Like many of you, I’m not getting any younger. Unfortunately, the passage of time has yet to lead me to professional success. Although I’ll probably just end up going to law school like a nice Jewish girl should, I’ve compiled a list of dream jobs, all of which are well out of my purview.
Futurist
I don’t know a lot about this line of work, but it sounds amazing. Now, I don’t want to do anything dull, like economic forecasting or assessing future health crises. I also don’t want to get bogged down with anything as dreary as “science.” I’m mostly interested in determining the extent to which the future will resemble the Jetsons.
Cake Taster
I have this recurring dream in which I’m trapped inside a giant cake and am forced to eat my way out…
Detective
I don’t mean a police detective. I’m not interested in attending the police academy and spending years as a beat cop. I’m thinking more along the lines of Miss Marple. You know, residing in a quaint cottage in a quaint village in which people happen to be murdered constantly. The inept provincial police would have no choice but to rely on my superior sleuthing skills and reward me handsomely for my troubles.
Modern Artist
Who wouldn’t want to paint a canvas red and sell it for $100,000?
Elf-Hunter
This profession is relegated to Iceland, whose citizens are under the impression that the Lord of the Rings was based on true events. Elf-hunting as a career exists because elves are very difficult to detect with the untrained eye; tracking them down requires the services of a seasoned professional. Note that Icelanders don’t eat elves – they’re a bit gamey – so elf-hunters aren’t out to kill any mythical beings. Rather, if a contractor is concerned that his planned project might encroach on elf territory, he hires an elf-hunter to determine whether the area in question is sufficiently devoid of elf-life so as to be suitable for human development. Alas, the University of Michigan, my alma mater, doesn’t offer degrees in this field.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Drawing Necessary Distinctions - An Exploration of Medical and Legal Ethics
Riding the train this morning, my significant other was perusing the free papers when he came upon a story he knew I’d be all over: a Frenchman by the name of Nicolas Cocaign is being tried for the murder and cannibalization of his prison cellmate.
Cocaign’s guilt is not in question. Not only has he freely confessed to the crime, but he looks like the kind of person who might crave human meat. His patchy beard proves that he’s a sexual pervert, and he’s festively tattooed much of his face, an outré sartorial decision even among sociopaths. Were I to sketch my idea of a convict with an overwhelming compulsion to consume his own kind, this is the guy I’d come up with.
In contemplating Cocaign’s crime, I think it’s important to consider the murder separate from the cannibalization. Murder is a heinous act, whether it occurs within the confines of a prison or in the outside world. That being said, murderers are housed in prisons, so sometimes prisoners get murdered. Had Cocaign, a crazy person previously convicted of multiple violent offences, killed a fellow prisoner and left it at that, this story would not be in the papers. No one would care.
Our interest stems from the fact that Cocaign, who allegedly killed his cellmate for having repeatedly clogged their shared toilet, opted to dine on the dead man’s lung. He ate a bit of it raw, and then fried the rest with onions, French prison cells apparently coming equipped with kitchenettes. I’m more than happy to acknowledge the obvious benefits to be had by sequestering potentially dangerous cannibals away from polite society, but I don’t consider man-on-man snacking to be an inherently evil act on par with murder. Frankly, once you’ve gone to the trouble of killing someone, you might as well get a meal out of it.
It’s the irrational reverence for cadavers that I find so confounding. Dead is dead. If once I’m dead a bunch of flesh-fiends feel compelled to dig up my lifeless body and eat it, so be it. You may be saying to yourself, “That’s fine for her because she’s nothing but a nihilistic atheist,” but even the religious should follow me on this one. If upon death your soul ascends to heaven, leaving behind nothing but a corpse, the corpse itself is meaningless. Anyway, your remains will eventually fall prey to animals. I just see no problem with those animals being human.
Cannibals aren’t necessarily bad people. Several years ago two Germans, both of whom were, to put it charitably, mildly deranged, met on the internet. Man A wanted to eat a human and Man B wanted to be eaten. This was to be an unorthodox love story. A and B met at A’s house, where they both attempted to consume a portion of B’s severed penis. This didn’t quite pan out, so B put away enough alcohol and sleeping pills to lose consciousness, at which point A killed and butchered him, storing his body parts in the freezer. Over the course of the next several months, A consumed B.
A is currently serving a life sentence for murder, and that’s wrong. A is not evil, A is sick. His intent was not malicious. Torture was not a goal, and murder was only a factor because supermarkets don’t sell human meat. All of the available evidence indicates that absolutely everything that happened between A and B was consensual. A isn’t a bad person. He belongs not in prison, but in a psychiatric facility.
As for Cocaign, he’s a violent offender who ended at least one life and destroyed many others. Don’t minimize that by fretting about his taste for human lungs. Punish him for what he’s done wrong, keep a close eye on him, and confiscate his hotplate.
Cocaign’s guilt is not in question. Not only has he freely confessed to the crime, but he looks like the kind of person who might crave human meat. His patchy beard proves that he’s a sexual pervert, and he’s festively tattooed much of his face, an outré sartorial decision even among sociopaths. Were I to sketch my idea of a convict with an overwhelming compulsion to consume his own kind, this is the guy I’d come up with.
In contemplating Cocaign’s crime, I think it’s important to consider the murder separate from the cannibalization. Murder is a heinous act, whether it occurs within the confines of a prison or in the outside world. That being said, murderers are housed in prisons, so sometimes prisoners get murdered. Had Cocaign, a crazy person previously convicted of multiple violent offences, killed a fellow prisoner and left it at that, this story would not be in the papers. No one would care.
Our interest stems from the fact that Cocaign, who allegedly killed his cellmate for having repeatedly clogged their shared toilet, opted to dine on the dead man’s lung. He ate a bit of it raw, and then fried the rest with onions, French prison cells apparently coming equipped with kitchenettes. I’m more than happy to acknowledge the obvious benefits to be had by sequestering potentially dangerous cannibals away from polite society, but I don’t consider man-on-man snacking to be an inherently evil act on par with murder. Frankly, once you’ve gone to the trouble of killing someone, you might as well get a meal out of it.
