Critical Mass

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us. And not pity disguised as mercy, like last time: real mercy.

Glory to God in eggshells, and on earth peace to people of good will, if you can find any. We praise you, we bless you, we fellate you, we adore you, because you certainly are adorable—though you might want to work on your pickup lines. 

We just have a few tiny suggestions for your future works, Lord God, heavenly King, and so forth. Lord Jesus Christ, only begotten Son, and so forth: You take away the sins of the world, but doing so only after the world commits them is nothing short of cruel. It's exasperating: we pray and pray and pray; you are seated at the right hand of the Father. (Does he still call you "bailiff" to piss you off? That was so cute.) You alone are the holy one (you alone will stand against the vampires, the demons,  blah blah biddy blah, I'm so stuffy, give me a scone) and this world is the best you and Big Daddy and the Spook can come up with?

I believe in one God, or possibly Three: the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, including bargain basement crap like crooked spines and decaying teeth and shriveling maculae and putting in one friggin' intake tube for two different sources of fuel.

I believe in one Lord, and Jesus Christ, is He a pain in the ass. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made... who wrote this shit? Does anybody know what it even means? Oh, no: it's a "mystery" [spooky hands]. Anyway. For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven (on a clearly visible wire), and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary (brown chicken brown cow!) and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, which must have been uncomfortable for them both. He suffered death—or rather say WE suffered through it, so ridiculously long he drew it out...

I nearly demanded a refund of the ticket price—and was buried, and rose again on the third day (a trite plot point recycled from The Prestige) in accordance with a hack writer who couldn't pull an original story out of his ass if Isaac Singer were living in his rectum. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father, which we got the FIRST time it was dropped in exposition. He will come again in glory (note to costumer: sequins =/= glory) to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end, much like this farce. Seriously, when already? Dude, you are 1,981 years backed up on foot-washings. Dépêche-toi.

 Oh yeah, just like that. Oh, fuck yeah. Christ, you're so good.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, blah blah blah. Yeah, I don't know who this character is either, or why he's always hovering around the action with a sheet over his head. I think it's a post-postmodern thing.

I believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess that one baptism scene, with the drowned baby, was a sin not to be forgiven, and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead career of the author of all life of the world to come. Amen.

Holy, holy, holy shit, this "Lord God" guy is our host? Why haven't we heard from him since ever? Heaven and earth, he's full of himself. With all that omnipotence, you'd think he could manage a creation without, say, cancer, or greed, or Tim Burton. Hosanna in the highest... the highest what? "Hosanna banana fanna faux-sanna" in the highest giggling helium voice, is what you get from me. And for an encore...

From the archives...

This is ancient history: February 1998, a month before moving into the basement apartment that has (with two years' ill-advised suburban exception) served as my longest-running home on earth. The cited prospective BF would be Mr. Christopher R. Gagnon; though at the time of writing I had no clue what had become of him, as he had simply stopped responding to my calls and emails. (I reconnected with Mr. G—— years later, purely by chance, at a sex party in Chicago.) For the invented details of his defection I just borrowed back several years for the more interesting story of Mr. Jonathan Westog of Philadelphia, Pa., who terminated our fledgling relationship with an "Ew, cooties!" phone call—he claimed I had given him chlamydia, when in fact a quick clinic visit and urethral invasion showed I had ever been clear thereof.

The second S-not-B would be Mr. David M——, with whom I used drunkenly to cruise the bars every Friday night in search of other playmates. We were fuckbuddies, namo.

This was actual correspondence, but I forget who this "nephew" was who asked the question. Possible Mr. R. Michael H——, late of Philadelphia/

Finally, I'm fairly certain the cited 'snark' is a Dodgsonian one; this whole piece is in the same meter as "The Hunting of the Snark". And in 1998 I'm not sure the word had yet been seized and forced into uncountable servitude to mean 'sarcasm'.

