A local high school has decided that a quarter of it's seniors are to be barred from the Prom, this decision stemming from an incident of drunken vandalism that showed up...predictably...on Facebook (your children are retards, you do realize that?). The principal, in my opinion, is absolutely correct; these kids committed crimes starting with vandalism and probably going all the way up to DWI. They defaced and disgraced themselves and their school, and they shouldn't be allowed to take part in any activity that is predicated upon school spirit or ties, having just demonstrated that such things mean absolute shit to them.
The response from the parents of these little douchebags, though, was as entirely predictable as it was distasteful: it begins with the "My Kid's a Fucking Angel who's been unfairly singled out" routine, and then ends, as it most certainly must, with "I have a $1,000 invested in this fucking prom, you'd better goddamned believe my kid is going!"
This is the Battlecry of the Middle-Class-With-No-Class which makes up a majority of the local population. They raise baboons and then get defensive when someone else complains about it, or worse, pokes their bubble of suburban bliss by making them have to face the truth about both their children and lack of critical parenting skills.
Predictable: denial that they've raised a fucking Philistine, pissed off because it's costing them money. It's no wonder a good many of the kids on this Island suck: look who raised them...or at least fed them, because if they were actually 'raised' they might have some manners, brains and some respect. These kids don't have parents: they just have people who donated the proper gametes. Children who have real parents don't do these things.
And while the kids at Moore Catholic are complaining about having to accept responsibility and suffer for their foolish actions, another Staten Island Catholic High School -- an older and far-more respected institution -- has celebrated it's last prom...ever. Talk about perspective?
St. Peter's Girls High School is the counterpart to my Alma Mater, St. Peter's Boy's High School. The school has been a part of the community since 1852 (and was one of the best-ever girl's basketball programs in all of New York City). It is an institution. And it will soon be closed for good, despite the best efforts of the alumni to save it, because the Archdiocese cannot afford to keep it open.
The Archdiocese can sell the property of another parish (St. Margaret Mary's) to Muslims who will build a mosque upon it, but it can't find any money to keep St. Peter's Girls open? Typical. maybe if the Archbishop wasn't being chauffeured around in limos?
Anyways. the young ladies who are, sadly, the last graduating class, perhaps had a bittersweet experience at their Prom. Knowing, as I do , how girls at St.Peter's are infused with a sense of self-respect, and a love of their institution, I predict that their Last Prom was everything Moore Catholic's most certainly cannot be. For one thing, it was attended by Young Adults who respect themselves and their traditions, instead of barbarians who get drunk, draw dick pictures on the school walls, and cry like little bitches when they're punished for it.
I'm positive they'll do extremely well in college, too. I'm taking bets that half of the Moore Catholic class of 2011 eventually winds up working for the Department of Sanitation, the DMV, or in jail. Most likely following in their parents' footsteps.
Friday, May 27, 2011
This Is Why You Should Never, Ever, Donate Bodily Fluids...
...unless there is a deep level of personal commitment. I wouldn't even think of giving mine to someone who wouldn't, at the very least, make me breakfast before she left, and then didn't make the effort to forget my address or phone number.
And if you can't make the delivery yourself in the time-honored fashion, then you don't want anything to do with being a sperm donor, either. It's not worth it if there's a turkey baster involved. If your recipients are a pair of lesbian chicks you wouldn't fuck without a steel-reinforced concrete condom and a fifth of Johnny Black, then you probably don't even want to be in the same house with that womb. If one of them lists her occupation as 'clairvoyant' and 'funeral celebrant', you definitely don't sell your seed for anything less than your weight in gold, and even then, you might think twice.
Here's another argument against Gay Marriage (as if the anti- argument wasn't already self-evident): how do you redefine 'Fatherhood' when the Warm-and-Fuzzies wear off between the Primaries, and you have to consider the rights of the gamete donor in the 'divorce'?
I feel for this guy, because he has been a father in all respects, it would seem. Especially financially; this pair of carpet-munchers wanted children, but children that someone else would pay for, looks like. This guy paid for the pre-natal care, the midwife, child support, and even offered housing to the mother and the defective she was playing house with. The child, to the...ahem...women, appears but a prop in their bullshit 'lifestyle choice' kabuki play.
He even offered to build them all a house to live in!
I hope this guy can get his daughter away from this pair of ding-dongs.
And if you can't make the delivery yourself in the time-honored fashion, then you don't want anything to do with being a sperm donor, either. It's not worth it if there's a turkey baster involved. If your recipients are a pair of lesbian chicks you wouldn't fuck without a steel-reinforced concrete condom and a fifth of Johnny Black, then you probably don't even want to be in the same house with that womb. If one of them lists her occupation as 'clairvoyant' and 'funeral celebrant', you definitely don't sell your seed for anything less than your weight in gold, and even then, you might think twice.
Here's another argument against Gay Marriage (as if the anti- argument wasn't already self-evident): how do you redefine 'Fatherhood' when the Warm-and-Fuzzies wear off between the Primaries, and you have to consider the rights of the gamete donor in the 'divorce'?
I feel for this guy, because he has been a father in all respects, it would seem. Especially financially; this pair of carpet-munchers wanted children, but children that someone else would pay for, looks like. This guy paid for the pre-natal care, the midwife, child support, and even offered housing to the mother and the defective she was playing house with. The child, to the...ahem...women, appears but a prop in their bullshit 'lifestyle choice' kabuki play.
He even offered to build them all a house to live in!
I hope this guy can get his daughter away from this pair of ding-dongs.
Can We Please Start Sending These People Back Where They Came From?
Muslims have to invent 'hate crimes' so as to garner sympathy. It's part of the jihad, you know; it's not enough to simply kill the infidel, you have to make him feel like it's his own fault that you blew his office building up, or sawed his head off.
In some libtard-dominated precincts of this country, irrational guilt is mightier than the sword, and the primary victims of the jihad (the ones who won't fight back in the name of a 'tolerance' that only ever goes one way) will do their level best to hold perfectly still while someone cuts their throat...just to be helpful, neighborly, and PC.
You would think that if you were going to mastermind a fake hate crime, you could have done just a tad better with a little more planning and attention to detail. This attempt is so incredibly transparent. The giveaway: I rather doubt someone who wants you out of his country would go through the trouble of asking you to do so in your own language.
Then again, people this monumentally stupid and anal-retentive are, perhaps, unworthy of any sympathy, at all.
People who are capable of beating otherwise-innocent and unsuspecting people to a pulp in a gang attack, and who have the absolute gall to walk the streets looking like this while they do it, are likewise, unworthy of sympathy.
So far as I'm concerned, until the day comes when Western Muslims can be relied upon to turn in their batshit-insane brothers and uncles before they detonate, and until they take to the streets in the name of tolerance and liberty in the same way as their fellows take to the streets in support of jihad and bloodletting, they're not going to be given any respect or consideration from me.
I hold out no hope that such will ever be the case, so let's save everyone a lot of hassle: leave now. This way you don't have to whine and feel put upon, leading you to craft fake hate crimes, and so I can go back to using airplanes anytime I want to, and I don't have smell you.
(H/T FiveFeetofFury, SteynOnline)
In some libtard-dominated precincts of this country, irrational guilt is mightier than the sword, and the primary victims of the jihad (the ones who won't fight back in the name of a 'tolerance' that only ever goes one way) will do their level best to hold perfectly still while someone cuts their throat...just to be helpful, neighborly, and PC.
You would think that if you were going to mastermind a fake hate crime, you could have done just a tad better with a little more planning and attention to detail. This attempt is so incredibly transparent. The giveaway: I rather doubt someone who wants you out of his country would go through the trouble of asking you to do so in your own language.
Then again, people this monumentally stupid and anal-retentive are, perhaps, unworthy of any sympathy, at all.
People who are capable of beating otherwise-innocent and unsuspecting people to a pulp in a gang attack, and who have the absolute gall to walk the streets looking like this while they do it, are likewise, unworthy of sympathy.
So far as I'm concerned, until the day comes when Western Muslims can be relied upon to turn in their batshit-insane brothers and uncles before they detonate, and until they take to the streets in the name of tolerance and liberty in the same way as their fellows take to the streets in support of jihad and bloodletting, they're not going to be given any respect or consideration from me.
I hold out no hope that such will ever be the case, so let's save everyone a lot of hassle: leave now. This way you don't have to whine and feel put upon, leading you to craft fake hate crimes, and so I can go back to using airplanes anytime I want to, and I don't have smell you.
