marsupial alert

I don’t know how to break this to you without delivering an unpleasant shock, so I’ll just spit it out. Unless you live in Wisconsin, South Carolina, or West Virginia, it’s probably illegal for you to own a kangaroo. Okay, in 10 states you can have one if you qualify for a special kangaroo permit but everywhere else it’s just flat-out prohibited. It’s easier in this country to acquire a semiautomatic weapon or a bag of really good weed than a simple kangaroo. What does that tell the world about our priorities? What example are we giving to our children?

Bullshit

The terms “shit job” and “bullshit job” are not interchangeable. I’ll explain. If you are employed to tear old shingles off a roof, wash dishes in a restaurant kitchen, or pump out septic systems, you have a shit job. That’s something nobody wants to do but it needs to get done. A bullshit job usually doesn’t need to get done at all. People with bullshit jobs spend a lot of their time reassuring one another that their jobs aren’t bullshit. A bullshit job is if you’re a tenured poet, an advertising copywriter, or a United States senator. Bullshit pays better.

The case for retreads.

Did you ever have your crappy old car finally suffer some terminal failure and you’re about to junk it and you think, “Dang. I just filled the tank, too.” That’s a good reason to keep running on fumes. Forget about actually completing any task; it’s gotten so even the act of adding a project to the to-do list is more effort than I’m willing to invest in the future. Live for the moment, that’s my motto. A bottle of Chilean Merlot will leave you with a headache tomorrow morning but a ball-peen hammer to the skull will hurt right now.

Them Changes

As of this year, “I Got Rhythm” is in the public domain, so no more making up a funny new name when you record it. What else is in the public domain (since 2020) is everything Tom Lehrer ever wrote, which he did on purpose. A friend was contrasting that with Bob Dylan’s selling his back catalog to Sony for maybe 200 million dollars but I stepped up and defended Dylan. I said, “Look, Lehrer had the advantage of a math professor’s pension while Dylan has to scrape by on a folk singer’s wages.” That pretty much ended the conversation.