Reform-atory school

Good news . . . but we're still not there yet. The short version reads, "Tom Corbett, you're a douchebag," but I thought this might carry more weight.

To Attorney General, Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania:

Dear Mr. Corbett,

I understand that the Attorney General's Office is considering filing suit to block healthcare insurance reform legislation, in the process of being signed into law at the federal level.

I certainly hope it does not come to this. I think the legislation is a landmark effort at instituting much-needed reform, putting restrictions on insurance companies from predatory practices--something that, in theory, I think you would support (the restrictions, that is). In addition, it adds greatly needed coverage for all Pennsylvanians and strives to cut skyrocketing healthcare costs.

I fail to understand this weak argument, apparently Republican or Tea Party in nature, that this legislation infringes on states' rights. I thought we settled that issue in 1865. I can't see how this idea betters our country. Trust me, having grown up in a region known for flogging that old (Civil) warhorse, I don't think any of us want to go down that path, legally or morally.

Regardless, if you choose to follow through with this suit, I hope you will do so with consistency and file suit against accepting Medicare, Medicaid, military recruitment, highway safety laws, civil rights legislation, and any number of national legislative efforts that impact Pennsylvania and its citizenry.

Surely you can agree that as an attorney, consistency is important, no matter how unpopular it might be during an election year.

Kind regards,

Tim Winni,
Pittsburgh, PA

Unholy crap

The election is almost upon us, so let's not waste time dawdling through my verbosity, getting mired down in my overwritten prose. Let's cut to the point. Let's get to the chase.

And my point is . . .

Since when does America take instruction on political and economic theory from a man who's not even qualified to snake out your toilet in Ohio?

Socialism, bah. Joe the Plumber, et al., you wouldn't know socialism if it jumped out of the toilet water and bit you on the ass while you were straining through your morning poo.

Still, I guess if Joe is qualified to pronounce (or, as the case may be, denounce) centrist politicians as "socialists," then I'm completely justified to label him and his ignorant, spoiled, and highly opinionated ilk as "steaming piles of unholy crap."

Elizabeth Hasselbeck--Daddy's little steaming pile of unholy crap! Rush Limbaugh--a pill-popping steaming pile of unholy crap! Kelsey Grammer--an underage-sex-engaging, coke-snorting, steaming pile of unholy crap!

My list could go on and on and on, but there's only so many days until the election.

But, ahhh, I feel better already. Name-calling and fear-mongering are indeed cathartic. No wonder the American right wing doesn't bother anymore with cogent arguments or altruistic policy-making. It's much more fun to divide and conquer instead of uniting and leading.

Bottoms up, citizens!

The sad state of Republican glamour

First it was Nancy Reagan, all '80s lacquered hair and makeup and that Wilma Flintstone, lop-sided, off-the-shoulder gown held in place by a boulder-sized choker. Sort of a Pasadena-meets-Bedrock version of Dynasty for the dowager empress set.

Then, after many, many years in the cosmetics-and-conditioner wilderness--Barbara Bush, Marilyn Quayle, Laura Bush, to name but three--it was Ann Coulter of all people, the Jenna Jameson of the Punditocracy, that caught the discerning, right-wing, horndog's attention. All bleached-blond hair, anorexic-ravaged body, perma-tanned countenance, and overly pneumatic "tires" as it were. I know she makes me feel tired just looking at them.

I mean, her.

But then . . . I don't know what happened. Maybe the craziness of Ann Coulter--the looks of a fast-deflating blow-up doll with the high-pitched screech to match--overstayed its welcome and the Bowtie-and-Viagra set started frothing at the mouth for a different kind of gal. No more of those one-night-stand-and-a-boiled-rabbit-in-the-morning babes like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Instead, we'll have the sloe-eyed and pouty-lipped comforts-of-home honey that is Miss Anne Archer!

So along came the hockey mom and the pit bull combined--ladies and germs, I present to you, the Guns-and-Ammo Playmate of the Year for 1985, Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin and Tall, as it were. More like Sarah Plain and Small. Caribou Barbie (wish I'd thought of that first). The WASP version of Evita Peron, at least if the photo (thank you, Wikipedia) of her waving to the descamisados at the Republican National Convention can offer any insights into her Miss Half-Baked Alaska persona.

It has been challenging for me to fathom the appeal of Sarah Palin. Oh, I get how that tough-talking, gun-toting, Jesus-loving mother/political barracuda plays in Heartland and Hearth. (Sort of.) She's just like us! Except that her opinions are better-defined than ours! Let's follow her!

