Verbatim Reply to a Friend Who Unwittingly Used the Word "Emperor" Correctly in a Sentence

Um - WHAT!? BAH!

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First off, the office of Emperor itself hey wait - just a sec, cute girl alert.

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This.

Think about it seriously, Mister. You know it makes sense. A share of Empire? A revel in a mutually-held responsibility to put down rebellion and take up civilization? That's a call we can all take seriously. Or even if we missed it - in our modern age, we have a safety net. It's called "voice mail," and I am an answering machine in the eyes of some. It's because I'm so answerable. Got slack?

I always pick up.

But! It's not just me who says that!

There's considerable precedent for it, in terms of proven, workable governance models! All we need to be is willing to take a step back from Caesar and be Consuls. In lieu of some potential tyrant, in lieu of a Chief Executive lording it over, demanding in the name of Christ that everybody render all this shit unto him on account of no greater justification than "I'm on the money!" - we check that, balance it, cancel it, strike it so hard it slips right back into reverse and then call off the picket, in favor of a true coalition solution: two chiefs, equal in cahoots by the authority vested in them on our about the waist and torso. A three-piece suit, basically, consisting of waistcoat, vest, and TO-GA! TO-GA! TO-GA! Take these two cochiefs, a randy and rambunctious non-ornamental Senate and a fucking vast and enthusiastic native noncitizen slightly-privilege-challenged worker class of proud-eyed, red-blooded, sweat-browed, peace-loving controllers of the means of production (if you get the dialectic?)! Take them, please. It will be very hard for anybody to fuck that up. The setup alone is far too self-evidently "tight."

Think it through, man, though because in any Empire where they start overthinking of an Emperor, they ought to think again. They have it coming, otherwise - and the history books will show they asked for it. They were BEGGING for it: who wears two vests and three togas, calls it a three-piece suit and parades around in state like that unless they're begging for it? It's basically, their fault: and we should persistently and continuously victimize them on account of that, because they basically brought it on themselves and let's face facts at this point. They deserved every word of the aforementioned sentence. So take heed from that one, pal. Hearken back a bit, take a deep breath, because - "it's been done." Your so called "bold" suggestion, called for in bold tones intoning milk-mild words for the sake of an absolute authority that was corrupt the first time we opened the milk carton and saw, to our horror, the picture on the back was ours? You think something's sweetened that big sour swig in the interim? Or are you just a real big fan of impromptu, untested unQC'd and experimentally laissez fairly made cheese? Because if that's what's coming for dinner, count me in for the beer. But an amusing caveat to that might be: I made it myself, my friend. Now pick me up an ear or two on the way home and spend one, lend one, shuck it to a boil and cut all kernels off lengthwise - or better yet, why not let it hear for itself, and judge for all of us? There's a name for a jackpot like that and it's called, "SUCCOTASH." You got some in your mustache, man - let me get that for you. The beauty of a setup like that is that when it judges for all of us, this jumbled up hot steamy side dish ALWAYS judges in strict accordance with the greatest good it has ever even imagined: its own beauty of the truth of the greater good. Which, as the beholden, it is pretty much bound by sworn and implied duty to keep an eye on, from time to time.

Check it.

Here's how it happened, and I suspect that the second it sinks in you'll be all, "Here here!, or hear hear? Which did we decide again, and why?" How did it happen? For details, sea hear:

The Emperor came saw and conquered and what did it get him? What was his inheritance, for that?

You can pretty much guess.

I bet you can.

But on the other hand, how about my proposal? We've already heard far too much of yours, and IT! STINKS!

My modest proposal, which was in fact the working model for the Empire for quite a considerable storied traditional age-old live-long and glory-filled day, is as proven as it is flexible. It's a much more Republican-style solution to the pervasive, irritating problem of Empire - which is sure to appeal to Cynics and Epicureans alike, so natural and tasteless is its non-selective target demographic. What on earth could be more Democratic than a well-targeted demographic? You see what I'm aiming at, here. TAKE THE SHOT!

And as you do, take heed: and a big pinch of fair warning, while your at it. While you sit, overthinking in your Rodan-inspired thinker's pose, taking a king-of-the-monster's-best-buddy-sized shit as it comes (or goes, as the case may hopefully be): TAKE HEED AND GO EASY. Because history has this to say about it, loser. Your tired ass shit has been tried, convicted, confined, released and all debts settled, in one sharp shiv with a point to it that we, even today, would almost have to be fools to ignore.

