More importantly, this issue has clogged up the sportspage, both online and on paper— I give you this idiotic article, and my response:

sportshack says:

Dear Roger Goodell,

I’d just like to start by saying that I like what you’ve done so far in your tenure as the commissioner of the NFL. You’ve laid down the law with players. When they get in trouble with the law, speak out against the refs, or make an illegal hit, you act swiftly and without remorse in handing out suspensions and fines.

But there is one player who has fallen through the cracks. I don’t know how he’s gotten by you. I’m talking about Matt Jones, who was caught with cocaine in July, then handed down a suspension in October, but appealed his penalty. Here we are in November and he still has yet to miss a game this year.

I think you might have forgotten about him. Maybe it’s because you were too busy suspending Adam Jones for getting in a fight with his bodyguard. Or maybe you got distracted by Santonio Holmes getting caught with marijuana and immediately being suspended for the game just a day after his arrest. Or maybe your attention was diverted by the comments made by Joey Porter about NFL refs causing an immediate fine. Or maybe it was Larry Johnson’s altercation in a bar that warranted a suspension without conviction.

You have handed out countless suspensions this year and all of them have been swift and stern, so why is it that Jones gets caught with cocaine four months ago and still has not missed a single game? In fact, he is leading his team in receptions right now with 45 catches for 524 yards and two touchdowns.

So what is going on here?

Despite admitting guilt, Jones has somehow avoided jail time and gotten any potential conviction banished from his record by sending his case to drug court. But all the other players were suspended without ever being convicted of anything. Holmes was a first-time offender with his marijuana possession but that didn’t matter. How is it that Jones even made it to October without any attempted suspension?

I just want an answer, Mr. Goodell. Any reasonable response will do. Even if you told me that it was complexion protection I could live with that. Or if you said he was a close friend of yours and they don’t get punished, I’d at least be at peace. But to sit here and do nothing has me puzzled.

If Jones has somehow pulled the wool over your eyes somehow, he should teach a class to the rest of the NFL, because getting caught preparing crack with a credit card in your car is far worse than commenting about refs, hitting a quarterback late, or having marijuana in your pocket.

But I’m not going to player hate on Jones in this letter; instead I’m calling you out.

Your lack of action here displays a severe inconsistency in your policies. With all due respect Mr. Goodell, I need you to prove to me and the rest of the league that there aren’t different sets of rules for different players.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Journalist

(Daniel Abraham from thetowerlight.com –independent student newspaper at Towson State)

Koolaidman sez:

Oh come off it, already.

This is Matt Jones First Offense… in the interest of disclosure, I was born and raised in pittsburgh, and am a steeler/wvu mountaineer fan.

Santonio Holmes recently faced his third arrest, third, since being drafted.

Pacman Jones has been a defense attorney’s wet dream.

As is the usual case, Czar Goodell awaited the conclusion of Matt Jones’ hearing before levying the suspension. He came down hard initially– 3 games for a first offense. Keep in mind Patriots RB Kevin Faulk was arrested in the offseason on drug charges, and was suspended one game, because it was his first offense.

(On the cocaine/marijuana or felony/misdemeanor argument, it’s not a very valid distinction. Under Federal law, pot and coke are both Schedule I substances… and the amount of cocaine jones was caught with (charged as a felony in Arkansas, because possession of ANY amount of cocaine is a felony in Arkansas— would have been a misdemeanor in many states, including Pennsylvania– the long and short of it is that Jones was arrested for a drug violation–his first personal conduct offense of any kind since joining the league)

Jones representatives have two lines of argument they are likely pursuing.

1) Jones penalty was too harsh, given the precedent sent by the Faulk case and other “first arrest” cases. Santonio was arrested for Domestic Battery, a violent crime with a victim his first time out.

2) Because of the nature of Drug Court, Jones is not yet done with the judicial process. Most states treat drug court as a diversionary punishment—meaning the charges have not been fully adjudicated, and that the court retains the right to try, convict and/or punish Jones according to the statute should he not complete his rehabilitation program and community service.

