You're To Blame.

Does This Come In Green?

2009-03-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago I was down in the Amazon rainforest for one last baby Ewok hunt before they started clear cutting in order to get a new Wal-Mart and a FedEx Kinkos up before the start of the rainy season.

My friends and I were none-to-pleased when we heard two American corporate giants were going to be destroying the natural habitat of these wild creatures especially when due to all the “political correctness” the world is awash in these days countries have banned the clubbing of baby Ewoks, except for Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, and of course France.

Then again it's 245 miles to the nearest MacDonald's and getting copies made; forget about it. Out there it's beating out mores code on a log and spaghetti & Ewok balls three meals a day. Trust me, after a week of smacking fuzz-heads you're jonesn' for a Quarter Pounder and a fax.

But the impending disruption of the annual man-fest of gore got my friends and I thinking about this whole “conservation” thing that has people all worked up and the impact that we as visitors have on the indigenous people of this land.

For instance, most hunters have custom clubs that can cost in the hundreds of dollars. You could easily spend in the thousands for a one of a kind hand-crafted, custom finish, rare wood club perfectly balanced to the hunter's swing. There is nothing like that first satisfying 'crack' to let all your fellow hunters know, that the season is now open and you plan on “bagn' your limit.” (Why the fuck there's a limit... The things breed like rats.)

Bill had been looking unusually thoughtful during the end of day cleaning and as he was gutting his tenth “wok” he said: “What if, instead of paying all that money to the club artisans in Greenland we bought them from the local natives? You know, give a little back the villagers and simple people that so graciously allow us come into their rich forest and take our modest bounty?

“You mean the ones that were protesting the first year that we had Blackwater go in and clear out?” Asked Rich.
“Exactly,” Replied Bill. “Kind of a, hey lets all be friends and here's a little something for a rainy day. Which is about is about three hundred sixty four and a half days a year in this shit-hole.”

This got me to thinking about other things I could be doing to contribute to the preservation of the planet. I could use less electricity, paper, water, plastics. I could pass on the farm raised salmon, the fua grau Mcnugetts, the $80 shots of glacier water. Maybe I didn't have to have the twin V engine model jet-ski and the Sherman A1 model Humvee.

So I pulled out my TeraByte iPhone and downloaded the, “Can We Stop It from happening?” app., plugged in a few random factual numbers and hoped for the best. I then fired up the, “Who Will Survive?” app..

The first answer was what I kind of expected: No!

But the second answer was a bit of a surprise: Ewoks!

Well; Not if I can help it.

Keep The Faith

Did You Hear That?

2009-02-26T20:09:00.000-08:00

At the latest session with my Parapsychiatrist I was telling him about having an argument with my Grandmother and that it had been very distressing to me. This was mostly due to the fact she has been dead for ten years and had been an evil sea hag. He assured me everything would be okay as soon as I ponied up $1,500 for a paranormal Orkin man to come out to the house and spray for ghosts. You can bet the first thing I did when I got back to the Casa de Adams Family was get my Realtor on the phone and ask him why this haunting business wasn't in the disclosure documents?

What the fuck is it with stupid people? Is there just not enough Jerry Springer and Oprah to go around? Every channel from A&E to The Discovery Channel has their own version of Dog The Spooky Hunter. Paranormal States, Psychic Children, (because it's never to early to become a nut-bag only dogs and squirrels will associate with,) Ghost Hunters, and soon to come: PSI. Psychic Scene Investigators, a team of surgeons that can let the air out of these balloon-head morons.

These shows take their format right out of the Seinfeld play-book; tweaking it from a show about nothing to shows about less than nothing. A family of Troglodytes or a woman with 30 cats has “had it up to here” with the non-tangible house guest from Hell who's overstayed their welcome. They just want to be able to get a good night's sleep damn it. Yeah? Then do what the rest of us do to deal with our problems. Have a Jack & Coke, do a couple of bong loads, pull the sheets over your head, and in the morning it'll be gone.

Or there's the sensible solution. Call a crack team of experts who will come in with a bunch of store closeout camcorders, a Radio Shack police scanner, and an oscilloscope they found at the flea market for $15. They will spend the next 30 minutes, (20 with commercial breaks,) wandering cautiously through your house with very concerned looks on their faces and the occasional startled gasp as they search for poltergeists without proper documentation, and any loose change that might be under the sofa cushions, or jewelery left out in the open . Fortunately The Brotherhood of Paranormal Investigators has strict rules regarding work hours so all instances of haunting must be resolved in a half hour show.

Now is all this really necessary? Has anyone ever been bitch-slapped by a ghost, been given a wedgie, a hicky? Have they taken pictures of you while you were in the shower and posted them on MySpace, drank the last beer, used your tooth brush to scratch their balls? See, the problem is in order for something to move a lamp, slam a door, smack your ass it has to have mass, and all mass is measurable. Yes, you can buy a $200 EMF meter and it will jag it's little needle all you want it to because guess what... Your house is filled with things that emit an electromagnetic field. They're called outlets, and microwaves, and fish tanks, and personal pleasure devices. (Which is another way of saying you're single.) But it will not tell you if you have a ghost hiding in your clothes dryer.

Thankfully we have a backup. Video surveillance. A crosshatch configuration of video cameras with motion sensors is established to intersect with all lines of sight, backed-up by an octagonal tripwire system connected to precisely calibrated still cameras equipped with precision ground aura filters. You can trip a ghost? Maybe that accounts for the crashing lamps and moving chairs. Ghosts are just really clumsy and run into things a lot. But we don't want to leave anything to chance. So Bob will be stationed on the second floor. When he sees Ghost Sign on the ectoplasm mats, (commonly known as contact paper,) he will attempt to trap the Sprite in an Apparition Containment Device, (commonly known as a thermos,) and transport it from the property in an astraltorial secure compartment on board the Ghostmobile, (Commonly known as the trunk of a car.)

“Jenn, Carl, do you have a copy?”

“We read you Bob, loud and clear.”

“Have you completed systems check?”

“Affirm Bob, all systems are on-line, and we're in position.”

“I'm getting some pretty heavy akasha readings up here.”

“We could be close to a full materialization, stay sharp.”

“Roger. Switching to night vision.”

“Roger? Do you see a Roger?”

“That's not what he meant Jenn, watch your screens.”

“Don't tell me my job Carl. Bob... Who is Roger? I'm not getting any readings down here.”

“He meant he understood you. Stay off the radio.”

“I have just as much right to talk on the radio as you do Carl.”

“Ahhh, ouch, damn it.”

“BOB! BOB! Can you here me?”

“Oh God I think my arm's broken.”

“What happened Bob? Was it a Banshee, did it attack?”

“No. I'm in the bathroom, the batteries in my night vision goggles died. I think fell into the tub.”

“What about Roger Bob? Is Roger in the tub with you?”

“Will you shut the fuck up. Somebody call 911 I think I'm bleeding.”

“Do you have your anti-ethereal serum? Inject it now.

“Oh God... Is that a bone sticking out?”

Maybe it's severe Nihilism that drives so many people into the open arms of the ridiculous. Searching for explanations and meaning to shore up the crumbling walls of their sanity. Rolling around in their own imagination like it was a big feather bed, tired and disappointed in the mundaneness and over ordinary that makes up most of life. You don't see movies about the mind numbing routine of apathetic life unless the protagonist has a psychotic break with reality or fucks some really hot chick who in real life wouldn't let you park her car. It might be fun if you got to do it. But you won't.

The fact is we don't want to spend $80, or whatever it is now for a movie, to watch what we can get for free by sitting on the couch and staring into a mirror for two hours. Fuck “Realistic Portrayal” I want to see someone suffering more than me or cuttn' a path through the checkout line at Cost Co with a chainsaw. Two thumbs up.

For some of us life is about staying ahead of the game, but for most of us it's about just trying to stay IN the game. The people who choose to legally change their name to Legolas, insist on wearing their Darth Vader costume to the company picnic, or refuse to believe the scratching they hear at night is the rats in the attic are just looking for their own version of American Idol to lose themselves in until the back to work whistle sounds.

