Jacko and the media, there are no surprises left

There are a lot of things I don’t quite
get in this world. Why would anyone put
pineapple on a pizza? Why does MTV never
show videos any more? Why put up an endless
string of road construction cones along 30
when there isn’t a road crew in sight? If
Jesus was a carpenter, how much did he charge
for a bookshelf? Is true love possible? Cats.
But if there is one thing that tops my list
of brain teasers it’s why anyone has a hard
time coming to terms with King of Pop Michael
Jackson’s weirdness. In years past, I’ve made
mention of Michael Jackson. Some mentions have
been harsher than others, but mostly they were
all designed to get some laughs while shedding
a little light. Even considering the nature of
his alleged crimes, one cannot allow oneself
to get too overwrought by them. Everyone should
have seen what was coming from far, far away.

Here’s the rub for me though. I like to check
the headline each day on My Yahoo! It’s got AP,
Reuters, national, world, politics, technology
and entertainment news. I find entertainment
stories to be the most refreshingly stupid
stories I’ve ever read. The headlines don’t
fail to draw my attention with their shocking
revelations about people in the one area of
American culture where every form of perversion
and human debasement has occurred at least on
film if not at Roman Polanski’s house. Why
pretend shock? It’s all for us. So let’s
check it out.

My favorite E! Entertainment headline from
this week was the delightfully understated
faux shocked sentiment in “Michael Jackson
a ‘Sociopath?’” Apparently, there is some
debate in his current trial over whether
or not the woman he paid to bear his children
called him a sociopath, whether he might be
one, whether that term means anything since
she isn’t an expert and has since called him
a genius and wonderful father or if we should
all just acknowledge that sociopaths are a
dime a dozen these days, as I will show in a bit.

Now, I remember about 10 years ago when Michael
was trying to buy the Elephant Man’s bones. He
wanted to “take care of him.” It was about 5
percent sweet and 150 percent creepy. It was
around the same time he was pictured sleeping
in an oxygen tent with his monkey or something
to stay young forever. Early signs, that’s all
it was.

Monkey business aside, the bones thing freaked
me out. The guy had been hanging out with little
kids for some time and everyone thought it was
cute. But I was pretty sure at that point that
Michael Jackson might be a good deal weirder
than any of us had previously considered or
discussed in the media. Oh sure, in England
they started calling him Wacko Jacko as soon
as it was possible, but their tabloid press
is full of savages who find no level of public
discourse too base or vulgar for public
consumption.

I had friends, no doubt “Thriller” fans, who
thought I was far off the mark suggesting
that Michael Jackson might, just possibly,
be a bad, bad man. It’s all about the signs
and portents after all. Today, if the charges
prove correct, few would disagree that his
actions warrant such acrimony.

But at what point in the last 10 years could
anyone have doubted that the man was a
sociopath? Sure, it sounds like a harsh judgment,
but in a world where we can see deadly sins on
TV and even pay good legal tender for a few of
them, sociopaths are not exactly hard to come
by, are they? The term “sociopath” sounds bad,
but if you take a look at what one really is,
it could be the person sitting next to you.
Don’t look now. Wait until their back is turned.
Culling knowledge from my years of watching
“Law & Order,” a couple of community college
abnormal psyche classes and a quick trip to
MedicineNet, I can tell you that a sociopath
is someone with antisocial personality disorder.

That’s a mild way to say they disregard the
rights of others and are unwilling to conform
to the norms of society. That’s most teenagers
and outlaw bikers right there.

There is usually a history of antisocial behavior
starting before 15 that just keeps on going into
the adult years. Sociopaths do bad things more
often than we normal people but they can’t be
dissuaded by consequences. They usually are
irresponsible academic failures with poor
job performance records who do crimes, take
chances and act on impulse. Not too bizarre
yet let alone King of Popish.

Here’s where we see Jacko though. In addition
to being unable to stand boredom, a sociopath
usually feels victimized; their personality
will bring them into conflict with society
because of a pattern of amoral and unethical
behavior.

