Saturday 3/2/13 – 10:46 a.m.
Sick as a dog; strike that, no mammal could possibly endure this strange cocktail of searing throat pain and high fevers and continue to call itself canine. A dog would likely have already dragged its disease-ridden carcass out to the woods and buried itself by now. My doctor has prescribed 750 mg of Levofloxacin, a new antibiotic that peels bacteria from the inner lining of the stomach with the subtlety of a Barbarian horde. This heinous drug has rendered my body impervious to equilibrium. My appetite has gone ‘round the bend and the hallucinations have become so severe I fear I won’t be able to recover with any semblance of a personality save the bleating of a doomed beast before slaughter.
The animal metaphors have gotten on top of me. This is a sure sign I might need a second opinion.
To which I guess I’ll have to weigh in on the sequestration that has befallen us like a plague of government mishap. But, alas, in this state, I have no thoughts as of yet about the sequester or those responsible for it. I wish, instead, to sequester my lower intestine from the rest of my innards for the time being. Begin by taking chunks of my body and donating it to science, if there are still clinics open. I wouldn’t know. Venturing outside is a no-no. I am highly contagious and begin coughing spastically by the mere drawing of breath.
Someone told me the Pope quit.
Sunday 3/3/13 – 12:00 p.m.
Just finished watching John Boehner on Meet The Press. I rarely write this kind of overreaching hyperbole, but he may well be the most ineffectual Speaker Of The House in my lifetime. Not sure what he is ever talking about or more importantly whom he is speaking for. Half the Republican caucus wants him castrated, and this is not a metaphor, animal or otherwise. The president is the only one who thinks he wields any kind of power anymore and this emboldens him to go on television and piss on him anyway. I think the best thing for him is to drag his sorry carcass out to the woods and bury himself.
It is as if Boehner has no background in civics. He recently equated taxes with stealing, as he runs the segment of government that is in charge of taxing. Boehner has been a congressman for 22 years and ascended diligently to the highest office that body can offer, all under the assumption he is a thief. This would be like an NFL linebacker referring to tackling as assault as he earns a living assaulting.
Boehner also acts as if he is unaware there was an election last November. Even Newt Gingrich was tamed by Clinton’s re-election. I suppose there is no chance in hell we can avoid a government shutdown in a few weeks if this jabbering dupe is still running things.
Monday 3/4/13 – 9:23 p.m.
Illness is lifting and I begin to pay closer attention to the media fallout over the sequester. It is manic. There appears now to be rancor over it not being as immediately devastating as promised by the president, who spent weeks talking about children wailing, the elderly lying dead in the streets, al-Qaeda moving in next door and the meat poisoned by monkey feces. Now, there are just people being laid off, which has been happening for the entirety of this administration and, by the way, in droves throughout every state run by Republican governors, each of whom went after government jobs as if they were a cancer on the body politic.
None of this is sitting well with Fox News or MSNBC, who finally agree on something: If there was to be a crisis, this is a pretty lousy one. The reports now are that it will be lousy later. Pretty soon. We swear! Really lousy!
Tuesday 3/5/13 – 4:09 p.m.
Halved the doses. Can read clearly again. Saw what I wrote earlier. It’s awful, but too late to change anything now. Sticking with Kerouac’s “First thought, best thought.” It’s his birthday next week.
The Dow Jones has hit an all-time high. It is official; the era of Socialism has brought a torrent of Capitalism the likes of which this nation has never seen. The unemployed are erecting a statue of Ebenezer Scrooge made of horse dung beside the bronze bull statue in the Financial District downtown.
Wednesday 3/6/13 – 11:12 a.m.
Things have remained stable here. No signs of neighborhood upheaval. Of course, I don’t really live in a neighborhood, per se. I live on the outskirts of a mountain commune, where lake dues are only paid through harassment and the local town meetings usually end with myself and Commander Joe, Compound Chancellor & Dean Of Security, screaming at the board about speeders peeling through the main road and our repeated schemes to curtail them; pellet guns, jackhammer trenches and scarecrows dressed as schoolchildren bleeding profusely in the middle of the road.
As far as we can tell, there has been no “pain” here due to sequestration, although the wife and me are due to head to Ireland in August and have already endured several run-ins with the TSA getting in and out of Mexico. Of course, Homeland Security doesn’t see it as “run-ins,” but more like “irascible behavior in a demilitarized zone” as it was put in the sealed report. I handle these affairs far better than the wife, who tends to use these minor annoyances to trump up charges of harassment, completely forgetting the varied items of contraband I repeatedly sneak across the border.
There was a call from a local congressman’s office bitching about job losses at Newark Airport that “could have been avoided by federal government action,” to which I promptly told the woman that my level of shit-giving had flat-lined many months ago and if these federal jobs are not cherished by those who write the checks (not pay for the checks, since that would be me) then I guess they know what they’re doing, right?
Thursday 3/7/13 – 8:27 a.m.
Read about Rand Paul’s 12-hour filibuster to get the attorney general to agree that the government will not murder Americans on U.S. soil.
Wish he were in the Senate when the Patriot Act went down.
Friday 3/8/13 – 7:45 a.m.
One week in sequester land. Feels a lot like pre-sequester living, except for this crap I’m sending to press. Although, there was always plenty of crap before sequestration, I choose to blame it anyway.
It will be lousy. Really.
Do yourself no favors and “like” this idiot at facebook.com/jc.author
James Campion is the Managing Editor of the Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey,” “Fear No Art,” “Trailing Jesus” and “Midnight for Cinderella”
