It's in our Jeans

I was alerted by an article on the Little Miss Attila blog about an article by George F. Will in the Washington Post in which he rails about the ubiquitous tide of denim on the sartorial landscape. He is clearly against America's preference for jeans and would prefer it if we all grew up, started wearing dockers and put on a tie, this from a man who wore bow ties until recently. His conversion to cravats suggests he finally learned to tie a four in hand necktie and could eschew the clip ons. That leaves Dave Garroway, Louis Farrakhan, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, and Tucker Carlson to be taught the Windsor knot.

With so many bad choices Americans can make; T-shirts that say I'm with stupid, baseball caps caps worn backwards by people that clearly are not catching the next inning, hoodies with the "designers" name as motif and the tramp stamp tattoo, why Will decided to blast jeans as an example for the decline of Western Civilization seems odd. One clue why is in the opening sentence, "On any American street, or in any airport or mall...", this rhetorical flourish shows Bill has never been on an American street, an airport or mall in living memory but still wants to be considered one of the folks. He disparages running shoes as well but not so vehemently, perhaps he wears them around the office and changes into the Ferragamos when he's getting into a cab.

He suggests we adopt Fred Astaire as our fashion exemplar, I'm sure Bill will be wearing spats, a top hat and tails the next time he catches a Southwest flight to Vegas.

The adjective that frequently jumps to mind regarding George Will is fustian and I am afraid this column falls into that category. I suspect he was trying to be funny but like Anderson Cooper joking about the homosexual act of tea bagging while displaying a more than a passing knowledge of the practice, the article reveals more about the author than the article intended. In this case Will comes across as a second rate Mencken, a curmudgeon but without the Sage of Baltimore's quaint anti-semitism and racism.

(Anderson's tea bagging references were meant to disparage the recent Tea Party demonstrations but also managed to expose our media elite's familiarity with gay sub-culture. It'll be fun to hear what they have to say about felching when that subject comes up.)

Mr. Will takes a nuanced view of things, his baseball book, "Men at Work", celebrated the work ethic of professional ball players, a class of people notorious for their slovenly and outlandish clothing, without once mentioning the fact.

Mr. Will thinks Jeans wearing Americans are unauthentic unless they toil in the soil or are panning for gold, there may be other professions that can wear denim but the only one he mentions wranglers on the old Chisholm Trail, it may be time for George to get out of the office and see what other things Americans do for a living.

Celebriticans

Our long national nightmare is over, Fran Drescher is going to Washington. Finally our nation's issues and concerns will be addressed in an annoying nasal hiss by an irritating, pretentious shrew other than Hilary Clinton. Following the demise of that fine piece of television, "The Nanny" and the equally fine "Shacking Up", Fran contested with Caroline Kennedy for an appointment to Hilary Clinton's vacant Senate seat. As you may recall New York Gov. David Paterson confronted with such an embarrassment of political riches appointed Kirsten Gillibrand to the seat, apparently because Jamie Foxx and Madonna hadn't thrown their hats in the ring .

After the debacle Fran found herself working in a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens until her boyfriend kicked her out in one of those crushing scenes.What was she to do, where was she to go, she was out on her fanny. So over the bridge from Flushing to the Sheffield's door, she was there to sell make up but the father saw more, she had style, she had flair, she was there, that's how she became the Nanny. Who would have guessed that the girl we described was just exactly what the doctor prescribed? Now, the father finds her beguiling, watch out C.C., the kids are actually smiling, such joie de vivre, she's the lady in red when everybody else is wearing tan.The flashy girl from Flushing, the Nanny named Fran.

But aside from that, the "entertainment" "industry" and politics seems to be a natural meld, people in both require baths of gratuitous applause after mundane accomplishments, unearned respect for limited attainments and the trappings of dignity overlaying what is essentially a job in the carny. Ms. Drescher is a fine actress and no less qualified than Mary Bono Mack, Al Franken or Nancy Pelosi to be in congress, its just sad we couldn't look a little harder to find someone better. The hacks already elected get their opinions from the same tainted well of agenda driven media hype that Fran does, so nothing will change except that the conventional wisdom will be brayed at us in a voice that has all the charm of the noises baby seals make when they are being clubbed to death by Canadians. Fran, like her erstwhile compatriots, has no original ideas to press, thank God, or agenda higher than how to look her best in the official portrait but I can't think of anyone I know that isn't smarter than Fran, although I assume she's smarter than Mary Bono Mack, Al Franken or Nancy Pelosi.

