POSTING TO RE-COMMENCE MOMENTARILY

Can't you just smell the anticipation?

FRANK McCOURT, 1930-2009

I'M BEGINNING TO SUSPECT WE SHOULD'VE JUST HANDED THIS CRAPSTORM TO McCAIN

I don't know, man. Obama's evisceratingly incomprehensible cabinet appointments, his copping to so-called "screw-ups," more than half-a-million more jobs poofed out of existence last month, my own disastrous unemployment crisis and financial disintegration ... maybe Lumpy McCain and his far-north Ho should've been elected instead. Obama owns the looming catastrophe, whether he wants to or not -- more and more people I happen to talk to can't even remember that there was such a thing called the "Bush Administration ..."

Sorry, people. Optimism is pretty much an unhealthy luxury I can't afford these days.

WE WILL GET BY

This one's for Lee over at Captain Quahog -- tickets to see the Dead? You lucky bastard.

SURE WOULD LIKE TO GET BACK INTO THIS BLOGGING BUSINESS

If anybody has any suggestions for jump-starting one's better blogging instincts, for re-vitalizing one's moribund snark glands, I'm all ears. Seriously. In the meanwhile, here's a nasty sample of the real reality I've been dealing with lately:

California unemployment rate reaches 9.3%

Happy days, happy days ...

WON'T GET FOOLED

In honor of all the unreasonable expectations the incoming administration is already being saddled with, and the halfwits who are starting to gag uncontrollably on their misplaced, utterly empty illusions -- already.

I laugh ironically, painfully ...

A BRIEF ALTERNATIVE TO WATCHING THE WORLD FALL TO PIECES

My niece Karmen and my brother Dan, "Still Early":

MORE WORDS OF WISDOM ...

A PICTURE WORTH SWIPING

A thousand pardons to profmarcus and company ... this is just too priceless to pass up.

SOON TO RETURN TO THIS BLOGGING NONSENSE ...

Can you stand the excitement? I can't ...

Back to the inexplicably useless blogging phenomenon, sooner rather than later. The only question is ... why? Whatever.

LOOKIN' FER A JOB ... ON A TUESDAY

It's been one hell of a long time since I felt even remotely motivated to yet again indulge this blogging nonsense. Too many real-world pressures pounding my attention span to a wimpy little pulp, you see, not the least of which is struggling with the unemployment thing in the dark age of Bush. Ick. Anyway, came across this from Mike Malloy's website today ...

Tuesday Afternoon

The song, not the time of day and day of the week. Justin Hayward wrote it, what? forty years ago? Oh, my.


Tuesday . . . . afternoon,
I'm just beginning to see, now I'm on my way
It doesn't matter to me, chasing the clouds away.

Something, calls to me,
The trees are drawing me near, I've got to find out why
Those gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh.

I'm looking at myself reflections of my mind,
It's just the kind of day to leave myself behind.
So gently swaying through the fairyland of love,
If you'll just come with me you'll see the beauty of

Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday afternoon . . .

I thought of those lyrics when I checked out this morning's headlines. Quick advice: Don't check out this morning's headlines. Anyway, join me tonight - Tuesday evening - because it's just the kind of day to leave myself behind.

Whatever.

HELL OFFICIALLY FREEZES OVER

Yeah, I know -- it's been a hell of a long time since I paid a visit to this brain-damaged waste of time. Not that anybody gives a shit, I'm sure; I'm just between sloppy drunken episodes in the long-running and utterly hopeless job quest that has gone on for fucking months. Whatever. Anyway, I came across a blog post that (apparently) I never posted, and I'm just buzzed enough to stick it online. Yes -- I've seemingly resurrected this nonsense, and hell has officially frozen over.

My unposted blog-spew follows:

I've spent the last several months desperately attempting -- fruitlessly, pointlessly -- to ignore as much of what's going on as possible, to stop riding the wobbling see-saw of hope and despair, to unhitch Fortuna's debilitating wheel from the bent and greaseless axle of my troubled consciousness, by paying only so much attention as is absolutely necessary. I've tried to move myself even further towards the margins and fringes, not so much to garner perspective but obliviousness, to shut out what little awareness of things I might actually have. A psychic pit-stop, a mental safe-room, an extended breather from the immense psychological burden of giving a shit within a cultural milieu that prizes self-centered indifference above all else ...

