I’m fourty four years old. Sometimes I think about that and it impresses me. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve done a lot.

I’ve seen a kid on a bike launched by a car doing sixty. I’ve seen people splattered and dying face down on warm asphalt. I’ve been rushed to the hospital bleeding in an ambulance. I’ve met governors and senators. I’ve seen comets and eclipses. Managed a Der Wienerschnitzel. I’ve rolled end over end off the side of mountain in a Subaru. I had a knife pulled on me. Been to a whorehouse and ridden miles above in a giant balloon. Lost my mind on hallucinogenic drugs. Got booked on a felony and made the front page of my hometown paper.

All by the time I was twenty one or twenty two.

I always wonder how many other people flirt with insanity as much as I do. I don’t think I’m going crazy or anything but I wonder about everyone else. Imagine working in a hospital. People with there shit hanging out or infected with insidious diseases. There are so many professions I’m automatically excluded from because of my prejudice for gore and human or animal excretions be they voluntary or not.

I am grateful to be an American. Despite her flaws, copious and profound, I’m happy I was born here and not anywhere else. They call India ‘the worlds largest democracy’, yet the caste system in India allows for a man’s only employment prospect to be diving in the crude sewage system to clear obstructions. These poor fucks have little beyond facemasks, gloves and snorkels. They climb out of manholes covered in shit.

Fuck me.

Welcome to Planet Earth.

“So, let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attention to our common interests……For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” -JFK

He said that nearly a half century ago. How far have we come? We’ve elected our first bi-racial or racially mixed President. A very high watermark. To my dismay we are still coated in fear, willfull ignorance and graceless stupidity. Still so disasterously handicapped by institutions and insipid indoctrination. People actually lament the end of Dumbya’s dynasty. Millions still believe reproductive rights to be a priority beyond any other issue. Millions still have mullets and poor dental hygiene. They all listen to Rush Limbaugh.

We can’t ignore these bastards. They used to just be stupid. Now they’re mad. Not a welcome development. Seems like the only thing to do is marginalize them. Zeitgeist appears to endorse that notion. The pendulum is in motion and it’s arc seems to favor sensibility. I don’t trust these zealous fuckers, they may be mad now but they’ve always been insane, that’s how it all happened in the first place. It’s been welcome to the monkeyhouse for eight goddamn years.

“…..in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….”

I just have to say this. As fucked as we are, these dipshits want to stand at every hole we attempt to fill stomping and screaming about how we shovel or what we use to fill the hole. The Republicans, after all this time pissing and moaning about the budget, finally produce a document we’ll have to call an alternative. We can’t call it a budget because there are no goddamn numbers in it. I haven’t read the whole and I refuse to. I have neither the time, the patience or the humor. It’s a joke.

And another thing, most of the people who manage to get a degree in this country end up owing an assload of money. In their early twenties they are desensitized to the idea of humongous debt. So, duh. No wonder so many are so confused. They were working and now they’re not. They had savings and now they don’t. They were living check to check and now they live hand to mouth. They lived in their cars and now they live on a sidewalk.

Another indicator of just how bad the shit is hitting the fan is conflagrations on our southern border. Juárez is occupied by the Mexican military. Thousands dying every year. Far more than our wars across the globe. It is blowing up. This shit is fucked up and it’s because of our senseless, pointless, compassionless and thoroughly ineffective ‘War On Drugs’.

Evil, draconian policy arriving home to roost. Hillary showed up, I don’t know what she did. People who buy pot, smoke pot or even sell pot should not be behind bars anymore than people who buy booze, drink booze or sell booze. It’s that simple. It’s that regoddamndiculous.

My cat Beddy likes to sit on my back while I take a dump. She let’s me know with her eyes and one of at least ten variations on the sound of a pigeon. She’s petite but I still need to lean forward a bit. She turns every direction of the compass. Otherwise she doesn’t approach me in the bathroom much. She’s transfixed by the water closet however. I call it that because of her. It’s a story for another day.

It’s just that we are still so plumbing the depths.

I no longer buy bottled water.

This is the strangest place I’ve ever been.

Drinks for my friends.

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