I Don’t Believe Anyone w/o a Tinfoil Hat

“The truth is out there,” reads a once-famous poster with a UFO photo on it.

Yeah, there you go.

We have the very popular “scientist” and entertainer Bill Nye “saving the world.”  He’s preaching that global warming is the end of the world (as we know it) and the seas will rise and destroy everything in their paths, and then we have the founder of the fucking weather channel, an *actual* scientist for fucks sake, calling global warming a money-grabbing hoax.  John Coleman wrote an article cited here.  Go on, all you hotties who believe in it, click that shit.  For the nay-sayers who want to debunk Mr. Coleman, he’s spent most of his life studying meteorology and actual historical scientific data and I think he knows what he’s talking about, but he’s being derided as a tinfoil-hat wearer because he wants to expose that the big money is driving the scientists to support the bunkum, so they’ll get paid.  And if you have a patron who’ll let you do actual scientific research, or enough independent wealth, the big money will not come your way because actual science and historical data does not support it.

Mr Coleman says that there have been documented times in the earth’s history which had warm trends, and this did not cause the world any damage.  He also said there have been times in the earths history when there was more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is even now, and the earth somehow went on oblivious to the obvious danger.  But yeah, the global warming scientists are right because of scientific data.  That’s right, but it’s data that some say has been dicked around with.  Go on, I’ll wait right here while you read it.

Crazy, tnfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorists, my fat ass.  It used to be a lot fatter but then global warming and food science bullshit engineering future famine caused me to lose some weight.  Oh, you haven’t read about genetically modified food yet?  Where have you been?  I suspect that genetically modifying things, especially food, is a bad idea.  We’ve had the way they are, actually improved by careful selective breeding by smart farmers, for a long time, and before that, we had the willy-nilly self-propagating that worked pretty good on its’ own, that the human race originally lived on.  But what the hell, let’s dick around with the whole world’s FOOD SUPPLY, for fucks sake!!!  Because food scientists know what they’re doing.  I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should, make ketchup that glows in the dark, for example.  For similar reasons as, just because processing your nuts is more efficient the new way doesn’t mean it won’t cause an increase in people having problems with allergies to your nuts.  The rise in allergies to gluten and peanuts, and the rise in autism and other maladies, have their root cause somewhere.  I’d like a genuine statistic of how much more depression and bipolar we have, along with other broadly categorized “mental illnesses,” since all the food processing and automation and chemistry and insecticides and hormone treatments and other experimentation started.  But the explanation may never come because the truth is awkward, or it can’t be undone.  (Food guy:  Oh, shit, everyone’s going to die because they can’t eat anything without dying from it!  Oh well, this method is so cost effective, a few deaths won’t matter.  Survival of the fittest means they’ll either adapt or die, so let’s do it anyway!)

Then after the news reports the normal mayhem and wanton destruction the grim viewers want to hear because it makes their shitty lives seem just a little bit better by comparison, they turn to the weatherperson who supports global warming because s/he wants to get a paycheck at the end of the week, and then to the political realms, where liars spend weeks or years fabricating even bigger lies to cover up the shit they’ve been doing, and pointing their bony fingers at someone else who they say has done something somehow worse than what they’ve done, so they can hide until they can comfortably retire after they get a kickback helping some big business person(s) steal our retirements out from under us and tell us schmucks that our investment portfolios went south so we have to keep working for the slave-masters and trying not to incur too much medical debt and paying off our kids’ college debt until we’re dead.  Because not everyone has the {Insert-Baby-Food-Company-Here,-you-know-the-one} life plan.

Yeah I’m sick to death of the non-stop diet of bullshit.  It never changes.  In 1986 we had Oliver North on trial for following orders, everybody pointed fingers at everyone else, and in the end there wasn’t a good resolution, and we still propagated arms to God-knows-where, and have forgotten about them, haven’t we?  Yeah, but that’ll come back to bite us on the ass.  And in 2016 we had the newest, scandal-to-end-all-scandals now under investigation, with the new Oliver North, James Comey, versus the new Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump.  I swear, someone is getting paid big bucks for this circus, just like back in ’86.  Both presidents were entertainers before they went to the presidency.  I liked Ronald to a point, and honestly I believe Donald is no Ronald, but I’m waiting for his version of “Well, I don’t remember” to come out.

Make ’em laugh, spin it, or lie through your teeth in an entertaining way, and then meet with the comedians and show up on their shows to improve your popularity, ratings, and they’ll believe you.  Fucking idiots think this shit is important and they waste our time broadcasting, and their time listening to a web of lies, and they’re not even very artfully spun, to cover up other lies.  The biggest stupidity is that Americans find the bullshit entertaining .  I don’t.   A lot of people are blinded by the show and distracted by things that don’t matter.  If you’re one of those, I could tell you the truth, but the truth would be too awkward.  And some people still believe

“So is the news.”~R.U.Gullible

You want to know what really scares me?  Well, nothing, but you know I always have the gears turning and they often take me back to something I once read, after twisting the meaning?  Yeah, my brain is (80s flashback) totally taking me back to 2 Thessalonians (no, not “two Corinthians,” Donald.), 2:1-11.  And I had to ask myself, if you read the text, which “delusion,” which “lie,” and which “lawless one?!”  There are so many, and they all seem to get their faces on the news.  But the ones telling you the truth don’t even get paid enough, or possibly not at all, for doing it.

Sure, I’m …probably… one of those wild-eyed conspiracy theorists.  But only because I don’t trust anyone on the TV- not the news, not the “scientists,” not the politicians, not the “authorities” we’ve collectively trusted to tell us the truth and protect us from danger.  Instead they cover up the danger and protect us from the truth.  When you can’t trust even scientists, for fucks sake (and whoever trusted a politician is an fool who’s been drinking the toxic koo(-coo)-laid too long), and you can’t trust the famous preachers because they’re all scandalized, or paid off, or both, and I’m not going to say who’s paying them off but if they’re teaching lies as if they were truth, and preaching that evil is good, oh I don’t know,

I didn’t just pull the fake-message preachers out of my tin-foil hat.  They’ve been around since the beginning:

Genesis 2:

¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

¹⁸ The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Without fanfare or explanation for how she got the message, see, though, the slight  misquote of God’s original instructions/information:

Genesis 3
² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

Who told her not to touch it?

That’s proof  right there, you HAVE to read it for yourself because as soon as you don’t, your PREACHER will lie to you.  The message-twisting was being done in the Old Testament history of the Bible,

Isaiah 5
²⁰ Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter.

and it’s still being done when we get to the New Testament, (see Matthew 23)
and it’s still being done in the modern era just as promised, or if you’ll allow, prophesied (see Matthew 7)

There are those that you’ll either laugh (or cry) about in empathy:  The contractor is lying to you when he says he can fix that shit and hours or days later it’s still not fucking working, it’s broken worse than before, and he’s charging you by the hour.  The mechanic is lying to you when he says it took him that long too, plus everybody gets a percentage markup on parts they paid a fuck of a lot less for, and he charges you for putting the broken parts in the fucking trash can, or for selling them to be chopped and recycled.  “Disposal Fee,” watch for it.

I saw a statistic somewhere on the internet that said 26.3967% of all statistics found on the internet were completely fabricated.  Because, sorry to burst your trust-bubble,

Everybody(, and by that I mean almost everybody, but hyperbole, folks), is lying to you.

Not even me.  I write bullshit.  I’d like to think it’s thoughtful bullshit, but still…  And I’m Deon Mumple.  Or am I?

~Deon

Not Writing About What I’m Writing About?

I got up early today and have taken my daughter to school.  It’s not something I want to be in the habit of doing, but then, she’s already 17 so it’s a way to bond I guess.  It’s bad inasmuch as it fosters her laziness and encourages a lax attitude about time management, because she has a safety net to fall on.  It’s there, but I don’t want her to take advantage of it and just think it’ll be there her whole life.  My slightly more responsible son caught his bus.  Today she had gifts for her friends and wanted a ride so she could easily carry everything and not have the jostling and space issues of the bus ride.

I’ve had a cup or two of coffee, I’m back home and feeling nicely focused, but maybe easily distractible, it remains to be seen.  The squirrel joke is no joke.  I’m hoping I can have a little “me” time (writing here) and still enough time to walk the dog before the rain comes and get some chores and maybe a little extra catch up work done before I have to get to work today.  That upstairs…  I want my floors,  I want my desk.  It’s just that I’ve been like a pack rat for a while with no place to put “everything in its’ place,” and my wife is worse because she’s better at packing big things into small spaces.  No, NO, stop.  I mean like getting more stuff in the suitcase, or in the car, like that old game TETRIS, not THAT.  Although…  Nah, only if she wants that.  I surrender.

I started out wanting to write about a specific writer who has recently moved to the US after running into some difficulty because his government took issue with his writing.  But I tried to research and didn’t find anything accessible.  “This content is restricted.”  If his native government wants to restrict his thoughts and he restricts his audience, who knows what he’s talking about?  I’ve read a few comments and a few things in news articles I presume were quotes, and two year old or older blog things I found, and all I can think is, who the fuck cares?

