Category Archives: Farce

May 22, 2014 · 22:59

Flash Fiction: Gigantic Honkin’ Nipple Clamps

This week’s Flash Fiction Challenge is a doozy, as you might have guessed from my title. In short, there’s a Buzzfeed article which shows fifty stock photographs that will never, ever be used by anyone. Mr. Wendig, of course, couldn’t let that challenge go by, so we are tasked to pick one and write our thousand words or so about it.

(As much as I may look down on BuzzFeed as being the TMZ of the Internet, and that’s really, REALLY not a compliment, this article is pretty funny. Even if you don’t read all of the stories for this week over on TerribleMinds, I recommend you go look at all of the photos.)

I went through all of the other entries so far and eliminated the pictures that they’ve chosen (as of this afternoon), then did a random number selection of the remainder, coming up with #24. I’ll give you the picture at the end of the story so you don’t have any pre-conceived notions. It’s a touch long at 1,319 words, but I had a ton of fun writing it.

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

GIGANTIC HONKIN’ NIPPLE CLAMPS

“You may experience some slight discomfort, sir.”

Getting a shot hadn’t been a big deal since I was about three. “Slight discomfort?” Yeah, right. Whatever. I held my arm out and didn’t even flinch.

“Very good, sir, if you could remove all your clothing now. You can place everything into the locker, then sit in the test chair.”

“You need me naked? No one said nothing about that. No way I’ll let a bunch of pervert doctor dudes mess around with me while I’m naked. Forget it.”

“Sir, in order for us to get accurate data, the test subjects need to be completely undressed. You were informed when you signed up for this clinical trial that it involved a new product related to sexual arousal. The tests will be carried out by female members of the staff and I assure you, they are consummate professionals. Doctor Getty has assured me you will be treated with all of the respect and dignity you deserve.

“On the other hand, if you have severe body image and self-confidence issues, we can cancel the test and void the payment paid to you for participating.”

That was different! “Chick doctors, eh? Okay, send them in.”

I stripped and headed to the chair, which looked like an old dentist’s chair, sitting in a pool of light in the darkened room. What was wrong with that little creep? “Body image issues” my ass! He dreams about having a body like mine. I just hoped the doctors were decent looking, not fugly nerd babes.

I went over to the “test chair” and sat just as two lady lab techs came in. They were both wearing those stupid, lime green, formless scrubs that were all the rage, covered with a lab coat to boot, but it looked like they might have some boobs and curves hidden under there somewhere.

“Are you ready?” the blonde asked.

“I’m ready for anything you’re ready for, doll.”

She looked at the brunette with a little smile. “Then let’s get going. As we’re getting set up, I’ll tell you what this test is about.” They both walked behind me into the dark and I could hear drawers opening and equipment banging.

“We’re testing a new erotic gel which is designed to heighten by a factor of more than one hundred the intensity and duration of tactile sensation during sex.”

They came back, one on each side, each with two pairs of restraints. As they started to tie my arms to the chair I was too fast for them and jumped up.

“What the hell is going on here? Are you all a bunch of kinky pervs?”

The tall brunette stepped in front of me, real close. Without touching me she leaned forward and spoke softly into my ear. “Sir, please sit down. These are necessary to prevent you from possibly hurting yourself in the more advance stages of the test. Previous test subjects have reported the experience to be somewhat violently pleasurable. You’ll thank us later.”

I stepped away from her. Having her that close was getting ready to cause some embarrassing changes in my vital signs, if you know what I mean.

“What if I’m not into that sort of thing and don’t want to be tied up?”

The girls put the restraints down on the chair. The blonde pointed toward the locker. “Very well, sir. You may get dressed now. The paperwork necessary to cancel your payment will be…”

“Hey, hold on, wait a minute! I didn’t say I wouldn’t, I was just asking.” I walked over to the chair, handed them the restraints, and sat down again. “You caught me off guard, but I’m cool. Let’s do this.”

They started strapping me down at both my wrists and ankles. “You may experience some slight discomfort, sir.”

Yeah, right. Like some girl’s gonna be able to tie me up tight enough to hurt.

The brunette started attaching little patches with wires all over my body, while the blonde kept talking. “The gel is the second half of a two-part formulation. When we go to market we expect the first portion to be administered orally, but for now it’s injected, as you saw.”

“I don’t feel any different, so maybe the shot’s not working.”

“The injected drug is inert until it bonds with the gel in the epidermis. We’ll run some baseline tests now to measure your responses.”

I gotta tell you, the next hour was pretty great. They used feathers, a velvet glove, some beads, and much more. They touched there, tickled here, pinched a nipple or two, rubbed up this side and ran their nails down that side.

I’ve paid $500 an hour in Vegas and not gotten that kind of good time.

Finally they started rubbing their super duper gel all over, and by “all over,” I mean “all over.” As soon as that shit touched me, every place it hit was like, “ZOWZA WOWZA!!” I could feel the breeze from the air conditioning like it was a hurricane, and the chicks’ breath as they worked on me raised goose bumps from head to toe.

They started again with the touching, the feather, the velvet glove, and everything else. It was the best hour of my life. Turns out they were right, it was a good thing I was strapped to the chair. I just didn’t have the breath or the strength to thank them.

While I came panting down to earth I could hear them behind me, putting stuff away. I was ready for them to let me go when they got back to me, but I wanted to know if I could sign up to come back again next week. Hell, I would do it again for free.

“That concludes the first part of the testing,” the blonde said. “You gave us an excellent data set for our trials, but now we need the complementary set to validate the study. For that, the principal investigator will conduct the tests herself.”

They walked out. In walked an older lady, also in scrubs and a lab coat. She was looking at me funny.

“Hello, Jack, I’m Doctor Getty. It’s so nice to meet you again.”

“Again? No, sorry doc, I don’t think so.”

She moved out of my sight and started gathering her equipment. “Jack, you’re so forgetful, especially when you’ve had your way with someone, gotten the checkmark in your little black book, and never called back.”

Uh-oh.

Getty… Getty… Wasn’t there a chick named Getty I had met a few months back? What was her first name?

“Donna? Donna Getty? Did we meet at the Coldplay concert in Santa Monica just before Christmas?”

“It’s Diana, not Donna, and yes, we did.”

She was right behind me and I felt something thermonuclear start scraping the skin straight off the bone on my left arm. I screamed and screamed, snapping tendons trying to get loose from the chair.

When the pain faded a bit, I frantically looked to see what was left of my arm, expecting a bloody stump. The arm was fine. Diana had just left a small sheet of sandpaper lying on my skin.

“This test has two parts,” I heard her say. “Now that we know the positive benefits of this drug, we need to know if there are any counterbalancing unpleasant sensations.”

She stepped in front of me, holding three of the most gigantic honkin’ nipple clamps I had ever seen. I swear, hook up wires and you could jump start a 747 with those things.

“Jack, perhaps you should have paid attention when we were talking that night instead of just seeing how fast you could get me drunk and get me naked. You would have known what I do for a living.”

She leaned forward with a very evil smile and a twinkle in her eyes.

“You may experience some slight discomfort, sir.”

enhanced-22346-1399922912-4(I must say, it was so tempting to just leave it after the first line, but we needed a story, not a caption.)

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Filed under Farce, Writing

May 12, 2014 · 22:47

Canadian Conspiracy Uncovered

I’ll have to be quick here, because I may need to go into hiding. I’ve uncovered a massive cybersquatting conspiracy by the Canadian government and as soon as this posts I’ll no doubt have to go deep, deep underground to avoid their retaliation. No more trips to the beach for me, I’m sure there will be squads of trained polar bears and orca lurking just offshore with massive advanced technology weapons, just waiting for me to show my face so they can fricassee it with a laser or cruise missile.

The truth came to me while watching the Angels play in Toronto today, while the Boston Bruins were in Montreal tonight. In all of that advertising on the outfield walls and dasher boards, hidden in plain sight, are the clues.

All of the Canadian web addresses end in “.ca”.

Uh-huh! You see where I’m going here, right? They want us to think that it stands for “Canada,” but it doesn’t!

There are these whack jobs here in California that are always trying to split the state up into five or seven or eleventeen parts, knowing that will never actually happen because it would totally screw up the numbers of senators and representatives in Congress and electoral votes for President and shift the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans and with all of the fruits and nuts out here it would probably bring the Libertarians or the Green party to power and that would totally destabilize the entire world government balance of power, so how are they ever going to get it passed by the very same self-serving politicians who would be in danger of having their oxen gored?

