And then it all went black...

Was reading a book the other day. Its something that I do from time to time. I have been known to take in a little literature now and then.

The book wasn't your usual story telling. It wasn't a hero vs. the bad guys who had kidnapped his girl and he had to save her from the evil mountain fortress where they were holding her.

It was more of a "save yourself" kind of a book.

Self help, would be the way that most people would characterize it. Which is something that I've been reading more and more since the war ended for me. I like those stories. Some guy with no legs ran a marathon, some woman graduated from college at 87, some kid overcame the odds and played basketball or any shit like that.

But this one posed a question. A question that I've been pondering and mulling over...obsessing over would probably be the best way to put it.

The question was this, you're on a plane over the mountains, doesn't matter what mountains, doesn't matter what plane doesn't matter if you're alone or with someone, just you're on a plane and you're 35,000 feet in the air and the plane just goes into a tailspin and is headed straight for the rocks and all you can do is sit there for the roughly 20 seconds you've got left and think to yourself...what didn't I do?

Now at first that strikes me as the typical shit. Motivational nonsense that has no basis in real life. But then the more I started and continued to think about that the more it started to hurt, and the more it started to gnaw at me. What haven't I done?

Well there's the big one. Haven't had a kid yet. Propogating the species. Leaving a legacy. All that jazz. I definitely want to do that. If you were to talk to my fiance she'd tell you that I've been baby crazy lately. Always noticing the little ones around, and seeing how much fun its gotta be to have one of my own. Teaching him...or her what's going on. Showing them the entire world through their wide eyes. Its gotta be a fun thing to do.

Then there's other ones. Mostly selfish ones. Haven't been to Africa or Australia yet. Haven't been on a Cruise. Haven't jumped out of a plane for fun. Haven't gotten my Masters Degree yet, but I'm working on it. Never in my life have I ever actually been in great shape. I've been in good. You don't really have much choice on that one in the Army. I managed to finish 2 Bataan Death Marches (the memorial kind, not the real thing) but I've always wanted to do one of those Spartan Races or Warrior Dashes or something like that. I haven't quit smoking. I haven't written the book about Afghanistan that I know is in there. Hell its probably already here. I don't even give a damn if it gets published but I want to write it.

When you really start thinking about all that shit, you get really uncomfortable. Most of my life I live in relative comfort. Now given my life choices my idea of comfort is different from most. I spent 14 years in the Army and the majority of my non-military professional career in a prison so I don't need as much comfort as most people do. Nonetheless I live in a nice suburb, I drive a nice car, I earn a nice living, I've got a nice family, I've got a beautiful girl, and I don't really want for much. And therein lies the problem.

Inmates use a term called "thirsty" Meaning "want" Obviously if you're thirsty for something you want that thing. You can be thirsty for success, thirsty for love, thirsty for money, thirsty for power, thirsty thirsty thirsty.

But for the most part, I'm not. I'm mostly satiated. My life is pretty satisfying for the most part. And that's definitely the problem. I almost wish I had a need, something to really thirst for. Some deficiency in my condition that led me to focused action. But I don't. So I've got to create it for myself, and I'm not quite sure how in the hell to do that. But at least thinking about this question has shaken me out of that comfort that I've been feeling. Which is nice, nothing fun ever happens in your comfort zone.

But its a simple fact, one day you are going to find yourself standing before the man in whatever Valhalla or Heaven or Great Castle in the Sky that you believe in and you are going to have to tell your story. Now everyone's story is going to end with...and then it all went black. All the stuff leading up to that is yours to write. Hopefully your story is a good one.

I'll leave you with a little Hunter S. Thompson:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”

Critical Thinking Deficit...

The United States of America has a huge deficit. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 trillion or some such shit. I don't really know what the figure is. Truth be told I don't really think that the figure matters. Here's the thing, I'm no economist and I'm most likely wrong about this, but I think that if the US goes down then the rest of the world who has hitched its economy directly to providing our fat asses with everything our overworked hearts desire is going down with it.

China's economy exists because Walmart won't pay full price for GI Joe's.

So call me ignorant, but I don't really give a shit who the government owes money to. I mean what are they gonna do?

Call in the debt? Good luck with that.
Attack? Have you met the US Air Force? (and they're a bunch of pussies.)
Piss and moan like an impotent jerk? Much better.

The deficit that bothers me is in critical thinking. Mostly because as a nation we just don't do it.

Fox news, MSNBC, CNN, the Onion, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Daily Beast, The Drudge Report, The Daily Kos, and a million other websites, TV shows, and cable news networks exist along with their myriad of apps, emails, and social media bombardment campaigns to provide Americans with quick access to a prepackaged, approved, and vetted opinion complete with talking points and counterpoints for any argument you may receive from someone who regurgitates their opinion from another opposite leaning media outlet.

My aunt is famous for this. It was on O'Reilly! The (insert enemy of the week) taking over the country.

Really, how many companies do they run? How much wealth do they control? How much influence can they peddle?

Those are the real questions you should be asking when watching this shit. Who does this benefit? Why are they telling me this? What do they want me to think? Why do they want me to think it? What are they trying to get me to do?

Critical thinking is what keeps a person from being manipulated. Unfortunately we are populated by a whole lot of easily led lemmings. Now don't get me wrong, I'd grab a lawn chair and a cooler full of beer to watch the majority of them march over the cliff, but then again, we're going to need some of them to dig ditches and make Reese's peanut butter cup Blizzards at the DQ.

Here's a prime example: GUN HOMICIDE IS DOWN!!!

Seems counter intuitive to what you see in the media the majority of the time. Except for the NRA of which I am a member but I also think they need to fire their leadership and get a new crew in there. The one we've got is a little too cold dead hand for me. you can't really reach a audience of today with that sort of shit.

The problem is that too many people have a click-whrrr response to the world.

Someone got shot =  guns are bad.

Now let's do some critical thinking shall we. You can call this a platitude but its a fact. A gun is about as dangerous as a pez dispenser until a human being manipulates it. So that's the first thing.

Now will guns or the lack of them rather decrease violence? Probably not. There will be just as many incidents of violence except now those incidents will be with baseball bats, knives, cars, bricks, or whatever else the wackos can get their hands on.

Will the lack of guns decrease the number of people killed? Of course, if you mean only the number of people killed by guns, not killed overall. That's an easy one. However many people died last year of gun violence, you can cut that number down to...zero or thereabouts. I know we'd have to wait a few millennium for all the guns currently in circulation to get weeded out.

However, you'd probably have to add about 99% of that number to other forms of violence.

Ya see, mass murders, or when the killer offs more than 4 people in one sitting, account for a staggeringly low percentage of gun violence. According to Mother Jones (hippies) there have been about 62 mass shootings since 1982.

Sure there'd be a few here and there that shot 3 and didn't make the list, but I'm sure they are few and far between. So let's examine the other 99 or so percent of gun murders.

If they didn't have a gun they would've:

A) Worked their problems out in a healthy and constructive manner.
B) Found a different and arguably more violent way to kill the motherfucker!

If you said A. Please stop stealing oxygen and food as quickly as possible.
If you said B. Well then you live on earth.

Guns are a choice we need to make as a society. Guns in and of themselves don't really do much. Like so many things. They aren't evil. Fucking people are evil.

Before there were any guns, or weapons of any kind. Cain bashed Abel's head in with a rock. Violence will not decrease. There will be just as much violence, just a different kind of violence. Removing guns from the situation will just make violence the exclusive realm of the young and strong. Funny as it might sound, I don't see too many 70 year old men brawling with me if I ever decided to come into their house and steal their Depends. Sure it could happen but its doubtful.

Guns are an equalizer. Guns are tools. Guns are a choice.

You can't legislate critical thinking and common sense. Sure, if there are guns a bunch of kids every year are going to shoot themselves and one another. Personally, I think that a parent that doesn't properly teach their kids about guns (especially if you have them in the house) should be criminally liable. Murder in the Stupidest degree sounds like a life sentence to me. You've got a kid in the house and you don't lock up your guns and your kid uses your gun to hurt themselves or someone else...guess who's going to get their asshole stretched by Thunder dick in cell block D.

It comes down to this. Guns are not nor have they ever been the problem. The problem was, is and always will be people. Stupid people doing stupid shit. Evil people doing evil things. So I wouldn't worry about outlawing guns, I'd find a way to outlaw stupidity.

Just One Little Binger To Brighten Up Your Day...

New Spot...

Sorry to say kids, I've kind of outgrown "Blogger" and am moving on to a platform more comensurate with my skill set.

Here's the link

EMBRACE THE SUCK II

Notre Dame our Mother, PRAY FOR US...

The title of this post is something I remember hearing in "Rudy". You remember that flick? You know, the one where the kid moved heaven and earth to play for the Irish and he ended up making it into the game for one whole play about 40 years ago and got an entire movie made about him.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm jealous of the guy. He played at Notre Dame and got a movie made about him. Which is pretty impressive. I am by no means demeaning his life. I'm just naturally a smart ass.

Now Rudy has got reason to celebrate. His alma mater is going to the BCS national title game in Florida in about 6 weeks. They're playing for the big ring, the top prize, and whatever other cliches you can think of for the championship.

