Journey to the End of My Sense of Humor

I started blogging almost six years ago for reasons that I don't fully remember.  I could say that I needed a creative outlet, but it's more likely that I just wanted to yell back at the people on the TV and this was the next best thing.  It was my intention to post something two or three times a week, and it went that way for a while.

I found that as I started writing regularly, I started becoming more aware of my inner monologue.  Eventually, after the 2012 election, I got so tired of the voice in my head, and my sense of humor, that I all but abandoned this space.  I needed a break from me, and while that's never entirely possible, I could at least give myself a break from writing, editing and re-writing my thoughts all the time.  I tried to get back here a couple of years ago, but that didn't really take. 

I bought a new car a few months ago.  I'm very impulsive and impatient, especially when it comes to buying stuff.  One day I was just sitting in my apartment getting ready to schedule an oil change for my 11 year old car.  Seriously, my car would have been a sixth grader, and I beat it up pretty good.  I don't think I ever took it to a car wash, and sometime last summer I kicked the clutch pedal the wrong way and just yanked it right out of the car.  I was able to jam it back in, but, not surprisingly, it never really worked as well after that.  Good tip for everyone...ripping things out of your car and then kicking them back into place isn't an awesome way to keep your car in top shape.

Anyway, one day in March I was sitting here thinking about not really wanting to put any more money into my old car.  I went online to research possible new cars.  Now, my grandpa is still alive, and he didn't win World War 2 so I could buy a Toyota or a fucking Volkswagon, so I limited my search to American cars.  I settled on Chevy because, I don't know, my Saturn was a GM car and it turned out pretty good.  About 90 minutes later I was putting a $500 deposit down at a Chevy dealership so Joe, the nice Irish car salesman, could find me a blue Chevy Cruze with a standard transmission.  Joe had a KISS mug on his desk, but I bought a car from him anyway because his hockey equipment was in the car that he let me test drive, so that kind of evened out the whole KISS thing.

Three days after that, I went back to Joe with a large check which I gave him in exchange for a blue Chevy Cruze with a standard transmission.  I didn't like the shade of blue then and I don't like it now, but I wasn't in the mood for red just then so blue was my best choice because the other two choices were white (no) and a fourth color that I honestly don't even remember.  A week later I kept thinking how much I wished I had just gotten a red one.

On the way home with my new car, I stopped in a parking lot to play around with the transmission a little before I got it out on a real road.  I realized that I didn't know how to put the car in reverse, so that started about 7 minutes of panic in a McDonald's parking lot.  What if I never figured out how to make my new car go backwards??  It would be like the Zoolander of cars!  Then I figured it out.

Then I stopped at home for a few minutes before heading back to work for a night meeting.  When I started my new car, for the second time ever, the check engine light went on.  I checked the gas cap and whatever else I could think of.  Luckily, my previous car had a pretty consistent check engine light problem, so I knew what to check, but nothing helped.  I was very unhappy.

I took my new car back to the dealership, and after they checked it out a little, they called me and announced that I needed a new part.  They said I needed to bring it in later in the week to get the new part (which they had to order), then I needed to drive it around for a few days, then I needed to bring it back in again to have it pass inspection with the new part.  This all made me very angry.  I sent Joe a very angry email, which I don't feel bad about because even though this wasn't his fault he's a KISS fan and that is his fault.  I had a very angry conversation with two different people in the maintenance department, which I do sort of feel bad about.

Everyone completely understood why I was very angry, but that didn't really make me less angry.  But eventually,  I realized that being very angry wasn't helping solve my problem, and I decided to stop being very angry.  And when I stopped being very angry, all the car people started trying extra hard to help me, because I wasn't being angry at them anymore.  Since I got my new part, everything about the car has been great.  It even retained its new car smell for like three months.

So back to blogging.  This whole car fiasco reminded me that angry Sean is generally not productive Sean, and that regular Sean is not really a big fan of angry Sean.  I started writing with the main goal of being funny.  I got tired of my own writing, in part, because my tone slowly changed from being funny to being angry, and mean-spirited.  To be fair, you can hardly blame me.  To keep informed on my subject matter, which is politics more than anything else, I watched a lot of cable news.  Here's a quick story about cable news that I think illustrates my point.

