The Easter 100

This particular assemblage of bullshit, balderdash and falderal is called The Easter 100.  If you live in Dixie you will probably assume it’s a new NASCAR race nobody told you about.  It ain’t.  It’s my one-hundredth addition to the ever expanding archives that are known as “The Garage”.   It just so happens that it is Easter Sunday today.

Weeeee

While all my neighbors are down at the church houses singing songs, filling children’s heads with complete nonsense and asking each other if they had heard the “Good News“ yet… I’m home drinking a beer with my eye on a nice carrot cake my other half baked yesterday.  It’s a drippy day here today and, more so than on any other day, it’s a good day for atheists to just stay home.  The religious fanatics are everywhere and it’s Jesus this and Jesus that and bless this, that, and the other thing, every god damned place you look.  The fat little kids are stuffing their faces with chocolate eggs and the obese adults are drooling over the ham and macaroni & cheese cooking slow… over at the home place.  I bet they don’t even know where Easter eggs come from.

OK, that’s the background for todays little excursion into the land of angst.  The starting point for the latest stroll down embarrassment lane.  It all began this morning with me making the mistake of reading the paper.  Fool that I am I used the internet to contact and connect with the nice people over at the New York TIMES and, like I didn’t know better, read some of what they had to offer.  It all began with an article about “Safety” and how OSHA isn’t quite doing the kind of job protecting american workers that most people think they are.  Politics, it appears, gets in the way.  Corporate profits, it seems, come first.  You can only imagine my surprise.

This is my stunt double

I learned that the federal budget for protecting workers is less than half of that set aside for protecting fish and wildlife.  I learned that occupational illness and injuries cost the american economy over $250 BILLION dollars a year in medical expenses and lost productivity.   Every four years… A Trillion Bucks!

The maximum penalty for a violation that causes a “substantial probability of death — or serious physical harm” is $7,000. The highest fine for a willful and repeated violation is $70,000.

Just so you don’t think the people running the show and making up the laws and fines are assholes and screwballs… you should know this.    The Federal Communications Commission can fine a TV or radio station $325,000 for indecent content.

You got that?  You can violate the law and cause someone the probability of serious harm, or death, and it will cost you $7000.  BUT…. If you say fuck on the radio, or, some cheap tart exposes her breast on a TV show…  the fine goes up to $325,000.

THAT is what makes sense to the bastards that run this country.  THAT is the kind of country America is.  I think it is important that people remember things like that when they hear on the news that between 800,000 and 900,000 military veterans are “waiting” two or three years to have their disability claims considered by the government powers that be.  I think it is important that every citizen never miss an opportunity to tell a young person considering joining the military that they are fucking nuts if they do.  Tell them that rather than respecting and admiring them for serving their country… you will write them off as fools.

On holidays such as Easter, when my fellow Americans openly display the nonsense and absurdities they hold to be the very foundation of our culture, I permit myself the imaginary indulgence of picturing the world as it would be… if I were in charge.  First of all I would dress like this…

Then, I think, I would begin to formulate the lengthy list of malicious bastards that I would have shot immediately.  Not that I would want to kill anyone mind you.  Just, well, a kind of feeling that I owe it to them, if you know what I mean.  Before they were shot I would be sure to have someone, a small child perhaps, ask them….

… if they had heard “The Good News”

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

 

JESUS is my Air Traffic Controller

It was announced this week that the control tower at Lynchburg Regional Airport will be closed.  Lucky for people using the airport Liberty University is right next door.  The Local newspaper reported the following…

“Round the clock prayer, targeted, or, “Flight Specific” prayer,… they are still working on the details.”  Either way passengers can rest assured that the entire Liberty student body will be praying like crazy that nobody is trying to land when you are taking off.  None of the students are gay and ample counseling is available for students troubled with masturbation issues, so, we are talking High Octane Prayers.  They are right next door too!

Unfortunately, this is all taking place during one of the happiest seasons of the year in Lynchburg… Easter.

