So... Should I Just Not Vote?

Yea, so that's the question. If being semi-addicted to political news has taught me anything, its that by the time the election for the president of the United States of America comes around this November, I will have grown so fucking sick of the circus that is our commercially sponsored facade of democracy that I probably won't give enough of a shit to vote. Now, everyone knows, or should at least realize, most people in this country don't vote at all. I get the feeling that the minority that actually does feels that what it is doing is really important. I used to feel that way too, but now I don't think I do anymore. I told myself that voting was one of the few methods in which we citizens are allowed to exercise our freedoms. This is true: we do have the freedom to vote. However, that doesn't mean it makes any difference whatsoever. And I'm not speaking from the "I'm just one person. What difference can I make?" perspective. I'm saying that literally, in practice and function, our presidential votes do not matter. I don't mean to sound pedantic, and I'm sure most of you already know this, but just to clarify:

United States Electoral College

Read up on that, if you're so inclined. If not, I'll skip to the important part.

Irrelevancy of national popular vote

The elections of 1876,^[77] 1888,^[77] and 2000^[77] produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive the plurality of the nationwide popular vote. In 1824, there were six states in which electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, so the true national popular vote is uncertain. When no candidate received a majority of electoral votes in 1824, the election was decided by the House of Representatives and so could be considered distinct from the latter three elections in which all of the states had popular selection of electors.^[78]

Opponents of the Electoral College claim that such outcomes do not logically follow the normative concept of how a democratic system should function. One view is that the Electoral College violates the principle of political equality, since presidential elections are not decided by the one-person one-vote principle.^[77]

A result of the present functionality of the Electoral College is that the national popular vote bears no legal or factual significance on determining the outcome of the election. Since the national popular vote is irrelevant, both voters and candidates are assumed to base their campaign strategies around the existence of the Electoral College; any close race has candidates campaigning to maximize electoral votes by capturing coveted swing states, not to maximize national popular vote totals.

Of course, however, we do directly elect our congresspeople, but even fewer people actually vote for them. Those that do are just taking it on good faith that their representative will see how their district voted in the Presidential race and put in a good word for them. That might be an oversimplification, but its probably not. If they don't vote likewise (the congresspeople that is), they might not get reelected for their next term.

Oh no! Poor congresspeople! They'll somehow have to scrape by on their $300k+/yr "consulting job" that they got after voting whichever way their lobbyist wanted all those times.

So, after taking a step back from all the manufactured excitement and outrage about what Obama said or what Romney said or Biden or Ryan or whoever-the-fuck, and reminding myself that I already know that voting doesn't actually matter, I just have to question why I should even participate. Besides some nagging sense of white guilt that I'm not taking advantage of a freedom that I know full well that people in other countries are dying for, is there any legitimate, concrete rationale for doing this?  Am I supposed to take this symbolic bone that our country is throwing us and be happy with it? I don't know, but I am sincerely doubting that I could even symbolically throw my support behind either one of the candidates currently running for president.

I mean, Romney is just out of the question. There is no man alive who more perfectly embodies a spirit of having no fucking clue not only of the struggles of poor Americans, but of people who just aren't sickeningly rich. Now I don't like to choose a candidate based solely on personality, but comments he's made like how he's not worried about the poor because "there's a safety net in place for them" show so clearly that not only is he completely devoid of any compassion, but he's unaware that there is even a need for such an emotion to begin with. Whenever any reporter dares to call him out on some pesky facts or tries to circumvent his talking points, he becomes frustrated at their insolence and makes an exasperated face like he just watched them jerk off in his throne room. There is no more adequate analogous figure for this man than Thurston Howell III of Giligan's Island. He's trapped in a land he doesn't understand with people who aren't all infatuated with how much money he has, and he has no useful skills except for throwing his wealth around in order to get what he wants, which is more money. I have no idea why this person is even in politics, except maybe to make his rich friends even richer, but let's face it, you don't have to be president to do that. And besides, at least Thurston Howell sometimes had a sense of humor.

Then there's Obama. Despite the fact that he has thrown the middle class a couple of corporate, watered-down life rafts like healthcare and signed on to gay civil rights issues that everyone besides old people, zealots, and racists have been on board with for years, his administration is still responsible for continued and repeated actions that are morally reprehensible. Sure, he's ended combat operations in Iraq (leaving behind thousands of other troops and military contractors), but the fact is that he authorizes drone strikes in sovereign nations on innocent people every day. He is responsible for targeted assassinations without trial or due process, claiming the executive branch saying so is all the authorization one needs. Is this as bad as the illegal wars and wholesale slaughter of civilians under Bush? No, its not. And obviously, he gets a pass for Bin Laden, but still, how can I bring myself to vote for someone whom I know is guilty of continuing the worst of this country's imperialist policies? In addition, he continually supports nightmare legislation like the NDAA and has yet to actually close Guantanamo like he promised. If Romney is Thurston Howell, Obama is Tony Soprano. You really want to like the guy because he legitimately cares about those close to him and tries to make sure they're taken care of, but when he leaves his home to go to work he does terrible things.

It's like, "Hey, you kids OK with your healthcare? Good. Now daddy's gotta go order some assassinations without congressional oversight." So forget about that.

I knew it was dark times indeed when I had to seriously consider if I would vote for Ron Paul were he to get the nomination. I agree with about half of his ideas, such as "stop spending all our money on wars" and "protect our civil liberties", but the other half of his agenda is to systematically dismantle everything the working class has fought to earn for the last 100 years. Obviously I don't think that Medicare and Social Security are flawless programs that don't need any fixing, but Ron Paul wants to revert the country to an entitlement-free time when "folks just helped each other out" from the good of their hearts, I guess. That's mostly the system that the entirety of human civilization had been operating under for all of history, and yet strangely there was no such thing as a middle class until America in the 1950's. So let's just ask all of human history for the last 10,000 years how well voluntary systems of public welfare work out.

