How the Manch Stole Build Back Better

Every smart Voter down in Voteville

 liked Build Back Better a lot…

But the Manch, who lived east in DC, did not!

The Manch hated Build Back Better,

even during this giving season!

Voters wondered why

No one could parse out the reason.

Perhaps his eyes didn’t let in enough light.

Or he fretted about the checks his donors wouldn’t write.

There are those who suggest his intestines were too small

and ponder if he had any guts at all.

Whatever the motive, his guts or his donors

he stood on Capitol Hill, hating his Voters,

glaring down from his houseboat with no Manchly pity

at the softly lit houses down in the city.

He knew every Voter down in Voteville beneath,

was obviously hoping a deal was in reach.

“They’re pinning their hopes on me!” he giggled with a cheer,

“The compromise is essentially here!”

Then he roared, his Manchy thoughts anxiously thrumming,

“I must stop Build Back Better from coming!”

It was up to the Manch to keep Congress from passing

this bill and thus crush the Voters’ hopes, everlasting.

For if the law passed, the Voters would feast!

The poor would have money to feed their children at least.

They would have Healthcare, but his palm had been greased,

so there’d be no clean energy, a thing the Manch could tolerate the least!

As the Manch pondered this happy law signing,

deep in his thoughts, he rubbed his right wing

and cried, “How can I halt this fool thing?!”

“I MUST stop this bill from becoming a law!

But HOW? How do I make it fail and fall?

He struck on a notion! A horrid solution!

The Manch got a horrid, delightful solution.

He giggled and snorted, “A perfect Manchy plan!”

“I’ll pretend I’m an everyday Joe. A real ‘common man’!”

“All I need is a soul,”

The Manch glanced around.

But, since souls are rare, there was none to be found.

Did that hinder the Manch?

Not at all! And he said,

“If I can’t find a soul, I’ll fake one instead!”

And with his deceit, he started down,

toward the homes and the homeless asleep in town.

Manch went to the White House, his ‘soul’ to lay bare.

“They truly, yes, truly trust me in there.”

“This is my first stop,” the old Manchy hissed.

And he mounted to the roof, empty promises in his fist.

He went down the chimney.

A pretty tight pinch 

for a politician not willing to budge one single inch.

He soon saw where, like stockings, little Voters’ hopes all in a row.

“These hopes,” he smirked, “are the first things to go!”

Then he glided and skulked, with a smile most befitting,

as he snatched back every benefit the Voters thought they’d be getting!

Housing! Affordable education! Climate saving measures! Jobs! Fair taxes! Earned Income Tax Credit!

He took each one and cut it and shred it.

Then the Manch, going back on his promise to deliver,

tossed the Voters’ hopes, one by one, in the Potomac river!

Then he slunk to the fridge. He took the Voters’ feast!

He took their nutrition, what everyone needs in the least.

The Manch emptied the entire fridge in a flash.

The Manch even took every last bit of cash!

He tossed all the benefits in the river, and said he:

“All I need now is this Christmas tree!”

He spun about quick and saw a small Voter,

he balled up his fist and reached out to smote her.

The Manch had been busted by this young pauper

who’d arisen from slumber in hope of clean water.

She stared at the Manch and asked, “Why, Manchy why?”

She blinked her large eyes and gave a small sigh

But, you know, that old Manch was so smarmy and sick,

he told her the truth, didn’t even try for a trick!

“Why,” the dreadful Manchy decried,

“The lights on this tree are solar and that I can’t abide.

I’ll make it need coal power, honey.

So I can make even more money!”

The Manch kissed the poor Voter on the forehead,

got her a glass of leaded water, and put her in bed.

He took everything, so that their hopes could just rot.

He even took the last log for their fire! ‘Cause why the hell not?

It was on Fox Sunday Morning… many Voters still lazing in their beds

when the Manch announced he killed the dreams in their heads

and without even very much warning.

“I’m an ogre to the Voters! I’m so Manchly cunning!

They’re realizing now that no Build Back Better is coming!

Their minds will be disbelieving, then they’ll start peeping:

“How could the Manch’s wicked ruse be so sweeping?”

Then the Voters down in Voteville will all start weeping.

That’s a sound,” sneered the Manch, “That I just gotta hear!”

So the Manch pulled his head from out of his rear

and cleaned the sh!t from his ear.

And he heard their weeping, but the Manch wasn’t sour

‘cause the Manch only cares about his very own power.

The Manch doesn’t care about you or about me

or comprising in political caucus, see?

The Manch only cares about big business lining his pockets.

