Anhedonia

Let’s say you grew up poor. How poor? Let’s say 8 people in a 2 bedroom house poor; 1 bathroom by the way. Let’s say you know what it is like to drink powdered milk. Let’s say you know what it is like to have the gas turned off and be cold in the winter. Let’s say you know the humiliation of having the lunch tickets at school because you are poor. Let’s say you know the tension that surrounds Christmas and back-to-school clothes buying because you are poor. Let’s say that your high school was not in the highest tax bracket in your county and that said high school led the county in teen pregnancy rate. Let’s say that despite all this you become a first generation, economically disadvantaged student…and you graduate. Let us go further and say that you earn a scholarship to a master’s program and earn your master’s degree. Let us say you took out student loans because, of course, you were poor.

Fast forward to 2012 and Mitt Romney says that 47% of people in the U.S. won’t take responsibility for their lives. Are you now angry at Mr. Romney? Do you look at your retirement numbers and think that you didn’t take responsibility for your life? Do you hold down a job, pay taxes, have a wife and child, and think that you have not taken responsibility for your life because you are not wealthy? Do you, despite the urge to resist, despite your knowledge of self-fulfilling prophecy, THINK THAT YOU DESERVE IT? Do you? Has the message been said too many times to be false? Have you worn down, eroded your once held belief that you could escape, if not the financial poverty, at least the poverty of the mind, the belief that you are worthy and have dignity, despite your financial situation?

Do you believe them? Do you believe that the playing field is level? Do you believe that the past has no bearing? That not having is no reason for not getting? Do you now agree with them that circumstance is not a factor? Isn’t just the case that, as George Will postulates, that the cream rises to the top and you have not risen because you are not the cream? Are you now a social Darwinist and believe that, the less worthy are the poor, those that will not pass on their genes due to inferior constitution? Maybe you agree. Maybe you didn’t use to, while in undergrad, holding court in the classroom…or in grad school when your advisor mentioned an Ivy League school for your PhD.

Are you a Christian? Do you believe that all persons have dignity? That’s interesting; George Will doesn’t think that dignity rises to the top, the cream, the better people, the UN-POOR rise to the top. And why shouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t the rich have more dignity? Why shouldn’t the rich have more importance? Why?

Have you changed? Have you selected the history that supports your argument? Have you become, in Cornel West’s words, myopic? But don’t you wonder? Don’t you wonder how Wall Street can have lobbyists that spend 1 million dollars a day? Don’t you wonder how that isn’t fascism? Don’t you think that taking a race of people and enslaving them and cutting off their access (or right to) knowledge is going to impact their economic future? Of course you don’t wonder about those things and neither does Mitt Romney.

Is it ultimately about Mitt Romney? Of course it’s not. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I have anhedonia, just like in Franzen’s The Corrections. Maybe I’m cynical because life has beaten me down a bit. But maybe in spite or better yet, because of these things, I can face the truth. The shitty, unpleasant, can’t change without facing, set-you-free-but-fuck-you-up-at-the-same-time-truth. Hell, maybe it’s you.

