Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Wednesday, July 23, 2008 )

After nearly 13 years of hiding, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, a fugitive from justice after being indicted for war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovnia in 1995, was apprehended by Serbian authorities on July 21. For much of his time underground, Mr. Karadzic assumed a variety of disguises that allowed him to wander freely in Belgrade. When he was caught, he was known as Dragan Dabic, a long-haired practitioner of alternative medicine who gave lectures at community centers and was very interested in beefing up his Web page.

What other people has Dr. Karadzic pretended to be while underground?

–*Ljuba Dabic, a communist sanitation worker who was enamored of the functionalist architectural aesthetic of Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson and who liked to woo women by playing them “Stairway to Heaven.”

–*Milovan Ljajic, an oncologist with a history of impotence problems and a love of the film “When Harry Met Sally.”

–*Vuk Vukcevic, organist with the philharmonic who has a slight proclivity toward the atonal serial music of Arnold Schoenberg and who had carefully cultivated a legend in Belgrade social circles of having an enormous dick.

–*Rudjer Mladic, a post-op transsexual who has not hidden his desire to be the first Bosnian-Serb nationalist male to carry a child. He likes gardening and staring into his Victorian reflecting ball.

–*Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, the Grand Duchess of Russia

–*Nelson Judd, a country and western singer from Frankfort, Kentucky who sings unabashadly of his love of America and freedom in the song, “This Conflict.” He may have been married to actress Renee Zellweger.

–*Blaze Starr, a retired American stripper and owner of Baltimore’s “Two O’Clock Club.”

–*Anders Bendtsen, a Danish base-jumper who likes to take a lot of acid and jump off outcroppings.

–*Mysterious Icelandic rock band Sigur Ros

–*Bald, fat psychedlic rock recluse Syd Barrett

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(Originally posted Monday, July 21, 2008 )

Hey males! Have you ever found yourself having a fight with your girlfriend or wife and unable to deal with her coy, stubborn, wily female obstinacy? Well we here at the Harvey Keitel-Marlon Brando-Mickey Rourke School of Couples Therapy have come up with all sorts of gambits for you to handle it the next time you are feeling emasculated by your spouse at the grocery store, the park, a bowling alley or at a children’s birthday party.

Before we begin, just fill out this questionnaire and soon you will be able to find a cool, masculine way to show your validity, empathy, and sensitivity — and more important, to comfortably assert yourself in a way that will make her beg for your manly scent.

Just answer these questions, and find out if the school is right for you:

Question 1

When your wife argues that you have not cleaned the kitchen in months, what do you do?

a) Look at the floor and be mumbly and non-committal.
b) Whine and continue to watch TV.
c) Wiggle your eyebrow up and down, slowly, as if you are about to explode in an act of unspeakable violence, then take a big drink of water and whisper: “Are you talking to me?”

Question 2

Your girlfriend wants you to spend some time talking about her day, but you want to watch football. What do you do?

a) Go in the bathroom and shut the door and stay in there for an hour.
b) Indulge her but think about something else while she talks.
c) Slowly crush open a hard boiled egg. When the shell has fallen off, hold the egg up and ask her if she knows it’s a symbol of the soul. Then put the entire egg in your mouth and eat it.

Question 3

Your wife wants to go to Paris and you want to go to Miami for the big game. What do you do?

a) Compromise and agree to go to Paris if she will go to a few home games with you.
b) Tell her you can take separate vacations as a way to both assert your individuality and your separateness.
c) Roll your tongue around, strip naked, lay your genitals on the hardwood floor and say “We’re only going to talk monkey talk now. Ooo ooo ooo! Ah ah ah!”

Question 4

Your wife wants to save 15% of your incomes to put in a 401k and you want a plasma TV. When she folds her arms and says you’re crazy, what do you do?

a) Start siphoning money out of the account secretly.
b) Give her the money and content yourself with Internet porn.
c) Read her an improvised poem you wrote about making love to a moose in the wilderness and then killing it and eating it.

