Thursday, April 24, 2008

Everything is political


















"Yes it is, commie."

Except this blog most of the time these days.

What can I say. I hate the political process. No, really, I do. Yet it, unfortunately, is as necessary as both air and water, whether we like it or not -- and if we're honest with ourselves, we don't, save for you insane junkie types who go past hanging on every minute of Russertapalooza and the tidal wave of online screeds and daily, nay, hourly, blog postings; you know who you are. Get some help, quick -- since its slimy tendrils have long slithered their way into every facet of existence, threatening to choke off the oxygen to our brains so that we mindlessly spend our evenings and Sunday mornings watching talking hairpieces and bitching about superdelegates, institutionalized torture, a neverending story of fraud and corruption, spineless opposition parties, a willfully supine press corps, bowling and shots of whiskey, preachers, teachers and Ricky Feacher -- sorry, a momentary Brown-out -- the falling dollar and how we're going to pay for little Susie's doctor bills all while throwing various and sundry objects at our televisions in the hope that one, just one, of them will defy the laws of physics and muss up the well-coiffed plastic skulls of those overpaid automatons.

En plus, its inherent trainwreck status makes it extremely difficult to concentrate solely on things that don't make us want to upchuck our raisin bran -- go on, try avoiding it for any length of time, I dare you -- and since I, like you -- don't deny it -- am a selfish bastard, I'd much rather be composing some more bad verse, doing my best impression of Satan gurgling hydrochloric acid while filtering my simmering rage through some Scandinavian death metal or fighting off tears like John Boehner as I lose myself in a Haydn string quartet.

But there it is.

Staring back from the shadows with its blank, bloodshot eyes dangling beneath a wizened, withered brow, uncounted thoughts of the most heinous evil clang sharply in the deepest, blackest caverns of its eternal -- until the sun goes red giant, anyway -- mind. If you listen close, you can hear them, biding their time. Waiting with the most perfect patience. Waiting for the next human error -- and it will come. Waiting to open its dripping jaws, our shivering souls exposed to the yawning abyss of madness, to be devoured, to be no more.

Waiting.

It is impossible for homo sapiens to ever reach a collective state of blissful tulip frolicking, and no matter how much long overdue and vitally necessary tweaking and de-monkey wrenching we do to our utterly fucked-up system, it'll still fall squarely in the camp of suck, for there is no more flawed variable in any equation one can conceive of than the variable of humanity in politics.

I haven't done a politically-themed post in awhile, so in order to rectify such an egregious oversight, let me go on, not a rant as such -- that's been taken care of above, in an aimless way, as it turned out -- but a quiet declaration of personal beliefs formulated from years of careful consideration of the issues list of things I'm right on, so kindly shut your contradictory noisehole:

Your candidate sucks.
So does yours.
The Maverick® is a fucking lunatic.
We're addicted to oil and that will never change until it becomes so scarce that we're forced to don ridiculous, poorly cobbled together S&M outfits while sporting bad haircuts as we jet across the irradiated landscape in rickety, steam-and-rubber-band-powered vehicles to kill our closest neighbors who I'm sure have a vast stockpile of the crude and who are dozens of miles away because everyone in between had died long ago from the virulent plague the government had no answer for because we're peons but just like during the Black Death, they too felt they would be immune from heaven's wrath, unlike those filthy, sinful serfs (hubris, like stupidity and death, never absent from the human condition) and so refused to formulate any kind of effective countermeasure so all one sees in the vast emptiness of the eerily vacant American landscape are rotting, abandoned buildings whose rubble, along with the miscellaneous detritus of a dead civilization, is infested with disease-carrying vermin and pustule-saturated flesh hanging and about to drop off the toxin-bleached bones of carcass after carcass strewn along the cracked, weathered highways into the endless sea of dust that stretches all the way to the Canadian border where, once beyond, one can buy cheap, yet quality, goods, relax with some herb, curb your newfound hunger at a Tim Hortons, watch hockey on the holograph, take a leisurely stroll through the wind and solar energy parks, finishing up with a smiling saunter past the sun-dappled granite of the International Polar Bear Musuem to enjoy a refreshing dip in the iceless, no-longer-Arctic Ocean.

