Homer Simpson Politics

Thank God in Heaven that MSNBC is bringing news junkies like myself the stories that really matter. In case no one else has noticed, MSNBC has the most attractive anchors in twenty-four-hour news, but aside from that, MSNBC is the self-described, "place for politics." How could I not watch?

Well, today the good folks at my favorite cable news network are doing more than their share to help undecided voters pick their ponies. In the most exciting presidential race in forty years, a race with no incumbent president or vice president running for either party, a race (especially on the democratic side) that is closer than anyone would have ever expected, only the folks at MSNBC are doing their part to leave no stone unturned. In the last two hours, MSNBC has shown me, eager viewer numero uno, the same compelling graphic no less than three times, and now I would like to share it with you:

Campaign Bakery Bills:
Clinton: $5,950.53
Dodd: $3,301.22
Obama: $1,877.28
McCain: $1,040.49
Romney: $ 992.91
courtesy of MSNBC

Yes, Dear Friends (an expression I've picked up from Senator McCain), isn't it just like a liberal to be a big spender in the pastry department. But I have to hand it to her, Senator Clinton knows that the way to a voter's heart is through his or her stomach and has allocated her donut money accordingly. Senator Obama, widely accepted as the most liberal candidate has spent less than 2 grand on donuts. Who are you trying to fool, Senator Obama? Don't think that, just because you're in the middle of the pack in the pastry expenditures department, the more fiscally conservative independents are going to be foolish enough to think you're not going to spend this country into the ground. Governor Romney, that cheap bastard, never even broke the thousand dollar mark. Perhaps it is this thriftiness that's made him the millionaire that he is.

More telling than what's on the chart is what isn't. Where's Mike Huckabee? Perhaps, as a thank you for spreading The Word, Sweet Baby Jesus, Himself, provides the Southern Baptist preacher and vehement creationist with donuts free of charge. Governor Huckabee is, after all, in the business of miracles. Just ask him. And where is everyone's favorite libertarian, Ron Paul? Well, I think the answer is simple. He firmly believes that the government should not be responsible for supplying its people with pastries. The people should feel free to invest their pastry money in what ever way they see fit. Maybe they don't want to invest in pastries at all. Maybe they're a bacon and eggs kind of crowd. "Buy your own fucking breakfast," says the Texas congressman.

Tune in next week when MSNBC reveals which candidate tops the list in toilet paper spending.

And Then the Prophet Said

I had a dream the other night in which I met Senator Hilary Clinton. She asked me how I felt about her. I said, "I don't know. I have this viscerally positive reaction to you. I know I shouldn't like you, but I do. What can I do?"

"Get me the youth vote," the senator said.

Waiting for the Sky to Fall

When I was little, the thing they told kids about tornadoes was, "they sound like a train." I didn't question what seemed like an absolute, so every time I heard a train whistle in the distance, I shit my pants a little.

When I was in the eighth grade, my science teacher, Mr. Bruns, showed my class a horrible made-for-t.v. movie called, The Day After. It was an uplifting little film about nuclear holocaust. Here's what I remember about that movie, after all the bombs went off, people started drinking well water without realizing that it was loaded with radioactive deliciousness. Someone had the unfortunate experience of being outside at the time of the explosion and was instantly blinded. Some man sat on an overturned cow carcass with a shotgun and blew anyone's brain's out who came near what was, presumably, the man's only food source. Steve Gutenberg, of Three Men and a Baby fame, got stir crazy and went outside, then, after a few days, his skin started rotting off. A few days after the explosion, a disgusting looking Gutenberg hobbled to the hospital to find it packed to the gills with people in varying degrees of gamma-ray-induced decay. A baby was born to symbolize hope. Jason Robards (an older, now dead, actor) went looking for his family, and when he got to where his house should have been, he just crumbled in a heap of despair and waited for flesh-eating death to take him away. After the movie, Mr. Bruns emphasized two things. First, the shit in these bombs has a half life of hundreds of thousands of years. Thus, if one ever goes off, even if you survive the initial blast, which you won't, you can never go outside again for the rest of your life or your flesh will rot off, begging the question, how many packets of Ramen Noodles should I buy to get through the next 80 years. Second, "this could totally happen. Right now, Russia has dozens of Nucs pointed right at us." The Cold War was over by this points, but I didn't sleep for five years. I grew up close to an air force base, and every time a cargo plane flew over my house, I thought the end had come.

There's a satellite falling out of the sky. It's expected to crash sometime in late February or early March. We're not to worry. In the past five years, 328 satellites have fallen out of the sky, and no one has been hurt. After all, the earth is mostly water. In the unlikely event that there is damage or injury, the government is fully prepared to offer some monetary compensation to the victim(s). At four-in-the-morning a few nights ago, when I was sleeping as deeply as I ever do, which is not deeply at all, a window rattling clap of thunder startled me and my heart nearly to death. My first disoriented thought was, the satellite has come early, and it's landed on the White Castle across the street.

