I had a real good idea

It came and left me while I was half asleep in bed. This happens from time to time. Some writers deal with this issue by keeping a notebook next to the bed, or even taking one wherever they went. This has always seemed a bit prissy to me, so I'm not going to do that.

But it was a great idea, right up there with my best stuff. It was funny yet profound. It was one of my bullseye-prescient observations of the delusions and hypocrises of Midwestern society. It was great satire, it was masterful satire. Nay, it was beyond satire. It would have changed your life. It would have been the first step to a new enlightenment. All of the old Gods and myths would have been finally and totally defeated by my atomic wit.

But I don't keep a notebook by my bed, because I pee standing up

Connor Oberst probably keeps a notebook next to his bed. He might have an idea similar to mine and right it down. But the "man" has no idea how to express himself.
I do.

I don't keep a notebook next to my bed because I never got dragged to the shrink for giving myself paper cuts on the wrists

so I can only give you a little scrap of my idea. Or maybe it's a scrap of another idea I had at some other time.

"How are we supposed to judge what makes a great man? There are so many walks of life, some so different from each other that they might as well be performed by seperate species. Few people know enough about other people's walks to have the slightest idea about whether they're doing a good job or not. So what then, is greatness? What is the objective standard that applies to us all? I tell you there is none."

Now, I know that was good, probably good enough to put in a book of quotes next to Oscar Wilde and Cicero, but I can see how some hard-to-please people might find it a little trite.

Oh, but if I could only show you the context, you would see that this quote is part of something far from trite, something, perfect. Your tears would flow for days. You would learn to vomit at the sight of all of your old status symbols.

But I don't keep a notebook next to my bed, because I only pretend to like Ani DeFranco.

Friday night fun and games

The Nebraska Unicam is considering cutting off Medicaid payments to non-citizens. That's non-citizens mind you, not illegal immigrants, the terms are not interchangeable. Maybe you've heard of a little thing called a green card, or maybe yu've heard of a little thing called an exchange student. (You should see what he's doing to your daughter.)

Of course, I'm sure you know that most people, citizen or otherwise, who receive Medicaid or some other government assistance. do work. Oh yes they do. They work shit jobs for minimum wage with no benefits, so they need the state to help them out. You may call it socialism. O.k. got ahead and call it socialism. I'm not a socialist myself, but the sound of the word doesn't scare me out of thinking.

Having said that, I am an American, and I get a boner at the thought of being a better American than people different than me just like every other red-blooded American male does. And maybe there is too much welfare money going to those damned non-citizens.

So let's play a little game. Three of these pictures represent non-citizens who have receive more than 200 million dollars in government handouts from the state of Nebraska every year, and untold billions nationwide. One of these pictures represents a naturalized citizen who has found steady employment and doesn't require any government help at all. First one to guess which is which wins a free jar of Peter Pan Peanut butter.

Proposal

I have an idea, it's called anti-Lent. I realize that this is the basic idea behind Mardi Gras, but fuck Mardi Gras. What good has Mardi Gras done for New Orleans? None at all. It has only given the public the impression that New Orleans is a disposible cauldren of sin, so that we felt justified in letting the source for a good deal of what is interesting about American culture drown. (A bigger disgrace than 9/11, in my opinion.)

So this is what we do. It starts tonight, do homework, watch network television, go out to Applebees, do whatever you like, as long as you can't possibly get any pleasure out of it.

Tomorrow, and for the next six Fridays, we drink, we smoke, we fornicate. We eat steak for breakfast, pork for lunch, and double rabbitfat burgers for supper.

On the Afternoon of Good Friday itself, cocaine, mountains of cocaine, served to us by illeagal immigrants (Dressed as Mother Mary left abandoned in her old age) forced into prostitution after their husbands were deported.

I realize that even some friends of mine may be shocked by this idea, good. This shows that, no matter what religion you were raised in, you still feel some latant affection for the Catholic Church, or at least the modern Western Civilization that it spawned.

There are some gloomy, pretentious types who claim that Western Civilization is decaying. There are none, however, more pretentious than me. I say that Western Civilization has been dead for at least a hundred years. It is only the corpse we are watching decay. The decay is being accelerated by power elites who, inspired by the 1989 film Weekend at Bernie's, have stolen the corpse from it's deep freeze and now prop it up in front of the masses (who, out of either courtesy or ignorance, claim to see nothing amiss) in order to gain power and influence for themselves.

They claim to be the corpse's best friends. They say they love Bernie. They say they can nurse him back to health and bring the corpse back to it's glory days. "Just give us your loyalty" they say "and we can bring him back to the glory days." "Just submit to the old myths and traditions, and we can return the days when we raped and pillaged the earth with impunity."

