Bobo Gets Fat And Lazy

I realize that Bobo is just trying for that breezy, too-cute-by-half feel that comes naturally to Money Dowd. But jeebus, the whole thing smacks of effort, at something which is not worth putting actual effort into. If a neutered cat could take human form, my guess is it would look a lot like Bobo -- lazy, complacent, and sharpening its claws on the most expensive piece of furniture in the house. I keep waiting for Bobo to shove Odie off the edge of the dining-room table.

Whatever. It doesn't matter. If there's any meat in Bobo's petits fours, it's here:

Mostly, I'm happy on an existential level. I like to be reminded that the universe is basically crooked. This is what the zero-tolerance brigades and all the better living gurus never quite get. They're busy trying to mold everybody into lifelong valedictorians, who spend their adulthood as carb counters and responsible flossers - the sort of organized folk who actually read legal documents before they sign them.

Yes, I just hate people who are efficient and orderly, don't you? Shame on you for paying attention to empirical reality, habit Nazis! Where do you get off trying to show people how to lead happier, healthier lives? Who are these jerkoffs who tell us to cover our own asses and not gorge on SnackWells?

Self-improvement nags can indeed be tiresome, but at least they're trying. It's better than being content to live in an entropic society that thinks "innovation" means finding easier ways to get more saturated fats down its collective gullet.

In reality, life is perverse and human beings don't get what they deserve. The people with the worst grades start the most successful businesses. The shallowest people end up blissfully happy and they are so vapid they don't even realize how vapid they are because vapidity is the only trait that comes with its own impermeable obliviousness system. The people regarded as lightweights, like F.D.R., J.F.K. and Ronald Reagan, make the best presidents, while you - so much more thoughtful and better read - would be a complete disaster.

No doubt Bobo has in mind the two most common "smart" presidents who are considered abject failures -- Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. This is not a small point; there is an argument to be made that these men outsmarted themselves in misunderestimating political reality whilst they drafted their grand designs. But when assigning blame, do you blame Wilson and Carter, or the douchebags they had to deal with during their respective times in office?

Besides, Bobo's theory that lightweights make the best presidents is completely undone by the current wiffle-brain. Face it, Bobo -- Bush has had a complaisant Congress and he's still managed to fuck up every single thing he's touched. It's a safe assumption that Bobo's response to that would be that the jury's still out, it's too soon to tell. Something predictably lame like that.

One thing about Bobo: You can set your sundial to his brain-dead bullshit. He's about as full of surprises as Michael Jackson at a Boy Scout Jamboree.

Fair enough. Put these items into your virtual envelope and seal it, to be unveiled on January 1, 2009:

• Bush will still (again) be the first president since Hoobert Heever to lose jobs.


• The military will still be reeling from the current misadventure in Iraq, whether or not they're home by then.


• The American economy will still be #1 in GDP, but on the wane, in terms of leading in GDP, trade deficit, and current account deficit.


• The Chinese and Indians will be rapidly catching up, and ramping up their respective space technologies.


• The US per capita GDP will be in free-fall, along with other measures of industrialized economies, like infant mortality and math/science proficiency.


• Real wages will still be stagnant, as will be the stock market.


• China will have started cashing in its T-bills, sending the US economy south, if not into an outright tailspin. Oil prices, military spending, and China pegging its currency to the euro, once it gets a big enough market other than the US, should do the rest.


• Condi Rice will have taken over as VP after Dick Cheney's fifth and final heart attack, and will prove every bit as inept at that job as she was an NSA. But hey, she's a VP with stiletto heels! Roowwwrrr!


• This country will be more polarized than ever, as rational people finally get sick of being pushed around and lectured to by pharmacists and shut-ins on how to live their own lives. Civil war, anyone? I sure won't mind being Left Behind, if it means these jerks will leave the rest of us the fuck alone.


• This administration will be so entrenched in scandal, even if it had a plan to fix any of these things (which it doesn't -- it doesn't even think there's a problem), it will be politically impossible.

And our Impermeably Oblivious Dear Cheerleader will still be clearin' brush and invokin' Jeebus, because that's all he knows how to fuckin' do.

Life isn't fair, logic is of limited value and, as Woody Allen observed years ago, everything your parents once thought was good for you turns out to be bad for you: sun, milk, red meat and college.

Well, that and banging your step-daughter. Hi-yo! Seriously, if I wanted this lazy Sunday morning crap, I'd tune into CBS' Sunday show and listen to the animal noises at the end of every broadcast. I think it's supposed to symbolize the power of nature's beauty and grace, but to me it sounds like a bunch of fucking seagulls getting ready to take a shit on the nearby seal colony.

I know I'm a bad guy for beating on someone who's just trying to come across as a good-natured doofus, but Bobo ain't Dave Barry, no matter how hard he tries. This is typical of when conservatards try to be "funny"; they can't help but insert a few of the usual passive-aggressive "you think you're so fuckin' smart" tropes.

I suggest that health nuts, as tiresome as they can be, are no different than the other usual types of nuts -- as off-putting and sanctimonious as they are, they are compelled to testify to all about their newfound glory. At least here they have some measure of reason and empiricism on their side. Who cares what the fucking study says? Every other week they try to decide whether salt and eggs and wine and such are good for you, or bad for you.

My guess: they're good for you, in moderation. Pretty much every food is like that. Call me crazy. It doesn't seem to occur to Bobo that these jerkoff "scientists" have to have make-work studies to justify their existences.

Chew on that, Fatboy.