My alarm rings just after 6 on weekday mornings, which sucks most days. Yesterday we rolled the clock forward so the alarm went off at what my body assumed was not “freaking 6” but in fact “God damn 5” in the morning. It makes a big difference. Most mornings, I could’ve shrugged off a priest on my local news show. This morning, I was on the stepper, stepping for all I’m worth in the semi-conscious state that permits me to exercise vigorously before I can talk myself out of it, when WABC’s Lori Stokes interviewed this priest on the matter of the Pope. If the reporter was not actually Lori Stokes, I have no explanation for why I didn’t leap off the exercise equipment and onto the remote. I like her. This interview was the softest soap I’ve ever seen. I talked this over with Mamie.

Me: So right around the 9-minute mark of my workout, he starts talking all this absolutely unbelievable, completely made-up crap about the Pope and I was thinking, ‘Voodoo. Cheap parlor tricks. Nobody could possibly be buying the cheesy sleight-of-hand this charlatan’s selling, could they?’ His version of what’s happening has as much relation to reality as those people who talk about fairies.

Mamie: Yeah? What was Father Lucky Charms saying?

Me: I wish I could tell you word for word but I was busy stepping, growling, trying to remain hydrated, assuring my cat I would soon be on the floor doing pushups, planning breakfast and some sort of outfit to wear to work that included – you know – less hypothetical clothing than last week. Wasn’t it Douglass Adams who said people could only have a certain number of thoughts at the same time before some have to leave? I thought, ‘Wait a second. One BILLION people believe this crap’ and I forgot what he was saying.

Mamie: Exactly. Like unicorns.

This morning, I posted Johnny’s straight-to-blog request, then got some angry email. Some of it was righteous. Some of it was bullshit. I conceded one point: one word in the text struck a nerve in a way that distracted from his point. I’m re-posting with that word replaced and asterisked – for which I apologize to him. I’m a free speech nut; sometimes free speech is uncomfortable for the listener. I’m also not in any way distancing myself from a frequent contributor to Poor Impulse Control just because his feelings about being a Catholic boy brought up in the Not-Acknowledged-By-the-Vatican-Catholic-Boy-Hellhole-That-Was-Boston offend people.

If you don’t like what you’re seeing, don’t read any further. You know what you’re in for.

******************************************************
Johnny can’t contain himself:

I haven’t prayed since Catholic school, but I’m praying today. I’m praying they hurry up and find something more interesting to talk about on the news than the death of the pope. First of all, I find it very hard to take the whole thing seriously, because my wife, another ex-Catholic, and I call our dogs’ poops “popes,” and we call pooping “making a pontiff.” You can imagine the difficulty of keeping a straight face when people on the radio gas on about the worldwide impact of this pontificate. Seconal, if this idiot* weren’t the so-called Holy Father, even my long-suffering still-Catholic mother would agree that, based solely on his opinions, the guy was a dumb fucking redneck, the kind of guy she and my dad held signs and protested against back in the sainted civil rights days, when even knowing black people was some kind of moral gold star, even though Floyd was their brother-in-law and if they wanted to see my mother’s sister, not to mention their nieces and nephews, they were going to have to know him anyways. Do me a favor. If after I die, which shouldn’t be long now, if anyone puts on a serious tone and starts talking about my great humanity and the richness of my spirit, fucking kick them in both balls. Do this in memory of me. Jesus.
******************************************************

A bit less than a year ago, Ronald Reagan died and I have never seen history rewritten so fast in my life. TV commentators and interviewees went boldly into science fiction with their fascinating new mantra: the poor loved the Gipper. The what? The poor loved fucking Ronald Reagan? On what planet? I tried so hard to keep a civil tongue in my head I almost bit it off. Every day, on an on, the most surreal assertions were made. At the time, I should have made a list of the most I-Want-What-That-Bastard’s-Smoking arguments. Being nice made me a complete waste of the oxygen I inhaled that week.

