I’ve Been Tagged

Okay, looks like my blog brother Shtuey (Mom always liked him best) has involved me in something called “Meme Tag,” an internet game with apparently few rules and less purpose and reason.  From what I can gather, I’m supposed to reveal six random things about myself and then choose six other bloggers to call out to do the same thing.  And so on, and so on… But, in the manner of put-upon older siblings since time immemorial, I will dutifully indulge him because…well…he’s my brother.

First of all, I’m tall, a little under six feet.

Okay, 2-3 inches under, but, still tall, and my heft stature Amazonian statuesque-ness makes me seem taller than I actually am.  Some people are intimidated by that.  Good.

Next, I’m black.  Well, more caramel-ly, but you get my drift.  Some people find that even more intimidating, but that’s their problem.  See above.

Moving on, I can type with one hand (finger) like I’m doing now, with the other hand on my hip, (turned to the back) my head cocked and a “oh, no, he di’nt” expression on my face, because my blog brother Shtuey tagged me to do this post.  See one and two.

What are we up to, four?  Lessee, I like smart, sassy, women with short, dark hair.  Attitude a must.  Call me crazy, but Lord help me, there it is.

Five, I think I’m smarter than most college grads I meet, many of whom seem to have wasted a lot of time and money taking up space in institutions of higher learning that could have been put to better use growing hydroponic plants or storing books and supplies for smarter, more deserving students.  So, I’ve got an inflated sense of my own value and importance; deal with it, and again, refer to one and two.

Finally, I’d like to teach the world to sing.  No shit.  That’s not snark, that’s the God’s honest truth.  Even though I’m not much of a singer myself, and have absolutely no musical training whatsoever, the thought of the whole world joined together in song just gets to me.  No Coca-Cola themed jingle-turned pop classic for me though.  The song I’d like globally performed is by Parliament/Funkadelic and entitled “Mr. Wiggles.”  I can totally imagine people from every corner of the Earth singing:

I got a string on my thing

When you pull my string

I can do my thing

Un-der-wa-terrrr

I got a string attached to my thing

When you pull my string

I can do my thing

Like I ought-taaaaa

Go wiggle!

I dunno, something about the idea of hearing little kids and non-English speaking people belting out lyrics they don’t understand, along with giggling teenagers and smirking adults, all grooving and singing with all their hearts, just makes my heart cockles warm and fuzzy.  Truly.  Since it’s unlikely that that particular dream will ever come true however, I’ll settle for trying to teach the world to point and laugh at the ridiculous with my blog.

Whew, that’s six, and not a moment too soon.  If I keep going you guys might really get to know me, and I can’t have that, can I?

Now, who shall I “tag?”  So many choices it’s hard to narrow it down.  But, okay, here goes:

Sugar – Sugar ‘n Spice

Myiq2xu – Klownhaus

John (South of Melrose) – Liberal Rapture

Murphy – PUMA Pac

Riverdaughter – The Confluence

HillBuzz – HillBuzz

Okay, they’re either going to kill me or ignore me, huh?  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Oh, and since there’s no You Tube video for “Mr. Wiggles,” I provided another from the Parliament/Funkadelic conglomerate, just to give you a sense of where I’m coming from.

Things To Do Instead Of Watching The Inauguration

Since many of us would rather pull our lips up over our heads and secure them in place with vice grips than watch a minute of the travesty of the overlong, overblown, overindulgent, overpriced installation of the Mass Marketed Messiah as president of our country, I’ve decided to offer some fun alternative activities to fill the next few interminable days (or, put another way, the next excruciatingly long, infinitely numbered seconds, minutes and hours) without access to television or any other normal news sources.  All are welcome to share their own suggestions with a sure-to-be grateful PUMAsphere.

First, many PUMAs, especially those of us who are of a particular age, could benefit from a good wax.  Shaving, depilitating, arching, and/or plucking unwanted stray hairs from every surface of one’s body where the unruly bastards insist upon growing (especially that one where the gray ones you can only see with a mirror and get to by contorting yourself into positions younger cheerleaders would envy are) can provide hours of distraction, with the added benefit of a smooth, hairless body ready for love when you’re done.  Win-win.

