Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Sunday, November 23, 2008 )

Dear God,

I am writing to ask your forgiveness about something I am deeply ashamed about. I’m writing to you because last night rather than read a book, go to an art museum or see a film, I stayed home to watch the Diane Sawyer-Ashley Alexandra Dupre interview on ABC, and for this I beg your absolution and grace.

I beg it, oh Lord, because I was momentarily caught up in the tut-tutting housewife’s prurient fascination with this horrible, stupid, smutty topic. The story of a small-time hooker who brought down the governor of New York. I usually stay away from bad TV, Lord. I don’t like the faux reality concocted by television, and normally I am wise enough to stay away and understand it for the waste of time that it is. And yet there I was last night. I had to watch.

I’m sorry because I, like many Americans from all walks of life, no matter what our pedigree, level of academic achievement or phase of maturity, had become sucked into the drama that had engulfed the New York state executive branch this year-had watched as a smart, brash Democratic politician draped in piety and self-righteousness debased himself and degraded his office to spend a few hours with a large-breasted, provincial high school dropout from New Jersey, exit 98. A reform minded man of arrogance who saw himself as protector and destroyer, who wielded power with great fluence and total confidence, Eliot Spitzer entered the office of governor with a great wave of popular support and widespread gratitude for all his efforts to bring Wall Street corruption to heel. He took the office not only with a mandate but with the bearing of a king.

I beg your forgiveness, God, because for some reason, I again needed to hear the story about how this great man with so much potential for greatness fell from grace because of a simple tragic flaw, a fussy adolescent need for instant sexual gratification. I watched because the archetype of the great man brought down by his hubris is one of the most compelling in our collective unconscious, an atavistic thrill that has stirred mankind for thousands of years. It is the subject of both Greek drama and I’m sure an episode of Desperate Housewives, too.

I watched because I so needed to hear once again the not-illuminating story of how a cute bridge-and-tunnel girl with strict parents rebelled, took drugs and sought out easy money.

I’m sorry God because I knew she would cry, and I wanted to see it so I could feel that the chickens had come home to roost, that the moral circle would be squared and the karmic ship righted. I am sorry, God, because I secretly hoped that she would have a thick New Jersey accent-which would just make the whole thing more stupid, tragic and sexy.

I’m sorry because I was gratified to hear that she only took solace in the arms of men who showed a remarkable willingness to lie to her on a daily basis and shelter her from reality, and thus it sounded to me like she had always been happily complicit in her own exploitation and debasement (the tale of her one sexual assault notwithstanding, obviously).

I’m sorry, God, because I let Diane Sawyer narrate me into the most titillating aspects of Ashley’s biography, from her first time with a john, to the regular rituals she performed before her assignations. (Ashley would hug her dog before going to work!) I’m sorry, because I played my stupid part in the gestalt, yelling at Ashley through the screen for her foolish choices, just as Diane Sawyer wanted me to do. I’m sorry that I let Diane Sawyer take a self-righteous tone on my behalf, which allowed her to hide her own complicity in the tawdriness of this tale by amplifying the awfulness of it all for an audience of peanut crunching, gum-smacking mouth-breathers – like me, dear God. Oh, I know. They are all just like me.

I’m sorry because I, like Ashley, sometimes feel a need to be special, too, and because of that, I also make bad choices. I am susceptible to flattery, sometimes, or I’m lazy and selfish. I, too, would every once in a while love to have members of the opposite sex lie to me so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the pedestrian heaviness of real life and all its burdens. I turned to Ashley to forget, God, how flawed I am.

I have never gone to a prostitute and never committed a crime, God. No, I was just sitting there on my couch, watching her suffer so that I could feel better about myself. And so I am so horribly guilty.

Dear God, who I don’t even believe in. Please forgive me in my horrible wretchedness for playing my part in this horrible affair. Please, please, please forgive me and have mercy on my TV-watching soul.

