This Humorless Post Brought To You By the 1960's

NOTE: I've been in the unyielding grip of writer's block these past few months, but I'm going to bust out a blog entry every day for the next month to try and break out of this. I doubt this will be interesting reading, but bear with me, one or two readers that are still left...

Despite a more crushing than usual dose of the reliable annual wallop of seasonal depression that always hits right about... NOW(!), I've got ample reason to be excited this holiday season.

A few months back, I picked up Robert McNamara's 400 page apology for Vietnam (and the impetus for the movie The Fog of War), In Retrospect, and put it down having developed a nascent fascination with the tragic presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was a boorish, world class asshole; ruthlessly self-serving in all his endeavors, but there was a heart buried under that gangling exterior. Despite his unforgivable mistakes in Vietnam (a war that he truly hated "having to get into", but felt obliged to in order to flex his muscles at communist Russia and/or Cuba, whom he believed responsible for JKF's assassination), no president did more for civil rights and poverty in this country than LBJ, who bullied, threatened, and cajoled the 89th and 90th congresses into passing over 100 pieces of major legislation, including the Head Start program, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Social Security act, the Public Broadcasting act (which established PBS), the Fair Housing Act, the Food Stamp act... the list goes on, and on, and on. His incredible failure in judgment with Vietnam notwithstanding, the LBJ presidency was unquestionably the zenith of American liberalism. Had Vietnam not been his undoing, perhaps Johnson's grand vision for a "Great Society" might have been realized. In many ways, it was.

It turns out that LBJ also happens to have lived a fascinating life, and that life has been chronicled in the exhaustive detail it deserves by one of the greatest biographers in literary history, Robert A. Caro, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Robert Moses bio The Power Broker. Johnson's wheeling, dealing, and scheming to become president of the United States began when he was just a child of a formerly popular--but soon broke and debt ridden--onetime state congressman from the devastatingly impoverished Texas Hill Country. LBJ simply knew he would president one day, and he was determined to accomplish that goal at the expense of all others, including his own ideology, an "ideology" that was all over the map during his trip up the political ladder. Johnson sidled up to whomever could help him gather power, be it segregationist southerners like Richard Russell, liberal northerners like Hubert Humphrey, and those occupying all points in between. He was a master at playing both ends against the middle to get where and what he wanted, often making disturbing moral compromises in his years as a US congressman, and later, as the wunderkind force of nature in the US Senate. Once he reached the top, however, he proved that he hadn't forgotten the poor folks he grew up with in the Hill Country, or the astronomically disadvantaged Mexican children he worked with as a 20 year old schoolteacher in Cotulla, Texas (schoolchildren who still remember him as the best, most dedicated teacher they ever had).

Anyway, Caro's four volume bio, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, has taken over my life for the past month or so, and I'm only about 500 pages through volume one, The Path to Power. I usually spend most of the holidays with my nose tucked in a book while Julia's family watches football, and I couldn't be more excited about it this year. The chance to slow down and spend a week with nothing but these books will be better than any Christmas present.

At any rate, if you want to keep yourself from developing an all-consuming need to learn as much as you can about LBJ, then you'd do well to stay away from the reading list I'm on, because it will take over your life for a few months.

In Retrospect -- Robert McNamara
Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream -- Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume One: The Path to Power -- Robert A. Caro
The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume Two: Means of Ascent -- Robert A. Caro
The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume Three: Master of the Senate -- Robert A. Caro
The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume Four: The Presidency (forthcoming) -- Robert A. Caro
The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson -- Joe Califano

Quickly...

Check out Neil Hamburger appearing the other day on the otherwise unwatchable Fox News late-night show, Red Eye (hosted by the dickhead that used to edit such high-brow contributors to the public discourse as Maxim and Stuff)

Link via WFMU's Beware of the Blog

I (usually don't) like Ike

After 31 years in congress, is Ike Skelton finally doing something to earn his keep?

I guess so, but after three decades of anti-gay rights, anti-gun control, social conservative representation by our "democrat" congressman, 'ol Ike can still can go eat a box of used, ebola-soaked jock straps as far as I'm concerned. I still have fond memories of arguing with him about gun control at a high school assembly in 1994 or 1995 or something like that (Imagine being the only kid in a rural high school gymnasium filled with 250 other people to raise their hand when Ike asked how many students were in favor of gun control legislation, then imagine all 250 people plus their turkey-necked dixiecrat congressman instantly morphing into an-almost-civil-but-decidedly-angry mob, and me staying the same old can't-keep-my-mouth shut guy -- only even dumber and more careless than I am today -- and you get the idea).

Nevertheless, it's nice to see an otherwise useless old bag of shit show some backbone once in a while, even if he did vote to authorize the war, not mention to continue funding it as the GOP saw fit as recently as May 2007.

