Here are the news headlines I did not post yesterday because they were too depressing, so of course I'm posting them today when they're no less depressing.

Time Magazine has called these past 10 years (2000-2009) the worst decade ever, mainly because how badly George W. Bush and Dick Cheney screwed us in the U.S. and the rest of the world as well. I call these past 10 years The Aughts with the Naughts.

~ D ~ R ~ E ~ A ~ D ~ L ~ I ~ N ~ E ~ ~ M ~ A ~ L ~ A ~ D ~ Y ~

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping

Cancer Victim Went On $80,000 Spree Before Finding Out She Was Going To Live

'12 Days Of Christmas' Items Would Cost Over $87,000

Massive Sushi Fraud

40% Of Food Produced Gets Trashed, While 1 In 6 Go Hungry

One in Eight Americans On Food Stamps

1 In 4 U.S. Children Relies On Food Stamps

Video Of Diners Eating A Deep Fried Fish -- While It's STILL ALIVE

49 Million Americans Going Hungry

More Than Half Of Teachers Report Buying Hungry Students Food With Their Own Money

Kids Reenact The First Thanksgiving With Smallpox Blankets And Whiskey

Two-Thirds of Chicken Tested Harbor Dangerous Bacteria

Sex, Beer, Heroin and Cocaine: How Prosecutors Pay Off Criminal Snitches

Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys -- The Very Dark Side of the Afghan Occupation

US Army Suicides Continue at Record Paces

U.S. Companies Kill 16 Workers A Day

Number Of Seniors Living Alone And Seeking Help Up By 81% In 2008

Economic Crisis Is Getting Bloody -- Violent Deaths Are Now Following Evictions, Foreclosures and Job Losses

Pharmaceutical Giant Paid $500,000 to Psychiatrist Who Used Chicago's Poor as Guinea Pigs

Teenager Charged With Murder Said Hobby Was 'Killing People'

"I Couldn't Give Up Jesus" For My Jewish Husband

Catholic Bishops Put Sex Obsession Ahead of Mission to the Sick and the Poor

Church Of Scientology Accused Of Torture, Forced Abortions

Santa Claus Actor Gets Prison For Part In Global Sex Tourism Ring

Peruvian Gang Killed People To Extract Their Fat

Lab Grown Meat Could Be Safer Than Eating Animals

Big Pharma Promises To Save Government $8 Billion, But Not Before Raising Prices By $10 Billion

Republicans Promise "Holy War" To Delay Health Care Bill

GOP Senator Wants To Let 'Mentally Incapacitated' Vets Buy Guns

Cult of Conservative Christian GOPers Backs Death Penalty for Gays With HIV

Uranium From Polluted British Petroleum Mine Found In Nevada Water Wells

Chinese drywall causes metal corrosion

Steelers Fan Killed Puppy Before Game

Rancher Jailed For Housing Homeless

The Vampire Banks Are Back

CIA Manual Of Trickery And Deception Declassified, Now On Sale

Women Now 'Better With Gadgets Than Men,' Study Says

Men Married To Smart Women Live Longer

Living With the Wound From a Stray Shot

I've harvested too many heavy headlines from the news these past two weeks and a bad chunk of them are grim sad mean and downright perverted. I've had enough of gritty nitty reality, so here are some of the lighter lines, leaving the larger darker horrors on the cutting room floor.

~ ~ ~

Toys For Tits

The Government Is Trying To Control My Breasts

I Was Told To Have Boob Job

$3M Bra

Boobs & Balloons At Victoria's Secret Show

Colombian Chefs Create Viagra-Laced Dessert

Man Marries His Video Game Girlfriend

Sex, Please, We're British

Youth Group Rap Advocates "Side-Hugs" Over Sinful "Front-Hugs"

Spray-On Jesus

Michael Jackson's glove sells for $350,000 at auction

CNN Gave Dobbs $8 MILLION To Leave!

7 Great Products For Telling The World You're A Rich Jerk

Laptop Steering Wheel Desk: So You Can Work While you Drive?

