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Xmasness, Part VIII

The holiday season is upon us again, like a shuffling jingle-belled zombie or a flatulent cloying distant relation who comes over for a Halloween party, spreads his crap all around so that you can't avoid seeing it, plays music too loud and somehow manages to stay until sometime after New Year's Day, fucking talking during your favorite television programs.

 This year, I am a homeowner again for the first time since early 2007, and it makes a difference.  An acceptable time for a civilized society to put up its OUTDOOR Xmas decor is just after whatever major holiday preceeds it, and that would be Thanksgiving for most people.  (Indoors, I apply the same rule I do to everything in private life: it's private, and I am therefore neither authorized or required to give 2/5 of a shit.)  A society in decline however - like ours - is filled with people who decorate - largely for the supposed or assumed benefit of others - coupled with an insanely short attention span that makes them leap from one "special" occasion to the next in a vain attempt to capture what they have come to think of as joy, but what is actually only distraction.

Enter Racistrix and Cypher Fucknut, who live on my cul-de-sac.  She's the one who warned me about the "coloreds" at the end of the street like it was 1956 as we were unpacking my bookcases, and he doesn't speak and makes no impression.  That's their house up there at the top.  First off, they started putting their shit up the night of my mom's birthday, which was the 8th.  Of November.  When I said good-bye to her that night, that mutant scrotum of ornaments was out there already.  On the ninth, they attempted to wave cheerfully to me as they were up on ladders stapling crap to their house.  I would point out that this was 2 days in advance of Veteran's Day, and that they actually had to take down the American flag they normally fly to put up the current poinsettia-splattered standard.  Could've waited until the 12th, at least, to start, but noooo - gotta get a big jump on fucking up the front of the house so we can go inside and make everyone else fucking look at it.

By the 14th, I was already having "car out of control, destroys their lawn" fantasies as I'd pull into our little dead end to go home.  Now, fifteen fucking days later, it's like Home Depot's holiday aisle took a giant, steaming dump on their lawn.  I would invite you to regard the details, as they certainly haven't: You will perhaps immediately notice that the Baby Jesus is being born at the North Pole, where there not only was no room at the inn, apparently there wasn't space for a manger, either.  Then we have dwarf Santa waving to Santa, some Karen Carpenter candy canes, a creepy hippo in a hat and some drunken swans or ducks or something.  The sole good thing about this "scene" is that it's quiet.  Nothing makes noise.  I hope they know better, but I'm taking nothing for granted.

Look, here's the thing; I like some of the outdoor Xmas stuff, I do.  I also like chocolate milk.  Sometimes it's very refreshing and delicious.  I don't, however, want five glasses of it in a row, and I don't want to drink it like it's water every goddamn day for what I'm sure will eventually turn out to be two fucking months.  These people with the deflated Santas and disassembled snowmen like little CSI: North Pole crime scenes on their lawns over Thanksgiving weekend?  Yes, fine.  Good.  Reasonable.  We're on your time, so to speak.  But this shit above is excessive and ugly and demented and bent.

Might be the only Xmas rant this year, but I wouldn't count on it or anything.  It's a tradition & I can do excess as well as anybody.

Chick-Fil-Gay

I was driving home from class today hungry, so I was checking every place on my route with any kind of food, and since it was lunchtime, all of the lines at the various fast food places were long, like windy snakes of hungry cars.  One was extra long, though - the line for Chick-fil-A.  It actually went out onto the feeder road in front of the little strip mall that it's in front of, it was so long.  In rapid succession then, inside my brains: "Wow, they have a little protocol for how to not block the road while they wait.  Wonder what's so awesome about the Fil-A compared to say, Wendy's which is right next door?  Or Steak and Shake?  Or that mom and pop sandwich place?  Is there crack in the food?  Probably a bunch of assholes looking for a gay-free lunch.  I bet that's a long line of cars filled with all straight people."

By which point I had turned around and found a parking space.  I got out and knocked on the window of the first car:

ME: Hi, are you heterosexual?

LADY: What is this?

ME: Just asking.

