Yep, September Randomness

Another great 2-book set:
Looking For Mr. Goodbar
Goodbye, Mr. Chips

The "Secret" is how they can keep repackaging the same old shit and know you'll keep buying it. The producers of Three Stooges DVDs use a similar philosophy.

Finland has not participated in a war in decades now. What the hell's their problem?

The dinosaurs took care of the planet.
For way longer than we've even been on it... and it still got rid of them.

A bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos before bed will produce the same effect as some bad acid before bed.

Why do the neighbors insist on slamming doors? To convince them to stay closed?

When Hitler was dead, the war in Europe was over. When Saddam Hussein was dead, 20,000 more troops were sent in. What aren't we being told?

If you travel back in time and shoot your grandfather, you do not suddenly cease to exist. But your hair changes color. Your height possibly changes, and if you're lucky, the length of your shlong gets a sudden boost.

Sometimes I wonder, maybe it is worth it to go into politics, for all that money I wouldn't have to work for.

If sex were as good as root beer, would it be foamy?

All In My Head

I'm thinking of a radio advertisement. I heard it years ago, many years ago – we're talking 1973 or so. I don't remember what the ad was for, just the repeated catch-phrase that echoed eerily through a night-shrouded country bedroom, with dogs ruh-ruh-ruffing somewhere off in the distance, and crickets chirping just beyond the open window. "Did they die for us?"

Who? Did who die? I'm trying to remember it. It was spoken by a group of children – a chorus of nine- and ten-year olds. "Did they die for us?" Then a somber baritone announcer mumbled something no doubt poignant and sobering. Followed by the children asking once more, "did they die for us?"

That's all I have. No clues that will suddenly uncloak the answer the longer I ponder. Just the interesting notion of who "they" might be. The ones that apparently died. And made a group of children curious as to whom "they" kicked off for.

Was it about veterans? When I think sometimes of a radio murmuring in the dark somewhere next to my bed, I remember one particular veteran: my dad. There's no face connected to this particular memory of him – just the blackness of a dark bedroom, pierced by a tiny, glowing orange point of light. A cigarette flaring. Intensifying to a neon yellow ever briefly, then simmering down to a flicker of amber. A falling star in an empty night. He smoked in bed. Never fell asleep mid-cig. He was either very careful or extremely lucky.

Was it rabbits that died? The bunnies who bought the farm, so that the mothers of this group of kids could find out whether a nose-picking little radio actor was on the way? Those were the 70s, afterall. There were no little gray "+" signs that turned blue. No ultrasound photographs. The "rabbit test" involved the death of Bugs, so that Mom could find out if your new little brother was in the oven. In that case, kids, yeah – they died for you. The real question is, were you worth it?

Another memory I connect to a puttering little night stand radio is announcer Vin Scully ("Vinnnz Gully" as he himself pronounced it) fading in and out with "so that's the inneen, as thuh Daahhjers take a pawbuball to zekkun" (the Dodgers take a pop-up ball to second) and thah remines me, faahnz, how all other lunchmeats come in zekkun to Fahhmer Jahhnz lunchmeat..."

I could listen to this guy talk all night, about damn near anything. An Ell-Lay raydeeo dude fighting his New Yawka accent like a mailman swatting a pitbull with the Publishers' Clearinghouse sweepstakes.

"An I godda pizzed-off bumble-bee in my trowzers, stingin' my azzzz, fanz, an boy duz it hurrrrt. Which remines me how all the other weener brands STING YOU IN THE AZZ at the subermarket cheggout lines. Unlike the deee-lishuss, wallet-friendly priced weenerz frum Fahhmer Jahhhn..."

I'd get up at 1:30 in the morning for a sandwich, to get that mean Fahhmer Jahhn bologna monkey off my back. Yes, I was a fat kid, until the few stations whose signals reached over the mountains to our house stopped carrying Dodger games – or at least just broadcast day games, when I was at school.

I'll never forget Scully translate the drama of a sudden homerun, to an audience that couldn't actually see the action. "Heeerrre's the pitch... An it's wayback... waaaayyback... and kiss it g'bye!!" I can hear it in my head, as clear as any 50,000 watt signal drifting north over the hills on a night sky crowded with thunderheads.

