Beetlemania

June 1998

Although I am surely no expert on buggery—actually, I think that’s entomology—I have had a lot of experience with June Bugs, no matter that they were all crammed into those carefree years between four and twelve.

Annually appearing in—yes, you guessed it—June, they glutted the Charleston air, buzzing like emasculated bees around our heads, occasionally knocking themselves goofy in the process.

June Bugs, of the family Melolonthidae, or June Beetles, or fin gators, as my mother used to call them, were everywhere in those days.

Just in case you may not know, or even care, what I’m talking about, June Bugs are inch-long beetle-like bugs with hard greenish shells, iridescent, horizontally strated stomachs, one set of wings and six legs. They, in fact, look a great deal like dung beetles who have shed their campy horns and cleaned up their acts—literally. They are totally harmless, though of course, in those days girls were terrified of them (or at least pretended to be for traditional purposes), and if you were quick enough to pick one up while it was recovering from its immovable object-induct stupor, all it would do was just crawl up your arm. They, for that matter, never seemed in a hurry to resume their airborne status, perhaps eventually associating it with pain, discomfort, and disorientation, or making a common sense decision that is obviously a lot safer to simply walk.

Although in human retrospect, I realize that these minute entities undoubtedly have a divinely programmed purpose, the general consensus in those days was that they were here for the personal enjoyment of us humans. And that enjoyment, as the tradition was passed down from one sadistic generation to the next, came from tying a string around one of the helpless bug’s legs and letting him try to fly away, giving the triumphant holder a sort of one inch living dive bomber. This somewhat macabre pastime, no doubt similar to those played by Hitler and Ted Bundy in their youths, could go on for hours, or until one or the other tired, the June Bug smashed into something, or in the most gruesome case scenario, the bug broke free of its fiendish mooring, leaving its tied leg still attached to the string, which floated grotesquely back to earth, while its erstwhile captor planned for a five point landing in a less hostile environment.

I, myself, never indulged in this barbaric recreation; I only observed from a (gutless) viewpoint, as my young friends and relatives reveled in this appalling air show.

I did like to sort of collect them (June Bugs, not relatives and friends) for other ostensibly more humane purposes. But perhaps more importantly, I did always release them once they had done my bidding.

At times, I just kept them in a jar with holes punched in the lid and observed them for a few hours through a pseudo-scientific stare, before letting them fly away, but mostly, since I also collected miniature toy soldiers. (My God, that’s why my brain has been deteriorating faster than Robert Downey Jr.’s—I got lead poisoning from those damned things.) I used the June Bugs in semi-live animated military dioramas.

I would set up my soldiers in a formidable defensive posture and then dump about 40-50 June Bugs on them. It would be “The Invasion of the Giant Killer June Bugs.” The soldiers would be knocked down into the dirt, (I was only allowed to perform my reenactments alfresco) accompanied by self-provided sound effects:

1. “Arrgghh, look out!”
2. “It’s got my head, Sarge!”
3. “Run for your lives, men!”
4. “Oh, my God, it’s eating my liver!”
5. “Brat-a-tat-tat! Look out, Joe! I’ll get him!”
6. “Oh, God have mercy!”
7. “My arm, my arm!”
8. “What arm?”
9. “Call in the artillery!”
10. “Baroom!”

All this ended tragically one day, when I, infused with a sudden rush of creativity, decided to re-enact a naval battle scenario, using my June Bugs as able but oddly shaped seamen. I placed them on some of my wooden battleships and destroyers, floating in a large metal tub, then began my devastating air bombardment of dropping pebbles into the water to effect bomb geysers.

“Eeeyow! Eeeyow!” (propeller-driven aircraft, of course) the battle raged on, with the pebble bombs sending up four inch geysers near the defenseless vessels. The June Bug sailors withstood the withering attack until a pebble inadvertently made a direct hit. No one was crushed by the errant missile, but most regrettably, some were either knocked overboard by the concussion or just decided to abandon ship.
“Man overboard! Man overboard!”

I quickly gathered up the luckily buoyant victims and placed them all on the ground. All but one, the captain, who was distinguished by his superior size and quickly vanishing water-colored-on white sash, began crawling away as fast as their little legs could move.

Realizing that I may have even transcended the inhumanity of ripping off a Melolonthidaeic leg, I made a redeeming attempt by trying something I had seen in the movies: artificial resuscitation.

No, I didn’t try mouth to mandible, but wrongly surmising that June Bugs had lungs just as humans do, I used light finger pressure in hope of discharging some of the life-strangling liquid. Not being aware that this was essentially impossible with an exoskeletal, lungless animal, and seeing no apparent re-effect, I applied a bit more force, with calamitous results.