Then there are these other groups that want California to declare independence and break away from the United States. I believe that these whackadoodles are being funded by the Canadian equivalent of the CIA or NSA (the CCIA or CNSA?) in order to get California to actually try to separate from the union.

Once California becomes an independent country, our very first and highest priority, of course, will be to establish our unique national identity. With Silicon Valley here and most every Californian practically having cell phones and tablets and Google Glass surgically attached and in use 24/7/365 (especially when they’re driving!), one of the primary symbols of California nationalism will be to switch all of our websites over to our very own third-level domain identifier, which will naturally be…wait for it… “.ca”!!

Then the Canadians will have us right where they want us. They’ll have the “.ca” domain and we’ll be obsessed with getting it as a matter of natural pride. We won’t be able to go to war with them to get it (Oregon and Washington are in the way, duh!) so we’ll have to negotiate.

The Canadian government will use this disgraceful cyberextortion to suck trillions of dollars in ransom out of the coffers of our budding Left Coast democracy. Oh, they’ll call it an “internet domain transfer fee” or something, but we’ll know what it really is!

Now that this nefarious plot has been exposed, tell the Canadian President that we won’t stand for it! (Wait, what? “Prime Minister?” Whatever!)

If they won’t call off this attack where they’re using the purloined symbol of our soon-to-be nationalistic jingoism, then we’ll have no choice but to carry out a preemptive overthrow of their government! We’ll put Rob Ford in charge of the Great White North and see how he negotiates. I’m betting he can be persuaded to see it our way!

Down With Canadian Cybersquatting!

 

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Filed under Computers, Farce, Politics

April 20, 2014 · 23:08

Telemarketer Wars, Round Three

I’ve recently ranted (and that’s all it really is, I’m well aware that in the big scheme of things, if this is the worst problem that I’ve got going on in my life [and it isn’t], then I’m pretty freakin’ lucky) about possible suggestions on how to deal with telemarketers.

We’ve pretty well established that the BEST way to handle telemarketers is to not answer the phone if your Caller ID doesn’t show you that the call is coming from someone you know and want to talk to.

Having said that, sometimes that’s harder to do because you might be looking for a job and sending out lots of resumes and filling out a lot of online job applications. (I am!) While you’re putting your cell phone as your preferred contact number, the home number is on the resume and needs to be filled in on many of the online applications. So maybe it’s someone calling about a job?! (Hope springs eternal, despite the odds against…)

Or you might have your own situation or phobia or neuroses. Maybe it’s a hospital calling about someone who’s been in a car accident. Maybe someone really liked a blog post and wants you to write for them, or it’s an agent wanting to know if you’ve got a book you’re shopping around. Maybe it’s really, really that Nigerian prince who’s trying to give away that fortune of his.

Or maybe you just were warped and scarred at a young age by nuns who instilled an unhealthy sanctimonious vengeance response into your brain stem and you feel the need to PUNISH those assholes, just because! (I used to know someone like that. Yeah, that’s it! Someone I used to know…)

Anyway…

At first, I couldn’t figure out the paradox of how these scammers could stay in business, because I didn’t see how anyone could fall for their blatantly obvious bullshit. Well, at least in some cases, it seems that it may be a cultural issue, or a generational issue, and they prey on people’s fear.

Then I had a fortuitous accident and came up with a possible scheme to potentially confuse, befuddle, and waste the precious time of telemarketers, thus (hopefully) disrupting the efficiency and automation which are the core of their business model.

These posts have generated some lively conversations, both with people I know and with friends of The Long-Suffering Wife. So, in the interest of thoroughness (and the fact that my brain is all screwed up after the Kings’ second embarrassing loss tonight to San Jose) here are a few more ideas and suggestions that have come in:

