An open letter to Congresswoman Giffords

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Eric von Quidnunc

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords,

The last week has been a time of mourn­ing and reflec­tion for most Amer­i­cans. The tragedy affect­ing you and so many fam­i­lies is incom­pre­hen­si­ble. The thoughts and prayers of my fam­ily have been with you and the other vic­tims. We pray for your quick recov­ery and hope you will soon be able to return to your position.

I am con­fi­dent you will regain the fac­ul­ties nec­es­sary to assume your office. I believe this because your endurance is poten­tially mirac­u­lous, and I sus­pect there is a higher pur­pose for your survival.

Many peo­ple have already attempted to politi­cize your assault. Many have tried to focus blame on sub­jects and dis­course in no way con­nected to the actions of your assailant. We live in an increas­ingly polar­ized soci­ety, and as such, your posi­tion can make you a tar­get. How­ever, when an indi­vid­ual turns rea­son into irra­tional response, that person’s actions are not a reflec­tion of a demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety. It’s mad­ness. That’s all.

Once you recover, you are going to be placed into an exalted posi­tion of reck­on­ing. You will be viewed by many as a hero. I hope you will be a cham­pion of what is pru­dent, not what’s pop­u­lar. I hope you will stand behind poli­cies that demon­strate the ideals of our time­less repub­lic, not those that pan­der to an ephemeral populous.

Please for­give your assailant. Not because it’s the Chris­t­ian thing to do, but rather a cat­e­gor­i­cal imper­a­tive for estab­lish­ing good will.

Please don’t ask peo­ple to give up their guns, ask them to aban­don their anger. Peo­ple will encour­age you to become the poster child for gun con­trol. It will not only define your polit­i­cal career, it will make you a polar­iz­ing fig­ure. You will also have very lim­ited suc­cess insti­tut­ing any real gun con­trol mea­sures. Ask James Brady if the Brady Bill was the result of his ini­tial goals.

Insist on no more secu­rity than you had on the day of the shoot­ing. Show the world you aren’t afraid. Dis­play to the peo­ple that you won’t let fear dic­tate how you will serve them. And make your­self more acces­si­ble to your con­stituents than any con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can fed­eral legislator.

Never accept another dime from any spe­cial inter­est group. Be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive who rep­re­sents the peo­ple who elected you, not one who rep­re­sents those who’ve paid for access to you. Cast your votes for the pub­lic, not your party. Pre­tend there’s no such thing as a reelec­tion. Don’t be a politi­cian, be an American.

When you stand up and speak to Amer­i­cans for the first time since the attack, I would be so proud to hear some­thing like: I am not a vic­tim. I am not a sym­bol of resilience. I’m a lucky sur­vivor, who will not let my past (neg­a­tively) reflect upon my future. Our paths are forged by a promise from his­tory; but they’re formed in con­sid­er­a­tion of our expe­ri­ences. We are not seeds push­ing through the soil. We are flow­ers seek­ing the light of the sun. Growth isn’t a resis­tance to change; it’s an adap­ta­tion to it. America’s seeds were planted in free­dom and equal­ity; and her flow­ers bloom in tol­er­ance and accep­tance for all. God bless this coun­try and every sin­gle one of us!

Sin­cerely,

Eric von Quidnunc

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Predictions for 2011

Posted on January 2, 2011 by Eric von Quidnunc

Unable to field viable con­tenders to face off against Pres­i­dent Obama, the GOP starts court­ing celebri­ties. Chuck Nor­ris quickly becomes the favorite. His tour bus fea­tures a mural of the mar­tial artist boot­ing the Demo­c­ra­tic Party mas­cot with the slo­gan, “Kick­ing Ass Coast to Coast”.

Natalie Port­man will win the best actress Oscar for her role in Black Swan. Upon receiv­ing the stat­uette from San­dra Bul­lock, the ingénue will lock lips with the older star. Port­man will then say, “Sorry, I didn’t pre­pare an accep­tance speech.” Crit­ics con­sider it one of the Acad­emy Awards all time best moments.

Dur­ing the tap­ing of her final episode, Oprah will offi­cially out her­self. She uses the pub­lic­ity to pro­mote her auto-biopic, Oprah, a Love Story, to be aired in prime­time on her nascent net­work, “O”. The movie will be the most watched tele­vi­sion pro­gram of 2011. It will earn Gabrielle Sidibe an Emmy for her por­trayal of Oprah.

