Steamy here this morning. We were out of bananas so I sent Bluffo out to find some. After several hours I am becoming concerned that Bluffo hasn't returned. I don't know why, on this particular morning it worries me - but it does.
I am fretting.
It is typical of Bluffo to go off into the jungle in search of bananas, monkeys or blowfish and not return for hours -sometimes days. An unsettling feeling has come over me this morning, perhaps because it has been pouring rain all night and the sonorous rhythm of the jungle torrent beating on the lush canopy of leaves has lulled me into a dark, listless state.
Why I am worried isn't important. I feel maligned and morose. I really wanted bananas this morning and I don't have any.
I don't know why I've become so wanton and given to my urges lately. It seems I'm always seeking instant gratification. After this many years of living among grubs, slime worms and spiders, sleeping on piles of moist rotten leaves, it seems most unusual that I've become so hedonistically needy. I know I should have given up long ago and jumped off Figuna Falls, plummeted to my death and ended this worthless life of mine.
Bananas. Damn Bananas. I crave them, even though I have visions of jumping into those falls and smashing myself into the rocky gorge below - it is the thought of bananas that consumes me.
I need them - bunches of them. I need them so bad.
I grew up banana-less in Toledo, Ohio. My parents, barely able to support a family of two, had four children, of which I was the last. I always felt like a mistake.
My father built a home for us out of leftover girders from the ubiquitous bridge construction that has made Toledo a laughing stock. Have you ever gone half-way over a bridge and encountered a "Bridge Closed" sign?
In Toledo, construction crews like to put the "Bridge Closed" signs in the middle of the bridges rather than at the egresses. Some sort of sick Toledo joke. It's not funny if you're in a hurry.
My mother, who didn't speak English, hated bananas. The site of them would make her bleed and swoon. It scared me when I was a child. She used to scream at the site of bananas and shout in whatever language that struck her fancy. I couldn't understand her cries for help.
I was such a useless child - I always felt alone, worthless, and humiliated.
You don't know what being alone really means until you've been alone in Toledo, Ohio -especially with those skeletons of half-finished bridges silhouetted in the smog looming all around. Toledo has more bridges per capita than anywhere else in the world - even Venice.
My father used to find occasional work spearing carp in the Maumee river. The carp business is a capricious one at best. During good carp crop years, my father would leave the house, spear in hand and not return for months.
Carp spearing is a difficult, dirty and demeaning way to earn a living - and my father knew it. There is not a day that went by that my father didn't think about his station in life. He tried hard, but just couldn't wiggle free from the lure of carp.
He'd come home stinking of rotting fish and intoxicated.
Back in '87, Toledo was the carp capital of the world. People in Europe would pay several cents a pound for Toledo carp and my dad knew it. He was making only a few dollars a day even though he speared carp sixteen to eighteen hours a day. His plight was shared by fellow carp spearers. It was a sad lot to be sure.
My dad was livid.
Angrily, he founded Carp Spearers Local 913 United Fish Cleaners - Federation of Carp Fisherman. He spent days trying to organize his fellow spearers - spreading the word of truth. But, they would have none of his incendiary talk - indeed they speared on oblivious to his impassioned pleas making vast sums of money for the carp corporations but only pittances for themselves.
I learned that life is not fair.
In the winter, my father would drink homemade turpentine and brood, mumbling about the inequities of life and opining about summer days on the Maumee and the thrill of the kill. He'd tell my mother, in English, how people in Germany were paying up to four cents a pound for Toledo carp yet he only made a few dollars a day. It wasn't fair, he'd tell her, tears streaming down his scaly cheeks.
She continued knitting. She didn't understand a word.
In those days, before the Maumee became heavily polluted with mercury and toilet detritus, carp were so thick that the water literally rippled with them. They were so plentiful, in fact, any new bridges built had to be built higher to accommodate the mass of the flotilla of wiggling carp.
These glistening, swarming cadres of Toledo-bred carp were the very lifeblood of my family and of Toledo's sagging economy.
Once the glass companies ran out of sand in Toledo, they booted their loyal workers out on the street, closed up shop and moved to Libya - leaving Toledo an economic disaster area. A slum-scathed landscape of broken bridges and decaying buildings.
