Your Children Disgust Me

I'm sure there will be a ton of hate-mail about this one, and yes, it may be a tiny bit tongue-in-cheek. That's the only sort of disclaimer I'm going to offer.

But really, folks, I hate your children. I may be biased, but is my child the only one that doesn't look like a clay-mation doll that used fat instead of clay, and then went horribly wrong? I may be biased, but is my child the only one that doesn't smell like week-old bacon? I may be biased, but is my child the only one with an I.Q. over eighty? I may be biased, but is my child the only one that has a personality that is tolerable?

I can't stand other people's children. They really disgust me. I'm sure every parent feels this way a bit, but when I take him to say, his school, I almost feel bad for leaving him with that riff-raff. It's the most accredited school in the state, and is attached to a major University, and all the parents of these kids are either current University students, or alumni. But seriously, if a kid there isn't ugly, it's drooling, if it's not drooling, it's got snot dried all over it's fat face, if there's no snot, then it's staring off into space like it is brain damaged, and if it's not doing that, well...you get the point.

Don't get me wrong, I mean, there are a few kids I like. My baby-sitter has a couple of cute and nice children, and so does my best friend. It's hard for me to think of any other children that I can tolerate though.

I mean, really. My kid is a genius. He just turned four, and he can do some simple addition (four plus four is, two plus three is, five and five is, six and six is, etc.), he can read a number of three-letter words, and can phonetically sound out and decode some two syllable words even when he's not familiar with them. He can browse a free game site such as shockwave.com or nickarcade.com and find a game that looks good, download it, install it, create a shortcut on the quicklaunch bar for the game, and then delete the install file. He can type a number of names, and knows how to type the correct things to login to the computer. He can hear an album once and then not again for nine months, and then when you do finally put it on again, just choosing some random song, he can tell you what it's called and what number it is and what band it is.

For instance, we listened to Nine Inch Nail's "Pretty Hate Machine" a ton a few months back while riding around in the car. Over a couple of weeks, we listened, but never really got past track eight or nine. Only one time did we listen to the last song. A few weeks later, I put the cd in again and my son says, "Daddy, can we hear number ten Ringfinger?" I didn't even realize what he was asking for because I hadn't listened to the whole album in years.

The point of all this is that my child rules, and yours drools. Okay, again, I'm being a bit facetious here, but isn't it the right of every parent to be highly biased in favor of their child? I think it is, and I hope if you are a parent that you are as well.

It's like that Mars Volta song, you know, the one. Now, if I could only find that Mars Volta record, I'd look up the song title. I guess It'd be easier to just go ask my son what it's called. I'm sure it'd be quicker.

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You Were So Hot in High School...Now You Are a Joke

The other day I was driving up the road. I swear that I saw this girl from high school. She was walking along the sidewalk. She still had the big 90s haircut that you could land a plane on, and looked to be about two hundred pounds. No, she wasn't particularly tall. She was five-five I'd guess. She was pretty chunky for a thirty-or-so-year-old woman, and I had to laugh to myself.

I mean, this girl was the hottest chick around in high school. I remember telling my friend, just before starting High School, that I had found out this girl was going to my school instead of his. He was so jealous, and I actually managed to become friends with her over the years, and even dated her younger sister for a bit.

My point in all this is that it's funny how the power pendulum swings. I mean, this girl had anything she wanted as a teenager because of her looks. Every guy wanted her, teachers were nicer to her than other people, and because she had an older boyfriend she got to go to the cool parties and ride around in his car starting at like fourteen. Girls hated her (not to her face of course), and guys wanted her.

Now, that older bad-boy boyfriend is probably some overweight construction worker that she has to avoid having sex with every night, while her six rug rats snore through their snot in their beds and on the couch. Or she desperately posts to craigslist searching for a "relationship" when she knows that only means "sex" to the guys that would respond. They probably bring home twenty-five thousand between the two of them per year, and live near the place I saw her walking.

Now, the guys like me that she would hardly give the time to in high school are getting degrees and have careers that are worth something to society and to themselves financially. Guys like me are the guys these girls desperately seek now, but can't find. I loved when I heard these women say in high school, "Where are all the nice guys?" We were right where we always were, home alone on the weekends wishing that girl would talk to us more while she was out with that jerk of a boyfriend. We always got to hear them complain about him Monday morning.

Well now the power has shifted, and you are lonely and prowling craigslist for us. Well, guess what? We've been taken by a woman better, prettier, smarter, funnier and more caring than you. We're poets, musicians, career men, family guys, artists, and just overall good guys.

Your time has passed now that your teen-beauty has passed. It's our turn to have our pick of whom to be with.

Think of that the next time that greasy guy is breathing down your neck.

