Archive for August, 2010

Let me tell you something.

So I mixed a song.  For the first time in ten years I darkened a studio door and wrestled a creation into what I think is palatable for the masses.  It’s what mixers do.  We polish and hopefully enhance an earnest, artistic musical effort. I had to do it.  I was scared.  New technology.  Tapeless.  No comforting whir of analog multi-tracks.  No printing the mix to a Studer half inch and editing with a razor blade if necessary.

None of that.  Archaic and obsolete.  Old school.

Hit the space bar and the track starts over.  Click in the box and enter the frequency you want to manipulate via the numeric keypad.  Pull the curve up and down with the cursor.  Write cuts visually.  Dial it up or down with the mouse after you’ve selected the “Q”.  Enter reverb and delay times consistent with note value based on beats per minute.  I didn’t touch a single fader and the only knob I fingered was the gain knob for the system I was monitoring on.

It was all about the mouse on a Mac.  Weird.

For what it’s worth, I produced, recorded and mixed my first record when I was twenty seven years old.  It sold a hundred thousand copies.  I had my first top ten multi-platinum hit before I was thirty.  I started as a janitor for A&M studios at twenty years old and was making records for the label long before the age of twenty nine.

But it’s been awhile.  A long time.

I was a little worried about a lot of things.  What if I couldn’t figure it out?  I’ve never been the most technical guy on the planet.  I worked with plenty of absolute geniuses and understand my place in that hierarchy.  Honestly, my biggest question and fear was whether, despite the entirely new tech, if I could still pull it off.  The extra added pressure, this was for my best friend since childhood.  We played together when I sucked and he was brilliant.  The engineer who’s studio it is and who cut the tracks, I’ve known since pre-school, the drummer I’ve known since his early teens and the guitar player has been my very best friend since we were thirteen.  I’ve only known the bass player for the last year but he’s a whip smart guy with no shortage of humility or musical ability.

They are an excellent band.  They can play.  They play anything they want, with an ease and level of musicianship that is rare.  I tell you this but you must understand that I know the difference.  I’ve worked with the best players.  Often.  I don’t wanna name drop, but I have to so I won’t.  I’ve been there. Over and over.

I co-produced and engineered Everclear’s “Sparkle And Fade”.  Art Alexakis should have let me mix it.  My mix of “Santa Monica” slays the mix that appears on the record.

I’ve been around but it’s been awhile.

These guys can play and they can write an excellent pop song.  I’m trying to tell you that I know.  I know the difference between shit and shiny.  They call themselves the the Atomic Giants and they are the best band that Carson City has ever offered.

Ten years I guess.

It is an awesome and sobering fact to me.  I might just still have a handle on this.

It’s not finished yet, but I trust them.  What follows is a letter I’ve written to them of my advice on how to bring it home.  I’m leaving town in just a few days to get back to my life so I can’t put the finishing touches on what I’ve wrought.  I want you to be interested enough to read my blankmanship in the context of the track that I hope I’ve figured out how to let you listen to.  There should be a link that takes you to it.

Davey V. plays drums and he has the grease.  My best friend Sean plays guitars, we have shared many a comic book, Chocodile, Rondo, Kiss and Van Halen record and he is my personal Jesus.  My new friend Greg plays bass and my new old Friend Mike Sarceno gives it throat.  They don’t suck at all.  Tom is the engineer of merit and receptacle of my thanks and gratitude.  A very sweet, very talented and capable man with really good ears and a nice pate.

Here’s my letter to the band:

Part four of something I didn’t imagine having four parts.  I suppose I could end it here.  I’ve no idea where it’s going.  Scroll down and read them in order,  all called “sketch” and there’s three previous.

She ends up at my place. I’m not sure if I pulled something off or if it was her idea.

My whole life through her eyes while she overtly inspects my cave.  She wrinkles her nose and flicks her fingers at the cat box.  Wincing at my messes and squinting at my possessions.

It’s drama, but I don’t care.

I just washed the entire house so with the exception of a few piles I know I’m good there.

She looks at me and demands to know why she’s here.  I remind her she’s here as opposed to just over there.  I tell her I want to sell her a lifestyle.

She takes her time and then she blinks.

I confess I have no idea how she ended up here.

She doesn’t blink again for an hour.  So it seems.

I’d just made a clean sweep of my ingrown toenails.  All four corners of my two big toes.  Dug it all out.  All four corners.  This is big for me.  Usually I get pretty loaded and tear them out.  This morning I’d had enough.  Second best time to tear at your toes is fresh out of the shower.  I screwed myself up and did it fresh out of the shower.  It wasn’t not painful.

It hurt like fuck.

So I was good there too.

Things had deteriorated by then.

Probably because I talked about my toes.  I know it was a mistake.  It’s just that it’s usually such an incredibly painful ordeal that can go on for days, so when you get all four corners in a not unpainful sweep but without substantial bleeding, it feels like a lucky spring day.  A mist and clouds until afternoon.  Not too hot, not too cold, the porridge steams a little in the morning light.

Still, she sits in my lap facing me, topless.  I’m burning with the smell of her sweat under scent.  Hands on naked hips.  We get as far inside each other as we can get and it’s good and sweaty.

I begin to dream of a white T-shirt.  It’s on a man too large.  In my dream I marvel at the whiteness of the t-shirt.  It’s almost blue like from the moon.  Out of place on a torso so substantial.  Levi’s and black boots by then.  Then it’s me and I am uncomfortable in the white t-shirt.  It’s too tight and wherever I touch it, I soil it with my hands.  With my fingertips.  It fits tight around my neck.

It’s what I have left of the dream I was having.  She lies next to me with a cream sheet pulled over her flared waist.  A gold chain glistens across her hips where they’re not covered.  There are rings on her toes.  The end of her landing strip is exposed and I remember the taste because I can still smell it on my hands.  I want her name to be Daisy and it has nothing to do with any woman named that I’ve ever known before tonight.  If I had a flower, I’d put it in her hair.

She arches her back in her sleep and I’m smitten again.  She arcs and the moon settles in and plays one side of her face.  One breast glistens under an exclusive with the light of the moon.

Her skin.  I run my hands over it and it makes no sound.

Not wearing a white t-shirt.