If you look at other suspensions around the league for off field conduct, Jones initial punishment is much stiffer than the precedent set by Goodell. I think there is a strong possibility that Goodell, being conscious of the way that punishment of Jones may be interpreted, came down on Jones hard because of his race— so that people could not level accusations “complexion protection”– or that Goodell “has it in for african american players” (which, I think he does. I think that the punishments leveled against Pac, and Tank Johnson were too stiff. I think it is insane and counter to what America is all about that Goodell has been targeting players even when they are not convicted of a crime (hell, sometimes not even arrested).

I think that Goodell tried to hit Jones hard to avoid that sort of debate from occurring. The reason I think the appeal process has taken so long is that Goodell realizes he may have been overzealous with Jones’ suspension, and now is caught in a bind.

On one hand, precedent shows that Jones should have likely been given a one (or at the most two) game suspension… However, Goodell has been very inflexible on appeals (gotta love a system where you appeal to the same person who was judge, jury and executioner in the first case)–

I would measure a guess that the league has been dragging its feet because Goodell isn’t quite sure how to handle the mess he has created.

In your piece, you come off as more a hater than a journalist, though. I also think that taking a critical look at the situation, rather than offering a knee-jerk “why the h*ll hasn’t this guy been suspended yet?!” rant, would have brought you to a different conclusion.

——————

why did the koolaidman feel the need to take a shot at some writer from an off campus newspaper? Because he was checking on Jones news (he’s the #4wr on my fantasy squad)–and this uninformed gut reaction bullshit pisses me off… plus I figured it’d make good blog fodder.

Shortly after my fifth birthday, my Mother finally left her husband.  I won’t say my father for any number of reasons, few relevant to this memory.

At the time we were living Dayton, Ohio.  I remember we had a chain link fence around our yard, I had a Snoopy rocker/slide, and my favorite toy was “Popoids”.  I don’t remember any part of the exodus, only the arrival.

My Aunt at the time was living with her husband and my two cousins in a cabin outside of Garfield.  It was winter and their dirt driveway was long and treacherous.  Which is where this memory begins.  My Aunt met us at the top of their driveway in her Jeep Cherokee.  In my head the Jeep was always brown, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

The ride down the driveway (one I would take hundreds, if not thousands of times more in my life) seemed to take forever.  When we arrived at the house, I was awe-struck.  You see, they lived in an honest to goodness Log Cabin.  I don’t mean stylistically a log cabin, I mean a no-shit “this wall is this long because that’s how long this piece of stripped round timber is” cabin.  There was no brickwork save the central fireplace, and the only door inside the house was a single rough-hewn collection of planks cordoning off the master bedroom.

At some point that evening, my Aunt and Uncle smoked pot.  The smell has remained in my memory all my life.  They smoked from an ad-hoc pipe made out of a paper towel tube with a metal stem, some foil and what might have been elmers glue on the seams.  During my more experimental youth, I would revisit that smell every time I smoked Good Ol’ Country Backyard weed.

Strangely enough, I’ve never been able to remember if my Mom smoked the grass or not.  Given her age at the time and the circumstances, I suppose it’s possible.  But as vivid as this memory is, even now I don’t know for sure if she did or not.

At some point we moved into a duplex in Hyde Park, my mother sharing the apartment with a strange man who ate only macrobiotic food.  I’ve no idea how long we stayed at my Aunt’s before moving, and I don’t actually remember anything from in-between.

Things are intentionally semi-anonymous. I say semi-anonymous because the authors (probably) know who the other authors are.  Otherwise, any claim to ownership is solely up to the individual author.

I guess the point is to allow people to write freely, without fear of it somehow being held against them at a later date.

I’ve had the idea of chronicling bits of my life for a while.  I’ve even made a few false starts.  This may end up being another one.

As the mood strikes me, I am going to brain dump various memories, parts of my life, here to superimposable.  For the sake of temporal organization, I’ll be tagging each post with the year I think it happened in, and possibly a season.  With the expectation that this will become an ongoing habit, I’ll also use the drmemories category, just for easy aggregation.

