More Crap In My Eye

The plan. I was tempted to give this one its very own post but it isn't worth it. Mother Dearest has been on me to come up with a "plan" for my life. I'm all like, "But I did the plan. The plan was college. My high school guidance counselor told me if I went to college, all the doors in the world would open up to me, flowers would bloom in the desert, Muslims and Jews would get it on, and my life would resemble a trendy sitcom about Modern Woman if I got a framed piece of paper with my full name on it. I did the plan. THE PLAN FAILED." I guess what she really means is that she wants me to solve this historic global economic crisis all by my lonesome in between blog posts and gin shots. "Well, you have to get a job," she bitches. Right. Because I haven't ever tried looking for a job. I'm waiting for one to knock on my bedroom door, take me by the hand, and introduce me to his (or her) HMO and 401k. Here's the rub, Ma: We're. In. A. Depression. No. One. Hires. In. A. Depression. Speaking of declaring the obvious...

Generation Y Job-Seekers Hit Hard. That's an actual article title on MSN. One, two, three: NO FUCKIN' SHIT! I really should quit reading MSN. It always pisses me off.

Automatic things. Everything is automated. Think about it. Doors, sinks, toilets, hand dryers, "people movers" (or as I call them, "flat escalators"). I was in a mall bathroom the other day (not soliciting a handjob, Senator Craig) and all of a sudden, I felt like I was living in a lame episode of The Jetsons. If, you know, people in the 60s thought automatic sinks were blazing new technology. The philosophy behind this shit is astounding. Automatic bathrooms? Well, we're saving trees by not wasting as much TP and paper towels. Wow, except for every piece of already recycled paper towel you save from being recycled again, you've wasted more than that in electricity to run this Lay-Z-Boy bathroom! You, sir, are a tool.

I, and you, are capable of touching things and wiping our own hands with paper towels. Allah gave us manual dexterity and opposable thumbs for a reason. Not to wave them under literally stupid computer chips that don't always detect our presence all in some vein attempt at eco-conscientiousness. Besides, every time I approach an automatic door, I get that Simpsons episode in my head where Bart sells his soul to Milhouse for a comic or something and all of a sudden he cannot walk through an automatic door because he lacks a soul. I have a mild panic attack every time I see an automatic door, knowing if it doesn't open, I'm most certainly soulless. Which leads me to my next beef...

I am the living embodiment of entropy. Entropy is the second law of thermodynamics that states the universe tends towards chaos and decay. I am that principle in action. More on that later.

The plane that crashed in New York yesterday. It's a bird! It's a plane! No wait, it's a bird in a plane! I am legitimately relieved to hear there were no causalities, but come on! How insane is it that a plane crashes in New York on the very same day George Bush gives his farewell address on keeping us safe! Well apparently, he should have declared a War on Ducks because those fuckers almost killed 155 people yesterday. Or a War on Human Error. Remember the plane that crashed in Queens on November 12, 2001, killing 265? No you don't! Because it crashed from run of the mill, and way unsexy, piloting error. Certainly nothing to steamroll the Middle East over.

I don't believe in fate but if there is a god, he has a cruel sense of irony. I like that!

Not Another Israel Post

I'm sick of that shit so I'm going to ramble incoherently for this particular entry. Here are some things that are chapping my lily white ass right now:

Number one: The cover of Joe The Liar's new book. Presumably, "Joe The Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream" means fighting against the forces of the gay liberal conspiracy to destroy America under a fake persona with an exposed ass crack via a book that was ghostwritten by someone smarter than you.
-Nostradamus, his fan club, and Nostradamus-related programming. He was not a prophet. He wrote vague statements about the events of his day that people later interpreted as prophecy. Sort of like the people who wrote the Bible. Take this quatrain: "The sky will burn at 45 degrees / Fire approaches the great New City / Immediately a huge scattered flame leaps up / When they want to have proof of the Normans." Clearly this references airplanes flying into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Because if there's one thing the hijackers hated, it was a lack of proof of the fuckin' Normans! Goddammit, they hated that shit! I think that's also mentioned in sentence one of bin Laden's first fatwa against the U.S. Check it. But it does teach me an important lesson if I ever decide to enter prophecy as a profession: if it's vague bullshit, the people will come. I just want to thank the History Channel for airing three successive and sincere programs on this asshat.

