The next person who recycles that Leftard-approved trope about “all cultures being equally valid” within earshot of me is gonna get punched in the fucking mouth.
News from Egypt, Fountainhead of that New-Fangled, Oxymoronic Islamic Democracy Thingy we learn today that what passes for a Parliament there is considering a law that would make “Farewell Intercourse” with your wife a legal right.
Showing posts with label You're Dead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label You're Dead. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Monday, May 09, 2011
Usama Bin Laden: Sorry Little Narcissist...
Some really creepy videos accompany this piece by the New York Post's Andrea Peyser.
It is almost axiomatic that the world's most notorious murderers and tyrants are insatiable narcissists, and incidentally, it's also true that many happen to be frustrated artists.
Adolf Hitler was a failed painter, Mussolini and Napoleon wrote extremely bad plays, Frederick the Great wrote execrable poetry, Nero fancied himself a playwright and master musician, Saddam Hussein wrote romance novels. Usama Bin Laden apparently fancied himself as a modern-day, Islamic Cicero, giving political speeches on the evils of Capitalism and Western Culture, all the while watching himself of television (a product of Western Culture), and up to his armpits in perhaps one of the most iconic symbols of Western Culture; huge stores of Coca-Cola were found in every nook-and-cranny of his guilded Pakistani-suburban slum/ hideout.
The contradictions would be lost on Bin Laden, but then again, what do you expect? A Narcissist is usually the last person to get the joke, especially when he's the butt of it.
We know of Bin Laden's last days because he did us the dubious favor and had them videotaped for us. Like a Muslim John Kerry, who had himself followed about by movie cameras while collecting enough self-inflicted gunshot wounds to be sent home from Vietnam, Bin Laden was never far from the glare of the lights and the video camera, creating a perpetual image of himself as something he wasn't. In the end, Usama Bin Laden wasn't the towering figure of cold, calculating, pious rage and fear that he had so carefully portrayed himself to be; he was a sick man, dyeing his beard, all hopped up on Viagra and past glories, hiding for fear of his sorry little life. When his end came, he did not, as he had once vowed, gone down fighting in a glorious martyrdom; he hid behind is wife and children, and then was gunned down like a dog.
The Great Hero of the Islamic World, shot to death within the borders of the Islamic World's only nuclear power, living under the protection of the Pakistani military, immersed in the very swamp water of the Western World that he hated so much; television, mass media, Coca-Cola, Viagra, the 24-hour news cycle, Al'Jazeera, the Remote Control, making speeches about the dangers of Global Warming and Capitalism like a college freshman with a 960 SAT score after a kegger. Bin Laden had been captured long before by the very culture he so despised, and he had never even noticed it. Dipshit.
His little world, the one in which he was never out of range of the sound of his own voice, never very far from his own self-constructed image, was all that was left to him, and it consumed his last days on Earth.
Now, after a decade of being the biggest boogeyman in History, Usama Bin Laden became little more than a punchline to a very bad joke.
I have no sympathy for the man, and if there's one complaint on my part about this whole capture and execution routine, it's that Bin Laden wasn't hung by his heels in Times Square to get the full Mussolini Treatment, in front of the very television cameras that he craved so much.
It is almost axiomatic that the world's most notorious murderers and tyrants are insatiable narcissists, and incidentally, it's also true that many happen to be frustrated artists.
Adolf Hitler was a failed painter, Mussolini and Napoleon wrote extremely bad plays, Frederick the Great wrote execrable poetry, Nero fancied himself a playwright and master musician, Saddam Hussein wrote romance novels. Usama Bin Laden apparently fancied himself as a modern-day, Islamic Cicero, giving political speeches on the evils of Capitalism and Western Culture, all the while watching himself of television (a product of Western Culture), and up to his armpits in perhaps one of the most iconic symbols of Western Culture; huge stores of Coca-Cola were found in every nook-and-cranny of his guilded Pakistani-suburban slum/ hideout.
The contradictions would be lost on Bin Laden, but then again, what do you expect? A Narcissist is usually the last person to get the joke, especially when he's the butt of it.
We know of Bin Laden's last days because he did us the dubious favor and had them videotaped for us. Like a Muslim John Kerry, who had himself followed about by movie cameras while collecting enough self-inflicted gunshot wounds to be sent home from Vietnam, Bin Laden was never far from the glare of the lights and the video camera, creating a perpetual image of himself as something he wasn't. In the end, Usama Bin Laden wasn't the towering figure of cold, calculating, pious rage and fear that he had so carefully portrayed himself to be; he was a sick man, dyeing his beard, all hopped up on Viagra and past glories, hiding for fear of his sorry little life. When his end came, he did not, as he had once vowed, gone down fighting in a glorious martyrdom; he hid behind is wife and children, and then was gunned down like a dog.
The Great Hero of the Islamic World, shot to death within the borders of the Islamic World's only nuclear power, living under the protection of the Pakistani military, immersed in the very swamp water of the Western World that he hated so much; television, mass media, Coca-Cola, Viagra, the 24-hour news cycle, Al'Jazeera, the Remote Control, making speeches about the dangers of Global Warming and Capitalism like a college freshman with a 960 SAT score after a kegger. Bin Laden had been captured long before by the very culture he so despised, and he had never even noticed it. Dipshit.
His little world, the one in which he was never out of range of the sound of his own voice, never very far from his own self-constructed image, was all that was left to him, and it consumed his last days on Earth.
Now, after a decade of being the biggest boogeyman in History, Usama Bin Laden became little more than a punchline to a very bad joke.
I have no sympathy for the man, and if there's one complaint on my part about this whole capture and execution routine, it's that Bin Laden wasn't hung by his heels in Times Square to get the full Mussolini Treatment, in front of the very television cameras that he craved so much.
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory...
I saw this earlier in the week, and thought; are you fucking kidding me? Keeping secrets? Then again, it's Slate and they can be expected to drool all over themselves in the effort to make Obama out to be the conquering hero, but when it comes to the death of Usama Bin Laden (UBL) we already know the following:
* a 40-man SEAL team took out UBL.
* The initial tip came from waterboarding KSM
* The tip led to the identity of UBL's courier
* the Courier (which FoxNews has already named) was followed for years to establish his bonafides
* The house where UBL was supposed to be living in was under surveillance for four years
* The Pakistanis were not informed, and could not be trusted, so as to get their help
* UBL is shot in the face
* UBL is shot in the face, futilely trying to use his wife as a human shield.
* UBL"s wife confirmed UBL's identity by calling out his name
* UBL's body was disposed of in an Islamically-approved way, by dumping it into the Arabian Sea
* The government identified UBL by his DNA and facial-recognition software
* The government is in possession of UBL's computers, notebooks, diaries, etc. and busily pouring over the intelligence within so as to find other terrorists
* UBL Had two cell phones/telephone numbers and 500 Euros sewn into his clothing.
* UBL's wife called out his name, and was wounded, in the course of the gunfight.
* UBL Might have ben captured, and then executed.
* SEAL Team 6 practiced the raid -- for a year -- in a secret mock-up of the compound somewhere in the United States.
* DNA testing has sorta-kinda confirmed that the dead man was, or at least very strongly indicated that it was, UBL.
* A 'treasure trove' of information on all-things Al'Qaeda was found at the compound and is being checked with a fine-toothed comb by US Intelligence, and as of today, DOJ and others are saying that indictments and arrests are pending, and that DOJ may be asking for wiretap permission and search warrants, and issuing subpeonas very soon.
* The names of others inside that compound have already been released. I'm surprised they haven't identified the cleaning lady and Bin Laden's plumber by name, yet.
Just what secrets, if any, are being kept? It seems to me that President Obama is doing nothing but talking about the raid -- understandable, as it is the ONLY accomplishment of his otherwise-disastrous administration -- and the Press is doing nothing but publishing/broadcasting all sorts of details, and that, obviously, means the government leaks information -- and secrets -- like a fucking sieve.
But even more troubling, and somewhat confusing, is that the Administration is not going to release any photographs of UBL to prove that he's actually dead, and the reason given is that no one wants to 'inflame' Islamic sensibilities with US Troops in combat zones, and US diplomats still in Islamic countries. That's when the excuse is not protecting National Security or the protection of sources and methods and so forth, in the meantime neglecting that so much information has already been released that it would take years for any investigative reporter with integrity and half-a-brain (oxymoron) just to run it all down.
It seems as if the Administration, true to form, is attempting to decide what is and what is not secret depending on what the perceived political and propaganda needs of the Administration are at any particular moment, and in the process only reinforcing what so many already think; that Barack Obama is a doofus, surrounded by bigger doofuses, who can't decide if it's Tuesday or Wednesday, and when confronted by the possibility of having to make a decision, unfailingly make the wrong one.
Having made the right decision to get UBL, the Won is now fucking it all up for himself by making -- or allowing his minions to make -- all the wrong ones.
First of all, who gives a crap about Islamic Sensibilities? If you say that not releasing the photographs and other evidence is the proper thing to do on the grounds that it's all too gruesome and graphic, I'd like to remind you that the images of 9/11 are just as horrific, and I just saw them all over again this entire week plastered all over my television screen, as the Press helps Obama take his, by now, extremely aggravating extended bow.
Second, the amount of data that has already been released (all of it for PR purposes) is astounding, if often contradictory, and has probably already let quite a few cats out of any number of bags, which begins to make a mockery of the idea of operational security.
We've been treated to pictures of the White House Situation Room during the raid, with their grave Obama, praying Joe Biden, and looks-as-if-she's-about-to-puke Hillary Clinton, but only because those images serve an ulterior purpose: making the Obama Administration seem competent, serious, concerned, and all Presidentially-like. Yeah, we get to see THOSE pictures, on the assumption that we really, really need to (really on the assumption that Obama needs us to), but we don't get to see the end result? Go figure.
The fact is that the Obama Administration, by playing to this nonsense about 'Islamic Sensibilities' -- burying Bin Laden according to Islamic custom (something they apparently fucked up, anyway), not wanting to rub salt in the wound of a major loss and dead folk hero -- and apparently trying, without much success, to return to it's 'beg Islam to be nice to us' policy, is doing itself, and us, a major disservice.
The disservice is that without evidence, no one in the Islamic World believes that Bin Laden is really dead. Without evidence, the same people who burned braincells and wasted air over Obama's birth certificate have new grist for the conspiracy theory mill. There are even some going as far as to say that those images are deliberately being kept from the public until Obama, about to lose the 2012 election, pulls an October Surprise and releases them a day or two before the election in a desperate bid to save his sorry ass. Already, there are those in the Islamic Sandbox saying the enitre thing is a fiction cooked up by a desperate Obama.
