Hail, Readers!
Run get your Champagne flute. Now, now, don’t stand there lookin’ at me like you don’t have a Champagne flute. What have you got? A tankard? A stein? A snifter? tumbler? A goblet? Any damn glass? Fine. Run and fetch them.
All right, everybody—ready? We have a VERY juicy letter today (see below), but first we’re gonna make a special cocktail called the . . .
Adios Asshole
The Adios Asshole is a Champagne and Absinthe drink which will get us through the 4th of July and—if we don’t blow ourselves up—most of 2021. All we have to do is drink two or three of these any time we need the strength to go on.
Here are the ingredients:
For the Lying Man who lied about winning the election, we pour one jigger of Absinthe
For this brainless half-wit and his fellow terrorists who BELIEVED the Lying Man, and attacked our Capitol, we add a splash of bitters.
For Rudy, who convinced the Lying Man that he could overturn the results election, we drop in a cube of sugar
For Mitch Who drove the wooden stake through the heart of Democracy, we pour in Champagne
For Keven McCarthy, we drop in the worm from a bottle of Tequila.
For Amy Barrett Coney who plunged all five fingers up the orifice of the Voting Rights Act we add the cherry.
Germany, 1939: For Josh Hawley, we waft a floater of Jagermeister.
And For Marjorie Taylor Green who has wet the bed of America and damaged all the sheets, we rub the rim with Chartreuse.
It’s a tough world, dear Reader. I was never into politics, but even I can see America is no place for wimps who sit around complaining about the Lying Man and his cavalcade of numbskulls. Thus we make plans (see the Conflab) and raise our glasses and shout:
Adios Assholes!
And now, the Ask E. Jean Classic:
Dear E. Jean:
I’ve been dating Mr. Man for eight years. I’m twenty-five, so doing the quick calculation, you’ll see we’ve been together since high school. In my heart I always knew he was THE ONE.
A short time ago, Mr. Man decides he has a wonderful business idea and needs seed money. I believe in his potential and loan him $8,500, which is $8,500 more than I have to spare. I work in New York as a director of fabric merchandising and sourcing—great title, but my salary is $61,000 a year, and taking out an $8,500 loan on my credit card was not a smart thing to do (incurring the interest, et cetera) because my story now gets very sad.
Mr. Man, as it turns out, did not fancy me as the Love of His Life. He’d been having an affair, and the “business idea” was a farce. He wanted the money (as I have now learned) to purchase an engagement ring for Miss Soon-To-Be-Mrs-Man.
Then he leaves me. Flat-out. Just gone. As for our apartment, I’m the only one on our lease, thus, I’m responsible for the entire rent, and it’s twice what I can pay. E. Jean! I’ve no idea what to do! I’m so sad and embarrassed. How blind I was! I’m tempted to file for bankruptcy. But that would ruin my credit history and I have plans for my life—a dream and a career I wish to follow! Please give me some advice, or send me a joke. I need to laugh!—Jaded in New York
Jaded, My Julip:
Congratulations on ridding yourself of one of the filthiest money-sucking swine ever to soil the pristine pages of the Ask E. Jean Newsletter. Indeed, Mr. Man is such a vile specimen, for the first time in the annals of Ask E. Jean, I am calling down the dreaded Curse of the Cullions—the sacred command to women around the world to don golf shoes and give the Accursed One a running kick whenever they come upon him.
Now, let’s deal . . .
First, Jaded, get a roommate to help pay the rent. Better, get two roommates. (Forget subletting. The last thing you need now is a move.) With the pandemic over, you can put the word out to friends, make a clever announcement on Instagram, search the roommate apps, (don’t forget Bumble), and take a look at the roommate matching programs on your college alumnae website.
Second, take the bastard to small claims court. You do not need a lawyer. You can sue him in New York for $5,000. Here’s the step-by-step procedure. Fill out and mail in this Small Claims Court Form. (New York does not provide electronic filing), pay your $20 and the court will notify him. Then gather your evidence—your credit card statements, documents showing payments you made on the loan you gave him, ALL emails, texts, letters, handwritten notes he has written to you about the “business” he was supposedly creating, any “thank you’s” he gives you for the money, photos showing your close relationship, and so on and so forth.
I also advise you to prepare two or three witnesses to testify on your behalf —friends who will verify that you loaned him the money for his “business venture.”
After you win—it will take months and months, but you will win—you’ll probably be compelled to send an “enforcement officer” to collect. An enforcement officer is a sheriff or marshal who is authorized by the state to take money or property from the “judgement debtor,” i.e, Mr. Man.
Third, as suing him in small claims court will take time, talk with someone at a non-profit Consumer Credit Counseling Service. Here’s how to chose the best one. They will help you create a debt-repayment plan and draw up a budget.
And now, Ms. Jaded, about that laugh you asked for. Invite your girlfriends over, whip up a batch of Adios Asshole cocktails, and each of you propose a toast to Mr. Man, celebrating his physical, emotional, mental, moral, and sexual defects. By the fourth or fifth toast [“Ladies! I give you Mr. Man’s zit-embroidered butt—it’s so flat it had to declare bankruptcy!”) you’ll be rolling on the floor.
And that is your greatest weapon, Ms. Jaded. Every time you laugh at Mr. Man, he dies a little.
Because I know that I don’t know everything, and because readers rule around here, and cuz commenters gotta comment, here’s the Conflab…
Mr. Man
The Conflab is where we hash over the questions sent to Ask E. Jean—and where our roisterous community saves mankind. Today we are drinking cocktails and trying to figure out why the GOP is so crappy.
Do you have any ideas why the GOP is so crappy? Is there any way you can stop them from taking away voters rights in ID, MT, AZ, SD, ND, UT, NE, OK, TX, AR, MO, IA, MS, TN, AL, GA, FL, SC, IN, OH, WV, NH?
And . . . have you ever loaned money to a lover? Who has a better chance: You getting your money back? Or voters in Arizona getting their voting rights back?
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Why the GOP is so crappy? That's an easy one. At this point, anyone with any moral fibre, or any sense of integrity, or any notions of working toward actual equality across society, has fled the party. What you have left is the modern GOP -- an organization that now quite literally has no ideology except to obtain power by any means possible, and to maintain that power at any cost.
P.S. Ernest Hemingway created probably the first Champagne and Absinthe drink.