Next, along the same lines, clip the toenails of every living being in your household.  Not only will you be kept busy, wood floors will subsequently go unscuffed, family members’ socks will last much longer, and spouses and lovers will be slightly more tolerable bedmates when they place their cold, scruffy feet where they’re not appreciated.  Additionally, think of all the extra calories you’ll be able to consume guilt-free after chasing small children and pets for hours.

The next suggestion will be met with skepticism by some, but bear with me.  Clean.  I know, I hate housework, too, but look at it this way, when will there ever be another time when scrubbing toilets is a preferable alternative to anything?  See, makes sense, huh?  I’m sure there are closets that need organizing, floors that need scrubbing, windows that need washing, and hundreds, if not thousands of little crevices that would benefit from the application of a little elbow grease with a toothbrush, even in the cleanest abodes.  And, for people who have fussy-clean houses like that, give the help the day off and do something yourself.  That should make time fly for you.

Alphabetize your internet files.  I have no idea what possible good that will do, but at least while you’re doing it, you’re not doing anything else, which is the point.  You could also measure your head, as well as the heads of all your friends and family members, sew up the legs of all the underwear in the house, microscopically examine things that come out of your face, make random lists, and read back copies of old magazines cover-to-cover.  Make up silly songs and corresponding dances, then attempt to teach them to strangers at random bus stops and Starbucks locations.  Wander aimlessly.  Drink.

Those of you who like to cook could create new inauguration-inspired recipes from ingredients past their freshness dates and forgotten leftovers.  Read the phone book.  Teach yourself whatever language they speak in Uzbekistan.  Do all your laundry by hand.  Eat.  Learn to use all the tools and appliances received as gifts over the years and stored in dark places in the back of other unused stuff, even the Flow-Bee and the BeDazzler.  Watch your CrockPot cook.  Grind coffee beans one at a time in a mortar and pestle.  Sleep.  Make those “special brownies” you haven’t made since college and won’t go to jail for now, eat them and giggle.

Have a bad ’60’s movie marathon, followed by listening to any old LP’s and 8tracks you still have the ability to play.  Figure out your neighbor’s taxes.  Window shop.  Give yourself an online physical.  Scour the house looking for pencils to sharpen.  Study ancient art history.  Teach a stray dog new tricks.  Fly paper airplanes.  Doodle.  Play board games.  Smell every surface in your home.   Take something apart and see if you can reassemble it.  (Note: only do this with disposable things you can do without, not your new Lexus.)  Write a letter to somebody you fell out with years ago and tell them why.  Whether you send it or not, you’ll feel better and be amazed how long it took to remember the details.  Read the Bible.  Backwards.  Take photos in very low light from weird angles with somebody else’s phone.

I’m sure if you think about it, you can come up with hundreds of innovative ways to get yourself and the rest of us suffering PUMAs through the next few days without losing too many of us to a lifetime of blank staring, mindless babbling and drooling through our tears.

Help

Me

Spokesmodel-In-Chief Of The UniParty

Government of the people by popular demand.  Tough decision facing the country?  Take a poll, do a focus group, flip a coin, make a committee-written, TelePrompTer-read  speech.  That’s just the way things work today.  What does the public want?  What do the people need?  Who cares?  Decide what you’re going to give them, then send out your bright, buff spokesmodel with the pretty teeth to visit the press and sit on their laps and wiggle while he whispers your sweet nothings in their ears.  He gets paid, the media gets laid and the people get screwed.  We are a reality show, and we voted for the Survivor spokesmodel who “outwitted,” “outplayed,” and “outlasted”.  Just the way the UniParty who hired him wants it.

Barack Obama seems determined to Obama-fy the Democratic party, a fact which seems to confound those on the left who seem surprised by it, and delight those on the right relieved that he seems to be committed to his campaign promises of it.

At his rallies, Obama tells a joke he’s been telling since before Iowa, about voters who whisper to them that they are Republicans but they support him.

“Thank you,” he whispers back. “Why are we whispering?”