I get back to it.  Dreaming again.  The shirt was gone but it’s back.  It itches.  It pinches and binds and confuses wherever I have hair.  I’m sure I look stupid in it.  I’m wearing it and every important person ever is here.  Old bosses, women I’ve dated and politicians.  I cross my arms and talk to them from over my shoulder.  I want a drink and a cigarette.  I have both but I can’t taste them.  Nothing works and I just want to leave.  I think about Yosemite Sam.  That helps.  I can’t just take the shirt off.  I know I’m dreaming but it’s like I’m being held down.  I’m late for class and I don’t know where it is.

Now the moon shines into the bedroom like it was the sun.  She’s on her side while shoulders and hips curve my horizon.  It’s so bright I can’t tell if she faces me or not.  I think I see a smile but I can’t be sure.  She flops a leg over my thighs and pulls me into her.  Within nothing she is over me and on me, breathing, sucking back spit and I am way inside her, hard as a fucking nail and she is up and down so hard our skins smack.

I wake up and it’s only sun in my eyes.  She’s not here.  I can’t smell her on my hands.

I only remember her perfume and it is fleeting.  Fast.

On the pillow, a pumpkin colored beetle on it’s back and kicking.

I don’t know her name.

Drinks for my friends.

I am reluctant to embroil myself in this one that has irresponsibly, recklessly come to be known as the “Ground Zero Mosque”.  Nomenclature at it’s most absurd.  It’s stupid.  I didn’t want to because it’s stupid.

That and what else could there possibly be left to say?

Let’s start with the indefensible hijacking of the issue by hard right demagogues and the various porcine zealots of faux patriotism and vicious jingoism.  The shit regurgitated from these mouths is as inexcusable as it is calculated to exploit fear and racism.  For Newt Gingrich to equate the placement of a COMMUNITY CENTER, that happens to devote a small portion of it’s proposed 13 story architecture for worship of the Islamic faith, a COMMUNITY CENTER that will not be built at ground zero or even viewable from there, for that loathsome hypocrite to suggest the intention here is no different than putting a swastika next to the Holocaust Museum, chaps my ass like a cheese grater.  For him to say we should not allow such effrontery until there are Christian churches in Saudi Arabia…….this from a man who left one wife while she was in treatment for cancer and cheated on another while leading the charge for impeachment against a sitting president for lying about a blow job……why would any sentient being listen to such a hypocritical douchebag?  Everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion, but what makes Newt’s worthy of broadcast?

Fox News does.  Fox fucking News is nearly half owned by a Saudi Arabian prince named Alwaleed bin Talal, a prince from a theocratic oligarchy where brutal misogynist Sharia law is absolute.  Irony irony irony.

*I’ve since been corrected on this point.  The aforementioned prince owns 7% of Newscorp and they own 9% of his largest Arab entertainment company, Rotana.  I posit the relationship is still nefariously symbiotic.  This is interesting: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/01/cairs-honest-ibe-hooper-caught-boasting-about-getting-saudi-money—-which-he-has-denied-getting-in.html

I could say a lot a about Newt, he clearly lacks for any moral or ethical imperative of any kind as well as well as being demonstrably bereft of compassion, what he does not lack is brains.  Newt Gingrich is a frighteningly adroit, modern Machiavelli.  He knows exactly what he’s doing.  He’s whipping the great unwashed, the willfully ignorant, into froth and frenzy by employing those by now, tried and true GOP archetypes of fear and racism.  He’s not the only one, the Palins and the Boehners and the Cantors……..have all fallen in line to manifest the inevitably hysterical Greek chorus.  In the key of indignant.

These people don’t realize they are embarrassing themselves and I don’t care.  What matters is they embarrass the rest of us.  Sometimes I wonder if the appeal of the whackjob demagogue is their inherent self loathing.  You know, as common denominator or perhaps ice breaker when they gather.  For fruit and seltzer.  Drugs, prostitutes and their lust for money and power.

It’s to be called the “Park 51 Community Center”.  Not a Mosque by definition, but even if it were it would be among 400, attended by some 600,00 Muslims in New York City alone.  There are Mosques in every state and major city in this country and they have been there for a very long time.  Common sense dictates that it shouldn’t be any big deal.  There is far more logic in protesting Catholic churches anywhere near public schools.  It’s all so goddamn fucking stupid.

There’s a Mosque in the goddamn Pentagon you idiot fucks.

The single most salient tragedy here, and it’s deliberate and hypocritically intentional, is how this nontroversy is more than mere catalyst for the devolution of national discourse over just about anything into fear by way of racism and bigotry.  The terrorists would like nothing better than for ordinary Americans to see the war on terror as an existential conflict between Christianity and Islam.  Such demagoguery hands them the advantage they would most like to have.  A rudimentary Us vs. Them vaulting horse.  Those that would foment as much seek to convince us that we are a Christian nation as opposed to what we are, a nation of Christian majority.  It’s a slow pitch game of xenophobia for the mouth breathing neanderthals that would have sucked up McCarthyism with a pastel bendy straw.

What’s new?  The GOP preying on the minds and sensibilities of the mentally and morally compromised.

Just yesterday, two polls revealed that either one fifth or one quarter of the citizenry believes that our president is a secret Muslim.  It’s evidence of just how hard and far they reach.  This begs a lot of questions.  My first one is so fucking what?  Who cares?  I happen to have equal disdain for all organized religion.

“I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name,” -Franklin Graham/abcnews.go.com

Conundrum?  None here.

Some of them blow themselves up in the market square and some of them shoot abortion doctors in church.  The rest of them hate on various levels.  These people all need to get fucking handle on it.  Their own insecurities and fears are why they act, never for the right thing but a result of what is wrong with themselves.

Equally disturbing is how obsessed we’ve become with what just doesn’t matter and should not ever.  I realize this is nothing new but just how far back are we gonna slide?  The color of skin, ethnicity or religious belief.  These fermented under Dumbya but they are exploding under Obama.  These things are not and were never intended to make a mad fuck’s difference when evaluating character or worth and they suddenly do, more than ever it seems, at least since I started watching television.

They are throwing this shit in the air at an amazing pace.  The whole immigration conversation has gone racial.  Why does it have to be racial?  If that question confuses you, you might be a redneck.  There is a quid pro quo between the fucktards and the GOP.

