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!"
There's no doubt about it, this guy Josh from "The Hamptons" needs to be chummed. I've lost count of the number of times he's said: "What up kid?!" Can you use chum as a verb? At any rate, it should be like something out of an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon, where he is pureed into chum and dumped into the waters of Long Island Sound in order to attract sharks. But enough of that. Not all of the people on this show were that bad. The musician Nancy Atlas, for instance, seems pretty cool.
So according to the New York Times, the Bush Administration, after adhering until this point to the ludicrous Republican position that global warming is not occurring, has now made an abrupt shift to maintain that global warming is, in fact, occurring, but that its effects are inevitable, so there's no point in making any efforts to, for instance, cut vehicle emissions and we might as well just get used to the idea of climactic change. Utterly despicable.
Personally, I'm glad that the fate of the human race is, to the extent that Dubya makes any decisions at all, in the hands of a president who pronounces the word nuclear, "nookular," just like B-52 pilot Major Kong in "Dr. Strangelove." While we're on the subject of Strangelove, I have to say I'm a little skeptical of the fact that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is heading to South Asia to broker peace between India and Pakistan. First of all, before I continue, these people are having parades for their missiles. Have you seen the footage? What's the rationale there? "Yay, there are the missiles! If they are ever used, myself and everyone I know will be dead!" At the very least, I hope when they fire their Kalishnakov rifles in celebration, they aim away from the missiles.
Anyway, Rumsfeld seems a bit hawkish for a peace broker. What I see happening is Rumsfeld getting down there with all those missiles and weapons of mass destruction just kind of lying around, just kind of right out there in the open, and getting caught up in the excitement and pushing the button himself. The idea of warfare, the word itself, causes him to sprout wood. Which, to return to Strangelove, reminds me of Gen. Buck Turgidson (played by the marvelous George C. Scott), who, when the president asks him if the runaway B-52 piloted by Kong has a chance of hitting its target and triggering armageddon, loses himself in his enthusiastic appreciation of the skill of a B-52 pilot and begins to exclaim, "Hell Yes!", before realizing what he's saying and clamping his hand over his mouth. And this is part of the overall theme in the film of the danger of military men who desire war for war's sake. Another example of this absurd lust for war-making: the insane Gen. Ripper, being fired on by U.S. Army infantry attempting to take over his base, pauses to shout, "That's nice shooting soldier!", at one of the men trying to kill him. Filmsite.org has a good, though typo-ridden, site breaking down the film.
