I still have my memories, but a fair fraction of my other stuff was stolen over Thanksgiving.  

I came back from the usual family shindig Sunday night only to discover the side door had been kicked in — the dusty footprints on it bearing a happy holiday greeting from someone I’ve probably never met, and whose presence in my life I will not soon forget.

In consequence, I find I haven’t got much to say about politics at present.  I am instead focusing on pinatas and the extent to which they should be replaced by burglars at children’s parties.

I do find, however, that the sonnet-creation engine in the back of my head still works.  

Anybody who wants some sonnets needs only suggest some topics.

I was reading CNN recently — a bad habit, I know, but a hard one to break — and discovered this story.  I don’t think I can sum it up better than they did:

• Zoo introduced polar bear cub to its resident bear and waited for sparks to fly
• And it waited and waited: Tsuyoshi never made amorous advances toward Kurumi
• Months later, the zoo makes key discovery: both bears are female

Hmm, yes, that would be a problem.  Not for the bears — the zookeepers.  What it means is that they failed to master the complex art of bear-sexing.  

Zookeepers of the world, here’s what you do: Look between their legs. 

Now, if this had been humans instead of bears, there would’ve been no trouble. Put two men (or women) in prison and I guarantee one of them will make amorous advances on the other before the end of the week.  So common a scenario is this, in fact, that we even have a cliche to describe it: prison bitch.

The cliche comes as a natural consequence of the fact that we are the randiest creatures in existence; our sex drive is nothing less than a biological juggernaut. 

And it seems to me we can leverage this fact to achieve forward progress in anything we want.  I’ve already explored the connection between hookers and exotic cars in a previous entry.  But try this on for size: a national porn tax.

It would be quite simple.  All porn sites would be required to charge their customers a special tax. The taxes would be paid to the federal government, which would then apply them to fixing the economy, specifically by rebuilding our infrastructure and ending homelessness.  (I would receive only a modest percentage of the total receipts as the founder of the concept.)

In this way, we would leverage human nature to the benefit of everyone.  Our nation’s hardworking, sex-crazed men would simply masturbate us out of poverty and a bad economy.  

And what could the objection possibly be?

Objection: “I don’t have enough money for a porn tax.”
Response: “Then stop spending so much on porn, you perv.”

Objection: “This will make it harder to hide my porn expenses from my wife.”
Response: “Good.”

Objection: “But if she finds out, she’ll throw me out of the house.”
Response: “In which case you’ll have a homeless shelter to live in, thanks to the porn tax.”

Come on, Obama — admit it — this is a better idea than anything your people have come up with so far.  The time has come to acknowledge my mastery of human psychology as pertains to business matters, and make me a cabinet secretary (possibly of a newly-created Department of Porn).

I promise, nobody will come up with a better stimulus package than this.

 So here’s a weird situation: The media has insulted Sarah Palin, and I can’t understand why.

It seems to be a whole big turkey video thing. Basically, in this video clip, she’s pardoning a turkey so it doesn’t get slaughtered for Thanksgiving (see also an excellent episode of The West Wing).

Meanwhile, in the background, unbeknownst to her, another turkey is being slaughtered.  And everyone on TV thinks this video is very distasteful.  (Olbermann probably thinks it’s “horrible! Horrible!!”)

Well… what exactly is the issue? It’s not like the turkey was beknownst. It’s clearly unbeknownst.  Palin never said “Please brutally murder a turkey in accordance with my beknownst wishes, and meanwhile I shall pretend it is happening in an unbeknownst fashion.” 

So this isn’t similar to the moose/wolf deal; her conscious, deliberate action here is to spare a turkey.   

Of course, she knows the ones she doesn’t spare will be killed horrifically and eaten, but we all know that.  We all know that animals feel extreme horror and pain just like we would, if we were slaughtered, but we don’t care because they are yummy. 

Instead, we make whatever excuses we need to make to justify chowing down.  Here, for instance, are some of mine…

Turkeys and all other avian life: Fuck them all!  Birds are the last descendants of dinosaurs, who would obliterate us if they could and overrun the world again. We eat them in revenge.

