That stone just keeps on rolling
Bringing me some real bad news
The takers get the honey
Givers sing the blues
Robin Trower—Too Rolling Stoned
Friends trying to find jobs
can’t get nothing
not even an interview
this “recessions” a tough one
I’ve got a job
hell I’ve got 2
gotta have both
to stay out of the screws
Families everywhere
are losing their homes
no money for the mortgage
who has 900 bones?
The banks take them back
they owned them all along
Citibank and Chase
say “we’ve done nothing wrong”
Health insurance costs
are out of control
40 million of us
have no help with the toll
The government plan is
just stay healthy
politicians won’t stop the insurance companies
because their making too much money
We bail the banks out
because they’re too big to fail
but we the people
our lives are for sale
Even after we save them
bonuses worth billions
get paid out
to greedy Wall Street minions
The recession is over
shouts the news
then why am I still broke
and singing the blues?
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Sarah Palin: Going Stupid
Sarah Palin’s autobiography Going Rogue has just been released. What a title, because she’s a maverick, a pioneer, an iconoclast. And why is that? Well let’s face it; normally someone this stupid would try to stay out of the limelight, to not draw attention to their idiocy. But what did Sarah “Rogue” Palin do instead? She ran for governor of Alaska. I won’t cast aspersions on the people of Alaska. When I wonder why they voted for Sarah Palin I have to believe they were under the influence of a mass delusion and they thought they were voting for a valid candidate or perhaps a polar bear. Only when they woke up from their reverie did they realize what they had wrought.
Here’s where our story takes a sharp left turn, a rogue turn, if you will. Sarah’s Circus of Stupidity would have remained in Alaska, a gentle, warming sense of amusement on those below 0 nights if it hadn’t been for John McCain. Or as he became known during the 2008 election campaign, John “Dear God I will do anything if you just let me be president” McCain.
John, in his infinite wisdom, asked Sarah to be his vice president. Most people, who knew their brains weren’t firing on all neurons, would have said no. But you know our Sarah, she’s a dope. I mean rogue. What does she do? She says yes, John, I will be your vice president. I will do interviews in which I say nothing but “you betcha” and “Bill Ayers” over and over again. I’ll say things in a homespun, folksy way meant to endear me to people but instead come off sounding like Granny catching a possum down at the ce-ment pond. I’ll go into a debate so unprepared that somewhere a chimpanzee watching the event will be heard to mutter, “You gotta be kidding me. This is a joke right?”
The gauzy haze of the Bush years was finally lifted and the American people rejected the bumbling please-let-me-win desperation of McCain/Palin and elected Barack Obama president. We thought we had seen and heard the last of Sarah Palin. But instead of staying in the wilds of Alaska and leaving us alone, she quits as governor, writes her memoir and becomes a nuisance by spreading herself all over the TV and newspapers like a stomach virus.
Our long, national nightmare continues . . .
Here’s where our story takes a sharp left turn, a rogue turn, if you will. Sarah’s Circus of Stupidity would have remained in Alaska, a gentle, warming sense of amusement on those below 0 nights if it hadn’t been for John McCain. Or as he became known during the 2008 election campaign, John “Dear God I will do anything if you just let me be president” McCain.
John, in his infinite wisdom, asked Sarah to be his vice president. Most people, who knew their brains weren’t firing on all neurons, would have said no. But you know our Sarah, she’s a dope. I mean rogue. What does she do? She says yes, John, I will be your vice president. I will do interviews in which I say nothing but “you betcha” and “Bill Ayers” over and over again. I’ll say things in a homespun, folksy way meant to endear me to people but instead come off sounding like Granny catching a possum down at the ce-ment pond. I’ll go into a debate so unprepared that somewhere a chimpanzee watching the event will be heard to mutter, “You gotta be kidding me. This is a joke right?”
The gauzy haze of the Bush years was finally lifted and the American people rejected the bumbling please-let-me-win desperation of McCain/Palin and elected Barack Obama president. We thought we had seen and heard the last of Sarah Palin. But instead of staying in the wilds of Alaska and leaving us alone, she quits as governor, writes her memoir and becomes a nuisance by spreading herself all over the TV and newspapers like a stomach virus.