(H/T FiveFeetofFury, SteynOnline)
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Your Children Are Still In Public Schools, Because...?
New York spends more per pupil, only manages to create more and bigger idiots than any state in America.
Here's a laugher: a good many of these doofuses will, eventually -- because it takes them six to eight years to finish their (remedial) 'education' at City College, where German Shepherds teach English and lack of involuntary muscle responses is no bar to admission -- become the next wave of overpaid teachers in this City. Only in New York could you accept the worst graduates, from the worst colleges, obtaining the easiest-to-get major, and then pay them to teach others.
It's a well-established fact that 'Education' majors are commonly drawn from the lowest echelon of academic achievers, and most of those will have switched majors at least once before settling on 'Education' because most other worthwhile degrees require work. Remember: those who can, do, those who can't, teach...
Nowhere is this more evident than in New York.
Without a cushy public sector union job to fall back on, many of those...ahem...City College graduates...would never be employed in an above-minimum-wage job.
Money Quote fromMichael Goodwin in yesteryday's NY Post:
MANY NYC GRADS CAN'T READ THIS
Responding to my Sunday argument that city schools deprive students of the freedom to fail by promoting too many who aren't ready, a professional aide in a Manhattan high school offers front-line evidence. Here is what she wrote:
"The increased graduation rates are being achieved by means that are absolutely fraudulent and are generally known as 'credit recovery programs.' In exchange for completing a minimal amount of work (and I do mean minimal ), students are granted credit for courses that they previously failed.
"In addition, teachers are 'encouraged' by the principal to pass 80 percent of the students in each of their classes. I can attest, with great confidence, that at least 80 percent of our graduates are functionally illiterate."
The writer, who asks to remain anonymous to protect her job, then quotes from student statements that are rife with errors: " . . . so they started hitting me and I felt to the floor." "I triped and fall with caused bleeding and my pants to torn."
Students say they are "dessie" (dizzy), hurt a "risk" (wrist), have a "hedick" (headache) or are "bruced" (bruised).
"Obviously," she adds, "social promotion is alive and well at all grade levels."
Sadly, her experience is not unique or even unusual. This is the real outrage of too many New York schools.
But then again, the priority is not education at NYC Schools. It can't be, not with all that money to be divvied up. And of course, where's there's taxpayer money to be passed out, there's Political Correctness and Corruption, too. Like these cases, from Andrea Peyser in today's NY Post
:High-school math teacher Rivky Love hounded a girl whom she called her "best friend and sister" with late-night texts signed, "Love you."
The married 36-year-old even offered to slip the Edward R. Murrow student an advance copy of a test. Love was suspended for six months without pay from the Brooklyn school. Then she's back as if nothing happened.
Meanwhile, a devout Christian elementary-school assistant teacher, Anita Wooten-Francis, 52, says she was ridiculed and fired by her principal because she prayed in an empty classroom at Brooklyn's PS 224. This, after more than 16 years of unblemished service.
Why can't Johnny read? At city schools, pervs are a protected class. And quiet devotion is punished.
It's supposed to be all about the chidlren, right? Apparently not in this state, where you have the highest property taxes in the nation and this is the sorry result. Tear thepublic school system down and replace it with private schools supported by tuition. If the dregs of this city can't afford it, then give 'em a voucher; it'll still be cheaper and more effective than continuing to warehouse kids in a state-run babysitting service, run by mouth-breathing retards.
Here's a laugher: a good many of these doofuses will, eventually -- because it takes them six to eight years to finish their (remedial) 'education' at City College, where German Shepherds teach English and lack of involuntary muscle responses is no bar to admission -- become the next wave of overpaid teachers in this City. Only in New York could you accept the worst graduates, from the worst colleges, obtaining the easiest-to-get major, and then pay them to teach others.
It's a well-established fact that 'Education' majors are commonly drawn from the lowest echelon of academic achievers, and most of those will have switched majors at least once before settling on 'Education' because most other worthwhile degrees require work. Remember: those who can, do, those who can't, teach...
Nowhere is this more evident than in New York.
Without a cushy public sector union job to fall back on, many of those...ahem...City College graduates...would never be employed in an above-minimum-wage job.
Money Quote fromMichael Goodwin in yesteryday's NY Post:
MANY NYC GRADS CAN'T READ THIS
Responding to my Sunday argument that city schools deprive students of the freedom to fail by promoting too many who aren't ready, a professional aide in a Manhattan high school offers front-line evidence. Here is what she wrote:
"The increased graduation rates are being achieved by means that are absolutely fraudulent and are generally known as 'credit recovery programs.' In exchange for completing a minimal amount of work (and I do mean minimal ), students are granted credit for courses that they previously failed.
"In addition, teachers are 'encouraged' by the principal to pass 80 percent of the students in each of their classes. I can attest, with great confidence, that at least 80 percent of our graduates are functionally illiterate."
The writer, who asks to remain anonymous to protect her job, then quotes from student statements that are rife with errors: " . . . so they started hitting me and I felt to the floor." "I triped and fall with caused bleeding and my pants to torn."
Students say they are "dessie" (dizzy), hurt a "risk" (wrist), have a "hedick" (headache) or are "bruced" (bruised).
"Obviously," she adds, "social promotion is alive and well at all grade levels."
Sadly, her experience is not unique or even unusual. This is the real outrage of too many New York schools.
But then again, the priority is not education at NYC Schools. It can't be, not with all that money to be divvied up. And of course, where's there's taxpayer money to be passed out, there's Political Correctness and Corruption, too. Like these cases, from Andrea Peyser in today's NY Post
:High-school math teacher Rivky Love hounded a girl whom she called her "best friend and sister" with late-night texts signed, "Love you."
The married 36-year-old even offered to slip the Edward R. Murrow student an advance copy of a test. Love was suspended for six months without pay from the Brooklyn school. Then she's back as if nothing happened.
Meanwhile, a devout Christian elementary-school assistant teacher, Anita Wooten-Francis, 52, says she was ridiculed and fired by her principal because she prayed in an empty classroom at Brooklyn's PS 224. This, after more than 16 years of unblemished service.
Why can't Johnny read? At city schools, pervs are a protected class. And quiet devotion is punished.
It's supposed to be all about the chidlren, right? Apparently not in this state, where you have the highest property taxes in the nation and this is the sorry result. Tear thepublic school system down and replace it with private schools supported by tuition. If the dregs of this city can't afford it, then give 'em a voucher; it'll still be cheaper and more effective than continuing to warehouse kids in a state-run babysitting service, run by mouth-breathing retards.
Barack Obama's First 2012 Campaign Ad...
You Should Love $5 Gas America, Because It Means Shorter Lines at the Airport...or something.
You'll still have to show up three hours early for your two-hour flight, but at least the TSA groping will be, mercifully, shorter.
Who the hell writes these things? That's like saying "The Clap is Awesome, because getting it is usually so much fun..."
Then again, you can tell that this was written by a Watermelon EnvironMENTAList (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) because all the 'upside' of $5 gas is shit that only matters to a bubbleheaded douchebag, like 'greater demand for higher mileage cars'. What sort of bullshit it that?
That's supposed to be a tangible benefit of $5 gas that will truly affect people's lives in a positive way?
And MSN tried to pass this off as a business article, too?
You'll still have to show up three hours early for your two-hour flight, but at least the TSA groping will be, mercifully, shorter.
Who the hell writes these things? That's like saying "The Clap is Awesome, because getting it is usually so much fun..."
Then again, you can tell that this was written by a Watermelon EnvironMENTAList (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) because all the 'upside' of $5 gas is shit that only matters to a bubbleheaded douchebag, like 'greater demand for higher mileage cars'. What sort of bullshit it that?
That's supposed to be a tangible benefit of $5 gas that will truly affect people's lives in a positive way?
And MSN tried to pass this off as a business article, too?
I Would Have Given Him a Medal...
Serbian General Ratko Mladic, alleged killer of 8.000 Muslims during the Yugoslav Civil Wars, arrested., will be tried for War Crimes. I would have given him a Nobel Peace prize. If Obama could get one for being black, Mladic should get one for having the courage to do what should have been done a very long time ago.
Like in 632 AD.
If we had guys like this in Iraq and Afghanistan the wars would have been over a very long time ago, victory would not have been ambiguous, and Barack Obama would still be filling in his application for night manager at Taco Bell.
By the way, American troops are STILL protecting Muslims in Bosnia, despite the fact that then-President Clinton said they'd only be there 'for about a year..."
Like in 632 AD.
