Overheard at Booth 4: exorbitant

You know I really think that the rich shouldn't be so hard on the occupiers. You do realize that in revolutionary France, instead of calling for the rich to share a bit more, they called for their heads to be chopped off.

Not to mention tsarist Russia. 1917. Bad juju that was.

Yike.

Overheard at the Counter: Bullet-Riddled Obama Shirt

OK so what can we tell from this picture, we got
seven white guys

- yeah, white. and slightly overweight, judging from the pot bellies, they eat at mcdonalds and burger king from the looks of it, especially having those guts and still being in their twenties.

- I'd say they're probably southern, probably anti-immigrant more than they're professed anti-black.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46159633/ns/us_news-security/




- are you sure you're not just stereotyping? Not all southerners are racist.

- nah, but I'm saying these guys are. But since this pic was probably just taken, because I doubt that someone would just sit on it for so long, then you know it was January, and they're all weaing t-shirts and jeans, except for one guy whose wearing a jacket, means it was probably crisp but not overly cold, so you know it can't be the Northeast or Northwest, or anywhere in the mountains, probably. My guess would be these guys are from Oklahoma, if not from Texas. But that's just a guess.

- you can tell they're working class from their boots and their guns. even rich people who like to go shooting, always wear clean boots and have better quality weapons.

- so these guys buy from pawn shops.

- drink beer.

- love their little baby daughters.

- think they're some sort of ancient heroic defenders.

- like to pretend they're protecting freedom.

- drive trucks with huge wheels, encrusted with mud.

- probably work at glass cutting plants, or machine shops.

- they vote against their own economic self-interests.

- basically, they're like almost every american male under 40 whose highest level of education is high school.

- classist!

- nope. I'm a truthist.

- well, I think we should be able to locate them by triangulation - the emblem on the jacket of the guy on the far left looks like some jaguar, or tiger. The guy next to him, all I can read is "Centennial" which might be some local college or high school, and I can't make out the one next to him, but I can almost guarantee you that if we could read the shirts it would give a clue as to who these guys are.

- whatever we come up, we know one obvious fact: these guys think it's OK to blow wholes through the face of a sitting president, which is dangerous for the safety and the security of this Union, and these guys are using violence to show some sort of saber-rattling, trying to intimidate by threat of violence . . . and you know what that means: these guys are

- terrorists!

Overheard at Table 3: Twitter Blocking

Man: did you hear that Twitter can now block tweets within certain countries?

Other man: yeah, I've been trying to hear back from my Syrian followers all day!

Overheard at Booth 3: Corporate Citizens

1: I heard Bill Moyers say, "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one."

2: Yeah, but if that ever happens there's a 5 to 7% chance that that particular corporation is either innocent or mentally incapable of understanding the charges brought against it.

Overheard at the Counter: Christmas Cards from Hookers

"Verble!" says Steppenwolf, "I can't believe you missed this one: Tom Waits's 'Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis'!"

Niall Carter says, "Dude I didn't know you were into Tom Waits!"

"Not much," he says, "But Neko Case did a cover, and man am I in love with that lady!"

"I remember that song," says Lucky Moran. "I thought it was way cool, every song on that album was pure poetry. Totally blues and beatnik combined. I even read it in my junior year creative writing class in high school."

"I bet that went over well," says Niall.

"Not really. Teacher chewed me out in front of the class. Told me I always seemed to act with 'questionable intent.' Strange, though, after class, she handed me a book. Anais Nin's Delta of Venus. Told me to read it, if I were really interested in such things."

"Lucky!" said John, "She was totally hitting on you!"

