pompadour & circumstance

If it hadn't been for Tony Curtis, Elvis probably would have retired from driving truck for Crown Electric in 2000, bought a little trailer on an acre or two near Tupelo. Because it was always the hair, wasn't it, the loops and whorls, the improbable glistening rivulets and distributaries, the whole gleaming artifice of pomades and waxes and perfumed unguents, the jet black shining edifice springing from the brow like some vaselined Athena, an ebon rostral projection emerging from the faultless sculpted helm. They don't have hair like that now. It can't be done ironically, nor made to look accidental.

Because it worked out so well for Youngstown

I'd have never guessed: Apparently, one of the worst things to do with rich alluvial soil and a long growing season is waste it growing stuff. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has proudly announced that by offering $600 million in tax-free bonds, he has managed to attract a large steel production facility to the banks of the Mississippi River. And this is land once thought fit only for agriculture. Isn't ponying up tax dollars to entice somebody to build a steel mill in your cane field is a lot like pimping for your sister and then lending the guy a twenty?

More choleric than splenetic, though.

You want a rant? I'll show you a rant. Seriously, this week I'm not writing one, just showing you one. It may the best rant ever, by anybody. A rant so quintessentially ranty that to attempt a rant of one's own in the same time frame would be like (insert clever pop culture reference here). So I'm simply turning around, trotting into the locker room, and changing back into civvies. I'll content myself with this 100 Word Intro to the rant you should be reading, by a guy who has been busting my cubes, humor-wise, literally since the Carter administration.

Enlightened shelf interest

Isn't Terry Jones, the mouth-breathing Florida preacher who was threatening to start his own bonfire of the inanities with a stack of Qur'ans, that one guy from Monty Python? Or maybe he's getting paid off by big paper and printing ink cartels anxious to maintain market share in the face of the inexorable penetration of the e-book into their bailiwick, down-loadable data files being less than optimum kindling. Okay, unlikely conjectures, both of them. But I'll bet when he rounded up the volumes he was planning to torch, it was more books than he'd ever owned before in his life.

We have been naught

It's hard to believe, but Labor Day was originally an occasion to celebrate "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations." So let's take a few moments to recognize the hard-working people who make this holiday possible, even the ones being chased across the Arizona desert to get to their jobs. Maybe you're enjoying a regatta or a bass fishing contest. Possibly you're playing croquet or watching the kids bounce on the backyard trampoline, attending NASCAR or the National Symphony. Just thank your lucky stars 'n' stripes you live in a country without a class system.

I've been eschewing normative ideation

I have to tell you the truth. I'm feeling unusually placid, with none of the gritty cerebral irritants so essential to creating the requisite ranty pearls of prose. I've tried. I swear. I checked the news. Plenty of outrageous stuff, but the appropriate responders have responded with appropriate outrage, so there's no work for me there. But I promise you, should I see the opportunity for any sort of cheap joke, BAM! I'll be all over it like an onomatopoeia. And meanwhile, at the Home for Retired Metaphors, all the old similes are sitting around like, oh, I don't know

Maybe next week

Yup, there you are. Right on time. All like, “Let's go see what kind of absolutely free rant Dave has provided for us this week.” Did it ever occur to you that I might have something better to you than type up a rant for you on a Monday morning? Like maybe I have a dental appointment and won't have time to write anything, or maybe I'm just the teensiest bit tired of providing exactly 100 words right on schedule, rain or shine, come hell or high water? Maybe this week there just won't be any 100 word rant.