A few years back I was looking into resources concerning child support, namely what kind of legal protections I might have and how to exercise them. Really I was hoping for some kind of forum that would at least give me some legal jargon that I could further research on. In my meanderings, the phrase “men’s rights” kept coming up over and over again. Thinking that I had somehow found a rich vein of material to use, or at the very least a supportive community of people who would be able to share their experiences and advice, I looked into it.

Some of you can already see where this is going…

I’ve always considered myself fairly confident in my own masculinity. But through the years, I have noticed a feeling of cultural disenfranchisement amongst my fellow Y-chromosome carriers. There have been times when I have felt it myself – “men’s culture” is sometimes often seen as some kind of exigent clinging to adolescent behavior. Sometimes it’s too easy to picture a modern man as a braying, emotionally stunted oaf than as any kind of spiritual or cultural contributor. I could easily devote this entire entry to that subject, but needless to say – I won’t.

So there I was, looking into a “Men’s Rights” forum, hoping to glean some kind of enlightenment: a new tool to use in my mental shed, so to speak. And it was there that I found that the common cultural trope of men as callow chauvinists was not entirely without merit. Each forum was a drunken circle-jerk of churlish misogyny – I’ve seen more enlightened attitudes at a Christian music festival hosted by Klansmen. The only thing missing from these websites was a crude cardboard sign with “GURLS NOT ALLOUD” written on the front of it. I’m surprised most of the messages weren’t telephoned by soup can. As I looked around, I swear I could hear the theme to the Little Rascals playing in the background.

Now, in any advice forum, you always run the risk of your post devolving into a long game of “Beat That Angst”: instead of offering any kind of counsel or succor for your problems, the thread just becomes of group of people saying “oh, I got that beat” and nothing gets resolved except for you lack of willingness to open up to anyone about your problems ever again. But even in the worst of circumstances, you’ll sometimes get lucky – somebody will contribute an anecdote that boils down to “had something similar happen, did X; got Y as a result – your mileage may vary.” That was not to be found by the “Men’s Rights Activists” here.

(Okay, I’m going to start calling them MRAs from now on, my “dick fingers” are getting tired.)

A serious issue like “Help! My ex-wife keeps showing up drunk on my doorstep and calls the cops for violating my restraining order! What can I do?” turns instantly onto how women are a scourge upon the land that must be reined in BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE! There is no commiseration on these threads beyond the kind of self-flagellating affirmation that women are out to get you and there’s nothing you can do about it because our laws and regulations are always slanted against the Man. The closest thing I saw to advice on any of these forums was some jackass crowing “That’s what you get when you put bro’s before ho’s, dumbass!” There are banner ads on the internet promising “hot bi teens” that dispense advice more readily utilized than these guys are capable of.

Apparently the real problem with those unfortunate souls who are overburdened by too many X chromosomes is women’s emotions are ruled by the murky, cavernous depths of the vagina. And as we all know, any organ that can’t openly express themselves, free and swinging like a pendulous bindle at the end of its stick, cannot be trusted. If the genitals are really the firmament upon which our emotional foundation is laid upon, it’s no wonder that an MRA’s ego is bruised so easily. I’m surprised more of them haven’t invested in a protective jock and cup. Another thing I learned from the MRA academia: vagina dentata isn’t some urban legend or Freudian aphorism, it’s a common condition that occurs so regularly I’m amazed more gynecologists don’t also moonlight as dental surgeons. (“Looks like your last pap smear showed two cavities. Have you been flossing regularly?”) Then again, hearing an MRA describe female genitalia is like listening to a 5-year old tell you about the reproductive cycle – only with less giggling.

Most of their ravings sound like a Pauline Epistle translated by Mary Daly. According to the MRAs, women are at best misguided souls who don’t realize their pesky reproductive organs are distracting their male cohorts; and at worst they’re strange creatures from another plane of existence that have infiltrated our society and are working to destroy it from within. It’s like every MRA is Roddy Piper in “They Live”: they’ve put on the sunglasses and see nothing more than the twisted machinations of a Feminist Agenda whose only goal is the eventual enslavement of the entire male gender! “Not on my watch! I’ve come here to jack off to free porn and kick ass, and I’m all out of porn!”

A common theme I kept reading is how women were denying men sex – like the female gender is a double-X-chromosome form of OPEC that’s controlling the rest of the world by manipulating the sex market that is so vital to our livelihood and industry.

(Gosh, when you put is that way, it’s no wonder Congress is putting harsh regulation on women’s genitals – but how long do you suppose it’ll be before the Feminist Agenda starts lobbying for more and more sex subsidies? Will it take into account market speculation into sex futures and derivatives? What will happen to the economy if there is a sex shortage? Are we already at Peak Sex?)

