March 26, 2004
This doesn't happen often, but my esteemed colleague is (I believe unintentionally) obfuscating the reality behind the upcoming election and I feel like I have to set the record straight. I like you and I want you to make an informed decision and know the situation you're in and have the facts within your grasp. So here it is.
The only issue for you to consider when you cast your ballot this November is the apocalypse. Everything else is bullshit. If you elect George W. Bush again, he will do his damndest and use every resource at his disposal to bring about Armageddon during or before the year 2008. John Kerry, on the other hand, will try to hold off the inevitable rending of the world for another four years.
So you have to decide, and start thinking now because this will require a lot of thought, whether you're pro-apocalypse or anti-apocalypse. Not just the idea of the apocalypse - pretty much everyone agrees that's fucking awesome. You stick the end of the world in any movie, novel, or concept album and it almost automatically becomes at least 150% better. I'm sure even John Kerry secretly relishes the thought of the masses of humanity grovelling in pain, as their dark-hearted master finally reclaims his majestic fiery throne and lays waste to everything they've bled the pitiful years of their lives away on by merely extending his cosmic middle minger.
But that doesn't make you pro-apocalypse. You might think Pulp Fiction is about the best movie ever made that does not include the end of the world (and you wouldn't be far from the truth), but your affinity for bloody screen violence and the word "motherfucker" says next to nothing about how prepared you are to actually take or witness the taking of another human life. If you vote pro-apocalypse, you are going to sit in the lake of fire. You are going to know what your loved ones, your beautiful wife and darling children, look like without their skin. You're going to hear them screaming in pain that transcends mere words and watch the sum total of your life melt away at the crash of a comet or the tidal wave of a bloody sea. The entirety of human civilzation will dissolve in the wrath of an unsymapthetic, unreasonable and unimaginably powerful force from which there is no refuge. Humanity will pass into nothingness, no memory remaining of its history, achievements, or posessions, and on what will be left in its wake I cannot even begin to speculate.
I am not a Christian and I don't advocate any specific iteration of the apocalypse. I don't believe God is a necessary component of the event, and I am just as happy with nuclear devastation, alien invasion, or a cosmic collision as I am with the idea of truly personified divine warfare on the human race. I do, however, recommed you pick up a bible and savor the incomprehensible majesty of Revelations. That is the kind of shit we are talking about and you will choose your allegience to it or rebellion against it.
If you, like Cary and I, are fully prepared to see such things come to pass, to flush our species and our reality down the evolutionary toilet, then by all means vote Bush. If, however, the idea gives you pause, if you feel there's a chance you might not enjoy living in the midst of humanity's final ruinous hours, then you might want to rethink that decision.
As for me, I'm definitely voting Democrat this election. Why? Because those of us in the know are aware that George Bush will not succeed. He will try but inevitably fail. The great things he aspires to are not written in his destiny. As the Mayans predicted, the apocalypse will not come about until 2012 - the year Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected President.
- Lieb
The only issue for you to consider when you cast your ballot this November is the apocalypse. Everything else is bullshit. If you elect George W. Bush again, he will do his damndest and use every resource at his disposal to bring about Armageddon during or before the year 2008. John Kerry, on the other hand, will try to hold off the inevitable rending of the world for another four years.
So you have to decide, and start thinking now because this will require a lot of thought, whether you're pro-apocalypse or anti-apocalypse. Not just the idea of the apocalypse - pretty much everyone agrees that's fucking awesome. You stick the end of the world in any movie, novel, or concept album and it almost automatically becomes at least 150% better. I'm sure even John Kerry secretly relishes the thought of the masses of humanity grovelling in pain, as their dark-hearted master finally reclaims his majestic fiery throne and lays waste to everything they've bled the pitiful years of their lives away on by merely extending his cosmic middle minger.
But that doesn't make you pro-apocalypse. You might think Pulp Fiction is about the best movie ever made that does not include the end of the world (and you wouldn't be far from the truth), but your affinity for bloody screen violence and the word "motherfucker" says next to nothing about how prepared you are to actually take or witness the taking of another human life. If you vote pro-apocalypse, you are going to sit in the lake of fire. You are going to know what your loved ones, your beautiful wife and darling children, look like without their skin. You're going to hear them screaming in pain that transcends mere words and watch the sum total of your life melt away at the crash of a comet or the tidal wave of a bloody sea. The entirety of human civilzation will dissolve in the wrath of an unsymapthetic, unreasonable and unimaginably powerful force from which there is no refuge. Humanity will pass into nothingness, no memory remaining of its history, achievements, or posessions, and on what will be left in its wake I cannot even begin to speculate.
