Annie, get your gun!

Thanks, Governor.

"I've alway said, in politics, your enemies can’t hurt you, but your friends can kill you.”

"Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did.  She just did it backwards and in high heels."

“Teaching was the hardest work I had ever done, and it remains the hardest work I have done to date.”

“Let me tell you, sisters, seeing dried egg on a plate in the morning is a lot dirtier than anything I've had to deal with in politics.”

"I'm really glad that your young people missed the Depression I'm really glad that your young people missed the Depression and missed the big war. But I do regret that they missed the leaders that I knew, leaders who told us when things were tough and that we'd have to sacrifice, and that these difficulties might last awhile. They brought us together and they gave us a sense of national purpose.”

Texas State Library

“I have always had the feeling I could do anything and my Dad told me I could.  I was in college before I found out he might be wrong." 

Reacting to complaints of a creche on the lawn of the Texas Capitol Building:  "You know, that's probably as close as three wise men will ever get to the Texas Legislature, so why don't we just let them be."

And... at the 1998 Democratic National Convention as keynote speaker, about George Herbert Walker Bush:  "Poor George, he can't help it.  He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

“I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.”

Tom Cruise, "J'accuse!"

Sorry, Suri...
but I liked the Tom Cruise and his daughter picture better when it was Paul McCartney and his daughter. 

 

The Flipping Bird

Spotted on the way into work this morning, driving by Westchester County Airport.

A small black bird. 

He was perched on a wire, looking down at the Net Jets hangar, where all manner of private corporate "birds" were being pushed into place and prepped with (just guessing) all manner of top shelf liquor, fresh flowers and top notch food. 

I wondered:  What's the little guy thinking?  Is he impressed?  Are birds that live near airports higher in the pecking order than others?  Are they cooler than woods birds or park birds?  Are they the Star-bellied Sneeches of the bird family??  What a great children's story that would be!  The wheels were turning...

Just then, the bird leapt from his perch and started an air acrobatics routine that would make the Blue Angels blush.  Flips, loop-de-loops, barrel rolls, darting left, darting right... all the things that pilots won't be able to do until airplanes grow tails that can ply the wind as instinctively as this bird's.

It occurred to me:  This bird's not impressed.  He's a showoff prick-of-a mocking bird!!  My whole attitude on this guy shifted in an instant.  And thoughts of the children's story of the jaunty little airport bird darkened to a cautionary tale on pride coming before the fall...

at the hands of a fable by Aesop....

or in my mind's eye...

at the fans of a turbine by Pratt & Whitney

"Swine bird!"

Sky Slalom and the Accidental Epitaph

Aboard American Eagle
Bound from Washington DC to LaGuardia: 
Friday, June 2, 2006; 8:00 pm EDT

"Well, if this is the end for me, at least it's been a fun ride!"

[Earlier that day...]
"You have a 3:00 meeting this afternoon??" asked a native.  "Hell, NOBODY does meetings at 3 on a Friday in this town."  I did.  Should have known better.  But I had no choice. 

I love to fly... so long as it isn't Monday morning or Friday afternoon... especially when LaGuardia and Washington Reagan or (worse yet) BWI are involved.  So I knew what I was in for...

The official DC Summer Code pretty much decrees that "everyone shall flee the District on weekends" from Memorial Day to Labor Day.  Something like that.  Either way, anyone who knows ANYTHING in that town sure as hell KNOWS that means beating it for the border by Noontime... especially if you are on the DCA to LGA route.

Apparently, it has something to do with the scientific theory that thunderheads and Embrarer Regional Jets don't mix as well together in the Summertime as, say, Tanqueray and tonic.

"Wheels up" was slated for 7:10.  But the "Departures" monitor started buzzing like a sports betting board in Vegas.  First, the two flights before mine were cancelled.  Then "PAD" [Possible Aircraft Delay, or Possible Arrival Delay, as best as I can tell]  appeared in place of where my gate number was supposed to be... and the fun began.

Those of you who know the drill, sing it with me (to the tune of the childhood "ABC song.")  

"PAD means TBA
TBA means not today.
7:10 is all BS.
When you're leaving we can't guess. 
If you're waiting for this flight.
You'll be with us for the night."

7:10 became 7:15, 7:15 jumped to 8:38, sending the defectors scurrying off like cockroaches.  The "Shuttle Shuffle" began, as the pathetic putative passengers ran off to grab gate agents, travel agents, real estate agents... aaaaaaaaaanybody who could get them on one of those big 737 shuttles that leave every half-hour for New York.  I was SURE that with too many defections, they'd scrub the flight.

Then, to my delight, the clouds parted.  Literally. 

