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

None.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s sick.  Pun forcefully intended.

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

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

Bring it or lose it.

The buck stops on your kitchen table.

Drinks for my friends.

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

Man I need some pot.

Life is all about curveballs and and gutterballs.

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

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

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

So much for the Beckian big tent circus of discontent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Afraid, suspicious and fearful for no sane reason.

Goddamn dumb.

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

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

My father is seventy seven years old.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

Surreal.

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

I’m not bored.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I really hate these pricks.

How much longer do we put up with this insanity?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

He spoke clearly.  With confidence and conviction.

Righteous ferocity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

As for the “Deathers”:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever.

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

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

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

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

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

Masterful.

He may just be that good.

Wow.

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

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

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

Awesome.

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

Todd Westergard, you may have been correct sir.

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

Well done Mr. President.  Very well done.

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

Rush crapped himself while announcing this philosophical gem.

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

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

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

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

It may indeed be a lost cause.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My favorite:

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

I wrote this next one:

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

I stand in awe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s like battling robots.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

Found this post on facebook last night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.”

See what I’m saying?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is bullshit.

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

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

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

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

Waffle on a public option and you lose us.

NOW DAMNIT.  NOW.

Drinks for my friends.

I hardly know where to begin.

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

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

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

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

Well, it’s summer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4) We can’t pay for it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The whole human race can survive without war.

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

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

Both of them, good old friends of Mark Harvey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I simply wouldn’t take his calls.

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

The catalyst was their bullshit, macho Jersey swagger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I digress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

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

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

They are twisted, disturbed and kind.

Anyway.

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

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

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

Whatever.  Let’s do this thing.

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

Dracula makes pies with delicate crusts and flowery contents.

Dracula enjoys a challenging board game with a nuclear family.

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

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

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

Dracula is very pro Zombie rights.

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

Dracula likes the way he looks.  No fucking shit.

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

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

If your number is up, Dracula has it.

You can always count on Dracula, you fucking whore.

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

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

Dracula likes A1 Sauce in his fries you fucking cunts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

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

I may be needing a late term abortion.

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

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

Prick bastards.

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

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

Man I hate these guys.

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

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

Pathetic.

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

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

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

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

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

Drinks for my friends.

Dick Cheney.  Dick fucking Cheney.  Man I hate this guy.

His very existence is hyperbolic.  Nothing he says or does weathers the ideal of truth.  These days, he’s a cartoon.  A rictus grin barely filled by crooked caramel teeth, lips pulled dry over an ugly mouth spewing lies and nonsense with the foulest of odors wafting from a lying maw.  Unfortunately, as any of the astute understand, he wasn’t always so toothless.  So laughable.  Thank us all for the end of of his nightmare.  The end of ours.

He led us into the shame of torture, the tragedy of unjustified war and the blanket, abject stupidity of neoconservatism.  A sociopathic charlatan that gives proof to the lie, the lie that if uttered often enough, is believed by the masses as well as the propagator.  He championed the stupid and lured them towards disaster.  With hubris and avarice and without any conscience or responsibility.

In an interview taped on Friday, that appeared today on, hold your breath, Fox news, Cheney called the investigation into his administration’s use of torture, “intensely partisan”.

Sheezus.

He went on: Calling the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on terrorist suspects “absolutely essential,” the former vice president deemed any decision to launch an probe into the possible illegal use of these EITs an “outrageous political act” and a “direct slap at the CIA.” -Huffingtonpost.com

When I was a kid, my friends and I had a label for people who could lie so effortlessly that they obviously lived in their own world where sugarplum faeries danced and everything they thought or believed was valid merely because.  That label was, “Fucked In The Head”.  As in, Dick Cheney is Fucked In The Head.

This guy still amazes me.  He seems to honestly believe that the Obama administration should be knocking at his door for advice on how to keep us all safe.  Nevermind the glut of evidence that an event like 9/11 was imminent and actually occurred on his watch.  Nevermind that history will show definitively that the stain of torture was spread over America’s reputation worldwide at the behest of Cheney’s office.  Nevermind the secretive fuckery the office of the Vice President, including Dick Cheney his own self, engaged in to conceal torture.   Nevermind that once that failed,  Cheney’s office rushed to justify torture itself.

Nevermind that the sonafabitch lied over and over and over.

Fuck this guy.  Prosecute his fat white, crooked toothed ass.  He is a criminal.  He is fucked in the head.  This is not right and I dare anyone to defend him.  Guilty.  Guilty of the worst crimes there are.  Sloppy, stupid and without conscience or shame.  Fucked in the head.

So transparent.  So one dimensional.  How does this prick sleep after the role he played in wrecking us so?  The Haliburton scandals and their subsequent enrichment.  The list is long and vulgar.  I really can’t bear to revisit it on your behalf.  It’s insane.

There’s more.  He said the launching of an investigation,  “offends the hell out of me,”  Oh really?  He’s offended?  This guy is fucked in the head.

I’m offended.  This remorseless jackass goes on national television, Fox fucking fixed news, and whines and waxes offense after all the evil he’s perpetuated and the all the fatuous and maniacal lies he’s visited upon us?  I’m offended.  I’m disgusted.  Who the fuck does this lying, black souled asshole think he is?  Who does he think he’s talking to?

Dick Cheney is uniquely, singularly and exclusively, an American piece of shit.  A monster, a horror we allowed with our laziness and apathy.

He would never have been allowed to manifest without a significantly sizeable and hopelessly stupid demographic.

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  Bitch.  Yep, our fault.  Big surprise.

Do us both a favor, when you click on my blog here at brainspank.org, there is a long list of categories on the right hand side.

Scroll down and click on Dick Cheney.

Read about his evil and destructive deeds.  I’ve taken great care and no small amount of time to document them.  Immerse yourself.  I did it because I couldn’t stand it.

I did it because America has no greater enemy than Richard Bruce Cheney.  Osama Bin Laden makes this piece of shit look Fisher Price.

Man, I hate this guy.

I’ve been doing it for years.  Learn about my detestation for him and from where it was borne.

I’ve been doing it because he fucking sucks.

I’ve been doing it because he’s a rotten molar in America’s head. Because he’s an egomaniacal, shameless bastard who has no integrity, no record of accomplishment, no reason whatsoever to lend any credence to anything that spills out of his ugly goddamn mouth.

Dick Cheney is toxic, a poison that demonstrates but one imperative.  The imperative is that the cancer be removed.  Cut it out.  Remove it.  If thine eye deceives thee, then pluck it out.  By all means.  Rid the body of the malignancy.

“In the interview with Fox News Sunday, which was taped on Friday, Cheney insisted that newly released documents from the CIA proved that the use of torture on terrorist suspects were instrumental in preventing future attacks (a claim that the documents actually say is difficult to make).”  -Huffingtonpost.com

The truth is, the heavily redacted documents prove nothing except what actually happened was far uglier than what we’ve been told.  An even bigger shop of horrors than Abu Ghraib hinted at.  We abused prisoners.  We tortured them without compassion and certainly without mercy.  We beat them to death.  In our name, they were tortured and beaten to death and Dick fucking Cheney is offended because we we want to know why and how?  Who the fuck is this guy?

I think we should force a molten glass rod up this guy’s piss hole and ask him what offends him so much that he can go on national television and spew this crap.

Fucked in the head.

I’m offended.  Fuck you Dick Cheney.  Justice should include you tasting your own blood right before you die.

You sir, are excrement.

Drinks for my friends.

It’s crazy.  DJ AM was found dead in his New York apartment due to an apparent drug overdose.  What’s even crazier, I have absolutely no idea who this guy is.  Or was.  What does that say about me?  I’m 44, a former multi-platinum record producer and I’ve never heard of this guy in my life.  Obviously he was a dj.  So?  High profile romances with Nicole Richie and Mandy Moore.  I kinda know who they are but again, so?  Not even a musician, much less a talented one, and he’s dated Nicole Richie who’s famous for what?  Being friends with Paris Hilton?  The adopted daughter of Lionel Richie?

I’m not so clueless as to know there exists an entire dj culture I know nothing about.

I worked with Lionel Richie, hell of a nice guy.

And Mandy Moore.  Never heard of her.  Sold some ten million records and is an actress.  Honestly never heard of her either, couldn’t pick her out of a lineup.  What does this say about me?

