Obama or Hillary?

Back to this issue. . .

There are many, many... and conversely, there are few, few... instances where two people with open minds can have a conversation.

Most of us have an open mind when it comes to how many jumps per minute is couth when it comes to Masai warrior dancing. You and I, not being Masai, could discuss this issue and reach an amicable agreement in minutes. But if you had this discussion with a Masai warrior, you'd either have to accept his point of view or get hopelessly lost in an argument about which you did not care.

So we can easily see that arguments, to be successful, require the involvement of people with divergent opinions. And the stronger held the opinion, the greater the likelihood the argument would eventually involve yelling and fist shaking.

Letting go of the need to defend your opinions is very hard. And it's wicked hard when you think your opinion is a scientific fact. (Notice how few arguments you get in about gravity or the freezing point of water?)

Anyway, Laztheism teaches that arguing should only be done if make-up sex is a certainty, during freeway closures, or when you're only doing it because the other person froths at the mouth cutely. Which is a basic tenet of Laztheism: whenever possible, only do those things which amuse and entertain you. But the only way arguing can be amusing is if you don't care about 'winning' the argument. Which is another tenet of Laztheism: you should care about what it is you're doing. See, even the most unorganized, motivationless, pointless plan of action has rules...

So in the next few months, as countless opportunities are afforded for expressing your views, avoid them, because too many of these will be precursors to 'arguments.'

Hillary or Obama? Global Warming or Global Myth? Jehovah or Allah? Raise taxes or lower taxes? Do those pants make her ass look fat or not? Arguments seldom have winners, but they almost always have losers.

The Conductor waved the latern and yelled, "All Abort !"

It's beyond controversy that 'abort' is a word that carries way more negative baggage than just about any other word in the English language. (To men, only "pregnant" carries close to as much weight, if not more, in some instances.)

But not having been aborted -- yet -- the word doesn't bother me. So I'll just move on,

There is word out from that part of the Medical World caught up with your well-being, that holding a cell phone to your ear while conversing on it for 20 hours a day may cause heating of the brain. So it's like sex, I guess, only 45 seconds of brain heating is apparently okay.

I'm passing this along to you in case you missed the announcement. Don't use a cell phone over 19 hours a day.

On the plus side, this research apparently did not cost American taxpayers a cent.

Little Known Doggie facts

1. The custom that has chic women carrying around little lap dogs began with the Iroquois Nation and then spread to immigrants to Canada, and hence and thence to France, where Napoleon insisted that Josephine adopt it. The purpose has always been to give these chic women credibility when they accused the dog of being the one who farted.

2. Dogs (of any size) will, in a human family or group setting, stay close to the person they identify as the alpha dog/human. But in that person's absence they will hang around the human most likely to fall over dead, so that they can be assured of a meal.

Both of these facts have been carefully screened and vetted by the United States Federal Truth Commission and may be relied on to win bets and settle arguments.

Politics as Boose-ual

The title has little to do with this post. I simply cannot refrain from playing with words. Although the "politics" part was sort of on target.

I am not rabid about politics. You could count in one jock strap what I am rabid about, and the way I do it, politics is not involved.

So here's the deal: I am a Republican. Old school. I wouldn't let George Bush be in my party. I mention this when the RNC people call my wife for donations. Which only means that I'm rabid about not spending money, not that my philosophical differences with the current administration bother me.

One of the best friends (I've never met) in the world is a Democrat. She's gone closing in on eight years now without a Democrat in the White House. Six months ago she was CERTAIN that there would be a Democrat in the White House come January 2009. And it wouldn't have bothered me, because if that's what it took to make her happy, then I was ready to hand her the election.

But now she's written a letter to Hillary Clinton, suggesting to Hillary that unless Hillary bows out of the race RIGHT NOW, things may go so horribly wrong that McCain will dodder to a photo-finish against whomever finally does emerge with the Democratic nomination.

There's a lot of merit to that concern. The Obama-Clinton fracas may polarize the adherents to each side so severely that the losing side in that fight may either refuse to vote, or vote for McCain or Ralph Nader/Nadir. And we get 2.6 years of President McCain, and 1.4 years of whomever his Vice-President is, when McCain is finely diagnosed as suffering from senile dementia.

But it won't matter because my friend will be unhappy starting in November. And because I won't be unhappy if a Democrat does wins the Presidency, I would like to help my friend out. So if any of you have any pull with the DNC, please see what you can do about making Clinton & Obama IMMEDIATELY agree to a Clinton/Obama ticket. If the two of them announced this tomorrow morning on the Regis and blonde girl with tits show, my friend would have a chance at happiness. And the Democrats might be looking at 16 years of White House occupancy.

