What Kind Of Fool Am I?

 Somewhere out there Sammy Davis, Jr is singing that beloved tune.  I can hear it in the mind's cache of party faves, like the songs youtube saves up for you like a deeply caring close relative.   The internet deserves a medal for replacing what used to be normal human relations.   Bravo.   I'm a happy little munchkin.  But not entirely.  There are some sore spots.

Real human relations appear to be at an all time low.   Homicide and suicide rates are up.   People are experiencing stresses and hardships here to fore unguessed.  The sense of self has always been to some degree under attack from without.   In days past people blamed Capitalism for it's pounding idiotic demands and intrusions.  Advertising has a way of telling people they are jerks for not buying things that could make them better people.  Implying that people are stupid until the buy brand X.   The new sources of misery, some of them, are the result of national agendas to change people.   We are all being blamed for someone else's misery.   If you didn't get your covid shot you are infecting people who did.   That's the kind of stress people are being subjected to.   Centrism, elementalism, universalism and flat out denial of the Two Party System are some of things I pitched over the last Lousy Seven Years, and having done so, I'm rather miserable.

For brevity, I wish people would ignore the two opposing parties and take action where needed.   I've noticed that some Democrats make it a point to accuse republicans of sex crime.  Some Republicans accuse Democrats of being subversive, treasonous Communists.   While you-know-who was president, Democrats obstructed every move he made, irrespective of merit.   Currently, and long before now, the government has been in a supposedly unconstitutional relationship with corporations.  One of the Bush Dynasty said the Constitution was just a sheet of paper.   I think this was in regard to the 'Patriot Act,' which enabled lots of government intrusion into privacy.   That's not what this blog post is about.

I'm suggesting people pretend there aren't two political parties that oppose each other.  Democrat and Republican voters should move closer together, mediate, play fair and nice.  Have a bi-partisan outdoor barbeque, fer chrisake.   I already made a fool of myself proposing a resurgence of hippy era Flower Power.   If you want to know what kind of fool I am, I'm trying it one more time.   Peace, tolerance, mediation.  Aggressive political agendas are probably contributing to the homicide and suicide rates.  And to a great deal of harm in general.  Get hip to Peace and Understanding.  Please direct agendas to politicians, and quit bashing each other.   It will be whole new year soon enough.   Make Peace and Tolerance top priority.

Moaning

 What a drag.  Some of  my favorite things are gurgling down the drain.   No sense talking about politics beyond kissing up and bashing.   Theory is a waste of time.  It isn't being published or discussed.   Philosophy isn't applied to anything anymore.  And dirty jokes are career suicide.   It doesn't leave much to write about.  Or talk about.    What is a thinking person  supposed to do these days?

Food is a fairly safe subject, but not entirely.   You might get sent to Siberia for liking meat.   Beef is killing the atmosphere.  It's probably guilty of causing bad weather.  So I hear, cow flatulence is the new Wicked Witch of the West.   Conservationists are a threat to the new economy.   Everyone is supposed to be a Green mass consumer.   If any of this is depressing, see a shrink and take a pill.   All cases closed.

Let's Not Pole Vault to Concusions

 

The caste system in Pittsburgh runs, in descending order, the A-list, the B-list, and Non-persons.  I'm a Non-person.   That means I get no support or help of any kind from the City/Corporate/Nonprofit partnership.   The 'Burgh operates on a mix of pay-to-play, quid pro quo and Party Favorites.   It's the most intensely partisan culture I've ever dealt with.   But let's not worry about that right now  There was an article in an online newspaper about an incident that took place at the Regional Transit Authority office downtown. 

 https://triblive.com/local/destructive-disgusting-acts-force-pittsburgh-regional-transit-to-alter-fare-vending-machine-hours/

Quoting from the story,  "People have defecated in the vestibule, and drug paraphernalia was found there on multiple occasions, said Adam Brandolph, a Pittsburgh Regional Transit spokesman.

