Geometric finality

 

If I seem movie-mad today, it's because they narrate, illuminate and anticipate our times so perfectly.  Threats to Congressional witnesses inevitably summon up Vincenzo Pentangeli, brought from Sicily to silently warn his brother that it would be unwise to testify against Michael Corleone.  Trump's Big Lie was lifted straight from the alternate front pages of the New York Inquirer:  "KANE ELECTED" or "FRAUD AT POLLS!"  At least once a day I hear the suave voice of Claude Rains:  "I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that..." some fresh atrocity has come to light.  

Today reality outdid itself in imitating art.  Out in Nevada, unnoticed by me (probably I was watching a movie), Joe Lombardo won the Republican primary and is running for governor.  Oh no, he didn't, says Joey Gilbert, who lost by eleven points but, as is now traditional for Republicans, refuses to accept reality.  According to his lawsuit against, well, almost everyone, "Mr. Gilbert will demonstrate with irrefutable geometric finality that he handily won."  It was that "geometric" that triggered the indelible scene in The Caine Mutiny.  Joey's going to prove that a duplicate key does exist if he has to strip-search everyone in Nevada.  And his "algorithm" is even nuttier than watching someone ladle sand in the middle of the night in the middle of the Pacific. 

 

I think I've earned a pass on this local story because there is so much other mishigas to occupy my time.  Like Dr. Anthony Fauci's announcement that he will retire at the end of Joe Biden's first term.  He is 81, he has been in public service for over forty years and he's tired of having fractious children as patients.  Time to put his feet up, play with his grandchildren, catch up on Netflix.  You'd expect the horse dewormer-and-exorcism crowd to be content with that, if not ecstatic.  Lauren Boebert will not have it.  "Not on my watch [sic].  He belongs in jail," she tweeted.  I think the former owner of Boebert's Barf-o-rama has a problem with public health in general, not that she's alone in her ravings.  But it's hard to fund-raise off FIRE FAUCI if he quits.  It will be even harder to replace him unless all Republicans are confined in the nation's zoos by then.

Herschel Walker said a true thing -- in 2019 but that counts, right?  He said he spent a week at an FBI school in Quantico where he shot a gun on an obstacle course ("I had fun").  This does not make him an FBI agent any more than Baseball Fantasy Camp makes you one of the Dodgers, but Walker still tells people, "I worked in law enforcement."  Etc.  Is it possible that one of his personalities landed that plane on the Hudson River in 2009?  It's not impossible.

Mehmet Oz explained to Dr. Laura why he's so far behind John Fetterman in fundraising:  "When Republicans get mad, we go out and mow the lawn.  Democrats, when they get mad, donate money to their party."  Outrageous!  And those sneaky Democrats are mad about the Opus Dei court and the failure of Build Back Better and especially about the possibility of another quack doctor in the Senate.  Sensing Trump's loosening grip on the party he went on to call him "a pretend populist...My parents were immigrants..." And they did all right, to judge by the fight he and his sister are having over an allegedly forged will in the Turkish courts.  Millions of dollars/lira.  Populism pays.

I don't believe I have ever eaten Skittles, which may be a good thing.  A class-action lawsuit by a group of (dying?) Californians accuses the Mars company of not removing titanium dioxide from the candy as they promised to do in 2016, or to warn consumers that they were risking their lives.  Yes, like virtually everything else, it can cause cancer.  Of course, M&Ms are always an option.

In conclusion, this is pure joy.  Enjoy.