Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

“Joe The Plumber…you can quote me…..is a dumbass.  He should stick to plumbing.” -Meghan McCain

Nevermind his name’s not Joe and he’s not a plumber.

That’s rich.

Sarah palin has the highest favorability rating of anyone in the GOP and she remains the parties most effective fund raiser.

That’s just sick.  Disturbing.  Portentous.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sessions, Cornyn and Grassley step on their dicks in the Sotomayor hearings.  They focus on her speeches as opposed to, and in obvious ignorance of, her seventeen years as a sharp and capable centrist jurist.  Dogs and ponies.  They can’t come up with a damn thing.  Didn’y lay a glove on her.  Pat Buchanan and Rachel Maddow collided over her on MSNBC earlier today.  Rachel rocked by telling Uncle Pat he was “dating himself”.   Summed up the disconnect between asstards like Buchanan and well, the rest of us.

That guy doesn’t lose many fights.  She kicked his ass.

I’ve written about this a lot but I’m not tired of it yet.  The Republican party is one hot mess.  Tying their own shoes and that’s a bad thing.  An implosion that keeps on giving.  Three sex scandals in as many weeks, all three by prominent moralizing Republicans, who happen to live on or in (?), C Street and happen to call themselves a Christian Mafia.  I believe all three have waxed hypocritical about other politicians who’ve been caught engaged in acts of untoward.  They hollered self righteously for resignations, and now refuse to resign.

Fucking poseurs.

All this in a venue the IRS has been led to believe is a church.  A goddamn church.  Some media began calling it a frat house today.  That works.  The fraternity is the Christian Mafia.  Fuck me.

Spying and torture and assassinations, oh my.  Now I hear they used insects, fire ants even during interrogations.  Another wingtip slams the marble everyday.  Turns out, Republicans really are idiots.  Fucking arrogant, willfully ignorant, lazy morons.  They do nothing but posture and make insipid pronouncements awkwardly disguised as rational disagreement.

The hangover is getting to be a bit much.  I knew it would be a long one but it’s becoming insufferable.

You can’t write this shit.

When I hear about this kinda buffoonery, I can’t help but wonder just how much of this ‘berg is above water?

It’s like Republicans only drink a certain kind of water and the Democrats just figured out how to infiltrate the supply.  It has become the perfect storm.

Or maybe, within the most cosmic of ironies, evolution is biting them in the ass.  A burst of honest, progressive and still empirical thought manifests as their own species threatening comet.  Or maybe ice age.

Whatever it is, a hard winter is upon the Grand Old Party.

Drinks for my friends.

Seemed like a kinda profound topic when it first occurred to me.

I want it to be good.  Pleasant.  Everyone gets their fair share and we are allowed to make our own happiness without concern for shelter and food or medicine.  We should have to work for these things for sure.  But, it’s ridiculous given the largess mother earth produces every day that so many go without.  Criminal that those lacking do so only by the hands of them that have so much.  There is a point where sanity ceases to be sane.  A point where it all is so ridiculous.

We are there.

Work with me here.  The last decade has seen the the single most massive redistribution of wealth in the history of history.  The rich got filthy richer and the poor got less and less than shit.  Veterans, handicapped and disabled.  Mentally ill and inner city humans, minorities and laborers.  All of them bound ever harder.  And middle class mouth breathers shriek about socialism and health care like they haven’t been ripped the fuck off by their own for decades.  Absurd.  Stupid.  The richest country ever on the face of this blue marble, afraid to distribute her gargantuan excess equitably enough to provide for the common welfare at hand.  To secure liberty and perhaps even the pursuit of happiness.

They wail and whine about any change at all to a corrupt system that incentivizes greed over service, while their very own pockets are beseeched and invaded by the paper champions they so covet and support.  Them that fall from grace in hypocritical scandal after embarrassing calumny.  Just how stupid are the great unwashed?

Yep, just that frustratingly stupid.  Just like that.  Over and over.  Again and again.  Fucking stupid.

Fools.  “Why behave in public if you’re living on a playground?” -DLR

An 8,000 square foot house for two people?  Maybe.  I don’t know.  Why would someone who makes twenty million a year aspire to make two hundred million?  Who cares at that point?  Unless you intend to give it away.  I can see buying a nice car.  I like cars.  I have a penis.

A guy named Horace Walpole said a hundred years ago that life is is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.

I don’t want my government using my money to buy so many fucking bombs and guns and ever more efficacious ways to kill.  WWII was the really the last time we needed all that paraphernalia of death and destruction.  What we need now is clean air and water.  A safe and reliable food supply, a clean well lit place to live, health care and a decent education.  These are not outrageous things to ask from the richest country in the world.

I’m not suggesting that everything be free, rather simply that productive employed citizens be able to afford life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The poor and disadvantaged should at least see a light at the end of a tunnel.  We can’t take care of everyone but we can do a helluva lot better than we are now.

I don’t understand why the great unwashed or so afraid of it.  Health care.  I believe it to be a right.  It shames and sickens me that we are not afforded this merely because all of our money, yes, our money, has been spent on our ability to wreak havoc on the undeserving around the world for the last six decades.  To establish dominance.  To show who’s boss.  So there’s no mistake about who’s boss.  Disgusting.

I love this country and I love it’s people.  Well, some of them anyway.  We all deserve it, whether you’re one of the shit bags who buy into the specious, self serving bullshit fear the Republicans cram down your neck everyday or not.  We’ve all actually earned it.  We deserve it.

Are you aware that there at least four pharmaceutical/medical insurance lobbyists for every member of congress?  The legislative branch of our government is bought and paid for.  Duh.  The thing is this, we the people have the same advantage we’ve always had.   Same potential.  Same power.  They all still need to get elected.  It’s true we’ve seen rampant polling malfeasance, but I’d like to believe that if Iranian brand fuckery happened here we’d be pretty pissed and the revolution would be televised.

I’m not so cynical as to as to imagine the reverse.  Just cynical enough to understand why they do it so slow, so incremental, so deliberate.  The powers that be fear this muscle unflexed.  They know better than most that should the muscle contract, they are fucked.  So they shoot anesthesia directly into it wherever, whenever and however they can.  Enough of you turn the other way for them to get away with it.

It’s pretty fucked up.

Ultimately, the power lives and dies with the people.  I’m not sure how to put a fine enough point on that.  You want health care?  “Only you can prevent forest fires.”  – Smokey Bear

See what I’m saying?  We are in a better position now to get what we want than we have been in a long time.  What we have coming.

Look at it like this, nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction and they are obsolete.  It’s razors edge, but right now the game is plus or minus zero.  Even Steven.  Penis withering logic.  So long as no other country or state manages to acquire them.  That would be a game changer.

Anyway.  Massive armies are made obsolete by two things.  The clash of hundreds of thousands of soldiers is an archaic concept.  It will never happen again.  And the advent of nuclear arsenals ensure that as strategy, a hundred thousand on a battlefield is a relic of an idea.  Kind of  two in one bonus logic.

I work hard to bring this to you.

The only realistic way to cure what infects us is a carpet bombing of our defense budget.  The biggest budget for any single concept in the history of man.  Eisenhower warned us of the perils of a military industrial complex and it all came true regardless.  The peak of the pyramid of our plutocracy is breaking this country’s back more than anything else that is actually on the goddamn TV.

I’m cutting to the chase here.  The 800 lb. pound gorilla is us and our ridiculous fantasies of superiority and exclusivity.  America needs to understand that we are no better than anyone else and by that I mean country, state or ethnicity.  If we want a kinder gentler world we need to back off.  This insane figure of over a trillion a year spent for the killing of other people is just not getting us anywhere.  We’re good at it but does nothing but backfire.

I’m no xenophobe but we really need to look inward.  Devote more time to introspection and infrastructure.  Acting as the world’s over armed mall cop has done nothing but cost millions of lives and elevate us to the level of world bully.  The bully they can’t wait to see trip so they can kick and use their sticks and clubs.  Our foreign policy sucked and so did domestic.

Israel, for example, is a billboard for diminishing returns.  A postcard for liability.  Our sugar daddy relationship with Israel is embarrassing.  I don’t doubt they have enough nukes to turn the middle east into glass.  Time for them to pull their shit without the biggest guy on the block backing them up.

For example.

We are stumbling and it’s ugly.

We are the only wealthy country without health care.  We are the wealthiest.  We pay twice as much as most and  what we get kinda sucks.  It’s a joke.

It’s not that simple but it’s a good place to start.

Drinks for my friends.

For what it’s worth, I began this blog on Friday the 10th.  My Spidey sense was bristling and I knew strange things were afoot at the Circle K.  I was right.  On with it.

Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on the subject of politicization of the Justice Department and subsequent firing of attorneys for purely political reasons.  On the record.  Transcripts to be released to the public.  Thus far the committee hasn’t relinquished the option of public testimony from either.

Booya.

Then this:

“………… in late June, Panetta admitted in secret testimony to Congress that the agency had concealed information and misled lawmakers repeatedly since 2001.”

“Far more important is Panetta’s reported admission that his agency has “concealed significant actions” and “misled members of Congress.” – The Nation.com

Redundant but had to throw it in.

I’m thinking Pelosi is off the hook for recent accusations that the CIA misled congress.

Then we learn of the subterfuge at the the behest of Darth Cheney his own self.  This from the New York Times no less.  He overtly ordered a CIA program, that may very well have been a vehicle for assassinations, be kept secret from the United States legislative branch.  This in direct conflict with the National Security Act.  It begs the oft asked question, who the fuck does this guy think he is?

Wow.

Next up:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Attorney General Eric Holder is leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s interrogation practices, a source familiar with the process confirmed to CNN. This precipitated by Holder clearing his schedule for two full days to read and reread the Inspector General’s ’04 report on torture.  A document as yet still classified despite official pronouncement(s) to the contrary.  A report that allegedly spooked the shit out of the former Bush administration.  A report described by those who have had access as “sickening”.  A report that states quite clearly that the interrogation “techniques” were not at all efficacious in any way.

Holder, according to Newsweek said, “There were startling indications that some interrogators had gone far beyond what had been authorized in the legal opinions issued by the Bush justice department, which were themselves controversial.  He (Holder) told one intimate that what he saw “turned my stomach.”

A torture prosecutor.

Oh boy.  Blood in the water?  Chum.  Methinks perhaps so.

I like Patrick Fitzgerald, he’s thorough and has giant kevlar balls.  Not your average pit bull.  This guy gets punched in the junk and doesn’t break stride.  He already knows everything.  Every fucking thing.  He knows Cheney to be so full of shit he looks to Fitz like he’s got a grill festooned with Oreos and potted meat and a full diaper.  He does.  He stinks like it.

An obscene volume of excrement has been launched with awesome velocity, a giant fan inside its trajectory.  The result will resemble a primate’s rendering of fireworks that frightened it to trembling.  Gonna be a mess.  Washington will be festooned with gore.  Inside and out.  he chimp will throw it’s mud at fools.