My adolescent heroes are by and large, still names on peoples lips, or at least, still familiar to most people eighteen and over.  Journalists, musicians, actors and writers.  Cronkite, Brokaw and Olbermann.  Miles, Eddie, SRV….  Sean Penn, De Niro, John Goodman, Frances McDormand….  Poe, Steinbeck, Capote, Vonnegut….  I could fill pages.

What does it say about us?  About me?  My generation?  Do the people who know who DJ AM is know who the Vice President is and that he spoke at a very important memorial this evening?  Do they know the last scion of Camelot is dead?  Do they even care?

I understand that there’s always been a disconnect between the youth culture and the more sober reality of the adult world.  Often that cleavage has yielded important cultural upheaval.  If American society had just listened harder and paid more attention to our youth in the late sixties, events might have been significantly less disastrous.  The under under 35 demographic played a huge role in last year’s elections.

A force to be reckoned with.  Pure and not easily confused.

I have to admit, beyond my bewilderment, I don’t necessarily have a point.

Well, maybe I do, but it smacks of codgerliness in an embarrassing ‘kids these days’ sort of way.  I mean, these are pivotal times.  The fate of the country certainly hangs in the balance, as does every single individual who has DJ AM on his or her radar.  Is our children learning?

I read Rolling Stone these days because Matt Taibbi has piece inside, otherwise I have no idea who or what they’re talking about.  The new artists are a mystery to me.  Weird.

To be sure, part of the problem is the phenomena of unchecked media saturation.  I grew up with two and a half channels, the newspaper, a 7-11 a half a hour way on a skateboard and a library forty five minutes away on a bike.  No cable, no internet, no cell phones, no video games except Pong and nothing but time.  I responded to this brevity of stimuli, entertainment and information by constructing powerful homemade explosives, listening to records, reading everything I could get my hands on and learning to play the drums.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I had no interest in sports.  I played a little tennis, these days I like to watch boxing and a little basketball, maybe the Superbowl.

Far  more constructive than today’s youth, I’m sure.

I understand that raging, pulsating hormones and prodigious pressure to succeed  pollute common sense and sometimes erode sensibility entirely, but work with me kids.  Whoever DJ AM was, I’m confident he commands no amount of gravity that even approaches the fight for your future that rages in town halls and the corridors of power as you lament the passing of this cultural speck.

What I’m trying to tell you is we need you.  Pay attention.  You helped us elect a man who was by far the best choice.  Your work is not done.  Sorry, it’s just begun.  It is the price you pay for what you already have.  It is what you owe for it.  Sincere earnestness is required to improve it all.  You are the future.  Read and masturbate more.  Reverse that, spank it more often and then turn off the insidious and ubiquitous media and read something.

The engine of youth is quite capable of driving the course of human events in this country when it’s fuel is righteous.

Drinks for my friends.

The Lion sleeps tonight and forever.  I for one am deeply saddened at his inevitable but still tragic shuffling from underneath his mortal coil.  If nothing else, I’ve been reminded anew of the sheer abundance and magnanimity of his legislative accomplishments.  A profound practitioner of comity and perhaps the fiercest defender of basic human rights to ever serve in what used to be at least, the greatest deliberative body in history.

A force, a  human hurricane of kindness.

Senators McCain and Hatch have take it upon themselves to soil it with contempt and hypocrisy beyond the proverbial pale.  They suck.  To think McCain had the audacity to run for President.  Stupid is as stupid does.

I don’t believe in heaven or hell, armageddon or a Christian God, but for his sake, I do hope Mr. Kennedy is somehow reunited with his so tragically deceased brethren.  I do believe in the soul, and I believe Mr. Kennedy’s to be of the most authentically unadulterated kind.  His passing is every single American’s loss whether they know it or not.

A grand patriarch of Americans needs and wants.  A father and protector.  A good man.

Teddy.

The tragedy for the redneck, great unwashed, is that they fail to realize what he did for them and including their hatred, vitriol and ultimate stupidity.  When made plain to them, they pretend not to care or understand.  Such is the state of filthy willful ignorance in contemporary American politics.  Ugly, shortsighted Americans that purport, at best despairingly, unable to understand the truth.  Hopeless and deliberately imbecilic because they’ve been indoctrinated with a simple shallow fear.  A fear they know and understand to be baseless and without merit.

Fools.  Goddamn fools.  Goddamn fools.

I’m not sure how this is, all the sudden, I’m reminded vividly of a retarded man named Johnny I knew some twenty five years ago.  I recently had the pleasure of spending some time with  him and a best friend for whom Johnnie is his charge.  My longtime friend, Sean and his significant other Johanna, are living with and taking care of, Johnny who is 56 years old and ridiculously sweet and affectionate.  Johnny is well adjusted, poses no danger to anyone but maybe himself and is funny as fuck. Can’t remember whether it was Jo or Sean who shared it with me, but apparently Johnny exclaims “I made it!”, every morning when he wakes.  How cool is that?

Whatever God there is, he loves you Johnny.

From Bob Cesca at Huffingtonpost.com, “Health care reform named after Ted Kennedy must not suck”.  If and when this gets done it better be good if we dare to do it in his name.  Are we clear?

So by the way, any of you assholes on the the right who choose to accuse us of politicizing Edward Kennedy’s death by celebrating his unapologetic liberalism can take a long slow suck on my runny scrotum you stinking cunts.  He was a proud liberal who never succumbed to the right wing stigmatization of the word or the concept.  He was never afraid of it, he embraced it. His record glows with it.  It’s why we loved him.  Piss up a goddamn rope, you misguided obtuse demagogues.  Tread there at your peril.

Not a single one of you dickwads who would take exception, ever voted for any bill, proposal, or amendment he ever put forward for the common man’s health and well being as far back as ’94.  Eat me.  Now is not the time to pretend you would have negotiated.  Simple bastards.  Disingenuous mouth breathers.

Puke on your own shoes.  Don’t even try to define this man as some moderate obsequious compromiser; even you respected him because he stood up to you and told you to pound sand over and over when you chose to abandon reason and logic.

Outclassed.  Way outclassed.

I’m so weary of the stupidity and the vacuum of logic or reason.  The only industrialized country, and by far the richest in the world, that fails, fails again and again, to care for it’s people in the simplest, most fundamental of ways.  I’m sick to death of the tower in place that dictates our basic needs according to profit and the filthy lucre that has poisoned the process for decades.  It’s bullshit and whenever someone, be they elected representative or clueless ideologue, tries to tell you different, you can bet they are far less than than full of shit.  Empty.  I mean empty.

Bet they are corrupt.  Bet they are ignorant and scared.  You can bet they will do no good.

I will never, ever lie to you.  I’m telling you the way it is.

Johnny wakes up and says, “I made it!”.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve gone through a change.  Transformed.  Like menopause.  Suddenly, the Republican Agenda makes sense to me.  I’ve gone from liberal to vacuous.

Seriously.  Work with me here.

Torture makes complete sense in the context of liberty and justice for all.  Dick Cheney and his minions should not be investigated or prosecuted.  They were merely doing their best.  It’s hopeless silliness, not to mention unpatriotic, to pursue any form of persecution of these brave defenders of the American way.  As American’s, we are better than everyone else, we don’t deserve the scrutiny.  We are above it.  God put us here to rule the world and he is on our side.  Our unique responsibility is to rid the world of evil.

We are special.  Jesus tells us so.  The Bible tells us so.

Our qualifications are exclusive and divine.  Christian Americans are The Chosen.

Republicans in particular.

The faithful.

Those who’ve failed to reach their fiscal potential are not my problem, my concern and certainly not my fault.  Maybe God’s will is that they should be left behind.  A kind of religious natural selection.  Ha!  Take that you atheist Darwin lovers.  After all, God only helps those that help themselves.  Christ has no use or patience for the weak or impaired, they are unable to do for themselves and are therefore worthless to the Holy Spirit.  Never give a fish to a Democrat, teaching the worthless to fish is a waste of time. Some have been chosen and some have not.  The Christian way and obviously what the Heavenly Father intended for the Christian nation of America.

The rich should be taxed minimally, if at all.  Wealth drives the modern economy.  They provide the largess for jobs and industry.  They are the chosen.  Thus, their generosity is evident and already in place.  They do far more than the beggar or the homeless can or would.

