The pretzel that almost changed the world, Randall Simon whacks a sausage, and the hand that didn't make either of them happen.

Weakend States by Miqual Corley - 2002 - 8" x 11.5"
playing card / typewriter text on a photocopy / magazine page/
 pastels / white-out /acrylic paint/ stamper ink/ pen

Our lives are a cosmic crap-shoot.  Nothing more nothing less.  Yes, experiences and events are many times the amazingly perfect sum whole of the parts, but those domino's weren't planned, arranged, and placed there by a hand in the sky. There's no Wizard pulling dials behind the curtain of burning bushes, stone tablets, and the conception of a holy child with no awkward moments of hitting the wrong hole or the cleanup of body fluids afterward that Hollywood films never seem to include either.  History is in many ways just the natural cycle of the universe as energy changes to matter and back to pure energy again in the constant yo-yo dance of potential vs kinetic states. And sometimes during that dance some truly unbelievable, and yet totally random things happen.  And once you can get past the natural human fear of this uncertainty and randomness, and give up on idea of the divine director, its then when you can truly look back and appreciate those moments in life where the simplest little difference in details had an exponentially grand effect on the totality of what was to come later. And at that point you can fully laugh at the absolute absurdity that the events that have such long reaching and serious consequences many times had such little significance or lack of a real creator and could really have gone either way.  That beautiful absurdity is one of the things that keeps me alive to want to see more of this shit go down.

We'll just assume this is the true story and he wasn't in fact
"Snortin' Whiskey" or else my whole story here is worthless

Let's revisit one of those key moments in history of which I speak, a moment in which everything that came after and things as we know them now would have been completely different if the variables involved were just the tiniest bit different. For those who know Corley-Pittsburgh lineage, I'm sure you assume I'm talking about the 1992 NL Championship Series and Francisco Cabrera's 2 run single with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th. On that play just a couple of inches made the difference between what looked at the moment to be a certain World Series appearance by the Pittsburgh Pirates and the chance for the Jim Leyland rebuilt era to claim their World Series and live up to the legends of the 70's, but instead became known as "The Slide" and the beginning point of 19 years of futility and what presently is the longest running streak of consecutive losing seasons in all of the 4 major professional sports leagues in America. Well actually, no, that wasn't the reference point I intended to use here, but god damn!! Think about it, with something as simple as just a little bit more dampness to the dirt, Sid Bream's run home is just that little bit slower and he's tagged out, and Bonds, Bonilla, Van Slyke would have returned the team to the glory days of Willie Stargell, "We are Family", and a sense of pride in city of Pittsburgh for it's baseball team (and for you cheap bastards out there, dreams of the return of the days of free chicken at "Chicken on the Hill with Will"!). Instead they went the complete opposite direction and turned into the team of the Tom Gorzelanny Middle Finger Bobblehead Doll giveaway, losing to Manatee Community College, and probably the single biggest cause of Iron City fueled domestic disputes over the last 2 decades besides Kordell Stewart and the brutally painful mediocrity of Dave Wannstedt.

Randall Simon whacks a sausage!

But getting back to what was planned to be my initial point of sarcasm to enter into a serious discussion, I was meaning to talk about the infamous George W. Bush vs. The Pretzel knockout battle I brought up earlier. While working on archiving old writing pieces, I recently found this scrap of typing I did years ago in response to the news of Mr Bush and his near brush with death:

 text by Miqual Corley - 2001

The piece was in fact was the impetus to a zine of sarcastic pieces that I was going to do with my "muse" at the time, and several pieces were in fact produced for it.  That's her handwriting at the bottom...spooky to say the least. Never did finish the zine though as is typical of the time of our lives when we encounter our "muse", the explosive mix of our similarities in not only creative energies but also those self abuse issues that always accompany that, made the darkness of the drama part quickly take over from the beauty of the creative parts. But trying to attach myself to the ridiculous yet constantly repeating Sid/Nancy/Kurt and Ernie storyline isn't my big plan here.  So back to the topic at hand.  Finding this writing got me thinking though just like it did at the time.... 

