June 17, 2004
Son of a Bitch!
"Science has presented us with a hope called stem cell research, which may provide our scientists with many answers that for so long have been beyond our grasp. I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this.
"We have lost so much time already. I just really can't bear to lose any more."
-- Nancy Reagan, 5/04
"Maybe one of the small blessings that will come from (Reagan's) passing will be a greater opportunity for Nancy to work on this issue, which of course means so much to her. I believe that it's going to be pretty tough for anybody not to have empathy for her feelings on this issue."
-- Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), 6/04, in a letter signed by 57 other members of the Senate
I won't defend Bill Clinton or John Kerry. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't wipe my ass with a ballot marked with someone like Kerry's name, and the incredulousness of the situation - that I will cast such a vote for him in November - grows upon me daily. What I can never understand is the ability of some to look at Clinton and Kerry with such withering detraction, and how that relentless acumen completely disintegrates when turned anywhere near George W. Bush. You who will never view Clinton with an ounce of charity - and by all means, don't interpret this as a plea for it, I couldn't care less - who are still hung up on whose particular combination of medals and ribbons Kerry threw over a fence thirty years ago, please explain to me how you can see George Bush or anyone in his crew as a person who is fit to hold public office. You can stand up for Cheney and his miserable stooge Scooter Libby for lying over and over about Iraq's nuclear program, or the vicious and illegal outing of Valerie Plame? (But then again, who knows. Maybe it was George Tenet after all...) You can stand up for Bush, who repeated his unsubstantiated assertion that Iraq and Al Qaeda had "numerous contacts" the very same day the 9/11 commission reported that Osama bin Laden had reached out to Saddam years ago and been completely ignored? You can stand up for him praising John Negroponte - who still claims he doesn't remember anything about the Honduran death squads he helped set up - and appointing that wretched bastard our Ambassador to Iraq? (Doesn't the symbolism of that even bother you a little bit?) And you can stand up for fucking Donald Rumsfeld? That's the most inconsistent crap I've ever heard of. Hate Clinton all you want. Hate Kerry too. But you should realize the reason that you're totally unbelievable is you have nothing comparable to say about the obvious failings of George Bush and his band of miscreants - worthless scum on their good days, dangerous and evil when the moon is in the wrong part of the sky.
I won't disagree on John Kerry's cowardice. If the man had any pride, he would have properly denounced Reagan for being the miserable son-of-a-bitch of a president that he was. He would have given that man the most scathing eulogy since Hunter S. Thompson called Richard Nixon the man who broke the heart of the American Dream. It was Reagan more than any other president this century who perpetuated the vile myth that an elected official can be insulated by his inferiors. Reagan, through tacit approval or incontinent dereliction, killed 50,000 Nicaraguans in an illegal war funded by running drugs, smuggling weapons, and scamming the American people out of millions of dollars, and the people who perpetrated it for him are, at the behest of George Bush, moving back into their offices downtown. John Kerry, on the other hand, should be crucified for his sinister plan to repeal Bush's tax cuts. Does any of this make sense to you?
Whenever I hear anyone say (usually in regards to the 9/11 commission) "we need to look forward, not dwell on the mistakes of the past," I chuckle sardonically and then throw up. But this is George Bush's America. War criminals and public thieves don't go to prison, they get diplomatic appointments or book deals and weekly spots on Fox News. This bizarre double standard is what allows Cheney and Libby to give the lie that neither one of them knows what the other is doing (even though it is their job) and get away with it. Cheney is the worst of the lot. This man is such a relentless pigfucker...someone asked him yesterday if, since he disagrees with commission's finding that there was "no collaborative relationship" between Iraq and bin Laden, he had information the 9/11 panel did not. He said, "Probably." The reporter should have thrown his notepad at the man's head and then climbed over his fellow journalists to throttle him. I will be surprised if the members of the commission don't sneak into his house at night and hog-tie him. The arrogance of that remark stuns even me.
You may, of course, believe whatever you want. It is in your power to believe that Ronald Reagan single-handedly won the cold war by parachuting into the Kremlin and abducting the Politburo at knifepoint - thousands of people all over the world are firmly committed to equally ridiculous horseshit, as the rosters of the Church of Scientology will attest to. But it is beyond common sense or rational thought to believe that, mysteriously, when no-bid war profiteering contracts are being handed out or a CIA agent is exposed and national security betrayed, all lines of internal communication in the White House suddenly break down and the only discoverable crook is a ghostly stranger who fades into the details. To believe so is to slip into the fearful realm of willfully blind and severely paranoid delusion - much like William Safire has done of late. You too may soon find yourself conducting seances with the ghosts of dead presidents, or standing atop some poor bastard's brand-new Kia Sedona in your underwear, bleating painfully at your detractors and urging a host of imaginary allies forward to arms, spilling your whisky all over the Nordstrom's parking lot. (You may, however, simply become confused as to the length of time Bill Clinton has been out of office.) So please, if you can, answer these few simple questions for me. They may help me clear up what is obviously a vast yawning chasm of misunderstanding on my part.
Do you think that government officials who lie (demonstratably, repeatedly) should remain in office? (Think carefully about Clinton on this one...)
Do you think that government officials who allow their staff to engage in illegal activities using their positions should remain in office?
Do you think that government officials who do not realize that members of their own staff are committing crimes using their positions are fit to remain in office?
And, do you think the perpetrators of said crimes should remain in office, or should ever be able to hold office in the future?
If you answered "no" to any of those questions, how in the flying fuck are you behind George Bush? This has nothing to do with Clinton or Kerry. It has to do with being able to call a spade a spade one moment, then claiming you've completely forgotten what a spade even looks like the next.
Long live George Bush indeed. May he and his cronies rot in prison to a ripe old age.
- Lieb
"Science has presented us with a hope called stem cell research, which may provide our scientists with many answers that for so long have been beyond our grasp. I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this.
"We have lost so much time already. I just really can't bear to lose any more."
-- Nancy Reagan, 5/04
"Maybe one of the small blessings that will come from (Reagan's) passing will be a greater opportunity for Nancy to work on this issue, which of course means so much to her. I believe that it's going to be pretty tough for anybody not to have empathy for her feelings on this issue."
-- Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), 6/04, in a letter signed by 57 other members of the Senate
I won't defend Bill Clinton or John Kerry. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't wipe my ass with a ballot marked with someone like Kerry's name, and the incredulousness of the situation - that I will cast such a vote for him in November - grows upon me daily. What I can never understand is the ability of some to look at Clinton and Kerry with such withering detraction, and how that relentless acumen completely disintegrates when turned anywhere near George W. Bush. You who will never view Clinton with an ounce of charity - and by all means, don't interpret this as a plea for it, I couldn't care less - who are still hung up on whose particular combination of medals and ribbons Kerry threw over a fence thirty years ago, please explain to me how you can see George Bush or anyone in his crew as a person who is fit to hold public office. You can stand up for Cheney and his miserable stooge Scooter Libby for lying over and over about Iraq's nuclear program, or the vicious and illegal outing of Valerie Plame? (But then again, who knows. Maybe it was George Tenet after all...) You can stand up for Bush, who repeated his unsubstantiated assertion that Iraq and Al Qaeda had "numerous contacts" the very same day the 9/11 commission reported that Osama bin Laden had reached out to Saddam years ago and been completely ignored? You can stand up for him praising John Negroponte - who still claims he doesn't remember anything about the Honduran death squads he helped set up - and appointing that wretched bastard our Ambassador to Iraq? (Doesn't the symbolism of that even bother you a little bit?) And you can stand up for fucking Donald Rumsfeld? That's the most inconsistent crap I've ever heard of. Hate Clinton all you want. Hate Kerry too. But you should realize the reason that you're totally unbelievable is you have nothing comparable to say about the obvious failings of George Bush and his band of miscreants - worthless scum on their good days, dangerous and evil when the moon is in the wrong part of the sky.
I won't disagree on John Kerry's cowardice. If the man had any pride, he would have properly denounced Reagan for being the miserable son-of-a-bitch of a president that he was. He would have given that man the most scathing eulogy since Hunter S. Thompson called Richard Nixon the man who broke the heart of the American Dream. It was Reagan more than any other president this century who perpetuated the vile myth that an elected official can be insulated by his inferiors. Reagan, through tacit approval or incontinent dereliction, killed 50,000 Nicaraguans in an illegal war funded by running drugs, smuggling weapons, and scamming the American people out of millions of dollars, and the people who perpetrated it for him are, at the behest of George Bush, moving back into their offices downtown. John Kerry, on the other hand, should be crucified for his sinister plan to repeal Bush's tax cuts. Does any of this make sense to you?
Whenever I hear anyone say (usually in regards to the 9/11 commission) "we need to look forward, not dwell on the mistakes of the past," I chuckle sardonically and then throw up. But this is George Bush's America. War criminals and public thieves don't go to prison, they get diplomatic appointments or book deals and weekly spots on Fox News. This bizarre double standard is what allows Cheney and Libby to give the lie that neither one of them knows what the other is doing (even though it is their job) and get away with it. Cheney is the worst of the lot. This man is such a relentless pigfucker...someone asked him yesterday if, since he disagrees with commission's finding that there was "no collaborative relationship" between Iraq and bin Laden, he had information the 9/11 panel did not. He said, "Probably." The reporter should have thrown his notepad at the man's head and then climbed over his fellow journalists to throttle him. I will be surprised if the members of the commission don't sneak into his house at night and hog-tie him. The arrogance of that remark stuns even me.