Yes, Easter.  A time for Muslim jokes and the celebration of capital punishment and scapegoating.  A time of pretending and bullshitting the little children into believing that death isn’t real if you know the right tricks and formulas.  A time of Joy and a time of contemplation of the great mysteries of life.  “Why did the South lose the war?”…  “How the Hell did a nigger get elected president?”…  “When is Jesus going to start torturing all the gays?”…

“Preacher says that evolution is a lie straight from hell… Preacher says people and dinosaurs lived at the very same time…  Preacher says people who don’t follow the teachings of The Lord sure going to be sorry when the Rapture comes…

At this wondrous time of year we are all called upon to look to our religious leaders for wise words and sound council.

Let the confusion end!  Let our Great Nation return to the Biblical Truths our Founding Fathers believed in and built this Nation upon.

I wouldn’t worry at all if you find yourself flying into Lynchburg Regional Airport.  Whether you are coming to Lynchburg to visit the world famous Enema Museum, located at the production facilities and home of C.B. Fleet, Co., (the worlds largest manufacturer of enema and douche bags).. or, the site of The United Cigarette Factory where, [“In 1882, James A. Bolzak of Lynchburg revolutionized the cigarette industry with his invention of a cigarette making machine. Within four years, Bolzak was marketing 30 million pounds of tobacco a year from his factory in Lynchburg. Bolzak’s fortune would soon turn to ruin, however, when in 1890, a leak of lubricating fluid went undetected in the cigarette machinery, and thousands of contaminated cigarettes were distributed widely under Bolzak’s “One-Eyed Jack” and “Brown Dick” brands before the dangerous flaw was discovered. The tainted cigarettes tended to explode with fury in the face of smokers when lit, causing hundreds of deaths and disfiguring injuries. Those cigarettes that didn’t explode wreaked their own havoc in the form of serious and often-fatal lung ailments. The cigarette fiasco produced a crippling barrage of lawsuits against Bolzak, resulting in Bolzak’s own personal bankruptcy as well as the ultimate demise of the cigarette factory. Despondent from the tragic turn of events, Bolzak took his own life by stepping in front of a speeding locomotive on the railroad tracks near his factory…..”]  But, that’s probably something you already know.

So there is nothing to worry about.  You will probably land and take off with no problems.  The locals will be praying their asses off that you do.  The only problem I can think of, and it probably isn’t something that you should worry that much about, is if there are any non-Bible Believing Christians on your flight…  you know…

Like Muslims…

Like Jews…  Then, I’m afraid, you might be shit out of luck when it comes to Jesus watching out for your ass.  And, seeing as this is Lynchburg Virginia we are talking about, if you see anybody at the airport waving a flag like this…

Rent a car from Hertz, Budget…  Just get the fuck out of town as fast as you can.  Things are about to get messy in Jerry Falwell Land.

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

Great Moments in Enema History

The earliest documented case of resuscitation by rectally applied tobacco smoke took place in 1746 when a seemingly drowned woman was treated by her husband. On the advice of a passing sailor, the woman’s husband inserted the stem of the sailor’s pipe into her rectum, covered the bowl with a piece of perforated paper, and “blew hard”.   In the 1780s the Royal Humane Society installed resuscitation kits, including smoke enemas, at various points along the River Thames and by the turn of the 19th century, tobacco smoke enemas had become an established practice in Western medicine, considered to be as important as artificial respiration.

One day, in the far future, I have high hope that time travel will become possible.  When that day comes about I’m quite sure a lively debate will take place among scientists, religious leaders and historians with regard to exactly where and when, in time, the first time traveler should voyage.   I have no doubt that there will be no lack of suggestions.  Some will opt for great moments in military history.  Others will demand that the lives of the founders of the World’s Great Religions be observed and investigated.  No doubt still others will seek the answers to such questions as “What really caused the demise of the dinosaurs and the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event?”

None of these questions interests me in the least.  Quite frankly military history and religious stories bore me to tears, and dinosaurs….?  I have four grandchildren.  Trust me, dinosaurs interest them far more than they do me.

Oh no.  If it were up to me, without hesitation, I would vote for a trip to the waterside in the year 1746.

The look on Julius Caesar’s face as he entered Rome triumphantly…

or, the reaction of the crowd when Jesus sawed a woman in half and joined her back together again…

Interest me not in the least.

