jeez, it was great, being back country and not reading the news .... i mean, the "news ...." how much secret heartache of the network stars can a man stand? i'm about saturated with baby tsuris and jen and biff and muffy and scummy and nibbles and pootie and who's going with who and who's not going with who and who's overweight and who's in the dry-out chamber and who got their picture taken with no panties and who dresses badly they all do for fuck's sake and who the fuck is jen anyway? i missed the emmies; i don't have a tv .... what i didn't miss was The Wall Street Meltdown, and it's not going to miss you, either .... but let me back up a bit .....
y'all remember molly ivins? you oughtta, and ya oughtta be checkin' out sumatha things she had to say .... but let me back up even further, and go off on a tangent which, hopefully, i'll bring back into the fold ....
i think i've talked about the stimulus barrier before? our neurological triage mechanism? the mechanism that assesses and grades and filters stimuli so that you can respond to those that demand immediate attention and ignore the other irritants and goings-on around you? if you have kids you know what i'm talking about--you learn what kind of shrieking is innocuous and what kind of shrieking calls for staunching the flow of blood ..... lilke an eskimo with snow, you learn the seventy-four different textures of crying; you know what can be ignored, what you can walk slowly to, and what has you dialling 911 ...... you know when to whip out the choke chain and the cattle prod and when to pour yourself a shot of single malt; you know when to put on the biohazard suit and when to just walk glassy-eyed into that good night and say "fuck it all ...."
i had some travelling to do, so i was listening to molly's "bushwhacked" on audio disc while i drove; it was a forcible reminder of the monumental incursions, the global depredations of bush and the bush league, and it made me aware that i'd deliberately been making myself unaware of them because, well .... because frankly i was getting overwhelmed by the magnitude of them, of what--in their parlance--we can summarize as "evil ...." yes, my stimulus barrier'd been assaulted by unrelenting evil and i had to shut up shop; i was running on adrenaline overload from perpetual outrage; i'd gone hoarse from shrieking "you fucking FUCKS you evil FUCKS fuck YOU you FUCKING FUCKS go FUCK YOURSELF in the FUCKING MOUTH YOU ............Auugugugughghghghhgh .... MY FUCKING HEART! IT'S LIKE AN ALLIGATOR!!!!!!"
shrieking like that's not a bad thing, mind you; it'l give your voice that rod stewart je ne sais quoi, and if you're doing vocal tracks it works out fine but ...
the fact remains that it's been eight non-stop years of rectal pounding and plundering, the shit frosting on the sociopolitical turd cake that started with reagan; it's hard for me to conceive of the thoroughness with which these malevolent evil fucksnufflers have trashed everything .... i mean, what did they do? did they get out of bed one morning and say, hey, i got an idea: let's fuck up everything! did they have a checklist of what they wanted to fuck up? or did they just check one box, the one that says "everything?" i can't even begin to do the catalog and catechism of it all, but .... the kyoto protocol; the environmental protection agency ... ha ha ... schools and education, with every [dark] child left behind; health care delivery; illegal immoral unilateral wars based on lies and deception deliberately foisted on a fear-saturated manipulated population; torture; mass murder; our international reputation; running national and foreign policy .... well .... ha ha .... what little policy there is seems to come from pentecostal visions, propounded by talking in tongues .... corporate welfare to the banks, the pharmaceuticals, the energy giants; packing the judicial system with psychotic idealogues; making it impossible to sue corporations; tax cuts for the wealthy; no taxes for corporations; screwing the taxpaying middle class; widdling all over the does this make me a fucking elitist if i say "lower class?" katrina .... heckuva job, bushie! making intelligence unconscionable, competence detrimental, experience anathema; institutionalizing greed and corruption on a byzantine scale ..... yada yada yada ... yada yada yada .... this shit didn't happen overnight, it didn't happen by accident, and boy, was there a rush of satan's little fuckelves, tripping over their barbed little yangs, jumping in to help .... yes, new york times and washington post, that's you; yes, television that's .... well .... ha ha ..... those airwaves, they're the public airwaves, and they're givin' the public what they want, which seems to be a triple scoop of congenital idiocy with the steaming brown fecal sauce of and i can't even carry this metaphor out into its most logical destinations because i want to shut it all down and not think about it which ....
which means i'm playing their game, the way they want it played .....
maybe if i google "jen" i'll find out something i need to know that'll help me survive in this fucking country .... i'm going to do it, right now and .... and ......
none of it makes any sense to me, except the jen buddhism thing: "Perhaps the most important Confucian and by extension Chinese value is jen--once you have mastered this concept, all the remaining Confucian and Neo-Confucian values fall into place. As a crucial concept the word is immensely complex and so can't be translated easily into English; traditionally, it is translated either as "humaneness" or "humanity" or "benevolence.""
and you know that has no relevance in this country, not now, no how ....
well, folks, the Wall Street Melt Down has landed, and you should be afraid, very very afraid .... what you should be afraid of is, here are the folks that wanted to "privatize social security" because "everyone needed to be in the market" "managing their own funds" and "the market always grows it never fails" and you're in the market now, oh yes you are, you're in the market place being sold down the river, lock stock and barrel isn't it funny how the latest scare is coming out this close to an election like so many other scares before like the eye-rak invasion and we have to give paulson irrevocable unquestionable powers but i'm sure his intentions are good is he competent? if he is i don't want him doing anything unless karl rove says it's okay and i'm thinking this is their last assault on the country's finances, they're going to hollow it out, they're like bankrobbers sweeping change out of the till into their sacks as they run out the back door of the bank into the waiting getaway car, they're looting the country, they're getting what's left, what's offensive and insulting is they want you to hold the doors open for them as they run out and make their getaway; they're going to take everything that they haven't given to exxon mobil god what are they communists you don't have to be an economist like paul krugman to know there's a fucking train coming down the pike comin' atcha real strong whooooo! whoooooo! here comes the train the engineer's text messaging he's not payin' attention WHOOOOOO! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WOOOOOOO WOOO WOOO WOOO WOOO WOOO WOO WOOO WOOOOO WOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!O!O!O!O!O!O!O!O!O!O!O!O!O!O!O!O! and meanwhile the democrats, relevant and upright as always, that partisan party that gives "buy partisan" a whole new level of meaning, the party of fun-lovers that's never stopped any republican giveaway, the democrats that have always gone along their mothers must've told them always say "yes" to be polite to get along have just funded another 618 billion dollars to the perpetuation of our illegal immoral occupation of iraq and remember this is the dream team that gave us samuel alito and antonin scalia and john roberts oh darn and the bankruptcy legislation written by the bank lobbyists that just sticks it to the little guy who's going broke in this booming economy and now they say it's okay drill for oil offshore we've had a moratorium on it for twenty-eight years but jesus fucking christ the democrats are just handing it right over no wonder i don't want to know anything anymore how about you and what i'm thinking is even if obama isn't assassinated and even if he makes it to the white trash house ......
there won't be a penny left in the treasury for any social programs whatsoever; we'll just have to keep feeding the military industrial complex and shut down all the schools .....
i miss molly ivins; she was way beyond bright and she tempered her views of the abattoir around her with humor ..... she also came up with solutions to the problems she saw, and her eyesight was way beyond twenty-twenty .... i don't have the energy to cite her, chapter and verse, although campaign finance reform is the start of it ..... you can find her in the library .... .
you can find me, huggin' my dust bunnies, hiding underneath the bed ......
next: dr. pete changes his mind .....