I’m mad at everything and everybody, but especially at career politicians. Not to mention career pediatricians. From now on, one of my kids gets sick, I’m taking them to see some incensed old coot straight off the street carrying a misspelled sign. Experience is way overrated. Why can’t US Senator be an entry- level position?

I’m mad about paying taxes. Because I don’t like paying taxes. I’m tired of my hard earned money wasted on silly things like roads and air traffic controllers and paramedics and pipeline inspectors. And flossing. I hate that too. Who needs teeth? Members of the lamestream media elite, that’s who. So they can lie through them. Those guys I’m mad at because they keep running stories about me being mad.

I’m mad at the government’s nit picking rules. Let corporations regulate themselves. They know what they’re doing. I’m mad because I have to work two jobs just to get by and I’m mad rich people don’t get more tax cuts. I’m mad about all the jobs that went overseas and I’m mad at unions demanding a living wage. I’m mad my life isn’t better than my parents’ and I’m mad I can’t have everything now and force my children to pay for it. And knowing I’m confused just fuels my maddening.

I’m mad our Muslim President was born in Kenya. And don’t bother me with your so- called facts. I know what I know and it makes me so mad I could just spit. So I do. Often. Right into the wind. And having the front of my shirt constantly moist just gooses the scale of how mad I am.

I’m mad at both of the parties. All of the parties. Political parties and birthday parties and tailgate parties. I’m mad at Democrats because they’re the polar opposite of mad and I’m mad at Republicans because they’re mad at me. And if my maddish spews hurt them, tough. Because they’re not as mad as I am. I’m so mad I’ll bite off both my hands one finger at a time if that’s what it takes. To prove I’m mad. Which I am.

I’m mad at immigrants for doing jobs that are beneath me. I’m mad at the French. I’m mad at French’s mustard. I’m mad at people who put ketchup on hot dogs. I’m even mad at people who are mad at people who put ketchup on hot dogs. You can never hope to replicate the purity of my precious maditude.

Some folks don’t ever get mad which makes me maddest of all. The hell is wrong with these people? These uppity madless ones. Oooh, they make me so mad. But they will be mad. Soon enough. Because my madness is going to bloom and grow until everyone is as mad as me. Which, is going to be tough. Because I’m really really mad. Did I mention I was mad? Good. Because I am. Mad, that is. Man oh man, I’m mad.

***

Rumpus original art by Jason Novak.

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White shoes are put back in the closet and storm windows taken out. Watermelons are replaced on the floor next to produce bins by pumpkins. Swimming pools get drained and ice cream trucks convoy back into their hibernatory garages. All the red, white and blue motifs give way to orange and black. The solstice is dead. Long live the autumnal equinox.

As a kid, I was too busy running from the shadow of school’s return and the end of my freedom to pay much attention to the meaning of the holiday. And when I did, it made no sense. Honor work? Who would do that? Might as well set aside a day to venerate broccoli. I thought of work as a thing to be avoided not celebrated. Chores squared.

But then I entered the real world and desired things, like food and shelter and clothing and gasoline, which forced me into gainful employment. And it was surprisingly enjoyable. Not the getting up at 4 am part, but the fruit of accomplishment deal- yeah. Got my social security number at the age of 12. Held over 100 different jobs. Then in 1981, I was able to earn a living at my chosen craft. Making me an extremely lucky man.

Without labor, we would still be nomads, boiling river water to wash down our nightly meal of beans and mush and roots and moss. Getting way too friendly with the livestock. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. From the people who brought you the weekend, not to mention the 40 hour work week and the lunch hour and the smoke break and the potty run and the punch clock dash.

Our society’s love affair with the genetically blessed can get tiresome. The rich and the beautiful and the fast and the strong. The lucky sperm club. People who were in the right place at the right time, and most of those places were wombal. That’s why it’s important to have this one 24- hour period to honor ordinary Americans. Real folks who don’t think “work ethic” is a dirty word. Or a dirty two words. Or whatever.

No, there’s no fireworks to watch or ugly birds to cook or chocolate covered bunnies to steal marshmallows from. Just one Monday off for all those regular guys and gals trying to make ends meet; raising 2.3 kids while juggling a mortgage and trying to cover the monthly cable bill with at least one premium channel thrown in.

