If you really need to see an example of the disintegration of political discourse over the past 20 years, it’s been the fact that political opponents constantly accuse each other of being like Hitler. Someone proposes changing the tax rate and they’re compared to mein Fuhrer. Someone suggests relaxing business regulation and they’re suddenly on par with the great fascist dictator of the 20th century.

I would argue that to combat this we should reclaim Hitler’s name by only using it when a person possesses some of Hitler’s positive traits. For example…

“You’re like Hitler! You have a strong affection for dogs and other animals.”

“You’re like Hitler! You possess great powers of oration and persuasion!”

“You’re like Hitler! You are an artist of middling talent and have a very unique mustache.”

“You’re like Hitler! You would like to eradicate the Jewish menace.”

You know… keep it positive.

Yesterday, while riding the train, I saw a large Hispanic dude who actually had the words “Fuck You” tattooed on the back of his head in gigantic letters.

I caught the train up to Los Angeles yesterday, and was reminded of this particularly awful brand of microwave pizza they serve on the train. It’s so bad that there’s actually something kind of appealing about it. It’s like, when you’re eating it, you’re reveling in how awful it is. It’s perhaps not that far off from the enjoyment one gets while watching a really awful movie. It seems like there should be a word to describe this, probably a German word. Something that captures the essence of both repulsion and attraction.

A friend of mine just noted in Facebook that he’d had to catch a bat that had gotten into his house. He reminded me of a similar experience I had at my dad’s house in Montana in my late teens. A bat got into the living room and was flying around. Finally we somehow threw a towel over it, and took it outside.

That reminded me of a time when I was a little kid in Montana, and I came across what was probably a dying bat. I hung out with him for several hours, I think perhaps feeding him something. And I recall a similar experience with some kind of mouse. I remember I made a little bed for him out of moss, and gave him some cheese. When I came out the next morning, he was gone.

What sort of baffles me about this is that my dad was letting me play with potentially rabid or diseased dying animals.

But I’m also struck by my total lack of the heebie-jeebies during those situations. Nowadays, if I came across a dying bat, I might be fascinating, but I would also be wary.

I used to catch snakes all the time too.

A while back, my brother was telling me about the strange career of author Jerzy Kozinski, most famous for writing “Being There.” Then Saleeby mentioned Kozinski’s book “The Painted Bird.” Then I happened to be looking at the bookshelf in the room I’m staying in and discovered a copy of “The Painted Bird.” I decided then and there that my long-held atheistic instincts were entirely wrong and there is a holy and grand force in the universe and it was ordering me to read “The Painted Bird.”

It’s a strange book. It’s about this kid (long rumored to be a stand-in for Kozinski) wandering around Eastern Europe during World War II. It’s essentially a series of vignettes, all of them quite horrible, involving torture, brutality, bizarre sex and everything else that makes books interesting to read. In my last session of reading, the kid got thrown into a big pool of feces, and then later was ordered by a farmer he was staying with to kill a rabbit. He knocks the rabbit over the head, starts skinning it, only to discover that the animal is still alive, and it starts running around the yard squealing horribly until the farmer axes it into a pile of gore. Oh, and by the way, the kid — who’s around 10 — is constantly performing cunnilingus on the farmer’s daughter who has a goiter.

That’s basically the book. An endless series of horrifying events.

But I have to say Kozinski really captures the brain of a child. This boy, always befuddled at the horrible events and tortures that befall him, tries to comprehend the kind of universe that would allow such things. First he seeks relief by using the gypsy spells is learned from some of the people that take care of him, but they don’t work. In the last couple chapters I’ve been reading, the kid tries Catholic prayer, but again to know avail (he basically gets rewarded by being thrown into the aforementioned pool of feces.) You can feel his frustration, and relate. I member when I was seven or eight, I came up with this theory that if you raised your middle finger to God, you had to apologize 20 times in order to negate the violation. Where did I come up with this? Who knows — I was a kid. Just like the protagonist in “The Painted Bird.”

Some may recall my concept of the digital vagabond. This is a person who essentially condenses as much of their life as they can down to a digital format, freeing themselves to be able to travel, untethered, as they please. They could digitize all their movies, books, work files, music and place them onto a laptop or tablet style computer. At that point, all that would really need to live would be a change of clothes, and some basic toiletries.

There is of course one concern about carrying all your files on a tablet computer. What if the computer gets stolen? It would really be ideal if the computer had some way of always authorizing who was using it. Now, it just occurred to me that since tablet computing is driven by touch, the computer could theoretically constantly served by the identity of the user via their fingerprints. Or, the computer could constantly be taking a camera view of the user and use face recognition technology.

Ideally, a tablet computer could be set so that if someone other than its owner attempted to use the computer, the tablet would release a stream of acid directly into the incorrect user’s face. Then, as that person screamed while their face melted off, the computer would take photographs of the process and post them on the web with a big warning that said “This is what happens to fuck jobs who try to use my computer.”

If there’s one food product that you would presume to be pretty much the same even amongst different manufacturers, I think it would be turkey slices. It’s basically turkey with some kind of salt infusion — how can one taste any different from another?

However, today I tried some turkey slices from supermarket chain Fresh & Easy. They were astoundingly good. The best turkey slices I’ve ever had.

These turkey slices are so good that were I able, I would marry them. And after I had married the turkey slices, I would dedicate my life to ensuring that they were satisfied sexually and had the emotional support they needed to flourish in life. That is how much I love these Fresh & Easy turkey slices.

Of course, we live in a society where one cannot marry slices of turkey. In fact, our misguided notions of morality allow no formal recognition of relationships between man and any kind of sliced deli meat. Thus, I weep for us all.

Well, I got my laptop back from the repair shop and it looks to be basically functional. So I think it’s fair to say the magic of My So-Called Penis will continue.

So, I am back in the U.S.A and all that. However, my laptop is currently in the shop and without access to a voice dictation capable computer my blogging has to be limited.

To tied you over: here’s an interesting article about Harold von Braunhut, the man behind several of the classic gimic items sold in comic books in the sixties and seventies including the infamous and pesty Sea Monkeys! Turns out he was a jewish neo-Nazi.

The general Aryan Nations view holds that Jewish people are directly descended from the devil. It seems clear that von Braunhut, who owned Nazi memorabilia and once said Hitler “just got bad press,” signed on to these beliefs. But one has to wonder what brought him to the point of nodding along when his friend Butler, for instance, described Jews as “the bacillus of the decomposition of our society.” Aryan Nations members might have been dismayed to hear that von Braunhut engaged a law firm called Friedman and Goodman early in his career. They might also have been puzzled that his name was listed on early patents as Harold N. Braunhut. The middle initial stands for Nathan. Harold von Braunhut was born and raised Jewish.

I should announce that I’m going to be on vacation in Morocco from Sunday (June 12) ’til June 30th. I’m not really sure how much blogging I’ll be doing (if any) but you – my loyal blog readers – will be in my thoughts.