Maybe shut the fuck up about politics around your kids

 

Kids. They’ll parrot any old shit they hear. You know why? Because compared to most normal grown ass adults, kids are dumb. Kids don’t know shit.

For a quick second, think about what you were like in college. After the fall semester of your sophomore year, you thought you fucking knew everything. Shit, you were a goddamn college student now, after all – you got yer learnin’ on! Now think about how much you actually properly knew back then. That’s right, you knew fuck all. You barely understood anything about all the shit that really matters in this world.

Now think about a little kid – maybe one of yours if you have one. Maybe an eight year-old runt who’s trying to perfect his delivery of two dozen fart jokes, but also thinks mac and cheese for breakfast is totally OK (sure, why not). And for some reason you might think your kid is brilliant. Except he’s not. Because he’s a fucking kid. For fuck’s sake, even your teenager walks to school in shorts when there’s three feet of snow on the ground and you know it – how smart can they be risking frostbite?

As functioning members of the human collective, kids are dumb. Are we clear on that now? This means kids shouldn’t can’t be trusted with certain things. Grown up things. Things like Kitchen shears. Your car keys. A martini.

And most definitely: your bullshit political tendencies.

Seriously, shut the fuck up about politics and the election around your kids. I’m being serious here. Shut. The hell. Up. There is no reason on God’s green earth for you to be talking about politics and the election with or around anyone who’s still bringing PB&Js to school in a lunch box.

I don’t talk politics with my kids. Not one bit. They’re way too busy getting up to speed on everything else being a kid that the last thing I want to do is boggle them further with comical election bullshit.

So when my elementary schooler comes home and starts mouthing off about Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, all the blood rushes from my head while I do everything I can to not completely lose my shit.

“Donald Trump hates Chinese people!” “Hillary lies a lot.” What the fuck. That’s not coming from me, that’s for sure.

Upon some further incredibly restrained enquiry, said elementary schooler confesses that he heard all these Trump and Cruz and Hillary tales from his classmates.

“But what does it mean, buddy?”

“I dunno, I just heard it from them.”

His response is exactly the sort of response I’d expect from a kid his age. Kids his age just repeat shit, even if they don’t know what it means – they all do it. Maybe it all just sounds funny to them. Maybe it’s because they just want to fit in. Maybe they wanna talk and act all grown up. I’m not clear why, I just know they do it.

Which stands to reason that his friends are likely also just parroting this political rhetoric they got off someone else. They sure as hell aren’t coming up with this shit all by themselves. Unless little Pablo is secretly DVRing Bill Maher and Meet The Press? So where or whom are these kids getting this political shit from? Perhaps an older sibling? Sure, it’s possible. Equally possible – and more than likely – is perhaps from an overzealous parent or two who’s getting all too wrapped up in the election dramz. That’s what my money’s on.

You know what, go bananas with your political rantings all you want – it’s your goddamn right as a grown ass person to give a shit about whatever you want to give a shit about. But leave the kid alone. Your kid is not your ally in your deranged political leanings.

Here’s the thing, on their own volition, your kids don’t care about any of this political shit. It’s petty, it’s tedious, it’s confusing, and it’s packed with premium grade bullshit. No, kids care about Minecraft and milkshakes and farts and Vines and Hotline Bling. They couldn’t possibly give two shits about Hillary’s email servers, they couldn’t possibly understand the viability of Trump building walls, they definitely don’t give a fuck about China or Mexico. Unless it affects where Friday night’s takeout is coming from.

Do you think you’re somehow raising some wunderkind by shoving all your political wisdom down their throats? That they’re somehow going to be really fucking intelligent because they now repeat what your ideology? They have no firm grasp of what you’re yammering on about, I assure you.

And if they tell you they’re backing one candidate over another, it’s not because they love that particular candidate – it’s because they love you, and they want to say things to make you happy. They can’t tell one asswipe politician from another asswipe politician. Reasonably informed grown ass adults can barely do that.

So, please for the love for God, knock it off and leave your kids outta this election bullshit. Just let ‘em be kids. Let ‘em watch cartoons. Make ‘em watch Full House reruns so get what the hell is going on with Kimmy Gibbler. Let them pee outdoors. Let them eat Nutella right from the jar.

Anything’s better than some eight year old mouthing off about Ted Cruz’s supremely punchable face.

It’s time to STFU about the Patriots’ soft balls

 

A lot of people hate the New England Patriots. Big fucking deal. Every sports team is going to have a grand army of haters. More so when the team’s successful. The Patriots will give haters no shortage of material: Bill Belichick’s philandering, Tom Brady’s Uggs, Brady’s waterslide, Brady being a little bitch on the sidelines, pretty much just everything Tom Brady-related.

Which is what makes this latest hogpile on the Patriots for deflating their footballs in the AFC Championship game such an exercise in complete and utter bullshit.

So apparently, the Patriots deflated their footballs by about 2lbs of air pressure. Deflated balls equal softer balls, which in turn equal grippier balls. Easier to throw, easier to catch. That’s what I read anyway, I have no idea, I’ve never played football at any level.

And of course this is against the rules of the sport.

Cue the angry mouthbreathing public mob decrying the Patriots for CHEATING. “ZOMG, cheating iz soo bad, you guys. So not fair, so cheeky, so awful, such an egregious violation of all that is sacred in football, everything is horrible!!!”

You know what, shut the fuck up.

Because guess what: everybody cheats, stupid. Get the fuck over it.

No sooner did the Patriots get busted for their soft balls, Aaron Rodgers the almighty got called out for having his balls overinflated. (I’ll give you a minute to get over chuckling at that one.) Then Brad Johnson bragged about how he bribed someone to scuff up his footballs in the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl!!! That’s bigger than a conference championship game! Where’s the fucking outrage for Brad Johnson? I mean, there was even a fucking bribe involved! Brad fucking doubled down on that one.

Then you get shitbag Matt Leinart coming out and practically carpetbombing the entire quarterback squad in the NFL, claiming all of them – with the exception of holier-than-thou blockhead Kurt Warner, apparently – fucked with their footballs. I’m not sure why I give a shit about anything Matt Leinart has to say about anything because Matt Leinart is useless, but in this case, his assertion supports the point I’m trying to make.

Here’s the thing: if you’re gonna lose your shit about a team or player playing outside the rules, don’t get mad because they’re doing it, wag your finger because they’re stupid enough to get caught doing it. This is professional sports, for fuck’s sake. This is about money. This is about the business of winning by any means possible. Winning = revenue = the whole fucking point, last time I looked.  Goody gum drops if you think you wanna try and win without using any unfair advantage whatsoever.  That’s not how the rest of the world runs, noob.

