Year of the Rat

It has recently been discovered that research causes cancer in rats, Antoinette.

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat🐀! Rats are a fitting metaphor for many things in our lives both good and bad. Good things include the Rat Pack 🕴🕴🏿🎶 because they're the coolest, but be careful about being a pack rat if you have limited space🏡. Gym rats are good if you're trying to make the team⛹️‍♂️, but if it's you in a lovefest with the gym mirror not so much🏋️‍♂️. Now lab rats can be beneficial to humans unless some kind of permutation occurs where you'll end up in a movie with Willard and Ben😱. Of course most of us do get up every morning from the alarm clocks warning⏰ to take care of business in this rat race of life, but we do get to collect our pay💵 to buy this reward 🍸🍺🍷so that kind of makes it worthwhile. When it comes to rats though, the big thing to remember is to stay away from the rat bastards like Big Brother👤.  You know the totalitarian communist/ socialist who used the threat of ravenous rats to turn citizens of Oceania against each other and nobody likes a rat fink. Like some Goodfellas I know, "Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut."🤐  That's why they invented rat poison☠⚰. Speaking of which... barkeep🍸👌!  So the moral of this part of the story is to be careful because rat pops up in lots of places... like words and you should probably know that words have meanings!🤔 For instance, babies love rattles👶 as long as they're not attached to a snake🐍, so be sure to keep an eye on them. And while nobody wants to see a rat in the kitchen, I hear Ratatouille is a first rate chef🥘. This of course brings us to some other famous rat words like lucrative, gratification, rational, and democratic to name some good ones and carbohydrate, concentration camps, rattlebrain, Democrat and deep state bureaucrats to name some bad ones. Why am I prattling on about rats you may be asking... well I'll tell you. It's 2020, and the Chinese say it's time to put away the Bbq, pork rinds, bacon and Bacon Bloody Mary's from 2019's Year of the Pig, because we have now kicked off the Year of the Rat.

Sounds unpleasant I know, but we do get a lot of things from China and they're not all bad...pandas🐼, cheap toys🏓, inexpensive take out🍜, reliable study buddies on test days 🤓(dibs on the seat next to Chin), witticisms from Confucius and the perfect guide on how to build a border wall🧱. Of course we also get pandemic flu🤒, nuclear threat🚀, steroided swimmers🏊🏽‍♀️, radical Maoisms and Hong Kong oppressors. So I guess it's a combo of the good with the bad.   The Chinese also gave us a different zodiac calendar🗓...theirs runs on 12 year cycles with animals and earth elements to signify personality types, compatibility etc.... its like Tinder from the stars🌠, but from the 5 star rated China🇨🇳 with cheap prices💴. Of course last year was the year of the pig🐖 and people born under the pig sign include former Prez wannabe HRC who though not relevant was still prevalent, and current high waisted porcine🐷 figure J Nads. 2018 was the Year of the Dog 🐕which coincidentally was the birth sign of 3 of the last 4 presidents #42, #43 and #45...2 of whom have been impeached for embarrassing the year of the pig candidate. Of course there are many people currently in the news who may or may not fit their Chinese Zodiac sign... you be the judge. Take for instance current Speaker, chardonnay sipper🥂 and urgent impeacher Nan is a year of the Dragon type🐲. Slitherly front running Iowa caucus commie BernieFeels and protege #AOC as well as billionaire socialist Bloomberg are year of the snake types🐍. And rival Native American candidate Squaw Heap Big Story Teller Warren is a year of the ox type🐃. I guess that's where oxymoronic comes from.🤣 Finally, let's get to the present... the Rats🐀! You know how they say people begin to look like their dogs... maybe it's true for the Chinese Zodiac animals as well. Take for instance rattlebrained Capital Hill Hoaxers A Schiff and A Gore

Now just because they're a couple rats, doesn't make them dirty rats, after all they are esteemed men and even lawyers. Who ever thought of a lawyer as a rat? What? Al Gore didn't finish law school or even divinity school? 🤷‍♂️ Hmm, but he has used his divine powers to predict twice that he only has 10 more  years to live in his Cali beach house and 10,000 sq foot Nashville home. Anyway, rat, snake, dragon, ox, dog or whatever creature there's plenty of room on this Ark. Time to resolve in this new New Year's🎉 to rework those resolutions. Maybe it's time to go in a different direction and choose a resolution worth keeping... amity to all! Be optimistic and consider your glass half full with space for more wine to fill it up🍷. Make 2020 a year of clear vision, and send the Pied Piper to steer all the disease spreading rats into the rat trap! That should take care of the problem with the Rat in the Kitchen, UB40...

