Raging Insomnia Presents:The Amazing Technicolor Government

Damn. Despite all valiant efforts to the contrary, I am finishing my final October blog 3 hours and 10 minutes after the 1st day November. A completely ridiculous and unfortunate result of fairly frequent sleep-deprivation. I am going off exactly 2 hours and 45 minutes of sleep, because due to some strange circumstance... I have come down with a rather alarming case of Insomnia, and I could not be more disgruntled. My tank is running on E here, and I have subsequently been spending long periods of time zoning out with a vague and vacant look on my face, and a small but steady trickle of drool from the right corner of my mouth because, you know, I like to be consistent. I would like nothing more than to spend the rest of the day abed in my new Vicky's Secret nightie, dozing off at regular intervals while half-listening to Eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind in the background... for pleasant dreams. But alas, I have made commitments, arrangements, whatever you may call them, and soon I must rise, get dressed, haul ass in the sunless early morning and take no less than 50 different trains while muttering no less than 50 different curse words. Per second. My great uncle and his wife were in town from D.C last weekend and it confirmed for me the idea that old people in general talk ENTIRELY TOO MUCH. I sat with them at the dinner table thinking to myself "If I'm called 'little lady' one more time... just once more, that lovely carving knife Uncle Clem (yes, all black people really do have an Uncle Clem) imported all the way from the nearest dollar store is going to end up lodged in at someone's quivering jowls until I can reestablish some fucking dignity." Their presence also made me remember why I said I was never going to another family reunion so long as I am mentally fit enough to realize my surroundings. I am appalled by the distant family member's unwillingness to believe that you don't remember dick about them from when you were 3 years old, and they might has well have been fucking George and Wheezy because we don't know each other. Period. I am also thoroughly convinced that one should be allowed large quantities of alcoholic beverage when subjected to such mental abuse as is inflicted by relatives. Or at least fix it so that I can start the fuck smoking again and finally get rid of the persistent neurosis I've developed since I forced myself to quit. I'm reminded suddenly of that line from "Secret Window" where Johnny Depp tells John Turturro that he's taking up smoking again for his health. I remember when that movie first came out back in '04 (when I could still smoke virtually guilt-free) I made that my new punchline, and whenever I was around some angry naysayer, I would whip it out like some wicked weapon the likes of which they had never seen. But alas, the glory days are over. I am forced to acknowledge the rather alarming warning labels on the packaging and be a model citizen. And I can't tell you how much it fucking sucks. Like listening to McCain's wheezy, raspy voice, calling me his friend repeatedly when he couldn't give a good butt fuck about me, Joe the plumber, or any other lowly fucking middle or lower class American comes kind of close though, but it's not like we pay his paycheck or anything. It's not like we're the whole reason his job exists. That would just be overly presumptuous now wouldn't it? And I'm hoping that these godforsaken, hope-injecting polls haven't been overly presumptuous, because and I mean this in all seriousness, if John McCain becomes the next president of the United States, I'm going to have shoot myself in the face. Right before I flee to