Great Expectations

i read a lot while i was growing up, and while i was growing up i read a lot of science fiction .... this was the classical period, with the all-time great sci-fi writers: silverberg and sheckley; bradbury, pohl, and asimov; mathesson and heinlein; bester and bloch, on and on and on .... it was a wonderful time and a wonderful time to be reading forays into the future; i lived in a world that was fraught with possibility and promise while reading about worlds of promise and possibilities ..... there were lots of things that were to happen between, say, 1955 and 2000, and a lot of things did happen, but not a single writer, not one of these visionaries, not on their worst fucking night, not when they were drunk out of their minds, crawling across the floor to the bathroom where they'd collapse into large puddles of vomit and excreta, not one of these incredibly gifted writers, not on the worst fucking acid trip imaginable, could have foreseen .....

sarah palin .....

well, shit; let me back up a little bit here and say that not one of these literary giants imagined republicans, let alone what they'd do to this country and the world, although ray bradbury got close in his "a sound of thunder ...." anyway, we're now in the present, which is what the future's become, and what do we have? we've commented at length on the disappearance of civil liberties and the abrogation of the bill of rights .... we're watching a select few dismantle the financial "system" that made them very rich, and we're watching them parcel it out to even fewer, while you and i pick up the tab ..... gosh, i remember those halcyon days in the past, when ma bell was deemed "too large" and was broken up into the "baby bells ...." boy, that sure worked out just fine, didn't it? now at&t runs phones and internet and credit cards and--as though that weren't enough--spies and eavesdrops on you and me and turns it all over to the government .... and it looks like bank of america and chase bank are going to end up owning all the other banks ....

but i'm sure their intentions are good and i feel confident that none of this illegally acquired data would ever be misused for any reason whatsoever, nor will the kind of raw brute power that these new conglomerates will wield will be misued and ..... excuse me .... i wonder who's knocking so loudly on my door? it's four o'clock in the morning, for god's sake and .........

just kidding, of course ... ha ha ..... ha ha .......

what's serious and sad is that fifty years ago we had great expectations: we imagined a cleaner, better world; we imagined a world with more leisure in it, not necessarily dependent on whether we had robots or not; we imagined a world where .... well, let me back up a little bit here; some folks did predict a grim mechanistic world, overpopulated, with gray polluted skies; a world run by brutal repressive corporations with no regard for human dignity or life; a world under the thumb of autocratic political dynasties, with one corrupt psychotic amoral oligarch handing the torch of power on to his handpicked successor ..... and still, swith this incredible spectrum of possible worlds, no one .... no one .... no one ..... no one ever imagined anything like ....

sarah palin .....

now, i've said it before and i don't want to belabor the point, but the republicans have always taken great pleasure in rubbing our noses in their feces: they've given us spiro agnew, who resigned because of criminal charges; dan quayle, who wasn't bright enough to steal newspapers from a blind newsboy, although if you remember marilyn quayle--and i can understand why you'd want to forget her--she probably did; george bush the first, who sold weapons to saddam hussein and probably gave him trading stamps to sweeten the deal; gerald ford, who ..... god help me, i can't go on; i just can't go on .... so it's not surprising that, once again, they're lowering the bar so low that a banana slug with down's syndrome could vault over with no difficulty--and find himself in the white trash house .... you've got to give it to the republicans, in some areas they are equal opportunity employers .... one way or another, they're going to get a retard into the white house .... remember, now; we've had eight years of george bush, and--i'm not making this up because i simply couldn't--there's still twenty-two percent--yes, that's right: about one out of every four amurkans--who think he's doing a great job, that he's just fine and dandy .... if that doesn't fuck you up, i don't know what will; say you're on an elevator and there are twelve people in there with you: three of them think bush is great .... say you're on a bus, along with thirty-one other people; there are eight people around you who like what george has done ..... say you're in a crowded restaurant, one hundred and twenty diners ... that means you'll lose your appetite because thirty people ......

makes you yearn for a heroin high colonic, doesn't it?