I am not a Christian and I don't advocate any specific iteration of the apocalypse. I don't believe God is a necessary component of the event, and I am just as happy with nuclear devastation, alien invasion, or a cosmic collision as I am with the idea of truly personified divine warfare on the human race. I do, however, recommed you pick up a bible and savor the incomprehensible majesty of Revelations. That is the kind of shit we are talking about and you will choose your allegience to it or rebellion against it.
If you, like Cary and I, are fully prepared to see such things come to pass, to flush our species and our reality down the evolutionary toilet, then by all means vote Bush. If, however, the idea gives you pause, if you feel there's a chance you might not enjoy living in the midst of humanity's final ruinous hours, then you might want to rethink that decision.
As for me, I'm definitely voting Democrat this election. Why? Because those of us in the know are aware that George Bush will not succeed. He will try but inevitably fail. The great things he aspires to are not written in his destiny. As the Mayans predicted, the apocalypse will not come about until 2012 - the year Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected President.
- Lieb
March 11, 2004
- Lieb
March 04, 2004
Fuck your kids.
Seriously. I try to keep things in perspective, but shit like this just makes my blood boil.
I don't hate kids. I actually kind of like them. Kids are cool. I don't have any and I doubt I ever will, and if you think that makes my opinion on the matter irrelevant, well, okay then (also: fuck you). The point is I'm not against kids and I don't hate people with kids and I understand at least a little the desire to protect them and not have them grow up to be mass-murdering psycopaths. All right.
You know what's not cool, though? All this shit you keep trying to do to "protect" your kids. Seriously, I have NEVER heard a remotely cogent argument for internet filters or anti-pornography statutes or any thinly-veiled attempt at censorship trying to get by under the smokescreen of Decency that didn't begin with "My kids shouldn't." Please try to understand - I don't care about your kids.
Look. I hate to break it to you, but you live in the world. When you stray off your property line, in reality or in the weird new virtual cyberspacy way we can do that now, all bets are off. You can't expect the big wide world to conform to your esoteric standards of "decency" or whatever the fuck. I mean come on, man. Do you really think seeing a boob is going to destroy your kids' psyche? When was the first time you saw some girl's tit or found out what a penis looks like? Can I assume 16? 17? I mean maybe your parents were religious or something, I don't know, but I'm betting it was around then. Are you dead? Crippled for life? Uncontrollably emotionally disturbed? I sure as shit hope not because you went and had kids of your own, and that kind of makes you a fucking asshole, doesn't it? Ha ha, I'm just playin'. I know you're all right. That's the point. Knowing what people look like naked - unbelievable, i know - doesn't instantaneously ruin your brain. Even seeing THE ANAL will not transform your children into axe-wielding murderers or rapists. I know you have all these weird hangups about different subjects and want to expose them "when the time is right." You just don't seem to realize how amazingly unrealistic that is. You think life is going to wait until you're ready to show your kids what death is? You think they're not going to be walking home from school and see someone get crushed to pulp in a car crash, or find some mutilated cat corpse on the side of the road and run home in tears? Maybe, maybe not. You think they're not going to see two dogs humping in someone's backyard or find an issue of Hustler under their friend's dad's bed before you feel up to having "The Talk?" Maybe, maybe not, although I can absolutely assure you your kids have already heard and repeated every curse word you've ever used and then some. Best case scenario, you do manage to avoid having them exposed to anything remotely visceral and they'll get their shocks in small doses starting in their early 20s, when they realize how sheltered and naive they've been all their lives. Then they'll either get curious and broaden their perspectives a little, or they'll grow up to be you.
Now, take it easy. I'm not trying to dictate your opinions. You're more than welcome to make your own and I encourage you to exercise that right as much as possible. What's more, you can teach your kids whatever you want. I'm certainly not trying to tell anyone how to parent, you know? You can tell them sex is dirty and convince them that baby Jesus cries each time they have a filthy orgasm for all I care. But you know what? That's not the way everyone else works. Many of us do realize that, scientfically, naked people and sex do not induce insanity. Neither do curse words. You don't have to agree with or believe that, but you had better fucking pick up on the fact that the world is a real thing full of real people who are free to not give a damn about what you or your kids see and hear while you're not in your house. Does that make it seem like the world is an evil place, full of sin and dirtiness?