So what now then? Shall we acquiecse? Shall we all be Catherine Parks, and necrophilize the corpse in a well played but insignificant bit role? Or shall we look into Andrew McCarthey in the eye and say "Come now, did you think we wouldn't notice the smell?"

I seek not to create depravity but to expose it, not to destroy morality but to show that there is not now, and perhaps never has been, anything to destroy. We cannot invent a new truth untill we are able to start from scratch. Those who still cling to the bloated carcass must have their foolishness shown to them in the clearest possible way.

We have no choice. We cannot allow the corpse of Western Civilization to return peacefully to the earth. In order to remove it's corrupting influence once and for all, we are forced to subject it to furthur outrage. We must shoot in the head with the arrow of hedonism, drag it through the bouys of licentiousness, use it as a float to escape the waters of slave morality.

And it starts tommarow. We're all gathering at my place for a breafast of De'Leon's and Sailor Jerry's. After this, black market Burmise Porn. This is the sanctifying moment, this is when anti-Lent officially begins. You can do whatever you like after that, so long as you regret it immediatly afterwords.

And some more on Nantkes

The other day I was listening to Drive-Time Lincoln, the local news show on KILN, the area source for Limbaugh, Hannity, Drudge, and other such clowns. Drive-time is hosted by one Coby Mach, I can't trust a name like that, sounds Texan, fucking short-dicked psychopaths.

In fairness, Mach isn't as much of a jackass as the nationally syndicated assholes we all know and love. This is probably a matter of necessity. It's one thing to excoriate faceless baby-eating liberals from some far away Sodom that good heartlanders will never go to, but it's quite another thing to demonize the next-door neighbor with a Nebraskans for Peace bumper sticker whose kid plays on the same soccer team as yours.

But though he's a second rate thug, Mach is, after all, the host of an AM talk radio show, so the bullshit, delivered with a smirk instead of a growl, is still reliably delivered.

And so it was on Thursday, when Mock tried to put a populist spin on my belladonna Danielle Nantkes's recent drunk-driving incident. Nantkes, you see, wasn't technically arrested, as state senators are immune from being arrested for misdemeanors when the Unicam is in session. She was taken to a detox center and walked out the next morning to her well-earned De'leon's breakfast without having to pay bail or face a judge.

Mach, in his own congenially outraged way, wanted to know why Nantkes didn't face the same righteous punishment that common drunkards do.

Well, it's because of the English revolution, Coby. It's because Charles the 1st tried to use his soldiers to get Oliver Cromwell and his partisans out of his hair. It didn't work, and Cromwell eventually succeeded in beheading Charles and installing his own highly amusing Puritan theocracy.

After the English unrest settled down, Parliament saw this incident of how the executive could use the legal authorities (who are his employees) after all, to remove political opponents in the legislature for any number of crimes real or imagined. So they forbade the King from having MP's arrested while the house was in session. This prohibition was passed on to the American constitution, and the constitutions for all fifty states.

A local lawyer explained this to Mach on the air, in slightly less detail, killing any further rant he had to make on the matter. But local news shorts on KILN still question the fairness of Nantkes's non-arrest at any opportunity. this is bound to mislead the typical AM radio listener, whose knowledge of history is restricted to vague remembrances of American supermen kicking foreign ass and dirty hippies complaining about it.

Of course, there is also the small fact that my neighborhood would have no voice in state government if it's state senator is in jail, but then we don't represent the real common sense people who listen to KILN and our outraged that Lincoln refuses to turn itself into an extension of West Omaha. With Mayor Seng on her way out, expect Nantkes to become the new local Streisand.

Danielle Nantkes is better than anyone who doesn't drive drunk.

Nantkes is the state senator from my district. I voted for her, she lives five blocks down the street from me, just on the other side of 27th here in Lincoln. Two night ago she went to detox after driving into a snowplow at Nineteenth and P,presumably on her way home from getting down at the Haymarket or the O street strip. So now a state senator, my senator, is charged with DUI. It's caused a bit of a stir.

Full disclosure, I myself have been to jail for DUI (and, ummm, fleeing to avoid arrest, youthful indiscretion you know.) This makes me one of millions of people in rural America whose criminal record consists solely of drinking and/or driving related matters.

I'm not trying to excuse it. It's a terrible thing to do, it kills people. It's just that, you know, it gets too cold to walk here in the winter, and sometimes you got to go to another town to party, and this is a drinking culture, and a driving culture at that. Giving a ride or receiving a ride from someone else is seen as shameful charity. I'm not trying to excuse it, but, you know.

And let's be clear; what Nantkes did was wrong. She's a bad girl. A very, very, bad and wicked girl and I have half a mind to grab my bullwhip and show her some discipline myself. But her crime wasn't a "political crime." She didn't cheat the campaign finance laws, she didn't take any bribes, and she presumably got drunk on her own money. It wasn't the sort of crime where one abuses or takes advantage of one's authority. Anyone can get drunk and crash their car. It's a crime of the people.

