A Well-Dressed Oyster

 There are things we approve of here at the Rancho.  We approve of:

Hanging out in the garage in the summer, drinking beer

Drag Queens

Drag Queens in the garage hanging out with us in the summer

Red meat

No active volcanos

All these things and more meet with our approval.  And upon them one might be tempted to affix a seal of approval, thusly:

I like that he's wearing a sweater and has human hands.  Maybe he's a Centaur-seal, is what I think.  Seal above, human below.  Imaging standing next to that on an elevator.   

But this is Rancho FirstNations, and we don't go around handing out tired memes like socks filled with raw liver, you know? (All the kids in the neighborhood look forward to that come Halloween.)  No, we prefer to hand out Swanky Oysters of Good Taste and Discernment:

The Swanky Oyster of Good Taste and Discernment sees you out there, and He approves.  

Mr. Swanky Oyster also heartily approves of Mr. Indigo Roth for his recent gift of an inflatable pickle, and the re-emergence of Z onto the scene!

__________________________

I found out the most awesome thing!  L. Ron Hubbard, the DEAD (in case there's any lingering doubt out there) former leader of Scientology, was for a brief period of time the commander of a small Navy vessel.  During his short, yet incompetent career as a commander, he carried out his duties exactly as you'd expect - he mined 'a Japanese sub' off the coast of Oregon, and then he sailed South to attack Mexico.

Yes.

Having detected a suspicious, elongated radar echo in the waters off the Oregon coast, he immediately jumped to the conclusion 'SUB!' and mined the everlasting fuck out of that sapsucker, called in the troops, called in air support, called in the Coast Guard, called in local fishermen, and generally pulled a lot of people away from more serious concerns to come look at what he'd doneded.  

Which was to kill a whale.

You can imagine everyone rolling their eyes and trudging back whence they came.  C'mon, dude.  Seriously?

After that astounding feat of fuckery, what next?  Go attack Mexico, of course.  So that's what he did.  Cap'n Hubbard in his little cruiser sailed straight down to Mexico and proceeded to blast the fuck out of the shoreline with his woefully limited battery.  What he hoped to accomplish by this is not known.  What is known is that he was drop kicked out of the Navy shortly afterward with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.  Of course, you're saying, Captain Queeg got away with that shit for years, no fair.  But you have to remember that Captain Queeg was Humphrey Bogart. He ran a tight ship.  Not even the strawberries were too small to escape his supervision.  And you know that Humphrey Bogart would never dump a bunch of sea mines on a whale.  It just wasn't in the man.

I have a brief, pathetic history with the C of SCN.  In my desperation to catch a man I agreed to join the 'church' that he belonged to.  Which was ol' 'Nuke the Whale' Hubbards ship of fools; and I'll say here that I never saw so many ignorant, incompetent misfits gathered under one roof in my life as I did during my short tenure as a member.  Luckily, I'd been through the cult thing with my mother years earlier and so I knew bullshit when I saw it.  

I lasted less than a year; and shortly after I left the church and my ex, my ex-husband was frog-marched out the front doors by several burly staff members for throwing one of his tantrums on staff time.  This really happened.  And it proves that there's nuts, and there's incompetent people searching in vain for direction, and then there's 'nutty is nutty but you don't get to turn red and kick over furniture and scream like an infant when you don't get your way and threaten to punch your superiors.'  So he got tossed out onto the sidewalk in the middle of town, and then stood there and raged and continued to have a tantrum until they called the police, which for a Scientologist is tantamount to drinking strychnine - they just don't DO that.  But in ex-hubby's case, they made an exception, and having been his wife, I understand it completely. 

So, even though it was not an episode of my life that I'm particularly proud of, here's to you, unknown burly Scientologists sick of my ex-husbands hissy fits: