Saturday, May 24, 2008

Tired again

It's early Saturday, and I didn't post last night because, frankly, I was whipped. I have a ugly cold that's been kicking my ass (my right facial sinus has, apparently, been replaced by a large wet sack of concrete), I had two loooong days of hard, grinding physical labor this week(and it's sad to admit that at 50 I no longer have the capacity to hump up and down hills all day and shake Daddy's little moneymaker all night; ugly, but there it is) and the usual kidlet-and-domestic needs...I'm tired. Tired of being desired. Tired of love uninspired...OK, sorry. I'll stop now.

(Apropos of nothing but the preceding number...wasn't Madeline Kahn effing brilliant? There was a time in the Seventies when she was probably the funniest actress working. No big thing, just saying.)

Plus, Fridays are supposed to be my day to think deep about the Big World out there and come up with some insight, a soupçon of wisdom or two, a witty epigraph to liven your day and make you want to return again and again to read the Les Propheties de Table Graphic de Feu.

And to save my life I can't think of anything.

Domestically the primary season drags on and on, enlivened only by the occasional gaffe and the increasingly goofy, "horse race" centered, personality-driven crap that passes for political discourse in this country. The inability of both the American public and our chattering class (who continue to blabber on about Obama's "problem with the white working class" as if this was anything else) to confront the nasty reality that many of my peers will refuse to vote for a black man even if it is in their own political, economic and social best interest is making me sicker and tireder than the damn head cold.We bicker about trivialities, watch our "leaders" fight to cut our own throats and ignore the vampire in the corner. Jesus wept.

And abroad, our government - OK, let's be honest and call it what it is, this fucking idiot administration - makes me feel like Charles Laughton in the old 1935 "Mutiny on the Bounty", who surveys the unpromising lot of handless dopes he's been handed by the Admiralty and drawls in his wonderfully sneering Laughtonish way: "During the recent heavy weather, I've had the opportunity to watch all of you at work on deck and aloft. You don't know wood from canvas! And it seems you don't want to learn! Well, I'll have to give you a lesson!" But I feel at a standstill. I've written and called my "representative", dropped H&I letter-rounds on the newspaper...the only thing that's kept me from going to work for the local Democratic party organization is that I simply don't have another minute in the day. I feel like nothing I do, or can do, can prevent my country from doing something suicidally stupid, like continuing to whistle past the fiscal graveyard, or insist on miring itself further in the Middle Eastern tarbaby by, say, bombing Tehran.

So the bottom line is: I don't have a soupçon or any other kind of wisdom right now. I'm feeling particularly un-wise, unhelpful and, honestly, feeling pretty fuckin' grumpy about that.

So, like any good announcer, when the game is boring and crap and the audience is getting restless I'll just have to tell some stories. And I'll be back with those in just a bit.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Considering the gems you've given us the last few monthes, I'd say that you've earned a break from the grind of being bright and witty :-)

Anonymous said...

Relax big guy. Take a break this weekend and treat your little guys to the magic of bratwurst or maybe ballpark franks grilled outdoors.

I was cantankerous and bad-tempered today myself, but not by hard labor. A couple of buddies and I visited four local cemeteries and placed over a thousand flags on veteran's graves. Saddened by that, it grew to an initial disgust with 3-day tourists, surf-perch derbies, car rallies, Memorial Day discount sales, and wall-to-wall politics on the telly. But thinking about it I am sure those vets, or most of them, would enjoy the picnics, the kids, the fun and the fishing. So I became less and less surly as the day wore on.

And don't be too hard on those of us not so enthralled by Obama. Most of us realize that he will probably make a good president if elected. It is not race. It is more a question of can he get elected, and dislike of his Chicago acquaintances and his campaign staff's sliming of his main primary opponent. We will come around in the end.

Buy hey, don't forget the marshmallows.

Anonymous said...

A former soldier from a Royal Gurkha Regiment, Bahadur Sherchan, has just become the oldest person ever to conquer Mount Everest. At 76!!!

"I have vigorosity [sic] inside me and inside my life-philosophy," Mr Sherchan said.

"...I have commenced the great mission with a great vision in a great season (spring season) to fight against the mighty Mount Everest with my will-power of mind and clean energy of my heart."

Lisa said...

Ms. Kahn was indeed effin' brilliant.

As per Obama and race -- too bad the liberals are too blind to see that they shouldn't be fighting both Clinton and the rest of America that's not ready for a black candidate of Obama's background. If one must look at his race, and in the U.S. today, one must, Obama is more radical than say an Andrew Young. His affiliations and voting record make him too foreign from the mainstream.

While he may be a good candidate in the future, that time is not now.
The liberals will feel very progressive about putting him on the ticket, yet in the face of overwhelming societal dissatisfaction with the past 7 years, he may well lose. That is a terrible injustice.

I can't help but wonder what mixture of ineptitude, callowness and machination led to this.

Lisa said...

Chief,

I couldn't agree more about the self-inflicted wound that, as my late friend Lurch would call them, the great unwashed perpetrate upon themselves when they vote Republican.

I have tried to reason it out. Many simply do so b/c they wish to affiliate with their "betters." One day, they too may be able to afford greens fees.

The NASCAR circuit sees them as the protector of God and Country. There are so many others who for no sensible reason have voted Republican, but who, I believe, just might have shifted their vote this time 'round, so dissatisfied are they with the blatant offenses of the last two terms.

However, those key change-over demographics are unlikely to go with Obama v. McCain. Clinton v. McCain, possibly. I predict the party will shoot itself in the foot with Obama.

But it will be a swell election night party for the West Coasters. (sorry--I'd like to be in OR, too!)

FDChief said...

Lisa: MmmmmIdunno. Remember that it was Hillary that was the original Wicked Bitch of the Rush/Coulter shouters. There's a LOT of hate there.

That's why I say that the Dems have ben so goddam dysfunctional. Let's leave alone the sad act that has been the 110th Congress and look at what the Dems have given us: an untried African-American neophyte from freakin' Chicago, the original home of black Democratic machine politics, and a thoroughly-hated woman from New York by way of Arkansas whose tactics appear to suggest that she's the best Republican not running for the GOP.

Well, fucketty fuck! That's a choice like the choice the smallest dog in the dog pound has. If you stand and fight you get torn apart and if you run you get bit on the ass.

Makes my butt itch.

That's why I've said, and said repeatedly: the system is broken. We're well and truly fucked. The only question is how soon does the icy water reach the promenade deck?

Lisa said...

Chief,

Alas, so true. How did it come to these two?

O.k., so I'll seek refuge in cinema for the moment: You mention the promenade deck, (in more of a Titanic ref., I know) and I see a Chas. Laughton ref. in the post. Brings me to mind of "Billy Budd"--a wonderful, quiet film, do you think?

FDChief said...

Lisa: I confess to never having seen "Billy Budd". I remember the story as rather tragic, where the foretopman is the innocent who suffers for his goodness...

On the other hand, Laughton as Bligh is a wonderfully scene-chewing bad guy; his problem is that Clark Gable isn't his equal as Fltecher Christian. The remake, with Brando as Christian, is a real smoulderama if you can catch it. Reminds you that the Big Guy really could act - and was a hunka-hunka burning love, too.

Lisa said...

Terence Stamp was perfect as the fey Billy Budd. He would later actualize his impulses in "Priscila, Queen of the Desert."

But Laughton, he of his own special predilections, was magnificent. I never did see Brando as Christian. I never much liked him, but if you say his performance was smouldering, I shall take you at your word.