As you may not have heard if you're Osama Bin Laden (and thus dead), Casey Anthony was found not guilty of the more serious charges against her (including that tiny one about killing her daughter). And as you might expect, this is a topic of some discussion in the nation at this time, with media talking heads exploding over themselves to try and explain why the jury is so stupid.
To that, I say....shaddup!
Yes, I think Casey Anthony is guilty of something. I didn't follow the case as much as Nancy Grace did, but when someone goes a month before reporting their kid missing, you have to believe there's more than just simple negligance going on. Let's get that out of the way.
But in a trial under the American legal system, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone is guilty of the charges they are alleged with. What the jurors have said is, the prosecution didn't prove its case.
Before Nancy Grace can explode through yet another hideous hairdo, she needs to remember that the legal system, while not perfect, is the best one we've got, and vigilantes don't need any encouragement.
One thing that stuck out to me was when Grace started bellyaching about Anthony's possible moves to write a book about her case so as to make money. What the hell has Grace been doing for the past however many years since the story broke, doing episode after episode about this case and basically engaging in a smear campaign (admittedly against a reprehensible woman, but still)? Trust me, any argument she makes about "rights of victims" is bullshit; it's about Nancy Grace's right to make a buck exploiting a tragedy. And we're all party to it, because we watched Nancy and those of her ilk make what was a tragic but nondescript murder case into a national obsession. It's the OJ Syndrome all over again.
Now then, who wants to talk about The News of the World and what a sack of shit Rupert Murdoch is?
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
The Mating Game
I come from a family in which pet-owning is almost mandatory (it's amazing that I've gone as long as I have without a pet myself), and so it should be no surprise that animals are drawn to us. One such animal is a beast of a dog that my grandpa inherited from my uncle. He's an old soul, he's probably on his last legs, and he's fixed so that the only damage he can do procreation-wise is maybe some light dry-humping. My sis started moving into a house a few blocks down from us and brought her two dogs with her, one male and one female. I go up there occasionally to visit, and wouldn't you know that the dog that lives with me and Gramps has to follow me up there or sense my presence and arrive some minutes after I have. Of course, it could be the female dog that gets his attention; she's fixed, but you wouldn't know it by how much she likes to jump around. Like I said, the worst that these two together could get up to would be some dry-humping. But it's still nice to think their passions might co-mingle.
Sometimes I feel like the older male dog when I'm talking to girls in Clemson, which is where I have to spend a significant chunk of my time because I work downtown. I'm in my thirties now, and I've never really had anything resembling a "relationship" with a member of the opposite sex. Mostly this is my fault, but it doesn't help that, in some of the circles I ran in as a much younger person, the girls I knew were superficial, stuck-up, and tethered to dickless wonders of boyfriends (not bitter much, am I?). Now, with a more healthy view of myself (for the most part), I still feel a little like that guy who would get all worked up over a girl, only to find out she's unavailable, and thus give up entirely.
"Bros before hoes" probably didn't exist as a phrase when I was a kid, but it's long been the code by which I live. Simply put, if a girl would cheat on her boyfriend with me, why wouldn't she cheat on me with some other dude? Also, the karma retributions are manifest; let's say her last boyfriend gave her the gift that keeps on giving (i.e., some sort of VD). I get to pass that on like a chain letter.
I've been thinking about this lately because I'm so old (well, to my mind anyway) and the girls I meet are literally girls, between eighteen and some point in their early twenties. Women my own age, around here anyway, are all married to their second or third husband, tied down by a litter of malcontent kids, and somewhere on the wrong side of "letting it all hang out." Plus, I suspect that a lot of them are on meth. You see a lot when you work in the customer-service industry, as I have for most of my working life.
I guess it's just a question of what I want versus what I can get. When all your experiences have been mixed, it's hard to know when you might actually have a shot. I still sometimes make the mistake of thinking just because a girl says "hi" to me that she wants my body (a reasonable assumption, right?). I remember once, when I was working at the Clemson university library, I'm pretty sure an older woman hit on me. If she hadn't reminded me of my grandmother (because when I say "older," I mean "remembers where she was when Kennedy was shot" older), who knows what might have happened? Then again, I could have been misreading the signals.
