Stuff People Really Need To Keep In Mind In 2012

Neither the President nor any of his would-be GOP successors are evil people simply by virtue of the fact their ideologies are not your ideologies. Having a differing opinion or perspective does not provide just cause for hyperbolic, panic-stricken claims that so-and-so is trying to destroy America…and certainly not just cause for Hitler/Nazi comparisons.

The majority of reality TV shows are abominations. Shows like Jersey Shore, anything preceded by The Real Housewives of…, or with a Kardashian name attached to it are a pox on society. These shows pay ridiculous amounts of money to “real people” to behave in ways that would get a normal person arrested, or at the very least relentlessly mocked at social gatherings. They glamorize imbeciles, punks, and narcissists by packaging it as entertainment. We should not reward these people with fame and/or fortune. Stop paying attention to them.

Christianity, chill out. The “secular left” is not trying to destroy you or discriminate against you. What’s really happening here is, reasonable people are tired of being browbeaten by pious twits for daring to deviate from their standards — standards that, ironically, many self-described Christian politicians are very good at invoking, but very bad at following. When someone irks you, try the gentle answer or turning the other cheek approach rather than playing the victim or telling everyone what awful people they are.

On a related note: not everything that happens in the world happens for the express purpose of making you angry. Not everything is meant as an attack on all you hold dear. Stop looking for excuses to be pointlessly pissed off about trivial crap.

A note for Hollywood: 3-D is overdone and overrated. You know what would really get people into the theaters? Good movies. Stop raiding old TV shows and comic books for fodder, stop remaking great old movies that don’t need remaking. Try — and stay with me, because it’s a radical suggestion — original material. Because TV’s doing that and TV is kicking your hinders in terms of quality entertainment. TV. You know, that thing a lot of actors didn’t want to do instead of movies…that doesn’t cost $12 a pop for tickets and another $12 for a small soda and popcorn.

If 2011 taught us anything, it’s that focused protests can achieve a lot more than a bunch of people loitering for days and weeks on end in public parks. Thanks to people taking action in a focused and organized manner, Bank of America and Verizon abandoned plans for unnecessary fees, Netflix didn’t separate into two distinct entities, and — although this one still rankles me — Lowe’s dropped its advertising for “All-American Muslim.” And that last one only took a few hundred people expressing their religious intolerance in letter form!

Wind turbines do not necessarily cause negative health impacts because of their ultra-low-frequency sound emissions. That is a scientifically unproven point, despite what Dr. Nina Pierpont’s deeply flawed study suggests. Conversely, health effects caused by prolonged stress reactions are real and cannot be discounted because it’s inconvenient for the wind industry.

No one has 365 consecutive lousy days. You are not the exception to this rule. If your life really is kind of cruddy? Chances are, much of it is within your ability to change and you’re simply not exercising your authority over yourself, so stop wasting time blaming the world around you and make some changes.

Declaring that you are the first person to post in the comment section of a blog by posting, simply, “first” is obnoxious, pointless, and pathetic, so don’t do it (especially on this blog in response to this post in a sad attempt to be funny, because that only increases your lameness tenfold).

You suck. Every last damned one of you.

You’ve been stinking up the joint for a long time now, but this week’s craptacular implosion of competence known as the deficit reduction super-committee deadlock was the rotten cherry atop your impotence sundae. Seriously? In two months, you couldn’t find a deficit reduction plan that all 12 of you agreed to?

Oh, what am I saying? Of course you couldn’t, because none of you the barest shred of courage necessary to peek out of your stifling ideological boxes for even a nanosecond. If you were a Democrat, you wanted tax hikes on the rich, if you were a Republican you wanted cuts, and there was simply no middle ground because god forbid you entertained an approach that wasn’t graven in stone by your respective parties.

And now we’re already deep within the phase of the quote-unquote process in which you start finding someone to blame for this mess other than yourselves. It’s the other guys whose ideas sucked. It’s the other guys who refused to budge from their position and compromise. It’s the other guys’ fault, not yours.

No, it is yours. Every member of the super-committee is to blame for allowing themselves to get further sucked into the morass of divisive partisan politics and flagrantly ignore your own rallying cries about “what the American people want.”

What the American people want is for you to fix the financial hellscape you’ve fashioned for this nation with your petty bickering and misplaced priorities and pissing contests over whether the left or the right is morally superior and unadulterated selfishness. Right now you all care only about two things: getting your jobs back in 2012 and getting your guy into the Oval Office. Everything else, like the public welfare, the public’s trust and faith in the system, the nation’s standing on the global stage? None of that truly matters to you — ANY of you. If it did, you’d be more willing to throw yourselves on the metaphorical grenade to save your constituents.

