Wherefore, sobeit

As I walked to the park, coat pocket full of Frolic brand mini-dog treats (i.e. small versions of the normal dog treats, although I suppose small dogs would eat them, too) the asphalt before me warmed and grew hot and bubbled and melted and an asphalt man rose up, like someone in a straight-to-video futuristic action movie with cheap CGI effects, and said, to me: wherefore we shall close the universities and all outdoor gatherings with more than 500 persons and indoor gatherings of more than 100 persons, but leave the schools open and let airlines operate normally and most of all, give extra money to rich people and companies, who suffer most from this Covid19 pandemic which we’re not officially calling a pandemic yet, sobeit.”
And I said, how do you do that, with the asphalt? That’s cool.
And he said, so you got what I said? Is that cool, can I go?
And I said, grabbing his asphalt coat sleeve, no hang on a sec.
But his asphalt coat sleeve tore off in my hand, sort of separated from the rest of the asphalt and I saw underneath was not a genuine asphalt vision guy, it was just a guy in a suit, and the guy was none other than the president of the chamber of commerce.
It was worth a try, he said. Just doing my job, advocating for my clientele, you know?
You know what I find most interesting about this whole covid19 pandemic thing, I said? It’s the way we are accidentally on the verge of a general strike, something we’ve needed for ages.
Now just a doggone minute, he said.
People have now seen everything can come to a stop and the world doesn’t end. Our existence is not predicated on the rich getting richer non-stop.
That’s not what this is about, he said.
Sure it is, I said. It’s even better than when Eyjafjallajökull erupted and there were no airplanes in the sky over Europe for a week. So peaceful. And this is, or will be, an even broader general strike you can’t fire anyone for.
We’ll find a way, he said.
Meanwhile, they’ll be home keeping themselves busy taking guillotine-building workshops. As long as recovery programs start at the bottom, not at the top.
That’ll be the day, he said. And melted back into the asphalt, leaving just a little of that tarry smell in the air.
I fed a few crows and went back to the office, feeling a little tired.

figurehead

does anyone else get the feeling
lately that the current president
of the usa is less a leader and more
one of those living figureheads strapped
to the front of one of those spikey,
flamey trucks in road warrior
hollering and spittle/snot-dripping through
his hammered mask? his typos and
brain-damage english distracting
us from the stabby, shooty,
burney nazi caravan behind him, seeking valhalla
but just bootlicker dogs of
the wheezer gods back at the cave
doling out water by the drop
or is it just me?
and of those, how many have the sneaking
feeling it has always been thus
and something just can’t be
arsed to apply its mask in the morning
anymore?

Viennese politics

Man 1: Apparently, to be considered a down to earth politician in Vienna, you have to be overweight and look half-drunk.
Man 2: So you mean I could go into politics?
Man 1: Your hair’s too long.

Who smells so good?

His stop was coming he put away his H.P. Lovecraft story collection – he had just finished The Horror at Red Hook – stood up and let his momentum do the walking for him as the train slowed and wow who smells so good? The pretty girl with an expression suggesting pain? The tall, husky, bearded lad with his long, black hair up in a bun? Can’t be me, he thought, my cologne is spicier and more amber. This is turquoise and iris and cumulus clouds.

Not the dogfaced screamers, nor the eldritch, seething, apelike, Asian devilworshipping Kurds (I left a few things out – swarthy, dark, what else?) Lovecraft was getting so worked up about in The Horror at Red Hook.

Avoiding dogfaced screamers, the man followed a five-year-old girl with sneakers with blinking soles, her big sister holding her hand, down the stairs and to the streetcar stop.

What is your pet peeve? Lovecraft was a xenophobe. This man here, he tried not to think about charity. Everytime he reads about a company running a charity event for one of their employees in dire financial straits because something fell on them or plowed into them or bit them, he has to think, why didn’t the company provide their employees with decent health insurance instead?

Every time he reads a heartwarming (seriously) story about thousands of people running or marching for a cause, he has to wonder why they aren’t marching on a capitol building or a country club instead. With torches and pitchforks.

He gave a panhandler twice as much as she was asking for yesterday, it’s not that he’s opposed to generosity.

When some billionaire donates money to a cause, he has to think, they should pay taxes, instead. Financing causes is plutocracy. Paying taxes is democracy.

He begins to walk up the hill to work, reading his book as he goes. He takes a big, Ministry-of-Funny-Walks step to avoid something that is either a dog turd that looks like a partially-eaten chocolate pretzel, or a partially-eaten chocolate pretzel. A mean-faced woman with dark red — almost black — lipstick walks three little kids the opposite way past him and gives him a scowl. A little blonde girl passes perpendicularly on her way to school.  A gang of little boys laugh about something in a good-natured way.

It is windy and the sun is out.

The trouble today

Man: [Driving. Scowls.] Take media, for example. It’s manipulative. It frames public discourse to give the advantage to the concentrated capital that owns it.

Captive audience: Deedeedee. Dee. Dee. Dee! Deedeedee.

