One of the benefits of the profound ignorance of a large swathe of the American people lies in their inability to recognize irony. So, when a first term member of congress who is probably looking at being a one term member of Congress pulls something out not from the Karl Rove playbook but the Joe McCarthy playbook, people will miss it. Our political discourse has skipped self-satire and gone straight to slapstick. As Gibbs rule number 7 puts it, “when you lie, be specific.”

Allan West, Congressman from Mesron and Florida, is now trying to win a redistricted, largely Democratic district by railing against the Democratic Progressive Caucus as “Communists’ announcing that he’s “heard that 80 member of congress are communists.” You see, the American Communist party, the old Gus Hall

Powerhouse, has said that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is reasonably close to endorsing their goals. (In the spirit of full disclosure, another website  where I write endorsed Gus Hall for President in 2008. Mr Hall died in 2000. In 2004, we endorsed Cthulhu and Anarchist Pastry Chef Crispin Sartwell as the ticket. I’m not sure whom we will endorse this year, but right now, Allen West is shortlisted for something!) I’m not sure what those could be, since the Communist Party of the USA was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics which…no longer exists. Well, the language is degraded by more than West’s blathering, but come on. Read something written by somebody not John Birch or J. Edgar Hoover that explains what Communism is as opposed to what you think it is…a vague threat to take your guns, your government health care, your government pension and your government roads, schools, infrastructure and pollute your precious body fluids while letting your children run wild having abortions and contraception and stuff, especially the gay sex folk. Dudes and Dudettes, Democrats are to Communists in much the way that the Republicans are to the Freemen of Montana.

West also babbled that Barrack Obama is afraid to debate him. Really?  Loudmouthed first termer thinks that the President of the United States should get on a stage in South Florida and debate him? Seriously, if the President has a few spare minutes to waste on West, he should devote it to shooting some hoops with his secret service detail or giving Bo a bath with the girls. Total lunacy… Seriously, the man is a deranged, megalomaniacal dweeb and needs to be kept in government custody to protect himself and his loved ones from his next over the top appearance or action.

Now, as I listened to the video (let’s hold the musing on that trope for another time), I got the sense that a good number of Mr. West’s constituents were laughing at him. It’s possible that this is gem came out not so much as a Michelle Bachmann unsolicited bit of insanity as a response to poking the bear. West is not exactly known for reasoned discourse, a sense of balance or proportion and measured response to provocation.

Now, the guy could have been court martialed for war crimes instead of being given a slap on the wrist and allowed to retire — should have been court martialed for war crimes, since he fired a pistol at a prisoner of war in order to make him provide information — and has disgraced the nation ever since. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in Army; he was in a command position in combat; and he ended up relieved of command and given the opportunity to retire — which he took. I think West is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder of an incredible magnitude and should be treated with respect for his service, compassion for his condition while being protected from himself and his demons. Well, Gulf I gave us Timothy McVeigh; Gulf 2 is giving us Allan West, Republican congressman from Florida.

This is where the Republican leadership needs to step up, get West under control or expect a far rougher response than the sort given so far. This is pretty funny, actually. “Chellie is a Democrat, a farmer and a Lutheran but no, she is not a Communist,” said Willy Ritch, spokesman for Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), also a vice chair of the caucus.”

While there is no Dean of the House Irony position, Barney Frank has had fun with West and ilk over the years. He’s gleefully chucking over this one, saying that West was dumber than Joe McCarthy. Well, duh, West was and is an officer, albeit a disgraced officer. No surprise that when he goes stupid, he goes very stupid.

(Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, and as a one-time student of Luther and the Protestant Reformation, I should point out that Luther had some commie-pinko-tendencies prior to the Peasants Revolt. The whole concept of grace in the Pauline-Augustinian-Luther tradition has a pretty strong egalitarian twist to it. But in general, in Wisconsin, yeah equating Lutheran Democrats to Communists is like equating Allen West to Allen A’ Dale, which I guess would make Boehner Robin Hood and Cantor Little John.)

As that great American political commentator Bugs Bunny would put it, “What a maroon!”

