Another year has come and gone. Looking back at the past 365 days isn't easy. Most days are routine and trite: work, eat, sleep, write, yell at the TV, etc. Other days are just a glorious adventure, especially when I seize life by the proverbial cojones. In 2010, I tried new experiences and saw where life took me.
Here are some of the many bizarre happenings over the last 12 months:
* I was a 2010 Peter Jennings Fellow for Journalists and the Constitution at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. An amazing experience. I got to work with a group of reporters and Kenneth Starr on a case and then present it to the group. I never really considered the U.S. Constitution before; now I carry a copy of it with me and practically memorized it.
* Met Tom Brokaw. A photo-op with the esteemed journalist was two seconds. The Harrison Ford character from "Morning Glory" comes to mind...
* Heard Bruce Campbell at Philly Comicon. The Chin gave an excellent and funny talk in front of an auditorium packed with adoring (and weird) fans. Also at Comicon, I saw Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner and the DeLorean from back to the Future.
* Rode on an Airship. The Horizon Blimp gave journalist-types like myself free rides to promote their partnership with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. I'm an airship aficionado, so this was heaven for me.
* Moderated a mayoral debate. Ah, local politics. Where hope goes to die. I was on a panel of reporters who interviewed the two Ocean City mayoral candidates. Prime time, here I come!
* Two gaming supplements published. Reality Blurs published two Ravaged Earth supplements: Relics & Rumors 3 and 4.
* Took Dad to a Father's Day Phillies Game. It was like "Field of Dreams" sans the cornfield and male guilt over lost fathers. We enjoyed the experience besides the Phillies losing to the Twins.
* Got divorced. After years of separation, we finally untied the knot. I now have an ex-wife and a box filled with half a set of china.
* Went to Gencon. Worked the Reality Blurs booth at Gencon and ran a game of Ravaged Earth. While there, I heard Wil Wheaton give a really great talk to fanboys about gaming and gaming culture.
* Fell in love. Reconnected with a woman I haven't seen in 19 years via Facebook and we began dating. She constantly never ceases to fascinate me.
* Re-Booted Ravaged Earth. Spent five months writing the new incarnation of Ravaged Earth, including a new plot point adventure campaign. The toughest thing I've ever written by far, but so rewarding.
* Re-Connected with High School Friends. Spent a great weekend drinking and raising hell with my old high school friends Kevin and Samir. Kevin singing Lada Gaga's "Poker Face" is one of my favorite memories of 2010.
* Cosbython 2010. Cosbython is an event a few friends held around Bill Cosby's birthday in July. We spent the day watching that delightfully bad movie "Ghost Dad", some Jell-O pudding commercials and "Picture Pages", and had fun playing Cosby-themed games.
* Went to Philcon. Participated in gaming panels and bathed in the geekiness of a great science fiction community. The Legion of Doom Dinner. The Masquerade. An awkward encounter with an ex-girlfriend. All memories of a kick-ass Philcon 2010!
* Saw some great standup comedy. John Conte, Mike KC, Big Rick Cahall, Kendra Cunningham, Maddog Mattern, Reese Walters, Alan Kaye.
* Acted in a Zombie Movie. I played the part of a shambling zombie in For Love of Zombies. The makeup people did a fantastic job transforming my rugged, handsome features into a horrific visage of rotting flesh.
* Performed in an Audio Serial. Keeping with the zombie theme, I leant my voice to "HG World", a great audio serial about the zombie apocalypse. I recorded three parts for the show, each one different and challenging.
* Saw a Re-Release of Back to the Future. For one weekend in October, BTTF was released in theaters. For 90 minutes, I was transported back to my teenage years in 1985, watching a movie I'd fall in love with.
* Trivia Kings. My trivia teams, Killer Rabbits and Donkey Punch, kicked some serious cerebral ass at trivia. Gift cards were won, meals ate and laughter (and knowledge) were the order of the day.
* Went on a diet an lost some weight. Not that I don't like eating vegetables, but when your doctor tells you your triglycerides are through the roof, you make sacrifices. So I exercised and stocked up on oatmeal and vegetables and lost about 15 pounds. Now children don't point at me in the street and giggle about the "manopotamus."
* Performed Standup. Returned to the stage to make audiences laugh in their beers. A little rusty, but it was great to write jokes and do the comedian thing again.
* Judged a Hooters Bikini Contest. Got a chance to ogle scantily-clad women in their 20s as a celebrity judge at Hooter's in Atlantic City.
* Spent Christmas with family at a the Hotel Hershey in Hershey, Pa. Relaxing and gorging on milk chocolate with your relatives is a great way to spend the yuletide season.
Next year I hope to get involved with more standup comedy, perform in an original podcast, have Ravaged Earth Rebooted published and other crazy, outrageous escapades.
Stay tuned if you dare, gentle reader!
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Back To Work
I’m reticent to post anything on this blog because, quite frankly, I’ve enjoyed the nearly two-month hiatus. During that time, I’ve completed a few important writing projects, spent quality time with my girlfriend sharing and laughing and dancing in dewy meadows while watching sunsets. Yet this blog is like the Damocles sword hanging over my head, suspended by a single gossamer strand.
Sooner or later, that bitch is going to snap.
As of this writing, the Angry Reporter blog has been viewed over 6,000 times by people in several countries. I know this because I can track where the hits are coming from.
Most of you arrived here after web searches for the angry Hitler meme or King Tut, since I blogged about both of those things. During this year’s election, you searched for Christine O’Donnell and found this blog. Glad you enjoyed that.
A few of you even bothered to post a response to my rants and ramblings. Some of those brave enough to post their responses should be commended, whether you agreed with me or not. Thanks for the time it took to tap on your keyboards and let me know how you feel.
The Internet is a vast electronic sewer overflowing with information, opinions and colorful photos of spread-eagled Russian girls. Once in a while in this decadent pornographic soup, you actually find something useful. Not that the Russian girls aren’t useful, but they’re not trying to change the world, no matter how outlandishly they contort their bodies.
Into this quagmire of ones and zeroes floats a morass of opinions written by people who cannot write, people who think they’re funny but aren’t, and people who believe American should exist preserved in a comforting amniotic sac of the 1950s.
Those who wish to take this country back to an Eisenhower utopia that never existed in the first place are delusional. Not content to keep their paranoia and instability to themselves, they rant online about the dangerous liberals, the socialism creeping into America via the mass media and Obama administration and how Sarah Palin will be the Den Mother of Boy Scout Troop America.
