squidbag

No Country For Stupid Men

The world is not safe for disrespectful pricks in restaurants any longer. Two instances from last week, the first from Friend of the Squidbag (SquidFriend? SquidFiend?) Joe Basilone out of Chi-Town:

"Took the boys out for lunch, and there were two men sitting across from us having a loud, profanity laden conversation. Realizing that my only "backup" were 2 and 7 year olds, I did the only rational thing I could think of.

Walking over, keeping my voice low enough so that the boys couldn't hear me, I said calmly, "You may not have any children with you, but I do. Have some respect before I shove that hot dog down your throat for you. Sideways." I then slowly walked back to my table and sat down to finish. Neither one of them knew what hit 'em. And neither one uttered a single word for the rest of our meal."

This one's mine: Stopped into a Mickey D's (I know, my mistake) for a quick breakfast between an Abby school activity and a presentation I had to give last Friday when some Seniors, skipping classes, decided to heckle an older woman who was working the register: the main heckler was six feet plus, pasty and red-haired: 

"Hey, you disrespectful Ronald Weasley looking motherfucker; you'd best calm down and keep your mouth shut or I'll drop you like a bad habit right now. Test me." It looked like he might speak, and I did my best dad/dog owner "Ut-tut-tut! No more talking 'til you leave," accompanied by closing mouth hand puppet gesture. It worked, everyone else had a peaceful wait for breakfast, and I did not hear him speak again.

We're out there, people. It's about respect. Behave.

The End is (Not) Nigh

I know you people believe stuff more or less at random, but this? This is embarrassing for us as a group. No, as a race. The human race should be collectively embarrassed over this. This would be as bad as reality TV if it didn't have a built-in expiration date stamped on it.

First off, even if you are the sort of person who believes that this symbol, or this one, or this one or this one or even this one, mean something to which you can semi-rationally or emotionally relate, you have to admit that basing a belief that the world is going to end on an ancient piece of semi-functional rock is pretty fucking thin. It's beyond thin. It's Karen Carpenter, it's Kate Moss's hipbones. I mean, I get that a lot of people want to believe in angels and demons and a coming zombie apocalypse, and that they base their "serious" beliefs on...well, on a lot less than this, but choosing to believe that the end of the world is coming because this thing doesn't have December 22nd on it is like assuming the world ends every year on December 31st at midnight because you didn't get a new calendar for Christmas. It is beyond ridiculous, and it is the behavior of people who shouldn't have privileges, knives, children, conversations, licenses or credit. 

First off, this thing is not a measuring device that should be given any credence by an advanced civilization. In this case, "advanced civilization" means any civilization who has given up worshipping corn gods, tying your wife's tongue up with barbed wire, and using heads for sport. Our measuring devices have numbers and letters on them, and if you want to argue that this is an arbitrary difference, imagine a tape measure where you had to tell someone the couch was "six snakes long." Or someone's temperature was "three pointy face guys." Extreme silliness.

Then, there's how this great mad stone bastard works. It needs two other massive stone wheels to work properly, I believe, and you only ever see this one. The "long measure" of time as calculated by the Mayans requires this disc inside of the other wheely thing, and no one's really doing that. Regardless, you can set this one in the other one and get to December 21 and no further - which is the point at which the Mayans would have re-set this thing and started counting again, you stupid, stupid people. Just a little reading and you can get right to it. I don't even really understand it and I have a better grasp on this than you do, you end of world moron, you. Additionally, it is perhaps important to realize that the Mayans didn't do leap years, and when you try mooshing that system with the one they were using, the world ended eight months ago, and you dumb motherfuckers didn't even notice.

So. What is this, really? An excuse for people to act stupid again? For people to kiss and fuck and fondle people they're not supposed to because the world's coming to an end? So they can be irresponsible and claim this was the reason? So they can spend too much on Christmas bullshit stuff? Just a "belief of the week," where, once you were done with Planet X or Ron Paul or vampires or group supremacy or religious craziness you could move on to this, believe in it until the 22nd, and then move on to "Well, I'm going to hold onto my canned goods and shotguns because the world has to end sometime."