Cows: Cows are exceptionally stupid.  This, actually, is why cowcatchers were invented.  Any animal too stupid to retreat from an oncoming train surely deserves death.

Pigs: Actually, I think I could give up pork… mostly. My beef against pork is that I’m too chicken to abandon bacon.

So I just can’t accuse Palin of unusual cruelty in this context.  She seems typically American to me.

What does this leave?  I can only guess that it leaves PR.  

We can still accuse her of being thoughtless in allowing herself to be associated with something most Americans find distasteful.

Basically, then, Turkeygate is about bad taste.  It’s about the fact that Americans don’t like to watch hideous, gruesome spectacles in which dumb creatures who lack a prefrontal cortex, who can’t possibly fight back, are exterminated mercilessly.

But no… it can’t be that either…

After all, we all tuned in for hours on election night.

 Dire times are indeed upon us.  It seems that even the world’s oldest and most established profession is not proof against our mischievous economy which, like the Artful Dodger, is picking money even from the emptiest pockets.

Says Susan Austin, chief executive ho of the Mustang Ranch, about recent applicants: 

“The age group is going older. I had a 72-year-old apply for a job.” 

She says the poor economy has forced her to lay off 30 percent of her staff, unheard of in a business generally regarded as a printing press for making money.

It’s actually come to this, people.  Innocent, hard-working whores can’t earn a decent living any more.  Instead, they are being shoved out into the cruel streets and forced to compete with financial industry executives for dead mice and stale crusts of bread.

That said, the revisitation of Ashley Dupre in the nation’s media reminds us that some of these ladies are still getting admirable buck for the bang.  

If you read the linked article above, you will find that each finger she’s holding up represents a thousand dollars paid to her on one particular outing with Eliot Spitzer.

What lesson can we learn from Ms. Dupre?  It seems to me there is this: When in doubt, charge more, not less. 

As proof of this economic dictum, ponder at your leisure recent results of the automotive industry.  As Detroit’s Big Three stumble into DC, contrite expressions of woe pairing well with their sob stories about being unable to think more than a week into the future, European luxury manufacturers are rolling in new money. 

Maserati sales?  Up ten percent.  Rolls-Royce?  Up thirty-two goddamn percent.

So here, too, it seems the best strategy to pursue if your business is running dry is target the rich and stupid among us, who will always find a way to justify the expense if they are persuaded it will make them look good. 

Therefore, for Obama, who needs to revive the economy double-time starting January 21 2009, I recommend this course of action:

1. Create a public, government-run sexual health service, hire the best talent you can find, and demand top dollar for it.  Our beautiful American whores deserve stable, high-paying incomes, even if they’re 72. 

2. Give the Big Three the $25 billion they want… if and only if they can come up with cars exotic and expensive enough that the everyday male consumer can fantasize he is some sort of rock star and act accordingly.  Inevitably, he will then form business alliances with the government whores.  This will drive the business cycle for both sex and cars, essentially bitch-slapping America’s ailing economy until the glow of health returns to its cheeks.

Today marks the first instance of a glorious new tradition at DeviousRogue: Politically Incorrect Fridays.

1. A week ago, I challenged you dorks to name a single English word that follows the pattern abcabca.  And I am sorry to say not one of you came up with alfalfa or anything resembling it.  

Now, this is not because you are busy people with lives to lead… people working complex jobs of paramount importance to the nation, whose time could be characterized with real honesty as “precious.”  No, it’s because you’re all completely retarded.  Each and every one of you is just as dumb as you can possibly be.  And I, who enjoyed and recommended the rock band KISS in the third grade to the point of wanting to change his name to “Ace,” am your king.

2. Rachel Maddow, you can suck it. You may be a Rhodes Scholar, but in objecting to the increasingly Clintonian makeup of the future Obama administration as “not the change we voted for,” you are missing the point and dumber than the people who can’t think of the word alfalfa.

The point is not that the Obama administration be different from every other administration in American history.  The point is that the Obama administration be different from the current bastards whose lubeless governmental malpractice has left us all bleeding where we were never designed to bleed. The point is that it be crazy-go-nuts competent.  