Canada. And have extensive plastic surgery that I'll get their government to pay for. I mean, I've been wanting that Heidi Montag nose ever since she got it, so I might as well have those homely Canadians pick up the tab. But honestly, I'm terribly nervous. I can't imagine what this country would be like under a McCain administration, but I'd like to think it would involve lots of poverty, a complete disregard for the current energy crisis resulting in the Earth melting onto our heads at random moments throughout the day, as well as, of course, lots and lots of beer. So I guess it can't be TOO bad. But still. I think the job of President of the United States is the most ridiculously challenging demanding job you could pursue in this country, and frankly, it baffles me that these idiot politicians keep turning up every year, knocking each other over to get it. I mean sure there's the international fame, the sweet annual salary, and, best of all, the ability to throw all the White House sexy parties you want, but you can't tell me these assholes who run for office really expect to get in there and honestly know what they're doing? They're ridiculous. I don't think anyone is qualified to be president until they've been one already. No it's true. You can watch all the C-SPAN, and MSNBC you want, but nothing can prepare you for the sacrifices you have to make, the gravity of the decisions that will be placed upon your shoulders and the immense pressure that comes with that rather difficult responsibility. It's the kind of job where you're not only blamed for your own personal fuck-ups, but the fuck-ups of 301,139,947 people. And that's not even including the illegal aliens and the newborns. And I've done a lot of campaigning and speaking out on behalf of Barack Obama, but the truth is, if he wants to be the President, he's just as much an idiot as the rest of them. And God love him for it. That's the thing about having faith in a politician. You get so caught up in the smooth talk, the fancy words, and the hope stew that you forget that what this man is, at the very core of his being, is a politician. And obviously an ambitious one at that. I'm not saying that I'm suddenly withdrawing my vote for him. For one thing I've already voted so I couldn't if I wanted to. And for another, Republicans are typically pretty fucking scary, and a septuagenarian one... well I just can't think what's worse. But I'm just reflecting on a hard truth. You can't ever trust a politican. Because they'll promise you the fucking second coming of Jesuse if the can get your vote and then they get in office and The People are asking them where the hell's the messiah, they tell us some bullshit about, "extenuating circumstances", or "new timeline", or some other lame ass political mumbo jumbo that we will in turn eat up because whereas we fed willingly from their hand on the campaign trail, now we're stuck with the bastard and it's either eat the bullshit or starve. And that's what's so great about living in America today. We are not a nation of whiners former Senator Phil Gramm, we are a nation of shit-eaters. And that's okay! Because, I mean look at the whole slavery thing. A whole race of people ate major shit for a couple hundred years and it really isn't that big a deal now, right? Because no one has ever or will ever suffer from the backlash of slavery, right? That's why we didn't get the 40 acres and a mule. We SO didn't need it. I mean when you've got the clothes on your back and the fresh scent of American earth in your nostrils, who the hell needs resources to live? America's the kind of country where you can live off hope, and hope alone. That's why there's so many homeless people. And dead guys.