There's a rat in me kitchen what am I gonna do?

There's a rat in me kitchen what am I gonna go?

I'm gonna fix that rat that's what I'm gonna do,

I'm gonna fix that rat.

When you open your mouth you don't talk, you shout

And you give every body the blame,

But when they catch you up,

They will shut you up

And you got no one to blame

There's a rat in me kitchen

When you out on the street,

You practice lies and deceit

And you scandalize my name

But when I catch you up

I'm gonna pull you up

I'm gonna check-out inside your brain

All The News That's Fit to Print!

Just in case you haven't heard former prince of a guy and princess of a girl did something somewhere for which now they have been condemned to Canada, Antoinette.

See now there's the kind of news we can use.📰 A real story about real people with real problems. You know like how do you screw up so royally bad? A potential future King of England👑 (yeah I know... about 100 people need to get whacked first... try calling the Clintons) meets Cinderella (Meg Markle)👠👸, marry and have a prince👶 then decided too much... they want out... will give up the family business of waving to large crowds🤚, and somehow earn their own money...in CANADA🇨🇦! I hear there's a lot of money in maple syrup. Of course it's a tough world out there, but you do have to commend these millennials for moving out of their parents basement🏰 and trying life on their own dime without their million dollar allowance💰... well maybe, we'll see!

Of course the point of all this is the problem of discerning real news and fake news and of course fake fake news sometimes called parody🤔. In fact the lines have gone murky and gray. Just like this blogs title...a statement that was supposed to reinforce that particular newspapers impartiality. I think I just choked on my beer...🍺🤮! Well we may have gone far afield from those noble 7 words but... oh well. Journalism has undertaken a decidedly yellow taint. Now there's news you can use and news better for refuse...you know like the Washington comPost, the Old Gray Lady if you're with her, or Bloomberg if you like your propaganda more along the lines of the billionaire socialist bent. Of course you can also choose to get your version of the news from any of the many alternative sources from all across the political, geographic and subject matter spectrum. Or maybe you prefer the slightly more believable Parody sites like the Onion, or Babylon Times, or Genius Times. The fact is in today's world of headlines you'd be hard put to discern the real from the false🤥. Fill your glass 🍸and I'll give you some examples...I'll leave it to you to figure out the veracity. "NYT endorses Amy Klobacher and Elizabeth Warren for president, citing Warren as a gifted storyteller."

Then those pesky science deniers, "Denver Post columnist fired after arguing there are two sexes." Of course competition for the next DNC lamb for slaughter just got tougher, "Deceased Iranian General Soleimani surges into 4th in Democrat Primary."

This one stinks, "Cop makes arrest in bathroom after smelling crack."🚽 And where's Planned Parenthood and eugenics when you need them,  "State population to double by 2040; babies to blame." And speaking of civil unrest and racist governors... weren't we?...Ralph Northam claims: "a militia assembling to defend their rights against tyranny is a dangerous first in American history."

If you don't believe that just ask the squaw, "Elizabeth Warren opens casino to help finance campaign." Or ask a working woman,  "Hooker named Lay person of the year." You gotta work if you wanna eat so remember boys and girls, "Starvation can lead to health hazards." So, "Students cook and serve grandparents." Sounds tough and chewy, but hey nobody will starve. I need to rinse my mouth...🍺 And in case you're worried I'd leave out where Democracy goes to die, "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar, dies at 48." No worries though if that somehow bothered you by painting an incorrect portrait of the recently blown to bits scholar, WaPo changed it to read,  "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, extremist leader of Islamic State, dies at 48." Remember he was more than just a crazy, Islamic, terrorist dirtbag... he was a cave dwelling terrorist who would have voted against Trump.