You check into professional sports and you come looking for some moral high ground? Do you also believe in the tooth fairy and leprechauns?

These shitheads got caught, that’s the only thing that’s out of norm here. Just like when Michael Pineda of the Yankees got caught with pine tar on his neck when he was on the mound. Sure, pine tar’s banned and all, but shit, EVERYBODY uses pine tar in Major League Baseball, for fuck’s sake. Bats and helmets are dripping with the stuff. But Pineda was an asshole for being so brazen about his pine tar use, and for that, he deserved to get busted.

Also like when Bill Belichick and the Patriots were busted for secretly filming the Jets (the motherfucking Jets, of all teams!). YOU DON’T NEED TO CHEAT TO BEAT THE JETS!!! They’re the Jets, they’re going to work very, very hard to easily lose to you spectacularly, so what the fuck are you doing trying to film them? All you’re gonna end up with is hours of footage of how NOT to play football. And that’s what the $750,000 combined fine should’ve been for – not for secretly filming your opponent, but for the fact that they did it against the goddamn Jets. A fine for stupidity, not for cheating.

Yet, $750,000 is such a paltry amount when you consider the bar set the McLaren team in Formula One. Also, when it comes to cheating scandals, this one took the motherfucking cake. You’re talking about a multi-billion dollar global sport here in which one team – McLaren – were actively stealing engineering secrets from another team, Ferrari. This isn’t like listening in to another team’s radio transmission during a race to predict when their race car was going to pit. And it’s certainly a different caliber to the Patriots filming the Jets. This was proper industrial espionage. Way more impressive than letting the air out of some balls. And the penalty? A $100 million fine and the exclusion from the 2007 world championship, which resulted in further loss many, many millions of dollars in race result revenue. $100 million.  You wanna kick a cheating team in the balls, that’s how you kick a cheating team in the balls.

Which brings us to our current sitch. If you must punish the Patriots for their soft balls – and you probably should, not because they actually deflated the balls, but because they were stupid enough to get caught – what’s the right penalty? A fine? Unless it’s $100 million, who gives a shit. Loss of draft picks? Warmer, but again, who gives a shit because the free agency market can help backfill that. Pull them from the Super Bowl and sub in the Colts? That would be hilarious.

However the NFL act – or don’t act, as is typical with the NFL – on this, it doesn’t matter that the Patriots played AFC championship game, or any other game leading up to that one, with their soft balls. Stop crying about it.

Because you’re missing the whole fucking point.

 

 

Last show at Terminal 5

I don’t go to a lot of concerts (relatively speaking), but I probably go to more than my fair share.  Thankfully, majority of bands out there are absolutely deplorable, so that certainly helps me set an artificial limit to my concert-going.

One thing I’d still like to do some time is go to a random concert every single night of one week.  Just randomly pick five different venues, then go check out whatever bands playing there that night.  Probably better if I don’t recognize the band so I’m not prejudging the show.  If I’m lucky, at the end of the week, I’ll have found a few new bands I want to listen to.  At worst, I’ll have uncovered a bunch of unlistenable bands to completely avoid like the plague.  Either way, it’s five night out, and there are worse ways to spend five nights out.

One venue I’m excluding from the list of venues is Terminal 5.  Fuck Terminal 5.

For as long as it’s been around, I’ve been going to Terminal 5.  After all, what choice do you have if a band you like decides to play there – you suck it up and go.  You go despite it being the worst fucking concert venue on the planet.

Last weekend, I went to what is probably my last time at Terminal 5.  The show’s line-up was absolutely brilliant, on paper at least.  The Beach Fossils, followed by Lee Ranaldo, followed by headliner Kurt Vile.  That’s a lot of talent packed into one night.  No throwaway bands here.  For the first time in the long time, we headed to the show right when the doors opened, unwilling to miss even a minute of the opening bands.

Getting there to Terminal 5 is both easy and hard.  “Easy” because being about as far west as possible in Hell’s Kitchen, it is surrounded by absolute shit.  There are no decent bars or restaurants within a 3-block radius to keep you from getting to the joint on time.  Most other concert venues have probably dozens of better than average watering holes where you can get a few brews and a decent meal before the show.  Not Terminal 5.  Terminal 5 is in the middle of Manhattan’s black hole.  There is jack shit around Terminal 5.  If you wanna grab a brew before a show, you’d have to walk a half-dozen blocks away to find anything.  It is also for that same reason that it’s hard to get to – it’s nowhere near any subways, and it’s in the anus of Manhattan.

Since it’s in such a shithole part of the city, the least you’d expect is for the joint to make up for it by being extra awesome.  After all, why would people keep schlepping all the way out there, right?  Well, the concert hall itself is fucking terrible.

Shaped largely like a cube, the main floor is peppered with large obstructive pillars.  The second floor balcony protrudes so far out that if you’re in far corner of the hall – any corner – you’re not seeing shit.

And that’s before you’re assaulted with what is indisputably the worst sound system in the universe.  It doesn’t matter if you put Jimmy Page or Jimmy Buffett on that stage – both will sound equally shitty.  Everything out of those speakers sounds like muffled farts through a bullhorn.  There is absolutely no articulation whatsoever (which is really important when you’re trying to listen to farts).  Honestly, I’ve had more pleasant afternoons listening to my neighbor’s dog bark incessantly at squirrels.

But that’s not all you have to listen to when you’re at Terminal 5.

You see, when you combine the fact that Terminal 5 is middle of the downtown Baghdad of New York and the fact that the sound is fucking dreadful, it becomes clear that Terminal 5 is being kept afloat by people who don’t really like music at all.

You go to any show there and you will invariable – and this entirely without exception – be surrounded by chatty assholes who don’t shut the fuck up.  People talk throughout entire gigs.  Whomever and whatever the fuck is playing on stage matters not one iota to these assholes.  Somehow, these assholes have rationalized the idea that the middle of a crowded thousand-decibel concert is the best place to carry on a meaningful conversation for two hours.  It’s always the same sort of person, too – it’s always either some tall bearded douchebag in a flannel shirt, or some overenthusiastic chick who looks like Marnie from Girls.  In other words, everyone in that place.  I can’t remember the last time I was at Terminal 5 when I’ve had to turn around to tell people to shut the fuck up.