-The Bible Code. Basically like Nostradamus for your computer nerd religious fanatics, the Bible Code is supposedly a series of secret messages hidden in the Bible that can only be found via a computer program that runs a series of matrices on the text to find vague, chopped up words that, if you squint your eyes and damage your cerebral cortex, clearly predicts events of our day. If god is omnipotent, then I think he can do better than "the assassin will assassinate" in reference to Yitzhak Rabin's murder. Yeah, god, assassinate is what assassins tend to do. Funny thing is, some Australian scientist ran the same matrix on "Moby Dick" and found similar shit. So I think there's one thing to conclude here: HERMAN MELVILLE WAS THE SECOND COMING AND WE FUCKIN' MISSED IT! OMFG!

-Educational bureaucracy. It took me a half hour to unenroll from a community college where I was planning on studying something in the medical field. I had to fill out a form in one building, drive to the other side of campus to get it signed by my advisor, drive back to the first building, and then take the form to three different offices to have it notarized by two different people. And you know they'll still send me a bill for the classes I'm now unenrolled from.

-My town's roundabout. In an effort to be cool, European-like, and save money on another useless traffic light, my town erected a roundabout (or "traffic circle," if you're a lame Yank) near said community college. Problem is, the local yokels cannot figure it out. As I was passing through it today, a guy in a truck did like a 380 in it; he went around it completely then took the right he was closest to when he pulled up to the damn thing. During that minute he was driving around, he must have been pissing himself in terror that he'd died, been sent to hell, and give this Sisyphean task as eternal punishment for his inability to understand the hard science of yielding to your left and exiting to your right. And I'm sure he's not the only one who's had that existential crisis while frantically trying to exit this black hole of a demon known as our town's roundabout.

-Maintaining this constant level of outrage. It's exhausting. :)

The Following Dumb Things Make Me lOLz

-Watching that kickass Iraqi journalist throw his shoes at George Bush's face. It will never get old and gives poignant new meaning to the phrase "shoeicide bomber." But I do have to take issue with the media reporting that his flying shoes represent only Muslim outrage at Bush. Believe me, no one hates Bush more than Americans right now.

-Knowing people are booking rooms in my hometown for Obama's inauguration, even though it's long, lonely, red two and a half hours away from Washington, D.C.

-The final election results from my county. We went almost 2:1 for McSame-Palin.

-The giant leaning Christmas tree downtown. I would have taken a picture but I kept laughing too hard to hold the camera straight. There's also a Santa Claus holding an American flag, which struck me as slightly insane.

-The Republican "outrage" over the Rod Blagojevich thing. And listening to tv hosts continually stumble over "Blagojevich."

-Listening to all the hicks who live in my hometown freak out over Obama's victory. One of them actually said: "I'm scared." What's to be afraid of? He's only the anti-Christ. And why are you afraid of the impending apocalypse? Isn't that what you nutbag Christians are trying to precipitate in the Middle East with your bizarrely vociferous support of Israel? Hell, man, look on the bright side! Obama's gonna be great for the sales of the Left Behind: It All Started November 4, 2008 series!

-Facebook status. It's just so narcissistic and stupid (unlike, say, having a blog where you espouse your worthless opinions). But at least I get to know whenever one of my "friends" is "so sad it's ridiculous" or "laughing so hard because McCain got beat like a cat gets beat down the stairs." (<--- They're real!) I mean, these are mostly people I haven't seen in five years or more and this is all I get about their lives since high school. And if it says anything...aw, fuck it. It doesn't say anything! It's just pointless inanity!