Amen,
Eric

Read Full Post »

(Originally posted Friday, November 21, 2008 )

Cupertino, Calif. (API) Apple Inc., the company that revolutionized personal computing and electronics, has pulled the plug on its operations after 32 years because its executives say they have have “gotten kind of bored and want to move on to other things,” said CEO, chairman and co-founder Steve Jobs.

“It just got kind of old after a while,” says Jobs, who founded the company with Steve Wozniak in 1976 to sell Wozniak’s hand-made “Apple I” personal computer. “I mean, we’ve got ADD around here and get really irritated by repetition and redundancy. I kind of wanted to start a rock band and take up parasailing.”

CFO Peter Oppenheimer agreed.

“It was really happening for 32 years around here,” he says. “We’ve had a lot of ups and downs, rising and falling stock, corporate shake-ups; we reinvented ourselves as a personal technology company with the IPod. But come on. We’ve all got a bunch of other stuff we’d like to do. I was thinking of going back and getting my graduate degree in Medieval Literature or something.”

“My girlfriend wants me to settle down a bit,” said Cokey Stevenson, a senior vice president in technology and design. “This Apple thing was great, but it’s hard to collaborate with the same people for so long. You start to get on each other’s nerves, and the spark just goes out of it. We thought it’s better to go out with guns blazing and people screaming for more, remembering us at our best. We wanted to get out before the company starts to feel like a nagging wife.”

Apple has about 28,000 employees around the world and had $24 billion in sales for its fiscal year ending in September 2007.

Apple became famous for building one of the first marketable personal computers. Its Macintosh line was seen as spearheading that revolution by introducing the first product with a mouse and a graphical user interface.

“GUI. It’s like sequins to me,” said Jobs. “That’s so 1984.”

Afterward, however, the Jobs & Co. suffered many slings and arrows. First he was defenestrated in a corporate power struggle. Then the company lost market share for several years because it couldn’t adapt its insular operating system to cheaper commodity PCs the way rival Microsoft could. When its ignominious failure seemed all but complete, however, Jobs returned to the fold to focus the product line, open up the operating system, and then reinvent the company as a consumer electronics powerhouse with the IPod and IPhone. It has since become a big media company with its ITunes store, which has changed the face of the music and film industry.

“Wow, it’s all just a blur now,” says Jobs. “It’s really hard to say goodbye to that rich history. Yet every time we come up with a new idea, you know we feel like we’ve ‘Been there. Done that.’ Just look at our history. We’re really bipolar over here. I think we’ve done just about as much as we can do with this particular hackneyed business concept.”

Jobs says he’s much more interested in other things now like writing music or screenplays or maybe staging Commedia dell’arte theater in Ibiza, his new favorite destination. He also wants to learn to how to be a teppanyaki chef at a Benihana-type restaurant. Stevenson says that he has taken a newfound interest in studying the linguistic origins of Yiddish.

Glen Turknow, COO, hopes to quit Apple and go to work in Third World poverty zones like the Congo and the Managua garbage dump as a Jesuit priest after attending seminary.

“Why would I want to spend the rest of my life figuring out how people Twitter each other?” asked Turknow. “This was a blast, but here at Apple, we’ve all decided to move on. There are other computer companies. Other electronics companies.”

Stevenson says that the entire Apple inventory will be sold off or melted for scrap, its goodwill and intangibles written off, and much of the company’s intellectual property and patents handed off to young people at a big party in Golden Gate Park.

“We just want people to remember the good times,” says Jobs, “Maybe pull out that old IPod after the battery runs dead and say, ‘Hey, I remember that company!’ But as for me, I don’t want to sell brightly colored lava lamps to stoners anymore, know what I mean?”

Read Full Post »

(Originally posted Wednesday, November 19, 2008 )

White Trash Racist Man Has Another Lousy Day Thanks To Obama

Muncie, INDIANA (AP) Muncie racist Blake Fortenoy has had another shitty day thanks to the election of America’s first black president, Barack Obama.

“Obama got elected and I know for a fact he thinks white people like me are trash,” said Fortenoy. “Guess I’m an endangered species now.”

