Where The Rubber Meets The Road

One day, when we’ve grown up as a species, we’ll teach our children the valuable lessons we deny them out of a backward sense of propriety. Here, the, is a list of things I propose we keep away from future generations:

5. Certain types of sushi.

4. Cheap cigars. Hey, if you’re a soulless empty-suited vampire who is living fat off the misery of others, I get that you might want to kick back and fire up a fat Cuban and chuckle over your ill-gotten spoils. But if you’re eating Ramen and hot dogs because you can’t afford mac & cheese, take that 47¢ Swisher Sweet out of your mouth. You’re fooling nobody.

3. Whitening strips/gel/etc. Stop with the age-defying bullshit. It’s the same faux-eternal-youth, Baby Boomer, narcissistic, gimmie-pig assholery that has landed us in the shit we’re in right now, and will only leave you as an octogenarian cyborg freak. Cut it out.

2. Carolyn Ruford. Ex-girlfriend. You don’t know her.

1. Bran muffins. Because if you eat bran muffins, then you’re an asshole. I know, you’re thinking, “Hey! I eat bran muffins, and I’m not an asshole.” Well, you’re wrong. Asshole.


This message is brought to you by the Department of Hatin’.

In As Good As It Gets, curmudgeonly asshole Melvin Udall takes in hate-crimed neighbor Greg Kinnear’s little ball of fluff after being threatened by an art enthusiast.
In typical movie formula format, he growls and grumps and stomps around, yelling at the dog, but over the course of a musically directed emotional montage, he warms to his little, four-legged charge. And when Kinnear’s Simon Bishop returns to health and takes the dog back, Jack Nicholson’s Udall grows weepy and maudlin to the point where he sickens even himself. As he plays his tribute to Monty Python, Udall laughs, shaking his head and chiding himself, “Over a dog!”
And we chuckle along with him.

But one day, you wake up, take heavy-duty narcotics (if you’re me), and head downstairs only to discover that the kids have accidentally shut your own little, hairy cuddle-pillow out as they headed off to school. As you race out the door, shouting and sweeping the neighborhood with panicked eyes, you realize that Hollywood schmaltz has become your reality, and you must kick your own ass. And not just for using bastardized Yiddish.

This was my morning. For four endless hours, I entertained the worst fears my brain refused to keep to itself while my wife and I swapped job-skipping places and left no stone within a half-mile radius in our search for Spike*.
Yeah, yeah, it is after all, a dog. But it is also a small preview of the blinding terror that strikes you when it’s a daughter, a brother, a mother.

Of course, what would the fates be if they did not humiliate you at the end of your nerve-wracking ordeal by having your precious pet stroll back into the house nonchalantly, with a casually cocky sniff and a flick of his now dirt-encrusted tail?
Which is exactly what happened. Relief, disbelief, fury, and pleasure collide on their way out your various noisemakers while your beloved fuzzball saunters around the house as if to make sure you didn’t fuck everything up in your incompetence when he was out.

I’m kind of torn between self-loathing and giddiness.

*Spike is short for William The Bloody, named after a Buffy The Vampire Slayer character.

Han was a man with many young, women suitors. This was unusual in his time, and it left him confused and indecisive. His parents had given him until his twenty-third birthday to find a wife, or he would not inherit their property.
His twenty-third birthday was approaching, and still, he could not choose among the women who desired him for a husband. He sought a Zen master.

“Wise master,” said Han. “I must choose among these women, any of whom would be an excellent wife. There is Simone, who is sleek and beautiful, and who laughs like chimes in the wind, filling my heart with joy. There is Orwen, who is bold and intelligent, and who challenges me every day, so that each day, I rise a better man. There is Dalia, who is fierce and passionate, and who takes great pleasure in even small things, making every day as blissful as the next. There is Soo, who is reverent and guileless, and who approaches all things with the wonder of a child, rejuvenating my spirit. And then there is Neela, who is wry and quiet, and who appreciates the simple things, promising an easy life.”

The Zen master said nothing.

Han said, “I must choose, wise master. Yet, I know not how. Each time I try, I am filled with questions. Will I choose wisely? Will I miss who I haven’t chosen? Will the others be jealous and hateful? Will I choose one among them who will one day resent my indecision? What if there is yet another who I know not now? Please help me!”

Still, the Zen master said nothing.

Despairing, Han cried, “I beg of you, wise master! Whom would you choose? Would it be Simone, the treasure for my eyes and ears? Or Orwen, the food for my mind? Or Dalia, the fire for my soul? Or Soo, the remedy for my troubled thoughts? Or would it be Neela, the ease for my aching shoulders? Do you have no wisdom for me at all?”

The Zen master waited patiently for Han to run out of questions. After a long pause, the Zen master finally looked up and said, “Pussy’s pussy.”

The next week, Han was married.