But, I would give just about anything to be there, on the spot, when a distraught man, holding his drowned and lifeless wife in his arms, was advised by a sailor to….  “Here, take my pipe, shove it up her ass and BLOW as hard as you can.”

You can call me crazy if you like, but, in my opinion, “I came, I saw, I conquered” and “Let he who hath not sinned cast the first stone” got nothing on “Here, take my pipe…

 

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

 

 

 

 

 

Helliconia Cabbage

This isn’t a Helliconia cabbage, it’s a Savoy cabbage.

A Helliconia cabbage would come from Helliconia and Helliconia is a planet located in a binary star system a thousand light-years distant from Earth.  It takes 2,592  small years to complete one round of the Great Year on Helliconia.  It’s as if our earth and our sun were themselves in orbit around a larger sun and it took 2,592 earth years for a full seasonal go round of the Large Sun to take place.   Helliconia’s plants, animal and sentient life forms have all biologically adapted to this unusual arrangement.  In the Fall of the Great Year, and then again in the Spring, the sentient life forms undergo a structural metamorphosis brought about by an acute infection with a specific virus that trigers alteration of their genetic material, and its expression.  In the Great Fall a viral plague sweeps the planet.  It is known as The Fat Death.  Those infected, that survive, go mad and voraciously consume all the calories they can.  When the sickness has passed their genes, and the genes they pass to their offspring, are altered and their body shape is rounder, thicker and far more suited to survive the many centuries of bitter cold to come.

In the Spring of the Great Year the sentient life forms are once again racked by plague and their numbers are decimated by the same viral disease.  This time it manifests as The Bone Fever and it drastically reduces the population leaving the survivors longer, lankier and better equipped to survive centuries of prolonged heat and drought.  A virally induced metamorphosis that switches the body shapes over and over again enabling adaptation to radically changing environments. … [From a book, “Helliconia Spring”, Brian W. Aldiss, 1982]

The problem is I have somehow become infected.

Like the inhabitants of Helliconia I undergo metamorphosis at the seasonal changes.  Currently I’m down with The Bone Fever.  I have consumed between 1000 and 1200 calories every 24 hours and exercised to stretch my bones religiously for the past month.  Clothes that were tight are now loose.  My environment warms and I no longer feel compelled to sleep in 3 pairs of pants and a wool hat.  I’m not the man I was.   I’m not the man I will be again after next november when The Fat Death once again overtakes me and alters my frame.  Then I will eat whole two pound cans of Deluxe Mixed Nuts (No Peanuts) and thousands and thousands of calories at one sitting.  Around and around it goes, year after year I suffer changes.

So, I was at the supermarket just looking around today, you know.   I do that a lot this time of year.  I just walk and look at everything.  I “window shop” the food, so to speak.  That’s when I came across the Savoy Cabbage.  I couldn’t help picking it up and fondling it.  It’s texture was absolutely magnificent.  It was one of those magical moments when, for a little while, you feel connected to everything else there is.  I hung out with the vegetables and was one with a particular cabbage for quite some time.  The leeks were something else too, but, something entirely different.

There were other things… dark things that were not food, but, pretended to be food.  Many of them were from the planet Kraft where the evil ones torture the byproducts of petroleum distillation into things that can masquerade as eatable… and the fructologists, in their foul laboratories, disguising corn sugar as many different kinds of love.   Then there was fruit and bread and I sailed round like a pilgrim in search of a safe port.  Frozen vegetables… meats… cheeses and other dairy.   These waters were well known to me.

I remembered that the cat needed food.  Ham was on sale, so, I purchased one pound.  I told the nice lady at the Deli that I wanted it cut as thin as humanly possible.  She was new.  She was unaccustomed to my requirements with regard to sliced meats.  She cut a test piece of ham and held it up for me to examine.  She said:  “Is this thin enough?”

I replied …no.  I don’t think you understand.  I like to read my newspaper through the slices of ham.  You will know it is sliced to the proper thickness if you sneeze and half of it blows away.  A pound should make a pile almost as large as a compact automobile…. Like a volkswagen.  That’s how you will know you have it about right….

She cut the ham, and I carried it and the cat food home… thereupon I drank wine, and in the fullness of time, I went to my studio, and I made me a collage.