Time for the trashiest thing I’ve ever seen– Back in March of ‘06, I went to Biloxi, Mississippi to do some post Hurricane Katrina volunteer work… dealing with FEMA and all sorts of fun…

At the time there was very little hotel availability near Biloxi, construction crews and displaced families had it pretty well booked solid… So I decided to stay in Mobile, Alabama–about an hour to the east, and commute to Biloxi each day.

Now, some of the things I saw surrounding the Hurricane and Recovery make for a pretty good set of stories, but that is for another time.

I decide one night to take advantage of my micro-fridge and get something other than take out/fast food… So, I find the local Super Wal Mart.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, Mobile, Alabama lent it’s name to the trailer a/k/a the Mobile Home… not ‘mobile home”

Truly one of the great centers of American society and culture. This of course means that I suspected that this Wal-Mart would be something of an “Alpha Wal-Mart.” I was right, but could not have, in my wildest imagination,  began to have conjured up what I was about to witness…

First of all, the Old South is alive and well. Don’t let Northern Virginia or Myrtle Beach, SC fool you… You just have to go far enough to find it. Rest assured, Mobile. Alabama is far enough.

It was a Monday evening, around 7 or 8pm. I was figuring on digging up one of Hormel’s kick-ass microwaveable entrees. The Beef Roast Au Jus will knock the socks off of Granny’s pot roast, beleive it. I wanted a bottle of acceptable red wine (nothing special, just a Kendall Jackson Cabernet, which was Wal-Mart priced at $13 a bottle, as opposed to the $19 it runs in a PA State Liquor Store)

– and a couple good, crusty french bread dinner rolls… My mission was simple… so I thought.

The parking lot yielded few clues as to the experience that awaited me inside Sam Walton’s baby Gorilla… The usual pick-up trucks, SUVs, an occaisional rebel flag license plate or decal… I could have just as easily been in Southwestern Pennsylvania— until I walked through the sliding doors, the positive air pressure blower blasting me in the face like the winds of un-change.

Immediately I knew I was somewhere else… there were all sorts of interesting people… Middle aged white women wearing pink woolen suits stright out of Jackie O’s wardrobe. (On a Monday night… confused the hell out of me, but I saw three such women, dressed like they were going to the country club for dinner, circa 1962.)

There were similarly dressed middle aged black men and women. I thought that people in the store who were all dressed up at 8 o’clock on a Monday night while shopping at Wal-Mart were a bit odd, but in a strangely charming “Old Southern Class” sort of way… These people were clearly the minority.

Myself, I was wearing a Dr. Dre T-shirt and Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap and jeans–gotta represent, baby!

There were a number of normal people, thugged out younger black guys and girls (whom I oddly felt the most connected to- KoolAidMan lived in a project or two in his youth) Young mothers fighting their children, with their frayed sanity on the line… Bratty little shits who seemed intent on taking my knee to their heads as they darted through the aisles…

Other than the overdressed, and a few more NASCAR shirts and hats than I’m used to… the Wal-Mart was like any other I’d ever been in… and then I took my place in the the checkout aisle (all were hopelessly log-jammed)… behind… them.

A beast of man was hunched over a shopping cart, as if the act of waiting were taxing his physical resources to the point of exhaustion… His torn and ripped “Rick Mast” (he used to drive the #1 skoal bandit car) t-shirt receding northward faster than the Arctic Ice Cap… leaving what seemed like miles of stretch-marked side-gut oozing up over his filthy gray sweat pants… a gleaming stream of sweat pouring through the hairy lowlands of his northern ass crack… A mop of greasy red hair scattered about his head, neck folds and shoulders… a true sight to behold.

The female of the tribe caught my attention next… this house of a woman seemed to be digging through both shopping carts, maybe arranging things so the cashier gets everything together… as I watched more intently… begging the question of why they make stretchy pants in a size 68 chunk… I noticed that she was actually taking some items and placing them in the child’s seat for some reason…. The thought of whether or not these two had ever mated, and in fact, whether or not it was physically possible sent a pang through my empty stomach…

I tried to put away the bad thoughts… she was wearing one of those old cross colors t-shirts, the kind with Bugs Bunny and Tweety dressed all ‘hip hop’ on them.

