8/10/2019 The Last Word 12/2014

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-last-word-122014 1/4

 he Last Word

™

Issue #483 December 2014

News of my devastating diagnosis

 Nyews!

Since The Last Word has become more of a humor zine since its comeback, I’d like to regale you withthe devastating medical news I received a few weeks ago.

I have hyocobalaminemia, which has caused severe, irreversible damage to my central nervous system.See what a funny zine this is"aybe one of these days, I’ll fall because of my

hyocobalaminemia, and you’ll laugh some more. #r  erhas I’ll sli and accidentally ull down my bookshelf onto myself, and I’ll mistake actually beingcrushed with the crushing feeling that comes withhyocobalaminemia. $hen you can guffaw yourself silly.

$hat’s what’s in store now that I’ve contracted

hyocobalaminemia. %et it %et it %et it &ontracted!I’m a writer! 'ike a writing contract! (ahaha!

 Now I face a future of ickles tasting vaguelylike board games, but at least now I have a diagnosisthat makes sense. $he crushing sensation, the burning inmy feet, the electric shock feeling, the loss of motor skills)severe and irreversible all, but now roerly diagnosed. "y hang gliding career is destroyed.

I long ago became accustomed to the idea that)thanks to the *ar +ight)this is an era and locale of shattered dreams. e lead lives of hard work and little reward. ill my diagnosis force me to retire all my regular activities *or most eole, it would. -ut for me, don’t bet on it, because get a ob. -isho -rossart (igh Schoolcalled me lazy to my face)which wasn’t true, but it ust shows that I have to ush myself much harder thansoiled rich kids who were held u as models of industriousness, even though no evidence has ever surfaced of 

them doing any real work. "y ursuit of hard work is ingrained./s my disorder has rogressed, I am now facing the inevitable sunset of my life. I trust that when the sad

day finally comes, others will continue to try to bend the arc of history back to its natural state of rogress and ustice, as I have been long committed to doing.

Some spaning new graffiti

In conservaworld, chasing someone into traffic in front of 'a +u -owling 'anes is considered residential material, while far less serious offenses are considered the crime of the century.

#nce again, someone has osted hotos on a local *acebook age documenting graffiti that has afflictedtheir roerty. It’s the worst crime ever to haen in the history of the universe! $he resonse was uroariously redictable. /s is usually the case whenever someone reorts some misbehavior like this, somebody relied,

01eole need to start sanking their kids again!2 3ou mean everyone stoed$his is roughly the same resonse that eole have trotted out for 45 years)maybe longer. Now folks

who weren’t even born yet when eole started comlaining that kids weren’t getting sanked enough aresreading this oinion. It’s always a barrel of laughs when someone on the Internet who is half my age startslecturing me that they got sanked in their day and that it’s a shame that young folks like me aarently weren’tsanked enough.

-ut in this wacky oblast we call the real world, the graffiti vandalism was robably committed by some678year8old. $oday’s tiny tots aren’t interested in anything that doesn’t re9uire fancy handheld electronic gadgets.+emember the kid in school who used to do things like write 0&##'2 ne:t to +onald +eagan on the oster in theclassroom with all the 1residents $hat kid is grown now. #ur generation thought writing on rohibited surfaceswas neat, and some never develoed the maturity to outgrow it. riting on things bores today’s youth.

8/10/2019 The Last Word 12/2014

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-last-word-122014 2/4

I’m actually surrised I haven’t seen some reactionary weirdo blame 1resident #bama yet for the vandalism)like how they absurdly blamed him for the boorish behavior e:hibited by folks recently at our local $hanksgiving marathon, at which eole wasted food and threw bo:es.

+ight now, there’s robably a middle8aged adult in this area whohas kids in college, who’s getting their hide tanned by their mommy wholives in a nursing home for all that graffiti they recently did.

I uncovered a scam!

$he union I belong to has a groovy webage where members cansign u and let eole hire them for writing gigs. I signed u for thishiring hall so ees can hire me.

