"Jazz, pfft. They just make it up as they go along. I can do that."

The humidity inside our suburban home, if not exactly stifling in a 'what the fuck are we still doing here in August' kind of way -- because we don't have enough loot to fly to Europe for vacation, that's why -- was all the convincing I needed to get me to leave a few minutes early for the bus. Thus, the CD I had chosen, if I could accurately remember its duration, would likely finish before I arrived, smiling like the Joker, and feeling just as loopy, at work. Lo and behold at E. 6th, Carolina Drama fades out -- dude, milkman, so what happened and why didn't I ever review this one? -- and I push play to restart the sucker. BEEP!

LOW BATT written in that futuriffic LCD lettering. Dammit.

The ubiquitous battery. An afterthought? Not anymore, not after I had to walk at least five blocks without tunes. Not a big deal, you say? You've got some nerve. Not starting so many sentences with 'not' might not be such a bad idea, no? No. You see Not having music to listen to when I'm not directly engaged in conversation with someone or something -- you've all talked to inanimate objects before, filthy liars -- is hellish, akin to a mashup of passers-by, rockers, pimps and businessmen rolling past in their swanky new wheels and all the ambient sounds of the city -- okay, Cleveland is pretty dead at 7 am on a Saturday -- being transformed into an endless loop of George Bush press conferences. When he's drunk. But I repeat myself.

And writing without music? Might as well ask me to clean up aisle six in Cheney's Good Time House of Torment where they give me a mop, a bucket filled with tepid water, maybe some of that gritty prison soap and about five minutes before they release another morsel for him to swallow whole, and if there's a second -- you know, moi -- then he likes to play with that one the way a starving sabre-toothed cat might have wanted to bat around cornered primitive man with his foot-long, flesh-rending claws.

I had no post ready today --


















"Gee, it's not at all obvious."

-- are you really one to be questioning someone's mental faculties? I think I hear a mirror calling your name. Pendant que je pensais à la suggestion de La Belette Rouge, faire un post en français, j'ai reconnu que cette idée était l'idée d'une femme folle. Pourquoi ? Au début, je n'écris pas le français bien. Ensuite, si je veux écrire mes pensées complexes -- cessez de rire ! -- cela me prendrait beaucoup de jours.

Guess how many grammatical errors are above and win a case of Turtle Wax nothing. Hey, if I knew, I wouldn't need to practice. Sorry, mon amie.

Okay, let's check the news wires.

clickety-clickety-clickety-clack

Given my natural cynicism and utter lack of faith in the American voter -- I still think McCain is going to be the one eyeing the red phone in January -- I'm not at all surprised that Obama picked an old white dude. But at least it's Biden so there's always a chance that he'll say 'bullshit' with a microphone around and if politics is anything, it's entertainment.

Apparently someone blew a bunch of folks up in Afghanistan. I had thought we fixed everything over there; you know, eradicated all the poppy fields -- WAR ON DRUGS! GRRR! CRUSH! KILL! DESTROY! FLEX! hey, Cindy called, she ran out of her supply already -- had the Taliban and their wonderfully full and manly beards on the run, killed The Greatest Threat Since Ahmadinejad's Persian Empire was single-handedly defeated by Victor Davis Hanson's kung-fu grip.











"Barack should have picked my full and manly beard. Sniff."

Oh, relax, Bill. You've got all those UFOs to deal with. Speaking of Unidentified Flying Os, are the Olympics still on? Just go away you bloated, corporate hulk so we can start talking about streamlined, populist American football. I wonder if Brett Favre is coming back to play this season. How about another will he/won't he story, Nashville Predator winger -- don't know if he's right or left, or if he's even eligible to vote -- Alexander Radulov who, while still under contract to his NHL team, signed a second with a squad in the new Russian league.

Maybe we should take on Pooty-Poot. First that whole Cold War gig, then the illegal and immoral invasion of one of our staunchest allies, Iraq Georgia, and now they're stealing our hockey players! Our hockey players!
