"A window" opened up in the weather.  The 8:38 departure whipsawed back to a 7:40 boarding call, and we were hustled on board for a 7:50 wheels up.  Minutes later, we screamed off the tarmac.  "No beverage service for the 37 minute flight, folks," said the First Officer.  "We'd be obliged if you'd keep your seatbelts fastened.  Meanwhile, just sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight." 

Right.

Actually, I DID enjoy it.  It was awesome.

That Embrarer must be a fun plane to fly, because it's quite a nimble craft.    Within 5 minutes in the air, still climbing, we banked hard... I mean HARD left.  The kind of hard that draws your ass down, down, down into the faux leather flotational device they call a seat until you can read the serial number on the seat's metal frame without looking.  [It read backwards on my ass halfway through the weekend.]  I was on the single-row "A" seat on the left of the plane, so it was all window for me... and I was like a kid on a carnival ride.

The setting sun backlit the tops of the clouds brilliantly...  churning white tops on steel-grey anvils.  It was the most spectacular array of foreboding meteorological muscle I've ever seen.  And it occurred to me that we were swooping back and forth, left to right, slaloming through the roiling thunderheads all the way up to New York. 

Once.  Once on the flight, with lightning flashing off the right wing and the air brakes dropping us about 5,000 feet in about 10 seconds, I wondered if the "window" had closed.  I was having so much fun with the scenery outside, my looming mortality broke through briefly enough for a hastily murmured Act of Contrition, a quick Hail Mary, and a parting thought for the Lord:

"Well, if this is the end for me, it's been one hell of a ride."

I liked that one so much, I wrote it in the cocktail napkin and put it in my shirt pocket.  "Better write that one down," I thought.  If this is the end of the line, maybe they'll know I got my ticket's worth.  If I do make it, I'll hold onto it.  

Either way, it beats the sh*t out of Amtrak!

XLI

41

(As in, "Today, I am..."   I still say life is linear, and just because some guy put 365 days into a year doesn't make this annual lap around the track mean all that much.  But I will take the cake and presents... AND my favorite present is absolutely the following two Haikus... is it two Haiku.... two Haiki??  From the middle of my three sisters.)

Happy Birthday
A new year begins
Raise a pint and share a tale
Amongst throngs of friends

The Sentinel
Eldest of the five
Sees us now through eyes of then
Keeper of "agos"

My sisters rock!  So does my brother, but he's strictly a couplet man.

LGA to BNA... Airport Improv Theatre

I thought this stuff only happened on television:

A man walking out of an airport Men's room with toilet paper stuck on BOTH shoes...  I mean, this guy TRIED to work them off.  Really WORKED it.  Did a Kramer-like leg shake, tried for the corner-of-the-wall vertical scrape... No good.  But what's a guy to do??  Airport bathroom... Strike that...  LaGuardia airport bathroom.  And no matter what this guy tried, he could only peel off little shreds from under his Weejuns. Put this scene in a sitcom, and you're good for a few laughs.  But put him in Terminal C on a Tuesday morning at LaGuardia, and it's improv for an audience of one.. with a soundtrack. 

Cue the iTunes.  Soon my comic foil at Gate C6 was dancing to "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

I just hope he was able to peel the wax paper "seat mate" off his ass before boarding his flight to St. Louis. 

"Why does it krinkle when you sit, Howard??  And what's that on your shoe??"

Beautiful day!

The day began with dismal doubt,
A stubborn thing to put to rout.
But all my troubles flew away,
When someone smiled at me today!
-Unknown

Oh, a snappy pair of boxers.

[Musical cue:  Outkast.  "Hey Ya!"]

Today's "...and the horse you rode in on" Honesty in Politics Award

"I think you're an asshole."

-- The last sentence of a letter from Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) to a constituent in her southeast Missouri district.

Emerson told the Associated Press that she "can't explain how the offensive language made it into the last line of the letter," but perhaps the piece de resistance is that the seven-lettered epithet came with a chaser that even Emily Post would approve of:  an apology for the lateness of her response.   And in so doing, she earns enshrinement in this blog's Poets, Priests and Politicians.

Toastmaster's Note:  This Refreshingly Honest Moment came courtesy of Wonkette, a must-read for Poke-in-the-Eye politics!  Link here.

... and I have many leather-bound books

"I wanna say something.
I'm gonna put it out there.
If you like it, you can take it.
If you don't, send it right back." -- Ron Burgundy

A friend sent this to me today.  I got such a kick out of it, I had to "put it out there."  Here's the full version. "Why Republicans are better in bed"

1.  NO CONSCIENCE!
It’s all about him—he needs to be the best you ever had, and that can be a good thing if your getting off is contingent on his.  He doesn’t even stay for breakfast.  (Though if you do make him breakfast, he is eternally grateful and will go down on you for another several hours.)  One word: pancakes!