It’s the irrational reverence for cadavers that I find so confounding. Dead is dead. If once I’m dead a bunch of flesh-fiends feel compelled to dig up my lifeless body and eat it, so be it. You may be saying to yourself, “That’s fine for her because she’s nothing but a nihilistic atheist,” but even the religious should follow me on this one. If upon death your soul ascends to heaven, leaving behind nothing but a corpse, the corpse itself is meaningless. Anyway, your remains will eventually fall prey to animals. I just see no problem with those animals being human.
Cannibals aren’t necessarily bad people. Several years ago two Germans, both of whom were, to put it charitably, mildly deranged, met on the internet. Man A wanted to eat a human and Man B wanted to be eaten. This was to be an unorthodox love story. A and B met at A’s house, where they both attempted to consume a portion of B’s severed penis. This didn’t quite pan out, so B put away enough alcohol and sleeping pills to lose consciousness, at which point A killed and butchered him, storing his body parts in the freezer. Over the course of the next several months, A consumed B.
A is currently serving a life sentence for murder, and that’s wrong. A is not evil, A is sick. His intent was not malicious. Torture was not a goal, and murder was only a factor because supermarkets don’t sell human meat. All of the available evidence indicates that absolutely everything that happened between A and B was consensual. A isn’t a bad person. He belongs not in prison, but in a psychiatric facility.
As for Cocaign, he’s a violent offender who ended at least one life and destroyed many others. Don’t minimize that by fretting about his taste for human lungs. Punish him for what he’s done wrong, keep a close eye on him, and confiscate his hotplate.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
A Musical End to the British Trilogy
I'm not at work today, and I'm not going to disturb my well-deserved idleness by writing anything. For the third entry in the British trilogy, here's a sort of "Northern Soul for Idiots" as compiled by an unenlightened American.
I'm on My Way
The Snake
There's a Ghost in My House
Turnin' My Heartbeat Up
I'm on My Way
The Snake
There's a Ghost in My House
Turnin' My Heartbeat Up
Friday, June 18, 2010
Our Little Secret
For the past few days I’ve been mulling over the idea of writing a post explaining how to commit the perfect murder. I’ve been reticent to do so because I know that, should a loved-one turn up dead under suspicious circumstances, this blog will be dredged up during my trial as evidence of guilt. I would prefer to avoid this, so please let the record reflect that I am not now, nor will I ever be, a murderer. I just think I’d be good at it. So, here are a few tips from me to you.
WHO
Kill a stranger, somehow enfeebled if at all possible. I know it’s tempting to go after someone who’s wronged you, but then you’re such an obvious suspect. You’ll most definitely find yourself under some pretty intense scrutiny, and every flippant remark, every questionable website visited, will be used as evidence against you. Every asshole you’ve ever rubbed the wrong way will be a character witness for the prosecution. Most damning however is that you’re likely to profit financially from the death of a loved one, either because of a life insurance policy or an inheritance. If profit is a motive for you, kill someone rich and steal their shit.
WHAT
Commission of the “perfect murder.”
WHEN
Don’t be cocky. Crimes are best committed at night when you’re unlikely to be seen and even less likely to be recognized. Not only is it dark, minimizing the odds of any eyewitnesses fingering you as the suspect, but many if not most people are unconscious.
WHERE
The victim’s house is ideal. For obvious reasons you should avoid criminal activity in public places. Remember, the perfect murder leaves behind no witnesses.
WHY
Killing a stranger isn’t a crime of passion, but rather a crime of bloodlust. If you’re following these instructions you’re clearly a psychopath, so there isn’t really a “why” to speak of.
HOW
Choose a clean method of dispatch. Stabbing or beating someone to death is invariably a bad idea. Not only is it gruesome, but the person is going to fight back, and that makes it much more likely that you’ll leave behind blood or DNA evidence. As far as the police are concerned, there’s no good explanation for why bits of you are scattered around a crime scene.
I would also throw out the idea of using a gun. Obtaining the gun legally leaves a problematic paper trail, but even an illegal purchase is a gamble; if the gun is somehow traced back to the black-market seller he could easily snitch. Any gun used in a murder has to be stealthily stolen and effectively disposed of, neither of which is easy.
As to the ideal method, I would recommend obtaining a syringe from a needle exchange or stealing one from a hospital. Use this syringe to inject the victim with a common household poison. In order to administer the injection, you could either attempt to catch your murderee unawares or you could threaten him into submission. If you choose the latter approach, bring a gun. You’re not to fire it under any circumstances, but without a weapon, your threats are empty.
My final suggestion might seem like overkill, but you really can’t be too careful. Prior to entering the victim’s home, you should don a full-body condom a la Leslie Nielson and Priscilla Presley in the Naked Gun. You’ll leave behind no fingerprints, no blood, no DNA, and the victim can’t give you AIDS.
One last thing. Although I don’t condone the murder under any circumstances, if you are going to kill someone for God’s sake don’t tell anyone about it. All of this should be our little secret.
WHO
Kill a stranger, somehow enfeebled if at all possible. I know it’s tempting to go after someone who’s wronged you, but then you’re such an obvious suspect. You’ll most definitely find yourself under some pretty intense scrutiny, and every flippant remark, every questionable website visited, will be used as evidence against you. Every asshole you’ve ever rubbed the wrong way will be a character witness for the prosecution. Most damning however is that you’re likely to profit financially from the death of a loved one, either because of a life insurance policy or an inheritance. If profit is a motive for you, kill someone rich and steal their shit.
WHAT
Commission of the “perfect murder.”
WHEN
Don’t be cocky. Crimes are best committed at night when you’re unlikely to be seen and even less likely to be recognized. Not only is it dark, minimizing the odds of any eyewitnesses fingering you as the suspect, but many if not most people are unconscious.
WHERE
The victim’s house is ideal. For obvious reasons you should avoid criminal activity in public places. Remember, the perfect murder leaves behind no witnesses.
WHY
Killing a stranger isn’t a crime of passion, but rather a crime of bloodlust. If you’re following these instructions you’re clearly a psychopath, so there isn’t really a “why” to speak of.
HOW
Choose a clean method of dispatch. Stabbing or beating someone to death is invariably a bad idea. Not only is it gruesome, but the person is going to fight back, and that makes it much more likely that you’ll leave behind blood or DNA evidence. As far as the police are concerned, there’s no good explanation for why bits of you are scattered around a crime scene.