"I must break you."

Aw, fuck it. Another war sounds like effort. Plus Vlad looks pissed off. And we don't have any money left. Pass me that bottle. I know I'm at work. Where do you think I need it the most? Oh, you honestly thought I'd say there? Are you fucking nuts? I'd lose mine!

Angry Chair

Yeah, more YouTubes. If you want incisive and witty commentary on the important issues of the day, you've come to the wrong place, mes amis. You should know that by now, you bastards, especially since I'm busy getting my noggin ready to parler français next week. En plus -- wow, practice does make perfect! -- it's birthday time for two of my musical favorites. POP, get dry, the cake is on me.



Happy birthday, you dead American dude.

Just say no. Except to you-know-what.



Bonne anniversaire, vous dude français mort.

Homme, j'adore Nuages. Quelle beauté éphémère, n'est-ce pas ?


















Also born on this day ninety-two years ago, native Clevelander Urbain Jacques Shockcor, better known to you and I as New York Yankee and St. Louis Brown starting pitcher Urban Shocker, a name certainly on the Mt. Rushmore of sporting cool despite having hurled for The Fucking Yankees.

On second thought, I'm going to go hurl.

Speaking of hurling -- I really need to come up with a better segue --


















"And a better blog!"


















-- ahem, a dude on the bus this morning was hurling his chutzpah around by wearing a jersey I haven't seen in public in a shade over fourteen years:















I see the real killer searching has been outsourced. Damn you, NAFTA.

Geek-o-rama

Since lovely and talented Vacuum Vixen Freida Bee believes me to be lazy -- hey, I told my wife I'd clean the basement a little later, I swear -- right after this MLB tripleheader -- I've decided to prove her instincts correct and steal from her the concept of legendary comedian Dr. William Henry Cosby, Jr. invading other creative territory then, through harnessing the awesome power of Jello Pudding Pops, fabricating an entirely new and fantastic realm of entertainment. Thus, Two Great Tastes, anime style.



This is more of The Artist's gig, but I watched me some Robotech growing up. Was Minmei annoying as fuck, or what? Whined as much as we Americans do on the economy.

Since we're on the subject of annoying whiners, how 'bout them neocons?











"And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped."
"This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedemir. Explain again how manufacturing lies may be employed to prevent diplomacy."

Since we're on the subject of science fiction -- no, that was first thing, damn you, linear progression of time! -- I've recently noticed not one, not two, but three reports of scary-as-Cheney-in-your-house insect hubris. This is what happens when you screw with the environment -- the environment fights back! Don't believe me? Then you need to watch this short documentary!



Don't take Mother Nature for granted, or she'll send you to your room!








"Without any supper?"













"Oh, there'll be supper alright....you!"

Night songs

One of the most painful occurrences in the otherwise wondrous realm of music is when an act that you absolutely love teases you with a few choice words and measures, this glittering confinement hinting at a greatness that you know will consume you, lead you to other locales and times where both the mundane world around you and your memory, verifiable moments usually banal, and imagined ones always scintillating, mingle in a delicious, heady stew, burning your tongue as you begin to get drunk on that aural elixir -- then disappears.

So, after releasing an introductory three-track single a few years back and assorted songs, some originals, some covers, on various compilations since -- okay, so I was being a bit melodramatic; a little melodrama never hurt anyone, you ironically jaded postmodernist, you -- the team of Black Tape for a Blue Girl mastermind Sam Rosenthal and raven-haired chanteuse Nicki Jaine, under the guise of Revue Noir, has gifted to us a compilation of everything -- well, everything that isn't sitting half-finished on a roll of tape or in a Pro Tools file -- that they've ever recorded, Anthology Archive, for posterity, mom, apple pie, fuzzy little bunnies, though hopefully not the final nail before the coffin is lowered into the cold, hard ground as they move on to other projects.