I will spare a description of the grisly scene, but needless to say, I had not saved my captain’s life. I had, though, ended his suffering, while, of course, simultaneously initiating mine.

Who was I to meddle with Mother Nature? June Bugs, like butterflies, were meant to fly free, not risk their already ephemeral existence in my Little Theatre of the Obtuse. Perhaps, I could justify the involuntary introduction of a cockroach into such a macabre production, but not so harmless a harbinger of springtime as a June Bug. At least, if I had left him a pentapod with a jerk of my sting, he could have escaped, but no, I had to impose my puerile but Demienesque will upon God’s delicate balance.

I never captured any more June Bugs after that life-altering event. In fact, for a few summers, I was a one-man Save-the-June-Bug movement, cutting the strings of unsuspecting fliers (as long as the flier was smaller than I was), flipping stunned bugs right-side-up, pulling them out of perilous puddles, even extricating them from the web-draped parlors of spiders.

With the gradual lifting of the onerous boulder of contribution from my weary soul, I eventually returned to my normal pre-adolescent life, such as it was.

Sometimes I reminisce about my days as a producer-director of June Bugs Productions and torment myself not only with vestige of guilt, but with the searing question, “Had it not been for the tragic backyard naval disaster, would I have been called up on the stage last March at the Academy Awards Ceremony?”

“And the winner for directing in the category of short subject films with an all bug/insect cast is Bob Coskrey for ‘Beetlemania’!”

Politicopathology – A Cure in Our Lifetime?

June 1992-

Suddenly, the horror struck me! I had been reading the exasperated quotations of some of the present and former US Congressmen, and various other courtiers, vampires and land remoras of the Washington environment published recently in the Post & Courier:

“I gave up a good job as s county executive with good pay to come up here in the middle of all this. I could be playing golf this afternoon, if I was home.”

“If you can’t have a private elevator and be able to cash checks, I really don’t see any reason to go through this rigmarole.”

“You might as well be in Des Moines.”

“It might as well be Albany.”

No more interest-free loans, unlimited restaurant tabs, free parking, post office services, medical care or tropical plants from the national botanical gardens, no more discount vacations and haircuts, no more endless boozing and womanizing. The party’s over, the good times are no longer rolling, and our capital offenders want to come home. They many not even wait for us to vote them out of office.

Sure, they’re a worthless bunch of overstuffed, over-staffed, smug, arrogant, conscience-less, bombastic, narcissistic, megalomaniacal blowhards, who last year had the temerity to vote themselves a 40 percent raise on the backs of their under-employed constituents. As one of their enraged constituents, I’d like to bring back the 18th Century practice of tarring and feathering and ride the whole pack of them out of Washington on a 500-foot, barbed-wire entwined rail.

But the question we must ask ourselves is: Do we want these people back in our home towns? Do we want these debauched and morally-retarded individuals, these Charles Mansons in Brooks Brothers suits, these pontificating percolators lurking and loping through our communities again?

Do we want these marauding miscreants turned loose upon us? Are we willing to endure dramatic local crime rate increases just to get them out of Washington? Will we gain an ironic but valuable insight into why Washington’s crime rate is so high? And, perhaps the most critical question of all, do we want to increase our population of practicing attorneys?

If they do come home—whether they’re defeated at the polls or return voluntarily—I feel that citizens must take steps to protect themselves. If these individuals meted out evil during their reign of tenure in our capital, surely they will behave just as atrociously at home. We must have some method of identifying them. Perhaps we could start with their license tags on which they are so fond of displaying single-digit numbers. So we’ll oblige them with the assignment of a number one, but prefixed by the words “Public Enemy.” Forehead branding, maybe, is a bit too cruel, but possibly a small hand tattoo of “MR,” standing for “misrepresentative” would be appropriate.

Of course, we can’t be too telescopic in directing our disapprobation toward the US House of Representatives members and their multifarious collaborators and enablers. Republicans, salivating in puddles of self-righteousness, are pointing damning fingers at the scrambling Democrats. But the only reason there are more Democratic malefactors is because there are more Democrats than Republicans in Congress, and the Democrats have had 77 years of majority rule to finely hone their iniquitous skills.

The problem, I’m afraid, runs much deeper than party affiliation or political philosophy and the national electorate will gradually witness the gruesome machinations of all aspects of government—national, state and local—as the seismic faults of revelation spread.

I think the problem can be traced to similar personality traits in persons who enter politics.

