Couple Laments Trip to Napa not Bougie Enough

Napa, California

A wine tasting at an upper tier winery in Napa is fraught with expectations. Will it be truly special enough to make the specials feel that they are special? It is the feeling of the thing that matters, and feelings are subjective. Will the experience make one forget that all pleasure is a mere vacuous distraction from this long march to the grave? Will it be enough to make some VP of accounting for some random exceedingly important widget maker feel the weight of his exalted position in life? And what happens when it falls short, when it isn't bourgeois enough?

Just such an experience afflicted poor Renard McPhereson and his new wife Trina just recently. After some time recovering from the encounter, they felt the courage to open up about the harrowing experience.

“I don’t even know where to start,” said Renard indignantly. “It all began when we pulled up to the enormous metal gate with the logo of the winery on it. We used the gate keypad to dial in, explaining that we had a tasting appointment. Ridiculous! It felt like we were on some squawk box ordering Mc Donald’s.” At this the 26 year old Trina plaintively mewled, “Eww!”

“Surely they could have had an actual person, perhaps a footman at the gate with a splash of bubbly there to greet us. Instead we had to wait until we pulled all the way up to the winery parking lot to be greeted by some millennial with a $200 haircut, sculpted beard, and Patagonia vest. Where was the properly dressed footman? I don't mind the pretensions of the proletariat as a general rule. Hiding class distinctions in the capitalist structure is helpful to prevent things like guillotines, but this is Napa!"

On Renard went, bravely telling his tale of woe, with Trina chiming in occasionally with an “Oh my gawd,” or “seriously," or her favorite, “eww!” His critique began with their pedantic host. His title was “Executive Enological Experience Expert," and somehow that all fit on his name tag. He had little interest in Renard or his bouncy bride, and spent the time name dropping about this celebrity winemaker and that celebrity winemaker, and how the clay loam this and alluvial that and the Sun on the ridge at 4:33 pm each day made truly exalted wines worth $2000 a bottle. But in all of this, Mr. Shimmering Beard oil audaciously ornamented with the fat watch clearly didn’t notice how important Renard and his trophy wife really are, how they like to name drop too, how they like to talk about their wine collection. He showed no interest in them at all! It was as if Mr. Italian Loafers thought Renard and Trina were the lucky ones to be there; that they were just another appointment printed on special linen paper. 

Not only that, but they didn’t even call to see if Trina likes black truffle, which she doesn’t! The whole tasting menu lacked any personal touches. The Iberico ham leg displayed in the tasting room was a nice touch, but it wasn’t even from Huelva! 

The interview ended with Renard simple dissolving into incoherent ranting. “It was all so derivative, unsurprising, more ponderous lighting of barrels and perfectly appointed rooms and polished glass and pretty gourmet food bites of caviar and cheese from some terribly important farm. And the multi-million dollar architecture merely to introduce them to Mr. Fake Smile. Where was the footman? And every one of these places is like that, with minor variations for the style of the fountains! I’m just bored with it all! Bored! Bored!” And he began to trail off and stare blankly, obviously compensating for his pain with anger. 

Pickle Ball World Championships (Costa Mesa Parks and Recreation Championships)

Costa Mesa, California

During the Ides of March, when fools place bets on College Basketball and there is otherwise a great dearth of meaningful athletic competition to behold on the American sports scene, there is on display some of the great unheralded athletes of our day. 

These gods and goddesses of sport compete for the love of the game, for the purity of sport, without pay or promise of glory.

They wield rackets forged in iron and fire, destined for the conflagration of the ages. They descend upon Costa Mesa with hearts pregnant with honor and courage, virtues the common man only dreams of or views from a distance in pangs of pathetic envy.

Not just anyone makes it to the Pickle Ball World Championships, also knows as the Costa Mesa Parks and Recreation Regional Championships. 

After many days of intense competition in the senior division (the only division); of grunts and the smell of liniment, of neoprene knee braces, of matching almost tennis outfits, of fallen heroes, of the crucible of hot battle, the final two emerged. We would be remiss if we didn't offer our sincerest congratulations to the two teams who fell in glorious Pickle battle to the two triumphant teams. Were it not for a sciatica injury to Bill "The Night Nurse" Juroviski (so nicknamed because of his talent for taking out the crap), things might have looked a lot different. But enough unbearable build up! Let us introduce you to the championship teams, each vying for the coveted Pickle Ball Trophy, which is just a whiffle ball made of bronze with names etched in immortality.

Team 1: Rackets of Fire

Captain Janice "The Executionist" Jones and Marvin "The Machete" Smith

Team 2: The Luftwaffe 

Captain Helga "The Howitzer" Heinrickson and Gunter "The Junk Baller" Ackerman

One would think that with the matching socks and head-bands and knee braces, team Rackets of Fire could perhaps be taken lightly. We asked the members of Luftwaffe what they thought of their competition before the game, and Helga Henrickson said solemnly, "We know we have our work cut out for us, but we feel confident we can hang in there with them. We've faced a lot of adversity lately, what with Gunter's tennis elbow, but that has only made us stronger." 