I digress. Sorry for the politics, but I was shocked enough that I had to share. I wonder if Ike will have enough time in between advocating a Mexico border fence and crusading to "ban the desecration of the flag" to follow up on this, though.

Hi, blog

I haven’t forgotten you, but I just started a new job, and have been sort of busy lately. I’ll be back soon, though.

"You’re Not Necessary", and an unsolicted advertisement

-- For heaven's sake, do I regret announcing in a public forum that I've been reading Are Men Necessary by Maureen Dowd. I'd like to take this opportunity to let everyone who seems to be concerned for my mental well-being know that I don't need any more messages or comments telling me that she's an idiot, or that reading her book will make me an idiot, too. What am I, a six year old? (don't answer that.) Is there something I don't understand here? Are her words going to become sentient razorblades that bore into my skull and lobotomize me into changing my entire belief system or something?

Maureen Dowd is many things – a sexist, a misguided gentry lost in a world of three martini lunches and loathsomely trendy lower east side avant art openings, an abuser of hair dye – but she's no idiot. She's simply too blinded by her own fantastical misconceptions of the world to see the forest for the trees. Her lazy brand of dumbed-down 2nd wave pseudo-feminism doesn't do much to advance the public discourse, but it sure strengthens book sales and keeps her name on the tips of the tongues of a veritable legion of insufferable pundits and AM radio blabbermouths nationwide.

Maureen Dowd is a clever, calculating woman who's made a long, comfortable career out of stirring the pot. Her public parade of arrogant and narcissistic half-baked "opinions" makes for a fascinating study into the origins of niche media manipulation. She's like a museum piece suspended in a state of 1973 only-the-rich-white-ladies-count pretend-feminism and all its associated trappings – how can you not stop and stare?

But dumb? She's not dumb. She's wrong about almost everything that comes out of her mouth/typing fingers, but she's far from dumb. Girl can market, son. I can't help but laugh to myself when people walk around believing, with impunity, that folks like Dowd, Rush Limbaugh, Insert-Republican-Politician-Here, Sean Hannity, or Michael Savage are dumb. Underestimating the intelligence of those who wield media power and manipulate information to large audiences is a reliable mistake that dooms the vast majority of us, who are smart to enough to see through this shit, to a life of suffering at the hands of the small number of those who eat it up with a spoon and ask for seconds. When the lunatic fringe preaches its gospel to an audience of millions, it would behoove you to remain aware of what they might be saying.

Learn about your enemy. Figure out how their machine works. Then dismantle it and cram it, piece by piece, up the next person's ass who might be misguided enough to utilize such fatally flawed "logic" to support their spoon-fed outlook to you. You just might convince someone to think about something instead of just calling them an idiot and walking away without having affected anything. Besides, it's a lot more fun to call someone an idiot after you've destroyed their argument, embarrassed them, and left them thinking about how stupid they were to buy into such bullshit in the first place.

-- If you're thinking of opening a business in downtown Columbia, and that business is going to be A) A tattoo shop, B) a used clothing store, or C) a franchised restaurant location, please do the rest of us a favor and shoot yourself in the face with the most powerful rifle you're able to obtain on short notice.

Seriously. I'm not joking. Kill yourself. Do it quickly, and do it correctly. I mean google it, research the most effective bullet-entry points, seek informed second opinions from qualified experts, and make doubly sure it gets done right the first time, because people like you are getting the way of people like this.

Get Lost bookshop just opened on 9th st. the other day, and I happened to wander in yesterday after work, quite by accident. It's a little sparse in there right now, but the owner seems to have at least a passably good eye for quality, interspersing a smattering of usual-suspect classics with moderately obscure titles, and succeeding in her obviously concerted efforts to represent a wide variety of categories and genres, even with a relatively anemic inventory overall (so far). Like I said, there isn't a whole lot in there right at the moment, but I guarantee that no matter how well-read you think you are, there are piles upon piles of books to be found there that you've never opened up in your life, and they cost next to nothing.

After power-browsing for a couple of minutes and selecting three books that came in just north of $16.00* altogether (that I would have happily purchased new and paid full price for, were it not for the existence of this store), I spoke with the owner briefly, and she seemed to emanate the air of someone who possessed an at least passable knowledge of literature, and it stands to reason that it might behoove this city to have at least one fucking used bookstore that was worth half a shit (Yes, fuck you, Acorn Books and your crotchety, money-grubbing dickweed of an owner; I was glad to see you go).

This is the kind of place that you should make an effort to patronize. Go check it out, I command thee. Buy a book a week to help keep the place open during its initial growing-pain period. They also buy and trade your used books, too.

*Be Cool - Elmore Leonard
The Economic Consequences of Peace - John Maynard Keynes
The Presence of Grace - Flannery O'Connor

See? I found good stuff, and I didn't even look that hard.