If the Obama administration can maximize its competency by installing every single member of the Clinton gang back into their original offices — if by doing so, we can reachieve the stability, comfort, national security, stock market growth, business innovation, and general optimism and faith in the future most of us had in the nineties — then goddamnit, let’s do it. And if that means Obama’s  getting head from Monica Lewinsky, then by all means, let’s do that too. Dig her ass up out of whatever Wal-Mart greeter position she’s slept her way into, and restore to her the job duties she was obviously meant by God to perform. I’m so ready to have a dabba-doo time in America, I can’t even tell you. 

3. You can’t be a scary kickass vampire and also wear makeup, be celibate, and be vegetarian.  It simply can’t be done.  Never has been done, never will be done.

If you try, people will not run from you.  They will run at you, mug you, and steal your fucking lunch money. Tiny poodles aged mailmen have kicked into submission will still fall over sideways laughing at you.

No one, in short, will take you at all seriously, ‘cept for a bunch of masturbating, canary-voiced, pimply-faced girls who barely have pubic hair.  And any grown woman who thinks differently is gonna have to prove to me she has got pubic hair.

4. Ted Stevens is a goddamn crook and that’s all there is to say about that.

5. The Big Three from Detroit, much like Lehman Brothers, obviously need to learn about a little thing called business resilience and its relationship to service management.

And here, too, Rachel Maddow’s Oxford dons clearly did not finish the job, because there she is on her show, panting openly at the idea of maximizing American debt and more than ready to donate billions to the clueless freaks who brought us the SUV twenty years after global peak oil production had come and gone, and then had the chutzpah to fly private jets to their handout-begging session.

Note to Rachel: Send me e-mail about this and I will school your ass in no time flat. You can pretend you knew it all along next week on your show. I won’t even call you out on it.

Attention, Republicans: All your gays are belong to us.

Consider the well-known case of openly gay and formerly Republican blogger Andrew Sullivan — a writer who, on a good day, is almost as snarky as the DeviousRogue. Wikipedia tells us this:

Sullivan is a libertarian conservative who has argued that the Republican Party has abandoned true conservative principles… After supporting George W. Bush in the 2000 Presidential election, he eventually endorsed Senator John Kerry for President in 2004… In 2006, he supported the Democratic Party’s takeover of Congress… On his blog, Sullivan has been highly favorable toward Obama.

What happened? Quite simply, the Republicans forgot who they were.  

They lost all sight of their rational origin — that sound intellectual foundation laid by radical characters like Thomas Jefferson, who advocated for church/state separation, states’ rights, and a small federal government.

They became, instead, crazed zombies who sought to acquire and maintain political power by pandering to the evangelical base.

Well, it turns out evangelical zombies aren’t good at creating public policy in the 21st century. And along the way, the Republicans also, to quote Sullivan, “lost the gay vote for a generation.”

So today we have what I would call a perfect political storm. Republicans want to redefine themselves to become more inclusive and stay relevant. They are also, as a result of this increasing inclusiveness, distancing themselves from the evangelicals.  Meanwhile, the gay population is pissed off about losing the right to marry in certain states.

Fortunately, these problems cancel each other out.

To put it plainly, the future GOP platform should obviously include explicit support for homosexual rights, specifically including marriage.

Some points to consider:

1. It would logically fit into the GOP’s classically libertarian platform of personal freedom.

2. It would immediately redefine their public image in a major new, positive way.  ”This isn’t your father’s Republican party” — that sort of thing.  Goodbye, red necks. Hello, rainbow bumper stickers.

3. It would dramatically increase the odds of gay marriage getting voted into existence nationwide.

I’ll even pony up a free slogan for the Republican party, should they decide to take my advice and, in this way, increase their numbers:

“Be fruitful and multiply.”

I was pleased to discover recently that Barack Obama has read every Harry Potter novel and is a comics collector. ‘Cause I’ve read HP books too, and when I was a kid, I used to collect comics. I immediately felt a sense of recognition that here, at last, might be someone like me.

If there’s ever been a comics collector in the White House before, nobody told us. (The guy there right now might collect… hmmm, Archie.  But if so, I doubt even half a century of constant musing has left him able to choose between Betty and Veronica. I see him sitting, puzzled, for hours on end while staring at the comics. He looks at his left hand… frowns… looks at his right hand… frowns… looks at his left hand…)

Of course, once you get past that initial shock, you start thinking more analytically.  I, for instance, had very mixed feelings on discovering that the exact comics collected by the president-elect are Amazing Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian.  