The framers of our Constitution went to great lengths to avoid such a clusterfuck.  They were clear to exacting on this very specific concern and the first amendment is proof of that.  This whole thing is stupid on the surface but profoundly important underneath.  What pokes out of the water is manufactured controversy.  I’m sick and tired of non-issues dominating news cycles and public dialog.  What’s underneath is the right of people, whomever they are and wherever they come from,  provided for in the very first amendment to our constitution.  There is no evidence whatsoever that the people attempting to exercise this right are doing as much to be provocative in any way.  It is merely an innocent effort to bridge whatever cultural and/or religious gaps that still exist between people from the Middle East and North Americans, between Christians and Muslims.  We attacked and wrought untold devastation on an entire country. completely innocent of what we invaded them for.  Everyone will be allowed in this proposed COMMUNITY CENTER, to be named “The Park 51 Community Center”.

It’s all about the first amendment and that means we are done here.  No debate, no objections.  Shut the fuck up.

And stay off the 14th amendment too.

We are done here.

Drinks for my friends.

Progressives are despondent, Democrats diluted and liberals dismayed.

All the while, Republicans get their mad on and the Tea Party spilleth over.

I’m well aware of the predictable dynamic that virtually dictates that the party in power, particularly when of the executive branch, will suffer losses in a mid-term election.  Okay, yeah, I get it.

But have you seen who they’re running?

Sharron Angle and Rand Paul are thoroughly pissing up ropes, profoundly out of touch, nonsense palavering, goofcocks who have actually long since bought what they’re selling.  Last I checked, they’re both still competitive.  Sheezus.  They are dangerous because they have long since bought what they seek to sell.  Such a distinction is important.  Salient.  It means they are dumb.  Or at least willfully ignorant.  You think Hannity and Limbaugh smoke what they peddle?  No way.  Limbaugh’s actual abuse of narcotics notwithstanding, these assholes know what they do.  Beck is likely a different story.  Therefore Beck is more dangerous; he has the courage of his bullshit convictions.

They each represent a definitively retarded phenomena.

My take on Angle here: http://www.brainspank.org/2010/08/lets-talk-about-sharron-angle-a-hit-piece/

Nathan Deal, running for Governor of Georgia after resigning from congress, is a birther.  So duh.

Dan Maes, running for Governor of Colorado thinks that a efforts to promote bike riding is some conspiracy aimed at “converting Denver into a United Nations community.” -denverpost.com

Tom Emmer, running for Governor of Minnesota, wants to lower the minimum wage for waiters and servers because he thinks they all make six figures in tips.  Every single conservative blows hard about tax cuts, but can’t be bothered to help the vanishing middle class, even with tax cuts, who would supply the bulk of America’s tax revenue, if they had jobs.  As opposed to the richest ten percent who have enjoyed tax cuts for nearly a decade and kept every penny.  So I say yes you fucktard, reduce their minimum wage and they will pay even less in taxes.

Not one of them can think their way out of a wet paper bag.

Linda McMahon?  Sure, Jessie Ventura got elected, but this is Connecticut.  And fer fucks sake, I mean fer fucks sake!

Ken Buck, running for Senate from Colorado, appears to be a fairly obvious misogynist.  He has embraced the Tea Party and then walked it back with criticism of the prince of bigots Tom Tancredo and by referring to birthers as “dumbasses”.  At the very least he’s confused and lacks the courage of any conviction.  I can’t really blame him for his confusion.  His party is a hot, dense mess.

Carly Fiorina’s (running against Barbara Boxer) campaign has vanity as it’s impetus.  She did call Boxer’s hair “so yesterday.” -usatoday.com  She’s endorsed by Sarah Palin and has actively pursued support from the Tea Party.

Forgive my instant assessment, but when you party with the Tea Party, it’s all I need to know.

Mark Rubio is a financial, tax cuts for the rich/ trickle down economics, douchebag.  He’s consistently unable to account for is own fiscal policy positions.  Unable to explain or even offer how they would be paid for when hard evidence demonstrates they’ll likely add over three trillion to the the deficit.  Much the same way Boehner kept stepping on his dick under fire from David Gregory on Meet The Press when asked the very same questions.  Russert would have taken him to task just the same but it would have enjoyed way longer legs.  A stain instead of a blip.

That man Boehner, is an idiot.

What the hell?

They look pretty sloppy and reckless from here.  It occurs to me that they ought to be careful of what they wish for.  These asshats so willingly clumsy on the campaign trail, would easily prove to be that and more in office.  Like Palin for example.  Remember, she quit as Governor of Alaska for one reason, to make money by capitalizing on the fame that losing an election for Vice President afforded her.  She hasn’t been and won’t ever be elected for anything else.  She’ll never even run.  She understands she doesn’t have the discipline and she is absolutely otherwise directed.  But I pray they run her.  I pray.  If she is so stupid and victim enough of hubris to seek the nomination, I will switch parties to vote for her.  Me and Master Bacon.  In the primary.  See?

I want the carnival of absurd that bad. The potential vulgar burlesque stirs my lobes and my lust for carnage.

Any number of these sycophantic empty headed opportunists get elected and the GOP may just suffer embarrassment for elections cycles yet to come.  Harbingers of doom perhaps.

Mayhap.

It’s a stretch, but there is some logic in the notion that we may not have much to lose in the long run.  The tsunami the main stream media seems determined to prognosticate ad nauseum may yet spill over America and it will be an embarrassing disaster for the GOP.  These people are idiots.  They can’t lead, they can’t legislate, they specialize exclusively in their sole ability to demagogue.  Worst case scenario is we’re forced yet again to learn the hard way.  Another protracted learning curve while the hole deepens and deepens and deepens……..while they step on their own pudenda, over and over.  Exploiting the zeitgeist that intellectual prowess is a commodity to be suspicious of the whole time.

Worse case scenario, we’ll finally have learned what what we should have already known just in time to understand there’s barely dick left.

So, it’s the big picture and the short term.  Feel me?

The media is salivating for a slaughter.  That just doesn’t have to be.  Pull up your goddamn pants fer fuck’s sake.  This ain’t easy but it’s not brain surgery either.  Try not to lose sight of the fact that as determined as these fucks are, they’re still really dumb.

You know, just because we’ve elected our first African American President during a Democratic majority in both houses of congress doesn’t necessarily mean we get everything we want.  What it’s turned into is humongous blockage of the pipes that deliver sewage to the treatment plant and a simultaneously egregious restriction of the flow of clean potable water for all of us, regardless of party affiliation or ideological subscription.

“You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need”

Drinks for my friends.