Does this mean they're not a bag of fruity nuts? Not at all, they're crazy as Hell.

The only difference between them and us is that they're not afraid to show it.

Keep The Faith.

Can I Get A Receipt For That?

2009-02-17T22:13:00.000-08:00

Besides sharing with the world my expertise and wisdom concerning what is wrong with the world, how to fix it, and how it should be run, I also spend some of my valuable time reading the writings of other people who have a grasp on the true state of the world.

In pursuing this pursuit (?) I was over at Deus Ex Malcontent where there was a piece referring to a post on the Huffington Post about the banking failures who floated back to earth on uranium parachutes.

The buzz on the Hill is that those Silly Billys over on Wall Street are going to get an invite to have a sit down with Congress for a little Q&A about what they've been doing with the 700 or so odd billion dollars they said they needed to cover them until payday... . In 2025.

Now taking the subjects of politics, the economy, and personal hygiene very seriously, I felt it incumbent upon me to put forth my own solution to the economic screeching halt that is currently body slamming us into Vegemite.

I new that if I were to have any hope of my solution being considered I would have to put the same careful thought and common sense into it as the recent attempts at a solution had.

And so the post below is the comment I placed in the comments section for the post over at Deus Ex Malcontent. Originally I had intended this as just another incredibly witty comment of the many I leave around this crazy thing we call the World Wide Web. But another visitor responded, (honestly taking mine seriously,) with a well considered and accurate dissection of my mathematical shortcomings.

All kidding. joking, and drug taking aside, Che's response illustrates in a clear, easy to understand serious manner the same lunacy of what is going on in Washington and Wall Street that I tried to portray in my comment. It was this counterpoint that made me feel I should turn it all into a post.

Below is my original comment followed in by Che's response as well as a follow up comment to another commenter in blue.

******************************************************************************

There will never be any consequences for Congress failing to do their job and regulate yet another industry in order to protect the citizenry. Regardless of what the financial entities say or don't say about what they did with the money they were given, there will be no action taken.

Never mind that: The bankers, the Congress, the mortgage lenders, the credit companies, (that the Congress let walk all over them in their hearings years ago,) were all supposed to be the 'Adults in Charge.' They were the ones who said vote for me I know how to handle all this responsibility better than anyone else. Put your money with us and pay us the millions that we're worth because we understand how it works and we are the only ones who can make the right choices for you.

Yet it keeps happening over and over and over again.

Lockheed

The Savings and Loan.

Enron

The airlines

And this time anybody but us who stuck their hand out.

I've lost track at this point. What are we at? 700 billion, 1400 billion.

And 300 billion a year for the war.

Somebody pop a cork in it. Pretty soon we're going to be talking real money here.

Let's do some simple math and just a tad of critical thinking.

Item one. The government has given hundreds of billions of dollars to people who clearly have no idea what the fuck they are doing. And they handed over this money without placing any demands or restrictions on how it was used, where it would be used, or any penalties for failure to account for these actions or failure to pay it back.

Um... A fucking crack dealer would have done a better deal than this.

I'm willing to bet that if the Capitol Police stuck a gun in a few CEO mouths they'd come up with some answers.

Item two. Touching on the minor inconvenience mentioned in item one: People are losing their jobs faster than K-Fed can get a girl pregnant. And a possible solution. (Call me crazy.)

Here's the simple math part.

US. Population. Roughly 300 million.

Money paid for a solution that didn't work. A fuck of a lot.

How about this.

Give every person over the age of 18 that makes $95,000 or less a year 2 million dollars tax free. Just once. 600 million. Not billion. Million.

Which means bills get paid, people still buy things, business don't need to lay people off, people can still engage in buying $8 cups of coffee, silk underwear for their cats and Barackberrys, the economy doesn't constrict and everybody but the people in charge are happy.

Oh, and the need for the services of the Dickweeds who got us into this mess goes down considerably. Wow, hope they don't have to reorganize or restructure or make the really tough decisions or any of the other pathetic tripe we have to listen to come out of the mouths of our employers when they tell us that life as we know it just came crashing down around our Wal Mart wadding pools.

Do you mean to tell me that out of all the uber-brains that have been elected or put in charge by their friends in the financial world that nobody has even thought to themselves: Hey. I've got this crazy idea that might save us enough that we could start having Free Muffin Mondays again. How about instead of giving complete fucking morons a free Ticket to Ride we toss a few bucks to the groveling masses just to watch them jump.

And if they screw it up we drag all 300 million of their sorry asses in front of Congress, threaten to put in jail and fine them and then tell 'em: Ahhh. We're just kidding.

What? Oh you mean this time we really put them in jail? Well okay. Never tried that before, but could be fun.

Sorry to burst your bubble, Brian, but your math is just a little off (like several orders of magnitude). Only 300 lucky people would get the $2M payout to reach your $600M figure. However, that number rises to 300,000 when the payout pool expands to $600B -- which makes the exercise a little more interesting, since we're still talking about numbers that are already in play. Considering that the TARP money ($700B) together with the just-approved stimulus package ($800B) totals roughly $1.5T, we could just as easily have given 750,000 families/households Brian's hypothetical $2M payout. Choosing the recipients would still be problematic, but one has to believe that 750,000 U.S. families would make better decisions and accomplish more with that money than the institutional greedhead entitlement class currently feeding at the trough.

Your (larger fiscal) point is well-taken, Anon, even if your tone is overly dismissive. Brian's plan is already in place on Wall Street: we're burning up the printing presses to haul dumptruck-loads of money to them so they can turn around and pay $18B in bonuses for the glorious year that was 2008! You think there aren't individuals in that group raking in at least $2M for their inglorious effort? How is that different from what Brian pointedly suggested for the proletariat except in scope? Neither approach is tenable, but you are weighing in against only one (so far).

Brian's idea is absurdly unrealistic on its face, but I chose to run with it just to try to put some perspective on this whole bailout rigmarole.

Okay, So This One Time At Band Camp.

2009-02-16T00:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I get these weird feelings and I'm never sure who I've talked to about them. I can never remember if I told my psychiatrist, my psychiatrist's nurse, if I was talking to myself in bed, (which I do a lot,) or the owner of the liquor store down the street who is from Iran and doesn't speak English, -not because he's from Iran where they speak Persian, but he refuses to speak it because hates their rugs- but because he's Albanian and he only speaks Malagasy from Madagascar which is pretty weird since he's never been there and swears he's never been anywhere near South Africa, plus he wears a Dastar which is a Sikhs' head wrap but he's says he doesn't trust them because they run up really high cell phone bills. And whenever I go in there he's always yelling at me that I buy too many condoms -which is crazy, I don't even use the fucking things- and gives me a free package of Hostess powdered sugar doughnut gems with my bottle of JD.

The owner of this oasis of insanity is Dhimiter Belushi. Dhimiter meaning: "Good Day," in Albanian, (Not fucking likely,) and Belushi meaning he tries to bullshit everyone into thinking he was related to the late John Belushi. Now I don't know if it has anything to do with being from another country or from watching Deliverance too many times but why do all liquor stores have a glass cases full of mini titties key chains that the nipples light up on, $5 Jason Voorhees Signature Series knives, lighters disguised as guns, guns disguised as lighters, pen guns, ring guns, nipple ring guns, and eight different sizes of ejaculating Silicone Butt Plugs. As well as every kind of liquor from Bacardi Zombie to a $260 bottle of 28 year old Willet, Single Barrel Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey. (Good shit.) Whatever happened to a six pack of Coors, a bag of pork rinds, and some beef jerky? You want variety? Coors Light. Get in the fuckn' car and roll that thing will ya.

I asked Dhimiter one day if he agreed with the hypothesis that a 350 pound comedian dressed up like a samurai who's tag line was “No Coke' but died from snorting it was representative of all Albanians.