What are we to make of Kal Penn, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Al Franken who decided to run based on a high opinion of their own opinions? Not much, a high opinion of their own opinion is what drives the claptrap in Washington right now, with celebriticans at least the claptrap will be delivered by better looking people. At least the world which Jay Leno described, politics being Hollywood for ugly people, will cease to exist

Whatever the celebriticans keep marching along collecting unearned public office like those gift bags they get for attending an award show. It's reward for their contribution to the passing circus that keeps we the people stupid, passive and docile.

Of course if Kinky Friedman or Jessie Ventura run for anything, I'm there.

It's called Swat Valley for a reason or the softer side of Muslim extremists

The Religion of Peace is back in the news recently and this time it's video of a young woman receiving a well deserved thrashing at the hands of the Taliban . Unfortunately our Taliban friends have gotten a lot of this fundamentally wrong. I have reviewed the video and made a few suggestions. Please bare in mind I am a graduate of the Vienna Institute for the Disciplining of Young Girls for No Apparent Reason so my opinion carries some weight with the international bodies that jury competitive wife beating. Our motto at the Institute was: "One for fun, one to stun and one just to show them you mean business."

1) The men are dressed in flowing robes with what looks like a giant cinabon on their head. That's fine for late night or being in Stanley Kubrick's immortal film "Eyes Wide Shut" with all your Scientologist friends. (Actually try that, you might enjoy it.) Next time leave the robes at home and go with a casual leather jodhpurs and jack boot ensemble, maybe shirtless with a leather hood to lend an air of menace. Nothing sends a shiver down the spine like a shirtless man in a leather hood wearing leather jodhpurs and brandishing a cat-o-nine tails.

2) There are no degenerate European aristocrats in formal evening wear in the audience! What, there wasn't a team of Italian soccer players nearby you could dress up? Nothing sends a shiver down the spine like a shirtless man in a leather hood, wearing leather jodhpurs and brandishing a cat-o-nine tails in front of an audience of degenerate European aristocrats in formal evening wear.

3) The guy with the whip was way too uninvolved. He needs a name like Gunther or Dieter and to have a maniacal look in his eye. Nothing sends a shiver down the spine like a shirtless man named Gunther or Dieter in who's eyes you detect a maniacal glint even though his face is covered in a leather hood, is wearing leather jodhpurs and brandishing a cat-o-nine tails in front of an audience of degenerate European aristocrats in formal evening wear.

4) The victim was a good choice, a naughty seventeen year old girl is just the sort you want to bring down your whole repressive regime on. Nubile is always best when you are trying to make a serious point. Unfortunately you missed a chance to score with western observers, when you let the girl wear slacks and a burka. I repeat a burka, its hard to believe anything happens under a burka let alone something naughty. For truly global impact, the girl should have been dressed as a Japanese school girl, had her skirt pulled up and panties pulled down to reveal garter belt and stockings, her hands tied behind her back then bent over a high school desk and spanked. Nothing sends a shiver down the spine like a shirtless man named Gunther or Dieter in who's eyes you detect a maniacal glint even though his face is covered in a leather hood, is wearing leather jodhpurs and brandishing a cat-o-nine tails in front of an audience of degenerate European aristocrats in formal evening wear watching a naughty Japanese school girl who has had her dress pulled up and panties pulled down to reveal a garter belt and stockings, her hands tied behind her back then bent over a high school desk and about to be spanked. Or maybe it's just me.

Earth Hour minus one

I enjoy protests which is what Earth Hour was supposed to be as opposed to the fatuous publicity stunt it is. It reminded me of when everybody held hands across America back in the seventies or eighties or nineties, which ever decade it was when Americans were out of their pea sized, drug addled brains. Oh how often I have wished I could have arranged for the last person in line to grab a high voltage line and we all could have learned the importance of being in contact with someone who was well grounded.

Earth Hour was supposed to raise awareness or protest or speak truth to power about global warming or climate change or global cooling or pollution or conservation or animal cruelty or something. (I think I could be persuaded to oppose animal cruelty if PETA would persuade more models to walk around naked in protest. I'm just saying...) At any rate we are supposed to turn off the lights to remind us to stop using oil and other fossil fuels which will make the lights stay off all the time, which would just about solve everything.

