Labor Day: Am I Actually Expected to Celebrate This?

Labor Day is the most befuddling day in the Western World.  It’s the day of the year we actually celebrate what we spend the other 364 denigrating.  What is so damn great about labor anyway, other than it keeps the lights on, the cable bill paid, and a modicum of peace on the street between 10 and 8? Umteenth cup of coffee and keep the boss off your neck so you won’t loose too much blood on any given day. Labor is hardly to be celebrated: It’s to be gotten over and forgotten in one too many barbecue beers.

I have always depended on the benign neglect of strange databases

Sorry, Blanche, there are no benign databases left, and I need to erase this post now from my so called serious site. Because you see, it’s not that funny anymore. Goodbye, Blanche. It may not be a streetcar named Desire, just a bus named after a dog. But at least it will get you out of town before the surfer robot killing squads show up.

Declaring a Disaster Capitalism Area

Ah, Springtime is in the air.  Noses are running and budgets are being trimmed to the marrow.  It’s an all out attack on the senses for someone allergic to everything they bothered to test for.  And now bad apple’s own job is up on the chopping block, like so much liver and giblets.  And no one wants to see their own giblets up there, hanging out, believe you me.

Remember this, for posterity: In the Great Depression we bailed out the people, in the Great Recession we bailed out the banks.

Who’d have thought all this mortage mess would lead to a proposal to demolish a whole city’s library system?  Sheesh.  What’s next, Orwell?  Cameras everywhere?  Check. Big Bro watching your every click? Check.  Media/Power conglomeration? Check.  Anti-Democratic forces affecting structural changes? Check.

Keeping one’s passport in order isn’t a bad idea.  Call me paranoid, but ever since college I’ve had this semi-irrational fear of surfboy paramilitary robots coming through and mowing down every last Greenpeace member in the state.

“Please, I swear, I only gave them $25 a year!  I never even read their newsletter, please!  I only paid them to leave me alone!”

Admittedly, this type of thing isn’t usually committed but South of the Border, which is why I had to make them California blond and wearing sunglasses over their dumb red-robot eyes.

We humans apparently still have a little time to fight this fate between now and June 21, at saveoaklandlibrary.org

Seven Habits of Highly-Effective Hitlers

Not every Hitler gets to take-over his own country.  Most have to be satisfied with dominating only the people they know and come into contact with everyday.  But that doesn’t stop you from becoming the most-effective Hitler you can be , if you just believe in yourself to the exclusion of all others!

Here’s a plan to keep even the most-self-conscious fascist on track:

Habit One: Maintain Your Power:  You have to keep power to get power, if you know what I mean.  You must never doubt yourself.  Critics aren’t just wrong, they’re Satan!  Never waiver on your path to total domination.  If you hear a little voice in your head questioning Habit One, clobber it.

Habit Two: Find Your Subjects:  Whether you plan to take-over your native country and spread your evil genicidal rot from there, or if you just want to rule your own little nuclear family with an iron fist, forming your children into messed-up and highly-ineffective adults — or something in between —  whatever your plan is, you need someone to dominate right now.  If a coup is out of the question, consider starting a family, or even getting a job in management.

Habit Three: Stay in Your Insanity Zone: We all know, a little crazy goes a long way.   A little crazy is charismatic, a bit more is convenient as well, at times when your subjects attempt to use reason on you.  But when you go too far into crazy, we’ve all seen what happens.  You lose it, and become a Highly-Ineffective Hitler.   This is a big no-no.  You must find the proper level of insanity and stick with it!

Habit Four: Locate Your Leni Riefenstahl:  A great Hitler needs to pair up with someone who can make him feel and look like a god.  Whether this be your presidential spokesperson or your tan-salon specialist, I cannot stress how important it is to locate top talent to keep your legend lookin’ good.

Well, that’s enough for today.  Perhaps you have a Habit to share that you have gleaned from the most-effective Hitlers in your midst.  You might be surprised how much you know and are willing to share about how to be an effective Hitler.

Signs of Our Time

“Submission Accomplished”
-homemade bumpersticker #1.

“Proud parent of a turn indicator user”
-homemade bumpersticker #2.

Loud religious debate overheard on the street at lunch today:
“That would be in the Bible: Have you read the motherfucker?”

Finally, overheard in the office moments ago:
“The human body is like 110 percent water.”

 Got any similarly-wonderful signs-of-our-time to share?  
Oh come on, I know you do, so give um up!

We Secretly Replaced the World’s Democracies with Folger’s Crystal Coffee

And no one noticed the difference!

Citizens the world round are delighted by Folgers Crystals instant coffee in place of the usual, slow-brewed democracy. In polls people prefer it 20 to one.