Spoiler alert: it doesn't. Without minimum wage, worker protections, and regulations on the power of business, there is no middle class. This isn't conjecture, its history. Quote Ayn Rand all you want, but a society with no funds for the public good doesn't equal some kind of heroic capitalist utopia, it equals feudalism. Sorry, but I've got the history of every nation on earth to back me up on this. Anyway, this is besides the point since Ron Paul isn't in the running anyway.

So what am I supposed to do? Choose between the self serving capitalist tyrant or the promise-breaking centrist war hawk? Is there even a lesser of two evils to choose from? Maybe the entire system is evil. In that case, wouldn't I be evil for participating? Maybe I should just sit this one out.

It's Not The Zombie Apocalypse, You're Just A Jerk

Well, here it goes, the post that makes all my friends and the Internet at large hate me forever. Nonetheless, it has to be written. I have to speak my mind, even if it means offending some people who I think are awesome. Sometimes you just have to stand up against things that everyone thinks are OK, because once you take a step back from them, you realize that they really aren't.

I'm talking about the face eating guy from the news. Sorry, I'm not going to link one of the articles on here because I don't have a direct URL and I really don't want to know what happens when I type "man eats face" into Google. Besides, if you haven't heard about this story by now than I'm surprised that you've made it this far into the Internet. In a nutshell, a crazy guy got whacked out of his mind on drugs and was shot by police while nakedly chewing off another guy's face in the middle of traffic. The pop culture response to this grisly crime was to sport a universal boner and excitedly announce that this of course marks the beginning of the long awaited Zombie Apocalypse, the coming of which seems to be the sole motivation in many more peoples' lives than seems logical. Since then I've been beset with people digging up and posting every gut-wrenching crime-related article that inductively supports this fictional calamity. Its just been so exciting to hear about all these violent drug fiends and schizophrenics who mutilate themselves and kill their own children because it means we're all going to be characters in Left For Dead 2 soon! Can't wait.

Here's the real news flash: Fucked up shit like that happens every single day. Cannibals, psycho-killers, and reality-altering drugs actually exist in the real world and do horrible things to people on a daily basis. The difference is that now the Internet fanboy culture has such a zomboner for these absurd doomsday scenarios that what should be a horrifying news story is taken and ironically re-purposed to be some "awesome" indicator that these wet geek-dreams are upon us. At least, though I say that, I hope that its ironic. Its entirely possible that some people are mired so deeply in this dogma of the dead that they've forgotten the fact that its all bullshit, that it is a fantasy based on movies, TV, comics, and video games. This is what happens when people trivialize tragedies down into the category of "craziest thing on Reddit today!" In fact, the word trivialize might not even be accurate, because what I've seen is more like celebration. Some people are legitimately excited that a man was shot to death while eating someone. Like, that guy's face was mauled. He's going to be a hideous freak for the rest of his life, if he even survived. I'm not sure. That fucking sucks. As far as I'm concerned, a reaction like this is a stone's throw away from those assholes who "really appreciate Dahmer's work". Hell, if the face eater hadn't been killed he'd be getting fan mail right now.

Look, I love crime movies. Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, Way of the Gun, Reservoir Dogs, Mystic River, The Departed... I think they're fuckin' awesome. But I don't actually get excited when I read news about people being gunned down in drug violence because it makes life like the movies. I don't fucking post online about bodies being dredged out of rivers and execution-style mob hits because it makes me happy. I even suspect most people would agree with that sentiment, but throw the word 'Zombie' in there and suddenly its funny and OK for everyone to do exactly that.


Am I overreacting? I don't know, maybe. If I am its probably because I'm already sick to death of zombie shit. When I was a kid you couldn't pay anybody to be a zombie for Halloween, it was boring and lame. Now we have zombie parades, zombie 5K's, zombie training camps, zombie survival guides, and probably zombie sex fetishes for all I know. Not to mention, while some is admittedly entertaining, a complete over saturation of zombie media of every conceivable kind. Not to mention the perennial Easter jokes about how Jesus was a zombie. OMG that's so fucking funny and original! I can't wait to hear it again next year! I don't even find it offensive except in how not funny it is. Its worse than when late night stand-up comedians default to midget jokes in order to get a guaranteed cheap laugh. Holy shit, midgets are short?? LOLLOLOLOL! Real cutting-edge stuff there, we've only been milking that one since what, the 12th century? What's next, "Yo mama so fat"? Anyway, I digress.

"Well just tell grandma I have 'other commitments' on Easter!"

 I just don't understand the complete and total obsession with it. I mean, I recognize that mankind has always been somewhat preoccupied with its inevitable extinction. Whether it be the Antichrist leading an army of probably Muslims now (you racists) or Skynet correctly realizing that humanity is an incredibly destructive force and nuking us into oblivion, we've always been fascinated with the End Times. Maybe it is an inevitable part of human nature, especially in modern times, to yearn for a post-apocalyptic world in which there aren't so many fucking people around and our daily responsibilities are simplified to "not dying horribly". The zombie ending could merely be the latest iteration of this. After all, its got all the familiar post-apocalyptic elements: scavenging for food, empty cities, useless technology, and people forming small bands in order to survive. Maybe there's a part of everyone that desires this regression to a simpler lifestyle.

