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.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Monday, June 08, 2009
Palatka
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.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
This is the story I want to write
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.
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.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Yep, Indians are nice like that
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.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thanksgiving
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:
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.
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