Bugs Bunny dressed like Kriss Kross---Jump! Jump!

It was badly faded, and carried what appeared to be a mustard stain on the left bulbous hulking mass that had to be either a breast or an upwardly mobile gut roll… greasy bleach blonde hair pulled back with a head band, so you could see her late 30-something forehead, which looked like the lunar surface… if the moon had active red and yellow volcanoes… I shit you not, on top of it all… she was missing the majority of her lower front teeth… I noticed this when she interrogated what appeared to be children, 3 of them, approaching… not a damned one of em over the age of 14 or under 200lbs… “Dr. Thunder or Root Beer?”—

As they answered, all sounding half retarded… or maybe they just had speech impediments… who knows… She actually began to bust into a couple warm 12 packs of Wal-Mart’s store brand sodas and pass them out. I saw the daughter, tightly flanked by her two brothers, (an interlude to her evening, perhaps?)

She said “Baawbby, you hafffta hold mine, I gots the cheeekens”

It was then that my quiet disdain turned to a strange sort of amused horror… Like rubbernecking at the scene of an auto accident and watching a severed leg, complete with one testicle, fall out from under the white sheet… but this was worse… I saw them… the “cheeekens.”

Briefly, when I came into the store, I thought about giving up on my roast for one of the gaggel of rotisserie chickens that Wal-Marts display, hot, ready and packed to go… right near the entrance/check out aisles…

Bwittney, as I learned her name was (from Baawbby tewwing her to ‘take youw dawcta Funder, I’m hungwy’), was carrying the mother load… two fresh cooked rotisserie chickens…

I thought to myself, they’re gonna have a picnic in the damned parking lot… nope, not a chance… I watched the mother crack open a bag of sams club cheese curls (which aren’t bad, by the way, for being generic)– and of course, this is the family sized bag, and hand it to the unnamed son, whose facial expression and haircut reminded me of ‘Gomer Pyle’ in Full Metal Jacket.

Turns out the mother had also been building a stable sort of resting place for the cheekens, atop the groceries… There was still one overstuffed cart ahead of them…

As the family was about to drop dead of starvation, they did what any good family would do— they tore into those chickens like a pack of dingos would rip into a baby with bacon stapled to its face.

Right there in the goddamned store… tearing into two chickens with the bare hands… Dad finally mustered the strength to straighten out his back, no doubt creating a natural wonder, “Crack Gusher Falls,” in the process… So he could get at the cheekens…

You know how messy even fried chickens are to eat… let alone whole rotisserie chickens without utensils, all of them, with their cans of wal-mart pop and with the bag of cheese curls being passed around…. I was watching the grease and cheese dust become one with these people… I feared that they may unite, not unlike Voltron, into a massive beast of cheesy-cheeken-grease… shooting bones and feral hungry glances around the store…

I’m from Fayette County, Pennsylvania…  a den of poverty and somewhat ‘backwoods’ folks (with a healthy mix of ghetto in  a few of the larger communities)… people half-jokingly call it “Fayettenam.”

Even that did not begin to prepare me for what I was seeing… it was the complete de-evolution of Homo Sapiens –I expected them to hunch over and sprout more body hair, dragging knuckles… to become Homo Erectus before my very eyes.

As it came to be their turn to begin to check out, Bwitney handed the cashier the tops of the chicken containers, the cashier didn’t bat an eyelash…

I think that disturbed me the most… even more than the fact that in ten minutes the death toll was two chickens, a giant bag of cheese curls, at least 9 cans of soda pop, and a few slices of bread that the father used to stuff into his gullet in between chunks of rotisserie cheeken flesh.

These people are out there… and in Mobile, Alabama… they don’t surprise anyone…  If you haven’t yet, rent Idiocracy… because the future is closer than you think… and you need to be prepared.

