Succinctly Put:

Succinctly Put:


Palin: shut the fuck up. I thought of ways to lessen the profanity without damaging the message, but my brain gave up. Those of you with tender eyes, forgive.

First Fox and now the Discovery Channel/TLC: stop profiting off crazy people. Grow some shame. The movie ‘Network” is not a primer for market growth.

Tea Party people: dunk deez.

Brick throwers enraged about “ObamaCare”: no surprise there. Exhibit cogent thought if you want to shock the populace into attention.

Enforced sterilization: starting to look better day by day. I know, I know, bad Clarence. Inhumane Clarence. Plus there’d be a mob coming at me with needles…

Insanity: is it our diet? Is that what digs America’s psychoses so deep? Can we get some international aid of vichysoisse and tiramisu?

Aspirations: often have nothing to do with success. Hit it out the ballpark; hit it long and hard to your own well-deserved cheers.

Love: where did it go?

Art: is it with love?

Truth: R.I.P.

Crap: see first 2 succinct bits.

Anger: always an unlimited buffet.

This train: stop it. Let me off. It’s a nice day. I’ll walk.

I wrote the following last year. It might still be online somewhere. More likely it’s walking:

Louis Armstrong Sings to Me…

January 20, 2009

Earth.

United States.


America. Free and beautiful, promised to all. Wintertime gets glacially cold around these parts around this time. You go east and freezing becomes a warming trend. There are a few million people standing outside around the country, particularly in Washington, D.C., our national capitol. Temperature’s about 30 Fahrenheit in D.C. Windy. Not as bad as it could be, but cold is cold. It’s Tuesday. A few million people don’t usually stand out in the cold on wintry Tuesday’s in America.




Operative word being “usual”. There’s nothing usual about today. We just inaugurated a new president, a skinny black dude named Barack Hussein Obama, charismatic as hell, professorial in demeanor but steely as a weapon when he needs to be. He’s now the 44th president of the United States of America. What’s even weirder is that he appears to love his wife and has two adorable children. Not sitcom kids, not entitled brats. That’s a trenchant indication of the man.



It’s a beautiful day. The theory of America creates the greatest country on earth. “We hold these truths to be self evident.” That all men are created equal. That’s the next phrase. Consider those words, because they’re more beautiful than anything in any bible. Inspirational poetry can’t touch it. It is an ideal of such howling humanism that, when held and viewed up close, induces the most exquisite tears. That declaration is written by every human hand. People try to avoid crying outdoors in wintertime. It’s the eyes and the nose thing. Frozen snot, not cool. Not cool on cameras when there are about another million media outlets shining down on you. But people are crying with these wide smiles on their faces. They’re oblivious to cameras. The country has decided to hold a simple truth to be self evident today. Something we haven’t held in—well, not since those words were written. Those beautiful words have become delicate, almost translucent and crystalline being over two hundred years old and unloved. We haven’t held these truths to be self evident. Even when first written they were basically a good sound bite. But some words, though, once released, become an incantation and derive a sustaining power from time itself. They bide, taking in just enough nourishment to survive. “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal” have waited a long time to be drawn from their cloistered box to feel the warmth of human hands. “We hold these truths to be self evident,” that anybody, particulary skinny black dudes (or fat ones, or chicks, or Asian ones, maybe some Native ones, and there’s always the possibility of one of those light brown Hindu brothers getting in) could and would do…anything.



Barack Hussein Obama. President.




We are all theoretical scientists today. Why? Because we wanted to be. That’s all it took. Credit where credit is due, people. All those millions of faces? They’re not all black. Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but it’s not a black day. For those who don’t know, MLK Day is not a black holiday, because MLK had no interest in just being black. Martin Luther’s spirit traveled back in time to help write that famous preamble to the Declaration of Independence. It’s all about being human. The dinosaurs were here for millions of years. We haven’t even been here long enough to call this our world, but we treat each other as though we’re all long-standing enemies. This kind of enmity can’t be sustained for millions of years. Millions of those faces enduring the cold January wind were white men and women warming the most beautiful words in millions of hands, not just white but every race America can proudly claim. We took the theory, we tested it, found proofs and supports, and realized that the only thing that’s sustained those words since their inception was the fact that truth empowers. Even though we haven’t lived up to the words, the words themselves contain a perpetual ember inside that in hands around the world today we’ve gently blown and watched catch higher and higher. We wanted light today. We wanted to see what we knew to be true.


There was an older white lady crying on the shoulder of an older black man. There were black kids hugging two white girls, the whole group being hugged in turn by everyone around them. A busload of white college types were enrapt on every word and nuance of this very historic day. History is not the past. It is life. It extends. Barack Obama is the first black president, but he might just be the first president to inhabit the office and title utterly and completely. This is why people are smiling. People the world over are smiling. Not everybody. But enough. Change brings joy. Not surface change. Presidents come and presidents go. Political hacks don’t change anything. There’s a sense with Mr. Obama, though, that not only sincerity but logic and drive direct the man. An air of truth surrounds him. We see he’s a theoretical scientist. We see he has ideas and he’s willing to share them with us. We see that he actually shares a lot of our ideas. Common sense over greed. Greed is its own downfall. Of America—and the world, whom our new president has reached out to in the most sincere of addresses today—it should be said that we are ready to rise. We have to believe it’s getting better.


Somebody prophetically sang a song saying “it can’t get much worse,” even though he knew it could, but you’ve gotta hope. Gotta hope. Gotta keep it alive.

That’s a truth we hold self evident.


And I think to myself, What a wonderful world.