Just flew back from California yesterday. No, my arms aren't tired.
Have you ever noticed that the seats in airport terminals are quite wide, with very low backs? I think it's some sort of karmic compensation for making the seats inside the plane very tall, but incredibly narrow. I'm a particularly broad man (across the shoulders, not the gut), and if there's anyone in the seat next to me larger than a small Asian woman or Gary Coleman, I have to spend the whole trip either hunched forward or twisted at the waist. Not to mention getting body-checked by every God-damned person who walks down the aisle, because their tiny minds can't begin to conceive that the entire width of the aisle isn't theirs at all times, that there are parts of people seated on the aisle which might need to be avoided. I swear, if another geriatric moose-hipped bitch bumps into me in the next three days I'm going to rip her fucking head off and wear it on my dick.
Sorry. That may have been out of place.
So, as I was saying, we're back in Maryland. And I have to say, although the East Coast is still inferior to California, California has really gone downhill since I was there last. I see you lot really can't keep things together without me. Guess it's no surprise.
San Diego was quite nice. L.A. seems to have only mildly slipped. But the prices in Westwood have continued to rise ($3.50 for a box of Whoppers at a $7 matinee showing of 28 days later), for no obvious reason. And Santa Cruz has positively gone to the dogs. Half of the retail space downtown seemed to be for lease, and instead of one panhandler per block as in my day, there was some seedy son-of-a-bitch flaunting his begging bowl and his halitosis every fucking twenty feet. It was ridiculous. If I didn't give any goddamned money to the last human leech I passed, and who is practically at your elbow, why would you possibly think I'd support your malodorous existance? Beggars in Buffalo, New York, I have pity for. I'll throw a dollar to a busker in Detroit. But the bums in Santa Cruz are so obviously begging because they enjoy not working for a living in a town that's nice and warm, it makes me want to puke. They make a mockery of the term 'homeless'.
And then I got to hear all about this recall nonsense. God damn I hate politicians. Sure, Gray Davis sucks goat ass, but he got elected fair and square. (Unlike George W. "the Antichrist" Bush, for whom Satan is even now growing an orifice to stuff him into once he finishes doing the Dark Lord's business up here.) Republicans, apart from their neigh-limitless other bad qualities, are the worst sort of whinging hypocrites, and this recall election stinks of their self-serving mendacity. And anyhow, you do realize that what you're going to wind up with is a political implosion, leaving the Lieutenant Governor in charge of the state and the Governor in charge of nothing but a few gubernatorial mansion maids and possibly the official state cow.
Because it only takes signatures from 12% of the number of people who voted in the last election (for the office being recalled) to get a new recall election rolling, California is about to enter into a gubernatorial death spiral, with each successive "winner" facing an neigh-immediate recall election. Thanks, Darrell Issa. Yeah, you're fucking special. Go jump off a pier with a rope around your fat fucking neck.
Also, I see that the price of electricity is keeping pace with, if not exceeding, the price of housing in the Gilded State. Yeah, the energy companies collude to rip off the state's consumers to the tune of billions, but somehow still have the right to charge hilarious rates thereafter. See, now, this is where a governor with balls (always Davis' short suit, though frankly he hasn't any long ones) would step in and nationalize some things. Fuck it, California's debt rating is junk anyways. Sure, the state hasn't built enough power plants to support itself (and that's your fucking fault, you NIMBY-voting assholes), but there are all sorts of capital assets that one could swipe. And hell, then the state should start importing power from Brazil. They actually have too much of it, and could use the capital investment and the steady flow of income. Try some lateral fucking thinking.
Teddy Roosevelt, the last Republican president before the party signed itself over to the dark side lock, stock, and barrel, was America's greatest president precisely because he did shit like that. He decided to set aside a big chunk of Florida as a bird sanctuary, and when they told him nothing gave him the authority to do so, he asked if there were any laws preventing him from doing so. And, seeing as there weren't, he went ahead and did it anyways. If California had a good governor, that's the type of shit he should be doing. Let the courts reverse your decisions later, but tackle the fucking problem now.
But, as was evident from day one, Davis isn't a good governor. He isn't even fair. He's poor. And now he's out, to be replaced by some Republican asshole (probably), who will be replaced by someone else, who will be replaced by someone else, etc etc, while meanwhile the state collapses from the world's 6th largest economy to something with less income than the Wal-Mart in Gopherphuck, Iowa.
You know I'm coming back. And if things aren't better when I get there, it's going to go really fucking hard on all of you. Really. Fucking. Hard. Because if you don't straighten this shit out, I will. And that isn't going to be pretty.
Consider yourselves warned.
- Sun Ra