Still, there will be some who will see the incident as reason enough to boot her out of the state penis. The Nebraska Unicameral is officially nonpartisan, but of course partisan and philosophical tensions have always been there. Now the term limits have forced out professional politicians (Such as Dave Landis, Nantkes' predecessor and a fine voice for my neighborhood who was stolen from us by the fucking T.L's)the nonpartisan label is almost total fiction.

The Unicameral is home to the true believers now, young vigorous, and proud to be uncompromising in a parliamentary system designed to force compromise.

People like Mark Christensen, holy warrior from Imperial, or Norfolk's Mike Flood, speaker of the Unicam and leather-slave of Governor Heineman.

Nantkes, an unabashedly liberal Democrat, has been a minor irritation for the state's power elite. Nowhere near as effective as Ernie motherfucking Chambers, but nobody likes getting nipped by a poodle.

And they may be looking to avenge the impeachment and removal of university regent Dave Hergert. (who was very friendly with the GOP elite in Lincoln and Omaha, pathetic pleas to Panhandle pride notwithstanding)

We'll see where it goes. In the meantime, Sen. Nantkes, I'd like to ask you out on a date. Meet me at O'Rourke's tomorrow night, I'll be wearing the red rose and Juventes scarf, and don't worry, I'll drive us home. Your place or mine?

Reminder

This current Nebraska winter does not disprove global warming, far from it. This is a historically normal winter, the only reason it's "below average" is because the average has been gradually creeping up over the past 25-30 years.

What is unusual is the lack of a "false spring" that usually hits the Great Plains sometime between mid-January and mid-February, where temperatures briefly rise to the 40's, 50's or even 60's for a few days. This gives everyone a break from artificial lighting and week-old cigarette smoke, a nice chance to stretch one's legs, take a walk through the park, get the cabin fever out of one's system before the second half of winter hits.

No such luck this year. Lincoln hasn't been above 40 since the solstice. It seems that the Jet stream (wholly unaffected by Global warming, btw.) which usually separates the Arctic from the American Midwest, is further south than usual this year.

This is important, because the plains continue unbroken to the north of here almost to the Arctic circle. Without the Jet Stream between here and there, there is nothing to prevent an "Alberta Clipper" or "Arctic Front" from blowing south from Hudson Bay, through the Dakotas, and on to here.

In a modern "normal" winter, we get one or two of these Arctic fronts a year, brining, snow, wind, and freakishly cold temps (single digits) that last for half a week. But with the jet stream to the south of us, these fronts are moving over Nebraska on a weekly basis. Just when temperatures are starting to get back to something reasonable; say, high 20's, low 30's Fahrenheit, here comes the next front.

So for you Huskers wondering what an Alaska winter is like, it's a lot like this. Anchorage is actually having an easier winter than we are since it lies on the air-moderating ocean. For all practical purposes, we are living in an interior Arctic climate right now, made somewhat better by the fact we receive ten or eleven hours of sunlight a day instead of none.

And like I said, historically, this is more or less normal, perhaps a little worse because the worst part of winter simply refuses to go away. Pioneers lived through Januaries that were even worse than this, while temperatures would usually be somewhere in the 20's by now and around 45 by the spring equinox.

So what does that tell us? That our ancestors were even more insane than we thought they were. We already knew that they settled a wasteland for no logical reason, but now that you are living through a real Nebraska winter, just consider the fact that they suffered for this, died for this, killed for this It's really too depressing to believe, isn't it?

Business idea

I've decided to record videos of myself masturbating for the purpose of masturbating to the videos of myself masturbating in the future. Traditional porn bores me, and even Hentai doesn't amuse me anymore. There's just not enough me involved.

The videos should be ready in a couple weeks. If you would like a copy, and I can't imagine that you wouldn't, leave me your e-mail address over this blog. Of course, you do understand that, due to the high quality of these videos, they will cost at least twice as much as your typical Hustler Real College Girls DVD.

In a few months, I hope to hav videos of myself masturbating to videos of myself masturbating. You know you want it.

A rememberance of sorts

Her house sits at the end of the block, accross Front street from the tracks. The inside is covered by paintings of Jesus, the Virgin of Guadalupe. She came here some years after being married at fifteen.

Her current house is the newer one, she's had it for over fifty years. She had eight kids, two died on another side of town. I was there to see her husband dying, he died slow and hard. He had been a strong man right into old age. Her grandaughter too, thirty years old, didn't smoke, didn't drink, stomach cancer, and left herself to the care of the North Platte doctors. I was there on her last night, with her grandmother, she begged me to let go of her arm so whe could tear her oxygen tube out. She stayed seven hours longer than she wanted to because of me. I was fifteeen and only knew what the church told me. I wore tie-dyes, smoked pot, listened to loud music, still I was fundamentally a child accepting what I was told about right and wrong. I'm sorry Julie.

