Dr. Faustroll Writes the Wrongs

Imagine that.

He got screwed out of his pension because the company went bankrupt after having invested its share of contractual negotiations into capital improvements which it used as collateral for loans to pay bonuses to its executive management. This was in 1967.

I’m sure many other members of The Greatest Generation were similarly entered into by their employers at the time, because employees are routinely cornholed by the care and compassion of capitalists. It seems like every 10 years or so, the business community manages to enter into their workers and the taxpayers of the NOMF™ with the full cooperation and adoration of the victims.

My father was a master machinist. He worked on the turbine shafts for the X-15 flights. He and several of his playmates signed up with the Airborne to fight against the Japs the day following Pearl Harbor, but he never made it out of the states after breaking his back during training in a jeep accident while trying to get his lieutenant back to the barracks to retrieve the orders of the day.

After Machinery Builders Incorporated went under, my old man worked for a telephone company, Rockefeller Center, and Swansons Foods before he died from Gilles Barre Syndrome, a complication of a reaction to the swine flu vaccination. I had not seen my father in 15 years, but I flew back to Virginia to pull the plug on him, because nobody else would. The government and insurance companies had kept him alive for nearly $1 million dollars that they split amongst themselves.

Unlike my father, I never expected to work with one company for my entire employable life. At age 61, I can no longer remember how many jobs I have had, although I once worked nearly 9 years for a single employer. Usually, I work contracts from 3 months to a year. I have been many things: teacher, tax collector, writer, clerk, administrator, team lead, formatter, pizza jock, turkey hanger, furniture warehouseperson, test engineer, usability consultant, and certified content editor.

This means I get to be like a fly with English translation skills on feces who can chuckle inside while either raging or bumbling on the outside. I remember, in particular, a strategerizing session long before the current First Idiot assumed the decidership role for the NOMF™ in which the assembled team was given little sticky notes to help identify all the necessary steps and the time required to accomplish the tasks predetermined as required to support an articulated dump truck to be introduced at a trade show by former Miami Dolphins fullback Larry Czonka.

I had already been shot down for suggesting that the company spend $15 thousand to purchase a server and four seats of FrameMaker to support an entire revamp of service, parts, operator, and maintenance publications for this dysfunctional concern, so I just took notes and computed the sequential time required to produce the impossible deliverables for a Las Vegas tradeshow.

After the meeting had devolved to the point where everyone had agreed to the steps on the board and deferred to the whims of the president, who had all the intellect of an alcoholic Oregon banana slug, that developmentally disabled sucker asked for questions, so I asked “Hey Rod. I wonder. Who does your math?”

Although no one else had thought of it, I had added up the dependencies and compared it to the actual drop-dead date. The latter was 62 days. The former was nearly 150 days.

I was fired within six months of that escapade, although I did produce fake publications for the tradeshow that were shrink wrapped, except for the set that was autographed by Larry Czonka. This cost the company more than $40 thousand, nearly three times what I was asking to solve the company’s complete publications problem.

I’d like to say I pissed on the president’s leg as I left the building, but I’m still alive, like Eddie Vedder, which wouldn’t have happened had I gone for the cheap thrill of the moment. A word to the future literary terrorists. Hold them cards close to your chest.

At least that’s what I keep hearing from those with gratis access to first amendment guarantees. I don’t happen to accept the premise that UDT (undifferentiated tissue) should be afforded the same rights as a regular citizen. For all we know, these failed abortions might grow up to be terrorists who will one day text and mp3 mean things on Ted Stevens’ Intertube or make messes in the food courts in our favorite malls.

Of course, I fully understand the short-sighted-no-contingency-plan born-again morality that drives the NOMF™. This is a nation that routinely bombs civilian populations in order to save them from their enemies, which are also conveniently our enemies. There is nothing that pisses off the holy leadership more than a bunch of questionable survivors, especially those who suggest that the dead were also innocents like themselves.