They might be contemptuous of those who try
to understand them. They won’t perceive that
anything is wrong with them. They are
authoritarian (or their entourage is). They
might be secretive, paranoid, extremely narcissistic
and grandiose. They are unable to feel remorse or
guilt. They are looking for approval and admiration
while controlling those they abuse. They justify
their crimes, are emotionally needy, incapable of
real human attachments and may actually say they’d
like to rule the world.

Maintaining a conventional appearance is on the
list too, but I think we are pretty aware that
Jacko totally lost control of his normal appearance
after the first few surgeries.

But hey, we can’t all be perfect sociopaths.

Operation Secret Eck-STRAC-shun

Todd Fox, the only picture
I could find.

[For an update on this ongoing saga, read this post.]

The whole situation was fucked up so bad from the very
beginning that any amount of money I "owed" later on
was really irrelevant to how messed up things had gotten
and why I felt it easier to fuck off the way I did.


Here's the story from the beginning:

I hadn't talked to Todd Fox for several years. He
thought he was cool... finally... after years of
sucking on my dry teats pretending that hanging out
with me made him cool. I never understood why he
thought I was cool back in junior high and high school.

I understand why some guys I know do,
but they aren't interested in being MTV rock stars.
That 'mo wanted to be cool like that.

So of course he eventually began to resent me in later
years for HIS having thought I was cool. It's kind of
a trend I've noticed. It's like finding out that Mel
Gibson is nuts or that Dennis Miller is so greedy
that he threw over being a hardcore fighting liberal
to be a Neocon chickenhawk pussy. It makes you hate
them and part of that is because you used to love them
and feel betrayed. Even though they never did anything
to me, owe me nothing, I feel betrayed. That is Todd
Fox in a nutshell.

He even borrowed about 20 bucks from me and my Mighty
Lemondrops tape just so he could "dump me" like a
bitch the summer after I graduated ISU. I had no money
that summer and he never managed to see me a second time
or pay me back in spite of the fact that he had a job and I didn't.
It would be just like him to do something like that so he could feel
superior and up one.

Fast forward a few years and he is calling me from
Hunstville, Alabama. His mommy got him a job at Boeing
probably by blowing some guy she knew that worked there
named Charlie. This might have been partly why his parents divorced
later. In any case, Todd was a very lonely boy because all
the dorks he hung out with in college didn't think he
was cool enough to stay in touch with later. So he actually
fucking called me up out of the blue one cold winter night to
apologize for not having been a very good friend.

I would have said, hey that's great I accept your
apology, it takes a big man to know when he's wrong,
now please piss off and never contact me again. But
the fucker caught me off guard so I just said OK and
let him feel unjustifiably relieved and back in my
good graces.

This was back in 92 when e-mail was just coming on so we
e-mailed a lot and even played an RPG that
was of my design. You'd dig it. It was just a bunch of
totally made up bullshit. We were time cops (just like
that fucking cartoon only years ahead). I conceived
it as being something like the Restaurant at the End
of the Universe though. Lots of people on a big space
station in orbit over a huge black hole looking time
vortex where time travelers from all over the
multiverse could get together and converse, but when
someone tried fucking with history, we would go back in
time to set things right.

A couple years after that, I was pretty much done with
grad school. It sucked, I wasn't getting anywhere, my
prof was a bitch who didn't want to work with me so
Todd said I should go down to Houston with him when he
got transferred because it was "a boomtown" and I could
"easily get a job down there." His real motive was he was lonely,
no one thought he was cool and he needed a friend or at least an audience.

It's like this: If a poser tree thinks it's cool in the
forest and no one is around to oo and aw at it, can it still be
delusional?

So I moved down there. I had about 300 bucks, no car and we didn't
even live near a busline. We had to have an apartment by the lake
though so poserboy could feel cool. Whoohoo.
There weren't even sidewalks in front of the apartment.

Houston is a shithole considering it is the fourth largest city in the U.S.,
it has no mass transit outside the central district.
You can commute to downtown for over a 100 bucks a
month. If you don't have a car in Texas, you are screwed.