I Spoke to Heroes

This past weekend I was part of the Inaugural Wine Country Spoken Word Festival in Petaluma, CA. The smoke from the devastating and deadly fires was in the air. The festival produces decided not to cancel the festival despite the fires, reasoning that since everything else had been canceled, people needed something to do.

There were many artists who participated and every one I heard/saw was fantastic. I can’t name them all here, because I’m lazy, but the festival culminated in a show at the Mystic Theater with myself, Steve Connell and Sarah Vowell.

And I’m not gonna lie. We rocked. It was one of the wildest mixes of hip hop slam poetry, storytelling, and hilarious tales of a sad sack cartographer that you will likely ever encounter.

But here’s the thing. There were three hundred people in the audience. Some of whom had lost their houses. They lost everything. Except the clothes on their backs and, oddly, their tickets to the show.

My job is standing on stage and saying words which I have organized in a manner intended to make you laugh. I’m not curing cancer. I’m not flying a tanker plane dropping fire retardant. I’m certainly not a firefighter parachuting into an inferno. I say words.

Your house burns down. Your whole neighborhood is gone. Forty people are dead. And your reaction to that is, in part, to come out and support the Wine Country Spoken Word Festival, to support Dave and Juliet in this endeavor because you know it will help your community be stronger in the future and despite your present tragedy you want to make sure your community thrives. Because next time it’s going to be someone else’s time for tragedy and you want a compassionate infrastructure in place so you can aid the next person. You people are heroes.

But you came for another reason, too. You also came to hear me talk. Yeah, you knew this was eventually going to be about me. You came in the midst of chaos to listen to Steve, Bil, and Sarah say words in the hope that we might take your mind off your loss for 120 minutes. That is a humbling and tremendous honor.

I work hard at my job precisely because I want what I do to be useful. I’ve had some people say some remarkably wonderful things about how my stories impacted their life, but I won’t ever forget that as your houses burned you came to see me. Okay, you came to see Sarah Vowell and Steve Connell, but I was in the mix. And that is humbling. I’m not going to say, “If even one you laughed just once. If even one of you forgot your troubles for one second…” cause we all know I’m too vain for that. I mean, I was there, you laughed. I had you for at least a few minutes. But that’s precisely the thing. You are heroes- the very heroes Steve described- and you needed a minute to just be human. To just be a laughing fool in a dark theater. A nameless moron without a worry in the world looking to bask in the revelry of Bacchus for a brief respite. And morons and fools are my demographic, baby.

Thank you for your courage. Thank you for your dedication to your community. Thank you for supporting the festival. Thank you for Petaluma’s outstanding outreach to evacuees. And thank you to the people who couldn’t come because they were fighting the fires.

Steve said something to the effect of, “…It is our job as people, in times of need, to say to those around us,’I got you. Until you can get yourself, I got you.’” For that show we had you. Steve, Sarah and I had you, but I want you to know that for the rest of my life whenever I doubt my usefulness I’ll remember, well, first, what a lady in Pigeon Forge, TN, said about my stories, cause it’ll never be beat. But right next, I’ll remember that in your time of need you came to me and that I made some heros laugh. And that will hold me for a long, long time.

Sorta Clean Water spills into WV drinking chemicals

A storage tank containing 30,000 gallons of an ancient compound known as Sorta Clean Water sprang a leak last week. The breach went unnoticed for several hours, allowing the Sorta Clean Water to contaminate the drinking chemicals of thousands of West Virginians.

The Sorta Clean Water is a compound that was used extensively in the production of trees and wildlife.

Customers complained that no odor came from the liquid flowing from their faucets, and that they could “see clean through” their drinking glasses. “It was unnerving,” said one customer. “Honestly, if I can’t smell it? And if I can see through it? Yuck. I don’t want to drink it.”

Scientists are unsure of the effects Sorta Clean Water may have on people who ingest it.

Hospitals have been flooded with folks complaining that their skin rashes are disappearing after bathing in the clean water.

Authorities are urging citizens to follow the procedures set forth in the Spoil Advisory. The Spoil Advisory contains detailed instructions on how to best recontaminate the water before ingestion.

 “If you are unable to properly recontaminate the water,” a spokesman for the Governor’s Office advised, “mix equal parts antifreeze, gasoline and Michelob Ultra Light. It won’t burn your esophagus going down as much as you are accustomed to from your normal drinking chemicals, but it should get you through the crisis without too many withdrawal symptoms.”

“It is especially important to make sure infants and children stay away from the freshwater,” warned Director Sogbottom, of the recently created the Department Of Environmental Destruction. “Old folks,” he continued, “and I mean the truly old, may be able to drink the Sorta Clean Water, as they probably still have some residual tolerance to cleanish water, but fresh water could be toxic to children, pets and big business.”

