Saturday, October 24, 2009

The New York Yankees and National Socialism

I'm forced to think of the Yankees and their fat-cat luxury fan base now that the World Series is here. (Should the other NY teams be thrown in as well?) We all know that the Yankees buy their teams and championships. What is disturbing (disgusting) is the wall-street psychopaths who sit in corporate boxes with ball caps on their heads and new gloves on their hands or their children's hands. These psychopaths have gone to the game for a night out, a few moments away from stealing money from ordinary Americans. Maybe they remember their childhoods and favorite players; childhoods when they were just kids and not rapacious scumbags ruining the retirements of those who have worked hard and played by the rules. (Doesn't that canard make you want to puke your ball park frank during the seventh inning stretch.)

The inane Yankee announcers are speaking for and to the psychopaths with their goofball home run calls. Americana, a hot dog, a home run and a huge bonus for running a failing company.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

You Bet Your Life

Groucho's sponsors were Geritol to give you energy for your day and Sominex to put you to sleep at night. This was less than a generation after the war and in the middle of the fears of atomic annihilation. If you worked up a nervous sweat during the day (or sleeping) there was Lifeboy for a shower. The advertising and consumer needs were very simple.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Sarah Palin

Say what you want about Sarah Palin, she does look like she is modeling glasses for Foster Grant.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Six Black Door-to-Door Preachers

1. They tower above the apartments, bending over to find door bells and knockers.

2. They are old and friendly, dressed in old preacher clothes.

3. They ask for help finding the doorbells. I'm not that small, but can still get on my knees on a street with double-parked cars and dead bodies.

4. It's the end of times, the end of times! Small buildings are a sign of the end of times. I admit, it's unusual, not the way it was when I came to work.

5. They sway as they pray for the scale of human suffering to diminish to that which can be saved.

6. I sway with them wondering just how I could paint these doll houses. I'd have to buy artist brushes.

7. How can we find these lost souls? The preachers have roused my curiosity.

8. I put a hose in one of the apartment windows and turned on the water.

9. We agree that we like rivers for fishing and as metaphors.

10. They are determined to outlast this shrunken devilment. I suggest it has something to do with the Savings and Loan debacle. We will just get smaller until we were the size of bacteria and enter the Promised Land.

11. They decide that I am the source of the devilment. I lift one of the apartments to show them the wet paint drying on the living room wall. A small woman sits inside clawing at a laptop.

12. They begin to chase me. But they are old and slow. I hide behind a van and they pass on.

13. I see them from time to time around the city towering over the buildings.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Keep It In Your Pants

You know who you are!

Friday, October 2, 2009

Author Suicide

On a trash can in San Francisco I noticed a small stack of books. On the bottom, supporting the stack, was David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. John Kennedy Toole's The Confederacy of Dunces sat on top. Did the owner of this small abandoned library leave the books before taking his or her own life?