“This came to a head this morning when it was discovered that someone had defecated in the vestibule and smeared it all over the windows,” he told the Tribune-Review Tuesday."

That's disgusting, but it is unfair to assume it was a homeless Non-person or junky who did it.  Maybe some filthy rich fascist on the A-list did it.   It takes all kinds of disgusting people to make the world what it is.  I don't think Elon Musk would sneak into town just to take a crap and spread it around, but anything is possible.   Please keep an open mind, and understand that life in the 'Burgh is sweet for many, and horrible to Non-persons.   And if you must relieve yourself downtown, please do so behind a dumpster, in an alley, like people on B-list do.   The middle class has bodily functions, too.  Let's be fair to everyone.

Mental Issues

 Some poor souls have conditions such as OCD or brain chlamydia and can't shut up about politics.  I was doing my best to be one of the silent majority, but I'm not wrapped too tight.  Try to be patient.  Maybe Joseph Stalin was right about dissent being a form of insanity, and that subversives need their brains worked on with an air hammer.  Despised enemy of the people Steve Bannon hatched a 'strategy' that gave the Left fits of temper, and so right they all were to put 'Sloppy Steve' in the hoosegow.   His 'strategy' was a danger to a lot of people.

It was probably, and I'm not all certain of this, a statist agenda that would have reduced the scale of the Federal government, placing many jobs done at federal level into the hands of state government.  Too, it may have been a plan to remove social politics from federal government.   If this plan actually happened, and it didn't, it could have cost a lot of people their jobs and their influence.    Again, no certainty of this on my end, but the hated 'drain the swamp' slogan may have pertained to removing any bias favoring one interest group over others.   I know.  That could mean that your agenda would have lost legitimacy at the federal level.   That didn't happen.   Please drink a gallon of wine and continue reading.  

Senile old people like myself might have a lucid moment and recall the wave of corporate downsizing that took place throughout the 1980s and 90s.  This was taking place in the private sector of the economy.   Younger and less senile folks might be aware of a wild uptick in non-profit corporations that began after the downsizing in the private sector.   This was a shift from tax paying private business to tax exempt business, allowing corporate executives to get rich or richer at public expense.   501C3 businesses are supposedly humanitarian or charitable, so it became necessary to adopt the pretext of social justice.   Most of the money involved goes to the rich, but with deep concern for the poor and oppressed.   Sloppy Steve's strategy was probably a danger to this trend in business.  

Nothing to worry about.  Steve is history.   The gravy trains are all running on schedule.  No one gives a rat's hairy butt what I think or do.   I'm senile.  

Done with it

 As subject matter goes, politics is for people who are too agitated to watch reruns of I Love Lucy.  You can talk for hours about that television show, and not get crank phone calls, harassment, weird head games and whatever else people are doing to silence their perceived opposition.   Maybe I'm wrong.  There may be militant Fred Mertz haters.   Maybe someone was harmed by his wife, Ethel.   Maybe Ricky Ricardo misappropriated a pair of castanets from the formerly beautiful Carlotta Romero.   Little Ricky might have peed on someone's priceless maracas.  What if Lucy sat on Fidel Castro's face?   Those are all good reasons to harass people who talk about that ancient, formerly popular television show.   It's still safer than talking about presidential politics.  

I'm done trying to reason with people about world affairs, or about keeping the peace in the United States.  There appear to be Party approved activists, mostly Hollywood A-list folks who weren't exposed as sex offenders.   They're famous, I'm not, so they're right about whatever hash they're slinging.  I'm now a full time television viewer, with no opinions and no pretense to any agenda of any kind.   And I'm a happy MF.

If you are still talking about any US president, doesn't matter which one, please get a lobotomy or try using heroin.   I'm done with the subject of politics.

Crank Phone Calls From Jerks

 

Oh, heck.   Last month I sent a letter to the editor and after it posted to the online newspaper I started getting crank phone calls.   Some have been hang up calls, other one's were cryptic BS from someone sounding female, and the best one yet began was a digital robo-call saying that the price of electricity would be going up and that I was being offered a forty percent discount, "press 'one' to speak with a representative."   I pressed 'one,' and a real person, probably female, came on the line and  mumbled something or other.  I asked, "Are you offering me a forty percent discount?"    "No," she said, "F___ you, you piece of  s___"   I said thanks and hung up.

