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!"
I'm pleased old Saddam (Sa' dem) has agreed to weapons inspections, though it's easy to regard it as a cagey chess move/stalling tactic and a way to piss off the Bush Administration. Of course, said administration wasted no time dismissing a decision that could very well prevent a costly and controversial war as empty. And it's not only war that would be avoided, but the potentially catastrophic fallout of war, when you think about the instability in the region. But the hawks (Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is like the guy in the bar out here in mellow San Francisco who bumps you repeatedly and doesn't say he's sorry and who basically needs to try that shit in a New York bar and get his ass kicked) aren't concerned with these kinds of silly, far-sighted ideas! They have no time for dope-smoking tree-huggers who don't personally hate every Arab peasant in the Middle East. Pakistan and India? Al-Qaeda sympathisers in Musharref's cabinet? C'mon! What's a little nuclear radiation, anyway, you sissy boy? What, you haven't built your own fallout shelter in the backyard? Sucks to be you, hippie!
My feeling is the Bush hawks will be immensely disappointed if Saddam allows us to conduct a thorough search and it turns out that he's clean. Their blood-lust is up, like drunk yuppie tools in pink polo shirts at the Mandalay Bay sports bar, infuriated by a heavyweight fight that ends in a first-round disqualification. If war is called off I bet they'll still call Saddam and ask if they can bomb him just a little. "Out in the desert somewhere. You guys have lots of that. It'll be fun! Kapucchhchghgh! Whee!"
Meanwhile, and I don't think this is being made quite as clear as it ought to be in the media (though, who knows, I don't watch the fucking "Factor" or "Hardballs"), we're bombing Iraq already. It's "just" their air defenses but still, there have got to be casualities as a result. I'm trying to think of an apt analogy for how the Bush Administration is saying one thing with their mouths while dealing with the U.N. and doing another with their hands with respect to our military. I guess "Trading Places," where the Dukes are trying to convince Eddie Murphy that all the stuff in Dan Akroyd's former house is his and he doesn't need to steal it. "Uh huh. Right. This is my house. This is my TV," Murphy says, as he works the room, stuffing shit into his pockets. "This is my vase. So I can do some Harlem Globetrotters shit with it, right? I can be like Meadowlark Lemon ... "