Reading an MRA forum on sex is like skimming through Rush Limbaugh’s nocturnal emissions diary. There are frat boys slipping roofies into their dates’ appletinis that are more deferential to a woman’s sexuality than these guys are. All of which would be disturbing if it weren’t for the irony that impotent whinging doesn’t make you any more laid. Drunkenly begging a homeless woman for sex has more dignity than kvetching about your neglected genitals to a group of similar-minded men. Talk about a sausage party – you have a better chance of getting a hook-up in the bathroom of your local dive bar on Thanksgiving than you do by complaining to a group of guys who also are complaining about how they can’t get any.

Now, don’t get me wrong: my life experience has taught me that neither gender has cornered the market on being an evil, abusive, manipulating fuck-wad. There are assholes of all stripes: be they with dangly-parts or bazongas. As a species, human beings have barely evolved past not eating with the hand we wipe our asses with, let alone developed a cogent means of sharing space with each other. We’ve been “civilized” for more than 5000 years and only thing we’ve gotten better at is how we kill ourselves.

I also think, as a basic concept, the idea of Men’s Rights does have some merit. The problem with focusing too hard on making things equal for everyone is that it ignores the basic fact that not every single person is equal. Note I said “person” and not “group of people”: no matter how you equalize things, someone still will feel left out. Also, people have a bad habit of decrying someone else’s nasty behavior while ignoring the same kind of behavior in themselves. Or, if they do realize the hypocrisy of their actions, they justify it because others have inflicted similar upon them in the past. Because perpetuating dickishness will eventually make it go away or something.

But you can’t complain about the inequality of the sexes while pining for the male-oriented, grab-ass culture you keep seeing on “Mad Men.” And you can’t make any kind of cultural impact by bitching about how unfair things are for guys on an internet forum. You need a syndicated radio talk show to do that – or a seat on the Senate.

Besides, when Apocalypse comes, the Feminist Agenda has already conscripted me into their pleasure pits. So while you MRA guys are bitching about the “Feminazi’s” Illuminati-like control over all of society, I’ll be at the gym doing squat thrusts to make sure I pass muster when I get drafted.

I was hanging out at a club with a good friend of mine one Saturday evening. As the evening progressed, we were invited to an after-party by a group of people who had also offered to drive us home (since neither me or my friend had a vehicle.) My friend went into the club to gather her belongings and say her goodbyes while our prospective ride showed me where they were parked. In the two-minute span it took me to locate my friend (who was a little intoxicated) and show her where our ride was, they had taken off.

My friend was aghast. She had never had someone ditch her like that. Stunned, she went back into the club to make arrangements for another ride for the both of us. I merely laughed at the circumstances because:

I’ve gotten so used to being stood up whenever I want to hang out with friends that I’m genuinely surprised when they arrive.

This isn’t a passive-aggressive rant where I refer to any particular individual in the third person in the vainglorious hope that they’ll wise up and be shamed into being mindful of their actions. (Has that ever worked for anyone?) But if I were to tell you that this column wasn’t fueled by frustration and hurt feelings, I would be lying.

It’s times like these where the ugly side of my low self-esteem rears its disfigured head and cries out like Sloth from The Goonies. Whenever I make arrangements with someone, whether it be for a dentist’s appointment or a date at the opera, I take the extra step to let them know if I might not be able to make it. Why? Because it’s common courtesy – or at least should be more common because it’s rare that others bestow me the same courtesy in return. I recently had someone cancel a meet-up for coffee because she was too tired from having just returned from a trip overseas.

“You must think I’m a colossal flake,” she said.

“No. You managed to give me a heads up well beforehand so I can make other plans. That alone elevates you above most people I consider good acquaintances,” I replied.

Because of my less that stellar success rate with meeting people, I’ve devised the following strategy: I look to see what else is happening in the neighborhood of wherever I’m supposed to meet someone. That way, when said person eventually flakes out on me, I’m not sitting in a booth at Denny’s with my thumb up my ass. I actually have something to do – albeit by myself.

If I’m lucky, someone will make a half-hearted excuse for why they left me hanging for our get-together a few weeks after the event in question. And usually it’s in the form of “Oh yeah, we were going to hang out. I just got super busy” – in lieu of any kind of apology for wasting my time.

And that’s what it really boils down to – time wasted. The people around me have become so unreliable that being flaked out on has become the norm instead of the exception for me. I don’t know what it is – as much as I would like to believe in the trope that another person’s actions reflect themselves, not the people they affect, the only commonality I can see for this is me. I guess I project some kind of psychic field or aura that tells people that it’s okay not to follow through on commitments, I’ll get over it and be available whenever it’s convenient. It’s not like an invisibility field – more like an irrelevancy field. I’m half-tempted to see if I can use it to my advantage and rob a bank. (I’m kidding.)

I realize that not everyone’s life centers around mine, and that shit happens. There are aspects to other people’s lives that I am only skimming the surface of. There are other priorities like jobs, relationships, personal health, finances, pets, vehicles, relatives, home maintenance, lawn care, and Netflix queues that have nothing to do with my intentions or goals. I understand that shit happens, and has a very bad habit of happening at the least convenient moment for anyone.

I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to expect someone to communicate their inability to fulfill an appointment with me – no matter how brief. I’m not looking for an elaboration – just a “Sorry, I can’t make it. Let’s shoot for some other time, okay?” Even lying means that you give enough of a damn about the other person’s feelings to avoid hurting them. It’s not the 1990s anymore, everyone has some means of communicating with people: be it by phone, text message, email, or carrier pigeon. So it’s not like people have that as an excuse anymore. But if I don’t even rate a half-assed excuse involving an overturned banana truck and a horde of crazed monkeys, that makes me feel less like a person and more like an object that’s been place for your convenience.

As a kid, I could never get into the sitcom “Full House”, and I’ve realized why. It had nothing to do with its humor (or lack thereof), but more about its theme. Like many comedy series around 1980s & ’90s, it used the “wacky hijinks of a single (widowed) dad” trope. And my problem with that is that the youngest child of that family unit was still a baby – meaning that the event that killed their mother happened pretty recently when the series started. So, what disturbs me about “Full House” (and a few others of the same ilk that I can’t recall right now), is that no one is addressing the loss of their mother/wife at all in the show. It’s just “wacky dad and his adorable kids” through and through.

Maybe they did have an episode or two where they talked about it – but since I wasn’t a devotee, I didn’t see it. In fact, from what I can remember of the pilot episode, any mention of the family’s late mother was consigned to a toss-off remark. I’m not saying that a program needed angst to hold my attention, but it felt like everyone in the series had disconnected so severely from the loss of a parent, that it was like their mother had never existed in the first place. “Why are you crying, Stephanie? We’re supposed to be a happy family! Do you hear me?! A HAPPY FAMILY!”

Aside from the straight-laced, white-bread father, the only other guardians in the series were a lothario and a man-child. Not to get all women’s-studies-major here , but it didn’t impress upon me that the girls in that family were going to have healthy attitudes about their gender as they developed. (This could also offer some explanation to the strange behavior of the Olsen Twins later in life.) I would’ve loved to hear how the grown-ups in the house had reacted to DJ’s first period – or maybe they addressed puberty with the old “my baby girl wants  a bra” schtick.

The series also seemed to rely on the “man smart, woman smarter” routine – a common theme in sitcoms – but in “Full House” it’s girls who haven’t left elementary school outwitting their 30-somthing dad. It came off less like a husband whose abashed from underestimating his homemaker wife and more like a dad that’s too terrified of disciplining his kids. “You’re right, honey, I shouldn’t have yelled at you for wrecking the car. I have wonderful children who can never do wrong.”

It’s any wonder that Bob Saget didn’t kill himself in front of the studio audience during a taping. I’m fairly certain that his first stand-up performance after the series ended was nothing more than him screaming every obscenity at the top of his lungs. I remember catching an episode later in the series, when the baby was now old enough to say catch-phrases, and Danny Tanner’s eyes had this glaze to them. Like an off-camera pitcher of martinis was the only thing preventing Dad from bare-handedly strangling the overbearing monsters that had developed from a need to reject grief.

My girlfriend and I have just returned from a week-long spree in the lovely tropical paradise that is the Hawaiian Islands, specifically Honolulu. I had a grand time there: six days of warm weather, surf, sand, and half-naked people is a good prescription for the stress that builds up from a year’s worth of college work. I pooled information from quite a few people (including my girlfriend, who had been to the islands twice before me), but even the sage advice from them could only paint what I was to encounter in broad strokes. As such, a few things got left out like…

6. The Sun

One of the main reasons people flock to Hawaii is the amount of sun they’ll be exposed to, you can’t walk two yards without tripping over a person working on their tan. Admittedly, I did a pretty half-assed attempt to prime my skin for the exposure I was going to get (one claustrophobic, 6-minute session at a local salon), but no amount of literature, television, or internet research can prepare you for the sheer intensity the sun has in Oahu. It’s like the brightness control has gone all wonky in your computer monitor. I found myself reaching for my sunglasses after stepping out of the restroom, lest I be blinded by glare I got from the carpet. And expect to get a sunburn, period. I troweled on whole bottles of sunscreen and still managed to get braised on several parts of my anatomy one never considered shielding from the sun’s rays. (Like my ears. Who knew?)

However, being blinded by the sun’s omnipresence and strategically pan-fried from overexposure wasn’t too surprising for me. What did come as a shock was how early sundown came. I went to Honolulu in June, it’s early summer where I’m from and the days have been getting progressively longer (sunset is at 9pm). On my first day in Oahu, I crashed in my hotel room (it was a 5 hour flight), figuring I’d have plenty of daylight later to enjoy the start of my vacation.

At 7pm the sun set.

This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, since Hawaii is in the tropic zone, meaning that it generally gets 12 hours of day followed by 12 hours of night. But subconsciously I had assumed that because it was summertime, I could expect to be subjected to solar bombardment for a good 16-18 hours. Also, it seemed to me that the sun rose and set with unusual rapidity – instead of a couple hours dawn, the sun just shows up ready to perform its duties like that annoyingly punctual guy at work who never calls in sick. Likewise with the evening, the light gets shut off and you’re left standing there awkwardly.

