CULTURAL STEW

 It took a slow burn to finally push me over the edge in regards to the declining state of American culture. The tipping point was a trip to the local Wal-Mart to buy some much needed groceries. I was making my final turn in the procurement of my weekly grocery supply when I wheeled my basket into the cereal isle and then it happened. Two escapees from local competing trailer courts went into a head-butting catfight right there in front of the Post Toasties!      

Upon arriving home with two paper bags full of food, I deplore plastic, and a very worn brazier which I was able to garner as a souvenir from the cat-fight battle of the century, I was greeted with an alert that I had a pending e-mail from my attorney, Douglas.

It seems that another customer who contemporaneously witnessed the Wal-Mart fracas had the wherewithal to record the event on his smart-phone. The subsequent story was uploaded to the world-wide-web and soon went viral. Douglass had just sent me the link: http://wtvr.com/2015/02/11/walmart-headbutt-fight-video-la-porte/       

A lot of words were spoken about someone’s mama, bad names were exchanged, and then a much smaller woman apparently having Billy goat genes in her DNA (or perhaps DNA in her Billy goat genes as I’m not really certain how that deal works) decided it wise to head-butt a much larger woman. You’d think these fools were members of Congress.  

Unfortunately, this is the kind of behavior we’ve come to expect as we venture into society. We witness it on TV, the radio, in the Newspaper and on C-Span, etc. This behavior is emblematic of what our cultural stew has become. I for one am ready to escape it. I have finally reached the age wherein I have become aware that I am no longer relevant for a number of reasons. Take for example the following: I am initially aware that most folks no longer listen to the radio much for music as there are many and more efficient electronic methods for doing so which have the added capability of being individually personalized. One can now listen to exactly the music one wants to listen to, when they want to listen to it, and do so on the go.    

Frankly, I don’t consider much of the contemporary music to even deserve the classification of music, which is another reason I’m convinced of my irrelevancy. Passing for talent is all too often the sound of some woman screeching out some incomprehensible phrase and holding some note, which is required to be one note beyond her vocal range, for what seems like an eternity.    

Then there’s this Hip-Hop. It won’t die. There’s no music to it. Jibberish! And, Kanye West? I saw where he was described as a musical genius. Funny, but when I was growing up, geniuses were rare, very rare. Geniuses were great scientists and mathematicians. Sometimes, even artists were declared geniuses. Names like Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, or Vincent VanGoh come to mind. Kanye West? I’m convinced that when it comes to modern entertainers, anyone who can wear a tuxedo and fart at the same time is considered a genius.  

Country music deserves a spot. Modern country or “New Country” as it is sometimes seems Hip-Hop’s stupid cousin. Let’s get drunk and write a song about it. To my way of thinking, Hank Williams Jr. was the end of country music. He spent the first several years of his career singing about his drunken old man, then bellyached because everyone compared him to his father. Shoot, sing about someone else for a change and that nonsense would have stopped. Eventually he did and it did. He still stunks!    

Some folks are now famous for no other reason than being famous. Paris Hilton started that whole deal. Now along comes Kim Kardasian. Kim is pretty enough to be a genius, but she has this great big old protruding butt that looks for all the world like a rectal goiter. It turns out it’s not even real. She has had an enhancement to make it look that way. Kanye West married her I guess because he was attracted to her big ol’ butt. I guess that makes her a butt genius. There are really getting to be a lot of geniuses out there.      

Business has even become part of American culture. This has happened for several reasons. One is the Supreme Court which in the Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission determined that corporations are people. For years and years only men, white men, were people. Then, women got to be people and black people got to be people too. Workers got to be people and even children got to be people. At any given time in our history, some or all of these groups were not people and generally that was because of the corporations that misused them. Now, the corporations are people and being “people” for real people is once again not what it is cracked up to be.

The poster boy for business is Donald Trump. He’s everywhere! Because he has a lot of money, he can get on TV anytime he says anything. He has the face of a large rodent with hair that he intentionally grooms to look like tumbleweed on steroids. He has a program on TV where he relishes firing people. The show is called, “You’re Fired!” The purpose of this show is to remind the smelly TV viewing audience that even though they are technically still people, they are not as important as corporations which are people who fire regular people.

The 21st Century Pledge of Allegiance:    I pledge allegiance to the logo of the United States  America, and to the oligarchy for which it stands. One corporation, under God, with dividends and debentures for only a select 1%.....         

Donald Trump once described himself as a self- made man. He said that is why people admired him. I have never met anyone who claims to admire him. But, he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps when upon graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League School, it has been reported that his father gave him a gift of $50 million and said you’re on your own. He received a BS degree in economics and has been a great practitioner of BS ever since. Actually, his very wealthy father gave him a job right out of school. Eventually, Donald declared bankruptcy three times but still managed to become very wealthy. He extols the virtues of the “free enterprise” system and stands against government interference, except when getting protection from the federal bankruptcy courts. That free market is really a marvelous thing.  

Trump hints at becoming President. This idea was once a farce but with the Citizen’s United ruling, there’s a good chance that the voting rights of corporations will outweigh those of real people and Trump could be elected. If so, he likely will put his name on everything imaginable, ie: Trump White House, Trump Library of Congress, Trump Yellowstone Park, etc. Regular people will no longer be able to get into such places.

I no longer relate much to our culture. I've witnessed to whole stinking deal. And, all I got out of it was a well worn bra. I will mount that over my fireplace….right next to my deer head.

WHAT'S IN A NAME ???

Many years ago, I worked for a state social service agency determining eligibility for cash welfare and Medicaid assistance for needy families. Before I go too far here, this is not a rant at all against the general welfare population. A number of years of experience with several thousands of folks made me aware that there are a great many people who are truly desperate through no real fault of their own. Like any group in society, engineers, attorneys, ministers, exotic dancers, politicians, teachers, me, etc., there are a few nuts that really poison the pie. This report is a true experience with one such nut. Names are history. They are words and they at one time actually meant something. One can look at English names for example: Stone, Miller, Elder, etc. These were names which reflected an occupation of someone’s ancestor. Some names are Biblical in origin, ie: Mark, James, Ezekiel, etc. And, these names often have a limited universality from language to language. An example is the name James which in Greek is Actually Demetrious or Demitri in Russian. Names have come to be sorely abused in the modern era. Wealthy folks of certain influence are sometimes guilty of this by giving their children pompous first names to show a specific pedigree, an unearned position of influence. Examples may be: Bradford Johnson, Harrison Billington, or Prescott Bush. This makes the more swarthy among us aware that one rich family most likely married into another and we are to KEEP OUT of the gene pool, which is fine with me. Some folks on welfare come to this practice of abuse from a totally different angle. They make names up because to them it sounds good. Some claim to take portions of grandparents’ names and reconnect them; however, in my years of experiencing this, I never could make such a connection with any such mangled naming method. Thus, their children are condemned to a lifetime of ridicule or abuse through no fault of their own, also insuring they will not break out of their gene pool any too often. No way does Bradford Johnson Billington ever marry De’la’Shawna Re’nae’ela Jones. We, in the office, used to keep a running list of bizarre names and the list was lengthy. This is the experience I had with one such name. In the late 1980’s to early 90’s, assistance records became computerized along with the rest of the business world. These early computers were very limited in terms of space and capabilities compared to today’s computers. We didn’t have built in word processors and spreadsheets were too interactive with about the only real computing capability being that one could sum a column of numbers after manually entering data. All letters were capitals and it was even suggested that in the future, the computing world would make lower case letters obsolete. In no way could an apostrophe ever be entered into a computer field designed for a name. That field would accept no symbol, punctuation marks, numbers or even lower case letters. If one did enter a lower case letter, it would be converted to an upper case letter as the computer recognized only upper case letters in this field. One day, a woman comes barreling into the office, asking for me and is mad as a hornet. “Where does my arrogant ass get off calling her son ‘Shithead’ and putting that name on his Medicaid card?” she demanded! Well, I never called anyone “Shithead” and never put such on anyone’s Medicaid card. As it turns out, she named her child at birth, “ Shi’Thead”, pronounced Shi-thee-add. I had entered the name into the computer just as she had indicated from the child’s birth certificate. The computer, not recognizing the apostrophes, determined on its own the name “SHITHEAD”. The name on the card sure enough appeared, “SHITHEAD JONES”. I explained to the irate mother the nature of computer programming as a valid explanation for what had occurred. She would hear none of it and demanded that we have the programming changed to accept apostrophes. Given the 20,000-30,000 or so names of folks on assistance in the entire state, there was no chance the programming would be changed to accommodate one name. I suggested perhaps she reconsider the name and give her child a real one. She indicated he had a real name and it was “Shi’Thead”. So it ended and I often wondered what life was going to be like for little Shi’Thead whenever he got report cards, driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, etc. As time went on computers became much more sophisticated and I quit thinking much about the story and newer better computing allowed for small case letters, numbers and even punctuation marks in any field. Finally an older and bigger Shi’Thead would have been allowed to grow beyond the name with which his dumb mother had saddled him. One day very many years later my neighbor Hank who was employed by a major delivery service, possibly FedEx, comes over to my yard while I was mowing and stopped me. He was laughing his butt off in amazement as he told me I would NEVER guess the name of a guy he had delivered a package to that day. He then said the guy’s name was “SHITHEAD”. I responded, “JONES”? His jaw stopped as he stood there completely dumbfounded. How could I possibly have known that? I said, “Really John, there could only be one.” As an aside: Hank came over to my yard some time months later while I was mowing. He told me that if I ever found his body dead in the yard to not try to take matters into my own hands. I assured him that if ever I found his body dead in his yard or mine, under no circumstance would I ever try to take matters into my own hands. It turns out he was going through a nasty divorce. I never saw him or spoke to him again, but I heard he had developed a quite active dating life via an internet dating site and was quite happy. That is an entirely different story.

