Thursday, March 31, 2005
The New Futile System
A paragraph from Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project)
What remains of democracy is the right to choose among commodities. Business leaders have long explained the need to impose on the population a "philosophy of futility" and "lack of purpose in life," to "concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that compromise much of fashionable consumption." Deluged by such propaganda from infancy, people may then accept their meaningless and subordinate lives and forget ridiculous ideas about managing their own affairs. They may abandon their fate to corporate managers and the PR industry and, in the political realm, to the self-described "intelligent minorities" who serve and administer power.
* * *
My Take On the Matter
From the moment children in the United States can comprehend their surroundings they are bombarded with advertisements for toys, junk food, video games, movies, and on and on and on. When I was a child there were few commercials that so relentlessly targeted children. The mindset of my parent’s generation was one of moderation. My family of six wasn’t destitute but we children knew that other than rare occasions such as Christmas or a Birthday we would not get gifts. Junk food too was a treat doled out along the same moderate guidelines. We rarely had Coke or sugar coated cereal and if we did we burned it off playing outside. I can think of only a few fat kids that I went to school with threw my entire career in public schools and even these were not morbidly obese like some of the children I see today.
At the age of nine I remember wanting a new bike because mine had been a hand me down from an older neighbor and was getting rusty and worn out and it was PURPLE! To my chagrin I didn’t get the black dirt bike I saw in the Sears catalog. Instead, my mother and father bought me a new dirt bike seat, handlebar grips, handlebars and paint and together we fixed up my bike. Could they have afforded a new bike? Probably but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I didn’t need a new bike mine was fine, it got me around. Did I feel less fulfilled because I didn’t have the new bike? I might have been slightly disappointed but I was too busy being a kid to dwell on it. I found happiness in other things; sports, reading, playing games, exploring the world, not in “fashionable consumption.” My generation had not yet equated consumption with happiness because the PR industry and corporate managers had not yet waged war against our consumer souls.
Worrying about the newest trends as a child takes the fun out of being a child. Mindless hours playing video games and stuffing their faces with ice-cream are not substitutes for the feeling one gets when they hit a homerun in a baseball game or when they’re reading a book that is so good they can’t put it down. I remember a lot of books that gave me that feeling and a lot of homeruns I hit but I don’t hold one memory of playing a video game and having the same feeling elicited.
I feel bad for kids today because they are victims of a system and government that does not have their best interests in mind. They don’t get to truly enjoy what it is like not to have worries. Should a five year old really have to fret over the fact that she doesn’t have a pair of Nike sneakers? I would think not but you know that there is an epidemic of children out there that do worry about such matters. Is it a wonder that so many people are depressed in this day and age? How do we combat these blues? How about prescription drugs! That is a topic for an entirely different article but is more evidence of government’s close relationship with corporate America.
I am thankful for my childhood of moderation. To this day I rarely eat junk food and although I have fallen victim to some of the PR industries gimmicks (I do have a book buying habit, which as far as habits go I guess isn’t too bad.), I haven’t mortgaged my life away so I can have a Hummer and stainless steel kitchen appliances.
Is it possible today even with good parenting for children not to fall prey to this trend of consumption? I would hope so but admittedly it is a hard battle for parents to wage. They are up against industries that spend billions of dollars to suck their kids in to the buying machine. I don’t envy their job.
As we grow older the insatiable quest for consumption is fed by the credit card companies, who feed our addiction for the product advertisements we are inundated with. They know we’re addicted to buying and they feed off of us and it is obvious from the passing of the bankruptcy reform bill (which benefits credit card companies only and not the people of this country that it is supposed to protect) that government is complicit in the feeding of our buying addiction and with the passing of the legislation has effectively ensured that some portion of credit card debt will have to be paid back and a “clean slate” will be much harder to come by. People will effectively become indentured servants to these credit card companies and the credit card companies will thrive as quality of life continues to decline. Does this sound hopeless? It sure does to me.
I for one want my life back. It is not hopeless and I do believe I control my own destiny and I have started to curb my spending. Freedom from the oppression of “intelligent minorities” and their greed is a matter of choice and while I still have choice I chose not to support them like the mindless consumer they believe me to be.
What remains of democracy is the right to choose among commodities. Business leaders have long explained the need to impose on the population a "philosophy of futility" and "lack of purpose in life," to "concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that compromise much of fashionable consumption." Deluged by such propaganda from infancy, people may then accept their meaningless and subordinate lives and forget ridiculous ideas about managing their own affairs. They may abandon their fate to corporate managers and the PR industry and, in the political realm, to the self-described "intelligent minorities" who serve and administer power.
* * *
My Take On the Matter
From the moment children in the United States can comprehend their surroundings they are bombarded with advertisements for toys, junk food, video games, movies, and on and on and on. When I was a child there were few commercials that so relentlessly targeted children. The mindset of my parent’s generation was one of moderation. My family of six wasn’t destitute but we children knew that other than rare occasions such as Christmas or a Birthday we would not get gifts. Junk food too was a treat doled out along the same moderate guidelines. We rarely had Coke or sugar coated cereal and if we did we burned it off playing outside. I can think of only a few fat kids that I went to school with threw my entire career in public schools and even these were not morbidly obese like some of the children I see today.
At the age of nine I remember wanting a new bike because mine had been a hand me down from an older neighbor and was getting rusty and worn out and it was PURPLE! To my chagrin I didn’t get the black dirt bike I saw in the Sears catalog. Instead, my mother and father bought me a new dirt bike seat, handlebar grips, handlebars and paint and together we fixed up my bike. Could they have afforded a new bike? Probably but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I didn’t need a new bike mine was fine, it got me around. Did I feel less fulfilled because I didn’t have the new bike? I might have been slightly disappointed but I was too busy being a kid to dwell on it. I found happiness in other things; sports, reading, playing games, exploring the world, not in “fashionable consumption.” My generation had not yet equated consumption with happiness because the PR industry and corporate managers had not yet waged war against our consumer souls.
Worrying about the newest trends as a child takes the fun out of being a child. Mindless hours playing video games and stuffing their faces with ice-cream are not substitutes for the feeling one gets when they hit a homerun in a baseball game or when they’re reading a book that is so good they can’t put it down. I remember a lot of books that gave me that feeling and a lot of homeruns I hit but I don’t hold one memory of playing a video game and having the same feeling elicited.
I feel bad for kids today because they are victims of a system and government that does not have their best interests in mind. They don’t get to truly enjoy what it is like not to have worries. Should a five year old really have to fret over the fact that she doesn’t have a pair of Nike sneakers? I would think not but you know that there is an epidemic of children out there that do worry about such matters. Is it a wonder that so many people are depressed in this day and age? How do we combat these blues? How about prescription drugs! That is a topic for an entirely different article but is more evidence of government’s close relationship with corporate America.
I am thankful for my childhood of moderation. To this day I rarely eat junk food and although I have fallen victim to some of the PR industries gimmicks (I do have a book buying habit, which as far as habits go I guess isn’t too bad.), I haven’t mortgaged my life away so I can have a Hummer and stainless steel kitchen appliances.
Is it possible today even with good parenting for children not to fall prey to this trend of consumption? I would hope so but admittedly it is a hard battle for parents to wage. They are up against industries that spend billions of dollars to suck their kids in to the buying machine. I don’t envy their job.
As we grow older the insatiable quest for consumption is fed by the credit card companies, who feed our addiction for the product advertisements we are inundated with. They know we’re addicted to buying and they feed off of us and it is obvious from the passing of the bankruptcy reform bill (which benefits credit card companies only and not the people of this country that it is supposed to protect) that government is complicit in the feeding of our buying addiction and with the passing of the legislation has effectively ensured that some portion of credit card debt will have to be paid back and a “clean slate” will be much harder to come by. People will effectively become indentured servants to these credit card companies and the credit card companies will thrive as quality of life continues to decline. Does this sound hopeless? It sure does to me.
I for one want my life back. It is not hopeless and I do believe I control my own destiny and I have started to curb my spending. Freedom from the oppression of “intelligent minorities” and their greed is a matter of choice and while I still have choice I chose not to support them like the mindless consumer they believe me to be.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Fingertip in Chili Remains a Mystery at Wendy's
Yummy please pass the toes.
Check it out here.http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=200503300734099900190073409990019
Yummy please pass the toes.
Check it out here.http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=200503300734099900190073409990019
Observations in Miniature: Different Golfers
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Tuesday, March 29, 2005
The Future I Grasp
There are places that one shouldn’t speak of. These are the places where the edges of Hell intersect with earth and the lowest cement crawlers edge along, their entrails leaving greasy stains on the decaying sidewalks. I’ve searched these places and know that caution must be held in hand like an industrial sized can of mace for these lowly beings can and will latch onto your ankle with their rotting teeth and their venom will rush to your central nervous system and you will lie twitching on the edge of the abyss that overlooks chaos. And this is of course where I lay when I closed my eyes for the last time before my metamorphosis…
I awoke with an empty bottle of Jack Daniels clenched in my fist; crusted blood sealing my hand to the bottle. Yes, of course I’d gone too far, this is of course is my nature.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuck,” I yelled, as pain shot up my forearm.
The knuckle of my right index finger was swollen stiff and seeping puss. With my Leatherman utility tool I pried out some hapless cocksucker’s tooth. It must have been a Hell of a night; the feeling like a Buick Driving over my temple told me so.
After cleaning my wound with Jack Daniels I stood and looked out over the abyss and knew that I had passed the threshold to the other side. How I’d crossed would always remain a mystery but suffice to say that a series of heartbreaks and wrong choices had robbed me of the ever elusive dream woman I’d been chasing and at length I’d given up on the conventional and disappeared for several months so that I could reinvent myself. Those that doubt my sincerity need only check my resume; my assertions are listed there in bold faced type between my qualifications as a bouncer and my lengthy history as a non practicing teetotaler (Page 1, Paragraph 4). The how and why of my journey of course is irrelevant when the end is calculated into the equation and momentarily I will get to that.