5. The Price of (Fast) Food

This isn’t a rant about how expensive things are over in Honolulu. First: Hawaii has to import most of the common goods that mainland communities can get locally. Second: I come from a place with a fairly moderate Consumer Pricing Index, so I’ve gotten used to the idea that things are more expensive when I go out of state.

What really threw me off was this: Fast food was just as (or more) expensive than some of the sit-down eateries I went to. I went into a McDonald’s figuring I would grab a quick burger because I was pressed for time, only to discover that I would be paying as much for it as I had for the dim sum (for two) the day prior. There are quite a few economic factors that are driving this (which I’ll leave to be debated by boring guys in tweed suits and bow-ties), but on the mainland I kinda got used to the idea of hopping into the nearest fast food outlet, counting the amount of sweaty change I had in my pockets and getting an easy (if health-eroding) meal. But $11 for a Big Mac value meal is something they kinda left out of the tourism brochures. (Oh, and McD’s breakfasts are spamtastic in Hawaii.)

4. Japanese Tourists

Again, this shouldn’t have been as much of a surprise to me as it was, Hawaii is a popular destination for the Japanese because of its proximity and price. But I was getting used to the idea that the only time I was expected to be bilingual in Japanese was if I crashed an anime convention to hit on girls cosplaying as Sailor Moon. There were places along Waikiki where the workers were visibly thrown off by the presence of non-Japanese people there. The second-to-last day in Hawaii, my girlfriend and I wandered into the DFS Galleria in Waikiki – which is like one of those outlet malls, except it was selling $2300 bottles of cognac, $5000 designer wristwatches, and clothes that cost as much as the down payment of a house for the label alone. Whilst window shopping for things I knew I couldn’t afford (and desperately trying not to get my fingerprints on anything) a saleslady approached me and asked if I needed assistance, in Japanese, before quickly correcting herself to English. (Side note: she was the only one who approached me there. I would make a snide comment about poor customer service, but let’s face it: I dress like an unemployed college student. And I’m pretty sure my body language betrayed the fact that I kept thinking “This belt costs as much as two months’ rent.”) To sum up: it was a jarring experience to leave a place where it’s preferable you are bilingual in Spanish to go to place where it’s preferable you’re bilingual in Japanese (with Korean and Tagalog being additional pluses.)

3. Traffic.

I don’t drive. I’m 35 years old and still haven’t acquired my license (I blame a combination of good public transportation and neuroses about driving.) So, I’m used to being treated as the low-end of the traffic totem pole (underneath drivers and bicyclists.) At crosswalks, I consider myself lucky if I don’t get gored by an SUV and then clotheslined by a guy on a bicycle. The drivers of Hawaii, however, were so courteous there were a couple times I was waiting at a street corner for a good five minutes, unaware that the driver opposite me had waved me on to cross. The last night we spent, some road improvement was going on that blocked all lanes of traffic, except two. Cars were backed up for a couple blocks. Where I’m from, people think gridlock is funny and don’t mind blocking an intersection checking their prostate while the other direction of traffic is hoping their firstborn dies while playing in an abandoned freezer. In Hawaii, everyone gave proper space, the intersections were clear; hell, one guy even allowed a big enough gap for a bus to pull into. Being surrounded by drivers who didn’t treat the experience of motoring like one, long Grand Theft Auto mission made me wish for my license.

2. Animals!

One of the other things that attracts people to Hawaii is the exotic wildlife: forests teeming with exotic trees and birds; sunken coral reefs filled with vibrant fish of all colors. I’m not talking about those.

Did you know there are roving gangs of feral chickens all about the island? Being from Portland, one of the things the sustainable community is big on is the idea of “urban chickens“. But Hawaii is a perfect example of that noble concept gone horribly awry. You sit down in a local park to enjoy a sandwich, enjoying the lull in the day as the sun and breeze create a perfect mixture for relaxation – when suddenly your reverie is broken by the screeching cry of a rooster. They are everywhere – at one point I expected to be hit up for spare change by a demographic I feel is better represented in a KFC bucket.

Hawaii doesn’t have any squirrels, either. Instead, they have the Indian mongoose which were allegedly introduced to curb the rat population. However, with rats being primarily nocturnal and mongoose being diurnal, a fat lot of good that did. While they can scavenge for food, they prefer eggs and fowl. So: feral chickens + mongoose = one of the bloodiest Disney anthropomorphic animal stories you’re going to encounter this side of the Emperor’s New Groove. While I didn’t personally see any of the adorable weasel-kin actually attack any of the feral chicken gangs, I would’ve paid good money for it.

While waiting for our return flight, I noticed that there were pigeon spikes on the flat-panel screen announcing arrivals and departures. I thought the interior of an airport was an odd place to put a deterrent meant for birds, until a majestic Brazilian cardinal swooped in and perched on the sign next to it. It was then I realized that Hawaii is a culture where people don’t close their doors or windows too often, which leads to all sorts of things coming in and interrupting your meal. (Like geckos.)