Not one thing about Terminal 5 makes it appealing to see a band. I’ve been suckered into going to that concert sphincter for years, but I can’t bear going to Terminal 5 anymore.  I’ve seen my last show there.  I like Kurt Vile.  But Terminal 5 made me hate Kurt Vile.

And that’s what it comes down to: I’m not going to let Terminal 5 ruin the bands I like.

Fuck Terminal 5.

 

 

 

Just buy a Porsche or fake boobs, your workouts are really irritating

 

It’s a crisis!  I wish everyone I know would just buy a goddamn Porsche and be done with it.  Instead, everyone around me – everyone who is every bit as middle-aged as I am – is not doing that.

Midlife crises used to be so easy work through.  So predictable, so easy; practically transactional.  You ran out and bought a Porsche.  Or you got some bouncy new boobs.  Swipe your credit card, you’re done.

Suddenly a 911 and pectoral saline vessels aren’t good enough anymore.   No, now everyone’s got to get fit.  Gotta work out, gotta pump up!  When you realize that you’re closer to death than you are from your birth, no one wants to go out in a blaze of glory anymore.  Instead, everyone wants to amp up the health factor, make up for years of indulgence and intoxication, desperate to try and reverse the aging process.

So yeah, let’s all work out and kick ass.

Remember when everyone on the planet wanted to take up kickboxing?  Ooooh, so tough.  But kickboxing is just so ‘90s, you guys.  Now, if you really want everyone know you’re middle-aged, kicking ass, and taking names, you gotta run a dozen miles, AND go to a spin class, AND take a crossfit session.  All before lunchtime, bitches.

Marathons?  Fuck that shit, you pussy – ULTRAMARATONS FTW, motherfucker!  Wait, scratch that – running’s not enough, I better tack on some swimming and some cycling to it!  Fuck yeah!

“Hey, how’s your marathon training coming along?” “Hey, are you signed up for next month’s tri?”  “We totally need to sign up for that obstacle race where they swing glass-encrusted sledgehammers at you and send 50,000 volts of electricity right to your nipples.”

OMG, SHUTTHEFUCKUP, SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP, SHUTTHEFUCKUP!!!

A buddy of mine once shared this joke with me, “When you’re at a party, how can you tell which ones are triathletes?  Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.”  Except it’s not a fucking joke.  The only thing more irritating than a triathlon are all the assholes running them.

All these fucking guys can’t wait to tell you about all their training, how their last event went, what races they’re signed up for, how many miles they ran this week, what shoes they ended up with after they got sized up by some supercomputer or some fucking shit like that.

Stop being so psyched, for fuck’s sake.  It’s fucking irritating.  Fucking nerd dorks with 2% body fat.  No one’s impressed.  You’re annoying as fuck and you look gross.

The most irritating of all are all these obstacle races that are all the fucking rage.  Crawling through mud, climbing walls, running under barbed wire, and fuck know what.  And these fuckers get so fucking carried away with all of it.

Admittedly, I signed up for one of these fucking things.  A year ago, happened upon one of these races and saw a bunch of people climbing ropes and running through mud, and thought, “Hey, playing in that mud looks fun.”  I have the maturity of a 5 year-old.  So I signed up for this year’s Merrell Down And Dirty Mud Run.  As a goof.  Because I hate running with every fiber of my being, and I am the least competitive (in physical activity) person I know.  I chose this particular event because it was the most creampuff event, and it took place 5 miles from my house.  That’s how lazy I am.

No fire pits, no swimming through pools of urine, no electric fences, none of that bullshit.  This was no more treacherous than playing flag football a bunch of pissed-off midgets.  Seriously.

Yet, I showed up the day of the event, and the entire scene instantly laughable.  Girls with team shirts saying “Beast” or “Tough Bitch” or something touting grrrrrl power.  Beefcake dudes with bandanas wearing eye black.  Everyone was constantly growling or grunting and pumping their roided fists in the air.

I had entered the WWE of running.

Are you fucking kidding me.  This was little pussy 3-mile run with a bunch of shitty obstacles thrown in, and you guys are losing your shit over this?  Calm the fuck down, you Adderalled assholes.  Maybe cut your Red Bull intake in half, let’s start there.

And for all the posturing and bullshit tough guy theatrics, I ran this race and came in 8th in my class.  8th.  This fat fuck.  All without any growling or making my pecs dance.  Puh-fucking-leeze.

You fuckers need to save all the grunting and shouting and the eye black and the compression sleeves for something that’s worth going ape shit over.  At the rate these types of events are taking off, it won’t take long.  Assholes aren’t going to happy until there’s an event in which race organizers are firing live rounds at the runners, making them run through actual minefields, and playing dodgeball with a balloon filled with the Ebola virus.

This is how “The Running Man” will come about.  And when it does, I hope it comes with all the shiny spandex we can stand.  Until then, would the rest of you please, PLEASE, PLEASE shut the fuck up about your workouts.

 

 

 

You know what, fuck these guys

 

“Head of Ideas.”  Check out that link.  Not a terribly long post, but so much to work with here.  It might’ve been a slightly more dignified post if it was all butthurt.  But it’s not.  It’s a fucking pathetic.  First of all, this guy actually acknowledges the job title that he’s been given: Head of Ideas.  In a supposedly creative industry, this fucking guy actually embraces the notion that he’s the grand arbiter of ideas in his shop.  “Hey, fuck the rest of you, I’m the boss of all the ideas.  The rest of you can suck it as far as ideas are concerned.”  Head of Ideas – what a colossally douchetastic title.

Second, this fuckwit is actually trying to validate the advertising industry against the motherfucking Onion.  “We don’t deserve to be called talentless.”  What a jerkoff.  Every industry on the earth is overrun with talentless fucks – why the hell should advertising be exempt of that?  If anything, advertising is probably leading the brigade.  We’re surrounded by fucking hacks.

And then he tries to formulate his argument by creating pathetic movie parodies that are neither interesting nor witty.  I don’t even know what point he’s trying to make with those examples.  I swear, whomever’s hiring his agency, fire that agency immediately.  Then fire him immediately after that.  Then fire the people who fired him because they were the probably the ones who hired him in the first place.  (Sometimes Monty Python have the right ideas for everything.)

You know what, fuck that guy.