If we had guys like this in Iraq and Afghanistan the wars would have been over a very long time ago, victory would not have been ambiguous, and Barack Obama would still be filling in his application for night manager at Taco Bell.
By the way, American troops are STILL protecting Muslims in Bosnia, despite the fact that then-President Clinton said they'd only be there 'for about a year..."
"But There's Nothing To Do..."
My Doomsday Diary.
Here's how I spent what was supposed to be our Final Day on Earth. Except for the Happy Ending, I found myself that day fervently hoping the planet would, indeed, split wide open and burn to a cinder. It started with my nephews.
I feel somewhat badly for today's children, mostly because they have been robbed of all the things that I believe should make up childhood.
I've been thinking about this notion this past week because of what happened last Saturday...
I have four nephews, aged 14, 13, 11 and 5. They're great boys, and by that, I mean that I love them very much, not that they're the best behaved. In fact, my nephews have the manners of a pack of wild boars...wild boars with toothaches and hemorrhoids, I mean. They can be a touch ornery and rambunctious, to say the least. Part of this is just The Age; two teenagers, busily exploring the boundaries, pushing every envelope. The two younger ones, naturally, mimic what they've seen the older ones get away with, which is quite a bit as my sister and brother-in-law are a bit lax in the discipline department. When I was their age, if I pulled half the stuff they did -- and got caught -- I'd be on the phone looking for organ donors, just in case I needed them in the aftermath of the truly horrendous beating I was going to get.
Worse, I grew up in a house with my grandparents and my uncle and his family. Stepping out of line -- and getting caught -- meant, potentially, three beatings. Even worse, I went to Catholic school, which meant stepping out of line included a bonus beating from the nuns, then three beatings when you got home. Considering that I was a beastly little swine as a child, I'm amazed that I was able to survive a John McCain-like experience of near-constant physical torture. Fortunately, for me anyway, I seem to have gotten away with just enough to avoid permanent brain damage.
My nephews have, thus far, been spared the experience of a truly epic beating at the hands of their belt-and-wooden-spoon-wielding grandparents, wooden-hanger-wielding mother, and the open-hand buttocks assault of an ex-Marine Uncle, and in today's Catholic schools you couldn't find a Shao-Lin- ruler-wielding nun if your life depended upon it. Besides, they all go to public school, except the oldest, and the Catholic school he attends is generally regarded as 'soft'. I went to grammar school with Dominican Nuns who moonlighted as hand-to-hand combat instructors with the Green Berets, and a high school with Black-belt Christian Brothers, half of whom seemed to be tough Hell's Kitchen Irishmen, and every last one of them claimed to have been a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth.
Suffice to say, short of being raised by the Spanish Inquisition, with alternate weekends at Gestapo Headquarters, very few people know physical discipline like I know physical discipline. Today they'd call this 'child abuse', but back then, it was just what parents did to straighten their kids out when that was necessary.
But, I digress...
Anyways, I had occasion to 'babysit' my nephews, despite the fact that none are babies anymore, but the oldest are certainly too irresponsible to be left to care for the younger two when their parents are away. Their father had pulled a weekend overtime shift. Their mother was dragooned by the Little League they've all played in to do her 'volunteer' service. My mother, a woman whom God certainly sent to annoy the living shit out of every other living being on Planet Earth, came along. Heaven forbid she should have to sit at home and rely upon her own wits to keep herself entertained for a day. It began, predictably enough, with constant complaints about 'the Sciatica', her back hurts, her legs, her knees, her sinuses, and even her fucking ass. It's all an act, by the way, it's all a play for attention because she's sympathy junkie and a drama queen.
This is the First Indication that I'm going to have trouble at some point. But I'll get back to that in a moment. Let's start with the Second Indication that it's going to be One of Those Days.
If there's one thing I really dislike about Modern Kids, it's the silly whining they all engage in about having 'nothing to do.'
Mind you, my nephews live in a house which has FIVE televisions, all with cable access including 150 channels and On-Demand programming up the Wazoo, two DVD players (with an extensive library), a Playstation 3, an X-Box 360, and a Nintendo Wii, each again with an extensive library of games. The garage is simply overflowing with bicycles, skateboards, kick scooters and roller blades, not to mention a bewildering array of portable ramps and rails for them. All my nephews play baseball -- Little League, High School, and Travelling Teams -- so there are enough bats, baseballs, and gloves laying around to equip a Major League Team. The only things missing are Buck and McCarver, chewing tobacco, and Yankee Stadium.
There are two computers in the house, both with internet access. I know they have internet access because guess who installed the cable modem and Wi-Fi router (that would be...Me)? There is a vast array of computer games available, as well, not to mention two or three Nintendo DS consoles. There are enough Lego bricks (the five year old is a Lego junkie who might soon require methadone treatments to wean him off of them) to build a life-size replica of the Manhattan Skyline.
There is a small library of age-and-theme-appropriate literature, and for good measure my sister has stocked the house with all manner of Art Supplies, colored pencils, sketch pads, crayons, markers, paints, and so forth, that would have made Van Gogh lock himself in her basement, and kept him far too busy with it all to even have time to think of cutting his own ear off.
Oh, and the three Big Ones have cell phones, too, and text message Lord Knows Who constantly. She just might be raising a passel of boys with the strongest thumbs on all of Staten Island.
I can understand the five year old complaining "I have nothing to do", because, well...he's five. Five year olds have attention spans measured in RPM's, although, like I said, he's a Lego junkie and when he's in his zone you don't hear a peep out of him for hours at a time.
And the Swimming Pool hasn't even been opened for the season yet. On a good day, my nephews will protest, loudly and in a manner which reminds me of a menstrual girl, if their mother suggests they go outside to play. They've been known to cry about 'how unfair' that is. Did you ever know kids to complain they're being sent outside to play? They'd rather ride their kick scooters IN THE HOUSE, on her marble-and-ceramic-tile floors, and she lets them get away with it.
So, who has 'nothing to do'? Well, the 13 and 14 year old, naturally. They're the biggest pests of all that way. They decide that since there's 'nothing to do' why not engage in a bit of absolute stupidity and build a tree swing?
Now, about this swing. It's my brother-in-law's fault. He decided one day that it would be a good idea to find himself a length of rope, toss it over a high branch on the tree out front of the house -- over 30 feet in the air -- attach the broken seat from an old office chair to it, and then encourage his children to swing from it. Even the Biggest Doofus. There's just two problems with this swing; the first is that once you're on it and gain any sort of momentum, you're swinging out into the street, and since there's about 20' of rope involved, you're swinging 20' out into the street and into traffic. The second problem is because of the peculiar position of the anchor branch, once you begin your 're-entry' from the street, you're likely to crash headlong into the trunk. If you're, say, 14, and weigh about 150 pounds and gather enough momentum to make the swing worth your while, if you hit that tree you're probably doing 20-25 MPH when you make contact.
Considering that the other three launch the 5-year old with enough force to loft the Space Shuttle, he's probably going to hit it at closer to 30 mph, assuming he manages to keep his grip at all.
For that reason specifically -- the five year old must be kept off of this dangerous contraption -- they are forbidden to do this thing without their father being there to supervise, so that they don't get stupid and carried away, and a 911 call has to be made. This Swing-erecting event also leads to the most inhuman arguing and crying you've ever heard over 'who's turn' it is; it's like listening to sorority sisters argue about who gets to use the Big Mirror, and there's no place for me to plug in my curling iron in the common bathroom with 12 other girls already in it. The whole operation is far more trouble than it's worth, if you ask me.
But this is exactly what they want to do, and they keep insisting they have the right -- and permission -- to do it whenever they fucking want to. Except that I know they fucking don't. So, I tell them; No Swing, find something else to do. This pronouncement gets the expected grousing, and unfortunately, no surprise at all, a lot of cursing.
I would have swatted them good for sassing me, but I'm not allowed to touch my sister's children that way. Consequently, neither does she...not until they've reached the point of being in close-to-riot condition. No wonder they push the envelope; there's no consequence for even having the audacity to dare it. Someone should smack them around. I took things from them I wouldn't take from a grown man without insisting he step outside and defend his honor.
The Law has been laid down. No Swing. I go back into the house. The The First Indication is now heard from, and you would think the Gates of Hell had just burst open and poured forth a vast horde of soul-stealing demons, red in tooth and claw, fire and brimstone flowing from their flared nostrils.
