Silence of Lucky

As things start to get a little better in Iraq, their government is trying to entice people to come and visit.  According to the AP, the center piece of this project is going to be a giant Ferris Wheel in the middle of Baghdad.  Brilliant idea.  Even I want to blow up Ferris Wheels.

Doesn't this have George W. Bush written all over it.

This is how Bush sees the world- if there's a Ferris Wheel, everything is going to be OK.  Bush in his mind is always at a State Fair.  You can see it in the language he has used throughout his administration: Axis of Evil- sounds like one of those rides at the fair that gives you whip lash.  Mission Accomplished- that's not how you end a war, it's what shows up on the screen when you finish an Arcade game.

The way he hasn't faced up to the problems in this country- Katrina, Donald Rumsfeld, torture- is just like a guy looking at the darkening sky, thunder clapping in the distance saying, "dude, this storm is definetely going to blow over.  It's just heat lighting.  Come on...don't you want to ride that Ferris Wheel."

Growing up I had a huge back yard. This was awesome… until I turned 11 years old and had to start mowing it.I'm not sure how letting an 11 year old cut the grass is even legal. It is a harrowing job not the faint of heart. First off, it’s done during the middle of the day before your father got home. Heaven forbid it wasn't done before 5 o’clock; he might actually have to help you. My dad always made me wear jeans and a long sleeve shirt because one the charms of cutting the grass is that it turns rocks into flying shrapnel. So it's 100 degrees and I’m wearing a Hazmat suit. I'm not sure if this is still the custom but everyone had a little red jug full of gasoline. And while filling up the lawn mower the gasoline would get all over you hands, you would then of course sniff, and get ready to mow the lawn, high off of gasoline fumes. So, the gas tank is full, you’re high as a kite, and now it is time to prime the death machine. You stand there for 15 minutes pressing the button on the handle. While I have absolutely no idea what this does, it says you're supposed to do it- so you do it. Now it's time to start the mower. Mind you, this isn't done by a handy little switch, or a key perhaps, it is done by a string. You have to pull this string with so much force your shoulder almost rips out of the socket. When this doesn’t work, you stand on the side of a hill to get a running start. That sounds safe. At this point one of two things happens: you start the lawn mower or you lose a finger. Either way progress is being made.Let’s recap: you in jeans and a long sleeve shirt, dying of heat stroke, high off gas fumes, with either a separated shoulder or a missing a digit. You are cutting the grass which means your hearing is now at risk. There is nothing louder then a lawn mower. You could be mowing the grass in James Island and the good people of Ladsen would know about it. Whenever I hear parents say their kids don’t listen to them, it’s not because they’re rude it’s because they’re deaf from the freaking lawn mower. So once again: you're 11 years old, high off gas fumes, shoulder separated, on the verge of heat stoke, rock shrapnel spewing in every direction, your body shaking like a tuning fork, and you are on the verge of becoming deaf. And you have to stay in this state for at least an hour, anything less will cause your mother to tell you there is no way you could have finished in such a short time. Mercifully the hour is over and you can let go of the handle. AHHHHH…that is the greatest sound on the planet earth, the second that mower turns off… the sound of silence is what I can only imagine heaven sounds like. You look out over your yard like a Duke looking over his kingdom, you pop open an RC Cola and life is amazing. Your dad gets home, pats you on the head, asks if you can see the value of a good day's work. No, no I don’t. I see the value in having sons.

Barack Obama is about to announce to the world his running mate.  All his selections are middle aged, white males.   And that is a huge mistake.As the first African American president Mr. Obama is going to have a huge target on his back.  He's going to more protection then an Israeli walking through Baghdad.  And he's going to pick Joe Biden?  Or the Governor of Virginia.  Are you kidding me?  He has got to pick the thuggiest black person available.  Someone he can look at the rest of the world and say "You wanna kill me?  Look what's next bitches."   He needs to pick someone that makes him look whiter then a Robert Frost poem.  Someone like…Condoleezza Rice.  I’m going on record and say Barack Obama should pick Condoleezza Rice as his running mate.  Ms. Rice would win over conservatives sitting on the fence, make up for his weakness in foreign policy, and make any would be assassin stop dead in his tracks. "He might be a black man in the White House, but it least he's not a woman.  She ain't married or nuthin' either, and she likes football, I'm pretty sure she's one of them there lesbos.  And that is one thing my daddy never would a stood for, a black, gay, football lovin' woman as the prez.  Come on Jim Bob, my Minutemen post starts in half an hour, I gotta get drunk."  So please Mr. Obama, this is one of the first big decisions you’ll have to make on your road to the Presidency.  If you’re not shrewd enough to watch your own back, how can you lead us in this dangerous world?  Obama/Rice 2008!  

Do you realize that the President of the United States only makes 400,000 dollars a year?  Now sure, to those of us mere mortals making $40-50,000, (or in my case not even that, God I hate the arts) 400 grand a year sounds like a ton of money.  But this isn't a good job.  Half the country hates you, 10 percent want to kill you, and you have to go around pretending you care about the hopes and fears of the idiots in Ohio.   It's a huge pain in the ass.   Plus being president requires you to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that breaks down to only 45.66 cents an hour!  That's it.  To be the leader of the free world?!?  I make that much tutoring kids.  $400,000 a year.  About how much A-Rod makes per homerun.  If you are lucky enough to get elected two terms that is 3.2 million.  Robert Downey, Jr., gets 12.5 million per movie.  If that ex-drug addict can make that much, surely we can give a raise to the one we have sitting in the White House.  The problem with only paying the President 400,000 dollars a year is that you attract people like George W. Bush to the position.  Bill Gates isn't going to be president, or the CEO of JP Morgan, people who have actually done something with their lives...  really smart, really bright people would rather go into business or law then politics because doing so would amount to a pay cut.  

I propose paying the President of the United States 10,000,000 a year.  And 1,000,000 a year every year out of office.  That way you would attract people to the position who are actually qualified to do it.  Not just Senators looking to fill the holes in their egos.  So the next time you complain about the quality of our presidential candidates, remember- you get what you pay for. 

It is very important to the modern American psyche to feel like we have a leg up. That just by being born in this country we are the prom kings and queens of the world. But as globalization has proved that we aren't the best workers in the world, test scores show we aren't the smartest, and the war in Iraq shows we can't even beat someone up the right way-we've been bummed out. Then with the dollar getting crushed by the Euro, the Yen, and the Pound, then the final blow coming when the Canadian dollar tied us (what is that all a-boot) we been eating rocky road ice cream, watching So You Think You Can Dance, obsessing over Bret Farve, trying to cheer ourselves up.

Enter the Olympics. For almost a year we've gotten to look down our collective noses at the pollution in Beijing, (forgetting that the Olympics were held in Los Angeles in 1984), and the occupation of Tibet, (forgetting our Native American past). Then the games started and the Chinese kept giving. They CGI'd the fireworks for the opening ceremony (the horror), they had a cute girl lip sync for an ugly girl (Doh- Ashley Simpson) and had 10 year olds competing in gymnastics (ok, that is seriously messed up). Then our old reliable nemisis Russia decided to invade Georgia- the one region over there that we can all pronounce, and we get to think of them as big evil Russian bears again with that Putin and his beady little eyes- uck, thank god we would never do anything like that, invade a foreign country, how dare they.

So we are starting to feel better, staring into the future with the Chinese and the Russians solidly the bad guys and we are the Michael Phelps of the world, winning everything in sight, our DUI solidly behind us. Now if we only elect Barack Obama, and we won't be racist any more either. This is shaping up to be a pretty good summer.