One day to celebrate what it is that we do for a living by taking the day off from work. Paying tribute not to some dead presidents or a religious fertility ritual or the valiant who have fallen defending democracy, but to the living. To us. The true American heroes. The ones who keep democracy alive and shaking and moving and growing. You and me. All right. All right. Fine. Mostly you. Happy Labor Day everybody.

***

Catch Will Durst with Johnny Steele and Deb & Mike, Sunday, Labor Day Eve, at the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley and then Friday and Saturday, the 10^th & 11^th at the Town Hall in Lafayette.

His new CD, “Raging Moderate,” now available from Stand Up! Records on iTunes and Amazon. Coming early next year: “Where the Rogue Things Go.”

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Labor Day. The last plastic souvenir sports bottle of lemonade on the dying coals of summer. The beginning of the end of the bright light and harbinger of the darkness. Swimming pools close. Ice cream trucks tie up their bells and convoy back into hibernation, And Dad suffers his last second degree hissing bubble burn from the BBQ grill for at least nine months. The dividing line between baseball’s endgame and football’s chrysalis from two- a- day drills into hardcore Bowl envy. The solstice is dead. Long live the autumnal equinox.

Labor Day. As a kid, I was too busy recoiling from the looming specter of the end of my freedom to pay much attention to the meaning or even the name of the holiday. One 24 hour period carved into the almanac to honor the American worker. Seems a bit of an archaic sentiment these days. A gesture almost as empty as the candy counter at a Cineplex after a Labor Day weekend Harry Potter festival, especially what with lean and mean being all the rage. And trust me, there is a lot of rage out there.

Labor Day. Now might be the perfect time to trot out that old chestnut that if it weren’t for the blue collars there wouldn’t be any white collars much less $4500 Brioni grey pinstripe merino wool suit collars. Without labor and the labor movement, we might still be nomads, camping on a frontier, boiling river water to wash down our nightly meal of beans and mush and roots and moss. Getting way too friendly with the livestock. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Labor Day Admittedly, not the sexiest holiday: There’s no fireworks to watch or ugly birds to cook or chocolate covered bunnies to steal marshmallows from. Just one Monday off for all those ordinary guys and gals trying to make ends meet; raising 2.3 kids, juggling a mortgage while trying to cover the monthly cable bill with at least one premium channel thrown in. The lifeblood of America’s body politic has always been its workforce, the people. (claimants before Judge Judy disincluded) I’m talking about real folks who don’t think “work ethic” is a dirty word. Or a dirty two words. Or whatever.

Labor Day. A calendaric conundrum. A day we celebrate what it is we do for a living by taking the day off from work. Paying tribute not to fancy movie stars or stodgy founding fathers or rich and bloated athletes, but us. The real American heroes. You and me. Okay, mostly you. But allow a guy who memorized his social security number at the age of twelve, wish you a happy Labor Day. Go out and buy a new notebook and a couple of pens. And a ruler. Nobody buys rulers anymore.

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It was a mite disconcerting that President Obama came up with Justice David Souter’s replacement in about a quarter of the time that it took for him to choose the family dog. Of course that dog is destined to become an integral part of the First Family. And a choice they will have to live with for ten or twelve years.. A Supreme Court Justice simply affects the country and the world for the rest of our natural born lives.

Although dogs and Associate Supreme Court Justices do share many commands. A judge must SIT on the bench. They STAY there for a lifetime. Tend to LIE DOWN at the first sight of a third rail issue. SPEAK only when questioning precedents. Clarence Thomas took a year and a half to HOUSE TRAIN. Antonin Scalia is a HEEL. Rumor has it John Paul Stevens’ law clerks regularly follow him around with a ROLLED UP NEWSPAPER. And generally all nine will BEG anytime they can FETCH a consensus.

Though they lack the votes to derail the nomination, Republicans will not ROLL OVER and PLAY DEAD. Their antagonism was evident even during the decision process. Qualms were expressed about the President’s use of the word “empathy” describing his search. It was interpreted as code for a radical left wing activist judge. Empathy, to these guys, is a pejorative. Well, there’s your problem right there. No wonder the GOP approval rating is lower than steel tipped fingernails on a schoolhouse blackboard.