Then the culinary elitists proclaimed Maumee River carp as the finest, most flavorful in the world and the carp business blossomed.
The displaced glass factory workers bought cheap but sharp,Zulu spears and headed to the Maumee to stake their claim and amass a fortune by exploiting the carp craze that was sweeping Europe.
As with most things in Toledo, nothing turns out the way it is planned.
Cantankerous, cut-throat Carp moguls moved in and took over the carp spearing operations, paying the poor, downtrodden spearers a paltry price per carp. My father went from making almost $12 a day to making less than $5.
From their vast treasuries built on the backs of itinerant, uneducated men, these greedy moguls bribed Toledo city officials to look the other way.
They squeezed extra hours from the poor broken men and committed atrocities upon the gasping, flopping carp. They drew great pleasure from inflicting pain on the poor ugly fish as they flopped helplessly on the docks, fresh from their impaling. It was yet another form of sadistic recreation for these aristocratic and narcissistic carp entrepreneurs.
Suddenly the bottom fell out of the carp business in Toledo. After several million Europeans become sick from eating carp infested with Maumee River cholera, Toledo-basin diphtheria, and garden-variety fecal coliform bacteria, Europeans wised up and stopped eating carp - just as Americans had done a century before.
Carp are dirty, ugly fish with a vile mud vein running through their innards which contains all sorts of germs and other unmentionables.
It wasn't long after Europe began reeling from the carp plague that several hundred Germans came to Toledo to vent their wrath on the carp spearers. By the time the Germans had arrived however, the carp-mongering moguls had taken their money and left Toledo. The poor carp spearers were alone again with only their dull, rusty carp spears to fight off the angry mob of wild Germans bent on exacting revenge on the carp industry.
There is nothing quite so frightening as a band of crazed Germans running amok in downtown Toledo. The enraged Germans lined the bridges over the river and threw hand grenades at my father and his friends.
As luck would have it, one German grenade severed my father's left arm and it fell flailing into the Maumee River with a sick splash. They may have been able to save the arm had they been able to retrieve it quickly.
Unfortunately, my father's arm was consumed by the angry carp that writhed and undulated in the filthy Maumee. Hungry and eager for revenge, the carp consumed every shred of the one vibrant limb.
There would be no reattaching it now.
My father didn't last long after that. The carp business flopped. My dad had only one arm. He did the only thing a proud carp spearer could do - he decided to end his miserable existence by jumping off Bridge #269 .
It was on March 10, 1992 that he made his historic leap. He waved goodbye and jumped off the bridge into the foul filth below.
Always thoughtful, my father had planned well. There would be no final expenses for him - he knew we couldn't afford to bury or cremate him. Now there would be no need for either. His turgid body was quickly and gleefully ravaged by vicious, voracious and vengeful carp.
How ironic that these foul carp, once the foundation of his life and the sustenance of mine, had rendered a final and fitting service to our family: unwittingly they had become my father's pro bono funeral directors.
Even after my father's jump into the Maumee River, I still couldn't understand my mother. Though she spoke sixty different languages, she just couldn't - or wouldn't - learn English. She mourned for my father day and night, gnashing her teeth on nearby bridges, cursing the carp in some unknown dialect and wailing for hours and hours as she crawled pathetically through the streets of Toledo wearing her favorite Aunt Bea designer house dress.
She was the ultimate woman of woe.
All this wailing and gnashing was depressing me. I could not stand it another day. My sanity was being eaten away like my father's arm by the carp.
I made my fateful decision as my mother clung to the girders of bridge #137, sobbing and moaning in her abject sorrow.
I said goodbye to her in English and waved farewell in Turkish. I was off to the jungles of Columbia.
I would never to set foot in Toledo again.
Bluffo still isn't back yet. My mind teeters on the brink of insanity once again. The falls yearn to me and the thought of bananas consumes me.
It's still raining and the air is sticky and thick with little green bugs. I am beginning to think Bluffo has gotten into a poker game with the local Shaman of the Wadituya tribe and has frittered away all of my bananas.
I think Bluffo is staying away for fear I will punish him violently for this transgressions with one of my patented vine-related tortures.
I don't resort to torture often, but when bananas are at stake I have no other choice, do I?