I would also throw out the idea of using a gun. Obtaining the gun legally leaves a problematic paper trail, but even an illegal purchase is a gamble; if the gun is somehow traced back to the black-market seller he could easily snitch. Any gun used in a murder has to be stealthily stolen and effectively disposed of, neither of which is easy.
As to the ideal method, I would recommend obtaining a syringe from a needle exchange or stealing one from a hospital. Use this syringe to inject the victim with a common household poison. In order to administer the injection, you could either attempt to catch your murderee unawares or you could threaten him into submission. If you choose the latter approach, bring a gun. You’re not to fire it under any circumstances, but without a weapon, your threats are empty.
My final suggestion might seem like overkill, but you really can’t be too careful. Prior to entering the victim’s home, you should don a full-body condom a la Leslie Nielson and Priscilla Presley in the Naked Gun. You’ll leave behind no fingerprints, no blood, no DNA, and the victim can’t give you AIDS.
One last thing. Although I don’t condone the murder under any circumstances, if you are going to kill someone for God’s sake don’t tell anyone about it. All of this should be our little secret.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
A Good List
I love a good list. Unfortunately, music lists always seem to take into account what the compiler thinks is “important” or “authentic” or “good.” I prefer to think of music on more shallow terms. Here is a music-oriented best/worst-of list that has nothing to do with music.
Greatest Song Title: “Killed by Death” – Motörhead
Most Hideously Deformed: Joey Ramone
Least Charismatic: Steely Dan
Most Dangerous: Phil Spector
Gayest Song: “Go West” – The Pet Shop Boys
Worst Hair: Art Garfunkel
Silliest Lyricist: Donovan
Fewest Female Fans: Rush
Best Albino: Edgar Winter
Greatest Song Title: “Killed by Death” – Motörhead
Most Hideously Deformed: Joey Ramone
Least Charismatic: Steely Dan
Most Dangerous: Phil Spector
Gayest Song: “Go West” – The Pet Shop Boys
Worst Hair: Art Garfunkel
Silliest Lyricist: Donovan
Fewest Female Fans: Rush
Best Albino: Edgar Winter
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Come the Revolution
Do you remember the welfare queens? An obnoxiously pervasive meme in the 1990’s, welfare queens was a term used to refer to chronically-unemployed women relying on public assistance to support their illegitimate children. While I doubt he coined it, I most closely associate the expression with Rush Limbaugh, probably because of his penchant for gross insensitivity.
So last week at an undisclosed time and in an undisclosed location, I was tacitly participating in a conversation (i.e. eavesdropping) which, in an unwelcome blast from the past, turned to the topic of welfare queens. More specifically, how the government shouldn’t expect good, hard-working Americans to support a bunch of women who function as little more than incubators of future criminals. It must be said that the undisclosed individual who voiced this opinion – far less poetically than I, I might add – is a white person from an admittedly privileged background.
This was the first time I’d thought about welfare queens in years, and with good reason. There’s really no such thing. Here’s a brief history of the welfare queen: at some point in the past 20 or 30 years, a cynical politico got tired of beating off to the collected works of Milton Friedman. As an alternate activity, he perused the papers until he found a story, very possibly apocryphal, concerning one woman in one city guilty of abusing the welfare system. The public, reliably stupid as we are, was only too happy to take this example and extrapolate, transforming the woman in question from a lone fraudster into a symbol of a positively endemic economic crisis.
Make no mistake, this woman, if she ever existed, was nothing more than a fraudster disingenuously presented as a typical welfare recipient. The problem wasn’t that our Jane Doe was collecting checks with no intention of becoming gainfully employed. The problem was that she was a criminal, and welfare fraud is a job in and of itself. Jane Doe is only entitled to one check, so if she’s looking for more than that she’ll need to develop a few aliases and obtain fake identification documents for each. She’s going to have to become an expert forger, able to convincingly disguise her handwriting. She will be obliged to traveling extensively throughout her city and state. Who knows, she might even need some disguises.
The number of people this committed to bilking the government out of taxpayer dollars in order to avoid working is most assuredly negligible. At least 99.9% of people receiving welfare do so legally and legally obtained public assistance is hardly generous enough to facilitate a life in the lap of luxury. Believe me when I tell you that a woman relying on welfare to support herself and her children is not indulging in champagne wishes and caviar dreams; she’s living in Section 8 housing and going without in order to give her kid a toy dump truck next Christmas. Also believe me when I tell you that if economic regulation were such that this woman could make more money performing unskilled labor than receiving a check from the government, she’d be working the fryer at McDonald’s as we speak.
In the interest of full disclosure, I myself am a white person from a privileged background and all I know about public assistance I learned in the pursuit of a fancy economics degree. This means that I do not understand what it’s like to be genuinely poor. I know what it’s like to be college-student poor, and I know what it’s like to be young-adult poor, but for-real poor is way beyond my scope. What I do know is that being for-real poor fucking sucks and nasty remarks from assholes like me are not helpful. The person whose defaming comments inspired this entry is insufficiently empathetic, and that’s not OK.
I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to argue that the American lack of empathy is seriously disturbing. “No free handouts” became the rallying cry of the right during the healthcare debate, and it is as heartless a statement as I’ve ever heard, particularly since they’re not committed to the idea of no free handouts as a principle. They’re committed to the idea of no free handouts for other people, but they’ll readily accept whatever the government tosses at them. House on fire? Dial 911. No garden hose can handle that. Kids in public school? Absolutely. Who can spring for a $15,000/year prep school? Affordable healthcare for poor people? Let ‘em die.
It is incumbent upon the fortunate to work to improve the lives of the unfortunate, and it’s heartening to see people, affected by the recession, coming around to this way of thinking. Acquisition is not the basis of a functional society, and greed is not good. You should feel sad when you see a homeless person wearing a thin coat in the middle of winter. You should feel sad when a bright kid can’t attend college. You should feel sad when you come across an emaciated dog in an alley. The well-being of other living creatures should matter to you. If it doesn’t, fine, but don’t be surprised when you find yourself on the wrong end of a proletarian revolution.
So last week at an undisclosed time and in an undisclosed location, I was tacitly participating in a conversation (i.e. eavesdropping) which, in an unwelcome blast from the past, turned to the topic of welfare queens. More specifically, how the government shouldn’t expect good, hard-working Americans to support a bunch of women who function as little more than incubators of future criminals. It must be said that the undisclosed individual who voiced this opinion – far less poetically than I, I might add – is a white person from an admittedly privileged background.