Not soon enough, cousin. Not by a long shot.

Previously Prude Owned

Often, I get a used textbook owned by someone insightful, smart, cogent, and who really helps me as a second owner of the the book get to the meat of the matter by leaving behind some awesome margin notes, some really great summations and observations, the kinds of things that inspire me to do likewise, and re-sale value be damned. You feel like you have the freaking Half-Blood Prince reaching through the ages and helping you through the semester, secret additional knowledge communicated across time in the form of esoteric scribblings - these are the books you cherish for their added value, their unexpected assistance and utility.

And then, sometimes I get this book. My particular well-used copy of Annette B. Weiner's The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea was owned - if the liner notes are a realistic guide - by an 88-year-old Pennsylvania Dutch farmhand who's never seen a book other than the Bible.

First off, before anybody goes there, the handwriting is distinctively female. There are heart dots and everything. I don't think her sex has anything to do with her reactions to stuff in the book - unless it's her lack of sex, and that may, indeed, be a factor, as she's easily scandalized. There is not a single helpful or digestive note in the goddamn book, but there are a plethora of gems like these:

• "Don't believe a woman can get pregnant due to sex?? WOW!" (This exhibits a gross misunderstanding of Trobriander matrilineal traditions.)
• "Birth not a socially important thing death." (Trobrianders place more pomp and social recognition on death ceremonies than on birth events; I think this is a garbled recognition of that.)
• "Kind of weird!" (In response to the wearing of jewelry featuring locks of hair from the dead.)
• "Aww" (Next to a paragraph about a chief of the tribe complimenting the author.)
• "WOW! Too EARLY!" (The paragraph about how boys and girls from the tribe sexually experiment as young as thirteen.)

A couple of things strike me about this pap I've had to read all semester. First off, you see where I'm headed with my "incredibly sheltered person" characterization. Second, even if you thought this stuff, who the fuck takes the time to put it in the margins? For future readers?  Is that why? She's hoping to bring me around to her P.O.V?

I just can't imagine the ridiculousness of someone who scrawls their stupid reactions to stuff in the margins of case study textbooks - that's what blogs are for.

Statecraftiness

Statecraft is an international relations simulator game online.

During this last semester of my Honors International Relations class, we spent nine weeks running this game so we could learn valuable lessons about employing various theories of IR. (Apparently, if you take the non-Honors version of this class, you do not get to play Statecraft. So yay, us.) At the beginning of the game, we took a little online quiz and either the game (or our prof) grouped us up based on the results and assigned us countries. We got to name them and decide what their "attributes" and forms of government would be. These last two decisions would determine a lot about what our countries would be capable of and how they would behave (toward each other and internally, but mostly internally) within the game. Different governmental types and attributes got different "powers" for example - if you're in a military dictatorship or totalitarian government, you can suppress rioting and complaints by your citizens, but democracies have to let that shit happen. Every turn. Either the environmentalists or capitalists were mad at us every stinking turn. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As soon as the process began, I had this premonition about getting teamed up with this guy, he of the condescension, evangelism, and wild theories about gay people. And of course, I did, because that was the option I would hate the most and since I owe the universe money, it's pissed at me and fucks with me sometimes. The only ameliorating factor was that we got a third person who could balance us out when we inevitably fought about crap. And then she dropped the class, about two weeks after we made her the President. Before this, we managed to name our country "Freedonia," after the country in Duck Soup. This would represent the last thing I would get my way on without fighting about it. We decided jointly to be a democracy, and there was some serious compromise on our "attributes." Once President Lindsey ditched us, my co-leader (we'll call him "Mike") and I fought for a couple of months. It was great. I really enjoyed the continuous arguing about nothing. It's my fave.

