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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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More Cynicism

It's either the economy or old age.

Clearly, something is driving me mad - or madder than usual - because I see plots everywhere.

Take Verne Troyer (insert joke about easy portability).

In case you missed it, he sued a guy who somehow got possession of a video he created "depicting him and his girlfriend at the time engaged in various explicit sexual and intimate relations together."

Take a moment to allow the concept to percolate through your brain.

Apparently the guy with the video is the same guy who distributed the Paris Hilton sex tape. For good measure (and maximum publicity), Troyer is also suing TMZ, one of the major sources of, um, "news" about the trivial famous.

Boy does this beg a lot of questions.

(By the way, for those of you who don't know, Troyer is the small actor who portrayed "Mini-Me" in the Austin Powers movies and now gets kicked around in another film called "The Love Guru.")

Let's start with the phrase that leaped out at me: "girlfriend at the time." This guy is a babe magnet?

OK, I'll admit to having absolutely no babe magnetism myself, so I'm not an expert on these things. Maybe women are lining up to get a turn with Mini-Me. That's possible - but it leads to the next questions: why videotape this performance and why leave the tape lying around for someone to "steal" it from his house?

Here's where I'm imagining a plot. You've got an actor co-starring in a film called "The Love Guru" that could use a bit of a bump at the box office and suddenly he's in a sex tape?

Coincidence?

Did anyone (aside from her immediate family) care about Paris Hilton before she had a sex tape stolen from her that she sued over?

Was Verne Troyer prominent on TMZ before this?

See what I mean?

The TMZ report, by the way, implies that the woman in the video might have been the plotter/would-be celebrity. But how many of you now know her name? How many of you know the name of the guy Paris Hilton had sex with?

My plot is more plausible.

One last question: what sort of people are going to want to watch this video?

I'm not sure I want to think about that.

Now on to another plot: gun possession.

A few weeks ago I exhibited my paranoia and cynicism after the California Supreme Court decided to allow gay marriage. It seemed the perfect Republican strategy to get out the right-wing vote.

I suggested an anti-abortion ruling by the Democrats to counteract this move. We didn't get that, but we did get a pro-gun ruling.

It's the perfect way to outrage liberals and it was a 5-4 vote so it can be squarely blamed on Republican president judge choices.

The playing field has now been evened.

Stay tuned for news reports on gay people with guns they can use for self-defense.

ORIGINAL GUN INTENT. If you've read the gun control ruling, District of Columbia v. Heller, you know that it's all about twisting and trying to make sense out of a pretty-poorly worded sentence and trying to completely ignore the stuff about militias.

But let's not get into that debate.

Instead, let's think about this from early in Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion. "The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding."

Apparently original intent is a lot less important when you have a different intent in mind.

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