Republicans for Obama, Democrat for a Day, Obamacans; right-wing policy disguised as “bi-partisan,” outright co-option of conservative principles, courting Republican endorsements, all of these things have been integral elements of Barack Obama’s campaign since the beginning.  That he would embrace Colin Powell early on, support FISA and all his other “flip flops” should be enough to convince even the most delusional liberal, progressive Obamanut that he’s just not that into you.  Yet, so many otherwise rational people continue to promote that which obviously isn’t as if it not only could be, but already is.

How much of this irrational, illogical headlong, head-first smash through the looking glass is due to the media manipulation of the Astroturf King, David Axelrod is hard to say.  We can be sure that just about anything we read in the mainstream media, especially the Chicago Tribune, besides John Kass, or see on cable, especially MSNBC, is Astroturf, and though it would be  difficult to prove in a court of law, that Axelrod has undue influence in the blogosphere is beyond reasonable doubt.  Whether he simply employs bloggers to infiltrate and sock-puppet websites resistant to the charms of his puppet president to death with straw man arguments and Xeroxed talking points; creates faux sites promoting the Obamessiah’s mythical messianic qualities; or pays off the Blogger Boyz whose biz depends on boastful, swaggering pretense to political prowess and power, Axelrod is a formidable string-pulling shadow force, combining the “best” of his patented Astrotufing techniques with Republican “ratfucking” to Astro- or Assle-fuck the internet into submission to his will.  And there’s no reason to assume that his activities are limited to Democratic venues.

The result is unprecedented media manipulation, with entire news networks, venerable newspapers, and upstart Netroots, having myriad, and often conflicting agendas, working together to worship at the feet, suck at the teat, lick on the boots, and plant lips upon the ass of a man whose greatest talent is reading in public and smiling for the camera.

A spokesmodel.

As we head to the biggest, baddest, bashiest of inaugural bashes ever in the history of the known world, 5 x more expensive than the entire Democratic party has cash on hand, the least experienced, most ill-equipped and -prepared man to ever take the country’s reins embarks on a marketing and  media blitz that puts Beyonce and J-Lo to shame.  He makes no secret of his intentions, either, and nobody cares one whit.  He’s a symbol, like Prince.  But, unlike Prince, who claimed to be a symbol of slavery to a record company, Obama is a symbol of America’s celebration of it’s reluctant release of it’s slaves.  Having released it’s symbolic grip on the symbolic throats, and it’s symbolic boots from the symbolic asses of it’s real African American citizens, Barack Obama represents all the “change” America could “hope” for in the fulfillment of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.  How considerate of Dr. King to struggle and triumph over oppression before giving his life, so that we may all celebrate his birth the day before his dream’s heir takes his rightful official place as his successor.

Parrrtaay!

In 1967, at Stanford University, Dr. King made a speech about the “other America,” a poorer, forgotten nation in stark contrast to the image of the privileged, preferred, yet limited reality, suffering in it’s shadow, comprised not only of blacks.  From the Black Agenda Report:

Many people of various backgrounds live in this other America. Some are Mexican-Americans, some are Puerto Ricans, some are Indians, some happen to be from other groups. Millions of them are Appalachian whites. But probably the largest group in this other America in proportion to its size in the population is the American Negro.

Dr. King’s point in this speech seems to me to have been that though it’s relatively easy to slap a pretty BandAid on a festering wound, the result of doing so without properly treating it first can be devastating, if not deadly.  Dr. King’s prescience has not gone unheeded, it has been exploited and corrupted.  For, while our soon-to-be President Obama actively promotes a “one America” concept, it is not that of an America that incorporates Dr. King’s “other” America, but subsumes it by ignoring it’s existence.  To celebrate Barack Obama’s election as though the wound has been healed is to celebrate illusion as accomplishment.

The man who smiles for the camera as he insists America is 90% of the way to racial equality while he opens the door to privatizing “entitlements” and advocates on behalf of a tax cheat, does so as the front person of a political party neither fish nor fowl.  As he said during his 2004 Democratic National Convention coming out speech:

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

One America, one party, one leader.

Spokesmodel for the UniParty.

Obamacanacrats.

And they all lived happily ever after.