I’ll tell you without reservation, that it is one of the funniest situation comedies I’ve ever seen.  Absolute no shit ridiculous.  Shot in a style that openly mocks reality television and all it’s inherent flaws.  The protagonists are often the antagonists and of course, end over end.  Not without tragedy like too much salt or Tapatio in the Hamburger Helper but always hysterical.  It can be painful to watch but it’s always absurd.  The best comedy has it’s fingers in the truth.  It’s a prerequisite.  All In The Family, not Happy Days.  Hell, even the Daily Show uses tragedy almost exclusively to make us laugh.  No dearth of glut there.  Or here.  Never is these days, never has been anyway.

No comedy can be entertaining without tragedy,  No tragedy is worth entertaining without some comedy.

They deliberately walk the line between the heart that feels and the mind that jeers.

Not much objectionable.  Very little violence with the exception of occasional gun play where no one ever gets shot, no gore and very little sex.  Squeaky clean if not for the copious bombing of the word fuck and it’s every iteration.  That and all leading characters are drunks and/or dope dealers who live in a Canadian trailer park with a quotient of white trash that might not find peer in Alabama or Ohio or Nevada.

The premise is simple.  A handful of relativity harmless not yet middle aged fuck ups, in a sea of less than overachievers, trying everything there is save honest work to get ahead.  In a Canadian trailer park.  It really is brilliant.  I can’t help but adore it.

Julian is the ring leader and by far the most charismatic.  Not terribly bright and never, ever without a drink in his hand.  Whether in jail, driving or knocking over a liquor store.  Occasionally demonstrating common sense and always bringing the big picture, the go to guy.  We want to root for Julian but he’s a dumbass.

Ricky is the dumbest and arguably the funniest.  He laces reflexive malapropisms with a propensity for confessional soliloquy that often devolves into his exclusive brand of crap, plastic wisdom.  I stand by that last sentence………..in lieu, of a paragraph. Ricky is a bit of a sociopath, yet hardly dangerous.  Ricky burns his father’s trailer down while attempting to cook french fries, getting drunk and getting laid.  Ricky’s father then takes up residence at the town dump in the sleeper cab he once owned as a trucker before he embarked on a course faking disability for a government check.  We want to root for Ricky and his father but they are consummate dumbasses.

Bubbles is easily the smartest and most compassionate.  He lives in a shed and loves kitties.  Makes his living repairing shopping carts or stealing them from one of two malls and selling them to the other.  His mode of transportation is a go cart he always pilots helmeted with goggles and often uses to tow the shopping carts that are his stock in trade.  He dreams of owning and operating a kitty day care.  They call him Bubbles because he loves bubbles.  We root for Bubbles.  We should, we have to because there is no one else.

Randy is a whore.  He prefers to go shirtless, despite the Canadian winter and his enormous gut.  When not prostituting himself for cheeseburgers, he makes his money as a male prostitute.  He’s an ally and lover of trailer park supervisor Mr. Leahy and an occasional lover of Mr. Leahy’s estranged wife and trailer park owner Barbara.  He will literally do any goddamn thing for a cheeseburger.  Randy is the epitome of pitiful, clueless but always defaulting to his own simple heart.  We can’t root for Randy; he’s just too goddamn dumb.

Mr. Leahy is a retired cop, trailer park supervisor and chronic alcoholic that drives a completely roofless car.  With a Hunter S. Thompson countenance,  he is the constant attempted foil to our “Trailer Park Boys”.  It’s a ridiculous “Scooby Doo” allegory, he never prevails.  Always foiled by the meddling kids.  We don’t root for Leahy, he’s too far gone and we’re just not supposed to.

We are left to root reluctantly for characters we can’t completely get behind and that is the beauty of the entire thing.  It’s gorgeous in it’s absence of anything at all redeeming in any meaningful way.  Genius escapism; allowing viewers to feel better about themselves while watching near blind hamsters take a turns at the wheel of their lives.  It is tragic and it is simultaneously funny as fuck.

Like I said, I adore it.

As far as I can tell, it’s pretty scarce on American television.  It’s uniquely Canadian.  Why are the Canadians so much funnier than us on a pure per capita basis?  I find it on The 101 Network via Direct TV.  It’s called “Trailer Park Boys”.  Just fucking Google it.  It rocks.

Drinks for my friends.

In the winter they crawl and scurry, in the summer they fly and dart.. I loath bugs.  They make me want to wash my hands.  My biggest fear is ending up with one in my mouth.  Any of my orifices would really be a nightmare for me.  Why do they call them earwigs?  They’re not very big but they have a giant, menacing claw device at one end.  It’s like they exist to tow a weapon.

It fucks with me.

She looks at me, offers her hand and asks my name.  I give her my first and after a jagged pause my last.  The way she offers her hand is something I’ve no idea what to do with so I squeeze her fingers..  I am so fucking smooth.  I do clock that her drink is almost empty and manage to point at it and then the bartender.  She nods at him and we’re done with that.  I’ve bought her a drink without having to ask out loud.

I think to ask her name and she says Winnipeg.  I smile and tell her my name again.  She stares at me and says Winnifred.

Peggy or Winny?

I don’t know her name.

The way her lips pull back and forth over her beautiful mouth.  I want her to talk.  I want to watch her face.  I tell her it’s nice to meet her and ask her what she’s doing here.  I want to watch her talk.  She says some shit about being out and about and asks me why I’m here.  I tell her because I live across the street.  She asks me did I run out of booze and I tell her no.  I tell her my excuse for being here is better than hers.  She smiles and tells me not by much.  It’s her chin.  The way she shakes her head to emphasize.  I ask her does she want to move away from the bar.  She tells me no and then asks me what I want.

I tell her I want to watch her talk.

She smiles and tilts.

Her drink comes and I order another for me.

She tells me, “See you there.”

I watch her walk away and I can tell.  Not just what she looks like from the back but the way she walks.

How to be cool waiting by the waitress station for a drink.  I don’t stare at the bartender because he’s in control.  I need a drink and if I stare at him he’ll feel my angst and that’s not any kind of incentive to take care of me.  I’ve ordered it;  It’s in his hands.  I look at my feet and try to think about bugs.  I think about moths and how that dust from their torsos and wings gets on my fingers.

I need to wash my hands.

The Earth thaws and my drink is in front of me.  I look up as he sets it down and he tells me how the waitress could have brought it.

I get into the booth all right.

She touches my hand and asks me what I’d like to watch her talk about.

I see there’s a bug in my drink.  Bigger than a mosquito but smaller than a moth or dragonfly.  A stamen suspended in gin by diaphanous wings.  Shit.  Now I’m confused.

I ask if people call her Wendy.

Drinks for my friends.

