Calling a customer who lives near Mt. Pisgah Rd.
Me: Hi, this is Sarcastro with [Local Utility Monopoly]. I have a trouble call that says you are having problems with your [Thing We Provide Service For].
She: Um, yeah. The thingy isn’t working right.
Me: You are in a new subdivision, so I want to make sure I know where you live. Are you off of Mt. PIG-saw Road?
She: Actually, it’s Mt. PISS-gaw, but yes we are.
Me: Like that sounds better.
1. Research the number of times the word “cornholing” has been used on public radio.
2. Sweep and mop bathroom floors.
3. Solve the issue of reparations for pre-Civil War slavery by “thinking outside the box”. It is such a genius solution, I may save it for another post.
4. Vacuum carpets.
5. Clean cat litter.
6. Compose profane laden email to the busybody religious nuts Million Moms organization.
7. Walk dog.
8. Finish watching The War.
9. Die of boredom.
What I liked about going to the library today:
1. In the New Releases shelf: The Complete Idiots Guide To Astrology. The third and sixth word in that title are redundant.
2. Complete whackjob Janice Dickinson’s memoir, No Life Guard on Duty was shelved and labeled under Fiction.
3. After searching for what seemed like minutes, I finally found the book I wanted to read. Given the selection of the Antioch library, that was no simple task.
Normally, these sorts of stories go right into the “Who Gives A Shit” file.
To recap, Ellen DeGeneres adopted a dog from some sort of rescue operation. Being it the Litigious State of California, she signed a bunch of papers with the do’s and don’ts of dog ownership outlined. The dog didn’t get along well with her cats. The dog got handed off to the hairdresser’s family. Dog rescuers became aware of this possible danger to the dog and showed up at the hairdresser’s house demanding the dog back. Ellen goes on television sobbing like a mother without tits. Dog rescuers get death threats from Ellen’s fans. Hilarity ensued.
That about cover everything?
Here’s what I want to know, if someone showed up at your door claiming to be from Puppy Liberation Front, or whatever the fuck sanctimonious Gladys Kravitz pet shop they claim to be from, and said you had to give up the dog that your children had bonded with, because they had a piece of paper signed by a talk show host, what would you do?
I don’t know what kind of sheep the people of California have become, but at Casa Sarcastro you aren’t getting a damn thing without a warrant or a bigger gun. If you think you can show up at our door and waive some Word document in order to take one of our family pets without needing medical attention, you are welcome to try.
Except for maybe this goddamn kitten. You can have him. His cute and rambunctious behavior is no longer cute at 2 a.m. when he is sitting on my forehead purring and digging his claws into my scalp.
On the other side of the celebrity/canine spectrum, how much must it suck to be Randi Rhodes dog? First, the poor pooch has to bear mute witness to Randi’s indiscretions and dissembling. Second, other Barney Gumbles in the bar mistaking the dog for Randi’s twin sister when making lurid suggestions concerning the three of them “go back to my place”.
Poor doggie.
Tennesseans For Genocide. That’s the name of the new organization I’m starting up. Our motto is, “We Must Destroy Humanity In Order To Save It.”
Face it, if history teaches us anything, genocide is The Solution to every problem facing mankind. Canaanites squatting on the land that your invisible pal promised you? Kill ’em all, let Yahweh sort ’em out. Armenians doing whatever it is Armenians do in your backyard? Wipe ’em out. It will be decades before anyone gives a shit. Too many educated people screwing up your worker’s paradise? Put them out to pasture.
Isn’t this the real goal of today’s environmental movement? It ain’t authentic Global Warming without Man Made™ Global Warming on the label. We’re told that humans are using up all the oil, burning down the forests, paving over the wetlands, expanding their settlements into the heretofore peaceful critter’s habitats. The unspoken inference is that the world would be a whole lot better off if there were less humans.
Personally, I would feed the still-beating heart of the last, lazy panda to my children if it meant our survival. What we are being fed, thanks to the Humans Are Bad movement, is a steady diet of thin gruel based on the assumption that the snail darter has as much, if not more, right to live here as I do. Bad or not, I’m the one with the fishing pole and the opposable thumbs.
