Gilbert Gottfried, one of my all-time favorite comedians, has died aged 67 (my age ATOW), from complications caused by muscular dystrophy.
There was and is nobody more cruel and nastier than Gilbert. Here’s one example (and is VVNSFW).
And my favorite line of his, conducting an imaginary interview of Jackie Onassis:
“So… do remember what you were doing on the day..?”
I am SO going to miss him. R.I.P.
Among many of my Readers, I know that their opinion of golf is that it takes up acreage better used for a shooting center. However, after watching the 2022 Masters last week, something really fine happened.
A young guy named Scottie Scheffler emerged the champion, and here’s his story.
Even better, he and his pretty wife have been crowned as the world’s cutest couple:
Best of all? (and this just has to stick in the media’s craw)
“It all goes back to my faith,” he said. “The reason why I play golf is that I’m trying to glorify God and all that he’s done in my life. So for me, my identity isn’t a golf score. Like Meredith told me this morning, if you win this golf tournament today, if you lose this golf tournament by 10 shots, if you never win another golf tournament again she goes, I’m still going to love you, you’re still going to be the same person.”
God, humility and family.
Makes me tear up, it does.
Oh yes… Our Girl has done it again:
Britney Spears, 40, reveals she is PREGNANT with her third child
And the hits just keep on coming for our Train Smash Poster Girl…
Alert Reader Mike M sends me this cheerful little piece:
A Florida man is facing criminal charges for alleged “lewd, indecent and obscene acts” aboard a Boston-bound flight.
Yeah, fine, whatever, Florida Man doing strange shit, nothing to see here, move along. Until we read the very next sentence:
Donald Edward Robinson, 76, Bonita Springs, was arrested Sunday morning at Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with one count of lewd, indecent and obscene acts.
Seventy-six years old? Man deserves a medal, not prosecution. Then further on:
Robinson is accused of masturbating and exposing his penis in front of a 21-year-old woman who was seated next to him. The woman recorded a 24-second video clip of Robinson allegedly touching and manipulating his penis through his pants shortly after the flight took off, authorities said. Robinson allegedly then exposed his penis. The woman tried to point Robinson out to a flight attendant after landing but was unable to point him out due to the number of people trying to exit the aircraft. Security footage captured Robinson exiting the terminal.
Spoilsports. As the title of this post indicates, we should all be so lucky to have such lascivious thoughts, so well past our threescore years and ten.
ZMan has a typically-mordant look at the global economy:
The Global American Empire has been supported for the past half century by a novel form of seigniorage. This is the difference between the value of money and the cost to produce and distribute it. In the old days, the king would make a profit from the minting of coins used in his kingdom. This was usually a tax added to the total cost of a coin on top of the cost of production. This was the king’s profit from coinage.
Since the Louvre accords in the 1980s, Washington has been able to swap securities for newly printed banknotes by the Federal Reserve. This would normally impose an inflation tax on the public, but the dollar being the reserve currency of the world spread this tax over the global economy. Inflation rates in the United States remained low, as long as global growth remained high and the world was willing to tolerate this system.
The bigger issue is that the rest of the world is losing interest in the system that profits Washington at their expense. China has been manipulating its currency for a few years as a way to prevent Washington from exporting inflation to Beijing. She has also been quietly building parallel financial structures, along with Russia and India, in order to escape the perfidious rules imposed by Washington.
Which means that if the $US is replaced by some other form of currency, we’re fucked. The only bright side of that scenario is that other currencies are even more shaky than ours (yuan coff coff) and a commodity-based system such as gold is impossible because quite frankly, there is no commodity on Earth large enough to replace the dollar without a radical devaluation of, well, everything.
Sobering stuff, all the same. Read all of it.