The Next Novel ...

Working title: Term Life

On the night before his sixty-first birthday, Corson Graves sat down at his desk and counted his money—gold coins; other than the equity in his house and the signed 1^st editions in the locked glass case to the right of his desk, it was all in gold now—and when he was done, concluded, as he had the previous night, and the one before that one, that if he wasn’t dead in three years he was fucked.

With Two Weeks to Go ...

As many of you know, I predicted back in January that Mitt Romney would be the nominee for the Republicans, and that he would get beat—trounced, I believe I said—on Election Day, now only two weeks away.

Alas, there are always factors we can't account for when we go out on a limb. One of the factors I hadn't counted on (and that no one else had counted on so far as I know) was that Barack Obama would throw the first debate ...

And that Romney, of all people, would show finesse, and actually appear to care about that 47% of the population that was left strangely unmentioned by the president. And that, moreover, Romney had every intention of keeping not just these freeloaders but his own freeloaders—military contractors, Big Pharma, insurance companies, private equity types, hedge funders—everyone, pretty much, but PBS and Big Bird, flush with taxpayer dollars, this while lowering the revenues from which these payments come.

If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought he had a sensible plan to clean up the spectacular mess Obama inherited and have our economy cranking again like it was after we'd won the Second World War. Back when we had industrial power second to none, and the world, in rubble, mostly, needed it, badly. Before we were importing more than we were exporting, and the Dollar began giving way to the Chinese Yuan—at least it would, or should, if the Chinese weren't "cheating."

Back then, after the war, we had a deficit relative to GDP that was larger than now, if just barely, and yet the circumstances, as anyone, especially Mitt Romney, ought to know, were quite a lot different. Radically different. We'd emerged from a depression as a country of savers. The Defense Department was still called the War Department, and amid the crisis of war, we'd been forced to ration rather than told to shop.

Why do I mention this? Because no one in his right mind would suggest rationing to support a war or anything else these days. Not if he wanted to get elected president. Not even if you're a supposed born again fiscal conservative running on a ticket purporting to swing a meat axe at the deficit.

Thus, I hadn't counted on Moderate Mitt, Conservative Mitt, Equivocal Mitt (who was for so much before he was against so much, only to be for most of it all over again), Whatever Mitt, to so enamor "the base" by promising even more, with less revenue, than his challenger.

But no. Not only were we going to get our Cold War military back, but the farmers and Big Ag would keep getting their subsidies. Patients and bilkers alike would keep getting their full share of Medicare. And all the cost savings in Obamacare/Romneycare—eliminated (saving, once you start it, is practically as bad as rationing, and means less money going to someone who might otherwise vote for you), and yet we'd get to keep the nice parts—for, say, those with pre-existing conditions. Big bills mean big money, for someone who might vote for you. We're a country where a lot of folks make good bank on the backs of the sick, and what lunatic running for office would want to change that?

Aside from a little trimming in "discretionary" spending, we'd get to keep all the stuff paid for by the supposedly wild spending he'd been railing against for months AND we'd get a tax cut! After which, in four short years, he'd balance the budget just like Reagan and Dubya did.

Or did they quadruple and more or less double the debt, respectively?

But has it mattered, really? Dick Cheney—and what fiscal conservative other than Ron Paul doesn't love Dick Cheney?—said Reagan proved that it didn't matter. So if it doesn't matter, what's everyone worried about? And wouldn't it be nice to have everything and more, and pay less for it?

If you watched that first debate, and took Mitt seriously, that was pretty much Mitt's plan.

I hadn't counted on it ... Mitt running, at the last minute, as a spendthrift. As a guy that not only the rich could count on for charity from the taxpayers, but the old, the poor, the sick, the 47%, everyone—everyone!—would keep getting and then some, if we just voted for the conservative guy. For Mitt.

And here's another thing. I hadn't counted on a significant portion of women not thinking through the implications of having Roe versus Wade overturned, of having abortion only legal in cases of rape and incest and the health of the mother, which seems so reasonable just as long as you don't think about it at all. I hadn't counted on women, a significant number of them, apparently, not caring about what two guys named Mitt and Paul had in mind with regard to their right to make their own decisions about what happens inside their bodies and not have to stand and make their case in front of a tribunal just so they could terminate a pregnancy if they happened to get impregnated by, say, an uncle or a rapist.

I thought: if just all the women who can vote in this country said, "Are you out of your fucking mind?" and voted for the other guy, while all the men who supposedly want to take rights away from women voted for the guy who wanted to take rights away from women, the other guy—not Romney—would still win, because women have the numbers.

At this point in our history, I figured that was a pretty safe bet, that at least a strong majority would vote for the other guy, and yet ... we'll have to see.

I had counted on even the dumbest fool on the planet understanding that neither candidate is going to balance the budget in the next four years. Not even close. I had counted on most people, particularly the ones getting older, with little in the way of personal savings, not again buying into the tax-cutting to a balanced budget and more for everyone bullshit.

I used to be certain. I'm not anymore. You might say I have a bad feeling ...