The old KoolAidMan recently exchanged emails with a republican friend of mine who suggested that the economic collapse is the fault of the  Community Reinvestment Act-- so briefly check that out— and then go below for what has really gone so horribly wrong… Complete with a Lindsay Lohan reference!

Redlining and the way that equal lending works in practice are  a red herring—because many areas that would have been redlined in the past (for example, the east end of Uniontown, PA (lower income primarily African-American neighborhood) have median home prices that are nothing (22,000 in the east end for example)— and borrowers still have to meet creditworthiness requirements, and are still constrained by the value of the loan.–even low doc and no doc loans still had requirements— some required bank statements to show income, or a two year history of rent receipts (all easily faked, but brokers who wanted to make cash were complicit, and in the case of major lenders like countrywide–encouraging the practices)

Our president’s failed idea of an “ownership society” tried to push people into home ownership, control over their own retirements, “choice” in the medicare drug benefit, etc…. has been disastrous—- yet, bush’s ownership society was only a small part of the problem.. taking all regulation off of derivatives and debt swaps–something the GOP slipped into an 11,000 page omnibus spending bill that was being passed on a Friday afternoon— that’s the center of the crisis, it allowed hedge funds to write debt swaps, many of whom did so through thinly capitalized dummy corporations—when the lenders started facing defaults and sought to collect on the swaps–they found out that hedge funds moved the swaps to companies who couldn’t pay out on them (swaps are essentially insurance policies, a hedge against losses)—then the banks (who were stupid for buying ‘insurance’ way below market value from hedge funds instead of insurers…)– then the banks were in trouble with the bad mortgage backed securities and started getting ass fucked on their balance sheets…

So yes, these companies wrote horrible loans, but they *thought* they had adequately hedged to cover expected defaults and losses…

–deregulation, which occurred on Bush’s watch, and has been one of McCain’s career long goals allowed this mess to happen— many subprime borrowers weren’t in ghettos… they were speculating and house flipping, because brokers and lenders believed that the borrowers would end up with equity, so who cares if they have the income to back it up— there were tons of low doc and no doc jumbo loans written— that is insanity at its finest— even warren buffet referred to swaps as “financial weapons of mass destruction”— when you have financial instruments so complex that the execs can only pray the accountants explained it right–and greedy hedge fund managers willing to collect premiums without ever bearing the risk of having to make good on the obligations—something had to give.

I am all about personal responsibility and an economy that rewards wise risks and punishes unsound ones— but let’s face it— the average American isn’t the one who should be making many of the decisions– ie “how much house can i afford” –”where should i invest my retirement savings” –”what prescription drug should i take” etc— shifting risk onto the individual and doing it in the name of “freedom”–is insane— average people don’t have the education to begin to make these decisions, nor the sophistication to do the level of research and investigation necessary to make consistently sound decisions—especially not when a group who is way more sophisticated is selling snake oil and bullshit half truth claims like “the market always goes up, 11% a year over time” (ignores things like long periods of stagnation, or people unlucky enough to hit retirement age at the end of a market tumble)  or “real estate always appreciates” etc (not everywhere, and after upkeep and property taxes, real estate is in many cases nothing better than a forced savings account)— average people are swayed by the “advice” of companies who have a vested interest in selling them a loan or an investment—

the deck is stacked against joe shmoe, and he smiles because he has “choices”– (the same as the tobacco companies creating fake science to defend cigarettes, or the automakers resisting safety equipment—this nonsense that a free market finds balance is hogwash–especially when the consumer has limited choices (or no real choice because there are limited service providers and high bars to entry for new firms)— a free market is ripe for collusion and abuse by those who have the $$$—

The consumer who wants anything, a house, car, etc (things we deem more or less necessary to get along in the world)–has no choice– none of the automakers had seatbelts, etc—so the consumer couldn’t demand them, or pick the ones who did—or they were an option, and stretched thin consumers simply didn’t buy them because they believed in their own driving ability— we all know that is irrational–because it’s not just you on the road—so now we have mandatory safety features, and lives are saved and costs to society on the whole are reduced… and no manufacturer went under because of safety belts… costs that were passed on to the consumer, anyway— what happened there?