He screams at me that I'm too fucking cheap to go see a real doctor. And how the fuck should he know anything about the hypothalamus. So I lit his Tic Tac display on fire and laughed my ass off while he used a bottle of Fruit Punch Gatorade to put it out and ruined all the rolling papers in the display next to it. He tried to hit me with the empty bottle but I ducked when he threw it and it hit the little girl behind me right between the eyes, and her mom comes unglued and is screaming at him and he's screaming at me and the little girl was just looking at me and screaming while she stuffs Kit Kat bars and Life Savers in her pockets. So I gave the kid a minute, lit a cigarette, then pulled the woman aside and tried to explain to her that he was Albanian and that seems to piss her off even more so I asked the kid what the fuck was up with her mom? And she told me that last year her mom had taken her to a petting zoo and that a Koala Bear had molested her. I tell her that sucks and asked her what the bear did to her, and she said she didn't know, her mother refused to talk about it.

So again I explained to the woman that he was Albanian not Australian, and she calmed down and said that she totally understood and left.

Dhimiter gave me a giant pretzel with extra mustard and told me to get the fuck out of his store. Which I didn't do until he gave me one of the Jack Daniel's mini bottles as well. Nothing goes with free pretzel like a little Jack & Coke.

Patronizing this store is like walking into a Gillo Pontecorvo film already in progress. People who come in for the first time usually have their first twinges of uncertainty when they realize the guy behind the counter is doing more yelling than your average Semtex strapped terrorist who just busted though the perimeter at the ranch in Crawford. By the time they get to the candy aisle they're expecting Carlos the Jackal to jump out and hand them a MilkyWay bar and when they reach the beer cooler wonder if all they're going to find is Arafat Double Cross Stout and Bin Laden Stone Age Ale.

I guess the strange feelings I get are not so much feelings as they are questions. Like how is it I am able to understand an Albanian from Iran who only speaks Malagasy, why does he charge me for matches when I buy cigarettes but gives me free doughnuts when I buy whiskey, why didn't I get that Koala Bear's number? And how much are these cherry flavored Zig Zags?

Keep The Faith.

"I'd Gladly Pay You Tuesday For A Hamburger Today."

2009-02-11T11:00:00.000-08:00

We've got a few major problems in my fine state of California and no one seems to be able to pull a slide rule out of their ass and come up with an answer. Now if in 1970 the the Pocket Protector Posse at NASA were able to bring a crippled spaceship back from space, (because that's where they use spaceships,) with a roll of Duct Tape, a frozen hot dog and a used coffee filter, then by 2009 the California State Legislature should have figured out a way to keep the state financially afloat.

The Schwarzmiser is forcing furloughs on state employees, and it's rumored that while they're gone, he's going to sneak into the break rooms in all the state offices and increase the rate that the vending machines steal their money by 35%.

Will this madness never end?

In addition to Casual Furlough Friday will be the court ordered release over the next few years of 40 or 50,000 prisoners from the state prison system due to overcrowding that has deteriorated the prison health care system. People will scream and yell that criminals are going to overrun the city streets like zombies crashing a Texas BBQ, but we're not talking about kicking loose the top ten list of Murder Inc..

The reason for prison overcrowding is no secret. We like drugs, and the alcohol companies hate that. So they lobby for the harder drug laws, they throw millions behind the 3 strikes effort and now the Big House is filled with young black men in the prime of their lives who are taking a year off to find enlightenment, introspection and deal drugs before going off to college. (Maybe if they had some fucking opportunities to give them hope in the first place...)

Using my crazy math here is how I suggest we use these problems to resolve each other.

Step one: Change the penalty for street level drug dealing to a no jail time graduated fine, ticket based system. The first four times a street dealer is busted he is given a ticket with an immediate $300 fine, no court appearance. Each ticket has to be paid within five days of receiving it or the next time he is busted he goes to prison for one year.

The fine scale would increase with the beginning of each new four bust cycle during a twelve month period. At bust five through eight the fine would increase to $600 and so on. In addition, a dealer would only be allowed 48 busts per year. Going over 48 results in three years in prison. With what dealers make they will be more than happy to pay fines rather than go to prison, spending their days pumping iron and tossing syrup salads.

There will be less street violence due to competition because dealers will be forced to take time off to avoid violating the 48 bust rule. This allows the other dealers to work while the others rotate out. They will also learn the value of saving a dollar since they will have to plan ahead for the days off. (Much like the forced furloughs for the state employees. Hmm... Gee...)

Patrol officers would be the only ones allowed to make these busts and no organized effort to make busts is allowed. (Fair's Fair.)

All of this money stays at the state, county and city level. Two thirds of the money goes to the state and the remaining third is split between the county and city.

Result: No more prison overcrowding, budget deficit is solved in, (judging by the water mark on my bong,) about six months, as well as helping to shore up the budget shortfalls at the local level. Plus, the drug dealers are now contributing members of society in a semi-cooperative relationship with the police. (And I don't have to walk six fucking blocks to score some decent green-bud.)

Now that we have room at the Folsom Inn, we can take care of our most important problem.

The worst kind of scum on the planet. They are up there with pedophiles, baby seal hunters, puppy kickers, and the people that make those suck-ass diamond jewelry commercials.

The arrogant pricks who drive in the car pool lane when they're not supposed to. I'm not sure where this sense of entitlement comes from. Can you imagine what it must be like to have one of these people in your life? They'd take all the beer from your fridge. as well as everything else right down to the sour cream that went bad last week, and leave a list of things for you to pick-up for the next time they're over.

These are the kind of guy friend that'll rape your girlfriend and tell you it was her fault.
And the kind of girlfriend who who will fuck all your friends and tell you it was your fault.

But. You guessed it. I have a solution.

As mentioned above, some beds have freed up at Cub Med Butt Phuket so why not put 'em to good use.

Currently, for a first time violation of the Carpool Lane the fine is around $300. After the first one the fines increase until presumably, after enough of these, the drivers are thrown off of an overpass on the 405. The reality is that there is very little enforcement of the Car Pool Lane laws, and this is because it is not considered a high priority crime, and due to the state budget conditions, there isn't enough money to put the extra CHP officers needed out there to catch theses rusty cum stains.

I suggest that the first violation have a fine of $2,000. If the first violation fine is not paid within ten days and/or there is a second violation, there is a mandatory 10 year sentence in State Prison without the possibility of parole.

I think it's a pretty safe bet that after the first two instances of people going away for 10 years the problem will disappear.

If you economic savants want to upgrade from the slide rule to a pocket calculator or even one of the fancy shamancy desk ones, I'll shoot over to Office Depot and spring for it. I'm about five minutes from the office, I can drop it off.

Like most people in the state I'm doing my part. How about you people in the big white double-wide downtown do yours.

Keep The Faith.

I'm Not All That And A Bag Of Chips.

2009-02-09T12:03:00.000-08:00

Let me go off on a little bit of a metaphoric bender here.

Being in life is like driving a car. The majority of the time you have control of it but it is still subject to events outside of our control. We do our best to keep it between the ditches, avoid obstacles, and hose ourselves off once or twice a month.

But as we careen down the two lane blacktop like a Saturn 5 rocket experiencing full gimbal failure, we are going to fall victim to outside forces. We will be T-Boned, sideswiped, and at times crushed and declared a total loss but hopefully we get a little better at it as we go.

Like most people, I have made mistakes, fucked up here and there, done a few things I'm not proud of and had a few successes. But for all the rights and wrongs I've done I have always thought of myself as a person who made an extra effort to be thoughtful of the people in my life regardless of the circumstances of the relationship. In short; to do the right thing.

I have never pictured myself as the great altruist, or the patron saint of nicety, but I have never felt that I hurt anyone out of maliciousness or purpose. But as you get older reality starts to seep into your bubble of perceived reality and after 47 years on this oversize dirt clod I have started to come to the conclusion that perhaps I am not the person I thought I was. Or at least, not as successful at being good to people as I wanted to be. Besides the gradual leak of self awareness sometimes life will slap you out of your disillusionment.

We get these wake up calls at various times along the way but they haven't really hit me as profoundly as they do now. Somebody got hurt and it was my fault. I don't know any other way to put it without it sounding like an excuse. It's not that this type of thing hasn't always bothered me but I have tried very hard to lessen their occurrence.

It's knowing this that makes it all that more urgent and important for me in whatever time I've got here, to do things right. To not spend my last years believing myself to be a person I'm not really living up to, but to do it right.