A bit about my Mother, first, so that you can get some idea of what's about to happen when I continue this story. My Mother is, without a doubt, the most disagreeable person in this Solar System. She's not a bad woman, she just has some rather strange ideas and an overly-inflated opinion of herself which is totally detached from reality. The first problem she has is that whenever she says something, no matter how stupid, how inane, how inappropriate, how non-topical, insulting, no matter how unasked for, she believes it should be treated as if Moses carried the decree down from the Mountaintop engraved in stone. As soon as the words are uttered, she either expects whatever it she wants to be done right this very second, or that it is to be regarded with the same reverence and respect that we have for the law, worthy of immediate attention and action, and we should all fall to our fucking knees and thank the shit out of her for having graced us with her words of wisdom.
I beg to differ. She was a rotten mother who offered no real guidance, and who's children suffered for her poor choices in husbands, and the bad decisions she made that ruined her life. These required her children to pick up the pieces for her, because that would require effort, and then support her for the last 25 years of her life. She's fortunate that we haven't taken her out into the woods, slathered her in animal fat, and left her there to face the grizzlies alone, or just tossed her off a convenient pier in cinderblock underwear, already.
As if this wasn't annoying enough, this distasteful personality trait is attached to a woman with an anxiety complex so monumental, and a variety of other mental issues of the Poor-Me type (the very worst), that it has kept the best therapist on Staten Island busy for 25 years...with no improvement to date, whatsoever. Which leads me to the question; just who the fuck was it who said she was the best in the first place? Because she's convinced that her every word should be an Imperial command, and because every second that passes between command and action builds up the cycle of anxiety and impatience, and because it all plays into this martyr complex of hers, nothing is ever simple. Everything is a fucking imperative, Earth-shattering emergency that is accompanied by That Sound.
That Sound. Look up the word 'cacophony' in the dictionary. Doesn't even come close to describing it. Imagine it like this: the sound of 4,000 cats being castrated simultaneously with a rusty, unsharpened garden scythe, set against the background noise of a pack of constipated wolves baying at the moon whilst being serenaded by some great locomotive that hasn't had it's moving parts oiled in a couple of centuries moving at high speed, which then tries to come to a screeching halt upon a dime.
That's almost it. But still not quite. You also have to imagine someone pouring table salt into your eyes when you're hearing it.
It's a terrible sound. Hearing it gives one the impression of great shards of jagged glass and ten-penny nails being pounded into your skull. The sweat breaks out on your spine. Your teeth are set on edge as if someone just slit your asshole with a razor blade and then poured lemon juice and Liquid Plumber into the open wound. You'd rather be sucked into a jet engine -- and survive -- than to hear that sound. You'd rather have someone open an umbrella up your ass repeatedly than to listen to it. You'd rather be the sex slave of some Al'Qada dude with a sandpaper and blowtorch fetish. It's a sound I've heard -- even in my sleep -- almost every day of my life for the last 44 years, and the amazing part of it all is that I haven't killed her yet.
MAAAATTTTYYYYYY! Come up here...NOW! Ohmygodohmygodohmygod....Look what that LUNATIC is DOING! STOP THEM!
The Swing is being set up. They can't even get the rope over the branch, and already, it's as if someone has just been struck by lightning, run down by a garbage truck and shot eleven times...all at once. And I absolutely HATE being called "Matty". I'm not a seven year old in short pants and knee fucking socks.
So, I tell them. No swing. Now knock it off. "But we have nothing to do." Bullshit, find something else.
Ten minutes later:
MAAAAATTTTTYYYYYY! LOOK WHAT THESE KIDS ARE DOING! Gooutthereandbreakhisass, goddammit!
Guys, I said Knock It Off. No Swing. Do us all a favor, and don't give that pain in the behind inside another reason to start wailing. I don't want to hear it, and it's pissing me off. Just shut her up and stop, or I'm taking this crap away from you.
Not two minutes later, it starts all over again:
So, I take the rope, the seat, and the garden tools they're using trying to get the damned thing over a 30' high branch. Find something else to do, fellas, because if I have to listen to that woman one more time, someone's getting killed, and it might not be just her.
At this point, the little guys want to go to the schoolyard and ride their scooters. Of course they do; it's only a mile walk, and naturally, the Big Ones don't want to go. I can only imagine what I'm coming back to when these two, naturally, resume their stupidity behind my back and Ye Old Nervous Windbag inside has several hours to witness and endure their nonsense and get progressively more aggravated, frustrated -- and even shriller -- because they ignore her repeated commands to stop it.
I take the Little Guys to the schoolyard, and we have some fun. They get to ride their scooters, they jump around on the playground, we play with a football they've found...and I get hit on by a chick. There's two scifoozas that we run into on the street nearby who talk as if they were taught to whisper in a sawmill, and use language that's...well... 'salty' is an inadequate description. It's even worse than mine.
Scifooza Number One can't stop talking about her boobs. In front of my two young nephews. She's telling Scifooza Number Two that as soon as she gets her "chemical balls" (admission: I have never heard this term before) she's going to get "my tits done", and "finally fucking get myself a fucking husband because all they want is fucking D-cups". Sciffoza One apologizes profusely for using such language in front of My Sons. There not my Sons, they're my Nephews, but it's okay. I'll just tell them to ignore you.
"Do you think my tits are alright, or should I get 'em bigger?" Sciffooza One asks. Scifooza Number Two feigns being flabbergasted. One gets the impression that Number One asks every random man she meets this question, and Number Two is obliged to pretend to be embarrassed, even though she's probably shown her tits to twice as many random men. And she might get paid to do it, too.
"Nah, nothing wrong with what you got. They're just fine."
"You boys are soooo lucky! Your father is such a nice man..."
"He's not my father, he's my uncle."
"He's soooo nice!" I'm now having my shoulders and biceps felt up and pinched as if she were looking for a ripe cantaloupe in the supermarket. She apparently likes my hair, too. I'm about to smack this bitch.
"I'm not married, you know...", She says.
"No? You? Can't imagine why not..."
"You have beautiful sons. I wish I had a son...."
"They're my nephews."
"Really? I thought they were your kids..."
"If you could shut up about your tits for three seconds you would have realized you were told otherwise three times. Maybe that's why you're not married: you can't shut up about your tits, you're pushy, and you don't listen very well."
Number Two finds this uproariously funny. We leave. If I ever wanted the local equivalent of Trailer Trash, I now know exactly where to find it. I wouldn't marry this chick for a Green Card and a mention in her father's will. It took near an hour to reach the schoolyard, if only because the five year old has little legs that don't carry him so fast. Twenty-five minutes after we get there they want to go home. Another hour back. And...
There's the FUCKING SWING...naturally. And a crowd of neighborhood kids all waiting for their turn. Mommy Dearest is apoplectic, and on the verge of having puppies. I figure if she does manage this astounding feat, it ought to look like something out of Aliens, only with fireworks and more gunfire. It's now all my fault that this happened because I was away for three hours doing GOD-KNOWS-WHAT-STUPID-SHIT-YOUR-BROTHER-IN-LAW-IS-AN-ASSHOLE-FOR-SHOWING-THEM-THIS-SHIT-GODDAMMIT-WHERE-IS-YOUR-SISTER-THAT-INCONSIDERATE-BITCH-THEY'RE-DRIVING-ME-INSANE.
And people wonder why I am the way I am? If you had my life...
Anyways, here's what I mean by 'losing their childhood".
In my day, if we were told 'you can't do that', we simply found something else to do. And since we didn't have a billion beeping-and-bright-lights-electronic geegaws, we had to make due with whatever was at hand, and somehow manage to have fun with it. Worse, I grew up in Brooklyn, and there wasn't a front lawn, an open field for miles, or a swimming pool in the back yard. We didn't even have a back yard worth the appellation. In those days, we played a lot of wiffle ball (no one plays wiffle ball anymore), and a ton of stickball. These were games that were pretty cheap, and in which you could improvise equipment if you didn't have any, and play for hours. In winter, we played tackle football -- in the street -- and during the fall, we played tackle football...on the concrete in the schoolyard. Hockey was played year-round, either road hockey or roller hockey, ice hockey being something extremely rare: skates were super expensive (your parents might blow a week's salary on skates then), and the only ice was at Coney Island, which required a death-defying trip on the B or D train, dodging muggers and streakers. We used a roll of electrical tape worn smooth on the sidewalk for a puck. It works remarkably well on the well-worn blacktop of a city street.
Protective equipment, if you could find any, usually consisted of a mish-mash of catcher's gear, baseball gloves, football helmets and shoulder pads, and the simple expedient of stuffing magazines into your socks to serve as shin guards. A hockey stick in those days cost about $10, and that was a ton of money, so no one took slap shots -- the best and easiest way to break a stick on blacktop.
