I Wasn't Gonna Say Anything

Seriously, I wasn't.  I haven't posted anything in a while because I really haven't felt like it, and certainly this stupid duck dynasty thing wasn't going to be what sucked me back in.  It's right in the middle of my winter break man.  I mean, I'm trying to relax and re-read The Sun Also Rises over here.  Even the recent stupid budget deal* wasn't enough to get me back here.  Why would I come back for something that involves ducks?  And not even real ducks?

*Sidenote: The recent budget deal is stupid because we still have the debt limit coming up and the only reason a budget deal happened is so Republicans can hold the debt limit hostage and say "hey, you can't get mad at us about this because look we did a budget deal".  Stupid.

Listen, I can't even count how many ways this duck dynasty thing is stupid.  First of all, why is GQ asking this guy about social issues?  Clearly the intent was to bait him into saying something ignorant and rednecky, and being an ignorant redneck, he was happy to oblige.  More importantly, why is GQ interviewing this guy at all?  It's not like he's some business genius, he didn't invent the iPod.  His family invented a thing that sounds just enough like a duck (or something ducks like, I don't really know) that it helps other rednecks murder ducks for fun.  Hunting is stupid and I don't want to know what Charles Manson's grandpa over there thinks about anything.

I also don't care that he's on TV.  He's not the anchor of the CBS evening news, he's on a reality show.  And it's not even a good reality show.  For $10,000 I couldn't tell you why anyone watches that show.  Here's what I knew about that show before this month:
1) Beards
2) Something about ducks
3) Beards Again
In the last week or so I've learned that at least one of them hates homosexuals, and also that they're from Louisiana.

If I had known those last two things before I'm confident I still wouldn't have been watching.  I don't recall anyone sitting Snooki down and asking her for her thoughts on health care (I certainly hope that never happened).  You know why?  Because nobody cares what she thinks because she's a moron and so is the duck dynasty guy.  If they weren't morons, they wouldn't be on reality TV.

I also have no problem with how A&E has been handling this situation.  Yes, nobody should care about what Captain Beardface thinks, but when somebody reveals himself to be a bigoted asshole, then you have to stop giving him a microphone and a podium.  It's a really simple decision.  And even if I didn't like what A&E was doing, what could I do about it?  There is no possible way I could watch A&E less than I already do.

I'm also not surprised or in any way interested by the predictable feigned outrage from the Christian right.  I already knew they can't possibly go five minutes without claiming to be persecuted in a country where they are the overwhelming majority.  My only regret here is that this new fake persecution interrupted the last bit of fake persecution we were discussing, and I have to say that listening to people on Fox insisting that Santa Claus is factually white was more fun than talking about the duck guy.

I'm also not surprised by the fact that everyone is ignoring the equally insidious comments this guy made about how black people in the south were perfectly happy before the civil rights movement.  Yes, Mr. Robertson, I too find it hard to believe that no black person ever sought out you and your armed redneck ancestors to tell you how much they would have enjoyed equality.  I'm sure if they had you would have assisted them immediately and we wouldn't have even needed a civil rights movement.

All of these points are incredibly obvious and none of them inspired me to come sit here and type for an hour.  But I have many weaknesses, and one of them is my inability to look away when I know something stupid is happening.  This usually leads me to watching Fox News when nobody should ever be doing that, and it did so again yesterday.  I heard Fox's own Governor Huckleberry was going to be on Fox News Sunday to talk about, among other things, the duck dynasty guy.  Sigh.  I should have just kept watching football, but I couldn't help myself.

I used to sort of like Huckleberry.  He was always way too christy for me, Huck never shuts up about his invisible friend.  But, the old Huck spent more time talking about good things like feeding hungry people and helping poor people than he did talking about how the gays were ruining America.  I even remember him being sort of cordial about abortion.  As Chris Wallace pointed out at the beginning of yesterday's interview, Huck has a reputation for being a conservative, but not being angry about it, and that used to be mostly true.

But recently Huck has been become less of a reality-based political figure and more of a Fox News bizarro world political figure.  As a guy on Fox, Huck has to uphold a certain standard of nonsense in order to keep up with his colleagues.  Since Huck can't really manufacture the indignant anger of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, he has to do it another way.  So, Huck has become Fox's go to guy for fake persecution of Christians.  It's a sad end to a mediocre political career.

So Huck starts with the usual bible nonsense.  First of all, do you know how many people we'd be stoning to death every day if we actually lived by that book?  Honestly, nobody would have time for blogging or fake TV outrage or reality TV, we'd all be stoning people to death all day until we worked on Saturday or something and got stoned to death ourselves.  Of course, we'd have slaves, so maybe they could do the stoning for us.