At this point, if you've had a real conversation with me in the past few months, you can probably quit reading, inasmuch as you've heard me rant about this situation in person. Especially my wife, who's had to hear about it so much the word "Statecraft" now induces uncontrollable vomiting. It's handy for when she swallows poisons and bad fish, though.

Co-President Mouthraspy and I first clashed on how to run our country. He wanted our long game to be instant war (due to our strong military and depth of resources) and seizure of other people's riches, particularly from the Sapphire Island which has them in excess. His great vision of the world was us sitting around on a throne of skulls with a giant military behind us while a Shermanesque landscape blackened the skies with smoke from burning capital cities. I mean, you know: in my opinion. One of my first acts was to co-author a laissez-faire treaty with one of the Zachs from Ionia regarding the Sapphire Island, as attacking them was a 100% guarantee for activating a group - The Sword of Amaru - that would turn terrorist if fucked with. This group would plague the world so one country could take their shit - a Tragedy of the Commons if ever there was one. So we moved to prevent it. This frustrated Mike in the same way that repeatedly banging one's genitals against iron can frustrate you.

Next was freeing the slaves. That's right, slaves. Statecraft the Game gifted us slaves as a hereditary condition we would have to resolve. Now if you can find Freedonia on the map up there, way off to the West are the Orion Mountains. They were populated by people indigenous to W.A.R., the ironically pacifist country next door. Named W.A.R. The people of the Orion Mountains were enslaved to us, producing 1000 Gold per turn. They were also morally fueling the outraged action of the Orion Liberation Front, a terrorist group attacking us for having their people as slaves. Mike was against ceding the zone, the mountains, the resources and the city within it just to free people and eradicate a terrorist threat. While he built our military, I negotiated a treaty in the UN to get all of the other countries to pay into us resources after we liberated the mountains. After a month of fighting, I got my way on this, too. I AM Abraham Lincoln. Respect the beard.

We argued - Dr. Strangelove-style - about war. LIke, three times a week. Mike thought that because we had this grand and glorious military, that it would be a crying shame to go the whole game without starting a nice, pretty war - despite the fact that numerous points would be subtracted from us and everyone else at the end, and due to our military focus, this would put other countries in a better position for winning the game. The mountain/emancipation treaty had non-aggression language written into it, which scuttled his chance to have a big war, and he's pretty much hated me ever since for that. I subverted state anarchy, and don't think he cared for that. I don't care for writing treaties, but it was worth it. Maybe. I don't know.

By this point, Mike had alienated three of the other countries' leaders on the grounds that they found him "slimy, like a used car salesman." He's actually a realtor, so not much difference there. People also found him weird, sexist and gross. He's an arm-touching space invader who calls people "brother" and doesn't listen when others are talking. His eyes float like those of people on coke. It was decidedly unusual for me to be the diplomatic and reasonable one of the two of us. Digest that for a moment. I really didn't expect that, and had set myself up as Director of Central Intelligence at the beginning of the game, letting Mike be UN Rep so that I wouldn't have to negotiate with people. This turned out to be a mistake that would be slowly rectified as I just started dealing evenly and directly with people inside and outside the game. People like that, that whole not being lied to thing. Just saying.

As I write this, we're in our last turn, and Mike's last ditch effort to build some kind of legacy seems to have failed. I'm hoping he pulls it off before Thursday. I didn't even talk about the pirates or Globe of Frost, because neither of them was my thing, but they were interesting bits of the game. I'm very glad this game is over, and have made some pretty good friends outside of my country as we played. I enjoyed (at first) writing treaties and memos, and backroom negotiations with folks working towards real ends. Sort of. I did not enjoy some of the nuts and bolts of Statecraft (though their tech support is awesome and super-fast), and would very much have liked not having a sphincter for a teammate.

I think that would have been fun.

Bad Anthropologist

I would make a terrible anthropologist.