1: Being Checked Out At The Beach

This part is completely self-indulgent, but I’m putting it here anyway.

Now, before you start worrying, I’m not using this as a means to deprecate myself: I have come to terms with my appearance. While I’m not hideous to behold, I know that any positive comparisons I make between myself and someone like George Clooney will elicit a snicker from many of you. (The celebrity I have frequently been compared to is Tim Robbins, actually.) But I clean up and dress well, and while I don’t leave a wake of swooning females when I pass, I know I look better in my fall attire than my summer clothes. And let’s face it, there are very few people who are completely confident with their bodies when wearing a swimsuit. While I’m not clinically obese, there are parts of my body (like my abdomen) that look like half-baked clay. You’re pretty exposed in a swimsuit, there’s a lot more flesh out for all to see, and there aren’t too many things you can wear to slim down your figure or conceal aspects of it that aren’t as comely. So I’ve gotten used to the fact that when I don swimming attire I look less GQ and more Zach Galifinakis. So when I noticed that the lovely lady who smiled at me as I climbed out of the water, and then kept looking as I bent over to put on my shoes, I was a bit stunned.

This happened at least twice daily when I went to swim. One woman even nudged her friend to point me out.

I could get used to being in Hawaii.

Kind of continuing my memorialization of my departed grandfather here.

On one of the frequent occasions I visited my grandparents in Eastern Washington, Dad, Grandad, and I set out to do some errand in Grandad’s pickup (what and where exactly has escaped me.) My father, silently jealous of my grandfather’s pickup truck, insisted on driving, leaving my skinny frame wedged between the bear-like masses of the two paterfamiliases on the truck’s bench seat. As we cruised around the myriad residential streets, a group of kids came riding their bikes down the middle of the lane, oblivious to everyone around. Dad always had disparaging comments about any non-motorized traffic that had the audacity to cross into his path of travel and would mutter choice words questioning a particular offender’s parentage, intelligence, upbringing or all three. Today was no different, and as the bicycling children (who were the same age as I was at the time) eventually gave way, my dad said something to the tune of, “That’s right, put your bike right into the middle of the street, your mom will never notice you were gone, kid,” and then adding as an aside to me, “I hope you don’t do that, son.” Grandad, who always had some kind of comment to add to any statement, elbowed me and said, “Well, you gotta die of somethin’,” then gave me a wink.

The last time I saw my grandfather was around Christmas of 2010. We visited the same house he had lived in all my life. It was a place where a percentage of my childhood memories were formed – we visited at least twice a year and usually stayed for about a week. But it was the first time I had been back at that house since I turned 30, and visiting stirred up a confluence of emotions for me. A few years prior, on a different Christmas gathering at my Aunt Susan’s house, I joked with her that her place always seemed bigger when I was a kid. That feeling was no different at Grandpa’s: it felt like I was in a miniaturized version of that house, everything felt smaller, yet I knew I was the one who had changed. As my youngest daughter played with her great-grandfather, I wandered a little as memories flooded back to me, only overlaid through the filter of the present. I saw the stone fireplace that gave me a scar across my eyebrow and invoked a permanent “no running in the house” rule. The kitchen that never seemed to run out of food. The living room with grandpa’s recliner and the carpet I remember drawing patterns into with my fingers.

I’m gonna miss that house.

This is a post I left on a social network ages ago, but I figured it needed a repost for posterior.

IMO, “geek” and “nerd” are two different distinctions that have some overlap, but a person is predominantly “geeky” or “nerdy”.

Both geeks and nerds are excited by knowledge, where they differ is the source of that knowledge.

Nerds’ depth of knowledge is primarily scholastic in origin – these are the computer science guys who spend 48 hours coding and the guys who took advanced calculus in college because they WANTED to. (They can also be into arts and humanities as well – just ask anyone who’s studied cultural anthropology or medieval literature.)

Geeks’ knowledge is about a particular field of entertainment culture – not only things like Star Wars and Trek, but also things like professional sports fandom. (Ever meet a Green Bay Packers fan? There’s no “halfway” to their devotion.)

The best litmus test for whether a person is a geek or a nerd is their sense of humor:

If your best friend tells you a joke and it involves a scientific principle you still don’t understand after reading up on it in Wikipedia – he’s a nerd.

If your cousin makes a joke that requires you to have seen the last three seasons of “Lost”, she’s a geek.

Again, geeks and nerds overlap a little: that guy on WoW works for Intel; that girl reads up on Chinese History between writing Harry Potter fan-fic. But most people are one or the other.

(Again, in my opinion.)

The kid gloves need to fucking come off.

