Christmas Balls

it was the summer of 1965 and i was hitch-hiking from stockholm, sweden to greece .... carrying a guitar case in one hand, i worked my way down to italy; i hopped a ferry in brindisi and sailed across to piraeus harbor outside of athens, where i took an underground to the ammonia square in the center of athens .... my eyes started to burn and water as i started walking out of the underground station; no wonder it's called ammonia square, i thought to myself--it smells just like ammonia ....

when i got into the square i realized it wasn't mr. clean i was smelling: it was the clouds of tear gas that blended nicely with the smell of burning gasoline and rubber from the overturned cars that were burning merrily away ..... masked youths ran hither and yon, bricks in their hands; one of them, noticing me and my guitar case (i wasn't a fool; i had a canadian flag sewn onto my backpack), threw bricks at a parked car and shouted "demokratia! demokratia!"

well, that was '65, and revolution was in the air; it culminated in 1968, with the waves cresting in paris and berlin; in rome; in prague; in berkeley and new york; when the wave broke--along with our balls--and we shambled into the '70s so that we could snort coke and listen to disco .... i'm pleased to see that the greeks are still at it; they, at least, have the nuts to get upset when the cops gun down a kid .... we don't get excited about that, although it happens here all the time, probably because the kids the cops gun down are primarily dark complected, so it's a non-issue .....

it gets harder and harder to write editorials these days .... oh, i know .... ha ha ..... we have the attention span of a hyperactive fruit fly and i, for one, find it hard to keep abreast of the endless litany of outrages that excite no attention or pursuit whatsoever; jen gets far more attention than does the denouement of the anthrax terror case, attributed to a "loner" who worked in the army's biological warfare lab; that it took seven years to winkle him out .... ha ha .... should make you feel more secure in the knowledge that the war on terror is successful on many fronts, from mailing anthrax or cocaine through the united states mail to stopping elephants wearing pink tutus and dancing en pointe down main street from frightening miniature french poodles whose eyes have those horrid nasty runny brown streaks down them ...... we're so excited about a politician (blagojevich) trying to sell an office rather than just letting himself be bought--like most of the republicans who've been bought lock, stock, and artificial hair by major corporations--that no one's appalled by let alone commenting on dick cheney appearing on television and advocating the use of torture as a government policy ..... torture and this 'administration' are business as usual ..... yawn .....

now ... what's up with jen?

as far as that goes, and it doesn't go very far at all, i'm slack-jawed at the disingenuous expressions of dismay from the cognoscenti at bernard madoff's costing some of the upper percentile 50 billion dollars, but the SEC couldn't catch it, just like who could have foreseen the collapse of our housing market impacting the entire global economy that we've heard so much about and gosh, how could that have happened with the invisible hand of the free market grabbing every fucking dollar it could for a select few and then giving us the invisible middle finger of The New Depression and thank you george bush, your emissions are accomplished .....

there are a couple of points i'll make, again ..... one of them has to do with those cute little republicans, shit-canning the fourteen billion dollar loan to the .... ha ha .... auto industry ..... don't you find it interesting that the gift of seven HUNDRED billion dollars to financial institutions, which have no workers, no laborers per se, which are fronted by a select few who just happen to be cronies of the person supposedly in charge of the fiscal allocation, that gift was jammed right through because it was important to do it the fate of the free world hung in the balance why it was a question of national security just like we had to jump into iraq before the smoking gun became a can of andy warhol's mushroom cloud soup boy the republicans went right along with all that shit didn't they but those good ol' southron boys this is the first time they haven't shown "party unity" the first time they didn't dance around the fire chanting "kill the pig! kill the pig! spill his blood!" at little george's behest so much for "hands across the aisle" and "buy-partisan-ships" because they were asking for concessions from the auto union which i seem to recall went something like, okay guys, why don't you just work for free and forget about health care and fuck you in your pension and the point of this is, those cocksuckers will do anything to bust unions; republicans just hate workers; republicans can't stand laborers republicans want to flush the middle class down the dumper put them in drums with all the toxic nuclear waste underneath yucca mountain i think their real agenda is they're still pissed off that they lost the civil war i mean the war of southron independence lincoln did what? goddam it slavery was a real good thang and it's out there for everyone to see their contempt and calumny is as plain as____________________________________ you can fill that in to suit yourself because i don't want to use up my quotient of "fucking assholes" who "suck satan's cock" quite yet ......

meanwhile in spite of our winning the whore on tear-air we're continually seeing appalling waste and mind-boggling corruption and the stench of death (4,209 american dead, upwards of 90,000 iraqi civilian deaths but hey, we had to take out that tyrant saddam hussein, we're all better off without him) not to mention the war on drugs and the war on liberals and the war on progressives and the war on cat sand in the kindergarten sandbox and what needs to be said is that every single republican financial policy has failed and always has been a failure, that all the republican machinations internationally and nationally have been abysmal failures with catastrophic consequences for the "american peeple" and just about all the other people conservative "policies" are not just failures they're dangerous and destructive and neo-con policies cause death and destruction and are horrible failures and goddam it, IT FUCKING HAS TO BE SAID!

we're getting close to christmas and it's hard to get that christmas feeling but santa what i'd like other than everyone from this republican adminstration bush rumsfeld cheney powell rice wolfowitz bremer perle libby et al placed in the dock the hague and charged with war crimes and you don't even have to tie it up with a red ribbon .... here's what i'd also like santa i'd like headlines in the new york crimes the poshington toast saying "chicago school of economics theories bogus!" "free market economy a hoax!" "economic deregulation an open invitation to looting and theft and corruption!" "tax cuts don't benefit the economy, only the wealthy!" "trickle down means widdle on!" "they've lied to you and we've helped them!" "war on terror justifies war profiteering! "wars justify war profiteering!" "republicans don't make you safer!"

now write some headlines of your own .....

one more thing, santa; can you bring the democrats some balls? balls are smaller and easier to carry than a spine, and can you maybe help change their diet from sheep food to at least dog food? i'd really like to hear the party that we elected into office so resoundlngly identify some of the misapprehensions under which this country has been piloted--into disaster and onto the rocks--for so long: it needs to be said that every single thing the republican party has advocated or done has been false, deleterious, toxic, disastrous, destructive, and a horrible waste of time, life, energy, and money .......

it needs to be said, and i'm not hearing it .....

i wish i could say it better, and i wish i could say it louder; don't let yourself get distracted by blagojevich's hair; keep your eye on the prize .... don't get distracted by the "ha ha" factor of an iraqi journalist, who has bigger balls than the entire north american continent put together, chucking footwear at our 'president,' when he's probably got those nuts hooked up to reddy kilowatt right now .....

it's been in the mid-30s here and it's bright and crisp and sparkling and the frost on the lawns at the boys school this morning was like powdered diamonds glittering in the sun .... it didn't feel like christmas, but it was awfully nice ......

next: dr. pete puts up his christmas balls