Here’s a few responses from customers who were pleasantly surprised:

“I can’t believe this is instant coffee!  I would have sweared this was the usual constitutional three-branch representative democracy that I always enjoy after a big meal.”

“This is Folger’s Crystals?  I’m switching right away.  I can’t believe I’ve been making messy, time-consuming government by and for the people all this time!  I could have just added hot water!”

“Did you say this was Folgers? Amazing.  Before tonight, I wouldn’t have touched instant coffee, but now that you’ve tricked me into it, well. I can say, only a fool would brew whole-bean representation when they could save themselves all that effort with instant.”

“Delicious.  I know a few non-democracies that would be interested in this stuff — it’s that good!”

Bad Apple Lasts One Whole Year!!

To all those folks who land here at Bad Apple hoping to find out just how long a bad apple will last — a surprisingly large number of you, I must report — well, apparently it can last at least a year or more, and just get better and bad-er. 

What is the secret to this amazing longevity of attention span on my part to keep this extraordinary flow of sass coming?  I can only attribute my proliferation of perilous word journeys, aka “posts,” to having hit a vein in my rotten niche of the universe and so far, the content just burbles forth like molten lava from a secret cesspool spring in the land of crack-addicted wood elves. In other words, “Jenna Say, ‘Qua,‘” as the Frenchies put it.

I will admit, I gain almost endless inspiration from the theme of rotten, stinky stuff, and in the future I do hope to further explore the connection between historically-bad smells and inspired participatory democracy.  You see, Bad Apple is not out rotting in a vacuum or some remote backwoods desert planet.  Her decay is firmly rooted in the context of this modern mess we’ve made of the world.  To review: Bad smells equals better government.  That’s why we all need to turn a little rotten, develop our soft spots and otherwise devote ourselves to the making of stink.

That said, I feel I would be derelict to not thank a few of the characters who have made Bad Apple’s first year of Internet life so colorful and fun.  I am of course referring to the cannibal chickens, Terminato the Killer Tomato, Little Spud Rasta, not to mention all the wood elves, celebrity mayors, etc., my long-suffering partner Hank, and of course, everyone who slighted me in the slightest or otherwise fed the incredible beast in my breast, born in a blog, aka Bad Apple.

And thanks all of you readers, and the thousands of page views you have given to me.  It’s so great to know somebody out there supports this kind of rot.  And I would like to understand you more, and know the answer to the incredible conundrum of just how long a bad apple can last, and whether you can use it to make some kind of intoxicating drink.  So if you know the answers, or even if you don’t, you are welcome to leave a comment anytime, and join the incredible unpredictable madness that is actually the only sane path in this crazy, messed up section of God’s company town.  

In the future, everything will be made perfectly clear.  With enough time and cider, we’re all going to eventually find out the answer to the question that keeps me guessing: Just how bad can an apple be??

Warning: Annual Retrospective Season Looms

It’s that time of year when everyone (in the media) takes a quick glimpse back at the last 12 months before jumping blind into the next 12 months.  Time to revive for one last moment all the folks who croaked, the famous ones I mean, and all the big disasters (especially the ones they have pictures for). They always include a few of the good things that folks might have done, crazy heroic acts and heartfelt philanthropy for some total heartbreak case, not to mention all the year’s developments in the big news stories and in the latest teen idol’s complete disintegration.  

Hard to give a crap about the geopolitical quagmire, but damn I need my latest teen-idol disintegration news just to get me out of bed in the morning, how about you?

Bad Apple also feels a certain retrospective impulse coming on, because I’m celebrating the one year birthday of the Bad Apple Blog on December 6.  It’s been a year of discovery, invention, and strangeness at Bad Apple, and I’m going try to ruminate on the high points, exorcise the garbage, and generally get a handle on where all this rot is headed heading into the great 20 ot eight.

For example, I’m going to take a hard look at potatoes vs. tomatoes.  In 2008, I predict all-out war between the potato and the tomato stories here at Bad Apple. Such vegetable rivalries never end up pretty.

Also, what about the cannibal chickens?  Will they remain misunderstood freaks or will they become the new It-chickens of tomorrow?  Stranger things have happened, folks, so don’t be laughing at my predictions’ predictor, now. 

Well, this is just a preview of the kind of deep bad apple pie-style thinking I’ll be serving up in December.  As a friend, I strongly discourage you from facing the annual retrospective season without regular, inoculating visits to this site.

My Latest Money-Making Screenplay Idea That Has Yet to Make Money

Now let me turn to an “elevator speech” example of my unique gift for money-making screenplay ideas that have yet to make money.  Imagine, if you can, a future-fantasy-action meets The Secret Life of Plants thriller, a parallel bio-freaky universe where the future of everything comes down to: 

Terminato and the Last Tomato…

Critics (in my head) call Terminato and the Last Tomato,
“the most suspenseful blog post of the last five minutes–ever!”