Now I love to protest, I wouldn't be what I am today, a bitter, middle aged man without employable skills if I hadn't been protesting during college instead of studying. Speaking of protests, what's wrong with kids these days, sure they're opposed the war but I didn't hear about any coeds gunned down at Kent State this time around. You're all a bunch of slackers! You aren't going to generate many good songs that way, it takes a body count to get Crosby, Stills and Nash off their duffs and writing.

I love protests and marches, its away for you and your friends to demonstrate (Yeah, I know.) your sincere and principled concern for an issue you don't want to waste any time doing something about. You get to hear people no more qualified than yourself lecture you on the urgency of a crisis they had no idea was going on until their basic cable package started including the Discovery Channel. Its activism lite, you don't have to go to meetings with skinny bearded guys or intense chubby women and best of all you can shave. Protests keep police crowd estimators employed and gives politicians parades they can get in front of and pretend they're leading.

I'm not a nut bag, OK maybe that isn't completely true but I don't advocate spilling tankers full of oil on sea birds no matter how much fun it is. Oil is a complex compound we have turned into a myriad of products, there is no organic analogue for Plexiglas or PVC so conserving this limited resource is a good idea. The problem is not that we are using it up at an unreasonable rate or doing stupid things with it, hydrocarbons are one of the most recyclable things around and even its most disposable products have secondary uses. (Think about that when you are picking up your dogs poo, although if you live by me I know you don't bother.) The problem is there are too many people using fossil fuels and until somebody addresses how we reduce the numbers sucking on the straw, pollution, congestion and fossil fuel usage will grow no matter how many lights we turn off.

I hope Earth Hour and Earth Day get to expand into an Earth Month where everybody does without fossil fuels for the good of the planet, ah the bliss of no electricity, no fertilizer, no transportation, no food. We could follow that up with Earth Year and discover the kind of lives our ancestors enjoyed without heat, clean water or a life expectancy. Behold a pale rider? Hell's Bells that's how we'll all have to get around without fossil fuels, it'll be like the best Christmas ever and we'll all get ponies because we'll need them to get where we want to go. It could be followed by Earth Famine Decade or Earth Destitution Century to put some natural order back in our civilization, after all why should Islamic Fundamentalist get to be the only ones living in the sixteenth century. I'm sure the Earth will appreciate it.

A Very Special Olympics

The President of late has run afoul of the parents and advocates for children that go to school via the short bus. Imagine my surprise when I learned we were all supposed to take the Special Olympics seriously, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I mean what are we to make of kids in wheel chairs being tossed into pools and told to swim or that competition where you ski and shoot and ride a horse, oh wait a minute that’s the Pentateuch or Biathlon or whatever and real people do it in Finland.

I assume that one solution would be not filling the little tykes in on what all the laughing behind their backs was about, thats what we did with Clinton and Bush. After all there should be a place where adult liberal sophisticates can safely snicker at the unfortunate with out being upbraided for being the callous bigots they are. With George Bush out of Washington how are Bill Maher, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert going to keep coming up with bright, fresh, politically savvy original material? They’ll have to mock the stumbling, drooling and funny looking folks that haven’t been elected to Congress yet, that’s how.

Now I have nothing against Down’s Syndrome athletes competing in whatever they choose, except curling and synchronized rowing because they clearly have an intelligence edge on the folks that do that for real. A very good friend and second most flamboyantly Queenie homosexual I ever knew, Waylon Flowers once told me “Don’t Taunt The Wretched!” and I have always tried to follow that advice. (Actually it’s more like a 500 way tie for second for the Queenie crown, sorry Waylon.) Although that begs the question, who is more wretched: the kids who are just having fun or our gifted President who it seems could medal at the next Special Olympics Spontaneous Public Speaking competition, although Biden is certain for the Gold.

From now on I will refrain from using Idiot, Retard, Imbecile, Shit For Brains, Moron, Hydro Cephalic Crap Head, Quarter Wit, Half Wit, Nit Wit, Melon Headed Nit Wit, French Brained Nit Wit head, Boob brain, Bean Brained, Bungle Headed Moron with a side of Retarded, Mullet Headed B B Brain, Stupid fucking Asshole Nit Wit, Badger Brain, Taco Flavored Doritos Nit Wit Bubble Brain and Dummy when referring to the challenged folks at the Special Olympics. I will reserve these words for the dim bulbs and pellet heads in the general population that aren’t in the Special Olympics and when I’m driving.