Q: How’s it going with your SBWWTSD? [Serious boyfriends with whom to settle down] Let me guess: It’s not.
A: Since you ventured a guess and since, as guesses go,
Yours was not an adventuresome one,
I hasten to answer—I want you to know—
That this settling down is no fun.
It entails every manner of mannered discourse
And eschews any flippant remark
And such pains it exacts—oftentimes with brute force—
At the merest allusion to ‘snark’!
Its grandest of pleasures is sitting around
Watching movies on cable TV
Between which soirées the adherent is bound
To the phone, should the caller be he.
Of the two SBWWTSDs
Of whom I apprised you of late,
The former—and S-er—with drear and disease
I appear to have driv out of state:
So his voicemail recounts, with alarming amounts
Of non-sequitur, malapropism,
And imprecise diction; yet nothing but fiction
To explain what engendered the schism.
By all gods does he claim, with no semblance of shame,
That I gave him the crabs and the clap,
Also genital warts, and various sorts
Of phallo-transmissible crap;
When the truth of the matter, I humbly submit,
Was that this, my so-so-called SB,
Was loath to consider, hard-pressed to admit
Ownership of more porno than me.
Either that, or perhaps he was just ill-equipped
To trim his toenails with his teeth,
And seeing me do so, his bonhomie slipped,
Exposing rank envy beneath.
Of the latter SB, there is none such as he
To ensure my tumescence of tool;
I shall never find glut of his succulent butt
(Emphasis on both ‘suc’ and [Fr.] ‘cul’).
And in fact, if I’m right, it was just Friday night
He and I made our last escapade—
What began with small sips and with Freudian slips
Found conclusion in triumph and trade:
For as daylight drew nigh, my S-non-B and I
Found ourselves ’midst an ocean of men,
One of whom we conveyed to my rooms where we made
Him shoot gallons from kitchen to den.
And this only after our previous plan,
Which involved 13 men and a goat,
Was dismissed when the lithest and horniest man
Found a horn firmly lodged in his throat.
In short, dearest nephew, my SD at last
(Which my mother and you oft implore)
Will most likely be someone of equally vast
Appetite, like, for instance, a whore.

What happened this morning.

I am on a plane with Fomo and I realize I need to pee and I have no idea where the bathroom is. The plane is swallow-shaped, with seating aisles and various utility spaces along and through two curved wings as well as down the thoracic center from head to tail. I am frustrated by the lack of signage as I wander down one wing to its terminus with no loo in sight. Around the central chamber where we're sitting, there ought to be bathrooms, dammit! but alas, it's just doors to the kitchen. So down the other wing I go, half-convinced by reasons of symmetry that it's another dead end. In a small, dark room that looks more like a train compartment for cargo, I find some people to talk to. I seem also in search of some object in my toiletries bag, because at one point I reach out and grab a tube of something, only to realize I've taken it not from my own bag but from the luggage belonging to the guy who's sitting right in front of it, attending to all its contents; and it doesn't look anything like my tube of something, anyway. I apologize. He is forgiving, and helpful, pointing out where my bag might be. And there it is, under a thing. One of its bottles or tubes has spilled or broken, and less than 3 ounces of liquid is all over the contents.

We have just taken off (again?) and I'm looking out a large observation window with a couple elderly women. We are clearly looking forward, in the direction of travel, and I wonder where on the plane we are to have such a vantage point. We must be near the tail because almost the whole of the plane is visible before us; but then the plane I thought we were on pulls away just out from under us, and it's clear we're right at the front of our plane—I guess above the cockpit. Wow, I think, we were way too close to that plane at takeoff. With mounting alarm, we observers note the pilots' seeming difficulty with the ascent: we're nearly running into concrete overpasses, which are hundreds or a thousand feet above the ground. (It's a major urban area I sometimes visit, part Philly, part San Francisco, with a familiar, elaborate I-highway ingress/egress via a huge, high semicircular bridge over a bay.) The women watching with me are fretting, complaining about the reckless driving, growing more concerned (not panicked! more annoyed than anything else). But then we're taking off tops of trees (the scraping and crashing is palpable) and it's clear the pilots are fighting even to keep the plane in flight and the passengers alive. We're still in motion through the city center when I see fires break out, new stories begin to tell of our plane's woes, various signs of the apocalypse; I wonder whether my family and friends (I have family, and friends) know the flight number I was on, excuse me, AM ON; and when it's absolutely clear the plane is crash-landing, without explanation I am outside the plan on the ground in the city, alive, unscathed. I know that I am unique among the passengers—either they are all dead and I'm the only one alive, or they are all still on the plane and I am the only one missing. In either case I realize it is the perfect opportunity to disappear and start over as somebody else. I consider the pros and cons and decide con.

