On Saturday at 4PM my daughter Josephine started complaining about not feeling well  and an hour later her discomfort blossomed into agony. She’s crying and grasping her head. Ear infection.

Since it was after 5 on a weekend, our pediatricians office was closed, but my wife calls the emergency number and is told the doctor will check in SOON, which is not a time period that works when your 6 year-old is convinced her head is about to fall off.

When another hour comes and goes, I load Jo into the car and start for the Emergency Room, but halfway there I get a call from Holly (home with our son) informing me that the doctor has gotten back and prescribed pain medication and antibiotics.

So, we U-turn to the pharmacy, where we wait for 20 minutes… my daughter basically speaking in tongues, while I try and distract her with UNO… before we can get the prescription filled at a cost of $30.

40 minutes later, having filled her up with chicken nuggets, the medication takes effect and my daughter returns from the land of “pain you think will never end.”

My initial reaction was, “WHAT A NIGHTMARE!,” but I quickly realized it should be…

My two cents, which, before the collapse of the stock-market, was worth much more.

*****

When I first got to the left-o-sphere in the summer of 2004 I remember watching as our opponents taunted us with the fact that everyone we supported in elections lost.

“0-19” was the taunt. “Don’t bother with them, they’re 0-19!”

But then came the 2006 midterms and the 2008 election and we were “0-19” no longer.

And yet… we still have yet to get one fucking thing actually done.

Iraq War… not yet. FISA… nope. Torture… Lieberman (recently)… drilling… even impeachment (for some).

I can’t, honestly, think of one legislative victory this community can tally on the “good gals” side.

And, I, for one, worry its because we’re increasingly seen as the FAR left.

(*Absolutely NOTHING political lies in the verbs, nouns, adjectives and gerunds that make up this diary. This is purely, hopefully, potentially, a chuckle for chuckles sake.)

So, I’m driving in my car this afternoon (on the way to do a little holiday shopping for my wife) and I’m about to take a left turn onto a major thoroughfare.

Across the street… a car is about to make a right.

But since there are two lanes in the avenue we are joining, I’ll be able to merge into the left lane… the other car the right… allowing us both to do our intended business simultaneously and peacefully.

Or so I THOUGHT…

Dear Human Applicant:

We are writing to inform you that though we’d like to take steps to save the economy, allowing you to keep a roof over your head and food in your children’s mouths, we’ve been informed that your gardener, Cruz, makes $18 dollars an hour, which far exceeds the pay for gardeners in your human competitor countries like China and South Korea.

Therefore we must insist you inform Cruz that unless he willingly cuts his salary in half and gives up his single family dwelling for housing more consistent with that of your competitors (see above right) we are going to be forced to use your tax refund to fund AIG’s “Mercedes For Millionaires” program.

So, an insider source tells me that hours before being picked up by the FBI, Illinois Governor Blagojevich met with Idaho Senator Larry Craig in a bathroom stall on former California Congressman Duke Cunningham’s former yacht the “Duke-Stir” (current Louisiana Congressman David Vitter standing nearby with extra Huggies in case anything got out of hand) to discuss how much of the cash found next to the Chunkey Monkey in soon-to-be-former Congressman William Jefferson’s freezer it would take to pay off former Governor of New York Elliot Spitzer’s hooker to keep quiet about lame-duck, but very fertile Congressman Vito Fossella’s secret family, which Fosella met while teaching former Florida Congressman Mark Foley how to “LOL” and “BRB” and “How big is your cock?” instant messages into the future to the soon-to-be secret girlfriend of the already-disgraced and soon-to-be former Florida Congressman Tim Mahoney, who was in discussion with Indicted Senator Ted Stevens about adding a free “lap pool” to Stevens soon-to-be jail cell, which he will share with former-former Illinois Governor George Ryan as well as the actor who used to play Willis on “Different Strokes”.

BEFORE (unrepresentative and inaccurate):

Merrill Lynch boss seeks 10-million-dlr bonus

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The chief executive of troubled Wall Street firm Merrill Lynch is seeking a 10-million-dollar bonus this year in the midst of a financial crisis which plunged his company into dire straits, US media reported Monday.

So, in 1995, just out of college, when I was still an actor, I was cast in a production of a play called Spiele ’36 about the two Jewish runners kicked off the 1936 United States Olympic team by American Bund members at the behest of Adolph Hitler (he, Hitler, didn’t want Aryan athletes to be seen bested by those damn Hebrews).

The Jewish runners were replaced at the last minute by African American runners, specifically Jessie Owens, which is how he, Owens, won his fourth gold medal.

But that’s all background to this tale.

The play was a co-production between George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, and in the George Mason production one of the Caucasian members of the team was played by an actor who got the unfortunate but utterly appropriate nickname “Poor Dumb Joey”.

Joey was a tad pathetic, not overly bright, but was hopelessly looking, so I’m sure he’s done fine in life.

But Joey, too, is basically irrelevant to this saga.

The guy who gets the title of this diary was the actor who took Joey’s role in the Chicago production. His name was Tom and he got automatically saddled with “Poor Dumb Tommy”… well… because that’s sort of thing just happens in the theater. Wrong place, wrong time.

In a sign that they may have been a tad too obsessed with the daily squabbles on The View, The National Bureau of Economic Research made the shocking and unexpected announcement yesterday that  the economy has been in recession for over a year.

The NBER followed up their “recession” revelation with the BREAKING NEWS that the really hot chick in the Crying Game was really… a dude.

In other news that you already knew…

With the knowledge that Joe The Plumber’s book “Joe the Plumber – Fighting for the American Dream” is fast approaching publication, I, a professional writer of pronouns and gerunds and other stuff with serif based English letters, am becoming increasingly worried about my job security.

I mean… now that HE’S an author, there surely will be one less opportunity for people of my ilk to ply our trade. That said, I know me some math, and while there is one less slot for wordsmiths, there is a opening in the area of sinks, toilets, and septic tanks.

So, with that in mind…

Let us, with prescience, practice the patter of those denizens of the AM dial:

So, I ran into a friend of mine, Slats Grobnik, who has just lost his job and therefore is struggling to figure out how he’s going to pay for his health insurance (not to mention his mortgage) and also has a brother on his fourth tour in Iraq (and that brother has a 401K which is on its first tour of the 8000).

We sat across the table from each other in a coffee shop and the first words that crossed his lips were…

“I hope to God Democrats get even with Joe Lieberman, because that’s primarily what I elected them to do!”

So, you’ve walked streets and knocked on doors and phone-banked and given money and put yourself on the line, emotionally and physically, in a campaign that seemed to last forever, but which, in the end, reminded you (and me) that sometimes all that’s required to manifest the unlikely (or even the unbelievable) is for you (and me) to bring it about ourselves.

We won.

We won nationally and locally.

We won the narrative and substance.

We won the denotative, the connotative and the illustrative.

In short, we kicked their cynical, bloated, entitled back-sides.

Which means we’ve earned ourselves a well-deserved break!

Not. So. Much.

What we’ve earned… is the right to DO MORE.

In the greatest act of blogging hubris ever expressed by a writer of seemingly nonstop asshattery, this diary challenges each of YOU, starting with the YOU that is ME, to give 28,000 seconds a month to community service until the midterm elections.

Simpler… this blog challenges the you that is also me to finish what we’ve started.