Scully announced Dodger games on the radio almost since Marconi invented the damn thing. I think Al Michaels first got work simply because his voice was a sound-alike to Scully's. Since the Dodgers themselves couldn't draw much of a radio audience by actually winning a game on a regular basis, they must have figured they'd better stick to SOMETHING that worked. Screw the game.

I just remembered that the foreboding "Did they die for us" commercial happened during a Dodger game broadcast. Maybe it referred to the Dodgers themselves. Or maybe just the ratings of their radio games.

Dodgers don't really die. They pop up to second.

Peevish Pastiche

I've had enough long-winded belly-ache about politics and all the crap served up hot on a paper plate by the media. They don't even spice it up anymore. Now the crap is sugar-free. Now it's bland and bereft of all zing and zeal. Sure, it's the same crap – but now they don't even attempt to make it look or taste like something else. Cynical turds.

Piss on our heads and shout that it's Free Lemonade Day.

How can I impress you with my rapier wit and wordplay wizardry when they bombard us with so much CRAP demanding comment!! Shitmeisters!!

Have you seen Madonna's latest concert snaps featuring those tendony forearms and sinewy inner thighs? That's what retirement home nurses see every day at sponge bath time. I'm turned on. Seriously. When you get to be my age, things that were repellant in my twenties suddenly totally DO IT for me.

I say, as long as you can hold that Schick steady enough for even crotch-frame symmetry, flaunt it, Madge! Play the Strat more often too!

I'm glad that one of my personal heroes, Jerry Lewis, doesn't look like an oompa-loompavitch anymore. He may be 82 now, but he looks like "Jerry" again, and that brings on a feeling of peace. That some things really are eternally correct. See "The Bellboy." That movie explains everything. When you walk through a storm...

Another Jerry – Reed – died. The slickest cracker in the box. A better guitargod, and a better actor, than a lot of folks gave credit for. And we're now "In a world" without Don LaFontaine. Sucks.

See this shit? There's TWO MORE 20th century icons that future dumbed-down generations of entertainment addicts will, ironically, not have frickin' clue one about. And when some old fart – like yours truly – attempts to explain to them what they missed simply by being born too damn late, they won't spend two seconds listening. They'll turn up the volume on their iUnipodphoneberry and lurch away. Fawk.

I see Karl Rove is back in the country, and still being given national airtime to spew his corrosive demon bile. Isn't he a fugitive? Shouldn't someone have met him at the border with handcuffs?? Wow, here's a guy doing Osama bin Laden one better – living right out in the open and still not being hauled in.

The Hadron Super Collider is due to be switched on in a week. There are some scientific types being spun into the wacko column, who think it worth talking about, that this huge "unknown" might shove us into a dangerous new territory that there will be no backing away from.

The most extreme nightmare scenario: it conjures up a mini black hole – on earth – that does exactly what the big black holes in space do, that is, devour light and matter. That would pretty much be the bad hair day from hay-ell, bee-otch. Incredible to watch. Impossible to run from.

Suggestion: Give Rove an up-close-n-personal tour of the contraption, timed just as the toggle is flipped.

The most far-out & groovy possibility: it creates a method of time-travel. Sign me up. I'll even join a gym and start eating right to qualify!

When the atom bomb was first invented, there were well-educated folks who predicted it would trigger some kind of doomsday chain-reaction into motion. Hasn't it?

Who knew I'd give myself a shit-fit being more green. I put all my empty bottles in a plastic garbage bag in the kitchen – once a week I can make a single trip to the recycling area with my big bag-o'-bottles. One problem: the bag eventually gets too big, and I get too lazy to haul it downstairs. Those bottles aren't exactly designed to stack well. And they make the darnedest whack-a-pow on a formica floor. You know what the favorite time is for a pile of plastic bottles to shift and tumble? Strange question, sure – but with a definite answer.

Two-fricking-fifteen in the a.m. Twocka-bucka-kapow-poppa-bang-doo-dup-dup. I'm in bed, tryin' to get my nightly 'old guy with work in the morning' snooze, and suddenly I'm jolted awake by what sounds like a midget wearing clogs who's decided to jump out of hiding and trash the kitchen.

