Be Proud You're A Rebel?

This is a bit of a long one, but it could not wait. It contains some words that are hurtful demanded by context. I submitted a version of this in December 2016, in response to "We Are Bitter, No. 2: From 2016 Forward," an essay (linked here) by Chuck Reece, editor-in-chief of The Bitter Southerner. The Bitter Southerner is a fine online magazine about the South and things Southern, in its myths, its realities, and its futures. I did not hear back from The BS (as it is affectionately referred to), but with the horrible events that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia over August 11th and 12th, I felt compelled to give it another turn in the light. It has been edited to take into account those recent events.

I was born and raised in southeastern Virginia, Portsmouth to be exact. I went to college at Virginia Tech, up in the Blue Ridge mountains in Blacksburg. Upon graduation, I wound up in Baltimore, Maryland where I stayed for over twenty years to find myself with an ex-wife, a daughter I adore, and probably nowhere to go from there. This before life got really crazy and I ended up in love again and in Kansas, where I lived until July 2017. Things did not work out in the heartland, and I moved myself back to Maryland, this time to the city of Annapolis.

To talk about a new South, a new America, we have to discuss the ugly, nasty truths of the past. The last election cycle in particular made everyone –hopefully, everyone—look inward to reexamine their consciences and outward to reexamine the cultural matrix to which they are beholden. I know I did.

To my shame, racism and bigotry were part of my upbringing. It never reached the magnitude of joining the KKK or actively seeking out the “others” for abuse and belittlement, but it was there. It was casually woven into the fabric of our daily lives. We, including myself, had no qualms about telling ‘nigger’ jokes or using it to say “those niggers” in the same way that more enlightened people would say “those folks.” You would hear stuff like that among white peers at the same time you wouldn’t actually say it to someone’s brown face.

The same shameful treatment was applied to Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Asians, the disabled, and LGBTQ folks. Equal opportunity bigotry, no doubt. I often felt uncomfortable spewing such things, but it never bothered me enough to stop myself or call out others when they did. I let myself be misled because I did not think to question it.

That is until the day I had a jarring break with the culture in which I was embedded. My awakening to what was really going on around me. An occurrence I will never forget happened in front of me as I walked into a shopping mall in my hometown. Ahead of me were two white men, appearing to be in their 20’s. Bearded and clad in a fairly typical set of work clothes that almost could have been our city’s uniform, they reached the door just as a little African-American girl was coming out.

She was probably no more than about four or five years old, carrying a toy and pushing on the door while her mother followed behind. The girl paused in the doorway which momentarily blocked traffic. Just as I came up behind the two men, I heard one of them snarl at the girl “Get outta the way, you little nigger!”

Thunderstruck is too mild to describe what I felt. I stopped while the two men pushed rudely past the girl and into the mall. To her credit, the girl did not seem to notice the slur hurled at her. But I am sure her mother heard it, because she hustled the child out the door much faster than you would expect for something so casual as a shopping trip. A few steps into the building, I had to stop a moment to collect myself.

I felt sick. A churning stomach and a racing heart catalyzed by the brush with violence and hate I witnessed. I had no understanding. How could that be? The girl was being a child, no bother to anyone, and yet these men saw fit to verbally abuse her because of her skin color? The illogic and injustice of it made my head spin. It sank in that this was how a lot of society, my society, operated, hurting others with thoughtless cruelty because they could get away with it, backed up as it was with structural and institutional racism.

The first of many switches flipped that night. I went home uneasy and sad while trying to make sense of the loathsome behavior I witnessed. It sparked the first of many years (in my teens then, in my 50’s now) of introspection and inquiry into the causes of such bad behavior and how to eliminate it in myself. I started turning a skeptical eye towards society. Intellectual laziness and lack of awareness had led me down a slippery, dead-end path. I began to question things, starting off with how I had allowed others to do my thinking for me.

I felt ashamed of the Southern way of life in which I lived. The people around me began to sound backwards. My own voice started to trouble me because I realized I did have a drawl, even if it wasn’t as deeply twangy as some of my friends and relatives. Arriving at college, I actively sought to drop the accent and even leave behind certain figures of speech. I was around a lot of different people in that time, and was self-conscious about being considered too “Southern.”