In an effort to close a $15 bil­lion bud­get deficit, Illi­nois Gov­er­nor Pat Quinn pro­poses a “fat tax” on high calo­rie fast food items. The idea is lauded by health offi­cials and leg­is­la­tors. In a failed lob­by­ing effort to kill the bill, McDonald’s moves their cor­po­rate head­quar­ters out of state, at the cost of sev­eral thou­sand jobs.

Fed up with the shame and humil­i­a­tion caused by his step-daughters, Bruce Jen­ner goes OJ on the Kar­dashian sisters.

The Cubs win the World Series. In the ensu­ing cel­e­bra­tion, Cubs’ fans acci­den­tally burn down Wrigley Field. Unable to reach a deal with city offi­cials on a new ball­park, the Rick­etts fam­ily moves the fran­chise to Mex­ico City.

On the tenth anniver­sary of 9/11, an overly-zealous air mar­shal shoots a sus­pected ter­ror­ist aboard a flight. An inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mines the man was drink­ing heav­ily in the air­port before his flight. Unable to wait for the pilot to turn off the fas­ten seat belt sign, the vic­tim made a dash for the lava­tory shortly after take-off. Law­mak­ers respond by pro­hibit­ing alco­hol sales in air­port terminals.

Tiger Woods is seen dat­ing for­mer porn-star, Katie Mor­gan. Tiger wins the Grand Slam. When asked what he thought most con­tributed to his suc­cess on the course, Tiger responds, “A hot blonde with the right attitude.”

A series of cyber attacks against Face­book erodes con­fi­dence in the social net­work­ing site, prompt­ing users to per­ma­nently log off in droves. US worker pro­duc­tiv­ity soars.

In effort to show the world they’re pre­pared to be 21st cen­tury mon­archs, Prince William and Kate Mid­dle­ton chore­o­graph a dance dur­ing the wed­ding pro­ces­sional ala the viral hit of the “JK Wed­ding Entrance”. Being a good sport, Queen Eliz­a­beth joins the fun. The video becomes an inter­na­tional sen­sa­tion avail­able only on iTunes. The pro­ceeds enable Britain to ease up on some of their aus­ter­ity measures.

In order to pro­vide a legit­i­mate path to nat­u­ral­iza­tion, ille­gal immi­grants are offered cit­i­zen­ship after a tour of ser­vice in the mil­i­tary. These troops are then sta­tioned en masse along the US-Mexican bor­der to halt to flow of ille­gal immi­grants and quell the drug-related vio­lence spilling across the border.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Alternatives to a higher education

Posted on December 17, 2010 by Eric von Quidnunc

Mil­lions of col­lege stu­dents will migrate back to their native nest­ing grounds this week­end to for­age for food; to rest; to regroup with old flocks; even to mate. In other words, they’re going to raid their par­ents’ fridge, sit around and play video games, get drunk with high school bud­dies, and use the knowl­edge learned the pre­vi­ous term to get laid. It’s a won­der­ful ritual.

Many of them are har­bor­ing a dark secret. They’re feel­ing anx­ious and guilty. Unable to approach the sub­ject, many of them will ignore the issue until it metas­ta­sizes beyond a cur­able con­di­tion. They real­ize col­lege isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (i.e. they dis­cov­ered there’s actu­ally work involved). They gave it the old col­lege try, and now they’re ready to join the ranks of dropouts everywhere.

They shouldn’t fret. (Bill Gates prob­a­bly doesn’t regret his deci­sion to leave school.) Nearly three-quarters of Amer­i­cans lack a col­lege diploma. Of the ones who start school, fewer than sixty-percent fin­ish in the first six years. Dare I say it? Col­lege is over-rated! There are a bevy of alter­na­tives for those who choose not to rack up stu­dent debt, live off Ramen noo­dles, or pur­sue a major that will never mate­ri­al­ize into an actual job.

Here are a few less than con­ven­tional paths for the per­son who can’t com­mit to college:

1. Start a cult. David Koresh. Jim Jones. Charles Man­son. These guys are famous!

2. Audi­tion for a real­ity show. You don’t have to be an actor or have any tal­ent what­so­ever to become a celebrity. Just ask Kate Gos­selin, Heidi Mon­tag, Spencer Pratt, the cast of Jer­sey Shore, and a slew of others.