It’s a fucking blog, like my own.  I guess, if he tells people to riot in the streets or kill someone or commit crimes, there’s a problem inasmuch as his words might actually have a direct impact on my life or the life of someone I know.  So yes, if he advocated violence or actual crime, I’d stand against that, but I can’t find anything to know if he did that.  And I consider myself a pretty damned good online stalker.  All I could find is stuff where he said, essentially, that both Christians and Muslims are idiots.  He’s an athiest, I get that, and again, my reaction is, who the fuck cares?

Well, radicals who profess either religion might, but I don’t.  He posted a picture online that was deemed “obscene.”  That’s stupid.   I’ve seen “sacrilegious” “art” before, and I don’t care.  Express your lack of faith in Jesus, who came back from the dead, or that “prophet” guy, who didn’t.  I don’t care.  Express your lack of faith in the government, I don’t care about that either.  America has elected a lot of presidents that people called names.

What concerns me is that people take the words of a fifteen or sixteen year old that seriously.

You want people to treat your religion with respect?  Get a religion that’s respectable, and be respectable with your faith.  You want people to treat your government with respect?  Get a government that’s respectable, and exercise your authority in ways that respect your constituency.  The people at quotesgram.com and quoteimg.com sum it up in short and then in long:

I don’t know how long it’ll take for me to earn my kids’ and wife’s respect.  Been working on that for more than 25 years for the latter.  Taking my daughter to school when she’s overburdened, giving a hug or a supportive remark when she’s sad or feeling insecure, helping my wife with chores and being as romantic as she’ll allow, helping my son in scouting and in becoming a young respectable man, helping the kids develop life skills and independence, it’ll eventually add up to respect.  Maybe.  I hope.  Work is a lost cause.  They want to demand my respect just from having authority to fire me, not realizing that at work, my respect can be bought, to start.  After starting with buying it with a decent wage commensurate with my experience and training and tenure, THEN it can be earned by helping me succeed in my career and developing me to the point where I can actually retire before I die, and hopefully have enough years to catch up with all the things I don’t have time to do between work and family and church and other activities.

As a blogger, if you don’t like me, you won’t read it.  You won’t follow it.  I’ll either get the message or not, but what do you care if you quit following me.  Just like the TV, or radio, if I hate the show or the commercial, I endure it or shut it off.  It has zero impact on the producers or the advertisers, but they are free to express whatever shit they want to broadcast and sell whatever shit they want.  Who the fuck cares?  And why?

There’s plenty of things I’d call “obscene” on the internet.  Why are people so afraid of someone offending someone else?  I think if a person has talent and respect, they ought to rise to the top.  But in the modern era what seems to rise to the top is infamy.  For some reason, the tacky, the cheap, the lowest common denominator, is what people want to see more of.  It makes them feel good about themselves and doesn’t challenge them to strive for better and more.  For some reason, the crafty, the villain, the ill-mannered, get the vote for fear that the one who seems honest and trustworthy might have some kind of hidden agenda the talentless, seem to get the sympathy vote because here in America we don’t want anyone to feel like they should keep on looking for their specialty, and try something new until they find something they’re really good at.  Our little baseball playing toddlers don’t keep score (but the adults do).  Art that people don’t think is art might sell to someone.  And someone might pay you to blog.  I wish they’d pay me, but I’m not holding my breath.  Plus, I need something either huge and inexhaustible, or huge and reliable over time.  I’m settling for reliable over time, but with that plan I’ll be working until I’m dead.  How disappointingly depressing is that?

I’ve vented enough, and I’ve thoroughly disappointed both of the people who strive to encourage my writing to be better.  So now I’m going to get myself ready to disappoint my boss, by working my ass off as hard as I can with my motivation high and my expectations low.  I think the boss pretends to be disappointed, and secretly they’re impressed trying to figure out how I’ve stayed so long for so little reward, and keep trying every day.  Maybe that’s why Mrs M is keeping me.  She’s secretly impressed, but also my worst critic, trying to encourage me to do better.  At doing what she wants me to do, mostly because she doesn’t want to do it herself.

I hope you find your inner motivation today.  I hope I do do.  I need to accomplish things when I take my breaks, because I didn’t accomplish anything great yesterday or today.  Except maybe I offended someone because I don’t take offense at sacrilegious, satirical, or political art or language.  If you’re offended that I’m not offended, you know what to do.  That’s right, have me arrested.  No, learn to park big things in small places.  No.

I hope you can do something good, that makes you feel good, or makes you happy because of either the sense of accomplishment or the gratitude of a friend or stranger.  Or, for a little while, do nothing, or something just for you and feel good and eventually harness the energy you have from taking a little “me” time to rest a little.  I hope I can too, but it’ll have to be snuck in between and after work, since I haven’t invested the morning in tasks.

Have a good day.  Both of you.

A Date with the Doctor

Yeah, so I had a date with my primary care provider, as the insurance company refers to him.  I last saw him probably 3 years ago.  My wife sent me in that time, for a visual exam to check a spot for skin cancer and another place to look at something else she thought was something irregular.  I told her I was fine, and then the doctor agreed with me that I was fine, after a cut and a biopsy and a visual exam of the other thing, which was nothing.  I hate the doctor.  And I hate the insurance overlords, who have drastically increased their *cut* of my income, and not increased my benefits.

Obama was horrid to me.  Obamacare is costing me additional THOUSANDS every year.  So far, Trump is just a case of “meet the new boss; same as the old boss.”  Unfortunately, politicians who win have their finger on the pulse of whatever fears or dreams motivate people to vote for them, and they know what to say and how to say it, but once they get into office, many of them are exposed to be fucking idiots.  I hate politicians.  The ones in office are all too detached and too ignorant of real-life issues to actually serve the common good.  When you forget how much a loaf of ordinary bread, or a pound of ordinary meat, or a  gallon of ordinary milk, costs because you eat what your fucking chef cooks for you, and your only interest in the price of a gallon of gas is because you’re invested in futures, you no longer serve the common good.  And if you’ve lived in Washington, D.C., living off the taxpayer dollars, “high off the hog,” as the expression goes, for more than 8 years, you’re out of touch with your constituency and need to be replaced by someone who knows what the fuck is going on in your old community, and you need to go back to getting a regular day job so you remember how hard THAT is for the ordinary commoner.

A politician should not become a millionaire while in office, because if they do, either we taxpayers are paying them too much, or they are taking advantage of someone or some situation that we commoners don’t know about.

I digress.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled rant, already in progress:

I hate the doctor but I had a date because the Boy Scouts require a physical if you want to go camping.  They don’t want you dying while you’re hiking or sleeping in their campsite, so they want some assurance that you’ve got a reasonable chance of survival.  I told him I was fine, and again, he agreed with me that I’m physically fine.  We didn’t address the mental-ly aspects of things.  But then, to add ass-ault to (alleged) inure-y, the doctor suggested a prostate exam *after* I told him everything was fine.

He gave me the finger, and afterward, agreed with me that everything felt good. Well, thank you very much.  I hate the doctor. I used to just hate him as a concept, just hating doctors and nurses in general due to previous events from which I still suffer what I perceive as mild ptsd- too many doctors invading my privacy, cutting, nurses being rude and verbally abusive, all of them poking, palpating, “practicing” medicine, then more cutting.  I literally had a panic attack as a little kid because a lady in a different uniform LOOKED a little like a nurse.  If I go to the doctor, I have a stress attack, so how is that beneficial to my health?  But today I hate this specific doctor and I swear I still feel what might be a small scratch in there. I should have offered him a manicure and demanded dinner, wine, flowers and compliments, and reminded him to “be gentle with me, it’s been a long time.”

But, for any of both of my two concerned readers, my BP is down, my weight is down, my pulse was slightly elevated (only 15 bpm above normal resting rate, but hey, wonder why that happened?), my prostate is fine, and hooray, if I want to go and if I can afford it and if can figure out the time off and the repairs to my tent, I can go camping with my son and the rest of the boy scouts this year.  Woo hoo.  No, I’m not a doctor, but I seem to have my own finger on the pulse of my own health, because I’ve been right for the entirety of my adult life, about my weight, my stress levels, my vitamin and mineral needs, my mental condition, and lately, about the mole and the other skin thing Mrs M wanted to know about, about my cholesterol and vitamin D and other blood chemistry levels Mrs M wanted to know about, my general health as it pertains to surviving a Boy Scout campout that the Boy Scouts wanted to know about, AND my prostate, that the doctor wanted to know about.  And the other obvious things.  I’m allergic to some pollens and sensitive to other things, including our new dog.  It’s not his fault.  If I were less informed and self-aware, I might not feel this contempt.  But I know how I am, and I’m fine, thank you very much.

If I were a doctor, I’d want to be a mental health provider so I could prescribe therapeutic regularly scheduled, and occasional PRN romantic encounters with Mrs M.  Because those are so much better for me than going to a doctor.  PRN is short for pro re nata, Latin for “as the situation demands.”  Or, “as needed.”  I’m afraid I hold more information in my head than I know what to do with.  For example, I recall the old grammatical rule that “a preposition shouldn’t ever end a sentence.” (See the prior sentence, as the rule has fallen into the abyss of ignorance, because it’s a rule no one cares about.  I’m only sensitive to grammar rules in my own writing, but I break those all the time, too.  I wonder if I’m not aware of some rule about profanity…)  But alas, my knowledge is just knowledge I have, not knowledge I’ve let the requisite people know I know in order to “earn” some kind of recognizational documents.  I also know a lot about cooking, but I’m not recognized as a chef.