A tape was discovered of Sotomayor riffing off a Sandra O’Connor quote, rhapsodizing about the hope that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” and a chorus of Conservatives jumped so far down her throat only the soles of their shoes can be glimpsed wriggling at the ceiling in choreographed mock fury.

Thus they charge Sonia Sotomayor with racism. For suggesting white men are not the ultimate end- all be- all in this country. Admittedly, this accusation has not been leveled by any real elected Republicans; just the usual peanut gallery rejects of Coulter, Limbaugh, Gingrich and Tancredo. That’s right. Tom Tancredo accusing a Latina of being racist. You can’t make stuff up like this. All the gas emitting from these blowhards is just another example of the Hummer calling the minivan annoying. What’s next? Bernie Madoff publicly complaining that the auto bailout math is suspect?

Their determination to escalate a confirmation fight has multiple motivations. 1. It’s necessary for the party to appear halfway relevant. 2. Combat provides an excellent opportunity to energize the base and raise money. 3. And most importantly; they can use the practice. Obstinacy, like a muscle, must be exercised.

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These aren’t your normal ordinary everyday forms of torture we’re talking about either: like 12th in line at a understaffed Starbucks or shuffling through life a Golden State Warriors fan or being forced to watch NBC’s prime time lineup against your will, I’m referring to real, state sponsored, “talk or we do something crazy” Jack Bauer on steroids kind of stuff.

The big difference being, Keifer Sutherland’s rascally television torturer gets most of his best results simply by raising his voice. “Are you going to talk?” “Never.” Compelling him to move in real close and yell in the dastardly scoundrel’s face:  “ARE YOU GOING TO TALK NOW?” “Okay. Okay. I’ll talk. Just lower your voice. The kids are trying to sleep.”

Now we got Nancy Pelosi and the CIA exchanging torture lying charges. Don’t you hate it when lovers’ spats go public? The Republicans are gleefully sliding into the House Speaker cleats up because she has little of the President’s Teflon coating. To many Americans she’s that great aunt who smiles too much at Thanksgiving and always uses your full name when scolding you for poor quality table manners. “William, only cows chew with their mouths open.”

Even Dick Cheney has gotten into the act with a recent talk show offensive defending his administration’s torture policies. And as far as everybody in the nation who sees his face being mightily offended, he’s been successful. This is not a partisan thing. A National Journal poll of Republican insiders shows 57% of them think he’s hurting the party. So pretty much everybody agrees, Dick Cheney speaking on torture is redundant.

He called the enhanced interrogation techniques used at Gitmo regrettable but necessary. And you got to love that phrase: “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Sounds like instructions on how to turn on the fluorescents at a job interview. He’s not being tortured, he’s being solicited to provide easy answers to exceptionally difficult questions. In bad lighting. And those car battery cables attached to his nipples are “nervous system awareness amplifiers.”

What I don’t get is how anybody can defend waterboarding a single prisoner 183 times. Operationally, wouldn’t you think the effectiveness would start to wear off after about 60 or 70? What genius kept pushing, “I know we’ve gotten nothing the first couple hundred times here, but I got a hunch, this next time- we’re gold.” Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 183 times, shame on me. As my daddy always said: 183rd time’s the charm.

The best way Dick Cheney can help this country is to creep back to that undisclosed location of his, and maybe take Joe Biden with him. Still haven’t figured out why Cheney is so obsessed with selling the positive merits of torture. Though there is that old axiom about one man’s torture being another man’s S&M turn- on, so maybe that explains more about the Cheney Doctrine than we really need to know. TMI. You want torture? Dick Cheney in fishnets. Try to pry that image out of your mind.

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So let us belatedly jump into this whole 100 day retrospective dealie thing, which recently became a heavy duty benchmark of real importance, because, hey: TRIPLE DIGITS. The media has dutifully kept us informed upon the significance of this monumental occasion and have not used their indoor voice while doing so. But this space will address the first one hundred and TEN days of the Obama administration, hence OUR look back will be 10% more accurate. 10% more comprehensive. 10% better. By being 10% later.

Exactly how has the fourth Democratic administration since 1968 fared in its first 110 days? Unh. Well. You know. About what you’d expect, I guess. Depends on whom you talk to. Not a lot of agreement. General consensus is: “too early to tell.” Or as my knock- off discounted Magic 8 Ball said when consulted: “Still not cleahr. Outlok cloudy. Try again alter.”