And for expressing my opinion that this country is slipping down a dark incline into the wood chipper due to greed, arrogance and a tide of pseudo-nationalistic fervor unseen since the dark days of Joseph McCarthy, I’m branded a radical Democrat and loose cannon.
I am neither a radical, a Democrat nor a loose cannon.
Because I write for a newspaper and try to shed light on the corrupt dealings of petty tyrants and millionaires whose sweetheart deals keep the fat cats fat and the citizens in the dark, I’m mocked and ridiculed. They said journalism is not an honorable profession and all reporters are lumped into one category with the dreaded “lamestream corporate media”.
If I have offended anyone with this blog, either with its subject matter or salty language or graphic descriptions contained herein, I make no apologies. My writing is my sword I use for slaying the kowtowing sycophants and bloviating assholes who have clambered their way into political machines on scaly lizard legs and turned this country into the redneck paradise it is; a backward-thinking, superstitious corporate gulag where the intelligent, the free-thinkers and the peacemakers are persecuted as hippie weirdos and communists. Both parties are to blame for dumbing this country down and failing to produce competent, honest leadership.
Want to get depressed and lose all faith in humanity? Read the comments section of any Yahoo News story. It’s a nauseating heap of dispassionate, uncaring remarks that will make you root for a pandemic just to thin the herd. It’s amazing how unmoved and apathetic people are to human tragedy and how they think their jokes are somehow amusing. If they want to tell jokes, go to an open mike night. Don’t post your quips on a news site meant for discussing the articles like adults.
That brings me back to my reason for taking a break. I’m weary of the general public bashing journalists, but I shouldn’t be surprised. There’s a large disconnect between what I do and what the public perceives. No matter how you explain it to them, the public will still view all journalists in a negative light, particularly when the corporate-run media continually under-report, fail to correct discrepancies and present themselves and their product with supreme arrogance.
It’s incumbent upon me to use this blog and carve out a space online where people can go if they’re fed up with the status quo and want change. For the good of our species and our country, things have to change. America must educate itself about the world outside of its borders. We’ve got to shun the superstitious and the corrupt forces that seek to control all of us. This country is already in the throes of bad science fiction, where cameras watch our every move and overzealous politicians are purging our Constitutional rights. The worst part about this Orwellian nightmare is the Tea Party has become the champions of freedom. This is a group of linear-thinking people in cardigans who are to the 2000s what the Liberty League was in the 1930s.
We need the truth and the unvarnished facts and we need them now, or we’re in danger of rapidly devolving to the point where the country will be populated by morbidly-obese American ape creatures hollering lyrics to Toby Keith songs while campfires from a million plastic hovels glimmer against the twilight of a once great civilization rolling into its grave.
Sooner or later, that bitch is going to snap.
As of this writing, the Angry Reporter blog has been viewed over 6,000 times by people in several countries. I know this because I can track where the hits are coming from.
Most of you arrived here after web searches for the angry Hitler meme or King Tut, since I blogged about both of those things. During this year’s election, you searched for Christine O’Donnell and found this blog. Glad you enjoyed that.
A few of you even bothered to post a response to my rants and ramblings. Some of those brave enough to post their responses should be commended, whether you agreed with me or not. Thanks for the time it took to tap on your keyboards and let me know how you feel.
The Internet is a vast electronic sewer overflowing with information, opinions and colorful photos of spread-eagled Russian girls. Once in a while in this decadent pornographic soup, you actually find something useful. Not that the Russian girls aren’t useful, but they’re not trying to change the world, no matter how outlandishly they contort their bodies.
Into this quagmire of ones and zeroes floats a morass of opinions written by people who cannot write, people who think they’re funny but aren’t, and people who believe American should exist preserved in a comforting amniotic sac of the 1950s.
Those who wish to take this country back to an Eisenhower utopia that never existed in the first place are delusional. Not content to keep their paranoia and instability to themselves, they rant online about the dangerous liberals, the socialism creeping into America via the mass media and Obama administration and how Sarah Palin will be the Den Mother of Boy Scout Troop America.
And for expressing my opinion that this country is slipping down a dark incline into the wood chipper due to greed, arrogance and a tide of pseudo-nationalistic fervor unseen since the dark days of Joseph McCarthy, I’m branded a radical Democrat and loose cannon.
I am neither a radical, a Democrat nor a loose cannon.
Because I write for a newspaper and try to shed light on the corrupt dealings of petty tyrants and millionaires whose sweetheart deals keep the fat cats fat and the citizens in the dark, I’m mocked and ridiculed. They said journalism is not an honorable profession and all reporters are lumped into one category with the dreaded “lamestream corporate media”.
If I have offended anyone with this blog, either with its subject matter or salty language or graphic descriptions contained herein, I make no apologies. My writing is my sword I use for slaying the kowtowing sycophants and bloviating assholes who have clambered their way into political machines on scaly lizard legs and turned this country into the redneck paradise it is; a backward-thinking, superstitious corporate gulag where the intelligent, the free-thinkers and the peacemakers are persecuted as hippie weirdos and communists. Both parties are to blame for dumbing this country down and failing to produce competent, honest leadership.
Want to get depressed and lose all faith in humanity? Read the comments section of any Yahoo News story. It’s a nauseating heap of dispassionate, uncaring remarks that will make you root for a pandemic just to thin the herd. It’s amazing how unmoved and apathetic people are to human tragedy and how they think their jokes are somehow amusing. If they want to tell jokes, go to an open mike night. Don’t post your quips on a news site meant for discussing the articles like adults.
That brings me back to my reason for taking a break. I’m weary of the general public bashing journalists, but I shouldn’t be surprised. There’s a large disconnect between what I do and what the public perceives. No matter how you explain it to them, the public will still view all journalists in a negative light, particularly when the corporate-run media continually under-report, fail to correct discrepancies and present themselves and their product with supreme arrogance.
It’s incumbent upon me to use this blog and carve out a space online where people can go if they’re fed up with the status quo and want change. For the good of our species and our country, things have to change. America must educate itself about the world outside of its borders. We’ve got to shun the superstitious and the corrupt forces that seek to control all of us. This country is already in the throes of bad science fiction, where cameras watch our every move and overzealous politicians are purging our Constitutional rights. The worst part about this Orwellian nightmare is the Tea Party has become the champions of freedom. This is a group of linear-thinking people in cardigans who are to the 2000s what the Liberty League was in the 1930s.
We need the truth and the unvarnished facts and we need them now, or we’re in danger of rapidly devolving to the point where the country will be populated by morbidly-obese American ape creatures hollering lyrics to Toby Keith songs while campfires from a million plastic hovels glimmer against the twilight of a once great civilization rolling into its grave.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Angry Reporter On Strike
The Wall Street Journal posted a story about a CBS affiliate in Alaska that left a garbled voicemail for an aide to GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller, where a female and male reporter discuss ways of embarrassing the Miller campaign, including reporting on sex offenders attending a Miller rally and Tweeting about any "chaos" in the campaign, such as Miller getting punched at a rally while laughing like spazmatic robots.
Miller's campaign released the tape, and the station denied that their reporters were discussing ways to fabricate stories.
The story didn't bother me. Alaska can fuck itself on an iceberg as far as I'm concerned. What pissed me off were the posted comments to the story, particularly one.
Someone identifying themselves as "HenryH" posted the following:
When were reporters considered a noble profession? About 39 years ago during the Nixon Administration when The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, which chronicled the coverup of U.S. involvement in Vietnam by five presidents. Other newspapers followed, publishing the secret documents, which were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg.
After the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Washington Times reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein investigated a break-in of Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, which toppled the Nixon presidency.
Journalism used to be an noble profession; expose corruption and enlighten the people. Inform the citizenry. Knowledge is power, so we're empowering our fellow Americans.
What crap!
It's now all about ratings, readership and precious money. The idealistic image of the scrappy reporter taking on entrenched political interests is deader than the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger and Andy Dick's career.
I'm demoralized. I've had it. I'm tired of being a professional in an age of liars, swindlers and lunatics.
The only way to get ahead in America is to be a criminal, to deceive people and keep them as ignorant for as long as possible. Don't give them a choice between wisdom and ignorance; cram ignorance down their throats and tell them it tastes as sweet as pumpkin pie. Stupid people are easier to control, easier to manipulate. A dumb population does whatever you want them to at the jerk of a leash.
Ever since graduating from college, (Where I studied journalism and communications, by the way) I've won my share of awards for my writing. The award-winning stories and series were very special to me and were the result of countless hours of digging, interviewing and re-writing.
Yet all my work and commitment to ethics and integrity means absolutely nothing if I'm lumped in with the scoundrels and dregs of the profession.
Anger has been the nexus of this blog. The Angry Reporter is my alter ego, the voice that imparts my zeitgeist to the literate public through these blogged screeds and rants.
I've seen the media, as well as many of America's institutions take a turn for the worse over the last ten years. I've seen the demise of sane and rational thinkers, the erosion of courtesy and professionalism and the death of common sense and curiosity.
We've become a nation of spoiled, petulant children cared for by idiot nannies who neglect to nourish us. Starved and stupid, we are ill-educated, ill-tempered and ill-informed. We're corpulent, petty and nasty and blame a host of scapegoats for our nation's problems.
I have a sinking feeling that we're marching into darkness, where evil and violence thrive, and good people are in short supply.
All of the crusading reporters have withered and fallen, replaced by corporate automatons who regurgitate partisan pablum.
"News is expensive," a colleague of mine said. We generate no revenue and only absorb a newspaper's cost. Why then call it a newspaper? Why not just run press releases and not have investigative reporters look into the workings of our government? Why not outsource your editorial staff to India like some newspapers are doing?
Americans lambaste the "lamestream media," yet don't understand why corporate media has under-served them. The 24-hour news cycle and cable news networks are only interested in breaking the story as fast as possible and about boosting their ratings, instead of taking time to develop stories and producing accurate information.
The people don't want information that challenges their long-standing prejudices: they want punditry. They want someone who agrees with them to tell them what they already believe. Not what's accurate or real, but what they believe.
This is the dangerous slope this country is sliding down. We're living through Plato's Allegory of the Cave, where America is forced to watch the shadows and mistake them for real people. And we fucking love those shadows. We drink those shadows up because to us, they confirm everything we want them to confirm about America's greatness in the world, about Republicans, about Democrats, about conservatives, about liberals and about anything we hold dear and sacred to us.
In Paddy Chayefsky's film "Network," Peter Finch plays Howard Beale, who, as the "Mad Prophet of the Airwaves," rants of television's power to dilute what is real and imaginary: "You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and your own lives are unreal! You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion!"
Now America labors under smoke and mirrors, a perpetual puppet show of lies and deception, where the mighty pulverize the weak all to maintain some semblance of civilization.
The intelligent are ridiculed, the spiritual are branded as fruitcakes, and those offering facts are called "the bottom of the barrel in terms of honorable and trustworthy human beings."
I've figured out this country all wrong. It's about money and hurting people. It's about selfishness and greed. It's about attacking others with the tenacity of a hundred pitbulls and latching your jaws around the throats of those who deserve it.
It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm feeling hungry.
Miller's campaign released the tape, and the station denied that their reporters were discussing ways to fabricate stories.
The story didn't bother me. Alaska can fuck itself on an iceberg as far as I'm concerned. What pissed me off were the posted comments to the story, particularly one.
Someone identifying themselves as "HenryH" posted the following:
"We are talking about “reporters” here people. Since when did this become some sort of noble profession? Last I checked, the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of honorable and trustworthy human beings are used car salesman, attorneys, and reporters. Just think back to when you were in college…who were the ‘journalism majors’? LOL"
When were reporters considered a noble profession? About 39 years ago during the Nixon Administration when The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, which chronicled the coverup of U.S. involvement in Vietnam by five presidents. Other newspapers followed, publishing the secret documents, which were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg.
After the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Washington Times reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein investigated a break-in of Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, which toppled the Nixon presidency.
Journalism used to be an noble profession; expose corruption and enlighten the people. Inform the citizenry. Knowledge is power, so we're empowering our fellow Americans.
What crap!
It's now all about ratings, readership and precious money. The idealistic image of the scrappy reporter taking on entrenched political interests is deader than the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger and Andy Dick's career.
I'm demoralized. I've had it. I'm tired of being a professional in an age of liars, swindlers and lunatics.
The only way to get ahead in America is to be a criminal, to deceive people and keep them as ignorant for as long as possible. Don't give them a choice between wisdom and ignorance; cram ignorance down their throats and tell them it tastes as sweet as pumpkin pie. Stupid people are easier to control, easier to manipulate. A dumb population does whatever you want them to at the jerk of a leash.
Ever since graduating from college, (Where I studied journalism and communications, by the way) I've won my share of awards for my writing. The award-winning stories and series were very special to me and were the result of countless hours of digging, interviewing and re-writing.