 

 

The Ramen Burger.  Hey asshole, this is not your cronut.  And before I go any further, I just need to acknowledge this cronut bullshit.  Upon advisement from Serious Eats, I ventured to Yonkers to get what was supposed to be a pretty good knock-off of Dominique Ansel’s cronuts.  The knock-off cronut was a far more modest affair.  No cream filling, not cream ring on top.  Just a sugar coating.  And it was such a fucking letdown.  A letdown not because it was missing all that creamy goodness.  But because it tastes exactly as a cronut had been described – a buttery croissant shaped like a donut.  And because it was all buttery and fried, the thought of one of Ansel’s originals gushing with cream just fucking grossed me out.  It’s probably like 1,000 calories per cronut.  Fuck that guy and his ridiculous pastries.

But wait, back to the ramen burger.  Just look at that fucking thing.  It’s such a forced concoction of stupidity.  Ramen should not be molded into hockey pucks, asshole.  That’s not how you eat it.  You don’t see me taking a burrito and putting it in a blender to make burrito soup, do you?  Then why the fuck are you molding ramen noodles into hockey pucks?

People like ramen.  People like burgers.  I get it.  That doesn’t mean that people need to have the two together.  This is the just the most insufferable Brooklyn version of asshole food that chains like Chili’s puts out there – “Hey, people like ribs, people like cheese… let’s smother our baby back ribs with cheese!”  No, asshole, no.  There is no redeeming reason to put ramen noodles and burgers together.

You know what, fuck that guy.

 

 

AUTI5M.  That was on the Maryland license plate of a car I passed when I drove back from Baltimore this past weekend.  Before I go on, let me get this out of the way – third only to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Maryland drivers are colossal assholes.  You’ve got some work to do if want that podium spot, Connecticut.

Anyway, I was gunning the pedal trying to get the fuck out of the shithole that is Maryland when I passed some white 4×4 with “AUTI5M” on the license plate.  This wasn’t some state-issued special edition license plate like those celebrating your stupid fandom for the Yankees or something like that.  No, this was a vanity plate in which some jerkoff paid a premium so that his license plate would read a goddamn medical condition.

What the fuck does it even mean?  Presumably, this fuckwit’s trying to raise awareness of autism.  Fine, I get it, the intent is noble and warranted.  But the means?  Is that really the way to go about it?  Does the rule apply to other disease states also?  I mean, next we ought to have a car driving around with a license plate that reads C4NC3R, right?  How about HERP3S?  It doesn’t work, asshole.

You know what, fuck that guy.

 

 

Ten grand for a hubby.  So some account broad in some dopey agency in San Francisco can’t find a man and is putting up reward money?  How fucking original.  Read the self-satisfying tone in that letter.  How proud she is to have written something so “witty” and “interesting”.  Ugh, puke.  Everything about that letter screams “bullshit” and “go fuck yourself”, and not necessarily in that order.  If you claim to resemble Charlize Theron, and you live in a major metropolitan market (granted, it’s San Francisco, which means your typical choices in companionship are either “dipshit” or “smug douche”), you wanna tell me you can’t find a single asshole who’ll hook up with you?  How much of a nightmare must you be for no guy – NOT ONE! – to want to put up with your bullshit?  I tell you what, if Charlize Theron was a total bitch on toast and she wanted to go out with me (shut up, it could happen), I’d put in the effort.  You fucking bet I would.  You fucking bet YOU would.  Charlize fucking Theron, you guys!

So this dumb shit can’t meet anyone decent and she puts the burden – sorry, reward – on her idiot friends to hook her up?

You know what, go fuck yourself.

 

 

Me.  Short of blowing a shit load of cash I don’t have on a new 911, I can’t think of a more pathetic attempt at a midlife crisis than what I’m going through right now.  I bought myself a road bike (a two-wheeled equivalent to the hot convertible).  Next thing I know, I’m riding all over like I’ve got something to prove.  I’m trying to beat other riders up hills and shit.  Now all these obstacle course mud runs are all the rage, and I signed up for one.  At my fucking age, I could fucking die in one of these things – even if I did sign up for the most creampuff version of such races.  Which means I’ve now started running, too.  I fucking hate running.  I tried it once right after Hurricane Sandy and it was as stupid as it was painful.   Yet, despite my eternal loathing for running, I signed up for a creampuff running event and I’m now running on a almost a daily basis.  Because I can’t bear to show up to this event like a waddling schmuck.

The lengths I will go through to try and preserve some little youth I have left.  Like I’ve got shit to prove or something.  That’s a lot of horseshit, and I fucking hate myself for being this way.

You know what, fuck me.

 

 

Ring of Fire – The Event

 

CONTINUED FROM: Ring of Fire – The Lead-up

 

Three weeks passed, and Phaal Day was upon us.  I did my best not to psych myself out, but the imminent horror was hard to push aside.  We all gathered at the restaurant a little after 6pm – there were eight of us in total.  By the time I got there, everyone was already about two drinks in and feeling loose.  And why wouldn’t they – most of them were there to witness insanity, not dive into it.

I took my seat at the table, doing a piss poor joke masking my nerves.  I started to ask our server about the phaal challenge.  How big of a bowl of curry are we talking about here?  “16oz.  And you have to finish everything, including all the sauce.  You can order it with vegetables, tofu, chicken, lamb, goat, any of that.  And you have 30 minutes.”  Jeez.

I started running through the game plan in my head:

• I needed to finish this fast.  Get it down my throat and be done with it.
• That meant now minimal chewing.  So no chewy meats.  Tofu would be a good choice.  Fish a second.
• No rice, no naan, no starchy medium.  Again, I needed this to go down fast to minimize in-mouth burn time.  The more I have to chew, the longer I’m prolonging the burn.  Rice is bullshit.
• It’s 16oz of molten nightmare.  That’s two cups of food I’ve got to inject.  That means there’s no way I can afford to drink much to put the flames out.  Just shovel.
• There are two kinds of burn – the spices, and the temperature.  Why add to the spice burn with a temperature burn?  I would let the phaal cool off a bit before I dug in.

The three of us who were competing all sat in a row, with our backs against the wall.  As if before a firing squad.  Backed into a wall with no means of escape.  When our three bowls of phaal were laid in front of us, everyone’s iPhones came out and I felt like The Beatles at a press conference.  *flash* *flash* *flash* *flash*  The pictures hit Facebook before I even took my first bite.

The other two dug right into their piping hot curries.  I think one of them might’ve actually squealed a little, completely taken aback by just how searing hot the phaal was.  I held back.  Stirring the curry, watching the steam waft up, but careful not to inhale the sharp aroma too much – that shit’s like a spike up your nose and into your brain.

After letting it cool off a bit, I scooped up a spoonful and took a bite.  Oh, the pain.  The startling immediate pain.  Like eating thousands of shards of glass in the form of a thick gravy.

