The Twenty-One Stooges

The Twenty-One Stooges
Kennesaw
Do I really want to start the day making fun of other Americans? You bet your sweet, southern, rear end, I do. I’m just poking fun, but at least its bi-partisan poking and no that does not mean Bill Clinton is running again. The idea that buying for next Christmas starts before the turkey and ham are gone is enough to make you sick. The idea that the next election cycle begins before the last one is over, is worse. It has taken less than three years to narrow it down from 313 million Americans to twenty-one.
Well that’s not completely accurate, there are twenty-one viable or not so viable candidates, it’s according to how you look at it. A least five are average Americans who have taken it upon themselves to save our country, they have a snowballs chance. The worst part, they will be beaten by several write in candidates which appear, every cycle.
The most successful write in, to date, Mickey Mouse? Not bad for an eighty year old rodent whose inappropriate behavior is well documented. The only write in to ever beat Mickey, Hillary Clinton? In the 2008 election she and the fifteen different ways her name was misspelled, beat him for the first time in history. Got to love us Americans, we ignore the possible Americans who might actually represent, we the people and vote for cartoon characters.
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln continue to get votes. If you turned the TV on during their address the nation you’d need to check the guide to make sure you weren’t watching, Tales from the Crypt reruns. “Hehehehehehe, I dig what you’ve done with the capital, love those cherry trees. I did not have axual relations with that tree.” What could a guy who has had all his organs, including his brain removed, get done? It appears to me, we’ll find out.
So once we get done laughing at the fifteen Americans who have less chance of being president than Chuck Norris or seventies, rocker Ted Nugent, we must turn our attention to those few who actually have the money to buy the presidency, Oh, sorry I misspoke, I meant get elected. Wait, before I go on let’s not dismiss the real possibility of Ted becoming president. Teds platform, kill it, cook it, stuff it and hang it on the wall. If he’d have been president, Saddam and Bin Laden would have been smiling down from the walls of his Michigan ranch in the late eighties, eliminating the need for our boys to leave the country at all.
Alright back to the true contenders. We are faced with the following choices, Barack, Mitt, Newt or Ron. My grandfather always told me, to never trust a man with two first names. Ron has three. Ronald Ernest Paul, what happened here, is he trying to hide something, for the love of Pete, get a last name? Ron would you like to buy a vowel or perhaps a last name? I’d like Ronald Ernest Pauline Jones, it has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?
I am continually mortified that Newton Leroy Gingrich is from Georgia, every time someone points it out, I cringe, imagine my relief to discover he is actually from Pennsylvania; I was relieved, but not surprised. Who would name an innocent child Newton Leroy? What long lasting, troubling effects could pop up later? I mean, the only thing that would be worse is to shorten it to Newt, dog gone it, too late. Will we end up in world war three because someone calls him Leroy?
Now to Willard, who would name their child Willard Mitt or the bigger question, once it was done, why would they call him Mitt? All these guys were picked on as children; I guarantee it, leaving them with only two options, one going into law enforcement or two politics. How can a man who has made 42 million in the last two years have any connection with a man who falls short a hundred bucks, a month on his bills? Or a single mother who that same hundred bucks causes to pay ninety bucks in late fees which compounds her problems monthly? He’s concerned with compound interest while most Americans are more concerned with compound poverty.
I refuse to get started on our current president which has the funniest name of all, but if the name fits? I’m not saying these guys won’t make good presidents and in fact, I’m just horsing around. I try to get serious every election cycle and it usually lasts about ten minutes. Then I laugh, giggle, snort, burp, poot and blow whatever I’m drinking through my nose as I write stuff like this. We as Americans have learned two things, it’s better to laugh than cry and it’s easier to smile than ask why.