Man: Like this morning. On the news. They said, “The president has to cut spending by $65 billion immediately,” or whatever. That is not a fact. They are not reporting a fact, they are selling public opinion a response to a fact that capital prefers. The fact is: you have revenue on this side, and you have projected spending on this other side, and there is a $65 billion difference between the two. That is the fact. The question is: how do we make up the shortfall? Cutting spending is one option. Buying lotto tickets and paying it off with a Powerball win is another. Oh, and there’s one more: you could raise taxes. Unfortunately, the poor and the middle class are already squeezed pretty tight, which leaves the upper class, and capital in the form of corporations etc.

Captive audience: Deedeedee! Dee! DEEDEEDEE!

Man: What you listening to there?

Captive audience: Skrillex.

An opera

Maria, Argentina, Cry, etc. etc.
or
Everything is better with slugs
an Opera
by
Mig Living

Scene I
Governor’s Mansion
Advisors:

Rising! Rising! You are a star!
Opportunistic cutthroats all
we drive the nation into the ground
and you are rising among us!
you are a star!

Chorus:
Sic!

Scene II
Governor’s office. He is alone, typing on computer.

Governor:

You are glorious!
I hope you understand!
Who needs shrinks???
Did you get my eamils?

Chorus:
Sic!

Governor:

Are you basking gloriously?
Are you holding something in the fading light?
Wow, what a rack!
I miss you unbeleivably

Chorus:
Sic!

Maria:
(Whom we hear but not see, only her words on a computer screen)

Hi beloved!
You’re a great kisser!
Crisp as new lettuce!
You make me feel like a teenager!
Soft and slimy!

I’am realized now
How it feels to realy love
I dream of embrassing you
Forever!!!1!

Chorus:
Sic!
Sic!
Sic!

Maria:
My address is (deleted by the State!)
Come to me
You leafy thing
Wet and crisp and tasty!!!

Scene III
In the wilderness

Governor:
Sweetest!
I am most jealous of your salad!
Stuck in world wind tour with family, China, Tibet, Nepal, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, all that shit
:(((
Then hanging with McCain :(((
Oh, the battle scars of life!
Missing your magnificent parts!1!
O sexual details at the steakhouse!
O 2 pathetic figures!
:)

Chorus:
Sic!

Maria:
I don’t know if I did understood
Your trips are unworthable, remember
You fullfile me with happiness
I don’t want to put the genius back in the bottle!
Freedom! Freedom!
Leafy, tasty freedom!

Chorus:
Sic! Sic! Sic!

Scene IV
Governor’s Mansion

First Lady:
She’s a what?
She’s a what?

First Advisor:
At least it’s not another woman!
Technically it’s not adultery

Second Advisor:
O shut up! Shut up!
Will you just shut up!

Shut up and let me think!

First Lady:
The man I married
and a slug?
Not even a house on her back?

Governor:
In my defense, it was dark.
Dark and moist
In the fading night’s light
O was it ever dark

Chorus:
Sic!

Advisors:
We must spin!
We must spin!
But how can this be spun???
:(((

First Lady:
You must confess!
Confess! Confess!
Apologize!!!!!

Governor:
What? What? What do you suggest?

Advisors:
What? Confess?
Never!

First Lady:
Confess!
Apologize!
I beseech you!
Just leave out the slug part!

Governor:
What? I am confused!
My head, my head.

Advisors:
The idea!
It is brilliant!
:)))
You must confess!
Just leave out the slug part!

(etc etc)

Americans can do anything

Just skip this if you’re tired of hearing about the Republican response to the President’s recent non-State of the Union speech.

Or watch this for the executive summary.

I hadn’t planned to watch the response, I even missed the fact that there had been one, until I accidentally stumbledupon it yesterday. I made it about 30 seconds into it before saying, What a patronizing weirdo and going somewhere else.

There was a nice discussion of it at mefi. A lot of people twittered tweeted twittered about it at twitter.

Didn’t see anything at facebook, but that figures. Myspace crashes my computer, or my eyes, so not sure about that.

Someone said he, Bobby “The Exorcist” Jindal, reminded them of Barney Fife the way he walked out there between the flags. Someone else said he looked as if he had just left a dead, or not-quite-dead, body in his basement. To me he looked like a combination of the two.

Someone else said the reason he sounded as if he were speaking to kindergarten children is because he was, because they’re going to be the first demographic to vote for a Republican president again.

I was basically just really, really appalled by so many things. Why this sort of speech? Why this awful delivery? Why this particular person?

jindal1

He creeped me out before he had said anything. I watched the first few seconds of the video over and over to figure out why.  It was something about his entrance and demeanor. Not only patronizing, but creepy. The serial killer thing.

I thought it might be the crazy eyes, but that could be attributed to craven political ambition, too. I finally decided it was his posture. The first glimpse of him here shows him leaning forward, and he keeps this crooked stance most of the time, off and on.

It makes you look weird, Bobby. Stand up straight!