To complete the super-nauseating 1-2 punch, WABC News played a phone interview with Nancy Reagan recorded over the weekend. I actually climbed out of the shower to hear it better, felt faint and climbed back into the shower in hopes I’d pass out and a head injury would make be forget what I’d heard. I can’t think of anything more undignified than letting this crap go on even one more day. Why isn’t Ron, Jr. patting her hand gently and saying, “Mom, I love you but you were always, always wrong”?

The Pope’s dead. We’ll have another. They’re a renewable resource!
Reagan’s still dead. It’s not very Buddhist but: good riddance.
Nancy Reagan pretends she’s relevant. Great.

When are we going to wake up from this nightmare?

Start with part one

“Please don’t refill my coffee,” Mamie says. “It’s not empty yet. The proportions of coffee to milk to artificial sweetener will be off.”

The waitress gasps. “I’m like that, too! Nobody understands! When someone refills my coffee before it’s empty my whole day is ruined.” I decide this young woman, who has never waited on us before, is our girl. I’ve decided we love her, and she will tell us more of her endearing quirks. I declare it so. Mamie’s not entirely convinced.

A good waiter or waitress is nearly invisible, which I know because I was a *terrible* waitress in Dad’s high-end restaurant, and a few other joints down the line. At the end of the meal, you remember you ate the delicious food you asked for when you expected it and there were no jolts or unpleasant surprises. You, as a diner, probably won’t remember much about the person who served you. You should tip 20% and thank your lucky stars. A good server is hard to find but a neurotic server is very entertaining. She’ll be back later for Act III, I’m sure, and I see the proverbial gun on the wall.

“I kept trying to leave the bridal shower,” I say, when chewing resumes. I’m not eating. I ate at home. They’re at my mercy and if they spit food, I win. “But Mamie reminded me if I’d kept my knees together nobody would be there. The first thing that happened was my cousin chased me around the room, trying to take my picture for a guest book. It took her half an hour to catch me.”

“Waaaaam sssh a bee?” Trout munches.

“No. She’s wily,” Mamie explains. “The room *wasn’t* that big. It was also a little warm.”

“Right! When a nice person from the place lit a fire in the fireplace I tried to climb out a second story window.”

“You did not! You wanted ventilation.”

“A lot you know! I was going OUT that window.”

Lala’s smiling. She’s attended her daughter’s bridal shower, too. “What happened?”

“Apparently, the place is used to people trying to bust out of the event room. The window cranks were gone.” I look forlorn. My escape plans were foiled. Mamie’s nonplussed. Trout perks up and swallows.

“Remember that time in Newark?” Trout’s very excited. “We were leaving The Fringe and that guy was just hanging onto the side of the building! He said, ‘I got locked out. Would you hold the door open?’ I laughed so hard I had to duck between the cars and puke.”

“Hanging…on the side…of the building?” Mamie is staring again.

“Yeah, yeah, you know they can’t always hear the doorbell and sometimes the door gets locked,” I toss out. “And you were there when Jhon Thum climbed the side of the house in a kilt, so it’s not like we never see people hanging around a story up.”

“Jhon Thum,” Mamie sighs. “I’m always glad when I see him in pants.”

“When we started eating, I was sitting between Mamie and Niece #1, who is inseparable from Sister #4. They’re less than a year apart in age and they get along great. We kept trying to feed them tiramisu because we couldn’t eat it. The calories! Miss Sasha walked by with a full plate. I asked her had she seen the vegetables on a stick. She said, ‘Damn!’ and went back to the buffet.”

“Everything’s better on a stick,” Mamie agrees.

“And if you have to stab somebody you’re prepared,” I continue. “When the girls got up to go do that junior bridesmaid notetaking thing, Dad sat down next to me, which should have had seismic consequences because then he was sitting next to my mother. She looked like she might dispense with the wine glass and drink straight from the chardonnay bottle. And – oh my God! You should’ve seen the presents.”

“She got five shower curtains!” Mamie shouts. “Miss Sasha registered for stuff and forgot all about it! I gave her this beautiful Japanese sushi plate set in green! She said, ‘That’s really beautiful! I love your taste.’ I said, ‘It’s YOUR taste. You registered for it.’ Your cousin said it was like she ran through Target with the UPC gun singing, ‘La la la la la la.'”