I think I hear footsteps approaching but I can't be sure. The rain is beating down so loud on the cacao leaves and drumming on the rotted mat of vegetation that lines the jungle floor I can't hear much else.
I want those bananas but I'm terribly afraid of getting wet - being cold and wet reminds me of my awful childhood in Toledo, Ohio.
My kingdom for a banana.
I hear the falls calling me.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Ode To Futility
Delirious with fever and hobbling on one foot, he broke the surly bonds of the tangled vines that had held him captive for nearly a week and soon found himself splashing in a pool of stagnant, algae-laden water. The corrosive liquid scathed his raw skin and made him grimace in searing pain. Every vine-scarred inch of his body oozed and itched.
Alone and nearly drowning in putrid green water, he called feebly for help. His pleas were inaudible against the thunder of the muddy cataracts which roared behind him as they spilled their brown-green filth into the gorge in which he now helplessly flailed. It was then, as if blessed by a sudden gift from the gods, that he wrote his famous "Ode To Futility".
Shortly after scratching out this inspiring five-line ode with this long fingernails on a tumescent piece of coconut tree bark, he breathed his last breath - one final gulp of turbid, green water that sent him choking and gagging into an uncertain eternity.
We will never know what his final thoughts were as he slid vomiting unceremoniously into the depths of that stinking cesspool. All we will ever know of Thurman L. Gaston are those famous five lines, preserved on that swollen, pallid piece of history - the original hunk of Thurman L. Gaston coconut tree bark unto which Gaston inscribed one of the most immortal odes ever written.
Impressively, that original chunk of bark can be examined by educators, scientists, and historians at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., where it has been preserved for posterity - still covered in the original green slime and pond scum, in exactly the same condition it was in on the day it was first fished from the filth.
This historical bark is preserved at the Smithsonian so it is exactly as it was when the choking, gasping, and nearly-dead Gaston inscribed those famous lines:
"He trudged on through inequity,
Razed the false serenity,
Bought the dark tranquility,
Seized swift with vain mortality,
The sun-baked soul again."
One can only wonder how many hearts and minds these immortal words have touched.
Alone and nearly drowning in putrid green water, he called feebly for help. His pleas were inaudible against the thunder of the muddy cataracts which roared behind him as they spilled their brown-green filth into the gorge in which he now helplessly flailed. It was then, as if blessed by a sudden gift from the gods, that he wrote his famous "Ode To Futility".
Shortly after scratching out this inspiring five-line ode with this long fingernails on a tumescent piece of coconut tree bark, he breathed his last breath - one final gulp of turbid, green water that sent him choking and gagging into an uncertain eternity.
We will never know what his final thoughts were as he slid vomiting unceremoniously into the depths of that stinking cesspool. All we will ever know of Thurman L. Gaston are those famous five lines, preserved on that swollen, pallid piece of history - the original hunk of Thurman L. Gaston coconut tree bark unto which Gaston inscribed one of the most immortal odes ever written.
Impressively, that original chunk of bark can be examined by educators, scientists, and historians at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., where it has been preserved for posterity - still covered in the original green slime and pond scum, in exactly the same condition it was in on the day it was first fished from the filth.
This historical bark is preserved at the Smithsonian so it is exactly as it was when the choking, gasping, and nearly-dead Gaston inscribed those famous lines:
"He trudged on through inequity,
Razed the false serenity,
Bought the dark tranquility,
Seized swift with vain mortality,
The sun-baked soul again."
One can only wonder how many hearts and minds these immortal words have touched.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Thundercloud For President
I'm running for president. I'll be honest with you, I am running because I need the money. And I'd love to live in a really big, white house with a really good chef. I would love lots of people running around waiting on me, too. It would be like living in a fancy restaurant without having to leave a really fancy tip. I'd love it.
I'm dreaming of the $300,000.00 salary and drooling over the private jet, helicopters, and the hot, hand-picked female chauffeur. I really want this. I would do almost anything to get it. One problem though - I have no money and no support.
Short of winning the lottery, I don't see myself ever making that much money in a year - and I certainly will never have any of those other perquisites the way I'm going. Not even the hot female chauffeur. Darn it.