First Prize: You're Fired.

I actually happen to enjoy "gloomy" weather, but three straight days of pissing rain has finally taken its toll. I can barely form a coherent thought, much less a reasonable blog post. This morning before work, I stopped what I was doing for no other reason than to kneel over a chair and spend several minutes thinking of a reason to cry, immediately following that with several more spent thinking of a reason not to. Get off my back, life.

Here’s a bunch of shit.

-- I’d work up some sort of disgust at the fact that Billy Crystal signed a one day contract to bat leadoff for the Yankees last Wednesday, but I can’t be bothered. Please save the "this makes a mockery of the great institution that is baseball" or whatever for someone who cares. Baseball has been mocking itself just fine for decades – they’ve never needed any help from Billy Crystal.

I do hope God rips Billy Crystal’s tongue out of his mouth today, though, but that doesn’t have anything to do with his dalliances with the Yankees. I wish that most days.

-- I hate cops more than almost any other human being on the face of planet Earth who hasn’t been raped with a plunger by a S.W.A.T. team high on Red Bull and freshly seized shower-stall-meth. I mean, I fucking hate ’em. Arrogant, self-aggrandizing pricks with a false sense of superiority and an unquenchable thirst for their own twisted notion of indefinable perverted "glory"… I could go on, but I’ll spare you. The purpose of this exercise is merely to inform you that, after less than two weeks in her new job, my girlfriend’s distaste for the police has surpassed even my own. That’s saying something.

-- I haven’t been banned from the Bernie’s Pressbox sports forum on STLToday.com since 2004. That changes today.

-- Louis C.K.’s 2007 special, Shameless, is essential viewing. If you want to watch the best comedy special of 2007 (and probably 2008, 2009, and 2010), On Demand this now. DEMAND IT!

-- Husker Du’s oft-maligned (by me) Candy Apple Grey is not deserving of malignment, as it turns out. Welcome to 2008, where the then-mediocre offerings of heroes from our long past glory days turn out to be far and away better than 99% of contemporary music. Expectations, you have been adjusted.

-- Did Diddy kill Tupac? I don’t fucking know. Probably.

-- Is anyone taken aback by the press’s reaction to the comments of Jeremiah Wright? What exactly did he say that wasn’t true? I guess "taken aback" is a silly way to put it; frankly, I expected nothing less (as opposed to the usual "less than nothing"). Because I’m a glutton for punishment, here’s a rundown of press reaction to Obama’s "race speech" from this from this morning.

-- Who is Matisyahu again? Oh wait, I didn’t care the first time.

-- Will someone please just pull the plug on the MU basketball program? Thanks.

Oh, and don’t make me laugh, Leo.

-- Systemic disenfranchisement: Now that’s what I call America, Jeremiah Wright!

-- Give me back the four minutes of my life that I spent reading this.

THE BLOGOSQUEER

-- I couldn't think of a better title. Trust me, I'm sorry.

-- There’s precious little pictorial evidence of my existence prior to say, 2003 or so. At some point in my life (back when Madonna had an audience that wasn’t composed entirely of gay dudes), I decided it was best NOT to pictorially document life’s rich symphony of regret and disillusionment. Photos never seemed all that conducive to the fond memories I was supposed to have been forming all these years; serving little purpose besides highlighting an endless string of notoriously poor choices (most notably in clothing and ex-girlfriends).

That said, I’m old enough now to regret not keeping enough pictures of myself. If you read this and you have photos of me or my (our) friends from pre-2000 or so, I’d be much obliged if you’d be so kind as to share them with me.

-- The USD exchange rate just dropped below 100 Yen; its worst low against the Yen in 12 years. Oh yeah, it also set another record low against the Euro. Your money is becoming more and more worthless literally with each passing day, but don’t despair, your government has a plan to rescue us all from the flailing economy that it has wantonly destroyed like a retarded toddler with a pissy diaper over the past seven years! YOU’RE GONNA GET A CHECK FOR 600 BUCKS SOON! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!

I’ve made 900 bucks of PURE PROFIT during the Bush administration years. Now that’s what I call a (ineffectual) return on an investment (that I didn’t make in the first place)! What did you ever give me, Clinton/Bush I/Reagan? (Just kidding, Ronnie. Thanks for the unending supply of ketchup packets that supplemented my free school lunches all those years. A vegetable isn’t really a vegetable until it’s been processed, cut with 15 parts high fructose corn syrup, and scattered, smothered, and covered over a greenish USDA grade D ground-chuck/soy-and-soy-byproduct-mixture patty!)

Oh my God, we’re fucked. January 2009 can’t come soon enough. It can’t get any worse, right?

P.S. Please don’t get elected, John McCain (or Hillary Clinton).

