Defiant Worm

Still beats digging ditches

2011-12-15T08:22:00.000-05:00

I was signing and distributing books a couple days ago at Barnes & Noble and the first customer to approach me seemed like a sure sale; talking about how he read A Land Remembered in one sitting and how he just loves Florida books. In retrospect I'm thinking he loves them almost as much as a good old Klan rally.

So there he was, holding my novel on his way to purchasing one and he says he just has to ask me one question: Did I vote for the current president of the United States? When I heard that I knew, from experience, that he would not like my answer.

The fact is, I don't vote except when I'm on the ballot but my boys, disenfranchised by age as they are, asked me to help Obama in their stead. Had they, in their impotence, required of me a McCain vote, I might have girded my loins and granted that. So I said to the prospective customer I sure did, to which he responded by putting my novel back on the stack and walking away.

Not an author to tolerate rudeness, especially from a non-buyer, I said, “That's awfully fascist of you.”

He said, still walking away, “I just don't want it.”

To which I said, “This is America, isn't it? You're not supposed to punish people for the way they vote.”

“Now that I know where you're coming from,” he said, turning half around, “I just don't want to expose myself to your writing.”

There you have it. I can understand if people don't want to expose their brain to crap, because every word you read goes in there and who knows what damage it can cause? I mean, look at this sorry lot of us that got exposed to at least twelve years of reading school curriculum. I'm pretty sure there's a connection. Think about it – only animals that can read go to psychiatrists.

My problem with this guy is, I'm pretty sure he regularly exposes his precious brain to crap of an order I never could dream of achieving. Maybe, like many of those worshiping at the altar of crap, he was simply afraid to contrast it with anything else.

Just say "yes" to coffee

2011-12-12T13:56:00.001-05:00

Wholesale hypocrisy: This caffeine-addicted society advising kids not to absorb drugs.

More stupid media-speak

2011-12-09T10:03:00.001-05:00

Unfortunately exposed again to a television news broadcast and heard the guy say "Our facebook page is blowing up." Would that that were really true. Whatever that would be.

Stupid media word of the month

2011-12-02T09:14:00.001-05:00

Activist: one who is very skilled in being active; adherent to activism; in modern media-speak: nameless, soulless, unloved, indistinct entity protesting inanities perpetrated by any government (example – two dozen activists were shot in Egypt today...); cultural activist: enzyme enlisted in the perpetration of yoghurt.

Driving on the phone

2011-11-04T12:14:00.000-04:00

Americans have agreed that hundreds of thousands will be slaughtered on behalf of the automobile industry and we're all pretty used to that. And since driving is fun, we accept the risk. But the auto has a new accomplice in mayhem, the cell phone, use of which killed 12,000 teenagers last year and maimed many more than that, not to mention the people incidentally run over while the teens were killing themselves. The communications industry has such power that cell phone use, more deadly than drunk driving, is legal in many states. In Tenneessee, where it is illegal, the fine is fifty dollars.

It is outrageous that this is allowed to continue. Since the government lacks the moral terpitude to address the situation, Americans should show that we don't. You want to protest something meaningful and easy? Instead of protesting Wall Street while texting your friends, protest the existence of cell phones. Put or throw them away until cell phones are incapable of working in a moving vehicle. Boycotting is easy, especially when boycotting something totally unnecessary. Just do it, America. Take a real stand for a change.

Rewriting history under our noses

2011-10-31T13:22:00.000-04:00

In a recent accidental exposure to a television news broadcast, I heard that the Iraq so-called War "started during the George W. Bush presidency." Quite a difference between that and "was started by George Bush." They're doing it already.

Euphemism of the month

2011-09-26T16:09:00.001-04:00

Euphemism of the month -

Substance abuse: the overuse of drugs purchased by nice people in stores – as distinguished from drug abuse, engaged in only by messed-up derelicts in alleys.

Tony Bennett

2011-09-23T16:02:00.001-04:00

I find it interesting that in this land of highly touted free speech and all, nearly ninety-year old Tony Bennett was required to affirm his patriotism because of a foreign policy opinion he expressed on a radio talk show. Where have you gone, Joe McCarthio?

9/11

2011-09-19T17:48:00.003-04:00

After the media mourn-fest attending the anniversary of the United States' chickens coming home to roost, I am left with some observations. It is interesting that most Americans consider it an attack on America. In the cause of accuracy it was an attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, two building complexes near the eastern edge of the vast piece of land we call the United States, geographically insignificant. In the media parlance of today, the victims were not the targets, they were collateral damage. The United States then went ahead and attacked itself. And Iraq of course. This country in fact never has been attacked from outside. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, a military base in the South Pacific, was extrapolated into an affront upon the entire continental United States. Many historians believe the American blockade of Japan left the Japanese no choice. For Korea and Vietnam, of course, the U.S never was attacked, only her dominoes. So apparently there is an aspect of human nature that embraces catastrophe of people thousands of miles hither because we pay the same tax collector. Therefore some farmer in Nebraska feels attacked when really, he was not. No doubt the people running the show understand this and mine it to justify having a war.

Also noteworthy is no mention of domestic responsibility for the 9/11 attack, like the idea, for example, that American military activities abroad might make people angry enough to perpetrate such acts. As one American soldier in Iraq said on tv, “If we busted into your house and tore everything up and pushed you around, you'd be out there the next day planting bombs by the road. Unless you're a wuss.”

Americans might see things more clearly if they try thinking about them in an unpatriotic way. And then they might notice that this now media event was nothing to what the United States military did to the people of Iraq, a country which truly was attacked. The last body count I read as the result of the American invasion was half a million, a significant percentage of the population. It seems a bit indulgent to sit and watch 9/11 again and remember where we were and how effected we were when so many Iraqis can't remember where they were when they were attacked because they're dead. As Americans mourn, they might mourn the likelihood that their tax collecting entity operates in a way that would cause this.

Classical Gas

2011-08-23T11:04:00.000-04:00

Against the advice of all higher cognitive functions I attended a film version the other day of Mozart's Magic Flute opera at the Enzian. How it delightfully surprised me, actually laugh- out-loud funny whenever this one big guy would speak gravely with a straight face in that goofy language. Why people didn't just crack up over Hitler with his Charlie Chaplin mustache to boot, I'll never know. Maybe you have to be German not to recognize stand-up when you see it. Also it was refreshing to get a heroine who could have picked her teeth with Twiggy. Far from requiring rescue, she looked quite capable of defeating the villain herself. Or being the villain. Since Placido Domingo's attraction to her was entirely skin deep, and there was plenty of it, maybe that's how it was in the day.

People are naturally inquisitive

2011-08-03T13:35:00.001-04:00

People are naturally inquisitive, always hoping to solve the mystery, understand the hidden meaning, learn the back-story. Not satisfied with our sensory look at the world, we must analyze its composition down to atoms. Yet it is the fate of modern man, casually connected to all worldwide malevolence, that he is almost daily made aware of events he cannot bear to contemplate.

His office is to shoulder the burden of evil without even the luxury of understanding it. Imagine modern man of a mere few hundred years ago, aware only of his own travails and those in his immediate vicinity; unenlightened by news of the most recent depredation placed upon members of his species, of anonymous sadness he can mourn only, never console or prevent. He has not been afflicted by history lessons poisoning his outlook with the knowledge of every god-awful horror ever perpetrated on a scale grand enough to be remembered by strangers. He was not weighed down, his days drained of their sunshine, by hundreds of years of misery. Imagine how lovely to live unaware of genocides occurring halfway around the world to people unknown to us beyond their terrible fate. How delightful not to toil under the weight of World Wars, knowing that multitudes suffered yet ignorant of the actual suffering. How excellent not to measure our happiness by the millions outrageously denied it. How much finer not to live in the age of information. Let’s face it. Humans aren’t newsworthy anymore.

In the Footprints of Bartram

2011-07-14T14:04:00.002-04:00

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times to go outdoors. Yet she did it, barely considering the consequences of her action. Yes, from the middle of our society ridiculous with people afraid to walk beyond the front door to the driver door, scared to drink non-plastified water, loathe to breathe unconditioned air, a hero has risen.

I found her in the unlikely pages of Lifestyle Magazine, which the mailman had shoved unsolicited into my box. This publication is a local horror that usually features gripping cover stories like "Orlando’s Ten Best Dentists." She is the editor but not for long. I believe Tarre Beach soon will be getting a call from OUTSIDE Magazine.

I would like to quote from her front piece: “Inspired by our piece on local waterways, I decided to check out the lake in my own backyard.”

Here we have it. Just like that, after living there ten years, well, let me quote again the source: ‘Without really thinking about it, I just put on my sneakers and walked myself down to the water’s edge.”

No sooner does she notice the lake in her backyard, then BAM! She’s thrown off the gum boots she stalks the perimeter of her house in and applied mere sneakers for swiftness and agility that she might survive the trek, but still guaranteeing nothing.

Standing amidst the shin-high grass, the intrepid woman posed jauntily for one final photo in her bright-white pants and blue top, before …once again, in her words: “Moments after the photo you see here was taken by remote release (Absolutely alone she was forced to use ‘remote release’), I fell in.”

Heavens to Betsy! One would expect this photograph to be the last we see of Ms. Beach, yet she fights for life though “scratched up by nasty thorns, bitten by mosquitoes and had a near panic attack when I heard a big splash behind me.” She writes so casually about a big splash behind her. How many of us would keep cool as she did, avoiding a full blown panic attack? In the entire account not once does she tell us she shat herself, in this day of confessional writing, admirable in itself whether she did or not. The thing is, she didn’t subject us to the image of it. Again…”Back on shore and cleaned up I decided to learn more about Trout Lake.”

She did what most of us would have done in the first place and Googled it, learning that the lake “is 80.5 acres large.” Largeness pretty well tells it all anyway.

Finally, this magazine editor ventured toward a lake with no regard for her own safety that she might save us: “Stick to known waterways”, she warns, “that have parks and boat rentals and other amenities. Let my wet, itchy, scary water adventure be a lesson to you.”

Letters from the Politically Correct

2011-01-10T10:36:00.001-05:00

Acme Athletic Gear
Ronconcomo, New York
Public Relations

To whom it may concern:

How can you, in good conscience, continue selling knee guards in this enlightened time? It is the most knee-guardly thing I've ever heard of.

Appalled,
Christopher Robin

# # #

Dear Mr. Robin:

We are presently looking at a plan for restructuring the company. Your letter has inspired us to redouble our efforts. Thank you for your interest.

In your debt,
Joe Acme

# # #

Politically Incorrect
Bill Maher
3-15-99

Dear Mr. Maher!

I'm a frickin' American and I'm as white as Jesus' ass. This whole country's made up of frickin' Americans. Why is it only the black race is referred to on your show as a frickin' American? It happens over and over again. What makes all your guests so damn afraid to call someone else a frickin' American? The name of your show should be Demographically Incorrect.