-Dick Cheney nonchalantly admitting he OK'd torture. And that Iraq never had WMDs (remember them?). And our collective indifference to those admissions.

-My mom's reaction to the Caylee Anthony case. OK, even I think it's sad that a two-year-old probably got killed by her mother, but my mom is acting like it's the first time the media has blown a filicide case out of proportion. I think she also views it as a reason she's a good mom, like I should be thanking her for not chloroforming me as a toddler. Uh, thanks Mom.

-Conservative bloggers. Get on talk radio! The blogosphere is our thing!

-Procrastination. I went to the big city today (Hagerstown, Maryland, population: 39,640) and every discount store I went to was packed with lazy (yet pushy and vicious) last-minute shoppers. While I was sitting in traffic waiting to leave the mall parking lot, I couldn't believe we're going through the worst economic crisis in 80 years. It certainly isn't keeping people out of the mall or off the roads. The way the media portrays it, every single American is spending the holiday season cowering in terror and hoarding their pennies in their soon-to-be-repossessed homes.

-That Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at George Bush's face! You're my hero, man!

A Few Phenomena I'll Never Understand

1) Christmas lights

I'll never understand how celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ has turned into this. I'm sure the nexus somehow involves Santa Claus, capitalism and OCD but it's still pretty insane how endemic it's become. The act of putting up Christmas lights usurps celebrating the actual holiday. My family has the same dialogue every Black Friday (after the dawn shopping, of course): "Junk the hay and pumpkins and put up the icicle lights! Get the fake deer that move their heads in the yard, now! Where the fuck is the "Santa Stops Here!" sign? Well, pull the cobbwebs off it and stick it in the yard!" I was driving along Route 40 tonight and saw a house with one of those huge, inflatable, lighted snowglobes and four of those huge, inflatable, lighted snowmen in their yard. It literally blinded me, both by its luminescence and its inanity. I mean, fuck it. If we're going to literally highlight our blatant disregard for energy conservation, I say leave the lights on 24/7, year round. "Yeah, bitches! Oh, Americans use 25% of the world's resources? Wah! Now we use them all!" And then, you know, we all die in a nuclear 9/11. But it'd be funny for a while.

2) George Bush apologists

OK, now I understand that the jury is still out on Bush's standing in the pantheon of U.S. presidents but...aw fuck it, you know he's going to be rated worst! Worst ever! Here's a small list of reasons why:

His handling of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the economy, the war in Iraq, the purging of U.S. attorneys, appointing an ex-dildo salesman as head of FEMA, shitting on the Constitution, and making "enhanced interrogation" and "rendition" part of common 21st Century parlance.

And yet...there are many who defend this man. There are many who think he will be rated among the best of our leaders. And whenever you attempt to spoil their reverie with a little facts, they get all pissy and claim you're un-American.

It's funny, because I question the patriotism of those who vote Republican. I think George Bush has been a better recruitment tool for al-Qaeda than Osama bin Laden. Yeah, I just fucking said it. A few days after Obama's victory, al-Qaeda released a video tape mocking and denigrating Obama, claiming he was an insult to "honorable" black Americans like Malcolm X. It's clear to me, and many others, that al-Qaeda is shitting in their throbes over Obama's win, partly because he has pledged to remove U.S. troops from Iraq. The number one reason al-Qaeda is able to recruit young men to suicide-kill is because of our sustained presence in the Holy Land. That's what incenses them. And the funny things is, Bush actually removed our troops from Saudi Arabia after 9/11 in what will go down as easily the best move he ever made on foreign policy. But then the moron turned right around and put hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops right back in their faces. A Bush apologist would say, "Yeah, but we haven't been attacked here since 9/11." To which I would respond, "How many people died on 9/11? Around 3,000? How many U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq? 4,209." Declare victory over that, motherfucker.