Or, more likely, maybe people just want to shoot something that looks like a human but without the guilt (read: consequences) of murdering the people around them. Wouldn't it just be great if every wiener with a bone to pick could prove what a big man he is by pumping endless rounds into the walking dead instead of just simulating it on his PC? Finally, your chance to be a winner! And all it took was the complete and total extinction of anyone who could have possibly appreciated it. Isn't that wonderful? Yea, except it isn't going to happen, which brings me to my next point:  

You wouldn't survive the Zombie Apocalypse anyway.

 See, that's the thing about apocalypse scenarios: 95% of people die. That means you, Jack. It means me too. Unless you're one of the few people reading this with a working knowledge of how to fire and maintain weapons, hunt and prepare game, treat wounds and diseases, and survive for extended periods of time without plumbing, heat, or electricity, you're going to fucking die. Assuming you're in shape enough to escape the zombies in the first place, which you're not because you spend most of your time watching horror movies and playing Left For Dead, you're just going to break your leg or get an infection or something and die in pain on the pharmacy counter of an abandoned Walgreens surrounded by a maddening mess of unidentifiable white pills. See, there's a reason this planet had a fraction of its current population 100 years ago. Staying alive is pretty fucking hard without doctors and hospitals even without the ever-present threat of undead hordes. Why do geeks always think they're ready for the end of the world when it would be a miracle if most of them could pass a 7th grade Presidential Fitness Exam? Sure, it doesn't take an Olympic athlete to shoot man-sized, slowly moving targets, but at some point you might have to climb over something or run two miles without stopping. Unfortunately, these days that is a severe challenge for many people.

Good luck, man.

You think you're a survivor because you got a backpack with a first aid kit, a bottle of water, and some duct tape? Congratulations! You're as fully equipped as a retired plumber. You're going to be eating duct tape soup when the canned food runs out, assuming you can build a fire, which you probably can't because its a lot fucking harder than it looks. You're all ready to chop off some zombie heads with the dull replica katana you bought at the Berlin Mart? You'd be lucky if you could decapitate a head of lettuce. Hear me well, its not the geek who would inherit the earth in the Zombie Apocalypse, it would be the people who can fight and do useful things, and the only people who know how to fight/do useful things are the people who fight/do useful things now. That's not me, and I'm 95% sure its not you.


You know what, though? All of this is a moot point, because


Zombies are fucking fake!

None of this is going to happen. The face-eater from the news wasn't a zombie because zombies are the risen dead, an archetype in the same category as vampires, mummies, and draco-liches, which by the way are all also fictitious. How stupid would it be if people trolled news articles looking for proof that the Mummy Apocalypse was upon us? Its the same fucking thing, and exactly as likely. People who prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse would be far better served practicing 1950's style air raid drills, because it is a thousand times more realistic that a flimsy wooden table will save you from a nuclear explosion than that a single dead person will ever rise up in an all consuming quest to eat live brains. In fact, from Terminator to The Stand to Waterworld, pretty much any apocalypse scenario is far more likely to happen. After all, we are creating AI, experimenting with biological weapons, and melting the ice caps.

Also more likely.

Its sad that so many people are more prepared for this zombie garbage than for a house fire or a medical emergency. Moreso than prepared, in fact, people are champing at the bit for it to happen so exuberantly that we'll probably see a more aggressive movement in the near future. People want to kill zombies so badly I wouldn't be surprised if they started settling for the homeless and mentally disabled. Its all I fucking need to be gunned down by a Jeep full of losers fresh off of a 2000's zombie movie remake marathon while I'm stumbling to work hung over and groaning in pain. "But I swear, officer, he was saying 'braaaaains!'" Fuck you, you gangly nerd, I'm dead now! Arg!


We have created a wide multitude of ways to waste time in our society, but preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse has got to be the absolute worst. Besides being useless and sad, it also further desensitizes people to tragedies that give them the sparkle of hope that its actually going to come true. And if there's one thing we don't need in this culture, its to be desensitized any more than we already are.


So please, enough with this already. The dead can't come back to life, but I'm sure if they could, they would find something better to do with their time.

Angry Viral Videos Are Not The Way

So today somebody on Facebook posted a link to a video that is (or hopes to soon be) viral, at least locally. The video was the parent of an autistic child who was claiming that his son was verbally bullied by the teacher and staff of the special needs classroom in the school that he attends. To back this up, the man sent his son into school with a hidden recording device. This entire story kind of freaked me out on multiple levels, not the least of which was the fact that I used to work at that school and with that same student. Now this is my personal opinion on what a situation like this says in general, so I'm not going to be giving any names or places. If you're familiar with any of them, please don't mention it anywhere, as the last thing I want is for any of this to come back and bite me in the ass. Bullshit like this is the reason I quit that line of work in the first place.

However, as it turns out, the father was right. Some of the audio that was caught on tape ranged from inappropriate (such as the teacher talking about getting drunk the previous night) to verbally abusive. According to the dad's self-edited video transcript, at one point the aide says "you're such a bastard" to the child. Behavior like this is of course inexcusable and should not be tolerated. Any school employee who engages in institutional abuse like name calling is beyond wrong and should not be allowed around students. When I was there, I worked under a very good teacher, and for the most part, a very good group of classroom aides. There was one who would say inappropriate things in front of students sometimes, and I believe she got transferred out of that room after I left.

In any case, I am of course a strong opponent of any type of bullying; institutional, peer to peer, or otherwise. I, like probably a majority of people, have been through it in some ways myself, and it sucks. I really approve of the action that has been taken in the past several years to try to recognize and address this problem.

