Well, I was itchin' to introduce mahself durin' the Rose Bowl. See, I spent the first 18 years of mah lahf livin' in Texiss, so I was sorely hopin' for some sort of a dee-vahn miracle to bring the #2 Longhorns to the drubbing they so richly deserve, and at the hands of the University of Spoiled Children.
However, I naïvely assumed that a big, bad foo-ball game like the freakin' Rose Bowl might've been, oh, I don't know, on a weekend, so I was taken unawares-like when I tuned in just in time to watch the Trojans get dicked by the Schlonghorns. Then, of course, I was in shock that Allah or Satan or Pat Robertson or Ted Stevens or the Flying Spaghetti Monster could abandon the left-thinking people of America by allowing the very embodiment of what is wrong with George Walker Bush to pull a fucking upset victory.
I mean, really, in Texiss, "Born-again Christian" is the #2 religion, behind Foo-ball. When I was a little tyke in north Dull-as-a-Tick's-ass, there were two Astroturf® foo-ball fields in the whole Dee-Eff-Dubya Metroplexxx: one belonged to the Dallas Cob-eyes Pro-feshanal Foo-ball Club (for whom I am named!), and the other belonged to the Plano Independent School District. Those poor PISD-off people decided that their only possible redemption from living in hell on earth, was to win the state haah-school foo-ball champeenship, twelve years running! (No, they didn't make it, but they shore as hell-fahr trah'd!) They graduated over 1,600 seniors out of only one high school in one year. The sole reason was that by having that large a pool to draw upon, they were sure to have a superior foo-ball team. If the boys happened to get an education in between foo-ball practices, that was just gravy, and the main function of the girls was to cheer the boys on to foo-ball glory.
You might have heard about Plano, Texas, for several other reasons. A whole string of high school kids committed suicide there, falling one-by-one like deadly dominoes. It was exactly what we were afraid of if Vietnam "went Red," only real life, and in our own suburbs. The ones that weren't killing themselves, were shooting up smack. None of that pansy-ass marijuana or even cocaine for those rich kids; they wanted heroin. But really, what else was there to do in suburban Plano, Texas, in the 1980s? The other thing that put Plano, Texas, on the map is that a man by the name of George Walker Bush lived there between the time Daddy moved up to the Oval and the time Junior became governor of Texas. That's where he lived when he single-handedly guided the Texiss Rangers Baseball franchise to victory before showing the world how a state government should be run. Leave no mentally retarded child behind, on death row!
So all of that operated as backdrop for my Rose Bowl experience. The provincial hick attitude so deeply personified by New Haven / Andover / Yale's finest, needed its comeuppance. Sadly, the gods don't always bet on the right team in foo-ball. After all, losing by 3 still would've beat the spread for the boys in Burnt Orange. I don't blame USC; it's not their fault that they let the Enemies of Freedom win the Rose Bowl.
So anyway, that was what I wanted to use to introduce myself, but the moment slid by before I could finish writing it. I therefore have a second topic tonight: Recycling.
I've been thinking a lot about recycling lately, and more broadly America's unconscionable greed in terms of natural resources and indifference to pollution. It occurred to me that you can break people down into three basic recycling categories:
It occurred to me, though, that it is an unreasonable burden to expect me to actually go out and find a homeless crazy person (who else would try to make a living picking up other people's litter??) when I finish a refreshing canned beverage. (For me, it's more likely a Grape Nehi than a Budweiser, but to each his own.) The essence of simplicity would be to simply open my window to the street and toss the empty can, confident that someone will snatch it up before it can clatter to the pavement.
Unfortunately, though, especially with Mayor Newsom's little Care Not Cash program, there just don't seem to be as many homeless people around, although the core of raving lunatic crazy people stubbornly persist. In any case, there simply aren't enough homeless people in San Francisco to adequately cover every single window in the city so that discarded cans will be collected immediately. I therefore propose that we hire a battallion of assistant homeless people — at below-poverty-level wages, of course — to fill in the gaps in our aluminum can safety net. After all, it is vitally important to our civic security to have no aluminum can left behind.
Of course, paying even starvation wages to this mass of pseudo-homeless people will require some source of public revenue. I therefore propose to pay their salaries with the proceeds from raising the Muni fare to $4.50, and adding a $3 surcharge to all BART journeys that begin and end within San Francisco. It's only fair that transit riders assume a disproportionate share of the burden, after all. Any excess revenue collected will be returned to the citizens in the form of a rebate on the gasoline tax.
With this simple one-time measure, subject to renewal every 99 years, we will secure economic justice, environmental paradise, social harmony, blissful mental health, and cheap shopping at Wal-Mart for our children and our grandchildren. Amen.