The album -- compilation sounds so greatest hits only available at big box store! -- starts off with the five songs that have previously graced our ears. The sparse rhythm, sexy and languid, of The Gravediggers, originally recorded for Black Tape's last(?) album, Halo Star, blows the doors off the excellent original for two reasons: the incorporation of a theremin, an instrument that seems to have been created specifically for this song, and Nicki's sultry, Marlene Dietrich-esque vocals. Strangely, there seems to be, beyond a slightly different mix that augments the stray violin progression, an added keyboard line during the penultimate fifth of the song that didn't appear on the single version that, if not exactly off putting, shoves the strings into the background a bit more than I'd like. Either that, or my hearing is shot.

A track that Mademoiselle Jaine pulled off her solo album is next, and not all that sonically different than the original -- though this seems to be a different mix as well, you sneaky bastards, but I ain't selling my original on eBay -- the beautifully wistful Amsterdam, whose tale over a gentle piano line has nothing to do with either of the two things most associated with that European metropolis but something far more universal, that most desired and loathed of emotions. The darkly uptempo A Girl, A Smoke swings chords and lines like 'a year, a night, a get well card/a book of dirty poetry/forgetting me can't be that hard' until a jazzy flurry of piano notes and the lamentation about 'the way that we come back asking for more' ends the performance.

A slow, mellow cover of Bowie's Rock 'n' Roll Suicide is next, stripping away a few layers of classic rock bombast -- not that the original was the thunderous Suffragette City, bien sûr -- and turning it into the signature piece of Aristide Bruant -- if he had been a rock and roller. The clothes may have changed, but the soul is the same. This soul might have once wandered into an old cabaret lost on some unmapped street, now found, its rotting planks being torn out one by one to help expedite a complete modernization, and behind the agèd wall, a dust-encrusted worker finds the sheet music for Sometimes, Sunshine. At times jaunty, depressing, danceable with some Zeppelin-esque, stop/start piano riffs thrown in for good measure, you can't help but want to tap your foot while you sip on your overpriced drink.

As for the unreleased tracks, there is a less fleshed out rehearsal version of A Girl, A Smoke, professional live cuts of the Velvet Underground's All Tomorrow's Parties, the Weill/Brecht standard Alabama Song, and Black Tape's Halo Star. The new/old originals are wonderful, starting with the gently undulating, downbeat I Have No More Answers, the piano punctuated with an ominous organ riff before the black and white keys return to close proceedings on a haunting note.

Strange Little Show and its concoction of melancholy, yet propulsive, trappings provides a memorable apéritif -- a lithe, husky-voiced singer bitter as unsugared absinthe? Whew -- before the album's double-barreled closer, the nearly instrumental Sunshine IV, a happy little bridge (curse you, Bob Ross!) laced with somber, echoing vocal undercurrents weaving sentimental motifs from both the previous track and the album finalé, the monumental She is the Madman. This eerie, disjointed journey has us steal through the singer's head, cries for help voiced through single notes plucked on the guitar writhing in restrained agony within Sam's ethereal, electronic swells that have crawled up from the chthonian abyss, painting this eternal conflict between the illusion of sanity and that cold, dark place we fear to face, refusing to turn around to see the source of its shadow perpetually engulfing our own, a crash of cymbals, thicker chords, before a respite and the slow, quiet acceptance of our descent into the depths of the creative process, into madness.

It would be a crime if we were to not hear anything more from this duo, but if that ends up being the case, they've left behind a document worth remembering and hearing during those evenings awash in spent adrenaline and empty pages, of which there are far too many it seems, where pain and regret, not a joyful smile, are what we see reflected back in the liquid mirror of our glass.

New boss, same as the old boss

It's always good to know than when the well is drier than my bank account, there's always an eerily familiar pain I can count on to save me from a wretched, post-less state.

Merci for pointing that out, Mr. Eight-and-oh-with-the-one-point-six-ERA.


















