The Save Our Political Assets act

The Save Our Political Assets act, or “That’s a nice Internet you
got there – it’d be a shame if something happened to it
“!

I was just looking down a page of Google search results, and mentally
drawing lines through the ones that pointed to Wikipedia, since it is
offline today to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, a.k.a. SOPA.

I was asking myself why the Congressmen who introduced the bill would
propose something so ham-handed — after all, SOPA has provisions to remove complete domains from the Internet by altering their DNS entries, thus blanking entire websites out if one of their users is accused of posting copyrighted content.

And then, it hit me: this has nothing to do with copyright.

I just realized that the SOPA legislation isn’t aimed at me. It’s aimed at Larry Page and Sergey Brin and the other “dot com” billionaires who created the Internet as we know it.

SOPA is a bill – pun intended – presented to the new Technorati leaders; a strong-arm invitation to support their local politicians. SOPA is a not-very-subtle invitation to purchase protection from other industries who have already antied up and are, therefore, in the good graces of the Congress: a body addicted to campaign contributions from every fat cat it can seduce or trap.

You heard it here first: this turkey is going to die in committee, because it has already accomplished what it was written to do. You’ll hear stories that it was killed by public outrage over the threat to freedom of speech, but that’s only partly true: it was never intended to live past the point where the Beltway Bandits get back on their Learjets, which I bet are now parked in Silicon Valley while their owners whisper in the ears of the new elites of America and sell their every-so-useful stable of contacts.

SOPA has created so much outrage because, on a visceral level, average people like me have realized it is a shadow-play conducted for the amusement of the golddiggers on capital hill. It remains to be seen if Larry and Sergey will write the check. I hope they don’t.

Mitt Romney wants retarded people to live next door to you

I’ve been imagining that I’m going to put some video on YouTube, saying that Mitt Romney wants everyone to live next door to retarded people. I could take some pictures of the house that’s across the street from me: it’s a home for what are euphemistically called “developmentally delayed adutls”: what we used to call “retarded”.

I haven’t done it. It’s not that Mitt Romney doesn’t bear responsibility: he signed the laws that kept the money going into some private pocket, and I’d bet it’s a pocket that belongs to one of his campaign contributors, but it’s not his fault. He did what was easy, just like shrub, just like the road-show team that made everyone on my block look like retards back when it started.

Mitt Romney wasn’t governor of Massachusetts when the house across the street was purchased. That happened in 1988, just after my wife and I bought our home. It was bought by the husband of a social worker, who took great pains to say he’d done it “as an individual”, and then a slick group of hucksters came in and did a dog and pony show that would have made P.T. Barnum envious. That was the year that Mickael Dukakis was running for president, so they sent the “A” team to deal with us yokels: one of them said that he had flown jets for the Navy, but when I asked him which aircraft, he named one that was never in the Navy inventory. They promised us that the house would be well managed, and the residents no danger. They promised us that a professional management team would be in charge, that the inmates – uh, excuse me – patients – would be carefully screened to make sure they wouldn’t molest our kids or light our homes on fire or anything else. “Constant supervision” is what the jet jockey promised.

The local paper ran a story, telling how we had all piled into the city council meeting and made fools of ourselves, and the reporter had lots of fun portraying us an backwards neanderthals who were afraid of the boogey man.

It was all nicely done: the rumors spread just before the meeting, the reporter who showed up at the perfect moment, the oh-so-glib political operatives who lied to our faces and treated us like fools. Everything slick and professional, just another day slopping the hogs.

They told just enough of the truth to cool off the marks until after the election, and the retarded people moved in, and they’ve been there ever since. They’ve added on to the house over the years, so that it now has more of God’s chosen in it, and they’ve widened the driveway because there’s always two or three cars there, and there are doors slamming and horns blaring when the shifts change and the workers go back to wherever they live.

There’s one guy who walks around the yard in thirty-degree weather, wearing what must be a salvation army suit jacket, and he was picking over the trash before he wandered away yesterday, and I have pictures of it. I’m really, really tempted to put the pictures on YouTube, and add a caption saying “Mitt Romney wants retarded people to live next door to you”, and I imagine it going “viral” and ending Mitt’s presidential bid.

Technically, my son could have resided in that house, or one like it, during his formative years. He has Tourette Syndrome, and a host of other albhabet-soup neurological issues. I spent his formative years listening to the bush-league stand-ins at my local school system, telling me how much they were going to do to help him and how effective their program was going to be and how he was going to turn out OK: always “going to” and never “did”.He has reached the age of Twenty-One, and has attained Eagle Scout, but he’s never going to go to college, never going to have even a glimmer of a hope of being an engineer like me, or a nurse like his mother.

I never expected much for being in Vietnam. I figured that I raised my hand and I took an oath, and I had to take what came with that oath, and in the end that meant taking my orders, and then I took Danang and I took Saigon, and then I took a job with the phone company and a chance to forget. There’s one thing that I did take away from it, though: I thought I was at least entitled to have my kid learn to read and write in a public school. I figured I should at least be entitled to that.

He’s going to be a plumber, like his grandfather, even though it’s the hardest of the trades and he’ll be a broken man with crippling arthritis by the time he’s Fifty, just like my dad.

I want to blame someone, and there’s something in Mitt Romney’s face that scares me silly: the hauteur of a daddy’s boy who likes to tell everyone how many home runs he hit without mentioning that he was born on third base. Truth be told, I don’t think Mitt Romney wants to be elected President: I think he expects to be annointed King. That, of course, is just my opinion, and everyone’s entitled to one, since this is America. Or at least we will be, until Mitt’s corporate masters tell him that it’s all arranged and he can suspend the bill of rights.

My brother told me that Republicans want us all to live in tents and own nothing but a TV set so that they can tell us what to think. He might be right, but I have to face the fact that I’m never going to be higher up the scale than I am right now, and I might be in one of those tents.

I wanted better for my son.

“Amica” doesn’t mean “friend”

I got a letter from the Amica Insurance Company. They say my insurance is going to be cancelled, that my house has fire hazzards in it, and that repairs haven’t been done.

Piss on you, Amica. You’re dropping me because I made two claims, both of which you approved, and now you don’t want my money because I’ve actually dared to use the insurance coverage I paid you for. You’re trying to shame me for having a house that’s not perfect and a life that’s not perfect, so go to hell. I don’t need your attitude, and I don’t need your overpriced “we’re friendly” bullshit.

I’m sure that, in the magic world of twenty-something insurance clerks, the magic ink in the printers leaps off the page and forms itself into competent carpenters and experienced electricians and available roofers. In the magic world of twenty-something insurance clerks, just typing a few words automagically accomplishes the task at hand, even while the homeowner is thousands of miles away hustling to make a living and trying to manage a home repair project by long-distance phone calls and email.

Maybe I’m overcomplicating this. It’s probably not magic ink that removes mold and hammers nails and cuts planks: there must be an app for that.

 

Inventing Old War Stories and Retelling New Ones

My brother arrived about Ten pm. He had driven up from Washington in a Prius that he volunteered to bring here to help out a friend who is getting cancer treatment.

He called me from Rhode Island, and I told him I’d start peeling potatoes. I really don’t bother anymore: I just cut them and throw them in the water. The skin has a lot of vitamins, and the experts says it’s better if you leave it on.

I put some Filet Mignon in the microwave to defrost, and I heard the door and he was looking like he had been rode hard and put away wet.

We started right in talking, about his kids and mine, about the generator I’m going to buy if I can just find out where the real specs are for all the dozen different kinds of engines Briggs & Stratton sells, and we were laughing at each other’s jokes and nodding sympathetically the way you do when someone lets you know that their life has been just as error prone as your own.

The Filet Mignon was really good: he likes his medium, but I like medium rare, but I had put them both in at once and so I took medium. I did, however, tell him that I was going to have the bigger piece, and he laughed at that, and said he knew what was coming when I asked if he wanted it, but I’d been too quick.

My wife got home from work, and she’s nursing a cold, and I gave her some decongestant that is sure to knock her out and sent her to bed, and my brother crashed too, and I stayed up to watch Bill Engvald on NetFlix and write this.

My brother and I will talk again tomorrow, like we do when we get together: inventing odl war stories, and retelling new ones.

Do you know what the difference is between a war story and a fairy tale?

 

Warhorse

There is a job at Curry college. They want someone to do all the stuff I’ve been doing for years.

I filed the application, and discovered that I already have an account there, that their system already knows me. The résumé that they had is still current.

I couldn’t remember what job I had applied for before.

I’ve been filing résumés since forever. It seems like I’ve got a set of skills that nobody wants all of a sudden, and I’m tired of going from contract to contract and always hustling for my next job and smoozing people and working the Rolodex.

There are ads on the TV for the political campaign, echoing the things that I and everyone like me feels: anger and disappointment and shame. I played by the rules, and I worked hard, and I did without and planned for the future.

It seems that the future didn’t plan on me. I hope I get the job.

I Ache All Over

I’m so tired I’m making typing mistakes. I’m so tired I’m unable to comprehend the online tutorials on how to move a WordPress™ blog from one server to another. I’m so tired that I’m watching some show on PBS that is a program-length advertisement for the stage production of “Peter Pan”. I got irritated and had my wife change channels, which is rare with me. Now, I’m watching part two of the “National Treasure” movie. I love ciphers and talking about them, but I can’t remember what a Playfair cipher is.

Anyway, I gave up trying to move my blog over to this server. I’m going to go at it again tomorrow. Tonight, I get to turn off my brain and take some Tylenol and put down the laptop.

I spend the day raking more *(#&*& leaves. I have a tarpaulin that I use to move them from the front yard to the compost pile, and it’s still filled and sitting on the lawn where I tripped over it one last $(*%(*& time and said “Enough!” and called it a day.

I don’t remember getting old. My bones do all the remembering for me.