Today's Awkward Moment...

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With every road blocked, every turn straightened, every orange cone mocking my every attempt, I quit my attempts at driving to my destination and hiked instead. In sandals. Up hill. At noon. In a construction zone.
There I met with a rude, obstructing port-a-potty - a gaudy sunburst color and an equally gaudy smell - that chose that moment to swing it's door open in a lascivious invite.

I didn't enter. Neither did I make eye contact. I simply turned away and hiked my way uphill with a noticeably increased speed.

Mr. Kelly has the floor

Audio is poor. Verbs are rich. And all of it without a teleprompter. Click and clap.

Ladies and gentlemen, Congressman Mike Kelly (R-PA).



Common sense on the House floor. Wonder if it gave the politicians hives.

Knowledge is Power. And other trite truisms I'm going to repeat.

He liked to watch them burn. The crinkle and recoil and inflamed edge of paper when fire grasped it around the mouth.
He seared the ideas.
Scorched the information.
He lit the books and smiled into the ravenous flames with their fingers reflecting in his black pupils. Then Fire Chief Beatty returned to his station in Ray Bradbury’s classic, Fahrenheit 451, for a robust laugh and a round of cards with the other fire-lickin' boys.

I'm guessing here but he probably won every hand. Somehow.

In the classic, though starkly believable, world of Bradbury's control-heavy culture, information wasn’t power. Except, of course, to those who silenced it.

“You can’t build a house without nails and wood. If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it.”
That's Beatty at his finest.

Ignorance.
Chief Beatty believed in the bliss of it. The utter joy of knowledge nothingness. Too much information made people think. And thinking brought about empowered individuals who warred and struggled and took life on the chin.

Those kind of people decide for themselves. They contemplate. Deduce. Mull over and meditate on. Dare I say it, they might even study both sides of an issue. And then form an opinion, discover a truth, find a solution, create a cure, fill a gap, and open a previously closed door. They might create running water and racing wheels, garage doors and paper plates, shoe inserts and air-conditioning, railroads and raisin cereal and rain guards for your Mazda.

They might turn out to be revolutionaries. Without bloodshed. And healers. Without egos.

They might, eek!, turn out to be capitalists.

What do you get from 24,000 emails?

A decent Jon Stewart segment.

Worth it?

Maybe.

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Down the Yellow Taxed Road

Today, I got in my vehicle (the government taxed) wearing a t-shirt and jeans (the government taxed) and drove down the street (burning fuel the government taxed) to the post office (paid for by my tax dollars) to mail letters (the government charges me to mail) to pay for my income taxes (the government cost of earning money) while thinking about what to fix for dinner (with food the government taxed) in my air-conditioned (the government monthly taxes) home (the government yearly taxes).

The government doesn't have a revenue problem.

Working Americans do.

Punch Drunk Creative Love

Illustrations by

Brendon C. Thompson

The a/eye - for no explainable reason - reminds me of the Mel Brook's Get Smart, starring Don Adams. It was the 60s. Everyone had bigger eyebrows then.

And the Monkey, that just seems fitting since I saw it this morning while eating a banana for breakfast and thinking about the opening to Buck Rogers.




At age three, Brendon could draw anything. Not that I was there to notice. When I arrived on scene a year later, he had already wowed our parents with his artistic talent and all I could do was gurgle saliva bubbles.
But that's what older siblings do. They steal your thunder so you spend a lifetime trying to catch up.
Thankfully, I've always loved a good chase. And, besides, his artistic talent was just as much fun for me. Ask me one day to tell you about the backyard maze he created with the lawnmower in the field behind our house.

This is a shameless and brazen plug for his illustration work. If you need a logo designer, illustrator, or all around creative genius, he's a one-stop-shop of madcap brilliance.

He can also mow you a labyrinth in your overgrown yard.

(Post a message if you want his contact info and I'll send it on.)

Boxed in? Box your way out.

He "strode defiantly" past the protesters.

Did Dominique Strauss-Kahn walk? No, he strode. Did he curve his neck downward with contriteness until his forehead greeted the pavement ahead? Not unless he's double jointed. Or remorseful. I doubt both.

No, he strode defiantly.

What Strauss-Kahn did was walk with defiance and whatever physical attributes that entails - a level head, a sweatless brow, eyes that connect and linger with others. That's what we can guess by the reporter's description of his shame stride into court this week. It's not a poor choice of words. Most likely, not even inaccurate.

Only safe.

That's how I would describe most news writing - safe. Or dull. (Po'tae'ta, Po'tata)

In 1996, when I entered the reporting business, the time spent avoiding the words you COULDN'T use took more time than using the words you COULD. Anything frivolous or lacy, anything with a curve or a color, a word that bent a little on the ends and flared in the middle, a description not summed up in two words, was simply not done.

I know this because I tried it. And was clearly instructed never to do it again.

When you wrote news, you wrote according to a format. Even according to a rhythm. We were punching out the equivalent of the monotone broadcast anchor, the timber of their voice raising and lowering on cue.

We couldn't speak with boredom. So we wrote it.

That was my second experience of having my writing and creativity boxed in. English class was my first.

Dry reporting is probably assumed to be classic. Old school. Born of generations of newspaper men. This is the way men did it back in the day. (Hitch up belt. Spit something out side of mouth.)

That's a bit of a misnomer. In my pre-Internet days as a reporter, I toiled and fidgeted in the badly lit back room of my local library, while going through reams of microfiche from 1901 and on. Take it from me, reporting in the beginning came in technicolor narration.

No wonder newspapers use to make a profit.

Reading the news then was an experience of the senses, even the ones you want to forget. You heard the heated words, dabbed at the perspiration, smelled the gun powder, and eyed the library trash can after discovering a decomposing corpse.

Old school journalism was storytelling at it's most intricate and alive. You breathed the surroundings in, even if - had you really been there - you would have been holding your nose.

Too often our stories don't reek or rile, don't whirl and spin, don't cling like fog to our pores or metal to our mouths. They don't engage our senses. We can peruse them so quickly they barely engage our minds.

Now, international politicians accused of sexual assault are reported to have "strode defiantly",
- not with an obstinate push to their feet as if warring against a crushing gale of negative opinion
- not with the stoic expression of a bloodthirsty matador snapping his cape in provocation
- not with the silent roar of a salivating carnal creature refusing capture
- not void of perspiration over the brow, on the lip, or under the arm
- not as determined as death.

Whatever description fits. Whatever takes the reader along. Whatever has us rushing to find library trash cans. Whatever.

Just more.

Just not safe.

I'm not saying boxes are always bad. They're great to store old trophies and move things. In writing, a short duration can even teach a writer how to follow rules, how to focus, how to streamline, how to summarize, and how to beat against a table with your left hand while typing with your right.

All boxes, however, need exit doors with ergonomic knobs. If you are trapped inside one, break down the door. Throw in a description that draws the reader in, teases them in the ribs, tickles their ears, and throws them off their scanning stride. Don't be afraid to create a scene that tilts their head or bites their tongue.

Reading was never meant to be safe.