I succeeded, to a degree. In my early years out of school, working for what ended up being about 20 years in Maryland, many of my co-workers seemed mildly surprised to find out I was from Virginia, because I did not sound particularly Southern. I even lost my taste for sweet tea, if you can imagine that! The net result was that slowly over time my roots loosened their grip on the soil from which they sprang. I became untethered from the past in such a way that I cast off the prejudices I despised but forgot to hold on to some of the good things I loved.

As the years unfolded I thought more and more of myself as American, but without regional identity. I was haunted by the notion that I was missing something that I could not put my finger on. I cannot tell you exactly when my search began to find what I lacked. But I can tell you my primary research medium was food. I have always been a trencherman, and learning about myself through cooking and eating foods from my birth region was a natural fit even if I was not fully cognizant of why I wished to do so.

Smithfield ham. Cornbread and grits. Fried chicken and collard greens. Some things I loved to eat and some things I thought I could happily do without now became more important than ever. Mail-order sorghum even made an appearance or two in my house. An old cast-iron skillet of my maternal grandmother’s fell into my hands as an inheritance when she passed away. It took me years to understand the great gift that skillet was, one that I still hope to live up to when I cook.

The point is that each dab of sorghum and butter on a biscuit, each skillet of cornbread, each forkful of collard greens I washed down with my (unsweet) tea began to fill me up in ways beyond the mere existence of calories in the belly. It all filled me up with home. The sense of dislocation I dragged around for years slipped away and the roots began to push themselves back into the dirt of my creation. There was an eagerness to share with others the Southern boy that I was and am. My adventures in cooking also taught me history as a spectrum, and food as a bridge to others.

This eagerness and comfort grew in the years between my divorce, subsequent relocation to the Midwest, and the travesty of the 2016 election year. My sense of well-being took a big hit as I watched the ugliness spewing out of the mouths of our President-elect and his repugnant followers. Who could pay attention to the news cycle and not be shocked and upset by the flood of bigotry bearing down on us as a nation?

Memories started creeping back in. Flashbacks to the times as a teenager when I paraded a Confederate flag around the neighborhood because I thought it was cool. Embarrassment at having participated in Civil War reenactments, on the side of the South of course, because I wanted to be a rebel. Shame welled up when I recalled telling and laughing at ‘spear chucker’ jokes, thoroughly thoughtless and disrespectful of the African-Americans I personally knew and liked at school. Waves of regret when I remembered that little girl at the mall and how I lacked courage to stand up to racist bullies and call them out on their vileness.

I was young, once, and stupid.

So it was when the election results were announced that I felt horrible for Americans in general and Southerners in particular. All this time having gone by, the history under our collective belts, and we have learned not enough to elect such a terrible representative of the American ideal? 

Watching the news about racists and neo-Nazis marching Charlottesville stirred up the muck again. The horrific act of murder we witnessed in that car plowing into a group of marchers who had taken upon themselves the hard work of opposing hatred, bigotry, and evil. A young woman who stood up for many good things killed by a man who took hatred and spite to obscene levels: this is the malignant fruit falling from trees planted long ago. 

Hearing the president generically condemn the violence, with the morally bankrupt stance of "many sides" being at fault, it hit me hard that we could have done so much better. We have to do better, be better . For the sake of all of us, we are going to have to oppose the white nationalist agenda of hatred, discrimination, and violence. 

In the South, whether you live there or carry it in your heart (as I do) and in America in general, we have to learn to talk about Confederate flags without waving them or using them as tools of fear and oppression. We have to stop fetishizing statues of deeply flawed, sometimes evil people. We have to understand we can move into the future without necessarily burying our past, but that future means inviting everyone to the table and being honest in our conversations with our fellow Americans. Claiming  superiority because of skin color and heritage is a desperately weak gambit to demand participation in the ideal of America. It only shines a bitter light on the institutional racism built into our society.

