If Obama didn't exist we'd have to invent him

He has certainly re-energized our politics, no doubt about that and we probably wouldn't have heard of a Tea Party Movement without him. My friend and I were talking about Alex Jones and Glenn Beck yesterday and he seems to feel that while the bulk of what they're saying is right on they're also riding ($$$$$$) the wave of The Crisis and while we don't know the exact nature of Alex Jones' financial status he has probably made more money off the New World Order than anyone. Now we hear that Alex Jones has distanced himself from that Michigan Hutaree militia group which I guess the finer point here is that by your wayward actions you distract from the real threat the NWO poses or maybe Alex Jones is kinda like the Hef of politics objecting that one offshoot of his thinking may be too hardcore and gynecological for his tastes. There's gonna be a Tea Party in my area at the Westchester County Center on April the 15th, glad to see we still have some spunk left as a country but to the average person who merely scans the headlines in between his two jobs this might all get glumped together, certain key words and phrases from the endless political gabfests on cable, the Internet, the more traditional papers and any other media you care to throw in (a sampling of key words & phrases: Alex Jones, Tea Party, Hutaree, John Birch Society, protestors at funerals of dead soldiers). It's all a part of this vast Right-Wing Universe out there so maybe we need something other than the Nolan Chart to find out where we stand and oh yes, there's no polar Left-Wing Cosmos out there, no yin and yang to balance it all out, no Leftist Fringe at the other end of our political solar system according to the leading lights of the msm. It's simply THEM vs. US (the Moderates).

When not to play the race card

If you absolutely suck as a worker don't play the race card. Makes no sense. You come in late, you call out sick and you're otherwise a lazy bastard, you're not Nelson Mandela. Even your brothers are going to say "but you suck." If you're a good or fair to middling worker you can give it a shot but to constantly be espousing your racial theories at work to anybody who will listen when you absolutely suck as a worker it's, how shall we say setting people up, dig?

Conservatives obsessed with reading Ole Gray Lady editorials, then they have to write about it in their own counter-columns. The New York Post even has an occasional Times Watch (does the Times have a Post Watch?). I've solved this problem a long time ago, I go out of my way to NOT read the New York Times. Works for me and gets me through the day. Letting a Times editorial or Op-Ed ruin your day, it's a form of conservative masturbation. I've given up those habits, I'd sooner read the TV Guide or Popular Mechanics. A corollary to this is the Frank Rich problem or the Maureen Dowd problem, I don't read them either. It's amazing, I feel so much better and I've lost 10 lbs.! you can too.

Thoughts on pluralism

Pluralism is ten people in a room watching a Geico caveman commercial and all nine of them find it hilarious but the tenth one goes "God I have these commercials! they're so stupid" and there's a silence in the room and a couple of people politely leave to go to the kitchen shaking their heads, "holy shit." Pluralism is one guy out of 100,000 who likes his nuts tied up. Most of the time it's the minority who feels the strongest about his position (ok so you don't like the Geico commercials, shut up already!) and while we like to tout our pluralist society it's problematic. We even disagree on the essentials, what form of government we should have and instead of the Statue of Liberty maybe we should just have a giant phallic symbol in New York Harbor (I'm open to various metaphorical interpretations here, fire away). Pluralism by its very nature means lack of consensus, I mean Saty thinks the rest of us are nuts. There are folks who disagree with each other out of principle, the contrarian mentality. It's like Neo and Agent Smith, I'm the pole who has to combat your pole, I have to cancel you out and will disagree with you at every turn. You have these at work and it's not my imagination but some people actually feel threatened by you, by your competence, your intelligence. Call this the undertow but you can actually feel it, that vibe in the room, the resentment. Pluralism means working with some people who are spaced out all the time. Said to a guy at work the other day you ever get the impression everyone here is in LaLa Land and he agreed. They say pluralism is our strength but to me it also shows we honor and celebrate those with faulty thought patterns, I mean you don't know a fetus is a life yet?

What are your thoughts on pluralism?

This rush into health-care "reform" reminds me of...

...the rush into the Iraqi war. We had no choice in the matter, it was a done deal, forces beyond our control, it was out of our hands. I feel like with Bush and now Obama no president represents me anymore, the independent conservative along with independents of other stripes who are supposed to swing elections. Bush was a polarizing president, Obama even more so and it's like all you can do is sit on the sidelines and watch the show go by. By signing that final version of the health-care bill yesterday Obama has also in one swipe of the pen federalized the whole student-loan industry. At what point in time will we stop saying this is not socialism? In both cases we paid dearly, the one in lives lost and the other a debt problem to hand down to future generations. To be as nonpartisan as I can about it Obama has none of the virtues I am looking for in a leader: deliberation, reflection, nonpartisanship and the rest of the statesmanlike qualities. Then again neither did Bush and that old old conspiracy theory that the money-masters are really in charge of the world well that's not so radical anymore. So fight on Tea-Partiers but you're really the flipside of the liberals who were against going into Iraq. If something's gonna happen it's gonna happen, there's a reason for it. Call it the Matrix of Politics, you don't even know you're in it.

Thoughts on unions and a note on Idol

Unions: fine in theory, worse in practice

Conservatives usually focus on larger more general issues when bashing labor unions, the fact they are a left-wing group supporting only left-wing candidates whereas for me it's more personal. The long and the short of it is that unions make it harder to fire people and this seems to be the main complaint I've heard from young conservative managers I've worked under. I worked in a library once, a heavily unionized job if there ever was one and it was my job to do Interlibrary Loans (ILL), alot to do as books come from all over the country. As a sidenote this is weird but one of the more popular books that folks reserved was Mortuary Science but anyways this young woman, we'll call her Amy, was being groomed to be my backup on those days I was off or on vacation. Took a week off and enjoyed my vacation thinking all was well and when I got back found out she called out sick the entire week so I had more work than ever. Seems to me the director should have been able to take her aside and say to her "look Amy I don't know what's going on in your life right now. Maybe it's all legitimate but you do have this pattern of calling out sick alot and you cannot in my view contribute effectively to this workplace. Good luck in your future endeavours." So that's a problem. Now do unions make for a better work environment? You would think so but having a long and varied resume myself consisting of union and non-union jobs I would say the answer is in large part no. Shit still happens that's not supposed to happen despite your dues going up all the time and believe me they will. I've also found that many times and it doesn't seem to matter what the issue is unions will often side with management, a form of collusion it would seem. Another interesting sidenote: even during the last Democratic primary season our union early on endorsed Obama over Hillary so what does that tell you?

& there's something weird about this season's American Idol

Admittedly I'm a heavy channel-surfer but from what I've caught it goes like this. A week or two ago this young singer named Didi was up and she belted out her version of Linda Ronstadt's 1974 hit "You're No Good." Now I'm not a professional when it comes to these things, had no musical training whatsoever but to me it was near perfect so Randy got the ball going and the rest always seem to follow his lead. It's all kind of Stepford Wive-ish so you're getting that vibe of something not quite right but anyway Randy said the girl was "pitchy" his fave phrase this season and the rest, Ellen, Kara and Simon all panned her with nothing good to say. Now I've heard another viewer say they've had flat singers come on to rave reviews so clearly something's up and it ain't with the singers who are singing their hearts out. DJ's the next morning often scratch their heads. Your options:

(a) Is the show fixed?
(b) Are they all on drugs (mysterious substances to be determined later)? or
(c) Have they simply made a fetish out of being quirky?

If I may tie this all together we will now be forced to buy health insurance or else pay fines and they're calling this health-care reform, you got Al Sharpton talking about an N-word tape that only he has seen, ya got your Idol problems, unions are no good and things in general just don't make sense. If you're a woman Tiger Woods wants to slap you around and choke you a little according to the latest e-mails recorded for all posterity by his porn mistress so that goes beyond being your average red-blooded American male imo. It's not just that we're liberal or conservative, always have been, but we seem to be meandering along in this fog of weirdness we're in, not quite thinking straight and not knowing we have a problem and if you point out that something is wrong then you're from the Fringe ((key up weird Suspiria music)).

Don't be scared but I'm introducing a new phrase myself here (btw don't try this at home, leave it to the pros). Re the whole health-care debate white liberals have niggerized the discussion, the whole process and that basically means they wanna keep the old racial flames burning. You see if you niggerize something you can never really put our old racial history to bed, let folks live in peace and Move On. You're in crisis mode all the time and you like it, it's your whole goal to agitate, to roil, to masturbate people's minds.

a'ight?

The Polarizer

It was a depressing way to go to bed. Wasn't gonna but caught some news before I turned in and they really shouldn't do this on a Sunday night, shit like that is bad for your sleep but I've got other things on my mind. The final score in the House of Representatives on the health-care bill was 219-212 with 216 needed to pass and 34 Dems voted no. I was informed that all Republicans voted against it which in and of itself is interesting because if even a RINO voted against it that tells you something right there. Though they're treating this as historically as important as the passage of Social Security and Medicare (and it is) the fact that 34 Democrats voted against it shows you're a polarizer even within your own party. Now the very subject of polarization I'm not gonna get into here, I don't always think it's a bad thing but that would require a bit of a dissertation. Having glanced at the comments to yesterday's blog abortion is one of these subjects but I think the major complaint I had last night before I went to bed was this: admit that you are a polarizer rather than the healer, centrist and reconciler that you campaigned as. That president Obama is a polarizing president is a perfectly apt and objective description despite your politics and at this point he needs to explain this polarity that drives him, that animates him rather than continue to pretend he is some type of pragmatic moderate reaching out to all sides (where is tort reform in the final bill?). Bill Clinton was a triangulator, felt that need more to come down somewhere in the middle (then again he had a Republican Congress) but Obama is none of that, he is pure ideologue. Politically he is a cyborg, he came into existence with a mission, cannot be reasoned with and his mission is nearly complete. None of this is to judge him as a person but the will of the people seems hardly even a factor in his thinking. Used to be conventional wisdom was that politics in the end was all about compromise, to use a TAO phrase "the moderation of ideology" but Obama represents a new political breed with a kind of Nietzschean twist. He is Superman beyond all that, beyond our usual understanding of the paradigm of politics. His vision is so clear it approaches metaphysical certitude and again all those wonderful things he campaigned on probably played a large part in getting him elected in the first place but it wasn't his essence and it fooled alot of people who are now suffering buyer's remorse. The nonpartisan guy, the moderate, the centrist, the non-ideologue, the healer, the reconciler, now we know although some of us knew all along that's not him. He is the Polarizer and he's just getting started.

