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Snitches Get Stitches

I was watching something where somebody said "snitches get stitches."  The previous sentence is the introduction.

I have never found this to be anything but comical.  While I agree with the baseline sentiment that one should, if at all possible, mind one's own business and keep one's yap well and truly shut most of the time and with greater vigilance when it comes to other people's activities (especially when oneself is not involved), and further recognize that my restatement here lacks the pithiness and memorable rhyme scheme of the original, it still rings hollow to me when I hear people - either in media or real life - say it.

Actually threatening people don't have the need, time, or inclination to say shit like this.  An actual threatening person gets in your face and says "Stay quiet about this or I'll fuck you up," and you remember the hell out of it while you clean the urine smell from your pants later on.  Threatening people don't spend a lot of time making up cutesy rhymes, and if they do, they become less threatening with each one.  How long was Ice Cube actually scary, for instance?  Pretty much when the Jeri curl went away, so did the threateningness.  Now he makes beer commercials.  Finally, an actual threatening person doesn't care to make up little poems to scare you, as his time is pretty filled with knuckle-cracking, drinking, and reading monosyllabic hate tracts.  So it's not realistic, is my point, and invalidates a fictional character in the saying, and makes a real person laughable.

Even if they've got a shiv.  You could wave a shiv around and say this and still lose me.  Now it's your turn; in the comments, leave examples of the most threatening things you've heard that actually work.

Dream 3/13/12

For the last 24 hours or so, my brain has been in a fog of poisonous murder thoughts, where I hate almost everyone I run into, consider the interaction with them a burden that intrudes upon my time (which is better spent in a white rage), and wish for a cloud squadron of winged air piranha that surround me and can skeletonize doorway blockers, phonetalkers, slow young lovers and speaky prickholes with a flick of my scornful eyebrow.  I don't know if it's me coming down from a great weekend, or some previously denied effect of Daylight Savings, but - MDK thinking prevails.  Arguably, then, this dream I'm about to relate is the happiest time I've had since about 7am yesterday, so enjoy.

It started with a chapel service at my old elemiddhigh school, Lipscomb.  People were singing, and so I sang along because I knew the words, being mildly impressed and depressed at this fact simultaneously. A couple of my former classmates filed by and remarked positively upon my singing, some normal looking, some regressed back to high school age, and at least one with an enormous head, though if Facebook is to be trusted, that's kind of true now.  Many people were dressed up, one woman was in formal wear, and I myself was in a black suit with black shirt and red tie.  That's not weird, though - I dress like that.  Eventually, I used what seemed to be coriolis/mosh movements of the crowd to inch toward a door and leave, walking quickly and being careful not to slip on the leaves.

It was a crisp Autumnal evening, and I ran into this one woman who I really like and with whom I used to feel very close.  She was dressed all sexy-retro, with headband and fruit pattern on her dress and stockings with seams up the back and garters.  Sometimes in your dream you just know.  Shit, sometimes you know in real life, too.  We ended up making out after a short conversation in front of one of the buildings where I used to have classes, and she nibbled on my earlobes, which I really like.  I could choose to be embarrassed by having told you that, but having also shared my feelings with you about Ryan Gosling, evil, umbrellas, my urine, cars, my own original poetry, and a bunch of other stuff that would have been personal in a bygone age, I think we're past that, don't you?

Then we had to get away from some cops for an unclear dream reason, but this was kind of hot, too. She had to go, and I ended up in a basement with a bunch of people where I committed to giving a ride in my car to a huge guy named Billy, and John Cleese.  I got hung up on saying "Cleese" over and over again while Mr. Cleese complained that my backseat did not have adequate leg room for someone of his height.  We drove to the border of Tennessee and Arkansas, and my alarm went off.

Good morning.

Spring Break 2012

When I was a kid, I remember that Spring Break never really seemed long enough to do anything really, but I needed it like pints of blood to bridge the gap between Xmas and Summer.  I always hated school, and was literally a day counter when it came to attendance.  You'd have hated sitting next to me in homeroom; "165 and a wake up man, I'm short." Most of my Springs Break were spent working or in unplanned leisure which always leaves one unfulfilled or in Destin at the timeshare condo.  Every now and again you'd get one that was okay, but for the most part I spent them not doing much.  Now that I am jobless, I get to once again truly appreciate the Spring holiday, and this Spring Break had me getting up every morning as usual, making breakfasts and lunches and picking up kids, but with some minor variations.

