I Hate RAPE

I apologize in advance for the serious nature of this installment. But sometimes you have to man up and talk about the issues, you know? Really, just get with it and stand up against something in the world that is wrong. I mean so wrong that it hurts to live. With shit like this going on it's no wonder we are a piss-poor war-torn nation. I am of course talking about RAPE. If you aren't in that enviable group called Know: Retarded Ass People Everywhere, or RAPE, is the newest social aphorism, if you will, purportedly evolving out of the best qualities of Yuppies, Hipsters and Cryps. RAPE is simply all over the place right now and shows no signs of diminishing within our lifetimes. The movement is being aggressively promoted by the PTA (Promotion of Television for Assholes) towards the next salient level of public gratification. We have finally gone beyond reality T.V and into...you guessed it...Reality. 

Stop RAPE Now!

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I Hate "Made in America"

There's no arguing that America is great. At least not when you're sitting across from a confederate flag-toting, gun-running biker wearing face tats and a leather jacket broken in with skeptics' blood, "Mead in America"[sic] finely etched into the side of his skull. Let the record show that we advise you to not argue. But just between us, I have a "beef" with certain aspects of this American-made malarkey.

"I am gonna desecrate the shit outta you after prom, girl!"

 
Just to touch on the aforementioned "beef" I need to bring up certain issues. Mainly: everyone says buy American-made because it's better. Part of the reason - and this is legitimate - is that when you buy domestic you are ostensibly supporting what little manufacturing we have left (read: artisanal douchebag accessories) and by extension the livelihoods of our own people. Which is fine, I get it. The best part of it all, of course, is that just about everyone up and down the line takes a cut. From indentured teen to teamster. Everyone gets a slice. Name one thing more patriotic than that! Assuming the wealth gets circulated internally and the union guy isn't just running off to snag Sony flat screens (yeah, actually they fell off the back of a truck but the packaging is so good you'd never know it), there shouldn't be any kinda problem there so mind your own business; but then you have to look at the flipside. To do that you go way back into the history of manufacturing and not too far down the beginning of unionization. Now it just so happens I was churned out of the American school system (yeah: pride) so unfortunately don't know the Hatter's Union from a hole in my head. But I do know that labor unions, like every other once-great idea to come around and revolutionize the world (Yes we Ameri-can!), was not long untainted until soon enough some brave entrepreneurial bloodsucker got the bright idea there was balls-deep profit to be made on other people's hard work. I'm not saying all the good work done towards labor equality since the late 19th century isn't good, just saying that honestly, come on: who didn't foresee the corrupting potential of that one?

"It's about family, unity and lining up in height order just like
we practiced it or you get another smack on the mouth, Tommy!"

So, yes do buy domestic if you can. No, that starred 'n' striped bikini is made in Indonesia, not Indiana...Ford what? But, if you don't already know, all this skimming off the top hurts the companies you hold so dear. How can any large company afford to operate domestically with all these hands in their pockets (land tax, competition, redundancy, minimum wage, asbestos abatement)? Both skimming internally - and externally as government taxation, which is just plain wrong. Why do you think they moved their plants overseas in the first place? And don't say China has better Chinese food. Think about it: Halliburton is as American as it gets and a few years back they've had to pack up and move to slumdog Dubai. Where is the justice in that? But I have good news. We are beginning to turn it around. Yeah we persevere. Well, not with manufacturing, anyway, but the food-truck industry is on fire!

"Psst...hey sugar tikka, meet me over there for a most ironic stabbing." 

Now as irony (or god, if you swing that way) would have it I happened to notice, just as I was typing up this screed with my thumbs, that Prezbama stopped over at a Milwaukee kipple factory on his way to Wallmartland, Wisconsin; rolled up his designer Italian cuffs and glared at the crowd for half an hour while behind him projectors flashed the words "Made in U.S.A" and "Top Priority" and something called "Insourcing" in bacon lettering on forty-foot screens. When the 'speech' was over his aides used supersoakers to shoot cola into the grateful and expectant gobs of applauding natives. 

"How many times I gotta tell 'em no fat chicks in the audience?"

The one statement he did make using sound-words was, and I quote: “It would take 20 years to change the school system to train manufacturing workers.” Seems like the idea is people "often are not properly educated for positions in manufacturing," which to me sounds counter-intuitive. But then again I'm not a Chinese but an Ameri-can, and like I keep telling my teachers my homework's been repossessed.

"Angel of what?--No, no I'm just the Repo man."

