dan's blog

1950s grand canyon

2009-12-04T05:45:00.001-05:00

power and communications

2009-11-29T18:14:00.001-05:00

Limbo-Dweller's Food

2009-11-24T00:53:00.001-05:00

There's Angel Food and
Devil's Food and
Limbo-Dweller's Food

In heaven they have caviar
Served by Billy Graham

In hell they have shit sandwiches
That Satan makes by hand

In limbo it is peanut butter crackers every day
They're not too bad, but not too good, I guess that they're okay.

The Gruntled Employee

2009-11-23T20:19:00.001-05:00

Who is the gruntled employee,
Who grins and takes the shit,
Who gets to work on time each day
But dreams he will someday quit?

Who is the gruntled employee,
Who grins and bears his load,
Who sits in his cube and knows
He's a rube, but hasn't the nerve to explode?

Who is the gruntled employee
Who eats lunch at his desk
Who does his job and is just
A slob who won't put himself at risk?

Who is the gruntled employee,
Who knows his time will come,
While the CEO rakes in the dough
The spreadsheets render him dumb.

Who is the gruntled employee,
Who worries his job is extinct?
Insurance wont' pay and he
Needs layaway and suspects he's somehow been tricked?

Who is the gruntled employee
Who wears a clip-on tie?
Who parks in the lot and his belly's a pot
Cause he scarfs cafeteria pie.

to kill a cat

2009-11-23T13:53:00.000-05:00

On slow days I write rotten fiction, drink tea and threaten to kill the dog.

Oh, I threaten to kill the dog about a thousand times a day, but she is do cute. I say, "Ginger, I'm going to murder you in about five minutes." Then I immediately say, "oooh, you're so cute, I can't murder you right now." Then later she'll bark at something and I'll say, "I hate you so much. I'm going to kill you and make it look like an accident."

Sometimes I threaten to kill the cat. Lately she's been meowing in the middle of the night for no reason and I am ready to strangle her. I'm trying to figure out ways to make it look like an accident. The problem is, cats aren't particularly accident-prone, and so I'm thinking of making it look like a skydiving accident. I've just got to find a place that allows cats to skydive and also lets the owners pack the parachutes for the pets. I've scoured the Internets and the phone book with no success.

I don't think I've got what it takes to go through with it.

Not Fat Elvis, not Fifties Elvis or Bad Movie Elvis, but '68 Comeback Special Elvis

2009-11-22T07:50:00.002-05:00

Last night I was visited by three ghosts. Or maybe it was two ghosts and one creepy old man, I'm not sure anymore. The first was the ghost of Elvis Presley. Not Fat Elvis, not Fifties Elvis or Bad Movie Elvis, but '68 Comeback Special Elvis, perfectly side-burned, tanned and vibrant at a mere 33 years of age. This is the Elvis just four years before his divorce and The Fattening.

My tire had blown on 131, North of Rockford, coming home from a Parcheesi competition. There was no cell phone service, as is always the case on misty November nights with unseasonably mild weather.

Elvis pulled up in a Ford F150. He got out and from the passenger seat, someone yelled "Lets give him a lift, E."

I was in the middle of putting the "doughnut" spare tire on.

Elvis took it from me. "Doughnuts are for eating, not driving on." He took a bite of the spare tire, and ate the entire thing. "Come on."

I accepted the ride, what more could I do? They were heading south and I wanted to get home.

The passenger in the truck got out. It was J. Edgar Hoover, wearing the dress from Beyonce's "Single Ladies" video. It was disturbingly short and gruesomely tight. He leered at me, his fat face behind thick glasses. His sparse greasy hair was in a pitiful comb-over.

I had to sit in the middle. There wasn't much room.

"We didn't just stop by chance," Elvis said. "John, get me my candy will you?"

Hoover reached into the glove box and brought out a prescription medicine bottle. Hoover dumped five or six pills of different colors and sizes into Elvis's hand, and Elvis popped them in his mouth. He had a can of Schlitz in the cup holder and he took a swig.

We were careening down the road at ninety; a light mist fouled the windshield but Elvis seemed unaware. He didn't put on the wipers. The tail lights of the other traffic were just blurs as we snaked through the traffic. The speedometer approached one hundred.

"We're supposed to meet someone in town," Elvis said. "We need someone of the living as a go between."

"Who is it?"

"Don't worry about that," Hoover said. He threw a manila envelope on the dash. "We just need you to hand him this."

"Why can't you guys do it?"

"This guy isn't really 'alive', and he isn't dead yet," Elvis said.

who are these smiling devils?