XY7YMFMCN4N2

I watch a lot of that liberal, progressive,  socialist, pinko media. Olbermann, Maddow, The Daily Show, Hardball, The Colbert Report………..love Bill Maher and Michael Moore.  I’m a voracious reader: The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Truthout, The Nation, Salon…….you get the idea.  I do my level best to monitor the other side, I listen to Limbaugh and Hannity everyday for as long as I can possibly stand it.  Fucking blow hards be as they may.

So it’s sometimes difficult to abstain from merely parroting various points of view, being a liberal, progressive socialist, pinko myself.  Often I’ll author a piece only to discover that an article, op-ed or televised segment is so congruent to what I’ve already written that I fear being accused of plagiarism.  Great minds think alike?  It’s true, they do.  Having said that, I can’t help but agree with Olbermann’s special comment this eve and endeavor to expound on it.

See, the other day, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs waded in with some fairly innocuous sentiments: “I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs told The Hill’s Sam Youngman, in an interview published Tuesday. “I mean, it’s crazy.” -The Washington Post.  Yes, that is crazy.  George Dumbya Bush was an inarticulate, intellectually incurious puppet.  A consummate fool.  Obama is much further down the the road than that.  He is his own man and I believe him to be doing what he believes is the best he can.  However not good enough it is.

He also said less auspiciously: “This “professional left,” he added, “will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.” -The Washington Post”  Well, that’s a little slipperier.  As for the former, I Remember Obama campaigning on single payer and affordability of prescription drugs like Canada.  But before the health care debate even had flame beneath, single payer was off the table and the public option was on the altar at the church of big pharma/big insurance with a knife wagging from it, gore and vital fluids oozing.  All this sacrificed, before the shouting even began.  Why did that happen?  The hard right does not even pretend at the spirit of compromise.  They are there for the whole pot or to insure that nobody leaves with a goddamn thing.  The current administration appears to have not yet figured this out  Regarding the latter, I’d be more than happy with a 2.5 sided building devoted to our massive expenditures, more than any other nation, to killing, as long as the other 2.5 sides could be devoted to fomenting peace, prosperity, potable water and nutritious foods and all that.  That would be cool.

He also said something like, and I’m paraphrasing here, that we of the left wouldn’t be happy if  Kucinich were President.  Well, Kucinich was my first choice, I called him the “little paste eater” because he was geeky but had the the courage of his convictions and the rather obvious heart of a lion.  I still like him and I can’t help but resent that observation.  I can’t help but think that he never would have folded so easily.  Pissing on Kucinich is misguided, thoughtless and sloppy.  We need him like we need Weiner and Franks and Sanders and Feingold and Grayson (telecom bullshit notwithstanding)……

Let me me tell you people something, Mr. President and your administration, something about why we’re pissed at you and why you’re frustrated at us for being pissed at you.  The amount of good you’ve been able to implement thus far, pales in comparison to the amount of havoc they were able to so expertly and efficaciously wreak in a similar amount of time.  Their hare of damage has passed your turtle and I’m fretting over your pace.  You’ve had some monumental legislative achievements for sure, but too many are in name only.  Sure you passed health care legislation but it’s weak.  A government mandate without a public option is just lame.  The protections against being denied coverage and care for pre-existing conditions are merely a financial disincentive to abide.  You appointed most of the same people who fucked us financially to prevent us from being fucked again.  Toothless legislation.  Way too many foxes in the hen house.  Don’t wag a finger at us, your base, for concerning ourselves with what is is right and fair and opposing institutionalized injustice.

Net Neutrality is in the shitter and what’s up with Elizabeth Warren?  Don’t ask don’t tell?  Gitmo?  Afghanistan? Military commissions?  The Patriot Act?  C’mon man.  Do you guys mean it or not?

Under the Bush administration, when they controlled both houses like we do now, reconciliation was used to the point of abuse.  It’s how we got tax cuts for the wealthy.  How much has that cost us?  How many times have you employed that tactic?  There is considerable doubt as I write this that your administration will even be able to resist the extension of those cuts.  And now that Democrats are in power of both the legislative and executive branches?  The threat of filibuster has been invoked more than ever in the history of the Senate.  Reconciliation Sir.  There comes a time when you fight fire with fire.

Can we get you all a testosterone cocktail?

I’m happy that you so compassionately seek to be President of all of America, to serve and and protect even those that didn’t and wouldn’t ever vote for you.  You’re a nice man.  But we don’t need a nice man.  My father, quite the brawler in his day, told me once that is hardly ever the toughest, strongest or most skilled man who wins a fight, it’s the meanest.  They hate you and everything you’re about.  Thank the powers that be that you’re smarter than them, but you need to get your mean on.  They will never give you a goddamn thing, so stop giving them anything at all.  At fucking all.  Oppose them and call them out when they so consistently act like jackasses by opposing any and all job stimulus so that the economy will be a hot mess and they will be so able and willing to blame you come November.

This is a done deal by the way.  We will lose seats because they will be successful in blaming you and your administration for this economic clusterfuck.  It’s over.  The fat lady is warming up and she’s gonna belt it out.  You’ve completely allowed yourself to be sucker punched.  The economy isn’t your fault, you probably saved us and the world from an economic depression.  But the sucker punch, that’s on you.  You all walked right into it.

I see you fighting, but not nearly hard enough.  Not even close to mean enough.

And tell your spokesholes to stop whining about us.  THEY, the right wing fucktards are your problem.  They are defining you.  We are in your corner but don’t blame us for lack of voter enthusiasm.  They smell blood and they aren’t wrong.  Make no mistake, this is a brawl.  If Democrats in general, and you in particular fail to man up, to get in there and throw hands and feet, we’re fucked.

We’ve watched for eighteen months now and you cannot blame us for being somewhat nonplussed.  If you didn’t think this was gonna get dirty ugly, maybe you don’t belong here.  We will still turn out and vote, we wouldn’t miss it because we can’t help it, but it’s not us you should be concerned with, it’s all those independents and reluctant voters that you sold that hope and change thing to.  Those people are just as unhappy and even less motivated than we are.  Quit fucking around and go punch Mitch “frog face” McConnell and and John “agent orange” Boehner hard in the mouth.  While you’re at it, bitch slap Michele Bachmann.  Stop, like Anthony Weiner said, bringing library books to a gunfight.  Let’s get this show on the goddamn road.

Nothing less than America hangs in balance.

Drinks for my friends.