Personal autonomy, where libs and cons differ

I'm gonna break this down in porn terms but apply it to the abortion debate. Philosophically where do you come down on this issue of personal autonomy? Take a young woman who decides to become a porn star. That in and of itself shows a totally autonomous decision, a decision many of us are not even capable of. What it says is I don't care what my mother and father think, if I embarrass them, what my family and friends think, what my pastor thinks, what my neighborhood thinks, what society-at-large thinks. I would go so far as to say it's not the right decision, a very poor decision but a totally autonomous decision. On some level you have to admire if that's the right word the sheer audacity of the decision. So here's the issue: is it more important for a decision to be the right one or a totally autonomous one? For a decision to be the right one you have to take into consideration other factors besides your own personal autonomy, for instance how will this affect my family, my standing in the community, my career and a myriad of other factors. The totally autonomous decision-maker says I'm gonna do what's right for me. So for a liberal or perhaps the better word is libertarian the totally autonomous decision is also the right decision, the two are interchangeable by the sheer fact of it being autonomously made. For the conservative, the socially conservative ones anyway, the right decision and the totally autonomous decision are not one and the same thing, indeed the latter smacks of moral relativism because YOU are the sole arbiter of Right and Wrong. As applied to abortion the fact of someone practicing total autonomy is the attractive feature here, it's very Randian, but to not consider other factors would seem to show the lack of a complete decision. So where do YOU come down on this issue of personal autonomy? it's not so much the wrongness of the decision that is of importance here but the fact that you can make it freely without undue societal and religious pressures, that's the libertarian position anyway. I can kind of guess soapie's position on the matter but maybe some things are deeper than any one philosophy can offer. I'm in a philosophical frame of mind.

Get it all in now

before they pass a law against it. Do what you can while there's still time. Stock up on soda, hit the restaurants before they're forced to serve hospital food. Have your doctor you've known all these years stick his finger up your rear one last time before some government bureaucrat does it. Eat drink and be merry, enjoy the Whatever before the Whatever becomes subject to legislation. In the Future the only thing it'll be legal to do is to kill a fetus.

Digital TV

I don't have even your basic cable so basically I have two sets, one upstairs and one downstairs. Of course I have to use a converter box but that's not the problem. Upstairs I get some programming I can't get downstairs. Watching a very interesting program the other night on Ch. 58-2 on the last flight of Amelia Earhart (hey Jess was she murdered?) and so go downstairs later to play around in the kitchen and can't even get that channel on the other set. On the downstairs set I get at least five channels playing the exact same Spanish show then I get a whole slew of Korean fare I don't even get on the upstairs set. No great loss there but I'm just sayin' In the old days ALL tv's had the same basic channels, now with the much-heralded digital transition they scan differently depending on which part of the house you're in (maybe the attic gets porn, dunno). I don't get the Home Shopping Channel on either set which I was kind of into only as a last resort when all else failed to interest me. I think it's all a conspiracy to make you buy cable so that Verizon Fios guy can come to your house. How is this progress?

The politics of obesity

They say we conservatives are reactionary by nature, real ornery bastards, player-haters and so because one of our own isn't sitting in the Oval Office we're still pissed even taking it out on Obama's missus. I'm talking of course about her signature issue, her campaign against childhood obesity. Sometimes a person annoys the hell out of you and you don't know why, there's something lurking, taking shape in your id and btw I count myself among the ranks of the annoyed. It's like when you have a boss at work and he's not really bothering you that day, even buys you a cup of coffee but his mere presence still annoys, irritates, rankles. Maybe he's overly into his job so you just look at him, it could be he's a dick and doesn't know it but it's something. So what bothers US about Mrs. Obama's drawing attention to what is a legitimate public-health concern? If I may diagnose the problem here first off it's that despite all the liberal commenters of late on the blogs saying that nobody's brought up the need to get the government involved, quite the opposite your bullshit meter's arrow is in the red zone. OF COURSE they do even if they haven't said it yet. Already in New York State there's a proposed or about to be proposed bill to add tax to soda the whole idea being to deter people from drinking the evil carbonated beverage. Then ya got another politician who has proposed that salt be forbidden in the preparation of foods in all New York State restaurants so your bs-meter is right on target as usual. Yeah but there has to be something ELSE that bothers us about Michelle Obama. Maybe it's this: how important IS this issue of our nation's chubsters anyway? How do you rank it? For me speaking honestly it's nowhere near the top of my list, the husketeers will always be with us and some of them are kind of charming anyway in an Our Gang sort of way, that's what gives society its character and the thought occured why doesn't she just start with Oprah Winfrey? set some type of moral example for the rest of us but the long and the short of it is she just plain annoys the hell out of us and we don't know why. I know I'M annoyed, she's put me in a bad mood like when you have skid marks in your drawers at work and just want to call it a day and go home. Maybe the whole Fat Acceptance Movement has a point, just accept us for who we are and get on with your lives. So we've made the decision in Life that food is more important than sex, what of it? are we bothering you? It's like when you were a kid and you were watching tv and your Mom said it's a nice day why don't you go outside but there was some hot chick on Hee-Haw that you wanted to see first. That's fine when you were a kid but now that you're full grown if you want to keep your pajamas on all day and stay in bed W(ho)TF's business is it of anyways? She wants to raise our kids for us so I guess my Mom and Dad were evil because when they went food shopping every Friday night they brought Devil Dogs home (ok that was Dad's idea). Alot of black women are fat as hell but there's something human and earthy about them, they don't have this NO TRESPASSING sign at the shrine of their pussies like the supermodels do (John Mayer and Leo DiCaprio yes, YOU got a court date buddy).

Please just go away and take up crocheting or something. First ladies and their causes, wouldn't be a bad idea to have a single guy in the Oval Office some day.

So what animates your conservatism?

& please don't say Smaller Government, we all agree on that, but what other things? For me some of my animating principles:

free speech -- I have over the course of time distilled a new (really old) Z-Principle and it is this: In the majority of cases free speech should prevail. Sounds simple enough but much more complicated in practice. Now I know free speech is not absolute but what would happen if we had near total free speech? Well we'd have to Deal With It and so if (a) nappy-headed 'hos didn't cause (b) the planets to spin out of their orbits then there really is no need to lose sleep over it. (a) Pornography may be debasing but if it doesn't lead to (b) cancer than it clearly falls into the zone of protecting freedom is more important than shielding us from bad taste which segues nicely into,

freedom (to not have a police state) -- A few years ago I was in the village of All-White-Dobbs-Ferry-on-the-Hudson going through one of those personal problems/issues phases in my own life kinda mulling things over on the street corner, wasn't bothering anyone, walking around a little and this young woman comes up to me and goes "you can get arrested for that." Now if memory serves my penis wasn't exposed so she must have meant loitering even though I was only there for about 20 minutes tops. Now here's where my animating principle comes in: does this mean Dobbs Ferry NY has a police state? no but if the village adds 50 more laws like this one then you do wind up with one so I am opposed to not only a police state but anything that foreshadows a police state. Beth's Nolan Chart doesn't deal with stuff like this but I'm filling you in anyway which leads up to my third animating principle:

minimal laws -- It's simple logic, the more laws you pass the less freedom you'll enjoy so for me the test is so simple it's astonishing even to me: if the old law or proposed new one doesn't serve some dire need, in short if it's not absolutely necessary to the survival of, to the cohesion of a just Society as we know it then it shouldn't become law or if a law should be repealed instantly. Again if my presence in Dobbs Ferry bothered that young woman that much then Deal With It, this in a village that used to allow later-term abortions where one young Spanish woman even died undergoing the procedure and they covered it up but I'm the problem apparently.

pro-life -- Not even coming at this from a political angle per se but just feel it would be better if Society were pro-life. The opposite leads to all types of things like the time I boarded a bus in White Plains and the driver had to take some time to lower the handicapped ramp so a disabled guy could get on and some young woman in the back started bitching about it. That be an ugly society indeed and again my bar here is very low, despite our political views on abortion why can't we all be personally pro-life?? Doesn't seem much to ask and if we did we could all tell the bitch in the back of the bus to STFU!

spend spend spend -- Don't feel guilty about it, you can't take it with you. If your Mom tells you you spent too much on a carton of ice cream don't worry about it. On a related subject it's also why I'm against dieting, well the more spartan ones anyway. There's an anti-pleasure principle at work here which goes against the fundamental ethos to just enjoy Life (God must be scratching His head). John Tesh is a major spokesman of this approach but he must be driving Connie Selleca nuts. Spend $$$ and enjoy Life, you'd think this would be obvious.

war only as a last resort -- When I was growing up leaned heavily towards the pacifist position, thought two countries fighting each other was the height of human stupidity and folly. Call this the Henry David Thoreau position but as I got older saw the world was far more complicated than this but despite my much more reasonable older self the invasion into Iraq didn't cut it for me. To be willing to give up your own life for your country is the height of bravery imo, takes your moral character to a whole new level but it has to be absolutely necessary not because Dick Cheney thinks it's a good idea.

Just so we're clear.