Thank you.

A Challenge, of sorts

Critics of the Bert Bananas’ way of looking at life are legion. Some are legionnaires.

By far the biggest criticism recently is, “Why do you play Pandora so freakin’ loud, dude?” To these critics, I take the Family Guy path and respond, “Because I can, Lois, because I can…”

But the most galling criticism, and the main point of this post, has to do with those critics who tell me that Laztheism is an empty vessel that results in a lack of a believed purpose to life, which has to leave me with no appreciation for life and living. They say, “Dude, if life has no purpose, why bother being alive?” Of course they’re eyeing my Blackberry, my hot, hot motor vehicle, and the other accouterments of hip-ness I’ve accumulated while they’re saying this, perhaps hoping I’ll commit suicide on the spot and they can, with faith in a purpose to life, take them.

I submit that people who need to find ‘purpose’ to life are flawed human beings. My first presentation to support this tenet would be children between the ages of 4 and 7. ‘Nuf said, right? Kids are proof positive that all the purpose life needs is found in figuring things out. At some point most of us stop trying to figure things out. The majority because of a combination of thinking we figured out enough to get by and being too busy to do any further exploring.

If someone were to suggest to you that you need to explore the facts behind what you accept as “true,” 98.27745% of you would smile knowingly and respond that there’s no need, because you ‘know’ it’s all true. So how about this, if the Cubs win the World Series, which everyone ‘knows’ they never can, you have to explore to its very foundation your belief that being beautiful makes a woman good.

He is Risen!

Although this was the basic theme of our honeymoon, I shan't visit that theme infra.

Yesterday late afternoon, on my way to poker (6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. every other Saturday, with frequent bathroom breaks; yes, that's what getting old is all about, along with sensible shoes), I was listening to Wayne Resnick on KFI. He was gloating over the fact that as a non-observant Jew he finds being alive both endearing and rewarding. And because it was the eve of a very important Christian anniversary, and he wanted some listener response to prove that someone out there was listening to him, he asked devout, knowledgeable Christians to call him, because the theme of the hour was, "Answer the Jew's Questions about the Resurrection!"

Almost a contest, but not quite, because how would he know if the answers he was getting were true? After all, without Faith, religions are nothing more than fairy tales with a promised happy ending. (But when you consider that mainline Christianity says there's no sex in heaven, how can you use the term "happy ending"?)

I didn't get to listen to much of the conversation between Mr. Resnick and his devout Christian apologists. But one caller garnered my respect when, to one tricky metaphysically complicated question about the timing and sequence of events regarding the stone being rolled away from the tomb, the caller's answers was, "Whoa, dude, we're talking about Ghawd here!"

To those of you with Faith about a Resurrection, Heaven and Eternal Life, enjoy the day!

And fret not about me, I have my enduring faith in the cold, uncaring, non-favoriing Universe to comfort me.

Anonymous, sir...

Your screed ended with this lament: "WE ARE IN BIG TROUBLE."

Tough to disagree with this assessment, but at my age, it's an old lament.

With respect to your screed, two issues come to my mind as responses. I shall now prattle on:

1. I believe you make a serious error when you assign condemnation to "the rich," the 1%, as an evil class of humanity. 1% of 6 billion is 600,000,000. That's essentially twice the population of the United States. I have observed all classes of people over the length of my life. And I assure you that a majority of this 1% don't work at getting richer. You're certainly correct that they have no idea what the middle and lower classes go through in their lives, but what did you expect? I submit to you that the 1% are in essence a leisure class. They are taught to protect their wealth and they hire money managers to assist them in this endeavor. I submit that the greed that scares me is that of the 2% to 10% of the top who are trying to get into the 1%. They are the ones who scheme and plot and cut corners and lie, cheat and steal. I don't have a solution to the problems they cause, other than the edumacation and maturing of the masses, as Homer Simpson would say.

2. While not a conspiracy wacko, I will not be surprised if it is discovered that certain movers & shakers in Islam, when confronted with a choice of action involving that which is good for Western Democracies and that which is bad for Western Democracies, push for the action that harms Western Democracies. And who could blame them? (Take revenge, sure, but blame them? No way!) After all, they learned from what they suffered at the hands of the Western Democracies from prior to WW1 all the way through to the formation of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflicts that followed.

Finally, for the purposes of this response, it's not the rich, that vaunted 1%, who are putting the fight against mythical Global Warming ahead of our own national interests. I submit that if new drilling were permitted in known Western oil fields, in under two years we'd see gasoline at under $2.00/gal. But do you see anyone protesting the drilling bans? Okay, maybe I am a conspiracy wacko...