Fortenoy had earlier in the day set his drapes on fire after leaving a cigarette burning all night. Later on he fell off his roof trying to steal his next door neighbor’s cable with a high gain antenna.

“God damn black president,” neighbors heard him yelling as he fell into an empty above-ground pool next door.

Fortenoy’s sister, nephew, mother and wife have said that since Barack Obama’s election, Fortenoy’s life has taken a definite turn for the worse, as he’s endured flat tires, a hunting accident, and third-degree burns when he tried to siphon gas out of somebody else’s car in a parking lot to fill up his 1978 Pinto. He also blames Obama for his frequent bad moods, upset stomach and inability to cope with daily pressures like having to pay his rising credit card debt.

“All I can say is, this was our country, and now it’s not anymore, and I feel more helpless than ever,” said Fortenoy, after cutting off the tip of his finger with a pair of cigar clippers.

Later that evening, Fortenoy bit off the tip of his tongue trying to eat an Arby’s big beef and cheddar too fast when he was still in the drive-thru.

While Fortenoy was out shooting his guns last week, he fired one up in the air. The bullet landed in his shoulder and he had to be rushed to the emergency room where he soon suffered from sepsis and a nosocomial staph infection.

“Fuckin blacks!” he yelled right before he underwent hemodialysis that his medical insurance would not cover. “Fuckin’ lazy blacks.”

“Fortenoy’s condition is such that he projects his own feelings of self-hatred and lack of self-worth onto an entire race of people,” said Dr. Gertrude Bronstein, a psychologist at the University of Florida. “What Obama-haters need to do is build the empty, dark, cavernous void that is their soul and find something that builds their self esteem and self of purpose instead of blaming people who are not responsible for their happiness.”

“Mother fucking darkies,” screamed Fortenoy after hearing that he had just failed his high school equivalency exam for the third time. “Will they stop at nothing to ruin me? Obama is the antichrist! Don’t you know that? It’s in the Bible. He’s a Muslim terrorist. I’m a guy who works all night at a factory making bottle caps and can’t even pay child support for four children I have or back alimony to three wives. So how is it that I am the only one who understands how dangerous this guy is?”

“Don’t you see how hard it’s been for him?” said his wife, Rema. “It kills me to have to leave him. But this new guy I met at the Broken Spoke’s got a steadier income, and my kids have gotta eat.”

“I used to be proud just to be white,” said Fortenoy. “Now I don’t even have that anymore. My whole life is ruined. Now I have to work for it.”

Fortenoy plans to spend tomorrow watching television for eight hours and firing his gun at stray dogs and pigeons before getting drunk to the point of blindness.

“That usually makes me happy for a while,” he said. “But happiness never lasts long. Thanks, Barack Obama.”

Read Full Post »

(Originally posted Tuesday, November 18, 2008 )

What questions are men asking as they watch “Gossip Girl” with their girlfriends?

–*Is that Kate Hudson?

–*Which one gossips?

–*Which ones are Heidi and Spencer?

–*That guy looks like some punk I wanted to clobber on the commuter train today.

–*And that other punk looks like his friend who was farting and then pretending somebody else was doing it. I swear to God this show is making me angry all over again.

–*I didn’t know Chloe Sevigny was on this show. That’s her, right?

–*Does everybody on this show have a terrible secret? By the law of averages, don’t too many terrible secrets make each individual terrible secret less important?

–*Why does everyone on this show have so many feelings?

–*Blake? That’s not a girl’s name.

–*Is that one Mischa Barton? Damn! I get them all confused.

–*Nate Archibald? Who writes this shit?

Read Full Post »

(Originally posted Monday, November 17, 2008 )

–*Because he is a voice of change and will keep me from losing my job.

–*Because he is a voice of change and will allow me to marry my same sex partner.

–*Because the HBO spring lineup looks pretty sparse, and Obama’s presidency will likely change that.

–*Because Obama will keep us safe and gender is an illusion that I plan to break down as I live life proudly with both kinds of genitalia.