Fortunately, in the U.S. there are no innocents. If you vote, you are culpable. You are another little Eichmann, following orders, supporting your flag. If 9/11 taught the American people anything, it should be, as Rage Against the Machine so succinctly put it: “There be no shelter here. The front lines are everywhere.” Did you really think that a century of foreign policy initiatives based on schoolyard bullying was not going to result in some surviving victim hitting you over the head with a brick when your back was turned? What planet do you live on, eh?

Let me summarize some of the key screw ups the current administration made PRIOR to 9/11:

So what kind of American are you? There’s no right answer for this question. The universe is not binary, and responses to reality cannot be contained in simple multiple choice suggestions. You will be penalized for clichés and repetition of political soundbites or reportage by the liberal media, including FOX News.

I am not ashamed of being an American. It was an accident of birth caused by Sir Isaac Newton, history, and my parents. I could have left 40 years ago when the going was good, but I hung in here because I want to see this thing through to the end. I want to hold a wriggling foetus over my head like the Son of Kong on some barrier island on the south Atlantic coast while the imaginary tide spawned by the imaginary global warming tries, anthropomorphically, to make me lose my balance.

Lose my balance? Me? The ultimate anti-Aristotelian? Gimme a break. And another double tequila, thank you.

I downloaded and watched Slacker Nation last week, and while it did not change my fundamental view that the right to vote is simply a way of getting average schmucks to share responsibility for the atrocities committed by rule-of-law mobs in the exercise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of stock options and golden parachutes that lead to secure property in a gated community, I was impressed by Michael Moore’s desperate hope that the system could be used to change the system and boot George W. Bush’s ignorant tookus out of the White House and back to the ranch in Texas where international authorities could arrest him and send him to The Hague to stand trial for his ugly Christian barbarism.

It didn’t happen, of course, the NOMF™ being the NOMF and all, so that now, four years later, the country is in worse shape than ever, and the First Idiot is still smirking and untouchable as the most powerful developmentally disabled leader on Earth.

As if to prove that the attention span of the American people has narrowed to focus on no more than an extended commercial break during Monday Night Football, while the economy has gone from “essentially sound” to the “worst shape since the Great Depression” in less than the month, it seems as if the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest of the world must be over. Sure, we occasionally hear of a sortie into Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen, Colombia, or any of a dozen of other places where the administration is trying to find more resources for well-heeled supporters, but the election, with its focus on the obvious economic collapse and liaise faire corruption, has driven the reality of war far back in the local papers among the lingerie ads and virtually wiped it off the broadcast news altogether.

As of this morning, there are 4,188 dead American soldiers in Bush’s war to avenge the nose-thumbing Saddam Hussein gave to his father. At the time Moore was on the Slacker Nation tour in October, 2004, the American death toll stood at 1,126. This was the same period when Lancet reported that the estimated civilian casualties in Iraq had exceeded 100,000. How’s that for collateral damage? Imagine how high it would have been if we hadn’t been using all those smart bombs. Apparently the intelligence of our smart bombs is on a par with the keen intellect of our supreme Decider-in-Chief.

Assuming that we couldn’t afford to use as many of those smart bombs as these meaningless genocidal Christian campaigns continue, and figuring that our mighty military is not about to reduce the kill ratio whether or not it is using body counts to measure success, we must be getting close to having slaughtered a half a million Iraqi non-combatants while fighting against a force that our own defective leadership has at times suggested was no more than a handful of dead-enders. Way to go, America! F**k yeah!

The population of Iraq in 2004, by the way, was estimated at 27 million, so knocking 500,000 of these terrorist sympathizers amounts to nearly 2% of the entire population. At this rate, the entire country could be neutralized during my lifetime! However, in November, 2004, with the second stolen election under Bush’s belt, American deaths soared to 137, perhaps indicating the excitement and hope that the reelection of Fubar the Decider engendered in the liberated people of Iraq.

The next president is going to have to deal with the mess that voting for incoherence and incompetence has gotten us into, no matter how far under the radar this ludicrous reality has fallen as Bush supporters pillaged the financial system and scampered off with the nation’s spare change in the past couple of months.