BearStearns goes belly up. Was it just simple greed, or was the greed complex?

Competitive greediness is what made America "great." But yet we had that Depression thing. I wasn't alive then, so I'm only working on rumors and things I made up, which experience has taught me works for the Federal Government when it came to involving us in foreign wars.

The Depression started when expectation couldn't match the excellence of the money-markets' collective greed. I'm of the impression (meaning I'm making it up) that this collective greed made people believe things that couldn't be true, like everyone who loans money to poor risks should be shielded from the consequences of such stupidity.

But apparently if you're the Chrysler Corporation or BearStearns, this actually turns out to be the case. Maybe it's just that the people at the top of these businesses knew people that Enron didn't know. I don't know them either.

There is no one way to order a society that is "the best" way. But there are better ways for the people who call themselves Americans to handle greed. From personal experience I know that the best way to control my own greed is to not want anything. Not wanting anything, or expecting anything, creates a cocoon of hopelessness that cushions me from the reality of modern America. That and watching my Family Guy DVDs... The ones in my imagination.

Riding out the Recession, or "How I got poor spending money I didn't have."

Okay, the last part was a cheap shot at governments and other deficit spenders. Sorry.

Today's lecture only applies to a narrow class of people, those who are living within their incomes. The rest of us need not listen as this will not be on the final exam.

Take your monthly net income. By 'net' I mean the actual money that you get to deposit in your checking account or mattress. Forget about saving money; this is a recession, so saving money is actually a bad thing, but retirement funding that you've already set in place is okay, because the odds are the worth of that account is depreciating, so it's not technically savings, for now.

You take the figure that is your monthly net income and you pay your mortgage/rent/utilities and allocate the necessary money for comestibles, because them's good eatens, you betcha! So now you're protected from the elements, you're warm, can watch TV and flush the toilet, and starvation is forestalled! Yowza, you're in the top 98 percentile in terms of humans who think being alive is an attractive option!

Is there any money left over? I sure hope so, because the odds are you have to travel places to make sure there's money in the back for next month. And even an MTA pass costs something.

If no, click on comments and say something that demeans me as a human being; you've obviously got plenty of time, unless you've got hitch-hiking down pat as a dependable transportation alternative.

If you have transportation money, or are trading sex for transportation, keep reading:

Now it gets tricky. Are you really satisfied with just riding out the recession? Or do you want to be part of the solution to this recession? Do you want to go down in history as being part of the problem or part of the solution? What's that? I can't heeeaaar you... Louder. LOUDER!

All right, that's the spirit! Together we can tame this beast!! You and me!!

Here's what you need to do, you need to read my 32 page pamphlet which holds the key to ending personal recession. (mine, anyway...) Purchase a money order for $14.95 and make it out to me. Enclose it in an envelope addressed to Bert Bananas, General Delivery, Earth. Include your address and let me know:

1. are you right handed or left handed?

2. is your mother still alive and if so, does she fool around?

3. are you allergic to water?

Once your money order has been cashed I will send you my pamphlet which contains all the information you need on how best to spend your surplus income so that the current economic doldrums will recede. We're going to all pitch in to recede ourselves from this recession. (Please, if you have a lisp, just hum along with the rest of us)

This message has been approved by the Vatican Council and Major League Baseball. Or as the Latins would say, if there were Latins who spoke High Latin, "Dunc, dunc, guhz."

Why the Draft is windy

This is a story from a long time ago. Many of you were not alive then. I was. Even if you were some strange lady's womb at the time, you wouldn't have heard about it, because acoustics in the womb are always a crap shoot.

When I registered for the Draft, the 'Nam was just heating up. And so was I. But rather than go to war or have sex, I traded in my 1-A Selective Service status for a 4-D clergy exemption. How cool was that? Here I'd just spent a year baking my carcass working on a road testing crew for the State of Nevada, and then overnight, with the receipt of a bulky letter from my Church of Choice, I was clergy! I know that like most of you, I think of the Church of England when I hear "clergy. 19 year old Mormon kids don't really measure up to that standard. But none the less, I had me a newly minted 4-D card.

So then after the best two years of my life, I returned to America, fluent in Spanish and with amoebic dysentery. How cool was that? And my Church of Choice snuck me into BYU and I turned in my 4-D Selective Service card for a 2-S card, a Selective Service student deferment.

And then in late 1968 the powers that be decided they needed cannon fodder more than they needed college graduates. How sad is that? So I was sent the dreaded 1-A card, cannon fodder.