The Winds of Change and the Minimum Wage

It’s been a while since I’ve reported as I’ve been busy with a great number of investigations. Now that the economy has improved, I was thinking of hiring some help in my investigative endeavors until I spoke with my newly elected Republican representative from Texas, Louis “Gomer Pyle” Gomert. Shoot, I’m not even from Texas and don’t now and never have even considered it a legitimate state. That’s beside the point. Until the recent elections in Kansas, I always found the most solace in Texas with knowing that I was smarter than elected officials from that state, thus my personal interests could best be protected there. Anyway, I digress. Now, there are things I admire greatly about Texas, Willie Nelson and Lyle Lovett. Unfortunately, that about sums the whole deal up. See, I sat down in the Buffalo Turd Café in West Pecos the other day with Louie Gomert to discuss politics and the economy and such. Louie is really feeling his oats these days…both of them. So, he’s decided to buck the trend which has been gaining strength across the country with those wanting to raise the minimum wage. Even Arkansas raised their own minimum wage. Louie sees things differently. He is proposing that we LOWER the minimum wage by about a buck fifty per hour. At this point I was pretty sure I would hear the logic following to state that this would help the working poor by enabling the wealthy employers to hire more folks. I disagree with that philosophy as having once been a small business guy I full well know that one doesn’t hire more people merely because they have more money to do so. Nope! They hire more people because they have more customers for their goods and services. Without more customers, hiring more people is nothing but welfare. There’s not much profit in that unless you’re a private contractor who gets a gig with the government after you make a sizable campaign contribution to someone…well, like Louis Gomert. So, realizing my mistake, I became glued to Louie’s explanation for his wage lowering proposal. See, there has been a significant drop in the cost of gasoline over the past six months ago or so. This has resulted in an unexpected, and according to Louie, an unearned windfall in the pockets of the undeserving poorer of our society and they have done nothing to earn it. Therefore, per Louie, we should lower the minimum wage to an approximate equal amount of the savings garnered by these low wage workers via gasoline savings. This would result in a net benefit to the wealthier employer who would not need to hire more folks because it would do nothing to increase the number his customers. Furthermore, it would bolster the coffers of the government because they would no longer need to grant such excessive tax breaks to these employers in exchange for campaign contributions. The poorer would be just as poor and who cares? Not Louie and that’s for sure. As the sun set over the Buffalo Turd Café in West Pecos, I left Louie and pondered what this country was becoming or has become. I rolled down the window and sucked some West Texas dust knowing I’d never return, while Lyle Lovett occupied my CD player with the words “But the winds of change, They fill the air, And you can't set your hat down Just anywhere.” From the ballad, Don’t Touch My Hat. Yippee, ki yay, git along little doggies and all that……..

