Thursday, November 19, 2009

What's Eating You?

This is the stuff that is most irksome to me at the moment. There's no significance to the order; just stuff that's currently pissing me off.

1) “That’s just ignernt.”


Can we get something straight? “Ignorant” has three syllables, and does not mean “rude” or “uncouth.” According to Mr. Webster, the word “ignorant,” (pronounced ‘ig-n(ə-)rənt,) means “Destitute of knowledge or education; also: lacking in knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified.

“Ignorant,” then, cannot be applied to person who insults you, cuts you off in traffic, fails to hold the elevator for you, leaves her used tampon on the back of a public toilet, or commits any other breach of social ettiquette. It also cannot be applied to your boyfriend’s baby mama when she take him back to domestic fo’ mo’ suppo’t, yo, nor can it be applied to me when I say that you who use the word in the ways I have described here should be stuffed in to a cannon and shot in to a wall. I may be an asshole, but I am not ignorant.



2)Speaking of ignorance…

Don’t send me any information about any political process, piece of legislation, university study, or anything else if you got it from any site leaning unabashedly to the left or to the right. I like to get my news and information directly from the news wires, not from media outlets who get the wire stories and edit them. I don’t pay much attention to anything that comes from anything with either “Christian” or “Progressive” in the title. (Send me anything that originated from the Center for American Progress and I’m likely to run from the room screaming, then spend the afternoon hiding behind the couch and clutching my wallet. “Modest” value-added tax my ass!)

You read something you find compelling? Research it a bit, why don’t you? If you’re going to take the time to forward on some information, find a few differing viewpoints, offer up the data, and ask me what I think.

Ditto for health-related news. Someone sent you an email saying that aspartame consumption causes MS? Google it; go out to the Center for Disease Control or National Institute of Health or Mayo Clinic web sites; hell, even Web MD is marginally reputable, and see if you can find anything that suggests there’s something to it before you hit “forward.” Otherwise, I’ll have to do it, and then I’ll have to reply to you and all creation that whatever information you’ve sent me is a bunch of crap; how in Bob’s name can you be such a moron?


3)Fa ra ra ra ra…

Some things about Christmas:

The retail Christmas season starts after Halloween. It’s been like this for years, and it’s not going to change any time soon. Stop complaining about how it's too early and we skip over Thankgiving. No one sings Thanksgiving carols because a) there aren’t any, and b) it’s a holiday created by government mandate. The religious holidays (Christmas, Easter, Halloween) exist because there’s a connection to some high holy day. The ones brought forth because they were tacked on to some piece of legislation? Not so much.

These holidays also garner more attention because they are accompanied some kind of consumption (candy, gifts, decorations) and therefore are heavily advertised. Thanksgiving only really generates revenue for the grocery and travel industries. Perhaps instead of focusing on the proliferation of Christmassy stuff though the month of November, stick with the spirit of the thing and reflect on the things in your life for which you are truly thankful. I’m thankful if I get though the day without hearing someonewhine, “Christmas already? What about Thanksgiving?”

Jesus is not, in fact, the reason for the season. Our modern Christmas, by and large, originated with the pagans celebrating winter solstice. The church assigned the birth of Christ to the soltice celebrations because they couldn’t get people to give up the parties and it was not economically feasible to excommunicate everyone.

Christmas is reverent, holy day to mark the birth of the Son of God, or it’s a noisy, filthy, garish celebration of gluttony, sloth, avarice and any other of the deadly sins. It’s up to the individual to choose, although personally I prefer the schizophrenic approach and make it a bit of both.



4) Healthcare-shmealthcare.

I will concede that the American health care system is imperfect, and that everyone should have access to it. I do not agree, however, that the system is “in crisis,” and I feel that a complete balls-out overhaul of the system is short-sighted and foolhardy.

Whatever work is to be done needs to be done incrementally, tackling one problem area at a time. Some kind of gap insurance for chronic and catastrophic illnesses, perhaps, so that thos who manage to survive long-term illnesses aren’t wiped out financially from all the treatments and services their insurance does not cover.

Government-subsidized health insurance plans for the self-employed or for those whose employers don’t offer insurance might not be a bad idea. Streamlining Medicare and Medicaid might be a reasonable goal.

Examining the reasons that health care costs are so bloody high might serve the country well. The previous administration sought to place caps on malpractice awards, in hopes that this would drive down the exorbitant cost of malpractice insurance. This was shot down, of course, and right along party lines. After all, faithfullness to one’s party is much more important than doing something that might actually do some good.

The healthcare legislation, currently in the Senate, will probably get pushed through because Obeekaybee and his progressive drones are working diligently to push through all of Clinton’s failed initiatives…because they CAN. They’re in a hurry because they know they are not likely to keep their current majority status, so they’re tacking health care and the student loan overhaul because once a few more Republicans are elected, they’ll lose both battles.

If you’re middle class, meaning 200% of the poverty line or above, your taxes are probably going to go up. Haven’t gotten a wage increase in a few years? Struggling to pay your bills? Tough shit. 56.8% of eligible voters participated in the 2008 elections; Obeekaybee took approximately 52% of that vote. For all intents and purposes, then, there are a very small number of people in this country who, in supporting the current regime, think that everyone else just needs to shut up and write out a check. These people are made up primarily of the dregs of humanity who'd never voted before but came out for the last election because they know there's something in it for them, and milquetoast progressives who vote for welfare and taxation out of guilt. Or stupidity, I'm not quite sure.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Udo on Childbearing.

"When someone is going to have a baby, why does it come down like this?" Udo asks this while bending his legs and gesturing between them.

I ask him what he means. "When someone is having a baby, it comes out here and this thing all splits open," he explains. "Down here where their winkle is."

"Where in God's name did you hear about that?" I ask him.

"Never mind that," says Udo, "why does the baby come down like that?"

I ask him again where he heard about this. He sighs and rolls his eyes. "On that episode of 'Family Guy!" I make a mental note to put the kibosh on the Family Guy.

"Why does the baby come down like that?" Udo asks again. "It looks like it would hurt."

I say it might hurt a bit.

"Why does it come out that way?"

"Because that's how it works," I tell him.

"Oh," says Udo. "Can I have a Popsicle?"