Still, here's my prediction: Obama wins in a squeaker (that should have been a blow-out, but everyone loves a game 7, which I, of course, didn't count on), on the kind of strong end-game/ground-game/door-to-door fighting and all out nastiness that got Bush re-elected in 2004. It's a dirty business, for a thankless job. There will be those ironies and more for the pundits and all the rest of us to talk about as we run up our cards trying again to spend our economy into health during the holiday season.

Or ... maybe Carville was right, and Obama, for one night in Denver, saw his way out of his predicament but couldn't quite bring himself to follow through.

The writer, once again, losing out to life.

In two weeks we'll know for certain.

The Next Debate's Moderator: Samuel L. Jackson

Word had it that Sam was going to run a tight ship, and there for a while, when the candidates walked onto the stage and shook hands, smiling, trying to look taller than the other, Romney whispering to Obama that he liked the shine on his shoes, that he could see up his pant leg, and Obama retorting that Romney's fly was open, chucking him on the arm then, grinning big, waving to the crowd, "Made you look," there was hope.

They went to their podiums and Jackson leveled a hard, bad-assed expression at them both. "Listen up, Motherfuckers, cuz I'm only gonna say this once," he began. "When I say you're done talking, you're done fucking talking. Are we clear? Cuz if I gotta tell ya twice, I'll be gettin up there, Secret Service or no Secret Service, and getting goddam Yosemite Fucking Sam on your asses ..."

Hearing this, Romney's eyes got wide with excitement, an excitement he hadn't felt since he hazed that sissy with the lavender hair back in prep school. He had to admit this was more fun than Old Man Lehrer, that PBS pussy, moderating. Obama, meanwhile, simply grinned in his cool, good-natured way. It was good to have a brother up there asking the questions, keeping it fair, after the other night in Denver.

"All right, then," Jackson said when he had their attention. "First question ... How do y'all feel about two mouthy, in-your-fucking-face gay brothers from the Castro, say, gettin married and adopting some Mormon kids? Not the pretty ones, mind you—I can see you're freakin out over there, Governor—but no, we're not talking about the smart motherfuckers who when they get older we'll all be so proud of and take all the credit ... no, not them, I'm talking about the more fucked up ones, the ones nobody wants, back of the 47% corral kinda kids, you might say. What are your fucking thoughts? Governor, you getta go first."

Romney looked around, not sure whether to laugh or tell this guy to go fuck himself. He'd never told someone to go fuck himself before. He wondered if it would be exciting. "Why me? I thought we were going to talk about the economy ..."

"We'll talk about the fucking economy when I decide to, Motherfucker.  Right now, however, we're talking about two brothers—hell, since I see you're wincing, that both you motherfuckers have your assholes in a pucker, let's make it two sisters. Two hot-looking dikes—I've got a couple in mind—wanna get married and adopt some Mormon kid that no one, not even the Mormons, want—"

"Why do I have to go first?" Romney asked again, a little louder than before.

"Because you always wanna go last," Jackson replied—he'd watched the last debate. "And because I'm the moderator and I fucking said so."

Obama, who'd been cool up till now, felt it was time to speak up. He was the president after all. "Sam, come on. This isn't quiz night at some dance club in West Oakland. This is a Presidential Debate."

Jackson leaned back and folded his arms. "Answer the question."

"What if I just took the kid," Romney offered after four or five seconds of silence. "And then hired someone. What if I created a job for someone, an opportunity, of the sort one can have in this country if one works hard, if my opponent isn't raising taxes on him or her at every turn ..."

"Now there's a novel idea," Obama cut in. "I'd have figured you'd buy the orphanage and let your buddy Sheldon turn it into a casino. Have the kids work the tables. Dress the place up in neon—"

"You laugh, Mr. President, but that kind of hard scrapping ingenuity worked wonders for the Indians—I mean, of course, the Native American population that had prior to that time been beaten down with government handouts—"

"And the fucking cavalry," Jackson put in.

Romney turned to Obama. "He can't say that. He's the moderator."

Obama turned to Jackson. "Sam, you aren't the peanut gallery. You're the moderator—"

"Fine, I'm the moderator. I ask a question about homosexuals getting married and adopting undesirable little Mormons and you start talking about casinos and Indians. What's a brother to think, other than, apparently, you're both cool with it—"

"Cool with what?" Romney wondered aloud. He'd never used the word cool in that particular context before. It gave him a strange tingle.

Jackson answered, "The sisters ... gettin married ... and giving the little 47% percenter Mormon boy a home."

"No! Of course not—" Romney shot back. Was this man insane?

"So what about you?" Jackson asked Obama, who had thus far kept cool on the question.