Talented pitcher, toiling for a fumbling squad, gets traded across leagues to a doe-eyed, hopeful gang of beloved -- I know that's pushing it where the Brewers are concerned -- underachievers and proceeds to tear it up like kleenex at a snot party in leading his new teammates to a long-overdue playoff spot.

Where they promptly rip out the beating heart of their fans, show it to them in the rapidly decaying seconds of life that crystallizes such horror into the last thing they'll ever breathe, and toss it on the ground, stomping on it, muscle fibres that once pumped precious joy throughout their veins now frayed, empty strands shredded by the polished steel of sharpened cleats, twitching in dark, coagulating pools of blood, mocking.

Sorry, boss. But don't worry, the unholy beast that is karma is striking my soul as we speak, for verily it is the height of folly to assume that a Cleveland sporting team could go through a preseason without getting smacked in the skull.


















I hope DA is all right because I'm not sure I could take a quarterback controversy and, given the intelligence of the average sports fan, any lingering effects from the ringing of the bells would turn that slow burn into a full-blown conflagration.

Brady Quinn is the savior!

No, he's the messiah, you dumbass!

Same thing!

Them's fightin' words!

Touchdown Jesus Brady!

I blame the pants.

A bird in the hand is worth another pic of Bush

"On the side, up high, down low, you're too slow!"

You know, given his embarrassing, drunken antics in China this past week, these fun with captions just don't carry the same chuckling power as they once did. Thanks a lot, Bush.

Well, he was a cheerleader.

"Go, energy, go! Drill that hole!"

Kids say the darndest things, the little bastards

In this topsy-turvy world of bloodthirsty tyrants hellbent, not for leather, but world domination, where supposed upholders of the law haughtily claim that it's not always a crime when such laws are broken and when your favorite sports teams fail year after year to win one of those shiny trophies -- wait, none of that is topsy-turvy at all! That's status quo! -- joys can seem all the greater even when they're small.














"That's what she said! Wooooooo!"











"Guess what came in the mail today?"








"Do I even want to know?"
*rifles through contents of envelope*
"Dude! Artist, do you know where your mother and I will be on Tuesday, September 23? At the House of Blues in beautiful downtown Cleveland to see the mighty Opeth."







"I hope you guys don't get shot."

Mind you, this was said, in direct contrast to my childlike exuberance, with the deadpanned nonchalance of an ex-con who knows something that you don't know, namely that you're going to get whacked.








"Well, we don't plan to."







"No one plans to."

I thought about throwing 'no one plans to have children either' back in her face, but I've used variations of that so often that the edge has dulled like a stick of butter that's sat out too long. So I told her that there are only two weeks left of summer vacation. Worked like a charm.

All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me

"Oh, shit, it's that time already?"

Ecstatic that our psycho offspring will soon be going back to school, I'm dreading that since I'll be doing the same I'll have to flip l'interrupteur français on once again -- whaddya mean this class isn't being taught in English? -- so, between that and using 90% of my USDA daily allowance of 0.3 joules of energy towards writing that fucking book, the remaining 10% to yelling at said psycho offspring -- my better half and I never yell at each other, merely scowl in between bouts of birding -- my brain is as soft as Johnny Mac's bowl of tapioca as it melts into runny, rancid liquid while he snoozes ever so sweetly underneath the blistering sun, exhausted from a long day of state fair pig squealing with Cindy.











Hey, dcap, I'm just fine, thanks, how 'bout my Cavs?
Mo Williams, less problems!

Talk amongst yourselves, stick bananas in the exhaust pipe of local Republican vehicles, get baked, bake some cookies, copulate, play bocce ball, play with yourself. Just don't do that last one in public, okay?

I think I'm going to take it easy, like it was Sunday morning.



Behind-the-scenes footage from the last Straight Talk BBQ.

"John! Wake up! I read the news today, oh boy!"
















