That's what I texted Meade just now, so then I pasted the statement in Grok. Didn't ask Grok to do anything with it, certainly not to write it up into a short short story, but that's what it did:
The car rattled along the elevated track, fluorescent lights flickering like a bad motel sign. I was wedged between a guy scrolling TikTok and a woman clutching a bag of oranges. Across from me sat Donald Trump—orange as the fruit, hair defying gravity, suit somehow unwrinkled despite the heat. No Secret Service. No crowd. Just him, me, and the Address.
Chuck Schumer is attempting to lure Americans away from Trump by tempting us with the humble indulgences beer and guacamole — drinking and snacking — paired with watching television. But even if Americans were hopelessly addicted to these fattening pleasures, we could still, easily, choose a non-Mexican beer and serve those tortilla chips with melted cheese instead of that avocado paste. That might work out well for Wisconsin — home of beer and cheese — and quite badly for Mexico. What is it going to do with all those avocados if we say we'd rather push for Mexico to help us with the border problem than continue to mindlessly consume that that green goo... that sludge... that guck...
This is fresh fruit, farmed in vast quantity in Mexico, where it will rot if not sold. What am I missing? We will easily win this trade war. And I'm sure Schumer knows all this and is embarrassed to be smarmily plying us with a beer and an avocado.
"... but he looks like a man who is definitely running for president in 2024. His CPAC speech this weekend was a rude awakening as to both his intentions and the strength he would bring to that campaign."
There was no bigger roar from the crowd during the speech than during the following section, and there was no bigger shit-eating grin on his burnt-toast face than the one that came following the roar:
I ran twice. I won twice and did much better the second time than I did the first getting millions and millions of more votes than in 2016. And likewise getting more votes than any sitting president in the history of our country by far. . . . And now we may have to do it again. We may have to do it again.
Shit-eating grin on his burnt-toast face.... We need to get rid of Trump and return the GOP to the more civil, mature adults in the party. You know, the ones who say things like "shit-eating grin on his burnt-toast face."
I became immersed in the poetry of "shit-eating grin on his burnt-toast face." Because if Trump is the one doing the eating — shit-eating — then why is he simultaneously a food substance — burnt toast. Does food eat? I began to think of the shit as a Nutella-like spread for toast. Do you picture the shit-eater eating it plain, like pudding, or using some medium, as with the legendary shit sandwich? Did you ever think deeply about the shit sandwich? Was it on toast? Was the toast burnt?
I'm so glad the excitable Tim Miller, from the illustrious Bulwark, gave me something to think about, this Monday morning. Some days, your food for thought is a shit sandwich... on burnt toast.
The man speaking to an adoring crowd at CPAC... owns an entire new crop of succubus surrogates.... His hands may be tiny and soft, but his grip on the party is pretty tight.
Finance is my least favorite subject, but I can't completely ignore something that feels expressive of my reasons for not engaging. I'm not even going to attempt to vaguely gesture at the briefest summary of what happened. Go read the article... or any article on the subject.
But I will quote the second highest-rated comment.
If the hedge fund managers are concerned, perhaps they should simply drink fewer cups of Starbucks. Eat less avocado toast. Do a better job at saving. Or, get a side hustle. Drive an Uber? Learn to code? Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, fellas.
Seems mildly nice, but here's where it goes — reported by The Daily Mail — "Even Presidential plane food is bad! Photo of a deeply unappetizing-looking dish served on Donald Trump's Air Force One goes viral/A photo of a meal served to journalists travelling on Air Force One has gone viral/Snap shows an innocuous stuffed bell pepper with a Halloween face - but it is the unidentified object on a side-plate behind it that has caused a storm/Beige-looking dish has sparked jokes galore, with some suggesting the President himself would not eat it."
ADDED: I think the journalist who took the picture was experiencing it as cute and fun, but by tweeting it, she gave the tweetosphere something to shit on, so, of course, they did.
