Category: BITTER LAUGHS

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MENTAL IMAGE COMICS

Steven Augustine

(17 BIG PAGES of FULL COLOR ACTION) (enviously  endorsed by the legendary cartoonist _______   ______’s  Childhood Acquaintance )   *******pg 1 NOBLE PROGRESSIVE INFALLIBLE CITIZEN #1 sez  “Your body your choice …!” NOBLE PROGESSIVE INFALLIBLE CITIZEN #2 sez  “Except when the Big Bosses say nope!” NOBLE PROGRESSIVE INFALLIBLE CITIZEN#1 sez  “That goes without saying!” NOBLE PROGESSIVE INFALLIBLE CITIZEN #2 sez  (singing a Patti Smith song while NOBLE PROGESSIVE INFALLIBLE CITIZEN #1 lights a candle blessed by Angelina Jolie and/or the Dalai Lama) ******** pg 2 BLIP sez  “Every animal has a survival instinct, but what’s happening, today,  in masses of … Continue reading MENTAL IMAGE COMICS

BECAUSE THEY SAY WHO'S SMART AND WHO ISN'T, BITTER LAUGHS, HUXWELLIAN, it's okay, kids, i'm black, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS, THINKING TO THE NTH ON THE TOPICLeave a comment

(J)WOKE  J(W)OKES  and THE BEASTS

Steven Augustine

The doctor  tells his patient “I have good news and bad news.” The patient says, “Tell me the bad news first, doc.  I can take it.” The doctor says “Well, after an exhaustive battery of expensive tests, I’m forced to conclude that I  no longer have the slightest excuse to charge you massive amounts of money for supposedly treating the terminal disease that  I previously jumped to the conclusion you may conceivably have begun to suffer from.  Without an excuse to treat you,  this also means no juicy kickbacks for needlessly exposing  you to incredibly toxic drugs that would  guarantee … Continue reading (J)WOKE  J(W)OKES  and THE BEASTS

BITTER LAUGHS, DUMB AS A RUBBER LADDER, it's okay, kids, i'm black, MINING the WHAT-THE-FUCKIUMLeave a comment

THE POMO TICKLER: A TASTEFULLY EVANESCENT BLACK COMEDY MICRO-ZINE

Steven Augustine

  —-FREE BUMPERSTICKER CONCEPTS FOR THE SUPER-CLUED-IN—-   ***”IT’S THE NEONICOTINOIDS, STUPID!” ***”I BRAKE FOR TRIGGER-HAPPY CENTURIONS” ***”MEN STARE AT MY BOOBS THE WAY I STARE AT BABIES: LIKE THEY THINK THEY’RE HARDWIRED TO DO IT!” ***”C02 = PLANT AIR, DIPSHIT” ***”WTF  R  U  ‘CONSERVING’ EXCEPT UR PRIVILEGE?” ***”ANTI-WAR, PRO-SEX, AMBIVALENT TOWARDS MONEY:  BRING BACK THE GENUINE LEFT” ***”CALL ME WHATEVER YOU LIKE WHILE I DO WHATEVER I PLEASE” ***”UNPLANNED BABY ON BOARD” ***”MY OTHER CAR IS IN A FANCY GARAGE FOR CAPITALIST MIRAGES” ***”THE BEARDED, VAGUELY-LEVANTINE, ANUS-FREE SKY GIANT IS WATCHING” ***”OK, KONSOOOMER!” ***”WHO TAUGHT YOU TO PRONOUNCE ‘VEGAN’ … Continue reading THE POMO TICKLER: A TASTEFULLY EVANESCENT BLACK COMEDY MICRO-ZINE

BITTER LAUGHS, from the DEPT of I SHIT YOU NOTLeave a comment

SMATTERINGS*

Steven Augustine

*(… sundry head-scratchers, gaspers, sunbeams and ironies collected from books read between dec 2 2019 and jan 21 2020)   1 “… in 1960, highranking Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann – one the chief architects of the Nazi genocide – was captured in Argentina, kidnapped and transported to Israel, where he was imprisoned while awaiting trial. Incidentally, at some point during his incarceration, one of Eichmann’s guards gave him a copy of the recently published German translation of Lolita, as German Jewish émigré philosopher Hannah Arendt puts it, “for relaxation.” After two days Eichmann returned it, visibly indignant, telling his guard, … Continue reading SMATTERINGS*

BITTER LAUGHS, CORPSE-GREEN CAT SHIT, CRUSH THIS MEME, DUMB AS A RUBBER LADDER, ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR, REQUIRED READINGLeave a comment

SNAILS in the COFFIN: SUNDRY ICKY, DISTURBING and/or BLASPHEMOUS THINGS

Steven Augustine

Take the case of the cultural jingoist and editor of The New Yorker David Remnick, who noted in his letter nominating TV critic Emily Nussbaum for a Pulitzer Prize (which she won in 2016), that “television has become the dominant cultural product of our age—it reaches us everywhere, and has replaced movies and books as the thing we talk about with our friends, families and colleagues.” Remnick did not stop there; to emphasize the untrammeled authority of TV, and literature’s ongoing uselessness, he casts it in military terms as a feeble enemy, now defeated. “Those of us who love TV,” he writes, … Continue reading SNAILS in the COFFIN: SUNDRY ICKY, DISTURBING and/or BLASPHEMOUS THINGS