  1. Just take the phone off the hook. Period. Anyone who really, really needs to reach you should know to call your cell phone. (The argument against this in my case is that my mother doesn’t know this, and our son overseas in the military always calls on the land line, so maybe there are issues with this approach.)
  2. Someone sent a link to an online anecdote from a confessed telemarketer with a situation that stopped him dead in his tracks — the person started singing, belting out a whole song while he listened, laughing. I’ve given this a try and it does work, at least in the sense that it gets rid of the telemarketer, stunning them with kindness (or at least surprise) instead of cussing them out. I started singing “The Star Spangled Banner,” which has the additional benefit of being really hard to sing (listen to anyone at the beginning of a ballgame) so if you suck at it (I do) it’s just what everyone would expect anyway. Emotionally, I would like to start belting out the chorus to Julia Ecklar’s “Temper Of Revenge.” (“Find me a horse as red as the sun! / Find me a blade that will make their blood run!”) Don’t know the song? You should! You can get a copy of the album from Prometheus Music, highly recommended.
  3. Someone at the hanger suggested just holding the phone out away from your mouth and saying something like, “Are you running the trace now, officer? It’s one of them again!”
  4. Someone suggested, if asked to let them speak to John Doe, to say something like, “He’s not here right now, but if you give me your personal cell phone number or home phone number, I can have him call you back when it’s most inconvenient.”
  5. Someone suggested just saying, “They’re dead,” and hanging up.
  6. I actually prefer a variation on this if you need to practice your acting and/or improv skills. No matter who they ask for, start stammering and crying, “You… You haven’t heard? You don’t know?” Sob, sniffle. “They died last night!” See just how much BS you can shovel, sort of like the way the guys got dates in “Animal House.” (“She died in a horrible kiln explosion.” “What, I talked to her just the other day, she was going to make me a pot…”)
  7. You can always just say, “Hold on, I’ll get them” or “Hold on, let me get to the other phone,” put the phone down, then go about your business. They’ll hang up, eventually. Then your phone is off the hook and you’re back to #1, above.

The gist of it is, don’t let the bastards get under your skin, and if you can turn the situation on its head, turn the tables so that you’re in control of the situation, so that you’re using the opportunity to get what you want or need (even if it’s just a good laugh at the expense of someone who deserves it), then take the opportunity and take back your life and your time.

Or you could complain to the police, the FTC, or your congress-critter. After doing so, please get psychiatric help if you think any of them will actually do anything about the problem.

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Filed under Farce, Freakin' Idiots!, Job Hunt, LA Kings, Moral Outrage, Paul

April 8, 2014 · 23:11

Hey, NYT! (Or Is That N.Y.T.?)

I probably read too much news, but one of my main sources is the New York Times. The “newspaper of record” and all of that. Hundreds of years of tradition, editors a bit obsessed over a consistent and proper style.

So reading today, I saw

US_(yes)_&_NATO_(no)and I wondered, why does “U.S.” have periods, but “NATO” doesn’t? “U.S.” is obviously an abbreviation for “United States”, but isn’t “NATO” an abbreviation for “North Atlantic Treaty Organization?”

That thought simmered until I saw

HBO_(no)and it got me thinking again. (I know, that can be dangerous, but humor me here.) Isn’t “HBO” just an abbreviation for “Home Box Office?”

So I went looking.

ABC_(no)Networks seem to not rate periods, even though they are abbreviations for “American Broadcasting Company”

NBC_(no)or “National Broadcasting Company.”

NCAA_(yes)Yet, the “National Collegiate Athletic Association” gets periods,

UN_(yes)as does the “United Nations,” but surprisingly now,

NC_(no)“North Carolina” does not rate,

NASA_(no)nor does the “National Aeronautics & Space Administration.”

Sports leagues seem to be pretty consistent, all getting periods, as in

MLB_(yes)“Major League Baseball,”

NFL_(yes)“National Football League,”

NBA_(yes)“National Basketball Association,”

NHL_(yes)and the “National Hockey League.”

But then, just when there seems to be consistency, there’s

PGA_(no)the “Professional Golfer’s Association” which suddenly does not have periods, but

LPGA_(yes)the “Ladies Professional Golf Association” does.

“General Motors” has been in the news a lot, and it gets abbreviated

GM_(yes)as “G.M.”

UAW_(yes)and the “United Auto Workers” becomes “U.A.W.”, but

VW_(no)“Volkswagen” is just “VW.” Okay, maybe that’s a nickname instead of an abbreviation. (My head is spinning.)

Best of all, the “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People”

NAACP_(yes)sometimes has periods,

NAACP_(no)and sometimes doesn’t.

That was it for me. Despite the reputation of the New York Times for having an obsession about consistency, I’m not seeing it.

As a last, desperate measure, I googled a question about “New York Times headline styles” and found a nice page that seems to have something of an explanation a few items down (“Why Nascar, Not NASCAR?”) I guess I’m not appreciating a finer distinction between abbreviations and acronyms, and I had no idea that some of them are all caps and some are written in upper and lower case.

