Celebrity Debt Match

I love Oprah. I know a lot of my friends are choking right now because we're all too cool to really like such a self serving self sycophantic event like the O but come on, she gives poor people cars. She built a school in Africa and hired teachers. She built houses for Katrina victims. So what if she turned each and every one of these events into a massive glamorized photo op.

And Bono. You have to love a guy who takes being a rock star so seriously. Not only did he take a Latin name (like all members of the secret rock star fraternity do) but he comes to congress and pleads on behalf of the indebted world. And though he doesn't choreograph the whole thing like her Ladyship O, Bono manages to seem sort of surprised and humbled on an awful lot of broadcasts when he's doing his thing. A kind of low key camera hog. Bravo, Bono.

So when the two of them come together to fight AIDS, you have to wonder what kind of media frenzy will occur. I, for one, have been disappointed so far.

The problem is that the marriage of Oprah and Bono has yet to be celebrated by a media moniker, a "gate" suffix or a nominal mashup--which I propose. I think the media need to refer to Bono and Oprah's activities, to their marriage of convenience, as "Ohno".

Look what it did for Ben Afflek and Jennifer whatever her name is. They had Bennifer. As soon as a reporter said Bennifer we knew the whole story already. We need this for the Oprah Bono alignment.

We could go with a gate. Call it Ohnogate or BonOprahgate. But gate is scandal positive and even I know Bono is happily married. I'm sure Oprah's trying, though. I assume she'll try to get him to star in a movie and then their trailers will be parked together and they'll share a craft services provider and then one thing will lead to another . . .

You have to love the reversed humility of these two. Like I said, I gave in a long time ago. I love Oprah. So she's a zillionaire. Big deal. She GAVE POOR PEOPLE CARS and BUILT HOMELESS PEOPLE HOMES for Christ sake. So she's rich and self-serving. It's ok. I think.

Unless what they're really doing is assuming a God form. I mean, when you look at the supreme evolution of material desires, Ohno pretty much covers the gamut: world class rock band, congressional influence, TV show, magazine, massive yacht, books, movies, Cd's, and they've fed the poor, relieved debt, and given gifts to the needy. If you or I were to list ten things we'd do if we were Bajilionaires, we'd have one of those. I sure as hell would have a magazine--"G"--but it would mostly cover chili and big band music. Still, I could write anything I want in it because I'd be a Gablillionaire and I'd represent serious advertising cash and nobody would care about content.

Ohno might be a good thing. As alarmingly unlikely as it is, if a self serving black journalist Chachillionaire can team up with a humble, sincere, self effacing yacht piloting world class rock star, maybe there can be peace in the middle east maybe . . . maybe Ohno can save the world.

Think about it! Ohno could visit Lebanon and take the Lebanese PM and the Israeli prez on a whirlwind shopping spree for peace. They'd only buy products with a "dove" tag on them. Then, when the two heads of state were sitting stiff and speechless over Lebanese speckled coot confit with white truffle sauce and hand milled couscous with green tea and a hookah, Ohno could tell them to reach under their seats and they'd find the keys to brand new Nuclear weapon facilities and coordinate papers with each other's home addresses on them. I can see the tears running down their ruddy cheeks.

Then Ohno would lead the leaders of Hamas on a pilgrimage through the desert, ending in Iran where they would have an intervention with that crazy bastard running that place. Then, a private jet to France where Ohno will have a live broadcast from the Muslim ghettos and the local Muslim leaders will reach under their seats and find the severed heads of their infidel neighbors. Get a tissue, baby!

And finally, Washington. Ohno would interview Dick Cheney and Dubya and Dick Cheney would break down in tears, admit he's been running the show the whole time, that he's a wartime profiteer who's been engineering global violence since the Reagan administration, and that Dubya really is retarded. They just let him hang around in meetings where he mostly plays Burnout 4 and eats Doritoes.

Ohno forever.

Crazy Train

When did the freak jobs take over?