It's a wasp-waisted George "Dubya" Bush in a pencil skirt, folks. In fact, it's highly reminiscent of the I-could-have-a-beer-with-that-politician mindset, just with a gender twist, brought up-to-date with beauty queen hair and a flattering choice of discount eyewear from LensCrafters. The same mindset that led a significant segment of the population (aka, Joe Six-Pack, as Sarah likes to call them, in her patronizing, homespun way) to think that they would far rather have a beer with Dubya than, say, Al Gore or John Kerry. And realizing what a good drinking buddy Dubya would make, it stands to reason that he would also make an excellent president.

It's hard to fault that sort of logic, of course, but, hey, that reasoning didn't turn out so good, now did it?

As the saying goes, most poor souls are just dying to be told what to do, and I guess Sarah Palin is as good (relatively speaking) a person (relatively speaking) to do just that. She is, if nothing else, more palatable personality-wise (relatively speaking) than Dick Cheney, for example, or even the now soul-deadened, right-wing marionette that has overtaken John McCain's cerebral cortex and voice box. You can only go but up from there, I guess, especially if you like your strychnine candy-coated.

I've never been one, though, who enjoys being told what to do and, in fact, when done so, I often have chosen to do the exact opposite. One too many entreaties to buy a "sensible car" impelled me to buy a Mini Cooper this summer. One too many admonishments to "get with the times" makes me hang onto my vinyl disco collection. One too many recommendations to settle down, buy a house, and get a boyfriend still finds me mortgage-free and unencumbered. It's just my nature to be different, to samba to the percussive tonic of my own drummer, and I think it's served me rather well over the years.

So I question authority and conventional wisdom at all times. It may have taken me ages to invest in an iPod, it may have made me wary of jumping on the Obama bandwagon early on, but I think I'm happier, safer, and saner for it.

Nonetheless, I don't think I'll ever come around to getting Sarah Palin. I simply don't understand the fuss, at least on a deep level (assuming there is one), and I certainly don't fathom her alleged sex appeal.

Granted, I don't butter my toast on the side of the bread that rises up for Sarah Palin. We know this already--and besides I'd prefer a nice imported marmalade, if truth be told. But doing my utmost to be objective, I simply can't comprehend her alleged va-va-va-voominess, the thing that for a while there seemed to bring grown reporters and pundits to their knees--or at least prevented them from standing up from behind their desks while on camera.

These guys keep acting like Sarah Palin is Veronica when she is really more Betty. No, wait. Betty had some good sense and a serviceable wardrobe. Rather, Sarah's got Betty's looks but Veronica's steely determination to sucker Archie into going steady, whether she's expecting his baby or not. Or maybe it's that to them, Sarah is Barbie, when she is so obviously Skipper. Or, worse, Midge. (Cindy McClain is clearly Barbie. All plastic with no moving parts. Duh.)

It was all going quite out of control there for a while, and, thankfully, a few too many deer-in-headlights answers about geopolitics and the inability to name one major newspaper or magazine has allowed heads to cool, reporters to stand, and realities to be pondered.

Still, I knew we'd hit a new low in American culture when mainstream media outlets starting discussing Sarah Palin's "MILF" factor.

For those of you who don't know, MILF is an acronym made popular by that other pinnacle of contemporary culture, American Pie. That's right, folks, a movie that made famous the salving of a youthful male's sexual yearnings through intercourse with an apple crumble is giving us new ways to think about government and politics. And MILF stands for (brace yourself, gentle readers) a "Mother I'd Like to Fuck."

Charming, no? A mother one would like to fuck. But then, if she's a mother you'd like to fuck, wouldn't that make you a mother fucker?

A MILF. I don't think even at my most unbridled and horndoggiest I could ever imagine saying that to another human being--even if I were a heterosexual teen with raging hormones, Stacy's mom has got it going on and all that. Every now and again I see an attractive father out with his kids and I think to myself, hmmm, I wish you were my Daddy. But I don't mean that in a literal, parent-child way, of course, just a lascivious one. (Which I guess would make me interested in, appropriately enough, some FILF.) Nonetheless, I'm certainly not walking up to one of his kids to share that information.

However, our pundits and reporters are secure in themselves enough to share this feeling with us. We are indeed blessed!

Yet I guess the situation with Sarah is not much worse than when early on in this interminable presidential race the Pundi-tards tried to make a shirtless, frolicking-on-the-beach Barack Obama an International Male catalog pin-up. And I'm still haunted by that postcard during the 1990s of the heads of Bill Clinton and Al Gore photoshopped onto buff, surfer bods, hugging each other, and smiling brightly for the cameras, as if that tag team was about to usher in a new era of gay love--at least right before Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act.

Which begs the question, at least for me--do countries that have parliaments or dictatorships have to go through this much psycho-sexual meshugas to elect a new leader?

Is anyone north of the border working up a sweat over a photo of a tight-jeans-and-plunging-neckline-down-to-there Stephen Harper?