Yet all my work and commitment to ethics and integrity means absolutely nothing if I'm lumped in with the scoundrels and dregs of the profession.
Anger has been the nexus of this blog. The Angry Reporter is my alter ego, the voice that imparts my zeitgeist to the literate public through these blogged screeds and rants.
I've seen the media, as well as many of America's institutions take a turn for the worse over the last ten years. I've seen the demise of sane and rational thinkers, the erosion of courtesy and professionalism and the death of common sense and curiosity.
We've become a nation of spoiled, petulant children cared for by idiot nannies who neglect to nourish us. Starved and stupid, we are ill-educated, ill-tempered and ill-informed. We're corpulent, petty and nasty and blame a host of scapegoats for our nation's problems.
I have a sinking feeling that we're marching into darkness, where evil and violence thrive, and good people are in short supply.
All of the crusading reporters have withered and fallen, replaced by corporate automatons who regurgitate partisan pablum.
"News is expensive," a colleague of mine said. We generate no revenue and only absorb a newspaper's cost. Why then call it a newspaper? Why not just run press releases and not have investigative reporters look into the workings of our government? Why not outsource your editorial staff to India like some newspapers are doing?
Americans lambaste the "lamestream media," yet don't understand why corporate media has under-served them. The 24-hour news cycle and cable news networks are only interested in breaking the story as fast as possible and about boosting their ratings, instead of taking time to develop stories and producing accurate information.
The people don't want information that challenges their long-standing prejudices: they want punditry. They want someone who agrees with them to tell them what they already believe. Not what's accurate or real, but what they believe.
This is the dangerous slope this country is sliding down. We're living through Plato's Allegory of the Cave, where America is forced to watch the shadows and mistake them for real people. And we fucking love those shadows. We drink those shadows up because to us, they confirm everything we want them to confirm about America's greatness in the world, about Republicans, about Democrats, about conservatives, about liberals and about anything we hold dear and sacred to us.
In Paddy Chayefsky's film "Network," Peter Finch plays Howard Beale, who, as the "Mad Prophet of the Airwaves," rants of television's power to dilute what is real and imaginary: "You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and your own lives are unreal! You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion!"
Now America labors under smoke and mirrors, a perpetual puppet show of lies and deception, where the mighty pulverize the weak all to maintain some semblance of civilization.
The intelligent are ridiculed, the spiritual are branded as fruitcakes, and those offering facts are called "the bottom of the barrel in terms of honorable and trustworthy human beings."
I've figured out this country all wrong. It's about money and hurting people. It's about selfishness and greed. It's about attacking others with the tenacity of a hundred pitbulls and latching your jaws around the throats of those who deserve it.
It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm feeling hungry.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Days of Gloom and Sorrow
INT – OVAL OFFICE – DAY
PRESIDENT OBAMA is slumped at his desk in the Oval Office, which is cluttered with papers, binders, empty cigarette cartons and discarded McDonalds’ wrappers. He appears exasperated, and rubs his brow feverishly. A pile of cigarette butts fills an ashtray on the desk.
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN enters, carrying a six-pack of beer.
BIDEN
Hey, POTUS! What’s up? (beat) Man, you look really down!
OBAMA
Have you seen these poll numbers? Our party is going to get chewed up this year! Republicans are predicted to get the House and maybe the Senate. My mandate is over, Joe. I’ve failed.
BIDEN
Is that all? Hell, that’s nothing! The president’s party always loses the mid-term elections. Want a beer?
OBAMA
No thanks. I want to take this defeat sober.
BIDEN
Suit yourself, Barry!
(Biden pops open a beer and deftly chugs it like a frat boy. He crushes the empty can against his forehead and emits a deafening belch. Biden pauses to gauge Obama’s stony reaction.)
Say, you are really worried! Look, Barry, you shouldn’t fret about this. Maybe we can go out and grab a few cheeseburgers after the election or something. I know how you like stuffing yourself with junk food.
OBAMA
Sorry, Joe, but a Ray’s Hell Burger with mustard and brie isn’t going to cut it this time. I’m really in a funk. The American people just don’t understand that I’m trying to help them. I was handed this crappy economy and this war.
BIDEN
It just ain’t fair, champ.
OBAMA
Tell me about it! The rise of the Tea Party movement put the kibosh on my plans. They refer to me as an elitist, as if studying hard and moving up the social echelons are bad things. Having media whores like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck calling me a socialist is one thing, but when an army of unwashed, angry Americans waving the flag and dressing like colonial soldiers does it, it’s an epidemic. Sure, they hate me because I’m an intelligent black man with power, but the socialist label really hurt.
BIDEN
Well, those negative labels stuck.
OBAMA
Right! How did that happen? Did they seriously want the auto industry to fail? Did they want massive unemployment? Now the independents are sick of me, and they’re the ones who put my over the top in 2008.
BIDEN
What a difference two years makes.
OBAMA
I’ve got Democrats fighting each other and resisting me. I mean, the health care bill wasn’t perfect, but it was better than what we had.
BIDEN
Sir, you tried doing too much too soon. Fixing health care right away? We should’ve gone after the economy. Gotten those pissed off people jobs. Worked better with the Republicans instead of blathering about bipartisanship. We also should’ve cut Pelosi and Reid loose. Gotten some new blood in there.
OBAMA
I still can’t look at Pelosi without flinching.
BIDEN
Yeah, that broad creeps me out, too.
(Obama lights another cigarette and inhales deeply. He puffs out smoke rings that hover over the Oval Office like a carcinogenic nimbus.)
OBAMA
Hear about the Democrat running for governor in Rhode Island? Frank Caprio? Told the press because I didn’t endorse him that I could shove it.
BIDEN
That fucking ungrateful prick! Want me to go up there and rough him up? I’ll do it. Just tell me! I’ll nail him to a tree in Woonsocket.
OBAMA
I don’t think that would be a good headline: “Vice President mauls gubernatorial candidate.” Besides, violence is what the other side does.
BIDEN
With all due respect, sir, the other side is winning.
OBAMA
Don’t remind me. They depict me as some effete Ivy League intellectual who’s out of touch with their suffering. I mean, I play basketball! I eat cheeseburgers! I smoke! That’s not folksy enough for them? What should I do next, grow a mullet and ride a Harley?
BIDEN
That would probably help…
OBAMA
What?
BIDEN
The people are pissed off, sir. They’re angry because the country is changing and they need someone to blame.
OBAMA
If I hear anyone else say they want to take their country back, I’m going to go all Samuel L. Jackson on their asses.