So that's why I'm here begging you for help - there are two things you can to do to help me:
1. Donate lots of money to me. If you do I promise I'll squander it.
2. Let me fix America my way.
Don't do number one. If you're that crazy, find a good charity and donate your money to them. I'll just waste it.
Number two is interesting. I will be a sweet deal for you. It will be an even sweeter deal for me. A win-win situation. I'll be collecting a cool $300 grand a year, riding around on Air Force One, bopping to and fro in my own helicopter - plus I'll have my hand-picked chauffeur "Amber" drive me wherever I want to go - even crazy.
Better yet, I'll bring new ideas to Washington.
I have no idea how the government works. None of us know how it works because it doesn't work - it's broken...duh!
I will fix it if you elect me. I want to ride around in limousines, helicopters, and big jets - at your expense. I want it so bad that I'd do anything to get it. Unlike the other candidates, I'm honest. I admit it.
I'll be the president of love. I'll be the president you'll write love letters to. I'll be the most loved president in history. Not only by you, my fellow citizens, but by all people, all over the world.
Here are my policies on some major issues I know you are concerned with:
Illegal Immigrants
We'll relocate citizens in Pittsburgh and Toledo and surround the two "cities" with 50-foot walls. We'll turn the cities into internment camps for illegal aliens. Once the word spreads to the illegals that they'll be sent to Toledo or Pittsburgh if they're caught, you can bet that they'll be no more Mexicans pouring across our borders illegally. Who wants to be sent to Pittsburgh or Toledo? No one, not even illegal immigrants - they'd rather stay south of the border than to be stuck in Toledo or Pittsburgh. Who can blame them? Think about it. Problem solved.
A note about language: If folks want to come to our country, they are welcome to come, but they must do it legally. And, another thing - if you want to live here you will learn how to speak English. No more bilingual signs. I have no intention of making America another Quebec. English is what we speak; if you want to live here, learn to speak our language.
I really hate calling my bank - an AMERICAN bank by-the-way - and having to listen to a 3 minute Spanish lesson and then push several buttons just so I can hear someone speak to me in English. We will speak English in America - and only English, por favor! Gracias mi amigos.
Foreign Policy
I do believe in the doctrine "if you're not for us, you're against us" as callow as that seems. Therefore, as soon as I assume the office of President of the United States, I will request that every leader of every country who wishes to be on our side, write me a long love letter telling me how much they love me and how they'd do anything for me. They'd have to deliver the letter to me in person and read it out loud. If they were sincere, I'd accept their letter as well as their love and put them on the "allies" list.
For those countries whose leaders choose not to do this, I hesitate to say what would happen. I would ask them to remember that we still a very large arsenal of nuclear weapon. Enough said.
If any foreign leader needs help writing the letter, I will make available to them a standard love letter they can use. All they need to do is sign it, come over here and read it to me, and I'll judge their sincerity. If I find them sincere, they're in. If not, we have the aforementioned nuclear arsenal. I'm tired of pussy-footing around. I'm tired of war. Are you for me or against me? That's the choice. You don't want to be against me - I'm the candidate of love. Love me or else.
The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
See "Foreign Policy" above.
Terrorism
All you need is love, people. Terrorist leaders would fall under the same category as world leaders - although it pains me to have to lump them all together like this. I would have a form letter prepared for them in both Arabic and English they can sign and deliver to me in person. All terrorists must learn to speak English I have no desire to learn to read, write or speak Arabic.
A word to potential terrorists. If you attack us, we'll find out what country you came from and that country will be used for the internment of our illegal immigrants, instead of Toledo or Pittsburgh - or if those two cities become too crowded - in addition to them.
This would all take place, after of course, we've followed we've implemented our foreign policy doctrine. I'll make a copy of it available to you as soon as I have written it. You would want to pay particular attention to the section entitled "Enemies of the United States", subsection "Those who have not yet delivered their love letter to the President".
Taxes
Forget rebates and tax cuts. The day I take the oath of office is the day you stop paying ANY federal income tax or social security tax.
I will sign an executive order legalizing drugs, prostitution, and gambling and federalize them all. Government run gambling joints, brothels, and "drug stores" will be built - by those currently on welfare - in every town with a population of 30,000 or more.
Drugs, prostitution, and gambling will be taxed at whatever rate we need and the revenue used to fund the federal government and social security. They way I figure, we'll still have money left over to fund, universal health care for all Americans.