But with that said, I want to look at the dangerous precedent that occurs when any parent that feels like it has the ability to open up Windows Movie Maker and spread viral videos around the Internet. Now, as I said, in this case the father was right that his son was being mistreated by the staff. In the video it mentions that the aide responsible for these comments was in fact fired, and the teacher and other aides were all reassigned to different schools. It would appear to me that even though the pain of the experience cannot be undone, a measure of justice was served. However, in the video, the father rails against the teacher union rules that allow the names of those involved to be kept secret, and demands a public apology from everyone involved. He mentions he's not going to sue (which is pretty admirable considering that many parents of special needs students love nothing more than big cash settlements from underfunded public schools when they're already rich), but its clear that the woman losing her situation and the rest of the staff being reprimanded over this matter is not sufficient. There has to be a viral video that incites rage, and a big production needs to be made. Its not enough that the school district took action, but everyone in the world needs to know about it as well, and every member of the classroom, guilty or innocent, and the school system as well, needs to have its reputation tarnished.

The biggest reason that crusader parents making viral videos is dangerous is because for one, they're completely one sided. There's no editor, there's no fact checker, there's no due process. The video is just the parent saying his side of the story as angrily as possible with well-placed editing to make it appear exactly the way he wants it. I know for a fact that he, like most parents of disabled kids (or maybe just parents in general), completely downplays the extent of his child's disabilities. He mentions that his son flipping out and having breakdowns in class was a new phenomenon related to the bullying, and that normally he never acted out anymore than "quietly mumbling to himself" and so forth. I had personally seen this kid launch into unprovoked tantrums years ago when I worked there. No, they were not common, but they did happen, and on one or two occasions, they could be somewhat violent. Even though this fact does not have too much bearing on the events that occurred, it is nonetheless a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts on the part of the father in order to further his case. Most people watching the video would probably not even think to question such a minor statement of the video, but because I was familiar with the student, I caught it instantly.


Another reason these videos are dangerous is because sometimes they achieve their goal: to incite rage. One of the comments I saw after this video was posted read, and I'm paraphrasing here, something about "taking those cunts and slamming their heads into a wall." Right, because the best way to deal with verbal abuse is more verbal abuse, and to crush women's heads. Some people really don't think about what the fuck they're saying, because this is the Internet and let's all kill everybody for everything! Now while I'm sure the father of the student wouldn't condone the brutal murder of a room full of teachers, that doesn't mean that by releasing an inflammatory video of a matter that should (and for the most part has been) handled through the proper channels, he hasn't started down a path that could lead to threats of violence or worse. He does not reveal the last names of the staff in question (seeming to indicate that if they don't come forward for an apology, he will), but that doesn't matter. He's already revealed their first names, where they work, and what position they hold. Since the names and salaries of all public employees in New Jersey are a matter of public record, and there's also this thing called the Internet, it shouldn't be too hard for anyone who wants to email someone a death threat to track them down. At the very least, you run the risk of turning entire public sentiment against a school full of mostly good and honest, non-abusive teachers and staff who are working their asses off every day to try and teach your god damn kids how to read and write.

And one more thing. In this case, the evidence was clear and the sentiment was as least justified. But what if the next angry parent with a bone to pick on YouTube is not? When I worked at that school I was kicked, punched, stabbed with pencils, and hit with thrown chairs on a daily basis by a different student with whom I worked. Some days I seriously considered bashing my head on a piece of furniture so that I could go to the hospital instead of to work. For my trouble, when we had to use state approved restraint techniques to keep the student from hurting others in one of his tantrums, his parents called for investigations of abuse from both the state and from Dyphus. Thanks to the due process of both of these entities, they found that the accusations were baseless, and nothing came of it. But maybe if the parents had thought that a viral video would have been a more effective means to deal with the imagined situation and had decided to fire up the webcam and publicly call me a child-beating monster until there was such a media firestorm that there was no choice for the school but to fire me, my good name would be fucked forever. Or hell, maybe they could have just sent the kid to class with a wire on every day until they had enough audio they could take out of context to doctor up and be able to "prove" whatever they wanted. By the time anyone figured it out, the damage would have been done and no one would have cared anymore, because that's how viral videos work.

Like I said, the woman who was responsible for saying these things was wrong, and deserved to lose her job several times over. The motive behind making this video is just, even though I strongly disagree with the method. We, as an information age society, need to be very cautious as to what we give credence. Many of the parents in that school district already have a staggering success rate at suing the district for, quite frankly, bullshit reasons. Some people are just out to rightfully protect their kids. Other people are looking for any excuse to lawyer up and prey on an already overburdened public school special education system and the underpaid employees who can't afford legal counsel. While advanced education programs and regular classroom aides are being cut due to the budget, special education classes are fully stocked with a personal aide for each child, and there's still not enough resources to train everyone sufficiently. If making viral videos becomes an effective way for vindictive parents to get people fired, there won't be one god damn teacher left in that school.

So, if you want to make an online video instead of going through the proper legal channels, you'd better have a good fucking reason, because you only have to destroy a person's career once. As for me, I left all that behind. Now, I no longer worry about being sued, investigated, or apparently wiretapped. Some people might say that its a shame, because I was good at that job, but in the end I just couldn't deal with the parents' bullshit.

Oh well, their loss.

You Might Be A Racist If...

There have been a lot of racially charged stories in the news lately, and with them comes the type of indignant comments made by people who are really upset that it is becoming less and less socially acceptable to be a fucking racist. More or less, I always hear shit like this (Please use your most indignant, butt-hurt, exaggeratory voice when reading the italicized words):

"Oh well if a white person said/did that, everyone would be all mad, but because a black/Mexican person did, we're not allowed to say anything."