End.

Of Getting Angry, & Accepting That Some People Will Never Shut Up

Do you know that song by N*Sync, "It's gonna be me?" Well I've found a way to adapt that piece of cheesy 90s pop into an everyday mantra. Recently, I have been sucked into a series of ridiculous and all together pointless arguments with a multitude of people, over nothing. And I keep wondering why it is that they alway end up getting so ugly for no reason. Then I realize it's because I don't have a drink in my hand while I'm arguing. But mostly, I've come to realization that arguments continue because neither party is willing to just say, "You know what, this is stupid. Someone's gotta end this... guess it's gonna be me." And I've decided that it is... uh, going to be me. I will ignore obnoxious text messages spouting drunken buffoonery, and I will no longer indulge the contents of angry myspace messages by acknowledging the hatred in the words. And in the way of bettering myself, ignoring a few texts, and being less profane may not seem like a lot but it is. Trust me. Being less profane in anything is, for me, a fucking miracle, especially when I'm angry. And do you have any idea how hard it is to ignore any kind of text message?! It's easy to hit ignore when the wrong call comes in, but I have one of those wretched phones that displays a preview of text messages when they come in so I am forced to look at it whenever I flip my phone on... and the temptation is, more often than not, too much to resist. You try to act like you haven't seen it, but then, snatches of it start to creep into your mind. You get angry and start writing imaginary, though equally scathing replies, and then after a while, you fool yourself into believing that so & so really deserves this rather pertinent and well thought out piece of your mind. Before you know it, you have sent back a three part text message complete with angry emoticons and extra exclamations points, to really drive the point home. My little brother was watching some kid movie in my mom's SUV yesterday morning and one of the characters shouted "It's so hard to communicate without emoticons!!!" And I couldn't help thinking, by God he's right! Where would all of my Aim and Yahoo Messenger convos be without them? How could I properly display my wide range of emotions without the vast selections of emoticons in the sidebar? It's almost unthinkable. How, for example, could I convey my renewed affections for Joseph Gordon-Levitt were it not for the googly-eyed emoticon with the hearts popping out of her head? Speaking of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I owe him a lot, I think. When I first saw him, on "Third Rock From the Sun", (which by the way remained my favorite television show for the better part of four years) it made me realize that Johnny Depp wasn't the only cute white guy in the world. There was, just to name a few Brad Pitt... Sean Lennon and of course JGL himself. That's 3 right there. He also helped me to rediscover the joy of indie films. They really are an untapped treasure. The other day, I came home and had a mini marathon and completey forgot about how much I still hate Charlotte Kemp Muhl for about 6 hours which is really something. Just picturing her lithe figure clinging to Sean Lennon in all his awesomeness makes me want to never eat another slice of cheesecake again, while simultaneously wondering how long I could make it in the frozen tundras after commiting capital murder. But of course I will eat cheesecake again. Tomorrow. But only because Auntie Ebony just made two of them last night and I paid for all the ingredients. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't eat a whole cheesecake on my own in a corner while watching another mini marathon, this time of back episodes of "Third Rock From the Sun" so I can reminisce about what it was like to be young and enjoy the type of comedy usually reserved for varying classes of white people. Like, just to throw a name out there, Sarah Palin. Who, by the way, very obviously abused her gubernatorial power and acted on her family's grudge in firing her ex-brother-in-law's supervisor, it's finally official. And the real kicker here is that I'm almost certain that it won't make any fucking difference in the polls because, well, the general American public tend to be a bit idiotic. And we have the very useful gift of selective hearing. You know like how we heard what Jeremiah Wright said, but the words were somehow coming out of Barack Obama's mouth? Or that McCain is not raising anyone's taxes, but how he's taxing employee health benefits and giving tax breaks to big business, in hopes of seeing the "trickle-down" effect succeed, when we have surmounting evidence (i.e the current recession that is threatening to turn into a Depression if something doesn't turn around soon) that it typically, uhm what's the word, oh yeah, FAILS. But I mean look at it from his perspective though. He comes from a family of modest wealth, thanks in part to dedicated government and armed service, and his wife is heiress of Hensley & Co, one of the world's largest Anheuser-Busch beer distribution companies, on which she sits on the board as Chair. The words "recession" have little effect on people who can afford to keep three homes on every coast. But what am I saying? We're his fellow prisoners, right? So of course he sympathizes with our plight. Even though he's got the good life, right down to an endless supply of free beer, he can understand what we're going through. I bet he was just as pissed as I was when "Third Rock From the Sun" got canceled. And far be it for him to have watched the reruns that came on at least a good 3 hours after his usual 7pm bedtime. And he totally knows about struggling to pay bills because he's watched us do it on TV. Surely it can't be much different than that. Excepting of course, the fact that the actors portraying us own their own islands, it's pretty fair. I think. So I'm going to lay off McCain. Because, and this is small consolation, mind, but at the very least, if he dies within the average life-span of 75.4 years then we're shot of him in 3! And he's a good patriotic soul. He's gotta die when we expect him to. Wearing a flag-pin. While knocking back some Bud light. And maybe even about to tuck into to some good old fashioned apple pie. Now THAT'S American.

END.