“At 7 o’clock, the place was a well-heeled mess, my sisters were exhausted, Dad was the only one who knew how to use the 50-year-old industrial dish machine.The bridemaids started packing things up, All the concerned menfolk arrived to help eat the mountain of leftovers. Dad, Sister #1 and I packed up food, washed and put away the dishes at lightning speed for about an hour until #1 had to sit down. She’s 8 months pregnant so I don’t know how she stayed on her feet that long. In her place, I would’ve told those twenty-somethings to go fuck themselves and get next to a dishtowel. And Dad’s got a heart condition, so I told the bridemaids to stop whatever they were doing and help me.”

“What were they doing?’ Lala’s done eating now. Trout’s plate’s disappeared. Mamie’s lighting a cigarette. And my seltzer’s empty! Alas, no one will be spitting food! Well, there’s always next week.

“Darling,” I say to the waitress, “May I have another seltzer with lemon?” She points to a spot on the other side of my Dragonball Z lunchbox.

“Like that one?” she asks. I didn’t see her put it down. I’m thrilled! Mamie purses her lips.

“Ever have one of those days where everyone annoys you?” Mamie asks the girl. “You know, where everyone’s poking at you and you just think you’re going to kill somebody?”

“She’s a WAITRESS!” I shout.

“That’s EVERY day!” she says. Mamie brightens. Our girl’s no Twinkie.

And now we have a new playmate.

Trout is truly a nice person. Mamie and I agree there’s no way Trout would ever do something deliberately to hurt anybody, so we think she hangs around with us to tarnish her karma a little bit. When I met her, I was 14 and trying to stuff my whole body into a 24″ gym locker. She was 17, busty, topless and making smutty jokes. I like that in a person.

On Tuesday nights, my girlfriends – some of whom lack a critical X-chromasome – gather in a restaurant with a fireplace to eat dinner and hoot like monkeys about the intervening week. Lala’s daughter’s wedding date is nine days after Miss Sasha’s. Both our families are undertaking interracial weddings. Both families include members the outside world regards as *so nice* but we know they’re ruthless, controlling bastards. Neither of us can keep our mouth shut.

We should hire a film crew.

“You can’t beat the food club prices for pudding!” says Mamie, gesticulating like a Sicilian traffic cop. “Or cheese slices! You can’t beat those!”

“Can’t you get pudding and cheese at the grocery store?” I ask, because I’m both lazy and driven, and grocery shop once every four weeks at midnight on weekends for Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, and myself. I see the same cashiers on a monthly basis. We’re very close. They think I have six kids and a petting zoo.

“In the grocery store, you get six for $3.89. At the food club, it’s 18 for about $2. Three times the pudding for half the price! That’s THREE TIMES THE PUDDING! And cheese – “

“Some of us like to poop,” Trout chirps.

“I was going to say ‘If you like American, the food club pack means you can have a slice for three months,” Mamie says, staring, arms frozen in mid-gesture.

“That’s it,” I howl, getting a pen and paper. “What did you just say?”

“‘Some of us like to poop,'” Trout chirps again for the home audience.

“Some…of us…like…to poop,” I say and write on the back of a list of windshield glass replacement companies. One is coming to my car in a university parking lot Monday morning, hopefully before the graceful tilde-shaped crack implodes the pretty, pretty auto glass into a big pile of shiny art supplies. I have a bucket of the stuff collected off the streets of New Brunswick. I’d rather have a car windshield than a second tub. Lala hasn’t skipped a sip of clam chowder. I’m still holding a pen. “Where’s your daughter registered?”

“Bloomingdale’s,” she sips. “Crate & Barrel.” Lala has a metabolism and she knows how to use it.