COCKFIGHTING COMES OF AGE

I just found this article in the news and it conjured up old memories of my past.**** http://www.businessinsider.com/romanian-princess-irina-walker-krueger-arrested-for-cockfighting-2013-8 **** I never knew any princesses and I do know times are getting tough all over the place due to free trade, global warming and Area 51. But, the idea of a princess getting all wrapped up in a cockfighting ring brings home the fact that the world economy had really turned everything all topsy-turvy and in some cases has even had a leveling effect on the status of various folks. One look at the last princess of Romania yanks at the chains of my heart as this very beautiful woman has resorted to the primal sport of cockfighting which heretofore I was only aware of due to the experiences of my long lost friend from South of the border, Pedro.

(The heretofore beautiful princess Irina Walker Krueger of Romania as seen above). **** Like the beautiful princess, my friend, Pedro, too is an immigrant. Immigrants have provided us with a cultural stew of music, arts, cuisine and sports…like the sport of cockfighting. This never used to be here. But, now we got us a new sport. Years ago, I had this friend names Pedro. My friend named Pedro is a bad ass, but, he’s my friend. I knew him in my younger days, when I lived for some time as a child and young adult in Costa Rica. So, I went over to his apartment and I said to Pedro, “hey Pedro…(cause that’s his name)….you wanna go to a cockfight?” He says, “Sure man, I’ll go get my protective cup.” I said,“No Pedro, not that kind of cockfight. I mean the kind they do with chickens.” He says, “Oh!” Chickens can serve a practical purpose other than food. When I lived in Costa Rica as a child, I would go to a little back alley market with my uncle who would take me to a cockfight. These were between roosters which are men chickens. Cock fighting seems to be illegal here because of animal cruelty issues, yet boxing is legal here as it is also in Costa Rica. It’s odd that this country sees sport in people beating the brains out of each other but we must protect the chickens. Sometimes, the chickens would die. Then, if you owned that chicken, you could still eat it which is what some people said that’s all they’re good for anyway. So, afterwards, I go to this cockfight with my friend, Pedro, and the crowd is full of men and a few roosters. There is one really big cock fight going on and the men watching are worked up into a mad frenzy, shaking money and little pieces of paper, what they call markers here. As the chickens became more excited and the fight got more violent, so too did the men become more excited and then the chickens got even more excited than the men who too got more excited and some of them started to fight with one another. So, in this circle, you had the chickens fighting and outside the circle you had the men fighting. Just as the fighting chickens worked the men into a frenzy, the fighting men worked the chickens into a frenzy and the next thing I saw was the chickens went berserk and were pecking each other and everything else in sight, including the men. The money and markers were flying everywhere as were the chickens and the men’s fists. Then, some guy starts screaming because a chicken pecked his eye out! I heard Pedro in the pile of men shout that he wished now he had brought his protective cup, but I didn’t know if that was because of the men or the chickens. Things kind of calmed down and they would have taken the guy with the pecked out eye to the hospital, but we didn’t have a hospital so they just took the guy home. As near as I could tell, most of the men went home without their money which would have happened anyway except the people who did go home with the money were probably not the ones who had a winning chicken. and that was wrong. I don’t think the chickens were any stupider than the men who lost their money. The chickens caused a riot and really screwed up the day for most of these men. I think those chickens got ate, which probably would have happened anyway. The very next day, I went over to Pedro’s and we had dinner….fried chicken. I didn’t ask no questions.

