Dumbasses of the latter 16th century; Scottish Edition

Long ago, in a Western European country far, far away, lived a bunch of mother fuckers who couldn't get their shit together. These where hard times; there was all the shit we deal with now, (ugly babies, fat chicks, STD's and Metrosexuals) only smellier. That's right, it stank. Literally. Like ass. Everywhere, all the time. It stank so bad that people used their own fecal matter to treat their plague. Why? Because it was handy, as they were sleeping in piles of it, and it stuck to the boils nicely. Also, they couldn't tell that it stank, really, because everything stank.
But the odiferous qualities of Medieval Europe are for another day. Mainly, this post exists to celebrate the first of a few choice "WTF?!" moments in 16th century European history. Let's start with a little somethin' for the laddies...

Mary, Queen of Scots
or How to be a Royal Dumbass

When first she returned to Scotland, the land of her birth, Mary had a lot going for her. She was tall, sexy, and she'd just recently enjoyed a stint as Queen of France as part of an extended trip abroad. She'd been a Frenchie since infancy, and couldn't quite relate to the Scottish way o' life. France in the 1500's was pretty much like France now; cafe, cafe, fop, jewelled fop, cafe, freak in a beret. Scotland in the 1500's was pretty much like Afghanistan now. Only with more rubble and a generally lower opinion of the rights of women. (Especially if those women are Queen of Scotland.) So "culture shock" doesn't really describe it. Suffice to say, Mary was quite contrary.
Her untreatable Uppity Bitch Syndrome (UBS) prevented her from seeing that her efforts to tart-up Scotland weren't going so well, that her craggy, sheep-buggering subjects hated her, and that John Knox wasn't the only one who wanted to slap her, fuck her, and throw her in the Inverness. Pretty much the only thing the Scottish liked was the fact she married her cousin, Henry, and only then because the Scottish are rednecks at heart, and also because it pissed off the English Queen, Elizabeth. (The one thing the Scottish like more than pissing off each other is pissing off the English. They liked the berets too, but that's not important.) So she goes all "West Virginia" and marries Henry, who used to be "Lord Darnley" only now he's married to a Queen, so he figures that makes him King.
Not quite.
So there was a lot of fuss, and he killed her best friend in front of her while she was 7 months pregnant with their baby, and she said he was an fuck-tard, and he said she was a whore, and it all went along smashingly until she crapped out the baby and Darnley started on the whole "King me" thing again. This was before "911" was an option, so she had to figure out another way to handle their frequent front-yard domestic disputes.
So she talked to some people and had Darnley blown up.
Then she married the guy who blew him up.
Then pretty much the entire country of Scotland wanted to blow her up.
(Cue John Knox laughing hysterically.)
Mary did the only thing she could do... she ran away.
And where did she run? Back to France, where she was raised, and where she still had a huge, loving family?
No.
Okay, maybe to Rome! She was a devout Catholic, after all, and she had a few cousins who were Arch-Bishop of Whatnot...
Nope.
Okay, where then?
Why the only place in the known world where she was even more reviled than Scotland!
ENGLAND!!
That's right. After making her short career as Queen of the Scots all the more memorable by managing to piss off her cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England virtually every other month, Mary did the logical thing and turned to her for help. And Elizabeth did help, by imprisoning Mary for 20 years and politely over-looking her occasional half-assed efforts to seize the English throne.

Until Elizabeth had her be-headed.
If it was good enough for mama, it's good enough for you, Uppity Bitch.


More on Scotland another time.

It Came from your Ass

No really, it did. I am sure of it. My work day was long and sporadically busy; I didn't know what to expect when I came to the bathroom for a much-needed piss break. The only thing I was certain of was that you were responsible for the horrific, gut-wrenching cloud that met me as I opened the door. You were not a suspect at first. Sure, you stood there, the only person in sight, washing your hands. But it wasn't until your eyes darted furtively towards mine that I realized your shame. Your hideous, toxic shame. Still, your digestive assault earned my respect. I was prepared to like you, to commiserate with you on your phenomenal achievement... but then you took even that from me. Emboldened by my silence, you wrinkled your nose in an affected and wholly unconvincing manner and said "Shoo! Don't you just hate when people make a mess?"
I narrowed my eyes at you. You felt my scorn; my reproach. The burden of your lie hung in the air as thickly and uncompromisingly as your bilious rectal leavings. I HATE YOU, I thought. I REALLY, REALLY HATE YOU.
You cowered then, knowing that I saw through your pink sleeveless shirt, crunchy perm and clumsy make-up job; saw through the bulging, pasty thighs that met fully, 10 inches below your sex where they seemed to be pulling the cuffed hem of your shorts into your twat, like two beached albino walruses fighting over a khaki blanket in a too-small hotel room bed; saw through all this and more to the twisted black soul you so ardently tried to hide with your sagging, sighing, swollen bladder of a shoulder bag. It was then the only thing between us... the last vestige of camoflauge you possessed.
Swollen bladder! It was in that moment, breathing through my mouth, that I decided to let you live. I had to take a piss too bad to deliver any machination of jurisprudence upon your filthy, dimpled person. In the manner of any prey delivered of its doom, you scurried away. Undoubtedly you intended to meet a swarm of sun burned, over-fed children, or to pretend to "look" at the books for a few moments more. We both know you don't read, you nasty, smelly slammerkin.
Relieved of your presence, and the 5 cups of coffee I'd had since my last visit, I too washed up. The door swung open, admitting the person of an elderly woman who instantly wrinkled her nose at the fetid cloud of feces that still veritably pulsated in the close air around us. She looked at me with something more than a question in her eyes. I answered with a proud sneer, my head held high. Sweeping past her frail personage, I administered a curt smile and left. Her gentle gagging was like a lullaby as the door finally shut behind me.

The restroom at my place of employment is equipped with a small device placed high on a wall that releases a sordid "HISS" sound every ten minutes or so, accompanied by the expulsion of some concentrated quasi-fruity-smelling vapor. Under the best of circumstances, such as at a fruit stand, this would not be a convincingly fruit-like smell. When administered at regular intervals in the ongoing effort to mask the vicious aroma of female effluvium, it's just VILE. And sad. And wholly inadequate to the task, regardless of the degree of concentration.

It's never going to smell like anything except for something good that has been tragically ruined by ass, so why not just start over from scratch? Why not just have a spray that smells of something MORE offensive than shit to begin with? Eau de Corpse? Whore Twat? Sulfur? Elephant Smegma? Pick your poison. Not just for commercial use either! Indigestion at a house party? Your guests in the living room will NEVER suspect you've pinched a greasy dook... they'll just sniff the air throughout the night as they refresh their cocktails, and think that the indigent hoarder who lives upstairs finally succumbed to age and disease, and is lying in a fetid pool of his own bile and toppled National Geographics.

Think of all the humiliation we'd all be spared. This isn't just on the pooper; the burden of the "what's that horrific smell" charade falls on us all.

That is all. Oops! Almost! Today's delightful minutiae:
-Cleopatra, the "Last Queen of Egypt" was of Roman descent, had an older sister whose name was also Cleopatra, and married two of her younger brothers at various times to keep the peace at home. Take THAT, West Virginia!