Ablogalypse Now

Confronting Fear and Hatred

Some time ago, I posted this in response to some rather lame criticism of Air America Radio.

I recently received via email a rather haughty reply from the author of the original op-ed I was responding to. In typical conservative fashion, the author refused to discuss the points I made in my critique and confessed that he regularly engages in a curious form of ego masturbation.

After a little bit of digging, I found that the individual in question is "syndicated" on several low-budget armchair patriot sites that cater to the angry white male Dale Gribbles of America.

Digging a little further, I discovered that the individual in question has a brother with his own site.

Following the link to the aforementioned site (which is now off-line for some reason), I finally found a link to this.

After the horror of Oklahoma City, and especially under the current regime, I had hoped that this sort of shit would have fallen into disfavor.

I guess I was wrong.

All of this has reminded me of the 1989 Oliver Stone movie "Talk Radio" and Mark Pellington's "Arlington Road". I must say that it's not very pleasant to think that, even now, at the dawn of a supposedly new century full of hope and promise (other than the fact that we're in a fucking war), there are still people among us who feel this way about their fellow human beings. People whose Fear of diminishing power and influence in an increasingly non-white America, and whose Hatred of Themselves and of the Other in all of its guises is their sole reason for living.

In my younger days, I was taught to despise others for things like the color of their skin and for their sexual orientation and lived half my life hating and despising others for reasons that made no sense at all.

I have since realized that such hatreds are borne of personal insecurities and have moved beyond those shallow views to embrace tolerance (with the only exceptions being stupidity and greed) as my guiding philosophy.

If only more people out there in the world could find it in themselves to do the same.

"The common dogma [of fundamentalists] is fear of modern knowledge, inability to cope with the fast change in a scientific-technological society, and the real breakdown in apparent moral order in recent years.... That is why hate is the major fuel, fear is the cement of the movement, and superstitious ignorance is the best defense against the dangerous new knowledge. ... When you bring up arguments that cast serious doubts on their cherished beliefs you are not simply making a rhetorical point, you are threatening their whole Universe and their immortality. That provokes anger and quite frequently violence. ... Unfortunately you cannot reason with them and you even risk violence in confronting them. Their numbers will decline only when society stabilizes, and adapts to modernity." --Anonymous AOL Member

A Non-Apology

"I realize I use the word 'fuck' alot, and I'd apologize for that.. but I don't give a shit." --Lewis Black

Everything Causes Cancer

So far today I have seen stories that say that soda, alcohol and diet have all been linked to cancer.

Burned out? Work got you down? Can't wait to get home so you can have a beer, or a soda, or a carb-laden hunk of whatever to soothe your senses?

Well too fucking bad, because it increasingly seems like everything that makes you feel good is bad because it makes you "less productive" at work or because it causes cancer.

Maybe these lab geeks should try taking a look at the impact of spending the vast majority of our waking hours each day chained to a dehumanizing, monotonous, soul-killing job that sucks all the life out of life.

I want to know when the FUCK one of these eggheads is going to do a study that shows without a doubt that mindlessly working your life away like a cog in a machine causes fucking cancer.

Soy Un Perdedor

Is a line from the chorus of the song, "Loser" by Beck, which means, surprisingly enough, "I'm a Loser."
I created a post under the same title some three months ago to refer to an old friend of mine - a former college scholarship-bearing guy and fellow veteran of many a Psychic War - who has recently fallen afoul of the law as a result of his king-hell methamphetamine habit.

At the time I created it, the post drew no hits at all. All of a sudden however, the post is getting some 15-20 hits a week.

So what the fuck, over? Is there some weird corner of the world where they only recently got turned on to early 90's-era Beck?

Somebody please comment to this post and tell me what inspired you to Google "Soy Un Perdedor" because this is weird and it is really starting to freak me out.

Deja Vu, All Over Again

Another day has passed into oblivion far too soon and once again I find myself, as I do every night, staring down the barrel of another dull and dreary day at work.

No God worth believing in would reward a man for enduring a lifetime of earthly drudgery in the hopes of earning some sort of divine redemption in the Hereafter.

Monotony sucks the life out of Life.

"Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age."

"No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it. "

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

You Might Be A Redneck....

....If you access the internet through WalMart Connect and if your search consists of the words, "stupid fucking muslim's".

I could've sworn I heard "Duelling Banjos" when the page loaded.

Scary that someone actually found my blog by searching for "stupid fucking muslim's."

Friday Dread

What's up with that? Typically Fridays are the happiest days of the work week for me. So why does today feel like a Monday? The fact is that I had a run-in with my boss yesterday. Not my supervisor, mind you, she's cool, but the overstressed, nervous-breakdown-waiting-to-happen who is above both of us.

Never in my nearly 20 years in the workplace have I encountered someone with such an uncanny ability to put me on the defensive. Someone whose mere presence makes my guts convulse into a giant knot. I hate being that way around anyone, much less around someone who has authority over me.

So, after 9 weeks on the job in which I have shared a nice cozy office 8 floors away from this maddening bitch, I have recently learned that a rippling domino effect of departmental relocations is forcing my research partner and I down to the ground floor where we will now be only 2 doors down from Mother Superior.

Suffice it to say that this fucking SUCKS. During the interview process for this job, I thought I doomed myself when I very bluntly expressed my disdain for managerial micromanagement. You would think that someone who likes to micromanage would have immediately written someone like myself off in favor of someone a bit less outspoken.

But no. She hired me knowing full well that I can't stand to have someone breathing down my neck all the time and now I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with her just a few steps away.

Besides her panic-invoking demeanor, there's also her maniacal bullshit insistence on shmoozing. I kept the original print-out that listed all the job responsibilities on it and NOWHERE on it can I find a line that indicates that the successful candidate will have to spend much of their time generating insincere nuggets of raw shmoozery.

If there's one thing I hate more than micromanaging, it's shmoozing. Let's just call it what it is: ass-kissing. I've never been good at it and I don't plan to start now. Nary a day goes by when K isn't encouraging me to find new and unique ways to shmooze people.

I may just have to start drinking at work because for the life of me I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do to get past this.

Anti-Work Quote of the Day

"Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an "ethic."
-Barbara Ehrenreich

Nailguns 101

Lesson #1: Don't do this.

My 1.5 Minutes of Fame!

Sitting at my desk this afternoon listening to the one and only Miss Randi Rhodes on Air America when I hear her put out a call for predictions on what "October Surprise" Bush will unveil to slam-dunk the 2004 election. The grand prize? Nothing less than a brand-new waffle iron!

So.....in a fit of rushed inspiration I quickly fired off the following:

"Digging deep into the Lee Atwater Bible of Republican Dirty Tricks, Rove and Bush will produce a Photoshop-altered image of a Speedo-clad John Kerry serving mimosas to young boys at a NAMBLA pool party hosted by Michael Jackson and Paul Reubens (aka Pee Wee Herman). On the heels of the subsequent media firestorm that will ensue, Osama bin Laden will be "captured" and brought to the U.S. along with Saddam Hussein where they will both be strapped to the hood of a specially-designed presidential race car that George W. Bush will pilot for an obligatory victory lap at the NASCAR Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 being held at the Atlanta Motor Speedway on October 31. Cheers! Dave in AZ"

Like an idiot I hit the "Send" button too soon and the post got cut in half. So I sent the last half with the NASCAR bit which Randi proceeded to read at about 2 hours and 10 minutes into her show today.

A replay of today's show will air later tonight or early tomorrow morning. Now if I can only find a way to record it.

Curious? Submit your "October Surprise" prediction here.