At this point in time, I do not believe that any single one of you elected federal officials give a toss about me, the country, the economy, job creation — I believe you only care about their political agendas and padding their own pockets. The concept of shared sacrifice you talk about, that stops right at your doorstep; I don’t see any of you giving up your six-figure salaries any more than I see you breaking away from the official party rulebook, and I don’t expect to see one of you manifest anything vaguely resembling courage in the name of breaking the deadlock that is slowly suffocating everyone in this country and driving us to fracture even more into our own little movements that achieve little beyond inflaming preexisting philosophical rifts to the boiling point and beyond.

You are supposed to represent the public. You are supposed to do what we want you to, and what we want you to do is act like goddamned adults.

***

Dear fellow voters,

Did you agree with any of what I just said?

Well, it’s your fault too.

Seriously, we put these people into positions of power, and we encourage their misbegotten feelings of untouchability by failing to hold them accountable.

Sure, right now you’re saying “Yeah! Let’s clean house and get these idiots out of office!” but, chances are, you’re not going to follow through. Even if you go vote — we have not exceeded a 60 percent voter turnout rate since 1968 — you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to look at the ballot, you’ll see the name of the guy that’s been there for years and/or belongs to the same party you do, and you’re going to think, “Sure, Congress is a cesspit, but MY GUY isn’t part of the problem” and you’re going to send him back to work in January.

You’ll rationalize the decision a thousand different ways, considering his “clout” in Congress, how he meshes with your own ideology, and all the good he’s done during his time in office, all the while turning a blissful blind eye to the fact that he’s part of a deeply entrenched political body that is more mired in myopic partisan bickering than perhaps any in history.

Your guy? He sucks. He sucks just as hard as the other guy. It’s time you manned up and admitted it. It’s time you displayed the same courage you berate Congress for lacking and throw the current guy out, even if it means sending in someone with whom you do not agree on anything (and if you’re really so hung up on the party aspects of it, try voting the incumbent out during the primaries — you know, those things that allegedly give you control over the process but are so driven by the party’s wants, needs, and money that they’re practically worthless…and that’s our fault too).

The definition of insanity, it’s been said, is repeating the same actions over and over while expecting a different result. The incumbency rate for the US House of Representatives has not dropped below 80 percent once in the past 30 years, and the last time the incumbency rate fell below 75 percent for the US Senate was 1980. That means this nation is at least three-quarters batcrap insane.

It’s way past time to end the insanity. Stop protesting, stop occupying, stop posting acidic comments on blogs and news sites and go DO SOMETHING. Do something real. Do something meaningful. Take control of your damned lives.

9 ) On a related note, Obama makes the right call in deciding not to release pics of bin Laden’s dead body. Doing so would have further incited those already outraged over bin Laden’s death and — I think the Birthers proved this — would not have convinced the nutters out there that he is really truly dead.

8 ) The Legislature holds a new round of hearings on the possibility of casino gaming in Massachusetts. Is it more than a little twisted that a portion of the revenue generated by casino gaming would be earmarked to fund gambling addiction programs?

7 ) The Popponesset Marketplace is heading for total shutdown over handicap accessibility issues. Just what the local economy needed.

6 ) Massachusetts appoints its first openly gay SJC justice in Barbara Lenk. Her first order of business is to outlaw conventional marriage (at least, that’s what dissenting governor’s councilor Charles Cipollini is expecting).

5 ) Auditor Suzanne Bump cleans house in her office, canning 27 people after an unfavorable independent review of the office. Her predecessor Joe DeNucci takes the finding personally and chides Bump, even though he had not voluntarily submitted his office to a review in 15 years; they’re supposed to take place every three. Joe. Bubbi. Suck it up. That fat state pension should help ease the pain.

4 ) Yarmouth Selectman Aubrey “Bud” Groskopf pulls a prop gun out at a meeting to make a point about wastewater management. I don’t know what’s more pathetic: the pointless use of violent imagery in this day and age or an old guy doing prop comedy.

3 ) Scott Brown’s formerly sterling image tarnishes a bit more after he proclaims a photo allegedly of bin Laden’s body genuine, only to later learn it was one of the many fakes making the rounds. Not as much of a head-scratcher as, say, claiming to be molested at a summer camp then refusing to name names, but these are the kind of dumb whoopsies that people really remember.