"Took me years to realize that, yeah," Lucky said. "A decade after I graduated, one day it suddenly hit me."




hey Charley I'm pregnant
and living on 9-th street
right above a dirty bookstore
off cuclid avenue
and I stopped taking dope
and I quit drinking whiskey
and my old man plays the trombone
and works out at the track.

and he says that he loves me
even though its not his baby
and he says that he'll raise him up
like he would his own son
and he gave me a ring
that was worn by his mother
and he takes me out dancin
every saturday nite.

and hey Charley I think about you
everytime I pass a fillin' station
on account of all the grease
you used to wear in your hair
and I still have that record
of little anthony & the imperials
but someone stole my record player
how do you like that?

hey Charley I almost went crazy
after mario got busted
so I went back to omaha to
live with my folks
but everyone I used to know
was either dead or in prison
so I came back in minneapolis
this time I think I'm gonna stay.

hey Charley I think I'm happy
for the first time since my accident
and I wish I had all the money
that we used to spend on dope
I'd buy me a used car lot
and I wouldn't sell any of em
I'd just drive a different car
every day dependin on how
I feel.

hey Charley
for chrissakes
do you want to know
the truth of it?
I don't have a husband
he don't play the trombone
and I need to borrow money
to pay this lawyer
and Charley, hey
I'll be eligible for parole
come valentines day.

Overhead at Table 3

Always remember that voting a Republican into government is like voting on a school bond initiative to disassemble the local high school brick by brick, so that the students won't have any place to go to learn.

Overheard at Table 3: Global Warming

You know, just because you had the coldest winter on record in upstate New York doesn't negate the fact of climate change. The problem we have in putting our minds around the concept is that we look at things to simply. They give us a term "global WARMING" and we expect to be growing oranges in Alberta by summer. We don't understand that the earth's biosphere is more complex than our own internal organs, so that's why whenever some dipwad gives me the "global warming but I just had a blizzard" crud, I tell them, yeah, much in the same way that sometimes a fever can give you chills.

Overheard at Booth 3: Flee from Anger

Two women sitting in Booth 3: one asks the other what happened last week at church.

The other says, "The sermon was all about how happy people flee from anger. Well, I was an angry person this morning, I got in the shower and my daughter never puts the spout bck right and it goes flopping over my head and whipping around my shoulder and bouncing all over the tub. And I didn't flee from my any but I tell you my daughter sure learned to flee from my anger!"

Overheard at Table 4: After New Hampshire

the thing that worries me the most about Romney possibly getting the nomination is not that it'd be weird that he gets it when so many Republicans so obviously hate him, it's that they hate him for being too 'liberal' - what I mean is, if they actually were to nominate one of those vicious buggers, like Bachman or Santorum, they'd be easy to take down, because the so-called 'independent' voters wouldn't vote for extremists. See, each side has their hard-core that would vote for a dirty coffee mug before they'd vote for a person of the other party - so even the Republicans who think he's a pinko would vote for him, just to see Obama lose. But if he gets in there, dang, we've got a proble.

- I think the establishment GOP knows that. I mean, they're taking some hard hits from their young uber-conservative-Hitler-youth, but that'll probably be another generation before they start making some real power gains. The guys still running the show are old money elite. They back the Romster because they're smart and they know exactly what you're saying here . . .

. . . now, the reason why I wouldn't mind seeing him get the nomination is to see what kind of hypocrites are the mindless masses that the Republicans have so easily controlled this past decade.

- who do you mean? The evangelicals?

- exactly. The social conservatives that they have drawn into their web of lies and deceit. By any Christian standards, Mormonism is a cult, on the same cult status as the Moonies, Jehovah's Witnesses, even Zororastrianism and Ba'al. I mean, voting for a Mormon would be exactly the same as voting for a Muslim, and these evangelicals would rather their eyes gouged out with flaming sticks than vote a Muslim into the presidency, so it'll be interesting to see if they would actually stand for it.

- of course they will. Those who understand are evil hypocrites, and those who don't understand are unthinking slaves to their evil hypocrite overlords.

Neil Young - Harvest Moon

Verble points to another of the framed album covers that he has on the walls of the Zen and Tao Acoustic Café. "Harvest Moon," he says proudly, "So much better than Harvest. Harvest was a hackpiece compared to Harvest Moon, I don't care what any of the purist hippies say. This one was Neil at his best - the guitars were superlative. I don't know of anybody else who can make an album of acoustic music that sounds like it was recorded entirely in one small corner of a concrete garage - and at the same time make you feel like your ear is right next to the soundhole of the guitar. And the songs make you feel like your dancing with your honey on some wooden dance hall whose walls have been pulled down and opened to view the sunset over the desert mesa, and you and your honey are wearing nothing but one warm woolen Indian blanket . . . but then, I'm probably also inspired not just by the music but also that fantastic cover!"