Asked for comment, Delegate Zatezalo, R-Hancock, said, “This is a tragedy and a travesty. When we passed House Bill 2506, recalculating the mixing zones and amounts of cancer-causing chemicals companies were permitted to dump into streams and rivers, we thought we’d effectively eliminated any chance of even a single child in West Virginia ever having to be subjected to drinking clean water again. We are not even sure why Sorta Clean Water was allowed to be stored in a tank a mere mile upriver from a drinking chemical intake. If industrial waste isn’t safe in West Virginia, then nothing and no one is safe.

“Trust me, we will take vigorous action against any and all people irresponsible enough to allow Sorta Clean Water to be present in any amount in any West Virginia stream or river. In fact, I’m working on legislation right now that would allow companies to dispose of their waste by pumping it straight into the, uh, um, boobs of breastfeeding mothers. We in the West Virginia House and Senate take the health and wellness of industry very, very seriously.”

For now, the National Guard will be mobilizing to bring in drinking chemicals from rivers, slag ponds and cesspools in Chernobyl and parts of India and China to get us through the crisis.

Please bring only lead-lined containers to the National Guard distribution site.

Bil Lepp is a storyteller and author.

– See more at: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/gazette-op-ed-commentaries/20170304/bil-lepp-sorta-clean-water-spills-into-wv-drinking-chemicals-gazette#sthash.NLI8kLj1.dpuf

Turns out I’m Cis-Demisexual… Or Pronouns are the New Metric System

Bil Lepp Copyright 2017
My son, like any good sixteen year-old, is more socially relevant than I. We got to talking about gender identity and sexuality the other day, partly because we were driving through Omaha and I saw a sign that read, “Exit here for L-Q streets.” I says to my son, “Know what streets are in between L & Q? B, G and T.”

 

He laughed, but not entirely.

 

If I had to describe my dad via just one thing he said, I would go with: “It’s not true that a cat always lands on its feet. The cat only lands on its feet the first eleven times. And you’ll never see that cat again.”

 

I come from a long line of men who firmly believe, “If it ain’t broke, keep trying.”
And I mean that in the most positive way possible. In the late the 30’s my Grosspapa, after fighting the Red Army and making his way to America, was looking for work. He drove by the employee parking lot at Goodyear. He saw all the cars in the parking lot and thought, “If they can hire that many people, they can hire one more.”

 

The system may not have been constructed with us in mind, but we can always find a way in.

 

The only real argument my dad and I ever had was my hair. I didn’t smoke, or do drugs, and, unlike my brothers, I got grades. Not necessarily good ones, but I did get grades. So my hair just couldn’t be turned into that big of a deal. I kept it long. Maybe just to rankle him. And it worked. But one thing I swore was that I would never comment negatively on my kid’s hair.

 

My son’s hair is ridiculous. But I’ve never said anything about it.
Still and all, my son has informed me that I have a skewed ideal of masculinity.
No doubt. When I was a teenager my idol was David Bowie. How could my ideas about masculinity not be skewed?

 

So, I says to my son, “Know what streets are in between L & Q? B, G and T.”
That started the discussion. I come from maybe the last generation where it wasn’t uncommon to describe Uncle Charlie as a “confirmed bachelor,” or explain that Aunt Tonya and her friend Sonja live together to save rent. I’m a pretty liberal guy, I also come from the generation that nearly revolted when school boards tried to make us learn the metric system. Who cares if 5280 feet is a weird distance? It’s the way things are and that’s that.

 

My son says, “There’s not just male and female, and your gender has nothing to do with your sexuality.”

 

Again, I try and keep an open mind, but 128 ounces makes more sense to me than 1000 cubic centimeters.

 

He says: “First you have to understand the pronouns.”

 

“I gotta learn new pronouns?”

 

“Yep. You can keep He and She, but you need to adopt Ze and Hir (pronounced Here) for gender neutral people. And Mx. (pronounced Mix) Instead of Mr., Ms. or Mrs.”

 

“Really? Like, ‘This is Mx. Johnson’s car. It’s hir car.’”

 

“Yep.”

 

1000 meters in a kilometer…

 

“See,” my son explains, “you think in terms of binary genders. Male and female, but that excludes nonbinary genders and makes you  cisnormative.”

 

“Wait, I’m a what?”

 

“Cisnormative. See, you’re cisgender.”

 

“I am?”

 

“Yeah, your gender and biological parts assigned at birth align.”

 

“Like I’m an Aries with a moon in Jupiter?”

 

Sigh

 

So I say, “You mean I was born male and I have boy parts? Is that bad?”

