I Love You… Here’s Proof

Every year around this time, we are inundated with commercials reminding us that a diamond is forever and if you don’t go to Jared you’re a shit-head. These commercials have pissed me off for years and they’re always the same. Some guy surprises his special gal with a diamond and she immediately starts to kiss him, or drag him into the bedroom. The underlying premise is simple:

“That special woman in your life is a dirty fucking whore and we both know it. So buy this ridiculous piece of jewelry… it’s time to pay the pimp.”

I find it insulting to men and women… something universally insulting that neither gender seems to mind. Men grudgingly fork over ten percent of their income for the latest trend in diamond jewelry, and women turn into a drunk cheerleaders at their first frat party at the sight of that little box.

This year’s new thing is the “Journey Pendant”. This is a little “S” shaped diamond string with the stones becoming increasingly large as they trail downward. The romantic in me sees the implication here--the diamonds grow larger as our love grows stronger on this journey we are taking together. However, the cynic in me says that, as this chick gets older and uglier, she costs more to fuck.

That’s not really the journey I had in mind. You want to take a journey? How about you take that money you would have spent on that rock and fly her to South Africa or some other conflict-ridden diamond producing country where the people are exploited and the rich benefactors funnel millions of dollars into perpetuating the corruption and poverty in order to better line their pockets with this blood money... your money. These diamond cartels are so corrupt and monopolistic they make Microsoft look like a group of nuns going door-to-door selling Girl Scout cookies to raise money for the Red Cross.

The people selling this line of crap are scum. I can’t think of anything else to describe them. They rely on the stereotype of a world where men are all thick-headed, incompetent, henpecked, hapless losers trapped in a marriage with a shrill, overbearing, frigid harpy of a wife who’s turned into a common prostitute.

“Every kiss begins with Kay.”

Fuck you.

Oh, and Happy Holidays.

Player Hater

With the release of the Mitchell Report yesterday detailing the sad state of Major League Baseball, it got me thinking about our collective consciousness and what we think of as “sad”. I’ve been trying to think of the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. The demise of baseball is not one of them. Frankly, I could care less. No, I'm looking for another kind of sad. Not tragic-sad like Darfur, but more along the lines of “pathetic-sad”. Like an empty fish tank. That’s kind of sad. Watching an old lady miss her bus with an armful of cheap Christmas presents she bought at the Walgreens for her grandkids on a cold winter day. Also sad. But, like most things, I found what I was looking for in a bar.

It’s really sad when you see a couple of “dudes” who are just horrible and being misogynists. I mean, they try. They sit at the bar and make inappropriate jokes that aren’t funny—which is really the first step. But they never seem to be able to close the deal. It just comes across as vulgar and a little more than just a little pathetic. Listen guys if you are going to embark on a public activity that precludes you from getting laid, you may as well do it correctly. I guess it’s not just misogyny, really it could be any form of socially unacceptable behavior. If you’re going to do it… commit to it. If you’re going to go on a tirade about women, do it with zeal. Otherwise it just makes you look… gay.

So here are some tips on how to make your misanthropic objective of societal alienation a little more effective.

Don’t refer to women as “chicks” or “bitches”, you should use the words “women” and “females”. “Woman”, especially when referring to a man, has the effect of taking the strength out of their gender by co-opting it as a derogatory term. “Females” is particularly effective at de-humanizing women… referring to them in much the same way one would a badger or some other lower order mammal.

Skip the “sexist” jokes. Humor is designed to be a form of social expression. You’re goal here is to ostracize yourself from society and isolate yourself from the rest of the people around you, not engage in behavior that simply re-enforces social interaction. You can be funny, but “joke-telling” is not the way to go. There is a rich landscape of opportunity here, female drivers, women in business… Oprah. Take advantage of it. Pass around a petition to end "women's suffrage" and see how many 22 year old drunk girls you can get to sign it. Now that's funny.

You can judge the effectiveness of your commentary by how women react to it. Over-the-top outrage from a woman means you have missed the mark. They are simply responding to your stupidity with an exaggerated sense of indignation, but she will still engage you in debate. Your goal is to make your typical woman turn red, squint her eyes and simply walk away from you in utter frustration and disgust. She should be so offended that she is unable to even speak. Now you’re on track.

Expand on your observations. Just making a little quip here or there is insufficient… unless you can string together about 5 minutes worth of really good ones. No, you should tell a story with the bottled-up hate you have inside. It’s a resource, and you should learn to tap it for all it’s worth. Like a Sith Lord you need to embrace that anger and give in to the hate for it makes you powerful.

Finally, commit to your antisocial behavior. Don’t back-pedal and start sounding reasonable just because you think you have a chance to get laid. Never alter your behavior, regardless of how hot she may be. Remember, no matter how hot she is, there's some dude who is tired of fucking her.*

*Example of a quip that one should never use.

Dog Daze

Michael Vick, the perpetually stupid Atlanta Falcons quarterback, was sentenced to 23 months in jail for financing an illegal dog fighting ring. The actual crime he was convicted of was “one count of interstate conspiracy to sponsor dog fighting”. I would like to say that I find the idea of dog fighting to be personally offensive. But, I’ve never been to a dog fight. Maybe I’d like it. Regardless I am not going to stand up and defend this guy but that’s a long time to be in jail for funding an organization that holds dog fights and for the untimely extermination of eight quadrupeds. From what I understand jail really, really sucks. I’m going to take some heat for this but, I’m going to go out on a limb here and call this absurd. These are, after all, dogs we are talking about.

I know we all like dogs. They’re cute and loyal and generally provide unconditional love to their owners. They catch Frisbees and protect our property. In some cultures, they’re considered delicious. I’ve owned two dogs and I loved them both. The operative word here being, owned. Those animals were property, my property. I would never advocate that a human being abuse a dog, or any other animal for that matter, but are we really saying that these pieces of property are to be held in such high esteem that we see fit to sentence a fellow human being to two years in prison over how they are treated? I did a little background research on this, and jail time for child abuse can run less. In other words, Vick may have been better off if he had left a toddler strapped into a car seat and locked in his car on a hot summer day. Something seems… off here.

I guess the lesson we can all take from this is that famous, black football players should stick to killing people.

Bag Lady

Today I went to my local convenience store. I purchased a package of breath mints and a beverage. My total was $4.01. I had exactly $4.00 in cash… and two twenties.

The clerk said: “That’s $4.01”.
I said: “How about $4.00?”
She said: “How About $4.01?”

Okay, I understand she’s following corporate policy. I mean, given 100,000 customers a day and if that happens 10 times a day, over a year that’s $3,600 a year. Someone should check my math on that. Regardless, it adds up. But here’s my problem. She then asked if I wanted a bag. A bag? I have a drink in my hand and some mints in my pocket. What the hell do I need a bag for? How can you be so stingy about that penny, but so free with that plastic bag?

Well, I took the bag and she started to put my drink in it. But I told her not to bother. “Just hand me the bag.” She did, and I said: “Do you think this cost more than a penny? I know it costs more than a penny to put this bag in the garbage can and haul it to a land fill and deal with it for the next 10,000 years.” She, rightly so, had no response. I threw the bag in the garbage right next the counter and left the store.

Does this change anything? No.

All I did was add another plastic bag to the garbage. But some day, that clerk is going to work somewhere else. And she will remember that moment--either to help save the environment or grow some business somewhere at the expense of the environment.

Either way, mission accomplished.

Sock-it-to-me-Sock-it-to-me-Sock-it-to-me...

I have reached the age where I really no longer go to night clubs. There being a difference between a bar and a night club. A night club is not so much a club as it is a festival of hopeful bitterness. People dance there. The Eagles got it right: “Some dance to remember. Some dance to forget.”