I was cleaning my fridge one night (gawd I'm glad those 3-month old apples were in a tied baggie) and there was something big and black, squashed, stuck to the back wall. I jumped. Ow my head. What the shit is THAT!

Whatever it was, it had died horribly. And had been preserved by the cold. Some mysterious dark brown roadkill, had met the Reaper while foraging in the frozen white alternate universe that is the fridge, and was defiantly still holding ground in grim repose.

I wadded up a mighty ball of paper towels, to grab the creature without its icky inner ooze grabbing me back. I reached forth. Crackle. Crunch.

A frozen round of brown wax paper – that had once held a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

I rose, looked at myself in the reflection of the microwave oven window. Slack-jawed, worthless, pouty-lipped, girly-man.

Now I'm listening to a radio ad for one of those psychic hotline scams. "The tarot tells me that this man you've been dating can be stubborn and hard to deal with?" Yes, the woman caller giggles. She asks how the online psychic could tell that? Well, I think, possibly it's because everything he does for you is judged against the advice of some astrological shit-heel with pat answers for every conceivable bird-brain scenario you insist on letting her be a third-party to?

What they see in that crystal ball is your Visa card, putz.

Just letting the thoughts blow through my head like old pillowcases through a dry cleaners. Leaves through an alley. Bologna through a puppy's tummy.

One political note: as I write this, the Republican Convention is in full swing. It's performance art, you know. All these people really care about is hanging onto their earmarks, their perks, their private jets and reserved parking. Cuff links aren't free.

It's bedtime. That means that another workday is about 12 hours away. I wonder what I'll dream about tonight? I hope it's the Swedish women weightlifters team again.

August Randomness

Just about anyone can beat me at chess. I don't play poker enough to know how bad I am.

Does Batman ever eat nachos while working in the batcave on a slow night?

The world's first biologist was the caveman who took a crap, looked down at it, and thought, "what IS that shit that keeps coming out of my ass!!"

That couple in the restaurant with well behaved kids – they deserve a medal. Both them and the kids.

Irony is nearly destroying a suppository getting the foil off, finally getting it inserted, then having a sudden involuntary fart attack.

Don't marry any metropolitan woman who does "Hillbilly Night."

Send me twenty dollars and I'll send you a shiny new penny!

What does it mean exactly, when through the wall, you can hear the landlord crying?

Roger Ebert's movie sucks!

Just because it rhymes doesn't make it a poem.

What ever you do with another consenting adult is yours to feel guilty as hell about the next morning.

Can you listen with the same intensity that you dominate the conversation with?

The Old Rover Boy

Executive privilege is not a license to have fun breaking the law. We are currently plagued, however, by quite a number of governmental types who seem to think that's exactly what it means. Recall one of Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon's famous quotes: "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."

Only Karl is not the President (there is a God). In fact, he's not even a certified member of government anymore. He's a private citizen who somehow still believes in his federal immunity to his own past.

His business card now just says the truth, plain and simple: Karl Rove, Motherfucker.

One of his dreams was a permanently established republican majority in Congress. Sorry, but that not only isn't how a democracy works, it isn't even how a REPUBLIC works.

He still has his ensconced friends, whose skirt tails he predictably runs behind, in these last few months of an administration that he used as a giant personal dildo upon the American public. Only the clock is ticking. Day by day, more of his pals will abandon him in their own mad dash out of the federal whorehouse. It will get difficult to keep washing his hands harder and harder and still smell that lingering trace of butt lube on them.

If 9-11 was indeed a covert government set-up foisted upon its own people to create an excuse to re-invade Iraq, here is a leading candidate for one of its masterminds...

Outing government covert agents – endangering them, their families and other federal agents in doing so – all to keep a lid on the cauldron of lies concerning the Iraq War. A nobler nation would call that high treason.

Tampering with the Department of Justice to promote party agendas. That's called malfeasance.

Scapegoating cronies. (Can you say "Scooter?")

High-up monkeying with voter counts in the presidential elections, not just for his boss, but quite probably to insure his own continued power base. Well, alright, Karl isn't the first to do that one.