But today I'm forced to ask myself why I am still making the same mistakes. How is it that even with new self awareness that instead of slowing down and looking both ways before I enter the intersection, I keep barreling through, convinced I have the right of way?

In life just like in driving; you need to pay attention, and keep your eyes on the road. I don't think I'm a bad driver but perhaps I'm a bit careless at times.

Here's hoping we can all learn to share the road.

Keep The Faith.

How Do You Hurt Me? Let Me Count The Ways.

2009-01-31T21:10:00.000-08:00

As most of us are already aware, nothing makes you feel better about yourself than someone else's pain other than the chance to mock that pain.

When I am feeling particularly sorry for myself, (which is oh, I don't know, daily,) I read the blog of a young lady named Binky. Now Binky is encountering a few obstacles along the highway of love and has had a hard time finding someone who will stick around longer than a Go Daddy commercial.

And before you get started, there is nothing to indicate there is anything wrong with Binky other than the apparent mental instability of her parents in their choice of names for their children.

I'm the self appointed reality check for Binky or perhaps better put, as the creator of context. So when she decides to go on another one of her alcohol fueled diatribes against the male portion of our species, (a species which in itself has more failings than George Bush's college transcript,) I step in with my embittered interpretation of her troubled love life which in turn lays bare The Nuclear Winter Of My Own Discontent.

Below is a portion of of Binky's post of Wednesday, January 28th 2009 entitled:
I Used to Miss Him...But my Aim is Improving...

In this post is a list of resolutions intended to serve as a milestone. An admirable endeavor that all of us undertake at different times in our lives. But we rarely see the reality that lies behind these resolutions.

That's where I come in to provide context to these lofty aspirations.

Binky's writings are in blue.

Let's get started shall we.

1. The Male Friend that you have Zero interest in Dating
“I have acquired the most sought out gift of all, the male friend. He's attractive, he's witty and is actually a Shrink by profession. And there is no sexual chemistry between us at all.”

Don't kid yourself. The two of you just haven't been drunk enough, horny enough, or both at the same time yet. This is the eventuality of all platonic friendships. Nature hates a void.

2. The Bucket List
“...a Bucket List is essentially a list of things you want to do before you, well, kick the bucket.”

Life is far too overrated, and has never lived up to it's advertiser's claims. If I could, I get a refund and an apology.

3. No More Online Dating. EVER
“It took dating disaster #12 to get me off of online dating. ...I am completely online dating-free.”

Or at least until you are starved enough for human contact other than the platonic friend you haven't had sex with yet. Nature hates a void. Do we see a pattern developing? You should be better at spotting these by now.

4. Meetup.com
“...now keep in mind that this is NOT a dating site. Take my word for it, it's a great way to meet like-minded dorks like myself. “

Great. Speed dating without the sex. Oh, sign me up.

5. Speeddating
“Speed Dating is how I met my Shrink Friend...Hmmm...Do you think that means something?”

Great. A series of one night stands without the sex. Garçon, my check and call me a cab.

6. Happy Homebuyer
“As another effort to distract myself from the disaster that was Mr. Sergeant and I's quasi-relationship, I am trying to diligently throw myself into planning my new home!”

Owning your own home will eventually become the same mood adjuster that a trip to the grocery is.
Walking down endless aisles with florescent lighting bright enough to make the sun jealous. Every song the Musac system pukes out -Even if it's Billy Idol's Rebel Yell- drags you deeper in to the black hole of lonely solitude living inside you. You're still fucked. You're still alone. The house just has better lighting and you get to pick your own songs.

7. Something Shiny
“I've been making an effort to treat myself for the past couple of weeks... Pamper yourself. if you dont, who will? “

Wine bottle. Shiny. Problem solved. Save a few bucks. You'll need it to buy more bottles.

8. Denial
“Yes, I am in denial. I try not to think about how right now he's probably talking to his new conquest."

Fuck it. It's been working for me since the fourth grade why change now?

The fact is, that with few exceptions (namely the women I date,) we all want a love to call our own. A love with a secret only the two of you can see. It's knowing that we are special to someone above all others. It lets you feel them hold your hand from across a room full of people. It reminds you everyday that you're not alone. It makes you feel safe.

I wish I could make it more poetic but love, real love is not poetic. It's hard and it's sharp and it cuts deeper than any knife Bryan Adams can croon about. (Good record though.) The only promise it keeps is that it will hurt. And yeah, it has all that squishy good stuff writers usually put in right about here.

But you know about the good and the bad already,

Whatr' you gonna do?

Keep The Faith.

Visit: 1000 Of Celibacy

I've Gotta Get Going. I've Got Nothing To Do

2009-01-23T22:03:00.000-08:00

People are in the perpetual rush of their lives these days. A triple-shot Apple Chai Tazo Tea infusion and a bran muffin the size of a bowling ball and the day is off to an eye dilating start. It used to be you could wait for the morning traffic to die down before you had to run the risk of doing a Dale Earnhartd into the wall getting to Safeway. Now all day long the roads are packed full of people with the pedal to the metal like Whitney Huston looking to to score a dime bag.

Yet for the hyper-velocity pace at which people spend their days, there still seems to be a need for more things to fill all that time we don't have. Each decade comes with the promise technology will give us the capability to make our life better than it was before. Better, stronger, faster. And what we usually wind up with is a toaster with a radio in it, and a new version of an operating system that's supposed to fix all the problems of the last one, that was supposed to fix all the problems of the one before it which was supposed to fix...

Here's something you can do to help save the environment: STOP BUYING SHIT YOU DON'T NEED. Is the Mp3-full qwerty keyboard-flat screen-bluetooth enabled-plasma-bread machine on the blink? How much boredom-busting bullshit do we need before we shove the barrel of our Nintendo Wii in our mouth and blow our multiplayer fucking brains out?

The time worn rant from the older generation deriding youth with: “When I was a kid all we had was a rock and a stick to entertain us. And if you were poor, all you had was the rock, and you had to rent that from the rich kids,” is not all that misplaced in our iPodian times. Rock n' Stick. The Guitar Hero of it's day. When you show someone from 50 or 60 years ago any three of the things we jack-off our coleslaw brains to these days, they look at you like you're either crazy, or Keanu Reeves in some really shitty Sci-Fi movie.

I was raised in a house of books, (coincidentally, down the street from that old lady who lived in a shoe,) and still suffer from a severe reading addiction. (It's not uncommon to find me face down in a bowl of Cheerios with a bookmark hanging out of my arm.) Through my childhood years and the current reliving of those childhood years, books have been a way to satiate the hours of waiting between Batman and Lost In Space on TV. They played one of the biggest roles in giving me the knowledge I needed to function and adapt in almost any situation I found myself in.

Admittedly, it's not the virtual World of Warcraft where you pound your imaginary enemies to a puss filled glob. When I was a kid you had to settle for the real thing. Grab your Louisville Slugger, stalk down your nemesis and cave his greasy haired fucking head in, spreading his IQ deficient gray matter over his front lawn where his parents could find his lifeless, rat gnawed body when they came home from their group-think IBM jobs with a bucket of Kentucky Fried under one arm and a copy of 'How To Tell If Your Neighbor Is A Commie' under the other.

I had issues growing up. But I'm better now.

In the latest infomercial, not only will you love the hawker's nuts, but the Slap Chop will release you from the doldrums of your boring life for only $19.95. Well what the fuck did I just blow $5,000 on a Real Doll for? Fuck. Can I get my money back if I only came in her once?

The corporate pendulum has swung into compassion advertising overdrive. The subtle shift to tear jerking background music and the Allstate talking head telling us in an overly sympathetic voice we need to hunker down and remember what's really important, and get back to the simple things that make life good. Oh by the way. Take what little money you don't have after getting laid off and buy their insurance to protect your speed-texting family unit. My dingle dinghy is already in good hands buddy. If I'm gonna pay someone to hold it it's not going to be a large sweet talking black man in a suit. (Unless it's 50% off.)

