Third party candidates?

There are times politics all starts to make this Simpsons Halloween special appear a little too accurate.  And it’s times like those that the words and actions of Ralph Nader and Ron Paul start to sound like a refreshing splash of realism to wash the shit stains of cynicism and subsequent indifference off my A-Team pajamas.  And I imagine any person capable of thinking deeper than the frighteningly common instances of tribal good vs. evil, A vs. not-A, sports mentality politics so commonly nourished by the punditocracy of the major media has succumbed to this type of apathy…myself included.

A brief history, if I must:

Deity of the month: Dionysus, aka Bacchus, aka Zagreus, aka Professor Shortpants.

Perhaps it’s simply that it’s August and there’s little else going on (except for some damn hubbub in China, which brings us no closer to peace without dinner, or victory without slip-N-slides…and how can anything be claimed as a victory unless some of the spoils involve slip-N-slides, I ask ye?), or perhaps it’s just a simple contemplation of how differently our world might be now had we chosen to throw our bank in with a different ancient deity.  Always so serious we are, Occidental materialists! If it weren’t for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Presleyterians I’d find myself spending far too much time watching the remake of the Scatman video featuring World of Warcraft, and none of us truly wants that.  So, to begin what will hopefully be a repeating monthly thing, I present one of my personal favorites from ancient Greece: Dionysus/Bacchus.

A moment of observation…

…in which I think the gas station is now advertising fuel at a rate of 41.9 cents per gallon, instead of the actual $4.19 per gallon.  For a virtual nanosecond I feel excitement.  But then I wonder, much as I used to about phone charges, if, in a country so in love with gambling, getting away with something/screwing the system, and not being affected by the realities of supply and demand that the rest of the world experiences, that a real opportunity exists here for the gas stations with the balls to try it out:

Man, I got nothing…

I’ve been working on the same story for a month or more now, and each time I pull it up to work on it I complete a paragraph or two, get disgusted with it, and my night rapidly devolves into Hamm’s Premium and Super Mario Bros.  Yes, my maturity level continues to hover somewhere between an 8th grader and every Pauly Shore character ever to hit the silver screen.  Worse yet, the jury’s still out on whether I should consider that a bad thing or a good thing.

So, in the interest of moving forward with this so-called “blorg” and not letting it rot away in the corner like so many hobbies of old (sorry, balloon-animal zoo, but I just couldn’t get that f’n porcupine to work), I’ve decided to simply buy some time by posting a collection of completely non sequitar nonsense blurbs.

Apologies to those who recognize a few from previous “blorg” incarnations, but I needed what we call in the business “filler”.  Let the games begin!

Reasons to blog:

A fine spring greetings!

And a beautiful one it is in Oregon, particularly because animals of all shapes and sizes have reappeared to beautify the planet, and this can only mean one thing: Bigfoot Season.

 

Now, I’m not suggesting we should hunt and/or kill bigfoot, or even track him/her in order to collect footprints, photographs, or other evidence of his/her existence, but rather, let’s tantalize him/her with modern products and conveniences.  I, for one, spend my weekends camouflaged in the bushes of the Cascades Mountains, planting trails of meat to stockpiles of Us and People magazines.  I smear pheromones around lone IPod minis with a full storage of the latest top 40.   I pool the sweet, sweet nectar of honey on bottles of Budweiser.  Oh yes, the market can yet expand.

 

And speaking of weird phenomena, remember crop circles?

Irish Wanderings

I feel awkward at this stage of my trip, just after boarding a ferry to Ireland.  It doesn’t seem to fit into the theme of my wanderings over the past few months, or the past few years even.  However, perhaps I judge too rashly…there is Guinness on tap.

 

            In my strivings to travel as cheaply as possible, I scoffed at the extra 50 Euro necessary to have one’s own quarters during the 19-hour trip from Cherbourg, France, to Rosslare, Ireland.  Additionally, I haughtily refused even the 11 Euro for a “seat” that one could, presumably, sleep in.  Besides, I have a bar packed full of delicious dark Irish ales and a pack of smokes, and if worse comes to worse I’ll curl up topside of the ten-story ferry with a bellyful of liquid peace and whatever clothing articles of warmth I can scrounge from my backpack of mysteries (or so its contents had gradually come to be mysterious to me after ten weeks on the road).  On the other hand, perhaps the luck of the Irish will shine upon me somewhat prematurely and a fine young (or not so young) maiden with a heart of gold and some extra real estate will take me in out of the cold.  Not that this type of scenario is common on a trip such as this, or in life in general, but I must maintain such fantasies to justify my behavior after incessantly waking up in strange uncomfortable places wondering, “why did I think this was a good idea again?”

The Penis and Testicles Coalition Party

A day of debate within the Senate of a lesser known, but far more common, legislative body, known simply as The United Body Parts of Male.