I’ve come to loath the rotting toothed, stupid and desperate poor.  God has not chosen riches for me but I shudder when I gaze upon the worthless because I know my tax dollars go to prolong their miserable lives.  Poor but obese, they lack the sense to choose wholesome and nutritious food.  They neither know nor care enough too seek proactive medicines or practices and I don’t doubt that’s all part of God’s plan.  That these zombies are allowed to drain the money and resources of American society in general confuses me.  God does work in mysterious ways.

I don’t hate them because God says not to.

America is the land of opportunity.  Always has been.  Those who’ve failed to take advantage of America’s vast and ripe system of free education and abundant possibility are simply beyond hope, especially once they pass the threshold of adulthood.  I work, I have a job, so these greasy, dentally challenged trailer park dwellers, these weak and worthless veterans of our wars who can’t get it together and refuse to do for themselves, make me want to puke.  Look at all the goddamn foreigners that take jobs as convenience store clerks or manual labor workers that take jobs from worthy Americans.  Are these people less capable, less able than honest Americans?  Maybe they are, maybe they’re not.

Falls under not my fucking problem.  All I know is I’d much rather have my tax dollars go towards fighting the raghead terrorists than these wastes of God’s air.  I see these people in wheelchairs sporting an oxygen tank in casinos and I just know my money is paying for them instead of keeping us safe from Satan’s Muslim evil doers.  They should be euthanized like the diseased cat’s and dogs that make a mess of my trash and threaten neighborhood children with a cornucopia of malaise.  Tics, fleas and ringworm.

Ever heard that expression “Kill ’em all and lot God sort them out”?  I’m down with that.  I’m no judge and jury but get them off my block and out of my town.

Sometimes I think Hitler was more on the ball than he gets credit for.  Everyone knows the Jews control the banks and the entire entertainment industry.  You know “The Family” on C Street more or less agrees.  He really was just looking to rid his country of Faggots, Gypsies, Jews and the ethnically impure. Hitler was a Christian too, you know.  He had “The Ultimate Solution” and I think we could take a page or two from his playbook.

It’s a good dose of reality as opposed to the fascism and socialism pinko liberals try so hard to cram down our necks every fucking day.

See, they’re not patriots like me and you.  They love niggers and spics and anyone who isn’t from the Mayflower like us.  They are weak.  They give money to all the dirty and lazy regardless of their color.  Ask me for money on the street, I’ll tell you to get a job you piece of shit.  They wander around pushing their stolen shopping carts full of stolen trash and I hate them.  Their skin a map of rashes, their eyes bloodshot with their hands out and the cloud of foul stink they walk in.  This instead of a job?

Fucking lazy if you ask me.  No excuse.

Christ has blessed my soul with charity but these people have no will or desire and don’t deserve the fish I can afford.  If they won’t die, better off behind bars at $30k a year because they are a menace.  Know God or pay the price.

We should attack and punish those countries who threaten us.  The future of the world depends on the triumph of Christianity over Islam.  They’re heathens and there’s no chance of co-existing with a bunch of towel headed camel jockeys.  Crude and uncivilized.  We have nukes and they don’t.  Time to use them.  Negotiation is pointless.  Turn their the desert into glass.

Take a breath.

I hope you understand that I’m kidding.  I’ve painted a picture for you of what I hate.  It is a caricature for sure.  A broad stroke, the impetus, the catalyst, being a solid month of right wing talk radio and it’s blatant, overt dishonesty.  Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are simultaneously American icons and stains on America’s aspirations and her identity.  What they do everyday is sick, irresponsible and evil.  They and their ilk seek nothing more than to pollute our national discourse so egregiously as to rile the stupid and offend the thoughtful to the extent that they are actually paid handsomely for their treason.  Shining examples of the worst of us.  The physical manifestation of everything that is wrong with American society, patriotism and all our precious ideas.

They are paid handsomely to stir shit.  Disgusting.  I would swing on either one.  I fucking hate these guys.

This blog is dedicated to Teddy Kennedy.  Not perfect by any means, I understand his flaws better than you can know, a lion nonetheless.  A champion of all those I’ve lampooned so harshly here.  The dynasty has ended.  It really is America’s loss.

His passing is poignant and symbolic.  It was with JFK’s assassination that the modern era of brutal politics flooded us.  The subsequent courage of LBJ and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King cemented the vulgar ugliness of right versus left in this once vital and proud nation.  We have fallen from those heights.  Those ideals and those hopes.

In so many ways, we are in the same place.  A half African, half Caucasian man as President.  We are back in that place more than you probably know.  Round headed idiots showing up to Town hall meetings sporting  loaded weaponry enough to slay everyone in front of them.  Adolph fucking Hitler invoked over and over.  There are so many children in America, both literally and figuratively.  I worry so much that despite the election, we are forced to choose between a martyr or Superman.

It would be convenient and gratuitously exculpatory to pontificate here, but I’ll spare both you and me.  Save this:  Both John McCain and Orin Hatch disingenuously lamented the absence of Ted Kennedy from the health care debate in the last day or two, insinuating that his presence would have made a difference.  Fucking pricks.  Shame on you assholes.  You and your ever shrinking party are beginning to trip over your own dicks in your own race for shamelessness.

Public option or bust.

Drinks for my friends.

Why is Obama allowing him self to be so humiliatingly chumped by empty suits like Chuck Grassley?  I’m hoping it’s political rope a dope and Grassley will soon wake on the canvas, the taste of his blood in his mouth.

Fingers crossed, boys and chicks.

I’m betting on it.  Think a knuckle dragging moron like Chuck Grassley is any match for our President?  Don’t forget the guy you elected is whip smart.  Made the Clintons look Fisher Price and McCain was Play Doh.  Five or six moves ahead.  The entire GOP will be crying in front of their friends by the time the leaves begin to fall.

Wanna know how I know?  Unwitting pawns showing up to town hall meetings wearing AR15’s.  A shrieking right wing media.  The paranoia is palpable.  The Secret Service could easily expand the perimeter to a mile or more at the behest of the White House and that would be that.  Ask yourself why that hasn’t occurred and a correct answer affords you a glimpse into what is really happening here.  When the day is done, if meaningful health care reform is not passed and signed, the entire GOP will  be left to suffer the slings and arrows of their own outrageous demise.

They will be forced to filibuster, actually filibuster.  Bring on the cots and porta-potties.  Coverage will be live and through the night while ass squeaking octogenarian obstructionists are forced to ramble ad nauseum for the purpose of keeping the poor and middle class from accessing what should be their right in a country so rich, a society so advanced.  This, after every opportunity to entertain compromise has been offered and then scorned.

What we see unfolding here is analogous to the sixties civil rights movement.  The guns.  The shrill psychopathy  I pray not the violence.  It is the old guard Republicans resisting change and what is right with lies, deceit and power whatsoever they are able to bring to bear.  Same as it ever was.  Same as it ever was.

I may be wrong, but when the talking heads gasp and wonder at what the White house is up to, when they all scratch their collective crowns at the the strategy or lack thereof, I’m hoping hard it is this.  I’m hoping this administration and it’s super intellectual brain trust is allowing this pot to boil over on the stove because they understand that the only way real change comes is through this brand of passive violence.  Political judo.

I pray it is so.

Today, former Homeland Security honcho Tom Ridge, from a book to be released September 1st, finally cops to the fact that terror threat levels were subject to political manipulation by the White House and the DOJ.  Um, no shit.  Thanks for your candor, you spineless coward.  Somebody get this man a Presidential Medal of Freedom.  I mean, Tenet, Franks and Bremer got one.  It’s only fair, clearly commensurate…….

In other news, John Ensign deems himself morally superior to Bill Clinton because he broke no laws.  Remains to be seen.  Hold your breath.  Former House Majority Leader, felony indicted and architect of K street, Tom DeLay, announced his new gig on dancing With The Stars and called for Obama to produce a birth certificate.  We also learned that Cheney’s secret CIA assassination program was to be outsourced to the notorious Blackwater.  Keystone fucking Cops.

Oh, and today Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed called for an apology from The New York Times and The Washington Post saying, “Judging from the evidence released, [the committee] uncovered facts that show that my role in the U.S. attorneys issue was minimal and entirely proper.”  My advice to the periodicals in question?  Invite Mr. Rove to piss up a goddamn rope.  And maybe request a sample of whatever he’s smoking.  Rove is as filthy as a half melted plastic doll discovered in a native American fire pit.  His hubris blocks out the sun.  His mother sucks cocks in hell.