One of the loose collective of my friends — The Defeatist-Malcontent-Anarchist Slacker Collective and Bait Shop — a Vet who’s trying to get his band going in upstate New York doing kind of boogie rock with metal overtones, spends time he should spend doing something like picking up bottles for the return fee on a Marshall Amp blog, and one of the folks on it posted something about a piece of software that my pal had not heard of. He tossed it out to the collective, and one of the guys explained that it is really kind of an auto-cad system that enables engineers, architechts, and marketing types to overlay everything and walk the customer through the whole bloody thing. He then commented that if he wanted to go back to working for somebody else, he’s take some classes…and then realized what he just said. Commented that he hated his life, and went off to drink copiously in the pine woods of Maine.

This made me realize something. The goal is not 3D confusion but infinite dimensional confusion. Then,
people can do things like compare the budget and expenditures of the United States with your family checkbook, and have people pay attention. This software then is part of the Koch agenda and goal for the brave new world where You can confuse the customer in multiple dimensions, inclucing time, simultaneously! What is it? It’s all of this. When will it be done? When it is done. What will it look like? Like all of this in layers. Why is this here? it’s in the regulations. In France, it would have to be here, but we’re not in France so it has to be there. Don’t blame us, it’s in the regulations. What is it going to cost? What it costs. Cost =f(X,L) where X is the “cost” and L is “a lot” and the relationship is undefined…either you add a lot or you multiple by a lot, but it’s going to really cost a helluva lot.

So, I decided to hide in music for the rest of the day…Anybody besides me remember The American

Breed? 60s garage band that incorporated a trumpet in a lot of their fadeouts. Almost recruited a chick trumpet player for my non-existent but brilliantly conceived garage-punk-blues-rock band…The Barstow Bad News Blues Band. However, she can’t sing and only knows how to play marches. Wouldn’t really help get a unique sound. Have been thinking about substituting kazoo for the trumpet if we do a cover version of their hit, though?

Looking for the one thing led to a lot of others. Here’s some other garage-type stuff from my youth…For example, the Knickerbochers. Guys were from Yonkers, or someplace else in the neighborhood,  but everybody thought they were either the Beatles or from Liverpool. Yeah…Liverpool, outside Syracuse, home of Heides Hotdogs…

The Beau Brummels were an interesting group. With that name, in the 60s, they should have been dressed in electric suits (really electric, plugged in like Christmas trees) but I guess they just liked the name. Pretty good song...

The Zombies had an interesting kind of vibe and were a talented band. Sort of stuff the Moody Blues originally did before they discovered psychedelia…and flutes.

Here are the Yardbirds with Jimmy Page supposedly playing the Beck riff because he was off being “brilliant” some place. I hate Jeff Beck, although I think his current bass player is hot. Actually, seeing her with that geezer is something I find scarey… I also think this was lip synching. Here’s the   Original with Beck –and, I don’t hear the difference. To complete the circle of jerks and egos at the time, here’s one their first lead guitarist, What’s his name, Dick Crampton or something…I read something recently that said that the Minor Pentomic Blues Scale was what differentiated the three of them. Beck rarely uses it; Page was sloppy with it; Clapton precise and thorough. Yeah…sure.

Now, We Five was an interesting group — kind of folky, with a big voiced lead singer named Beverly. Who had a helluva voice…since by then the folk voices for women were the amazing altos of Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell, not too surprising that they got lost in the dust. Kind of a shame — she’s dancing, shaking and jiving on stage like she might mean it, in a nice Christian California girl way.

Syndicate of Sound — A classic song, but what a waste of two Rickenbackers including a George Harrison 12. Couple of Japanese Squier knockoffs from Kresge’s before it was K-Mart would have done the trick for that rif.  Saw these guys in 66, one of the opening acts for the Stones.

Finish up this nostalgia with two organ songs…despite the legend, not  Augie March on both of them. She’s About a Mover was Doug Sahm, Augie and some other guys. Flip side was his attempt at being part of the summer of love, which I think was horrible. MENDI-cino. MENDI-cino. Mover was a helluva number though…\ Then, of course, there’s that great American Band, ? and the Mysterians.

