Did You Hear That?

At the latest session with my Parapsychiatrist I was telling him about having an argument with my Grandmother and that it had been very distressing to me. This was mostly due to the fact she has been dead for ten years and had been an evil sea hag. He assured me everything would be okay as soon as I ponied up $1,500 for a paranormal Orkin man to come out to the house and spray for ghosts. You can bet the first thing I did when I got back to the Casa de Adams Family was get my Realtor on the phone and ask him why this haunting business wasn't in the disclosure documents?

What the fuck is it with stupid people? Is there just not enough Jerry Springer and Oprah to go around? Every channel from A&E to The Discovery Channel has their own version of Dog The Spooky Hunter. Paranormal States, Psychic Children, (because it's never to early to become a nut-bag only dogs and squirrels will associate with,) Ghost Hunters, and soon to come: PSI. Psychic Scene Investigators, a team of surgeons that can let the air out of these balloon-head morons.

These shows take their format right out of the Seinfeld play-book; tweaking it from a show about nothing to shows about less than nothing. A family of Troglodytes or a woman with 30 cats has “had it up to here” with the non-tangible house guest from Hell who's overstayed their welcome. They just want to be able to get a good night's sleep damn it. Yeah? Then do what the rest of us do to deal with our problems. Have a Jack & Coke, do a couple of bong loads, pull the sheets over your head, and in the morning it'll be gone.

Or there's the sensible solution. Call a crack team of experts who will come in with a bunch of store closeout camcorders, a Radio Shack police scanner, and an oscilloscope they found at the flea market for $15. They will spend the next 30 minutes, (20 with commercial breaks,) wandering cautiously through your house with very concerned looks on their faces and the occasional startled gasp as they search for poltergeists without proper documentation, and any loose change that might be under the sofa cushions, or jewelery left out in the open . Fortunately The Brotherhood of Paranormal Investigators has strict rules regarding work hours so all instances of haunting must be resolved in a half hour show.

Now is all this really necessary? Has anyone ever been bitch-slapped by a ghost, been given a wedgie, a hicky? Have they taken pictures of you while you were in the shower and posted them on MySpace, drank the last beer, used your tooth brush to scratch their balls? See, the problem is in order for something to move a lamp, slam a door, smack your ass it has to have mass, and all mass is measurable. Yes, you can buy a $200 EMF meter and it will jag it's little needle all you want it to because guess what... Your house is filled with things that emit an electromagnetic field. They're called outlets, and microwaves, and fish tanks, and personal pleasure devices. (Which is another way of saying you're single.) But it will not tell you if you have a ghost hiding in your clothes dryer.

Thankfully we have a backup. Video surveillance. A crosshatch configuration of video cameras with motion sensors is established to intersect with all lines of sight, backed-up by an octagonal tripwire system connected to precisely calibrated still cameras equipped with precision ground aura filters. You can trip a ghost? Maybe that accounts for the crashing lamps and moving chairs. Ghosts are just really clumsy and run into things a lot. But we don't want to leave anything to chance. So Bob will be stationed on the second floor. When he sees Ghost Sign on the ectoplasm mats, (commonly known as contact paper,) he will attempt to trap the Sprite in an Apparition Containment Device, (commonly known as a thermos,) and transport it from the property in an astraltorial secure compartment on board the Ghostmobile, (Commonly known as the trunk of a car.)

“Jenn, Carl, do you have a copy?”

“We read you Bob, loud and clear.”

“Have you completed systems check?”

“Affirm Bob, all systems are on-line, and we're in position.”

“I'm getting some pretty heavy akasha readings up here.”

“We could be close to a full materialization, stay sharp.”

“Roger. Switching to night vision.”

“Roger? Do you see a Roger?”

“That's not what he meant Jenn, watch your screens.”

“Don't tell me my job Carl. Bob... Who is Roger? I'm not getting any readings down here.”

“He meant he understood you. Stay off the radio.”

“I have just as much right to talk on the radio as you do Carl.”

“Ahhh, ouch, damn it.”

“BOB! BOB! Can you here me?”

“Oh God I think my arm's broken.”

“What happened Bob? Was it a Banshee, did it attack?”

“No. I'm in the bathroom, the batteries in my night vision goggles died. I think fell into the tub.”

“What about Roger Bob? Is Roger in the tub with you?”

“Will you shut the fuck up. Somebody call 911 I think I'm bleeding.”

“Do you have your anti-ethereal serum? Inject it now.