The letter was about the problem in social politics.   People have become immune to reason, and insanely aggressive.   Too, free and open analysis of presidential politics has become a ghost.  Certain people have been 'cancelling' anything running contrary to their singular point of view.   I wrote the letter out of frustration with what has become a barrier to free speech and expression.   It was stupid to bother trying to pitch the concept of centrism, and stupider to use '45' and what happened 2015 through now to illustrate that people may be combatting the best courses of action out of partisanship.   People used to like debating politics.  Now they take whatever position their comrades are taking, whomever their comrades are.   I wonder who or what is calling the shots.   Millions of people can't all be getting the exact same information and directives from thin air.

Crank phone calls are a pain in the butt, so I stopped answering the phone when it rings, and let the answering machine take it from there.   Not that I'm going to do it, since normal decent people might be calling for a real reason, I've been thinking up humorous messages to leave on the machine, in case crank callers have a sense of humor.  They usually don't.  Some of them think they do, but they are delusional.  

"This is Bruce's dog," one might begin.  "Bruce is a caring wonderful person, and he's been getting crank phone calls from heartless, sick, animal abusers.   If you are one of these pigs, I'll have you know Bruce suffered an aneurism because of what you've been doing, you idiot, and he is unable to get to the store and buy me food, so I'm starving, and it's your fault, you scumbag.  Please leave a message at the beep."

Consider Political Centrism

 

Political centrism isn't a popular position.  The point in it, though, is to keep the peace and to better enable grass roots politics among persons on both the Left and Right.   Suppose Democrats and Republicans seek common ground.   There are things both parties can agree on and support.   Differences can be managed.  

The epidemic of violence should be one thing individuals in both parties can work together on.   Pro 2nd doesn't mean 'pro-violence.'   Some people feel they need to be able to protect themselves. Other people believe the 2nd amendment is out-moded and shouldn't remain in effect.   The disagreement is understandable, and there is merit on both sides.   But this does not mean both parties can't work together.  People need to teach their kids respect for human life, 2nd amendment or no.   Leadership has not done everything it can to inspire young people.    And to discourage rash acts of violence, of any kind, anywhere, for any reason.   There are many reasons to consider political centrism.

The recent reversal of Roe V Wade is a conflict that may be impossible to resolve.  I'm pro-choice and believe reproductive freedom is between an individual and a service provider.  The government should never have taken a position on it, for or against.   The pro-life element has the right to speak against abortion, while pro-choice individuals should be free to do as they wish.   It's only a suggestion, but feminists might re-consider the concept of free market economics.   It's probably out of the box, but the right to abortion could be supported on the basis of free enterprise.   Also on the basis of right to privacy.  Suppose Democrats and Republicans agree that the Federal government has become overly intrusive and authoritarian.  Also consider that reproductive rights may have to be protected at state level.  The much hated '45' had an agenda to shift power from the Fed to the state government.   The reversal against reproductive freedom is reason to shift to statist politics.  No matter how people hate you-know-who. 

For the record, I vote Dem.   It was a waste of time trying to mediate between Left and Right during 45's presidency.  All it did was piss people off.  Now that the president is a Dem, it's my opinion both parties should kiss and make up.   Accept differing opinions, speak freely, live in mutual respect.  Coalesce to change the wrongs both sides agree are wrong.   I've been a sad little munchkin because I want to work for the cause of peace, and nobody likes my methods.   Sorry for being a freak. 

No One Is Protesting Unfair Business Practices

 Seven can be an asinine number.  Especially among people who are superstitious.  It's supposed, by some folks, to be lucky.   But the last seven years have been quite, quite dreadful.   The pandemic is set into the time frame like an ugly, radioactive  diamond.    The US Presidency of one particularly hated media personality caused the worst division among people in US history, short of the Civil War.  Social media became a corporate tool of government, first giving, then taking free speech and free enterprise along with it.  People have been de-platformed and de-monitised  for saying things the Powers don't want peons sharing.   