What ensued in this game for the ages was nothing less than the furious energy of the stalemated athleticism of finely tuned athletes prowling the courts, reflexes like jungle cats. It could only be described as a blur of rackets, like long swords in combat, every move countered by an equally dazzling answer, until all players lie exhausted on the court, having moved a total of twenty feet during the entire two hour long match. 

For all their effort, Rackets of Fire fell to Luftwaffe in a game so close it required two instant replay sessions to grant the winning points to Luftwaffe. Unfortunately for Luftwaffe, they were ultimately disqualified for violating the tournaments doping policy, having each spiked the Ensure with performance enhancers. 

Truly Unpredictable Hallmark Movie Plots

Hallmark Christmas movies are delightfully derivative and sappy and unrealistic and all the things we love at the holidays while we pretend the world isn't an absolute hell hole. 

There are those of us who want to see a truly realistic, even gritty, portrayal of life as it really goes in one of these Hallmark films. 

Here are a few plot ideas: 

1. She kills it at her job. She is sent to a quaint little winter hamlet to do a story on the "vanishing of quaint little hamlets." She meets this guy, a handyman, who turns out to be a prince, or at least a really rich dude. They put up this playful crackling banter with each other for a few minutes and then fall madly in love. But she is torn, you see, between the life of a world killer globetrotter journalist type and a small town nobody family woman. She seeks counsel from that snarky friend, and from her parents, and they of course counsel love above all. But she takes the job and he ends up marrying his old girlfriend. The End.

2. A developer wants to take over a centuries old family farm. He is ruthless. The farm owner is an old man with a beautiful daughter. The old man is in serious debt and the farm isn't making the money it used to. The developer decides to travel to the small town where this farm is located to make the old farmer an offer he can't refuse. He meets the daughter, and there is an icy initial dialogue, but there is also heat because they are both attractive. He makes his offer to the father, but the father cusses him out and storms out. While in town the developer sees the daughter working as a bartender, and then there is banter. Some drunk dude tries to make a move on her, but the developer steps to her aid, beating that dude to a bloody pulp. But the thing is he went a bit too far, and the man dies. The wife of that dude presses charges, and the developer is charged with murder and put away for life. The movie ends with her visiting him in prison, bringing his favorite carrot cake muffins. A cautionary tale about anger management. The End.

3. A family owned vineyard and bed and breakfast has fallen into disrepair. The old Cabernet vines are in bad shape, and so is the old house and the barn and all. A struggling couple decides to give their marriage one last try by going to this charming old bed and breakfast and vineyard. After a few days in this magical place, they find each other again and renew their vows on the old victorian porch. It is all magically set at Christmas. At the Christmas morning breakfast, after a night of passionate love making, he eats something and goes into anaphylactic shock and dies. The wife sues and the owner loses, forcing bankruptcy and the sale of the place. Now it is a parking lot for a strip mall. The End.

4. It's a time of war. But at Christmas the men find a lovely chateau owned by a beautiful woman. She takes them in, though they are from the enemy's side, and feeds them and provides them shelter. The captain, a widower, is drawn powerfully to her. For weeks they are with her in her home while they are healing from their wounds. There are several scenes of her dabbing sponges on his bare body. During this time they fall madly in love with each other. They go on walks through the fields, and laugh and pick flowers. They chase each other for some reason and fall down onto each other for some reason and kiss passionately. One day after recovering from his wounds, he sets out to put Christmas lights up on the exterior of the old chateau. While high up on the ladder the man falls and dies. She weeps and throws the rest of the men out and vows to report them. The End.

5. She is a poor girl from a broken family. But she is also brilliant and sweet, and a mysterious rich man makes her his special interest and, unbeknownst to her, names her beneficiary of his substantial estate. She receives various acceptance letters from prestigious colleges, but even with scholarships she simply can't afford to go. At Christmas the old man dies and she learns she is a bazillionaire. He turns out to be her miserable father who left her and her mother when she was three. She punishes him after his death by becoming an embittered harpy of a woman, spending all of his money on frivolous luxuries, avoiding responsibility by living a debauched life, having several abortions when in her 20's, and finally, after four divorces, dying alone in her cottage in Aspen with her Persian cats all around her. The End.

Mother Gaia Democrats Raise Alt Right Christian Republican

Autin, Texas

Moonbeam and Chaz Lovegood didn't mean it. In retrospect, they probably shouldn't have had a child in the first place. The planet groans under the burden of the human parasite as it is. But they were modest. They were only going to have one designer child at age 40, participating humbly with mother Gaia in creating life. They gave birth in a natural spring to their one daughter Aurora, fully expecting her to find her own identity, and by that they meant she would become an enlightened modern person and think just like them. 

Instead, and much to their horror, Aurora grew up to be what they call an "Alt Right Christian Republican." 

"We just don't understand how this could happen," said Moonbeam, spluttering ugly tears as she said it. "We were careful to raise Aurora in all the best schools--open, expressive schools without draconian rules or absolutes, creative communities of care and inclusion. And we didn't even raise her to be a girl or a boy or an American or any religion. We raised her in pristine neutrality, giving her the gift of creating her entire universe, unlike the stifling sectarianism of our parents and their blind Christian white privilege. How could she do this to us?" 