We decided that the American consumer (and big business) needed a nudge, a little protection from his own irrationality and stubbornness—

just like the current situation—people don’t know what loans and investments are good for them— and they are irrationally optimistic– interest only? sure, i’m gonna get that promotion, and then re-fi… 1/29 arm (adjustable rate, fixed rate for one year, then adjusts every year after)? sure! same deal, i’ll get my finances in order and re-fi!  it’s irrationality again and businesses foaming at the mouth to make a buck off of it… and providing the vehicles to help consumers commit financial suicide… exotic mortgage products—40 year loans, interest only loans, etc— those aren’t required by equal lending standards…. and u can’t get an FHA backed no doc or low doc loan… etc— the restraint and protection has to flow from somewhere, asking individual consumers and corporations to exercise it is like trusting Lindsay Lohan to only do a bump of your cocaine…

our economic system is based on division of labor— u get sued, you hire an attorney, because he specialized in the law, your car breaks down, you hire a mechanic, because he specializes in cars, you get cancer, you go to an oncologist–etc—

but what we’ve said about financial decisions that are just as complex is here, read this advertisement–i mean, prospectus, and pick what looks good to you— or with mortgages– even though we have established debt to income rations, appraisals, etc— we put out loan products that said “here, you tell us how much house you think you can afford”— it is fundamentally insane to suggest that people of average education can make decisions as well as pension fund managers/actuaries…. or as well as the credit rating and banking systems had determined—

at the end of the day, there has to be a floor of protections in place to keep abuses from happening–laissez faire capitalism has failed every time we’ve allowed it—whether it be what Ford, Carnegie and Frick did to the American worker, or this current financial mess— when you allow “the market” to run free—there will always be people who want to exploit it and make a buck any way they can— whether it be by back dating stock options, or selling and trading worthless swaps, making risky loans, selling bad investment products and ideas, selling “me too” pharmaceuticals, etc.

Because we have a split between those with the knowledge and position to take advantage of the average jackass and the average jackass himself— someone has to make sure the rules of the game are fair–and that is the role of government– to create a regulatory scheme that allows legitimate businesses and entrepreneurs the opportunity to use their wealth and talent to create more wealth— but that also protects the average American from abusive practices— paternalistic? maybe a little— but we acknowledge that there are some people who are better trained and better equipped to make decisions throughout our economy and society— whether it be engineers who come up with building codes or doctors, lawyers, or regulatory agencies like the EPA or FDA—

is government regulation perfect? no, it gets politicized when it shouldn’t be, and needs to have ethics rules to prevent abuses by the regulators…. but it is possible for the public at large to keep an eye on government in a democracy—in a total free market system, capital answers to no one…

it all comes down to a simple fundamental split—do you think that everyone truly has rights, or do you believe in pure social Darwinism, where the elite can rise up and use the masses as nothing more than grist for the money mill?

I think that everyone deserves a level playing field to start from, and the only way to make that happen is to hold business accountable and make it respect some minimum level of ethical behavior–there ave to be regulations and standards in place… we protect people from themselves with drug laws–because damage to themselves costs us all money—well we didn’t protect people from themselves, or big finance—and now it’s going to cost us a fuck of a lot more than some crackhead having a heart attack….

I’m just for protecting hard-working people and making sure they get back out of the economy something for what they put in.

I’m sick of Sarah Palin’s “Fargo” accent that makes her sound even less intelligent than not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is… or intimating that being able to see Russia from Alaska givers her x-ray vision inside of Vlad Putin’s innermost thoughts.

But I wanted to float my crackpot theory out into the interweb. This is wild speculation, bordering on fantasy. Time will tell whether or not this is parody, or chillingy close to a truth more twisted than most have dared to allege.

First off, the notion of her revealing her daughter’s current pregnancy in order to quell rumors that Trig Palin is actually Brstol’s child… makes no sense at all. None.