2 ) Matt Dean, Republican leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives, calls author Neil Gaiman a “pencil-necked weasel” and a “thief” for accepting a hefty speaker fee funded with taxpayer money. Money that was offered to him by its actual recipient, a library. Which it had to spend in order to keep its budget level-funded the following fiscal year. Which Gaiman donated in its entirety to two charities. The kicker, and this is true: Dean offered a half-hearted apology after his mother chided him for calling someone mean names. Great guy you got there, Minnesota.

1 ) President Obama zings birthers Michelle Bachman and Donald Trump at the annual White House press corps dinner. The Donald’s laughter looked about as realistic as his hair.

Say something callous about Japan.

Catch seven shades of Hell for it.

Go on Twitter again.

Offer half-assed apology.

Undermine half-assed apology with explanation/excuse that it was meant as a joke.

Slink away and wait for Charlie Sheen to do something to distract everyone.

2) Working at home is not all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve been snowed in at least three times in as many weeks and I don’t care for it. I stay productive, yet I somehow feel like a huge slacked by simple virtue of the fact I’m not in my office.

3) I’ll be covering another hearing this week on some proposed regulations for onshore wind turbine development. I am not looking forward to listening to the exact same people air the exact same grievances yet again — especially since they so rarely address the merits of the proposal. Roy Richardson, if you’re listening: keep these people on-topic and give some new voices a chance to be heard, huh?

4) On Sheriff Cummings’ decision to hire Jeff Perry: Jeff does have solid credentials for the job, absolutely, but it has at the very least a distinct air of patronage, particularly after the sheriff lamented his funding woes. Perry needs to prove his worth, fast and in a big way, or the critics will be proven right.

5) Why are people still clinging to the “Obama wasn’t really born in this county” foolishness? Oh, right: because they’re frickin’ idiots who can’t deal with even the idea of two more years of Obama. Hey, guys, I sucked up eight years of George W., so man up.

6) I was angry when I learned that “Snooki” from “The Jersey Shore” scored a publishing deal. I was delighted to learn that her book “A Shore Thing” (get it? Isn’t that clever?) has sold fewer than 10,000 copies nationally.

7) Vampires are overdone and zombies are fast heading that way. Well, at least the fast-moving zombies are. The shamblers might take longer to achieve overexposure.

8 ) I am amazed how some ambitious filmmakers can — armed with a decent concept, good actors, minimal equipment, and almost no money — turn out really cool movies like “Monsters” or “Paranormal Entity,” yet others can only produce pieces of crap so smelly pigs wouldn’t wallow in it (i.e., 90 percent of the horror flicks you’ve never heard of available through Netflix).

9) “Bioshock: Infinite” cannot come out soon enough.

10) It’s been a couple of weeks since the Arizona tragedy. Have we forgotten about being civil and not riling up people by instilling them with a baseless fear of “the other”? Oh, right, we had Steve Cohen making Nazi references not too long ago. Way to bounce back, hyperbole-prone elected officials!

11) Sci-fi and alternate history fans, check out the work of Cherie Priest. “Boneshaker” was awesome, and “Dreadnought,” which I’m now reading, is well on its way to awesomeness.

12) If you see a guy near the Shining Sea Bike Path this spring trying to cut stuff in half with a bullwhip, that’d be me. Don’t freak out.

13) Most common comment thrown my way lately: “Why is there so much negative press about [insert topic here]? Why can’t you write any good news about [topic]?” My response: “Because that’s all you’re giving me, and you’re not giving me a reason to, respectively.”

14) Hey, you. The guy who’s stretching out his earlobes until I can pass a billiard ball through them. Your earlobes won’t reboot to normal size when you grow up and realize how stupid they look and try to take the rings out.

15) Random point of superficial pride: I know lots of hot women. Many of them know how to swordfight.

16) Political unrest in the rest of the world = violent, destructive riots. Political unrest in the US = poorly spelled protest signs and angry blog posts.

17) Fascinating Wikipedia find of the month: the entry on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, wherein people cannot grasp how ignorant they are in a given skill or field of knowledge, which leads to a false sense of superiority (think “American Idol” auditions). I know lots of people suffering from this.

18) Fascinating Boston Globe article that explains the “birthers” (see item #5) and people of their ilk: How Facts Backfire.

19) COMMENTERS ON BLOG POSTS WHO TYPE LIKE THIS NEED TO BE DELETED ON PRINCIPLE. THIS IS REALLY ANNOYING.

20) Mispronouncing or misspelling a word is not excusable with, “Well, that’s the way I say/spell it.”

21) Fame is an absurd goal. People have gotten famous for being extremely stupid, unlucky, or evil. Try aiming for happiness or success.