Sincerely,
A frickin' American, God dammit

# # #

Dear Honky:

It's African American. And what you don't get, is there's a fine line between being hailed as politically incorrect and being perceived as ignorant. An ignorant person cannot be politically incorrect. He's just ignorant, like you, and that's not what my show is all about. It's about informed people having the courage to sound ignorant. Once my guests have used the current terminology to isolate the darker races, they can say whatever they want, short of queer bashing.

Candidly,
The Star

# # #

Virginia Clarion
3/12/99
letters to the editor

Dear editor:

I'd just like to know what's wrong with being niggardly anyway. My father was a Niggard, his father before him, and right on down the line, all Niggards and proud of it. What the Hell'd we fight the Civil War for?

Fightin' mad,
Niggard Lee VI

# # #

Crisp-Coon Funeral Home, Lake Alfred, Florida
Mr. Crisp/ Mr. Coon
3/12/'99

Dear Whoever:

I can no longer contain the revulsion I feel driving by your sign on my way to work at Cypress Gardens. In our prevailing moral climate, it's a wonder your establishment has not been put out of business or forced to a name change. I'd like to help: The more appropriate Crisp-Coot comes immediately to mind. Crisp-Loon doesn't offend anybody who would care. Crisp-Moon doesn't say much, but that's the idea. Crisp-Toon has a happy sound. I hope you choose one of these immediately and erase this highly visible blemish upon our town.

Sincerely,
Wannaweewee Buttcant

# # #

Dear lady:

Believe me, we've tried. Here is our list: Crisp-Colored Person - sounds somehow archaic. Crisp-Darkey - seems a bit overstated, or overdone, if you like. Jungle bunny on a spit - too crude. Nobody likes to think about spit.

Crisp-Negro - too stuffy. Crisp-Nigger - rhymes with trigger - we don't want to be promoting guns; it looks too self serving. Crisp- Spook sounds too afterlife. You can see the problem we've had.

Thank you for your suggestions. We never thought of those and should make a decision soon.

Yours truly,
The Head Figger

# # #

Ted Koppel
ABC News
Monday

Dear Mr. Koppel:

When did they start callin 'em niggards? I gotta say I like the direction things is goin. I quit keepin up when they got to Afro-American. Where's the fun in that?

"Hey! Afro-American! Get over here and wash my hub caps."

That just don't work for me. But I can sure live with niggard. Finally got somethin to make me glad I lived this long. Shoulda knowed they'd run outta names sooner or later and come back round to the start.

I didn't know you had it in you, boy. We're havin a membership drive shortly, hopin to see you.

Rejuvenated,
John Baumgartner
Imperial Wizard, Orlando, Florida

# # #

Dear John:

Please stop watching Nightline.

Best wishes,
Ted

On becoming Stupid

2010-12-21T13:04:00.000-05:00

Anybody notice how insidious is the language of cyberspace? How computers worm their way into our brains, such as they are, by us applying terrestrial terms to computer functions? The earliest and most grievous one I noticed was "surfing" the web. Yep, that sure makes staring at a computer screen sound cool but I see no resemblance at all to surfing. It reminds me of the way the media morphed Pee Wee Herman into Osama Bin Laden and then Osama into Sadam Hussein. Lately I notice how people "go to " websites and stuff. I would like to point out that nobody "goes there". At least not yet. We "look at" them. Not interactive enough, is it?

What we say probably becomes our reality so people should take a cue from Popeye and resume saying what they mean, not what the computer promoters want them to say which actually sounds pretty darn ridiculous.

More what's really wrong with WMMO

2010-11-24T13:43:00.001-05:00

When the guy who talks everybody through their drive to work relays the time to us, I would like to know why he tells the time, then always explains it (it's 8:25, 25 after eight). Are there aliens listening in readying their attack, who require this?

It's the little things, really

2010-10-07T16:42:00.001-04:00

In my continuing probe into WMMO radio's motives and methods, I find myself wondering, after years of informing their "listeners" at almost every opportunity of their "music promise" to "I.D. the songs and never talk over the music", why they still say it. Clearly somebody is amazingly proud of this unprecedented posture which they spend close to an hour a day touting. But do they think people can't remember for fifteen minutes that this is their mind boggling "music promise"?

There has to be something else going on here.

Could it be a money saver? An hour a day not playing music? And what about their other "music promise", to play no more than fifteen different songs?

WMMO - probably even wierder than we can ever know. It's the little things, really.

The media - you gotta love it

2010-10-04T10:15:00.000-04:00

It seems Americans are still burning witches at the stake; modern witches being worshippers of nature. Yet no eyebrows are raised by senators and congressmen worshipping at the altar of money and making real human sacrifices there by the thousands.

The media - you gotta love it.

Politically incorrect things to say to roadkill

2010-09-16T13:57:00.001-04:00

Politically incorrect things to say to roadkill:

Come here often?
Does your mother know you're doing this?
Wanna race?
Been on the road long?
Where you going?
Look out! Just kidding.
What would Jesus do?

AT&T

2010-08-31T14:09:00.000-04:00

Well, I just survived the crucible of trying to get my disconnected phone and internet dealt with by AT&T. They sure don't make it easy but they do give bonuses while you wait to speak to a "customer service professional." Now I always did think driving on the phone could make you crash but I had no idea that people talking on their cell phone are "23 times as likely to be involved in some sort of a safety critical event." Better known, no doubt, as an SCE. I haven't heard that kind of word-smithing since Congolisa Rice hit the road.

It's re-election time again

2010-08-11T13:12:00.000-04:00

It's re-election time again, re-election since it's mostly just signing up the incumbents for another ride. A lot can be gleaned from the words the hopefuls use. Howdy Doody (Bill McCollum) refers not to “the other candidate” but to his “opponent,” clearly demonstrating that he sees this as a fight for a job, a fight the taxpayers of course, in our irrelevancy, never can win. We are the prize.

Driving through Macon, Georgia

2010-08-02T13:21:00.001-04:00

Driving through Macon, Georgia. Saw The Ramsbottom Company. Big letters on the side of their brick building. What are these people thinking? There's just no way too read that in a favorable light. Unless- that's what they're selling - ramsbottom. I don't know.

Listener Reward

2010-07-19T13:57:00.001-04:00

WMMO-fm keeps playing my three favorite popular songs with sufficient frequency to keep me risking, occasionally, the inane prattle of the broadcasting employees. Here's my latest WMMO perversity update: You worker ants out there, you toilers and laborers, you latter day slaves to whom this radio station is directed used to have workdays, usually Monday through Friday. WMMO has rescued you from this. You now have "WMMO workdays" but only I suppose, if you are one of their “listeners.” Clearly this radio station would take you by the hand, or some other appendage, and lead you through life, denying you now even the autonomy of your own workday. Probably some day soon you will be able to hold a radio up to your butt and WMMO will wipe it with some special “quality time” words from the d.j. Or maybe Shawn What'shisname's tongue will actually emerge from the speaker to perform this “listener reward.” I can't wait.

In the meantime I'm starting a contest for best acronym – what insidious evil do the call letters stand for? If we figure it out, the spell will be broken and all WMMO “listeners” released from their audio bondage. Vive la revolucion!

The Fart Man Still Cometh

2010-07-12T10:37:00.000-04:00

Those who have read and appreciated The Fart Man Cometh from my fabulous collection of relatively true stories, BITE ME! may appreciate knowing that the Fartman is still making the most of his God (or somebody else) given talent. In fact, he seems only getting better (or worse). Today's adventure may have been his most glorious ever, recognition being key to the glory, anonymity key to enjoying it.

He visited CVS and though he probably already has been forgotten, his effect will not be. He walked around the entire store seeking a few different items. In his own words, “It was silently flowing out of me like the Gulf oil spill. It was like the difference between a cracked door and one flung open.”

Everything he had eaten for the last two days was still in him, lots of bar-b-qued spare ribs and yoghurt included, festering into a fetid mixture only the peculiar chemistry of his body could produce. From experience I stay away at such times. When he got to the cash registers a horrified clerk was ranting about “a hideous odor. It's all over the store.” Another employee confirmed that he, also had smelled it and one of the customers commented as well. In self defense employees walked around the store spraying deodorizer, puny effort that it would have been. Fartman stood in line grinning broadly, conversing with someone who thought he must just be having a very pleasant day. Indeed he was.

Friend is a verb

2010-06-28T14:35:00.000-04:00

Number 1 clearest sign that communication in modern America is dead:

Friend is a verb.

Befriend was a verb already there and ready to go but it didn't make the cut. Maybe because it actually means something good, referring to the compassionate act of befriending someone. No, they had to take one of the noblest nouns in our language and strip it of decency, emotion and meaning. Friend is now a verb that lives in the wasteland of computers. In computer-speak you can talk complete nonsense and people will respond to you in kind. So anyway here's how my day went:

I woke up and floored my feet so I could food myself. After that I outsided myself and got biked. I biked over to Jack's and we automobiled to the beach where we oceaned until we got sundowned. Then we barred at the Breakers and I beered Jack because he hasn't been moneyed lately. After that we womaned. We didn't woman very well so we just homed. It was real.

WMMO – Fifth Turd Bank - more than a feeling?

2010-06-16T09:30:00.001-04:00

I heard a folksy ad for Fifth Turd Bank on guess what radio station. It starts out with a little acoustic guitar to relax our sphincter muscles, than tells about their Aw shucks “relationship banking.” I happen to have first hand knowledge of this relationship. Here's a clue about the type relationship it is: it starts when you bend over.

My down-home neighbors at fifth Turd were able to exercise basic human decency only after Greg Dawson of the Orlando Sentinel called them. It was stunning how completely the threat of bad publicity improved our “relationship.”

WMMO – Fifth Turd Bank - more than a feeling?

What does WMMO really stand for?

2010-05-05T15:33:00.001-04:00

Just when you think you're done writing about how spooky WMMO fm radio is, you tune in and soon you're further impressed. If these people really know their "listeners" and their "listeners" really relate to the sort of patronizing, spoon-fed crap the disc jockeys say, then there is a large segment of our population beyond my comprehension. So here it is: Once in a while I tune in WMMO because they play over and over again a couple of my favorite popular tunes. As they play about two dozen songs total, I figure there's a pretty good chance I'll hit one. What I heard today, I never could have imagined, much less imagined hearing over the air. The disc jockey started plugging a wonderful new service for anybody gutless enough and living in a soup of office-bound misery so pervading his life and his being, to take advantage of it. Wait for it....

