Deleted Scene from Dances with Wolves

With a measured, stealthy gait, Lieutenant John Dunbar's stallion Cisco crested the picturesque plains hill.  Dunbar knew that warring tribes might be in the vicinity.  Suddenly, he heeled Cisco.  Before him, across the gently undulating hills lay a sprinkling of black-clothed, sunglasses-wearing men.  A rather porcine fellow wearing white garb and a red hat was hunched over, holding a shiny metal stick.  Golfing nativists?  This pasty, orange man was immediately distracted by Dunbar's presence.  

"Can't you see that I am putting?!  Can't you see that you are not welcome here?"   

Perhaps it was just a misunderstanding.  Dunbar cautiously approached.  He could see that the orange one looked like he hadn't slept in weeks, so he tried to assuage his ire with an offering of coffee.  It was to no avail.     

"Get him outta here!  Get him out!!"  

Dunbar was beaten savagely by the sunglasses-wearing men and dragged off the premises.  

(A few days later...)

Dunbar was offered a wampum settlement for the beating, even though the petulant orange one had announced after the incident that he would never settle and admitted no wrongdoing.  Dunbar took the settlement and resolved to study this tribe and how they could have installed such a strange, grotesque leader.

He is known by opposing tribes as "Yellow Nest on Head."  His supporters seem to have immense reverence for him because he promised  that he alone could provide everything by virtue of his fierce bartering and negotiating skills. 

 An important non-blood relative, who wears a curious outfit that seems part rich frat boy and part baseball umpire, seems to be at odds with the Chief's right hand man, who seems to be afflicted with dysentery or putrid face.   I'm told the frat boy is pushing the infected one out of the circle of power, as he did  previously with a rotund hanger-on.

The tribe tells me that the Orange Chief has an exotic-looking, younger wife who keeps busy  operating  a rudimentary business venture selling moccasins, pelts and jewelry made from animals that her warrior brother Foot in Mouth has killed.   She also has yellow hair and her Lakota name is something like Tatonia or Tatonka.   She has taken up an office in the executive tipi, perhaps for purposes of consolidating power.   Her brothers are also sons of the Chief, so apparently they've got some sort of Pitcairn Islands thing  going on here.

The Chief is not a lover of animals and has no pets, unless you count White Bird in a Golden Cage, who is kept in another district and shown off from time to time.  Her friends and family, from whom she was purchased, believe that White Bird must fly.  Or she will die.

Yellow Nest on His Head  has a translator who I'm told is also an expert in seasonings.   He seems at times petulant and at times clownish.  I don't really know if he's malevolent or just stupid, since the people can't understand a thing he says.  He seems dishonest, partly because he speaks in some sort of butchered version of their tongue, which makes the Lakota Nation suspicious of him.  ( Before him, the Orange One apparently had employed some sort of witch, who answered questions only with questions of her own.)

The Chief has firm allies at the dominant smoke signal network in the area, though many of them seem to be sabotaging their careers by virtue of being misunderstood by the womenfolk.  

He has a sort of anti-medicine man whose strict prohibition of the burning of medicinal herbs has engendered considerable animus among tribes in the district and beyond.  Healthcare is not even his lookout, they say; he should stick to what he knows best: cultural tribalism.

One of the Orange One’s warriors was sacrificed to the scandal gods after he lied about meeting with the enemy.  And according to an allied tribe of the Lakota, the Orange One himself participated in a crude, undignified sort of rain dance in enemy territory.

The Chief has been known to do business with notorious scalpers.  And reliable sources say that it’s well documented that he has close ties to the red menace himself, Vladimir Pawnee, who has infiltrated the government of the Lakota Nation. 

The Orange One's tribe has deliberately poisoned the water supply and I fear their government is now broken beyond repair. 

I do not understand the ways of these people, but  there is some good news:   I do believe the groundwork has been laid for the removal  of this fulminating, baggy-eyed, paunchy, short-fingered, corrupt orange duffer they call  "Yellow Nest on Head."   

My Holiday Movie

The only film I want to see this holiday season would be one in which every character is trying to get their hands on a valuable artifact called the Archimedes Palimpsest.  (The actual Archimedes Palimpsest resides in  a museum in Baltimore, and is owned by a Florida billionaire.) 

Wikipedia defines a palimpsest as “a manuscript page from a scroll or book from which the text has been scraped or washed off and which can be used again.”

Every time a character mentions the artifact, they struggle to remember its name, kind of like Steve Martin’s character in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels desperately trying from jail to remember the name of Michael Caine’s character, Lawrence Jamieson.

Each character gets the name wrong, and among the mistaken attempts are the following.

§   The Scarlett Pimpernell

§   The Hasselbeck Blunderbuss

§   The Abscessed Pimpleface

§   The Kayak Palindrome

§   The Benedict Cumberbatch

§   The Instamatic Politician

§   The Arbuckle Bottle Scandal

      The Kardashiaan Pamplonabutt

§   The Jack Palance Quest

§   The Archemiley Papyrus

Happy holidays and merry moviegoing.

