Archive for September, 2009

Did ya guess I’m furious?

Where exactly does the rub lie you ask?

I’m a little at a loss for words here.  Don’t worry, it won’t last.

Heh.

It’s just that this is so important.  In a country as wealthy as ours, health care is not a privilege, it’s a right.  Fuck me, every living being deserves it.  How embarrassing that far poorer nations are getting it?  Until we can make it available to us and for us equitably and fairly, how can we even advocate for it with a straight face for anyone else?  It’s moral and ethical and shouldn’t be political but it is and that’s just ugly.  Fucking disgusting.  The very idea that it’s being debated in our corridors of power just confounds me.  We have the money and the resources and everyone wants it.

We stood up against the Nazis and humiliated Japan.

For this most humane of causes, we battle our own.  We fight those elected by us to advance our very best ideas, interests and needs.  The fight for what we deserve is with our own alleged democracy.  They mock us by allowing it to even be a contest.  What is right is clear.  What we expect is obvious.  Why they represent us is clear.  What we want is clear and still, the outcome is in question.

You inglorious fucking bastards.

Ahem.

We’re talking about the public option amendments proposed by Chuck Schumer and J. Rockefeller today before the Senate Finance Committee in the precipitously spectator friendly fight for health care reform.  Note to elected reps, you’re being watched.

Okay, I understand this is the first authentic punch in this fight.  I’m well aware that it was meant to be ceremonial; a shot across the bow if you will.  Schumer and Rockefeller admitted as much.  Both amendments pretty much went down in flames.  The reckonings were 15 opposed to 8 and 13 opposed to 10.  Chuck was all smiles for the post game, saying that they did better than he’d anticipated and momentum is building.  I’m a little lukewarm on Schumer but I admit to having a soft spot for him.  His assessment is likely more cogent and certainly better informed than mine.

Pisses me off when he defends Baucus though.  Shumer wishes they weren’t running those ads.  Buacus is a pawn and an officious prick.  He deserves it and we’ll be talking about it here in a minute.

Here’s what chaps my ass.  Max, four million bucks in campaign contributions from big pharma and big insurance, Baucus.  After a suspiciously protracted process of negotiation, Baucus puked up a bill so lame, so transparently in favor of not just maintaining the status quo but adding bulkhead after bulkhead to protect and enrich insurance companies at the expense of the common American,  I’m simply in awe anyone in what was once the world’s greatest deliberative body can pretend to take him seriously.

I harbor dark oozing contempt for this man.

Let me give you an example.  His bill mandates that every American, regardless of income level, purchase health insurance.  Any American citizen who does not not purchase health insurance would be subject to a fine.  Either way, whether an individual buys in or not, monies for premiums or penalties for not buying in, go directly to health insurance corporations.  No reach around, just straight up cash.  All it does is give access to the money of the forty or fifty million uninsured to the insurance industry they haven’t otherwise been able to get their hands on.  Needless to say, without a public option to foment reasonable competition for rates and service, his bill is nothing less than a totalitarian dictate to further enrich an industry that has been ripping off the average American for decades.

Max Baucus really sucks.

Max tells us today on national television that his job is to deliver a bill that will garner sixty votes on the floor of the Senate.  Bullshit.  Where is that written?  Where does it say that his job as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is to do anything but deliver a fair and equitable bill in the best interest of his constituents and as committee chair, a bill that reflects the will of 65% of the American people?  Just what is with this sixty fucking votes thing?  It’s absurd.  It takes fifty one votes to pass a bill.  Sixty votes guarantees cloture and therefore prevents filibuster.  But it only takes fifty one votes to pass a goddamn bill and there are sixty of you spineless bastards.

The Democrats are so terrified of fillibuster they won’t bust a move without being able to prevent it?  So what?  Make the filthy Republicans actually filibuster.  Bring some sandwiches a cot and a laptop loaded with porn.  Have your aides set up a tent if you need to spank it.  Pretend you’re at the DMV.  Outlast them if it’s something you believe in and it’s the right thing for the American people.  You ARE the majority you know.  This is a walk in the park.

Why, why, why do the Democrats insist on being such pussies?  I’ll tell you why.  Because so many of them just as shamelessly beholding to the same forces as Baucus.

Procedurally, if Democrats stand together, they have enough votes to prevent filibuster on specific amendments.  What is the goddamn problem?  This is doable.  We have a majority in congress because the people have spoken.  65% of Americans favor a public option.  Between the congressional majority and the overwhelming majority on the part of the electorate, we have what I like to think of as a motherfucking mandate.

Fer fuck’s sake, do the math you retards.

It’s no secret that during the last decade profits have rocketed towards what Baucus and friends intend to be an apogee, while service, care and the number meaningfully insured has cratered below sea level.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely and dickheads like Baucus don’t give a mad fuck about being re-elected because his next gig will be with the very cabal of ruthless, greedy swine he’s now representing instead of the interests of the people who elected him.  The same can be and is said by me for Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, Bill Nelson and Tom Carper.  Spineless, greedy sycophants all of them.

Cowardly inchoate vaginas that are looking forward the next cush gig.  Man, I hate these guys.

There is nothing wrong with prostitution as far I’m concerned.  It’s a contract, a transaction between two consenting parties.  You want to fuck for money?  Have at it.  Baucus however, is a filthy, disease ridden whore.  His entire reason is to let someone else screw you without your consent and get paid by them and you simultaneously.  He wouldn’t do it if it hadn’t worked so far.  How’s that make you feel?

Sucker.

He thinks you’re stupid.  He underestimates you.

Maybe.

Sucker.

Like I said in my last blog, shave a few points off defense spending, end the reprehensible, ineffective and exorbitant War On Drugs  and we’ll be swimming in cash.  Health care will be an “oh yeah, let’s do that” kinda type a deal.  Free cable and comic books for everyone.  The return of $4.99 buffets and all you can eat breakfasts.  We’ve got plenty of money, we’re just really stupid.

Sucker.

And for the record, fuck Roman Polanski.  He gave drugs and alcohol to a thirteen year old girl and raped her.  If I believed in hell, I’d advocate for him to roast on a spit there.  Guess I’ll have to settle for throwing the prick bastard in prison, introducing him to Big Jim Slade and tossing the key.

If more Americans believe in UFOs than oppose a public option, where does that leave me?

Drinks for my friends.

My mom is  so goddamn cute.  I spend afternoons at the hospital and she takes over in the evening through morning unless my sister can give her a night off.  Every night I come home and she’s packaged the breakfast for Billy Jean the Tripod Lab in a Ziploc baggy and left it on the kitchen table, the closest elevated surface to the actual dog dish outside.  I doubt she suspects I’d neglect to feed her but my mother is nothing if not thorough and organized.

I’ve been trying to leave the bag handy so she reuses it.

Let’s talk about Pot and it’s most auspiciously efficacious cousin, Hemp.

I assume you know that I’m a frequent imbiber and would go so far as to champion the Buddha as valuable if not imperative component of my creative process.  After all, every record I ever made I did so completely sober, under the influence of nothing more than coffee or deep fried fish sandwiches.  I like to get baked and write though.

This is not necessarily an issue of freedom of expression or needless and ultimately deleterious persecution or even the man keeping us down.  Well, it’s all those things, but it’s not my intention to bring them things to the forefront.  I hope to make you see, the issue is bigger than that.  Those are symptoms.  Side effects of the “War On Drugs”.  At the end of the day, it is an environmental, economic, health care and human rights issue.

Treatment for these symptoms, requisitely including a more equitable application of jurisprudence, would represent a sizable chunk from the asses of industries pharma, oil, timber and big stupid self righteous neoconservatives and right wing Christian zealots who seek to expunge mankind’s historical quest to self medicate.  This has been going on for as long history has been written.  The self medication bit I mean.

You may or may not be aware that this country incarcerates more people per capita than any other country on this planet.  States are going broke and one of the most insidious determinants is draconian state and federal drug laws.  States, municipalities and local elected officials are beginning to understand that the detention of non violent drug offenders is less than congruent with their fiduciary obligation to tax paying citizens.

It’s a useless mess.  A clusterfuck without moral, ethical or practical imperative.  The entire effort, from imprisonment to blowback and all the bureaucratic minutia in between costs us tens of billions a year.  Probably as much as fifty billion annually.  End it all, shave a few more points off defense spending and hello health care.  No more taxes worth contemplating.

Fuck me and you.  Seriously, fuck us.

Never has their been so wealthy a nation with such fucked up priorities.  We are a continent of jackasses.

What it is, is bullshit.  In 2008, total arrests for possession and or intent to distribute marijuana totaled 847,863, more than twice what they were in 1980.  Total violent crime arrests for the same year totaled 594,911, up only 7.98% from 1980.  One simple statistic speaks volumes about our priorities.  Pretty fucked up when you consider they’re not hurting anybody.

Some more simple truths about pot: Well over 40% percent of us have done it and no one has ever, ever died from it.  Ever.  Well over half a million a year die from abuse of perfectly legal drugs.  About 20,000 expire prematurely from illegal drugs.  People who smoke pot don’t beat their spouses, start fights in bars or knock over liquor stores to support their habit.  Regular marijuana use is no way linked to a propensity for schizophrenia.  Marijuana smoke is no where near as damaging to the lungs as is tobacco.  There are at least as many arguments to be made for the beneficial effects of marijuana on the brain as to the contrary; evidence shows that it may even mitigate the negative effects of binge drinking regarding oxidative stress or excitotoxic cell death.  Have some martinis and pack a bowl, I say.  Just because you smoke pot, doesn’t mean their exists any greater likelihood you’ll become a junkie, a blow hound or a crack whore.  Pot is a terminus as opposed to a gateway drug despite the disingenuous propaganda we are so often forced to gag on .  Anti-marijuana ads foisted by the government only encourage minors to do bong rips and at some two billion bucks, we’re looking at another huge waste of time and money.

I really need some pot.

I’m of the opinion that it would be far more pragmatic to tax and regulate, if only to keep the Devil’s foliage out of the hands of minors.

Money is being made, but it benefits none of us directly with the exception of employment in the prison facilities and therefore the communities where they exist.  See, who knows the cost in broken homes, families and lives?  Who can guess at the damage done to society?  No one knows how unfairly it’s been used as a tool against minorities.  That it has been, is not in dispute.

I’ll tell you one thing for sure, non violent drug offenders may go to prison relatively innocent, but they emerge as criminals.  Tens of thousands every year.  Their future’s so bright………

No single aspect of the “War On Drugs” can be demonstrated as successful.  It’s an egregiously expensive, colossal failure.  Nothing has been accomplished, save making matters much, much worse.  Anyone looking for an example of government failing the people, need look no further than the “War on Drugs”.

We figured out as a nation as early as 1933, collectively, that prohibition of alcohol was a spectacularly dumb idea.  It gave rise to organized crime and people poisoning themselves with bathtub gin.  Why then, do we still fail to recognize the damage wrought on society by prohibiting any and all other substances that have at least as storied a history as alcohol?  The answer here is the Daily Double.  The answer here is money and power.

A  simple corollary.  Cause and effect.

In the early part of the twentieth century there were two very powerful men.  Two very powerful families.  Two very powerful industries.  Oil and textiles.  Petrochemical and paper, rope etc.  The “etc.” wasn’t yet a big deal, but the speculators could see that it might be.  The fusion of the two was predicted to be tremendously, obscenely, lucrative.  Technology, science and chemistry, although in infancy, was about to bust out, hire hookers and buy everyone in the know a brand new house and car.

It did.  All that and more including a delicious bag of salt and vinegar chips.  As a result of fossil products and pulp from trees, America volcanoed from the agrarian age into an industrial one and began to dominate world manufacturing of products, finance and military power.  Don’t forget the experiment of alcohol prohibition had as it’s impetus the notion that sober workers would be more productive.

That went really well.

The men were  John D. Rockefeller and William Randolph Hearst.  Magnates of oil and paper respectively.  Hemp, not marijuana, represented the single largest threat to their empires ever.  An incredible natural resource was hemp.  The strongest natural fiber known to man to this day.  Beats the shit out of nylon et al.  Makes cotton look Fisher Price.  An entire crop can be turned over in twelve to sixteen weeks.  A non flowering plant that requires no pesticides that thrives at almost any latitude and is actually good for the soil.  Anything can be fashioned from it.  Clothing, oil and fuels, paper, lotions, soaps, waterproof incredibly durable concrete, foods rich in protein and antioxidants.

Hemp remains the world’s best kept secret.  Schwarzenegger recently vetoed a bill allowing for it’s cultivation in California.  Woulda been huge.  Our best hope as the world’s fifth largest economy and this Austrian diphshit vetoes it despite it’s evil cousin being perfectly legal and everyone smoking the shit out of it in his state.  The original reason gone and he still lacks the courage to step up.  Beyond Arnold outing himself as a giant vagina, what does this tell you?

So they demonized it.  Back in the day.  They produced propagandic films depicting depraved negro jazz musicians raping white women immediately after smoking it’s demonic and potent cousin of specie, cannabis sativa.  Early model Ford’s fast motioned off roads into ditches, drivers and occupants flying like drunken acrobats in an era before seat belts.  Everyone who came in contact with it either lost their fucking minds or suffered a fate they didn’t deserve and didn’t see coming.  The aftermath of a single vintage 1920’s joint (marijuana cigarette), was littered with destruction and carnage.

No wonder post 1950’s generations came to view such nonsense as high comedy.  Then there was Manson, hippies and Vietnam.  The subsequent first cultural war in America.  A story for another day, but without those neanthropic landmines, I imagine we’d be a lot further along and better off.

If you think about it, it really was the first successful attempt to manipulate the masses in this country through an organized regimen of fear and loathing.  Unfortunately it was and has been extraordinarily successful.  How sad.  This was their prototype for what they do now every day.

I could easily make the case for the legalization of all drugs.  It’s just that I have reservations.  I’ve done just about everything under the sun including heroin and meth.  Meth can ruin a life in weeks.  It’s the worst  recreational substance I’ve ever seen.  On the other hand,  William S Bourroughs survived and thrived as an opiate junkie for fifty years or so.  I have to be honest and tell you, I don’t know where to draw the line.

The facts are exhaustive.  And the fact is, it’s patriotic to support legalization of marijuana at least.  It would do us no harm and a world of good.  Hemp too.  Let us build and rebuild using the most intelligent, efficacious and viable resource nature has ever provided.

We simply must abandon this puritanical zeitgeist.  It makes no sense, defies logic and it will be our ruin, it prevents us from all manner of practical things and exists as an excuse for spending our way into oblivion.  The traditional precepts of God and and country are archaic, obsolete and fucking absurd.  We are smarter and more practical than this.  We remain the wealthiest country in the history of mankind and stand on the verge of fucking it all up because of superstition and fear.  Enough is really enough.

