Do you know Michelle of The Green Study? I discovered her during the holidays when we were both hanging out at C4C, Company For Christmas — the open blog for folks who were alone on the holidays. Neither of us were alone, actually. In fact, I don’t think that I “chatted” with anybody who was alone. But I made some friends, including Michelle. We followed each other, and I entered her Christmas Story contest.
And I won 2nd Prize!
Recently, I entered another one of Michelle’s contests, this time for “The Worst Job I Ever Had.” And I did it again. I won second prize. But next time, I’m going to take this bit of advice:
Check out the first prize winner, The Wisdom of Life. That job was way worse than mine.
And check out mine over at The Green Study: The Gray Zone.
One of the reasons I started blogging is that everybody who knows me sooner or later gets to hear all my stories. Repeatedly. I needed new victims. Preferably victims whose eyes I do not see rolling when I pull out my story again. Victims who I won’t hear saying “oh, not that one again.” Victims who are out of sight and will therefore leave me unaware when they run screaming from the room.
My fellow bloggers.
So today, on the magic day when all of Hollywood turns out, dressed glamorously (or incredibly hideously) for the Academy Awards, I will dust the red carpet off the story of my own personal triumph.
It was an incredibly special night for me. An honor really. Well, actually two honors. Two Oscars. Two Awards. But I only got to make one speech.
It was the summer of 1983, and some really fun people worked in my office, one of whom, Jon, was a summer intern from the DC area. Carol, Mike, Jon and I all went to Jon’s house one night. You see, 1983 was still in the Bronze Age, and Jon’s parents were on the cutting age of technology, because they had a VCR. And Risky Business had just come out on video.
In the middle of the movie, we took a beer/bathroom break. And guess what I spotted, casually stuck on the bookshelf in the TV room of Rob’s house.
Oscar
And Oscar
It turned out that Jon’s father was a filmmaker. Documentary films. So, in honor of my acting career that died in a broom closet, my pals presented me with two Oscars for Documentary Filmmaking. Sadly, not one of us had a camera. Probably just as well, because my career would not have benefited by all the publicity surrounded my wearing blue jeans during my acceptance speech.
Receiving Oscar, and his twin, Oscar, was a special honor to me, since I had neither made, nor been in any documentary films, nor even fetched donuts and coffee for the real filmmakers. Regardless, I got to hold Oscar and Oscar, and I got to make a speech accepting my Academy Awards. So I am in an unusual club of people who have never actually acted or contributed in any way, shape or form to a movie, who has been presented an Academy Award.
Yes, I’mthat good.
* * *
If you’ve read this before, I hope you screamed quietly.
It seems like just the other day when I was telling you about David Siegel in my post Robbin’ a Better Hood.
You know, it was the story of David, the poor billionaire CEO of Westgate Resorts who likes to sit on a golden cherub-encrusted throne. In case you can’t remember, he threatened his employees with termination if Mitt Romney doesn’t become president, if Obama wins and raises his taxes. He also complained about not getting any happy hours.
Oh, it was just the other day!
Well, I’ve learned so much since. And I just gotta share.
You see, I learned that apparently CEO’s are pack animals. And a bunch of other CEOs are doing the same thing to their employees so that they can protect their billions.
At first I was confused. How could so many folks, living high on the hog, come up with the very same idea?
Then I learned just last night that there is a common thread here that, well, I for one would never have guessed.
Because guess who is telling those CEO’s to do that? Guess who is showing his leadership ability by actually getting billionaire CEOs to follow an order? Guess who has the morals and ethics of a crack whore?
[26:30] I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, you pass those along to your employees. Mitt Romney, June 6, 2012.
Yup, it’s Mitt. The guy whose team is in favor of voter suppression (heard the one about the Arizona Voter ID cards that were sent out with the wrong date for election date – funny thing, it’s only wrong on the Spanish ones).
Can you say “Watergate?” Can you say “Iran Contra?” Can you say “Tammany Hall?” Are you listening Mitt Romney?
I heard that Ann will be cancelling her next few campaign stops. She’s out shopping for furniture for the Oval Office.
Or maybe they should go on the Truman Balcony. The view of the peasants is way better from there..
It’s your most cherished hope. It’s what you wake up, day after day, wishing would happen. It’s more important to you now than World Peace.
Yup. You wanna be Fresh Pressed.
And I can help you there, my friend. Just listen up.
You see, I have the power to make it happen. To get you there. To fulfill your wildest blogging dreams.
I would have mentioned it before but, well, I only just realized my power. Until today I thought it was just coincidence. I’m so ashamed.
Take a look at my blog roll – you’ll see. I follow a lot of blogs that have been Freshly Pressed. Even though my blogroll is hopelessly out of date, you can see that I’m there in the trenches with the best of the best.
But I just didn’t see the pattern.
Last winter when I was having problems receiving emails of some of the blogs I follow, I decided to follow myself – that way I’d know for sure that I was getting alerts of all the folks I wanted to read.
That’s when it happened. Yup. I was Fresh Pressed for Hey Doc?
It’s happened since, too. Well, not to me, of course. But still I just didn’t notice the pattern. Finally it dawned on me. A couple of weeks ago when I started following Fear No Weebles. She was FP’d almost immediately after I put my email address in the “Follow Me” slot for a post called There’s something about Mr. Weebles.
But the concrete proof came just this week. For those of you who don’t know her, Miss Weebles is very fond of Le Clown of A Clown on Fire. She even wrote a post politely recommending that Word Press’s habit of not FP’ing the Clown should end. I clicked over there and realized that I’d been meaning to “Follow” him for a while, but, well, hadn’t. So I did.
I don’t think my brother Fred ever hurt my feelings as much as he did when he laughed at me that day. When, as a 4- or 5-year old I shouted at him:
“You’ll be sorry when I wake up DEAD.”
Instead of being cowed, well, Fred laughed at me. I was devastated. Confused. I didn’t understand what was so funny. Later he explained it to me:
“Lease,” he said patiently, “You can’t ‘wake up dead’!”
“Why not?”
“Because if you’re dead, Lease, you don’t wake up. You can’t. Cause you’re DEAD.”
“Oh.”
It was the first time I understood that I had done something incredibly stupid. I learned my lesson, though. Never again did I threaten anyone with the possibility that I’d wake up dead.
So imagine my surprise when I read about high school nurse Terry Collins in this article. I learned that I wasn’t so dumb back then after all.
You see, Ms. Collins woke up dead one day. Yeah, it’s true! She got a letter saying that she was taken off the voter registration list because she is dead. She was quite surprised because, well, she felt just fine! Coincidentally, her 80-year old father was equally surprised when he got a similar letter. He had woken up dead, too! Even more coincidentally, they are both African-Americans registered to vote in Texas! Or they were until they woke up dead in a state where the Governor is a Republican and the legislature is run by the GOP.
Apparently, there is an epidemic in Texas. An epidemic of waking up dead! And the number of folks who are caught up in this, umm, problem? According to NPR, there are about 80,000 Texas voters who woke up one day and found out via the US mail that they were dead. Most are African American or Hispanic. Imagine that, they were members of minorities who tend to favor Democrats, and they woke up dead.
I’m calling Fred. He’ll be so sorry he made fun of me.
* * *
The creativity of the folks who try to keep others from voting is quite impressive. If only they used it to govern, the U.S. might be in much better shape today.
