today's rant: pride parade

My new car comes with a 3-month free trial for satellite radio.  I might have preferred a 3-month free trial of gasoline.  I think I like it enough to keep it.  I primarily play the 90s channel.  However, I have to change it when Hanson inevitably comes on.  Mmm… nope.  Not for me.  I’ve marked two channels as favorites:  the Vivid adult entertainment channel and the George Carlin channel.  I’ve openly admitted to my wife that I listen to the Vivid channel when I don’t have the kids in the car.  I don’t see anything wrong with that, and she hasn’t said anything bad about it.  It is not like I am going to fuck the radio while I am driving.  In addition, I have given her my login credentials to stream on her phone so she can listen to Billy Joel music all day long.  Everybody wins.

I really need to find out what there is to vote for next month.  I just had a sample ballot emailed to me.  Let’s see what it says…

Is it weird that my voting precinct location is at a school that’s not in my kids’ school district?  Ok, major one, governor.  Seeing that McMaster is Trump’s puppet (Trumpet?), I’m not voting for him.  That was easy enough.  There’s a spot for a write-in.  Maybe I’ll put down Santa Claus.  Next is Secretary of State.  I’m assuming it’s the one in this state and not the Secretary of State that’s part of the federal Executive Branch.  How do you discern the two offices?  Federal Secretary of State and State Secretary of State?

The National Hurricane Center categorizes the projected sustained wind speed of a hurricane using 4 letters: in order of severity, D, S, H, and M, with M being the strongest.  The letters stand for:

D:  Damn, it’s windy

S:  Son of a bitch!

H:  HOLY SHIT!

M:  MOTHERFUCKER!!!

Four months ago, my family went into Columbia to a festival called Outfest, an event produced by SC Pride.  We wanted to spend more time there than we did, but we cut it short because it was too damn sunny and hot.  We borrowed sunscreen from a group of people at a tent who were part of a Baptist Fellowship who are LGBT-friendly.  As a heterosexual male, I see a few different variants of the acronym, ranging all the way to LGBTQ+.  As a Pokémon Go player, just to keep it simpler for me, I was thinking of mentally calling members of that community “shinies” (cool variants of Pokémon with a different color pallet), but I’m not going to say that out loud.  Anyhow, 2 weeks after Outfest, we sat through a service at that Fellowship, and have kept going almost every week.  As the jaded fuck that I am regarding organized religion and its hypocrisies, I can provide first-hand observations that just because some people are not heterosexual does not mean they don’t have faith.  So suck it, you Leviticus-thumping asswipes.  On the plus side, I was called an ally for the first time.  To me, “ally” seems like one of those titles that only someone from a specific sub-culture can give out.  If I gave it to myself, that seems pretentious.  This ranks up there with a lesbian former coworker asking me to be a sperm donor for her girlfriend.

As of this paragraph, it is a Monday morning and my thigh muscles above my knees are burning.  I’ve spent the past 6 days continuously on my feet.  I’ve been walking and standing on a manufacturing production line taking notes and pictures, marching in support of a pride parade, and yesterday I played paintball.  I’m out of shape, so my legs are suffering because of it, feeling the burning sensation of muscles that haven’t been used like this in a pretty long time.  So my choices at this point are to continue using my legs in order for them to get used to the activity in the long term or consider getting my legs cut off at the knee like in the movie “Tusk” so I never have to feel this kind of muscle burning again.  I’ll let you folks know what I decide.

I dislike Trump’s presidency as much as I disliked W’s presidency.  With the midterm elections coming up in a few weeks, I think the best thing I can hope for is a stalemate in government for the next 2 years, where democrats are the majority in Congress.  That way, no more laws are passed.  Congress agrees on a bill, Trump vetoes it, and they get paid hundreds of thousands by the taxpayers and millions by their corporate masters to sit on their hands all day and play “the stranger”.  To me, that is the best-case scenario.

In the immediate aftermath of some guy in Florida sending the most undesirable kind of fan mail to Trump critics, all I know for sure is this:  the guy’s a Trump-thumping wacko.  That is to say he is a wacko who also just happens to be a Trump-thumper.  Not all Trump-felatio enthusiasts are wackos.  This guy is.  Once again, the mainstream discourse coming out of the event is pure bullshit.  Democrats and Republicans are going back and forth debating whether Trump’s asshole-ish rhetoric is to blame.  Really?  That’s what we need to talk about?  The guy was only just caught.  Sit back, let the authorities kick the guy in the nuts for a few hours, and wait and see what information comes out.  Maybe there was another reason he sent that “fan mail” to those specific people, and it didn’t have anything to do with politics.  Maybe they’re the most prominent subscribers of Hustler magazine and that’s the reason.   Spoiler alert:  it’s not.  The guy is an angry nutbar of a Trump-thumper.  That’s it.  I bet he’s white, too.  This is coming from absolutely no data; just a guess based on stereotypes.