This was the first time I’d thought about welfare queens in years, and with good reason. There’s really no such thing. Here’s a brief history of the welfare queen: at some point in the past 20 or 30 years, a cynical politico got tired of beating off to the collected works of Milton Friedman. As an alternate activity, he perused the papers until he found a story, very possibly apocryphal, concerning one woman in one city guilty of abusing the welfare system. The public, reliably stupid as we are, was only too happy to take this example and extrapolate, transforming the woman in question from a lone fraudster into a symbol of a positively endemic economic crisis.
Make no mistake, this woman, if she ever existed, was nothing more than a fraudster disingenuously presented as a typical welfare recipient. The problem wasn’t that our Jane Doe was collecting checks with no intention of becoming gainfully employed. The problem was that she was a criminal, and welfare fraud is a job in and of itself. Jane Doe is only entitled to one check, so if she’s looking for more than that she’ll need to develop a few aliases and obtain fake identification documents for each. She’s going to have to become an expert forger, able to convincingly disguise her handwriting. She will be obliged to traveling extensively throughout her city and state. Who knows, she might even need some disguises.
The number of people this committed to bilking the government out of taxpayer dollars in order to avoid working is most assuredly negligible. At least 99.9% of people receiving welfare do so legally and legally obtained public assistance is hardly generous enough to facilitate a life in the lap of luxury. Believe me when I tell you that a woman relying on welfare to support herself and her children is not indulging in champagne wishes and caviar dreams; she’s living in Section 8 housing and going without in order to give her kid a toy dump truck next Christmas. Also believe me when I tell you that if economic regulation were such that this woman could make more money performing unskilled labor than receiving a check from the government, she’d be working the fryer at McDonald’s as we speak.
In the interest of full disclosure, I myself am a white person from a privileged background and all I know about public assistance I learned in the pursuit of a fancy economics degree. This means that I do not understand what it’s like to be genuinely poor. I know what it’s like to be college-student poor, and I know what it’s like to be young-adult poor, but for-real poor is way beyond my scope. What I do know is that being for-real poor fucking sucks and nasty remarks from assholes like me are not helpful. The person whose defaming comments inspired this entry is insufficiently empathetic, and that’s not OK.
I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to argue that the American lack of empathy is seriously disturbing. “No free handouts” became the rallying cry of the right during the healthcare debate, and it is as heartless a statement as I’ve ever heard, particularly since they’re not committed to the idea of no free handouts as a principle. They’re committed to the idea of no free handouts for other people, but they’ll readily accept whatever the government tosses at them. House on fire? Dial 911. No garden hose can handle that. Kids in public school? Absolutely. Who can spring for a $15,000/year prep school? Affordable healthcare for poor people? Let ‘em die.
It is incumbent upon the fortunate to work to improve the lives of the unfortunate, and it’s heartening to see people, affected by the recession, coming around to this way of thinking. Acquisition is not the basis of a functional society, and greed is not good. You should feel sad when you see a homeless person wearing a thin coat in the middle of winter. You should feel sad when a bright kid can’t attend college. You should feel sad when you come across an emaciated dog in an alley. The well-being of other living creatures should matter to you. If it doesn’t, fine, but don’t be surprised when you find yourself on the wrong end of a proletarian revolution.
Friday, June 11, 2010
More Musings From Her Majesty's Realm
In yesterday’s entry I implied that I, along with my fellow countrymen, cannot or will not take Britain seriously. This was somewhat dishonest on my part. It’s undoubtedly true that the rest of America remains defiantly apathetic to the British people and their way of life, but I myself have been an avowed anglophile for well over a decade, having greatly enjoyed my trips overseas in spite of the rain, the mad cow disease, and the horsey transvestites. My most recent visit to the UK was about 7 years ago when my parents took me to Yorkshire. While there, I laid eyes on something so strange, so improbable, I have yet to wrap my brain around it: full English breakfast in a can.
All of our previous voyages to the UK had centered around London, where a car would have been little more than a hindrance. This time, however, the plan was to set up base camp in York, and from there to take daytrips to surrounding areas. It was thusly determined that a vehicle would come in handy.
For an American, a car journey in England consists of long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. It doesn’t help that the whole of Yorkshire smells like shit. The primary problem with driving in Britain is obviously their road dyslexia. The secondary problem is that they have no qualms about making their two-way streets wide enough for only one car. They only exacerbate the threat of a head-on collision by erecting quaint stone walls along either side of every country lane, ensuring that no one can pull off the road and into safety.
Terror notwithstanding, in Britain the ordinary trappings of car travel remain. On one of our daytrips, we stopped for gas somewhere outside of York, giving us a fantastic opportunity to stretch our legs and get a good whiff of poop. While my parents got down to the business of filling up the tank, I wandered into the little gas station convenience store to examine their edible wares.
I must say that trolling supermarkets abroad is one of life’s great pleasures, and probably the single best way to come to grips with a country and its people. I thought my previous trips to Tesco and Asda and Sainsbury’s had adequately prepared me for the eccentricities of the British diet, but I was wrong. Really, once you get down to it, British supermarkets are disappointingly comparable to their American counterparts. Sure, they have the audacity to refer to frozen meat nuggets as “faggots,” but the basics are the same – fruits, vegetables, milk, bread, etc.
Not so British convenience stores. They must sell the requisite soft drinks and salty snacks and candy bars, but I really couldn’t say for sure. In my memory, this little store’s shelves were empty, except for a single innocuous-looking can shrouded in a strange and beautiful light. Upon closer inspection, I was positively floored to discover that this can advertised itself as containing a full English breakfast.
The English value breakfast because their other meals are so universally foul, and they consider the full English to be the absolute pinnacle of breakfast treats. Ingredients vary based on personal preference as well as region, but a full English generally consists of bacon, sausage, eggs, fried bread, mushrooms, a grilled tomato, and beans. All this in a can. It blew my mind.
I still wonder about the bread. I get the rest of it. Let me rephrase that. I don’t get why this product exists or why anyone would consume it, but I get that pork products, eggs, and vegetables mixed with beans would form a thoroughly unappealing brown mush whose component parts have been compacted out of all recognition and that this mush could be suitably preserved in a can. The mystery of the bread, however, lives on. My best guess: croutons.