I hope we can now watch the Special Olympics with new found gravity and watch the equestrian sailing, rhythmic weight lifting and ice fishing finals with the seriousness they deserve except when that vacuum headed shit melon Bob Costas is doing the commentary.

Presidents' Day

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, you can see it in the eyes of children and on the faces of their parents, it is a special season and it only comes once a year. It’s Presidents’ Day, the holiday where we honor our chief executive by giving them the same birthdays, like race horses and English Royalty.

It kind of hacks me off that I never get write about this holiday because I’m busy doing my taxes, (That’s right, I’m not an Obama cabinet selection.) and if ever a holiday deserved 3000 over wrought and sarcastically ironic words from me its Presidents’ Day.

Both of you who are reading this have probably suffered through my Presidents’ Day Song Medley and know how enthusiastic I am about boring people into a coma with facts about obscure presidents; like how Franklin Pierce kept a small shaved monkey under his desk that he would introduce to dignitaries as his son. (I’m kidding; Pierce is not an obscure President.)

This is an important holiday with lots of history attached; it’s more than just an excuse to hold a white sale although for the life of me I can’t think of another reason right now.

It used to be that we only had to remember Washington and Lincoln, conveniently born within a few days of each other during Black History Month and each with a special place in the hearts of black Americans, one for freeing slaves beyond his control and the other for freeing slaves he controlled albeit after his death. But there are forty two other presidents to be remembered, (Let’s settle the Cleveland issue once and for, Cleveland was a pair of identical twins both named Grover and the Baby Ruth bar was named after his daughter who went on to have a spectacular career with the New York Yankees setting many batting records.) and not all were born in February or even memorable in their own time ( Garfield during his own bullet shortened term was referred to by members of Congress as: “That guy a disappointed officer seeker plugged.”) so a remedy was needed.

Briefly, celebrating every President’s Birthday was tried, but it was a logistical nightmare, Calvin Coolidge was born on July Fourth and Chester A. Arthur’s birthday frequently conflicted with Columbus Day. Also it was thought that taking the additional 42 days off each year would undermine the economy; postal workers, government officials and GM workers disagreed and continue to observe the extra holidays to this day.

At any rate our dark overlords cobbled together Presidents’ Day, conflating Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays into one nameless pointless holiday to ensure bankers and bureaucrats weren’t over worked. My imaginary family and I will celebrate this year in the traditional Presidential manner, I will make promises I have no intention of keeping, pretend I care about the lives of others and hit on cocktail waitresses when Hilary isn’t looking.

So enjoy your Presidents' Day, it has no songs associated with it, no parades, no games, no events, you don't even get to plant trees but enjoy it any way and please join me in promoting a new holiday, Vice-Presidents' Day on July 11th. Its the day sitting Vice President Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton and the last time one of these non-entities did anything useful while in office.

The Tortoise, The Ant and The Country Mouse

I got a complaint about the last post I put up about three children and their miserable fiery death. They said it was a bit angry, I said the Blog is called Products of a Diseased Mind. They said I had a responsibility to moderate my writing for the impressionable, I said if I haven't driven someone to a tower with a high powered rifle, a bucket of chicken and a can of Brasso, I haven't done my job. They said if I had the courage of my convictions I shouldn't hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, I said thats what the Internet is for, to insult, offend and slander people anonymously.

We could have gone on like this but as Finch in the Sham Wow commercial says: "We can't do this all day," so I scraped my tale about a Labrador Retriever that gets sucked into the intake manifold of an F-16 and gets his doggy guts blasted over the tarmac like so much puppy chutney and posted this family friendly chestnut from the slush pile.

The Tortoise, The Ant and The Country Mouse

In a land far away, at a time just past now, in a bar called Ye Olde Coach House, that was noted for its cool quiet calm as opposed to anything “Olde” or coach like about it, three characters from various fairy tales, parables and morally uplifting stories gathered to relive the past. The tortoise, the ant and the country mouse would regale everyone around the bar with accounts of their long past achievements eventually boring their fellow patrons beyond mere tears and causing them to repent their lives.