However, I naïvely assumed that a big, bad foo-ball game like the freakin' Rose Bowl might've been, oh, I don't know, on a weekend, so I was taken unawares-like when I tuned in just in time to watch the Trojans get dicked by the Schlonghorns. Then, of course, I was in shock that Allah or Satan or Pat Robertson or Ted Stevens or the Flying Spaghetti Monster could abandon the left-thinking people of America by allowing the very embodiment of what is wrong with George Walker Bush to pull a fucking upset victory.
I mean, really, in Texiss, "Born-again Christian" is the #2 religion, behind Foo-ball. When I was a little tyke in north Dull-as-a-Tick's-ass, there were two Astroturf® foo-ball fields in the whole Dee-Eff-Dubya Metroplexxx: one belonged to the Dallas Cob-eyes Pro-feshanal Foo-ball Club (for whom I am named!), and the other belonged to the Plano Independent School District. Those poor PISD-off people decided that their only possible redemption from living in hell on earth, was to win the state haah-school foo-ball champeenship, twelve years running! (No, they didn't make it, but they shore as hell-fahr trah'd!) They graduated over 1,600 seniors out of only one high school in one year. The sole reason was that by having that large a pool to draw upon, they were sure to have a superior foo-ball team. If the boys happened to get an education in between foo-ball practices, that was just gravy, and the main function of the girls was to cheer the boys on to foo-ball glory.
You might have heard about Plano, Texas, for several other reasons. A whole string of high school kids committed suicide there, falling one-by-one like deadly dominoes. It was exactly what we were afraid of if Vietnam "went Red," only real life, and in our own suburbs. The ones that weren't killing themselves, were shooting up smack. None of that pansy-ass marijuana or even cocaine for those rich kids; they wanted heroin. But really, what else was there to do in suburban Plano, Texas, in the 1980s? The other thing that put Plano, Texas, on the map is that a man by the name of George Walker Bush lived there between the time Daddy moved up to the Oval and the time Junior became governor of Texas. That's where he lived when he single-handedly guided the Texiss Rangers Baseball franchise to victory before showing the world how a state government should be run. Leave no mentally retarded child behind, on death row!
So all of that operated as backdrop for my Rose Bowl experience. The provincial hick attitude so deeply personified by New Haven / Andover / Yale's finest, needed its comeuppance. Sadly, the gods don't always bet on the right team in foo-ball. After all, losing by 3 still would've beat the spread for the boys in Burnt Orange. I don't blame USC; it's not their fault that they let the Enemies of Freedom win the Rose Bowl.
So anyway, that was what I wanted to use to introduce myself, but the moment slid by before I could finish writing it. I therefore have a second topic tonight: Recycling.
I've been thinking a lot about recycling lately, and more broadly America's unconscionable greed in terms of natural resources and indifference to pollution. It occurred to me that you can break people down into three basic recycling categories:
- people who turn in every bottle and can they find because they want the 2½¢ each
- people who try to recycle every bottle and can, but don't much care about the 2½¢ unless they buy by the case
and - people who just don't much care what happens as long as it's NIMBY.
It occurred to me, though, that it is an unreasonable burden to expect me to actually go out and find a homeless crazy person (who else would try to make a living picking up other people's litter??) when I finish a refreshing canned beverage. (For me, it's more likely a Grape Nehi than a Budweiser, but to each his own.) The essence of simplicity would be to simply open my window to the street and toss the empty can, confident that someone will snatch it up before it can clatter to the pavement.
Unfortunately, though, especially with Mayor Newsom's little Care Not Cash program, there just don't seem to be as many homeless people around, although the core of raving lunatic crazy people stubbornly persist. In any case, there simply aren't enough homeless people in San Francisco to adequately cover every single window in the city so that discarded cans will be collected immediately. I therefore propose that we hire a battallion of assistant homeless people — at below-poverty-level wages, of course — to fill in the gaps in our aluminum can safety net. After all, it is vitally important to our civic security to have no aluminum can left behind.
Of course, paying even starvation wages to this mass of pseudo-homeless people will require some source of public revenue. I therefore propose to pay their salaries with the proceeds from raising the Muni fare to $4.50, and adding a $3 surcharge to all BART journeys that begin and end within San Francisco. It's only fair that transit riders assume a disproportionate share of the burden, after all. Any excess revenue collected will be returned to the citizens in the form of a rebate on the gasoline tax.
With this simple one-time measure, subject to renewal every 99 years, we will secure economic justice, environmental paradise, social harmony, blissful mental health, and cheap shopping at Wal-Mart for our children and our grandchildren. Amen.
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