Monday, April 14, 2014

monday april 14: scattershooting while ...

"I am insensitive*.
I have a tendency to
Pay more attention
To the things that I need.

Sometimes I drink too much**;
Sometimes I test your trust***;
Sometimes?  I don't know
Why you stay with me.

I'm hard to love,
Hard to love,
No, I don't make it easy.

I couldn't do it,
If I stood where you stand.

I'm hard to love,
Hard to love,
Yet you say that you need me.

I don't deserve it,
But I love that you love me,
Girl ..."


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(*: no sh*t, Sherlock.)
(**: no sh*t, Sherlock.)
(***: no sh*t, Sherlock.)

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Scattershooting while still recovering from the shock of not having an episode of “How I Met Your Mother” to start off my Monday prime time viewing enjoyment for the first time in … hang on, carry the six … nine years!  Nine years!  Goodness gracious …

* Like anyone with a functioning brain, and a conscience, yesterday’s killings at the Jewish Community Center and the retirement village here in our fine metropolitan area, both sadden and enrage me.  It saddens me that men like this jackwagon, like the late (never great) Rev. Fred Phelps, and other hate mongers like the Reverend’s Jackson and Sharpton, keep being given platforms they don’t deserve, to spread their message of intolerance, hatred, and disrespect.  (Although in fairness to Ol’ Fred, Ol’ Jess, and that repulsive ol’ FBI snitch, Ol’ Al, at least they haven’t killed anyone, to get a camera focused on them.  (Pause).  What?  (Pause).  Yeah, good point – how would you know, with Reverend Sharpton?  Nobody watches his show (rimshot!).  Or the network that airs it (rimshot!)  Probably because America is sick and tired of being lied to daily by this President and his verbal fellaters known as “the mainstream media”.)

And it enrages me that once again, we as a community, are going to let the opportunity to have a serious, frank discussion about hate, and intolerance, escape us.  Once again, the focus is going to be on the unquestionable evil on full display yesterday, and on everyone’s (understandable) desire to get justice, for the injustices done.

Until we as a society are willing to acknowledge why this stuff keeps happening, it’s going to keep happening.  You can’t bury your head in the sand, and pretend things will get better on their own.  Nothing left to its own devices, has ever gotten better, in the recorded history of humanity. 

* Because if we’re being honest, all this is happening, because noone in a position of leadership in society today, demands consequences for wrong behavior anymore.  Sure, we go through the motions – this demon in our midst who committed his unconscionable acts yesterday will likely rot in prison until the day he dies, as well he should. 

But we live in a society, where pleasure in the moment, defines what is right, and what it wrong.  And that is absolutely wrong.  Feeling and emotion have nothing to do, with morality and ethics.  If anything, they’re the exact opposite, of what morality and ethics are.  Doing the right thing isn’t necessarily supposed to feel good.  That’s why it’s hard.  We live in a society today, where for the last thirty, forty years, we’ve raised ourselves and now our children with this asinine idea that “if it feels good?  Do it!”  We live in a society today where for the last thirty, forty years, consequences are frowned upon.  It’s “wrong” to judge others.  It’s “wrong” to question the actions of others, because after all, they just did what they wanted to do, and that means it’s alright.

No, it’s not.  And until we as a community, as a society, and as a nation, stand up and begin to demand absolute right and wrong return as the baseline standard, the baseline benchmark, for what we strive to be?  It’s just going to keep getting worse.

* Which is why, when one of the truly good ones in life succeeds, you have to raise a glass, and celebrate.  Congrats to Bubba Watson on winning his second green jacket yesterday.  No, this year’s Masters wasn’t as entertaining for the last couple hours as last year’s, or as 2004’s, or as “the year that will never be topped – never!”, 1986.

But to see someone as decently good, as Bubba Watson is, to see him just dominate the final nine in a way few golfers ever will, really made me happy yesterday.

And to see his precious two year old son, stagger out to hug his daddy, utterly unaware of what was going on, but knowing he saw daddy, and that’s all that matters?  I’m man enough to admit it.  I cried.  Some of that is just me.  I’m not Jim Valvano emotional, but I don’t mind having my emotions moved to tears a few times a month. 

And that moment?  Got to me:



* Don't even get me started.  Gutless chicken sh*t cowards like this, who make 92.43% of the metropolitan area's, uuh, metropolitans, view my area of town I live in as hell on earth (when it is anything but)?  Gutless chicken sh*t cowards like this, I could actually listen, to an argument for the death penalty, to be applied to.

* Apparently the KC Star's race baiter, has run out of offenses here in this great country.  Because today's Lewis Diuguid opinion piece?

Racism ... in Guatalama.

Sweet merciful Jesus, what passes for competent journalism today.

I mean, and I will grant you, I am slower than the average bear, but let me get this straight.  A Central American nation, where slavery of people from Africa never was legal, doesn't have a boatload of people with black skin, roaming the streets?  Circle me shocked, Bert!