Then I took a nap…  and in my dreams I was a Savoy Cabbage in an endless field of Savoy Cabbages all dreaming sweet chlorophyl dreams.

I awoke soaking wet.  Perhaps my fever has broken…   again.

 

 

 

 

Flutterbye Baby

I slept badly last night, or, maybe I just needed to get up at 3:00am as I often do.  I really can’t tell.  I made coffee and began to read.  I read that Monarch butterflies are almost a thing of the past.  You see, they winter in colonies west of Mexico City, in a fir forest, and according to The New York TIMES…  the colonies are…  “a pitiful remnant of their former splendor. The aggregate area covered by the colonies dwindled from an average of 22 acres between 1994 and 2003 to 12 acres between 2003 and 2012. This year’s area, which was reported on Wednesday, hit a record low of 2.9 acres.”…  The TIMES goes on to inform me that these magical creatures are being done in by… “the destruction of breeding habitat in the United States because of the widespread use of powerful herbicides and genetically engineered crops, and illegal logging in Mexico’s high-elevation Oyamel fir forests.”  

So the natural tendency is to ask yourself what the fuck is the matter with people?  But, you find yourself holding back on that because you already know.  It’s too early in the day to go punishing yourself all over again with how embarrassing it is to be human.  Hold it at arms length as long as you can and don’t look at it.  Think about something else.

I drove 100 miles round trip thursday to buy bagels.  I bought 3 dozen and froze them.  30 seconds in the microwave and they are as good as good gets.  Cut them in half and lightly toast under the broiler.  Put the toasted halves in the freezer for a few minutes to cool back to room temperature.   When you schmeer on the cream cheese you don’t want it should melt.  While you wait cut up red onion, paper thin, and fetch capers and lox already.  (I feel myself becoming more and more Jewish by the minute and I’m not even a little Jewish)

So I kick back with my bagel & Lox and have a good nosh.  Sure, living amidst the gun toting goyum and having to shlep my ass 100 miles for a decent bagel is mishegis.  I know that.  I also know what’s good.   The schmucks that make bagels where I live don’t know bupkes.  They think it’s a fucking biscuit with a hole in it.  So, I drive 100 miles.  I don’t like to kvetsh about it.  But, it’s the truth.

So where does that leave us today?  I remember.  We have just about killed all the Monarch butterflies, the Middle Class and any hope of things not getting worse in America.  As I predicted a few essays ago there will be no laws to halt the stockpiling of all manner of deadly weapons on the part of Constitution loving citizens.  As it slowly dawns on Americans that not even one of their political representatives in Washington isn’t a lying sack of self serving shit, licking the boots of their corporate masters, things will get uglier.  They will become more terrified than they already are.  The population will continue to fragment into even more ridiculous groups.  Truly good cheese will become almost unobtainable.

It’s good that it is spring.   The living world around us is unlocking itself from winter and, if we look closely, there is much Nature can tell us.   But, will we understand?

The Great Wall

WARNING!  Mrs. N. is even more cheesed off than usual today, so, you may want to take that into consideration before you proceed.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful spring day here in Dixie and I feel physically superb.  My other half, who underwent a somewhat perilous surgical adventure a matter of days ago, …

… reports feeling just peachy.  For that I am grateful.  I’m not grateful to anyone, or, any thing in particular because I’m not religiously afflicted.  I figure it’s all pretty much chance, random events and happenstance in this lovely meat grinder, this one way ride through the Land of the Absurd.  No, I’m just feeling grateful in a generic sense.  In a sense that it’s spring and nobody has a brain tumor, or, a hideous skin rash and boils today… at least in my house.  But it doesn’t stop me from bitching.  I still have my work.  There is still all the crap that goes on around me, that nonsense that other people are up to… the stuff that does the one thing that irritates the shit out of me more than anything else.  That stupid crap that makes me embarrassed to be of my species…. and, in the spring when everything is looking alive and “shiny new greeny”… it just stands out, like something caught in my eye.  You know?