The old woman has a basic understanding of the world around her. She knows that Mexicans are moving into Lexington. To her this means Goya, Valintina, all the brands of home. Nothing but Univision at the house, her accent forever as thick as boiling chocolate, her exclamations (never curses) forever in Spanish. She can understand you perfectly well, better than she lets on.

She knows what corruption is. She knows you don't get married young here, you go to school instead. That's what her kids did, went to school, than got married, than to work at the railroad, construction, plumbing. Her grandchildren, as often as not, didn't see the need to finish school. Pregnant at sixteen, just like home, only with know idea of what to do about it.

Adapt to our ways. She did that as well as a mayfly to October, no one dared say a word against her.

Her house is a block from my mother's and I don't know if she's still alive. I see her grandchildren around and exchange a few words, it doesn't seem right to ask. She would be over ninety now.

I'm a man now Elisa. How's that great-grandchild I used to cavort with?

You taught your family those things that are true forever it's a shame. You wern't meant to see this.

Age of terror ends with a giggle?

Never forget indeed, the Boston "terror hoax" may well be the funniest thing that has ever happened, period. It is certainly more culturally significant than the Dems taking Congress. People were afraid that an "electronic device" might be a bomb, and we didn't praise them for their caution, didn't sign them up to be comforted by Oprah, we laughed.

Political figures reminded us that we live in "a post 9-11 world" and we weren't cowed into silence and submission, we laughed even harder.

For once, if just for this one amusing incident, we treated the idea that terrorism should be our sole national obsession like the fucking joke it is. John Kerry was skewered for saying he wanted to make terrorism a nuisance again, how dare he suggest that one thing shouldn't be our everything, that building a national identity out of our greatest fear was something less than a fantastic idea?

Yet how absurd would it be to say that cancer, or Aids, or heart disease should be the absolute national focus until nobody dies of disease anymore? Such a suggestion would be rightfully laughed at, but for the wrong reasons. When someone dies "naturally" it's God's will. When someone dies at the hand of another human being it's an outrage, maybe even a cause for war.

Friends, I tell you it's the same thing. Dying in bed "naturally" is no more and no less acceptable than murder or terrorist attack. We should allocate our resources accordingly, and stop deluding ourselves by vigilantly defending our herds from the next bogeyman as we march them off to the next artery clogging factory on a Friday night.

This shit isn't funny anymore

Never in my lifetime has it been consistently every day for the entire winter, I simply refuse to believe that this can be possible. Everything changes, atoms are deteriorating and reforming into new combinations at a constant rate, how the fuck can it possibly be this cold every fucking day for ninety days straight? How can the wind possibly not stop? I simply fucking refuse to believe that the reason isn't supernatural.

As humans, we are entitled to condemn God whenever he gives us weather that displeases us in the slightest way. This is fucking unacceptable, he knows what constant bad weather does to our psychology and he is fucking laughing at us, don't think he isn't. Anyone who still thinks God is worthy of respect, anyone who dresses their kids up all neat for church on Sundays is a fucking subhuman inferior and will be treated as such.

I am entitled to absolute climatic fucking perfection and fuck you if you think otherwise!

Nothing to see here.

A state rep in California is proposing banning spanking children under four. Some say this is good, that there is no conceivable reason to use physical force against such young children, others say that this is a shameful intrusion on parental authority it's got AM radio types all hot and bothered, nothing new here, bloggers on both sides debate like jilted lovers, nothing new here. Practically no one who has an opinion on the bill has read it of course, who has the time? Rather they formed their opinions after comparing and contrasting the soundbites of other people who haven't read the bill. This is the fair way to do it, this is how reasonable people reach their conclusions, by watching both sides do their 30-second bumper sticker raps on CNN and than judging which one sounded more passionate, outraged, and pro-children.

And me? I have no opinion. I haven't read the bill, and honestly, I have as much shit to do as anybody, so I have no intention of reading a theoretical law from somebody else's state. If you happen to think that there's something vacillating or unmanly about not having an opinion on everything one hears about, then I can only say, grow up.

What I do have is a strong suspicion that this controversy is just the latest in a long line of increasingly pathetic attempts to prove the existence of the imaginary politically correct bogeyman. Is this, then, the sort of news that the liberal media doesn't want us to hear about? Is this really the best you people can do?

BTW: News reports seem to think it's very important that the rep. proposing the law is a woman who, wait for it.... has no children! Well, now I can see reason for outrage; the woman is clearly a lesbian. It's a fucking abomination that she's allowed to vote for against laws in the first place, let alone propose bills regarding parenting. In the good old days we put these uppity maids at the back of the cannery where they belonged.