It was tried before. The traditionalists, averse to change as usual, settled that dude's hash for him and some say, rightly so. You really wanna go there? I heartily suggest that you have been behooved by better things.

Think on it.

He came, he saw, he crossed the Rubicon, solved the Cube cut the knot that held the oh-so-fabled Damoclean katana from puncturing his ever-so-surpassingly swollen HEAD, and what did it get him?

YOU CAN ABOUT GUESS!!!

It didn't go over well! So much so in fact, that I believe at one point, the top wop (or is it dago?) who more-or-less presumed to sole chief executorship of the people's will (without, I might add, a shred of their testament! - and no, post-facto acclaim is no substitute for consent, my friend! NO BODY fucks that well! Nobody EVER fucked the people better than my man Jules, tryna be the shepherd as usual, getting the words confused and result: stabbing match honorable mention. Nobody EVER fucked the people as much or as hard or as deep as Caesar number one. And I tell you son, they loved him for it but it stank so high to heaven that even now, the biological residue from that way-too-much-more-and-yet-less-than-sexual congress STILL SMELLS) in defiance of tradition and all manner of etiquette and protocol (which tends to rub a proud people the wrong way, my man! CONSIDER YOUR AUDIENCE! Give the people what they want! Pepperidge Farm, Barnum and Baileys, if you get my increasingly belabored references!), tried it and got killed in a stabbing match over it, for his troubles. And ours, as it turned out. As anyone could have told him! As he surely saw for himself, because let me tell you: you don't declare absolute monarch with contagious-via-sexual-reproduction-vector assigned divine right to it! You just don't! On the face of it: bad idea! Assholes have kids too, you know, and I don't care if you think the sun shines out of yours, your kids will be assholes if you can convince them of a thing like that. "Hey junior, yeah, all this is yours. Because ummmmm...well, let me explain it to you in terms that will fuck you up for life plus the entire dominion under you, if you so much as fucking swallow 'em..."

You know? Think about it a second first, and before you know it it won't make sense to anyone anymore. You don't declare a comprehensively evidenceless thing like that. That kind of a king thing dealy? Wait a second, pause, consider. OK?

No.

At least give it a second. It works conceptually and not at all. Have you thought about it yet? Give it at least a SECOND, dude? Even in later ages, duels always took at least a second and customarily, usually, cruelly, two or more. You don't pull the trigger on a thing like divine right sole rulership in less, unless you can back it up with one hell of a two-step. Step one, be a great ruler, the kind later generations will still measure themselves by, and a damn good judge of character besides. Step two: ensure that there are no later generations. There are two ways to do this conceptually, and both are easy. One way? Destroy the universe, or any less overcompensatory measure that deletes the living specimens of the species. The other way is probably far more ideal, yet in practice, it's the way they actually went:

Never die. Simple.

Nice odds on pulling it off.

And let me tell you something you don't want to know, but will find hard to argue seriously against. Stabbing matches? Don't be so quick to condemn. You might find yourself on the business end of the modern equivalent of one of those, which are albeit, far less lethal - but also no where near so authentic and hip-feeling. It's because of all the preservatives and process (which to be fair, is only their due) but I digress.

If you can imagine such a thing, I do. I do digress. We were talking about a stabbing match, and let me tell you those hot, cismediterranean blood types, you know. Always with the knives, them.

We must be tolerant, and presume not to a cultural chauvinism or anything tantamount to it. For heed me my ever accepting and conscious, enlightened, children: to those who don't know about it, who weren't there or haven't heard, let me lay the skinny on you speaking as one who is a member of the abovemaligned belowdefined race, and can therefore joke freely about such things, without let or hindrance throughout all the realm and territory of Christendom, or one better. These "stabbing matches" that you so assiduously reference, these "stabbing matches" that then as now, our friends, the post-, pseudo-, or practicing ethnically-Catholics, their forbears, their cousins of slightly goldier locks, and the combined inheritors of that thrice-accursed heritage and blessed liberally with a huge posterior, secured unto itself by the seat of its pants to a degree somewhat unto, like, I don't know, let me count. WHOA! The results are in! These accursed autumnal blessings of ours keep counting for the length of the game, plus overtime (if in the event, it happens). That amounts to a sizeable portion, assessed at up to a seven times seven generations' gap's worth, at least! And when you look into THAT gap, mind the crease. The abyss has eyes for you.

