Keep the Change (Pt. II)

Okay, the post in August was a trifle melodramatic. I can’t give “spoilers” because this is an intense family problem. My favorite troll posted a comment that made it appear that he was drunk, and a dare was involved; I won't take you up, because there is some intense personal business involved here that doesn't lend itself to the Internet. Folks have asked if a state agency can investigate. The GBI only investigates at the invitation of the local authotities, i.e. the sheriff's department. They refuse to invesitgate. Nothing is being done, except for trolls saying I should sober up. I tend to ignore such jibes as desperate, juvenile attempts to attract attention. I welcome the BS, as long as it’s reasonably clean. Of course nobody reads this column, except for what the Sitemeter world map betrays. South America through Europe to Indonesia, Australia, and all points in between. I am flattered beyond belief by my constant readers.

I am not going to offer a concise explanation of what happened to me in August. Something happened, and it is not explained by insomnia, the blunt edges of my desk, or half a cup of coffee. If you want to be an amateur forensics person, go back to the posted photo, look at the angle of the facial lacerations and bruises, and tell me this was somehow self-inflicted. I am not in the habit of bashing my head against the furniture, then waking up in my wheelchair, upright, with a face full of blood.

I am amazed that no women have excoriated me for saying they are not suited for ground combat; also in the last post...I want the ladies rolling in with the ground-attack aircraft; I can become a feminist like Alan Alda PDQ at that point.

None of this is to the point. The Wall Street crisis is beyond my ken; I invest in gold or real estate. Ayn Rand has a chapter in Atlas Shrugged about “making money”. Today’s investors have not done that; they play paper games with opium, i.e. OPM…Other People’s Money. [Thank you, Governor Palin, for the pronunciation of the acronym.] People who produce make money; those who speculate and play the markets play with the money others have created.

I am not an economist, and not qualified to comment on the current crisis. I live below my means and below most radars, although I’ll doubtless take a hit for the mismanagement and golden parachutes of others. Thanks, guys, I just wanted to buy some propane this winter.

I opened my absentee ballot today. It goes back next week. No secret where my vote lies; I have no choice. Bob Barr has poisoned the well for my Libertarians, and Osama Bamalama will bring this nation down kicking and screaming.

To the crux of the matter: I am of the generation and birthplace that remembers a president named Jimmy Carter. He was my homeboy; I thought he could do no wrong. He ran for president on the platform of being the outsider who would bring change. From the moment he arrived in DC and took the oath of office, he was defeated. The entrenched DC bureaucracy never gave him a gasp of breath, and he ended up with double-digit unemployment, gas-shortage lines at the pumps, a military disaster in Iran, and pleas for us to button our sweaters and persevere.

I cried the night Ronald Reagan displaced my homeboy. It was the last election I ever voted for a Democrat. Thinking back to Watergate, I was sure the world had ended now that Republicans were back in power.

My favorite folk singer, Roy Harper, has a single line in “The Spirit Lives” from his HQ album: “What a young fool I am!” That line resonates across 30+ years.

I seem to recall some rhetoric from Osama Bamalama that this campaign would be above the mudslinging that characterized the Lincoln-McClellan race of 1868. Instead, this has turned uglier, at least on the part of the Democrats. I have cancer, and having that fielded as a tool against Senator McCain and Governor Palin, by Mad How Dean’s brother and PMSNBC, is unspeakable. How about you try to win an election on the merits of your candidate?

Since the Democritters have none, it’s all about another rock ‘n roll song: “Follow Me Down.”

Still alive and well

Suffice it to say that I am delighted with Sarah Palin. Even my ex-wife, who voted for “Bill the Zipper” Clinton, is delighted. I am much more at ease with McCain as president. Not to shill for anyone, but every time Bill O’Reilly popped the words “socialist tenet” on Obama, there was tap-dancing and muttering that gave credibility to Stepen Fetchit.

The attacks on Gov. Palin had me jacked up from the get-go. I only have one objection to “equality for women”, and that’s in combat. Even that has a stipulation; women fighter pilots have faster reflexes, and lower pain responses. As ground troops, though, they lack the upper body strength God factory-designed into men. There is also the psychological factor of guys seeing women mangled beyond recognition, and abandoning the mission in favor of rescue. I can admire women who make it through the reduced standards for qualification in the armed forces—the Air Farce actually has a “time out” card to flash in case basic becomes too intense—but the non-prejudicial fact is they don’t have the upper body strength to hump 100 pounds of junk through physically exhausting conditions, and be ready to fight after digging into a secured position.

All right, ladies, tell me how wrong and sexist I am. This is not what I am here to talk about, although Governor Palin is going to kick some serious butt. I didn’t say women are totally disqualified from combat; I say ground combat is an option they can’t fulfill.

On the other hand, if I was 35 years younger and on the ground, there is no one I’d rather see rolling in from above than a squadron of women in F-5 Phantoms or state-of-the-art F-22 Raptors.

Stephen King—in his book On Writing—points out that writing is an adventure that has an uncertain beginning and an unknown end, or something like that. He is most certainly correct; this is supposed to be a short blog post to assure my three constant readers I am alive, well, and in pursuit of something.

What I am in pursuit of is something more horrifying and sinister than a Hitchcock psychodrama.

Sorry, kids, but you will not get details online, ever. Suffice it to say that I may have discovered the motive for the bloody attack on me—see last post—and have to snap myself into a state of belief as to the veracity of said motive. I am not alone in my opinion of what happened, and it is more horrifying than anything I faced in combat in Vietnam. There, the enemy was clearly defined. This is deeper, more sinister, and while easily identifiable upon hindsight, 1,000 times more evil.

I am greatly appreciative of the comments of a faithful reader who denies it—an opponent to all things rational—for keeping it clean and actually managing therefore to get published in the previous comments section of the last blog post.

Thanks for your input, joker, but I was halfway through a cup of coffee, not a mug of bourbon. Like the British Navy, I wait until the sun is past the mainmast before I break out the hard stuff. I eat before I drink, and were I that hammered—which my health does not permit: I linger to aggravate liberals and trolls—I would have awakened on the floor, not sitting up in my wheelchair. Re-read the post. Informal forensics people have also determined that there are no sharp edges anywhere near where my head may have fallen if I had passed out, fallen asleep, or otherwise obtained unconsciousness.

I am gaining a clearer idea of what happened, and it is more terrifying than gunfire from the North Vietnamese Army. Don’t ask, ‘cause I ain’t telling.

Meanwhile, Ol’ Uncle Possum is alive and well. Scars add character to the face, for men, so thanks to my unknown attacker for making my aging self look more distinguished.

We’ll get to “Keep the Change [Part II]” eventually. (My home nurse thinks Osama Bamalama is a joke, alongside every cliché you’ve ever heard about used car salesmen.) Liger, and your proxy, saying I should lay off the adult beverages, did not read closely enough. It was half a cup of coffee. Like the British navy, I do not consume otherwise until the noon sun is over the mainmast.

A cartoon "lightbulb" has popped on this matter, and it is so horrifying that it will not be published here. You, Liger, are published here because you kept it clean. Thanks for the input, and keep reading, even though you say you don't.