 

“Bad is word you need to disassociate with this conversation,” counsels my sixteen year old. “So you’re cis, and cisnormative people think there are only two genders.” He continues, “There are people who are Agender, Androgynous, Androphilic, Aromantic, Asexual…”

 

“Okay, hold up. I know androgynous, what’s the others?”

 

“Agender has little connection to traditional genders at all.
“Androphilics are attracted to males or masculinity.
“Aromantics have little or no romantic interest in others.
“Asexuals have little physical interest in others.
“Got it? Cause that’s just the A’s.”

 

….Twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard.

 

“Then there’s Bigender, Bicurious, Bisexual and Butch.”

 

“Hey, we used to say Butch. Can I say Butch?”

 

“You probably shouldn’t.”

 

“Then there’s Cisgender…”

 

“That’s me!”

 

“Demigender, Demiromantic, and Demisexuals…”

 

“Those sound ominous.”

 

“Not at all. Demigender people are basically nonbinary but might lean a little toward one gender or the other.
“Demiromatics don’t experience romance until they are physically involved with someone and
“Demisexuals don’t experience physical attraction until a strong emotional bond is formed.”

 

“Wait! I think that’s me, too! I’m a cis-demisexual. Sounds like a Star Wars character.”

 

“Feminine-of-center and Masculine-of-center are folks who present, understand themselves, and/or relate to others in a more feminine or masculine way, but don’t necessarily identify as women or men.
“Which is not to be confused with Feminine-presenting or Masculine-presenting which is someone who expresses gender in a more feminine or masculine way.”

 

“Oh, no,” I say, “that’s not confusing at all.”

 

A liter used to be described as a kilogram of water under standard conditions.

 

“Fluidity describes a gender identity that shifts over time.
“FtM and MtF is for transgenders going from male to female or female to male.
“Gender Non-Conforming, Gender Normative, Gender Straight and Gender Variant should be pretty self-explanatory,” says my son.

 

They should?

 

“Then we get to the alphabet soup. LGBT, LGBTQ, GSM and DSG. LGBTQ stands for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Queer.”

 

I want to ask why we need the Q after the LGBT, but I’m afraid of sounding cisnormative.

 

And then my son says, “Sometimes the Q stands for Questioning instead of Queer. If you see a plus sign after the Q, that means And Everybody Else. GSM is Gender and Sexual Minorities and DSG is for Diverse Sexualities and Genders. And sometimes you hear somebody say QUILTBAG.”

 

I have heard people say quiltbag, but it was generally little old ladies who were referring to a bag in which to carry a quilt. I hold my tongue. Then I wonder if there’s a name for people who like to hold tongues.

 

“QUILTBAG stands for Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian Trans*, Bisexual, Asexual/Allied, and Gay/Genderqueer.”

 

“Seriously?” I say.

 

“Yep.”

 

“Is that it?”

 

“Tip of the iceberg.”

 

I’m a dad in the 21st century raised by men born in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Here’s what I know. If you see a parking lot full of cars you can think, “There’s no room for me,” or you can think, “There’s easily room for one more.” And, as a dad, you always have the option of deciding that you are right no matter what. And you can prove it. You can drag that cat up onto the roof and chuck it off until you do irreparable damage, but you’ll likely never see that cat again.

 

Sometimes you just need to accept that the centimeters have always been right there, across from the inches on your ruler.

 

Note: This is a composite of several conversations, not an actual start to finish conversation

If Johnny Fever ran the Olympics the slogan would just be Higher Faster

It used to be that the Olympics inspired me.  I remember watching the 1984 Summer Games.  I ran track at the time.  I was a distance runner.  Distance running is one of the most unglamorous and unheralded sports in the whole sports cosmos.   To save you the trouble of looking it up, distance runners are those folks who run all the way around the track more than once.  Really good milers can run a mile in around four minutes, but hardly anyone has the stamina to watch someone run in circles that long.  Sure, sports fans can watch the last two minutes of a college basketball game for ninety minutes, but they can’t watch a miler run around a track four times.

The only thing more boring than watching distance running is watching distance swimming.

I watched the 1984 Summer Games and thought, “If I buckle down I could run in the ’88 games.”

I did not compete in the 1988 games, nor any subsequent Olympic games.  I would have mentioned it earlier, and often, if I had competed in the Olympics.  I’m pretty fast, I still like to run.  I hold the record for the mile on the treadmill at the YMCA , but so far I have not developed the fire to compete on the world stage.  I’m not even positive ‘Mile on the Treadmill’ is still an Olympic event.

It is a bad sign when the Olympic announcer says, with awe and reverence, “At thirty-two years old she is by far the oldest competitor in this event.”  I can’t help but think, “Thirty-two?  I’m four Olympics older than she is!”