He prefaced it by saying what a really bad idea it is to give somebody who gets on your nerves, some "tool" the finger in person. So - some entrereneur out there will anonymously e-mail the finger to someone in your office who is a "real tool". I confess I have no idea what he means with this use of the word "tool". I am sure only that he is mocking his "listeners" when he uses it. Then, to justify this, he speaks of how "they've seen some amended behaviour as a result of this". "They" has to be God, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny because omnipresence is the only way anybody could be in these offices and see and judge this behavior amendment.

Now just imagine the positive effect these anonymous fingers will have. Someone gets one and wonders who in the office sent it, who hates him. Could make for a real improvement in an already oppressive atmosphere. He didn't give any examples of the "amended behavior". This guy is no John Tesh.

I thought when I turned it on a few weeks ago and heard a lady disc jockey talking about what great botox this one doctor gives, that was as perverse as it got. Guess i was wrong. This station is clearly some sort of nauseous support system for people whose office job is their life so they may continue making that substitution for the greater good. It does keep me tuning in and writing about it in cyber space. Maybe that's the real purpose. I'd feel a lot better with that.

For God's Sake, Don't Drink the Water!

2010-04-27T09:53:00.001-04:00

Looks like the year 9595 is arriving ahead of schedule. Instead of “panic in the streets” we have teenage girls panicking because their cellular telephone stopped transmitting. According to a reliable source, girls at school actually become hysterical upon temporarily being excluded from the web - like adults who can't find the teevee remote but worse. Also there is a segment of society who cannot go anywhere without being directed by a satellite. GPS quits, they are helpless to advance. But that's all topped by a horrific tale of suffering related to me at the Lake Lily Art Show. A man and a woman kayaking on the Wekiva River when they - imagine how scary this would be – ran out of water. Of course I thought they meant the river suddenly dried up and they were stuck on the bottom. But that wasn't it. They were talking about the water in their little bottles. Well, they had foolishly prepared inadequately for the expedition and thirst
began to overtake them, gnawing at their throats, parching their very innards.

“It was really terrible,” they said, being out there with nothing to drink, probably at least a half mile from safety.

If this had been the Cleveland River I could sympathize but the Wekiva is a clear spring. When I visit Florida springs, I always enjoy drinking the water so I said, “I have to ask you something. Why didn't you drink the river?”

They paused for a moment like it was unfair of me to ask this most pertinent question. Then the woman claimed fear of alligators, which are not known to police the river vigilantly for unauthorized drinking. The man dismissed the alligator threat, then looked a little sheepish and alluded vaguely to the possibility of germs.

I would love to know how much thirst they would have allowed themselves before caving in and chancing natural water; or if they'd have just given up and died out there. Clearly these people are adapted to life inside the house but some vestigial instinct pushed them out into nature. It's still in their genes if not their brains.

On the subject of germs, that nasty horde always waiting to swarm up and take over the world, I recommend financial investment in Purell. Going to many businesses as I do selling my books, I am in the unique position to know that every single office out there has a big old bottle of that goo sitting on the counter. I don't know what forces inspired this revolution but I believe it is just for appearances. It's hard to imagine anyone but a German standing there and squirting some into his palms. If people do actually start to bathe every time they walk into a new office, then we will see some formidable germs arise, much like the antiseptic hospital setting that gave us Mersa.

So here it is, our great society which would rather publicly debate the policy on gays in the military or whether or not there should be a new basketball stadium than the shocking scandal that across this land people have lost their minds and their independence to the degree that they tend lawns but not gardens. PERHAPS IT NEEDS TO BE A HEADLINE. Here are a few suggestions:

FLORIDA TEENAGER FALLS INTO PIT OF DESPAIR WHEN CELLPHONE QUITS

FLORIDA DRIVER CAN'T READ A ROAD MAP

FLORIDIAN WON'T DRINK WATER WITHOUT A PLASTIC BOTTLE

FLORIDIANS SANITIZE THEMSELVES ALL DAY

FLORIDIANS GROW GRASS INSTEAD OF FOOD

FLORIDIANS WATCH TELEVISION OVER AND OVER AGAIN

FLORIDIANS SEEN WALKING ON TREADMILLS

Hey – how about this one?

FLORIDIAN SEEN BREATHING FRESH AIR -

Nah – too far fetched

Golf, Anyone?

2010-04-19T17:14:00.000-04:00

Anybody else notice how creepy the terminology is on WMMO FM radio? It seems to issue straight from the bosom of the great corporate mother, soothing and consoling her minions in their monotonous presence, the queen bee blowing her slaves a common experience in their ears, granting brotherhood in their unified purpose never to flag in feeding the beast they were born to serve.

Yes, they have music for your “drive time,” you hordes of insects on your way to work, altogether swarming from the little houses and apartments you swap your lives for. They even run interference on the highway to ensure you arrive on time. To ease you back to your “quality time” music, of course is music for the drive away from work.

They have your life fine tuned, music for every aspect of it – driving to work, driving home and the “quality time” before you go to sleep. Why do they divide your life like this? Why can't they just play the music? It's rude not to speak to those Orlandoans who don't nine-to-five, leaving them out of this mass medium of existence, alienating them from the mainstream.

Since it is ultimately all about maintaining the Great Work Pyramid, none of this is haphazard. And while you may have somewhat individual, if largely indistinguishable lives, you are enhanced by the same soundtrack. And what a soundtrack it is! Some time back WMMO dropped the pretense of playing many different songs, claiming no longer variety but “the best variety”, meaning a handful carefully chosen to maintain your hypnosis, recycled ad nauseum. Many of the mid-day songs are rendered by someone apparently straining his voice through the anus of a unicorn, venting for “listeners” the anxiety produced by their sensory overload of an existence. If they do play a song you love, keep “listening” – you'll soon tire of it. But to spice up life, they offer “listener rewards” and “free money!”

For sure clones of WMMO are directing lives all over the land of the free and the home of the brave, “listeners” dutifully drinking their cups of coffee so they can volunteer to be cogs in a machine, then trading caffeine for Budweiser Saturday and Sunday, stupidly being swept into that sweet goodnight, satisfied to be one small drop in the vast tide of consumers drawing ever farther from the shore to drift without landmark or foothold.

What is the meaning for the targets? I think it can be found in the language, literally true. You say you work for so-and-so. Exactly right, you do. You do little for yourself, the bulk of your life devoted to the entity you “work for,” no doubt facilitated by the human propensity for worship. Imagine allocating this much time to your family or to nature. Perhaps you would not constantly be seeking a connection. But that would be too much “quality time” which is supposed to be a rare thing that happens briefly once a day with WMMO setting the tone. You are a “listener,” not making even your own noise. What an astounding gift is time, how readily squandered when in great abundance. WMMO hides nothing in the blatant patronization of her listeners. Listen closely and you will hear the broadcasters droning as to morons.

With only one day to live, few would spend it like this. But they willingly spend thousands. I'm just waiting for unicorn anus beer.

The Econ River

2010-03-21T10:26:00.000-04:00

Well, the Econ River, heroine of my fabulous novel Paradise Interrupted, is in the crosshairs again. This time the county commissioners uncharacteristically didn't perform all manner of unspeakable acts of passion on the developer before granting his every wish. Ah, maybe because the developer in this case is the three women who inherited the land from their father and not some big company from the charismatic "out of state". Suspiciously none of the commissioners condemned the proposal, just saying things like it's not the right time, clearly leaving the door open for future pandering. Kind of like saying it wasn't "the right time" for the Iraq war.

As always, though, the developer lawyer was bald.

Panama

2010-03-10T16:02:00.001-05:00

I went to Panama recently and saw what a real warning label looks like on a cigaret pack. Several different images are randomly placed on all packs. One features the open mouth of someone with mouth and teeth rotted by smoking. My favorite features a dead rat beside a backstroking roach, drawing the link between ingredients in rat and roach poison and “smokes.” Perhaps in Arabian countries they depict a dead camel.

I used to be proud of United States warning labels until I saw what can be done in what they call “the developing world” where people lack our modern advantages. Before I ever saw a cigaret pack there I had noticed nobody smoked. The only people I ever saw smoking in Panama were European tourists. Guess it'll never happen here. This attack on a huge health problem is just too simple, effective and bad for business.

Blowers in the Wind

2009-12-08T09:31:00.001-05:00

When humans wish to demonstrate that their species alone has true intelligence, then they must be very selective about the evidence they present. My case in point is the human capacity for operating a “blower” to clear leaves and dirt from pavement. Possibly even more astounding is the human capacity to pay someone else to do it.

Perhaps they never have heard about our friends “wind” and “rain” who humbly perform the task with neither clamor nor pollution. Maybe they are unfamiliar also with “brooms”. Mother nature decorates with fallen chlorophyl factories and bits of dirt the asphalt zones that defend our feet against contact with earth. This is an offense. Instead of Varoom why not a broom?

The problem is, and I truly believe this, the broom is not a stupid enough solution to their neurosis . Why can't some transient dirt and leaves lay upon the paving? And why must the space support for all time no sign of the organic? It is in the human brain that nature once vanquished shall remain vanquished. She may mount no comeback however pitiful and ineffectual.

There you have it. At any time of the day you may hear a man with a blower moving leaves off pavement as wind blows more on. Just yesterday I witnessed a man blowing leaves off a public highway. No other animal is interested in this project. It is either sheer genius and unavailable to my ordinary brain and the platypus' or clear evidence that humans actually are the only animals without true intelligence.

Field and Stream

2009-10-17T09:37:00.000-04:00

For some reason I get free copies of Field and Stream in the mail. They could leave off the stream part. It’s almost all hunting. Hunting these days, I have learned, is buying a can of deer whiz to splash on a tree, then climb up the tree and sit on a platform waiting for some deer attracted by those pretzels you’re eating, and bushwack him or her. The purpose of all this is to make the deer glad to pose for pictures. If the deers had any sense, they’d scope the pattern and make themselves more friendly, saving everybody a lot of trouble.

Say what you want about hunters and hunting, like them or revile them, I have learned that people who read hunting magazines, presumably hunters, have something many have long suspected of conservative talk-show hosts - little dicks. Yep – that’s right – three full page ads again this month – get your bigger dick right here!

No kidding. And in case you’re worried that ordering a bigger dick means you have a small one – don’t be. Apparently even guys with way too big dicks wish it was bigger. Of the purpose I’m not sure. The only reason I can see why every guy wants his Johnson to be a Johansen is so we don’t have to walk so far to pee. You know, stroll halfway into the men’s room and Put out that fire! Over a lifetime that could save lots of strolling. Of course Field and Stream is famous as a wholesome magazine that can lure the coming generation off the streets and into the woods, so we must assume today’s kids will be ordering their dick dip or penis pills in preparation for manhood. Probably the younger they start the bigger it gets. Maybe they won’t even need a super high powered rifle. They’ll just sit up there in the tree and whack down Bambi with their giant appendage. I guess that’s another use.