2009-11-15T14:00:00.003-05:00

Who are these vile men who have robbed us? These men who can't recall how it happened? These well-dressed men, these well-heeled, well connected little men with their jewel-encrusted lives, with their trophy wives and mansions behind gates of brick and iron? Who are these thieves of old women's savings, these destroyers of jobs? Who are these men in expensive ties, this smiling devils in expensive ties who trade imaginary coins, who bet our tiny treasures out from under us, who ask us for more, who tax us by proxy, who sell us lies, who bind us in impossible contracts written with impossible words in a language of their own creation that is impossible to understand? Who are these titans who are too big to fail? Who are these men in princely dress who sit and smile with fresh haircuts, with their limited liability and Windsor knots and prepared statements who tell us how they can't recall how they became wealthier than kings? Who are these spawners of empty strip malls and foreclosed houses? Who are these lordly aristocrats who contribute nothing? Who are the ruling class? When did this caste system come about? Who are these devils in their ties that squeeze us for more, these prescription drug pushers, these loan sharks and cookers of books with their slick commercials and shiny advertising campaigns? Who are these gentlemen surrounded by private armies in Ivory Towers in the sky? How do they believe that they will one day fit through the eye of a needle? These men who have made us a nation of debtors, a nation of worried-well hypochondriacs who are told to ask our doctor, ask our doctor, ask our doctor? Who are these devils who poison our minds with network drek, these thieves, these propagandists of prosperity, who hypnotize us when they whisper:

"Strive, and you can be like one of us."

Lies. They want us to be obedient workers. We will not be allowed to join them. They will loan us the money to strive for material things and then make slaves of us all. They will enslave us with an idea of sophistication. Their goals and the goals of the common man are not the same. They preach free enterprise, but they get gargantuan handouts from the treasury that no poor person on welfare will ever receive. They have privatized their profits but socialized their risk. They take a King's Ransom while our roads and schools and hospitals and society fall apart around us so they can live like Gods.

Who are these puppet masters who have hijacked our country? They steal from us; they fill our legislature with lobbyists. The lawmakers are the lobbyists. The Corporations write the laws. The thieves write the laws and they make their thievery legal. Who is this gang of thieves that has run all countries for a hundred years? Who are these men who make themselves rich beyond the imagination of any mortal man? How long will these leeches engorge themselves on the backs of the poor? Who is this Aristocracy? How did this Kleptocracy happen? Who is this Royalty that has appeared before us? Who are these men in expensive shoes who stand on our necks? Who are these devils who put us out on the street, these loan sharks, these owners of offshore sweatshops, these smiling killers who control the newspapers, the lawmakers, and the military? Who are these makers of war for profit? Who are these murderers of small business? Who are these usurpers of local identity? Who are these devils that have reduced us all into database records in basement server farms? Who are these smiling men in ties who have reduced us to consumers of their plastic poisons? Who jams all this propaganda down our throats? Who are these men that make indentured servants of us all? Who are these Smiling Johnnies who have damaged this land from within far more severely than any enemy without could ever damage us?

Why exactly are these smiling devils in charge?

procrastination

2009-11-11T13:29:00.001-05:00

Muzak Moment

2009-11-02T08:22:00.002-05:00

Muzak Moment: Paula Abdul's 1988 hit "Opposites Attract" while buying milk and bread at the grocery store, 8:03 AM. None of the senior citizens were dancing. They cut out the "MC Scat Cat" rap, which was a relief.

Why can't Chevy make lawn mowers?

2009-11-01T14:39:00.001-05:00

Chevy has a commercial where Howie Long compares Chevys to Hondas. In the end he says, "Honda has one thing we can't compete with..." and they show a Honda lawn mower. I guess that was supposed to make some kind of point, but my first reaction was, "Why can't Chevy make lawn mowers?"

rejoice!

2009-11-01T13:59:00.000-05:00

This is the day that the tilt of the earth in relation to the sun, atmospheric conditions, and the complete total of all circumstances up to this point in time has made!

Let us rejoice and be glad!

today's word is Sysyphian

2009-10-27T13:21:00.000-04:00

Sisyphus was a king punished in Tartarus by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.

The word sisyphean means, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, "endless and unavailing, as labor or a task."

Find the word Sysyphian used in this letter.

Sysyphian.

read the letter here: http://tinyurl.com/yg85uog (pdf)

podcast #154 is out

2009-10-20T09:20:00.001-04:00

danmanning.com podcast #154 is out. Get all my podcasts at www.danmanning.com/19.php where there's a link to the iTunes page. Why? I have no idea.

download now!

generic blog post

2009-10-07T22:25:00.004-04:00

today I took The Complete Works of Shakespeare to Founders and read Macbeth while I ate lunch. If there is one lesson to be taken from Macbeth it is this: don't listen to witches, they will complete screw with your mind. And killing makes you feel guilty. There are probably a lot more lessons in that story, but I'm just getting past the language.

After lunch I took my study to the Common Ground Coffee shop where I had much coffee and smoked a cigar.

