Jesus, where the fuck did I go?
Righty-o, kids. Sorry about the vanishing act. Billyhank has been dying inside for a little while now. But I'm feeling better.
News. Me n' Buttons are getting hitched in the spring. Up at Lake Quinault where she & I met one drunken week many years ago. Yeah, so, fuck if you happen to be up there and see a slighty tipsy skinhead getting hitched to a cute little red-headed girl, well, then, shit you're probably one of my pals, and thanks for hauling your ass all the way out to the Peninsula.
Rev. Sparky berated me not so long ago for not chiming in on Karina, and I feel like I should write something, but I haven't the slightest idea what. Dunno. There's a lot of directions in which to point our fingers, but I'm not really caring about that right now. There's not much point, is there? The screwups go up and down the line, and it's been happening on a small scale for-fucking-ever and why in the world did anyone thing it would ever work right on a large scale?
Listen: I used to work for a very smart engineer-turned-biz guy, and the company ended up having to get a bunch of investors involved to keep everything solvent, and they came in with a bunch of fairly bad ideas and pushed them through despite the objections of the people in the company who understood just how bad those ideas were. And I used to go to my boss and collapse in front of his desk and ask him why the hell he didn't fucking DO something about it all. And he would just smile and light a cigarette and say "If you give the idiots enough rope, they'll hang themselves with it."
At the time, I saw that as sage advice and tried to counsel myself to patience. But I was twenty-something then, and patience was in short supply. So I fumed and fussed and swore and generally made myself fucking miserable about something that, in hindsight, I should simply have walked away from. Back then I saw standing on the deck of a sinking ship as something noble and worthy. The experience has since taught me that sometimes it's okay to cut and run when you're sailing with a bunch of people intent on self-destruction. It's not cowardly; it's just fucking smart.
But my boss was right, I have to admit. The idiots were given all the rope they wanted, and managed to hang themselves and sink the ship and force a company that had every shot at success to go straight into the toilet. The problem was, the investors survived. They had other businesses and other money and hanging themselves in one place didn't mean much to them. My boss didn't have anywhere to go and died, both figuratively and literally, when the whole thing came crashing down around him. And while the whole rope & hanging thing still seems valid to me, I have to amend it to something like "Give the idiots enough rope and they'll hang SOMEBODY with it."
This is where it's going in this country. Maybe all the countries. I'm not terribly well traveled, so I dunno. Fuck, I can barely pay attention to everything that's going on in Jet City, never mind the rest of the world. The Power is becoming so insular, so buffered, so remote from the People that it's getting tough to see any way to bridge the gap. I dunno. Any government that's decided $5.35 and hour is enough to survive on is so out of touch as to be laughable, that passes laws to make it easier for Corporations to not pay taxes, that allows, what, half the people in the richest nation in the world to go without health insurance...I dunno. I just don't know. The system stopped making sense so damned long ago. Hell, maybe it never really made any sense. I'm sure that Washington and Jefferson were cutting backdoor deals to get government contracts for themselves and their friends, that Lincoln ruthlessly crushed his opponents whenever he had opportunity. Shit, we all know that FDR was banging his secretary and let the Rising Sun put the torch to Pearl Harbor.
Goddamn, we sound so good on paper. Duly-elected officials, three fingers of government keeping each other in check, a Constitution that spells out just what we are and aren't entitled to as citizens. One guy to run the army, some other guys to pass laws, some other-other guys to say what's fair and what's foul. How come it's all fallen apart so fast? How come we're all whining, but nobody's doing anything about it? Yeah, yeah, I'm typing, but I'm not doing anything. I'm with you. I agree.
We were talking at work today and Deetroit posed a query: What's one thing that was better about the 1800's than the modern day?
I thought about it for a minute and, maybe 'cause all this shit's on my head right now, all I could think is that it seemed like shit was less locked down in the 1800's and that it was a helluva lot easier to start up an armed revolt against your government when it wasn't fulfilling its duties. Which, yes, yes, is kinda juevenile and not something I'm probably capable of doing. But maybe that's the problem right there; we've lost the capability of being in charge of ourselves. We're so fucking used to it, so indoctrinated to the idea that the people in charge are the right people to be in charge...fuck, shit, dammit. Dunno.
Bah. Screw this. I need guns and bombs and warm bodies. Welcome me home, kids. Send me your love, your fealty and your willingness to do what's right. Let's ride, and clean up this shit.