We'll all living off the vices of others. You'll all be singing "Vice is nice" !
For those of you who are against vices, let me remind you that all the above (to varying degrees) are illegal now and those who choose to partake of them do so whenever they wish. I'm not promoting vice, I'm just being realistic and honest. It's time we admitted the world is not heaven, we are not angels, and the government might as well skim some money from it. Why not? You don't want to pay taxes, I don't want to pay taxes, and now you won't have to pay taxes.
You love me, don't you?
Health Care
See "Taxes"
Energy and the Environment
I don't believe in global warming. I don't believe we need to worry about it. Then again, there's no sense in mucking up the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the land we live on, is there? If you have any logical reasons why we should pour junk into the air and garbage into our water, let me know - I'll take a look at your logic.
For now, I believe in clean air, clean water, and lots of trees and rainforests. It only makes sense. It's logical.
We also need to stop burning oil and coal. Therefore, I am going to start a new project called "Clean and Green" and it will be lead by the world's leading scientists. We will fund it with all the money we're making from vice - and it will be the most intensive project since the Manhattan Project. If we can build a nuke in less than 2 years, we can find viable alternatives to oil and coal in less than five years.
My promise: We won't need anymore foreign oil by 2012. We won't need to scrape the earth for coal either. We'll use hydrogen, ethanol, hydro, wind and solar, maybe even nuclear power - but no more oil, natural gas or coal. I'll personally tell those Middle Eastern leaders what they can do with their oil - and I'll do it on national TV so you can all hear me say it. I guarantee you, what I say to them will be something no President has ever said on TV before. I'll have to bite my lip to keep from snickering - but you can snicker if you like. It will be a great day for the U.S.A.!
Other Stuff
I have more ideas, but I'm running out of time. By now you really love me don't you?
I'd love hobnobbing with the all those smug world leaders. I'd still never comb my hair. I'd belch at big expensive state dinners, blow my nose at the table while sitting across from Princess Amirda from Bostipul - heck I'd just be the general, all-around slob I have always been.
I'll answer any questions you have honestly - brutally so. If you don't like my answer - that's tough. I'll call a spade a spade and it if hurts someone's feelings - too bad. If you're short, you're short. If you're fat, you're fat. If you're stupid, you're stupid. I didn't make the world, I live in it just like you.
America's a mess. George and Thomas would be turning over in their graves if they were living today.
Most other countries don't like us - especially France. They say we're slobs. If the French think we are slobs now wait until they get a whiff of me. When I'm your President, they'll love me or else!
We've spent too much money that we don't have. When I'm your President, you'll pay no taxes and we'll be spending all the money we want and still have a lot left to spend. We'll be awash in money provided to us by all those fine, fun-loving sinners.
The only candidate who has no governmental experience at all is me. And when it comes to government experience - less is better. I don't know how government works but I sure now how it shouldn't work.
You hear politicians tell you that they'll put you first - what a crock! If they could put you first why haven't they done it? The only time you'll ever be first is right before an election or if you love me. If you love me I will love you - all you need is love!
You'll hear them tell you that government is broken and they can fix it. At least one part of that statement is true. Government is broken. If they can fix it, why haven't they done it? Some of them have been hanging around the U. S. Senate for years. Why would they really want to fix it? These people are doing well. Do you know a poor senator? They'll never fix government because while it works really well for politicians - it just doesn't work for the people.
You say you're not from America? Who cares? America's going to take over the world eventually anyway. But I promise you, if I'm elected, and your country's leader writes me a really smarmy love letter, I promise I will leave your country alone. So, even if you're not from America, your questions are welcome. When I come up for re-election in four years, I'll see to it that the whole world can vote for me - your vote would be appreciated.
I want the glory. I want the power. I want the money. I want the chauffeur, I want to live in the White House with lots of minions around me. I want jets, helicopters, and limousines.
With your help I can do this! And you will love me!
All you need is love! All you need is me!
I'm dreaming of the $300,000.00 salary and drooling over the private jet, helicopters, and the hot, hand-picked female chauffeur. I really want this. I would do almost anything to get it. One problem though - I have no money and no support.