-ut there’s always someone out there trying to take advantage of hard8working folks like me./ coule weeks ago, I got an e8mail from someone who aeared to be looking to hire a writer to write a

 iece on international violence for a seminar. I was looking fiveward to this ob. I told him what rate I wouldcharge, and whether it would be er word or er age. Soon I estimated it would be ; ages and gave him a er8 age rate.

(e asked how much the total rice would be)as if he was too dumb to figure it out by multilying myrate by ;. I thought he was ust an idiot who didn’t know how to do math and had accidentally droed his See<N’ Solve calculator in the toilet. I’ve had e8mail e:changes with some real morons over the years. I don’t

necessarily mean imbeciles of the militant right8wing variety like the aid trolls who sam newsaer commentwebages. I’m talking about folks who try to ortray themselves as semiliberal, but I can’t figure out what theywant from me, and they eventually give u, lamenting my itchfork8waving oulism or my alleged

incometence. $he latter comlaint is articularly tenuous, because I’ve been fairlycometent in all of the many roects I’mknown for. #ccasionally, I’ve been subectedto the famous laint, 0-ut our side doesn’tstoo to the enemy’s level lololol.2 3es wedo sometimes)if we want our side to gainany lasting olitical arity.

/nyhow, back to this writing gig.

/fter I erformed my client’s mathcalculation for him and gave him an estimateof how much the ob would cost, he asked toknow my full name and street address. $hatraised a red flag. So I relied that I’d need toknow more about the assignment and who Iwas dealing with before releasing this info.

(e resonded, 0so tell me what doyou want to know.2

I ust told you what I want to know,genius.

I knew right then that this guy was a

scam 0artist.2 =ust to make sure, I looked uhis e8mail address on the Internet, and sureenough, I saw it listed on a website listing eole who try to defraud writers by stealingtheir work.

$hat was the end of that ob offer.$he most seemingly lucrative offer 

I’ve had in ages turned out to be an out8and8out fraud. $hat’s because /merica today has a crime8based economy.+emember the >nron scandal +emember the stock market boom of the <?5s If you think all Street in the <?5sgot so rich due to ethical business ractices, you’re even more gullible than *o: News thinks. @ind of like the eole who think the +eublicans didn’t rig the election.

I’m lucky I didn’t take my chances and write the iece I was hired to write and then not get aid for it) 

and become a victim of identity theft too. /uthorities won’t even go after the unseemly scoundrels who sent out

8/10/2019 The Last Word 12/2014

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-last-word-122014 3/4

that comuter virus a few years ago that made eole ay them to kee using their own comuter)even thoughwe know who did it. /nd credit card comanies are in on that scam, since they won’t reverse the charges. So whatmakes you think they’ll bust some greedy fartie trying to steal from union writers It’s a damn good thing wehave the union, because think how little recourse we’d have if we were nonunion.

 Needless to say, it isn’t only fly8by8night criminals who are riing us off. It’s the big ublishing housestoo. #ne writer reorts that she was asked by an unsecified ublication to write a A,7558word article for onlyB75. Ironically, the toic of the aer was...labor e:loitation. 1lus, %oogle /dSense still owes me the moneythey cheated me out of years ago.

&onservaworld means roductive eole are seldom roerly comensated)while cororations andassorted loudmouths and hacks rake in the real dough. *or e:amle, +ush 'imbaugh signed an C8year contract

worth B655 million, which works out to B75 million a year)while the average erson in my town was making a altry BAD,555 a year. "eritocracy is a dirty word in -ush/merica.

"en dairy was scary

“Michael, we’re not gonna fight about this, OK?” 

“Paul, I think I told you, the milk is warm” 

$o kee a lack of vitamin -AE from worsening my hyocobalaminemia, I’m buying milk again, and it’swonderful!

I’ve always felt guilty about criticizing milk, because in my day, milk ket milk on the table. *or years,milk did a number F7G on my digestive tract, thanks to lactose intolerance)but the ros of milk outweigh the

cons. >ventually, however, I stoed buying milk, because it was often soiled. I first noticed this right after +eagan seized ower, and the roblem ket getting worse and worse over the years. >ventually, odds becamegreater than 75H75 that if you urchased mill8mill at the store, it would be sour and undrinkable)even if it waswell within the e:iration date.

