The other day I was at work when one of the new supervisors told me I was needed in the bathroom. "Wonderful," I said into the radio, in my badass imagination. "Does a customer want to defecate into my open mouth? Or does the management?"
It turns out that the little boys' room was out of paper towels and that one of the stalls "wasn't working." My job was to replace the paper towels and discover how, exactly, a small room designed for shitting in can "not work."
First, I found out that the stall was "not working" because someone had locked it from the inside and then somehow left--presumably by crawling under the door. I also discovered that I had no idea how to open the paper towel dispenser. This left me posting an "out of order" sign on the door and standing outside the bathroom with a roll of paper towels in my hand.
A young girl approaches me. She needed help finding something, and decided to ask me the following question: "Do you work for the books, or do you just work for the toilets?"
Let me just restate this. I work at a job in which a situation arose that prompted a small child--the universal harbingers of innocent truth-telling--to ask me if I worked for the toilets. A child asked me if I labor on behalf of, and in service of, inanimate objects that function only as poo receptacles. Apparently, in this little girl's eyes, the shitters are, collectively, my boss.
And my response? I merely sighed and told her that I work for both the books and the toilets, and that I couldn't help her at that moment. I sent her off to find someone else.
Anyway, I have a couple posts in the Tubes. The next one is a long one, several weeks in the making: The Food Monster Final Tour. That's right, more of my friend committing dangerous acts of shameless gluttony for our amusement! Take that, TV ads of starving, near-homeless brown children!
Showing posts with label mild racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mild racism. Show all posts
Monday, November 9, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Travels: Boise, Idaho (The Trip Out)
On April 7, 2009, RJP4 and I flew out to Boise, Idaho to visit our friend (and former occasional guest DJ), Stone. RJP4 is moving out here, and I am thinking about doing the same if my all my shit goes pear-shaped. Which, you know, is what is happening. Anyway, I decided to detail our exploits on this here web log for your singing and dancing pleasure. I will try to withhold anything that might result in either RJP4 or myself being arrested and killed by stoning. Which is what they do here.
On Tuesday the seventh we left the Wilkes Barre/Scranton airport at 6:09 pm on the smallest jet possible. "This feels like a bus," I said to RJP4. "No," he said. "Buses are larger." This is why I hate flying out of the local airport. The closest thing we have to an actual commercial airliner is a World War I era biplane flown by an old man in scarf and goggles. It is unsettling to be able to look out the window of a plane and be eye to eye with a man standing on the runway. Once they cleared away the goats from the runway by means of blowing the great horn we were able to take off. It was roughly an hour and a half out to Chicago, and RJP4 and I were seated behind a baby who screamed as if in a meat grinder.
Chicago's O'Hare airport is the size of a small city and is a surreal place to say the least. We had to go to concourse C from concourse F--and you can take a shuttle, but RJP4 has feelings about such things. We decided to take the long walk through the strange--passing on our way the skeleton of a brachiosaurus, and riding one of those movable walkways in a tunnel with blinking neon tubes on the ceiling. "O'Hare is a massive robot," I said, "and we are riding though it's horrible brain." RJP4 was unfazed by our surroundings, quite like the semi-sinister Willy Wonka in the tunnel of terror--I was almost expecting to turn to me and start jabbering disturbing poetry about being lost in the belly of a great phosphorescent whale. This is the airport in Chicago.
Our plane out of Chicago was a proper one, thankfully. But our seats were taken by a family with several screaming children. They were largely unapologetic, so RJP4 and I scrounged seats behind them against the wall of the bathroom. During the flight the children were yelling and walking around while the flight attendants were trying to tell the parents "UH YOU CANNOT HAVE THE CHILDREN ROAM AS FREE AS CHICKENS" and "UH YOUR SON AND/OR DAUGHTER HAS CLIMBED OUT ON THE WING PLEASE RETRIEVE." I assume the family was Mormon for the following reasons: first, they were as blond and blue-eyed as the American Jesus. Second, at one point the father told a bedtime story to his daughter about space aliens with large families who don't like black people. Either way, like many observational comedians, we consistently sat behind ill-behaved, screamy children. And, in one case, creepy Mormon children.
Once we landed at Boise we were picked up by Stone and his friend Veronica. On the way we picked up another of Stone's friends and went to a bar in downtown Boise called Mulligan's. It was odd to be downtown at night. I grew up in a place where those who trespass upon the night were practically gauranteed to be, at the very least, raped. We sat at tables outside, and the worst thing that happened was that a drunk woman came by and asked for a drink of Stone's beer. He obliged and she thanked him and continued on her way. No one was raped.
But that is not to say that Mulligan's is the best place to take someone on their first Boise experience. While the bartenders and bouncers are nearly suspiciously nice, the clientelle is composed of a strange demographic which I have termed "metal hipsters." They look like hipsters but with more tattoos and worse taste in music. They have long hair and scraggly beards and look like they will stab you to take the pins from your backpack. RJP4 and I played pool until about 2 AM. I am very bad at the game, and RJP4 was drunk, so it turned into an hour or so of flailing and cursing and shame being brought upon our families.
After last call we got a ride home to Stone's house. I went to bed assuming that Boise was composed entirely of vaguely threatening ponytailed twenty-somethings that view skateboarding as a legitimate and age-appropriate mode of transportation.
Next time on SQR: Day One of Boise, wherein our hero discovers that Mulligan's is a dive that caters to what passes for assholes in Boise--and that the city itself is actually quite nice indeed.
Stay tuned!
On Tuesday the seventh we left the Wilkes Barre/Scranton airport at 6:09 pm on the smallest jet possible. "This feels like a bus," I said to RJP4. "No," he said. "Buses are larger." This is why I hate flying out of the local airport. The closest thing we have to an actual commercial airliner is a World War I era biplane flown by an old man in scarf and goggles. It is unsettling to be able to look out the window of a plane and be eye to eye with a man standing on the runway. Once they cleared away the goats from the runway by means of blowing the great horn we were able to take off. It was roughly an hour and a half out to Chicago, and RJP4 and I were seated behind a baby who screamed as if in a meat grinder.
Chicago's O'Hare airport is the size of a small city and is a surreal place to say the least. We had to go to concourse C from concourse F--and you can take a shuttle, but RJP4 has feelings about such things. We decided to take the long walk through the strange--passing on our way the skeleton of a brachiosaurus, and riding one of those movable walkways in a tunnel with blinking neon tubes on the ceiling. "O'Hare is a massive robot," I said, "and we are riding though it's horrible brain." RJP4 was unfazed by our surroundings, quite like the semi-sinister Willy Wonka in the tunnel of terror--I was almost expecting to turn to me and start jabbering disturbing poetry about being lost in the belly of a great phosphorescent whale. This is the airport in Chicago.
Our plane out of Chicago was a proper one, thankfully. But our seats were taken by a family with several screaming children. They were largely unapologetic, so RJP4 and I scrounged seats behind them against the wall of the bathroom. During the flight the children were yelling and walking around while the flight attendants were trying to tell the parents "UH YOU CANNOT HAVE THE CHILDREN ROAM AS FREE AS CHICKENS" and "UH YOUR SON AND/OR DAUGHTER HAS CLIMBED OUT ON THE WING PLEASE RETRIEVE." I assume the family was Mormon for the following reasons: first, they were as blond and blue-eyed as the American Jesus. Second, at one point the father told a bedtime story to his daughter about space aliens with large families who don't like black people. Either way, like many observational comedians, we consistently sat behind ill-behaved, screamy children. And, in one case, creepy Mormon children.
Once we landed at Boise we were picked up by Stone and his friend Veronica. On the way we picked up another of Stone's friends and went to a bar in downtown Boise called Mulligan's. It was odd to be downtown at night. I grew up in a place where those who trespass upon the night were practically gauranteed to be, at the very least, raped. We sat at tables outside, and the worst thing that happened was that a drunk woman came by and asked for a drink of Stone's beer. He obliged and she thanked him and continued on her way. No one was raped.
But that is not to say that Mulligan's is the best place to take someone on their first Boise experience. While the bartenders and bouncers are nearly suspiciously nice, the clientelle is composed of a strange demographic which I have termed "metal hipsters." They look like hipsters but with more tattoos and worse taste in music. They have long hair and scraggly beards and look like they will stab you to take the pins from your backpack. RJP4 and I played pool until about 2 AM. I am very bad at the game, and RJP4 was drunk, so it turned into an hour or so of flailing and cursing and shame being brought upon our families.
After last call we got a ride home to Stone's house. I went to bed assuming that Boise was composed entirely of vaguely threatening ponytailed twenty-somethings that view skateboarding as a legitimate and age-appropriate mode of transportation.
Next time on SQR: Day One of Boise, wherein our hero discovers that Mulligan's is a dive that caters to what passes for assholes in Boise--and that the city itself is actually quite nice indeed.
Stay tuned!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Canada Jackson's Doctoral Challenge Vol. 1
Recently I have been engaged in a pitched battle with what one might consider fate, or destiny, or the cruel and childlike whims of whatever deity might eventually send me to Hell--I have been applying to doctoral programs in the mysterious realm of "philosophy."
Little did I know, however, that for some reason philosophy programs are absurdly competitive. For instance, I saw information online showing that it is statistically more difficult to get accepted into the Harvard philosophy program than it is to get into Harvard law or Harvard medical. We could wonder for days as to why this is the case, but the answer we would eventually come to is that 84% of all philosophers are dicks who don't want to share their toys.
And so with great darkness and woe weighing heavy in my heart, I began the application process. As anyone who has been in my shoes knows, the application process is designed to be awful: time and money consuming on a grand scale, most likely to keep out the shabby mobs of poor people and negroes that are constantly banging on the gates of higher learning. The application process is the boiling oil that is doused upon the unwashed masses from the parapets, and as a person belonging to the general category that includes "poor people and negroes" I was very concerned.
It started with the GRE, which stands for Mostly Useless Test Which Measures Nothing Save Your Ability To Purchase GRE Preparatory Materials and Classes. Somehow, through reverse mishap, I managed to do well. This caused what the Greeks call "hubris."
"I am the paragon of book-learnin'," I thought. "I will have my doctorate before tomorrow noon."
But, lo, does calamity accompany me always. Not long after I began the application process did my trusty computer--bearing my only digital copy of my complete undergraduate thesis--decide to pack up its belongings, don its traveling hat, and limp off to the great central processor in the sky. Furthermore, upon discussions with a few of my old professors, all of the schools I had started applications for weren't really what I should be looking for--in other words, not only would I not get in, but I probably wouldn't find anyone there to help me with the things I'm interested in. So there I was: late in the game, with no helpful technology and starting over again.
Also, this was getting close to Christmas, and I work in retail. Add "working constantly" to that list.
I settled on five schools:
Duquesne in Pittsburgh, Marquette in Milwaukee, Boston College in...Boston, Loyola University in Chicago, and Notre Dame. Only one of which I had previously sent my GRE scores to. So here we have 80 more dollars to send the scores to these places, plus application fees, plus the original fee for taking the GRE, plus the cost of mailing the material so it gets where it has to go on time, and sorry, kids, Christmas is canceled this year.
Today, Loyola let me down easy with a polite little letter telling me I might as well have spent my money on Fabergé eggs and cocaine, and my time on training my dog to burp on command. But all is well, for Chicago is cold and full of gangsters, and I would most likely end up sleeping in a bus station carrying more knives than usual in order to fend off homeless sodomites. All wearing fedoras!
(I admit that most of my knowledge of Chicago has come from various confused stereotypes and possibly dreams I've had.)
And so, children, we regretfully cross Loyola off the list of places I may fail out of in the future. My best guess is that either 1) they read my re-typed thesis, which is the profane ravings of a madman bent on telling Plato to fuck himself in fifty pages, or 2) they somehow traced me back to this blog, and summarily submitted my name to the Hague to be investigated for crimes against humanity.
Little did I know, however, that for some reason philosophy programs are absurdly competitive. For instance, I saw information online showing that it is statistically more difficult to get accepted into the Harvard philosophy program than it is to get into Harvard law or Harvard medical. We could wonder for days as to why this is the case, but the answer we would eventually come to is that 84% of all philosophers are dicks who don't want to share their toys.
And so with great darkness and woe weighing heavy in my heart, I began the application process. As anyone who has been in my shoes knows, the application process is designed to be awful: time and money consuming on a grand scale, most likely to keep out the shabby mobs of poor people and negroes that are constantly banging on the gates of higher learning. The application process is the boiling oil that is doused upon the unwashed masses from the parapets, and as a person belonging to the general category that includes "poor people and negroes" I was very concerned.
It started with the GRE, which stands for Mostly Useless Test Which Measures Nothing Save Your Ability To Purchase GRE Preparatory Materials and Classes. Somehow, through reverse mishap, I managed to do well. This caused what the Greeks call "hubris."
"I am the paragon of book-learnin'," I thought. "I will have my doctorate before tomorrow noon."
But, lo, does calamity accompany me always. Not long after I began the application process did my trusty computer--bearing my only digital copy of my complete undergraduate thesis--decide to pack up its belongings, don its traveling hat, and limp off to the great central processor in the sky. Furthermore, upon discussions with a few of my old professors, all of the schools I had started applications for weren't really what I should be looking for--in other words, not only would I not get in, but I probably wouldn't find anyone there to help me with the things I'm interested in. So there I was: late in the game, with no helpful technology and starting over again.
Also, this was getting close to Christmas, and I work in retail. Add "working constantly" to that list.
I settled on five schools:
Duquesne in Pittsburgh, Marquette in Milwaukee, Boston College in...Boston, Loyola University in Chicago, and Notre Dame. Only one of which I had previously sent my GRE scores to. So here we have 80 more dollars to send the scores to these places, plus application fees, plus the original fee for taking the GRE, plus the cost of mailing the material so it gets where it has to go on time, and sorry, kids, Christmas is canceled this year.
Today, Loyola let me down easy with a polite little letter telling me I might as well have spent my money on Fabergé eggs and cocaine, and my time on training my dog to burp on command. But all is well, for Chicago is cold and full of gangsters, and I would most likely end up sleeping in a bus station carrying more knives than usual in order to fend off homeless sodomites. All wearing fedoras!
(I admit that most of my knowledge of Chicago has come from various confused stereotypes and possibly dreams I've had.)
And so, children, we regretfully cross Loyola off the list of places I may fail out of in the future. My best guess is that either 1) they read my re-typed thesis, which is the profane ravings of a madman bent on telling Plato to fuck himself in fifty pages, or 2) they somehow traced me back to this blog, and summarily submitted my name to the Hague to be investigated for crimes against humanity.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Books: You're doing it wrong.
This is why I hate my job:
A few days ago I was yelled at by a customer. I was yelled at by a fully grown adult man because my store did not have Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Adventure Number 3. Please let this be for your children, I thought. But no: "I read Number 1 and Number 2 and now I want to read Number 3," he said, as if he could read my mind.
Sweet and merciful Jesus, you grown-ass man, have you no concept of shame? I swear, upon everything that may be considered by any to be holy, that when I am finally elected Emperor of these United States I will make it so grown-ass people who are unable to hide their Pokemon Adventure whatevers like particularly unsettling pornography will have to go door-to-door like sex offenders and pronounce to all and everyone that they are shameless deviants who should be kept away from children and easily lured pets. "Feed them to the bears!" cries Jackson the First, "Feed them to the bears!"
(There will be a bear pit.)
The gall it takes to harass another human being over something that should be carried home in a small paper bag and hidden under a floorboard, knowing that should it be discovered you would have to hang yourself from the rafters with a hastily scrawled note to loved ones saying "Oh God I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry"! "Monster does the world a favor," reads the obituary.
Now, I do not in any way advocate the taking of one's own life. But, if you are legally an adult with all of your faculties intact, and you get snippy with The Help because they do not have your colorful Japanese dog-fighting-for-children comic book, you should immediately attempt to end yourself. But if you failed so terribly at life you will probably fail at death, too. So ask your mom to do it.
Full disclosure: I recently bought a graphic novel (the third League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), but that has tits in it so there's a difference. Plus there's obscure literary references and off-color jokes about Shakespeare. But it's mostly tits.
Full disclosure: if there were tits in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Adventure Number 3 I would immediately resign and retire to my hidden compound at Owl Creek, never to engage society again. But, seeing as we are dealing with Japanland, children+tits+flashing lights=Saturday morning, so gas up my generator and clean my guns, friends.
A few days ago I was yelled at by a customer. I was yelled at by a fully grown adult man because my store did not have Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Adventure Number 3. Please let this be for your children, I thought. But no: "I read Number 1 and Number 2 and now I want to read Number 3," he said, as if he could read my mind.
Sweet and merciful Jesus, you grown-ass man, have you no concept of shame? I swear, upon everything that may be considered by any to be holy, that when I am finally elected Emperor of these United States I will make it so grown-ass people who are unable to hide their Pokemon Adventure whatevers like particularly unsettling pornography will have to go door-to-door like sex offenders and pronounce to all and everyone that they are shameless deviants who should be kept away from children and easily lured pets. "Feed them to the bears!" cries Jackson the First, "Feed them to the bears!"
(There will be a bear pit.)
The gall it takes to harass another human being over something that should be carried home in a small paper bag and hidden under a floorboard, knowing that should it be discovered you would have to hang yourself from the rafters with a hastily scrawled note to loved ones saying "Oh God I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry"! "Monster does the world a favor," reads the obituary.
Now, I do not in any way advocate the taking of one's own life. But, if you are legally an adult with all of your faculties intact, and you get snippy with The Help because they do not have your colorful Japanese dog-fighting-for-children comic book, you should immediately attempt to end yourself. But if you failed so terribly at life you will probably fail at death, too. So ask your mom to do it.
Full disclosure: I recently bought a graphic novel (the third League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), but that has tits in it so there's a difference. Plus there's obscure literary references and off-color jokes about Shakespeare. But it's mostly tits.
Full disclosure: if there were tits in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Adventure Number 3 I would immediately resign and retire to my hidden compound at Owl Creek, never to engage society again. But, seeing as we are dealing with Japanland, children+tits+flashing lights=Saturday morning, so gas up my generator and clean my guns, friends.
Friday, December 26, 2008
A Christmas Message from your Uncle Jackson
Merry Christmas, you little scamps! May you and yours have a lovely time worshiping, ignoring, or denying the existence of the deity or deities of your choice. Personally, my family and I spend the holidays remembering that thousands of years ago a child was born who would grow up to be tortured to death to save us all from some kind of especially nasty metaphysical pigwidget. We do this by giving each other scarves and eating cookies, and occasionally going to a movie none of us really want to see. This is called Catholicism, and it is weird. No one really gets it the first go-round, but fortunately we have an eternity of either damnation or stagnation to think about it after the fact. I subscribe to a service called agnosticism, which means I rightly don't give a shit about the large-bearded-man-in-the-sky and would rather watch disturbing and violent pornography anyway.
As most of you are aware, our friend and colleague Tyler hiked up his grumpy pants recently and clattered out a special Christmas tirade railing against nearly everyone. I would like to take this moment here to let our readers know that Sports Quiz Radio covers all kinds of political ideas--and while Tyler more often represents the Center-With-Mild-Right-Flavorings, I want to assure you that I am here to represent the far left with positions such as mandatory man-marriages and beating unwanted babies to death with socks full of nickel rolls. And, while we're outing our habits, I voted for Barack Obama, may peace be upon him. And I also must agree with Tyler that my fellow supporters of Obama tended to be more annoying. But that's mostly because I hate hipsters in general and that Venn diagram had a hell of a lot of overlap. Just like "McCain Supporters" and "People Who Cannot Read."
But this post is not about politics. It is about Christmas--which is a completely a-political time of year. This year my scattered immediate family collected in Scranton and drove down to my grandmother's house in New Jersey. Somehow my father had procured an audio copy of the only mystery ever written by Abraham Lincoln, and we listened to it on the way there. It was disturbingly awful. It was based on a case in which Lincoln was the defense attorney, and it shows that Lincoln was actually quite bad at his job. His clients managed to get off mostly on sheer luck, and he was never able to offer an explanation of whatever happened--even for the fictionalized story. Most mysteries have some kind of ending, perhaps in which the strangeness of the whole story (the "mystery") gets unraveled and explained (the "solution"). But Lincoln ended his story with what was basically "Well that was all quite a strange occurrence, wasn't it? Too bad we never figured out what the hell happened there. Might have made a good story." Perhaps one day he took off his lawyer-ing hat and put down his mystery writer-ing pen and said to his beastly wife, "Mary, I can't write worth a shit and I'm the worst lawyer in the world, so I might as well give up now and become the President of the United States and free an entire race of people from centuries of institutionalized inhumanity." It is unsettling to see an amazing specimen of human capacity fail spectacularly at something. It was like watching Thomas Jefferson inadvertently fly a hot air balloon directly into the waiting jaws of a crocodile, all the while screaming incoherently and helplessly. Or like watching To Kill a Mockingbird with all the reverent children and black people edited out. Or it's like neither of those things, because they are silly.
Remember, kids, on this most holiest of days, that even a middle-aged Jew with good prospects can fuck it all up.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
As most of you are aware, our friend and colleague Tyler hiked up his grumpy pants recently and clattered out a special Christmas tirade railing against nearly everyone. I would like to take this moment here to let our readers know that Sports Quiz Radio covers all kinds of political ideas--and while Tyler more often represents the Center-With-Mild-Right-Flavorings, I want to assure you that I am here to represent the far left with positions such as mandatory man-marriages and beating unwanted babies to death with socks full of nickel rolls. And, while we're outing our habits, I voted for Barack Obama, may peace be upon him. And I also must agree with Tyler that my fellow supporters of Obama tended to be more annoying. But that's mostly because I hate hipsters in general and that Venn diagram had a hell of a lot of overlap. Just like "McCain Supporters" and "People Who Cannot Read."
But this post is not about politics. It is about Christmas--which is a completely a-political time of year. This year my scattered immediate family collected in Scranton and drove down to my grandmother's house in New Jersey. Somehow my father had procured an audio copy of the only mystery ever written by Abraham Lincoln, and we listened to it on the way there. It was disturbingly awful. It was based on a case in which Lincoln was the defense attorney, and it shows that Lincoln was actually quite bad at his job. His clients managed to get off mostly on sheer luck, and he was never able to offer an explanation of whatever happened--even for the fictionalized story. Most mysteries have some kind of ending, perhaps in which the strangeness of the whole story (the "mystery") gets unraveled and explained (the "solution"). But Lincoln ended his story with what was basically "Well that was all quite a strange occurrence, wasn't it? Too bad we never figured out what the hell happened there. Might have made a good story." Perhaps one day he took off his lawyer-ing hat and put down his mystery writer-ing pen and said to his beastly wife, "Mary, I can't write worth a shit and I'm the worst lawyer in the world, so I might as well give up now and become the President of the United States and free an entire race of people from centuries of institutionalized inhumanity." It is unsettling to see an amazing specimen of human capacity fail spectacularly at something. It was like watching Thomas Jefferson inadvertently fly a hot air balloon directly into the waiting jaws of a crocodile, all the while screaming incoherently and helplessly. Or like watching To Kill a Mockingbird with all the reverent children and black people edited out. Or it's like neither of those things, because they are silly.
Remember, kids, on this most holiest of days, that even a middle-aged Jew with good prospects can fuck it all up.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Fair and Balanced
Let me start this entry off with a warning. My grumpy pants are most definitely on and pulled way up.
Over the past six or so months I have found myself increasingly apathetic about the news. This is an extremely dishearteningly trend for me especially since I almost became a political science major in college. At one point in my college career I could name every Supreme Court Justice from right to left, who appointed them, their religion, and one of the major cases they decided on. Since then I have avoided watching those cable “news” channels and reading much on the Internet. My last safe haven was the newspaper, and even that has been assailed by sensationalism and loss of objectivity. I find it increasingly hard to find truly unbiased news articles. I want to hear both sides of the story; I want to hear all the facts. I don’t want someone telling me what I should think or someone giving me their opinion. I want to come to these conclusions myself.
That is at the heart at my growing apathy towards much of the news. It is no longer news; it is sensationalism with no objectivity. This fact seemed to have become unbearably clear in the months leading up the election. My apathy often teetered on anger especially when I did read certain articles or more often when I spoke to people about the election, who often spoke with total conviction when they lacked any true understanding of the issue.
Unfortunately, the majority of these people seem to be supports of Obama. Too often it seemed people who supported him, and in turn, voted for him only understand two things in his entire campaign, “Hope” and “Change.” The have come to the conclusion that Obama can magically wave a wand and fix every ill in this country. Stop the war in Iraq? Done. Tax the rich more? Done. Save jobs? Done. Stop those evil Republicans? Done. Lower Gas Prices? Done.
It got to the point where it seemed that voting for Obama was not a political decision, but a decision made on what is hip and cool. Wearing your Obama pin around before and after the election was the latest fashion statement, not a political one. People blindly associated Republican evils with John McCain simply because he was one. Some of which he deserved and some that he did not. I found myself avoiding political discussions all together since I knew it would be less about politics and more about “how fat McCain’s fingers were." I did notice an overwhelming number of “election night parties” being held. Seriously? Is that what is fun now?
“Hey guys, let’s all meet at my place and watch CNN. That hunky Wolf Blitzer is going to me on, he gets me all hot and bothered.” Come on people.
“Hey guys! It’s a hologram! Just like in Star Wars!” Did someone say sensationalism?
“I wonder what type of dog Obama will get?” Did someone say loss of objectivity?
Now that the election is over I thought I would be spared all the crazy political hoopla. Wrong. I am now being barraged with TV ads trying to sell be “collectable” Obama victory plates and coins. It is a sad day when Montel Williams is doing commercials for coins with Obama on them. What happened Montel? Did you run out of “Who’s the Daddy?” candidates for your show? WHO THE FUCK BUYS THIS CRAP?
“Honey, can we get us that nice plate with Obama on it? It would look swell next to grandma’s urn.”
The realistic truth is that Obama will lucky to do the things he promised in his campaign. This is not to belittle Obama, but to highlight the fact that he works in politics, where deals are made and broken in the shadows, and everyone’s soul is for sale. The majority of this post focused on Obama supporters and how they “irked” me, but that is not to say that all of McCain’s supporters were leveled headed and fully informed. I’m sure we have all seen the Youtube video of that crazy old bat calling Obama a Muslim. Both sides are equally guilty of everything spoken about in this post, I only happened to encounter more Obama supporters than McCain supporters, probably due to my geographic location (The Northeast).
I’m sure I’ve ruffled some feathers in writing this post, and I’ll even throw it out there, I voted for McCain. I still really like Obama, I hope he does change things. God knows they need to be changed. I think he will be a great president and wish him the best. I’m just going to be realistic about it.
I just want to know if they're going to paint the White House now.
Over the past six or so months I have found myself increasingly apathetic about the news. This is an extremely dishearteningly trend for me especially since I almost became a political science major in college. At one point in my college career I could name every Supreme Court Justice from right to left, who appointed them, their religion, and one of the major cases they decided on. Since then I have avoided watching those cable “news” channels and reading much on the Internet. My last safe haven was the newspaper, and even that has been assailed by sensationalism and loss of objectivity. I find it increasingly hard to find truly unbiased news articles. I want to hear both sides of the story; I want to hear all the facts. I don’t want someone telling me what I should think or someone giving me their opinion. I want to come to these conclusions myself.
That is at the heart at my growing apathy towards much of the news. It is no longer news; it is sensationalism with no objectivity. This fact seemed to have become unbearably clear in the months leading up the election. My apathy often teetered on anger especially when I did read certain articles or more often when I spoke to people about the election, who often spoke with total conviction when they lacked any true understanding of the issue.
Unfortunately, the majority of these people seem to be supports of Obama. Too often it seemed people who supported him, and in turn, voted for him only understand two things in his entire campaign, “Hope” and “Change.” The have come to the conclusion that Obama can magically wave a wand and fix every ill in this country. Stop the war in Iraq? Done. Tax the rich more? Done. Save jobs? Done. Stop those evil Republicans? Done. Lower Gas Prices? Done.
It got to the point where it seemed that voting for Obama was not a political decision, but a decision made on what is hip and cool. Wearing your Obama pin around before and after the election was the latest fashion statement, not a political one. People blindly associated Republican evils with John McCain simply because he was one. Some of which he deserved and some that he did not. I found myself avoiding political discussions all together since I knew it would be less about politics and more about “how fat McCain’s fingers were." I did notice an overwhelming number of “election night parties” being held. Seriously? Is that what is fun now?
“Hey guys, let’s all meet at my place and watch CNN. That hunky Wolf Blitzer is going to me on, he gets me all hot and bothered.” Come on people.
“Hey guys! It’s a hologram! Just like in Star Wars!” Did someone say sensationalism?
“I wonder what type of dog Obama will get?” Did someone say loss of objectivity?
Now that the election is over I thought I would be spared all the crazy political hoopla. Wrong. I am now being barraged with TV ads trying to sell be “collectable” Obama victory plates and coins. It is a sad day when Montel Williams is doing commercials for coins with Obama on them. What happened Montel? Did you run out of “Who’s the Daddy?” candidates for your show? WHO THE FUCK BUYS THIS CRAP?
“Honey, can we get us that nice plate with Obama on it? It would look swell next to grandma’s urn.”
The realistic truth is that Obama will lucky to do the things he promised in his campaign. This is not to belittle Obama, but to highlight the fact that he works in politics, where deals are made and broken in the shadows, and everyone’s soul is for sale. The majority of this post focused on Obama supporters and how they “irked” me, but that is not to say that all of McCain’s supporters were leveled headed and fully informed. I’m sure we have all seen the Youtube video of that crazy old bat calling Obama a Muslim. Both sides are equally guilty of everything spoken about in this post, I only happened to encounter more Obama supporters than McCain supporters, probably due to my geographic location (The Northeast).
I’m sure I’ve ruffled some feathers in writing this post, and I’ll even throw it out there, I voted for McCain. I still really like Obama, I hope he does change things. God knows they need to be changed. I think he will be a great president and wish him the best. I’m just going to be realistic about it.
I just want to know if they're going to paint the White House now.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The Technodrome, Giant Robots, and the Collective Unconscious
On most Mondays during the Summer (and some Mondays during other times of the year) some of the Sports Quiz staff can be found at Cosgrove's--a nice, dark little pub on the edge of Green Ridge. Monday night is Quizzo night, which is fun for the whole family if your little ones enjoy hits of the 80's and 90's played at maximum volume, lonely old men, the occasional hip young twenty-something with nothing to do, and a host with a nearly supernatural inability to ask a direct question in less than fifty words.
I was there a few Mondays ago with my long-time friend and brother-in-arms, the playwright Robert John Parry, IV. As he steadily made disappear two white russians followed by a forgotten number of four horsemen (which would be enough to kill or at least induce considerable vomiting in mortal men), the questions became more and more sports-oriented--which is an area embarrassingly far outside of my expertise, while RJP4 is unmoved by our human proclivities for organized sport. Naturally, the conversation moved to a common topic of ours: namely, what in the crimson April fuck is wrong with Japan.
Well, to be fair, the conversation started out with Ninja Turtles. I am fascinated by the Technodrome, the lair/vehicle of the Shredder. From Wiki:
fig. 1.1: "The Technodrome at Sunset."
Even in this dramatic image, the Technodrome shows itself as an imposing and fearsomely ridiculous piece of equipment. The name comes from the German technodrommen, which means "big metal sphere with tank treads and an eyeball on top." Or, perhaps, is a portmanteau of technology and aerodrome. Which would make the Technodrome a really fancy airport. Or maybe they picked drome because it sounds cool, or because it sounds like dome and the whole contraption is kind of dome-like in a retarded way. The mystery continues.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Technodrome was that it was always spoken about as if it were some hugely important and powerful weapon, but always ambiguously. One got the sense that even those that lived inside the Technodrome were uncertain of what, exactly, it did. Perhaps its greatest weapon was the confusion it would most likely cause upon arrival on the battlefield--its mysterious power being its complete inscrutability. And what, exactly, is the purpose of the gigantic eyeball? The Technodrome spent most of its time underground. The giant eyeball seems like more of a hindrance than an advantage in that situation. I imagine it was constantly getting stuck on rock formations. Or perhaps it was just a functionless hood ornament.
Furthermore, one can clearly understand the advantages of an underground lair. One can also clearly understand the advantages of a mobile liar. However, the combination of mobile-ness and underground-ness mitigates the advantages of both. An underground liar is difficult to get to while a mobile liar could be anywhere. If an underground liar is mobile, you are basically constructing a massive tunnel right up to your doorstep--and it can't really "be anywhere" because all one would have to do to find it is travel in one of two directions: follow the tunnel that goes this way, or follow the tunnel that goes that way. Also, cave-ins would naturally be an issue. I doubt the Shredder was some kind of rock doctor.
Aaanyway, RJP4 brought up that in the Japanese version of the Turtles they have the prerequisite Giant Robot which the Turtles drive or pilot or operate or transform into or whatever (I believe I found some evidence here: wait for the credits for the weird robots to start appearing). I also recalled that the Japanese version of Spider-man has this same confusing and unnecessary addition as well. This naturally brings about the question: why does Japan feel the need to insert the Giant Robot into everything--even places where it would be narratively inconvenient for a Giant Robot to be? If Japan does a production of Hamlet, does he scream into a wristwatch at the end, calling forth an enormous robotic version of himself, garbed in gunmetal with its trademark "ray of metaphysical doubt" weapon? And yet, here is Peter Parker, humble freelance photographer struggling to pay the rent--and also endowed with a robot the size of a skyscraper. With which to fight...gang members? Ah, like opening a can of peaches with a shotgun.
Because of the Giant Robots omnipresence not only in Japan's homegrown cultural artifacts but also being shoehorned into their imports and transliterations--regardless of the appropriateness--it becomes clear that the Giant Robot is some kind of Japo-Jungian archetype. Kind of like how all American heroes are basically cowboys in different wardrobes and situations...which is representative of our unconscious love of gay men.
RJP4 and I then spent the next hour or so trying to decipher what the Giant Robot may mean as a cultural symbol. I think most of Japan's fucked-uppedness in the eyes of the West can be traced back to the whole we dropped the World's most devastating weapon on them--twice. Unfathomable violence and destruction has the tendency to make people a little weird. Is it any wonder that the Japanese culture fetishizes innocence to a degree that would embarrass Holden Caufield? I mean, we disintegrated their children.
But that is really a separate and more disturbing discussion. I think that the Giant Robot fetish can also be traced back to that whole atomic business. It makes sense that a people that affected by devastating technology would in turn attempt to anthropomorphize and redirect that technology as some kind of protector. And who is it that almost always pilots or controls these Giant Robots? At least, in the original Japanese TV shows, it's most often children. Done and done. Another culture psychoanalyzed by Canada Jackson and RJP4, Existential Detectives.
The West has their own cultural warnings against nuclear warfare: post-apocalyptic visions of the future where the land is afire and Mel Gibson wanders in the midst of murder machines or vampires or zombies or vampire-zombies. But all of these are insufficient caveats. The strongest reason why we should never use nuclear arms is Japan. Japan shows us that the atomic bomb is more of a pervert bomb than anything else, and we would only surive through fondling each other on subways and showing hardcore animated sex on Saturday mornings.
"Look upon my works, ye mighty..."
I was there a few Mondays ago with my long-time friend and brother-in-arms, the playwright Robert John Parry, IV. As he steadily made disappear two white russians followed by a forgotten number of four horsemen (which would be enough to kill or at least induce considerable vomiting in mortal men), the questions became more and more sports-oriented--which is an area embarrassingly far outside of my expertise, while RJP4 is unmoved by our human proclivities for organized sport. Naturally, the conversation moved to a common topic of ours: namely, what in the crimson April fuck is wrong with Japan.
Well, to be fair, the conversation started out with Ninja Turtles. I am fascinated by the Technodrome, the lair/vehicle of the Shredder. From Wiki:
fig. 1.1: "The Technodrome at Sunset."Even in this dramatic image, the Technodrome shows itself as an imposing and fearsomely ridiculous piece of equipment. The name comes from the German technodrommen, which means "big metal sphere with tank treads and an eyeball on top." Or, perhaps, is a portmanteau of technology and aerodrome. Which would make the Technodrome a really fancy airport. Or maybe they picked drome because it sounds cool, or because it sounds like dome and the whole contraption is kind of dome-like in a retarded way. The mystery continues.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Technodrome was that it was always spoken about as if it were some hugely important and powerful weapon, but always ambiguously. One got the sense that even those that lived inside the Technodrome were uncertain of what, exactly, it did. Perhaps its greatest weapon was the confusion it would most likely cause upon arrival on the battlefield--its mysterious power being its complete inscrutability. And what, exactly, is the purpose of the gigantic eyeball? The Technodrome spent most of its time underground. The giant eyeball seems like more of a hindrance than an advantage in that situation. I imagine it was constantly getting stuck on rock formations. Or perhaps it was just a functionless hood ornament.
Furthermore, one can clearly understand the advantages of an underground lair. One can also clearly understand the advantages of a mobile liar. However, the combination of mobile-ness and underground-ness mitigates the advantages of both. An underground liar is difficult to get to while a mobile liar could be anywhere. If an underground liar is mobile, you are basically constructing a massive tunnel right up to your doorstep--and it can't really "be anywhere" because all one would have to do to find it is travel in one of two directions: follow the tunnel that goes this way, or follow the tunnel that goes that way. Also, cave-ins would naturally be an issue. I doubt the Shredder was some kind of rock doctor.
Aaanyway, RJP4 brought up that in the Japanese version of the Turtles they have the prerequisite Giant Robot which the Turtles drive or pilot or operate or transform into or whatever (I believe I found some evidence here: wait for the credits for the weird robots to start appearing). I also recalled that the Japanese version of Spider-man has this same confusing and unnecessary addition as well. This naturally brings about the question: why does Japan feel the need to insert the Giant Robot into everything--even places where it would be narratively inconvenient for a Giant Robot to be? If Japan does a production of Hamlet, does he scream into a wristwatch at the end, calling forth an enormous robotic version of himself, garbed in gunmetal with its trademark "ray of metaphysical doubt" weapon? And yet, here is Peter Parker, humble freelance photographer struggling to pay the rent--and also endowed with a robot the size of a skyscraper. With which to fight...gang members? Ah, like opening a can of peaches with a shotgun.
Because of the Giant Robots omnipresence not only in Japan's homegrown cultural artifacts but also being shoehorned into their imports and transliterations--regardless of the appropriateness--it becomes clear that the Giant Robot is some kind of Japo-Jungian archetype. Kind of like how all American heroes are basically cowboys in different wardrobes and situations...which is representative of our unconscious love of gay men.
RJP4 and I then spent the next hour or so trying to decipher what the Giant Robot may mean as a cultural symbol. I think most of Japan's fucked-uppedness in the eyes of the West can be traced back to the whole we dropped the World's most devastating weapon on them--twice. Unfathomable violence and destruction has the tendency to make people a little weird. Is it any wonder that the Japanese culture fetishizes innocence to a degree that would embarrass Holden Caufield? I mean, we disintegrated their children.
But that is really a separate and more disturbing discussion. I think that the Giant Robot fetish can also be traced back to that whole atomic business. It makes sense that a people that affected by devastating technology would in turn attempt to anthropomorphize and redirect that technology as some kind of protector. And who is it that almost always pilots or controls these Giant Robots? At least, in the original Japanese TV shows, it's most often children. Done and done. Another culture psychoanalyzed by Canada Jackson and RJP4, Existential Detectives.