Not that long ago, maybe around the same time I bought the car, I tried to watch MSNBC.  I honestly hadn't watched MSNBC at all in like a year because it is so very awful.  While Fox's detachment from reality is often genuinely entertaining, MSNBC's detachment from reality is usually just sad and unsettling.  So I turned on Chris Matthews, a familiar face to ease back in.  Chris, and I swear this is true, was talking about Chris Christie and the George Washington bridge.  A whole segment on it.  Roughly 18 months after the non-scandal happened.  Why?  I watched the whole segment and I honestly couldn't tell you.

Completely unrelated tangent.  I was just adding some tags to this post (Chevrolet, MSNBC, Fox News, etc) and apparently I've never tagged a post with Zoolander before.  How does that happen?  23 year old me would be very disappointed in current me.

Anyway, you can't blame me for getting angry all the time back when I was watching hours of cable news every day.  Honestly, you should be impressed I'm still alive.

I'm at the point now where I either need to start writing here again or I need to come on here, thank the 8-10 people who read most of what I wrote, and give up.  I'm willing to give it one more try.  And this time I can try it without crushing my soul with hours and hours of Fox and MSNBC.  If there's one thing I learned the first time, its that I never learned anything useful watching cable news anyway.

There's an election just starting, with debates and what-not, and plenty of silly sports things about under-inflated balls to talk about.  And maybe sometimes I can just tell funny stories that happened to me in life.  I've heard people find that interesting.  If I can't get back into this now, then maybe it just isn't for me anymore.

First up, a total rundown of the Republican field.  Then a debate on Thursday.  Then we'll see how it's going.  Maybe it'll go a little less angry this time.  Maybe I can get through this whole election without calling anybody a dumbass, and maybe then I can sign off feeling good about how it ended.  Or maybe it doesn't have to end there.  Or maybe I'll write a couple of things next week and realize that I've wrung everything out of the sponge that is my sense of humor already and I don't have anything else useful to say.  We'll see.

Insert Bridge Pun Here

You have to admit, it's at least possible that the media loves this Chris Christie story so much because of the cornucopia of available bridge related puns.  Chris Matthews could lead his show with this story every day for three weeks (and he might) and never use the same silly segment title twice.  Bridge Over Troubled Water, Bridge to Nowhere, Bridge to 2016, Bridge-et Jones' Diary of New Jersey Political Revenge...it goes on and on.

Assuming that isn't the reason, and I'm not saying that's a safe assumption, I suppose I can see other reasons the media would find this so fascinating.  First of all,  this is a perfect Chris Christie story.  If six months ago you told me something was going to happen that would reflect negatively upon Governor Christie, and that the nature of the situation would be not even a little bit surprising based on what I already knew about Governor Christie, and then you asked me to guess what was going to happen, my guess would have come pretty close to the mark.  Like if I told you that Chris Christie was going to use sanitation trucks to block the Outerbridge Crossing indefinitely because he didn't like how Staten Island was looking at him, you would have to at least think about it a little before you decided not to believe me. 

I also have a hard time believing Christie didn't know anything about this until last week.  He doesn't exactly seem like the kind of guy staffers go rogue on.  The most I'd be willing to believe is that his staff did it without him knowing and then told him about it as a present, like a cat showing up in your doorway with a dead mouse.  If that was his story, I'd probably believe him, even though it's a little hard for me to believe that his staff ever gets him a present that isn't a meatball sandwich.

Having said all that, MSNBC can't possibly expect people to care about this, like in reality.  Sure it's fun and distracting for a little while, but they can't honestly think that people will go to a voting both in 2016 and think "I really like Chris Christie as a candidate, but there was that one time he caused traffic, better vote for Hillary."  That scenario seems highly unlikely to me. 

