WTF is going on?

I'm rattled.  I'm honestly shaken up by the horrible tragedy that took place in Connecticut today.  So first off, another fair warning, some of the language I use in this rant will not be "PG" or PC for that matter, but I'm gonna say what I gotta say and I'm not going to labor forever to figure out the best, nicest, cleanest, least offensive way to say it.  So if naughty language or bluntly spoken thoughts offend you...you'll probably want to leave now.

This shit just doesn't make any sense.  We've seen a lot of heinous acts over the years.  But at least in the past there's been some reason, some cause and effect.  When I say reason, I don't mean justification by any means.  Sept. 11th was radical extremists who hated America and attacked us.  Unjustifiable and unforgivable, but for fucks sake at least there was a reason we could connect the dots with.  Columbine...2 fucked up kids who were retaliating for being picked on, bullied, and outcast.  Unjustifiable and unforgivable, but there's at least a cause and effect.  Dude hates Sikh's for whatever fucked up reason and goes and shoots up a Sikh temple.  Dude hates his boss or co-workers and goes and shoots up the place.  These are all horrible fucked up totally tragic events that AT LEAST HAVE SOME FUCKING CAUSE.

This one has no cause.  The guy shot his mom because whatever, ok I get that.  Well no I don't but at least there's some sort of relationship there.  But then he hops in her car, goes to the school, and...  There's no reason.  There won't be a reason, there can't be one.  I don't know why that makes it more upsetting but it does.  It's not like the other shit I mentioned before is any less upsetting because we do have some sort of fucked up reason. 

So WTF is going on?  It's not guns.  I'm not trying to spark that debate, but look, Connecticut has tough anti-gun laws.  That school was a gun free zone.  No gun control law would have stopped what happened today.  You may disagree, honestly I don't think it matters, because here's the real point:  This shit just didn't happen 20, 30, 40 years ago.  We had guns then, we had fewer gun control laws then.  And yet this kind of thing happened very rarely.  Almost never.  So the gun control laws aren't stopping this kind of shit or even slowing it down.  So maybe we need more gun control or maybe we don't, but getting too wrapped up in that debate is distracting from the real cause of all this.  There has to be something else.

That's the question that has to be answered, WTF is going on???  I honestly don't know.  But we need to figure that shit out sooner rather than later.  What is different now than 30 years ago, when guns were just as abundant (probably more so) and yet we almost never heard about shit like this?  We felt safe going to school or sending kids there.  We felt safe going to work or going to a movie.  We could go fly somewhere without worrying.  Shit maybe, until we figure out what's causing all these people to go wacko, we need to get rid of as many means of carrying out these violent acts as we can, I don't know.  But that still doesn't solve the real issue.  And it might not even put a band aid on it, because if we take away all the guns these fuckers will probably just go Tim McVeigh and start bombing shit with fertilizer and gasoline filled trucks.  Do we ban all that too?

This rant is filled with questions and has no answers because...I fucking have no answers, just a bunch of questions.  But we better all start asking these questions, and coming up with some answers. 

The Grand Illusion - The "Debate" Rant

Yeah so it's been a while.  But Wednesday's debate at the reaction to it got me going again..

So I watched the "debate" and read the transcript of the "debate" and read all my friends reactions to the "debate", and that classic Styx song kept on running through my head:

"Welcome to the Grand Illusion
Come on in and see what's happening
Pay the price, get your tickets for the show..."

You know the song.  Well that's pretty much what you saw Wednesday night.  Two candidates representing two supposedly different parties basically holding a joint press conference disguised as a real political debate.

What we have in this country is basically two slightly different versions of the same ideology where differences are exagerrated in order to present the illusion that we have political choices in this country. 

And deep inside they are the same.  Romney and Obama.  Republicans and Democrats.  They want to borrow and spend, maybe on different things, but that doesn't really matter.  One wants a little higher tax rate than the other.  One wants to pour money into the military, the other into health and social programs. 

"Someday soon we'll stop to ponder what on Earth's this spell we're under..."

But the list of "differences" between Romney and Obama pales in comparison to the list of similarities between the two.  Everything from military intervention in foreign affairs to continuing the wasteful "War on Drugs", deficit spending, foreign "aid" to nations that harbor our enemies, immigration laws and the list goes on and on.

You're being duped into believing that you actually have a choice in this election. 

I leave you with the words of Judge Napolitano...