We The People are being oppressed by inflation.   The Federal Reserve keeps raising interest rates, which profits the banking industry, while claiming it will reverse inflation.  How ridiculous.  It will sustain inflation, while having no positive effect on the lives of  the middle class and poor.   It will increase the power of the very rich, of course.   The Federal Reserve should have been abolished a long time ago, and the banks should have been forced to reduce extortionate interest on loans and credit cards, and to pay appropriate interest to their customer's for their savings account.  People used to get 4%  interest on passbook savings, now they get nearly nothing, and are subject to  oppressive penalties.   The whole time the most universally hated person was US Prez, no one was taking action against the banking industry.  No one was protecting free speech and free enterprise from unfair repression.  Bummer, man.  

Please demand reform in the banking industry.

fiction: Outsider

 

In most of rural Pennsylvania shooting a person in the leg is considered a prank. Even the police raise a chuckle. "Did you see

 the look on Mike's face? He don't need no crutches. Them's for people who have a job."

It's considered lucky to have a job waxing floors at the court house. If you need two good legs to run a buffer it's proof of congenital character problems. There's only a few cities in the so called 'Keystone State,' and people think differently in those hornet nests of sin. Shoot someone with so much as a paint ball gun and they go to pieces over it.

It's a total waste of time explaining to people in Pittsburgh that pain is a ten percent discount on your ticket to Heaven. That aside, it's a town full of non-violent criminals. They screw people over all the time, lie, cheat and steal all the time, and they are all best of friends. And they don't want anyone owning guns, because it escapes their wispy conscience that they have been inflicting harm. They love their own, and have to keep strangers from getting a foothold on their eroding turf. As if they were the illegitimate babies of Mr. Spock from Star Trek, they are entitled to live well and prosper. Not one lying, corrupt jet of gaslight deserves to face the consequence of their vile behavior. My right leg aches when I think about it.

Eeegads... I've offended a person or scanning device.

 Just got some  emails, all saying Blogger put up a shield on several posts, all from about four years ago.  Hardly anyone reads this blog.  How did they determine this?    What am I, the G. G. Allin of prose? 

Like a sweetheart, I looked up the posts, and reverted them to drafts so no one has to suffer through reading my creative work.    

Bring Me The Head Of The Lanternfly

Flash Fiction Reading: Begging Mercy

poem reading: Social Progress 7 8 2022

Prose Poem Reading: My Crappy Spirits 6 15 2022

Essay: Pets 5-30-2022

5 29 2022 3 lucid moments video

Dark Side video 5 27 2022

poem: Sunk 5 27 2022

Reading: 3 poems with electric bass 5 26 2022

poem reading: Beach Patrol 5 26 2022

Poem Reading: My Personality Contracted Monkeypox 5 26 2022

Poem Reading: Lucky Accident 5 22 2022

 

 

Poem Reading: Join Up

 

Rant: Breast Feeding Rant 5 17 2022

 

 Essay: The Sound of Coffee 

To 'errrr' is espresso, to go nutso divine. My aluminum 'Euro' espresso maker is making this soft chiding sound. "Err, err, err." I think it's telling me I'm a cheesy American. I think it's correct. I'm no John Phillip Sousa. I'm crapola compared to John Wayne or Randolf Scott. My self-esteem appears to have spontaneously combusted and died on an ugly used living room couch.

When I was using a generic Mr. Coffee knock off, banal years ago, it made this urinating sound. I felt as though it and I had something in common. We both piss. Before that, a plastic percolator from McCrory's was like a heart that had been stabbed with switchblade that had done stellar acting in West Side Story. After drinking five cups, I'd skip around the living room singing, "There's a place for my sick ass, somewhere..." That was a long time ago. Since then a pall of alienation fell on me like a gigantic tone arm on a portable vinyl record player. I no longer know what it means to be a total failure in America.