But mostly, I think people dance to be noticed. Like a desperate cry for attention. They move onto that dance floor with a feigned sense of exuberance like a man spending his last dollar on a lotto ticket. This time he’ll win and he wants everyone to know it.

It goes without saying that men and women have different motives for dancing. Women seem to have a biological need for it. As Dane Cook put it, they see a need to “Dance it out”. Men on the other hand see a pile of handbags and shoes sitting on the floor surrounded by a circle of intoxicated, gyrating women. In other words, they see an opportunity. The mating ritual resulting from the co-mingling of so much estrogen and testosterone combined with the effects of a few Alabama Slammers would make a National Geographic photographer blush with embarrassment. It’s an orgy of self indulgent posturing designed to both attract and repel members of the opposite sex.

I can deal with that.

But what I cannot deal with is the senseless, lemming-like rush to the dance floor every time “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor starts playing. The shrill shrieks echo throughout the already loud club: “Oh my God! This is MY song! We HAVE to go dance!” It’s not just that song actually. It’s really any song whose primary subject matter is overcoming the obstacles inherent in being female. “Respect” by Aretha Franklin is another one. When these songs play, every woman in the room makes a mad, desperate dash to the dance floor in order to purge years of oppression through a cathartic dance of self-empowerment and Oprah-inspired sisterhood.

Oh give me a God Damned break.

Listen ladies, I hate to burst your bubble here, but these songs were performed by black women in the 60’s and 70’s. These are women who grew up in the 40’s and 50’s in a racially divided, gender-biased America that is (thankfully) now a relic. They knew a thing or two about "survival" and "respect". I understand that when your boyfriend makes fun of you for not being able to parallel park your SUV (that your daddy bought for you) it's traumatic. But it's really not the same thing.

The only thing marginally more pathetic than watching this herd of female self delusion shuffling onto the dance floor at the opening bars of these songs, is the men who follow them there. As if to say. “I understand your pain. I too am in touch with my feminine side. Allow me to show you that I accept and respect you for the strong, unique woman you are by grinding by penis against the small of your back.”

There's the "Respect" you've been longing for.

The List

As we go through life, people enter and exit through the revolving door of acquaintance and friendship. In one’s professional life there are relationships that seem so important and so enduring that imagining a time when you are not in daily contact with that person seems absurd. But sure enough, a couple of weeks at a new job and you can’t seem to remember their last name. I have always found the deconstruction of such relationships to be sad.

When you run into these people on the street some years later, you both lie and say you’ll keep in touch and maybe get together for lunch some time. You dutifully exchange numbers again and part company feeling guilty for the lie. It’s the worst kind of lie because both parties want to believe it, but both know it isn’t true. This once important part of your life will fade into obscurity, filed away in the rolodex of things lost.

I hate that.

There are, of course, some relationships that don’t lose their luster, or at least you don’t wish them to. I have a list of such people… a list of people that I simply refuse to forget. These are people for whom, even after years of not speaking, I would do just about anything. But there are rules to the list:

The New Jersey Rule: If this person called you at 3am from a jail in New Jersey (or some other far off land of the damned), you would drop what your doing, take time off work and go bail them out.

The Assumption of Respect Clause: It is important to only add those people to your list who would not take advantage of your unconditional generosity. In other words, you can assume that they would not be calling you from New Jersey unless they have exhausted all other reasonable options.

The Reciprocity Rule: You must assume that this person would do the same for you. Although you can’t know for sure… confidence should be high.

The Longevity Rule: You really shouldn’t add people to your list that you have known for less than 10 years. There are exceptions, but they are rare.

The Most Important Rule: Be careful about who you add to your list, for though you may add to the list… you may not subtract. Once on the list, they are on it for the duration.

It’s that last one that grabs one by the throat and forces the truth to the surface. You have to live with this decision for the rest of your life… or theirs, or whichever ends first. You had better be sure. Really really sure.

In my 36 years of living I have managed to build my list to what I feel is a sizable number. You know who you are… all eight of you.

More Like, Republican't

I broke down last night and watched the CNN/YouTube Republican debate. I watched it on YouTube because I canceled my cable subscription some time ago. It’s been a while since I have watched a Republican presidential debate, and I was surprised to learn that I am not, in any way, not even a little bit Republican. Are these guys for real? This wasn’t so much a debate as it was the Asshole Olympics. These guys were in a life or death struggle to see who can be a bigger dick.

“Well I have to disagree with my opponent because you see, I hate Mexicans and gays WAY more than he does.”

There were only two things even remotely intelligent in that debate, some of the very good questions and John McCain… who is also an asshole but can at least state his position on torture (he’s against it). The others couldn’t quite get that far. Are you fucking kidding me?

In order to better understand the pressing issues of our day, I have made this handy chart highlighting what was discussed during the debate.

Did you notice anything missing there? You see, when it comes right down to it, there’s only one issue that really concerns me… dying. I’m against it. I figure I’ll either die from lack of medical attention or from some environmental catastrophe. So let me get this straight, eight old white guys, twenty eight questions and not a single word about health care or the environment?

I understand that not everyone had a chance to see this debate. I feel it’s my obligation to help educate the electorate about the wide, and varied choices available to them from the Republican party. With eight candidates to choose from, the typical voter may be overwhelmed with their choices. As such, I have provided a voting guide to help you, the reader, navigate the complexities of Republican presidential politics.

Candidate Summary

- Mit Romney is a fucking tool.

- Fred Thompson is an asshole.

- Rudy Giuliani is in over his head.

- Mike Huckabee is Jesus freak and (I suspect) a closet homosexual.

- John McCain is a grumpy old man who can’t figure out the remote control.

- Ron Paul is crazy.

- Tom Tancredo is racist xenophobe.

- Duncan Hunter is… well irrelevant

Demographic Synergy

This is far and away the best example I have ever seen of someone knowing their target audience.

I wouldn’t watch this at work… well actually I would and just did. But you may not want to. It’s a little risqué. I mean, it’s not a Britney Spears video or anything… it’s not porn. But it is mantastic.

Simply the best music video ever made. I can’t not laugh my ass off at this.

Benny Benassi - Satisfaction

Same Shit Different Day

I hate to bring up another bathroom etiquette post because I think this subject has been beaten to death. However, I need to get this off my chest.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

On what fucking planet is it acceptable to piss on a toilet seat? First of all, you have no business taking a leak in a stall. That’s what the urinals are for. But let’s assume that they are all busy. What are you thinking? “Hmmmm, I could lift the seat up and do my business, or… I could just piss all over the toilet seat like a howler monkey marking his territory. I want to force other people to sit on my urine droplets later.”

Seriously, what’s the thought process there?

I think I know who these people are. These are the guys who always use the stall, no matter what. They are shy and afraid to use public restrooms at all. They would never dream of actually taking a dump in one of them. Maybe they assume that since they would never use a public toilet for a two-sey, then no one else does either—and therefore no harm done. Believe me, I understand the hesitancy, even disgust, at the thought of dropping a deuce in a public bathroom. I share it. But my good friend Pat once said something profoundly wise: “Always poop at your place work. I mean, you might as well get paid to poop.”

Brilliant.

Perhaps the hesitancy lies in the lack of etiquette displayed by others. Today I was in a stall doing my business. There are three stalls and I, of course, take one of the end stalls so as to encourage others not to plop down directly next to me. We all know how this ends. Some inconsiderate prick takes the stall right next to me and begins to unload. Some people have absolutely no dignity.

Then there’s always the awkward and universally unwelcome side-by-side urinal chit chat from a stranger. As if I really want to chat about the weather with my dick in my hand next to a stranger. “Do I think it’s going to rain? Hmmm. I’m not sure, hang on a minute, let me cup my balls and see if the right one is hanging down lower than the left one because if it is, then it’s going to rain. Better yet, let me cup your balls. Here, hold on to my cock for me while I check that out.” Jesus Christ.

