friday night fights? Swing and a Spliff

oh my. it's friday, isn't it? it was monday and now it's friday. it was monday, then it was tuesdaywednesdaythursday and tonight it's not. i need a moment to do a system check...minor knot in the mid-back region next to the spine (curable with Heinieken10, per hour x2, low-level headache and small blister on finger from busting ass all day today so that tomorrow will only be a long short work experience (see above prescription); beer fluids level is acceptable (but can be topped off); red sox are beating the yankees. cheers.
okay. everything's fairly in the green.
so, let's chat. i'll open up the floor to questions first. anyone? no? you sure? great.
looking to the news:
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. the link really is to a story, but when i was at the end of it and saw the threat...well, call me immature. call me reactionary. call me...The Pale Writer.

Storms in U.S. divert gaze from worsening Iraq...yeah, remember this one? that "war" over "there"? wasn't going so well, people dying, soldiers getting blown up, constitution in crisis and all that? still happening...yup. didn't go away. except from the papers, of course. it seems judith miller being freed from jail is more newsworthy than 62 iraqis being blown to pieces along with 5 of our soldiers. karen hughes handing out books about our presidents to children in istanbul (by the way, the four photos on the book's cover were of washington, kennedy, lincoln and...you guessed it...bush) is also more noteworthy. but the iraq "experience" is still kicking up dust in the rear view mirror and gaining again. unless, of course, we can generate another diversion.

some time ago i was sent a link by lecram to a site that traded photos of dead iraqis from american soldiers for free porn access. lecram did not send it for prurient reasons. he sent it to inform me of a gruesome and immoral "hobby" going on. i did not blog about it. instead i sent it to a fellow blogger. he posted about it and sent it to other friends who could investigate it. little did we know at the time that this would become something of news importance. we were just trying to get the word out about this atrocious site. now, i find who the first blogger was to see it and post about it. don't click on the link unless you know italian. now, though, the press is beginning to run this story and ask questions. like "how can it be legal to trade desecration of the dead for 'lolitas-r-us'"? this link gives multiple links to those in the press picking up the thread. and about time. the site started as a place for soldiers to post nude pictures of their wives/girlfriends (huh?). it eventually morphed into what it is when the site's owner was sent pictures of iraqi dead (civilians, insurgents, terrorists...what's the difference, right?). he chose to then open the porn up to anyone who would email him or post macabre shots. and give free access to retail porn. i can understand soldiers using morbid humor to relieve the daily stress over there. cops do it, too, over here. we civilians tend to not understand the pressures constantly placed on soldiers. they are not the decision or policy makers. they are the front line holding the decisions and policies together on a shoestring budget and no armor for their trucks. and getting shot at and blown up...however. trading death for what one can only hope is a good 30 second jackoff is just wrong. FUCKING wrong! there is plenty of free porn to be had out there (and way more fun). more than i can shake my stick at. one doesn't have to buy a dime's worth in order to get off. so, there you have it. straight from the ass's mouth. my moral two cents, which is worth $.00014 less than it was when you started reading this post.

The Senator's aide chuckled rather loudly and said, "What VA? By the time this administration is done there won't be a VA." cue villain theme music, an offstage "bwahahahah!!!" and four shots of something strong. the Veteran's Administration actually works? despite the budgetary cutbacks they've experienced over the past 6 years or so? go figure. they should be bankrupt by now. they should be mere rubble under the boots of Small Government Nazis. we should be watching old soldiers lining up for the "special showers". that's how much conservative compassion this administration has had for those who served our country (for better or worse) in times of war and peace. once again: front line grunts paying the political price instead of those politicians on both sides of the corporate boardwalk who try to gut needed programs in order to free up money for their pet pork. at the moment, this IS a republican pogrom. but politicians will be politicians no matter who's in power. sell to the highest bidder and hope they have really good lawyers who can hide the shady dealings, reword untimely sales of stock and redistribute focus when it it all spills out (what politico can honestly think nowadays that the BIG fuckups will go away? especially with us fuckass bloggers getting involved).