Drinks for my friends.

I have nothing to say.

I’ll come up with something.

I always do.

Mom says the old man had a very good day.  My services weren’t required and that’s a good thing as it allowed me to muck out the secondary master bath and bed suite I’ve been inhabiting for the last six weeks or so.  Cats are messy and so am I.  The fact that they don’t avail themselves of modern plumbing complicates any and all sanitary imperatives I might aspire to.

Did I mention I’m lazy?

I really liked Paul Newman.  Too bad he took the dirt nap.  Helluva an actor.

My mother tells me again she’s glad I’m here and tells me the time we spend together is a treat.  This makes me very happy.  I took the time to prepare her a very special hot dog today.  Mayonnaise, mustard and coarsely chopped white onions.  Ketchup, a sharp slice of cheddar, a quartered kosher dill and chunks of vine ripened tomato with an all white meat smoked turkey frank, a little lemon pepper and a secret ingredient.  Better cold than hot, trust me.  It’s all about texture with dogs.

Protein and produce on a bun.

She brought avocados so next up is my cold stew.

In as much as the path is obvious between now and then.  As clear as is the cartography, I’m still bewildered by how we’ve progressed and simultaneously regressed so consummately.  The vulgarity and naked ugliness of racism has reared it’s ugly head upon the election of a half black President.  Dichotomy and irony hold hands all while skipping to a mysterious and confusing Lou.

One step forward, two steps back.

What in hell are we up to?

I have no personal or particular reservation in declaring the seemingly idiopathic bowel obstruction to our otherwise facile and enviously intelligent new President’s legislative agenda, to be about not much else beside the color of his skin.  After all, I have never witnessed such virulent and obstinate complaint towards a pursuit of such humanitarian and compassionate endeavors ever.  I don’t believe any generation has in this country, witnessed such fuckery, since the Civil War.

The dissent is a cheap firecracker with a loud report.  It is bullshit.

We are a nation of reckless, feckless racist slobs.  To allow this sort of ignorant, irresponsible, irrational bullshit to poison what should be an informed and historically important conversation is a stain, a remarkable and embarrassing canker of our own device THAT WE HAVE CHOSEN TO COUNTENANCE in the face of logic and goddamn common sense, well, it compels me to hate Americans.  To loathe my fellow man.  To wonder just how fucking stupid we can be.  Where is the bottom?

Just how stupid are we?

We as a country and a society are on the verge of really fucking this up.  There are those of us too weak to stand and deliver and those so recalcitrant and so too ready to shit where they eat.  Between the two, we’re looking at gorgeous pizza upside down on the sidewalk.  What follows is anarchy from hell to breakfast.  Nine ways to Sunday.  A shitstorm of biblical proportions.  Whiskey dick chaos.  Cats and dogs fornicating and reproducing.  Such unions yielding dangerous and vicious progeny not unlike a Rick Baker rendering.

Forgive my skipping too much to my own Lou, but you feel me don’t ya?  This shit is getting refuckingdiculous.

I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just concentrate on selfish fun for a few years because it’s all going to end in some mad dash for food and sundries and weapons pretty quick.  The very same thinking would lead me to seek membership in a militia.

Future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.

Upon monitoring our mainstream media, an independent alien of other than earthly origin would be justified in concluding that the most powerful of nations has lost it’s fucking mind.  One look at the Becktard or the Human Shitsmear and they plot a course for the next nearest solar system with the potential for algae or sponges and above ground agriculture.  Any reasonably intelligent expedition is probably only carousing the universe for a place to grow leafy greens and to bang loose humanoid bitches.  We are way to high maintenance for any discriminating extraterrestrials anyway.

The very idea of corn confuses them.  It’s tasty but nutritionless.  They just can’t wrap their advanced brains around it.  That we seek to make it a source of energy confounds them.  It does me too.  They liken it to contemporary politics in America.  It makes no sense to them on any level other than their understanding that with the right amount of butter and salt, we Americans find it palatable.

Think about that.  It really is analogous to the way we deal with politics.

This is why why they keep cruising the atmosphere in green or gray hotel room service enclosures instead of stopping in for a cocktail and engaging any of us on a Taco Bell level or making land at Burning Man.  Sometimes they probe us rather invasively, but they’re just trying to understand us and our seemingly corn based existence.  They understand for example that when we ingest corn, we eliminate it in an almost completely unaltered form.  Proof that no benefit is had from its consumption.

As good a reason as any to probe us.

Earth is a great place to visit but they don’t want to live here.

I don’t blame them.

I’m so sorry for the sandwich I’ve caused you.

Drinks for my friends.

A composition:

The difference between Republicans and Democrats is painfully obvious.

Republicans are greedy sociopathic reptiles who don’t give a mad fuck about their constituents but love to suck corporate dick.

Democrats are spineless douchebags, who lack the courage to get down in the mud and fight for their constituents but love to suck corporate dick.

Evidence being the massive ongoing struggle for any meaningful legislation despite significant majorities enjoyed by Democrats in both houses of congress.  A pathetic, ridiculous and vulgar burlesque.  Shameful and stupid but an attestation for Democrats being far more inclined to think for themselves or someone else as opposed to conventional party wisdom or lack thereof.

All on embarrassing and inept display.

Libertarians don’t care about anything, they just want commerce to flow.  Anybody who wants to suck dick should be allowed with a particular deference to profit.

If you’ve been paying attention to the main stream media of late, you know that Republicans want to save us from socialism despite not understanding the concept, and Obama’s government lusts like a pizza faced adolescent army in neck braces or orthodontal head gear to takeover our health care so we can be killed off at their convenience.

Meanwhile, Republicans seek to kill pizza faced teenagers or adolescents in head gear for profit if possible.

Libertarians take no exception.

Responsible parents everywhere insist children wear helmets these days.

If you choose the contemporary Republican model,  you see them as unrelenting right wing, neoconservative, intolerant evangelical Christian zealots who are afraid of anything homosexual or any other religion.  You understand that they believe they know better while enduring a fusillade of common sense and science to the contrary.  Book burning and creationism and the like.

Retards at the Roundtable.  Scopes trial as blasphemy and all that.

I remember a time when what was contested was ideas, philosophy and policy.  Discourse was just that.  Polite and respectful.  It was about issues.  Then something happened.  That something was William Jefferson Clinton.  Far from perfect, but charismatic and smart as all get out.  He presided over the longest period of economic prosperity America had ever seen.  He left us with a massive surplus and a balanced budget for the first time ever.

We were cookin’.

The Republicans though, they did hate.  They began to investigate.  Afraid Bubba was Jesus, a special prosecutor named Kenn Starr was appointed to investigate Hillary’s real estate dealings while she was a member of the Rose Law Firm and they came up with dick.  Pun to be intended.  Nothing.  Sand in hand they kept on…… and discovered Bubba got a blow job and so they impeached him.  Never mind that it was none of our business.  They spent tens of millions of dollars, more than on all investigating into the events of 9/11, to shine light on a Jewish woman unable to remove a stain from a dress.

First one ever I hear.

And that is really why we are where we are.  It will all go down as the darkest and silliest period in American history.  Yet it’s sordid smell means we are less likely to forget it than UFOs, Elvis or pick a disease.  Let us hope the legacy will not be merely that of a cautionary anecdote, but rather a lesson about a forest instead of individual trees.  Otherwise, America will not be America come one hundred years from now.

Tom DeLay is on dancing with the stars and it offends me.  He’s paired with Cheryl Burke whom I think is the hottest thing since Georgia asphalt.  Goddamn, the woman is gorgeous.  Delay grins his lying rictus and looks as he has the breath of a sewer rodent.  Creepy with a ‘K’.  I really don’t like this guy and I’m a little jealous.  Never watched the show and don’t intend to but that woman is one ripe gust of feminity

Share a smoke, Make a joke
Grasp and reach for a leg of hope
Words to memorize, words hypnotize
Words make my mouth exercise.
Words all fail the magic prize
Nothing I can say when I’m in your thighs
Oh my my my my my mo my mother
I would love to love you lover  -Violent Femmes

Democrats are communist, anti constitution, caped crusaders who want to steal from anyone who has anything and give it to anyone who has nothing no matter how big of a loser the loser happens to be.  I’m not really a Democrat but I tend to identify with them and that sucks on many levels.  Giant dingbats who somehow manage to keep their self righteousness in place while failing at everything they attempt like pre-pubescent soccer players who get a trophy for simply showing up.

Democrats seem to “fail up”, almost as much as Republicans although not quite so deliberately.  Max Baucus may be shocked to see the hand entirely up his ass and into his mouth via x-ray, but John Boehner would consider it as much business as usual as his spray on tan or morning knuckle and back shave.  I fucking hate that guy.

They are different, Democrats and Republicans, but they are all still politicians.  The qualities they share are a moral and ethical bankruptcy, a willingness to feast on or make a meal out of any cock connected to money, and an instinctual fondness for anything other than the absolute truth.

This is why reasonable reform of any kind, be it health care or of industries financial or military, is in perpetual jeopardy.

Nothing can change until we have reform for our system of campaigns and polling.  Zero corporate money.  None.  Entirely financed by the electorate.  Firm start and stop dates for campaigns and equal air time for candidates.

No meaningful change before that one.

Drinks for my friends.

I hear Tam stirred a little shit.  She called night before last to tell me I would be spending the night with Dad and I’d be wearing a mask because of my mosquito sized cold.  She announces it matter of fact.  This is what’s happening now.  Mom is spent she says.  Who am I to piss against the wind?

I’d had a minor but obstreperous summer cold so it was decided I shouldn’t sit with the old bastard at least until I ceased to leak the mucus.  The other morning I fell out of, yes fell out of, the shower.  I was standing on one foot scrubbing the other.  Pretty fucking slippery.  It’s a tiny shower.  For people under 200 lbs.

What new devilry is this?  Same kind my dreams are visiting on me I think.

I show up to the old place on Viking and Nye.  Dad’s got a German helmet on and no one else is paying attention.  Outside the weather is gorgeous. It darkens and everything that’s bloomed seems to flee before the wind hits.  Whites and pinks go first.  Children are screaming.  I smell maple syrup.  My fingers are sticky.

We’re at peace because the bright red shag really does work with the paneling in the master bedroom and the wallpaper in the bathroom.  All hells breaks lose.  Often it’s a hurricane, sometimes it’s an earthquake and about half the time the trailer ends up on it’s side.  Rogue waves.  The giant motor home plunges of a cliff into a violent ocean.

I try to call her back to see if she’s got a laptop I can use and eventually end up with my old man on the phone while he’s doing his best to push one out.  He sounds strong to me and I smile.  There’s no phone in the shitter, they handed it to him.  How cool is that?

I’m a private first class

Third behind my Mother, my Sister and the doctors.  I know, my math sucks already.  I see myself as third because I refuse to be last.  4th, 5th and 6th are available to my niece and nephews.  I don’t need to be the xo unless it’s cognac..  My youngest nephew Keaton,  might just be a Carson City analog of Sean Connery and Richard Gere.  This dates me, huh?  I suspect he’s smooth.  Across the board they’ve benefitted from their respective gene pools.  Big cool brains on them.  Their style is.  Priorities is.  No respect for the Mason Dixon Line whatever that means.  The Westergards are a credit to their race and I adore them.

I wonder if they think I’m cool.

Anyway, Dad still live and pushing.

Neither one of us knows what’s up between the women folk but he thinks Mom is on her way to me.  I’ve pretty much decided I’ll finish my drink, brush my teeth and head out once Mom shows because she is my CEO and I gotta be consistent.  My briefcase ready and my teeth washed, I sit sipping my Bombay.

She arrives home and parks where the driveway meets the road like she’s going to get the mail without even coming inside.

It’s still a small town, no more than sixty thousand or so but it is the Capitol and my sister has been well and beneficially involved in it’s downtown.  An old city, even for the West, so there is architecture and landmarks aplenty.  It’s both bucolic and sleazy.  The Sierra Nevada Mountain Range hosts the sun every evening this Fall and for every season ever. I can see just about all of town from my folk’s backyard.

This makes me think of Wednesday morning trash pick up so I haul it out to meet her.  No recycling today, it’s every other week.

She’s flustered and alludes to my sister being a pain in the ass.  I think I know about that.  I don’t ask but set to making her a gin and tonic.  My brother in law did the coolest thing the other night by showing up to the hospital with pre-mixed gin and tonics in a big jar.  Mom jokes she considered crawling into the closet with the jar.

Mom is rarely funny herself but has a good sense of humor.  She is my mother.  I adore her.  She rocks.

I help pack some food and include a small Tupperware with ice because she’s still got some of that pre-mix at the hospital.

I hung out with my dad yesterday, he was good.  He flipped me off a lot and told me I was a shitass.  My dad is very often very funny.

Mike Bacon called and wanted to hang and we did but first I went to see dad for the first time in three days.

They brought salmon, green beans and rice for dinner. We shared it.  So surreal.  I applied the supplied packets of lemon juice, salt, pepper, Mrs. Dash and tarter sauce according to the best of my culinary instincts.  He asked me which utensil I wanted.  I chose the soup spoon as I had eyes on his soup and he’d already confessed to giving up all soup to my mother for the last few days.

It was cool in that was what he expected.  He assumed he was sharing his meal with me.  We ate it together.  It’s not so unusual on any level but it touched me in a way I can’t really describe.  We also talked about how things freeze in your memory perfectly preserved.  And of course, we discussed the dipshit Republicans.

He told me it was best case scenario under the circumstances.  He really likes it there and he’s comfortable.  He told me it doesn’t fuckin’ beat home though.  He flirts with the nurses and has nicknames for all of them.  No matter who enters his room he flips them shit and simultaneously charms them.  They all stay and sometimes talk too long for my taste.  He tells me one is a lug or another talks too much or that his affection for another is sincere.  My father has his flaws but he one of the best judges of character I’ve ever seen.  To this day I would trust his instincts over my own.

Note to self, the head administrator is fucking creepy.

You know I like soup.  Even shitty hospital soup.  The concept of soup is both wholesome and genius.

The ice maker on the fridge just made a squeaky farting sound.  Kinda like souls squealing and kinda cartoon spooky.

I wonder if he was on his best behavior for me.

He always eats desert.  We had fun yesterday.  He was in good spirits.  Patty was there when I arrived and was reluctant to go.  This guy Patty is the coolest.  I think I’ve already told you.  My father and I don’t have much to talk about so I tell him the news of the world.

Two men were wiping at their eyes today.  One was Maury and the other was my father.  I just remembered this.  Morey Tresnit, brother of Joe, son of Bob, tells me he got my message and will fax Tuesday.  He tells me this as the sun is setting in front of his bar & grill, “Mo & Sluggo’s”.  I’m not really sure in either case why eyes were leaking.  I can only be sure there was pain.  A drunk told me I had great hair and hi-fived me.