You have to understand that so much of the national media is based in New York, and some of them commute from northern Jersey.  Traffic on the G.W. Bridge may seem like a ridiculously huge story to them, but I have a hard time picturing people in Ohio caring.  They don't have traffic in the Midwest.  I'm not even sure they have traffic lights in the South yet, or lights in general for that matter. 

Sidenote: If I ever have to go south of Virginia for some reason (please no, it's so hot down there), I'll probably just delete everything I've ever written to be safe.

And I certainly can't picture it hurting Christie in the primaries.  I don't see a lot of Midwestern Republicans thinking "Christie seems like the best candidate, but he was pretty mean to New Jersey Democrats so I guess I'm voting for Rick Santorum".  If this story has any impact in the primaries it'll probably kill for Christie with the tea people.  If Ted Cruz shut down a bridge in a liberal city just to be a dick the tea people would throw him a parade.

Meanwhile, if the liberals in the media are trying to hurt Christie and help Hillary with this, I think they couldn't be further off the mark.  I can't even watch Fox for fun anymore because I get so angry when one of them mentions Benghazi or the IRS "scandal" that I want to throw things at my television, and I don't want to pay for a new TV right now.  Liberals and the media have been doing a fantastic job of ignoring these fake Republican scandals, but you can't continue knocking Republicans for making up nonsense scandals if you start making up nonsense scandals of your own.  You're giving up the high ground and saying that making up scandals to smear the other party is a perfectly acceptable form of journalism.  It isn't. 

I'm not a Christie supporter, and I've said I'm probably only voting for him if he winds up running against Hillary Clinton, who I will not vote for, but I'll probably vote for every other Democrat over Chris Christie.  I'm not downplaying this because he's my guy.  This isn't a scandal.  It's stupid and sort of interesting, and I'm sure people in Fort Lee were really inconvenienced (although they already live in New Jersey so they should be used to disappointment, and four hours of traffic is only like a half hour more than normal), but it's not a deal breaker. 

You know how many politicians are currently plotting revenge on anyone who even slightly wronged them?  All of them!  They're all egomaniacs, presidential candidates especially.  Do you really think that people who believe that god told them to be President wouldn't take an opportunity to get some revenge on anyone who stood in their way?  Chris Christie got caught because his staff is very stupid.  How hard would it have been to actually do a fake traffic study?  And how long before everyone finally learns that if you're going to do something you aren't supposed to be doing you can't talk about it in an email?  A little longer I guess.

My only point is that my opinion of Chris Christie isn't any different now than it was a month ago.  If your opinion is a lot different now, I have to think maybe you weren't paying a lot of attention to Chris Christie before now, because even in the worst case scenario, what happened here is pretty much exactly what I thought of Christie before this happened. 

He's not my favorite candidate, but I could certainly find worse Republicans.  In fact, I found five of them (plus Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul) and documented every debate they had for like a year.  You know what, I'm not sure any of those people from the 2012 primaries (except for Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul) could even successfully do what Christie might have done.  Disrupting a whole town for fun and revenge isn't a good thing, but if we could just get Christie to channel some of that competence into slightly more productive things, he'll already be the best Republican nominee since, I don't even know, Eisenhower?  I don't think I'm kidding about that.

I know some people will tell me I'm not understanding how big this really is, and how this isn't funny and how people's lives were effected and Chris Christie is a monster.  And I know I joke about New Jersey, but I actually don't have any problem with people from New Jersey.  I've known New Jersey people that I've legitimately loved.  I swear.  But about this bridge and traffic thing, I'm sorry, I just don't care, and you can't make me.

PS...For those of you who read my blog sometimes and are hockey fans, I'm working on something that I think might turn out kind of awesome...or, ya know, not that awesome.  I don't know yet, but just get ready for something awesome or also maybe not.

Job Killers

Did you know that the Affordable Care Act is a job killer?  I know that, because the TV told me, like 1,000 times.  If jobs are like the people of Baltimore, the Affordable Care Act is like Chris and Snoop, out there just murdering all of them for President Marlo and throwing the bodies in vacant row houses for Lester to eventually find.  So many senseless job killings, and for what?  So some poor people can go to a doctor?  If they wanted to see a doctor, they shouldn't have decided to be poor in the first place!