BIDEN
The Tea Party activists don’t merely disagree with your policies. They hate you personally. This isn’t a land of clear-thinking, rational adults anymore. It’s a morass of 24-hour news stations, insane talk show hosts and superstitious religious fundamentalists who believe you’re literally the antichrist.
OBAMA
I could deal with crazy. Logic always trumps hollow rhetoric.
BIDEN
Not this time, sir. This time, the crazies will take over the asylum. Democrats will be the new endangered species. Now people want hollow rhetoric. When they’re told what to think, they won’t bother questioning anything.
OBAMA
I think I’ll have that beer, Joe.
(Biden gives Obama a beer. Obama pops the can and takes a few tentative sips, his face wincing.)
Domestic beer? Really, Joe?
BIDEN
Sorry, sir, but we were all out of that expensive imported Dutch stuff you drink out of a solid gold stein.
OBAMA
I guess this'll do. (beat) Am I really that out of touch and unlikable?
BIDEN
Your approval rating is at 37 percent. That’s not too shabby.
OBAMA
That’s abysmal!
BIDEN
Okay, it’s pretty awful. Sir, we might lose the Senate as well. There’s this goofy girl named Christine O’Donnell running for Senate in my home state. She’s a Tea Party Republican who doesn’t understand the First Amendment and believes God selected her to run for office.
OBAMA
That’s pretty funny. She doesn’t stand a chance!
BIDEN
Sir, if she gets in, she’ll be Sarah Palin’s running mate in 2012. She’s got all the qualifications the Tea Party Republicans want.
(Dejected, Obama sips more beer.)
OBAMA
I think I’ll have Zoloft for dinner tonight.
BIDEN
Come on, sir! Don’t be sad! Just look on the bright side!
OBAMA
What bright side? My party is going to lose big and voters are turning against us in droves! We’re no closer to solving any of the problems I set out to conquer! Even worse than that, Michelle is withholding the goodies from me.
BIDEN
Uh, goodies?
OBAMA
Sex, Joe. She’s withholding sex. Today there's less sexual activity in the White House than since the time of James Buchanan.
BIDEN
Oh, because he was a bachelor? Ha! Damn, sir! You are clever! See, this is the side of you America doesn’t see. They’re too busy seeing the intellectual, uptight and whiny side of you.
(Obama finishes the beer. He rubs out his cigarette.)
OBAMA
Guess it’s time to face the music, Joe.
BIDEN
If it makes you feel any better, a lot of one-term presidents have gone on to lead prosperous, healthy lives. Take Carter, for instance.
OBAMA
I don’t think I'd be comfortable with a hardhat and a hammer building low-income housing. Nor would I care to negotiate peace agreements between the Palestinians and Israelis.
BIDEN
If you don't make it in 2012, I mean, if the people really turn against you, what would you do?
OBAMA
I could see myself as a law professor at Harvard. Maybe Yale.
BIDEN
I’m beginning to understand why the public hasn’t latched onto you, sir.
OBAMA
Pardon?
BIDEN
Have another beer, Barry. It’s going to be a long night…
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Fundamentalists Rising
This is NOT the line to the Justin Bieber concert.
When I was in my early 20s, I corresponded with a group of Armenian intellectuals, which included writers in California, New Hampshire and Canada, and an educator in Holland. We’d write letters about politics, culture and current events and share our own unique perspectives in a passionate albeit wry way, with the consensus that the powers that be are letting the planet fall to shit.
Recently, I was rummaging around my old steamer trunk and found a box filled with letters from those halcyon days, when the written word carried more weight and correspondence was more than a few hastily typed characters texted over cellphones.
In the summer of 1993, I attended an expository writing program at Harvard University and lived with relatives in Watertown, Mass. The letters I received from my pen pals kept me engaged and thinking about current topics and issues and pushed me towards critical writing.
During my recent excursion to the steamer trunk, I unearthed one of the letters, whose subject matter always stayed with me, particularly after the terrible events of 9/11.
The letter, dated June 20, 1993, was from Stephan, a teacher in the Netherlands, who wrote about the influx of Muslims into Europe:
“I used to articulate thoughts like yours about the brotherhood of man, survival, monsoons, earthquakes, ‘in the long run we are all dead’, etc. What is at stake is culture. Any culture, say the Dutch culture which took 1000s of years to evolve. If one does not protect it, it can become endangered and disappear in a 1000 days. That is the issue. In a sense the Dutch culture, like the American culture is self destructing. It is weakening with corruption and apathy, while other cultures are becoming more militant and threatening to replace it. According to one research, in the last 10 years the number of Dutch churches has been reduced by 8%. At the same time there was a 5 fold increase in the number of mosques in this country. In Britain the Moslems have set up an Islamic Parliament. In Pakistan, there isn’t a single church, because all planning permissions for the construction of churches are denied! A similar policy is to be found in Turkey. If you lived in Europe, you would feel this. I am not a xenophobe, or a racist, but the growing menace of militant fundamentalist Islam worries me and many people like me. If we are not careful, Paris could become another Istanbul in a 100 years, or less. At this moment two people out of every five in Paris are Moslems. Their plan is to turn the whole world into an Islamic planet. We must not sleep walk into such a hell. Early action is called for. Already there is a growing spread of female circumcision in Africa. Have a great summer and write soon!”
Two things: I find it prophetic that the concern over the rise of Islamic fundamentalism happened nine years before 9/11, an attack perpetrated by Muslim terrorists. Secondly, one should never end a letter with references to female circumcision and wish someone a happy summer.
“Have fun thinking about mutilated vagina while you’re on the beach!”
But I digress.
The cri de Coeur against the mosque in lower Manhattan, the claim that President Obama is a Muslim from Kenya, and the skittishness of anyone on an airplane who is brown and wearing a headscarf is based upon the West’s uneasiness with Islam.
My friend wrote this letter because he saw that what was occurring in Europe was a harbinger of things to come. Now I’m not saying all Muslims are terrorists. I’ll save that for the Fox News commentators. I am saying that militant Islamic fundamentalists are the problem.
In August I blogged about the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” and how Americans shouldn’t rush to judgment and allow the Islamic center at Park 51 to be built. I stand by my assertions that Park 51 will not harbor an American chapter of Al-Qaeda, but I do understand the concerns many have regarding the proliferation of Islam, especially those adherents who believe Islam is the only way and everyone else should be exterminated.