I found a job driving a cab which paid pretty good and solved a lot of my problems, but
that didn't last because these hayseeds were a vicious
and brutal lot who "let me go" one night because
they brought back an alcoholic they fired two weeks
earlier. They replaced him with a woman and they didn't
want to get rid of her because she lived in the
trailer park the cab co. owners ran so if she couldn't
pay the rent it would have been half their fault.

It was at this exact same time that Todd told me when
our 6 month lease was up, he was moving in with his
girlfriend. I was fucked of course and pretty pissed
off. It cost me about 1500 total to rent moving vans to
and from Houston not to mention paying the rent and
bills that Todd had originally said I wouldn't have to
worry about paying until I got a job because he was
making so much money at Boeing (14 an hour plus 65
per diem and perks out the ass) that it wouldn't be any
different than when he was living in his own two bedroom
apt. in Huntsville, Alab. by himself.

He was so relieved that I didn't get pissed off at him
for bailing on me and our plan to start a comic
book/game store (the main carrot for moving down there)
that he pretty much felt content to go about his business
guilt free.

Meanwhile ...

I kept a cool facade, but I was shitting myself. I had saved
up a lot of money driving the cab 12 hours a day 6 days a
week, but that money was going pretty quick. I had
about 600 left after paying rent and utilities. With 6 weeks on
our lease, I had no intention of sticking it out just so I could
be homeless in Houston while Todd got to go off happy as
Larry after fucking me.

My honor system doesn't include paying dicks
for being dicks. I consider that asshole tax, man.

I had a couple weeks before the next rent was due and
wanted to leave before that. Enter Mark Schonberg.
Just by pure luck, his wife, Kum Ju, was in Korea, he
had all the time in the world down in Kansas and a love for
adventure. Most people would balk, but not Schonberg.
This was his literal definition of friendship. Any number of times,
Schonberg would tell me and anyone who'd listen that a real friend
is someone who'd drive down to Mexico to bail you out of jail.
This was basically the same thing or at least as close as he is
likely to get until I actually go to Mexico one day and get arrested.

He still had his doubts. I told him I would pay him back
for renting the van if he would get it in Kansas or Omaha
and drive down to Houston. I found out later, he honestly
didn't think I was going to be able to pay him right there and then.
It wasn't clear if he thought I was planning on dicking him
or if he just thought I was kidding myself, but I most certainly
did intend to pay him with the last of my cash. I appreciated his
willingness to help me out in spite of his doubts, but I was a
little offended. Only because I would have told him I didn't have
any money and asked for help like a proper beggar should.
I am not that big of a scumbag, after all.

So Mark is slated to show up on a Friday in February. Todd usually
came home after work just long enough to pack some
rubbers and then spend the weekend on his bitchy
but hot girlfriend, Pam, the red-headed Alabama skanksnake.
The other roommate, Catfucker Jim, was an
alkie and went to the bar and got absolutely tore up
every Friday. I figgered, if Schonberg showed up by
noon, which was his plan. We could pack up the van and
fuck off before anyone noticed.

What happened was, he overestimated his endurance a
bit and showed up around 4:30. He made good time, but
that was a real bad time to show up. So we went out,
got a burger, hit the bookstore, saw a few sites and
went home when we saw that Todd and Catfucker's cars
were gone. Everything was packed in boxes, we had a
dolly, it took 20 minutes. It was beautiful. The best move ever.
Then we got faced at Croc's right across the street.
$1 shots of tequila. How good is that? Mark confessed
to me that he liked hentai that night.

We hit the rack about midnight, got woke up at 2:30 by old
Catfucker tripping over a lamp. Woke up at 5, grabbed
our pillows and blankets and hit the open road without so
much as a HEY WHERE'RE YOU GOING? To which the answer
would have been, "out to breakfast. See ya later!"

Now, the "Operation Secret Extraction" bit comes in to
play the day before we took off. We were going to keep
this secret because we didn't want a hassle when we
tried to move shit out. That's a bad scene. I knew
we'd have plenty of time on Friday to move without
hindrance so all we had to do was time things so that
even if Mark was seen arriving, everyone thought it was just
for a visit. Then all we would need was a half hour
window and no one would be able to say shit.

So even knowing that he just needs to just keep his mouth shut,
Schonberg calls me up on Thursday to tell me he is on his way and
rather than just say on the answering machine, oh,
nothing, or "Hey Greg it's Mark. Everything is cool with
me, just thought I'd call to say 'see you soon, buddy.'"
He decides that he need to be cryptic. To him, that meant
saying "Greg, this is Mark. Operation Secret Extraction is under way."

Now talk about FUCKING OBVIOUS. Anyone with an IQ
over 68 could figure it out and both of my roommates, though dicks,
were ROCKET SCIENTISTS. Todd certainly would have figured it out
had he heard it. Catfucker heard it and asked me what
it meant. I told him Mark was in the army and liked to
talk like that because he is one of those gungho gamer
closet fags who gets turned on by that sort of shit.
What else COULD I say if I had any hope of fooling
him? As it is, I can't believe ANYTHING worked.

I think CF figgered it out and couldn't wait for the fallout.
He is one of those guys who really fucks his friends
over with evil intention. He hit on Todd's girlfriend
once right before she picked Todd over him and rather than get
over it or just fuck off, he tried to play Roman
intrigue. He even suggested to me after Todd told me
he was moving out, "Boy if it were me, I'd have to get back
at him in some really fucked up way."

Really Catfucker? Like by fucking his cats or
something? Like anyone needs to be reminded that
revenge is an option.

So he probably thought all of this intrigue was of his
making instead of being just about the only thing I
could possibly do with no money, no prospects, no car,
no sidewalks, no jobs and no busses.

Todd called me up the following Monday and tried to
guilt me. As a good person, I felt bad because we were
clearly not going to be friends after something like
this so I let him have his say, but he brought it on
himself.

He used to have a kill phrase he liked to use when
gaming or arguing. It was "you're just mad because
you're losing." It was the funniest thing in the world
to him to say that to someone just to piss them off
a little bit more than they already were. He said
that to me once when we were playing Space Hulk, a board game
with a rulebook it took an hour to read. I know, because he
insisted on reading the entire rulebook to me right
before playing my first game. Oh, that was helful.
He was a sadistic little fuck that way. It all stemmed from his
"I can't believe I used to think you were cool" mental disorder.

I strongly considered using it on him when he called me
up the Monday after my move. I didn't. For me, it was the
end of a long, sick and twisted friendship with a guy who
used to do the most wicked things he could do just to score
points on some stupid "purity test" that made the rounds one
year. He once had group sex and gave a girl a pearl necklace
in his parents' living room while they were asleep upstairs just
to score points on that test. I don't doubt he would have screwed
a goat, too, that was on the list as well. He is no doubt a Republican
today. He confessed to me once, I think I really am a racist.
No shit? I wasn't surprised.

He changed his name when he got married to a
woman named Dark . He is now legally named Todd
Dark-Fox. Can you believe that shit? What a fuck.

Mark said of him, "Well he always did want to be a player
character."

That is true and funny if you ever played D&D.