If my current anthropology instructor is to be believed, An effective anthropologist is kind of a terrible human being. In order to properly analyze and consider what's happening in a culture and with its people, you must first divorce yourself from judgment and bias of any kind. This is called objectivity, and presumably springs from the ability to turn oneself into an object. This complete abandonment of what is seen to be entirely cultural bias requires an additional commitment we've not discussed in class yet and is a bit broader than the simple Western conception of "keeping an open mind." I shall illustrate.

Picture your mind as a home, open for a party. Your own ideas are already there, comfortably slumped in overstuffed chairs, feet up on the marble table-top, sipping brandy in front of the fire, reviewing the books of your memory. They've eaten many of the snacks and for some reason play the same songs over and over again. Eventually, other ideas will arrive, and the door is open to them - after all this is a party, and we often benefit from our exposure to others as a major component of growth. But let's say that after "Gay Marriage is Just Marriage" and "Life In Outer Space Might Exist" arrive, "Cold Fusion" shows up. Okay, you'd let her in. I'm totally letting in "Bigfoot" even though we don't get along, because he's a lot of fun and other people like him. Same with "Communism" and with "Religion Provides Solace for Some." But what about "It's Okay to Place Dollar Amounts on Brides?" Do you want to talk to her? You might, but the conversation's going to bore you pretty fast. What about when you get to "Forced Child Labor" or "Female Circumcision" or "Child Sex Workers?" I don't know about you, but this simply isn't that kind of party.

So I would make a bad anthropologist, because I eventually ride right up to stuff that I cannot help but judge, and I can't call that a bad quality in a person - a person who judges nothing must be the opposite side of the coin from sociopath, right? I think there's one of those in my class right now, actually. I don't know her name, but she's pretty and blonde and covered in sorority stuff and postures herself as a "Rebel Traditionalist." She doesn't call herself that, but you know the type; crusading for traditional values and backwards ideas because no one else will crusade for them anymore 'now that the whole world's going to hell.' She argued once in class that men make better leaders than women - biologically, based on emotions and hormones and stuff.

That's not what ruined our non-existent relationship, though; she and I got into it in class last week when she asserted that it was wrong of us to judge people in other countries who push their kids into illegal sex work "because they might have reasons of their own." I'm sure they do, actually - everyone's reasons are their own reasons unless they have no minds of their own to begin with - but I don't care. If you live in a culture where people have sex with children and people feel justified into getting their kids into that business, then your culture needs work. ALL cultures need work - we're all fucked up. But I don't believe that everyone is solely a product of their culture, can't see their culture anymore than a fish sees water, and should be able to justify whatever they want based on a bullshit bandwagon culture.

And so I would make a bad anthropologist.

Liar

So, say you just realized that someone that you've known for quite some time (in this case, we'll say a little over a decade - it's been longer, but dealing with the rest is too overwhelming) is a liar.

Changes just everything, doesn't it?

It makes you question absolutely everything - or it would, if you could make time for that shit. It makes you want to question absolutely everything, every past event, every motivation, every conversation, every gift or insult or argument, every everything. Every favor. But you can't. You can't remember everything. You can't do it all on your own, and it's not like you can question the liar about it - because they'll just lie. Disrespectful as that is, and as inclined as you are to take it personally, the really worst thing about the lies is that you can't do anything useful with them. You can over-analyze them, come up with reasons they might have been told, chip away at them and try to get the truth elsewhere, but at the end of the day, a lie is a piece of garbage, useful only for taking up space, getting shy of, and eventually, disregarding completely. You have to put it behind you.

And its source, too. Because what good is that person, really? How are you supposed to believe anything that person says? I mean literally anything here, too. When a person is evasive and secretive and then you find out - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that it is because they lie about stuff all the time, then how are you meant to continue associating with them? What would be the point? So they can continue to lie to you all the time? Thanks, I've had my fill.