Man I hate these guys.  Even after they’re gone, a pungent, greasy slick glistens on the surface of our water.

Then, my beloved Jon Stewart has Betsy McCaughey, propagator of the “death panel” schadenfreude and big medical industry shill, as a guest and subsequently shellacs her like a bar stool missing a leg.  A premature halt is called so we may watch the entire charade unedited online.  Brilliant.  We loves us some Daily Show.  What the hell was she thinking?  Oh, the shameless cuntiness.

You just can’t make this shit up.

And it goes on and on and on.

Drinks for my friends.

……a constituent asks, “Why are you supporting this Nazi policy?”  Frank responds: “On what planet do you spend most of your time?” He then calls her approach “vile, contemptible nonsense.” He closes by saying: “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table.”  -The Huffington Post

And thus, Barney Frank owns the crazy bitch on national television.

Fucking brilliant.

Barney Frank blows my skirt up.  My favorite gay Jew member of Congress schools us all on how to respond to the paranoid obstructionist right wing nut bags.  Closest thing to tumescence since I woke up this morning with a piss hardon.  I hate waiting for those to go down so I can do my morning business.  Otherwise ya gotta get kinda horizontal; very tricky and often messy.  It does beg the question, why has Obama not said something similar to Senate Republicans?  I for one, think it’s time.

This national debate has long since devolved into a vulgar burlesque.  A cirque de bullshit.  Once again, I find myself embarrassed to be an American.  If only it could be about facts.  If only it could be about exactly how it will be funded as opposed to whether or not abortions will be free, or illegal immigrants will have access, or whether grandma will be euthanized, or whether Medicare, Medicaid or veteran’s care will be compromised.

It’s not about any of that.  Trust me.

How about the efficacy?  About exactly how the middle class and the poor will benefit, as opposed to what makes these fucking idiots think it’s somehow appropriate to show up with goddamn loaded assault rifles to what is obviously intended at least, to be a civil and decorous exchange of information on one of the single most conspicuous issues of our lives as topic.

Who the fuck are these morons?

Ladies and gentlemen, because brains are back, so is ignorance.  Say hello to militias and all the congruent, potentially violent, paranoid consequences.  Word is at least one of the asshats to show up at a town hall recently was a member of the Viper Militia, a 90’s group that saw many of it’s members end up in federal prison.

Oh man, here we go.

There is no action without an equal an opposite reaction.  An intelligent President equals the emergence of weird flat earther, birther, deather, desperate mouth breathers.  There is no free lunch.

He is a good man, our President.  If he’s unable to accomplish what we who elected him expected, who he is and what we hoped for will not be without the tragedy of disappointment.  But it does not change the righteousness of our aspirations and expectations any more than those of the man himself.  It changes nothing.  Man does not live by bread alone and Obama is no island.

This is on us.

Hunter S. Thompson said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”  It is time.  Barney Frank, that smart and strange little bastard showed us today.

“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco
this ain’t no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey
I ain’t got time for that now”  -Talking Heads

Wade in you bitches.

Drinks for my friends.

I like talk radio.

There is no talk radio in Carson City.

That’s not exactly true.  The only kind available is of The Human Shitsmear and Sean Hannity variety.  I wake up every morning to Limbaugh.  Entertaining.  Yup.

I am in awe.  Astounded.  I’m sure it’s a very lucrative gig.  It must be.  It would have to be.  He’s got a damn good radio voice.  He certainly sounds as though he’s bringing an abundance of conviction.  Despite my abject cognizance of what a despicable, hypocritical douchebag this consummate fuckhead is, were I retarded, I might be inclined to succumb to the rancorous enmity he so effortlessly pontificates toward anyone with a triple digit IQ.

Without a doubt, his audience, some twenty million or so, are mouth breathing, snot oozing, Depends wearing, pasty and pallid, gun loving, Jesus worshipping, irrationally fearful dipshits.  Just ordinary folks who would never vote for a black man or a woman because the very idea scares the living shit out of them.

This man, this Human Shitsmear , is not nearly as stupid as his brethren.  He is a master charlatan.  The hoax he perpetuates pollutes the most valuable and vital discourse we engage in.  Always, no matter the issue, Limbaugh and his ilk walk wide with nonsense and lies to distract and obfuscate.  How he sleeps at night is a mystery.

The entire behemoth of far right conservatives and GOP dickheads afford this gold bricker an amount of fealty that makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.  A racist drug addict without any evidence of faith or religious persuasion at all.  Yet they embrace him.  That he’s allowed to play on the national stage as an arbiter of anything is as disgusting as it is confounding.

A champion of idiots.  A prurient propagator of lies, deceit and disinformation for and to the great unwashed earn him a fat check.  Still, how does he sleep?  He’s no idiot.  He knows exactly what he’s doing.  Everything that is wrong with America is manifested by this Human Shitsmear.  The worst brand of sociopath.  Without a broadcasting career he would likely be a serial killer.

Or perhaps a very successful used car salesman.

I’ll be switching to a classic rock station.

Drinks for my friends.

Here I am in Carson City Nevada.

Back on the grid.  Internet access achieved.  Kinda proud, as I’m a bit of a luddite.

The capital of the great state of Nevada, merely titular as the seat of power.  Since the seventies or early eighties,  the actual force and center of political influence has resided with indefatigable dominance in Clark county, some five hundred miles to the south, by virtue of the voracious development and a subsequent population explosion in Las Vegas.

Despite all that, Carson City remains a cracklingly political town.  My sister tells me it’s all about to change.  Power will return to it’s rightful place in the North.

Between nation trotting sojourns with my father in an RV better appointed and more luxurious than most apartments I’ve lived in, my retired mother still oversees vital components of the bi-annual legislature.  They are somewhere between small towns in Washington state as I write this.

My sister swings a heavy municipal bat.  She has big plans for this town.  A media center unrivaled on either coast.  Her husband, whom I’ve known since grade school, wields substantial influence with Nevada’s nearly omnipotent Gaming Control Board.  Friends of the family are the wealthy, elite and intelligentsia as well as the kind, humble, ordinary and delightfully quirky.

Hello, Don Carlson, Harry Reid and the rest of you.

Not at all out of the ordinary for me to crack my hometown paper to find an article or editorial written by my uber talented and modestly ambitious sister.  Just last week while having lunch in an ordinary burger palace, I enjoyed such occasion.

Their lives are impossibly full.  Easy to envy.  Very busy and purposeful people.  Even my sister’s three children, two in college and the youngest a senior in high school,  are elaborately involved.

The net effect of all this furious activity and humble accomplishment  allows for me to feel distinctly and unmistakably slovenly.  Sloth like.  As I sit writing this from my parent’s kitchen counter, my trophy, a gold record, prominently adorns a living room wall.  Not much in the scheme of things, but I’ll take what I can get, at least until I’m a famous and/or critically acclaimed writer.  Or maybe head of the cheese department at Whole Foods.  

Another thing that impresses the crap out of me is the depth and breadth of both my mother’s and sister’s larders.  The culinary treasures in each are enough to sustain one through the apocalypse.  Exotic condiments, mustards, pickles, oils and dressings of all kinds.  Cheeses and sausages.  Canned fruits and vegetables.  Spices, soups and seasonings.  Refrigerators and freezers stocked with meats and nuts, breads and more vegetables.  Everything from freshly frozen hand picked huckleberries to chicken nuggets, huge sides of mammals, frozen diet meals and seafood.  Sauces from barbecue, to soy ginger and sesame, vidalia onion and fig, chili, rice vinegar and raspberry pecan.  Tomato paste, tomatoes chopped, tomatoes whole.  Soups and pasta, raw beans and crackers.

Slim fast in a can and baby corn in a can.  Microwave popcorn and Cups O’ Noodles.

Alcohol from fine wine to to cheap champagne.  Malibu Rum to Creme De Menthe, blood orange liqueur, vodka, gin, whiskey and Amaretto.  Soda, beers and juices.

All manner of candies and chocolates.  Jams, jellies and preserves.

Farm fresh eggs from my brother in law’s chickens and home made pies from my sister’s oven.  She has an herb garden and shops the farmer’s market every Saturday morning.  She runs marathons.  Her husband is soft spoken, brilliant and absurdly funny.