I kept working at the bowl in front of me.  The other two would stop to converse but I ignored them – I had a job to do.  I had a strategy and I was sticking to it.

I scooped, I ate, I scooped, I ate.  We had 30 minutes to polish this off.  About 10 minutes in, I was about halfway through my bowl.  My mouth felt like the bowels of hell, my throat was charred raw from swallowing the molten earth, and my stomach started to feel like I’d swallowed a hot brick right out of a kiln.

My server came by for a bit of encouragement.  “Actually, you’re doing quite well.”  He then handed me a small bowl of yogurt dressing.  Decorum be fucked, I took out the serving spoon and chugged the whole thing and asked for a second bowl of the cool dressing.

I looked over and my partners-in-crime were grinding to a slow halt.  10 minutes in, and they were looking done.  One was casually swirling around a piece of naan in her curry.  The other was taking his time carving the goat meat from the bones.  Neither seemed in a particular hurry.

I, too, was slowing down at this point.  I contemplated throwing in the towel.  On account that I now felt like the fiery member of the Fantastic Four.  This was too much.  My mind started to toggle back and forth – slow down and dull the pain, or power through and compound the pain?  I looked down at the bowl, and I realized that I maybe had about three spoonsful left.

I had come too far to turn back now.  I made the three scoops, and raised my arms in victory.  “Holy shit, you’re done?!”  “WHAAA?!!”  Oh my God!”  iPhone popped out again. *flash* *flash* *flash* *flash*

I asked the server over to evaluate.  I looked in the bowl, and I realized I hadn’t done a great job polishing the bowl.  A true competitor – and a goddamn sadist – would have scraped up the remaining bits of gravy.  My server gave a half-hearted approval of my feat.  Fuck it, I’m not tripping into the finish line, I’m marching right through it.  I grabbed my spoon, scraped up all the remaining curry in the bowl and let the burn in my mouth one last time.

Now, I’d fucking earned it.

I was the first to finish.  But as it turned out, I was the only one to finish.  That’s when I also learned that there was money on the table – $40 to a winner.  I grabbed the cabbage, then grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste that I’d packed and ran to the bathroom to clean the hellfire from my mouth.  I was a puddle of sweat, and I was in agony, but I’d done it.  I made phaal my bitch.

Now, just because I had hastily inhaled my meal didn’t mean that dinner was over.  Everyone was only just getting started on their chicken tikka masalas and their saag paneers and their rogan josh.  I sat there, with 16oz of pure grade, uncut curry hell in my stomach.

That’s when the staff showed up with my rewards.  A massive mug of lager and a certificate with my handwritten name on it.  Nice gesture, but easily the most pointless reward ever.  Where the fuck was I supposed to put that lager after I’d wolfed down all that blistering curry?

 

The pain wasn’t sudden but it was fast.

I excused myself to the bathroom, and that’s where I started to fall apart.  I started to feel woozy, nauseous, with a growing pain in my stomach.  I made a slight vurp, and quickly realized that hurling the contents of my stomach wasn’t an option.  That’d be going through the whole phaal consumption experience again, in reverse.

I stumbled back outside and crumpled into a chair, a big sweaty heap.  Which promptly freaked everyone the fuck out.  I have no recollection of how long I was out, but after a while, I got up, we walked out of the restaurant, poured into black limo that took us all back to the suburbs.

That’s where the full force of the phaal was realized.  I was soon to learn that the great lie ever told about phaal is that it’s an extremely hot curry.  What no talks about is what phaal does inside your body.

That night, I didn’t sleep a wink.  One might expect that I was kept awake because I was terrorizing my bathroom.  In fact, the bathroom offered no comfort.  The pain was buried deep in my gut.  Through the entire night, I was able to plot exactly where the curry was, as it made its slow trek through my innards.  The pounding pain just below my sternum slowly crept downward toward my navel.  There, wave after wave of dull, cramping agony ensured that there’d be no comfort anytime soon.  Sitting upright didn’t help.  Lying down didn’t help.  Laying on my side did nothing either.  Curled up like a ball?  Nothing.

I suddenly started think back to all the childbirthing classes the missus and I had taken just before our first kid.  The short, rapid breathes.  Ice chips, my kingdom for some ice chips!!  I was convinced that this was the closest any dude would ever get to experiencing labor pains.

When the night passed, and the sun came up, I had gotten no sleep.  Slumber was replaced with crippling agony and a million questions all centered around the same idea, “Why the fuck did I do that?!”

Why the fuck indeed.  I had just put some of the most hostile material created by mankind – highly questionable if it should’ve even been edible or not – into my body, paid the price for it, and for what?  For the satisfaction of having done it?  Exactly what part of it was satisfying?  I couldn’t even enjoy the beer I was rewarded at the end.

Now, 24 hours later, I still question whether or not it was a wise stunt.  Wise?  Well, most stunts aren’t exactly grounded in wisdom.  The best ones are grounded in some manner of insanity.  In this case, it sure was.  Mission accomplished, that case.

Now, if anybody needs me, I’m going to take a bath in a milk shake.

 

 

Boredroom lunch

 

Not to sound ungrateful, but if there’s working lunch at the office and we’re getting food brought in, can we please never ever have stupid fucking sandwiches again?  Fuck sandwiches.

Now, working lunches are a bit more commonplace in some industries than others.  I work in advertising, and this shit is a daily occurrence.  It may not happen literally every day for you, but you can bet there’s always some group stuck in some big important meeting in some big important conference room at midday, and lunch is being brought in so that everyone can keep working.  This shit’s important, no time to stop so you can pop out to grab some lunch, we gotta keep going, right?  Right.

So wheel that cart of sandwiches in, why don’t you.

You wouldn’t be out of place for thinking, What an ungrateful wank, he’s getting a free lunch and he’s bitching about it?  Yes, yes I am.

I’ve had it with sandwiches.

In the time that I started working in the late-‘90s, I’ve have witnessed some absolutely remarkable leaps of progress all around me, in and around the workplace.  Snail mail letters and fax machines got replaced with email, the internet become far more indispensible than being just for porn, I can have a virtual face-to-face meeting with people in Sydney right from my office in New York, and I can sign and authorize shit with a virtual signature.  Fucking power moves.

Meanwhile, the working lunch has remained largely unchanged for decades.  The working lunch is like Little Richard, who still looks and sounds like he did 60 years ago.  It’s always the same, isn’t it.  Sandwiches.  A big predictable platter of sandwiches.