You may, of course, believe whatever you want. It is in your power to believe that Ronald Reagan single-handedly won the cold war by parachuting into the Kremlin and abducting the Politburo at knifepoint - thousands of people all over the world are firmly committed to equally ridiculous horseshit, as the rosters of the Church of Scientology will attest to. But it is beyond common sense or rational thought to believe that, mysteriously, when no-bid war profiteering contracts are being handed out or a CIA agent is exposed and national security betrayed, all lines of internal communication in the White House suddenly break down and the only discoverable crook is a ghostly stranger who fades into the details. To believe so is to slip into the fearful realm of willfully blind and severely paranoid delusion - much like William Safire has done of late. You too may soon find yourself conducting seances with the ghosts of dead presidents, or standing atop some poor bastard's brand-new Kia Sedona in your underwear, bleating painfully at your detractors and urging a host of imaginary allies forward to arms, spilling your whisky all over the Nordstrom's parking lot. (You may, however, simply become confused as to the length of time Bill Clinton has been out of office.) So please, if you can, answer these few simple questions for me. They may help me clear up what is obviously a vast yawning chasm of misunderstanding on my part.
Do you think that government officials who lie (demonstratably, repeatedly) should remain in office? (Think carefully about Clinton on this one...)
Do you think that government officials who allow their staff to engage in illegal activities using their positions should remain in office?
Do you think that government officials who do not realize that members of their own staff are committing crimes using their positions are fit to remain in office?
And, do you think the perpetrators of said crimes should remain in office, or should ever be able to hold office in the future?
If you answered "no" to any of those questions, how in the flying fuck are you behind George Bush? This has nothing to do with Clinton or Kerry. It has to do with being able to call a spade a spade one moment, then claiming you've completely forgotten what a spade even looks like the next.
Long live George Bush indeed. May he and his cronies rot in prison to a ripe old age.
- Lieb
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
February 18, 2004
Dean is out.
John Kerry and John Edwards are assholes. In any other universe I would just as soon spit on your mother as vote for either one of them, so it makes me feel a little like Hunter S. Thompson must feel every single day of his life to be in the one where I actually will. My apologies to your mom.
A couple weeks ago I didn't feel like going to work, so I called in sick and watched talk shows. Have you ever seen the Wayne Brady show? It comes on around 3, which is later than I would expect a daytime talk show to run. Kids are generally home from school around then, and nobody wants to see that shit late in the day, least of all some jittery fifth-grader high on ritalin. No self-respecting 11 year old is going to sit through an hour of Ellen, they'll just go out and bust in car windows (as is their wont) to kill time before Yu-Gi-Oh comes on.
Anyway.
I don't know anything about Wayne Brady, except that he was probably in some movies and is the most miscellaneous black man on network TV since Kevin Eubanks. His guest was some Pulitzer-winning consumer reporter, whose name (like his life) was utterly unremarkable and anyway I forgot it. Anyway. The part of this show that actually bears repeating was when Wayne took a break from letting the guest pimp his new book about how corporations are really truthful and friendly and the government wastes all your money to show a mid-80s news clip featuring the guest trying to interview a strung-out pro wrestler. Of course this guy walks right up to 230 pounds of muscle and straight up asks the guy - and this takes balls, or incredible stupidity based on the guy's sweaty contorted face, I'll give him that much - "hey, isn't your entire profession a huge fucking lie? I mean come on." The wrestler responded by bitch-slapping him. Not a punch, an open-hand slap, the way you'd slap a disobedient puppy, if you were the kind of surly roid-raged motherfucker who'd hit puppies. As a corrolary to his previous statement, the wrestler did it again, hard enouigh this time to knock Mr. Shocking Wrestling Expose straight to the floor. He spent a few seconds dazed from the impact before crawling to his feet and scurrying down the hallway, his bad 80s mullet flapping behind wildly him.
I have enormous respect for journalists who put their personal safety at risk to do their job, and I generally don't like to see people get smacked, and I don't care because that shit was too fucking funny. And what did Wayne Brady do to console his red-faced guest, who seemed totally unaware that this little relic from his professional past would be trotted out in front of TV land and a live studio audience? He played it again, and afterwards loudly remarked, "MAN, YOU RAN RIGHT OUT OF THERE! LOOK AT YOU!"
If you ever have a chance to catch the Wayne Brady show, I would suggest you skip it, unless it's that episode.
- Lieb
John Kerry and John Edwards are assholes. In any other universe I would just as soon spit on your mother as vote for either one of them, so it makes me feel a little like Hunter S. Thompson must feel every single day of his life to be in the one where I actually will. My apologies to your mom.