So I'm back on the plane, and voilà! there's the bathroom. Of course, it's next to another kitchen door, where I greet a buddy of mine (I think her name is Shelly). I had emptied my pocketses and put everything on the desk before heading to the loo, and when I get back, I pick stuff up from the precise spot I had left my stuff, only to find that it's not my stuff but a bunch of professional artifacts—suspect cards and whatnot—belonging to the police detective who's sitting right at the desk there attending to stuff in front of her. Silly! she says, and points to my stuff, which she has moved off to the side to give herself room for her investigation.

It seems everyone on the plane is alive and well, but the investigation is vigorous and all-encompassing, and we must stay on the plane until it's done. "I don't suppose we have any idea how long they're going to keep us?" I ask, and somebody replies, "Anywhere from 3 p.m. to 3/6." Then, realizing that utterance was a bit opaque, he qualifies, "As in March sixth." It occurs to me that the current month is January.

(Later, separately, two FAA types, one of whom is James Cromwell, are discussing the crash over a relief map of the city; Cromwell issues an opinion, in a perfect quatrain, about the rarity of saving all the passengers.)

I head back to "my seat" (I'm not sure I've ever sat in it) to find Fomo, who appears to have been a MacGuffin; various other friends are there ("there" now resembles an academic courtyard, circular, with pillars and graduated stone seating, accommodating—oh, look, there's a fire pit in the middle!) including Greg Wolford, who, due no doubt to the stress of the plane crash, has got himself all looped up on muscle relaxants. He is thinner than I remember him, and he is smoking cigarettes. I ask for one and he tosses me a pack of Marlboros (wait: this is the movies, so make that Morleys). I take one out but then realize I already have a cigarette in my hand... seconds later, like some unwitting illusionist, I now have three cigarettes in my hands, and they're all lit. I show this nonsense to Greg, who laughs and asks whether I've gotten one of the *blah blah* cigarettes—thin and black, with a robin's egg blue filter. Yup, one of the three is such. I love those, Greg says. (Actually, he probably says something like, "They're the ginchiest.")

Finally off the plane, I think: Like Renfield but not perceptibly mad, FilthE is in search of vermin. There is contextual justification for this hunt, but I forget it now. Anyway, Filth and Dodo and one other friend and I are exploring, and in a antique store showroom (or possibly back room) we run across two Victorian-looking sofas, each of which is fitted with a removable bier  (coffin-shaped, decoratively etched) mounted on the front for a "corpse" to lie upon, for public display. There is museum signage telling us that one of these was built for Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (the other, perhaps, for Mr. Poe), but both items were stolen or lost at some point and so what you see here are replicas. The sofa parts look comfy.

Filth finds a rat and tries to keep it from disappearing through a door or hole in the wall; I help corral the rat by snapping a shirt in strategic places near the floor. It is less adept at or insistent on escape than most rodents: it cowers from the fabric snapping like Tontín. Filth eventually pounces on the rat, manages to neutralize its various pointy threats, and holds it down. It is a very large rat. It is a Hallowe'en rat, made expressly to be scary. "It wanted to bite me," Filth says; "It still does," says I, and indeed, the rat is straining against Filth's grip to get at his hand.

The company discuss the relative scariness of real rats and mechanical rats. We decide they are both scary.

P.S. In the process of recalling all of the above, I flashed on some wandering I did just before boarding the plane; I revisited that subterranean place, all curved spaces, with the human queues and the railway tracks, which are part transit shuttle (e.g., work commutes) and part Disney attraction point of embarkment; and then grander public spaces, almost like casino floors, vast, carpeted, with steps/ramps up and down a few steps in various places, giving an elaborate split-level effect. I retrace my steps as best I can, I look around... and I say to myself: "Holy crap. I have an airport."

I add the airport to the cruise ship/hotel, the long city block of bank offices, the presidential museum, the barely inhabited long house, the much-inhabited labyrinthine long house, the nine-room square house in Newark with the garden porches, the skyscraper dorm/hotel, the not-quite-Olga's diner, the split-level formal dining room, and the place of inscrutable elevators; all of which I have visited with some regularity.

For the sake of argument...