Our long, national nightmare continues . . .
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Partycrashers
Boise State, TCU, Cincinnati: Thank you for your college football seasons thus far. We appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into creating such exciting and fun-to-watch teams and can imagine the thrill it must be to be undefeated this late in the season. We wanted to say thank you . . . and you shouldn’t have bothered because you’re not getting into the national title game.
Even if you win out and end up undefeated for the whole season we are not letting you in the club. Why? You’re not in the SEC or Big 12 of course. Those are the only two conferences that have any relevance. At least that’s the consensus of the talking heads on ESPN, Fox, CBS, ABC, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We realize that you’ve worked just as hard as any other Division I school with the coach spending months recruiting the best players available, the tough two-a-day summer practices, the game planning, dealing with injuries, etc. Yes, you’ve done all these things, but you haven’t done them in the SEC or Big 12, so it’s a moot point.
Oh, and don’t feel like you’re being singled out. We don’t care about the Big 10, The ACC, the MAC, Conference USA, the Sun Belt or the PAC 10 either (except USC, we’ll always care about USC no matter how many games they lose to Stanford and Oregon).
In fact you really don’t need to have a football program. By all rights you should just shut down, save that money, use it elsewhere at the university because we’ll never let you in the title game. What would this country be coming to if the National Champion of Division I college football was Boise State or Texas Christian? I mean that would be un-American. We’d have to be communists to let that happen.
You should just be happy that we ALLOW you to play in bowls against the teams we do let into the championship game, such as Boise State’s 2006 defeat of Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl or Utah’s 2008 defeat of Alabama in the Sugar bowl.
Because you see, those games are the real reason that we don’t want to let you play for the national championship.
You might actually win.
Even if you win out and end up undefeated for the whole season we are not letting you in the club. Why? You’re not in the SEC or Big 12 of course. Those are the only two conferences that have any relevance. At least that’s the consensus of the talking heads on ESPN, Fox, CBS, ABC, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We realize that you’ve worked just as hard as any other Division I school with the coach spending months recruiting the best players available, the tough two-a-day summer practices, the game planning, dealing with injuries, etc. Yes, you’ve done all these things, but you haven’t done them in the SEC or Big 12, so it’s a moot point.
Oh, and don’t feel like you’re being singled out. We don’t care about the Big 10, The ACC, the MAC, Conference USA, the Sun Belt or the PAC 10 either (except USC, we’ll always care about USC no matter how many games they lose to Stanford and Oregon).
In fact you really don’t need to have a football program. By all rights you should just shut down, save that money, use it elsewhere at the university because we’ll never let you in the title game. What would this country be coming to if the National Champion of Division I college football was Boise State or Texas Christian? I mean that would be un-American. We’d have to be communists to let that happen.
You should just be happy that we ALLOW you to play in bowls against the teams we do let into the championship game, such as Boise State’s 2006 defeat of Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl or Utah’s 2008 defeat of Alabama in the Sugar bowl.
Because you see, those games are the real reason that we don’t want to let you play for the national championship.
You might actually win.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Fearmongers!
This Tuesday at 9 it’s a new episode of Fox’s hit drama The Fearmongers! This week’s episode: Dr. Death!
Starring Glenn Beck as The Douchebag:
“Conservatives are awake. 9/12ers are willing to do the hard things. We know what this means! We’re taking time out of our busy lives, taking time away from their families; they’re attending town hall meetings. They are calling their representatives. How many times do we have to be yelled at by your people in Washington? The 9/12ers are willing to stand in line and take our shoes off before the plane actually hits the tower.”
Michele Bachmann as Wingnut Michele:
“I’d love to have everyone join me so we can go up and down through the halls, find members of Congress, look at the whites of their eyes and say, ‘Don’t take away my healthcare.’”
Virginia Foxx as Birdbrain:
“Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. . . . I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room – this very room – and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.”