Even if your justification for using a stall to pee is avoiding others in the men’s room, there is absolutely no reason to not lift the seat. It’s a MEN’S room. You don’t need to worry about your wife yelling at you for leaving the seat up. We all know to check it before we sit down. That’s what men do… we check the toilet seat. Fundamentally, that’s what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

The next time I walk into a stall and I find the toilet seat covered in urine I am going to take a shit in the urinal, piss in the sink and throw my used, crap-encrusted toilet paper against the mirror. Might as well finish the job.

Thanks-taking

This holiday season it’s time to reflect on what we have and for what we are thankful--hence the Thanksgiving holiday. As such, I took a moment this weekend to think through what I am truly thankful for. I don’t think people think this through enough. I don’t really think you should be thankful for things that you have earned or done. In other words, should I be thankful for my job? I mean, I worked hard to get here and I do a pretty good job at my job. So should I be thankful, or should my employer? What about friends and loved ones? Should I be thankful for them? I mean, are they not getting anything out of this relationship? I don’t expect them to be thankful for me.

As far as the bigger picture goes, the world around us, the trees and the flowers and bumble bees… what should I be thankful for? To whom should I give thanks? God? To each his own I suppose, but in spite of all appearances to the contrary I am not so egotistical to believe that God did all this for just me, I think the burden of thanks on that front lies on all of us. So consider me one six-billionth thankful for the world around us.

I guess I can be thankful for one thing…. my parents. I am thankful that they weren’t bad people for the first few years of my life. Really, until I could speak or make decisions on my own, I didn’t do much to improve their lives or earn their love. I pretty much just made noise, ate food and shit myself.

So thanks Mom and Dad.

I think in order to be thankful for something, one must have been given an unexpected and undeserved gift. If I won the lottery without even buying a ticket, I’d be thankful. I guess if I bought a ticket and won I’d be thankful too…thankful for me, for buying a ticket.

So I guess what I am saying is that what I am most thankful for is me.

Is that narcissistic enough for you?

Stupid is as Stupid Does

This post serves as an official warning to clear the coastlines and abandon all major cities near any ocean anywhere in the world over the next year. Get started now. Because you see, the collective and simultaneous sigh of relief the planet will give when George W. Bush is no longer President of the United States will cause tsunamis and category 5 hurricane force winds around the world. CO2 emissions will see a huge spike at the moment his successor takes the Oath of Office as a result of the global, relieved exhale. You should also buy ear plugs now because when the entire planet in one voice cries out in its many tongues: “Thank God!” the sound will deafening.

I’m a political guy. I was a political science major and have operated on the edge of the “machine” for a long time. Long enough to be cynical, pragmatic and very analytical about whatever issue we face. I tend to go against the grain. I think most people respond emotionally. Usually this is wrong. In most cases the gut instinct that tells people a given politician is an idiot is based on an ill-informed notion of the facts surrounding the situation. In most cases, politicians have more information than we do. They know about the real issues and causal relationships that exist. They are generally smarter than we are. That’s why we elected them, to be smarter than us and make decisions about things we don’t understand.

I’ve tried to give this guy the benefit of the doubt--looking at the big picture, trying to see the long-term global strategic outcomes and objectives. Not because I am a supporter of the administration and I want to avoid any cognitive dissonance, but because the alternative is too terrifying. I mean, if Bush is really the kind of guy, doing the kinds of things he does for the reasons I actually, instinctively suspect, then we’ve been on the brink of Armageddon for some time now.

It took me seven years to get here, but here I am. Forget the detail and nuances of complex international politics. Forget the complexities of governmental policy-making and social issues. Remove the word “visionary” from your vocabulary. This President is, exactly as your gut tells you he is. He does things for the reasons you think he does.

We are at war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein tried to kill his dad.
That's it. That's the reason. It is, in fact, that simple.

Everything else he does is based on his belief that God is telling him what to do. He actually claims God tells him to do things. I can visualize a scene where Dick Cheney hides behind a couch in the Oval Office whispering: "George? George. It's me again, God. I just wanted to let you know that it's my will that you end stem cel research and cut funding for social programs."

He thinks of himself as a righteous warrior in God’s army of the chosen. His self-delusional state has allowed him to actually believe that he is saving the world from “terror”… whatever the hell that means.

Side note: We are not in a war against “terror”… maybe “terrorism” or even “terrorists”, but not the emotion “terror”. If you want to declare war on an emotion maybe you should start smaller, like a “War on Ennui” or a “War on Mild Anxiety”.

It's not always the case that when someone speaks like an idiot that they were quoted out of context, or just had a bad day or are otherwise smart people who just have a little more difficulty with public speaking than others. Sometimes, the reason someone sounds and speaks like an idiot is because, sometimes... they are.
The problem here is that when the United States sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. I heard a senior Pakinstani diplomat the other day explaining that his military controlled, state of emergency government run by a general exists as a result of following our lead and the policies of the U.S. “We are the way we are because we follow your policies.” In other words, the world will mimic us. When we start illegal wiretapping, the rest of the world notices and decides that sort of thing is okay. When we round people up and imprison them without due process, the rest of the world starts doing it too. When we admit that water-boarding and other forms of torture are acceptable to us, then God help our captured soldiers… because no one else will.

You see, we need to lead by example… and we are not. We are leading by fear. Fear works if you’re a small, European country in between Russia and France and it’s 1939 and all you are asking for is Poland, but not if you’re the world’s only remaining “Superpower”… a moniker that I am seriously beginning to question.

I know this in my gut. I feel it. Most people feel it. People around the world feel it. This guy is a crazy, dangerous religious zealot who has squandered the good will of the post 9-11 world community in order to push forward his vindictive, petty, personal agenda, bringing the civilized world to the brink of collapse. We are on the precipice of a new dark age… or a new ice age, or both. Regardless, it's this guy's fault.

I just want Gerald Ford to come on my T.V. and once more utter the phrase: "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over."

But I'm not holding my breath.

Species, Genus, Family, Order, Class

In my high school there were distinctive social hierarchies. Being in central North Dakota, I’m sure there’s a difference in nomenclature from where you went to high school. So I’ll provide some basic translations:

• Jocks: Dumb boys who used the word “fag” a lot.

Muffins: Typically cheerleaders or those girls who dated the jocks.

Preps: Although all Jocks and Muffins are also preps, not all preps are jocks or muffins.

Loads: Potheads, burnouts... typically the smokers. They liked heavy metal.

Goaties: Short for “goat roper”. These were the cowboy hat, Wrangler jean wearing crowd.

____ Fags: Play fags were in the theater, band fags were in the band, art fags were into art… you get the idea.

Everyone Else: The normal people who quietly went about their business, formed their little micro-cliques generally unnoticed by the defined classes. The smart nerds, the female athletes, the crazy misanthropes who would grow up to work in the post office… all sort of fit into this class. No doubt this class comprised 80% of the school.

These classes are listed in order of popularity (the currency of high school social life).

Like D&D you could play with a multi-class character. Say, a Jock/Prep, or Band Fag/Paladin… but generally you had to choose. There were classes of characters that one simply could not combine: Jock/Play Fag? No.

If you didn’t know already, I was a Play Fag.

I imagine it’s very much like prison where you must choose a gang for protection. It was vitally important that everyone be immediately categorized, preferably you could tell one’s class simply by looking at them.

Almost twenty years later, I still see a degree of social stratification. But now it seems more formalized. It happens at work and your class is clearly defined by your job title. As a society, we have more or less learned to apply the principles we learned in high school to our adult professional lives. Maybe it’s just inescapable human nature. I’m not sure. But it got me thinking. Do all professions have these cliques?