I’VE BEEN EATING THE SAME FUCKING SANDWICH FOR 15 YEARS!!! 

This is exponentially more preposterous for those of us who work in large cities, like New York or San Francisco, where there are literally hundreds of other food options out there.  I shit you not: there are literally 40 different food joints – restaurants, delis, food trucks, you name it – within a 2-block radius of my office.  It almost doesn’t matter where I’ve worked, past or present – there’s always been an overwhelming number of places from which to order food (the one exception is probably Times Square – those of you unfortunate enough to work in Times Square are fucked for edible options, sorry).

I can get tacos, mofongo, pho, curry, BBQ and fuck knows any number of other types of food within 5 minutes of my office, and that’s not an exaggeration.  If you can’t be arsed to walk the 5 minutes, every single one of these places will deliver to your office (because that’s just the sort of awfully civilized place New York is.)  All the choice, all the variety!

So why the fuck am I still eating goddamn sandwiches in the conference room?

This bears repeating: fuck sandwiches.  How many turkey and cheese on Kaiser rolls can one eat in a lifetime?  How many ham and cheese sandwiches can you fucking put up with?  Regardless of whether it’s turkey or ham or salami, they taste like nothing and you can only tell them apart by color (if you’re lucky).  All the cheese slices have the same consistency and blandness, they’re all shit anyway.  The rolls are hard as fuck by the time the sandwiches show up.  And as if to impress you, they always stick a bunch of wraps in the platter as well.  Fuck you and your fucking wraps.   You’re not fooling me with your fucking wraps.  Don’t pretend to be healthy or fancy with your stupid wraps.  They’re just as calorific and bland as the accompanying sandwich culprits. Wraps are just sandwiches shaped like penises, a big fuck you to your working lunch.

And these pathetic sandwiches and wraps never just show up on a platter and that’s it.  Some overenthusiastic assistant is always trying to impress you by ordering them with offending partners-in-crime.  It’s like some horrible Will Smith movie – you can always count on his dumb kid showing up to further ruin your shit.

That’s where the large bowl of salad comes in.  Actually, it’s always two bowls of salad, isn’t it.  You’ve got your obligatory plastic bowl of unappetizing lettuce that just stares at you, and right next to it is some toxic bowl of lumpy pasta salad.  Fuck you and your salads.

And the thing is, this whole mockery of a meal – the unimaginative sandwiches, the ritualistic salads – they’re always cold.  I’m so fucking sick of cold lunches.  Even when they try and mix up the sandwiches with a panini or whatever the fuck, it still gets to you cold.  If I want a cold meal, I’d be thrilled with a bowl of cereal, I really would.  Not your goddamn sandwiches.

If I’m giving up my right to a lunch of my choosing, then the least you could do is provide me with a lunch that is slightly more motivating than a fucking cold ham and cheese sandwich.  Because that’s bullshit.

 

It’s time we talked about the durian

A few times a year, I become really “ethnic”.  That is to say, for a variety of reasons, I get into a phase where I really – and I mean really – embrace my Chinese heritage and my cultural upbringing.  Granted, I’m fairly selective in how I embrace my heritage.  Last September, I wrote a blog post that showed that I’m clearly not totally cool with my country of origin, and fuck hell, did I ever get a haterade bath for that post.

But this isn’t about Malaysia.  This is about being a Chinese person who grew up in Malaysia.  It’s is an entirely – and uniquely – different experience from any other Chinese person growing up anywhere else in the world.  Which is to say that it’s no different from an Irish person growing up in Boston having an entirely different upbringing from someone growing up in Dublin.

So anyway, about my occasional cultural embrace.  The only time I can seen reliably “throwing the switch” is during the Chinese New Year.  This is my Thanksgiving, Christmas, and St. Patrick’s Day celebration all rolled into some stir-fried holiday that goes on for 15 days.  Sure, there are many holiday customs I’ll go through each year, but the one thing I always do also – which has absolutely fuck-all to do with the Chinese New Year – is buy the biggest durian and can find and fucking go to town on it.

Whatwhatwhat?

The durian.  It’s a fruit.  Proudly labeled the “King Of The Fruits”, which is a fucking stupid label.  Because, really – what the fuck does that even really mean….

In any case, here’s the durian I bought last week.

Except, the durian is more than a fruit.  It’s a conundrum encased in a paradoxical shell of sensory fuck-you-upness.  The durian has been, is, and always will be more than just another fruit.

I mean, look at it.  IT’S COVERED IN HORRIFYING, DEADLY SPIKES.  It’s so deadly it needs to be restrained in a net.  It’s Charlton Heston in Planet Of The Apes.  Like the lobster, who was the fuckwit who first looked at the durian and thought, “I’ve got to eat that”?  You’ve got to be mental to think that that’s something you should eat.  It grows in the tropical rainforest climate, and it doesn’t grow close the ground like a pineapple does – oh no, this fucking thing hangs from high up in the tree and, and like most other fruit, bombs to the ground when ripe.  Imagine that shit in free fall right into your goddamn head.  This is Mother Nature’s quintessential Fuck You Fruit.

So when you get a fruit that’s covered in lethal spikes, and you’ve just got to get to the core of its forbidden treasure within, you don’t just ask politely.  That outer layer doesn’t just peel back nicely for you.  Fuck that, you know what you do – you fucking take a cleaver to the thing.  That’s right, a goddamn cleaver.  I’m not just doing this for dramatic effect, mind you.  Growing up, this is the only way I’ve ever seen anyone open up a durian – with a couple of a precise hacks of the cleaver.  This fruit requires boldness.

Once you make gash at the bottom of the fruit, you stick your fingers in there and rip that sumbitch open.  That’s right, nothing’s subtle about the durian.  It makes you fucking work for what’s inside.

And when you open it up…

You’re greeted with yellow lumps of soft, delicate “pillows”.  There’s no other way to describe the edible insides.  Inside each of these lumps is a small chestnut-sized seed.  That yellow goodness is what you eat.

And since taste comes largely from your olfactory senses, I haven’t even gotten to one of the most ridiculous things about the durian.

The smell.

If there is something on this earth that is more polarizing than the smell of a durian, I haven’t encountered it.  Anything you can think of that’s polarizing – the U.S. president, EDM, assault weapons, Anne Hathaway, you name it – forget it, they’re all child’s play compared to the sort of reactions the durian elicits.  No one in the history of time has ever tried a durian and said, “meh.”  No, it’s usually squarely between “That is so sweet and heavenly I think I just saw cherubs descend from skies to paint the earth with rainbows” (the durian does not have hallucinogenic qualities as far as I know) and “Holy motherfuck, what the FUCK is that, it’s like Satan’s wet farts.”  No one’s ever reacted that way to Anne Hathaway.

