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Cleveland Does Not Rock

Published at: 12:01 am - Wednesday January 04 2012

Cleveland.  The mention of that city, in the rest of the country, invokes a roll of the eyes, and a vision of the quintessential rust belt town; rife with urban decay, dead industry, litter, corruption, and of course, rust.  One trip to that pile of smoldering rubble they call a town, and that vision is affirmed.  I’ve suffered the woes of being required to travel there far too many times for one life, and our drive there for the New Year’s Day was hopefully, as I’ve always found myself wishing on my way out of town, my last for a very long time.  Go to Cleveland? I’d rather visit the hospital.  As a patient.

My mother’s family emigrated from Macedonia, and instead of picking West Palm Beach, or Taos, New Mexico, they headed straight for the nexus of the coldest and filthiest.  Cleveland.  Maybe there were jobs there back then, or the streets weren’t quite as choked with trash and vermin in those days, but for some reason, like LeBron, they had a choice.  Unlike Lebron, they chose poorly.

I always wondered why my grandmother got married at 15.  After all, she wasn’t pregnant, and it wasn’t an arranged marriage.  Years later, I realized that she got hitched so early because it was her ticket out of Cleveland.  Featureless, minor-league Columbus probably seemed like Oz compared to the major-league craphole she was escaping.  And I thank her for doing so every time I see that miserable place on the lake, which is only on TV.

Still, her siblings and mother stayed behind, so at least once a year, my own mother would drag us to whatever great aunt or uncle was hosting whatever birthday, or whatever wedding, or funeral.  I cannot remember the events, only the dread of going, and the joy of returning home, even as a child.  The fact that many of my Cleveland relatives were complete assholes was only a minor part of the equation.

So two weeks ago, my wife decides that she hasn’t bought her father quite enough for Christmas, and comes up with the idea of buying him Browns tickets.  She goes online, and picks up four of them for their season finale which was, of course, the last regular season game, the post season being out of the question, this and every other year.  This year’s Week 17 game was on New Year’s Day, the latest installment of their hopelessly one-sided “rivalry” with Pittsburgh.  It’s a rivalry alright, if you consider a dozen cockroaches versus a can of Raid a “rivalry.”  Anyway, I thought, “Okay, fine.  It’s a nice gift for the old man, and I enjoy checking out new stadiums.”  I was game for getting out of the house on New Year’s Day, and taking my son along with us to the game, so he’d get the full experience of why he’s lucky to live in Central Ohio, or anywhere but up there.

Boy, did he ever.  I-71 pierces the Greater Cleveland area like a lance into the belly of a giant sewer rat.  “Hey Jake, check out those houses,” as we drove past the oh-so tasteful 1950’s vintage turquoise, pink, and lavender cracker box houses in Parma.  There’s a 100’ banner next to Progressive Field that shouts about how Sherwin Williams has been based in Cleveland since 1860.  Does anyone in Parma know this?  From an airplane, the houses look like someone puked up a bucket full of Necco wafers.  Paint your homes, Parma jerkoffs, they’ve come up with new colors since 1953.

Of course, I-71 brings drivers right into the rotten, burnt out guts of the city, a Mordor of dead industry.  That’s always entertaining enough, and it’s kind of interesting to see the grave of what was once a heavy manufacturing district.  It was also fun to explain to my son how fluids can have different densities, and therefore can be lighter or heavier than one another, and that when a city is sufficiently choked with pollution, these properties can contribute to the river running through it to catch on fucking fire.  “I get it dad, oil and gas floats on water.  But how does a river catch on fire?”

I don’t know kid; I just don’t know.  “Look around,” was my only answer.

We got a long, protracted look at said river, because that’s where traffic stopped dead.  For an hour.  A three mile long, honking, road-raging testament to a complete lack of planning and mismanagement of one of the city’s very few attractions.

You see, sometime in the ‘90s, the titans running Cleveland realized that they were going to get a second chance from the NFL.  A chance to start all over again, from scratch, and build an NFL franchise.  They would even construct a modern stadium in which the new Browns would play.  They decided that it would be a great idea to put the new Browns Stadium right on the lakefront; a nice idea, on the face of it, as Lake Erie is the only thing the entire place has going for it, in spite of the entire metro area dumping about a billion cubic yards of gasoline and feces into it monthly.  What the decision makers didn’t do is create any kind of way to get to the goddamned stadium.  How did that thought process go?  After all, the same streets that have been there since the 1920’s are just perfect for funneling in 80,000 people that have come to your city, to spend money, right?  And since you put it on the lake, they can only come in from one direction, unless the ticket holder is a Navy frogman or a fucking duck, which makes sense, right?  After all, there are only 500 square miles of easily accessible, yet totally desolate post-industrial moonscape where you could’ve put a stadium, so people could actually come and go.  And while you’re at it, don’t regulate traffic at all on game day.  Wait, you can still post traffic cops that do nothing but earn special duty, satisfying whatever graft-ridden union needed appeased, but keep the streets two-way the entire time, with the normal traffic light timing.  And since city buildings just happen to be on one of the TWO streets that head in, make sure that city vehicles are still parked on the streets during game day.

After crawling down Ontario Street, parts of which look like a normal city, but some of which looks like Dresden, circa 1945, we got to a parking garage.  We probably would have burned less fuel taking a helicopter there, but it was nonetheless a relief to pull up to the ticket booth, manned by a pasty-skinned young man who looked like he just killed the actual ticket-taker and stuffed him under a van.

I rolled down the window and said, “Hi.  Some traffic today.  Is it always like this, or just for big games?”

“Twenty-five,” meaning the charge to enter the garage.  I barely saw his face move.  Perhaps one of the symptoms of being born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, as surely a significant percentage of Clevelanders are, is the inability to change facial expressions.

“OK.  Hey, got exact change for ya.  This level full?”

Silence, and a blank stare from his dimly lit eyes, barely able to peer out from beneath the heavy lids concealing them.  However, a barely perceptible shift in his face, drawn tight by whatever pollutants he’d been exposed to in his short, yet likely half over life, gave me the impression of …scorn?  Yes! The disdain of outsiders, found in the denizens of every crack den of a city and every hollow full of inbreds in Appalachia.  A xenophobia where anyone with normal chromosomes is alien, must not be trusted, and should not be approached, as they probably use words and stuff.  Not wanting to return to a smashed headlight, I pulled away without a word, and found a spot, the ticket-punching mouth-breather I’d just left becoming the most recent face of Cleveland, the latest in a long list of mean-spirited, mulleted, jorts-wearing, Camaro-driving, tacky and rude bastards with whom I’ve crossed paths in that urban cesspool.

We left the parking garage, and found ourselves amongst the throng jamming the footbridge across Route 2.  I was confused; there was a jingling noise that the crowd was making, and no one was dressed in any kind of fan regalia.  It was then that I realized that the bridge was simply packed with aggressive panhandlers.  Once we fought past their zombie-like aggression, we finally arrived at the foot of a very average-looking stadium.

I’m guessing that Kafka had a time machine, and once tried to go to a Browns game, because after facing more transit issues than a wagonload of Mormons with dysentery, we found that once you get to the stadium, you can’t get in.  There are maybe 5 entrances, each staffed by half a dozen very dim bulbs, patting everyone down for bazookas and bongs.

When at last we took our seats, I could only think of two things; how the hell I was going to get out of there without a firearm, and how badly I wanted to see the Browns lose.  I’ve always been indifferent with regard to the Browns.  If anything, I’ve been mildly amused at their fans continued loyalty no matter what they get put through, but now, I will root for them not only to continue losing badly, but to fold as an organization.  High headwinds and rough seas for they and their fans will bring me sheer delight, as I guffaw at their futility, wrapped head-to-tow in Baltimore Ravens gear.  Damn you, Cleveland, so offensive you have been to my sensibilities for so long.