The West has their own cultural warnings against nuclear warfare: post-apocalyptic visions of the future where the land is afire and Mel Gibson wanders in the midst of murder machines or vampires or zombies or vampire-zombies. But all of these are insufficient caveats. The strongest reason why we should never use nuclear arms is Japan. Japan shows us that the atomic bomb is more of a pervert bomb than anything else, and we would only surive through fondling each other on subways and showing hardcore animated sex on Saturday mornings.
"Look upon my works, ye mighty..."
But then, perhaps a couple of 20-something Japanese losers are examining our precious Technodrome and proclaiming how it clearly shows our obscene American obsession with small-to-moderate-sized robots and of-age, consenting human sexual partners. Is there nothing that relativism cannot fix?
Friday, December 12, 2008
The Marty McFly of the digital age
I work at a local book store--shall we call it, perhaps, "[Demarcations]." Now, this being one of the few book stores in the area (draw from that fact what you will) we get some interesting people. Most of them are just unremarkably crazy. For instance, there is a person who regularly vomits in the men's room. This is not really worth much hullabaloo because this person has what we might call brain and behavioral problems, which means he may think that it is OK to purge oneself on the floor of a public place. This is something that everyone knows crazy people do, so why blog about it? It is not blogworthy to say that a crazy person did something that, to non-crazy people, appears crazy. (I imagine that crazy people have a kind of supra-sane communication and understanding, and that other crazy people would respond to a person purposely vomiting in public with sage nods and "good shows" all around. But then again I am not a doctor and am, by most rubrics, mentally retarded.)
But beyond the shuffling and vomiting hordes, [Demarcations] also provides its many services to some genuinely astonishing people. Tonight I had the pleasure of helping a young boy who had clearly traveled through space and time from the distant lands of what can only be called "1992."
(I have done a Google Image Search of the phrase "1992" in order to better show what I mean, but I got distracted by one of the results:
This woman, who looks considerably like television's Ricky Gervais. She is also a "traffic manager" from 1992.)
At first I was struck by the time traveler's appearance: light blue tapered jeans; an oversized striped sweater of the colors green, orange, and red; white high top sneakers; a green down vest; and a perfectly shaped blond semi-mullet. Unlike a regular mullet, which was worn primarily by the lower class (a tradition carried on today only by idiot sub-humans), the semi-mullet was the rich man's mullet--being business in the front and slightly more drunken business in the back. For those of us who grew up televisually inclined, think of the blond Taylor child on Home Improvement.
Next came the mysterious time-wanderer's request: He wanted the Simpsons. "Ye Gods!" thought I. Trapped in the confines of the early nineties, this poor soul has yet to see the fate of the Simpsons! Sure that he would not believe me, I--with heavy heart--led him back to the glass DVD cases, where I unlocked for him seasons four and five.
After my brief encounter, I thought that he had gone. But he returned again to continue marveling me with his antiquated tastes and behaviors. He approached me, apologizing for taking up my time again. Can you imagine? A child! Apologizing and being needlessly polite! He wanted to purchase another boxed set--this one of some wrestling business. How can this boy afford all these boxed sets, I thought. But then, slapping my forehead, I remembered: the nineties were times of economic prosperity. Mulleted children with day glow slap bracelets and deep seated fears of a Negro President scampered around buying ridiculous shit all the time. Such a strange and terrifying world this boy had come from: a land where Sonic the Hedgehog is a cultural icon, where the "overall" is not extinct, and Star Wars--Oh! Those beautiful Star Wars!--remains unblemished. He probably still played outside, thought computers were only for doing math problems, and had never called anyone a "gay ass bitch faggot" after they "killed" him in cops and robbers.
As he left the building--surely to disappear in a ball of lightning--I could not help but think of such a brave old world.
But then some crazy motherfucker tossed his biscuits in the bathroom.
But beyond the shuffling and vomiting hordes, [Demarcations] also provides its many services to some genuinely astonishing people. Tonight I had the pleasure of helping a young boy who had clearly traveled through space and time from the distant lands of what can only be called "1992."
(I have done a Google Image Search of the phrase "1992" in order to better show what I mean, but I got distracted by one of the results:
This woman, who looks considerably like television's Ricky Gervais. She is also a "traffic manager" from 1992.)At first I was struck by the time traveler's appearance: light blue tapered jeans; an oversized striped sweater of the colors green, orange, and red; white high top sneakers; a green down vest; and a perfectly shaped blond semi-mullet. Unlike a regular mullet, which was worn primarily by the lower class (a tradition carried on today only by idiot sub-humans), the semi-mullet was the rich man's mullet--being business in the front and slightly more drunken business in the back. For those of us who grew up televisually inclined, think of the blond Taylor child on Home Improvement.
Next came the mysterious time-wanderer's request: He wanted the Simpsons. "Ye Gods!" thought I. Trapped in the confines of the early nineties, this poor soul has yet to see the fate of the Simpsons! Sure that he would not believe me, I--with heavy heart--led him back to the glass DVD cases, where I unlocked for him seasons four and five.
After my brief encounter, I thought that he had gone. But he returned again to continue marveling me with his antiquated tastes and behaviors. He approached me, apologizing for taking up my time again. Can you imagine? A child! Apologizing and being needlessly polite! He wanted to purchase another boxed set--this one of some wrestling business. How can this boy afford all these boxed sets, I thought. But then, slapping my forehead, I remembered: the nineties were times of economic prosperity. Mulleted children with day glow slap bracelets and deep seated fears of a Negro President scampered around buying ridiculous shit all the time. Such a strange and terrifying world this boy had come from: a land where Sonic the Hedgehog is a cultural icon, where the "overall" is not extinct, and Star Wars--Oh! Those beautiful Star Wars!--remains unblemished. He probably still played outside, thought computers were only for doing math problems, and had never called anyone a "gay ass bitch faggot" after they "killed" him in cops and robbers.
As he left the building--surely to disappear in a ball of lightning--I could not help but think of such a brave old world.
But then some crazy motherfucker tossed his biscuits in the bathroom.
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