Memorizing the Declaration of Independence

You know how I'm always talking about how smart I am? Well, I thought I was, but now I'm not sure.

I've long had the desire to memorize things. I got the idea for this from a little old lady I used to know who memorized and recited poetry all the time -- all the time -- and always followed her recital the same way, a half hour of lambasting the rest of us, who hadn't memorized a thing. It seems that when she was in school, back in 1914, kids had to memorize a lot of stuff. It's like they didn't have enough books to go around or something. Either that or they had nothing better to do.

I know this is true of her generation, because I heard my own grandparents reciting a few simpler things they'd memorized in school, also ages ago. Now they're dead, and the little old lady -- who incidentally only had one eye, which makes it much more impressive; she wore glasses but one glass was fogged over so you couldn't see the sewn up place on her face -- is also dead.

And now here I sit, with two functioning eyes, and the vast library of the world wide web to assist me -- to find things worth memorizing -- and I couldn't memorize a grocery list. Or something simpler. The main problem might be I didn't get started early enough in life. So my brain doesn't have the trained grooves for memory work. I'd check out that website that helps you exercise your brain -- the woman advertising it on TV's kind of cute -- but I can't remember what it is.

Anyway, today being the Fourth of July, I had the idea of reading the Declaration of Independence. I've read it a couple times in my life. Mostly what I could already tell you by memory is that the king of England at the time was named George. That's a start, although admittedly it's not a heckuva lot to go on. What it was, what was going on is, the Americans at the time were very aggravated at George, so they wrote up the Declaration of Independence ... and the rest is history. Something, something. And our first leader was also a George!

OK, for some reason it's always easier for me to remember the first few words of something than it is the next few. Like the Bible. I always remember, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," words to that effect. The rest, I could probably hack out a few more words more or less accurately, but, again, my memory isn't what it should be. Did I already say that?

Let's review how far I got: "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to--" No, I just checked the webpage and the next word is "for," not "to." I'll just copy and past the first paragraph and we can review it:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

According to that, "Course" is capitalized. Must be one of the Quaint Customs of the Time. So we've got a "Course of human events," the progression of time, pointing to a particular moment in that course, the "When." Then there's a people feeling it's necessary to dissolve the political bands that they had with another. Then they intend to assume "among the powers of the earth," other countries, a separate and equal station, blah blah blah. I'm sure George didn't care for this: the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them to make this assumption. OK, When that necessity arises, they care enough about the opinions of the rest of the world to declare the causes of the separation.

That's a little different than now. Isn't our attitude now just to stomp the crap out of people and let them like it or lump it? Maybe I'm thinking of some other country, but I'm pretty sure ... I seem to recall ... although my memory ain't great.

That, my friends, the first paragraph is frankly more than I can handle, let alone the rest of it. I'm not one to admit failure easily, but the Declaration is simply too long for me to get it entire thing down pat. Not this year! Maybe next year when I'm older ... and, I hope, wiser.

P.S. -- Obama ought to prank the Republicans and just recite the Declaration of Independence on the radio. Since most of them likely have no knowledge of it, they'd hear it and start bitching, "He's totally full of hot air!" Then he goes, "It's the Declaration of Independence, you bozos!" They'd go, "It came out of your mouth, we still hate it!"

My Dreams of Open Carry

My dreams of open carry are coming true! And this is even one of those weird things I never thought would happen, like flying cars. I figured the Old West was gone and we'd never get it back.

This is true, that as a kid watching westerns, I always complained that they carried guns all the time and we couldn't. Our guns were hanging on a rack -- unlocked, mind you -- and we only took them down for hunting or cleaning or showing someone.

Parents didn't believe in safety as much then, which was OK, because we did all right. We had the run of the town. We played lots of war games, cowboys and indians, and killed each other all the time, only in our imagination. Even though we had guns, we never actually killed anyone. Although I remember having a grievance against the sheriff one time. All water under bridge...