Politicos may espouse different agendas, be pro or con on various issues, or have contrasting deep-seated feelings and thoughts about the means to effect their respective ends, but they all seem to have certain common personality traits:

1. An indestructible, messianic ego. No matter how much they are vilified by the press and their opponents, no matter how easily they become joke fodder for comedians and the general public, no matter what stupid things they say, lies they are caught in, or handshakes they are refused, they keep coming at us like the relentless zombies in “The Night of the Living Dead” tirelessly repeating the same phrase, “I am the best man for the job.” This egoism is often manifested in blatantly arrogant behavior. (See John Sununu under definition of “arrogance” in 1992, Merriam-Webster Dictionary.)
2. A superhuman ability to avoid giving a “yes” or “no” response to any question, even when threatened by bodily harm or even death, though the latter inducement has not actually been tried often enough.
3. An inexplorable willingness to do or say anything in order to get elected (or reelected) to office. For example, visit a chicken processing plant, wear stupid looking hats, ride in a tank, shake hands with people one normally ignores or avoids, or feign a sincere interest in various kinds of snack foods, music or lifestyle behavior that makes one look just like “plain folk.” Does President Bush really believe we think he loves country music and eats pork rinds?
4. An extraordinary ability to fool most of the people all of the time and all of the people most of the time, while smiling.
5. The God-like gift of rendering to the truth a degree of malleability or even making it obsolete (e.g., renaming taxes “revenue enhancements,” making statements “no longer operative,” explaining that the only bounced checks you ever wrote at the House Bank were to charities or to buy stones to put around the Virgin Mary shrine in your backyard).
6. An inability to feel remorse or accept responsibility for ones actions. (e.g., “I never received a single overdraft notice.” “I stand on my record.” “Everybody did it.” “I never inhaled.”).
7. Chameleonic acting ability. Able to adapt themselves to specific environments and to convince the audience that they are share their ideas and concerns. “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
8. Disarming, meretricious, charm. (e.g., “I am mighty proud to be here in (fill in the blank), the greatest state in the US of A.” “I’m just a humble country boy.” “I just wanna help you.”)
9. Almost terminal scruple deficiency. (e.g., “So what if my check to the Girl Scouts bounced, their cookies aren’t that good anyway.”)
10. An incredible knack for attracting unscrupulous, mean-spirited, viperfish and weasel-like creatures as campaign managers and aides. (e.g., any presidential campaign manager.)

It’s my feeling that all politicians have these characteristics, and in fact, I will go so far as to say these attitudes and behaviors make up what should be classified in the DSM (Diagnostic and Dtatistical Manual, used by mental health professionals) as a Politicopathic Personality Disorder.

To assure ourselves and our progeny protection from these people, it should be a law that anyone seeking public office must first undergo a psychological evaluation. Anyone diagnosed with this disorder will not be allowed to run for office.

Just as we would not want a paranoid schizophrenic as a policeman, we don’t want a politicopath as a public office holder. Of course, there will be an option for treatment, and after having conferred with a local psychiatrist, whom I occasionally run into on a weekly basis, together with what valuable information I have gleaned from Doctors “Ruth,” Brothers and Joy Brown over the years, I have developed what I believe to be an appropriate mode of treatment—“Humility Therapy.” This treatment would simply require the aspiring office holder to live as a normal, law-abiding, perkless human being for a year. He or she would have to get a real job, drive his own car or use public transportation, balance a checkbook, use the post office to mail or receive letters only, pay for parking, pay interest on loans, and fork out market prices on medical care, haircuts, meals and vacations. Those completing the therapy would be permitted to run for office.

Election winners could be required to maintain this mundane lifestyle during their entire term of office, since they would always be considered “recovering,” not “recovered” politicopaths.

And while we’re purging and normalizing the behavior of the current incumbents, there is one penultimate, incongruent, insulting and craw-constricting amenity I’d like to eradicate: No longer will they be routinely referred to by their constituents as “The honorable,” or allowed to refer to one another as “my distinguished” or “my estemmed” colleague.

In the future we’ll not tolerate listening to some windbag introduce, via C-Span, one of his check-kiting perk-masters as “my distinguished colleague, good friend and eminent statesman from the great state of (fill in the blank).”

In addition to the ongoing Humility Therapy, it will be incumbent upon all incumbents to receive daily doses of Value Inculcation Therapy:
1. He/she must be able to recite, verbatim, Jimmy Stewart’s speech from “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
2. He/she must watch “Mr. Rogers” each afternoon and write a report at week’s end explaining how Mr. Rogers helped him/her to be a better public servant.

Though some of what I am suggesting may seem a little drastic, the actions and attitudes of these politicopaths warrant drastic measures. I wonder: should I start with the county council and work up, or with the presidency and work down?