Some experts proclaim the 44th President has done brilliantly under adverse circumstances. Others blame him for everything gone wrong with the planet in the last 3 months including the unusually high, late spring upper Midwest humidity. Unfortunately, that vaunted Bipartisan Outreach Program was about as successful as barbed wire crib rails. As they say in Variety and exceptionally frantic frog restaurants: “no legs.”

Neither is Barack getting what you would call your major assistance from either side of the aisle. “We want to work with the President.” Mmm- hmm. The same way a starving coyote wants to work with a nest of baby ducks. One discouraging word circulating the Beltway accuses the Chief Executive of being arrogant, but you know what, at least he’s smart. Because we tried arrogant and stupid and that didn’t work.

From a comedic stand-point, I’m severely disappointed. The foremost scandal thus far has been couple of Cabinet appointments that didn’t want to pay their taxes. Which most of us can relate to. Problem is, Bush was a satirical motherlode and even Clinton hit the ground running as a corpulent womanizer. But Obama is smoother than liquid black velvet affording little purchase to hook a barb onto. Besides, you can’t mock hope. Too much like kicking a small furry whimpering thing with big eyes. Got to wait for hope to scab over a bit.

Not to mention the economy being more fragile than a spun glass step- ladder, so pretty much everyone not named Rush Limbaugh is rooting for him to succeed. But with pirates and pandemics and Pakistan all set on High Menace, the job ahead looks tougher than untying a centipede’s shoe laces while wearing oven mitts. Which is bad for the nation, the world, the planet and the solar system, but good fodder for us political comics. Of course, at this point, we members of the CCJU (Comics, Clowns & Jesters Union,) just might be wiling to take one for the team.

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And now Mister Smarty Pants Commander- in- Chief is talking about how any significant improvement is going to take time. “Don’t expect too much too soon.” Oh yeah, great. Change, but small change. Nickels and pennies and dimes. Maybe one of his advisors should remind him that his constituents are not an incremental people. Rather, we have the attention span of hickory ash in a wind tunnel. In the land of “too much is not enough,” tomorrow is too far into the future by at least two days.

This “baby steps” approach is definitely not what people had in mind last November. Pretty sure folks were thinking more along the lines of something wonderful right away. Snap some fingers. Wave some wands. Tall buildings being leapt in a single bound. The righteous smiting of foes. Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew, cover it with chocolate and a miracle or two? The President can. The President can, ‘cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good. And why did we think that? ‘Cause Obama done told me.

We should be waking up right now swimming in sunshine and rainbows and Mylar balloons. Instead; storm clouds all around, and its raining bailouts and bank failures and bedbugs. I’m not kidding. Bedbugs have made a comeback. In the USA. That’s a straight shot of third world right there my friends. I think I would have remembered hearing anything in his stump speeches about bedbugs. What’s next: cholera? Yellow fever? River blindness? Angelina Jolie adopting domestically?

How long are we supposed to wait before the President kisses boo- boo and makes everything all better? Another month? Five weeks? Five weeks and two days? I know. I know. I know. It took longer than sixty days to get us into this mess, it’ll probably take sixty more to get us out of it. But after his first sixty days, FDR had ended Prohibition, vanquished the Depression and was two thirds of the way into world peace, until that spoilsport Fuhrer came along.

Maybe the problem is geographic. After all the District of Columbia was built on a swamp. Kind of hard to hit the ground running when your landing ramp has the consistency of She Crab Soup. Not to mention all the potholes, rolls of red tape and barbed wire the opposition thoughtfully installed as welcoming gifts. Knowing this, I still don’t care. I just want better.. No, scratch that. I want best. And I want best right now. And as an American I’m perfectly within my rights to keep complaining, wee, wee, wee, all the way home. So I will.

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Go ahead. Guess who’s to blame? No, not the subprime mortgage brokers or Bernie Madoff and his ilk or those reverse Robin Hood hedgefund speculators throwing trillions of dollars worth of derivatives around like paper towels at a chili cheese dog eating competition. Nope. The dastardly bums that created the world wide financial crisis is… us. That’s right. You and me. And I hope we’re happy.

For making former Silicon Valley start up CFOs toil as Indian casino valets. For driving down the price of 2 year old Porsche Boxters to the level of a 96 Taurus with a blown head gasket. For forcing casseroles and meatloaf onto the menus of 3 star Michelin chefs. It’s all our fault. And how are we doing it? By not buying enough stuff. Damn us anyway. How dare we?