__________________________________________________

There is a light and it never goes out

Back in the days of yore (a yore being anywhere from
an epoch and two thirds at the high end down to a
Canadian Thanksgiving, half a Boxing Day and two
Kwanzaas), homes were equipped with shrines. In these
shrines, the household Gods lived conveniently so that
we could worship them as we came in from the fields or
went out to the fields or just stayed in one day and
looked at the fields through a knothole.
Shrines could hold any number of household gods, minor
deities, heroes, saints, wood sprites or dog-headed,
multi-tentacled, blue-specked Lovecraftian spacesquids
for that matter. Who was important, but even more so
was that attention was paid to that which was truly
important. Life’s hard. It helps to have someone who
can influence events on your side.
Today, most homes still have shrines, but they have
names like Sony and Magnavox and Phillips. They have
wide-screens, plasma screens and flat screens. They’re
cable-ready, remote-controlled and in hi-fi surround.
Mine is a 13-inch Zenith from the 20th century, a
personal failing. Inside these shrines live sit-com
stars and soap opera actors, daytime talk show hosts
and cable news presenters. We turn them on when we
walk in the front door and shut them off just as we
are leaving. But we know they will still be there when
we get back.
Blow back the mists of time with the box fan of too
much time on your hands and you find a lot of things
you thought were different never really changed at
all.
Ecstasy is one of those words we tend to use when we
want to say something felt good, but want to sound
more into it than that, i.e. “I was ecstatic when I
found out Hy-Vee had rotisserie chicken on special.”
But as good a word as ecstasy is, its meaning goes far
beyond such base pleasures of the chicken flesh; juicy
and crispy though it is.
The Greeks invented ecstasy … the word, any way. It
was some time after gyros and right before wrestling,
which historians think had something to do with gyros,
too. Ekstasis was a rapturous delight beyond reason or
self control marked by overwhelming emotions of a
mystic or prophetic nature. You don’t see that much
these days because we medicate for it.
Ecstasy is a side product of intense devotion, if by
intense one means wiggy. If we had a snapshot of the
unmedicated religious ecstatic from yore (between 15
and 5,000 years ago), we would notice a great many
points in common between the mystic and anyone who
watched the final episode of “Friends” in a bar full
of shrieking, weeping fans. This is no coincidence.
Words change in their commonly accepted meanings.
Literal usage changes a little bit over time, but our
love for hyperbole and metaphorical speech is bigger
than a really big bull elephant on steroids wearing a
zoot suit standing on top of another slightly smaller
elephant who is still pretty big in his own right.
If shoe sales put you in a state of ecstasy, you are
probably speaking figuratively and you know it. But if
you said seeing Tom Jones in concert did the same
thing, you might be speaking more literally than you
realize … especially if you threw anything on stage
that you wouldn’t tell your mother about.
No one’s judging these things and this isn’t a test.
But just out of curiosity, when was the last time you
laughed or cried in ecstasy? Was it as church? Were
you at home reading the latest John Grisham potboiler?
Was Rachel saying she got off the plane? Maybe you
were in a delivery room somewhere, your first kid
taking its sweet time, “Lightning Crashes” in your
head.
Life is ecstasy if you can handle it.

Moussaoui's fate is just not worth caring about

I don't know, any more it seems like 'what's the point?' This Moussaoui guy is like the 2 Live Crew of criminals. He just doesn't seem like he's worth getting worked up for either way. He sucks and kind of deserves whatever he gets not because I'm in favor of the death penalty or even because this once I'd like to seem this guy die but then I'd go back to being opposed to the death penalty. You see that sometimes and this isn't one of those times.

Tis probably just low blood sugar talking, but with this guy, I just don't care in the same way I just don't care about these Asian beetles that look like Ladybugs but apparently aren't. I don't like them, but they don't really bother me. They are a pain in the ass sometimes and if they disappear it's OK, but I'm not wasting any time or money on RAID just for them.

I don't care if he's foreign one way or he other, I don't his guilt or innocence matters, I'm not blood-thirsty or hoping that he lives.

I AM all in favor of due process for the detainees in GITMO, I am opposed to the war in Iraq on general principles, it wasn't handled well, but we're stuck, I know that abuses have taken place in America and at Abu Ghraib that make me sick, I don't want to see Muslim women abused and restricted against their will (cause some say they dig the whole thing so live and let live), I'm pretty much a leftie and an independent one at that. No pre-fab, knee jerk passions for me, but let's be honest, I will agree with the vast majority of left wing platforms because that is really how I feel and if I didn't feel that way I'd be a right winger.

I'm not out for revenge or forgiveness for 9/11. I wont be satisied if he dies nor will I be satified if he lives in pain nor will I be happy if he goes free to get married and have kids and work at my local WalMart store. I am not particularly amused by the debate. But that's always the case.

I think maybe it's that I know there is no point in arguing this. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen and the only thing that will make America a little less nasty right now, is if we on the left just ignore this one case and let anyone of any faith or creed, including fellow lefties, have this guys head or let him go as they see fit.

