December 2010 archive

KARMA-RIFIC

A senior citizen trying to steal coins from a donation box at a shrine in Tokushima fell and hit his head while attempting to flee the scene. He later claimed his six stitches were “punishment from God.”

A 35-year-old Japanese man was caught at the airport in Bali with 6kg of hash. Apparently, he recently served time in an Indian prison for a similar offense, and now faces the death penalty under Indonesian law.

The 19-year-old son of an American soldier stationed in Japan was found guilty of seriously injuring a 24-year-old Tokyo woman by stringing a rope across a roadway in 2009, causing her to fall off her scooter “just for laughs.” Three other American kids involved got off without charge.

Three Tokyo teens, meanwhile, were arrested for breaking into a couple of cars using a method they had learned on YouTube.

This week’s feature song was the title track of a Berwyn, Illinois group’s debut studio album in 1970.  When the song was released that year, it became the fastest selling single in Warner Brothers’ history.  The group was named by the group’s bass player, as homage to a memorable line he’d read in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when he was a high school student.

The song peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #1 on the corresponding Cash Box chart.  The single sold more than a million copies and was awarded the gold disc in November, 1972.  The album itself reached #55 nationally.  

The band toured with many headline acts during the early 1970s, opening for the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin.  The group also participated in the train tour featured in the 2003 documentary “Festival Express”, but their work was not included in the film.

Lately I’ve noticed in my blogosphere wanderings the big controversy over President Obama’s balls.

I can’t even believe I wrote that!  Bleeeccchhhh!  Ewww.

I am really not interested, outside of my love life, in anyone’s organs of any kind.

I lament the loss of real privacy, which is an essential part of intimacy, one of the more pleasurable experiences in this crazy life.

The recent transformation at Daily Kos from non-stop cheerleading for Obama into bitterly critical diaries at the top of their popularity list reminds me of my last term as a destitute graduate student in 1999, when I couldn’t even afford to ride a bus, and used to walk home from the library late at night through a series of black, Latino, and Native American slums.

After midnight I was more or less alone on the street except for a few gang-bangers who usually recognized me as that guy who taught basic reading skills at the local juvenile prison, out of books by Malcolm X and César Chávez and Russell Means’ autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread.

About halfway home I would pass a halfway house for mentally challenged individuals, many of them only recently emancipated from unpleasant institutions or exhausted families. There were almost always three or four residents socializing on their front porch until two or three o’clock in the morning, and after a few nights of getting-to-know-you banter back and forth we quickly became friends.

Promptly at 1 AM all of us would rush inside for the late-night weather report on TV, and we played a crazy game with the weatherman.

“Current temperature is 72 degrees Fahrenheit, 22 Celsius, clear skies and a gentle breeze from the southwest,” and we had been outside in exactly that weather only moments before. But someone would immediately scream…

“Sleet and freezing rain!”

“Tornado warnings for the Greater Boston Metro!”

“Hail-stones bigger than Toyotas!”

“Earthquake in the Back Bay!”

I read this am on AP that you have endorsed the Bowles-Simpson bill – most specifically on changing the SS retirement age to 69.  Then said something along the lines that it is unsustainable to spend the money we are spending on food stamps for children for instance.  You didn’t mention that it will be unsustainable as well to spend the monies we will spend on those of the working class who will be retiring earlier and asking the government for disability funds.  Plus, I so admire the way politicians pit children, babies, kittens, struggling university students against older Americans.  It’s so subtle and heartwrenching.

As well, you are onboard with cutting the tax credit for companies offering healthcare.  That’s not going to affect anyone’s healthcare, is it?  For sure, American companies will not give up their health insurance benefits to employees if there is no tax benefit.  If we’ve learned anything, it is that corporations are our friends, trusted, courageous and unselfish.  Of course, there is no dearth of employees in other countries, for instance – who wouldn’t mind this – having national healthcare.  So good on America – more outsourcing.

I will come back to this diary after I research further but I am having some friends over for lunch and want to begin the festive preparations.  It will be a modest affair but I am a good cook so we will eat heartily.

Usually I have a Christmas doing of some kind but this year in the spirit of austerity, I am foregoing it and instead having two friends for lunch.  Also, in the spirit of paying my real estate taxes which have risen about 35%.  As dark winter closes in on me and the other little old ladies here in the Chicago area – a Holiday Party is really an act of sanity as we face the long, cold winter – more isolated due to the weather as younger people.  But look – I want to do my part, as do my other elderly friends. Perhaps you can give us more hints so we can accomplish this.  I’ve gone to your website and seen nothing yet as to your sacrifices.  I’m disappointed but know you are a busy and important man with many more austerities to research to keep America safe and healthy.

I am leaving for now – but will revisit this diary and make revisions, if necessary.  Til then, Dick, I wish you and Barry all the things you deserve this Holiday Season.

Oh, and Dick, if any of your constituents are being crybabies about the 69 yr SS thing, please direct them to Alan Simpson – his sharp mind, his compassion, his love of country – and he’s past 69, isn’t he?  But wait – when do your congressional benefits kick in?  

I’ll be back after lunch and will change any inaccuracies if necessary.

P.S. —  we can discuss discontinuing the mortgage tax interest option which I believe is another option you endorse – what the heck – where are the Real Estate lobbyists?  

Dick, I see you have come out and said that you voted for this proposal so that you will have a “seat at the table” when the time comes to oh let’s say – get serious.  Your liberal blessing (excuse me while I leave the room to roll around the floor and scream) —

okay, that felt good – gives credence to the seriousness and cover that you and your pal, Obama, give to these suggestions that screw the working class.