On Late-Night Limewiring and My New-Found Crush On Shia LaBeouf

My recent late-night ritual, when all is quiet and dark in the house, is to dive head-first into a series of new tracks bestowed upon me by the wonders of Limewire. I try, with all my might to to hold on to my remorse at the thought of illegal downloading, but then I look in my wallet and it all mysteriously disappears. You try expanding your music collection with my checks. I couldn't so much as purchase a millisecond of Yanni without having to pay it off in installments for the next 8 months. And I am SO over payment installments. But I'm wondering, though, how Limewire has so far managed, unlike Napster, to continually slip through the cracks. I am clearly getting loads of good quality tracks for free and I am certainly not sharing any of mine because I'm too lazy to figure out how to upload them. P2P sharing, as it's called in computer circles is a totally awesome and innovative idea. The thing is, with every great, noble idea, there will be some awful, unmoral person out there willing to exploit it. And that's where I come in. I watch movies for free too, now that you mention it. I have a man-friend that will burn me a copy of pretty much any movie I ask for, and then their is the wonder of the internet where you can find, well, just about anything. Free movies, or course, being included in that everything. And I couldn't be more thrilled. But I'm not all bad. I do tend to pay for most things. The movie theater, for instance, where they won't even let you upstairs for a piss without a ticket stub, often gets a great deal of my money on the weekends. Why, this year alone, I wouldn't be surprised if I had spent upwards of 200 bucks just to sit in a theater and crane my head up at a giant screen for 2 hours. And in the last two weeks, I have seen the movie "Eagle Eye" twice. Which is an absolute first for me. In my entire movie-going career, I have never seen a movie (even a really awesome one, like Dark Knight, or Iron Man... or something with Johnny Depp in it so that I could drool mindlessly thinking completely unnatural, and purely sexual thoughts) in the theaters more than once. To pay $10.50 more than once for any particular movie just seems ridiculous to me. And this past weekend I had my heart set on falling in love with "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist". Instead, I gave in to my movie companions and saw "Eagle Eye". Again. And it made me realize something. Shia Labeouf has definitely gotten WAY hotter in the past two years. I remember him from my very brief Disney Channel days, when he played "Louis Stevens" on the show "Even Stevens", and I remember being fond of him even then, but more in the "we can hang out and make fart jokes together" way, as opposed to the, "we can knock back a few drinks, get a pizza and fuck" kind of way. Like now. My attraction to him becomes increasingly more prevalent. I found myself anticipating the appearance of his face on the screen, and imagining lame, but equally pleasing scenarios where he would sweep me off my feet and keep me on my back for at least 2 hours. But then, it could be nothing. I almost lost it during the preview of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" when I had to stare at the achingly gorgeous features of William Bradley Pitt for a good minute. And whilst I endured that torture, my mind wandered to his bedmate, and I thought to myself, if I could just have one night in between the both of them, I could become a better person. No really, I mean it. I'm convinced that sex with them actually makes you THAT much better. Look at Billy Bob Thornton for instance. But, as usual, I'm getting off topic here. I had become dejected in my attraction to Shia, because I'd heard from People magazine that he was totally kicking it with Adrien Grenier's ex-girl Isabel Lucas, but, to my imagination's great delight, he showed up to the Eagle Eye premiere without her, following some pretty serious break-up rumors. Not that I don't daydream about guys with a woman, I mean, I've fucked Barack Obama like 48 times in my head since the debate ended at 9.30, but I do have a bit of a conscience, and so I have to imagine them breaking up gruesomely first, and then I can imagine us depicted in various explicit sexual scenes from the very pits of hell itself and be content. Also it helps to imagine them as unshakably democratic. And any guy who says The Shins are his favorite band like Shia Labeouf does on his Myspace (totally my favorite band too. We can get shack up and share custody of a dog now) has gotta have some democrat in him somewhere. Speaking of democrats, my favorite one did pretty well today in the Town Hall meeting that more closely resembled a particularly aggressive public service announcement from both candidates instead of the open forum it was meant to be. I think both of them were pretty quick on the draw against each other, though, due mostly to my bias, I feel certain Obama reigned supreme. I could hear the heavy breathing every time McCain moved across the stage and tried to speak at the same time. You could just hear him thinking "damn that ar-th-ritis. (you know how old people draw out words in that annoying way...)" and hoping no one mistakes any of the new liver spots on his face as returning Melanoma. (I'm going to stop making the melanoma jokes soon. I swear.) Oh yeah, and by the way McCain, if you're reading (because thanks to seeing Eagle Eye two times in as many weeks, I am firmly reassured that ANYONE and EVERYONE is reading and watching AT ALL TIMES) I caught the hair regrowth joke you made when talking about advanced health-care plans, I'd like you to know that no one laughed because it wasn't fucking funny. At All. We already know you're old. If we need a reminder all we need do is watch you shuffle weakly across the stage muttering incoherently shouting the words "War hero" "Experience" "Maverick" and, my personal favorite, what seems to be your transparent attempt at being personable: "My Friends". We realize that you have been in public office since the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, during which time you narrowly escaped permanent dismantlement along with the rest of the Keating Five, a credential you conveniently fail to mention when you regurgitate your governmental resume, and we also know that you served in the armed forces where you were captured and sung like a canary, calling yourself both a "Black criminal" and an "Air pirate". So please shut up about it so we can do more important stuff. Like watch streaming episodes of The Hills from the past few weeks on MTV.com. And rent the 4th Indy movie. Because I'm getting tired of fucking Shia Labeouf on a table in an empty office at Chicago's FBI headquaters.

END.