I'm thinking of renaming my blog "For the Sake of Argument". And I fully, freely, exuberantly admit part of me wants to do so just to be an asshole. I think it self-evident that the world doesn't need more assholes; but I think that blustering, barrel-chested fact makes us forget or overlook a corollary: The world desperately needs more of the RIGHT KIND OF ASSHOLE. You know, like Bill Maher and me.

I have a minor and a major point to make here, and I hope you'll bear with me. The minor point is meant to be illustrative of the major point... so without further doo:

Gratuitous conditioning: Buy local! Buy independent! Support employee-owned or at least employee-empowering businesses! Know your sources!

Starbucks CEO sez! That's what the man said! You heard him say that! That's what he said!

There are, I hope you'll agree, a bazillion perfectly good reasons for nevereverever going to Starbucks—starting with their freaking coffee—and yes, the income gap between CEOs and entry-level workers is obscene, across the board: An epidemic of ravening robber-barons vacuuming up all the wealth there is and governing the government of the Benighted States of Amurka—or rather, its evil neo-feudal twin that's been feared and deplored by commie pinko presidents from John Adams and Tom Jefferson to Teddy Roosevelt to... well, nobody to speak of with much conviction in the last century. (The current capo of  the Organized Crime Racket of American Politics [OCRAP] gave a speech in 2011 in the same Kansas town where Teddy delivered his, attempting to ride on those century-old progressive coattails and failing miserably.)

 Let Teddy win!

In general principle and sentiment, no argument from me. But this meme purposely takes "Starbucks CEO says" out of context. In a series of March 2013 interviews, CEO in Question Howard Schultz said a lot of things about the minimum wage increase. To take some examples that seems germane to this meme:

• "I am a supporter of the minimum wage going up."
• "I applaud the President for taking a stance on raising the minimum wage."
• Raising the minimum wage “is the right thing to do in Seattle—and the right thing do in the country.”
• "I do think there ... is a larger gap between the haves and have-nots in America."

These statements, taken together and with no further reporting, seem diametrically opposed to the meme—because, obviously, they're just as free of context as the meme's quote... so let's check out some context:

• “We’ve got to be very careful what we wish for because some employers—and there could be a lot of them—will be scared away from hiring new people or creating incremental hours for part-time people as a result of that wage going up.”
• "I wouldn’t want to see the unintended consequences of job loss as a result of going that high. That would not be the case at Starbucks, but I suspect that most companies, especially small- and mid-sized companies, would not be able to afford it."

(That said, an online survey of starting wages at SB says $8.80 average for barista—higher than the current minimum, but not by much—and still not a living wage. No Starbucks positions except supervisors have even a maximum hourly wage of $15 or more.)

So I'm not defending Schultz, his ubiquitous company, their practices, or their dreadful product. What I am doing here is what I always do: lamenting purposeful obfuscation even (especially?) on behalf of progressive causes. Saying "We should be act with caution in raising the minimum wage, lest a well-intentioned, too-steep hike has unintended consequences that harm the workers and the economy at large" is not the same as saying, "Fuck you, Bob Cratchit."

Yes, I know we live in a world where, to get Joe Asshole's attention, you need to sound-bite and simplify to the point of actual deceit... but oil beef hooked if I'm not gonna complain about it.

And that, dear reader, is what gets me in trouble, time and time again:

• I spent some time tracking down upstream propagators of the wholly fraudulent Tumblbook meme claiming that President Obama said, "No, you can't deny women their basic rights and pretend it's about your religious freedom. If you don't like birth control, don't use it. Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs." [Seriously, how talcum-pudding stupid do you need to be to believe this president said that in public?] Consequently I get banned from at least one leftist site and harangued by various users—as if I were attacking the political sentiment itself.
• Ditto result from my debunking—or rather, my pointing out somebody else's debunking—of the oft-lobbed "freedom v. security" quote from Ben Franklin—a terrific quote but completely devoid of the context generally attributed to it.
• In the wake of the murder of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson, I object to the ubiquitous claims—based on the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement's not-at-all-sensationally titled April 2013 report "Operation Ghetto Storm"—that 313 black persons (or "one every 28 hours!") were "executed" by police or vigilantes in 2012. In fact, the report itself concedes many (many) of the 313 cases it compiles entailed suspects who were armed and who fired on police. I looked the fucking thing up and read it; apparently nobody else did, but that didn't stop any number of people branding me an asshole for questioning the veracity of the "facts" being quoted everywhere.
• [ETA: Steve N—— was kind enough to remind me of my recent "pedantry" (I suspect he means "sophistry") re the Great Facebook-Drag Queen Massacree 2014; apparently, without my noticing, drag queens—that is, a group of people engaging of their own volition in a particular occupation or avocation—have become a protected class of citizen, exempt from any public accommodation's longstanding and explicit policy and against whom ordinary mortals may not for any reason inveigh. So rouge your cheeks and claim your prizes, girls! I'll be over here, inveighing.]
• Then there's my illustrious and carefully cultivated career as a rape apologist—and there are just too many milestones on that road to mention!
• Oh, by the way? Apes are not monkeys. (That one generally just garners eye rolls, not banishments.)

