I created an online persona to expose creatures comparable to those a wronged woman labelled a “cowardly wet noodle,” who was to his profession as Eddie the Eagle Edwards was to winter sports, without being t-t-trolled back. It was David versus Goliath, but she was resource constrained and David was out of the question as an after-dinner speaker. She could only afford Eddie the Eagle Edwards.
I would not be in on blowback aimed in my direction in any event, being wary of returning to the same “people are reacting to …” website twice. If it serves the court m’lud: The story broke a couple years ago and after this length of marketing and promotion, she belatedly conceded there weren’t any tabloids out there which would pay for his racey texts to her, and she handed them over in exchange for lorra lorra free publicity. The editors were intrigued by her connotation and understanding of the word “length,” but they needed more, more, in order to break into treasury funds. Her two-year-old quips were more entertaining, I was prepared to conclude without fear of contradiction, until the wet noodle remark.
Via my epic Stardust Vintage avatar, I hailed and slayed the mother of all media inventions, without looking back. Did someone troll me on non-web social media? I won’t know sadly. My interest in contributing to a thread was below threshold.
This became an occasion to test the Bumbo Theory, which reverts to Chris Williams. The better off unsaid 5 must have been on something, or things, far more sectionable than the loco-smoko, because under most “lively conditions,” a passenger would have urged Bret to slow down, or stop by the side of the road to sober up from the quarts of Haffenreffer Private Stock, while everyone but Bret smokes another joint, because his parents will smack him for not sharing, if his clothes smell of it, when he gets home.
In the reverso version, they prepare and serve dinner cocktails all right, White Russians in a spaghetti container borrowed from Mario’s and imbibed with multi-use plastic straws, but his has been spiked with zero-alcohol coffee essence and he can’t tell the difference. He thinks he’s intoxicated and behaves as if soused after everyone has been dropped off safely, but he’s sober and his parents recognize the behavior as integral to his Coolio act. They are faintly tipsy themselves and are alternatively studying the Sunday Arts section and the LL Bean catalogue with Tom Snyder on Channel 6 in the background, not paying attention to him anyway. After all, an excerpt from the agony aunt column in the centerfold of the Arts section:
“A guest dropped in unexpectedly and said he had just eaten. The last time this guest dropped in, he drank 15 cans of beer. This time he brought a case of beer with him. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to leave until the case was finished, and I was getting hungry, so I served some cheese and crackers. At that point the guest left and I was told by my husband that I insulted him. He hasn’t spoken to me in four days.”
The Armenian-American academic who discovered the 7-38-55 Rule was the first to point out its limitations, but even he would agree with the denouement, that 55% of person to person interaction is nonverbal, was applicable on this evening. When not memorizing the catalogue or turning toward the TV set with each abrupt change in tempo of Snyder’s voice, Bret’s parents would look at each other and communicate with a subtle head movement or eyelash adjustment, leaving Bret out in the cold.
A guy or gal has gotta know when to pick his or her battles and if only Bret had stuck to Bumbo in the non-reverso scenario, with Maui Wowie yet to arrive on our shores, Chris would be alive and a legend would not have been born, Bret’s legend that is. His first toke of Maui Wowie, however, love at first sight. No wonder it’s called Wowie, he told his parole officer.
In the everyone lives scenario, the lawyers would have had other public defender roles to play, to say nothing of the “death, taxes and nurses” which is the Woodford Litigation, so don’t cry for them. In Bret’s county, public defending was the only game in town, given a lack of corporations large enough to service, and SME bankruptcy was dominated by firms two counties away.
At any rate, lawyers at this time were busy rewriting the cadastres to more closely resemble the world around them. They and their mooties would continue to default to Latin terms when the spirit took or moved them, and would negotiate en banc when the stakes were high, and when the casino was royal. However, they would shift gears and argue, or listen, in idioms or parables when attempting to reach or be the common man. I’m cognizant of this because of the many rulings I have digested when necessary for professional reasons or advisable for personal reasons.
Accordingly, you and I might say “the moment of truth,” or “showtime,” but counsel with 30 years’ experience might declare in his closing argument the aforementioned rubber and the road. When championing a client’s bad boy business by insinuating it is trivial or that he was provoked, the spokesman for the defence might insist that it was “just a foot fault,” whereas I might insist this was a “side of the boat issue,” rather than a leak on the bottom of the boat issue. Only Borat’s Uzbek cousin would be ballsy enough to attempt a metaphor such as “knock it out of the park” or “drinking out of the hose.” Which hose, right?
The phrase -moment of truth- has a lot of answer for, by the way. It was devised in the 1980s by advertising rather than legal professionals, and does not, as all good phrases should, date to the ancient Greek philosophers. Data scientists have discovered five actual moments of truth, including an “actual moment of truth,” although the first has curiously been labelled the “zero moment of truth.” Who’s on first. Moment of truth is by definition allegory, which means it has no euphemisms of its own.