Short of winning the lottery, I don't see myself ever making that much money in a year - and I certainly will never have any of those other perquisites the way I'm going. Not even the hot female chauffeur. Darn it.
So that's why I'm here begging you for help - there are two things you can to do to help me:
1. Donate lots of money to me. If you do I promise I'll squander it.
2. Let me fix America my way.
Don't do number one. If you're that crazy, find a good charity and donate your money to them. I'll just waste it.
Number two is interesting. I will be a sweet deal for you. It will be an even sweeter deal for me. A win-win situation. I'll be collecting a cool $300 grand a year, riding around on Air Force One, bopping to and fro in my own helicopter - plus I'll have my hand-picked chauffeur "Amber" drive me wherever I want to go - even crazy.
Better yet, I'll bring new ideas to Washington.
I have no idea how the government works. None of us know how it works because it doesn't work - it's broken...duh!
I will fix it if you elect me. I want to ride around in limousines, helicopters, and big jets - at your expense. I want it so bad that I'd do anything to get it. Unlike the other candidates, I'm honest. I admit it.
I'll be the president of love. I'll be the president you'll write love letters to. I'll be the most loved president in history. Not only by you, my fellow citizens, but by all people, all over the world.
Here are my policies on some major issues I know you are concerned with:
Illegal Immigrants
We'll relocate citizens in Pittsburgh and Toledo and surround the two "cities" with 50-foot walls. We'll turn the cities into internment camps for illegal aliens. Once the word spreads to the illegals that they'll be sent to Toledo or Pittsburgh if they're caught, you can bet that they'll be no more Mexicans pouring across our borders illegally. Who wants to be sent to Pittsburgh or Toledo? No one, not even illegal immigrants - they'd rather stay south of the border than to be stuck in Toledo or Pittsburgh. Who can blame them? Think about it. Problem solved.
A note about language: If folks want to come to our country, they are welcome to come, but they must do it legally. And, another thing - if you want to live here you will learn how to speak English. No more bilingual signs. I have no intention of making America another Quebec. English is what we speak; if you want to live here, learn to speak our language.
I really hate calling my bank - an AMERICAN bank by-the-way - and having to listen to a 3 minute Spanish lesson and then push several buttons just so I can hear someone speak to me in English. We will speak English in America - and only English, por favor! Gracias mi amigos.
Foreign Policy
I do believe in the doctrine "if you're not for us, you're against us" as callow as that seems. Therefore, as soon as I assume the office of President of the United States, I will request that every leader of every country who wishes to be on our side, write me a long love letter telling me how much they love me and how they'd do anything for me. They'd have to deliver the letter to me in person and read it out loud. If they were sincere, I'd accept their letter as well as their love and put them on the "allies" list.
For those countries whose leaders choose not to do this, I hesitate to say what would happen. I would ask them to remember that we still a very large arsenal of nuclear weapon. Enough said.
If any foreign leader needs help writing the letter, I will make available to them a standard love letter they can use. All they need to do is sign it, come over here and read it to me, and I'll judge their sincerity. If I find them sincere, they're in. If not, we have the aforementioned nuclear arsenal. I'm tired of pussy-footing around. I'm tired of war. Are you for me or against me? That's the choice. You don't want to be against me - I'm the candidate of love. Love me or else.
The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
See "Foreign Policy" above.
Terrorism
All you need is love, people. Terrorist leaders would fall under the same category as world leaders - although it pains me to have to lump them all together like this. I would have a form letter prepared for them in both Arabic and English they can sign and deliver to me in person. All terrorists must learn to speak English I have no desire to learn to read, write or speak Arabic.
A word to potential terrorists. If you attack us, we'll find out what country you came from and that country will be used for the internment of our illegal immigrants, instead of Toledo or Pittsburgh - or if those two cities become too crowded - in addition to them.
This would all take place, after of course, we've followed we've implemented our foreign policy doctrine. I'll make a copy of it available to you as soon as I have written it. You would want to pay particular attention to the section entitled "Enemies of the United States", subsection "Those who have not yet delivered their love letter to the President".
Taxes
Forget rebates and tax cuts. The day I take the oath of office is the day you stop paying ANY federal income tax or social security tax.