Flash Fiction: Heavy Water

  Heavy Water 

Noncompliance is a heinous crime against humanity. The city ordinance states that rain water pissing off your roof has to drain into one sewage line, and the city water from your tap and shower has to drain into the other one. Bastards spent your money determining that this prevents landslides and pestilence. But there are still bastards out there with mono-pissing drainage, which means that both types of H20 is all going into one or the other shit pipe. Landslides are like a fully comped month in Vegas compared what just happened to me.

I was using the bathroom, innocently, trustingly, when the water began rotating. Looking between my two hairy legs, I deduced the vortex was not from a spontaneous autonomic flush, which has happened. The plumbing here is older than character actors on All In The Family, so some funny things happen once in a while. It was a biochemical reaction from the two kinds of water colliding.

It's called 'smart water.' It was with only the best of intentions that the city put radioactive cobalt in the water supply, to kill germs and neutralize the cadmium that's killing residents by the dozen. It's not city leader's fault that Republicans emitted worse chemicals into the atmosphere to kill birds that are killing everyone with their goddam avian flu virus. It's why one egg costs sixty dollars at Giant Eagle. Sure, it was necessary, but short-sighted. Their scientists are intellectually challenged, while ours are all just brilliant. It's because of the GOP that I incurred horrible pain and trauma.

Please don't conflate what happened. It wasn't an alligator or a cobra, it was a water snake, a chemical reaction, that leaped from the vortex below and charged up my ass. I called my city councilperson, and there's a program they clipped like a coupon out of the infrastructure bankroll to pay for surgery. So I'll probably survive what happened, and it won't cost me a red cent of my own holdings, but smart water hardens on contact. I was told to lay off whole grain bread till they can schedule the procedure. Soon as they can free up a winch, I'll be good as new.

Flash Fiction: Great News

 Great News 

Nurse comes out of seemingly nowhere, approaches, and says, "The doctor will see you now."

Niles followed him down a carpeted hallway, noticing the tattoos of Asian letterings and runes on the back of his thick flabby neck. "Should I get undressed,' Niles asked upon entering the exam room. "No,' the nurse answered, "the doctor called you in for a conference."

"What the hell is a conference?" he thought to himself. The doctor came in, a burly, athletic old cuss. He started out with something happy and irrelevant, to put his patient at ease. "My grandson just earned his Ph.D in world cultures. We're having a celebration for him later today at the Cheesy Valley Racket Club. You ever been there?"

Of course Niles had never been here. He wasn't completely brain deficient. He knew this was something rich people do to make poor people think they are in the same picture frame. "Uh, no," Niles answered, trying to sound sociable. The doctor went on as if it was possible for Niles to join the Country Club. Niles wondered if this was a form of calculated mental abuse taught at expensive universities. "You'd like it. They have beautiful tennis and squash courts at the Racket Club."

Niles was getting annoyed, and he wondered if it was because of some secret set of rules and methods. "Mr. Groper," the doctor continued, "you have mentallary thyroid cancer, and it isn't like a flash drive that we can pull out in a hot second."

"That's great," Niles said. "Sounds like my thyroid earned it's ass a Ph.D."

Short Fiction: Inner Peace

  Inner Peace

I'm taking this new medicine called Newtlarva. It's used for terminal diseases of all sorts. Keeps you ticking longer than you might if you have anything terminal. No point worrying about the side effects. But they are nasty. It can cause a guy's cock and balls to fall off, but by the time you need Newtlarva, you don't need the equipment.

So I'm keeping to my normal routine, starting the day with budget espresso and toasted Wonder Bread, breakfasting while enjoying an old foreign slasher movie on this fantastic new free movie web site. No point reading one free article in NYT and one in WSJ. The world is perfect when you get to this end of the Monopoly Board. If China attacks Taiwan it only proves life in the United States isn't all that bad.