You're forced to confront the grim reality that you're not important to the liar, otherwise, they would have told you the truth. That means that nothing that's important to you is important to them either, because if they're lying to the whole world (which they ARE) well, that shit's all about ego. They think the whole world is stupid enough to blithely go along with their colossal truckload of bullshit while they just spin whatever tale suits them. And that sucks, too - you feel really stupid when you find out someone's been feeding you lies for years.

But the worst part (I know, we already did the worst part, but this is really the WORST worst part) is that you now have to wonder about what else they might be up to. Or might have been up to. Because a person who will lie and deflect and mislead and make up stories and leave havoc behind them - well, that person's capable of just about anything, because they don't love or respect anything but themselves.

And we have other words for that.

Headaches, Actual & Otherwise

So.

I was awakened at 3:08 this chilly Monday morning with a splitting headache unlike anything I've ever had before, ever. Okay, without injury. I used to get knocked around quite a bit, have had concussions and breaks and the head injury combo plate, but this thing was like an inner ear swelling coupled with the worst sinus headache ever on top of a pinched neck nerve or something - it was the Hurricane fucking Sandy of goddamn headaches, that's what it was. I was dizzy, sick to my stomach, weak-kneed and eventually knocked the sonofabitch into submission with eight blue things, a mug of sweet coffee and water until I was sick of damn water. When you hate the taste of water, time to put the glass down. I took a hot shower and used the back massager (and it really is one, you prurient fucks) on my head for like, twenty minutes while sitting on the bathroom floor and wishing the whole rest of the world would cease to exist.

I eventually got my shit together (except for my watch, forcing me to carry C's cell all day for the time) and went downstairs again, started getting food for my family ready, breakfasts and lunches and stuff. Assembled my gear for the day. The kids and I went outside with multiple boxes of Christie's weekend grading and loaded them into her car. Then we tried to start it. I listened to the wheezing, galumphing death rattle of her starter motor and then made the snap decision to load her stuff into my car, sending my young daughter inside and upstairs to let her know about the change of plan. We all bundled into my semi-functional warhorse of a car and made our way first to her school, and then to the kids' schools. The kids were both late. Sign in, make excuses late. Suck.

When I arrived on campus, half the power was out due to a heroic squirrel who tried to get classes cancelled for the day. I had Writing in a freezing classroom where nothing was working due to the power there having just come back on. Speech - where I had a major presentation on Women in American History that included a PowerPoint - was in a dark classroom and we did the PP on a laptop. I would have worn a tie with my suit, but it got stuck on the Velcro in my fucking backpack. I spent most of my cash (no cards working on campus) on lunch and then went to Anthro after hoping against hope it would be cancelled. No dice. 

We are home now, planning around one car and massive workloads, and the kids are out for Decide the Future Day. Right now they are having snacks and cartoons. My headache is a ghost of its former self, but I am afraid to sleep lest it think that I am vulnerable and come back to kick my ass.

Give & Take

(Just to warn you, I couldn't be bothered to properly structure this one. It's a rant. It may not even make sense.)

Some people take and never give. Most (making the effort to be) decent people hope we're not that person, but I suspect that the worst takers don't give a fuck. They probably never even think to give a fuck, much less decide not to give one. They're takers, after all, and takers gonna take - giving even a single fuck is giving too much for them. Perhaps they have no fucks to give due to some childhood fuckectomy - I'd prefer not to know, I think. Ultimately, knowing tends to me make me allow them allowances or give them the "benefit of the doubt," a concept which is alien and sticky and hard for me to even get a bead on, really.

I try to balance the equation out, myself. "Try" is a key word, here. I know that many have to give much to continue their associations with me, so I give back/out as much as I'm able or think is appropriate. My assessment of how much I'm able and the actual amount I'm able tends to grow as I age, except in terms of finance - I never have any money any more. Mostly, that's not what I mean, though - I mean people who are boons to your emotional and mental health vs. Lucious Jackson's "Energy Suckers." Those people around whom you find yourself in a constant state of emotional export, rictus grin fixed on face, thoughts pointed toward their problems - they're like Dementors, leaving you all cold and screamy inside. You can hope that they're trying, but when they really drain you, that shit doesn't help, and I know that's true when I do it, too.