Look on the bright side: I’m still going bald.

Those of you who know me personally know that I’ve done some criminally moronic, sub-fucking-retarded, covered-in-gossamer-shit things in my life, but deciding to take my current job is THEEEEE topper. Dear God, if you exist, please grant me the courage to kill myself in such a way that it provides for a maximum amount of inconvenience to the people who make my days so unnecessarily difficult. Maybe dropping me out of a helicopter, through the roof, and onto some $6000 mahogany conference table surrounded by dead-eyed meeting attendees might work? Maybe?

Get back to me, O Busty Lady of Our Idiotic Sorrow.

What Should Eliot Spitzer Do Tonight? Resign, Or Fuck Some Whores?

***Warning: Stupid, emotional, poorly argued, and mostly pointless – I did a sleep study last night and only got about two or three hours sleep, so I was bound to wake up yelling about something****

A better question: Why in the Sam Fuck am I supposed to care?

Hey 24-hour news-media, how about we talk about the fact that the United States economy is mired really deep in the shitter. No, I mean really deep. The US Dollar is getting its ass handed to it by the rest of the world – not only are the Euro and it's bivouacked beneficiary the British Pound dominating our ass (that's actually just as normal as being cornered by Erik Moore and subsequently being forced to listen to him talk about how fucked a black chick once – no need for alarm there), but now, for the first time since the mid-70's, the Canadian Dollar has been beating the USD on a semi-consistent basis over a period of several months. That's not a harbinger for some unavoidable depression or anything, but it's the opposite of good news.

The newsmedia in this country spends 24 hours day trying to make you believe that the rest of the world is feeling the same hurtful effects we are of from the US's irresponsible, greedy, just plain old mean subprime credit mess and its reckless military spending in Iraq over the past five years (that's right, count 'em; FIVE FUCKING YEARS), and while that's true to a certain extent, it's only a fraction of the real story. The real story is that the sitting presidential administration and the most shiftless, worthless, patently indolent democratic-led congress I've ever lived through (and that's saying something – just remember, the only thing worse than a democrat is a republican) have done their level best to destroy the economy with an astounding mishmash of stupidity and inaction. Sure, our economic woes are hurting the global economy, that's true. But when the economies of other countries are viewed relative to ours, it's obvious that the rest of the world is taking two steps back and one step forward, while the US just steps backward three times, stumbles, gets kicked in the shins by the European Union and then puked on a by a drunken soccer hooligan.

Now, I'm forced to sit through a 24-hour news cycle featuring nothing but up-to-the-minute coverage of some arrogant prick's piddling sex scandal? What about 4000 dead American soldiers in the Middle East (3800 of those post-"Mission Accomplished")? What about the countless number of dead Iraqis? Anybody want to spend some time calculating that number? What's that? No? You're going to give me another story with the same four screen shots from some call-girl website being paraded about while pandering digital-American-flag-graphic-perpetually-waving-in some-digital-wind anchor a scrolling news feed that somehow manages to offer only slightly less insight than the retards on screen? Will you fucking assholes please stop insulting the entire American populace? Can you report some actual fucking news just once? Please? I'm begging. I'm on my knees. Please???

I know there was no point to that, but I had to get it out of my system. Serves me right for watching almost an entire episode of MSNBC's Morning Joe before I went to work.

In conclusion: You fucking assholes. YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.

I feel slightly better now.

Raped By Gum

I sit here, radiant with the glow of life’s simple pleasures: like using the tattered shards of what once was my “mouth” to slowly reconstitute a months-old piece of Big Red® chewing gum, wrested from certain death in an obscure campus vending machine just minutes earlier with one of 3% of the dollar bills in circulation that MU snack machines will actually accept.

This pack of gum was fading fast. Probably well into its fifth or sixth month of residency in a mostly-ignored vending machine crammed wantonly into one of the Engineering West basement’s unkempt corners, several of the package’s withered inhabitants must have silently given up hope that their moment of truth would one day come – a moment that was to have no longer been characterized by the eventual consumer’s humble, cinnamon-tinged contentment, but rather by that same consumer’s unsuspecting cheeks being ripped asunder; its mouth torn to ribbons by comically dehydrated Big Red® chunks, sharpened to myriad keen edges over the past several months by the vending machine proprietor’s quiet indifference. Were it not for me, this pack of gum’s defining moment might never have arrived. And were it not for this pack of gum, I never would have gotten up the courage to experience what an entire afternoon at work would be like with a ragged, blood-and-saliva-laden mouth.

Thanks for the reliably old, possibly dangerous snack items, Guy That Manages This Vending Route. That parched headfuck of a Snickers® I got last week (which expired in November of 2007) should have been more than sufficient to keep me away, but I couldn’t leave well enough alone. You’ve got my number, you magnificent bastards!

Ow.