It's like Cujo. Cujo was nasty and scary and whether he deserved to die or not, it was gonna happen because that is just what history has shown us happens to rabid dogs. And I don't even mean that to sound judgmental. If you don't kill him, someone else will because you know he kind of wants it at the same time. The only reason not to kill him is so no one gets all martyrish about him. But I dont even think they will, he's kind of a fuck up and if they do, I don't care about that either. That just makes us look better because our martyrs are usually killed doing SOMETHING, not getting killed after they failed.

Give me a retarded minor who doesn't know what's going on to defend JUST ONCE in my life. Even Ted Bundy was easier to root for than Moussaoui and that pretty boy made me physically ill.

I know that nothing I say for or against this will make a difference. It feels like fate to me. Logic has nothing to do with it. Caring can't even make you feel morally superior in this case and that feeling is the basis for all logic that cmes from it. If you dindt feel good about your logic, you wouldnt believe that your logic was in fact logical. It's a catch-22.

I could get worked up for Leonard Peltier, over the Congo, the Middle East, Putin being a dick, Israeli expansionism, Palestinian violence, the war on drugs, reinstating the death penalty in Iowa, the new speed limit, fast food, corrupt politicians ... it's all inevitable and pointless to some extent, but still worth getting involved in.

Moussaoui just needs to be erased somehow. Maybe a lobotomy (for him or us)would satisfy everyone.

Selling is an addiciton

The reason why former addicts (alkies, tweakers and
cokeheads for sure) are so annoying is because most of
them are hopped up on adrenaline. They can't get their
ya-yas out on a drug, so their drug becomes life.
"Being hardcore" ... on life, they think is their
game, but in reality, they are getting off on going
balls out all they time. Because most humans are
superior assholes, they think anyone who isn't going
balls out is lazy and not living up to their
potential. They also seem to feel that they need to
make up for lost time. They wasted a lot of time doing
drugs even though tweakers probably do more stupid
shit in 24 hours than most people do in a week ... and
it's all stupid shit or boring shit.

This is why there are so many current and former
addicts who are car salesmen. Being a salesman gives
an addict a chance to pay for his habit and a former
addict the chance to get all wired trying to sell
somebody something at the highest price possible. It's
not immoral or unethical and doesnt make them feel bad
to lie about asking their manager or saying that
undercoating comes already done at the factory and we
can't do anything about that because that's just the
way business is done and anyone who feels remorse is
lazy. Consequently, there is a high turnover rate
among salesmen because burnout is inevitable when you
are kiding yourself.

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Never Trust a Junkie

I hate junkies. I don't mean the ones currently hooked
on smack. So long as they don't try to sell my stuff,
I take a live and let live attitude. these are people
with genuine problems after all and they should be
pitied. No, the kind of junkies I hate are the ones
who are fully recovered from their habits, so they
like to tell you repeatedly. They think themselves
superior for quitting something that was killing them
and apparently believe no one has had a problem as bad
as theirs was which makes them, quietly and otherwise,
superior to everyone they meet.

Junkies, and I use the term loosely to refer to anyone
who has been addicted to anything from H to X and then
gone through a 12 step program. These people are
nothing more than other cult members whose higher
power 9be it a doorknob) showed them the way out of
darkness and, if you let them talk your ear off, they
can help you too. I don't trust their horse shit line
of self help religiosity.

Problem is, most people aren't fucked up the way
junkies are. Oh sure, we all have our little
peccadilloes, but most of our peccadilloes aren't life
threatening street drugs or clearly marked consumer
products marked "may kill you" which is worse than
will kill you because it leaves wiggle room.

A tar like piece of heroine or a bag of weed has no
assurances that it is good for you. Considering the
moral character of people who try to make as much
money selling drugs as possible (by cutting them with
everything from oregano and formaldehyde to baby
powder and detergent) everyone should know better
before hand.

i don't like to judge, except when i do, and I do like
to judge when people can't he;help but tell me about
their bullshit. if you were addicted to booze and H
for ten years and got clean and now believe that Jesus
is the guy you need to thank, then God Bless You
pally, I mean it. But if you think I need to know
about Jesus because you think he saved you, then
please fuck off.

