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Please excuse my extended absence from writing on this here blog. I’m sure there are thousands of you out there who have been waiting for my latest missive. Well, I can honestly say I’ve been terribly busy. With my novel going to final draft, and the accompanying negotiations over the film rights, I barely have time to rehearse with the band, let alone finish mastering our latest album, Painful Paean.

Ha ha, funny, huh? Of course, none of that is true. I haven’t written a novel (yet), and I’m not a member of a band, except in my own rock ‘n roll fantasies. I’ve mainly been doing what I always do, i.e. working on my boat, messing around with web sites, playing a little guitar, reading, hanging out, and generally being an over-privileged, self-absorbed smart ass. In other words, life has been good.

Mainly, I was struck by the feeling that the world, and the Internets, hardly need another whiny commentary on the decline of western civilization. Don’t get me wrong, it still gets my goat in a major way. It just occurred to me that, perhaps, there are many, many others who are both more qualified, and more eloquent, who could take up that charge. Fortunately, I got over that shit.

So, let’s get back to me being a presumptuous, pseudo-intellectual, shall we? We shall.

Let’s see, what’s happened of late? The pope died, I remember that. Not being a Catholic, or even faintly religious, I can’t say it effected me personally or emotionally, but I couldn’t help but notice all the radio and TV coverage. NPR became National Pope Radio for a good solid week. It sort of reminded me of when Reagan died. All of a sudden, the crying jags began, and the revisionist history was taken to new heights.

Reagan became a great, beloved statesman. I guess they forgot to ask anybody in Central America to weigh in on that debate. There were a few hundred thousand of them who got maimed and killed during Reagan’s terms, as a direct result of his egregious policies. I guess that’s just life in the big city, as they say.

But, back to the Pope. I guess he was an inspirational spiritual leader to millions of people, but it’s hard to call it a tragedy when an 84 year old man, who’s led a life of amazing privilege, kicks the bucket. I guess he did a lot for the poor, and spoke out against tyranny, but I have a hard time with the whole telling poor people in Africa and Latin America not to use condoms thing. Oh, and saying homosexuals are going to burn in hell. To me, that seems vaguely, well, medieval. But, that’s just me. Rest in peace, Mr. Pope.

In other news, Our Fearless Leader continues to waste time and taxpayer’s money travelling around the country, trying to convince people that sabotaging Social Security is a good idea. Nobody’s buying, and yet Fearless doesn’t seem to have received the memo. I guess that’s not too surprising, since he doesn’t read any memos, but instead has his personal nanny, Condi Rice, read them to him. Actually, since she’s been promoted to Secretary of Alienating the Entire World with Her Shrill, Annoying Voice, he may have had to replace her in that position.

Perhaps, if he ever read a newspaper, he’d realize how the public feels about all this nonsense, and turn to more important matters, such as the horrific quagmire of a war he got us into, or the coming energy crisis, or global warming, or Medicare. Yeah, right. No, this is simply an ideological crusade. The radical right hates Social Security. Always has, always will. They simply can’t stand the idea that we have a successful system of social insurance in this country, so they have to manufacture this “crisis”, and waste all of our time, and subject us to Bush’s stuttering, incoherent attempts to explain the principles of his “ownership society”.

Speaking of incoherent, Fearless also graced us with another press conference last week, and my, what a performance it was. He kicked it off by outlining what we need to do to deal with the coming energy crisis. In essence, we need to develop better energy conservation technology, we need tax incentives for fuel efficient vehicles, and we need to explore new, environmentally sensitive means of energy production.

Frickin’ brilliant, I tell you what. I couldn’t have said it better myself. If only Fearless would actually follow through on that, or even, dare I say, not sabotage the efforts of others to do just that. Or, perhaps we should revoke the tax deduction for giant SUV’s that he put through last year. Yeah, he’s a real visionary, in the imaginary world we call Bizarro World.

Anyway, enough of my blather for now. If you’re interested, check out this article by John Podesta. He predicts that the Bush administration will, by this summer, attempt to combine it’s twin policy goals of “saving” Social Security with an attempt at regressive tax reform. He urges the Democrats to put forth their own plan, however much it might be wishful thinking, in order to avoid being stuck with a “just say no” campaign against Bush’s attempts to entirely eliminate taxes on wealth. Good read.

Oh hey, and Bernie Sanders is running for Senate. Go Bernie!