Einstein Was Wrong

I’m not big on quotes.  Letting someone else rent space in my mind reeks of irresponsibility and makes me feel like I’m missing an opportunity to un-quiver an arrow at something original.

But sometimes, with the wisdom of experience, someone says something that captures my thoughts in the right way and I feel obligated to attribute their words to my ramblings.  Today is one of those days.

I am sitting sub-comforter – my back consciously congruent to the deflating pillows of an old couch – and staring at one of the various talking heads now screaming at me from the sixty-inch boob tube.  Five political people perch around a wooden table arguing the merits of phrases like “fiscal cliff” and “debt ceiling” and they toss around threatening

comments such as “If we don’t do something, blah blah blah, the Mayans were right.”

Some of the heads have poorly combed hair and at least one of the men employs hand gestures, which your average moviegoer might recognize as vaguely Kubrickian.  Plus, there are charts.

As I nestle into a bowl of oatmeal – possible cholesterol issues – and concern myself with the pajama pants crease now grinding into my left leg, I weigh the day’s contradictions.  See, when I grew up, I had some ideas about potential:

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. – Bruce Lee

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them. – Albert Einstein

Truth is, while I’ve already expressed my anathema for unoriginality, these guys pretty much nailed it. We are individuals subject to the many influences of our predecessors.  As kids, the thoughts and words of our idols guide us.

What I’m saying is – “I get it!”  Our government leaders have taken the lessons of their youth and applied them to their governing philosophy.  Only, they fucked up.  Going beyond your limits does not refer to the economic parameters of a thriving nation.  Breaking limits refers to upward mobility, not to downward spirals – no one wants to break limits on depression or trash dispersal or losing friends. Limits are less about how many people rejected your advances and more about how often you secured a date.  Limits refer to things like space and seas and ambition and excellence.

 

It seems, however, that our leadership is confused, suffering before the wrath of misunderstanding now permeating American culture. When it comes to financial security, they believe “going beyond limits” is a good thing.  They pride themselves on filling the nation’s credit card and burdening America’s youth with high-interest long-term debt.  They think they are adhering to the “go beyond” mandate.

Perhaps we need some new information. Maybe outdoing oneself is not always in one’s best interest.  Sometimes limits might be good.  Here are a few more voices of reason:

We are beginning a new era in our government. I cannot too strongly urge the necessity of a rigid economy and an inflexible determination not to enlarge the income beyond the real necessities of the government.

Andrew Jackson

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Oscar Wilde

Alas, I am off the couch now, pressing the button on the remote control to the off position, recognizing that I’ve reached my listening limit, and doing something about it!

 

Attention: Deficit Disorder

Just once I’d like to hear someone in our government tell it like it is.

Dear America,

We…um…ahem…hrummpphh….alright I’m just gonna say it. You know that thing people talk about called financial responsibility, where if you don’t have money, you don’t spend it.  Well, um, we fucked up.  Big time!  We’ve leveraged America’s future by putting it on a credit card and now we’re looking into this great chasm of financial devastation and thinking, “Oops!”

Truth is, we probably should have stopped when the deficit hit zero dollars, or maybe a few thousand below the beltline  – the way holiday shoppers do.  But we didn’t.  We saw all these great things America could have right now and we’ve placed the responsibility upon our nation’s children to the tune of about 50K per kid once they leave the womb.  It’s quite possible there is no way out.

Oh sure, we can print sixteen trillion in new money and pay off our debt to China, but that would devalue the dollar and mean bread and milk prices would push higher than Hunter S. Thompson on a bender.   Hell, we could even raise the hell out of income tax on the 50% of the population that pays it and we’d barely make a scratch in the deficit, not to mention the tailspin we’d throw our economy into.  We could cut spending enough to rip the well-being out of the Medicare patients and we could slash the military budget until we’ve got just a few guys and girls in rowboats shooting water pistols at our attackers.  We could make the retirement age somewhere near Betty White and make up new terms for unfunded liabilities and tell everyone that they’ll have to “bite the bullet” for a few years.

But guess what?  That still won’t do it.

Because unless China forgives about half of our debt, we’re pretty much done.  Start learning Mandarin kids, because in about fifty years, the headlines in the Peking Press are going to be talking about those poor little children in Atlanta, Georgia and Manhattan, New York who are laboring away in sweat shops at $0.32 per hour to help their parents put some rice imported rice on the table.   Once we hit twenty trillion, it’s over – there’s no way home – fat lady singing, deflating erection, final credits rolling on the Constitution, OVER!   And that day is coming very soon.

It’s painful to be an economic pessimist, but with fiscal cliff impending and unfunded liabilities growing and an apathetic generation of entitled youth, there just simply seems to be no hope left.

And still they won’t tell us the truth.  Still they are negotiating deals that only raise 1.5 trillion in revenue, and deals that only cut the increase in spending – not the actual spending.   With leaders like this, it is no wonder we are staring into the dark chasm of economic doom.  Maybe it’s time we throw in the towel and max out the ol’ Visa.  Maybe we should all pursue the hedonistic lifestyle and forget about the future.  YEA!  C’mon Darwinists, let’s do it.  What do we have to lose?  It’s just our country, right?

Another Inappropriate Christmas Tale from CC

‘

‘Twas the night before Christmas and the house was a mess

I’d been drinking since three, of career distress

The stockings were lying right there by the floor

My wife saw me come home and she’d stripped at the door

The children were in their bed all nestled and sweet

She was feeling quite naughty and wanting a treat

Mama put on her leather and I dropped my briefs

She grabbed the North Pole and I sighed with relief

When out in the yard some idiot with a sled

Crashed onto my lawn while I was getting head

Away to the window I flew like a flash

Ripped open the shutter and yelled out to his ass

The streetlight failing above the commotion

Was a prelude to the hell now set in motion

When what to my rueful eyes should appear

But a staggering red suit with a forty-ounce beer

When the unsightly lush fell over and got sick

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick

More rapid than rats the police sirens came

And he slurred and mumbled and call’d them by name

“Now Narc, Now Piggy, Now Popo and Shady

On Five-0, on Copper, on Smokey and Statie”

He slammed through the porch and crashed into the wall

“You’ll never catch me,” he said clutching his balls

As dry leaves before passing semi- trucks fly,

When lifted by wind, mount to the sky

So up to the roof the officers flew

Reaching for Nick as he shouted “Screw you”

And then in an instant I heard up on top

His lurching and wobbling as he avoided the cop

I drew in my head to see what would transpire

Down the chimney came Nick, burnt his ass in my fire

He was dressed all in fur from his beard to his toes

His clothes reeked of booze and his junk was exposed

A bag of things stolen was flung on his back

He turned his head and coughed and then touched his sack

His eyes – how they bled! His frown lines how deep

His skin appeared jaundiced and his breath smelled like feet

His chapped lips were dry like a riverbed’s drought

The beard on his chin was covered in Stout

The blunt of a joint he held with lips like a wreath

And the smoke, it had yellowed and rotted his teeth

He had cloud-colored hair and a furry beer gut

Which when pressed from the sides looked a lot like his butt

He was putrid and rank, a right dastardly drunk

I held up a bat and cried “Don’t fuck with me punk.”

With a roll of his eyes and a flop of his head

He fell on the ground and I thought he was dead

He said not a word but went straight to his work

Left the gifts from his bag and called me a jerk

And then shoving a finger inside of his nose

He scrambled up my chimney and burned off his clothes

He jumped to his sleigh and flipped off the cops

Then grabbed the reigns and slagged down some Shnapps

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight

Bah Humbug you bastards, you messed up my night!