Needless to say, this useless endeavor has been an unmitigated failure -- not to mention being misguided and ludicrously hypocritical as well.

Luckily (or not, I'm not sure which), I've been rudely jolted out of my self-generated torpor through the highly unlikely agency of what appears to be an endless troop of homeless people, purposefully rummaging around in the long row of garbage cans across the street from the grimy brewpub I happen to be sitting in. I seem to be the only quasi-alcoholic here who notices this interesting activity, occurring as it is but a few feet from the front windows of this tackily hip crap hole; from the neatly-dressed executroids in their SUV's, to plainclothes cops with guns, to the self-conscious grunge-fucks who ride up on their carefully de-engineered bicycles while smoking "organic" cigarettes (the basic clientele of this place), they're all pretending not to see the garbage can people they practically have to wade through -- or drive over -- just so's they can get their desperately needed booze fix. I watch this low-rent spectacle and I think: what's worse, that there are so many in the "wealthiest nation on earth" who must forage through the trash to survive, or that the people responsible for producing the trash in the first place act as if the rubbish-harvesters don't actually exist?

The irony of deriding confirmed consumerist assholes for actively ignoring the blatantly rising tide of poverty, homelessness, and all the other fun features of predatory capitalism, while at the same time complaining about how difficult it is to ignore all the grotesque ugliness myself, is not lost. In fact, "irony" is probably not the correct term -- "hypocritical stupidity" better approximates the situation here. Whatever the case, the idea that ignoring something will make it go away, whether that something be dumpster-diving street people or the neo-con appetite for destruction, is patently ridiculous and self-defeating. Leave it to a group of hard-case trash pickers to dish up an unexpected reality check; to remind me that, all the pseudo-snark and sophisticated cynicism aside, I'm basically no better than the disconnected money-worshiping corporate fuckwad in his Escalade, righteously plowing through the paper-thin fabric of this tattered society with nary a worry or concern, or a thought really about anything. What an eye opener.

Then again, I might actually have published this crap -- I can't remember. Who cares?

WHILE I'M TRYING TO DECIDE IF I REALLY WANT TO CONTINUE WITH THIS THING ...

... why not scoot over to Vichy Democrats, a collaborative blog that has some of the best writing -- and just plain thinkafying (?) -- I've come across, in ever so long, among the sour sewer-spew and rotting brain-cabbage that most of the bogworld is. That includes my own, if anyone feels compelled to call me out on such an unfair characterization.

(Hey, Thersites -- sorry that I haven't had an opportunity to get back to you. The dramatically fuzzy imperatives of despair and unemployment have made their presence felt a little too strongly of late ... I haven't been able to keep ANYTHING up-to-date)

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE ...

... before the Pelosi-lead "House of Representatives" injects the House version of the FISA travesty with immunity for corporate criminality? Tell you what -- I'll bet anybody, oh let's see, a pint of amber ale at the Rubicon Brewing Company (sorry, but my low-budget lifestyle is a bit truncated during these unemployed days) that the Vichy Democratic appeasers will successfully re-infect the House's FISA bill with immunity before a week is up. If you're in the Sacramento area, say, a week from today, and the halfwits in Congress don't do what we all know they will do, the beer's on me. I'll be there in any event, getting hammered. Anyhow ...

By the way: up to this point, I haven't had much of an opinion about the two officially-approved Democratic candidates for president; the fact that Obama voted against telecom immunity, and Clinton refused to actually go on record as either for or against ... Well, that's enough for me. I'm wholeheartedly endorsing Obama -- fuck Hillary.

A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO THE TROLLS AT "INFRAGARD"

By now, all thinking people who actually care (you know who you are) are aware of this "Infragard" bullshit -- if you aren't, read this article over at The Progressive. Personally, all I can think of to do is, briefly, call off my self-imposed semi-retirement from the blogging sewer and dish out this message to the subhumans at "Infragard" ...






HEY INFRAGARD: GO FUCK YOURSELVES.

Just had to get that out.