Trout has a gift for wicked understatement. Once she sidled up behind me in a bar and whispered provocatively in my ear. “Did you know musicians make the same faces when they’re playing music as when they’re having sex?” She’s a musician and she’s dated musicians, so I know she’s telling the truth. Just that second, I was watching my brother play one of the blistering guitar parts on “Radar Love.” I went completely spastic and spent the rest of the evening with a beer in each hand, facing the back of the bar. I couldn’t finish a sentence. Audrey, dating my brother at the time, sprained a shoulder pointing at me and laughing. I say, “This is like that time you said guitar players – “

“Fuck like they play,” she purrs. “Only: dairy products.” Lala made for the salad bar. Finally, all the girls were eating, while the restaurant’s waiters and waitresses were squeezing one another’s young, firm bottoms at the bar, which is to say directly behind Trout and Lala. College basketball was on the differently color-balanced TVs behind Lala and Mamie. I’d eaten at home. Everyone was chewing as if her life depended on it except me. This was not their first mistake.

“So Mamie and I went to the bridal shower and I so wished you two instigators were there,” I say, as if putting out fire with gasoline were an original idea. “My dad catered the event, which means the food was really good. Sister #1 set up the banquet table and displays, so it was really beautiful. Colorful. Rustic.”

“Rustic?” Mamie frowns.

“Yeah, there was bread coming out of EVERYWHERE.”

Mamie slaps her forehead. “She’s right! There was bread coming out of EVERYWHERE. And she had stands and risers so the food was at all different levels.”

“Sister #1 is a professional. Also: Sister #2 and Sister #3 made a really sinister-looking room very nice with a bolt of orange tulle and some safety pins or something. It was a miracle.”

“The room wasn’t…so nice?” Lala ventures, spearing a grape tomato.

“You had to walk through an old man bar with a disco ball to get there. Or down three flights of wooden dune stairs. Keep in mind we’re all carrying giant serving dishes in lovely floral designs that turn into shrapnel on impact.” Mamie dips cauliflower in cream sauce, as foretold by the prophet Atkins.

“Ooooooooooh,” breathe Trout and Lala together.

**************************************************

Continue to part 2

Johnny’s a man on the move:

You must remember this. Because I don’t. Remember. This. Here’s your proof. You can’t outrun them. You have to kill them with a stake before they bite.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7209312/?GT1=6305

Furthermore, I had to switch from juno to earthlink, and I’ve lost all my Favorites, like your blog, which I can’t seem to find on google, maybe I’m just a retard, I can only find altrok, and I, like, KNOW where altrok is.

Cal’s dad got us a AAA TripTick, which is a spiral-bound notebook of maps for our whole trip, from our door to Santa Fe, with our routes highlighted. It’s fagulous. I’ll be seeing places out of a Boys Don’t Cry/In Cold Blood/Thelma and Louise nightmare, like Laramie, like Amarillo. Ama-fucking-rillo! My greaser cowboy past coming to life before my eyes! Don’t look!

Marcello is a sweet and mellow fellow, Giancarlo too. They don’t even seem to have noticed that their mummy cut their balls off. Cal jacked them up with something called Kitty Magic, which is morphine, ketamine, and something else, but hey, this already sounds like a pretty good menu. Rather than waking up slowly and thrashing around for a while and then being torpid for days, patients flying on Kitty Magic Airlines come back in a few hours, happy as me on a poppy farm. I’m heartbroken that apparently it really doesn’t work as well on people, although I’d like to know, did they actually test it on people? I’ll volunteer. As long as they don’t cut my balls off. Again.
********************************************************************************

Hot damn. I’m going to need a grad student to take all this down for posterity.

Monday morning, Sean – whom I haven’t seen since last August – quacked from his obscenely expensive home at an undisclosed location somewhere near the Jersey Shore that he had strep. I swear I hung up the phone and didn’t just run but sprinted a fever. He cursed me. Within an hour, my hands on the keyboard on my desk were the only part of me still moving. My eyes were closed but I’m a touch typist so illness did not interrupt the constant stream of scathing and mostly unintelligible email Mamie receives from me all day, every day. At work, I only *seem* quiet. Monday, I looked like a wax museum statue with an axe to grind.

