the Minutes 8211

Why’s it take a funeral boy, to bring you back to town?
The Funeral Turnpike Troubadours

My old shields of Apathy and Anger are failing me so I rely on the old familiars to get me through.  I suffer rueful mornings hungover with a smoker’s cough and a wasted life behind me.  At least that’s how it feels anyway.  We’re ratcheted in the torpid and heinous mechanizations of the New Century and all I can do is drink a 12pack and smoke Norwegian Shag?  My father was right.

I’m not even close to fully comprehending the soon (any minute now really) to be resolved financial crisis.  The Wisdom tells me that it’s all dog&pony.  Obama will take it weakly, butt hurt and crestfallen among big sharp grins from the Suits with Red ties.  Somewhere in America an under/overqualified non-unionized employee feels justified and the hatred for the working poor by the willfully ignorant will be perfect.

Taking a look around the block at the world outside America can only reassure all the Key Players that the U.S. Economy is still the only game in town, except for maybe the Sleeping Dragon of China.  What was written will be done, especially if it’s written on checks made out to the People’s Republic. 

I’m not the first to say that if the U.S. Economy loses its AAA rating then surely what will come next will be the scrambling and posturing of investors declaring that those ratings don’t matter anyway.  Welcome to the Greek Century brother.  Salud.  Kiss your working wage and pension goodbye. 

Some paranoid jackboot posted on my Facebook last week:  “The Dumb want to have their way in this Country. If they do get their way let ’em have it. Knowing you were right won’t make a damn when the Chinese own your children and the Airways are clogged with annihilation.”
It may not be the End Times but the coming Age of Nutter’s Rule.  Violence, retribution and willfull ignorance are an understandable, if insane, response to insanity.  Let’s go crazy, let’s get nuts. 

Just ask   Private First Class Naser Jason Abdo.  Former pacifist-posterboy for a peaceful Islam went from being a hero on ABC news to being arrested in Killeen, TX with 6 pounds of smokeless explosives and a 9mm back in his rented room on Wednesday.  The party he was planning wasn’t the American kind.  He was going extremist, except that he atypically planned to leave no survivors as grim momentoes behind.  He would finish the wounded off with the 9. 

And so I ask you, who but the insane&me could go on living, chasing this silly rock n roll/Bukowski dream when a man like Abdo is sitting in a hotel room a few towns away and a nutter like Joseph Steck flies a plane into a federal building a few blocks from my apartment?  You’ve heard about Drop&Roll, JAPS and Hitler, the Communist Threat and TERRORISM?  Well all those old scares and paranoias our parents suffered are nothing compared to the coming Age of Nutter’s Rule. 

Look on the brightside, we remembered when rock and roll was born last week.  Yep, on July 27, 1955 Maybelline dropped on America like a race riot and all the man had to do was mix a little country with a little blues.  Chuck Berry was a change agent and Elvis was the Man’s response. 
Not Elvis the preVietnam-babyboomer- protoNick Cave from Mississippi, but Elvis the product.  The Elvis you find at a Flying J in the middle of a winter night with a spilled tankfull of RV urine soaking you through.  Yeah, right, that Elvis.  What do you want from me?  It’s the minutes, the news.  You want a real rockstar, look up Lydon, Johnny.

And listen to my homeboy Matt Reilly why don’t ya?  The Philadelphia ex-Pat was killin it, filling in on KUT last week.  John Aeli coming back from vacation can only mean Death in the morning and another reason to sleep late.

Matt the Electrician really delivers with Friends from his Accidental Thief album.      How rarely can an artist convey real joy?  Pure, unadulterated, and original, un-clichéd happiness?  How rare a cheery tune in a dead dark world.  You go homeboy, just-wow.

If there’s anything good about 30 days in a row of triple-digit temperatures it’s that it’s not for the Weak.  Singer Caleb Followill couldn’t take the Texas heat and ended up walking offstage in Dallas on Friday.  His brother and bandmate in Kings of Leon tweeted that “There are problems in our band bigger than not drinking enough Gatorade.”, like sucking, for example. 

The employees at a Virginia [IKEA] plant voted overwhelmingly to unionize on Wednesday.  This could be the only last little bit of good news to come across my desk last week and certain to make Billy Bragg happy.  He was on Democracy Now on Thursday, teaching this “old faithless dog”(me) some new tricks.  These two news items brightened an otherwise bleak&painful 27th week of the 11^th year of the New Century. 

See you on the streets punkrocker, keep cool and please PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO HANDLE BATS.

As for me, I hope they never see, D.B.Cooper again.
–Todd Snider