Also, if I were a doctor I’d need a much cooler name.  Doctor Mumple?  Doesn’t hold a candle to Doctor Von Doom, or Doctor Strange, or Doctor Octopus, or any of the other arch-villain OR superhero doctor names.  Any suggestions, if I ever go back to school for the doctorate, what I might have my name changed to? (Doctor Grammarian is right out, I just did the preposition thing again.)

I’m fine.  Thank God, I survived another trip to the doctor.  But they refused to tell me how much I’d be charged, so I’m waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop.  Today, there’s a little less unnecessary bullshit to handle before I go to work, thank God again.  Because there’s housework, there’s work, there’s maintenance and repairs, and then there’s more housework, because after one washes the dishes, the wife and kids return home and make more dirty dishes and additional filth.  I’m OK for now.  But I need to prepare breakfast for the dog and make sure he gets his morning workout.  Fuck!  I’m the dog’s personal trainer and chef.  Is my dog smarter than me, or is he just a brilliant politician, getting his constituency to do whatever he wants?!

Mixed Messages Sunday

It’s not just Sunday.  It happens a lot, because, as some of you know, I’m a big fat idiot.  Sometimes.  Oh, I can pull the wool over several readers’ eyes and appear to be halfway intelligent, but the truth is the truth.  There are messages coming in, and I get the intent mixed up.

Is the message meant to encourage me?  Am I ok?  Am I supposed to be allowed to rest, or am I supposed to be motivated to work?  Does she love me?  Really, or is it all a show to get me to keep doing so much housework and keep going to work at my day job?  Does my family care?  Or should I be alarmed by the message, or is it a “sign” I should pay attention to, take a warning from, or react in some way.

At this point let me confess that I started writing this blog a while ago.  I had asked a lady on the internet if I could send my readers to her website by a link.  Most of the time I don’t feel obligated but she had a note on her site that made me decide it was a better idea to ask permission than to beg forgiveness.  I sent her an email and I understand not everyone checks, because I don’t always check, but I’ve been waiting to see if she would grant the permission and she hasn’t, so I can’t refer you to her website but you can find it eventually if you research omens.  I thought the content was interesting, but being an intelligent woman of discriminating taste, perhaps she looked at my content and decided to wisely and silently decline.  It’s fine.  If you feel like searching for information about omens, eventually you’ll find her site.  Maybe it’ll be an interesting search and curious people will learn curiously interesting things.  I just published it without including the web address, and now I get a bunch of psychic/tarot/responses, and I can’t tell if they’re actually blogspam, or if they are legitimate lovely people sharing the love.  They’re sitting in the WordPress spam folder right now, I’ll decide sometime what to do with them.  We now return to ancient content.

I left the church building after hearing a message that was sort of a mixed bag of information, and we sang that song where I have to stop singing part of it.  The song is a modern choruses and it talks about God in glowing, fantastic terms that are all completely true.

]

It’s really a great song until 1:02 when it starts describing my own heart, and I can’t sing that because right now, and for a long time, it’s not true.  It doesn’t accurately describe my heart.

Speaking of hearts, my daughter just made me describe the tricuspid valve, I swear it’s the absolute truth.

That all (except the one paragraph) was a few weekends ago.  Since that time there have been events I haven’t bothered to write about.  All certain things do is bring out people’s fighting side, and I don’t want to be about that.  I’ll only say, as if you didn’t know what I was talking about already, that I went on record with my hatred of both candidates the American people were stupid enough to choose as their front runners, and so now we have one of them as our new President, and we have his pick as Vice President, and may God turn both of their hearts to wisdom and righteousness.  Don’t tell me “a president isn’t the same as a king.”  I know, but the Bible, figuratively as some people want to interpret it when they don’t like what it literally says, and, literally as some people want to interpret it some of the time when it suits their annoying argument against the rest of its’ context, can have literal and figurative meanings at the same time.  Figuratively, our new president is like a king, in that he is the leader of the country.  So, all you so-called Christ followers and/or Biblical scholars who just want to pick a fight and be right, maybe you and I can pray in agreement for a change, and just pray for our new President and his idiotic crony administration just like I did for our previous President and his idiotic crony administration, for God to literally guide their decisions and words so we don’t get our whole country, figuratively or literally, blown to shit.

Protesters, your children are watching.  I watched a little shit on the news bragging about setting a fire, and speaking about our newly elected President in an entirely disrespectful way, and I wanted to slap his ass to Iran or Afghanistan so he could learn how much better it is to live in those countries.  And his little shit family with him.  He may have the legal right to burn my flag, but that, friends, doesn’t prevent me from suggesting he find an alternate country to live in, one he can love.

I’m a patriot (though not a fan of The Patriots).  If you don’t love your country, and you can at all afford it, either step in and do something to help, or step the fuck out.  I have no time for people who promised to leave if [insert politician name] is elected to [insert political office here].  I have even less time for them if they don’t leave when it happens.  Buh bye, best of luck in whatever other country you choose.  And I have no time for rich fucks who sit on their asses and their assets and don’t help anyone.  Fucking useless.  (See also, one of my favorite verses, Proverbs 3:27, and another, Isaiah 1:17, and another https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+4%3A32-35&version=NIV )  I read these verses and I don’t understand why when someone is in need, someone doesn’t step up and help.  But all I can do is pray, for myself, and for others I know who are in more dire need than I (am).Whatever.  The rambly rant says, in short, I’m unsure of myself, I don’t like bullshitters from religious encounters or from secular encounters, and if you can do something good for someone else, as one of my relatives is fond of saying, “just fucking do it.”Insert a certain corporate logo here, you know the one, it’s in your head.And now, this:An old blog from someone who writes completely better than I (do) who is decidedly, completely better than I (am)  :https://christypovolish.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/you-cant-do-everything-but-you-can-do-something/and if you followed all of that stream of consciousness, you’ll either love or hate this:

and this:

 

Life In Denial, Part Deux

Maybe I should say part five.  In my previous article I mentioned several ways in which Americans are in denial about the 2016 presidential election.  But wait!  There’s more!  I don’t sleep much when I remember to take my meds, so I have lots of time to read and watch the news, in spite of myself.

If you are and were a rabid Clinton supporter, or possibly a rabid Trump supporter, click over to someone else’s blog now.  You will not like what you’re about to read.  It’s just not pretty, no matter which side you look at it from.  (Take that, grammar Nazis!  For you non-grammar-Nazis, the rule was “a preposition is something one should never end a sentence with.”)  I didn’t like any of the candidates, and I’ll decline to let ANYONE know who I voted for.  You can guess, and I won’t confess.  But I voted.  I’ll confess, this article is pissing ME off even as I write.  I know where this is going, so after I finish it, if I decide to post it, I’m going to be so upset I’ll have to go somewhere else myself just to get away from it.  And there’s a few beers in the fridge waiting,unless I resort to my standby vodka.  Shit.  I’m almost out of vodka.  So, beer then.

Why am I resorting to alcohol?  Because, friends, America is fucked, and it’s not Trump’s or Pence’s fault, not Clinton’s fault, not Obama’s fault, not Putin’s fault, not Kim Jong’s fault, not Hassan Rouhani’s fault, not even Theresa May’s nor Benjamin Netanyahu’s nor Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s fault.  It’s our fault.  We’re fucked, because too many Americans are fucking idiots. Obama, Clinton, Pence, and Trump, may well be fucking idiots, but it’s not their faults.  Shakespeare wrote, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars (celebrities, well-known wealthy people, well-hidden wealthy people, politicians), but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”  Of course, when he spoke of stars, he meant our fortunes as supposedly spelled out by the relative positions and interpreted meanings of the celestial bodies.  But I mean to say that politicians do not bear the full blame for the shit America is in.

It’s your fault, it’s my fault, as citizens of this nation, that we have chosen between two Americans who best represented America.

In Clinton we have a woman for all women (and some men), someone powerful and opinionated, who stands up for a woman’s right not to be bothered with the potential impact a man might make in her life whether he’s good or not, a right to make choices and damn the consequences for anyone who might get in her way, a right to decide whether to live for herself or live for others or to try for a little of both.  She takes charge and makes choices and listens to her own heart and pursues her own dreams, and occasionally she forgives herself if she might not be able to hear someone else’s heart or consider someone else’s possible dreams over the importance of her own heart’s drumbeat.  (Subtle, ain’t I?)  She forgives others (she didn’t murder Bill, did she now?) unless they’re irredeemably deplorable people, and when she makes a “mistake,” she thinks a little forgiveness isn’t too much to ask.  A woman for all women, she had enough mystique (charisma, intrigue, scandal, lies, money, fame, and ambition) to represent the we we could be if we had enough money, ambition, fame, and just enough of a lack of moral principles.  She has the experience as a stateswoman  and is accustomed to making deals where you accept what you can get and deal with the negatives as you can.  She unified people who most closely aligned with her principles, good or evil, and some of us stood with her.