Monday night, I lay on the couch, eyes closed, listening to the TV. To my complete and absolute shock I fell asleep before 11 p.m. This should have been my first clue that I’d caught a truly vicious plague, and that prompt medical attention would save me days of saying, “We’ve known one another since I came to work here in the eighties, and yet I don’t remember hearing you had a twin. Wearing the same outfit, even…” No, I was an idiot and went to work Tuesday morning. We’d suddenly received performance appraisal forms Monday, and I’d really tried my best to form sentences. I may’ve written words like “I’ve risen through the ranks to become Interplanetary Cancellation Potentate, striking fear into the hearts of publishers on three sides of the Atlantic.” Tuesday morning, I wrapped myself in a Joe Boxer blanket and became an embarrassment to my department in the staff lounge. Over the course of 85 minutes, no fewer than twenty people saw me sleeping in a baby blue microfibre blanket in a reasonably public place and asked, “Are you okay?”

It is important to recall that people mean well even as they’re asking the dumbest question you’ll hear all day two dozen times.

Anyway, the reason I didn’t leave work was that my car was a doorstop in my parking lot at home, and one of my co-workers offered to drop me at home halfway through the day. Besides the ride, I was hoping my mind would clear long enough for me to read my appraisal and find out *how* unemployed I’d be next week. The proofreading didn’t go so well. The co-worker dropped me off at my driveway and turned around because the next block was barricaded. Police cars were parked as unspeakable angles. It looked like a patriotic Christmas light nightmare. I went upstairs, called Miss Sasha and demanded she and her fiance come over, jumpstart my car and drive my nemesys to the mechanic. Curiously, she didn’t tell me to fuck off. She’d call when they were nearby. I fell asleep. Probably.

Sometime later, the phone rang. I stumbled down to the parking lot with my clown-red hair pointed toward magnetic north. The hood was already up. I opened the trunk and took out the cables. They were easy to find in my miniscule trunk because they were red, black and I couldn’t tell if I was seeing double. He started the car. She drove it to the mechanic’s. I’d taken out the radio so she stood a fair chance of arriving at the mechanic’s without an arrest record because her attention span is shorter than mine. Which is seconds long, really. Safety first! As I turned to stumble back into the building, the super’s path intersected with mine.

“Know what that police pileup is?” he asked. Fuzzy, I said I sure didn’t.

“Hostage situation,” he said. “They’re not letting anyone past the cars.” I didn’t just laugh, I BARKED out loud. Oh, come now. In New Brunswick? The police seemed pretty convinced and convincing. This event turned up on CNN. Later, it turned out to be a bi-polar child molester in Texas and her chat room friends making 911 calls for fun. People do plenty of low-level crap to one another in this town but the city’s accumulated felonies don’t hold a candle to one day in Newark or Jersey City. All afternoon, a helicopter hovered directly above my window at a height that guaranteed the rotor noise was louder than I could turn “General Hospital.” Tuesday night, I called a cab and went to the mechanic’s.

See, late the week before, I’d driven over to Mamie’s and couldn’t figure out why the interior lights wouldn’t go off. My car is not like yours. It’s a 1992 LeBaron Convertible, and it has – thankfully – a real minimum of buttons and gadgets I would be nervous about touching anyhow. Paulie bought me this car so I could go to work without catching fire. I love this car but it’s not so sure about taking our relationship to the next level. Mamie and I combed every inch of the dashboard and couldn’t find a way to turn off the interior lights, which none the less flickered seductively and sometimes went out. It was just a matter of time before my car turned into that doorstop and Monday morning, it did not disappoint me. Tuesday afternoon, just over the rotor noise, the mechanic called and said a plastic piece in the door was displaced and he’d moved it. I love that man. At the mechanic’s I found the teenage boys who love the same bands I do and asked where my car was. They gave me the keys and I drove off. I thought my fever had gone but I was wrong. The cool evening air temporarily made me lucid. Minutes later, I realized I was a danger to myself and others. Fortunately, I was on Route 27, with all the other drivers who were routinely a danger to themselves and others, so I got home okay and swore next time I’d take a stunt owner.

I once again fell asleep at least an hour before I ordinarily would’ve thought about brushing my teeth and complaining about the hours of tossing and turning ahead of me. Honestly, I should’ve just checked into the hospital I can see from my bathroom.