Not much substance here I know.  Been away from the wheel for awhile so give me some room.

I will tell you this.

Without a public option at the center of any health care bill, all is lost.  Obama will have squandered too valuable political capital for next to nothing.  The only efficacious mechanism for curbing corporate insurance greed, for legitimate reform, will be missing.  Without it, it will be a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.  Consequences of a bill without it will be dire.  All momentum and any mandate from an overwhelming majority will expire.

The ideas of hope and change will atrophy.  No bill will be failure.  A bad bill, without a public option, will be a stage for blame deserved, optimism smashed and the very last chance Americans will ever have at fair and equitable health care will fade to black.  The best promise of this administration will be shit.  Obama’s presidency, and our last best hope, will surface out past the breakers, missing a limb.

Fuck the Republicans.  Take one lesson from them and get the goddamn Democrats to march in step.  Marginalize the flat earthers by excluding them.  I’m weary of the vagina monologue here.  Tell the assholes that would terrorize their constituents  with stories of “death panels” and grandma’s plug being pulled to shut the fuck up.  Go to those states and wage war.  Get proactive.  Get medieval on their asses, with the truth.

Chuck Grassley should be invited to suck his own dick.  He’ll never vote for health care reform unless he’s shamed into it.  Obama needs to go to Iowa.  I’m not sure what Ted Kennedy’s status is but wheel him in.  Get proactive.  Fight, you you pussies.  More than health care is at stake here.  Don’t you see it?  Hope and change hinge on this.

Absent a public option will be proof that Democrats are unable to even lead a horse to water.  A majority in the House and Senate will be meaningless and it will all be for nothing.  Not a goddamn thing.  All for naught.  God will whisper in Michele Bachmann’s ear and she’ll be your next President.

You think the last eight years sucked?  I’m just sayin’.  It’s all about this.  Right here.  Right now.

Drinks for my friends.

What I am is a writer.  I like to talk about what I see and have seen.  There’s plenty.  I hope to illuminate, maybe even educate, but at the end of the day, I’ll settle for pissing you off.  I’m here for a reason.  It’s not deep or profound.  The reason is I can’t help it.  I must do this.  I am compelled, whether anyone listens or not, to speak my mind.  I always have something to say.  It’s a curse and a blessing.

I’ve always been this way.  I can’t bring myself to be unhappy about it.  I don’t really try.

Either I’m wont to wax political or I tell you stories.  I do so because I can’t help it.  I am a writer.  I like words.  They are my stock in trade.  Fiduciary.  Supple.  Plenipotentiary.  Flabbergasted.  Onomatopoeia.  I’ll fire them at you for fun.  That’s one of the things I do with words.  Otherwise I strive to make a point.  To awaken you to some aspect or angle you hadn’t considered.  I really like doing that.  Sometimes I search high and low for that angle, that perspective.

If I just can’t find it, I come at you full bore with something I hate that you might not understand.  I get myself in a lather and blow smoke in your face while I pound and complain.  I do this because I have to.  Because I can’t help it.

All humans are foolish.  Humility is the best we can present, despite it being insincere the majority of the time.  I’m no exception.  I really want you to read my shit.  I’m a writer.  I want to talk to you.  Communicate with you.  Reach you.  Touch your heart and your mind.

I am a writer.  I can’t help it.

Just like any other pedestrian, my humility is fragile.  Like any other egotistical pontificator, I’m confident I have something to say you’ve never heard before, or at least in a way you’ve never heard before.  It’s just as likely I’m completely wrong.  I can’t help it.  I’m a writer.

I hate any organized religion and I love to hate politics.  I love to talk about both until I run out of breath and big interesting words.  I sincerely hope, in that pursuit, to entertain you.  I do endeavor, with as much honesty as I can muster, to tell you the truth as I see it.  I am not here to fuck around.

What I am, is a writer.

Bear with me, I’m working up to it.

What I want to tell you.

As of Monday, August four, I’ll be off the grid.  I’m going to ground because I have to make money.  Whims are no longer subject to me.  I am subject to them.  Off I go, back to ground, to make them my bitch again soon.  I don’t imagine it will be longer than a week or so.  For me to get back to you.  Back on the grid.  Not to make whimsy my own.  That will take a little longer.

The whole idea is for me to control circumstances once again.

Fly a biplane into the yonder blue.  Away we go.  Yep, A biplane.  A Sopwith Camel.

My two girls will be in cages in the back of my newly registered, no insurance, expired drivers license, most likely with a bench warrant vulnerable ass…..car.  I got new tags though.

I’m off.  Bear with me.  I’ll be back just as soon as I can.  To startle you.  To entertain you.

No worries, I’ll be back soon.

I am a writer.

Drinks for my friends.

Let’s talk a little more about Barncard.  Barney.  SQB.  Stephen Quinn Barncard.  Resident Genius.

Barney designed and implemented so much crazy cool shit at A&M studios, it’s safe to say he was taken for granted by almost all of us.  What it must have been like for a man so bright, to serve at the discretion of men so much dimmer, is completely outside my ability to fathom.  When I think about it, I’m a little embarrassed.

Understand, it’s not a scenario that was exclusive to him, there were many great minds in that place.  Ultimately, as well as I knew him, he stands out, a little more of an enigma than the rest.

Friendly, gregarious even, and never patronizing.  Undeniably odd though.  A little crazy even.

He seemed happy and was so goddamn smart, pretty much above reproach.  Nobody ever really fucked with Barney.  Not as far as I know.  Sometimes he’d say something he clearly thought was funny, he had a laugh not unlike a little kid’s, kinda gleeful and unselfconscious; a little shrill for a man in possession of such a rich baritone.  About a third of the the time I’d smile and chuckle, not having any idea what he’d said or meant.

It sounded to me like, “A little like folding soup on hot summer day inside an igloo, eh?”

The Star Trek door leading to the control room in Studio A.  Push of a button and the the heavy airlock door whisked aside.  Kind of a pain in the ass sometimes but cool as shit nonetheless.

Tape copy.  A hundred plus Tascam 122MKIII cassette decks controlled and completely synchronized by a primitive late eighties Mac.  A listening system that allowed for the operator to hear a few seconds from each individual deck and thus be able to pull a bad copy in the process.  Oscilloscopes to see phase in case you couldn’t hear it.  I loved the dance of the cathode ray tube.  An integral step in teaching potential engineers how to listen and develop an attention span.

“They had good three motor transports and three heads, and were easier to align that other prosumer decks. But the deal making feature for me was that the decks could be operated by a direct connection rather than by infrared. That allowed the use of simple transistor circuits to drive the remote control inputs of the decks. At the end there were over 135 decks in the room; it was built for 156. There were 13 decks in each rack because that’s all that would fit. It would have been nicer digitally to have 16 decks in a rack.” -SQB
The FM radio station complete with Orban Optimod brick wall limiters.  You could listen to your mix on your own car radio in the parking lot, or a fully restored candy apple red ’57 Chevy sitting out back.  What the FCC didn’t know, didn’t hurt them.

Then there was Echo Central.  The Inner Sanctum.  Barney’s office.  A windowless room in the upper regions of A&M studios behind the second floor Studio A and B lounges that housed backup hard drives for the four computerized automated consoles in studios B, D, Mix and eventually A, once the legendary Neve was retrofitted with Massenburg flying faders.  The epicenter of research and development for A&M studios.

It was among the quietest and most peaceful places to sleep in the wee hours.  There was a back room, sort of a sepulcher, most didn’t know about.  I thought of it as a secret sarcophagus.  I enjoyed many a nap back there.  I might be imagining this but I seem to remember a way through the ceiling to the ancient catwalks above.  A few ceiling tiles pushed aside and you were in the era of Perry Mason.  It was filmed there, in that space, decades before.  You could see into the B lounge from up there.  A window that from the lounge looked on nothing, or so people thought.

Barney had devised a technology where all of the studio’s five live chambers and some 13 or 15 EMT plates could be assigned to any individual studio patch bay via ELCO connectors and then show up on a television channel so that each of the five control rooms could see which echo units were assigned to each room and which ones were available.

Red room, white room etc.

A live chamber is essentially a small, highly reflective room with two transducers.  A speaker and a microphone.  Pump signal through the speaker and it’s reflections are available via microphone.  I believe the White Room was a coincident or XY stereo pair, whereas the Red Room was mono.  There were three smaller chambers above C as well.