The item in the background is something to puzzle over. If you decide it's meat, it seems gross and it's the main course so if you don't eat it you're deprived. If you decide it's a glazed pastry, it's just at worst a caloric dessert that's easy to pass up and no loss at all.
IN THE COMMENTS: Big Mike said:
I ate worse-looking than that when I was in the army! You should see what chipped beef on toast looks like at 0 dark thirty!
I said:
My parents — who met in the Army in WW2 — often served us chipped beef on toast for dinner back in the 1950s and 60s. We loved it! If you know how to make white sauce properly and you can get that chipped beef that used to come in a little jar with a pry-off lid and you toast up just normal white bread, it's excellent!
AND: As long as we're talking about chipped beef on toast, here are the 3 Stooges in "Of Cash and Hash." Go to 4:26 to skip the set-up and focus on the food. Larry is serving a customer at a diner:
The use of "toast" to mean "A person or thing that is defunct, dead, finished, in serious trouble, etc." originated — if I am to believe the Oxford English Dictionary — with "Ghostbusters"!
1983 D. Aykroyd & H. Ramis Ghostbusters (film script, third draft) 123 Venkman..: Okay. That's it! I'm gonna turn this guy into toast.
As the OED explains with exquisite pedantry:
The lines in quot. 1983 do not in fact appear in the U.S. film Ghostbusters as released in 1985, since a considerable amount of the dialogue is ad-libbed. The actual words spoken by Venkman (played by Bill Murray) as he prepares to fire a laser-type weapon, are, ‘This chick is toast’; this is probably the origin of the proleptic construction which has gained particular currency.
"Proleptic use" means in phrases like "You're toast," "I'm toast," and "Susan Collins is toast."
I still don't know — and don't really care — what happened to Susan Collins.
Here's the tweet, which is funny for a few reasons:
Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite President. He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is “toast.”
The funniest thing about it to me is Trump calling himself "your favorite President." It's absolutely accurate, because he is our only President. I mean, you might try to write a screwball comedy — in the manner of "My Favorite Wife" — where some strange occurrence causes there to be 2 Presidents, but even if you think Hillary was cheated out of the presidency, there's no way she is the President. And if you try to say, but my favorite President is Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt, I'm going to say it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.
There's also some rock solid content. Flake has decided not to expose himself to an actual election process in Arizona, where a GOP incumbent should be able to win, and instead — with no judgment of the electorate to worry about — he's just speaking out against Trump. Flake's speaking has struck me as vain and attention-seeking, and the love he's getting from liberals would never translate into support in an actual political contest.
The "(purposely)" is funny, because who doesn't believe that Flake meant for his remark to be heard? Making it seem secret was a way to amplify it. That was my opinion and my favorite President agreed. Good. I also like that he used the "mike" spelling and not "mic." (Maybe Laurence Tribe will apply his massive brain to the question whether "mike" is a "distinctly Jewish" spelling.)
And on a deeper, emotional level, "toast" is a warm, delicious word. Toast! We're toast! I love toast! Mmmm, toast! A toast to toast!
But what I really came here to opine about is the name-calling: Flake(y). Should a President be sticking names on everyone? I don't know but Trump doesn't do it to everyone. Only to those who hit him with a low blow. It is undignified, and I prefer the idea of going high when they go low, but that's not Trump. That's not what our favorite President does. (That's the name he's gotten me to start using for him. It's sticky.)
So let's move on to the question whether Flake(y) is a good name for Jeff Flake. "Flake" was already a funny name — already connoting flakiness — and Flake has lived and achieved with it. How can you make it more of an insult by adding "y"? Is it worse to be "flaky" than to be a "flake"? I think it's worse to be a flake, since it suggests it's the entirety of what you are as opposed to merely one of your attributes. (Reading the definition of "flaky/flakey" in the OED, I see that President Reagan called Qaddafi "flaky.")
But when I think about "Flakey," my first association is Flakey Foont!
Do you know what I'm talking about? Are you not up on Mr. Natural comics?
