the simca

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back from austin yesterday.


not a pleasure trip, but it had its moments--dinner with my mother, my sister and her boyfriend on my last night in town, for instance.


end of a great meal and we're relaxed around the dinner table.  marcus and i are of an age and, being texas boys and all, naturally the talk turns to high school and cars.  his first was a '64 ford galaxie 500--and mine?


"'71 corolla," i start to reply, but i'm cut off in mid-sentence by my mother's flat pronouncement:


"no, michael--you're forgetting the simca."


i blank for a second, and then . . . oh yeah, the simca.  she was right--for better or worse, it had been my first car.


i turn to her, astonished. "ma, i had that thing for maybe all of three weeks--how could you possibly . . ."


and then it all comes flooding back, and i start laughing.  "oh yeah, i guess you would remember the simca, wouldn't you?"


she doesn't join in. 

picture it:  tyler, texas, summer of 1972

it was a faded periwinkle blue--a ridiculous, boxy little thing that looked pretty much the same coming and going, but i was inordinately proud of it.  yeah, it was butt-ugly, but it was a car, goddammit, and it was all mine.

even back then $200 didn't buy you much car, but when (a) you're a 15-year-old kid making $1.25 an hour slaving away part-time at the local sizzler and that's all you've managed to accumulate; and (b) an older co-worker suddenly sees a way to rid himself of a problem for just the amount of money you happen to have--well, you do the math.

it started smoking before i even got it home, but i didn't care--i washed and waxed it with loving care, started it every morning and counted the days until i turned 16 and got my license.

meanwhile, there was driver's ed to get through--and that particular summer, it was held not at the high school which i would attend in the coming fall, but at the other one way on the other side of town.  my friend bruce and i carpooled--his mother took us one week, my mother the next.

and lemme tell ya, that shit started early.  and while bruce's mother was invariably made-up and dressed to the nines in the morning, my mother generally was not--with her, it was usually pajamas, a bathrobe, hair wild and askew, coffee cup in one hand and cigarette in the other--not a pretty picture under the best of circumstances.

i don't remember which week it was when i talked her into driving us over in the simca--she didn't want to do it; she hadn't driven a stick in years and she mistrusted the damn car, but she did it for me, god love her.

we made it over there fine; it was only after she dropped us off, turned around and attempted the climb back up the hill that the thing died.

it took all eight of the boys in our driver's ed class--each one reassuring my mortified mother that she looked beautiful in her bathrobe--to get the simca going fast enough so that she could pop the clutch and get it started.

she put-putted off in a cloud of smoke and i forgot all about her.

it was only later that i found out that the simca died again halfway home, and that she had to get out and walk two miles--barefoot, in pajamas and a bathrobe, hair wild and askew, coffee cup in one hand and cigarette in the other--over to rachel and j.c.'s house and call a tow truck.

the simca never recovered, but my mother (mostly) did.

a couple insights into mkf's enduring internet popularity

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so the sound card on my macbook died last week and i'm bored on an airplane today cleaning up my desktop prior to handing the machine over to the apple people for repair and i come across a couple long-forgotten screenshots.

the first would be a sterling example of the sorta comment that got me banned from bill in exile:

[i'm guessing this one never made it past moderation--whaddya think?]

this next one--and i actually sorta remember this one, an instinctive rebuttal to a joe.my.god post mourning the young patrick kennedy's recent decision to retire from politics (i guess i just couldn't help myself):

is remarkable mainly because of the follow-up:

 

see, here's what i figure is my saving grace:  my most drunken obnoxiousness is almost always offset by my equally over-the-top morning-after remorse--that'll get me into blog heaven, right?

mkf engages the bitches

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[this woulda been friday night's post had i been able to manage it]

they're arrayed around their semi-circular booth as usual when i enter the break-room, their day half over and mine just beginning--crocheting their afghans, stuffing their faces with lunch and chattering incessantly over one another.

"the bitches", i call 'em, even though they're really not.  individually, i can happily deal with any one of these women, but as a group? fuhgeddaboudit--if you're not careful you'll get sucked into a conversation about scrapbooking that'll never end.

knowing this, moving purposefully and avoiding eye contact, i make my way to the fridge as usual, dump my shit, stop at the icemaker and then the water cooler for a refill, and just as i'm about to head out the door--a clean getaway--i hear from their table the following which stops me in my tracks:

"listen, if they have to swab my hands to keep me and my kids safe, then i say it's a small price to pay."

[sigh]

somebody tell me:  what is it about the prospect of a commercial airliner smashing into the earth in a flaming ball of pyrotechnic carnage that reduces most otherwise rational human beings to helpless, easily-manipulated mush?  i dunno, but boy, the terrorists and the government sure seem to, and these days i'm really not sure which group americans should fear more.

i know i shouldn't but i can't help myself, so i turn away from the door, walk over to the booth, face the bitches and say,

"so just because some grubby, semi-literate dumbass muslim tries and fails to blow up a bomb he's managed to slip past whatever half-wit minimum-wage cretin we have guarding the gates, every american should forevermore have to bend over, take their shoes off and have their hands swabbed every time they have to board a plane?  really?

startled by this direct assault, the bitch in question bravely answers, "if it will keep us safe, yes."

i move in:  "so tell me something, [insert individual bitch's name here]--how many plane crashes you imagine this bullshit will prevent every year?