Electronic Polar Bears Replace Real Bears At St. Louis Zoo

Galileo's Lost Tooth, Fingers Found By Italian Collector

A 'Meat Band-Aid': Mass-Produced Living Tissue Could Help Healing

Roadrunner, Conch, And Pork Brains: The Craziest Canned Foods Ever

A plague of flatulence
        
Humans Still Evolving As Our Brains Shrink

Dad Locked Kids In Trunk While Running Errands

Cell Phone Use Linked To Brain Changes

Think Like An Intellectual

They're Getting Rid of Whom

~ ~ ~

This is Whom, once again reporting backside the unemployment line in the shallow end of the gene pool just the other side of Looking Glass Gone where we all see our strangeness in the black water's reflection.

Having a tooth pulled at 8:30 in the morning is not the way I'd choose to start my day. I'm sick of the taste of swallowed blood. That and my love of garlic shows I would make a darn poor vampire - besides, I've been to enough parties with the brainless to realize the undead are not my preferred conversational tribe.

Last time I had a tooth pulled, the dentist wouldn't give me my tooth, said it was against the health laws. Time before that the dentist did give me my tooth and I put it in a fine collage titled Post Coital Repression. This time when I asked, he said sure, and then the assistant threw it away anyway. The dentist came back with a prescription and asked if I'd gotten my tooth. Said no, so he went to the trash can and dug the two pieces out for me. Now that is service.

When my father had his artificial knee installed, I asked if he'd ask the surgeon for his old knee cap back so I could use it in art. The doc laughed, said that was the oddest request he'd heard and that he'd be happy to except old knee caps are sliced out a thin section at a time so there'd be nothing to give me.

The tooth did not want to come out. Believe my body was thinking I'd lost enough teeth already and was fighting to hold on to this one. The doc's pliers kept slipping off into my lower teeth and I had visions of him breaking even more.

Doc said the tooth next to the one he pulled was loose and would eventually go. That leaves two loose future lost teeth on top. Aren't you glad you're not me?

The minor good news is I miscounted my top teeth - I have nine left now, not eight. I'll take what I can get.

After I left the dentist and spit blood all over the street, I glanced at the prescription - it's for 30 Vicodins. Last tooth extraction they told me to take Aspirin or over the counter Tylenol, so this is a major gift. In fact, I have a good buzz on now.

Got too tired to keep myself together and broke yesterday.

Three days of cleaning for our first stay-over guest followed by nine days daze of energy output, people overload, insufficient sleep and absolutely no downtime recovery time made me so unfocused I could no longer hold my reality together with just my mind and I broke one of my remaining teeth yesterday during Thanksgiving dinner. Fortunately it was one of my too many root-canalled teeth so there's no pain or feeling.

My teeth are a sorrowful tale.

When fluoride was added to the nation's drinking water in the 1950s to prevent cavities, we lived on a farm and drank unfluoridated well water. At the same time we were poor and the dentist was only for pain emergencies; periodic check-ups were for those with money.

I figured I could finally get my teeth fixed up when I enlisted in the Navy in 1963; instead they pulled two and promised they'd replace them soon. That was 46 years ago; I'm still waiting.

After the Navy kicked me out for smoking grass in 1968 (with an honorable discharge because they didn't want the bad publicity of putting me through a court martial and embarrassing the U.S. Naval Academy), I started doing a lot of crystal meth and ground my teeth like all speed freaks do. I have very small teeth anyway, so this didn't help.

Later on down the line as one tooth after another went bad, I usually had no money to fix them properly so many times they were pulled rather than repaired and crowned. One I did have crowned was so badly done the crown kept falling off. I'd glue it back on my tooth with some extremely foul-tasting 5-minute epoxy, but the mouth saliva would turn the epoxy brown and soft and the cap would fall off 2-3 days later (usually while chewing; I was constantly afraid I was going to swallow my crown or break another tooth on it) and I'd glue it back on again. One dentist told me the soft brown epoxy goo he pulled off my tooth gave him nightmares, dreams where his patients' teeth turned brown and soft and fell out.