War crimes committed without a doubt.  Crimes for a war not justified.  Hundreds of thousands if not millions dead.  Tens of thousands of our own dead or maimed, permanently handicapped and not receiving adequate care.  Lies and irony piled high.

Ain’t that America.

The soft shoe approach so far adopted by the Obama administration regarding all matters prosecutorial notwithstanding, critical mass will soon be at hand.  A fecal combustion as inevitable as gravity.  Castles of cards flattened.

Arrogance, hubris, misanthropy, avarice and megalomania. All that and a dipshit chief executive of a once proud nation.  Making egregious voter fraud appear Fisher Price.  Right up there with lying to the American public about the urgent need for “pre-emptive” war.  The single worst Presidential administration to ever occupy the White house.

What have we done?  We are not without blame.  In too many ways, too many of us were complicit.  Those who weren’t part of a solution were part of the problem.  Forgive the cliche’.  They still are.  Wailing nonsensically about socialism when few of them can even define the concept.  Nevermind that any and every country to adapt national health care has never looked back because it works.  It works you fools and the people are happy to have it and research and the practice of medicine thrives.

Our own elected representatives moaning about bias and racism on the first day of confirmation hearings for judge Sotomayor.  An approach that is all at once archaic, obsolete and embarrassingly absurd.

See, the difference and indeed the solution has always pivoted or not, on the citizenry.  Our engagement or absence thereof; the most important example just visited on us by Dick-in-Bush and the great unwashed.  Complacency, willful ignorance and fear fomented and eagerly imbibed.  Thank you sir, may I have another.

There is hope here, but it remains merely a concept if we don’t pay attention and get involved.

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”  -Bertrand Russell

“I never promised you a rose garden.” -written by Joe South, sung by Lynn Anderson

Drinks for my friends.

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

Blow me.

A quick assessment of the faux furor over the Sotomayor nomination by overtly racist Republicans, notwithstanding that her confirmation is a foregone conclusion, and the swim club debacle in Pennsylvania, where existing patrons were frightened by negros and the public statement of fear that new members would “change the complexion” of the organization, stand as proof that America continues to harbor backward ass racist fucks as a significant and powerful demographic.

What we need here is a national moment of vomiting.  Why can’t we grow the fuck up?

In other news, I’ve discovered a personal predilection for naughty secretary or teacher student themed scenarios when I surf for porn.  Can’t help it, it blows my skirt up.

New evidence today that John Ensign is an even bigger douchebag than Mark Sanford.  No small feat there.  And this religious organization they both belong to called C Street?  A tax exempt church?  Are you fucking kidding me?  Makes me think I haven’t been nearly devious enough in my own life.  I mean, the obtuse crap I could get away with.  I’m gonna take one of those online courses and get my shit ordained and licensed.

Hey baby won’t you lay down with me.  Hey baby.

Something else I want to tell you.  Enough of the Michael Jackson media masturbation.  I’m over it.  A tragedy for sure, but enough is enough.  I’m more than tired of having this speculative freakshow painted on my brain pan every time I access any mainstream media.  I’m looking for shit to mock or make fun of and there’s really nothing funny about any of this.  Tired, tired, tired.

I like chunky peanut butter.  I’m a bit of a texture eater.  Last night my woman took me to sushi.  I adore sushi.  I use an alarming amount of wasabi in my low sodium soy sauce.  I kinda like that sinus brain burn.  Anyway, after the standard salmon and albacore with shaved red onion and ponzu sauce, we ordered a dish with raw tuna and tomatos slathered in the house dressing over fried wonton skins.  Texture and flavor explosions on my tongue.  Sinful.  Decadent.  Evidence of the divine.

Made me pine for the flowerful flavor and structural softness of avocado.  Next time I’ll know.

I read something today that said less than six percent of scientists identify themselves as Republican.  Go figure.  Logic and an empirical ethic vs. fairy tales lies so large they block out the sun.  I’m a socialist I guess because I just can’t own humankind is only six thousand years old.  Flat earthers.  I really want for people to believe whatever they want.  Freedom of speech.  Freedom of religion.  Freedom of thought.

Unless it’s really fucking stupid.

Does this look infected to you?

Oh well.

Were you to ask me if I like people in general, I’d say no.  Perhaps emphatically.  If given time to think about it, I’d probably answer the opposite.  As I sit here, I’m thinking about lots of people I like.  It is my hope that arrogant dipshits don’t out number the thoughtful and aware.  Who am I to blow against the wind?

Paul Simon always makes me think of Al.  I’m not sure why.  Graceland is a gorgeous record but I knew that before I met Al.  We made records together, Al and I.  So I called him just now.  He sounded good.  He’s just the smartest coolest uncool guy I’ve ever met.  If ever there was was a quiet genius, his name would be Al.  If I were him, I’d pay me to spend time with his kids so they turn out cooler than him.  They deserve a shot at being cool.  His family needs a Kenny Powers type influence like me.

They need an asshole.

The Windshield Wonder combines a micro fiber cleaning cloth with a long handle and pivoting head.  Ten bucks bitch.  Oh, the humanity.

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

Drinks for my friends.

My experience with the Canadians is a book in itself.  I’m thinking these bastards deserve at least a couple three chapters.

Meet Bill Kennedy.

I’ll never forget my first time.  Neither would you.  Kurt Gibson hits the heroic home run in game one of the World Series against Oakland in ’88.  Randy Staub calls, we’d just seen the same thing, he was pumped and his buddy Bill was with him.  We all thought drinks.  I wash my hands and brush my teeth.  Change my shirt.  The doorbell rings and there’s this ugly little fucker with brilliant blue eyes and long red hair standing there.  Tight black pants, Beatle boots, a CBGB t-shirt and a black leather jacket.  Teeth like a donkey.

My first thought was The Tasmanian Devil.

I stick out my hand and he grabs my balls and says, “Nice ta meet ya motherfucker.”  Then he laughs all throaty and mocking but like a fucking witch.  Kinda spooked me.

Staub hangs back with a half grin looking me right in the eyes.

Can’t remember what the deal was but neither one of them could drive legally in the States.  We headed into Hollywood in my shitbox ’69 Superbeetle.  They rode in the back like I was the chauffer and took turns covering my eyes and sticking fingers in my mouth.  They bought my drinks, Staub got shut down by some betty in fishnets while me and the Tasmanian Devil got shit hammered.  We drove back under the same conditions.  Except for alcohol and drugs part, it was a virtual re-enactment.

I don’t even remember where we went.

For what it’s worth, I don’t do that anymore.

Bill Kennedy or Kill Bennedy, his alter ego after too much Jagermeister, was and probably still is, a crazy bastard with a big heart.  He was to help and teach me a lot.  Sometimes his own worst enemy, he’d monitor and mix so loud his clients would be driven from the room.  His maxim was to “make a racket” and he always did.  Hard drinker.  We all were.  Truth is, he drank harder than most of us and that’s saying something.  Not as hard as the rest of us and that’s saying something too.

I was furious with him for using forty seven microphones on a drum kit when I was producing/engineering my very first record for Down By Law.  Even in a studio like A&M, that amount of excess taxed resources.  A day to sort out phase alone.  Ridiculous.  Over compensation for a tiny penis.  He was doing Demos for Motley Crue in D and I was trying to make a record in C.  Prick.

Once upon a time, he had like eight Marshall stacks and six Ampeg cabinets going full tilt in D, so loud it was leaking into the live echo chambers above C, I had one patched into a mix I was doing in B.  Had to go to an EMT plate.  Bill Kennedy was an abhorrent gear and amplitude slut.  Louder was better.  He sometimes missed the point.  Subtlety was never his Devil’s advocate.  It never occurred to him.

Bill Kennedy was a dick.  I don’t know what he is these days but if he’s any less of a dick I might like him more than I remember.

We became good friends and I miss him.  Standard greeting was, “Hey fucker”.  He taught me a shitload, particularly in matters of outside the box thinking and extreme approaches to standard engineering gospel.  I learned to push all the ratio buttons in on an Urei 1176 with the input and output all the way up at once.  Gorgeously unpredictable distortion.  Child’s play. Bill would patch six of them together, turn the line amps to eleven, push the fader to the top, mute the console, turn the master gain all the way up and deselect the mute button for the adolescent pleasure of making the NS10’s smoke and spark.

Call a tech, the monitors are toast.

I learned compression and distortion, concepts rarely mutually exclusive, from Bill.

The strip joint across the the street, Crazy Girls, was known as Bill’s office.  Canadian for strippers is “peelers”.

A story about Canadians including Bill:

Randy Staub had found himself a lovely bride named Janice from the other lot so we had a bachelor party.  Events are soupy blurry but I remember spraying Bill in the face with air freshener I’d discovered in the glove compartment of a taxi and helping to toss his ass from said taxi while it was still moving.  He rolled end over end.  Ass over teakettle.

Kadump kadump.

Not sure if it was before or after we got thrown out of a mud wrestling place on Western called The Tropicana.

What happened next is unclear. We were drinking and spilling and yelling.   Staub was good to go.  He was in some sort of a diaper.  Down there on the stage.  We’d all put up hundreds of dollars.  Not me, but all the other Canucks.  Next thing, we’re on the sidewalk under the neon and there’s a handful of bouncers with their arms folded, saliva ran from their snarling lips.

Proud shithoused Canadians.

I think it was before.  The cab thing.

I had wisdom enough to discourage an actual fistfight.  Been there, done that.  No win situation.  Bad idea.

That was my genius.

What I remember next is Bill falling from his second story balcony trying to break into his own apartment after losing his keys. I think I heard his his ribs crack.  We  got in and Bill was the first to lose consciousness, maybe because his ribs were cracked.  Pain and alcohol being a formidable force multiplier.  Yes Mother, there were drugs too.

It was Staub’s idea was to paint his dick blue with one of those jumbo Sharpies.  So that’s what we did.  Painted Bill’s flaccid, unconscious penis a deep inky blue.  Bill was so pleased, he whipped it out at even the slightest provocation for any member of the wedding party and probably a few tourists.  I remember some old folks being offended.  I don’t remember what his dick looks like.  Maybe I blocked it out.  There’s a chance it never happened.

He complained to me once that it wasn’t coming off.  Soap wasn’t doing the job.  I reminded him that Sharpies were alcohol based and the answer was contained therein.  He said to me, “Fuck, I’ll just leave it.”

A Kill Bennedy catchphrase:  “Take a long, slow suck on my runny scrotum you stinking cunt.”  There was something else about eggs in a swamp and elaborate theories regarding stale semen buildup or “SSBU”.

I just knew the crazy little fucker would never supply me with cause to question his integrity.  Were I to drop the ball, it would be on me.  Bill Kennedy would never throw me under the bus with alibi or malice in mind, however.  Kind of a miserable prick but he treated me well.  Fiercely loyal.  Big heart.

Much love to you Bill.

Drinks for my friends.

Robert McNamara shuffled off his mortal coil yesterday.  Ninety three.  Architect of America’s abject folly in Vietnam.  In his time, he was humankind’s most  notorious failure.  He confessed to understanding as early as 1965 that the war was unwinnable.  Without Mac, there’s a chance the world would never have suffered his contemporary, Donald Rumsfeld.