It shouldn't take a world wide economic meltdown for you to find the family fun of covering the kids with peanut butter and making them run a gauntlet of the neighborhood dogs. I'd ask you what you'd do if all the junk you've filled your life with stopped working all of a sudden. But that question was answered back in 2007 with the discovery in the Silicone Vally Rainforest of an epidemic like strain of Blackberry addiction and it's subsequent withdrawals.

I can't write my usual novel length post tonight. I've got a migraine tearing my head off and I see whiskey and a large handful of prescription drugs in my near future. But I'll leave you with this. We're on hard times currently but that'll change in time, just like it always does.

Maybe if everyone had slowed down and paid a little more attention to what was actually happening around them, we wouldn't be listening to the job market's gas tank sucking air. But the fact that we've had enough recessions in this country to qualify for the bonus elimination round means we don't learn and we're just going to keep doing it.

It's like getting back to the simpler times of 5th grade. Take one and pass it on. Take one and pass it on.

Keep The Faith

Born Under A Dark Sign

2009-01-12T23:40:00.000-08:00

Here we are, on the cusp of the most historical event this country has ever seen. Tickets to the ushering in of the most exciting moment in these-here-times, are harder to score than a box of Trojan Twisted Pleasure condoms in Salt Lake City.

The first President Of The United States with a PDA.

Many thought we'd never see the day a Commander-in-Chief would use a tool, rather than being one. After eight years of ideological philosophy that made the Dark Ages look like A Santa Cruz granolagirl jamboree, there's a light on the horizon, and it's not a laser-guided Hellfire aimed at the Constitution.

We have target acquisition Mr. President.

Fire at will General.

Target eliminated Mr. President.

Completely?

Well... Yeah, pretty much.

Wow, Dick. They never suspected it wasn't really him.

And they never will Harry.

BANG!

An era of change. The passing of the generational bedpan to the new breed of Rock Band Pogo Stickers that will put a stop to the microwave speed of glacier melting, give the boys down in Guantanamo, their own Kindles preloaded with copies of “I'm OK, You're OK” and “Dilbert 2.0,” develop a boidegradeable Toyota Pretentious, and push the equatorial balance back to the left where it God damn well belongs.

Social Commentator Jonathan Pontell, coiner of the new generational label: “Generation Jones”, barfs it up this way: “Jonesers are idealistic, he says, but not ideological like boomers. "Boomers were flower children out changing the world. We Jonesers were wide-eyed, not tie-dyed."
And Obama, he says, is "a walking, living prime example of Generation Jones. He's a classic practical idealist. It's not the naive idealism of the '60s."

Ohhhh, that's right. I forgot about the Substitute for Experience Chip the Generation Joneser's were implanted with when they were downloaded from the womb. A pre-lobal implant that enables them, to access Google from anywhere on the planet in order to confirm their decisions are correct. It is with this unimpeachable surety of correctness that Joneser's will be able to put racial and gender inequities to rest once and for all. Give everyone a place in the buffet line. And equal opportunity for an affordable, advanced education at an Ivy League college near you.

Keeping up with the Joneses is going to be tougher than it ever was. There won't be time for ancient frivolities of the forefathers and mothers. There won't be time for idolizing James Hilton Dean. They won't be arranging their schedules to make sure they don't miss Wheel of American Idol Fortune. If the Beatles Brothers Jonas showed up on our shores today, they'd be laughed out of the stadium.
Take your matching suits and haircuts, your catchy little pop tunes and hit the road you limey fucks.

We've got shit to do. Important shit. Like puking the most intimate details of our lives all over You Tube. Building passionate, long lasting relationships with someone we've only met over Yahoo Instant Messenger.

I don't know dude. I'm starting to feel tied down.

She like fucking txted me twice last night.

Bro, she lives in another country.

Still man, it's getting too heavy.

We're learning about the cultures and traditions of those who live around us by Goggling it while we have our iPod ear-buds dangling out of our skulls like 20,000Hz umbilical cords. Nothing says: cultural awareness, like a white guy with dreads and a hemp hat slamming back a Venti chai latte in downtown Dallas.

The naive and misguided efforts of previous generations will be getting a 404: Not Found from now on.

The Ludicrous Civil Rights Act passed in 1964. (Not to be confused with that previous abomination passed in 1866. WTF were they thinking?)

The bullying defeat of fascism in Europe in WWII. (That one cost a few bucks. And for what? To bitch-slap one little German dude?)

The hoity toity Marshall Plan, rebuilding Japan, and making them our allies. (Dig the sake bongs though.)

The arrogant assumption that technology held any of the solutions to the world's problems. The indulgent creation of NASA, the building of the Saturn rockets, going to the moon. Tang. (Some Swiss dude already came up with Velcro in 1941. Crack a book grandpa.)

The vandalism of the Berlin wall. (Was it our fault they were standing on the wrong side when it went up?)

The capitalist corruption, and ultimate down fall of the Soviet Union. Freeing all those fuzzy little foreigners to invade our shores looking to make their greedy little lives better. (Look. They got themselves into that Gulag mess, let 'em get themselves out of it.)

One asks themselves, where does it all end. Thank Buddha someone who knows what they are doing is taking over the helm. “Make it so number one.”
The problem with labels -Generation or otherwise,- is that they have no substance. They are a means to identify something, but have nothing to do with actual results. It's a great sign to hang out to let everybody know there's a new Sheriff in town. But new is no guarantee of better.

The assertion is that Obama represents a generational shift away from the ideological poles that the Boomer generation has up it's ass. Unwilling to compromise any part of their belief system. Polarized and hateful of the other side and their ideas and beliefs. This new group of trailblazers has none of that. These people are here to work, get things done. Didn't you get the e-memo on your commemorative Barackberry? All you have to do is look at any chat room or comments section of a news outlet or blog for proof of the universal blissful, cooperative spirit washing across the country like a gentle wave of organic tofu.

It just makes you feel squishy all over.

Don't get me wrong, I'm on board the Obama bullet train to better living. I've placed a lot faith that he's going to be the one guy who will actually do the fucking job he was hired to do, rather than being in it for the killer parking space at the office. I'm a big Bill Clinton fan. But if you can't trust a guy with your sister, do you really want to trust he can bring life back into a dying country? As far as I can tell, Obama is probably our last and only hope at this moment in time.

To give credit to the cheerleaders of change: They're right. We can't afford any mistakes. We can't afford the old way of doing things that have been the SNAFU for so many years. The glad-handing, mobsters with Cheshire Cat grins who drug us into this thermonuclear pit of economic breakdown, and a 'walk the plank' job market will never be brought to task for committing an act of terrorism on their own people so brutal that even Osama's boys said: “That's some fucked up jihad shit. Let us get this one, you guys drove.”

The fear I have, is that when it doesn't all get better at the end of his second week in office, everyone's gonna start whining like someone stole the prize out of their Cracker Jacks. This is gonna be a long haul, and we're going to lose some people along the way. I may be one of them. I've got the gun but I can't afford the bullets.

If you're one of the Joneses, believe in yourself, but don't get full of yourself. You have a heavy burden on your shoulders. But there's two things to remember about that burden:

The Mr. & Mrs. Smith Gen., the Gen. Browns, and Gen. Van Schaacks are all shouldering it as well. None of us are on the sidelines in this. And all the Gens. that came before you shouldered some pretty heavy shit of their own. There might be a couple of them you want to listen to.

Keep The Faith

Jonathan Pontell quote source material came from:” In Obama, many see an end to the baby boomer era”
Written by AP National Writer: Jocelyn Noveck
AP 1/11/2009

Grim Reaper Image By: Anne Stokes 2007
www.annestokes.com

Sky Falls 228 Points At Closing

2009-01-10T18:11:00.000-08:00

The world is coming to an end.
Really? Well it better be Monday. Because Friday I've got a thing with this chick at Taco Bell.

The Byzantines, the Mayans, the Incas, the Paul Ankas. All of them have predicted the end of the world or the second coming of Celine Dion. Same thing only different.

For the past five thousand years of what has been passing for civilized man, there have been predictions of nasty, icky, puss filled disasters that would rain down pestilence and liquid hot magma on the planet like a Krakatoan freebase party.

Yet. The Madonna, Sticky&Sweet tour is over, and we're all still here.

