This is a republication of a piece originally entitled "Platform 2006." Normally we wouldn't re-post a piece, but this seems more relevant now than ever given the current political climate.

DM

Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

- Walter Sobchak, The Big Lebowski

"Collect call from a 'Mr. Sparkle.'"

"From where?"

"San Francisco, sir."

"Why collect?"

"I don't know, sir. Will you accept the charges?"

"What does a phone call cost these days?"

"I don't know sir."

"You're the operator."

"I don't have a land line, sir."

"Fuhhh-- Go ahead... Put it through..."

"Hey dude." I immediately recognized the voice.

"Alex? Why the fuck would you call me collect?"

"I wanted to see if they still did that."

"Why not just ask the operator if you could do it and leave it at that?"

"I don't know. It got away from me..."

"Working hard again, eh? Who's this call getting billed to?"

"Haven't decided yet. I've been soaking the Chinese clients a lot these days. They mint bills on the shitter."

"So business is good?"

"The money's OK. The people... well that's different. It's like that Hot Tuna song, you know, the one--"

"'99 Year Blues.'"

"I always forget that title. Makes no sense."

"I hum it around the office..."

"But fuck all that... I'm not calling about me. I read that piece about Zelig and you have it all fucking wrong. You're just popping off nihilist rants."

"As opposed to what? Your book of virtues?"

"I thought you might become the first Dadaist blogger, but you're no Dadaist."

"So then I'm a Dadaist?"

"Only if you stop writing again."

"I can't."

"That's because you have no values. You're a groundless scowl... taking potshots from the bully pulpit of anonymity."

"I'm doing a book."

"Then you're a sellout."

"Oh, really... Who should I follow?"

Silence. 1... 2.... 3... "D.B. Cooper. There was a hero. That's escape..."

"He jumped out of a plane with a stolen bag of cash."

"Exactly..."

"Except he died."

"Never found a body, dude."

"But they found the cash."

"It wasn't about the money."

"You hypocrite fuck... You keep 'ACME Corp's' money from Uncle Sam... You're guarding whores from rapists..."

"I'm buying a boat... a fast one."

"They'll find you dead, washed up on the rocks in bloody bits like that Peterson girl, or floating in the harbor like Natalie Wood, face down with a dean's list blood alcohol level..."

"I'll have stood for something."

"What?"

"The futility of challenging physics."

"Moving... I'll read from 'Jonathon Livingston Seagull' at your memorial. You'll need a plot next to Nicole Ritchie, or that deformed girl who looks like Gumbi with grapefruit tits... what the fuck's her na--"

"Tori Spelling?"

"I always forget her name."

"You can't do any better. What are your beliefs? You don't even vote."

"I vote."

"For who?"

"I voted for Clinton, then I voted for Bush."

"Like I said - no conviction."

"You still voting for LaRouche?"

"Hey, I have conviction. I take a stand."

"So do I."

"Like what?"

"Uh...

--- tumbleweeds ---

...Shit, my other line's ringing. I think it's a judge's chambers. I'll call you back..."

What do I believe in?

* * *

I believe in brown silver dollar nipples, Taco Bell bean burritos, a flat tax, a canyon-sized separation of Church and State, one irons from deep rough and the endless regenerative powers of a Celtic liver. Pam Anderson's tits look like shit, and Bill O'Reilly should be boiled in bacon grease and served in an Al Franken reduction. That Bill Hicks died young proves God's vindictive and decisive; that Howard Dean is allowed to speak in public proves he probably enjoys "Arrested Development" and "Monty Python." If you have a DailyKos account, there's a 37% chance you didn't have sex last year. If you're a rabid Rush Limbaugh nut, there's a 42% chance. The Holy Ghost is the "Dick Cheney" brains of that operation. Sean Hannity proves the Angry White Male is more than Michael Douglas' bigoted lunatic from "Falling Down"... He can have great hair.

Yes, the pope used to masturbate. T.O.'s pathetic, but not nearly as pathetic as the thousands of people who've spent the last 18 months discussing him as though he were a pillar of our foreign policy. The WMD in Iraq story was an excuse for people who needed one or didn't know any better. You can never underestimate a person's selfishness or insecurity. Ninety percent of things break even at the end of the day, but if something appears to have a 50/50 shot of working out, there's a ninety percent chance it won't. People who use "patina" a lot tend to pronounce it "pateena," and are still upset about getting wait listed at Cornell. If I knew I could get away with it, I'd... hell, we don't have the bandwidth to fit that one here.

I enjoy Anchor Steam with omelettes, the way My Morning Jacket pisses on the rock song's accepted "arc" structure and that, no matter how stacked they are, the Buckeyes find a way to lose one game a year. It's probably time for Joe Pa, Mick, Keith and Rumsfeld to hang it up. Using "delicious" to describe anything other than food is only acceptable if you're Harvey Fierstein. Reading David Foster Wallace is a supposedly fun thing I'll never do again. "Fundamentalist" anything is code for "our women know their place and shut the fuck up when we tell them to." There were so many better cities for Katrina to strike... Public buggery and white slavery are more popular concepts in modern America than "personal responsibility" and "assumption of the risk." Eric Clapton's been phoning it in for 30 years, Bill Murray's played the same character in his last four movies and "Crash's" Oscar proves Hollywood has the maturity and emotional depth of the average prom queen.