I believe you people know EXACTLY what I'm getting at, and are merely attempting heckle me with your silence. Well guess what, or better yet: GOOD NEWS! I got the headline for you and it says KNOCK KNOCK! This represents (for you) an almost insurmountable opportunity if you know what it says in the bible. WORDS, MAN, WORDS! And one of them born, if you can believe such a thing and/or are an old school rap fan. Can I get a witness, can a get an A, men? Is word born, or what?

"Word Is Born," my friend, and that's good news for anyone with a current events nostalgia-fetish, as well as for retro music enthusiasts everywhere, in every place and from age to age. Why is it such good news? It's because you will not fucking believe it. So therefore, judge not. That's pretty much the rational caboose to that train of thought, choo choo fans. And if you think I can get up over this NEXT hill - thanks for your faith! I think I can. I think, therefore, I do not judge. And these so-called "stabbing matches" of yours, which you so condescendingly stoop to disparage, did and do in fact constitute a bulwark, to these people. Did you stop to think how much that means? Or should mean - to us? Now?

For them it was a trademark, if you will. A beacon. A benchmark, a hallmark, a reference point - it augered well, for them, and who are we to declare it ominous? Futures is as futures does, I say - but when a fortune teller stands up behind the counter to cash you out, and you're all "THAT'S IT?? TEN CENTS?"

Some fortune!

We must rely on greater, shared, metaphorical riches, as these dudes did. If we're going to survive with a smile on our face and upon the faces of our babies (in-between bouts of squalling, of course - those lusty babes must squall!), we're going to need a little more than a piece of paper with a promise on it "pay ya later! We're good for it! You swear!"

We need a tradition.

An ordeal, if you will - but one that these so-called day-glo bearing trail-blazing pathfinders of ours, the cradle-robbers of civilization so to speak (LITERALLY!) - they, in their so called "savage," "maligned," "benighted" way - WHICH WE MUST PRETTY MUCH NOW CONCEDE TO BE A-OK BY VIRTUE OF THE POWER VESTED IN THEM BY THEIR OWN DANG D.N.A., or the cultural equivalent thereover (and thereunder: as above, just so you know) inheritance or the equivalent in postmortem reparations to the estate, considered these stabbing matches to be, in their eyes, to be truly beautiful. What you call brutal, they retort, "Eh? This is a much-bruited tribute to the honor of man, man! Let me see that ear of yours for a second," and such requests, while unreasonable and dangerous, are not objectively wrong.

You can't call a thing wrong just because they culturally love to do it, even to the point that people who wish to be in-the-know-and/or-appear-so begin to concoct widespread habits into the intrinsically objectionable form of exobiologically-false-sibling-dichotomy-derived contact-plus-safeword-triggered powers in the style of, "FORM OF: STEREOTYPE!" - well, that doesn't make it objectively wrong. Just a little sick, when you pause to think what those taupe-skinned freaky fetii were up to together in that alien womb of theirs - but again, that's a bit of an anthropomorpobe move in the first place. Don't do it. It is NOT objectively wrong, and what the hell is these days, anyway? Who can say? Not this guy!

Kidding.

Anyway, what I'm saying here, [ MY FRIEND ], is it really did work for them for a very long time, and it can work for us. It didn't fail out of failure! It failed out of their failure to appreciate the baroque beauty of the status quo, which let's face it: worked. It worked OK. Nothing succeeds like successes succeed! And these guys, instead of going all cult of personality hero worship on us just because somebody thought his laurels looked kind of too regal to rest on, well, let's just say a word to the wise is sufficient, but a word to wiser would be needless to say. They weren't wiser. Wise is as wise delves, and they'd have been far wiser to take a good fucking look at things, before they chucked that status quo vadis on the scrap-heap of history and started yelling about hideous corpses or some equally garbled, barbarous phrase.

I say we try it! I say we try my idea. It's the perfect compromise, if you think about it like I do. Share and share alike, my brother deep in all counsels and equally chief in executions! Because even if sadly, Caesar the First got martyred to the point that a later generation's Bard practically had to make play of words on it, or tried to, it did work before that deadly precedent got set in cement. As the story goes, the precedent was pretty much set the moment that dude's blood hit the flags 'n' cobbles, and the next guy up was president-elect, in effect - or very much so. Why? Just 'cause. He took office later that same fall, or shortly therefore: it was a cold day in Augusta, that's for sure.