There were exactly seven television channels -- and one of them was PBS. Video games consisted of Pong, and if your family could afford it, you might get lucky and have an Intellivision, Atari -- or the Cadillac of them all -- a Commodore 64 with something like 3 really crappy games. Otherwise, you needed to scrounge quarters to go to the local candy store to play pinball, or maybe Space Invaders or Asteroids. When PacMan came around, kids seriously considered taking up a life of crime to support their habit. You dreamed of the days when you had enough quarters to just play a few games of PacMan AND get an Egg Cream. That was like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to us.
We played a lot of common childhood games: Johnny-on-the-Pony, Red Rover, Stoopball (kind of like baseball, only with 'phantom' runners, where you tossed the rubber ball with all your might against your front steps when you were 'up'). We played handball and basketball in the schoolyard, boxball on the sidewalk (like tennis, using the square sections of the sidewalk as a court). When your rubber Spaulding ball split at the seams (they always did) from all that stick- and boxball, you simply took the two halves and played Halfball (a variant of baseball, played with the half a ball and a short length of thick rubber hose).
When you didn't even have a ball, you played Skelly. In this game, you shoot bottlecaps that have been filled with melted wax around a square 'board' drawn on the sidewalk or street in chalk. If you were really serious about your Skelly, you carved your Skelly Board into the hot asphalt of the street in summer with a screwdriver. Kids got very creative with their carved Skelly boards. Some were really intricate and quite challenging.
We didn't have trees to climb, so we climbed fire escapes and 'laundry ladders'. These were skinny, metal ladders, often 30' or more in height -- and not always anchored very well -- that one found behind most houses or apartment buildings, and to which tenants attached clotheslines from their back windows. Climbing a laundry ladder was usually something you did when playing 'War', in which we ran around the streets and the back-alleys in mock combat with toy guns. Try that today, and the local authorities will drag your kids off to a mental institution, just in case they want to grow up to shoot a Democrat. Any fence was like an open invitation to 'come climb me', and it didn't matter if there was barbed wire or razor wire, or even if it was rusty; we climbed them, especially if there was something 'cool' on the other side...like access to Tar Beach (the roof of an apartment building from where one could launch water balloons, or watch the local girls sunbathe).
Bikes and skateboards were rarities. In the Brooklyn of that time these things were likely to get stolen. At knifepoint. I was mugged at knifepoint, twice, before my thirteenth birthday. Nowadays in Brooklyn, they definitely would be stolen, only you'll receive multiple gunshot wounds and might get your house burnt down just so there's no witnesses to the crime for good measure.
Everyone played with matches. Everyone played with magnifying glasses and anthills. Everyone played with magnifying glasses, anthills, model glue and a can of hairspray. You circled the anthill with the glue, set fire to it with paper and magnifying glass, and when the ants came up to escape, you used the hairspray can like a flamethrower. We knew how to make slingshots, and makeshift crossbows with a piece of two-by-four, a thick rubber band, wood staple and a clothespin.
Disputes between kids were always settled with fisticuffs, or a wrestling match, and three minutes after someone got his ass kicked everyone was friends again. We collected comic books, baseball cards, bottlecaps and Matchbox Cars. We 'flipped' baseball cards, we pitched pennies, we played a lot of catch, Tag, Dodgeball (or a rougher variant, Kill the Man With the Ball), Red Light-Green Light, Ringolerio and Bulldog. We built model airplanes and ships. We knew how to build and repair our own toys, or adapt them to other uses. We did it in the CITY, too, with a lack of open spaces and grass, and with what nowadays would be considered Third-World-level disposable incomes.
In short, we knew how to be BOYS. We never had 'NOTHING TO DO'.
My nephews, for all the love I have for them, would have been lost in that world. They would have been constantly bored because no one would be giving them anything. As it is, they get so bored despite all they have, that they become single-minded of purpose when it comes to a tree swing that even in my day would have given Evel Knievel second thoughts. Now, granted, there's some creativity and a sense of danger involved in that swing, but the point is if we were told 'don't do that', we found something else to do, and we had enough of a store of made-up/improvised games/activities at our disposal that it wasn't difficult.
Nowadays, kids seem incapable of doing this. Try to teach these things to them, and they look at you as if you've just emerged from a spacecraft with three heads, green skin, and antennae. They aren't interested unless there's a flashing light, a large price tag, a beeping sound, or a degree of extraordinary, bound-to-end-in-the-emergency-room danger -- they call these things Extreme Sports nowadays, but in my day, they were simply the things The Stupid Kid Who Always Had a Broken Bone did.
There was a degree of danger in what we did, too, but it was always a calculated danger (kids were smarter then, I think). We knew the limits. An equivalent to this swinging between traffic and a great fucking tree trunk in my day was called 'Skitching'. In Skitching, one either wore roller skates, or did it in winter when the streets would be full of packed snow that you could slide on. You simply grabbed onto the back of a stopped bus or truck, and got low where the driver might not be able to see you easily, and got yourself pulled along as if water skiing. At least until the vehicle stopped, and you didn't...you usually only stopped when you got a face full of back bumper. The worst cases saw the Skitcher eat the bumper and then slide under the now-stopped vehicle, and being too stunned to move, get trapped under a wheel to get themselves run the fuck over. Never did it myself, never wanted to. It was just too stupid and dangerous.
But such was the life -- and the joys -- of a city boy in the 1970's, and amazingly, we did these things with no adult supervision, whatsoever. Makes you wonder just what the hell happened to the world and what happened to the Spirit of Boyhood. These kids today are such pampered, spoiled, over-supervised, whining little pansies who don't get beaten on a regular basis for their misbehavior, and who don't know how -- and who can't be trusted -- to play on their own. And who suffered for it all this fine day? Why... I did.
I'm not even their parent, either.
I had to listen to a Screaming Banshee who turns my insides into a knotted mass, and who could curdle used motor oil with her voice alone. I had to hike two hours to and from a schoolyard I didn't want to go to, and we barely stayed. I was nearly sexually assaulted on the street by a bimbo I wouldn't screw with a stolen penis, and who didn't even have the courtesy to offer me a drink before putting her hands on me. I had my nephews actually tell me to do something anatomically impossible -- twice -- and I'm not allowed to feed them their teeth. When my sister finally gets home, she wants to know why I 'didn't do anything to stop those kids from putting up the swing' and has the nerve to ask me if I'll watch them again the following day.
It's a good thing it was supposed to be Doomsday, and there was a 'We Didn't Die' party later that evening. I managed to play a few other games that night that also don't require flashing lights and electronics, or adult supervision...only adult participation.
That was something else we learned to do in the schoolyard, too.
Here's how I spent what was supposed to be our Final Day on Earth. Except for the Happy Ending, I found myself that day fervently hoping the planet would, indeed, split wide open and burn to a cinder. It started with my nephews.
I feel somewhat badly for today's children, mostly because they have been robbed of all the things that I believe should make up childhood.
I've been thinking about this notion this past week because of what happened last Saturday...
I have four nephews, aged 14, 13, 11 and 5. They're great boys, and by that, I mean that I love them very much, not that they're the best behaved. In fact, my nephews have the manners of a pack of wild boars...wild boars with toothaches and hemorrhoids, I mean. They can be a touch ornery and rambunctious, to say the least. Part of this is just The Age; two teenagers, busily exploring the boundaries, pushing every envelope. The two younger ones, naturally, mimic what they've seen the older ones get away with, which is quite a bit as my sister and brother-in-law are a bit lax in the discipline department. When I was their age, if I pulled half the stuff they did -- and got caught -- I'd be on the phone looking for organ donors, just in case I needed them in the aftermath of the truly horrendous beating I was going to get.
Worse, I grew up in a house with my grandparents and my uncle and his family. Stepping out of line -- and getting caught -- meant, potentially, three beatings. Even worse, I went to Catholic school, which meant stepping out of line included a bonus beating from the nuns, then three beatings when you got home. Considering that I was a beastly little swine as a child, I'm amazed that I was able to survive a John McCain-like experience of near-constant physical torture. Fortunately, for me anyway, I seem to have gotten away with just enough to avoid permanent brain damage.