Question 5

Your girlfriend wants you to meet her parents but you don’t think you’d like them. What do you do?

a) Go ahead and meet them and acknowledge this as an important new step in the development of your relationship.
b) Tell her that even though you hope to take that step in the future, you feel the relationship is still young and it is too soon to introduce the dynamics of outsiders.
c) Take take a rose off the kitchen table and start eating it.

Question 6

Your girlfriend thinks that you’re not interested in her friends. What do you do?

a) Let her know that you two must be allowed to be separate people, too, as well as a couple, so that you can assert your own identities.
b) Go along with her friends and try to brush it off when they tell emasculating jokes.
c) Writhe around like a giant spastic colon.

Question 7

Your wife is mad that you grabbed the remote and seemed to have broken something on the television. What do you do?

a) Let her know it wasn’t intentional and that she should not project her anger onto you.
b) Tell her that you are glad the TV is off so now you will be able to relate more to each other.
c) Ejaculate in Nicole Kidman’s hair.

Question 8

Your girlfriend wants to move in, but you’re not sure. What do you do?

a) Tell her that it’s fine by you, because you’re willing to take a chance on love.
b) Tell her that most people who live together unmarried first often get a divorce later because the tentativeness with which you approached the relationship created commitment problems later.
c) Run your hands over the uncooked pot roast and say “Look how they messed up my boy.”

Question 9

Your wife says you are aloof and hard to get to know. What do you do?

a) Tell her that you will try to be more open because her love is worth it.
b) Explain to her that men learn very early to hide their feelings, since most of their earliest impulses in childhood development, such as sexual drive and territoriality, are shunned during social conditioning.
c) Drink an entire bottle of wine, play bongos and ask her to put a stick of butter up your ass.

Question 10

Your wife says she wants a baby and you are unsure. What do you do?

a) Tell her that having a child is a great responsibility and you want to make sure you are mature enough to handle it before tackling it.
b) Let her have the baby and then blame the child later for not accomplishing everything you wanted to do in life.
c) Let out a belch and say “When I made love to the rook, it was already dead.”

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(Originally posted Sunday, July 20, 2008 )

Dear Playboy Adviser:

Who doesn’t love bee hived British jazz chanteuse and troubled torch singer Amy Winehouse? The woman is the Billie Holiday of our time. She’s sings with a sense of timeless romanticism, of aching loss, of soul crushing despair. I love Amy because she sings music for dark nights of the soul.

And who wouldn’t want to have a dark night of the soul — out on the town, that is–with a lady of such rare refinement and grace? Oh sure, you say, Amy is married, and that dreaming of a date with her is a little far-fetched. Yet, I often like to imagine, late at night, that under different circumstances, she and I were not star-crossed lovers under the same moon, but real soul mates not yet united in space. If she were to grant me just one date, this is how I imagine it would go:

First, I would pick her up in her East London pied-a-terre in Mayfair, where her large black bodyguard would frisk me down and destroy my camera. Then he would tell me to hang back because Amy is just finishing up with some business upstairs. I’ve brought her a bottle of Frixinet, a Spanish wine; the bodyguard instantly takes it away from me, smashes open the bottle and pours it out, then hands me the remainder. “Amy doesn’t drink,” he says.

When she finally comes down she’s dressed in fishnet and tulle painted black, her trademark beehive spun up vertiginously high over her head like a trailing tornado.

“Don’t bo’er with me. I’m a right sket. Real mankies inside, kn’wha-a-mean?”

“No, I don’t, but I love the way you say it. Heh heh.”

“Who’re you ‘gain, luv?”

“Why, I’m your date, Ms. Winehouse. Or may I call you ‘Amy?'”

“Wass that you brought?”

“Well, it was Frixinet, but your bodyguard threw it out.”

“Thas Raoul. Dodgy mac. Gone stark bollocks mad, has ‘ee?”