But also, who cares what the bible says?  The old testament was written like 3,000 years ago.  Those people didn't even know where the sun went at night.  Why would I let them tell me what to do?  Seriously, sometimes I can't understand what's wrong with people.

Anyway, that was predictable, and this next bit was too but it still pisses me off.  Huck said that he is tolerant of people who have a different view of gay marriage than he does (how sporting of him) but he won't tolerate the intolerance directed at what he called old fashioned values.  He went on to claim that that this is a new level of bullying.

Come on, Huck.  I'm disappointed in you.  This is Fox's favorite trick.  Every time a Republican says something racist, they remind us that Barack Obama hates white people, so this whole racism thing is kind of everybody's fault and if you point out racism you're actually being a reverse racist so you should probably just shut up.  This trick with tolerance is the same thing.  If you point out that someone is being bigoted and intolerant, say by comparing homosexual relationships to bestiality, then you're actually a reverse bigot and a bully and you should probably just shut up.

Sidenote: This is the first time I've ever typed the word bestiality.  What happened to the "a" in beast.  Why isn't it in there?  That's weird to me.  Anyway...

Sorry Huckleberry, that's not how tolerance works.  You can say intolerant things if you want, but you don't get to do the double tolerance thing where nobody gets to call you a bigot.  Tolerance isn't like base where the first person to run to it wins.  If you're being intolerant then the rest of us get to call you a bigot and you just have to sit there and be a bigot.  And no, the fact that you claim your invisible friend agrees with you doesn't help.  The voices in my head always agree with me.

But that wasn't even my favorite part.  Huckleberry ended by trying to soften his position on homosexuality by saying that homosexuality isn't any different than any other sin.  It's just like if you lust after a woman, that's a sin too.  We're all sinners, says Huck.  That's great.  See?  God doesn't hate homosexuals, he hates everyone.  Feel better now?  For some reason, Huck thinks you should.

I changed the channel back to football once Wallace asked Huck if he was running for President in 2016.  I honestly don't want to know.  I'm obviously not voting for Huckleberry, but if he winds up running against Hillary Clinton I'll need to buy a boat and go live at sea for at least four years.  I heard Elizabeth Warren might run.  That's probably not true, and she probably couldn't win anyway.  I'd vote for Elizabeth Warren, she's smart and actually, ya know, believes in things, but she's also not awesome at running for office and when I say she's smart I mean "she's smart and would therefore make a good President" but other people will say the same thing and mean "look at her thinkin she's all better than us with her fancy book learnin".

No, I'm not getting sucked back into the 2016 election again.  I stand by my earlier predictions and Huck's sudden interest certainly doesn't change anything.  What was I talking about again?  Oh yeah, Mr. ducky duck.  I'm sure he'll be back on the show eventually and Fox will call it a great victory for values or free speech or whatever, but it'll really just be a small victory for nonsense.

Old people say crazy stuff all the time, and that's just the way it is, but I don't get why a whole news network and half the country feels the need to reflexively back this guy up.  I honestly don't understand people sometimes.

People Are Idiots

Would you like to know what I think about Syria?  I think if I lived in Syria I would start walking west and I wouldn't stop until I got to a country where things don't routinely and spontaneously explode.  Although I suppose that would just get me to the Mediterranean Sea, and then I'd have to swim to Italy.  And if I survived the swim to Italy, I'd probably just walk to Paris, grow a beard and spend the rest of my life pretending to be Hemingway.   I seem to have lost my train of thought...oh yeah, Syria.

Would you like to know what I think the United States should do about Syria?  Nothing.  I'm not saying I think we should do nothing.  I'm saying I think nothing.  It's not that I don't care.  I think this is really important, and I think whatever the President and Congress decide to do will be an important moment for our country and the world.  It's not that I haven't had time to stay informed.  I've tried to keep up on the story as much as possible.  Unfortunately, cable news coverage is light on "facts about Syria" and heavy on conjecture about the domestic politics of military action and self-assured opinions from clowns who have no idea what they're talking about, but are 100% sure they're right.

Fox News, in particular, is absolutely positive that the President is being indecisive and weak by waiting for Congressional authorization for action.  Just like they'd be absolutely positive that the President was pissing all over the Constitution if he had decided to act without Congressional authorization.  I'm going to try not to be too hard on Fox though, this must be really confusing for them.  On the one hand, boy do they love bombing muslims.  I mean they LOOOVE that shit!  But on the other hand, the President wants to bomb muslims now too, and they fucking hate the President.  Also, half the Republican party is suddenly anti-war, it's like some Republicans don't even want to bomb anyone right now.  It's a strange time in the Republican party and you have to sort of feel bad for Fox as they try to be the propaganda wing of a party that can't figure out where it stands on the biggest story of the day.  It's tough being a worthless shill sometimes.