Luckily, the Republicans know what to do about all this murdering, so they're shutting down the government.  I mean, sure, shutting down the government will put actual people out of work right now instead of hypothetical future people, but if you want to talk about facts, you're sort of missing the point.  The point is Republicans are going to hold their breath until everyone has no health care and 14 guns, and you can't make them breathe because you're not the boss of them.  So there. 

I don't really want to talk about the government shut down though.  It's all silly political theater.  Either they'll come to an agreement today or tomorrow, or maybe never and we're all going to die, but I don't care a lot either way.  I do want to talk about job killing a little though, because the TV has been lying to me.

If I worked somewhere and they told me that I was being laid off because the government says they have to give me health insurance now and they don't want to pay for that shit, I wouldn't blame the government for my situation.  If my employer would rather lay me off than meet the basic social responsibility of providing me with health care, that's on my employer.  I realize it's easy to blame government, especially if you're a Republican and you blame government for everything, but that doesn't make it true.

What else are we supposed to do?  We're stuck with this employer-based health insurance system.  It isn't the best system, just ask Europe and Canada, but apparently it's the only one we can have because if I suggested single-payer health care for America Ted Cruz and Rand Paul would show up at my apartment later to kill me with their bare hands.  I mean, what do those stupid Europeans know about anything?  Some of them can't even drive on the right side of the road.

So in a country where we don't have other options, all we can do, before we even start to figure out what to do with unemployed people, is force employers to provide insurance for the people who work for them.  And we only have to force them because too many weren't doing it on their own.  I know it's expensive, and that sucks, but you couldn't get 20 votes in Congress for a bill with real price controls because that would suggest we don't have blind faith in the magic power of the free market.  So, once again, we're stuck with our own stupidity and without a lot of good solutions.  

You can make all the excuses for businesses that you want, but look, since the Reagan administration, big businesses in this country have been allowed, if not encouraged, to be robber barons.  Now we're asking them to do one simple thing, and they're threatening to cut jobs instead of doing it.  "We can't afford it" is not a good enough reason to not give people access to health care.  

When the President was first elected and started talking about finding a way to get millions of people health insurance, one of the arguments against it was "won't that mean I'll have to wait longer to see a doctor?"  Yes, yes it will.  Not if you're bleeding from your eyes, but yes, you might not be able to take your whiny, hypochondriac ass to the doctor 15 times a year for no good reason.  Sorry.  Eat a fucking apple or something.  

And this is the part Republicans aren't being honest about.  They don't really want cost controls because that would be socialism.  They also don't want people who already have insurance to have to share their doctors, because that would be inconvenient.  Republicans are cool with the way things were, which, come to think of it, sort of sums up the Republican position on everything.  But I'm not cool with the way things were, and the Affordable Care Act is a tiny little bit better, and that's better than nothing.

If you're so worried about jobs, do something about jobs.  Like a real stimulus bill with spending for fixing roads and bridges.  And high speed trains.  I don't really get the high speed trains thing, but Chris Matthews won't shut up about them and I feel like we should probably throw him a bone.  Or, even easier, just stop cutting things like food stamps.  Did you know food stamps are specifically designed to both feed poor people and stimulate the economy, because people who get food stamps tend to spend them immediately at a local business on, ya know, food?  True story.

Republicans want to make everything about jobs, except bills that could actually create jobs, those are about spending for some reason.  But health care bills aren't about jobs, they're about health care.  Just like environmental protection laws aren't about jobs, they're about environmental protection. Everything has a downside, that doesn't mean you don't do anything.  It means you do the right thing and then you do other things to mitigate the downside.  That's how grown-ups solve problems.  Then again, our country isn't really run by grown-ups at the moment.  

Lying Is Hard

I watch Chris Matthews most days if I'm home at 5PM.  I used to flip between him and Fox News, but since Fox let Glenn Beck go, their 5PM show is still just as stupid (thanks in large part to Eric Bolling, who is an absolute clown), but about 1000% less funny (Eric's more of a sad clown).  Matthews, on the other hand, remains as loud and entertaining as always.