Good. IT IS. WAKE THE FUCK UP. You can have any opinion of it you like, but you damn well better recognize what's going on. Because just as you have the right to say and think whatever you like about whatever you like, every other one of us does too. And as we are not required to give a rat's ass about your opinions on what is or is not "appropriate" for your kids, we don't. We reeeeaaalllly don't. You do not get to segregate us, our art, our writing, our music, or our fucking grocery lists into catergories like "decent" and "indecent." I'm not going to just sit here while you try to determine for me and everyone around me what is acceptable speech. You don't like porno? Fine, don't look at it. Oh, but your 9-year old uses the library and might see someone looking at a "questionably" naked woman, whether it be hotnudesluts4u.com or a Rembrandt. One good question is, what's stopping him from just going and getting a book on sex, or a National Geographic for that matter? A better question is, what the fuck is he doing in the library unsupervised anyway? Probably the best question is, though, what's next? Written erotica? Stories with "bad" words in them? The website of Planned Parenthood? I don't know where you actually intend this to stop and I'm scared to find out. All the bad words ever written, all the terrors and horrors of the world are freely available in book form to anyone who can get themselves to a public library, but thankfully nobody yet needs written authorization to sit down in one and blow their minds wide open. And so, you do not get to assign us designated free-speech zones where we can actually excercise our Constitutional right to learn whatever we can and say what we really fucking think or feel about it. That's the world. You don't have to like it and you surely don't have to be a part of it. If you want to scurry like a little mouse to work and the Safeway and Carnegie Hall to see fat fucking Pavarotti sing about the purity of love, trying to avoid the corrupting influence of other people, by all means be my guest. You get to make that choice for yourself and so do I.
I know it's hard to raise kids. I know you're a working parent with a 13-year old latchkey son and you can't be there all the time. I'm sorry. The answers are not easy. Here's some things you should consider, though. If you're not prepared to hear people singing about any subject they feel like putting to music, do not buy a radio. If you're not prepared to potentially experiece visual representations of the full spectrum of life and the human imagination, do not buy a TV. If you're not prepared to experience pretty much everything in the audiovisual realm in a completely decentralized way, PLEASE do not buy a fucking computer. Do not connect yourself to the world and expect it to dance for you. Because you don't need these things, not really, and just because you buy them does not put the world under an obligation to negotiate with your weird individual concept of morality. I know that might not agree with you, and I fully support your inclination to shut out the parts you don't want. We all do that. Most of us use the "off" button instead of a lawsuit, but we all do and it's something you probably want to do it for yourself and your children. That's fine with me, it's your kid after all. But you know what? YOU GAVE BIRTH TO IT. That's a fucking big-ass responsibility, bigger than any I can really think of off the top of my head. I don't care what your reasons were, that's not my business. I'm just saying - I don't want to hear about it. You fucked. You had the kid. Tell me why it's okay to say, "Yo, I know I took on this huge-ass burden but seriously, I had no idea what I was getting into. Is it cool if I just abdicate some of that right now? I mean everyone else can just change the way they live and think so I don't have so much to worry about." Because that's what you're saying to me when you start fucking with my life in order to make raising your kids easier. And I'm so, so tired of it. You want to cut yourself off from the rest of society? Good. It's going to be hard. It SHOULD be hard. Because the rest of us have a right to speak freely. We shouldn't have to shout to be heard and we shouldn't be relegated to passing notes under the teacher's nose. If you don't want to listen, go home. Go home and sit in the dark for all I care. Just don't break up my party, because if you can't at least TRY to be cool with your neighbors instead of litigating them into shutting up, you're not fucking invited.
I'm trying to be reasonable here. It's probably not coming across that way, but I am trying. And I'm not hard-hearted. I'm not against parents, I'm really not. I know it's tough and I do want to help. I'm all for, like, welfare for low-income families. Shit, I'm poor. It sucks! I don't want anybody's kid to go hungry. And although I think public school is shit, I'm all about people getting a good education. Everybody! I'm not trying to bust anyone here. But do you really expect me to care whether your kid sees a tit on TV or not? I mean, do you seriously expect me to take that into consideration when I'm deciding whether to accept or reject our most important and irreplacable Constitutional principle? "Well, personally I'm all for freedom of expression, but you know, people are raising kids all over the country and since I don't have one I guess they know better." You gotta be fucking kidding me, man. I'm not going to put a federal judge in the position of determining whether the stuff I get to see and hear is just smut or has "value." Because that's completely irrelevant. Free speech is free speech. It's not "free speech, as long as it's important."