This is when Amy throws up the first time. I must tell you, Playboy Advisor, that not only am I a dreamy man with an aching sense of romanticism myself, but I am a tolerant and patient man, who understands a person’s hurts and driving desires. Oh yes, Playboy Advisor, Amy hurts. That’s why her emesis goes by unnoticed and unjudged by yours truly.

Raoul gives me a note.

“Read this if something goes wrong,” he says. Then he leaves.

We drink some seltzer, but soon enough I realize it’s spiked with Scotch. She spends quite a bit of time playing with her beehive and occasionally cuts little slices into her forearm with a plastic knife.

“So, Amy, what are your interests?” I ask, a little playfully pushing around my fork, trying to be coy.

“Scuba doyvin’. Smokin’ crack.”

“You like nature, huh? Much like your romantic forebears, Byron and Keats.”

“Dose bligh’ters ‘re dead, ain’t dey?”

“Well, I like to think their poetry made them immortal.”

“Think I’m gonna frow up again.”

From there we move to her limo. I have to carry her half the way there, as she fainted on the stairs. She lifts her head momentarily to utter softly in my ear, “Right, you dodgy mac, keep your blodgy fingers off my Bristols or I’ll four-square you in the li’l knackers. Say, why don’t you cadge me a cig and some Britneys from that bar cross the way. Be a love.”

I run my hand softly over Amy’s hair. She has now more than ever struck a chord of affection in my heart, a woman who is beautiful and ruined. A perfect mix of Billie Holiday, of Saraghina from Fellini’s classic film “8 ½,” and Mary Poppins.

I kiss her on the forehead.

“I hope you don’t mind me doing that, Amy.”

“Do’in wha?”

She starts shaking a little as I carry her up the stairs to a fancy bistro in London’s West End. The paparazzi is there in full force, taking lots of pictures as I, swoony as can be, pull Amy up the red carpet by her belt and elbow and finally by her hair.

“Dear Amy, don’t you know when you mix Doriden and Codeine, your body converts it into morphine?”

“Well I ‘ope so. Das why I took ’em.”

A bright white froth is coming up out of her mouth.

“Oh you sweet, beautiful child! Please wake up. I love you so much, you saucy minx, and yet I’m so afraid you’re going to stop breathing.”

Amy is now a right mess after taking the “doors and fours,” and I’m worried that we’re not going to be able to make it to the mahi-mahi. The waiters part like the Red Sea as Amy and I make for a table in the back. Amy puts on sunglasses and lights a cigarette after a few waiters and I get her behind the table. The restaurant has high ceilings, solid teak-wood tables and shoji screens, and we are able to cook our own Kobe beef on braziers sunk into the table.

“Isn’t this a beautiful place,” I ask Amy, but unfortunately, the grill is smoking off her false eyelashes, one of which gets cooked into the asparagus and chicken skewer. Amy is embarrassed, picks it up and sticks it back on her eye.

“Do I look a’right?” she asks.

“Amy,” I say, “There is nothing that could replace the beauty of this experience. This night is what we make it, you and I, and the only limit is our imagination.”

“Watch this,” she says. Then she takes her cigarette and snubs it out in her palm. “You like tha t? I din’t feewl nuffing.”

“Amy,” I titter. “You’re bad.”

“My dad’s a mean old sod. Says I got emphysemar from smokin’ cigarettes and doin’ eight-balls.”

“Oh, Amy, my dad’s the same really. Only he said youth is wasted on the young.”

“What a tosser. If I were you, I wouln’ give him anymore of your royalty money.”

“Exactly.” Oh how cute. She thinks we all get royalty checks. My girl is so funny sometimes.

Our dinner comes late, and Amy asks me to cook the beef for her, since she’s too tired to lift her arms. Easy enough to do, because taking care of Amy isn’t just a simple pleasure for me, but a passion. How could a man not help the woman who sang “Back To Black” with aching lyricism; who ripped through “Love Is A Losing Game” like someone who knew the pain first hand; who sang “Wake Up Alone,” as one unafraid to be an exhibitionist and show her perfect pain, because it was simply her humanity on display. “Of course I’ll cook your one-minute beef strip for you, Amy.”

