8/2/07

Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 4)

Why don’t you get back into bed?

Yellow dog and holly
A bit of Tommy Jolly,
Alder Gators.
Hungry Hollow Jammies
Salmon Trout and Lammies,
Dump Day.

Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part 5)

Why don’t you get back into bed?

I don’t have a Velcro face.
My dog is friendly.
We live in a time of clumpable litter.
I ‘m not on a transplant list.
I don’t live in Newark.
I don’t live in Baghdad.
I don’t live in the White House.

Of course, a Velcro face might be nice. I could snap it off whenever people say something so boring as to require my courteous attention. When people ask stupid questions like, “What are you thinking,” I could simply expose my faceless hole, allowing my gaping maw to leave them agape, sending them home to keyword land, “Ann Arbor, man without a face.” Legend has it that I was so unlucky as to have botched a suicide attempt, leaving myself with no countenance, no visage, no piehole, just two eyes and a bad attitude. Googling myself at Starbuck’s, I found out that I’m rude, belligerent and mean. I suppose I should always keep a rag stuffed in it, but it’s often (not all of the time) fun to watch the horrified look on their faces when I push my note in their face.

Who would want a mean dog? Maybe Michael Vick. Some redneck, cheeseball from Manitowoc, a Falcons fan, is aghast that their inner city hero from Newport News Va. (my birthplace) grew up in circumstances so desperate that dog fighting was one of the more respectable street activities. When the gladiator walks in the arena nobody cares where he came from. And when he’s finished, he’s disposable. But should we really expect an American public so ignorant as to think the concept of “civic duty” implies an obligation to vote on American Idol, to care about any of the minority supermen who reinforce the idea that the only way out of the ghetto is sports. It’s no wonder they identify more with Michael Jordan than Martin Luther King. HARPER’S INDEX: “Rank of golf and basketball, respectively, among the ten pro sports Americans view as the most ‘ethical” and ‘upstanding’”: 1, 10.”

Clumpable litter. What can I say? Thank God I have cancer, I no longer have to touch it. Just so you know I’m not above self-deprecation, I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: I ate cat shit. It’s true. I was, shall we say, in my cups, when I dropped a chocolate turtle quite close to a cat with a clump of shit on its tail. In a strange, but yucky, coincidence, the turdy clump fell very near the choco goody (this was before my cataract surgery). Trying to be funny, as always, I jokingly pretended to eat the cat shit. Guess what? It was cat shit.

Transplant list. Can you get a personality transplant? Perhaps the day will come when this is possible. When it is, there will be a long waiting list.

Newark, New Jersey represents just how low the safety net is in America. Why should we care about the black, urban poor? Why should we care about providing basic health benefits to our most needy citizens? There’s more important work to be done, like spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world. Forget the murder, mayhem, and injustice that prowl the streets of America’s inner cities. HARPER”S INDEX: “Number of U.S. prisoners freed through DNA evidence since 1989: 201.”
“Percentage who have been mistakenly identified by eyewitnesses: 77%.”

Baghdad, Iraq: HARPER’S INDEX: “Percentage of Baghdad residents who have a family member or friend who has been wounded or killed since 2003: 77%.”

The White House: “Never have so few been responsible for the deaths of so many.”
-- R. Louis Tessier