There was one moment of overwhelming joy, a bouquet of sunbeams that was so unexpected, that saved me from jumping into the foamy chill of Erie rather than face the exodus of dullards in brown.  With 10 full minutes left in the game, my father-in-law, trebling the value of the gift we’d given him, leaned over and said, “I’m ready when you are.”

After a headlong sprint back to the car, and peeling out of downtown as though we’d hit a Brink’s truck, I then found what fleeting, miniscule beauty Cleveland has to offer…apparent only when shrinking in one’s rear view mirror.

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Perhaps You Should Pray For Decency

Published at: 10:01 am - Wednesday January 19 2011

There is evil afoot, wherever humans live and breath.  In and out of the cross-hatched weave of society, there are threads that are just bad.  You can live out your entire life without being touched by it, because the vast majority of folks are decent people, but that’s not likely.  The bad things that happen in the lives of most people aren’t always the worst things, but there really are shadows in the woods that actually want to get you.  And, just a few weeks ago, evil in it’s worst form did the unimaginable to perfectly innocent people.  Right down the road, too.

Story here. But, in summary, for us humans, an ex-con unemployed tree-trimmer went to his mom and dad’s one day, and noticed that there was a little girl that lived a couple of doors down, and that little girl was someone that he just had to rape. So, after scoping out a good place to hide all the bodies he’d have to create to make this happen, he went over to her house one weekday, stabbed her mom, little brother, and a family friend to death, chopped them up, bagged up the pieces, and got rid of the bags that contained what used to be people.  That way, the little girl would be easy pickings later on in the day when she got home, and sure enough, she was.  He took her home and had his way with her for three days, and was about to get rid of her, too, but not for the Sheriff’s Department figuring out who chopped up that nice family, so that they were able to rescue her from this real-life monster.

When a crime like this plays out in the media, so close to home, it’s almost impossible for certain horrifying images not to play out in your mind, right along with the local news narrative.  What stuck out to me, and tormented me for days was this:

I used to buy rotisserie chicken from the grocery store from time to time.  I used to figure it was a fairly healthy and easy dinner.  You know what I didn’t like, though?  I didn’t like having to slice through some of those joints, in order to separate drumsticks, wings, and other pieces.  I always found it off-putting, enough so that I just don’t buy them anymore.  Seems silly, but it’s true.  Well, this motherfucker didn’t have any problem cutting up that nice family.  He didn’t have any problem doing that to people.

The scope of what this monster did is unimaginable.  Rotisserie chicken is as close as I can come to imagining what he did, because I don’t want to imagine it.  I can’t.  I’m not built that way.

As good a job as the Sheriff’s detectives did in saving that little girl, they’d have never found the bodies were it not for the killer wanting to himself avoid the Death Penalty.  Really, it was a clever idea to stuff the chopped up bodies of those people into the trunk of that beech tree.   For the killer, it was probably a pretty natural conclusion, as he was a tree trimmer who had surely looked into the maw of many a hollow beech. Just use your equipment to hike yourself and each bag full of body parts up to the top of that beech, and in they go.

It was also a really smart idea the Nazis had, stuffing living humans into the body of a cargo truck, then simply routing the exhaust into that compartment to efficiently suffocate them.  Just a quick trip around the camp, and the deed is done. That was a pretty natural conclusion for the Nazis, who had been in the business of mechanized death for quite a while, by then.  I wonder if they were smart enough to make those trucks with dump bodies, in order to, well, dump bodies. Just back right up to the pit, hit the aufzug button, and in they go.

That’s a pretty natural conclusion for me, but I’ve been in the truck business for a pretty long time.  My being human means that I’ve got a gift for figuring out how to work things, especially in mechanical terms.  Fortunately, I’ve also been built such that, for me to come up with the idea of dump cylinders making it easy to bury people, someone else has to have had the idea of actually having a truckload of dead people to get rid of.

Man, some people…

Being this close to Columbus, people are murdered every day, but this was a particularly horrifying act of brutality that got a lot of media coverage, and rightly so.  It’s been on the minds of nearly everyone in Ohio, and more so on the minds of folks that actually knew these poor people.  All anyone can do about it now is contemplate what happened, and perhaps raise money to benefit the kids left behind.  There’s nothing else anyone can do about it now. Ayn Rand, who was maybe the smartest philosopher ever, even though her fiction wasn’t very good, said, “You can’t compromise with evil.”  No, you can’t.  This monster is in jail, and will remain there forever.  The hot shot is off the table, in exchange for the information as to where the bodies could be found.   Now, for so many people, there’s nothing to do but shout the completely and totally irrelevant question of “why,” which people, by their very nature, are doomed to ask.  Even those of us that don’t think there’s anyone really listening.

Let’s cut a Gordian knot here.  There is no why, no reason, no story that makes it all better.

Well, there is a story, but not the kind that makes anyone feel any better, and here it is:  This ghoul came up with a plan.  He was compelled to do so, because while he was at his mom and dad’s house one day, he saw something he had to have.  Not someone, but something, because what this predator resolved to do is not the act of a person interacting with others, not in the sense that any normal person is used to.  It was the act of something in human form acquiring something that it considered an object.  So, this monster did what it did to get what it wanted, with no regard to the pain and suffering it would cause, because human pain, suffering and remorse are feelings and concepts for which this creature’s brain is not wired to comprehend.

In other words, this is someone that was literally born without humanity.  Commonly, these inhumane humans are known as sociopaths, of course, but why call them humans?  You can call them homo sapiens, (which is what makes these creatures so scary), but I have no problem revoking someone’s membership in the human race based upon what they do to others.

So, the wiring of our brains (we’re talking normal people now), for some reason, likely due to our evolutionary history, makes almost all of us as “why?” when things like this happen.  As above, this is an unfortunate question to ask.  There is no “why,” other than the fact that monsters are real.  As above.

People have been trying to explain evil for as long as we’ve been writing stuff down, but there just isn’t any answer to it.  Evil is a motherfucker, and that’s it.

The Eastern religions (or schools of thought) take a different road here, saying something like the real problem with the pain and suffering caused by evil has more to do with out expectations of the world, how things ought to turn out, how our brains are constantly assigning judgment to this and that.  “This is good.  This is bad.”  The implication is that good and evil are man-made concepts, and that judgment is the problem. For the day-to-day, soul-numbing clutter with which we constantly occupy ourselves, especially in modern life, that makes a great deal of sense.

Chopping up people in order to rape little girls, well, that kind of falls outside the range of day-to-day shit.  Yes, evil does exist, just as sure as you’re born.

Taoism is more sensible than anything that might be called “religion,” lining up better with the Universe than any Theism or other voodoo; but it is evil that causes one to call “shenanigans” on the deal.  It’s revealed as just more human spin on the nature of the universe.

Hardly anyone around here is a Taoist. Most folks are, of course, Christians, and while it’s certainly fun (and necessary) to poke Christianity with as sharp a stick as one can find, it’s just undesirable and inhumane to do so when people in pain find comfort in it.  Therein are human rituals that ease suffering, and that’s a good thing, the only glimmer of light that many might find when things like this are visited upon good and innocent people.  It’s a way to perhaps share each other’s humanity.  If a religious setting, or house of faith is what comforts folks, that’s fine.  If this little girl and her family immerse themselves in religion, and that somehow eases their minds, then good.  Who could deny the salve that soothes the survivors, if that’s what works for them?  Though they’ve been murdered emotionally, they are still here, and have lives to live, so whatever helps, helps.