You see, if you live in the manner I do, which is predicated on the notion that one’s existence should be a vast series of escalating monkeyshines, that you’re self worth should be determined by how loud people laugh at you, not with you, then you can expect happiness in only fleeting thunder like claps of other’s disapproval. It takes a man of a certain kind of constitution to survive such abuse, to readily accept the unacceptable. I am such a man but of course I’ve already said too much. It’s dangerous for me to be too aware of my own faults and other’s intentions.
* * *
It took me all morning to piece my life back together but by noon my head was screwed on tight and I was ready to confront whatever lay in the new day, which unfortunately for me was already half over and had thus far been filled with meaningless office work.
I chewed on the end of a pen and looked out my window. Outside I saw a rat thrusting itself against the brick wall of the building next door in some strange attempt to gain ground in a fight with a pigeon perched above him who seemed to have hijacked his lunch which apparently was a scone of some sort. This reminded me that it was time for my own lunch and I lit out for Second Street and restaurant row.
Pages of newspaper and leaves blew up in tiny twisters and the steam from the great industrial beast leaked out onto the street through the manhole covers. Human activity was scarce and the lower lizard section of my brain immediately jumped to conclusions of an Armageddon in which George W. Bush drove a gold plated Hummer and slayed the nonbelievers with Greek Fire (petroleum provided by our friends in Saudi Arabia) whilst I slept. It was a paranoid and cautious walk that led me to the Little Italy Pizzeria where I was relieved to spot a corpse dressed in a tattered black trench coat. It was sitting at a table outside the pizzeria with a lit cigarette in its mouth.
“Could I get a light,” I said, walking up to him.
To my surprise a leathery hand shot out at me and in the tips of the fingers was a worn book of matches.
“Gracias compadre,” I said, snatching away the prize.
He grunted which I guessed I was supposed to take as a “you’re welcome.”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” he screamed lunging at me.
There was a pizza box on the trash can beside me so I grabbed it and blocked him with it and then beat him over the head with it until he sat back down on the bench gasping for breath.
“I was just hungry,” he said. “Ever since I lost my job…”
“You should have invested your money in the stock market,” I said, lighting my cigar.
“I didn’t have any money to invest,” he said.
“Right,” I said, “that makes profit somewhat problematic.”
I took a twenty dollar bill out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“Go buy yourself a pizza,” I said.
As I stuck my hand in my pocket I felt the bottle of Jack Daniels and so I pulled it out and took a nip. They guy stared at the blood crusted bottle.
“Here wash it down with this,” I said, handing it to him.
“Great things will happen to you,” he said. “You’re like Jesus’ brother or something.”
“No, I’m more like Billy Carter. The former President’s brother. It is more likely my brother would be in the White House and I would be the sibling featured many days for incidences that involved inappropriate displays of carousing while intoxicated…”
He frowned.
“Oh, well thanks anyway,” he said and made to hug me but his body odor was atrocious and I artfully dodged him, turned, caught him by the scruff of his jacket, turned him back towards the pizzeria and gave him a little shove.
“Remember,” I said, as he turned back towards me, “you never saw me.”
I made my way to a small eatery on the corners of Locust and Second and seated myself at the bar. Patrons were scattered about and a guy sitting adjacent to me was hungrily shoving down a Caesar salad and his fork kept clanging against his teeth which in no time got on my nerves.
“You ought to use a plastic fork. You’re going to chisel the enamel off your teeth,” I said.
He looked up for a moment and then went back to banging his fork off his teeth.
“Cocksucker,” I said under my breath.
While I paged through the menu I felt the presence of someone sitting down two bar stools down from me.
“What would you like to drink?” the bartender asked.
“Guinness,” I said.
“Guinness,” a female voice said almost simultaneously.
I turned and there seated but two seats away from she sat. Yes, it was her…or at least I was pretty sure it could be her; my American Dream woman. She was hot enough to melt the wax top off a bottle of Maker’s Mark. There too was the matter of her eyes which drew me in and spit me out like the chaw of a burly baseball player. I was beyond smitten and in the interval between the tics and the tocks of the clock on the wall I was lost to the present and had traveled the universe in search of the perfect words to say to her.
“You like Guinness?” she asked, flipping back her light brown hair.
Like a loutish fool my mind ceased up on me and I was unable to articulate the affection I held for my favorite Irish stout.
“Guinness,” I mumbled.
“Yes,” she said and smiled.
She wouldn’t know I’d changed, that I had completely reinvented myself. How could she? She didn’t even know me. Perhaps though the change had seeped through my pores and was as obvious as a new bright red silk shirt and a pair of platform shoes with hollow Plexiglas soles in which goldfish swam.
“Hey there,” the guy that had been clanging his fork against his teeth, said. He sat in the empty seat between me and her and it was all I could do not to throttle the arrogant little cocksucker.
I peered around the dirty little scoundrel clinging to the barstool beside me and she was staring at him intently and I knew all was lost and strangely I didn’t care. You see the change that occurred in me had made it so. I didn’t want to be a part of that world anymore. It was a place that was hopeless and which I had grown to detest.
My self appointed job as a writer is to study people, to know when a woman has a boyfriend she isn’t telling me about, to see the slight of hand behind the velvet smiles of the corporate whores that claim to be politicians, to turn and catch in mid air the knife I know is headed towards my back. Everyone had become too predictable, even me. I was bored with it all. It was then that I realized what a professor had meant when he told me, “You were born one hundred years too late.” In a nutshell I didn’t belong. He was right. I would always be on the outside looking in.
Finishing off my Guinness I threw down a twenty and made for the street where the rain was pouring down. As I walked back to the office I contemplated my options and I knew my partial disappearing act wasn’t good enough that something more drastic needed to be done.
Outside the back door to my office I ran across the rat that had been thrusting himself against the brick wall. He was sitting on cinderblock eating the scone. How the Hell the little bastard had gotten a hold of it was beyond me but I admired the filthy little vermin and decided against crushing him with a garbage can.
AND THEN IT OCCURRED TO ME! A plan to escape all the treachery and it came about thanks to this scraggily little rat. Of course I can’t divulge the constructs of my strategy here but I can tell you that I took the lace out of one of my Burmese Jungle Boots and made a lasso with it.
It was hard catching the rat with the shoelace but eventually I did. He hissed and gnashed his horrible yellow teeth at me as I sprayed him down with Lysol.
“Hold still you little cocksucker,” I yelled. “I need to make you presentable.”
When my rat was good and clean I managed to put a collar on him and then a leash. In time I was able to present him to others.
“A rat as a friend?” my neighbor asked me one day as I took the rat outside to go to the bathroom.
“Of course not that would be too metaphoric. He’s simply a rat,” I said.
I awoke with an empty bottle of Jack Daniels clenched in my fist; crusted blood sealing my hand to the bottle. Yes, of course I’d gone too far, this is of course is my nature.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuck,” I yelled, as pain shot up my forearm.
The knuckle of my right index finger was swollen stiff and seeping puss. With my Leatherman utility tool I pried out some hapless cocksucker’s tooth. It must have been a Hell of a night; the feeling like a Buick Driving over my temple told me so.
After cleaning my wound with Jack Daniels I stood and looked out over the abyss and knew that I had passed the threshold to the other side. How I’d crossed would always remain a mystery but suffice to say that a series of heartbreaks and wrong choices had robbed me of the ever elusive dream woman I’d been chasing and at length I’d given up on the conventional and disappeared for several months so that I could reinvent myself. Those that doubt my sincerity need only check my resume; my assertions are listed there in bold faced type between my qualifications as a bouncer and my lengthy history as a non practicing teetotaler (Page 1, Paragraph 4). The how and why of my journey of course is irrelevant when the end is calculated into the equation and momentarily I will get to that.
You see, if you live in the manner I do, which is predicated on the notion that one’s existence should be a vast series of escalating monkeyshines, that you’re self worth should be determined by how loud people laugh at you, not with you, then you can expect happiness in only fleeting thunder like claps of other’s disapproval. It takes a man of a certain kind of constitution to survive such abuse, to readily accept the unacceptable. I am such a man but of course I’ve already said too much. It’s dangerous for me to be too aware of my own faults and other’s intentions.
* * *
It took me all morning to piece my life back together but by noon my head was screwed on tight and I was ready to confront whatever lay in the new day, which unfortunately for me was already half over and had thus far been filled with meaningless office work.
I chewed on the end of a pen and looked out my window. Outside I saw a rat thrusting itself against the brick wall of the building next door in some strange attempt to gain ground in a fight with a pigeon perched above him who seemed to have hijacked his lunch which apparently was a scone of some sort. This reminded me that it was time for my own lunch and I lit out for Second Street and restaurant row.
Pages of newspaper and leaves blew up in tiny twisters and the steam from the great industrial beast leaked out onto the street through the manhole covers. Human activity was scarce and the lower lizard section of my brain immediately jumped to conclusions of an Armageddon in which George W. Bush drove a gold plated Hummer and slayed the nonbelievers with Greek Fire (petroleum provided by our friends in Saudi Arabia) whilst I slept. It was a paranoid and cautious walk that led me to the Little Italy Pizzeria where I was relieved to spot a corpse dressed in a tattered black trench coat. It was sitting at a table outside the pizzeria with a lit cigarette in its mouth.
“Could I get a light,” I said, walking up to him.
To my surprise a leathery hand shot out at me and in the tips of the fingers was a worn book of matches.
“Gracias compadre,” I said, snatching away the prize.
He grunted which I guessed I was supposed to take as a “you’re welcome.”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” he screamed lunging at me.
There was a pizza box on the trash can beside me so I grabbed it and blocked him with it and then beat him over the head with it until he sat back down on the bench gasping for breath.
“I was just hungry,” he said. “Ever since I lost my job…”
“You should have invested your money in the stock market,” I said, lighting my cigar.
“I didn’t have any money to invest,” he said.
“Right,” I said, “that makes profit somewhat problematic.”
I took a twenty dollar bill out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“Go buy yourself a pizza,” I said.