The Needy Folk are in the Dementor category, and it really sucks when they have the money or the stuff, 'cause they'll give you that to counter the aggressive theft they're pulling on your energy all the time, and you don't notice because you're comfortable. The only thing worse than Needy Folk with stuff? Needy Folk without stuff, so you can't even be distracted (big cash, lotta prizes) while you're counting their pipe burns or scars or smelling the urine and smoke and desperation scattered about their burned out hulk of a life.

Sometimes, the giving is easy, and comes without predetermination or thought - I think maybe that's when the back-and-forth flow with another person is in perfect, Swiss-craftsman balance, and you found a connection - like psychic plumbing - a rare, multi-sensory glimpse into how the hell this is supposed to work. Consequently, once you've felt it, like Bill Murray at the end of Scrooged, you want it all the time, because it feels great, it feels natural, and everything else pales by comparison. On the other end of the spectrum, it becomes a labor of fucking Hercules relating to people when you feel them sucking away your life, Count Rugen-style. I feel you pulling at me, and I can't wait to get away, and it comes across as me ducking your phone calls and emails and physically refusing to be trapped in small spaces with you because I can't bear your invisible needy little hammer fingers pulling at all I've managed to put away in the last week or so.

Of course, there's always the chance that all of you are pretty little bottomless Buddhist campfire circle caring wellsprings of peace and goddess-like soulful compassion, and you're sitting there in your comfortable office chairs thinking, "Fuck, man, he's got a real problem with this being 180 off from most of the rest of the human race thing." (Our minds are not enough alike to be a "race" of people, by the way. That's a shit classification.) And maybe that's true - maybe my well is not deep enough to be among you, which is why I take breaks, I suppose. Maybe you all feel the same as I do, but you've mastered your resentment better. Probably.

Like I said, good luck with this one.

Having Kids & Hitting Kids

Recently, this was posted on The Facebook where I could see it (I'm sure it's been around for a while, it's just that I'm just now seeing it), and I made the mistake of attempting to become involved in a discussion about it without first realizing that there would be no discussion, simply people who want to hit their kids half-assedly justifying their positions.

Argument one for spanking: "I got beat as a kid and I turned out okay." Well.  You turned out as a droning punk who needs to use a proxy to belittle other people on Facebook and who thinks it's okay to hit kids, apparently, so that's debatable at best. If you want to raise kid-hitting assholes, then go forth and spank, I guess.

Argument two for spanking: The Biblical One, which I have previously mentioned that I will no longer respect or refute, because it is a waste of time and a disservice to breath and life to pretend that people who are using a 2000-year-old aphorism of dubious origin as a parenting guide are using compassion or thought to raise their kids, so fuck them in the spanked ass with a switch, I haven't got time for their invisible friend justification.

That's it. That's what they've got; these two arguments are the two horns on the bullhead of kid-whacking rationale as espoused by people who are apparently dumbfucked in the skull parts enough to be outwitted by children.  Seriously, as I mentioned in the Facebook thread, the day that I can't outthink my kids, they're raised. These are the people who hit their kids because they want to, and connections between that ritualized humiliation and adult erotic spanking be damned. They don't care that there's no proof that it really works, they've got the Bible and a ridiculous "I'm okay," argument, and that's all they need.  Two things: the pain and humiliation cocktail of traditional spanking is fucked up; physical correction is largely unnecessary and should be relegated to whacks to stop them hurting themselves (swatting a kid's hand away from knives and fire, for example) and genial, not-hard, expected cuffs around the back of the head. Corrections without the punishment, so they do right because they're supposed to and not because they're afraid of you.

