Raise Less Corn, More Hell

Getting better all the time.

 Here is your presumably 10th rendition of Mi Mamacita Communista, or Things My Mother Taught Me, which I first wrote for May Day 2008, shortly before the country found its mind and elected the smart nice Black guy, and started serializing I guess in 2012, when I bought this joint. Some different things have happened since then! I no longer think Stalin was hilarious, and it turns out Daniel Ortega is not that awesome of a Nicaraguan president, so that's upsetting. But after last year's rendition featured "global pandemic" and "President Trump," well, once again the country has found its mind. It only ever takes absolute world-on-fire catastrophe to set a slim majority straight. 

And the things, they are getting better. A weekend — 17 weekends? — ago, I went to Detroit for my little brother's college graduation from U of M. At some point, my hard Berner brother looked at me, and with a Tucker Carlson golden retriever face, asked, unprompted: "Becca: Joe Biden .... GOOD????"

So far, God willing and the creek don't rise.

 Love your mother — and your brother. 

And so today is May Day! We can have — or heave! — a cocktail for the working man. We can put on Our Marching Zapatos of Ocupado Justice! We can do lots and loads of things! But me, I'm missing mi mamacita communista. She didn't die or anything, she just retired and moved back to Oklahoma, where they still (unaccountably) haven't burned her for a witch.

These are things my mother taught me.

* The dog can drink out of the pool.

* It's best if the babies are naked.

* Protesting is fun! Marching is better!

* It is our patriotic duty to cuss loud and creatively. Lenny Bruce wants us to stick it to the squares. For America. And the children.

* Good names for America's pets and children include Rosie, Emma, Fidel and Diego, and any of her children who don't comply will have their kids' and pets' names changed unilaterally. Rodents should be named after baked goods.

* The best name for getting arrested under while demonstrating is Emma Goldman.

* Good places to get arrested are the Nevada Test Site, Diablo Canyon, and the mean streets of Thousand Oaks, California, during Gulf War 1.

* Bad places to get arrested are on warrants for failure to appear.

* All the words to "Union Maid."

* Contra Barbara Ehrenreich, it is perfectly acceptable to pay a lady to clean your house. You just have to pay her three times the going rate, and you may not use the sort of slave agency that can afford to advertise in the Yellow Pages. You must find a lady via reference or supermarket bulletin board.

* C-Span is a joy and a privilege.

* UNION!

*Do not stand around doing nothing if someone else is working. This applies equally to camp-outs and the lady cleaning your house.

* High levels of wealth may be forgiven if they are spent on cliffside or canyon Modernist homes.

* How to make freeway offramp banners out of bed sheets and shelf liners.

* How to choose a losing candidate.

* The names of a high proportion of local flowers and trees.

* The "Hail Mary."

* The "Our Father."

* Liberation Theology.

* All 15 stanzas of "The Cremation of Sam McGee."

* There's no need to hold a grudge for more than a couple of hours, unless your friend is 100 percent right and you are 100 percent wrong, in which case you may stay angry for the next 15 years.

* Blame America first!

* Un pueblo unido … can never be divided!

* I should not wear whore shoes. (She finally gave up on that.)

* Good places to pick fights are at parties and in line at the grocery store.

* There is never an inappropriate time to talk politics.

* DO NOT fail to appear.

* Fun fact! Ronald Wilson Reagan = 666

* George H.W. Bush: Not much better!

* Also, April Glaspie totally told Saddam we didn't care if he went into Kuwait.

* Seriously, that whole war was based on LIES.

* You know, as opposed to this last one.

* I would regret my Nader vote like she regretted hers for Eldridge Cleaver.

* Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

* No, really, I am not allowed to vote for Ralph Nader.

* WHAT DID SHE TELL ME!

* UNION!

* Read "Catch-22." A good place to do this is on the sand at Hermosa Beach in 1966.

* Read "Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit."

* Read Mother Jones and the Utne Reader.

* Read "A Prayer For Owen Meany."

* Read Evelyn Waugh and the sainted Miss Ivins.

* Erma Bombeck was funny too. No, really, she was!

* Read Eda LeShan, and take her childrearing tips to heart. Forgive yourself if you snap and smack your kid, but it's a lot better to do it because you're out of control than if it's in-control and premeditated. Also, kiss your husband or wife before your kids when you get home from work, because the best thing you could possibly give your kids is parents who are happy and in love.

* Read e.e. cummings, Bukowski, and Thompson. The best way to do this is out loud at the dinner table. Also, the scene in "Tracks" where someone takes a shit on Louise Erdrich's pillow.

* Reading trashy romance novels is giving me a skewed vision of life, and I will never marry and will always be sad.

* I should marry an ugly guy. He will love me.

* I should do my son's homework for him but make him watch. Eventually he will pick it up by osmosis.

* It is better to have a kid who cusses than a little prig who goes "ooooh I'm telling" when someone else does.

* If you don't take your kids to parties and restaurants and concerts and galleries and city council meetings, you are loosing an idiot on the world.

* That entails making them behave. Princes and princesses reflect badly. On YOU.

* A little violence never hurt anybody, so there's no reason not to take a three-year-old to see Lethal Weapon 4.

* Weed will save you from alcoholism.

* There will come a day when I no longer look cute on a barstool.

* How to make a martini.

* How to clean a kitchen.

* How to do all her phone-treeing for the Democratic Club meeting.

* How to use chopsticks.

* Water is life.

* My plants are screaming in anguish.

* If I don't water my plants, she is going to take them away, because I do not deserve to own plants.

* Also, my dog.

* And my son.

* Whom she will rename Fidel.

* Both of them.

* If people start with their overwrought bitching about STALIN! And 20 MILLION DEAD! don't bother to respond about the Butcher of Santiago making Chile safe for capitalism, and our complicity in the Disappeared, or about any of our other complicities (even Iraq). Just point and laugh.

* The Contras really shouldn't have raped those nuns.

* Roberto D'Aubuisson really shouldn't have assassinated Archbishop Romero and Che.

* Ronald Reagan really shouldn't have committed treason by sending George Bush pere to Paris before he was elected to promise the Iranians missiles should they be kind enough to keep our hostages just a little bit longer.

*No, Ollie North did not look "sexy" in his uniform, Jesus Christ.

* Viva Sandino!

* Viva Chavez!

* Viva Fidel!

* It's okay, I can love Jimmy Carter if I want.

* Too bad about Ronald Reagan's treason and all.

* How to pronounce "primer," as in a schoolbook: short i.

* How to pronounce "mauve": long o.

* There are UFOs in Topanga.

* Just because you are driving a crappy old Geo Metro does not mean you are friendless, as the crabby cop who kicks your 57-year-old schoolteacher ass will discover when the former head of Amnesty International and the legal director of the ACLU takes your case.

* The Southern California ACLU got its start in San Pedro, after Upton Sinclair got arrested for reading the First Amendment out loud on Liberty Hill.

* UNION!

* Serious people don't care if a boycott's "over" or "doesn't exist."

* Brown rice, not white.

* If you love Martin Luther King in 1961 Oklahoma, boys in your high school will threaten to "make you dead."

* Down with Whitey.

* And the Man.

* And most women too!

* When your kid has to write an essay on What the Flag Means to Him, and you are writing it for him just like she told you to, be sure to include The Right To Burn It.

* Why are you leaving out the best part?

* She knew you were going to leave out the best part.

* Idiot.

* Love your mother.

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