So the War on Healthcare has just escalated. For those of you who don’t watch television and aren’t on Facebook, Arizona Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot (along with others in the crowd) by a wingnut who decided to go full Travis Bickel. As with any major event, the media is already drooling over this story with all the gusto of a frat boy at his first strip bar. The shooter, a Jared Lee Loughner, is currently in police custody – and thanks to the fastidiousness of the Huffington Post, we now know what his archived MySpace page looks like without the animated gifs and tracks from Tool playing in the background.  I can already see the pundits on both political sides sharpening their fangs about this one. MSNBC is going to point out that “Mein Kampf” was on the nutjob’s list of favorite reads, Fox News is going to say the mere fact the shooter is literate is suspicious on its own. Personally, I think the book list proves that Loughner suffered from the delusion that Poetry & Classics majors get laid. (Side note: why do folks like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck bother to write books? It’s not like their audience can read.) Suppositions about Loughner’s mental state are already being made. I think anyone who lives in Arizona is borderline insane, anyway – it’s like America’s own South Africa down there, only they haven’t elected de Klerk yet. Plus their football team sucks. (Oh yeah, I went there.)

But my message here is for the Dems. Pay close attention.

This isn’t like when you guys got ignored in the Bush administration. This isn’t like when the public mercy-voted you into a “super-majority” (whatever that means) because they felt sorry for you. This isn’t like all those times you tried reaching across the aisle only to have the Republicans act like a twisted 5-year old who thinks that stoning your puppy to death and then urinating on its body is somehow funny.

You are getting killed out there, literally. This isn’t something that can be just negotiated away.

Giffords’ shooting, while tragic, is an opportunity, don’t drop the ball on this.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Tell Eric Cantor and every other Republican who opposes health care reform to shut the fuck up. If they won’t, tell them that if Loughner had access to proper health care, his obvious mental issues could have been addressed, and a family in Arizona wouldn’t be burying their 9-year old daughter. Fuck compromise: you can’t negotiate with a Republican senator any more than a female intern can talk him out of trying anal on her. And if they whine about being ignored, just say that listening to the GOP just seems to encourage terrorism on our own soil.
2. Now is also the time to plow every single bit of legislature you have on gun control through the Senate like a runningback from Seattle. (That’s two NFL references!) If anyone objects, first compliment them on their bravery, and then question their sanity. (“I commend your willingness to face danger, Senator, but I don’t see how your constituents will benefit from seeing you assassinated with a legally purchased weapon.”) Again, the Republicans can eat a flaming bag of shit on this one, or I guess they really like terrorists when they’re white.
3. It’s time you guys realized that the Tea Party isn’t just a bunch of ultra-conservative asshats with poorly spelled protest signs, and are more like al-Qaeda with a greater affinity for Pabst Blue Ribbon. The more you guys shout that the Teabaggers are terrorists, the more people will listen. The first step in this is to take Sarah “thinking isn’t as important as money” Palin to task for every fucking thing she has said; her “did I say that?” defense is starting to look a little thin nowadays.
4. I know things are still chancy for you, Rep. Giffords, but if you survive this ordeal with your faculties intact, please stay in office and take charge of #1-3. If there’s one thing Star Wars has taught me, all it takes is a horrifyingly disfiguring incident to transform a wussy twit that watched too much Dawson’s Creek into the type of person who can choke people to death with their mind while giving them cancer of the balls. Whenever conservatives disagree with you, just turn your (probably) disturbingly scarred countenance toward them and stare at them dead-eyed. That alone should make them want to schedule an oncology appointment to get that lump on their vas deferens looked at. Now is not the time for hand-wringing and whinging, Padawan: slaying of Republican legislative younglings is what’s called for.

This event is like a sword dropped from heaven for you, Democrats. A gigantic, flaming sword you can use to strike down all who oppose you and leave their families striven. Please, oh please, don’t drop the ball on this like the Saints did with their playoff chances. (NFL Trifecta COMPLETE!)

http://www.nfl.com/teams/schedule?team=ARI

I got my voter’s manual a couple days ago and was flipping through it whilst dropping a deuce on a john (hey, a college kid’s gotta make money somehow), when the phrase “To my LGBT community” caught my eye – it was in the promotional copy of your candidacy announcement. Since I consider myself a big supporter of Gay/Bi/Trans rights, I was intrigued and read further when the next paragraph “To my TEA Party patriots” slapped me in the face like an erection from an elderly relative. Seriously, I nearly prolapsed myself in apoplexy  – and my customer nearly walked out on me (it’s a good thing I get paid up front.)

As one in the business, I understand that the difference between politicians and whores are the kind of ties they wear, so as a challenger for office you need whatever votes you can tongue out of a constituent’s asshole, but it’s starting to look like you consider “teabagger” to be a blanket term that covers two demographics – which is really ironic, because both of them are diametrically opposed. On the one hand, you have a group of deranged perverts that feel sex is something that’s done anonymously in filthy public restrooms, on the other you have the LGBT community. I could go on further like this, but I’m not David Letterman.

