scrapiana

Okay...testing to see if this new set up is working...

I wander disconsolately 'round the web, clicking here and there to find my way in these troubled times. America's current political play is on the brink of some extreme change or other, but I can't tell whether this damn show is a comedy, or tragedy, or one of those newspeak corporate 'dramedy' things I keep seeing on TV.

Yet I sense in the trembling threads of the web, a catch has been made and the spider of public opinion is rushing to tangle up the victim's wings, then wrap and suck him dry.

Suddenly, in my peregrinating dreams, an electric sheep has given me a script! Quickly, I skim through the pages, riffling up to the present.

The first act of the show saw the fearless Bushboy tumbled into a mighty war and the second saw him successfully struggling to overcome his enemies..then came a summer intermission where we all enjoyed shocking lobby entertainment with a Kali-esque skit called 'Acts of Mother Nature'...complete with chorus of grieving mothers wailing on the mall...ahhh, but the intermission lights have just dimmed. The audience is called to return to their seats.

As in any good theatre, the majority of the audience continues with their conversations, getting that last bit of nosh from the reception tables or just running off to take a quick leak before the ushers decide to close the doors and the curtains rise once again. Everyone wonders what Act III will bring...will the fearless Bushboy be undone by his slimy advisors? Where has his old man Cheney been? What shocking revelation will be tossed at the audience in the upcoming scenes?

There have been some rather interesting predictions made, from well considered establishment politicos to the odd psychic renderings of the far, far outers. I am neither, but I do have a suspicion to present, gleaned from the ephemeral pages given to me by Maaaaa, the chief sheep to this little Babe in the (ahh, ferget it)...Let's just take our seats now.

The scene opens downstage right - with all of us in the dark, a powerful stench is brewing...Something big is going to blow! I'm talking some real political nukular fallout up onstage, spilling from the beltway. Nations downwind take note....

Shhhh! the main curtain rises - Act III, Scene 1. Amid the wisps of a stinking fog and the yammer of a dissatisfied chorus- Harriet's nomination flops, (The script notes reveal that she was a red (state) herring anyway, designed to cause pressure and distress to make way for a more powerful and radical rightwing candidate that a worn out Senate would approve in desperation.) With dignity, Bushboy moves to stage right and reaches out his hand to take his cue and announce the ....

But wait, there is a noise coming from just off-stage left...a new set of actors emerge to take center stage! Bushboy and his doughty allies are faced with a feisty little terrier by the name of Fitzgerald, who pulls back a curtain in the corner. Revealed to all are the intricate machinations of the old man and his Roving gang of neo-cons. Party players in the chorus call for blood, running to and fro to cast off their pledges of allegience and don their cloaks of righteous indignation.

Bushboy is aghast, just as he was reaching to pull out a plum from the pie...his panties are threatening to fall! He calls out to his Raven tressed rIce-maiden, Condi! Casting aside her modesty, the valiant warrior-princess...the stately wonder-woman capable of taking on the vile oil-drenched demons of the east, answers his operatic call to take up the flag of the fallen vice-man and shield her beloved Bushboy from the glare of publicity! ...

The pages of my dream script crumble...alas, I have no idea what is going on!

At least, I think this is one scenario that could be played out, but I may be wrong. Lots of other folks have been hinting that they have seen this script too, but then again, the actors are playing a deep, deep game.

Next time...I want to propose a new rubric for determining the Bushboy's depth of political doo-doo...Brownie Points!

Most blogs are created for the purpose of bitching and moaning. Now I'll readily admit some do celebrate the joys of knitting or the wonders of golf. I'm sure that someone is covering the excitement of philately. I actually saw a blog yesterday devoted to the presentation of a daily adorable kitten photo. Yes, there are a lot of sweet and happy posts out there...but I am in a phase of life where situational depression is just another term for waking up every day.