FRIDAY: The threat of tornadoes loomed large over my Spanish and TN History midterms, so we rushed through them and an early school closing for us and my kids, cancelled a social engagement I'd been looking forward to, and ate delivery pizza while watching histrionic wall-to-wall weather coverage on local networks.  It was kind of an early night at the end of a long week.

SATURDAY: Other than some cutthroat Monopoly between me and my son, a mostly nothing day followed by a late night brats and games session (with pie!) with Meredith and Sandy and late night joking and laughing until your face hurts.

SUNDAY: You know, I actually can't remember.  I know I did a bunch of laundry and watched The Walking Dead and stayed up too late.  Wow.

MONDAY: Went to Thai lunch with my buddy Steve and we installed vinyl graphics on the kids' walls. Abby got a silhouette of herself with some butterflies (that needs some work) and Max got a giant Avengers "A."  We'd purchased them from Steve's home company with part of our tax refund, and I got to feel like I was working again for a minute. This basically took all of the daylight; I used the last bit of the day to make arrangements for Tuesday, my suit and documents and keys and such.

TUESDAY: Got up at 3am and drove over the mountain to Chattanooga for a court hearing to decide a contentious family matter. Was an interesting experience, to say the least.  While there, went down to Ross's Landing for a school project, fell on some stone steps and made my camera look battle-scarred. Drove out to my grandmother's nursing home and spent a couple of hours with her looking at her card, watching the View and hanging out with her on her birthday. Came home and explained stuff to various parties, ate Chinese food while kids did homework.  Read some Ghost Rider comics.

WEDNESDAY: Met with the TNDP folks in Nashville from 8:45 until about noon - this involved a lot of graphics talk and planning (made the all-important dummy book) and then a 10 minute conversation about comic books with one of the other interns.  So when Obama loses Tennessee in November, it's our fault for wasting those 10 minutes talking about Warren Ellis and what DC did to Starfire.  Went from there to a florist and a hardware store, then out to Mt. Olivet cemetery to tend to my friend's gravesite. Cut back the weeds, cleaned the stone, hung out with ex-girlfriend, had a good talking session, drove back to the 'Boro and picked up the kids.

THURSDAY; Spent the morning cleaning the house a little, picked up the kids at 11:00 due to a school 1/2 day, and took them for cartoons, book shopping ice cream and Glow Golf with our friends the Dials. Was hit in the head by a flying tray borne aloft by 25 mile an hour winds at Culver's.  Lurked around the bookstore having adult conversations, eventually returning home to re-engage the routine.

FRIDAY: Once I had the day to myself, I sat and squared away my remaining schoolwork, tied up loose ends from Wednesday's meeting (including the production of 3 cover choices for the project), sent out and deleted a bunch of emails, applied for 2 jobs, finished 4 loads of laundry, cleaned my room, did mine and C's FAFSAs, touched base with my current ongoing freelance project people, baked a loaf of banana bread and delivered it to the new neighbors across the way, and invited C's dad to the new Mexican place at the end of St. Andrew's.  Stayed up late and watched Drive, which I believe I mentioned; also listened to a big chunk of that night's Coast to Coast AM, which I should probably have left out.

SATURDAY: Yesterday we spent the 1st part of the day mostly taking it easy, tidying a little while C went to her classes, then I hit the store for grilling out / having a fire supplies for when Wess & Chelle (the people delayed by last Friday's shite weather) came over at 5:30.  We hung out with them until the wee hours of near-Daylight Savings Time, sharing personal histories, joking about monkeys and other really important stuff and enjoying the fire. Then I slept for four hours or so.

Seems like a really long week, especially in retrospect.  I've got one or two things I need to take care of before tomorrow.

"No Homo"

I went all the way around the fucking world on this one.

