Nothing

I got nothing.

George Bush's Economic Analysis Averts National Disaster

Republicans and Democrats Observed Copulating

Whew! That was a close one. Here I was all week worrying about the demise of the economy. What would happen to my extensive securities portfolio, I wondered. How would I support my wife AND my mistress? What third-world country would I have to go to now for my elective bowel resection? I can tell you, I was in a pickle of a worry. I shit you not.

Good job then that George Bush has something those Wall Street muckety-fucks couldn't git with any amount of their so-called book-learnin': it's called folk wisdom, and you can't pick it, and it don't grow out of the earth, and you can't slaughter it like an abattoir full of protein units. No sir, you have to be born with folk wisdom.

See, it's in your bone, way down in your bone, right next to where they make your white blood cells. An X-Ray of his cranium reveals that George Bush possesses a special quantity of the stuff, and I can prove it. You know that old saying, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me"? Well according to George Bush, in Texas they have a similar saying. Only, it goes, "Fool me once...won't get fooled again."

How in the world did George know that? My guess would have been that in Texas, they say it like they say it everywhere else, but it seems I'd be as wrong as a McCain-Palin-Paulson menage a trois. You want to know the reason George knew the right answer and I didn't? You got that right, buddy, George Bush's carrying around an unusual amount of folk wisdom upstairs.

Indeed, if I slipped George Bush a Rufinol while we were having a beer together--as has been my desire since the 2000 election and the very reason I voted for him in the first place--if I slipped him a roofie, then dragged him to the bathroom and gave him a tympanning, I'd bet you dollars to donuts that I'd be able to scoop out 1.3 kilograms of gelatinous, but beautiful, folk wisdom.

As I started to say, I was getting worried earlier this week over what the government would do about the economy. It didn't look like we could rely on the usual bipartisan leadership that's defined Congress throughout the Bush years. I guess I just took it for granted that the Democrats would cooperate with the Republicans after the Right called the Left a bunch of child molesting Communists who have never satisfactorily explained why they hate America. This time, it was different, and the Democrats refused to cave outright to the Treasury Secretary's modest request. It looked like we were headed for an impasse.

But now, it doesn't look so bad to me anymore thanks to George W Bush's folk wisdom. For on Thursday night, in just a few words, he let me know that once again, the grown-ups are in charge of Washington and I wouldn't have to worry about any credit freeze.

“If money isn’t loosened up," Bush said, "this sucker could go down.”

Sound Advice

A friend writes:

Cheesy Graphic Man,

Should I be drinking a Martini too?

Love,

A Friend

Dear Friend,

Ha ha ha. I know what you mean. And we all feel that way some times, so don't you feel alone. So let's not pull any punches. What you need to do is doctor a photograph of yourself to make it look like you're a fun-loving guy, you know? The kind of free-spirit who doesn't know what that cold sore is that just won't go away, who doesn't know the meaning of "stop touching me you stupid drunk" and, as Sarah Palin advises so wisely, who never blinks, because you burned your eyelids off while free-basing. That's my suggestion.

Vacations Should Be Fun

Decision '08: Spare Some Change?

I'm sick of hearing about change. You want something to change, America? Here is truthful historian Howard Zinn saying something you would never hear discussed by the orifices of the status quo. I don't know if it's "orifice" or "status quo" but the names Charles Gibson and Cokie Roberts immediately leap to mind. Never mind. Take it away Professor Zinn :

Q: Is there any hope the US will change its approach to the rest of the world?

HZ: If there is any hope, the hope lies in the American people.
[It] lies in American people becoming resentful enough and indignant enough over what has happened to their country, over the loss of dignity in the world, over the starving of human resources in the United States, the starving of education and health, the takeover of the political mechanism by corporate power and the result this has on the everyday lives of the American people.
[There is also] the higher and higher food prices, the more and more insecurity, the sending of the young people to war.
I think all of this may very well build up into a movement of rebellion.
We have seen movements of rebellion in the past: The labour movement, the civil rights movement, the movement against the war in Vietnam.
I think we may well see, if the United States keeps heading in the same direction, a new popular movement. That is the only hope for the United States.

I agree. The positive, fundamental change that Zinn is talking about is not going to come from Obama. The Democratic Party, more than anything else, competes with the Republicans for the same corporate donations and relationships, so don't expect them to do anything the managerial class doesn't like, such as significantly slash welfare to agri-business, remove waste at the Pentagon (to say nothing of cutting expenditures) or create any help for individuals that would disrupt an industry's bottom line (I'm looking at you Aetna and friends).