As I stuck my hand in my pocket I felt the bottle of Jack Daniels and so I pulled it out and took a nip. They guy stared at the blood crusted bottle.
“Here wash it down with this,” I said, handing it to him.
“Great things will happen to you,” he said. “You’re like Jesus’ brother or something.”
“No, I’m more like Billy Carter. The former President’s brother. It is more likely my brother would be in the White House and I would be the sibling featured many days for incidences that involved inappropriate displays of carousing while intoxicated…”
He frowned.
“Oh, well thanks anyway,” he said and made to hug me but his body odor was atrocious and I artfully dodged him, turned, caught him by the scruff of his jacket, turned him back towards the pizzeria and gave him a little shove.
“Remember,” I said, as he turned back towards me, “you never saw me.”
I made my way to a small eatery on the corners of Locust and Second and seated myself at the bar. Patrons were scattered about and a guy sitting adjacent to me was hungrily shoving down a Caesar salad and his fork kept clanging against his teeth which in no time got on my nerves.
“You ought to use a plastic fork. You’re going to chisel the enamel off your teeth,” I said.
He looked up for a moment and then went back to banging his fork off his teeth.
“Cocksucker,” I said under my breath.
While I paged through the menu I felt the presence of someone sitting down two bar stools down from me.
“What would you like to drink?” the bartender asked.
“Guinness,” I said.
“Guinness,” a female voice said almost simultaneously.
I turned and there seated but two seats away from she sat. Yes, it was her…or at least I was pretty sure it could be her; my American Dream woman. She was hot enough to melt the wax top off a bottle of Maker’s Mark. There too was the matter of her eyes which drew me in and spit me out like the chaw of a burly baseball player. I was beyond smitten and in the interval between the tics and the tocks of the clock on the wall I was lost to the present and had traveled the universe in search of the perfect words to say to her.
“You like Guinness?” she asked, flipping back her light brown hair.
Like a loutish fool my mind ceased up on me and I was unable to articulate the affection I held for my favorite Irish stout.
“Guinness,” I mumbled.
“Yes,” she said and smiled.
She wouldn’t know I’d changed, that I had completely reinvented myself. How could she? She didn’t even know me. Perhaps though the change had seeped through my pores and was as obvious as a new bright red silk shirt and a pair of platform shoes with hollow Plexiglas soles in which goldfish swam.
“Hey there,” the guy that had been clanging his fork against his teeth, said. He sat in the empty seat between me and her and it was all I could do not to throttle the arrogant little cocksucker.
I peered around the dirty little scoundrel clinging to the barstool beside me and she was staring at him intently and I knew all was lost and strangely I didn’t care. You see the change that occurred in me had made it so. I didn’t want to be a part of that world anymore. It was a place that was hopeless and which I had grown to detest.
My self appointed job as a writer is to study people, to know when a woman has a boyfriend she isn’t telling me about, to see the slight of hand behind the velvet smiles of the corporate whores that claim to be politicians, to turn and catch in mid air the knife I know is headed towards my back. Everyone had become too predictable, even me. I was bored with it all. It was then that I realized what a professor had meant when he told me, “You were born one hundred years too late.” In a nutshell I didn’t belong. He was right. I would always be on the outside looking in.
Finishing off my Guinness I threw down a twenty and made for the street where the rain was pouring down. As I walked back to the office I contemplated my options and I knew my partial disappearing act wasn’t good enough that something more drastic needed to be done.
Outside the back door to my office I ran across the rat that had been thrusting himself against the brick wall. He was sitting on cinderblock eating the scone. How the Hell the little bastard had gotten a hold of it was beyond me but I admired the filthy little vermin and decided against crushing him with a garbage can.
AND THEN IT OCCURRED TO ME! A plan to escape all the treachery and it came about thanks to this scraggily little rat. Of course I can’t divulge the constructs of my strategy here but I can tell you that I took the lace out of one of my Burmese Jungle Boots and made a lasso with it.
It was hard catching the rat with the shoelace but eventually I did. He hissed and gnashed his horrible yellow teeth at me as I sprayed him down with Lysol.
“Hold still you little cocksucker,” I yelled. “I need to make you presentable.”
When my rat was good and clean I managed to put a collar on him and then a leash. In time I was able to present him to others.
“A rat as a friend?” my neighbor asked me one day as I took the rat outside to go to the bathroom.
“Of course not that would be too metaphoric. He’s simply a rat,” I said.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Prologue The Barbecue Wire Boy
“For Cole’s a jolly good fellow. For Cole’s a jolly good fellow. For Cole’s a jolly good fellooooooooooooooooooow. For nobody can deny!”
“Thank-you,” I say, quietly into the microphone.
“Speech, Speech,” everyone cries.
Damn it, I knew that was coming next. My generally twittery temperament does not lend itself to protracted bouts of stampeding effusion. The constructs of my delicate being are more suited for endeavors of high snobbery, like writing checks and leafing through the Wall Street Journal but alas, these are not choices of a perceived societal superiority. You see my mind is iron clad, hand forged in the likeness of Einstein and de Vinci but my physique is a grotesque, off angle display of Mother Nature at her worst. It sucks to be eighteen and crippled but at least I’m not retarded anymore. A revised destiny guides my actions.
“I…er…you know there are times…it’s hard turning eighteen years old…”
This obviously isn’t going well. There must be something I can do to get out of this situation. Think damn it. Think.
“Is it hot in here?”
Shakily, I take hold of the microphone stand and busy myself by adjusting it up and then down and then up again. I clear my throat and grip the microphone tightly for comfort and the murmur of the crowd grows deafening and begins to sound like the din of some great Biblical swarm. Locusts? Nervously I reach inside my frilly button down shirt and run my fingers up and down the pink zipper of flesh and stitches over my heart. It’s been two weeks since my most recent heart operation. In my short eighteen years of existence I’ve had twelve such procedures. After this last operation the doctor said, "Cole, this will be the last operation for you." He wasn't smiling when he said this so I'm pretty sure I know what he meant.
“Come on my son,” my Pop cries, waving his white chef’s hat in the air.
I dig the toe of my Italian leather shoes into the red shag carpet and slowly open my eyes. My bladder spasms and I know this isn’t good.
“I uh…have to use the restroom,” I say and with the aid of my walking stick limp off the small stage in the corner of the restaurant. My Pop gave me the 18th century hardwood walking stick with an ivory stylized knotted knob for my birthday today and damn it if it isn’t easier to get around with it but I wish he would have given me something a little more stylish.
“Here comes the birthday boy,” my Pop says.
He reaches for me with his large hands and I smack them away with my walking stick.
“Not now,” I say.
“Okay?” Pop says.
Yes, it was rude treating my Pop like that but my bladder is fuller than a lush’s Chablis glass and if I don’t hit the restroom pronto there will be a soggy Hell to pay in my velvet suit pants.
“Excuse me. Pardon me,” I say.
I try to make my way through the throng of chattering guests but all feel obliged to fiercely shake my hand, kiss me on the cheek, or engage me in some sort of polite version of conversation. It’s time to get nasty. In my weak physical condition this is unfortunately the only way I’m often able to get things done.
“Step aside,” I say, smacking a buxom woman in a blue dress on the ankle with my walking stick. “No time to talk.”
“Happy Birthday,” Art Nixon says, putting his hand on my misshapen shoulder and corralling me to a stop. Evidently he didn’t hear me. “Your dad really set up quite a party here. There aren’t many eighteen year olds that get Pearl Jam to come to their birthday parties.”
In the stagnant goldfish pond that was radio the smallish Nixon rose up through the ranks like an apocalyptic carp fighting vehemently for every available crumb of publicity and grew HUGE with his in-your-face style; eventually swallowing up his competition. It wasn’t long before he could no longer be contained in the small pond of radio and branched out into television, movies, and books soon dominated all media. Several years back when Art’s career was just starting to peak I appeared on his radio show. Afterwards we quickly became good friends.
“Thanks,” I say, pulling away from him.
There is a line ten men deep at the bathroom and I know I’ll never last long enough to reach the front of it. As I see it I can either urinate in the shrubbery out front and risk having my unit photographed by the paparazzi or use the restroom in the gas station, which is part of the complex of the Spruce Pierre Gourmet Diner and Truck Stop, my Pop’s world famous restaurant. Damn it the paparazzi leave me no choice I must reach the gas station restroom.
I grip my walking stick like a Louisville Slugger and start whaling at people’s shins.
“Get—out—of—my—way,” I cry.
People start yelling at me.
“Ouch, watch it Cole, that hurts.”
“I’m taking my gift back!”
“Has that formula totally fried your brain?”
I cut through the guests like a machete wielding Cuban in a sugar cane field. The crowd parts to reveal the front door and I rush towards it as fast as I can, which really isn’t too fast because of my handicap.
“Move it, little man with a big walking stick coming through,” I cry.
I think of myself as Indiana Jones running through a gauntlet of poisonous darts that shoot from the walls. The door is so close but the tunnel of people is closing. Just as the gap of guests closes and I am about to hobble through to the front door my uncle Darwin bends over to pick up his lighter and his ass closes the gauntlet. I run into it and fall to the floor.
“Ugh…oh my back,” I say from the floor.
“Hey, little buddy,” Darwin says, grabbing me by the arm and helping me to my feet.
“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I say.
With some help from Darwin I am able to get the heavy door open and make my way outside. Immediately I am hit with a gust of wind and my top hat almost blows off but I grab it in the nick of time and hurry on.
The immense blue neon Spruce Pierre sign above the diner--bloated like the silicone injected lips of some OD’d Hollywood starlet--buzzes frightfully and the sound of it reminds me of the clippers my Pop uses trim his chest hair and goatee.
The soles of my shoes scuff noisily against the macadam as I make the scant thirty yard journey across the parking lot to the gas station. For most, a walk of this length wouldn’t be a major undertaking but with my weakened heart I find myself out of breath and gasping for air.
“Fuck knuckles,” I say.