He stammered a bit, then said, "Well, I think ... yes ... possibly. As you know, I'm the president of everyone, the president to all of America, from the richest of the rich to the dirtiest, sneakiest little weasal—" He stopped himself "But I think reasonable folks would agree, that even Governor Romney would agree, that we need to consider some of the potential complications that could arise—"

Jackson leaned back in his chair, looked up and ran his hand over his scalp. "Mr. President, I am not asking you if the sisters I have in mind can be allowed to change this little Mormon motherfucker's name to some shit like Elijah, or some goofy-assed one like yours. I'm just saying, Can These Sisters get married? Like all the rest of us poor motherfuckers, right? And by the way—" He eyed Obama knowingly "—I bet that was some anniversary you had the other night, some real joyous shit to be sure after the way you let that lyin motherfucker run all over your ass the other night—"

"Excuse me," Romney remarked indignantly. "What did he just call me? He can't say that. He can't be calling everyone a—"

"He's right," said Obama, raising his eyebrows at Jackson. That no nonsense, worn-out-being-the-president-and-having-to-listen-to-assholes-go-on-all-day-long look. "Sam ... I think we need to talk about the economy. Right now. I really do. We need to talk about jobs, and giving hope to the middle class, to the whole country and not just the sisters who want to get married and the Mormon orphans and those of us who have done well and should pay a little more. And one more thing ... if you say one more word about my anniversary, I'll be turning my wife loose on you, and she'll be putting a whup ass on yours that'll make the one she put on me the other night look like a—"

"Can we talk about the economy now?" Romney interjected petulantly. "For instance, Mr. President, tell me why, if I, or someone even richer than me, someone like Sheldon, for instance, is willing to create a job for someone, to take care of this young child you spoke of, to give just one example, so that he doesn't end up in a parade some day wearing chaps—"

Obama, ever presidential, nonetheless cut in, "Now hold on, Governor, I think we can all agree there are worse things, far worse fates that any of us could end up with, particularly if you and your running mate get elected, than going to a parade wearing chaps—"

But Romney wasn't so sure. In fact he disagreed. No, you wouldn't see his children going to a parade in chaps. If anyone he hired in the private workforce to raise a child (rather than let a couple of lesbians get their hands on him) let that child go off to a parade in chaps, well, let's just say someone's head would roll. There'd be some firing going on.

Jackson, incredulous, was heard to say, with relative calm at first, "Did I say that either of you motherfuckers could talk?"

Perhaps he said it too softly, because both Romney and Obama ignored him. As they did, repeatedly, with Jim Lehrer during the first debate. They continued on, bickering, talking over the top of each other.

"Tell me this, Mr. President, what if your girls—"

"My girls? My girls are on a tighter leash than I am. They're doing calculus right now. Either that or they're in bed—"

"Gentlemen—" Jackson tried once.

"Assuming they've finished reading their Zora Neale Hurston for the night," Obama added.

"Who?" Romney had never heard of no Zora Neale Hurston. Figured she was probably one of his aunts from Kenya.

"Gentlemen, please—" Jackson tried twice, his tone betraying annoyance. He was not in the habit of being ignored, not even by motherfuckers with armed guards.

"I have to say I'm not at all surprised," Obama said to Romney, squaring off with him, looking, to the close observer, like he might throw down with the Mitt if he kept on. After the anniversary he'd had—or rather, didn't—with Michelle after the first debate, he really wasn't in the mood for any shit tonight. "Then again, you probably had your hands full with Horatio Alger and Dale Carnegie, reading up on how Jesus hauled ass from Nazareth to Missouri just ahead of Lewis and Clark—"

Now, Romney thought, he didn't need to say that. There was no need of that. It wasn't like he was Dan Quayle going on about Jack Kennedy. "I'll have you know, Mr. President, that while you were smoking your grass and doing your blow and dreaming about your father, I was out in the business world, stealing money fair and square and without caffeine or any other dangerous drugs—"

Obama squared his jaw, stuck out his not so intimidating chest. "What say you and I go play a little basketball?"

Romney smiled and kept on. "I was pursuing the American Dream. Paying way too much in capital gains before Ronald Reagan, and the president whose name we don't speak—"

"Would you both SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Jackson shouted.

Both candidates stopped talking. Romney looked at Jackson. "Whoa." It was the first time he'd ever said the word Whoa, anywhere.

Obama, seeing one of the Secret Service snipers aiming at Jackson's head now, waved him off. "Sam," he said with all the reasonableness he could muster, "This isn't the set for "Pulp Fiction." You aren't sitting in the front seat of a car with John talking about cheeseburgers at a Paris McDonalds. This is serious. This is a Presidential Debate. And, by the way, if I don't do better at this one, something of mine is going to be in the ringer afterwards, so I'd appreciate it if—"

"You know what I think?" Romney remarked, his eyes sparkling in the lights. "I think we're going to win this election!" He remembered Walter Mondale saying the same thing at a debate with Reagan back in 1984, after he'd imagined he'd wiped the floor with the president, who was probably in the early stages of Alzeimer's at the time. At least he acted like he was. Then and after he beat Mondale in a landslide—it was a memory Romney only wanted to see out so far.

Jackson, hearing him, turned to Romney and said, "I'll bet you a hundred fucking dollars that you don't."

 Romney thought a moment, and wanting so much to be cool like the president, stepped out from behind the podium now and walked toward the front of the stage, toward the moderator's desk. He held out his hand. "Brother, you're on."

Jackson stood up. "Who the fuck you calling brother, Motherfucker?"

There was the sound of guns cocking. Lots of them. Obama, once again, made the kind of gesture he did with his girls when they started back-talking Michelle at dinner; the Secret Service stood down. "Guys," he said, "you can't be placing bets on the election. This isn't Las Vegas—" He frowned and looked to his handlers, to the sniper with the rifle. "We're not in Las Vegas, are we?"