Of course the first headline is in keeping with some of their others like "Joseph Stalin, advocate of strong working party and population control dies at 74." Or, "Attila the Hun, world traveler and government administrator, dies at 47." And of course this headline since not a day goes by when his name isn't brought up,  "Adolph Hitler, passionate community planner and public speaker, dies in wife's arms at 56." And in case you're wondering if this kind of news could lead to competing news agencies to get up in arms over the competition for the gullible reader, 2 sites well known for their fake news, The Babylon Bee and CNN recently squared off over this headline, "CNN attacks Babylon Bee: The internet is only big enough for one fake news site." Disgruntled CNN reporters complained that their news was much faker. Ok take it easy boys.... plenty of fake news to go around. There's a lot of news out there, and a lot of news with conviction, and a lot of news with conviction and a biased agenda, and a lot of news who's writers should be convicted, because they're just Goebbels🐀 running on the wheel of misinformation. Tough to discern. So my suggestion is to take your news with a grain of salt, lime and big shot of tequila. Look at it for the laughs, then either line the puppy cage or start a nice warm fire, pour a nice Rutherford Cab🍷, put on some Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit and I Hope the High Road is where I find you...

I've heard enough of the white man's blues

I've sang enough about myself

So if you're looking for some bad news

You can find it somewhere else

Last year was a son of a bitch

For nearly everyone we know

But I ain't fighting with you down in the ditch

I'll meet you up here on the road

I know you're tired

And you ain't sleeping well

Uninspired

And likely mad as hell

But wherever you are

I hope the high road leads you home again

To a world you want to live in

The Road Less Traveled

I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part Antoinette.

"They confiscated everything. Even the stuff we didn't steal. They took the bar! The whole F'ing bar! This is ridiculous. What are we going to do? Roadtrip!" 🚦That's right... when things start to get ridiculous there's only one thing to do... load the gang in the car🚗, grab some appropriate road snacks like jerky🥓, funions, pork rinds🍿 and cheetos, and since this trip is chauffeured... feel free to grab as many roadies 🍺 as you can cuz this road trip will be off the beaten path. Time for a little Shama Lama Ding Dong... Hit it! 🥁As you know we are two weeks into a new year, a new decade, and an election year and it's important to start these off with a bang💥😜... advice that works for everyday btw as long as they're reasonably conscious, willing and available😜. Yeah #metoo.🙈🙉🙊 Anyway, because it is an election year and it's important for the candidates to get out and meet the voters, let me recommend a path to victory that will take the right candidate away from the swamps in DC🦎, the Sour Apple🍏, and La La Land🧚🏼‍♂️ and into the hinterlands where normal people reside. Well, I don't know how normal but at least to places that will give the mailman reason to chuckle📫. Now I know we're entering our Roaring 20s, and maybe it's time for more mature thoughts... who am I kidding... let's just hit the road and see who we run into... hopefully Fawn Liebowitz and three of her friends. After all she was going to make me a pot.🚽 We'll start locally and head to Bumpass because they've been feeling a little blue in Virginia lately so time to redden those cheeks and...say it slowly...bump ass! I take it you'll be good from now on! Next stop... Beaver Dam... now unfortunately many states have a Beaver Dam, and, boys back me up on this, beaver blocking is not a good thing. This is America where individual rights matter including the unfettered access to beavers everywhere... just saying... if you SJWs want to March around with your little placards protesting whatever nonsense then the least you could do is Free the Beaver. Just put on those beaver hats and march.