But that's not for awhile yet. I'm going to go watch some teevee.

I think Hardball is on.

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

//Waiting for the next human error -- and it will come. Waiting to open its dripping jaws, our shivering souls exposed to the yawning abyss of madness, to be devoured, to be no more.

Waiting.//

Whoa, Poetry!!

//Your candidate sucks.
So does yours.
The Maverick® is a fucking lunatic.//

Politics!

Ha! McCain.....

'appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.'

But, Hark&stuff...what email through yonder screen breaks...It is that young varlet, the fruit of my loins, Boy-Wonder! He greeth me with news and astonishments&shit...and an un-Bard-like play that he hath penned for class....

"Dad,
Here's the deal, and I know it ain't no big deal,but my play sucks. We need to work together to make this good. This means I need to change the whole conflict all together. It's a complete mess and I'm basically stuck.

Thanks for your help.

Bubba"

I don't know where this 'WE' stuff is coming from, but I think he's gonna owe me a six-pack.

Anon!

(again, big time thanks to Anita. Broke me up all day!)

Mary Ellen said...

Haven't you noticed my lack of political posts? Ok..there's a lack of all posts. But still...a new post going up tomorrow on TDD and it's not politics. I decided that when I feel the need to rant about what's going on in the political world, I write it...put it in "draft" and delete it the next day. It saves you the agony of having to read it (which I know you didn't anyway...but hell at least you left a comment anyway and that's the best part).

PoliShifter said...

I wonder how Americans will react to $10/gallon gas, $10/gallon milk, and food rationing.

Maybe we should all plant victory gardens for Iraq.

Unfortunately the media and government thrive on apathy and helplessness. The more they can convince people to tune out the better off they are. The more they can frustrate people into a state of Apathy the better off they are.

The more they can convince people that they determine everything the better off they are.

Still, quality of life goes up exponentially with the less one watches the news or follows politics.

I have friends who live on a 40 acre parcel of land and run a business out of their home.

They absolutely do not give a shit about anything that does not directly affect them or their business. And they are happy.

They step into their backyard where a rive flows near by and catch salmon.

They shoot their guns. There are no neighbors for miles. They make their own reality.

Sometimes I think that is what I need to do.

Christopher said...

Rebuild the fucking oil refining platforms destroyed in the Gulf of Mexico from Hurricane Katrina's wrath and supply will go up by at least 25% and prices will drop.

If the U.S. oil industry refuses to reinvest some of their obscene profits into rebuilding these facilities, then slap them with a windfall profit tax of 75%. This would get their attention and lite a fire under their asses.

Of course, the Feds could always nationalize the oil industry, a la, Pemex and make the stranglehold of commodity petroleum a thing of the past. We may be coming to this point if something isn't done about the energy mess in this country.

Utah Savage said...

You will see this vignette fleshed (sorry) out and on the big screen before you can delete it and makes sure your agent sells it first--you're one brilliant motherfucker. Sorry I don't know how to say that in french. I have a house to sell in a neighborhood that hasn't lost it's cachet. Yet. I have been talking to Gary who is probably the laziest blogger I've run across and he lives in BC. He is stretched out on a rock, just like a lizard, sunning himself. Short sleeved t shirt. It's not a close up, and you can't really see whether, or not, he has goosebumps, and he posts some tunes and goes on vacation. He's a counselor. Or is the councilor? I'm not sure. Anyway, I bet his town could use some sad, bitter emmegres, (where's that accente grave thingy?) Can someone as old as I learn to speak French? Gary doesn't sound French. You sure don't look like your bio. So, could we put together a little caravan? I'll keep all my Margaret Atwood books on my lap. A little KD on the tunes. I'll pretend I like her, and we're there. If we wait too long, they'll probably put up a fence or wall or something.

Randal Graves said...

okjimm, hell no, the bad poetry comes tomorrow, assuming I can find something that doesn't make me cringe too much.

We are legion, for we are many.

Oh man, don't get me started on that link she gave us, we (there's that we again!) need to put these Elizabethan insults back in the language!

