Bobby Lightfoot's Unfettered Bitterness, Cynicism and Disappointment Week #2: Yesterday People And Tomorrow People
Man, I was playing a party th' other night and I got into the vodka just a tad because I've been such an upstanding guy lately. A paragon, almost. And I was thirsty and I figured I'd get a little lit up and I found if you just threw a li'l ice in there with th' Finlandia and a splash of cranb'rry jiice you could drink it almost like a sports drink, you know? Tasty stuff, man. And musical. Man, was it musical. I was like god damn Len Bernstein that night.
But goddammit if I hainted done been there six minutes and I'm introduced to a cop. And heck, you know, it's not like that's a problem or anything; I know plenty of fine, upstandin' coppers. And I know plenty that understand the not-so-subtle difference between crime and victimless crime. But it's just, you know, if anyone wants to have a fucking giggle they're going to have to sneak around, you know? If you don't have th' downlow on th' copper? If they're looking for a little innocent chuckle is all. You know what I'm drivin' at here, man. This ain't 1979 anymore, man. There's danger out there.
And fuck if I know why but sometime later I find myself out on th' deck with just the copper and he starts talking about all th' development and everyone's huge debts and the size of student loans and the size of mortgages. And how tough it is for a youngster startin' out.
All true, man. All true.
But man, the last thing I want to do is go there with this guy, right? I mean, he's a Yesterday Person. Yesterday People are a dangerous, dangerous fucking lot, man. I try to spend as little time around them as possible. And when I'm in the unfortunate predicamente of sharing air with one of these fossils I try very hard to keep my mouth shut and slowly move away from the Yesterday Person. Slowly.
Because Yesterday People are higher than I could get with six Musical Sports Drinks and eight chuckles, man. Yesterday People think things like there's no global warming and the middle class is an anamoly that is correcting itself and if you rolled George Bush in flour he could probably find his asshole.
My deep sense of dread worsened when the dude actually asked me my opinion. I was like man nice party but I wasn't getting out of it. I asked him if he really wanted my opinion or if he was making small talk and that I'd be happy to continue in th' small talk vein. No, he really wanted to know what I thought was at the root of it.
So I told him I thought greed was at the root of it and that I felt like we've turned greed into a virtue and the only way for us to keep apace of our greed is to go into debt. And I told him that the way I see it we're in the grips of shitty financial planning and greed from the federal level down to he and I. And that we float our crappy wank off to money on debt so that anyone can live beyond their means.
And I told him that in my humble opinion our country is under attack by The Disgustingly Rich to such an extent that we're feeling it bigtime every time we reach into our pockets. And I told him in my humble opinion that The Disgustingly Rich had devised some very clever, precise and devious strategies for mobilizing the Decidedly Unrich to their ends. I mentioned that one of the most effective ways for The Disgustingly Rich to get even disgustingly richer was to privatize and deregulate and monopolize and that the current "administration" seems to be operating with seemingly little else in mind by way of agenda.
I told him that, in my humble opinion, the reason it was hard for young people to get a start these days without incurring debt is that they often have to take on the debt burden of a third world country to get a higher education because we don't see fit to subsidize education in much of a significant way. And I told him that the reason his beautiful countryside is being developed at such an alarming rate is because we don't seem to value our environment and our resources and that most of us simply see them as financial assets. And that the current administration had loosened controls on pollution to an almost sadistic degree, controls and regulations that had been set in place by Tomorrow People like that horrid little Carter.
And I mentioned that, in my humble opinion, prices for a home for a young couple to start out in weren't maybe that different from what they used to be but that the dollar isn't worth a fucking thing anymore and people can't make the amount of money they used to because all our jobs seem to be mysteriously disappearing. And that a huge proportion of people work well over 40 hours a week and still remain in poverty because we haven't raised th' minimum wage from tuppence an hour when we was colonies.
And I mentioned that it's insane to support fiscal policies that impoverish oneself and one's one children for the gain of CEO's. And I said that the way I saw it, at least we would soon serve as a representation of the logical conclusion of unrestrained capitalism much as the Soviet Union provided a blueprint of Why Communism Doesn't Work in the 80's. And maybe that would be the good that would come of the whole thing.