Kanye West Was Right!

2009-09-28T11:07:00.001-04:00

Holy Crap! I just say the "single ladies" video for the first time, and Kanye West was right: Beyonce DID make the best music video of all time!

a perfect evening

2009-09-24T21:22:00.001-04:00

Today was our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Deb and I went downtown to have dinner. The Artprize exhibits were on display everywhere downtown, the weather was perfect, and we had a great time touring the exhibits.

The Chop House

We ended up having dinner at The Chop House. This place has such balls, they actually drew the balls on the stick figure of a bull they have for their restaurant logo. I had the best fillet minion, the best piece of beef I have ever had in my life. The service was amazing. When they bring your food, two waitresses bring the orders and with a little signal they simultaneously set the food down in front of everyone at the table at once. The wine was perfect. The lobster bisque was perfect. Deb had beef Wellington. But that fillet minion was a life changing experience. The ambiance was perfect. The lighting was perfect. The music was perfect; fifties and sixties style Vegas music. I expected the ghosts of Frank Sinatra or Martin and Lewis to walk by.

And then, they have a cigar lounge in the basement. Deb ordered some orange liquor coffee the waitress set on fire at the table. I had a cigar and coffee.

Anywhoo, that was our night, and it was friggin' awesome.

A Rant on Tuesday

2009-09-22T13:01:00.000-04:00

In America today, every important issue is not a problem to be solved, but a contest of wills between two "teams". Condoms or abstinence. Jesus or damnation. Capitalism or socialism. We are told that these are the options. These are the false choices. For every problem, we are only allowed to choose between two solutions. There might be dozens of reasonable solutions, but we only get to choose from two, crafted in such a way as to garner the most votes for politicians whose only goal is reelection.

Whatever the problem, we are told it is a struggle between good and evil, morality and corruption, misanthropy and philanthropy, greed and largess, right and wrong, ignorance and knowledge, folly and wisdom, superstition and enlightenment, freedom and tyranny.

These are imaginary struggles handed to us in slick media productions by charismatic public figures that are trusted simply because they are in front of cameras and microphones. They are photogenic. They are articulate. They are slim. They are well dressed. They must be right.

Every issue becomes a football to facilitate a "win" for the "team". The United States has been artificially divided into two teams with public figures who claim to speak for the masses. Our politicians create false dichotomies, false choices out of every problem that needs to be solved, and they tell us that every solution needs to be solved by winning, the facts be damned. Win at all costs! Death to all who oppose us!

And to our shame, we have lost our ability to think critically. We do not read books. We do not ask questions. We do not research facts. We do not like math. These matters are too complex. Let someone else handle it. We are busy.

We join a party, we follow authority, and we do not question that authority again.

We are a house divided. And while we fight amongst ourselves, we are conquered by the powerful groups who quietly work behind the scenes to make sure the poor do not rise up and strangle the rich.

The two "sides" are made into bogeymen for each other by those at the top who are screwing both sides. The rich, the connected, the corporations and the military contractors control the lawmakers, and through them they control us all.

For every televised lunatic yelling stupidities beneath a misspelled handwritten sign, there are a thousand polite people who know how to behave in public. No one puts a camera on polite, well behaved people. That lone lunatic becomes the straw man for the other side to hold up as an example. "Here's the other side," we say. "They're crazy."

Platitudes. Bullet points. Slogans. Sound-bites.

If we weren't so busy clawing at each other's throats over manufactured "epic battles of ideology", we might lift the veil from our eyes and see that church-goers, bohemians, gays, conservatives, and liberals are all being screwed by powerful groups that are never elected, never seen, and answer to no one. These powerful groups bribe our "representatives" and these "representatives" represent no one but the groups that purchase their souls.

Conservatives are told that liberals are destroying the country. Liberals are told that conservatives are destroying the country.

We call each other names: We are fascists, Nazis, socialists, communists, capitalist pigs, hippies, hypocrites and liars. We are greedy, naive, and cynical. We don't understand the issues. We take things out of context. We misrepresent the facts. We cherry pick the details. We manipulate the media. We are weak on terrorism. We are war mongers. We are radicals. We are apathetic. We are extremists. We want the status-quo. We are anarchists. We are promoting the homosexual agenda. We are bigots. We are racists. We are haters. We are self-righteous bible thumpers. We are mouth-breathing red-necks. We are wine-swilling liberals. We are short-sighted. We are trying to destroy the country. We are trying to take over the country. We hate immigrants. We are giving the country away. We support death panels. We hate the poor. We are selfish. We are going to bankrupt the country.

We are none of these things and all of these things. We are Americans, but we have been set against each other by something nameless.