Mr. Natural has strange, magical powers and possesses cosmic insight; but he is also moody, cynical, self-pitying, and suffers from various strange sexual obsessions. He is endlessly being accosted by would-be disciples seeking the truth (among them such long-running Crumb characters as Flakey Foont and Shuman the Human). He typically regards them with amused condescension and a certain grudging affection, although his patience often wears thin and he takes sadistic pleasure in making them feel like idiots. While he is typically very cool and in control, he sometimes ends up in humiliating predicaments like languishing for years in a mental institution.
The really weird thing is thinking of Trump as Mr. Natural!
Cruz just ended his political career. And I say that as someone who supported Cruz in the primaries.
There is a time and a place for everything. You don’t accept an invite to a woman’s wedding and then give a toast to the groom’s ex-girlfriend. It is bad enough that he has gone back on his promise to support whoever won the GOP nomination. ... What he did tonight was beyond rude — and then standing there at the podium with a smirk on his face.
Until tonight I thought the rest of the Senate hated him because he would not play ball. While that still might be partly true, tonight I discovered another reason: he is a jerk. I will never support him again.
Well, that's a great bad analogy. A good chunk of the assembled group were delegates pledged to Cruz, not supporters of Trump. And a convention is not necessarily a celebration focused on one couple. Even the couple's kiss was not a thinking-alike sort of thing ....
Said Bradley Manning, in a statement released after he received his sentence of 35 years.
The statement went on to request that Private Manning’s supporters “refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility).” It was signed, “Chelsea Manning.”
Leaflet — delivered to our door just now — caused Meade to say "Look: Jesus got a haircut."
I expect to see a nice-looking Jesus, but this is nice-looking to the point of too nice-looking. How nice-looking is Jesus supposed to be? Also, where did he plug in the blow dryer? At some point you'll say that's not Jesus, but, oddly enough, this isn't at that point.
What does it take for an image to be perceived as Jesus? Here, the words are a big influence. Let's strip away the context.
That seems less like Jesus than the slices of toast that evoke the Shroud of Turin. What's happening with the toast and this stingray and so forth is a mental process called pareidolia — the perception of meaning in "a vague and random stimulus." It's "a type of apophenia, seeing patterns in random data." The lack of detail invites our mind to provide the completion. We instinctively want to see something, and so we do. It's hardly surprising that our fulfillment often (but not always) gravitates toward the divine. The problem with the picture on the new leaflet is that it's too detailed and specific, and that blocks the creative contribution of our minds. Jesus looks like a particular guy, and that can't be Him.
And here's a story about a man who was kicked out of a darts tournament for looking like Jesus:
[Nathan] Grindal, 33, who has long hair and a full beard he started growing four months ago, was sitting in the crowd at the tournament when some nearby spectators began to chant, "Jesus! Jesus!" during the final match between Phil Taylor and Kim Huybrechts, ABC News reported. Others joined in the chant, until most of the 4,500 people in the arena were chanting the Almighty's name.
It got so raucous that security staff decided to remove Grindal, fearing his presence was upsetting the concentration of the players, as well as hurting the enjoyment of the viewers at home...
What if you gave a toast and nobody raised their glass with you, because they were in the middle of a solemn ritual that you had thought was the solemn ritual that is your toast but was their national anthem and the elderly queen was queenly enough to say gently to you "that's very kind"? You would carefully place your glass on the table and stand stiffly like everyone else and hope that the wide frown on your face expressed not your nightmare experience but some simulacrum of the "national anthem face" you should have had there all along, when you were blabbing that Shakespeare — Shakespeare! — to try to butter them up about what a great country they think they have. Oh! The rigidity of this horror!
Writes Walter Scheib, former White House Executive Chef, fired by Laura Bush in 2005. Don't mess with the chef. He knows those embarrassing facts about you, like the way you like processed cheese and white bread, and is not afraid to tell the world.