Morey touches me on the shoulder when I tell him I’m there to meet Mike Bacon and asks me if I want a drink.

Mike tells me I’m in graduate school.  He means that’s where I am in life.  He thinks that’s how I should look at it.    He’s so painfully bright he dances around me and I hope I’m keeping up.  He points out things I did or said I don’t remember and it’s kinda hard to believe it came from me.  We’ve been friends since the fifth grade.  He shares all manner of things.  I think he tells me he’s gay because I didn’t ask and I’m almost sure he tells that truth one person at a time.

He dated Cecilia Martin right before pining for dudes.  This is huge to me.  You gotta understand Bacon and I just can’t help you there.  I can tell you things about him but they don’t define him.  Plus, Cecilia Martin was an absolute vixen by the sixth grade.

I believe she had braces.

He’s episcopalian and he says he goes to church.  We drank gin.  Bombay Sapphire only.  I think I bought two drinks.  Joe Tresnit, who lives with my friend Kelly’s dad, Reg bought a couple, Morey Tresnit who’s business I want, bought a couple and Bob Tresnit father with the one leg bought a couple.

We liked the gimlets the best.  Mike had to remind Joe how to prepare them.

A subtle but sublime pleasure to indulge in cocktails and conversation with this man I’d not seen in fifteen years at least.  Erudite, razor sharp and lightning fast wit.  He’s currently a candidate for Ph.D. in Victorian literature, his thesis to be centered around his own novel concept of “gentrifuge”.

I either spent twelve or eight dollars.  Maybe both.

Bacon took me to his athletic shoe of a rental car and gave me a small tin with Obama’s countenance on it’s sliding cover and a chunky little bit of green inside.  He also supplied me with a one hitter painted to look like a cigarette.  I’m no stranger to paraphernalia  but I never sold these.

I’ve just discovered an entire box of Twinkies.   What new devilry is this?

I can hear Beddy wailing a little in the bedroom and Billy The Tripod and I have enough of an understanding for her to sigh and act like she can’t hear it.  A very good dog.

I think a piece on the actual difference (s), between Democrats and Republicans might be in order.  Thanks for the reminder.  It will be challenging yet educational………maybe a little didactic.

Bacon said something pretty profound about re-branding the word ‘socialism’ into an “E. Pluribus Unum” kinda vibe, “Out of many one”.  They didn’t teach Latin here in the brush but I got it.  Pretty elegant and disarmingly simple.  I think it means nothing about leaders or demagogues but ideas.  I hope.  That’s what I got.  I think he was reminding me of consensus.  Maybe he was reminding me that we have one.  Could be genius and could be a fool.  Either one of us.

It’s this kind of confusion what makes pot great.

He spoke so calmly and sincerely.  He half asked if he was effeminate.  I shook my head.  What he is, is who he is.  He’s a sensitive and sincere man and a little hypervigilant.  In Carson City, Bacon is like a well dressed comedian from New York City.  Jewish maybe.  Carson folks have no idea but they like him.  He is as close to the ten to twelve year old that I knew, as a 44 year old could possibly be.  He looks you in the eye and with very little physical language, imparts crazy thoughtful observations and very perceptive conclusions.

He delivers wisdom and humor in the same voice because it is the same to him.  He’s advanced.

I am rich to have a man like Michael Bacon look forward to spending a minute with me.  He told me, me and his grandmother had made his day.  He is exceptional in many ways, but so foghorn, lighthouse bright it would be intimidating if not for the lack of ego and a completely unassuming honest look in his eyes and on his face.  I don’t doubt Master Bacon is what he his without exception.

Drinks for my friends.

I made a genius tuna salad.

I used albacore packed in water by Chicken of The Sea.  A little mayo, some honey dill mustard, bleu cheese (not Bob’s) dressing and some tartar sauce.  Lemon pepper, garlic powder, chopped white onion, dill, lemon juice, black pepper, but I resisted basil.  I felt the licoriceness of the herb would’ve upset the delicate whang and tang I’d so meticulously constructed.  I’m very pro basil.  Mother said it was a little runny but flavor solid.

A little fresh basil would’ve changed the calculus.  Fresh rosemary too.

I’m all about the herb.

I added more chopped white onions and another can of albacore and ran a handful of the mixture through my hair.  It informed mine own coiffure with bounce and volume. No chunkiness in my wig.  Nothing untoward.  Slick and glistening smoothness notwithstanding, I was pleased with it’s sandwich worthy texture and consistency.  Mother was ironing pants and otherwise puttering in a busy and random way.  My mother is blind shithouse loony when it comes household duties.  A fart in a whirlwind says my father. I was phoning clients while contemplating my culinary creation.  Relaxed and contemplative was I.

Wish I’d had a few green or black olives on hand, but they’ve just returned from the road and the larder is not stocked with the pre-holiday robustness to which I’ve grown accustomed.  Still, it’s an amazingly well appointed kitchen.  All flavors,  appliances gadgets and tools at hand.  I love fashioning anything edible in my mother’s kitchen.  I want for little if anything at all.

Olives and onions are flavor and texture, see. I used it for a sandwich on multi-grain bread and wished for some thinly sliced Swiss while she spooned it over fresh, vine ripened tomatoes from Pasco Washington for to take with her to the hospital.

Dad seems to being do much better.  Haven’t been able to pull a shift in a few days because of an obstreperous yet minor cold.  Feel shitty in the mornings, fine by dusk  but I’d like to look in his one good eye.  Really wanna see the bastard.  He’s doing much better by all accounts and there is far less reason to worry than the last hospital stay.  Tough old bastard.  More worried about mom.

Turns out because of my recent fall from financial grace, my concerned busybody and overly nosy aunt has decided, without evidence of any kind, that I must have a chronic and acute drug problem.  She’s convinced herself and a fingerful of her sisters that I could be bad news and they have nearly talked themselves into an uninvited and unwarranted visit to save my mother from me.  The aunt in question sent her son, my cousin, to check me out.  He’s the oldest of my fifty plus cousins and has seen plenty of trouble.  Thrown out of the Navy, convicted on what we all KNOW to be baseless child molestation charges involving his own daughter.  So yeah, prison. He was pissed about the mission but told me all about it and said once he looked in my eyes he knew I was good.  He called his mother, my aunt, and told her to back the hell off and leave us the fuck alone.

Michael is fine, he told her and so the rest of the retired overly concerned vultures, and offered to score me some pot.

I don’t mean to malign these women because they are each and everyone a love and really only concerned for their sister, my mother.  This is beyond the pale however.  Over the line and just plain irresponsible out of control cattiness fomented by one aunt in particular who would know who she is if she ever read this.  She won’t.  If she does, I love her, she loves me and I have nothing to hide.  She was wrong.

Way out of line and I am offended.  Deeply.

I could really use some green bud.  It’s been months.  Man, I could use but an eighth.  I don’t even have a goddamn pipe. He’s a handful and an asshole but he’s been fighting the good fight on my behalf for at least a week unbeknownst to me.  My parent’s raised him for most of his formative years.  He’s very loyal to them and therefore to me.  I believe him to be a flawed but good man.

It occurs to me I could say that about anyone including myself.

My sister doesn’t like him. She is often guilty of rushing to judgment, and she is a nuclear powered earth mover once she sets her sights.  It can be either or both, advantageous and/or deleterious depending on the situation.  I adore her.  She is a house afire.  Methinks she needs to settle down, take a breath and consider context more often. Who am I to piss against the wind?  I am the cautionary tale.

We fought on the phone last night and I hung up on her.  I hate that.  Hanging up on someone.  It’s a weak thing.   She tells me I’m a bad listener while refusing to hear me out.  A nuclear powered earth mover who wades into things convinced of her overview and the accuracy of her assessment.  It goes without saying that we both share a certain alpha dog proclivity.  It goes without saying that she chaps my ass in the most urgent and immediate of ways.

I find myself losing composure with her quicker than just about anyone else I know.

I love and respect her but she pisses me the fuck off despite always having the best of intentions, much like the aforementioned aunt.

Very much like the aforementioned aunt.

Tonight I sit here writing, her youngest son, my nephew, shows up with a plate for me.  It’s the other thing about mi hermana.  Her heart is the size of gigantic juicy melon that threatens to burst from her torso.  Wrapped elegantly in a soft cloth of sunflowers that secures a pale blue paper napkin, cookies, chips, applesauce and a sandwich on a gorgeous roll.  My sister cooks like an angel.  From a simple sandwich to an elaborate five course meal to a BBQ for a hundred and fifty guests along with ridiculous pies and pastries.  Anything of sustenance or comestibility benefits from the grace of my sister’s hand and her adept and instinctual culinary prowess.

I refer to her and think of her as “Pissy” and she really is the shit.  Any pun you imagine, I take responsibility for.

About five years ago, when my fiancee and I were busting, she called me at my office to ask about coming to LA for Thanksgiving.  I told her as much as I loved the idea, I couldn’t say yes because I’d just put my house on the market.  Two days prior to the holiday she called again and asked if she and her family “could come over”.  Hadn’t sold the house yet, so about five hundred miles later, her and husband and brood showed up with a fully prepared Thanksgiving feast except a brined turkey and pies that would require time inside of my oven.

It might just be my favorite Thanksgiving memory.  I got pretty hammered and slept late the next morning.  By the time I came downstairs, my house was spotless.  She’d even swabbed my entire refrigerator.  Coffee and breakfast of course.  I think of my sister’s face and my heart swells.  She is good smells, good vibes, happiness and unconditional love.        

A violent storm or a soft gentle rain with the smell of moistened flowers and grass.  An absolute force for good but perhaps too often willing to bulldoze subtlety and nuance. No one who knows my sister can possibly avoid loving her.  I know I do.  She is exceptional in so many ways. I know this to be true as I’ve been on it’s receiving ends.  Yes, both of them.  She has been my savior and a foil.  I want her to know, she is righteous, but not always completely right.  A stopped clock is on money twice a day.  Don’t wind your own clock, or it’s the best you and your clock can expect.

No thing or circumstance is even remotely as black or white as she sometimes perceives.  Grey is the day.  Most days are purple.  Neither blue or red. Gimme a break Sis, I know what I’m doing despite not being complete in your eyes .  Help me to do what I need to do as opposed to what you want me to be and do.  Stop fighting me and help me.  I’ll never be as antiseptic in your estimation as you would prefer.  I am me and you are you and we are all together.  I could just as easily battle what and who you are, but I think unlike you, I’ve long since learned that lesson.  Sometimes your righteousness is cloying.  I don’t doubt where your heart is but help a brother out.

I simply don’t want the same things for myself that you do.  We are very different.  Ketchup little tomato.

Come to think of it, if only I’d had some capers for that tuna salad……..

Drinks for my friends.

I kinda like that Obama called Kanye a jackass.  Know why?  Because he is.  I like this side of him.  Obama, not the jackass.

Kinda like how he handled Joe Wilson’s retarded outburst.  Kinda like him sinking an unscripted, non-rehearsed three pointer in front of a 60 Minutes camera crew.  Kinda like his speech about Reverend Wright when everyone anticipated some sorta Mea Culpa.    He’s so fucking cool.

Wouldn’t it be the damn dickens to eavesdrop on the pillow talk between he and the first lady?  You know that would be some funny and revealing shit.  She’s hot.  A long limbed beauty with a booty.  What really informs her sexiness though, is her intelligence and subtle strength.  Michelle Obama possess a certain physical grace, but it is her emotional deftness and intellectually adroit approach, evidenced by the shine of her smile, the shimmer in her eyes and the subtle edge of her tongue.  She comports herself likes she’s been America’s first black First Lady since she was eighteen.  A beauty Queen with a big ass brain.  I adore her.

Were I Obama, I would have chased that until the road ran out too.  His wife speaks volumes about him.  Not so much because he was able to make an honest woman of her, more to do with her allowing herself to be exclusive to him forever.  He was no doubt an impressive man when they met.  A conspicuous education, but the pedigree potential of a hospital administrator or assistant DA maybe.  He wasn’t exactly presidential for reasons obvious and reasons less than.  Feel me?

I doubt that Michelle Obama is a woman who takes any shit, not from her husband and not from anyone else.

I have been impressed with her from day one.  They appear to be a gorgeous family unit.  I believe with all my fibers that we are lucky to have them in the White House.  When she said she was proud of her country for the first time, I understood exactly what she meant.  You bet.  Fuckin’ A.  Me too.  First time in a long time.

I wonder how the average American woman estimates our president’s hotness.  He’s tall and athletic, but he looks a little goofy to me.  That is until he opens his mouth.  The greatest orator of our time.  It’s not just rhythm, cadence and lilt, it’s substance and yes, soaring inspirational rhetoric.  I venture those who would despise him do so because they are confused by his charisma and threatened by his prowess.  A half African American president who embodies the antithesis of their previous stumbling and bumbling champion in every single way.

Smart, where Dumbya was well, dumb.  Articulate where Bush was um, dumb and lacked eloquence altogether.  Lucid as opposed to clueless.  In control and on the case, whereas monkey boy spent a third of his tenure on vacation, pants around his ankles, while Cheney and company did whatever the fuck they wanted.  Before, during and after every national disaster on their watch.  You, know, murder, torture, war profiteering, hurricanes, stage four financial cancer and stealing candy from babies of war veterans.

Humans with compassion and wisdom instead of a carnival of assholes.

Big stupid toast and the sigh of brainrot.  Superman vs. Karl Rove or Max Headroom.

People Magazine vs. National Geographic.

This compare and contrast is exactly why they hate him.

Politics certainly ain’t what it used to be.  I remember disagreeing on policy and issues but this game of vilifying one’s opponent with the powderless ammunition of nothing but perceived or exaggerated moral or ethical imperatives is nonsense.  It’s a cheap and tawdry counter to the people’s best interest.  There exists no legitimate place for it.  Manchildren like Beckerhead, The Human Shitsmear and Hannity propagate it for nothing other than profit.  They have no shame.

Elected officials purvey such less than fine filth without conscience or even a single eye towards consequence.  They don’t give a mad fuck what happens should we not enact  new law dealing with the inequities and egregious avarice of contemporary health care.  These people would oppose anything at any cost to defeat the magic negro, regardless of the total due to their own constituents.  They will, without reservation, break the backs of the same people who elected them, to hand our first progressive half African American President a Waterloo.

Such singleminded, disciplined adherence to demagoguery reminds me of only one modern regime.  Irony is it’s the same one they consistently and ignorantly hurl at any and all who endorse what is best for everyone including them.  It just keeps going round and round.  Where she stops, nobody knows.

It’s wearing me the fuck out.  Conventional wisdom, common sense and the responsible polls, eat me Rassmusen, tell us the majority of America is overwhelmingly in favor of what this administration attempts to advance.  It’s what we voted for.  It’s what we want.  We delivered a voluntary popular mandate.  What happened was, we espoused free will.

