Breeder Outrage
Artistic rendering of “stabby.”
Note: Hippie Cahier proactively assisted with a single instance of grammar in this post. The remainder of errors are, as always, solely my own. -Ed.
A teacher quipped on Twitter one day that her students made her feel “stabby.” Outraged parents, obviously, well-provisioned with torches and pitchforks, demanded that her head be removed and braised like an oxtail and served on a silver platter as a delicate amuse-bouche at the next school board meeting. Now that is justice deliciously served!
Yeah, that sounds like an appropriately-measured response. Because, yeah, I’m so sure they’re all such wonderful people and perfect parents to boot.
Fact: On average, Americans shop six hours a week and spend only 40 minutes playing with their children.
Source: PBS.org – Affluenza
In the world of social media umbrage, judgement can be swift and final. Make an ill-advised joke before boarding an airplane and by the time you land your employer may have already knee-jerk terminated your career. That must have been a really good joke. (I’m not attempting to evaluate the social content of the joke here.)
Sometimes the target of ire may really “deserve” what they get. I guess in some cases the downside of not waiting for actual facts can backfire. Oops. Too bad, so sad. At least you got your 15 minutes of notoriety, right?
Lemming My Eggo
Sometimes I feel a bit like a lemming who looks around and says, “Hey. Sup with that cliff, yo?”
Is there free will? If not, then it sucks to be you. Because, those dies that were cast are mighty damn cruel. Think about it. If there’s no free will then you have to act like this. Somebody clearly doesn’t like you.
If there is free will? Then you’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do.
“What happened? Why did you run over and kill those pedestrians?”
“I couldn’t see. The sun was in my eyes.”
“Uh, okay. Follow-up question: Why the fuck was your car moving?”
“I don’t know. All the other cars (that I couldn’t see) were moving, too. I had faith we were all moving together. It seemed like the thing to do.”
“Seriously. How do you expect us to allow you to continue to roam free? Shouldn’t you have been crushed upon the rocks at the bottom of the sea cliff by now? And, just curious. I have to ask. Have you reproduced yet?”
Next!
“Hey, you. What’s your story?”
“I decided to teach my 10-year-old son how to drive. A truck. Right by a river. And, for good measure, I brought all of my other sons along for the ride.”
Good plan. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
Long story short, I choose to do things like not walk in front of moving vehicles. To each their own.
What’s The Points?
Guru hard at work.
The computer screen told the story. A weather system, shown as a menacing blob of glowing crimson on the screen, was bearing down on us and about to engulf the whole damn island. Isla Nublar was really in for it. Gale force winds, 40 foot swells, the whole nine yards.
Communications were already out.
The control room shook as horizontal rain punished the windows creating enough background noise to decidedly get on my nerves. I took a moment to glance out the window. The tropical trees were whipping in the wind like piñatas under a baseball bat.
It was up to me.
I realized a voice was coming out of the high-tech radio I held in my hand. “Sqwk! Say again, say again, we are pinned down. No way out. Request immediate EVAC. Do you copy? Over. Sqwk!”
Sending out the chopper in these conditions would almost certainly be suicide. Yet there stood the flight crew, having already volunteered, now impatiently awaiting my decision. Risk three lives to save eight? I could barely comprehend the mathematics that involved.
The weather display was blinking now. It has just been updated with the name of the storm which was now closer than ever. “Fiona” they were calling in. Wow, I thought. They named the storm. That’s extremely useful information.
“Clever girl,” I said without realizing I was saying out loud.
Time was growing short. It was do or die. This command decision had to be made so I could triage the next looming disaster only seconds away.
“Send ’em out,” I ordered. I keyed the mic. “Help is on the way. Out.”
Outside
Next time on Biography…
I’m on the outside
Lookin’ in
Oh I’m an outsider outside of everything
Oh I’m an outsider outside of everything
Oh I’m an outsider outside of everything
Everything you know
Everything you know
It disturbs me so
It’s trendy these days, or so it seems to me, for some among us to run around having conniptions of kittens because some law might apply to them and … gasp of horrors … they never had the opportunity to sign off on it first.
Well, la dee frickin’ dah! Who the fuck are you? Apparently I forgot that any one of me is worth a hundred of you. You’re special. You’re important. Me? I’m the official spokesperson for The Rest Of Us. Also known as the Wretched Refuse, the tired, poor huddled masses of the homeless, tempest-tost. I’m the elected leader of those not worthy to be ground to mush to fill the empty spaces in the waffle treads of your Nike footwear.
I’m the stranger in a strange land. As I look around and apply logic to what I see, the message comes in loud and clear. I do not belong.
Continue reading →
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: What of Mediocre Fred?
For newbies, Mediocre Fred is a decent, honest, hard-working guy. He doesn’t cheat on his taxes, obeys the law and is kind to small furry creatures. As such, he’s not exactly rewarded like a paragon of the American way.
Here in America we base our entire system of government on one simple principle: No freeloaders. You have to work for a living. As a nation we abhor the notion of those who work the system to get the promised land of freebies without pulling their own weight. Well, at least on the bottom end of the scale.
Mediocre Fred has worked every week of his life since he was 16. When still in school he worked part-time. After graduating with his high school diploma, he went full-time and has never looked back.
Over the decades Mediocre Fred has always worked. He’s had no pension, 401k plan, health insurance, vacation or paid days off. He just works. And when his fellow workers tried to unionize and the company closed and bulldozed the store and built a new non-union store across the street, Mediocre Fred always seemed to land on his feet. He’d just get a new job and keep his nose to that grindstone.
That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?
Continue reading →
Hittin’ Run
Sadly, binary is not a workable template for real world problems. Most things are just not that simple. They don’t fit neat and tidy in the binary box. Oh, how I wish they would.
Drive drunk? I feel that should be classified as “attempted murder.” Society, as usual, doesn’t agree with me. “No jail time for killing four pedestrians while driving with a BAC three times over the legal limit and not even old enough to drink.” That wee bit of difference of opinion on punishment makes me an outlier, I guess. Of course, that’s an extreme example, yet to my way of thinking, punishment in even garden variety DUII cases falls woefully short.
Cheat on your spouse? That should also be “attempted murder.” It’s all so simple to me. Pick up a deadly disease, bring it to your marital bed, and pay it forward with a potential disease that could theoretically kill the person who trusts you the most. There should be serious punishment for that. Far too often the only real punishment is going back to your regular life like nothing ever happened. Not much of a deterrent, eh?
In brief, my point is that without certain and meaningful consequence there is absolutely no limit on behavior. Period.
I believe a certain percentage of people just don’t give a shit. Perhaps they are motivated by drug addiction. Perhaps they are psychopaths and/or sociopaths and it’s what they do. Maybe they were brought into the world and damaged beyond repair by parents, environment and random events. Whatever the reason, it makes little difference in the end. The outcomes are similar. The themes of destruction and causing harm are remarkably consistent.
We tend to expect it from these folks. No big surprises there.
What about the rest of us? We’re good, right?
Hold on. Let’s not be too hasty.
Continue reading →
Shouts from the Abyss 
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