Radio Interview with Close Advisor to Obama on Syria and the Smart Drone Threat

Audio only: Radio Interview (culture jamming)

[Transcript:]

Today we are pleased to have Johnny Ostenopolis, advisor to President Obama and privy to the deep thought processes that transpire in conferences on major international events such as the shell game of weapons of mass destruction. Do you think the Syrians have drones?

According to sources at the table, they not only have drones but they have smart drones.

Can you describe these smart drones for our listeners?

Sure. Smart drones are armed and lethal robots that shoot anything that moves, women, children, three-legged dogs, whatever touches your heart, kiss it goodbye.

Does America have these?

Of course we do. Ours are the prototypes being shot down and stolen by rebels in Afghanistan who send the pieces to China where they are reverse-engineered, mass produced and sold to rogue states like Syria, Panama, Luxembourg, and Quebec. One YouTube report claims even Mercer Island is arming itself for Armageddon.

Whose drones are smarter? According the very reliable and unbiased Rand Corporation highly sophisticated research report, I quote, “By gosh all them bad ones and we good ones they bad we good, we want to go too, make us happy, make us go fast, faster; heat-eating sensors, laser nanotech itchy under the collar.”

Sublime. Dudes really know what they are doing. I honestly don’t know how anyone in the defense business like Obama could cross a chemical Syrian street without the jujitsu those guys lay down in the mud like mink coats for lady was a tramp.

Whose stocks should a patriotic American Mother Courage buy to cash in on the bombing of Syria and the good it will do for promoting war and all the peace, and peace of mind, and pieces of American minds, it brings to American minds.

Very well put. In my mind you can’t go wrong with the big war profiteers listed by USA Today, especially Boeing, boom-boom-boom, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics, and most of all Lockheed Martin, a big boomy-boom-boom. As Obama said, he personally expects to be compensated by the entire lot of 25 biggest defense companies in the USofA, upon stepping down, of course. If Cheney and Bush can do it he can.

There you go. The real color barrier is right there with the big guns.

You know it, he knows it, but do the big 25—really 47—know it? Who knows….

  

Pointillist Roundup at the Changing of Guard

Whispers raise the wall on nostalgia,

retrofit a preemptive uplift for a latte,

lead-ins ticking off a lonely pensioner

depending on one nice Joe. A step

on the tube in the wrong election

paints the town a lost-cause sauvignon.

Handfuls of Velveeta gather behind a church 

a hundred times I won’t, I will, just short

of detritus standing out of class

to write his name a hundred times, no matter

broken enough. We return to a bulletin
of tunas fished to the seed of death.

The sushi, from a long line of Secretariats,
is finely marbled and fresh from a local corral

at least until the Petri chicken is flown in.

May I recommend a man or a woman, but hey, it’s your life.

Nouveau riche penguins drag nature and are taken.

Birds and bees also have tools

and microtransmitters. Possums are marching north,

leave little wind-ups on the back porch.

Footnote to a Poem with an Allusion to Donald Trump

Not inclined to exhibit malice of any sort,
might one merely ask a hypothetical question:
what do these lines

… tipping back
in a world born to its station, a world across the street
in sunny Maine, where the neighbors, the Trumps,
said it was a pity the way the pecking order gets televised nowadays

in a memorial poem "The Shiga Hero" really mean?

Could the “pecking order” mean “the shouting order”
an apprenticing intern gets with a 12-step boss?

Might “gets televised” suggest how easily one may let go
of one’s good upbringing, sacrifice pleasantries
and be let go by families for one’s excessive obsession with power?

Might one take the threatening tone of “I’ll give you 5 million dollars if you…”
as serving people notice to service people?

Might even the high and mighty approach the danger zone
of becoming a caricature, a salable on a video shelf?

Such it would seem, and there are stories to tell
from the families and neighbors in the grand vacation enclaves of Maine.

Ah, indeed, it’s too late to ask, now, isn’t it, what you meant?
But one day, the paparazzi will ask said families
who then, themselves, must stoop to inquire of Ms Manners as follows:

Dear Ms Manners:

Terribly sorry to bother you when I know you must have so many less fortunate people trying to make do in our part-time service economy; however hard it must be for them to maintain a sense of dignity, I yet remain indeed inclined, I must say, and, still, terribly afraid, that I must bother you with my dire dilemma. It is a dilemma that has fallen on my shoulders and become the albatross of my waking hours. You see, my cousin, who I won’t mention by name, thinks he is better than others and can, so to speak, treat others with unkindnesses. It has been our way to at least pretend we are all equal, as people are all people (some in our circle would even include whales and porpoises, not to mention endangered breeds of pelicans and midget owls in upper Maine). So I write in earnest to beg your kind advice and ask this question: should I grant an interview with reporters that might save our family’s good name after being violated by such spiteful and insulting public spectacles, all in the name of placing the blind pursuit of profit before our innate caring spirit, and, dare I say, life itself? Or, should I mind my own business and hope that I haven’t shorn myself from my wealthy cousin’s will? Mind you, he is not much older than me, but dare I say the years have not treated him well. Thank you kindly for your sagacious wisdom.

Shocked and Awed in Kennebunkport

Dear Shocked and Awed in Kennebunkport,

Gentle Reader, Ms Manners appreciates the delicate nature of your dilemma. Every family has its wayward black sheep. It would seem an epidemic of such unwanted circumstances enters the menu of family discussions as so many of us find ourselves relying on the kindness of strangers, and family, in our worst slump since the 1930s.
Yet, I ask, does it not really come down to two old adages? First, “He who has suffer'd you to impose on him knows you.” Consider tolerating the antics of your cousin as an exercise in self-growth; you learn about not only your cousin, but life’s extremes. The more the world is debased, the more we all learn. The other proverb which comes to mind is “Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.” By that Ms Manners wonders why you would shy away from your ethical calling.