now, it's important to remember that the Texas District Attorney is well known for his indiscriminatory pursuits of justice. and it's important to remember that a cia agent's outing is still not solved at the highest level. this man in Texas has managed to convince a grand jury that Tom (How To) Delay should be indicted for conspiracy (granted, grand juries merely rule on the general news). this indictment follows in the footsteps of not less than three rebukes by the House On Ethics and Reform in the last three (?) years. the majority leader has a few marks on his record? seems to me that if his scoresheet belonged to me i would be paying very high insurance rates and unable to secure loans or any kind of real financial help. but How To still has the public backing of the largest insurance company in the world: the republican party. if things went this south for me i'd be worried that the check cashing place on the corner wouldn't really hold my check until monday.

the one time i ran afoul of the law (in any meaningful way) was when i got really, really, really drunk and insisted on driving. it was a barbecue after a matinee at second space. we started at one actor's house where we drank beer and ate. then we went to the "english" pub where i used to work and drank guinness (notice how i separate beer from guinness?). after some games of real cricket we sojourned to the roadhouse. i had been given $5 by a friend who couldn't go and had told me to buy a kamakazi and drink it for her. when the gang got to the roadhouse one of my compadres talked the bartender into giving the two of us a pitcher of kamakazis for the same price. i remember saying to him "that's damn slick". then i turned to view the pool table. then i woke up and was driving through a school fence at 3 a.m. the only thing that woke me in time was the cigarette ember burning into my hand, because my head was slumped down onto my arm. at the station i blew a .27. at the court appearance to plead guilty to drunken driving 2 or 3 months later the prosecuter's assistant's jaw hit the floor when the judge read off my blood alcohol level. so did i actually. i hadn't heard what it was. and i immediately thought of how i drove right through the fence without hitting the posts and no car rammed me and nobody was hurt. and only one word came to mind: wow. i'm alive.

and all of this makes me think of my cat who expects me to feed it, house it and then leave it the fuck alone. this is the tabby translated into siamese. holy cat on a cross, saint francis. i don't know her name, but thumper is her game.

HNT Goes Coastal

we walked into the theater and claimed our spots. we were first in line, the three of us. picking seats in that back row (because that's usually the safest place in a Neo-Surrealist show) we began to enjoy our beers. lecram had run out after the previous show and bought a fifth of C.C. you see, the Neo-Surrealists are what some might categorize as "drunken fools on a parade float with four flat tires and nowhere to go". in plainer words, they don't care what happens so long as they have fun and make us have fun in the process. but i don't agree. i think they have a master plan to show themselves as aliens, take over the world and then redo mount rushmore to make it look like mojo nixon, lyle lovett, ed wood and all of southern culture on the skids. oh, and they're drunk. the Neo's, that is.

so, they we are. lecram has handed me the fifth. i have yet to open it. i had been drinking most of that afternoon, but it was all beer. i don't like to mix beer with the hard stuff on the weekend. so, i left it capped and sealed. then, daniel walked in and asked in his childlike voice "so, where that drink?". or something to that effect (one year it was "who's got the fucking booze?"). i have to admit now that the bottle was for him and his cohorts. i have learned over the past 4 years that (when walking into one of his shows) one should come well stocked.
but i digress. we're here for the show.
well, i don't remember how it started other than lights down. but the lights down part was pretty good. then a man was rubbing northern quilted toilet paper through his crack while yelling at the quilters that the stitching was'nt tight enough. then really bad carpentry...hit a bit close to home. at one point a mime fucked up a heckler. the c.c. came back out for the portrait session. somewhere in there, they threw cheese at us. generik and i were given chocolate as a love gift by a naked man whose genitalia always reminds me of a lotus blossom on the pond. i mean literally. and that's all i mean... shut up.
there were bouncy balls with a black light. a "go fly a kite" song. zuskha wasn't there this year and she is my favorite techie in the world, because she's really pretty and got naked for the show last year. in fact, there were 4 or 5 naked women in that booth. where'd that go?
so anyway. i'd broken the rule of the festival that said no pictures allowed during a show. well, i didn't break it really. when daniel was hanging out before the show and told me he was doing the "love" skit i told him about HNT and asked him if it would be okay to use him for it. he agreed and told the actors that there would a flash during the skit. but when it started i couldn't do it. he was on top of his game that night. i've seen that skit 4 times now and this year was by far the best (even though it wasn't zuskha). it was tight. and i didn't want to interrupt it. so, i didn't get The Shot. what i got was bathroom humor:

disgusting. immature. freakish. not the high brow i was expecting. i felt dirty afterwards. i hate myself now... i ate his chocolate.