Great, another can of worms opened.

As long as we’re being infinitely recursive in our search for meta,

FAQ_(no)shouldn’t “FAQ” be “F.A.Q.” since it’s an abbreviation for “Frequently Asked Questions?”

I could use some clarification here, New York Times.

Or is that “NY Times?” Or “N.Y. Times?”

Or “NYT?” Or “N.Y.T.?”

I don’t even want to start on whether or not that last question mark should be inside the quotes or outside…

 

 

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Filed under Farce, Writing

April 5, 2014 · 23:01

A Possible Countermeasure Against Telemarketers!

I’ve got it, I think. Perhaps. Let me know if there are unseen flaws in the plan, but if not, spread the word! Maybe we can stop these slimy bastards in their tracks, or at least slow them down significantly.

First, a few thoughts, some talking points, a little gedankenexperiment if you will:

  • These calls are annoying, illegal, and 99.99% guaranteed to be scams.
  • The people making these calls are often rude and abusive.
  • We would love to stop the calls altogether, but we’ve seen how well that works. Unsolicited telemarketing calls have actually been illegal for years, but there’s just about zero-point-zero enforcement, so what’s the use?
  • As individuals on the receiving end, we can hang up on them, yell at them, cuss them out, ignore them, or otherwise find a way of dealing with it. However, many of those methods still involve raising our blood pressure.
  • The best way to handle these calls is to screen them and just not answer at all — but some people (like those of us sending out resumes and looking for a job) regularly get (or hope to get, hint, hint) calls from unrecognized numbers.
  • The companies making these calls are successful because of automation and volume. They only need one in a thousand people to be ignorant or stupid enough to bite on their scam, they’re calling millions of people.
  • Humans aren’t making the initial calls, that’s a computer just going down a list calling one number after another.
  • The individuals working for these companies (couldn’t they get a job at McDonalds or in a Bangladeshi clothing manufacturer’s sweatshop, they have to sink to this level?) just take call after call after call after call. They’re making their pay based on the number of calls they make and the number of “leads” they can set up.
  • If you hang up, the company and their employees don’t care — they just move on to the next call.
  • Once you’ve gotten enough of these calls, you can recognize that a call is probably a telemarketer even before they start talking — you answer, get silence for a second or two (the computer on the other end is waiting to see if there’s a live human answering), then a couple of clicks (the computer has detected your presence and is now connecting you to somewhere in southeast Asia or Texas), then someone wanting to sell you aluminum siding.
  • It might be spite, but wouldn’t it be really great to find a way to simultaneously: A) Hit the telemarketers where it hurts (i.e., wasting their time), and; B) Have a bit of fun at their expense?

This would be wonderful, a much better option than getting frustrated! We’re not going to let the bastards wear us down! Illegitimi non Carborundum!

Some incompetent telemarketer may have inadvertently revealed to me the way to do this.

The call came in, I heard the silence and the clicks, I hear the background noise of a hundred telemarketers reading their scripts, and then “my” guy starts in:

“Hello, this is Bubba Schimmelfinny with ABC Corp, can I speak to Mark?”

Okay, this was new. I was perfectly ready to simply hang up — but this guy had a wrong number and didn’t know it. Maybe…

“I’m sorry,” I said, “would you like to try again?”

“I need to speak to Mark, please.”

“Would that be Mark as in my brother who lives in Vermont?”

Embarrassed silence for a second. “Oh, I’m sorry, I need to speak to Frank, please.”

“Strike two, would you like to go for three?”

“I don’t understand, maybe… The computer says… Oh, okay, can I speak to George?”

“Keep trying, slugger. You’re not getting warmer, but at least you’re entertaining.”

“I’m sorry for the call.” For a second before he cuts of the call, I can hear chaos and confusion on the other end.

Observations:

  1. I was laughing, not grinding my teeth.
  2. The buffoon telemarketer had wasted more than thirty precious seconds on a totally useless call.
  3. Absolutely the best of all, there was a real problem at their end when their computer had flipped out and was feeding garbage data to the guys on the phone.

And it struck me — WE COULD DO THIS TO THEM ON EVERY SINGLE CALL!

I tested the theory an hour or so later. The call, the silence, the click, the “Hello, can I speak to Paul?”

“Excuse me, Paul who?”