I watched the Dark Knight trilogy enough times to make it clear why I wasn’t in the 2012 Summer Games.  In those movies Bruce Wayne does approximately twelve pull-ups and eighteen push-ups to be cut and toned enough to be Batman.  I wish I had that kind of drive.  If twelve pull-ups and eighteen push-ups can make you Batman, I bet half that many will get you into the Olympics.  But when would I have time to do six pull-ups?  Plus, the Summer Olympics are hot.  And the Winter Olympics are cold.  Is there a Spring or maybe Early Fall Olympics?

Even if I take up Skeleton sledding and become a citizen of East Timor there is no guarantee I will medal.  Part of my problem is that I don’t want to do it if I don’t medal.  What truly moves me watching the Olympics is seeing the athletes on the stand, bending down to have someone hang a medal around their neck.  That is so cool.  It speaks of accomplishment, hours training, a dozen pull-ups, and the culmination of a dream.  It also bespeaks of peaking too soon.  If you win your first Olympics at twenty, what then?  People are going to have huge expectations for you.  You can’t just become a car salesman after that.  Sure, you can sell plumbing fixtures at Lowes while you are training for the Olympics.  That’s noble.   But, if you are still selling plungers twelve years after you medal you may have not only peaked too soon, but over focused.

I don’t over focus, and as far as I know I haven’t peaked yet.  I’m still on the up-slope, I hope, and medaling in the Olympics would only dispel any illusions of success I still harbor.

Another part of my problem is that I have a Johnny Fever attitude toward sports.  I want to be in a lawn chair way out in right field with an umbrella giving me shade, and another umbrella floating in my drink.  Of course, if Johnny Fever ran the Olympics I think the slogan would just be Higher Faster.

Last Olympics I discovered I have a deep affinity for curling.  I’m not sure I had even heard of curling before the last Winter Olympics, but I watched it with all the fervor of a fresh convert.  It is just another sign that I am getting too old for the Olympics when the sport I most anticipate is also the sport most like shuffleboard.  If I start training now, and move to Djibouti, maybe I can curl for the Gold in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018

copyright 2016 Bil Lepp

Garage Sale String Theory

We’re (NOT) having a garage sale next Saturday

By Bil Lepp
For the Sunday Gazette-Mail

We are having a garage sale next Saturday, but don’t get too excited. We’ve been having a garage sale next Saturday for about nine years now. Reasons it will turn out that we cannot have a garage sale next Saturday include:

•  It is not a good weekend for it.

•  We did not advertise soon enough.

•  Our garage’s atmosphere and ambiance are not conducive to a garage sale.

•  Migratory birds are unable to find enough to eat due to over-fishing of horseshoe crabs.

And my all-time favorite:

•  We have too much stuff in our garage to have a garage sale.

I did not graduate from the Wharton School with an MBA in Garage Sale String Theory, but I do believe that the main reason to have a garage sale is because you have too much junk in the garage.

I want to donate our excess stuff to the unfortunate people in our community who do not have enough stuff to contemplate their own chances of not having a garage sale next Saturday. We have enough stuff that several families could not have garage sales next Saturday. But we cannot donate the stuff because we are having a garage sale next Saturday. After the garage sale, I’ve been told, we can donate whatever is left over.

Truth is, it is not just our stuff accumulating in our garage. My wife’s friends have found out that we are having a garage sale next Saturday and they have brought their stuff to our garage so we can sell it for them in our garage sale next Saturday, which we are not having because we have too much stuff in our garage to have a garage sale because people keep bringing stuff for us to sell in our garage sale that we are having next Saturday.

This is the Great American Circle of Too Much Stuff.

Some would suggest we get a storage locker to store our extra stuff but that is just feeding the vacuum. I refuse to get a storage locker. If I move all of the stuff into a storage locker I guarantee our garage will fill up with fresh stuff, which I cannot donate because we are having a garage sale next Saturday. I have this theory that if I built a flat surface in the woods, and there was nobody around, my wife would come by and put stuff on it.

Also, renting a locker doesn’t solve the problem because not all the stuff in our garage is ours. Some of it belongs to my wife’s friends. It is bad enough that I have to store their stuff in our garage; I am certainly not going to pay to store their stuff in our storage locker. Furthermore, I cannot move all our stuff to a storage locker because the most convenient day to move all our stuff would be next Saturday, and I can’t do it next Saturday because we are having a garage sale.

Others would suggest I get a new wife, but that doesn’t solve the problem either. I love my wife and don’t want a different wife. Plus, if my wife and I split, I’ll bet you the profits of next Saturday’s garage sale that she would end up with the good stuff, and I would end up with the stuff in the garage.