The mystery lives on because we left that gas station empty-handed. I did submit to my parents that it would be a grave mistake to drive off without a specimen, but one of them dismissed my suggestion as absurd. Today, burning with a curiosity no less intense than mine, neither mother nor father wishes to admit guilt. Sadly, lacking the funds necessary to return to England I have little choice but to move on, though I continue to wonder what might have been…
All of our previous voyages to the UK had centered around London, where a car would have been little more than a hindrance. This time, however, the plan was to set up base camp in York, and from there to take daytrips to surrounding areas. It was thusly determined that a vehicle would come in handy.
For an American, a car journey in England consists of long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. It doesn’t help that the whole of Yorkshire smells like shit. The primary problem with driving in Britain is obviously their road dyslexia. The secondary problem is that they have no qualms about making their two-way streets wide enough for only one car. They only exacerbate the threat of a head-on collision by erecting quaint stone walls along either side of every country lane, ensuring that no one can pull off the road and into safety.
Terror notwithstanding, in Britain the ordinary trappings of car travel remain. On one of our daytrips, we stopped for gas somewhere outside of York, giving us a fantastic opportunity to stretch our legs and get a good whiff of poop. While my parents got down to the business of filling up the tank, I wandered into the little gas station convenience store to examine their edible wares.
I must say that trolling supermarkets abroad is one of life’s great pleasures, and probably the single best way to come to grips with a country and its people. I thought my previous trips to Tesco and Asda and Sainsbury’s had adequately prepared me for the eccentricities of the British diet, but I was wrong. Really, once you get down to it, British supermarkets are disappointingly comparable to their American counterparts. Sure, they have the audacity to refer to frozen meat nuggets as “faggots,” but the basics are the same – fruits, vegetables, milk, bread, etc.
Not so British convenience stores. They must sell the requisite soft drinks and salty snacks and candy bars, but I really couldn’t say for sure. In my memory, this little store’s shelves were empty, except for a single innocuous-looking can shrouded in a strange and beautiful light. Upon closer inspection, I was positively floored to discover that this can advertised itself as containing a full English breakfast.
The English value breakfast because their other meals are so universally foul, and they consider the full English to be the absolute pinnacle of breakfast treats. Ingredients vary based on personal preference as well as region, but a full English generally consists of bacon, sausage, eggs, fried bread, mushrooms, a grilled tomato, and beans. All this in a can. It blew my mind.
I still wonder about the bread. I get the rest of it. Let me rephrase that. I don’t get why this product exists or why anyone would consume it, but I get that pork products, eggs, and vegetables mixed with beans would form a thoroughly unappealing brown mush whose component parts have been compacted out of all recognition and that this mush could be suitably preserved in a can. The mystery of the bread, however, lives on. My best guess: croutons.
The mystery lives on because we left that gas station empty-handed. I did submit to my parents that it would be a grave mistake to drive off without a specimen, but one of them dismissed my suggestion as absurd. Today, burning with a curiosity no less intense than mine, neither mother nor father wishes to admit guilt. Sadly, lacking the funds necessary to return to England I have little choice but to move on, though I continue to wonder what might have been…
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Blimey! There's a New Prime Minister
The UK is not part of America. This may sound obvious, but I bring it up because despite knowing better, a little part of me suspects that when America turns its back, Britain ceases to be. I acknowledge that this is a stupid thing to think and thinking it makes me a stupid person, but I suspect my fellow American plebes are with me.
I got to thinking about this because the name of the new British Prime Minister, a name I’ve most definitely seen and heard dozens of times, escapes me. For reasons I never bothered to understand, the most recent election in Britain was so special American news organizations deigned to cover it. The interest was short-lived. Once whoever won, won, buried deep within US papers was a forgettable photo of yet another chinless wonder named Lord Snootinghamtottenshire, and we reverted back to our natural state of indifference toward their political landscape.
Yet even though we’re no longer looking, even though we couldn’t possibly care less, this guy still exists. Not only that, he’s still a major world leader. Did you know that there have been Prime Ministers other than Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher? Neither did I, but there must have been.
In case you’re wondering, Wikipedia reports that the current British Prime Minister is named David Cameron, not Lord Snootinghamtottenshire, and the photo clearly indicates a chin.
I got to thinking about this because the name of the new British Prime Minister, a name I’ve most definitely seen and heard dozens of times, escapes me. For reasons I never bothered to understand, the most recent election in Britain was so special American news organizations deigned to cover it. The interest was short-lived. Once whoever won, won, buried deep within US papers was a forgettable photo of yet another chinless wonder named Lord Snootinghamtottenshire, and we reverted back to our natural state of indifference toward their political landscape.
Yet even though we’re no longer looking, even though we couldn’t possibly care less, this guy still exists. Not only that, he’s still a major world leader. Did you know that there have been Prime Ministers other than Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher? Neither did I, but there must have been.
In case you’re wondering, Wikipedia reports that the current British Prime Minister is named David Cameron, not Lord Snootinghamtottenshire, and the photo clearly indicates a chin.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
True Crime Revisited
I am obsessed with true crime shows. Not casually obsessed, autistic obsessed and I’m pissed because I wouldn’t suffer from this condition had my parents done away with all that vaccination nonsense and just let me die.
Now I have a lot to say about true crime shows and the criminal justice system and how I could probably commit the perfect murder if I weren’t such a pussy, so I could theoretically take this post in any number of different directions, but I have on my mind one thing: the disappearance and subsequent murder of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, her mongoloid son and granddaughter.
For those of you not hip to the true crime scene, Madalyn Murray O’Hair founded an organization called the American Atheists and as such was once dubbed “the most hated woman in America,” a description so good it’s been affixed to her name in print ever since. I’m not sure whether people hate atheists or confrontational women (why not both?), but speaking as a feminist and an atheist I can assure you she was objectively unlikeable. So it came as no surprise when, in 1995, this professional shit-stirrer, along with two creepily devoted family members, went missing.