Earlier this week, a friend of mine, Christy Farr (who is also a better writer than I am and far more rational - though that probably goes without saying) had to ditch a stupid person on Facebook because they simply couldn't see that "no homo" isn't appropriate or funny when used by the clueless.  (By "clueless" here I assume I am referring mainly to younger straight guys.  If you are clueless and not part of that demographic, feel free to let me know.) I subsequently suggested the tried and true re-appropriation of the phrase, using it after everything, so that it becomes meaningless.  "I'm going to go feed my dog; no homo," for example.  I'm writing a blog entry - no homo.  That one kind of works, actually.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought it might be kind of harmless, especially after I saw Drive, with Ryan Gosling.  Ryan Gosling is the most attractive man I've even seen, what with the nose and the jaw and those eyes.  But I'm not gay, so if I was one of these guys who use the phrase, I guess I'd throw a "no homo" onto the end of that confession, right?  But therein lies the rub, because what one is doing is denying what is, essentially, a homosexual thought, which the user of the phrase finds so repulsive that they find the need to distance themselves from it immediately, lest anyone contemplate their possible sexual ambiguity.  I don't want to have sex with Ryan Gosling, but I wouldn't give two-fifths of a fuck if people thought I did, except that it might lead to some misguided gift giving, I suppose.

So what you're really worried about when you say "no homo" like this is that people will think you're gay and you think that's bad, which brings us back to "stupid and hateful" territory, inasmuch as it still serves as a stigma/tool for keeping a whole group of people in what some people perceive as their "place" which is not a place that they like, for good goddamn reason, because it leads to them being denied religious rights and freedoms, the ability to marry and share like straight people, and it keeps them from being taken seriously enough to fight for what should already be theirs in the first place.  It's a pretty fucked up place, and the keys to prisons of thought are language and those keys don't belong to you.

So cut the shit.  No homo.

On Evil

I keep thinking about things that have come up in the recent past and thinking to myself: "Wow, I could deal with this so much more easily if I were just evil."

You know what I mean?  If you could just steal and break shit and fuck with people and kill those who need killing? Just fucking smash your car into the side of some prick when you know they're out driving, then drag them out and flaming crucify them roadside?  Or just target those who're a drain on others and shoot them 666 times while they watch TV, make people think it's a Satanic thing?  Burn some insensitive prick on live television and run like a bastard. I could get a lot done, very effectively, in a very short goddamn period of time if I was just evil.  I don't mean simply callous and cruel and inconsiderate and mean - though those things are the tools in the Toolbox of Evil™ - I mean really transformatively violent and premeditatedly invasive in a way that humiliates and cleanly strips away the human rights of others forever.  Evil, as I define(d) it.  Just efficiency personified, man.  No more chances, no more benefit of the doubt or pussyfooting around simple solutions - just burn away what's not working and move on.

The problem of course, is not that there's not some people out there who wouldn't deserve it - because there really, REALLY are - it's just that it's so amazingly hard to be evil without getting it on you.  And it stains.  You can't ever get it off - you have to carry around the evil thing you did forever like a drunken tattoo decision.  You can be thoroughly decent for the rest of your life, but it's gonna be your job to mule around the evil shit you did on your back forever.  And that can make it hard to be decent, since it's ultimately futile if looked at selfishly.  Why not just give in?  If you're always going to be burdened with evil - fuck it, give in just be bad all the time.  And once you do, it's easier to do it again and again - and way more satisfying, too.  Immediate results and complete catharsis.

Of course, you become what you beheld, having looked into the abyss, and if your hatred of the evil shit was what pushed you down this road in the first place - attempting revenge, retribution or correction on the evil fucks before you, now, having stepped over the line, you will have joined them in the cul-de-sac of evil if you give in.  When you don't give in, that's why you don't, of course - no one signs up for self-loathing, especially at a deep and personal moralistic level that's all tied up with identity like that.  So you can't just be evil, not even for a little bit - it's not a viable option, unless you're taking it up full-time and that doesn't work for most of us.

But if it did...I'm just saying, I could get a lot done.