I'm sure you hear garbage like this all the time. Maybe you even say it. Hell, maybe you even believe it. This statement is the kind of pushback you get when you back a racist into a corner, a kind of emotionally vomitous expellant inanely spewed by people who honestly believe that they, and I'm talking about white males age 18-35 here, are themselves discriminated against in our society. That somehow their ability to criticize things that are legitimately unjust is so beset on all sides by a hypersensitive, over reactive populace that they are powerless to point out the myriad evils to which the rest of us compulsively turn a blind eye. Well, frankly, that's bullshit, and to prove it, I don't have to go back more than 48 hours into the news cycle.

You see, at one time, the object of the news networks may well have been to report the news. I can't really confirm or deny this, as it certainly hasn't been the case for as long as I have personally been able to understand what the fake-looking people on the TV have been saying. With increasing gall, the uniform goal, the all-encompassing singularity to which all news network now aspire is none other than complete dominance of the ratings. The programs are engineered to whip the viewer into a frenzy, to incite rather than to inform. "Everyone look! Ridiculous sideshow presidential candidate #1 is about to say something! Now he is saying it! He just said it! Now let's bring a panel of 27 commentators to endlessly rehash and reinterpret the fairly simple and straightforward message that the average sixth grader should be able to understand." I myself am a victim of this, drawn into stories that I know with all my heart that I should not give one fuck about. But it's got everything: the anticipation of something important about to happen, the good guys (left or right), the bad guys (left or right), the legitimization of even the most insane cabin-in-the-woods apocalypse fearing fringe group's agenda, birthers, death panels, war on women, war on religion (while the effects of the real war are hidden), election races that last years, all attempting to elicit as much raw emotion as possible from as many people as possible. I used to think it demonstrated some kind of culture or intelligence to be informed as to what was going on in the country, but now I think it may be driving us to collective madness. The reason is that less than half of what we think is happening is actually happening, and we're not even seeing half of the real stuff. Now, there's no laws being debated, there's only threats to our way of life, or wars on whatever group of people. The President is somehow a dictator, a fascist, a socialist, a communist, a Muslim, and an illegal immigrant all at the same time. The media legitimizes every ridiculous claim simply by covering them, while real abuses of power go undiscussed or fade quickly from the public conversation. And the media fuels it all in the name of ratings.

The point of this tangent being, then, that one would have to have a very particular and predisposed worldview to possibly conceive the fact that the media and society in general specifically target only controversial remarks made by white men. To the contrary, they dredge up and pull to the forefront any sensational comments regardless of the source as long as they can be offered up to the golden idol of ratings. After all, when there's blood in the water, its always the same color. The example I alluded to earlier to counter this absurdity happened earlier this week, when the manager of the Marlins, a Venezuelan, was suspended for five games for saying on the record that he admires Fidel Castro. His comments, which in my opinion are hardly worth a controversy considering that Che Guevarra shirts are a popular fad in this country and that political opinions should have no bearing on a game of baseball, have garnered national attention and have infuriated baseball fans, Cuban immigrants, and residents of Florida. Now the point here is that the Marlins manager, Ozzie Guillen, is decidedly not white, yet people are calling for him to be fired over these remarks that in all honesty don't even reach the "Hitler had some good ideas" level of political incorrectness. They want him to lose his career for saying he admires Castro, a comment so tame it wouldn't even get you a detention in high school. Believe me, I know.

So when these people say that only white people get in trouble for making racist/controversial remarks, where the fuck are they getting their news? Oh that's right, nowhere. Forget about the fact that the Reverend Wright (black guy) thing was a huge media frenzy that caused a giant controversy. Forget about the fact that Herman Cain (black guy) got in a shitload of trouble for harassing women. Forget about the fact that Ozzie Guillen (Venezuelan) can't manage a baseball team because he likes Castro. They forget about all these facts, and just rehash the same phobic cliches with other racists about how white people aren't allowed to criticize a minority anymore, and other dipshit statements like, "Pretty soon we won't even be allowed to speak English!" That's another gem. Half the fucking countries in the world speak English, how paranoid are you?

White males are the statistically most financially successful demographic in the country, so stop bitching. If the culture is a little more diverse, or understanding, or politically correct than it was in your idealized pre-Civil rights (or Civil War for that matter) American fantasy-land, deal with it. It doesn't even mean you're not free to be a racist anymore, it just means that a larger percentage of people these days will think you're an asshole.

And they're right.

Teenage Mutant Bastard Franchise Alien Turtle Whores

With people dying all over the world and evil running amok, pop culture seems like the least worthy thing to be railing against right now, but let's face it, there's a million things a day that make me hilariously and unhealthily furious. The following article is simply the straw that broke the camel's back (the camel here being a metaphor for my apathy while sitting on the couch and not writing this blog).

http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/blog/post/721877/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-arealiens/?cmpid=sn-120221-twitter-na-twitterfantrack

So if you haven't heard already, Michael Bay and some other crap-ass director of bad movies are working together to bastardize all of our fond childhood memories of the Ninja Turtles into some sure-to-be-unwatchable new film that will inexplicably gross $300,000,000 in 2013. From the soulless voids of flashing lights and loud noises that make up what should be the creative centers of their brains, they've made the decision to make the Turtles actually aliens.

That's right. Aliens.

I'm going to try to touch only briefly on why this is stupid from a creative perspective before I move onto my main point, as I'm sure the internets at large will be abuzz with the collective outrage of a generation, but lets see how it goes.