Maybe he deserved to be Borked

Robert Bork, conservative icon, should've been on the Court and helped knock down some pretty bad decisions but I've really changed over time on this one. So I was channel-surfing the other night and came across some program on the Constitution on NJN2 the theme being Original Intent vs. an Evolving Constitution. Now I'm mainly an originalist myself but I actually found myself agreeing with at least one of the libs on the program who said what conservatives like Bork really want is to go back to the old days and by old days I mean olde olde days, it's like they're stuck in a kind of Victorian timewarp, Oscar Wilde got what was coming to him and so there was Bork saying things like liberals have used the courts to push sexual permissiveness, "to create a right to homosexual sodomy"...ok let's stop right here and have a cup of coffee.

Of all the conservatives who populate our corner of the conservative blogosphere, hell conservatives in general, is there anyone out there who seriously wants to put folks in jail who have gay sex with each other? I'm not talking morality here, views and tastes differ but should anal sex even be included within the purview of the Law? I'm finding Bork's brand of conservatism to be......disturbing. So what other acts of a sexual nature is Bork ok with a legislature or political body banning? Bork strikes me as the kind of guy if his wife was starting to do something orally creative he'd push her off and go "get off me bitch!" Again when it comes to Sex opinions definitely differ, folks do all kinds of freaky things in their early years they may regret later on in Life but again this properly falls within the sphere of personal morality and not law and I think most folks would agree it's far better to ponder on your life and the things you should or shouldn't have done in the safety and privacy of your living room with a bottle of Jack with the tv droning on in the background than in a prison cell.

Think of the conservative landscape out there and how vast it is. At one end you have your libertarians smoking dope, getting down with the 'hos but otherwise being very fiscally conservative and for smaller government. In the middle you have your soccer Moms, PTA gals, committee members who go food shopping, attend the neighborhood watch meeting, vote straight Republican (even McCain) and otherwise live quiet suburban lives. Then all the way around the other side of the globe intrepidly trudging across the frozen tundra in Viking helmut sun glistening off their frozen snot are folks like Bork harpooning those buggering homos on the ice floes. Welcome to the Land of the Strict Constructionists, guy masturating in an igloo, tie him up on the sled and bring him in. So how did we all manage to inhabit the same planet?

Not getting hired because of something you said online

This seems to be one of those rather hot topics that pops up every now and then in the press and the spin is always, well it seems to be that you should never post anything online for fear that it will come back to haunt you in any future job search. Z-man has multiple problems with this not the least of which is Free Speech but here for a typical column offering the typical sagelike advice in this area are some excerpts from conservative Kyle Smith's piece yesterday in the New York Post, Idiocy in the age of Facebook - Why you're not getting that job (2/28):

"A 2009 study concluded that 45% of employers were checking social-networking sites before deciding to hire someone...The news gets worse: of that 45% who bothered to check 80% subsequently decided not to offer a job to someone based on info found on the sites..."

Aren't there enough violations of free speech already? I know I know an employer can technically do this I suppose just like a radio station can fire someone for saying whatever but it's a violation of the spirit of free speech and when you look at it cumulatively we're a less free nation because of it. What you do online is your own creative domain and this is likely to have a chilling effect on bloggers, commenters, MySpacers, Facebookers etc. It's absolutely no business of the employer how much you drank at a party last week let's say or what conspiracy theories you believe in. It might be unwise to post some things but that's for your fellow commenters to point out, to issue TMI Alerts but it still shouldn't invalidate you from further consideration to fill that post. Besides don't these pencil-pushing geeks have anything better to do?

"As an employer you're taking a chance when you hire someone. No one wants to hire a dud. What if someone has a history, say, posting rude sex jokes about women on his Facebook 'wall' and turns out to be much the same around the coffee pot? No sex-harassment lawyer is going to fail to tell the jury that...

OK stop right there!! Time was, in recent memory in fact that most conservatives questioned, criticized the growing field of sexual-harassment law but ever since we learned from Paula Jones that Clinton has a crooked member they got with the program. I'm calling them out on this. Kyle bro you're smarter than this, many people are not going to repeat in the workplace what they say online ("geez Madam can I pour some blueberry syrup on those pancake nipples of yours?"). If there's one thing I hate with a passion it's this fashionable politically correct conservatism, neocon pussies all.

"...The No. 1 reason not to hire someone discovered on social-networking sites, though, is 'provocative or inappropriate photos'."...

Again too much time on their hands, not worried enough about the Bottom Line which may be part of the reason why our economy is in such a shambles. You got time to worry about this shit then pluck your candidates from a convent. Are such images right or wrong? that's purely in the eyes of the beholder but what Kyle doesn't mention is it can surely work in the opposite direction and I'm sure it does. When Tiger retires and runs his own golf equipment company I'm sure he would take it into consideration.

Then there's some crap about divorce lawyers just love Facebook and college admissions offices are getting into the act too. Z-man's position is simple -- if a boss cares this much about your online activity then he or she is probably not worth working for in the first place.

The philosopher class

Lately I've been watching this special on Immanuel Kant on NJN2, some Harvard professor named Michael Sandel giving the lecture. Exciting class, kids all look interested, lots of Asian faces. Like my friend and I were talking, you're in Barnes & Noble and there's some hot Asian chicks in the cafe studying who won't even give you the time of day because their parents have used YOU as an example of what not to wind up to be in Life, you're a walking warning in your Dockers and Reeboks stimulating their studies. There's just something about You, you give off the stench of a low-wage job and don't seem confident. You pass a chick in a department store and your eyes wander and then she notices and buttons up that top button, you must be giving off a stalker vibe or something. Interesting stuff as when we are told that Kant thought it always wrong to lie so if a murderer knocks on your front door and asks if your friend is in there you have to tell him the truth, give up your buddy, something to do with you can't make exceptions to the categorical imperative. Philosophy usually takes weird turns every now and then like when I was in Catholic high school our professor talked about solipsism a Greek word which basically means there's no objective reality outside of your own mind which means that nothing else exists, you just imagined it all which if true then why the hell did I get up to go to work these past 25 years? You can't blame it all on the acid, that didn't come until 1938 but you did have your morning glory seeds, the heavenly blues so don't know if some of the Thinkers accidentally ever swallowed some. I was thinking about the nature of dreams the other day, what are they exactly? Now we all know that dreams ain't real but they do exist on some level otherwise you wouldn't have dreamt. Put another way a dream happened somewhere, it took place in your mind, your imagination which has its own existence so if it makes you feel any better maybe Kim Cattrall really did kiss you au naturel in the kitchen. Arthur Schopenhauer, said to lead the philosophical school of thought known as Pessimism. What I wanna know is did the philosphers ever work a day in their lives? hold down your typical 9-5's or did they just think all day? We've all heard "if a tree falls in a forest and there's nobody around does it make a noise?" and along these lines what's the deal with this tinnitus-type state? I mean the noise is real to me, what am I nuts? Maybe I'm gonna give my two weeks at work and spend the next few years pondering the finer points of Life but getting back to dreams if you work in your dreams as I do shouldn't you get paid for it? Maybe we're all dead. BTW Obama ain't real folks, get over it!!

The Plowman Cometh

Having been through two blizzards so far this winter, second one worse than the first what happens is you shovel all day, clear your space out so you can just glide on out early the next morning for work and just as you're done for the day all proud of your achievement and go in for a hot toddy HE comes. But he already came once or twice already but NOW you have an embankment of snow to deal with, the third or fourth embankment so far this day as you already cleared away the first two and you'd better get to it now 'cause in a day or two that baby's gonna be rock hard. We need a meeting of the minds here and folks generally fall into one of two camps:

I clearly belong to the second camp. Once the plows have been through the side roads twice that's enough, any rational citizenry would say we'll deal with the rest and we will. Get that snow out into the road which apparently you're not supposed to do anymore and the traffic will take care of the rest. This can't be though because of the first group, larger and more influential and these yahoos will raise holy hell, write letters to the editor and call their representatives if the plows don't come through their street in a timely fashion. Yes they have a point, your tax dollars at work should help your streets get clear but how much plowing is too much? Are they overcompensating for fear of the yentas?

I have no easy answers. All I knows is my body is sore and all for naught.

Faith systems

Along the lines of Patrick M's recent musings on faith, what faith system coincides most with our own personal belief system this is a tricky one indeed. I would go so far as to say all the official faith systems of the world don't do it and fall short for a good many of us. Born and raised a Catholic, still am, theologically very in sync but there are problems. Just to choose four issues out of a hat:

Birth control: Tried understanding the Church's position on the matter time and again, damn I tried but I think what it all boils down to is this - Sex is a fairly animalistic act when you get right down to it and the Church is trying to ennoble it, pleasure for pleasure's sake even to express love become issues so have the act be open to the transmission of human life at all times even if it means winding up with ten kids if you're the sensual type...anyway don't recall the subject even popping up in the Bible per se so I'm very Sola Scriptura on this one you could say. It's a blue moon moment, me and the Rev. Pat Robertson see eye to eye on this one.

Confession: Probably my biggest difference right now as the oldtimers accept it without question but never got the logic here - Jesus or God won't forgive you and you'll wind up eternally damned even if you're sorry as hell unless you explain in morbid detail to the priest your most personal sins and then some. Makes me instinctively uncomfortable, is there some kind of prurient interest at work here and you have to question any person or institution that says thou shalt not use your mind, put reason away and obey blindly. The priest will point to the confessional, you'll feel like a million dollars afterwards, my thing is why do you need to know?

Transubstantiation: The doctrine that when the priest at Mass consecrates the bread and wine they literally turn into the Body and Blood of our Savior. Not buying it and it has cannibalistic overtones, why can't it just be symbolic? Literalism can get you in trouble but they insist so again it's not a perfect fit.

Priestly celibacy (and hell why don't we throw in nuns too?): Doesn't seem nat'chal to me at all, why can't a woman or man bring you closer to God? Of course you could be a layman and practice what I call involuntary celibacy but I don't want to get into that right now. Valentine's Day is hard for lots of folks but at least we have it as a goal, for them the goal is illegal.