I grew up in Carson City Nevada. Harry Reid is friend of my mother’s.  She worked for him as his secretary when he first appeared in the Nevada State Legislature, when he came to be known as one half of the “Gold Dust Twins” along with Dick Bryan who went on to be governor and to the U.S. Senate as well.  The first political campaign I ever worked in was for Mr. Reid when he ran for Lt. Governor against Paul Laxalt.  I was nine years old.

He lost.

A few years ago I asked my mother for an autographed copy of Harry’s autobiography “The Good Fight” for my birthday.  The following January, before my February birthday, Mr. Reid in his quiet but inimitable way, summoned my mother, since retired but working the bi-annual legislative session, to a brief private meeting.  He handed her a copy of his book, signed and inscribed.  They didn’t talk politics.  He asked about her.  Her life, her children and her husband.  She did the same.  About forty years had gone by, but they’d been in touch.  It was personal.

That night Harry Reid kissed my mother on the cheek on live television in the State Senate chambers after delivering a speech.

The preface is necessary.  I’m compelled, in the interest of disclosure, because I have no intention of recusing myself from another task for which I feel compelled.  Said task would be a sincere examination of that crazy bitch who would usurp the power and position Mr. Reid has fought for and earned, a position that finds Harry Reid one of the most powerful men in America.

I will tell you that I have vehemently disagreed with Harry.  Often.  No one individual can be expected to consistently agree with another unless such an individual does not know his own mind or is willing to ignore it.  Yes, he’s an old school incumbent.  Indeed part of the status quo, quid pro quo, old boy network that is often an egregious component of the problem.  But I will tell you this, from far outside the beltway, but still from someone far more likely than you dear reader are able to know, Harry Reid will never ever be caught up in an ethics, money, sexual or any other kind of scandal simply because the man is honest and humble.  I know this to be true.

If they could have, trust me those dirty bastards would have by now.

I’ve been stuck in Carson City, against my will for far too long.  Soon to be free.  Yet it has afforded me a front row opportunity to this contest, one I observe to be of the most important in these mid-term elections, particularly for Nevadans.

When I first began to pay attention, Harry was in trouble.  An anti-incumbent tsunami was sweeping the land fueled by boiler plate Republican bullshit; casting blame for a disastrous economy on the Democrats who’d been in power, at least theoretically, for two years before Bush left office.  Whatever.  That’s another blog.  Early polls had Sue Lowden  ahead of Harry by double digits.  She was a force to be reckoned with, at least until she stuck a greasy foot in shit by suggesting that people actually barter with their physicians by bringing chickens to their offices in a lame attempt to refute the health care legislation Harry had so labored to pass.

Until then, Sharron Angle had pretty much escaped my attention.  My mother knows her too.  Said she was a very nice lady.  I pointed out she was a little bat shit and mother just reiterated that she was a pleasant woman.

I had written her off.

In a political heartbeat, the party faithful realized Lowden was an asshat and it was all over but the shouting.  The hard right, Tea Party financed, despicably Christian nut job, Sharron Angle emerged from the primary a victor.  The dark horse now the white.  It took a few days,  goofcock Michael Steele notwithstanding, the RNC had it’s “Oh Fuck” moment.  As in, “what have we done?”  As in, “This bitch is crazy, what do we do now?”  They are absolutely justified in their sentiment.  The woman fashions her chapeaus from tin foil because aluminium is probably too worldly and sophisticated.

She’s a mess:

On tape, video and/or audio and therefore on the record, she has called for the repeal of social security, medicare and medicaid.

She’s opposed to abortion under any circumstance, suggesting that an adolescent victim of incestuous rape make lemonade from the lemons life has dealt her because it’s God’s plan.

Her campaign ads focus laser like on unemployment despite stating that it would in no way be in her purview to create or advocate for jobs for Nevadans, her constituents, as a United States Senator.  When asked about the City Center development in Las Vegas, a city already suffering and near destitute from chronic and rampant job losses, she stated she would not have lifted a finger to help save 21,000 jobs.

Harry did.  And he saved those jobs.

She posited that unemployment benefits in Nevada (maximum $362.00 a week) pay too much money and are therefore a disincentive to seek honest employment.  She said that we have spoiled our citizenry.  Even in rural Nevada, if you have a family, $1600 a month is really dumb math.

She told Fox News about the press in general, “We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer, so that they report the news the way we want it reported.”  What the fuck?  The first amendment appears to be inconvenient for Ms. Angle.  She continued by saying that she would like it if the press would allow her to plug her Web site and solicit donations on the air.  Who is this woman?  Methinks she’s operating under some serious misconceptions.

Earlier this year she said,  “And these programs that you mentioned — that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward — are all entitlement programs built to make government our God,” Angle said in an April interview with TruNews Christian Radio. “And that’s really what’s happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government.”

What?  She said that shit.

She’s a hardcore homophobe and would prevent gay couples from adopting and I don’t doubt attempt to wrest children from their gay adoptive parents.

She suggested that Americans exercise their 2nd amendment rights, as in take up arms, if they’re not satisfied with the outcome of the elections.  She didn’t reference fraud or anything, just that people use their guns if they don’t like the way it turns out.

Sheezus!!!

I have to tell you that I quite literally hate Sharron Angle, everything she stands for and anyone like her.

Where are we as a State of this Union, that such an astringently dogmatic and spectacularly frightening societal, populist heretic can be a legitimate contender for such an exclusive and important legislative body?  One could easily point to those that have come before her; Jesse Helms, Tom Delay, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, Sam Brownback, John “Agent Orange” Boener, Mitch McConnell……….the list is long and they are all prick bastards.

Sorry for getting all didactic.

I do have a point beyond this.

What often rankles me about some of the aforementioned is I’m that I’m reasonably sure they know what they’re doing.  They’re assholes, but at least they’re deliberate assholes.  They know exactly what they’re doing and they do it because they’re greedy power lusting fuckheads.  They are bad people.  That, has always pissed me off.

But Sharron Angle scares me.  This woman is an empty headed vacuous agent of ……evil?  What really unnerves me is how she delivers such abject nonsense with that ridiculous grin and those vacant, Stepford, Manson eyes.  Empty, illogical, hollow but sincere glee.  She has the conviction of the pious.  She believes what she says.  She believes the absolute sewage she spews.  She’s so goddamn wacky, pun intended, that whenever she opens her mouth, the entire GOP machine shutters and then scrambles and then stumbles.

There is comedy to be had here.  But it’s not pretty.