So, wha's up with that? Why do I pick fights with "my own people" (as it were)? Well... somebody fucking needs to. Truth is the only absolute morality. Misinformation is a crime against humanity. For liberals or progressives to decry the outrageous, not-even-truthy distortions of Fox News, or its talking heads, or the various "experts" it employs, or its bevy of professional godfearers, or even the mainstream media, increasingly owned lock, stock, and babble by the ultrarich; and then to promulgate precisely the same sort of horseshit because they work toward righteous ends is inexcusable. Unconscionable. And especially liable to wind me up.

I'm used to the lies, damn lies, and sophistics of the Kochsucking Right; I devoutly believe they are—to the extent that the metaphor makes sense—the villains of the piece. Deception is their stock in trade. What I cannot abide is seeing progressive rhetoric that is near and dear to me propped up on a gimcrack stage and bedecked with all manner of chicanery. Not acceptable. No, you can't pretend abridging women's right to choose abortion is "exercising your religious freedom"; you also can't fucking pretend the fucking president gives a fucking fuck about it. Playing fast and louche with facts because your goals are moral is immoral. We the sensible radicals must hold ourselves to higher standards of ethics in all levels  of journalism—and yes, every political or current events memeshare is an act of journalism.

Thus endeth my lesser point. I do believe my points have reversed rôles. So we move on to this:

I like xkcd. I think it's a smart and funny comic—and I adore the art almost as much as that in Dinosaur Comics. The above is an entertaining dialog about one person intentionally frustrating the other, a perennial favorite among humorous themes...

Trouble is, some people (perhaps including Randall Munroe, the author of the strip; though I can't be sure) truly buy the frustrator's line of argument in re arguments. For some folk, "Can't we all just get along?" is a bleeding mantra; in their worldview, everything would be hunky and/or dory if people just refrained from arguing with one another.

For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little? That's how peace begins!

Let's unpack this freight car full of horseshit, shall we?

First of all, nobody who has ever said "for the sake of argument" in the history of argument ever meant "for the sake of argument". Not literally. (For the sake of the slower among us, perhaps I should also point out that nobody who ever said "I'm just playing devil's advocate" was actually providing legal services to Satan. Not even pro bono.) "For the sake of argument" is often a vacant conversational widget that people employ to wrest control of the floor or the conch, as it were; it's similar to "on the other hand" or "speaking of which" (though of course connoting dissent). It's more substantial than the introductory particles (thus the OED calls them) "well" and "so" with which people tend to bumpstart their sentences—but not by much.

To the extent it does mean anything tangible, "for the sake of argument" is most likely to mean "I disagree with you. I'm too polite or too afraid to say so outright, but I'm going in for a rhetorical gambit now, gonna try to convince you that you're wrong and I'm right. Just watch me. Here goes." Secondary definition: "I'm not sure about this. Let's keep talking about it in different ways and I'll see whether I'm convinced of this proposition or any of its alternatives." Lastly, I'll concede that "for the sake of argument" can mean "For the sake of driving you to distraction because one or both of us are assholes."

What it doesn't ever mean is, "We humans just don't argue enough. Let's argue for a while!" And it certainly does not the fuck mean, "I'm going to say something I believe to be untrue just to create an argument."

(To be fair [another rhetorical whoosit!] I suppose this meaning could be the subtext, say, when Person A desires to break up with or otherwise free hirself from Person B—but even then, we're right back to somebody being an asshole.)