So they lie, they obfuscate and they conceal and confound.  And not a goddamn thing gets done because Democrats are almost as filthy and far more spineless.  Obama tells us change must happen from the top down, not the bottom up.  Ketchup little tomato.  We don’t like the way you fight.  Even democrats wonder if you’re a sissy and that’s just  an emasculation proclamation.

I guarantee you a fighting force if you just announce the charge.  What are you waiting for?  Stop fucking around with Republicans and wiping Blue Dog asses and while you’re at it tell Max Baucus to blow me.  Why aren’t you out in front proclaiming the Baucus bill is utter shite?  Why?  Kick this ludicrous circus out of town and get on with it.  You wanna be the next Jimmy Carter, with a majority in both houses?  You have a majority of both citizens and lawmakers.  A mandate entirely different than Dumbya declared.  Your detractors hate and fear you and that will not change no matter what you do.  Let’s go goddamnit.  Time to get on with it.

Let’s do as much damage as we can and not worry about what happens next.  Just like them.  Time for rubber to meet road.

Bring it.

Drinks for my friends.

Newsflash for you right wing, neoconservative fear mongering, Red scare foisting douchebags:

The word “czar” is an adaptation by journalists, the mother of which is a necessity for brevity.  It’s merely colloquial.  Contemporary parlance, a euphemism at best for an adviser appointed by the president whomever he or she may be.

The idea that this is some novel and pernicious design on the part of Obama and his administration to foment communism is fucking absurd.  If this douchebaggery were visited upon liberals, we’d recoil in horror,  feeling our intelligence raped and our sensibilities violently maligned.  Then we’d call bullshit on it.  We would do this immediately because we’d understand it to be really fucking stupid.

But you know, the great unwashed just sucks that shit shake through a straw and ponies up for a month’s supply.  How is it so many asstards exist, live and breathe in America?  What kind of people are we growing here?  This is ridiculous.

Dumbya had 47 of them there dastardly czars.  Obama has 32.  The shorthand usage first occurred under Nixon and really came into it’s own under Reagan.  Drug czar, energy czar etc.

And, don’t you know, the communists kicked out the czars.  Look at my thumb, gee you’re dumb.  Not just misdirected, but extraordinarily fucked in the head.

Again, fear and desperation championed by Beckerhead and The Human Shitsmear.  Congratulations  you dolts; a little kool aid with that shit shake?

“Right-wing extremists live in a politically parallel world where everyone they know believes the same as they do. They don’t like established facts so they come armed with their own.” ~ Gary Younge ~

I’m a little worn out these days by circumstances other than politics, but this kind of crap still really chaps my ass.  Again, that such a bullshit meme is allowed to penetrate into the mainstream baffles me.  How and when did people become so goddamn dumb?  Is it something in the water?  Didn’t we manage to get most of the lead out of the air and out of paint on children’s toys?  Insipid, callow and shallow.

Worthless and weak.

Some 25% percent clung to Dumbya ’til the very end.  Even after the shit hit the fan.  To this day, the volume so overwhelming, the proverbial fan is so clogged with gore that a vapor of ozone from it’s failing engine rises above it all to sting any inhale over the heavy pungence of rotting sewage  About the same number stood by Nixon.  It is safe to assume that at least one of every four people one encounters might just be so intellectually challenged that truth is tertiary.  These people don’t understand just how stupid they are and in fact take an ignorantly sanguine pride in and of.

I do the best I can but it’s not good enough.  Cultures bleed.  Dogma is relentless.  Indoctrination is all the sudden ripe and healthy.  Into the mainstream miasma and malaise, racism and bigotry, afford white heat as we are confronted with society’s lowest common denominator marching ignorantly in numbers exaggerated while boiling and seething only to direct blind stupid hate into an otherwise honest and logical national discourse.

We are polluted by this phenomena that has only dared to rear it’s ugly head because for the first time in a decade, the inmates have lost control of the the institution.

What do I do?  It just keeps coming.  Every onslaught more illogical and less rational than the last.  With every 24 hour news cycle it gets ever more ludicrous and uncouth.  Nancy Pelosi stands up and warns us in no uncertain terms that it’s all leading to violence and the retards mock her and accuse her of stoking the very fire of violence she cautions us against because she brought it up.

We show up with fire extinguishers so they bust out with napalm.

We’re not really interested in harming anyone and they are happy to  reduce us all to carbon.  They just don’t care.  We do.  Therein lies the rub.

They are crazy from fear and confusion.  We are worried for humanity, justice, compassion and humane equity.

None of it makes any sense beyond the fact that they are blind shithouse stupid.  You go Patty.

Drinks for my friends.

September 16:

Hard day.  He’s so strong but so fragile.  Never witnessed this kind of pain.  He can’t find a way to sit where it isn’t excruciating.  He struggles to suppress his cough because it tears at his insides.  He squirms and fights.  He writhes and stomps and cusses.  I finally end up demanding the nurse administer a morphine injection.  His eyes  wide and his mouth open without a sound. It spooks me.

He says he wishes he could pass out from the pain.

It’s just so surreal and crazy.  I don’t remember being this afraid for him.  I don’t remember being this afraid.  I’ve come to loathe hospitals.  It’s  horrible.  A beautiful hospital, expansive slate walled lobby, fountains and modern sculpture, abundant natural light and beautifully scaped desert grounds, yet I hate it.  I want to run away.

If only there were a bar or cocktail lounge.  A silent television, a bowl of snacks and some cleavage.

I don’t want to come back here tomorrow but I will.  On the way, I will pray for him to be better despite my agnosticism.

Mother is breaking down.  It’s too much.  I understand.  They have been married for fifty five years.  She was eighteen.  They are attached at the hip, the brain and the heart.  I do the best I can.  Hug her and hold her.  He will be ok, I tell her.  We both know he will come down another notch or two in terms of what he can and cannot do.  He has beaten his body hard against the rock of concrete as a profession for some four decades and now this.

He was never out of work and he never really missed work.  He piled into his beat up Datsun pick up every morning and was gone long before six a.m.  In four feet of snow or hundred degree heat.  Hangover being the lamest excuse not to show up so that never stopped him.  He came home and drank a cup of coffee, read the paper with one eye, hard hat still on while I pounded on my drums.  He stopped me only when mom pulled up.

His lifelong friend Pat Sanderson walks in and even through his pain, they trade insults the entire time.  Pat wouldn’t have known had my mother not run into his wife this afternoon in the parking lot.  Both named Jeanne, both of similar composure.

We had decided not to tell too many people yet.  Until he could, I don’t know, be more normal.

Mom was raised on a ranch/farm with ten siblings.  They ate what they raised or grew.  They were poor and are still remarkably close.  The love in my mother’s family is as rare as it is exceptional.  Her parents did something very, very right.  She began by typing marriage licenses in the county clerk’s office and ended up an administrative assistant to the Governor of Nevada and at one point, the Nevada State Legislature created a position for her in the economic development commission and appointed her to it.  Very powerful politicians are family friends.  Mayors, Governors, numerous state representatives and Senate majority leaders.

She’s a very smart and accomplished woman.

My sister and her husband carry on that tradition but far more focused on local.  Their hands in and on everything municipal.

He hasn’t pooped since it happened, so me and Patty joke about a suppository applied with a hammer.  A gay hairdresser named Larry to feed my dad and maybe help him with his reluctant bowels.

I love Pat, he once bit off a man’s index finger in a fight because the sonafabitch kept poking him with it.  This guy is the shit and he’s gonna show no matter what when he learns my Old Man is any kind of trouble.  Same as last time.  Understand my Dad was a hard working, hard fighting man and men like Pat were by his side the entire time.  Hard hats flying in bar fights, they’d drink beer from them afterward.

I’m often impressed by the men who hold my Father in the highest regard.  My cousin Derek came by too.  Rough hands and bandaged fingers.  I guess my sister told him.  Found out in the morning and stopped by after work, then headed to my parent’s house to empty the shit tanks and grey water from the RV my Old Man was working on when he fell.  He adores my Father and my Father adores him.  My cousin Derek is the shit.  Race car driver who wins just about every race.  Fiercely loyal.  We have little in common but we like each other a lot.  He shook my hand and hugged me hard.  He loves me because he loves my father and I have no problem with that.

I adore him and his wife, My cousin Marlo.  Her parents, uncle Tyke and aunt Bobby, rock.

I can’t stand it, I’m so frightened and weak.  I advocate for him.  I bully the nurses and doctors.  I rinse his piss jug and try to entertain him. We’re not at all that alike you know.  I’ve spent so much time with him in the last few years in hospitals when his condition is dire.

September 17:

Pat “Patty” Sanderson calls this morning offering to take a shift from one of us.  He understands that we do not leave the Old Man alone; one of us is there 24/7.  I certainly don’t need it, but my mother could use it.  I tell him I’ll have mom call.  When I ask her about it, she says no, too soon, family only.  You need to call him, I tell her.  My uncle Larry calls to say if we need him he’s there.  This phenomena of love and selflessness would be multiplied by a hundred but we’ve decided not to tell anybody yet.

I call before I leave for the hospital to see if I need to bring anything.  The answer is no and mom says it’s been a pretty rough morning.  Instantly I’m fearful.  In the shower I try to imagine what it would be like to not be able to clean myself and realize he’s probably used to it.  In the past few days I’ve fed him, held cups for him to drink out of and scratched him where he can’t reach, fought with nurses and doctors to get him what he needs or what I think he needs.

We’re very different my Father and I, but his vulnerability has allowed me to love him and appreciate him so much more than I otherwise would have.  That old testosterone impetus for conflict has disappeared.  The rivalry between Father and son, especially between two of such different minds, is gone.  I understand that I’m of a different mind because both he and my mother wanted almost desperately for my sister and I to be.  He’s always been so proud of me and my accomplishments.  His praise and pride, always  so unswerving and resolute.  Love runs very strong and deep in my family.  I am so very lucky.

Patty didn’t hear from my mom so he just showed up with his wife this afternoon.  Brings a card that sounds like a toilet flushing when opened.  If you don’t tell Patty no, he’ll do whatever the fuck he wants.

He and Dad share a hysterical story about locking some asshole supervisor in a porta-potty on a high rise job, hooking it to a crane and dropping it.  They tell me they dropped it five stories before slamming on the brakes, so the cable stretched and snapped back causing the shithouse to tumble in the air a few times.  The super emerged, speechless, shaken and covered in shit.  When he finally reappeared at the job site, looking to fire somebody, they were busy working on the cable brakes for the crane.  He never knew until some twenty years later that my Father and Patty had been behind it.  Patty invited the man and my Dad to breakfast one morning unbeknownst to either and spilled the beans.  Patty describes the breakfast taking place in a booth neither could escape from as he was on the end blocking the exit.

He tells me that whenever my Father had a problem with someone on his crew, he’d ask Patty if he’d heard the shit the guy was saying about him (Patty).  Patty would beat the hell out of him and the problem would be solved.

Often as a child, particularly before holidays, my Father had to “work late with Pat”, that’s what mom said.  She understood these two fuckers were likely out drinking, getting their asses beat or more probably beating some ass.

They talked about Freddie Crowley, Ozzy Ellis, Roy Deihl, Johnny Annas and Frank the crane operator.  All icons of my youth.  More than a handful of times, Dad would come home, his entire orange Datsun pickup, the ‘Pumpkin”, wrapped from stem to stern in knotted together rubber bands, courtesy of Frank.  I remember him as the rubber band man.  More than once he came home with a brand new hard hat crushed by the crane Frank operated.  No choice but to show up to the job the next morning with his beat to misshapen concrete encrusted hard hat from days gone by.  Frank seemed to be just fine with that one.  In retrospect, I’m confident Dad would show up with a shiny new one, like a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt, just to bait the bastard into destroying it.

I believe my Old Man was gratified and amused to bring home yet another brand new one flattened by Frank’s crane.

He ate a full pork chop today and his chocolate ice cream.  None of the squash or salad no matter how hard I tried.  He needs a good crap.  We watched Hardball with Chris Mathews and I read to him from the paper.  His humor is good and he flirts with the nurses.  He had a shower because he stank.  He is brave and big hearted.  We will get through this.  I love him.  He is still my fearless, pick a fight with the biggest guy in the bar, Father.

The Old Man is rising to this occasion.

Further reading: http://brainspank.org/wordpress/?p=637

Drinks for my friends.

Sorry but I did.

I would humbly refer you to last night’s blog:  http://brainspank.org/wordpress/?p=639                                                                                                                                                          You could always hit the back button and read it first.

What Max Baucus offered up to day at what admittedly is a moveable feast in the sense that it ain’t soup yet, was a shit sandwich or a turd taco or a fecal falafel or a serving of butt cobra carnitas, dookie dumplings, dung danishes, poop pirogis, bunghole bouillabaisse…………..sorry.  What happened was a most odious discharge from the boil infested ass of an obese insurance industry bureaucrat on a pickled cabbage, deviled egg, fiery chili and grilled onion slathered, spicy sausage diet.

It sucks and it blows with the ferocity of a furiously flatulent gale.  Tolja.

Had little fun there.  Hope it’s mutual.

Why so bad you ask?

The easy answer is congress, in the words of my father, is a scumbag.  He calls ’em like he sees ’em and he’s almost always right.

I cribbed and cobbled together the following from various sources including my memory, RJ Eskow’s piece on the Huffington Post, Olbermann, Maddow, Taibbi, my father et al.

You thought I was gonna read all 800 plus pages?  As my father would say, “in a pigs ass”.

a). Max Baucus is Judas.  He sold out the public option, despite being a vocal champion thereof less than a year ago.  He prostituted himself and our best interests to the insurance industry, just like I said he would.  I hold no bias nor do I harbor a moral or ethical imperative for prostitutes,  except maybe those who would knowingly infect their clients with painful burning crotch rot; that’s the kind of cheap hustler Baucus is and that is precisely what he’s done.

In it’s stead, Baucus proffers the idea of co-ops.  I’m not even going into it.  It’s bullshit.  A weak ineffectual and lame effort as substitute for a public option.  Dumb and intellectually dishonest.

Understand, without a vigorous public option, any health care reform legislation is worthless.  Bogus  Beyond single payer, the ultimate and most equitable solution, a public option, is the only realistic way to hold insurance company’s cloven hooves to the fire and make them bubble and blacken like a goddamn marshmallow.  We are smithereened without it.  No real reason to consider anything else.