My options are thus: girls who are younger but not hung-up on any age difference (I'm thirty-one, not seventy-two. If they want to date me, it won't be for my money), women my own age who aren't attached and are looking (harder to find in this area), and crazy old ladies who want to mother me and shower cash on me like I'm some child prostitute that their husband brought back from Thailand (okay, bit of a stretch, but I'm thinking outside the box). I say all this not as a means of generating sympathy or even a pity-whatever (though that would be nice, it would improve my batting average). I'm just tired of meeting the love of my life and then meeting her handsome husband, to paraphrase Alanis Morrisette.
Also, if any rich older ladies see this and are open to it, I can be your boy-toy. I hope you like 'em a little on the love-handles side.
Sometimes I feel like the older male dog when I'm talking to girls in Clemson, which is where I have to spend a significant chunk of my time because I work downtown. I'm in my thirties now, and I've never really had anything resembling a "relationship" with a member of the opposite sex. Mostly this is my fault, but it doesn't help that, in some of the circles I ran in as a much younger person, the girls I knew were superficial, stuck-up, and tethered to dickless wonders of boyfriends (not bitter much, am I?). Now, with a more healthy view of myself (for the most part), I still feel a little like that guy who would get all worked up over a girl, only to find out she's unavailable, and thus give up entirely.
"Bros before hoes" probably didn't exist as a phrase when I was a kid, but it's long been the code by which I live. Simply put, if a girl would cheat on her boyfriend with me, why wouldn't she cheat on me with some other dude? Also, the karma retributions are manifest; let's say her last boyfriend gave her the gift that keeps on giving (i.e., some sort of VD). I get to pass that on like a chain letter.
I've been thinking about this lately because I'm so old (well, to my mind anyway) and the girls I meet are literally girls, between eighteen and some point in their early twenties. Women my own age, around here anyway, are all married to their second or third husband, tied down by a litter of malcontent kids, and somewhere on the wrong side of "letting it all hang out." Plus, I suspect that a lot of them are on meth. You see a lot when you work in the customer-service industry, as I have for most of my working life.
I guess it's just a question of what I want versus what I can get. When all your experiences have been mixed, it's hard to know when you might actually have a shot. I still sometimes make the mistake of thinking just because a girl says "hi" to me that she wants my body (a reasonable assumption, right?). I remember once, when I was working at the Clemson university library, I'm pretty sure an older woman hit on me. If she hadn't reminded me of my grandmother (because when I say "older," I mean "remembers where she was when Kennedy was shot" older), who knows what might have happened? Then again, I could have been misreading the signals.
My options are thus: girls who are younger but not hung-up on any age difference (I'm thirty-one, not seventy-two. If they want to date me, it won't be for my money), women my own age who aren't attached and are looking (harder to find in this area), and crazy old ladies who want to mother me and shower cash on me like I'm some child prostitute that their husband brought back from Thailand (okay, bit of a stretch, but I'm thinking outside the box). I say all this not as a means of generating sympathy or even a pity-whatever (though that would be nice, it would improve my batting average). I'm just tired of meeting the love of my life and then meeting her handsome husband, to paraphrase Alanis Morrisette.
Also, if any rich older ladies see this and are open to it, I can be your boy-toy. I hope you like 'em a little on the love-handles side.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Smile, It's Tuesday
Happy 4th of July...weekend, it's just now July 2nd where I am so I feel a bit premature about yelling "happy 4th of July!" when we're not even there yet. Go figure, I'm a stickler for waiting until the appropriate moment to celebrate our nation's founding.
Well, scratch that: the lamestream media's officially-sanctioned version of events that led to our nation's founding. You know how they distort things, making it sound like we forgot to do anything about abolishing slavery right off the bat, or kept Chinamen from coming over until we needed railroads and were too lazy to build them ourselves. You know, that sort of thing.