Who are the real enemies of the people? The churches that pedal guilt, nostalgia, superiority and American exceptionalism. The government that is run by corporations. The corporations that push drugs and hypochondria. The media that distracts us with celebrity gossip and vapid programs. The corporations that tell us we smell bad, we're fat, we're old, our breath is bad, our clothes are outdated, our teeth are yellow, and that we must consume, consume, consume to make it all better. The news organizations that don't investigate and don't report because they have been co-opted by their corporate sponsors. The bankers who count imaginary coins. The insurance companies that abandon the sick. The loan sharks that offer personalized credit cards and crushing debt so that we might consume, consume, for the love of God, consume! The Military Industrial Complex that wages wars to sell weapons while it kills our children; they tell us it is patriotism.

When will we wake up and recognize the real enemy?

Aw screw it; those new iPods look really sweet. Kanye West did that one thing. Who will make it to the playoffs? Who will win Dancing With the Stars? I can't believe Paula Abdul isn't on American Idol anymore. There are new CSI episodes this fall. I need to update my Facebook status. There's a cat playing the piano on the Internet.

kanye!

2009-09-18T08:00:00.001-04:00

Captain Crunch is high on crack.

2009-09-15T23:05:00.001-04:00

What the hell is wrong with Captain Crunch? His eyes are bugging out of his head, a look of desperate expectancy, as if he is pleading with you to respond to his manic insanity. He grips his spoon as if he's gripping a butcher knife, and he looks so hopped up on dope he would beat you to death with the spoon before he realized what was happening. His mouth is open as if he's screaming. Why is his mouth open like that? Even his tongue is jumping around, as if he's ululating before blowing up himself and all the insane kids on the box with some explosives he's thrown together on his ship.

The box has a green circle in the bottom corner that reads "Smart Choices Made Easy". "Smart Choices"? This crap is pure poison. There's a (disclaimer?) explanation on the side that says "Cap'n Crunch" is a smart choice because it is low in saturated fat. Please. What kind of bullshit is this? If the FDA is allowing this kind of bullshit, why don't they just shut them down already? Are they trying to claim that Captain Crunch is good for you? That's legal? Is no one monitoring this bullshit? Captain Crunch is sugar. It is "Corn flour, sugar, oat flour, brown sugar, coconut oil, salt, niacinamide, yellow 5, (what the fuck is 'yellow 5'?) reduced iron, zinc oxide, yellow 6, thiamin mononitrate, BHT(a preservative), pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, and folic acid."

Yes, that is a smart choice made easy. The kids on the back of the box are all zonked out of their minds. Their eyes are all bugged out. They're mouths are open in silent screams. There's a website where they can collect information about you listed on the box.

But you know, for all that, it's delicious.

I am not a cop.

2009-09-14T18:01:00.001-04:00

So I'm sitting in my white car, windows down, in the middle school parking lot, waiting for my daughter to get out of basketball practice. A mom in an SUV pulls up in the next space, windows down, and starts chatting on her cell phone.

Her son, maybe five or six years old, peeks up front and sees me and says, "What's up?"

I say, "What's up?"

He says, "You a cop?"

I say "No, I just fix computers."

The mom busts out laughing, I bust out laughing.

generic blog post

2009-09-07T20:14:00.002-04:00

I have been walking a lot in the mornings. You notice a lot of things going on regular walks. I enjoy walking more than running, because I can do it anytime, I don't need a shower afterward, I can do it every day, and I can stop for coffee (or a beer) or do some banking on the way.

I am old.

shameless self promotion

2009-08-25T17:31:00.001-04:00

Everyone should go to http://www.talesofthetalisman.com/ and order Tales of the Talisman, Volume 5, Issue 1. When it arrives in the mail, turn directly to page 42 and behold the awesome fiction. I wrote the story found there, and it is the most awesome short story you will ever read. Or not. But it is just one great story in a magazine packed full of great stories which you must have.

Today's MUZAK moment:

2009-08-19T12:03:00.001-04:00

REO Speedwagon's 1981 power ballad, "Keep on Loving You" from their 1980 smash album "High Infidelity": While buying a gallon of 2% milk and a box of 13 gallon tall kitchen bags (white) at the Save-A-Lot.

Muzak Moments:

2009-08-18T13:15:00.002-04:00

Madonna's 1984 hit "Borderline" while getting coffee at 8:45 in the morning. The perky yet refreshingly slutty 26 year old (when it was recorded) told me how I was making her "lose her mind" while I was getting my coffee.

Awkward MUSAK moments:

2009-08-17T12:48:00.001-04:00

(1) "For Your Eyes Only" 1982 hit by Sheena Easton endured while buying cat food at Meijer at 10:30AM.

(2) The 1979 Rupert Holmes hit "Escape" (The Piña Colada Song) while watching The Elderly chew their breakfasts and lunches at Perkins while dining with the family. This was followed by the 1978 hit "Le Freak" by the disco band Chic.