The Author Connects Everything to the Toilet

[from 9/22/10]

Brace yourself for a truly awful column written by me, © Dr. Wes Browning. Worn out complaining about police brutality, homelessness, and wars, I’m reduced to sputtering about Christine O’Donnell and what she has to do with generalities. You might want to “go potty” before reading further.

I can’t get O’Donnell out of my mind. The devil will get me.

First thought: How did Bill Maher know way back in 1996 that, 14 years later, America would want to know how Christine O’Donnell felt about masturbation, or being a phony high school witch? I wish I had that kind of prescience.

I’d never ask a 27 year-old what sexual practices she approves. Who cares, I’d say. Bill Maher cares. That’s why Bill Maher gets the show and the fame and the money that comes with it, and I get to watch it on the TV with my hand down my pants.

Second thought: Let’s be fair. That was then, this is now. She’s come right out and said that she won’t govern based on her religious beliefs, she’ll be a strict Constitutionalist. Regarding her brush with what she now calls Satanic beliefs, she says she’s learned from it. “I know what it's like to live a life without principle.” Something to fall back on.

Since she wants to be a strict Constitutionalist I’d prefer she’d know what it’s like to live with principle. But let’s give her credit for meeting us halfway.

“What does she have to do with generalities, Wes?”

A. Look at ugly bell peppers.

Do it! Go to your local supermarket. Find the produce section. If it’s a good supermarket you’ll find what they call heirloom peppers. They come in a tray, all different colors and there’s always a fugly one. What’s that about? They’re the exceptions, that’s what.

Generalities, as opposed to exceptions, is about McDonald’s. It’s about Monsanto. It’s about Foster Farms chickens, homelessness, Texas textbooks, No Child Left Behind, WASL, Demopublicans, NAFTA, global warming, bed bugs, Fox News, talk radio, and the Real Change Cat, Sid Vicious.

What do these things have in common, you ask? They’re all constipated or signs of constipation, that’s what.

It’s simple mathematics. It’s starts with anal retention. You hold in the nasty. You “miss your train” as they say. More accurately, you partially derail the train, another gets jammed up behind it, and another, and they all get squeezed trying to use the same tunnel.

Your general modern world is anal. Christine O’Donnel is both anal and exceptional. She wants to be a strict Constitutionalist, but she can’t be, because Constitutions and strict don’t go together. That’s how you get backed up, trying to be con-stricted and well-Constituted at the same time.

Everybody wants everything just so. Nothing can be messy. Monsanto doesn’t even think plants should be allowed to reproduce by themselves. Fox News can’t stand the thought that any liberal might have a good idea now and then.

Everything has to be under control, and there’s two ways to do that, one expensive, and one cheap. The expensive way is to force everyone to do it your way. The cheap way is to get everybody wanting to do it your way.

Here’s an experiment. Say to your spouse, parent, child, best friend, “you want to go to the frig and get me a [insert beverage of your choice]?” Later on try telling them, “do it or else.” They might do it both times, but you’ll pay in grief for the second approach.

The general world is being constipated to death by corporate propaganda telling you how to live & what you want, for the convenience of anal controlling corporations, who don’t care about the long term consequences. Just because it’s done with nonviolent persuasion doesn’t prevent the inevitable disaster.

Eventually something has to give. You can’t control everything. If you try, like the Demopublicans have been trying, something exceptional is going to leak out. In this case she’s prepared to out-anal us all.