Sunday, January 25, 2004

5 Pound Bass - Steve Raker Recently... ...I wrote a piece of drivel where I bitched in a light-hearted and heart-warming way about lazy-ass fiction authors who insert extraordinary coincidences into their stories.  I'm speaking of the superfluous extraordinary coincidences, over and above the string of wacky coincidences upon which the plot balances, like a fat ballerina on tiny feet.  As you may recall, the novel that set me off involved a jazz musician catching a 5 POUND BASS during a phone call with his wife.  An S.E.C. plopped into the story for no reason other than, "I bet this'll fill up a few pages and be easy as Paris Hilton* to write."   ...Let's start calling an extraordinary coincidence that does nothing to advance the plot, a '5 POUND BASS'.  This'll be great.  You too can be in on the ground floor of this newest pop culture phrase. ...Imagine warming yourself by a glowing fireplace, tucked in your favorite chair, adoring children clutching at your cuffs (black lace apron); "Grampa(ma), tell us about your literary experiences", followed by a chorus of, "Pleeeeez".  "Well children, many years ago, before we had flying cars and computer edited fiction, I was instrumental... (you are interrupted here by several of the adults gathering round, "Go on Pop/Mom, we love this story.").  I was instrumental in the popularization of the literary put-down '5 POUND BASS'.  I would say things like, "You've got a 5 POUND BASS on every other page here Dude"."   There are visible admiration rays flashing from the children's' eyes, heads are nodding, hopeful wives nuzzle their husbands; the world becomes a warm and forgiving place.  "Yes, this is the beauty of age," you think, as several of the smaller children faint in the crush.  "This is fulfillment writ large on my soul".  ...Destiny knocks but once**, start popularizing now.        * I don't know for sure that PH is easy, but that is the consensus among humorists, so I'm going to pretend I'm with them.  And I'm not saying that 'easy' is bad; don't try and hang that 'double standard' anchor around my neck, ya bastards.  As my Aunt Hazel used to say, "It takes two to be easy."     ** Again, I don't know for sure.    6:48:18 PM    on the other hand  []

The Weatherman I was watching Ivanhoe When they said the tornado Blew your big old house apart Robert Taylor was the star You never knew why I was blue So I went to a movie after you Spread out on your feather bed With weather maps you never read You said the east was freezing but The clouds were insignificant I never knew what made you speak Of sleet between your satin sheets You're always calling me But I'm never needed I'm needy I'm needy I'm needing a new home A fall in Philadelphia When you were much healthier Obstructed your recovery As yellow leaves fell from the trees lyrics © 2002, The Residents           photo © 2003, replicator 6:09:45 PM    on the other hand  []

Pardon the activity, while I rearrange my Blog.     If you've wondered about the frequent updates, it's me rummaging through all my old files and adding them to categories. I'm reposting some of them to the current page as well, when it catches my fancy. And yeah, I know. I'll have to try a lighter shade of green. 12:36:36 PM    on the other hand  []

From the desk of Pat Robertson Operation So-Called Supreme Court Freedom (first draft)   Dear Fellow American, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, once wrote: "You seem to think that the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of constitutional interpretation, a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one that would place us under the tyranny of an oligarchy." Now he didn’t say who ‘you’ was, so I’ve got to believe he was talking to you secular folks out there who don’t give two hoots about the lord Jesus. And he didn’t say what an oligarchy was, so I had to look it up. Oligarchy:  Government by a few, esp. by a small group of people. I think what he meant was a nineigarchy, government by nine people, five of who are unelected. Aside from that, how very wise Jefferson was. Except for that one incident with the niggress. Yet even Jefferson could not have foreseen what the so-called Supreme Court has done to the Constitution of the United States since 1962. Just think what five unelected judges and four elected ones have done to our nation’s moral framework. 1. In 1962, they ruled prayer right out of the public schools. Bunch of a-holes. 2. In 1963, they tossed the Bible out of public schools. Dirty dirtbags. 3. In 1973, they applied a "right of privacy" not found in the Bible as the basis for opening the door to the torture and slaughter of more than 43,000,000 innocent unborn children who were turned into soylent green and sprinkled atop the pasta salads of ungodly liberals. 4. Subsequent federal courts have ruled that all Ten Commandments were illegal in schools (giving our children the right to slaughter innocent teachers), that statues of Jesus were illegal in public parks unless they were accompanied by a placard proclaiming them ‘For Entertainment Purposes Only’, that prayers on a map of Raleigh in North Carolina were illegal, and that it was illegal for little elementary school children to eat milk and cookies at snack time. 5. Now, the Supreme Court has declared a constitutional right  for a man to commingle his God given flesh with the flesh of another man,  and, by the language in its decision, has opened the door to homo marriages, big armies, legalized prostitution, chicken plucking and even incest. The framers of our Constitution never intended anything like this to take place in our land, do you think? (Except maybe that Benjamin Franklin character, who sure cozied up enough with the French to make me a little bit suspicious). Yet we seem to be helpless to do anything about it. Why?  It’s not because we’re a dumb bunch of peckerwoods or anything like that. It’s because we are under the tyranny of a nonelected nineigarchy. Just think, five unelected men and women (and four elected ones) who serve for life can change the very moral fabric of our nation just like a dirty diaper and take away the protections which our elected legislators have wisely put in place. But there is a higher tribunal than the United States Supreme Court. There is the Judge of all the earth, George W Bush. We must earnestly come before Him now and cry out for redress of our grievances. He loves America as much as we do, and He does not wish to destroy it. But he just might not have any choice. No culture has ever endured which has turned openly to homo marriages and chicken plucking. And no society has ever been spared the wrath of Bush which has been guilty of slaughtering tens of millions of innocent babies and turning them into soylent green. In short, by its distorted reading of the religion clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the "discovery" of eliminations from the 14th Amendment called "pentlandites," the so-called Supreme Court is bringing upon this nation the wrath of Bush, when the precious limousines that we love so much may be taken away from all of us. Would you please join with me and many others in crying out to our president to change the Court? I mean that in a figurative sense, you understand, cause while the Robertson mansion is grand indeed, it just doesn’t have enough space to hold all of the righteous. If we fast and pray and earnestly seek Bush’s face, then He will hear our prayer and give us relief. One justice is 83 years old. Ain’t nobody going to be suspicious if he just wakes up dead one morning. Another has cancer, and God willing, it’s going to hollow him out like one of those hollow things. Another has a heart condition, and if someone sneaks up behind her and goes ‘BOO!’ really loud, well it’s still our constitutional right to say boo, says so right there in the first amendment (which I am somewhat ambivalent about, but that’s another letter). Would it not be possible for Bush to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire? With their retirement and the appointment of conservative judges, a massive change in federal jurisprudence can take place and we can dwell in the house of the Lord forever, except for two weeks in June when he has the family over. We can have a court that no longer legislates from the bench the wishes of The New York Times and Hustler Magazine, but which will earnestly seek to interpret the Constitution as it would have been written if it had been written by Jesus which it was but then those five unelected judges got together and screwed the whole thing, but I digress, and they can give meaning to the centuries of moral standards which have undergirded this wonderful country called the United States of America. Please join us in prayer to support a massive prayer offensive that we are going to call Operation So-Called Supreme Court Freedom. "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!!" (Matthew 19:12) George bless you. Yours in Bush, Pat Robertson 12:22:51 PM    on the other hand  []

Jan 1 through 19 is lost 10:18:02 AM    on the other hand  []