All Wednesday, I lay on my couch with my eyes closed. Often, I said, “Blubb…” but as you might imagine, of course I was unbearably attractive. My drink of choice was NyQuil, and again, I slept through the night. No wonder I was confused Thursday and went to work.

Fortunately, it was performance review day, and my brain was full of soda. In the seventies and very early eighties, I used to pay to feel like my feet were a mile from my brain. The people I work for went on a bit about how fab my year was, work-wise, and I pooh-poohed their efforts to pretend I might earn a living wage because we don’t want to embarrass one another.

Naturally, I didn’t sleep Thursday night and Friday, I wondered if I’d hallucinated the whole week. Pink elephants? Car trouble? Friday night and Saturday, I stripped my bed, scoured the bathroom and bleached my apartment to within an inch of its life.

If I’d had orange juice in my fridge, my insomnia might still bat .1000.

It’s you and I, you know.

By “you” I mean you. You know who you are. You can wear that sombrero and stick-on mustache six days a week but on Sunday, you’re up against it. The truth is you may not remember who used to wear the hat.

By “I” I mean me, and I could be anyone. I’ve got a personality to match every sweater I own and a couple I’ve got my eye on. Since we’re here, get the door and don’t step on my cat. He’s black so you won’t see him until he’s sitting on your chest, issuing demands. Don’t worry. He’s a hustler. When he sees you have nothing he wants he’ll leave you be.

Any plural pronoun forms the basis for misunderstanding. “Let’s be patient,” I might say. The pronoun is hidden in a simple contraction; the anxiety would be clear. The risks are great in any human interaction. You’ve come a long way. For a moment you didn’t recognize my face and when you did, you hesitated. You know who you are. I could be anyone. The cat doesn’t trust you. Take off your shoes.

Johnny pops his head in and blurts:

I slid on some ice last week and hit a curb, breaking my drive shaft. The car was damaged, too. Repairs proceed, but in the meanwhile, all the agency had was a Jeep Cherokee 4 x 4. This is another case of learning how cliche’d expressions got that way. I climbed into this monster and I immediately felt like I was driving a tank. I have to admit, it’s a masterful, invincible feeling, looking down at the tiny little cars. I can see now what a gnat I look like to people driving these things. They said I could come by today and see if anything smaller had come in off the road and give back the Jeep. I didn’t go by.

OJ inoculated me against American justice. I just laughed when Robert Blake got off with that preposterous yarn about going back to the restaurant to get his gun. Balls big enough to tell that one, maybe he deserves to walk, besides which, if I were him, I would have shot Bonny Lee a lot sooner. A few miles away, it’s heartening to see that Scott Peterson could sell bullshit for a living but not to a jury. I don’t care how much of a prissy pain in the ass she was. Get a divorce like the rest of us hapless bastards. Fry, you stupid asshole. Fry!

*************************************************
I’m not a lawyer, but as your attorney, I advise you to get a divorce and pretend you’re Oscar Madison, not Billy Madison. Grow up!

Not a single member of the family has both oars in the water. Miss Sasha’s bachelorette party plans to cruise the side of New Brunswick where I spent fifteen years at, under and behind the bar. Ordinarily, I’d say mine was a problem with prepositions but I might have to mame my drinking buddies for drooling on the beautiful girl who looks like a miniature, blond, girlie, smiling, youthful version of…okay, she looks nothing like me. If there were a resemblance, the barflies might figure it out and cower at the other end of the room. Geez, I know my friends. I would have Miss Sasha dusted for fingerprints Sunday morning if I hadn’t issued strict orders to the cousins that the group stay out of my local.