Everything else proceeds from dismantling the wholly specious rhetorical foundation of the xkcd strip. I'm not going to belabor the point.

As to those humans among us who believe the need for cordiality trumps all disputes—borders and property, of course, but also human rights, corporate welfare, cops committing murder, destruction of the biosphere, and so on... Well, vast number of humans believe vast numbers of patently moronic propositions. Fuck 'em if they think we need fewer arguments, not more. I staunchly counter with the proposition that NO WE CAN'T ALL JUST FUCKING GET ALONG, and, seeing that that's the case, we may as well do everything in our power to learn how best not to; and I'll argue thus with sonorous oration till the moon turns blue from cold; and after a while they'll argue back, thereby conceding my point. GSM.

That insufferable, egregious fuckpig Tim Burton...

... is doing Through the Looking Glass, of course.

Seriously, you evil troll, naming a bunch of characters after those writ by Lewis Carroll does not make it Through the Motherfucking Looking Glass. I devoutly wish there were an afterlife so that Carroll could see to you himself. As it stands, I will more than avenge his honor if I ever meet you. Trust.

[This is Tim Burton volunteering to be taken out and shot.]

Begonia

Looks big on ya.

In my fondest dreams...

Joanna Newsom and Sufjan Stevens meet and decide to collaborate and write and record and publish an album every six months forever and ever amen.

Republicrats, or, A Parliament of Whores

"Why is Warren so sweet on the [Export-Import] bank?...as former Democratic Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank told the [expletive deleted; rhymes with Sloughing Compost], Democrats have made a tactical decision to close ranks and dump their previous opposition to Ex-Im because they want to wrest Corporate America—and presumably its campaign contributions—from the GOP."

Very disappointing.

Meanwhile, back at Spahn Ranch...

... we sane people don't have to perceive unintended slights or make them up out of whole cloth. There are humans out there who have made it their entire purpose in life to deny queer people the rights and privileges enjoyed by all heteromurkins.

Ok, granted, for all their visibility and vitriol, NOM is a laughable organization. I mean, they don't even have the good sense to lie about the number of their supporters. Oooh, 40,000? Really? I quiver and pale.

Still, wouldn't you rather have cause to laugh at the queerbashers than the queers?

FB hates drag queens!

Oh, no, wait, that's me.

Can anyone source for me the slightest evidence that FB's recent, aborted attempt to force its users to use their real names was targeted at drag queens or other putative LGBTx groups? I've seen story after story and meme after Auntie Meme claiming such, and I think it's absolute rubbish. While I am and have been vehemently opposed to the "real name" policy, I have seen zero evidence that it was intended to target queer people. The many claims to this effect ignore (perhaps insultingly to other identities) the fact that FB users across all spectra of identity have nicknames, stage names, pen names, drag names, cosplay names, porn names, super-spy names, mad bomber names, what-the-hell-ever names. It's not FB's business in any case, but claims of "Waah, I'm being singled out!" are precious, petulant, and finally horseshit.

Glad I cleared that up. Now if only gay strip clubs would start discriminating against drag queens. Can you say "perfect world"?

GOOD NEWS, EVERYBODY!

Larry Storch is still alive.


Yeah, that article's from spring 2013, but he's still kicking. I had quite the crush on Mr. Storch when I was, I dunno, eight? Ken Berry was pretty, but give me the goofus, every time. In other news, Abe Vigoda is still alive, too.

Dear Proposal Authors:

"We will do all the things" is not an acceptable technical approach. Please revise.

Love,
gourd

Dear Every Single Employee of Every Single Beltway Bandit Contractor:

Two things.

Thing one: Stop leveraging shit. Just stop it. Use tools, processes, and methods. You can even make use of or deploy qualified staff in your sphere. And let your experience inform your actions and plans. Just don't fucking LEVERAGE that shit, ever again.

Thing two: Don't ever, but never, make fun o' no cripples.

Wait, that wasn't it.

Thing two, take two: Don't ever, but never, concatenate the words "proven", "track", and "record". Just don't do it, seriously.

I'd threaten a smiting from God, but I'm afraid he's been feeling a little imaginary lately, so you'll just have to deal with me doing the smiting. And smite I shall, with all due fervor and ferocity.

(I thought this etching was about smiting, but it's only "Made you look!")