AT THE HOME DEPOT

I shouldn’t have laughed. But, when I pulled into the parking lot at the Home Depot, it hit me. The first three parking spaces in each row were designated for disabled people. I’m not talking about the first three spaces only. Nope! I’m seeing the first three spaces in all of the rows which must have totaled 12-15. That’s three spaces in each row times 12-15 for a total of at least 36 disabled parking spaces right there up front. I never park up front. I enjoy walking and I even enjoy more parking away from everyone else so I don’t return to my vehicle suffering numerous door dings from the oversized cars parking in the disabled spaces. What really strikes me is that the only people I ever see parking in these spaces are fat people, not just overweight people either. Shoot, we’re all, almost all, overweight. What I’m talking about is really great big fatty two-by-fours! When they get out of their big cars, it is necessary for them to drive their door as it opens as hard as they can into the car next to them because they need the extra inch that the ding provides in order to get out of their car. Otherwise, there just isn’t enough room. Is seems there must be a rush of these disabled folks descending on the Home Depot who are all worked into a frenzy re-roofing their homes and doing jobs involving heavy lumber and large appliances. Disability for these large folks does not interfere with doing things other than walking 30 feet into the store. Once in the store I went to grab a cart, but the darned thing was huge and heavy. Then, I noticed it had a locomotive attached to it. On the surface, this made some sense as many items in the Home Depot are large and heavy. These large turbo powered carts were not to provide for the weight of items, however, these were to carry the significant weight of the folks who needed the assigned parking spaces. I grabbed a regular cart and wheeled down to the back of the store to grab some cardboard boxes. I’m moving. Just as I tuned into the cardboard box isle, I was blocked by two of these super powered carts. Each cart was occupied by a person who appeared to have had Hippopotamuses transplanted to their asses. They were so wide that the entire isle was blocked and I couldn’t even walk past, let alone maneuver my regular sized cart. Normally, I could get my cart past a large fork lift in this isle. But, (no pun intended), these two people had sets of buns, that’s four buns total, which entirely blocked the isle. I had no hope of getting to the boxes from this direction so I wheeled the cart around and rolled all the way through the appliance section and attacked the box isle from the other side. However, by the time I arrived, the large people had moved, pulling one in front of the other, and now the entire side of the isle with the boxes was blocked. Sure, I could now push my cart down the isle which I heretofore couldn’t even enter, but now I couldn’t get to the boxes. I excused myself and indicated I needed to grab a couple of boxes. These two folks turned out to be quite nice and apologized, with the man stating that it was quite a coincidence that they were blocking the only thing I needed to get to. It struck me that they were so big that I could have gone all the way down to the lumber stacks on the other end of the store and they STILL would have been in the way. He started up the locomotive attached to his cart and a giant puff a black diesel fumes poured from his exhaust pipe…actually the cart’s exhaust pipe, not his, thank God! His cart rumbled about five feet down the isle.. Anyway, I grabbed my boxes and left. On the way out of the store, it struck me that these two people had been wearing camouflage pants. (Not both of them wearing the same pants but each having their own set of camouflage pants). What on Earth were they trying to blend in with? I just plain cannot figure any of this out. One thing I do know for sure is that I will never make it a habit of eating potato chips for breakfast. As I approached my truck, I saw a pair of disabled people pulling into one of our regular peoples’ parking spaces. That really burned me up….