“You know,” I say later, “I think it was Kierkegaard said that faith is more important than reason. That’s why I really got where you were coming from when you sang ‘Rehab.’ It was really about the Sisyphean experience we all share-the moral imperative to go to hell in our own way and justify our own burden.”

She retched in her purse. Quickly, I grabbed her hair and held it back. It was awesome, Playboy Advisor. Soon, when we were in a moment of soft touch, there was a moment of understanding that only fingers can know, when only a sigh can say its name. I was struck, as I was cleaning the yellow sick off her face, how much love one can feel in the deepest depths of emotional drama. I do not think I could love any other way but dramatically, Playboy Advisor. And in fact, I do not think I could love this way ever again, since the first knowing of it is what so greatly heightens its …

I have to stop, because Amy has gone into seizure. I’m not sure if it’s the alcohol, the crack or the bodily converted stomach morphine. Or maybe she’s epileptic, I’m not sure. I reach around for the note from Raoul. It says don’t let her touch the sake. She is wiggling with her eyes back of her head and the first appearance of cyanosis is making her glow in the dark a little bit.

“Hey!” I scream. “Can somebody help me! It’s Grammy winner Amy Winehouse! And she’s in trouble!”

No one is around who can help, and thankfully I have prepared for my date with some rudimentary CPR training, which was only pragmatic, I must say. The beautiful sigh of her voice that mere minutes ago bespoke pained bluesy passion has momentarily stopped, most likely because of a respiratory system shut down due to a mix of heroin, alcohol and benzodiazepines. I listen close to see if she is breathing at least 12 breaths a minute, and put a spoon up to her mouth, hoping for a bit of that same tormented air from those pipes that so beautifully rendered “You Know I’m No Good” into one of the most heartbreaking acts of contrition ever to cut vinyl. I’m thinking of this as I rub hard on her breast bone and upper lip. And finally, I do what I must, Playboy Advisor, I bring my lips down hard on hers and wish to God that the blush of blood on her lips could be the nectar that breathes life back into this phoenix before she leaves us too soon.

I again look at Raoul’s note, which has a picture of Amy in the recovery position on her stomach, head turned to side with airways unblocked so that she can get plenty of oxygen. I give her a few more “rescue breaths” and then turn her over, but that’s when Raoul arrives, knocking me out of the way, and giving Amy a blast up the nose with a special spray that blocks brain receptors for heroin. Amy wakes up and asks if she ate all the beef or if there was any left.

Later, as we’re walking home, Raoul’s giant hand placed firmly on her shoulder, I ask Amy if she had a good time, and if she thinks I might be boyfriend material. She comes closer to me.

“Are you my ‘usband? I’d say anythin’ right now t’ya dearie. I don’t even know where I am.”

With that she turns and goes up the stairs into her apartment. And I, Playboy Advisor, am not bitter at all. Amy lives in a world we don’t understand. And for me to share it with her for even two hours makes me feel an excitement … makes me feel it will be hard to reach such great heights of drama and passion again. I’ve been told that such profound heartbreak is only the province of the silly young. But I ask you to remember when you were young and had a heart.

To hold Amy Winehouse, but not to have her, that is the greatest ache and the greatest love of all. And I sing to myself, “He can only hold her. He can only hold her …”

Oh my God, she puked in my jeans pocket. How does somebody do that?

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(Originally posted Friday, July 18, 2008 )

What Super Powers Do Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s Natural Children Possess?

–*They can fly.

–*They have big cushion-y lips that can stop a small compact car.

–*Knox can make himself elastic and stretch through keyholes.

–*They are full of active mitochlorians that give them the power of invisibility.

–*They have cable access playing through translucent screens that appear in the middle of their bellies

–*If you lick their backs, you will get high off the psychoactive toad venom bufotenin

–*They can live through a nuclear firestorm by shifting their shape into cockroaches.

