A Column about nothing much

Writing a weekly column is sort of like doing laundry. You know in the back of your mind that it needs to be done, but when it is time to really pull the trigger, isn’t it easier just to wear a T-shirt that is 20 years old and socks with holes in them?

That, friends, is an awful analogy. And this is going to be an awful column. I have been wracking my brain all week trying to come up with a topic and in the end I got nothing. Zip and Zero. Nada and less.

But I have to fill this space somehow because how many “tell them you saw it in the Phillips County News” in-house ads can I run per week (three and counting, I believe.)

I was going to write a column about Donald Rumsfeld and the letter he wrote to the IRS after he filed his taxes this year. The letter states that Grumpy D – his Rapper name -- is college educated, feels he is literate, but admitted he wasn’t entirely sure he had filled out his taxes correctly because they are just too darn confusing. I was, for maybe the first time, going to agree with the former Defense Secretary, the tax codes are a bit obnoxious. But then I got to thinking … careful now … why would he complain about it now, when nobody gives a rat’s fat rear about him, instead of when he actually had the ear of the POTUS? Rumsfeld frustrated me for the thousandth time in my life and I scrapped the idea.

Column idea number one circled the commode faster than Rosie O’Donnell circles a breakfast buffet.

Then I came up with the brilliant topic of Queen Elizabeth and her 88th birthday. I was going to blather about how her reign as Queen, which has seen 12 US Presidents, six Roman Catholic Popes and yadda, blah and yadda. Halfway through my research on the Queen, I happened a gander at the portrait the British Government got her for her birthday and was struck by how much she looks like Donald Rumsfeld – if he would wear a bad wig and pillbox hat. The thought of Rumsfeld eating pork pie and Yorkshire pudding while wearing an evening gown and pantyhose is, to me, slightly amusing, but to prattle on for a whole column? Nah. Strike two.

I thought I had finally found my column topic when a heckler threw her shoe at Hillary Clinton. Now I am about as big of fan of the Clintons as I am of any Federal politician … not much. When it was first reported that the former Secretary of State/ Senator/First Lady dodged the shoe, I immediately went to the internet to watch. I gotta say, she has nice form, but if the maniac who threw two shoes at George W. would have been on the mound at Hillary’s Las Vegas shoe-toss, he’d of hit her square in the bean.

That got me thinking about our last republican president and the artistic talents he has displayed of late. If you haven’t seen George W. Bush’s paintings I think you’d be surprised at his skills (though he could probably use a few nights out at Cocktails n’ Canvas with Bohn’s Bones Arts here in Malta.) I was slightly amazed that some of W’s portraits of world leaders captured their likeness so well. It’s a side of Bush that I had never seen. Then I happened across a self-portrait of President-Painter in the shower which showed a side of him I can never un-see. Yuck and wow.

The painting shows the back of Bush’s naked torso with a stream of water pouring from the showerhead and if you look really close – and I’ll admit, my stomach didn’t want me to, but my eyes just wouldn’t stop – you can see Georgie Boy looking back at you with those weasel-like eyes. Where Bush succeeded in capturing the likeness of world leaders in many of his portraits, in this self-portrait he failed. For all I know, this isn’t a likeness of the painter, but rather that of Bill Clinton, Rumsfeld, or Queen Elizabeth.

Strike three....yer outta there!

Well, I told you this wasn’t going to be good, and I think I have proved I’m a man of my word. I have offended representatives of both major political parties, royalty and a pear-shaped celebrity. Mission complete, as the artist George W. Bush once said. In closing, maybe don’t tell them you saw it in the Phillips County News? Aloha.