Here’s my crackpot theory. I think Trig is Bristol’s… I think Bristol isn’t pregnant now. I also think that Bristol will “miscarry” before the election… possibly right befor the VP debate so that Joe Biden can’t expose her for the trailer park reject she is.

–Why such borderline insane speculation? Because John McCain has no integrity, he has shown that he will stop at nothing to become president. He sold out his values to get in line with the bible beaters… for the entire Bush Presidency he has been a good little republican. He has switched his view on abortion (or at least on Roe v. Wade–but calling this a states’ rights issue is like saying poor women in the south have to deal with turpentine and coat hangers… sorry!)… and now he has selected an complete and utter dipshit as his running mate.

How can anyone, regardless of politicial affiliation, who saw her interview with Charlie Gibson think otherwise? She is ill informed, and doesn’t seem like she has given any real thought to the issues facing our country… What they’ve done is put lipstick on a talking point parrot…

I’m not elitist. I grew up in housing projects, trailer parks and rented houses in coal mining villages built by the likes of Frick and Carnegie. Having been born and raised as po-d’unk white trash gives me a great ability to spot it… Palin is like the butt of a Jeff Foxworthy joke… her kids are named Trak, Trig, Bristol, etc…  She’s another goddamned bible thumping, PTA directing, nebby douchebag of a human being.

…and John McCain thinks she should be one fall in the shower away from the presidency??!?

In 2000, I was a registered Republican… I liked McCain then… because he WAS different… but different got him murdered in the deep South… so he readjusted his game plan… win at all costs… even if it means jeopardizing our country to try and win some of the 45yr old housewife vote…

Maverick?? Only if that term is defined as someone who is willing to defy convention and all rational thought.

God Help America if McCain wins this thing…

…but not when they shit everywhere.

Normally, the beginning of the day goes by without incident.  I collect a paycheck, but have no work to speak of, so my days are filled with boredom and cigarettes.  On any given morning I wake up, piss, and go outside for a smoke.  This morning was a bit different.

I sit on the steps, slightly hungover, and enjoying the first smoke of the day.  Across the street there is an old woman walking her dog.  It’s a black lab from the looks of it.  You can hear the dogs inside barking insanely at the audacity of this dog being outside.

The pair are now directly across from me.  The woman holds a plastic bag, ostensibly to hold the dropped-off cosbys.  A door bangs down the street, and another of the myriad elderly neighbors emerges.

“Hey lady!  Hey!”  Lady and dog stop mid-stride and turn.

“What?!”

“Your dog pooped on my sidewalk!  You didn’t clean it up!”

“Ohmygod, I must have forgot!  I’m so sorry!”

Now, one would think the story ends here.  The offending party walks back to the crime scene and cleans up.  Not so.  Here’s the conversation and ensuing fireworks.

Lady: “My dog didn’t do this.  These turds are tiny.  My dog takes bigger poops.”

Neighbor: “Yes he did!  I saw him do it.”

Lady: “He did not!  If he did do it, I would clean it up, but it’s not his, so I won’t!”

I really want the conversation to go further because I’m thoroughly amused at this point, and idly wondering whether these are the kinds of things I’ll be arguing about when I’m in my in my sixties.  Alas, it is not to be.

There are at least two yap dogs barking frantically inside neighbor’s house.  Black lab starts to retort, and lady loses her hold on the leash.  Screen doors can be a comic prop.  Enough to let a cool breeze in, but not enough to keep an agitated black lab out.  Lab runs and launches itself through the screen door.  Various barks and yelps emerge, and the two elders run inside, retrieve their respective pets and start back out, with little damage done from what I can see, besides the screen door, of course.

Lady apologizes, reaches into her purse and pulls out some payoff money, obviously for the door.  She walks away and resumes her trek.  Across the street I hear a door slam.  Out of curiosity, I get up, walk down the sidewalk and take a look.

The poop was still there.