Firing 9 U.S. Attorneys simply because of their personal politics.

Destroying incriminating e-mail evidence regarding all of the above. That's a felony if you or I do it.

Casting all blame for federal inaction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina upon the local (Democratic) officials whose homes and livelihoods were annihilated along with those of their constituents. That's like the fox blaming the chickens for being in the coop in the first place.

And let us not overlook... flagrantly ignoring a Congressional Subpoena and... skipping the country (!!!). Didn't a few Nazis try that after Germany surrendered?

Everything listed here has already been reported on, exhaustively, by the media. Could anyone scan the previous decade's résumé of this individual and not see an unwavering career of festering deceit and criminality? Yet in each grandly staged photo-op, there he is, unaware that his immense evil is telegraphed to the lens with even the slightest shifty eyed grin. He is polished, speck-free, possibly even "bright." In the way that the sheen on the skins of wet dog turds may be said to be "bright."

He makes Richard Nixon look like Henry David Thoreau.

A hundred years ago, such a person would face a firing squad.

But no – he will likely get away with it. All of it. He's untouchable – at least in his own twisted mind. He's a higher species than you and me – unshackled by mere morals or ethics, he's that uncaught bird, flying away to some branch too high for any predator – legal or otherwise – to reach. But always certain that the chosen perch is suitable from which to freely crap on those below daring enough to look up.

It will be truly amazing to watch. This living embodiment of everything wrong and ugly about the current condition of government, will continue to be coddled, championed and in some cases sainted by a league of tunnel-visioned loyalists – in the halls of politics, the private sector, and even the media – and his fetid, flatulent influence will continue to spread like mold in the forum of public opinion, as he takes his place among the talking heads and pundits. He did get them to write him his own Rap song, remember?

Then he'll write his obligatory tell-all bestseller, in which he will betray every former ally, and smugly claim victimhood. His controversial past in high office will guarantee him a publishing deal – rather than any discernible writing talent. He'll hire some flunky to check commas and semicolons. There's no way to hook a book to a lie detector. He'll be assured of a continued life free of all money woes. He'll never have to use a time-clock. He'll never wait in line for lunch. And all us tax-payers, with anuses still hurting from his days of unelected, undeserved privilege, will only be able to stand and watch his limo roll by.

But even then, let us never forget, this is that special brand of fiend, whom acquired a high seat of power and used it for every wrong purpose. This is the guy who took a shit in our plate, and told us it was chili.

No Way To Treat A Lady

All she ever does is stand around, with her back turned. Even on her birthday. She keeps a lid on her emotions, too. No smiles, no tears – even when betrayed. Not so much as a raised eyebrow. Ever. That can't be healthy. She must be ready to burst inside. But no, she's impossible to read, at her face.

Hers should be the first name on every Top Ten Babe List. All we ever seem to do, however, is fantasize about her death. After all she's been through. What kind of sick, demented relationship is that?

Whenever Hollywood has needed to show how bad a catastrophe, an alien invasion, or anything monumentally disastrous really is, they draw upon her image to provide that one shot that says-it-all. No movie about global destruction in any form is complete without a scene depicting her as the ultimate damsel in distress.

The most righteous thunder of indignation came from Charlton Heston, who was the very first to 'find the body' in "Planet of the Apes."

"God damn you all to hell!" That's probably what I would have said, too.

Her specialty is dramatic death scenes. I can't help but wonder if that tablet tucked in the Statue of Liberty's left arm isn't really a big driveway-size SAG card.

Her most recent cameo was in the monster flick "Cloverfield." Why, she's even on the movie poster, post-decapitation. In the film, her indifferent noggin bounces off skyscrapers like in some gigantic pinball game, to finally skid to a street-demolishing halt right in-frame of the kid 'documenting' everything with his handy-cam. The auto-focus zeroes in on her balefully staring eye, which looks eerily like its about to form a tear.

She is continually referred back to at intervals in "Day After Tomorrow" to show us the terrifying progression of a planetary pole shift. First she is drowned by an incoming high tide of Biblical proportions, then later shown shoulder deep in an ocean of ice. She made the poster for that film as well.