I have watched my self retreat from life’s pleasures....

2009-09-01T13:11:00.001-04:00

Over the last month and a half I have watched my self retreat from life’s pleasures. It began with the morning I awoke with a balloon where my left foot had been. The affliction stayed and so, lacking a personal physician, I drove down to the emergency room at 7:30 Thursday morning. I lucked into an empty waiting room, a circumstance I had dared to hope for with my early arrival. I was ushered quickly into my own room where the doctor believed it might be gout until my blood test indicated otherwise. He was an oriental sort of guy and dove right into my complaint. He ordered X-Rays and then connected me to an intravenous anti-inflammatory drug bolstered by anti-biotic in case it was an infection. Five hours later I was free to go and the deflated foot felt fine enough that I took the boys and their friends to Blue Springs and had a great time swimming and snorkeling. I began the course of prescription antibiotic that night yet by morning the foot was back looking like a balloon-animal rooster, my toes as the comb.

I hobbled back in the next morning but not early enough and a bad choice of days. Progress was slow, the triage nurse informed me, because on Friday people don’t come to work. Many people who arrived after me went in ahead of me, I was told because they didn’t require a room. Six hours later I was beckoned through the swinging doors of hope to wait with a personable therapist of some sort who finally said, “I’m going to go get the man. This guy knows everything.”

He returned a half hour later with a dumpy guy in a doctor suit who looked at my foot from a comfortable distance and admitted he didn’t know what was wrong with it. Then they let me go with advice to keep it up and iced.

It has been a month with my left foot up and regularly iced. At first the pain was like having a kidney stone in my foot but that eased. The boys’ mother, not a terribly solicitous person by nature, treated me kindly at first, even bringing me food. This lasted a few days. After that my constant presence on the couch was tolerated with no thick veil of impatience. Sympathy also drained from the boys and my inert state became a source of amusement for them. Many times I rose to hobble to the bathroom, a dreaded and painful move at best, only to find one crutch shorter than the other. Rare was the morning I did not awake with a penis drawn on my forehead. Disabused of any chance at retaliation, I was poked, prodded, squirted and farted upon with clear similarities to the wolf pack when the leader has gone down. I could easily imagine the affectionate tricks they would play on me if I were attached to a breathing tube. And I saw plainly what fun they will have with my body should I chance to die. I also knew with a certainty that when I go to my grave it will be as a dickhead. This will be the last sight of me on earth and how I will be remembered. Of this I am sure.

I paid another visit to the Emergency Room to complain of my malingering. It was early and not a Friday and I got right in. This doctor was a middle age woman who called me “kid” as if she were Bogart and I Bacall. This had the intended effect of showing me things weren’t so serious after all and I felt immediately at ease.

“How ya doin kid?”

“Been better.”

She held my foot. “This isn’t you, kid. You’re too healthy for this kind of thing. This is for diabetics and overweight people.”

She looked at the X-Rays which indicated arthritis to her so she ordered a cat-scan for greater detail. The cat-scan showed her that my foot and ankle bones are perfect and arthritis free. This result didn’t help her diagnosis so she gave up although she did opine that the earlier antibiotic had been pointless. Humphrey prescribed more anti-inflammatory drugs. I suspect I’ll be back with a kidney problem.

I spend my recumbent days now plotting revenge on the children, should I ever again be capable of it. In the meantime my left leg has atrophied practically to a skin covered series of bones, an almost unending source of hilarity for my loving offspring.

I have gone to the Jewett Orthopaedic Clinic and been examined by a doctor who specializes in ankles. At last I must get my answer. He tries to twist my ankle, compares it to the right one which he can twist, pokes and finds the tender spots, makes me try to stand on my toes, views cat scan, X-Ray and blood test and at the end of it says he doesn’t know what’s causing my problem though he’s sure it isn’t gout; but I should take some more anti-inflammatory drugs and he gave me a prescription for a five hundred dollar ankle brace.

I’ve decided I’m just going to walk on the damn thing how it is, come what may, because I may never get another chance.

Belly Button

2009-08-12T10:01:00.000-04:00

The first time he saw his belly button – that remarkable socket into which the universe had plugged itself, through which all living had flowed as he blasted from the great eternal oblivion of notness into a seventy year battle to live and exult on a planet he had evolved on but never known about - it was no longer connected by anything and he chased his belly to find the rest.

It was an early epiphany, a huge moment full of running, swimming, rolling downhill, escaping your mother and ’57 Corvettes; but it lacked the impact of the first time he didn’t see it.

“Uh, what the hell?” he said to the world as much as to his wife in the bathroom.

“What the living hell?” in a voice more panicked than picnicked, betraying a tone of realization usurping disbelief.

“Did you say something, honey?”

He tried to find the words but didn’t want her to know, was suddenly ashamed as a fetid, unclean thing. She wouldn’t have him anymore. He stole another glance at his toned, hairless now featureless belly, ran a hand over it with wonder. He wanted desperately to get her out here, have a look, for surely she would see what he couldn’t for some reason. But he couldn’t win that one. He had no navel or no mind and he couldn’t decide which he wanted to keep.

He heard the shower start. “Well, you see, honey, it seems my belly button has gone missing. Isn’t that kind of funny?”

“What do you mean, you silly freak? Let me see.”

She would pseudo-seductively waltz over, bathrobe loosely tied. “That’s odd, she would say on close examination, the bathrobe involuntarily closing up. “Do you have a hernia or something?”

You can see Kirk Douglas in everybody’s torso if you stare long enough. She’d run her hand across my uninterrupted abs. “No dimple, where’s Kirk? Come on, Kirky Kirky, where are you hiding?” she’d say in the calm before the storm. Then, “what are you??!?” she’d scream terror stricken, running out the house naked onto the admiring lawn.

The shower stopped. “That was quick. Maybe she already knows. Hell, I’ve been laying here asleep all damn night. ‘Honey, did you take my navel? Come on now, where is it? I need it for work you know. Suppose Mr. Feeney saw me without it.’”

“Strict policy here. Proper bellies only. No navel, no job.”

“Wouldn’t want me to lose my job would you?”

“You still there, darling?” the voice came from the bathroom.

“Of course. Why?”

“Oh, I just thought you might have already left. Do you happen to have my belly button?”

Remember when you had that horrible stomach ache, then farted for about a minute until it went away? Or when…..

“You too, eh?

And then she exited from the bathrobe in front of the mirror and he saw his belly button on her back, not even opposite her own but between the shoulder blades. It was all out in the open now. He went to her and felt it.

“God damn honey – look at your back,” he said, relieved that it wasn’t just him and happy to at least see his belly button somewhere.

“I can’t do that, you know. Why? What’s wrong?” she said a little panicked and picnicked.

“Do you feel this?” he said gently, inserting an index finger and scouring for lint.

“Ai! What are you doing?”

“Listen. I think we’ve entered a transmigratory phase where our body parts start mingling,” noticing a familiar breast hanging from his arm at the moment she screamed.

“It’s time we got divorced.”

“I believe you’re right,” he said through a mouth he’d known before only from the outside.

That’s when the ominous sucking started up. He followed the sound to its source that was his belly button turned wide vacuum cleaner nozzle and his wife an old fashioned Electrolux, great for picnics and panicking. Sure, it got him and he went into the most amazing strawberry Jello and a giant stuck his huge spoon in and his belly button moved on.

The Trump Card

2009-07-16T09:16:00.001-04:00

Once in a while I get talking politics with someone who finally must point out that the United States is the greatest country in the world although he's never been to another one. This is his trump card, the one he pulls out when all else fails, usually in an heroic attempt to defend something indefensible, like the last eight years; intended to validate all his previous arguments. I mean, right. Shouldn’t I surrender? How can anybody argue with that?

I got to wondering where this comes from. Is it important for the person's self esteem that he live in the world's greatest country? So if he hailed from Andorra his rallying cry would be the same? Or does he truly believe the U.S. is the world's greatest country even without that title being conferred by a three person panel? And so then, considering how great all those other countries are, that means the U.S. probably can do no wrong and is above reproach?

After watching the All-Star game I'm thinking this country needs to be greater; for is own sake and for those other countries that need something to shoot for and not at. It needs to be a country that doesn't demonize marijuana while informing children trying to watch the All Star game without becoming emotionally scarred by Flomax ads, that they can't enjoy life without Miller beer and certainly, there is no real beauty in a summer day without Budweiser. (An optimist would hope kids will notice the correlation between beer and Flomax use and conclude that beer damages one’s ability to pee right; so then beer drinkers will need Flomax someday. They may even suspect collusion there; but that’s a lot to ask of a nine-year old concerned at the moment for the strength of his stream.) It needs to be a country that doesn't blatantly breed its next generation of alcohol and coffee addicted sheep who would rather sit around watching other people play games on tv then play games themselves. Hey – maybe it’s because Americans have learned not to try to enjoy a weekend without beer and it’s hard to engage in sports while inebriated. Easier to follow our swilling orders from the couch. The pusher man isn’t only on street corners. He’s in your living room.

If marijuana is a gateway drug to worse things, then a greater case can be made that beer is. Sure hard alcohol advertising was banned on television. Why not? They don’t need it when they can hook eight year olds on what a great idea beer is. The rest will follow. Beer companies get quite a bang for their television advertising buck and hard alcohol companies get a free ride.

So, yes –maybe we live in the greatest land in the world but its hyper-dependent population seems somewhat less magnificent.

Palatka

2009-06-08T11:33:00.000-04:00

Palatka – most memorable Memorial Day parade ever – no floats, no marching band -– the lead old vet got to stand in the back of a pick-up truck, hands on the cab like a friendly bag of fertilizer. Next came walking vets in plumed hats. The Viet Nam vets looked more like they were there to protest the whole thing. And every little girl in town was Miss Something To Do With Blue Crabs, all in Tinker Bell dresses and gold hair bands. The absolute queen had the wave to an amazingly robotic degree. Her whole body seemed to pivot around the elbow. Most memorable, some guy riding a more gigantic Brahma bull then ever I imagined existed – like Mongol in the world’s greatest movie – followed by Barak Obama’s lost twin in a convertible, mayor of some other town around there. I yelled, “Barak Obama.” He looked around a bit sternly until he spotted me, then gave a wry smile and pointed his finger. He was followed, for some unknowable reason, unless it’s just because he offered to do it, by a George Bush look-alike. This mock-up was no slouch, a real pro with his career reaching for the bottom of the toilet. He was so authentic I felt like punching him. One guy got in just because he had a 70’s Eldorado convertible in pretty good shape. That was almost a float.

This is the story I want to write

2009-05-13T09:31:00.001-04:00

So here it is. This is the story I want to write. George bush and his cronies get kidnapped by an enterprising movie company/terrorist cell and sealed up in a pit somewhere with ventilation and a hidden video camera.