The truth is, I don't know enough about Syria to say anything useful.  I know Assad's name.  I know his country is in the middle of a revolution/asymmetric civil war/crazy shit going on situation.  I know Assad is a Baathist, and I know Ted Cruz thinks that means he forces people to take baths against their will.  I know something went on there with chemical weapons, and I know chemical weapons are bad. 

I also know that, if we do bomb Syria, it will be the fourth, count 'em, FOURTH Western Asian country we've had some sort of military action against in the last dozen years.  And that doesn't even count whatever meddling you think we did in Egypt.  Four!  That's a lot!  Bombing seems to be our only solution to anything.  I'm surprised we haven't tried bombing our public schools or our health care system yet.

I understand the arguments on both sides, and they both make sense.  Why take action?  Well, we told Assad not to use chemical weapons, and he apparently went ahead and used them anyway, on civilians, and children.  Even if we hadn't explicitly said we weren't going to allow that, it's still in violation of about a dozen international treaties. 

And if we don't do something, who will?  The French?  Seriously?  I heard they already surrendered to Syria, twice, just this week.  The U.N. can't do anything, and even if they could, U.N. military action is just the U.S. Armed Forces and like 15 British dudes, and the British already said they're not coming along for this one.

But why not take action?  Well, for one thing, we've been lied to about weapons of mass destruction before.  The case is clearly a little more plausible this time, and, if true, more of an imminent threat, but still.  The point of the boy who cried wolf is that eventually wolves eat all your sheep and nobody cares, and if you use Colin Powell to cry wolf you've sort of poisoned the well, because it's really hard to find someone more credible than Colin Powell used to be.

Also, as I've previously mentioned, this would be our fourth military adventure in Western Asia in the last twelve years.  Wouldn't it be lovely if we could just not be at war for a minute.  And look at how far we've moved the bar in terms of reasons for going to war.  Hitler took over Europe and turned London into rubble and it still took a Japanese attack on Hawaii to draw us into World War Two.   Now we start bombing every time a dictator looks at us funny.  Ron Paul's been complaining about the U.S. being the police of the world in Republican primaries since back when I would have actually considered voting for the winner of the Republican primaries.  And Ron isn't wrong. 

Also, Syria is in the middle of a violent civil war.  Why would we willingly step into the middle of that and pick a side when we all agree that we don't really like either side.  Why do we always feel the need to choose between the lesser of two evils in situations we could just choose to stay out of?  And there are probably five more valid arguments on both sides that I'm not getting to. 

So what do we do?  Well, polls show that an overwhelming majority of the American people don't want us involved in Syria.  But listen, here's the thing...This is one of those times when I couldn't possibly care less about what the American people think.  I would bet you a thousand dollars that half this country can't even find Syria on a map (and way too many of them would be proud and unapologetic about it).  I'm like 99% confident that if you asked Americans who the President of Syria is, roughly 5% of them would say Saddam Hussein, and another 5% would say Osama Bin Laden.

Think about it this way.  If you casually ran into the President, or your Senator, or your Congressman on the street and they asked you what you think they should do about Syria, would you 1) calmly tell them your opinion and expect them to listen or 2) panic because the people running our country are so completely out of ideas that they're asking your opinion without knowing whether or not you even have a vague familiarity with the subject matter?  I'm not saying the President and Congress should never listen to the people (although honestly sometimes I think we'd be better off that way), but on complicated foreign policy matters?  Come on.  People are idiots.  And even if we weren't idiots we wouldn't have time to get familiar enough with something like this to form an educated opinion.  And even if we did have the time, we don't have access to most of the pertinent information. 

I'm also not saying we should just follow the government blindly into war because we're too stupid to know any better.  I don't have any problem you voicing your opinion about Syria, and if you can get the Congress and the President to listen to your nonsense, then good for you.  I'm just saying that if I was the President and you told me what you think I should do about Syria I would respond to you the same way you respond to a three year old when you ask him what he wants for dinner and he yells "ice cream and pizza! Oh, ice cream pizza!"..."Really, ice cream pizza, okay buddy, I'll get right on that."

And if President Obama decides to take military action against Syria in spite of public opinion, and if it turns out to be a colossally horrible decision, and if it turns out his administration lied a little about why we were going there in the first place, then we get to shun him and pretend he was never President.  Just like George W. Whats his face. 

Now I grant you that shunning President Obama in 2017 won't fix whatever mistakes he makes just like shunning President Bush now doesn't fix the federal disaster area that was his presidency.  But the thing is, that's what these guys signed up for.  I don't want a President who hides behind Congress or polls instead of making the decision he thinks is the right one.  When you're the President, sometimes you have to make really hard decisions, and sometimes you have to make really hard, really unpopular decisions, and sometimes you might get them wrong.  If you get a big one wrong, then everybody hates you forever.  That's the job, and if you aren't up for it, then you shouldn't sit down in the big chair in the first place. 