A couple weeks ago I didn't feel like going to work, so I called in sick and watched talk shows. Have you ever seen the Wayne Brady show? It comes on around 3, which is later than I would expect a daytime talk show to run. Kids are generally home from school around then, and nobody wants to see that shit late in the day, least of all some jittery fifth-grader high on ritalin. No self-respecting 11 year old is going to sit through an hour of Ellen, they'll just go out and bust in car windows (as is their wont) to kill time before Yu-Gi-Oh comes on.
Anyway.
I don't know anything about Wayne Brady, except that he was probably in some movies and is the most miscellaneous black man on network TV since Kevin Eubanks. His guest was some Pulitzer-winning consumer reporter, whose name (like his life) was utterly unremarkable and anyway I forgot it. Anyway. The part of this show that actually bears repeating was when Wayne took a break from letting the guest pimp his new book about how corporations are really truthful and friendly and the government wastes all your money to show a mid-80s news clip featuring the guest trying to interview a strung-out pro wrestler. Of course this guy walks right up to 230 pounds of muscle and straight up asks the guy - and this takes balls, or incredible stupidity based on the guy's sweaty contorted face, I'll give him that much - "hey, isn't your entire profession a huge fucking lie? I mean come on." The wrestler responded by bitch-slapping him. Not a punch, an open-hand slap, the way you'd slap a disobedient puppy, if you were the kind of surly roid-raged motherfucker who'd hit puppies. As a corrolary to his previous statement, the wrestler did it again, hard enouigh this time to knock Mr. Shocking Wrestling Expose straight to the floor. He spent a few seconds dazed from the impact before crawling to his feet and scurrying down the hallway, his bad 80s mullet flapping behind wildly him.
I have enormous respect for journalists who put their personal safety at risk to do their job, and I generally don't like to see people get smacked, and I don't care because that shit was too fucking funny. And what did Wayne Brady do to console his red-faced guest, who seemed totally unaware that this little relic from his professional past would be trotted out in front of TV land and a live studio audience? He played it again, and afterwards loudly remarked, "MAN, YOU RAN RIGHT OUT OF THERE! LOOK AT YOU!"
If you ever have a chance to catch the Wayne Brady show, I would suggest you skip it, unless it's that episode.
- Lieb
January 26, 2004
I have a couple theories about Dennis Miller and why he's not funny anymore. One is that he sold his soul to the Devil some fifteen or twenty years ago, and he spent the next decade or so doing a lot of deplorable shit, I mean really dirty fucking stuff for the Devil, in exchange for the ability to string a lot of obtuse historical references and twenty-five cent words together and trade them in to an audience for hysterical laughter. My theory is that about two and a half years ago he finally got tired of doing these things, the details of which will most likely never come to light, and told the Devil to fuck off once and for all, at which point the deal was broken and Dennis became the unfunny schmuck he had always really been. Since then he's been drinking more and trying to shop his somewhat dingy and tattered soul around to CBS and the Republican party, but the formula of Roget's Thesaurus + Cotton Mather + "fucking" + defenestration of Prague = big laffs is not adding up anymore, and he really doesn't know what to do. He is much louder now and I swear I've seen his hands shake, and given that the punchline of many of his recent jokes is "Terrorists will kill us all, renew the PATRIOT act and remember September 11th!" I have speculated from time to time that he was actually responsible for the attacks, and that was the deed that finally turned him away from the life of riches and depravity ushered in by his Mephistophelian pact. Another theory I have is that he recently quit drugs, but that's not as much fun to think about so I usually don't.
Althought we will probably never know the truth, when I think about the many horrible things Dennis Miller must have done for the Devil, I imagine him standing in a front yard, laughing and dancing in a circle while burning in a huge trash pile the entire life savings of a paraplegic senior citizen, who can only look on with great sorrow and cry.
In the event that Dennis prefers Merriam-Webster's or the Oxford Concise, I'd like to take this opportunity to sincererly apologize to Roget's.
- Lieb
Althought we will probably never know the truth, when I think about the many horrible things Dennis Miller must have done for the Devil, I imagine him standing in a front yard, laughing and dancing in a circle while burning in a huge trash pile the entire life savings of a paraplegic senior citizen, who can only look on with great sorrow and cry.
In the event that Dennis prefers Merriam-Webster's or the Oxford Concise, I'd like to take this opportunity to sincererly apologize to Roget's.
- Lieb
October 21, 2003
THIS IS AN ORTHODOX BLOG
- beiL
- beiL
Yes. No. Maybe. I have to pee.
But I really do have to pee.
- Lieb
But I really do have to pee.
- Lieb
I saw Kofi Annan speak today, and although I'm still crunching numbers on this one, the odds are that I'm way better than you.
- Lieb
- Lieb
