The Once-in-a-While

Daily News

1  " 'Murica. It'll never be the same."

2  Last Wednesday I awakened at 4 a.m. and wanted to smother myself with a Wal-Mart pillow. I instead got out the old 'puter and tacked away at the DN, tilting at windmills, or some such thing. Towards the end I muttered the phrase in item number one: 

     " 'Murica. It'll never be the same."

 I then got it down on paper (Is the DN considered paper? Oh, bother...) before it would lapse. It became a not-so-cleverly disguised version of what the great Herb Caen called "three-dot journalism" sans Caen's wisdom. 

3  Would that be considered "accuracy in media?"

4  Nah.

5  I just think that any product sounds funnier if you precede it with the word "Wal-Mart.": "She drenched herself to the neck in Wal-Mart perfume." "He offered out a shot of Wal-Mart whiskey."  "He had Wal-Mart armpit stains." Stephen King stuff.  

6  fdfajdf;adfkdas;fjsdfdsf;ds

7  <Remember when it was fashionable to hit a bunch of keyboard keys when you were at a loss for words?>

8  Anyone who knows me knows I am seldom at a loss for words.

9  

10  afaddfdsfsdjfksdfjkdsfjsf

11  If an infinite amount of liberals randomly hit keys as would an infinite amount of monkeys, would they eventually plagiarize Last Train to Clarksville?

12  

13  Rhetorical question.

14  <sigh>

Genius at work.

15  Moving On, Part One: I decided not to add to the already out-of-control emotionalism that bombarded the social media following the recent Presidential election. 

16  For younger people in particular, it was all pretty traumatic. Even we older farts felt as though we had quaffed tankards of kerosene last Wednesday morning. 

17  Fingers pointed, horns grew, and daughter Caitlin's  husband Josh deemed it "...a real s#it show." 

18  I couldn't have put it better. Fast-forward to this past Monday. 

19  I awakened Monday morning with my Wednesday DN deadline looming. I thought back to the election, and what went down last Wednesday. 

20  When the Trump presidency was announced, the world erupted into protests, fires, obscenities, and massive street violence. At the time, I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to douse those fires by tossing a few verbal grenades onto them, followed by bone-dry logs. I jumped into the rage with more rage, never a good thing. I became rude, and outspoken, especially on the social media. I could not believe that anyone in their right mind could vote for such a crude, racist misogynistic blowhard. 

21  

22  And then I stopped. 

23  I simply stopped. 

24  

25  Oh. Not for any moral reasons. I just didn't feel like going back through all my resources and coming up with sixty-trillion facts that would prove that everything I had to say was right. 

26

27  How obnoxious. 

28  And I was going to trace the history of all the Presidents who succeeded JFK following his assassination, and how many of them had links to his assassination. 

29  That required spending two days going through moth-filled conspiracy books. 

30  Richard Nixon appointed Gerald Ford President just prior to his own resignation, for example. Ford, along with a fellow named Arlen Specter, had already co-authored  the single-bullet theory, the "theory" that purportedly proved that one lone nut killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy. 

31  Allen Dulles, whom JFK had fired as CIA chief, was appointed to the Warren Commission, the fellows who pushed the lone-nut pretense. He and his brother, John Foster Dulles ran a New York law firm called Sullivan and Cromwell, a company that had as a major client I.G. Farben, a German company that funded the Nazi death camps.

32  I could go on, but much of this is old stuff, things I weighed and measured against different sources over the years. I have neither the time nor the inclination to argue with people about things I took years to research. 

33  And...it's a pretty fruitless thing. It does nothing to improve the world, and it does everything to alienate people.

34  So I'll just leave those tidbits out there, since the anniversary of the JFK assassination is next Tuesday. That way I can correct all my inaccuracies. 

35  'Murica. 

36   

37  Moving On, Part Two: I decided on Sunday morning to go out to my back yard and dress it up for a small party. It had become Novembered to death: patio furniture stood winterized, yet rusty and wet. Market umbrellas lay silent on the cement, forced to the ground by fierce winds. Fountains sat motionless with moss and still water. The mild rains soaked everything. And Sunday morning, the early sun smiled down on all of it. 

38  I spent all day Saturday changing all that. I didn't give the election a thought. Everything I tried failed: chairs fell over, pliers cut me, shoes attacked me, lights fell to the cement and popped, and tools hid from me. One of THOSE sorts of projects. It caused me to attain a somewhat Zen state:

39  I stayed with it, and by nightfall, I found a colorful sunset lining up with a subtle light design swirling through my yard, and I took back the world. 

40  "No more politics!" I whispered to nobody in particular. 

41  It worked. I calmed. I climbed into yet a another world; a different world, a world of mind, and a world of thought.

42  It worked. In a funny sort of way, it worked. Something entered my soul, and soon, I came back to the real world, and lo, it was good...

43  Moving On, Part The Thoid: We have gotten so trigger-happy and mean of late that I spent much of last week almost afraid to walk outside. 

44  This election affected people more than any other I can recall, but really? 

45  I've had trouble with tons of elections over the years and let me tell you: there is nothing new under the sun. 

46  Stay vigilant, but love your family and friends. For God's sakes, we're only here for a finite period of time. 

47  I'd even like to apologize for being brash and arrogant. 

48  That never wins friends, although it may influence people. 

49  And the people we "influence" are sometimes our children and our grandchildren. 

50  I vaguely remember mild political arguments from my own childhood. I remember well my parents bringing crayons to my grandparents' house so that I could make paper "Kennedy" bumper stickers for the car. 

51  

52  Did I just age myself?

53  Maybe it was Clinton bumper stickers. 

54  Trump? Nah, that would make me TOO young, and 
WAY too Republican.  

55  Was this a made-up story?

56  Nah.

57  Don't think so.

58  Can't remember.

59  

60  I'm gonna go watch the Beebeez this morning. Our politics will be confined to Winnie-the-Pooh and Zootopia. 

61  Make 'Murica sane again. Make adults sane again. All of us.

62  Why you wanna be hatin'?

63  I don't.

64  Life is too short. This s#it show is over. Stay active, but you are not obligated to drag an election result around like a large stone in a wet sack. You don't have to do that. Take a walk on a crisp November afternoon. Smile at someone. Hold a baby. Crunch some leaves. Look at the autumn sky. The s#it show is over. For God's sake, it is over. 

65  

66  Gottago.

67  Live life.

68  Love life.

69  Peace. 

~H~

fin.