–*They spit African petrodollars

–*Vivienne and Knox wonder twin powers, activate! Form of–a bucket of Bridget Bardot’s spit. Shape of–a murderous, territorial hamster.

–*They can muster, in mere seconds, an entire army of fire-breathing publicists

–*They have the ability to develop into giant adults through exponential number of cell divisions following mitosis, a result of reproduction that occurs when two super beings engage in nuclear hot fucking.

–*They can run around naked without understanding the concept of shame.

–*If you look at them directly, you will turn into a poisonous methane marsh gas

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(Originally posted Friday, July 18, 2008 )

What things did we say in intimacy to a stranger on an airplane that led to the psychological phenomenon of alienation?

–*I’m a vegetarian.

–*Actually, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories.

–*I love Rush Limbauh.

–*Porn ruined my marriage.

–*Porn saved my marriage.

–*I write in C programming code.

–*I prefer Pascal

–*I’m reading this book by Hegel.

–*What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence.

–*You’re not a smoker, are you?

–*I prefer Crispin Glover the artist.

–*I don’t believe in global warming.

–*I don’t really care for sports.

–*Kabbalah? Come on!

–*I don’t really care for children.

–*I just like Arnold Schwarzenegger movies so much

–*Pull my finger.

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(Originally posted Wednesday, July 16, 2008 )

From: Steve Jeffords
To: Jonah Aranoff
Re: Your Bar Mitzvah

Dear Jonah,

My wife is your distant cousin Sally Hollo, and we recently were in attendance at your bar mitzvah at the Long Beach Long Island Yacht Club, and I just wanted to say mazel tov. You are a man now, and it was very inspiring to see you receive the Torah scroll, passed from so many parents, grandparents and step grandparents and whatnot and I was impressed to see how well you read from it and how you came up with the creative bar mitzvah theme, “The History of Asian Cinema.” I’m writing, however, because, you probably don’t know who I am. That would be understandable, since my wife and I, after driving two hours across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, did not even get to meet you on your special day because you were very very very very busy. Now, I do not want to take away from the pride of your special day, or impugn your good character, but let me get straight to the point: I wrote a check to you for $100 that you have deposited, and you would probably realize, as any reasonable boy now turned into a man would, that this was an exorbitant amount to pay for a person I did not even make eye contact with. Oh yes, I got to watch you dancing with your grandparents and all your young friends and giving your mom and step moms kisses and extolling the bushido code of the samurai. But let me tell you what I was doing at your bar mitzvah. I spent it chatting to a 90-year-old woman who had to ask me my name three times and claimed to have slept with Montgomery Clift. Since you’re a man now, Jonah, I think I can be presumptuous enough to tell you that Montgomery Clift was a homosexual, and if there’s one thing I hate more than boasting, it’s stupid boasting. If that were not enough, I also spent your bar mitzvah getting to know a man who wanted to sell me a variable annuity. Do you know what that is, Jonah? It’s like taking all that bar mitzvah money and bashing it to pieces with your samurai sword, that’s what it is.

As you know from school, the age of 13 is when you learn to start observing the commandments. I’m pretty sure there’s one in there about not accepting a really big present from a total stranger. If not, then maybe you ought to consider it just common politeness.

Simply put, I’m asking you, man to man, for my $100 back. I know this might seem a bit extreme, but I figured now that you’ve ripened to an age of manhood, this much would make some sense to you. As your rabbi said at your bar mitzvah, after today you will always be learning how to become a better man and a better Jew. Whoever this better man and better Jew might be, I believe both of them might throw an old soldier a sop and give him the money back that maybe he could spend on his own children, or at least on somebody he shook hands with, or at least to a homeless person who asked for it. I was invited to your celebration third-hand by people who I now believe made a mistake in the invitations. You should not take this personally or let it detract from the blessings of your glorious day. But becoming a man doesn’t mean just reading the haftarah, Jonah. It means using your fucking brain and seeing when somebody has made a grievous mistake in giving you a hundred fucking dollars that you will likely spend on a Nintendo Wii or some other frivolous item.
If you feel confused, I understand. But I also understand that you are a boy of good character, and while the world of adults may sometimes seem strange and bewildering to you, here’s a good adult lesson that will teach you all about being a better man and a better Jew: Don’t fuck people over, Jonah. Especially don’t rip off a guy who was trying to do you a good turn, who was hoping to extend the bonds of family and who instead showed up feeling less popular than your first stepmother and a little more popular than the drunk taxi driver who crashed the party.