What if that pretzel piece was just a little bit bigger?!!

This happened happened 3 months before the beginning of the Iraq War and the drain spiral it sent America upon after.  Would 1mm more of pretzel have prevented the "Roofie" effect of the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue that allowed Wall Street to take advantage and date rape us?  Would a bit crispier of a pretzel recipe have prevent Abul Ghrabie?  Did the amount of verbal diarrhea coming from the man's mouth post-9/11 contribute to an abnormal level of lubrication, and therefore give the pretzel a better chance to clear itself then in a regular man's throat?  Was this not a complete mind fuck that in the history of Americans shoving lard and sugar directly up their rectums, that it was in fact the lack of a harmful outcome that brought this piece of junk food it's power?

The year Bush invaded Iraq is the same year the Paula Dean Butter Ministry
began. Weapons of Ass Destruction were not located until many years later.

 But the "little differences leading to different outcomes concept" I was working on here had to be expanded further then just the joy of quenching my "atheist liberal-media biased blood-lust" or whatever Fox News would call my celebration of the passing of the Dubya', and has to fully take into account the consequences of what that pretzel victory would have brought us.....it would have led directly led to one Mr. Dick Cheney squarely behind the desk of President of the United States.  Talk about an important piece of pretzel!  If that was in fact the case, I mostly likely would not be typing this piece of pretentiousness blog writing right now, and would instead, like most of my other brothers and sisters of the Dead Kennedy's and the Huffington Post generations, be locked in one of the Dick Cheney Heart Replenishment Prisons that would have erected to provide continual fresh heart transplants to keep the evil bastard alive indefinitely after he removed all term limits and declared himself the Arab-inator.  I'm sure right now rather the indulging in a mix of art, music, NFL football, medical marijuana, sarcasm, and fake Facebook revolutions that make my life bearable, I would instead be spending my time forced to drink Zocor and Diovan cocktails while watching videos of Cheney sport hunting house pets to prepare my heart to be properly heart drug-riddled and devoid of morality so as not to cause complete shock to the body of Darth Cheney when implanted.

If the pretzel had succeeded in it's mission, would Skarsgard now not only wet the panties 

of HBO subscribers, but also be Cheney's new Secretary of Transplant Procurement?

So maybe the initial outcome I envisioned of this commentary was now blown and in fact, we should be grateful that bastard Bush was so incompetent he couldn't even choke to death correctly.  But it further brings to light the amazing historical consequences of just the littlest change in details of an event.  We waste so much time trying to define and place supernatural, god-like or higher power origins and miss the most amazing parts of life.. that no matter how hard we try to control everything ourselves...no matter how much we wish for a holy hand to guide our way.. sometimes just one second later.. one inch more... a missed appointment..a drink or drug not taken...could have led to such different lives for ourselves.  And we really have no choice but to sit back and watch the insanity happen and laugh our way along as we adjust to the consequences.  The cosmic crap-shoot.

"If my mother is listening, mother, I should have listened to you:

 Always chew your pretzels before you swallow," Bush said

The man was 56 years old, President of the United States of America, and still hadn't even been able to keep up with the advice that most toddlers have down pat:  chew your food.  There's no other reason the luck that man is still alive.

If instead of picking up just one more box of the late 80's surge in American French Fry Technology called the Arby's Curly Fry, maybe if home plate umpire John McSherry had instead eaten something a little more healthier, he wouldn't have had the chest pains that forced him to have to leave during the 2nd inning of Game 7.  Instead he stuffed his mouth with more and more spiced, processed potato products, and 1st base umpire Randy Marsh and his notoriously tight-wad strike zone had to step in and replace him.  Drabek and Belinda got screwed out of some great pitches.  And in the end, we got this years later:

Lloyd McClendon steals first base since his 336-446 record didn't have
Giant Eagle beating down his door to sell "McClendon's Meatballs"

Pretzels and Curly fries....inches and seconds...just think if "The Pretzel" was the one standing in front of the "Mission Accomplished" banner and not the man living out childhood GI Joe fantasies.