22) Unless you are an elderly British gentleman, calling a woman “dear” or “darling” or “sweetheart” is, as a rule, not endearing. It’s patronizing and, in some cases, kinda skeevy.

23) If you can be a vegetarian who doesn’t like to eat meat, I can be a carnivore who doesn’t like to eat vegetables.

24) Samuel Adams new beer, Revolutionary Rye Ale, is interesting. Don’t think I love it, but it’s a Sam Adams brew so it’s instantly ten times better than Budweiser (or Miller or Coors or Schlitz or Michelob or…)

25) Anyone who believes the media hype about “the end of the Fantastic Four” because one of the main characters is getting killed off has obviously never actually read a comic book.

26) “Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World” is awesome. If you missed it in the theaters, get it on DVD and prepare to go into sensory overload.

27) Why are more and more people deciding that it’s a good idea to stop their car in the middle of the road so they can hold a conversation with someone on the sidewalk? Or worse, that it’s smart to get out of your car at a stop light so you can chat with the person in the next car? Addendum: where do they get off acting indignant when another motorist tells them to move so traffic can get by?

28) Dear everyone involved with “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”: the cosmos is doing it’s damnedest to tell you this is a terrible idea. This is something the rest of us realized a long time ago, but how much more convincing do you need?

29) Little Steven’s Underground Garage — listen to it, love it, make it part of your life.

30) My bulldog Beatrix is well-known in South Station, models dog coats on Etsy, is currently appearing in a print ad for Clip Clocks, has appeared on the cover of a pet supplement in last year’s Enterprise, and has been rendered in balloons by renowned balloon artist Royal Sorrell and as a lawn ornament. In other words, my dog has a more fascinating public life than I do.

31) Whatever happened to those neat trucks that took snow and melted it down and flushed it into municipal drainage systems? They were all over the news a few years ago and were touted as a great way to dispose of mountains of snow. We could sure use a few of them now.

32) Sarah Palin: still a doofus.

And yet, I now find myself compelled to defend him a second time (the first time is here).

It’s all due to this Boston Herald story entitled Republicans Feeling Blue As Scott Brown Win Backfires. If you’re too lazy to read it yourself, here’s the gist of the story: Republicans and Tea Partiers who supported Brown are now feeling like grade-A suckers because Brown failed to stop the health care reform bill from passing.

Here’s a telling quote from the story:

“We start to wonder whether we helped a RINO (Republican in name only) get into office,” said Tea Party activist Jeffrey McQueen, who traveled from Michigan to campaign for Brown in the final days of the Jan. 19 special election that rocked the nation. “If it wasn’t for the Tea Party movement, Scott Brown wouldn’t have gotten that seat. We expect to see a true conservative in there.”

First of all: You expected to see a “true conservative,” eh? What happened to the Tea Party being a bipartisan movement? Or was that claim never really sincere? (He asked rhetorically…)

Second: Brown did not vote for the bill. He did vote to allow the process to continue rather than being hijacked by a filibuster — which, ironically enough, led to the Democrats manipulating the process to their advantage so they needed a smaller majority to pass the bill — but the bill itself? He voted against it, just like he said he would.

There was no “betrayal” anywhere here, except perhaps of Brown’s supporters’ expectations — expectations as unrealistic as, say, thinking Obama would overnight undue a decade’s worth of economic destruction. Brown voted against the bill, just like you goofs wanted, so why are you angry at him? Because one guy was unable to overcome a system riddled with loopholes and arcane parliamentary procedures (that the GOP itself used 35 times in the 2005 – 2006 Congressional session, I might add)? What, are you also pissed at that Chinese college kid because he failed to stop the tanks at Tienanmen Square?

Politicians aren’t wizards fresh out of Hogwarts, people. “One man, one vote” is a great slogan but it’s not, for good or ill, how things get done in Washington.

If anything good could come out of this, it’s perhaps that Democrats and Republicans now have a common ground upon which to commiserate: They both now know what it’s like to load up one man with all your hopes and dreams and have them dashed to bits by the cold hard fact that he’s only human.

PS: Democrats, y’might want to stop being so dickish about this situation. How many times must you fly too close to the sun and plummet into the ocean before you realize that arrogance is not a virtue?

Joking (somewhat) aside, I’ve been inspired to go OLD old-school with my holiday greeting this year in response to the latest surge of people pushing “Merry Christmas” is THE only acceptable greeting.