COFFEE WITH A FRIEND

I ran into a friend a few months ago and decided to catch up by having coffee with him. It turns out he was quite distraught due to the fact that his marriage of 37 years has just ended with his now ex-wife having tossed him aside for another man. It turns out my friend had known this other individual which is not all that uncommon, I guess. The two had shared many conversations over a period of several years. My friend recalled one time that this other guy had commented that a light bulb had just come on in his head. My friend assumed it meant that the guy was expressing that he’d just come up with a thought. Later, my friend discovered that the guy was really a robot and a light bulb actually had come on inside his head. To this day, he doesn't know if that’s what attracted his ex-wife to this guy or not. My friend has suffered greatly, not only because he feels a lesser man after losing his wife to another. But, given the fact “the other” was a robot, he’s totally demoralized! I told him that in my opinion, the light bulb turning on inside this guy’s head probably was a thought, and the thought was to run off with my friend’s wife. I though this would add a little humanity to the problem. I haven’t heard from the guy since.

WAR ON HETERO-SEXUAL MARRIAGE

It was a few years ago that I recall Bill O’Reilly declaring that he was going to lead the fight against the War on Christmas. It was a war envisioned only by the uber far-right- super-paranoid. They had become convinced that because clerks in large box department stores were overheard saying “happy holidays” rather than “merry Christmas” and because a stock boy named Jesus Rodriguez had allegedly been asked to hide his name badge by some hairball manager who feared customers would be offended by his first name that there was a massive cultural onslaught to wipe Christmas, if not the entirety of Western culture, from existence. This so called war played out with an array of mental pygmies like Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity jumping on the bandwagon as super patriot warriors who were willing to lay down their collective…well I don’t really know what it was as their lives were certainly never in jeopardy…essences to win this greatest of all battles. Shortly thereafter, Bill O’Reilly declared ‘victory” on his radio program upon learning Jesus was allowed to again wear his badge after an abundance of negative publicity hit the store where Jesus Rodriguez worked. As a result of this great victory, we are all the beneficiaries of 30 pound newspapers hitting our doorsteps a full month prior to Thanksgiving as well as an array of tasteless and tacky blow-up yard ornaments depicting such iconic religious symbols as Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman, Dick Cheney and others, to name a few. As we have become a nation inclined to a permanent state of war, we were to suffer no reprieve from such after the conclusion of this decisive and quick victory in the war on Christmas. I am the proud uncle of a niece and nephew, both very good kids, who have met their soul mates and are scheduled to be married a few mere weeks from one another. At first I thought this quite the coincidence. Upon further examination, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are reacting to the current spate of news concerning the momentum with which various states and the country as a whole are accepting the concept of gay marriage. Now, gay marriage is an issue with which I have no complaint. If folks are willing to fight our wars and pay their taxes, then I’m for letting them marry whomever they wish. What I fear is not gay marriage. What I do fear is the thundering gallop of pandering politicians who will jump on any band wagon in order to garner votes by taking positions which will favor such regardless of what they themselves believe. It is with this in mind that I fear the declaration of the next cultural war, and it will lead to the taking of many prisoners. The war of which I speak of is the War on Hetero-sexual Marriage! It’s bound to happen as we are already going down that slippery slope with the permissiveness of gay marriage, childbirth out of wedlock, individually packed coffee pods, and electronic smokes. When will it end? It’s as if I can already hear these politicians railing against the concept of one man marrying one woman as going against everything in nature as if a horse married a camel or an elephant married a hippopotamus. “If men were meant to marry women, God would have ordained it,” would be pronounced by a mainstream politico most likely from some place like Texas. “Why, it’s akin to full-noodle frontity”, they will proclaim. Rick Perry will be outraged…“I’ve been married to a woman, the same woman, for over 35 years and let me tell you, it was a horrible mistake!” Shoot, even Vladimir Putin is jumping on the bandwagon. Finally, I will go to the marriage ceremonies of my nephew and niece with the comfort of knowing they got in just under the wire, not having to live in the quiet desperation of hetero-sexuals, being men who love women, women who love men, hiding such facts in the closet for the rest of their lives. These may well be the last hetero-sexual marriages allowed in this country. Where’s the humanity? Oh, where’s the humanity??? And, God bless Bill O’Reilly.