And then I got my draft notice: "Greetings!" it said. "Come spend a year in Vietnam!" My initial inclination was to join the Marines. A friend of mine told me that from what he knew of me, that in giving myself up to the Marines, I would become the perfect killing machine. An enticing goal, no? But apathy, inertia and a drinking problem (Fresca) kept me from doing anything except for shooting myself in the foot with a nail gun. But when I went in for my draft physical, a doctor put a bandaid on the wound and declared me fodder.

So I appealed the decision. The draft board turned down my appeal. So I went to Vietnam and collected social diseases...

No, I re-appealed to the full board. And while that final appeal was pending, to be heard the following Thursday, they held America's first draft lottery, the Monday before. In that first lottery they had 366 capsules in a big bowl, In each capsule was a piece of paper with a day of the year printed on it. Which meant that the young men with birthdays corresponding to the date on that first capsule would be the first ones called. Etc., etc.

The capsule with my DOB remained untouched until only it and one other occupied that bowl. Imagine my nervousness! Would my DOB wind up the final date? Nope, mine was pulled next.

I lost that final appeal and my name was put on the list to be called to service per the order designated by the draft lottery. Hee hee hee! And so I went on to become a perfect killing me softly with love machine.

(In subsequent draft lotteries they had two bowls' the capsules in one bowl had DOBs and the other capsules had numbers 1 through 365 (leap year wasn't a consideration for that second drawing). So there was a double pulling, a date with the number it would be listed. But of course I paid no attention to that lottery.)

America can breathe easy!

No, I am not referring to the fact that I'm blogging again, although there are those who right now have raised their fists to the heavens and cursed ghawd for this revulsion to the natural order...

Nope, I refer to the FACT those plucky people who manufacturer and market Downy fabric softener are trying to lead America out of our economic doldrums by giving us not only clothing that is soft, but has fragrance!

While many of the rest of us were slouched in a comfy TV lounger watching Family Guy (oh sure, like I'm the only one...) some movers and shakers within the Downy commercial kingdom were busting their humps to find some way to stop America's slide into advanced mediocrity and push us back up the slope to a new era of USA-ian hegemony, or as those in the world dominance industry call it, Pax Americana.

What I found shocking is that the powers-that-be revealed the identities of their "Designers."
What were they thinking? Downy put their names and photos on a website for all the power-hungry foment-mongers of the world to see. And for the rest of us to envy... C'mon, admit it, you wish you'd come up with Turquoise Frost.

But none of this would matter if The U.S. of A. had not lost that gumption that took us to the pinnacle of our panache, back in the olden days (whenever that was...).

Our "olden days" could be said to be any time after the Civil War up to Desert Storm, with the slice 'o history that covers the last three years of the Viet-None war excised.

Like that 20 year period following Custer's Last Stand at the Little Big Horn... (Had Custer chosen the Big Big Horn to make his stand, the world would be a whole different place.)

Anyway, after Custer and his 200 men died, along with most of Major Reno's men, at the Middle Big Horn, the citizens of the USA were incensed! INCENSED, I tell you! America wasn't taking that slight sitting down, no sir! The citizenry, with hardly a quibble, funded 20 years, TWENTY YEARS!, of prairie war making. That's how long it took for the US Army to corral all those wild Indians.

How far is it to your nearest Indian casino? I only go to buy fireworks...

I'm not one who normally complains...

But I would like to take the opportunity, on this lambent Sunday morning, to eschew that trait and give vent to, as the Mexicans say, a queja:

Politics.

I don't like politics. There may have been a time, back when Shirley Gregson's father was running for Mayor of Las Vegas, when I might have thought it was an okay gig. But to give credit where credit is due, it had to do more with how cool Oren Gregson was (not to mention his daughter, yowza!). So I helped get him elected and then learned the ugly truth, that politics makes for strange bedfellows. Or does that go, "Politics makes strange bedfellows of us all"?

That mayoral candidacy in Las Vegas, NV, circa summer of 1961, ended with me in the hospital with serious complications from mononucleosis. (So okay, I was not immune to the allure that are a woman's lips ... sue me.)

But ever since then politics has done all it possible could to annoy, harass and otherwise be an affront to my own personal happiness. And I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that I am, generally speaking, ungovernable. Nope, politics is at it's heart a rotten way to make a living, even if the populace acedes to being governed. And while there may be some merit in the argument that... "Hey, someone's got to do it!" I would not mind taking some time out of my busy schedule to debate that issue.

But not right now. I have to go trim my ear hair.

Thank you and good day.