Obama, who has now scored major points in an area which was one of his biggest weaknesses (He's been soft on the War on Terror), has gone and squandered that advantage -- and re-opened the floodgates of conspiracy theory and charges of incompetence. The left hand doesn't seem to know what the right hand does here; one day UBL is said to have resisted, and the next that he was unarmed. One day UBL was found in part because of what happens at Gitmo, and the next, it was painstaking intelligence work done over a series of years,like someone doing a giant jigsaw puzzle in the dark and with one hand tied behind his back. The CIA says one thing, the Pentagon another. The State Department (which on a good day might be able to find it's own collective ass with both hands and a roadmap) says something else, entirely, and they all contradict and step all over each other in the process.
The disinformation may be deliberate, granted, but from here it appears as if no one in the government is on the same page, and that always leads one to the conclusion that no one in Washington can muster enough intellectual firepower to burn calories, and in this political climate (Throw the Bums Out!), that's rather dangerous for a sitting President (even if I do think he's a con man).
Offered as proof of that lack of attention to detail: You'll be glad to know that the FBI is STILL offering a $25 million reward for UBL. Administrative oversight, probably (The FBI probably requires 700 bureaucrats to remove a staple from a two-page memo), but you just know what conspiracy theorists will do with this sort of detail.
Leave it to Barack Obama to create a rather strange dialectic in which Americans may actually thank God that Wikileaks exists.
If you did the thing right in the first place, you wouldn't have these problems, and you wouldn't have to expend so much energy trying to look the part of legitimate, in-charge, hands-on, involved, know-everything, competent President.
UBL is dead; Great! I'm proud of you. Now prove it. Considering the track record of this President and this Administration, documented, authenticated, carved-in-stone proof is required. They have no one but themselves to blame for it because they way they 'do business' leaves them vulnerable to charges of not being truthful. Their inability to ever nail down details -- do they even care about details? -- makes them look bad; as if they're just winging it, and leads to the sort of distrust that allows a two-year kerfuffle over birth certificates to fester. It'll take all of five minutes to do, and who gives a shit what Achmed in Riyadh thinks, besides Larry King?
I believe that UBL is, in fact, fish food, but let's face it; there's millions of people, here in the United States and abroad, who won't until they've been given solid evidence. And even at that, there are still going to be those who will never believe it anyway, so why not just release the damned things and spare yourself the multitude of self-inflicted wounds, accusations of blind stupidity, and attributions of sinister political motivations?
Show the damn pictures.This is par for the course with President Obama; even when he does something awesome and worthy of praise, he ruins it by leaving so many loose ends, refusing to release information that is readily available and which the public has a right to because political motive gets in the way, and because he and his people often feel the need to take that Victory Lap before the Public has been convinced that he's acually won something. I think at this point it's become an automatic, reflex, defensive routine on the part of the Administration: declare victory, take the photo ops and good press, go home, refuse to answer questions that might rain upon your parade, then complain about the 'unfairness' of having to be held to some sort of higher standard than past Presidents, cry racism.
* a 40-man SEAL team took out UBL.
* The initial tip came from waterboarding KSM
* The tip led to the identity of UBL's courier
* the Courier (which FoxNews has already named) was followed for years to establish his bonafides
* The house where UBL was supposed to be living in was under surveillance for four years
* The Pakistanis were not informed, and could not be trusted, so as to get their help
* UBL is shot in the face
* UBL is shot in the face, futilely trying to use his wife as a human shield.
* UBL"s wife confirmed UBL's identity by calling out his name
* UBL's body was disposed of in an Islamically-approved way, by dumping it into the Arabian Sea
* The government identified UBL by his DNA and facial-recognition software
* The government is in possession of UBL's computers, notebooks, diaries, etc. and busily pouring over the intelligence within so as to find other terrorists
* UBL Had two cell phones/telephone numbers and 500 Euros sewn into his clothing.
* UBL's wife called out his name, and was wounded, in the course of the gunfight.
* UBL Might have ben captured, and then executed.
* SEAL Team 6 practiced the raid -- for a year -- in a secret mock-up of the compound somewhere in the United States.
* DNA testing has sorta-kinda confirmed that the dead man was, or at least very strongly indicated that it was, UBL.
* A 'treasure trove' of information on all-things Al'Qaeda was found at the compound and is being checked with a fine-toothed comb by US Intelligence, and as of today, DOJ and others are saying that indictments and arrests are pending, and that DOJ may be asking for wiretap permission and search warrants, and issuing subpeonas very soon.
* The names of others inside that compound have already been released. I'm surprised they haven't identified the cleaning lady and Bin Laden's plumber by name, yet.
Just what secrets, if any, are being kept? It seems to me that President Obama is doing nothing but talking about the raid -- understandable, as it is the ONLY accomplishment of his otherwise-disastrous administration -- and the Press is doing nothing but publishing/broadcasting all sorts of details, and that, obviously, means the government leaks information -- and secrets -- like a fucking sieve.
But even more troubling, and somewhat confusing, is that the Administration is not going to release any photographs of UBL to prove that he's actually dead, and the reason given is that no one wants to 'inflame' Islamic sensibilities with US Troops in combat zones, and US diplomats still in Islamic countries. That's when the excuse is not protecting National Security or the protection of sources and methods and so forth, in the meantime neglecting that so much information has already been released that it would take years for any investigative reporter with integrity and half-a-brain (oxymoron) just to run it all down.
It seems as if the Administration, true to form, is attempting to decide what is and what is not secret depending on what the perceived political and propaganda needs of the Administration are at any particular moment, and in the process only reinforcing what so many already think; that Barack Obama is a doofus, surrounded by bigger doofuses, who can't decide if it's Tuesday or Wednesday, and when confronted by the possibility of having to make a decision, unfailingly make the wrong one.