Almost 60,000 dead Americans and some two million dead Vietnamese.  For nothing.  Well north of 4,000 dead Americans and as many as one million dead Iraqis.  For nothing.  A zero sum game with the exception of the enrichment of our military industrial complex.  A serious hole when you look at things as diverse as money and reputation lost.

The 2003 documentary “The Fog of War”, although fascinating, falls limp as a mea culpa.  It serves as more of a rationale for a despondent and tortured man than anything resembling an explanation or apology.  I believe he suffered.  Most people would say it’s lucky to live for ninety three years.  I’ll bet Mac didn’t think so.  He was haunted.  Every day.  He deserved it.

As near as I can see, we’ve learned nothing.  America is still a swamp for this brand of reptile.  Soulless  technocrats in charge of carnage.  Captains Crunch.  Obsolete but we still breed them.  By the hundreds of thousands.  Mac was a far bit smarter than Rummy so he had a way higher body count.  Maybe they’re getting stupider.  Maybe.  But if that’s true, then so are we, because we just got fooled again.

I don’t believe in Heaven any more than I do in Hell.  But if there exists a destination for a soul this guilty, it is my hope he ends up there and that Donny boy Rumsfeld ends his days suffering and tortured just like Mac.

Fuck these guys.  They sucked.

Drinks for my friends.

There simply is no cogent remonstrance to be made for Sarah Palin’s resignation being in anyone’s best interest but her own.  Callow, cowardly and nothing if not character as yet still inchoate.  A better, smarter  politician would have stepped back, done personal inventory and realized her own tempest was precisely that.  Her own.

Instead, she threw in the towel and walked away, blaming everyone but herself.  She did not belong there and that’s not entirely her fault but none of it is mine.

Maybe there was an epiphany.  Maybe she finally realized she was in way over her head.

That would be nice.

Ideally, she could own some some humility, regroup and educate herself on the issues;  a little geography and some foreign policy.  If the content of her character was what her and her mouth breathing Christian conservative base would have us believe, after some sincere and earnest wood shedding, she could rise to the occasion.  Re-emerge a more sober, thoughtful and with luck, a far better informed public figure.

Either way, I suspect she has for all intents and purposes, taken the political dirt nap.  Notwithstanding her rabid enthusiasts, typically of the under informed and aforementioned mouth breathing variety, the pooch has pretty much been gang raped.  The resolute, far right, Christian neoconservative base is in decline.  An accelerated rate of atrophy as it goes the way of the Dodo.

Cheney tried.  He failed.  He will be hated forever.  He dines on live infants.

I’m not too broken up.  Political Darwinism eroding a really stupid and toxic doctrine.  As rapidly as the jackasses ascended, so precipitous is their decline.  Self correction as it should be; kinda vengeful.

Should she choose to run in 2012, her comeuppance will be complete.  Even were she to stage the most spectacular transformation ever witnessed by the instantaneous post technocratic media, she will arrive obsolete.  Redundant.  Too little too late.  She will embarrass herself and her party.  Her mascara will run.  She will remain a sullen runner up to prom queen.  No ride in the magic float.

It’s my hope she tries her hand at something else.  I get the feeling this was her first real ass kicking.  She caved.  Better to know it now, huh?

Sheezus.

My advice to you Mrs. Todd Palin is to pursue entertainment.  Not journalism.  Entertainment.  Broadcasting.  Somebody said something about a talk show.  This your best option.  I would get there soon.  You’ve already got a huge book deal.  Get a radio show.  Start slow.  Learn the business.  You’re not stupid, just not very smart.  You are the paradigm of right wing radio.  Right between G. Gordon Liddy and Glenn Beck.  The very exclusive, very elite of the ridiculous douchebags.

Learn to talk to people that are only as smart as you are.  You’ll be so much happier.

So will the rest of us.

Drinks for my friends.

Belated happy Independence weekend wishes to you all.

I do hope it was at least as good as mine.  At least as interesting.  I hope as warm.

“I try to use positive association……anytime anything good happens to me, I stick something up my ass.”  -Margaret Cho

I spent the day at a family barbecue.  Not my family, my girlfriend’s.  Extraordinarily pleasant and I hope to show you how interesting.

I always bring wine because I’m flush with wine and  that’s what I want to drink in the afternoon.  Hard liquor in the afternoon is uncivilized when women and children are present.  Family barbecue.  Zins and pinots for everyone.

Except the pinot had gone bad.  Cork came out way too easy.  No pop.  Tasted like ass.  Poured it out for fear it would get drunk and come back on me.

Very nice people.  Pleasant and warm and sincere.  I was under some degree of scrutiny.  You see, I was with my girlfriend, at a holiday barbecue, with her people.  Not mine.  Her relatives and very close friends and all manner of folks who’ve known her since she was a child as well as people who’ve never not known her.  They were checking me out.  I caught nobody staring.

I learned to slap some bones. I hope I got that right.  Dominos.  I was monitored during this activity as well.  Two charismatic women at the end of our table lent tacit approval while my girlfriend showed me the game.  They kept a close eye and nodded in approval when I made a play.  I’m not sure why.

Food.  Pork ribs,  meat sliding from the bone with juiciness and justice for all.  Homemade mac & cheese of creamy texture and richness.  Baked beans with excellent consistency under tooth with all the peppery and  flavorful.  Sublime deviled eggs made me greedy.  So many other things to taste but it’s conspicuously rude to fill your plate and not finish it.  It was just so nice.  My family does it too.  They set up a spread and pretty much welcome whoever walks through the door like an old friend as long as you’re with someone they know.

I haven’t often understood how swell it feels to be the stranger on a day like today.  Warm.  It’s warm when the woman you’re with affords you the benefit of the doubt in such a large gathering of people you’ve never seen before.

We ate and drank and the roosters sat four at a time at the domino table by the pool and talked the most hysterical shit you can imagine.  Brutal but always funny.  That was the line; say whatever you like but it better not be mean and it better be funny.  Nothing personal.  Inside those rules and the rules of the game, they played and played.  Loudly.  Roosters.  Peacocks.  Awesome.

I was one of two white people there.  There was me and one other honky in attendance.  I’m not here to make a big deal about that but it is germane to the story.  I’m sorry, I adore the word honky.  The word honky is goddamn funny.  Even funnier in italics.  Honky.

Picture George Jefferson or Fred Sanford.  Honky

So here are all my cards.

Cracker.

I moved from Carson City Nevada to Atlanta Georgia when I was nineteen years old.  I want to say this as simply as possible.  I grew up with white people.  The handful of people with different skin pigmentation were few and far between.  My parents were non judgmental,  open minded, freedom loving Democrats.  Not Hippies but progressive hicks.  I really never had a chance to develop a bias and I was never really exposed to much.

Honkies.

Atlanta Georgia hit me right in the mouth with it’s polite but overt racial divide.  First person I talked to fresh off the boat used the word nigger in his first sentence to me.  Southern comfort.  It was Atlanta when black women began to ask me what I was mixed with.  It was mostly women.  The better I knew them the harder they laughed.  I really didn’t think too much about it.  They were teasing me or flirting.  Still,  ‘Honey, what’re you mixed with?’  is something I’ve heard hundreds, if not thousands of times.

Through my years as a recording engineer I did everything from hip hop to gospel.  Punk to metal.  I remember being asked that question one way or another, over and over.

My Girlfriend and I ended up at Magic Johnson’s TGI Fridays in the not too recent past.  We drove away and it occurred to me  I was the only white guy in there.  Almost as soon as I brought it up she told me nobody else noticed because most probably assumed I was black.

I’m no idiot.  I understand that it’s almost mathematically impossible for me to be exclusively Caucasian.  I’m Scottish and German.  I  also understand I’m a descendent of Custer.  I’m pretty white.  Not pretty, but white.  Blue eyes, fair skin, blond hair…..curly to nappy and I’m all torso.  Broad shoulders, barrel chest and an oversized head.  Short but powerful hindquarters.  I’d make an excellent backwards digging rodent.

Today I met a white black man.  It was his house I was at.  Very nice man.  We shook hands.  He was white.  His sister saw me from afar and mistook me for him.  She and I had never met until today.   A rooster at the domino table.  His other sister observed me for a time and summoned my girlfriend from across the swimming pool.  She had a question.  The family half African American and Half German.  Grew up in Compton.

“What is he mixed with?”

It wasn’t just her question, other people wanted to know.  The thing is this.  My epiphany was thus.  All this time, the question was not whether I was black or not, it was assumed I was black.   The question was what else was I mixed with.

Not how black, but how white.

I contemplated all this this while driving in silence with her along the freeway.  Sitting in her driveway and the gorgeous cacophony of fireworks bouncing and echoing through a hilly neighborhood of beautiful houses.  Turned on the radio.  Frampton came alive and Journey sealed the deal.  Technicolor bursts  as we sped through dusk on the 60 and the 405.

I’m an agnostic.  Whatever.  If there is a sensible idea, it’s that we’re all supposed to be equal.  We’re all supposed to procreate to the point where we have no reason to discriminate based on pigmentation, sexual preference, orientation or gender, religion philosophy or fashion sense.

All along, these folks assumed I was black.  I think that’s kinda cool.

Drinks for my friends.

Awash in nothing but hubris, dishonesty and hypocrisy.  Ladies and gentlemen, the post modern GOP.

E-mails released today between Palin and Steve Schmidt, McCain’s best boy and chief strategist, are astonishing  in the contexts of hubris, dishonesty and hypocrisy.  The subject is her husbands seven year membership in an organization who’s primary objective is to foment for Alaska to secede from the goddamn Union.

See, I really don’t care about this kinda crap, though there is a much bigger picture.  She’s dumb.  She doesn’t get it.  Further proof this woman is not fit to clerk at a 7-11,  much less governor a state.  Will she run?  Too stupid no to.  God told Joe The Plumber to walk away and that is sad.  That could be a good time had by all.  We here at brainspank sighed wistfully in harmony.  I find that God is often wrong.

She remains the the single brightest star in the Republican sky.

Mark Sanford  seems to think he’s in a confession booth without realizing the world is listening.  This guy is gonna end up in a hospital.  I can’t help but be fascinated in a morbid way with his passion.  Still, he needs to spend some time in the garden, where there are no cameras or microphones.  He can work with his hands and nurture and caress.

Everyday it get’s harder to watch.

At this point my guess is that the Republican party’s chances of rising again are similar to that of the old South with slavery still a fundament.

Limbaugh, the Human Shitsmear in a haze of hillbilly heroin and a viagra induced priapism pronounces the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 overturn of a unanimous decision by a panel of three appellate court judges that just happened to include Sonia Sotomayor, as nine to nothing.  Tells us to read Ginsberg for proof.  Bet he means Ruth as opposed to Allen.  Still leaves her batting about six hundred before the supremist of supremes.

The elephantine look silly attacking a woman who swings without muscle between centrist and moderate.  They’ll crap themselves and explode if Obama nominates someone left of center.  Fools.  They should at least save looking stupid for a fight that matters.  Cartoon brinksmanship.