In fact, I would end up with the stuff in the garage, and I would end up having to store it in a storage locker. And I refuse to rent a storage locker. Double furthermore, where would I find a new wife who doesn’t already have, and regularly acquire, stuff?

The house across the street from us has a yard. My wife suggested that we ask the neighbors if we could use their yard next Saturday to have a yard sale because the ambiance of their yard is far more conducive to a sale than the mood of our garage.

Unfortunately, before we could ask the neighbors, they moved. Before they moved they had a yard sale. A “Moving Sale,” to be exact.

New neighbors moved in. We were going to ask them if we could use their yard next Saturday, but before we asked them they upstaged us and had a yard sale. A “Moving Sale,” to be exact.

I don’t know if they really needed to move, or if they just wanted to spite us. The nerve of them, moving, just so they could have a yard sale after only living in that house for five years.

So, if you need me next Saturday, or the Saturday after that, or after that, forget it. We’re having a garage sale.

– See more at: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/life/20160410/write-your-own-column-were-not-having-a-garage-sale-next-saturday#sthash.QCvrFRpM.dpuf

Equating the Presidential Candidates to the Bands of My Youth

Copyright Bil Lepp 2016

Remember Columbia House Record Club?  Choose twelve albums for one cent, then promise to buy one album a month and start ruining your credit early?  Looking at the presidential candidates reminds me of trying to pick the last six albums.  Here’s how I compare the candidates to the bands of my youth.

Clinton: The Smiths  A lot of people I knew loved The Smiths.  A lot of really smart people.  And I wanted to like The Smiths.  I tried to like The Smiths.  But Morrissey was just so morose.  I was wrong every time I thought he was making a joke and I never got it when he did.

Cruz: Marilyn Manson  Dude might be a genius, some people like him, but there is something fundamentally off-putting that keeps me from wanting to get involved.  Or, if that’s too much, Van Halen with Sammy Hagar.  Something just wrong about it.

Kasich: Lionel Richie  He’s just too nice.  I’m afraid he’ll pick Hall & Oats as his VP. Watching the debates I imagine in his head he’s signing

Hello!
Is it me you’re looking for?
’cause I wonder where you are
And I wonder what you do
Are you somewhere feeling lonely?
Or is someone loving you?
Tell me how to win your heart
For I haven’t got a clue
But let me start by saying I love you

Hello! (By Lionel Richie)

Rubio: Heart  When I hear the first riffs of most Heart songs I think, “Oh, I like this.”  But after thirty or forty seconds I realize, “Oh, no I don’t.”

Sanders: Warren Zevon Catchy. Very smart. But ‘everyone’ has decided that the guy who sings Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner can’t be president.  But it was so cool when Zevon played Prince’s Raspberry Beret on Letterman!

Trump: Warrant  A lot of noise, a lot of hair. Lyrics such as

She’s my cherry pie
Cool drink of water such a sweet surprise…

Woaw

Well, swingin’ on the front porch, swingin’ on the lawn
Swingin’ where we want ’cause there ain’t nobody home
Swingin’ to the left and swingin’ to the right
I think about baseball, swing all night,

Yeah, yeah, yeah  (By Jani Lane)

It was a huge hit, but what the Hell?

All I know is, come next January, one of these people is going to start showing up in my mailbox and, month after, I’m probably going to be writing Return to Sender on the package.

Put a Dishwasher in the Living Room & a Dumpster on Everest

Copyright Bil Lepp

In our house the dishwasher and the kitchen sink are in the same room.  They are located right beside each other.  This is a colossal design flaw.

We don’t need two places to store dirty dishes in the kitchen.  Scholars argue that the sink and dishwasher are situated in close proximity so the dirty dishes can be rinsed and then placed in the dishwasher.  Evidently those scholars do not have children.  My children believe that trudging all the way from the table, burdened by as much as a single bowl and spoon, is enough toil for one day.  They think that the magnanimous act of putting the dirty dish in the sink is a great gift to humanity. To then put the dish into the dishwasher would be flaunting their selflessness in a shameful manner.

Please note that one has to pass the dishwasher to get to the sink.

Furthermore, there are hardly any dirty dishes in the kitchen.  The dirty dishes migrate to the living room.  This is a factor of climate change.  I don’t mean to suggest that migrating dishes are a factor of climate change; I mean eating food in the living room is a factor in climate change.  The kids leave dirty dishes in the living room rather than hiking them back to the kitchen.  The food rots and produces methane, which stinks, so we have to open the window.  Then it gets hot, so we have to run the AC.