Difficult work is needed to determine who we want to be as Americans moving into the future. The arc of history is pretty clear on that score. We carry the moral imperative to resist hatred and bigotry wherever we encounter it. I learned that lesson long ago, acknowledging my personal shame in these matters and opening my mind and heart to cast out the hate I had thoughtlessly absorbed. After Charlottesville, it is clear that many white Americans have not done the same. We cannot avert our eyes, stifle our voices, shut our ears. We have bridges to build, not burn, if we claim to be Americans.

Chasing Chaff With A Spoon

So much going on inside and outside, I'm dizzy and struggling with what I wanted to say next. The Shiny Things are bright and plentiful in the moment. I wanted to be eloquent and witty with a point...

...but I keep losing focus. I think it is fatigue combined with politics-induced exasperation. My brain is full and my tolerance level is way low. The thing is, I want to avoid getting sucked into the quagmire looming before the 2012 election.

But the idiots and the liars, they won't shut up. Can't seem to avoid them. This election year in particular has seemed one long case of the Nasties, and the lunatics in charge of the asylum. The continuing spew from the Party of the Tea, and right-wing bigots, and the downright hatred some Americans seem to have for everyone who isn't like them...makes me sad and sleepy. The latest abhorrent remarks by Ann Coulter regarding 'stupid single mothers' is a case in point.

Bah. I'm too worn out for a rant. It's there, folks, and I don't mean to disappoint. It will just have to be a post for another time, as I am sure I will have to get it out of my system.

Then I can get back to something truly invigorating and creative. You know, stuff that really matters, like good stories.

Human, Kind

In over three months of unemployment, I have spent a majority fraction of my waking hours thinking about, looking for, and worrying over finding a job.  This we know, as I have beat that particular horse too often in the annals of Irish Gumbo.  This week was no different.

Right now, dear ones, I don't want to dissect the job hunt.  I want to get something different out of my head.  Something that has been incubating in there for weeks, and that I finally put my finger on today.

In my time that has not been spent on job searching activities, I have had the opportunity for steady engagement with current events.  Not always to my benefit, either, as I tend to mouth off at the computer or the television when perusing or watching the news.  I have had many opportunities to indulge my love of reading and research in following threads on a wide range of topics.  When something catches my interest I savor the opportunity to follow it until I decide I have learned enough, not when the dictates of the outside world say I am done.

In an election year this carries noticeable risk.  Especially when one has strong feelings and opinions about many things involving the human condition.  This year it has been especially acute given all the attention lavished on the issues of what constitutes marriage, families, gender politics and equality.  When this is mashed up with regressive social thinking, bigotry, hatred and exclusion, it becomes a big thought bomb.  Today it blew up in my face.

A lot of wind has blown from the mouths of conservative, right-wing, supposedly religious people in the past few months.  A lot of foul, obnoxious wind.  Much talk has been aimed at the supposed damage that has been done to "God, America and Family" by those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) people.  We have presidential candidates signing pledges vowing to be faithful to their spouses and to uphold the U.S. Constitution, and opposing same-sex marriages, while continuing to maintain the false premise that homosexuality is merely a "choice".  We have politicians who have been divorced multiple times (including cheating on a spouse while trying to divorce them) telling us our morals are corrupt and "America has lost its way".

There are people who call themselves serious contenders for the office of President of the United States, and seem to think nothing of condemning lives they obviously don't understand. They claim to stand for the ideals of a country founded on the principles of life and liberty written into the U.S. Constitution.  It is a poor joke to claim one stands for individual freedom while ostracizing and attempting to legally exclude whole groups of people from the benefits and protections of the law.  It is abhorrent to use hate and ignorance to tell anyone, not just Americans, you don't deserve to be treated as an equal human being because you are a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person.

What that amounts to is saying: you are not human.

It is a classic sign of a fascist mindset to designate a class of people as The Others, The Different, The Outsiders, in order to galvanize the remaining people with fear and hate, as a method of exerting political control.  Look at the governments of Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, the Soviet Union of Stalin.  Look at McCarthyism in the 1950's. The thread continues into today.  Look at the idiocy that spews from the organizations supporting Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, any of them.  Better yet, look at the statements and actions of the people themselves.  Signing ridiculous pledges.  Claiming that the morals of the country are being destroyed by people who don't marry, or want to marry a person of the same gender; that ruin lies down the path of acknowledging someone who was born one gender realizes they are really another.