Did heterosexual Cambodian women and homosexual Cambodian men dream of a page 3 layout in the Phnom Penh Daily News of a six-pack-abs-bedazzled Pol Pot?

Did British men in the 1980s fantasize about a hyper-shellacked centerfold of Maggie Thatcher?

Does anyone really want to see Venezuelan bully boy Hugo Chavez posing in a cowboy hat, fringed vest, and buttless chaps? Or German prime minister Angela Merkel in full dominatrix gear?

Or is this all too much of a Maxim-um overload to consider?

Somehow I can't imagine any of this political porno happening anywhere but in our own little fair-to-middlin' republic. The land of the freak, the home of the bored, with libertines and cheap thrills for all. Oh man.

I figure it must all come down to dissipation and decadence. At least that's the only way I can explain to myself the appeal of Sarah Palin. That or there's just so much Viagra in the water supply these days that most of the country's gone blind.

Not to mention deaf. As well as just plain dumb.

Paper or plastic?

I was innocently minding my own business, simply catching up on older mail in my Bloglines RSS feeder, when I discovered this item available via MSNBC, dated October 9, 2007:

Brain found in bag near Va. apartments

Unclear if it's human or animal, police say; awaiting word from examiner

That's quite a find! I'm still not sure how it turned out, but whether animal or human, a brain in a bag is not your usual home-from-a-day-of-shopping-at-the-mall kind of treasure.

Nevertheless, it's not much a mystery to me. I'm sure a quick cross-reference with the Congressional Record or the daily newspapers would reveal that the President himself had indeed been at a barbecue/pool party that weekend at that very apartment complex. One of his now-divorced frat buddies--now living single in an apartment complex (a Whispering Pines, a Mistyfield Ponds, a Heatherview Mews, if you will) near the airport, because don't you know, he's in sales and has to travel a lot--had the Prez and some of their good ol' boys over for a few beers. They fired up the smoker, got comfortable with a few cold ones, let their cares slip away while they watched the game (the Cowboys of course!), and next thing you know, His Serene Cokeheadedness has stuck his brain in a bag for safe-keeping. Wouldn't want to get it dirty or scuffed up. Most definitely wouldn't want to wrinkle it.

Not in a grocery bag, I suspect. Not even in a brown paper lunch bag. No, more likely in one of those tiny, plastic snack bags ("fun size" perhaps) you mistakenly buy at the Giant Eagle, thinking its a full-sized sandwich bag.

And then he went and got distracted, thinking up new nicknames for his buds (Brownie is now Katrina, Rummy is now Resigned, and Dick . . . well, he's still a Dick) and forgot all about it. Kinda like his whereabouts and daily routine during his alleged service in the Alabama Air National Guard in the middle of that other regional conflict.

Of course, I could prove this conjecture, or at the very least, make it sound more plausible, at least as plausible as any argument against Western Civilization as made by Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh (who kinda look like they could be our Ill Douché's frat brothers, come to think of it), but I'm just too lazy. Too lazy to search the Congressional Record and too lazy to come up with something other than a cheap laugh at Our Fearless Leader's expense.

But, hey, if'n you're too chintzy to pay for healthcare for non-insured, sick children (why not just kick some puppies instead? or send some orphans to the alms house?), then all ya deserve is a cheap laugh, bubba.

Mine's thirty-three

A slightly chilly, blustery, rather boring day in the Middle-Sized City. Not much going on, not much planned for the weekend either. Don't want to be at work today. Don't want to be anywhere really, except maybe in front of the TV in sweats with a jar of Nutella hazelnut spread and a spoon. I leave the rest to your imagination and better judgment.

Suddenly, my cellphone vibrates. I've missed a call. An invitation for an event this evening. From the boyfriend (aka, the Artist) of a friend (aka, Fouchat). The phone message listens like so:

"Hey, we're going to Ball tonight and have an extra ticket. We wanted to know if you'd like to join us. at 8, but maybe we could meet for dinner before.

"OK, take care. Oh! Wait! Why don't you give us a call and let us know if you want to join us. My number's 7!"

Seven. Or, rather, 7. That's the number. The entire number.

Goodness, there's nothing better on a mentally dreary day than getting a message from the Anti-Linear-Thinker League. It made me laugh. Out loud. Several times throughout the day. Almost as much as the time when I played Scrabble with the Artist and Fouchat, and the Artist developed new rules for the game--"You have to spell a word, then use it in a sentence about George Bush," plus you could spell the word upside down, backwards, forwards, diagonally, wherever you could find the space. And, thankfully, you could use expletives and primal screams. It rocked my little binary world to its very foundation.

