11/12/2011 in Normal entries

You’re a bastard just like pharaoh, you kill de children just like pharaoh, now you send a ticket for me, but it don’t have no rsvp, oh lord it’s a war party, me no wanna go, heard about the last one so thanks but no thank you no — Eddy Grant
I dig a ditch, I shape a stone, another day on earth has flown, we’re all working for the pharaoh — Richard Thompson
When Israel was in Egypt’s land (let my people go) Oppressed so hard they could not stand (let me people go) Go down Moses way down in Egypt’s land, tell old pharaoh (wacky pharaoh) to let my people go — Traditional

And the foreman says ‘fuck your wages, you’re on piece work now’ and sometimes I want to hang the pink bastard from a hook, drop him down in the chrome until he comes up beautiful as a sleeping pharaoh — Haredawg

I bummed up a spud or two, my wife cooked up a tater stew, we poured the kids full of it, mighty thin stew though, you could read a newspaper right through, I always figured that stew’d been a might thinner even some of them there politicians might have been able to see through it — Woody Guthrie

There isn’t really anyway around it folks, these are hard times; hard times in the states, hard times in Europe, even with the expansions it ain’t easy times in Asia. Easy to point a finger at a politician here or a group of them there, sit in an arm chair and say “If those folks would just get up off their asses” — god knows I’ve done it, likely to do it again, I ain’t holding myself above the rest or even saying my notion of who’s to blame and who’s to fix it is anymore right than yours, just that the idea is equally wrong. It’s going to take one of two things; a Hero or a bunch of heroes. I don’t even mean a hero as in a good guy; I mean a guy or gal with more balls than sense and more charisma than a sack full of charming monkeys. Last time we were in a fix this bad we had folks like FDR, Churchill, Hitler and Mussolini step up, and yeah we got an idea who was morally right and who was morally wrong, but that’s not what I’m talking about, all them guys dragged their countries and economies kicking and screaming out of a depression. Seems there would have had to be a better way of doing it, but that milk’s spilled, dried to cheese and the carpet it was spilled on burnt down.

This is now and we face a complete collapse, shit, Greece faced it and just fucking fell. I’m thinking a world war is the wrong way to fix it, but I’m also thinking there’s a motherfucker or two with a lot more influence than I who thinks I’m mistaken. That’s not really here or there. The thing that’s disappointed me the most in general about Barrack Obama is his balls seem a lot smaller than then did a few years ago. We have an election coming up, and to simplify things, there isn’t a set of balls or charisma that looks up to the job. I know, I know, if I post this in the politics circle some folks will start throwing specific incidents at me, or party lines, or arm chair pundit speechifying or think I’m being stupid and ill-informed and not paying close enough attention. What analogy do I use? It ain’t the little dots in an impressionist painting that make it interesting, it’s the picture you get when you step back; the little dots are just dots of paint. And you can bitch all day long about how you’d have put the dots in some other order, but you ain’t Monet, is you? You got no dots at all. You could, you could run up to the art store and get brushes and canvas and pigment and make your own dots, but even if it turns out you’re any good, you just bit off someone else’s idea at expression. We need new ideas; we need heroes, balls and charisma.

A gender side note; the reason balls are a symbol for courage and not ovaries, is that the balls hang outside and are always vulnerable, always in danger of getting hurt and destroying future progeny, to stand up with your arms raised to tell folks they need to do something they don’t want to do is to expose your balls to a world of hurt. There ain’t a place on a woman that hurts more to get punched in, sure there’s tits, but it hurts a guy to get punched in the tits too, and a punch to the gut might hurt something inside, but it would to a man too. Balls are symbolic for bravely exposing your most venerable bits and still saying what you got to say. Not to sound like one of those knee jerks during the civil rights movements with the analogous ‘Oh, some white folk are niggers too’ but some women do have symbolic balls. If I had been a registered democrat and could have voted in the last presidential primaries, I would have voted for Hilary. She’s got balls. I don’t know that she would have been the hero we needed either, and I don’t know that being a registered independent is all that smart seeing as I usually vote democrat anyhow.

I’ll probably vote Obama again too. The places where he’s disappointed me aren’t places this new crop of republican hopefuls look particular ballsy or charismatic in either. Besides, I’m not convinced getting our business straight is really how to get the worlds business straight, not sure that the balls are going to come from the States. I don’t really have a buttload of issues like y’all do and they ain’t all that complicated; I think we should tend to our sick and wounded, I think we should have people who can and want to work working, and I think we should quit blowing shit up in the middle east. I sort of thought Obama was going to do that or at least make a concerted effort. If there was a candidate who I believed had that agenda for reals and a plan that’s who I’d vote for. Even just two out of three with a half ass workable plan isn’t good enough. Compassionate health care, employment and ceasing a war predicated on bullshit and then with the bullshit goals realized seems pretty fucking A reasonable, and despite a whole buttload of pundits with little dots of why we should still be there, they’re wrong just wrong.

I realized something the other day as I was listening to the song I posted when he sang “I have two infant daughters I thank god I have no sons” everyone in the states under 36 wasn’t even alive when there was a draft in this country. Don’t have any idea what it was like for a mother to open a telegram from the state department saying “greetings” and her sons name on it. One more reason to support our troops, those men and women are volunteers. One more reason to really support them and get them out of the line of fire. Though if anyone has a good reason why we shouldn’t, I’m all ears. Anyone have a good reason why we need to sacrifice our men and women, bring it on, tell me what’s so important that we need to support the death of American sons and daughters (though I feel the same way about ‘the enemy’ I’m thinking I don’t want to hear your reasons for why they have to die as I still have some respect for you as a human being). This paragraph is on account of the three things I’d like to see happen the least likely one to be a campaign promise is ending the wars. Any nurse’ll tell you; quit picking at the scab or it’s never going to heal.

And I’m spent.