Category Archives: politics

got soap?

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Watch your mouth, California, or the State is going to wash it for you.

ralphie_soap

The nation’s most populous state is asking its 38 million residents to stop using four-letter words for an entire week beginning Monday.

Assembly Approves Cuss Free Week – The Fresno Bee

Now, I thought I really ought to share this with you for 2 reasons:

I say fine, let’s do it. But if we’re going to do it, I insist we have Talk Like A Deadwood Character, just to be fair. I think the week of March 15 would be good. First week of Daylight Savings, St. Patrick’s Day, green beer. Perfect.

Second, this is the fist time in the long and storied life of Metaphor that I’ve had the chance to quote The Fresno Bee.

So, this is going to be really nice. Next week, while cities up and down the state are laying off cops, we can all speak politely about it. 

It’s a nice gesture, at the grassroots level, and I kinda have to respect it. But it’s ironic to note, as does The Bee, that it “comes four months after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sparked headlines with an acrostic veto message that began with the letter "F" and ended with "You."

urgently urge

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Several times each day, I receive an urgent e-mail from an environmental or political group, urgently urging me to click a click or a button to send an urgent message to some elected official, urging them to do something. I receive these because over the years, I’ve acceded to many such requests, and they tend to spread like mushrooms.

I care about animals, the environment, and justice for all, so I click.

A few days later, here comes an e-mail from Washington – my congresswoman or one of my senators – thanking me. And it never says, “Oh spare me, I wouldn’t support saving the burping barbaloots if my life depended on it.” In fact, it almost always turns out they supported my side of the issue all along.

Sometimes, it turns out I have dramatically urged them to support their very own bill.

Basta. No more of this. It makes me – and the people who sent me the urgent e-mail – look very stupid. So henceforth, such pleas must include some affirmation that the representative to receive our petition is presently wrongheaded and needs to be set straight. Urgently.

Or I can simply unsubscribe. That’s a good idea too.

dagnabbit!

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I forgot to watch the state of the onion tonight. I was doing other things, left the TV off, and forgot all about it. Now I have to find it online, read it in the paper, or something. It’s like football; if it’s not live, it’s not the same.

I’m sure the speech shares other attributes with contact sport, but let’s not digress.

I blame Yahoo. They used to have a feature in their TV listings that created a reminder in my Yahoo calendar, and I wouldn’t forget things I wanted to watch. Not only did they lose that feature, but they failed to keep Yahoo calendar up to par. So now I use Google’s far superior calendar, and I forget to watch stuff, see?

Did he say anything hopeful? Cheering? Reassuring?

No we can’t, not anymore? We thought we could but we were purblind stupid to a man? … Don’t tell me. If I didn’t watch it, I don’t have to know, right?

do not print that!

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Seems they’ve located 22,000,000 e-mails lost by George W. Bush. Well, not by him personally but by his administration. I’m glad. I’m sure that someone got a slap on the back and maybe an extra long lunch hour for finding them. But here’s the neat part: that’s from 94 days of his juntacracy.

Holy hard drives, Batman. That’s over 234,000 e-mails a day. How are they getting any work done, if they’re playing with MS Outlook that much? … Yep, that’s a rhetorical question.

How do you like the title of my post?

Think they will? Print it all out, I mean. Bet they do.

do something

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All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause — there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once.

– Joss Whedon, writer and film director (b. 1964) 

Now how could anybody disagree with that? I would add one caveat: do a little reading and thinking first.  Try to clear off a small plot of mind for the task at hand. Stupidity is one of the most contagious diseases threatening our species. Here’s a particularly serious case, by the name of Mark Williams. Seriously, wow.

puffs of smoke

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“… it also helps to be far away from America and the mounting drumbeat of Democratic defeatism on healthcare reform. Nobody is so ready to embrace martyrdom as my fellow liberals, and here they are, seven months after Mr. Obama took the oath, crying out, ‘Where did it go, the glory and the dream?’ Get a grip. Solid majorities in the House and Senate and yet a few puffs of smoke from the other side and Democrats are full of consternation. If they back out on this young president, and if this Congress cannot pass the public option and meet the basic human needs of our people, what does this say about us?”

– Garrison Keillor | Salon. 

Hear hear, Mr. Keillor, well said. 

a little tweak

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… Sent via Web to my state assemblyman today:

Mr. Nava, I have a modest proposal to help close the deal on the state budget. Let’s lay off two thirds of the legislature, consolidate the legislative districts, and liquidate the real property of the state capitol, to be subdivided into affordable housing for those who’ve lost their homes to foreclosure. The remaining third of the state’s legislators can telecommute, and the capitol can reside in the servers of Google in Mountain View. Might that save some money? Please pass the idea along, respectfully, to your colleagues. … By the way, I admire your efforts on behalf of animals and strongly support your work in that area.

Thoughts?

lawrence ferlinghetti’s birthday

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The fine poet, activist, and city-enlightener turned 90 on Tuesday 3.24.09. He’s still sharp, thoughtful, wise; he can still teach, is my point. As demonstration of which, The S.F. Chronicle published an interview, which I commend to you.

Here’s a nibble:

Q: Why do you prefer the term wide-open poetry to Beat poetry?

A: I never wrote ‘Beat’ poetry. Wide-open poetry refers to what Pablo Neruda told me in Cuba in 1950 at the beginning of the Fidelista revolution: Neruda said, ‘I love your wide-open poetry.’

He was either referring to the wide-ranging content of my poetry, or, in a different mode, to the poetry of the Beats. Wide-open poetry also refers to the ‘open form’ typography of a poem on the page. (A term borrowed from the gestural painting of the Abstract Expressionists.)

Q: Can writing be taught?

A: It has to be taut.

Bye W!

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Well, that’s it. The long, sad, sordid, sick and twisted, destructive and desperately fearful reign of George the Lesser is shuffling out the back door, not a moment too soon.

It doesn’t surprise me that he still doesn’t understand what he’s done. The Decider to the end.

I guess it’s time to move on, having acknowledged that Inauguration Day will dawn with at least 4229 Americans dead in the Iraq Oil War.

It is important to note that, though solidiers will be on hand, power is expected to pass to Barak Obama in a matter of hours, without bloodshed. A peaceful revolution has taken place, to the extent that the moral character of our government has the potential to project our morality as a society in a much different way. That’s wonderful, a cause for gratitude, a testimony to the spirit of our people.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
– John F. Kennedy