I will sign an executive order legalizing drugs, prostitution, and gambling and federalize them all. Government run gambling joints, brothels, and "drug stores" will be built - by those currently on welfare - in every town with a population of 30,000 or more.
Drugs, prostitution, and gambling will be taxed at whatever rate we need and the revenue used to fund the federal government and social security. They way I figure, we'll still have money left over to fund, universal health care for all Americans.
We'll all living off the vices of others. You'll all be singing "Vice is nice" !
For those of you who are against vices, let me remind you that all the above (to varying degrees) are illegal now and those who choose to partake of them do so whenever they wish. I'm not promoting vice, I'm just being realistic and honest. It's time we admitted the world is not heaven, we are not angels, and the government might as well skim some money from it. Why not? You don't want to pay taxes, I don't want to pay taxes, and now you won't have to pay taxes.
You love me, don't you?
Health Care
See "Taxes"
Energy and the Environment
I don't believe in global warming. I don't believe we need to worry about it. Then again, there's no sense in mucking up the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the land we live on, is there? If you have any logical reasons why we should pour junk into the air and garbage into our water, let me know - I'll take a look at your logic.
For now, I believe in clean air, clean water, and lots of trees and rainforests. It only makes sense. It's logical.
We also need to stop burning oil and coal. Therefore, I am going to start a new project called "Clean and Green" and it will be lead by the world's leading scientists. We will fund it with all the money we're making from vice - and it will be the most intensive project since the Manhattan Project. If we can build a nuke in less than 2 years, we can find viable alternatives to oil and coal in less than five years.
My promise: We won't need anymore foreign oil by 2012. We won't need to scrape the earth for coal either. We'll use hydrogen, ethanol, hydro, wind and solar, maybe even nuclear power - but no more oil, natural gas or coal. I'll personally tell those Middle Eastern leaders what they can do with their oil - and I'll do it on national TV so you can all hear me say it. I guarantee you, what I say to them will be something no President has ever said on TV before. I'll have to bite my lip to keep from snickering - but you can snicker if you like. It will be a great day for the U.S.A.!
Other Stuff
I have more ideas, but I'm running out of time. By now you really love me don't you?
I'd love hobnobbing with the all those smug world leaders. I'd still never comb my hair. I'd belch at big expensive state dinners, blow my nose at the table while sitting across from Princess Amirda from Bostipul - heck I'd just be the general, all-around slob I have always been.
I'll answer any questions you have honestly - brutally so. If you don't like my answer - that's tough. I'll call a spade a spade and it if hurts someone's feelings - too bad. If you're short, you're short. If you're fat, you're fat. If you're stupid, you're stupid. I didn't make the world, I live in it just like you.
America's a mess. George and Thomas would be turning over in their graves if they were living today.
Most other countries don't like us - especially France. They say we're slobs. If the French think we are slobs now wait until they get a whiff of me. When I'm your President, they'll love me or else!
We've spent too much money that we don't have. When I'm your President, you'll pay no taxes and we'll be spending all the money we want and still have a lot left to spend. We'll be awash in money provided to us by all those fine, fun-loving sinners.
The only candidate who has no governmental experience at all is me. And when it comes to government experience - less is better. I don't know how government works but I sure now how it shouldn't work.
You hear politicians tell you that they'll put you first - what a crock! If they could put you first why haven't they done it? The only time you'll ever be first is right before an election or if you love me. If you love me I will love you - all you need is love!
You'll hear them tell you that government is broken and they can fix it. At least one part of that statement is true. Government is broken. If they can fix it, why haven't they done it? Some of them have been hanging around the U. S. Senate for years. Why would they really want to fix it? These people are doing well. Do you know a poor senator? They'll never fix government because while it works really well for politicians - it just doesn't work for the people.
You say you're not from America? Who cares? America's going to take over the world eventually anyway. But I promise you, if I'm elected, and your country's leader writes me a really smarmy love letter, I promise I will leave your country alone. So, even if you're not from America, your questions are welcome. When I come up for re-election in four years, I'll see to it that the whole world can vote for me - your vote would be appreciated.
I want the glory. I want the power. I want the money. I want the chauffeur, I want to live in the White House with lots of minions around me. I want jets, helicopters, and limousines.
With your help I can do this! And you will love me!
All you need is love! All you need is me!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)