L-I P: What's a petit bourgeois?
You are.
L-I P: That's not much help. We don't know who the hell we are.
They are people too caught up in their own business to see the bigger picture.
L-I P: We keep up with the new. . .well, we at least check the headlines.
Constantly anxious over their economic livelihood and social status.
L-I P: We have kids.
Sensitive to your social standing because you don't have much to stand on or for.
L-I P: We want respect like everyone else.
Dominated by knee-jerk emotional reflexes for and against your deep-seated prejudices.
L-I P: We vote and cherish our individual liberties and the Constitution of the United States.
And you'd ditch the latter to catch and imprison all the child molesters, murderers and drug sellers.
L-I P: You can't have social chaos. Hey, aren't you the one who asked for trial by ordeal?
It was a suggestion.
L-I P: What does Larry of the Three Stooges got to do with this? He's not a Nazi.
He represents an easily dominated type who goes along with the programs as long as he benefits from it. A follower. And as part of the Three Stooges, something more. I didn't finish Vespucci's remarks in column 37.
*
Moe's unconscious genius was to depict the Dictator (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) as the Ultimate Asshole.
The ultimate imposter, Moe as Leader seeks power through chicken bleep rules. I don't expect that he believes in them, but the anal leader must have a program to follow. God forbid that he wins an election.
Anal Moe. Pure asshole.
Nazi Germany = a nation of assholes.
For its attempt to achieve purity of maturity -- Aryan race, eugenics, euthanasia.
Led by the supreme asshole.
A nation of Stooges.
A nation acting out its idea of a mature nation. Like the U.S.S.R. under Stalin.
Stooges ubėr alles.
A Stooge nation. . .over all other stooge nations.
*
"Women don't like the Stooges," said Frank Weathers. "My wife wouldn't go with me to a 24-hour Stooge marathon at the Civic Center."
Vespucci also mentioned that the Stooge spectacle deeply pains the female psyche.
*
Not only do the Stooges remind women that men are childish, doltish, piggish brutes but also that these same assholes rule and have ruled the world. Have been free from Neolithic times to be ridiculous. Free to be assholes. Strutting, goose stepping.
Women risk their lives giving birth to new generations of people while men remain superfluous and powerful. Women are pitiable slaves to nature. More hideously, they are dominated by a bunch of assholes.
Will women honestly deny their accessibility to being or becoming beautiful and attractive for these assholes? Do they want to look like "Stooge-women": a type that occasionally appear with buck teeth, high foreheads, weigh one hundred and eighty pounds, large-eyed? As it happens, the only kind who can dominate these "men".
Can women promote their own ugliness and immaturity in order to secure power?
Will Armageddon be a showdown between women who want "Stooge-rights" and men who would rather destroy the earth than see Stooge women triumph?
*
"I went to that Stooge marathon," said Joe T. "About one percent of the audience were women."
"I think your boy, Vespucci, was being a little hard on us guys. Don't you think, Sard?"
Look around. Wal-terr, Joe T., yourself.
"What about McNulty?" asked Joe T.
"I've never seen the Three Stooges," McNulty said. "And I love the Marx Brothers."
"You think we're assholes?" Frank asked.
Only if all men could be considered assholes. Watching or liking the Stooges isn't the only criterion. Hitler liked Charlie Chaplin. That didn't stop Der Fuhrer from being the biggest asshole of the twentieth century.
"I don't like what you are insinuating," said McNulty.
Hey, I am just trying to tell it as Vespucci sees it. Although he is seldom wrong.
"What does Honey think about Vespucci's characterization of women?" asked Wal-terr.
"I was too embarrassed to read it."
"I think he was basically saying," said McNulty, "that women can never attain real power in the world until they confront their delicateness."
"You mean they have to start farting in public," said Wal-terr.
"Crudely put sir, but quite accurate."
The Sardine's essays, articles, and stories have appeared around the Internet in the last few years at 3 A.M., Facets, Eclectica magazine, Fiction Funhouse, The Fiction Warehouse, 5_trope, and several film journals. Who and what he is probably will be revealed at various points through the articles appearing at this site. The first fifteen installments of his saga can be viewed at the old Unlikely Stories.