You Can't Spell Life Without Lie

     No one likes being lied to.  For six months I negotiated a relationship with a woman who, it turns out, lies for sport.  Her motto:  When you come to a fork in the tongue, take it.  I was playing with fire there, and our relationship was probably more like a transaction.  

     Nobody likes a liar.  And yet we also don’t care for people who claim that they never lie.  There is a proper amount of lying that should take place in order to spare feelings, avoid embarrassment and keep the wheels of society lubricated.

     My supervisor at work claims that she never lies.  Is it lying to let someone take credit for something they didn’t do?   What about exaggerating?  Acting?  Keeping up appearances?  Flakiness, omissions, glossing over, dressing up?   Isn’t  being full of shit a form of lying?  On the internet, if you’re not fully happy with the hand you’re dealt, you can fold or you can bluff.  How many people are one hundred percent forthcoming on the internet?  (Why do you think they call it the web?)

        Another thing people fudge is resumes.  Come on; when a guy puts, “went  extra mile to assist the President with crucial trade presentation in San Antonio,”  what he really means is “Road trip!  Got chance to hit San Antone for three days of comped hotel room and buffets.  The President is my college roommate.  (Neither of us got laid.)”

        Who lies more, employers or job applicants?  Producers or consumers?  Students or teachers?  Doctors or patients?  Pre-sex men or pre-tip waitresses?   Athletes or people in show business?   Children or their parents?  I’d bet that if we could interpret  animal behavior and communication more accurately, we’d find most of them lie, too.  

     If you work for a major food or drug corporation, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a liar.  If you work for a tabloid, it doesn’t automatically make you a liar, personally.  If you're involved in politics on the state or national  level…okay, you’re a fucking liar.  It’s right in the job description.  In fact, there are people who feel it’s a complete and utter waste of time to listen to politicians.  (It’s also a waste of time to use two different words that mean the same thing, like complete and utter.)

     

Bauchery

A much  needed new word in the English language is "bauchery."

Bauchery  n.  A bauble or luxury item such as jewelry bestowed on an angry spouse, usually female, esp an older wife.  Often bought by a philandering husband to assuage a livid spouse, usually for a dalliance with a younger female.

1.  "Stop complaining.  What about all that bauchery  you got last year after the business trip to Vegas?"

2.   Kobe has spent a lot of money on bauchery.


(Editor's note:  If you don't like this new addition to the English vocabulary, I'll let you get back to twerk.)    

Dirty Peccadillos

       I don’t consider myself a “smoker.”  And yet I do indeed enjoy a good cig once in a while.  I favor those  cigs with no added rat poison or plutonium.  American Spirit.  It’s a quality smoke.  Burns slow.  You can really kick back and stretch out with one of those. Last calendar year, I consumed seven cigarettes, and when I say "consumed," I mean the way a person consumes a cigar.  Yeah, I don't want that stuff in my lungs.  

      These days people seem more and more rigid in their opinions, and most anything can constitute a deal breaker in relationships.  I suspect that a person who has a strict “no smoking ever” policy will find themself with plenty of opportunities to be in a room where there is no cigarette.  And no significant other.

(NOTE:  mention the incident at the driving range w/ John and that cunt from the ins agency?)

     People who pull out a cig today are ostracized about as much as people who never pulled one out back in the '50s.  A particularly conservative, religious, and straight-laced friend of mine (!) once wore a button with a picture of flowers and the tagline “Smoking Stinks.”   Okay.  You know, smoking is more than just the stench of a stale ashtray.  Likewise, religion is probably more than just burning people who are different.

     Apparently some folks are under the impression that a single cigarette will cause their curtains to smell like a Bangkok brothel.  Listen, in order to make your curtains smell like a Bangkok brothel, you’d have to… Never mind what you’d have to do.

     I personally find tattoos kind of a dirty peccadillo.  I don’t see the allure.  I don’t get why people get them.  Other than the obvious, “I was drunk at the time,” or “It’s the Chinese character for Judge Judy, who saved my life by making me realize I should quit law school,” I don’t know what motivates people to get them.  Maybe it’s because I have sensitive skin.

     That said, it wouldn’t be a deal breaker if a woman whom I liked had a small one in a discreet, remote location.  I  would have to be pretty closed-minded to rule out a sweet, smart girl just because she has a minor flaw.  After all, it’s a high impact world we live in today.   I keep hearing about the importance of branding yourself.  Since no one has job security anymore, you must make yourself stand out. 

     Whatever the reason for getting tattooed, I’m a reasonable man.  It’s not like in the middle of our first intimate encounter, having pulled off her undergarments, I’m going to exclaim in a Ralph Kramden voice, “ah-HAH!  You didn’t tell me about your filthy little friend.  You know how I feel about tats.”

