My take on an old joke...

You'll recognize the punch line:

Joey the midget was having a bad night. He was part of the regular crew at Flannery's, an old-school bar that was the sort of place that would have been called a gin joint years ago. There was a TV that no one really watched, and a dusty jukebox that still had 45's, a real antique. Maybe it still worked, but no one was interested. Flannery's was the last stop before that long walk home, a place for drink and smoke. My kind of place, where you could learn real lessons about the American Dream.

Joey was drinking whiskey, always a bad sign, since whiskey took him to the dark places inside, places no man should have to go alone. It was still early, so I decided to pull up a stool next to his, see where his ride was taking him tonight.

"I see you're still a house brand sort of guy," I said, offering him a cigarette.

"The top shelf stuff is for fools," he said, taking the smoke. "Cheap stuff takes me where I'm going just the same. What once was taste is now economics."

"You're a cheap bastard, Joey." I lit my own smoke, looking around the bar. Slow weeknight, too early for the strippers who came in for nightcaps after their shifts at Alley Cat's and The Carousel up the street. Just the regulars in a place where everyone knew your name, but never really spoke it aloud.

"I am the very model of a modern major drunkard," he said, a little more bitter than usual, and I could see that the whiskey already had him well down that path, another long, dark night.

Lou the Bartender wandered up, freshened the midget's drink without a word. I admired his efficiency.

We sat and smoked, listening to the clink of glasses, murmurs of conversation coming from the dimly-lit booths against the far wall. Joey then looked up. "Doc? I ever tell you I used to be in show business?"

"Maybe. Talking about when you used to work at the adult arcade, selling stroke books and peep show tokens?"

"Not that shit. I'm talking about when I was a kid. The whole family was in the business. We had an act."

"What kind of act? Singing, dancing, that sort of thing?"

He knocked back his drink in one gulp, turned to face me a little. "Nothing like that. It was something else." He shook his head. "I didn't know how fuckin' sick it was at the time. I was a kid, you know. The old man had some weird ideas about entertainment."

"Your folks were immigrants, weren't they?"

"Grandparents were from the old country. That's where the act started, back in one of those old Communist bloc shitholes." He signaled to Lou for another round. "Want that Chivas freshened?"

"Yeah." I motioned for the barkeep to make it two. "So what was this act?"

"Let's wait for the drinks."

The drinks came, then another round. More cigarettes. Joey was hunkered down now, sitting low over his glass and ashtray, gathering his thoughts. I was starting to lose a little patience, but I wanted to hear about The Act.

Finally, he looked up again. "The family left the old country...fled the old country...hit the United States with the clothes they were wearing. Only other thing they had, only other thing they knew, was The Act."

"Pop was just a kid then, him and his sister, my Aunt Sofia. Gramps and Nana used them in The Act. Barely knew any English, but they traveled all over, performing for anyone who'd give them a few feet of space and access to some farm animals."

"Farm animals?" This sounded like it might be taking a weird turn.

"When they were lucky. If there were no animals, it was up to the kids. After me and Silvio, and later Annie, were born, it was up to us."

"What kind of twisted shit are you talking about, Joey? I'm a Doctor of Divinity, you evil troll..."

"I'm getting to it," he growled. "I'm telling you about The Act. Gimme another smoke."

"Okay, but no more drinks for you. You're losing grip."

"I lost my grip a long time ago, you fucking hillbilly. Anyway...Gramps and Nana got too old to do The Act anymore, so Pop and Mom and Aunt Sofia got us kids into the biz. And since I was born like this..." He gestured to himself, wobbling a little on his stool. "Well, our little freak show had a real freak. I was a fuckin' meal ticket, the star of The Act."

"Enough," I said, turning to face the drunk midget. "This Act...are you gonna tell me what it was?"

Eyes watery, barely focused. "Yeah. I'll tell you what it was..."

Joey told me the whole story, a tale of depravity I couldn't have prepared for. The children, the animals, all those bodily fluids...it was a nightmare of sickness, an American Dream gone terribly wrong. And it starred Joey the midget, the young King Hell freak who barely understood the things he was doing to his baby brother, later a baby sister, and all those chickens. I thought the monkey was a cruel, but inventive, touch. He found out years later that he and his siblings were all inbred, born to his father and his Aunt Sofia. The woman he believed to be his mother was left unable to bear children after the nasty plate-spinning routine was added to The Act.

The Act broke up for good after Joey's father added a horse to the show. The beast was a natural performer, but Joey's old man just wasn't as ready as he thought he was. By then, Gramps was dead and Nana too far gone in senility to take stage direction, and everyone simply drifted away.