3. Run for office. You don’t have to know any­thing about pol­i­tics, need a decent edu­ca­tion, or have the integrity or skills to respon­si­bly man­age the office for which you’re run­ning. Just ask Sarah Palin, George Bush, Tom Delay, or Rod Blagojevich.

4. Find a job in the adult enter­tain­ment indus­try. Sex sells. Always has. Always will. If you were born with sex­ual charisma, why not cap­i­tal­ize on it? We all pros­ti­tute our­selves in one way or another. If you’re that hot chick that all the boys were crav­ing in high school, there’s a poll some­where you can dance around. If you were that guy in the show­ers your class­mates were sneak­ing peeks at, you might just be the next Ron Jeremy.

Maybe LiLo needs a sixth stint in rehab

5. Go to rehab. Col­lege cam­puses around the nation are breed­ing grounds for alco­holics, drug addicts, gam­blers, etc. Why wait until you actu­ally have a life to destroy to ruin it. Learn to man­age that addic­tive per­son­al­ity before you waste tens-of-thousands of dol­lars on an edu­ca­tion you can’t remember.

6. Learn a trade. The world needs plumbers, car­pen­ters, elec­tri­cians, chefs, etc. Arti­sans will always be in demand and you don’t need a col­lege degree to be one. Besides, if uni­ver­si­ties were more inter­ested in minds than money, high school guid­ance coun­selors would learn the phrase, “I don’t see col­lege in your future.”

7. Join the mil­i­tary. The mil­i­tary is always look­ing for a few good (straight) men. If you can keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told, there’s poten­tial for advance­ment. There’s also job secu­rity. As a nation with inter­ests in every part of the globe—America sticks its mil­i­taris­tic nose in everybody’s busi­ness. As long as there are eco­nomic resources to exploit, you can always be Army strong.

8. Knock up/get knocked up by your high school sweet­heart. Noth­ing pre­empts a col­lege edu­ca­tion like a shot­gun wed­ding. Thank God Star­bucks and McDon­alds still offer fam­ily insur­ance programs.

9. Pay your debt to soci­ety. You know that high school bully you swore you’d get even with? Just do it. A good blud­geon­ing can be quite cathar­tic: so long as no one dies, you’ll be home in 5–10. You’ll still be young, and have a sweet tat­too col­lec­tion to boot. You can even get that degree from your cell these days.

10. Steal a job from a Mex­i­can. You’d be amazed at all the jobs that are avail­able if you don’t mind work­ing for (some­times less than) min­i­mum wage. Get a dish­wash­ing job in any com­mer­cial kitchen in Amer­ica and you’ll not only get a pay­check, you’ll learn a new lan­guage. Wanna work out­doors? You can pick pro­duce and get a sweet tan. Plus, you might develop a new found respect for ille­gal immigrants.

11. Find a busy inter­sec­tion. A good pan­han­dler can make a com­fort­able liv­ing (really!). A catchy sign can be your ticket to hun­dreds of dol­lars a day. “Why lie, I need a beer”, is an old stan­dard. Try, “Just got accepted to Har­vard” or “Please help sup­ple­ment my teach­ing income”. Another bonus is there’s no bathing or dress­ing up for work.

12. Be a sugar baby. Gold dig­gers have been around since homo erec­tus returned to the cave with the biggest kill of the hunt. The hides were drop­ping to the dirt that night. Find your­self a lit­tle secu­rity in the arms of some­one who has already secured theirs.

13. Cre­ate your own Ponzi scheme. Let’s face it; the entire finan­cial sys­tem is com­posed of illicit ways of cre­at­ing money. Be it sim­ple usury or com­pli­cated credit swap deriv­a­tives, unless your mat­tress is stuffed with cash, some­one has fig­ured out a way to make money off your money. Just keep a fake pass­port and enough money to sur­vive in a non-extradition coun­try handy, just in case…

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Jesus Christ: An interview with the Lord

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Eric von Quidnunc

 

[Jesus is the rea­son for the sea­son. Since it’s His birth­day we cel­e­brate, I thought He deserved a chance to speak for him­self. After all, there are so many peo­ple who believe they’re speak­ing on His behalf. There­fore, I sent him an email with a list of ques­tions, and this was his response. I ini­tially ques­tioned whether it was actu­ally Jesus respond­ing to my mail, but I fig­ured I had The King of Kings when I opened the attach­ment and all the viruses in my com­puter were imme­di­ately cured.]

