BartBlog

“The American Dream has died,” stated Madam Jane this morning over coffee. “This country is doomed to never again amount to more what it is now — a cheap source of rent-a-cop armies for corporations and an economic blood donor to keep the personhood of Big Business alive and well.” But surely it can’t be as bad as all that. Can it? “Oh yeah it can,” replied Madam Jane — who claims that her crystal ball never lies.

“As long as corporations continue to receive all the same rights as citizens but are required to pay almost no taxes http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110325/ts_yblog_thelookout/g-e-paid-no-taxes-on-5-1-billion-in-profits, I predict that these vampire-like corporatists will continue to feed off of America’s body like the evil pin worms that they are until our country dies and becomes just one more pale smelly national corpse being stored in their crypt.” Good grief, MJ! This time you are going too far! Evil pin worms? Really? And besides, where is your proof?

“I, like Fox News, don’t need no stinking proof,” responded Madam J. “It is what it is. Either America grows a pair now or starts preparing to meet its final doom. Madam Jane has spoken.” Yikes!

“But American CAN change!” I cried out like some terrified and repentant modern-day Unca Scrooge who had just been confronted with the ghost of Bob Marley. Yet despite all of my entreaties, Madam Jane just shrugged.

“The future never lies,” intoned Madam Jane, “because it is based on the past — and on the present. Just lookie here. Right now you’ve got America’s heroic soldiers fighting rent-a-cop wars for Exxon and BP in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya. And you got your courts tied up in knots while trying to bend over far enough to get properly screwed by Monsanto, Wells Fargo, Big Pharma, Rupert Murdoch and AT&T. And you’ve got your Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury happily opening their veins up to Wall Street. And you’ve got evil corporatists in charge of most of your state governments and voting machines. Plus you’ve got your current President trying to act like he was the Bush family’s red-headed step child….”

Enough of all this gloom and doom, Madam Jane! “Can’t you just predict something happy for a change — like who’s gonna be in the World Series next year or who’s going to win a million dollars on Survivor?” Or who will finally stand up to the corporations who now own America and actually get America’s oligarchs to stop shoveling us all this “Personhood” crap? Or perhaps you could predict when Americans will actually finally start to grow a pair?

“Sorry. No can do. Not in the cards. I see what I see.” Humph. If that’s all you see, Madam Jane, then perhaps it’s time to go buy yourself a new pair of glasses. This is not the way that the Great American Experiment is supposed to end!

PS: I keep telling my family that I’m not gonna ever write any more political stuff ever again because it has become such a thankless task. Nobody wants to hear me — or Madam Jane either — sounding like Cassandra. “I need to just stick to travel writing,” I keep telling them. “Nobody wants to read all this negative stuff.” But then America’s slimy corporatists do something else intolerable once again — such as pay absolutely NO taxes at all on billions of dollars in profits on the exact same day that I’m putting my own lowly $750 IRS check in the mail — and I get all enraged once again. And as for travel? Who can afford to do that any more.

Ah but I still have a whole bunch of wonderful travel memories stored up.

PPS: Please don’t tell M.J. this, but I also just consulted another fortune teller — a gypsy palmist in Oakland. And she told me that I needed to get more organized and to meditate more. So I started to set my timer for 15 minutes a day in order to organize my apartment for 15 whole minutes every day. So far so good.

Then I started meditating — first I meditated on the past, then on the present and then on the future. But all I could remember about my childhood were those summers at Girl Scout camp and that time that my parents bought a green 1946 Studebaker Commander from Uncle Rudy and we had to fly back to New York to pick it up.

This was in 1951.

Our plane was old and propeller-driven, probably left over from World War II, and took us on its milk run through Denver, Chicago, Amarillo, Louisville and Pittsburgh before finally landing in New York. The flight took over 24 hours, most of that time spent throwing up. I will never forget Amarillo because of some horrible scrambled eggs served at the airport diner.

Then we all drove back to California — my mom, my dad, my sister and I, plus my grandfather who had been living with Uncle Rudy. And Grandfather Eugene PINCHED me every time that I’d squirm. And it hurt! But my parents didn’t believe me over him.

No one messed with Grandfather Eugene. Heck, we didn’t even dare call him Grandpa. He was raised in the Oklahoma Territory back in the day and worked as a migrant farm-worker when he was younger, picking apples in Oregon and peaches in Banning, California.

My dad was born in Roswell, New Mexico in 1911, on the family’s way out to California, one of six boys. Grandfather Eugene had stopped there to help harvest grain — and my Uncle Jim got his leg cut off in a threshing machine accident that year. Uncle Jim was only three years old. It devastated my grandfather — but not Jim. He later grew up to become a big California real estate tycoon.

Meanwhile, my grandmother Alta kept trying for a girl — and finally gave up and just dressed her youngest, Uncle Ray, in girl’s clothing until he was six. And Uncle Ray grew up to become aide-de-camp to General Vandenberg during WWII, lost all his hair to malaria in the Pacific and was gay. Uncle Ray later claimed that he became gay because Uncle Gene used to take him out behind the barn when they were kids — and not because of General Vandenberg. Uncle Ray went on to be aide-de-camp to Conrad Hilton but quit in a huff when Hilton alleged kept making him fly in Canadian hottie girls for his (Hilton’s) pleasure.

And to continue the family saga, Uncle Gene went on to overcome his migrant farm-worker roots, develop a phony British accent and become an English professor at Pomona. Family legend also has it that his first wife died mysteriously in a house fire and that he kept his rich second wife locked in a closet. But you can’t prove it by me.

PPPS: The palmist also indicated that I would live a very long life (she said this, however, a week before Fukushima started melting down) and that I was not to be afraid of death.

That statement about death also got me to thinking that perhaps the reason that so many religions are so fond of reincarnation — or of being raised back up from the dead when the final trumpet blows — is because this idea of rebirth might make it, psychologically speaking, a hecka lot easier to die.

It might be easier to kick the bucket if you knew that the condition of being dead was only temporary, right? That you will be only passing through the Valley of Death for a few minutes while riding on that Train to Glory. Works for me.

But if I were ever to get reincarnated, I’d like to come back as a Native American — living in the woods and communing with Nature (but also being able to withstand being cold. I HATE having cold feet.)

PPPPS: Do you think that if enough palmists look at the hands of enough young children (and can actually truly see into the future as well), will they be able to see whether or not the human race will be able to survive all that radiation from Fukushima, combined with the nasty effects of global warming, endless war, pesticide-infested GM crops, diet sodas and all other evil deeds done over the years by greedy corporatists (who, perhaps, are reincarnations of Benito Mussolini).

Or will said palmists instead see a new and better world where nature is protected, Wall Street is shut down, we the people run Washington, art and education are the USA’s top gross national products and war is obsolete?

I’m almost afraid to ask Madam Jane what she would say about that!