"We're in an Alternate Universe!" someone from the crowd yelled.

Obama looked into the audience, dead into the camera as it turned out, and offered his best smile of the night. The pundits later on would say it was his best moment of the debate. "So what about gambling?" he asked—to crowd, anyone. "Can folks gamble out here, in this Alternate Universe?"

No one was sure whether they could or not. Apparently a lot of things were still getting ironed out. Laws and regulations, just how much a citizen could get by with in this Alternate Universe before it became a problem for the others. Obama looked to Romney, fearing that Mitt might try to shake hands with Jackson soul man style to seal their bet (he tried so hard—it was touching, really, as he'd told Michelle the other night, after which Michelle told him that if he ever wanted to get touched again he'd better wipe the floor with this equivocating clown tonight) and having already called the Secret Service off twice, put his arm around him, his less hapless than before challenger, and said, "Come on, Governor, time for you and me to clock out. You don't want to end up like Pete Rose, do you?"

"I can't have lesbians raising one our children," Romney confided. "The base would shackle me in a dungeon somewhere."

"It'll be fine," Obama assured him. "Sam got a little too far over his skis on that one."

"Let's make it a thousand!" Jackson shouted menacingly as the two candidates headed arm in arm into the wings.

"Are we going to have him again next time?" Romney wondered, mortified at the possibility.

"I don't think so. I heard we got Rachel Maddow next time."

Romney gasped—even while he was secretly excited. He had a thing for Rachel Maddow. It was something he'd never shared with anyone. He'd see her on the television and want to reach inside the thing and kiss her. It made no sense at all.

"Really?" he said.

"No—" Obama gave him a light elbow to the ribs and shook his head. "It's a presidential debate, Mitt. We can't be having lesbians moderating a presidential debate. Not even in an alternate universe does that happen ... yet." He watched Romney's expression and swatted him on the arm. "I'm just messing with you."

Romney chuckled nervously. It was hard to tell sometimes.

Just then two African-American knockouts, legs as long and beautiful as the dancer Stephanie Pope's, walked up, handed each of them a cosmo and walked away, holding hands.

"I like it here," Romney said, taking a sip—it was an alternate universe, after all. The rules regarding Mormons were still getting worked out.

Obama, wondering if it would hurt him to sneak a cigarette, if not a joint, had to admit he found the place agreeable as well. "Helluva a lot better than Denver," he sighed.

"All we have to do is keep it interesting," Romney reminded him.

Obama, tired, wishing it were otherwise, nevertheless raised his glass. "To a satisfying pageant!"

Cheers!

Selling the Book: The Attention-Getting Query Letter

Dear Editors:

As with the hundreds of other emails you will get today, requesting the very same, I have a novel, the working title of which is Dearly Departed, which, unlike the hundreds of other requests your wearied eyes will consider today, is actually pretty good. I won't bore you with even a line or two of details, since there are many who can write jacket copy who can't write an affecting line much less an affecting novel, so, please, to save us both time and needless torpor, read the rest of this, my query ... and then, contrary to habit and probability, write me back and ask that I send you, per the custom, fifty pages, for you to read and consider.

Having then read and considered them, ask for more. At which point you will come to the reasonable conclusion that they are quite a lot better than almost anything you see on a daily basis: that the writing is excellent, the narrative drive compelling, that, along with real-life gore, and sex, and interestingly fucked up characters getting under each other's skin in ways both nuanced and not so, there is even a well-hung midget, albeit deep into the book, one who, granted, we never actually see, but nonetheless, a well-hung midget is a well-hung midget—one I wouldn't be averse to mingling in the action a little more if it suits you.

Which is to say, on certain matters, I'm flexible.

That said, on the actual point of whether or not you decide to read and publish my book, I am not so flexible. On that point I am actually quite insistent. Which is to say: you will like and publish my pages, my novel, please, or so help me God I'll blow my fucking brains out.

Let me explain ...

But before I do, before you note my address and panic—OMG! He's from Colorado! A nutjob threatening us from the state currently at the top of the A-list for nutjobs!!! WTF!!!!—let me assure you that, should you decide NOT to publish my novel, I will NOT, I promise, shoot or otherwise harm, in any way, anyone else, this despite what would surely be considerable disappointment on my part.

Furthermore, I have a wife and two young children, and am certainly not going to blow my brains out in the house where I currently reside ...

Frankly I don't even own a firearm (for reasons that should be obvious by now), which is not to say I couldn't get one pretty easily (need I say more on THAT subject?), or that, on the contrary, I'm looking forward to my children one day getting older and looking at me, ensconsed in my study, ignoring them—"radically wasting time," as the great Annie Lamott once called it—and coming to the stark, hateful conclusion that this is why we no longer have any money, why we are having to, conceivably, sell our house and move to a small apartment far away from the fine neighborhood and school district that is currently ours, why there are no vacations to Hawaii and New York City anymore, why they can no longer partake in the kind of expensive activities that their older brothers took for granted—because Daddy is a writer who had to write a book, one that when he finally finished it he couldn't fucking sell!