Having made the right decision to get UBL, the Won is now fucking it all up for himself by making -- or allowing his minions to make -- all the wrong ones.
First of all, who gives a crap about Islamic Sensibilities? If you say that not releasing the photographs and other evidence is the proper thing to do on the grounds that it's all too gruesome and graphic, I'd like to remind you that the images of 9/11 are just as horrific, and I just saw them all over again this entire week plastered all over my television screen, as the Press helps Obama take his, by now, extremely aggravating extended bow.
Second, the amount of data that has already been released (all of it for PR purposes) is astounding, if often contradictory, and has probably already let quite a few cats out of any number of bags, which begins to make a mockery of the idea of operational security.
We've been treated to pictures of the White House Situation Room during the raid, with their grave Obama, praying Joe Biden, and looks-as-if-she's-about-to-puke Hillary Clinton, but only because those images serve an ulterior purpose: making the Obama Administration seem competent, serious, concerned, and all Presidentially-like. Yeah, we get to see THOSE pictures, on the assumption that we really, really need to (really on the assumption that Obama needs us to), but we don't get to see the end result? Go figure.
The fact is that the Obama Administration, by playing to this nonsense about 'Islamic Sensibilities' -- burying Bin Laden according to Islamic custom (something they apparently fucked up, anyway), not wanting to rub salt in the wound of a major loss and dead folk hero -- and apparently trying, without much success, to return to it's 'beg Islam to be nice to us' policy, is doing itself, and us, a major disservice.
The disservice is that without evidence, no one in the Islamic World believes that Bin Laden is really dead. Without evidence, the same people who burned braincells and wasted air over Obama's birth certificate have new grist for the conspiracy theory mill. There are even some going as far as to say that those images are deliberately being kept from the public until Obama, about to lose the 2012 election, pulls an October Surprise and releases them a day or two before the election in a desperate bid to save his sorry ass. Already, there are those in the Islamic Sandbox saying the enitre thing is a fiction cooked up by a desperate Obama.
Obama, who has now scored major points in an area which was one of his biggest weaknesses (He's been soft on the War on Terror), has gone and squandered that advantage -- and re-opened the floodgates of conspiracy theory and charges of incompetence. The left hand doesn't seem to know what the right hand does here; one day UBL is said to have resisted, and the next that he was unarmed. One day UBL was found in part because of what happens at Gitmo, and the next, it was painstaking intelligence work done over a series of years,like someone doing a giant jigsaw puzzle in the dark and with one hand tied behind his back. The CIA says one thing, the Pentagon another. The State Department (which on a good day might be able to find it's own collective ass with both hands and a roadmap) says something else, entirely, and they all contradict and step all over each other in the process.
The disinformation may be deliberate, granted, but from here it appears as if no one in the government is on the same page, and that always leads one to the conclusion that no one in Washington can muster enough intellectual firepower to burn calories, and in this political climate (Throw the Bums Out!), that's rather dangerous for a sitting President (even if I do think he's a con man).
Offered as proof of that lack of attention to detail: You'll be glad to know that the FBI is STILL offering a $25 million reward for UBL. Administrative oversight, probably (The FBI probably requires 700 bureaucrats to remove a staple from a two-page memo), but you just know what conspiracy theorists will do with this sort of detail.
Leave it to Barack Obama to create a rather strange dialectic in which Americans may actually thank God that Wikileaks exists.
If you did the thing right in the first place, you wouldn't have these problems, and you wouldn't have to expend so much energy trying to look the part of legitimate, in-charge, hands-on, involved, know-everything, competent President.
UBL is dead; Great! I'm proud of you. Now prove it. Considering the track record of this President and this Administration, documented, authenticated, carved-in-stone proof is required. They have no one but themselves to blame for it because they way they 'do business' leaves them vulnerable to charges of not being truthful. Their inability to ever nail down details -- do they even care about details? -- makes them look bad; as if they're just winging it, and leads to the sort of distrust that allows a two-year kerfuffle over birth certificates to fester. It'll take all of five minutes to do, and who gives a shit what Achmed in Riyadh thinks, besides Larry King?
I believe that UBL is, in fact, fish food, but let's face it; there's millions of people, here in the United States and abroad, who won't until they've been given solid evidence. And even at that, there are still going to be those who will never believe it anyway, so why not just release the damned things and spare yourself the multitude of self-inflicted wounds, accusations of blind stupidity, and attributions of sinister political motivations?
Show the damn pictures.This is par for the course with President Obama; even when he does something awesome and worthy of praise, he ruins it by leaving so many loose ends, refusing to release information that is readily available and which the public has a right to because political motive gets in the way, and because he and his people often feel the need to take that Victory Lap before the Public has been convinced that he's acually won something. I think at this point it's become an automatic, reflex, defensive routine on the part of the Administration: declare victory, take the photo ops and good press, go home, refuse to answer questions that might rain upon your parade, then complain about the 'unfairness' of having to be held to some sort of higher standard than past Presidents, cry racism.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Welcome Smartsilvers.com Readers...
Been a lot of you coming here for the last four months or so, so I'd like to take this opportunity to say hello, and thanks for stopping by...and mind your own business.
Of course, you're all here to read the same four-months-old post, and judging from the e-mail that it still continues to generate, it would seem that you're all shocked...shocked...that someone would say such horrible things about his own mother without having a clue as to our family dynamic,or history. A few have expressed concern for her safety, and some, mostly you Asian twits -- who have come here from that Lady in Singapore's blog which linked to the original post, which will get no traffic from me -- want to know what the fuck is wrong with me that I show such blatant disrespect for my own mother. This would never happen in Singapore/China/Japan/Korea, et. al.
Well, this here is America, not the Orient (I don't care if that term is Eurocentric, I'm fucking using it).
Here's the news: My mother is still alive, despite being the biggest pain in the ass since that (in-)famous Englishman (who's name I cannot be bothered to look up) was executed at the Tower of London by having a red-hot iron poker rammed up his Poop Chute. She is well, and no, I haven't beaten her to a bloody pulp...yet...and -- probably -- never will. So you can stop saying novenas for her safety. She is not liable to meet her untimely demise at the hands of an ungrateful son.
That post is what we refer to in the trade as SATIRE. It's actually not very far from the truth, but still satire all the same. Your generation (and just which generation is that, anyway? How many of you went to school with King Tut, John The Baptist or Atilla the Hun? Show of hands?) has the unfortunate habit of believing everything you read without engaging your (rapidly-fading) critical thinking skills. You figure that if it wasn't completely, literally true then no one would bother to write it down.
What I really enjoy -- other than the indignation of old folks who have little time left on this Earth but choose to spend their last, waking breaths questioning my sanity -- is the palpable fear that's contained in those e-mails. Now, when I say this, I don't mean that I actually get off in some sexually-perverted way on your fear, just that it's interesting to note just how frightened many of you are at the thought of your children completely abandoning you just as you begin to enter your Terminal Incontinent Stage, and think I've just given then a How-To-Manual on how to treat a sick parent,or a Permission Note to mistreat you.
Apparently, this is a common worry amongst the Lived-Longer-Than-They-Ever-Deserved-To-and- Collected-More-In-Social-Security-Than-They-Ever-Paid-Into-It demographic. Yeah, I know: you're entitled. You fought Hitler.
If I have to explain it again:
1. My mother is not, and never was, circling the bowl. She only had a knee replacement and is/was in no immediate danger of dying, unless she took a header down a flight of stairs. However, she was never left alone, and had no intention of ever approaching a staircase in her condition.
2. She pissed me off with her incessant whining, so I blogged about it. Then again, she's been pissing me off with her constant and ungrateful whining for 44 years now, so I can't imagine why I waited so long. Even at that, I was here, taking care of her. People who have no class, empathy, or sense of obligation don't do things like that. Like my sister who only lives eight blocks away and couldn't be bothered to do more than make a daily phone call, and my brother who might as well be on the side of a milk carton. More people have seen Bigfoot than have seen my brother in the last three years. Got anything to say about those ungrateful and disrespectful children? Didn't think so: they don't blog, after all.
You should read all the e-mail I got from 'kindred spirits' (i.e. other children taking care of sick parents) that ran the gamut from 'I hear ya! These old folks suck!' to 'Do you think I should ask the doctor to give Dad a Hot-shot and just be done with it?' Now you tell me, just how bad was my post, or my actions on my mother's behalf? Compared to some of those lunatics, I'm a friggin' saint.
If this fear preys on your mind in your final days, instead of worrying about me and my mother, you should start worrying about what kind of monster you've raised, or perhaps start making amends for having been a rotten parent before it's too late.
By the way, my mother will eventually die so poor she won't even be able to pay attention, let alone her bills in years to come. So I certainly didn't do it to get a bigger piece of the inheritance, as some of you have suggested.
3. She received the absolute best of care that I could provide. I fed her, washed her, changed her dressings, administered her medications, saw to her comfort and otherwise fufilled every whim, wish and need, no matter how fucking stupid, time-consuming, retarded, unnecessary, or annoying. I've done the research: in at least seven states, the kind of crap she pulled would have been grounds for justifiable homicide. I paid for all the Visiting nurses she needed, and have paid for physical therapy twice a week for the last two months.
4. I warn everyone who comes here that they're liable to be offended. I don't care if I offend people because, believe me, no one gives a shit if they offend me. Those of you still following the New York Times link were warned by the author of that post that you would probably be offended. You are owed no apologies, and since most of you asking for one (why?) will soon be dead, anyway. Good luck getting one.
5. The absolute LAST thing I need is to be lectured to by complete strangers. Especially ones who apparently don't understand what they read, or who rub hemorrhoid cream into their hair because they had 'A Senior Moment' only three minutes earlier, and then get on the computer.
6. I DO NOT HATE THE ELDERLY. Only the whiny old bastards who won't help save their country the cash and finally let slip this mortal coil, already. In fact, I only wish every goddamned day that my grandparents were still here, because they were the only people who ever gave me any guidance, or who talked any horse sense. My mother, incidentally, will only be 65 this August, so technically, she's not elderly at all. She just behaves as if she is.
7. Yes, I use a lot of foul language. Like you never have in the 3,000 or so years you've walked the Earth? Just deal.
Other than that, I'm happy to see you. Enjoy your (unfortunately brief) stay.
Of course, you're all here to read the same four-months-old post, and judging from the e-mail that it still continues to generate, it would seem that you're all shocked...shocked...that someone would say such horrible things about his own mother without having a clue as to our family dynamic,or history. A few have expressed concern for her safety, and some, mostly you Asian twits -- who have come here from that Lady in Singapore's blog which linked to the original post, which will get no traffic from me -- want to know what the fuck is wrong with me that I show such blatant disrespect for my own mother. This would never happen in Singapore/China/Japan/Korea, et. al.
Well, this here is America, not the Orient (I don't care if that term is Eurocentric, I'm fucking using it).
Here's the news: My mother is still alive, despite being the biggest pain in the ass since that (in-)famous Englishman (who's name I cannot be bothered to look up) was executed at the Tower of London by having a red-hot iron poker rammed up his Poop Chute. She is well, and no, I haven't beaten her to a bloody pulp...yet...and -- probably -- never will. So you can stop saying novenas for her safety. She is not liable to meet her untimely demise at the hands of an ungrateful son.
That post is what we refer to in the trade as SATIRE. It's actually not very far from the truth, but still satire all the same. Your generation (and just which generation is that, anyway? How many of you went to school with King Tut, John The Baptist or Atilla the Hun? Show of hands?) has the unfortunate habit of believing everything you read without engaging your (rapidly-fading) critical thinking skills. You figure that if it wasn't completely, literally true then no one would bother to write it down.
What I really enjoy -- other than the indignation of old folks who have little time left on this Earth but choose to spend their last, waking breaths questioning my sanity -- is the palpable fear that's contained in those e-mails. Now, when I say this, I don't mean that I actually get off in some sexually-perverted way on your fear, just that it's interesting to note just how frightened many of you are at the thought of your children completely abandoning you just as you begin to enter your Terminal Incontinent Stage, and think I've just given then a How-To-Manual on how to treat a sick parent,or a Permission Note to mistreat you.
Apparently, this is a common worry amongst the Lived-Longer-Than-They-Ever-Deserved-To-and- Collected-More-In-Social-Security-Than-They-Ever-Paid-Into-It demographic. Yeah, I know: you're entitled. You fought Hitler.
If I have to explain it again:
1. My mother is not, and never was, circling the bowl. She only had a knee replacement and is/was in no immediate danger of dying, unless she took a header down a flight of stairs. However, she was never left alone, and had no intention of ever approaching a staircase in her condition.
2. She pissed me off with her incessant whining, so I blogged about it. Then again, she's been pissing me off with her constant and ungrateful whining for 44 years now, so I can't imagine why I waited so long. Even at that, I was here, taking care of her. People who have no class, empathy, or sense of obligation don't do things like that. Like my sister who only lives eight blocks away and couldn't be bothered to do more than make a daily phone call, and my brother who might as well be on the side of a milk carton. More people have seen Bigfoot than have seen my brother in the last three years. Got anything to say about those ungrateful and disrespectful children? Didn't think so: they don't blog, after all.
You should read all the e-mail I got from 'kindred spirits' (i.e. other children taking care of sick parents) that ran the gamut from 'I hear ya! These old folks suck!' to 'Do you think I should ask the doctor to give Dad a Hot-shot and just be done with it?' Now you tell me, just how bad was my post, or my actions on my mother's behalf? Compared to some of those lunatics, I'm a friggin' saint.
If this fear preys on your mind in your final days, instead of worrying about me and my mother, you should start worrying about what kind of monster you've raised, or perhaps start making amends for having been a rotten parent before it's too late.
By the way, my mother will eventually die so poor she won't even be able to pay attention, let alone her bills in years to come. So I certainly didn't do it to get a bigger piece of the inheritance, as some of you have suggested.
3. She received the absolute best of care that I could provide. I fed her, washed her, changed her dressings, administered her medications, saw to her comfort and otherwise fufilled every whim, wish and need, no matter how fucking stupid, time-consuming, retarded, unnecessary, or annoying. I've done the research: in at least seven states, the kind of crap she pulled would have been grounds for justifiable homicide. I paid for all the Visiting nurses she needed, and have paid for physical therapy twice a week for the last two months.
4. I warn everyone who comes here that they're liable to be offended. I don't care if I offend people because, believe me, no one gives a shit if they offend me. Those of you still following the New York Times link were warned by the author of that post that you would probably be offended. You are owed no apologies, and since most of you asking for one (why?) will soon be dead, anyway. Good luck getting one.
5. The absolute LAST thing I need is to be lectured to by complete strangers. Especially ones who apparently don't understand what they read, or who rub hemorrhoid cream into their hair because they had 'A Senior Moment' only three minutes earlier, and then get on the computer.
6. I DO NOT HATE THE ELDERLY. Only the whiny old bastards who won't help save their country the cash and finally let slip this mortal coil, already. In fact, I only wish every goddamned day that my grandparents were still here, because they were the only people who ever gave me any guidance, or who talked any horse sense. My mother, incidentally, will only be 65 this August, so technically, she's not elderly at all. She just behaves as if she is.
7. Yes, I use a lot of foul language. Like you never have in the 3,000 or so years you've walked the Earth? Just deal.
Other than that, I'm happy to see you. Enjoy your (unfortunately brief) stay.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The Roll Call of the "Famous" Dead...
One of the things to despise about the end of the year is the annual Roll Call of the Famous Dead. What really sucks about this ritual is that usually half, if not more, of the people on such a list are totally unknown to you, and the recitation of their names leaves you scratching your head; just what the fuck did this person ever do to become famous? And if they really were famous, why haven't I ever heard of them?
Well, that's because most of them fall into a category I will call "Parochial Fame", that is, they were considered a luminary within the small confines of specific circle of people that most normal folks wouldn't associate with if you paid them. Most of your dead poets, obscure writers and philosophers, internationally-known-but-otherwise-back-bencher politicians, career journalistic hacks, and people who "revolutionized" a field that only about 17 people world-wide know about fall into this category. Recite those names in your circle of friends and family, and you'd be genuinely shocked if anyone recognized two of them.
Then there's a second category, which I will call "People Who Became Famous for Shit No one Cares About". You'll find amongst that number such "famous" figures as, oh say, a professional surfer, some dude who scaled Everest three times in his underwear, rich playboys who screwed their way through the all supermodels in the finer European resorts while squandering the family fortune and dying of a drug-resistant strain of clap, the Exiled Crown Prince Of Northeast Buttfuckistan. They would be people who went totally unnoticed in life by anyone who wasn't paid to kiss their ass.
Then there's the final category, which is "Those Made Famous By People Dumber Than They Are". You can put just about any self-help guru, maharishi, fire-and-brimstone reverend, Communist Guerrilla leader, flash-in-the-pan artist/musician or Film Director, into this bin. They'd be totally obscure to most of the general public, and if they were remembered at all, it would most likely be in the motif of "I can't believe I wasted $19.95 on that asshole's Book/Album/Movie/T-shirt".
Amongst the "honored" dead this year, there were, in fact some really famous people (and most of them deservedly so).People who are still household names, who after years have seen their careers have an effect upon the culture that will resonate in the future. They were famous because they actually DID something that made people think, or act, or just made them happy.
I ran across one of those "Dead Celebrities of 2010" lists. I really didn't want to look at it, but Lena Horne and Leslie Neilsen were on the top of the list. So, why not? I enjoyed the work of both. And sure enough, I didn't know about 120 of the 164 people listed. Of those I did know, I decided to take issue with some of them, with regards to their achievement of the "famous" imprimatur.
On the List That No One Could Argue With, we have: Lena Horne, Leslie Neilsen, Tony Curtis, Eddie Fisher, Patricia Neal, George Steinbrenner, Jean Simmons and Teddy Pendergrass. You can argue about the nature of their individual accomplishments, but you can't say none of them are "famous" in the sense that if you stopped 10 people on the street and mentioned their names, you'd get 7 who would recognize at least that much. Some of the names on this list had me asking "what drugs was the person compiling this list taking when he/she conferred "fame" upon this loser?". In no particular order:
* Blake Edwards; was nothing without Peter Sellers. At best, Edwards made his name making risque-I-guess-you-could-call-them-comedy films at the height of the Sexual Revolution (when the taboos surrounding sex were being torn down rapidly), and then nothing else. In the world of film directors, Edwards was a one-trick pony.
* Elizabeth Edwards: Give me a fucking break. So far as I'm concerned, the only thing she ever did was to enable a narcissistic douchebag who might have become President of this country, and then milk the sympathy extended by the public over the death of her child, and her cancer, for a shitload of money. I really hate to piss on her grave this way, but I'm quite certain that Hell has a special place reserved for her and her husband, the Breck Girl.
* Teena Marie - No fucking way. In the world of one-hit wonders, she was barely that. Her "gimmick" was to be a white girl singing R&B and soul music. In a day-and-age of American Idol -- where everyone tries to sound like a cross between Whitney and Aretha, even the Men --that is no longer a distinction, let alone a badge of courage.
* Captain Beefheart - if it wasn't for drugs and 1960/70's counter-culture, this man would have been locked away in a mental institution. If extreme eccentricity, deliberately cultivated as an affectation, is enough to make you "famous", then we're fucking doomed as a species.
* James Wall - never heard of him, have you? He was Captain Kangaroo's sidekick. Certainly a cultural icon. I remember thinking as a child that he was probably a child rapist, one of those people your mother told you not to take candy from. Or maybe that was Mr. Greenjeans? I forget. . He probably has a statue dedicated to his memory in some podunk town like Nosepicker, North Dakota...where no one will ever see it. Along with his carefully-concealed criminal history, and predilection for underage hookers. (Ed. Note: I don't know if any of that is true. It just sounded funny).
* Jimmy Dean -I'm torn. I mean, what would the world be without link sausage?
* Dennis Hooper - everyone has heard of Dennis Hopper, but he was a douchebag, and therefore, undeserving of the orgy of fake grief someone was trying to gin up by putting his name on the list. Sorry, but "Easy Rider" and playing Molly Ringwald's alcoholic father don't make you a great actor, because they were almost all exceedingly bad movies. After that, you pushed the idea that Baby Boomers were miniature gods who fundamentally altered the Universe. Which indicates that you not only made very bad movies, but took too many hallucinogenic drugs, Dingbat.
* Gary Coleman - well, if he wasn't a sick midget with a catchphrase, what would you remember Gary Coleman for, exactly?
* Lynn Redgrave - because no Dead Celebrity List is ever complete without at least one terribly bad English actress on it. Technically, Vanessa is/was worse, but she could at least pull off that vacant stare that could scare the fertilizer out of you.
* Corey Haim - an icon of the incredibly plastic and shallow 1980's. After that, he's only remembered for his addictions, which were numerous, and his appetite for self-immolation, which seems to have been boundless.
* J.D.Salinger - write one really awful book that Libtards love, and somehow this makes you immortal. Salinger was perhaps the worst American writer of the 20th Century, although it's a close-run thing considering there's Jack Kerouac, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alan Ginsburg, Maya Angelou, Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Vonnegut to consider. They are all, almost universally, unreadable.