My nephews have, thus far, been spared the experience of a truly epic beating at the hands of their belt-and-wooden-spoon-wielding grandparents, wooden-hanger-wielding mother, and the open-hand buttocks assault of an ex-Marine Uncle, and in today's Catholic schools you couldn't find a Shao-Lin- ruler-wielding nun if your life depended upon it. Besides, they all go to public school, except the oldest, and the Catholic school he attends is generally regarded as 'soft'. I went to grammar school with Dominican Nuns who moonlighted as hand-to-hand combat instructors with the Green Berets, and a high school with Black-belt Christian Brothers, half of whom seemed to be tough Hell's Kitchen Irishmen, and every last one of them claimed to have been a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth.
Suffice to say, short of being raised by the Spanish Inquisition, with alternate weekends at Gestapo Headquarters, very few people know physical discipline like I know physical discipline. Today they'd call this 'child abuse', but back then, it was just what parents did to straighten their kids out when that was necessary.
But, I digress...
Anyways, I had occasion to 'babysit' my nephews, despite the fact that none are babies anymore, but the oldest are certainly too irresponsible to be left to care for the younger two when their parents are away. Their father had pulled a weekend overtime shift. Their mother was dragooned by the Little League they've all played in to do her 'volunteer' service. My mother, a woman whom God certainly sent to annoy the living shit out of every other living being on Planet Earth, came along. Heaven forbid she should have to sit at home and rely upon her own wits to keep herself entertained for a day. It began, predictably enough, with constant complaints about 'the Sciatica', her back hurts, her legs, her knees, her sinuses, and even her fucking ass. It's all an act, by the way, it's all a play for attention because she's sympathy junkie and a drama queen.
This is the First Indication that I'm going to have trouble at some point. But I'll get back to that in a moment. Let's start with the Second Indication that it's going to be One of Those Days.
If there's one thing I really dislike about Modern Kids, it's the silly whining they all engage in about having 'nothing to do.'
Mind you, my nephews live in a house which has FIVE televisions, all with cable access including 150 channels and On-Demand programming up the Wazoo, two DVD players (with an extensive library), a Playstation 3, an X-Box 360, and a Nintendo Wii, each again with an extensive library of games. The garage is simply overflowing with bicycles, skateboards, kick scooters and roller blades, not to mention a bewildering array of portable ramps and rails for them. All my nephews play baseball -- Little League, High School, and Travelling Teams -- so there are enough bats, baseballs, and gloves laying around to equip a Major League Team. The only things missing are Buck and McCarver, chewing tobacco, and Yankee Stadium.
There are two computers in the house, both with internet access. I know they have internet access because guess who installed the cable modem and Wi-Fi router (that would be...Me)? There is a vast array of computer games available, as well, not to mention two or three Nintendo DS consoles. There are enough Lego bricks (the five year old is a Lego junkie who might soon require methadone treatments to wean him off of them) to build a life-size replica of the Manhattan Skyline.
There is a small library of age-and-theme-appropriate literature, and for good measure my sister has stocked the house with all manner of Art Supplies, colored pencils, sketch pads, crayons, markers, paints, and so forth, that would have made Van Gogh lock himself in her basement, and kept him far too busy with it all to even have time to think of cutting his own ear off.
Oh, and the three Big Ones have cell phones, too, and text message Lord Knows Who constantly. She just might be raising a passel of boys with the strongest thumbs on all of Staten Island.
I can understand the five year old complaining "I have nothing to do", because, well...he's five. Five year olds have attention spans measured in RPM's, although, like I said, he's a Lego junkie and when he's in his zone you don't hear a peep out of him for hours at a time.
And the Swimming Pool hasn't even been opened for the season yet. On a good day, my nephews will protest, loudly and in a manner which reminds me of a menstrual girl, if their mother suggests they go outside to play. They've been known to cry about 'how unfair' that is. Did you ever know kids to complain they're being sent outside to play? They'd rather ride their kick scooters IN THE HOUSE, on her marble-and-ceramic-tile floors, and she lets them get away with it.
So, who has 'nothing to do'? Well, the 13 and 14 year old, naturally. They're the biggest pests of all that way. They decide that since there's 'nothing to do' why not engage in a bit of absolute stupidity and build a tree swing?
Now, about this swing. It's my brother-in-law's fault. He decided one day that it would be a good idea to find himself a length of rope, toss it over a high branch on the tree out front of the house -- over 30 feet in the air -- attach the broken seat from an old office chair to it, and then encourage his children to swing from it. Even the Biggest Doofus. There's just two problems with this swing; the first is that once you're on it and gain any sort of momentum, you're swinging out into the street, and since there's about 20' of rope involved, you're swinging 20' out into the street and into traffic. The second problem is because of the peculiar position of the anchor branch, once you begin your 're-entry' from the street, you're likely to crash headlong into the trunk. If you're, say, 14, and weigh about 150 pounds and gather enough momentum to make the swing worth your while, if you hit that tree you're probably doing 20-25 MPH when you make contact.
Considering that the other three launch the 5-year old with enough force to loft the Space Shuttle, he's probably going to hit it at closer to 30 mph, assuming he manages to keep his grip at all.
For that reason specifically -- the five year old must be kept off of this dangerous contraption -- they are forbidden to do this thing without their father being there to supervise, so that they don't get stupid and carried away, and a 911 call has to be made. This Swing-erecting event also leads to the most inhuman arguing and crying you've ever heard over 'who's turn' it is; it's like listening to sorority sisters argue about who gets to use the Big Mirror, and there's no place for me to plug in my curling iron in the common bathroom with 12 other girls already in it. The whole operation is far more trouble than it's worth, if you ask me.
But this is exactly what they want to do, and they keep insisting they have the right -- and permission -- to do it whenever they fucking want to. Except that I know they fucking don't. So, I tell them; No Swing, find something else to do. This pronouncement gets the expected grousing, and unfortunately, no surprise at all, a lot of cursing.
I would have swatted them good for sassing me, but I'm not allowed to touch my sister's children that way. Consequently, neither does she...not until they've reached the point of being in close-to-riot condition. No wonder they push the envelope; there's no consequence for even having the audacity to dare it. Someone should smack them around. I took things from them I wouldn't take from a grown man without insisting he step outside and defend his honor.
The Law has been laid down. No Swing. I go back into the house. The The First Indication is now heard from, and you would think the Gates of Hell had just burst open and poured forth a vast horde of soul-stealing demons, red in tooth and claw, fire and brimstone flowing from their flared nostrils.
A bit about my Mother, first, so that you can get some idea of what's about to happen when I continue this story. My Mother is, without a doubt, the most disagreeable person in this Solar System. She's not a bad woman, she just has some rather strange ideas and an overly-inflated opinion of herself which is totally detached from reality. The first problem she has is that whenever she says something, no matter how stupid, how inane, how inappropriate, how non-topical, insulting, no matter how unasked for, she believes it should be treated as if Moses carried the decree down from the Mountaintop engraved in stone. As soon as the words are uttered, she either expects whatever it she wants to be done right this very second, or that it is to be regarded with the same reverence and respect that we have for the law, worthy of immediate attention and action, and we should all fall to our fucking knees and thank the shit out of her for having graced us with her words of wisdom.
I beg to differ. She was a rotten mother who offered no real guidance, and who's children suffered for her poor choices in husbands, and the bad decisions she made that ruined her life. These required her children to pick up the pieces for her, because that would require effort, and then support her for the last 25 years of her life. She's fortunate that we haven't taken her out into the woods, slathered her in animal fat, and left her there to face the grizzlies alone, or just tossed her off a convenient pier in cinderblock underwear, already.
As if this wasn't annoying enough, this distasteful personality trait is attached to a woman with an anxiety complex so monumental, and a variety of other mental issues of the Poor-Me type (the very worst), that it has kept the best therapist on Staten Island busy for 25 years...with no improvement to date, whatsoever. Which leads me to the question; just who the fuck was it who said she was the best in the first place? Because she's convinced that her every word should be an Imperial command, and because every second that passes between command and action builds up the cycle of anxiety and impatience, and because it all plays into this martyr complex of hers, nothing is ever simple. Everything is a fucking imperative, Earth-shattering emergency that is accompanied by That Sound.
That Sound. Look up the word 'cacophony' in the dictionary. Doesn't even come close to describing it. Imagine it like this: the sound of 4,000 cats being castrated simultaneously with a rusty, unsharpened garden scythe, set against the background noise of a pack of constipated wolves baying at the moon whilst being serenaded by some great locomotive that hasn't had it's moving parts oiled in a couple of centuries moving at high speed, which then tries to come to a screeching halt upon a dime.
That's almost it. But still not quite. You also have to imagine someone pouring table salt into your eyes when you're hearing it.