she's still game, if a little scared [she's never seen mkf drop his jovial mask--none of 'em have]:  "if it's even one, that's enough."

i push it:  "so let me understand this:  you're willing to trade the balls of a nation--reduce us all to passive sheep--in order to maybe save 350 lives a year, right?

she obviously hadn't thought about it in that way, but after a moment's reflection, says "yeah," and her fellow bitches nod in firm agreement.

i then look her in the eye and say, "lemme rephrase the question:  you're willing to throw every american's civil liberties under the bus in order to maybe save one planeload of people, yet at the same time you're happily willing to sacrifice 40,000 of your fellow americans a year for the sake of your own convenience--right?"

every eye at the table widens at this wild accusation and she says, "no--what are you talking about?"

when i inform her that most of the 40,000 deaths which occur on america's highways each year could easily be eliminated if we reduced the national speed limit to, say, 25 mph, the table erupts in derisive laughter--"if we all drove at 25 miles an hour, nobody'd get anywhere!"

when i reiterate that 40,000 lives could be saved every year, they remain unmoved--hell, you gotta get to work, right?

as it has throughout most of recorded history, liberty takes a backseat to convenience--and as with most of america, irony is obviously lost on the bitches.

meanwhile, back at the left

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seriously, you useless, craven, dickless assholes?

you know, when they gained the presidency and both houses of congress i knew they were gonna spend us into oblivion, but i consoled myself with the knowledge that at least the worst excesses of the bush-era assault on the constitution would be rolled back.

joke's on me, i guess.

yet another interesting chart

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let us pause in our merciless attack on the brainless left and scrutinize the teabaggers for a minute: waving their misspelled signs and screaming for limited government and fiscal restraint, you could almost forget that most of 'em no doubt cheered on the idiot bush as he trampled our civil liberties and spent us from surplus into bankruptcy whilst waging his stupid, pointless wars--but only almost.

where do most conservatives wanna cut?  as the above chart makes clear (courtesy of the american national election studies), it's simple:  foreign aid and welfare.

the problem, you teabaggers, is that foreign aid and welfare account for less than 1% and 6% of our annual budget, respectively--a mere drop in the bucket.

the other 93%--social security, the military, medicare, childcare, science/technology, education, border security, infrastructure?  no way, jose--less than 15% of self-identified conservatives would condone cutting any of those.

in other words, you pussies, you're just as pro big-government as the lefties you pretend to deplore.

[me?  gimme the budget, a red pencil, a half-gallon of vodka and a long weekend and we'd be back in the black, goddammit.]

i know this'll come as a shock to--well, nobody

so today i'm reading through joe stack's suicide manifesto and thinking, "hell, except for the crazy parts, i coulda written most of this."

hey, there's always north dakota

ever wonder why so many of the most highly-taxed [i.e., liberal] states are also among the most broke?  i mean, you think with all that tax money flowing in they'd be goddam utopias, right?

here's what newly-elected new jersey governor chris christie recently had to say about one of the biggest reasons in his first state of the state address:

One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits, a total of $3.8 million on a $120,000 investment. Is that fair?

A retired teacher paid $62,000 towards her pension and nothing--yes, nothing--for full family medical, dental and vision coverage over her entire career. What will we pay her? $1.4 million in pension benefits and another $215,000 in health care benefit premiums over her lifetime. Is it "fair" for all of us and our children to have to pay for this excess?

[emphasis mine]

in other words, it's the same thing that killed GM and chrysler--unions [in this case, state-worker unions] and their entitlements run amuck.

i mean, jesus god, i work for a private company that contributes a little to my 401k every year, and matches a percentage of my contributions each year, but the day i retire, like most americans, i'm on my own.  can somebody please splain me why i should be expected to work until i'm 80 to support the lavish early retirement of  hordes of fat-ass 55-year-old polyester-clad government cubicle-workers [and their families] for the rest of their miserable lives?

the answer, of course, is there is no good reason; these millions of state workers enjoy these obscene benefits because of decades of political payoffs to their unions by corrupt politicians every election cycle in exchange for their support.

is it "fair?"  of course it's not fair, but that doesn't matter--the politicians have locked their states into these contracts whether the hapless electorate they were supposed to have been looking out for like it or not.

california's governer schwarzenegger had this to say about his [my] state's predicament:

The cost for state employee pensions is up 2,000 percent in the last ten years, while revenues have only increased by 24 percent. The pension fund will not have enough money to cover this amount, so the state — that means the taxpayer — has to come up with the money.

what he fails to mention is that all of these pension funds have lost an average of 40% of their value in the last two years since most of them were heavily invested in AIG-style derivatives, leaving the shortfall even greater.

is this a sustainable model?  of course not, and it's not gonna get any better--as taxes continue to rise in these states to pay for all this foolishness, the businesses and middle-class taxpayers who are expected to foot the bill as they always have will continue to flee to more responsibly-managed states.

i can see this fiasco playing out in one of two ways (because the problem is too big for any government bail-out):  either the taxpayers will revolt, or the states will default. either way, the pension funds upon which millions of past and present state workers rely will most assuredly go broke.

and as for the folks who don't have the good sense to get outta these states while the getting's still good?  well, they can look forward to, as the chinese say, most interesting times.