Bottom line: you can have your kids. Rock on with that. You can raise them any way you like and you decide what you think they should hear and see and do after school. You can shield them from the world as best as you possibly can, if that's your whim. You can home school them and shut them in the house every second of the day and make them wear blinders on their trips to the market so they don't see anything besides their shoes and the carton of milk and the cashier the whole trip there and back. Your business, not mine. But - and this is a big one - it is not, and will nevereverevereverEVERevereververNEVER be my responsibility to make the job of shielding your kids from the world one tiny little iota easier for you. You want to wall yourself off from the world? Do it on your own time, and please please do not fuck with me in the process. The world is not going to block itself for your convenience.
Fair?
- Lieb
Seriously. I try to keep things in perspective, but shit like this just makes my blood boil.
I don't hate kids. I actually kind of like them. Kids are cool. I don't have any and I doubt I ever will, and if you think that makes my opinion on the matter irrelevant, well, okay then (also: fuck you). The point is I'm not against kids and I don't hate people with kids and I understand at least a little the desire to protect them and not have them grow up to be mass-murdering psycopaths. All right.
You know what's not cool, though? All this shit you keep trying to do to "protect" your kids. Seriously, I have NEVER heard a remotely cogent argument for internet filters or anti-pornography statutes or any thinly-veiled attempt at censorship trying to get by under the smokescreen of Decency that didn't begin with "My kids shouldn't." Please try to understand - I don't care about your kids.
Look. I hate to break it to you, but you live in the world. When you stray off your property line, in reality or in the weird new virtual cyberspacy way we can do that now, all bets are off. You can't expect the big wide world to conform to your esoteric standards of "decency" or whatever the fuck. I mean come on, man. Do you really think seeing a boob is going to destroy your kids' psyche? When was the first time you saw some girl's tit or found out what a penis looks like? Can I assume 16? 17? I mean maybe your parents were religious or something, I don't know, but I'm betting it was around then. Are you dead? Crippled for life? Uncontrollably emotionally disturbed? I sure as shit hope not because you went and had kids of your own, and that kind of makes you a fucking asshole, doesn't it? Ha ha, I'm just playin'. I know you're all right. That's the point. Knowing what people look like naked - unbelievable, i know - doesn't instantaneously ruin your brain. Even seeing THE ANAL will not transform your children into axe-wielding murderers or rapists. I know you have all these weird hangups about different subjects and want to expose them "when the time is right." You just don't seem to realize how amazingly unrealistic that is. You think life is going to wait until you're ready to show your kids what death is? You think they're not going to be walking home from school and see someone get crushed to pulp in a car crash, or find some mutilated cat corpse on the side of the road and run home in tears? Maybe, maybe not. You think they're not going to see two dogs humping in someone's backyard or find an issue of Hustler under their friend's dad's bed before you feel up to having "The Talk?" Maybe, maybe not, although I can absolutely assure you your kids have already heard and repeated every curse word you've ever used and then some. Best case scenario, you do manage to avoid having them exposed to anything remotely visceral and they'll get their shocks in small doses starting in their early 20s, when they realize how sheltered and naive they've been all their lives. Then they'll either get curious and broaden their perspectives a little, or they'll grow up to be you.
Now, take it easy. I'm not trying to dictate your opinions. You're more than welcome to make your own and I encourage you to exercise that right as much as possible. What's more, you can teach your kids whatever you want. I'm certainly not trying to tell anyone how to parent, you know? You can tell them sex is dirty and convince them that baby Jesus cries each time they have a filthy orgasm for all I care. But you know what? That's not the way everyone else works. Many of us do realize that, scientfically, naked people and sex do not induce insanity. Neither do curse words. You don't have to agree with or believe that, but you had better fucking pick up on the fact that the world is a real thing full of real people who are free to not give a damn about what you or your kids see and hear while you're not in your house. Does that make it seem like the world is an evil place, full of sin and dirtiness?