So call me a cafeteria Catholic if you want, it seems to be the only way. Soapie HAS TO have some thoughts.

Obama has plumbed new depths

Now at first blush this is gonna sound grossly unfair to President Obama, you can just picture Bill Moyers using it to illustrate classic right-wing hate in the blogosphere on his Friday night journalfest. Well let me first link up Malcontent's excellent commentary today on the matter:

http://malcontentralphie.blogspot.com/2010/02/this-is-not-joke.html

Glenn Beck talked about it this morning on his radio program and I'm gonna predict this is gonna be a HOT TOPIC in the conservative blogosphere and why shouldn't it be? There was a DNC fundraiser last night in where else? Washington DC and Obama made the point that a national health-care system is still dear to his heart worth fighting for and then he talked about a letter he received concerning a young woman, 41 years old, who worked for his campaign while fighting breast cancer for four years and finally succumbed as he put it. You see she had no health insurance, couldn't afford the tests that could have saved her life but here's the kicker and I'm quoting Obama here: "and she insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt."

Malcontent's point, she worked for his campaign so as a campaign worker why didn't they pay for her health insurance thus saving this poor woman's life? Now here's my dark thought and I'm not afraid to express it though I usually don't go down this road: they wanted this young woman to die, hell they could've gotten one of their Hollywood buddies like George Clooney to pick up the tab. It's a kind of variation of Rahm Emanuel's let no crisis go to waste, let no death be in vain when it can be used for political purposes. Does this seem harsh to you my judgement here?? not when you consider that some people deliberately use a moral calculus of let someone or a few people die for the Greater Good, think of all the future lives that could be saved. It's utilitarianism with a Machiavellian spin. It's only one life and think of the tremendous political gain to be reaped!

It's creepy, it's perverted, it's evil but it doesn't surprise in the least. Imagine if Ronald Reagan had said "she's going to be buried in a Ronald Reagan t-shirt", it would have diminished the man and it goes without saying that the liberals would have had a field day. Obama has corrupted rational political discourse in this country which in itself is a feat, the whole thing is shocking in its banality and predictability. It's far worse than anything Bill Clinton ever did while in office imo and that's saying something so shame on the Obama Administration!!!

How much should you criticize your own side?

First off I have to admit I do it on a fairly regular basis myself but then again they make it easy. I mean when you have Savage the other night saying Toyota's current problems were caused by some kind of corporate conspiracy, a sort of war games to do in a competitor something has to be said. Ditto for Rush who had to spin the Haiti relief effort around to it's gonna show Obama to be compassionate and humanitarian and will help him even more among African-Americans. What does this have to do with the price of onions? it'll only get the Oxy talk going again. Then you have your simmering tensions between the SC's and the FC's usually over abortion with the FC's taking offense at the SC's always waving a dead fetus around in everyone's faces but I don't know how you can discuss it otherwise in the end, it'd be kinda like talking about gay marriage and leaving out the anus (oh I know it's so much more but just being a little Aristotelian here). FC's tend to lump all SC's together but there are varying gradations of social conservatism. I myself find gay marriage to be unpleasant whereas I find abortion to be repugnant, a violated sphincter is preferable to a, ok no getting around it, a dead fetus and so...When Judie Brown of the American Life League said that studies show that married couples who once had premarital sex with each other have higher divorce rates than those who didn't well I don't navigate those waters. Same thing when James Dobson of Focus on the Family interviewed Ted Bundy only to "prove" the point that porn makes men into this so I really don't wanna get that far away from land ya know? There is much in the conservative movement not to like and I can't totally refrain from criticism of my own side, that'd be hard. It's like waking up with a woody, you have to go with the moment. The links I've chosen show the full range of conservatism which is why I chose them, agreement not being a prerequisite as it is at alot of blogs to get a link going (Opus Dei - sheesh!). So really the Question Before the Board today is when should we criticize our own side? but also how much is too much? It's not an easy answer or issue for me, there be those who be team players and those who don't even like to be on the same team. For me it has to do with those uncharted waters again. Now all of us are perfectly capable of a brain fart every now and then and if you think you're not believe me we're gonna find something but Pat Robertson has a string of 'em so it makes you wonder. There are uber versions of both Left and Right and everything in between so take it away.

The Avatar Phenomenon

Haven't seen it yet. My friend did, he's really into this kind of stuff but if anything they come out on DVD so fast now I'll probably see it then at my leisure. Yeah my friend thought it was great and all, definitely a watchable flick but this James Cameron guy saying he had this concept of the blue humanoids since he was a kid, trying to give it that old artiste edge, the creative genius who had to wait literally years for IT to all come together like it's the greatest opus of all time or something. Yeah right!! my friend said he probably had some weird acid trip and just wrote it all down afterwards. Highest grossing film of all time surpassing even his previous work Titanic and I'm sure when the DVD finally does come out it'll be chock loaded with Extra Features including that annoying option of watching the movie with the acclaimed director's commentary throughout. They always have those extra 10 unedited minutes too like I hear Mel Gibson has an extended version of The Passion where you can see Jesus getting scourged for a few extra minutes or so. Anyway wha'd'ya think?

& then there's Racial Matters

Having had a long and varied career, I always seemed to choose the career path of The Whatever, didn't matter what job I had this theme ALWAYS came up and for the record I never brought it up, others said it to me:

Ya got yourself a real slacker who happens to be black and he's getting away with it whereas the white person always has to bring in a doctor's note when he or she gets sick, gets chided for arriving at work ten minutes late, didn't complete the workload that day and it's like wha'happened? you know the deal but the black worker seems to be getting away with it. In fact NOTHING ever happens, never written up and so someone makes the off-the-cuff remark that it's because he's black. Now stop right there, is it really this simple?

Boss: "Moussa's late again but I'm not gonna say anything because he's black."

Is it really that conscious of a decision? I'm not saying it's not or can't be but if it is that's a truly sad one. Then again my brother worked for years with a self-avowed lesbian who regularly told customers off, even dropped a few f-bombs and nothing ever happened to her but still I have a hard time making this calculation.

I was mugged when I was twenty and long story short I'm riding around with two white cops and they start making racial comments. Now I'd never do this, didn't condone what they said but a part of me understood. They deal with this crap day in and day out. Wanna reduce white racism reduce black crime since the one drives the other. Folks don't wake up and decide to be bigots, have a Jew in a yarmulke rob a Sunoco station for a change. The Oscar-winner of a few years back Crash dealt with matters of race honestly which surprised alot of folks and the racist white cop played by Matt Dillon turns out to be a little more complicated after all by the end of the movie but the other thing is conservatives who in matters of police brutality against blacks routinely and as a matter of course always side with law enforcement. Hit the nigger on the head and they'll come up with an excuse. Funny but you used to be able to joke about STUFF like when I worked in a flower shop in the Bronx and one florist was gay and the van driver and he got on the Abner Louima case (for those of you out West he had a plunger rammed up his ass) and so the van driver goes to the gay guy "you'd like that wouldn't you?" and nobody got offended or threatened to sue but that was back in the day.

You'll often hear that those who use crack cocaine (mostly black) are dealt with more severely than white hedge fund managers who snort coke but as a correctional guy I was talking to once at a party said "ya wanna know something? don't do drugs." Then there's the high % of blacks in prison, much to-do has been made of this by Jesse Jackson but the only injustice here would be if most of them were innocent and railroaded and so choose a different career path like Thomas Sowell or Bill Cosby did.

Howard Stern has probably said far more racially insensitive things (insensitive to whom?) than Don Imus but Stern has wisely made the decision to never apologize and so they forget about him after like a day or two and Rumor Has It that's he's poised to replace Simon on American Idol. Now how did this happen? It's because there's nothing the racial pimps love more then when you grovel and when I saw the I-man do this I was like will you cut it out you big pussy!! that only fuels them on more and how can you prove that one of the girls on that team wasn't a ho anyway? all of a sudden everyone's a spokesperson for Focus on the Family signing chastity pledges. It's wrong to stereotype of course but how come in porn you always see some big black buck with a twelve inch dick (don't they come any smaller?) plowing some 18-year old black girl who looks scared like they just plucked her out of some CVS and she has a baby to support? the thing is more like an anaconda looking for its hapless prey & btw how come Jews and other groups don't address each other by their respective slurs? "how's it hangin' kike?" "tell the spic, he'll get the job done."

Worked with a white meatwrapper once (or is that meatrapper?) and so she got pissed one day because she had to unload some U-boat and I'm just walking past: "fucking motherfucker!" she said but what's with the adjective? Isn't it superfluous? I mean isn't motherfucker strong enough to stand on its own and why do they always have man hands these women meatpackers? imagine them caressing your organ after a hard day's work but I'm gonna cap it right here...

Motherfucker!

A serious aside for a moment - the anti-smoking and pro-marijuana movements

The commercials against smoking are getting more and more ghoulish. The latest has some black woman who lost her fingers to the stuff (???) and another one that claims smoking can cause irreversible blindness. Now I'd have to say this is pure propaganda, dubious at best but to refute it would take the better part of a blog so on to the larger point. While the anti-smoking movement has taken on new heights, new passion in public-advocacy zealotry at the very same time the pro-medical marijuana movement is picking up steam, has made some inroads of late such as in the Garden State where then outgoing governor of NJ Jon Corzine just signed it into law. The smoking evil/pot good formula seems a very contradictory public health message at best, seems to me the only two logical options would be either smoking bad/pot bad or smoking good/pot good. In my experience and this is purely anecdotal as I always stress but people I have known who were regular pot users did not become more mellow over time. In fact it was quite the opposite, their personalities seemed to change for the worse, harder to get along with although when I drop comments like this at other blogs where the subject comes up the pot legalizers always deny this. Then there is the rather common practice of dealers adding more dangerous ingredients like PCP to the mix unbeknowst to the pot user. In fact judging from a workplace situation I've been blogging about recently angel dust and ANGER are inextricably intertwined and the person under its influence will often develop an angry and paranoiac view of the world, major anxiety on an existential level (the downplayers will chalk this up to alcohol but alcohol doesn't have those effects, not all in tandem that is), these people over here are enemies see? they need to be dealt with. The person sinks into a weird depression, he or she may go to work in the morning with a strong sense of impending doom, becomes detached from his environment, detached from himself (ego-death) and detached from reality, enters a dissociative fugue state.