LADY: Yes, now - 

ME: (walking away, knocking again)

GUY: Yeah?

ME: Excuse me, are you a heterosexual?

GUY: No, I mean, yeah - why?

ME:  Which is it?  I need to know for my results.

GUY: What results?  I'm married.

ME: To a woman?

GUY: YES!

ME: Awesome.  (next car) Hi, are you a heterosexual?

MAN: (laughing) Yes, I am.

ME: Are you here for a specifically gay-free lunch?

MAN: What?

ME: Did you know that Chick-Fil-A has expressly said that they don't want gay people coming to their place here even though it's common knowledge that many gay people have green money and eat poultry?

MAN: (line moving forward) Really?

ME: Yup. (moves away) Hello, miss, are you a heterosexual?

WOMAN: (from behind window) I'm not rolling down my window!

ME: Understood, but are you straight, though?!?

WOMAN: Yes, go away!

ME: Did you know that Chick-Fil-A donates a not insignificant amount of money to anti-gay groups?

WOMAN: GOOD!

ME: So you're a homophobe, then?  A hungry homophobe?

EMPLOYEE: Sir?  You can't stand here.

ME: Why?  I'm not gay.

EMPLOYEE: It's illegal to block the line.

ME: I'm following the line backwards.  And what do you mean, 'illegal?'

EMPLOYEE: I think you're trespassing if you don't buy something, sir.

ME: I can't support your anti-gayness, Chick-fil-Clerk; but I will return to harass your homophobic customers!  (stalked away to my car)

So this did no good, but I feel better.

Umbrellas

An umbrella for me is just another sign that I am not, and likely will never be, entirely grown-up.

I have never purchased an umbrella, not even as a gift for someone else.  I have like, three or four.  I don't know where they all come from, though the one I'm using right now is a rare exception; it's a blue and yellow golf umbrella labeled "Parrish Medical Center" and I boosted it from my mom's car.  Kept meaning to give it back, then it rained a bunch of times.  Had a black and white one before that with some condo place or apartment name on it, but don't know where that is right now.  I like this current one; it has a wooden handle and the rain drains out through what I will call the finial when it's closed and turned upside-down.

I like it when it rains on campus and you get to see the vast diversity in umbrellas on display.

It doesn't do for me to carry one most of the time.  When it's open, I'm Sputnik 1 sending out a cold warning, or a guy on a streetcorner in a spy novel, making a dead drop in an alleyway trashcan.  I'm more likely to aggressively sing at people.  It's lucky that I don't know that many songs from front to back.  I do that Gene Kelly spinny thing and splash around.  I'm Violet Parr or Susan Storm with my impenetrable force field.  When it's closed, it's worse.  I'm Mercutio and Zorro and Inigo Montoya, and you killed my father; prepare to die.  I fenced a drama student on the way to my second class today.  I'm a ninja assassin drum majorette.  It's a microphone and I'm Elvis, Sinatra, Mick Jagger, Axl Rose, Steven Tyler.  I'm Alex DeLarge, the Penguin (always the Burgess Meredith version), and Lee Harvey Oswald.  Or, you know, an actual sniper.  I'm a plate-spinner, walking with it balanced on one finger, alarming the hell out of people getting off of elevators and passing me on the sidewalk.  I'm a spear hunting Jedi Master Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.  I'm Mr. Banks coming home or Mary Poppins leaving, a divination master, a suspicious prospector.  I'm the first guy to spot land from the crow's nest, a lion tamer, a drop-thumb banjo player walking to my car in a drizzly mist.

Next time it rains, I challenge you.

Full Circle

If you've been following my blog longer than is healthy, say, for instance, since Autumn of 2004, you might remember my 5th and 6th posts, both of which have to do with primary elections that happened in Escambia County, Florida.  I worked on a campaign for J.E. Jones, a republican candidate for County Commissioner District 1.  I managed it as well at it would be managed, got Jones to a lot of events, got him name recognition, coached him through debates and interviews, made the signs and put them up, hosted events in my building, and investigated the infractions of the other candidates in the race.  In the end, we got stomped like a roach on white carpet, and I lost the faith, not just in the people of Pensacola, who lied to me and voted in the old criminal they once threw out, but I also haven't worked on another race since then, not in any really serious way.  17 races between 1999 and 2004.