Good. IT IS. WAKE THE FUCK UP. You can have any opinion of it you like, but you damn well better recognize what's going on. Because just as you have the right to say and think whatever you like about whatever you like, every other one of us does too. And as we are not required to give a rat's ass about your opinions on what is or is not "appropriate" for your kids, we don't. We reeeeaaalllly don't. You do not get to segregate us, our art, our writing, our music, or our fucking grocery lists into catergories like "decent" and "indecent." I'm not going to just sit here while you try to determine for me and everyone around me what is acceptable speech. You don't like porno? Fine, don't look at it. Oh, but your 9-year old uses the library and might see someone looking at a "questionably" naked woman, whether it be hotnudesluts4u.com or a Rembrandt. One good question is, what's stopping him from just going and getting a book on sex, or a National Geographic for that matter? A better question is, what the fuck is he doing in the library unsupervised anyway? Probably the best question is, though, what's next? Written erotica? Stories with "bad" words in them? The website of Planned Parenthood? I don't know where you actually intend this to stop and I'm scared to find out. All the bad words ever written, all the terrors and horrors of the world are freely available in book form to anyone who can get themselves to a public library, but thankfully nobody yet needs written authorization to sit down in one and blow their minds wide open. And so, you do not get to assign us designated free-speech zones where we can actually excercise our Constitutional right to learn whatever we can and say what we really fucking think or feel about it. That's the world. You don't have to like it and you surely don't have to be a part of it. If you want to scurry like a little mouse to work and the Safeway and Carnegie Hall to see fat fucking Pavarotti sing about the purity of love, trying to avoid the corrupting influence of other people, by all means be my guest. You get to make that choice for yourself and so do I.
I know it's hard to raise kids. I know you're a working parent with a 13-year old latchkey son and you can't be there all the time. I'm sorry. The answers are not easy. Here's some things you should consider, though. If you're not prepared to hear people singing about any subject they feel like putting to music, do not buy a radio. If you're not prepared to potentially experiece visual representations of the full spectrum of life and the human imagination, do not buy a TV. If you're not prepared to experience pretty much everything in the audiovisual realm in a completely decentralized way, PLEASE do not buy a fucking computer. Do not connect yourself to the world and expect it to dance for you. Because you don't need these things, not really, and just because you buy them does not put the world under an obligation to negotiate with your weird individual concept of morality. I know that might not agree with you, and I fully support your inclination to shut out the parts you don't want. We all do that. Most of us use the "off" button instead of a lawsuit, but we all do and it's something you probably want to do it for yourself and your children. That's fine with me, it's your kid after all. But you know what? YOU GAVE BIRTH TO IT. That's a fucking big-ass responsibility, bigger than any I can really think of off the top of my head. I don't care what your reasons were, that's not my business. I'm just saying - I don't want to hear about it. You fucked. You had the kid. Tell me why it's okay to say, "Yo, I know I took on this huge-ass burden but seriously, I had no idea what I was getting into. Is it cool if I just abdicate some of that right now? I mean everyone else can just change the way they live and think so I don't have so much to worry about." Because that's what you're saying to me when you start fucking with my life in order to make raising your kids easier. And I'm so, so tired of it. You want to cut yourself off from the rest of society? Good. It's going to be hard. It SHOULD be hard. Because the rest of us have a right to speak freely. We shouldn't have to shout to be heard and we shouldn't be relegated to passing notes under the teacher's nose. If you don't want to listen, go home. Go home and sit in the dark for all I care. Just don't break up my party, because if you can't at least TRY to be cool with your neighbors instead of litigating them into shutting up, you're not fucking invited.
I'm trying to be reasonable here. It's probably not coming across that way, but I am trying. And I'm not hard-hearted. I'm not against parents, I'm really not. I know it's tough and I do want to help. I'm all for, like, welfare for low-income families. Shit, I'm poor. It sucks! I don't want anybody's kid to go hungry. And although I think public school is shit, I'm all about people getting a good education. Everybody! I'm not trying to bust anyone here. But do you really expect me to care whether your kid sees a tit on TV or not? I mean, do you seriously expect me to take that into consideration when I'm deciding whether to accept or reject our most important and irreplacable Constitutional principle? "Well, personally I'm all for freedom of expression, but you know, people are raising kids all over the country and since I don't have one I guess they know better." You gotta be fucking kidding me, man. I'm not going to put a federal judge in the position of determining whether the stuff I get to see and hear is just smut or has "value." Because that's completely irrelevant. Free speech is free speech. It's not "free speech, as long as it's important."
Bottom line: you can have your kids. Rock on with that. You can raise them any way you like and you decide what you think they should hear and see and do after school. You can shield them from the world as best as you possibly can, if that's your whim. You can home school them and shut them in the house every second of the day and make them wear blinders on their trips to the market so they don't see anything besides their shoes and the carton of milk and the cashier the whole trip there and back. Your business, not mine. But - and this is a big one - it is not, and will nevereverevereverEVERevereververNEVER be my responsibility to make the job of shielding your kids from the world one tiny little iota easier for you. You want to wall yourself off from the world? Do it on your own time, and please please do not fuck with me in the process. The world is not going to block itself for your convenience.
Fair?
- Lieb
