So, I'm at the gym this morning, worked out with Nic Cage, then climbed on the old Precor and while I was working up a sweat, watching the "news" on Fox, I had a sudden epiphany.


That's where he's hiding! Right under our noses.

But think on this a moment: they exhibit the same sort of megalomaniacal, supremely arrogant behavior; you just know Santino reeks of patchouli and onions, just like Osama. You've never seen them in the same place at the same time...

Coincidence, or something more sinister?

And a special thanks to my most Southern Sistergirl, Miss Pearlie Mae, for this one.

President George W. Bush was scheduled to visit the Methodist Church outside Washington as part of his last campaign. Karl Rove made a visit to the Bishop and said to him, "We've been getting a lot of bad publicity among Methodists because of Bush's position on stem cell research, the War, and such. I'll gladly make a contribution to the church of $100,000 if during your sermon, you'd say the President is a saint."

The Bishop thinks it over for a few moments and says, "The Church is in desperate need of funds. I will do it."

Bush pompously shows up that following Sunday, looking especially smug, sneering for his photo ops, while strutting his way, cowboy-style, into the church.

As the sermon starts, the Bishop begins his homily:

"George Bush is a petty, self-absorbed hypocrite as well as a nitwit. He is a liar, a cheat, probably still a drunk, and a low-intelligence sneaky weasel. He has lied about his military record, and then had the gall to put himself in uniform on a military jet, landing on a carrier, and then posing before a banner stating 'Mission Accomplished.' He invaded a country for oil and money, all the while lying to the American people about the war, with nary a care for the thousands of lives it has taken and continues to take. He is the worst example of a Methodist I've ever personally known or known of. But compared to Dick Cheney, George Bush is a saint."

Or, maybe, should I drop a dime on my brother?

I try so hard in this blog not to talk about my real life, my personal life, except in the most broad strokes. I don't use real names, for the most part. I have a personal journal, kept in ink, kept for myself, and I've journaled for more than 30 years.

So this exercise is more for the joy of writing, and of being read, than for soul searching and deep thoughts.

It's just that at this particular time in my life, things are such that I have very little to say to amuse you, my imaginary readers. I am consumed with
a problem involving my brother, Biggus Dickus, his wife, Incontinentia Buttocks, the family estate, and questions of control of money, honesty, theft, and general skullduggery.

These are the BIG questions, are they not? More so, I think, than the other big questions, you know, life, the universe and everything?

I am not the sort of person who goes to court. I do not desire to see my name in the papers. I have no burning lust for fame (well, maybe a little smouldering lust). As jaundiced as I am, as jaded about the human condition, I want to believe that my own brother isn't screwing me over something as meaningless as money. And yet. All signs point to that very thing.

My mother's silver has gone missing from the family home. Biggus Dickus and his wife were very la-di-dah about that. As of course, they would be, since it was left to me. Or will be left, or would have been left, since Mummy isn't exactly dead, yet.

Last week I had to pay a bill that Biggus Dickus was refusing to pay, related to Mummy's care...from the hurricanes of 2004. He refused to pay, he refused to talk to the lawyer representing the agency that was seeking payment, he refused to listen to me when I told him to just pay the damned bill, he refused to listen to logic, or my psychoanalysis of his behavior. (Biggus Dickus may be a therapist, and by his accounts, a good one, but I spent 10 years on the couch and came away a better person and one with an understanding of pyschology.) I paid it out of my own, limited means.

He's never acknowledged that I pulled our family name and reputation out of a fire of his own making. I am dragging my feet about calling him out on this. I do not want/need this kind of drama, but I am being forced down an unpleasant path.

Or I can bend over and take a royal ass reaming by my own brother and pretend that it isn't happening, never happened, couldn't happen between us.

Or.

I can let out my inner bitch, she who is held in such tight control so that I can live among men. I can, I say, let her out, and go to court and have Biggus Dickus removed as my co-trustee for cause, thereby causing an irreparable rift between me and my only brother. As you can see, this is quite a dilemma, since we love each other so much and so well.

And you want to know why I'm not blogging much these days. Mmmph.

This is going to be a clusterfuck of a year, I can just feel it in my bones.

The RLA got a spider bite last week, and with diligence and a course of antibiotics has kept the necrotizing whatever at bay. He only has a small swelling and a little crimson spot on his drawing hand. But it was a nail biter.

My mother is drifting deeper and deeper into the waters of Lethe. Now and then she pulls a name or a complete sentence out of the ether and that makes it even worse. Yesterday she blurted out the real name of my brother, Biggus Dickus.

I have a confession to make. I am completely unable to focus today. I know that there is a pile of work in front of me, and yet, I cannot make myself attend to it. I've been looking at Today's Kitten, reading the recap of Project Runway (and don't get me started about Nicky Hilton and Santino—a perfect match of stupidity and arrogance if ever there was one), idly filing papers, and rummaging in the break room for bacon.

Not as random as it would seem, the rummaging for bacon thing. There is a week-long training session going on next door, and the breakfast leftovers have made their appearance in the break room. There were sticky pecan rolls, too, if you must know, but I was able to muster enough self-control not to eat those. Bacon, on the other hand, is a primal force against which I am no match.

Last night, on the train home, I sat in front of a gentle-looking soul with an acoustic guitar. He strummed and plucked quietly and well. Unfortunately, I couldn't hear him, because the asshole in front of me was shrieking into his cell phone the whole trip. The irony? The asshole was holding a copy of The New Times, with its headline: If Silence is a Virtue, Miami is Going to Hell.

Also, a special shout-out to Kathleen and Muv:

HOOK 'EM HORNS

I referred to the POTUS today as Du(m)bya (the m is silent) and my boss got very upset. Don't call him that, he said, it is a term used by his fans. You may call him the boy idiot, or the war criminal, or the shrub, or bubble boy, or... well he went on in that vein for a while, and then he summed up his opinion of our imperial majesty.

It was extemporaneous and brilliant. I had him write it down for me, and I give it to you.
As President, George Bush is ...

... more out of touch with real Americans than his father

... more guilty of launching illegal, covert, foreign acts than Ronald Reagan

... more insular and paranoid than Richard Nixon; more destructive of basic constitutional liberties than Richard Nixon

... more silent in the face of the hate-filled, demonization of political opponents than Eisenhower

... more incompetent than Herbert Hoover

... more beholden to Big Business than Calvin Coolidge

... more corrupt than Warren Harding

... more boneheaded than William Howard Taft

... more stiffnecked and rigidly Conservative to the overall degradation of the common good than William McKinley

In short, he is the worst Republican President of the past 100 years and, quite likely, the worst President in the history of the United States (with apologies to Millard Fillmore and James Buchanan).