I’ve always thought of this as a sort of morality play on reflected glory. There is a lot of this going on these days; perhaps it has always been so. From sports apparel to Kato Kaelin to the parade of hangers-on flitting in and out of the company of trainwreck media whores, we’ve seen the cheaper side. And we’ve seen the more callous and sinister side, in the form of a former Air National Guard no-show strutting on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a flight suit and codpiece.
Whatever the case, these people are seen for what they are with a clarity I wish were applied to the principals instead of the coattail riders. Sad, lame, untalented, lacking in the even meanest degree of dignity, they seem oblivious to the pathetic spectacle they are, so engrossed are they in having a toe in accretion disc of their masters’ celebrity.

Their sad story ends – almost invariably – the same way every time. They grow restless being the shadow of other people, and either try to step out on their own, or cash in. And just as surely as they are recognized as the remora that they are, they are slapped down immediately. When Kaelin tried to sell his fifteen minute cache, nobody was buying. The slob in the Tom Brady jersey isn’t passing to Randy Moss; nor is he nailing Gisele Bundchen. And contracting herpes from Paris Hilton won’t make you anything more than a nobody with painful sores who forgot to wear a condom.

Everyone who thinks they’ve been robbed of their rightful place in the firmament of American celebrity should be forced to watch Michigan J. Frog torture his discoverer. Maybe we’d fill the resulting gigantic hole in our so-called news with actual information. Just a thought.

But whatever you do, don’t trust the frog – he’ll fuck you over every time.

Let me start by saying that we have precious few Christians left in the United States. Oh, there’s a slobbering horde of people out there who call themselves “Christians”, but they are no more so than I am, and that’s saying something.
No, the aforementioned faux-holy host of complete wankers are not Christians. They’ve long since mutated into this elitist, gimmie-pig, me-first cult of complainers, puritanical thought-police, idolaters, and money-worshipers. I think of them as neo-xtians*.

I don’t need to present a mountain of evidence for the above claims. If I’d like, I can simply use the neo-xtians’ methodology, which is to baldly state assumptions with no supporting facts, and counter any dissent with a tantrum. You’ve probably seen this; when cornered, the neo-xtians curl up an wail, “Anti-Christians!” If it sounds familiar, it is. It’s the same pitiful refuge taken by the bleating commissar sheep of the right, with their “anti-American” horseshit.
But if I must, I can simply point to the thousands of examples all around us. From paparazzi shots of Britney Spears‘ ruined storm drain of a baby funnel to the latest superchurch Pied Piper flaming out in more ways than one, it has become abundantly clear that this country is badly in need of a better class of Christian.

Don’t look at me. Holding all religions in contempt hardly qualifies me to help.

Obviously, the same-old, same-old isn’t going well for the neo-xtians. Their shining examples crash and burn with a regularity that a dysentery sufferer would gape at. The Spears sisters didn’t turn out well, despite being glorified as paragons of virtue. Lindsay Lohan didn’t Bible-thump, but she had a legion to do it for her. Similar disaster awaits every other snot-nose punk who thinks their opinions matter because they get their picture taken a lot. The Jonas Brothers will be in a bukkake video with a pound of blow on the table in the background; mark my words.
(By the way, I get it when underage famous people advocate putting off sex. However lame, it’s at least an attempt to spread moderation. But once they reach eighteen, it’s time to shut the fuck up. Let’s be clear; being a virgin does not make you “pure”. It makes you “bad at sex”. Virginity pledges fail 75% of the time. Deal.)

I saw a commercial recently for a pendant that displays a magnified Lord’s Prayer when stared at until your retina detaches. Also, you apparently get a creepy look of divine glee on your face when you do see it. I’d link a picture here, but none of the online pics I’ve found show how truly gaudy this trinket is. This commercial says just about everything you need to know about the neo-xtians, but because I’m an asshole, I’ll go on. It makes me laugh every year when the neo-xtians stamp their feet and screech about their precious graven images nativity scenes. Do they have no sense of irony? Idolaters, every one.

Let’s be honest. There are evil people in the United States of America, and the most evil of the evil have chosen to camouflage themselves in this country’s most prickly and hysterical of religions. Bill Maher once said that our fanatics are better than their fanatics because ours are just funny. No, Bill. Ours are just as scary; it’s just that we have rule of law. If we didn’t (and the neo-xtians are working hard to rid us of it), they would be murdering people, blowing themselves up, committing genocide, and subjugating women – just like your “bad” fanatics.

Jesus Christ (fictitious or not) was – above all – a good Jew. Also, he was black, which is neither here nor there, except that it pisses off the neo-xtians. Poor, wretched, heathen, sinner – he (supposedly) loved them all. Even the neo-xtians say, “God hates fags”, and not, “Jesus hates fags”. And with good reason. If they had those kind of balls, they’d be lopped off. Many Americans take their caucasian hippy Jesus seriously, and thus, when it comes to the hypocritical neo-xtians, Jesus Saves, But God Will Fuck You Up.

It’s kind of sad that the very traits that make true Christians admirable also keep them from weeding out the vile and depraved among them. To paraphrase The Daily Show writing staff, it is the eternal fate of the noble end enlightened: to be brutally crushed by the armed and dumb.

Just sayin’.

*Totally ripped off Dan Savage, here.