"As a father I was careful to manage my toxic masculinity," said Chaz with a flip of his beautifully maintained dreadlocks. Chaz was adorned in hemp clothing and Birkenstocks, and spoke truly about doing everything he could to downplay his masculinity. His diet of lentils and kale gave him a sleek, almost waif-like physique. Certainly few people on planet earth would be intimidated by the androgynous skeleton of Chaz, even in his most aggressive stance of protest. 

"Whenever Aurora had questions about hard moral dilemmas in her life, or questions about death or God or meaning--you know, all the hard questions--I was careful never to mansplain things to her. She needed to find the answers to these questions for herself. We would always encourage her to ask the hard questions whenever she asked the hard questions. Answers are not as important as endless questions. We wanted our daughter to join us in our confusion." 

"And then one day she asked us whether the claim that answers are not as important as questions is itself an answer rather than a question, and we knew she was headed down a dangerous path toward absolutes. She was trying to find answers, and that was distressing to us. Why? Because we could sense her fear. And fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. And hate leads to suffering. I heard that quote somewhere once, and it is so deep." 

And on Chaz and Moonbeam went, telling their woeful tale of losing their daughter. It began with a search for truth, which assumes a belief that there is a truth to be found. She went off to college, took philosophy classes, and met the most endangered of all species--the intelligent Christian. She found answers to the endless questions, answers she could believe. And now she lives a life of conviction rather than confusion. Whenever she opens her mouth, her parents think she is speaking Ancient Greek or something. 

And get this! Aurora does't even smoke weed anymore. She drinks non-organic Chardonnay, and sometimes doesn't even recycle the bottle! She is truly lost.

Woman Takes Courageous Stand in Affirming What All the Powers Tell Her to Affirm

Beatrice Franklin is hopping mad! And she is going to let you know about it in the most courageous way possible. She is going to repost some jarring memes on social media, the single most dangerous place on planet earth. Some might think that no-mans-land in World War 1, or religious fidelity in a time of persecution, or taking to the seas during the age of exploration, or things like that are the contexts of the greatest courage required of people in human history. Forget soldiers or explorers or faithful men and women. Beatrice has come that you might have an exemplar of bravery in these perilous times.

Not only has she stormed the ideological beach of Normandy, but she comes with opinions so bold, so razor sharp, so original, so beautiful, that they can only be uttered by the most courageous of the courageous class! She is so courageous that she is like a woman wearing daisy dukes taking a stroll down the streets of Kabul. 

Her social media feed includes such culturally radical forays into battle as these:

“White people are so racist it disgusts me. I feel sick being white.” 

“Women’s bodies are their own bodies and they can eject parasites inside them if they want to! Parasites are gross!"

"If women were in charge, there would so much less killing!"

“Everyone should be free to love whoever they love for as long as the loving lasts.”

"Capitalism enslaves!"

“Gas powered cars and plastic bottles and billionaires are killing the planet. Buy a Tesla and a yeti!”

“Rich people are so greedy. They should give their Tesla’s to college students.”

“College should be free, like the credit card my dad gave me.”

Now one would think that with such radical and minority views Beatrice would surely be facing persecution, and that probably is coming soon for such steely and courageous bravery, but most days she is only forced to summon her courage in facing her too hot chai tea latte at Starbucks, never yielding in her laser focus for social change from the plush safety of her corner booth. Thank you, Beatrice, for standing in the gap for all of us. 

Man Identifies as Semi-Sexual

 Local man Frank Higgins recently came out to the shock of literally everyone as "Semi-Sexual." The term basically means that Frank defines himself by larger constructs than his mere sexuality and identified gender.  He prefers to identify as a Christian father and husband and lover of wisdom rather than by how often and with whom he copulates. After all, one can only have sex perhaps .05% of one's whole life. But Frank has frankly not done the research on this, but he is nevertheless proud of the dad joke. 

"I think that sexuality is important and all, but it seems to me that it constitutes only a small fraction of how I want to be known and what I actually do. I mean, I am a Christian and I like great books and big ideas and I love to make my kids laugh and I want to learn wisdom and travel and discuss important things with friends."

These radical and controversial ideas were uttered in open space where others could hear Frank, causing a major backlash. 

Said one transgender bystander whose ear holes were violated by Frank's ignorance and heteronormativity, "It is offensive and insensitive to the LGBTQ community to even know that such people exist. I thought by now that everyone agreed with us that sexuality is everything and should be discussed everywhere and that there is nothing else interesting about human beings. First we were hated, and now we are being dismissively ignored. Things have obviously only gotten worse for us!"

The good news is that activists were able to cancel Frank and ban his various utterances on social media, so that they wouldn't have to know about him living out his balanced and deeply fulfilled life. 

Church Finally Achieves Total Behavior Quotient Sufficient to be The Gospel

At year 20 of its life cycle, Taycan Church of Newport Beach has finally achieved a total behavior quotient such that it can reliably rise above the charge of hypocrisy and represent itself as the hope of the gospel in the world. 