Who cares whether we’re employed or not? Don’t we realize we are the pistons that drive the free market engine? It’s our God- given patriotic duty to go out there and buy stuff we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like. We don’t do easy. We do compulsory.

Remember how good it felt to buy that brand new DVD we had no intention of ever watching? Aren’t you just itching to tear the shrink- wrap off of something with your teeth right now? Anybody can conspicuously consume when things are going well and money geysers from the ground like it did between the Bushes. It takes a true retail soldier to run up credit card bills when banks are raising interest rates so high, it would not be too far off the mark for them to utilize a dorsal fin as a logo.

I wouldn’t get this squishy if I wasn’t seeing pubescent girls get punched in the gut with our selfish frugality. Girl Scout Cookie sales have sunk to levels not seen since Jimmy Carter was scolding us while wearing cardigans. The Girl Scouts! Okay, that’s it. I don’t know which of you commie pinko yellow rat cretinous toads managed to hypnotize the rest of us into believing we’re so broke we can’t afford a couple of measly packages of Thin Mints, but you’ve gone too far. You fiend. How soon before we take out our parsimonious wrath on the innocent producers of Sham- Wow and Snuggie?

Ladies and gentlemen, I implore you; open your wallets. Ask yourself, “what would Paris Hilton do?” It doesn’t matter what you buy. A Jonas Brothers lunch box. A $75 grass fed, hand massaged, Kobe beef porterhouse steak, bathed in boysenberry infused truffle butter. A 96 piece Limited Edition Pewter Napkin Ring Set in the shape of the characters from the Lord of the Rings. Ford. Besides, this isn’t about you and me people. This isn’t about America. This isn’t about Detroit. This is about the Girl Scouts.

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So, St. Barack made a big deal of reassuring the public that at least a modicum of accountability will exist on his watch by announcing a cap on executive salaries for the banks that want to be part of the government bailout. And the number of banks that are looking to be part of the government bailout is approximately… all of them. Times two.

In retrospect, it’s not difficult to figure out why all these trusted financial institutions went belly up. The people they got running those things have the same sense that god gave a beach pail full of green plastic Easter grass. Proved to be more self- centered than the backstage bathroom mirror at a Debutantes Ball in the Hamptons. Crazier than naked flagpole sitters in a blizzard.

They bought into their own Tom Wolfe “Masters of the Universe” BS. Mesmerized by the siren song of a little thing called unregulated greed, which ended up sucking them drier than a four- day dead possum on an interstate outside Tucson. Making them weep and keen and cry that it was up to us to bail them out or all hell was going to break loose, and we, like the large mouth suckers we are, snapped at the bait. Pulling muscles in our rear haunches rushing to give them palettes full of cash before our retirement accounts retired for good.

So what do they do with all our bailout money? Help out society and homeowners by fixing the sub- prime mess they created? What are you, nuts? They spent it on themselves. AIG arranged a little spa vacation at a Ritz- Carlton.. Citigroup tried to buy a $50 million corporate jet then put their name on a stadium. Wells Fargo planned a staff retreat in Vegas to “recognize team members by emphasizing their value to the company.” Recognize their value to the company? The company’s broke. You could recognize that value with a shovel, a six- foot hole and a pointy stick.

AND despite their worst year since Hoover, Wall Street passed around 18 billion dollars in bonuses. To the exact same idiots steering our grocery carts down the pet food aisle in the first place. Who will undoubtedly find loopholes the size of Saskatchewan in the President’s edicts, but, at this point, like the size of the Valentine, it’s the thought that counts. Even if only one guy gets his hands slapped, its ten more red knuckles than we’ve seen in 97 months.

What we’ve been experiencing is bank robbery in reverse. The perps didn’t even bother wearing masks. And triggered absolutely no silent alarms. The problem is, those security cameras in the lobby are pointing the wrong way. You should do what I do. Now, every time I make a deposit, I ask the teller for 2 pieces of identification. “Oh yeah, what’s your mother’s maiden name?”

**
Catch Durst in Tahoe Feb 10- 16. And Chicago Feb 19- 29. Okay. March 1st. Don’t get all persnickety.

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