It’s Columbus Day. I don’t really need to rant about that do I? Even the story they give kids in rudimentary secondary Ed, which is more or less accurate, is rife with misplaced inductive reasoning and conclusion that makes little sense. Dude didn’t really discover America, prior to his bad directions and misguided trip other Europeans had actually made it to the continent, and the real upshot is; If there are people already living in a place the simplest of deductive reasoning would suggest that those people had already discovered themselves and the ground they stood on. Beyond that I start trotting out all my liberal shit, like the god-damn commie, hippie, liberal notion that genocide sucks. Columbus didn’t even participate in that.
The best part of the tale is that he was such a fuck up that the crew was ready to hang him from a yard arm and head back home. I’m not naïve enough to suspect that had that happened the entire course of American history would have changed. Which, in my simplest, most child-like, opinion, means old C.C. really didn’t have shit to do with shit.
It wouldn’t even be on my mind except I figured out yesterday that today would be Columbus and I thought to myself “Shit. Really? Shit. A federal Holiday during a time when the entire federal government is working without contract and dangerously close to defaulting on the horrible deficit we racked up by funding Halliburton’s damn near privatized Wars. Yes, I’m trying to be non-partisan here. I can’t tell you I got much out my education, but I did hit the goal, as I see it, of an education system; I came away with a foundation for critical thought. I understand that I have peers with the same foundation who could come to different conclusions. Bottom line is no matter where you’d like to point a finger we are fucked sans lubrication and in an uncomfortable orifice, and yet, we’re taking a day off to celebrate a lost motherfucker who got to the West Indies before mutiny.
I’m fine, thanks for asking, how’re you? I was a little concerned when the Oregon DMV sent me a change of address (I wonder how that’d play with the cops? A Michigan address pasted over an Oregon Id. I best shoot my way out of a ticket.). Because I had expected a Jeep Title, have a copy of a cashed check to the OR DMV and was all kinds of concerned that they sold me a red herring instead of a pink slip. So I called. This is more a leap of faith than any saint or martyr has ever taken. As an agnostic I lean more towards the possibility of a god than I do towards the DMV answering the phone with a live person. But Lo! It Came To Pass, I spoke With The Living And It was good.
A bored and testy fellow with enough snark to have a dorsal fin, a theme song and hear the phrase “We’re going to need a bigger boat”. Yes, I think of Snark, snarky and snarkwad as a declension of shark; lots of teeth and a vainglorious sense of ones place on the food chain. Although he sounded vaguely pissed off about it he assured me that the title is processed and should be mailed this week. If I had called today nobody would have been home. I’m thinking them what are home are wondering if they have a job tomorrow morning. Mr. Burns told Homer Simpson that if he wasn’t on time Friday morning to not bother to come in Monday, Homer replied “Whoo Hoo! Four day weekend!”
Doh.
I have a court hearing on the 29th that will result in a judge’s signature of dissolution of marriage order. It’s possible that by November first I will have become a Michigander once again. In theory I’ve been one, in a broader theory I’ve been one all my life. In practice I have a wife in the great north woods and my identity, the papers in my possession, still show me to be an Oregonian. In my heart I will continue to be an Oregon and/or a man without a country. Yeah, I know, same country, I just mean in a broader sense I am untethered and although there is a poetic and philosophical foundation for negative aspect of an Unbearable Lightness of Being, there is a sort of freedom. In works the way the Kris Kristofferson refrain works “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Examine either too close and they are both sort of bullshit. Freedom is independent of possession, things to lose or not to lose, and the state of being is fluid, in flux and sans suicide ideation it’s bearable because the alternative sucks ass, again without lubrication.
This entry seems to think the finest principle of the body politic and existence in this vale of tears is lubrication. Not my intent but you’ll notice the lack of exercising the delete key. Where applicable lubrication is, with the most positive spin, the very embodiment of compassion. Both death and default seem more consensual with lubrication. If death and federal bad faith needed an ad campaign it should, at some point, as the model is holding up the product and smiling with the Unbearable Brightness of Capped Teeth, the voice over should say “Death; Now ribbed for her pleasure” or “Allowing the feds in your butt does not make you gay, and besides, we’ll be gentle, and what do you have against the gays anyhow? --- and then maybe a little Irish woman’s voice ‘And I like it too!’”
These are the sort of ad campaigns Columbus probably would have liked, because they seem like they are going south and East but are, in fact, going West. Just because the world isn’t flat doesn’t mean some folks aren’t dumbasses, and, just because their ass doesn’t know no better doesn’t mean you can go in all willy nilly without lubrication.
Apologies. Happy Columbus Day. Stay Moist kids.
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