Ever notice the lower the budget the pinker the wine?  In soft porn it looks like Kool-Aid.

Drinks for my friends.

My problem is with the shape of Norm Coleman’s head.  That and his giant teeth.  A thin lipped rictus framing nightmare white tombstones.  I’m so hoping that despite what Franken said yesterday, he’ll wade in and stir shit up.  Please.  He is painfully bright, a math jock at Harvard and very funny.  The long standing rivalries between him, Bill O’Reilly and the Human Shitsmear Limbaugh, are enough for me to sponsor him for Crew Chief of all he would survey.  His colon is clean.  He is not full of shit.

Word to Obama and the all the pantywaste Democrats.  You are out of excuses.  You now have a filibuster  proof majority.  If we don’t get health care, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the lobbies of AIPAC, insurance, the military industrial complex, energy and financial put in their respective places………..well then we’ll know for sure that the only difference between Democrats and Republicans is balls and spine.

Get something done.  Get anything done.  Or you suck and don’t deserve the opportunity we the the people afforded you.

The elephant = evil + balls and some vertebrae.  The donkey = a few good intentions – any vertebrae and any sack whatsoever.

The math is that simple.  The swirl of rhetoric around Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is disgusting.  Man up.  Show us a little something.  Make it so number one.  This is litmus 101.  If you can’t do this, given solid public support, we will doubt you.  Break hard to the left and run the damn ball, I for one am tired of waiting.  Show me goddamn it.

Time to come to Jesus, you so far worthless candy asses.  I am not impressed.

Is it complacency on the the part of liberals because there is no longer a a Cheney or Bush in the room with knife in hand?  I doubt it.  It’s mitigating but there is a preposterous malaise on Democrats that can can only be described as vaginaness.  Fucking pussies.  I really hate this about Democrats.  They’re all about it until it’s time to accomplish.  There is always a thousand reasons not to do something and then there is the single right reason to do it.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin claws at relevance like a woman scorned.  Just lately she sorta challenged Obama to a foot race.  I’m sure by now you’re aware of the conflagration between her and Letterman.  Methinks she did protest too much and in so doing,  audaciously yanked her daughters into the harsh light of scrutiny she so immodestly decried.

A degree of charisma, otherwise stupid and bereft of common sense as well as humility.  Can’t completely blame her, she was a snowball’s chance in a foundry by the notion she might warm the leather in that elliptical of all offices one day.  Yeah right.  Like installing Dumbya’s retarded sister.  See how I loathe?  She’s paper thin.  She disappears at ninety degrees off axis.  The epitome of grandiose insincerity.  What bothers me is how dumb she is.  Forgive me but she is a stupid cunt.

Big bag full of mashed up jack ass right there.  -Keith O.

“I remember as it were a meal ago”

“Said Tommy the Cat as he reeled back to clear whatever foreign
matter may have nestled its way into His mighty throat.
Many a fat alley rat had met its demise while staring point
blank down the cavernous barrel of this awesome prowling machine.
Truly a wonder of nature this urban predator.
Tommy the cat had many a story to tell,
but it was a rare occasion such as this that he did.

“She came slidin’ down the alleyway like butter drippin’ off a hot biscuit.
The aroma, the mean scent, was enough to arouse suspicion in
even the oldest of Tigers that hung around the hot spot in those days.
The sight was beyond belief. Many a head snapped for double
even triple, takes as this vivacious feline made her her way into the
delta of the alleyway where the most virile of the young tabbys were
known to hang out. They hung in droves. Such a multitude of
masculinity could only be found in One place… and that was
O’malley’s Alley. The air was thick with cat calls (no pun intended)
but not even a muscle in her neck did twitch as she sauntered up into
the heart of the alley. She knew what she wanted. She was lookin’
for that stud bull, the he cat. And that was me.
Tommy the Cat is my name and I say unto thee…

Say baby do you wanna lay down by me”  -Primus

Drinks for my friends.

Michael Jackson.  I’m a fan.  Brilliant pop composer.  Tragic.  Bona fide ElvisBelushiAnnaNicoleChrisFarley syndrome.  I don’t believe he was a pedophile but he sure did some stupid shit.  I can’t but think his persecution and prosecution for child molestation tore at his most human fibers.  It really was his proverbial straw.  It was then  he began to fold.

I’d always kinda liked the music, but only in the periphery.  He sealed the deal with me when he let  Eddie Van Halen tear it up on what would be one of his biggest songs.  Brilliant move.  Gave all us naive white boys an open door.  Brave if you acks me.

He was damaged and Papa Joe is clearly a sociopath.  The face is of evil.  I see an asshole.  What disturbs me the most is the inevitable slow but hot coal lambaste by the media.  Sheezus.  Randi Rhodes and Tom Hartman were all over it on Air America today.  When it gets that deep, it’s because they hafta.

His star was likely the biggest ever seen by earthlings, despite some rather advanced oxidation.

In death as in life, more than anything else, the world’s most accomplished and beleaguered defendant of celebrity obsession.

It’s true that I am of fan, but I’m not overly sympathetic.  At the end of the day, he was the leading architect of his own demise.  I ultimately believe anyone with the aforementioned syndrome knows exactly enough of what they do to understand just exactly what they’re doing.  Add Kurt Cobain to the list.  No piss mocking of the burden of celebrity.  Fame flat out fucks with most people who end up in the light.  It fucked with Michael Jackson as early as five years old.  This end as predictable as always for people with this syndrome.

His affliction was chronic and acute.  You know what they say about walking in a man’s shoes.  Truism.

And yet, the tragedy.  There is family, friends and fans.

In other news, Samuel Wurzelbacher, in his current role as Joe The Plumber, graced us with his prowess for history today by reminding us that our founding father’s knew full well that Socialism and Communism were not at all efficacious.  Kinda hard to figure how he can say that with such conviction as neither concept was to be born for another half century.  He went on to suggest with the certitude of round headed jackass that Senator Chris Dodd should be lynched.  More than once.  Every time I see this nimrod on television I flash back to projectile vomiting as a kid with the flu.  Specifically the aftertaste of a partially digested dinner and the corrosive agents of digestion in my windpipe.

Having said that, I owe Joe.  He’s a bit player in the neoconservative production that caused me to vomit so often that I’m no longer traumatized by it.  Now it’s pretty much ‘Oh Liz Cheney is on, pardon me while I paint this hedge with the contents of my upper gastrointestinal tract’.  He’s a goddamn plebian narcissist.  And a fucking fool for thinking he has something to say.

“The Tennessee stud was long and lean
The color of the sun and his eyes were green
He had the nerve and he had the blood
And there never was a hoss like the Tennessee stud” -Tennessee Ernie Ford

I’m sticking to the current events thing.  This just in from an old friend:

Hey Mike,

I’m writing you in confidence, just to let you know what kind of trouble my ex is.

she asked me if I had ever heard of the Powerhouse. I said “NO”,

she then told me that you had told her that I was there the night the bar tender showed you her oral talents. And that we both got service on the bar.

And then she told me that you once had a cocaine problem and it’s back again.

She said that you contacted her directly by email and that Misty is also still in contact with her.

I went and looked at your blog and put two and two together.  = trouble with Capital T

later

****

I respond:

Sheezus Crap!  How’d you end up with this kinda crazy?  I’m spooked.  My stalker and you’re stalker activate their wonder twin powers.  I don’t believe I was ever at the Powerhouse with you.  Blow was never my thing.  It’s merely the wrong direction for me.  Pot and booze are my elective poisons.  I don’t mind a little xanax or vicodin.  This woman is crapping in public nuts.  Obviously when I first engaged her, I had no idea who she was.  I want nothing to do with this.  We are longtime friends ****, let me know what I can do and/or keep me out of it.

Tell the bitch we were complete blow hounds and routinely got our stingers moistened on the bar, in front of the juke, in the bathroom, the alley……..

Take care

Then there’s this:

I was in another medical marijuana dispensary today, the terminal I’d brought acted like it hadn’t been downloaded.  My name was on the box as well as that of the business.  Still had to download it twice, adjust the time and date and finally ended upon a conference call with our technology partner.  Got it done while the staff did bong rips in the back office.  I like stoned folks more than drunk folks, but even the stoned ones are a pain in the ass.  To be fair, I like these people quite a bit.

My one pair of Kenneth Cole dress shoes were fucking killing me.  My feet ached ached to my knees.  What should have taken ten minutes took two hours.  This on top of the dance I’d done with my superiors a few hours earlier to deposit funds in my girlfriends account so she can pay her state bar license, among other things, after she helped me with my rent.  This and a just now phone call telling me she’s still $400 short.  If I had a gun, I’d be tasting steel.

Anybody want Spiderman #22, X-men #94 or an original A/DA flanger?

Drinks for my friends.

After almost too long, I needed to step up to the plate again.  I lobbied the powers that were, Mark Harvey, and got a gig in the mix room with Ggggarth Richardson, he stutters, and Joe Barresi on an L7 mix.  Garth producing.

I knew Joe and Garth pretty well.  Garth called me the demo king and later the donut king.  He insisted that would be my credit and I dared him to do it.  Joe and Garth brought consistent business to A&M and Garth was part of the Canadian contingent.  There always seemed to be a disproportionate number of Canucks in music production but I liked them all.  Randy Staub and Bill Kennedy both mentored me.  Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, The Wall) is a Canadian and he is one brilliant man.  Google him, you’ll see.  Garth did the first Rage Against The Machine record, arguably their best.

Joe became the shit.  Queens of The Stone Age.  Tool.  Google the talented bastard.  We were born on the exact same day you know.

The Canadians made great engineers and producers.  Google Bob Rock.

Garth looked at me on the morning of the first day and said with unmistakable seriousness, “Mikey, if you do nothing else on this session, I want you to set it up so that every time I hit rewind or stop on the multitracks, the audio from the hockey game comes up.”  The finals were already on the television mounted between the massive monitors.

I ran a mult, from SMPTE  time code always on track 24, from the sync head to a gate,  some fifty five milliseconds before the playback head.  Gave me a five one hundredths of a second advantage.  Trigger to open on rewind and stop, but duck on playback when the gate saw signal of a certain amplitude.   SMPTE time code was of a very consistent amplitude..  A mere threshold issue.  I brought it up on a fader.  In the interest of thorough, I strapped another gate across the insert to close while the mix was playing.  Kinda the same chain but in reverse.  I still took care to mute it when we were printing mixes.

I think they were impressed.  Didn’t think a rookie like me had the chops.  It took me about five minutes; I’d been stealth engineering on my own for some time but hadn’t ever been responsible for maintaining lock on two analog multitracks.  Ahead of the curve and behind it.  Story of my life.  Bane of my existence .

There was only one Canadian I could never muster any affection for.  Scott Humphrey.  Pro Tools hack and  pompous asshole.  His wikipedia page has him as an “American  record producer/mix engineer”.  Wore his money and privilege on his forehead.  Maybe he is an American.  That would make sense.  I’m an honorary Canadian.  This prick did nothing but look down his nose at me.  I never saw him touch a fader much less mix, engineer or produce a single note.  An expectorate absent any acuity with phase coherency.  He was a dick.

