Damn it, tubey! Get your roots off my neck! This bloody floor is covered with glass shards and god knows what else. Let me up, will you?
Good goddamn thing for PDAs, otherwise there’d be no way in hell I could post this week. Freaking hell, were under siege here in The Straw Horse, a local public house we stumbled into last week. Oh, sure…. I know what you’re going to say. “Joe,” you’ll tell me, “aren’t you guys just a little old for barroom brawls?” And the answer to that is, of course, yes. But before you ask a follow-up, let me just explain that this brawl was a.) not my idea, b.) the result of circumstances entirely beyond my control, and c.) started by Marvin (my personal robot assistant) in an uncharacteristic fit of passion. Whoa, hold on… can’t type… here comes another bottle…
Fuck, that was close. Sorry for the interruption. Where was I? Ah, yes. Marvin. Of course, as you remember (just scroll down to last week’s column), was encouraged (by myself and 
others) to pull on a ludicrous scarecrow get-up in hopes that that would keep us from being ejected from yet another tavern, most of which up here still refuse to serve robots. (Yes, I’m ashamed to say that this is true. There’s a kind of lucite ceiling here in upstate New York… people don’t like to admit it, but there you are.) Well, the cheap disguise worked, after a fashion, and we did manage to purchase a round of libations before the trouble began. (Not sure you want the kids to hear the rest of this… I’ll just pause a minute while you put them to bed. Good night, Mary! Sleep tight, Chucky!)
Now, it seems as though the proprietor of the establishment took a certain amount of pride in the autumnal display he maintains (seemingly year ’round) out in his front yard. And it appears that, in preparing the decorative scarecrow, 
he employed some of his own discarded clothing to add a certain verisimilitude. As he set up the drinks we ordered (including a white Russian for Marvin), he took notice of the distinctive laundry mark on Marvin’s collar… a mark that he himself had made. Marvin, convinced the clothing was his own, made no effort to conceal the mark. And… well, you can probably guess the next thing that was said. (Clue: it starts with “HEY, Wait a minute….!!”) As a matter of fact, you can probably imagine the entire body of dialogue, as well as the obscene gestures, grunts, and various violent acts that ensued after this unfortunate discovery. (Fact is, I’ve been introduced to some words I’ve never heard before… and if I survive this encounter, I will surely use them.)
So, crikey, here I am on the barroom floor, scrambling for purchase, dodging broken glass, and praying for deliverance. (And I don’t mean the movie, Chucky. So just go back to bed, now – there’s a good little chap.)
flabbergasting, I must admit. With the coincidence of daylight savings time starting last Sunday, I kept wondering all week if I were merely sleepwalking and that things would be less bizarre when I finally came to, but no… this was the week that was. You’ve heard way too much about the Spitzer thing, I’m sure, and I will not add any weight to that burden other than to briefly visit one event that took place last weekend. It was the annual Gridiron dinner, a “press yucks it up with the President” type of affair. Bush was there, singing a clumsily satirical version of “The Green, Green Grass of Home” (penned by someone on the public payroll, no doubt) in which he made light of some of his administration’s most monumental failings, from the circumstances surrounding the deliberate distortion of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war, to Hurricane Katrina. Spitzer was in the room, by that time well aware that his political goose was cooked, and I can only wonder what ran through his head as he listened to mister 15 percent yodeling his way to the end of a disastrous presidency, not a care in the world.
What a media spectacle this year is turning out to be. As the final fragments of plaster fall from the edifice that is imperial America, Bush is seen gleefully tap-dancing, breaking into song, and waxing poetic on the “romance” of combat in Afghanistan. And what of the man – the anointed successor – who will inherit Bush’s wars, his recession, his crumbling federal infrastructure? Well, McCain represents nothing so much as a third Bush term, one that will carry the expanded powers of the executive to a new and dangerous magnitude of “unitary” authority. The only difference may be that, whereas Bush is as unfeeling as a hollow tin soldier, McCain passionately believes in the necessity and efficacy of war. And if he and his advisors may be taken at their word, a McCain administration will mean more foreign interventions, more military action, and more international brinkmanship with respect to countries that can actually fight back, like Russia and China.
Hmmm. I think we need to circle back that way. You see that church over there? We should hang a left right there. Right, I said left. Right, you heard me. Left. RIGHT, LEFT!!
Not that he’s bad company, you understand (in addition to being a bad driver), but he always insists on bringing Big Zamboola along. And if Zamboola goes, well then tubey has to go, too. Then the Lincolns get all interested. Anyway, pretty soon you’ve got a whole carload of freaks and you won’t be allowed in anywhere (or, at least, anywhere you would want to be allowed into). So you drive from place to place, turned away at the door again and again, and pretty soon anti-Lincoln starts getting fussy, then the man-sized tuber wants a glass of water, and so on. Hoo-boy.
inconvenient. I mean, we’re out here in the sticks on a cold, cold night, looking for someplace to stop, when we might have had a friendly beer just a block away from our squathouse, had it not been for these persistent freaks we’ve surrounded ourselves with over the past few years. (Matt says they’re accumulating like barnacles on a rusting ship, but I wouldn’t go quite that far.) Still, you go to the pub with the entourage you’ve got, not the one you…. Hey… there’s a place up ahead. Marvin, pull over, man! Hmmmmm. The Straw Horse. Sounds like a nice place. And what luck – there’s a scarecrow in the front yard! Marvin – go get ‘im!