“I need you to prove that you’re bi.”

[produces ticket stub]

“Fuck, that’s good proof.”

Edit:

Never forget:

Wwweeeelllllll…

Hey, I got left out of things kids my age were talking about the old-fashioned way, by being a gigantic fucking dork, and it was free, goddammit!

“Who’s Gonald Trimp?”

The Dreamcast controller is ugly as sin but surprisingly comfortable to hold. It must have the widest delta between looks and ergonomics of any controller.

I can think of “penny for your thoughts,” and “I don’t give a red cent,” and arguably the very concept of “penny loafers,” but all of those are already fairly archaic. What are some others?

Weaponization or dangerous rays are not among the challenges facing space-based solar.

Contrary to appearances in fiction, most designs propose beam energy densities that are not harmful if human beings were to be inadvertently exposed, such as if a transmitting satellite’s beam were to wander off-course. But the necessarily vast size of the receiving antennas would still require large blocks of land near the end users. The service life of space-based collectors in the face of long-term exposure to the space environment, including degradation from radiation and micrometeoroid damage, could also become a concern for SBSP.

Star Trek would have been very different under Harlan Ellison.

So we went to the commissary and shoved in around the Writers’ Table.

What I did not know was that the Writers’ Table was right behind the Producers’ Banquette. That was my first big mistake. As it turned out, it was also my last big mistake.

Oh, what fun, sitting there with intellectual companions, cutting up touches and laughing at the drolleries! Born again: the Algonquin round table. Wit beyond compare. And, naturally, as the youngest member of the group, striving to make my mark as worthy of their camaraderie, their respect, I suggested a droll, witty lunchtime conceit . . .

Two things you must know. First, I do a terrific Mickey Mouse imitation. Absolutely phonographically perfect. If the publishers of this book had the money, they ought to bind in a record, one of those little plastic jobbies, so you could hear my spectacular Mickey imitation. When I tell this anecdote in person, it really enhances a lot. But just pretend you can hear it, okay?

The second thing you need to know is that the Producers’ Banquette had filled up with Roy Disney and the other heads of the studio, behind me; a fact of which I was unaware; a fact no one bothered to impart.

At the top of my voice I suggested, “Hey, listen, what a kick! Why don’t we do a porn Disney flick?”

Everyone smiled. “It’ll be terrific,” I said. Loudly. “I mean, everyone knows, for instance, that Tinker Bell does it . . . what they don’t know is how she Does It.” They all looked at me expectantly. “She flies up the head of the penis and flaps her wings like crazy,” I said, proud as hell of myself at this bit of fantasy. Everyone chuckled.

I went on, oblivious to the sudden hush all around me in the commissary. “I’ll be Mickey, and I’ll be the director; John, you do a good Donald, so you can be the male porn lead, sort of a duck-style Harry Reems; Mary, you can be Minnie, the female lead; and Albert, you can be Goofy . . . and Goofy, of course, is the producer.”

Their smiles were frozen; the way the smiles of bit players get frozen when they see the monster creeping up behind the hero in a horror flick.

“Hey, gang!” I squeaked in my terrifically accurate Mickey voice. “Everybody ready to shoot the ultimate Disney flick? The film that rips the lid off the goody two-shoes hypocrisy that lies sweltering beneath the surface of G-rated true-life adventures? Okay, you guys, let’s get that hand-held Arriflex right down there between Minnie’s legs! I wanna see closeups of quivering labia!”

A silence as deep as that at the bottom of the Cayman Trench.

I went on, oblivious, carried along by my enthusiasm. In Donald’s quack I said, “Goddam sonofabitch! Pluto, get outta there, you’re steaming up the lens!”

As Goofy, in the dumbest voice possible, I said, “Yuck, yuck, yuck . . . hey, fellahs, I’m a highly-paid, extremely-inept producer person . . . c’n I play, too?”

As Mickey: “Fuck off, Goofy, fuck off! Get those Seven Dwarfs in here . . . I don’t care ff they don’t wanna gang-bang a mouse, tell 'em they’re under contract . . . and fer chrissakes, Minnie, will you take off those damned shoes?!”

The meal came. Everyone addressed their plates like inmates of the Gulag Archipelago. When lunch was over, everyone vanished very quickly. I was confused, but felt good. What a nice little shtick I’d invented. Wished they’d joined in. Oh well.

Went back to my office. Noticed first that my name had been whited-out in the parking slot. Upstairs, the secretary and her paperback were gone. On my desk: twelve sharpened #2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencils and a pink slip.

I had been fired after working for the Disney empire for a total of four hours, including lunch.

The lessons here cannot be avoided.

Big business is humorless.

And . . .

At Disney, nobody fucks with The Mouse.

Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids

The white supremacists are losing the numbers game, so “something must be done before it’s too late.”

Libs HATE it when strong MAGA men cut their own dicks off!

This scenario would also make the various economic crises of the last twenty-ish years look like a calm Sunday picnic. America can sustain stupid non-productive forever wars overseas because we have a very-nearly functional society and economy here at home. If the American government starts trying to violently subjugate its own citizens, we will see in real time just how complicated, interconnected, and fragile our internal infrastructure really is.

But then I start to feel like

this guy, with the “real” camera and the phone camera, but the phone camera is the one I’ve most consistently got on me, because I can’t lug a whole additional piece of hardware around in a camera bag, meanwhile the phone camera pictures are grainy and shitty, and I’d just as soon have a Pixel in my pocket at all times that can take fairly good pictures at all times.