Rock Island, IL
Not so fast. We’ve got to think this thing through. There are lots of jack-asses out there.
Not to mention the beast in the photograph is actually sneezing, so it may be we want to call this “The Sneezing Jack-Ass Award” or “The Snot-Slinging Jack-Ass Award.”
In any case, the point here is abuse. Understand that the recipient is being honored only in a Mac Flecknoe sort of way. I’m looking for the king of dullness absolute.
(Hold your peace, ye technophiles and Marxists and ye defenders of Krustmas. I’ve checked the mirror; he is not there.)
My baser instincts tell me to nominate all the people who have disagreed with me or taken umbrage with what I’ve written and just give the award to them. But where to begin! I mean, if one thing is clear it’s that there’s no shortage of morons in the world. When you’re right as often as I am you’re acutely aware of this, let me tell you.
I think the thing to do—and you non-morons can chime in any time here—is to think in terms of categories that lead toward something. They should build toward the Ultimate Jack-Ass Award or something like that–in the manner of that annual show in Hollywood that ends with the award for The Least Relevant Self-Absorbed Person.
We could easily begin—and I’d be all for it—with the Laughing Jack-Ass Award (LJAA) for the Most Inane Comment Left on the Porch, which need not have been made by the Most Inane Commenter.
I’m all for the LJAA for the Most Inane Post and fully expect this or something else I’ve written to be nominated. (You’ve got to understand that the pace here is brutal.)
I’m all for:
The LJAA for the Least Reliable Contributor.
The LJAA for the Most Frequent Commenter—a.k.a., The Person With No Life.
The LJAA for the Worst Post Written by a Mormon or Kansan.
The LJAA for the Worst Post Written by a Kansas Lawyer.
The LJAA for the FPR Contributor Who Has Made the Fewest References to an Actual Place
The LJAA for the Use of the Ugliest Word or Most Aurally Offensive Sentence.
The LJAA for The Person Obviously SuperGlued to His (or Her) Monitor.
The LJAA for the Person Who is Most Wrong About the Most Things. (I can think of a troll who appeared early on. We had to do to him what the Church did to Origen. There have been others who have excommunicated themselves—that is, they have left because their wrongness was not only a great burden to them; it was a matter of embarrassment to everyone else, including other wrong people.)
The LJAA for the Biggest Historical Blunder in a Post.
The LJAA for the Most Cogent Post Written While Legally Drunk.
The LJAA for The Person Who Gets a Tapeworm From Eating Raw Beef.
The LJAA for The Grown Man Behaving Like a Child Because Someone He Doesn’t Know (and Who Isn’t Using His Real Name) Wrote Something Really Mean!
The LJAA for the Worst String of Cant Ever, Whether From the Left or the Right
The LJAA for the First Person To Level the Charge of Fascism at the Porch.
The LJAA for the Best Krustian On the Internets.
The LJAA for the Person Attempting to Avail Himself (or Herself) of More Seriousness than is Actually Available in the Entire Universe Even at Its Current Rate of Expansion.
The LJAA for the Commenter Most Determined to Defend His Honor Against a Charge Made on a Very Obscure Website Read by Very Few, and Obviously Insignificant, People.
The LJAA for the Greatest Sense of Moral Outrage!!!
The LJAA for the Greatest Sense of Affected Moral Outrage.
The LJAA for the Worst Doggerel.
The LJAA for the Lamest Moniker.
The LJAA for the Best Overall Guy on the Porch Who Sometimes Writes Under the Pseudonym ‘Bar Jester.’
And so on. (After that last one we needn’t try to cover “Best Looking” and “Wittiest” and “Least Likely to Cause Any Trouble Whatsoever.”)
Now I think it is perfectly reasonable that we take nominations in each of these categories. But I think it is also perfectly reasonable to suppose that other categories will be suggested and added. I for one would certainly welcome them. As I often say when I’m seated in a bar with seventy-five or more beers on tap, “I’m open to all truth.”
