Who are these people?

Still out trick-or-treating at 10:00pm?  Really? What’s up with that?  Are these the same people you see in Wal-Mart at 1:00 am when you have a child at home throwing up and you need some Pedia-lyte, and you run out fearing for your child’s brain function? And you run in thinking the place will be empty, amazed that its still open, and see large mom’s with three children in tow, buying toilet paper and snak-pak pudding?

What are they thinking? Oh! They dont have school tomorrow, so they can sleep in! Yes, your four-year-old can be out gathering yet more candy, as if they don’t have enough already, knocking on old people’s doors who have already gone to bed, all in the name of the Halloween candy free-for-all!

Is this just a difference of lifestyle? or is it really the failures of tomorrow, the people we will have to support on welfare because they had no structure, no parental tough-love, no one to occasionally say “no”, no one to say “its time for bed”?

Maybe it’s not the election which matters so much for the direction of our country, not the corporations which determine our country’s decadence, not the celebrities who’s lives matter so much, but our families that are spelling out the end of anything that was admirable in American culture, that are giving in to the disorder that has made France and Sweden the black holes of civility that they have become, that are raising a generation of self-loving, faux-oppressed by society, gizmo-obsessed slackers that the young are becoming.

Just my opinion.

The Trail of Tears

The true story of how the segments of highway between Austin and Abilene came to be known among skunks of central Texas as the Trail of Tears is both mysterious and tragic. The facts have become clouded by time owing to the general distraction and lethargy toward documentation that has prevailed since the events. Indeed, historians have long sought to uncover the dark deeds that surround the highway construction and won it this grim title: the acts of heartless betrayal, the power struggles, the totemistic rituals that now darken the minds of every skunk clan dwelling along the scrubby, barren pass – the details of which are revealed now to you, secret friend, that the spilt blood of so many may not be forgotten.

It began in the days when many youths of the Spilogale skunk clan began increasingly to chafe under the uninteresting lot that their lives had become. Unrest simmered and, like many other cultural shifts, parent-teen arguments brought strife to nearly every household. Shifty groups of adolescents gathered murmuring and sniggering at the edges of the dens. Their growing desperation and the sense of being helplessly trapped gave rise to their cynicism and precarious quests for new experiences. As the malaise wore on, some began referring to themselves as the Lost Generation, a title applied with a mildly wry pessimism at first but later came to haunt the dark-eyed wanderers.
click here to read the rest of the story…

sick of this phrase

You know what phrase I’m sick of?  “Thrown under the bus.”

That’s right, I’m sick of “thrown under the bus.”  At first, I thought this was a hip, catchy sort of phrase that had a certain emotive punch.  It scores rhetorical points by painting a picture, a graphic picture in the mind of the hearer. Violent and visceral.

The problem is that it is always used about one’s self.  “Oh! well then so-and–so threw me under the bus!” I’m hearing this phrase on a regular basis now. Eeeevery time someone gets called down, criticized, reprimanded, or spoken ill of, “Ew, he just thuh-rew me under the bus!  Pity me, o man. I too am among the downtrodden.  I know bitterness, injustice and betrayal.  I have been *THREWN* under the bus!”

So, in my job when I have to tell Shmoe Farquarson that he needs to handle a certain situation himself, and I do it in the presence of one or two others, I have just thrown  him under the bus. No matter that Shmoe really was in need of a little prod. No matter that I have actually suffered incalculable grief and criticism because of errors that Shmoe made, but because I am the manager I take responsibility for it in the eyes of our customer. No matter that I have really decided that Shmoe is a liability to the company and should be fired.  Shmoe has a silver bullet. The role of the martyr.  Because I…

THREW

…him under…

th’ BUS.

Night at a video arcade.

I went to a video arcade today as part of a 13-year-old’s birthday party. And, yeah. You think you already know what I’m going to say.

You probably do, but perhaps you have not been in one for a while. Perhaps you are considering whether this might be a good idea for your child’s upcoming birthday. If so, please hear me. Do not do this.

To enter a modern day video arcade and remain standing upright requires nothing short of a total dismantling of the conscience, and violent suppression of the will. Notions of good and evil must be redefined. Not quite reversed, although that is tempting to say, but intentionally corrupted, imbued with a sense that evil is identified by subtleties of physiognomy and disproportion. For example, in some anime’ stylized games like Time Crisis III, the villain is virtually indistinguishable from the hero except by the angle of the jutting spikes hair, and the fact that villains always seem to be partly mechanized. Just look at these two here. They could be twins.

And what a stupid name for a game. Seriously, my entire life is a time crisis. Why is this name so intriguing ?

Indeed, don’t the kids who play these games live something of a time crisis? As in, do they have too much time on their hands that they’re here playing a silly game?  No homework? No job? Given up trying to find themselves? Spent all their angst? Their crisis is TOO MUCH time, the result of strict child labor laws and lax school standards, and the boomer prosperity, all combining to produce a bored generation with a lot of money.

As I entered the video arcade, I thought I would find a nice car racing game to pass the time. Who knew there was an INSANE TAXI game, or TOKYO GANGSTER RACE game? I did find a couple of nice racing venues with automatic shifting, but what, I asked, is the thrill of this? It is not that different from driving on 290 toward Dripping Springs, or 71 to Bee Caves, which are far more perilous anyway.

Beyond the numerous zombie and military shooting games, off in a corner by itself, alone as if banished, a recluse, a relic, a laughingstock, there stood an old-fashioned game, Galaga, aloof under a lamp post, melancholy as Sam Spade. I played this game when I was young – a gussied-up version of Space Invaders. I could never read in such a place, so I shot down pixelated bug-aliens as I had not done in some decades.

After all the free pizza I could eat, and a Sam’s birthday sugar cookie, and a few long stretches of Galaga, I was ready to go home. All the children and really, the adults too, were shooting zombies with plastic guns, riding simulated motorcycles, simulated snow skis, playing simulated guitars and drums, and simulating face-ripping street fights.

No one asked what this says about our society, or whether there would be a tomorrow. Nobody threw up, or curled up fetal on the ground in horror. Nobody ran through the room shouting “Ichabod! The glory is departed!” But if we were still sane, we would.