Last night I dreamed that I was on a plane that crashed. No big deal, we were only hovering about ten feet from the surface of the ocean when we went down, and we landed on a sandbar. It was really more an inconvenience than anything else. As we switched planes and the young pilot responsible apologized for the mishap then took his seat in the new cockpit I turned to the flight attendant next to me and asked, "are they really going to let this guy fly this plane too?"

"Not to worry," she said, "he just gets it off the ground. Then the real pilot takes over from there." Apparently getting off the ground is the easy part.

The Game

This is not chivalry, nor is it your best pick up line, "you can go ahead of me. It's not like I'm going to wet myself or anything."

When Bad Movies Happen to Good People

My hero, Janeane Garofalo, is starring in a Lifetime movie. It doesn't appear to be of the Meredith Baxter Birney or Markie Post variety, the sort where some woman's husband turns out to be a murderer, or where a teenage daughter has a raging eating disorder. No, this appears to be a comedy of sorts. The synopsis on imdb.com states that, "a disgruntled music critic travels cross-country with her inheritance, a Jack Russell Terrier named Binky." This is, I think, the acting equivalent of getting a job as a greeter at Walmart. I want to cry.

Nancy Sinatra Can Kiss My Ass

I have this pair of riding boots, which is to say that that is their style, not that I have ever worn them while riding a horse, or a motorcycle, or a lumberjack. These boots, I fear, were not made for walking. A few days ago, while walking to class, the heal of my boot got caught right around the sixth step from the ground. I would like to say that I caught myself on the railing. I would like to say that I, at least, took the guy I was walking with down with me. Alas, it was just me and my fat ass, tumbling towards humiliation, landing on the edge of the first step with all my weight on my left shin. I think it went, left shin, right shin, left knee, turn, ass before I finally hit the bottom, at which point I was facing the steps that I'd just gracefully descended. I ignored the pain, and immediately sprang up like a gymnast who's hoping that the judges won't notice she fucked up her landing. "Oh my God, are you all right," was the most popular question posed by the onlookers.

"I'm fine. I'm fine." It's just my pride.

Are you ever disappointed to discover that you haven't really hurt yourself as badly as you think you have? As I walked toward the bathroom to pull down my pants and assess the damage, I was semi-convinced that the only reason I was standing was that I was in shock. I was hesitant to look down, afraid that I would see blood seeping through my jeans, due to the fact that I'd almost certainly partially severed my leg at the spot on my shin that took all the impact. Imagine my dismay when I got into the bathroom stall and dropped trow only to find that I'd scraped a bit of skin off my shin and my knee. This was kid's stuff, really. The sort of thing my fourteen-year-old self would have done with an eraser if she felt that people weren't paying enough attention to her. Annoyed, I pulled up my pants, flushed the toilet (not because I'd used it, but because I didn't want the other ladies to think that I had and then hadn't flushed,) and walked to class, taking a moment to consider throwing myself down the stairs, this time on purpose, in hopes of more dramatic results.

Waxing Political Again

During tonight's Republican debate Mayor Giuliani said, "when the country was 7 out of 10 in favor of the war, Hilary supported it.  Now that the country is 6 out of 10 against it, so is she."  He says this to show that she's flip-flopping at the will of the people.  Here's the problem: we live in a republic.  We live in something called a representative democracy.  There are a couple reasons for this.  One, it's impractical for everyone in a country to vote every time a decision needs to be made, so we elect people who we think would vote the same way we would when it comes time to make one of these decisions.  I personally find it refreshing that there are people out there representing us who follow polls, who say, "well, my constituents don't like this, I better not vote for it, or they're going to assert the power that they have over me, and they're not going to re-elect me."  That's how this government works, if the people who represent us act in a way that we don't agree with, we get to fire them.  What is wrong with Senator Clinton voicing the will of the people she serves?  This brings us to the second (read real) reason that our government was set up the way it was.  The founding fathers, and apparently most of the people who currently represent, or wish to represent us, don't think we're smart enough to make informed decisions.  Now, I get that we don't have the resources at our fingertips that elected officials do.  I don't remember the last time a 5-star general sat down with me to talk military strategy or disclosed classified information to me.  But I do think that after 6 years of war in which nothing seems to be getting accomplished, in which we start to see people who have served in the Middle East saying that enough is enough, I think it is well within our right to say, we've had it.  Your time is up.  Let's put an end to this, or we'll fire you.  Whether Mayor Giuliani thinks we're smart enough to make this decision or not.