And the Republicans? Are they fucking kidding? The only thing John McCain is going to change is his adult diaper a few hours after dinner. But McCain, paradoxically, in this elections really is the candidate of change. Or at least the continuation of change. Ever since Ronald Reagan, McCain's party has sought to shift more and more power into private hands that are neither responsible to or responsive of the commonwealth.

The goal might be to change a representative democracy, influenced by enlightenment thinking, into a corporate brand of feudalism, complete with an executive permitted to rule by fiat (though not indefinitely) and a legislative body drawn from and strictly beholden to an elite class, much like the early House of Lords.

Considering the incredible amount of money and energy invested in our never ending cycle of "change" and our ersatz representative government; considering that our leaders propagate elaborate lies to convince them and us that we care more about democracy than capitalism, then Zinn is right.

The only real change must come from a mass movement. But the problem is, we still like our candidates, and for now, most of us, the people who count, still have their jobs. Sure, they're making less money than they were seven years ago, but as George W Bush once suggested, holding down three jobs just to keep afloat, well that's what America is all about.

I'm afraid it's going to take a LOT more than Zinn might imagine to get us to turn off the Colbert Report, to kick us off our couches and into the streets, to get us to care enough to have a "rebellion." If the Gestapo tactics of the St. Paul police at the Republican Convention is any indication, the entrenched powers react with a hair-trigger to even the most remote demonstrations for authentic change. Be warned: those Free Speech Zone enforcers now have ray guns.

From the Editors

Dear Troll(s),

The custodians of Dysthymix wish to apologize for yesterday's blog entry. It failed to live up to this blog's usual high standard of squalid antipathy, cheerful rancor and artificially sweetened bile. We had been assured that the author was thoroughly vetted through our offices in the tundra; make no mistake, all bonus kippers have been cancelled.

sincerely,
Flange Dubois, BFA

Particle Research Points to Dumb Universe

Scientists with the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland will finally begin experiments next week using the highly anticipated and moderately expensive Large Hadron Collider. After several delays and costs reaching as high as two weeks of the American occupation of Iraq, the LHC will finally help in mankind's most pressing question: why are there so many stupid people in the world? Scientists expect to flick the switch on Sept. 10, but already they've been making startling progress in showing people are dumb-asses, especially among those who think the black holes the LHC might create would swallow the Earth.

So what's all this shit about? First off, I like to think of the LHC as a 1970s disaster/adventure movie. It's the story of a 17-mile long magnetic railroad where two trains of protons ride the same track loop in opposite directions almost at the speed of light. They carry a lot of momentum and their collision is a disgusting mash that only scientists can interpret. Passengers--the quarks (with George Kennedy as "Strong Quark") and the leptons (a sizzling Joan Collins as "Ms Gluon") and other bit players--get strewn about the place in a bloody mess of back-story and overacting. A physicist (Paul Newman, from his death bed) rushes to the scene and, ascertaining the trajectories taken by the bodies upon impact, deduces the composition of the train and perhaps even confirms a theory he had that his ex-wife, Ms. Gluon had been cheating on him with his best friend, Erwin Schrödinger.

Well, so much for attenuating one of the dumbest metaphors I've ever thought up. The LHC really isn't all that; in the grand scheme of things, it's a big-ass laboratory instrument that will be used to try to demonstrate the existence of the Higgs boson which might help explain how particles gain mass. Biologists spin cells in autoclaves, particle physicists have smash-up derbies and they've been doing it since the 1930's, with good results.

Some people are concerned that if tiny black holes should form during one of the experiments, the black holes would have the potential to destroy the Earth, even though they would entail minute quantities of mass. But do you know what happens to people who get sucked into a black hole? They get attenuated, like a metaphor. And as we've seen, that's pretty ugly. Maybe it's not surprising that some people are worried enough to make death threats against the scientists, according to the Telegraph.

But I doubt the scientists have anything to worry about. Writes one concerned citizen on an anti-LHC Website,"wtf. . . thats actually not fARE I BET THIS WILL ALL GO WRONG AND WERE SCREWED SUPPORT THESE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!" Experts are still trying to figure out what language that is, but considering the brain behind the message, could people capable of such a sentence possibly locate Switzerland on a map of Switzerland, let alone make good on a death threat against someone in Switzerland?

As Professor Brian Cox of Manchester University said, with obvious good reason, "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."