Do homeless people have a class hierarchy?

Yesterday I saw this homeless man collecting cans, but he had this pimped out, multi-level cart with big wheels in the back and smaller ones in front. Is this the homeless guy equivalent of driving a Lexus? Does he look down on non-can collectors? Does he get together with his friends and talk smack about the guys who stand on the on-ramps with a sign asking for money?

I bet he does. I bet he’s just like the rest of us. I’d wager that if you took 400 homeless people and put them in a high school cafeteria they would organize themselves by class hierarchy and begin hazing freshman.

Homeless Jock: "Check out Frank. What a loser. Look at his shopping cart! The wheels are all fucked up and he's using paper bags! What if it rains dipshit! What a fag!"

The Color of Money

It all started with postage stamps. The purpose of a postage stamp is to pay for the delivery of a piece of mail. When I was a kid our family always had a roll of postage stamps in the family desk. They were the little American flag stamps. That’s the only kind of stamp I knew for most of my childhood. To me, that’s what stamps were. And stamps meant America. Something about that stamp represented the American dream to me. It looked official. It was used for official business and important things. Money went into envelopes, taxes were paid… the engine America was fueled by that little square tab you had to lick. It was, quite literally, the glue that held us together. Then I started noticing different designs--flowers, trees, astronauts and later, Elvis. The stamps changed, not only in denomination, but also in size, there were oversized rectangular stamps now. There are as many postage stamps designs as there are crappy postage stamp designers.

Why?

I mean, I get that some people like to buy stamps that reflect their personality, or collect them as a hobby (I don’t understand that either). But it’s just a stamp. It’s a tax--or if you’re Governor Tim Pawlenty… a “user fee”. I don’t need my governmental fees to be pretty; I just need my cable bill to arrive on time. I wouldn’t say it bothered me, it just seemed so unnecessary.

But apparently, stamps were just the beginning. Remember money? You know, the good old greenback? It’s iconic. But for some reason we keep changing it. First it was making Ben Franklin’s head gigantic. To me, it looked like a giant-headed baby. All these dead presidents suddenly needed an enormous picture of them on the money. Then came colorful swirls of orange and red and pink. Holy shit… my money is pink!

It keeps changing. I understand that it’s designed to minimize counterfeiting, but you know what? The old money is still good. It still works. Our money has changed so much that no one would be able to tell if that purple and orange $4 bill with a giant picture of Ed Asner on it is real or not. To be honest, it almost looks like Canadian money now. Have you noticed that the Canadian dollar is now the same value as the American dollar?

Coincidence?










Now there’s a different quarter for every state. Is that really necessary? I mean… really? Comparing the old style of currency to the new is like comparing a glass of bourbon on the rocks to an apple-tini. One of them has a silent, dignified sense of class. The other is kind of gay.

That brings me to license plates. License plates are not a forum for you to express your personal beliefs; they don’t define you as a person and they sure as hell don’t make North Dakota seem like a cool place to visit. They are there so that if you run a red light and t-bone a busload of handicapped girl scouts someone can report you. They need to display a series of letters and numbers. That's it. I don’t need to know you support the fucking environment or that you “Remember Columbine”. I shit you not, there’s actually a Columbine flower remembrance license plate in Colorado. Great, now people can associate Columbine with traffic fatalities as well.













Michael Moore, you magnificent bastard, where’s your indignant outrage at that one?

Finally, I have seen at least 4 different versions of the MN driver’s license over the last 10 years. They seem to change almost as frequently as postage stamps. They’re chock full of holograms and secret reflective coating invented at Area 51. Most people need a fucking de-coder ring see how old you are.

“You see, you just need to tilt the license away from the Sun at an angle of incidence perpendicular to the square of the moon’s apogee on the autumnal equinox.”

I like my government documents, legal tender and instruments of control and taxation to be simple and stable. I guess I am a bit of a traditionalist. Put another way, I abhor change like nature abhors a vacuum.

I think I’m getting old.

What the fuck are you talking about?

So I am going to beat this dead horse just a little bit more because I just experienced a manifestation of this language issue I addressed in the last post. I also want to harp on this a little because it’s important. Let me give you an example. When the war in Iraq was but a year old, there were protesters in Washington with signs that read “Get out the war!” They then chanted “Get out the war! Get out the war!” not “Get out of the war!”

English is a complicated language due in large part to our odd colloquialisms. Most people in non-English speaking countries attempt to learn these in order to get by. When they learn little phrases like “Get out the word” and accept it also means “spread the word” and then hear “Get out the war!” what do you think, they think that means?

A bunch of crazy Americans chanting: “Spread the War! Spread the war!”

To the typical Iranian, a chilling prospect.

Back to what just happened to me. People have gotten so used to speaking in terms of context rather than actually using the correct language that they forget that you are not inside their head. In other words, to them language is entirely experiential. So that if they just had a thought, or got off the phone with someone else, they presume you know the context of their thoughts or previous conversation. This results in them speaking to you as though every sentence begins halfway through the thought.

I was in front of our building having a smoke and was approached by a repair man of some sort.

Guy: I installed some vending machines here?
Me: Excuse me?
Guy: Vending machines. In this building.
Me: Yeah?
Guy: There are vending machines. By the red awning. Vending Machines… like pop and candy and potato chips…
Me: I know what vending machines are. What are you asking me?
Guy: Are they in here?
Me: Yes. Are you asking me where the vending machines are located?
Guy: Yeah.
Me: Down this hall, first right.

You see, he was thinking that he needed to repair some vending machines that his company had installed in our building. Apparently his company gave him directions to the building indicating that it had a red awning in front. Because all language has become experiential, it never occurred to him that he would need to simply ask the question in a way that ANYONE would be able to answer regardless of the situation or whether or not I was riding shotgun with him in his repair van. So he just assumed that I knew everything that had just happened to him. Or, more likely he is unable to wrap his brain around constructing a sentence outside of his own contextual world of recent experiences and therefore unable to speak to anyone else who hasn't just come from the same set of experiences.

You can tell when someone is afflicted with this condition. They fail to define their pronouns. How many times have you heard this one:

“I had lunch with Susan, Rachel and a couple people from our sales department. She told me that our revenue forecast needs to be changed. So I asked him if that was because she didn’t have the right information but he said that it wasn’t hers that was bad, it was Steve’s way that he delivered it to her.”

Who the fuck is Steve?

Listen. You know that big round thing that you shove food into? That’s your head. And guess what… I’m not inside it.

Idiocracy

I went to the video store last weekend to rent some movies. I still like the act of going to the video store. There’s something tangible and definitive about the experience. Last weekend I rented the movie “Idiocracy”. The concept here is that an average guy from our time is frozen and 500 years in the future, when thawed, he is now the smartest human alive:

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd it began to reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species. The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes that genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.”

One of the cornerstones of this movie is how the idiots of the future speak. The words they use don’t really have any meaning attached to them. The only way these people communicate is with vulgarity or random words that are only vaguely understandable based on the context in which they are being used. People don’t actually know what they mean, but the language is contextual so their general meaning is still conveyed.

Doctor: "Well, I don't wanna sound like a dick or nothin', but, uh, it says on your chart that you're bleeped up. Uh, you talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded. What I do is just like, like, you know... like, you know what I mean?”

Although I consider it an undeniable fact that we are getting dumber as a result of our breeding patterns, it is the issue of language that concerns me most. You see, we are already there. Our language has already become one of interpretive relativism and contextualization. We are at the point where people don’t actually understand each other. They base their entire ability to communicate on the context they are in. At McDonald’s, they just assume that the other person is talking about fries because the word they used only has one syllable and they are at a McDonald’s and they are currently speaking with a mouthful of fries. Therefore they probably mean “fries”. It’s actually getting to the point where it doesn’t matter what is said, it matters what you mean. How often have you heard someone whose language is being corrected angrily say: “Well you know what I mean!” Yes. I do know what you mean. But that’s not what you said.