–*Because some women still won’t put out on the first date, and Obama is a voice of change.

–*Because Obama will do something about this Y2K we’ve heard so much about.

–*Because he’ll do something about those uncomfortable moments you feel with co-workers when you accidentally see them on the morning commute and you were hoping to avoid eye contact because you wanted to do work on the train but then sure as shit that co-worker strikes up a conversation with you.

–*Because there are no available men left. They’re all married or gay.

–*Because he has said he will annex the Sudetenland and promise every German woman a husband.

–*Because he plans to withdraw from Iraq, deal with the alternative minimum tax, and do something about this illegitimate baby I’m having at age 14.

–*Because I’m a racist, but I’m also counterintuitive.

–*Because Patti LuPone is leaving the Broadway revival “Gypsy”

–*Because I can’t find the bathroom in this restaurant

–*Because these bisexual impulses I’m feeling are throwing me for a loop and somebody’s got to do something.

–*Because that’s not a moon. It’s a space station.

–*Because Obama represents the dreams, aspirations, wants, desires, impulses, predilections, drives, demands, hungers, thirsts, velleities, inclines and fussy insistence on immediate gratification of an entire people at once at the time they are least likely to get them.

–*Because he was capable, and the best leaders are the ones who inspire us to do the major work of democracy oursel….

–*Scratch that. Because we wanted a Nintendo Wii. Where they fuck can you get one of those things these days anyway?

Read Full Post »

(Originally posted Saturday, November 15, 2008 )

President-elect Barack Obama has prepared an extensive questionnaire for those seeking a cabinet-level post for his incoming administration, and the questions it asks are seen as being more far-reaching and personal than ever before. Many see it as a way to help avoid potential conflicts of interest and embarrassing disclosures about administration officials that might come later.

What are some of the questions being asked?

–*Can you please list any jobs or sources of income besides those on your current resume?

–*Have you ever worked as a lobbyist or worked for a foreign principal?

–*Are you Hillary Clinton?

–*Do you have the kind of baggage that Hillary Clinton has?

–*Have you ever been the focus of any kind of controversy, a question that is admittedly pretty silly to ask if your name happens to be Hillary Clinton.

–*If your name happens to be Hillary Clinton, did you really think we’d believe you when you said those missing Whitewater records would just magically appear on a dining room table?

–*How is it that you made a ten thousand percent rate of return on cattle futures in 1979 when you had no trading experience in this type of commodity … if your name is Hillary Clinton.

–*Do you like sex with plump young Jewish interns?

–*Do you like sex with plump young interns because they look up to you and don’t judge you like some other people?

–*Which describes you better: a) You have an uncontrollable need for unconditional love, mostly from the sexual favors of firm-breasted 22-year-old co-eds; b) You need to make a lot of money to prove yourself to people who were taller than you in high school; or c) You entered politics because you didn’t know how else to handle your unquenchable desires to kill?

–*Please list any instances in which you have testified before a grand jury, a legislative body, a regulatory commission, an empanelled jury in a criminal trial, an administrative law judge, a tax clerk, a papal magistrate, a devil’s advocate, the Shriners, a council of bishops, a Greek Orthodox Synod, or the tribal council on “Survivor.”

–*Please provide a list of any books, articles, blog posts, essays, op-ed columns, memos, e-mails, haikus, blank verse, villanelles, quatrains, sestinas, librettos, graffiti, theses or manifestos you have ever written, published, posted, circulated, slapped on somebody’s back, written on somebody’s notebook, or nailed to the door of a church.

–*Please include a list of any speeches you have given, along with possible transcripts, even if the speech was given in college and even if the audience was stone drunk.

–*If you have ever sent an embarrassing e-mail that you wish you could take back now, please tell us what it is, especially if it involved calling somebody’s girlfriend a hatchet-faced, castrating harpy.

–*If you ever revealed a man-crush in a diary, please divulge now and tell us if it’s definitely over.

–*Please list any organization, civic, fraternal, charitable, or political that you have been even remotely involved with, including the Cub Scouts, Brownies, Fantasy Football leagues and the KISS Army.

