The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

Another campaign season is upon us and my eyes and ears already bleed from the ceaseless bloviating onslaught. Candidates rain down like fallout from a nookular bomb. Campaigns spend millions in corporate donations and $500-a-plate rubber chicken dinners - KFC should be so lucky - while agonizing over the sorry-arsed condition of campaign finance reform. Lobbyists are trampled in a lemming-like rush to have their picture taken next to their pre-purchased candidate. Never mind they’ll hold giant black hats over their faces when the photos make a NYT article about influence peddling. I’ve voted for more than 30 years and I ask the same unanswered question each time, “There are 300 million frickin’ people in this country and these clowns are the best candidates we can field?”

Bruising Bitchfests

Like a certain unnamed Gulf Coast hurricane, these bruising bitchfests are massively disastrous. For one, they’re waaaaay too long. Does anyone really need two years of uninterrupted caterwauling to decide which candidate is the least of a million evils? We’d be much better off if we simply said, “The election is next Tuesday. You have seven days to equivocate your position before we punch our choices into an electronic voting machine that will lose all the data anyway - except in Florida where their cracker jack, leading edge technology uses 1950s punch cards that apparently require more manual dexterity than many Floridians can muster.

The unseemly jockeying for first dibs on early primaries also contributes to the mess. If states keep moving the start dates back, people will vote in primaries before they’re born. Prepare yourselves for the rabid argument about exactly when a baby becomes a voter - conception, embryonic stage, or fully birthed decider. I fail to see how candidates dropping in for a planned, spontaneous Manchester coffee klatch serves much purpose other than giving the candidate free morning coffee and seeing New Hampshities modeling the latest in plaid cold weather gear. The cat-scratch campaign fights inevitably leave even the winning candidates so bruised and battered most people would prefer the Bin Laden/Musharaf ticket to McCain/TBD or Clinton/Barrak.

Pubic Hairs in the Coke

It’s not like all the money, primaries, unreliable voting machines, and rivers of fresh Iowa coffee mean much anyway. Eleven percent of registered voters will show up, vote their conscience, and find out that - despite winning the popular vote - the loser wins because the Supreme Court gets a political hair up it’s collective ass. Probably a pubic hair recovered from a Coke can at that.

No other nation on the planet has an electoral system quite like ours. Like many things, we’re going this election thing alone. Third World dictators run better elections than we do - just ask Jimmy Carter. Say what you will about Saddam, but he turned in overwhelming numbers. Ninety-nine percent voter turnout and garnering 100% of the vote isn’t easy, even in a totalitarian country. I’m beginning to wonder if raping, pillaging, and burning might not be a better system. At least it has the virtue of clear, unequivocal results.

My eyes and ears can only take so much. Could someone set the alarm clock and wake me up about a year and a half?

I’ll need my omnipotent strength to smite the winning Crapweasel as he takes the oath of office on the Bible…or Koran…or Torah…or….

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Cap’n Dyke and Janice from Cow Hampshire tagged me to do the four true (plus one untrue) things about me meme. I’ve seen all the responses and I have to say that I’m either a fantastic liar or you are an extremely gullible lot. No one found the fib, so here are the answers to inform and suitably impress:

I once sat next to Clarence Clemmons on an airplane.
In fact, this is true. I was already in my seat when a huge black man carrying a saxophone plunked down beside me. While he struggled to wedge his large frame in, I opened the conversation with something banal about crappy airplane seats. I eventually got around to confirming my suspicion that he was the Clarence and we struck up a quite pleasant conversation about music and current events.

And no, I did not ask for an autograph, but since I’m the Omnipotent Poobah, I offered him mine. Inexplicably, he declined.

I’ve been inside Ft. Knox.
This is also true. In the early 70s, a rumor alleged that all the gold in Ft. Knox was gone and our paper money was worthless as a result. In a display of transparency that I’m sure the current Bushkibibles would never dream of, they allowed 100 reporters and assorted governmental observers in to see the shiny stuff. The reporter slots were assigned by state and I snagged my pass by working my contacts and being very lucky. The Associated Press was not happy to be scooped.

As for the gold, it looks pretty much like you’d expect. There were huge stacks of gold bars in a series of small storage rooms behind no-nonsense vault doors. They bars we were allowed to heft were as weighty as you’ve heard. Though it sounds all exciting and shit, it was anti-climactic. I would have written a much more positive article if they’d let me take home a brick or two. There was no James Bond or Auric Goldfinger slouching around either. Damn the luck. I really wanted to meet Odd Job.

For obvious reasons, they didn’t reveal security details, but I can speak from personal experience that someone always watches the seemingly unattended main gate.

Several years after going in, I took my mother-in-law to see the place. Despite my warnings, she ran up to the iron gates to take a picture and was immediately addressed by a disembodied and menacing voice, “STEP AWAY FROM THE GATE AND STATE YOUR BUSINESS! NO PHOTOGRAPHY ALLOWED!” She was not arrested, but I’m of the mind that maybe that was a bad thing. After that I always told her she owed me big for saving her life.

I once hosted my own FM-radio show about politics.
This is the fib. While I auditioned for a spot on WKQQ (Lexington, KY), I lost out to another candidate who I agreed was much better. Rush Limbaugh heaved a sigh of relief at my aborted radio career, I’m sure.