Roland The Headless Thompson and I experimented recording various acoustic guitars, nylon and steel string, in those live chambers with mixed, but always interesting results.

EMT plates are archaic technology as well.  Again, two transducers.  A small speaker at one end of a huge metal plate and a “pickup” at the other end of said plate, all housed in a wooden box about the size of a grand piano.  We had something like fifteen of them, all hanging in a two story brick building behind the studio.

In both cases, simple methodology and crude technology to create very unique echo on recordings before digital was even a word in pro audio.  Think Beatles, Stones and Elvis.  By the time I became a sorcerer’s apprentice, live chambers and EMT plates were a luxury very few studios in the world could afford real estate for, much less the logistics.  We were spoiled.

To switch or reassign any of them meant  trekking up to the Inner Sanctum, walking through a blue haze of quality pot smoke and physically moving the the ELCO connector  from one patch bay to another.  Barncard may or may not have acknowledged the interloper, depending on what he was working on.  It would then instantaneously appear on the television screen showing the patch point it could be accessed from in any given control room.

The only thing the Inner Sanctum lacked was test tubes and Bunsen burners.

Genius.

I confess, as a runner/janitor at A&M studios, I had keys to just about everything, including Barney’s Inner Sanctum.  Later on, I had legitimate reason to enter, but before that, under the auspices of emptying the trash……. you see where I’m going with this.

Barney could usually be counted on to at least leave a roach or two in an ashtray and we came to learn he kept his stash in empty quarter or half inch reel boxes back in the sepulcher.

Air conditioning is a very big deal in recording studios because the equipment generates an amazing amount of heat.  The temperature in a control room would go from 65 degrees to 95 or a 100 in fifteen or twenty minutes when the air went down.  This, in turn, effects the audio gear as well as musical instruments in a hurry.  Guitars go out of tune, drum heads go flaccid etc.

Just so happens, the Inner Sanctum shared ducting with the control rooms of both A and B.  Whenever we did bong rips in Echo Central, the Inner Sanctum, the inhabitants of both control rooms could smell it.  It was obvious, like green pungent gas.  Barney didn’t seem to care, he didn’t have to.  We did.  So upon locating his cache, we’d often take it to a safer place, like the Secret Pizza Lounge also known as Berg’s Green Retreat, far higher up in the building and the only other way to access the the weird upper regions of this recording complex built inside the the antiquated shell of the original Chaplin sound stage.  Far above and behind the tech shop, the speaker loft and removed from the elaborate air conditioning system.  Hot as fuck in the summer but the monotony was broken by getting high.

A happy sweat at three A.M.

We’d climb down the catwalks and ladders, consciousness altered enough to afford patience for clean up after rock bands, washing their dishes and schlepping their trash.

At the pleasure of judge and jury, a quick anecdote:

One Saturday afternoon, not too long into my time at A&M recording studios, I was working the front office phones when a battery of fire trucks arrived in front of the main gate on La Brea, sirens blazing.  The front guard shack called to say there was a fire alarm going off full tilt inside the studio somewhere.  Let them in I said.  What could I do?

Seconds later, eight or ten anxious firemen stood before me in heavy uniform while their captain explained that a smoke alarm was going off in the building and they couldn’t leave until they verified the location of the alarm wasn’t actually on fire.

What could I do?

Somehow, they were able to pinpoint the specific location of the alarm.  Echo Central.  The Inner Sanctum.  Fuck me.  I called up and there was no answer.  Anybody sitting up there blazing away on a Saturday wasn’t gonna answer the phone.  I knew that, but I had to try.  I stalled by paging another runner to cover the phones before I escorted them up.

I guy we called Foo Paux answered the page and I explained the situation to him and told him to keep ringing Echo Central.  Meantime, I led the phalanx of firefighters behind me up the back way explaining how we couldn’t interrupt the recording sessions in in either A or B…….trying to buy time.

We started down the back hallway to Echo Central and we could all smell it.  What the hell I figured, it’s not like they’re cops.  They began to giggle and chuckle behind me.  Still, I was nervous because I couldn’t know what we’d find upon my unlocking that door.

At any given time, this place could erupt into a carnival/circus with naked chicks, drugs and mayhem from hell to breakfast.  It was an insane place to work.  On weekends, the runners were expected to mitigate the inevitable craziness or at least keep it from spilling on to the streets of Hollywood.

Any reputable recording studio of that era served simultaneously as a creative environment for artists and a sanctuary for rockstars to indulge themselves without concern for the outside world and mere pedestrian consequences.  Our job was to encourage and foment the idea that within our walls, they were not subject to society’s rules, judgements or persecutions.

An unspoken but concrete ethic.

Early on you become sensitive to sound, if you’re serious at all about making a living at manipulating it.  The heavy feet of so many battle outfitted men behind me coming to such an abrupt stop startled me.  Two or three at least carried axes.

Silence.  The provenance of any real recording studio.

The sound of the keys in my hand was like a chandelier crashing on concrete.  I unlocked and opened the door.

Slow motion in real time.

There sat Randy Wine, a fat hog leg of a joint in his hand.  The atmosphere blue green from smoke, his feet up on a workbench, slit eyes like road maps and a shit eating grin on his face.

The troops behind me began to laugh out loud.  “Ain’t no fire here man”, he said while exhaling another thick blue cloud.  Behind me they began to  lose it.  I stood for a second, not sure what to do.  Randy gave me a what the fuck gesture with both hands and I shut the door and turned around.  They were laughing so hard they couldn’t look at me.

I asked if they could find the way out.  They assured me they could.

On top of it all, Barney was a shit hot engineer.  His acoustic guitar sounds were crazy good.  His legacy stretches from Crosby, Stills and Nash, to Nilsson, New Riders of The Purple Sage and The Grateful Dead.
Barney would eventually hire me to engineer in his stead.  No greater compliment.  I was paid handsomely, put up in a nice suite in Ann Arbor Michigan and did well enough to be asked back a few times.  The artist afforded me room service and an open tab at the hotel bar as well as room service.  Nothing ever came of it.  The material wasn’t bad but it wasn’t timely.  I had a swell time and did a good job.  My acoustic guitar sounds weren’t as good as Barney’s but I held my own.  They were bright and shiny.

Drinks for my friends.

So Ann Coultergeist goes on Faux news and says Lou Dobbs was right on racism, I mean immigration, but wrong on the Birther movement.  Dobbs is saying he’s not a Birther but merely wants proof.  Nevermind that the issue is less than silly and Dobbs is at least willfully complicit by irresponsibly shining a mainstream media spot on it.

Duh.

The punchline is that Coulter is in a shitstorm over the whole thing.  The far right whackaloons are marching on her cottage with torches and pitchforks.  I love it.  What does it say about these people if they’re too nuts for Coulter?  Ignorance is bliss.  If you’re retarded, do you really know you’re retarded?

This is rich.

Somebody on Hardball put it pretty succinctly.  I’ll paraphrase.  When the river is low, sand bars and rocks at the bottom are exposed to the light of day.  The Republican river is low.  I may have put a more than poetic flourish on it than was originally intended but that’s my job and I’m sure you get the point.  The GOP is experiencing a drought.  With that drought comes famine.  A famine of ideas, leadership, intellectual honesty and common sense.  The fabric of commonality, the fish net if you will, is rent asunder and the carp are left to flop and writhe and wheeze amid the sand and stones while baking in the hot summer sun.

I can’t help it, that visual makes me a little sad.

Ahhh, but then the lunatic fringe marches ever onward, if not forward.  Not forward at all.

Through nefarious effort of various obfuscationists, I may have just invented a new word, the elderly are being led to believe they will be evaluated on their individual likelihood to die and whether it’s cost effective for the government to pay for cost saving measures based on that likelihood.  Some are even expecting government employees to literally visit their homes to determine how they would prefer to die according to mortality statistics and actuarial tables with their specific affliction as a determining factor.

Think I’m kidding?

“The Republicans have a better solution that won’t put the government in charge of people’s health care……… and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government”  -Virginia Foxx (R-NC) on the floor of the House of Representatives

“A lot of people are gonna die……..this program of of government option that’s being touted as this panacea, the savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price is gonna kill people” -Paul Broun (R-GA) on the floor of the House of Representatives

I think he might be saying quality affordable care is impossible unless we kill some of us off.

