Dear Diary

The last time we spoke, right before the battle, he made a suggestion I admit I considered absurd. “You should try keeping a journal,” he said.

“A journal?” I echoed. “Do you mean I should write a book?” I know, of course, that Moff Nur has been editing the manuscript of my master Darth Sidious the Emperor Palpatine, whose highly anticipated treatise on the subject of the subjugation of civilizations and the creation of powerful monsters promises to be a bestseller.

“No, no,” smiled Nur. “I mean like a diary.”

“Like a teenage girl?”

“Well, not entirely unlike a teenage girl, I suppose. The purpose is to help you analyze yourself by exporting your thoughts and impressions into a form you can review. Not only can it provide valuable insight as an artifact, but I find the actual process of recounting my reflections cathartic in itself. … I promise you, my friend, it helps.”

And so I have decided to make good on the Moff’s advice, now that he is dead and the confidence of the terrorists swells. I have begun this journal. I do not know how long the experiment will last, but I admit that in the absence of Nur himself I do find it calming to imagine I am speaking to his spirit as I dictate this recording.

Hello, Moff!

Alright, now I feel really stupid.

Well, lots of folks, other than teenagers and Sith Lords, keep a diary.  Some people call them “journals” so they don’t have to admit that they have a diary.  (The Punisher called his the “War Journal,” which was awkward when you consider all those “Catcher in the Rye” quotes and Good Charlotte lyrics scribbled in the margins.)  Your truly has a diary.  It’s pretty badly named – “diary” shares linguistic roots with the word “daily,” and all you Friends of the Hive know that I’m not a daily sort of writer – but diary it is.  I like to think of it as closer to to the Sith model than the Twihard, as befits a good minion.

You may suppose that a “journalist” would have a “journal” rather than a diary, but having been a journo major way back when, I know better.  A lot of these cats are really of the fawning lap-sitting variety.  Case in point:

Over the weekend, CNN anchor and reporter Tom Foreman wrote a piece for CNN’s website explaining the genesis of a tradition he has kept for the last four years. … Foreman has been writing President Obama a letter every single day of Obama’s first term. Some letters offered Obama advice, while others explained to Obama why Foreman rarely buys a lottery ticket.

You can call it fan mail, or hero worship, or love letters… whatever you like, but I’ma go ahead and call this a diary.  Some people actually have names for their diaries, even if it’s just “Dear Diary.”  (Mine just has dated entries.  Sith do NOT name their diaries.)  Mr. Foreman’s Diary is apparently named “Obama.”    And like a diary, Obama is quite unlikely to ever reply.

* No, but seriously, read this whole thing, it’s really terrific stuff.

When will now be then?

Soon.

As a word of explanation: on either side of my family, I’m the eldest of my generation.  My mother’s sister got in the next three, and then there’s a gap of eight years or more between me and my brother.  From there, the various cousins and siblings range well younger than myself.  As a result, sometimes I tend to lapse into “get off my lawn” mode with the youngsters, a situation that annoys all parties, and one I take pains to avoid when I can.

Still, I notice even when I manage to keep it to myself, and what I primarily noticed in the Czar’s Monday missive is the uncanny resemblance to many of my generation.  This meant that I wasn’t keeping it to myself this time.  The Czar kindly let me ramble, but even that was cut down.  My interest was more than abstract.  What got me where I live is the part I’m putting after the jump.

Will you still govern me tomorrow?

Via Twitter, the Masters sent word to the Minions of a new Obama campaign ad.  It’s…. well, it’s really creepy.  Even here in the Supersonic Rocket Ship, we’re unsettled – and remember, we let unbalanced people use toxic substances to test practical jokes on each other.

There are so many objections to this, it’s hard to know exactly where to begin.  I will start with what a lot of others are noticing: it’s a conceit used first by Vladimir Putin, the “freely elected” “President” of Russia.  It’s not the only resemblance that Obama hopes for, no doubt – he’s done end-arounds of Congress and statutory requirements via executive order and agency regulation, part and parcel of the idea that he should just be in charge all the time.

From there, the observations come very easily.  It’s very conceited to think that someone who wants you to be president just “wants you,” full stop.  Likening that vote to giving up one’s v-card?  ”Off” barely begins to cover the distastefulness of this concept.   The “Hey Girl” Paul Ryan meme that ran the rounds a couple of months ago was a mockery of the idea of the hunky guy sending ladies’ hearts a-flutter; if you recall, it was pictures of Ryan at his dreamiest captioned with “flirting” such as “Let me show you my budget projections” or “You want to get some tort reform some time?”  IOW, politics and infatuation don’t mix.