You can call me a misogynist, despite your knowledge of my love for all women in general and my wife in specific, because I blamed Mrs Clinton at least in part, for her husband’s well known (and it’s certain, many not well known) lapses of moral character.  Bottom line, it was his fault and his choice, and his stupidity.  But.  If a woman commits in marriage to a man, she commits to care for him and encourage him, by any means.  I don’t know what went on behind closed doors, but there were evident problems.  I’m sorry if you don’t like other people’s opinions when they’re different than  yours, but I believe, (let the metaphor be heard) if a woman sets the gourmet meal of all his favorite foods in front of him (and he should do the same for her) and lets him pick what he likes often enough at home, he won’t be as likely to go out sneaking to the shitty little fast-food burger joints around town.  If you cook, but you never cook something he really likes, he’s eventually going to crave it enough to go elsewhere to have it.  You don’t have to be a master chef, you just have to try the recipe even if all the ingredients aren’t just like on the cooking shows. He’ll be happy, and your cooking will improve with practice.  It’s out there now, so I expect I’ve lost readers for saying it.  If I made you mad, remember, I told you not to read it.  If I made you quit following my blog, fuck off and read someone who writes better than me; I know damn well there are a LOT of better writers.  If I do apologize, it’s only for writing as though a specific set of readers would actually read this article.  I wrote it that way, I’m calling them idiots, but most of my actual readers aren’t.  So since you’re not an idiot, don’t take offense when I call the people I’m writing about, idiots.  They are, you’re not.  Sorry in advance.

In Trump we have a man for all men (and some women), someone powerful and opinionated, who stands proudly and builds an empire.  He stands up for himself and promises to stand up for our country, and not let anyone take any unfair advantage of us.  If someone wants to come to America and respect American laws and culture and heritage, maybe even make friends and come over to the house, there’s no problem.  We’ll share our grilled steaks and a few beers, but if someone wants to sneak in through a side window in the dark and steal our shit, that’s a different matter.   Trump fearlessly, thoughtlessly and selfishly spoke, seeming like he was almost deliberately trying to piss people off. And yet we know he’s right.  He’s right that we need to figure out what to do about people who want to come to America and kill us, but wrong in his proposed approach to that defense.  Not all illegal aliens crossing illegally into the United States over the border  with Mexico are criminal rapist drug dealers.  Most of them are hard workers who just want an opportunity and haven’t figured out how to do it the legal way.  But some drugs come from Mexico.  The very act of sneaking across the border without proper documentation or declaration of intent makes the one who does this a criminal in the eyes of our current law.  And occasionally an illegal alien from Mexico or some other country turns out to be a psychopathic perro who doesn’t want to shit in his own back yard.  Not all Muslims seeking to get into the United States are bent on destroying heathen American lives, and peace amid the illusion of safety, even if it costs them their own lives as a sacrifice to their god.  But occasionally one Muslim, or another, or a couple, (or an alleged Christ follower,  or a group) goes rogue due to overly dogmatic doctrine, doing things contrary to what most say is “mainstream.”  They’re called “radical.”  Both Muslim and Pseudo-Christian terrorists call themselves “conservative,” and say their interpretations and applications of their sacred texts are correct and justified.  In actual fact, a  person or group perpetrating run-of-the-mill crime OR hate crime are just fucking criminal, that’s all.  And there’s really no way to know who might do what next.  We’ve seen what the so-called “sleeper cells” have done in Paris, and Nice, France, Belgium, England, and what a single attacker did in Canada as well as what a sleeper cell was plotting in Canada.  Occasionally even Americans do some pretty stupid things for a cause, however misguided.  While they may feel like their motive is for a greater good, their actions are just criminal. (Thanks, NC NOW, for the insightful article)  Do NOT try to tell me that a true Christ-follower would ignore His commandments , instructions, and teachings (footnote to the last link: mainstream Jews of Jesus’ day hated Samaritans).  Why the idiots in the KKK were allowed to announce an endorsement is beyond my comprehension.  Why they don’t abhor their own souls for their inherent hatred of others    Now, I’m not saying we can’t respectfully disagree, discuss, and debate.  But IMHO, any unprovoked murderous attack “in the Name of Jesus” is not done in the name of MY Jesus.  It’s just done by someone who wants to discredit His real message, or prove they’re an asshole.  I’m sure many peace-loving Muslims feel the same about radicals who call themselves Muslim.

Trump doesn’t play a character on TV trying to appeal to the broadest cross section possible.  He’s the same guy he’s always been.  An irritating braggart who still manages to be very rich and very successful.  He welcomes opportunity, and when opportunity comes along, he grabs life by the pussy and rides it until he gets what he wants.  He’s an unapologetic, brash, loud, proud idiot.  He’s the we we all would be if we had his finances, his persistence, his luck, and his lack of good manners and tact.  He offered this leadership style to America, standing on the proof of his wealth, power, and success, and some of us invested.

And why did it come down to these two?  Because, American voters:  We’re idiots.  We damn well knew the character of both of these people, and yet those are the two we chose, out of fucking 321,420,000.

So the election is over, and one side didn’t win.  And in the modern era, what does that mean?  Protesters, because we’re idiots.  Clinton understands the election laws, the election process, and knows how to gracefully and lawfully step aside when she lost the electoral college vote.  Her concession speech evidenced her understanding and surprising grace.   Trump wasn’t prepared to accept a loss, but Clinton handled herself with perfect poise and dignity, and issued a call for unity.

So what do Americans do?  Act out in a temper-tantrum of civil disobedience and rioting against Clinton’s clear instructions.  Dumbasses.  Go home, you’re not doing what your leader says, so who exactly are you following?  You’re as bad a hypocrite as the self-proclaimed “Christ-followers” who do the violence and terrorism and shit.  And you delude yourself into thinking you’re doing something positive, but you’re a criminal.  She said:

…we must accept this result and then look to the future.

Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power and we don’t just respect that, we cherish it. It also enshrines other things. The rule of law, the principle that we are all equal in rights and dignity, freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values, too, and we must defend them.

Clinton supporters denied that Trump told the truth about the broken Electoral process, and now they’re upset about the results.  Trump said it was broken, and if you’re a Clinton supporter I would bet you believe him now.  You have as your scapegoat the electoral college.  Except that the electoral college is national, constitutional law.  Clinton is aware of this, and in the name of respect for the law and the love of peace,  she told her people that she’s now going to support Trump as President, and her followers should do the same, and do the good they would have if she had won.  I was very impressed she included Galatians 6:9 in her speech.  I was impressed by the tone of acceptance and peace.

I was unimpressed (and sadly, not the least bit surprised) to hear the pride of Trump, in himself, no mention of any Bible or any other sacred text of any kind, and only a last-minute inclusion of gratitude to Pence, who may be one of few reasons why Trump somehow won.  No, it’s very clear to those who are really paying attention, that the only person Trump really loves, is himself.

And what’s even worse than Clinton supporters rioting, there are a few too many isolated reports of fucking idiot people claiming to be in Trump’s camp who may or may not be doing or saying hateful, racist, homophobic, islamophobic (or any other religio-phobia), ignorant, criminal things.  Vandalism, terrorism, assault?  Fuck you.  This is why he didn’t really want the endorsement from the fucking KKK.

Go home and stop doing your hateful, shitty, criminal acts.  You’re idiots.  You aren’t doing it right, you’re not even following the instructions of the guy you supposedly support.  He said:

“Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division, have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.  It is time. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be President for all of Americans, and this is so important to me. For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country.”

You aren’t doing any of this.

Instead, you’re in this for yourselves and you’re worse than the stupidity of Trump’s campaign trail foolishness, and multiplying it by several thousand.  Trump said offensive things before and during the campaign.  If  the charges are truthful, he DID offensive things before the campaign.  Trump offended practically everyone and still won the electoral college vote even though Clinton apparently won the popular vote (but not by much).

It’s a Civics lesson, kids.  We’re by and large idiots, because most don’t even know how it works, and we’re idiots because we don’t realize this:  The electoral college was conceived not because of poor communication, but because all the way back in the 1790s the leaders knew the average uneducated American peasant wasn’t very bright, so the popular vote may not always be the best choice for America.  The Electoral College is the failsafe to prevent the ignorant American commoner from fucking up the country, and the ignorant American commoner is us.

We can undo the 12th constitutional amendment, but the rioting in the streets is sad evidence we can’t undo ignorance.  Repealing a constitutional amendment has been done before.  They repealed prohibition, thank God.  It’s a simple procedure but it takes time and either a significant vote by Congress-both House AND Senate, or an even more sweeping call by State legislatures.  Prohibition’s repeal was done by the State process, but that was a hugely popular idea.  It would take a long time to do the State process for Clinton.  And Congress moves even slower.  After it’s done, we’d probably be too late to undo Trump.  It requires either a National Convention or a Congressional proposal  And if we did, it wouldn’t undo what the current electoral college has decided for America.  It wouldn’t allow retroactive installation of Clinton even if she did win the popular vote.  She didn’t win by a high enough majority to undo the constitution.  It would probably take longer than 4 years to amend the constitution, even if it did ultimately pass.