Here is this years picture.  I took it today.  It’s what Mrs. N. has to look at, on the way in, to shop at Wal-Mart.  Wal-Mart is a company owned by the richest family in America.  America is widely considered to be the richest country in the world.   Wal-Mart has more employees than some countries have citizens.  They pay their employees squat.  Peanuts!  I’m sure the family that owns Wall-Mart views all their employees as so many peasants, the way kings were accustomed to viewing people who were ridiculously poor and unfortunate compared to them.  I don’t really see how they can help it.  Human beings are stinkers that way and have been throughout recorded history.  It’s so embarrassing.

These Wal-Mart creeps pay their peasants so little that their spouses and children, who are peasants too, qualify for government provided health care.  Some deal.  The Wall-Mart Family makes a killing and sticks the taxpayers with the health care bill.  You know why?  Because they believe in Capitalism.  They hate Socialism.  The fuckers must laugh themselves to sleep every night of the week.

But, I digress…  Look at that picture above.  Every time I see that wall… that testament to half-assery… that red-neck salute to the meaning of “American Workmanship”… I get pissed off.  The GOD DAMNED Chinese can build a wall that lasts 2000 years…  And, looks like this today!

and THIS is the shit we build.

It’s a fucking miracle I can drag my ass out of bed in the morning when I have to put up with this kind of shit.  Who the hell in their right mind puts their name on a piece of shit, bit of construction, like this?  Who “signed off” on this disaster?  I have asked The Building Inspector.  I have enquired politely of the County Director of Safety and, oddly enough, they are hesitant to discuss the matter.  It appears Mrs. N. will be forced to resort to one of her specialties.  She doesn’t want to.  She is beginning to feel that it is being thrust upon her, so to speak.  Mrs. N. will have no choice but to become exceedingly rude, belligerent and obnoxious.  Sarcasm will be employed liberally.  Mrs. N. will make enemies.

There was a time when Mrs. N. used to care about things like that.  Making enemies that is.  That time is long past.  Now all Mrs. N. cares about is stopping the embarrassment, even if it is just a little.  Saying FUCK NO when that is the only thing it makes sense to say.  Not being shy about it.

I read in the paper that the new plan is to hire armed guards for all the schools in the county.  It should cost about $1,000,000 a year to do this.  As long as nobody tells the crazy people with guns that they can kill children in “other places”, just as easily, I’m sure that the increase in property taxes to pay for the guards will be more than worth it.  I’m just thankful I live in Tea-Party Republican Country.  Here we know that Government is the problem, not the solution.  Here most of us are positive that evolution is a stinking lie, and that Obama is a Muslim just itching to take away all our guns.

Mrs. N. worries about the road ahead.  Things seem to be shaker than they have ever been before.   If I didn’t know better I would think my teeth were moving around in my head at night.  In the morning, sometimes, they are in places I just don’t ever remember seeing them before.

Maybe I just need a vacation.  Perhaps someplace on the water……

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

 

Pretenducation

It’s a sad, crazy day when you come to the realization that most of what you have been taught is nothing but crap.

How do you even begin to think straight?  How do you keep from going mad when you start to understand that so much of the very essence of “what it means to be human” falls so pathetically short of anything a self respecting creature can, or, should be proud of?  Is there a name for being overloaded with embarrassment?  Is that some kind of condition, or, diagnosis?  If there is… I have it.

The Stock Market broke a record the other day and American corporations are making almost unbelievable profits.  On the same day I read that 31% of our young people with college loans are 90+ days behind on their payments.  College loan debt in America is at right about a Trillion Dollars.  So, what do you do when you owe the bankers $100,000 plus for an education and you can’t find a job?  What do you do when you realize that those jobs that “went away” are not coming back?  I would think one of the first things you do is ask yourself… “How the fuck did I get into this mess… What was I thinking?

Mrs. N. will be happy to tell you.  You were thinking that what you were taught at school was true.  You were thinking that America is the Land of the free and everybody has an equal shot at opportunity, greatness and happiness.  You were thinking that if you kept your nose clean, played by the rules and worked hard you were, more or less, guaranteed a shot at “the good life”, even though you never really had any idea what that was.  You were thinking that because THAT is the horse shit they fed you when you were growing up.