I lit a fresh smoke, motioned to Lou for my tab. Joey was quiet now, staring at the bottom of his empty glass as he dug in his pocket for a few bills. I stopped him. "This one's on me."

"Appreciate it," he mumbled as he slid from his stool.

We stood there for a moment. The strippers from up the street were starting to filter in, tough and tired-looking women with almost as many issues as Joey. No one really noticed them anymore.

I slid on my coat. "Need a ride?" I asked.

"Naw. Think I'll hoof it, Doc."

"Up to you," I said, taking my cigarettes from the bar. "You know, I got one more question."

"Sure. What the fuck, eh?"

"This act...what was it called?"

He smiled a little, the smile of a man who has seen things that would peel apart the strongest dream, strip it bare and reveal the ugly inside that we all have and try to hide. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out an old business card, placed it on his barstool as he walked away. I picked it up.

In fancy cursive script, the card read simply "The Aristocrats." I didn't get it.

I shook my head as Joey walked out the door without looking back.

Slipping the card into a jacket pocket, I followed him out.

###

August Rant
Life is hard; it's a whole lot harder if your
stupid. Drink seems like a haven, a comforting
place to shelter from the contretemps... only
to awaken hung over again, eyes puffy, head
pounding, mouth nasty, wallet empty, regrets
aplenty.

Not yet 11 am yet, Detroit is already sticky,
sweaty and horrid. What an ugly summer this
has been. And no end in sight. My girl's
worthless dope addict son is a plague. My bat
shit crazy mother is more bat shit crazy than
ever. Michigan remains mired in economic
depression, and it's not going to get better.
The ugly, ugly political season is here, again.

The one bright spot was the brief visit from
Sparks and his lovely companion. We dragged
them downtown to the notorious Cass Corridor
to the infamous Jumbo's Bar, formerly the
home of pimps and hos and dope dealers, now
just a little dive in the heart of a desolate
wasteland. Our conversation mainly centered
on the devastation suffered by the American
Midwest and American society in general. We're
shell shocked, stunned, our heads ringing in
the aftermath of the great silent Bomb blast
that has left us wandering amid the ruins and
wondering what happened. We look about us and
see rubble and destruction everywhere around
us, but it's not clear what caused it.
Lil Hint:
it was class warfare practiced against us by
the top predators in the food chain, the Wolves
at the top.

Geez I'm broke, sore, tired and have difficulty
focusing. My guts are churning, my head too.
Dumbfuck dimwit doofus dickwad asshole squats
on my couch, not about to apologize for his
latest bullshit scumbag manuever ripping his
mom off and fucking with me. Now he's in my
house, the piece of shit. I think it's time
to close this out and get the hell out of here.
I don't even want his apology, I want him to
vanish. Die. Go To Hell. Fucker. Get your
junker car out of my driveway so I can leave,
since you won't.

God I feel bad. Physically, mentally, morally
sick. An unsound mind in an unsound body.
Something broke in me long ago and I've never
been right. The world is a twisted sick place
and I'm in it.

The State O'Michigan got a couple things right
yesterday. Carolyn Butt-Cheeks Kilpatrick, Kwame's
corrupt Beast of a Momma, is going to be out
of the US House of Representatives following her
defeat in the primary election. That and we've
chosen Virg Bernero as the Democratic candidate
for Governor. He's the only guy I heard talking
about the working man and standing up for the
middle class. Everyone else is concerned with
Corporate Profits and how those poor downtrodden
gigantic undead Frankenstein monsters are in
need of our help.

Of course no one can really help Michigan or
any of us because the Corporations want GATT
and NAFTA and want the US deindustrialized and
want the American Middle Class liquidated, and
there is no one to stop them. Government was
supposed to do that but it's been bought and
sold by the same monsters they were supposed to
restrain. Until we end Corporate Personhood
and make all elections publicly funded
and make it a crime to make a campaign
contribution and kill all the lobbyists... we
don't have a country. We have a satrapy ruled
by Corporate Lawyers.

Here's something a guy said that mirrors exactly
what I feel: "the current incarnation of the
Republican Party [has] fallen in with the “family
values” crowd, and now a lot of big Republican
talking points are things like outlawing gay
marriage and abortion, which doesn’t make a lot
of sense to me, seeing as the government dictating
who can and can’t get married and what women can
and can’t do with their bodies is hella intervention
in day to day life. It’s this sort of hypocrisy
that gets me: I didn’t see an awful lot of fiscal
responsibility during the last eight years
of Republican rule, as evidenced by the war over
nonexistent weapons and the fact that Wall Street
did burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp.
Furthermore, a lot of the same senators who are
so up on family values are the ones who usually
get caught in airport bathrooms or are flying to
Argentina for booty calls on the state’s dime."