Let me get a few things straight right off the bat:

1. I like Notre Dame
2. I would like to see them win the game.
3. I have never attended Notre Dame in any capacity
4. I have never even set foot on the campus
5. Closest I've got is posting pictures of Touchdown Jesus to piss off USC and BC fans

Now we all know that Notre Dame is the most well known university in the world, football wise. They are easily the most storied football program in history. Sorry anybody who roots for the SEC, you can't hold a candle to a team that Jesus LITERALLY watches over.

I told you all of that to tell you this:

We've all got to get some perspective on life kids. And this doesn't just apply to college football, it applies to any sport. 

The team you cheer for...is not who you are.

The team you cheer for...is not infallible.

The team you cheer for...should never be referred to using the pronoun "we". For example, "We need to put some points on the board!" Sorry dipshit, Notre Dame or Alabama or Clemson, or Michingan, or Charlie's Steamrollers from the after work softball league down at the Y need to put some points on the board.

People live and die with this shit. And the funny part is many people who are crazies about their respective team have never even attended the school they are losing their mind over weekly. If you think I'm kidding check this guy out.

Perspective kids.

You are not your favorite football team. They should have no bearing on your mood or whether you have a good day or bad.

Watch, cheer, if they win...gloat (a little). If they lose, shrug it off. Because at the end of the day, you didn't do a fucking thing.

Sometimes I think its a disease. SPECTATORITIS

Maybe if everyone weren't so busy checking scores and who's banging who on perezhilton.com we'd have a long enough attention span to realize just how bad we're being fucked by the upper 1%

Think about it.

Oh, and to be fair, I can be just as bad as most guys. Except my teams are the Chicago Bears, the Chicago White Sox, the Chicago Blackhawks.

Lewis Black and Twinkies...

Saturday November 17, 2012. Lewis Black played the Chicago Theater downtown. I was there. In the very back row, but I was there. And he was hilarious.

A few of his thoughts to share with you today:

1. Ohio doesn't really mean anything, Ohio is just Indiana looking at itself in the mirror.
2. Since I've been eleven years old you can draw a line from every decision I've ever made straight to pussy.
3. Where was Tiger Woods Conceived? A Black Thai Affair
4. Fucking government. I mean really, with this deficit and debt its astounding. I mean really 16 trillion? Did someone forget to carry a 2 somewhere?
5. Obamacare is a bullshit term, there is no Obamacare. It is not the care and feeding of an Obama!
6. I currently have 1,993 channels. Exactly 1,990 more than I had as a kid, and oddly enough the same amount of shit to watch.
7. Fuck Facebook! Its nothing more than a glorified yearbook, except we're all in the same grade.

Those were the ones that made it into my notebook while I was there. On another note, it is quite funny to see the reactions of people as they are negotiating any social situation when you whip out a little notebook and start writing. Try it. Its almost as funny as facing the rear of an elevator.

Moving on.

Its now time to say goodbye to twinkies. At least Hostess twinkies. Hostess went under. Filed for bankruptcy. What's the first thing I heard? I heard that its all the union's fault. They wanted too much money so the company went under and now we can't have twinkies.

Couple things. 

A. You'll still get twinkies. Part of that company is the recipe for twinkies. Some other rich cocksucker will buy the recipe and mass produce twinkies to sell to the ever expanding waistlines of the sheeple. So don't worry, they'll be back. Only difference is they'll probably say "Made In Bangledesh" on them.

Second thing. Let's talk about this blaming the union thing.

First of all, there was never any mention of executives or senior managers taking pay cuts. Only union bakers and employees. To be fair, a few executives took pay at $1 per year. Right until the company had enough cash to pay them. Now why didn't they keep doing that when the ship was going under?

Hostess requested permission from the bankruptcy court to pay 1.75 million in bonuses to senior managers in the liquidation. FUCKING WHAT?????

These parasites have the nerve to ask to give bonuses when they are pitching 18,500 employees out on their asses? Oh yeah, they've got the balls. Now could someone please kick them in them.

Plus, some of the executives received raises of up to 80% while the company was struggling.

You can argue all you like. The fact is executives, on average, make about 231 times what the worker bees make. Now that my friends, is a travesty.

Close the company, give ourselves raises while the ship is sinking, and right before the whole fucking thing goes under we're going to flip the loyal destroyers another 1.75 million as a parting gift. Workers? What about them? Fuck them, they'll be there for me to tread on when I demolish and loot the next company.

I wonder how many salaries that 1.75 million could've paid?

I wonder how many salaries those 80% raises could've paid?

Maybe someday, people will realize that this company collapsed under the weight of executive salaries and executive missteps. Not union wages.

Hopefully...

BILL HICKS: It's just a ride

BILL HICKS: It's just a ride:

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