Tonight’s episode is brought to you by the Republican Party:
The health care reform bill is right outside your door! It's wearing a vest of explosives. Don’t let it into your home! Terrorists! Conspiracy! Fear! Listen to us!
And FOX News:
Tune in to tomorrow’s episode . . . whoops, I mean newscast, to hear all about how democrats sweat sulfur from the bowels of hell and republicans’ saliva cures cancer! Fox News, we lie so you don’t have to!
Starring Glenn Beck as The Douchebag:
“Conservatives are awake. 9/12ers are willing to do the hard things. We know what this means! We’re taking time out of our busy lives, taking time away from their families; they’re attending town hall meetings. They are calling their representatives. How many times do we have to be yelled at by your people in Washington? The 9/12ers are willing to stand in line and take our shoes off before the plane actually hits the tower.”
Michele Bachmann as Wingnut Michele:
“I’d love to have everyone join me so we can go up and down through the halls, find members of Congress, look at the whites of their eyes and say, ‘Don’t take away my healthcare.’”
Virginia Foxx as Birdbrain:
“Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. . . . I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room – this very room – and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.”
Tonight’s episode is brought to you by the Republican Party:
The health care reform bill is right outside your door! It's wearing a vest of explosives. Don’t let it into your home! Terrorists! Conspiracy! Fear! Listen to us!
And FOX News:
Tune in to tomorrow’s episode . . . whoops, I mean newscast, to hear all about how democrats sweat sulfur from the bowels of hell and republicans’ saliva cures cancer! Fox News, we lie so you don’t have to!
Monday, November 9, 2009
Mediocre Minds
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds
Albert Einstein
As evidence that Mr. Einstein knew what he was talking about I present these signs seen at various Tea Party protests:
“Obama listens to Mao, I listen to Fox News”
“Obama and his Marxist buddies are after your freedom”
“The American taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s ovens”
“Obama loves taxes, bankrupt USA, loves babykilling”
“Barrack Hussein Obama: The new face of Hitler”
A cartoon of Obama slitting the throat of Uncle Sam
and the vilest of them all:
“National Socialist Healthcare Dachau Germany 1945” printed over a photo of a pile of dead Jews
This is the devolution of this country. Soon we’ll be back to single-celled paramecium swimming in the muck. How did we go from a country of intelligent, thoughtful, progressive pioneers to degenerate, ignorant, hate-spewing separatists?
If there is even one person, much less a thousand, who think these type of incendiary signs are appropriate to the national discourse, then as a country, we are lost.
Albert Einstein
As evidence that Mr. Einstein knew what he was talking about I present these signs seen at various Tea Party protests:
“Obama listens to Mao, I listen to Fox News”
“Obama and his Marxist buddies are after your freedom”
“The American taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s ovens”
“Obama loves taxes, bankrupt USA, loves babykilling”
“Barrack Hussein Obama: The new face of Hitler”
A cartoon of Obama slitting the throat of Uncle Sam
and the vilest of them all:
“National Socialist Healthcare Dachau Germany 1945” printed over a photo of a pile of dead Jews
This is the devolution of this country. Soon we’ll be back to single-celled paramecium swimming in the muck. How did we go from a country of intelligent, thoughtful, progressive pioneers to degenerate, ignorant, hate-spewing separatists?
If there is even one person, much less a thousand, who think these type of incendiary signs are appropriate to the national discourse, then as a country, we are lost.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Tales from the Morning Hours: Newspaper Delivery
It’s 3 a.m. and a moonless sky greets me when I leave my house. The air has turned colder as the calendar has flipped to November. I’ve already worked one job and now I’m off to my second, running on caffeine, sugar and being too tired to care. I deliver newspapers.
This is my city. Well, actually I live in a small town eight miles south of here and I don’t deliver papers to the whole city, just ten or twelve streets in a residential neighborhood so . . . you know what, never mind.
