Of Playing Ball

I love to see ten gangling gorillas slapping the ball around under bright lights to the roar of fans. I do not much care about the Romans, even though they knew what it was all about: you win, or you dead. Too intense for me. I know more about Kobe, less about the 250 pound marbled Kobe-ushi who lives next door. I know what Phil ate for lunch. Phil, the coach, not Phil, my son. I do not know much about my son, even though I see him almost every day from the corner of my eye while I am watching my game or something. Let me stop for a minute and thank the media for achieving this state of atomicity. Frugal, minimalist, independent. Each individual wired to the signal, now in High Definition.

I play the ponies and politics alike. I toss my coinses and make my choices: heads, Obama, tails, McCain. I want to say the Romans knew how to make a salad of the Caesar they did not like. But it does not make much sense in this ethereal, make-belief world. I want to thank our media keeping me fully informed without being rude. I can watch the floods from my cozy couch. I know all about the real issues: Barack’s pastor, Iran’s weapons of mass destruction, the lying clawing Hillary, gays getting married, kids going to jail for smoking marijuana, abortion, Oprah’s makeup artist, and Britney’s bosom. I stay wired while I get my high fructose corn syrup fix and stuff my face with cheesy chips. See how comfortable I am with their first names: Barack, Hillary, Iran.

The other day someone told me a General Eisenhower joke. The General said in 1956, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

Wanna hear another war joke?

I know illegal Mexicanos dropping in on us is a big problem. They take away cotton-picking jobs at bargain wages that I could do if I wanted. And then they send all the millions they earn to their home in Oaxaca where their farm is dead but the U.S. government subsidized Iowa corn is cheap. May be I can take a vacation there. It will help their local economy, wiping my pale ass. Ha, ha. If they are nice, I will tell them a secret: free markets does not mean free movement of labor. No, I think I will join the war - as a contractor, shoot some Hajis. It seems like a fun thing to do as I watch it on my TV. They say it pays well. And the mothers are crazy about their Marines.

I do not need the money, really. I am on the buddy list. And the buddy-kitty is about 2.5T dollars. Ask IRS. I votes for my Congressman, he votes for me with dollars from the kitty. Perfectly legal like as in a Bill. I scratches his back, he mine. It is a regular church: steal from the poor, distribute to the rich. Why do you think Bill Gates is worth a $100B and the Pope wears Dorothy-red shoes?

Did you know hot air is free? The cool air is not. You pays for it, because my little company smokes coal and belches sulfer dioxide. I have a license to smoke the city brown, the same city that spends the tax money and spins its wheels (pollution?) to show it is on the job cleaning air. Talking about city services, please do separate the garbage into recyclable and not. It helps my buddy corporations make a living. You know corporations are like very rich human beings. Ask the nearest Judge, the corporations live and breathe and can trump your eminent domain any day. Like OJ, they can buy whatever whenever.

Here is another joke, this time about water. A liter of soda is yours for a dollar. The carcinogens and fatteners are free. My buddy HMOs want you fat and marbled. But here is the funny thing. It takes about 7 liters of potable water to make a liter of soda. Seven liters of bottled water can be had for 7 dollars, if you are lucky. I will do the math. Every time you buy a liter of soda, my buddies eat up a loss of 6 or more dollars just to be a good citizen. What a deal.

Okay, okay, I know the math is kind of heavy. So hear this: All over the TV, the rumor has it Winehouse is ill and Britney is gonna climb the Eiffel Tower in the nude for AIDS benefit. Can you beat that?