In a bold move that pushes the church beyond theology and into the deepest areas of cultural need, Taycan Church has been tracking the overall behavior quotient of their church for 20 years, believing that Christian behavior has been so bad that the world cannot hear the gospel. 

Said pastor Jerome Stevenson, “Jesus told us to peach the gospel at all times and sometimes use words. We finally realized that what matters is not what Jesus did as a dry point of historical reference or declarative theology, but what is happening through us now. How have our hearts and hands changed as a result of experiencing Jesus? Most Christians make the gospel unbelievable by their lives.”

The pastoral team of Taycan church has developed a detailed missional algorithm that tracks tithe contributions, time spent in devotional activities, service activities, church attendance, care for the planet and disenfranchised groups, along with various other good Christian behaviors, and then measures for negative behaviors like greed with money, rage driving, racism, drinking alcoholic beverages too much on weekdays, watching bad things on electronic devices, failing to recycle, and so on. The system then assigns a value for each parishioner. The aggregate score must then rise above the minimum score that pastoral experts have established for "generally good secular behavior." And Taycan church has finally risen above the minimum score. 

"Now what Jesus did can finally make sense to the watching world," said pastor Stevenson. "Jesus inspires us to be our best selves, and at Taycan at least we are finally seeing the difference he can make." 

Critics have noted that some of the reason that Taycan's total aggregate score improved over the past 20 years is that the truly sinful people left the church for churches that teach the old understanding of the gospel, but that is merely unsubstantiated speculation. Pastor Stevenson is confident that his church has by all metrics improved to the point that Jesus is alive and well in the superior collective of Taycan Church. 

The Woke Washington Football Team

Since the NFL and other pro sports teams have taken up the cause of linguistic cleansing, it seems appropriate to suggest a few new names for the team from Washington, since they still can't figure out what to name themselves. In keeping with the league's current drive toward racial equity and inclusion, each idea was carefully culled from various sensitivity trained think tanks within modern American high schools, led by their teachers, whose bachelor's degrees from modern liberal secular universities make them among the smartest people ever to walk the planet. Any of the following names is clearly better than the former name, which was clearly hate speech, along with any other name pulled from Native American culture. The Braves and Chiefs and Indians can also consider some of these alternatives:

The Washington Woke

The Washington Adorable Woodland Creatures

The Washington Puppies 

The Washington Cancel Culture (the helmet can be all white with a black X on it)

The Washington Inclusivists (And the team could model this by representing all groups equally, including finally providing opportunities for women in the sport, other than as referees or kickers. It is high time we address the obvious sexism in the sport and put a few women at middle linebacker.)

The Washington Defunders (you know, because of the police...)

The Washington Cherry Tree (something like Stanford's move, but more Washington in terms of geography)

The Washington Django Unchained (a nod to a true race pioneer, Quinten Tarantino)

The Washington Recyclers (totally green uniforms with the little recycle symbol as the logo!)

The Washington Biodynamic Farmers (the field could be wild native grasses)

The Washington Socialists (all players paid the same, even if 3rd string)

The Washington Gretas (in tribute to true environmental warrior Greta Thunberg... they could have the little French braids coming out of both sides of the helmet)

The Washington Non-Binaries (Not in the racial sense, of course. Obviously, race is as clear as black and white, but gender is an infinite kaleidoscope. Rainbow colored uniforms here would be a true statement.)

The Tuskegee Air Game (Note that many of the think tank participants took issue with naming the team after the city, because Washington owned slaves. They also take issue with any university, city, state, or school being so named, because the only thing to know about Washington was his white oppression.) 

The Washington Iconoclasts (because it is better to use this chance to destroy the legacy of Washington... the mascot can be a smashed statue of George Washington)

Names involving abstract concepts, which may prove to be less offensive than other options one day: 

The Washington Infinity

The Washington Relativity

The Washington Sustainability

The Washington Multiverse

The Washington Subconscious Yearning

The Washington Peace

The Washington Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis (either Hegelian or Marxian)

Names that bluntly call America what it is as an ongoing reminder of how much it truly sucks: 

The Planet Polluters

The Parasitic Humans

Self-Loathing for Past Sins (the cheerleaders can perform self-flagellation, or simply sit and weep)

The Washington Plantation (a football field of cotton or tobacco)

Inevitable Systemic Racism 

Capitalist Hellscape

The Washington White-Washers (bonus for alliteration... everything white, helmet, uniforms, socks, shoes, banner. Then everyone boos when the team enters...)

The Washington Colonizers 

The options are limitless really. As in all things, we shape our language, and our language shapes us, and then we go back to shaping our language even more. By changing the words we change the world, and by changing the world we change the words. Obviously the world is getting so much better now that things are being more sensitively named. 

Man Attempting to Imitate Jesus Becomes Celibate Carpenter

Seattle, Washington

As with Nicodemus, poor Henry Marshall is perhaps taking things a bit too literally. He recently heard from his pastor at Sienna Church of Seattle that we are to imitate Jesus in all things.

