I finally found a banjo of mass destruction (BMD)!

But not in Alabamistan.

At the movies.

Specifically, in the film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? that we talked about yesterday.

Your Honor, I enter into the record Exhibit A (4:03).

I mean, what else would you call it but a banjo of mass destruction, given how the Hudson sisters, Blanche and Jane, turned out (2:20)?

Uh-oh. On closer inspection, Exhibit A might be said to contain a piano of mass destruction (PMD) as well. That hits a little too close to home. The jury will disregard this paragraph.

But most importantly, Your Honor -- and it should serve as a warning to all parents everywhere -- we intend to show that Exhibit A reveals a man who undoubtedly meant well, a man with talent, a man with a great deal of ambition, but -- when all is said and done -- a man who was actually a Daddy of mass destruction (DMD).

One other thing, Your Honor.

Any similarity between the Daddy in Exhibit A and yours truly is purely coincidental.

Je n’ai pas la plume de ma tante

...or, for that matter, de ma mère, mon père, ma soeur, mon frère, or even mon oncle. But I can still write a post, thanks to my trusty old computer and an ergonomically correct keyboard that I bought at a neighbor’s garage sale for ten dollars. It was still encased in its original sealed plastic wrapping, and it cost its original owner $39.00 American. I bought it to lessen the likelihood of my acquiring carpal tunnel syndrome. So far it has been doing its job well.

Why do people buy things and then never use them?

Recently I bought a pair of gray trousers that still had the original tags on them at a consignment shop for $5.00 (original price: $34.00). There was a lot of brand-new clothing in that store along with stuff the proprietors want customers to think has been “gently used” but some of which appeared to have been worn by every member of that huge family on 19 Kids and Counting. I don’t know what exactly it is that The Learning Channel and Mr. and Mrs. Jim Bob (Michelle) Duggar want us to learn from 19 Kids and Counting unless it is “Do as I say, don’t do as I do,” a teaching my father also tried to pass along to me, with little success. I believe a good case could be made that TLC wants us to learn the same lesson from programs like Hoarders and Sister Wives and Toddlers and Tiaras and My Strange Addiction and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Oh, wait, that last one isn’t on The Learning Channel. It was a horror movie starring the very-long-in-the-tooth actresses Joan Crawford and Bette Davis some years back. I lost my head.

Just like Marie Antoinette, who was executed by guillotine on October 16, 1793. Lest we forget, so was one Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre nine months later on July 28, 1794.

I am rambling.

As Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise, surprise!”

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for liberté, égalité, fraternité and all that. But I am very glad on this August 25, 2011 -- some 222 years, 1 month, and 11 days after the storming of the Bastille -- that l’ètat, ce n'est-ce pas moi.

I am gladder still that this film clip (3:04) exists.

If this post makes no sense at all, chalk it up to the guns heat of August.

Here is a picture of Robespierre in drag Marie Antoinette and friend on a bad day a couple of ladies you might recognize.