The sun sinks into a bog of black clouds and my shadow is engulfed in the ensuing darkness. There is but one lone vehicle saddled up to the gas pumps, a mud spattered black Aerostar minivan with Pennsylvania plates that read: Red 1. The man pumping gasoline into the minivan moves jerkily like a marionette; he is a study in creepiness. The clothing he wears is entirely black--black knit hat, black combat boots and long black trench coat—and I can tell immediately by the way he’s pushed back against the minivan that he is a shadow dweller, the kind of man that shrivels in the rays of the sun. His head is tucked against his chest and tilted slightly to the side and it snaps quickly to the right as if on a swivel and now he is staring at me over the top of his mirrored sunglasses. I can see the half moon of his fiendish rat like eyes. The edges of his mouth curl up like the scrolls on some fancy parchment and this frightens me inexplicably. It is a fear that dries my mouth and turns my spinal column to ice cubes. I shiver and hurry on as quickly as my spindly limbs will carry me.
With the end of my ivory walking stick I push the door to the gas station open. The cowbell above it rings.
“Oh, Cole how do you do?” Bazyli says, scratching at his long neck.
“What’s up? Could you give me the key? I really need to use the bathroom,” I say.
“Dees could be a problem. You see your father told me that I could break for dee bathroom but this was many many hours ago,” Bazyli says. “I have as you Americans say to sheet?”
“Sheet?”
“Terribly would you mind watching dee station while I go lose one?”
“No, but you’ve got to hurry,” I say, grabbing my crotch in an attempt to stop the flow of urine.
“I thank-you, Cole,” Bazyli says.
He grabs a Playboy off the magazine rack, tips his Yankees baseball hat at me, and hurries around the side of the building.
“Oh, and Cole,” Bazyli says popping his head back in the door.
“Yeah?”
“Happy Birthday.”
“GO TO THE BATHROOM!” I scream.
“Right,” Bazyli says ducking back out the door.
I shift my weight from leg to leg trying to ease the discomfort but it doesn’t really help. Pushing myself up on my tiptoes I look out over the counter at the gas pumps. That freak that was pumping gas is looking right at me. I duck, sitting back on my heels but squatting down in this manner makes me have to pee even more. There is no way I can wait until Bazyli gets back. I’m going to have to use the sink in the closet. There is no door but customers wouldn’t see me peeing in it unless the poked there heads in. I hurry to the closet and the sink and climb up on it using steps I’ve constructed out of cardboard boxes.
“Oh…yeah…that’s it…ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” I exclaim as my urine streams into the sink.
KABOOM!
An immense explosion causes me to lose my grip on my unit and it flails about like an agitated cobra, piss spraying everywhere. In the gas station tiny diamonds of shattered glass cascade down and the sound they make when they hit the stainless steel hotdog machine is like that of wind chimes clanging in a stiff breeze. There is a sudden rush of warmth that peels the hair back on my exposed left hand and the closet is illuminated with a splendiferous orange light. I grab hold of my flailing member, tuck it away, and quickly zip up my pants.
With great caution I peer around the frame of the door as smoke and flames poor into the gas station. The fire has created an impenetrable wall between the gas station and the Spruce Pierre. Already the roof of the Spruce Pierre is on fire.
“What in dee Hell’s going on?” Bazyli yells.
He appears in the side door, his pants are down around his ankles.
“The Spruce Pierre is on fire,” I say.
“Who deed it?” Bazyli asks.
I don’t answer him but immediately I think of the horrifying man filling up the black minivan. In a trance like state I climb off the sink and walk out into the gas station.
Sparks shoot from the electrical appliances on the coffee counter. Some land on my velvet suit coat and it bursts into flames. I can see myself in the mirror against the front wall. I lift my arms up to my sides and flames outline my body. I look like the phoenix rising from the ashes.
“You’re on fire,” Bazyli screams.
I laugh. The flames are licking at my face. I fart and in the mirror I can see a ball of flames shoot out my backside.
“I am Tookoo, pygmy god of barbed wire and fire. I have risen from the ashes--”
“What in dee Hell are you talking about?” Bazyli says.
I feel like I’m going to faint. There is an explosion of white gas as Bazyli sprays a fire extinguisher on me. I see nothing but the red glow of twisting flames from behind a veil of smoke.
“You’re in dee shock,” Bazyli says.
“I thought I was in "dee" gas station,” I say, as the flames close in around us.
“Thank-you,” I say, quietly into the microphone.
“Speech, Speech,” everyone cries.
Damn it, I knew that was coming next. My generally twittery temperament does not lend itself to protracted bouts of stampeding effusion. The constructs of my delicate being are more suited for endeavors of high snobbery, like writing checks and leafing through the Wall Street Journal but alas, these are not choices of a perceived societal superiority. You see my mind is iron clad, hand forged in the likeness of Einstein and de Vinci but my physique is a grotesque, off angle display of Mother Nature at her worst. It sucks to be eighteen and crippled but at least I’m not retarded anymore. A revised destiny guides my actions.
“I…er…you know there are times…it’s hard turning eighteen years old…”
This obviously isn’t going well. There must be something I can do to get out of this situation. Think damn it. Think.
“Is it hot in here?”
Shakily, I take hold of the microphone stand and busy myself by adjusting it up and then down and then up again. I clear my throat and grip the microphone tightly for comfort and the murmur of the crowd grows deafening and begins to sound like the din of some great Biblical swarm. Locusts? Nervously I reach inside my frilly button down shirt and run my fingers up and down the pink zipper of flesh and stitches over my heart. It’s been two weeks since my most recent heart operation. In my short eighteen years of existence I’ve had twelve such procedures. After this last operation the doctor said, "Cole, this will be the last operation for you." He wasn't smiling when he said this so I'm pretty sure I know what he meant.
“Come on my son,” my Pop cries, waving his white chef’s hat in the air.
I dig the toe of my Italian leather shoes into the red shag carpet and slowly open my eyes. My bladder spasms and I know this isn’t good.
“I uh…have to use the restroom,” I say and with the aid of my walking stick limp off the small stage in the corner of the restaurant. My Pop gave me the 18th century hardwood walking stick with an ivory stylized knotted knob for my birthday today and damn it if it isn’t easier to get around with it but I wish he would have given me something a little more stylish.
“Here comes the birthday boy,” my Pop says.
He reaches for me with his large hands and I smack them away with my walking stick.
“Not now,” I say.
“Okay?” Pop says.
Yes, it was rude treating my Pop like that but my bladder is fuller than a lush’s Chablis glass and if I don’t hit the restroom pronto there will be a soggy Hell to pay in my velvet suit pants.
“Excuse me. Pardon me,” I say.
I try to make my way through the throng of chattering guests but all feel obliged to fiercely shake my hand, kiss me on the cheek, or engage me in some sort of polite version of conversation. It’s time to get nasty. In my weak physical condition this is unfortunately the only way I’m often able to get things done.
“Step aside,” I say, smacking a buxom woman in a blue dress on the ankle with my walking stick. “No time to talk.”
“Happy Birthday,” Art Nixon says, putting his hand on my misshapen shoulder and corralling me to a stop. Evidently he didn’t hear me. “Your dad really set up quite a party here. There aren’t many eighteen year olds that get Pearl Jam to come to their birthday parties.”
In the stagnant goldfish pond that was radio the smallish Nixon rose up through the ranks like an apocalyptic carp fighting vehemently for every available crumb of publicity and grew HUGE with his in-your-face style; eventually swallowing up his competition. It wasn’t long before he could no longer be contained in the small pond of radio and branched out into television, movies, and books soon dominated all media. Several years back when Art’s career was just starting to peak I appeared on his radio show. Afterwards we quickly became good friends.
“Thanks,” I say, pulling away from him.
There is a line ten men deep at the bathroom and I know I’ll never last long enough to reach the front of it. As I see it I can either urinate in the shrubbery out front and risk having my unit photographed by the paparazzi or use the restroom in the gas station, which is part of the complex of the Spruce Pierre Gourmet Diner and Truck Stop, my Pop’s world famous restaurant. Damn it the paparazzi leave me no choice I must reach the gas station restroom.
I grip my walking stick like a Louisville Slugger and start whaling at people’s shins.
“Get—out—of—my—way,” I cry.
People start yelling at me.
“Ouch, watch it Cole, that hurts.”
“I’m taking my gift back!”
“Has that formula totally fried your brain?”
I cut through the guests like a machete wielding Cuban in a sugar cane field. The crowd parts to reveal the front door and I rush towards it as fast as I can, which really isn’t too fast because of my handicap.
“Move it, little man with a big walking stick coming through,” I cry.
I think of myself as Indiana Jones running through a gauntlet of poisonous darts that shoot from the walls. The door is so close but the tunnel of people is closing. Just as the gap of guests closes and I am about to hobble through to the front door my uncle Darwin bends over to pick up his lighter and his ass closes the gauntlet. I run into it and fall to the floor.
“Ugh…oh my back,” I say from the floor.
“Hey, little buddy,” Darwin says, grabbing me by the arm and helping me to my feet.
“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I say.
With some help from Darwin I am able to get the heavy door open and make my way outside. Immediately I am hit with a gust of wind and my top hat almost blows off but I grab it in the nick of time and hurry on.
The immense blue neon Spruce Pierre sign above the diner--bloated like the silicone injected lips of some OD’d Hollywood starlet--buzzes frightfully and the sound of it reminds me of the clippers my Pop uses trim his chest hair and goatee.
The soles of my shoes scuff noisily against the macadam as I make the scant thirty yard journey across the parking lot to the gas station. For most, a walk of this length wouldn’t be a major undertaking but with my weakened heart I find myself out of breath and gasping for air.
“Fuck knuckles,” I say.