One of the cool things about the internet is that you don’t have to be Adrian Veidt to suss out the collective zeitgeist. Population Reduction is in the hidden gremlin in all of these conversations. Over at Slate they are openly considering the idea.
A new non-fiction release that I’m looking forward to, but can’t summon up the lack of decency to purchase, is The World Without Us. A book that postulates what the earth would look like and how things would be “better” for the environment. Proof of concept as reviewed with breathless anticipation to join the dinosaur over at Salon. I am not willingly going to slouch towards extinction, thank you very much. Earth First? How about, You First.
If it has to happen, let us make sure it happens on our terms. Seems that a billion Chinese and a billion on the subcontinent would be as good a place as any to thin the herd. Hell, the Indians think they are going to be reincarnated anyway, so no big deal. According to their religion, we’re doing them a favor, or something.
According to God’s Favorite Republicans, we aren’t making white people fast enough. If we thin out the numbers of the Indians and Chinee, we might stand a chance, statistically speaking. Crank out a vicious little bug of the superflu in Shanghai, Beijing, Islamabad and Dehli. Concurrently open up a canister of the same in Mecca, Mogadishu, Tehran and Khartoum. That should get the Mohammedans to simmer down for a few centuries with all that irresponsible talk about holy war.
I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed, but we’re talking ten million, twenty million dead…tops. That still would leave us in a decent position population wise to rebuild society.
Which brings us to the Pied Piper of the Apocalypse.
What about all those hurricanes that Jor-Al showed us in Power Point? Maybe next year. I know Sheryl Crow was really looking forward to them wiping out people’s homes and businesses so she could be right. The scientists whose funding depends on making dire predictions aren’t even behind this myth.
Now Jor-Al has won a prize. For Peace. Sure a billion people will have to die for us to have that peace, but it will be peace at last. From the Nobel Committee’s press release:
Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.
Now we’re talking!
Think of the world you want to leave your children? Doesn’t the one with less people sound better? Are you going to be able to afford to launch your only son into space in a flying Prius? Drunkenly bouncing around the galaxy looking for a suitable planet to colonize and maybe get a little high. I don’t think so.
No, you’ll be stuck here, watching the fall and rebirth of human civilization.
It will be like Disneyland without the crowds.
I still don’t get the big deal about Porch Monkeys.
As ably dramatized in the above clip, the phrase has an unfortunate racial overtone associated with it. In the Free To Be You And Me carousel of my racially color-blind childhood, it was always applied to kids in general. It was considered to be from the same subset as “rug-rats” or “ankle-biters”. In retrospect, however, I have to wonder if “yard apes” have fallen into the same taboo category.
When I tell my kids to “quit monkeying around”, is it racist? Or, is “horsing around” more culturally sensitive? Does that offend people with horse faces, like former NFL player Shannon Sharpe?
I can’t say “quit dickin’ around” because they might get some horseshit, bullshit complex about their bodies and their gender identification. No doubt they would wind up in therapy and be forced to sit through Free To Be You and Me.
Plus, their mother is on my ass about swearing at the children.
My real question is, if no offense is intended, then how can offense be inferred? If you call someone who, say, cuts you off in traffic a “cocksucker”, are you suddenly some sort of irredeemable homophobe?
Now there are two similes that I enjoy immensely which I learned from my friends who are from the darker end of the crayon box.
“Spends money like a nigger with a hit record”
and
“Beat him like a runaway slave”
I love those two phrases so much I want to run off to Utah, don some silly boxer/briefs and get married in the Temple to them. Maybe President Romney will let me. Alas, even he won’t be able to keep Rev. Sharpton from calling for me to be fired, despite the usage amongst and stamp of approval from my black pals.
It isn’t a double standard problem, but rather one of no offense intended, none inferred.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where you can’t have a private conversation with a friend and say something innocuous like, “Don’t be so niggardly with the hot sauce” without someone overhearing it and getting their dashiki in a twist. More’s the pity.
Like the man said, “Ain’t like he called us ‘porch monkeys’.
One of the many, many tasks I have for the day is going through my iTunes and deleting songs that seemed like a good idea at the time, but, in retrospect, not so much. Especially with the wife on her way home and my chores undone.