You know who else makes hateful, ignorant, repellent statements like that? Groups like the Taliban, and other religious fundamentalists.  Groups who want to control what you feel, who you love, what life you want to live.  It is terribly insulting to me, and incredibly dangerous to others, to be told that my morals are corrupt...because I don't think the way they do.

My morals are just fine, thank you.  I don't need some ignorant, power-hungry buffoons deciding for me what is right or proper, especially when their definition of right and proper is based on taking away freedoms and arbitrarily designating some people as not worthy of love, respect or protection under the law.

To sit and listen to someone slander tens of thousands of their fellow citizens, to hear the hypocrisy behind asking for their votes while working to deny them basic rights, is abhorrent beyond endurance.  They cannot claim to know what is best for all citizens, because they have demonstrated they do not have empathy for or understanding of all those citizens.  Anyone who cannot see the crippling inconsistencies in their ideology, and expects me to ignore those inconsistencies, has no business running the country.

I am not a lesbian.  I am not gay.  I am not bisexual.  I am not transgender.  I am a heterosexual male. Most important of all, I am a human being, as is anyone who identifies as LGBT.

To condemn people to the status of sub-human, not equal, because of their inherent identity is probably the most revolting perversion of the American ideal I have witnessed in my lifetime.  The claim that we are a compassionate, humane and free society will remain a joke if intolerance and hate become the rule of law.

We all deserve love and respect based on who we are, not on someones ignorant and hateful definition of who they think we are.  I cannot accept, will not accept, will not support any political hopeful who wants to exclude human beings from society based on lives different than their own. Different does not equate with wrong.

Heterosexual. Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Transgender.  We all identify as one of those.  The common thread is that we are all human beings.  It saddens me to think there are forces out there that want to deny many of us our humanity.  Those forces must be opposed.

On Not Caring About The Trial Of Conrad Murray

Holy smokes, people.  It's Day 4 of November and this is the first post of the month for me.  I'm slacking.  And tired.  And still looking for a job.  Okay so there is a lot going on that I haven't been prodigious with the production lately.  Too bad my first of the month is a rantlet.  Gotta get it out of my system, though.

As many of you know, I was let go from my job back in the first week of October.  While I have been very busy with job hunting (and a personal endeavor, more of which later) it is also true that I have had more time during the day to do things not job related.  Unfortunately, one of those things is watching television.

Daytime television.  Gah.

One thing that has been getting on my nerves, because it seems inescapable, is the trial of Dr. Conrad Murray.  It's so all over the media that I won't bother with a link here.  Come on, folks, its the Internet 24-hour news cycle world now.  Stuff like this trial is a fast-growing fungus.

To put it simply, I don't give a good damn about the trial.  I can't care any less about this whole mess.  I don't want to care any more, I'm fed up with the news covering it like it is some world-shattering event.  I even saw one web "news" outlet covering it like it was a sporting event, a goddamn baseball game complete with metaphors and cliches.

Really, people?  A man is accused of causing another man's death by drug overdose, and you use phrases like "It's the bottom of the ninth" now that the jury has to decide?  With all the economic uncertainty, the joblessness, the wars, unstable political situations and governments on the verge of meltdowns, this is what the media thinks is so important we need round-the-clock updates?

What's the meme say? "I don't want to live on this planet anymore!"

The only people this trial truly matters to are the families of Dr. Murray and Michael Jackson.  The trial itself, and the verdict especially, will have no material effect on the vast majority of the humans on the face of the planet.  Their families are no more and no less important than anyone else on earth.  To push this sad tale to the forefront of our collective consciousness is repugnant at worst and criminally boring at best.

Nothing in this trial would have done, nor will it ever do, anything to make my life better.  The same goes for everyone else.  It will not enhance the quality of life for all citizens.  There are overwhelming issues of vaster importance than the sad death of a talented, troubled pop star and the enablers who may have unwittingly killed him.  It is only worsened when pop culture tries to shove it down our throats, to force us to care for the sake of ratings and gossip.  I, for one, refuse to open my jaws.