Word of caution, though: be wary of suggestions made by the likes of Deneen, Wilson (JM), Beer, and Kauffman. (Sabin we won’t even get into.) These scoundrels are prone to lies, exaggerations, prevarications, and hyperbole.
Puts me to thinking of the old yarn about the farm inspector who ambles up to the farm one day and says to the farmer, “I’m doing a little survey here and I was wondering if I could check out your farm and talk to your animals a bit.”
Farmer says, “say which?”
“Talk to your animals a bit. You know, see how they like it here.”
Farmer looks at the inspector standing there with his clipboard and necktie and penny-loafers and city-boy face and, as if coming slowly to a conclusion about the man, says with a mischievous grin, “mister, you just go ahead and ask them anything you want.”
Inspector goes up the horse and says, “how do you like it here?”
Farmer can’t help himself. “Damn it to hell, man! Have you never been on a farm? Don’t you know that horses can’t talk?”
But even before he can finish the horse says, “Oh, it’s great here. I’m well-pastured and watered, and there are mares galore, let me tell you, and I’ve got a lean-to if I want to get out of the weather. This is the life.”
The inspector is nodding matter-of-factly and writing all this down while the farmer’s eyes widen and his chin hits the ground. He’s never heard a horse do anything but whinny, snort, stomp, nicker, and fart.
The inspector moves on. “Hey pig, he says. “Are you comfortable here?”
Again the farmer breaks in to dispute the verbal abilities of his hogs, but almost immediately the pig says, “best mud and slop in the county. Couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Again the farmer is speechless. No pig of his has ever done anything but oink or squeal.
Inspector moves on to the chickens, and the scene plays out as before, beginning with the farmer saying that chickens can’t talk and ending with a bantam rooster saying, “I pity the fowl on other farms. We’re—bawk-bawk!—living the high life here. Our farmer is the best farmer ever.”
At last the inspector says to one of the sheep, “what about you? How do you like it here?” Whereupon the farmer breaks in and shouts, “you can’t trust a word these sheep say! They’re all a bunch of damn liars!”
Let’s not forget the LJAA for the Worst FPR Joke.
(Thanks, Miss Kate, for the photograph.)
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Bad idea…don’t go there, Porchers. In a bar, or on a porch, it could be fun, given the right company and the right guiding spirits aware of those verses in James about the tongue. But this is not a porch. This is a “quasi-place” and “quasi-conversation” that has its own peculiar fragilities and dynamics.
Ok, I give the
“Best Euphemism by a First Things Interloper” award to the good Mr. Scott for his characterization of our relentlessly addled and braying stream of mule-pucky as a “quasi-conversation”.
But, let me be the first to say that I have developed nearly amorous affection for that there Mule Picture . Before I pass from this tragic existence of near-misses, I only want to buy a nice stout, supremely accidental-looking Jet-Black Jack-ass so I can nail, above the lovely beasts well appointed stall, the hand-carved nameplate I intend to steal from a client’s barn with name “Satchmo” on it
Paradise is a Black Mule named Satchmo and a saddlebag full of Laphroaig Scotch packed safely within an armature of Twixt Bars.
Oh, this is AWESOME. I am going to ABSOLUTELY CLEAN UP in this contest! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I can see me easily walking away with about five of these awards, though I will probably have to leg-wrestle Caleb for that “aurally offensive” one.
(Incidentally, I wouldn’t trust a word that sheep say either.)
With so many worthy recipients of epithet, you are probably going the wrong way around. We should establish an appropriately undermining, yet oddly familial award for all prominent community members.
I propose the LJAA for the Contributor Whose Posts Are Most Conducive to Facilitating a Drinking Game (imbibe at every mention of modernity, global something, Wendell Berry, destruction (creative or otherwise), self-references, etc.)
I’ll also put myself in the running for LJAA for the MFCTPWNL. Though Bruce Smith is officially nominated. Sabin doesn’t count; that’d be like cheating.
I love FPR. And this is why I love FPR.
Ahhhhhhh.
::she sits back in her rocker and waits for the fun to begin::
I’m going crazy I want to marry