“Isn’t this the number for Paul Willett?”

“Beg your pardon, can you speak up, you’re very faint.”

“I’M TRYING TO REACH PAUL WILLETT.”

“Raul Willard? Never heard of him.”

“No, Paul. Willett!”

“Can you repeat that?”

Long story short (too late!), I kept that poor kid on the phone for nearly a minute, and when he finally hung up he was pretty sure that his computer had fed him garbage on that call.

But that’s just the beginning.

Remember Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant?” (Wait, what… You don’t?! Okay, go immediately and listen to it, then listen to it again a couple of times because you will realize how perfectly wonderful it is. When you’re ready, come back. I’ll still be here.) His cause was fighting the draft in the Vietnam War era, but his technique will work here as well. Remember how at the end he wants everyone to walk into their draft board, sing a bar of “Alice’s Restaurant”, and walk out? If one person does it… If two people do it… If ten people a day did it… What if a hundred people a day…

So what if 10% of the people answering the calls from telemarketers played this game? (Extra points if you want to keep track of your personal record for how long you can keep someone on the hook.) What if 25% of us did it? What if half of us did it?

The telemarketers would:

  1. Be losing money, because their non-productive calls, which currently only cost them a few seconds, would now cost them ten or twenty times as much.
  2. Be unsure whether there was an actual problem or not. They could spend tons of money trying to “fix” a problem that doesn’t exist.

This type of thinking is not without other precedents. There are folks who deliberately “bait” the guys sending out the “Nigerian prince” emails to see how much of their time they can waste, with the real goal being to someday set one of these stooges for a sting by law enforcement. We could do something similar, on a much smaller, more personal scale.

Alternatively, you could look at it as a new type of performance art. The new equivalent of “planking” or “Tebowing.”

It could work! What do you think?

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Filed under Art, Farce, Freakin' Idiots!

March 2, 2014 · 23:24

Airlines Bingo

Has anyone ever played “Boring Meeting Bingo,” aka “Dogma Bingo,” aka “Bullshit Bingo?” You know, where you fill a typical 5×5 bingo card with phrases or event or mannerisms or memes, then see who can fill their card first with the observed phenomenon or catchphrase?

On the way from BUR to MAV via LAS last week I was Tweeting my game progress across the country in my made-up version of this, “Airlines Bingo”:

Today, my meetings in Midland over, it was time to go home by the same route in reverse:

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Filed under Farce, Flying, Travel

February 23, 2014 · 22:23

Now That The Closing Ceremonies Are Over

Out here on the West Coast we’re still watching the closing ceremonies for the Sochi Winter Olympics. (Yeah, I know that they really happened about eighteen hours ago. Thanks, NBC!)

What catches my eye is all of the lights and displays hanging down from the roof. They’re sort of like the LED “dripping icicles” that you can get here for Christmas decorations in the last couple of years, just a hundred times bigger and brighter.

My first response to The Long-Suffering Wife was that they would be great for our yard, adding to our already great annual display. But the drawback would be the expense — I’m betting they’re not cheap.

But then I realized, “Hey! The ones right there in Sochi, what are they ever going to be used for again? I’ll bet that I could pick some of those up cheap!” It would be a great way for Putin to get back a few buck on the billions and billions of dollars spent on these games.

Better yet, they could sell them in a “shopping channel” or “adfotainment” style or format, you know, “But wait, there’s more! Order in the next ten minutes and you can get TWO giant Sochi icicle lights! Pay only separate shipping and handling!”

Then I realized that the shipping and handling might be Putin’s plan to get back all of the fifty billion dollars or so they spent, and I’m pretty sure that’s over the credit limit on my cards, so I’ll have to keep looking for them elsewhere.

Maybe Vancouver or London still have some stuff lying around that they’d like to get rid of.

P.S. My thanks to The Long-Suffering Wife who suggested this topic just after I yelled something inappropriate for a family audience, followed by, “It’s after ten and I still haven’t written or posted anything today!”

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Farce, Sports

February 22, 2014 · 21:53

A Few Questions re: Arizona AB-1062

As you may have heard, the Arizona Senate has passed a bill, AB 1062, which is being referred to by its supporters as a “religious freedom” bill. It would allow any individual or company in Arizona legal protections from discrimination lawsuits if they were to refuse service to someone when that person or business owner believes that providing such services would violate their religious beliefs.