What do you think of these mod­ern day mega-churches? If there’s an oper­at­ing cash reg­is­ter any­where on the prop­erty, noth­ing that comes out of the minister’s mouth is inspired by Me. Though I will admit, some of the cof­fee they sell is heavenly.

Will there ever be peace in the Mid­dle East? I doubt it. But if the Jews really want a peace­ful home­land, I sug­gest they all move to Florida. They own most of it anyway.

Do you feel Your birth­day has been overly-commercialized? Not really, con­sid­er­ing I was born in the springtime.

What kind of car would You drive? You wouldn’t believe how many peo­ple have an opin­ion about this. They assume I’m an eco-friendly, tree hug­ger who would be tool­ing around town in a Prius. Well, I was a car­pen­ter. I’d drive a Ford F-150 with a tool­box in the back, a half-dozen empty beer cans in the bed, and a union bumper sticker.

If You had a chance to con­front Judas, what would you say? Your name is fucked up for eternity.

What kind of rela­tion­ship do You have with your Father? We haven’t spo­ken since I was nailed to that cross.

Who are the five peo­ple You’d meet in Heaven? I’ll tell you five peo­ple I won’t: Jerry Fal­well, Pat Robert­son, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, and the woman who does the Pro­gres­sive Insur­ance commercials.

Who would You say was the worst per­son in his­tory? Other than the woman who does the Pro­gres­sive com­mer­cials? You prob­a­bly want me to say Hitler. Admit it. How­ever, Stalin’s orders and poli­cies accounted for the deaths of way more peo­ple. But I’m going to have to go with Billy Ray Cyrus. He not only pro­duced the worst, piece-of-shit song known to man; he spawned that irri­tat­ing, no-talent tramp.

Who do You think was the best per­son in his­tory? Gene Rod­den­berry. I’m a Trekkie.

If there was any­thing You had to con­fess, what would it be? I don’t care for Jews; and being a Jew, I feel pretty guilty about this.

If You were stuck on an island and could only bring one book, what would it be? First of all, I can walk on water, so no one is stick­ing me on an island. Sec­ond, I was a car­pen­ter 2000 years ago. You show me a car­pen­ter who could read back then, and I’ll show you some­one else who can walk on water. BTW, St. Peter’s a busy guy. In addi­tion to man­ag­ing the gates, he does dic­ta­tion for me. 

How did You feel when John Lennon said the Bea­t­les were big­ger than You? I was so excited to find out he actu­ally knew me.

Do you know where the Holy Grail is cur­rently located? Unbe­knownst to man­age­ment, it’s in a box of unused dec­o­ra­tions in the stor­age room of the TGI Fri­days in New­ing­ton, New Hampshire.

Why didn’t you have a wife and kids? The Bible never men­tioned the part of my child­hood where I had a bad case of the mumps. I was shoot­ing blanks. As for the wife: when there’s a for­mer pros­ti­tute in your entourage, the women aren’t exactly lin­ing up to date you.

What advice would you give mankind, in 10 words or less? Always dou­ble down on eleven. Oh yeah, and sin less.

How should I respond to peo­ple who claim I never actu­ally scored this inter­view? Unless you inter­viewed me for the pur­pose of ask­ing peo­ple for money in My name, you can tell them to go to hell—which is exactly where you’ll find the peo­ple who invoke my name in order to enrich themselves.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments

A technotard contemplates a new career path

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Eric von Quidnunc

I don’t know crap about com­put­ers. Really. How I man­aged to get through high school and col­lege with­out a com­puter class is a mys­tery. I was edu­cated on the cusp of this tech­no­log­i­cal indoc­tri­na­tion, so I made it through with­out the basics. I liken my com­puter skills to my knowl­edge of the auto­mo­bile: I can drive on the infor­ma­tion super­high­way, but I can’t build the road or fix the car.

A typ­i­cal nine-year-old prob­a­bly knows more about com­put­ers than me. It was pretty dis­con­cert­ing when my young niece was teas­ing me about being a “tech­no­tard”. I got a lit­tle smug sat­is­fac­tion when I dis­cov­ered she couldn’t spell with­out word-check or do basic math with­out a cal­cu­la­tor. Then she reminded me, “I can do all that on my com­puter. Can you?” Lit­tle brat. So I just pushed her down and taunted, “Now what are you gonna do, Baby?!”