It’s not okay to be wrong.

Don’t give me that crap about language being mutable. Words have meaning... specific, defined meaning. That’s what dictionaries are for. If we subscribe to the belief that it’s okay to use whatever words we want in whatever order we want to use them in regardless of their actual literal meaning we’re doomed. And we are. I mean, do I even need to say this? I can't beleive I am actually arguing that words should have, you know... meaning. Watch MTV on a Saturday afternoon or just pay attention to conversations you hear on the street. For that matter, just listen to our President. He’s the fucking President! He’s the best we have to offer the freedom loving peoples of the world. In fact the President from the movie (President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, porn star and champion wrestler) is more articulate than our current President. If the things these people say were put into written form and removed from context, they would make no sense. No one would be able to understand them.

It’s biblical. We live in Babylon. Our language has become confused and it will rain sulfur upon our cities. Yes. It will rain sulfur. But not from the fiery hand of a vengeful God. It will rain sulfur because a night watchman at the chemical storage company will release a toxic cloud of gas into the atmosphere resulting from his attempt increase the power of the break-room microwave by wiring it to the coolant system so that he can cook burritos faster.

Call Me Ishmael.

Some Hollywood producer a few years back had this great idea. “Let’s see if we can take the most boring, trite, predictable and disjointed story ever written in the English language and make it into a full length feature film!”. A few years and a few million dollars later we have the film version of the epic poem Beowulf. If you’ve ever read it, you know what I mean. But, it got me thinking. What is my saga? What is my epic story of good versus evil? To be Melvillian… what is my White Whale?

Squirrels.

I have had squirrels invade my home. It’s been going on for years now. It has become, if not epic in its own right, symbolically so. These are not just any squirrels. These are hyper-intelligent, poison-resistant rodents whose tenacity and cunning is matched only by an indefatigable hunger for destruction. They are quite literally consuming my world.

It started innocently enough. I could hear the scratching claws scurrying about the attic. They had chewed their way through a small area of my home where the siding, the roof and the chimney meet. Taking advantage of some minor water damaged wood to create their entrance. Little did I know how difficult it would be dislodge them from their new home… my home.

My first attempt involved rat traps--those little “snappy” traps on the small piece of wood that sometimes go off when you set them and make you react to the resulting pain like a cartoon character. I baited some traps with bits of food and set them around the attic. Needless to say the next day, the traps were sprung, the food was gone and the squirrels had been fed.

I moved on to rat poison. The strongest I could find. I sprinkled bags of delicious little morsels of toxicity about the attic--20 or 30 little bags of death. I left the wrappers mostly on and the boxes they came in the attic. Two days later, climbing the step ladder into the attic we made eye contact. There he was… rummaging through the empty bags of poison searching for more. He had acquired a taste for the stuff and needed another fix. Like a desperate crack addict, he nervously paused to take one look at me, assessed that I was not a threat and continued rummaging. Three days later I saw him outside. He was moving a little slower than usual--like I move after thanksgiving dinner. But he would make a full recovery and had once more, been fed.

So I thought to myself, OK, he doesn’t see me as a threat. A little insulting. But having read Art of War I knew I could use that to my advantage. Thank you Sun Tzu. The next day, I went up there with my pellet gun. I’m a pretty good shot, I figured I could take care of this the old fashioned way. I waited patiently for him. He appeared. Saw me, saw the pellet gun, and this time his Spidey Senses tingled determining the threat was real. He quickly ducked out of sight on seeing the pellet gun in my hand. Oh yes. The game was afoot.

My final salvation (or so I thought) came in the form of the humane solution. The large cage trap. Baited with peanut butter, it was successful. I trapped a squirrel. Carried him down the attic out to the trunk of my car and let him go across the river.

The rustling noise continued. There was more than one. In fact, I now hear at least two. The trap was set. Another was caught. Then another a few days later. Then another. In all I have trapped, released or otherwise "dispatched" over 20 of the disease ridden creatures. I have spent Saturday afternoons balanced precariously on the edge of my roof attaching sheet metal to possible entry points. I have purchased pellets that smell like coyote urine and spread them around my property. I've installed high frequency sonic generators. I have spent thousands of dollars on a new roof and new repairs only to learn that these creatures can chew through sheet metal. I have paid contractors to effect repairs with twice the material strength and still they claw their way through. They are relentless, remorseless creatures. It is indeed a war… a war of attrition. A war I am losing.

I am ceding ground to the enemy. Wave upon wave of furry quadrupeds are descending upon my fortress in numbers unknown… like an army of mutant bushy-tailed drones, I throw myself into the fray knowing that in the end it’s them or me.

The Inconvenience Store

I’m what you might call a “convenience store high roller”. Let’s just say, if my local Super America Store were a Las Vegas Casino, I’d have a free suite with a steak dinner. However, there is something that even the most seasoned convenience store "power user" cannot abide: "Inconsiderate Queuing”.

You see, there are typically two checkouts in your average Super America convenience store--as I am sure there are for many other types of stores. Really, this could be any establishment with multiple checkouts. But delays at the convenience store are particularly irritating because, well, it’s supposed to be convenient. As the diagram suggests, there is a right way to queue up at a store.

One does not form two lines trying to guess which will be the shortest. No. No. No. One forms a line at the back of the checkout farthest from the door. In this way, regardless of which checkout counter becomes available first, the next in line will move to the next available checkout. Efficient. Orderly. Fair.

When I walk into a convenience store and see two lines forming, I immediately attempt to set the precedent for a single line system by queuing up at the back of the line for checkout #2 facing the doors such that my line of sight is parallel to the front of the two checkout counters. This is my natural signal to the rest of the herd that I am leading. It is time for them to (literally) fall in line behind me.

Let’s assume for a moment that I am successful. I line up at the end of the second checkout counter and people start to fall in line behind me. Pretty soon we have a nice, orderly… even convenient experience. Then let’s say you walk in and start to form a line behind the checkout closest to the door. You’ve effectively cut in front of 4 or five other people who are waiting their turn. You inconsiderate jerk!

What were you thinking? “Hey, look at all those idiots waiting in line behind checkout #2. Don’t they see that there is only one guy at checkout #1. What a bunch of morons”. Great. Good job asshole. You’ve just torn asunder the fabric of our society. You’ve created anarchy from order. What results is a series of line changes, and nervous glances. “Checkout Lane Anxiety” overtakes even the most patient and courteous of us. Jockeying for position and aggressively moving from one “line” to the other. Now there is bottleneck of people waiting right in front of the doors. People are bumping into one another, items are dropped and chaos ensues.

Not very convenient if you ask me.

It just takes one person to destroy the harmony of this logical practice. Now that this chaos has been established it’s going to take an extreme act of will by a brave soul willing to risk disenfranchisement at the hands of his less courteous brethren. So this affects more than the few people currently waiting in line. Once established, this pattern of inefficiency and frustration can last for hours, causing irritation and anxiety for dozens of people--people who no doubt carry this frustration with them to their jobs or their families. This, ultimately, culminates in work-place violence and domestic abuse which only serves to perpetuate the cycle of violence and intolerance in our society. It grows and festers into a swirling maelstrom of hate until, eventually, all this bottled up anger and hostility ends up somewhere in the Middle East.

It's "That" Guy

There he is. Just sitting there. Breathing too loudly... with his mouth open. It’s “that” guy. There are a small (but highly visible) subset of people that seem to defy categorization but we all instantly recognize them as somehow not a part of the world around them. They walk among us, in fact they stand out among us, but we simply don’t know what to do about it. It’s not like an obnoxious guy who’s loud and tells off color jokes at the wrong moment, but it’s close. And it’s certainly as, if not more, irritating--because you can’t quite dismiss him as a jerk and move on... you have to deal with it.