The sun sinks into a bog of black clouds and my shadow is engulfed in the ensuing darkness. There is but one lone vehicle saddled up to the gas pumps, a mud spattered black Aerostar minivan with Pennsylvania plates that read: Red 1. The man pumping gasoline into the minivan moves jerkily like a marionette; he is a study in creepiness. The clothing he wears is entirely black--black knit hat, black combat boots and long black trench coat—and I can tell immediately by the way he’s pushed back against the minivan that he is a shadow dweller, the kind of man that shrivels in the rays of the sun. His head is tucked against his chest and tilted slightly to the side and it snaps quickly to the right as if on a swivel and now he is staring at me over the top of his mirrored sunglasses. I can see the half moon of his fiendish rat like eyes. The edges of his mouth curl up like the scrolls on some fancy parchment and this frightens me inexplicably. It is a fear that dries my mouth and turns my spinal column to ice cubes. I shiver and hurry on as quickly as my spindly limbs will carry me.
With the end of my ivory walking stick I push the door to the gas station open. The cowbell above it rings.
“Oh, Cole how do you do?” Bazyli says, scratching at his long neck.
“What’s up? Could you give me the key? I really need to use the bathroom,” I say.
“Dees could be a problem. You see your father told me that I could break for dee bathroom but this was many many hours ago,” Bazyli says. “I have as you Americans say to sheet?”
“Sheet?”
“Terribly would you mind watching dee station while I go lose one?”
“No, but you’ve got to hurry,” I say, grabbing my crotch in an attempt to stop the flow of urine.
“I thank-you, Cole,” Bazyli says.
He grabs a Playboy off the magazine rack, tips his Yankees baseball hat at me, and hurries around the side of the building.
“Oh, and Cole,” Bazyli says popping his head back in the door.
“Yeah?”
“Happy Birthday.”
“GO TO THE BATHROOM!” I scream.
“Right,” Bazyli says ducking back out the door.
I shift my weight from leg to leg trying to ease the discomfort but it doesn’t really help. Pushing myself up on my tiptoes I look out over the counter at the gas pumps. That freak that was pumping gas is looking right at me. I duck, sitting back on my heels but squatting down in this manner makes me have to pee even more. There is no way I can wait until Bazyli gets back. I’m going to have to use the sink in the closet. There is no door but customers wouldn’t see me peeing in it unless the poked there heads in. I hurry to the closet and the sink and climb up on it using steps I’ve constructed out of cardboard boxes.
“Oh…yeah…that’s it…ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” I exclaim as my urine streams into the sink.
KABOOM!
An immense explosion causes me to lose my grip on my unit and it flails about like an agitated cobra, piss spraying everywhere. In the gas station tiny diamonds of shattered glass cascade down and the sound they make when they hit the stainless steel hotdog machine is like that of wind chimes clanging in a stiff breeze. There is a sudden rush of warmth that peels the hair back on my exposed left hand and the closet is illuminated with a splendiferous orange light. I grab hold of my flailing member, tuck it away, and quickly zip up my pants.
With great caution I peer around the frame of the door as smoke and flames poor into the gas station. The fire has created an impenetrable wall between the gas station and the Spruce Pierre. Already the roof of the Spruce Pierre is on fire.
“What in dee Hell’s going on?” Bazyli yells.
He appears in the side door, his pants are down around his ankles.
“The Spruce Pierre is on fire,” I say.
“Who deed it?” Bazyli asks.
I don’t answer him but immediately I think of the horrifying man filling up the black minivan. In a trance like state I climb off the sink and walk out into the gas station.
Sparks shoot from the electrical appliances on the coffee counter. Some land on my velvet suit coat and it bursts into flames. I can see myself in the mirror against the front wall. I lift my arms up to my sides and flames outline my body. I look like the phoenix rising from the ashes.
“You’re on fire,” Bazyli screams.
I laugh. The flames are licking at my face. I fart and in the mirror I can see a ball of flames shoot out my backside.
“I am Tookoo, pygmy god of barbed wire and fire. I have risen from the ashes--”
“What in dee Hell are you talking about?” Bazyli says.
I feel like I’m going to faint. There is an explosion of white gas as Bazyli sprays a fire extinguisher on me. I see nothing but the red glow of twisting flames from behind a veil of smoke.
“You’re in dee shock,” Bazyli says.
“I thought I was in "dee" gas station,” I say, as the flames close in around us.
Chihuahua Terrorizes Ind. Postal Workers
I love these feisty little suckers. Chihuahuas have guts.
Check it out here:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Little-Terror.html
Anyone who is familiar with me knows that I have two Chihuahuas. The fiercer of the two is a very small thirteen year old named Flea (They were pictured on my blog back in Nov.). Last Halloween I let the dogs out and was doing some yard work out back when I heard some sort of ruckus in the front of my house. I hurried around to see what all the noise was about and saw Flea chasing a pack of ten or fifteen screaming Halloweeners down the street. It was perhaps the funniest thing I've ever seen. I guess those kids won't be coming back to my house next year...
I love these feisty little suckers. Chihuahuas have guts.
Check it out here:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Little-Terror.html
Anyone who is familiar with me knows that I have two Chihuahuas. The fiercer of the two is a very small thirteen year old named Flea (They were pictured on my blog back in Nov.). Last Halloween I let the dogs out and was doing some yard work out back when I heard some sort of ruckus in the front of my house. I hurried around to see what all the noise was about and saw Flea chasing a pack of ten or fifteen screaming Halloweeners down the street. It was perhaps the funniest thing I've ever seen. I guess those kids won't be coming back to my house next year...
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Where's the Superior Bush Morality?
Read it here: http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050321154309990003
According to Pam Easton of the AP in her article Neil Bush's Ex-Wife Settles Slander Case Neil Bush's ex-wife, Sharon Bush, was sued by Bush's new wife, Maria Andrews Bush, for slander. Evidently Maria was Neil Bush's mistress when he was married to Sharon and at the time the affair was going on Maria became pregnant. Supposedly Sharon Bush spread rumors that the baby was Neil's when in fact it turned out to that the father was Maria's former husband Robert Andrews. The case was settled out of court.
Okay, maybe I'm missing something here but does this strike anyone else as absurd? Here Neil was fucking another woman during his marriage and his ex-wife gets sued for slander when she purportedly spreads a rumor that Neil was the father of his mistress’s baby. Which crime is worse? Sleeping with a mistress or saying that the woman your husband was sleeping with, who became pregnant during this time, fathered her child?
Where are the morals that the GOP supposedly hold so near and dear to their cash register hearts? I frankly don't give a shit if Neil Bush was sleeping with his neighbor’s pet goat but when you are on the team that continually tears opponents apart for lacking "morals" then you deserved to be viewed through the same lens. Of course if Neil runs for the presidency the GOP will use framing to cover this little moral slip up. They will do something like focus on a mistake the reporter that brings this story to people's attention made (ALA Dan Rather) or they will make up some absurd story about how Sharon Bush was a drunken witch and abused little Neil and he had to run to the arms of his mistress (Sobs and tears). Give me a fucking break. The point is that Neil is an adulterer. End of story.
Some Democrats are no better and if they really want to win an election they need to get rid of the elitist agenda and start working for the benefit of the people of this country not big business like the Republicans. That's how you distinguish yourselves, that's how you win. You don't distinguish yourselves by sucking up to the pro life crazies, homophobes, religious loons, and the extremist gun freaks (NRA put another 10 notches in the door of your gun cabinet). THEY ARE AN EXTREME MINORITY NOT THE MAJORITY! Democratic Party if you stick together and take care of the people you will win but if you try to be "Republican Lite" you will get beat at their game.
I thought we lived in a democracy but I guess I was mistaken because if we did we could oust these politicians and begin anew. For many the "American Dream" will remain a dream because the powers that be have fixed it that way. There is plenty of wealth to go around in this country but greed is destroying the chance many have at a better life. The solution isn't nearly as extreme as communism but lies in true democracy where people have the ability to rise up and become rich but not at the expense of the middle and lower classes. For those that claim to have a monoply on "morals" I ask you if it is "moral" to let people freeze to death because you cut subsidized heating or that the infant mortality rate in a number of US cities is worse that in Cuba or other third world countries because of cuts to health programs. It is time to truly adhere to morals and I don't mean censoring every fucking creative outlet in this country but to do things that benefit the whole of this country, to give chairty when needed, and to bring prosperity back to the majority in a country that is sliding down the slippery slope of tyranny. Despite what those that have hijacked religion in this country think, morals are not found exclusively in the Bible or the Koran or any religious text, they are found in the heart and the heads of those who are compassionate enough to care about what happens to their fellow man.
So, Neil and other politicians, go fuck your mistress or fifty of them for that matter because I don't care. What I do care about are the lack of morals that are robbing people in this country and other countries of the American Dream. The pig can only grow so fat before it is slaughtered. In the new morning I wake to the smell of bacon and revolution brewing.
According to Pam Easton of the AP in her article Neil Bush's Ex-Wife Settles Slander Case Neil Bush's ex-wife, Sharon Bush, was sued by Bush's new wife, Maria Andrews Bush, for slander. Evidently Maria was Neil Bush's mistress when he was married to Sharon and at the time the affair was going on Maria became pregnant. Supposedly Sharon Bush spread rumors that the baby was Neil's when in fact it turned out to that the father was Maria's former husband Robert Andrews. The case was settled out of court.
Okay, maybe I'm missing something here but does this strike anyone else as absurd? Here Neil was fucking another woman during his marriage and his ex-wife gets sued for slander when she purportedly spreads a rumor that Neil was the father of his mistress’s baby. Which crime is worse? Sleeping with a mistress or saying that the woman your husband was sleeping with, who became pregnant during this time, fathered her child?
Where are the morals that the GOP supposedly hold so near and dear to their cash register hearts? I frankly don't give a shit if Neil Bush was sleeping with his neighbor’s pet goat but when you are on the team that continually tears opponents apart for lacking "morals" then you deserved to be viewed through the same lens. Of course if Neil runs for the presidency the GOP will use framing to cover this little moral slip up. They will do something like focus on a mistake the reporter that brings this story to people's attention made (ALA Dan Rather) or they will make up some absurd story about how Sharon Bush was a drunken witch and abused little Neil and he had to run to the arms of his mistress (Sobs and tears). Give me a fucking break. The point is that Neil is an adulterer. End of story.
