Rougher than I like but it made for decent toilet paper.

So,
I wish I’d asked my Grandmother, before she passed…well…alot of things, actually, but in particular, if she felt that, during the 40′s and 50′s, we, as a Nation, were worse off than when she was a child.
I’m sure she might have told me that life had become more complicated, harried and that things were just simpler for her as a small girl.
Of course, much of that impression might be attributed to her having become an adult. One with the pressures and responsibilities that generally come with adulthood. Back then.
I don’t think, were she pressed (at your peril), she would have said that the Country was a less attractive idea, a perceptibly failing experiment. I don’t think she would have thought that, during the 40′s and 50′s, we were less morally grounded or even civil, for that matter, then when she was reared.
Now…ask yourself the same question.
I ask, because recently I was in line at an airport behind a Father and his two Children and they were both shockingly beautiful kids. Most noticeably, was that they both, boy and girl, had the longest eyelashes I think I’ve ever seen. So long, that I recall thinking they must brush the lenses of any eyewear.
My first instinct was to comment to the Father, “Such beauties, these two!”. Already smiling in greeting and raising my hand, minutely, to point to them as I did so…then, letting it drop, my smile faded and I looking away, as the second instinct took hold.
The one that told me Dad would think me a predator, were I to remark, in any way, on his Children.
It at first disturbed me, then saddened me, then, made me angry. Because I would have felt the same, were they my kids and a strange Man had even noticed them. much less thought to make comment upon it.
I can’t help but wonder at what else has changed in these past several decades. What we as a society have lost, that we once took for granted.
The answer I keep giving is…no, we are not as well off as we were 60 years ago. We are not even as well off as recently as when I was a child, though I think the corruption of spirit had already a solid foundation by then.
If so, if that be a general consensus, shouldn’t the next questions be to why?
What has changed? What are the common denominators of our decline?
The obvious, at least for me, is apathy,  a sense of entitlement, coddling, drugs, Family, Education, Faith, and decadence, both moral and spiritual.
One can argue or highlight the many significance advances we have made in American society. The obvious ones, rooted in race and gender. Perhaps not as obvious, are those in technology and science. From reaching the Moon and beyond, to understanding and mapping the human genome. So many fantastic, inconceivable achievements…yet…what will they, or have they, contributed to our the hope of our future, that of our our youth.
Is your Child better off today, than you, at that age? I kinda doubt it.
Are they safer, smarter, more driven, more compassionate, considerate, hopeful, or…dare I say it, healthier?
I kinda doubt it. (well…except yours, of course)
Globally, Seven billion, this year. Less than a century ago we were half that number. Is THAT the promise of the future?…boundless humanity? This, the boon of our advance…or the price?
There are no truer words whispered to us than those of history.
If looking back, at every redrawn boundary, every calculated resignation to the impulse of society, there could be a bygone appreciation.
We could and have done worse than to savour it.
It may well be all we are left with.

You put that nasty butter salt on the popcorn??...shhh...it's starting

So,
Do you remember that time you thought I might care to hear about the dream you had the night before?
Yea. I’m having none of it.
Obviously dreams are an extention of our consciousness. Just as obviously, they only make sense to those that have them.
What makes perfect sense to you, is much like a rabbit hole to whoever you are trying to detail it to. Trust me.
“So then..then I was like walking around and Billy pops out of a meatloaf and wants to use my metal leg as a gearshift for her sewing machine…”
Who the fuck is Billy?
And so on…
Now though. I dream.
I didn’t used to. Or at least, remember any. Occasionally, I might wake suddenly from one horrible enough to pull me from a deep slumber and even those, I’d not recall in the morning.
That was before I caught allergies.
I shit you not, in the last several years, either because of the mild allergy medicine I take or because of the pressure on some portion of some lobe, from my sinuses, I dream like crazy. Vivid, close to the surface dreams. Tangible, almost. To the point where I can actually recall thinking to myself…in my dream.
Just last night, Petey, having just left Office as New Jersey Governor and was celebrating now being the “ex Governor” but still keeping the title…I recall thinking to myself, in the dream, “man, that fucker can do anything!!” but then my phone rang and Joelle insisted on describing her husbands (routine) colonoscopy to me. Seriously??
I’d almost rather have someone else tell me their dreams than have to recall my own now.
I hate it. No fucking dream journal for me.
I wanna go back to sleeping and remembering nothing.
What little attention I’ve given to analyses clearly shows a pattern. That I only dream of those I need recall, not those I have any day to day with.
In other words, two of my Ex’s haunt me like ghosts, except not as ethereal, but in my face, “I thought I was rid of you when I set you ass on the curb” payback.
Fuck me running.
Karma? Purgatory, more like.
There is some consolation though. Occasionally, my beloved Nana stops by. Sometimes even around dinnertime and I get to relive her unbelievable chicken and rice. Even that though, I’d forgo, if it meant I needn’t keep driving that damn yellow school bus (empty) over the barrier on the bridge….again and again. The sneezing and congestion is bad enough… must I saddle up for the only six hours I used to count on without you?

No…you still can’t tell me yours. I have enough on my hands.

So.
Simply because I’m a better driver than you, and I am, may not mean I’m a better person than you. Credit reporting agencies would have us believe that their scores determine exactly that.
Perhaps we can come to an understanding.
I AM a better driver than you. Actually, it’s not even close. While I am a master, you…are a lemming.
Besides having ridden countless miles, in every conceivable condition, at the helm of two wheels and at the mercy your absent minded weekly pilgrimage to the grocery store, I also drove for a living and put more miles behind me in a week than you did in a year. Over one million credible miles in a decade.
So what? Big deal, Dr. Salk. What’s your point?
Is this…
With my bone fides plain and vetted, I have a proposal.
Why, instead of prospective employers and landlords referring to credit reports, don’t they ask for driving records?
You see, I believe there is very little that can’t be determined of ones character but by how they conduct themselves on the road. Not only that, but certain employers may detract from certain driving habits an asset where others might see a liability. A brokerage firm, for instance, may appreciate a person willing to take risks with other peoples lives but a school principle may be looking for someone a little more reserved and conscientious.
A driving record has already been adjudicated whereas credit reports are manipulated by a myriad of agencies.
Barring your little Brother or Sister stealing your license to get into a club or using your name when they get pulled over, there are few other instances where an identity thief would steal it and use for anything but…fucking up your credit. A solid ass kicking and a relatively quick trip to the DMV (compared to the headache of clearing an erroneous credit report) will repair what ever short term damage a sibling might have done.
Best of all…relationships.
Fuck Google, the next potential love that crosses my path, I’m getting a DMV printout and if I see any tailgating, DUI’s, Minimum speed, Handicap or carpool violations…adios. On the other hand…show me a couple of exhibitions of speed, reckless, or seatbelt and my heart will be hers.
Do this…
Your next weekly jaunt across town, go the long way. Get on the freeway and look.
You will notice (depending on the day and the stretch) huge gaps of no traffic and then, out of nowhere, a parade of vehicles, right up on each others ass, tooling down the road.
The person in the front is the one you want to date. Those following, you want working for you. Watch for the leader to exit and the resulting confusion of those behind. They slow down, unsure of what speed to maintain, having had someone set the pace for them. They change lanes, looking for another stream to attach to. Speed up and slow down until someone else passes them and they can again follow along. You might even notice (take the lead and test this) that if the leader wanders over the braille lines and back, those behind will likely do the same. In step. Lemmings.
There are a few obvious conclusions we can make from how some drive.
One might assume that the car, usually a Man, that passes everyone else in a construction merge, racing to the front, ahead of the hundreds of other motorists that feel it their civic duty and with an incumbent sense of fairness, to wait their turn…is a dick.
Chances are, he’s unpleasant, impatient, self absorbed and is very good at his work.
We can figure that the car that always signals, allows others to merge, relies on cruise control and is obsessive about obeying school zone limits…is very aware of others, kindly and dogged, but laid back. Also prolly very good at what they do, generally.
Let’s face it, I’m generalizing here. I’m gonna go all in.
Women drivers suck. Period.
It’s a fact, get over it.
You might, if you bothered trying, be able to convince me otherwise when I no longer see a review mirror turned at an angle, in motion, to apply makeup.
Till then…
Women simply don’t take driving seriously. For them driving is a tool, much like any other appliance. It’s supposed to just work. It’s supposed to work regardless how they pilot. Somehow, they were instructed that it’s up to the rest to watch out for them, NOT the other way around.
Chicks have just two speeds.: On the phone at 90 mph or white knuckled at a crawl.
You don’t like that?? Trust me, meee neither.
You might like this less…
Race is a factor. Say it ain’t so. If you do, you lie.
Hands down, the most dangerous public motorist, the biggest roadway hazard, is an Asian Woman, driving a mini-van, in San Francisco, with a KQED sticker on the back.
If renting from me, answering my help needed ad…keep your credit report and just show me your DMV printout. In fact, just for good measure, bring your registration cuz if you’re a middle aged white guy and own a Corvette…look elsewhere cuz I got your number.

Awww...so cute!! Can we keep him??

So,
If you might get their attention, long enough to get him to turn the wood chipper off and put the shotgun down or get her to lower the gallon of petrol and book of matches…ask them if they know that what they are about to do may end them up on a gurney, at some distant date, with needles in their arms and three colour coded plungers on the wall, primed to end their lives.
I have a feeling, in the heat of passion, as it were, they would reply…yes please.
I happen to think there are situations that might, if not excuse murder, explain it. I do not think that the threat of capital punishment would stay their course. If I try to consider their position, it seems to me that whatever manner of lunacy or desperation has them feeling so without options, so filled with rage or…passion…preservation is likely the last thing on their minds and possibly, even, contrary.
Determining premeditation is a factor for a host of reasons. Primarily, for determining consequences. While capital punishment may not appropriate for some crimes, it most certainly is for the larger percentage of heinous ones.
Premeditated or not, I don’t think the threat carries ANY deterrent in it’s wake.
More importantly…I don’t give a fuck.
The deterrent debate is absurd. Both, for those who argue against capital punishment and those in favour of it.
Of those that would commit unspeakable, violent, premeditated, life altering or life ending crimes, the argument should be more about the preservation of society, than that of the butcher. Whether or not the possible outcome may or may not have been considered, is inconsequential.
Put em down.
If they take the innocence of a child, with proven inability to be rehabilitated, the inevitability that they will foul again…put em down.
If they could be so callous as to consider (or even worse, NOT consider) that bottle of wine, that $80, that Snickers or rite of passage, above that of another’s life…put em down. If they kill or are in any way responsible for the death of a police officer or fireman, that have been sworn to protect me from THEM…put em down

I don’t care where they came from, how long they have been addicted to drugs. I don’t want to hear how their Fathers beat them or how their Mothers put cigarettes out on them. I’m not interested in their Faith or lack of it, where they came from and where they might have ended up.
All that…is personal and THIS ain’t. It’s business. The business of preservation. My life, yours and ours.
That ball of fur, was once a puppy, some child’s best friend, perhaps. Sweet, loving, loyal and cuddly…till it began frothing at the mouth.
Your dog is rabid.
Put em down.

So.
It wasn’t that their two knee-high children were running the aisles of the restaurant, full tilt and with ear piercing squeals in concert.
It was that the four adults, in the twenty minutes at the counter, never so much as looked over their shoulders once, to determine OUR welfare. Of the Children, they could be heard, no need to wonder if THEY were still there.
There, and wreaking havoc.
I’m not gonna lie, I considered an extended leg, thinking to trip one of the lil Cherubs, constituting squeals of delight into wails of anguish, in hopes THAT might have them gathered up and corralled. THAT might get Mom to take a look-see at what her child was up to. “My poor Baby!!”

I ask you, is it that you think your Children SO adorable that the rest of us should be prostrate in gratitude, if allowed in their presence? Are you thinking that by the simple measure of birthing one, you’ve bestowed some gift on Humanity?
I beg to differ.
Interestingly, when it comes to the Children of others, I bet you differ as well.
What we have in plenty and increasing in number, is humanity.
Of every other natural resource on the planet, it seems we, and cockroaches, are the only thing not threatening to extinguish.
So, I’m supposed to be impressed that you survived a trial that we share with the simplest of life forms, reproduction? If your babe emerges from adolescence not having reenacted a Columbine…THEN I’ll be impressed.
Mommy’s are by far the worst offenders. They can somehow introduce their offspring, duly named, into any conversation. “Gosh, the genocide and atrocities in Darfur…” “Oh I know!!, horrible!! it’s funny though, just the other day my youngest, Caleb is his name, was just reading, yes reading!! and only three, mind you!!, a pop-up book about Africa”
Yea, hilarious. A prodigy, no doubt.

“If you don’t have a uterus then YOU. DONT. KNOW. A. THING. ABOUT. IT!!!”, someone recently made me aware, in a heated discussion on life.
True enough, I suppose, but I also could as well ask a monkey for insight, they having the required components to be considered “in the know”. Of course, they’ve also been known to eat the young of rival troops.
Next time I’m dining out, like they do at Riviera, San Diego, it may be BYOBrats.
Best get a sitter, huh?

The Masons have a handshake and innocuous greeting, Program enlistee’s have the word “Anonymous” to be anything but. Undiscriminating Men have three quick foot taps from the adjoining stall to be co-joined, Deadheads, despisers of uniformity and The Man, have Tie-Dye and Birkenstock. Liberals have…the Bumper Sticker.