I gave up all hope of open carry -- walking around with holsters, dangling guns down to your knees. Never thought I'd live to see it, but now... All praise and glory! They're back!

Frankly, I don't know how long it'll last. His term is only so long. Meaning, we need to groom future black presidents so we never have to go back to a ban. There's definite benefits to a generalized paranoia, which we're reaping now.

Only, I don't see any decent candidates being groomed. On the bright side, we might get a woman president for eight years. Of course that'd give our testosterone a workout, meaning open carry would be safe. Yet, it's all temporary. What we need is a constitutional amendment -- call it the Second Amendment Part B -- that presidents can only be black and/or women.

The worst case scenario for open carry is that we get another white man like Bush, especially like Bush. He had that whole ignorant good-old-boy thing going so strong there wasn't ever the slightest temptation to allow open carry. And the more dishonest he was -- we frankly didn't have time to plumb the depths -- the more people liked him. I still see various idiot assholes on Facebook pining for those supposedly "good old days" of a white male president, with absolutely no understanding of what it meant for open carry.

I personally haven't taken the gun plunge yet. The openness of open carry is still a little too primitive for my taste. If you kill someone you still have to account for it. I want it like the westerns. You do your killing, you have a drink and play cards undisputed. Or go upstairs to Diamond Lil's room and do whatever they did back then. Teach her a thing or two with your barrel.

A Shoutout From The President

Today was the inauguration of President Barack Obama for his second term. It was a wonderful display of patriotism, optimism, and hope. And I'm sure I join with freedom-loving men everywhere when I say, It was sure a lot better seeing this man of integrity taking office than the opposite nightmare of seeing Mitt Romney up there. Good God, alternate history can be so terrifying!

I felt my heart fill up with emotion as I saw the inspiring pomp of our dear country joining in the ceremony honoring our great president's second term. I can only hope that his vision for America is able to carry the day, over the intransigence of a Republican party so far off the beam as to be considered completely derelict. The downer of the event, if there had to be one, had to be the sight of John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Paul Ryan, followed up by the close second of Bob Schieffer's pathetic commentary, the CBS veteran quite unabashedly shitting in the punchbowl of joy.

Everything else, from the wonderful singers to the great, pensive poet, to the president himself, in a stirring oration, was great. It renewed my faith, not only in America itself, our past and our future, but in humanity itself. It's just such a shame, in the light of renewal, that we still had to see a parade of Republicans pretending to make nice. They are truly a scurrilous bunch, even though Lamar Alexander managed somehow to hold his poison tongue. I held my breath and wished real hard, getting my wish.

Kelly Clarkson was very cute. I had to think, What a long journey she's had since her introduction at the auditions of American Idol to this magical moment! That was back when I watched AI, which I did up until they allowed Kris Allen to win over the much greater Adam Lambert. When I said I would quit watching the show in protest, I meant exactly what I said!

But the heart of the inauguration had to be the president's speech. In my opinion, it was a well-honed address, and despite Bob Schieffer passing gas to the contrary, it was a home run in every sense of the word. He mentioned the things that matter most to me: Equal rights for all and opportunity. But shame on the Republicans for failing to applaud. (I'm assuming they failed to applaud, since they weren't on camera and we couldn't see them.)

Finally, the greatest moment for me personally had to be President Obama's shoutout to me, a financial contributor to the campaign: "I've looked to the mountaintop. And I want to send a shoutout to D.B. Kundalini, the great blogger at my favorite blog, grandmaslump.com. It was because of his contributions, every penny he earned from Google ads as well as all he could spare from his disability pay, he having a game toe, that I am able to stand here today."

When I heard that, I happened to be eating an ice cream cone. And I snorted some of it right up my nose in shock. Pretty soon the phone rang and it was Wolf Blitzer, asking me how it felt to get that honor. I said, "It was delicious." Wolf said, "Delicious?" Then I explained about the ice cream, and that I had it on DVR, and would watch it again and again, every time I had ice cream.