Edgehill, Westwood, Greendale, Prescott, Randolph: these are the mean streets of my route. With ranchers, A Frames, Cape Cods, one on top of another, you never know who you’re going to run into. One morning it was the 70 year old man in his boxers waiting for his newspaper at 3:30 a.m. Another day it was a guy in the dark, on his porch, in his underwear with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, surprised I was handing him a newspaper like he didn’t remember he had a subscription. Then there was the drunk girl who had obviously just gotten home at 4 a.m. and couldn’t comprehend what a newspaper was. There’s the guy walking his dog at 4 in the morning, or another man who was standing along the road drinking a cup of coffee in his bathrobe and slippers. Drunks, insomniacs, and people without pants: These are the hard cases I meet on these rough and tumble streets.
While you’re safe at home in your bed I’m up and out on the roads with ne’re-do-wells and rapscallions. So you enjoy yourself while you sleep, dreaming of tomorrow at your normal job with regular hours and vacation pay and health insurance and weekends off. I’m delivering the morning paper because who else is going to do it? You? You pansy. You wouldn’t have the guts to get up and do this job.
And the complaints I have to deal with. Like the guy who complained that his paper was wet when it was in a tube and it hadn’t rained in 4 days. Or the morning I had car trouble and I had to call my sister to come help me finish the route and ended up finishing 20 minutes late and the one house had already called to complain they didn’t get a paper. Oh, I’m sorry ma’am; did I scar you because I didn’t get your paper there by 6? Do you wake up in the middle of the night sweating and screaming, asking your god why there is so much pain in your life because you couldn’t read Marmaduke at precisely 6:01 am?
You think you can do this job? Ha! I’d like to see you try. No, really, I want you to try because this effing job is killing me. Please take over my route. I’m tired all the time, people are driving me nuts, it’s always raining, I don’t make enough money for the amount of work it is, soon it will be 30 degrees and I’ll be driving around with the windows down just daring the flu to attack me. All that stuff I said earlier about you being a wuss? Just kidding. You can totally handle this job.
This is my city. Well, actually I live in a small town eight miles south of here and I don’t deliver papers to the whole city, just ten or twelve streets in a residential neighborhood so . . . you know what, never mind.
Edgehill, Westwood, Greendale, Prescott, Randolph: these are the mean streets of my route. With ranchers, A Frames, Cape Cods, one on top of another, you never know who you’re going to run into. One morning it was the 70 year old man in his boxers waiting for his newspaper at 3:30 a.m. Another day it was a guy in the dark, on his porch, in his underwear with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, surprised I was handing him a newspaper like he didn’t remember he had a subscription. Then there was the drunk girl who had obviously just gotten home at 4 a.m. and couldn’t comprehend what a newspaper was. There’s the guy walking his dog at 4 in the morning, or another man who was standing along the road drinking a cup of coffee in his bathrobe and slippers. Drunks, insomniacs, and people without pants: These are the hard cases I meet on these rough and tumble streets.
While you’re safe at home in your bed I’m up and out on the roads with ne’re-do-wells and rapscallions. So you enjoy yourself while you sleep, dreaming of tomorrow at your normal job with regular hours and vacation pay and health insurance and weekends off. I’m delivering the morning paper because who else is going to do it? You? You pansy. You wouldn’t have the guts to get up and do this job.
And the complaints I have to deal with. Like the guy who complained that his paper was wet when it was in a tube and it hadn’t rained in 4 days. Or the morning I had car trouble and I had to call my sister to come help me finish the route and ended up finishing 20 minutes late and the one house had already called to complain they didn’t get a paper. Oh, I’m sorry ma’am; did I scar you because I didn’t get your paper there by 6? Do you wake up in the middle of the night sweating and screaming, asking your god why there is so much pain in your life because you couldn’t read Marmaduke at precisely 6:01 am?
You think you can do this job? Ha! I’d like to see you try. No, really, I want you to try because this effing job is killing me. Please take over my route. I’m tired all the time, people are driving me nuts, it’s always raining, I don’t make enough money for the amount of work it is, soon it will be 30 degrees and I’ll be driving around with the windows down just daring the flu to attack me. All that stuff I said earlier about you being a wuss? Just kidding. You can totally handle this job.
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