ME, hmm, that's not a bad idea, but don't delete them because when you've hit that wall where the entire world can go fuck itself, you can post them all at once.

And whatever you put up, I'll comment on, even if I'm not adding to the discourse. Which is, admittedly, all the time.

poli, that's the big dilemma isn't it? I feel much better when I tune out of this cesspool. But it keeps calling me back. I don't know how it'll end, probably badly, but hey, look at Ragnarok. The Norse gods knew they were going to fucking lose, but they fought anyway. And 10 bucks for a gallon of gas or milk might be the only thing that'll light the collective fire.

But that 'making own reality' thing sure does sound nice, no?

christopher, so the corporates can understand [let me affect my best CEO accent]: the paradigm certainly needs to be shifted. Use that tax to invest in some alternative energy. And hell, it's not like we didn't have more controls in the early 70s over this crap, but of course, that was under that noted liberal Nixon.

Something needs to be done and policy can affect that much better than us simply all going to hybrids or driving slower. Public transportation in this country sucks and given how everything is spread out, we need to us gas to get there. We can cut back all we want, but will industry? Not unless they're forced to.

Of course, if they want to allow me to work from home, I won't say no, heh.

utah savage, that's okay, I don't know how to say 'motherfucker' in French either. Let's hold off on the brilliant for those who deserve it. I'm just in a ranty mood today.

I hear BC is very nice, Vancouver, all that. Which is in BC so I don't know why I added that. I don't see why not, but it does get more difficult, I'm sure the 18- and 20-year olds in my classes will have far surpassed me by the time they hit my age. I'm glad our prof is lenient with the grammatical errors!

Funny you should mention the fence. Sure, this is only anecdotal, but a classmate of mine was up in Quebec for a couple of semesters and he said he got MUCH more grief from the Americans than the Canadians at the border, both to Canada, and back. There's those slimy tendrils. He's probably on the no-fly list by now.

Anonymous said...

Here fucking here.

I'm so off politics that I might just shut down 'Tits and go with the blog about my trainwreck of a life. The best I might do tomorrow is a YouTube viddie of me scouring sinks and a story or two about my smart ass children.

Just another day of blogging with or without Hardball. Which I watched today. Twice. Help me!

My Inner French Girl said...

Dear Randal,

Uh....someone has a hangover.

I stopped watching the election coverage months ago because of the same-ol'-same-ol' stuff. However, I still have to dip my head into the muck now and then, as the column I write for the paper does cover some politics. But I daresay that I'm not quite that cynical. Yet.

It's depressing, though, that so many people are.

You should try Philippine politics. People there can't decide whether or not to be cynical or optimistic. In the meantime, since politics is such a carnival anyway, they tend to elect film and TV actors to high office. Hey, it may as well be entertaining.

Salut,
Marjorie

B said...

Such cheeriness just inspired me to inhale half a box of croutons and down a quick jack and coke on your behalf! ;-) Cheers!!

Anonymous said...

oh, gees&stuff....

what a nice little blog thread here...
Ahw, golly.....

Anita's thread had me going all day!

RG...I will take your 'worsta' poetry over the local Gannett Newspaper, like, oh, wow ana&stuff anyday.....

BC? It is one of the Greatest Places in Nord AmerIka!! My sister-in-law is from BC.....Vancouver...shit&stuff, Gastown is very jimm....

and when UT Sav...age figures out how to say 'Mother Fucker in French' I wanna know about it!!

And DCup with fucking full of Politics..... Whewwww am I there or What!!!

Gees, bloggin' & Beer go sooooooo well together!!!!

...gotta get another...

Peace,Love,&Lake Eeeeerie!!!!!

Randal Graves said...

dcup, but that's why we love your blog, it's not just politics, it's all kinds of crazy shit. Hell, just toss up youtubes every day and a line or three. We'll still stop on - wait. You watched Hardball twice?

Is there a psychiatrist in the house?

marjorie, surely you jest. I've only had coffee and water (and the milk for my cereal) in the last 24 hours.

It's nigh impossible to not be depressed. And what's especially frightening is that, I would assume, most of us aren't even romanticizing the past as some bullshit golden age of civility and lack o' hyper-capitalistic imperialism, simply that it keeps on getting worse.