First of all, the turtles are four things: Teenage, Mutants, Ninjas, and Turtles. Everything they are is already in their name. If they were actually aliens, or had ever been meant to be aliens, I feel like that would be a pretty fuckin important thing to leave out of a title that's already absurdly long and descriptive. Secondly, turtles are pretty Earth-specific. If they were from another planet, they wouldn't really be turtles, would they? They'd be turtle-like aliens, and the likelihood of all four of them also being genetic mutations of their proper, extraterrestrial turtlesque species seems infantesmal at best. At that point, you'd have to call them something like "Teenage Alien Turtle-Like Ninjas". I mean, that is if you were in any way trying to actually give a proper title to an idea and not just using name recognition to guarantee your profitability while eye-fucking the audience with hours of predictable fight scenes, explosions, and one-liners.

But fanboy bitching aside, seriously, you had us already. Its the Ninja Turtles. They had to do absolutely nothing except to tell the same story over again twenty years later and everyone would have been happy. Let's face it, by the time I was watching the Turtles, they had already long since been wholly corporatized by the franchise goons. The pizza-loving dudebros of the cartoon show who went around chopping up a somehow affordable army of human-shaped robots were a far cry from the comparatively brutal crimefighters of the comic books who drank beer and killed gangbangers. I'm not even asking for some kind of artistic purity here, I'm just asking why you would mess with a guaranteed formlua. In the years between when the cartoon show aired and when everyone decided to save $7 by not seeing the third movie, the Turtles sold us comics, action figures, movie tickets, video tapes, school supplies, halloween costumes, video games, t-shirts, pajamas, novels, backpacks, shoes, party supplies, sleeping bags, and Vanilla Ice and KRS-1 singles. They made us want to eat pizza, join Karate, and skateboard. Every stick that fell on the ground was a bo staff until you broke it into a sword, and then finally, a sai. Then, if you had a rubber band, it became nunchucks. The mere fact that I feel a palpable sense of betrayal at the idea of someone turning the Turtles into aliens speaks to the incredible success with which they have ingrained me with brand loyalty.

All of which begs the question, why fuck with it? The groundwork is already laid. There's a legion of fans out here with a near-genetic loyalty to the Ninja Turtles franchise, just waiting to take themselves and now probably their kids to the movies, just to catch a familliar whiff of what was once so awesome. They could just do the same exact thing: Splinter, Shredder, April, ooze, and bam, it all pays off. Sure, Raphael can make a wisecrack about Jersey Shore or something, and Donatello can have a 4G Ipad instead of a collection of radio transistors, but just once, give the fans what they want. After all, its not like Michael Bay and his million dollar cronies have any artistic stake in the story. But of course, that's not what we'll get. Instead, prepare for a 3D, computer generated "action-packed thrill ride" that takes all of our childhood memories and bends them over a table in a metaphorical hillbilly rape-shack, just like GI Joe and the Transformers. I still haven't seen any of those movies, by the way. I can't bear the thought that I might get hit by a car and die knowing that the last movie I watched was Revenge of the Fallen.

There is hope, however. I recently heard that George Lucas was going to quit making movies because he was tired of all the "fanboy bitching". I'm assuming that term is washed-up, out-of-touch, lucky to have gotten unspeakably rich in the first place director-speak for "public opinion". But the point is, it seems to have worked. It may be too late to stop Michael Bay and his apprentice from turning the Ninja Turtles into some kind of nonsensical explosion aliens. In fact, they might not even know what the fuck a Ninja Turtle is in the first place. I assume that the first thing they do when the studio acquires new production rights is rev up the pyro trucks long before any scripts are written. However, it might be possible, with enough fanboy bitching, to make them quit making movies before they seek and destroy every fond memory we have, even though I think the only 80's cartoons that have managed to stay under the radar are the gay ones like the Snorks, David The Gnome, and Carebears.

To that end, sign this petiton that Jimmy Viola made: Turtles! It may be a small start, but lets get the ball rolling to send those assholes back to their mansions to sleep on piles of money with many beautiful women as the jokes of the movie industry!

Music History (As According To Stuff I Remember) Part I: The Band That Singlehandedly Destroyed Rock Music

Disclaimer: This article is based on stuff I remember and is not checked for factual accuracy. That said, everything is probably true anyway.

I believe the year was either 1995 or 96, putting me either in 8th or 9th grade. Back then, MTV still had programming that included these little four to five minute curiosities known as "music videos". The tide was beginning to turn away from these, but at the time I could still come home from school and bask in what was truly a unique and innovative era of rock music. I remember a regular rotation of Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Rage, and all the seminal bands of the day alongside the industry giants like Aerosmith and the Stones, coexisting peacefully in spite of reality shows that nobody I knew cared about, like "The Real World". Bands were cool, music was exciting, and all was well for my 14 year old self.

Then, one song, one song came along and irreversibly changed the face of rock music forever, bathing the channel that had made me and so many others love music in a sea of limp-dicked weenie ballads for the rest of the short-lived life of the music video. People always talk about how "Smells Like Teen Spirit" popped the Glam-Metal bubble, a concept that has been endlessly rehashed and remembered on VH1 for three times as long as Nirvana was actually recording music. But nobody talks about how a mere 4 years later, this band came along and destroyed everything novel and meaningful that was going on in music thanks to the Seattle and alternative bands. Who was this band, you ask?

