And Now You've Got Something to Die For

You might know about that cartoon that's been censured for softer modern sensibilities.  That one where a Depression-era hobo flea camps out on Porky Pig's dog. Shenanigans happen.  The dog self-mutilates in an attempt to kill the flea but it's a cartoon trickster god flea who always wins through some contrivance. (Why they bother to put such in the nominal underdog form of a flea or a mouse or a bunny I don't know)  Affairs reach a point where the dog is angrily chasing Porky Pig while being chased by the flea in turn.  A cat observes this says "Well now I've seen everything" pulls out a gun and blows his own head off.  They do not show the suicide on TV anymore and they've completely covered up the existence of the cartoon's final half hour, which shows nothing but the cat involuntarily urinating and convulsing while it gradually bleeds out; bits of cerebellum falling out with the blood. 

A nation of sissies where kids don't throw lawn darts and skin deer anymore. Go ahead and keep telling yourself that but I think you know that you would have simply been happier if you'd been born twenty years later.  You weren't and I was so I win Waka Waka Waka.

I know a bit about Budd Dwyer.  The guy who killed himself on TV, 357 Magnum delivered in Manila envelope fired through his mouth, camera lovingly closing in on shredded sinus muscles falling through his nostrils.  Dwyer was the Republican treasurer for Pennsylvania who was up against corruption charges of some kind.  I do not know the evidence against him or how strong it was.  If he had been innocent after all well that's so much the more unfortunate for everyone.  Nor is the fact that he killed himself necessarily proof of guilt. Maybe it was just a case of politicians naturally having a stronger than average need for public approval and being more deeply hurt by public loathing. His hopes of experiencing national fame as a live man; as a big-state governor or US Senator were out the window now. Now the world will always know about the man who killed himself on live TV on the afternoon of a school holiday.  Way to tell the world to fuck off Budd. Dwyer had dressed for his suicide in a standard business suit. If he had shown up to the press conference naked put his dick on the podium and interviewed it for an hour what would have been the consequences anyway?  The cameras being turned off before he got down to business is what I suppose.

There was talk of Chuck Hagel running for president back when Becky Paul Dan and I went up to Pine Ridge. At our hotel in Rushville I would wake up horridly early for reasons I forget, generally hungover on Hurricane. I would go to a nearby gas station for coffee a sausage biscuit and a World-Herald, fresh off the presses to that distant village, and it was through this that I learned that Chuck Hagel had called a press conferance to announce that he had nothing to announce. He had held an anti-press conference.  This Is Not A Press Conference live on CNN; and it still fills me with pride to know that this Nebraskan had only been posing as a standard farm-state Republican all along; that he was in fact a brilliant culture jammer whose true goal was to make heedless mock of artificial conventions.  Chuck Hagel has no gender identity.  Chuck Hagel keeps a map of the world "upside down".  Chuck Hagel does not sleep but spends his nights liberating industrial hog farms with a ski mask and a blowtorch.  Chuck Hagel is Jack Chick.  Winning converts for atheism has always been his true goal though I guess that much has always been apparent.

My mother's dog Taz died of heart failure at fourteen last week; life likely shortened by Mom's smoking but never mind that for now.  I remember my twentieth Christmas when she was a pup.  She had pulled an entire roll of toilet paper thirty feet into the living room as pups do.  So I put my plate of hash browns and eggs in a low spot took the TP out of her mouth and went to the bathroom to roll it back up.  I came back to find that this tiny poodlish mutt had eaten it all, what must have been twice her own weight in food devoured in eight seconds.  Three nights before in Lincoln my girlfriend and I were in a threesome with a railrider from Casper.  There was LSD at that party.  There was meth a tank of nitrous two brothers who fist fought for hours and an undocumented man from El Salvador who calmly drank Bacardi by the bottle and played solitaire until dawn.  If it's singular and intense than do it.  Eighty isn't so much longer than fourteen; time speeding up with age and all.  It is a commandment that we inhale twice our weight in eggs.