No matter what century, there is always a guy looking to tell us we're fucked three ways from Sunday. Some little grease-spot nobody gave a shit about until 200 years after he got hit by a bus, and someone digs up an old podcast of him rambling incoherently about the progenitor radio-waves in the Crab Nebula causing sushi prices to go up. All of a sudden he goes from the guy who got splashed all over You Tube wearing his sister's panties and getting a blow-job from a shop-vac, to a Prophet who knew what “RAP music” really is: People rhyming.

"These aren't the droids you're looking for."

Soothsayers. Someone who has all the answers, even though no one asked them. Usually some guy dressed in an outfit Elton John wouldn't be buried in, standing at the pulpit spouting his twelve step program of how you can get to heaven if you just give him all your worldly possessions and your earnings from the job assignments that Dew Eye will be handing out at the table located next to the People's Waters of Life vending machine with the out of order sign on it.

Jim Jones, Charles Manson, The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. (Rajneeshee dinning tip: Skip the salad at the potluck.) The Greatful Dead. (If that isn't a cult, the Backstreet boys write their own songs.) Each one has their own crowd of believers: Some wearing tie-dye, others wearing tie-dye, and the rest of them wearing some sort of tie-dye.

My all time favorite of these harbingers of better living through Rolls Roycing, is Heaven's Gate. The Club Med of the: “We're fucking insane and don't care what it takes to prove it.” crowd. The first sign that you might have wanted to take a second look at this outfit before you signed up for the, -albeit brief,- lifetime membership, is that it's named after Michael Cimino's four day run-time epic that almost turned United Artists into a hot dog cart on the corner of Lacieniga and Melrose.

That a couple named Bo and Peep, could get seven American males to be voluntarily castrated in Mexico is the kind of salesmanship that makes Glengarry Glen Ross look like a lemonade stand maned by an eight year old in the San Fernando Valley.

Ah, communal living. House Memo: Hey gang. Tuesday will be falafel night. Wednesday we'll have the all you can eat popcorn, Charles In Charge marathon. And Saturday will be vodka shots and plastic bags over your head night. Don't show up late and miss out on your complimentary: Party Like It's 1999, purple face shroud.

Whacking themselves because a Waste Management comet was supposed to come by on Monday (not Wednesday, the regular pick-up day,) and “recycle” Earth.

This makes the, Rising From The Dead, story almost make sense.
(J., not the zombies. We already know them's sum craazzy mo' fo's with all that arm falln' off, face eaten' shit. Damn. That's a party.)

Here's the thing about being the guy who predicts the end of the world. Eventually, he's going to be right. Duh.

“So, tell me who's that writin',
John the Revelator.”

All these 'Guiding Lighters,' say they have been given the supreme knowledge of The Way, by a higher entity, that speaks only to them because they are the only ones wise enough to follow the instructions of an unseen Omnipotent being that says everyone must die on a yet to be determined Thursday afternoon. This method is most commonly employed by religious groups, investment and hedge fund managers, and the occasional President of the United States. “God said, to kick some sand-nigger ass. You want to tell him no? Don't come cryn' to me when Satan's givin' you a blow torch enema, purgatory boy.”

"I haven't played Ring Around The Rosy since college."

Now it seems to me that I've seen a few homeless guys mumbling a lot of the same things. What sets the Polyester Preachers the flock listens to apart from BoBo over there, pushing what he believes is his golden shopping cart? Best as I can tell, it's their tailor. The quest to find answers to life's most elusive questions is at best an exercise in futility. If there were answers, they would have shown up a lot sooner, and somebody would have put 'em on a Post-it and left it on the cave wall for the rest of us. If you think about it, who needs the help more? The guy trying to carve out a living for his family, smacking a Mammoth in the head with a rock. Or the Wall Street, American Psycho wannabe who decides over a $300 bottle of Japanese imported glacier water whether another two million of us are going to lose our jobs.

Okay, maybe we could keep looking just a little bit longer. Just until it gets dark. Oh, 2009 job market. Too late.

The problem with following people is you never really know for sure where you're going until they take you there. And by then it's often too late to know if you want to be there or not. Looking to someone else for direction can be a perfectly normal instinct. Animal pacs follow one or two leaders, schools of fish and and flocks of birds move in unison with their group, and Republicans all use the same braincell to make a decision.

Look, life is a scary fucking proposition. No matter how much some act like they've done this before, we're all getting our cherry popped all over again with each new day. Right about now somebody's standing up in the back of the room saying: That's not true. “We've learned from those who came before us. We use that knowledge to guide us, to avoid their mistakes.”

--Do I really need to come up with something incredibly witty to put here?--

We all would like to know what's around the corner. We all have times we look back on and wish we had known then...

If we had known, it would have turned out so much differently right?

If right now you told me you could take me back and give me that answer. Right now, when I am in the worst throes of pain I've ever felt in my life, because of the woman I love more than life itself leaving me, I wouldn't take it. Every day for the last five years has been misery. And each one of those days I have to find a way to get through it one more time. And tomorrow I have to try to do it again.

But for all that I wish was different. For all that I wish the pain was gone. I wouldn't accept that answer. I wouldn't want to have known to have not fallen in love with her the second I walked off the band's bus. Or to tell others how to keep it from happening to them. No one likes or enjoys the hardship, pain, loss, fear that life holds. And I'm not saying that those things should not be solved, cured, avoided, prevented when they can be.

But I accept that life is life because of these things. It can't exist any other way. If we lived in a perfect world, we'd never know it.

And anyone who says any different.

Is lying.

Keep The Faith

The lyric: “So, tell me who's that writin', John the Revelator.”
Is taken from the Gov't Mule version of the song: "John the Revelator."
From the album: Dose

I Love Your Work...

2009-01-07T00:03:00.000-08:00

It's been a few days since I've written a post but I've been going through a really bad bout of depression. First there was the news K-Fed had pumped Britney more times than a Texas oil well. Then there was the big scare anthropologists thought Paris might NOT be as big a stupid whore as first thought. (Too close for comfort on that one is all I can say.) And then this week's news that Lindsay Whorhan and her boy/girlfriend Sam are moving to Dubai. (After of course, they whip off their trousers to get into Tommy Lee's dressing room when they stop off to say good by. New rule.) It's almost more than an emotionally sensitive, in touch with his inner child guy such as myself can take.

Hero-Worship in this country is at such an epidemic level it gets Props and a case of Cristal sent over from the Ebola virus' private booth at The Viper Room. What is it that causes people to sideline what little common sense they have and drool over every tidbit of celebrity lives like feral dogs in a South African garbage dump looking at a new born baby?

When Kooky Spooky Spice, Victoria Beckham, changed her hairstyle to a “Pixie Crop” by putting her head in a blender and hoping for the best, women stampeded to hair salons in the UK. with newspaper clippings of Ms. Spooky in order to achieve their life long goal of removing any last remnants of individuality from their lives.

Now correct me if I'm wrong. But this pipe-cleaner makes an Auschwitz survivor look like Rosie O'Donnell after she belly-flopped into a swimming pool full of Ben & Jerry's. For God's sake, pick up some Mickey D's, grab a doughnut, swallow next time you give Davy B. the 'ol hummer.

J. Lo: “Has anybody got a cross, some garlic? A spare wooden stake perhaps?”

After the stolen video of Tommy Lee pounding Pam's Smurf-Puss, -which looked more like one of those hairless cats, than something you'd want to stick your dick in,- hit triple digits, every 'Never should be seen naked on film' celebrity in Hollywood was triple-booking plumbers, roofers and window washers in the hopes one of them would somehow stumble across the VHS tape labeled: “Taking it in the face after I took it in the ass. For our eyes only. PRIVATE! PRIVATE! PRIVATE!” duct-taped to the outside of the mailbox.

I have 'em all. (Purely for research purposes.) From Tonya Harding spooge juggling to Ray J splitting Kardashian's onion. And there are two things I've learned after watching these sexual-thespian masterpieces over and over and over and over. Stupid people should not be allowed to own video cameras, and that I fuck way better than I thought I did.