I crap you negative.

b.) It allows the insurer to charge as much as five times more based on age alone, so much for affordability for everyone.  See, the idea is to spread and share risk so insurance is accessible for all of us regardless of income or age.  Level the playing field.  Apply some civil rights fairness to the process.

c.) If there’s going to be an individual mandate, the difference in premiums between potentially healthy and potentially sick has to be at least close to the same.  Insurance companies shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate.  It occurs to me that’s the implied spirit of health care reform.  They get more customers and a mechanism, by virtue of volume, to ameliorate profit and loss.  There is no methodology for the pooling of risk in this bill.  Nothing to foster responsibility and accountability on part of the behemoth bastards.

Again, the idea and spirit is to spread and share risk so insurance is accessible for all of us, regardless of  the relative waxing or waning of any individual patient.

Hey Max, it is profoundly irresponsible and egregiously stupid to mandate Americans buy in to a health care system without any realistic reforms.  Look at my thumb, sheezus you’re a stupid worthless fuckhead.

d.) Poor families, not impoverished ones, would be mandated to pay as much as 13% of their gross income for insurance or pay nearly half as much in penalty.  Either way, all monies would be mainlined into the veins of the insurance beast.  Fuck that.  Seriously, fuck that shit.  That’s enough to bankrupt many if not most families and the beast doesn’t stand to lose a goddamn thing.  If they don’t cover them they still get their money, one way or another.  What it does is spread mayonnaise or peanut butter on the dick of the beast and supply starving puppies and any activity that occurs beyond companionship is at the discretion of the two mutually consenting parties, you know, the emaciated puppies and the beast with the skin tone sequoia erection.

At the end of the day, what really chaps my ass, is how lacking the bill is in innovation, boldness and real quest for change that yes, we can believe in.  No controversy, nothing groundbreaking not even a single attempt to tip at even one windmill.  It bolsters the status quo.  It safeguards avarice by the big dogs and does less than little for the poor and middle class.  It is antithetical to the spirit of reform we so desperately need.

It’s crap.

Gamesmanship, brinksmanship and clownsmanship.

One step forward?  Not even.  Two steps back?  Obviously.

My father would say, “In a pig’s ass.”

Drinks for my friends.

There will be no bipartisan support of efficacious health care reform legislation.

None.

In fact, if such support is garnered, you can bet your sweet ass it won’t be worth a shit.  I’m telling you that if, by some miracle, a truly bipartisan bill emerges, know that it’s all for naught.  If that is what arrives for a final vote, it will not include a viable and toothsome public option and it will be worthless.

Unless the clouds part and the sun’s golden beams bust through to vaporize those flying, squeaking, uncooked, flying meatfish that nearly killed Spock from that coolest of  original Star Trek episodes, a Bill from Baucus means the pooch is screwed.

A feelgood crap attempt amounting to a band aid on a sucking chest wound.

The word “trigger”, means bullshit.  Means won’t happen.  Means business as usual.  Means they hope we’re suckers and fools.  Means they know we are.

“Wendell Potter warned that if Congress “fails to create a public insurance option to compete with private insurers, the bill it sends to the president might as well be called the Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.” -huffingtonpost

Mr. Potter is a whistleblower and former vice president of communication at Cigna.  He knows what he’s talking about.

Max Baucus is the village bike, everyone has taken a spin.  The town trollop who will likely vacillate just enough to deliver a bill that pleases his insurance industry masters of bondage and discipline to keep the inordinate amount of filthy lucre flowing free and save him from a severe beating and the humiliation of empty campaign coffers.

Yeah, he’s a Democrat but he sucks.  He’s a pussy.  He’s Montana’s pussy.  See, he’s fattened himself with nearly four million dollars from the evil empire from 2003 to 2008.  Not just a pussy but egregiously cunty.

He chairs the senate finance committee and is therefore between a rock and a hard place.  The rock being the enemy and thus the antagonist and the hard place being the American people or the protagonist.  Yep, it’s good versus evil.  Max Baucus will not do the right thing.  He is a whore.

So nothing good from there and that is most likely where anything will come from.  We’re fucked.  Get it?

I’m so sick of this I want to projectile vomit.  Want campaign finance reform?  Right here, right now, cut the big money out of this one picture and you will see behind the curtain.  Empires will tumble.  The quid pro quo will become persona non grata.  The plutocracy will be breeched.   We are the only modern, industrialized country where it is legal for any corporate entity or business of any kind to to profit from providing health care.

I believe it to be a right, not a privilege and that makes this whole dog and pony promenade to burlesque, goddamn amateur puppet theater.

“Why behave in public if you’re living on a playground” -David Lee Roth

We are one red pubic hair from getting fooled again.  And the wannabe domestic terrorist mouth breathers can’t wait for their premiums to triple only to be denied coverage once they’ve been forced to move from trailer to tent.

It’s sick.  Pun forcefully intended.

Call yer motherfuckin people or this shit is over.  Call them.  Understand, change will end here if you don’t.

The death of change will be on us, not the one man who promised to bring it if we stand with him.

Bring it or lose it.

The buck stops on your kitchen table.

Drinks for my friends.

Greasy ones from this Jimboy’s joint here in town.  Cheese and cheap salty ground beef that will make your ankles swell.  Hard shell corn tortilla envelopes made malleable by the  copious orange grease and cheap yellow cheese.  Order an extra large Arnold Palmer because yer gonna need it.

Man I need some pot.

Life is all about curveballs and and gutterballs.

I can’t believe the lies and exaggerations of the right wing sleaze shovel jockeys.  I heard the Human Shitsmear, Limbaugh, proclaim offhandedly that the crowd for the 9/12 rally was a million plus this morning.  My jaw did not drop.  I took my my morning crap while I lamented stupidity.  Later I learned that Fox actually showed decade old pictures of the Million Man March to bolster the lie.

Hello God?  It’s me, irony.  Oh, and I’m inexcusably, as in voluntarily, retarded and therefore dangerous.

His subtlety belied the giant lie he knew he was foisting upon his audience of millions of mouth breathing cro-magnon foreheaded, backwardass, loser sycophants.  Spell check is furious with that last sentence.  The socialist Washington DC Fire Dept. estimated the crowd to be sixty thousand at best.  Some reports have it as low as twenty five thousand.

So much for the Beckian big tent circus of discontent.

Invalid soldiers, a fart in a whirlwind.  A puff of neanderthal air.  A mere mote or eye booger, in the eye of truth, justice and the American way.

Much ado about nothing at all.  Still, I’m really pissed off.

If we do some rough arithmetic based on on the median IQ actually present, I feel safe in estimating the crowd as being far less than would be required to fill your average Wal-Mart.  Disgusting.  Appalling.  I watched an unscripted clip on facebook today that revealed these mental midgets lack the capacity to discern a meaningful difference between fascism, communism or socialism, they in fact, experience profound difficulty distinguishing between plants and animals.  They hope all vegetation is in possession of a soul so that it may attend services and donate to the NRA.

Get thee back to the bog you mole and wart infested reptiles.  Their females struggle with dark black facial stubble and psoriasis.  They pollute our gene pool and water supply and poison the national discourse.  They of all people require and would benefit from government subsidy.  We do need camps for you.  Pestilent and dirty.  Please remove them for they are stupid and contagious.

What I’m telling you is these birthers, deathers, tenthers, twelvers and goddamn nimrods are foul and deleterious of our social fabric.  Dangerous idiots.  What so inspires these jackasses?  What binds them?  Where lies the crude commonality?  The glue? What could  possibly be the low common denominator?

Well, whether they know it or not, they are all, every single one of them, including their televised and broadcasted fomentors, racist fucking fucks.  Stupid, dentally challenged, pinheaded white trash.  Rationally challenged and pridefully irresponsible.

Afraid, suspicious and fearful for no sane reason.

Goddamn dumb.

I loathe them and their willful, lazy ignorance.  They conspicuously consume the snake oil so audaciously proffered by charlatan frauds like Hannity, The Human Shitsmear
(Limbaugh) and Glenn Televangeashit Beck.  They follow and believe anything anyone one of these guys purports, proclaims or posits and they are all, candidates for a prefrontal lobotomy.

Perhaps a new health care deal would rid them from us.  Maybe that’s why their so afraid.

Forgive my elaborate aspersion but it’s my sincere and most humbly earnest neurophilosophy.  If only I could shame these people.  Call them out one by one and show them how dumb and carcinogenic they are.  Just what fools they are and the damage they do.

I’d do the bonedance with Serena Williams in a heart beat.  As an agnostic, I have zero reservation in telling you that good God she’s hotter than Georgia asphalt.  Kanye West is a crotch dweller.  What a looselipped cashier.  Kanye should boil his own head.  Hubris on parade.

Drinks for my friends.

For the past month or so I’ve been inhabiting my parent’s house in Carson City Nevada, by myself.  I’m here on business in the town I grew up in to hopefully take advantage of old contacts.  It’s not going too bad.  My folks are retired and travel as much as they can in a 38 foot motorhome more luxurious and better appointed than most apartments I’ve lived in.  It has a satellite dish for the all important NASCAR contests along with at least three televisions, it even has a washer and dryer.

Yesterday they arrived home after months away.  Mother has a kidney stone(s) to be dealt with via an ultrasound procedure.  I’m hoping it will be painless.  Otherwise they wouldn’t have returned until early December.

Not far from home they met heavy weather.  A sandstorm that compromised an awning on my father’s beloved rig.

My father is seventy seven years old.

We had a pleasant supper of tomato basil bisque and BLTs; we’ve been blessed simultaneously with an affluence of tomatoes of exceptional caliber.  My folks brought home bags of them and my sister dropped off gorgeous heirlooms along with peaches and handmade olive oil soap yesterday morning.  My family understands a good tomato.  A nice malbec followed by  a peppery shiraz.  Great conversation.  I adore my parents.  Bright, well informed, kind, compassionate, loving and remarkably open minded.  We caught up on all things family, my Mother’s nine siblings, politics and specifically the dumb fucking racist Republicans.

In case you wondered, I’m a product of progressive non-biased thinking.

My father mentioned casually how my mother would no longer allow him on a ladder.  My mother and I discussed how well he’s doing after a series of illnesses.  About two years ago he was hospitalized after a colonoscopy revealed a substantial tumor.  There were complications and by Christmas, things were more than dicey.  Before that he’d torn a rotator cuff after a night of getting shithoused with my cousin Derek at a NASCAR race in Phoenix.  Sometime after the surgery, he injured his back after falling from a ramp while helping to construct a porch for my cousin Dee Dee with my uncle Fred.

My old man is one tough sonafabitch.  No shit.  One eye lost in a barfight some 45 years ago.  A retired concrete foreman that coveted the idea of the bigger they are, the harder they fall.  He was fond of proving it to himself.  Left home at 12 years old after completing the sixth grade.  Honest, brave, fearless and a firm believer in hard work.  The kind of man that might not make cops obsolete, but certainly lawyers and courts wouldn’t be necessary if all men had his honesty, ethics and ideals.

I stayed up late writing a new A&M chapter, basking in the warmth of my parents return and writing another chapter for the book about my time in the music business.  Nostalgia fueled my muse and I went with it.  I was very happy to see my parents.

I was awakened this morning around eleven or so by mother.  She was asking me to move my car so she could get her car out.  There are two other vehicles so I rolled over to face her a little confused.  “Your father has fallen off a ladder and I need to get him to the hospital”.  I think I said “fuck me” out loud.  I rushed to pull on my pants and t-shirt and made my way to the driveway.  As I pulled my car out and away, I flashed on the blood I’d seen on my mother’s blouse.

I walked towards their hoopty Buick in the garage and there he sat in the backseat, head bowed, feet not in the car yet.  I touched him on the shoulder and said something like what the fuck happened?  He didn’t really raise his head as much as he raised his eyes.  He was in pain and a little confused.  His face was bleeding from where it had bounced off the cement.  “I fucked up”, he said.  I asked my mother if she had her phone and she didn’t.  I rushed to fetch it off the counter.

As they pull out of the garage I knuckle the window and give my old man a thumbs up.  He gives me one back and says take care of my puppy.  My mom echos it, take care of the puppy.  Billy Jean The Tripod Lab.  No worries I tell them.

I was left with my thoughts for hours.  His hips must be fine because he was ambulatory.  The head bleeds profusely, but their didn’t seem to be an inordinate amount of blood so hopefully that’s not a big deal.  His ribs I thought, he must have cracked some ribs.  That’s gonna hurt.  I understand that as well as I can without ever suffering it myself.  It goddamn hurts.

A few hours later mom returns.  X-Rays and a Cat Scan but no word yet.  We’re both hoping it’s just cracked ribs.  He’s in a lot of pain, they give him morphine.  She collects some pajamas and a robe and heads back.  I call my sister to tell her what’s happened.  No way I was gonna call her until I had some info.  She wants to head out immediately and I advise her to wait.  Let’s just see what the tests tell us.  Probably just cracked ribs I tell her hopefully.  He’s tough.  Hold tight.  He’ll be in a world of hurt but we know how tough he is.  She says she’ll shower, prepare a meal for us all and be ready for my call.

After five p.m. and no word from mom so I call.  She can’t get a signal at the hospital but calls me back minutes later.  Six broken, not cracked but broken ribs and a cracked shoulder.  No internal injuries and they’ve stitched up his head.  He has asthma and the doctors are worried about his blood oxygen as it’s excruciating for him to breathe deep. He’s on oxygen and they want to keep him for a few days.  She says she’ll be home once he’s comfortable, settled in a room and has a morphine drip.

I call my sister and in her inimitable style, she says a meal will be cooked and she’ll head to the hospital.  I tell her she doesn’t need to do either because mom is there and I’m an adult now.

Uncle Larry calls just to chat and I fill him in.  I love this man.  The orneriest bastard I’ve ever met.  Woke up with his socks in my mouth once.  Liked to blow his nose and put the tissue back in the box.  Decorated a Christmas tree with my mothers undergarments and left it in the front yard.   A former jockey, he liked to shock me as a three year old with his homemade version of a cattle prod.  Despite all that, he’s among the sweetest men to ever suck air.  I got him back but that’s a story for a different day.

He recently kicked the ass of unbeatable cancer through sheer force of will and an indomitable spirit.  We all thought he was a goner but the little bastard whipped it.  It was grim and he somehow handed the big C it’s ass.  He said to me, “goddamn I hate to hear that”.  As a onetime jockey, he understands very well the pain of broken ribs.  We told each other we loved and he said he’d be in touch.  I’m sure he will.  Probably everyday, even though my old man hates to talk on the phone.

Not long after that, the doorbell rings and it’s my brother in law Todd and my nephew Keaton with a basket of goods.  Two different kinds of ice cream, sliced peaches, cucumbers in vinegar & oil, bread and a hamburger helper casserole.  At the same time, sister Tammy has arrived at the hospital with a prepared meal for my father.