Overheard at the Counter: Verble on another TED rant

. . . and there was this post that was obviously trying to inflame a debate about the Bible, and it came right out and said it - proclaiming an attack on the supposed "inerrency" of the Bible and there were already posts about how science has proven that it cannot absolutely in no-way-shape-or-form be accurate, and there I was, trying to post, trying to frame the debate, a simple question asking the presenter of the debate to frame the argument, specifically to define what were the parameters of the term "inerrency" - I even gave the example about the literal 6 days of Creation, because I know that's what hangs up a lot of people, because you have the fundamentalists who send everyone to Hell if they don't believe that the Earth is exactly 7000 years old - BY OUR RELATIVE VIEW OF TIME - and then you have the others who puff and fume and pout like little schoolboys "well if yer gonna tell me that garbage well youse can tek yer Bibble-n-shuvvit" and I really really want to get through that question and state that time is relative and the more we learn about the nature of the universe the more the Bible is proven true, and the smaller that we become in the scale of creation then the greater the gift of Jesus Christ and my GOD both those who believe and those who don't believe in the Bible are both wrong equally and it's a beautiful thing that we have the Word of God and each and every one of us is looking at it the wrong way!

and no, I'm not saying I have any great insight, because I'm wrong as well, and it's a beautiful beautiful thing to be wholly incorrect, because it reminds me upon Whom I must lean . . .

but then when I tried to go back to the debate I think it's been removed by the TED folks, because I can't find it anywhere! The only evidence is an email from some rube who replied to my post and he started out by saying, "The English police want you to know that the word is spelled INERRANT - with an A!"

oops! said I . . . my entire argument, killed by a misappropriated vowel!

Overheard at the Counter: TED

Steppenwolf is saying, "Man, Verble, I really can't believe they kicked you out for being off-topic."

Verble says, "Are you being sarcastic? Because if you are being sarcastic, then just come right out and say so."

Steppenwolf says, "Me? Sarcastic? What could make you say that?"

Verble says, "Anyway, TED didn't kick me out. What they did is delete all my comments because they said I was off-topic. But I was only responding to what other people had posted. If that was off-topic, they should have tagged everything off-topic."

The Barista asks, "So what really was the topic?"

"Would you believe in Heaven and Hell even if you had never been exposed to organized religion?"

She says, "Oh. My. You going off on a tangent on THAT topic! How utterly absurd!"

"Et Tu, Barista mía?" says Verble.

"Sarcastic? Me?" replies the Barista. "Sweet little innocent me?"

"Oh, no, never!" laughs Steppenwolf.

Overheard at Table 2: Sherlock Holmes - A Game of Shadows

"I don't know," the husband says, "I just don't really care for sequels in general, I guess."

"Says the incurable Star Wars fan," says the wife.

"That's different. That's Star Wars. Those aren't movies, those are a philosophy - a way of life. 'Game of Shadows' just didn't have that some 'oomph' that the first movie did, and you know how I hate when they take one joke from the first and continue it over and over again in the next one."

"Yes, yes, I remember! You went on for weeks about 'Shrek' - but let's not get into that now."

"Well, heck," says the husband, "It's the same thing - you know, poisoning the dog was funny in the first one, but dull in the second one. But I did like the 'living camouflage' bits, that was cool - where he looked like the chair."

"Well, you can criticize it all you want to," says the wife, "But that movie has two things that make it perfect for me - Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr."

"Please!" says the husband.

"Super yummy!" says the wife, as she delightfully sips her latté.

Overheard at Booth 4: Advice from the Old Tennessee Mountain Man

The son says, "Seriously, Dad, how did you and Mom make it together all these years? You guys seem, like, really tight, you know . . . still! Like, what's the secret?"

The father replies, "Really, there's no secret. We just learned a long time ago that you never keep matches in the hay barn."

Left on Table 4: Writing on a Napkin