The proceedings are already underway: Senate makeup: Brain Party (BP): 50 members; Penis and Testicles Coalition Party (PTCP): 50 members 

Split decisions fall on the Vice President as the deciding vote. The current VP is a member of the PTCP, but is a moderate and known to only side with his own party when his own current and specific interests are at stake.  The President, on the other hand, is a strong proponent of the PTCP platform, and will quickly sign into law any bill passed by his party.

VP: “Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, please, let’s have order.  We are here to debate the bill before us: SR1948C, more popularly known as the “should we hook up with this random girl at a party” bill.  This bill is urgent, as any extended debate will limit the possibility of carrying out the recommended measures.  I open it up to the floor.”

Announcer: “The floor recognizes the Senator from the right testicle, member of the PTCP (PTCP-RT).” 

PTCP-RT: “Thank you, good sir.  It is clear what must be done here and the fine people of the Senate know it.  This is a fine party we have attended as a united body, with many available alcoholic beverages and many fine young females, which, if I may be so bold, could be described as ‘bootylicious’.  We have consumed several drinks, both of the beer and ‘jungle juice’ variety, and now this fine young woman has taken an interest in us.  It is clear to us all what must be done for the good of the United Body Parts of Male.  We must take advantage of this wonderful opportunity before us, because life is for the living, and none of us knows how long any of us will have.  Surely, we should enjoy our lives and experience all we can.  That is all I have to add, thank you all.” 

The Bush Factor (AKA “What I did on my summer vacation”)

The other night on the news there was a hubbub that was causing quite a stir in the bar, and it forced me to occasionally pull my nose out of the pint of Guinness I was gradually hibernating in.  Seems the people of Arkansas (and apparently much of the rest of the nation) were “havin’ themselves an election” as the jovial gent next to me colorfully put it.  And amongst all the pretty flashing lights I kept seeing the same question: “How has the Bush Factor affected voters’ decisions this election?”  An interesting query, to be sure, though far less so once I was informed by the equally stupefied gent next to me that “Bush” was, in fact, the name of the current President of this here conglomeration of somewhat interconnected nation-states.

“You don’t say!” I exclaimed, fashionably drooling in an effort to attract the many members of the opposite sex hovering about my general vicinity, “And here I thought that was one of George Carlin’s seven words you can’t say on television!”  Twat.  I was informed that I was actually thinking of the colorful single-meaning ‘twat’, and not the rather un-enjoyable half-whispered (perhaps due to its origin of being whispered between seventh-grade males in English class) multiple-meaning ‘bush’ that I had often considered far more crude in common parlance.  Twat vs. Bush?  A crime…sheer crime.  Bloody FCC.

But then I knew what must happen in this state of affairs: someone as blissfully unaware of the state of things as me, either because of or in spite of their frequent consumption of legal drugs, must be located by these reporters and answer this question…

Farting Existentially: An Experimental Play in Three Scenes

List of characters:

Professor Shortpants

Gamblor the Almighty

Didi the Frazzled Misogynist

Tybalt the Not Stolen from a More Famous Play

Umbro the Nonexistent

Deus Ex Machina the Conveniently Convenient

Stan

 

Act I: Scene I

 

Frozen food section of the local Wal-Mart

(In this scene Professor Shortpants and Didi the Frazzled Misogynist, recently married, are shopping for chocolate and diapers, not necessarily to be used together)

 

Professor Shortpants: “I say we simply get one of each product and combine them in the blender to find which will produce desirable taste-combinations.”

Didi the Frazzled Misogynist: “I don’t see why we would want to do that, besides, don’t you realize that I can hardly look at diapers while the seething hatred of women I carry could boil over my carefully controlled exterior at any moment, without warning?!”

Prof. SP: “Yes, but…you are a woman Didi…”

Didi the FM: “True, but the playwright wrote me in to be a misogynist without really thinking about how that would affect our consequent relationship.  Not my fault really, as I also happen to be Frazzled with a capital F.”

Prof. SP: “Well, I received no such moniker, so count yourself lucky, but I suppose the title of Professor will have to suffice.”

The Brief Reign of the Crypt-Sweepers: A Tale of Custodial Terror

This town was once so normal: small, mostly white and middle-class.  However, the changes that happened had nothing to do with race or economic standing.  At least, that’s the way I have always seen it.

            It all started a couple of years ago.  Maybe I noticed the first one, or maybe it wasn’t until the group had grown that the oddity became perceptible.  One day, with no explanation at all, and on no particular date that anyone can now possibly recall, one young man, an early twenty-something local, picked up a broom and starting walking randomly about the town.  In the beginning, I imagine he was only spotted sporadically, leading those that observed him to simply assume that some guy was innocently, and purposefully, carrying his broom from one location to another.  Perhaps some spring cleaning, perhaps loaning it to a friend, hell, a good son sweeping up his mama’s place.  “Nothing to see here,” Jimmy ‘Less Than Three Standard Deviations From The Mean’ would say, “let’s pull over and grab some high-octane fuel and some food in equally high-octane packaging at a store with a name consisting of two verbs spelled phonetically in an annoying and creative manner, which are broken up by an “and” altered in the only manner known to humankind, i.e., the now infamous ‘n’.”