Recently, one of the best parts of Chris' show is his almost constant befuddlement at the hands of Mitt Romney.  Every time Romney says something that doesn't make sense, or just doesn't sound exactly right, Matthews reacts as if Romney just ate an entire wheel of cheese and pooped in the refrigerator.  He's totally baffled by it.

This shouldn't be surprising.  Matthews has spent his whole life in politics.  He knows what a polished politician is supposed to sound like and he knows how polished a major party Presidential candidate should be.  Romney's inability to consistently, well, sound like a person, is an enigma for Chris, but not for me.

I was in a couple of plays in high school, and when I got a little experience with it, I realized that just memorizing your lines is stupid.  Lines are important, but it seemed like it was more important to actually understand what the character is trying to say.  That way, if you forget your line, you still sort of know what's supposed to be said, and you can get through it.  If you just memorize lines and then forget them, you're totally lost.

One of the simplest things about life is this, lying is hard.  At least harder than telling the truth.  The consequences of the truth might be less desirable, but telling the truth is always easier than lying, if for no other reason than the truth is easier to remember.

When Mitt Romney opens his mouth and something incomprehensible comes out, it's because he's out there playing Generic Ultra-Conservative Presidential Candidate Man, and sometimes he forgets his lines.  So, when Brian Williams asks him if London looks ready for the Olympics, he doesn't just say what he thinks.  He thinks, "what would Generic Ultra-Conservative Presidential Candidate Man have to say about that?", and then he tries to say something that sort of sounds supportive but also reminds the world that America is the best and fuck you. 

But Mitt isn't always playing Generic Ultra-Conservative Presidential Candidate Man.  Sometimes he's playing Guy Who Can Relate To Regular People.  Guy Who Can Relate To Regular People might show up in Michigan babbling about how the trees are the right height, because Mitt can't exactly remember Guy Who Can Relate To Regular People's lines, but he knows that regular people care very deeply about tree height.

But then sometimes Mitt has to play Bat-Shit Crazy Foreign Policy Lunatic.  Bat-Shit Crazy Foreign Policy Lunatic says things about how we'll always support Israel no matter what they decide to do, and how Israel has a better economy than the Palestinians because the Israeli culture is inherently superior.  He's just trying to say things that sound strong and tough and supportive of Israel while also appeasing the base of his party by sounding vaguely anti-muslim, and in this case it's less about him forgetting his lines and more about the people writing his lines being dumb.  Either way, it's a mess.

And listen, my problem with Mitt Romney isn't that he made the Palestinians angry.  My problem is that this man who wants to be in charge of our foreign policy thinks it's OK to add another ring to the million ring circus that is the middle east in an effort to do some least common denominator pandering for votes at home.  Mitt Romney should have to wear a sign whenever he leaves the country that clearly states he doesn't speak for the rest of us.  In fact, a lot of people should.  Can I be the one who decides who gets a sign?  I'd be really good at that.

Anyway, I can only conclude that Mitt Romney's actual self is too unlikeable for him to be honest with us and still win.  I suspect that I would probably like actual Mitt Romney.  He's probably one of those guys who makes mean jokes and everyone laughs while he's in the room and then when he leaves everyone talks about what a jerk he is.  I usually like those people, but other people usually think they're mean and probably wouldn't vote for them.

I work with college students, and when I give them interview advice one thing I always say is be yourself, because if you get the job people are going to expect to work with the person they interviewed, and if you don't get the job, at least you gave it your best shot.  You don't want to go on an interview, be fake, and then not get the job and be left wondering what would have happened if they had met the real you.

So I'm wondering if we're going to look back on this election and wonder what would have happened if we had met the real Mitt Romney.  And I'm wondering if there even is a real Mitt Romney.  And if there isn't a real Mitt Romney, that really worries me.  There are times when a caretaker President who doesn't have much in the way of his own opinions/values/personality will do just fine.  This doesn't really seem like one of those times.