It's a terrible sound. Hearing it gives one the impression of great shards of jagged glass and ten-penny nails being pounded into your skull. The sweat breaks out on your spine. Your teeth are set on edge as if someone just slit your asshole with a razor blade and then poured lemon juice and Liquid Plumber into the open wound. You'd rather be sucked into a jet engine -- and survive -- than to hear that sound. You'd rather have someone open an umbrella up your ass repeatedly than to listen to it. You'd rather be the sex slave of some Al'Qada dude with a sandpaper and blowtorch fetish. It's a sound I've heard -- even in my sleep -- almost every day of my life for the last 44 years, and the amazing part of it all is that I haven't killed her yet.
MAAAATTTTYYYYYY! Come up here...NOW! Ohmygodohmygodohmygod....Look what that LUNATIC is DOING! STOP THEM!
The Swing is being set up. They can't even get the rope over the branch, and already, it's as if someone has just been struck by lightning, run down by a garbage truck and shot eleven times...all at once. And I absolutely HATE being called "Matty". I'm not a seven year old in short pants and knee fucking socks.
So, I tell them. No swing. Now knock it off. "But we have nothing to do." Bullshit, find something else.
Ten minutes later:
MAAAAATTTTTYYYYYY! LOOK WHAT THESE KIDS ARE DOING! Gooutthereandbreakhisass, goddammit!
Guys, I said Knock It Off. No Swing. Do us all a favor, and don't give that pain in the behind inside another reason to start wailing. I don't want to hear it, and it's pissing me off. Just shut her up and stop, or I'm taking this crap away from you.
Not two minutes later, it starts all over again:
So, I take the rope, the seat, and the garden tools they're using trying to get the damned thing over a 30' high branch. Find something else to do, fellas, because if I have to listen to that woman one more time, someone's getting killed, and it might not be just her.
At this point, the little guys want to go to the schoolyard and ride their scooters. Of course they do; it's only a mile walk, and naturally, the Big Ones don't want to go. I can only imagine what I'm coming back to when these two, naturally, resume their stupidity behind my back and Ye Old Nervous Windbag inside has several hours to witness and endure their nonsense and get progressively more aggravated, frustrated -- and even shriller -- because they ignore her repeated commands to stop it.
I take the Little Guys to the schoolyard, and we have some fun. They get to ride their scooters, they jump around on the playground, we play with a football they've found...and I get hit on by a chick. There's two scifoozas that we run into on the street nearby who talk as if they were taught to whisper in a sawmill, and use language that's...well... 'salty' is an inadequate description. It's even worse than mine.
Scifooza Number One can't stop talking about her boobs. In front of my two young nephews. She's telling Scifooza Number Two that as soon as she gets her "chemical balls" (admission: I have never heard this term before) she's going to get "my tits done", and "finally fucking get myself a fucking husband because all they want is fucking D-cups". Sciffoza One apologizes profusely for using such language in front of My Sons. There not my Sons, they're my Nephews, but it's okay. I'll just tell them to ignore you.
"Do you think my tits are alright, or should I get 'em bigger?" Sciffooza One asks. Scifooza Number Two feigns being flabbergasted. One gets the impression that Number One asks every random man she meets this question, and Number Two is obliged to pretend to be embarrassed, even though she's probably shown her tits to twice as many random men. And she might get paid to do it, too.
"Nah, nothing wrong with what you got. They're just fine."
"You boys are soooo lucky! Your father is such a nice man..."
"He's not my father, he's my uncle."
"He's soooo nice!" I'm now having my shoulders and biceps felt up and pinched as if she were looking for a ripe cantaloupe in the supermarket. She apparently likes my hair, too. I'm about to smack this bitch.
"I'm not married, you know...", She says.
"No? You? Can't imagine why not..."
"You have beautiful sons. I wish I had a son...."
"They're my nephews."
"Really? I thought they were your kids..."
"If you could shut up about your tits for three seconds you would have realized you were told otherwise three times. Maybe that's why you're not married: you can't shut up about your tits, you're pushy, and you don't listen very well."
Number Two finds this uproariously funny. We leave. If I ever wanted the local equivalent of Trailer Trash, I now know exactly where to find it. I wouldn't marry this chick for a Green Card and a mention in her father's will. It took near an hour to reach the schoolyard, if only because the five year old has little legs that don't carry him so fast. Twenty-five minutes after we get there they want to go home. Another hour back. And...
There's the FUCKING SWING...naturally. And a crowd of neighborhood kids all waiting for their turn. Mommy Dearest is apoplectic, and on the verge of having puppies. I figure if she does manage this astounding feat, it ought to look like something out of Aliens, only with fireworks and more gunfire. It's now all my fault that this happened because I was away for three hours doing GOD-KNOWS-WHAT-STUPID-SHIT-YOUR-BROTHER-IN-LAW-IS-AN-ASSHOLE-FOR-SHOWING-THEM-THIS-SHIT-GODDAMMIT-WHERE-IS-YOUR-SISTER-THAT-INCONSIDERATE-BITCH-THEY'RE-DRIVING-ME-INSANE.
And people wonder why I am the way I am? If you had my life...
Anyways, here's what I mean by 'losing their childhood".
In my day, if we were told 'you can't do that', we simply found something else to do. And since we didn't have a billion beeping-and-bright-lights-electronic geegaws, we had to make due with whatever was at hand, and somehow manage to have fun with it. Worse, I grew up in Brooklyn, and there wasn't a front lawn, an open field for miles, or a swimming pool in the back yard. We didn't even have a back yard worth the appellation. In those days, we played a lot of wiffle ball (no one plays wiffle ball anymore), and a ton of stickball. These were games that were pretty cheap, and in which you could improvise equipment if you didn't have any, and play for hours. In winter, we played tackle football -- in the street -- and during the fall, we played tackle football...on the concrete in the schoolyard. Hockey was played year-round, either road hockey or roller hockey, ice hockey being something extremely rare: skates were super expensive (your parents might blow a week's salary on skates then), and the only ice was at Coney Island, which required a death-defying trip on the B or D train, dodging muggers and streakers. We used a roll of electrical tape worn smooth on the sidewalk for a puck. It works remarkably well on the well-worn blacktop of a city street.
Protective equipment, if you could find any, usually consisted of a mish-mash of catcher's gear, baseball gloves, football helmets and shoulder pads, and the simple expedient of stuffing magazines into your socks to serve as shin guards. A hockey stick in those days cost about $10, and that was a ton of money, so no one took slap shots -- the best and easiest way to break a stick on blacktop.
There were exactly seven television channels -- and one of them was PBS. Video games consisted of Pong, and if your family could afford it, you might get lucky and have an Intellivision, Atari -- or the Cadillac of them all -- a Commodore 64 with something like 3 really crappy games. Otherwise, you needed to scrounge quarters to go to the local candy store to play pinball, or maybe Space Invaders or Asteroids. When PacMan came around, kids seriously considered taking up a life of crime to support their habit. You dreamed of the days when you had enough quarters to just play a few games of PacMan AND get an Egg Cream. That was like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to us.
We played a lot of common childhood games: Johnny-on-the-Pony, Red Rover, Stoopball (kind of like baseball, only with 'phantom' runners, where you tossed the rubber ball with all your might against your front steps when you were 'up'). We played handball and basketball in the schoolyard, boxball on the sidewalk (like tennis, using the square sections of the sidewalk as a court). When your rubber Spaulding ball split at the seams (they always did) from all that stick- and boxball, you simply took the two halves and played Halfball (a variant of baseball, played with the half a ball and a short length of thick rubber hose).
When you didn't even have a ball, you played Skelly. In this game, you shoot bottlecaps that have been filled with melted wax around a square 'board' drawn on the sidewalk or street in chalk. If you were really serious about your Skelly, you carved your Skelly Board into the hot asphalt of the street in summer with a screwdriver. Kids got very creative with their carved Skelly boards. Some were really intricate and quite challenging.
We didn't have trees to climb, so we climbed fire escapes and 'laundry ladders'. These were skinny, metal ladders, often 30' or more in height -- and not always anchored very well -- that one found behind most houses or apartment buildings, and to which tenants attached clotheslines from their back windows. Climbing a laundry ladder was usually something you did when playing 'War', in which we ran around the streets and the back-alleys in mock combat with toy guns. Try that today, and the local authorities will drag your kids off to a mental institution, just in case they want to grow up to shoot a Democrat. Any fence was like an open invitation to 'come climb me', and it didn't matter if there was barbed wire or razor wire, or even if it was rusty; we climbed them, especially if there was something 'cool' on the other side...like access to Tar Beach (the roof of an apartment building from where one could launch water balloons, or watch the local girls sunbathe).