Regardless of your circumstances, dear editor, you can surely understand how a responsible parent (such as the term is generally understood in our better communities) wouldn't exactly look forward to such an eventuality. Enough that he might consider, on occasion—now, for instance—doing something that many would consider a bit extreme. Especially when one considers that even if you publish my book, and it enjoys modest success (as the term is generally understood with regard to first-time literary novels), that modest success will only provide me, the writer, with enough money to pay, with any luck, next month's bills, this depending on whether someone had to go to the hospital, or the dentist, whether ice fees for hockey were due the previous month ...

And—AND—surely, you being the sensitive, at times neurotic literary type you almost certainly must be—working for free, yes? reading scores of mediocre to poor manuscripts, imagining yourself on your better days, nonetheless, as a kind of Soulmate to the Monks, in the Dark Ages, keeping literature alive!—you despair over the staggering amount of drivel, the wincingly, cringingly tepid, self-indulgent, uninspired (if occasionally "well-crafted") shit, much of it from cash-flush MFA programs, getting slung around to scores of agents and publishers like yourself, many of whom are dependent now more than ever on reading fees and handouts from those few wealthy souls who haven't already handed out all they are going to hand out to cure cancer, to feed the starving, support their candidates, their causes, not to mention the local orchestra and theater, who have, magnanimously, left a little back to support LIT-RAH-CHOOR. You have to admit you are thankful that most of them aren't readers, that they simply like the idea of supporting LIT-RAH-CHOOR, kind of like you like the idea of being an agent for, an editor of, LIT-RAH-CHOOR—

Except that on some days, my fucking God ...

Still, and despite your own unsettling moments of despair, you have to admit it would bother you if you were to find out not long after you insouciantly deleted my email query that I did in fact blow my fucking brains out. Even if I didn't do it in my home, or under a tree outside your office (think about that! you who thinks woodpeckers and pigeons are annoying), even if I went out into the woods, or way up in the mountains, and didn't make a mess that someone like Amy Adams in that movie "Sunshine Cleaners" would have to clean up (a profession, btw, should you be looking for a new one, where one can make serious bank).

It would bother you the worse for the fact that, once I was dead, someone, probably several, would actually be asking for the manuscript, looking at it, reading it, considering it, the new platforms post-suicide, the money, and wondering why no one—YOU—ever bothered to ask for it, a mere fifty pages, from a suicidal author!

Soon, all over Twitter and Facebook ... Tumbler, all those sites that have contributed to our fragmenting attention and made your particular failing, antediluvian industry an even poorer, more depressing economic bet, there would be the easy, predictable comparisons to John Kennedy Toole, who, likewise, killed himself after not being able to publish his novel ... a novel that later went on, after his mother (who doesn't come off well in the book; one must admit the pathos is heartbreaking) showed the manuscript to the estimable Walker Percy, at LSU, to win the Pulitzer Prize.

And keep in mind that the late John Kennedy Toole never had children to be ashamed of his failure, or a nice house in a desirable neighborhood in the best town in the country to raise a family and buy locally produced art, to lose—no, he was merely a misfit radically wasting his time with a Big Chief tablet in his mother's basement, trying to publish when, let's be honest, it was quite a lot easier to get published.

Keep in mind: You don't want to be that person. You want to be the person who says, Don't be an asshole! Don't run off to the mountains and kill yourself! Send me your pages to me, and I'll read them! I'll publish you! I mean, why not? Who the fuck will notice, right? We'll publish you and afterwards leave you to continue on in your Sisyphean way, to radically waste time, to make sure that your children look to your example one day and think: Fuck that, I'm going to medical school.

Only then will the success of your insensible enterprise become apparent.

Yes, you want to be the person who says all that, if not much less. Who, after publishing my novel, can go on television and maybe write a book yourself one day, telling how you saved another writer's life. Maybe put a well-hung midget in there, one with fangs. A well-hung, walking dead midget with fangs who can travel through time and has a dog who can quote Shakespeare and philosophize on a level that people who aren't terribly philosophical might think is brilliant.

You could be the person who might one day, from a podium somewhere, thank me.

Looking forward, expectantly, to your reply.

All the best,


The Author

  

Why I'm Done Posting Political Point of View On FaceBook

Well, to be perfectly honest, it's because as best I can tell nobody cares—or reads it.

So that's one reason.

Also—and again, a smart person probably wouldn't admit this, or at least go announcing it as if he were some prescient smarty-pants, but—Romney's toast. He's probably the worst politician either party has seen running for president in my lifetime (and that's a pretty long time, going back to Eisenhower's last year in office), with the possible exception of Mike Dukakis. What's worse, his political team, his advisors, are made up of the kind of hacks and discredited fools that would give the management of the Colorado Rockies a run for its money. Again, if I were a smart blogger, interested in growing my audience of like-minded souls at a time when most of them are just starting to pay attention to the political race, so that I could one day end up on the Huffington Post ... well, no one ever accused me of having a lot of sense that way.