but anyway .... like i said, it's not surprising that the republicans have found themselves yet one more cretinous retard that they'd like to put into the highest office in the land; that's what they do, that's how they've managed to turn the united states into a fourth-rate third world country plundered and looted by corporations that pay no taxes and have more rights and legal considerations than you or i ever will .... what's disgusting is how low the country's expectations are, and how this has been reinforced by the "media ...." did you listen to "the debate?" i couldn't, i really couldn't and, having no television, i missed sarah's high points, like .... winking .... jesus fucking christ bleeding ass wombats, give me a fucking break .... bush looked into putin's soul; sarah looks out her kitchen window and sees him .... what the fuck is she going to do now? wink at him? when she meets with world leaders, what'll she do? wink at 'em and teach 'em the macarena? she's such a blatant dildo that by not pissing herself, by not picking her nose and eating the boogers, by not masturbating on stage (yeah, i know she was jerking off on stage, but i meant not actually dipping her moose-gutting fingers into her honeypot and lickin' 'em clean) then, well .... she passed the fucking test and she's now qualified to be a republican leader because we've already seen what a twat she is so anything better than that is really really really good and that's good enough for the republican ticket so it's goddam well good enough for the american sheeple .....

christ all fucking mighty .....

we've had eight years of one booger-bitin' moron and there's more lining up to take his place, and they're getting a green light, they're getting a pass from .... well, shit; let me back up again; you'd think the "media'd" be the gate watchers, but .... ha ha .... they're just watchin' brad 'n' jen 'n' pootie 'n' sniffie 'n' tom 'n' brad 'n' i don't even know and if the "media" isn't telling us that the emperor is naked is turning blue from the cold without clothes you know they'll not tell you shit about the last bit of cash in this country being looted out right from underneath your noses and being given to the same old corporations that have been calling the shots forever ..... so sarah gets the green light and this last "interview" my god how can they live with themselves why don't they ask a real question like "yo, bitch .... where is your shame? and why don't you go back home and drill in a seal's ass for oil that'd be part of your .... ha ha .... energy plan ....."

and where is the seven hundred billion dollars that's going to prevent our financial collapse going to come from? honest to god, these fucksniffers are still doing the same old same old shit and they're still getting away with it they're stil pushing buttons that you'd've thought would have turned to dust around the time noah was whipping the animals on the ark it'll all be paid for by tax cuts for god's sake and, oh, we'll put a cap on ceo's compensation i'm sorry but that's such whoreshit; yes, these robbing fucks make way too much money, but they're being rewarded for being crooks and they've done a really good job .... you know what we should see? instead of tax cuts? we should see corporations being taxed, that's what we should see .... oh, no, dr. pete; that would stifle creativity and exxon needed another tax break so they can develop alternative energy sources like all the fucking hot air they spout putting in ads that say how green they are they could just dip bankrupt homeowners in wax, put wicks in their mouths, and light 'em up; put 'em in times square and you'd see the great white way, all right' you could see it from the hubble telescope, over off the burning shoulder of orion: burning tax payers, a renewable energy source .....

and why would we even talk about how much has been pissed away in iraq, no one's even talking about it for god's sake although it must be because the surge worked placated the people why so many have been killed off no wonder the level of violence has gone down to, say, compton or east lansing on a saturday night and ......

we know the nation has been "dumbed down;" that's the way you want your farm animals--placid, bovine, docile--but do we really need to be proud of it? brag about it? i'm tired of officials that speak no language known to man, english foremost among them ..... language is a tool; among other things, diplomacy relies on the ability to use language .... oh, shit; i forgot .... we don't need diplomacy any more; we just figure out what nostradamus and jesus christ would want us to do .... this whole bullshit song and dance about sarah "doing better than she did in her first interviews so it's all okay now ...." for shit's sake; a french poodle on quaaludes could do better than she did on her first interviews; i know parrots that are smarter, better looking, and talk better than her .... horses can count by raising and lowering a hoof but ..... that doesn't qualify them to be vice-president .....

gosh, new zealand's looking awful good, right about now ....

next: dr. pete gets a visa

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