So to cap it off a young person absorbing all this like a sponge might form the not unexpected conclusion to not smoke but that it might be preferable to light up a joint every now and then especially when you have a medical condition (geez you'd think modern medicine was lacking in the pain management department). The other thing the pot legalizers will often throw at you is that you want to throw their sorry asses in jail. I don't, I'm half-libertarian on the issue but I have the right to opinions, impressions formed over the years by social interactions with these people and on balance I find them more annoying than your traditional drunk. In that case the effects wear off by morning whereas imho pot somehow alters the chemistry of the brain, how we think and it's been said marijuana is like a low-dosage of a psychoactive like LSD, it's mind-altering at least to some extent and in my observations not in a positive direction.

Potheads should be free and contributing members to society, just thought I'd offer a few thoughts counter to the pro-pot trend .

Catcher in the Rye - some thoughts

He died this past Wednesday on January the 27th at the ripe old age of 91 (LSD founder Albert Hoffman had him beat by a few years) so Catcher's in the news again. The novel has passed the test of time although I had an English professor in college once who said it was ok but he didn't know what all the fuss was about. Since we've been talking about it since 1951 when it was first published clearly author J.D. Salinger tapped into something but WHAT exactly? something in the existential ether. Clearly when even the psychos liked your work you've struck a chord (Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley were said to have carried copies to their missions) which is another thing, what to do when psychos enjoy reading your work and get something out of it? ain't exactly the best blurbs to put on your jacket. In fact if the novel were written or updated for today's world it'd be not just everyone's a f*n phony but everyone's a psycho like lately I've noticed that anybody who disagrees with me in my day-to-day is just a wee bit too serious. Take today at work, the bakery guy goes don't take my trays, you have your own which in and of itself is a perfectly valid point but it's the way he said it, getting in your face until like my friend says you're looking for something to defend yourself with should the need arise, can I throw flour in his face? But anyway any resemblances with my blog to Holden Caulfield is purely coincidental. You want your themes of angst and alienation, the occasional existential meltdown it's all here so where's my literary validation?? It's been said the protagonist is a cynical outcast, that's what my library display memorializing Salinger's passing tells me but that'd be ME. I hate social obligations: as soon as I go to a wake I want to leave. It's nothing personal but I saw the dead guy already and I'm sure he'd want me to leave too. Observations on Society: like it's often the women who are the most sexual, who show the most cleavage who are most likely to call the cops should the wrong guy pursue. It's not the tits for God's sake, it's the phoniness ("madam your melons are falling off the table"). Take organized religion: the confessional is an invasion of my privacy. Why does the priest have to know what my left hand did last night? do I ask him how to make altar boy pudding? My blog comes from the heart (or the gut). I am ANGRY folks and it's everything, I can't go through a whole day without some vibe in my being getting plucked the wrong way like when you hear your boss say so-and-so doesn't like to work which is a totally wrong framing of the issue. Getting up and going to work everyday is a form of discipline, nobody except your boss insists you have to like it as long as you show up for work every day and do what's required. I don't ask the tolltaker on I-87 if he likes his job or not, it's irrelevant. There are other things...

Yes I am HE.

WOW!! Nuclear power plants & offshore drilling

There was enough last night in President Obama's first State of the Union address to warm the cockles of any Republican heart but I wanted to hear more about his mysterious jobs bill that he wants on his desk without delay (are we allowed to ponder it or just accept the omniscient wisdom of Our Leader?). He rapped on about clean energy, climate change, even gays in the military but the thing was JOBS JOBS JOBS in 2010. He got into regulatory reform of the financial markets a little, said he doesn't want to punish the banks (codespeech - "I'm not a Marxist you know") and really touted all the tax cuts he's signed, small business, capital gains, the works and it was said a couple of Republicans got that Chris Matthews tingle in the leg area but won't admit it (oh is that a semen stain?). About 33 minutes (or was that 31?) into the speech as the ever-helpful pundits pointed out afterwards he finally brought up health-care and said part of the problem was he didn't explain it better - oh no buddy we heard you loud and clear. At this point about 60% through the 71-minute speech the Jim Beam Sour Mash was jerking me in and out of consciousness so I had to catch some recaps afterwards. I always skip the counterspeech from the Opposing Party later, what's the point? it's an anticlimax. The Speech? it was a'ight, he struck some of the right Reaganesque notes early on, despite our hardships he was hopeful about our country's future.

So there was Biden on the Today Show this morning, first thing he said was he expects unemployment to grow this spring until Meredith ever the helpful msm'er corrected him ("you mean employment") but if I were doing the interview I would have just let the guy rap for the sheer fun of it, the line would have gone down into our ever-growing list of Bidenisms. So the prez and Biden are heading down to Florida to give an $8 million federal grant for some light rail project, that'd be good.

My favorite State of the Union of all time? When Gerry Ford got up in front of the nation and said "the State of the Union is...not good." I'm sure the Malcontent will correct me on some of my points.

right-wing schtick

Actor Danny Glover says climate change caused the earthquake in Haiti, something to do with Copenhagen, didn't know in addition to his acting credentials he had skills in geophysics. Savage was talking about this last night and noted that Haiti is only 100 miles from the Florida coast and so they're gonna come here in droves for the welfare. Upon first seeing the news footage of the devastation 'twasn't the initial thought that immediately came to my mind but leave it to Savage to boldly explore territory that Beck won't even venture into. Trudging along the frozen tundra in his parka with frozen snot and a chafed a-hole give him a Viking helmut and a harpoon and maybe he can shoot a polar bear on an ice floe. The new quarter, Savage on one side, Danny Glover on the other, you flip it on the table and it just pings differently. Hey there's a political lining to any tragedy, Glover must be bored with no Lethal Weapon movies to do. Patrick M is right I think, Savage's thing is Anger but excuse me I have to go check my Drudge Report.

Free Speech, it's all good.

Maybe money really does grow on Trees after all

President Obama has pledged $100 mil to help the Haitian earthquake victims. I've no problem with the sum, with its necessity BUT we don't even have the funds for health-care "reform" and the rest, we're running at a deficit and a massive one at that. You know the way your Mom told you to save money when you were growing up? imagine if the government did that! they'd have $$$$ left over for a rainy day.

Phantom menaces

It's when Glenn and Rush are always saying things like "they're trying to silence us", well you're still talkin' ain't ya? Pornmakers pull this too, will often tag on some ad for the Free Speech Coalition, "if you're a fan of XXX-rated entertainment here's what you do" but you're still makin' porn aint you? In one case the threat is supposed to come from the uber-Left, in the latter social conservatives I guess. Rush has been saying the same thing, this conspiracy against him for how many years now and I can't remember the last time he wasn't on the dial barring vacations of course or the last time there was an obscenity prosecution in this country. Did some large vat of LSD somehow make its way into our water supply?

The overimportance of education

Friend said to me the other day "what about going back to school to get a better job?" but folks often miss the mark. You have higher-level bosses with business degrees who sorely lack the common sense and besides basic fairness should apply across-the-board in any workplace low or high, has nothing to do with advanced degrees.

People who say that's besides the point

When engaged in debate or argument or discussion with someone I like to rotate the issue just like a globe, rotation of the issue, spin it around and flip it back to them and that's where your "that's besides the point" comes in. They resent you're showing them another side or angle to the issue. Joe Biden and Harry Reid, if you combine their two past statements on Race (I know I know, keep the two separate, you're fudging the mathematical equation) are really saying that the clean and articulate African-American without the Negro dialect is really not the norm but that's besides the point.

Conan has a right to be pissed

Why can't HE just retire or something? I remember I worked in a civil-service job once and one by one the older workers would begin to retire, they'd throw retirement parties for them and sure enough they'd all come back one by one on a part-time basis, get in the way, use the computer you wanted to use etc. So I was the bad guy when I kinda made some comments about this but I never fit in there anyway...Conan has every right, he uprooted his family after all and moved them all to the Left Coast, time for his day in the sun. Now I like Leno alot but c'mon dude, let's go gracefully but a part of me can't help entertaining a little conspiracy theory: all this happened after Glenn Beck appeared on his show recently (hmmmmmm). So move Jay to 11:35 his old time slot for what? a 1/2 hour monologue and throw the whole early morning scene into chaos? I'd give him an Asswipe Award actually, people aren't happy with his asswipery. Guy's got a collection of classic cars and old bikes, tinker with them the way my retired Dad putters around the house.

BTW The Simpsons have been on for 20 years. Back in the day you had shows like The Odd Couple and it surprised me to learn a few weeks back that that show hung it up after only five years and while they had some great episodes maybe they figured they mined all the humor they could. Retire Homer (& SNL for that matter). Get the Food Network back on, Bobby Flay can rock a kitchen. Ah the White House Executive Chef position, what a thing to have on your resume!! I'd bet Bill Clinton was real easy to cook for -- "just a cheeseburger and a hot dog with some fries and a cold one and I'm good."

Liberal charity

I blogged about this back in the day but I wanna toss it around again. There was a time many years back I was really down on my luck, reached the bottom and I was looking back the other night (the spirits will do that t'ya every once in a while) and I concluded that the conservative people I knew and came across helped me out far more than my liberal brethren. Now this is purely anecdotal, it hardly passes the rigors of a scientific study but the only reason I bring it up is because these liberals that I knew proudly advertised themselves as liberals, would say things like all the money they spend to produce music videos could be put to better use like to help the homeless.