Since I have two blogs...this one and Kitty Shroedinger's Box (see sidebar); I have determined that one shall be for complaints about the world in general (bitching)...meaning those events that I find either outrageous, but rather remote from my sphere of influence, while the other blog will pertain to my own personal woes (moaning).

Henceforth, Scrapiana is being transformed from literary scraps to reflections of public scrapings and Kitty's box will contain my personal droppings.

Of course that does not mean that I will necessarily be any more regular in my postings. But at least I have determined a purpose that reflects my current mood.

Rant du Jour

Word of the moment...funicular. It's common enough I suppose, but I just like the way it sounds. A mechanical rail car designed to conquer steep inclines. Prone to breakdown, like all kinds of man made contraptions. My proposal however, is to use it as an general adjective in politics. It somehow implies a complex-clunky-funky/nuclear slightly foul and obscene process. It has an echo of ontomonpoesy. Maybe I had too much oatmeal in my childhood, when I learned the word or there might have been a personal trauma, now thoroughly repressed, that I unconsciously associate with it...funicular.

Yes indeed, the funicular aspirations of our leaders are obvious. Take Karl Rove and his boy George. A funicular pairing, if I ever saw one. Georgie's cable is currently tangled up over his administration's lack of adequate disaster plans, and his car is rapidly sliding downhill. To be fair, I dont know if anyone on the planet has adequate plans for much of anything. But this current clown show is just not funny at all. All the posturing and outright lying (as in 'no one could have foreseen that the levees would break'), all the cutesy promises and speechifying about how the South is gonna rise again....barf. Rise again on whose backs Georgie;the backs of impoverished children or on the seniors trapped in their nursing home beds as the waters of Medicare costs rise? Will your 'billions for reconstruction' flow like the sewage in the streets of NOLA into the gaping maws of your corporate best buds? Will the new New Orleans rise up on the shredded scaffoldings of a gutted Social Security System or a disenfranchised EPA? Do you actually have any real plans at all, George? Will they be as effective as your grand scheme for folding FEMA into Homeland Security?

Oh yeah, with this administration's talent for political management, be assured that there will certainly be uprisings. Just dont be so sure that the boys from Blackwater and Halliburton will be able to handle the job next time.

Am I dissapoined? bitter? cynical?
yes...and I am just another citizen.
...who votes...
regularly. And I am not the only one who feels this way.

I dont really hold out much hope for the Dems abilities either. Will America 'send in the clones' next year? Who or what manchurian option will the people be manipulated into voting for/against? Last time around we were titillated into upholding family values and opposing threats of gay marriage. Meanwhile matters of genuine value like global poverty and climate change were smothered with the cries of 'terrorists-terrorists-terrorists'.

We are surely ripe for a populo/fascist solution...indeed these are dangerous times. It is going to take real leadership to put the car back on the tracks...and I just hope we dont get fooled or cheated again.

I'll send help to the refugees, but I'm counting the moments until the next election when we'll all be able to send our government some real assistance by hopefully electing some competent leaders. Unless of course, God sends a message via Osama or the weather..or whatever and martial law could finally be declared. I fear some folks in Washington would probably like that, it would make their jobs so much easier.

Anyway, here's my current note of advice for the boys and girls inside the beltway-this is of course if everything stays relatively stable and we get to have another election. (maybe even a real clean one this time)

Be prepared to find a day job, and pray for a living wage. Better yet, why dont you do yourselves a favor and pass a living wage law now? After all, where do you suppose your funicular aspirations are going to take you?

I dont know if 'writer's block' is a real phenomena or just plain laziness. Last Friday, I saw a flyer advertising a seminar on creativity. It was being led by a writer whose work I greatly admire. $36 isn't exactly cheap for me, but I decided to go and try to make some contact at least other artists and writers in my communiy.

WOW... I actually wrote something and I actually read it to the group and they actually seemed to like it and I actually think I may have actually said something valid.

really.

more on rampage...one reporter today on NPR became so caught up in the moment, that while interviewing a plant ecologist about the environmental details of today's blazes, she asked,

"What effect will these rampaging wildflowers have in the long term?"