Now you are beginning to know better.  It’s a hard lesson.  Harder perhaps for this younger generation because, other than being killed or maimed in some ridiculous war you were tricked into thinking was a smart thing to get yourself involved in, nothing quite beats the realization that you have been scammed out of a hundred grand, and some faceless banker owns your ass as surely as if you were his slave.  You are 23 years old.

If you think about what George has to say in the YouTube clip that I began this little essay with I don’t think you will be able to stop yourself from feeling a little embarrassed for what we are.  The more you think about it… the worse it gets.  The more you see how we all play our part in the Big Scam that is our culture the more embarrassing it all becomes.

Where did we get the balls to teach little black children that they lived in a country founded on the idea that “All men are created equal” and they could expect “Equal justice under the Law”?  We knew it was bullshit!  We taught it to them anyway, and we kept a straight face while we were doing it.  That is the kind of stinkers humans are.  Tricking white kids into borrowing their life away for a diploma they may as well use to wipe their ass with is nothing compared to the horse shit we fed black kids.  Talk about chickens coming home to roost!

It’s at times like this that I wish I was a religious man.  For, if I was, I could be truly thankful to a merciful, all seeing GOD for the fact that I live in the Southern United States of America where racism is a thing of the past.  Why, it wasn’t long ago that I had the pleasure of having a conversation with a former Mayor of our beautiful little Christian community.  We spoke of the weather, politics and I mentioned to him that I was expecting a delivery of a package from the post office and it seemed to be a bit overdue…  He replied with a smile, in a meticulously cultured Virginia Gentleman’s accent…

“With all the Niggers in the Post Office it’s a miracle anybody gets any mail at all.”

How can you not be embarrassed?  Only one way I’m afraid.  Unfortunately for us all, that’s the most embarrassing thing of all about what it means to be human.

Kiss, kiss

Mrs. N.

 

 

I’m Upset

I read some things about elephants today that really upset me.  I have always liked elephants.  I have always found the very idea of having a prehensile nose fascinating.  I honestly can’t look at an elephant without feeling all childish inside and overcome with the excitement that comes with knowing that we are related.  Sure, we branched apart way back on the tree of life, but, we are cousins in a way and I can’t help feeling guilty when I see them performing tricks in a circus.  We all know that they were mistreated to learn tricks.  I can’t look in their eyes without feeling guilty.

What I read in the New York TIMES today caused me to become very upset.

“Since the beginning of 2012, more than 32,000 elephants have been illegally killed, according to the Born Free Foundation, a wildlife organization, and conservationists say the majority of ivory sold in China, which sells for more than $1,300 a pound on the black market, is of questionable origin. The Chinese hold the key to the elephants’ future,” said Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants. “If things continue the way they are, many countries could lose their elephants altogether.”

It’s completely impossible for me to understand how anyone could enjoy something produced by killing an elephant.

I have nothing against the Chinese.  Their culture is ancient and they have given the world much.

Their achievements in engineering and manufacturing over the past 50 years have been astonishing and, in spite of what “some people” say, there is absolutely no reason to mistrust their motives with regard to international relations or economic trade.

I just have to wonder about a people who, on the one hand, can convince their population that they can only have one child, but, on the other, can’t stop a trade that will spell the extinction of elephants.  Quite frankly, it makes me think they just aren’t trying very hard.

The guy who owns the Chinese restaurant in my little Virginia town has been caught dumpster diving out behind the local supermarket three times by employees of the food store.   He always claims he “only take veg-a-bal… for home!”  He never has been caught bringing anything in to the restaurant, but, it makes a lot of people wonder.  I stopped eating there myself, but, a lot of local people still do.  They probably don’t know about the dumpster business.  I always felt they were talking about me whenever I picked up take-out.  They were always talking Chinese, and it always seemed to me that something funny was going on in the back room.

Maybe it was just me.   Im sure I have no right to let the fact that the Chinese are the people primarily responsible for slaughtering what’s left of the elephants on planet earth poison my view of an entire culture and population.  I should know better than to let this unfortunate situation foster ill will toward the Chinese, in my heart.

But, being a tribal creature, I’m not really sure I can, or, that I should trust the bastards.

I’m open to advice from readers.  I don’t feel like I have a lock on everything there is to know, or, if perhaps I’m being too judgmental of the diabolical little sneaks.

Is it me?

Is it just me?