What? Who the Hell are these guys? I'll tell you, God damnit! They're called The Verve Pipe, and I clearly remember the specific moment they destroyed rock. I was watching the Jenny McCarthy show for some reason. She always had a musical guest on at the end of the show while she rolled around in her pajamas on some corny retro 60's studio set. After twenty minutes of trying to be funny (immunizations make your kids autistic, Hut Hut!), she introduced the debut performance of the hot new band, The Verve Pipe, with their breakout hit "The Freshmen". I can clearly remember wondering for the next three minutes when the song was actually going to start. This boring, washy, clean guitar wusfest had to just be the intro, right? The weepy, uninspired lyrics just had to be a buildup to an actual song. I mean, these guys were on TV, where the hell was the rock?  As it turns out, nowhere. When the band stopped playing and the audience cheered (more out of excitement at being part of an audience rather than at anything they'd heard, I'm sure), I realized that that had been the whole song. Ha! Nice try at being relevant, Jenny. The Verve Pipe were a bunch of boring losers, their hit song was about as exciting as an afternoon nap, and that's the last I would have to hear about that.

Wrong again, Lou.

So the next day, while returning to my usual routine of watching music videos all day because I was in 8th grade, imagine my surprise when I saw the video for "The Freshmen" sandwiched in between two definitely superior songs. It had the same grainy, low lit texture as the alternative videos of the day, but, as with the live performance, it was ultimately boring and meaningless. "How the hell did this song get into the rotation?" I paraphrased to myself, "I thought I'd never have to hear this crap again! What gives?" Well, imagine my further surprise when this song absolutely exploded. MTV was playing the video all day long. I'm convinced that Y100 had the song on repeat at the station. I was sure it was a fluke. "The Freshmen" was garbage. I mean, I practically was a freshman and this song had absolutely no appeal to me. These guys were going to burn out, and rock could continue as normal.

Well, I was right on one count at least. The Verve Pipe did turn out to be a one hit wonder, but the absurd over saturation of that song opened the door for a seemingly unending stream of wiener bands who couldn't have found the overdrive channel on their amps if it was directly under a picture of the girlfriend they were always pining over. In the next couple of years I was bombarded with one bittersweet, toddler-friendly pop ballad after another. Next out of the gate were the bands that would become the leaders of the wus-rock movement: Matchbox 20, Fuel, and Third Eye Blind, with safe, radio-friendly bubblegum pop tunes like "3 AM", "Semi-Charmed Life", and whatever fuckin Fuel song everyone liked at the time. After all of these singles broke, the floodgates were open for forgettable bands with hummable choruses to absolutely dominate life on earth: Dishwalla's "Counting Blue Cars", Fastball's "The Way", Eagle Eye Cherry's "Stay Tonight", whoever sings "Closing Time", Smashmouth's "Walking on the Sun", Savage Garden, The New Radicals, and a host of other copycat bands who plugged in the guitar just long enough to have their albums filed in the "Rock" section in the record stores. In my mind, nothing could be farther from the spirit of rock and roll. There was no local scene that spawned this explosion. Nobody talks about the "Wisconsin Wus-Rock Movement" or anything like that. I believe that these bands were handpicked by labels to be a safe and consumer-friendly alternative to, well, Alternative.

To make matters worse, all the good bands were breaking up and dying. Kurt Cobain died, along with Layne Stanley. Soundgarden split up (conveniently the day before I wore my brand new Down On The Upside shirt to school, unknowingly), and the Smashing Pumpkins soon followed. No comparable bands were coming up, at least in the popular music sphere, to replace them. A few funny things happened too. For example, the proto-hipster Beck, who had been a small fry in the alternative market suddenly seemed like a genius in comparison the rest of the wus-rockers. His quirky, retro, boring songs became huge hits with their forced, too cool for school nonsense lyrics and funny noises going on in the background. Some bands that had potential to be cool, like Filter, suddenly jumped ship and pandered to the wussery of the new market, revealing themselves as the copycats they were. It seemed as if there was no end in sight. Day after day I would continue to come home and watch MTV only to find an ever increasing slew of reality shows encroaching on an ever worsening variety of music videos. The only respite from this and spark of originality came in the form of Marylin Manson, and let's face it, I really, really didn't want to become a Manson fan.

Popular music has never really recovered from this era of weepy not-rock. Once the labels realized that the public still loved music even though it was completely stripped of any originality, personality, or creativity, they knew they could pretty much sell us anything. For evidence of this, look no further than at the biggest rock band names of the past decade: Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Staind, and Nickleback. What they all have in common, besides not being able to spell the words in their own names, is that they've all sold a million billion records despite the fact that pretty much nobody I've ever met in my entire life would listen to any of them with a ten foot listening cone if you pointed a gun at their mothers. So how can this be??

Popular rock music has been on a steady decline for the past 15 or so years, and it was The Verve Pipe who pushed it down the hill. From the first time that they lazily feathered their guitar strings on The Jenny McCarthy show, their "we're just not trying that hard" attitude crept its way into the airwaves, letting every band thereafter know that it was ok to not push any boundaries, ok to not play any hard parts, and ok to have your press photo look like an IT staff meeting outside of a Starbucks. Perhaps that's not completely fair. Perhaps any one of those predictable singles I mentioned above could have lit the spark that fueled the entire inferno of boredom if "The Freshmen" had never been written. However, that's not how it went down, at least according to my memory. And if there's one thing I can trust myself to remember with nearly superhuman clarity, its being disappointed.

Me Vs. The Libertarians - Round 57

The Argument:

Imagine you are in a family, and you have a dozen or so brothers and sisters. You all work. You are children of a single parent.

Your father, presumably very wise, tells you children that instead of having to stretch your meager paychecks across many different bills, that he will pay all your expenses. He requires that you contribute about a third of your paychecks to him (maybe a little more or a little less depending on what you make), but he’ll cover any expenses you accrue. Your school, your doctor visits, your car payments. No matter what you rack up, he’s going to pay.