My kitchen looks like Mario Batali’s briefcase exploded in marinated mushroom and garlic breadstick shrapnel. Serving bowls and platters, squeaky clean, are stacked on even the smallest bit of surface space. Dad, via email, growls about the hour at which bread can be purchased, and why no one knows where to find a decent Italian bakery outside of New York and Philadelphia. Sisters #2 and #3 have remained calm, but #1 is going to have an aneurysm if I tell So-And-So that I know what happened with You-Know-Who, and #1 can’t be blamed because nobody would trust her and she’ll never tell me another secret if I blabb. If I don’t hem a pair of pants tonight, nobody’s going to say to me tomorrow, “She’s going to make a lovely bride.” No. They’ll say, “Tata, darling, you look lovely but, um, where are your pants?” and, “Blue’s not your best color, dear.” I hate to wish away twenty-eight hours of my life but I can’t wait to survey the wreckage of a rented hall, all the tulle a party of 30 could swing from and the ruins of meringues and vegetable kebabs and gasp, “I meant to do that…”

Oh God, I hate bridal showers.

In California, the world’s only captive great white shark is swimming around an aquarium tank. She’s got a bruised nose from bashing the glass. She’s recently made fresh sashimi of two tankmates. The marine biologists who take care of her have the nerve to stand in front of news cameras and act surprised. I immediately thought of catnip.

Like many of our former stray friends, Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, is an indoor wild animal. I used to enjoy discovering he’d foraged in the garbage can and torn apart chicken carcasses as I slept. It made me think his sojourn among the outside cats might have been filled with slow-moving pigeons, possibly in orange sauce. Still, he’s not tame. One night I gave him some catnip to roll around in. About fifteen minutes later, I remembered that catnip makes him crazy. My memory is terrible, but it improved temporarily when I looked over the side of the couch and took a claw to the face. See, *I* may forget who’s bent on stealing my soul, but like Pepperidge Farm, the little black cat remembers. So yes, my hair is a vivid red and since Friday my wild ideas feel smarter and wilder than they have in ages. So here’s one: some creatures by their very natures do not belong to us. We live alongside them and forget to our peril that they’ve got their own lives. Next time I dish out the catnip I’ll keep one eye on the cat. The shark belongs in a deep ocean, scaring surfers and making little sharks – or on a Japanese menu, if you will. From this we might also learn that our own lives are best conducted without tourists and voyeurs. You know. Unless they’re tasty.

Millions of years ago – when dinosaurs roamed the earth and ethnic teens used curling irons in futile attempts to model their hairstyles after the not at all ethnic Farrah Fawcett’s feathery coif – I saw an article in the practically unproofread local paper about a rally for George Wallace. Not the comedian. The photograph depicted a wheelchair-bound Governor Wallace surrounded by a crowd of supporters. Next to him, Tammy Wynette crooned “Stand By Your Man.” Whenever I think of this distasteful moment in the history of American hatred, I am pleased to recall the song’s tender rendition behind chicken wire in “The Blues Brothers.” There! So much for *that.*

We live in a time of creeping and insidious hatred. Your oppressors – stop arguing with me, you *have* oppressors; wanna talk about your credit card-issuing Evil Overlords? – want you to live fearfully, obediently and in isolation. TV news begins every night with a storyline that ends with, “Could your neighbors be [insert latest shocking behavior humans have actually been displaying since the dawn of time] with your [insert children, pets, fine washables; whatever victim scares you most]?” Maybe you didn’t even notice for a while that you wonder what your friends are up to, what Mom and Dad did before the population was under constant surveillance, and that Fox News and Homeland Security want you to believe every busted fuse in your basement panelbox is the work of crafty al-Qaeda.

Yeah, yeah. Malarkey. We have a problem.

I am telling you right now: I can’t take credit for this idea, but I don’t remember where I saw it first. When I find the source of it, I will credit the brains most abundant. It’s this: it’s time for a giant, sustained game of Political Point&Laugh.

When Bill O’Reilly says something inflammatory or breezes past the facts, burst out laughing.

When our President says Social Security is doomed (DOOMED!), grab your sides and guffaw.

When Dick Cheney says…anything, giggle like Gidget.

See, their whole schtick is being taken seriously. When you’re interpreting Bush’s latest budget request as a real kneeslapper, it’s suddenly very, very easy to see behind the Wizard’s curtain. Remove your own fear and you will see clearly. We have a revolution to conduct, and the first up against the wall are the hate- and fearmongers.

Now, laugh! And pass it on.