Where were you all when Mister George W. Bush was
wiping his ass with our Constitution, and only
NOW do you suddenly get worried about it. The
USA Patriot Act was an abomination, last
I heard you were cheering for it. You were
willing to give up every Right you ever had going
all the way back to the Magna Carta for some kind
of bullshit fake "security" handed to you by a
Nazi Jackbooted Police State just so you could
wallow in your "Patriotism" and wrap yourself in
the flag and bleat about how great America is
and it's the Land of the Free Home of the Brave
only it ain't anymore while you weren't looking
the Creeps stole it out from under you and
turned it into their own little privately owned
third world shit hole and co-opted the only thing
that was standing between you and getting
eaten up by the bigger meaner sharks in the pond.

Libertarianism is great; I was a Libertarian most
of my life. Small government is good, fiscal
responsibility is great. But Libertarianism isn't
supposed to be anarchy and under anarchy the
strong take the weak and that's exactly what's
been going on here. Small Government is supposed
to be big enough to do what it legitamately exists
to do: keep the Wolf from the door. Last I looked
the wolf ate your job, your pension, your home,
your medical insurance, your wife and your kids
and is shitting on your chest at night. You
were too busy worrying about the supposed Muslim
Threat, the bill of goods you were sold by these
scumbag elite shyster rip offs as the looted the
whole damned country and made off with their ill
gotten gains to their privately guarded gated
communities in the Cayman Islands where they live
like pampered dolphins, utterly free of any
responsibility or care existing off the backs
of you and me and leaving us to suffer in
this bombed out hell hole they've created. It's
sick. I'm sick. I'm not right. This entire
misshapen bent deformed Scenario makes me ill,
I can't even freaking look at it any longer or
I'm gonna wanna go start drinking again and I'm
crushing my liver and beating my head it and it's
barely noon and I've got things to do, I think.
I can't even think straight. I'm so pissed off
and disgusted and finished with the whole damned
thing.

Tea Party Candidate my ass.
I was a god damned Tea Party person twenty years
ago when nobody would fucking listen and nobody
cared and the whole damned thing was going down the
toilet and now we find ourselves Here and it was
always so damned predictable but you didn't want
to think about it or try to understand because it
made your little head hurt and you were perfectly
happy to let the banksters and the nazis and
the mob and the blue-blood Eastern Establishment
Swells and their CIA Cowboy lackeys trash the
whole damned place and stomp the World making it
safe for Corporate Profits and making us hated
everywhere because the horrible crimes they
perpetrated in Our names, and you let it happen
because you were too damned silly to actually
look what was being done and it couldn't happen
here and we're America we're good and we would
never do anything wrong and we're just fighting
Communism or Narco-Terrorists of Islamo-Fascists
or whatever other bullshit false flag boogy man
they waved in front of you...

An Ayn Rand/Ragnar Benson/Anto LaVey-style
rugged individualist totally free society without
any government at all is great, if you're
the biggest meanest Shark in the pond.

But try not to grow old, or get feeble, or
lose your teeth, because there's always younger
hungrier up and comers who will have you for
lunch. That's why I prefer to live in a world
where there is a government, where the strong
can't just take the weak, where Cowboy Capitalists
can't turn the whole place into the Wild West
with no law except Brute Force and Robber Barons
and Moguls and Cowboy gunslingers for hire to
the highest bidder and the rest of us get to play
the role of the helpless townspeople at the
mercy of the Combine. The archetype of the
Libertarian in the world today is Dick Cheney.
Evil Dick is the model for the Cowboy-Capitalist
Free-Market lassie faire Buccaneer, a Land
Pirate who never retired, taking no prisoners
and sparing no one.

Welcome to The Road;
Welcome to the world Dick Cheney wrought.
The Carlyle Group Halliburton Plutonium poisoning
cadmium lead arsenic. A mother rat eats her babies
rather than let another predator get all that good
protein. A dead dying gray world; oil spewing into
pristine waters befouling beaches, killing wildlife.