There they are with sufficient water to drink, immersed in the smell and feel of each others’ excrement, fighting over the random bits of food tossed down to them, revealing all their sorry character traits, strip em down to their elements, see if they’re better people without power or even worse - all live, bigger than the first Bush War, 24 hour coverage on CNN, sponsor revenues through the roof. Sponsorship becomes a bigger issue than saving them, like what products are too tasteless to represent the government in exile, after a period of conditioning it’s a free-for-all, hilarious toilet paper ads featuring administration look-alikes. It’s such a hit, nobody really wants to find them.

Coverage is not actually instantaneous. The signal can’t be broadcast straight from the hole or officials would have to admit they could find it and go rescue them. Videos are dropped off at different locations called in from phone booths.

But I can’t write that because I lack the expertise. It has to have a suspenseful buildup, kidnapping strategy, how they get around the Secret Service. I don’t know about any of that stuff. I’d just have Dick and George, Don and Richard and Condi runnin around nekkid out the back forty givin love to pigs and pullin the feathers out of live chickens. Secret Service is off pukin somewhere, helicopter comes over, drops a wide castnet on the whole ugly scene and hauls them up and off.

That’s what I’d write and it just ain’t good enough so I’m skipping all that and cutting right to them in their hole. Action.

It’s their fourth morning of captivity and Donald Rumsfeld is just waking up. “George, what the Hell is this?” he exclaims venomously, pointing at a small pile of feces with a tiny American flag stuck in it.

“Looks like Iwo Jima to me,” Bush smirks, then starts shaking and snuffling uncontrollably.

“That’s not what he’s talking about, George,” Dick Cheney puts in from the limit of his patience. “Rummy wants to know why it’s in his area.”

“Look. I’m the President of the United States . I can crap all over the free world if I want to.”

Richard Perle grabs him by the collar. “This isn’t the free world, you moron. If you don’t learn to…”

Rice squeezes Perle’s shoulder. “Let him go. We could be on camera.”

Meanwhile you’ve got George Bush’s father on tv proclaiming, “This will not stand,” and people all over the world wondering if he’s really just been talking about his penis all this time.

Rumors start flying around that some American special ops guys are behind this because nobody hates the Bush Bunch more than the CIA except General Boykin who thinks it was God stepped in and stole the election from Al Gore by creating Ralph Nader, disenfranchising black people, immaculately conceiving the butterfly ballot, getting Joe Lieberman to say, “Let’s don’t check all those phony military absentee ballots” and finally, after he couldn’t influence the Florida Supreme Court, by getting the United States Supreme Court to do the dirty work.

Back in the hole, these guys are getting skinnier because they’re not getting enough to eat and Rumsfeld, Cheney, Condi and Perle get thinking how they might get the same ration no matter how many of them were dining. And they’re all pretty tired of George Bush, whose presidency has reached his head and he expects special consideration.

“You know, I let myself be the president so you guys could do what the hell you wanted, have your war, whatever. But the blame’s all gonna go on me. I’m the one history’s gonna remember as the world’s worst president. So now it’s your turn to let me have most of the food,” he whined.

“We may need a constitutional amendment for this,” Rumsfeld says pensively. “If you eat the president, does that make you the president?”

Cheney clears his throat. “I believe most cannibalistic tribes assume they get the powers of whomever they eat.”

“That settles it then,” says Rumsfeld.

Network officials are horrified that with Bush gone the ratings could slip but just then Wolfowitz dumps a load of delicious tv dinners in the hole. It would just go on, kind of like that, forever. It would be funny. Anyway, that's the idea. Don't think I'll ever get around to writing it.

Yep, Indians are nice like that

2009-03-20T12:14:00.000-04:00

I was just thinking about how we finally got shed of the Bush family, kind of like getting all the leeches burnt off your body, and how seems like it took George Bush to make even a black man look good to the American public. And then I was thinking how excited the remaining Americans Indians must be about how we overcame race and all like that; after the Europeans pretty much exterminated them and then had to reach clean across the Atlantic to find a minority to exalt so magnificently. You know – to show how far we’ve come. Yep. Haven’t heard much about it from the Indians’ viewpoint but I’ll bet they’re squatting in their teepees talking how glad they are for us getting over our prejudices and all and being just one big happy family now. Yep. Indians are nice like that.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T13:38:00.001-05:00

This Thanksgiving the giant television window stood open in the parlor with relatives peering through it anticipating a football game to be played thousands of miles hither. But miles mean nothing these days, all events capable of happening right in front of us. Our distance vision puts the eagle’s to shame.

Eagerly awaiting the main course, I became transfixed by what must have been the most atrocious variation ever performed on The Star Spangled Banner. She was not so much singing a song as gargling with it. Based on this trend it shouldn’t be long before we can hear the whole thing yodeled. I always have enjoyed the melody to America’s war song and I wonder if more faithful renditions still support drunken lyrics in the English Pubs of its birth.

This got me to thinking. Ever since the Twin Towers and Pentagon were attacked by the Infidels, the more lyrical God Bless America has supplanted the Anthem at the less bellicose baseball games. And always it is belted out by one lone Christian soldier metaphorically about to march off to war. It seems like no patriotic songs at all are drummed into our heads at basketball games. Perhaps bouncing a rubber ball lacks the requisite gravity. What ever happened to My Country ‘Tis of Thee? Why didn’t that make the cut? Hmm. In the first verse, at least, it evokes neither God nor explosions. Only liberty. This could be its weakness. America the Beautiful, too, seems to have fallen by the wayside. Too green, I suppose.

With today’s technology it is silly for the government to continue depending on mass gatherings of citizens to remind us who we are and what may be expected of us. I suggest here a few ways to increase efficiency:

patriotic toaster: why can’t we hear some inspiring words from Valley Forge as we press down the bread followed by a bugle call when it pops?
patriotic refrigerator: How about a few bars of the national anthem to show the world what it means when the door opens on an American fridge and the light of democracy comes on to show us where the goods are.
Patriot Act fart whistle: you get the idea.

Personally, I just need more. In spite of a lifetime of allegiance pledges and rousing songs, I’m still not ready to go shoot people just because they’re on the other team. How about a little Lee Greenwood on my doorbell? Or maybe we just have the wrong national anthem. We should try the German one. It worked pretty well for them.

Thoughts fer the day

2008-11-19T14:15:00.000-05:00

It has recently come to my attention that nobody is the wiser.

Many things can be said but many others can be said. This is in the ocean.

If a rooster crows half the time, where does a cow?

There is no bizness like show bizness

Don't try to claim anything of the kind. It will only bring you menopause.

There is a certain beauty to all this.

The United States replaced George bush with Barack obama. Well, i guess we're done for now.

Humans sending our artifacts into outer space for the gratification of such beings as might find and enjoy them seems like a child reaching into his diaper and holding out his prize to impress his parents.

There are more things in heaven and earth than you used to think I thought you knew about.

Ahh, thank you. I feel a lot more like i do now than i did before.

Poor Al Gore

2007-12-31T11:07:00.000-05:00

Al Gore is the most tragic figure in the history of American politics. Who knows what it’s been like for him to watch from his personal Purgatory as George Bush stomped through his presidency like a hobgoblin through goodness. But Gore recently was granted a chance at redemption and he failed to take it. It was a huge letdown for me.

Recently Al Gore and Bush met alone for forty-five minutes. Here is my fantasy: Imagine Al Gore walking out of the room, dusting off his hands against each other, straightening his tie and looking with a new-found serenity to the future, George Bush lying in a crumpled lump on the floor. No, not dead, but forty-five minutes was more than enough time for Gore to beat the snot out of him, as he has every right to do and as every American has the right to expect of him. Now imagine the cheering around the world, the chanting of “Al Gore” from every righteous mouth. Forget about all the other Democrats. Here would be the nominee by acclaim, redefining quick, economical campaign. And here would be a cherished place for Gore in history.

It is, in fact, the only way I can imagine Gore ever coming truly right. And as we all squander or fail to recognize opportunity, he missed this one. Darn shame.

-- Tom Levine

If Mark Twain Could See Us Now

2007-12-27T13:58:00.000-05:00

We're sorry to say that your piece, "If Mark Twain Could See Us Now," isn't right for us, despite its evident merit. Thank you for allowing us to consider your work.

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______

If Mark Twain Could See Us Now

by Tom Levine

I apologize for my previous view of the human race. I see now I have been something of a Pollyanna; but what pessimist could have imagined twenty- first century man? Cruelty, greed and sloth have enjoyed a race with each other this hundred years and government met them at the finish line. The ground they sped across is sprouting horrors at a pace to give this young century the edge for history's worst before a tenth of the crop is in.

I thought we stood on the precipice of enlightenment. Instead mankind's higher aspirations were gunned down in the street as they stretched and yawned before a morning stroll to the flower shop. Jesus, too, has been wounded - in the leg and is unsuitably employed trying to heal himself. I am told an ambulance is on the way. Nations, tribes, races - they've all outlived the dubious utility of their distinctions. If once they were an irresistible excuse for the dispatching of one's fellow man, in my day it was only retail.

Every modern household features an electrified box which displays atrocities from around the world. At last the dark recesses of evil have been exposed by an amazing light for all to see and rise up against them. However, with fame these corruptions have become entertainment and are used to sell product; so they will endure. The happy chatter of their audience is interrupted only by the assassination of food. By multiplying the staggering death rate by the even more impressive total of such appliances, the entire human population can be wiped out at least once a week, and twice during holidays. Modern man lives with the grief of millions and it has made him numb to all but his own.

Pygmies shall inherit the earth. No one bothers to kill them in American households. Perhaps they are too small and it has been deemed a waste of artillery.

I have met the twenty-first century American president but I believe someone is playing me a joke. They have gone out and fetched the least likely man for the job and masqueraded him before me. I think it a bit cruel as this bumpkin must know how he is being used. I do hope to meet the real president. To guide this country as it is today, he must be of a more remarkable breed of man than any I have known.

The way medicine was bounding out of the dark ages in my lifetime, I expected this day's physician to cure a rock of its hardness. Instead medicine seems to have bounded into a wall. And stuck there. Little more is repaired now than before. The modern doctor makes his mark dispensing pills to ease the sufferer's case for a time, but which will cure him of life down the line. Government agencies exist to test these drugs but often their data is collected in the marketplace.

I have seen images from the Hubble telescope. They seem almost a grander hoax than the president but I am assured they are the real article. So this is how space looks viewed from beyond the blur of our atmosphere. What Galileo would have given for my eyes! If one must take the bad along with the good, if men can look upon such star clusters and then turn back to the more natural business of slaughtering each other for the god whose heaven they have yet to locate in that cosmos, then I suppose it is worth it. In the twenty-first century cave men look through time to the dawn of the universe. And are unmoved.