Here’s my dilemma, I have a couple of different versions of the same song. Here are a few examples
Like A Rolling Stone
Bob Dylan–I like the organ bit, courtesy of Al Kooper. It is, after all, the “classic” version.
The Rolling Stones–Better energy. I like the cultural inevitability of the Stones singing a song with their name in it. Like, ‘Hey, Hey We’re The Monkees’.
Lonesome Town
Ricky Nelson–So melancholy. Without a doubt one of his best. I make no apologies about liking Ricky Nelson.
Paul McCartney–Better vocal. It is tough to not like a McCartney cover version of anything. I make no apologies for liking Paul McCartney.
Jambalaya (On the Bayou)
Hank Williams–It’s Hank.
John Fogerty and the Blue Ridge Rangers–Like Creedence, but without all the intense hatred.
Van Morrison and Linda Gail Lewis--Great piano and vocals.
Memories Are Made of This
Dean Martin–Usually the definitive version. Lampooned in ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’.
Johnny Cash–Low key and lo-fi. Full of regret, this version brings a whole new meaning to the song.
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out
Derek & The Dominos–From Clapton’s best record. Blistering guitar work.
Louis Jordan–Two minutes shorter. Captures the atmosphere of the smoky clubs of the 1940’s.
Return To Me
Chris Isaak–Chris is at his best when depressed sounding.
Dean Martin–Makes me hungry for pasta. Used in a great opening to a passable David Duchovny romantic comedy.
That’s Life
Frank Sinatra–Nobody crosses Mr. Sinatra. The inflections are almost Phil Hartman-esque. Or the other way around.
Van Morrison–I like this arrangement better.
The Weight
The Band–As seen on cell phone commercials and Angelina Jolie star-making performances.
The Band (with The Staple Singers)— I love me some Staple Singers.
Twistin’ The Night Away
Sam Cooke–As seen in ‘Animal House’.
Rod Stewart–Who am I kidding. This isn’t even close. Although, early ’70’s/Faces era is the only Rod I like.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
The Beatles–George Harrison’s masterwork. Clapton guitar solo.
Eric Clapton & Paul McCartney–From the Concert for George. Touching ukulele intro on first verse. Clapton guitar solo.
I’m about 150 songs too heavy to fit on my antique iPod. Getting superfluous songs off would be a good start.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Steve Goodman’s song, The Ballad of Penny Evans. It goes like this:
Then, last night, I saw this real-life and resolute Penny Evans on the news.
I don’t have much to say to Leslie Reeves other than, I grieve with you and I admire your strength.
You need to hire me to replace Andy Rooney. He isn’t going to be around much longer and I’m sure you are sick of the office smelling like “old man”. Maybe that’s Morley’s office. Anyway, you need to come up with a successor in the case of Andy’s imminent demise. I am supremely qualified.
I’m grumpy and curmudgeonly. It isn’t too big of a leap for me to make statements offensive to women, gays, minorities and whoever else gets easily upset. I should live another 20-40 years. That kind of longevity is the reassuring comfort that the Sixty Minutes audience craves. An additional bonus would be that I’m at least 20 years younger than any of your other correspondents.
Here is just a sample of the kind of topics my commentaries would include:
What’s with the long fingernails on black guys?
When did this mole on my leg change colors?
When did people start dropping the letter “H” when followed by the letter “U”? Listening to the radio, I will hear the reporter say something like, “Hugo Chavez is a rotten human being and a huge asshole.” But, it sounds like “Yugo Chavez is a rotten yuman being and a yuge asshole.” That’s just pretentious. Stop it.
I wish Dabney Coleman didn’t have to do the voice over for Rent-A-Centers.
The Chinese are my favorite ethnic group. I love their food, their culture and how they get the women’s feet so small. So, is it wrong that I say, “Let’s get some Chink food.”? Because, I mean it affectionately.
Is Larry King still on the air? If so, why? “Sweet Embrace of Death, Hello!”
See, I can do this sort of thing all day. Hell, I could do it from home, which would really work out best for both of us. You probably don’t want me around your offices and I can’t think of one reason to move up there.
Unless, of course, the money is right.
Talk it over with whoever you need to. I’ll be waiting.
Your Pal,
Sarcastro
Watching The Defectives 