I believe if you can identify with more than 70% of either party's platform, you shouldn't be allowed to vote. Gun control is silly and senseless, and gays should be allowed to marry, if for no other reason than to infuriate people who give a damn where a pair of consenting adults he doesn't know stick their dicks. As Bill Clinton said, abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." Rarer still should be taxes, lawsuits, the average man's forced interfacing with Big Govt and The War on What Your Broker, Doctor, Lawyer, Plumber and Half the People in the Front Pew on Sunday do Recreationally with No Adverse Consequences. P.J. O'Rourke properly defined a conservative as a "liberal who's been mugged by reality." Ralph Nader properly defined both parties when he noted the difference between them was "the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door." There'll be 112% voter turnout in many districts in Philadelphia this Fall.

In a perfect world, the Southern Baptist Convention and Al Queda would fight one final crusade, on a football stadium sized barge, 700 miles off Madagascar... with tactical nukes. Homophobes have no grasp of market theory. Unless you're looking for true love, quantity is quality. Every escort service in the yellow pages leads to the same telephone in some guy named "Richie's" basement. A lot of people are pretty sure Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and Chef Boyardee have something in common. Schadenfreude's a shitty shameful thrill, except when it applies to Duke and Notre Dame. Paul Krugman and Anne Coulter should be forcibly married, Chris Hitchens is the finest journalist alive and Bill Maher's opinions are unfairly associated with his face and demeanor. Fitzgerald nailed us for the ages in 1925; Willy Loman's extinct in a world of Prozac and adjustable rate financing...

Consistency is a wonderful quality for peanut butter. Debate the place of chivalry in a post-sexual revolution world all you like - holding the door's the only way to check out her ass. The person who demands most shrilly to sit in the non-smoking section will order the cheesecake and cookie dough ice cream split dessert, with extra whipped cream. Anything's a gateway drug if you have shit for brains. That you're happy with yourself doesn't mean you're attractive. Condoleeza Rice burns out one Rabbit each trip through the Middle East. No person with any sense of decency declares himself a Braves fan. You'll lose tons of weight on Atkins, in 20 lb increments, evacuated thrice monthly. Closure's alright if you're out of vodka... Revenge is always too much effort. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta. People who use the word "justice" a lot aren't much fun to drink with...

I know you can't fart into the seat in First Class, most people don't get "Shakes the Clown" references and it's better to make up something - anything - than not have an answer in court. Underwear's superfluous, but you have to be vigilant about The Shake. The Holy Trinity of Modern politics is Lee Atwater, Richard Daley, Sr. and Josef Goebbels. The Conspiracy is in your head - it's your own fault you don't have as much cash, status or stuff as you want. A cruise is a great way to cure sex addiction. You'd be much better served to read "Atlas Shrugged" than "It Takes a Village..." in the next 20 years. In my perfect world, the difference between me and you would be five bank accounts, three ounces and two vehicles. That Bernie Ebbers and Jeff Skilling deserve jail doesn't change the fact that most of people who lost their asses were as qualified to be in the market as you or I are to perform brain surgery (assuming you're not a brain surgeon... which is a safe assumption).

Whiskey's truth serum... You can't depend on a drunk, but you can't trust a teetotaler. You'll never hear anyone who's been on "the bus" argue against it. We all pay for sex at some point; some of us just don't recognize the exchange. If you select a spouse based on religion, ethnicity or color, you deserve to get one... with herpes. People who pitch herbal cures tend to use every herb but the one they should. I struggle to differentiate many of the illegal immigrants I read about from the people who came through Ellis Island. It's debatable whether those who donate money to "Hillary '08" or the Intelligent Design Crowd employ a more astounding suspension of disbelief. You can consume roughly 3.5 times whatever the Government tells you is a safe daily amount of anything. I'm inclined to buy a lot of what protesters say, until I see and hear them saying it. Alternative medicine is like alternative music - investing in either is betting on getting that one Nirvana out of hundreds of thousands of "Foamheads," "Argyle Eclipses" and "Bonerman5000s."¹ There's no worse hypocrite than an acid nut who preaches about organic foods. Never fuck a Creationist...

... unless she's really, really hot.

I believe the shitrain's darkest before it clears, and that any of us can make a difference. But I also believe that those of us who should be doing so are part of a huge majority too turned off by the carnival of thugs, saps and swine running the turnstiles in The Big Processes to engage them. Nothing that happens four weeks from now is going to change our lives drastically. The same predictable bought-and-paid-for degenerates are racing for top slots in the Parliament of Whores. A blue or red wrapper doesn't mean much when the bag's full of shit... In this festering cycle, with the gallery of Jesus-shuckers, pork pimps, fear evangelists and entitlement pushers offered in my state, I'm thinking I'll buy some nitrous oxide at Wonderland, sneak a balloon in to the voting booth, suck deeply and mash my hand against the levers like Frank Booth groping Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet. "Mommy... mommy..."

Yes... It's that kind of voting year... And I'm a weak man. If I had any conviction, I'd do what a true Dadaist would - what I ought to do... not show up at all.

----------

¹ A remarkably misunderstood rock and/or roll band.

Posted by PhilaLawyer at 9:26 AM

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