And I told him that I'd learned that the world is a huge place and that Americans are some of the most miserable sons of bitches on the whole planet because they just can't shut their fucking pieholes for a fucking minute. And I told him that I thought the face a minority of us had chosen to show the world was about as perfect a representation of us as is humanly possible; the face of an ignorant, rich, greedy, incurious, loutish, unrefined, cultureless, bloodthirsty, adolescent creep. And I mentioned that it would be good if we started thinking about the threat of terrorism as befits a superpower instead of continually providing violence with exactly the outcome it desires. And that maybe if after Sept. 11 we'd mourned our dead, strengthened our cockpit doors and brought the requisite Al Qaeda people to justice and then gone on with our lives we'd be much better off. Because instead what we'd done was altered the entire geopolitical map for the worse because of a few creeps and some tinpot shit head ex-client of ours in Iraq.
And I mentioned that we're torturing people regularly and disappearing people by the fucking planeload and dropping bombs indiscriminately on other countries and the reason we're doing it is because there's a lot of profit in it for corporations so it's good business.
And I mentioned that the longer we actually give credence to people like Denny Hastert, who can in good conscience stand on the floor of Th' Senate and tell us that people who don't want poor and middle-class kids that they've never met to die in Iraq are "cowards" and that he's not because he doesn't have a problem with it, the longer we'll go on and on playing into the hands of corporations and terrorists. And that the longer we let our "administration" play craven, obvious shell-games by diverting our attention to trivial things while they fuck us about the ass and head, the deeper we'll sink and the harder it will be to get back to just the usual disastrous state of affairs instead of this Armageddon.
And I mentioned that in my opinion, which had been solicited, there were two types of people in the world: Yesterday People and Tomorrow People. And I said that I thought we were in the grips of the Yesterday People, people who think of nothing but money and status and possessions, and that the best thing we could do for those children trying to get a start was to remove from power and influence with all due expediency all the Yesterday People like Denny Hastert and Dick Cheney and Tom Delay because we've seen how profoundly dangerous and corrupt and greedy and hurtful they are to our country, to our children and to our world.
Yesterday people are always tryin' to get things back to somethin' that never existed, man. It's the Rosebud Phenomenon with these fucking assholes. Hitler, Pol Pot, Manson, Karl Rove, Maggie Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, all these fuckers. The American and British ones have been trying to get this shit going for a long, long time. It's like the fucking Omen and Bush II is fucking Damien. And it's tough to fight that fucking evil.
See, there's all this fucking money and it has to go somewhere. And it can flow up or it can flow down. And if it flows up it all ends up in some fucking third worlder's backyard, man. It always does at the end of the fucking day. And it ends up in the pocket of some fucking demon like that fucking Warren Buffet who can walk up to the microphone and say I'm giving away eighteen quintillion dollars and walk away with another quintillion in his back pocket and act like it's some sort of Joan of Arc fucking move. That shit makes me murderously, apoplectically sick and angry. Fucking Warren Buffet. Fucking Bill Gates. What a goatfucker that fucking little twit is.
See, I'm for having it flow down if for no other reason than I'm sick of it flowing up. I say let's have the most ridiculous welfare state in the universe. Let's give every fucking indolent poor bastard a million a fucking year. Because then at least it isn't ending up killing lots of people and making a few richer than they have any fucking use for.
I say fuck it- that's what we should do. Just fucking go into South Central and Appalachia and fucking Cabrini fucking Green with wheelbarrows of our tax dollars and just deposit it at the feet of the poor, useless, lazy, talentless, toothless, indolent bastards that we seem to fucking hate unto death. See how that would be better?
See how that would be better?
Yesterday Person: Dennis Hastert
Tomorrow Person: Roosevelt
A Yesterday Website
A Tomorrow Website
But goddammit if I hainted done been there six minutes and I'm introduced to a cop. And heck, you know, it's not like that's a problem or anything; I know plenty of fine, upstandin' coppers. And I know plenty that understand the not-so-subtle difference between crime and victimless crime. But it's just, you know, if anyone wants to have a fucking giggle they're going to have to sneak around, you know? If you don't have th' downlow on th' copper? If they're looking for a little innocent chuckle is all. You know what I'm drivin' at here, man. This ain't 1979 anymore, man. There's danger out there.