“Oh God... Is that a bone sticking out?”

Maybe it's severe Nihilism that drives so many people into the open arms of the ridiculous. Searching for explanations and meaning to shore up the crumbling walls of their sanity. Rolling around in their own imagination like it was a big feather bed, tired and disappointed in the mundaneness and over ordinary that makes up most of life. You don't see movies about the mind numbing routine of apathetic life unless the protagonist has a psychotic break with reality or fucks some really hot chick who in real life wouldn't let you park her car. It might be fun if you got to do it. But you won't.

The fact is we don't want to spend $80, or whatever it is now for a movie, to watch what we can get for free by sitting on the couch and staring into a mirror for two hours. Fuck “Realistic Portrayal” I want to see someone suffering more than me or cuttn' a path through the checkout line at Cost Co with a chainsaw. Two thumbs up.

For some of us life is about staying ahead of the game, but for most of us it's about just trying to stay IN the game. The people who choose to legally change their name to Legolas, insist on wearing their Darth Vader costume to the company picnic, or refuse to believe the scratching they hear at night is the rats in the attic are just looking for their own version of American Idol to lose themselves in until the back to work whistle sounds.

Does this mean they're not a bag of fruity nuts? Not at all, they're crazy as Hell.

The only difference between them and us is that they're not afraid to show it.

Keep The Faith.

Can I Get A Receipt For That?

Besides sharing with the world my expertise and wisdom concerning what is wrong with the world, how to fix it, and how it should be run, I also spend some of my valuable time reading the writings of other people who have a grasp on the true state of the world.

In pursuing this pursuit (?) I was over at Deus Ex Malcontent where there was a piece referring to a post on the Huffington Post about the banking failures who floated back to earth on uranium parachutes.

The buzz on the Hill is that those Silly Billys over on Wall Street are going to get an invite to have a sit down with Congress for a little Q&A about what they've been doing with the 700 or so odd billion dollars they said they needed to cover them until payday... . In 2025.

Now taking the subjects of politics, the economy, and personal hygiene very seriously, I felt it incumbent upon me to put forth my own solution to the economic screeching halt that is currently body slamming us into Vegemite.

I new that if I were to have any hope of my solution being considered I would have to put the same careful thought and common sense into it as the recent attempts at a solution had.

And so the post below is the comment I placed in the comments section for the post over at Deus Ex Malcontent. Originally I had intended this as just another incredibly witty comment of the many I leave around this crazy thing we call the World Wide Web. But another visitor responded, (honestly taking mine seriously,) with a well considered and accurate dissection of my mathematical shortcomings.

All kidding. joking, and drug taking aside, Che's response illustrates in a clear, easy to understand serious manner the same lunacy of what is going on in Washington and Wall Street that I tried to portray in my comment. It was this counterpoint that made me feel I should turn it all into a post.

Below is my original comment followed in by Che's response as well as a follow up comment to another commenter in blue.

******************************************************************************

There will never be any consequences for Congress failing to do their job and regulate yet another industry in order to protect the citizenry. Regardless of what the financial entities say or don't say about what they did with the money they were given, there will be no action taken.

Never mind that: The bankers, the Congress, the mortgage lenders, the credit companies, (that the Congress let walk all over them in their hearings years ago,) were all supposed to be the 'Adults in Charge.' They were the ones who said vote for me I know how to handle all this responsibility better than anyone else. Put your money with us and pay us the millions that we're worth because we understand how it works and we are the only ones who can make the right choices for you.

Yet it keeps happening over and over and over again.

Lockheed

The Savings and Loan.

Enron

The airlines

And this time anybody but us who stuck their hand out.

I've lost track at this point. What are we at? 700 billion, 1400 billion.

And 300 billion a year for the war.

Somebody pop a cork in it. Pretty soon we're going to be talking real money here.

Let's do some simple math and just a tad of critical thinking.

Item one. The government has given hundreds of billions of dollars to people who clearly have no idea what the fuck they are doing. And they handed over this money without placing any demands or restrictions on how it was used, where it would be used, or any penalties for failure to account for these actions or failure to pay it back.

Um... A fucking crack dealer would have done a better deal than this.

I'm willing to bet that if the Capitol Police stuck a gun in a few CEO mouths they'd come up with some answers.

Item two. Touching on the minor inconvenience mentioned in item one: People are losing their jobs faster than K-Fed can get a girl pregnant. And a possible solution. (Call me crazy.)

Here's the simple math part.

US. Population. Roughly 300 million.