"John! John! Did you see this report? We'll be the minority by 2050!"

















"Cindy, my friends and I are not plastered trollops."

When there is ass to kick, we'll be there

In the rarefied air of expert ass kicking, there are those who do so with a stunning, gravity-defying flair and a bloodless, poorly-dubbed wounding such as the man below on our left, a legend we should never forget:


















Ouch!














"I know you didn't forget me."

No, sir, Mr. Norris, that would be crazy talk.

Of course that movie still was photoshopped.

Please have your beard, and all the fists it contains, back off.

Someone who decided that I also shouldn't be left behind like American schoolchildren -- and Chuck Norris, yes, sir, I remember, I've evolved, oops, moved beyond such forgetfulness -- is one of my favoritist bloggers clogging the tubes with her patchouli and stolen reading materials, fellow book geek and head of the EPA in the next presidential administration, Liberality. We'll overlook her weirdo filthy hippie vegetarianism just this once.

Man, I sure could go for a thick, juicy burger.

Oh, dreaded awards posts with your pros of virtually writing yourself and your cons of trying to narrow it down. Though I'm sure everyone at some point will get one, all of us being denizens of the lefty anarchist bomb-throwing echo chamber that we are, never attuned to the reality of the real world and all its realness and realistic realism, instead locked up in our basements with our illegal stashes and homemade wine as we pen angry screeds against The Man, this veritable hell of empty hedonism and self-flagellation barely illuminated by a single bulb whose filament is about to burn off, so reminiscent of that last joint, everything turning to ashes in our mouth as even our pen runs out of ink, one more brilliant manifesto unfinished, soon to be kindling for the fire to heat our crypt since we, in a further fit and start of defiance, refuse to pay our bills to our corporate oppressors.

Rage, rage against the dying of the bulb!

The rules, chumps:

1) Choose five other bloggers that you feel are "Kick Ass Bloggers"
2) Let them know that they have received an award.
3) Link back to both the person who awarded you and also to http://www.mammadawg.com/
4) Visit the Kick Ass Blogger Club HQ to sign Mr. Linky and leave a comment. And don't forget your non-refundable deposit of $9.95 for your t-shirt. You should receive them in 6-8 weeks.

And now, the Mighty Five. Pass the vodka.

1. Border Explorer, because unlike the majority of Americans who so easily get caught up in the feverish wave of Teh Other Haz Scaree, she doesn't. The real pimps and prostitutes aren't roaming the streets outside a RNC-sponsored event, they're agribusiness lobbyists roaming the halls of Congress with more say than you or I could ever hope to have in our fondest dreams.

2. The Dean's Office, because I have to, if I ever want to get off double secret probation. Plus he writes with acuity and verve on all kinds of crazy crap, and who doesn't dig that? Oh, Stones are still better than your precious Beatles. Nyah nyah nyah!

3. Little Bang Theory, because the cunning runt's a picture taking fiend, and boy, are his pictures of the natural world stunningly beautiful, almost enough to get me to sell my teevee and move closer to nature. Maybe in between football seasons.

4. phantsythat, because susan vividly animates, both verbally and visually, slices of this crazy passive/aggressive, manic/depressive joyously psychotic existence we call life. En plus, since she's an artiste, creative types always get big-time bonus points.

5. Perspective of an American Hill Billy, because the man is attempting the connect the dots, and The Flying Spaghetti Monster knows there's a hell of a lot of 'em to sift through. If only he posted more pics of scantily-clad celebrity babes roaming around his Latin American home.

Birds of a feather

Concrete roads and Bush is coming,

Just months before President Bush leaves office, his administration is antagonizing environmentalists by proposing changes that would allow federal agencies to decide for themselves whether subdivisions, dams, highways and other projects have the potential to harm endangered animals and plants.

Bears are finally on their own.

In May, the polar bear became the first species declared as threatened because of climate change. Warming temperatures are expected to melt the sea ice the bear depends on for survival.

