fuck dinner

.
from baja oklahoma (a favored book of my youth), dan jenkins' immortal "ten stages of drunkenness":

1. Witty and Charming
2. Rich and Powerful
3. Benevolent
4. Clairvoyant
5. Fuck Dinner
6. Patriotic
7. Crank up the Enola Gay
8. Witty and Charming, Part II
9. Invisible
10. Bulletproof

*   *   *   *   *

back during the arab oil embargo of the '70s, i'd sit in his big, white living room and listen into the night as my dead father's brother, also an oilman--a man who bought his brother's widow a fine house and several cars, and would put all of said brother's orphans through college--waved his highball glass and regaled me with tales of, among other things, how he and his petroleum club buddies planned to put together an army of mercenaries to go in and take the saudi arabian oilfields back from those ungrateful, primitive towelheads who had so recently and unceremoniously thrown them out.

with the wisdom gained by hindsight (and lots of alcohol), i now realize he was merely at stage 7.

sorry, uncle d--if i'd been old enough to drink with you back then, maybe we'd still be speaking now.

see, linda, if you'd only yelled something inoffensive like "god damn america" at those kids, you'd still be a delegate

text

from the chicago sun-times:

Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski, a Carpentersville village trustee, was elected as an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She sports an Obama sign in her front yard.

On Saturday, two neighbor children were playing in the tree next-door to her house.

Ramirez-Sliwinski "came outside and told the children to quit playing in the tree like monkeys. The tree was not on Ramirez-Sliwinski's property," Carpentersville Police Commander Michael Kilbourne said.

Ramirez-Sliwinski admitted she used the word "monkeys," but said she did not intend racism. She said she was only trying to protect them from falling out of the tree.

"Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski said she saw the kids playing in the tree and didn't want them falling out of the tree and getting hurt. She said she calls her own grandchildren 'monkeys,' " Kilbourne said. The mother of one of the children did not see it that way, noting she and Ramirez-Sliwinski have clashed before.

"She felt it was racist because of the fact the children were African-American," Kilbourne said.

Told of the incident Monday by the Sun-Times, Obama's campaign called Ramirez-Sliwinski and persuaded her to step aside as a delegate because the campaign felt her remarks were "divisive and unacceptable."

obviously, the obama camp were not impressed with linda's "it takes a village" attitude.

oh, and to add insult to injury, not only did linda get banished from obamaland for her words, she also got a $75 ticket for "disorderly conduct, " defined as, "when a person does something that alarms or disturbs another." all because she referred to a couple of kids climbing a tree as "monkeys." i mean, jesus god--i've said it before and i'll say it again: it will not be the conservatives who kill free speech in america; it'll be the liberals.

i posted this story because it so clearly serves as a portent of one aspect of what we have to look forward to if this guy gets elected--every non-black (oh, and every non-liberal black) in america tiptoeing around on eggshells for at least the next four years lest they slip up, be labeled "divisive and unacceptable" and thus get relegated to the gulag.

[and yes, virginia, i'll still be voting against mccain voting for obama, but i'm just sayin--and probably not for the last time.]