Money paid for a solution that didn't work. A fuck of a lot.

How about this.

Give every person over the age of 18 that makes $95,000 or less a year 2 million dollars tax free. Just once. 600 million. Not billion. Million.

Which means bills get paid, people still buy things, business don't need to lay people off, people can still engage in buying $8 cups of coffee, silk underwear for their cats and Barackberrys, the economy doesn't constrict and everybody but the people in charge are happy.

Oh, and the need for the services of the Dickweeds who got us into this mess goes down considerably. Wow, hope they don't have to reorganize or restructure or make the really tough decisions or any of the other pathetic tripe we have to listen to come out of the mouths of our employers when they tell us that life as we know it just came crashing down around our Wal Mart wadding pools.

Do you mean to tell me that out of all the uber-brains that have been elected or put in charge by their friends in the financial world that nobody has even thought to themselves: Hey. I've got this crazy idea that might save us enough that we could start having Free Muffin Mondays again. How about instead of giving complete fucking morons a free Ticket to Ride we toss a few bucks to the groveling masses just to watch them jump.

And if they screw it up we drag all 300 million of their sorry asses in front of Congress, threaten to put in jail and fine them and then tell 'em: Ahhh. We're just kidding.

What? Oh you mean this time we really put them in jail? Well okay. Never tried that before, but could be fun.



Sorry to burst your bubble, Brian, but your math is just a little off (like several orders of magnitude). Only 300 lucky people would get the $2M payout to reach your $600M figure. However, that number rises to 300,000 when the payout pool expands to $600B -- which makes the exercise a little more interesting, since we're still talking about numbers that are already in play. Considering that the TARP money ($700B) together with the just-approved stimulus package ($800B) totals roughly $1.5T, we could just as easily have given 750,000 families/households Brian's hypothetical $2M payout. Choosing the recipients would still be problematic, but one has to believe that 750,000 U.S. families would make better decisions and accomplish more with that money than the institutional greedhead entitlement class currently feeding at the trough.




Your (larger fiscal) point is well-taken, Anon, even if your tone is overly dismissive. Brian's plan is already in place on Wall Street: we're burning up the printing presses to haul dumptruck-loads of money to them so they can turn around and pay $18B in bonuses for the glorious year that was 2008! You think there aren't individuals in that group raking in at least $2M for their inglorious effort? How is that different from what Brian pointedly suggested for the proletariat except in scope? Neither approach is tenable, but you are weighing in against only one (so far).

Brian's idea is absurdly unrealistic on its face, but I chose to run with it just to try to put some perspective on this whole bailout rigmarole.

Okay, So This One Time At Band Camp.

Sometimes I get these weird feelings and I'm never sure who I've talked to about them. I can never remember if I told my psychiatrist, my psychiatrist's nurse, if I was talking to myself in bed, (which I do a lot,) or the owner of the liquor store down the street who is from Iran and doesn't speak English, -not because he's from Iran where they speak Persian, but he refuses to speak it because hates their rugs- but because he's Albanian and he only speaks Malagasy from Madagascar which is pretty weird since he's never been there and swears he's never been anywhere near South Africa, plus he wears a Dastar which is a Sikhs' head wrap but he's says he doesn't trust them because they run up really high cell phone bills. And whenever I go in there he's always yelling at me that I buy too many condoms -which is crazy, I don't even use the fucking things- and gives me a free package of Hostess powdered sugar doughnut gems with my bottle of JD.

The owner of this oasis of insanity is Dhimiter Belushi. Dhimiter meaning: "Good Day," in Albanian, (Not fucking likely,) and Belushi meaning he tries to bullshit everyone into thinking he was related to the late John Belushi. Now I don't know if it has anything to do with being from another country or from watching Deliverance too many times but why do all liquor stores have a glass cases full of mini titties key chains that the nipples light up on, $5 Jason Voorhees Signature Series knives, lighters disguised as guns, guns disguised as lighters, pen guns, ring guns, nipple ring guns, and eight different sizes of ejaculating Silicone Butt Plugs. As well as every kind of liquor from Bacardi Zombie to a $260 bottle of 28 year old Willet, Single Barrel Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey. (Good shit.) Whatever happened to a six pack of Coors, a bag of pork rinds, and some beef jerky? You want variety? Coors Light. Get in the fuckn' car and roll that thing will ya.

I asked Dhimiter one day if he agreed with the hypothesis that a 350 pound comedian dressed up like a samurai who's tag line was “No Coke' but died from snorting it was representative of all Albanians.