I wish there was a scientific explanation for this – and maybe there is, and I just can’t be arsed to look for it.  I am firmly in the camp of those who think that there is nothing sweeter in the world than durian.  Nothing.  Not truffles, not my kids, not Kate Upton, nothing.  For me, the durian transcends earthly explanation.  It boggles my mind that something that tastes and smells so mind-blowingly amazing can exist without ripping a massive black hole in the universe.

Then there are those who think that the durian is proof that the devil exists because it is his festering hemorrhoid littered on this earth.  Those people would be wrong, and those people are stupid.

And here, I’ve saved the very best bit for last.  If you can wrap your head around this fucked up fruit at this point, then you’ll love this part – you can’t have alcohol when you eat durian “because you’ll die”.  This fucking thing will KILL YOU.  Shit, even the infamous fugu sushi doesn’t have any booze restrictions on it.  Not so with the durian.  At least that’s the unwritten rule that EVERYONE abides by when they eat durian.  You just don’t fuck around with that rule when you’re eating durian.  You’ve gotta make sure there’s no alcohol in your system before or after you eat it.  Eat it right, or you die!  Truth is, no one really knows if there’s any shred of truth to this, but to date, I don’t know anyone who’s been willing to put this to the test.  I’ve done a lot of stupid things, but I ain’t doin’ that.  Because that’d be a pretty fucking stupid way to die.  “The idiot knew he wasn’t supposed to booze it up with the durian, but he did, and now he’s fucking dead.”  That’d make for a horrible epitaph.

Durian = no booze, you guys.

Some of you are gonna read this and think, why the fuck is this dipshit writing about some goddamn fruit that sounds like a cancerous sphincter?  Because those of you who haven’t tried durian are gonna lack the balls to try something that could – as track records go – turn out to be the most glorious thing you’ve ever tasted.  But no, you’re gonna puss out.  And that’s going to be fucking shame.

Grow a pair, eat a durian.

 

 

12 things to leave behind in 2012

 

 

The word “bespoke.”  I was in a bar last week that boasted “custom bespoke cocktails.”  First of all, way to be redundant.  Second, what the fuck is a bespoke cocktail?  By definition, that a poncy way of saying “we’ll mix whatever the hell you want.”  In which case, that’s like, you know, EVERY BAR.  Fuuuuuck yooooouuuuu.

“Curate” is another word.  Holy fuck is this word thoroughly misappropriated.  Almost as bad as “diva” was.  Museums and art galleries only, if that.  You don’t get to fucking curate anything else.  A butcher is not a meat curator, a DJ is not a music curator, you don’t curate Twitter feeds, none of you assholes are curators in any capacity.  Please fuck off with the curating.

“Occupy” anything.  Here’s a bonus fuck you to the assholes who wasted their meaningless lives about a year ago trying to picket Wall Street.  A lot of good that did, you fuckwads.  No one gave a shit then, and fewer than no one give a shit today.  But what’s worse is somehow this “occupy” term taking on a whole new meaning for which it was never intended.  Don’t believe me?  Look at this shit on the left.

Lena Dunham.  Holy shit, you are SUCH a bore.  If Lena Dunham is to be cultural milestone, then 2012 is the year of celebrating mediocrity.  You’re not funny, you’re not interesting, how the fuck you finagled million dollar deals out of tepid, borings ideas that no one gives a shit about is beyond me.  And frankly, I’m jealous as fuck.  Because no one’s giving me million dollar deals for any my stupid ideas.  Oh, that’s right, I don’t have hyperartistic celebrity parents like you, you charlatan.  Ugh, enough with this dummy.

Instagram is all its faux filtered tilt-shift bullshit glory.  If someone took away Instagram tomorrow, would you miss it?  Would you?  I know if someone took away my Facebook or Twitter, I’d be fucking pissed.  But Instagram?  Who gives a shit.  Instagram did one thing only – they ability to share filtered, tilt-shifted photos.  Sharing?  Any number of other platforms can do that.  Shitty filters and fake tild-shift effects?  Every other camera app can do that now.  So what’s the value of keeping Instagram around?  And they’ve now got some new policy where they can sell my photos?  Fuck that.  I just deleted my account.

Plastic mini skateboards.  I got my elder kid a skateboard last year.  It was brilliant – a proper skateboard with a maple deck, trucks, big bearing wheels, the lot.  Then these stupid vinyl mini-skateboards show up all over the city. All commandeered by some hipster douchebag with a gnarly beard.  It takes every fiber of my being not to throw an empty Starbucks cup in front of one of these douchebags just so see him fly and eat some curb.  Fuck off with these little skateboards, you look ridiculous.

Homeland.  If there’s one thing I can reliably count on each Monday, it’s that my Twitter feed and my Facebook page will be completely inundated with comments about fucking Homeland.  “ZOMG!!  Homeland is the greeaaatest!!!!”  “WTF!  Homeland jumped the shark!!”  I have never seen the show and at this point, I never want to.  It may be a good show, but I’ll never know for real because you fuckers have ruined it by being completely incapable of not yammering about it all day and night.

Dubstep.  Thank you all for already killing this off.  Skrillex can now go back to pumping gas in the Valley.

That Gangnam guy.  Please, PLEASE, PLEASE go away.  I hope someone takes him across the border and straps him to one of Kim Jong Un’s “weather rockets.”

YOLO.  A few years ago, when I was in the market for my first paddleboard, I nearly bought one that was Yolo brand.  Thank fuck I didn’t or I’d have to set on fire, gather up the ashes, then set it on fire again just to be sure.  If anyone ever uses the phrase YOLO to you, verbally or in writing, no judge would ever convict if you decided to stab ‘em with a rusty spoon.

Camera phone self-portraits in the mirror.  It’s the holding of the phone that’s so, so stupid.  If you must use your camera phone to take pictures of yourself, make sure it’s dick shots only (Brett Favre can help if you’re not sure).  No more self-portraits.  And I’m not even going to get into doing with iPads.

Moustaches.  I don’t just mean in November (although that can fuck off, too, because all that Movember bullshit is prejudiced against those of us who can refrain from shaving for two months and still look like cantaloupes).  I mean year-round.  Hipster moustaches, moustache ink on index fingers, glue-on stashes, all of it.  A follicle tuft positioned between your upper lip and your nostrils is hardly a thing that needs to be celebrated, so please fuck off.  Moustaches on Instagram are the fucking worst.