We scored the game by voting on a scale of 1 to 10 how good the sentence was. Somehow we all ended up with practically the same score, which make say a lot about how bad artists are a math or how good they are at social cohesion.

So today, whenever I thought about something negative--my weight, the impending winter, my car, my travel schedule for October and November, the geopolitical situation, my over-reliance on The Gap to meet my sartorial needs, nothing in the cupboard for dinner tonight but feeling too lazy and cheap to order take-out--I remembered "my number's 7!" and it made me guffaw. In the office. In the restroom. In the line at Subway waiting for a sandwich. In the street on my way home. And while typing this post.

Oh please, oh please, oh please, let this boyfriend of a friend run for office. I don't know if a healthcare bill would pass any sooner, but at least I'd feel constantly entertained and not perpetually aggrieved.

Plus we'd all win at Scrabble.

Two-minute hate (and then some)

My fellow Americans, my fellow citizens of the world, our soliders overseas and at home, the people of the nation of Iraq, and why even you, Mrs. Anthrax and Mr. Chemical Ali--On this lazy, humid afternoon in mid-August, when most of us are droning along in our jobs until quittin' time, on vacation, dodging hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, or avoiding petrol bombs in public squares, I feel it is my duty to make you aware of the latest official wisdom from the Ministry of Truth with regards to the ongoing war between Oceania and Eurasia, as evidenced by this article from the CNN website, published Wednesday afternoon, 22 August 2007:

U.S. officials rethink hopes for Iraq democracy

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Nightmarish political realities in Baghdad are prompting American officials to curb their vision for democracy in Iraq. Instead, the officials now say they are willing to settle for a government that functions and can bring security . . . .

. . . "Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future," said Brig. Gen. John "Mick" Bednarek, part of Task Force Lightning in Diyala province, one of the war's major battlegrounds . . . .

Hmmm. And, again, altogether now but louder, HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

So . . . how would this scenario be different than, I dunno, life with Saddam Hussein and the nondemocratic governmental structure that was in place in Iraq in, oh, say, 2003?

Please pardon me for this question if it at all sounds like I'm giving aid and comfort to the enemy, whomever they may be now. I'm frightened of terrorists and fundamentalist social extortionists, both international and homegrown, as much as anyone. However, I guess I'm just confused over why more than 3,700 U.S. soldiers and tens (or hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqis have had to die so that we can get back to the same place we were four years ago.

There were those of us who thought this invasion was a bad idea from the beginning, a classic case of tilting after the wrong windmill--or oil well, as the case may be. Why, even Dick Cheney knew we wouldn't succeed in Iraq--at least the 1994 version of him did. The 1984 version of him has possibly forgotten this point, though. Reeducated right out of him. I envision Cheney in the dreaded Room 101, but instead of being threatened with Winston Smith's great fear (rats), there's a moment involving a remote ranch, a hunting rifle, a shotgun blast, and 24 hours without a visit by medical or police authorities.

Bound to make you change your allegiances. Or die trying.

In times like these, I'm reminded of a bumpersticker my friend the Gladman told me he saw on a car in Texas sometime before the last national election: "If you're not outraged, you're just not paying attention."

Folks, we should be paying very close attention, and we should indeed be outraged. No matter what your political stripe--red, blue, green, pink, or full-spectrum rainbow coalition--this should officially piss you off.

My fear is that it won't, though. I suspect most of us feel helpless in the middle of this muddle, maybe even somewhat depressed or world-weary from it. Thus, if the war hasn't pissed you off so far, if Katrina and the botched response to that didn't madden you, and/or if the constant lying, the excessive greed, and the total lack of interest in good government accompanied by an intense fixation on wielding power at all costs didn't infuriate you, well, I don't know what would.

This isn't condemnation of you, dear reader. I'm as guilty as anyone, maybe more so because I whine publicly and still do little but stew and steam in the August heat. I'm furious, seething, apoplectic, would love to foment revolution, go wild in the streets with protest, and have hyenas with tapeworms feast on the entrails of our leaders--and that's just for this afternoon's entertainment. When I'm really wound up, I have far worse scenarios in mind for the idiots in charge, the expression of which would be ill-advised and liable to prevent me from flying for years to come.

Yet I sit here in my home office typing this blog entry for I don't know who.

What is wrong with me? What is wrong with all of us? What's it going to take to get us angry enough to take action and demand a government that doesn't do what it wants (money, power, control) or what we want (whim by whim by whim), but aims instead to do the right thing for the right reasons?

These aren't necessarily rhetorical questions, guys. The more we tarry, the worse it's going to get for all of us, at home and abroad. We need to figure out answers and take appropriate action, 'cause clearly those who wield power over us aren't paying attention and need to be reminded of who's in charge here. Us.