I think it was in the early <?5s, when I still lived at home, that it assed the 75H75 threshold. It didn’t helthat once during that era, we buyed a ug of milk on which somebody at the store had already written, 0-ad.Stale.2 #ne day, we got a carton of milk that was so rancid that I took a marker and wrote on it, 0$astes like cow baste.2

1lus, our refrigerator didn’t work roerly, so even if our mill8mill was fresh when we buyed it, it becamewarm and risked soilage. I would warn the rest of my family about it by singing, 0$he milk is warm...$hedoggone milk is warm,2 to the tune of the "ichael =ackson and 1aul "c&artney song 0$he %irl Is "ine.2

$he only times in recent years I’ve urchased milk is when family members who know best insisted on it.

-ut I’ve noticed over the ast 7 or ; years that one articular store chain no longer seems to deal in soiled milk. -e stillmy beating heart, it’s all fresh! I’m not going to name thisstore, because I don’t want to give out free advertising, and Idon’t want them to take notice and start eeing in their milk  ust to lay mind games with me. $he fact that they stoedselling soiled milk roves they know what was causing itto soil)so now there’s no e:cuse for anyone to sell rottenmilk.

/nother factor in my decision to buy milk again wasthe fact that the store now carries whole  chocolate milk again, like they used to decades ago before /merica’s skim

milk fetish ruined everything. Skim milk is more like skimwater. >ven /ndy +ooney did a iece comlaining aboutthis.

$he all8knowing ikiedia e:oses the sad truth of skim milk. / E55D niversity of (awaii study says lowfatmilk carries an increased risk of rostate cancer)whilewhole milk decreases  the risk. $his of course was never reorted by $he "edia. $he ikiedia entry on skim milk also says that -ritish whole milk is a lot wholer than/merican whole milk)6J versus 4.E7J. In fact, until afew years ago, >uroean nion countries did not allow AJ0milk2 to even be labeled as milk)but cororate lobbying

Ffor which the > was tailor8madeG changed that. It’s AJ for 

8/10/2019 The Last Word 12/2014

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-last-word-122014 4/4

the AJ! 1lus, when I was in college, I had a rofessor who was from &olombia, and she said that in her homeland, all milk is whole milk.

/ll that said, the only milk I’m ever buying again will be whole milk. If I wanted lowfat, I’d mi: milk with water. "ost /merican school cafeterias haven’t distributed whole milk in E5 years, so you can bet your  bizcream that today’s children will suffer an increased risk of vitamin deficiencies.

30 years$ sti%% no &ustice

Kecember A4 will mark the 45 th anniversary of "y Lery *irst Susension, and)desite the humorousmanner that eole have e:ected me to tell the story year after year)the lack of unishment for the real culrits

is no laughing matter. If the worst thing that came of it for me was missing the field tri to &incinnati "ilacron, Icould live it down by now, but noe.

$hirty years is a mighty long time to wait for ustice. I remember early in this zine’s history writing abouthow it had been A5 years, but 45 is absolutely ridiculous. $ime asses, but the thirst for ustice rightly remains.

I’m modest about my volumes I ublished through 'ulu. I don’t mention them even to folks on my*acebook list or eole I meet in erson. -ut let’s ut it this wayM $he green book got back at the assholes. -igtime. 1robably cost E school administrators their obs.

$hat’s been my high water mark so far, but it’s not enough. $here needs to be criminal prosecutions.+acketeering seems like the most fitting charge.

0>lected2 officials in &ambell &ounty should resign or face arrest unless they suort rosecution for these crimes. 1lus, if they don’t favor rosecution, these officials also have to own that these are their standards of conduct. -y not suorting criminal charges, they are suorting organized violence. "y Lery *irst Susension

was really ust one of the first significant rounds in the years of reeated right8wing assaults lobbed against me.1unish the ers, or I will.

&oyright E5A6. /ll rights reserved.