Questions I'd like someone to ask Barak Obama

2007-11-12T09:27:00.000-05:00

Questions I'd like someone to ask Barak Obama, as he is claiming candor as his mantle:

Do you consider George Bush and his accomplices criminals?
As President, would you block international attempts to prosecute them as war criminals?

Rice's Warning

2007-10-29T10:13:00.001-04:00

Is it just me, but when Condosleeza Rice warns Turkey not to invade Iraq, does everybody get this image of a black leopard crouched over a recent kill, snarling and swatting at the vultures?

The American Economy

2007-10-11T10:21:00.000-04:00

If the American economy seems about as vibrant as a hangover, it is because Americans are in limbo. We are in shock from the consequences of allowing the least wise among us to rule and determine our fate.

For years our wisemen warned of global warming (ex. Carl Sagan, his book published in 1995). So we ignored them and invited greedy businessmen and their politician puppets to craft our future. Now it appears, though we were metaphorically warned about this even in the Bible, Industrial Man has destroyed Eden.

This country's resources were used to attack and subsequently destroy Iraq for no good reason. Now, instead of concerning ourselves with the positive subjects that should have been ushered in by the new millenium, we are swallowed up by this horror and the ongoing guilt of having liberated over half a million men, women and children from the joys and travails of life, and driven another two million from their country. And the ruthless nincompoops responsible are still in charge, still affecting peoples' lives!

There are enormous clouds hanging over our heads. Kind of hard to get all that excited about business.

-- Tom Levine

Consider the bald eagle

2007-08-27T15:24:00.000-04:00

Consider the bald eagle. The symbol of the world's greatest nation, he is unaffected and lives modestly without roof or walls on a pile of sticks, the very lifestyle that signals failure among his adoring subjects. An unschooled observer might believe he actually represents only Arkansas
or Mississippi. This shabby existence reflects not only humility but ignorance, each eagle feeling it must be some other eagle leading the free human world.

Maybe the choice of national symbol was made hastily. We look at the eagle as we do a recently squashed pet, seeing only those characteristics that we cherish. In a transparent attempt to create common ground, we even have treated the eagle as ourselves, trying to poison him into extinction. Selectively, a case can be made that this is a noble or an ignoble bird, a being that shares many traits with Americans or none.

The eagle got in as the national symbol because he can fly really high and still see details on the ground, or at least pretend to; and he is a hunter and fisher, living on top of a tree or rock, ruler of all he surveys, tax exempt.

There is little here that makes him an appropriate standard bearer for the American people. However, this bird also walks badly, eats carrion and gets a white head with maturity. So after all he is like us. We like favorable associations and are not bothered by the uppity bird's reluctance to fraternize. Although this indifference is necessary to reverence, some might say that it shows plain good sense.

The fundamental problem with America is the eagle. Americans spend far too much effort trying to be worthy of this icon. We climb trees, scale rocks and jump off them, go hunting and fishing, even built the U-2. We need a symbol we can realistically aspire to and then get on with life.
Whittling down the field of logical successors is easy.

Americans, by and large, can't fly. This leaves only birds with one wing shot off. Suddenly the bald eagle rushes to the fore. We could live calmly with the "wounded eagle". For promotional purposes, the wound could be rotated. For example, the "Eagle with its Head Blown Off" would be appropriate for armed forces recruiting posters.

Moving down the line, bees and other flying insects also exceed us but are less enviable due to size. However, the North American truck grill dragonfly would be a fine representative. It accomplishes very little and travels a lot without seeing anything.

Americans can survive in water for short periods but, compared to most aquatic animals, we can't swim. This eliminates aquatic mammals, turtles and fishes. However, laying on the bottom, the sea cucumber comes to mind, total lethargy within reach of any American with a television.
Of rocks, bituminous coal is most likely, being soft and flammable.

Plants are too beneficial for consideration.

The mammal category gets complicated, many mammals sharing characteristics with us. I have narrowed it down to two: the first is the domestic dog. To signify America of course, the dog must be a big mutt. Of the many classic canine poses, humans everywhere relate to the "big dog
defecating". Americans can emulate this ecstasy and likely achieve it every morning, leaving the rest of the day for industry. And the dog's countenance will rival the eagle's for severity and concentration. There is some question, however, whether "dog with head blown off" would have the desired impact on recruitment posters. The competing mammal candidate, logically enough, is the human. And why shouldn't we celebrate ourselves? In particular, I propose SUPERMAN. He would be better than the eagle because he can do more things yet he is an American. We would not be obsessed with equaling his achievements as we are with the eagle, because he is one of us. We could simply sit back and root for the man of steel, speaking with familiarity about his performance.

If we wish to display our sense of humor to the world, then "Indian with an Arrow through his Head Drinking on a Can of Beer" is a good one. He's a universal metaphor. For a touch of the old aggression, put an eagle feather in his hair.

For women, we must tap the "red '57 Chevy convertible with a nekkid lady propped across the back seat." It just feels comfortable. The finalists for the symbol of America are:

Wounded eagle
Truck grill dragonfly
Defecating Dog
Sea cucumber
SUPERMAN
Bituminous coal
Indian
'57 Chevy

For practical reasons, I have to go with the wounded eagle. It will be a simple matter to convert all the present paperweights, the lopped off material sent to recycling centers to add nicely to our gross national product. Changing to an entirely new idol would over-stimulate the economy, ballooning inflation and bringing on recession.

Although Superman is tempting.

This is my "I believe" essay that NBR hasn't sent me $200 for yet

2007-08-06T11:20:00.000-04:00

This is my "I believe" essay that NBR hasn't sent me $200 for yet.

I believe I should not profit from the misery of another; therefore were I a news reporter, it would seem indecent to report someone's tragic loss to the unconcerned masses for whom it would be largely entertainment and relief that it wasn't them and really none of their damn business, so I would not do it and my career would be short. I believe if you sell cigarettes, you are pimping for the tobacco companies, so if I were a store clerk, I would refuse to purvey them and very soon I would be fired. I also believe the gene pool would be enhanced if people stupid enough to smoke would die of lung cancer before they can reproduce. With the exception of my parents. Though there are many intelligent people in it, I believe the public is an idiot. I believe people would feel better if they made more music than they listen to, if they felt the earth beneath their feet when they walk and if they weren't forced to know about an entire planet's worth of suffering. I believe giving allegiance to your government is like identifying with your kidnappers. I believe governments wage war until enough regular people just trying to get on with their lives are killed, and then they stop, with no casualties to the interested parties. Many more people have been killed by the United States in Iraq than were killed in the World Trade Center attack. Therefore I believe the United States government is a far more terrible monster than Al-Qaida. I believe people feel obliged only to live up to their self-image, so for human behavior to improve, every individual's idea of himself must improve. I believe I should not say anything behind someone's back that I wouldn't say to his face. Therefore I am prepared to say some really awful things to the people who hijacked this country in the 2000 election, should I ever meet their faces. I believe they are ruthless nincompoops but they are not the problem with this democracy, only the clearest possible symptom of how sick it has become. I believe knowledge of the passage of time is what kills us and we would live forever without periodic motion. At least until we died. I don't think we advance alongside technology's advances. We are still just cave men living in a more perilous time. I believe there is no bizness like show bizness. I believe the idea of curing cancer is a farce. It only can be prevented, by living naturally. Cancer is not the problem, only the clearest possible symptom of how sick our environment has become. I believe I'll have another beer. There is no such thing as good and evil, only nice and mean. I think entertainment leaves people unsatisfied and participation makes people feel strong. I believe Little League should be abolished so kids can just go out and play baseball for fun again. And I believe I am finished.

Quick one.....

2007-07-23T09:07:00.001-04:00

The funniest thing about bush transferring power during his brain exam is that he believes it matters whether he's clinically unconscious or not. But I suppose it's fun for him to pretend.

An Act of Cod

2007-07-09T13:44:00.000-04:00

Sooner or later everyone witnesses an "act of cod."
When it happens, most of us are not ready for it. For
example it happened to me in the Astor Theater as I
waited to see Blazing Saddles for the sixth time. In
two days. Suddenly the screen rolled up and fifteen
cod came soft shoeing across the stage. At first I
wanted my money back but then I began to appreciate
the miraculous nature of what I had just seen. In the
realm of natural phenomena movie screens simply do not
just roll up. And then I remembered the cod. Yes,
the cod were there when it happened, weren’t they?
Very simply, since then I have been a follower of cod.
And so I began talking to people about my experience
and many said yes, they too had witnessed a miracle at
some time and in each case they saw cod. Even as far
back as the Bible, what did Charlton Heston say when
he wanted the waters of the Red Sea held back? That’s
right. "Cod dam it."

But unfortunately most people are not ready to
accept the significance of an act of cod when it
happens to them. Take the well documented story of
the old blind lady who was knocked to the sidewalk by
a school of cod. When she got up off the pavement,
her herring was gone as well.

Many evangelists and other fishers of men will
try to tell you that everything is an act of cod.
They are not wrong. If you have good luck, it is an
act of cod. If you have bad luck, it’s because of
cod. And if you have no luck at all, you can thank cod
for that. When you were a child, didn’t the tooth cod
put twenty-five scents under your pillow? Didn’t cod
bring you a beautiful day?

If we are ready, the answers to all our
questions can be found in the word of cod, which is
"blub". "B" for "Be kind," "L" for "Love everything
but don’t eat brussels sprouts," "U" for "Underwear
isn’t necessary," and "B" for "blub."

An Interesting Dichotomy

2007-06-25T09:43:00.000-04:00

Statistics show driving on the phone is as dangerous to others as driving under the influence of alcohol.

Driving unbuckled is dangerous only to oneself.

Driving on the phone is perfectly legal.

Driving unbuckled is a crime.

If we are coerced to buckle up for our precious safety as advertised, then why are we not protected from cell phone users as we are from drunk drivers?

Could it be in the land of the free and the home of the brave that we are granted what liberties benefit the telecommunications giants and denied those painful to the insurance industry?

The liquor industry probably approves of drunk driving prohibition as it doesn't likely diminish the amount of their product purchased and it preserves the lives of their customers. So they do not fight it. This viewpoint might work for the phone companies but consumption of minutes would be down too drastically to allow making the roads safer.

I would like to hear this explained by a lawmaker.

Little League politics

2006-08-23T14:17:00.000-04:00

If The United States ever becomes a third-rate power, its unprecedented force of entrepeneurs and catalytic dreamers putrified into a melting pot of slothfulness and complacency, the blame may lie squarely in the epidemic of Little League.

Here children are taught that failure is the most they can hope for and that just about anything they do more competent than stepping in front of a car en route to the field, will result in lavish praise.