In other news of ignorance, I’m hearing about a possible Presidential pardon of Clinton by Obama before he leaves office.  Except that’s nonsense because it would imply Clinton is lying when she says she hasn’t done anything wrong.  If Trump makes good on his campaign promise to investigate Clinton, what will he find out?  We know of a trail of several and varied scandals that Clinton’s had her hand in, from Watergate to hostagegate.  $400M and we only got 4 of our 8 hostages set free.  Can Obama write a pardon like a blank check, that exonerates her without implicating her?   Can Clinton get that carte blanche for anything that might be discovered without confessing what she’s done?  And if that happens, and then we do discover something, are we allowed to riot in the streets until Clinton is un-pardoned?   Should Obama be investigated?   Of both Clinton AND Obama, one wonders what skeletons we’d find in their closets that aren’t recently put away halloween decorations.  Would we want their smug smiles slapping down the papers that officially forgives them for anything they’ve done that was against the law?  And would we be content with letting them get off scott-free for what they did?

Not that I have the time to riot.  I have to work so I can stay, just barely, above poverty, at least until any new minimum wage hikes start.  If that happens, then I’m back to the lower end of the poverty  scale, because whatever the new minimum wage is, that’s the new poverty.  I’ve worked a long time at keeping a job so I could earn more than that, and I’d rather the politicians, or worse, the American people, NOT push me back down to the bottom.  Fucking idiots.

Is 4 AM too late to have a beer?  Or is it too early?

Life in Denial

I’ve read there are three sides to every story:  your story, their story, and the truth.  There are three sides to an argument.  Your side, their side, and the right side.

Being unsure of the origin I looked it up and found what I hope is the original, and then what I’m delighted to report is music I’ve never heard before.

“There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently.”
Robert Evans. (2002). The Kid Stays in the Picture [Documentary]. Highway Films.

Here’s the song, too, because you all know I REALLY love music. Joe has his three sides, and there are three I want to talk about.

America, holy shit, let us pray. Apparently we’ve decided collectively that Trump was the lesser of the evils running for president, and elected him.  I might have written the same article with the story taking a different turn if Clinton had won, but we have what we have. There are three sides of denial to be dealt with here, and I’m not going to let any of them pass.  I lied; there are four sides, and some of the sets of groups of people in their various denials overlap like a terrifying Venn diagram.

So here’s the denial on the party of the first part:

Side I:
Trump, like all politicians before him, has lied to the American people, and we let it slide. The Muslim ban, and the Great Wall of Mexico are quixotic, idiotic, xenophobic wet dreams that will NEVER happen, and if they do they will be disastrous for our country. We all know this. The wall promise will be impossible to fulfill and if it does come to pass it will cost more to maintain and secure than we will ever save by having fewer illegal aliens come over the borders. And Mexico will never foot the contractor’s bills, the maintenance costs, nor monitor our wall for us.

If we can’t have a wall, we probably will continue to have a revolving door for our illegal alien workforce, if they’re even caught by immigration officials. Don’t get me wrong. I want everyone to be law-abiding. But the reality is that some won’t respect the law, true about immigration, true about crime, true about guns. I hope, regarding his promise about crime, that he can get a law passed requiring the death penalty for anyone convicted of murdering a cop in cold blood. But I also want the balance of the death penalty for any cop convicted of murdering an innocent person in cold blood too. If I’m reaching for my license, don’t fucking shoot me.

He promises to use common sense to fix the mental health system and prevent mass shootings. The trouble with this is that it’s another aspect of denial. I submit that he’s probably lying here too, because “common sense” would actually separate mass shootings and mental illnesses into separate categories, each of which needs to be addressed: A mass shooter is a criminal, a person with a mental illness is a person with a mental illness. Sometimes the sets are combined, but it’s not a bus to throw everyone with a mental illness under. This discussion of mental health and crime needs experts who know something about mental illness in on the discussion, not just the kneejerk reactionary vapid and nebulous promise of policy development. This one is important to me. I want to be on the advisory committees, but I don’t expect an invitation.

Here’s why:
1) I think mass shooters and other terrorists need to be immediately executed by the arresting officers. (No invite, because with that opinion, I’m barbaric.  But if people know that at the end of it all they’re going to die, there will be fewer shooters and terrorists.)  If you and your group plan an act of terrorism and begin its’ execution, and you get caught in the act, I want to leave no further opportunity and I want to just end you, with no fame or martyrdom.  No mention of names in the media, you’re erased from life and history.

2) I think people with mental illnesses need to be treated with respect and dignity and afforded the exact  same rights granted to every other citizen (No invite, because with that opinion, I’m crazy).  Mental illnesses are diverse in scope and impact, but I believe it’s safe to opine that most people with mental illnesses want to just live normal lives, not commit crimes or kill other people.  I know people with no mental illness who routinely make jokes about killing people, just like people with mental illnesses sometimes do, and from these people, they are fucking JOKES.  I’m angry, but I’m not angry enough to buy a gun and murder anyone.  I don’t know about anyone else, but the voices in MY head only tell me to harm myself, not other people.  We deserve the right to own firearms and use them in our own defense, the same as anyone who’s called “mentally healthy.”

Because criminals may technically not be allowed to have or use guns, but that doesn’t mean they won’t figure out a way to steal one, buy one, or make one.  Plus, if a killer (translation: criminal) wants to kill someone, a gun isn’t required.  They can use bullying or some other psychological weapon, fists, a car, a lake, a knife, a rope, poison, a bomb, or any of a number of unconventional murder weapons, such as a plastic bag, or a brick wall, or cartoon-style violence if they’re truly creative: a freight train, a rocket, an acme mail-order novelty, or maybe a piano, or an anvil.

Normal people, including normal people with mental illnesses, understand that doing these things in real life make one a criminal, but in cartoons and movies such actions are not fatal because the artist wakes up and draws, or creates new special effects, another day.  We all suspend our disbelief just like when we watch movies, and may even laugh if it’s comical.

Criminals actually DO criminal things to other people, and they need to be treated as criminals and justly taken care of so they won’t, or can’t, harm another person.

Separately, people with mental illnesses need to be cared for by a caring community of professionals, not lumped in with criminals and presumed guilty before any act is ever perpetrated.  Disallowing guns to ALL those with mental illnesses sets a huge group up to be victims of crimes by those who somehow get their hands on guns, legal or not.

He promises to make medical marijuana widely available to patients, and allow states to decide if they want to fully legalize pot or not. If it’s not a lie, I say it’s not enough. Just push for congress to legalize it across America, and then push another law that all in jail for marijuana be immediately released and the records of all convicted of marijuana related offenses be immediately expunged.

There’s probably more deceit in the lists of promises.  But I’m already tired of it, and I hope the GOOD promises he made are carried out, and the foolish ones are admitted as foolishness.

We’ve accepted as our leader a person who joked about sexual assault.  Sexual assault is a crime; it’s not funny.  Ever.  I can’t say this with enough emphasis.  I really, seriously pray that Trump is able to behave decently and morally, while in office.  But there’s no denying the way he evidently thinks about women, at least some of the time, because it’s out there.

______________________________
Side II:

Clinton supporters?  You’re in denial too.  You whine and moan about the election results and claim a glass ceiling that prohibits ALL women in the office of president.  But that’s not accurate.  I’d vote for a woman for president, just not Clinton- because of her history of scandal and coverup.  There are several women I’d like to consider from these lists, who might potentially make great presidents.  I have a list of potentially viable candidates here.  Let’s investigate them all NOW and not 4 years from now, so we know who’s the most supportable candidate on the basis of all those ethical categories- misandry, ethics, criminal background, criminal allegation, um, if I’m allowed to assert there are universal goods and universal evils as measurements of character, let’s choose someone of basically good character.  If there aren’t any (and I seriously doubt that) then let’s find another woman of good character and ask her to run.

You’re in more denial, when you deny the scandals themselves.  We want to call them “mistakes.”  But there was no mistake in Benghazi when nothing was done at all to defend our citizens, our soldiers, or to rescue them.  But we rescued the traitorous Bergdahl due to the tireless efforts of Clinton in exchange for giving them back known criminal terrorists, and paid a $400M illegal ransom to a government that is openly antagonistic against America, in exchange for 4 , not all 8, of our citizens being held prisoner at the time of the event by that government.  And we were fed a story about that exchange, that just screams to me that it’s a lie.  So we care about some American citizens, just not all of us.  Depends who you know, and how valuable a chess piece you are on the global chess board.

There was no “mistake” in propping up women who were willing to allege Trump’s assaults.  The mistake was in your timing.  Tell us before he’s the only other candidate left for the people to vote for.  Saving the allegations for this late in the campaign says you’re desperate, you’re shady, you’re lying.  You made a power play in withholding this, because you let the other candidates in the race falter for various cosmetic or personality reasons because they would be stronger in the end of the race if you didn’t trip THEM, than Trump was.  And then at the end, you gave us these allegations.  Too late.  And if Trump is a bad choice, for bankruptcy or misogyny, or being whiny when he doesn’t win, then your choice in waiting because you thought you could beat him was a mistake.  Dr. Carson or Ted Cruz might have lost in the end if they were left in the race, just based on their belief systems.