There is nothing about these numbers that doesn’t say the yearning of teenage sex, Budwieser and cold duck on a Friday nite after the dance in the gym…who wouldn’t like that, again?…

That should ruin the weekend for those of you with daughters!

Dear Harold,

Boy! I am certainly feeling a little silly this morning. It seems my faith in Woody Harrelson, the Mayan calendar and the world’s demise in 2012 has been exceedingly misplaced.  According to you, the end of the world actually begins this weekend. Saturday—right after the six o’clock news!

Well, Harold…that sucks!

I’m really sorry, but this simply will not work for me. I’ve had plans for months and it would be in very bad taste to cancel due to an eleventh-hour invitation to the Apocalypse!

Its not just me Harold. The other 97% of the world’s population that you claim will languish eternally in Hell after Saturday are a little put out too! A lot of us aren’t going to be able to make it. I know you have spent “tens of thousands of hours” tirelessly analyzing the Scriptures, but surely you, a reasonable man, can understand our point of view. Would it be too much of an imposition for you to reschedule? I hate to ask, but since you rescheduled in 1994, surely it wouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience for you to reinterpret the Bible yet again. A weekday, perhaps a Monday, would be far more appropriate and I know you’d get a much better turn-out for your event.

Love,

Jody

P.S. Call me next week.

10. When Sarah Palin said U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords should be “targeted,” she meant targeted with a surveyor’s scope

9. Sarah Palin used the term “blood libel” in a completely non-Jewish Christian context, referring to people who claim that wine in church isn’t really the blood of Christ

8. When Byron Williams, who got into a gunfight with police trying to attack members of the Tides Foundation in San Francisco, said he had been influenced by Glenn Beck, he really meant the singer Beck (“Odelay”)

7. When Sarah Palin complained that the shooting in Arizona had been unfairly politicized, then suggested that the gunman was perhaps a “left-leaning criminal,” she meant one of his legs was shorter than the other

6. When the mother of Gregory Lee Giusti, who was convicted of threatening former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, blamed Fox News, she actually meant the news that Redd Foxx had died

4. Tea Partier Sharron Angle’s suggestion of “Second Amendment solutions” for an out-of-control Congress was a misquote; she actually referenced the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments

3. Sarah Palin’s use of the phrase “don’t retreat, reload” was a reference to wash loads

2. When a relative of Charles Wilson, who was convicted of threatening Sen. Patty Murray, said he was “under the spell that Glenn Beck cast,” he really meant he’d been drinking Beck’s beer.

1. Whenever Sarah Palin uses the term ‘Democrats,’ she of course means ‘shitheads who should be taken out’
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

A friend of mine recently referred to her life as a mountain. Apparently she started climbing it years ago without realizing, then one day looked down and discovered how high up she’d gone. She also discovered that it would be nearly impossible to get down off of this mountain and start the climb up a different mountain. By different, I think she meant the one on which she had assumed she would end up.

Setting aside this whole mountain thing, let me explain it to those of you who are not she and I. The two of us, she and I, have fine arts degrees. When we were eighteen and gorgeous (she is still a knock out), we thought we could quite possibly end up as movie stars, or rock stars, or something equally celestial and fabulous. We both pursued our own versions of this path for a time. Our twenties were pretty cool overall, if not quite as we thought they would be. Then we got married and had kids and bought houses and got regular jobs. And those things are all fine things. Anyone who has done all those things, though, knows how hard it is to do them/have them and still maintain your artistic life.

So now, she says, she is on the top of this mountain, and she isn’t super happy about it. Not ungrateful, just not sure about how to handle it. Well, I am not on any effing mountain. (Wait, this isn’t a family blog, is it?) I am not on any fucking mountain.

I’m not saying I was on one and got down because of the upcoming divorce thing. I am saying fuck that mountain idea. That is crap. I am not at the top of a mountain, looking down a few thousand feet (wait, how tall does something have to be to qualify as a mountain? Nevermind, I couldn’t care less). I am not dizzy at the thought of climbing down and starting all over. I can breathe just fine, thanks, the air here is not thin.

