Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The Randomness of My Work

My brain is a storehouse of arcane information I hang on to until just the right moment. Then I pay the bills with it. Such was the case with my NYT piece last month about what now becomes of the Bush-specific line in the finale of "Avenue Q" and tonight it's the case for this weird piece I wrote that was just posted on Slate.Com.


Read it here. It's fun. And of no consequence whatsoever. Well, unless it drives someone to take a shot at President Bush between now and Tuesday. Then it becomes eerie and this post will be in incredibly bad taste. Now you know why it was difficult to write this thing, actually.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gee, Steve, I thought part of the 9/11 master plan was supposed to hit the White House nad kill President Bush.
Jeff in OKC

Anonymous said...

But many say the DC-bound plane was headed for the Capitol.

THE STRIP PODCAST said...

i would argue back -- a terrorist attack isn't quite the same thing as the other examples and Bush wasn't even in DC, which the terrorists must have known because the president's schedule is very publicly available -- but this hardly seems like something to debate. take it up with the astrologers.

Liz in Ypsilanti said...

The simplest explanation is that W hasn't really been the president; think how much this theory explains. I've spent the last eight years dreading the thought of a Cheney presidency - how much worse would the country be if that had come to pass, unless the plan was for W to be the front man and Cheney the real president, thereby confusing the fates. (I am really quite a rational person who doesn't even look at her horoscope.)

Anonymous said...

Maybe the curse was broken by Bush because he really was not elected in 2000.

Anonymous said...

that's a pretty good one. then again, gore did pretty well after all. maybe not the rest of us, but gore did. at least the REAL winner in 1960, Nixon, would go on to leave office before his term was up, too...

Anonymous said...

It's pretty easy to condemn a man. Give George some credit for some of the things that came out of his presidency that were truly good. I remember when he first ran for president back in 2000 and people were giving high praises. Then when 9/11 happened he gave the country a direction for getting them SOB's that killed our people. I still admire him, no matter what.

Anonymous said...

Yeah! And if Bush had died, we would've gotten Cheney, so the policies woulda been exactly the same!!!

Anonymous said...

10:05 - care to list any of those "things" that came out of his presidency that were "truly good?" And as far as getting those that attacked us, Bush has made it painfully clear in the past few days that he has no clue whether we were ever close to getting OBL.

Matt Farmer said...

While we had no great desire to see W fall victim to Tecumseh's curse (President Cheney, anyone?), Chicago's Blue State Cowboys were more than happy to throw our collective musical shoes at the forty-third president by recording "Crawl Back To Crawford" (video and lyrics below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I9-BJtvQzE

CRAWL BACK TO CRAWFORD
(Matt Farmer)

VERSE
Well, for eight long years we’ve been payin’ your rent
But now your lease done run
And all our money’s been spent
So pack up your bags
And take a last look around
At how you drove a great nation straight into the ground

CHORUS
And don’t let the door
Hit you in the ass on the way out
Don’t bother with the goodbyes
Just make sure that you stay out
There ain’t no need to call
No need to write
We don’t even need you to turn out the light
Just crawl back to Crawford, brother
Promise that you’ll leave us alone

VERSE
Every step of the way, your story’s been the same
Just cruisin’ through the world
On your daddy’s name
You had the oilmen friends
You had the Skull and Bones
But it never would have happened if your name was Jones

REPEAT CHORUS

BRIDGE

Slam dunk, privatize, deregulate
Tax cuts, trickle down
The politics of hate
Flag pin, waterboard
Intelligent design
You were handed your throne by just five of the nine

REPEAT CHORUS

Anonymous said...

Jeff, if my memory of 9/11 Commission's findings is correct, the hijackers had considered the White House as a target but decided against it in favor of the Capitol because it's such a small target, difficult to spot from the air. Though somebody *did* crash a dinky little private plane into it (or came pretty close) during the Clinton administration, IIRC.

David McKee

Anonymous said...

If near death experiences qualify (which the inclusion of Reagan's almost assassination implies) than wouldn't Bush almost killing himself with a pretzel count towards keeping the curse alive?

JohnR said...

Didn’t he choke on a pretzel and need to be rescued by secret service?

... and if so does that count?