And fuck if I know why but sometime later I find myself out on th' deck with just the copper and he starts talking about all th' development and everyone's huge debts and the size of student loans and the size of mortgages. And how tough it is for a youngster startin' out.
All true, man. All true.
But man, the last thing I want to do is go there with this guy, right? I mean, he's a Yesterday Person. Yesterday People are a dangerous, dangerous fucking lot, man. I try to spend as little time around them as possible. And when I'm in the unfortunate predicamente of sharing air with one of these fossils I try very hard to keep my mouth shut and slowly move away from the Yesterday Person. Slowly.
Because Yesterday People are higher than I could get with six Musical Sports Drinks and eight chuckles, man. Yesterday People think things like there's no global warming and the middle class is an anamoly that is correcting itself and if you rolled George Bush in flour he could probably find his asshole.
My deep sense of dread worsened when the dude actually asked me my opinion. I was like man nice party but I wasn't getting out of it. I asked him if he really wanted my opinion or if he was making small talk and that I'd be happy to continue in th' small talk vein. No, he really wanted to know what I thought was at the root of it.
So I told him I thought greed was at the root of it and that I felt like we've turned greed into a virtue and the only way for us to keep apace of our greed is to go into debt. And I told him that the way I see it we're in the grips of shitty financial planning and greed from the federal level down to he and I. And that we float our crappy wank off to money on debt so that anyone can live beyond their means.
And I told him that in my humble opinion our country is under attack by The Disgustingly Rich to such an extent that we're feeling it bigtime every time we reach into our pockets. And I told him in my humble opinion that The Disgustingly Rich had devised some very clever, precise and devious strategies for mobilizing the Decidedly Unrich to their ends. I mentioned that one of the most effective ways for The Disgustingly Rich to get even disgustingly richer was to privatize and deregulate and monopolize and that the current "administration" seems to be operating with seemingly little else in mind by way of agenda.
I told him that, in my humble opinion, the reason it was hard for young people to get a start these days without incurring debt is that they often have to take on the debt burden of a third world country to get a higher education because we don't see fit to subsidize education in much of a significant way. And I told him that the reason his beautiful countryside is being developed at such an alarming rate is because we don't seem to value our environment and our resources and that most of us simply see them as financial assets. And that the current administration had loosened controls on pollution to an almost sadistic degree, controls and regulations that had been set in place by Tomorrow People like that horrid little Carter.
And I mentioned that, in my humble opinion, prices for a home for a young couple to start out in weren't maybe that different from what they used to be but that the dollar isn't worth a fucking thing anymore and people can't make the amount of money they used to because all our jobs seem to be mysteriously disappearing. And that a huge proportion of people work well over 40 hours a week and still remain in poverty because we haven't raised th' minimum wage from tuppence an hour when we was colonies.
And I mentioned that it's insane to support fiscal policies that impoverish oneself and one's one children for the gain of CEO's. And I said that the way I saw it, at least we would soon serve as a representation of the logical conclusion of unrestrained capitalism much as the Soviet Union provided a blueprint of Why Communism Doesn't Work in the 80's. And maybe that would be the good that would come of the whole thing.
And I told him that I'd learned that the world is a huge place and that Americans are some of the most miserable sons of bitches on the whole planet because they just can't shut their fucking pieholes for a fucking minute. And I told him that I thought the face a minority of us had chosen to show the world was about as perfect a representation of us as is humanly possible; the face of an ignorant, rich, greedy, incurious, loutish, unrefined, cultureless, bloodthirsty, adolescent creep. And I mentioned that it would be good if we started thinking about the threat of terrorism as befits a superpower instead of continually providing violence with exactly the outcome it desires. And that maybe if after Sept. 11 we'd mourned our dead, strengthened our cockpit doors and brought the requisite Al Qaeda people to justice and then gone on with our lives we'd be much better off. Because instead what we'd done was altered the entire geopolitical map for the worse because of a few creeps and some tinpot shit head ex-client of ours in Iraq.