Of course upon hearing of the family’s disappearance, atheists across the country set to work concocting a whole slew of theories implicating those zany fundamentalists in a variety of intricate kidnapping schemes. Although only a stupid person could have seriously speculated about the Vatican’s possible involvement, the majority of the atheists’ theories seemed pretty plausible. After all, in this increasingly modern society, Americans retain the right to talk shit about non-believers and Canadians with absolute impunity even though all right-thinking people know that only Canadians deserve it.
The theories may not have been crazy, but they were wrong. Theories generally are. Why heed the principle of Occam’s razor when elaborate conspiracies involving sexual perversions and international espionage are so much more fun? In the end we learned that the Pope hadn’t driven off into the sunset with the Murray O’Hairs stuffed into the trunk of the Popemobile, however captivating an image that may be. Rather, a disgruntled former employee of the American Atheists and a couple of henchmen carried out a simple extortion and murder plot. Revenge is a disappointingly prosaic motive I know, but sadly truth is seldom stranger than fiction.
Overall, this particular show was as predictable as the crime itself. It was nothing special, but it stuck with me because I’m ashamed and saddened that my fellow non-believers allowed such a grotesque spectacle of a woman to be our spokesperson. If ever a wholesome godless family existed in the public imagination, it’s been supplanted by the Murray O’Hairs, a godless family of freaks. There’s not a doubt in my mind that these people set back the atheist cause, and I’d like to posthumously cross them off of our roster.
So I hereby officially declare that Madalyn Murray O’Hair has been ejected from the irreligious fold. In the interest of fairness and because I appear to end all of my blog entries with lists, below you will find some excommunication suggestions for a few major world religions. Conspicuous in their absence are the Scientologists, but I’ve excluded them because, as a for-profit religion (i.e. cult), they’re not big on excommunication.
To be dispatched:
Catholics: Mel Gibson
Protestants: Jerry Falwell
Jews: Bernie Madoff
Muslims: Osama Bin Laden
Mormons: Marie Osmond – Prior to excommunicating anyone, however, the Mormons have to divulge the secrets of their special underpants.
Hindus: M. Night Shyamalan
Buddhists: Steven Seagal
Now I have a lot to say about true crime shows and the criminal justice system and how I could probably commit the perfect murder if I weren’t such a pussy, so I could theoretically take this post in any number of different directions, but I have on my mind one thing: the disappearance and subsequent murder of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, her mongoloid son and granddaughter.
For those of you not hip to the true crime scene, Madalyn Murray O’Hair founded an organization called the American Atheists and as such was once dubbed “the most hated woman in America,” a description so good it’s been affixed to her name in print ever since. I’m not sure whether people hate atheists or confrontational women (why not both?), but speaking as a feminist and an atheist I can assure you she was objectively unlikeable. So it came as no surprise when, in 1995, this professional shit-stirrer, along with two creepily devoted family members, went missing.
Of course upon hearing of the family’s disappearance, atheists across the country set to work concocting a whole slew of theories implicating those zany fundamentalists in a variety of intricate kidnapping schemes. Although only a stupid person could have seriously speculated about the Vatican’s possible involvement, the majority of the atheists’ theories seemed pretty plausible. After all, in this increasingly modern society, Americans retain the right to talk shit about non-believers and Canadians with absolute impunity even though all right-thinking people know that only Canadians deserve it.
The theories may not have been crazy, but they were wrong. Theories generally are. Why heed the principle of Occam’s razor when elaborate conspiracies involving sexual perversions and international espionage are so much more fun? In the end we learned that the Pope hadn’t driven off into the sunset with the Murray O’Hairs stuffed into the trunk of the Popemobile, however captivating an image that may be. Rather, a disgruntled former employee of the American Atheists and a couple of henchmen carried out a simple extortion and murder plot. Revenge is a disappointingly prosaic motive I know, but sadly truth is seldom stranger than fiction.
Overall, this particular show was as predictable as the crime itself. It was nothing special, but it stuck with me because I’m ashamed and saddened that my fellow non-believers allowed such a grotesque spectacle of a woman to be our spokesperson. If ever a wholesome godless family existed in the public imagination, it’s been supplanted by the Murray O’Hairs, a godless family of freaks. There’s not a doubt in my mind that these people set back the atheist cause, and I’d like to posthumously cross them off of our roster.
So I hereby officially declare that Madalyn Murray O’Hair has been ejected from the irreligious fold. In the interest of fairness and because I appear to end all of my blog entries with lists, below you will find some excommunication suggestions for a few major world religions. Conspicuous in their absence are the Scientologists, but I’ve excluded them because, as a for-profit religion (i.e. cult), they’re not big on excommunication.
To be dispatched:
Catholics: Mel Gibson
Protestants: Jerry Falwell
Jews: Bernie Madoff
Muslims: Osama Bin Laden
Mormons: Marie Osmond – Prior to excommunicating anyone, however, the Mormons have to divulge the secrets of their special underpants.
Hindus: M. Night Shyamalan
Buddhists: Steven Seagal
Friday, June 4, 2010
Springtime is no time to be a celebrity
Springtime is no time to be a celebrity. Shit, springtime is no time to be famous enough to have your own Wikipedia page. Basically, when spring hits you’d better hope your name’s never been in the paper.
What am I talking about? Stars die in the spring, and we’re not talking the occasional expiration here and there; they die en masse. The big death news a year ago of course was Michael Jackson, and not just because his family shamelessly exploited a personal tragedy for profit; we’ve come to expect nothing less from those attention-seeking oddities.
His death was a seminal pop culture moment allowing him to join Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Kurt Cobain in Heaven’s VIP section. Fortune has smiled on the lot of them. Marilyn was an aging drug addict who was bound to lose her looks sooner rather than later. Elvis was a fat, aging drug addict who’d already lost his looks sooner rather than later. Kurt Cobain, also a drug addict – seems to be a theme here – had just released an album no one really liked until he shot himself in the face and made everyone feel guilty. Lastly we have Michael Jackson, who died on June 25, 2009. He was an aging, drug-addicted freak who was universally (in)famous in life and is now universally iconic in death.
Consequently, poor Farrah Fawcett, who was unlucky enough to die the very same day as Michael, was largely overlooked. I’ve never died before, but I imagine it’s one of life’s low points, Farrah’s being lower than most. Being a dead person she was mercifully spared the humiliation of knowing for certain that the world was more interested in someone even weirder than she, but she was not spared the humiliation of dying from ass cancer, that most embarrassing of terminal illnesses.