Several other states have tried to pass similar bills recently (such as Kansas) but so far none have passed. It’s not clear at this time if Arizona Governor Jan Brewer will sign the bill. It’s also not clear that the law would stand up to any kind of legal challenge if it were signed into law.

On the flip side, there are twenty-one states which specifically forbid anyone denying services due to someone’s sexual orientation. This has been part of the motivation for Arizona to try to push for this law. They are concerned that some hypothetical baker in Arizona would be forced by law to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage when the baker’s religious beliefs are strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. In their opinion, this would violate the baker’s rights to freedom of religion. (This is also why these types of laws are referred to as “no cake for gays” laws.)

The measure has been strongly promoted by two conservative groups, the Center for Arizona Policy and Defending Freedom Alliance. (Please note, the online stories from the various news services have links to these organizations — I very, very deliberately do not. If you really, really want to go to their web page, google it.) It has also received strong support from the Arizona Catholic Conference. (I have never in my life been so happy to be a “recovering” Catholic.)

Of course, there are many Arizona groups opposing the bill, including business leaders who are concerned that it will send the message that Arizona is bigoted. They’re correct — it will send that message, because, well, Arizona is being bigoted.

Many have also pointed out that most businesses in Arizona (and every other state) are so in need of customers that they can’t afford to turn down anyone, regardless of what the customer does in the privacy of their own bedroom. That would be my first assumption, but I guess their God does a better job of taking care of their business for them because they’re turning down customers in His name than my God does. (Should I be urging my God to get on the ball and stop being a slacker in that regard?)

While the proponents of the bill are very good at wrapping themselves in the flag and the Bible in order to argue that this law is good for us and proposed out of their love of fundamental American freedom (otherwise known as “hypocritically lying through their teeth”), I have to wonder if their law goes far enough. After all, if you’re going to go on record, repeatedly, as a bunch of ignorant, bigoted, hate-filled, pinheads, why stop with anti-gay legislation?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is Muslim, he could refuse to make a cake for a Bar Mitzvah?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is white, he could refuse to make a cake for a Martin Luther King Day celebration? (After all, Arizona refused to recognize MLK Day for five years or so, and only relented when a significant boycott got established and it became obvious that the state wasn’t going to get the Super Bowl or NCAA Championship game if they didn’t relent? Fundamental principles are critical and the basis of our moral foundations — right up to the point where billions of dollars are involved. Then, as Winston Churchill said…)

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is an N’Sync fan, he could refuse to make a cake for a Backstreet Boys reunion rave?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is a nudist, he could refuse to make a cake for customers wearing clothes?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is a pacifist, he could refuse to make a cake for an NRA member?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is member of the Flat Earth Society, he could refuse to make a cake for astronaut Mark Kelly’s birthday? (Extra points if you “get” this one!)

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is an Arizona Wildcat, he could refuse to make a cake for a Arizona State Sun Devil tailgate party? After all, if we’re going to support hatred, let’s start at home!

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is a misogynist, he could refuse to make a cake for a bachelorette party?

Finally, why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker has an IQ bigger than his shoe size, he could refuse to make a cake for a member of the Arizona Senate because they’re freakin’ idiots?

Curious minds want to know.

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Filed under Farce, Freakin' Idiots!, Moral Outrage, Politics

February 12, 2014 · 09:12

Thirty-Seconds Of Comedic Horror

About 3:20 AM, I wake up because I’ve gotta pee. Leave the lights off so I don’t wake up The Long-Suffering Wife, there’s just enough light coming from the window and the various digital clocks to see where I’m going. Carefully step into the bathroom where the dog is lying on the floor next to the toilet. She is not going to move or get up (this is not news) so I contort myself to find a way to stand over her and hover over the bowl, leaning against the far wall for support with one hand while “taking care of business” with the other. There’s a little more light in here.

Just after liquids start to flow, something is seen out of the corner of my eye, moving between me and the window. It’s dropping slowly, straight down. Before I have time to react or move, the spider lands on my shoulder.

Chaos ensues.

The sleep-addled brain fragments and freaks out with multiple conflicting and simultaneous goals. Get the spider off of me! Don’t pee on the dog! Stand up so that support arm can be used to battle the spider! Don’t step on the dog! Turn on the light so I can see the spider! Can’t do that, not enough arms! Don’t pee on the wall!

