All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

No quarter.

I don’t remember this room being this cramped. For crying out loud, what did they do to this place? Where’s my plastic furniture? I was weeks collecting that bedroom set!

Oh well … there’s bound to be a few glitches in any complex negotiation. The important thing is, we’re back, baby! We’ve won the right to squat in our beloved Cheney Hammer Mill once again. And when I say “beloved”, well … that’s a relative term. Next to the potting shed we’ve been crammed into all summer, the mill is a veritable palace. Sure, we have to share it with lunatics, but even that’s not unprecedented. (Just take a look through our back pages and you’ll see what I’m talking about.)

All that said, there are a few restrictions on what we’re going to be able to do as residents of the mill from here on out. Maybe it was a mistake to deputize Anti-Lincoln as our chief negotiator with the crazy upstairs neighbors. Our main thought was that he was, after all, an old country lawyer … or the antimatter equivalent of one. It’s that second element we didn’t fully consider. Antimatter country lawyer means the opposite of country lawyer … so, I don’t know … city outlaw? In any case, Anti-Lincoln didn’t come away with the better part of THAT deal.

So this is what we have to deal with:

No Tap Dancing. Okay, this shouldn’t be a problem for anyone except Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has brass feet and sounds like he’s tap dancing when he’s just walking across the floor.

No Cops. Again, not a problem for most of us … in fact, a positive benefit for some … like Anti-Lincoln, who is (as mentioned earlier) an outlaw.

Nah, none of that, Marvin., thanks to old honest Abe, here.

No Boiled Asparagus. This is getting up my nose a bit. Unfortunately, when I complained about it, our nasty neighbors stuffed raw asparagus up my nose.

Mandatory Clapping for Fireworks. I think I may have mentioned that our upstairs neighbors love a nice fireworks display. Apparently they want to spread the love around a little. And when I say “spread”, what I really mean is enforce through the power of contract law.

No Loose Coins. I can’t figure this one out at all. They prefer that we use paper money. What the hell am I going to do with that barrel full of quarters I’ve been filling since third grade? That’s my retirement, people!

Those are the highlights. There’s more, but I’ll save it until I locate my plastic side table. Thieves!

Political Rants

Lookout, Buchanan.

There’s no question but that Donald Trump is the worst president in my lifetime, and I’m fairly certain he’s a serious contender for the worst president in American history. In most of the surveys I’ve seen, that position is held by pre-Civil War POTUS James Buchanan (1857 – 1861), but I think Buchanan’s one distinction is under serious threat … he may be surging to second worst by the end of Trump’s current term.

Of course, Trump doesn’t see it that way. His ranging, incoherent cabinet meeting this past Monday gave him the opportunity to crow about the greatest economy in American history, his single-handed defeat of ISIS, his deal-making acumen, and so on. Sure, he got Turkey mixed up with Iraq at one point, but who’s counting? He claims to be fulfilling a promise to bring American troops home, and one wishes that were true, but of course this claim – like everything else that comes out of his festering gob – is a cheap, transparent lie that wouldn’t fool a five-year-old. Like previous failed presidents, he sold the Kurds down the river, and they are paying a heavy price for his carelessness and self-dealing. (Trump freely admitted prior to the 2016 election that he had a conflict of interest with regard to Turkey, referencing his signature twin towers in Ankara; he still makes a lot of his money there.)

Look out, Jim. He's gaining on you.

You would think it would be easy to compare Trump unfavorably to other recent presidents, but the picture does get kind of complicated kind of fast. There was a discussion of this on Morning Joe this week, wherein Joe, Mika, and historian Jon Meacham talked about leaders putting the nation ahead of their own narrow political interests. Sounds good, but the example Joe gave was that of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in 1998, at the height of the impeachment conflict, working together to find a way “to contain Saddam Hussein.” I think what he’s referring to is the Iraq Liberation Act, passed in October 1998 and signed by Clinton, which provided the foundation for the 2003 war. This act came through at the peak of our sanction regime against Iraq that cost the lives of 300,000 Iraqi children, conservatively – a cost Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described as worth it. In other words, bad example.

Self-dealing and corruption are bad things, to be sure. They are not the only bad things, however, and we do ourselves no favor by forgetting the failed policies of past leaders in an attempt to single out the current president. It is obvious where he comes from, and we must beat him  next year. But we must also accomplish so much more than that one goal. Status quo ante is not enough.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Deal, no deal.

Here’s my counter offer. You can use the counter any time you want, even when we’re having brunch in the kitchen on alternate Sundays, as per our agreement, volume 3, chapter 5, subsection 4, paragraph 2 (see also sources in footnote 845). Now what do you say?

Yeah, here we are, making a deal with the devil, folks. Yes, I’m talking about those crazy squatters who invaded and occupied the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our makeshift home, sometime during the summer, consigning us and our various hangers-on to the potting shed in the courtyard. We’re attempting to reach some understanding with them, but it’s a bit more complicated than I had imagined. Apparently one of these yahoos is a contract lawyer. Doesn’t look it.

Anyway, our draft agreement for the return of Big Green to the Cheney Hammer Mill is … well, it’s thick as your ass, maybe thicker. Lots of wherefores and what-have-you’s, which is fine, because what have we right now but big fat nothing? There are few disputes that cannot be settled through studied diplomacy, and while none of us are trained negotiators, our friend Anti Lincoln did once play one on T.V.  … or was that Lincoln Lincoln? Not sure I remember – they look almost exactly alike. It’s uncanny! (Speaking of uncanny, when’s lunch?) So … Anti Lincoln has taken up our part in these talks, and we couldn’t be better represented. (Mainly because we have no money. Don’t tell Lincoln.)

You guys can pick the curtains.

Thing is, I don’t know how good a lawyer anti-Lincoln ever was. I mean, the real Lincoln had a sharp legal mind. That makes me suspect that anti-Lincoln is a dullard. Or maybe their opposition to one another is played out along some vector other than human intelligence. I’m thinking about suggesting that anti-Lincoln just make a speech in the meeting room, just to turn things upside-down for a few moments while we rummage through the mill and take anything of value. We could then use the proceeds of our ill-gotten gains to hire a decent lawyer, for cryin’ out loud.

In the meantime, we’re being committed to some punishing legal sanctions. It’s all in the agreement. Like page 17 – Mondays and Thursdays are pants optional days. I say “optional,” but the truth is .. they really don’t want to see any pants.  They just want to laugh at our expense. (And again, mea culpa – I didn’t realize I was spending so much.)

Well, let’s hope we can ink this thing soon. It’s getting cold out here, and the potting shed is, well, being used for pots right now.