I ended up with this interesting artifact, though - a DVD of the campaign ads we did for Jones, complete with Roads, Mole People, shattering glass that produced complaints, bad props, inaudible dialogue - the works.  They're so bad, they're funny, and we knew that then.  Recently, in my Politics and Elections course, my professor was referencing what kind of ads "no money" campaigns would make, so I brought the DVD in and showed it in class today.

They were confused.  Some of them thought it was funny, but for the most part, you could see the opinions of me going down like a Hindenburg whore.  They mostly didn't get it, didn't understand that not everything is slick, and that candidates are often crazy characters with no real business running for office; that campaigns are crazy times with no money and no sleep and no time.  Regardless, I was glad that I had this leftover collection of weirdness from the past that could inform the present.

Thanks, Jones.

Penn State

An old axiom: "You will regret that which you did not do far more than that which you did do."

Probably true.  I'll bet Joe Paterno regrets not chasing down the allegations of rape happening in the showers of the Penn State locker room.  I'll bet he really regrets it now that he's out of a job, asked to fuck off and has his "legacy" ruined beyond repair, but that's attrition, not contrition.  I learned that in Bible school and also from Morgan Freeman.  What he should have done is trusted that his linebacker coach, Mike McQueary, was telling him something that was so urgent and so important and so completely fucked up that it needed to be looked into right now and stopped immediately, instead of whatever it was he did do, which I can't find anywhere, but what must have been a sort of "passing the buck" up the chain of command.  Meanwhile, a predator systematically raped kids for years.  Good job, guys.

I get that you're attached to JoePa and stuff because football, especially college football, in the United States is like a religion, and as such, often makes blinkered, unthinking assholes out of people.  And because he's been around since fucking LBJ was in office, and has 409 victories.  Right.  And one colossal fucking failure, the failure to remember that you work in a school, and as such, are charged with the education, protection and fostering of children, even if some of them aren't strictly minors.  The football program IS NOT more important than the school to which it's attached, no matter what you think, and the fact that we act like it is in this country is one of the reasons we as a society just might be in decline.  Bread and circus, folks.

In fact - and this will be hard for some people who really love it to accept - football, in and of itself, is not important at all.  When it inspires and tells stories or has heroism inherent, then, yeah, it's doing something.  But it doesn't matter, not any more than a TV show or a comic book or a cookie or a rose or gentle wind on an autumn day.  Might be nice, but pretending that it matters makes us into something less than people.  There's nothing wrong with enjoying football, but ultimately, the word "game" in there should be a BIG clue - it's an amusement for most, a recreation for some, but not important - at all.  Sorry.

And JoePa?  Well, the great and powerful and venerated Joe's kind of a crotchety asshole.  You might even have seen something like this coming.  He lost his temper and did something to a ref that the law would call "assault" back in 2002, and made light of an alleged sexual assault on campus in 2006.  And then, of course, there's this, which is hardly a phenomenon confined to Penn State, but taken with everything else, well - it makes kind of a pattern.

What I'm more than a little confused by is the lack of outrage over McQueary having ACTUALLY SEEN what was happening and not having stopped it or called the cops himself.  You know what qualifications are required to call cops over something like that?  A pulse, a spine and a brain.  That's it.  McShithead's apparenlty lacking in one of these important categories.  Now, of course, the university Prez is fired and Paterno's gone - but McQueary's on "paid administrative leave?"  What the fuck is that about?  Any Penn State riot that misses burning down that guy's fucking house is a pointless riot.

Now of course, we're past the "Penn State Is Emotionally Retarded" stage with the riots, and we're into the other half of the Penn State brain holding candlelight vigils for the victims.  While I'm glad that they seem to have (sort of) moved past the idocy stage, with all of the campus moodswings they're into right now, I think you'd need Dramamine just to go to class.  You know 'class?'  Those things they have at colleges that aren't football?