Some Democrats are no better and if they really want to win an election they need to get rid of the elitist agenda and start working for the benefit of the people of this country not big business like the Republicans. That's how you distinguish yourselves, that's how you win. You don't distinguish yourselves by sucking up to the pro life crazies, homophobes, religious loons, and the extremist gun freaks (NRA put another 10 notches in the door of your gun cabinet). THEY ARE AN EXTREME MINORITY NOT THE MAJORITY! Democratic Party if you stick together and take care of the people you will win but if you try to be "Republican Lite" you will get beat at their game.
I thought we lived in a democracy but I guess I was mistaken because if we did we could oust these politicians and begin anew. For many the "American Dream" will remain a dream because the powers that be have fixed it that way. There is plenty of wealth to go around in this country but greed is destroying the chance many have at a better life. The solution isn't nearly as extreme as communism but lies in true democracy where people have the ability to rise up and become rich but not at the expense of the middle and lower classes. For those that claim to have a monoply on "morals" I ask you if it is "moral" to let people freeze to death because you cut subsidized heating or that the infant mortality rate in a number of US cities is worse that in Cuba or other third world countries because of cuts to health programs. It is time to truly adhere to morals and I don't mean censoring every fucking creative outlet in this country but to do things that benefit the whole of this country, to give chairty when needed, and to bring prosperity back to the majority in a country that is sliding down the slippery slope of tyranny. Despite what those that have hijacked religion in this country think, morals are not found exclusively in the Bible or the Koran or any religious text, they are found in the heart and the heads of those who are compassionate enough to care about what happens to their fellow man.
So, Neil and other politicians, go fuck your mistress or fifty of them for that matter because I don't care. What I do care about are the lack of morals that are robbing people in this country and other countries of the American Dream. The pig can only grow so fat before it is slaughtered. In the new morning I wake to the smell of bacon and revolution brewing.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Free Speech is in Danger
According to Patricia J Williams in her article Grim Fairy Tales she learned on NPR that "William Poole, a high school junior from Kentucky, was taken into custody and charged with threatening to commit second-degree-felony terrorism for writing a story about a horde of zombies who wreak havoc in a school. It seems the boy's grandparents had been reading his journal, found a story he'd been writing for English class and promptly turned him in. According to a police detective, "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function, it's a felony in the state of Kentucky."
If this doesn't worry you writers out there it should. With the new laws passed to "protect" you i.e., the Patriot Act and others, the government can and will arrest you for whatever they want and deem it some sort of terrorism. Poole should be protected by his first amendment rights but evidently this doesn't mean anything in Kentucky. Big Brother is closing in...
The last Williams heard, Poole was “dispatched to jail to await mercy and a sense of perspective.” Jail for writing a fictions story? Stephen King wrote a book called Rage in which a character named Charlie Decker brings a gun to school, kills a teacher, and holds students hostage. Under Kentucky law if King’s grandparent’s had found a page of this story sitting in King’s typewriter they could have reported him to authorities and he would have been jailed. Sound ridiculous? It is but something like that could happen to you for doing nothing more than writing a fiction story that someone considers “threatening.”
I've also read the GOP is working on strategy to go after the Internet next. They won't to control what you say and they will do this by passing laws to control content and will do this under the guise of protecting you from something like terrorism, identity theft, etc. People laughed at me when I said we would lose rights with this Patriot Act crap, that these laws were not so much to protect us from terrorism but to control what we say and do. Keep laughing and you will find yourself in jail for writing something on your blog that the government doesn't like.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Suspended Haze
Fueled by a plethora of cold medicines and the thickest, blackest coffee imaginable, I careened down Derry Street in my Cherokee towards downtown and my office. My head felt inconceivably light as if gorged with helium and my hands trembled as I tried desperately to grip the steering wheel. The inside of my mouth was as dry as the straw doormat on Satan’s doorstep and the world was engulfed in the yellow particle suspended haze that only days choked with sunlight can produce.
Despite the brilliance of the light the day had ordinary written all over it, as most days do, and there was nothing that would have made me think otherwise until I saw a crack in the sky and the weirdness began to rain down.
I remember thinking that school bus in front of me was like some great yellow metallic warthog rooting through the industrial jungle of Harrisburg and that it was making me late.
“Hurry up you bastard,” I yelled out my open window.
This did nothing to hurry the great beast and we continued to limp along at a pace most suited for funeral processions, while the children in the back, peering out the windows, mocked me with extended fingers and out stuck tongues.
“Santa Clause isn’t real,” I yelled.
This seemed to quiet them or maybe they just lost interest but at any rate I was freed of their menacing gestures and as I drove through the paper scattered intersection of 13th & Derry Streets I spied a rather rotund youth in a puffy down jacket poised to cross the road. At first I thought he was wearing headphones upon his ears--positioned down towards the lobe--but as I drew closer I realized this wasn’t the case. What I had thought were headphones were in fact black discs the size of hockey pucks wedged in his ears, stretching his lobes to the point where they looked like strips of thinly sliced bologna.
“Yikes,” I said to myself, squeezing the steering wheel.
It was abundantly clear, if only to me, that some imbecile had forgotten to shut the rusty padlock on the freak cage the previous night because they were out in numbers storming the streets like zombies damned from the dead. The hustlers, pimps, street walkers, dealers and dopers were spread out so as to cover as much area as possible. It was impossible to walk down the street and not be touched by their disease.
It usually isn’t necessary to lift too many stones to find examples of the demented and deranged, and it never takes too much prodding for the sickos to open their Kevlar trench coats and expose all their ground in ugliness but today was different. They were walking right up to the side of my car like lions in a wildlife preserve, clawing and scratching at the doors. I didn’t dare role down my window because they are an unpredictable breed. There are some that will spit on your windshield and smear it around with an oily squeegee and still others the will yank you out of your car through the window and try to sell you a piece of ass or a bag of hedge clippings.
Quickly I rolled up my window and as I sped off I pondered this whole body modification thing, the studs, the discs, the rivets, the scarring, the branding, and pins. What was it all about? Why the permanence? Does it symbolize some other level of freakiness that my generation couldn’t ever grasp?
I knew that in Omo, in the Ethiopian River basin, women in the tribes there wear enormous plates in their lips. As teenagers a hole is punched in their lips and then gradually stretched until they are big enough to put in plates the size of cafeteria lunch trays. The bigger the lip, the more “beautiful” the girl is thought to be and thus the more cows she will get for her dowry. Surely, in America females aren’t swapped for farm animals but still these bizarre body modifications occur. What pray tell are you going to do with such a lip here in America where such modification is generally seen as bizarre and repulsive? I suppose one could use the lip as a substitute Ping Pong paddle or serve tea on it but what if you wanted to mug down with said sweety? I do believe that such an appendage would make the average lip lock not only awkward but virtually impossible.
I had to find out more about these modifications so upon arriving at the office I searched the Internet for information on body modification and found something quite interesting. It seems now the self mutilators and deranged carnival sideshow freaks are on the cusp of another more dangerous trend in body modification. A Dutch institute is now offering something a little more eye catching. It seems these clog wearing doctors are cutting slits in the cornea and inserting small, metal half moons and stars into the eye! Yes, eye jewelry. Wouldn’t it just be easier to get contact lenses with stars and half moons on them and not risk going blind? I suppose this would be the equivalent of the fake tattoos children get out of bubble gum machines and which wash off when they bathe. Perhaps the thrill is in the permanence. Or is it in the pain?
Upon further investigation I happened upon pictures of a penis cut in half and pierced with rings and the rings attached to a chain worn around the neck. I saw railroad size spikes stuck through the labia and ghastly green fish scale tattoos that covered a person’s entire hide. I read about people shooting themselves so that they can have the scars to show off; still others have stainless steel balls and rings implanted under their skin. Soon, enough it was time for lunch but I had lost my appetite. It appeared something was seriously awry, that standing out in a crowd now required more than snappy shoes, a spiked hairdo and an attitude.
I walked down by the Susquehanna River and sat on a bench amongst the melting snow. Women in sneakers and floral print skirts power walked by me chatting back and forth at a frenzied pace. Men in short sleeve dress shirts with sweat stains engulfing the arm pits huffed and puffed going up the cement stairs. Joggers and roller bladders whipped by. I stared at the brown choppy river not quite sure what I was doing but then I saw a girl walking an extremely long Dachshund and as she slowly approached me I saw the glitter of earrings and studs all over her face. As she drew closer still I saw her arms were sleeved with colorful and intricate tattoos. Her dog stopped and sniffed at my Burmese Jungle boots.
“Ernie, stop that,” she said.
“He doesn’t have any Mississippi leg hound in him does he?” I said.
“What?” she said with a smile.
“Nothing…why all the piercings, studs, and tattooes?” I asked.
“Why not?” she said, giving me a dirty look.
Evidently I’d pushed some invisible button but didn’t care because I was focused on her nipples which at that time were poking through her shirt like the beaks of angry parakeets and they too appeared to be pierced.
“Right,” I said.
“Come on Ernie,” she said, and took off down the macadam path.
Ernie unwrapped himself from around my legs and took off wobbling back and forth and wagging his tail happily.
This wasn’t the answer I was looking for but it would have to do. My lunch hour was rapidly dwindling down.
As I walked back to the office I wondered if perhaps if I wasn’t hopelessly out of it, that my time for being “cool” had effectively passed me by but I quickly nixed the idea for I knew that cool wasn’t a concept that should be defined by outward appearances, that the mind is what truly needed to be modified in order for one to be “cool.” So these people and their odd body modifications were either cool or they weren’t but it wasn’t because of anything they might have stuck through themselves or had permanently inked on their skin. Cool is a state of mind.
Despite the brilliance of the light the day had ordinary written all over it, as most days do, and there was nothing that would have made me think otherwise until I saw a crack in the sky and the weirdness began to rain down.
I remember thinking that school bus in front of me was like some great yellow metallic warthog rooting through the industrial jungle of Harrisburg and that it was making me late.
“Hurry up you bastard,” I yelled out my open window.