So naturally you live a little beyond your means. You drive a car that’s more expensive than you would if you were looking at your own money, you eat out more often, etc. But the bills always get paid, so this seems like a good system.

Then one day… one day you find out that your dear old Dad doesn’t even have a job. He’s been paying all those bills (and his own, too!) with a combination of the part of your paychecks he collects (which of course isn’t enough) and putting the rest on credit cards. Massive, massive credit card debt has accrued as a result of this.

And that debt is still there when he dies, since he never had any way of paying it off. And you inherit it, because that’s the way debt works.

Welcome to government.

My Response

This is an example of a heuristic argument. I might be playing devil's advocate a bit here, considering I am a firm believer in paying debts on time, as I always have. However, your emotions tell you that debt is inherently a bad thing, so the government should not have one. However, this is in conflict with reality. For one, you present the common fallacy of comparing the federal deficit to a household budget, and there are a few holes in this. I recently read an article that showed that the US has only NOT had a federal debt for something like 5 or 6 out of the last 60 or 70 years. Despite monetary standard, political party in power, economic boom or recession, the debt is nearly always present, and has not stopped our way of life in its tracks.

In addition, while dad can die, The United States probably won't. When you say that the debt will be passed on to our children I guess you are technically correct, but it really just means next year's congress will have a budget deficit, and the next year's after that, and the next year's after that. It doesn't mean that a Chinese army is going to kidnap our population and throw us into debtor's prison, or repossess the state of Delaware. Operating in debt is a worldwide phenomenon, and if every monetary institution were suddenly and abruptly forced to balance their budgets, society as we know it WOULD cease to exist. Even the giant corporations that you hold in such high esteem operate with high leverage, the term for the ratio of actual liquidity to debt. When the bubble burst in '08, many of the investment banks were operating with ridiculously large ratios such as $40 of debt for every $1 of liquidity, but to a certain extent, nearly all profitable business operate in such a manner to a much smaller degree.

I also heard a piece today about how Newt is talking about returning to the gold standard, as if it were the magic bullet to control the deficit. While its probably true that it would control inflation by limiting the Fed's ability to just print more money, it's by no means a sure thing. Gold's value is subject to demand by countries, investors, and speculators, the same as any other commodity in the world. As Wyatt Cynac said when asked by Jon Stewart "But what about gold?", he responded, "Turns out, gold is just a shiny metal, Jon."

The problem is, wealth is an abstract concept. Therefore, so is debt. Now, debt may have real world consequences, such as a bank forces me out of my house into a smaller apartment, or Big Jimmy Breakabone (Break-a-bo-nay) comes by and pops me in the knee cap, but the actual debt I owe is as subjective as the value of the paper money I have in my wallet, my high yield mutual fund, or the gas in my lawnmower. (In reality I have only one of these things. Try to guess which!) Operating in debt is the way that our global economy works. China, or US Bondholders (who actually hold more of our debt than the Chinese ever will) cannot file some paperwork and force the population of America out of the country into a smaller one. It could be that humanity as a whole is exploiting the absurdity of such a system, flaunting the fact that despite the negative numbers on the balance sheets, life goes on much as before. Its easy to point to current events and say "Look at Greece! Look at what happens when a country racks up debt!". But countries have become destitute before, and they will become so again. This is not an argument against debt. After all, let's face it, Greece has been around since the Bronze Age. They've seen worse.

In addition, your example above takes for granted certain social values. It takes for granted the fact that anyone who has their basic necessities provided for will doubtless take advantage of this and live outside of their means. Its also sort of hints at the fact that of course dad couldn't afford to pay all those bills, and you were stupid to think that he could. Well, I believe these are very American assumptions. On the second point, in socialist democracies, government can, in many cases, afford to pay for these basic necessities like healthcare, maternity leave, etc, because income and sales taxes are very high, sometimes around 50-60%. In this country, we would equate taxes like that to the equivalent of the king of England bursting into your room on your wedding night to screw your new wife. We've been conditioned by our society to view contributing to the advancement of said society as a fundamental breech of our rights, and that nothing should be so abhorrent as parting with some of our money, no matter how beneficial the effects. I know you are in strong agreement with this, as you are a product of this society yourself. However, this is not a genetic imperative, it is a sociological one. As to the first point, this is not the case either. People in Spain and Germany aren't gorging themselves into obesity because the government pays their bills, that's us! We have a comparably small social safety net, and yet its we Americans who are living beyond our means, buying new cars and becoming the fattest fucks on the planet. Again, this is a product of our consumer based society. High taxes are seen as a violation of our rights because we have been told all our lives that buying equals freedom. It shouldn't take long to strip this down and discover the absurdity. I, for one, feel that a mandatory six weeks of vacation a year is more akin to freedom than two weeks and a new TV, but that's just me.

Anyway, back to the debt argument. I submit that the case against it is overblown and disproportionate to reality. Its easy for a presidential candidate to get a roomful of applause when he promises to "Git this country out of debt!", but such promises go far beyond the President's power in the first place, and in the second place, that applause would dry up quickly when the people providing it realize just what exactly our country's debt is providing them. So, I will use an argument you often use with me. Since debt is the status quo, as long as my creditors are happy with the terms of my borrowing and I can keep up the lifestyle to which I am accustomed in said debt without anyone else coming to harm, who are YOU to say that I ever need to pay it off? That anyone needs to pay it off? That the United States has to pay it off? This is simply the new perspective on an old concept, nothing more. And it is the world we live in.


However, while I feel these arguments are valid, I myself pay my debts on time.