Twice a week I take a city bus to the grocery store to get more espresso and Wonder Bread. No one talks to anyone on the packed box of pubic transportation. Everyone plays video games on their phones, but it's like we all know each other. I see some of the passengers at the clinic, and it's never been better the way no one gossips about anyone, everyone having lost interest in other people. The French existentialists were completely moronic about he human condition back when people were still healthy and happy. Those creeps had to dig into their evil minds to find proof everyone was secretly miserable. Leave It To Beaver was still being produced when they determined Americans suffered from alienation.

How wrong those stupid pessimists were. This morning I was entering the bus when the side effect took effect. It was quite painful, I had to scream as I clicked my Connect Card on the cash box, but I felt no embarrassment at all. The driver and everyone at the front of bus saw what happened and everyone heard me scream but that aside, privates rolling down and out the wrinkle-free polyester slacks meant very little to anyone. I found a seat beside a sick old lady, and the driver kicked the stuff I just lost out the front door before getting back in the drivers seat and heading to the Westview Plaza, where everyone shops. No one even looked up from their phone.

Essay: There needs to be a New Counterculture

 

I need to wing out thoughts about Counterculture.  When I moved to Pittsburgh in 1991 people I met were talking about how it had either evaporated completely or else changed into something they no longer recognized.  I'd say it was mostly because people had been leaving town in droves, and the economy no longer supported people involved in the Counterculture.

Another reason for what the Counterculture became is the rise of tax exempt arts and humanitarian groups.   To get 501c3 status people have to claim a humanitarian or social agenda, when the individuals are seeking personal gain, e.g. salaries,  real estate, fame, sex  and tax deductible cash contributions.  The business model lead to an epidemic of fraud and gaslight.   For years people have been slandering each other in hope of proving they are doing important social justice work while competitors in this business climate are evil pigs who do terrible things.    It's not fun being on the losing end of this.  Take it from me.  Worse, wealthy elitists are faking humanitarian work to gain status among the super-wealthy donor class.

Most recently there has been the invention of the celebrity dissident.  These individuals claim to be persecuted and repressed in their homelands, and in the United States they are used as money magnets for tax exempt businesses.  People lie all the time about their backgrounds and experiences, also exaggerate or invent persecution stories.   In reality, American artists, writers and activists are ignored, and very few of them gain national attention or remuneration.  It's very difficult in the US to land a lucrative book deal, and the celebrity dissident racket provides a system with which to gain national or local attention and unearned status.  This is most disgusting in the area of poetry writing.  No one cares that the material is garbage, only that there is a martyr story of persecution and rescue by tax exempt saviors.  

For a lot of people, the Social Justice movement is a fast track into business, remuneration, special favors or social status, irrespective of validity.   The formerly rigorous intellectualism the Left used to engage devolved into a mindless, hostile  singularity.  Only one way of thinking  is tolerated, theirs, unified in their hatred for the political right, and for anyone not fitting their paradigm.   People no longer care about free speech and expression, only in sustaining any advantage they have or think they will gain.  The Left used to abhor and protest censorship, now it is  the leading proponent of it.   They have had a putrid effect on literature and on creative people who don't fit in with the Social Justice paradigm.  

I plan on writing more on the subject of Counterculture.  A new one needs be formed.  I suggest it be based in a nonpartisan Universal mode.  It shouldn't recognize party affiliation, only an agenda to resist what has become a repressive and oppressive partisan economy and culture.  It shouldn't recognize Democrats, Republicans, Capitalism, Socialism or Communism.  Partisan politics is a disaster, and best serves the rich and powerful.  The poor folks have been reduced to voiceless peons.   The new Counterculture needs to be free of greed and ulterior motives.  People need to resist corporate/nonprofit/government fascism.  I read in news recently that China's new model of Communism is Corporate Communism.  Pittsburgh's City/Corporate/Nonprofit partnership appears to be the same thing.  I am in fear of this corporate/political fascism, and hope to resist it.  A new, nonpartisan Universalist Counterculture is called for.