Conan is just a drunk and burly thug. Spider-Man, while a great coming-of-age sort of story, lacks the depth and philosophical exploration of more recent offerings.  

Obama is supposed to be an intellectual; why then is he not reading something adult and complex like Watchmen or Sandman or Maus?

I feel this question must be answered before I can really say I understand him, let alone anoint him as my proper representative and feel in my guts that he has the requisite geek cred. 

Actually, I have other questions too. If he could answer them and get back to me by the end of the week, that would be fine.

1. Grease or Star Wars?  If he says Grease, it’s over. Give the job to Biden… but ask him the same question.

2. Did Han shoot first?

3. Finish this line: “It’s not the years… it’s the X.”

4. Does he watch Heroes? If so, then true or false: Hiro acts just as mature at ten as he does at twenty-eight.

5. What is the president-elect’s theory about why the word “mutant” is never used on Heroes?

6. What is James Kirk’s middle name?

7. Name one major, memorable character from comics history who died and never came back.

8. If Obama were going up against a rogue Green Lantern in a fight, what would he wear?

9. Does J. J. Abrams know what he’s doing, ever, on any project at any point? Or does he just make it up as he goes?

10. Where does Obama stand on the news the last HP film will be split in two?

11. Does it worry him that as much as four hours may be spent watching Harry, Hermione, and Ron camp out all over England and whinge pitiably that Dumbledore didn’t give them enough information?

12. Does he hope that in the movie, they’re smart enough to realize they can steal Dumbledore’s portrait from Hogwarts and ask it whatever they want?

Some years ago, I had a girlfriend named Kelly who was notable in at least two different, but remarkably balanced dimensions.  They were as follows:

Absurdity: Kelly believed that space aliens had built the pyramids at Giza.  No amount of facts or logic could sway her.  She knew who had built the pyramids; it was space aliens.  You see, space aliens may fly between solar systems using unimaginably powerful technology, but when it comes to architecture, they think along retro lines.  They like it sandy, stony, and pyramidal.

Compensation: On nights I slept over, Kelly was known to wake me up with wonderful blowjobs.  She would then cook and feed me first-caliber breakfast tacos (or, as they are sometimes known in the benighted North, breakfast burritos).

So you see, the absurdity was pretty bad, but the compensation was better.  The important thing was not that there be zero absurdity… although that would have been marvelous… but that the ratio of absurdity to compensation was relatively low.  It was this low ratio that kept me hanging around.

At this point, you may be wondering what blowjobs and absurdity could possibly have to do with the world of politics (my usual subject).  Bear with me in your deep confusion a bit more.

Looking back over the tenure of President Bush, it seems to me he gave America more than his fair share of absurdity, but no compensation.  Space aliens, yes; blowjobs, no.

We must hold President Obama to a higher standard. 

When President Obama commits acts of absurdity, as he inevitably will, we must measure them against an established metric and thus arrive at a suitable compensation. And we must expect him to deliver it.

Some suggestions follow…

Absurdity: President Obama creates unconstitutional spying programs in which the phone calls of Americans, here and abroad, are monitored for dubious reasons. 

Compensation: President Obama sets up a pizza kitchen in the National Mall. President Obama then personally bakes gourmet pizzas on command, using exotic cheeses and many secret spices, for all who wish to eat them. 

Absurdity: President Obama doubles the national debt, from ten trillion to twenty trillion, for no apparent reason except that he felt like it.

Compensation: President Obama goes into the lab, pulls on a white smock, and rolls up his sleeves.  Three weeks later, flushed with victory, he emerges with cures for cancer, the common cold, and stupidity.

Absurdity: President Obama starts a nuclear war with Pakistan — a result of sending mass troops into Pakistan (without getting permission from the Pakistani powers that be) who inadvertently kill a few hundred thousand civilians.