I can tell you’re a smart boy … I mean, smart young man … and by that I mean you know how to write a check and you know how to spell “one hundred” in square cursive. If you don’t have an account on your own, then certainly you can find the checkbook of your parents and write out a draft made to my name for redress of my bar mitzvah money. If you like, because it was a special day for you, you can keep $5 or so. Take it as a token of my warm feelings as someone who, though not acquainted with you, has married somewhere into the vicinity of your gene pool, and feel free to spend it on something more commensurate with my actual feelings: a Frosty at Wendy’s or a bottle of motor oil). And then you can consider the rest accounted for by the $95 in gas money I spent driving on I-95 and the Long Island Expressway. (I don’t think I have to remind you how many people die on that expressway each year. Usually it’s because a tie rod flies through the windshield, and if you’re lucky, gives you a quick, painless trans-orbital brain puncture. That’s if you’re lucky. Luck is something you’re going to be much more appreciative of in your journey into this horrible thing called manhood.)

I’ve been doing a little reading, Jonah, about something called Pirkei Avot, which is the ethical maxims of the Mishnaic rabbis. It says that when you’re 13 it’s the right time to fulfill the commandments of the Torah, 18 is the proper time for marriage and 20 is the right time to earn a living. But I’ve got a maxim of my own: the time to do the right thing is now, Jonah. Please remit the $100 in question to me at the enclosed address.

And once again, Mazel Tov,
Steven Jeffords, esq.

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(Originally posted Wednesday, July 16, 2008 )

What themes would you like to see honored on your U.S. postage stamps?

–*The history of rice

–*The history of sugar packaging

–*The history of innovations in logistical transportation of dry goods

–*The history of bitches and hos in gangsta rap

–*The history of dirty Hispanic borrow words like “pendejo”

–*The history of German fisting videos

–*The history of chemicals used to create the taste of American food

–*The history of date rape

–*A commemoration of the facial hair of Ethan Hawke

–*The history of scuzz

–*A commemoration of the reverse turnbuckle move in pro wrestling

–*A history of multiple blades in razors

–*A commemoration of the physical act of love between Anne Sexton and her daughter with the immortal line “A woman who loves a woman is forever young.”*

–*A fond look back at the now defunct monthly menstrual cycle

–*A history of girls named “Sabine”

–*The commemoration of the death of jazz

–*The commemoration of the death of reason

*Thanks to PJ for bringing this important cultural milestone to my attention.

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(Originally posted Monday, July 14, 2008 )

Top 10 Reasons Not To Go To Family Functions

10. Nobody fell in the cake last time, and it’s getting a little boring
9. Not enough guilt from mom. Come on, mom. Where’s the guilt?
8. Grandma’s dancing to YMCA. Does she not get the homosexual subtext?
7. Cousin Sylvie gave herself to Jesus, probably to get even with her Jewish family, and here we are all pretending to sing “Jesus Loves Me.” Oh God, are we really doing this?
6. Aunt Mavis and Uncle Charlie are not only still in the middle of their divorce, they’ve started bringing the lawyer along to the bar mitzvahs.
5. Wait a minute. This kid I just gave $100 to now that he’s a man today … do I know him? I want that money back!
4. Cousin Sandy probably won’t like the gift we got her, and she shouldn’t even bother opening it. She ought to just return it to Lord & Taylor now.
3. Pesto is a bit sour this year.
2. Mom won’t eat tomatoes because of the salmonella scare and won’t eat beef because of the mad cow disease and won’t eat Chinese food because of the SARS and won’t eat salmon because of the mercury. What does that leave? Just the paper napkins.
1. My sister’s goddamn baby won’t talk to me. So what she’s only 6 months old, I bought her a gift.
1. “You did No. 1 twice?” “Yeah, mom. I did No. 1 twice just to piss you off! Are you happy?”