No, actually it sounds like he is defeating his own argument here. But in any case, my feeling is that if you're not equipped to bolt shit onto other shit for twelve hours a day at the assembly line without losing fingers then you're not equipped to vote. I mean when I think of jobs in manufacturing - in sectors other than aerospace and robot army - I think, hey isn't this what everyone and their daddies in every flee-bitten rat-shitten town ever used to do straight out of high school or prison? Anyone can read an order form and, let's face it, you already gained expert hand-eye coordination when you started sneaking off with your old man's sticky old Playboys. Whose idea was it to put the option on the table of changing the school system to train workers for manufacturing jobs? You're not fooling me. We are way more than 20 years behind other countries in curricula which require half a brain so don't talk to me about setting back the little chilluns' whatchacallit intellectual development another deuce for pocket-science.

I Hate the Post Office

I have done business with many different post offices and I can honestly say I have never encountered one that I liked. Which is strange, you know, because when you think about it even the worst establishments will have their model outposts, places where they do it just a bit differently - go out of their way with regards to service in an effort to distinguish their location as "the best" - and it works, somewhere in the world. You might hate Subway's sandwiches but then you find one that is just right - so much so that it lets you overlook just how terrible their sandwiches are - and it's refreshing, so you go there again and again.

"For the last time - I don't want mayo on my goddamn hamburgers!"

Not so with post offices. They just get worse every time you step foot into a new one. Every time you change your identity and hitchhike over to a new city with a substandard stance on pedophile registry and walk into a post office where you've never been before it's still and truly the worst place you've ever been. And this is a place where you go in with a potentially 2 minute transaction that winds up taking at least 20 minutes. You walk out a changed person. And not in the beneficial way where your childhood traumas and criminal records are magically wiped clean, but in a prison shower kind of way. In fact studies have shown that post offices are second only to prisons in how powerless, compromised and violated they make you feel. Basically the opposite of what the t.v spots would have you believe. You know the ones: closeup on a customer's beaming face as he hands over a package; the postal worker's perfectly white grin and warm, welcoming demeanor as she takes it and completes the transaction without once breaking eye contact. In fact I have never seen a government worker smile. Never. 

"I make so much more money than all you bitches!!"

Now here I will contest that I have been to the far and away worst post office you have ever seen and it is located in the Dominican Republic of NYC, USA. And, keep in mind, I live in a fairly progressive, well-off place. It just so happens that the specific neighborhood of this place is not so progressive or well-off. Now the post office in question is housed in quite a large building. Which is good because it is always packed like a sardine can full of sweaty hippos. Any smaller of a space and there would be injuries. Like you'll see from time to time on the subway during rush hour. I mean if you walked in with asthma, bronchitis or a mild cold you would almost surely die of asphyxiation.

First class is the only way to go.

If you went there in the middle of the day you might just turn around and go home because all the gates are decidedly drawn down over the long sooty windows. It's like they don't want your business at all. But the masses are not fooled. The lines are long, and start at about half past 8 or about 1 hour before the clerks start working, and tend to stretch all the way back to the front door, snaking in on themselves like diabetic paper clips or crop circles if crop circles were made up of rheumy slack-jawed inbreeds. All too often you come through the door and find yourself right at the very end of the line. And then everyone turns around to look at you cross, as if they've never seen a white person before.

"You want stamps with that?"

Near the entrance is the automated self-serve postage machine. You can buy stamps and mail your parcels without standing on line. It rarely gets used though due to two primary factors. One (1) The size of your package must fit into the maw of the parcel box, which is tighter than a Bell-Air girl on vacation in Baltimore, and this, of course, greatly limits your choices. Especially during the holiday season for your annual mass-mailing of handmade Sybians. And two (2) Who the hell knows how to use computers anyway? Seriously, these people can't even figure out the most user-friendly, talk-you-down, touchscreen, foolproof, 1-braincell-or-less human interface machines. This is why the bank ATM's are the second worst place to find yourself in my neighborhood. But this, dear reader, is the quintessential American Dream. And it's a goddamn nightmare.

The American Dream: Freedom to be yourself.
(And everybody else can go fuck themselves.)

Now, I consider myself a moderate and patient person. Call it an evolutionary byproduct of being a wimp. But encounter me at the post office and I'm a Hell's Angel. i.e: Don't fuck with me at the post office. The post office, like the DMV is a goddamn time warp. Every minute feels like ten as your eyes bore a hole into the backs of old ladies standing at the teller window, speaking a language the teller simply does not understand. And god forbid I have to pee. Because when I wait on the long snaking line for 20 minutes before finally the morbidly obese 50-something career postal worker with the lisp declares in his disinterested monotone that I want the other long snaking line for my issue I am about ready to bite someone's ear off.

"Keep that crazy SOB away from me;
he's been inside a government facility!"

I must say this about bureaucratic due process in general, governmental institutions in particular: the funny thing is that everyone always complains about how the bureaucrats are rude, disinterested and offensively ugly and how every miniscule issue becomes an exercise in downright idiocy, but what you don't figure - and this is my one concession on the topic - is that part of the reason the bureaucrats got this way is that customers just like you are rude, pushy, impatient, haughty and stupid. Please Note: As in nature so in government, equilibrium will eventually be reached.