Unlike those who are behind Park 51, who desire to develop a dialog with those of different faiths, fundamentalist Islam is determined to wreak havoc upon America. They don’t want us dead because “they’re jealous of our freedoms”. They want us dead because we’re infidels. We’re the wicked country where women go to school, porn and pork are popular and we’re not mandated to kowtow to anyone.
The brand of fundamentalist Islam propagated by the Taliban has no problem with treating their women like animals or decapitating their criminals or marrying children. It might not be PC to criticize other cultures or beliefs, but when you’re operating from a fucked up 7th century worldview that’s mired in overzealous religious dogma incapable of expressing forgiveness or preaching tolerance, you deserve a little scrutiny. Recalcitrant in their attitudes and barbaric in their application of the law, they make life in rural Alabama seem liberal by comparison.
But it’s the use of violence to prove that their God is supreme that sets them apart from everyone else on the planet.
Christianity went through a gloomy phase of death and mayhem called the Dark Ages, but it’s the 21st century. Civilizations should have evolved from a medieval mindset.
Apparently, not everyone got that memo. If you can talk a child into strapping explosives to his chest and taking several innocent lives, then that’s some pretty hardcore shit. We’re dealing with an enemy who doesn’t care about dying, and even welcomes the martyrdom because it brings his family prestige and riches.
This week Muslim insurgents attacked the parliament in Chechnya and killed six people. In September, a suicide bomber in Pakistan crashed into a police station, which killed 11 policemen and four children and wounded 40 others.
These are not random, freak events. They’re business as usual for fundamentalists who’ve declared jihad on what they see as a threat to their way of life and the encroachment of the “decadent West.”
Many in the West are worried about Islam’s proliferation and influence.
National Public Radio recently fired news analyst Juan Williams because of comments he made to Bill O’Reilly on the Fox News Channel about Muslims.
Williams said, “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country… But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
NPR clarified that Williams was fired because his remarks didn’t meet their editorial standards and practices, and that his credibility was “undermined.”
Well, of course it was. He was talking to Bill O’Reilly.
What standards and practices does NPR have? Not being complementary enough after the goateed intern in the Che Guevara T-shirt delivers your herbal tea?
If one delves into Williams’ comments, they do reveal something profoundly important about many Americans: Muslims, whether they’re terrorists or law-abiding citizens, scare the living shit out of us.
Why? I guess after 9/11, the beheadings, the threats made to cartoonists over the depiction of Muhammad and the fact that Islamic fundamentalists would be right at home with serial killers, genocidal madmen and history’s most depraved and bloodthirsty butchers kind of makes us Yanks nervous.
What of Europe’s dealings with Islam? In France, wearing a burqa is illegal. French lawmakers this year overwhelmingly passed the burqa ban because the Muslim garb “constitutes a threat to our society,” according to Jean-Francois Cope, leader President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, the Union for a Popular Movement.
After that, the falafel hit the fan and the protests began.
Other European countries are also viewing Islam’s rise as a threat. Part of this is based on xenophobia and part on the connection between fundamental Islam and violence.
If Muslims are tired of the West portraying their faith as one of barbarism and terrorism, then they should step up and condemn Al-Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban and any faction or group that uses the teachings of the Koran to enslave or kill.
I know Muslims view the Koran as the literal, unbreakable word of God and their own practices reflect a submission to God. Going against the Koran for Muslims means going against God.
But there’s got to be some understanding that Islam shares the planet with others who don’t view their religion as the absolute way. It’s up to Muslims who are tired of being lumped into the murderous rabble of Islamic fundamentalism to stand up and show they’re not afraid of any repercussions from the crazies in their own religion.
This struggle is not about cultural differences and we can’t, as one local hippy put it, try to “understand our enemies”. Joining hands with the Taliban and singing “Kumbaya” around a campfire won’t stop the bloodshed in the Middle East or change the way the terrorists feel about the West.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Constitutionally Dumb
In a recent debate at Widener University between with Delaware Democratic Senate candidate Chris Coons and Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell, something bizarre happened.
When Coons clarified that the concept was found in the First Amendment, O’Donnell asked incredulously, “Are you telling me that’s in the First Amendment?”
Not wanting to make his candidate sound like a complete valley girl dipshit, Matt Moran, O’Donnell’s campaign manager responded, “Christine O’Donnell was not questioning the concept of separation of church and state as subsequently established by the courts. She simply made the point that the phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution. It was in fact Chris Coons who demonstrated his Constitutional ignorance when he could not name the five freedoms contained in the First Amendment.”
Really? Because I saw the video and Coons wasn’t queried on the freedoms contained in the First Amendment, nor was O'Donnell making any point. They were talking of the rights of local communities to teach intelligent design in public schools. Coons said schools should teach “broadly accepted scientific fact.” After that, everything took a swift detour to Did-She-Really-Fucking-Say-That Land. Here’s the transcript:
Wilmington News Journal reporter Chad Livengood asked O’Donnell if she agreed with repealing the 14th, 16th and 17th amendments.
“17th amendment I would not repeal. That’s the amendment that puts the power to, for the state government to determine who represents you in Washington. I support that. I support the free election process of that,” O’Donnell said.
The 17th Amendment establishes the direct election of two Senators from each state by the people, instead of the state legislatures, which was originally defined in Article I.
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring my Constitution with me. Fortunately senators don’t have to memorize the Constitution,” O’Donnell said, as the rotting cadavers of the original 39 signers of the Constitution simultaneously rolled over in their graves.
It used to be that the best and the brightest ran for public office, that the citizens could look to their leaders in times of strife and unrest and be comforted that the nation’s Congress will find solutions to any insurmountable task though their competent intellectual abilities. Yet after hearing Christine O’Donnell at this debate I’m ready to build a fallout shelter in the back yard because if she gets elected, America will resemble a nightmarish post-apocalyptic wasteland that would make “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” seem like Disneyland.
But soft! Let us once again hither into the laudanum-inspired dream world of Christine O’Donnell:
Oh, Christine. Why are the pretty ones so dumb? If you hope to garner any support from rational, sensible Delawarians…Delawarans? Delawarlocks? Whatever your constituents are called. If you desire their admiration and respect, for once put down the Bible and pick up the Constitution. Better yet, go to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. It’s a wonderful place dedicated to teaching citizens about the U.S. Constitution. There are many interpretive exhibits and experts who could walk you through it, amendment by amendment and you won’t feel stupid for revealing your naiveté. They even have pocket-sized copies of the Constitution you could take with you to your next debate.
But Christine, please, learn about the laws of the country before you decide to run for office.
It’s obvious that you’re constitutionally retarded and it showed when Coons schooled you on the First Amendment.