Something’s worse than rotten in the remote city-state known as Tomatofornia, and the stink trail leads right to Governor “Terminato,” the region’s tough celebrity governor.  Originally famous for playing Terminato The Deadly Tomato in the phenomenally popular film series, that was before he got into politics.  Now the “Governato” is quietly taking over Tomatofornia’s treasured Public Tomato-torium and seems seed-bent on directing it right into the ground. 

At stake is nothing less than the combined world’s knowledge of tomatoes, including when to use an “e” or not.  Its ruin in a tomato-centric world like Tomatofornia would lead to certain tomatastrophy, with dreadful implications for the Tomato-state and beyond. 

But before Tomatofornia’s last slice turns Gang Green, there’s one last hope.  The adorable and powerless Aliseedison Bowmato trips upon Terminato’s tomato-hater plot, and how he’s using the town’s crack-addicted wood elves and pink lawn flamingos to carry it out.  But how can little old she stop the spread of rotten death stank before the it reaches….

The Last Tomato?

Can Aliseedison take on Terminato’s gang and save the precious seeds for all future generations, or will tomatoes go the way of carrots and apples?  Will the evil celebrity governor make sauce of Tomatofornia’s public treasure?  What in hell is a Public Tomato-torium anyway? All these intrigues and more will unfold before you eyes in what other critics (in my head) call “the freshest take on the whole tomato-film concept blog post in years.”

Tune in soon here, for the first episode of Terminato and the Last Tomato.  In the meantime, if you like Terminato and the Last Tomato, you might enjoy reading about the Cannibal Chickens.

Have We Done Enough Nothing Yet?

Officially, it is unsafe to help the birds and clean up the oil on the crude-besotted coast of San Francisco Bay.  Officially, you should leave your hillside home to burn and let the experts take care of it.  And if there are no experts in sight and your house is burning and your shores are coated with black death and a wild bird is struggling to stay above the surf, well, remember to stick to safer activities like driving at 80 mph in the carbon car and shopping in the city where homicides are only at X many this year compared to last. 

Yes, and we all know what good hands our national security is in, and how safe the geoglobal political politics are making us everyday in every way.  Not to mention what’s going to happen around here when The Levy breaks, The Big One hits, and millions of people go crazy on each other for things like food and water.  I’m so freaken safe-feeling right now, I could swallow a sword. 

Why is it in a so-called participatory democracy that the official line is “do nothing?”  Haven’t we done enough nothing yet??  Haven’t we let them rip up the trolley lines and turn our cities around, to be built for cars instead of people?  Haven’t we let them string us along on this toxic death road long enough? 

We who live in our dream houses have let the fire’s fuel build up too much.  This land wants to burn.  The chaparral needsto burn to complete its cycle.  We told it, don’t burn:  It’s much safer to do nothing.  But oh, you cannot tell the chaparral that.  It may listen for a while, but we all know that when it does finally, inevitably go up, it’s much worse.  Even the chaparral won’t survive that inferno. 

So goes democracy’s story.  The powerful say “be still,” but enough fuel builds in the frustrated human heart to blow us all away in a beat. Justice and greater equality aren’t nice ideas to be set up in gilded frame in the back of some museum.  The human race can’t build a future on corrupt privilege for the few and massive injustice for the rest – we have to keep those relics in the rear view mirror if we plan to survive any significant length of time.

Today, deadly oil mars San Francisco waters, a bay of such peculiar natural security that the sea’s storms can’t penetrate.  All the unseen animals seeking refuge beneath its surface, a wilderness that humanity spoils everyday, in little ways and now in a big one.  It is too ugly to face, and yet I must see my own complicity in this pure evil unleashed on the voiceless innocent.  I too haven’t done nearly enough, have left too much to the experts.  Swept up in short-sighted survival agendas, living in not exactly a dream house but certainly not a reality house, either.

But fortunately (and unlike official spokespeople), fire doesn’t mince words.  So sometimes it becomes blessedly obvious that the only right course of action is to turn on the hose and stop your house from burning down.  Of course, in matters like fire and oil and democracy, time is of the essence.  Wait long enough, and the inferno isn’t safe for any living thing.  

What democracy and life require now is a low, hot fire burning under the proverbial asses of our politicians, figuratively speaking, so let’s all use a little bit of the overabundant fuel in our hearts to call and call and call, and vote, and talk to others voters, and get involved and get engaged, and do something! 

Don’t leave self-government to the experts, because that has proven the least safe course of them all.