BITTER LAUGHS, ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATORLeave a comment

THREE MYSTIFYING PUBLISHING PHENOMS EXPLAINED

Steven Augustine

Karl Ove Knausgaard (code name: KOK) Karl Ove Gump. Or Chauncey Knausgaard? A little of each, cannily packaged as one smoldering Nordic pin-up. The craggy, sinewy smoker who writes with such little ambiguity or sophistication that he makes JK Rowling seem Pynchonian.  KOK’s texts are a near-blank canvas: project whatever you want (or need, but don’t really need to read) on them.  Conveniently, you can read KOK’s texts at the high speed at which he wrote them and, once you start, his texts become seamlessly continuous with the texts of everyday life: billboards, G-chat messages, cereal boxes, Yahoo News and … Continue reading THREE MYSTIFYING PUBLISHING PHENOMS EXPLAINED

BITTER LAUGHS, ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATORLeave a comment

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR: GOING DOWN!

Steven Augustine

Difficult to express just how hilarious I find this: “An important early glimpse came in a 2001 experiment by University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Nilanjana Dasgupta and University of Washington’s Anthony Greenwald, in which they found they could temporarily reduce people’s prejudices by showing them pictures of black icons like Martin Luther King Jr. in conjunction with infamous white villains like Jeffrey Dahmer.” I can only hope to sketch the vast outline of its hilarity by comparing it to the rest of the well-meaning article it comes from (which is ten times more hilarious and phosphorous-hot with irony)… but, before you … Continue reading THE ELEPHANT IN THE ELEVATOR: GOING DOWN!

BITTER LAUGHS, DUMB AS A RUBBER LADDER, HUXLEY ORWELL INC, MURKKALeave a comment

But they’re well-informed enough to vote…. right?

Steven Augustine

  Americans are enthusiastic about the promise of science but lack basic knowledge of it, with one in four unaware that the Earth revolves around the Sun, said a poll out Friday.  http://phys.org/news/2014-02-americans-unaware-earth-circles-sun.html Continue reading But they’re well-informed enough to vote…. right?

BITTER LAUGHS, DUMB AS A RUBBER LADDER, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICSLeave a comment

From the Dept of Utterly Ridiculous (albeit possibly professional) Bullshit

Steven Augustine

You may or may not be aware of who Cass Sunstein is, or be familiar with the material with which he’s earned the tingling spines and risen hackles his name triggers among members of Informed Paranoia’s cognoscenti, but the fellow is an old hand at mind games on the national scale. In 2008, Sunstein earned his Totalitarian wings by authoring a paper suggesting all manner of online shenanigans (including the hiring of operatives to troll chat rooms and forums with anonymous disinfo, aka, spreading “cognitive dissonance”) in order to disrupt these pesky Conspiracy Theorists. “Conspiracy Theorist”, of course, replaced “Commie” … Continue reading From the Dept of Utterly Ridiculous (albeit possibly professional) Bullshit

BITTER LAUGHS, GOAT BRAINLeave a comment

Progress

Steven Augustine

Progress! Just two centuries later, such chores fell to The Beatles… “It has been said, that he contracted this grievous malady from his nurse. His mother yielding to the superstitious notion, which, it is wonderful to think, prevailed so long in this country, as to the virtue of the regal touch; a notion, which our kings encouraged, and to which a man of such inquiry and such judgement as Carte would give credit; carried him to London, where he was actually touched by Queen Anne. Mrs Johnson indeed, as Mr. Hector informed me, acted by the advice of the celebrated Sir … Continue reading Progress

BITTER LAUGHS, HUXLEY ORWELL INC, INSECTS MASQUERADING AS HUMANITY, JUSTICE-AS-RAPE-TRICK, PSYCHOPATHY MASQUERADING AS POLITICS, THE STENCH OF THE NORMALLeave a comment

TRAPPED IN A NOVEL BY HUXLEY ORWELL… or IN A PLAY BY IONESCO?

Steven Augustine

  During the incident, a neighbouring passenger told a flight attendant: “Look what he’s writing.” This story is really all about the Qunt sitting next to the doodling Christ-figure of this tale; the Qunt’s empowerment to seize on the most trivial detail in order to fuck another human up, hiding behind the Bully State. The Bully State is just the facilitator here. The real enemy of decency here is that deranged quisling Qunt who said, “Look what he’s writing…” (the perfect blurb for a banned book, while we’re at it). I understand what the Bully State gets out of oppression/ … Continue reading TRAPPED IN A NOVEL BY HUXLEY ORWELL… or IN A PLAY BY IONESCO?

AUTHENTIC FICTIONS, BITTER LAUGHSLeave a comment

GENTLY FLEW THE FLAG: a short story

Steven Augustine

The sex with S. was good, if not as good as it had been when she was 18. She was only as yet 22 but some profound inner shift had re-structured the mesh of all her intangible parts. Those inner-gears like interlocking cypher-cogs spelling out so many junk novellas in the fullness of time. It’s funny how The Cynic now thinks of rational thinking as a deeply sexy and even romantic thing. When S. was 18, she was clear-eyed and rational and so avid with her warm skin glowing; her easy mainstream health. Something in the sham metaphysics later (the duped hunger for infinite power) had turned her cold and tired and self-enshrining. Continue reading GENTLY FLEW THE FLAG: a short story