For your clarification, here’s some shocking shit you Christians won’t believe about the Constitution.
You know when the president takes the Oath of Office and finishes it with “So help me God?” Guess what’s not in the Constitution? That’s right! The presidential oath found in Article II, Section 1 does not mention “So help me God” at all.
If you thought the Constitution was a Christian document and the United States a Christian country, then you’re mistaken, because the Founding Fathers you feverishly dry-hump in your mind didn’t want to make a big to-do about religion in public life. Article VI states that Senators, Representatives, members of state Legislatures and judicial offices shall be bound by oath to support the Constitution, “but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
While this guarantees no favoritism or preferences of certain religions, to the many devout fundamentalist Christians who claim America is God’s favorite nation, this part of the Constitution makes baby Jesus cry sorrowful tears.
Even though the First Amendment doesn’t contain the exact words “separation of church and state,” the meaning is clear, and has been backed up by the courts and is recognized as legal to anyone with a functional brain who doesn’t believe touching your pee-pee parts will send you to Hell.
Christine O’Donnell’s latest cringe-inducing foray into the Constitution is another example of how politics has been tainted with ignorance, and reveals who the teabaggers really are: anti-intellectual robots who shout at the top of their lungs at just how patriotic they are, without having the slightest clue about the laws granting them the very freedoms they so espouse and claim are threatened from a mulatto Muslim president.
Christine, you’re not me. I actually know the Constitution.
When Coons clarified that the concept was found in the First Amendment, O’Donnell asked incredulously, “Are you telling me that’s in the First Amendment?”
Not wanting to make his candidate sound like a complete valley girl dipshit, Matt Moran, O’Donnell’s campaign manager responded, “Christine O’Donnell was not questioning the concept of separation of church and state as subsequently established by the courts. She simply made the point that the phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution. It was in fact Chris Coons who demonstrated his Constitutional ignorance when he could not name the five freedoms contained in the First Amendment.”
Really? Because I saw the video and Coons wasn’t queried on the freedoms contained in the First Amendment, nor was O'Donnell making any point. They were talking of the rights of local communities to teach intelligent design in public schools. Coons said schools should teach “broadly accepted scientific fact.” After that, everything took a swift detour to Did-She-Really-Fucking-Say-That Land. Here’s the transcript:
O’DONNELL: The theory of evolution is not a fact, it is a theory, and that theory, if local school districts want to give that theory equal credence to intelligent design it is their right. You are saying it is not their right. That is what has gotten our country into this position, the over-reaching arm of the federal government getting into the business of the local communities. The Supreme Court has always said it is up to the local communities to decide their standards. The reason we’re in the mess we’re in is because our so-called leaders in Washington no longer view the indispensible principles of our founding as truly that – indispensible.
COONS: And one of those indispensible principles is the separation of church and state.
O’DONNELL: Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?
(horrifying gasp, guffaws and a hundred whisperers tittering how stupid O’Donnell is)
Wilmington News Journal reporter Chad Livengood asked O’Donnell if she agreed with repealing the 14th, 16th and 17th amendments.
“17th amendment I would not repeal. That’s the amendment that puts the power to, for the state government to determine who represents you in Washington. I support that. I support the free election process of that,” O’Donnell said.
The 17th Amendment establishes the direct election of two Senators from each state by the people, instead of the state legislatures, which was originally defined in Article I.
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring my Constitution with me. Fortunately senators don’t have to memorize the Constitution,” O’Donnell said, as the rotting cadavers of the original 39 signers of the Constitution simultaneously rolled over in their graves.
It used to be that the best and the brightest ran for public office, that the citizens could look to their leaders in times of strife and unrest and be comforted that the nation’s Congress will find solutions to any insurmountable task though their competent intellectual abilities. Yet after hearing Christine O’Donnell at this debate I’m ready to build a fallout shelter in the back yard because if she gets elected, America will resemble a nightmarish post-apocalyptic wasteland that would make “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” seem like Disneyland.
But soft! Let us once again hither into the laudanum-inspired dream world of Christine O’Donnell:
COONS: I also think you’ve just heard in the answers from my opponent and in her attempt at saying ‘where is the separation of church and state in the Constitution’ reveals her fundamental misunderstanding of what our Constitution is, how it is amended and how it evolves. The First Amendment establishes the separation, the fact that the federal government shall not establish any religion and decisional law by the Supreme Court over many, many decades clarifies and enshrines…
O’DONNELL: The First Amendment does?
COONS: …clarifies and enshrines that there is a separation of church and state that our courts and our laws must respect.
O’DONNELL: So you’re telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?
COONS: It is important for us in modern times to apply the Constitution in my view as it exists today and as it’s been interpreted by our justices. And if there are settled pieces of Constitutional law like the separation of church and state, like the individual right to reproductive freedom that Roe vs. Wade represents, that we’ve lived with and have lived under for decades. In my view, it is important to know whether you have on my side a candidate who believes and supports those things and on the other side, a candidate who’s both unfamiliar with…
O’DONNELL: Let me just clarify. You’re telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?
COONS: ‘Government shall make no establishment of religion.’
O’DONNELL: That’s in the First Amendment?
Oh, Christine. Why are the pretty ones so dumb? If you hope to garner any support from rational, sensible Delawarians…Delawarans? Delawarlocks? Whatever your constituents are called. If you desire their admiration and respect, for once put down the Bible and pick up the Constitution. Better yet, go to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. It’s a wonderful place dedicated to teaching citizens about the U.S. Constitution. There are many interpretive exhibits and experts who could walk you through it, amendment by amendment and you won’t feel stupid for revealing your naiveté. They even have pocket-sized copies of the Constitution you could take with you to your next debate.
But Christine, please, learn about the laws of the country before you decide to run for office.
It’s obvious that you’re constitutionally retarded and it showed when Coons schooled you on the First Amendment.
For your clarification, here’s some shocking shit you Christians won’t believe about the Constitution.
You know when the president takes the Oath of Office and finishes it with “So help me God?” Guess what’s not in the Constitution? That’s right! The presidential oath found in Article II, Section 1 does not mention “So help me God” at all.
If you thought the Constitution was a Christian document and the United States a Christian country, then you’re mistaken, because the Founding Fathers you feverishly dry-hump in your mind didn’t want to make a big to-do about religion in public life. Article VI states that Senators, Representatives, members of state Legislatures and judicial offices shall be bound by oath to support the Constitution, “but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
While this guarantees no favoritism or preferences of certain religions, to the many devout fundamentalist Christians who claim America is God’s favorite nation, this part of the Constitution makes baby Jesus cry sorrowful tears.