Little League of course, has its better known aspect, that of parents berating children for slandering their genes by striking out, fighting each other in the stands and abusing the umpire and players on the opposing team. To mitigate that image, sympathy has been planted at the core of the corporation.

In case a child does not feel bad about striking out, parents following the lead of the coaches will now show him that he should, by glorifying his shortcomings.

“Great swings,” a player hears as he returns to the dugout after striking out with no more threat to the ball than an ice cube to the climate of Death Valley. “Good job.” Now he knows he will receive attention and succor for striking out and government aid crawls to the horizon of his consciousness.

Ultimately the child sees that no one expects him to be able to hit the ball or succeed at anything in life and America’s place in the world drops infinitesimally.

I managed to avoid little league until fatherhood. If your kid would like to play some ball, he has to join because they’ve usurped all the ballfields and all the other kids. Gone are the days of the pick-up sand lot game. My eight year old boy, normally one of the better hitters, had strike five on him. Failing to grasp the desperation of my ancestry, I yelled, “You’re supposed to hit the ball.”

It was so politically incorrect and so naturally refreshing to hear a parent give his kid a little ribbing, that an involuntary chuckle burst from the bleachers. After strike six Sam walked back to the dugout trying to suppress a grin that showed he appreciated being the only kid not taken for a fool.

Little League has some stock phrases that you’ll hear more in one game than “uh” in a George W. press conference. “Baseball ready” is the most ironic, used to transfer the players’ gaze from a passing butterfly to events at the plate. The true meaning of course, is recline with beer in hand. My favorite is “Good eye.” This is used to encourage batters not to swing at bad pitches. And passing airplanes. The ball can be so far out of the strike zone that it can’t be seen and if the child refrains from swinging the bat just then, he will hear, without exception, “Good eye.”

Who knows what the tike is thinking when this happens or if he even knows what it’s supposed to convey. He may think the parents and coaches are complimenting themselves with “Good I.”

One coach ever ready to find something nice to say, was faced with the challenge as a seven year old swung and missed at six straight pitches, finally ending his at-bat. “Way to hang,” he came up with, though it sounded to me like he had resorted to rating the boy’s genitals.

The spread of Little League throughout the world is America’s best hope to survive its effects as civilization will climb backwards together with us at the top of the pile, albeit a lower one.

Surf and camp -- obsolete words by today's standards

2006-08-02T17:10:00.000-04:00

In the all-out assault on good words (Bush, of course, being the most conspicuous casualty), surf and camp now have bitten the dust. Surfing, which once depicted riding an ocean wave on a board, now can be accomplished in a tiny cubicle looking at a computer screen, doing any number of other things simultaneously. And camping once had to be done in the woods, or at least outside. Now any tedious lesson imposed in the summer is a camp. There is a video-game creating camp.

Pretty soon nobody will know what anybody is talking about

Letter to the Editor of the Orlando Sentinel

2006-07-27T10:25:00.000-04:00

Dearest editor:

Our country is in the hands of ruthless nincompoops responsible for the ongoing horrors in Iraq, Israelis and Lebanese are killing each other and bombs are going off occasionally in subways. Amidst all this proof that humans, including Americans are, by and large, a horrible species, it is very hard to find kindness. If you do, don't tell the Orlando city council about it, because if it's in their jurisdiction, they'll squash it like an Iraqi bug.

Petty and small-minded has been redefined by our city. While the civilized world is in chaos our local rulers have managed to ferret out our most pressing problem - the program to feed the homeless in Eola Park. By God, let's hear it for the Gothics. They sure dress funny but it appears they have a foundation in what is called decency. Decency is bad for Orlando's image, offends developers, who have only profit in mind, something a city council can better relate to than an empty stomach.

Anyway, really, look at these compassionate ones. If they would wear business clothes or belong to the Jaycees, well, it might not look so bad. But Food not Bombs? Come on. Not only are they against hunger on their doorstep, but war as well. What kind of creeps are these?

If Orlando had no houseless people, they should be imported just so we can sit back and watch these radicals take care of them. Because, especially nowadays, it feels good to see a little organized kindness. And we should be proud to have such people in our midst. But we have a city council that feels inclined to squash them. Our city council would have outlawed the bread lines of the Great Depression.

Forty-five people spoke against the ordinance to ban feeding the homeless within a two mile radius of city hall and four spoke in favor. So, by democracy, it passed. No wonder Iraq is in no hurry for it.

Before it was just a bad joke. Now Orlando's city council is a disgrace.

-- Tom Levine

The Thought Provoking Mudfish

2006-07-24T14:47:00.000-04:00

Jack London despised the domestic dog, naturalist Ed Abbey urinated on ant hills and Mark Twain had only poison for the French. These eminent literary outdoorsman scorned three widely diverse creatures innocently born into what they are. For sure they had one sentiment in common though.: a deep and abiding loathing of the bowfin.

Yes, the blameless bowfin, finning gaily here and there, opening his toothy mouth occasionally to briefly thrill an angler thinking he has hooked something else, anything else. The bowfin has been more kinds of fish initially than any other and is never himself until the evidence is undeniable, for no one fishes who is not an optimist.

Its identity is so tenuous in fact, that it is never called by its given name. Bowfin is not spoken - only written. Generally any amount of swearing will locate one. Recently I chanced upon Andy Rooney sitting under a frayed straw hat, cane poling in a roadside ditch. I inquired about the fishing.

“I don’t know why,” he whined, “you can’t just ask me how many mudfish I’ve caught. That’s more to the point, isn’t it?”

“Alright. How many bowfins have you caught?”

“You know, I’ve never cared for the name. It doesn’t tell you what you want to know, does it? Is it half mud and half fish or is it three quarters mud? Some people think they’re completely mud. I like that.”

How the Mudfish might have got its Name

Two old gents were angling down in the old slough. One of them pulled up a bowfin. “Whatchew got there?” said the other.

“I don’t rightly know,” said the first. “I think it’s a fish.”

“No, look to me you jus’ caught a gob o’mud.”

“It’s a fish.”

The other leaned over squinting. After a time he concluded, “Nope. That’s jist the durndest gob o’ mud I ever did see.”

“It’s a fish.”

“Mud.”

“Fish.”

“Mud.”

Then they looked at each other and smiled. “It’s a fishmud, ain’t it?” said the first.

“Durned if it ain’t.”

Does the bowfin deserve all this ill will? The name “mudfish” always seemed unjust. Although they can inhabit muddy water, I have not found one in solid mud, seeing them often in clear, flowing streams. It’s true they do not suit the palate. After throwing them back for years, it occurred to me to be open minded and try one. I can report that the very filleting of a bowfin is disgusting, the flesh slimy and putrid. Not one to be put off by trifles, I sauteed a small piece and upon eating it learned the origin of its name. The rest was offered to the cat who instantly ran away from home, proving that this ancient fish does have a useful application.

In Florida the conversation often reaches another of Mother Nature’s children who obliviously inhabit human thoughts, the manatee. The vast majority of opinions emanate from compassion and appreciation. The rare empty headed view is always the same: “I hate manatees.”

It is hard to imagine anything less hateable than a manatee but here it is again - the general slander of an innocent race. Perhaps these individuals are all eminent literary outdoorsmen. On hearing it the first time, I thought, horrified, “Oh, man. Her family must have been slaughtered by manatees.” Loathe to learn the truth yet spurred by morbid fascination, I asked why.

“They’re so ugly.”

The answers can be classified by gender. Women who hate manatees always give this reason. Based simply on looks, one would expect women to love the manatee, as it gives them all a favorable comparison. But perhaps they can’t stomach someone going around looking like that without doing something about it. The men are likely to hold against them the government regulations instituted for their protection, which sometimes interfere with high speed motorboating.

“Pardon me for being protected,” I heard a manatee mumbubble once in passing.

“Excuse me for being endangered,” another apologized.

Ever the scientist I continue to ask why when I hear it and finally was rewarded with that invaluable aid to research, the anomaly. I swear that the following quote is absolutely true and that it came from the proprietor of an investment firm in New Smyrna Beach. We were in his office and I never will forget it because I wrote it down. I said, “Please can I have a sheet of paper and a pen? I wish to record those words you have said.”

Pleased as punch he handed them over. The following is a word for word transcription. I never would tamper with such a pure example of whatever this is: “Well, you know - all the government red tape and bullshit. Manatees are dinosaurs. If you had elephants walking on I-4, do you think they’d close that? No way.”

After recovering the facility of speech and requesting writing tools, I said, “Thank you very much. Everyone I meet from now on will seem quite sensible because I will compare them to you. Let me further congratulate you, a financial advisor. I have heard many stupid things said about manatees, but yours is the undisputed champion. You are indeed a rare individual to volunteer such damning evidence about yourself. If knuckleheaded remarks about endangered species becomes an Olympic event, and it wouldn’t surprise me, then you, sir, are the horse I will back. For training I will find a spot on the bank of Blue Springs Run where you can sit and constantly be reviled by these monsters and inspired to your greatest elocutionary heights.”

I am not so sure of the accuracy of my comment because I wrote it down much later. However, the spirit is intact.

While the bowfin is despised universally by fishermen only, the manatee is despised only by knuckleheads. If there is some kind of a connection here, it escapes me. I chanced to spy Mr. Rooney again, on a bank of the St. John’s River and asked if he had spotted any manatees. He turned to look at me, then his shoulders slumped as he sighed in apparent exasperation.

“Why does everybody have to call them “manatees”? Sea cow was good enough when we used to grill them. Everybody knew what you were talking about and it’s certainly a more picturesque name. Maybe I’ll just go to the movies and see a matinee. I think I like that.”

We all have our little prejudices. Mr. London and the manatee haters occupy small, bitter minorities. We are left to wonder if he hated manatees also, because they have the quizzical, friendly look of the domestic dog. And the manatee is the rare wild animal that will seek us out and accept food and a scratch on the belly, the very behavior he seemed to detest so in the dog. Mr. Abbey persecuted the pismire for its neurosis and Mr. Clemens loathed the French for their cruelty. If there is a common thread among the ant, the Frenchman and the bowfin, it is too fine for me to see. Perhaps there is a little mudfish in everybody.

The life of a man can be ruined by the eating of a single aunt

2006-07-24T14:45:00.000-04:00

In the beginnin’...

In one corner of a long ago whitewashed room is a small table with a banana on it. Both banana and table are underneath a fly. The fly knows shape - nothing else. He thinks he’s sitting on a turd. The fly is not wrong because he has recently crapped on the banana.

A gunshot is heard and the dead fly tumbles to the table top. His shit remains on the yellow fruit, a monument to where he had been. A demure curly headed little girl sidles into the corner and without noticing the monument, lifts the banana from the table and shoves it up her ass.