American history, when you're an idealistic kid, is a very different animal from what you learn as you get older (assuming you learn anything, what with the condition of American education). When you're a kid, all those guys on the poster that goes around the wall, the dead white guys who are recognizable because some of them are on the money that you have for lunch that day, they seem like nice guys. A little hard to gauge in terms of how much they like to party, but you're guessing that Lincoln would do the Electric Slide while Teddy Roosevelt shot a bear just for the hell of it, and Franklin Pierce would be doing jello shots off Rutherford B. Hayes' facial hair. Maybe you didn't think of such things when you were a kid, and I can't say that I did either. But for the most part, you knew the basic facts about America, and were content.
Then, say, you read about the whole Indian forced-resettlement thing (basically pushing them to the Pacific, until we decided that we wanted that too), everything to do with being black in America (at the lib I used to work at, there was a series of books called "You Wouldn't Want to Be A..." with some historical context, usually like a "Titanic passenger" or "Jamestown colonist." I once suggested "You Wouldn't Want to Be a Black Person in America 1619-1955 or So"), Jewish, Irish, any other kind of "-ish," and sharecropping. A lot of bad shit has gone down under the banner of the Stars and Stripes, people.
But I think that's a good thing, in a way. We're the most powerful nation on earth (well, except for the Chinese), and we're looked up to (well, except for the time that ex-cheerleader was in charge). We have made amends somewhat for some of that bad shit, but we could do more. But I think we'll get there.
We don't need the idealized version of history, the one that says nothing bad ever happened and if it did, it was the pinko liberal homo Commies' fault. We need an honest appraisal of where we've been, what we've done, and what we got right. So this 4th of July, take some time to appreciate the real America, the one that shows up at your barbecue three sheets to the wind and intolerant of the Irish. Because as fucked-up as this America is, he's got some redeeming qualities. He never molested you, right?
Happy Independence Day, bitches!!!
Well, scratch that: the lamestream media's officially-sanctioned version of events that led to our nation's founding. You know how they distort things, making it sound like we forgot to do anything about abolishing slavery right off the bat, or kept Chinamen from coming over until we needed railroads and were too lazy to build them ourselves. You know, that sort of thing.
American history, when you're an idealistic kid, is a very different animal from what you learn as you get older (assuming you learn anything, what with the condition of American education). When you're a kid, all those guys on the poster that goes around the wall, the dead white guys who are recognizable because some of them are on the money that you have for lunch that day, they seem like nice guys. A little hard to gauge in terms of how much they like to party, but you're guessing that Lincoln would do the Electric Slide while Teddy Roosevelt shot a bear just for the hell of it, and Franklin Pierce would be doing jello shots off Rutherford B. Hayes' facial hair. Maybe you didn't think of such things when you were a kid, and I can't say that I did either. But for the most part, you knew the basic facts about America, and were content.
Then, say, you read about the whole Indian forced-resettlement thing (basically pushing them to the Pacific, until we decided that we wanted that too), everything to do with being black in America (at the lib I used to work at, there was a series of books called "You Wouldn't Want to Be A..." with some historical context, usually like a "Titanic passenger" or "Jamestown colonist." I once suggested "You Wouldn't Want to Be a Black Person in America 1619-1955 or So"), Jewish, Irish, any other kind of "-ish," and sharecropping. A lot of bad shit has gone down under the banner of the Stars and Stripes, people.
But I think that's a good thing, in a way. We're the most powerful nation on earth (well, except for the Chinese), and we're looked up to (well, except for the time that ex-cheerleader was in charge). We have made amends somewhat for some of that bad shit, but we could do more. But I think we'll get there.
We don't need the idealized version of history, the one that says nothing bad ever happened and if it did, it was the pinko liberal homo Commies' fault. We need an honest appraisal of where we've been, what we've done, and what we got right. So this 4th of July, take some time to appreciate the real America, the one that shows up at your barbecue three sheets to the wind and intolerant of the Irish. Because as fucked-up as this America is, he's got some redeeming qualities. He never molested you, right?
Happy Independence Day, bitches!!!
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