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(Originally posted Monday, July 14, 2008 )

Sorry for the fewer postings lately. I have had serious problems with MySpace and other sites since a recent upgrade of Windows XP. There are times when logging into MySpace is taking me about as long as it would on a dial-up. I fret to think that others are having the same problem, especially with all my media, which we would dearly like people to experience.

I have heard different explanations for this problem, and have been told to blame it on one of these things:

–*Windows XP, which does not like playing with certain types of software like two of my favorites, Firefox (the browser) and Zone Alarm (the firewall).

–*Firefox, which has also upgraded and which I understand is going through some growing pains of its own. It seems like this program is now taking up an outsized proportion of RAM on my computer. My problems don’t seem solved, however, when I switch over to Internet Explorer.

–*Banner ads on Web sites, which have become increasingly complicated and which are slowing down page views. I have tried to attack this problem with a program called Adblock Plus, but this has hardly helped.

–*A combination of all these things.

If anybody is having similar problems or has solutions in mind, please feel free to chat about them here. I am not very technological.

My inability to get on has kept me from getting to some much needed shout outs to friends like PJ and Fran. Keep reading my blogs you beautiful people! I am reading your comments.

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(Originally posted Monday, July 14, 2008 )

The Miller Center of Public Affairs has recently released the “National War Powers Commission Report,” a new bipartisan report that includes involvement by two former secretaries of state. The publication offers a series of suggestions for curbing the overreaching of the executive branch in matters of war, mainly by suggesting that the president and Congress should cooperate more. What are some of the suggestions in the 72 page report?

–*If Congress wants to make its opinions known about a president’s overreaching on matters of war, it needs to stand up and speak more clearly. Also, it should not roll its eyes so much, which means no one will take it seriously, and it should wear brighter colors.

–*Congress should let down its hair and take its glasses off. That way it will show the president that it is not trying to hide its power, but is comfortable and confident in telling the president he has overreached on matters of international warfare.

–*The Congress should suggest, politely, that the laws the president is breaking are not vague or unclarified or delimited, as he says. He’s pretty much just breaking them. If this makes the president angry, Congress should cajole him with its coy, feminine powers of persuasion.

–*Congress should tell the president that it’s not just the words of the Constitution that it loves, but also what the words mean.

–*It’s hard to go against a rich and powerful president during times of war and widespread public bellicosity toward other countries. Congress should salve the president and public’s ill humor with a soothing milk bath.

–*The Congress should tell the public that it’s OK, the president is just hell-bent on aggression right now, and out of control, but he’s a good man and nobody understands his need to exert his personal will on matters of law, just like Napoleon, and slake his thirst for unstoppable power. He’ll calm down after he’s destroyed a few things, probably. Really, the president is a good man.

–*A man’s going to do what he wants. You can’t stop him. So let him sleep with a hooker once in a while, Congress.

–*If you let a president make war in the past, you just encouraged him by saying nothing. Try to assert yourself more, Congress. Stop being such a mealy-mouther.

–*When the opening salvo in the Civil War was launched, Abraham Lincoln called up militias and suspended habeus corpus when Congress was not in session, but he immediately afterward sought Congressional approval of his actions once it was. Most people nowadays would say that that was pretty pussy of him.

–*Ronald Reagan invaded lots of things without Congressional approval, and it all turned out all right. Maybe you should stick to dealing with welfare mothers, Congress. You’re better at that because you’re all touchy feely. Come on, this is a man’s job you’re talking about.

If you want to read the actual text of this historic yawner in the ongoing War Powers crisis, go here.

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