2 hours later:  I TOLD YOU!  Old, pasty white guy who wants nothing more than to taste Dumbo Trump’s nut nectar.  Is Trump an enabler?  I think so, but I believe in personal responsibility more.  It’s this guy’s fault for being stupid enough to be influenced by an angry orange troll.  If you have to validate yourself by blindly aligning with the loudest voices and not logically form an intelligent opinion yourself, you deserve all the repercussions.

Today's rant: chicken hurricane

There are certain topics I do not talk about at work.  I have such a fucked up sense of humor and pessimistic outlook that a lot of people would have a problem with me.  Basically, if talking about a topic will disrupt the day-to-day business of the people I work with, I don’t do it.  One or two people around me could be way too uptight not to go to HR, and I like getting paid too much to risk fucking it up.

- Politics.  I hate them in general and I flat out will not discuss them.  No one else around me is dumb enough to either, so let’s just continue on getting through the work day.

- My social life.  I’m an introvert, but there are a few lucky groups of people who can get me out of my shell occasionally.  Social life is separate from work life.  As such, I don’t ask coworkers what their night life is like.  That has nothing to do with getting our shit done before 5pm.  At a previous job, I have known 2 coworkers who hooked up and had a kid.  I didn’t say a word about it because it wasn’t my business and should not have affected how they did their job except when the kid wasn’t feeling well.  I say “should not” because that’s the ideal.  I have no idea how others actually treated them afterward.  I hoped for the best.

- Money I make and money I have.  I have needed to explain to by manager the need of being absent to close on buying a house, but not how big or where or how much.  That’s my business.  I haven’t even told coworkers I bought a new car.  It’s common courtesy, but also I don’t like the idea of bragging when I’m pretty sure a lot more people who work here don’t make as much as I do.  Consequently, I feel awkward when my wife says how many square feet the house is to those whom I don’t give a shit enough to remember their last name.  I think she forgets poor people exist.

- College sports.  Long Island did not have any major college sports teams.  I can only say Stony Brook was a 16-seed in the NCAA basketball tournament some years ago.  Whoopy-fricken-doo.  Besides, they play real sports in NY, so why should I give a damn about 99% of players who don’t turn pro?  That’s what college is for, getting an education in case you’re not good enough to get paid to receive concussions.  Residing in South Carolina, I don’t care about Clemson vs. USC, nor about Alabama vs. Auburn.  I’ll cheer for whatever school gives my kids the most money to go there.

Speaking of no-no’s at work, I have some t-shirts I do not wear to work.  They are mostly concerning the topic of beer.  Today, I saw a guy at work wearing breast cancer awareness t-shirt saying “I Run For Boobs”.  I think it’s funny.  I’d wear that in public, because if someone was offended, it would be stupid of them to tell the police that they were uncomfortable watching me wear a t-shirt that said the word “boobs”.  I would not wear that at work, just because I wouldn’t want to be bothered by a small fraction of people going to HR and complain about me.  HR will do something that a cop would laugh at because they protect the company from liability from employees.  A stupid liability is still a liability to them.

I have very little trust in HR departments because I’ve only recently become aware of their true purpose.  Honestly, I feel stupid for not figuring this out earlier.  “Human Resources Department” is a misleading phrase for the true purpose.  To me, the phrase sounds like it deals with the liaising management’s processes and policies of to the employees having to do with things like conduct, benefits, prohibitions, and career advancement.  However, as I mentioned earlier, HR is meant to protect the company from liability caused by its employees.  It is not meant to protect or advocate for the employees themselves.  This is why I hear personal stories of people being fired for complaining about harassment or fired for taking legally protected medical leave.  It is less risky for some companies to terminate people for making waves than it is to provide a decent place to work.

I like scary movies, but they’ve gotta stop with this reboot/retcon stuff.  I bring this up because they are releasing another Halloween movie that completely ignores everything in the series that happened after the original in 1978.  Well, fuck!  What a waste of time I spent watching that shit!  It’s like creating an alternate universe like they did with Star Trek in 2009 or when they declared the Star Wars Expanded Universe non-canon.  This will be the 5^th different iteration of the Halloween continuity:

- Halloween 1, 2, 4, 5, 6;

- Halloween 3;

- Halloween 1, 2, H20, Resurrection;

- Rob Zombie’s Halloween 1 & 2;

- Halloween 1, 2018, and subsequent sequels

It’s getting harder and harder for me to suspend reality to be entertained by this shit when I have paid attention to one story, and now have to differentiate it from a totally new universe they are creating.  This is the same reason why I don’t like the latest round of X-Men movies with Fassbender and McEvoy headlining.  It’s not their fault, but Deadpool said it best:  it’s hard to keep up.  It is especially worse for scary movies because, like I said, it’s harder to suspend reality. 