Not however the most embarrassing way to die. That honor goes to autoerotic asphyxiation, an activity David Carradine was enjoying a little too eagerly when he died on June 3, 2009. Simply put, he inadvertently hanged himself while jerking off.
Ed McMahon and Billy Mays also died in June 2009, but who gives a shit? Much more interesting is that Mickey Carroll, one of the munchkins from the Wizard of Oz, died in May 2009. Coincidentally, my father also played a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz. He represented the Lollipop Guild.
For all the notable deaths of the spring of 2009, 2010 is shaping up to be even better. Just yesterday, June 3, 2010, we lost Rue McClanahan, the slut from the Golden Girls. This has affected me personally as I once had a close encounter with Ms. McClanahan as a teenage grocery bagger at Whole Foods Market. For reasons unknown, Ms. McClanahan was in Ann Arbor, Michigan and apparently craving a wheatgrass shot so she stopped by the store. I wasn’t wearing my glasses so I didn’t see her, and I didn’t bag her groceries so I didn’t talk to her, but my coworkers assured me she was there. All things considered, I suppose calling it a “close encounter” would be overstating things a bit.
To veer off topic momentarily, the Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor attracted more celebrities than one might imagine. Rue McClanahan notwithstanding, our most notable celebrity shopper was Michigan native Ted Nugent. He didn’t purchase food since he eats only wild bear meat, so presumably he just stopped by to shoot some hippies.
Let’s return to the dead. The first genuine celebrity to die this spring was Lynn Redgrave, but no one really cared since the more famous one is still alive. Lena Horne, one of the first black performers to break into the Hollywood mainstream, died a week later. At least I’m told she was black. I don’t see it.
We covered Ronnie James Dio in an earlier blog, so let’s skip him and move on to Gary Coleman who died on May 28. I don’t even know where to start. I guess it’s sad he never saw his gubernatorial dreams come to fruition, but given that he went from bona fide TV star to security guard I don’t think death was really a low point for him. In a final blow, Gary’s death was overshadowed by Dennis Hopper’s, which occurred the following day. This was sad to me because no one does creepy and terrifying as well as Dennis. He once admitted in an interview that prior to getting sober his daily intake of drugs and alcohol consisted of a half-gallon of rum, a fifth of rum, 28 beers, and 3 grams of cocaine. As a person who is neither rich nor glamorous, I’m not well-versed in the cocaine world, but the alcohol alone sounds like enough for a lost month. So let’s not mourn Dennis Hopper’s death; let’s marvel that he made it as long as he did.
I’m going to finish by telling the future. The following will die in June 2010:
The one from Diff’rent Strokes who’s still alive
Peter O’Toole
Keith Richards WILL NOT die. He’s obviously immortal.
Nicholas Cage
Cher
Robin Williams (fingers crossed)
What am I talking about? Stars die in the spring, and we’re not talking the occasional expiration here and there; they die en masse. The big death news a year ago of course was Michael Jackson, and not just because his family shamelessly exploited a personal tragedy for profit; we’ve come to expect nothing less from those attention-seeking oddities.
His death was a seminal pop culture moment allowing him to join Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Kurt Cobain in Heaven’s VIP section. Fortune has smiled on the lot of them. Marilyn was an aging drug addict who was bound to lose her looks sooner rather than later. Elvis was a fat, aging drug addict who’d already lost his looks sooner rather than later. Kurt Cobain, also a drug addict – seems to be a theme here – had just released an album no one really liked until he shot himself in the face and made everyone feel guilty. Lastly we have Michael Jackson, who died on June 25, 2009. He was an aging, drug-addicted freak who was universally (in)famous in life and is now universally iconic in death.
Consequently, poor Farrah Fawcett, who was unlucky enough to die the very same day as Michael, was largely overlooked. I’ve never died before, but I imagine it’s one of life’s low points, Farrah’s being lower than most. Being a dead person she was mercifully spared the humiliation of knowing for certain that the world was more interested in someone even weirder than she, but she was not spared the humiliation of dying from ass cancer, that most embarrassing of terminal illnesses.
Not however the most embarrassing way to die. That honor goes to autoerotic asphyxiation, an activity David Carradine was enjoying a little too eagerly when he died on June 3, 2009. Simply put, he inadvertently hanged himself while jerking off.
Ed McMahon and Billy Mays also died in June 2009, but who gives a shit? Much more interesting is that Mickey Carroll, one of the munchkins from the Wizard of Oz, died in May 2009. Coincidentally, my father also played a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz. He represented the Lollipop Guild.
For all the notable deaths of the spring of 2009, 2010 is shaping up to be even better. Just yesterday, June 3, 2010, we lost Rue McClanahan, the slut from the Golden Girls. This has affected me personally as I once had a close encounter with Ms. McClanahan as a teenage grocery bagger at Whole Foods Market. For reasons unknown, Ms. McClanahan was in Ann Arbor, Michigan and apparently craving a wheatgrass shot so she stopped by the store. I wasn’t wearing my glasses so I didn’t see her, and I didn’t bag her groceries so I didn’t talk to her, but my coworkers assured me she was there. All things considered, I suppose calling it a “close encounter” would be overstating things a bit.
To veer off topic momentarily, the Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor attracted more celebrities than one might imagine. Rue McClanahan notwithstanding, our most notable celebrity shopper was Michigan native Ted Nugent. He didn’t purchase food since he eats only wild bear meat, so presumably he just stopped by to shoot some hippies.
Let’s return to the dead. The first genuine celebrity to die this spring was Lynn Redgrave, but no one really cared since the more famous one is still alive. Lena Horne, one of the first black performers to break into the Hollywood mainstream, died a week later. At least I’m told she was black. I don’t see it.
We covered Ronnie James Dio in an earlier blog, so let’s skip him and move on to Gary Coleman who died on May 28. I don’t even know where to start. I guess it’s sad he never saw his gubernatorial dreams come to fruition, but given that he went from bona fide TV star to security guard I don’t think death was really a low point for him. In a final blow, Gary’s death was overshadowed by Dennis Hopper’s, which occurred the following day. This was sad to me because no one does creepy and terrifying as well as Dennis. He once admitted in an interview that prior to getting sober his daily intake of drugs and alcohol consisted of a half-gallon of rum, a fifth of rum, 28 beers, and 3 grams of cocaine. As a person who is neither rich nor glamorous, I’m not well-versed in the cocaine world, but the alcohol alone sounds like enough for a lost month. So let’s not mourn Dennis Hopper’s death; let’s marvel that he made it as long as he did.