Zman (down on his luck calling a liberal he once knew): "Yeah hi (yada yada yada), I'm in a tough spot right now, any jobs in your area?"
Liberal: "I'll let you know. I have to go now, bye." (click/dial-tone)

Needless to say he never called back. The one time I was betrayed in Life involved a couple liberal people (not that most liberals betray but they're constantly tooting their own horns about how much more virtuous they are than conservatives). Some conclusions: maybe we are not the Sum Total of our political philosophies. TAO said something similar at his own blog the other day that maybe it doesn't really matter who's in the White House the Ship of State always seems to steer the same course, libs and conservatives once in office are kinda the same deal and I really didn't have a response at the time because I somewhat agree. The other conclusion: maybe conservatives take the Biblical mandates more seriously and the most recent study seems to bear this out, says they give to charity far more than liberals do. These libs I'm talking about strongly, passionately believed in the Welfare State yet when push came to shove wouldn't even loan you a twenty. My feelings: liberals are by now so well known for being caring, compassionate, sharing human beings that they no longer have to prove it. These lib associates of mine who never helped out, I never called them on it of course but if one were to they'd probably proudly point to their voting records when in reality they were really living the Creed of Ayn Rand.

OR maybe they don't help out conservatives down on their luck, dunno. I only mention my anecdote because it doesn't fit the usual liberal/conservative paradigm.

Back in the day

Guy and I were talking at work today, rapped about this and rapped about that and then he told me the story of this woman who worked in a supermarket chain who slept, strike that, sucked her way to the top, well not quite the top but let me continue. She blew all her managers and co-managers and wound up with the top prize of Front-End Manager. In the olde days you had women who were willing to sleep with their bosses to get what they wanted of course but here's the key, in them days intercourse sufficed, 'twas more than enough but in these modern times the price of admission just went up:

You have to give head,

I mean it's Mandatory, we're no longer talking satin sheets, Johnny Mathis and just that thinnest veneer of social respectability just guzzle it down like a milk shake you fucking slut so she played the skin flute of about, oh I don't know pick a number out of a hat, 5 co-managers and 2 or 3 managers (were these separate deals or did they simply form a circle holding hands singing Kumbaya?) and everyone knew it too. She'd sip her coffee in the morning proud as a peacock and strut around all day giving orders like she was the manager of the store or something but she's older now and settled as they say. BTW sounds like the guys got the better end of THAT deal

but that was back in the day,

and you did crazy things, that's just the way things were

back in the day. You might be older now, have a nice husband and kids, a Jack Russell Terrier and a nice office job and checking account and keep respectable company and play SpongeBob for the kids in your minivan on the way home after grocery shopping

but that was back in the day. Maybe Gary hung upside down with a corn cob up his ass in a weird masturbation experiment and somehow cut off his oxygen supply and had a stroke and had to be rehabilitated at some nursing home at the prime age of 34. You can all laugh about it now,

that was back in the day.

"Back in the day I was a freak."

Glenn Beck and Apocalyptic Conservatism

Now some conservative bloggers like Patrick M say he's crazy and that's cool, everyone's entitled but there's no denying much of conservatism these days seems concerned with the advent of a Manchurian Candidate, not if but when and for many they have found their man. In Apocalyptic Conservatism the issues are more sharply defined, the stakes are higher and there's more of a sense of political Destiny than say the comfortable conservatism of a David Brooks whose prime tenet seems to be Do Not Offend, split the difference and have tea at the end of the day with liberals who always mean well after all (a little too Melba-toastish for me). Perhaps Rush had an acute case of Glenn Beckitis, he saw his blip getting near the end of the radar screen and had to get his name back up in lights (those phantom pains, I've gotten them every now and then in Life and usually just chalk it up to agita, I don't have my agent call the msm). El Rushbo (pretty cornball in this the Age of Lady Gaga) merely calls Obama a polarizing figure (BORING) whereas the new kid on the block is much more blunt, has more of a Scenario in place and so in Apocalyptic Conservatism you truly have a Clash of Opposites, how could it be otherwise? It might be extreme or radical but it stands for Something and after all Fatima was always more exciting than the Second Vatican Council anyway, the only thing missing is the cyborgs. Apocalyptic Conservatism, it's like Extreme Hardcore, why do you want a vase in the way or men on screen without genitals?

hey it's early:)

...drugs...

People don't drive right, customers don't act right, co-workers do things that don't make sense, it explains some happenings in the blogosphere, you can throw in politics, the crap that passes for entertainment these days, Life in general. Yep, I'm talking about a little substance abuse action and I have become convinced over time that drugs alter the mind, the way we think, change the chemistry of our brains in some way and I'm including ALL illegal drugs from pot to the psychoactive class. Some drugs make you feel invincible, all-powerful and self-important and I'm half libertarian on the issue in the sense that drug users should never see the inside of a prison cell. However having said that these people are annoying as hell to deal with, the lack of a lucid grasp of a situation, the running roughshod over the normal course of human behavior, civilized modes, the paranoia, anxiety, lack of initiative, egomania and I am also convinced that 1/2 the population be on something, wouldn't be the lucrative business it is if people weren't.

It's not the war on drugs that's all wrong, it's the war on our minds.

Napolitano

She reminds me of that boss you work with and everyone has one, he or she is clearly incompetent, the living embodiment of the Peter Principle and yet upper management likes 'em:

"Hey Janet, how's it going?"
"Where's Janet?" "She's on vacation." "Good for her."

& the bosses over her will go out of their way for her, bend over backwards and as workers you could never understand it, you scratch your heads on a daily basis until one of you gets up the gonads and asks the relevant question: "whose dick did she suck?" Well you're the one who's gonna get written up but the handwriting was on the wall once she put Savage on that DHS list. That cockbomber on that Christmas plane, basically what she said was nothing to worry about, the system worked just fine. Basically she's Nuts. Even her boss was more angry about the sit'chation but she gets to keep her job, must know where the bodies are buried I guess.

You know about this racial profiling, my friend and I were talking the other day if you have a company chain with branches in different states and this company is just teeming with Italians, most of the honchos are Italian you can't tell me a very small percentage are not affiliated with the Mob in some way, involved in criminality and so you have your Arab lawyers/groups who are pissed off about the situation but we are dealing with a very serious situation here and that is radical assholeism. Now we've dealt with Fascism and Communism in the past, the Cold War and the whole terror movement used to be primarily politically motivated (think Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army) but today it seems mainly motivated and inspired by religion so at what point when they're strapping explosives in your undies do you not get that weird feeling (hell I get that weird feeling with some of the people I work with), so at what point in time do you not get that creepy feeling like these folks are not right in the head and my other thought would be why doesn't the Almighty Leader, this OBL guy follow suit and lead by example and hop on a plane himself and hang upside down with a nuclearized corn cob up his ass in some kind of weird masturbation experiment? If you were this guy with a name I can't pronounce let alone spell you'd swear you were being punk'd no??

Yup, better to worry about the Beckster.

Tiger Woods on hiatus

Well if anything we'll learn the names of some of the other golfers now. If every other scandal-tarred athlete were to remove himself from the game in order to be better husbands/fathers/people we'd have no sports, what do you think? (A-Rod never even seemed to feign remorse, maybe that's the way to go). Guy at work the other day regarding why Tiger would stray so often on his supermodel wife: "you even get tired of filet mignon" - I guess......(ok I was waiting for my session to be extended for 15 more minutes, there you go). Lady Gaga doesn't do it for me, she's trying to be like Madonna but there's only one Madonna and you might say when Madonna wasn't being controversial she had a little bit of talent. Oprah's White House Christmas Special, that's a I-have-to-have-a-gun-pointed-at-my-head-to-watch-it kind of deal (is Brian Williams gonna be an elf?).

Now I'm gonna go get hammered.

The West Point address

I DID watch the bulk of it until the Sobieski kind of took the upper hand and haven't read the other blogs on the matter yet but I have to say the thought occured that Obama is somewhat better at foreign policy than domestic policy. I watched it basically because it was West Point and wanted to see the cadets. There was the element of pathos there, you'd look in the audience and realize that many of them are going to be deployed to Afghanistan and a certain percentage of them are never coming home. I also feel the war in Afghanistan is far more germane and relevant to the War on Terror, to crushing Al-qaeda than the campaign in Iraq was and is and there was a kind of inversion of priorities under Bush when we saw Saddam Hussein swinging from the gallows instead of Osama bin Laden though for the record I oppose the death penalty. The President will send 30,000 more troops over there, many by Christmas and the rest by next summer in a kind of two-step surge and the withdrawal date is set for sometime in 2011. What's a conservative to argue with? the speech was okay unless you like eternal warfare but it's hard to believe we're still at war with a bunch of cavedwellers who haven't been rocked back to the Stone Age yet. Bush kind of led us to believe the Taliban was crushed once and for all and all the action was in Iraq if you wanna be honest about it. I pray for those young men and women we saw last night, lives so full of promise and hope but Obama did well in laying out why they're going over there. Now to the other blogs......

keeping it psycho: those White House party crashers

We finally got our exclusive! There they were on The Today Show this morning talking to Matt Lauer. We're talking about the Salahis of course, Tareq and Michaele and Tareq was saying how the media have it all wrong, how they were devastated and their lives practically ruined over this. So it's all our fault, it's that old theme again. They can't talk in detail now but that day's coming and they insist they were invited. Seems they once crashed a Congressional Black Caucus dinner and they were politely escorted out and when Matt brought this up they just called it a gossipy rumor. OK no need to recap all this you know this stuff already but here's why technically they're not lying, they're telling the truth which is not to say the msm is engaged in a conspiracy against them (why for heaven's sake?), the msm do have their facts straight so how can both of them be right??? Very simple,

they're nuts

they ARE telling the truth as it exists in their own heads just like O.J. didn't murder those two people and UMA sent love signals to Jack Jordan. Now the Salahis are not Charlie Manson insane, they're what is known in the trade as being functionally insane. Worked with a woman like this once and you don't catch on right away until the stories they tell, the things they say don't make sense, don't add up. They can hold down jobs perfectly well, tie their shoelaces in the morning, brew their coffee, pay their bills on time and chat with their neighbors. They make it through the day just fine but they're still major bonkers. Even THEY don't know they're nuts.