What I mean to say, is that although I’m an agnostic, she’s the closest thing to an Anti-Christ I’ve ever seen.  Trust me.  Let’s sit her down and ask her about the apocalypse.  I bet she can’t wait.  She’s nuts.

Harry Reid is among the most powerful men or women in America and thus the world.  This woman is poised, much like Sarah Palin was, to fill some very important shoes.  Such zealots have no place in contemporary politics.  Regardless the proximity to flame such creatures are somehow allowed to enjoy, they just don’t belong there.  There is zero possibility they can do any good at all.  Deleterious waves and ripples without a doubt.  Despite her convictions, Sharron Angle would occupy the office she seeks, instantly become one of a hundred as opposed to the Majority Leader, a face in the crowd……no power and no influence, and fuck it up completely by virtue of those very things she utters and so obviously believes.  She doesn’t understand that she’s a joke, but I do.  She’s absent any clue what the people want or need.  She has her own agenda.  She’s a fool.  Forgive her for she knows not what she does?  Fuck that.  I can’t help it if she doesn’t understand how dangerous and stupid she’ll be and I don’t care.

In, way over her head.  Not my problem and you shouldn’t make it yours.  Please don’t make it mine.  Please.

If Nevadans elect this crazy stupid broad.  They deserve her.  We’re in bad shape.  Highest unemployment and foreclosure rate in the country, I know.  It’s because we’re an economy entirely too dependent on tourism and yes, the Dick-in Bush administration was avaricious, clueless and really fucked up.  Wanna see how much worse it can get?  Put this callow inchoate, utterly clueless bitch in office.

We will have reaped what we’ve sown.  We will have it coming.

Republicans prove it over and over, when you try to fuck the future, the future fucks you.

Harry, I understand you are loathe to fight dirty, but you need to understand what happens to the rest of us if you lose.  You were a boxer.  Lace up dude, this is much bigger than you.

Drinks for my friends.

I walk back upstairs to my apartment.

I start to think about it and I’m brushing my teeth.

I put on jeans and a newer t-shirt.  Clean socks.  I’m not telling myself what I’m doing yet.  Going through the motions.  Cologne.  Deodorant.  Check my nostril hair.

Sipping at a Bombay martini.  A few hits off a hog leg.

What am I doing?

I sit for a minute.  Check my e-mail.

I’m baked and that always makes me shy.  Socially inept.  Out on my balcony I have a smoke and suck through the ice of the martini.  I check for my keys, wallet and business cards.  The default trifecta.

Before I know it it I’m trotting across the boulevard, with sweat on the back of my neck.  To my right the sushi joint is hopping and in front of me the jukebox swells and recedes with the opening and closing of the door.  The night is humid and the moon is yellow and fat.  She stands outside inhaling her cigarette.  I don’t think she sees me but she darts inside as I walk up.  It’s her skin and I nod to the smokers as I open the door and pass through a cloud of her musky flower and tobacco smoke.

It’s dark and loud.

I’m casual.  I don’t see her and I wonder what I’m doing here as I pretend like I need to use the bathroom.  I stand there pissing nothing with the smell of urinal cakes around my head.  I tell myself this is stupid.  I make up my mind to leave.  Out of the bathroom and into the syrup.  I decide to have a drink and abruptly feel like an idiot waiting for the bartender’s attention.  I don’t wave, that’s not my thing.  Eye contact is my thing.  It’s not happening.

From the corner of my eye, there is a slim hand waving and a finger gesturing.  I look to take it in.  Her lips part and she’s grinning, locking eyes with me.  Without a drink I approach.

“I see you changed out of the office.”, she says.

I tell her I would’ve anyway.

She looks past me behind the bar and here’s the bartender asking me what’s it gonna be.

Drinks for my friends.

A white bug just ended up between me and my keyboard. Upside down and kicking.

I loathe bugs.

I popped it in a tissue.

She swayed across the four lane blacktop from the bar to the 7-11 to buy cigarettes.

I watch this and wonder why there’s blood on my arm.  I’ve just come out and she’s the first thing I see after I straight arm the door and look up to see her despite how far away she is.  I hear her in her shoes.  Hips and nails and rhythm.  I pause to unwrap and light a smoke.  I throw the cellophane in the trash can of stone with an ashtray on top and put the fresh pack in my inside breast pocket.

Hoop earrings and a subtle but feline musky on approach.

I turn to go, thinking about her skin and her sway and her smell.

She swivels and looks right at me.  I don’t know what to do with this.

She says, “I came here for smokes but I don’t need a whole goddamn pack.”  Her head jerks a little at the end of her sentence.

I’m shy, I say something about only buying them by the shipping container.

She says, “Give me some cigarettes.”  She sticks out her lower lip.  She fucking says this and starts to goddamn pout.  She knows I stopped to check her out.

She wears some sort of straw hat with a huge yellow flower on it.  A flowery dress in contrast to her skin.

I’m wearing a coat and tie and start to dig inside my left for my new pack.  I feel like I look like William Shatner.  She smiles and leans an elbow on the ash tray/trash can between us.  She has freckles but barely. She folds her hands across her stomach and cocks her jaw just a little.  I’m leaning in her scent.

I try to smile as I clench teeth on my smoke and shake a few out of my pack.  I hold up three or four and she grins and winks and snatches them before I can blink.  The door jangles behind her as someone exits and she spins away asking me what I’m doing in front of a 7-11 on a Saturday night.

If I had an answer, I’d have to yell it.

I watch her dance back across the street to the bar.

I can’t figure out if she’s waiving me over or not.

Drinks for my friends.

Greed permeates everything.  It informs our day to day decisions, who we vote for, whether we know it or not, and even how we see ourselves.  It has infected our bathroom mirrors.  Greed is envy.  It is lust.  It is a cancer, insidious and consuming like the very worst drug ever.  Eventually, everything collapses under the weight of greed.  As a country, as a people, as a species, we’ve never been more threatened by greed than we are now.  Right now.  Yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Right now.

More and more and more the weight of greed defines us.  It is heavy on our society, our politics and our religion.  Our peace and our war.  Our self image and therefore self confidence.  Our peace of mind.  Although greed has pushed our faces inward with chronic narcissism, so many of us are fat and very ugly.  Yet we are implacable.  Inexorable.  Insatiable.  What matters is not what we do have, what we care about almost exclusively, is what we don’t have yet.

We are sick fucks.