Here endeth the rant.

Bag of Hammers

If in a big box store
you are compelled
to buy a t-shirt
emblazoned "McStud"
because you think
its funny and hipster
there is the proof
that you are a tool
in service to tools

The STFU Files: On Not Being A Weiner

Begging your pardon, dear readers, I must veer off into current events (of the American political variety), so please bear with me while I get this out of my head. Kind o f like passing a mental kidney stone.

(Ahem)

First of all, let me say up front that Anthony Weiner (you know the one) is a dumbass of the first order.  But it isn't so much for the "media transfers" he made.  To me, the pictures and the texting aren't the main issue.  It's the lying about it that really kills me.

Have none of these guys learned anything, anything at all in this era of New Media and the 24/7 news cycle?

Lots of things get texted and sent that, in the hands of someone with malice or righteous justice on their minds, could have a lot of hay made out of them.  Agendas abound in the information age, so its best to make yours clear and stay ahead of the curve.  Or the pack, if one has reason to believe one has a lot of ill-wishers out there.

I reckon a lot of people are horrified on moral grounds, too.  And a case can be made for that, I suppose, if moral purity were the sole arbiter of fitness for office.

But.

I. Don't. Care.  It's fruitless and boring.  Boring.  

If one is looking to politicians for moral role models, perhaps one should recalibrate one's notions of a role model.  People will argue that poor decision making in personal life automatically translates into poor decision making in professional life.  True?  Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the individual.  Just because someone is imbued with a supposed true moral compass, by themselves or by their followers, does not mean the decisions they make are the right or good ones.  Don't believe me?  Then refresh your memory by looking back to all the bad decisions based on bad and wrong information (and right information that was flat out ignored) that got the country involved in the mess that was Iraq.  That people lied and so many died...Somehow, that's more obscene to me, in light of the lives destroyed, resources squandered, in a war that was prosecuted on falsehoods.

Nothing Weiner did rises to the level of national security risk.  He needs to apologize to his family, friends, the women with whom he was involved and to his constituents, not the world.  This is why the nature of his offense doesn't really interest me.  I don't expect anyone to live their lives without doing something that will most likely be considered as stupid, especially in the political arena.  What I would hope they wouldn't do, is lie about it if confronted with something, justified or not.

After all, isn't it supposed to be an admirable trait, to own ones' supposed transgressions?

To paraphrase Dieter from Sprockets, "This habit of exposing yourself has become tiresome!"

Next There Will Be a 'No Cough' List

Warning:  This post has been floating around for a few days, always had something better to post up.  I wrote it in a fit of pique.  But even second-string work eventually makes it to the top of the slush pile, and sometimes it is better to just publish and get it out of the way.  I promise, better things are on the way.

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Almost two weeks ago in Arizona, a person who had no business to possess firearms easily purchases equipment to make a deadly device even deadlier.  As we know, tragedy ensued.

This past Sunday in my home state of Maryland, I was asked to show my driver's license to purchase one bottle of over-the-counter liquid cold and flu medicine, from a large, national retailer (rhymes with "Arrgh-het!).  Not only that, I was told by the cashier that she couldn't just look at in while it was still in my wallet.  She had to scan it.

Scan it. At the register.  I'll give you a moment to let that sink in.  (whistling)

Seriously?  They think I might be trying to get high, or make my own narcotics?  Really?  This 40-ish guy with a salt and pepper beard who was also purchasing paper towels, windshield washer fluid and a box of Band-Aids?

It was one bottle.  Good thing they checked, because otherwise I might do something dangerous and irresponsible...like take it as directed, and then fall asleep.

No wonder things seem so out of kilter these days.

Weapons Grade Stupidity

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I apologize for the following post. I'm sailing another sea of unbloggableness, and the political slant is something that won't leave me alone, so I must purge. Like kidney stones and bad dreams, this too shall pass. Thank you for your patience...

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There is a bit of conventional wisdom that goes something like this:

If the person you are having dinner with is nice to you but rude to the waiter, that person is not a nice person.  Avoid that person.