Clinton also threw the race on the basis of her idiotic stance about gun control.  She said she would implicate gun manufacturers in gun crime, and restrict guns like Obama did in Chicago.  We see how well gun control is working there, right?  And the people who make guns aren’t any more culpable in gun crime as McDonald’s or Hardee’s is in causing morbid obesity.  They make a product to meet a demand, it’s sold under circumstances basically controlled by the threat levels they pose, and no one is forcing the fast food customer to supersize their asses and not exercise and clog their arteries and die of a heart attack.  And no gun manufacturer is forcing the gun buyer to commit a crime.  I sympathize with people who have been the victims of gun crimes, but I put to you who would restrict gun access to law abiding citizens, that it isn’t the law-abiding citizens who are causing all of the gun related problems.  Restrict the law-abiding citizens, and they are marked with targets.
______________________________
Side III:

Finally, there’s the overlapping set of denials we all perpetrated here.

Let’s start with the electoral college.  We have the electoral college that makes us a democratic republic, and not a true democracy.  The news media is saying that Clinton won the popular vote but lost the electoral college.  This tells me, the electoral college is an antiquated system for choosing a candidate based on an elite few who may or may not represent the voice of the people.  It should be abolished, and the popular vote should select elected officials.  The whole nation is in denial in letting that system choose our president.  If you want your vote to count, abolish the electoral college.

We picked these two, or four, whatever, that’s not the point here, and presented them to America as if they were our best and brightest, and we voted for them (or against them).  Both majority candidates were lacking in character.  Both lied, or hid truths, or told half truths, or asked forgiveness for various character lapses, and we bought that shit and put it on our dinner tables and served it up.  America, if we’re not ALL, collectively, a bunch of fucking idiots…

Trump tried to tell us the electoral process is broken, and if you believed that and you voted for him, you’re a bigger idiot than he was for saying it, and if you believe it now and voted against him, read what I said about the electoral college again and compliment Trump for saying at least ONE thing that was the truth.

Clinton tried to tell us that increasing the minimum wage would be a good idea, so she could fulfill her other promise of increasing taxes to pay for all the programs she wanted to give us.  Some of her campaign rhetoric, and some of her campaign ideas, like her opponents, were fucking brilliant.  But not this one.  Some of Trump’s promises and rhetoric, and some of Clinton’s, were utter and complete bullshit.  This idea is case in point.  Because I’ve worked very hard for a long time to get a wage that is higher than minimum wage, but if you shove a raise at everyone that doesn’t make a higher rate of pay in the name of just raising it, you neglect to consider basic economics.  Basic economics lesson:  the economy adjusts itself.    This means, if you suddenly decide to raise the minimum wage “to get people out of poverty,” it sounds good on its’ face, but after economic adjustment, the new minimum becomes the new poverty.  It’s basically stupid and doesn’t honor my efforts to better myself by staying with a company for a while until I earn raises.  It slaps me back down until I’m back at the bottom of the fucking pay scale again.  Fuck you, for wanting to make me at the lowest level of poverty all over again.  Just FUCK YOU.

Oh, I forgot I lied, there are 4 sides to this story.  I made a mistake, it was simple math classroom talk, it was an oversight, forgive and forget, OK?

______________________________
Side IV:  What we all should do:

In short, what we should do is face reality, and go forward with whatever’s left of our integrity, and pray for America and for Trump and Pence.

I said it when the Christ-followers thought Obama was the anti-christ in the flesh, and I’ll say it now that the Demoncrats lost their bid for the White House:  Pray.

After you finish praying to whatever god you believe in, in whatever faith you practice, remain as productive, law abiding citizens and do the good you would have done if Clinton had won, or the good you wanted to do if Trump won.  Or your third party choice.  We need to work together, and we need each other to make a strong country.  It’s not Trump or Clinton who makes us great.  It’s each other, supporting and helping each other.

I heard several public faces saying they’d leave the country if this or that candidate won.  Well, my first reaction is, if you said you’d leave if Trump won, get the fuck out.  But my second, more heartfelt and loving reaction is, if you still can make a go of staying to help the rest of us, please stay.

The ridicule, mudslinging and character assassination of presidential candidates is over for the next 4 years, thank GOD, so let’s move on like we always do.  The Cubs won, but I bet The Cleveland PoliticallyIncorrectNativeAmericansWhoProbablyAren’tReallyNativeAmericans went home and they’ll keep practicing and playing because that’s what they always do.  And the Democrats and Republicans will keep trying too.  They’ll be back on those ballots, slinging mud like old times, in another few years when it’s time to elect new liars or re-elect the old liars in between presidential elections, and in 4 years from now, it’ll be back to the same old presidential shit.  Win or lose, life goes on and we try again tomorrow.  Tomorrow, I have to go back to work at my day job, and I’ll do that same shit all over again and it won’t get me anywhere.  I’ll also buy a lottery ticket, because there’s a possibility, however slim, that I’ll win that shit.

The most important things I can advocate are 1) to pray, and 2) do whatever you can to make our country better.

Midnight Or Bust

“Normal” people are probably watching election returns, unless they’ve gone off to bed.  I can’t.  I voted today, spent the day out in the real world running around like a damned chicken with my head cut off.

For fucks sake, I took the day off.  To take the day off.  And then voting took more than an hour, ran to point A for my daughter, to point B for my daughter, back again to A for my daughter, went to the store, back home for a few minutes, back to A for my daughter, then dinner, to point C for my son, back home for shit we forgot, back to C, back home, finally.  I’m honestly exhausted and don’t want to see people tomorrow, which, thank GOD I asked for another day off tomorrow.  I have to check to see if it’s approved, so that means I drive to fucking work so I can make sure I can go back home for the day.  Shit.  If the boss had just approved it when I first asked, but it’s a way of stringing me along.

Those candidates.  I hated every one of them.  I wish that the press would release all the shit about the candidates when they first announce their candidacy.  Trump is a mysogynist blowhard ass hole who can’t shut the fuck up, Clinton is a misandrist scandal-driven ass hole who can’t shut the fuck up.  Oh look, they’ve got something in common.

You can’t blame Trump, he’s got no filter and no one advising him to shut the fuck up.  If he had shut the fuck up after announcing his candidacy, he’d have won hands down. Oh wait, hands down seems to be the other part of his problem, maybe he should keep them at his sides, or just on top of the desk.  Please.  No grabbing anything.

You can’t blame Clinton, scandal just seems to follow her, and she certainly wants nothing to do with that.  At the polls, I saw a guy passing out fliers, well away from the actual voting place in keeping with the law.  I saw another guy wearing a t shirt that said something about Benghazi, an obvious anti-Clinton tactic, and I had to wonder if it was actually illegal.  I didn’t see anyone making female crotch grabbing great again, so no standard for comparison.

The word “Benghazi” isn’t inherently offensive.  Just the connection connoted to Clinton. The word “pussy,” is unless it’s a damned cat.  We don’t assault people, or advocate that sort of behaviour.  But then, we don’t ignore calls for help when it’s in our power to at least try to do something to help out, either.  So the comparison is apples-with-worms-in-them to oranges-with-hairs-with-lice-in-them.  Trouble is, if it’s an apt metaphor, I can cure lice, but I can’t cure an apple with a nasty worm and a hole in it.  Leave him to “reality”tv, which I avoid watching like the plague, but she needs to retire from politics forever.

We didn’t get the shit out in the open about the extent of Clinton’s email server problems, or Trump’s shitty braggadocio-filled sound bytes and rape allegations until after the majority candidates had been chosen.  But she kept whitewashing herself against the scandal, or admitting it and apologizing because she made a “mistake.”  And if the allegations are true, Trump kept his dick in his pants and his hands to himself from 1997 to 2016.  As a guy who loves women, I don’t think I could do that if I had a thing for extramarital affairs and sexual assaults, mixed with that much money and power and celebrity status.  If it were me and I had it like that and acted like that, there would be a trail of thousands of women.  Too late to pick the best candidates, so fuck everybody, we all have to choose between these two losers.

In politics, “mistakes” cost lives.  You can’t just go “oopsie-doodle!” and get a mulligan, once someone is dead.  From Mary Caitrin Mahoney to Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, and someone knows who else before and since.  The author of this article asks how many people we know have died in the last 10 years whose deaths were mysterious.  My answer: zero.

In politics, sex seems to be part in parcel.  From the satirized until sanitized Washington record (“Washington Slept Here” commonly seen on signs and ads for hotels and bed and breakfasts, and George Washington as the “Father of Our Country,” I mean, come on, people, follow that backward to its’ logical inception in literal truth(s  “to be self-evident”)), to the records sealed or swept under a LOT of rugs for Kennedy, to Mrs. Clinton’s own fucking husband, to probably every other fucking (sorry) President of the United States.  I’d posit that sex seems very likely inevitable, but mysterious death shouldn’t be, even if adultery and murder are both on God’s top ten list.  And maybe, just maybe, speaking as a man who routinely doesn’t get what he wants, if Mrs Clinton had done what Mr Clinton wanted her to and proven she’s NOT a misandrist, his fiasco (fucking idiot and some cigars [getting] oral) would have never happened.  I have limits, and if they’re met or surpassed, I don’t think about wanting more.

I don’t want to hear about anyone fucking on the presidential seal carpet or getting head under the First Desk, or assaulting women, any other tacky, low-rent behaviour. I also don’t want to have hacked emails that were supposed to have been deleted, with state secrets leaked to potential adversaries giving them an advantage over our country or the wimpy Commander-in-Chief not doing shit while Americans, including American soldiers, are helplessly getting killed.

All the majority candidates suck, except Mrs Clinton apparently, and she should.   I just wish we were told how badly, before it was down to this choice.

