2009 has been one stinker of a year. It started out with a lot of promise and aplomb, but as events wheedled their ways along it seems to have ended with more of a whimper, or a whine, than a bang. In fact, on a more personal level, the year has ended with a good solid kick in the crotch. I can taste my testicles. Some years are like that, the bar has to be set somewhere. Anyway, the main point of this is that I will not be displeased when 2009 ticks away into the history books. Of course there is no guarantee that 2010 will be any better, but what the hell? You take a roll of the dice every time you drag your sorry ass out of the bed.
Come to think of it, this entire damned decade has been about as wonderful as a cactus turned inside out and used for an artificial vagina. First some little pissant apparently steals an election, rides around on a golf cart for nine months, the Twin Towers get knocked down by 19 assholes from Saudi Arabia, and ever since then it's been one war after another. That same little son of a gun goes on TV and tells everyone to keep spending all that money they don't have so our phoney-baloney, credit driven, consumer economy can keep running so the folks sitting at the top can keep skimming off their cut. He compresses interest rates to a point where you can't reasonably resist buying with money you don't have; and then the banks, in their infinite wisdom, decide it's a great idea to start lending sizable chunks of change to people who can't possibly pay it back so they can buy houses they can't possibly afford. This creates a housing bubble that screws just about everyone, just about everywhere, in the world Way to go American lenders! Way to go!
Of course, none of the economic gurus are complaining when their house's value is going up 25% a year for five years straight – hey, no, nothing out of the ordinary there! We are just super fantastic investors with big, capable brains – never mind the hair on our knuckles and nuts, we are advanced goddamnit, advanced!
Now we have Obama, who wants to give himself an A-minus if this bullshit, health care, nothing bill manages to get ram-rodded through Congress. I'd like to see something pass in order for us to have something to change, because this particular package is not likely to help many of us at all. It has been so watered down that Howard Dean is on the record seeing it needs to be scrapped, start again, mulligan. What is going on around here? When are people going to come to their senses and realize that the folks in Washington, be they well-intentioned or not, just aren't capable of steering a ship this large. It is getting to a point where it is too big not to fail. We need to step back, shift power away from the power centers, and start letting the people have a say in this whole system again. It's no amazing coincidence that Obama seems to have been sucked up by the system so quickly. They call it a system for a reason – it exists all by itself. There is not much that a single person, even one as powerful as the President of the United States, can do to change it. These Frankenstein monsters tend to have minds of their own. War, special interests, corruption, money – welcome to the status quo. The President doesn't answer to you and me. That was out of style before it was ever in.
So yeah, you can take 2009, you can take the whole damned decade. I won't miss it much. We've had our moments, but all things considered I wish this pain emanating from my groin and arching into my solar plexus would, at the very least, begin to subside. This is the situation I am talking about – the state of being that requires the creamy, white, helliday lubrication that is egg nog. Son of a bitch! This is necessary!
There is blood everywhere. You don't need special lenses to see it. The stuff is oozing from the walls, from the floorboards, out of the heating ducts. With your eyes closed you can smell the coppery goop. I don't know how we've made it this far. I don't know why we keep living and breathing. We are strange, strong creatures – maybe stronger, and definitely stranger than we have a right to be. The nog is kicking in, the nog is kicking in. Oh come on egg nog, rum, magic. I need that dull feeling, I can tell it's coming on, it's starting to overcome me – just... about... now...................................................
madbob@madbob.com
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