My biggest tooth insult came at the hands of Dr Liesman. I paid him $1,500 for an upper and lower partial. He fucked up the lower and had it sent back, then forced the repaired partial into my mouth. Over the next 6 months the partial caused all my lower teeth to go crooked and overlap.

One night in the midst of a bad run of unemployment when my world was crashing around me and I was in danger of losing my studio, I got hit with bad tooth pain and absolutely zero money. I decided to pull the tooth myself using pliers, but when I grasped the tooth with the metal prongs, it shattered - the insides had rotted away.  I sat in bed that night with tears rolling down considering suicide because at least if I killed myself the studio would be paid off and mom would have a place to live. Got through the night and went and asked a rich man to loan me $1,000 to get my tooth fixed and me back on my feet. He stared at me in silence for a long time, then said he was going to loan me the thousand because if he lost it, it wouldn't affect him any, but he would be extremely disappointed if I didn't pay it back because he'd hate to lose our weekly visits and conversation. Took the money, fixed the tooth, bought some clothes to interview in, got a job three weeks later, and had him paid off two months after that.

Three weeks ago I learned at the dentist that one of my two upper front teeth is loose because it hasn't had a tooth next to it for 15 years to support it and finally just got tired and I'll be losing it eventually.

I have 9 teeth on top, 13 on the bottom. Today the dentist told me the broken tooth is unsaveable so will pull it tomorrow morning. That'll leave 8 on top. Getting to the point chewing is becoming an adventure, especially since top and bottom teeth rarely mesh.

Pretty soon I'll have no teeth and can offer my wife a gum job. The kids in the neighborhood can start calling me a toothless bastard.

Being poor affects your whole life - from what health care you get along the way to what and how you eat (i.e., obesity is more prevalent among the poor because they eat cheaper inferior starchier fatter foods).

I tell you, reality lately seems to be testing me, trying to see what it'll take to knock me down and keep me down. But I doubt that will work, because no matter what, I always eventually pop back up with whatever is left of me and start slogging that cold empty trail to fame and fortune I've been unsuccessfully flogging these past 63 years. Guess they're going to have to kill me to get me to stop (not that that would break my heart - if it weren't for Lady, I'd rather have been gone by now anyway).

My only two real fears are that I'm slowly losing my sense of humor, and I'm slowly losing my sense of hope. Both define me to me; I wouldn't be worth much without them. But even that doesn't really worry me because the humor only gets darker and edgier, while the will always bounces back eventually - and where there's will, there's hope.

Was going to blog my latest harvest of headlines from the daily news, but that seemed an awfully heartless and curmudgeonish way to start Thanksgiving Day. So I'll repost my funny philosophical food poem instead. I was 19 when I wrote it, and it's now 44 years old. Namaste.

Confessions of a Conservative

Let others munch spare frog’s legs and things
Or their mother's tidbits so fine.

Not me.  
I prefer wee bumblebee wings
With a pipe of blueberry wine.

I've no desire for porcupine stew
Aunts coated in chocolate yea thick
Fried crocodile 
Ala flayed caribou
Or some other chef's table trick.

A simple table whenever I dine.
Not mine all these modern cuisines.
I'm quite satisfied with blueberry wine
And old fashioned bumblebee wings.

 - Steven B. Smith, 1965

If aliens hadn't stolen my brain years ago, my mind right now would be awash in people, poetry, egos, ids, needs, heeds, feeds, and fatigues.

It’s a shame the aliens did take my brain because I'd hardly ever used it and was thinking of selling it on ebay as new.

But my mindlessness is still taxed, hacked and pre-facted into uselessness from a poetry people plethora, so instead of words I'll blog two more of my assemblages, one less savory than most.

Some cringe at this one because it contains the front half of a dead turtle (upper right corner of alligator postcard), most of a dead flattened frog with leg bones showing (lower right corner of alligator postcard), and all of a small dead Florida lizard (lower right corner of piece). I conceived of this as road kill stew, so added my baby spoon and fork from 1946 in case the viewer gets hungry. I love to use non-electrical interactive material that changes as people walk by - like 3-D postcards, glitter, mirror shards, etc. The blues are from my liquid copper corrosion creation, while the grays are from my mixture of aluminum powder and acrylic polymer.