I blame Eddie Haskell for this btw!🤔 Ok, onward north through Maryland. Of course we all know how bad they drive🏎 in Maryland so my advice is to drive straight through as fast as you can because nobody wants to get in an accident or have any part of Blue Ball Village, Md... so hold it in and head straight through to Intercourse, Pa before getting relief. Hey, we're guys and after a little Bumpass, it's time for Intercourse! That's right this is important... there are lots of issues needing a good and frank discussion so don't just roll over and sleep after Bumpass and unblocking the Beaver Dam... it's time for Intercourse. A polite mhmm before falling asleep should suffice! 🙊Where to next? The GPS now says that since we will be driving through the night we might as well stop for some moisturizer in Butternuts, NY before hitting Ramtown, NJ. Always a good time there. And since we are still young and energetic let's keep the road warrior rolling and head to Swallow Hill, De. It's of course home to the Blue Hen's who wear Blue Dresses and for some reason a favorite campaign stop for #42! 🤔 Still more gas in the tank then double back through Short Pump, Va before reaching Climax, NC. Ok time for a rest before heading to the flyover States. My advice for women candidates is to follow the phallic road from south to north starting with Dry Prong, La to Weiner, Ar to Big Bone, Ky to Floyd's Knob, In (ok candidate Pete B🧚🏼‍♂️ you can take this route also... what? I mean only because he's from Indiana)🙊🙉🙈...to Dick, Mi before heading back south through Balltown, Ia to Bonesteel, SD, then onto Dry Wood, Ks, then Bluit, NM before ending up appropriately n Dickshooter, Id. I know that might be a lot to swallow🙉 but you girls can handle. As for you male candidates I suggest you follow the campaign trail zig zagging north to south from Spread Eagle, Wi to Beaver City, Ne to Cooter, Mo to Hooker, Ok where if you like to go swimming with Bow legged women and swim between their legs you can pop by Bowlegs, Ok as well. #OkBoomer. Next zig east to Sweet Lips, Tn before zagging to Virgin, Ut to finish the job. No sense venturing to Mary's Igloo, Ak it's cold as ice! Keep it warm and meet up in Three Way, Az where there's room for a Third Party. And if this wasn't enough for sight seeing then let's head to Needmore,Tx also home of the Big D! We will leave La La Land alone since they are currently drowning under a mountain of Schiff💩, and we'll leave Wankers Corner, Or for the oddball fascist antifa type candidates in case any of the #fraudsquad throw their hat in the ring.  Now that's what I call a road trip. Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones may get their Kicks on Route 66, but I get mine on route 69! 🙈 Remember that we are in the 20s now and have many forked roads ahead with important decisions to consider. And since many youngins of voting age are still under the fog of inexperience it's the duty of us Gen Xers to show them the way. Let our experience guide these recent teens blinded with naivete, but bustling with frenetic energy down the path that will #KAG! Many of the young and uniformed/misinformed are like the classic joke, "why does the dog have a flat nose... he chases parked cars." Nice one dad!😂 Time to move past the pointlessness of wasted energy, and lessons already learned. How you might ask? Well I'm here to provide you with a roadmap to success and the Waze to avoid the pitfalls of the roads more traveled. Don't worry I'm not Niedermeyer, I don't think you're all worthless and weak. But my advice to you is to start drinking heavily,🍸  otherwise it actually might be seven years of college down the drain. Now where's my man, Otis Day and the Knights I feel like I want to Shout...

Well, you know you make me want to

(Shout)

Kick my heels up and

(Shout)

Throw my hands up and

(Shout)

Throw my head back and

(Shout)

Come on now

(Shout)

Don't forget to say you will

Don't forget to say

(Say you will)

Say it right now, baby

(Say you will)

Come on, come on

(Say you will)

Say that a you

(Say you will)...

You know you make me want to

(Shout)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah alright alright

Come on now, come on now, yeah, yeah

Oh all right, oh all right, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now wait a minute, I feel alright

Now that I've got my woman

I feel, hey, alright

You been so good to me

You been so good to me

You know you make me want to

(Shout)

Lift my hands up and

(Shout)

Throw my hands back and

(Shout)

Come on now

2020 Hindsight and Foresight

Happy New Year and here's to hoping the only pain you have in 2020 is champagne Antoinette🥂. 

