What a special treat I got this morning!!! I stopped this morning at the Triangle Stop (for 2-!@#$ dollahs worth of gas – times can be hard on the mean skreetsa Polk County…) and when I finished, I turned to head toward the store to pay and *BINK!* , there was this big, beautiful boy leaning against my truck – ADAM PALMER! (Baby Vin, the VP of the B.B.B.D.F.H.*) home from boot camp, looking like a million dollars - and heading out tomorrow to Iraq or Kosovo, or some other horrible place that he should ABSO-!@#$-LUTELY NOT !@#$ BE! I jumped a foot in the air, squealed like Bob Barker had just called me to “Come on down!” and threw my arms around his neck… He looked wonderful (and felt even BETTER! OW! Boot camp has been good to him, baby-fat-wise! Holy cow! His arms felt like crepe myrtle branches!) He looked different, more grown up. There was a depth to his expression that I’d never seen before, maybe due to the fact that he is shipping out to this horrible, pointless war.

Let me pause here to stop being nice and publicly state that George W. Bush is a complete idiot, and an evil, careless, unrighteous dictator. When he and his Heavy Duty Crew-style Posse single-handedly and quite completely destroyed democracy in this country by fixing our most sacred electoral process, all illusions of us being a truly free country died. He can claim a lot of things for his stint at the helm of this great nation, but I hope the world always remembers him as the man who made America, it’s Constitution, and all of it’s bold, daring claims to freedom and democracy a complete LIE. There is a great ripple of fear among my friends and loved ones that he will be re-elected, and there is a glimmer of unbelievable sweet and naïve hope for Howard Dean, but I believe there will be no election. Just like last time, they will lie and cheat and fix the books (or the chads or whatever) and we will take it just like we did before. Or maybe just forego it, call it a National Emergency, and just appoint Herr Bush Der Commissar. Our flag has been reduced to a muddy rag, our constitution to scrap paper. They might as well take a crayon and re-write it so that the Governator can step into office and be a Bush-puppet when they can’t figure out how to make the Twins co-presidents. Our claims to being the land of the brave and the home of the free are no more. We slept on the job and now we can’t go back. We took that last slap in the face, in Florida and in the entire nation back in 2000, lying down, and now we’re down and we just accept it. I am ashamed of all of us, including, maybe especially myself. We all say “but what can I really do?!?!” We believed all along that our vote counted for something, and they proved us wrong and drank champagne over it. I predicted on “election” day that The Big Idiot would have no choice but to get us embrOILed in a war so that he could be a Cowboy and a Hero and show us his Big Guns, thus proving to us that the man who can cheat in an American Presidential Election can do any damned thing he pleases, including possibly arranging a few terrorist attacks (what’s another 3,021 people when we know we’re going to be racking up tens of thousands more in the coming war? Which ok, of course, because it’s good for the economy. Pigs.) to get the ball rolling. How disgusting. How unbelievable sick and wrong...
And my Adam, beloved, beautiful, brave boy will be sent into the teeth of George Fucking Bush’s mindless money campaign tomorrow. Adam, and supposedly another 84,999 just like him. Oh, it’s supposed to be over by June… and I suppose that Der Commissar will at least try to make it look like the brakes are on in time to justify rigging another election for himself, but can these boys and girls make it until June? And even the ones whose bodies come home in one piece, what will their hearts and minds be like for the rest of their lives – and does their government, their "fearless !@#$ leader", CARE?

(If Adam is hurt, if he has hard times afterwards when he does finally come home, I will go to Washington and I will be heard if I have to stand outside the Whitehouse and holler. I wish every injured person and family member would do that. I wish we – I – had done that when our Democratic process was sodomized back in 2000.)

But these soldiers, going, knowing what is really behind the whole thing anyway, doing what they believe is right, bless them. Love them, support them, pray for them, and pray for George Bush to never, as long as he lives, have another good nights’ rest for what he has done. He is no better than Hussein, who also has no conscience about what he does to his people and his country. Perhaps we should have just sent in Black Ops volunteers to do what really needed to be done, and perhaps they should have done the same.

Tonight, I will sit with Private Palmer, and look at his face and hear his laugh and his stories, and I will pray hard that he comes home safe to his terrified mama and his little brother. They are all that each other have. If something happened, would George Bush – or even his administration – take care of Gail and Isaac and Adam? No. They will leave that to us “free” people.

Pray for miracles, think (as) positively (as possible. physics proves that our positive and negative thought energy actively affects the world around us), support Howard Dean, support these soldiers, and don’t forget that it is really easy to kick and bite and scratch when you are lying down. In fact, it’s the one of the three places (besides in a corner and up against a wall) where you don’t have to watch your back, and it has the added advantage of leaving all of your limbs free for fighting...
…and most importantly, hold fast.

-sam



*Badass Biker Baby Ducks From Heck - guess who's Prez?

Y’know what?
I am overdue for a real rant.
I cannot be terribly specific about the subject of the following rant, because of legal issues, nor can I use certain language, because I want to be sure that EVERYbody can read this, so I will do my best to be non-specific as well as pc.
CERTAIN people in CERTAIN job and life positions have a certain habit of confusing their private lives with their “professional” lives and taking it out on those of us who couldn’t give a RODENT’S HEINEY! These certain people also have a tendency to confuse their maternal figures with EVERY OTHER BLOODY WOMAN ON THE BLOODY PLANET and lording their erstwhile “power” over anyone who can’t escape for fear of screwing up their ends*.
We all run into these little power mad bureaucrats every day, at the bank, managing our favorite stores and eateries, selling us leather and metal goods, making sure our garbage is picked up on time… and honestly, we ought to just be able to kick them. Or just slap them, openhanded, across their cheesy little facial hair/bald spot/smug face. We ought to get, like… one freebie a week. That should be how they justify the fact that they are so grossly overpaid for the heiney smooching that they do every bloody day in, day out. We should be able to TELL them how awful they are, how pointless their behavior is, how silly their suits are, and that should go at least a little way toward justifying the fact that we are ultimately the ones paying for their hair implants and trips to the Bahamas to drink Blo… um, Fruity Drinks On The Beach with oily enriques waiting on them hand and foot and …
What was my point here?
Oh yeah, SMACK ‘EM! Small price to pay, eh? For their perks and bonuses and kowtowing. Of course if every person they dealt with could smack them once a week, if they so felt the need, then things might get a little hairy for them, but then maybe they’d catch on, and the smackings would decrease exponentially with the increase in their improved outlook, open-mindedness and more decent treatment of their customers and employees.
It would certainly go a ways toward balancing out what we as shoppers, employees, etc. have to deal with not only from them but from the people on the OTHER side of us, too.
To heck with middle management! Poopie on them! May they all go all moldy in purgatory! May their rogaine be switched with Nair and their mustache trimmers go on the blink! May they be cursed with dandruff and laryngitis (and tourettes!) at the worst of times! May their cappuccino makers never work! May their hostessing always flop and may they spend eternity in hot coals up to their squid marks! Amen!

-Sam the Mad Magpie

*This is NOT an intentional Freudian slip, o’ those of you who know me, this is an ebonic reference, ‘ends meaning ‘cash flow’.