 

Bang bang: no answers, just more questions

This morning – probably like countless other parents around – I woke up feeling a sense of dread. Because we decided last night that we needed to tell our kids about Newtown. My kids are surrounded by a lot of pint-sized know-it-alls, and I’ll be damned if some other kid is going to feed my kids with all sorts of wild and horrific stories about the Newtown shooting. Because that’s what kids do. Kids have no governor. No, my kids are going to learn about this on my terms, on my time.

The fact that I have to do something like this…

24 hours after the fact, I’m just as dumb and numb about the Newtown incident as I was when first heard about it. Probably ’cause no one has any proper facts, still. What everyone seems to have, on other hand, is some rabid opinions – one way or another – about gun control. That, and mental illness being an underserved condition. But the loudest arguments have been about gun control.

Guns, guns, guns.

You know what’s awesome about guns? The fact that you squeeze a little pin on end of it, and something loud and destructive happens on the other end of the barrel. NOTHING else in the world operates that way. Not my bicycle, not my iPod, not my microwave (unless you count the time I didn’t realize that I’d left some foil my chicken leftovers), none of it. I’ll admit – I’m fascinated by guns. My kids have a shit ton of Nerf guns, and I squirrel away a BB gun to help deter herds of possum, raccoons, and skunks that overrun my backyard all year round. Yay, guns.

But do I need them? Not personally, I actually mean “we” as a larger societal collective. Before you roll your eyes about this being some anti-gun rhetoric, relax I’m not going to do that – truth is, I’m not properly-versed to take a side definitively. What I have an abundance of, however, are questions.

First thing I did was look up what the hell the Second Amendment actually says: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” according to the National Archive. I don’t know these things off the top of my head because I didn’t grow up in this country. “Militia”? WTF? I didn’t know that was part of the statement. How the hell did we get from militia use to personal ownership of guns for personal defense and recreation? Well, I did a bit more reading, trying to follow the breadcrumbs, and it seems that the evolutionary interpretation of the Second Amendment upheld by various courts over time takes more twists and turns than the entire series of Lost.

Be that as it may, let’s just take the reality today for what it is – the fact that, quite simply, just about anyone has the ability drive down to your local Walmart, fill out some paperwork, hand some currency to the cashier, then come home with a shiny new gun.

One of my ill-informed and completely non-rhetorical questions here is, just because we can, do we need to? Just because I can own a gun, do I NEED to own one? Typically the first response from gun advocates when challenged about gun ownership is “because it’s my inalienable right.” Because I can. That’s a pretty lousy reason to ever do anything. I can eat every single piece of bacon at a Vegas buffet because I can, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Every time I hear “because I can” I think of the scene in Prometheus in which Holloway and David exchange thoughts on creation and purpose:

There HAS to be a grander purpose for gun ownership. And of course there are plenty. Self protection, hunting, recreation, the list goes on, and on. When I was in Arizona for a TV shoot, so many members of our production crew ‘fessed that they packed heat and that they always have either a handgun or a shotgun in their cars. They are absolutely steadfast in their belief that Arizona’s so fucked up that if they didn’t have these guns to protect themselves – one cameraman puts all his gear on top of wooden pallets in the back of his SUV so that he can easily and discreetly slide his shotgun under the wooden pallet – they’d constantly be mugged or might even be killed. When I asked, not a single one of them have ever had to fire a single round in self-defense.

How about hunting and recreation? Shit, if we don’t go deer hunting, we’re going to get overrun by these massive antlered rodents. To some degree, I get that. But do we need use high-powered automatic rifles to get the job done? Oh, that Uzi’s not for deer, but for your giggles down at the firing range? I play video games, so I get the thrill of unloading several thousand rounds into various targets. But what’s the thrill worth to you? In order for you to have (presumably responsible) fun with your high-tech ballistic contraption, are you prepared to have these same guns just easily make their way into the hands of less responsible individuals who use them for horrific outcomes?

Hey, maybe it’s not about taking away guns altogether. Is a compromise possible? I know this probably can’t apply to the self protection argument, but what if guns were treated like the Ferrari FXX? When you buy a Ferrari FXX (hah!), you’re not allowed to drive it home and keep it in your garage. Rather, it’s kept at the Ferrari factory, but you get to use it anytime you want. The car is carefully maintained, and its access is limited only to you. Could that work? Sporting weapons can only be kept and safeguarded at massively secure facilities in which they’re perfectly legal to use?

And maybe Chris Rock’s eerily prophetic bit about gun control from “Bigger & Blacker” has a good idea in it. Gun control? Ppffftttt! Fuck that. Bullet control. It’d be like the razor marketing strategy. Here’s a gun for $20. Bullets? Like Chris Rock said, $5,000 apiece. I’m being serious here – what if we made bullets a hundred times more expensive? If you’re buying ammo for sporting purposes, it’d make you a hell of a better shot, I guaranfuckingtee you. Detractors would argue that that would mean that only rich people can own guns. Fine, I’d be totally cool if guns were only owned by the likes of Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, or Mark Zuckerberg. Those assholes couldn’t hit you if you were standing 5 feet in front of them.

I guess what I’m trying to figure out here is if the ability to freely own and use a gun is so fucking vital to an individual, that events like Newtown, the Oregon mall, Gabby Giffords, and countless other acts of gun violence are acceptable collateral damage? Again, that’s not a rhetorical question – I genuinely want to know.  Does the preservation of an individual’s right far outweigh the collective welfare of the greater mass? Me me me me me me. If there have been enough examples showing a correlation between the easy procurement of personal artillery and the devastating outcomes like these fucking insane shootings, is that not enough for you to put aside your individual prerogative for the greater good? In my freshman year in college, I learned that a civil society only works when we are all willing to give up a little bit of our individual freedom for the greater collective, and entrust that right to some order that regulates that civility. As a society we don’t always get to do whatever the fuck we want.  Like stockpiling Liberia’s arsenal in your basement.

Seeking a different plan for gun control probably won’t be perfect either. But the current plan is far from perfect. In fact, look at where it’s gotten us. If it worked better, I wouldn’t feel the need to write all this. We can do better. Even if that means, for the greater good, maybe your access to the guns you love are far more restrictive. So maybe you can’t keep an arsenal at home. Maybe this means you won’t be able to get that shiny new Glock for your birthday. Big fucking deal, there are bigger catastrophes in the world. You know, like Newtown.

Because we owe this to Newtown.