The Sardinian Occupation of a Buick

I don’t know who Murphy was, but his laws are more inescapable than any passed by the Supreme Court and require no gargantuan army to enforce them. As we prepared to leave on Jan. 16th the car, big enough for the trip, succumbed and decided, at the last minute to have problems. A much smaller Buick appeared to do its part in the newest American Revolution, what’s more American than a slightly small, Buick?
It took a shoe horn and grease to load five young idealists, enough ideals to stock Wal-Mart, if Wal-Mart carried such things, the gear required to be homeless for two days and an overweight journalist, into it. Undaunted the Buick smiled and departed on its journey to deliver a heaping, overflowing dose of Americans and their stuff, to the streets of the most important political, capital of the world.
The small Buick and the overflowing amounts of patriotism it contained defied the laws of physics for almost 600 miles, 950 pounds of, insert smelly word here, in an 800 pound sack. Murphy could not fit inside, but was content to ride atop the car, kind of like the dog of a certain candidate who wishes to be the next prince of Pennsylvania Avenue. As the miles passed below, the rain and cold descended from above.
The train ride into the city of Washington DC. was enlightening as people jockeyed to avoid Americans who would dare come to the nation’s capital to exercise their American rights and the signs they carried. The dash across the city, through the rain, intended to dodge the drops falling into the freezing temperatures was doomed. By the time the tent was up, the rain’s victory was nearly complete; except the spirits of the group gleamed through the cold, rainy, predawn, unimpeded.
The march to occupy Congress started at nine and several hundred protesters shouted their way down Pennsylvania Avenue, surrounded by bicycle cops, motorcycle cops, cops in cars, cops on foot, cops on horses and cops driving vans and buses.
As the morning moved along some were arrested, but their reason for being there was not diminished nor denied. Several hundred turned into 1500 by lunch, of course by then most of the media had returned to their rooms to write unflattering pieces about the protesters and their numbers, while drinking martini’s and eating Grey Poupon on imported salmon sandwiches.
At 6:30 the number had risen to over 3000 and with great purpose and a verbal power, adequate for changing the world, they marched to the Supreme Court. The media sipped their drinks and told stories of the wars they almost died in as thousands of average Americans owned the streets of our Capital, “Who’s streets, our streets?” echoed between the high-rise symbols of our freedom and might, as they marched toward the Whitehouse.
Thousands of Citizens arrived at the Whitehouse accompanied by hundreds of police officers and a generous amount of riot gear which waited in the wings, in the end it was not needed. The only thing missing from this, the most important and decidedly, possible volatile time of the day, was the media. I’m sure the Hotels along Pennsylvania Avenue loaded up expense accounts with designer beer and expensive food, as the reporters prepared stories about what had happened instead of what was happening. I guess it isn’t true, that you get what you pay for, or maybe the news industry got exactly what they wanted and not one word more.
After someone was spotted peeking from a window of the Whitehouse, the protest, hoping it was the president, retook the streets and moved back toward Congress for an occu-party, complete with pizza and dancing. The march had taken all day and had controlled over six miles of streets in the most influential city of the world.
If I have a war story to tell, it’ll be of a return trip, in an occupied Buick, containing a young, Afghanistan, war veteran with a tear on his cheek, who after laying his life at the altar of freedom has now lay his tears below the symbols of that freedom, containing a soft spoken Christian from the mountains of Georgia, on a quest to decide his level of commitment, containing a slightly psychotic, conservative, hippy, struggling to find his place in this world, containing an understated, bookseller with no delusions of, but a firm possession of grandeur and an ingrained ability to lead, containing the Buick’s master, a unassuming Massachusettsian who has the capability of being one of the future princes of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
This slightly overweight journalist with bad knees, who struggled to keep up, has always been proud to be an American, but never more proud than he is today. I salute and will always be proud to be counted among the Sardinians.