Bikes and skateboards were rarities. In the Brooklyn of that time these things were likely to get stolen. At knifepoint. I was mugged at knifepoint, twice, before my thirteenth birthday. Nowadays in Brooklyn, they definitely would be stolen, only you'll receive multiple gunshot wounds and might get your house burnt down just so there's no witnesses to the crime for good measure.
Everyone played with matches. Everyone played with magnifying glasses and anthills. Everyone played with magnifying glasses, anthills, model glue and a can of hairspray. You circled the anthill with the glue, set fire to it with paper and magnifying glass, and when the ants came up to escape, you used the hairspray can like a flamethrower. We knew how to make slingshots, and makeshift crossbows with a piece of two-by-four, a thick rubber band, wood staple and a clothespin.
Disputes between kids were always settled with fisticuffs, or a wrestling match, and three minutes after someone got his ass kicked everyone was friends again. We collected comic books, baseball cards, bottlecaps and Matchbox Cars. We 'flipped' baseball cards, we pitched pennies, we played a lot of catch, Tag, Dodgeball (or a rougher variant, Kill the Man With the Ball), Red Light-Green Light, Ringolerio and Bulldog. We built model airplanes and ships. We knew how to build and repair our own toys, or adapt them to other uses. We did it in the CITY, too, with a lack of open spaces and grass, and with what nowadays would be considered Third-World-level disposable incomes.
In short, we knew how to be BOYS. We never had 'NOTHING TO DO'.
My nephews, for all the love I have for them, would have been lost in that world. They would have been constantly bored because no one would be giving them anything. As it is, they get so bored despite all they have, that they become single-minded of purpose when it comes to a tree swing that even in my day would have given Evel Knievel second thoughts. Now, granted, there's some creativity and a sense of danger involved in that swing, but the point is if we were told 'don't do that', we found something else to do, and we had enough of a store of made-up/improvised games/activities at our disposal that it wasn't difficult.
Nowadays, kids seem incapable of doing this. Try to teach these things to them, and they look at you as if you've just emerged from a spacecraft with three heads, green skin, and antennae. They aren't interested unless there's a flashing light, a large price tag, a beeping sound, or a degree of extraordinary, bound-to-end-in-the-emergency-room danger -- they call these things Extreme Sports nowadays, but in my day, they were simply the things The Stupid Kid Who Always Had a Broken Bone did.
There was a degree of danger in what we did, too, but it was always a calculated danger (kids were smarter then, I think). We knew the limits. An equivalent to this swinging between traffic and a great fucking tree trunk in my day was called 'Skitching'. In Skitching, one either wore roller skates, or did it in winter when the streets would be full of packed snow that you could slide on. You simply grabbed onto the back of a stopped bus or truck, and got low where the driver might not be able to see you easily, and got yourself pulled along as if water skiing. At least until the vehicle stopped, and you didn't...you usually only stopped when you got a face full of back bumper. The worst cases saw the Skitcher eat the bumper and then slide under the now-stopped vehicle, and being too stunned to move, get trapped under a wheel to get themselves run the fuck over. Never did it myself, never wanted to. It was just too stupid and dangerous.
But such was the life -- and the joys -- of a city boy in the 1970's, and amazingly, we did these things with no adult supervision, whatsoever. Makes you wonder just what the hell happened to the world and what happened to the Spirit of Boyhood. These kids today are such pampered, spoiled, over-supervised, whining little pansies who don't get beaten on a regular basis for their misbehavior, and who don't know how -- and who can't be trusted -- to play on their own. And who suffered for it all this fine day? Why... I did.
I'm not even their parent, either.
I had to listen to a Screaming Banshee who turns my insides into a knotted mass, and who could curdle used motor oil with her voice alone. I had to hike two hours to and from a schoolyard I didn't want to go to, and we barely stayed. I was nearly sexually assaulted on the street by a bimbo I wouldn't screw with a stolen penis, and who didn't even have the courtesy to offer me a drink before putting her hands on me. I had my nephews actually tell me to do something anatomically impossible -- twice -- and I'm not allowed to feed them their teeth. When my sister finally gets home, she wants to know why I 'didn't do anything to stop those kids from putting up the swing' and has the nerve to ask me if I'll watch them again the following day.
It's a good thing it was supposed to be Doomsday, and there was a 'We Didn't Die' party later that evening. I managed to play a few other games that night that also don't require flashing lights and electronics, or adult supervision...only adult participation.
That was something else we learned to do in the schoolyard, too.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The Great Hopenchanger is a Douche..
And the rest of the planet is beginning to realize it.
I only wish there was a journalist who had the courage to say the same things in this country! It is, after all, what most of us here think, anyways.
(H/T: Closet Conservative, and Five Feet of Fury).
I only wish there was a journalist who had the courage to say the same things in this country! It is, after all, what most of us here think, anyways.
(H/T: Closet Conservative, and Five Feet of Fury).
Baby Survives Eight-story fall Down Trash Chute...
The phenomenon of young girls hiding pregnancies, and then simply disposing of the baby within hours of birth is a frightening one. It is a striking reminder that in someprecints of America, Life is Cheap, and what value one does attach to Life is often conditioned by other cultural values of questionable origin or worth, which are more and more coming to be detached from a commonsense morality.
It's sickening.
Good thing this girl had access to Planned Parenthood, huh?
I hope they flay her alive on national television.
It's sickening.
Good thing this girl had access to Planned Parenthood, huh?
I hope they flay her alive on national television.
End-of-World Fearmonger Disappointed...
The man seems beaten and dejected, and is perhaps the first casualty of a long, silent war against extreme Christianity?
And yeah, it is extreme Christianity. If we can have Extremist Islam, why not Extremist Christianity? Anything which disguises itself as a religious faith, yet fervently prays for the End of the World and the horrible deaths of billions of people it considers 'sinners' while screaming selfishly for it's own salvation -- fuck everyone else! -- is extreme.
And fucking crazy.
We may have just seen the first 'convert'; a formerly-dedicated follower of this stupidity just had his deepest and most cherish beliefs tested. And they failed. In front of crowds, television cameras, newspaper reporters, in front of the entire world. Now Mr. Fitzpatrick apparently wants nothing more than to withdraw from the world, and there's even hints that his own family has now ostracized him. I almost feel sorry for him.
Almost, because I happen to know he got a good education (I went to the same high school as Fitzpatrick) and I know they taught him how to think. He forgot that, and instead let unquestioning credulity (they call it 'faith') guide him instead of his innate reason. Where did it get him? He's flat broke now, having squandered $140,000 on bus and subway ads telling people to repent. He's been embarrassed before the eyes of the world. His family holds him at arm's length. Everything he's believed in or ever felt passionately about turns out to have been a false hope.
I'd be fucking depressed, too.
Some people just weren't fazed at all and will continue on with their mindless stupidity as if nothing had ever happened, and these are the really dangerous ones, if you ask me. The true fanatics. Under different circumstances, every last one of them has the makings of a suicide bomber.
And yeah, it is extreme Christianity. If we can have Extremist Islam, why not Extremist Christianity? Anything which disguises itself as a religious faith, yet fervently prays for the End of the World and the horrible deaths of billions of people it considers 'sinners' while screaming selfishly for it's own salvation -- fuck everyone else! -- is extreme.
And fucking crazy.
We may have just seen the first 'convert'; a formerly-dedicated follower of this stupidity just had his deepest and most cherish beliefs tested. And they failed. In front of crowds, television cameras, newspaper reporters, in front of the entire world. Now Mr. Fitzpatrick apparently wants nothing more than to withdraw from the world, and there's even hints that his own family has now ostracized him. I almost feel sorry for him.
Almost, because I happen to know he got a good education (I went to the same high school as Fitzpatrick) and I know they taught him how to think. He forgot that, and instead let unquestioning credulity (they call it 'faith') guide him instead of his innate reason. Where did it get him? He's flat broke now, having squandered $140,000 on bus and subway ads telling people to repent. He's been embarrassed before the eyes of the world. His family holds him at arm's length. Everything he's believed in or ever felt passionately about turns out to have been a false hope.
I'd be fucking depressed, too.
Some people just weren't fazed at all and will continue on with their mindless stupidity as if nothing had ever happened, and these are the really dangerous ones, if you ask me. The true fanatics. Under different circumstances, every last one of them has the makings of a suicide bomber.
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