Robertson: Fuck You, Tornado Victims

On what has previously been a bastion of balanced and sane programming, the 700 Club, maniac and complete fuckwit Pat Robertson took a break from having God talk to him to condemn people who build houses where tornadoes might come while also claiming that God was responsible for tornadoes without being responsible for them.

It breaks down like this: See, God makes tornadoes when a group of air of one temperature meets a group of another temperature, and they are used by God to siphon hot air away from Earth, since presumably, tornadoes extend into space, but any damage they cause during that process is the fault of stupid, stupid people who build things anywhere in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas, or really, about a third of the United States.  Now you could build stuff that might be knocked down by tornadoes there, but you'd have to pray really hard that God would divert the tornadoes from your stuff, and if your stuff got knocked flat or you died, it's your fault because you didn't pray hard enough.

Got that?  Because Robertson also believes that Sandra Fluke is a fornicator who'd like others to pay for it (and that Rush was "a little over the top" in talking about it), that the earthquakes in Haiti happened because that country's founders made a deal with the devil, that 9/11 could be blamed on lesbians, abortionists, the ACLU, and others who disagree with him and Jerry Falwell, made money off of Hurricane Katrina, and is financially linked to Charles Taylor, Mobuto Sese Seko, and blood diamonds. In addition, God frequently talks to Pat (who's real name is Marion, so he went with the far more masculine 'Pat') and has recently told him who will win the 2012 Presidential race. 

Poppycock, all of it.  Everyone knows that tornadoes are formed when the hot air from doorknobs like Robertson and his ilk collides with cold truth.  Whatta maroon.

American Family Tradition

I heard someone the other day talking about this story, which is how I became aware of it at all.

President Obama's half-uncle - which I'm still a little lost on, and I've spent some time this morning looking at this: I think he's Obama's grandmother's kid by someone not Obama's grandfather?   Anyway, this guy, variously known as Omar or Onyango Obama (which doesn't help, those AKAs), who's related to the President, gets pulled over for a rolling stop which causes a police cruiser to almost hit him and then gets picked up for DUI.  Wow.  Then, they find out that he's here illegally, having been issued deportation orders in 1989 and 1992, and possibly having illegally obtained work documentation. Extra wow.  Fucking Fox is probably having a field day with this one.  This all happened last year, but the case is due in front of the judge this week, and all of a sudden it's a majorly-searched-for news story.  There are also the extra wrinkles of Omar talking about "calling the White House" as he's being arrested, which his attorneys are trying to suppress, and the driving record of the cop who was going through the intersection apparently without looking and had to swerve to avoid Druncle Omar.

It's not a good week for driving in the extended Obama family either, because you've got Obama's grandmother heading off the road in Kenya, but she wasn't driving and she's 90, so this is kind of a non-story.  Unless, of course, you're the braindead fucks I hear talking about this shit because they hate the President and if you can't talk about what he did wrong, you can go after the family, and the uncle's got some undeniable problems, especially since he's not the first illegal Obama in the country, though the aunt has since been granted asylum.  Frequent readers of this blog will remember that I don't give a shit about illegal immigration, so this is non-issue for me, but I know others give a giant pointy shit, so it'll stick around for awhile.

Embarrassing relatives are a Presidential family tradition, though.  Anyone remember President Bush, who had that idiot moron son, President Bush?  That guy started a multi-front war on an abstract, fucked the economy and made the world hate America.  That's embarrassing.  Of course, the Bushes had Neil, Jenna and the other one, too.  There's Reagan being embarrassed by Ron, Jr. who was into ballet, atheism and being lefty.  What about Roger Clinton, half brother of President Clinton? Remember that guy with the cocaine?  No, the other guy.  And what about BIlly Carter, who drank himself to death on his own beer and took money from Libya?  Or LBJs brother who basically got locked up in the White House? Or the 5000 fucking Kennedys?  Of course, if you reach back far enough, we've got Grover Cleveland's bastard & Sally Hemings, who I count as family.

I think these things are stories because it makes people in positions of power look normal; human again.  We've all got embarrassing family, we can all relate.  At least Obama's uncle didn't have a dog on top of the car when he ran that stop sign.