We are not a Democracy.  We are not a Republic.  We are a plutocracy that flirts ,albeit disingenuously, with theocracy because they have money and power.  The defining characteristic of a plutocrat is of course, greed.  The religious zealots are power brokers because they are adept at whipping the stupid and afraid into a frenzy profound enough to compel them to vote against their bests interests and donate to those that would forsake them in a heartbeat for more money and power, as they inevitably do.  Over and over.

Christianity in America endeavors to make you ignore the theory of evolution.  Science keeps coming up with million year old skulls.  And clavicles.  Contemporary Christianity does not even want such an empirically fastidious discipline to be taught in our schools.  Instead, it implores you to view the existence of fossils and the carbon dating thereof as some sort of test of your faith.  It really wants you to believe some woman bit an apple a few thousand years ago and a serpent emerged and well, we may all be fucked because of it, unless we submit to bigotry, homophobia and narrow minded bullshit dogma.

Santa Claus for adults.

For what it’s worth, the greedy could not give less of a mad fuck about any of it.  They chuckle and sneer at the ease of manipulating the zealots while the zealots manipulate their own.  Because all of them are really fucking stupid.

Got off on a tangent there.  Let me brush the crumbs from my frilly liberal blouse.  Oops!  Looks like I spilled some champagne and caviar on it too.  Need to have the suspension checked on the limo.

Still, greed was the catalyst and now enjoys the momentum.  We serve at it’s pleasure and succumb to it without knowing it.  We are are consistently beseeched to rail against unfair taxation without bothering to realize that under the Obama administration, most of us are being asked for far less than we have been in nearly four decades.  And this same administration seeks to restore tax rates to the wealthiest two percent that were disastrously reduced on the notion that they would create jobs.  Guess what?  No jobs and another $trillion added to the deficit.

The pisser is the fight to restore tax rates to the richest, and maintain or even cut them further to the middle class and small businesses may already be lost.  Republicans are staking their campaigns on defeating it, despite the overwhelming empirical evidence that it will add $3 trillion to the deficit and without a doubt have a broad and devastatingly deleterious effect on the economy in general.

Yet they’ve successfully sold the lie that somehow such counterintuitive, “voodoo”, “trickle down”, economic policy will somehow benefit the average American.  That the administration seeks to only let the cuts on the wealthiest expire, and indeed to extend them to anyone and everyone making less than a $quarter million a year is another absolute fact that Republicans are actively, knowingly, lying about every day.  Just like “Death Panels” and the government “takeover” of the banks or the auto industry.  Keep the government out of my health care but don’t you dare touch my Medicare.  Lies,  Goddamn despicable lies and they know it.  Despite the glaringly irrefutable proof of the very recent past, wherein we were led through the gates of hell, to shake hands with he of the cloven hooves and bifurcated tail, and in exchange for our souls, we got fucked.

Greed.

People choose to believe it didn’t happen that way, because they really want just a little more money.

Good show.  Greed 1, Americans 0.

Why would they do such a thing?  Greed.  Not just for money.  Power.  Greed and power are no less incestuous and licentious than greed and money.  Greed begets them both and they return to suckle at the tit of it in a lascivious symbiotic spectacle.  A greasy orgy of lucre and lies.  Clicking and sucking and slurping and smelling of rotting fruit.

Every single thing Sarah Palin does is motivated by greed.  You don’t quit halfway through being governor of an American state, immediately release a book and go on an incredibly lucrative speaking tour unless your impetus is the filthy lucre.

Because of unmitigated greed, many of us believe that one of the richest corporations in the history of humankind has been demonized and unfairly persecuted for recklessly destroying an as yet untold amount of our environment, including ecologically irreplaceable wetlands, an entire regional economy and a historied way of life for generations.  The media has backed off.  America has shifted her attentions.  But if you think 60,000 barrels (2.6 million gallons) a day for over three months is just gonna disappear, you’re an idiot.  You think this whole clusterfuck is even close to resolved, you’re just dumb.  So surface oil slicks are hard to come by.  Dispersants just as toxic as the Texas Tea itself distributed in gallons by the million.  Do the math, that much oil went somewhere.

Decades, this pollution will rear it’s ugly head for decades.  Cancer rates will spike.  Entire populations of sea creatures will go extinct.  This gift will keep on giving because of reckless, unchecked greed.

This ain’t over because of, you know, greed.  We subsidize the industry you know.  Some $35 billion a year.  About the same amount Republicans refused to pony up week after week for the unemployed.  How sick is that?  We subsidize the richest business ever, every year for the same money that would allow our own victims of greed to eat.  Whenever the Democrats try to end that “entitlement”, the Republicans piss, moan and then filibuster.

It’s fucking ridiculous and they’re about to do it all again.

Illegal immigration exists and has become the problem it is because of greed.  If there were no demand, there would be no supply.  They persist in demonizing the undocumented worker, falsely inflating the crime statistics, which have been falling for a handful of years.  Portraying all of them as violent drug dealers.  Drugs are another ugly American story.  Fomenting the rhetoric that the dirty Mexicans are stealing our jobs.  Just this weekend Senator Jon Kyl lied about it all on national television.  Claiming that Phoenix was the kidnapping capital of the world second only to Mexico City.  McCain has lied about it over and over as does the Governor, Brewer and the sheriff of the only county where crime is up, Arpaio.  The aggregate is a HUGE filthy lie.  They want immigration reform because they want to control the borders.  Not to keep them from coming in but to keep the ones they have and be able to get more of the same kind.  What they really want is to better screen and control their pool of slave labor.

Greed.

Commercials and infomercials devoted to making me bigger and hornier and more of a stud.  Over a billion capsules sold.  With all due respect.  That’s greed merely because it’s bullshit.  How do they assume I need that?  Free lunches everywhere, lose fifty pounds without ever getting out of bed or off the toilet  I could literally make $70 grand next month in real estate if I just sign up for this seminar.  Them that buy in are just as guilty of greed because they’re looking for something for nothing with an even cruder zeal.

Greed prevents us from acting on global warming and therefore a chance to save our planet.

Greed keeps us from actually helping impoverished countries plagued with disease and famine because they have resources we covet and empowering them in any way would just make it harder to keep raping them.

Greed stood in the way of efficacious health care reform.

Greed stood in the way of meaningful financial reform.

Greed is why we are beholding to and and at the utter mercy of, big energy, big pharma, big corporations, the military industrial complex, banks, credit card companies and even our own government …….

Avarice is an evil lonely bitch, but not for lack of company.

Greed kills.

I think I’m done here.

Drinks for my friends.