And even if I did, no one (not really) wants to read about it on FaceBook. As my dear wife has heard me say ad nauseum: FaceBook's brilliance is that it took everyday banality to the next level, allowing many of us the illusion of connection without having to actually smell the person and worry whether some of his or her saliva was going to hit you in the face when he or she told you—live—what was going on with his or her children, or home repair, or where they'd gone of their vacation, and instead of, say, smiling while at the same time seething with envy over whether that person's vacation was cooler than yours, you could simply huddle with your device and privately, very privately, and quietly (or not, if you're home alone, as I am now) say to yourself: Fuck you and fucking vacation you fucking fuck!!

Which sounds smug, and pompous of me, I know—and it is!

But here's the thing. As much as most of us, when we aren't on some cool vacation ourselves, don't especially want to hear about someone else's vacation, we'd rather hear about their vacation, or even their children's activities, than listen to them go on about who they're going to vote for in November.

I mean, I know its part of the human experience to find out that someone you really think a lot of, and respect, "Likes" something, or someone, you don't like, or think is a fucking idiot. I know that happens, and I really shouldn't expect the sort of perfect world where, at least on FaceBook, it doesn't happen. But what I've decided is that it doesn't need to be a reason for despair. For thinking less of that person (anymore than I would want them to think less of me). Supposedly Reagan and Kennedy got along famously, as did William F. Buckley and John Kenneth Galbraith. I know it isn't fashionable these days to be so cosy with those you don't see eye to eye with on economic issues, that practicing Catholics ought to get the better seating in the pews than the ones who only go to church when their mom is in town, but nonetheless, it wouldn't hurt us—it wouldn't hurt me—at a time when people are getting killed over some not even B-grade movie to say WTF ... WTF do I care if someone I really think highly of, and would do anything I could for if they needed help, or someone had hurt their feelings, or fucked with them in some way, is reading the entire compendium of the "Fifty Shades of Grey" series? Does it really matter if a person who almost all the time makes me smile "likes" Paul Ryan? Am I not someone who embraces irony, paradox? Is my own life not one great big example of both?

So, you ask, WTF is your point?

Well, in short, I'm done, on FaceBook at least (if you want to read my political stuff, in 140 characters ore less, no less, follow me on Twitter @BPithyCB), pushing my point of view on people and imagining that they're going to give a shit. I'm going to stick with anecdotes, preferably funny ones. And if I tell you about my vacation, and include pictures that might make you for even a second want to strangle me because you're stuck breathing smoke in 100 degree heat after your child just dumped a bowl of cereal on their homework, I'll try to include at least one horrible thing that happened to me that day. Something we can all relate to and not feel too murderous about, to each other.

Anyway, I'm going to try.

The (Surrealistic, Barely Avoided) Conversion of Paul

"But what are we to do with the weak?" Paul asks, his pupils having strangely grown to the size of dark quarters since the reception that followed Mitt's big speech. "What do we do with the losers, the screw ups, the ones who can't be whipped into shape, who buy high and sell low, who don't respond  to reasonable incentives ... "

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Mitt wonders, frankly, frustrated, sitting his glass of plain water on the coffee table and leveling a severe pair of non-dilated eyes at his young companion. These odd, incongruous questions from Paul are very perplexing, particularly after he, Mitt, has just given a speech that was nearly as memorable as Clint Eastwood's discussion with the empty chair.

Paul, holding what looks like a Cosmo in one of those pretty glasses, leans forward in his stuffed leather chair, his head slightly askance. He appears both amused and disoriented, as if he were staring at himself in one of those old-fashioned fun house mirrors. "I thought Mormons didn't curse."

"I didn't curse," Mitt informs him. "I was being profane—adjectivally profane—which is something different."

"You know what you look like?" Paul says now. "You look like someone who would play the president in a movie where the president doesn't have much of a part ... like in that movie where Clint Eastwood plays the Secret Service agent who listens to Miles Davis ... and then puts the moves on Renee Russo ... this when he isn't trying to catch John Malkovich, who, if you ever saw the movie, is way creepy, some ex-CIA guy ..."

Mitt, bristling, gives him a good slap across the face in the hope it'll straighten him out. Paul smiles, as if he wants him to do it again. Mitt asks, "Have you been drinking? Is that what this is all about? Tell me something, why is it that Catholics drink so much? Especially the Irish Catholics. Why, when I was the governor, in Boston—"

Paul winces. "Don't mention Boston."

"What?"

"With Boston comes equivocation. The Etch-a-Sketch has erased it."

Mitt wants to slug him now but doesn't. Instead he points to the glass. "Do me a favor and tell me what you had to drink. What are in those pink things? And what are those things floating in your glass."

"Confetti." Paul replies dreamily. He looks down in his glass. "Little tiny squares of confetti ..."

Mitt gets up. "I'm going to call the doctor. I think you've been drugged—"

Paul laughs—hysterically, convulsively, like someone who has been drugged—then says, "You know what I can't understand? I can't understand why you can't drink just a little coffee in the morning, before you step in front of a microphone. I mean, your forefathers took Benzedrine—"

Mitt picks up the phone, but then remembers what happened to McGovern after they found out Thomas Eagleton had had a few jolts to his nervous system. Mitt doesn't want to end up like George McGovern in '72. No, Mitt thinks he'll just have to talk him down himself. "Listen to me," he begins, only to have Paul ignore him, run over to the window, stick his head out and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!!"