What if the whole purpose of the Democratic and Republican parties was not to expand voters choices, but to limit them?

What if the widely perceived differences between the two parties was just an illusion?

What if the heart of the government policy remains the same, no matter who's in the White House?

What if the biggest difference between most candidates was not substance but style?

What if those stylistic differences were packaged as substantive ones to reinforce the illusion of a difference between Democrats and Republicans?

"Just remember that it's a Grand Illusion
And deep inside (they're) all the same..."

Never trust a wizard...

Iranian police are looking for a phony sorcerer who conned a man into believing he was invisible and could rob banks, the Jam-e Jam newspaper said Thursday.

Customers at a Tehran bank quickly overpowered the deluded robber after he started snatching banknotes from their hands.

Appearing in court, the repentant thief said he paid five million riyals ($625) to a man who gave him some spells and told him to tie them to his arm to become invisible.

"I made a mistake. I understand now what a big trick was played on me," the would-be bank robber was reported as telling the judge.

His name was not released.

I swear I didn't make any of that up.  Somebody else might have, but all I didn't...but just the same there's gotta be video of this somewhere to prove it's true.  Don't they have security cameras in banks in Tehran?

This is why you can never trust a wizard.  They always pull shit like this.  Witches too.  I just took my kids to see the movie "Brave", and  basically the story goes that a princess wants to marry who she wants, but her mother wants to arrange the marriage for her.  So the princess does what any rational person would do, she goes to a witch to have her cast a spell on her mother to "change" her.  Well the witch changes her allright...changes her into a (spoiler alert) freakin bear.  So screw you, wizards, witches, and sorcerers...you're never getting any of my hard earned riyals, I know what you bastards are up to...

Cy Young Winner and Terrible Bank Robber Randy Johnson

By the way...Don't tell me that's not the Big Unit in that mugshot.  I am 100% convinced it is. 

Save my Direct TV....

I got an email today from my bank, one of those spammy types that tries to get you to apply for one of their bullshit credit cards.  I'm good with that, I like my bank, I want it to succeed, and if sending out stupid ass emails like that helps them along then it's good with me.  But where they got me was at the end of the email.  It said, and I quote, "Please consider the environment when deciding to print this email".  How fucking arrogant, condescending, and outright bunch of bullshit is that statement?
So, THEY sent ME this unsolicited email.  And now its up to me to save the trees by not printing out this borderline spam.  I had no intentions of printing it out until I read that, but now I want to print about 3,000 copies of it.  I'm not a big tree lover in the first place.  In fact, there's one particular tree behind my house that's preventing me from getting DirecTV, and therefore the NFL package.  I want that tree to die.  And I'll happlily print out copy after copy of my bank's letter until the paper manufacturers have no choice but to chop down that tree to make more paper, and then I can get my satellite TV and NFL package back. 
But what this really boils down to is what I've talked about many times.  People (and businesses) are basically full of shit.  They say whatever they think you want to hear.  Do I think my bank put that little notice on that email because they all sit around fretting about the fate of the planet or the trees?  Fuck no they don't.  They care less about the trees than I do, and that's not much.  They put that sentence in there because they think that makes them look like some upstanding environmental citizen.  It looks good and it sounds good and it means absolutely nothing.
So I hope all of you will print out this blog and share it with your friends.  Print tons of copies, plaster it everywhere.  At least until I get my fucking DirecTV back...

And here I thought Chick-fil-A was just a shitty Bowl game...

But apparently it's also a restaurant.  And now I'm seeing all this uproar about Chick Fil-A and how they are horrible and rotten and evil and nobody should eat their chikin and they can go rot in hell.  And I'm cool with that, because as Americans we have the right to choose who we do business with.  We have the right to speak our minds and say whatever the hell we want.  I also think the owners of Chick-fil-A have the right to say whatever the hell they want as well.  What I don't agree with, what I think is total bullshit, is that the mayors of three major US cities are trying to stop Chick-fil-A from opening stores in their cities.

Look, if you want to boycott a place because you don't like their stance on gay marriage, go for it.  Again that's what makes this country great, that you can eat wherever you want based on whatever you want.  Personally, I could give a rat's ass how they feel about gay marriage.  Is their chicken good?  Hell I don't even know, I had barely even heard of the place until a few days ago.  But really that's all I care about.  I boycott restaurants because their food or service blows.  That's pretty much my only criteria.

