I can’t say I envied her death by guillotine, but she had an awesome wardrobe for a time, whatever that’s worth.

(Just imagine all the lice in that wig…)

Today I am reminded of Lord Acton’s Dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  This being said, I don’t want to be in charge of anything more lofty than getting Jerry’s AV equipment working for him.  It’s a TV and cable box, (God forbid he wants to figure out how to play a DVD at 6:30 AM) but for him, the TV remote might as well be Mission Control at NASA.

We have achieved ignition!  The TV is on!  Now Jerry can watch the news, and I can get on with getting my own shit done.

I know I shouldn’t pander to Jerry’s ever-present Helplessman mode.  I know he wants attention, otherwise he wouldn’t have unplugged all that crap a couple of weeks ago, forcing me to contort my body into positions it was never meant to assume in order to plug all of it back in and get it working again.  I couldn’t do Kama Sutra positions when I was younger and actually had sex every now and again.  Why the hell should I suffer like that knowing that sex is just a distant memory, and all I’ll get out of it now is dirty and pissed off?

Now that he knows I really hate the contortionist bullshit I have to go through to plug everything in again, it follows that when he whines about not being able to operate the TV, I will just turn the box on and leave the box on, and set the power button so the power button only works the TV.  If you turn off the box, then you have to turn the power button on, then turn the box on, then hit the power button again and then hit the TV button, which is just too many steps for Jerry.  If he would just leave the damned thing alone except for turning the TV on and off with the power button, it would work just fine, but he has to jack around with things he doesn’t understand.   Guess who gets to fix that mess?

Yes, he was raised by wolves, and his childhood sucked, and he didn’t get enough attention from Mommy, and all that psychological clap trap, but by the time you’re 55 one would think you would have learned to let it go and just deal.  Maybe I just took my own dysfunctional childhood the other direction and became insanely self-sufficient out of necessity and also out of recognition that if I want something done, it’s on me to get it done.

Depending on the charity or beneficence of others is sort of like wishing in one hand and taking a big juicy crap in the other.  We all know which one is going to fill up first.  Either I do it myself, or pay someone else if it’s something I can’t do myself. I don’t expect anyone to do my laundry, or hook up my TV, or fix my meals.

It’s well to remember that before the mid-20th century, most Americans were rednecks raised by wolves, bathing twice a year whether they needed it or not, and using the facility in the woods along with the bears.

I wish we had another working toilet.  There is a toilet in the basement, but it doesn’t work.  It’s some kind of weird electric (?) flush up type thing, but it’s permanently out of order unless Jerry can find someone to fix it or replace it or something.  Plumbing is a skilled trade- that I know absolutely nothing about.

All I know is that it cost $250 for the plumber to re-do the kitchen sink drain after Jerry tried to put a catfish head down the kitchen sink disposal.  The bad part about sharing a bathroom (and even though Jerry’s as filthy as a  horde of hogs, I would rather share a bathroom with a dude than a woman any day) is that it seems he has to take his place on the throne at the same time I need to brush my teeth and put on enough makeup to avoid traumatizing small children and dogs.

“Shit with a Hint of Mint” is not a flavor I think the product developers at Colgate had in mind, but more often than not, that’s the experience in my world.

This one would be flying off the shelves… not!

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so sensitive.  I should be more thankful that I don’t have much of a sense of smell.   If it stinks to me, it positively has to reek to the rest of the world.

I’m also thankful for the MP3 player, as the abysmal selections of country music being played by others in my vicinity seem to get worse every day.  I don’t care about saving horses and riding cowboys, nor do I give a hang about some hillbilly’s alcohol problem. I have realized that being exposed to country music- constantly and against my will, especially- only makes me loathe it more.  That’s OK.  I’m listening to the live version of Journey’s “Line of Fire,” which is drowning out the oat opera quite nicely.  I don’t want to be rude, but I would like to tell both the oat opera offenders where they can shove their damned radios and how high.  Those things have headphone jacks…please for the love of God use them!

I miss Reagan even more after the current Obfuscater in Chief sent out yet another misguided apology yesterday.

Back to our friend Lord Acton and his Dictum.  One person or one misguided group of people holding all the power is a very dangerous thing.  Humans are evil by nature, and without checks and balances- just imagine a five year old left alone in a car with a very expensive interior with nothing but his imagination and a Sharpie.  I’ve seen it.  It’s not pretty.  Neither is what has happened to the current government of this country.

I think if anything the system that we have to fear in this country isn’t so much Marxism or socialism or communism, but government by oligarchy.  The good ol’ boy system is nothing new, which is why the Framers of the Constitution tried to design safeguards into our system of government to help prevent one person- or even one ideological group- from getting too much power.  Obama on his own- he’s not that bright.  But the self-appointed “elites” who run things behind the scenes know exactly what they’re doing to this country and by proxy to the entire world.

Some pigs are more equal than others, as Orwell pointed out.  Al Gore might preach to the world to “mind their carbon footprint” and “wipe with reusable cloths,” or to “bury your car,” but this jackwagon is riding about in private jets and SUVs and sucking down more fossil fuels in a weekend than some entire countries do in a year.  You can bet there’s no Charmin shortage at Chez Gore either. 

Let them eat Big Macs!