These proceedings have been totally witnessed by God Almighty who puts it all down to Genesis and the governor of Mississippi Frogfart Pondodor who says, “What fly? I don’t see no fly.” Probably Governor Pondodor shot the fly.

Governor Pondodor and God Almighty are heard breaking into a chorus of “I shot the sheriff but I did not shoot him in the fly.”

The fly fails to see the humor in any of this because he is dead. But he is not dead because he had no sense of humor. He is dead because an assassin failed to see the human in a fly sitting on a banana.

Flies make people look like shit. They have many ways of doing this, the most common of course being hypnosis. They congregate in the morning and hypnotize each other toward this end. It’s a sort of fly humor. When you walk amidst flies feeling very godlike, swatting them as you go, have you never wondered why they keep trying to land on you?

In the days of Abraham Lincoln people knew how to leave pins sticking out of their butts.

Miss America or leave it. There was a time when people knew better than to leave pins sticking out of their butts. There was a time when spaceships ruled the toilets and submarines the sky. But no more. “The sky is underwater!” cried the fly. “How do I swim and keep me dry?”

And yet another from Arnie

2006-07-20T15:38:00.000-04:00

Bush vetoed Stem Cell Research

Because...........he can't spell it.

WAR..............that he can spell

Yet another from Arnie

2006-07-14T11:37:00.001-04:00

Shiite Happens! W
Thanks to you!

3" x 6" Color: White on Black with Red W

Vinyl $ 1.75 each. Quantity 50+ $1.25 100+ $1.00

Bush lovers won't love this one.Too bad!

It looks wonderful on my car.

For more ordering information E-mail Alevine99@aol.com

Another submission from my brother Arnie

2006-07-14T11:37:00.000-04:00

To Be A Bleeding Heart

You Gotta Have One!

Buckwheat is better than Alfalfa at sports

2006-07-14T11:33:00.000-04:00

Once again science has discovered what everyone already knew, and acknowledged that Buckwheat is better than Alfalfa at sports. This establishes the wisdom behind the historic exclusion of Negroes from Major League Baseball and many colleges and universities (so the white boys'll get to play). Now that it's official, it's time to do something about it.

With the physiological superiority of the Negro documented, there is no reason why athletes of other races need to continue competing with them. It is time to reestablish the Negro leagues. The existence of gender separation in sports sets the precedent. The frustration of female athletes having to compete with men is identical to that of white men against black. These days young white men no longer dream of a career in sports. It is simply too unlikely with their standard issue. Instead they must turn to sedentary goals. It is the optimistic white boy indeed, who works toward an Olympic gold medal. He has little chance.

We must read the graffiti on the wall. Basketball, football and now baseball are becoming "colored only". Hispanics are today's white baseball players. Let's change the national poem to "Ramos at the Bat". With the New Colored Leagues, we can once again look down a baseball roster and read names we can pronounce.

To all my conservative friends and family

2006-06-22T15:40:00.000-04:00

Something my brother, Arnie Levine, sent me:

To All my Conservative friends and family:

I received this letter which was included in a fund raising package and was asked to forward it to all the loyal Republicans I know.

I had no more money to send, but I am honoring their request.

Here's the letter:

6/6/06

Dear Fellow Conservative,

In order to ease the suffering in your knees from all the genuflecting you do in front of your autographed picture of our beloved George W. Bush, we have formed a charitable organization to provide some much needed financial assistance in the form of FREE Kneepads (fur-lined), of course.

I urge you to register at www.Kneepads.com You will be contacted to arrange for your Free pair of kneepads.

We know you are in pain but with our 32% Approval Rating many, many other loyal Republicans are suffering as you are. In 2 years the pain will go away, hopefully. Our health system won't help you and those godless Democrats that don't genuflect won't help you either.

Please Register ASAP before we are out of kneepads. For more information visit our website:

www.KneepadsForKnitwits.org

Thank you.

Tom Delay
Chairman

RNC

Available on my site as a bumper sticker or decal.

2006-06-15T08:27:00.000-04:00

If you like Sean Hannity

You've Lost Your Sannity

Bush Ain’t Funny

2006-06-07T09:06:00.000-04:00

Laurel and Hardy, like heads of state, could battle with no risk to their health. In a tiff they would set about smashing each others’ things, each politely allowing the other to finish before retaliating. Their behavior illuminates the essence of war, the dispensable property, of course, being people. The affronted parties fling out their lower class taxpayers to kill or be killed, then step back out of harm’s way to portray sorrow over the carnage. Unlike Laurel and Hardy, the humor is very dark.

Before the United States attacked the Taliban, their leader made a truly statesmanlike offer: To meet George Bush on the field of battle like men and spare the non-stakeholders. It seemed outlandish but only in the context of our chicken-shit society. The challenge got little play in the media and Bush ignoring it got no play at all. He preferred to sacrifice the lives of brave soldiers and innocent bystanders to free Afghani women from their burkhas, which, according to recent reports, have been exchanged for pedophilia and venereal disease in the ensuing chaos. Al Kaida, whoever he is, exited stage right.

Iraq is boxed in by the No-fly zone and powerful countries at its borders leaving its only claim to glory these days, recognition by the United States as a worthy foe. Interesting that killing heads of state like Saddam Hussein, the advertised focus of the latest crusade, is against the law, but killing the victims of his oppression and American soldiers is perfectly legal.

Sad as it seems, George Bush must be a reflection of what the American character has become, because Americans are prepared to let war proceed against a faraway country that has never so much as farted our way. We are separated from Iraq by the Atlantic Ocean yet European nations must be persuaded of the danger Sadam Hussein presents. And it doesn’t collectively appall us that pursuit of this war will result in everyday families being blown to smithereens as we coldly lay them in the coffin of “collateral damage”; this to save our unworthy asses from the trumped up possibility that Iraq might someday give us an owie. It is not only inhumane but cowardly and violates every moral code Americans take pride in embracing. Putting such a premium on our own lives in fact devalues them. It makes us not worth saving. We must bear constantly in mind that politicians live not at the apex but near the bottom of the human heap and from there they wield their power. The masses must guide these moral cripples to an acceptable path, not adopt their corrupt standards as our own.

War with Iraq clearly was part of the Bush agenda, 911 the excuse, however illogical. It was a deception of despotic proportions to keep this platform plank invisible during the election, to omit the campaign cry, “A vote for B ush is a vote for war!” Then the people could have spoken from their hearts. Terrorists may have hijacked Islam, but oil barons have hijacked the United States. If Americans allow their country to be led into war by this scourge of ruthless nincompoops, retribution will be visited upon us and, as always, not upon the perpetrators. In the world view, we’ll deserve it.

Losing limbs in Iraq -- at our President's request

2006-05-30T09:10:00.000-04:00

The United States of America has required tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children, to lose a limb or two, be otherwise horribly disfigured, or die, so that we can pursue our agenda, whatever it is. George Bush never asked them what they thought about this sacrifice. He just imposed it upon them.

This same should be required of every American who supports or supported the so-called war. Nothing could be more fair. How many hawks would have remained hawks if this suffering had been guaranteed for them? If the question had been put to them, "Would you support attacking Iraq if it means many Iraqi children will be killed and maimed? " Clearly the answer was a resounding "yes", because everyone knew this would happen.

"Would you support the attack if it means you must be maimed or die?" Of course we know the answer in their hearts would be "no." Suddenly many mitigating circumstances would cloud the path to war and it would be abandoned. Interesting difference, that.

Dick Cheney said the day he shot his bird-shooting buddy in the face was the worst day of his life. One has to wonder what it was that bothered him so. Certainly not the carnage, as every day people are blown apart and shot to pieces with his blessing. More likely it was the bad press he got, or the bird he missed on the other side of his friend's head. It's the little things, really, that we find annoying.

Death tally show whom America has really attacked

2006-05-30T08:44:00.000-04:00

America attacked not Saddam Hussein, not repression and certainly not Osama bin Laden. Those three are alive and well. But, according to independent tallies, somewhere between thirty and one hundred thousand people have died from the American invasion of Iraq. Clearly that is who the mighty America attacked, because that is who is dead. The United States has achieved at least ten times the toll from the Twin Towers, and in the wrong country.

When all other justifications failed, our country offered, with one-hand democracy, a gift the Iraqi people never solicited. With the other hand our country delivered chaos, misery and death. Why Iraqis don't revel in these boons and thank us, Allah only knows. Still the United States hunts down and kills those Iraqis with the courage and fortitude to resist our generosity.

But hey - that's the government for you. Dadgum, dadgum gov'mint. Governments are by nature oppresive. Whadda you gonna do?

The American public is the part that gets me. The so-called "pro-lifers" who decry abortion in America have approved with their silence the American rescue of thousands of Iraqi women, children and pregnant women from the travails and joys of life. Of course another huge number of people have been relieved of some of their limbs, a clear rescue from the joys of life but a multiplication of the travails. Politicians never mention the dead and maimed Iraqis, and politicians are our best barometer of public interest; so I have to believe they are a non-issue in our largely Christian society. We Americans have selective courage. We are afraid of being blown up, yet we are unafraid to inflict explosion on others.

We have a president who is publicly repulsed by the sacrilege of using stem cells from a dead fetus, yet he initiated this Iraqi massacre with no good reason, and there is no outrage, no overwhelming rejection of him. Isn't murder a violation of the Ten Commandments? Doesn't God reserve the right of retribution? Aren't we cowardly to allow helpless, inoffensive people to pay the price for our security?

The Attorney General excuses the administration's wire-tap program as worth it, if by chance one important phone call is intercepted. This pathetic mindset projects that anything is alright as long as there is an infinitesimal chance that it will save our sorry butts. I submit that placing such a high value on our sorry butts renders them not worth saving. We no longer breathe the rarefied air of a society striving toward the ideal.

Since we are not a nation of unkind people, as revealed in times of domestic duress, I can see only one explanation: except that we bleed, cry and die in the same way, Iraqis are not like us. We never could terrorize a Christian country of European looking people in this way, because we could relate to them as humans. That would be unconscionable.

Dolphins are sentient

2006-05-30T08:43:00.000-04:00

Here's a letter to the editor I wanted to share:

Maybe the general public doesn't grasp the idea that orcas and dolphins are sentient, conscious beings, probably more "intelligent" than we techno-chimps. And maybe most people didn't know that "Shamu" (and trust me, that's not his real name) and the rest of them have families and lives in the sea that they'd like to get on with. And probably most of us don't realize that after their life sentence in an aquarium, kidnapped from their families, these mammals die a premature, unimaginably lonely death.

But when Sea World presents a radio ad depicting these captives as being excited about their new show and all the video screens they have to entertain the tourists with, because, really, they're just so jazzed about their job; well, let's hope their marketing department has severely overestimated the gullibility of today's children.