Out Source the Bush II Administration to Jordan's King Abdullah II

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 11:05

News here today and yesterday from Radio London better known as the BBC's World Report featured an interview with Dolly Parton which interested me more than I care to admit. It’s funny with living here how even my musical tastes change. If I never came to live here I probably would only be annoyed with Parton but from here hearing her on the radio reconnects me to a time and place once called home in Old Ohio. I want to visit Dollywood if I ever pass through Tennessee. The other more news worthy story featured 50 or so former American diplomats (this after last weeks 50 or so former British diplomats) who gave warnings about the hazards abroad to the US’s image as a result of the Bush II administration foreign policies in Iraq and with Israel. More reason the Bush II administrations jobs should be ‘out sourced’ abroad like many American’s have had to endure, especially Ohioans. My vote for out sourcing the Bush II administration goes to Jordan’s King Abdullah II who is well educated, intelligent, articulate and fluent in many languages and most importantly is a genuine pleasure to listen to unlike America's King George II who mumbles and always sounds like his asshole is being pinched by an unrepentant hemorrhoid. Plus King Abdullah knows what is going on in the world unlike the Bush II administration which seems to think only of the world in unavoidable Biblical Apocalyptic turmoil so they can all devise ways to profit off the chaos. Meanwhile it is a cold and sunny Tuesday morning here that feels more like late October than early May.

Oh yeah Warren Buffet was also on radio London making a plug for Kerry saying middle and low income American’s needed the tax break he got more than he did. Until recently I thought Warren Buffet was a country western musician... Come election time I always say voting is about choosing the lesser of the two evils. In 'o4 that is certainly going to be easy! I am not such a fan of Kerry as Wesley Clark was a swimmer and I am a swimmer and Clark makes much more sense than Kerry. Hearing Buffet admit he didn’t need such a tax break as much as other less fortunate Americans astonished me. His voice is actually kind of cool which reminded me of documentarian journalist voices from old VOA news reels. I got the feeling it was Henry Ford talking while listening to his funny voice defend the middle of nowhere America where he hails from.

Meanwhile I am working on a quilt my great grandmother fixed the pattern to together before she died late in life in the mid nineteen fifties. She left it to my grandmother to quilt but grandma never go to it before her breast cancer got to her so she left it to my mother. My mother never got to it before her colon cancer got to her. I am determined to quilt this quilt before it turns into a curse. I suspect the fabric which is now old and fragile might actually be American made textile remnants from the clothes previous family members wore. This particular quilt (she left three to finish that I know of) is a wedding ring or flower pattern. I am working on it one quilt flower at a time – each flower has 37 petals and there are 69 flowers in total. It seems to take me a week to complete a flower so that means it will take about one year and two weeks to complete this quilt. I’m not so certain I am happy that this quilting task was my last conversation regarding these quilts with my mother in person. In fact since it is so easy I don’t know why she didn’t start this quilt on her own and teach me how to do it when I was a kid. I feel silly at my age doing this when people like Parton and Buffet were my age were raking in millions, meanwhile I do work that pays less than a sweatshop out of guilt to my mother, grandmother and great grandmother. That said though there is something about doing it that is good for me and my crazy conspiracy theory rattled over sexed brain.

So while quilting in Belgium listening to radio London Parton was going on about how the songs she has written are her children and that she expects her children to take care of her when she is old. I wish I could say the same about my illustrations, writing and handiwork. Then Buffet was talking about investing money from when he was a late teenager. I'm, like, so happy for him and Parton and their fullfilled delux retirements. All intended sarcasm aside I would pay euros for a copy of the cover Dolly Parton did of Led Zepellin's Stairway To Heaven. Back when I was a teenager working at Kinko’s Copies (being exposed to electromagnetic radiation and ink chemicals along with bad air under all too bright fluorescent lights lunching daily on killer fast food and all without health care, proper housing or transportation alternatives besides my own two fucking feet) my dad was telling me I should invest money in the stocks. I was like yeah ok with what is left over from my near minimum wage salary when all my money went into the cars gas tank and engine repairs or to the credit cards I was in debt to my ears with so I could just get by until the next pay check. Yeah right. Dad was right had I done that investing then assuming I had money to do so I would be seeing the profit from that now. But I didn’t/couldn’t and that was no accident those were the Reagan years. I might say I am a Republican at heart – party of Lincoln and Walt Whitman etc. But I will never throw away my vote to a Republican again in my life! The proof in what I believe about them can be seen in the sorry state of Ohio and Michigan economics at present compared to the rest of the nation when compared to the Clinton years. Not that I care that much because good economics or not Ohio is now strip malled to death and where it isn’t strip malled it’s track housed to death and where it hasn’t gone to suburban high hell its all multi lane roadways packed full with SUV's in non moving bumper to bumper sprawl all within an exhaustive brown haze... To say nothing of it having been farmed into a certain chemical like Silent Spring just as Rachel Carson once wrote about. It wasn't so long ago when Lake Erie was so polluted it would ketch on fire. To think Jefferson once wrote of it being among the nations most pristine and wooded landscapes is unbelievable from my vantage point in history.

Like the title of an old Moby CD that I like: Everything Is Wrong.