He doesn’t spill his drink all over the place so much as he sloshes some of it over the side of his glass when he sets it down. He doesn’t fart in public, but there is an odor about him, not B.O. per se’ but just… something. You want to believe that the elastic waistband pants he is wearing is the result of his strong desire for comfort, and there’s an element of truth in that, but you also get the sense that part of him thinks it’s stylish. He’s not trying to stand out or make a statement, but he’s subconsciously aware that he doesn’t fit in. Most importantly, he has absolutely no idea that he affects the people around him. He sees himself as a ghost who doesn't actually affect the physical world of the living. But instead of Caspar the Friendly Ghost, it’s a ghost that CAN affect the world around him and it’s the ghost of Godzilla tromping through life like it’s downtown Tokyo.

This is the guy who always mumbles and is so used to repeating himself that he does it even when people (in rare cases) actually understand what he was saying the first time. But here’s the really irritating part--when you don’t understand him and ask him to repeat what he just said (again), he says it exactly the same way at the same volume he did the first two times. As if it’s you that need to turn up your hearing or turn down the ambient noise of the environment around you.

Last night I was playing poker at my local card club and “that guy” sat down next to me. I shouldn’t say “sat down”, I should say “aggressively plopped down” and then let out a big sigh. As with most of his ilk he was on the heavy side (but not that heavy) so everything he does seems to be done with a great deal of effort. But again, the grunts and groans and sighs that accompany his actions are out of synch with the timing and the amount of effort they truly involve. He immediately started talking on his phone which you can’t do at the table. Everyone, I mean everyone in this loud casino can hear every word, but the second he starts talking to the dealer or the waitress or the other players, no one can understand him. He’s a bad poker player. He never folds and loses $200 in about an hour. He’s baffled by how unlucky he is. It’s like watching someone repeatedly hit themselves on the hand with hammer while trying to put a nail through a piece of concrete… except he’s not holding a nail.

As he spreads his legs to get comfy, he moves the little drink cart in between us out of his way and shoves it right next to me. Not actually touching me… just about a tenth of a centimeter from touching me--just enough to make me move my chair over, but not enough to be overtly confrontational. He orders a Pepsi and the dinner special. That went something like this:

That Guy: Hey, hey! [to waitress about 10’ away]
Waitress: [looks over at him]
That Guy: “Yeah. The turkey. The turkey dinner. Can I get the Turkey dinner? And Pepsi”
Waitress: [comes over] “You want the dinner special?”
That Guy: [mumbles] “Yeah. What’s that come with?”
Waitress: “I’m sorry, what?”
That Guy: [mumbles] “Yeah. What’s that come with?”
Waitress: [guessing]“What’s the Turkey Dinner come with?"
That Guy: “Yeah”
Waitress: "Well it’s turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and corn.”
That Guy: [mumbles] “And a Pepsi.”
Dealer: “Sir it’s your turn to act. Sir. Sir. Excuse me. Sir it’s your turn to act” (the table has been waiting this whole time because he chose to do this when it was his turn).
Waitress: “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
That Guy: “What?”
Waitress: "You wanted something else?”
That Guy: "No that’s fine."
Waitress: [walks away]
That Guy: [shouts] “PEPSI!”
Waitress: [Comes back and gives him a Pepsi.]

Needless to say, I was forced to leave and have a cigarette just to deal with the stress of the situation.

When I got back there he was... eating. He had placed his cel phone in the drink cup on the little tray in between us. Not the drink cup on his side, but the one on mine, where my drink had been all night. So do I move his phone to his drink cup or do I place my drink on his side and risk having him drink my Pepsi? Of course, his Pepsi isn’t in any drink cup, it’s balanced on the edge of the tray table. I chose to move his phone. There’s five little corn giblets in my drink holder, but none anywhere else. The entire time he is eating, he completely forgets he is actually playing poker as well; he turns away from the table and just starts eating. When it’s his turn the dealer must once again say: “Sir it’s your turn to act. Sir. Sir. Excuse me. Sir it’s your turn to act.” He fumbles with his cards (which now have gravy on them) and throws the wrong amount of chips into the pot, one of which rolls across the table into someone else's chips. This happens… EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME.

Needless to say, he eventually ran out of money and his complaining about his bad luck combined with his uninspiring speeches about how it’s “only money and sometimes you just don’t get the cards”, trails off into the distance as he places the stub of an unlit cigar with about one inch remaining into his mouth and walks toward the men’s room, where he will no doubt interact with the people in it.

God help them.

Decisions are Acceptable

Somewhere along the line we’ve lost something very important. We seem to have lost our ability to see the shades of grey in matters that are actually pretty important. We’ve gotten to the point where not supporting the policies of Israel makes you an anti-semite, not being in favor of affirmative action makes you a racist, and thinking Will & Grace is kind of a lame show makes you homophobic. The thing is, we are all judgmental and racist and classist to a degree. We have to accept that, and then learn to tolerate it to the extent that it does not interfere with the freedom and progress of our society. We then can define when it is unacceptable and harmful. In other words, if ALL judgments and perceptions are unacceptable, then they all become equally acceptable.

Look I’m not a big fan of racial profiling. It just smacks of... wrongness. On the other hand, the statistics bear out some trends we would be stupid to ignore. Certain types of terrorist attacks tend to be perpetrated by a certain class of people. Do we ignore that? When you’re on a plane, don’t tell me you don’t look around and size up the passengers.

I once heard some executive of a large fried chicken franchise doing a radio call-in show. Someone called in and accused him of running a racist company: “It’s disgusting and racist! How come you put those fried chicken places in black neighborhoods more than white ones?”. This business man was obviously confused by the inference. He didn’t understand the problem here. He didn’t make a connection between racial stereotypes of black people eating fried chicken and his business. He saw demographics, revenue stream reports, profit and loss statements and marketing budgets. His answer: “Well, the reason we do that is because black people proportionately eat more fried chicken than white people. I’m not sure I understand the question.”

Is he a racist?

The trick here is to rely on accurate information. There's no question that stereotypes can be bad. But they can also make things move more smoothly. It depends on how they are applied. There is room for minutia here. In order to make rational decisions we need to have the right information. We cannot obtain that information in a vacuum of secrecy. If we become afraid of even considering a judgmental thought we are doomed to innaction. All things become equally bad or equally good. Therefore, everything becomes black and white, right and wrong, good an evil.

Polarized.

There is an acceptable level of judgmental behavior that is not only normal, but actually necessary in order to get through our daily lives. We make decisions based on our circumstance and what we know. We can't possibly consider everything from every angle. We have to make the best decisions with the information we have available.

I know that not EVERY old lady behind the wheel is a bad driver, but you won’t see me lingering behind her on the Interstate. I know that not EVERY little kid is a screaming, annoying irritation machine, but you won’t see me eating at Chuck E. Cheese. Making a judgment about two creepy looking guys hanging out in a dark alley may make you walk across the street and avoid that dark alley. Maybe those guys were just helping to clean up garbage for their local Rotary Club. I don’t know, and that’s okay.

It's Just a Jump to the Left...

Last weekend my VCR and computer agreed on what time it was, but my alarm clock and phone did not. Who should I believe? Can’t they all just agree to disagree and move on? I guess not. I wasn’t the only one who had to deal with normally honest, hard-working electronics that were suddenly lying to me. Apparently this happened all over the place and as usual, we can blame the Government

The United States Congress has once again declared themselves masters of time and space. This mythical construct called Daylight Saving Time has been pushed back from the last weekend in Oct. to the first weekend in Nov. Thus confusing my self-updating electronics.