I don’t think I’m stretching to suggest that Obama likely thinks of himself as for-reals irresistible ladykiller.  He thinks of himself as a for-reals Zen Hoops Batman Prophet Jedi King, so why not Casanova too?  So, Hey girl, vote for me, because it will thrill your finer features – we’re all about your lady bits in the Democratic Party.  Ugh.

It’s rather a pity that a lovely and talented young lady like Lena Durham wouldn’t run from this advert like she would from a stalker in a windowless van. What was she thinking?  It’s not insulting to women to be told that it’s not enough to support President Tiger Beat with her vote, but that she has to swoon over him and flatter his virility as well? Who the hell does this doofus think he is?

Next step: the inevitable backlash over the squickiness, followed by the equally-inevitable calling of “Dog Whistle!” when people point out how awful this is.  You’re just afraid of da black man sexin’ up white women, raaaaaacist!!!one!  Sure, sure… keep politically-advertising that chicken.

The final observation is one that the Obama campaign probably doesn’t want to think about, but it’s actually the first thing I think of.  To wit: America already gave up their v-card to this cad in 2008, and wound up just like so many other poor girls who listened to rutting fools and gave it up, only to wake up in the morning to an empty bed and a guy who was just too busy to call all of a sudden.  Now he’s crawling back to us:  Oh baby, I was crazy to give you up, I’ve learned, I’ve changed, let me make it up to you.

Well, he only wants one thing out of us, and I pray America has learned some self-respect and kicks this bum to the curb.  He’s mooched off the rest of us for long enough.

Snippets

§ Insty reports a new wine in town.

On May 24, 1976, the British wine merchant Steven Spurrier organized a blind tasting of French and Californian wines. … The results shocked the wine world. According to the judges, the best Cabernet at the tasting was a 1973 bottle from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars in Napa Valley. When the tasting was repeated a few years later—some judges insisted that the French wines had been drunk too young—Stag’s Leap was once again declared the winner, followed by three other California Cabernets. These blind tastings (now widely known as the Judgment of Paris) helped to legitimate Napa vineyards.

But now, in an even more surprising turn of events, another American wine region has performed far better than expected in a blind tasting against the finest French châteaus. Ready for the punch line? The wines were from New Jersey.

Bingley has been way ahead of the curve on this, apparently.  Even I, who imbibeth but a little, have enjoyed the occasional winery tour-and-taste.  Cream Ridge Winery is a good spot for that sort of thing if you’re visiting the Garden State.

One of our earliest successes

Today the dread Doctor Darth J links a WSJ piece contrasting Romeny and Obama.

The article is worth your time, but this is more a quick note on Lokai and Bele, the two fellows pictured in Doctor J’s post.  Together they pulled off one of the first signature gags in the history of the Department of Practical Jokes.

The United Federation of Planets is* useful, but also often annoying.  They often think they’re actually in charge instead of the Masters.  Being a forward-thinking despot, the Czar ordered our Department to prank ol’ Bossy Britches himself, James Tiberius Kirk.  Lokai and Bele (not their real names, obviously) were duly dispatched.

* Or will be, or has about to, depending on your temporal reference point.

The Full-Contact Cosmetics Team were unsung heroes.  They actually fooled Doctor McCoy, who is nobody’s fool, into thinking that was their natural pigmentation!  But Lokai and Bele sold it so well, Bones could hardly be blamed.  Hell, at the end we began to wonder ourselves.  They were only supposed to fill all the Jeffries tubes with rice pudding, but instead they wove that outlandish tale of a millenial vendetta… I’ve got to hand it to them, it was brilliant.  The UFP has that soft spot for making everyone play friendly.  And whenever things got dicey, they hit Kirk right in the ego, and distracted him from actually asking five minutes’ worth of hard questions.  I swear, he must have majored in journalism at Starfleet Academy.

So the whole Enterprise wound up diverted light-years off course, to their “home planet,” where we scooped them up and brought them back to the Supersonic Rocket Ship.  They crack us up near tight deadlines by jogging down the corridors with those drippy stoner faces they used “remembering” the “civil war.”

Now, you may ask, gentle reader, what point there was in merely inconveniencing a Federation starship like that, just for a joke?  Well wouldn’t you love to know…