You claim to be a supporter of marriage equality, and then in the next breath you talk about being a “leader” at the Teabagger rallies. That’s like claiming to be fasting for Yom Kippur while wearing an SS uniform (can’t go wrong with Hugo Boss.) Like most of the Libertarian crowd, you seem to be following suit with the Teabagger philosophy of “taxes are bad, m’kay?”, but as someone who lives a half mile away from the Oregon State Capitol Building, I’ve blundered into multiple Teabagger rallies and they all were as progressive and thought-provoking as the invasion of Poland. For every “NO MORE PORK” sign I saw waving, there were two with dead fetuses on them (because nothing challenges your worldview like a good eye-fucking). Attendants fervently hated illegal immigration, but didn’t want to do anything about the people who hire them – because it’s our right as Americans to have indentured labor working our fields, that’s what our founding fathers did. While wandering through the hate-filled rhetoric and racial epithets about having an African-American president it dawned on me – the Teabaggers are nothing more than the KKK, only without the fancy dresses. It’s like the Klan held a jamboree where everyone said “You left your robe and hood at home too? Mine’s in the dryer!” and then had a hearty, if sheepish, laugh.

The Teabagger Party (what else do you call a group of people who’s motto needs to be “I wanna dip my balls in it”?) is not exactly one that encourages civil liberties – unless by “civil liberties” you mean “unquestioning fealty to a bunch of pseudo-religious pederasts.” These are the kind of people who fall for the “it’s my way or you’re gay” jape, they buy the latest editions of the Bible that have all the big words like “sodomite” and “forgiveness” edited out of them. The think the Westboro Baptist Church has a good thing going.

The Teabaggers say they don’t want new taxes, what they mean is “We want the slaves- I mean – the POOR to be the ones who have to pay them.” There’s no such thing as a “socially liberal” Teabagger, diversity for them is watching a movie with Morgan Freeman in it; these people compulsively wash their hair at least a dozen times after getting it cut or styled, so the gay oils don’t seep into their brain (which is a laugh, since everyone knows that the conservative cranium only contains a medulla oblongata and a tumor in the shape of Ronald Reagan.) If you suggest that only the rich pay taxes, you’ll be branded a socialist then scourged, nailed to a tree, set on fire, and your remains will be violated by their sexually abused dogs (or kids, whichever pack shows up first.) Progressive, for a Teabagger, is listening to MODERN country.

So, to sum up, you cannot have your gay and eat it too.

(Oh wait, you’re a third party candidate – you’d have better luck smearing yourself with feces and raping a newscaster live on the 11 O’ Clock News.)

So, there I was, glancing around on the various forms of non-porn entertainment that the internet has to provide, when I stumbled across a friend-of-a-friend’s blog entry detailing the latest trolling session she endured from yet another random asshat – who didn’t realize that “your vagina and my penis would go together like peanut butter and chocolate” was an ineffective means of melting the clothes off the female persuasion. Attempts to rebuff the troll-tard were about effective as passing a campaign finance reform bill in congress; but at least he was of the “gets more incomprehensible the more he gets agitated” breed, so watching the final throes of their exchange was about as funny as seeing a Tea Party rally get dispersed by a wild bull. (Damn, I’m just racking up the political analogies today.)

Any of my readers of the XX-chromosome variety are all too familiar with this phenomenon: apparently there’s some unwritten rule of the internet that states if you are female and know how to use a computer, you must make any and all orifices available to any male who asks of them. It doesn’t matter where you go on the internet either – a woman could be on a forum run by a convent in the Vatican and she’ll still get a message like “I want to be the Abelard to your Heloise – except substitute ‘my cock’ for Abelard and ‘your hoo-hah’ for Heloise.”

What shocks me is that this attitude seems to be on the rise – like some kind of net-based disease that makes grown men about as socially inept and incapable of respecting women as Bill O’Reilly in the later stages of syphilis. It used to be that it was easy to picture these kinds of trolling fucktards: they typically looked like a twisted fusion of Rush Limbaugh and the Star Wars Kid – and because of the anonymity of the internet, they didn’t have to worry about smelling like a diaper fire when they began sweating at the thought of approaching someone of the opposite sex. But now even “normal” looking guys are doing this; which can be understandably frustrating for a woman: “He seemed like a nice enough guy, until he emailed me ‘your pussy is like vase for multiple dicks.’”

It’s times like these when I wish there was a “sacktap” command on my computer so I can work one of these ass-maggots over like a speed bag. Then again, knowing the kind of self-loathing mentality that possesses these guys, any kind of attention they receive to their genitals would be seen as positive and affirming (“You want to staple my scrotum to the caboose of a moving train? That’s hawt.”) We’re talking about a demographic that probably likes being yelled at and insulted when they’re having sex – so while sending invective-filled replies to them is only going to fuel their libido, it does mean it’s only a matter of time before they’re arrested for jerking off in public.

To any of my female readers – the next time some guy messages you with a come-on that’s as subtle and respectful to your feelings as a conventioneer with his hand up a waitress’s skirt, simply send the following:

Dear sir,

Thank you for your enthusiastic interest in my genitals. Unfortunately they are occupied at the moment in other endeavors – for right now I’m involved in product testing for a new weapon designed by the US Army where I can voluntarily fire a swarm of Africanized killer bees at any assailant using my vagina.