"Imagine," Paul says, coming back now, his face flushed, "if people actually DID that. If they wouldn't just accept their lot in life. If everytime people like us left our homes without security we had to worry about getting our throats slit by someone who wasn't accepting his lot—"

"But people don't do that," Mitt replies, his voice soft and reassuring. "They have television to calm them. And there are many, many drugs. There are workout routines. Moreover, we DO have security. At least for the moment—"

Paul frowns. "We're going to lose, aren't we."

Mitt knows it's true, but sees no need in adding despair to Paul's situation at the moment. He regrets that he let that last part slip out. "Now, now, let's not be silly—"

"The Secret Service, for us, is fleeting. Soon we will be on our own—"

Mitt sighs, thinking this is what often happens to these true-believer types. Even Barry Goldwater went soft in the end, after he had that homosexual caregiver ... No, better to lick your finger, he thinks, and hold it up into the breeze for guidance. "We're going to straighten this country out," Mitt takes Paul by the shoulders and insists, staring into Paul's eyes, now, and seeing a full-length black and white reflection of himself. "We're going to cut the capital gains tax so I can make serious bank again. We're going to repeal that health plan that Obama stole from me, all of it except the part about covering the people with pre-existing conditions—"

"The expensive part," Paul says.

"That's right," Mitt winks. "After all, I'm not heartless.

Paul smiles, supremely entertained as he watches Mitt's entire skull expand and contract like the lobe of lung. He takes another sip of his Cosmo—he loves these things. He wonders what one would cost in a real bar. Then, suddenly, his mood slips. "The poor will always be with us. I just didn't realize until now just how much—how close—they would be. If we do what I want to do with Medicaid, for instance, Uncle Ned might be in my basement. And maybe Aunt Virginia. Those two couldn't balance a checkbook much less make sensible decisions with a Medicare voucher. Uncle Ned would have probably taken it and bought the FaceBook IPO—"

"Then he deserves what he gets," says Mitt, who is finding all this fussy talk of consequences tedious.

"What he'll get is a tent," Paul retorts. "One big enough to hold all his guns, and he'll pitch it in my yard! Until I let him have a room in my basement!"

"Make him help out," Mitt suggests, sensibly. "Who knows? If you train him right, you might be able to fire the guy who mows your lawn."

"Or Ned could shoot me in my sleep."

"Well then there's always Virginia. You did say Virginia, right? Maybe she wouldn't be entirely useless. Maybe she could pick up the slack for Ned. Does she do floors? The person doing my floors at the moment is ... let's just say he isn't doing much of a job."

"Why don't you fire him?" Paul suggests, looking a bit more himself, Mitt thinks. "I thought you liked firing people."

"I would," Mitt admits, believing he may have seen the turn, "but he frightens me."

Paul stares at him indignantly and shrugs. "So don't call him again. Get someone else to do your floors. Get a dog, an alarm system. Hire someone else."

"But he hasn't left since the day I let him in."

Paul is at once intrigued and aghast. "What do you mean he hasn't left."

Mitt isn't entirely sure this is working, but keeps on. "I mean, Paul, that I have a big house, and the guy who does my floors, or did, once, is living in one of the rooms—the one farthest from mine and Ann's. I got him a flat-screen TV with all the premium channels and I have my chef cook him whatever he wants when he wants it. You could do the same for your aunt and uncle. Maybe build your uncle an underground firing range, so that he leaves you alone—"

"But I don't have that kind of money, Mitt. I'm not as rich as you."

Mitt scoffs. He's tired of people telling him they aren't as rich as he is. "Well then, fire your maid. Get a job manipulating resources in the private sector. Be practical."

"But I want to be vice-president! If I was vice-president, and maybe, someday, the president, then I could have the Secret Service take care of Ned—"

"Or—I'm just saying, OR—you could make Ayn Rand up in Atheist Heaven proud, and get your spoiled by government work self to work in the private sector, and make millions, and buy an island somewhere. How well does your uncle swim?"

Paul, who could swear that the room they're in has just turned into a jumpy castle, thinks about this and says, "I'm not sure."

"Stick with me," Mitt finally says, not at all sure if it is good advice or bad at this point. "Once we're done handing out favors we'll be able to get you an island for a decent price. We'll get you set up better than Dr. No."

Paul smiles at the James Bond reference. He likes James Bond, how things always seem to work out for him, how James is a government employee, too, but nobody makes fun of him, because he's James Bond and would kick their ass if they did. He offers Mitt a drink from his glass."

"No," Mitt says, a bit shocked. He waves his hand and makes an attempt at a joke. "You know us Mormons. If it isn't Benzedrine, it's crap."

"Benzedrine?" Paul has forgotten about his Benzedrine remark.

"Never mind," says Mitt, adding, "What do you say I freshen up my water and grab my Book of Mormon, and you grab your copy of Atlas Shrugged, and we see which book will put us to sleep first."

Paul, much to Mitt's relief, thought that was a great idea. After a little bit, Paul asked, "Do you think I could do a mission to Africa some day? Get away from all these government jobs ..."