Well, that's because most of them fall into a category I will call "Parochial Fame", that is, they were considered a luminary within the small confines of specific circle of people that most normal folks wouldn't associate with if you paid them. Most of your dead poets, obscure writers and philosophers, internationally-known-but-otherwise-back-bencher politicians, career journalistic hacks, and people who "revolutionized" a field that only about 17 people world-wide know about fall into this category. Recite those names in your circle of friends and family, and you'd be genuinely shocked if anyone recognized two of them.
Then there's a second category, which I will call "People Who Became Famous for Shit No one Cares About". You'll find amongst that number such "famous" figures as, oh say, a professional surfer, some dude who scaled Everest three times in his underwear, rich playboys who screwed their way through the all supermodels in the finer European resorts while squandering the family fortune and dying of a drug-resistant strain of clap, the Exiled Crown Prince Of Northeast Buttfuckistan. They would be people who went totally unnoticed in life by anyone who wasn't paid to kiss their ass.
Then there's the final category, which is "Those Made Famous By People Dumber Than They Are". You can put just about any self-help guru, maharishi, fire-and-brimstone reverend, Communist Guerrilla leader, flash-in-the-pan artist/musician or Film Director, into this bin. They'd be totally obscure to most of the general public, and if they were remembered at all, it would most likely be in the motif of "I can't believe I wasted $19.95 on that asshole's Book/Album/Movie/T-shirt".
Amongst the "honored" dead this year, there were, in fact some really famous people (and most of them deservedly so).People who are still household names, who after years have seen their careers have an effect upon the culture that will resonate in the future. They were famous because they actually DID something that made people think, or act, or just made them happy.
I ran across one of those "Dead Celebrities of 2010" lists. I really didn't want to look at it, but Lena Horne and Leslie Neilsen were on the top of the list. So, why not? I enjoyed the work of both. And sure enough, I didn't know about 120 of the 164 people listed. Of those I did know, I decided to take issue with some of them, with regards to their achievement of the "famous" imprimatur.
On the List That No One Could Argue With, we have: Lena Horne, Leslie Neilsen, Tony Curtis, Eddie Fisher, Patricia Neal, George Steinbrenner, Jean Simmons and Teddy Pendergrass. You can argue about the nature of their individual accomplishments, but you can't say none of them are "famous" in the sense that if you stopped 10 people on the street and mentioned their names, you'd get 7 who would recognize at least that much. Some of the names on this list had me asking "what drugs was the person compiling this list taking when he/she conferred "fame" upon this loser?". In no particular order:
* Blake Edwards; was nothing without Peter Sellers. At best, Edwards made his name making risque-I-guess-you-could-call-them-comedy films at the height of the Sexual Revolution (when the taboos surrounding sex were being torn down rapidly), and then nothing else. In the world of film directors, Edwards was a one-trick pony.
* Elizabeth Edwards: Give me a fucking break. So far as I'm concerned, the only thing she ever did was to enable a narcissistic douchebag who might have become President of this country, and then milk the sympathy extended by the public over the death of her child, and her cancer, for a shitload of money. I really hate to piss on her grave this way, but I'm quite certain that Hell has a special place reserved for her and her husband, the Breck Girl.
* Teena Marie - No fucking way. In the world of one-hit wonders, she was barely that. Her "gimmick" was to be a white girl singing R&B and soul music. In a day-and-age of American Idol -- where everyone tries to sound like a cross between Whitney and Aretha, even the Men --that is no longer a distinction, let alone a badge of courage.
* Captain Beefheart - if it wasn't for drugs and 1960/70's counter-culture, this man would have been locked away in a mental institution. If extreme eccentricity, deliberately cultivated as an affectation, is enough to make you "famous", then we're fucking doomed as a species.
* James Wall - never heard of him, have you? He was Captain Kangaroo's sidekick. Certainly a cultural icon. I remember thinking as a child that he was probably a child rapist, one of those people your mother told you not to take candy from. Or maybe that was Mr. Greenjeans? I forget. . He probably has a statue dedicated to his memory in some podunk town like Nosepicker, North Dakota...where no one will ever see it. Along with his carefully-concealed criminal history, and predilection for underage hookers. (Ed. Note: I don't know if any of that is true. It just sounded funny).
* Jimmy Dean -I'm torn. I mean, what would the world be without link sausage?
* Dennis Hooper - everyone has heard of Dennis Hopper, but he was a douchebag, and therefore, undeserving of the orgy of fake grief someone was trying to gin up by putting his name on the list. Sorry, but "Easy Rider" and playing Molly Ringwald's alcoholic father don't make you a great actor, because they were almost all exceedingly bad movies. After that, you pushed the idea that Baby Boomers were miniature gods who fundamentally altered the Universe. Which indicates that you not only made very bad movies, but took too many hallucinogenic drugs, Dingbat.
* Gary Coleman - well, if he wasn't a sick midget with a catchphrase, what would you remember Gary Coleman for, exactly?
* Lynn Redgrave - because no Dead Celebrity List is ever complete without at least one terribly bad English actress on it. Technically, Vanessa is/was worse, but she could at least pull off that vacant stare that could scare the fertilizer out of you.
* Corey Haim - an icon of the incredibly plastic and shallow 1980's. After that, he's only remembered for his addictions, which were numerous, and his appetite for self-immolation, which seems to have been boundless.
* J.D.Salinger - write one really awful book that Libtards love, and somehow this makes you immortal. Salinger was perhaps the worst American writer of the 20th Century, although it's a close-run thing considering there's Jack Kerouac, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alan Ginsburg, Maya Angelou, Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Vonnegut to consider. They are all, almost universally, unreadable.
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