It is there that the benefit of religion ends, in my estimation.  Not only does religion reach its limits in usefulness, it becomes downright offensive, in so many ways.   In offering so-called “answers” to the tortuous “why” questions, the stories of religion fold in on themselves, like pythons eating their own tails.   The tall tales that Christians are telling each other, and non-believers, in the wake of this ghoulish crime anger anyone with a rational world-view!  In fact, the results carry beyond outrage; anyone that has been touched by the blackness visited upon this innocent family ought to feel compelled to come to their defense!

Especially the little girl, who is left to feel everything.

I want to defend her from the people that are telling her that there was a reason for her family’s death, and her rape.  Because, ultimately, that’s what the religious and superstitious will tell her, and not for any real good reason, other than to prop up their Bronze-Age creation myth.

Epicurus drove a stake through the all-knowing/all-loving God idea with just a few questions that are pretty obvious to any casual observer, didn’t he?  I can imagine the human authors of the bible continually writing and editing the works of Christian dogma,  how they wrestled with the concept of evil, and how they even made up a winged creature with a pointed stick to account for it (which is even sillier than the idea of an all-knowing and omnipresent, yet caring God).  I imagine the church trying to figure out a way out of that logical mess, and then coming to the realization that the question didn’t have to be answered at all.  In fact, the unanswerable nature of that question means an almost inexhaustible supply of customers, doesn’t it?

I want to defend this little girl, because it happened close to where I live, and even though she’s a placeholder for any little girl, or woman, or person that’s living through these unimaginably dark times for her, or them, or whomever.  I am aghast at what people that are so badly hurt are told, what “answers” they are offered, even if they aren’t asking.

After all, anyone that goes through this is inevitably told that these happenings “are part of His plan,” or “Satan’s work,” or “understandable only to God,” or some other such flaming outrage.  What an inconceivably tasteless thing to say to someone that has gone through something so awful!  “Your loved ones just had to die, and horribly at that, because God thought it was a good idea.”  What a horrendous line of thinking.  What positively empty words, bereft of any sort of decency or compassion.  “God is great, God is good,” and in the same breath, claiming it’s all part of His Holy Agenda.

And for what?  To prop up the proselytizer’s silly story, nothing more, a story which implodes under the slightest scrutiny, and is revealed to be an absolute sham in especially these sorts of situations.  It’s stomach wrenching to think that human tragedy is nearly always contorted to support some impossible story, without the obvious insult to the living and dead even being considered.

Perhaps some folks find comfort in the idea that mapping a story over bad events gives them some sort of order.  Rational people get that.  The random nature of this crime, and others, and of human happenings is scary. Randomness scares people.  It scares reasonable people as well.  It’s so often repeated that blind faith takes courage.  Really?  Does it?  Or does it take more courage to see the world as it is, based on the evidence and events as they occur?  Does it take more courage to imagine some celestial plan, or to acknowledge that, while life is generally wonderful, one is still subject to bad things that can happen for no particular reason at all?

Even so, the possibility exists that over in Knox county, that little girl just might find her only refuge in religion. If she does, and that gets her through life, then that would be absolutely wonderful.  Whatever shall ease her suffering, that is all that’s of any importance.  She would find no quarrel with any reasonable person, no one with a heart, knowing what she’s enduring.

But she’s just one victim of monsters, close to home, that’s been on my mind for weeks now.  Maybe she’ll move that way, into the soma of religion, maybe she won’t.  Nonetheless, so many good people, the world over, have no interest in any spurious tales of supernatural plans that demanded the pain and deaths of loved ones, have to further endure such bald insult to injury!  That it’s part of a celestial plan, that’s supposedly good overall, yet has to include the deaths of someone’s child, mother, or brother.  The rational mind boggles at this; and yet, the high priests and shaman take these offenses eve further, almost always using the opportunity to turn the emotionally vulnerable around towards their way of thinking!  “Converting the Hurting.”  I’ll bet that’s used in seminaries everywhere.

What to say to someone, what to suggest about the nature of the Universe to anyone in such pain?  Another subject altogether.  It’s entirely dependent upon one’s relationship to that person, of course, and one’s capacity for love and compassion.

One ought to start, however, by avoiding the suggestion that an all-powerful and supposedly loving “God” thought it would be a good idea.

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I’m a Schoolgirl

Published at: 11:09 am - Tuesday September 14 2010

It’s no secret that I love the greatest power trio to ever take a stage, the supremely competent Rush (and, yeah, that includes Cream and The Who, you fuckin’ zeroes).  You take three guys that are arguably unparalleled in their technical proficiency, literate, smart, prodigious, and that can keep it up for 35 years, still packing arenas to the roof, and that’s greatness.  It proves that rock critics are as worthless as clergymen and politicians (or, as Frank Zappa called them, “..people that can’t write, writing about people that can’t talk, for people that can’t read”).  And if you don’t like Geddy’s voice, throw out all your Led Zeppelin CD’s; Bob Plant sings on that higher register, people cum in their ill-fitting Levi 501s.

I first started checking them out because my Uncle Mikey played the shit out of their LPs in the late ’70s.  Uncle Mikey has that most stereotypical of American suburban upbringings, described almost perfectly in “Subdivisions,” from Rush’s “Signals” album, his middle class parents living in a modest, mass-built home on a street that was just one of so many exactly like it, lined up one after the other, the occasional ox-bow corner thrown in to make room for maximum density, chain-link fences for miles.  Fuck, Neil Peart might’ve been inspired to write the lyrics for that song by driving down my grandparents’ street.

Incidentally, my Uncle, while you might not have described him as amazingly good-looking during his teenage years, was one of the ones that was cool, and definitely not “cast out.”  He didn’t play sports, but he always had money, and always had hot chicks.  Always, even though he worked part-time for minimum wage washing cars at the Pontiac dealer around the corner.  I found out later why…once the statutes of limitations had expired.

Anyhow, the first time I ever heard Rush was sometime around 1979, when I wandered down into his basement bedroom, which was really more like an apartment, and as usual, there were half a dozen of his friends down there, hanging out…amid that smell.  That pungent, yet pleasant smell with which I’d become so intimately familiar later on in life, permeated the basement, yet somehow it never made it’s way upstairs.  I have no idea how he pulled that off; I wouldn’t have gotten the first particle of that weed into my house without my mom picking up on it (before confiscating it for her own use the next time she had to face her in-laws).  So, I wander downstairs to see what Uncle Mikey, Orca, Bozo, Zippermouth, and Ottomatic were doing, and there was not a word being exchanged between any of them.  They were just hanging out on the dozen or so bean bag chairs he had down there, and I remember the song was “Rivendell” from “Fly By Night.”

“Hey Uncle Mike, what are you guys doing down here?” I asked.

At least three voices, in unison, “Gettin’ mellow.”

While “Rivendell” was never one of my favorites, that was the start of my love affair with Rush.  I’ve seen them better than 10 times live, and never miss the opportunity to do so now.  I’ve had seats as close as 3rd row, and usually am never much further from the stage.  I was looking forward to this last show at Nationwide Arena (even though that place has shit acoustics for such a new place), but it ended up being more than me wetting my pants along with the other geeky Rush devotees.  Through a business connection, I got my buddy and I a Meet and Greet with Geddy and Alex.

I was in Florida, on vacation with my family, when I went back in to the condo by myself to take a few phone calls, watch some TV, and whack off.  You know, to actually relax while I was on vacation.  I was on the phone with a customer, trying to focus on what he was saying while simultaneously zeroing in on the MILF action directly below our balcony, when I heard him mention that he’s be in my town doing a 3D audio (however that works) production for the Rush concert at the end of the month.  My mind snapped back into focus, and catching just the hint of a whiff of some kind of hook up, I went on a mini Rush rant, how much I loved them, how I’d be there as I always am, when he said “Oh, well, I’ll call Liam and set up a Meet ‘n Greet.”

Any Rush fan knows who Liam (Birt, the Stage Manager), I got a chubb on the spot.  Probably a singular moment in my life, when the name Liam would get me that excited, but it meant that my customer was totally serious.  And, as it turns out, he was!  Two months later, I’m with my pal at the Will Call window, ready to grab our passes.  It’s the night of the big show, and we’re both giddy for Geddy and Alex, though I’m sure something’s going to go wrong, I know it will go just fine, and I’m thinking about what I’ll say to those guys when I get in there, and I open up the envelope, and instead of two Meet ‘n Greet passes…there are two tickets to the show.  Granted, they were great tickets, but I already had great tickets. I asked further, I dropped names, I gave a plaintive wail, but the nice lady that was in charge of the passes just couldn’t do anything.  I tried to call and text my contact, but it was a Sunday evening, so I figured he was busy with his family, or something similarly unimportant.  We retreated to the back of the entryway, out of options, nothing to but wait.  Refugees.

I looked at my pal.  Clutching his now-forever-unautographed Rush biography, lip quivering, eyes downcast, like a teenage girl kicked off the tour bus.  He was pathetic.  He managed to turn his head 1/4 of the way towards me, and uttered, in a voice softened to, “well, then…let’s just go drink.” I got mad.  I got my pal’s back, I’ll tell ya.  Mess with me, Cruel Fate, but don’t make my friends look like even bigger assholes than they already are.

OK, I said, but let me call my guy one more time.  He picked up.  He picked up, and assured me that something got loused up.  We clicked off so that he could call the Front Of House Engineer, which, in spite of my renewed hopes, left me dubious.  Like THAT guy wouldn’t be busy an hour before the show.  My guy called me back, and gave me the FOH Engineer’s number.  I scrawled it on my arm with the Sharpie that was in my pocket in big, Amityville Horror numbers, and dialed the guy that would surely be too busy to pick up his mobile.  “Hello?  Hello?  Is this Chris?!,” said Brad the Engineer, after only one friggin’ ring.  He told me something indeed got loused up, and that Mike The Security Guy would be down to get us.  Mike showed up, and stuck our laminates right on our chests.

I don’t know if that’s a Canadian thing, calling backstage passes “laminates” or not.  I’d like to think it is, and for that reason, I’ll not Google it.  For some reason, it made the experience of meeting my favorite Canadians just that much more authentic.  I mean, would you sit in a bar on Sydney Harbor and drink a Miller Lite?

As we followed Mike into the bowels of the arena, we thanked him profusely for coming to get us.  I started talking about how I got the passes, and the harrowing experience we just went through, and he turned around just enough as we were walking so that I could see the front of his shirt.  He wasn’t with the band or the tour; he was just a local security guy.  “Hey, sorry man, you really don’t give a fuck, do you?” I asked.  Mike the Security Guard acknowledged that indeed, he did not give a fuck.

We ended up in the bar/club that sits underneath the seating sections at center ice/field/court, and saw that there were about 30 other folks down there waiting as well, all of them nearly our age or older, mostly male, mostly nerdish.  Typical Rush crowd.  Remember when you went to prom, and there was that paper background, with maybe some cheap flowers that you’d stand in front of for pictures? There was one of those central to the gathering, with the Rush Time Machine Tour livery on it, and some crew member was standing there telling everyone there what the deal was.  No autographs (thanks, eBay assholes), no cameras (no shit), and that the pictures that would be taken would be online for anyone to download.  “Now, here are the guys.”

Sure as shit in a sewer, Geddy and Alex walked right in through the door just to our right, and took their positions in front of the prom paper background thing.

The whole process, which they repeat in every city, was pretty mechanical and orderly.  You waited in line, and when it was your turn, you walked up, gushed how awesome it was to meet them, you shook hands (if you’re a guy; if you’re a chick, you rub your big middle-aged titties all over them), posed in between them, and got a couple of snaps taken.

Usually, I’m the first one to say something irreverent, or make an inane observation in such a situation.  This was not one of those times.  I was in awe of other humans, probably for the first time in my adult life.  Well, I did tell Alex that I wanted to have his babies, to which he put his arm around me and said to everyone still waiting in line, “We’re dating.”  But that was it.

We probably spent, in total, 20 seconds up there with those guys.  Grown men, with lives, jobs, children, wives, standing in our respective communities, acting like schoolgirls full of peach schnapps and their first hit of X at a Jonas Brothers concert.

It was fucking great.

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School’s In, You’re Out, Shaman

Published at: 09:08 am - Wednesday August 25 2010

I love our school district.  It’s probably the main reason that my wife and I planted our flag here.  The school district taxes are high, to be sure, but it’s probably the one tax I don’t bitch all that much about paying.  After all, if you want low property taxes, you might get Morrow County, Ohio, the Buckeye State’s own little slice of Appalachia, where every mayonnaise-sandwich eating mouth-breather north of I-70 parks his trailer and half a dozen cracker spawn.

Anyhow, our district represents a happy little medium, where the district is forward thinking enough to have the educational tools and opportunities that the larger schools have, yet it’s small enough that, when some kid fucks up, especially yours, you’re going to find out about it.  It’s small enough that the sounds  crumpling beer cans and breaking condoms are heard by someone, and parents concerned will hear about it.

I’m not talking about other parents concerned about my kids.  They can mind their own fucking business.  I’m talking about my concerns with my progeny; I don’t live in Linden, and I’m frank and honest with my children, so I’m not having grandkids until I’m grandpa-aged.

My son is going to be one of the new kids at his elementary school this year, as are all of the kids there, because the school itself is brand-ass new, as in just built, new as Lindsay Lohan’s daily pledge to sobriety.  Granted, the last levy to be on the ballot failed, so the district won’t be able to operate the goddamned thing, but that’s another story.   Who needs books and computers? Play Duck, Duck, Goose all day, the kids will likely learn more valuable lessons from that then they would having whatever political agenda the NEA monster has come up with this year.  Kids usually learn more on the bus, anyway, truth be told.

The grand opening ceremony was last evening, with a ribbon-cutting, local politicians, and a large crowd eager to check out the school that’s been under construction for the last year or so.  A lectern was set up at the school’s main entrance, damming the tide of eager onlookers, while the Superintendent of schools dazzled us with his silver-tongued oratory, which he apparently Googled under “standard+school+opening+speech+levy+support.”  He passed it off to our local US Representative, an Italian American whom I asked later, “hey Paison, are you going to be able to unfuck us or what?”  (I did not say that.  I wanted to.)

Being that the school is named after a prominent Civil War Union General that was born in the area, the local historical preservation society presented what I thought was the highlight of the proceedings (aside from the assortment of hot MILFS sprinkled throughout the assembly).  They fired the cannons that they keep near the town square, which was promptly followed up by half the 1st graders shitting themselves.  Then, an actor portraying the General himself rode towards the crowd on a white stallion (maybe, I didn’t check for horse balls), and strode toward the lectern, where he delivered a fairly passionate, if confused, speech, as though he were speaking from the grave (that’s okay, though.  There’s no way I could have kept the present and past tenses straight either).

By the way, there was a significant delay while the “General” was making his way through the crowd.  Some mom next to me asked out loud, “where’s the Civil War General?”  I answered, out loud, “probably clawing desperately at the inside of his coffin.”  That’ll get you a dirty look.  But, hey, my wife chuckled.

I enjoyed the entire thing, really, with one major exception.  The superintended surrendered the microphone to several different individuals, and acknowledged a few others, but partway through turned the lectern over to the minister (or pastor, or reverend, or whatever the fuck.  I don’t care what you call, and I don’t care to keep track of, each of the holy men and their respective cults) of the local Methodist church.  Now, the Methodists are generally less annoying than the Baptists or the Nazarene, but this guy runs a church  that is at the busiest intersection in my town, and every week has the most empty-headed message one could ever find on a church sign, each week’s message being dimmer than the last!

Boy, do I despise obnoxious church signs.  I know there are a few websites dedicated to them, but none like I’d put up.  I drive by, and the internal dialogue gets a shot of nitrous, and not in the way that the chief shaman intended.

Anyhow, this guy gets up to the lectern, and immediately starts in with a prayer.  In front of a public school.  He did start out with “god of us all,” which might be interpreted as being a multi-faith introduction, but then he peppered with the rest of his prayer with “Lord” this, and “Lord” that, and we all know what that means; the spooky ghostly father-figure story of Christianity.

Could my community be well-described as a majority Christian community?  Sure.  Easily.  Does that make it right that a Christian prayer, from a Christian shaman, ought to be a centerpiece of an opening ceremony for a public school, built with public fund?  No.  In fact, it was highly offensive.

What business has this man, who deals in nothing but superstition, in the opening of a public education building, a new school?  Before you christians start to even think about some muddled answer, um, community, values…let me stop you right here.  The answer is zero, none, naught.  He has no business being involved; you can take that to the bank, cash it, and take a trip out of our fucking educational system.

“Let us take an attitude of prayer,” began this guy, before he started in on his plea to Someone Who Obviously Isn’t Listening Or Isn’t There.  Why don’t we take an attitude of respect for our Constitution?  Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion.  That’s the heart of why there is separation of church and state.  This is a public building.  Paid for with local tax dollars!  Neither prayer, nor your Invisible Friend built the damned thing.  Thousands of hands working literally did; from every landowner in the community that works to pay their property taxes, whether or not they voted for the bond issue, to the last man applying caulk to the windows in the cafeteria.

I was right up front, with my wife and son.  I did not bow my head and close my eyes, because I am not in the practice of teaching my children hypocrisy, at least as much as any human can.  I was acutely aware that the look on my face was probably that of a local whose shoes were being pissed on by a tourist, so I did the simplest possible thing.  I turned around, looked up at the American flag that was flapping atop the pole in front of the school, and smiled.

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Pope Creepula XVI

Published at: 01:05 pm - Thursday May 06 2010

So, I’m obviously pissed about what the Catholic Church has been up to, and not just what they’ve been doing in general for the last 1,500 years or so.  You know, what with burning people and thwarting human advancement for tens of centuries; it’s not only the Church fucking humanity in general that’s got me upset, but the more specific fucking of people, namely little people.  Don’t get me wrong; any mention of the systematic rape of children by the elders and administrators of any organization is infuriating to me.  But the Catholic Church holds a special place in my heart, as you might well guess.  The kid-fucking that the Catholic Church has abetted has become such common news that it can barely be regarded as news, but a the church itself (yeah, the lower case is on purpose now) is really doing a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the last few months.  The current Pope evidently has a record of helping cover up a lot of these crimes during his career, and that kinda thing is a lot harder to hide these days!

Well, color me white with red shoes, but The Vatican seems to be getting a little more defensive than usual!  What?  Is the Catholic Church starting to fight back? Are they starting to feel it financially?  Between all of these kid-fucking priests, and declining congregations, and having to buy out whomever the latest colossal failure they’ve named head coach of Notre Dame football, maybe so!  It is a glorious thing, however, to see this monstrous organization on the defensive now, instead of being in the position to suppress the Western World.  Maybe we really are making progress.

The latest Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, aka Joseph Ratzinger, aka Joey Ratz, aka the Pope that was probably a Nazi when he was younger (which is actually not as frightening as someone being a Pope), spent his entire career as a Holy Bureaucrat shuffling around pedophiles in the Catholic hierarchy such that they wouldn’t expose the Church to any further liability.  In other words, he was probably the hardest working guy the Church has seen in a long time.

So anyway, As I was tooling past Old Navy and Target this morning (meaning I was somewhere in America), I heard yet another news report about some powerful bishop, somewhere in the Western World, blaming the internet, gossip, and media exposure for the Church being in so much trouble for child rape.  Now, it’s perfectly natural for a clergyman of ANY stripe to react viscerally to any sort of technology, advance in communication, or the light of day; after all, the internet represents the latest quantum leap in human communications, and the internet is where religion goes to die.  Blah, blah, blah, Bishop whomever.  But then, then, this fucking guy’s mouth runs on (because there’s no way that his lips could have still been connected to any sort of consciousness when he said this) to say that the Pope, the one guy who is the interlocutor between humanity and GOD, simply didn’t have the training to deal with the “sex-abuse scandal” when he spent years hiding and shuffling these rapists around so that they wouldn’t get caught.

Training?

What “training” would one need in order to recognize that molesting and fucking children is heinous, amongst the most vile of human crimes?  What “training” would one need in order to deal with subordinates that engage in such hideous behavior?  What “training” does one need to defend children?

Wait, why does the one man to whom God speaks directly need training in anything?!

“Holy Father” my fucking ass.  He’s a fucking creep, hands-down, don’t bother protesting.

And something that’s always confounded me is this; why is there any talk about “internal rules” to handle these “matters?”  Does the Kiwanis Club get away with handling felonies in-house?

For this, you vampires get cuffed, stuffed, driven downtown, and have your ass fucking kicked by the deputies in the interrogation room maybe if you’re lucky you won’t slip and fall, hurting yourself in the process.  Then, after getting the shit kicked out of them all the way during the holding process for trial, with a nice 20 years in the can to follow, cast down with the worst of the worst in State Prison, getting the shit kicked of them by Gen Pop for the rest of their miserable fucking lives.

In fact, “handling this internally” is what gets mob figures sent to Marion Federal Correctional for  40 years under the RICO statutes.  That’s organized crime, motherfucker, and not just in the conveyance of illegal gambling, narcotics, and prostitution, but the worst crime that a human being can commit, which is arguably worse than murder in some cases!

Personally, I hope Pope Ratzinger gets ass cancer.  I don’t want him to die from it; I just know it really hurts, and I’d like to see him live a long time with it, before expiring of something else that’s nearly as nasty.  And I’m not making light of that awful disease; I’m accentuating just how heinous the actions of these people really are.  Perhaps then, he might get an idea of what it’s like to truly suffer, and having his rectum fall out just might remind him of how much pain all of those kids went through, throughout the ages, as a result of his legion of pedophile minions.

I suppose I ought to say that, if you’re Catholic…I’m sorry.

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Las Vegas Esta Muerto

Published at: 10:04 am - Tuesday April 27 2010

Las Vegas is a beautiful woman in skin-tight clothing, who, upon closer inspection, is actually a mannequin in heavy makeup smoking a Pall Mall and holding a colostomy bag.

For me, the city has lost all of it’s luster, and I can’t tell if that’s borne of my somehow maturing or if it’s the simple fact that I’ve been here so many goddamned times.  Since 1995, I’ve been there once a year, for a large convention in my industry.  The fact that I hate that convention more than any other work-related chore I’ve ever had to undertake probably has something to do with it, but I’ve also been out there another dozen times or so for fun, with my friends, my uncles, and my wife.

But I’ve had enough.  And, I can say with reasonable certainty that maturity isn’t a factor.

Vegas was fun, say, the first 15 times I was out there. I first went in 1992, when I was 21 and thought that dropping two rolls of quarters in the slots at the Flamingo was gonna break me.  Then again, in 1992, you could get any drink for 1.35, and a 20 oz. T-bone for less than $5.  The new corporate casinos were still wonders to behold, and I could drink a gallon of vodka with no ill effects.  There was a lot to see, and it was hard to gamble anywhere but Vegas at the time;  so, it really was a novelty.