Because while you were out smoking and spiking and
having an admittedly good but sinful time, I was wide
fucking awake the whole time (except for the
occasional nap and beer and J in college) and I didn't
miss a single campus crusade preacher telling me what
a sinner I was because, apparently, I was fornicating
and sinning between watching movies in the library
basement media room. OK, some of those flicks were
R-rated, but still, a couple weren't.

I know Jesus as well as any addict, maybe better. And
between the Recovered and the Never Sinned types, i
don't know who's worse. Each group's got me pegged as
being worse than they are simply because I am not high
and mightying it around the earth trying to convert
the wicked.

I insist that I am in my own way, but consider this.
If you've never sinned, you don't know what you're
talking about and if you have sinned a whole bunch
more than me, you probably need to recalibrate your
judgment. Because my God is a loving God, too, and I
like to think he gives me credit for helping old
ladies open the door while some of these people were
busy rolling around in alleys with hookers (junkies),
handling snakes (thumpers) or rolling their eyes in
ecstatic rigor lost in the illusory state created by
their own personal delusion (both).

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Tax relief means never having to DO your taxes

Just in case no one has mentioned it to you yet, your
taxes are due today.
Many a quaint and best forgotten piece of folksy
wisdom has been written about taxes. And why not?
Death, too, for that matter, especially by the French
who are into that kinky, existentialist subjects.
Taxes are one of those essential societal burdens that
we all complain about loudly from the first day of
work until God tell us to shut our holes a thousand
years from now because we’re making heaven even more
boring with out nattering.
We don’t like paying taxes because the government does
take one hell of a bite. We need as much cash on hand
as we can carry for impulse purchases like
cheeseburgers and the Weekly World News.
As if the bite weren’t bad enough, the process is
ludicrous and arcane like Kafka would have thought up
if only he’d been a little more paranoid and had a
better imagination.
If you’re like me, and I know I am, having someone
else do your taxes is an act of faith that usually
pays off. That is the least you should get for $50.
Fifty bucks to have some semi-retired hausfrau fill
out your 1040EZ in 15 minutes while you watch? That’s
awesome. You’d do it yourself if you weren’t gutless.
I know I would … if I weren’t like me, but I am. So
what are you, or I, gonna do?
What you’re gonna do is go see a tax pro anyway. This
is a lot like using a foot and a half of toilet paper
to pick up after your dog. It’s a psychological trick
to make you feel like you aren’t really touching poop.
Convoluted, incomprehensible poop.
This is not to suggest in any way that tax
professionals are like poop, just the IRS.
Tax pros are like the clean, white, perforated sheets
that keep you out of the joint. Convoluted,
incomprehensible joint.
Didn’t the IRS say they were going to make things
easier a few years ago with less paperwork and
promises of more polite and easy going agents who beat
you gently with their stun sticks before confiscating
your fishing boat? Whatever happened to that?
To avoid all this, I filed online this year. It wasn’t
too bad. I didn’t have to leave my house or put on
pants, at least. It also had the added benefit of
creating another item for me to rage against at tax
time.
Using the IRS Web site to guide me, I found one of
many free services. The free service I chose only cost
me $30. The bonus was that the whole process took
roughly an hour and 30 years of my time.
I had heard many a good thing about filing online and
really none of it was true except that it was online
and my taxes have, hopefully, been filed. I don’t know
for sure.
The IRS site points you to free online services that
each want to derail you to their premium service. They
do this through a unique conflict of interest by
offering you the service then making it pretty good
but a little too hard to get through on your own
without great fear of failure. Every step asks if
you’d like to change your mind and get a pro to help
you for only $50 more. More than what? Who knows? One
would have to be rocking out on fistfuls of Valium to
walk through these electronic shadowed valleys of
death exhibiting no fear. But somehow I managed to not
give in even though I can’t afford Valium. Who can
what with taxes as high as they are, right? I kid.
The farther you go, the greater your fear, the fewer
warnings you get that you need something that you
don’t have on hand like last year’s return (duh,
right, I should know better), Adobe Photoshop, a
computer, no pop-up blockers, a Geek Squad rep, a case
of malt liquor and the aforementioned Valium.
You spend your hour clicking boxes, changing your
shorts and hoping beyond hope. Then, just when you
think you see the light at the end of the federal tax
return tunnel, the state tax return train smacks you
in the forehead without so much as a warning light or
one of those red-striped gates. The “95 percent” sign
shifts back to “80 percent” and sits there and sits
there and sits there for the next … however long it
will take.
Unlike the federal “percent done” bar, it doesn’t move
to show progress and to let you know that you might be
free to cry into your malt liquor in the next few
minutes. It’s a mocking reminder that no matter what
you do, no matter how hard you try, you will
eventually die. And when you do, it will probably be
in the middle of doing your own taxes.
And then someone will tax what’s left of your estate.

