It's just a matter of time.....

It seems that Amy Winehouse managed to make herself dead over the weekend in a turn of events that was admittedly sad, but also eminently predictable. Doctors seldom prescribe a diet of whiskey and heroin – although senior citizen, Keith Richards, seems to be doing OK on this regimen – so it’s not as though her death came as a surprise to anyone. If you’d never heard of her before this weekend, her death didn’t register. If you had heard of her, you’d already seen the pictures of her wandering around London, barefoot and bloody with gobs of snot-moistened white powder dangling from her nose. This is why, in the wake of her death, reporters and journalists and celebrities (George Michael is apparently very broken up) have leapt at the chance to say, write, or tweet that, “It was just a matter of time.”

That sentence is actually what I want to discuss. Of course it’s sad when young, talented people die, but Amy Winehouse wasn’t my close personal friend; I’m not choking back tears or having an unusual amount of trouble focusing at work. What’s gnawing at me is mankind’s blatant propensity to spew out meaningless drivel that we erroneously think makes us sound thoughtful, caring, wise, considerate, profound, or some combination thereof. Obviously it was “just a matter of time” before Amy Winehouse died. It’s also just a matter of time before I die; before you die; before everyone you know dies. Yes, the woman who chugs a bottle of vodka before embarking on yet another stint in rehab is probably closer to death than me or you or anyone you know, but if you want to be all fatalistic about it, each and every one of us is a ticking time bomb.

So let’s not make “drugs and alcohol are bad” the moral of the story. We adults know a poor life choice when we see one. Smoking crack is a poor life choice. Putting a shot of vodka in your morning coffee is a poor life choice. Let’s take a different lesson from this tragedy, and solemnly swear to consider the words we intend to speak before letting loose. Is what you’re about to say worth saying? Does it have any meaning whatsoever? Is it just fucking stupid? If, after careful deliberation, the answers are no, no, and yes, don’t pollute the world with your inanity. Appoint Mark Twain your life coach, and abide by his sagest pronouncement: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

Here we go again.....

There is something innately American about shoving your head up your ass, and charging in the wrong direction. We don’t excel at a lot of things anymore, but in this capacity we rule.

This obviously isn’t a new phenomenon, nor is it exclusively American; humans have been making terrible decisions for at least as long as we’ve been bipedal. It’s just that this whole recession has really highlighted Americans’ lovely propensity to leap headfirst into a shark tank simply because some huckster told us it would be OK. Also our propensity to, having just barely made it out alive, leap right back in because the same huckster has somehow convinced us that the best cure for a shark attack is another shark attack.

I am speaking, as you may or may not have gathered, about financial regulation. Our economy disintegrates because Wall Street is like a less-prudent Las Vegas, and our response is to reimburse the criminals – sorry, “bankers” – who presided over the catastrophe a few hundred billion dollars, no strings attached. Huh? In the spirit of things, I’ve dreamed up a few “solutions” to some of this country’s non-financial problems…

Prison Overcrowding
Rather than locking up serial killers, let’s just fill their basements with children and expectant mothers and kittens, and see what happens. There’s no way this laissez-faire approach could backfire.

Drunk Driving
Drunk drivers should not only retain their licenses – and not be fined for their transgressions, since everyone already knows that governmental adoption of austerity measures obviates the need for revenue of any kind – but should also have their backseats filled with cases of their drink of choice.

The War on Drugs
The drug war should certainly not be declared a failure at this juncture. Instead, we should continue to spend unthinkably large sums of money on futile attempts to eradicate narcotics through means that have been proven ineffective in every respect over the last half century. We should also lengthen drug offenders’ prison sentences since there’s extra room now that the serial killers are loose.

Education
We should clearly retain our focus on standardized testing in schools, because that’s a solid idea. We should clearly not elevate the status of the teaching profession – and its pay – to a point where intelligent, competent, patient individuals are more motivated to enter the field. If we hone the tests and get them juuuuuuust right, it won’t matter that lots of teachers are narcissistic halfwits. *Disclaimer* I’m not suggesting that all teachers are dumb and self-important, just that we presently don’t demand that they not be.