Righty-o, kids. Sorry about the vanishing act. Billyhank has been dying inside for a little while now. But I'm feeling better.
News. Me n' Buttons are getting hitched in the spring. Up at Lake Quinault where she & I met one drunken week many years ago. Yeah, so, fuck if you happen to be up there and see a slighty tipsy skinhead getting hitched to a cute little red-headed girl, well, then, shit you're probably one of my pals, and thanks for hauling your ass all the way out to the Peninsula.
Rev. Sparky berated me not so long ago for not chiming in on Karina, and I feel like I should write something, but I haven't the slightest idea what. Dunno. There's a lot of directions in which to point our fingers, but I'm not really caring about that right now. There's not much point, is there? The screwups go up and down the line, and it's been happening on a small scale for-fucking-ever and why in the world did anyone thing it would ever work right on a large scale?
Listen: I used to work for a very smart engineer-turned-biz guy, and the company ended up having to get a bunch of investors involved to keep everything solvent, and they came in with a bunch of fairly bad ideas and pushed them through despite the objections of the people in the company who understood just how bad those ideas were. And I used to go to my boss and collapse in front of his desk and ask him why the hell he didn't fucking DO something about it all. And he would just smile and light a cigarette and say "If you give the idiots enough rope, they'll hang themselves with it."
At the time, I saw that as sage advice and tried to counsel myself to patience. But I was twenty-something then, and patience was in short supply. So I fumed and fussed and swore and generally made myself fucking miserable about something that, in hindsight, I should simply have walked away from. Back then I saw standing on the deck of a sinking ship as something noble and worthy. The experience has since taught me that sometimes it's okay to cut and run when you're sailing with a bunch of people intent on self-destruction. It's not cowardly; it's just fucking smart.
But my boss was right, I have to admit. The idiots were given all the rope they wanted, and managed to hang themselves and sink the ship and force a company that had every shot at success to go straight into the toilet. The problem was, the investors survived. They had other businesses and other money and hanging themselves in one place didn't mean much to them. My boss didn't have anywhere to go and died, both figuratively and literally, when the whole thing came crashing down around him. And while the whole rope & hanging thing still seems valid to me, I have to amend it to something like "Give the idiots enough rope and they'll hang SOMEBODY with it."
This is where it's going in this country. Maybe all the countries. I'm not terribly well traveled, so I dunno. Fuck, I can barely pay attention to everything that's going on in Jet City, never mind the rest of the world. The Power is becoming so insular, so buffered, so remote from the People that it's getting tough to see any way to bridge the gap. I dunno. Any government that's decided $5.35 and hour is enough to survive on is so out of touch as to be laughable, that passes laws to make it easier for Corporations to not pay taxes, that allows, what, half the people in the richest nation in the world to go without health insurance...I dunno. I just don't know. The system stopped making sense so damned long ago. Hell, maybe it never really made any sense. I'm sure that Washington and Jefferson were cutting backdoor deals to get government contracts for themselves and their friends, that Lincoln ruthlessly crushed his opponents whenever he had opportunity. Shit, we all know that FDR was banging his secretary and let the Rising Sun put the torch to Pearl Harbor.
Goddamn, we sound so good on paper. Duly-elected officials, three fingers of government keeping each other in check, a Constitution that spells out just what we are and aren't entitled to as citizens. One guy to run the army, some other guys to pass laws, some other-other guys to say what's fair and what's foul. How come it's all fallen apart so fast? How come we're all whining, but nobody's doing anything about it? Yeah, yeah, I'm typing, but I'm not doing anything. I'm with you. I agree.
We were talking at work today and Deetroit posed a query: What's one thing that was better about the 1800's than the modern day?
I thought about it for a minute and, maybe 'cause all this shit's on my head right now, all I could think is that it seemed like shit was less locked down in the 1800's and that it was a helluva lot easier to start up an armed revolt against your government when it wasn't fulfilling its duties. Which, yes, yes, is kinda juevenile and not something I'm probably capable of doing. But maybe that's the problem right there; we've lost the capability of being in charge of ourselves. We're so fucking used to it, so indoctrinated to the idea that the people in charge are the right people to be in charge...fuck, shit, dammit. Dunno.
Bah. Screw this. I need guns and bombs and warm bodies. Welcome me home, kids. Send me your love, your fealty and your willingness to do what's right. Let's ride, and clean up this shit.
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