      “Uhh…what?  That’s not a tat, you idiot.”

Chief WTF Engineer

    These days I often ask people what their take is on dialogue obfuscation in films.  The people who don’t know what I mean tend to annoy me.  As does dialoge obfuscation.  My theory, perhaps a cynical one, is that the studios do it to increase the chances that the viewer will go to the movie / rent the DVD again to find out “What the fuck did he say?” 

    A little bit of mystery is a good thing, but there is a fine line between romance and annoyance.  As if Charlize Theron’s character in Young Adult isn’t annoying enough, there’s the scene where she says to Patton Oswalt, “____ me.”  Hmm.  Anyone catch that?  Could’ve been "Hold me."  Or maybe "Fuck me."  Hell, I'm thinking, Why me?  An acquaintance of mine pointed out that maybe the studio was going for a certain rating and so needed to cut the “fuck” down to, say, a barely audible “do.”

    My friend in L.A. who works in the business, sort of, says that sometimes on a given take the actor might have a vocal miscue, or the vagaries of the take might leave an audio soft spot.  I don’t really buy that explanation, since much of the dialogue is dubbed in during post-production anyway.  C’mon.  They have the fucking technology.  I mean, even in The Invisible Man, a film shot in the ‘30s, you can clearly hear every word.  You can’t see him, but you can hear him fine.

    The woman I'd been dating doesn’t know what I’m talking about.  “Okay, the next movie we see, I’ll point it out to you,” I promised.  Unfortunately, next up in my queue was The Artist.  It’s always something. 

    How can so many people not be aware of this practice?  As if you need some kind of sixth sense to detect it:  "I hear dead syllables." 

    If the studio wants to create mystery of the “what-the-fuck-did-he-say” sort, they should stick to the type rendered by Bill Murray at the end of Sophia Coppola’s Lost In Translation, where we are not meant to know what he said to Scarlett Johanson. 

     On a related topic, someone should start an 800 # or web service to explain confusing plotlines.  “Hello, yes.  I don’t get the thing with the keys in A Perfect Murder.”

    “Right, here’s the deal with the keys…”

     As of now, I’ve never seen “Chief WTF Engineer” appear in the end credits, but I’m convinced these schemers exist, secretly calibrating the amount of obfuscation.  Especially in romcoms.  Especially a certain 2008 romcom.  I won't mention any names.  Suffice it to say, the film left me frustrated:  Forget you, Sarah Marshall!  









 

Display Case for the Ductwork

   Ladies, I implore you...

   Our work space was a huge, expansive single floor with about 300 cubicles. Sort of a cubicle farm.  Women, especially young women, tend to turn out for this work.  As a team leader, I spent most of my day milling around helping fellow readers score essay answers to standardized test questions.  I peer over shoulders at monitors, and down at faces.  It's not exactly a professional job, and the dress code is pretty casual.

   You know, if a woman wants to show lots of tit at the club or even at the grocery store, great.  But at work, what are you doing?  Many women, especially the younger ones, don't seem to realize the extent to which they insinuate themselves into the male brain, a brain that just might be stuck at work carrying around a 3 and 1/2 day encumbrance.  Sometimes I'll be walking down an aisle, look up at someone and think, Put that away.  Jesus.  (Other times it's more like, Pick that up.)

   There were two women on my team named Sabrina.  Both sexy.  Black Sabrina, the type of girl who was probably used to getting her way, was a very nice person, but she tested authority.  She would take her own "break before the break."

   Guys would wander over from other projects to chat with her.  Big Glen, our data monitor with a front butt, said, "This is getting out of hand."  I joked with him  that we should set up one of those deli number dispensers at her cubicle.

   "I know, Glen.  There are two black guys and three white guys who come by all the time.  Four, counting me."  Blame it on the wanderbra.

   She had a sweet set of B cups.  I don't know what these brassieres are called, but  hers may as well have been "The Erector Set," or "Display Case for the Ductwork."  She provided a sweet view from above.  The luxuriating mid-size mams with that little strip of connecting fabric.  I was seriously asking myself if I could afford to be let go.

   If you hold a Milk Bone in front of a dog, he's gonna look.  He's gonna do more than look.

   Once in a while a student's essay needs to be flagged and sent higher up.  Anything mentioning suicide, other violence, pregnancy talk, stuff like that.  One day four minutes before dismissal, white Sabrina raises her hand.  She's also in her mid-20s, not quite as angelic, but really pushes the boundaries with her display.  When I get over there, she says, "Is this an Alert?"  (Something about building a bomb and blowing things up.)

   I looked down over her and thought, You bet it is.  Jesus!  I'm seein' pink.  I'm seein' blue veins.  Secure the perimeter!  This is a major alert. Then, conjuring up Groucho, I'm all,  Lady, please!  I need this job.  I've got kids to feed.  And from the looks of it, so do you.