Roger Roger, Over Rover

president bush wants to allow the military to wander our streets and tell us what to do in the event of a(nother) catastrophic event. contrary to popular belief, there are some critics of this plan. and this is the government which i think broke our basic agreement with it by not protecting us from weather beyond our normal control. so, i do not give the benefit of doubt any more. and this proposal of bush's is ludicrous at best. at worst it's ...well, i don't see a worst. i see fascism. i see a strangelovian operetta filled with all of the "worst" things that our government can think of to throw at us in times of stress in order to divert with either a new scare (and reason for continued patriotism) or an old triumph (and reason for renewed patriotism). the only reason we went crazy down in new orleans after the flood was because we thought we had been left to die. i watched it from the west coast and couldn't believe my eyes. i couldn't believe what i read. it started bad really quickly and then it went straight to hell. but do i think that letting the military step in as if it's martial law is right? why, wouldn't that basically say that the government has quit the business of our safety if it means giving up afghanistan and iraq?

have you heard of the davis-bacon act of 1931? neither had i until today when i read that president bush had suspended it. go here to find a summary of it. or go here to read the actual act itself.
evidently, federal contractors working to rebuild any area damaged by the recent hurricanes need not pay a local area's prevailing wage (don't read that as union wage...not even close!) to workers hired. in louisiana that prevailing wage is about $9 per hour. many of the people who would apply for these jobs are the very locals put out by the storms and in need of jobs and money. now, they will work for minimum wage or thereabouts. if they can even get the jobs. word is going around that the contractors are trying to hire as many undocumented workers as they can find.
apparently, bush looked at the money he was willing to let go of to help the storm reconstruction and looked at the amount of bodies needed to do the work and sagely decided that the only way in which to keep the budget under control was to roughly halve the wages. hey, let's all give a damn hearty round of applause to those white house bean counters, huh? kudos to youse guys! and let's not forget that oh-so-humble white house counsel who looked into the murky, murky past and saw an opportunity to do good for the common citizen by suspending a major law that protected the common citizen up until today, but was now "keepin' the kid down on the farm". big, big shout out!
hell, you'd think the "citizens" down around the Big Easy would be more than grateful for this government handout. minimum wage? so what? it's a job and those folks who were dumb enough to choose to live 6 feet under sea level should be grateful to bush for this show of generosity. and they should just get to work and tote that cotton. damn, i love this country! what a great way of life! now shut up and eat your gruel!

Can We put Bush's Face On It?

Official Announcement

The government today announced that it is changing its
emblem from an Eagle to a CONDOM because it more
accurately reflects the government's political stance. A
condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the
next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you
a sense of security while you're actually being screwed.

i like to write to the Fresno Bee with my pompous, self-serving genuflections. it beats actually doing anything concrete to change society. the following are the most recent two i wrote and considered sending. enjoy, hate, froth, writhe, undulate...whatever. i'm becoming pretty damn cynical, so i don't really care much anymore.

It seems the media and the populace at large are content to be enthralled with Mayor Autry's taxpayer-paid excursion to Louisiana where he is conducting a touchy-feely, goodwill tour full of newsbites.Yet I have not seen or read of one instance in which a family has been issued an invitation to our city while they sort out their affairs at home. Are we really looking to bring 300-400 evacuees here or are we merely paying for a re-election junket? Autry looks good "getting down" and yucking it up with selected Lousianans, but what is he actually doing? I'm beginning to seriously doubt that a few busloads of displaced poor people will be allowed to enter our county. It's really the "thought" that counts anyway, right?

While we focus on Mayor Autry's re-election tour in Louisiana it may be time to, also, think on how we might respond to a natural disaster happening closer to home. We now know that we can't rely on the federal government to protect us in any manner resembling that which it agreed to when any of us became citizens. That agreement involves our government protecting us from harm to our bodies and our properties from individuals or events that endanger our basic way of life. That is democracy. In return, we work hard and tithe a certain percent to its coffers. This is the big question. What did we receive from it when Katrina hit? Answer: platitudes, assurances, denials, finger pointing and death. There will be a next time and chances are the response will be the same without common outrage forcing change at the highest levels. This is an American tragedy. Not White versus Black. Poor versus rich. American. How do we not let our government simply wipe this blood off its hands? If we don't speak up, shout out, then history is doomed to repeat itself.