This morning I read a piece by Howie Carr — a man who embodies Jesus in his unconditional tolerance and acceptance of all people — encouraging State Senator Scott Brown (R – Wrentham) to use “Merry Christmas” relentlessly in order to draw some quick and easy attention from the media (and ire from liberal “moonbats,” because they universally hate Christmas). I also read a piece extolling the “historical” attachments of the birth of Christ to Christmas (as detailed in that most respected of historical texts, the New Testament).

If we’re going to embrace the “true origins” of Christmas, then Jesus has to move over and make room, because Christmas owes a lot to pagan celebrations that pre-date his birth. The Christmas tree, for example, itself finds its origins in the Roman practice of bringing an evergreen plants into the home as part of the winter solstice celebration.

It’s also been hotly debated that early Christians, seeking to eradicate pagan faiths, reoriented Christmas and other key celebrations to coincide with pagan holy days in order to make assimilation of the godless heathens easier.

So, in summary: Jesus is not THE reason for the season; it’s A reason for the season, so Christians: ease up a bit, huh?

And before you start whining about the “war on Christmas” and society’s alleged efforts to eradicate all Christian elements of the holiday, take a moment to consider the irony.

Happy Yul(e)!

You mention the public option and their take is that the government will royally screw up such a system. America already has the greatest health care system in the world, they’ll say, so why fix it if it ain’t broke?

Well, first of all, if there are people in this country who cannot receive basic health care because they cannot afford to pay for it, it’s not the greatest. And if the private companies are refusing to provide coverage to those who can afford it (even with the assistance of their employer) because of a pre-existing condition, it’s not the greatest. And if the companies refuse to pay for a procedure because it’s “unnecessary” despite the recommendation of a doctor — the person who is ostensibly the best judge of such things — it’s not the greatest. I could go on, but you get the point.

But to my main beef. Many reform foes will neatly contradict themselves in their arguments, claiming America is already A-number-one in the health care department and doesn’t need a government-run program. Yet you point out that we already have such programs in the form of Medicaid and Medicare, and that the health care program for American military personnel is government run, those programs suddenly become exceptions to the rule. Those things? Aw, they suck and are proof positive that Uncle Sam would make a poor Dr. Sam.

Yet, did not Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard recent say that Medicare and the military health care systems were in fact top-of-the-line? He did, in a discussion with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Yet he could not reconcile that statement with his belief that a government-run system for the general public would be a mess.

And I might remind the GOP opposition in particular, our own former governor Mitt Romney wholeheartedly approved of a state government-administered health care system in Commonwealth Care? And so far Mitt has yet to completely reverse his stance there (so far, but give him time).

What I’m saying, health care opponents: let’s have a little consistency.

It came about because a friend of mine (a real one, not a “Facebook friend”) posted something about the health care reform debate. A friend of hers (a “Facebook friend,” which means she in fact barely knows the person to whom he’s responding) responded in what I would describe as an unnecessarily belligerent manner. He wasn’t out to start a lively but civil debate or offer a contrasting opinion. He was just out to be a jerk.

You know the kind of kid who, in school, responds to everything other students say with mockery or derision because he cannot differentiate between “good” attention and “bad” attention? You know the kind of person who goes to a concert for a band he knows he doesn’t like for the express purpose of heckling them? You know the kind of person who yells “FIRE!” in a crowded building for the sole purpose of creating chaos then excuses his behavior by claiming he has the Constitutional right to free speech? That’s the kind of person this guy is.

The “discussion” degenerated quickly. He threw out patronizing cracks and accusations of socialism (which has become the modern-day equivalent of “Commie”). When I didn’t back down he apparently went and checked out my profile so he could make some more personal (yet still quite superficial) attacks. He resorted to ad hominem strategies (wherein one of the parties attempts to devalue his opponent’s information by claiming fault with the speaker or source of information; the information itself is not directly challenged or disputed). Y’know: the usual.

Then he hit rock bottom: he whipped out a Nazi reference (Josef Mengele, specifically).

Did I mention my friend is Jewish? Kind of important to the story, really.

Which brings me to my point. During this debate, a lot of people have alluded to Hitler and the Nazi regime. Let us recall that woman who showed up to a hearing with Barney Frank (a Jew) with a poster of a Hitlerized Obama. The allusions have been flying pretty freely, I’d say far too freely.

Unless the individual on the receiving end of such an accusation is directly or indirectly complicit in the murder of six million human beings, resorting to a Nazi comparison means you automatically lose the debate. It shows that you have exhausted all rational fact-based avenues of argument (if you had any to begin with) and are now so desperate you have to reach out to push one of the hottest of hot buttons to provoke a visceral emotional response and demonize your opponent/garner cheap sympathy for your point of view.