My dearest friends, I must regretfully inform you I have been rendered obsolete. Not by AI, but by all too naturally occurring anti-intelligence. I don’t say this lightly, but I believe we may have just endured the single dumbest week in human history.

You know you’re livin’ through some stuff when you wake up to headlines like “Israel carries out strike on Iran and Taylor Swift drops secret double album” and you can’t help but wonder what the third thing’s gonna be, you’d believe anything from kaiju attacks to two-for-one Häagen Dazs pints but I swear to god I was in the middle of writing this paragraph when some unwell gentleman set himself ablaze outside Off-Brand Orbán’s latest trial. (For…rape? Fraud? Attempted insurrection? Ya need a scorecard I tell ya!)

Scroll down a bit to discover reports that our 45th and possibly future President is once again napping through this trial (34 felony charges for the adjudicated rapist this time ‘round, by the way. Thirty-four of the eighty-eight total.) and perhaps not merely napping, but actually sleep-farting all over the courtroom.

(Disclaimer! The fart story is unconfirmed, but of course I got carried away and wrote a bunch of fart jokes, built the whole fucking post around ‘em in fact; when the opportunity to make fake jokes comes along, you seize it. And now it’s too late to rewrite this shit. Just give me the fart thing, okay?)

I’m grateful Donald Trump didn’t sleep-fart on me today, partially because at his age and given the cocktail of miscooked beef, cheap bronzer, and Adderall that passes through his body, those emissions are surely deadlier than anything deployed during the First World War, but mostly because I’d be in that courtroom, and therefore the crosshairs of the MAGA murder mob. Basically the shittiest Scylla/Charybdis scenario since the original. A.k.a. jury duty.

Seems the defense’s strategy is to terrorize every single potential juror away individually, until Manhattan runs out of people. And Jesse Watters is just a merry ol’ cog in the stochastic terror apparatus. Trial starts Monday, unless Fox successfully/accidentally dispatches some hammer-wielding psychopath to one of these jurors’ homes.

You’re not allowed to do terrorism in the name of a rapist who farts in his sleep at his fraud trial. It’s against the rules to be that pathetic. Look, I’m willing to meet you halfway. You can have a cult of personality, but you have to pick a different personality. Worship Shakira, or Count Chocula, anyone but this sleep-farting rapist.

How does none of this embarrass you? When he farts himself awake to waddle out to whine and moan and lie for a few minutes, how do you see anything to admire? I’m honestly curious. A man who cannot tell Jimmy Kimmel apart from Al Pacino deserves neither your adulation nor the American presidency. There, I said it.

I fancy myself something of a connoisseur of authoritarian lackey groveling, (I keep a couple bottles of Trump Cabinet Meeting, the 2017 vintage, for special occasions) so I think we should take a moment to savor Stephen Miller referring to the Dotard as a “style icon.” I love the way that story effortlessly, elegantly leads your brain to the most humiliating moment of that fascist freak’s life. “Stephen Miller” + “style” has nowhere to go but “hey remember that time Stephen Miller went on TV with spray-on hair?” and I think it’s amazing and just that he’s incapable of drawing attention to himself in a non-embarrassing way.

Speaking of groveling, I don’t usually watch the Sunday shows, but I was channel-surfing, and I came across Chris Sununu throttling this sickly, homunculus-like creature, which turned out to be the last tattered remnant of his self-respect. Helluva thing to witness. Say hi to Lindsey Graham’s husk when you see him, Governor!

I’m calling it, you guys. Meet the Republican Senate Candidates is my all-time favorite show. Name a scripted drama that’s delivered as many memorable characters, I’ll wait.

Because out of all available, eligible humans, Wisconsin Republicans somehow settled on a real deep thinker called “Eric Hovde,” who has a kooky plan to disenfranchise the elderly. I wouldn’t worry, I bet that’s the last weird thing Eric ever does or says. Donald Trump wouldn’t endorse a candidate without rigorous vetting, you know.

Plus, this season, they’ve been able to build around an established star. Kari Lake urged followers to “strap on a glock” ahead of the upcoming election, and while I almost always deplore such violent rhetoric, I kinda get why she’s feeling unsafe these days. Like, can you imagine being KARI LAKE and finding yourself out-crazied from the Right?

Cuz Arizona House Republicans are not fucking around. My sources tell me they’re petitioning the state Supreme Court to accept as legally binding a napkin, allegedly signed by Arizona Territory Governor John Noble Goodwin in 1865 in the region’s very first Applebee’s, proclaiming that a woman is worth only and exactly her weight in chickens.

Lotta future Senate candidates in that bunch, I bet. Deep bench.

Y’know, too many politicians flip and flop at the slightest polling fluctuation, but not Tom Cotton, who remains as dedicated to the vision of visiting violence upon those he disagrees with as the day he first made all those friends over at the Times.