His pastor boldly proclaimed that we live in a culture that emulates foolish cultural heroes and celebrities where it should copy the lifestyle of our cultural savior Jesus. "Jesus came into this world to show us how we ought to live," the pastor confidently and heretically proclaimed.

Since historical Reformed doctrines like justification, regeneration, adoption, and the like, get no traction when one is trying to build a large church, the pastoral staff at Sienna Church decided to mine Jesus' teaching for inspiration in making heaven for ourselves through action, according to our own desires, right here and now.

But silly Henry interpreted his pastor to say that he should immediately leave his wife and enter a trade school to learn the skill of carpentry, and begin selling wooden sculptures at the local farmer's market. The pastoral staff at Sienna immediately intervened, suggesting to Henry that he was perhaps mis-handling the Bible. But Henry remains unwavering. He sites back to the pastors their claims that we are to follow the example of Jesus, and that through our actions of giving up sex and making things out of wood we can make a better world.

The pastoral staff, for their part, clarified what they meant by imitating Jesus. Jesus obviously meant that we were to be vegans and fight against whiteness and climate change and capitalism and America! The pastors are still perplexed that anyone could interpret the Bible so recklessly. Then they returned to their studies of Origen, Rob Bell, and John Yoder. 

Parents Who Can Afford it Buy Boat Instead of Sending Their Kid to Christian School

Dallas, Texas

Bob and Wendy Richey are your average suffering upper middle class parents. They only have two houses, unlike many of their friends who have lots more, and they certainly can’t afford private schooling for their two designer kids.

As committed Christians, they know there is a lot of whacky teaching going on in the public schools, but the public schools are free, kind of. They already pay for obscenely high property taxes in both of their gated communities. 

“We are as disturbed as any that our kids are being taught things we don’t believe about gender and sexuality and the unborn and socialism and postmodernism and identity politics grounded in Marxism and atheism and pretty much everything that is of deepest value in education, but what can we do?”

When it was pointed out that their community was one of the fortunate communities to have a truly Christian high school, in the sense that the school actually teaches theology as a tool to unlock all the arts and sciences, Bob answered that the school in question was “absurdly expensive,” and “how could Christians of conscience charge so much?” and that “Jesus would be a socialist and give away education for free because he said to suffer the little children and all that..." 

"And furthermore," Bob noted, "It's all going to be a waste of money when all these Christian school kids go off to college and become a bunch of clones of the secular universities and the secular culture!" 

And then Bob, exasperated in his own confusion but also blaming the interviewer, slammed the door on his F-350 pulling his 28 foot Cobalt and sped away.

Genius Social Commentator Works Hard to find Flaws in Flawed Human Beings

Washington, D.C.

Liberal voices everywhere are pooling their impressive intellectual resources to find all the flaws.
Said Zephyr Livegood, “So few people today are willing to do the heavy intellectual lifting in our culture.” Grateful that all the world’s brightest and best people live in our times in the shining liberal wonderlands of our big coastal cities and big altruistic universities, she went on:

“We need better leadership than we have had! I mean, while it is true that guys like Washington and Jefferson founded an impressive imperialistic nation—and all I’ve done is get a degree from the University of Virginia and write some blog posts—they were still the bad guys, much worse than me and my friends! We don’t have slaves, or even buy stuff made in Indonesia. All our clothing comes from a Portland co-op."

In an effort to appropriately identify the flawed people, Zephyr was kind enough to supply us with a list of people with whom we can compare our lives to feel superior: 

1. All the people who wore black face at some point in their miserable racist lives, except liberals like Jimmy Kimmel and Robert Downey Jr., because of the context and everything. 
2. Anyone who ever miss spoke on social media or in a college paper or in a high school yearbook or while in preschool.
3. The Police. Obviously!
4. Writers of tone deaf satire. 
5. White people. Even the mostly white people. And even the poor white people. 
6. Men. Especially the white ones. 
7. Rich people. (Except rich black people. And also except all the rich celebrities who think the right way.) 

8. Black people who vote Republican. 
9. Anyone who offends against the ever changing standards of incoherent postmodernists. 

10. Hitler, mostly for being white, like Trump, and like the Police.

Curiously missing from her list was any mention of people like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, or people of that ilk. 

“Grace must be earned with pledges of fidelity to one's comrades. Some people give grace cheaply to anyone who seems sincere in asking for it. We give it only to those who prove to us that they are truly sorry for having been white. We must see public humiliation, cancellation, and groveling obeisance to the collective. Only then will we possibly consider--what is that word--forgiveness."

Joe Biden to Hire Cast of Hamilton as His Cabinet

Washington, D.C.

Following all of the woke institutions of the land but also demonstrating bold leadership, President Elect Joe Biden will make his administration the most diverse in the history of the poorly named White House. 

In a recent interview, Mr. Biden said, "Let me be clear, I am against all the whites that have imposed the whiteness upon the American people for so long. This office has for far too long been dominated by the whiteys, and it stops with me. In fact, I plan to form most of my opinions after hearing what Kamala has to say, since I'm also afflicted with the whiteness, and also my whiteness is even paler now that I'm so old." 