And then there's the backlash support from religious wackos and right wingers that now want to go eat at Chick fil-A just because they are anti-gay marriage.  What if these people hate the food?  Shit I wouldn't go choke down some disgusting food just because the owners had the same political beliefs as me, any more than I would boycott a place I loved to eat at just because they were run by bigoted idiots.

Honestly, in a way I admire the owners of Chick-fil-A.  These days everybody just says whatever the fuck they think everyone else wants to hear.  Nobody is honest anymore, everyone is full of shit.  But not these guys.  I'm sure they are aware that their opinions are unpopular and that by openly stating them it would cause a backlash and possibly hurt their business.  But they are sticking to their convictions.  We need people like this.  Because how the hell can you ever have an honest debate about anything if everyone is just going around saying what they think everyone wants to hear? 

Now what really makes me laugh about this whole situation is how KFC is trying to capitalize on it.  I saw a picture of a billboard that said something like "our chicken is made without hate" or something like that.  And now all the leftist liberals are literally eating up this message and going to KFC.  Really?  Aren't they the same rotten bastards that all the animal rights activists tried to put out of business a few years ago because they supposedly torture chickens?

So where are we going with all this?  Are we going to start choosing who we do business with based on whether they are pro-gay marriage, or pro-life, or pro-this or anti-that?  Not me.  Just give me some good chicken and I'm a happy guy.

Well, writing this longwinded bunch of crap has me really wanting some fried chicken right about now.  Anybody know what Popeye's thinks about Obamacare....?

More shit that makes me smile...

Maybe this will be an every Thursday thing...

Paterno's statue is torn down...and everything is all better now

So Penn State decided to tear down Joe Paterno's statue and piss on 42 years of legacy because one guy says Joe was a bad guy.  Now I understand that this isn't just some guy, it was a former FBI director hired by the university to get to the bottom of the shit that went down at Penn State.  And that guy spent eight months producing a 267 page report basically saying that the people that hired him to do the investigation in the first place, along with Joe Paterno, enabled that sick fuck Sandusky to go on violating little boys for over a decade.  I get all that.  But at the end of the day...it's still just one guy, and his investigation doesn't prove a fucking thing. 

There was no trial, and an investigation is far different from a trial.  An investigator gets to decide what leads to pursue and what ones to ignore, he can interview whoever the hell he wants and ask them whatever he wants (or not interview whoever he doesn't want to or not ask them whatever he doesn't want to ask).  He can dig and dig until he has enough evidence to "prove" what he alleges.  Is that what happened here?  I don't know, and nobody else knows either.  Is Paterno guilty just because this guy says he is?  Hell no he isn't.  At least not on the basis of one investigation.  This is why we have a judicial system in the first place.  So both sides can present their cases, however they choose, bringing in whatever evidence they choose to employ in order to argue their side of the case.  Then an unbiased judge and/or jury renders a decision based on the arguments of both sides.  That's not what happened here.

But here's the most ironic thing.  Most of the Paterno bashing out there is about how he placed the football program above everything else (allegedly).  And yet, what do you think the decision to tear down Paterno's statue was based on?  The victims?  Give me a fucking break.  It was Penn State doing some symbolic gesture one day ahead of the NCAA's announcement on sanctions against it's football program. I'm not saying they are heartless bastards that don't give a shit about the victims in this case, I'm saying that the victims had absolutely nothing to do with this decision.

So now the statue is gone, and Paterno's name has been dragged further through the mud.  Everybody happy now?  Are the victims and their families gonna now go on to lead normal, happy productive  lives now that this symbol of horror and evil has been eradicated?  Yeah, I'm guessing the victims and their families dont give a rat's ass.  I'm pretty sure the horror of their experiences hasn't been alleviated one iota because a statue got torn down.  In fact, I'm gonna guess that all of the uproar over this has done nothing for the victims except thrust the whole situation back into the public spotlight and re-open any wounds that might have been starting to heal a little bit.

I'm as angry and disgusted by the whole Sandusky thing as anybody could possibly be.  It's sick and horrifying and makes my skin crawl.  But maybe that's all the more reason to not jump to conclusions about who's guilty of what.  Maybe we should let all sides present their case.  Maybe we should be damn sure before we throw a legendary coach who has been credited with so many good and noble deeds under the bus.  Or maybe it really is just all about the football program...