"This is America," Mitt answered, distracted and overwhelmed by the torpor of Rand's prose. "You can do anything you want here."

"That's what I was hoping."

And in this way, the universe was righted once more.

Those Fundamentally Different Paths

I'm going to make this quick (I know, bullshit, but one must try), since I have a woodpecker banging on the side of my house that I need to go outside and shoot, before I pick up my mower from its annual physical, and maybe go sell some gold to pay for my health insurance premiums, which have recently gone down, considerably, though I no longer have "behavioral health" coverage (which some of you might find astounding, or at least unwise, given certains tics and tendencies you've observed in the author's recent posts), and am currently waiting on my refund of the difference, which, well, if you want to see an insurance company dilly-dally, and flat out lie to you, ask them when you can expect your refund (hint: not in time to pay your American Express bill, chumpie).

So not only did I watch Obama speak to the DNC last night, but I saw him again today addressing some "folks" in Portsmouth, NH, essentially repeating the same speech as last night, though this one had a little more humor in it (joking on making Bill Clinton the Secretary of Explaining Stuff).

I don't care what anyone says: he's an incredible speaker, doing just exactly what he needs to. Unlike his opponents, he's cool, self-deprecating, and yet ... he's quite ... presidential.

Anyway, that fucking bird is going to have a hole in our cedar big enough for a bear if I don't get out there (he sees me even peek my head out on the deck now and he flies away, that's how scared he is of me), so let's get to the matter at hand ...

In short, what no one tells you, is that the consequences of continued tax cuts, or further concentrating the wealth among the wealthy while cutting programs (to finance the cuts) that overall serve to stabilize the fortunes of the unfortunate, is going to be a lot more strife. You can run a professional sports team on the principle of Winners Only. You can run a Gulag or a Concentration Camp on the principle of Only The Strong Survive (to do more work, for those running the camp). But if you aren't willing, or don't have the stomach, for such strong, highly un-Christian measures, then you need to accommodate the entire population. Which is to say you need to govern a society, and not pretend that you're fielding a team of olympians and when all is said and done there will only be beautiful and talented people using the 15,000 condoms provided for the Olympic Village.

No ...

There will be people with no athletic skill at all, who don't fuck well or maybe don't fuck at all, but who will nonetheless be stealing the condoms because, well, fuck those pretty, talented people because I'm not one of them ...

This is not going to change by making these people exercise more. Not everyone is, or ever could be, an olympic athlete.

Is this not obvious?

Similarly, not everyone is going to "win" at capitalism. Not everyone who gets a big line of credit is going to behave sensibly with it. And we can let those people go broke, and bitch about how unfair it is that our tax dollars have to pay for these fucks ups and all that, but unless we take them to a ditch and shoot them—and everyone else who fucks up, who doesn't have a respectable Win/Loss record—then we have to deal with them. As scripture says: The poor will always be with us.

So, all matters of decency, and compassion, Christian charity and all that, aside ... would you rather leave it up to these folks to wisely use a grossly indequate voucher to sensibly buy their health insurance in their dotage, from unregulated (or far less regulated) for-profit insurers, or should we make sure that we do what we can to keep Medicare funded?

Should we ... spend more money than the Pentagon is even asking for (and not on soldiers, but to make happy the various pigs at the trough of the "Military-Industrial Complex" Eisenhower, a Republican, warned us of over sixty years ago), and take it from Medicaid, from the real losers in the system, many of whom don't even vote, and then, what ... make them go out and get jobs? Where? And what about when Dad's money runs out and it's either Medicaid paying for his nursing home or you bringing him home and setting him up and, well, that's going to do wonders for the disposable income you could otherwise use to stimulate the economy. Though it might be good for you as a person. Or it might not. Maybe some pretty ugly things inside you might come out, things you might have kept inside and never been made aware of until Dad was asleep in his grave. Though you would have the consolation of knowing the wealthy had gotten wealthier while you were learning these things about yourself rather than, say, going out to eat from time to time, or taking a vacation, or maybe even paying for your son or daughter to play hockey.

The game with Republicans, since St. Ronald, has been, in theory, to choke the beast—government—though, as Clinton's numbers (verified by Bloomberg News the following day) indicated, they've done a terrible job. Government has grown, considerably, under every Republican administration including St. Ronald's—one could say St. Ronald took the idea of growing government to new levels, levels never seen before. And yet our new disciples sing his praises.

What they did was give the tax dollars to different people. That's all they did. And it seemed to work out all right while the economy was in a generational expansion ... which is to say, a natural leg up, and the stock market we were all encouraged to buy into was going up, up, up.

But what goes up, must, at the very least, take a breather, a pause; these pause, when you measure them closely, last about as long as the legs up. Politicians hate them, since during these fallow times difficult decisions need to be made that don't sit well with the people doing the voting.

The endgame to the Crisis of 2008 has always been whether we would end up getting suckered out of programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and probably VA benefits, so that the wealthy can continue to make respectable year over year gains in the stock market at a time when the market should, in a free market environment, be selling off, getting cheap, until a new cycle begins, or whether we embark on a different sort of arithmetic, one less the calculations of the gulag, and more the calculations of the neighborhood. Woodpeckers and all.