Through the glass darkly. That was our trip home. Better believe it, my friend. (Jesus freaking Christ…. if I say “my friends” again, I’ll turn into John McCain. And we can’t have that… not with all these Lincolns around.)
Okay, well, so I’m not such a good pilot. I kind of already knew that – that’s why we of Big Green made common cause with the likes of Mitch Macaphee, our sometimes-resident mad science advisor. But when Mitch ain’t available, we improvise and… well… things don’t always turn out the way you hope. It hurts my pride to say so, but I did push the stick when I should have pulled it, and our rented space craft went into a dramatic nose-dive. We were dropping faster than the S&P 500 during the dot-com bust (forgive the metaphor). How could I tell? Well, things on the ground were getting awfully big, awfully fast. I was just opening my mouth to say “Marvin (my personal robot assistant)!!!” when the Cheney Hammer Mill got big enough to crack our windshield.
I won’t tell you what came out of my mouth next. (My guess is that you’ve heard the word once or twice, but fuck it… this is a FAMILY blog!) It’s the kind of utterance that 
comes of driving someone else’s vehicle through one of the only unbroken windows in your squat house – namely, the one right over where I sleep. (Rather, slept.) Glass all over my best bedspread, glass in the water fountain, glass ground into the floor. Worse than that, high-explosive spacecraft fuel had spewed all over the walls (and my bedroom couch) and ignited, reducing my humble domicile to a somewhat more humble state. It was ugly… very ugly. (In fact, it still is ugly, as this catastrophe is compounded by the fact that I am not at all a good housekeeper.)
Were there any injuries? (Thanks for asking, actually.) The most serious one was sustained by John, who laughed so hard at my inept piloting that he was grasping his sides in pain. Big Zamboola caught some shards of windshield glass, but in as much as he possesses his own atmosphere, the shards burned up in re-entry. Moments before the crash, the man-
sized tuber scrambled off for his specially designed, climate-controlled, shock-mounted terrarium and strapped himself in. I’m not sure how my brother Matt or the Lincolns managed to emerge unscathed, but it could have something to do with their common interest in avian biology. Yes, they were bird watching in our moment of sheer terror. Callous and uncaring? You might think so. But anti-Lincoln’s lifetime list of birds is getting longer every day. (Between us, I’ve seen the list, and there are at least six or seven chickens on there, entered by name. I’m just saying.)
Okay, well…. so we’re home anyway. I, for one, am glad to have my feet firmly planted on the ancient planks of this august old squathouse once again. It feels good… even if I have to sleep with an umbrella (and a hazmat suit).
prices, the duopoly of federal office holders has decided to cut some checks and pass them out to us proles. Guess they figure we’re pissed off enough to warrant bribery at this point. In any case, a recession during an election year is bad news for either party in a divided government, so you are seeing the kind of “bipartisanship” that in another might be considered a mild form of totalitarianism. Sure, we’re blowing billions of dollars a month (to say nothing of lives lost) trying to hold on to our imperial stake in Iraq and perpetuating astounding economic inequality through a tax system heavily skewed in favor of the hyper-rich, but we’ll borrow even more money now for a one-shot payoff to the American people in hopes they’ll go out and shop and forget about how fucked up everything is. 
Doing this must gall Bush no end. He’s been going around for years repeating the same hackneyed talking points about the U.S. economy, about its “strong fundamentals” and its “resilience”, and never was heard a discouraging word. As recently as this week, his drone Condi “Supertanker” Rice was praising our economic strength at Davos. Lord knows, Bush despises having to reverse himself, like the Custer character in Little Big Man. (I wonder if his father and the old man’s somewhat embarrassing friend had to shame Dubya into it? Hmmmmm….) Whatever its genesis, this half-measure Keynesianism can be seen as the ownership class’s bulwark against much more meaningful adjustments, like restoring some measure of taxation to the extremely rich (i.e. those few who have benefited tremendously from the economic order of the past 25 years), or slapping an excess profits tax on the oil companies, or re-regulating the financial/banking sector, or dismantling the so-called “free trade” investors’ rights agreements. Not that any leading candidates from the nominal left are advocating this, but there’s always a chance someone will if people get mad enough.
Electrodes to power, turbines to speed, wind in the willows, egg on your face. What the hell – why can’t we get lift? We need lift, man, lift! Arrrgh! Where the hell is Mitch Macaphee when you need him?
York industrial ruin we know as the Cheney Hammer Mill. As John and the others are otherwise occupied, I have taken it upon myself to man the helm, with Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the man-sized tuber (see his Facebook page) handling the navigation console. (Yes, it takes both of them to do that… and there’s only one chair.) And as you may have gathered from my previous utterance, it’s not going real well. Not real well at all.
fills the viewing screen. I point the rented space cruiser towards the dotted outline of New York State and begin looking for the inscriptions for “Little Falls”. 100,000…. 75,000… 45,000 feet and still nothing! Then it strikes me… ouch! Damn lanyard hit me right in the face! (Rat bastard.) There was also something else… this must be a topographical continent, not a political one. No wonder there’s no type, no little target-like symbol over Albany, no heavy lines for major thoroughfares. Looks like I’ll have to land without those subtle cues. Marvin points to a fat-looking peak – could this be Bear Mountain? Need a map, damnit. Tubey – Look in the glove compartment. Good vegetable.