The quality of an evening at Ye Olde Coach House could be judged by the number of times the discharge of a firearm punctuated the night. Almost nightly one or more customers would end the torment of listening to the biographical ramblings of a reptile, insect and rodent to seek a happier destiny by punctuating his skull with a bullet. In another time or place Ye Olde Coach house might have suffered for patronage in light of its sinister reputation but there were always more recruits willing to test their mettle for the cheapest well drinks in town.

Normally a reptile, insect and rodent wouldn’t have much to discuss much less drink about except as it related to who was going to eat whom but this is a fable and the county it takes place in is notoriously lax in its supervision of alcoholic beverage serving establishments since most of it revenue comes from servicemen on leave.

Each animal had a moment in the spotlight, and taken applause from a hypocritical public who demanded moral rectitude from their icons while they wallowed in a sump of comfortable corruption. To refresh your memory, the tortoise had won his famous race against the heavily favored hare through a combination of persistent plodding and sustained effort. The ant had thriftily stored up wealth for the long lean winter unlike his careless friend the spendthrift fiddling grasshopper. Despite the blandishments of his city cousin, the country mouse had turned his back on the material appeal of the city fleshpots for the wholesome values of the country. They were held up individually and collectively as icons of virtue and like Roman conquerors they returned to receive their praise from the mob. Unfortunately at the time of their triumph no slave rode in the chariot with them, holding their laurels above their heads and reminding them that fame is fleeting.

The fleet of fame had definitely sailed for these guys, they were has beens. They still got invited to appear on telethons and sometimes they were hired as guest attractions by the local triple A ball team; having them stand around and shake hands was cheaper and safer than giving away beer or bats. An unbiased observer would agree their time had passed; the bloom was off the rose and their glory days were long passed. If Arthur Miller were writing this they’d all have been traveling salesmen.

What made their pathetic lives even more galling was that their counterparts, the hare, grasshopper and city mouse had all gone on to success in other fields. The hare had gotten some coaching and gone on to lead his team to the league championship an unprecedented six times while having sex with an astonishing number of partners even for a rabbit. The grasshopper was so successful in his music career that on his last world tour he had filled Wembley Stadium and for an encore led a swarm of other like minded grasshoppers and locusts that denuded Somalia of its grain crops, causing widespread devastation and starvation. The city mouse had established a fabulously successful publishing empire anchored by a magazine he edited that featured photos of nude young female mice and generally lived the life of a degenerate Italian playboy except that he was rodent vermin and spread the dreaded Hanta virus in his feces.

The three spent their lives waiting and discussing their past with who ever came through the swinging doors. They complained about how unfairly life had treated them. But mostly they drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And drank.

One day a man named Hickey came into their saloon to drop off some ice and exposed the petty meaninglessness of their drab empty lives with irony and biting insights. Incensed they fell upon the interloper, killed him and then devoured the still twitching corpse. Normally that would have been the end of it but the death of Hickey started them thinking: Their lives were indeed dead and meaningless except for the earlier specified triumphs. After some soul searching accompanied by a commensurate amount of drinking they discovered the psychological roots of their existential ennui:

A.) Incestuous relations with an insane prostitute mother.

B.) A drunken, abusive religious fanatic father.

C.) Inability of society, family and/or self to accept homosexuality.

D.) A&B but not C.

E.) B&C but not A.

F.) A&C but not B.

G.) All of the above

H.) None of the above.

This galvanized our unlikely trio and they resolved the next day to start running guns to worthy Central American revolutionaries. Like latter day Ernest Hemingway’s they would all take notes and keep diaries and any one who survived the adventure would see to it that their story got told. Of course their wives, creditors and employers frowned on this sort of behavior so after sheepish apologies they shook off their hangovers, abandoned their crazy dreams and continued their lives of noisy desperation.

In a more forgiving culture they might have carried on like this for years but fortunately this occurred in a land where the personal right of every person to carry a hand gun was respected. After one night too many, the barkeep, tired of mopping up after suicidal patrons bored to despair by the endless self examination and angered by the trio’s incessant boasting about killing his dear friend Hickey, snuffed them all. The jury didn’t bother deliberating; many recalled Hickey as valued member of the community and a friend, while the deceased victims were an insect pest, an animal valued primarily as an ingredient for stew and an unpleasant but un-endangered species of turtle. The barkeep was released with the thanks of the court.