Racism
We have a black president, ergo racism is dead. Affirmative action, institutionalized racism, blah, blah, blah. These debates are mere relics of a bygone age.

I guess the moral of the story is, if at first you don’t succeed, keep trying the same thing over and over. It’s bound to work someday, and if it doesn’t, vociferous denial is a punchy plan B. You’re welcome.

Where is my protractor when I need it?

Thought #1
Bananas are the most stress-inducing of all the fruits – green when you put them in your shopping cart, a lemon-lime hue once you hit the register, and perfectly ripe when you arrive home. From this moment, you have approximately 4 hours to ingest the whole bunch before they rot. Too much pressure.

Thought #2
Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner should pitch a Wayne’s World-style show to VH1, a light-hearted discussion of politics and ladies. Schwing.

Thought #2A
Eliot Spitzer should parlay his (theoretical) VH1 fame into a run for president, since he seems not to lend credence to the notion of bipartisanship. I don’t care if he fills the Cabinet with hookers as long as he forces rich fucks to pay taxes.

Though #2B
Anthony Weiner should parlay his (theoretical) VH1 fame into a career in porn. My only qualm is that the movie title “Weinergate” is probably already taken.

Thought #3
There’s not a person on earth who enjoys spending 40 hours every week sitting in an office. That’s a fact. Instead of continuing to torture each other and ourselves, we should take a page out of the South American drug cartels’ book, and collude. With a little teamwork, I’m sure we can work out a superior arrangement.

Thought #4
The most useful class I ever took was a typing clinic in the 7th grade. How is it that typing is not a mandatory aspect of a child’s education, but trigonometry is? Here’s how I know this is ass-backwards: I’ve never had occasion to use trigonometry outside of school, but I did just have occasion to type it.

Thought #5
I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but there’s something about certain pieces of tacky art that is indubitably Christian. You might be looking at nothing more than a painting – or a “commemorative plate” – depicting an eagle flying over a mountain, but it just smacks of Jesus. Kind of insidious, really, considering that art of this ilk could wind up adorning the homes of non-believers, simply because they have terrible taste.

Baseless and Mean-Spirited

As you may know, a bill proposing the legalization of same-sex marriage is currently making the rounds in Albany. As you may also know, television ads produced by special interest groups are retarded. So this morning when I saw a commercial paid for by some collection of New Yorkers who oppose gay marriage – New Yorkers United to Protect Children from Butt Sex, or something – I wasn’t surprised that it was terrible. I was, however, surprised by the blatant weakness of their argument. Here are a few factoids from the commercial, designed to make me say no to same-sex marriage:

1. Kids in California (or Massachusetts, or somewhere else queer) are taught that boys can marry other boys.

2. A class in California was taken to a same-sex marriage ceremony, with the school describing the field trip as a “teachable moment.”

3. Two dudes getting married infringes upon my rights as a heterosexual.

OK, on point one, if two (or more) consenting adults believe their relationship is valid, it’s valid. To claim that you’re somehow better-equipped to gauge the legitimacy of strangers’ love lives than they are equipped to gauge the legitimacy of their own, is to display a set of monstrous, unsightly balls. Whether or not you agree with what they’re doing is irrelevant. A modern society allows its adults to choose their own romantic partners. It’s as simple as that.

As to point two, I agree that a gay wedding is an odd choice for field trip, and perhaps not as enriching for children’s minds as, say, a museum. That being said, in a litigious society such as our own, teachers and administrators are not in the business of whisking kids off school grounds without their parents’ full support. The attendees’ parents were informed of what the trip entailed, and signed off on it. Fear not. Your kid won’t be going to any gay weddings without your knowledge and approval.

Argument number three really isn’t even an argument at all. Which rights, exactly, am I losing? Marriage isn’t a scarce commodity. There’s no upper limit on the number of marriages that can occur within a given time frame, so it’s not as though two affianced dudes could be stealing a marriage that was rightfully yours. Perhaps conservatives and Christians are laboring under the belief that the legalization of same-sex marriage is synonymous with the criminalization of opposite-sex marriage. It’s not. Oh, and if marriage is so fucking sacred, don’t protest in Albany. Protest in front of a drive-thru chapel in Vegas.

This commercial was so disturbing in part because I’m desperate – DESPERATE – to hear an argument against gay marriage that doesn’t ultimately boil down to, “Guys fucking guys is icky.” This issue seems so cut-and-dry that it makes me nervous, like I must be missing something. Other groups I disagree with have viewpoints I can vaguely understand. I think abortion should be legal, but I understand why people oppose it. It’s hard to pinpoint when a group of cells become a fetus, and it’s perhaps even harder to determine what rights to grant to those cells or that fetus. Similarly, I don’t support the death penalty, but I understand the instinct to rid the country of its most dangerous criminals.

The instinct to stop gays from marrying, on the other hand, is not understandable. It’s baseless and mean-spirited, and until someone is able to present a reasonable argument – something to do with our safety or our money or our quality of life – I’ll never think otherwise.

Whip it out, boys!!

Photographs of disembodied dicks are not sexy. In fact, if sexy had an opposite, it would be a random erection straining a pair of boxer briefs. I’m confident that every woman on earth is with me on this one, which leads me to wonder one thing: why do men persist in sharing such pictures with the opposite sex? After all, I don’t think women, as a whole, are sending mixed messages. There may be a few stray weirdos out there, but in the wake of Weinergate, the general female consensus has been something along the lines of, “Gross,” or, “What a gross pervert,” or, “Gross.”

I can only conclude that women are not really the intended audience for crotch shots. Just as women dress for other women – men would mostly prefer women to not dress at all – men whip out their dicks for other men. You know, to show them who’s boss. I haven’t been able to bring myself to look at the infamous pictures for any significant length of time, but I gleaned from “The Colbert Report,” that Weiner is packing, and if you’re packing, why not share it with the world?

Intriguingly, if my theory is correct, this whole business has played out perfectly. Had the girl in Seattle been the only recipient of those photos, his penis would have elicited nothing more than a stray comment, probably including the word, “gross.” She would have immediately deleted the picture, written off the Congressman as a sexual deviant, and gone on with her life. But now every American has seen Anthony Weiner’s weiner (I didn’t want to play on his name, but my inner child is a 14-year old boy) and on some level he couldn’t be happier. Any reasonable person would react to 300 million people seeing his or her genitals by moving to Peru or committing suicide; Weiner’s not going anywhere.

Which is not to say that I think he should resign; he’s a politician, so it goes without saying that he’s unreasonable. Anyway, sending pictures of your dick to other adults is inconsiderate and unsavory, but it’s not really criminal, nor is it necessarily indicative of a lack of professional judgment. That creepy bastard, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, had little choice but to resign, not because he’s a predatory asshole, but because he can’t head the IMF – or France – from prison; sexually assaulting women makes him a bad person, not a bad economist. Similarly, Anthony Weiner is manifestly a shitty husband and a slimy Facebook friend, which isn’t the same as being a bad legislator. So I say let his constituents determine his fate. If they want him to stick around, and at least for the moment they seem to, don’t rush to oust him and his penis.

A final thought: If I were registered to vote in the state of New York, I would be among Weiner’s constituents, most of whom are elderly Jews. Is my neighbors’ willingness to forgive and forget evidence that they too are fans of sexting? Super gross...

So, what are you going to do about it?

