VPUTZ JD Vantz: "An amped up fighter told a joke after a fight. People say stuff all the time. I work in a business where, obviously, people make life-and-death decisions all the time. And I'm always a little bit caught off guard by the culture that just overreacts. The worst you could say is, Oh, that was an offensive comment,' and you get on with the rest of your life. That's the worst that you could say. The people who really flip out about it and kind of lose their minds -- I just don't understand that."

~snip~

JD Nonce "just doesn't understand that." Perhaps he should ask his dark-skinned Hindu Brahmin wife Usha Bala Chilukuri Vance why some people might be upset by that terrible joke about former FLOTUS Michele Obama.

Oligarchs Joe Rogaine and Bill Maher are two sides of the same filthy coin, making a Mammon-like fortune distracting the hoi polloi with nonsensical deflections and ribald humor -- distributing cultural Soma -- subtly defending the wealthy elites and the status quo like two media Judas Goats.

These two are certainly not on the economic side of "Joe Sixpack" or "Jane Vassar."

Blech!

Thanks for that awful imagery, Doc Sarvis! Now I must burn out my mind's eye with my morning coffee and smoke.

BTW: Last century when I was working at the NYC bookstore, like you, I had to tear the covers off paperbacks to get a refund for the unsold copies. I could keep any ruined book.

But I didn't have the heart to tear the gilded cover off The Jackal Helix by Gloria Vitanza Basile, so I dropped a shekel or two on it and kept this paperback for over three decades.

Her espionage/conspiracy tome was not too bad and this may have been a "one-hit wonder" for this authoress.