 

Ex Post Birthday...Post

I know I said that I was going to do this yesterday, but yesterday was my birthday, right, and I did other stuff that I mostly wanted to and then there was this party and I ran out of time, and get off MY FUCKING BACK, OKAY?!?

Thanks first of all to my loverly wife, who organized what Louis Tully would have called "a classic party."  To everyone who couldn't make it, I missed most of you, and if I didn't really miss you I will later lie and say that I did.  There was fire and beer and (an Iron Man) cake and music and old B/W movies on MUTE on the TV and good food and kids and comics and cigars and friends and people who don't normally mix mixing, which I always love.  We waited quietly around the table at 11:11 on 11/11/11 and waited for something to happen - I don't know what others had pictured, but I was waiting for the coffee table to spontaneously become a cephalpoid Lovecraft nightmare and slink off to hide in a closet, but sadly - nothing.  One of the ways that you can tell that I'm much older and a responsible homeowner now?  The above picture represents the only party debris I could find.  Thanks to everyone who came; I would make a list, but I'm not really in favor of listing, and I'm still slightly tired.  I enjoyed my hugs and gifts and favors and good conversations.  Thanks!

Thanks also to those who posted wonderful birthday fishes on my FB wall, or sent me cards and emails.  You guys all rock, and I wish you all could have been here.  No, really.  ALL.  Would have been some structural and emotional damage, but fuck that noise, it would have been a party.  Which it was anyway, but you get what I'm saying.  You feel me, and then I get slightly uncomfortable with all the feeling and move away to a corner with a drink.

Some of you actually took me up on my $11 challenge thingy, like Meredith, whose is secret for a while, but I'll let you know when I do, and Matt, who's still picking one.  

Then there's my mom, who gave to PETA, the Gentle Barn and Rescue Road Trips, reflecting her natural affinity for fuzzy things, and who is now also thinking about going pescatarian next year, so anyone with tips on that, drop her a line.

Eric P gave to Style Wars and ETAN, which I would imagine happens fairly regularly, at least as often as I pitch cash to the CBLDF, which I also did.

Mitch Silverman gave $22 (eleven twice, or 11/11) to SmartRide, an AIDS bike ride, for both halves of a couple he knows who are riding in it.  Mitch should also know that I have not yet emailed Rabbi Steve, but I will take care of that today.

Finally, my friend Beth gave to Dress for Success' Memphis chapter.  They're people who help women do some personal shopping and get some good clothes that they can use to get jobs and enter or re-enter the workforce.

If you did one of these and I forgot you, or you're just now doing it, stick it in the comments!

Apparently, a significant number of folks did not get the donation INSTEAD OF a gift memo, and so I still got presents from people who donated money to charities, which I have to say, was also awfully nice, so thanks for that, too.  I was trying to go easy on wallets, to no avail.  Anyway, I'm going to go be 37 now, and see how that works - I haven't really had any practice at it yet, but I'll let you know how it works out - slowly, over a larger number of painful blog posts.

Discount Salvation

Just happened:

I was at Books-A-Million, buying a birthday card for my mom, and these sour-faced people walked in, an old lady, a young lady, and a guy.  I was standing near one of the front registers, finishing the process of checking out.

OLD LADY: Where are your Bibles?

BAM EMPLOYEE: Most are in the back corner underneath that white sign, but there's a whole table in the center with discounted ones on it, near the middle aisle.

GUY (sotto voce): Discounted Bibles?  What's that supposed to mean?

ME (in what I internally think of as my "ready for a miracle" voice): Well, my friend, if you can pause on your journey just long enough to lend an ear, I'll tell you what it means; it means that, back there on that long table full of discounted Bibles, and between those gilded leatherette covers is some of the cheapest, bargain-basement discount salvation that you'll ever get your hands on, it means that the Word of Jesus Christ is now available for your purchase price of only (gestures back to the employees, gets no help) - well, I don't know myself, but I bet it's pretty blessed cheap!  I assume that your evident chagrin is coming from a lamentation that Bibles should never have to be discounted, but I would ask you a question: Did Mary charge for the Good News that the Lord was risen on the third day?  (pause) SHE DIDN'T, DID SHE?  And was there a ticket price to see our Lord a'crucified on the hill of skulls for the sins of man?  Maybe, but it didn't compare to the available options that the Lord God has seen fit to have on a veritable buffet of Holiness back there on the table, CENTER AISLE!!!  CAN I get an "Amen?"