Whoever wins, I’ll do what I always do:  pray.  You probably should, too.  Because our country doesn’t seem like it can win from where we are now in the game.  We’re going down no matter what color the carpeting is and no matter what kind of plumbing is installed, this is going to suck one way or another.  And I’m afraid we’ve all been screwed, and not in a nice way.

And, I’m sorry I didn’t finish this by the deadline I hoped for.

Resisting The Impulse

My life lately seems to just be the poster child for resisting the impulse to act rashly.  I want to act on my rage, I want to act on my panic,  I want to act on my passion, I want to act on temptations, I want to act on my discipline and my desire to make progress in life, I want to act on compassion, I want to act on indifference.

I appear to be controlling the desire to act on what may be negative impulses.  I appear to be resisting the impulse to act out.  But what may actually be happening is this:  My impulses are keeping me from doing anything.  I’m stuck and buzzing with the feeling I should do something, but I have a counter-impulse that keeps the first impulse under control.

So when I have the impulse to tell the boss and the company they can go fuck themselves because of the way they’re treating me, I have the counter impulse that says I need a job, and a job is better than no job.  So when I have the impulse to find some stress relief somewhere to just relax, I have tasks that force me to not be able to relax.  So when I feel the urge to sleep, I have the brain that says, maybe later.  Or not.

It’s an election year.  It would be nice to know who to vote for because they’re good, but instead, they’re all shit and you have to pick the ones you think is going to do the least damage.  Which is why when I’m voting for one party’s presidential idiot…candidate,  I vote for the other party’s congressional candidates, to keep them from furthering their harmful agendas.  Lately, and by that I mean for the past twenty or thirty years, that hasn’t been working so good.  Yeah, I’ve probably been voting for twenty or thirty years.

It’s possible that my life is demonstrating this text.  (or not).  Yeah, click it, you’ll probably either laugh or ask yourself “what the fuck did I just read?!”  It’s not a good  “in my own words,” but if I were writing that, I might say this:  I want to do good and positive things, but everything I try to do only turns out to be more shit.

It’s possible I have every impulse known to mankind, and they’re all in perfect balance, preventing me from actually doing anything.  A bit like genius Matt Groening’s delightful Mr. Burns and his diseases:

Like my poem from the other day, I need to put one foot in front of the other one. Except every time I feel like i might be making progress,some shit happens to take that progress away. So it isn’t a good thing to me. Or maybe it’s fine.

It would really feel good to tell the boss exactly how I feel, but instead yesterday I worked my ass off again because I don’t want to give her or the company any ammunition they could use against me.  Fuckers.  I’m going back to do the same again.  Because I want to stay home and do fuck all.  But instead, I’ll get home after work and do the thing scheduled for tonight instead of reading all your blogs and catching up and trying to make encouraging comments and deleting my excess emails.  Because my progress continues to take a back seat to everything that has to be done.  I don’t have the resources to do what I want, so I have to do what I have to do and not do what I want to do.

Confused yet?  Well so am I.  So I’m going to work.  Sorry everyone!  I hope, despite my stuck situation, that you all make good progress today.  I’ll try to put a dent in something other than my car or my head.  Oh, I hit my head yesterday, too.  Maybe I just hit it too hard, but I feel fine.  Really.

Have a great day!

~Deon

The Devil’s Skill

This:

is the supremely talented Mr. Perlman.  I can actually pick up and play a violin, but I want to learn to play violin like that.  The Tartini piece starts out easily enough, but then quickly shows its’ true colors, hence the nickname “The Devil’s Trill.”  Perlman apparently keeps this piece and others of similar skill level in his proverbial back pocket, to be ready for an encore.  I can play things that are medium skill, and with practice probably more difficult pieces, but not THAT difficult.

Perlman “just” knows them from memory, the result of playing violin since he was very young.  And he plays them, “just” like that  I may be too old to master these techniques, whenever I can finally buy or acquire a violin.  Or, if I have five or six or more hours a day to practice, maybe I can.  Who am I kidding?  I already know I don’t have the discipline for that.

Here’s the other thing:  I want to write like that.  I want to write so well, so fearlessly, so fiercely, as to be irresistible to my audience.  I want to be a rock star writer (and string player).

I know a few things about myself, though, that may prove to derail those aspirations, both for violin and writing:
1. I don’t want to sell my soul to the devil.
2. I’m not supremely talented like that.
3. I don’t have all day to work at the craft.
4. I don’t know people who are willing to be my patrons.  I really need patrons, almost as much as I need minions.
5. I don’t have name recognition to just sit in on the symphony and play, or just demand cash for my writing, so I’d have to audition, or do the self-publicity.  What a  pain in the ass to have to people like THAT.  I just want to play.  I just want to write.  Maybe a minion can be an agent and do all the peopling for me.  Except they’d have to work for free until I’m established and making enough to pay them decently.  And decently I would, really.  Because who wants to work for a hack for no pay?
6. I don’t want a gold fiddle, Charlie Daniels.  Or Satan.  Or whoever.  I’d sell that and buy a good one.  But I wouldn’t turn down a violin, if I can ever win the drawings, whenever someone is giving one away.  Or, maybe I can win $7K in the lottery (because I’d have to pay taxes on the $5K violin after I paid taxes on the $7K prize.  Fuck, who am I kidding?  That money would already be spent before I could dream of a violin.  I’ve got bills and debts, and everybody wants a piece before I can grow anything.

I know some people who write almost that good, and I have to wonder if they’ve sold their souls to the devil to get that good.  I’m sure Perlman hasn’t sold his soul to the devil. Well, pretty sure.

I have no respect for those writers who tell us they know the story because they heard it, and they’re writing as a public service, and then we find out they read it somewhere and plagiarized the shit out of whichever sucker writer hadn’t caught them yet, for profit.  Further, I have no respect for speech makers who tell us all they know what’s best, or they know the story, and we read their life’s story and it’s full of lies and scandals (that, I’m told, is called “politics”) and screwing everyone out of whatever they could (that, I’m told, is called “good business.”  Unless you’re the person who got screwed.)  Write your own shit, writers.  If it’s any good maybe you’ll make some money.  The evidence of my skill level may be in its’ profitability, which doesn’t look too promising at present.  And, speech makers, before you tell us how to live, or who to believe in, better make it a bit more believable.  The old saying is “practice what you preach.”

It’s hard to follow a preacher who gets caught in a sin, and it should be hard to follow a politician who gets caught in scandals, cover-ups, and a hidden-body count.  Not that I’m accusing anyone.  I have no smoking gun for proof.  These people are better at hiding than they were when Jimmy Hoffa was buried under Yankee Stadium, in the concrete under the foundation. Conspiracy theory?  Moi?  No way. I have no proof, and I’m not going to dig that up.  Plus, there’s only a thin veil between the audience and my sin, so there’s that.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!  Damn it, Toto, fuck off!!

But it’s easy to follow a musician, or a favorite band, or a blogger.  What I don’t understand is the popularity contests.  If I attract a million followers I still won’t understand.  I just wonder, because people are so afraid to leave any comments, if anyone actually reads it or if they just click delete and move on with more important things in their lives.  Plus, for some reason people get all polarized about music- I HATE THAT!  I LOVE THAT.  I don’t even want to know the character of the musicians, because if they do something I don’t appreciate, I don’t want to not like their music because I know they’re ass holes.  I just want to like the music.  Plot spoilers, don’t even tell me.

This is no conspiracy, it’s a fact:  People play games with numbers (see also, Sudoku, and linear algebra and statistics if you’re a real masochist.)  Mum says, “figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”  She means, you can say whatever bullshit you want with numbers and con people. For example:  “We’ve collected actual data for the last two or three hundred years.  And based on this relatively microscopic sampling of data, the world is going to end.  How do we know this?  Because through the magic of math and statistical trendline analysis that none of you can possibly understand, we’ve retroconfabulated the data from the past million years.  How can you prevent it?  You can’t, and the end is nearer unless you buy our new experimental technology and continuously invest in future developments!” to put our children through college and allow us to retire comfortably.  Damn, I wish I was that convincing with starting a rumor.  And that profitable.  It’s almost as bad as these preachers telling us the end is near.

The end is near people, but it’s coming in a way no one really believes any more.  People are busy following the latest fads so they don’t think the world is ending any more.  We think science is our savior, and the liars are making bank on that.  I won’t follow anyone who tells me a date for the end, because no one gets a Moses-style face to face with God, and Jesus didn’t even tell us.  He said, “no one knows,” so I don’t trust anyone who says they know.  Similarly I don’t trust anyone who says they know about how to run the country and fix the global economy.  Which is to say I don’t put any faith in the religion of politics either.  These people are not your saviour.  They’re not qualified.

I suspect some of the politicians and preache…um, “scientists” may have sold their souls to the devil.  Or to the big money organizations.  Look at the polls and who the front-runners are.  Look at how quickly scientific theories get embraced as scientific fact, without demonstrating any real proof.  Both these groups are doing what they’ll get paid to do:  sell the company line.   A certain politician who’s not in the running any more called out another politician for having her hand in the wallets of a certain large bank type organization.  It got ignored.  And now recently the same large bank type organization is sending one of their people to sell us the other certain front-runner.  Or to sell him out, if the big money wants politician A to win over politician B.  If you follow the money trail, they’re supporting both of our beloved two-party system candidates.  Which should tell you they’re the same, it makes no difference who you vote for.  I’m not even convinced it matters, unless you have a lot of it, who or what you invest it in.  It’s your money, it’s your gamble, so good luck.