A crowd of twenty-somethings in a basement, thoroughly intoxicated. In the middle of the room is a table, upon which there are several paper plates. Each plate holds a large amorphous Jell-O blob, so rich in alcohol it barely maintains cohesion.

Larger than necessary speakers blare 90’s rock music while the crowd looks on as two men talk. Man One is wearing ass-less chaps, a hooded sweatshirt, and very little else.

In a flash, Man Two is on his knees eating vodka-soaked Jell-O from a large plastic kitchen spoon. The crowd roars with laughter. The spoon? It’s clenched firmly between the ass cheeks of The Man in Chaps.

At the time, this makes perfect sense.

Alcohol (booze, spirits, liquid courage, hooch) is an amazing social lubricant. It allows us to do things our sober selves would never dream of. It’s not that we aren’t capable of being awesome while sober, but sobriety has too many “rules” associated with it.

Have you ever called your girlfriend at two a.m. to explain why you should have an “open” relationship?

While sober?

Of course not.

You know why? Because sober at two a.m. you are feverishly searching for hardcore pornography featuring girls with mohawks you *haven’t* already seen.

But drunk… Hey-o, that’s a whole other ball game! Now where are you at two? Standing outside a dive bar with a barely legal sorostitute whose name you can’t remember. And how did you get here? Because moments ago, shortly before the lights came on and everyone scattered like cockroaches, you subtly shouted in her ear that you knew a far-eastern technique involving “two in the pink, one in the stink”; and yes, you *do* provide in-home demonstrations.

So why the phone call? Because deep down, you really are a good guy. Sober you are a caring and sensitive lover, selfishly devoting your ministrations to but a single woman. Drunk on the other hand, your better, slurrier self comes out. Your greedy side is gone, you live to turpidly enlighten this busty beauty of questionable taste. The shocker wants to be free.

But alcohol can do so much more than lower the barriers to spiritual enlightenment!
Let’s play a game of “Choose Your Own Adventure”, shall we?

You and a group of close friends decide to go out into the woods in the middle of nowhere. You bring food, tents, firewood and other related implements. Did anyone bring a keg of beer?

NO: This is called camping. You will sit around the campfire, talk until the wee hours then sleep uncomfortably on the rocky ground. You will be bitten by several mosquitos.
The End.

YES: This is also called camping. At least that’s what you call it when you are underage and lying to your parents about your whereabouts on a Friday night. Invariably someone will produce an axe and a group effort will commence to fell an unnecessarily large tree. The group will then drag the tree, whole, to the campfire and begin burning it from the top down.
The campfire is now a bonfire, visible from Space.

If shovels are available, a large hole will be dug for no readily apparent reason. The hole shall not be larger than is necessary to entrap one petite female. At some point, someone will fall into this hole.

Back on the bonfire, people are now jumping through the fire with the sole justification that it “seems like a good idea”. In actuality, it is an excellent fucking idea.

Still burnt from a mis-calculated jump over the Space Pyre, you will find yourself high in a tree seeking out a “perfect” branch for “sticking”.

For the uninitiated, “Sticking” is a game where you place your forehead on the end of a short stick, the other end firmly planted in the ground. Bent over, you do ten laps around the stick, stand up and attempt to chug a beer. The difficulty in this game is twofold: You’re probably already shitfaced, and even if not, you are definitely dizzy.

You will sleep like the dead, probably under your vehicle (or in the case of a small car, a friendly looking SUV) because you forgot you had a tent, and sleeping *inside* the car is too much like cheating.

The following morning you will be dirty, burnt, hungover and reeking of cheap beer and smoke. The ideal next stop is a Denny’s or Eat n’ Park.
The End.

How did you do? If you answered No, you may want to pretend the answer was “YES” to compare outcomes.

IN Summary:

Alcohol is awesome. While these are but a few examples of how it improves every day life, consider this: Everything is better with booze. Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Funerals, First Dates, Conference Calls, Second Dates, Cookouts, Anniversaries, Court Dates, Surviving each day you are forced to spend in unholy union with that fucking Ogre you married… the list could go on for days.

Drink Up.