What new devilry is this?  They have either been led to believe by lobbyists that it’s all true and that would make them gullible idiots, or they are so deep in the pockets thereof that their chief concerns are money and power.  Either way, it is profoundly fucked up.

And as Rachel Maddow points out, all this morbid retarded fucking bullshit starts with and is propagated by the likes of America’s preeminent Human Shitsmear, Rush fucking Limbaugh.  They are taking their talking points from this drug addled, lying and thrice divorced douchebag.

The GOP needs immediate health care.  The GOP needs a surgeon for it’s tumor.

But wait, there’s more, lets listen!

“This is very dangerous.  We, in Michigan have already fought back an attempted assisted suicide several years ago and yet you see that the people who support this are trying to use this bill to advance this agenda.” -Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)

Really, what?

Wait.  It get’s better.  Let’s listen!

“We’ve been battling this socialist health care, the nationalization of health care, that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens.  They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early because they won’t get the treatment as quickly as they need… Once the government pays for your health care, they have every right to tell you what to eat, what you drink, how to exercise, where you live…Any time you have economic chaos, people are always willing to give up their liberty to get economic stability” -Louie Gohmert (R-TX)

Sheezus.  I really like the word ‘diphthong’ don’t you?  It’s meaning is so nebulous.  A sliding vowel.  Sorry, let’s keep moving.

He then goes on to compare the quest for reasonable and affordable health care for American citizens to the aspirations of Hitler and Mao.

This asstard is a genius.  Buy his free book.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is simply the most voluminous wad of shit any single agency, much less, American political party, has ever attempted to shove down your ignorant neck.  If you buy into a single aspect of it, you are stupid and worthless.  You probably still think the Iraq war was a great idea.

Ask yourself what this is about.  The answer is Fisher Price.  Money.  Each one of these shriveled dicks is gagging on giant pharmacuetical cock and loving it.  Can’t get enough of that huge milky cock.  These fucks.  These fucking fucks, are nothing but avaricious politicians who’s sole concern when they wake up everyday is money and power.  They don’t give a mad fuck about you.  They don’t want you decent tax paying citizens to be able to cross violent car crashes or brutal insidious cancer off your list of things to worry about because they’ve got eyes on a new boat or hookers in another city.

They lay their heads each night on pillows wrapped in high thread count sheaths and pray for your continued gullibility.  Oh, and more pharmaceutical cock.  Milky cash and medicine spewing cock.

This, is the exact nature of the battle being waged on your behalf by your elected representatives.  These are actual statements mouthed by the lying thieves you elected and trust with your best interests and every single goddamn one of them is a Republican.  I’m not here to tell you Democrats are much better because they aren’t.  At best they are spineless pussies and supine in contrast to the snarling overfed neoconservative hounds wandering the moors in search of weakened foul exactly like you.

God helps those that help themselves.  I don’t believe in your God but you better believe in this one thing or we all get nothing.  Nothing.  The richest country on earth will deny you treatment that will save your life when disease is acute enough to kill you if we don’t make this happen now.  It won’t even be your country, it’ll be your insurance company.

Here comes the hard part.  The irony.

You think the horror they preach isn’t possible?  Get sick now.  What they are screaming about has already happened.  Fourteen thousand a day losing any chance at affording a life threatening occurrence.    It’s a right, not a privilege and as the richest nation on earth we deserve it.

What these fucks would have you believe is worse case scenario, already is.  If you have insurance, you assume you’re insured.  You get sick and it’s fifty fifty at best.  Your insurance provider can and will walk away from you and there isn’t a damn thing you can do.

Now, there is no bill yet, but why are they so scared?  Simple things like no discrimination against pre-existing conditions etc……

Let it begin.  It won’t be perfect but it’s easier to fix a tire once the car is on the road rather than having to reinvent tires all over again.

We spend more than ten times our nearest competitor state on WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and we pay for all of it, there’s plenty of room and money for us to be taken care of when our darkest days come.  And they will come.  For each of us, they will come.  Wanna be scared?  Be scared of that, because it’s inevitable.

Fuck Israel, fuck Iraq and fuck Afghanistan.  There is plenty of filthy lucre and it’s ours.  All ours.  Time to stand up and tell them how to spend our goddamn money.  Our money.  Our country.

” We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

So be it.

Drinks for my friends.

Today the House passed H. Res. 593, a resolution “recognizing and celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the entry of Hawaii into the Union as the 50th State,” contains this provision: “Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii”.  -Think Progress

Our first Hawaiian President.  Pineapple pizza for everyone.  I favor this particular fruit on pizza as in contrasts so well in both flavor and texture with ham and cheese.  Ever grilled it?  A little teriyaki, A nice dry rose’ and Bob’s your uncle.

Although it’s true that resolutions are for all intents and purposes toothless, the symbolism and import of this one is pretty obvious.  Interesting that CNN has no mention of it on its website.  The network itself is experiencing a very specific malaise by the name of Lou Dobbs.  A border line bigot (pun intended) who’s recently colored outside the lines by lending credence to the elaborate falsehood propagated by the “Birthers”.  A collective of flat earthers who’s entire impetus is the spurious contention that Barack Obama is not a citizen of the United States.  Dickheads, who make the swiftboaters appear sane in comparison.

So egregious, racist, irresponsible and desperate are these Birthers, that they have become a boat anchor for the GOP as it claws and scratches for relevance.  A party that pines for the days when the cacophony of derisive laughter didn’t disturb the waking hours and interrupt the sleeping ones.  As little as twelve months ago they would have embraced these dickheads and fomented their baseless nonsense in the interest of business as usual in context of slash and burn politics.

Today, 158 Republicans voted aye, not a single nay vote and Bill O’Reilly debunked it saying “It was easy, the State of Hawaii sent us a copy.”

Not without a whimper do they go however.  I give you Michele “crazy eyes” Bachmann (R-MN):  “BACHMANN: Mr. Speaker? I object to the vote on the grounds that a quorum is not present and make a point of order that a quorum is not present. […]”  -Think Progress

Michele ““We’re Running Out Of Rich People In This Country” Bachmann is one stupid bitch.   “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter…….” -Huffington Post

Except it actually occurred under Ford.  She’s sure carbon dioxide isn’t harmful because it’s a “natural gas” and from “nature”.  I adore her.  Vicious little cupcake without a clue.

Together, Bachmann, Dobbs and Palin represent the best case right wing Christians have for their argument against evolution.  Despite gravity even, they demonstrate an uncanny ability for failing upward.

It speaks volumes about American zeitgeist that we even allow such poison to pollute our sociopolitical discourse, that these clowns are elevated to a platform where they are listened to by anyone.  A special kind of sickness, unique to Americans.  The same kind that allows us to tolerate the impeachment of a President for sexual indiscretion.  The very same that makes us reluctant to investigate and prosecute a former President and his Vice for war crimes.  An insidious brand of false entitlement and judgmental narcissism that allows some of us to believe we have every right to estimate the worth of another without regard for facts and before we’ve walked any distance in their shoes.

It works both ways.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, was more right than wrong when he said “Goddamn America”.

Here’s my new thing.  When dining Mexican, I’ve always felt a bit guilty when the customarily ubiquitous tortilla chips arrive.  I never eat them.  I’m not big on the free salsa.  Lately I’ve been taking a lime from the salsa bar, squeezing it over the chips and sprinkling a little salt on them.

You’ve just paid five dollars for a five seventy five show.

Drinks for my friends.

There I was, actually engineering on a KISS record.  Garth as head engineer and Eddie Kramer of Hendrix fame producing.  So what if I was flying in explosions and applause, eventually I recorded Paul’s lead vocal for Detroit Rock City.  I used an SM58 and encouraged Mr. Stanley to go handheld in an effort to preserve context and vibe.  KISS Alive III………see, there’s no such thing as live records anymore.

KISS records had long since become low budget productions in the interest of maximizing profit.  Gene and Paul may very well be rock icons, but they are businessmen first and foremost and they never pretend to apologize for that.  Therefore, respect.

Real live records were pretty much before my time and probably yours.  Johnny Cash, “Live in Folsom Prison” circa 1968.

I ran into Paul Stanley a few months ago at the 7-11.  It’s right next door you know.  He looked at me while we stood in line and I told him quietly that I’d engineered some of his vocals for Kiss Alive III, he smiled and said something about there being no such thing as live records anymore.  I wished him a goodnight.  Nice guy.