I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to get through life with­out a mod­icum of com­puter acu­men. It’s not like I thought the tech­nol­ogy was a fad. Any­thing that con­tributes to com­mu­ni­ca­tions is going to become an indeli­ble link to the advance­ment of man. It’s a bio­log­i­cal imperative—an advan­tage in nat­ural selec­tion. Imag­ine if the native-Americans had cell phones. Chief  Lapowinsa, my grampa did some deal­ings with Peter Minuit in Man­hat­tan. Don’t trust the white man.

Infor­ma­tion is nec­es­sary for our sur­vival. The quicker we can gather, inter­pret, and dis­sem­i­nate it, the bet­ter. Com­put­ers have been a cor­ner­stone of this era. They’re a cat­a­lyst for expo­nen­tial rates of discovery.

I feel like a guy sit­ting on the back of his steed when the first auto­mo­bile drove by yelling, “Get a horse!” In fact, my intended career path has faced such obso­les­cence. I stud­ied print jour­nal­ism in the late 90’s. It was like learn­ing to be a black­smith right before the first Model-T rolled off the assem­bly line. Sure, the world still needs good jour­nal­ists, but not as many; and few still make a respectable income in the pro­fes­sion. So when I’m apply­ing for a job at Applebee’s, I’m usu­ally com­pet­ing for the posi­tion against for­mer jour­nal­ists, travel agents, tele­mar­keters, full-service bro­kers, and–more recently–college professors.

There­fore, I’ve con­sid­ered going back to school to get the edu­ca­tion I missed on com­put­ers. I fig­ure most jobs are going to require a sub­set of these skills. The more I can pad my resume, the bet­ter my chance of land­ing a good job. Right?

Bull­shit! There’s some nine-year-old over in Asia who already knows every­thing I’ll ever learn about com­put­ers. He’s also learn­ing to speak Eng­lish, Man­darin, and Span­ish. In twenty years, he and his class­mates are going to have every com­puter related job in America.

His cousin, with sim­i­lar lin­guis­tic acu­men, is study­ing med­i­cine. One day I’ll walk into a vir­tual exam­i­na­tion room where he’ll per­form my phys­i­cal by using his child­hood gam­ing skills to oper­ate a prostate probe from the other side of the world. This will offi­cially com­plete the cycle of the once devel­op­ing world cit­i­zens stick­ing it up the ass of the Amer­i­cans, who inno­vated the tech­nol­ogy we dis­sem­i­nated around the world as we shipped our jobs overseas.

Maybe I should con­tinue to uti­lize my com­pa­ra­ble advan­tage within the field that financed my use­less col­lege edu­ca­tion. I can just keep wait­ing tables until I learn the skill I’ll be able to use in the new age to sup­port my fam­ily: farming.

Some­day, I’ll free myself from the bondages of com­puter tech­nol­ogy and get myself 40 acres and a mule.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Trickle Down Economics in verse

Posted on December 5, 2010 by Eric von Quidnunc

Trickle down economics.

It sounds right to me.

Let the rich keep their money,

it’ll set us all free.

.

The wealthy are generous.

They’ll share what they’ve got.

Let them have all the tax breaks…

that’s just food in my pot. Con­tinue read­ing →

Posted in Politipoems | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Santo inducted into Heaven’s Hall of Fame

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Eric von Quidnunc

Ron Santo’s 1965 Topps base­ball card

Ron Santo passed away on Thurs­day in an Ari­zona hos­pi­tal from com­pli­ca­tions related to blad­der can­cer, accord­ing to WGN radio. He leaves a nation of Die Hard­ers mourn­ing for the Cubs’ legend.

For those of us who love him, he will for­ever be in our per­sonal hall of fames. Let’s hope he finds his right­ful place in Coop­er­stown. He will be missed in the broad­cast booth and missed around town in Chicago. His sense of humor and ded­i­cated loy­alty to the Cubs made him an icon. He will be remem­bered by gen­er­a­tions of Cubs’ fans as not only great for baseball, but also as a phil­an­thropist ded­i­cated to find­ing a cure for dia­betes. Rest in Peace, Mr. Santo, you put the “friend” in the Friendly Confines.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment