So on or around election day, Carin had the idea of both of us trying to get tickets to the 56th (remember that number, it’s important later) Presidential Inauguration Swearing In Ceremony. I figured the odds were astronomical, but it was worth a shot. So between us, we sent a total of six emails to our Senators and our respective Representatives. Then we pretty much forgot about it.

Then today, I get a message saying she got an email saying that she’d won two tickets in the California 22nd district lottery. The email reads as follows.

We are pleased to let you know that after conducting a lottery, your name was selected to receive inaugural tickets for the 53rd Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2009.

In order to accommodate as many ticket requests for this historic inauguration, a lottery was conducted of ticket requesters. While your name was selected,:

· If you requested 1 ticket, 1 ticket has been reserved for you.

· If you requested more than 1 ticket, 2 tickets have been reserved for you.

The number of tickets that have been reserved for you and your party is: 2

Based on procedures issued by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, we will be given all of the inaugural tickets allotted to the 22nd Congressional District the week prior to the Inauguration. And in order to ensure that ticket recipients are constituents of the 22nd Congressional District, tickets must be picked up by yourself from my Washington D.C. office on Friday January 16. We will send more information regarding ticket distribution.

Please respond to this email, no later than Friday, December 12, indicating that you are still planning on attending the inauguration and would still like tickets so you and your party can attend. If you are no longer attending the inauguration, we would appreciate knowing so that the tickets can be returned to the lottery system so another neighbor of ours might be able to attend.

Thank you for your patience.

Notice anything fishy? That’s right, the email mentions the 53rd inauguration. We’re both really, really hoping this is just a typo, and not some really scummy scam or prank or hoax. This is history, and we’d both be honored to witness it. The email address certainly looks legit from the forward, but I haven’t been able to look at the full headers yet, so that’s no help. We’ve both called all over the place to try and find somebody who might be able to get ahold of someone in Representative Kevin McCarthy’s office to confirm the status of the email. Nobody’s picking up the phone on a Sunday. Grrrrrrrr . . . Luckily we’ve got our plane tickets price saved until tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll be able to clear this up in time to not get ripped off any further on plane fare. The next hurdle will be accommodations, but for that I have a cunning plan . . .

So, if you’re reading this, please send us good mojo. I promise to share the most awesome possible pictures from whatever vantage we get.

Yeah, not really. Arbor Day is a good idea, but I wanted this entry to fit today’s apparent theme of holiday bashing. I thought the theme was going to be something a little angrier, like “Useless, Made-Up Holidays and Why They Suck and Should be Fucked: And by Fucked, I Mean Abolished”, but my editor rightly suggested that was a rather unwieldy and decidedly non-catchy theme. And by editor, I mean brain. (Okay, I promise I’ll try to stop using this particular cliche. (And by cliche, I mean “3. anything that has become trite or commonplace through overuse.”))

So yeah, Arbor Day: Great idea, but needs major improvement. A couple of suggestions.

1. Celebrate it – Come on, people. Go to a fucking nursery, get a tree, and plant it somewhere. We really need to do this, because in case you haven’t been outside in the last four months Global Warming is definitely happening, and it whether or not you believe we caused it, it’s our asses if we don’t solve it.

2. Make Arbor Day the Designated Hitter – Here’s my completely brilliant plan: Any time there’s a holiday you would otherwise ignore (Like Valentine’s Day), don’t ignore it. Just make it another instance of Arbor Day. We need the trees people, step up. This could have a huge impact during things like Ramadan and Chanukah, or any other multi-day holiday. Anybody not observing should get off ther ass and plant something green. Catholics count all the days of Lent too. And since Lent is about penitence, all you Catholics step up and plant a plant for each day of Lent.

Look, assholes, you are the same people who bitch and moan about world poverty and starvation and blah fucking blah! “Feed the poor, but, um, don’t!” Shut the fuck up, burn your fucking protest hats and do something constructive. If you can’t live without conflict, or the simple pleasure of giving someone some shit, start a fucking fight club and leave us rational people alone. Useless human scum!

This hurts like hell, and is pretty much the same thing I just had surgery for, so don’t think I say this lightly. He deserves it. John Ashcroft has done his level best to beat the civil liberties out of the bill of rights, and has shown himself to be an ogre. He deserves the pain.

At least the lucky bastard has plenty of money and excellent insurance. Without county assistance, my surgery would have cost roughly $50,000, or so I’m told. That’s roughly three years pay for me. Ashcroft, however, through careful undermining of our constitutional rights has certainly earned his government health benefits. Lucky him.

The link between comedy and anger has been well explored, but to my knowledge, no one has heretofore identified stand-up comedy as the world’s most fascist artform. That means I get to be the first. Booyah!

Think about it. A stand-up comic, like George Carlin, packs in an audience mostly on reputation, and proceeds to make sweeping inflamatory social and political statements with or without a basis in logical examination of the relevant world events. Through the magic of peer pressure, at the end of two hours, he had indoctrinated an auditorium full of people to his way of thinking. Conform, conform, conform. Conform to the funny rebel-man.

I know it would be great if I would actually research this stuff, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. Just take a listen to George’s album “Complaints and Grievances”. A lot of it is good, but once in a while, he’ll delve a little too far into left field, but everybody laughs, because that’s what’s expected.

Not that the effects are likely to cause much damage after a single show, but if you went back every day for a couple of weeks, I bet you’d find yourself pretty effectively brainwashed. So the next time you see a stand-up comedian spout of with somthing that’s superficially funny, but completely wrong, or ill-thought-out, come back here and drop me a comment, so I have some back-up for my little rant here. Be sure to notice the reaction of the audience.

As you can tell, the preceding entry was brought to you by the wishful thinking network. And if anybody was offended by the rather angry nature of it, I’m not going to appologize, but I’ll acknowledge the validity of those feelings. I’ll tell you what, though, it was a very therapeutic thing to write, and I’ve never respected Dubya more than I did as I pictured him in my head resigning with (for once) some genuine dignity and sincerity.

I was originally going to post date it to July 4th. That would be a nice birthday present for the country. Wow. I’m in an uncommonly pessimistic mood today. ‘Soon as I perk up, I’ll write something a little brighter.

When is the last time we cured a disease?

Seriously, I can’t remember the last thing we cured. Feel free to correct me, but it must have been twenty years or so. Now it’s all about “treating”. It’s about establishing dependence. It’s the Microsoft theory of business. Never sell what you can force people to rent. Software, their own good health, whatever.

Why is it that rich people can never have enough money, whereas middle-class and poor people are so easily satisfied. Man, the last time I cleared fifteen hundred bucks in a month, I was ecstatic. Right up until I was forced to spend it on my car.

I guess it just comes back to doing something good for somebody once in a while. No reason necessary. Just because works fine. Especially when you some day become obscenely rich.

As a dude on a very strange Canadian children’s show used to say:

Peace, love, recycle, dude!

Truer now than ever, eh?

I had a really good idea for something to write just before I went to sleep last night. Guess what happened. D’oh! Gotta write that stuff down. So I’ll just express my profound disappointment in the apparent inability of grown up Americans to handle the sight of a partial boob. It’s a sad, sad day. What really gets me is that we didn’t even really see a boob. We saw a boobular eclipse. The world’s largest nipple ring hid most of the naughty bits, yet according to the news of the day, everybody’s foaming at the mouth from the mortal offense. I’m going out on a limb here. No death threats please. Okay, here goes:

I like boobs.

I think you’ll be able to cope.

Listen up! All you socially retarded pricks in the fifteen-foot-tall SUV’s need to cash a reality check. If you can’t park it, don’t buy it! I can’t stress this enough. When I see these things parked at a thirty degree angle from the parking lines I laugh right along with the people in tiny little cars who fling their doors open with michevious glee. It is well past the time time you people should have been forced to demonstrate your fitness to drive those killing machines. You should have to navigate an obstacle course at speed, and demonstrate an ability to park in a standard stall before you should be permitted to drive one. And I do mean permitted. There needs to be a formal permitting process for any vehicle weighing more than 4,000 lbs. And if you aren’t fully capable of safely driving that vehicle, you shouldn’t be allowed to buy it. So grow up and quit trying to take your fucking living-room with you on the highway.