Simplify, Henry David advised us, and I’m finally doing it after years and years of threatening to. I’m trashing the subtleties, the gray shades, and have commenced the process of dividing people, places and things into two piles. Call them good and evil, hip and square, tolerable and insufferable — I’m going with people, places and things that rule, and people, places and things that blow.

Rule is good and blow is not.

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They’re four-letter words, yes, but not patently offensive ones like what President Bush fondly calls Karl Rove, or what Vice President Cheney, that other paragon, told Senator Leahy to go do to himself. So maybe the FCC won’t be slapping any big indecency fine on me as it did CBS for the Jackson girl’s Super Bowl hooter flop and for some stupid police drama scene that didn’t even show a single naughty bit of either gender.

Turns out that there’s a plethora or cornucopia or buttload of ruling and blowing — some rulers blow, some blowers rule, very confusing — and I’ll be confined here to just a few stark examples, no trouble deciding which pile they go in.

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Them that rule: banana pudding, blackberry cobbler, apricot fried pies, purple-hull peas, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Gomez Addams, Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan, Hazel Motes, Ree, Art Fern, Patsy Cline, Zorak, Amos Shellnut, Schopenhauer, Smarty Jones, the morning star this time of year, opalescent sunsets, Tom Tomorrow. Kinky Friedman for governor of Texas rules. That wall that separates church and state rules. Racing greyhounds with wagging tails.

Them that blow: Anybody who doesn’t think the new South Dakota anti-abortion law blows blows. Fred Barnes blows. Ann Coulter blows. The really ugly-ass writin’ psychiatrist of the Washington Post blows. Pat Robertson blows and that weird-looking boy of his blows too. FEMA set a new standard for blowing. There’s big competition for blowingest blower of modern times but I’m unilaterally awarding the title to Bill Bennett. If you don’t know who he is, lucky you. The country was acreep with his sanctimonious phony blowing type just a few years ago, but they’ve thinned out, perhaps an incidental result of fire-ant pesticide overuse, the same way DDT once threatened the eagles. I don’t think it’s a case of their having crawled back under their rock so much as it’s that they all seem to have been sucked up by these halleleujah bent-on-takeover squads like the one that Bro.-Gov. Huckabee was pitching mutual woo at in Florida just last week.

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Fungi in dark out-of-the-way bodily crevices blow. Scalia, of course, and his running buddy Pube Guy. Meth blows. Gay Scientologist actors in deep denial blow. Shooting the person you’re hunting quail with and then blaming him blows. Gassing red meat at the supermarket to keep it red blows. Iraq just keeps on blowing in more ways than one. I get accused myself, but falsely, probably just out of envy.

There aren’t any athletes who rule anymore, maybe Tiger Woods, except I can’t get past those assmunch announcers who grovel in worshipful unworthiness and grope for new hyperbole every time he even assumes address. Why don’t they just shut up and let us judge for ourself whether he rules or blows? Bonds blows for sure, and the other roid-bloviated bigs. Terrell Owens is just one big disruptive blow and if the Pokes want to buy into such mess, they blow too. Even worse than I already thought. Their owner blows and that puss surgeon of his really does. Wally Hall trying to morning-after coach the Razorbacks blows. The root-Hogging on the morning daily’s editorial page is just embarrassing. It’s so embarrassing that it doesn’t even blow. It’s like Billy Graham, whose column is so pitiful any more that it doesn’t even blow, even though it really does blow, but because it’s so pitiful you just have to shake your head sadly and wave it on through. Pete Rose blows that same way.

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You should keep in mind that this variety of blowing is just a metaphor, and when I say that Condoleezza Rice is the reigning queen of blow, it’s just a manner of speaking. It’s not saying anything bad about her, or anything about a drug habit, or anything in the Monica Lewinsky sense of the word. She just blows, is all. You know it, I know it, and the American people know it. It’s halfway pathetic, again like Billy or Chuck Hustle, that they are reduced even to touting her, but you can’t pity these old blowers in their morph to wheezers any more than you could a snake.

Phishing blows, and the old fashioned kind with the F blows too although it used to didn’t when I was younger and more easily amused. My getting up mornings and going out to catch goggle-eyes was just as pitiful as Billy or Pete or touting Condi though I can blame it on youthful stupidity since outgrown. Deer jumping in front of your car and causing you to ditch blow. Tennis elbow blows. Carpal tunnel blows. Gas prices blow. Man alive do they ever…

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I can’t decide if Dog the Bounty Hunter rules or blows but I’m pretty sure it’s one or the other.

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