And more to the point -- how in the hell is this racism?  If a population segment isn't there, that doesn't mean racism is why.  How many black people (yes, I'm being intentionally non-PC; to quote The Champ, "deal with it!") are roaming the streets of Moscow?  Of Berlin?  Of Paris?  Of Beijing?  Of Tokyo?

Honestly, people like Mr. Diuguid frustrate the crap out of me.  Not just because Lewis is better than this -- he is.  But because this is just patently absurd.  What in the hell does the lack of people with black skin in Guatamala, have to do with dealing with America's racial issues (and they are real, and they do exist)?  What in the name of God does this do, to tackle the single biggest thing destroying our nation, the utter lack of accepting their roles as parents, by black fathers?

What does this have to do, with dealing with anything tethered to this fun place known as "reality"?

Louie's upset because a black person isn't available to carry his bags from the car to his room, at a hotel in Guatamala?

Someone should ask Louie why he assumes, a black person HAS to be the one, to carry his bags into a hotel.  Isn't that racist, to assume black people cannot aspire above and beyond an entry-level position in life?

* Even more patently absurd -- and quite frankly, absolutely beyond offensive -- than Mr. Diuguid's premise, was this paragraph from the column linked above:

"Flores showed us the poverty, and described how people in Livingston couldn't rely on the government for help.  There is no Medicare and no Social Security here."

So, wait.  Did he REALLY just go there?  Did Lewis Diuguid really just say that unless the government pays for everything, that people of color are too (pick one, or pick 'em all) stupid / ignorant / lazy / incompetent / unmotivated / dumb f*ck retarded, to make a life for themselves, on the basis of their own (pick one, or pick 'em all) intelligence / common sense / hard work / dedication / education / desire to succeed?  Only government, can provide success to a black person?  Only government, can make a person with black skin's life, worth living?

Remind me again, peoples and peepettes -- who's the racist here?  Who looks down their nose, and sees black people as nothing but wards of the state, to be propped up financially (yet kept in their place socially) by giving them just enough to drag their asses to the voting booth every two years, to cast a loyal D vote, to continue the cycle that has destroyed the black family in this country, has ensured a racial divide in this country that will never be conquered in my lifetime, and now has to go 2,500 miles away, to find a not-even-remotely credible outrage, over a not-even-remotely legitimate issue, that doesn't have one damned thing to do with life in America in 2014?

Lewis?  To quote from one of my favorite "Saturday Night Live" sketches of all time (ironically enough, about a (half) black man who didn't rely on Social Security, or Medicare, or any arm of the government to attain a success I'll never see in life -- he did it all on his own): "unless you've been living in a cave ..."

Unless you've been living in a cave Lewis, open your eyes.  A black man occupies the Oval Office.  He's utterly incompetent, fails to deliver damned near anything he promises, the world's credibly horrific leaders are taking blatant advantage of his utter incompetence, and to top it off, he lies to us for three straight years that "if you like your plan?  You can keep your plan!"

And this nation is so racist, so against any person of color, so against any person that isn't a white, 50ish male ...

... that the only President in my lifetime (and I am 37), re-elected by a wider margin than Mr. Obama was?  Was Ronald Reagan's "49 states but not the District" landslide in 1984.

Mr. Diuguid is a damned talented writer.  I wish I could churn out stuff like he has.  But articles like today's are not just utter nonsense, Louie?

You're destroying any credibility, your serious, thoughtful, credible articles, SHOULD be given.

Do better, sir.  Because you're better than today's repulsive "whitey hates blackey everywhere" bullsh*t opinion piece, that should offend anyone, with an IQ above room temperature.

* I'm not a Hearne Christopher fan ... but yes.  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.  (Went with my co-worker Shannon two weeks ago for lunch ... and yes!  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!, to my favorite BBQ joint in town, being back to its former glory.)

* Dorial Beckham-Green: the Lester Earl of Missouri.  (Note to anyone unfamiliar with the Border War -- and it will always be a war, not a showdown -- this is NOT a positive comparison.)

* Congrats to Anthony and Jaimmie, on this weekend's impending nuptuals.  Looking forward to one helluva reception.  And one helluva beer pong throwdown.

* Congrats to my second parents, who will celebrate their (hang on, carry the four ...) eighteenth anniversary on Easter Sunday.

* And tonight's final scattershot.

Congrats to The Champ and The Chica, on the arrival of their son earlier today, Miles Reid.  Little dude?  Whatever I may think of your parents at this point -- and in the interest of keeping every post on this site below a "cut a couple explicit sex scenes, and drop the f-bomb total below 400, and you avoid the NC-17" rating, I'll keep those to myself .  But whatever I may think?

You're one lucky kid, to have the parents, and the family, you will.  You won life's lottery, little dude.

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