This summer I hear no advising,

The proposal, first reported by The Associated Press, would cut out the advice of government scientists who have been weighing in on such decisions for 35 years.

More dying on the globe.

"Over the years, the Endangered Species Act has become a regulatory nightmare that kills or stalls even the most well-crafted land-use projects," said Rob Rivett, president of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a group that supports property rights and limited government. "The economy suffers, people suffer, rational environmental planning suffers. Some careful streamlining is long overdue."

You're all an interminable string of vulgar epithets.

What do you think, Republican Jesus' Secretary of the Interior?

















"Dirkie, you're doing a heckuva job."

The Sentencing

It was a dark and stormy night. No, really, it was, at least until the rain finally stopped for a moment, leaving behind memorials in the form of countless pools of polluted water on top of which floated a flotilla of flakes of ancient rust stained the color of raw umber -- since retired, so we'll have to come up with something else but not its wild strawberry replacement, so eat it, Crayola, you atomic tangerine motherfuckers -- torn off the decrepit, cobalt blue building by the howling gusting of winds or the occasional hellfire stroke of lightning.

His combover blown into oblivion by said aerial cacophony, the manager managed to hand me a stack of rain-spattered video cassettes.

"I need you to take these to the second floor. That's where we put the deposit box, so get to it."

Knowing this made absolutely no sense since 1)no one puts a deposit box on the second floor except Ludovic Vaclav, proud yet crazy owner of Vaclav's Video Vignettes, and 2)we had yet to finish moving the rental operation from the shithole it currently resided and into our new digs next door in a McDonald's abandoned after the horrible e.coli outbreak of 2005 which the authorities assured us, with all the assurance of a veteran insurance salesman, was clean, I grabbed the tapes anyway and, muttering under my breath, the keys rattling in the wind with all the Dickensian fright they could muster, entered the building, its weathered brick sides pockmarked from too many drunken electric funky Satan grooves or however it is kids get their kicks these days. Since the entire structure -- once one of those pristine, gabled McDonald's, not those cheap-ass, single-floored 1970s models dotting dying American suburbia -- was ringed by a wreath of broken windows, it was a good thing I remembered to wear my shoes to work this time.

Pushing a hastily constructed mountain of broken chairs away from the staircase towards the dining room tables caked with years of dust and Big Mac grease, I trudged up the steps with the dexterous aplomb of a hallucinating sloth. My left foot landing on the penultimate step at the base of the second floor, I heard, emanating from beyond a door bearing a copper nameplate struck with the letters R. CHE and a thick smudge of reddish-brown filth obscuring the rest, a muffled noise reminiscent either of a few people mumbling to each other as if their mouths were stuffed with octopi, or zombies munching on some trainees McDonald's had left behind.

Overcoming my excitement at the impending hot sex action, which is what was obviously waiting behind said door, my hand trembling with anticipation ignored the rumble of sloshing gore and muzzled screaming to grab the knob and twist --

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

Fucking alarm. I hate work.

Well, no, that's wrong. Work is where I craft most of my wondrous blogging, but imagine if I could work from home. I'd be able to git r done and save on gas, and what is more American than weening ourselves off of fossil fuels controlled by Evil Islamist Jihadists?

"Don't you take public transportation to work?"

Shut up.

That bizarre dream capped my Sammy Hagar Edgar Allan Poe weekend of holing up for two days underneath a deeply overcast sky with headphones strapped to my skull, pen and paper on my lap and copious amounts of the best wine I could afford. No Ripple this time, chumps. I'm guessing the wife and kids were around somewhere. Maybe my sometimes-better-half screaming at me to get off my lazy ass -- hey, fuck you, I did some laundry -- was that godawful noise I had heard.


















Cooler than you'll ever be.

Hell, I didn't even turn the computer on and only found out this morning that Isaac Hayes had kicked the bucket, no doubt in a suave way.