In perhaps the boldest move in presidential politics in the history of ever, Mr. Biden stated that he wanted to do something like the play Hamilton was able to do--that is, make America's story and America's leaders less white and thus more relatable. Then it occurred to him (and by him we mean his advisors) that it would be so much simpler to hire the already beautifully diversified cast of Hamilton itself as his cabinet.

When asked whether or not a group of remarkably talented actors are qualified to lead the department of defense, state, treasury, etc., Mr. Biden wisely retorted, "Come on, man! Sometimes the times call for us to look deeper than such petty things. We want under-represented minorities to have their place. They are young, scrappy, and hungry, and that--combined with their non-whiteness--qualifies them in my mind. Let me be clear, again, I'm not throwing away my shot to make this nation more un-white."

The first cabinet meeting/rap battle will focus on other under-represented groups. The buzz all about town is that Kamala plans to spit some sick rhymes pushing for Jill Biden to be replaced with the first trans womyn. 

Other plans include re-naming the White House the Rainbow Palace of Equity and Inclusion.

NFL to Enforce Social Distancing by Requiring Players to Wear Giant Inflatable Donuts

 Canton, OH

Always on the leading edge of culture, the NFL recently announced that it would institute a policy that can only increase both the safety of the players in the coronavirus era and also the excitement we've come to expect of chemically enhanced freakish males throwing themselves into bone shattering collisions for our amusement. Starting with the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, players will wear either a giant inflatable donut or a giant sumo suit under their modified protective gear. As a statement of solidarity with Black Lives Matter, each player will wear a helmet made to look like Colin Kaepernick's afro. It will be made of the best collision absorbing materials, will be a full 6 inches thick, and will look sick! 

"There are several benefits to this change in the rules for the league," said commissioner Roger Goodell. 

"The added padding will create social distancing on the field where once there was uncomfortably sweaty man-intimacy. Concussions can be minimized because of the sweet new afro helmets as well. We're very exciting about the possibilities of enhancing the product on the field to model both social sensitivity and safety." 

Said Goodell, "The only complication for the new safety protocols is kneeling for the anthem. Both the donut and sumo suits make it difficult to kneel, but as in all things social justice is the most important value, so players will be permitted to extricate themselves from these cumbersome health measures in order to protest the injustice of a society that pays them millions." 

Man Inclined to Be Racist after Being Called a Racist His Entire Adult Life

Jason O'Reilly is of mixed race. His mother is hispanic and his father is white. His mother struggled and so did his father, both of whom won scholarships to prestigious universities by working hard and excelling. They did well and enjoyed prosperous careers; the first in each of their respective families to be so distinguished.

Because of them, their son grew up with various advantages, like having a stable home with two parents who modeled virtue and industry. But his real privilege is his white name and looking mostly white too, a relief and a curse at the same time. Being white-ish has prevented all the traffic stops and glares of disapproval and discrimination with respect to job applications. Nevermind that he lost out on two jobs for which he applied, one to an Asian man and another to a black woman, and another black woman was promoted ahead of him. He is not bitter. As his middle class life has developed, Jason has worked hard, saved, married, had kids, and has done these things with a high degree of constancy in virtuous living. His interactions with black people can only be described as genial, respectful, even boring in their normality.

Jason grew to be a happy professional, whose university, culture, friends, and now even his grown kids, all believe to be a racist, having benefited from generations of illicitly won advantages, and allegedly having done nothing to correct for this abuse. He doesn’t even have a black friend! He is so ignorant that he gives to organizations that care for the human poor and not just the black poor! And he is obviously a selfish custodian of his advantages rather than saying something or doing something about injustice for black people. He even thinks that America is, on balance, a relatively good place. What a racist fool!

Jason is now old, perplexed, and worn down by being called a racist for his entire adult life, though he has never done or said anything to disparage a black person. He is assured that his racism is passive and that it is invisible to him. He has been called a racist for so long that he now wonders what the loss is in actually being one. Before he wasn’t uncomfortable around black people, but now he knows everything that their social media and political and cultural advocates think about him. He doesn't know how to behave around them and walks on egg shells around them for fear that he will say something wrong. He calls them "them” now. Previously he didn't see color. Now he sees it everywhere.

When he was younger, he worked with black people, went to college with black people, did commerce with black people and just thought of them as people, which is his most egregious offence. His own kids keep trying to evangelize him, pressing him to acknowledge the sin of racism, and cudgeling him to offer proper self-flagellation. But Jason still doesn't see the racism in his past, and probably won't because his privilege so blinds him. His kids have decided to cancel him in the winter of his days, withholding his grandchildren from him for fear he might contaminate them by his obliviousness.

Clearly the blossoming of Jason’s privilege and unconscious bias and implicit racism and white washing and murky white id personality--which he doesn't see but everyone else does--have motivated him to keep the black man down. Is there anything more obvious about this guy? Like Oprah says, there is no hope for some people. We just have to wait for them to die, and then make progress with the next generation.