I think there is a corollary to that advice, and it goes something like this:

If a public figure emphatically claims something to be that which it never was, and their claim can easily be refuted, they are insulting the intelligence of the listener.  And that figure is not a nice person.

On January 8th, Rebecca Mansour, an official for the Sarah Palin PAC, appeared on the Tammy Bruce* radio show, claiming that the symbols on that infamous map of theirs were never intended to be gun sights.  Laughably, at Tammy Bruce's suggestion, Ms. Mansour agreed that they weren't gun sights, they were "surveyor's marks".

Surveyor's marks.   Really.  And I suppose "Don't retreat, RELOAD!" really meant "Don't back up the minivan, just rearrange the luggage!"

I really cannot fathom why so many people seem to think that Sarah Palin and others of the same mindset are worthy of our votes for public office.  Not only are they blind to their own shortcomings, they expect us to be blind as well.  

These people aren't exhibiting much intelligence of their own, and they are blatantly insulting our collective intelligence.  Would you really want them in positions of power?


They are not nice people.  Don't have dinner with them.


*To be fair, I was only vaguely familiar with Tammy Bruce before this past weekend.  The miracle of the Interwebs made it easy to rectify that, although now I'm ambivalent about the knowledge.  Ms. Bruce has described herself as "a gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, Tea Party Independent Conservative", with her show promoted as "a chick with a gun and a microphone."  That kind of glib, moronic attempt at a 'ballsy' persona is just as unimpressive coming from a woman as it is coming from a man.  Too bad she doesn't take that gun and shoot her microphone, thus sparing us all the irritation of another oxygen thief befouling the airwaves.

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To those who left comments on my "Politics and Violence" post of January 9th, thank you. It's nice to know I was not alone.

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Sick Of Politics and Violence

I am aghast at the latest violent tragedy bleed all over our collective consciousness: the shooting of those unfortunates in Tucson last Saturday.  So many victims, so much pain and trauma.  Already the jackals of the left and the right have started to mine it for political gain, or just plain 'spreading the hate'.

It's probably safe to say that no one in their right mind would agree that the shootings were justifiable or explainable in the context of political beliefs.  This horrible crime was most likely perpetrated by someone who truly had lost their mental bearings, their ability to understand the difference between right and wrong.  Suggesting or implying violence against others to resolve political differences would never occur to someone in their right mind to begin with, would it?  Sadly, no:

"Don't retreat, reload!"
- Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska

"If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies."
- Sharron Angle, former member of the Nevada State Assembly

"If ballots don't work, bullets will."
- Joyce Kaufman, Radio host, Tea Party activist

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Currently serving United States Congresswoman from Minnesota, leader of the Tea Party Caucus, paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson

"Sarah Palin has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district and when people do that, they've gotta realize there are consequences to that action."
- Currently serving Congresswoman from Arizona Gabrielle Giffords

I know, I know, it's just words and they really didn't have anything to do with the shootings.  But it does make one wonder when bloviating hate-mongers like Sarah Palin start backpedaling so fast (like removing this map from her PAC website) it is amazing they haven't broken their ankles.

But I'm digressing from my point.  The fact remains that people got killed (including a 9-year old girl) for no good reason, and no matter where you stand in the political spectrum, this is a horrible, horrible crime.  I can only hope that, in your prayers tonight, you pray for everyone involved.

Farging Bastiches Friday: The Curmudgeon Files

Apologies, dear readers, as I must indulge myself a rant, in bullet point form:

THINGS WHAT HAVE BEEN BUGGING ME LATELY:

•  Being possessed of a pulse, a uniform and a job does not make one a hero.  Being 'heroic' (i.e. showing great courage, exhibiting noble qualities, and great achievements) makes one a hero.  Calling someone a hero because they got out of bed and put on their pants only cheapens the ideal, and means that if everyone is a "hero", no one is a hero.  You want to be a hero? Then do something truly heroic.
• Being possessed of great religious conviction does not equate with being possessed of superior morals or ideas.  If you ask a stranger what faith they profess, ostensibly to have a polite discussion about belief, only to quickly turn it into a thinly veiled lecture on why their relationship with God isn't the "right" relationship, and that yours is, then you have disqualified yourself from being a truly humble practitioner of faith.  No one can truly know the mind of God, so don't even try, you hypocrites.  Corollary:  When the party you have just insulted and patronized by denying the legitimacy of their belief system reacts by disagreeing with you, said disagreement does not constitute persecution of you as a believer of a different faith, nor does it constitute an insult to your faith.  The person simply does not believe what you believe.  Different belief is just that; different, not wrong.  So get over yourselves, you tinpot martyrs.  Cry your crocodile tears somewhere else.
• Being a newly elected Republicanfacisticteabaggernutjob U.S. Representative or Senator does NOT mean you are possessed of a God-given, "will-o-the-people" mandate to enact every ill-thought out piece of legislation in your Big Box of Crazy Ideas.  You won that seat because people wanted to change things, and because this supposed democracy is heavily weighted to the two-party system, the people who wanted to change things voted for you because YOU WEREN'T THE GUY/GAL ALREADY IN OFFICE, not because your stupid ideas and close-minded thinking were so attractive.  There were no real, viable third-party alternatives.  So get your heads out of your own asses, and stop looking in the mirror so damn much.
• Being excited about getting up at 3:00 a.m. on Black Friday does not make you the envy of the neighborhood, or an example to be imitated.  It does not make you worthy of respect, and it does not make you nearly as cool and fascinating as you think you are.  What it does do is make you a tool.  A Pavlovian, programmed consumerist tool, beholden to whatever megacorporations have hoodwinked you into believing that the latest/greatest app/gadget/machine/toy is the only way to show how much you care for the people you want to give gifts to.  Good thing the product life cycles are so short, that way you can do it all again next year!  Seriously, though?  Do you really want to be at the end of your days, thinking "Wow, it was so cool that I was the first one with an xBox 3000, way back in '10!"  Hate to break it to you, Sparky: NO ONE CARES.
• F-book (or any other Internet-intensive New Economy company) announcing it will be "making a play" for the market by offering services that other companies already offer...is not news.  So, all you local news anchors hawking thinly veiled ads for said companies under the aegis of "Consumer Watch" human interest stories? Shut up.  Just shut up.  I. Don't. Care.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
• Putting any humble food (like french fries) on a pretty plate, and taking a glossy picture of it, and adding the word "GOURMET" to the description, does not make automatically that food "gourmet".  If you want to make french fries "gourmet",  let's see them fresh-cut to order, twice-fried, properly drained and served with side of say, chipotle aioli or homemade mushroom ketchup.  Plus, a waiter should bring them to the table.  DO NOT let some bored high school kid dump a block of batter-coated frozen fries into stale grease, oversalt them and dump them (undrained) into what will become a grease-soaked recycled paper boat, accompanied by a fistful of 'ketchup' packets.  Really, if you want to impress people, just make them hot, crispy and with the right amount of salt.  If you can do that simple thing well, you will go far in life.

Here endeth the rant.


All of then above items I have recently heard or seen in person or through various forms of media, and the irritation factor reached critical mass, hence this post.  It may be a long winter, folks...maybe I'll just put my fingers in my ears and shout "La, la, la..."

For the Calorie-Conscious Caffeine Freak

Seen at a gas station/convenience store:

Now you can be twice as amped and still be calorie-conscious! After all, you wouldn't want to put any junk on your system, now would you?

Photo credit: Irish Gumbo

End Result of Drinking Radioactive Beer

Seen in the window of a gift "emporium" at the local Cathedral of Excess Consumerism*:

 

I suppose the only way it could be any better would be if it was "Stripper-Pole Mounted". In case you had no idea where to use this, I like the helpful suggestions of "DORM ROOMS" and "FRAT PARTIES" and "RIVER TRIPS". Oh, and "CAMP SITES"...because the only thing better than one drunk-ass idiot rolling down the hill towards the latrines is SIX drunk-ass idiots rolling down the hill towards the latrines. 

Remember folks, it holds a twelve-pack, so buy in bulk.