You know why I am not on a mountain? On accounta I can still court and embrace change. On accounta shit doesn’t simply end just because you are almost forty (yep, in November!) Right now, I have some personal things on which to focus. So, no, I am not in a band. No, I do not have an agent anymore. I am, however, writing when I can — working toward some serious goals — enjoying my son’s toddler years. I am a woman with a five-year plan and a knack for sticking to the important stuff. At most, I am on a hill and I can totally see my way to the next one.

My friend refuses to give up the idea that she’s on the mountain. So I advised her to make it look as much like the one she wanted as possible. Maybe re-decorate it somehow. Learn to enjoy the view by changing the scenery.

Meanwhile I am gonna gather up my friends on this hill of mine and start planning a party for November.

My father-in-law recently faced up to the adult equivalent of “there is no Santa Claus.” Specifically, he discovered that, if the shit ever hits the fan, nobody is going to wipe his ass for him. Well … Maybe that’s unfair. He actually realized that, in case of disaster, he can’t count on “the authorities” to charge to the rescue.

Hmmm … I phrased it better the first time.

The wide-eyed revelation he shared with my wife and me over cheap red wine and better cigars was actually a continuation of a conversation dating back about five years. You see, my wife and I live in Arizona, which has a nasty habit of bursting into flames from time to time. Seeing as how the state is so unpredictably flammable, it’s generally a good idea to be ready to bug out if the neighborhood starts to get well-done, and we keep a “go bag” of important documents and the like at hand in case we need to head for less-smoky environs. Dear old dad-in-law’s California digs are similarly combustible, and also prone to slide into the ocean if visited by rain instead of fire. So we thought it wise to inquire as to his preparations for unfortunate events.

“Oh, I’ll just do what they tell me to do.”

When pressed, he grew upset at the idea that he should presume to make plans when there are experts whose job it is to handle such eventualities.

Since then, though, we’ve had Hurricane Katrina, flooding in Tennessee, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and any number of smaller incidents when even the best-intentioned authority figures have been completely overwhelmed by events and unable to play savior to everybody in distress. When authorities aren’t so generously inclined, they sometimes … err … How to put this delicately? Let’s just say that they sometimes act like hungry wolves in a field of sheep — like the New Orleans cops who, apparently for fun, gunned down civilians at a bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Don’t you just love a man in a uniform?

So now pops is ready to throw a water filter and a box of Dinty Moore in the pantry, just in case, right? Not so much. It’s all too overwhelming. How can you prepare when the lights could go out for weeks? Or months? (He’s obsessed with the idea that hackers are going to crash the power grid.) What’s the point of doing anything when even the authorities are overwhelmed?

You see, from a state of abject dependence, we’ve journeyed not to self-reliance, but to despair and resignation. God failed — or at least FEMA screwed the pooch — and the old guy has decided to die in the dark rather than lift a finger on his own behalf.

Actually, the lights did go out two years ago, where I live, for the better part of a week. It was a wild storm that nobody anticipated. We drank water from storage containers and read by the light of a Coleman lantern. Hey, when I die, I plan to have a full belly and some mood lighting. Frankly, it’s just not that hard to get ready for some of life’s little speed bumps.

I’m not saying that it’s necessary — or possible — to prepare for the apocalypse. But I don’t pretend to understand people who are determined, one way or another, to be victims in even the most easily handled circumstances.

My father-in-law is a decent, well-intentioned guy. But if, like too many other people, he’s not prepared to carry his own weight if something goes wrong, he better be really careful where he puts that cigar down.

Because, as the world keeps on discovering, despite promises to the contrary, nobody can be counted on to wipe your ass for you.

The local news informed my mother-in-law that Maytag was recalling dishwashers because a heating element could cause a fire. She has a Maytag dishwasher and so do we, so we googled Maytag dishwasher recall. Maytag had set up a page on its site for the recall. We entered our model and serial numbers and were able to schedule an appointment online for a repairman to come to our house and replace the faulty heating element. They’ve already repaired my mother-in-law’s machine — it took a half-hour — and will repair ours this week. The company seems to have handled this well and tried to minimize inconvenience to customers.