Pecans, Vegans, Runners and Other Nuts

As I write this my bags are packed, I’ll need to move and change my name as I expect a visit from the Animals liberation Army. While they may not advocate the eating or using of any animals products, they have no such reservations about shooting a meat chomping, Redneck.
I ran five miles a day for over five years, all the while smoking three packs a day; it really toasted the other runner’s shorts. One day while running I realized no one was chasing me. I decided I would never run again, unless someone was.
Later when overseas and involved in Martial Arts, someone convinced me that Buddha, Mohammad, Bruce Lee and Jesus were not only pals but cousins or brothers. It was during that time I became a vegetarian. I spent a year abstaining from meat, but noticed the other vegetarians I encountered were playing with less than a full basket of mixed nuts. It only took one cheeseburger to cure myself of that foolishness.
If vegetarians are mixed nuts then Vegans are a nut roll. A vegan is simply a vegetarian with an attitude, a gun and a little religious fanaticism mixed in. They walk around carrying m-sixteen’s wearing those robes made famous by Moammar Gadhafi and Yasser Arafat. They carry signs saying “Kill the Killers” while yelling “Death to all those who kill”.
If I ever step into the voting booth and see the choices Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent and Vegan on the ticket I’ll know the end is near. If a Vegan becomes president I’m thinking Cuba might become much more attractive. Talk about getting wrapped up in a bunch of wars, the animals of the planet would be safe, but it would be open season on the 97% of us who are not Vegans. If all living things have a soul, that means plants have them too. No one can survive on rocks and dirt, so if the vegans really believe their own words they will become extinct, quickly. Good lord, if no one or nothing can eat anything else, the world will end within a week, making the whole earth experiment pointless.
I know we are all different; it’s what our country is about. I’ll try not to shove a pizza in your mouth, but you best not try to rip one from mine, you might lose a finger. Our country has room for all manner of foolishness and it’s proven every day.
Then you got the work out wacko’s. Try drinking a ton of protein shakes, taking a fist full of vitamins, working out for several hours a day, running for several miles a day, eating expensive organic foods and drinking those eight full glasses of water they recommend. It makes me tired thinking about it and it makes me need to pee. Add to this that soy milk makes you sterile and I’m simply not getting wrapped up in it. How about steroids? Let’s take shots, do what? Not me, why would I want to use a drug that not only doesn’t create euphoria, but may cause you to be so irritable that you kill someone, while suffering from roid rage?
All of us will die of something, someday. I can image sharing my final hospital room with people like these. I’ll be relaxed, probably still sneaking out to smoke. The runners will be paranoid, wondering who might be catching them since they can no longer run and worrying about the seven ounces they’ve gained in the last week, which raised their total weight to that of an anorexic feather. Visions of BBQ riblets and McRib sandwiches, which may or may not contain meat, will be dancing through the vegetarian’s dreams. The vegans will be plotting to kill us all using weapons containing no animal products, while suffering from cheeseburger envy. Secretly they will be cursing themselves for never eating meat and once they give up on the idea, will get really upset upon realizing the only cheeseburger available to them will come from the hospital kitchen and will contain everything, but taste.
We’ll all die, but I’ll do it eating the Big Mac, snuck into the hospital by my overweight grandson. As the vegetarian, the vegan and the runner who is contemplating a new diet so he can die at his optimum weight, look on, I’ll chomp on a fat juicy cheeseburger. I’ll die with a greasy smile on my face rather than the look of shock that will be on theirs. Dying from nothing will be the toughest thing they’ve had to face in life. The only people who will die with a carrot in their mouths will be Bugs Bunny and Vegans. What do pecans, pistachios, vegans, runners, roid riders Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have in common? They’re all nuts.

I've Fallen and My names Not Chuck

It’s the name of my next book which will contain all the jumbled meanderings of a mixed up, shook up, slightly out of balance, redneck mind. Remember the commercial where the older woman has fallen and says, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up? Yeah I’ve fallen a few times, sometimes I couldn’t get up, sometimes I shouldn’t have gotten up and one time I was hit by a car and fell up which hurts much worse than falling down.

I’ve been knocked down, thrown down, tripped and flipped. I’ve been kicked out, picked out and run out of more places than most people will admit to running into. I’ve had my doubts about entering some places, but always shrugged and went in any way; it’s the price you pay for being from the rural south or more aptly for being proud that you are.

I’ve traveled in boats which had forgotten their most important function, which was to float, which taught me swimming was pretty important after all. I been on trains that appeared to smoke, drink and cuss and ones that ran faster than any pea brained Georgia boy should go. I’ve been on big planes, medium planes and a few planes that looked like Gomer had been working on them using cheap tools stamped with, made in Taiwan. What exactly did I think I was going to do if one of those trains jumped the tracks at a gazillion miles an hour in Istanbul turkey? What if some of that duct tape Gomer had been using, peeled off at 5000 feet and one of those planes had decided it needed to pull over, at an inopportune time?

I can tell you this, all the swimming in the world ain’t gonna help much and there is no roadside assistance up there. I think ambulances and emergency vehicles carry a big spatula with them, which amounts to roadside assistance for those in planes and fast trains. I remember my step-dad throwing me off the end of the dock and saying, sink or swim. Even as dumb as that was, at least he never stood in the yard and tossed me into the air repeatedly, yelling, fly you little so in so, fly. In a plane there is only one way to go if the service engine soon light comes on, I hate it when that thing comes on in a car, but have no desire for it to start flashing on a plane. I’ve avoided Submarines more diligently as there is only one way to go and you’re half way there already.

Life will pump you, bump you and dump you. I’ve been on that floor more than once and never, even when I was inebriated, was I ever a Chuck. In fact most of us have fallen and our names have never been Chuck. I have no idea why this line is so funny to me, but it is, so take that.

Let’s talk about another great commercial from the past which deals with the same topic. How did you get to the Grand Canyon? The camera pulls back as people who make me look young; spin around in circles on their Shovearounds at the edge of the canyon rim. Shovearound, shovearound, shovearound echoes across the distance and then they inform you that if you were a good boy or girl the government will pay and you’ll get yours at no cost to you.