A hellbrew, a vast gigantic brownfield.
Things fall apart you cannot receive treatment here
The endless dirty war grinds on.
A mostly illiterate lumpen-serfdom squats blithely amid
the ruins sexting pictures of each others genitals back
and forth, oblivious to the poisons in the almost-food
they ingest, in perfect ignorance of the toxins in the air,
the water, the soil, coursing through their blood streams
or how it all happened, that it was done to them on
purpose by Republican scum bags. An Apocalypto-style
Acapulco; vacation on Lord of the Flies Island, trading
trinkets, worthless lumps of slag and base metal,
pieces of cloth with arcane symbols, While in the
guarded gated communities the elite frolic like
dolphins never touching the bottom or sides of the
pool unable to find anything to restrain them and
driven mad with ennui and boredom tired of the
Sport of watching the unwashed masses procreate or
kill each other in games designed to entertain
the patrician klass.

The Third Horseman was Black for Capitalism, his
cohorts were Green for the Pestilence Pollution and
Red for War... Last came Death.

A devolved humanity in a spoilt world the eloi frolic
while the morlocks toil but the sirens will wail and
the roundup will begin until the all clear is sounded
and the whole world groans for the return of the gods
with some kind of cleansing fire to end this hideous
nightmare child’s science experiment gone wrong...

Stephanie Miller

How Stephanie Miller's wonderful understanding became known to her father Bill Miller, by the invention of a bum-wiper. (With Apologies to François Rabelais)

About the end of her fourth year, Bill Miller was returning from the Presidential Campaign, went to see his daughter Stephanie Miller. There was he filled with joy, as such a father might be at the sight of such a uni-browed, gray-fanged, webbed-toed wolf-child, and whilst he kissed and hugged her, he asked about many suitably childish matters, and drank very freely with her and with her governesses, the Saintly Nuns of the Sisterhood of the Holy Blessed Bloody Suffering Christ of whom in great earnest he asked, amongst other things, whether they had been careful to keep her clean and sweet. To this Stephanie Miller answered, that she had taken such a course for that herself, that in all the country there was not to be found a cleanlier girl than she.
“How is that?” said Bill Miller.
“I have,” answered Stephanie Miller, “by a long and careful experiment, found a means to wipe my bum, the most lordly, the most excellent, and the most convenient that ever was seen.“
“What is that?” said Bill Miller, “how is it?”
“I will tell you by-and-by,” said Stephanie Miller. “Once I did wipe me with a gentle-woman's velvet mask, and found it to be good; for the softness of the silk was very voluptuous and pleasant to my fundament. Another time with one of their hoods, and in like manner that was comfortable. At another time with a lady's neckerchief, and after that I wiped me with some ear-pieces of hers made of crimson satin, but there was such a number of golden spangles in them (turdy round things, a pox take them) that they fetched away all the skin of my tail with a vengeance. Now I wish St. Antony's fire burn the bum-gut of the goldsmith that made them, and of her that wore them! This hurt I cured by wiping myself with a page's cap, garnished with a feather after the Swiss fashion.
Then, this one time at band-camp, when I was cacking behind some bushes, I found a March-cat, and I wiped myself, but her claws were so sharp that they scratched and exulcerated all my perinee. Of this I recovered the next morning thereafter, by wiping myself with my mother's gloves, of a most excellent perfume. After that I wiped me with sage, with fennel, with anise, with marjoram, with roses, with gourd-leaves, with beets, with colewort, with leaves of the vine-tree, with mallows, wool-blade, which is a tail-scarlet, with lettuce, and with spinach leaves. All this did very great good to my bum. Then with mercury, with parsley, with nettles, with comfrey, but that gave me the bloody flux of Lombardy, which I healed by wiping me with a baguette.
Then I wiped my tail in the sheets, in the coverlet, in the curtains, with a cushion, with the wall-hanging, with a green carpet, with a table-cloth, with a napkin, with a handkerchief, with a dressin gown; in all which I found more pleasure than do the mangy dogs when you rub them.”
“Yea, but,” said Bill Miller, “which bum-wipe did you find to be the best?”
“I was coming to it,” said Stephanie Miller, “and by-and-by shall you hear the tu autem, and know the whole mystery and knot of the matter. I wiped myself with hay, with straw, with thatch-rushes, with flax, with wool, with paper, but,
When you your foul tail wipe with paper,
You’ll have to clean your ass with a scrapper.
“What,” said Bill Miller, “my little rogue, hast thou been at the pot, that thou dost rhyme already?”
“Yes, yes, my dear father,” answered Stephanie Miller, “I can rhyme gallantly, and rhyme till I become hoarse with rheum. Hark, what our privy says to the skiters:
Shittard,
Squirtard,
Crackard,
Turdous,
Thy bung
Hath flung
Some dung
On us:
Filthard,
Cackard,
Stinkard,
St. Antony's fire seize on thy toane (bone?),
If thy
Dirty
Dounby
Thou do not wipe, ere thou be gone.
Will you have any more of it?”
“Yes, yes,” answered Bill Miller. Then, said Stephanie Miller,
A Roundelay.
In shitting yes'day I did know
The debt I to my arse did owe:
The smell was such came from that slunk,
That I was with it all bestunk:
O had but then some brave Signor
Brought him to me I waited for,
In shitting!
I would have cleft my watergap,
And join'd it close to his flipflap,
Whilst he had with her fingers guarded
My foul nockandrow, all bemerded
In shitting.
Now tell me I don’t know anything! By the Merdi, they are not of my making, but I heard them of this good old nun, that you see here, and ever since have remembered them.
“Let us return to our purpose,” said Bill Miller.
“What, said Stephanie Miller, pooping?”
“No,” said Bill Miller, “but to wipe our tail.”
“But,” said Stephanie Miller, “will you give me a box of wine, if I do not blank and gravel you in this matter, and put you to a non-plus?”
“Yes, truly”, said Bill Miller.
“There is no need of wiping one's tail,” said Stephanie Miller, “but when it is foul; foul it cannot be, unless one have been a-pooping; poop then we must before we wipe our tails.”
“O my pretty little waggish girl,” said Bill Miller, “what an excellent wit thou hast? I will make thee very shortly proceed doctor in the jovial quirks of gay learning, and that, by God, for thou hast more wit than age. Now, I prithee, go on in this torcheculative, or wipe-bummatory discourse, and by my beard I swear, for one puncheon, thou shalt have threescore boxes, I mean of the good Franzia wine, not that which grows in Britain, but in the good country of California.”
“Afterwards I wiped my bum,” said Stephanie Miller, “with a kerchief, with a pillow, with a pantoufle, with a pouch, with a pannier, but that was a wicked and unpleasant torchecul; then with a hat. Of hats, note that some are shorn, and others shaggy, some velveted, others covered with taffeta, and others with satin. The best of all these is the shaggy hat, for it makes a very neat abstersion of the fecal matter.
Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf's skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney's bag, with a hooded cape, with a cap, with a falconer's lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to a nice downy neck of a goose, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honor, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains. And think not that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel, ambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this, according to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a goose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is also the opinion of Barry Goldwater“.