OLD LADY (small): Amen.

ME (leaving): Get thee ready for a discounted miracle!

VOICE BEHIND ME: Does he work here?

Sometimes, you have to make your own fun.

We Are Fuckheads & We Are Legion

Rampant fuckheadedness.  

It's a massive problem, and it seems to crest and crest with no evidence of ebb; it just won't go away, and it really wouldn't be a big deal if it weren't so easy to NOT do it that it makes evidence of people doing that much more annoying.  We're going to start today with Church leadership who apparently can't understand what driving wind and pissing rain mean when they actually stop Pope Hitleryouth Monsterface from talking.  You folks believe in signs and miracles, right?!?  I'm going to call that a very big fucking sign, and it's red and has eight sides.

Next up, we have the US Retardican Party, who can't just pick one kind of scandal to have, so they went for the scandal combo plate, which is a cheap way to offend a lot of people and fuck up without having to think, which is good for them, 'cause it's not one of their strong suits.  You can tell by the way Trump and Coulter miss people looking at them, so they go racist.  You know, just to do it.  Like a five-year-old, it's just that they need the attention.  Shit, even the Yahoo News headline includes the phrase, "keeping themselves in headlines."  So it's not like this is occult knowledge or anything - WE ALL SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.  Trump does do it slightly better than Ann, but he's been on TV and stuff, he knows how to appear passive-aggressive.  Coulter just wipes the flecks of foam from her lips long enough to pucker her disgusting facial sphincter and shit out another gross epithet (in this case referring to African-American GOPers like they were household slaves), then they lock her away from civilization in the Fox News vault and thaw her jerkified ass out when they need her again, like the Winter Soldier.

Moving on, not quite 60 days after Republicunts in Pima, AZ - which is where Ira Hayes was from and is part of Gabrielle Giffords' district - decided that auctioning off a Glock would be a good idea, a group of 'em in Virginia put out the Zobama poster, ostensibly for a Halloween scare-tactic lit drop - but there's a big bullet-hole in his head.  Go do a Google images search for "zombie."  Even though bullets to the head are the standard killshot on the undead menace, you have to go a fair bit down before you find that happening, and I never saw an actual bullethole.  So not a standard part of the iconography, then.  So it's a bunch of horseshit; these fucks wish they could shoot the President, and since you can't do that or really even talk about it, they gussied it up in rotting flesh and fashionable zombie.  Pussified liars, the lot of them.

Michelle Bachmann's New Hampshire staff is a bunch of dicks, apparently.  I'm not going anywhere with this one, I just thought it was funny.

Finally, we're still in knots over gayness as a group, which I blame also on the preponderance of fuckheads in our midst.  Picture it like this; it's a six-inch curb, but our feet are tied to those of people who think the curb's bad because it's gay, so they won't take the step, so we can't all go together.  We either have to cut them loose, or I have to wait for someone more noble than I, like my friend Christy Farr, who's dealing with this shit here close to home, at her kids' school no less, and will go door-to-fucking-door explaining to people how they've been stupid about this.  She going to expect you to change, too; she's not doing this for her health.

Even more finally, I'm going to let Clint Eastwood have the last wise word here (specifically about gay marriage, but applicable to SO much else), so any man don't wanna get killed better skin on out the back: "These people who are making a big deal about gay marriage?  I don't give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We're making a big deal out of things we shouldn't be making a deal out of ... Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want."

11-11-11

Hi.