Best laugh I had all day...the visual image was just too strong. I could only see ranks of Gary Larsenish daisies and roses viciously assaulting strangers and wrangly weeds rapidly engulfing the canyon homes and hillsides in a tangle of thorns and pollen. Like a rural version of 'Little Shop of Horrors', they roared,

"feed me, Seymour!".

I don't know what the expert had to say.

I know it's been a long time since I posted. No excuses...I just didn't feel like writing, but the fires of Southern California have finally stung my inner muse into action. I am convinced that there are times when certain words become overused, abused and so irritating that they cease to mean anything at all.

Some words are meant to be used sparingly...rampage is one of them.

For the past two days, excited reporters have been tearing into regular media programming to breathlessly inform the public that wildfires have been 'rampaging' through Southern California. Rampage is the 'verb du jour', and I for one am heartily sick of it. Yes, the fires are out of control, they have spread rapidly, they have destroyed hundreds of homes and taken over a dozen lives. Is there no other verb in the english language to describe the event? In times like these a lexicographer can only turn within and ask...

What would Roget do?

I've been away from my computer, very far away. I got off a Greyhound at quarter to seven yesterday morning after a 36 hour run, valiantly negotiated a taxi and then finally bathed, ate real food, slept. The brain is still adjusting, the body also...I'm back here now, but is it home yet?

I like to go visit my parents...I just have a little difficulty getting there sometimes. The seven hours of official traveltime only took about 15 hours this trip. I took a red-eye and then the train, my dad got lost trying to get to the station to pick me up for the two hour ride up into the mountains and then there was this doublewide house trailer in the middle of the two-laned road, so we took an alternate rout. We got sorta lost again and so we stopped for directions at this woodworking shop out in the North Georgia woods for directions.

There was this slow turning, giant exhaust fan encrusted with about a half ince of sawdust right by the front door of the low concrete building and inside the air was thick with solvents; one spark would have taken us out of this world. I could feel my brain cells doing a shrivel with each breath. This was not an EPA administered site.

Inside, we found this real cute twentysomething blond bubba languidly sanding away at a door propped up on sawhorses. He smiled vacantly and was just as nice as could be and when we told him where 'we was goin' ...he said to just go up the road a ways and turn right when it stopped and then after a bit we'd get to the big pile of rocks in the middle of the road and to turn right there too; after that it was easy, cuz there was signs and all. I was game, after all it had only been about 12 hours since I'd left LA and 26 since I'd slept.

About nine miles later there really was this big pile of rocks in the middle of a three way intersection, so we turned right and then left and then left and then right and we were climbing up. We started counting the turns just for fun...and after about 2 more hours and over 200 switchbacks and curves we finally figured out exactly where we were and that was only about forty minutes from home..I'm very tired still.

There are probably lots of poetic things I could say about the southern smokies and Tusquittee (where I am now writing this). but there are others who have said it much better. It is (TRITE ALERT) sooooooo beautiful and green here. This is postcard country. Photos however, do not do the place justice, because they lack the essential atmosphere one needs to truly understand the region.

North Carolina is a place where everyone sweats constantly and there are lots of WASPS. There are also stinging insects, hornets, yellow jackets, mosquitoes and my perennial homecomeing favorite...the fleas. The folks have cats and every so often they get annoyed with them because the 'blasted animals' (as mom has titled them) like to leap about and knock stuff over and shed hair etc; so the parents banish them from the house especially when they want to tidy up and make things jsut so nice for me...this is wonderful and no big deal except when the little felines go, they leave behind their nasty little companions.

I got the folks to let a couple of the cats back in to collect some of their friends and I think it might be working...I got a lot fewer bites last night and today.

It might be that I am just getting used to picking the little critters off my body and putting them out of my misery