The good news is that these greedheads are always easy to find and track down when the populace wakes up to find itself as decimated by their leadership as the citizenry of the original Axis powers were during the sacrifice of the Greatest Generation in the war to drive down unemployment and keep capitalism in the driver’s seat. Remember that thought, and remember the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, even if the liberal media prefers you fat, dumb, and complacent.

As Dan O’Neill often said: Politics is poopadoodle, which make it easy to see politicians for the cockroaches they are behind their expensive wardrobes and flip-flopping morality. So it’s no wonder that within minutes of the felony conviction Alaska’s fossilized Senator Ted “The Bridge to Nowhere Man” Stevens for doing the kinds of things politicians and business people routinely do as part of their nebulous job descriptions that Democrats were calling for his resignation and Republicans were scampering for cover.

Alaska’s folksy dominatrix and vice presidential candidate Sarah “Plainly Simply” Palin was first out of the box with the cockroach analogy by releasing a statement that said the conviction “shines a light on the corrupting influence of the big oil service company that was allowed to control too much of ou state. It was part of the culture of corruption that I was elected to fight.” Yay, Sarah! I guess you stuck it to the man.

Other Republicans caught up in tight reelection contests were also quick to throw Stevens under the convenient bus as they struggle to maintain their own corrupt careers in the NOMF.

Stevens, for his part, chalks this up to “prosecutorial misconduct.” That’s right, the putrified state maker who funneled billions in pork barrel projects to his fiefdom is convinced that he did nothing wrong in not paying for a quarter of a million dollars in improvements to his home by companies he routinely sponsored legislation to aid. Only in America, land of opportunity, would the liberal media let such a lame defense go unchallenged.

The gnarly old dude has just been convicted of seven felonies, each of which can result in up to five years of jail time. The man is 84. If he gets the maximum sentence and serves all the time he’s got coming, he’ll be 119 when he gets out. The fact is, your local marijuana dealer will spend more time for first offense possession with intent to distribute in most states than any politician or corrupt businessman ever will.

Before it’s all over, the Senate will probably approve a bailout for Stevens, allowing him to retire to his remodeled Alaskan retreat and live out his years in the manner to which he has become accustomed. As the years of his exile and disgrace wear on, the liberal media will eventually restore the questionable majesty of the man as they did with Richard M. Nixon. It’s called polishing a turd.

It’s the American Way.

They endorsed Obama, deciding that John McCain would probably make about as bad a decider as the current First Idiot and that having Plain and Simple Sarah one aging angry heartbeat from the presidency would be like giving Dubya yet another four years to bring on the rapture.

I guess when the Govermatrix couldn’t recall the name of a single magazine or newspaper she had every read during her interview with Katie Couric, she was waiting to see who was going to endorse her first.

It’s a good thing Sarah doesn’t know that Anchorage is in Alaska or she’d probably be insulted by the slight.

As it turns out, your fellow Boy Scouts were right. Farts are good for you and the stinkier the better.</p

At least that what I saw the other day at LiveScience.com where research involving laboratory mice seems to indicate that that smelly farts are the key to controlling hypertension, which means an SBD emission in a crowded elevator on a transcontinental flight can help you avoid both heart attacks and strokes.

As I type this, I’m convinced that big pharma is partnering with one or more international fragrance manufacturers to produce Eau de Low Tide or Spritz au Queef. Coming soon to the Sunday paper in your hometown, there will be scratch and sniff samples of blood pressure medication that you can take to your physician and get an expensive prescription.

The more practical will, no doubt, simply drink more beer, eat more beans, and whenever they feel a little stressed and light headed, they’ll remember their Boy Scout training. They’ll relax and bend forward and drop their heads between their knees.

Then they’ll let rip with home brewed burning brake floodablasts that could help Sarah Palin figure out exactly what it is the VP does all day, and all will be well again.

Spreading the wealth around is anathema to those who have it. They prefer a system in which wealth is hoarded, consolidated, and protected by taking from the serfs and giving to themselves and their friends and family.

As the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. often pointed out, the rich believe they own gravity through the inalienable right to own property. Property is only possible because of gravity. Gravity is what makes you and me stick to the surface of the property owned by the rich and anonymous.