And goddamnit, I am sick and tired of these non-numerical sequel titles!  Make it even harder for me to follow the sequence of the full story, why don’t you!  Fuck!  X-Men, X2, X-Men:  The Last Stand, X-Men Origins:  Wolverine, X-Men:  First Class, X-Men:  Days of Future Past, X-Men:  Apocalypse, X-Men:  Dark Phoenix.  In that last sentence, we’ve gone off storyline chronological order 4 times and completely erased one continuity.  It’s a cash-grab.  Here are a few more titles that I’ll incorporate or make up just to fuck with the timeline even more:  X-Men:  Onslaught; X-Men:  Cheese Danish; X-Men:  Wait, I forgot, Cyclops is supposed to be OLDER than Havoc; X-Men:  X-Force; X-Men:  FINALLY Something with Mr. Sinister, like cloning Jean or something, leading to…; X-Men:  Let’s Finally Acknowledge That Cable is Cyclops’ Son; X-Men:  Light Roast; and just to fuck with everyone all over again and start another continuity, Ultimate X-Men.

Here’s a quote from Wikipedia about Hurricane Florence:

“The death toll rises to 35. Also, about 3.4 million chickens and turkeys and 5,500 hogs were killed in flooding from Hurricane Florence as rising North Carolina rivers swamped dozens of farm buildings where the animals were being raised for market. (CBS News) (Washington Examiner)”

Holy shit!  Firstly, that is a shit ton of dead animals.  Secondly, there is sooooo much more detail about the millions of dead farm animals than there is about the dead people.

Following up on a comment I made earlier this year about the US finally having a conversation about sexual harassment, HOLY SHIT, did social media blow up during and after the testimonies about Dumbo Trump SCOTUS nominee Kavinaw (I don’t want to remember how to spell Kavanaugh, so until I do, he’s Kavinaw).  Honestly, I’ve been trying really hard to think of something that has not been already said, but I keep going back to:

- Why him?  Why not someone else who doesn’t have an allegation of being a douche? (although the obvious answer is political affiliation and the abortion argument)

- At least do an investigation and try to prove or disprove Ford’s story.

My wife and I are registered Republican.  Please understand that when I turned 18 and had to register to vote, airplanes were flown into the twin towers.  Also, at the time, NY Republicans were not that bad.  They didn’t 100% shit their pants when gay people wanted to be treated like everyone else.  They shit their pants a little bit, but not 100%.  Then I escaped that bubble when I went to college and learned to think for myself.  My wife, on the other hand, has been stricter with voting along party lines.  When we started dating, she asked me via AOL Instant Messenger (and now I’m paraphrasing) “You’re voting for McCain, right?”  It was harsh for her to comprehend that I couldn’t vote for someone who was endorsed by the worst US President of all time (at the time) and who had a retard of a running mate like Palin.  However, in the past year, I won’t say my wife has flipped political affiliation, but she openly proclaims her regret of voting for Trump.  Personally, I’m happy she came to this conclusion by herself without any influence from me.  The victim-shaming and abuser-enabling rhetoric that has dominated and been documented and publicized finally pushed her over the edge.  She started turning when the Trump Tariffs started costing her job a couple million dollars.  Now the argument that the current presidential administration is anti-woman is really grabbing her attention.  I understand not voting for Hillary.  I didn’t vote for either of them, and to be perfectly honest, I forgot which 3^rd party candidate I voted for.  Oddly enough, I was not upset at her voting for Trump.  I was upset that she voted for Trump and lied to me about it.  She initially said she also voted for some forgetful 3^rd party candidate.  She accidentally let it slip months later while we were driving.  My in-laws are so pro-Trump it makes me nauseous.  That sort of naïve blind devotion should only be reserved for children ogling over Paw Patrol and Doc McStuffins and adults ogling over Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits.  Fuck, those things are good.

On a personal note, now I don’t feel so bad about me being a too scared to talk to girls or go to parties in high school.  All you had to do was let me jerk off and give me WWF No Mercy on Nintendo 64 and I stayed the fuck out of trouble.  Notice that I didn’t put the wrestling video game first before the comment about jerking off in that last sentence.  Just wanted to make that clear.  I did not… have… jerk off… relations… with that video game… WWF No Mercy.