This is clearly a case where, once again, our politicians are in the pocket of Big Candy. The large candy conglomerates have lobbied hard for this change claiming that by pushing this arbitrary shift in space-time past Halloween, it will boost lagging candy sales. Arguing that more daylight for trick-or-treating will increase the consumption of candy corn.

This makes sense because we all know that what the average American child needs is more fucking candy. Childhood obesity be damned! Candy Corn for all! That bullshit about saving energy is just that. It’s all about the special interest Big Candy lobbying money corrupting the political process which, as we all know, is the true master of what time it is. The Sun’s position in the sky or the Earth’s orbit around it are false constructs foisted upon our society by scientific zealots out to prove that God is dead.

I have heard the arguments for and against Daylight Saving Time. I find them all equally irrelevant. The time is what the time is. Don’t fuck with it. People have been using Sun dials for thousands of years to reckon the time and I think maybe, just maybe, use of the physical universe around us as a method to determine the time might seem reasonable. But no, good ol’ Ben Franklin had a dream. This dream was to fuck with the various electronic devices of future generations such that no one really knew what time was.

There was a point in our society when we had to standardize the time because, you know, trains needed to arrive at the station when they said they would. Apparently not any more. Various States have different laws. My parents live in AZ. They don’t adhere to the arbitrary time changes. Good for them. But my State does, meaning that sometimes I am an hour ahead of them, and sometimes I am two hours ahead for them… or maybe it's the same time there that it is here. I can’t even tell any more. In other words, I have absolutely no fucking idea what time it is in Phoenix right now. Even our beloved Twin Cities was separated, not by the mighty Mississippi river, but by time itself:

“In 1965, St. Paul decided to begin its Daylight Saving Time period early to conform to most of the nation, while Minneapolis felt it should follow Minnesota's state law, which stipulated a later start date. After intense inter-city negotiations and quarreling, the cities could not agree, and so the one-hour time difference went into effect, bringing a period of great time turmoil to the cities and surrounding areas”.

Unintended consequences--you see fucking with universal constants such as the speed of light or time always has unintended consequences. If you don’t believe me just watch an episode of Star Trek. When the English Parliament was debating this issue one clever chap by the name of Lord Balfour came forward with a unique concern:

"Supposing some unfortunate lady was confined with twins and one child was born 10 minutes before 1 o'clock. ... the time of birth of the two children would be reversed. ... Such an alteration might conceivably affect the property and titles in that House."

The impact of this increasingly annoying predilection we have with changing the time around to suit our needs can have even more disastrous implications. What happens at bar close at 2:00AM when suddenly it becomes 1:00AM again? Do we get to drink for another hour. Some say yes, some say no. But what about the converse. Suddenly your late night out is cut short because some asshole in Congress has decided that regardless of what the Earth’s relative tilt and position in the solar system may be, we’re just going to arbitrarily change time… confusion over such an important issue can end in tradgedy:

“Patrons of bars that stay open past 2:00 a.m. lose one hour of drinking time on the day when Daylight Saving Time springs forward one hour. This has led to annual problems in numerous locations, and sometimes even to riots. For example, at a "time disturbance" in Athens, Ohio, site of Ohio University, over 1,000 students and other late night partiers chanted "Freedom," as they threw liquor bottles at the police attempting to control the riot.”

I propose to set the time based on you know, the time. If you really feel compelled to fuck with it, why not on the Solstice or Equinox? I’ll tell you why. Because this is a conspiracy to socially engineer the population:

"I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves." (Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday.)

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Stop Killing Us All

"The Superbug". It almost sounds like something really cool, like a tricked-out VW Beetle or a wicked-awesome crime fighter. But it’s not. It’s an antibiotic-resistant staph infection that is killing people. In clinical terms, a Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria.

“Well how the hell did that come about?” you ask. Overuse of Penicillin. Doctors prescribe it for the sniffles now. Overprotective mothers throw an absolute fit every time little Johnny runs a temperature demanding that doctors prescribe a litany of antibiotics.

“But I want to keep my children safe. What’s a manic, obsessive, paranoid insecure mother who has tied her entire self-worth directly to the physical and emotional health of her perfectly healthy child to do?” Bingo! More antibiotics. Let’s all immediately go to Wal-Mart and buy a case of anti-bacterial soap, Clorox anti-bacterial wipes, anti-bacterial toilet bowl cleaner and anything else that kills 99.9% of all germs.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Frankly I don’t think anything that kills 99.9% of anything is a good thing. But the problem here is that we are creating entirely new classes of diseases. Bacteria have been around for a while now. They have had millions of years to evolve into highly efficient killing machines. But apparently that's not enough for some of us. Rubbing every surface of your home down with anti-bacterial wipes is like exposing Bruce Banner to gamma rays. But instead of a giant green asshole with indestructible pants, we end up with invisible silent killers that propagate by the trillions in a matter of hours.

Thanks Mom. Because you want to keep your kid from getting a head-cold we all have to live in a world where touching absolutely fucking anything can kill us.

Sub-Prime Mortgage Fiasco

I am sick and tired of hearing about this sub-prime mortgage crisis. But I have a perspective on this that I have not heard anyone discuss. First, we need to stop blaming mortgage brokers for this in its entirety. Granted there is plenty of blame on their collective shoulders, but it doesn’t rest exclusively with them. Don’t worry. You still get to blame the banking industry as a whole.

As with most things that are catastrophically wrong with our country, the blame lies squarely with two segments of the population:

• President Bush
• The Banking Industry

I think the analysts and talking heads are missing something critical with their analysis of this issue. The increase in foreclosure rates is due (in my opinion) in large part to the changes in the bankruptcy laws sponsored and pushed through by Bush a couple years ago. I am not surprised that people have missed this connection. Frankly, most folks who analyze the markets and have a voice in the media don’t really think about bankruptcy in real-world terms. It’s just not something they can personally relate to. You see, I am one of those people. I have one of those high-risk, low-interest adjustable rate mortgages. I have gone through bankruptcy and financial hardship and had to make decisions about whether or not I could keep my home. So let me weigh in on this issue from the perspective of someone who’s been there.

Forget the macro-economic conditions that affect long term interest rates, declining wages, increased health care costs blah blah blah. Forget the pie charts and the graphs that depict the ever increasing rate of decline of the American economy and way of life. Instead, let’s focus in on a typical real life scenario for a minute and maybe the issue will become clear.

First, I don’t buy in to the idea that everyone who selected this type of mortgage is ignorant of what they were doing. Not everyone in this scenario was taken advantage of by predatory lending practices—at least not by their mortgage broker. Of course, there’s plenty of that going around, but some people simply analyzed the situation they were in and made a choice that at the time made sense for them. Let’s say you lose your job, get cancer, have an accident or are going through a divorce but want to keep your house. In the divorce example, in order to separate that asset from the marriage, the person keeping the house needs to re-finance on their own. In that case, you may not know for how long you can keep the house or what your job situation is going to be in 2 years. In that case, a 1.8% adjustable rate mortgage for a period of time lowers your short term costs until you can get back on your feet, find a job and settle in to your new life. So, in that case, an ARM makes sense. But here’s where that breaks down…

I think most folks can actually afford to make their mortgage payments. That’s not the problem. It’s managing the other debt you acquire while making a life transition that’s the problem. People end up in a scenario where they are using one of their 9 credit cards to pay the minimum monthly payments on their other cards. I’ll detail out the cycle in another post, but suffice it to say, the end result is a consumer with a mountain of high interest debt they cannot pay. The only way out of that catastrophic event is typically bankruptcy. Remember, you don’t lose your home in a bankruptcy; you can still keep that, your car, your TV etc. What you lose is the mountain of usurious debt piled on by predatory lenders outside of your mortgage company. If you can unload that high interest (28%+) debt load, you can pay your mortgage and make a fresh start and once again become a productive member of society who still owns a home where you can raise a family. It’s the path to redemption for people who’ve hit a bump in the road of life.

