(Because this past weekend a Monster ate the site, detroitmechworks was unable to post on Sunday his usual Openly Eccentric open thread. This is neither Right, nor Fair. Thus, this here is a combo of the customary Open Tummler of a Tuesday, and also the Openly Eccentric offering that detroitmechworks would have published Sunday. If only there had not been the Monster.)

The Democratic versions, they are today making the president, and in six states. The Cranky Brooklyn Deli Man, he can win in California, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, and South Dakota. However, he will not be winning in New Jersey. That is because that state is, well, New Jersey. Currently governed by the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, and best known as the place where NYC mobsters bury the bodies.

In 1984, Gary Hart, he got in some trouble there, when he spoke The Truth:

Campaigning in Bel-Air, Calif., Friday evening, Senator Hart made an appearance before supporters with his wife, Lee.

''The deal is we campaign separately; that's the bad news,'' he said. ''The good news for her is she campaigns in California and I campaign in New Jersey.''

''I got to hold a koala bear,'' Mrs. Hart said.

''I won't tell you what I got to hold—samples from a toxic waste dump,'' the Senator responded.

Most New Jersey officeholders, they eventually go to the prison, because they are too stupid to effectively conceal their corruption.

Thus, the place, it is a natural, for The Mad Bomber. And so, she will be winnering there.

It is said that The Mad Bomber, later today, after the votes have come in from the toxic waste dumps of New Jersey, she will declare victory—that she is the Democratic presidential nominee—from a bunker somewhere deep in the bowels of New York, which is one of her "home states."

The Mad Bomber, she has had many "home states," during this campaign season. New York. Illinois. Arkansas. Mordor.

Her pronouncement, it will be premature. Because according to this sober and staid accounting, The Bomber has currently earned 1812 pledged delgates, compared to 1521 for the Deli Man. The votes of some 2383 delegates, they are required, to secure the nomination. Today, The Bomber, she will not succeed—no matter what the waste dumps do—in accumulating the required 2383 pledged delegates. To reach that 2383 figure, she will need to include the professed wishes of the notorious superdelegates, who are corrupt party potentates that loll around all day and all of the night on cushions of American currency, eating grapes and snorting cocaine and brazenly fondling eleven-year-olds, and who are not pledged to vote for anybody.

Relying on these grape-eaters for her proclamation of victory, this is a parlous undertaking. It is like the guy who announces to the world that the gal is going to marry him, based on her representation that she will "probably" go with him to the prom.

Hold up, hoss. Not so fast. Getting kind of ahead of yourself, there.

For a lot can happen, between now and the roll call at the convention. These superdelegates, they could achieve conscious evolution, and so decide to vote for the Deli Man. Or, the Deli Man could petition the convention Rules Committee that pledged delegates, they be released from their pledge. Ted Kennedy tried that in 1980; he didn't succeed, but that doesn't mean the Deli Man can't or won't. That convention Rules Committee, it can make any change in the rules it Feels Like. It could determine, for example, that The Bomber, she cannot become the nominee, unless she first races through the convention hall, naked, shrieking "I AM THE PRESIDENT!" Or, The Bomber, she could start barking again, and this time she may not be able to stop. Which would mean she would have to go into a Shelter.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNl7VrYoygo]

Who knows what may be, may be, both before, and during, the prom? So, stay tuned. And pray jeebus it won't be, like, some Carrie shindig.

Meanwhile, the AP news service, it got tired of waiting for the Democratic versions to make the president. And so, Monday night, it publicly declared that The Mad Bomber, she was the weiner. Based on its version of "the math." Which involved counting on their fingers the pledged delegates, and making phone calls to the grape-eaters.

This sort of wire-service premature ejaculation, it is not unprecedented—it also occurred in 1984 with Mondale, in 1988 with Dukakis, and in 2008 with The Kenyan.

What is new, however, is that AP has become so impatient with the primary process, that it has also projected the winners of the 2020 presidential primary contests. And thus, we now know, that Kanye West, he will face Lindsay Lohan, in the general.

Over in the Republicans, The Hairball, he came out to California last weekend. Though no one here wanted him around.

For the Californians, they already passed through their Hairball moment, back in 1994, when the bigot Pete Wilson sought to ride to the White House astride the Mexicans with his Proposition 187. The proposition passed, and Wilson secured re-election as governor, but he had to forego the White House, because his brain started bubbling. Also, a hoodoo curse descended, that prevented him from talking, out there on the campaign trail, and for months. Meanwhile, 187, it galvanized the state's Latina population, as well as the Sane people of other colors, and, today, Wilson's Republican Party, it is in California a corpse, and the brown people, they are in the state government, Ruling. Ha-ha, white people.

Anyway, The Hairball, he got out of an airplane, about 90 miles north of here, and started bellowing his usual bilge, out there on the tarmac. In my universe, shortly after The Hairball began speaking, a brace of Bigfoot, they loped out onto the runway, picked him up, and carried him away. They took him into the lava tubes around Lassen, and there ran on him a brain scan, the results of which they posted to the intertubes (see below). And now they are having a Talk with him.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqe0hQDGsc8]

However, in the different-one universe, that apparently did not occur. Instead, there on the runway, The Hairball introduced his slave. "Look at my African-American over here," he beamed.

He announced that in California there is no drought, a Reality based on a fart blasting from between the buttocks of his butt-buddy Alex Jones, and said that, when he is the president, he will "start opening up the water."

He meanwhile ululated without surcease about "the Mexican" who will not bless his defunct scam-"university." This last caused nearly every Republican officeholder and pundit who does not actually have a swastika carved into her or his forehead to publicly deny him, like panicked St. Peters, three, thirty, three-hundred times. When it was revealed that even people on his own campaign staff wanted to stifle the vomiting about "the Mexican," The Hairball said no one should pay them any mind, because the people who work for him "aren't that smart," and so send out "stupid letters."

Maybe his campaign, it will end, when he spontaneously combusts.

(And now the Openly Eccentric of detroitmechworks, that on Sunday was eaten by the site Monster.)

∞

Ahh, last week of School before Summer. For folks who aren't a single parent, you can't possibly imagine the dread. Not that I mind having my kids home, but daily fights over the TV, oh god, I'm so bored, and numerous other petty little disagreements. I love my kids, but in a new city, it just means a complete end of anything even resembling a social life until the end of summer.

Overall, been pretty happy. I love paying my rent because it's a great opportunity to let my landlord know when something has broken. It's an old but stupid habit from my days living in corporate controlled housing. I used to avoid ever telling them when something was bad until the rent was paid up for the month for at least 2 months in a row. Because Corporate slime are quite happy using "repairs" as a pretext to snoop and find you in need of paying them more money for "Damages". Sigh. I know, paranoid, but that is the way it goes.

—High fresh vegetable and fruit prices are driving away poor people. To me that's scary, since it directly impacts me and my kids.

—A reminder that even when voting is MANDATORY, it doesn't seem to improve the quality of attention that people pay.

—Just in case people missed it, Clinton has family arrested. I know this isn't as big a deal with the whole "She's a winner" thing going on, but I remember back when Roger was considered a family embarrassment, so much so that he appeared on Comedy Central as "The First Brother" whose responsibility was to be as big a fuck up as possible.

And now some folk metal:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb8WGig0MLU]

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[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C98rLUe50n8]