I don’t think science or medicine or technology or religion will save us.  Shit’s gonna go down no matter what we do.  (“Oh, [me] of little faith.”)  There’s a huge movement to go retro- live small, alternative therapies, tiny houses, electric cars, and the funniest thing about that to me is they spring up from their moms and dads and grandparents who were hippies back in the 1960s, with the same theories about humanity.  So it’s nothing new.  When Noah was preaching he advised people to turn back to God, that old hippie.  “There is nothing new under the sun.”

But if a few small investors want to give it a go, I know there are a few therapies I can help with.  Trust me, they’re my specialties.  All I need is enough money to buy a violin and I can be a music therapist, and enough money to pay my bills, put my kids through college and retire comfortably, and I can be a mood therapist. My mood therapies are very cathartic:  I do alternating and sometimes blended sessions of rage and laughter therapy.  It’s healthy to vent, in constructive ways, and it’s also extremely healthy to laugh.  Or, if you’re a corporation looking for someone to sponsor, I can do bullshit.  I can prove it:  I wrote THIS.

So, who’s buying?

No, Satan, I’m NOT selling my soul.  Even if you would give me a solid gold violin.  Fuck off.

Hysteria Rage

It’s a little-known fact that Deon Mumple exhibits hysteria rage.  That’s all about to change.  It’s true:  Deon Mumple exhibits hysteria rage.

I was trying to find a word that means “fear of hysterical idiots, frenzies and those who encourage the hysteria, the idiots, and their various frenzies,” but all I could find was “fear of mankind,” which at second glance appears to be closer to the truth than I would like.  Which is why I like my bunker.  And it’s not really fear so much as pathological hatred.

Honestly, I do my best not to hate people.  Instead I hate trends.  I have a special hatred for trends that cost me money.  Beanie Babies.  Cabbage Patches.  Gaming iZords.  Cell Phones.  Global warming.  Sorry, it’s hysterical fear, not real science.  We don’t have actual data that supports it, we only have speculation.  So for that I only hate people who try to force that religion (and it IS religion) down my throat.  So is a lot of so-called “science.”  Digital TV.  The government shoved that down everyone’s throats and said it would improve the quality of reception for everyone.  Well, I still can’t see certain digital channels clearly unless the sun, moon and stars align just right and there aren’t any solar flares, so that was a lie.

I hated the trend of reality TV shows, no great loss there if I can’t see it.  From Jerry Springer and Geraldo Rivera on down through recent history, all those shows suck.  They show the lowest things they can get away with showing, so everyone else feels better because they aren’t as bad, or as poor, or as evil, or as stupid.  Or are they?  And on the other side, there are the celebrity and rich people shows that encourage envy.  I mean, who (besides Deon, that idiot) doesn’t want a mansion and a limo and a chauffeur?

I hate the keeping-up-with-the-joneses fads so you know I don’t have the newest cell phone.  They’re money suckers.  I would have been content with my land-line, but Mrs. M wants to be able to harass me when I’m out, or when she’s out.  So I have a cell phone but the damned thing is turned off most of the time.  And you also know I don’t have to have the biggest, baddest, fastest, of anything.  I don’t look over the neighbors’ fences to see their new car, like they show on the damned TV commercials, not that I have the money to spend on that shit.  If I did, it wouldn’t be wasted on many frivolities.

I hate the Pokemon Go trend.  Sorry kids, but no, I don’t think you should be staring at your cell phones while walking into traffic to catch the rare and elusive Moltres or Articuno.  Or fucking DRIVING in traffic to catch it, or to hatch your damned eggs at 15 mph because you’re too fucking lazy to serve the secondary purpose of the game which is to get you to GO, by walking a few kilometers.  Get the FUCK out of my way, you damned kids!  And you, walkers, get the hell off my yard!  Used to be only the milkshakes brought all the boys, and now it’s the stupid Squirtles and Pikachus.  If there’s any Pikachus peekingatme, or at my wife or kids, I’ll have the damned things arrested.  What the hell is wrong with those boys anyway, are there no more football games or gang fights or other participatory sports to go participate in?  And what’s wrong with the girls?  Are there no participatory sports or gang fights or football games to participate in?

I hear what you’re thinking, if you go for Pokemon Go:  He’s an expert, how does he know those names and that they’re rare if he doesn’t play?   Well for one, I have my wife and kids Pokemon go-ing, one who literally drove around the block at 15 mph either to catch one or hatch one.  I hate it, but I tolerate it. Go, for heaven’s sake.  Walking.  I don’t want to “ketcham” all.  All I want is Mrs. M.

I hear what you’re thinking and for the record, I am not in favor of gang fights.  I hate the trend of irresponsibility, which has probably been going on since Billy Budd killed John Claggart or Cain killed Abel.  I’m not at all in favor of committing murder and then making excuses.  Or any other crime against another person followed by an excuse.  I was taught when I was a kid (oh, read that in my “angry-old-man” voice! which, coincidentally, sounds a lot like my normal voice, shut up, damn it), “Excuses are like ass holes.  Everyone has one, and they all smell like bullshit.”  If you’re going out for a gang fight or a drive-by shooting or a robbery or whatever other inappropriate shit you want to do, don’t try to make excuses.  If you’re going out to shoot someone who’s unarmed, in the back, don’t try to say you were only doing your job.  If you rape someone, or assault them in any other way, don’t try to say she (or he) was asking for it.  I call fucking bullshit on all those lies.  Your actions are on you, not anyone else.

There’s a difference between literature.  Both were stories alluding in their own twisted plots in some way to the death of Jesus. One was a true story and the guy claimed full responsibility for his actions, and the other was a work of artistic fiction where the guy said we ought to judge his intentions and not the actual cause and effect of events.  And sadly, the modern era shows life imitating bleeding art, so we have bleeding hearts instead of just coming clean and admitting the whole truth.  Last time I checked, I didn’t have the divine power to judge an intention or a thought.  I can only see what happened and know who did it, I can’t know why.  People lie about why anyway, and you can’t trust them.  I’m waiting for the fictional story of the dystopian society where …   Nevermind, I hate the modern trend of dystopian society stories.  It’s so common it’s lost all meaning.  I’m bored, move on.

I hate the panic fad.  I can’t watch the news and I hate the teasers they put on to advertize the news.  You’ve heard the teasers:  “Hackers and terrorists are going to steal your identity, your money, your property and then your life and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.  Find out why, tonight at 6!”  “There’s a dangerous thing right in your house, and you use it every day and it’s going to make you vomit and bleed from your eyes and ears and ass holes and then kill you.  Find out what it is, tonight at 11.”  Or worse, “Someone broke into several home near you, broke all their shit, shit on their carpets and dishes, raped the family gerbil and set the neighborhood on fire, and your neighborhood could be next.  Find out about it tonight at 10!”   Fuck you, news ass holes.  I also hate the news itself.  They only want to tell you the shit, until they run out of shit to shovel and then they show you the cat hoarder and the lady whose baby was attacked by a baby lion.  Those were on this morning.  They want to scare you, when a little common sense would avert the bullshit.

Presidential candidates?  I hate the presidential candidates too.  Whoever gets into office, it’ll be bad.  That’s hopeless and I’m tired of being afraid of whomever gets in.  I love the USA as a concept, but by and large the people are idiots.  Or, we’re being lied to and the people we allegedly picked were not actually picked by popular vote.  Conspiracy theory. Don’t nevermind, and please, don’t kill me if you work for Trump or Clinton.  They should have to do their own fucking dirty work, and then they should have to admit they did it.  Politicians should all wear shock collars that blast them if they lie.  Tell THAT story, dystopian novelists.  Oh.  Nevermind.  That’d be a utopia, not a dystopia.  Unless you’re a politician, I suppose.

I’d rather see stories about heroes and cheap ways to romance your wife and people who’ve stayed married for 95 years and they’ve never committed adultery and they’ve still not murdered each other.  “Mr. Jones, tell us how you do it.”  “Well, generic deep-voiced newscaster, it’s like this:  ‘Me-e a-and, Mrs.  Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones… We’ve got a thing goin’ on.'”  I’d rather see stories about criminals caught in the act and stopped, and instant karma, but too frequently there’s no such thing.

Like the old Rolling Stones song goes,  “you cain’t always git what you wa-aaunt.”

And Mrs M. wonders why I’m depressed sometimes.  Fuck me.  (Please!)  See, that’s the cure for everything that’s wrong with me.  Maybe it’s the cure for all of society.  All I need is a good steak, maybe some cake (yeah, you know what I mean, if you know what I mean), some average ice cream, shit that doesn’t fall apart, and hot, steamy, healthy …um, reciprocating social interactions… with Mrs. M.  Bring on some NATURAL anti-depressants and I really believe I’d be just fine.  And honey?  Would you shut off the damned news, please?  And get off your phone already.  You can’t?  Who is it anyway?

Oh.  Shit.  I can’t win.  It’s a Charizard.