it's awesome!:)

Tiger Woods

I'm no legal expert so correct me if I'm wrong but I thought when something happens that may be in the purview of copland and they call you down to the precinct or come to your house to talk to you you pretty much have to, I mean Joe Schmoe just can't slam the door in their face and say he's had a hard day at work, he's tired. Yeah I'm talking about The Accident. I remember about a year or two ago when Tiger's game was suffering, he'd miss a few putts here and there, he was a little off his game, just a tad and my brother said "that's because he's still thinking about her sitting on his face last night" but that was then, apparently the shine may be off the conjugal apple. Now sure his Swedish supermodel of a wife was probably tempted early on, he's another one like Simon Cowell who can wipe his ass with money AND single-handedly fund health-care reform but a smart gal with a good head on her shoulders would have easily saw down the road and seen the signpost marked TEMPTATION, turn around. You know it's a pretty big story when it's the second lead story on the national news over the weekend even bigger than those White House party crashers and the prevailing theory right now at least among the women is that he had an affair and she wanted to wrap a golf club around his neck, just sayin'.

Tiger Woods, I always thought he had a 'tude.

How do you define a conservative Utopia?

Let's say in our futuristic theoretical scenario conservatives got every victory under the Sun they ever fantasized about

except One,

and anyway the FC's have always had a problem with this one issue. They say the SC's are way too concerned and focused on It and it would do the party well to give it the old heave-ho since we agree on so many other things. OK so let's say in our hypothetical here liberalism is a total thing of the past, a fossil, don't gotta even worry about it anymore and so we have our conservative society, our conservative world but without Pro-Life. We got everything else just not that one thing. The libertarian wing got their wish big-time and so the everything else includes the usual: leaner government, vastly lower income taxes (or none at all), a strong and stable military (very Reaganesque), labor unions gone, a better educational system that got rid of tenure, geez terrorism you don't even have to worry about anymore even at a shopping mall in Israel, free speech and then some, tort reform

the whole gamut,

except that not only is abortion-on-demand still the law of the land but the country hasn't even been pulled in a pro-life direction, in short there's no pro-life influence even. The FC/libertarians would naturally be perfectly fine with all of this but it would still be a spiritually empty victory. Take away the moral tension on any issue and you leave yourself a vacuum, there is a part of us that likes to be reminded of Right and Wrong though we may bristle at it on the surface. Even the FC's themselves who no longer hide their irritation at the SC's, take away the SC's would they still miss us? We need that moral voice even if we disagree with it, if anything it may lead us to calibrate our own views, many times they need calibrating anyway. If abortion ceased being on the political radar screen, if every pro-life voice vanished overnight it'd be like your Dad buying you a Hustler and a bong, you'd be taken aback and would lose the sense of sin. Many of you may hate the SC's the way Barry Goldwater did in his dotage but do you really want us to go away? Can't we on some psychological level represent Conscience at least in some rudimentary, vague and primeval way, serve some type of existential purpose? Tension, moral tension always serves a purpose and liberals can serve this purpose as well. We will always oppose the Welfare State but the moral calibration here caused by liberals force us to give more charitably, at least that's my theory and studies bear this out, conservatives are not at all stingy when it comes to the collection plate. Take away every single moral voice which you hate be it liberal or conservative and what have you got? Many FC's say Rand had the perfect blueprint for a perfect society but for me for all of her great ideas and she had a few it would still leave me spiritually empty. We NEED other voices!

How do YOU define a conservative Utopia?

Idol without Paula

She's been on since the show's founding and I ain't the president of the Paula Abdul Fan Club or something but it's like when a regular worker leaves for all their faults you still miss them. Ellen the newest judge, no musical expertise or connection to the music world that I know of. Drifted in and out of Idol all last season and what we got was Adam "It's Because I'm a Gay Man" Lambert. Paula has had two careers, as a pop singer and larger imo as a judge on AI. We have treated her zaniness as a threat to the Republic ("oh did you see?") when the more important issue is the government running the country into the ground (Bush government or Obama government, doesn't really matter). Anyway I ain't watching this time 'round. It's not a kind of fervored protest on my part just a show that doesn't know what to do with itself. Did they want to get rid of her all along?

Our Earth Goddess has made a prophecy

OPRAH has announced her last show will be sometime in 2011 - "25 years feels right in my bones" (it does to me too) - and this was promulgated with the utmost gravity. The way it was announced though I thought her last episode was just two weeks away. It's apparently as important as a predicted astronomical event and one can expect a new understanding of Time itself: there was BC, AD and now AO for After-Oprah. So why can't SNL, the Simpsons and the Tonight Show with any host follow suit?

Knew a Jamaican chef once who said he couldn't put his finger on it but he just doesn't like her. "I know she's done good things with her Book Club and all but I just don't like her." Her beneficent and fruitful Womb has spawned Dr. Phil and now Dr. OZ. If she and Obama ever have sex we could have ourselves a new Creation Myth in about 2,000 years hence, the Renewal of the Earth and archaeologists will be unearthing the bones of Republicans and conservatives in the Gobi Desert.

Phil Donahue was big back in the day but not like this. He'd have on say a very sexually active grandmother and raise her hand and say "God bless you Mama!" with cheers from the audience but he kind of resembled a big channel catfish near the end foraging in the muddy river for chicken guts and doughballs the kind a good ole Southern boy night noodle or grapple with. He was a liberal who knew his time was up.

Somewhere in the cold winter nighttime sky between Orion the Hunter and the Twins lies the as yet to be discovered Oprah constellation, future beacon to navigators and seafarers alike and when she passes she will be mummified in a sarcophagus, lines will form around the Globe and Mankind will finally know Peace.

Ah-men.

Does being pro-choice mean you have to be pro-Roe?

Is this constant percolating tension between the social conservatives (SC's) and the fiscal conservatives (FC's) within the party a false one? Can one be pro-choice and anti-Roe vs. Wade? Soapie has said in the past abortion should be a states' rights issue though he is personally very much pro-choice but he seems one of the very few fiscal or libertarian conservatives to actually say this. Put it this way I could (though there are alot of other factors involved here) support someone for political office who is pro-choice but anti-Roe and I would say the majority of pro-lifers these days are not purists on the issue. The Human Life Amendment is pie-in-the-sky stuff except for folks like Judie Brown of the American Life League. If Giuliani had adopted this federalist approach even a few years ago he well might have been the GOP standard-bearer instead of McCain by default. I've never understood it, this internecine political rift between the SC's and the FC's when there is so much potential common ground here. Roe was wrong on so many levels that would be a separate blog unto itself, I'd probably have to break it down into 3 threads at least.

FC's do the same thing with Terri Schiavo, it's always the Congress shouldn't have gotten involved but I've talked to a couple of pro-choice people who saw it from other angles. When that case was living news a chef friend of mine whom I worked with at the time first said he wouldn't want to live like that (DUH, who would?) but then framed it as the husband was suspicious (no mention of Congress' involvement) point being can't the FC's look at pro-life issues from any other perspectives? My chef friend though I disagree with his politics (he's a liberal) generally thinks of things the right way, goes through the correct thought processes and I don't see alot of objectivity out there. Again he and I both had a common ground here about why not just let Terri's family take care of her and so you can't tell me there can never be any thoughts that coincide on the life issues between SC's and FC's or even between conservatives and liberals in general.

George Will once concluded that the abortion issue is stale, maybe that's because he prefers it that way. You take any issue under the sun and I can find new hues, other nuances, perspectives, shades of meaning. Maybe the problem is our limited imaginations.

Conservatism at its most primeval

I like every single conservative on the planet oppose the Welfare State but I come at it from a more visceral, more personal angle. Sure I oppose folks sitting on their duff getting a check for the usual reasons, fosters dependence on government yada yada yada but where I differ from most conservatives is when they say work automatically ennobles a person. Occasionally yes but more often no, let's face it work sucks for most of us so the main reason I oppose welfare is if I have to suffer then so do you pal. Not exactly high Newt Gingrich philosophy, won't make the GOP platform but there you have it. I oppose the beatnik philosophy of getting up whenever the hell you want to and doing whatever for the rest of the day because I can't do it. My brand of conservatism is you could say off-kilter, it goes all the way back to the Id. The Id has a few things to say about race too but I'll leave that for another day, well no let's do it here. Folks who are racist are that way because of black crime, not like they wake up one morning and decide to become a bigot. Obama bending over for the Japanese Emperor on his Asian trip, now this Emperor had a father once who was also Emperor by the name of Hirohito I believe who okay'd the attack on our sleeping soldiers at Pearl Harbor. Now I GET the criticism that we conservatives are just looking for stuff, the guy can't do anything right (your basic Shaw Kenawe position) but he's making it too easy. It's times like these when I believe you should be allowed to say without a peep from Keith Olbermann or Bill Moyers the guy's a FUCKING ASSHOLE!

I can't believe I'm living.

Sarah Palin Week & other thoughts you hear seldom expressed (if at all)

Yeah Sarah Palin Week is coming up. I know if you're a lib you're supposed to hate her and if you're a conservative you're supposed to love her but mine is a non-position just like I'm not for or against Dancing with the Stars because I don't watch it. I'm not into Sarah Palin, there's just something existential about it. I'm at the point in my life where I'm bored with alot of stuff but seems to me

we should have cured cancer first instead of impotence. Impotence is not a tragedy, it's a misfortune and folks often confuse the two. Cancer on the other hand...put it this way, how can you enjoy Sex if you're dead?? Our cultural priorities don't seem very logical but then again it'd give everyone something to talk about if you're lying there in the casket with a boner.