In the past, we were tithed so we could continue to stick to the surface. Today, we are misdirected into taxing ourselves by those who are most adamant about the need to reduce taxes.

Look at the last eight years of Bush administration actions. Is the Federal government spending less today than when the First Idiot took office? Of course not. And yet, far too many citizens in the NOMF truly believe that the Democrats are going to raise taxes, and they will, of course, because someone is going to have to pay for all the trillions of dollars spent by Bush and his buddies without having any plan to balance the budget.

In fact, the budget is even further in the red than anyone can suspect, because this administration has been conducting illegal wars off the books for seven years and funding them with supplemental appropriations paid for by vague promises against revenue that is purely wishful thinking.

Meanwhile, the liberal media continues to do its job of ignoring the obvious and fiddling about while the country’s economy circles the toilet like the Tidy Bowl survivor.

So the country heads into another meaningless election in which the misguided are encouraged to validate a system of government designed to misinform and misdirect the ignorant proletariat who has just been snookered into scattering their crumbs of wealth to the wealthiest while condemning their children and grandchildren to more of the same.

I’ve never quite understood why the average American idiot feels so threatened whenever someone suggests that the rich should be paying more for the advantages they have by virtue of having no virtue. These idiots have so much nothing, they can only imagine what it would be like to have so much less than someone just like them.

I can hear my mother’s whiny voice: “They think they’re better than us, but they’re not.” And she wasn’t talking about rich people. She was talking about other middle class people who weren’t so into ticky tacky.

And what is this crap about Joe the Plumber? Who has decided that some uncertified tax-delinquent wage-slave who dreams of owning a business he is not currently qualified to purchase is in any way a newsworthy item? Who gave John-Boy McCain and Sarah “Plainly Simpleton” Palin immunity from derision whenever they play the plumber card?

What we have here is not failure to communicate. It is a failure of imagination, a failure of gumption, a failure of all the fail-safe systems the NOMF has put in place to keep the rich safely ensconced behind their wrought-iron gates or in their armored Hummers while the ignorant schmucks who pay the taxes to keep the rich protected in the manner to which they have become accustomed fight over who gets to have the best Halloween costume or Christmas light display.

Wake up, douche bags and douche baguettes of Western civilization. It’s not only turkeys that drown during storms by staring up at the rain with their mouths open saying: “What’s this? What’s this?”

Don’t forget to vote, you nimrods, so you’ll know who the blame for all this damned disorder.

Alfred Jarry says hi. I say high. Julio says jai alai. Jean drinks a mai tai.

I’m still wondering what exactly was so great about the Great Depression. Was it named first and the Greatest Generation followed, leading inexorably to the nation of miserable fucks in which we live today, wallowing in our imaginary pig filth, wondering why the world has become so fucking dull and binary.

And what is this crap with Joe the Plumber? Who has decided that some uncertified tax-delinquent wage-slave who dreams of owning a business he is not currently qualified to purchase is in any way a newsworthy item? Who gave John-Boy McCain and Sarah “Plainly Simpleton” Palin immunity from derision whenever they play the plumber card?

Main Street or Wall Street? What about Klickitat street? What about Smegma Drive? What about the folks who used to live in Idiotville?

The universe is not binary. There is no right or wrong. There is no left, no right, no center. Hell, even W. B. Yeats was more intelligent than to believe in a center. He knew it would not, could not hold. After watching Crazy Al Jarry’s play Ubu Roi in 1896, Yeats famously wrote “…after all our nervous colour and subtle rhythm, after the faint mixed tints of Condor, what more is possible? After us the Savage God.”

Just who is this Savage God and what does She want and when does She want it? I’m beginning to think She likes to smile a lot and wink and say folksy things that mean nothing.

I have yet to find meaning in life or death. In fact, I am so convinced that there is no meaning in life or death that I have given up on looking at either. Instead, I focus on what is and not what people want it to be. The cup is neither half full nor half empty when you drink directly from the bottle.

And I’ve been doing all right and getting good grades, as someone used to sing. The future’s so bright, I’ve got to wear shades.