*The local mall, in prime holiday shopping time. My little daughter was with me at the time. She's really smart and very observant. Fortunately she didn't see it. No way in hell I'd have been able to explain that to her. Wrong, so wrong...

1 down, 6 to go...

...and your pride is here on earth.

I guess the wages of sin pay pretty good, but how are the benefits?.

Our Superpatriots Will Beat Your Terrorists

Time for another rant. I cannot hold this in any longer. By now you probably have heard or seen reports on the following: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/29/india.attacks/index.html

I used to think that committing violence against others based on religious/political convictions was the most reprehensible thing we as human beings could do to one another. Then along comes something like this:http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/28/black.friday.violence/index.html

WHAT THE F**K IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!

How could this happen? Are people really that ‘effing stupid? Wait, I already know the answer to THAT question. I cannot help but see this as an awful analogy of life in these post 9/11 United States. Self centered, blindered consumerism on a rampage for the sake of a dollar, trying to heed the exhortations of “The terrorists win if we don’t get out and act normal”. Normal in this case a thinly veiled reference to consumption. I remember being appalled anew in the days following the 9/11 attacks when the Current Occupant and associated cronies seemed to be telling us we needed to resume our normal lives for the sake of the economy. Gotta buy, gotta spend, get out and get some big ticket electronics/TV/car/clothes, whatever, because consumers are good citizens. Appalling and sickening.

I was just as appalled watching the events in India unfold. Great, just great, another group of fanatics trying to make a statement by mass murder and destruction. That they seemed to be targeting Americans and Britons was definitely no accident. America’s profile as an exemplar of the “Satanic godless West” (and the UK by extension) has set us up as the punching bag for every nutjob politico-religious group in the world. This is a situation only worsened by the disastrous approach to foreign policy the current administration had inflicted on the world in the past eight years.* Watching the India footage of a hotel in flames with the ticker crawl headlining the Wal-Mart tragedy, I was overwhelmed by a disturbing realization: comparing the two, violence in the name of religion was becoming comprehensible. Not excusable, not understandable, not justifiable, but comprehensible. Religion by its nature is irrational*, so it isn’t surprising that people deluded by belief into thinking they should perpetrate such awful violence, would indeed do such a thing. As uncomfortable as it made me feel, I could see the twisted logic chain that could bring the attackers (Deccan Mujahideen, Al-Qaeda, pick a lunatic organization) to do what they did. They were choosing to be irrational in hopes of being closer to God.

But what about idiots trampling someone to death, or starting a gunfight over a toy? Were they so caught up in this culture of consumerism that they saw virtue in being the “first through the doors or the first to have the toy”? Reports from the Wal-Mart state that some idiots (I won’t dignify them with the term ‘shoppers’) were angry when told the store was closing, because they had “been in line since Thursday.” Oh, there is so much wrong with that! First, they are stupid enough to get in line a day in advance for the privilege of getting a bargain at Wal-Mart. Second, a person gets trampled to death and they want to keep shopping. Third, they have the gall to get pissed off because they won’t be able to save a few bucks. Yeah, and the poor worker was just an inconvenience to your out-of-control greed. If spending and consuming are supposed to be traits of a good citizen, I suppose those people could call themselves ‘superpatriots’.

Nothing will ever adequately explain, excuse or otherwise justify what any of these screwed-up SOB’s has done here or elsewhere in the world. Never, never, never. However, I can see part of the reason why extremists of all stripes are so afraid of America. Any group of people who would trample an innocent person to death in the name of consumer spending is a group to be feared. Maybe someday, we can say ‘The terrorists have not won’. My hope is that will be because America truly does represent the best of human nature, not because we are a nation of crazies in search of a bargain.

Happy holidays, you assholes, if you can get the blood off your hands.

*(Before any one gets their hackles up, know this: for the record, I think our actions in Afghanistan were and are fully justified; Iraq, not so much. Regarding religion, please note I did not say people should not be religious, or that irrationality was necessarily a bad thing; unfortunately, it can too often lead to people doing bad things. Finally, while it has not been confirmed that the attackers were definitely a ‘religious’ group, you can bet that they were at least cynically exploiting religion for their own horrendous purposes.)