Can or should the act of onanism land you in Hell? Posed this once at a religion forum where I was deemed somewhat controversial but seems to me if you're gonna be damned for all Eternity you should at least have done IT with another party. I don't get Catholic theology on this one, not advocating for or against but just seeing the existential absurdity of it all. God doesn't want you, the Devil doesn't want you (you're not depraved enough) and so there must be some kind of Limbo out there for folks like porno pete.

Re Love % Romance I have alot of thoughts. Now what are the odds exactly of two people feeling exactly the same way about each other? No I'm not talking about being compatible, you both like bowling and hate Obama, you both ipod to Pink, you're both against the oral but the whole Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor, Antony and Cleopatra thing, a love for the ages -- "Elaine!! Elaine!!." Can you grow to love somebody? seems in most cases we have no choice, Life ain't that poetic or doesn't cooperate or whatever which if you go back in my blogging archives is one of my recurring complaints, a romantic peeve of mine. Here's the paradox although we won't admit it, the stalker's view of the universe is the correct one, it's the way Life is supposed to be, but his or her actions are wrong of course, after all as bloggers well know it's the hardest thing trying to convince someone else of your own POV although we sure as hell try. Most folks are against the happy ending, "reunited and it feels so good", and we seem to want to trudge through Life with our bad memories. Goes a long way in explaining
our divorce culture,

It's November the 15th and here in the Northeast it's balmy again. Wondering how long it will take before the rest of my conservative brethren admit maybe the Goracle just may have the smidgeon of a point, a sliver of the total picture. I don't know how to dress in the morning anymore, it's chilly at 6AM but then I find I overdressed around 2 in the afternoon. Wasn't this way in the past when this time of year was autumnal but that was in the era before global warming and the climate change stuff. We shouldn't disagree on this one anymore only question is why do we care so much? if it's 65 degrees out in January why the massive cause for alarm? Enjoy the day, I mean if you don't have cancer.

Obama, the Hamlet of foreign policy

It's the Nobel Effect. What's a peace-prize winner supposed to do, send an additional 30,000-40,000 troops to Afghanistan? although I did read in the paper just the other day he was on the verge of doing just this. Short of a mushroom cloud does the guy call anything a terrorist act these days? I don't feel comfortable.

Obama's erotic dreams of socialism

In case you missed it by now there's some sort of liberal consensus out there that we conservatives all go to the Big K whenever they have a big tinfoil hat sale. Well yeah to call Obama a socialist you have to wear a tinfoil hat so just the other day I got my new issue of The Fatima Crusader in the mail, Issue 93 - August 2009. Hey it may not be most people's main source of information here but the themes are the same and that's the beauty of the VRWC, many segments are deliberately kept in the dark about the other factions, it truly is what the V stands for and is as complicated as Whitewater so that should the day ever come when THEY decide to prosecute us it'll be too, shall we say like that George Clooney movie Syriana. Anyway an article by traditionalist Catholic writer John Vennari is germane here: We Must Choose Between Our Lady of Fatima's Plan for Peace vs. the New World Order Tyranny (http://www.fatimacrusader.com/cr93/cr93pg37.pdf) Now to those of you whose eyes glaze over at every mention of the supernatural there's enough Glenn Beck stuff here to really sink your teeth into. A recap:

"Obama is essentially a left-wing radical, he is a globalist and he is one of the most (if not the most) pro-abortion political leaders on the planet...In a January 5 interview of CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Kissinger, speaking of Obama and the current economic crisis, said, "I think that his task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period, when really a 'new world order' can be created. It's a great opportunity. It isn't such a crisis." There's some stuff on the Bilderbergers and "one of the main aims of the New World Order is to erode the national sovereignty of nations in favor of an international world government." yada yada yada David Rockefeller, special interests...oh God he's even more pro-abortion than Barbara Boxer!! Oh yes and then there's Saul Alinsky, radical left-wing organizer who died in 1972, Obama a big student thereof. The Rules for Radicals, Chicago, "it is crucial for the radical not to look like a radical" (hmmmmm.....). In a 2001 radio interview Obama said the liberal Warren Court didn't go far enough, didn't "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution" meaning redistribution of wealth for instance but you already knew that if you're good Glenn Beck fans. Education and health-care, euthanasia down the road, globalism and the UN, cap 'n' trade, climate change, communist treaties, government should raise your kid yada yada but I saved the best for last. The People's Weekly World which is the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA sees Obama as "the best opportunity in decades" (so where do they get their tinfoil hats?).

WHEW, let me give my fingers a rest. President Obama, you must be giving out the wrong signals dude! Hugo Chavez likes you, the Castro brothers don't think you're half bad, you pleased Putin, some Norwegian socialists gave you their highest prize (the Dalai Lama is soooo yesterday) and now the official paper of the Communist Party USA thinks you're great. They say they can tell you're one of them, they just know even if you don't yet. Maybe there's a latency here, some erotic dreams never talked about but if I were him I'd take a day (or two) and take a walk down by the lake without the wife and kids, go out on the pier in the fading sunset and skim a few pebbles across the lake and take stock, sort things out, work on some issues. SO WHY IN HELL DO SO MANY RADICALS IN THE WORLD LIKE ME??? The right-wing, they're nuts of course and yet the commies and the socialists just love me, well they don't exactly hate me like Ronald Reagan...hell call Michelle and take a couple more days and hit the cabin, you need to be alone, every Man needs to, call it a retreat. It's like when you're shopping in the supermarket and some perv comes on to you or when you went to high school the quirkiest kid in the class shunned by all the others took a liking to you and sat next to you and tried to be your friend. The right-wing is telling you you're a commie, the left-wing is telling you you're a commie. If you ask me there's some serious VIBE action going on here. Everyone thinks you're in the closet dude, whassup?!? time to get......reorientated?

Thoughts on Election Day

Does your vote really count? Sometimes I feel like a drop in the ocean when I go in there, if you don't have a million other drops just like you it's meaningless, a kind of existential politics if you will. What with corruption, voter fraud and the special interests in answer to the question somehow I don't think it really does. In a perfect world.

The theoretical -- What if you had 100% voter turnout? What if everyone eligible to vote in this country did how would it break down? Would Obama even be President? If there's such a groundswell of grass-roots opposition to him now how come this didn't manifest itself in the voting booth then? Are liberals just better organized? Was it corruption or is it simply a case of buyer's remorse? In this case it wouldn't be such a right-wing thing as the msm is making it out to be, a bunch of Glenn Beck podpeople mechanically doing what the Master says but let me not ruin a good story.

"He couldn't be elected dogcatcher." Do we even have dogcatchers anymore?

& Finally Corzine, throw the bum out on his keyster!!

The politics of the Breast

A theme is going to be emerging here, actually it has poked its head up already in the past and I didn't really go looking for it. God knows I'm a busy man but for me it's almost a certitude and it's this:

There is a cultural, a societal preference in favor of the Woman. Her needs, her emotions, her overall health, her general wellbeing is of paramount importance and her perspective is almost accepted without question.

It's happened within practically the last few months, the Breast Cancer Movement. It's everywhere you go. Take supermarkets. Boar's Head has the pink ribbon thing down pat including pink deli caps for the ladies although I suppose men can wear them too and so you pass the deli and then you see just up ahead a big bin of Breast Cancer Balls for $9.99 each. In the bakery section you see a setup on a table of pink roses in vases and pink cupcakes and then when you're paying for your stuff the cashier asks you if you'd like to donate a buck to you guessed it but let's stop right here and pull this rig over for a minute.

There's nothing at all wrong with any of this. I was in a food store just the other day and forked over my dollar, WTH? there's a collective feel-goodism about it all and you're making a difference at the same time but where are all the prostate cancer displays? Where are the brown ribbons? where is the symbol of the whole Prostate Cancer Movement? (perhaps something to do with a finger, I leave that to your imagination). OF ALL the forms of cancer why is the Breast the thing? If I as a man give to Breast Cancer Research because it's socially required, politically necessary am I not slighting my own sex?

The theme I highlighted above will be a recurring theme throughout my blog now (that's a leitmotif for you people in Rio Linda California). Even when women do wrong or go bad it's treated differently. 'Member Lisa Nowak the astronut? initial reaction to her even among male commentators expressed more than a nod of understanding (yeah Sean). Most recently Steve Phillips' stalker, Brooke Hundley, well put it this way, everyone knows her elevator is stuck between the 4th and 5th floors but at worst it's treated in appropriate comedic fashion whereas the men stalkers most recently in the News of late were treated with the Utmost Seriousness, don't recall any jokes from the Jay. On the workfront I've noticed the workers most likely to be fired or at least ripped a new one are Men and this happens on a fairly regular basis. A woman could suck, a female boss can be atrocious but it's overlooked, there are really no repercussions and it took me a while to figure this one out in my own jobs but women are special although this won't be posted on the breakroom bulletin board as official policy. It all goes back to the movies from the olden days, women have that special aura, due to the nature of their sex men give them deference, men want to protect them etc. etc. Humphrey Bogart. It's why Mother's Day has always been a bigger day than Father's Day. Men just ejaculate and then roll over and go to sleep, women have to deal with the rest. Pro-choicers will deny this to the max of course but the act of feticide is really a political statement although they could just as easily make this statement by urging the woman to have the kid and then sue for child support but somehow this is better.

If you want to call this a masculinist screed go right on ahead, call me a male Andrea Peyser if you like but it's time Bill O'Reilly devoted a whole hour to a discussion of the Politics of the Breast. Devote a whole show to the prostate too, Bill could even bend over on the air not for titillation's sake, oh no, but to show the seriousness, the utmost gravity of the i-shoo. Somewhere deep deep down you know I'm right.