Well boys and girls it's the dawn of a new year, new decade and new possibilities! And for those of you who decided to bring in the New Year with a copious amount of adult beverages🍾 it's probably also the dawn of the year's first headache and grubhub delivery of a KFC bucket of goodness🍗. Now, because it's 2020 it's a good time to look backwards with perfect hindsight and, raise your hand if you agree with me, but the sight of a perfect hind always deserves to be seen with 2020 vision🍑! 😜 Yeah #metoo! And looking back at my 2019 I'm reminded of what George Best said, "I spent a lot of money on booze🍸, birds💃 and fast cars🏎... the rest I just squandered."😜 Anyway, my experiences aside, the 2020 metaphor is a good one to talk about vision, but it's also good to remember that while vision can be perfect, perspective is personal and unique and often clouds what should be clear🤓. So what seems obvious to some, is delusional and ridiculous to others. For instance, looking backward for the normal and sane we can see that America clearly did very well. Record stock market, record employment, record wages, record energy production and record take home pay because of tax cuts for the average American. The immediate danger to our troops has lessened, more beers than ever are produced in the USA, we've apparently staved off climate catastrophe for at least the immediate future because why else would wannabe #43 and didnthavetobe #44 buy beach houses, and the Nationals won the World Series! Not bad. However,  the lunatic rants of the shrill and shrieking delusionals would have you think that the sky was falling in 2019. 

Their impeachment hoax was merited because orange man bad, even though it's been proven a hoax. In fact, their long sought efforts to impeach now looks more like a planted fake Yelp review bad mouthing a competitor from someone suffering from TDS. (Btw, did you realize that 2 of the 3 impeachments in history are because of men humiliating #HRC?🙈🙉🙊) Anyway,  the blurry visioned warn that the booming economy will end (eventually they'll probably be right and America will be blue)🤔... in fact they actually root for it to end because to the delusional their Party's success is more important than America's and besides...Orange man bad!👌 Crazily, the vision challenged are so misguided they are suggesting marxist remedies for problems that don't exist which just means they need to browbeat the American Public with the propaganda arm of the party...the MSM, or currently...Chicken Little. In addition to creating as many victims as possible, they are trying to convince America that somehow we'd be better off with communism rather than the free market, that free speech should be cudgeled when it suits Big Brother, more government is better, statues hurt people,  and the swamp creatures are better at running people's lives than the individual. They also believed that to get away with their fascist tendencies you just call everyone else a fascist which is classic doublespeak. #antifa. This ridiculousness comes even when they have the benefit of 2020 hindsight and can see Venezuela, Bolivia, China, Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Lil Kim and North Korea, etc. Their idea of looking backward is Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward." The utopian socialist who by projecting forward, then looking backward could show America how to proceed. Of course these are the fanciful fantasies of children. We know the reality of these utopias from the real world experience of the aforementioned whose utter failure you could see even if your vision was 20/2000. If you want a more  accurate literary description of where that path leads just read 1984 and might as well throw in Animal Farm! By the way, those are views of a real socialist not a wouldn't it be nice if socialist. Now all of this isn't to say there aren't problems we need to address and fix with a clear vision looking forward👀 of who we are, why we are the greatest country🗽, and how we became such. Looking forward, I think it's time we addressed a few realities. First off we need to rid ourselves of the alphabet crowds, the hyphenated crowds, and the hashtag crowds. Any basement dwelling SJWs who resists will be punished by having to go into a bar in Texas and say their rant out loud and at risk of a punch in the nose🤼‍♂️. Secondly, and I'll say this slowly, statues don't hurt anyone, school names don't threaten, and every commercial doesn't have to be the United colors of Benetton! The only colors that matter are the Red, White and Blue🇺🇸. Stop dividing, stop creating weakness and victimhood. If you're gonna fight, fight about important things. The big game🏈, the girl at the end of the bar💃, taste great or less filling🍺, and whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie📽. Trying to be all things to all people just means you're nothing to nobody. Also, I hereby cancel cancel culture. Save boycotts for Apartheid. If you want to make PC shaming a good thing then use it to exert societal pressure on the benefits of education, intelligence, good grades, no drugs, family values, religious institutions and general kindness. It's not forcing fake science and permissiveness down the throats of those who disagree or replacing your moral compass with Big Brother. Make 2020 the year of the individual without threat of fake conformity. We're America...we got this! Team USA. Now fill up you glass and toast🥂. Time to get this 2020 party started with Jake Owen...YeeHaw!

You take your all right, you take your can't wait

A lot of of bring-it-on, an' some damn straight

An' mix it all up with some down home southern drawl, y'all

You got your yee haw

I'm talkin big time, I mean saddle up an' hold on tight

An' if you know what I'm talkin' about, y'all, yeah

How about a yee haw, ha, ha

Yep, bow wow, y-e-e-h-a-w, yee haw