The Bugs Are Coming to Get Me

I've managed to avoid the flu or even a mild cold for several years, but tonight I can feel the beginnings of some malign seasonal invasion. Unless it's more Polonium 210 poisoning. You know, I was on some British Airways flights through central Europe not that long ago.

The reason I know that this weekend will be spent drinking tea, blowing my nose, sucking down Riccolas, and watching a lot of mind-numbing television is because I have had a sudden drop in my vitriol level. I seem incapable of getting apoplectically angry. I am beginning to even feel sorry for Chimpie.

That's how I know I'm sick.

Really, seeing him raving on television has turned from an experience in fright to one of pity. Can't someone get this dude some help? An intervention, please!

Meanwhile, the spousal unit Rotkohl will defrost some of her custom chicken soup and will command me to eat of it until I get better. It's delicious and quite meaty, so I don't mind, but the trouble with soup is you can't eat it while in the supine position, which is the advantage of Red Vines and Twinkies. Oh, this damned sore throat!

Let me ask you this--if you were the intelligent designer of the universe, couldn't you come up with something better than pain to signal a problem? Oy!

Interviews--What's the Point at My Age?

This is a lost day. I've got an interview at 2:30--yes, for a fucking job--and another tomorrow morning at 9:30am. The interview today is for a part-time techie position, but I'm pretty sure they'll find it suspicious that I want to take a low-level 3/4 time slot, and I can't outright declare that I'm semi-retired. Tomorrow's interview is for a writing gig for technology crap, also part-time. They'll take one look at me and say to themselves, "This old fuck? Who wants to listen to his boring stories?"

Truth be told, I don't really want either of these, and so I ask you all--should I use this opportunity to be totally honest in the interview? You know, like when they ask me about my proudest accomplishment, I tell them about getting my boss fired for masturbating at his desk. Or if they ask about my biggest mistake I could admit that to be when I got caught stealing Polonium 210 from the nuclear lab I was working in. Never did find it, either. And as to why I want to work in their facility, I could explain the benefits of having a warm place to shit and a free high-speed internet connection, not to mention all the office supplies.

I need help here, my friends (and enemies). Let's help Olaf scorch the interview. Give him your very best advice.

Patience, My Ass

I've kept my mouth shut for long enough about the new Congress, hoping that justice would finally be served and the cabal of war criminals in the White House, Pentagon, and State Department would be summarily impeached/indicted, tried, sentenced, and our dark national legacy finally lightened at least a little. But, exactly as we feared, the Democrats are going to continue their campaign of gutless inaction. The only changes you see will be cosmetic or rhetorical, and the same interests continue to control the levers of government. When the Dems assume power in January, they will lightfoot their way around Iraq, civil liberties, the Patriot Act, etc. They won't fix Medicare, and they may well try to sell out Social Security by failing to do the one simple thing that would ensure its liquidity for 100 years or more--remove the cap on FICA from the present $97,500 per year set for 2007.

You may not care about this, but you should...unless you earn more than $97,500 per year. Here's what opponents to eliminating the cap say (from a paper in 2004, hence the lower cap):

Eliminating the payroll tax cap immediately affects the 9.2 million Americans who earn more than $87,900, raising their marginal tax rate — the tax paid on each additional dollar of wage income — by 12.4 percent. As a result, earners in the top income tax bracket (35 percent) would pay more than half of each additional dollar they earn in taxes.

Let me ask you a question--does that bother you? Do those top tax bracket folks face homelessness and starvation?

Moving on to other things that won't change, now that NBC has decided that the civil war in Iraq is actually a civil war in Iraq, it will be interesting to see two things develop. For one, the White House will stretch language to unimaginable distortions to deny the fact. This should launch a dozen dissertations in linguistics, at least. The second will be to watch the Democrats squirm away from actually doing anything to get us the fuck out of being in the middle of 5? 6? 7? factions killing each other. A ghoulish pool to start would be to speculate how many more Americans will die before the Democratic Congress finally acknowledges the idiocy and criminality of starting this war and pulls the troops out of the shooting gallery.

But they won't, because amoral political opportunists on the Dem's side voted to give this stupid monarchy of the Chimp's the authority to go to war, and that includes the Kerrys, Clintons, Edwards, etc. Any of these Democratic politicians who voted to authorize the war should be denied any attempt at the presidency in 2008, and should be constantly reminded of how they are all as morally culpable for this disaster as Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and the rest of the criminals.

Meet the new boss--same as the old boss.

Feel fooled again?