A band of Jersey Goombas was across the hall in studio D.  Biohazard.  Dipshits.  Evan Seinfeld is a consumate douchebag and  now he’s married to Tera Patrick.  One of these things is not like the other.  My buddy Rick and I had the good fortune to clown his clueless ass about a decade later.

I have a plethora of tales about the Canadians, Biohazard and L7.  It gets better.  Stay with me.  It gets better.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve just discovered Oscar Mayer cheese dogs.  A big delish.  I eagerly anticipate test driving them with a variety of condiments including Claussen dill spears and of course, Big Bob’s Bleu.  Countdown to angioplasty.  Harbinger of heartburn and a guaranteed culinary delightful.  I need to buy an onion.  Excellent texture and authentic whang.  Got me plenty of ketchup and mustard.

Can’t always afford those smoked white turkey franks from Ballpark.  I’m a whore for good tasting nourishment.  Will need to explore cheap asian noodles again soon.  Another jar of peanut butter.

I’ll need a glass of Woolite, a glass of Kim Crawford sauvignon blanc.  The Crawford is the shit.  Very grapefruit with good acid.  Order salt & pepper calamari and the seared ahi appetizer at PF Changs.  If they don’t have the Crawford, throw a fit and opt for the Estancia pinot grigio.  Trust me, I know how to gamble.  Do this by yourself and bring a book.  Sit at the bar, it’s lovely.

I have an odd fascination with Ernest Borgnine.  I named a room in my house after him.  I like when he’s spooky, he has the creepiest grin.

Drove by Pink’s today.  Marveled at the line.  Romanced by the aroma.  Lovely perfume guaranteeing a gastrointestinal malaise.  I’ll suffer that but not the absurd volume of zombies waiting online.  I hate them.  Ordinary people.

My first and last hang in Hollywood, The Powerhouse.  On Highland just north of Hollywood blvd., on the east side of the street.

When my session ended before two am, you could find me there.  They were cool enough to put my records on the jukebox.

Bartenders were, SJ, Steve, Gary and Tracy.  I’ve long been a compulsive hand washer, so upon entering, I’d head straight to the bathroom to sate the sticky handed urge.  More often than not I’d emerge to find a giant, dry as the desert Bombay Sapphire martini, three olives up at least, in a punchbowl of a pina colada glass waiting for me.  I usually had something to read.

You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here,  shouted just before two, accompanied by a ringing bell.  I was exempt.  Once the door was locked, the onus was on me to make my own drinks.

Never cut to the guy getting pasted by the train at the end.  That’s chickenshit.

Old wooden bar on the left, red naugahyde booths on the right and shitty green shag underfoot.  Pinball and a juke at the back end.  Steve was a musician, Gary an aspiring comic, SJ a Republican from Texas and Tracy had amazing oral skills and a very nice rack.  I brought the Gotohells with me one night after a gig at Al’s Bar along with a journalist from Flipside and the six of us drank all night while the journalist conducted her interview.  Whiskey and pitchers of beer.  The bill was twenty four dollars.  Quid pro qou, I left a hundred on the bar.

Got my dick sucked on that bar with a nickel plated .38 snub nose above my head.  Tracy had mad skills and a gun.  It was her birthday and she wore some ridiculous hippie buckskin bra with feathers.  Ridiculous but it stirred my loins.  She locked the door and only her and I were left.  One thing led to another.  Paradise by the jukebox light.  Mad skills.

I actually got up and did a short set on drums with some band one night.  Gesticulating the best I could.  Killing myself softly.  I was a shitty drummer.  I’m lucky to have sucked because it informed my engineering and production skills.  My own suckage was positive stuff.  Invaluable.  A seriously penis whipped drink.

My goal is a deluxe apartment in the sky.

My Sharona is as close to a perfect pop song as it gets.  Great production.  The solo rips.  Fuckin slays me.

Listening to Primus lends me largesse in the form of gristle.

I visited the Powerhouse a few years back.  Despite the fact that Joe Power had finally  sold the place and it had been remodeled into strip mall austerity, I was with a lovely woman and had a swell time.

But it was absent vibe.  You can never go home again.  My heart sank a little.  My start yanked a little.  Nostalgic for the salad days.  I just remembered how much I like snowglobes.  My eyes have begun to fail me.  I need reading glasses.

I want to be Walter Matthau when I get old.  It’s a good goal.

Drinks for my friends.

I ain’t askin for much.

I always liked the word gendarme so I looked it up.  Big disappointment.

I’ve long since recognized the appeal of wealth.  I admit, I like shiny things.  Actually, I like handsome objects.  Artful globes to leviathan machinery.

Used to be I coveted wealth.  Then I made a little money and indulged myself a little.  Bought a nice car.  Developed a taste for caviar and champagne.  Good wine.  A ridiculously expensive stereo.  A house.  Vacations.

It all kinda fell apart, slow enough so the way down wasn’t crazy in my face but just enough to make me puke now and then.

There are magazines still reasonably popular, devoted to things most of us can’t afford or wouldn’t, even if we had the scratch.

I don’t covet the pretty things so much as the freedom.  A nice lunch.  Healthy food is more expensive.  I like tomatoes.  Sauces.  Appetizers and good wine.

I want a condo in the sky above the dirty streets.  My life’s trajectory has been odd at best.  One of the things we’re supposed to do here is distinguish ourselves.  I feel I’ve done that but would like to continue.  Cook up some pork maple sausages, dip them in Big Bob’s Bleu and you’re courting intestinal methane pressure.  The antithesis of fiber and nature’s broom but still an efficient evacuator of the colon with many a loud report.

My two biggest questions are why are we here?

And are we really here?

I often think one’s life is either a good mosaic or a bad one.  Subject to trends and popular opinion.  All of us beholding to what is vogue  What is not.

I’m trying to point to how closely we dance with chaos.  A true economic implosion would have families and entire clans grouping and sharing resources.  There’s a chance that’s not a bad idea.  It could just be the most important skill my mother can pass to me is how to grow and preserve produce.  Agriculture is about to become more important.  Dad taught me to shoot but I need a refresher.

Imagine a world without glutinous salad dressings.

I want to talk about bars now.

I feel obligated to start with the Whitehorse.  Dark and sinister.  Late eighties, early nineties.  Just north of Sunset on Western, east side of the street across from an OSH.

Pretty crazy neighborhood, rather insane clientele.  Pimps, prostitutes, trannies and drunks.  Drug dealers, criminals and musicians.  Not odd at all for a cockroach to skitter down the bar dodging the cheesy candlelit, white plastic net wrapped red glass candle holders.  I figured it was the light they feared, not the heat.  “There goes another cola nut”, I’d say.  Diane, the lovely but flawed bartendress who always wore rosewater perfume, would smile and bat her eyes while protesting she hadn’t seen it.  Had never in fact, seen a single bug on the bar or anywhere else ever.

D.S. Morey.  Adorable.  Lying to me for sport.

She was gorgeous.  Blue pools for eyes.  Voluptuous.  Serious tits and a Coop Girl frame.  Smart clever and vulnerable.  Gorgeous tattoos on pale skin.  Blond with a yellow tooth at the very front of her head.  She was a reformed meth addict from Traverse City, Michigan.  We got very close.  She put my records on the jukebox.  I believe we were afraid of each other.  She was fragile and I was timid.  We went on a few actual dates.  The first one, she watched me get drunk and I took her to Denny’s, the second I took her to see Naked Lunch and tried to kiss her.  She resisted my overture and politely insisted that I not embarrass myself.

I was crushed.

A few weeks later she took a lover and told me I just wasn’t mean enough.

I wondered a long time before I understood what she meant.  I drank cheap whiskey in those days.  Long neck Budweisers.  I recorded punk rock.

There was a framed picture on an end table in her apartment from her days as an addict.  She and another woman on a rooftop at dawn.  The sun breaking behind them as they celebrated how fucked up they were.  Her hair in braids and colorful ornaments.  Christmas on a summer morning.  Huge awesome smiles.  A light blue sky and clouds pink and orange.  I asked about it and she had nothing to say.  She was ashamed of it and that’s probably why it was there.

It was so very sublime to me.  Finally, I actually asked for it.  She told me no way could I have it.  Not long after, her apartment late at night, the photo in the same place but the glass was broken and the picture torn.

The Whitehorse was completely destroyed in the ’94 earthquake.  It had been my bar of choice because the bartender was lovely and fascinating and the bars in my neighborhood were no place for a big long haired white boy.

Oh Diane Morey.

Drinks for my friends.

The salient point I’m about to serve up is not original.  It is not mine, I just happen to enthusiastically agree.

Names have not been changed to protect a single asshole.

Off we go.

If I hear another Republican dipshit criticize Obama’s reaction to the the Iranian election clusterfuck, when they all know as well as anyone else, for us to intervene or interfere anymore than we have is counter to foreign policy 101, with a country like Iran who’s history we’ve meddled in disastrously, I’ll projectile puke.

Shut up you idiots.  Our Man’s course of action is obvious, informed and reasonable.  What would you have him do?

Ridiculous and absurd.  Their own people asking us not to wade into their affairs again.  They are grateful for our support.  Yet they understand better than the royal “we”, that any influence perceived as American fuel in this struggle will dilute it and ultimately disease it.

Duh.

Iranians and Americans cannot afford for American government to be a component of this struggle.  It would ruin it.  It’s that simple.

The douchebags that persist in shouting that crap from the roof tops aren’t doing favors for anyone.  McCain, Bill Bennett, Lindsey Graham and Newt.  A message that only falls on the ears of the great unwashed.  The lowest common denominator.  The deaf.  The stupid.  The under informed.  The arrogant jingo assholes who think it’s our duty to force our bullshit on every other camper.

Work with me, it was this exact thinking that got us into the trouble we’re in now.

I’m here to tell you that terrorists will not be killing you in your bed.  They really are the least of our worries and even that’s an accident.  If you’re on a list as a suspected terrorist, your biggest problem will be boarding a commercial airliner.  The least of your inconveniences are buying guns or explosives.  If you are an evil doer (love those two words), your best bet is some destruction at home as opposed to interstate travel.  Our advice to you is to shit where you eat.  The current terrorist watch list of more than a million members, does not prevent anyone from purchasing guns or even explosives, interstate travel however, is far more difficult.

You bet.  Yeah baby we’re on it.  Fear not, the NRA has your back.

It’s a goddamn joke and we are pigs.

God has not even dick to do with it.

An election was stolen from the Iranian people.  They are indignant and I understand.  I think they just might be an example to us.  C’mon.  Their bravery is awesome.  We have been giant vaginas.  Forgive the gender aspect.  I’m just saying.

We should stay out of it for obvious reasons and let them show us how it’s done.

I’m getting tired of American hubris.  Who the fuck do we think we are?

Drinks for my friends.

More than a little pensive.