My mother is exhausted and tells my sister he’ll be fine, that she doesn’t need to stay.  My mom says to her, “You have to work in the morning”, my sister says, “Well, that’s why I’m here now”.  She then shouts down some nurses who want to remove some sheet from under my father they used to transfer him from the gurney to his bed.  They insist, she stands her ground.  He’s in pain and my sister is not having anymore.  Period.  There really is no use in fucking with my sister.

As I write this, she’s either snoring or watching my father intently in his hospital room.  She will spend the night in a chair and go straight to work as she did for weeks two years or so ago.  I arrived to give her a few much needed nights off.  My family does not fuck around.  My sister, well,  she is fierce and sincere with her love.  Intrude in the way of my sister’s love, loyalty or affection at your peril.  She will mow you down.

I am lucky.  I see a hospital room in my future with the man who made me goddamnit.

Drinks for my friends.

Surreal.

Life gets more and more strange and I thank the powers that be for that.  I am grateful.

I’m not bored.

I sort of covet anarchy.  I kinda like chaos.  I’m a big drinker and like to burn one.  Indeed, after a few glasses of gin, the wing of a plane can be achieved rather easily by a well packed bowl or two.  Maybe a percocet or uh, oxycontin, when the Devil’s weed is unavailable.

I’m just sayin’.  It puts me firmly in my thoughts.  This blog fueled by gin only.  Tanqueray ’cause it was on sale but I prefer Bombay Sapphire.  I covet the bottle whether it be green or blue.

” ……..don’t doubt that the randomness of life is in some way synchronized with all the things that we don’t
understand about the universe. It’s what we do know that confounds us.                                                                                                                                                                                       All the while, what we don’t know blows us along. ” -Me

Now, as much as I favor the random, let me be clear, I’m not about violence.  Violence confuses and disgusts me.  Religion confuses and disgusts me as well.  As does politics.

I need to be disgusted and confused.  I like politics.

Let’s talk about what I like.  Dean Wormer’s wife from Animal House is my original milf.  I’m not sure why.  She was dirty and  somewhat sophisticated.  Well, her and Robbie Chiappe’s mom, Pam.  She was hotter than Georgia asphalt.  Sucks that she’s probably in her sixties now.  Oh, and Julie Newmar.  Damn, all these women that I wouldn’t have known what to do with even if I had the chance, are old now.  This concept really chaps my ass lately.  Not fair.

I think it’s important to always have a jar of decent pickles in the fridge.  Various cheeses including Bob’s Big Boy Bleu Cheese Dressing.  I like white meat smoked turkey franks from Ballpark.  A selection of gourmet mustards and no other brand but Best Foods Mayonnaise; Hellmann’s east of the Mississippi.  Olives are good and so is a decent tapenade.  Crackers.   It’s important to have good olive oil and balsamic vinegar on hand.

Good God the right wing is fucking nuts.  The more they marginalize themselves the more violent their tantrums become.  Blind shithouse batshit.  I’m completely confident in stating, with all rational conviction, that the underlying, indeed barely concealed catalyst, is nothing other than racism.  They fear the pigmentation.  They held with certainty the notion that neither a black man or a woman could be elected president and thus their brains were dashed and broken on the rocks of the emerging ethic of American progress.

It really is that simple.  The truth is simply this bare.  Stark.  Austere.

It was one of the late night hosts who wondered how this ass clown Wilson from Sanford territory, was able to endure eight years of Dumbya telling him everything was just fine without losing his shit and then barking during a nationally televised address before both houses of congress, prime time.  The obvious answer, it wasn’t a half black liberal president saying it.  That and he’s a goddamn moron.

By far the largest concentration of Birthers reside in the South.  Not so coincidentally, the least educated and most likely to be Republican region in America.  Not all Republicans are hypocrites, but if you’re a hypocrite, you’re most likely a Republican, as the saying goes.

I really hate these pricks.

How much longer do we put up with this insanity?

Eddie Murphy said in 48 Hours to a bunch of backward ass country fucks, “I’m your worst nightmare, a nigger with a badge.”

That is precisely what’s afoot here at our Circle K.  I’ve taken this tack before, but I’m starting to get really spooked.  I mean instead of being appropriately embarrassed by Turret’s Wilson, many in the GOP are emboldened.  Before this, we had screaming astroturfers strapped to the nines at town halls.  Birthers, Deathers, Tenthers……each manifestation of racial hatred more ignoble and meretricious than the last.

Palin accuses the President of demonizing our troops on her facebook page for mentioning the cost of the war of no reason in his speech before congress.  I thought it was solid irony.  We spent this much killing people, why not spend next to nothing saving lives?  I’m still hopeful they run this clueless hag in 2012.  Oh, the burlesque.  Please Santa, I’ll be real good ’til then.  I’ll give up my two front teeth.

Glenn Beck, Fox news’ most pulchritudinous clown, the same dickhead who claims the levees were allowed to fail to cover up ACORN corruption, will be exploiting 9/11 in the most audacious of ways with his 9/12 project.  A march on the Capitol and festivities funded by Dick Armey’s  Freedom Works (charging as much as $10,000.00 a pop for participation) and co-sponsored by NARLO, a domestic terrorist organization that anticipates with zeal, a violent revolution against our government and secession leading to civil war.  Joe “you lie” Wilson will be speaking along with crazies like Mike Pence and Jim DeMint.  A clusterfuck of mental invalids.  Astroturf at it’s most egregious.

Ever more frightening.  Ever more ominous.  Something wicked this way comes.  I’ve gone from disgusted, to amused, to fearful.  The climate gets indefatigably uglier and ever more maniacal.  Death threats against the President of The United States of America are up over four hundred percent compared to the previous administration.  Feel me?

“Its all building up to something,
Something that can be repeated with fire” -Pete Townshend

You see where I’m going with this.  I’m wondering where it stops.  Where does it end?  Can it be thwarted and how?  I really don’t know.  The far right base shrinks as  desperation blooms.  The animal is wounded.  Nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal in fear and cornered.

The hate train steaming under the guise of our first amendment is poised to do damage that can’t be undone.  I’m confused and disgusted.

This is where we are.  Happy 9/11 everybody.

Drinks for my friends.

He spoke clearly.  With confidence and conviction.

Righteous ferocity.

“Ours is not the first generation to understand the dire need for health reform. And I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.”

No more Rope-a-dope boys and girls.  Ha.

“We did not come here to fear the future; we came here to shape it.”

“The danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little”

“If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.”

“But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the
calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve
it.”

As for the “Deathers”:

“Such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.”

And the Republicans.  The Fucking Republicans like Boehner and Cantor and McConnell and Hatch, who sat seething and smirking with turds in their mouths.  Transparent and stupid.  Cantor texting.  What a dick.  The whiplash of your arrogance is on the way.  Half of you will be gone come 2010.  I can’t wait.

Republican Joe Wilson actually shouted “You lie” while Obama assured us that reform will not cover illegal immigrants.  Fucktard.  Our Man flashed anger and moved on without missing a beat.  A superhuman burst of restraint, composure and civility.  A class act Our Man.  Not less than brilliant in the face of callow contemptible disrespect directed at a man who has earned and deserves nothing but respect.  He didn’t miss a beat, wasn’t rattled or even distracted.  We are lucky to have this man leading our country.  Forgive my gushing, but that brief moment reinforced everything I admire about our president.

At the end of the day, Joe Wilson did us all a favor by exposing what jackasses the contemporary GOP are.  Thanks Joe, you’re still an asshole, but I thank you for being one.

He stared down those Republicans.  Watch it.  When he looks to the right on television he’s looking to his left in the chamber.  The irony of where Republicans sit has never been lost on me.  Observe the steel of his countenance and the fire in his eyes.  He was picking them out and staring them down individually.  One by one.  The unspoken question, are you reptiles or humans?  His words and his gestures signaled unequivocally that the blatant ridiculous fuckery is over.

You know Fox news carried some reality show instead of the speech.

Whatever.

He delivered unambiguous  and vigorous support for a public option with some amount of caveat.  We’ll have to wait and see but I welcome the predilection.

Then Charles Boustany appeared on my screen and lied.  The same boilerplate, fear based bullshit.  He spoke as though he hadn’t heard the speech the president had just given.  Actually, given logistical constraints, he obviously hadn’t.  It was a joke sans punchline.  Pathetic, out of touch and he looked a fool as much as Jindal did.  How do they get these poor bastards to do this?

The GOP are famous for exploiting the stupid, often of late towards their own demise.

The Republican party has never looked more like a bunch of dickheads than they did tonight.  They have marginalized themselves with help of an unforeseen catalyst of Barack Obama’s expert political judo.

I have been frustrated for months now at the political calculus from the White House.  The passive taking of blow after blow on the ropes like some cheesy boxing movie.  I was disheartened and becoming bewildered.  Now I wonder if he really did know what he was doing the entire time.  Let them swing and shout, taunt and lie until they trod heavily on their own pudenda and cease to lay leather at all on anything that matters.

Masterful.

He may just be that good.

Wow.

Can one speech, even if before the entire congress and a national television audience (except Fox), function as a game changer for such a momentous and hotly contested concern?  The question on the lips of almost every progressive in America since it was announced.  We shall see.  It is more than incumbent on me however,  to point out that this is no ordinary president.  By that I mean he is extraordinary.  He did exceptionally well tonight.  Tone, nuance, sincerity and an overt sinewy rigor were all on display.

Impressive and I’m impressed.  The character of our country.  The letter from Teddy Kennedy.  He framed it earnestly and effectively as a moral imperative and I have no reservation in declaring him to be absolutely right about that.  Invoking Teddy was an appropriate, as well as emotional homage to a man who declared this the cause of his life.

Obama has once again acquitted himself a very smart man.  A very sensitive man.  An incredibly capable man.  Deft and adroit and not to be underestimated.

Awesome.

He came off the ropes to swing hard and with precision.  An expert boxer against a reckless and stupid brawler.  They retire to their respective corners, our man fresh and with lightning in his eyes and fists furious.  The brawler with legs of rubber, pukes his bloody mouthpiece, head swimming eyes confused as his crew goes to work and dreading the bell.

Todd Westergard, you may have been correct sir.

Show us this until it’s done Mr. President and we are golden.

Well done Mr. President.  Very well done.

Drinks for my friends.

After that communist/socialist, hypnotizing, brain washing, indoctrinating speech by our elected president yesterday, I felt the need to check on all of you.

The Human Shitsmear complained today that Obama’s speech was an attempt to rob our youth of their God Given right to be losers.  I’m not kidding.  I heard him say it on EIB Network live, on his golden EV RE20 microphone.  It’s fascism indeed to encourage our youth to be something other than losers.  How un-American.

Rush crapped himself while announcing this philosophical gem.

I don’t mind telling you, I’m a little confused.

I just had a lively debate with the mostly ignorant and under informed housewife denizens of Carson City Nevada.  They appear to have given up for now in the face of a vicious fusillade of facts and demand for the same.  One actually accused me of being pedantic, which I took as a compliment when she was unable to answer exactly how.  I suspect she knew not of what she spoke.

I’m just so confused.  What makes these people tick so irrationally?  Yeah, it’s a free country.  I guess.  But when we have have major televised media opposing and even demonizing of our elected President for addressing our children with nothing more than a message of hard work, hope and aspiration, I can’t help but see racism in it’s most insidious and cloaked derivation.  Crude and neanderthal enough for it’s purveyors to deny it while they pursue it with zeal and absentmindedness.

Forgive them for they are not aware of what they do?

It may indeed be a lost cause.

At the recommendation of an ancient genius friend, Master Michael J. Bacon. I bring you Bertrand Russell:

“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”

“Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.”

“In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.”

“Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.”

My favorite:

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”

I wrote this next one:

” ……..don’t doubt that the randomness of life is in some way synchronized with all the things that we don’t
understand about the universe. It’s what we do know that confounds us.                                                                                                                                                                                       All the while, what we don’t know blows us along. ”

Drinks for my friends.

Last night I pontificated vitriolic over the idiots that think President Obama’s address to America’s school children is some sort of socialist plot to indoctrinate them.  It goes without saying it’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.   A shining example of the stupidity, ignorance and racism that still runs rampant in this not so great country.  It’s sad.  It breaks my heart.  I’m not kidding.  It breaks my heart.

The one man who represents most of these moron’s best shot at a better life is vilified by them.  They are programmed, indoctrinated if you will, by those shallow, transparent entities who have their very worst interests at heart. Vicious irony.  Cruel.  The blind and deaf hatred, suspicion and fear sometimes overwhelms even a cynic like me.

I stand in awe.

It’s all about blatant, overt avarice.  Simple.  Plain.  Machiavellian in the most perverse sense.  Sociopathic in it’s indifference.

It moves me.  I can’t help but write about it.  It’s my therapy.  My vent.  My catharsis.

It occurs to me that the difference between liberals and conservatives is profound.  Duh.  Aside from the obvious, I’d like to point out the less than.  Liberals have a tendency to be disgusted with conservatives.  So much so they are reluctant or refuse to listen to them at all.  Yet they are still willing to investigate, seek alternative points of view and even sample the rantings of those irresponsible broadcasters who’s stock in trade is the fomenting of hate and judgment.

Conservatives on the other hand, refuse to listen at all.  To read or investigate.  They do not want to know.  They don’t want to hear or see anything contrary to what they’ve been told.  They don’t care.  They are unwilling to care.  What their icons tell them is better than good.  It is their truth, regardless and despite.  It’s all they need or want.  What lies beyond is confusion, vast tracts of gray between black and white.  George W. Bush was famous for not doing nuance or subtlety.

The great unwashed take orders very well.  They adhere and obey very well because they don’t want to to think for themselves.  Intellectually lazy and spiritually complacent.   To discern or debate confounds them and makes them very uncomfortable.  They have an overriding need for all or nothing.  Right or wrong.  No in between.  From there, the pattern is clear.  God is good, all knowing and all seeing.  God will keep them from harm or even mistake because he is always right.  Follow God and you’re cool no matter what.  You simply cannot wrong if you go with God.  It’s an absolute and the contemporary conservative covets the absolute.

Without absolutes, they flail and flop, sweat and panic.  They are agitated and bewildered because their whole system of belief is under a fire that only logic and rationale can bring to bear.  What follows is desperation, irrationality, lies and obfuscation.  They show up at political events with guns and rhetoric invoking Nazis, communism and Armageddon in the biblical sense.  The only thing they have in the face of an onslaught of truth is what they see as their absolutes; the lie of contemporary Christianity, morality as they define it and the righteousness of their twisted concept of patriotism.

They spew an invective infused jingoism and mediaeval archaic notions of religious superiority.

It’s like battling robots.

By the way, their next actions will be violent.  Violence will be justified in their minds.  They imagine it as we speak.  Many of them on the fringe have already  embraced it.  They shoot doctors don’t they?