Then, I started going out there for work in 1996.  The National Association of Broadcasters has it’s annual convention out there in the monstrous LVCC every April, and we have to drive our products out there perennially.  Back then, that meant not hiring Billy Bob Bigrig to drive our products out (our products are trucks), that meant us driving them out.  That was pretty cool the first time, taking the northern route through the Rockies and down through Utah, but getting the shit kicked out of you by crosswinds all the way across the country in April isn’t exactly sight-seeing bliss, and the convention is just brutal.

Somehow, during the 90′s and 00′s, I ended up going out there more than 20 times!  The convention trip was an annual and necessary evil, but the other jaunts were actually a pretty good time, up until a few years ago.  I am not sure what happened, truthfully, but I guess maybe I just got sick of the place that has everything to offer.  My wife and I went out there a few times just because we knew exactly what we were getting, and wanted to relax without having to explore.  Well and good.  But even that’s not possible any more.  I hate the fucking place.  The only things I’ve enjoyed out there during my last several trips were driving out into the desert to check out sights that are far removed from what you see day-to-day in Ohio, and playing poker, which you can do anytime with your friends.  Where once I saw man-made wonder, I now see facades and sausage factories.  The attractive locals are hardened service workers, and the tourists are walking in endless circles, looking for who-knows-what.

I also have a hard time figuring out why Frank Marino still has a job impersonating Joan Rivers.  Granted, he’s at the Riviera, and if you’re staying there, you’re either 80 years old, and thus a contemporary of Joan Rivers, or Asian, but how is anyone interested in a middle-aged cross-dresser impersonating an old lady that hasn’t been relevant since 1985?  Arsenio Hall is breaking news compared to Rivers, and I actually like her.  Hell, I have trouble understanding why people are interested in female impersonators on stage.  Drag queens are interesting on karaoke night, and are interesting to a lot of people when they’re alone in a hotel room with them, but doing a show or musical?  Watching someone put down mulch at a strip mall is more intriguing.

Another thing that’s worn me out on the place is that, for a city that seems to throw up a new billion-dollar casino every year, there’s actually little that changes (aside from the fact that drink and meal prices have gone up 1,000%).  For example, that motherfucker with the lobster from Rosewood Grille has been holding that thing at every bus stop since 1992.  And, frankly, Rosewood Grille ain’t all that good.

I’ve got a lot of great stories from that place; enough to fill a book (and get me divorced), but for this lifetime, I’m full up on it.  What happens in Vegas can definitely stay there; I sure as shit don’t plan on it any more.

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I’m More Likely To Watch Now, And So Are You

Published at: 02:02 pm - Sunday February 14 2010

Maybe you’re interested in the 2010 Winter Olympics, and maybe you’re not, but I think we’ve all seen the footage of the Georgian Luger ending his 90MPH practice run within a space of a couple of inches, courtesy of the gigantic, unpadded steel poles conveniently located right next to the finish line.  21 years old, and probably had no time to register any impressions of what was happening to him, which was likely a good thing.  I do think that he probably had a lot of time to think about how slick and fast the track was in the months prior to the Vancouver games.  After all, no one outside of Canada was permitted to have a go on it before February 1.  Maybe that was in keeping with the mystique and big reveal of the games, maybe it was a little Canadian home cookin’ going on.  Either way, I seriously doubt that Georgian luge training is anywhere near what it is in the more well-financed and sophisticated competing nations. That’s probably some scary shit, being less well-trained and equipped for an event like that.  It’s not like ice dancers from Panama are risking their necks or anything, just shitty scores from the Russian judge is all they’ve got on the line.  You aren’t ready for the luge, you might not be going home in one piece.

Frankly, I think that the worst part of the video footage (not that you can find it now on the internet) was not the actual imagery of the guy flipping endo into the supports, but the footage of the officials/coaches/spectators standing by and reacting to what happened.  If you would have listened to the audio during that segment, you would have heard a metallic “BONG.”  That’s not a beer keg getting thrown off the back of a truck.  It’s not the swinging rear gate on a dump truck.  It’s the sound of the man hitting a vertical I-beam, head-first at 95MPH, or 140 feet per second.  There are pictures out there of the poor sonofabitch being attended to by EMTs, but he’s very obviously DRT (Dead Right There), 5 mile-eyes-wide-open stare and all.

Frankly, if you enjoy the “speed” sports showcased in the Winter Olympics as much as I do, that poor young man paid the price for all of us that tune in for just such events.  I can think of no other reason to watch the luge event other than the fact that flying down a tube filled with the slickest ice imaginable, on the north side of 90MPH on a fucking cookie sheet, is inherently dangerous.  There are an awful lot of sports for which that’s the main attraction, and a lot of those are found in the Winter Games.  In order for there to be an element of danger, some people have to get seriously injured, or die.  That’s what danger is, risk of death or serious injury.  There’s a good argument (mainly because it’s the argument that I make) that the difference between a sport and a game can be found in the risk of bodily injury.

BONG!

I do find it curious that NBC and the IOC have seen to it that all of that video has now been scoured from the internet.  If you search for it, you end up just linking to malware sites (of which I have no fear, striding into the interwebs forest in a MacBook Pro).  The day it happened, NBC had no problem replaying the footage again and again, in high def, slow motion goodness.  And now, interest in the Olympics is surely heightened, much as opposing traffic on I-71 is when there’s a wreck.  I’m just saying.

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Call Brinks Home Security, Cancel The Alarm Service

Published at: 01:01 pm - Friday January 22 2010

Yesterday, I found myself in a familiar position, killing time between meetings, so made a run to a local convenience story and gas dispensary.  While I was in the venerable Ram, I heard a news tease that included a story about how a major pot operation in my town had been taken down that day. A major pot operation!  My immediate thought was not, “oh, thank goodness that those drugs, which would have otherwise hit the street in my community, have now been seized and no harm will come to anyone that I know or love.”  Fuck no.  That sentiment would have to be based on more than one premise that I’m unable to accept, being that I like to think I’m a sentient being.

Instead, I thought “who?”  This is a small town, and surely if I didn’t know of the person, I’d know someone on the pot farmer’s road or street.

I checked out the Columbus Dispatch online first, foolishly, so I didn’t catch up to the story until this morning when I found it on Channel 10′s website. I was glad, even if slightly disappointed, that I didn’t recognize the name.   The news station, in keeping with their brilliant investigative journalism, left out any mention of where the bust took place, so I missed out on relating to the story that way as well.

(Say, didn’t I learn in 3rd grade, about what a news story is supposed to get across?  I am damned sure I remember Mrs. Moyer teaching us “what, who, when, where, and why.”  How hard is that?  Is there any possible way that journalism could be centered around other ideas, especially when you are talking about run-of-the-mill news splashes?  Maybe you can excuse a TV station, though I’d rather not, but the Dispatch is constantly guilty of missing themost basic vital components of what’s supposed to be a news story!  I suppose that’s what you get with a one-newspaper town in a city the size of Columbus.  I’d imagine that, as in many cases where there isn’t any competition, not needing to win will attract the retarded and the lazy like misery attracts clergymen.)

Anyway, this guy was growing up to 100 marijuana plants in his basement.  I can’t add anything further to that, because that’s what he was doing.  Was he selling pot?  Probably, but without guys that grow and sell it, where are people that enjoy getting high going to get it?

I’m looking for the crime here.