We did elect an actor to high office. Twice. It didn't work out that well. ;-)

b, now that's what I'm talking about! Did you have some Velveeta-ized hot Texas peppers, too? Don't disappoint Dante!

okjimm is completely plastered, or does a great impression of one who is plastered. Kudos to you, good sir, this is why you need your own blog, dammit.

Anonymous said...

OK, screw it. Let's not talk about politics.

Let's talk about Religion!

Regards,

Tengrain-the-Problem-Solver

anita said...

This is hilarious. And to think that I just responded to your comment on my site (the "depression" post) about how in the midst of all the chaos, a good laugh can bring me back to life. I mentioned George Carlin whose HBO special I watched tonight and it sent me REELING. I could not breath I was laughing so hard.

Coming here now, I have to ask, are you sure you're not related to George Carlin?

Oh, and just for the record, when the time comes, MY S&M outfit will NOT be "cobbled together." A girl MUST have standards, man. Even in the face of Armageddon! Get with the program! We've got to go down dramatically, in flames.. And bombs bursting in air!

Or ... at minimum ... with our latex and leather gear in tact!

Utah Savage said...

That Anita, she's a classy babe!

Anonymous said...

Good idea on the ball game...oh wait...fuck...that's political, too.

Dean Wormer said...

Wow. That last paragraph. You've really thought this through. I don't see anything about being chased around by Tina Turner or "two men enter, one man leaves" but it's pretty comprehensive.

Oh, and your non-candidate sucks.

Anonymous said...

Ales&Porters&Stout, oh my!

I started with a Red Seal Pale Ale
A Goose Island Porter
A Mud Puppy Porter
& finished with Carlsberg Elephant

.... drinking through the wild kingdom...

...wow....I wonder how much coffee I gotta drink to get rid of the fur ball in my throat...

gees.....I better go over to Nunly's and make sure I did not say anything stupid, and if I didn't...do so immediately

Randal Graves said...

tengrain, if you really want to solve problems, why not the religious implications of abortion? Talk about fun!

anita, oh how I love Carlin, the cynical bastard. And I wish I was related, I'd probably have at least a few extra bucks in the bank account!

And if that's how the style is going to be, I say bring on Armageddon! (I hope Hagee didn't hear me)

utah savage, evidemment !

spartacus, especially if you play for the Cincinnati Reds.

dean, actually I stole most of it from The Road Warrior script, but don't tell anyone.

Yeah? Well, yours sucks more!

Think we've got a shot at being hired by CNN for such thought-provoking commentary?

okjimm, beerdrinkers and hellraisers. Someone should write a song on such topics.

I think you're hoping she dons her apocalyptic S&M outfit early and pulls out the whip.

B said...

Yes, you can't forget the devil's dip, a.k.a. "the queso." ;-) A diet like that and shutting myself up to write and read copious amounts of poetry?! There is nothing political in that... just sheer bliss! ;-)

Randal Graves said...

Now that's a hell of a suggestion. Minus the queso. ;-)

My Inner French Girl said...

Dear Randal,

Yes, but the point of electing an actor to high office isn't to make government work. It's to provide some entertainment to the masses and fodder for overwrought journalists while we wait for our dinner to heat up! ;-)

Salut,
Marjorie

Tom Harper said...

That's the trouble with politics; it's so deeply imbedded in our lives whether we like it or not. I like to think I'm not interested in politics, but every time I go online or see a newspaper, it's "WTF????"

Either Ann Landers or Dear Abby once told a reader that "not being interested in politics is like a fish not being interested in water."

Randal Graves said...

marjorie, since you put it that way, color me convinced. ;-)

tom, that's exactly what makes it so depressing. The only way to not end up that way to become completely cut off from things. And as nice as that sounds, if we were to actually do that, it's not like all the evil crap wouldn't eventually track us down anyway.

dguzman said...

Nice post, and day-yum that's one loooong sentence!

Randal Graves said...

Thanks, but it's still only half as long as one by Proust!

Distributorcap said...

i have given up on politics for now -- but not Bush, just too much fodder from his anus.....