I have read that Mt. Everest is becoming a huge garbage heap because climbers jettison useless gear on the mountain rather than hiking it down to the dumpsters by the bathrooms in the parking lot.   Our living room is very much like Mt. Everest.  It can be hard to breath up there and it is littered with chip bags, candy wrappers, and dirty dishes.

The dishwasher should be in the living room.

And it wouldn’t hurt to put a dumpster two-thirds of the way up Everest.

If the dishwasher were in the living room I would never have to say, “Is it too much trouble for you to carry your dirty dishes from the living room to the kitchen?”  Instead, I could say, “Don’t leave your dirty dishes on the coffee table, Sir Edmund Hillary! There is a dishwasher under the TV!”

Actually, my mama brought me up better than that.  If Sir Edmund where a guest in my house I would not ask him to carry his dishes to the dishwasher.  I would do that for him, but you get my point.  Come to think of it, unless it was tea or something, I don’t even think I would feed Sir Edmund in the living room.  I ain’t Emily Post but I’m pretty sure that you are supposed to feed Knights of the Realm in the dining room.  Unless it is someone like Sir Mick Jagger.  I’d feed Sir Mick in the living room, but Jagger doesn’t fit my Everest reference so there’s no sense putting him metaphorically in my living room.

There are some drawbacks to installing a dishwasher in the living room.  Eventually the dishwasher in the living room would get full- provided someone actually put the dirty dishes into it- and then someone would run it, and then it would be full of clean dishes desperately needed in the kitchen and no one would take them down to the kitchen and I would be faced with a whole new frustration.

Maybe I could just put the TV in the kitchen.  That would limit all my dirty-dishes oriented frustrations to one room.  I believe it is very Zen to limit your aggression to a single room.  Spreading your frustrations across several rooms ruffles curtains and stirs up dust.

My understanding is that when you get to the top of Everest, that’s it.  There’s nowhere else to go.  And so it is with this little essay.

Home-School Children are Disrespectful and Anti-Social

From Charleston Gazette-Mail 3/6/2016

By Bil Lepp

Home-school children are disrespectful and anti-social … at exactly the same ratio as public and private school children. But it’s perception that counts. A lot of people have encountered “that” home-school kid who is pampered or lazy or just plain weird. And that’s the home-school kid by which some people judge all home-schoolers.

Three recent commentaries concerning homeschooling piqued my interest: one on Feb 14 by Debra K. Sullivan, and editorials on Feb 20 and Jan. 28. My wife and I home-school our kids. As with all crazy, radical, uber-religious zealots, I like to think my wife and I are normal and raising well-adjusted children.

Ms. Sullivan asserts: “The balance within a school team, based on the school’s carefully nurtured, already developed environment, will be disrupted,” if an outside student participates. This environment is developed when kids “spend seven hours a day, 180 days a year, for years at a time interacting with their peers and the adult staff,” and “that if you were to place an outside child into that environment you would corrupt the system.” By that metric no school should ever allow new kids to enroll.

Groups benefit by exposure to fresh or alternate experiences. Should we reject exchange students because they are only part of the social fabric for one year?

It is true that some home-schoolers are disruptive and corrupting. King George III called George Washington a “sniveling imp of a home-schooler.” This isn’t completely accurate since Washington was only partially home-schooled. Abraham Lincoln, a home-schooler, tore the nation in half. And then there’s Rudolph. He wasn’t excluded from reindeer games just because of his nose. He was also home-schooled.

“Public school students mix with youths of many different ethnic and economic backgrounds, so they learn … society is widely diverse. We worry that home-schooled children may wear blinders and know only the views of their parents,” (Jan. 28).

First of all, blinders only impair peripheral vision. Since it is also possible to learn by seeing things straight on, or by using your ears, many modern home-school parents have adopted sensory deprivation helmets for our children.

Secondly, I went to public school in West Virginia. I don’t remember a lot of diversity. West Virginia is 93 percent white. There are places in West Virginia where ethnic diversity is evident but also many schools where diversity means some kids are tall and some short. If that is the criterion, our home school is diverse.

Speaking of diversity, the editors lump all home-schoolers into one homogeneous group, as if home-schoolers are all the same.

“I see kids on a four-wheeler all day long and they’re home-schoolers,” Delegate Ralph Rodighiero, D-Logan, commented.

Not every home-school family is responsible, but given Logan County’s nearly 50 percent truancy rate, some of those four-wheeling kids may be public schoolers. The easiest way to tell is to check if the kids are wearing blinders or deprivation helmets. It is difficult to ride a four-wheeler in a deprivation helmet but it protects our children from getting hit with new ideas at 30 miles an hour.