I got switched, belted, paddled and spanked.  I was smacked in the face by authority more than once, too, because I had (have) a very big fucking mouth. You know what happens when someone bigger and older than you hits you?  It changes your relationship to them forever. You internalize a giant "fuck you" for them and anyone else who thinks they can bully you into correct behavior, and that expresses itself in as many ways as there are children. Spanking: another example of traditions being used by those who can't think their way out of anything.

While dealing with these people who you wish didn't have children, I happened upon another ongoing discussion between childless people tired of justifying why they don't have children. Wow. I didn't even know that this was a thing, but there was a whole opinion piece in the Times and everything.

Okay, if you're one of the people that I know and you don't have kids?  I don't care. I don't care why or anything. It's totally up to you, seriously. Great if you have 'em, great if you don't. I mean, I'm glad somebody's having some; we need as many evolutionary chances as we can get, but I cannot fathom wanting to be involved in someone else's personal affairs like that.  "Whassmatta, Melman?  Prong busted?  Where's a passel of rugrats leaping out of your wife's cub-hatch?"  I hate people on both sides of this one, though: You've got your invasive, noisy prick asking you about your personal decisions, and then you've got people defending their rationales.  If you say anything other than "noneya" when asked why you don't have kids, you walked into the trap. Enjoy the trap, stay a while.

Fuck.  Just when I think the wheel-spinners have wasted all the oxygen they can...

Hate Away the Straight

Pastor Sean Harris of the Berean Baptist Church (pictured here talking about his recent trip to the boys' showers) made headlines the other day (which was probably always the plan) with his comments about beating homosexual tendencies out of the children of Christians.  While the propensity to do such a thing is not news nor even rare, talking about it where everyone can put you on the Internet for it is just stupid, so now we all get to act like preachers like this doorknob are a rarity.

There's nothing even remotely special about Pastor Sean - the garden-variety hate he preaches is pretty standard for deep South Baptists, and his 180 turnaround and full retraction are pretty par for the course in a 24 hour news environment.

What's really interesting about Pastor Sean is that he's the first volunteer for a revolutionary new program being offered by Squidbag Solutions (which is wholly owned by Squidbag Enterprises, DBA Squidbag Group, global pioneers in Bockwursting and Field Screaming) wherein intolerant straight motherfuckers take a series of skull-crackingly focused courses designed to help them reject their hateful heterosexual lifestyles and become completely gay.  

"It's a fairly easy procedure," said (not a) Dr. Garrett Crowell, wearing a plastic stethoscope from his daughter's doctor dress-up kit, "we 'Hate Away the Straight™' in a series of physically and psychologically demanding intimidation and violence sessions that eventually culminate in the subject becoming more open-minded, or dying, and more to the point, an order of magnitude more fabulous.  Ultimately, everyone benefits as the subjects become more interesting and fun to be around, stage parades and shows, and the hope is, pass the evolutionary gayness along to the next generation.  Somehow.  We're still working on that."

The newly-established Squidbag Clinic in a basement will be offering several "Coloring Your Rainbow" sessions a month, tailored to help currently straight social conservatives give up their damaging lifestyle and embrace a new path to being productive gay citizens.  "It starts with them ponying up a truckload of cash money," said (not a) Dr. Crowell, brandishing a pink bejeweled baseball bat, "which symbolizes their deep and pure commitment to the process and my revolutionary procedure.  Besides, these 1% fucks can afford it.  We move on then to a series of exercises in science, sociology, sexuality, gender studies, musical theater, alternative media, and yes, even riding crop beatings in order to make it clear to these conservatives that even if they don't want to go the full gay, so to speak, that their current lifestyles are too destructive - to themselves and everyone else around them - to continue.  The last bit is up to them - after all, it's their choice to make."

Critics of the procedure have argued that being conservative is natural for some people, and that people are born straight and can't really change, but the Squidbag Clinic is committed to social transformation, and has responded to this initally with more beatings and repeated heavy drinking.