The citizens of Iran have a profoundly legitimate beef.  One of the best kind.  Noble and justified.  An obviously rigged election.  Blatant.  Ridiculous.  The turn out was over 120%.  Bullshit is the given.

Tomorrow may inform us of eventual fate.  The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,  deigned to wade in today on the Sabbath, by vehicle of his scheduled sermon.  Just another day of worship.  He was clear:  Those who “take wrong measures which are harmful, they will be held accountable for all violence.” He called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “the absolute victor” in last week’s election…..”  -CNN.com

This sucks.

I’m spooked.  The difference between these human events and Tiananmen Square for example, is that despite the Iranian government’s game face and perseverant campaign to control information, this revolution just may be televised.  Forgive my trite.  I’m not here to obviate something so big and ripe.  I fear what happens next.  Both sides are more than aware that the entire world watches.

The chances of a fistfight are always multiplied by an audience.  Always.

The Ayatollah didn’t merely draw a line in the sand.  He came out with serious lumber.  He tells the people of Iran that they are welcome to test his bat.  He tells them it will be ugly.  I’m really afraid of that.  I think it’s quite likely.  Man, I hope not.  Did you know that Iran is arguably the most pro-American country in the entire region?  These people are in trouble and I doubt they will walk away.  There will be blood.  There already has been.

Iranians are not pussies.

Our Man’s facility with it all has been pitch perfect.  He understands that any movement in Iran perceived as being fomented or even endorsed by the US government is a guarantee it will sink under that weight.  The asshat Republicans shouting jingoistic bullshit from the rooftops are posturing with lamentable irresponsibility.  Man I hate these pricks.  No compassion, zero sensibility, reckless abandon in pursuit of grandeur.  Shut the fuck up.

Iran is a modern society.  It has a vibrant and youthful population, progressive by regional standards.  Amazingly, a huge chunk of them don’t hate us.  Really.

My fear is that the Iranian people will suffer for whatever they do tomorrow.  For years.

It is the covert option that most media fails to talk about.  I’m afraid they will be picked off at random, regardless of participation, until, you know, morale improves.  I don’t see tanks but I do see terror.  For years.  They know full well, both sides get it.  Tomorrow is going to be interesting.

See, we’re all just citizens of the world.  After the sun impregnates the horizon and the stars come out, the day is done and we are all the same.  We really are all the same.  I live in a big city so ethnic diversity is but a part of my coat of many colors.  Whether your thing is prayer or the power of positive thinking, it’s time to do a little dance.

Wisdom, safety and support to the people of Iran.

And, um, fuck the Ayatollah.

Drinks for my friends.

Today I learned of the existence of baconnaise.

This brought courtesy of The Daily Show.

I’m broke as fuck but I’m headed to Ralph’s first thing to get me some.  I’ve still got quarters.  Sounds like the world’s ultimate condiment to me.  Oh my.  The possibilities boggle.  With french fries or on a sandwich.  Combined with sour cream and chives for dipping.  Inside a doughnut.  Fish & chips?  With a squirt of lemon?  This shit is huge.  Could be the best thing since Bob’s Bleu Cheese Dressing.

Nevermind I said that.  Blasphemy.

Sheezus, I’m ashamed.

So you know, I’m pretty sure the Bob’s gave me the crapanacious the other night when I combined it with generic Doritos.  We’re talking volume and velocity.  I was impressed.  Prodigious thrust.

Baconnaise.  Fuck me.  Gonna be a really big show.

More important was a segment that succeeded in contrasting the reality of the Iranian people with what we’ve been sold and bought under Dumbya.  Most of us were already aware of this despicable gulf between a dictated perception and actual opinions of the people and the events on the ground in Iran.

Don’t forget the great unwashed.

McCain infamously sang the bomb, bomb, bomb……bomb bomb Iran song while campaigning for President just last year.  The Bush administration had an embarrassingly obvious hard on for Iran for at least it’s last four years.  The same kind your Black Lab or Irish Setter wags in front of everybody at every gathering you ever  host.

I like girl cats.

This is why they fear Obama.  It’s hope.  And fear.  And no more of that other shit.  With dignity and wisdom he stays out of it almost entirely.  Has the State Department ask Twitter to reschedule some maintenance hours.  He’s on it and staying out of it.  Nice.

The net effect really does reflect the quality of cheese in hand.  Smooth.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Then a successful communication because of a complex humiliation.  The previous administration is really hoping we don’t remember glimpsing their lipstick penises at picnics.  Iran is not a monster.  They want the same things we do.  To live long and prosper.  In peace.

The unwashed loathe Obama because he’s seen their penises and they haven’t seen his.  They would have him be the Bull in the China shop in Iran.  They pretend to not understand how stupid that is.  To not remember the chaos that was wrought from their ludicrous lockstep loyalty to the biggest collection of assholes in history.

Refuse to remember how we were on the verge of war with yet another nation the represented no threat at all to us.

Goddamn these guys are stupid.

All this illumination for the masses from Comedy Central.  As opposed to any news network.  That really is my point here.  So much energy spent to dehumanize these people and they show us in a flash that they may just be more courageous and sincere than we can boast of being.

We are far from real.  Not even close.  The Iranian people show us.  Hundreds of thousands marching silently.  When the guns of the government appear, they sit where they stood, in silence.   Tens of thousands.  Hundreds of thousands.  Awesome.

The disparity between  Mirhossein Mousavi and Ahmadinejad is far narrower than between  Obama and McCain.  Forgive me, at least on the surface.

The most compelling aspects are not on the evening news.  Most of US don’t even know.  A whole row of teeth that will be given away here.  Twenty million people will chew wrong if they don’t play this game exactly right.

One way or another.

Courage be to you people.

I am impressed.

Drinks for my friends.

I keep dreaming I’m going over a cliff in something.  Every night.  Sometimes it’s not a big deal and sometimes I’m gonna die.  I’m always going over a cliff.

The scariest thing about “Man In Picture” is that he just keeps coming.  He never stops.  Once he begins, it never ends.  He is always there.  Relentless.  Nothing to do but deal with him directly until I win or lose.  You should look it up on this very blog under that title in quotes.  “Man In Picture”.  On the right hand side under categories.  It’s the first draft of a novel I intend to start a rewrite on very soon.

It’s crude and raw with an under developed plot and narrative.  The bones are there though.

It was disturbing for me when I wrote it.  I’m going to make it a book soon.  Now would be a good time for you all to weigh in and tell me what you think it needs.  I’m pretty sure I already know.

The worse sensation I can imagine is of thick ropey hairs bursting through my dermis.  Sharp muscular rigid worms.  I see it happening slower than in a movie.  Way slower.  My flesh opens at a rate that allows me to hear it.  The sound of knuckles popping, Rice Krispies and heavy wet fabric tearing.  Canvas, maybe burlap.

Blood flies and floats because it’s happening so slow.

It sears, aches and itches.

It burns.  It crawls.

Sometimes it toggles between hard pleasure and soft pain before it talks me in and out of a waking nightmare.

This happens to me in a hospital bed under a dim blue light.  I’m there for another life threatening reason.  Flesh eating virus.  I’m already horrified as the disease eats it’s way up my torso.  Now this.  There’s a sheet over me but with each smack and crackle the linens bloom red.

Saw something hanging from his ear until I realized it was the zipper on his coat.

Join me.

Drinks for my friends.

Today the DOJ, in support of the DOMA  (Defense Of Marriage Act), issued a brief using language invoking pedophilia and incest, eerily reminiscent of the vituperation vomited by the religious right ad nauseum since the dawn of the cerebral cortex.

Puns intended.

So much for change.

I don’t care if Obama was aware of this or not.  The only acceptable action here is swift, unambiguous refutation.  Obama and his administration need to get in front of this crap like yesterday.  It’s not just bullshit, it’s madness.  Best case scenario is Obama talking about this before I get out of bed.  The time difference alone gives him a hell of a head start.  Time to show me something Mr. Fierce Defender.

Enough.

Let this pass at your peril.  Hope will turn to doubt.

While we’re on the subject of Our Man, I was none too thrilled by the glaring omissions in his remarks in front of the AMA today.  It was a good speech, but no substantive reckoning that big pharma and big insurance are hopelessly infected by avarice and therefore ground zero for reform and regulation.  No mention of what an inefficient, bureaucratic clusterfuck the FDA is.  These items are at the very root of the problem and no reform has a chance at efficacy without force being brought to bear on them.

Blowing up balloons with holes in them.

The sad truth lies in the why.  Along with the AMA, pharmaceutical and insurance companies are championed by some of the biggest and most influential lobbying cabals in Washington.  If there were stars on K street or Pennsylvania Avenue like Hollywood Boulevard, two thirds of them would be dedicated to these filthy bastards.  For all you sniveling morons who live in such fear of communism, here is a bonafide  Red Menace for you.

Welcome to the plutocracy.  This thing is way bigger than just stubborn Republicans.

Along with energy, campaign finance reform and the military industrial complex, these are the windmills I expect Our Man to be tipping.  That’s why I voted for him.

We loves us some Bill Maher.  Maher said the other night in his New Rules segment:  “…..I’m glad that Obama is president, but the “Audacity of Hope” part is over. Right now, I’m hoping for a little more audacity”.

Me, I’m looking for those balls of zirconia  I thought I glimpsed on the campaign trail.  Dude, please don’t Jimmy Carter us.

Remember how I was pissing and moaning about pumps on lotion and soap bottles not long ago?  Well, for the record, adding water to any of the soap dispensing ones is pretty viable.

Sometimes I think all Americans are either corrupt or stupid.  Often both, but rarely neither.

Drinks for my friends.

Good evening.

Bill Clinton gave the keynote speech to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee yesterday.

I’m cutting to the chase here with direct quotes.

“Global cooperation is crucial for the survival of mankind…..”

“If we have a chance, it has to begin by people accepting that they can be proud of who they are without despising who someone else is,”

….”we are genetically “99.5 percent the same……..”

“From time immemorial, people have fought over identity rooted in that (half percent),” Clinton said. “We should have spent more time thinking about that other 99.5 percent of ourselves.”

“You teach your children their ethnic heritage; their religious heritage; their cultural heritage with no negative reference to anyone else because it’s the only shot we’ve got to make the most of our interdependent world,”

All quotes from CNN.com

You’ll have to forgive me but these sentiments strike a real chord with me.  Beyond that chord, is a three part harmony and a choral ethereal behind it.  With a Hammond B3 through a tube Leslie cabinet and some tympanies and strings.  Some brass and wood.  French horns and Oboes.  Oooh, and a Moog.

“Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you’ll know by.” -Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

These simple notions explode in my heart.  If we could just live by them, we’d enjoy so much more peace.

John Lennon beseeched us gently to imagine.  To imagine an entire world with no religion, no hell and just the blue sky above.  No country.  No nationalism or even patriotism.  No reason to even covet wealth or profit from famine.

“A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world” -John Lennon

That’s big stuff there.

Then there’s proof we’re almost outta rope.  This is such a simple thing but the climate is getting ever more polarized and violent.  While the right wing frolics in it’s own pudenda, evangelicals are snug as a bug in a rug with the idea they are somehow among the righteous and will somehow live forever.