I wish you the best of luck in your search and hope that you can find a lady whose bodily openings are as open and accessible to your penis as your mom’s were during your formative years.

Best of luck!

And for my male readers, here are some tips:

1. Yes it’s true; there are ladies on the net who want sex with someone they’ve just met. But do you really want to hook up with the one who falls for: “UR TITZ R AWESOME! I WANNA CUM ALL OVER DEM!” That’s like sticking your dick in an industrial vacuum – it’ll feel cool for a few seconds, but then…
2. Speaking of penises – don’t send the woman you’re courting a photo of your cock either. At least don’t do it unsolicited: at best she’s just deleting it from her inbox while cursing that she didn’t pay more attention in her Women’s Studies class in college, at worst she’s given a printout to the local Voodoun mambo in her area for a little loa action – which means that black spot you just noticed on the head there isn’t gonna go away, but probably spread and turn your gonads into a Lovecraftian horror. (I speak from experience on that last part, one of my friends has an emperor cobra where his penis used to be – that’s not a metaphor.)
3. The best pick up line is “hello.” It’s amazing how versatile that one word can be, and when you carpet bomb the entire female gender with just that, you aren’t bringing down the image of the rest of us males who are only pretending to care about women’s interests in order to get into their pants.

This is probably going to come as no surprise to anyone reading my blog, but I’m unemployed at the moment. And while the free time has been a great way to level up on Farmville, I have been hitting the bricks (in an online sense) and applying for work on a daily basis. Now, I know that the economy sucks – especially for Oregon, where we rank #2 in unemployment, (that’s right, the Beaver State is the first loser in a poverty-based competition) but I hate looking for work, it’s like trying to find a date by asking every woman who comes up to you – most of the time you’re ignored, but every now and then one will take time to pull your pants down and mock your genitals. If I listed every single thing about job hunting I disliked, though, we’d be here until I started drawing Social Security. So instead, I’m listing the top four things that piss me off while trolling for work.

Pre-Employment Credit Checks:

“You’re going to base my eligibility for a job on my credit rating? Well, so much for working for your company – Skeezix the Friendly Meth Addict stole my identity and left me accountable for a fleet of impounded vehicles and more debt than the gross national product of Surinam. I’m so glad you have this hiring practice in place, there are so many people out there who aren’t poor enough.”

Really, the only reason why you peek into someone’s credit history is to make sure you aren’t accidentally showing them legal means to get them out of debt. What’s also interesting of note is most companies that use credit checks have high turnover rates – meaning that you’re probably going to be treated about as well as a migrant worker at a berry picking farm.

And before any of you corporate asshats tell me “Well, it’s company policy,” – that kind of bullshit didn’t work for the Auschwitz administrators and it sure as shit doesn’t fly today.

Personality Tests:

“So not only do I have to prove to you that I have no outstanding debt, but I also have to see if we’re emotionally compatible? Screw the test, why don’t I just email you a photo of my penis – if it works for online dating, it’ll work here.”

So Company X wants to make sure you have the right “attitude” for this job? First of all, you can BS your way through a quiz like this: just imagine yourself as a subservient toady with skid mark going down your tongue and fill in the appropriate answers. Second: it’s perfectly obvious that the REAL reason these personality tests exist is to provide upper management with a pool of people they can wheedle free blowjobs out of that won’t sue.

Flexible Hours:

Sounds great out of context, doesn’t it? Makes it seem like you can work any schedule you want and that the management is easy-going, right?

Bullshit.

“Flexible hours” (along with “flexible schedule”) is employer-ese for “We’d keep you chained to the desk and living in your own shit if it weren’t for those pesky employment laws.” The slaves that built the pyramids had a better work week than the one you’re going to be getting. Oh yeah, and employers like this tend to take federally-mandated things like overtime and medical leave about as seriously as Republican at the Vagina Monologues.

“Overqualified”:

For a brief time I was trying to get employed at some of the local retail outlets – anything for a buck, right? But on the few occasions I did get contacted by someone with hiring authority, they always said something like this: “You have an excellent work history, but we feel that you’re overqualified for this position and that there are better opportunities for you elsewhere.”

As Abraham said unto the Lord: “What the fuck?”

Or, as my friend put it, “Does that mean I can call my landlord and tell him I’m too qualified to pay rent?”

“Overqualified” seems to be a shortcut for “According to your application, you’ve worked for a while and seem to be intelligent enough to call the authorities when we try raping you in the walk-in. Sorry, but we prefer high-school dropouts that huff paint fumes.” I can understand if it’s a job that required a significant amount of investiture to hire, train, and equip me properly – but it’s flipping burgers, not angioplasty – there’s not that much that goes into preparing the employee. Of course I’m overqualified for a minimum-wage job – a three-toed sloth would make a more efficient worker than the ones I’ve encountered at my local mall.

The next job listing I see on Craigslist that requires a credit check, personality quiz, and/or advertizes “flexible hours” – I’m going to mail them a video of me smearing feces on their corporate logo. That and an MBA is good for a management position, right?