–*Please reveal whether you have a Facebook page, what your handles are, what groups you are a part of, who you have chatted with, who you’ve Super Poked and why.

–*If you have ever joined the Facebook page, “Obama is the AntiChrist,” please explain why, laying out your ecclesiastical arguments one by one.

–*Please reveal which business entities you are currently doing business with that might be subject to federal aid or legal intervention, including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, General Motors, Macy’s, McDonalds, Death Row Records, the Wu Tang Clan and Girls Gone Wild! Also provide any account numbers, Social Security numbers, pin numbers, passwords, safe-deposit keys, credit card numbers and Frequent Flier points.

–*Please think of anything you’ve done going back to age 5 that would compromise the office of the president of the United States, including embarrassing class pictures, failed romantic courtships, pre-marital sex, provocative movements, bad haircuts, wrong-headed political t-shirts and interest in bad music groups that could reveal you to be unethical, to use bad judgment, to have bad taste, or to think bad thoughts. Suspect behavior would include being too liberal or making too much money.

Read Full Post »

(Originally posted Saturday, November 15, 2008 )

Which WWF Wrestling Stars Have Names That Sound Like Unseemly Hygiene Problems?

–*Preparation J

–*Sigmoid Colon

–*’Shelle McBurns

–*Angel Fissure

–*John Dice

–*Primo Wang

–*Brie Discharge

–*Maryse Ringworm

–*Pink Eye Jones

–*Tinea Crusis

–*Lady Eczema

–*Larry “Lower Lip” Papules

–*Leticia “Plantar Warts” McBelle

–*Beefy Scrofulous and sidekick “Rash”

Read Full Post »

(Originally posted Wednesday, November 12, 2008 )

Federal bailout + lobbyists + “mad scramble”

Bailout + automakers + SUVs + suck

Automakers + crisis + Obama

“General Motors” + “penny stock” + “65-year low” + “toilet paper”

Bush + gracious + helpful + “smooth transition” + “anything for good press”

“$700 billion bailout” + “already dried up” + lobbyists + “special interests” + plumbers + “house builders”

“special interests” + “Jack Abramoff” + “filthy lucre” + “Paulie Walnuts”

“Joe Scarborough” + “says fuck you on air” + “seven second delay’ + “Where’s the FCC?”

“Jennifer Aniston” + “Angelina Jolie” + catfight

“John Mayer” + “Jennifer Aniston” + “not visibly pregnant”

“Jennifer Aniston” + pregnant + twins + “John Mayer” + bullshit

“John Mayer” + annoying + “too mellow” + douchey

“Brad Pitt” + “Angelina Jolie” + “breed like mayflies” + “DNA frozen and preserved in lead casing”

Obama + “stimulus package” + “food stamps” + “state aid” + “health care” + “auto industry bailout” + “empty Treasury” + “ha ha ha”

How can I get food stamps, state aid and health care from Barack Obama?

How will President Obama find the money for food stamps, state aid, health care?

FDR + “New Deal” + socialism + “tax the rich”

“John Maynard Keynes” + rehabilitated

“Alan Greenspan” + asshole

“Alan Greenspan” + “kept interest rates too low” + “housing bubble” + meltdown

Republicans + “blame Fannie Mae”

Does every American deserve a house?

Does Danny Bonaduce deserve a house?

How can I get a house and meet Jennifer Aniston?

“jennifer Aniston” + “pregnancy rumor” + “Vince Vaughan” + “John Mayer” + “gets around”

“Jennifer Aniston” + “John Mayer” + “multiple breakups” + turbulent + “base infatuation” + ephermal + “even a dog knows it won’t last”

“Sarah Palin” + “rock star among dummies”

“How can I get a house?”

“How can I score some of that federal financial stimulus bailout money?”

“How can I get some of that bailout money in Des Moines, Iowa?”

“Where can I get pregnant in Des Moines, Iowa?”

“Des Moines” + “bus schedule

Read Full Post »