Not exclusively, of course. One might spy, if paying close attention, a sticker adorned to some large, gas guzzling SUV, suggesting one Right leaning candidate or another, even an occasional spirited rebuff, of a kind, directed at a prevailing Liberal policy.
Generally speaking, that would be the full intent. Not so for the Liberal.
For the Liberal, the Bumper Sticker is a  a membership card. A cry for other like minded Prius drivers to acknowledge them as fellow magnanimous, free thinking,

Peace Sister.

peace loving, erudite, progressive, intellectually endowed rescuers of Humanity. A phenomenon dubbed by a Friend of mine as the “wink wink” factor. Not nearly as concerned for Bake Sales or Co-existing as they are for you to permit or nod entry to that coveted and regaled spot, the doors and walls of the Bastille, so that they might fling them open!, knock them down!, allowing the prisoners of ignorance, so long chained and sheltered, to be free and warmed, nourished in the light, the illumination of their omniscient embrace!!!
~HURL~
I’ve actually argued the opposite is true. That were Liberals truly able to convert the masses, that they would flee the ranks in droves for less fed upon pastures. Disregarding the obvious,  to why the field might be absent or vanquished of herd.
That they might be common, unrecognizable in the throng, share a widely held belief or Faith, could never be acceptable to the sticky backed vinyl crowd.
Oh no.
For them it isn’t simply enough that they suggest, or propose. For them, it’s an insistence. That you be aware of their thoughts, attitudes and profane expressions. To advise you personally would never do. They need a vehicle to spread their intent. A billboard, on wheels. Hear me and give me due!! In the spirit of Bumper cars, ramming into your conscious or conscience,. for your own good, of course.

~wink wink~ C'mon in! We serve condescension, gluten free, of course.

So. 

There is so much I don’t understand, things that are well beyond my scope and give me a headache to even ponder.
Some philosophical, much practical and sadly, more obvious.
No doubt I spend entirely too much time trying to grasp concepts that I can neither alter nor have much real affect on my life or those I care about, usually with very limited results.
When against a wall of confusion, reeling from an assault of my own failings…I am not too proud to ask for help.
Please…
Why am I paying so much more than you in taxes?? Why am I more responsible to provide new roads, indigent health care, and Drug and alcohol  rehab centers? Why must I support, with my taxes, bailing out banks that would, and have, shown me the door in the past?
~waving raised hand frantically~ ” Oooh ooooh pick me!! pick me!!”
Because I smoke.
Because you don’t.
It doesn’t matter that you make other questionable life choices that I don’t, myself, engage in. Or that I have private health insurance that would see to my short lived hospice care. That, I at least have the courtesy to decline rapidly and expire without need of extended or repeated in-patient care.
If gracious enough to offer explanation, let me please just interrupt for a moment more, to stem the inevitable tide of qualifying liberal, condescending bullshit that you would offer.
It wasn’t second hand smoke that killed my Aunt…it was a drunk driver. It wasn’t second hand smoke that killed my best Friend Jeremy either…it was his habit of injecting whatever heroin laced cocktail du jour into his veins. It sure wasn’t second hand smoke that had a wonderful Man in Patrick, wither away to nothing, leaving us all behind, wondering how…it was his addiction to the unprotected embrace of others.
Before you even begin your sanctimonious rant…fuck you.

Say please.

Miss me with the notion that my choice to smoke somehow infringes on your own need to breath. I love your paneled banners of “Second hand smoke kills!!” plastered to side of busses, spewing more carbon monoxide in five miles than I could in my very long career of smoking.
I don’t smoke around you. I would never think to light up in your car or house. I cringe at the sight of the drifting cigarette smoke of others into anyones path and would never allow it myself.
If you think I reek, my clothing, my breath, my hair…I’ll say the same of your own choice of drenching in Patchouli. The difference, of course, I’ll not burden you with tariffs for the privilege of my having to endure it.

I swore, “fat fucking chance” , that I would EVER pay so much as 75 cents for a pack of cigarettes. I recently paid $11.
Fine. My choice. I could try to quit, I suppose. That’s what you’re driving at right? A campaign to have me quit by fiscal impracticality? Because…you care??
Fuck you.
I should quit. I should quit just to expose you for the fraud you really are.
Consider if I did. Who would pave your roads, who would see your children rehabilitated? Who would provide Emergency Room care for your landscaper when he loses a toe in a weeding accident (Those weeders are gnarly!!) Hmmm? Would you turn to whatever other life choice is out of fashion?
You don’t want me to quit. At least have the balls to look me in the eye as you bend me over.
I have to wonder…when you’re done with me, will you light up afterwards?
Might as well.

So.

"me me me me me me meeeee"