This did nothing to hurry the great beast and we continued to limp along at a pace most suited for funeral processions, while the children in the back, peering out the windows, mocked me with extended fingers and out stuck tongues.
“Santa Clause isn’t real,” I yelled.
This seemed to quiet them or maybe they just lost interest but at any rate I was freed of their menacing gestures and as I drove through the paper scattered intersection of 13th & Derry Streets I spied a rather rotund youth in a puffy down jacket poised to cross the road. At first I thought he was wearing headphones upon his ears--positioned down towards the lobe--but as I drew closer I realized this wasn’t the case. What I had thought were headphones were in fact black discs the size of hockey pucks wedged in his ears, stretching his lobes to the point where they looked like strips of thinly sliced bologna.
“Yikes,” I said to myself, squeezing the steering wheel.
It was abundantly clear, if only to me, that some imbecile had forgotten to shut the rusty padlock on the freak cage the previous night because they were out in numbers storming the streets like zombies damned from the dead. The hustlers, pimps, street walkers, dealers and dopers were spread out so as to cover as much area as possible. It was impossible to walk down the street and not be touched by their disease.
It usually isn’t necessary to lift too many stones to find examples of the demented and deranged, and it never takes too much prodding for the sickos to open their Kevlar trench coats and expose all their ground in ugliness but today was different. They were walking right up to the side of my car like lions in a wildlife preserve, clawing and scratching at the doors. I didn’t dare role down my window because they are an unpredictable breed. There are some that will spit on your windshield and smear it around with an oily squeegee and still others the will yank you out of your car through the window and try to sell you a piece of ass or a bag of hedge clippings.
Quickly I rolled up my window and as I sped off I pondered this whole body modification thing, the studs, the discs, the rivets, the scarring, the branding, and pins. What was it all about? Why the permanence? Does it symbolize some other level of freakiness that my generation couldn’t ever grasp?
I knew that in Omo, in the Ethiopian River basin, women in the tribes there wear enormous plates in their lips. As teenagers a hole is punched in their lips and then gradually stretched until they are big enough to put in plates the size of cafeteria lunch trays. The bigger the lip, the more “beautiful” the girl is thought to be and thus the more cows she will get for her dowry. Surely, in America females aren’t swapped for farm animals but still these bizarre body modifications occur. What pray tell are you going to do with such a lip here in America where such modification is generally seen as bizarre and repulsive? I suppose one could use the lip as a substitute Ping Pong paddle or serve tea on it but what if you wanted to mug down with said sweety? I do believe that such an appendage would make the average lip lock not only awkward but virtually impossible.
I had to find out more about these modifications so upon arriving at the office I searched the Internet for information on body modification and found something quite interesting. It seems now the self mutilators and deranged carnival sideshow freaks are on the cusp of another more dangerous trend in body modification. A Dutch institute is now offering something a little more eye catching. It seems these clog wearing doctors are cutting slits in the cornea and inserting small, metal half moons and stars into the eye! Yes, eye jewelry. Wouldn’t it just be easier to get contact lenses with stars and half moons on them and not risk going blind? I suppose this would be the equivalent of the fake tattoos children get out of bubble gum machines and which wash off when they bathe. Perhaps the thrill is in the permanence. Or is it in the pain?
Upon further investigation I happened upon pictures of a penis cut in half and pierced with rings and the rings attached to a chain worn around the neck. I saw railroad size spikes stuck through the labia and ghastly green fish scale tattoos that covered a person’s entire hide. I read about people shooting themselves so that they can have the scars to show off; still others have stainless steel balls and rings implanted under their skin. Soon, enough it was time for lunch but I had lost my appetite. It appeared something was seriously awry, that standing out in a crowd now required more than snappy shoes, a spiked hairdo and an attitude.
I walked down by the Susquehanna River and sat on a bench amongst the melting snow. Women in sneakers and floral print skirts power walked by me chatting back and forth at a frenzied pace. Men in short sleeve dress shirts with sweat stains engulfing the arm pits huffed and puffed going up the cement stairs. Joggers and roller bladders whipped by. I stared at the brown choppy river not quite sure what I was doing but then I saw a girl walking an extremely long Dachshund and as she slowly approached me I saw the glitter of earrings and studs all over her face. As she drew closer still I saw her arms were sleeved with colorful and intricate tattoos. Her dog stopped and sniffed at my Burmese Jungle boots.
“Ernie, stop that,” she said.
“He doesn’t have any Mississippi leg hound in him does he?” I said.
“What?” she said with a smile.
“Nothing…why all the piercings, studs, and tattooes?” I asked.
“Why not?” she said, giving me a dirty look.
Evidently I’d pushed some invisible button but didn’t care because I was focused on her nipples which at that time were poking through her shirt like the beaks of angry parakeets and they too appeared to be pierced.
“Right,” I said.
“Come on Ernie,” she said, and took off down the macadam path.
Ernie unwrapped himself from around my legs and took off wobbling back and forth and wagging his tail happily.
This wasn’t the answer I was looking for but it would have to do. My lunch hour was rapidly dwindling down.
As I walked back to the office I wondered if perhaps if I wasn’t hopelessly out of it, that my time for being “cool” had effectively passed me by but I quickly nixed the idea for I knew that cool wasn’t a concept that should be defined by outward appearances, that the mind is what truly needed to be modified in order for one to be “cool.” So these people and their odd body modifications were either cool or they weren’t but it wasn’t because of anything they might have stuck through themselves or had permanently inked on their skin. Cool is a state of mind.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Juicing Lobsters and Butter Sauce Baseballers
I’m convinced that the world is in the grips of some sort of weird social meltdown. The news coming off the wires sounds like the dying shriek of a wino that finally got to close to the edge of the highway and was mowed down by a tweaking long haul trucker. Justice no longer hangs in the balance it hangs from the rafters with a noose around its neck and on its back are the long purple scars from its stay at Guantanamo Bay. The religious freaks are sharpening their crosses and walling off the west with stacks of shellacked Bibles. The bully named government, fat on hypocrisy, is on the other side of the seesaw and we’re stranded up in the air wondering whether we should jump or if we’re fast enough to run down the plank and kick him in the balls before he jumps off and we going flying through the air like suicidal lemmings. And there’s more…
The Mall down the road from my home has gone the way of Las Vegas with glittering acid trip billboards that spew forth bites of gibberish and in between these bites undetectable subliminal catch phrases are flashed and suddenly you have a craving for Social Security reform and Lite Beer. The center of this monstrosity is the football stadium sized Outdoor World and Bass Pro Shop, where outdoor fish and game Pimps, wearing brown polyester suit pants and belt buckles as big as satellite dishes, whore out fifty foot long pontoon boats and camouflage sweat pants to a redneck population that trolls the premises looking for the next best way to kill Bambi. It is this portion of the population that believes Jesus will rise again and will probably be driving the Budweiser car in the Daytona Five Hundred and will most certainly be a Republican.
Yes, the rednecks have been breeding, birth control be damned and they’re moving their junked cars and broken down appliances into the yard next to yours. So be warned. It’s a weird world and it just keeps getting weirder…
And the weirdest is yet to come. Trust me folks. I’m on your side…
According to a story from the AP by Mike Crissey (http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050302084709990002) it appears that a 22 pound lobster named Bubba hitchhiked its way from the waters of Nantucket to a Pittsburgh fish market where he was caught roughing up the help and demanding female lobsters be sent to his tank. I’ve heard of these types of crustaceans before and know they are a reckless bunch that frequent all night sand bars and swim recklessly in and out of lobster pots, daring the man to catch them.
Where this story took a weird turn for me personally was when I received a 3 AM call from an anonymous tipster who worked at the Pittsburgh fish market where Bubba was staying and who claimed to have found something very interesting at the bottom of his murky tank. No, it wasn’t lobster shit, although there were rumored to be several Baby Ruth size lobster logs floating about, what this tipster found hidden amongst the plaster castles and colored stones was used syringes, and no Bubba wasn’t diabetic.
I immediately had the syringes sent to a lab and the contents tested and it was of little surprise that the syringes held trace amounts of DMT, the once undetectable steroid sold by Victor Conte of now infamous Balco fame, who also gave athletes steroids code named, the "clear" and the "cream." YES! BUBBA WAS ON THE JUICE! I was staring right into the googly eyes of a new trend in shellfish training and I knew then that I had to have an exclusive interview with Bubba. I just hopped that I beat that bastard Brian Williams of NBC to the punch. Williams believes the heart of America lies beneath the faux waterfall in Cabela’s (the ugly twin sister of the Bass Pro Shop setup). Beneath his suit coat and slacks he wears a camouflage jump suit and always hides his hands on air so no one sees the grease on his palms. I know who you are Brian Williams.
I needed to act quickly and so set out in my Cherokee for Pittsburgh for an exclusive interview with this lobster named Bubba.
During the ride to the Steel City my source phoned me on my cell phone. He said that Bubba claimed the steroids were in the tank when he got there, that a King crab had occupied the tank before him and he was sure the stuff was his. I didn’t buy it for a minute. No lobster gets to be 15 times the size of his peers by clean living and good eating alone. What really bothered me though was why Bubba hadn’t been indicted by the grand jury with the rest of the Balco clientele and then it all became painfully clear, Bubba had turned states evidence.
* * *
I met Bubba in a sleazy hotel lobby in Oakland. He was sitting in a filthy tank filled with brackish water and was flanked by a lady Fiddler crab and two hussy lobsters. His black beady eyes kept twitching this way and that and his claws trembled uncontrolablly.
I turned on my tape recorder and Bubba snapped at me.
“Easy big fellow,” I said, “I’m not here to boil you.”
This seemed to put him at ease and so I commenced with the interview.
SM: “So, Bubba, did you have a relationship with Victor Conte and Balco?”
Bubba: Nothing.
SM: Did you rub something called the “clear” under your pinchers which was given to you by Victor Conte?
Bubba: Nothing.
SM: You are quite a bit bigger than the average 1.5 pound lobster and you attribute this to good eating and vigorous training?
Bubba: Nothing.