Well it was.

Not any more my friend. Along comes a change to the bankruptcy laws. Now it’s damned near impossible to get rid of that debt completely, you are still under the thumb of these predatory credit card lenders making escape from the cycle of usury impossible. When that minor interest increase to your ARM comes around adding that extra $100 a month to your mortgage payment the result is that you try and try to make good on your debt, always deciding who to pay this month until finally you’re overwhelmed and you lose everything.

So it’s not as simple as blaming people for entering into bad mortgages, or mortgage lenders for making risky loans… it’s the other egregious financial pressures placed on people who’s lives get turned upside down that are the real problem here. From the credit card company that jacks your interest rate up to 30% because you miss a payment, to the bank that charges you $180 in overdraft fees for checks totaling $20. That’s where the true burden is and that is what's causing this collapse.

You want someone to blame? Just go to the nearest bank branch and point your finger at the guy behind the counter. Even though it’s not his fault directly, he is as close to the problem as you’re likely to get without an armed escort.

Democrats Can't Win in 2008.

Some of you have heard me say this before, but something happened last week that is forcing me to say it again. The Democrats cannot win in 2008. There are myriad reasons for this, all of which are direct corollaries to why some people think they can’t lose:

“Anyone in support of the unpopular war in Iraq cannot win.”

Wrong. I’ll wager that come Oct. 2008 this war will be rounding out the bottom-end of the top ten most important issues the typical undecided voter is concerned with. The Republican’s have a whole year to spin this back to a “favorable” position… which is exactly eleven and a half months more than Carl Rove would actually need.

“America is so fed up with Bush and he is so unpopular that anyone even associated with a Republican can’t win.”

Wrong. The people who say this are partisans. They define themselves as belonging to one party or the other. The majority of voters in this country identify themselves as “independent”. I put quotes around that because what they mean is that they will vote for either party’s candidate… not that they vote for independent candidates. They don’t know the difference between those two things.

We are sick of being deceived and lied to and told that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 or the war on terror(ism).

Wrong. Most people actually believe the lies. I don’t have the time right now to reference the polls, but they are out there for the industrious reader.

We’re ready for a female or black leader (read Clinton or Obama).

There it is. You can forget all the other reasons above because none of them matter. The real reason the Democrats can’t win is because they will almost certainly choose to nominate one of two candidates:

1. A black man whose middle name is Hussein and whose last name rhymes with Osama.
2. A woman that most women hate and don’t respect.
   

“Oh but Scott, I think the American people are smart enough to see past that obvious B.S. There are enough enlightened, non-racist and non-gender discriminating Americans to overcome that kind of obstacle.”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. So very very wrong.

Last week I was listening to a radio show… my favorite non-political talk radio show (The Mischke Broadcast) and I heard a black female caller say something I will never, ever forget. I’ll do my best to quote this:

Caller: “I would never vote for that black man. Obama. Ya know why? Ya know what his middle name is? It’s Osama! That’s right. That’s why black people don’t like him.”

Host: “Is it, is that his middle name? Let’s find that out. (to assistant) Find out what Barak Obama’s middle name is for me.”

Caller: “That’s what I heard.”

Host: “And that’s why you wouldn’t vote for him? I mean my father’s middle name was Hitler and I think he was a pretty upstanding citizen.”

Caller: “I’m not voting for nobody named Osama”

Host: “It’s Hussein. Barack Obama’s middle name isn’t Osama. It’s Hussein.”

Caller: “Well whatever. Same thing.”

Host: *chuckles*

Think that one through. Not only does this woman not know anything about the candidate, but she is making snap racial decisions (a black woman mind you). She can’t distinguish the difference between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and Barack Obama. Just like the polls indicate most Americans think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. Listen, the number of Florida voters who voted for Bush in 2000 who thought he was his father was five times higher than the margin of his victory. They didn’t even know who the hell the guy was. But they recognized the name: “Yeah, OK, I know that guy. Let me just punch this hanging chad out like Mike Tyson punching a hole through the innocent face of democracy itself.”

I challenge you to randomly ask women you may consider your typical, average undecided voter (find someone who calls themselves a small “i” independent) what they think about Hillary Clinton. I have done this. The answers range from: “She’s a bitch.” to “I couldn’t vote for someone who let their husband cheat on them.” to “I just don’t like her (see the previous two responses)”. Women don’t respect her. And I’ll let you in on a little secret… most American men don’t feel comfortable voting for a woman because, frankly, they have such a low opinion of their own wives.

There are enough redneck, backward, uneducated, racist, sexist, ignorant morons in this country to fill a… well to fill a country--a country somewhat smaller than Canada and slightly to the South. I hope I am wrong. Really I do. Because there is a part of me, albeit buried deep deep beneath a crusty exterior of pragmatic cynicism that really wants to be wrong about this. Kind of like the feeling I get every time get pulled over for speeding: “I bet this cop will cut me break because I wasn’t really going that fast or endangering anyone and he can see that I don’t have a very nice car and probably can’t afford an expensive ticket.”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong…

Suck for a Buck? Fuck Off.

This weekend I enjoyed what was probably the last patio night of season at my local watering hole. I witnessed something that has been bothering me for years. The bachelorette party. Frankly, it’s disgusting. What is it that drives otherwise dignified women to carry around giant dildos in public, wear strings of necklaces with little penises on them and tape suckers to their t-shirts declaring proudly that you can “Suck for a Buck.”?

“Last fling before the ring!” Bite me. Your fiancé must be so proud.

This isn’t intended to be an indictment of all bachelorette parties, or all women for that matter. But there is something unique to this event that stirs a particular class of women into a group of uninhibited, obnoxious, self absorbed, attention-seeking whores with a sense of entitlement the size of a small moon. I mean, aren’t there male strip clubs for this sort of thing? No. Because what they seek is not sexual in any real way. What they seek is attention—from everyone. I am trying to come up with the male equivalent here. Perhaps someone can help. Perhaps the male equivalent is pretty much how men act all the time without the need for an event to justify the behavior… but I don’t think so. I’ve never seen a group of men running around with vaginas and boobies taped to their shirts walking up to every woman in the bar demanding a dollar for some candy that’s duct-taped to their asses while throwing copies of Penthouse all over the table.

This isn’t limited to a specific age group either. I’ve seen this behavior in groups ranging in age from 20 to 50. What is the deal with demanding money or free drinks from strangers because you’re getting married? One group was in their 30’s. Most of these women were already married. The combined value of their wedding rings alone was probably on the order of $75,000. If they’re that hard up for cash maybe they shouldn’t have asked their husbands to fork over 3 months’ salary to buy those diamond monstrosities obtained from exploited South African laborers.

There were two such groups who entered the bar last Saturday night. They arrived in a party bus (one painted entirely pink) and invaded the bar like a barbarian horde--literally pillaging. Now I know what Iceland felt like when the Vikings arrived. I have news for you ladies. The reason men buy you drinks and generally spend money on you is because we are hoping you will have sex with us. Now, you’re getting married. The chances of me getting into your pants have gone from 1% to zero. You’ve now past the threshold of usefulness to the average male patron. Once you put that ring on, you’re about as welcome at the bar stool next to a guy as the old man who smells funny and wants to talk about how the Vietnam war was part of a larger conspiracy to fund the military industrial complex ultimately culminating in the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem in order to bring about the second-coming of Christ.

Not very welcome.

You’re not cute. You’re not funny and at this point you’re not even worth trying to sleep with. So please take your “suck for a buck” lollipop, shove it up your ass, get out of my face and let me drink my beer.