Manifesto Destiny-Oh

Eric Rudolph, the not-prolific-
enough-for-a-clever-nickname bomber, pleads guilty
and gets to spend the rest of his life in a jail run by
the federal government he hates ... if he's lucky. Chances
are, he will be transferred to a privately run
facility where the corporate mentality of lower costs
and higher profits through less rigorous prehire psych
screenings will guarantee that this rugged nut
will be "helping the guards do drug search drills" at
3 a.m. every morning until he's dead.
There is nothing like having a German Shepherd
nipping at your nards to make you rethink your whole
position on who does and does not deserve to get
blowed up real good.

The thing I really hate about this redneck fuck is
that while his politics are abhorrent to me and pretty
much represent the opposite of everything I've ever
rambled on about drunk or sober, I am forced to admire
the fact that he is at least a fucking individual.

Oh sure, he probably shops at Wal-Mart for it's low,
low everyday prices and anti-abortion corporate policy
like the rest of us do whether we like it or not, but
he's at least he's Catholic while he's doing it.

At least when he took a firm position on a subject. He
didn't waffle like an International Space Station solar
panel two minutes after some frat boy got worried that
ad revenues might be lost if he took a stand.

This fuckstick may be out there with all the other
NASCAR dads mulleting around the deep dark woods of
Skankton in their pick-ups talkin' 'bout how the
gubbamint is in it with them homos and the commie jew
media is making us whack off to videos of Britney
Spears while Rush Limbaugh fills in the blanks,
but when it came time for his dickhead revolution,
he was all business.

Yes, it's a shitty business and he's an evil little
douchebag for thinking that a killing spree is the way
to get things done in America especially with ALL THE EVIDENCE
TO THE CONTRARY, but he's doing something and not just
bitching about it.

It would be the easiest thing in the
world to prove that his theories are cracked, I mean,
c'mon, no one who doesn't want to hurt other people is going
to load an explosive device with nails and screws
especially if he knows the concussion alone could be enough
to kill someone accidentally. So we know he's a LIAR from
the get go.

Having Rudolph's stupidity deconstructed on CNN by the
same people who planned your college's Greek Week is
like listening to Kid Rock lecture R. Lee Ermey on the
points of The Patriot Act he finds weak.

It's laughable. You've got the amoral sitting in
judgment of a criminially self-righteous zealots
manifesto.

Reading about Rudolph's smirking, less-than-apologetic
elocution is like reading an Amazon.com book review of
"Mein Kampf."

"There were parts of the book where Hitler seemed to
go too far in his criticism of the Jews, like it was
funny or something to not like them. If he isn't
careful, some people might think he doesn't like them
at all, and then he might not get to write another
book."

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Nothing's Shocking

I lost every shred of incredulity I had left on 9/11
and in retrospect, that wasn't even that big of a
surprise. That spammers would use the Pope to lure
people in order to TRY and sell them something is
fucking like "I can't believe _I_ didn't think of it
first."

Getting offers for dick enlargement was almost a
surprise. It's the times, man, nothing is shocking and
no line is too far out to cross especially for money.
We live in shitty times, that's all there is to it.

I would have been surprised if spammers hadn't used
the popes death to lure people. Wait. No I wouldn't
because nothing shocks me. I'm surprised that they
didnt know he was dead before he actually died so they
could exploit his death for spam. Actually, that they
didn't KILL him just to use him for spam is KIND OF a
shock ... but not really.

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