Hornswaggler | The culture, the humor, a bit of the sports, not so much the politics, and the workplace distraction
Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of
hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my
pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" --
"I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers,
bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits,
vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers,
buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train
robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!"
We live in tumultuous times. Times that teach you to appreciate the simple things: your health, your family's health. They're also times when the author of a small web log could get himself in an assload of trouble by issuing purely fictitious but thoroughly unkind diatribes against certain smarmy tabloid news personalities. I don't want to wind up on John Ashcroft's naughty list, so what follows is a brief legal disclaimer:
The author of this site does not wish any harm upon Dateline NBC Anchor Stone Phillips, nor does he condone any harm perpetrated against him by anyone who has or has not come across this small mote-speck of a site.
There, that's out of the way. Which is good. Because Stone, you in trouble, dawg. I am going to bring you down. I can no longer live in a world in which Stone Phillips is held in anything approaching high regard, by anyone. If Stone Phillips was created in God's image, then God must surely be Troy McClure. It boggles the mind that one human being could take himself this seriously. Have you ever wondered how this guy looks at himself in the mirror? Well, I have. And any day now I'll be going into pre-production on my debut feature film. It's an update on Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment," adapted for the 21st century. In it, two disaffected youths abduct Stone and attempt to smack some sense into him. But, unfortunately, things go awry, as they often do in Coen brothers movies (they've agreed to executive produce), and they wind up knocking him off. He just drives them out of their fucking minds with his daily reports on the condition of his chafed wrists, on the inadequacy of their non-extra-whitening toothpaste, etc. So then, when I'm at Cannes, and my film is up for the big frond, a reporter will ask the question that is surely on your mind right now. He or she will ask: "Aren't you at all concerned about the possibility of a copycat crime?" And I will reply, after a languid pull on my Dunhill cigarette, "But you see, that is precisely the idea."