These folks are stupid.  These folks are mean.  Sheezus.

As cynical as I am, I’m still an optimist.

The latest xenophobic diatribe from the asshole club foolishly denounces the concept of being a citizen of the world.  Newt the Salamander (new nickname alert), mocked it last week in a speech before rotting doddering sycophants.  That’s dumb.  I don’t care what backward crap you subscribe to, if you are reading this, you are a citizen of the world.

Some of you don’t like it.

Tough shit.

Newt the Salamander cracks me up.  The hair of a robust but premature gray talk show host, the face of a caramel and Scotch addicted bigot, the grill of an octogenarian who’s still got some baby teeth.  Thinks he’s got a shot at the head office.  The way he’s shoveling sewage, he doesn’t have shit to say.

Whatever he does say smells like ass.  He packs his jowls with feline fecal tootsie rolls to lend his face symmetry.  I’m really happy I just said that exact thing.  I don’t care much for the Salamander.

Nattering nabobs of negativity want to know Newt’s languor.  How does the Salamander balance the warm rock and the cool water?  Plump and bellicose.

I’d like to have him over for drinks and duct tape him to a space heater.  Make him watch CSI Miami.  Feed him nothing but Slim Jim’s and Dr. Pepper.  He would change his own diapers whilst suspended by a chin strap.  Morticians would be allowed to practice on his pale countenance and somewhat alien bone structure.  I could invite some NBA size trannys.

” George W. Bush left office with a public approval rating under 30 percent. Less than 30 percent of Americans currently describe themselves as Republicans. The amalgam of evangelical Christians, hardcore gun-rights fanatics, anti-tax, anti-immigrant and anti-choice voters who make up the base of the Republican Party amount to less than 30 percent of the overall electorate.” -William Rivers Pitt, truthout.org

Salient point of ensuing article by Mr. Pitt is that it’s own base is reason for the GOP’s demise.  The Sarahs, salamanders and Huckabees are prisoners of their own device.  The once muscular, hard right base of the Republican party, the guns and God crew, are essential for candidates to be allowed to sit at the table, but now a virtual guarantee they’re exempt from being dealt a winning hand.

My synopsis: These guys are fucked and it’s all their fault.

Will Pitt rocks.  Like a hurricane.

As much as I loathe the great unwashed, I sincerely wish they’d wake the fuck up and smell the world along with America’s place in it.  They nearly screwed the pooch when they were in power last time and now they are poised to do their worst despite being the minority.  Irrational fear, ignorance, prejudice and unwillingness to judge a man based on the content of his character, but rather his religion, political affiliation, culture or social beliefs, has the whole movement flirting with obsolescence.

The Republican party is a parody of itself.

They have begun to eat their own.  They drag their party moderates toward a house still fully engulfed instead of even entertaining the idea they are less than absolutely right about everything.  Frustrating to watch.

It has always been true, always an imperative, but now it’s damn near an emergency; we must get along.  Share the world.  Humankind can no longer afford to relinquish reality and truth while clinging to individual interest and willful ignorance.  The fomenting of hate by right wing media is not just reckless and irresponsible but is literally a menace to society.  I’m not here to suggest we revoke the first amendment rights of fucktards like The Human Shitsmear (Limbaugh), Hannity, Coulter, Glenn Beck, O’Reilly or even the Cheneys.

Fight fire with fire by using your own rights under that same amendment to drown them out.  How hard would it be for every American who loathes Rush to storm his phone lines regularly?  Sunday afternoon in the park.  We could do it from facebook and myspace.

What then, of the example by the Iranian people this weekend over the travesty of their national election?  They took to the streets.  I understand that the chronic malfeasance of our ’00 and ’04 elections was not nearly so obtuse.  We are guilty nonetheless, for behaving.  Not nearly enough ‘what the fuck?’

They are furious and showing courage.  Point to me the American who doesn’t cheer this struggle.  These people are ass pissed as they should be.  This is incredibly good stuff.  Anybody looking for inspiration or even an example?

As I write this I watch dickheads go swine stupid downtown over a goddamn basketball championship.  Now that’s blind shithouse irony.

I have it on mute but LAPD are going paramilitary and scaring the crap out of them.  Herded like cattle and KCAL9 cuts to commercial.  Lean it up against what’s happening in Iran right now, that’s all I’m saying.

Drinks for my friends.

I must tell you about the Magic Snot.

As  janitor King of the Fruit, I was accountable  for the appearance and cleanliness of the entire studio.  Tens of thousands of square feet.   King of the Fruit; the onus was on me more than anyone else.  Five bathrooms.  Two public restrooms inside the complex.  One for men and one for women.  Five bathrooms total, three with showers in the private lounges of studios A, B and D.

Lounge bathrooms were to be stocked with shampoo, conditioner, razors, shaving cream, toilet paper, soap, tampons, paper towels, tissues…….

All five control rooms required full dispensers of denatured alcohol, windex, tex wipes, Kim Wipes, a certain number of blue, red and black medium sharpies, grease pencils, sharpened pencils, ballpoints, splicing tape, canned air, red tape for reels stored head out and blue tape for reels stored tails out.  Red heads, blued tales.  At least two empty half inch, quarter inch and two inch reels.  Labels to fit any tape box size, track sheets, patch sheets for 72 channels and templates for documenting outboard gear of at least 50 different kinds filed alphabetically, blank cassettes and dats……

Of course the aforementioned pots of fresh coffee, decaf, cold water, hot water, and then tea, sugar, non dairy creamer, sweet & low, cocoa mix, honey, stir sticks, plastic spoons, forks and knives, paper plates, salt & pepper, napkins …….

Then ice chests with half & half, milk, ketchup, mustard and an identical accompaniment for each refrigerator in four lounges.  Fruit baskets etc…..

I did my best to ensure those bathrooms, control rooms and lounges appeared  clean and sanitary.  Sort of.  I didn’t take it any more seriously than I had to.  I was adept at maintaining appearances.  Randy Wine taught me to stoop and pick up imaginary flotsam when passing authority in the halls.  Greet them and smile while bending to retrieve imaginary refuse, then make your way to the nearest trash receptacle and out of their periphery.

We did mop the floors, clean the toilets and urinals, windexed the mirrors and took out the trash at least twice a day.

It was there and then I became a compulsive hand washer.

The day shift was a hump but it was only nine hours.  We ate when we could.

Years of my life were spent cleaning up after drunken , drug addled rock stars and don’t give a shit producers and engineers.

The night shift could be a grind.  Cleaning up after five, spoiled and self indulgent rock bands who ate their meals off real plates using real flatware.  All of which had to be transported down to the runners closet to be washed in a single sink that you couldn’t even see because of the shelving in your face if you were taller than five foot six.

It fucking sucked.

The worst part was the waiting.  Waiting for the rooms to go down in the early hours of the morning knowing the work that was waiting for you.  Work that would challenge my janitorial acumen.  My capacity for giving a fuck.  It sucked.

As a runner, I was exploited, taken advantage of, discounted and dismissed.  It was a goddamn nightmare.  I remember sitting in my piece of shit ’69 VW Bug outside some shop in South Central LA in the pouring rain to procure obscure vacuum tubes for the amp of a semi famous studio guitar player.  I was already wet and about to be soaking.  Sitting there, asking myself just what the fuck I was doing.  The wind making my bug rock and the rain drumming on it’s thin metal shell.  My hands and feet were freezing.

I would ask myself that a lot.  I was to be in that place over and over.

I drove that shitbox everywhere.  From Malibu to Oxnard, Beverly Hills to Manhattan Beach.  Before it was over I would drive Shelly’s cars back and forth between Tahoe and LA.

If you lasted in that place longer than six months you were probably at least a little crazy.  More than two years, you were for better or worse, a member of the asylum and it might be the best place for you.  I put in over eight years, which is easily twelve in human chronology.

I need to explain to you the Magic Snot.

There was a brass push plate on the door of the public men’s at the end of the first long hall.  Past studios B, C and A.  One day I glimpsed a curious thing.  I can’t be sure how long it took me to notice it.  Once I clocked it, I couldn’t be sure how long it had been there.

A smear of mucus on the upper right hand corner of the brass door plate to the bathroom inside the privileged and exalted environs of A&M recording studios.  It looked a little like Italy. Maybe a half an inch.  That was it’s shape.  Boot and all.

It seemed impossible for such an obvious anomaly to survive in an environment of turborcharged anal retentivity for very long.  For awhile there was a stunted black whisker lying flat, half inside and half outside it’s shape.

I could have eliminated in seconds with a variety of tools.  My thumbnail even.

Yet there it was.  A booger.

A Magical Mucus Smear.

Albeit a tiny one.  It’s edges blackened over time.  It became more disgusting.

But it was holy.  Sacred.

Hallowed by a singular audience.

I came to ascribe all manner of superstition and outrageous fear to the Magic Snot.

I grew to covet and admire it’s unlikely existence in the face of impossible odds.  It was my champion and I became it’s benefactor.

I protected it.  I preserved it.  After years, yep years, I came to regard it as the signpost of my future.  I never mentioned it’s existence to a single other person.  The Boot Shaped Booger came to represent not my hardship, but instead my survival.  My symbol.  My metaphor of eventual triumph..

It became my Mascot.  My Talisman.

I was even assigned the men’s room one weekend with nothing but a toothbrush.  With that mere toothbrush, I did my damndest to demonstrate my devotion to the institution that was A&M recording studios, yet I took care to preserve the Mystical Booger.

I couldn’t believe for all that time, no one noticed the sacred Italian Mucus Smear.

One day, in a sort of semi obsessive compulsive routine that had manifested itself over time, I saw the Magic Snot had vanished.  I was able to detect that it had been scraped off with what was likely a razor blade.

In my mind’s eye I pictured it’s abrupt removal.  Flaking away and wafting in the sun spilling before gravity claimed it’s feathery mass.

Razor blades were plentiful in recording studios in that day for the editing of analog tape.  The entire plate and been polished to it’s full sheen of brassy potential.  It glowed and I admit, it was beautiful as it shone beneath the morning rays streaming through the windows of the rear studio entrance.  My stomach flipped and my heart pounded in my ears.  Some over zealous runner had forever deleted my secret charm in the self interest of janitorial acuity.

I was reckless that day.  I got Marcus Miller’s Porsche up over eighty between two stop signs on the way to a car wash down De Longpre.   Got it up to a hundred down Highland ………

I had been asleep.  It was time.  I was to make happen what I heard in my head or fail.  Time to relinquish childish things.  I waded in up to my chest in a vicious current and started swimming against it.  Stand still, you die.

Stand still you die.

Drinks for my friends.

If I don’t close a few deals tomorrow, we all may be killed.

Gotta pay the rent and peanut butter by way of index finger is getting old.

Meanwhile the asstards of the GOP have decided that Sotomayor is so very experienced, possesses such an elaborate history of jurisprudence, that her confirmation must be delayed until after the end of the Mayan calendar, as they need to study her every move.  They prefer her confirmation hearings begin sometime after the world ends in 2012.