This how we arrive at tomorrow.  Our president will address the children of America and simply encourage them to be good people.  Work hard, study hard and dare to achieve and aspire.  That is all.  But the right wing paints it in very broad strokes as something entirely different and I for one understand exactly why.  I’ve just described it to you as best I can.

Without further ado, I give you his words to be spoken tomorrow, so you may judge for yourself the potential of his dangerous and controversial words.  If there is a God, may he help us all.

“The President: “Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.”

“Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book.

Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.”

Drinks for my friends.

As a progressive Liberal in the 21st century, I am by necessity, maybe by gravity, a cynic.  Still, since this story broke, my jaw has been glued, nailed, to the floor.  The audacity, the profane vanity.  The shallow disfigured grotesquerie.

Found this post on facebook last night.

She writes:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             “please remember that there’s a nationwide public broadcast from Barry on Tuesday morning in our children’s schools!!!!! I am sending a note to school saying that I don’t trust what might come out of his mouth. My children don’t want to be exposed to socialist indoctrination.  My kids know how important it is to make money and be able to keep it for their own wants and needs.”

 I write:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       “Please delete me. “My children don’t want to be exposed to socialist indoctrination.”???

I’ve so had it with you ignorant asstards. You have just uttered the stupidest most underinformed crap that can possibly be typed. By all means keep your little neocons out of school so that they miss the message to stay in school, work hard and succeed and believe in the American dream.

Please, if your chronic malaise is genetic, we right thinking people hope you’ll ignorantly withhold any advantage they may benefit from.

You people kill me! Willful ignorance. Code speak for fear of a progressive black Democrat.
Yep, racism.

What I’m trying to say is piss up a rope you stupid ignorant bitch.

Delete me or I will be here to call you on every intellectually irresponsible thing you say from now on.

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.”

See what I’m saying?

Insulting someone personally is not something I usually stoop to unless they’ve done as much on my own territory, you know, like on my blog.  Of course, I take great delight in it at that point.  It’s just that I’m so completely frustrated with the underinformed, the great unwashed who don’t read or research or bother to pay at least a modicum of attention, but instead, shout from the couch in an intellectually lazy stupor having just watched Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity or listened to the Human Shitsmear on the drive to Wal Mart.

I fucking hate it.  And I loathe those who would  absentmindedly propagate it.  The bacteria, the cancer advanced by slow eyed fish wandering our sidewalks, malls and supermarkets.  Brainless zombies.

I’m in my hometown of Carson City Nevada on business and it’s surreal.  Today I bought the Sunday edition of the Nevada Appeal.  On the opinion page I discovered the following in a sidebar entitled “Your View”.

QUESTION: Would you let [sic] your child watch President Obama’s back-to-school address to children?

“Absolutely not because no other president has ever done it and there’s no reason for him to do it either.”  -Elaine Torres, 54

Nevermind that the George Bush Sr. did it, as did president Reagan and he used it as a vehicle to promote tax cuts for the wealthy as part of his trickle down economic folly, to America’s children.

The overall poll ended up at 50.79 percent being against Carson City’s school children being allowed to hear The President of America’s address.  I’m guessing they fear that socialist indoctrination thing.  Whatever that is.

How the fuck did we get here?  What the hell is going on?  Is fear of a half African American Democratic President of the United States of America that visceral to the stupid and racist?

Um, yeah, it’s socialism.  Like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  Forgive me,  we all forgot about those hallmarks of American life and the evil they represent.

The explosion of ignorance leaves me dismayed and disgusted.  Each action has an equal and opposite reaction.  Still, I am in awe.  Reckless hyperbole runs rampant while Obama maintains, clings even, to decorum.  Polite and deferential while the minority rips his administration apart.  Apologizing for Van Jones instead of rising to his defense while he steps down.  Praising assholes like Grassley and defending noodle dicked, ineffectual Democrats like Baucus.  Enough really is enough.

This is bullshit.

These are important times.  Events are severe, conspicuous and exigent.

This has really been allowed to be way too fucked up.  I for one have had it.  Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.

All eyes on his speech Wednesday before both houses.  A time to define all things I hope.  I want to know where Our Man is at.  I need to know.  It’s evolution into a circus maximus of  clusterfuck is madness.  If he’s going to be bold, this is literally, his last chance.

Those of us who elected you are not here to fuck around.  Bring it or be Jimmy Carter, despite a majority in the House and Senate.  We want you to throw down even if you lose.  If they don’t have your back, it will be their peril.  Let us take care of that.  Fight.  You know why you’re there.  Carpe diem.  Now.

Waffle on a public option and you lose us.

NOW DAMNIT.  NOW.

Drinks for my friends.

I hardly know where to begin.

Just when I think the army of ignorant, mouth breathing retards who oppose all things Obama, consistently and without grace or agility and discrepant against their very own interests, cannot possibly get anymore hypocritically and incoherently shrill, well, they pull down their pants, run around screaming, shitting and pissing themselves.

Now these roundheads are encouraging their children to skip school on Tuesday to save their fragile minds from some evil socialist indroctination by the President of The United States.  You can’t write this shit.

My old friend Gabby put it this way:  “Don’t worry kids, Obama’s not gonna ask you to procreate or practice loading your 45s.  He just gonna ask you to do your homework, which I guess from the conservative stand point, is a horrible thing.  Ok, so all you Republican Kids, just go back to your unprotected sex and guns.”
-Gabrielle Birchack

Racism, ignorance, stupidity and fear are alive and well in America.  It reminds me of leaving wet food as a treat for the warehouse cat at work, only to discover the bowl squirming and glistening with maggots the next morning.  I remember my disappointment and nausea inducing disgust vividly.  It was summer and I was a little saddened that my gesture had been so perverted by some of earths lowest creatures.

Well, it’s summer.

They would have us believe and likely believe themselves, that health care reform will:

1) Ration care, deny treatment to the elderly based on whether a government death panel deems them worthy and deserving.  It will do neither.  Um, by the way, health care is rationed rather egregiously in America today.  Weeks, sometimes months for an appointment with your doctor if you have insurance.  Automated phone voices instruct us that in the event of an emergency, meaning care is needed any more urgently than say, a month, hang up and call 911.  The chances of your insurance paying for the specific treatment, prescription etc. that you and your doctor have agreed is most efficacious is as low as sixty percent in many cases.  People have died and are dying as a result of the insurance company coming between patient and doctor.

Sounds like rationing to me.  It’s not just the uninsured that are going bankrupt or literally dying.  Sounds like death and or bankruptcy panels to me.

2) All illegal aliens, undocumented workers et al. will be automatically covered at our expense.

Guess what?  They already are.  They, as well as uninsured Americans go to an emergency room, as there are laws in all fifty states mandating that no one be turned away from emergency rooms.  We pay for it in higher costs across the board.  It should be noted, there is no provision in any of the bills in committee, that provide for care to illegals.

3) This is just the first step in a government take over of health care.

My first reaction is so what?  We’re the only modern industrialized nation without it and the wealthiest.  Contrary to the opposition’s chronically mendacious bloviating, those people in those other countries are quite happy with the care they receive.  Perfect?  No.  Would they choose to do without it?  In a word, nofuckingway.  Then, the fact that Medicare and Medicaid are tremendously popular in this country, despite both programs being entirely administrated by the government and the appearance that most of the opposition are willfully ignorant of this, reveals the argument to be specious on it’s face.

They use Stephen Hawking as example of someone who would never survive socialized medicine, despite socialized medicine being the best and only reason Mr. Hawking is still with us.  They are full of shit.  Idiots.  Empty blowhards.  Liars.

The stated goal is to increase efficiency and foster competition to bring down costs and end the chronic, unchecked avarice of the insurance and drug industries.

Every year, insurance company profits go up, premiums go up and the the number of insured goes down.  Remember, one way or another, despite the rampant suffering, it’s you and me who pay for those uninsured whether we like it or not.  Some estimates have the price of health insurance requiring half the median income of Americans within ten years.  Are you ready for $20,000.00 plus premiums?

4) We can’t pay for it.

I will admit, this perhaps their most legitimate protest.  But first, I say to you who would tout it, so what?  Remember Reagan spewing the nonsense of tax cuts to none other than our children during a period of double digit inflation, interest rates and unemployment?  Remember your icon telling us that deficits don’t matter?  So why do you care?  Why all of the sudden are you so ardently in favor of fiscal responsibility?  Why so vehemently concerned about the price our children will pay?  I smell political opportunism.  I smell hypocrisy.  You folks stink of intellectual dishonesty.  You folks reek of goddamn stupidity.

I’m a firm believer that increases in efficiency and a slim tax increase on those who’ve prospered so plenteously the last eight years will go a very long way towards funding a program that will improve the life of virtually every American.  Failing that, let me say this very plainly, we could opt to spend somewhat less than the near trillion dollars we spend each and every year to kill brown people overseas.  It’s just that simple.  Kill less brown people and foment life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all of us, including the brown people.  

The fact is, that without a robust public option to not only cover the 50 million who have fallen through the the cracks, but to obviate the greed and vacuum of compassion of the status quo, any “reform” legislation is antithetical and more than likely worse than nothing at all.

See, it will fail to incentivise competition and nothing will change. The simplest and most comprehensive as well as comprehensible way to do this is expand Medicare appropriately.  A walk in the park.

As to the trigger idea that has surfaced of late, I’m calling bullshit on that.  Ostensibly, it would give insurance companies a few more years to clean up their act before a public option would be implemented.  It won’t work.  The dirty greedy bastards will conduct business as usual at best, daring the powers that be to do what they haven’t been able to do for half a century anyway.  A pretty safe bet on their part.  At worst, they will go for broke, wring us all dry in the time allowed, take the money and run, much like the Bush administration and it’s corporate cronies did with everything including the war, leaving a gigantic mess, nearly beyond repair.  For eight years it was open field running for the plutocracy under Dick-in-Bush.  It’s insane to think they’d behave any differently under the same circumstances.  These people care far less about you than your government and that’s a mouthfull.

The real reason for such virulent opposition to health care reform is that it is literally the first, and therefore most important, domino to be tipped.  Should it lose it’s center of gravity, the horror show that is the great unwashed will be subject to any socialist whimsy we in the majority see fit to impose on their jingoistic, empty headed sloganeering asses.

We may choose to prevent bloody mass murders by over armed nut jobs by pressing for incrementally better gun control.  No, we’re not interested in taking your fucking guns away, even though you dress ridiculously to kill defenseless animals.  We may seek to at least make sure that creationism can’t be taught exclusively, but mandate that evolution at least be offered along side it.  We may just, *gasp*, insist that gay people be treated fairly under all aspects of law, including marriage.

The prerogative to get all bold and righteous will be upon us.

We might legalize the demon weed, in order to tax it, better regulate it and keep it out of the hands of teenagers.  Legalize hemp production and we’ve got oil, paper, textiles, plastics, even high protein food, all renewable in twelve weeks, no pesticides and no detrimental environmental impact whatsoever.  We may push to stop imprisoning all non violent drug offenders because we currently incarcerate more people per capita than any country on earth at $30k per.  You can bet we’ll pursue green industry more aggressively because even if we’re wrong about global warming, and we’re not, there’s nothing wrong with cleaning up the water we all drink and the air we all breath.

Our sun vomits more energy in an hour than we use in a millennium.  Might as well work that shit.  It’s free beyond the technology to collect it.

The whole human race can survive without war.

The churches will have to endure a renewed and vigorous scrutiny.  The message will be, get the hell out of and stay the hell out of politics or your considerable largess will be taxed.  Oh, and maybe, just maybe some real and actual campaign finance reform.  I’m getting carried away here but I hope I’ve scared the living shit out of all you neocons and thoughtless, unpatriotic, yes unpatriotic, dittoheads and obsequies followers of Hannity, Beck and O’Reilly.  Let’s be honest, you’re already scared shitless because a half African American, progressive Democrat is your President.

We know why you show up to town halls armed to the teeth.  It’s because you’re stupid and scared.  We’re not at all impressed.

The opposite also applies, should the first all important domino fail to be moved off it’s axis by the will of the people and a pantywaste full majority Democratic administration, any subsequent metaphorical monoliths will be twice as hard to encourage toward a capitulation to gravity.  We will be left with an administration weaker than that of Jimmy Carter and a better than even chance our next president will be some empty headed dipshit like Sarah Palin or crazy eyed Michele Bachmann (God will have whispered in her ear).

This is the first fight and it’s the most important because of the obvious and enormous precedent.  They know it on a sub-genius level almost as well as we do.  Get involved.  Contact your representatives, sign petitions.  You want change you can believe in?  Get up and get out.  This is no time to fuck around.

Drinks for my friends.

There were these two guys.  Ed Stasium and Paul Hamingson.  Ed was a little crazy and Paul was little sane.  Yin and yang.  Ed had a bit of of an Alfred E. Newman grin and Paul had a wandering eye and a Weird Al Yankovich vibe.  Ed was the producer and Paul was the engineer.  Some of the most pleasant times I ever spent in a control room were with these guys.

I liked them, very much.  I learned a shitload from them both.  They both had a quiet methodical discipline and a humor just as subtle.

I learned the art of a good flange using just an AMS off the sync head.  Monitoring quietly through anything cheap.  Bringing something to read to a session with Pauly and Ed was important because they didn’t want me bouncing around the control room with nothing to do.

Both of them, good old friends of Mark Harvey.

They weren’t just two guys.  I’m proud to count them as friends.  I hope it’s not too presumptuous to hope they feel at least somewhat the same about me.  Actually, I think can be confident Pauly does.  We’ve been corresponding a little lately.

They had a system, a major component of which was zero drama.  They did their thing without angst, urgency or anger.  No eighteen hour days or at least as few as were absolutely necessary.  Methodology gorgeous.  They would have preferred Geetus as their assistant but they weren’t unhappy with me, I hope.  I think.  Paul supervised me.  He made sure I documented and took care of the things that were important to both he and Ed.

As a second engineer, the job is to make the engineers job easier and to be “wood” in the eyes of the producer.  I was never an expert at either.  It’s true I have kind of a big personality and it got me in trouble more than once.  Ed and Paul never seemed to mind much.  They were as egoless as I would ever encounter in a control room.

Understand that Ed Stasium was as luminous and accomplished as anyone I would have the privilege to work with.  From the Chambers Brothers to Sha Na Na.  The Ramones, The Talking Heads, Soul Asylum, Living Colour and Mick Jagger.  The Smithereens seminal album “11”, Motorhead and the Reverend Horton Heat.  I don’t think I ever tracked with Ed and Paul, but it was a pleasure to assist them both on the mixes I did with them.  They knew what they were doing and the vibe was focused but relaxed.  They made clear what they expected of me and it was relatively minimal.

It occurs to me now, they didn’t really need an assistant at all, much less me.  Pauly was on it.  I was perhaps the shittiest assistant at A&M studios, save for maybe Randy Wine.  Wine was way smarter and more capable, he just gave far less of a shit.  That says a lot.