Man Bravely Joins Universal Chorus Condemning Obviously Bad People

USA

From the comfort of his suburban home, Jerry Smithers is unsettled. After a lovely dinner of Salmon and arugula salad, he saw a report on the news of a black man being killed by a police officer in another city.

Now Jerry sits before his computer screen. He must do something about all of this. He bangs out a Twitter post and cues it up, sweat pouring down his face. He knows this post will draw a line in the sand. He knows how controversial it is to come out against this kind of thing. How will all his white friends in cyberland react? The cursor on the screen just blinks back at Jerry. He paces the room for a few minutes more, wondering what kind of reaction it will cause. Will it go out like a rhetorical intercontinental ballistic missile into cyber-pseudo-world? What kind of sacrifice will it require? A thought passes through Jerry's head that if only he had lived 150 years ago, saying such things would have required real courage, but he suppresses that uncomfortable truth. The echo chamber of culture is louder still. He knows that a modern Lincoln, a modern King, are still needed. Their work is clearly unfinished. And he is just the man to finally also say something condemning such things in our time.

At long last, he summoned the courage of Wilberforce and hit send, then had a mild panic attack, which was quickly remedied by 18 Year old Macallan Scotch and a nap.

But the country thanks you, Jerry, not only for your compassion at the awful death of a man who clearly didn't deserve to die, but also for making your courageous stand and signaling your virtue so boldly, so nobly. You are carrying on the work of Frederick Douglas in our time. But remember, Jerry, fighting systemic injustice requires action also. The only way to do it is to destroy local businesses, because of the symbolism.

It is Not Objectification if Women Do it to Themselves

Rule 286 of the unwritten and ever changing code of modern feminism is so obvious to certain women that it hardly needs to be written (it being intuitive for women), but for all the meat-heads out there who still don't get it explanation is clearly still needed.

It may be true that women of yesteryear were turned into little more than objects of sexual fulfillment and service to men. Men would ogle them in magazines and appreciate them only for their physical attributes. They had to make sandwiches for their men and welcome them home with a smile.

If you go back far enough in time, the patriarchy bought and sold women, married as many women as they wanted, had mistresses without concern, and basically used women as objects of personal pleasure and entertainment alone. In places like ancient Rome, men and only men could throw a woman's greatest treasure, her child, out with the morning garbage. In America in the 50's, women had to wear high heels while delivering beer to their husbands on couches.

But today women are teaching us about true womanhood. They have fought long and hard for their precious freedoms. Lots of celebrities and empowered women like Beyonce, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, and Shakira, are boldly using their newly won freedoms to provide sexual entertainment to men and advocate for the rights of women alone to kill their unborn children if they want to do so. In these days of progress and societal evolution, it is the women who are providing the sexual entertainment and also easing the consequences of unattached sexual liaisons through abortion.

If it weren’t for all the men objectifying women without women initiating it as a poetical demonstration of empowerment, we would have arrived at a golden age for women. But it seems clear that men still have a lot of work to do.

Multi-Site Megachurch Discovers How Awesome Youtube Talks Are

Chicago, Illinois

Digital Wonderland Church (DWC) of Chicago recently announced a bold new direction. Already a multi-site megachurch, it became apparent to the pastoral leadership that there is a lot of great preaching on YouTube, and indeed most of it is better than the preaching within Digital Wonderland Church.

"I don't know why it didn't occur to us sooner," explained Executive Pastor of Cultural Sensitivity and Discipleship, Francis Stevenson. "For the longest time we were churning along with modest growth fueled by frustrated small-church folk leaving their sham churches for ours, but we think this new direction will surely bring in some mega-numbers so we can fulfill our mission of opening up digital cafe churches all over the land."

According to William "Smitty" Smithers, Pastor of Demography, modern consumers of digital media are looking to the Church to give them exactly the same thing they are familiar with everywhere else. Apparently multiple studies have shown that people today like to watch stuff on screens, and they also like music, especially if it is fun or moving, so long as they don't have to engage something that causes perplexity or personal accountability. They want professional excellence in a warm and welcoming, but not personality invasive, environment.

That discovery, apparently altogether unknown to the rest of the oblivious churches in the land, got the staff of DWC together to embark upon new optics for 2020. The 180 person team at DWC came together and brain stormed--more like Brain Tsunamied--ways to reach this technologically superior plugged-in culture. They were in unanimous agreement that the best way to reach people lost in superficiality is to become equally superficial.

Pastor Smithers continued, "We plan to find excellence out there and then bring it to our people via digital media! We want witty comedian pastors, shocking vignettes, moving stories, montages, voice-overs of various scenes, Ted Talks, etc. We can stitch these together each week to provide our people with the cutting edge of Christianity rather than trotting out some frumpy no talent from some midwestern seminary.”

We asked Pastor Smithers a few questions:

1. Could this change make pastors obsolete, since people will see that the church is becoming a place where vaguely "Christian" inspiration is cobbled together from various online sources, which of course they will learn they can do on their own or with friends?
2. Is there really a need to travel to the satellite digital church when people can solipsistically view a screen anywhere, including those times of deep meditation on the porcelain throne? Or they can also view the screen in small groups at home, and so why the need for crowds and parking lots?
3. Surely tithe can be prorated down, since thousands and potentially millions of people would be supporting the same worship bands and a select few celebrity pastors, correct?