He screams at me that I'm too fucking cheap to go see a real doctor. And how the fuck should he know anything about the hypothalamus. So I lit his Tic Tac display on fire and laughed my ass off while he used a bottle of Fruit Punch Gatorade to put it out and ruined all the rolling papers in the display next to it. He tried to hit me with the empty bottle but I ducked when he threw it and it hit the little girl behind me right between the eyes, and her mom comes unglued and is screaming at him and he's screaming at me and the little girl was just looking at me and screaming while she stuffs Kit Kat bars and Life Savers in her pockets. So I gave the kid a minute, lit a cigarette, then pulled the woman aside and tried to explain to her that he was Albanian and that seems to piss her off even more so I asked the kid what the fuck was up with her mom? And she told me that last year her mom had taken her to a petting zoo and that a Koala Bear had molested her. I tell her that sucks and asked her what the bear did to her, and she said she didn't know, her mother refused to talk about it.

So again I explained to the woman that he was Albanian not Australian, and she calmed down and said that she totally understood and left.

Dhimiter gave me a giant pretzel with extra mustard and told me to get the fuck out of his store. Which I didn't do until he gave me one of the Jack Daniel's mini bottles as well. Nothing goes with free pretzel like a little Jack & Coke.

Patronizing this store is like walking into a Gillo Pontecorvo film already in progress. People who come in for the first time usually have their first twinges of uncertainty when they realize the guy behind the counter is doing more yelling than your average Semtex strapped terrorist who just busted though the perimeter at the ranch in Crawford. By the time they get to the candy aisle they're expecting Carlos the Jackal to jump out and hand them a MilkyWay bar and when they reach the beer cooler wonder if all they're going to find is Arafat Double Cross Stout and Bin Laden Stone Age Ale.

I guess the strange feelings I get are not so much feelings as they are questions. Like how is it I am able to understand an Albanian from Iran who only speaks Malagasy, why does he charge me for matches when I buy cigarettes but gives me free doughnuts when I buy whiskey, why didn't I get that Koala Bear's number? And how much are these cherry flavored Zig Zags?

Keep The Faith.

"I'd Gladly Pay You Tuesday For A Hamburger Today."

We've got a few major problems in my fine state of California and no one seems to be able to pull a slide rule out of their ass and come up with an answer. Now if in 1970 the the Pocket Protector Posse at NASA were able to bring a crippled spaceship back from space, (because that's where they use spaceships,) with a roll of Duct Tape, a frozen hot dog and a used coffee filter, then by 2009 the California State Legislature should have figured out a way to keep the state financially afloat.

The Schwarzmiser is forcing furloughs on state employees, and it's rumored that while they're gone, he's going to sneak into the break rooms in all the state offices and increase the rate that the vending machines steal their money by 35%.

Will this madness never end?

In addition to Casual Furlough Friday will be the court ordered release over the next few years of 40 or 50,000 prisoners from the state prison system due to overcrowding that has deteriorated the prison health care system. People will scream and yell that criminals are going to overrun the city streets like zombies crashing a Texas BBQ, but we're not talking about kicking loose the top ten list of Murder Inc..

The reason for prison overcrowding is no secret. We like drugs, and the alcohol companies hate that. So they lobby for the harder drug laws, they throw millions behind the 3 strikes effort and now the Big House is filled with young black men in the prime of their lives who are taking a year off to find enlightenment, introspection and deal drugs before going off to college. (Maybe if they had some fucking opportunities to give them hope in the first place...)


Using my crazy math here is how I suggest we use these problems to resolve each other.


Step one: Change the penalty for street level drug dealing to a no jail time graduated fine, ticket based system. The first four times a street dealer is busted he is given a ticket with an immediate $300 fine, no court appearance. Each ticket has to be paid within five days of receiving it or the next time he is busted he goes to prison for one year.

The fine scale would increase with the beginning of each new four bust cycle during a twelve month period. At bust five through eight the fine would increase to $600 and so on. In addition, a dealer would only be allowed 48 busts per year. Going over 48 results in three years in prison. With what dealers make they will be more than happy to pay fines rather than go to prison, spending their days pumping iron and tossing syrup salads.

There will be less street violence due to competition because dealers will be forced to take time off to avoid violating the 48 bust rule. This allows the other dealers to work while the others rotate out. They will also learn the value of saving a dollar since they will have to plan ahead for the days off. (Much like the forced furloughs for the state employees. Hmm... Gee...)