This clear pronouncement on my abilities as a pundit obviously foretold the day when I would become a blog-borne political pundit. If I had auditioned for this blog gig, I would have lost out on that too. Life’s like that sometimes.

Linda Ronstadt once blew me a kiss.
Also true. Linda was at the zenith of her 70s popularity when she arrived in Lexington for a concert. I weaseled an assignment as the newspaper’s photographer so I didn’t have to buy tickets. My press pass allowed me to approach the edge of the stage, much to the chagrin of the people who’d bought front row seats.

Most of my photos of Linda were mediocre at best, but somewhere, lost in the mists of time, there is a perfect photo of her in all her 70s sexy glory. She wore hot pants and a very tight Cub Scout uniform shirt. Her brown hair shined brightly in the stage lights and curled down around her shoulders. Lit from behind, she fairly glowed. Her signature deep brown eyes focused directly on me, so it was easy to believe the kiss was aimed at me. I caught her hand in mid-flight leaving those beautiful pursed lips of a kiss behind.

It was a beautiful moment. I wish I’d kept the negative. Sigh.

Interestingly, the photos I took of her opening act - The Flying Burrito Brothers - were better “concert” pictures so the editor went with them instead of smoochable Linda. Our readership’s loss I think.

Jimmy Buffett’s band once attended a party at my house.
True. Jimmy and his band, then led by the legendary Marvin Gardens, appeared at a smallish concert at the University of Kentucky. After performing for about 500, my roommate, who was a member of the university’s concert board, invited the boys over to the house for a wrap party. We never expected them to show, but they did.

Unfortunately, I left on a beer run and I’m told Jimmy himself showed up, but left before I returned. Margaritaville wasn’t yet a gleam in his eye and parrotheads were still just the tops of brightly colored birds back then.

I would have offered him my autograph too. There’s no telling what it would have been worth by now.

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Editor’s Note: Remember to leave your guesses to yesterday’s post in the comments.

I’m not exactly a people person, so I’m often at a loss for why people do the things they do. What possesses someone to read the newspaper while driving? Why do celebrities make sex tapes when they know their penchant for feather dusters and anal sex will come out on the internet? How can postal workers not know that New Mexico is the state, not the country? How can some halfwit take us into a war without a plan?

Well, never mind that last one. I know the answer to that.

My typical defense against overwhelming stupidity is to check out mentally. This ability has saved my career more than once. If I actually paid attention in meetings I’m sure I’d vault across the table and strangle someone - as it is, I just drool on them while I’m asleep.

When forced to pay attention, I find that just being detached and aloof helps. After all, I am born omnipotent. I didn’t go to one of those cheesy online divinity schools to get my Ordination of Omnipotence. That would be so gauche. The nouveau riche - like the nouveau omnipotent - are just a bunch of pretentious scallywags. You simply can’t trust someone who hasn’t been a deity for at least 12 millennia. Fourteen is even better.

But sometimes I get sucked into the reality of the moment despite my best efforts.

Many years ago, when I was still a blue collar deity, I used to work night shifts. So when I went to the movies I usually went during the day and by myself. I always stopped at the concession stand for my 18-metric ton steam shovel of popcorn - with free refills too - and accompanying supertanker-sized soda.

One day I was helped at the counter by an excessively chipper chippy who was somewhere between high school and young divorcee age.

“OK, so I have a Coke and a popcorn. That’ll be one dollar please.”

“Uh, I think it costs more than that. Are you sure,” I asked?

Yessir! See, that’s what it says right here on the cash register and the cash register doesn’t lie,” she cheeped as her pigtails waved in time with her bobbling head.

I said, “OK then. If the cash register doesn’t lie, who am I to question it?” I handed her a $20 bill.

“Oooooh sirrrrr. Do you have anything smaller? All I have is ones,” she said with a lopsided, vacant grin.

“No.”

“Would it be all right if I gave you your change in ones,” she asked?

“That’ll be fine. It all spends the same way,” I said.

“Huh?” she said ignoring my fine quip.

“Let’s see, one, two, three… nineteen, twenty,” she said proudly as she counted out the money.

“Miss, you said the drink and popcorn was $1. I gave you $20. But, you gave me $20 back in change,” I said.

“That’s right sir,” she twilled.

“No, you don’t see. The popcorn was $1 and I gave you $20. That means you should’ve only given me $19 back,” I said reasonably.

“Is there a problem sir?”

“Yes. You’ve cheated yourself out of a dollar,” I replied.

“That’s not possible sir. You gave me $20 and I gave you back your change…$20,” she said. “I even made sure I counted it properly because that was an awful lot of bills and I didn’t want to make a mistake.”

“Well, I think you did. I still owe you $1,” I said.

“No sir. You already paid for your popcorn.”

“Are sure you don’t want me to pay for the popcorn,” I asked a little impatiently.

“No sir. You’re all paid up,” she said.

As I said, “OK” and turned around to leave, I heard her tell her countermate,”Geez. Some people just don’t get it, do they?”

“Yeah, they don’t,” I thought as I savored my first fist of popcorn. “They really don’t.”

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