Fred Stadium and Pauly.  Always a sweet gig I was happy to have whenever the Geetus wasn’t available.  “Did ya prick her ya prick ya?” was a question Ed was fond of asking for no reason at all.  Ed was a friendly goof and not a little bit of a dirty old man.  Forgive me for mentioning his tremendous talent last.

I was in The Mix Room once with Gggarth and Joe Barresi working on an L7 record and Biohazard was directly across the hall in Studio D with Ed and Paul.  Understand that I thought these Biohazard guys were consummate dickheads.  About the time cell phones first came out and these Jersey retards wandered the halls all day trying to get a signal with bricks pressed to their empty, wannabe heads in a recording studio designed to reject all manner of radio or electromagnetic frequency.  Evan Seinfeld was the singer.  Later to have a gig on “OZ”, the HBO series and even later to marry Tera Patrick, the world’s most beautiful porn star.  As far as I know now, Evan is still her suitcase pimp.

He was and I’m sure still is, an idiot.

As fate would have it, Evan and I would cross paths again some ten years later.  First in a titty bar in Vegas and then in the form of a potential business deal involving his beautiful wife and the company I was then second in command at.  Much comedy was had there at Evan’s expense.  I’m still in awe at the idea of this beautiful and elegant woman allowing such a meathead to speak for her, let alone entering into matrimony with such a clueless fucktard.  We clowned him around the office for at least a year.  He somehow got the idea that it was me standing in the way of his wife’s deal with Phallix as my good friend Rick, owner of the company, had passed the buck to me, just to shake his stupid ass and annoyingly self aggrandizing phone calls.

If Evan ever reads this, he’ll be pissed and scrambling for a dictionary.

The truth is, they were asking an astronomical sum for a simple day’s work.  We sought to hire Tera as a catalog model and perhaps develop and market a signature toy with a share of the gross profit.  It was Evan who was relentlessly hard charging for such an exorbitant fee from our relatively small company.  It’s my belief this was because he’s as stupid as I estimated him to be.

I simply wouldn’t take his calls.

It didn’t take long at all for the girls in L7 to understand what kind of brain trust was across the hall.  They were a comic strip.  A cartoon.

The catalyst was their bullshit, macho Jersey swagger.

Wannabe Jewish goombahs.  At least Evan was.  A clown.

There is perhaps nothing I loathe more than those who wrongfully assume they are smarter than they are.

The girls, or rather, women of L7 were a fairly streetwise and savvy bunch.  Jennifer Finch and I forged a bond a little beyond what typically developed between artist and second engineer.  Somehow, she reminded me of my sister.  It was her humor and resolute intelligence.  They were very cool chicks in general.  They would put me in “love jail”.  It involved surrounding me with chaste kisses and aggressive hugs I wouldn’t be able to escape unless I resorted to a degree of violence or brutality that would’ve been completely out of context.

Obviously, I succumbed.  I adored them.  Some of the coolest “artists” with whom I ever had the pleasure.  Very self aware.  Very funny and very real.  At that point in my career, such qualities had begun to stand out.

My future partner, Alex Reed and I were instrumental in getting Jennifer’s next band “Other Star People” a record deal by doing their demos pro bono at A&M studios less than a week after we were both officially released from our employ by A&M recording studios.  Al & I sat in the middle of the cavernous live room of studio A early one morning after we’d completed three songs with that band, burned a candle and drank a fifth of Jim Beam.  It was our wake.  Our Ode to almost two decades between us in that place.

The Other Star People record went nowhere, we were never asked to participate on any level and the other half of the band, a douchebag friend of Alex’s named Xander Smith, hit on my girlfriend hard one night while she was on a layover in Vegas.  I had the pleasure of letting him know on the phone that I knew what he’d done and was secure in the knowledge that I could have broken him in half.

What a prick after what I’d done for him for free.

Welcome to pro audio as my good friend and master tech Gary Myerberg used to say.

But I digress.

Between the two of us, Jennifer and I, we began to foment a good natured plan to  fuck with the dickheads across the hall.  It blossomed one night with Joe and Garth complicit.  Garth was never afraid to stir a little shit.  We sent a runner to a newsstand in Hollywood to buy as many gay porn magazines as possible with what was available in petty cash and waited for the goombahs to leave for the day.

We spent at least an hour cutting out every erect penis we could find and taping them to every surface or moving part there was in the control room of Studio D.  Open the DAT machine and a penis leapt out.  Cassette decks were popping with cocks.  Every multi-track had phalluses ready to spin.  We were thorough and Garth was happy to be the default ring leader, mentoring the circus and directing the placement of elaborate faggotry.

I’ll never forget Joe going around the room and picking up the scraps, so careful not to leave a mess.  A class act was Joe.  Joe, Ed, Paul and Garth were among the best men I ever worked with.  Serious talent and excellent human beings.

At first, it was all in good fun.  The escalation involved both camps barricading each inside their respective studios with furniture from our lounges and the abundant equipment that always lined the back hall.  It didn’t take long for the whole thing to turn ugly, however.  Stupid testosterone resulted in trapping the estrogen in the Studio D lounge against their will with a microphone patched into the complex wide PA system and the the girl’s subsequent panic was broadcast throughout the halls of A&M.

It ended badly.  I was embarrassed for my role in it.

I certainly wasn’t guiltless in playing both ends against the middle, but good clean fun was all I had in mind.  It ended up going way too far and the Biohazard guys remain boneheads in my memory.  I never liked them.  Lowbrow misogynist jerks.  I always loathed bands that thought they were on top of the world just because they’d gotten a record deal and were in our hallowed halls.  Dumb enough to not realize that the hard part begins with a record deal.

I doubt they’ll ever be candidates for the rock & roll hall of fame.  I recall the record they were making then doing pretty well.  No doubt because of Ed & Paul but most subsequent efforts went double balsa.  They are a rock & roll asterisk.

A few years later, Al and I were making the Phenobarbidolls record in Studio C and the phone on the console rang.  I answered it and whoever the receptionist was at the time told me it was Paul Hamingson calling for me.  Put it through I said, I asked Pauly to give me a minute and put it hold so I could take it in the machine room.  I shut both sliding glass doors behind me and lit a Marlboro.  I picked up the phone and said something like Pauly, to what do I owe the pleasure?  He told me he was calling to thank me.  I wondered for what.  He said he was calling to thank me for making his favorite record of the year.

I was more than taken aback.  I have to paraphrase, but the gist of what he said was that the Everclear record I’d done, Sparkle & Fade, was his favorite new record and that it gave him joy to listen to it.  I was beside myself.  It is a singular moment in my music career that I will never, ever forget.  I can’t help but well up a little as I write this.  A professional for whom I had so much admiration and fondness, took it upon himself to call me and congratulate me, for what he estimated to be a job well done, a magnanimous gesture that left me speechless other than to thank him for calling……….

Tears leaked involuntarily as I hung up the phone.  I took my smoke out behind the studios and finished it while I gathered myself.  The enormity of it at that moment is beyond words.  Thanks again Pauly.  That was huge to me.  The confidence and inspiration you handed me that day is no doubt far beyond your humble intentions.  A simple sincere gesture on your part filled my heart.  Thank you my friend.  Thank you.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve been ranting and raving a whole lot lately.  Forgive me, I’m reacting to just how fucked up everything is.  But still, by my own estimation, It occurs to me I’m sounding a little shrill these days and my ravings lack a certain amount of substance and are a little top heavy on the vitriol.

I’m going to ask that you excuse me from the the table and in the stead of my standard fare, allow me to serve up some vittles I think are funny as fuck.

About twenty five years ago, my friends and I devised a very simple game.  I’m still friends with these immensely gifted, uniquely talented men I first met as boys more than a quarter century ago.  Artists all.  Intellectuals all. Accomplished all.  There were four of us.  There still is.  I can’t say enough about these friends.  These men are among my very favorite people ever on earth.  They are family.  I am so lucky.

They are twisted, disturbed and kind.

Anyway.

The game is ridiculously simple.  The mandate is to invent possible titles for a Dracula movie.  A movie with Dracula as the antagonist.  The object is to get carried away.  To blow smoke up the ass of reason and piss all over convention.  Simple and stupid.  Not clever, no redeeming value.  Nothing but prurience.

I’ll give you a few examples:  Dracula Shits in a Whopper Box.  Dracula Bathes in Shit.  Dracula Helps The Children.  Dracula Waltzes Through Your Intestines While Bellowing “Ring of Fire” At The Top of His Lungs.

Yeah, it’s existential.  And weird.  Under the right conditions with enough booze and drugs it is hysterically funny.

Whatever.  Let’s do this thing.

Dracula stumbles across the room towards the pink plastic enclosed tissue box after rubbing one out to the hooker ads on craigslist.

Dracula makes pies with delicate crusts and flowery contents.

Dracula enjoys a challenging board game with a nuclear family.

Dracula loves to pretend to puke root beer from his nose and mouth for the children but is confused when they’re not as amused with his packing his trousers with mac & cheese from the grade school lunch buffet.

Dracula is saddened by not seeing his countenance in a mirror.

Dracula is thrilled with the sectioned plates he’s stolen from the cafeteria.

Dracula is very pro Zombie rights.

Every now and then, Dracula blows the shit out of a rodent or a human infant with one of his two hip holstered six guns.

Dracula likes the way he looks.  No fucking shit.

Dracula will clock you, rock you and tick fucking tock you.

Dracula heads up every ways and means committee there is, bitches.

If your number is up, Dracula has it.

You can always count on Dracula, you fucking whore.

On the seventh day, Dracula named the city of Playa Del Ray.  Then, he rested.

Sometimes, for that squishy sensation, Dracula wipes his ass with the wrapper from a Del Taco burger.

Dracula likes A1 Sauce in his fries you fucking cunts.

When the arresting officer asked Dracula if he’d been drinking that evening, Dracula said “Blow me dimestore cowboy” and ripped his arms from their sockets.

Dracula loves to wade into the picturesque lake up to his waste so he can fart and piss with abandon.  At night he silently visits the tents of every camper and leaves a small hard turd on every pillow.  In the morning he clasps his hands gleefully and inquires earnestly about everyone’s slumber.  Later he whispers an inquiry to a select few about whether their sleep was disturbed in any way.  When they look at him questioningly, he produces a small hard turd from the folds of his garments and laughs so hard his spittle makes tiny rainbows in the morning sun.

In the afternoon, Dracula astounds the children by making beetles and dragonflies disappear up his nose.

At night while telling terrifyingly brutal tales that cause all the children to weep and cry, he pulls his dark garments up beyond his waist to reveal white silky hose and crotchless undergarments.  He then begins to dance in the fire, kicking cinders and and flaming coals onto all the campers while firing his pistols in the air and at the feet of the campers.

They all vow to never invite Dracula camping ever again and Dracula is forced to fly home.

That’s it for now.  If you made it this far I hope you are somehow inspired to contribute.  That would be very cool.  Wade in you pantywastes.  Get creative.  I’ve got a new A&M chapter on deck.

Drinks for my friends.

Other progressives I talk to still think Obama is playing political rope a dope on health care.  I certainly hope so, but  I’m not so sure.  Even if he is, I’m thinking he’s waited too long to get off those ropes.  Reading Matt Taibbi’s latest screed in Rolling Stone this month has given me very pregnant pause.  The battle may have been conceded before the bell ever rang.

I may be needing a late term abortion.

It is clear that Republicans, a wholly owned subsidiary of the health insurance and big pharma lobbies, is beyond uninterested in any kind of reform and determined to sabotage anything that poses the remotest threat to the dirty filthy game as it is played today.  It is painfully obvious that the clueless demagogues of the once Grand Old Party are determined to turn a deaf ear on their very own constituents.  Instead, they actively participate in efforts to mislead their own into opposing what is in their best interest.

They do so with an expert acumen of fear and lies.  Same as it ever was.

Prick bastards.

In effect, the GOP as a whole gives far more of a fuck about the filthy lucre arriving in wheelbarrows, some $1.4 million a day, as well as the four lobbyists for every one of their sorry elected asses there to buy breakfast, lunch and dinner, than it does for it’s own, who’s burden would be refreshingly and deservedly eased by any real reform.  Nice trick.  Those who need it the most, lied to so consistently and efficaciously, that they rage and rail against it.  Nearly as impressive as it is disgusting.

Loathsome of those elected to represent the people, odious of the stupid bastards who choose to march in lockstep instead of asking the obvious questions.

Man I hate these guys.

Republicans realize the war of dumb ideology is lost.  They have raped the pooch, stolen it’s food and it’s rhinestone collar.  They seek then, to win a battle.  Any battle and this one happens to be on the field.  Kick the pup into submission.  It matters not that a battle won could cripple the nation for whom they pretend to fight.  They swing haymakers because subtlety, skill and discipline are lost to them.  The devices of decent, compassionate warriors are no no longer available to them.  No longer familiar.  They punch wild and awkward, not caring that landing such blows, will cripple both fighters.

The backs of every middle aged, middle class American will break.  The fabric of our great society will tear and rip and eventually be rent asunder by greedy stupid fools who want only to be reelected.  Pigs at our trough.  Plutocrats.  Glenn Beck can’t manage to spell the word much less comprehend the concept.  Oligarchy.  He understands we are rushing towards it but he’s too goddamn dumb to get that it’s coming from his own people.  It comes from his right, not our left.

Pathetic.

Sometimes people admonish me me for my invective.  I understand.  I’m a little outspoken.  A little harsh.  Can you blame me?  These people are idiots.  Dumbshits.  Unable or unwilling to think for themselves.  Unwilling or unable to do either, means you should sit it out.  If you still choose to participate, you qualify for my wrath.  Blow me.

With profound regret, I’m here to tell you that thus far, the Democrats are perhaps just as pathetic.  Cowardice and cluelessness.  Instead of hearing and ignoring the populace, they are deaf dumb and blind.  A new friend on facebook called it a paradigm hurricane.  Wow.  Crazy accurate.  It’s clear neither party understands it at all  and neither party cares enough to try.  We are steaming full throttle towards a humongous clusterfuck.  A paradigm hurricane.  Nobody at the brake and too many at the switch.

If we don’t explode on the way down, the fall will kill us.

The time has come for a third party.  A new one.  All existing ones are just ineffectual enough to escape notice.  We need a new religion.  An agnostic one with a human Deity, like Carol Burnett or Gore Vidal, he’ll die any minute so I’m thinking Lewis Black as VP of whatever.  This is fucked up.  We rose up and elected this man and I’m beginning to get slapped across the mouth with the idea that it didn’t matter at all.

Nothing is about to change.  Nothing at all.  Fuck me.  I’m beginning to wonder if violence isn’t the only answer.

Drinks for my friends.