The socially criminal side of this sequin obsession is the intrusion into the most emotionally private parts of the lives of the famous. The excuse that these people have given up all expectation of privacy by virtue of their career choice is as hollow as the heads of the Cabbage Patch putzes that shred the National Enquirer so they can sprinkle it on their Corn Flakes. The death of John Travolta's son last Friday is a hands-off subject. If the Fagarazzi are going to sit in a boat off the beach of Travolta's place, a Predator drone should be dispatched and melt them into a glass surfboard.

If the picture snapping jackal-pac follows Michelle Williams and her daughter, two guys from Blackwater should step out of an alley, put one of those parasites against the nearest wall and blow his fucking brains all over the rest of them. Problem solved.

Our obsession with the lives of the famous is often explained with the logic that their lives are so much different than ours. More exciting, beautiful, exotic, nothing but shits and giggles 24-7.

Bullshit. I've lived and worked with these people for years, and their lives are in such a constant state of derailment Amtrak is considering suing for trademark infringement. If any of us had the money, adulation and preferred parking these narcissistic space aliens do, we'd slip quietly out of town and resettle on a yet-to-be-discovered, tax free island before our 1986 Buick driving, meth addled relatives knew we were gone.

The every hour of the day monitoring of Angelina Blowme and her tragic hang-nail condition is just one more symptom of this country's downward spiral into a National Motto of: Don't Worry About Me. Let Me Worry About You.

If you think the Star's lives are more interesting and tragic than your neighbor's. You're wrong.

If you think there's a difference between the Star's sex lives and your neighbor's. You're right.

The only ones videoing your neighbor's is you.

I gotta go. Brad P's on the phone and he wants a pinky massage before FedEx arrives with the Hawaiian sunset he ordered for later this afternoon.

Keep The Faith

Paper Or Plastic?

2008-12-30T20:30:00.000-08:00

Most of us have once or 50 times, had the thought of “going postal” at our job race through our head like Danica Patric on her way to a 50% off sale at Victoria's Secrets. That cock hardening fantasy of stalking from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers.

Myself, I can't think of anyone less deserving of a workplace massacre than my coworkers. Even with my own misery of working for employers with a draconian management style the likes of which haven't been seen since The Spanish Inquisition, I know that the people working in my office have it far worse than I.

If I were to commit such a hubristic act it would be to a far more deserving group of people. That's right, people in grocery stores. Grocery stores are a petri dish of stupidity so viral it makes the Andromeda Strain look like a fucking head cold. Drunk drivers are more cognizant of their surroundings than these brain dead zombies pushing a chopping cart. You may even be one of them. You will of course claim not to be one of these Shopping Cart Shit-heads (SCS), but the rate of denial of this condition is higher than than a group of Oklahoma tweakers on a three week meth binge.

I am still, with all the years of shopping under my belt, bewildered by people who wander off, leaving their cart in the middle of the aisle like the Rapture is coming and the canned beets are where everyone's -the worthy ones- are supposed to pick up their ticket for the non-stop ride to heaven.
They are the most passive aggressive of the SCS'. They rarely acknowledge the inconvenience they cause and if they do, it is with a flippant 'my needs are more important than yours' expression, or a disarming 'I'm sorry, I'm so stupid sometimes' excuse. This breed of SCS is relatively harmless so you might reply with: “Don't sell yourself short. I bet you're this stupid most of the time.”

These Raptures, (shut the fuck up, you would have used it too,) are close cousins to the Meeter-Greeter, who is easily identified by their obliviousness to the existence of all other living things on the planet other than their immediate circle of friends. They are always found in pairs completely blocking a path of travel with their carts as they discuss the most minute detail of their dial tone lives. Inexperienced shoppers have been know to wait for such long periods of time in the vain hope of being allowed to pass that their eyes start to bleed. Engaging Meeter-Greeters is not recommend for anyone but the most experienced and self-confidant shoppers. Any intrusion into the Meeter-Greeter's space is met with an irritated and contemptuous expression. If you attempt to stand your ground the Meeter-Greeter will emit a challenge call. It sounds like this: “You can go around.” At this point it is highly advised that you not push your luck. 99% of Meeter-Greeters are female and this can lull a male shopper into a false sense of being more powerful. If the shopper is female they will often assume they are at least on an equal level with the Meeter-Greeter. This can be a very costly mistake. Meeter-Greeters have a contemptuous disdain for all other living things that borders on the obsessive. Though it's not uncommon for a female Meeter-Greeter to shop alone, they are usually accompanied by their mate. He will come to the female's aid, and they will simultaneously launch a pretentious 'you're lower than beetle balls' attack.

There is one breed of SCS that, though they can be annoying, are also relatively harmless, and if dealt with with caution can be neutralized rather easily. These are the ones who stand -most commonly in the yogurt or ice cream section- blocking any access to a product type that has various selections. This breed of SCS knows instinctively when to arrive before you do and quickly becomes confused and uncertain what selections to make and stand blocking the case bewildered by the choices in front of them. They share the same level of awareness of their surroundings as other SCS': Absolutely none. However, they are the least aggressive of the SCS and experienced shoppers know that by using a phrase such as: “Do you mind if I squeeze in here a sec. and grab a couple of these?” will cause the SCS to respond in a friendly manner and move out of the way.
Caution: It is very important to use the right tone of voice when attempting this. Failure to use a polite tone can cause the SCS' to become defensive, and possibly lash out verbally.

As unpleasant as the above SCS' may seem, there is one breed that is the most offensive and dangerous of them all. The Cell Phone Trampler, (CPT,) is a subspecies of the SCS that has devolved over the past ten years or so. The CPT was first classified as relatively harmless. As it has devolved however, the CPT has become increasingly dangerous. CPT's are often observed without a cart and this leads to a common misconception that they are not a member of the SCS species. In fact, the CPT is very adept at functioning with or without the use of a cart. It is this ability that has kept their primary classification as a SCS. The CPT comes in two primary groups, each having individual markings, and one sub-group that attempts to mimic the markings of the two primary groups. The first primary group is the African American female, the second group is the Hispanic Female, followed by white females trying to act black or Mexican. No one has ever mistaken a white female for the real deal, and are usually laughed at by most observers, and are generally shunned by the two primary groups. They should still be considered dangerous.

(The males of the two primary groups are rarely combative and are identified by their calm, self-confident manner. Males from the white sub-group can be identified by their extremely thick layers of fat covered with tattoos. Their intelligence level is very low, and they are easily distracted with salty snacks, and a six pack of anything.)

The CPT is on it's phone from the time it enters the store until well after it leaves. It moves at a much higher speed than the other SCS', and with a heightened sense of obliviousness (Often leading to the merciless trampling of anyone in their path.) Typically it will charge up and down the aisles seemingly lost, occasionally spinning unexpectedly and grabbing items from the shelf while it argues with a friend or family member on the phone. The longer it is on the phone the more excited it becomes. Use caution if you find yourself in an aisle with one. If you are too near one when they are in a highly agitated state you run the risk of being accidentally hit, as they tend to flail their arms wildly as the phone call gets progressively worse.

IMPORTANT: Never, under any circumstances attempt to confront a CPT. If they sense even the slightest hint of criticism or suggestion of corrective behavior from you they will attack without warning. Usually these attacks are verbal but there have been documented cases of physical aggression. If attacked by a CPT, use a bottle of brightly colored nail polish to lure it into a frozen pizza case where it can later be safely removed by an experienced handler.

Unfortunately, the hunting and killing of SCS' is not yet legal. And where there is a strong desire to, poaching is strongly advised against. The penalties are severe and though most police, prosecutors and judges share your frustration with the inaction of store management and city governments to deal with this wide spread problem, they are bound by the law until those laws are changed.

There are lobbying efforts underway to change the laws, and we may see the day where the SCS' are hunted to near extinction. If you don't want to wind up mounted on somebody's wall, you might want to think about behaving in a manner that clearly sets you apart from the herd.