Even though the First Amendment doesn’t contain the exact words “separation of church and state,” the meaning is clear, and has been backed up by the courts and is recognized as legal to anyone with a functional brain who doesn’t believe touching your pee-pee parts will send you to Hell.
Christine O’Donnell’s latest cringe-inducing foray into the Constitution is another example of how politics has been tainted with ignorance, and reveals who the teabaggers really are: anti-intellectual robots who shout at the top of their lungs at just how patriotic they are, without having the slightest clue about the laws granting them the very freedoms they so espouse and claim are threatened from a mulatto Muslim president.
Christine, you’re not me. I actually know the Constitution.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Starsucks
I fucking hate Starbucks.
The Seattle, Wash.-based coffee company and I are at odds recently because I have a thing for its pumpkin spice latte, the quintessential autumnal beverage. I entered the Starbucks in my local strip mall today and told the barista, a jaded 23-year old who, when he’s not serving hot coffee is probably into The Cure or cutting his wrists, that I’d like a medium pumpkin spice latte, which costs $4.75. After I drank this concoction, which is far from the tasty treat I envisioned in my daydreams, it repaid me by giving me orange diarrhea.
That’s why Starbucks can go fuck itself raw with an un-lubed giant rubber dong. The company is an enormous octopus with massive tentacles that encircle the planet and squeezes the life out of everything good and just.
Its pricing is way off the mark for the crappy, bitter coffee it serves.
If you don’t think that Starbucks is not a pretentious yuppie hellhole, then check out its cup sizes. Instead of small, medium and large, Starbucks suggests - no, demands – that the sizes are Tall (12 oz.), Grande (16 oz.) and Venti (20 oz.). Three different languages for cup sizes and they all mean the same thing. If you order a Tall, you get the smallest size. Shouldn’t Tall be the biggest size? In the strange realm of Starbucks, where logic takes a back seat and tells you to suspend your disbelief, the Italian Venti is the largest size, while the Spanish Grande is medium. Whose bright idea was this? What kind of strange conditioning experiment is going on here? I’m not calling the small drink the Tall drink. That’s why I defiantly call the drinks small, medium and large. When I wanted a medium drink, I’m not saying Grande. The only time I say Grande is when I’m ordering Mexican food.
Starbucks spreads like a virus across the globe, pushing its inflated prices and snobbishness in 17,000 locations worldwide, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, China, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Russia, Germany, Poland, South Korea, Sweden, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. If the Saudi Arabians don’t hate us infidels enough, we dumped Starbucks on their doorstep.
Starbucks builds Starbucks next to Starbucks. Some shopping centers have two Starbucks in them, right across from each other. This over-saturation has led to amusement and resentment by some, who see the coffee giant as being an omnipresent juggernaut squeezing out stores that just serve coffee without the Starbucks aura behind it.
The Starbucks mermaid logo is smiling because the salty broad has our money and she’s going on a shopping excursion to Bloomingdales. Finding a dress to fit those dual fish tails isn’t going to be cheap. As long as we’re paying nearly $5 for lattes and not screaming highway robbery, we’re enabling Starbucks to continue to inflate their prices for a sub-standard product.
The problem with Starbucks is that it invented its own culture of liberal activism mingled with unbridled capitalism. It’s designed to siphon every last dollar out of its customers by hooking them with liberal guilt of suffering, poverty and environmental degradation, while cajoling you to buy expensive shitty coffee. If they can’t ensnare you with its caffeine-laden toxic sludge from some dirty Third World country, then you can buy Ethos water at $1.80 per bottle. Don’t worry because every purchase contributes 10 cents to helping children in impoverished areas get access to water.
Starbucks’ pretentious business and political standards seeks to drive out anyone who doesn’t vote for Democrats or makes over $65,000 a year. Hollywood screenwriters sit in Starbucks and type on their laptops as they slam down Sumatra coffee, which helps them hammer out another mediocre piece of tripe they can option at Mirimax. The fat middle aged bastard in glasses and an L.L. Bean jacket relaxes on an overstuffed chair and reads The New York Times and gingerly sips his Tazo tea like a prissy school girl, as a Bob Dylan tribute band plays over the speakers, daring anyone within earshot to purchase the CD on their way out. The place has an intolerable feel of a San Francisco coffee house. The only thing that’s missing are the bad poetry readings by a scruffy-haired beatnik who accidentally soils his dungarees because of a sudden acid freakout.
Every time we visit Starbucks we have to tolerate these urbane metrosexuals cuing up for a mocchachino or an Ethiopian select blend with a dash of steamed milk they gulp down on the way to their jobs as architects, public relations executives or members of the Obama Administration. And if you order the pumpkin spice latte and make a donation to the Peace Corps, you get a free Rwandan child with your drink.
In a way, Starbucks has a brilliant corporate model. By expanding at a breakneck pace, it can gobble up the remaining coffee retail market until it stands as the world’s only coffee source. And by cornering the market, they can charge the public outlandish amounts for their coffee. In the future, Starbucks will rule the entire world, and generations will be born not knowing coffee that doesn’t taste like it came out of a buffalo’s anus.
This trend must stop. We must say no to Starbucks and make them see the error of their ways. The shallow activism that whines at us to recycle but whose own cups can’t be recycled because they contain a plastic inner coating. The irritating marriage of selling CDs and Starbucks-related products, which only makes me resent them even more as money-grubbing hustlers peddling more than coffee beans. The inflated prices that make people drain their bank accounts to pay for something they could get for far cheaper at Dunkin’ Donuts or Wawa Food Markets and at a better quality. Dunkin’ Donuts’ might not charge $5 a cup or their coffee beans might not by picked by Ecuadorian peasants, but it’s a damn good cup of java.
For Starbucks to be taken seriously, it has to act like a company that cares about delivering good coffee at reasonable prices. Dropping the attitude that it’s a savior to the environment and helper of mankind while acting like greedy 19th century robber barons may be a good start.
And who knows? Maybe in the future I’ll walk into a Starbucks again and buy a latte that doesn’t cost like it was made from the breast milk of Balinese virgins and served in a solid gold cup adorned with rubies and sapphires. Until then, I’m reticent to enter a Starbucks, and will get my cup o’ Joe at a place where I’m not inclined to help the starving coffee growers of Peru or buy a Sheryl Crow CD.
I just want good coffee and no schmaltzy gimmicks.
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