I don’t even want to spoil this one for you if you missed it amidst all the farting and self-immolating, but plug “Biden cannibals” into your favorite search engine, if you’re ready to take the plunge into utter madness. PRETTY WEIRD WEEK.

Honestly though, maybe the weirdest thing that happened was a Republican Speaker telling the feral wing of his caucus to fuck off, there’s a country to govern. Which required working with Democrats, an inescapable truth in the face of the MAGA micro-majority’s many fatal flaws, which set off a great deal of snarling and slobbering amongst the ferals, as you can imagine.

And FARTing, even. Do you see how I got carried away with the fart jokes? I’m a fart truther, dammit. I need this.

Anyway, Newt Gingrich’ll scold those rowdy proto-fascists right back in line. “You can’t govern by shooting yourself in the head every day,” he harrumphed.

Trouble is, you can’t BE a Republican in 2024 without first disabling your own brain, by shotgun or hammer or ice pick or perhaps by shoving nickels up your nose because you thought they’d be safer there. You worked so hard to build this electorate, Noot, this tangled mass of outrage-addled fuckwits. The fuck did you think would happen?

Tennessee Republicans are passing anti-chemtrail bills, Noot. It’s a party that solves fake problems while real ones fester. You built that, bro.

Still, looks like Ukraine may actually get that desperately needed aid, (FUCKING FINALLY) even over the objections of the very small, very loud, very insane pro-Putin wing of the Republican Party, led by the space laser lady, who is now making these sad, trolly little space laser jokes that don’t really land, not that you’d expect a mind that misfires so badly and so frequently to be capable of humor, but don’t quit your day job, Marj, or wait, actually, quit your day job, Marj.

Somehow Gingrich’s finger-wagging failed to deter Greene, who has been joined in her crusade by a pitchfork-wielding Tom Massie and Paul Gosar, bearing a torch. Even our mobs are embarrassing.

Hard to figure out why anybody would want off such an awesome train, but the retirement announcements keep piling up. Imagine getting death threats for the sake of a job that forces you to sit in a room and listen to Chip Roy pitch that same insufferable Chip Roy shitfit every single week of your life.

My second-favorite show, after Meet the Republican Senate Candidates, is House Dems Bully Poor, Dumb Jimmy Comer. It’s super mean, but you don’t have to feel bad because not only is the target a proud enemy of American democracy working on behalf of wannabe autocrats, he’s also this inadvertent slapstick genius, a drooling fuckup who simply refuses to stop punching himself in the dick.

Even the Furry Kids Shitting in Litter Boxes at School Because Wokeness hoax (my personal favorite) came back this week. The furry kids are biting now. As the myth grows, rural shut-ins will come to believe our cities contain vast “no-go zones” where non-furries fear to tread.

Seems Rob Schneider offended autogolpe co-conspirator/U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith’s delicate sensibilities at…oh, some gathering of shitty people, I forget. Any religion that offers me an afterlife where those two are roommates and I get to watch gains a zealot.

Matt Gaetz and Derrick Van Orden are locked in the room next door. Every channel features a different pair of belligerent shitbags, cursed to spend eternity trapped in a confined space with unbearable company. Reince Priebus and Sidney Powell. Larry Kudlow and Nick Fuentes. Kellyanne Conway and Scott Baio. I would kill and die for that religion.

Sarah Huckleberry Slanders, who longtime readers may remember as the Mouth of American Fascism, quite possibly committed criminal lectern fraud, according to a legislative audit. Governor Slanders insists she did nothing illegal, as the lectern originally came filled with $19,000 worth of delicious nougat, but she ate some of the nougat and gave a bunch to neighborhood children and then she swapped the rest for some magic beans which admittedly failed to pan out as promised but all she’s really guilty of, Your Honor, is making a bad investment with her own legally obtained nougat.

Looking to tack an extra-dignified final chapter onto the ol’ legacy, seems Bob Menendez invited the feds over to play a few rounds of Pin the Bribery Charges On My Wife, Please. Suddenly kinda wondering whether prenups typically cover seizure of assets by law enforcement…

Anyway, I’ve just accepted an offer to join some time-traveling adventurers on a mission to save Joe Biden’s uncle from those cannibals, so if anything else happens, you’re gonna have to chronicle it yourself.

We could use some beer on the mission, because I’d hate to get eaten by cannibals like Joe Biden’s uncle without having one last beer. (The beer fund takes Venmo, Cash App and PayPal now, it’s very modern and user-friendly.)

One of the members of our team is Corn Pop, by the way. C’mon. Buy Corn Pop a beer.

Oh, and thank you SO MUCH for selling out the CEX run of Marguerite vs. the Occupation! Should be some more Kickstarters someday soonish, so more copies will be available down the road someplace. I’ll always be deeply grateful that you’ve supported me as I chase this big, fat, lifelong dream. Y’all rule. Thank you.