Be aware and considerate of those around you.
Be polite. Say excuse me, move your cart the fuck out of the way.
I know you're tired, we're all tired, none of us wants to wait in line anymore than you do. Suck it up and tough it out. You'll be home soon enough and you can take it out on your family. That's what they're there for.
When an eight year old runs over your foot or bumps into your cart, don't give his mother a bunch of shit about it. Bend down to the little guy and quietly tell him if he does it again you'll pop his head like a fucking grape.

The thing is: People don't notice every time you're nice.
But they sure notice every time you're an ass-hole.

Keep The Faith.

The last line of the first paragraph: “ Armalite AR-10...”
Is from the movie: Fight Club.
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk and Jim Uhl

The line used in the third paragraph: “non-stop ride to heaven.”
Is taken from the Buckcherry song: Tired Of You.
Lyric by: Josh Todd

How Much For That Flag In The Window?

2008-12-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

It's Saturday night and I'm docked at my usual port of call on the couch watching Forensic Files, (just to pick up any helpful tips,) while nurturing masturbatory fantasies about Forensics Firearms Examiner, Justine Davis, (is it just me, or is she hotter than Hell in a totally nerd-girl way?) and who comes on the tube but Montel Williams as a barker for collectible Obama coins.

Now I don't have any problem with Montel. Yes, his television career tanked after he dared to be an “uppity African American,” and say something he wasn't told to on the FOX network. (“We Report We Decide. Now Shut Your Mouth You Terrorist Piece Of Shit.) And yes he has a web site selling things that... I'm not really sure what they do, but he says they'll make every part of your life better. Montel if nothing else, is a survivor in the world of media where they eat their young, stardom, and life with MS. More power to you brother.

No, what I'm bugged about, (other than not being able to score Justine's e-mail address,) is the RONCOizing of our new President, Big Bad and Black Obama. (Have you seen the abs on this guy? He'll drag Kim Jong Il out on the South Lawn and knock the shit out of him. “You gonna let the inspectors in now bitch?”) The tears have barely dried on the inbred faces of Ku Klux Klaners everywhere and already: Valuable, one of a kind, limited pressings, not to be reissued, we've broken the mold, stencil painted, beautifully embossed with the image of President Obama whatever the fuck it is, are available for $19.95 plus shipping & handling.

Grab yourself a little piece of throw away history.

Plates, coins, pillows, blankets, license plate frames and red, white and fuzzy toilet seat covers flash on the screen of the Idiot Box every 20 minutes. This is the kind of marketing that gives Ron Popeil a geyser shooting chubby that'll last all night. Throughout Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and parts of Georgia there are wide load lime green polyester clad asses tripping over their TV trays and sweater wearing chihuahuas to get to the phone and be first in the trailer park to decorate their double-wide with Wal Martesquian slices of history.

It's not like this is anything new. We've all seen commercials for the limited edition Golden Otter $8 coin issued by the Republic of Kiribati, that due to overwhelming demand must be limited to three coins per order. (Unless you ask for more when you call.) What is so alarming about this is the ever increasing volume of these craptastic offerings. This is a sign of one of two things, or God forbid both. Either the herds of stupid people are greater in number than first estimated, or the first count was right but they're getting stupider. Either way it doesn't bode well for those with an I.Q. above room temperature.

American culture has become so mired in accumulating worthless shit we make a Japanese teenager look down-right frugal. We could do a 360 in any room of the house and find five or ten things we wouldn't even notice were gone if someone bypassed the Hi-Def video surveillance system we can monitor from our blackberry as we trade stocks on the Zagreb Stock Exchange while we order Jamaican take out from the comfort of our GPS equipped Hummer, and took them.

You need to upgrade your cell phone every two months because the technology just changes so fast and besides, you're planning on doing a lot more texting so you need the flip-out keyboard and retractable drink holder with matching BlueTooth headset so you can look like a total fucking jerk-off doing your Lt. Uhra impersonation as you're ordering your almond latte and the cashier is trying to figure out if your calling her or your secretary a stupid cunt who can't get anything right.

Better fire off an e-mail to I.T. telling them to order you a new laptop to replace the one they gave you ten minutes ago, because your PowerPoint presentation is getting bigger than China and it just can't keep up with the jackrabbit on crack pace of your ninety minute sales pitch.

Sure, you really did like the BMW X5, but felt it was the right thing to give it to the wife and kids you dumped for the nineteen year old receptionist who blew you under your desk. And since it's just the two of you now, the Boxster made sense.

There may be a lot of things at first glance that seem to set us apart from our collecting brethren in pink stretch pants.

But really, we just pay more for our plates.

It may or may not be true the sanctity of the office of the President died with JFK. And it is important that we keep in mind that our leaders are human just like us. They certainly seem to take every opportunity to prove it. Since the signing of the greatest document mankind has ever penned: The Constitution of the United States, there have been politicians. But there were also those who were Statesmen. Men who's driving purpose was to solve problems and reconcile differences by binding people together. Men who cared for the good of the people and did their best to serve these ends with integrity. None were perfect, and there always have been, and always will be those who are not up to the task.

The responsibility of returning these offices to a position of respect ultimately lie with the men and women who hold them. But if we do not treat them with respect and make it clear that the defiling of them by anyone will not be tolerated, why should anyone else?

We need, all of us need, to decide which is more important: What we have. Or who we are.

Keep The Faith

Was It All That You Feared It Would Be?

2008-12-26T12:34:00.000-08:00

The holiday season has left the building faster than Elvis looking for a 24 hour all you can eat Dexedrine buffet. And along with it, the dysfunctional family get together where you get the most for your entertainment dollar when someone keys off on a drunken rant with more “fucks” in it than a forty eight hour Tarantino marathon, ending with their proclamation of a decades long hatred for all you worthless shit heads at the table, before puking in the cranberry sauce.

Now that we've sulked our way through a Christmas darker than a Tim Burton holiday special, we're left drying little Susie's tears with our pink-slip as we try to convince her how much cooler an AM radio is than an iPod. This year the Christmas spirit was personified by the arrest of a 51 year old Maryland woman for stealing her neighbor's Christmas lawn decorations so she could sell them on ebay, and the slaughter of eight people by a spurned husband in a Santa suit. Unlike past years where people were mainlining Christmas spirit like they were Curt Cobain, and would kindly give up a parking place, or pay the bridge toll for the car behind them, this year you ran a good chance of being kidney-punched if you took too long placing your order at Starbucks.

With the economic meltdown just starting to hit it's stride, the American corporate juggernaut has given up all pretext the holidays have anything to do with family, charity, and love for your fellow humans. Instead, launching a full frontal attack for every dollar they can scrape out of us and the beggars cup. The manufactures of money counting machines who once burned the midnight oil in order to keep up with demand are now seeing how fast they can retool into coffin factories to meet the impending wave of bodies of fund managers and mortgage bankers who have committed suicide. (Or at least made to look like a suicide.)

As housing developments become ghost towns over night, and layoffs hit the tens of thousands every week, the upper 1% that ass fucked the American people like we were their prison bitch, will suffer little more than a stiff finger wagging from a Congress that gave them a 30% tax break on the Astroglide.

A new day is dawning on the American horizon, and it looks like we may be starting pretty close to square one and rebuilding this thing from the ground up. For once in this country's modern lifetime, people will have to learn to do without. No more T.G.I. Friday's single serving portions big enough to feed a family of six, just to be thrown out in the same dumpster a homeless woman is digging through for aluminum cans. No more driving vehicles bigger than a bulldozer because you might need to haul two bags of potting soil and a couple of rose bushes, or wood for the one deck you'll build in your entire life. Guess what, Home Depot delivers, now put your fat ass in the Kia and give me a ride to the soup kitchen. No more serial wasting of anything and everything just so we can scream, 'Yes, every thing's okay,' as we run down the middle of the street in our planned community, a baked potato in each hand with a stick of butter up our ass and a bucket of sour cream clenched in our teeth.

The life of chauffeured golf carts, Peppermint White Chocolate Pumpkin Truffle Spice Decaf Macchiatos, hand made by indigenous Chibchas from Columbia, and renting Nevada for Tabatha's sweet sixteen is over. Think back on it fondly, because it's time to do the heavy lifting, and this time around we can't afford to underpay Mexicans to do it for us.

Keep The Faith.