2.  NO TEARS!
A Republican man will never, ever cry. Not on election night (no matter what happens). Not when you’re breaking up with him (what, you think he cared?). Not even when he’s having “a problem I’ve never had before, really, I’m not kidding, I swear.”

3.  A SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE
Republicans, particularly when naked, do not want to sit around and talk about Social Security privatization.  Or Iraq, for chrissake. Or why (oh, boo hoo, get over it!) Kerry lost. They don’t even want to sit around naked and talk about George W. Bush. They just want you to sit on them.

4.  A SENSE OF HUMOR
Republicans are happy to watch Jon Stewart with you.  They think he’s a riot.  They don’t parse every word he says in an effort to figure out if “The Huffington Post” will approve.  They just laugh, pour another cocktail, and decide upon which couch they will fuck your brains out after the show.

5.  FOREPLAY
Democrats often need something incredibly erotic—like Meet the Press—to get revved up, particularly on a Sunday morning (there are only so many sections of The New York Times).  Republicans, on the other hand, don’t even need Fox News to get it up.  They understand that foreplay is about sex.  And lots of it.  Democrats are too busy checking if the condoms you keep in the jar by the bed are good for the environment.

6.  SIZE
It is absolutely, positively, 100 percent true that Republicans have bigger dicks. Just ask Lynne Cheney. (Dick is the Liam Neeson of Washington!)

7.  EFFICIENCY
Republicans are much more likely to whip their dicks out during the cab ride back from dinner.  (This is not an urban myth.)  They are also more inclined to get started in the elevator, pin you against a wall, do you on the kitchen sink, wherever.  Democrats bring jammies, spend at least twenty minutes prior to “sex time” doing God knows fucking what in the bathroom, and then emerge with a big grin that says: “After all I did for you supporting equal pay and abortion rights, the least you could do is make love to me.”  Democrats always think you owe them.  Republicans, because they’ve never done a goddamn thing for you, have no such delusions.

8.  LARGESSE
Republicans have great taste in restaurants and will never make the wussiest of pre-date proposals: “You pick.”  They understand that a woman wants a guy who knows how to pick a restaurant by himself.  And who doesn’t feel the need to tell you what Zagat said about it before you get there.  A Republican also knows how to order wine without getting all prissy about it, never dissects the bill (they don’t even look at it!), and will never, ever—ever—say, “Well, yes, I think that’s fair; your half comes to $39.25, but you had one more drink than I did,” if you offer to pay.  They won’t let you think about offering to pay.  This is so sexy!  The best part: There’s never any guilt involved; we all know they got their tax break.

9.  WOOING TECHNIQUES
Republicans will never send you group e-mails that consist of the entire text of Al Gore’s last speech (that was “woefully underreported” but “I knew you’d want to read it in its entirety”). Or the sign-up sheet for Democracy in Action, or whatever the hell those weirdos from the Howard Dean campaign are up to now. Nah. Republicans send e-mails that say: “I can’t wait to eat your pussy.”

10.  NIGHTSTAND READING
You will never hear a Republican say, “Let’s just cuddle and read The New Yorker tonight.” They understand you do not want reading materials in bed. You want a man.

10.5. THE BIG CAVEAT
Yes, Republicans are the better lay—but only the Republicans you’ve never heard of.  The opposite is true of Democrats.  Think about it.  Is there any woman on the face of the earth who wouldn’t fuck Bill Clinton? (Didn’t think so.)  But with a gun to your head, could you even think of doing Santorum? DeLay?  Lott?  Okay, with a gun to our head, we might do W.  And Cheney.  Definitely Cheney.  As long as we’re blindfolded. (But that’s okay. Republicans are into that, too.)

Not the usual Wry fare, I know, but according to Muhammed Ali, it's not bragging if you can back it up...  And let's face it, the GOP hasn't had too much good news of late.  Just think what a great recruiting tool it could be... [pun not intended, but for humor's sake I'll let it stand.]   

Pride takes a holiday

I saw greatness today.

Humility.  Good will.  Cajoling.  Compromise.  Then consensus.

I saw men and women reach across a gulf of ideology, steer into the headwinds of a rhetorical tempest, because they were more concerned about doing right than being right; more about all gaining than some winning.

Yes, it had to do with public policy... but instead of in our nation's Capitol, it was in a frost-bound state Capitol.  Pride took a holiday today.  If it can happen here, why can't the big shots get it in DC?

I saw the best of what I attempted to describe here. 

But I've been miles from home all week.  And I miss my kids, and haven't gotten road souvenirs yet. Don't suppose this shoe buffing cloth and a packet of gourmet decafe coffee will do, huh?