My father-in-law was over the other day — neither of our machines had been repaired yet — and when someone mentioned that we were just about out of silverware, he said something like, “You can’t run the dishwasher until they have fixed it.” He wasn’t adamant or anything, just said it off the top of his head. But I think his initial reaction is a common one and says something about how people respond to the news of some new danger or risk.

According to the recall notice, there have been 12 fires caused by the faulty heating element. There was extensive kitchen damage in one of the fires. There have been no injuries. The recall includes 1.7 million dishwashers. We have been using the dishwasher since we moved into the house last year, with no problems, and the previous owners had been using it for three years before that, presumably without a fire, since the machine and the house were not burned down. 1,700,000 other households have also been using the dishwashers week after week with no fires, minus the 12 fires, of course.

That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be a recall — if a faulty element can cause a fire, that element should be replaced, obviously. But how should we act when we learn about the recall? The recall notice says, “Consumers should stop using products immediately unless otherwise instructed.” But it has to say that — the people writing recall notices always say to stop using the item when there is even a minuscule risk, because they are trying to minimize lawsuits and bad PR that would surely result from any additional fires or injuries. Lower on the same page it also says, “Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled dishwashers, disconnect the electric supply by shutting off the fuse or circuit breaker controlling it…” 

I’m not going to live without clean forks because there were 12 fires out of 1.7 million machines. It’s far more likely for me to be hurt or my house to be damaged by any number of occurrences that I can’t predict or don’t expect. We’re probably all in more danger from the weather, car accidents, slipping in the bathtub, something we don’t see coming, than we are from our dishwasher. Are people really going to shut off the circuit breaker to the dishwasher? For some of us, that means walking all the way down to the basement.

I would be willing to bet that if all 1.7 million owners turned off the circuit breakers as instructed by the recall, since a very large number of those people (some elderly) would have to go up and down stairs in order to do that (in some cases multiple times, since many do not have properly labeled circuit breakers), there would be a much greater chance of someone being injured from falling on the stairs than there would be from a dishwasher fire that could result if no one shut off the circuit breaker. (Though probably you can’t sue Maytag if you fall down the stairs on the way to turn off your circuit breaker.) If we are acting rationally, since there are only 12 cases of fire being caused by the faulty element, we should act exactly as we acted before hearing about the recall. We should continue to use our dishwashers.

It’s reasonable to have a recall and get the heating element replaced, but just because something is on the news, or there is an increased risk, doesn’t mean there is considerable risk, especially over the short span of a week between the discovery of the recall and the replacement of the part. If I knew about the recall and didn’t schedule the repair and just continued to use the machine for five more years, I would be increasing my risk of fire, but by how much I don’t know. I would guess that a fire would still be unlikely even if I ignored the recall and kept using the machine for a few years, but maybe it would no longer be exceptionally unlikely, and in any case the repair is free and easy to schedule, so I wouldn’t recommend ignoring the recall. The more time that goes by, the more chance there is for a fire to be caused by the faulty element. But the chance of my dishwasher catching fire over the next two washes is too small to warrant any worrying or to keep me from using the machine.

This isn’t about my dishwasher, of course. It is about the way people worry about dangers that they hear about on TV, the way their understanding of risk affects their choices, and how they often misjudge the risks in comparison to the scale of time. If you were going to live 5,000 years (barring some accident that could cause your death), you would be taking a great risk to regularly ride in a car. Car accidents are too common, and over that length of time — if you drove in a car regularly — your chances of cutting your lifespan substantially short or suffering a debilitating injury through a car crash would be much higher than it is over the span of a normal human life. (And you’d have to live with that injury for a long, long time.)

It is reasonable for people who expect to live to be 80 or 90 to take the risk of driving in a car along with precautions like wearing seatbelts. People do get hurt and killed in crashes, but you are not likely to die in a car crash before you die from some natural cause. If you were going to live 5,000 years before natural causes would end your life, that might no longer be the case (I didn’t do the math), and you might reasonably conclude that riding in a car isn’t worth the higher risk of losing hundreds of years off of your life. (You might conclude the opposite, if you really like to drive or you value seeing the world more than you value hundreds or thousands of years of additional life.) It’s possible that 5,000 years from now, cars might have really good airbags, or we might teleport from place to place, but that’s not the point.

The point is, an understanding of probability and an awareness of risk in relation to time can help prevent the latest danger announced on the evening news from running our lives. Taking precautions and minimizing risk should be balanced by some understanding of what the chances are of something actually happening. 

The other point is that you can wash your dishes.

10. Once you start driving a Toyota, you’ll never stop!

9. Look out, we’re comin’ through!

8. Toyota. Moving forward! Whether you want to or not!

7. Click! Vroom! Yikes!

6. Have you driven into a Ford lately?

5. Toyota. Get the Feeling. Of Terror!

4. Accelerating the future!

3. Holy cow, even we had no idea the Prius could do 100!

2. The power of dreams! The reality of nightmares!

1. Give us a break!
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

10. “Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck both claim paying taxes contributes to socialism.”

9. “Wealthy people who are exceptionally good-looking should be exempt.”

8. “On April first, I got an e-mail saying that, as part of the stimulus package, there was a tax moratorium this year.”

7. “Trying to use the Qualified Dividends and Capital Gains Tax Worksheet, I got a severe brain cramp.”

6. “My buddy at the post office said he could backdate my return.”

5. “After I claim all the voices in my head as deductions, it turns out they owe me money!”

4. “This year, in the box labeled ‘For Office Use Only,’ I just plan to write ‘Approved – Send massive refund!’”

3. “Fill out a tax form?! I can’t even get my VCR to stop blinking ‘12:00’!”

2. “My accountant said I could deduct my late fees.”

1. “I just woke up from my New Year’s Eve party.”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Thirteen Misconceptions Surrounding National Shelve Your Indie Novel in the Superbookstore Month

1)  America did not carpet bomb any lawless tribal regions with remaindered and pulped copies of confiscated counterfeit Indie versions of Sarah Palin’s autobiography.

2)  103,017 bottles and cans of Coke and Pepsi staged a walk out from 7-11 freezer space across the country in protest of the marginalization of indie novelists and collusive practices across the country.

3)  Jeff Bezos follows 213,497 Indie novelists on twitter, includes contact info for 112,239 others on his blackberry, stores 9,212 of their novels on his kindle, but did not tell 139 others that “it ain’t a score if it’s shelved front door.”

4)  Andy Breslin shelved and sold 2,317 copies of Mother’s Milk and used all net receipts to establish a cash-for-ranting scholarship fund.   

5)  In March 2009, Warren Buffet almost bought warrants to “save the collective ass” of large-cap publishing but then undid the deal after an Indie novel brought him laughter, tears, and a feeling of release not experienced since leaving his last shareholder’s meeting.

6)  Southwest Airlines encourages obese passengers to buy multiple tickets unless they can prove Kevin Smith’s movies were an inspiration for their foray into Indie novelizations of independent films.

7)  Mark Rayner flashed “all five fractals” as he was shown the door of a major retail chain in downtown Toronto but remained neutral on Southwest Airline’s policy.

8) In secret negotiations, five big-book executives bought the rights to an authorized Vladimir Putin autobiography that will include pop-up judo scenes but no mention of his secret war against Indie novelists.

9)   213 Christian ministers signed a petition stating that if Jesus returned today he would be with us in the form of an Indie novelist.

10)   The German phrase for Indie Novelist is not pronounced like the Yiddish phrase for “Illin’ Rabbi,” but there is evidence of Indie novelist activity throughout modern Europe.

11)   Self manipulation with your Indie novel is illegal in half the states that require parental consent for gay marriage if partners have been together for over 18 years.

12)   Amtrak union employees voted not to picket superbookstores throughout the Northeast corridor but reserve their right to strike for better lighting for efficiency apartments and parents’ basements housing Indie novelists in other regions.

13)   Contrary to the official position of the United States of Kudera, February is not America’s National Shelve Your Indie Novel in the Superbookstore Month and all shelving cheats caught in national bookstore chains will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.