75 Reasons I'm Still Single

Whenever I talk to my mom, she either asks me if I'm seeing anyone, or I can tell she wants to but she doesn't because she already knows the answer.  I often joke about why I'm still single, and then I thought, is there a blog in there?  And then I thought, of course there fucking is, because I don't get paid for this and whether 0 or 1,000 people read this has no impact on anything else in my life and I can write about whatever the fuck I want.  So there.

75 Reasons I'm Still Single
1) I'm given to understand, from movies and such, that women like a sense a humor.  That has yet to be my experience.
2) Maybe my sense of humor is more of an acquired taste.
3) Maybe me just telling people I'm funny doesn't make it so.
4) I'm not that good-looking.
5) I think I'd look better with a beard, but
6) Something from my vague memories of childhood tells me that growing a beard would make my mom a little too happy.
7) The rational part of my brain is mostly sitting this one out, because it doesn't really care why I'm still single, but it chimed in here to suggest that perhaps my refusal to grow a beard for that reason should shed a little more light on this whole topic, #waytoofuckingstubborn.
8) Yeah, my brain uses hash tags now, we're trying a new thing.
9) Shut up brain, nobody asked you!
10) Sleeping when there's somebody else in the bed is damn near impossible for me.
11) Seriously, who in history decided that couples have to share a bed?  I'd like a word with her (or him, but not really).
12) Speaking of sharing, I suck at that.
13) Maybe #10 would be less of a problem if my body hadn't decided that the best time for me to sleep is between 5AM and Noon.
14) I can't really stop myself from making a face at anybody who tells me they believe in god.
15) Turns out, lots of people believe in god.
16) When I was a kid, I was naturally good at a number of things.
17) school...
18) sports...
19) being awesomely rational.
20) For example, I wanted to play guitar, so I picked up a guitar...
21) I wasn't immediately awesome at playing the guitar...
22) I never picked up the guitar again.
23) Same thing happened with my keyboard.
24) There's a lesson in here somewhere about not being willing to try at things that aren't immediately perfect.
25) Also, some people aren't wild about #19.
26) I'm told that I always need to be right.
27) Apparently that's annoying.
28) I don't always need to be right, I just am right.
29) It's not my fault, I don't make the facts.
30) Rational brain wants to make another editorial comment.
31) I'm not allowing it.
32) My friend Sadie says I may or may not be a sociopath.
33) I might have made up the "may not" part of #32.
34) You can't grow the economy and cut the deficit by cutting taxes again...
35) Because you don't actually have magic powers.
36) OK, #34 and #35 don't have anything to do with me, but...
37) I feel obligated to mention that in every blog entry until people stop believing it.
38) I have at least 6 fantasy football teams.
39) It seems like people like to talk about books.
40) Unless Ernest Hemingway wrote it, there's about a 102% chance I haven't read it.
41) If I did have a girlfriend right now, she'd have to listen to me complain incessantly about those new Maker's Mark commercials with James Carville and his awful wife.
42) Seriously, I've never seen a worse ad campaign.
43) It's like they want me to hate their product.
44) It also makes me want to punch James Carville in the face...
45) Because I feel like he knows better.
46) I wanted to do 100 reasons why I'm still single...
47) But I'm only up to 47 and now I'm pretty bored...
48) I get bored really easily...
49) Probably another lesson in there...
50) Shut up, rational brain!
51) Online dating still seems weird and unnatural to me
52) No offense, but...
53) The people in those eHarmony commercials seem like the kind of couples that would do eHarmony commercials.
54) I don't want to be in that kind of couple.
55) Rational brain says maybe if I wasn't so fucking judgmental...
56) I said be quiet, brain!
57) The Yankees look pretty much done.
58) #57 isn't about me either...
59) but I'm pretty sure I'm right about it.
60) There's a very small chance that I'm going to find you interesting.
61) The fact that you don't find me interesting either doesn't change that.
62) If you're reading this, there's a decent chance you now know more about me than several people with whom I'm been in actual relationships.
63) Hmmmmm
64) I'm a pathological liar.
65) No wait, that's Paul Ryan.
66) My bad.
67) People think I'm quiet...
68) Because I can't make fun of you in my head and talk to you at the same time.
69) Eventually people find that out...
70) They don't love it.
71) #68 is a lie...
72) I absolutely can do that.
73) I spent two hours on a Saturday doing this.
74) Because it seemed like a good idea two hours ago...
75) See #7