Partnership for an Idiot-Free America

My favorite new song...

Courtesy of Mika

Poor husband. He did manage to get some shut-eye finally. The wife--who was awoken from a desperate slumber thanks to the objectionable goings-on here this evening--didn't fair so well.

It was just a couple of weeks ago when two friends of mine were sitting in a house in the heart of North Minneapolis. An otherwise happy, booze-lubed conversation was catastrophically interrupted by gunfire just outside.

Now, my biatches can TAWK! I'm not referring to the kind of chatter you might hear at a quilting bee or even a rowdy 'football' match at the local Irish pub. You throw me and my clouder together and you'd be lucky if that 'Let's get ready to ruuuuumble' sports announcer guy could overcome our volcanically-volumed exchanges. So, the fact that my peeps actually heard gunshots begs for some disconcertion.

In a state of disbelief, my friends snuck to a nearby window. Sure enough, a small army of miscreants were right outside the house and one of them was wielding a firearm. They watched as the thuglets unabashedly skirted away down the alley and back into a night of ill-deeding.

Alas, the police were called and squad cars rolled up shortly thereafter. There is some speculation of a potential victim in this crime, as an ambulance came and someone was taken into custody.

Not five minutes before all of this went down, two also-very-close friends of mine left that same house to head home. I don't even want to consider the 'what-if's' on this one. I shutter at the thought. I shutter also re: the COUNTLESS times I've been on that very home's porch into the wee hours of an evening, less than lucid..joyfully ignorant.

It's so very easy to sit in a warm little house at the end of the street and watch the news, shaking our heads as we struggle to digest what is happening around us. We are a nation completely detached from the reality of the downfall of our microcosm in this universe.

As you may already know, one of our cars almost got stolen for the second time in as many months tonight. It didn't get very far, thank god, broke-ass-piece-of-shit that it is, but still.

I used to really enjoy the late evenings the hub and I would spend outside in the yard, snuggling around a nice little fire as we mused about life, repented for past sins and played dumb games. These invasions, 3 this year alone, are really beginning to encroach on my sanctity of home.

As was necessary due to the night's events, hub and I talked briefly about the possibility of getting a firearm of our own, in the event our house is ever breached by those deemed unwelcome. I have personally been extraordinarily adamant that I do not want a gun in this house. You could no more get me to budge on the topic than you could airlift Machu Picchu to exit 8a on the Jersey Turnpike.

And so it goes. For the first time in my life, I'm considering letting the hub purchase a weapon. What does that say about us, as a culture, that we need to have these conversations with one another, that we need to consider our options with regard to our very real and quite actual self-preservation?

All I can really say is, Homeland Security is starting to mean something altogether different to me these days and, in case you were wondering, no warm fires will be burning in our yard tonight.

What a world.

So my husband does this fantastic and brilliant rant about Rendering the Evildoers, which managed to totally confuse me..at first.

See, I thought the Curmudgeon was speaking literally and was going to talk about, you know, rendering. The hub is a chef after-all. It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Alas, my conclusion proved erroneous and sadly, he postured no culinary angle. But then--then my evil twin reared her ugly, twisted, perfect little head and got me to thinking:

Imagine a world where we could extricate all heinous wrong-doers by lowering them in to a spare-no-expense, infernal-hell-inspired, roiling-hot, Cauldron-of-the-Apocalypse!

Don't you see?! Once we get them all boiled to bits and their nasty husks melted, we take the *say it with me kids* renderings, turn them into soap and clean up all the VA hospitals!!!!

I know, I know! I outdo even myself...

So I was sitting here petting Claude-the-kitty when all of a sudden it occurred to me--liberal Americans are like cats being held captive by a bunch of fucking fish people.

No matter how much we meow; no matter how overfilled our litter box; or under-filled our food bowl; no matter how many of us need homes; and no matter how often we push our little faces into the hand of the fish people lookin' for love, they just don't seem to give a shit.

We didn't want fish people, Bitch! We didn't VOTE for fish people. We wanted some mother fuckin' CAT PEOPLE, MOTHER FUCKERS!

The sad..the pathetic...ne, the ass-fuck-sans-lube-reality is, neocons fish people just want to toss a couple of flakes of fake food into a tub then go about their selfish business while their electorates dependents fill their bellies worth of shit and swish miserably in their own fecal matter. Fish people don't want to hear anybody bitching about going hungry, or living in squalor or not being able to get their purr on.

In the end, neocons fish people just want to be able to say they have a pet-- you know, cuz it like shows they care about something other than themselves. They LIVE for people to come over and say, "Oh what pretty fish," promptly followed by "My golf-cart or yours?"

I swear to god, the next time I see a fucking fish , I'm gonna fucking EAT IT! And not for any other reason than to piss off the neocons.

...Fucking fish people can suck it.

I loathe to admit I'm an Idol watcher. It may make me an insipid little corporately-sponsored lamby-pie in a flock of fucktards, but I can't help it. I'm a train-wreck addict.

Don't get me wrong, I like success. I like having it, and I like watching good people achieve it, but really let's be honest. Watching Simon go after a punk performance is like a watching nurse Ratched gut a Spanish mackerel--sadistic, emotionally detached, and violently amusing.

Which brings me into this unchartered quandary. What do you do when a contestant is so consistently bad even Simon has surrendered his Ginsus?

Sanjaya Malakar is a disaster. He's a nice enough kid. I can't even blame him for sticking around...to a point. I'd even venture to say he's got some talent, if only he'd grow a pair and use it.

However; the reality is, Sanjaya's a twerp whose popularity is being sustained by a bunch of 13 year-old girls who are happily experimenting with their privates. Add to that the contingent of Anti-Idol voters, and Howard Stern's readily-influenced flock and we've got ourselves a fine theater of the absurd. It's the Gong Show sans gong! It's performance purgatory!

And there, there is my quandary. How long can you sit around and wait for a train to wreck before your ass gets too tired and your bladder begins to quiver?

I gotta tell yah, while I've got one hand negotiating the remote, the other is off crafting a mighty fine mitt of Angel Soft...