Who's the white blogging dick
That's a sex machine to none of the chicks?
GRAVES!
Ya damn right!

Who is the man that would risk his neck
For no fucking man?
GRAVES!
Can you dig it?

Who's the cat that will cop out
When there's danger all about?
GRAVES!
Right On!

They say this cat Graves is a bad writer
SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
I'm talkin' 'bout Graves.
THEN WE CAN DIG IT!

He's a complicated man
But no one understands him -- no, really
RANDAL GRAVES!

Hey, keep it down, people, I'm busy with art, dammit. Don't make me sic Mr. Hayes' angry corpse on you. He can still fuck your shit up. I can only fuck your shit up if you're not home and you've left your apartment unlocked. Six thousand words, baby, about 5,990 of them pointless. Boy meets girl. One scene, only ten percent of which is dialogue, zero percent of which is boy and girl talking. Don't ask. After rereading and rewriting numerous sentences both before and after grafting further explication -- or ripping some off like an angry Frankenstein -- to each, I couldn't help but think of something Flaubert wrote in one of his letters, I can't remember to whom:

"It is easier to become a millionaire and live in Venetian palaces full of masterworks than to write one good page and be satisfied with oneself."

No shit. I'm not sure how healthy it is to spend dozens of minutes either butchering or performing delicate surgery on a single sentence until it feels perfect and is able to walk upright, imparting emotion and wisdom that I probably stole from a writer who's actually talented -- but not Flaubert, I've never borrowed from him, the stupid hack frog -- given that it'll probably be one million AD before I feel good about any of them and by that time we'll all have mutated through centuries of nuclear fallout into beings who've lost all higher brain functions and exist only to feed, shit, butcher our neighbors for their stuff, sleep and die. Which isn't all that much different than nowadays, except we at least attempt to prettify the proceedings with our illusions.

You think I'm lazy?*

"C'mon stretch, I ain't gettin' up."

*hey, it's the weekend. See you clowns on Monday.

How to win a war

"My friends, what Russia is doing to Georgia is reprehensible. And although Cindy and I are too many states away to help, rest assured Atlanta, we will never forget you."

How cool a name does the NATO Secretary General have?

C'mon man, we're only down by one, jaap de hoop!

Rag & Bone

That's how the short-term financial future feels during -- and before -- and especially after -- the harrowing experience of back-to-school shopping. Get caught up on a series of medical extortions bills, liquor cabinet replenishments various car repairs and the utilities -- from the past nine winters -- and then this annual torment. Never fucking fails.


















"Well, you little bastards won't stop growing, so in addition to outfitting you in a swanky new wardrobe every August while poor ole dad is stuck with his closetful of ragged, moth-eaten t-shirts -- no it's not by choice, I'm very fashionable and you know it -- they didn't change the dress code again, did they, 'cause I'm not taking all this shit back -- I have to continue feeding you. It's a law or something, and unlike the President, I follow the law.












Here's a loaf of bread. No, it's white, organic whole wheat's too expensive. No, that's not it for dinner. There's butter in the fridge. Toss some PB&J on it if you want. Fine, have cereal. Just enough milk for one of you? Flip a goddamn coin, Texas steel cage match, I don't care.














Whaddya mean each student has to bring in an additional pack of pencils? Popsicle sticks just don't hold the same constructive charm? What the hell is your class going to do with 60 boxes of tissue? Contract the Black Death? The teachers are collecting the red pens? Why don't they buy their own fucking pens?"

At least our high schooler doesn't show any inclination like some of these kids do towards dressing up as if employed by the Vegas "burlesque" shows Republicans enjoy railing against in the presence of their constituents before they slink away to spend thousands at those same businesses in anticipation of railing against them once more when the cameras are rolling. I knew we were good parents. Must've been all that death metal and commie propaganda I made them listen to growing up while mom and dad were holed up watching "burlesque" shows in our bedroom.

Sniff.