A week from today is my birthday, and this year it falls on the rare, random, meaningless, but-still-kind-of-neat , triple ridiculous date of 11-11-11.  I share this day with Kurt Vonnegut (who never calls anymore) and my evil twin, Leo DiCaprio.  He's got a couple of films out or something.

I don't know if all of you were planning on getting me anything for my birthday or not (chipping in for a shark or an in-ground radiation shelter), but I'd like to encourage you to do this other thing I was thinking about: I'd like you to donate $11 to your favorite charity, and then send me an email - not a comment - and tell me about it.  You have until the 10th.  What I thought I would do is collect all of the emails together into one entry and publish that here on my birthday (comments would wreck the surprise, see), which is kind of fun on a day when there's unavoidable focus on you - putting it back on others.  Doesn't have to be $11, could be $111, or $1111, or any step up from there, but I thought $11 seemed pretty doable for most people, and I'm going to do it, so it seemed like a good way for people who need money to get money from people who have money.

And you know, it eases my karmic debt a little if I believed in that.

Occupational Hazards

So, the Occupy Wall Street / Occupy Everywhere Else / 99% movement / revolution has been going on long enough now for the vast majority of us to become slightly culturally numb to it, to accept it, to be glad or infuriated by its presence, or in the case of some rare people, to pushed beyond the edges of sanity, common sense, or intelligence by the simple facts of its existence.  While it is tempting to say to people who seem not to fully understand the implications of this thing, "You either get it or you're a comfortable, non-sympathetic financially stable airheaded prick," I don't think that digs deeply enough.

Across the pond, there's MP Louise Mensch, featured above, trying to point out that perhaps, if you are part of an anti-capitalist movement supporting christing STARBUCKS is an ill-planned move, but instead when she opened her noise hole "anyone who's ever taken part in big capitalism (which is often unavoidable, especially if you're broke and HAVE to go to Wal-Mart or not have food or clothes) has had their opinion rendered invalid by queueing up for a latte," and she was rightly taken the piss out of for it, too.  She's nowhere near as bad as career dunderhead Sky News' Adam Boulton, who compared the Occupiers in front of St. Paul's to Nazis occupying France.  He will be immediately fined under the provisos of Godwin's Law of course, but I hardly think that's good enough; perhaps fucked to death with Pickelhauben?  Yes, that seems appropriate.  Well, to me.

Here close to home, Occupy Nashville has had some recent luck with the higher-ups in Nashville law after having some initial bad luck with a pack of Tennessee Highway Patrolmen (in Smokey Bear hats!) and a trumped-up last minute bullshit curfew designed to clear Legislative Plaza.  The night court magistrate refused to prosecute the arrests and let every one go, and the Occupiers have recently been to see Governor Bill after weathering a firestorm of shitty insults from state Republican lawmakers.  A lot of it is here. What isn't there is the most egregious thing they're having to deal with, John Stefanski, leader of Occupy the Altar (which has one member that's not John for a total of 2) and a certified, card-carrying putz who's on street corners with signs encouraging people to pray rather than protest.  A mixed message, to be sure.  First off, John lives right here in fucking Murfreesboro, so I'll be on the lookout for his ass, and second - John, choose your words more carefully; I've occupied a couple of altars in my time, and while fun is had by all, you'll need some clean-up to happen before Sunday services.  You've been warned.

Meanwhile, Oakland cops have apparently taken a break from cracking open skulls to kick back and tear gas some people, so things are obviously way more intense there. Probably because they've actually managed to shut down a port, and that will make things uncomfortable for a lot of people a lot faster than blocking other public spaces and church walkways.  A different approach, you might say, and you also might say that deliberately shooting canisters of gas and toxic chemicals into people's bodies and smacking them against the ground whilst restrained is police brutality.  In fact, I'm saying it, just said it, seems pretty clear-cut to me.

The major kvetch I hear about this thing from people who don't get this thing is that it's open-ended and vague.  Yeah.  Here's how it is, though: things are fucked up, and protesters will stop protesting when things are less fucked up.  This is not a difficult to understand arrangement.  This has always been the arrangement.  Listen to what they have to say or walk around.  In the meantime, let's see what happens next.