I do not like pot.  I haven’t smoked it in over 10 years, and I simply don’t care for it.  Frankly, I think pot is for pussies.  I mean, where’s the thrill?  You fire up your bong, or your bowl, or your perfectly rolled joint (once you’ve admired it, of course), and then, after raiding your stockpile of delicious snacks cache, watch TV, or listen to some music, or these days, evidently, play XBox 360 until you get sleepy.  That’s fucking weak.

I prefer a far more dangerous drug, as do most Americans.  We’ve all got our specific taste for it; for example, I favor a Canadian strain that’s imported regularly, along with some stuff from Europe.   Then, I fix at home, where I hit my stash until I pass out, not to be stirred for fire, burglars, or sex. But, you can also be served my favorite drug at any number of establishments set up just for that purpose, with loads of other users.  A few hits, and you’re just like everyone else that’s using right there with you, looking around at who needs punched, and who needs fucked.  Man, even those uptight home-schooling housewives, they get a few hits of the grape-flavored variety, and it’s legs-up in the taxicab time.  What a fucking push!!

Of course, the good times come to an end, eventually, because the drug I like give you liver disease, and are associated with various cancers, and that’s no fun.  But you gotta live for today, man.  Those pot-smokers lose in the end as well.  They end up forgetting where the remote control is.

Getting home, if you make it that far, is a problem though.  Charged up on my favorite drug, you kind of forget how to drive, but that doesn’t stop you from jamming on the accelerator and having a good old time!  A pot user, well, the only thing that they ever do is sit too long at a green light, on their way back from UDF with a bag of Funyons and a 2 liter of Mountain Dew.  Fucking pussies.

The funniest, and by that, I mean the most ridiculous and sad, part of the story is that there were two children in the home, so the grower of this supposedly noxious week was charged with two counts of child endangerment.  Really?  I have no idea if the adults in the home were fit parents, but if there is anything related to the growing of cannabis in the home that would have damaged these kids, I’d have to say that it would probably be trumped by having a dozen or so narco-stormtroopers, all surely clad in tactical gear, as enforcement agencies simply are enamored with militarizing themselves these days, crash into the house, shouting like vikings, and taking custody of the adults.   For growing plants.

Sure, one could point to seedy visitors, in and out of the house to buy their weed (if that was indeed happening at that house).  Of course, the people that usually buy pot are such pussies, and so lazy, that they probably wouldn’t be energized enough to case the joint for a later burglary. As long has one has hidden the Twinkies, there’s probably no ancillary crime to be committed.  Charged up on my favorite drug, there’s gonna be fightin’ and fuckin’ and who knows what else.

So, I’m going to rest easy tonight, knowing that this grower of plants the government doesn’t like is now safely away from the public.   If we’re going to do drugs in this community, let’s stick to the legal ones that kill and maim a few hundred thousand every year.

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Take St. John’s Wort For Haiti

Published at: 01:01 pm - Wednesday January 20 2010

I did what I was supposed to do, after all of Haiti fell down.  I examined my skill sets, and, realizing that I was not qualified as a search and rescue expert, and I’m not a medical or health care professional, the only thing I could possibly do was get off of my wallet and send money to a responsible and honest charity.  That’s it.  That’s all I can do.  The only possible contribution I might be able to make is behind the controls of some heavy equipment, as I can run a back hoe or a Bobcat like LeBron can play pop-a-shot over at BW-3,  but it’s not like there’s a NationsRent in Port-Au-Prince!  Any equipment that heads there is going to be accompanied by half a dozen Billy Bob Bigrigs that know what they’re doing anyway.

Well, that’s all just an illustration anyway.  I’m pretty confident I’ll live my whole life, and never, ever fuck a rabid goat…or go to Haiti.  The two ideas are equally appealing.  I’m just saying, if there were something I could do without jeopardizing my family, or if I had a specialized skill set that was in demand, I’d feel obligated to do it.  But, that’s not the case, so I transmit monetary credits to an appropriate agent, and that’s it.  I took a flyer on the Red Cross with my money, even though they’ve probably got a pretty big administrative overhead, and even though I’ve seen them waste money post 9/11, personally, though I would not be prudent in disclosing that colossal fuck-up, which took place because they were flush with money, and fresh outta disaster victims at the time.  I did the research, and sent the money. Beyond that, well, we’ll see what the wind does with those seeds.

Here’s what I could do, though.  I could take heed of the encouragement and admonishments of my Christian friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and those Christians that are just passing by on the interwebs.  I could pray for Haiti.  Pray for the victims, pray for the dead, pray for the people working there to save lives and counsel the bereaved.   Then again, as far as to whom I ought to be praying, and why, I can’t get a straight answer out of any of them.  Well, I can get a straight answer, but not an honest one.  It’s all convoluted, frankly, and I simply can’t reason my way through what they’d suggest.

For example, Pat Robertson says that Haiti had it coming.  They swore a pact with the devil (I’m trying to find the dates on when that meeting might have taken place, and I’m coming up with nothing.  Presumably the editors at most reputable news sites are looking too.  I also am wondering if the Port-Au-Prince Convention Authority might have any records of when that accord might have been reached between all those Haitians and The Dark Lord).  Therefore, there’s nothing that Christians can really do but raise money post-God’s-righteous-and-holy-wrath.  After all, those voodoo-loving, chicken-blood -drinking so-and-so’s had it coming.

I saw an interesting, farcical letter from the Devil to God/Pat Robertson that’s making the rounds.  In it, Satan really jumps on the two Holy Men for associating Haiti’s problems with some sort of deal they made with The Angel Of The Bottomless Pit.  After all, Satan says, when someone makes a deal with him, they get prizes!  Women, money, skyscrapers, mansions, the ability to play the guitar like Clapton; it’s all good in this life, you just have to pay up at the end of it.  No way, says Old Scratch, that he has anything to do with a deal that would subject Haiti to 80% poverty, AIDS, cholera, dictatorships, hurricanes, filth, shantytowns, and then a devastating thrust-fault earthquake!  He might be the Overlord of the Underworld, but he understands a contract, every bit as much as his protoges in the legal profession.

No, if someone’s going to subject the world’s most fucked-over people to a cataclysmic disaster, hundreds of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands dismembered, orphaned, homeless, bereaved, well, there’s only one guy, really, isn’t there?  And, it’s right up His alley, if you are familiar at all with the Old Testament, or Revelations, for that matter, and He’s done far worse.

The only problem is, how do you ask a guy that would do something like that for help in the matter now?  Honestly, I would be worried about irritating Him, and maybe that’s precisely what’s happened, given the 6.1 magnitude aftershock that occurred this morning!  At least you could say that He made the first quake so strong, that there wasn’t anything left to fall down this time around, which would make this morning’s temblor a really, really mean joke.  Then again, this is the guy that planted dinosaur fossils just to fuck with everyone that doesn’t believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old.  He is quite the Cosmic Prankster, I tell ya.  You could, indeed, die laughing.

Perhaps it really was Satan that did it.  Or maybe someone else did it, someone in Celestial Middle Management that screwed up, and caused that thrust fault running right through the island to slip.  If so, then maybe all these prayers are going in the wrong direction; perhaps asking who’s really in charge might be in order, and more productive, eh?

Maybe those prayers ought to be directed towards areas that are vulnerable to geological activity in close proximity to substandard building practices? A pre-emptive prayer flood might keep those nasty subduction zones and seismically active areas on hold?  But what kind of fun would that be for an all-powerful being?  Kinda takes the “Almighty” out of things.

Ah, you know what, pray away.   You’re not hurting anyone, unless there are chores to be done, or if you’re doing it in front of gullible children, or if you are doing it loudly enough to irritate me.  Supernatural intercession is just like St. John’s Wort, really.  If you take it, you can make yourself feel better; really, you can.  I think that’s indisputable.  However, the evidence shows that it’s clinically ineffective.  Per Epicurus.  And donate blood and/or money to Haiti, if you can spare either.