I’m going to finish by telling the future. The following will die in June 2010:
The one from Diff’rent Strokes who’s still alive
Peter O’Toole
Keith Richards WILL NOT die. He’s obviously immortal.
Nicholas Cage
Cher
Robin Williams (fingers crossed)
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Television and Me
My parents pressured me to start a blog, and I agreed for one reason only: shrimp bloggers.
Like an alcoholic tries to hide how much he drinks, I try to hide how much TV I watch. This is because I watch a lot of it. I’m sure I’m comfortably within national norms, but that hardly warrants self-congratulation. I’d sooner boast of being less morbidly obese than the average American. And anyway, I was raised better than this.
My mother and father kept tabs on my television viewing throughout my childhood, which I imagine is typical. However it’s since come to my attention that parental monitoring of television generally results in the proscription of certain programming deemed inappropriate for children. This was not the case in my house. My parents weren’t particularly troubled by the presence of vulgarity, sex, and violence on TV or in movies. To this day basic cable has never aired anything lurid and grotesque enough to have been deemed off-limits, even during my infancy.
What I’m trying to say is that the problem wasn’t what was on TV, but that the TV was on at all. As a kid, my viewing was capped at about an hour a day, which my parents erroneously considered lenient. With age came the freedom to watch TV until my eyes bled, and as such my teenage years were shrouded in red, but I could never escape familial judgment. Whenever I began to relax and enjoy reruns of Charles in Charge, a voice in my head (my mother’s voice, in fact) would remind me that I should be doing something, anything, else. I’ve compiled a list of adolescent activities my parents considered more productive and wholesome than television:
Homework
Reading
Exercise
Socializing
Cutting class
Heavy petting
Soft drug use
Shoplifting
Of the above, I engaged only in reading on a regular basis. Sure, I churned out the odd homework assignment and was known to periodically wander off school grounds in the middle of the day, but the remaining activities, parentally-sanctioned as they were, had nothing on that forbidden bitch-goddess, TV.
Oh, TV, TV, TV. I love TV, and 500 miles away from my parents’ prying eyes I enjoy copious amounts of it, which brings me conveniently back around to my original point: shrimp bloggers.
A recent Taco Bell commercial stars and is narrated by a man who identifies himself as a shrimp blogger. I could be cynical and point out that this guy is an actor and that Taco Bell, in presenting shrimp blogging as a viable and existent career, has really done away with any pretense of verisimilitude, and I’d probably be right, but even without all the cynicism this is a pretty insidious way to introduce more botulism into American diets.
Taco Bell is actually attempting to fool the public into thinking it’s OK to eat shrimp at Taco Bell. In fact, not only is it OK, but shrimp experts(!) the world over will be lining up outside Taco Bell franchises like junkies in front of methadone clinics. Never mind the greasy white-trash teenager nudging in your direction slimy, miniscule nuggets of rehydrated shrimp and Krab. Disregard the fact that these nuggets have been dredged out of a can and the animals involved probably died sometime during the Cold War. They’re delicious and more importantly THEY WON’T KILL YOU!
Anyway, if Taco Bell can casually posit the existence of a shrimp blogger and not be met with universal incredulity, there’s surely room in the world for my blog.
Like an alcoholic tries to hide how much he drinks, I try to hide how much TV I watch. This is because I watch a lot of it. I’m sure I’m comfortably within national norms, but that hardly warrants self-congratulation. I’d sooner boast of being less morbidly obese than the average American. And anyway, I was raised better than this.
My mother and father kept tabs on my television viewing throughout my childhood, which I imagine is typical. However it’s since come to my attention that parental monitoring of television generally results in the proscription of certain programming deemed inappropriate for children. This was not the case in my house. My parents weren’t particularly troubled by the presence of vulgarity, sex, and violence on TV or in movies. To this day basic cable has never aired anything lurid and grotesque enough to have been deemed off-limits, even during my infancy.
What I’m trying to say is that the problem wasn’t what was on TV, but that the TV was on at all. As a kid, my viewing was capped at about an hour a day, which my parents erroneously considered lenient. With age came the freedom to watch TV until my eyes bled, and as such my teenage years were shrouded in red, but I could never escape familial judgment. Whenever I began to relax and enjoy reruns of Charles in Charge, a voice in my head (my mother’s voice, in fact) would remind me that I should be doing something, anything, else. I’ve compiled a list of adolescent activities my parents considered more productive and wholesome than television:
Homework
Reading
Exercise
Socializing
Cutting class
Heavy petting
Soft drug use
Shoplifting
Of the above, I engaged only in reading on a regular basis. Sure, I churned out the odd homework assignment and was known to periodically wander off school grounds in the middle of the day, but the remaining activities, parentally-sanctioned as they were, had nothing on that forbidden bitch-goddess, TV.
Oh, TV, TV, TV. I love TV, and 500 miles away from my parents’ prying eyes I enjoy copious amounts of it, which brings me conveniently back around to my original point: shrimp bloggers.
A recent Taco Bell commercial stars and is narrated by a man who identifies himself as a shrimp blogger. I could be cynical and point out that this guy is an actor and that Taco Bell, in presenting shrimp blogging as a viable and existent career, has really done away with any pretense of verisimilitude, and I’d probably be right, but even without all the cynicism this is a pretty insidious way to introduce more botulism into American diets.
Taco Bell is actually attempting to fool the public into thinking it’s OK to eat shrimp at Taco Bell. In fact, not only is it OK, but shrimp experts(!) the world over will be lining up outside Taco Bell franchises like junkies in front of methadone clinics. Never mind the greasy white-trash teenager nudging in your direction slimy, miniscule nuggets of rehydrated shrimp and Krab. Disregard the fact that these nuggets have been dredged out of a can and the animals involved probably died sometime during the Cold War. They’re delicious and more importantly THEY WON’T KILL YOU!
Anyway, if Taco Bell can casually posit the existence of a shrimp blogger and not be met with universal incredulity, there’s surely room in the world for my blog.
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