Libertarian Morons

I used to be a Libertarian. Twenty years ago I thought
Ayn Rand was great and Big Government was bad.

Now I see the flaw in all that. Maybe it wasn't Ayn
Rand's intent, but getting rid of Government puts
us in the State Of Nature, otherwise known as
Anarchy, otherwise known as The Law of The
Jungle, otherwise known as The Strong Take
The Weak.

The thought of it terrified Thomas Jefferson and
George Washington. It should terrify you. The
Strong are taking the weak here and now, and
unless you are a billionaire you are getting taken.

Your job, your home, your money, your
retirement, your health care, your environment...
they are all being trashed by the elite. You are
being enslaved and trampled by a tiny clique of
creeps. And the Government, as sad and
inefficient and corrupt and stupid as it is, is your
only protection.

The problem with Government right now is not
that it's too big, the problem is that instead of
protecting you and me, the little guys, from being
preyed on by the big fish is that it's in too many cases
working for the evil fat cats it's supposed to be
restraining. There is nothing wrong with rich
people. There is nothing wrong with government.
We need both.

We need the rich to pay their share. They want to take
their profits and leave us to clean up their messes.
They want unsafe working conditions, unlimited
pollution where we live, not them, they want to reduce
us all to peons and rape and pillage the entire Earth
and all humanity.

The Government is the only thing that can stop them.
As bad as governments can be, they are at least
somewhat more responsive to the needs and wishes
of the governed than any feudal fiefdom Corporate
edifice.

Corporations are only about profit. They are not about
people, or the environment, or justice.

You think you're ready to live in the State of Nature?
That you're prepared to wear a loincloth and slit
throats for fuel? You think government is wrong
and you're big and bad enough to walk through the
valley of the shadow of Corporate Monsters 'cause
you're so tough and smart and bad-ass? Think again.
Unless you are a billionaire you damn well need
government to protect you from the Giants. They
will devour you.

If you're concerned about the government, get busy
working to force it to respond to your needs and the
needs of all of us. Get government to reign in these
Corporate Creeps. Force them to quit robbing us,
polluting our world, enriching themselves at our
expense and leaving us to pay for the cleanup.

Go ahead, live in your Libertarian Paradise. The Old
West, where there are no courts or laws, just
Cowboys and Robber Barons. Try Somalia, that's
about a perfect Libertarian paradise right now.
See how you like it.