Truly, a meeting of equals.

There will come when this rant will be far and away obsolete; a generation which will no longer know the trials of waiting in line for their mail as if they have nothing better to do, never boil with rage watching the teller behind the 6 inch-thick glass make his way carefully over without their package in hand, taking steps like a prowling alley cat, never face-palm discreetly when they realize they're standing behind a flock of old women who don't speak English and wish to purchase a dozen money orders. Just like the present generation will never know a time without internet or reality T.V or paying at least twice what their shitty apartment is worth in rent every month. Truly, we live in an age of rusty patina.

I Hate Siblings

Lately I have been thinking that I really hate siblings. This is a new feeling for me as I've previously always wondered what it would be like to have siblings. A brother or sister to console, confide in and control. A little human fodder in the war with the folks. Someone to blame when the fish turns up dead on the living room rug or the dog is found frozen in the treehouse unable to get down or the cat is discovered ground up inside the lawnmower. (I was a problem-child). Anyway, you need siblings to be there for you when you have no friends, or when you have problems the folks can't know of. You need them to just be there, really. This had always been my reasoning. After all, is being an only child not the loneliest thing in the world?

"This nuclear winter has been the loneliest nuclear winter."

Now, you might say that, on the contrary, it's not so great, that siblings can be a pain but let me tell you this; being an only child comes with its own set of problems. You get all the attention from your folks. There is always extra money to buy you whatever you might want. There is never fighting over who gets the bigger slice of cake, the nicer toys, the defter beatings. No, it's no charmed life. You are sure to grow up an entitled, self-absorbed douche-bag. Having experienced none of the adversity of competition, of deficit for every little meaningless thing, griping every step of the way - without some bullshit to fight over - it's such a bore. Would it not make life that much more interesting to win the prize than to be spoon-fed indiscriminately? Otherwise you are sure to be a spoiled snot-nosed brat:

"Yo check it out, dog, that bird is all angry and shit!
..Nah I got this shit nigga, and what did I just tell you about touching my shit?"

And that is part of the reason why I have always wanted brothers and sisters. Because I respect the value of closeness and the intimate responsibility of consanguinity. I have family values coming out the ass. Plus, it's not healthy to indulge a kid. Without rules, borders, beatings and the occasional Ambien-laced Hot Pockets so mommy and daddy can get it on in private, the kid is bound to get out of hand - over-privileged, self-obsessed, insufferable, armed with nothing but a one way ticket to Maury's maladjusted couch of televised scorn:

"And your producer promised me one snack of my choosing, so..."

It is well known that a large family with many children helps develop - technically speaking - a high degree of "can-do attitude" and "go-for-it gusto" due the extensive support structure resulting from the intimacy dynamics of a dozen dumb-ass kids who look just like you and refuse to shut the hell up all the time.

"This year our stockings accept personal check and money order only."

These kids are going to be hard-headed, contentious bastards. And that is exactly what it takes to make it in today's world. You can just tell they will grow up real fast. You have to develop a certain resourcefulness to beat out your siblings and excel in the world, especially when your mother is a cold-blooded, poison-lipped, opportunistic gremlin who spends all your hard-borne welfare money on face-lifts and holiday-themed lingerie. You've got no choice but to murder...or band with your countless siblings and start "making it," for instance, by churning out iPhone apps to pay for food and clothing or by charming the bell-bottoms off of suburban America:

"Get happy or you and me we're gonna have big problems."

But, recently, I have been thinking maybe I don't have it so bad. As I said, I've come to hate the idea of siblings and I can't quite pinpoint why. I think part of it is that as an only child, a parent's energies are always focused on you. You are the only one there to teach, to nurture, to blame for ever being born and derailing a burgeoning career in broadcasting. You get all the benefits of your parents' undivided attention. I know what you are going to say, but before you go dismissing this all as "white-people-problems," consider this:

Humans think they're so goddamn smart!

But the best part is that, as an only child, you get to pass high-handed judgement on other families, to look down on their motley of smelly kids. You see all the siblings roll into homeroom period in identical T.J Max outfits, smelling like Pall Malls and Clorox Bleach. You see them at lunch sadly removing identical pastrami sandwiches from identical greasy brown bags. You snicker at their quaint adversity and quietly laugh at their collective misfortune. At least they have each other, right? What a joke. Better to be alone than a sad clone. In the end, all that matters is that you are one of a kind. You go home and cry alone in your room and no pipsqueaks barge in to confront or distract you from your well-deserved angst. Everything is better when you don't need to share or explain.

"Hey you don't see me crying, fag."

 You said it Fonzy! Everyone else is fags. You are one of a kind. Now go show us how to jump the shark.