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Whatever He Died Of, I Hope It Hurt

Published at: 05:12 pm - Monday December 21 2009

Oral Roberts, carnival hustler of improbable rewards and impossible punishments not just in the afterlife, but right here in the life we can all see and experience, in front of anyone with a ticket to the show or a television set, is finally dead at the ripe old age of 91. Good riddance.

The now-decomposing shaman was widely credited with being a trendsetter, the first real televangelist that ramped up the showmanship, with the healing, laying on of hands, and all of the drama that’s now part-and-parcel of religion-for-TV scams.  I don’t think that he ever spoke in tongues or handled snakes; he probably did a cost-analysis on those activities and there just wasn’t enough margin for those risk-reward scenarios.

He did come up with one of the Top 10 scams of the 20th century, though, because he’s also the guy that, back in 1987, told his congregation that God spoke to him, and told him personally, that if his viewers did not send in $8 million, that the Lord would call him home, that the Almighty would kill him.  I’ll be goddamned if that just didn’t work.  It’s almost as though good ol’ Oral was halfway through a bottle of Wild Turkey and said to himself, “what WON’T these fucking suckers eat up?”  Kind of like McDonald’s probably did when they came out with the Shamrock Shake and McRib sandwich (sorry Sam).  Sure as shit through an anemic Bolivian, his viewers came through with 8 big ones.

So, now he’s dead!  91 years this guy got to live.  Did he die of natural causes, or did the Almighty Christian God have a formula for allowing Oral another 22 years?  8 million, divided by 22…or maybe Oral lied about actually raising the dough, and God somehow got busy with locust infestations, famines, and tsunamis and whatnot, and forgot to grease Oral Roberts back in ’87?  I mean, to God Almighty, 22 years ain’t but half a heartbeat, right?  All it takes is fumbling around with the stylus on the Great Celestial PalmPilot, trying to check Oral off, and he’s around ’till ’09.  Is that scenario any more ridiculous?

Yes, yes, anyone that asks people for money in God’s proxy is stealing or scamming, whether they’re cognizant of it or not.  Of course, going through as much trouble as the televangelists do, they’re just as culpable as the thug that walks into a check cashing establishment with a sawed-off Remington 12 gauge.  In fact, they are far worse.  They not only know that they are stealing, but they’ve set up this huge bureaucracy within their religion…which in itself is nothing but a bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake, so they’re amongst the greatest of schemers.

Further to that, these clowns have gotten themselves set up to where they don’t even have to offer a product.  It’s the ultimate Ponzi scheme, bigger and more sophisticated than Bernie Madoff.  You pay now, through the nose, at a clip that God himself established of 10%, for a product (well, real estate, I suppose) that you can’t see now, and that you won’t see until after you are dead.  Kind of like Social Security.  Better yet, these religious guys have it set up so that they don’t have to even pay taxes…talk about God’s Perfect Plan!  That’s the first evidence I’ve ever seen of any sort of providential perfection.  What a sweet deal!

These guys are actually far, far worse than Bernie Madoff.  Bernie Madoff was a thief that ruined many a family, financially.  However, he picked on rich people that wanted to get richer.  There is nothing wrong with being wealthy, and wanting to accumulate more wealth, but it paints a contrast with what these blood-sucking scumbag preachers do.  These vampire evangelists pick on the people that usually can least afford to give away their money; the elderly, the infirmed, the sick folks that have no hope in this life, and a great deal of people that are simply unequipped to take care of themselves.  These human viruses, these Gucci-wearing chupacabres victimized people that have already been victimized by circumstance, and squeeze every last dime they can from them.

It almost makes me wish that there were a hell for them to go to.

These guys always make me think of my dead grandmother, Baba Florence.  “Baba” is the Macedonian word for “grandma,” so that’s what we called her.  She was the toughest person that I’ve ever known.  She died at the age of 58, when I was 13, of respiratory illness, and missed out on a lot of great years.  We missed out on more than she did; she was that awesome.  Baba Florence was incredibly generous, loved her kids and grandchildren fiercely, and only ever said anything bad about a person because cared about that individual, and wanted them to better themselves.  The older I get, the more I miss her.

Her illness was a long, degenerative one, so she was prime territory, good hunting for the televangelists.  Thing is,  she did not believe a word of what religion had to offer.  I remember her being asked about what kind of service she’d want, what kind of religious arrangement would work for her.  She replied flat out, “None of it.  I can’t believe any of that.  Doesn’t make a bit of sense.”  Being a person that was suffering so long for no good reason, I’m guessing she might have thought things out pretty thoroughly, and she utterly rejected the idea of the perfect plan, the omniscience of the christian god, and so on, and so forth.  To her, no, I guess it didn’t make any sense at all.

Thereby, according to a lot of religious people I know, she’s burning in hell, for all eternity, with monsters like Adolph Hitler and John Wayne Gacy.

Thereby, if you buy into that line of thinking, and believe that Baba Florence is in Hell, allow me to say, in the strongest possible terms, “Fuck you.”

I’ll be pleased to repeat that story and sentiment many times over, for as long as I’m alive.  And I’ll do so using such coarse language, as that way of thinking, eternal condemnation for such a dear person, just because she disagreed with a certain religion’s viewpoint (which has only been around for about a minute or so), deserves no more and no less.

You needn’t be offended, though.  It’s the idea that I condemn, not the person offering it.  That’s dependent, of course, on how tight you and I are, and I offer the above anecdote about my dear grandmother in order to provide some perspective.

Anyhow, there’s a Christian I know very well, a person to whom I have a sense of loyalty (though he doesn’t really rate it), who is the type of Christian that’s what I call a rubber-stamper.  By that I mean he knows the Bible, studies it several times per day, has run youth-groups and hosts bible studies, but he’s the sort that thinks that if you say the magic words, asking Jesus to forgive you, then not only does it not matter what you have done to that point, but then you can do whatever you like after that.  It’s weapons-free with lies and your cock, wrecking relationships and breaking covenants, as long as you come to Jesus at the end of the day, and confess.  Another great deal, if you ask me, but that’s another story for another time.  Bring up these televangelists to him (and the subject does come up, as he definitely reminds you of one of them), and he actually has the audacity to agree that, yes, those men are liars and serpents, but they sure have brought a lot of people to the Lord, and that the Lord certainly does work in mysterious ways, using these charlatans to save souls.

I nearly swallowed my fucking tongue.  Isn’t this the same Creator that’s responsible for the billions of galaxies, atomic fire, and the miracle of DNA?  But to get his point across, he has to employ these TeleThugs?  This man honestly believes this.  It never ceases to amaze, the backflips and contortions that religious folks have to perform in order to make their worldview line up with how things actually are.

I’m not a Star Trek fan, but whenever I think about God’s cash flow problems, I always think of that one Star Trek movie where this vaguely priest-like character leads the Enterprise to this far off world, where God supposedly lives.  God has summoned this priest, and Kirk, and Spock there because, of all things, He needs a ride, and wants to commandeer the Enterprise in order to get off the moon-like planet on which he was living.  It was a Holy Mission, and everyone was filled with wonder, until, during the climactic scene, something occurs to Kirk, and in classic Shatner hackery, he exclaims “Excuse…me…but!…what!…does God?…want!…with a spaceship?”  Of course, the God-alien goes gangsta with lightning bolts, and kills the priest guy, and the crew of the Enterprise barely escapes, which is typical of Old Testament God behavior, except for the OT God was a whole lot better at murdering and genocide, and likely would have gotten the whole lot of them.

“Excuse…me…but!…what!…does God?…want!…with money!”

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