And I mentioned that we're torturing people regularly and disappearing people by the fucking planeload and dropping bombs indiscriminately on other countries and the reason we're doing it is because there's a lot of profit in it for corporations so it's good business.
And I mentioned that the longer we actually give credence to people like Denny Hastert, who can in good conscience stand on the floor of Th' Senate and tell us that people who don't want poor and middle-class kids that they've never met to die in Iraq are "cowards" and that he's not because he doesn't have a problem with it, the longer we'll go on and on playing into the hands of corporations and terrorists. And that the longer we let our "administration" play craven, obvious shell-games by diverting our attention to trivial things while they fuck us about the ass and head, the deeper we'll sink and the harder it will be to get back to just the usual disastrous state of affairs instead of this Armageddon.
And I mentioned that in my opinion, which had been solicited, there were two types of people in the world: Yesterday People and Tomorrow People. And I said that I thought we were in the grips of the Yesterday People, people who think of nothing but money and status and possessions, and that the best thing we could do for those children trying to get a start was to remove from power and influence with all due expediency all the Yesterday People like Denny Hastert and Dick Cheney and Tom Delay because we've seen how profoundly dangerous and corrupt and greedy and hurtful they are to our country, to our children and to our world.
Yesterday people are always tryin' to get things back to somethin' that never existed, man. It's the Rosebud Phenomenon with these fucking assholes. Hitler, Pol Pot, Manson, Karl Rove, Maggie Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, all these fuckers. The American and British ones have been trying to get this shit going for a long, long time. It's like the fucking Omen and Bush II is fucking Damien. And it's tough to fight that fucking evil.
See, there's all this fucking money and it has to go somewhere. And it can flow up or it can flow down. And if it flows up it all ends up in some fucking third worlder's backyard, man. It always does at the end of the fucking day. And it ends up in the pocket of some fucking demon like that fucking Warren Buffet who can walk up to the microphone and say I'm giving away eighteen quintillion dollars and walk away with another quintillion in his back pocket and act like it's some sort of Joan of Arc fucking move. That shit makes me murderously, apoplectically sick and angry. Fucking Warren Buffet. Fucking Bill Gates. What a goatfucker that fucking little twit is.
See, I'm for having it flow down if for no other reason than I'm sick of it flowing up. I say let's have the most ridiculous welfare state in the universe. Let's give every fucking indolent poor bastard a million a fucking year. Because then at least it isn't ending up killing lots of people and making a few richer than they have any fucking use for.
I say fuck it- that's what we should do. Just fucking go into South Central and Appalachia and fucking Cabrini fucking Green with wheelbarrows of our tax dollars and just deposit it at the feet of the poor, useless, lazy, talentless, toothless, indolent bastards that we seem to fucking hate unto death. See how that would be better?
See how that would be better?
Yesterday Person: Dennis Hastert
Tomorrow Person: Roosevelt
A Yesterday Website
A Tomorrow Website
posted by Bobby Lightfoot at 20:00
8 Comments:
Amen, brother, amen.
So, don't leave us dangling ... how did the Copper react?
O.K., since you asked:
He said, "yeah, it's like socialism with all these unions running everything".
I just didn't have th' heart to write that before.
I'm not kidding, by th' way.
Shoulda just took a bic to the US flag and left it at that.
G
I'm not kidding, by th' way.
Jesus. I guess he wasn't listening. Too busy looking at your tits, mebbe.
Awesome post Bobby.
...quite a few of us have been in that position, and it's getting more common, too....there's a definite divide here in the States now...and it's amazing how many people like your cop think they're on the one side when they're clueless because the people we all know to be on that side don't claim and don't want 'em. (Until they vote. One f__king day of the year!)
Bobby...were you in the Malarians?
-hagbard
Dude- *in* The Malarians?
I *was* Th'Malarians. Those guys were surfing me all th' way.
Post a Comment
<< Home