Was I--were we high? I mean, I know I wasn't paying real close attention but I did used watch CNN every day. Ok, last summer I took a week to catch up on LOST. But a guy ought to get a little slack every once in a while, right? I ought to be able to take a few days off when I'm drinking old fashions and smoking cigars and digging some porn without THE ENTIRE FUCKING CIVILIZED WORLD BEING TAKEN OVER BY CRAZY PEOPLE!

Who the--look, I'm gonna cuss. Right here, from this point onward, it's gonnna be a ribald anathemic fulmination of unprintable gutter cant because I'm way past the point of being professional or even cautious here. I'm freaked out, alright. FA REEK KED OUT. I'm as paranoid as a prison pothead and it's not getting better. I swear, I might move to Moosejaw. I'm scared. Because all the world leaders are nutjobs.

I know ours is. He's a fucking wingnut. And it's our fault. We elected him. Sort of. We let the whole thing slip away and get took over by power hungry souless dogfuckers and we're suffering now. The evangelical hiveminders put it to us cause we let them get away with it. We treat them like pilgrims; we quit giving it to them in the media, quit kicking their asses. We need 'Church Lady' back. Plus those Columbine goths didn't help much. I wish just one fucking high school psycho would do it for the glory of Jesus instead of Mudvayne. Thank god for Aaron Sorkin--he not only puts it to them, he does it with their own guns. I love that man. Why isn't he in charge?

Cause he's not fucked up enough, that's why.

Only the truly, deeply, genetically deranged can achieve the stratospheric level of nuts required to run a 21st century nation. Apparently. Look at that weird little Elvis impersonating tranny running Korea. Holy shit! How did THAT guy get in charge? And the Iranian president, Yakov Smirnov, when did he stop telling jokes and start shaking his fucking fist? And Cesar Chavez--he didn't used to be crazy but now, now he's calling our wingnut satan and he's fucking serious.

Maybe this is the signal of the end of nation states anyway: they don't matter anymore. Only market segments matter. I mean, gas some people, hang some liberals, wipe out a village or two and yeah, eventually you get your own trial-cum-reality show but nothing bad will happen. However: convince the 18--23 year old male alpha buyers to switch to a smoother lite beer and you might find yourself at the wrong end of a UN Sanction.

Jesus Haploid Christ. Is there any leader in the world who's not evil or crazy? Is Putin really losing it and going for his tenth dead journalist? Are we going to go down in the books alongside Vlad the Impaler as evil and rapacious democracy stranglers? Can democracy even survive this shitstorm?

Maybe, I don't know. My buddy the hippy tells me that at the core of paranoia is a kernel of information straight from the heart of the world mind. He says that when you're really scared, seriously wigged, falling our of your own head terrified, it means the world is trying to tell you something. Actually, he kind of says it's a good thing.

Of course he is a hippy.

But I take heart that things really are as bad as they seem and in fact, probably worse than we know. I take heart because when democracy and peace and the souls of nations are abraded to the foundation like they are right now, something snaps and the people make it stop. They vote again. They carry signs again. They burn stuff.

Maybe this is the worse that precedes the better. It has to be because, really, look at this dark circus we're attending: it can't get any worse.

Position Statement

I believe the only tool left for saving the world is the invigoration of our children's imagination.

I am told that our dreams, beliefs in Gods, visions of saints, visits by ghosts, sticky attractions, and overwhelming epiphanies, are all the result of exceedingly fine electrical transactions and microscopic chemical spills in our brains; that all this ephemeral mystic mumbo-jumbo means exactly squat; that at the most irreducible level of observation, our natures are merely mechanical to which I can only say, and not at all humbly, to those sad, expressionless, sexless, passionless souls staking this myopic claim: so what?

If the purely determnistic explanation is true, if our divergent and fractal-lineated hungers are merely the result of our gentic code, then our reaction to it–our rush to the altar, our search for truth, our deep loves and weird obsessions, our endless and difficult quest for the divine kiss–are also the results of this same embedded code and, therefore, we should rightfully abandon ourselves in these pursuits as selfishly and gleefully as wild children running into an open field for they are our birthright, our muse, our inescapable fate, our nature, our skin. They are our instructions. We should follow them.