Compensation: President Obama turns out to be The One, as some among us have imagined him.  He establishes a thousand-year kingdom of peace on the Earth, in which all humans who have died are resurrected, their souls restored to their bodies. Those whose deeds in life proved them most holy are given positions of high authority in the new heavenly realm.  Manna is showered upon the hungry people, who sing hosannas of praise, and joy and prosperity reign forever and ever.

We essentially cannot compete in the Northeast, we are losing our ability to compete in Great Lakes States, we cannot compete on the West Coast, we are increasingly in danger of competing in the Mid-Atlantic States, and the Democrats are now winning some of the Western States. Similarly we cannot compete… where we have a large deficit with Hispanics, where we have a large deficit with African-American voters, where we have a large deficit with people of modest incomes and modest financial circumstances.

– Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) of Minnesota

National demographics and voting dynamics tell it like it is: the Republicans are done.  They simply have nowhere to retreat except deeper into Appalachia, where the grits may be tasty but nobody can spell.   

The best argument I have seen for revising the GOP platform, by Ron Paul, still falls short.  Congressman Paul doesn’t seem to grasp that values must also be addressed. 

And not the same old white-bread, pray-to-the-Father, here-in-the-heartland values.  New values, presented in a new way that’s likely to attract new demographics and keep the Republican party relevant in the new America of the new millennium.  

Where can the GOP find such values?

Certainly not Huckabee… the man who argues he is not a primate and nearly has me persuaded. 

Not Romney… his chance was 2008, and it’s gone.  Not Jindal. Not Pawlenty.  Not Crist. And absolutely, positively, not Palin, that half-witted, Armani-clad, lie-spewing media hag — the dullest knife ever brought to a gunfight.

Instead, let me suggest… as the absolute best possible Republican candidate for the presidency in 2012… this individual:

Black. Gay. Transvestite. Sharp as a tack. Not a career politician. Fond of purple prints. Oh snap!  No politician in America offers such a potent package.

And RuPaul is strongest when it comes to the values the GOP needs most. On diversity, tolerance, empathy, open communications, pragmatism, and astonishingly fluid psychosexual definitions:

“You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee. I don’t care! Just as long as you call me.”

On modern, bipartisan approaches to problems faced by all Americans, vigorously implemented with a courageous disregard for political consequences:

“What other people think of me is not my business. What I do is what I do. How people see me doesn’t change what I decide to do. I don’t choose projects so people don’t see me as one thing or another. I choose projects that excite me.”

You just aren’t gonna do better, Republican pundits.  

You will never find anyone who can repair your busted-up, broken-down, right-wing PR faster than that.

Heed my words… or Ru the day you didn’t.

Many years ago, when I was a small yet mnemonically gifted child, I recall seeing a Love Boat rerun featuring Sonny Bono. I say this with confidence — they all featured Sonny Bono.

In this rerun, he sang a tune to a deaf girl which went like this:

Now I found the rainbow… and I don’t mind the rain
Sarah’s here and nothing is the same.
All my world is magic — since she smiled hello –
And now that I have found you Sarah,
I can never… ever let… you go.

My YouTube searches have turned up blank, but I will make and send confections to anyone who can find a clip of this scene, which seems incredibly appropriate given recent events. Doesn’t it?

All of a sudden it seems Sarah is indeed here, and nothing is the same. I open the garage door — Sarah. I turn into the coffee aisle in Central Market — Sarah. Up goes the toilet lid, and out pops her head. The woman is ubiquitous.

So it was no surprise to me that Greta Van Susteren recently conducted an interview with her.

Now, during this interview, Van Susteren pointed out that time will not halt. Instead, there will be a year referred to as 2012. She asked Palin for her take on this phenomenon.

PALIN: We are going to have a 2012. I don’t know who is going to be a part of it. You know, I have — faith is a very big part of my life. And putting my life in my creator’s hands — this is what I always do. I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is. Even if it’s cracked up a little bit, maybe I’ll plow right on through that and maybe prematurely plow through it, but don’t let me miss an open door. And if there is an open door in ‘12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.

This word salad is sufficiently tossed that the DeviousRogue has decided to clarify matters.

For the cognitive convenience of our many loyal readers, I provide here an explanatory flowchart of Palin’s decision-making process. Enjoy!  (You might want to click on the chart to improve readability.)