I wasn’t that good okay, I ain’t that good now and have a terrible feeling the government is already looking for a way to either, take my birthday or make me move to Haiti. I’m afraid they’ll make the decision or pass the required law about the time I’m ready for SSI, it’s what I’d do, it’s what the insurance companies do. Hey when it’s time to retire just put us in a line for some government program; most of us will die standing in that line, before actually applying for the program the line was created to serve.

So, if I’m to ever own a Shovearound my writing must eventually make me independently wealthy. I’ll probably own one of those aluminum walkers without a motor, I’ll end up stumbling around blowing through my lips and making little sounds with them, which mimic whatever sounds Shoverarounds make. I’m pretty sure they are electric and make no sound, which makes my retirement look pretty bleak.

If my writing does eventually take off, I’m having one with a hopped up motor and racing strips. I want to be the fastest slow person on my block. I still chuckle when I remember Evil Bo Weevil trying to jump the Snake River Canyon on a Shovearound, on steroids. He was always one of my heroes; as long as he was alive I could never be the dumbest person on earth.

Ain't no Quitting for the Quitter

As children we are bombarded with quips about quitting. Apparently quitting is akin to saying I can’t, a statement which got my hide skinned several times when I was a young quitter. Quitting doesn’t always accomplish its goals. I quit drinking twenty-five years ago, but somehow I still wake up with a hangover after attending any party where drinking is involved. I might as well drink and have a good time, which I can’t remember, rather than wake up with a hangover which I can’t forget.

So if quitting is bad, why do we start each year, trying to quit everything we like to do? You are aware of New Year’s resolutions aren’t you? I quit making them and that was the only one I’ve kept. I’d like to stop waking up feeling fifty-one, but I’d need to quit breathing to do it, something I’m not ready to try.

I’ve got too much to accomplish to quit now. I need to win the Nobel Peace Prize for simply winning a record breaking amount, in the lottery, first I need to be able to afford to play the lottery. I need to win the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes; it would help if they had my address or if I had any idea what they’re clearing out in the first place.

So what will it mean, if by some miracle, all Americans could keep they’re resolutions, If someone covered the country sprinkling magic quitting dust on all of us? First the cigarette companies would crash, taking the fiber filter and paper companies with them. What exactly are those fiber filters made of and do they serve any purpose, other than filtering out the things you smoke for in the first place. I’ve long suspected that the cigarette companies are hedging their bets and either support the companies that produce cigarette cessation products or own them outright.

The junk food companies would be next. No more Little Dippies or Kitty Kats. No more plain, pickled, vinegared, BBQed, cheesed, chillied, smothered, covered, chunked or chocolate potato chips. No more Big Whops, Whop Jr Mac’s or those little Krystcastles, we eat by the bags full. No more Poke, Cepsi, Mountain don’t, eighteen up, Grape Thigh High or any color that’s been crushed. No more Dead Bull or Monster Urine, you’ve got all the energy you’re going to get, get used to it. What would such a catastrophe do to our medical system, we’d have homeless doctors?

I’m pretty sure all diet companies are owned by the companies listed above. I can give up a Turtle, but you should be very careful about coming for my mac and cheese, banana pudding or my ketchup and French fries. I firmly believe that French fries are the reasons we continue to be allowed, to possess firearms. The American public and the free world will stand for many things, but when French fries are outlawed a new American revolution will begin. If you don’t believe me, place something on the ballot involving fries and you’ll see the highest voter turnout, in history.

Stress levels would evaporate and credit card debt would be a thing of the past. What’s so bad about that? The credit card companies would crash and I’m convinced they’ve used all the interest they’ve been ripping us off for, to buy most of the free world. Well, not most, China owns fifty-two percent, paid for by the interest on the loan we owe them. The credit Card companies own thirty-three percent and the insurance companies own the other seventy-five.

I know those numbers don’t add up, but isn’t that the real problem, the numbers don’t add up, most of the time. The average American is seventeen pounds overweight, so multiply that times seven billion and you’d get the collective amount of weight we’d lose. I can’t do it, couldn’t figure out how to say the number if I could and don’t really have any desire to learn, thank you. Where in the world would all that weight go?

Everyone in the country would be a student studying business or criminal justice, but no one would be working, wait people seem to be taking that resolution pretty seriously already. The constitution would be amended to grant every fingernail the right to live grow long and prosper.

I guess it’s a good thing Americans are not quitters, see how many problems this would create? We’d become a non smoking, non drinking, smiling, country full of disgruntled postal workers, with long finger nails. Wait, we’d be Canadians at that point or more aptly, French Canadians. Americans quit quitting long ago and I’m proud we did. Remember quitters never win and winners never quit. I’ll quit for the moment and rest my case. One last statement, quitting and resolutions are downright un-American and should be avoided at all cost.