This is supposed to be a low space orbit radio station for Bird (aka Charlie Parker). Used hologram of a skull, mirrors, costume jewelry, copper corrosion and aluminum powder.

Been a long nine days.

Spent three days cleaning out our second bedroom so the Nepali poet Yuyutsu Ram Dass Sharma could stay with us for 10 days. The room was where we'd put anything that didn't go anywhere when we moved in - like 60 big boxes containing 4,552 VHS videos of movies from 1894 through 2006 - so it was a serious mess.

Then Yuyu arrived Wednesday and we had his featured readings Wednes and Thurs night.

Friday we took him to artist Chiplis' found neon studio, then over to musician Peter Ball's so he could record his poetry, then to two art openings that night.

Saturday one of his fans (a Maoist Zen Buddhist) took him around town. Saturday night we went to a potluck party at an artist/poets, and then his Maoist took him out to a concert.

Yesterday we gave a potluck party for him. Had at least 30 poets and artists and a few civilians here, which was interesting since we have seating for nine. It was a marvelous gathering with one great poet after another popping up performing their work in a 45 minute round robin of unscheduled poetry.

Today take him to a laundromat, then drop him off at Peter's so they can finish their music/poetry jam session. Thursday we'll take him out to Lady's folks for Thanksgiving.

Wednesday isn't covered yet, but I think I'm just going to ignore everyone because I'm not a people person; normally 1 or 2 people a month is more than enough for me and so far this week there's been at least 100.

Lady's talking of turning our second bedroom into a poet's residency, having traveling poets come through and stay a week at a time. A great concept for networking, but it obviously entails being with more people which in my book is pre-paid Purgatory time, by which I mean each social gathering is suffering for me so I figure all my social suffering during life on this Earth counts as time already suffered so that same amount of time will be deducted from my time in Purgatory.

Of course this doesn't do me much good because both Hell and Purgatory are here and now in this life on Earth, and I don't really believe in Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, or this Earth.

The bottom line - we gave temporary sanctuary to a traveling poet from Nepal who sold enough of his books (he has eight) to cover this leg of his journey, we had our first party in our new digs, we've shown the cream of the poetic crop here in Cleveland our artistic and poetic chops (though most were already aware), and we set up an infrastructure for traveling to Nepal as performing poets as soon as we can afford the air fare.

If this keeps up, I'm going to have to join Hermits Anonymous.

Gotta put on my party smile, we have a potluck party with an unknown unknowable number of artists poets and such. Party sprang unprepared from our foreheads at Yuyutsu's reading Wednesday night and we just blurted it out. If I'm lucky, no one will show; if not, knot.

Not sure my party smile works anymore; think I out-wore it last night at another poet/artist's poet artist potluck party and I don't know if it was designed for use two days in a row.

Back to the art fart park.

(Have to blog quickly while Lady's out jogging, before she comes back and takes my computer to do paying work. This loss of my umbilical cord computer and internet access is driving me bug fucky).

Lady and I have 90+ pieces of art by dead Mother Dwarf Smith, dead brother Cat Smith, live wife Lady K Smith and me Smith Smith displayed in eight room/nook/crannies of our apartment in 30-some installations. We walk from gallery display thru gallery display to gallery display to eat sleep shave bathe defecate in beneath around between art - art brut, art primitive, art outside the barcode box.

Here are five more.

Used a dead bird skeleton and some bird skulls found on the roof plus a couple chicken heads from the West Side Market. From life to death - the journey we're all on

This was done on an embroidery circle. It is a riff on Einstein's saying that God doesn't play dice with our universe. I suspect there's a lot of dice playing going on.

"Regardless of my credit experience, I WANT" - sums up America, sums up religion, sums up too many of us.

Mom (Mother Dwarf) put a bunch of metal on a plate and fired it in her kiln. She didn't like the results so asked me if I would finish it. I added my liquid copper corrosion and some diffraction grating paint to make it shimmer. The title refers to the moon being made of green cheese.