By that time, she was already quite the veteran of the New Yorker's view of the Apocalypse. In "Deep Impact" a comet plunges the city under water nearly up to the eyebrows of the Twin Towers – which were still standing when that movie was released – and the only things still standing of the Big Apple when the fictional flood recedes. A mighty suspension of disbelief, that, in our post-9/11 world.

Once again, our Lady's lopped-off head, floating to the bottom of this new inland sea serves to lick the envelope closed on the magnitude of the devastation just witnessed. I may not recall correctly, but did she reprise the scene for the Bruce Willis sci-fi actioner "Armageddon?"

She peeked up from the depths of a post-modern ice age in "A.I."

She parodied herself in the yock-fest, "Strange Brew," where she not only served her standard role as New York's only post-doomsday landmark, but became the Barbie Doll size yardstick by which we measured how huge the atomically radiated McKenzie brothers had mutated.

How many other films have set her up either as victim of worldwide calamity, or at least vigilant in the face of one? A Google search provided a partial list of additional titles:

"Saboteur" (1942)

"Beneath the Planet of the Apes" (1968) Recreating her scene from the original film.

"Escape From New York" (1981)

"Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins" (1985) ... and never goes much further.

"Independence Day" (1996)

"X-Men" (2000)

"Godzilla: Final Wars" (2004) – She is destroyed by Rodan. Sheesh.

I'm sure that's not even half of them.

There must be some rational explanation for this pattern. Psychoanalysts have documented countless cases of harm fantasized about, or actually inflicted, on loved ones, out of some deeply rooted issue that expresses itself as violence. Some serial murderers reportedly have seen their own acts as an ultimate form of possession and control – that they imagined lacking in their above-ground lives.

Well, nobody else can have her, that's for sure. Is it that we'd rather see her toppled by some act of nature, or monster attack, than willingly give her up?

Another well-documented issue is male inadequacy. That lingering dread that we have landed a relationship with someone out of our league, and it's just a matter of time until our beloved realizes what phonies we are. Could our continual replay of Lady Liberty's demise be a grand-scale case of erectile failure, brought on by subconscious sexual intimidation? Our last desperate reflex of self-loathing being to put her in her place with an impulsive bitch-slap?

Lastly, the most obvious inner conflict is simply that loving her is a burden. She stands for so much on our behalf. Symbolizes emotions that cut so deep. And she has never complained, or sagged even slightly, in the face of our shortcomings. Her love is unconditional, and that is the heaviest love of all – that tests our faith in our own ability to love in return, and love fully, equally. She makes us doubt what we can do for her. Can we? Have we? The question hurts just to ask.

She's the ultimate woman. Living with her is hard. But living without her is hell. If only something would lift the load, without leaving any guilt... like a galactic armada, or a huge atomic beast from the sea, or an immense cataclysm of nature... or a...

Unthinkable, yet ours to dream. It seems too typical a post-modern relationship; no matter how all-consuming, it is embroidered with dysfunction.

But of course, we aren't serious. Just funning with ya, sweet thang. Give us a kiss. Mmm-sugar.

July Randomness

What do you do when the stream of consciousness bottlenecks?

Be careful what you wish for. Hillary wanted someone tall, dark and handsome who would "rock her world." Look what happened.

When I was a kid, I never knew any adults who needed things explained to them on a third-grade level. Now as an adult myself, I can't escape them!

That guy who always wears short-sleeved plaid work shirts that won't stay tucked – he didn't go to Harvard.

You never ever hear of an alien abductee shitting their pants. That may be the one clue that proves they're faking. They never say, "then I blew butt-chili all over their spaceship!" If that was me, we'd be talking hot Thai rectal-reflux.

Okay – here's what I wanna know: How the hell did they time the motorcade to pass by the Schoolbook Depository right at Oswald's lunch hour?

I want a network anchorman named Hymie Schlitz. "And now here's the news, with..."

The pervert Marx brother they kept hidden in the cellar, and never let in any of the movies: Spermo.

For the most part, buying Girl Scout cookies is about as close as any of us will ever get to banging that sexy mom keeping an eye on the till.

We all have our faults. Mine runs down the center of California.