The clerk behind the counter had no idea.

Eddie Kramer is an entirely different story.  I’ll do my best to be succinct; as I typed that, I knew it to be a lie.

His ego was a blimp.  His talent was a cherry tomato water balloon fashioned from an extra small prophylactic.  His integrity was larval and his personality was heartburn.  A loathsome man who kept whispering in my ear about mixing unreleased Hendrix tracks.  I can just imagine him doing the same thing to every up and coming engineer he’d ever been in a control room with over the last two decades.  A sociopath with tendencies latent I can only guess at.  An egomaniacal asshole.  A man I’d swing on today if he said hello to me in a mall.

I’d like to put a very fine point on this.  Eddie Kramer is, if he’s still alive, a shitty, stupid and callow human.  The kind of man my father would call a “shitass” and then find reason to beat the crap out of.  A miserable and misanthropic little prick with no idea what everyone in his life thinks of him because he can’t be bothered.  He had no business inside a studio like A&M.  He, of all people I encountered in that environment for over eight years, had the shallowest of reasons to be inside that place.  A bullshit legacy that was far more about luck than talent.  Right place at the right time and absent a modicum of ability nonetheless.

From the guy who took care of the giant saltwater aquarium to Buddy the piano tuner.  From the runners to Shelly Yakus, no single person ever entered that monolithic front door with less integrity, less character or less credibility than Eddie Kramer, music’s most odoriferous charlatan.

The scene:

Here I am engineering for Garth and Eddie on a goddamn live KISS record.  I lied to Paul Stanley before we did the Detroit Rock City vocal by telling him I couldn’t remember the lyrics.   In order to “punch” or drop in and out of record by the millisecond for a vocal on an analog machine, you had to know the lyrics and melody or at least have a map because you did it live and in the moment.  Not at all like today.  He graciously wrote them out for me.  Somewhere I still have them.  Yep Sean, they’re still yours unless I end up homeless.

By the way, Gene and Paul, exceptionally nice guys.  Bright, clever, very funny and about as anti-asshole as  rockstars can be.  I thoroughly enjoyed working with them.  That it was fun, is no understatement.

I knew what sort of animal Eddie was by that point.  We learned far more than engineering in a place like A&M.  He was hapless without knowing it.  No skill, no acumen, no ear and completely clueless about the then contemporary technology.  His assistants and engineers spent considerable time each day after he left cleaning up his boneheaded mistakes and fixing his retarded, ill advised contributions to whatever project he had a hand in.  The comedy is that his ears were of such cheap and tawdry tin, he’d arrive the next day and never hear the difference.  He never suspected a thing.  Talk about an ego.

Eddi Kramer made his living taking credit for what everyone around him did to keep him from looking the fool he was.  Look under narcissist in the dictionary.  Guess who’s pictured.

I was smart enough to play along.  I curried favor, did the best job I could and even pretended to be excited about mixing his lost Hendrix tracks with him.  I knew he was a douchebag of the highest possible order.  In a place like A&M, you became accustomed to wizards and sorcerers.  The best of the best.  Eddie Kramer could not qualify for girl scout in that arena.

Look under hack.

I’d come to the studio on one of my precious days off to ensure the transfer of tapes, notes, documentation and gear from Studio C to the Mix Room went smoothly.  I was there to answer any questions and assist in any way I could.  I had done this for one reason.  Garth Richardson.

After a few hours and double and triple checking that all track sheets and documentation were in the right boxes and everything was as organized and idiot proof as I could make it……..dark clouds eclipsed the sun.

Luther Vandross and his engineer Ray Bardani were doing vocals and mixing across the hall in Studio D.  For some reason they were there in The Mix Room that afternoon.  Luther was a very nice and gentle man and so was his Engineer/producer Ray.  I had huge respect for Ray, he was a wizard.  Luther always brought a couple real video arcade games with him.  Runners and techs played them until dawn.  More often than not drunk or high or both.

I have stories about Luther but that’s another day.

Of course, Gene and Paul were there too.

I was about to leave when Eddie asked me to throw up a quarter inch reel on an ATR and find something he remembered as being funny.  All humor and light, he was attempting to entertain the assembled.  I wasn’t familiar with the reel he was asking for but more than happy to do my part for Eddie’s burlesque.

It took me a minute but I located the reel he was asking for and threaded it.  The map in the box wasn’t very clear and I wondered if he wasn’t sure what he was looking for.  A few minutes of trying to locate what he wanted and I started to sweat.

He started by saying things like there was a rookie in the room.  He laughed and suggested I read the label on the front of the box.  He went on to announce there was an idiot at the controls.  He wondered aloud what was to be expected from a simple “teaboy”.

I told him I wasn’t sure what he was looking for and it didn’t appear to be on this reel.

It was then he abruptly shoved me aside spitting words like asshole and fucker.

For the record, I’m not a violent guy.  I haven’t been in a fistfight since my early twenties.

I stood behind him with no choice but to feel and look foolish.  He began to stab at the controls maniacally, cursing and yelling ever louder.  A child’s tantrum building.  He started to stomp and scream.  Somewhere in the course of his volcano erupting, I saw that he’d reset the tape counter in the middle of the reel.  The sketchy map was now useless.  He pounded the machine in shrill frustration, stepped back and demanded I find what he was looking for all while calling me names and insulting me.

The room was silent.  Nobody looking anywhere but down.  Like an elevator after someone had farted.  Without saying anything and realizing what he’d done, I stepped to the machine and began to rewind the reel to the top so I could reset the counter.  It was then he exploded.

“It’s not at the beginning you fucking amateur!”

To be honest, I don’t remember what he said or rather, screamed after that.  It’s all a blur.  I can tell you it was the absolute worst, most invective, vituperative vitriol that had ever been directed at me in my entire life.

Stunned.

Surreal.

I was looking around for who he was talking to.  This pathetically ponytailed halitosis of a human was looking and screaming at me.  Ferocious indignation swarmed in my chest like furious bees.  My fists balled into hammers.  A career ending paroxysm was coming like a locomotive.  Fight or flight and my brain had seized on pounding this little limey shit in front of me into bloody unconsciousness.

I was going to hit him.  I was going to bash his fucking brains in.  I was going to kick his petite and lifeless body over and over.

And there was a hand on my shoulder.  “Mikey”, he said softly.  I turned slowly and there stood Garth.  He wrinkled his nose a little and pushed his glasses up.  “Mikey”, he said again and tilted his head to the left, towards the door to the hall.  He followed me out and I turned to him.  I was beside myself with anger and humiliation.  I tried to talk but there were no words.  With his hands at his sides he said to me, “Forget it, you didn’t do anything wrong.  Don’t worry about it.  Go back to Studio C and wait for me.”

I waived my arms and my mouth was open.  “Go”, he said.

Not a short walk between Mix and C and a lot longer on that day.  I sat in the rolling chair behind the console and shook with rage while my eyes leaked tears.  No one had ever spoken to me like that in my life.  I’d never been so embarrassed.  I’d nearly shit myself in desperate confusion.

I had my head in my hands, elbows on the console when I heard Garth enter the machine room behind me.  He asked if I was okay.  I don’t think I answered.  The entire time he spoke to me, I don’t believe I said a word.  I have to paraphrase what he said.  He assured me it was no big deal.  He told me an idiot like Eddie Kramer would never go to my superiors and make trouble for me because he was far too spineless and had a chronic reputation for the kind of behavior I’d just been on the receiving end of.  He told me that in the unlikely event Kramer attempted any such thing, that he, Garth, would intervene on my behalf and promised I had nothing to worry about.

His advice to me was to go home, or maybe a bar, and forget it ever happened.  The only thing anyone in that room anyone would remember about today he said, was just how big of an asshole and a child Eddie Kramer was.  You are a pro he said.  You didn’t hit him.  Walk it off.

Twice his size, I could have killed him before anyone pulled me away.

Mark Harvey joked with me about it the next day.  Told me no one else needed to know about it and reminded me that Eddie Kramer’s reputation proceeded him.  And that was pretty much it.

When Eddie and I passed each other in the hall in the days and weeks following, he wouldn’t even look at me.  Coward.

Thank you Garth.  You were and still are I’m sure, one of the best ones.  A good man indeed.

Drinks for my friends.