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The New Face of Iraq

I just read a harrowing article in the most recent Discover magazine. Now, this is not a magazine that normally writes about anything political, and I guess this really isn’t a political issue, although I am sure some will see it as some form of “liberal media” attack. Anyone that would think that is a horse’s ass blinded by partisanship, and it sickens me at the realization that I am sure this Discover article will probably be labeled as such in some circles. Either that, or a blind eye will be turned to it. It’s probably safe to say that this is the course of action most who read it will take, amongst those of you who bother to lie down less-than five dollars of your easily-earned (I don’t care what your job is) cash and spend the twenty minutes of your time that is too important and tied up with doing useless shit to read an article about something.

I’ll try to summarize, because as I said before, I’m pretty sure one of the ten of you who read this will actually go get the magazine and do something pro-active regarding the issue. “Well, R.A.Matheson, what are you doing about this issue,” I can hear you saying. Well, my friend, I took the twenty minutes to read and become aware of the issue to begin with, and now I am spending the time to read this and spread awareness.

The issue is the Iraqi medical situation. The article title is “Iraq’s Medical Meltdown.” Here is a quick list of bullet points I pulled from reading the article.

Out of 190,000 Iraqi police, more than 12,000 have been killed since the United States-led invansion in 2003, according to the Iraq’s interior minister.

1. Some lucky Iraqis injured in the conflict are sent to the Air Force hospital where they receive unparalleled treatment for one week before being shuffled off to one of the four worst health-care systems in the Middle East. Iraq was previously the best.
2. Iraq had 34,000 doctors before the 2003 invasion. Since then, 2,000 have been murdered and 18,000 have fled the country.
3. In Vietnam, the United States had “an efficient system in place to maintain health care. Not this time.”
1. The Medical Civic Action Program (MEDCAP) treated 220,000 Vietnamese civilians from 1965-1970. American medics treated nearly 40 million civilians from 1963-1971. So far, the hospital that treats the vast majority of all civilians has handled just 2,000 civilians a year.
4. In 2003, Bush did something that Dr. Frederick Burkle (trauma center doctor who headed up a trauma center in the first Gulf War, and has led recovery efforts for more than twenty years in other war-torn nations) said was “unprecedented.” Bush took the organization, the USAID, that provided and oversaw care for civilians injured in wars with the US and handed its job over to the Department of Defense, “leaving a single agency in charge of both engaging the enemy and patching up the people they blow apart.”

Burkle states that “in Africa the recovery rate of its countries takes about a decade. It is going to take a long time for Iraq to come back. Even if there is a will, there are no doctors or nurses...They will never see the country they had before.”

I’ll leave you with another from Burkle. “The Bush Administration violated every single tenet that has been known in humanitarian circles for decades.”

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Bipolar - The Cop-Out Disease

Okay, so today I had time to post here. I might actually post some again this week if I get more time.

The other day I was at someone's house and a commercial for "Restless Leg Syndrome" came on the television. This person started asking everyone about some other disease, a mental disorder, that people claimed to have that made them depressed or sad and blame their parents for everything they do. He said it was the cop-out disease, but he couldn't remember the name of it. I knew he was going to say what it was, because it's something I was diagnosed with a year ago.

He left the room and came back and said, "Bipolar! That's it!"

I instantly remembered when I got diagnosed. I went over to their house a little later and it came up and of course this person said, "Oh that's a bullshit disease. Everyone has that now." I asked him who he knew that had it, and of course he could only strug and say, "Well...I'm just saying is all." Yeah, that's what I thought. You have no idea what you are talking about, do you?

This person is an alcoholic that has been sober for like fifteen years. I felt like I should have said something like, "Oh, what's that disease people pretend to have, where they act like they can't decide whether or not they get drunk? Oh yeah! Alcoholism!" Now, I'm not trying to rag on people that are alcoholics, but c'mon. I mean, I would say a chemical imbalance in the brain would be more of a "disease" than alcoholism. I mean, if I catch a flu, I cannot decide not to have it anymore. That's a disease. But getting drunk too much? No matter what, you always make that dicision before you pick up the drink. That's not a disease, sorry. If it was, it would take medication or something to get rid of, not the person simply buckling down and deciding not to suffer from it anymore. You can't go to some program and tell everyone you have cancer, and then talk about it a bunch, exert your will, and then suddenly the cancer goes away.

Before I left, I was also thinking, "Oh, what's that disease where you think you know all about something that you know nothing about?"

The answer came easily enough.

"Ignorance."

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Intermittent Posting This Week

Just to let you all know, I may not be online mostly until this coming Friday, and the every-other-day-posts will resume on Friday or Saturday. In the meantime, catch up on ones you haven't read, and remember to subscribe!

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