What exactly do these men of lust, greed and glory hope to accomplish here?  Don’t know about you, but they look like dickheads to me.  She’s gonna be confirmed you assholes of the flat earth society.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, another right wing, homophobe, bigot loses his shit and goes off on innocents with a gun.  This guy’s done time just like the last uniquely American tumor.  You know by now DHS distributed a report a few months back warning against this specific conflagration.  The Republicans piled on and forced an apology out of Janet Napolitano.

How rigoddamndiculous does that dance look today?  Looks like under Obama, DHS might have a chance at efficacy.  Might just be the most prescient and important thing they’ve ever done, you know, that report that predicted all of this.

Fucking Republicans. Can’t figure out why they’re not embarrassed.

The frontline of the GOP is the Human Shitsmear, Sarah Palin and some human salamander named Newt.  The bench is Guy Smiley (Romney), McCain and John Voight.  Can’t figure out why they’re not embarrassed.  Rounding out Republican leadership is Michele Bachman and John Boehner.  Mr. Everglow and Mrs. Dipshit.  I understand now why Republicans pretend to stay right with God.  Hypocrisy is in their blood and they are not then, easily embarrassed.

Still can’t figure out why they aren’t embarrassed.   They have become parodies of themselves.  Not a single original thought, plan, strategy or policy.  Nothing but anti.  Nothing but no.  They just don’t get it.  The weight of circumstances and the gravity of right now is barely in their periphery.  They wander through fields and ditches without any concept of consequence.  Not a single Republican is thinking about anything beyond itself.

Rome is dry.  Rome is a tinderbox.  Rome is about to burn and you assholes can barely be bothered to get off the phone.

Wake the fuck up you Republican moderates.  You think you got no place to go other than Independent?  A lot of us will be inclined to join with you or at least work with you if you can behave.  We’ll hold it against you but we won’t throw it in your face.

Let’s get on with it.

Drinks for my friends.

So Newt Gingrich declares he’s not a citizen of the world to applause by the most prominent collection of misfit toys ever to gather on an annual schedule.  John Voight, the same whackjob who melted down on public airwaves a few years back over his superstar daughter Angelina Jolie’s estrangement, called Obama a false prophet and told us America is weaker.

Newt also told them the brand new economic plan has already failed.  This, despite news today that ten banks are set to repay almost ninety billion in stimulus money.  This,  despite it being way too early to tell.

This blog is for you Lo.  I understand that Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.  The big picture is far more convoluted than most of us know.  It is far greater than the sum of it’s parts.  Both sides have bodies buried and there’s no innocence in Washington; I am not a Nuclear Playboy.

It’s just that people like Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich, whom I adore, have no real chance at influencing seminal policy, much less posturing for the highest office in the land.

You see this administration as a glass half empty.  I’m not ready to go there yet.

When was the last time a President of the United States told Israel in front of the world, in an Arabic Muslim nation, that her actions were intolerable?

You graciously offered an article on the similarities between Bush and Obama for this particular context: http://www.internationalpoliticalwill.com/2009/06/heard-it-all-before/

Ironically, it’s context that Will is ignoring.  Just about every speech by Bush that Will cites took place inside our own borders.  I commend him for his research acumen, as he’s painstakingly culled all these examples of congruence from over six years of lexicon, far more muted and less specific than that of Obama’s single speech in a Muslim country delivered to Arabs.

It’s a manufactured duck and weave befitting a high school research paper.  No score here Lo.  Your man Will has written a fluff piece.  I’ve taken it upon myself to post an edited version of this critique on his blog.

You know I hope, that I have immense respect for you.  Thanks be that you’re far better informed than most.  I wonder if you haven’t taken the wrong fork on your philosophical/ideological path.  You’re energy and intelligence is lost on wanna be demagogues  like Ralph Nader who only run for office out of hubris and the obstreperous notion they may upset a close election.  If Ralph Nader truly wanted to make a difference he would position himself politically to do so.  Perhaps an earnest and sincere attempt at a cabinet position or a prominent non-profit.

Ralph Nader may be as full of shit as the next guy.

And you my dear, would be better served by getting on board with a society and an ethic that is changing.  Just because I support Obama, doesn’t mean I can’t bitch at him.  It gives greater license to do just that.  See last night’s blog.

I’m not, by any means, hook, line and sinker.  He’s not perfect, I own that.  But in a few short months he’s managed to fundamentally change the way the rest of the world looks at us.  Take the recent elections in Lebanon as an example.  The amount of influence he brought to bear is debatable but there’s no denying he brought some.  This is big stuff.  He’s the best thing we’ve had in a very long time.  Work with me here.

Don’t look away, there’s plenty to see.

Drinks for my friends.

I gotta tell ya, Obama’s absence on all issues gay, specifically Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, is pretty disappointing.  He was unmistakably upfront about being a fierce defender.  He’s dropping this ball.  A civil rights ball that he needs to account for.  This is big picture stuff.  Us heathens deserve to know.  No free pass here, dude.

The sand dollar is underneath the stairs.  The blue juice is in the pantry.

So this is how it happened.  I gather they wanted Palin first and her staff gave the nod.  The fundraising dinner for the Senate and House Republican campaign committees.  The premier GOP money event of the season.  I don’t know if they have another name for it or not.  Anyway, they then discover somehow that Palin was never made aware of the invitation.  Um, yeah, allright, so then, they can’t get a confirmation from Palin.  So they ask Newt.  He jumps on it.  Newt goes on to immediately stick his own ass in his mouth by calling Sotomayor a racist.  They walk it back a little but can’t get word from Palin.  Newt walks it back too by saying he shouldn’t have called her that because he doesn’t know her.

So, Newt’s back in because Palin is being a cocktease, so Newt goes on television and says that Sotomayor might not be a racist but says racist things over and over.  Then he says she’s a “racialist”.

They work out some deal where they both will speak.  Then, Palin delivers some speech that was blatantly plagiarized.  Sheezus.  The GOP announces finally that Newt will be Mr. Keynote and Sarah will hopefully be in attendance.  They went on to acknowledge that Palin could maybe eclipse Gingrich in a popularity contest.

I got a degree in cartography.

Sarah shows up and commands copious limelight.  Steals the show by all accounts.  By the way, the speech she plagiarized?

Wait for it……

She lifted it from an article co-authored by Newt Gingrich in ’04.

Fuck me running, not even I could write this shit.

These are the stars of the Republican Party.  Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.  The new Arsonists Laureate.  Their best and brightest.  The party of Lincoln.  That’s sick.  These two are empty.  Shallow, callow and retarded.  They have no idea what Americans want or need.  They don’t care.  That they haven’t bothered to figure it out is evidence enough.  That this is the best they have is outrageous to me.  Newt and Sarah are a low budget slasher flick that isn’t even funny on any level.

The good news is that more people label themselves Independent these days than Republican.  I got no problem there, at least until we see what they  become.  It could go either way.  From not so judgmental libertarian to deranged, fascist, Lutheran Nazis.  The great unwashed are migrating and that is cause for concern.  We must track them.  No need to shadow them in their own habitat.  No tranquilizer darts or tags with chips.  The science and technology of demography is now at our fingertips.  No chance we’ll lose sight of them.

This country’s bowels are percolating.  We may be on the verge of giving a shit.  I’m more than inclined to applaud the demise of the Grand Old Party but they will show up somewhere.  There’s that and the truth that chaos covets a power vacuum.

These are interesting times.  Better pay attention.

Drinks for my friends.

I like to have more gin than I can drink in one night on hand at all times.  Same goes with pot.  I don’t like to have to budget my recreational drug intake inside of  a 24 or even a 48 hour cycle.

This particular ideal is not necessarily a good one.  And that’s ok, because it’s an ideal I can rarely live up to.  What happens when I’m back in the saddle?  I don’t rightly know.  For now I manage to keep a steady supply of one or the other.

I get my brain to relax in the right way, manage to turn the noise down, and I’m golden.  Can I do that without a better living through chemistry mentality?  Maybe, but not consistently I fear.  Forgive me, it gets loud up in here.

Refreshments are welcome.  Maybe mandatory at this point.

There’s this great Mexican place across the street.  Nothing fancy but flavor perfect.  I’d put the cheese enchilada plate against any for the price.  Hard shell chicken tacos?  Say hello to my little friends.  The grease to freshness ratio is rudimentary culinary perfection.

I’ve grown to appreciate that frontal lobe burn brought on by just enough wasabi in your soy sauce.    And then a cold cold beer.  A little albacore and some salmon, some ginger here and there and you’ve got uncle who goes by Bob.

Ever notice the lack of cheese in any Asian cuisine?

The way white pills and cotton look inside bottles of apothecary brown or green glass soothes me.  Like the way an orange creamsicle tastes.

I tried to write a poem once about hot corn dogs and mustard, that greasy yellow glass on old popcorn makers and the colored lights of carnivals and gave up after six months.  Most poetry sucks because poetry is so damn hard to write.  Far more poetry in life than on paper.  Pick a flower.

Boxing is brutal poetry.  Ultimate fighting is brutality minus the poetry.

I’m sure people who wear sunglasses on cloudy days or inside are jackasses.

I do appreciate girls, but I adore women.

Kinda curious about Kentucky grilled chicken.  My first real job was at KFC you know.

Life is so goddamn slippery.  Rich or poor.  Black or white.  One day you’re the master of your destiny and the next day everything is whirring like a demonic gyroscope and completely outside of your grasp.

I hate that.  I like to have control of my shit.

We have a mutually beneficial relationship based on  individual prosperity that we share with each other.  Wonder twin powers are activated.  She thinks I’m Y chromosome impaired.  She’s wrong, of course.  I’m actually Y chromosome advantaged.

I really like chunky peanut butter.  I like the oily natural kind.

Music informs me.  it is my elixir.  It informs me.  A constant gift.  The power of music is unique among all of the artistic mediums.  There is no more immediate artform  than a single good song.

Man I lament stupidity and I hate willful ignorance.   Twin tragedies.  A friend of mine challenged my championing of Obama’s speech in Cairo the other day.  She called me out on facebook.  I invited her to bring it.  I didn’t hear back.  They never come at me.  I invite them but they don’t.  This woman is my friend.  I’m quite fond of her.  She’s smart and I want to know her mind on this.

What I get instead is wingnuts and whackjobs like Ralph and that asshole Trueblood from a year ago.  Nobody rational.  No big brains.  Where the hell are you who would engage me with intellectual honesty?  Retards like Ralph are entertaining but I tend to covet dialog more substantiative.

Lo, from Dandelionsalad, hasn’t posted anything of mine for at least a year.  My piece on Obama in Cairo she turned down because she is not an “Obama supporter”.  I wrote her back to say so what, it was a historic speech.

What I’m doing here is pissing, moaning and pining for responsible opponents.  I can’t be coming so correct as to intimidate legitimate contenders.  It does get lonely.  Talk to me.  I won’t bite, unless you’re  super dumb.

Somebody get Liz Cheney a ball gag.

Drinks for my friends.