The Case of The Half-Bitten Shrimp

He began circling like a vulture. His eyes were wide open and his mind alert; looking, waiting, praying and preying like only the religious can. And he needed a miracle in this crowd. These dames were way out of his league, what with the degrees, the money, the jobs, and the morals. But maybe, just maybe, he had god on his side or, in his pocket. No one needed to know he kept a small bible next to his condom, unless of course he thought he could score one of these Christian broads with such factoids. Cleanliness is next to godliness he could hear himself saying to some religious chick with a small streak of irreverence with a dash of verisimilitude. He knew many were phonies but that wasn’t the point at all. The point was to get some…by hook or crook or god or jesus or buddah or booze, or weed or feigning whatever needed feigned.
                His head on a swivel, he scanned the room looking for the right combination of nice enough body and drink-in-hand posture to suggest scorability. He remembered Eddie Muprhy in 48 Hours when he said “look, if I don’t get some trim, I’m gon’ bust,” and how it worked…in the movie. He didn’t think he could be that forward but some reasonable facsimile thereof might work on the right one. “Do something, even if it is wrong” he muttered beneath his breath.
                “Hi, how are you doing…(glance at namecard)…Meghan?” He noticed before she even got a word out that her eyes darted away for a millisecond, as if looking for help. She said something very polite but he knew before she ended the sentence that she was a no go. So he meandered through another minute and created a sultry escape hatch near the shrimp, where another candidate was standing in red heels and red dress and probably a glass of chardonnay.
                Different broad, different tact. He hoisted some shrimp and cocktail sauce to his mouth and smiled at the lady in red and just in the act of biting said crustacean, promptly spilled some of the tasty treat right into her cleavage. This created quite a scene. “Oh my gosh I’m sorry,” he said as bodies backed away from the activity while eyes closed in. “I guess the lord works in mysterious ways…(glance at namecard)…Woody. Wait, is Woody your name?” “It’s not Bathsheeba sugar. Would you mind getting me a napkin…(glance at namecard)… Lance?” Lance, what a terrible fake name he thought, phallic though it may be. He hustled and felt glorious to hand this bombshell in red what she needed. He snickered as he thought to himself that he knows exactly what she needs. “Yes, the lord does work in mysterious Lance, how else can we explain cocktail sauce between my 34 c’s?” Those words, those intoxicating words: “cock” and “34 c’s”…might as well have been the ten commandments. “Woody, allow me to make it up to you, allow me to rectify the cocktail sauce between your 34’cs, allow me to atone for the sin of sauce between the sheets if you will, and I know you will Woody.” By this time the crowd had dispersed and he had free reign to feign whatever needed feigning. “I was thinking tang in the tarps there Lance but pre tell, how might you atone for such a diabolical act of soiling my pretty dress and boobs with horseradish and ketchup?” He was in. He knew it like he knew 2+2=4.
                But where did the half-bitten shrimp go?

Aguilera

I think Christina Aguilera is losing it. Look at her new album cover.

Is she auditioning for a photoshop cover box or for some sort of extra-terrestrial salon that specializes in white wax jobs? It’s like the fairy from Lord of The Rings has gone pantless. Maybe Cee Lo Green is some sort of middle earth ork who strokes it under his revolving throne-desk-chair while Adam Levine looks down at his huge hobbit feet and the country douche calls his rebel flag “my precious.”

11/15/12 Monologue

Just one day after former Seahawks tight end Jerramy Stevens was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his bride to be Hope Solo, the two were married.

Dear Kim Kardashian, your 72 day marriage record may be in trouble. When you get into a fisticuffs at your rehearsal dinner, what the hell happens at cocktail hour? A tag team match between groomsmen and bridesmaids with a sideshow of in-laws knife fighting?

A furious Rex Ryan lashed into his team Wednesday morning, telling his players it was "cowardly" for some of them to anonymously rip Tim Tebow in a newspaper article.

Tebow was his usual gracious self after the bashing, openly acknowledging that is was god’s plan that he can’t complete a five yard slant or recognize a cover 2. 

The Seattle Police Department has come out with a practical guide to marijuana use posted on their website. The department's post has been viewed more than 120,000 times.

            What hasn’t been reported is that the Seattle Dominoes has sold over
            120,000 pizzas.           

The absence of vast swaths of summer sea ice is changing the behavior of Pacific walrus, federal scientists said Wednesday.

In fact, one walrus was spotted in a Hawaiian shirt, apparently drunk and hitting on the Kardashian mom.            

If sales hold up, One Direction could sell half a million records in one week.

The band’s manager said the members plan on giving some of the profits to a charity that helps kids straighten their hair after hurricane sandy.

Dr Gerald Crabtree of Stanford thinks humans may be (slowly) losing intellectual and emotional abilities because they're at risk from mutation or loss from the genome.
            What?! Get out! And here I thought episodes of Bridezillas was makin us so’s dumb.

Researchers have found a 'monogamy hormone' they say may help men stay faithful to their partner. The researchers found the chemical oxytocin could act as a 'fidelity marker' in men.
            Guys, you can forget the prenup, just pee into this cup.

Cute Couple..if yer Hannibal Lecter

Tom Hanks plays Olivier Sarkozy & Calista Flockhart is Mary-Kate Olsen in…French Kiss. Rated NC17.

Who Legalized Weed?

Sage Steel

Report: Sage Steel in 693rd day of hunger strike for espn anchor rights.

I Voted

I voted my conscience today…literally, a write-in vote for my conscience. Don’t worry, my id is my running mate so it is a pretty well balanced ticket.