I was going to say all these things. I had them planned. I practiced them in my head. And I walked more assuredly in the mornings after dreaming about the perfection of it all.

Never mind.

The new team, Coconut and Big Jim, giving rides on the Worcester Town Green last Sunday afternoon.

Oh shit.

I hate when that happens.

You know, when you think people mean what they say and all.

Palm. Meet forehead. Again.

–

So this dumb guy thought he could flip the bird to the world without ever even noticing that the bird was flying for the world to see.

–

Love Note (# 7,843):

Liberal fuck
That you are.

–

She never told me she was vulnerable.

You idiot.

–

I heard this on the metroliner: “I don’t want to know what makes you cry.”

–

And the colored girls go: Do-Doo-Do-Doo-Do-Do-Doo.

–

I feel like you’re not listening.

–

But trying to make the ecstatic out of the ordinary is not that easy, you know?

–

And then there was a knock at the door. Another pissed-off blogger coming to say that I was a very bad boy. I broke the code, dude. The code that goes like this:

Being bored is power.

Wait. Maybe I’m just having a Minutemen flashback.

Carry on.

–

Friends gathered to say: Bastard.

–

And then they ate handfuls of lamb and loins, toasting to the heavens for their civil ways.

–

Amen.

–

Final Notes (#909):

Shh. Come here. They are very sensitive.

I have collected an entire room of hoarded ordinariness.

And most of it was collected from you.

–

Is it morning yet?

–

Indeed. And always. If you must.

She said.

Thanks, I needed that.

–

A break, that is.

–

But it’s been a hard week. On Tuesday night I got a call from Boots Wardinski, a candidate for Lt. Governor in Vermont.

“If I win, you can have whatever job you want,” he told me.

But wait, the smarter side of me thought, the Lt. Governor in Vermont doesn’t even have a staff.

Damn, fooled again.

But that’s okay because it wasn’t much of a nail biter. Boots lost to Republican Phil Scott by a margin of 110,000-or-so to 2000-or-so. And, of course, there were those other three candidates between them, too.

Boots, of course, was overjoyed by the 2000 votes.

“We both got thousands of votes!”

But then Wednesday came. And Boots called on the campaign hotline (that’s what I call our home phone because it’s usually Boots on the other end).

“I need to make changes,” he began. “I’m firing you as my campaign manager for the 2012 elections.”

Boo-fucking-hoo.

–

Hey J.D. Ryan, I heard you know something about campaign managing.

Welcome to the losers’ club.

–

As usual, everyone I voted for on Tuesday lost.

But what’s really weird is that I voted for a gentleman named Johenry Nunes for U.S. Senate, mostly because I liked him while listening to a debate and I think Patrick Leahy is missing a few cards in the deck, if you know what I mean. And if you don’t know what I mean, think: Reagan. Or, if you’re a Vermonter, think: Jeffords.

Sometimes the lights just go out, you know. Even from dull bulbs.

Back to the real story: This morning I received an email from the Worcester Grapevine reporting the vote totals from our town. Nunes was listed as receiving “0” votes.

Um, that should have been “1.” As in, the company I keep.

–

But, what I wanted to share with you was this, a little ditty I scribbled for the insufferable bunch at Green Mountain Daily (where the mantra must be: “The louder you scream the duller the pain of your inanity!” Or something like that.

Here you go:

Correcting & Questioning Pat Leahy

I know it’s full-on rah-rah time around here with regards to your beloved Democrats – I mean, even Wes Hamilton has thrown himself into the mix – but I hope there’s also a little room for something a little closer to reality. And here’s something to ask ourselves as Vermonters: Is Pat Leahy all there? Or are we slowly working our way down the same path that saw Jim Jeffords be sent out to pasture a few years ago?

Personally, I think it’s fair to ask these questions. And here are a few tidbits to back up my concerns about Pat Leahy’s health and wellbeing.

This morning on the Mark Johnson show, Senator Leahy sounded confused on a number of occasions. While discussing Vermont Yankee, for example, Leahy repeatedly referred to the “Nuclear Regulatory Commission” (NRC) as the “NRSC.”

No big deal, really — if it was done once. But Leahy did it several times, all as part of a rather bizarre explanation to Johnson that he “didn’t have a position” on whether or not to close the Vermont Yankee. Johnson clearly sensed the oddity that Leahy didn’t have a position and kept pushing him on it. And Leahy kept insisting that the safety questions needed to be answered and that he had “asked the NRSC to look into it.”

After a commercial break, Leahy noted that he had been made aware of a mistake in his language, continuing: “I meant NRC, the National Regulatory Commission.”

Um, Senator, that would be (again): “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”

Yikes.

A caller or two later wanted to know Leahy’s position on “Community Policing.”

Leahy’s initial response: “I don’t know about immunity policing.”

After Johnson informed him that the caller said, “community policing,” Leahy declared that he hadn’t heard of “community policing,” either.

“I’m shocked you haven’t heard of it,” said Johnson.

But then came the commercials, including one by Leahy and his wife about organic agriculture in which Leahy’s campaign makes the assertion that organic agriculture was started in Vermont and that Leahy’s efforts to standardize national organic standards led to a sort of exportation of Vermont’s organic agriculture.

Leahy’s wife even goes so far as to say that they wanted “the rest of the nation to have access to the same kinds of organic food that Vermonters had.”

First of all, the original existence of pesticide-free food happened long before Vermont learned to market itself. It was, after all, how ALL foods were grown before the domination of the petro-chemical giants decided to monopolize and otherwise industrialize the basic necessity of food – worldwide.

But even if you let Leahy off the hook on this rather nitpicking piece of evidence, he’d be snagged pretty well on the reality that the need and push for national organic standards had nothing to do with Vermont. For those of us involved in the organic standards battles of the 1990s, we know that the driving force behind them weren’t quaint Vermont organic farms – most of whom wanted nothing to do with federal standards – but, rather, the gigantic California organic farms, the increasingly monopolistic retailers like the anti-union “Whole Foods,” and the corporate food giants like Kellogg’s, etc. who were looking for regulatory cover to enter (read: control) the booming organics market.

But let’s live for a moment longer in the Leahy land of organic make believe. If, as the Leahy ad wants us to believe, that Vermonters were the creators and glorifiers of organic agriculture for the nation and world, how do you explain that the top three agriculturally related products in Vermont – Ben & Jerry’s, Cabot Creamery, and Green Mountain Coffee – are not even organic?

Leahy logic: Fail.

Worse, when activists like Food & Water made attempts to point out that Ben & Jerry’s farmers were (and continue to be) swimming in the use of the cancer-causing Atrazine on their non-organic feed corn, politicians like Leahy ran to their defense. Similarly, Leahy ran to the defense of the Cabot Creamery’s use of the Monsanto Corporation’s rBGH – a most non-organic practice, for sure.

Which is all to say: I think we need to be asking Pat Leahy about his recent health check-ups. Is he, for example, all there? Because his public pronouncements and mangling of the simple facts leads this voter to think otherwise.

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Book a sleigh ride, people: 802-272-3775. Sleigh ride and dinner packages available.