To all of this Pastor Smithers only blithely responded that, "It is certainly not perfect, but neither is ignoring the cultural trends in our musty churches with pipe organs and hymnals and bad performances. We have to meet people where they are in order to lead a small percentage of them to sit for a weekend seminar explaining the Christian Faith to them. We are building a massive church to find the Church within the church, within the church. "

A fine point indeed.

This Christmas Middle Class American Struggling Along Without Extreme Luxuries

Indianapolis, Indiana

Local everyman James Reynolds is a man of modest means and modest needs, at least he was until he became aware, through technology, of literally all the lifestyles of all the people in America. Now James, whose job and lifestyle are better than 95% of the people who have ever lived upon the planet earth in the entirety of its history, is feeling a growing discontentment. Even though he does magical things every year like eat good food, travel more than 10 miles from his home, experience pleasures that most people in human history have never experienced like Belgian ale, and never struggle to merely survive, still others apparently live better than he does.

Just the other day, a social media post made it clear that some other acquaintance of James' got to go wine tasting in Tuscany. Another friend just bought a sports car. Still another got a home in Vail, another some designer clothes, and another a boat. James realized that these people's lives are clearly so far beyond his as to make him hold his many blessings in contempt, as he should! He deserves all that they do. They are no better than he is. Why should they get all these things and he should be so impoverished of human experience. What really is the difference between some poor orphan who always wanted a plushy toy for Christmas and finally is given one by some generous benefactor and poor James?

This Christmas, James feels entitled to see his life as empty and unfulfilled until he gets what he has always wanted since the last few posts of his social media friends. As a man of simpler tastes than all those materialists, all he ever wanted was a Brunello Cuccinelli cashmere sweater. Well, also a single bottle of Chateau Petrus. Okay, he is a man of simple tastes and also just wants to have one Porche in his life. Clearly compared to so many these are modest needs.

Astronomer Warns that Universal Cooling a Greater Threat than Global Warming

Glasgow, Scotland

Astronomer Dr. Edmund Sorensen led a minor break out session at this years climate summit. With multiple speakers and advocates warning that we only have a few years before the earth will be uninhabitable, all because of plastics and SUV’s and airplanes, Dr. Sorenson’s warnings seemed a bit anachronistic to most of the attendees.

"People seem to forget that while the planet is warming, and going through various fluctuations of temperature in this tiny neighborhood of our solar system, the universe is cooling!" insisted a passionate Dr. Sorensen. "It's like everyone has forgotten the second law of thermodynamics! Given a wide view, we are totally screwed! If you think a degree or two in North America is a problem, wait until the sun burns up all of its fuel. What are you going to do then? You fools are side-stepping a bike only to be smacked in the face with a bus!”

Dr. Sorensen acknowledged that it isn’t likely that this cooling, at least in our solar system, will occur in the next twelve years, like the boiling of our oceans and the demise of Venice, but it will come after all of that! And no one will survive it. In closing, Dr. Sorensen said, “All the arrogations of human intervention are futile in the grand scheme. Human reason itself is wholly accidental to the universe, a vapor, nothing! Ah, but don’t forget to recycle. Morons!”

Many of the comment cards of Dr. Sorrenson’s talk complained of him being a sad little man, and also that he was clearly a racist.

White Christian Cisgendered Heterosexual Male Loses Nobel Prize After Winning It

Stockholm, Sweden

The Nobel prize awarding committee has made an enormous mistake. In its foolish enthusiasm, the committee awarded the Nobel prize for medicine to Dr. Carol Johnson, a pasty white cisgendered Christian male devil, who also happened to cure cancer. They prematurely awarded Dr. Johnson on the basis of his work alone, seeing as how curing cancer is fairly impressive. But then a heroic researcher at the organization discovered who he is, despite his girl name.

In a statement, the Nobel Prize Organization acknowledged that in the past it awarded the prestigious honor based on work that substantially advanced medical science and improved the human condition. But for too long medical science has been dominated by Euro whiteys. Just google it and you'll see staring back at you faces of oppression and privilege (with a few token exceptions).

A spokesperson for the organization said, "Curing cancer is nice and all, but advancing intersectionality is even better. We just wish cancer had been cured by a left-handed transexual paraplegic black zim/zer from Detroit. It just goes to show you how deep our prejudices go that we can't find one."

When asked whether Dr. Johnson's cure for cancer might help all people and not just his own people, whoever they might be, the spokersperson said, "That is exactly how they keep the rest of us down. They make it seem that they care about all of us, but we will no longer be duped. We must rise above this system that would make us slaves to the oppressor. We now know that while it seems Dr. Johnson is giving us a gift; in reality, he is giving us shackles of obligation that we, for far too long, have been compelled to acknowledge in our contrite aquiescence." After her statement, several voices in the background were heard to say, "Amen!"