Some of my kids’ best friends are public school kids, but it is true that apart from Scouting, Tae Kwon Do, swim team at the Y, city and church sports teams, church activities, city theatre productions, organized science, English and speech classes, ski club, extensive travel opportunities, and an active and somewhat diverse Kanawha-Putnam home-school group, my kids are almost entirely unsocialized and never hear any viewpoints but my own.

However, I do agree with the Feb. 20 editorial questioning the ethics of home-school parents. “What about [home-schoolers] fudging grades to qualify…?” to play sports, inquire the editors. Oh man, we are so busted! It is only right to assume that all home-schoolers are scheming to invent the never before employed tactic of lying about grades. The idea of academic cheating to benefit athletic aspirations is so novel that certainly no public or private school has ever been guilty of, or even considered, this avenue. I’m a bit chagrined that the editors so easily saw through our carefully plotted plan. Drats, foiled again.

I have no idea what it costs for a home-schooler to play on a public school team but I bet parents interested in their children participating would help defer costs.

Beyond that, I now employ the ol’ “I pay taxes” line. My tax bill is not lowered even though I home-school, as far as I know. I think I helped pay for the public school sports complexes. In fact, we have access to public school text books and my children have been welcomed into certain public school programs. I have happily voted for school levy increases. I believe that home schooling is a privilege and that since not every family has this opportunity or capability, I should do what I can to ensure that public schools in my community are of the highest quality.

Okay, it’s almost noon. Gotta go get the kids up.

Checkout Bil’s PEN Award winning children’s book The King of Little Things

http://www.wvgazettemail.com/article-/20160306/bil-lepp-home-school-children-are-disrespectful-and-anti-social

Christian Community Needs the Gay Community to Keep Us Straight

From Charleston Gazette-Mail 2/21/2016

By Bil Lepp

Gays will be able to legally refuse to sell Christians mimosas on Sunday mornings, thanks to the West Virginia Legislature’s hard and useful work.

The “Brunch Bill” will allow alcohol sales as early as 10 o’clock on Sunday mornings. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act will allow business owners to refuse service to anyone they please, so long as the owner holds a sincere religious belief. Ergo, gay business owners who sincerely, religiously, believe that Christians shouldn’t be drinking during Sunday School hours can refuse said Christians a drink.

At last, even the godless gays will have a say in Christian morality. But how can godless gays have a sincerely held religious belief? Simple. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act is not a Christian act, or a heterosexual act. Your legislators may want you to believe that the RFRA will protect your Christian rights, but the bill reads: “‘Exercise of religion’ means the sincere practice or observance of religion, or any action that is motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.”

There is no mention of Christianity in this bill. And that last bit about “sincerely held belief, whether … compulsory or central to a larger system …” means anybody can think of any reason to refuse any service to anyone and say they believe it sincerely because it is part of their religion. What religion? It doesn’t matter. A Hindu doctor could refuse to treat your heart problems because you eat beef. Or a Muslim doctor because you eat pork. A pastor could refuse to marry a straight couple because they supported the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Or a gay bar owner could refuse to serve you a drink on Sunday morning. You can even make up your own religion and you are protected by this bill.

I know this to be true because Obama communicated all this to me through secret hand signals. You can trust me.

The reader may wonder why the Legislature even needs to enact a law allowing drinking on Sunday mornings. In the past Blue Laws “designed to restrict or ban some or all Sunday activities …” were passed to regulate un-Christian like behavior. Like drinking on Sunday mornings. This needs to be clearly and loudly stated: The Legislature is simultaneously passing a law called the Religious Freedom RESTORATION Act and REPEALING a law designed to protect Christian virtue.

If the RFRA passes, Christians will be able to drink on Sunday AND refuse to let others drink on Sunday. Brilliant. It’s not like we need new roads or a budget.

Let this be an appeal to “the” gays: Obviously, Christians who support both these bills are conflicted. At long last, the Christian community needs the gay community to keep us straight. There are many sincerely religious LGBT folks out there, and many hetero-religious people who are more interested in inclusion than exclusion. But please, whatever your practice or observance of religion looks like, develop sincere religious beliefs that allow you to refuse to sell conflicted, hetero-Christians booze on Sunday mornings. You will be protected by the very bill that allows Christians to refuse to DJ your wedding.

“This puts us in line with all the surrounding states,” said Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha (of the Brunch Bill). Lawmakers say the bill will boost tourism and give West Virginia’s hospitality industry a shot in the arm.

It sure will. When people find out that gays can legally refuse to serve Christians booze on Sunday morning, Christians from around the country will flock to our state the way the aristocrats used to head to the Greenbrier for the healthful waters.

http://www.wvgazettemail.com/article-/20160221/bil-lepp-christian-community-needs-the-gay-community-to-keep-us-straight