The America of our collective imagination is dead. That upwardly-mobile, egalitarian paradise where all you needed was a dollar and a dream no longer exists; these days it takes more than that to worm your way into a homeless shelter. Show me 1 working class kid who graduates from Harvard Medical School, and I’ll show you 100 high school dropouts; show me 1 middle class kid doing better than his parents, and I’ll show you 100 who are un- or underemployed. We have to do better. My generation deserves the shit we were made to believe we were entitled to – a living wage, a house, a car, a family, a decent education, healthcare, etc. – and there are two things standing in our way: old fucks’ greed and their constitutional inability to admit they’re wrong.

Let’s start by discussing the greed. Although to the broke masses it may appear otherwise, there’s still plenty of money in the United States. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the money is all in the grubby hands of a few greedy, reprehensible, middle-aged white dudes, and Oprah. This, according to fiscal conservatives, is the system our Founding Fathers – and maybe even Jesus Christ himself – handed down to us. Bullshit. This country was founded on a wave of Enlightenment republicanism, and “republicanism” with a lower-case r is more about preventing tyranny by the rich than tyranny by the queers.

And tyranny by the rich is, by the way, eminently preventable. We tend to erroneously view the economy as some sort of mythical beast beyond our control. We forget that we ARE the economy. We made it, we sustain it, and when it plummets, it’s because we let it. It’s not difficult to unearth the reasons we find ourselves where we are today. Take our ill-advised, quasi-religious reverence for free-trade. The outsourcing of labor to overseas sweatshops where foreign workers are paid pennies on the dollar is why America no longer produces anything tangible; since the manufacturing sector was a major employer up until the 1980’s, its dissolution has had a pretty devastating economic impact.

Of course, the government could regulate this kind of thing; they certainly used to back in the age of American prosperity. They simply choose not to because they exist in a climate of covetousness and cronyism and secrecy. As long as robber-barons have the legal right to donate money to elected officials – bribe them, to use the vernacular – corporations will have the legal right to maximize profits by any means necessary, profits which they need not share with rank-and-file employees. Greed is socially corrosive, and not the natural order of things. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Now on to my second point: it’s time for fiscal conservatives and proponents of laissez-faire economics to admit defeat. Obviously the privileged few players in this game who are winning won’t give up their money bags without a fight, and why should they? The system worked for them. For those of you who are losing, it’s time to reexamine your political positions. It’s time to realize that you’ll never be in the top 1%, that you’re closer to a bum on the street than a millionaire. Most of all, it’s time to be held accountable. You’re responsible for the fact that the country’s deficit is skyrocketing while corporations and rich people remain criminally under-taxed; for the existence of the Rust Belt; for the 85% of recent college graduates who have to move back in with their parents after failing to find adequate employment; for the under-funded public schools that fail children so badly that fewer than 50% of them read at grade level. Your votes brought us here, and you were wrong. It’s as simple as that.

Does anyone remember Kirk Cameron?

“Kirk Cameron criticizes Stephen Hawking for saying ‘there is no heaven.’” This is apparently news to the Washington Post, which is why no one reads newspapers anymore. I mean, honestly, do we really care what some 80’s sitcom star-turned-evangelist thinks about science? Some people probably do, but they should be put down.

That being said, the article is mercifully short, and bursting with amazing Kirk quotes. Try this one on for size: “Professor Hawking is heralded as ‘the genius of Britain,’ yet he believes in the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything and that life sprang from non-life.” This from a guy who, at his peak, shared screen time with a character named “Boner.” Forgive me for doubting his scientific bona fides.

Having roundly trounced Stephen Hawking in a battle of wits, Cameron goes on to claim that, “to say anything negative about Stephen Hawking is like bullying a blind man. He has an unfair disadvantage, and that gives him a free pass on some of his absurd ideas.” Harsh, Kirk. I don’t know if Jesus would outsmart a cripple and then kick him when he’s down.

I also don’t know if Jesus would imply that a cripple’s unfair disadvantage is in reality his greatest – and most unfair – advantage. Personally, I would probably murder puppies to avoid winding up in poor old Stephen’s shoes, but I guess it’s all in how you frame it. And, hey, apparently if you’re gimpy, Cambridge University will fast-track your tenure, so it’s not all bad.