SM: This isn’t a very good interview. It’s been rumored that you were seen in the bay outside San Fransisco’s Candlestick park with Barry Bonds. That’s an awful long way from home isn’t it? What is your relationship with the baseball player?
Bubba: Nothing.
SM: You’ve seen the before and after pictures of Barry Bonds. How do you explain the growth in the size of his head? Did he shoot steroids directly into his jowls? Barry’s head is now so big that although he gained fifty pounds of muscle his body still appears to be the same size.
Bubba: Antennas twitch but he says nothing.
SM: Did Jose Conseco ask you to inject steroids in his backside in the toilet stall at the A’s Stadium and did he in fact rub the “cream” on your tail?
Bubba: Nothing.
At this point Bubba tried to pinch me but I blocked him with my notepad. This was the end of our interview. I knew then that Bubba wasn’t going to talk and it wasn’t just because he couldn’t talk it was because he was loyal to Balco and Victor Conte for helping him become the biggest and baddest lobster around.
At my hotel that night I pondered the steroid problem and how a lobster could get caught up in it all. The allure of being the biggest lobster in the tank must have been too much of a temptation for old Bubba much as I imagined it had been too much of a temptation for those baseball players that had multi-million dollar contracts on the line. Fans wouldn’t be so understanding though.
These great conveyers of purity, the average slobbering fan that dry humps the fantasy that sports figures are immortal role models who are supposed to be a better example to their children than they are, and are outraged at the recent allegations of their lobsters and baseball players juicing up should be ashamed of themselves. You are the same bastards that cheered like rabid monkeys in a free banana line when Mark McGwire hit 71 home runs. Did you really believe that Androstenediene was what he was taking when he hit all those home runs? If you do just stick your head back in the sand like the ignorant ostriches you want to be. Androstenediene does not produce steroid like effects.
Are you telling me that you just noticed the drastic change in the way players look these days? Babe Ruth looked like he was harboring a mini-bar and two showgirl under his jersey. Hank Aaron was so thin you could barely see him if he turned sideways. On average lobster tails used to be the size of a Twinkie but now some are as big as one of Dick Cheney's thighs. Did you really not know what was going on or did you just not want to know?
Forty years ago NFL football teams would put salad bowls of steroids on their training tables and players were told to take their “vitamins” before they ate and took handfuls of the drugs. The drug use amongst lobsters and baseball players may not have been around quite as long but the gross change in physiques over that last fifteen years should have been a clue that all was not as it should have been.
So I leave you, the hypocritical fan, with the ball, so to speak, in your hands. You can pretend at being outraged or you can look reality in the eyes and realize that a ball player isn't a perfect guy and shouldn’t be a role model for your kids any more than a lobster should be. You should be the role model for your kids and stop screwing your secretary and smacking your wives then maybe your kids will want to be more like you instead of a juiced up sports star.
* * *
It is with much regret that I inform my readers that Bubba the 22 pound lobster went the way of Ken Camniti (baseball player and steroid user) and died at the Pittsburgh Zoo. He will be missed. In Lieu of flowers donations can be sent to your local Red Lobster to help free other lobsters.
(http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050303090409990008)
The Mall down the road from my home has gone the way of Las Vegas with glittering acid trip billboards that spew forth bites of gibberish and in between these bites undetectable subliminal catch phrases are flashed and suddenly you have a craving for Social Security reform and Lite Beer. The center of this monstrosity is the football stadium sized Outdoor World and Bass Pro Shop, where outdoor fish and game Pimps, wearing brown polyester suit pants and belt buckles as big as satellite dishes, whore out fifty foot long pontoon boats and camouflage sweat pants to a redneck population that trolls the premises looking for the next best way to kill Bambi. It is this portion of the population that believes Jesus will rise again and will probably be driving the Budweiser car in the Daytona Five Hundred and will most certainly be a Republican.
Yes, the rednecks have been breeding, birth control be damned and they’re moving their junked cars and broken down appliances into the yard next to yours. So be warned. It’s a weird world and it just keeps getting weirder…
And the weirdest is yet to come. Trust me folks. I’m on your side…
According to a story from the AP by Mike Crissey (http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050302084709990002) it appears that a 22 pound lobster named Bubba hitchhiked its way from the waters of Nantucket to a Pittsburgh fish market where he was caught roughing up the help and demanding female lobsters be sent to his tank. I’ve heard of these types of crustaceans before and know they are a reckless bunch that frequent all night sand bars and swim recklessly in and out of lobster pots, daring the man to catch them.
Where this story took a weird turn for me personally was when I received a 3 AM call from an anonymous tipster who worked at the Pittsburgh fish market where Bubba was staying and who claimed to have found something very interesting at the bottom of his murky tank. No, it wasn’t lobster shit, although there were rumored to be several Baby Ruth size lobster logs floating about, what this tipster found hidden amongst the plaster castles and colored stones was used syringes, and no Bubba wasn’t diabetic.
I immediately had the syringes sent to a lab and the contents tested and it was of little surprise that the syringes held trace amounts of DMT, the once undetectable steroid sold by Victor Conte of now infamous Balco fame, who also gave athletes steroids code named, the "clear" and the "cream." YES! BUBBA WAS ON THE JUICE! I was staring right into the googly eyes of a new trend in shellfish training and I knew then that I had to have an exclusive interview with Bubba. I just hopped that I beat that bastard Brian Williams of NBC to the punch. Williams believes the heart of America lies beneath the faux waterfall in Cabela’s (the ugly twin sister of the Bass Pro Shop setup). Beneath his suit coat and slacks he wears a camouflage jump suit and always hides his hands on air so no one sees the grease on his palms. I know who you are Brian Williams.
I needed to act quickly and so set out in my Cherokee for Pittsburgh for an exclusive interview with this lobster named Bubba.
During the ride to the Steel City my source phoned me on my cell phone. He said that Bubba claimed the steroids were in the tank when he got there, that a King crab had occupied the tank before him and he was sure the stuff was his. I didn’t buy it for a minute. No lobster gets to be 15 times the size of his peers by clean living and good eating alone. What really bothered me though was why Bubba hadn’t been indicted by the grand jury with the rest of the Balco clientele and then it all became painfully clear, Bubba had turned states evidence.
* * *
I met Bubba in a sleazy hotel lobby in Oakland. He was sitting in a filthy tank filled with brackish water and was flanked by a lady Fiddler crab and two hussy lobsters. His black beady eyes kept twitching this way and that and his claws trembled uncontrolablly.
I turned on my tape recorder and Bubba snapped at me.
“Easy big fellow,” I said, “I’m not here to boil you.”
This seemed to put him at ease and so I commenced with the interview.
SM: “So, Bubba, did you have a relationship with Victor Conte and Balco?”
Bubba: Nothing.
SM: Did you rub something called the “clear” under your pinchers which was given to you by Victor Conte?
Bubba: Nothing.
SM: You are quite a bit bigger than the average 1.5 pound lobster and you attribute this to good eating and vigorous training?
Bubba: Nothing.
SM: This isn’t a very good interview. It’s been rumored that you were seen in the bay outside San Fransisco’s Candlestick park with Barry Bonds. That’s an awful long way from home isn’t it? What is your relationship with the baseball player?
Bubba: Nothing.
SM: You’ve seen the before and after pictures of Barry Bonds. How do you explain the growth in the size of his head? Did he shoot steroids directly into his jowls? Barry’s head is now so big that although he gained fifty pounds of muscle his body still appears to be the same size.
Bubba: Antennas twitch but he says nothing.
SM: Did Jose Conseco ask you to inject steroids in his backside in the toilet stall at the A’s Stadium and did he in fact rub the “cream” on your tail?
Bubba: Nothing.
At this point Bubba tried to pinch me but I blocked him with my notepad. This was the end of our interview. I knew then that Bubba wasn’t going to talk and it wasn’t just because he couldn’t talk it was because he was loyal to Balco and Victor Conte for helping him become the biggest and baddest lobster around.
At my hotel that night I pondered the steroid problem and how a lobster could get caught up in it all. The allure of being the biggest lobster in the tank must have been too much of a temptation for old Bubba much as I imagined it had been too much of a temptation for those baseball players that had multi-million dollar contracts on the line. Fans wouldn’t be so understanding though.
These great conveyers of purity, the average slobbering fan that dry humps the fantasy that sports figures are immortal role models who are supposed to be a better example to their children than they are, and are outraged at the recent allegations of their lobsters and baseball players juicing up should be ashamed of themselves. You are the same bastards that cheered like rabid monkeys in a free banana line when Mark McGwire hit 71 home runs. Did you really believe that Androstenediene was what he was taking when he hit all those home runs? If you do just stick your head back in the sand like the ignorant ostriches you want to be. Androstenediene does not produce steroid like effects.
Are you telling me that you just noticed the drastic change in the way players look these days? Babe Ruth looked like he was harboring a mini-bar and two showgirl under his jersey. Hank Aaron was so thin you could barely see him if he turned sideways. On average lobster tails used to be the size of a Twinkie but now some are as big as one of Dick Cheney's thighs. Did you really not know what was going on or did you just not want to know?
Forty years ago NFL football teams would put salad bowls of steroids on their training tables and players were told to take their “vitamins” before they ate and took handfuls of the drugs. The drug use amongst lobsters and baseball players may not have been around quite as long but the gross change in physiques over that last fifteen years should have been a clue that all was not as it should have been.
So I leave you, the hypocritical fan, with the ball, so to speak, in your hands. You can pretend at being outraged or you can look reality in the eyes and realize that a ball player isn't a perfect guy and shouldn’t be a role model for your kids any more than a lobster should be. You should be the role model for your kids and stop screwing your secretary and smacking your wives then maybe your kids will want to be more like you instead of a juiced up sports star.
* * *
It is with much regret that I inform my readers that Bubba the 22 pound lobster went the way of Ken Camniti (baseball player and steroid user) and died at the Pittsburgh Zoo. He will be missed. In Lieu of flowers donations can be sent to your local Red Lobster to help free other lobsters.
(http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050303090409990008)
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