Patrol officers would be the only ones allowed to make these busts and no organized effort to make busts is allowed. (Fair's Fair.)

All of this money stays at the state, county and city level. Two thirds of the money goes to the state and the remaining third is split between the county and city.

Result: No more prison overcrowding, budget deficit is solved in, (judging by the water mark on my bong,) about six months, as well as helping to shore up the budget shortfalls at the local level. Plus, the drug dealers are now contributing members of society in a semi-cooperative relationship with the police. (And I don't have to walk six fucking blocks to score some decent green-bud.)

Now that we have room at the Folsom Inn, we can take care of our most important problem.

The worst kind of scum on the planet. They are up there with pedophiles, baby seal hunters, puppy kickers, and the people that make those suck-ass diamond jewelry commercials.

The arrogant pricks who drive in the car pool lane when they're not supposed to. I'm not sure where this sense of entitlement comes from. Can you imagine what it must be like to have one of these people in your life? They'd take all the beer from your fridge. as well as everything else right down to the sour cream that went bad last week, and leave a list of things for you to pick-up for the next time they're over.

These are the kind of guy friend that'll rape your girlfriend and tell you it was her fault.
And the kind of girlfriend who who will fuck all your friends and tell you it was your fault.

But. You guessed it. I have a solution.

As mentioned above, some beds have freed up at Cub Med Butt Phuket so why not put 'em to good use.

Currently, for a first time violation of the Carpool Lane the fine is around $300. After the first one the fines increase until presumably, after enough of these, the drivers are thrown off of an overpass on the 405. The reality is that there is very little enforcement of the Car Pool Lane laws, and this is because it is not considered a high priority crime, and due to the state budget conditions, there isn't enough money to put the extra CHP officers needed out there to catch theses rusty cum stains.

I suggest that the first violation have a fine of $2,000. If the first violation fine is not paid within ten days and/or there is a second violation, there is a mandatory 10 year sentence in State Prison without the possibility of parole.

I think it's a pretty safe bet that after the first two instances of people going away for 10 years the problem will disappear.

If you economic savants want to upgrade from the slide rule to a pocket calculator or even one of the fancy shamancy desk ones, I'll shoot over to Office Depot and spring for it. I'm about five minutes from the office, I can drop it off.

Like most people in the state I'm doing my part. How about you people in the big white double-wide downtown do yours.


Keep The Faith.

I'm Not All That And A Bag Of Chips.

Let me go off on a little bit of a metaphoric bender here.

Being in life is like driving a car. The majority of the time you have control of it but it is still subject to events outside of our control. We do our best to keep it between the ditches, avoid obstacles, and hose ourselves off once or twice a month.

But as we careen down the two lane blacktop like a Saturn 5 rocket experiencing full gimbal failure, we are going to fall victim to outside forces. We will be T-Boned, sideswiped, and at times crushed and declared a total loss but hopefully we get a little better at it as we go.

Like most people, I have made mistakes, fucked up here and there, done a few things I'm not proud of and had a few successes. But for all the rights and wrongs I've done I have always thought of myself as a person who made an extra effort to be thoughtful of the people in my life regardless of the circumstances of the relationship. In short; to do the right thing.

I have never pictured myself as the great altruist, or the patron saint of nicety, but I have never felt that I hurt anyone out of maliciousness or purpose. But as you get older reality starts to seep into your bubble of perceived reality and after 47 years on this oversize dirt clod I have started to come to the conclusion that perhaps I am not the person I thought I was. Or at least, not as successful at being good to people as I wanted to be. Besides the gradual leak of self awareness sometimes life will slap you out of your disillusionment.

We get these wake up calls at various times along the way but they haven't really hit me as profoundly as they do now. Somebody got hurt and it was my fault. I don't know any other way to put it without it sounding like an excuse. It's not that this type of thing hasn't always bothered me but I have tried very hard to lessen their occurrence.

It's knowing this that makes it all that more urgent and important for me in whatever time I've got here, to do things right. To not spend my last years believing myself to be a person I'm not really living up to, but to do it right.

But today I'm forced to ask myself why I am still making the same mistakes. How is it that even with new self awareness that instead of slowing down and looking both ways before I enter the intersection, I keep barreling through, convinced I have the right of way?

In life just like in driving; you need to pay attention, and keep your eyes on the road. I don't think I'm a bad driver but perhaps I'm a bit careless at times.

Here's hoping we can all learn to share the road.

Keep The Faith.