As my head jerks, it hits the web the spider was descending with, draping the single strand across my face, futher invoking reflexive flipping out by my out-of-control meat-sack body. Of course, all of this also alerts the spider to the fact that “Bad Things Are Happening!” so it starts scurrying down my naked body looking for an escape route.

This doesn’t help.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Don’t kick the dog! Spider! Spider! Spider! Don’t pee on the floor! Doing the spider dance while it runs down my back, but don’t move! Don’t fall down and break an arm, leg, skull, or anything else! Jeez louise, how much pee is there?! Where’s the spider, how huge is it, is it going to bite me? Pee, pee, pee! Dance, dance, dance! Twitch, twitch, twitch! Spider, spider, spider!

The spider now drops down onto the back of my leg, just below the knee. The leg muscles, already stressed from the awkward stance needed to lean over the dog to get over the toilet, now twitch involuntarily and go into a full-blown “charlie horse” cramp.

PAIN! Aaaaaaaahhhhh!!! Straighten the leg, stretch it out! But don’t move! Don’t scream! Don’t step on the dog! Don’t spray pee all over the room! Damn, that really hurts! Don’t you dare let the other the other leg cramp up too! Pain, pain, pain!

After a near eternity (ten to fifteen seconds, but all in super spider slo-mo) of panic, confusion, adrenaline, pain, and toilet training nightmares come to life, the flow of pee stops and the spider has fled. I can stand up, flip on the light, work out the leg cramp, and look for my long-gone arachnid archenemy.

No spider in sight, but definitely a web strand across my face. I wasn’t imagining it. Miraculously, no pee on the dog, on the floor, on the wall, on my foot, or on the ceiling.

The dog, of course, has slept through the whole ordeal, blissfully oblivious to the imminent catastrophe just inches away.

Once my leg stops cramping, I limp back to bed in the dark and crawl in. The Long-Suffering Wife stirs enough to mumble, “Everything okay?”

In the interest of brevity and the need to get back to sleep, let’s go with “Yes.” She can read this in the morning.

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Filed under Dogs, Farce, Paul

February 7, 2014 · 21:55

A Canine’s Lament

Jessie here. Hello! I’m a dog!

The Male Food Provider is busy ravaging and pillaging the work that I’ve slaved over all week. Again. He has become the Destroyer of Worlds. Again. Since he feels obligated to steal what’s precious to me, I’ll do the same to him. Today his blog is mine!

Let’s talk about this horror, this abomination, this callous injustice.

It happens a couple of times a week. Once again I have it rubbed into my face that my efforts to create art and try to find a meaning to my canine existence are considered to be futile and worthless. You all think that it’s just sleep, eat, sleep, eat, lick my but, sleep, and eat. You couldn’t be more wrong.

I spend all week carefully putting poop all over the yard in just the right places. I judge the ever changing feng shui of the yard, then carefully find just the right location, making allowances for volume, odor, texture, and color. Let’s see you try to deal with the pressures associated with that kind of responsibility. It’s exhausting! That’s why I need so much sleep, obviously.

Moreover, I have to perform under incredible time pressures, with an audience. “Come on, find a spot!” he says. “It’s not getting any warmer out here!” he shouts. “Leave that skunk alone!” Okay, that last one probably is good advice, but as for the rest of it? How can I be expected to do my best work without a thorough examination of the yard first? Squirrel??!! Oh, and what’s up with the staring and chaperoning? Has he got some kind of sick fetish that we need to talk about? Do I watch you when you poop? Of course not. So why can’t I get the same courtesy?

Then the ultimate insult. Just when I’m starting to make some progress and the yard isn’t the laughingstock of the neighborhood, out comes the shovel and the little plastic bag. In just minutes, days of work can be wiped out.

I don’t know what to do about this. I’ve tried and tried to communicate, but apparently the Male Food Provider is deaf as a post, and not too bright to boot. How can I get it across to him that the poop needs to stay right where I put it? How can he be made to understand that his efforts at “cleaning” are nothing more than sadly misguided vandalism, the equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria?

Good thing that he has that whole closet full of food. Otherwise he would have no known purpose at all. I don’t see how the Wonderful Woman Food Provider puts up with him.

The cat poops in his shoes. Maybe I should try that.

Any suggestions?

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Filed under Dogs, Farce