Scheib, a professionally trained cook with an outstanding CV even before he started work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, tells me flatly that making lunch for Bush was "not very challenging and didn't really require any of my professional training".
But according to Scheib, this is not a making a partisan or political statement. During our conversation over coffee in a swish New York bar, he does refer to the burgers and 'dogs to which his first Presidential employer, Bill Clinton, was partial. Yet Scheib's book, White House Chef, part memoir, part cookbook, clearly shows who he preferred working for, and why, during his 11 years in the basement kitchen, even if his professionalism - and presumably his desire to work for the big guns again - rule out any the dishing of any serious dirt....
"The White House is a private home," says Scheib. "And the important thing is to achieve what residents want - whether that's a bowl of chicken soup when they're not well or a state dinner for 900 people. Each is important and I submit that the chicken soup may even be more critical to your long-term success."
Scheib, or "Cookie" as President Bush liked to call him, is frustratingly discreet when it comes to talking about his tête-à-têtes over toast with his employers.
Aw, Cookie. I guess he's not a rat. But now the book's no fun at all! Weren't you ready to go to the bookstore and check the index for all the Hillary stuff? Check out the acknowlegements:
"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, for taking a chance on me - you literally changed my life and I'll be in your debt forever - and President William Jefferson Clinton, for your good humour and social grace - I actually believe it when you say you are happy to see me. President George W Bush and First Lady Laura Bush - it was my pleasure to serve you."
Miaow. But when I mention this to Scheib he mumbles and says only, "Well, the temperament of the two families is substantially different."
"Both first ladies had eclectic palates," Scheib reveals. "Both presidents on the other hand, if you'd opened a barbeque or rib joint in the basement, would have been happy as clams...."
And if you'd opened up a clam joint in the basement, they'd've been...
When Bill Clinton swept into the White House with his forceful wife at his side, it was Hillary who decided to bring a new type of cuisine to the White House and it's never ending stream of guests. Less than two years after moving in, she began searching for an experienced chef. "There was this idea that great cuisine should be driven not by complicated techniques but by tremendous, fresh, ripe, spectacular, seasonal ingredients. It should be a flavour-driven concept. She wanted someone who could modernise the White House menu by moving away from the traditional French style and towards modern American cuisine." Scheib says.
In other words, Hillary was up on what had been the most well-known food trend of the previous 20 years. She's so amazing!
Surprisingly neither Bill nor Hillary ever asked for any cooking tips.
So Hillary didn't want to make cookies, Cookie?
Bill liked smoked mozzarella and pepperoni calzones with spicy tomato sauce, Southern fried chicken and Porterhouse steak (24 ounces, no less) with béarnaise sauce, while Hillary requested dishes such as curried Cornish hen, tuna melt with no-fat cheese, and cabbage rolls with shredded turkey and mixed vegetables.
Which food preference suggests better aptitude for the Presidency?
While the Clintons had been an inclusive group, who made staff a part of their extended family, the situation was distinctly different with the Bushes - from day one.
"With Laura it was simply, You're in a domestic position. We respect your professionalism, we like what you've done, everything is fine, but you're not our friend,'" says Scheib. "And a lot of my classic training was suddenly no longer necessary."...
The new President was into simpler food than his predecessor. "He didn't like soup or salad, or anything green," says Scheib. "He really just wanted beef and anything that could be prepared in Tex-Mex style. There was little challenge in preparing the President's lunch."
He really just wanted beef and anything that could be prepared in Tex-Mex style. Actually, that food preference seems really presidential to me. I mean if you were a PR person and it was your job to make up a lie about what your candidate eats, wouldn't that be the best lie?
President Bush was also reluctant to dine with his wife if she had friends over for lunch or if she was having anything fancy'. "He wanted one of his go-to items such as a cheese sandwich or a peanut butter and honey sandwich on white toast with potato chips," says Scheib.
Sounds right to me. I remember reading that Jackie Kennedy liked to have just a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. Suddenly, it seems completely elegant, doesn't it?
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