Joe Biden is an Impossible Burger

An Argument for the Practical Application of Moral Certainty in the 2020 Election

OR

Why Joe Biden is an Impossible Burger

I want to make a suggestion to you. I want to make it in the form of a reasonable, well-thought-out, experienced argument that isn't based on loyalties or tribalism, but on evidence, strategy, and – dare I say – morality. I hesitate to use that word. I don't know your specific moral code, and you don't know mine. But, I'm going to postulate that if you're reading this – whether Athiest, Evangelical, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, or anywhere on the religious and spiritual spectrum – you have a similar enough moral code to fall within the audience of this essay. If you want to see the world burn, you might want to step outside. Everyone else, please hang around.

The suggestion concerns a McDonalds that I'm hypothetically standing near right now. Imagine it, the McDonalds and me. (The McDonalds looks like a McDonalds. You can imagine me how you like, including choosing my outfit.)

I am near this McDonalds in a blue leotard and wool socks. (I assume that’s how you’ve chosen to dress me.) I'm a conscientious person who wants to do good in the world, and McDonald’s is McDonald’s, complete with its current corporate behaviors, sourcing chains, and treatment of its workers. Should I eat at McDonalds? The answer is obviously no, no matter how hungry I am or how you've dressed me. I'd be supporting a mountain of morally unctious Mordor. Except.

Let’s tweak McDonald’s. It is now paying people $17 an hour and offering vegan food. Do I eat there? Is that enough to win my support? The vegan food is served wrapped in plastic and cooked alongside tiger meat. Do I eat there? The workers are children saved from poverty and given a fair shot in life, including free health care. Do I eat there? The french fries are made from Monsanto-fed potatoes that are flown in individually at an absurd cost to the environment. The building is sustainable and actively cleans the air and water that pass through it. Do I eat there? The seats are uncomfortable. Now what?

Clearly, this essay and its McDonalds comprise an argument about compromise, about moral complexity, about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. It's an advocacy piece that says you should hold your nose and vote for Joe Biden no matter who you support, because -- though he is clearly problematic and almost no one under fifty's first choice -- he would be better than the alternative. In a complex moral universe, he would do more good than harm. You should compromise your values. You should accept the reality that we face. Except.

This is not that piece. I would argue that, as a Bernie supporter especially, you can’t just vote for Joe Biden. You have to do two things instead. 

Before I tell you those two things, you need to know where I’m coming from. 

I'm a Bernie supporter, and a serious one. I've followed Sanders since I lived in New England, before he ever ran for president. I followed his 2010 filibuster with enthusiasm. I devoured the Rolling Stone article, Inside the Horror Show That Is Congress in which Bernie took the magazine through the process of trying to get a bill passed in a deeply partisan era; it was, indeed, a horror show, and Bernie stood out as a rational, ethical outlier. In the early 2000's, when Massachusetts adopted the model that would inspire Obamacare, I was so profoundly disappointed that I wrote a letter to all of my local representatives and changed my voting habits. I didn't vote for Obama in his second term because I felt he compromised too much on the issues I valued.

In short, I'm far from a mainstream Democrat, and when Bernie announced his candidacy for president in 2015, I followed him there, too, and how. I volunteered in text and phone banks and distributed campaign literature in Chicago. I shared my health care horror stories and fought with friends and partners over minimum wage, Wall Street regulation, free public universities, the electoral college, and, of course, what Hillary Clinton was all about. Bernie winning Michigan is up there with Barack Obama's “Yes We Can” speech in the ranks of the most inspiring political moments of my lifetime.

I love Bernie Sanders. I love what he fights for. I love how he fights for it. I love his dignity and integrity. I love that he yells. I love that he laughs. I love how he plays with his grandkids. I think his policies are essential and ahead of their time here. So.

Fellow Bernie supporters, what are we to do? Are you going to #DemExit and #NeverBiden? If so, let me ask you another question first. Just one question before you go.

What is wrong with you? And another.

What the hell do you think you're doing? And another.

Are you out of your mind?

I'm sorry if that got a little antagonistic. You can put me back in the wooly socks and leotard if it makes you feel better. But please, spend some time with the rational, moral, Bernie Sanders-esque argument I'm now ready to make. (Yes. That's right. This is an argument that I believe Bernie Sanders himself has made and would make again.) 

Part One. Compromise. Voting for Joe Biden is something you should and, in fact, must do.

Part One’s argument isn't the most original, but it needs to be made again, and maybe in a slightly different way, because too many people are insulting us by trying to sell Joe Biden as a feasible alternative to Sanders. Biden is not an alternative to Sanders. When I suggest that you vote for him, I don't mean that you accept Joe Biden as a “close enough” Plan B. I don’t mean that you should settle for who he is and what he stands for. Even if the best stories about him are true and the worst false, he doesn't live up to the standards of integrity that Sanders set for his campaign, much less what we want in a president. He has caused harm, more than he needed to. I won't advocate that he’s not as bad as we think or should be a suitable alternative. But.

I will argue that we must elect him if we want progress, because we must. Electing Joe Biden is progress.

Disagreeing with that assertion is your right, but the definition of progress is rooted in from where we are progressing. We are in trouble. Serious trouble. We are in a dire, ugly, inhuman, perilous, near-apocalyptic DEFCON-5 fire swamp of trouble. The Trump administration’s current practices must not be allowed to continue, much less to be extended and emboldened by a second term. This is an administration that draws straight from the fascist playbook, belittling all critical press while praising outlets that spread its conspiracy theories and biased, self-serving misinformation. It is an administration that has challenged your fundamental rights in courts. Where those courts have ruled in your favor, they’re being dismantled and discredited; the administration is appointing more and more judges to them who are ruled unqualified by their peers but are ideologically in line with your president. And this administration has undermined the processes and precedents that protect not only you, but people far more vulnerable than you. 

This is an administration that, within hours of Trump's inauguration, erased all mention of climate change from the EPA web site, the same EPA that will no longer be enforcing any environmental law. It is an administration that has mismanaged, equivocated on, and worsened the greatest health crisis of our time, so much so that it is being investigated by Congress . . . again. It is an administration that, during this health crisis, has continued to purge opposition and oversight within its ranks, including that of the biggest stimulus package in history. It is an administration propped up by a tacit and obstinate elephant party with members who still think women often lie about their rapes, that doctors should be killed for performing abortions, and that trans people are the equivalent of sexual predators. 

Do I sound like an alarmist? If so, reread those two paragraphs and chew on the facts. They are not hyperbolic or hypothetical. In fact, they are only a meager sampling of what’s been happening the last four years, and despite the administration’s ongoing efforts to eliminate objective truth itself, they are real. You are in a McDonalds where you eat the meat whether you like it or not, where there's no food safety or inspection standards, where you can be killed for being brown without consequence, and where the seats are especially uncomfortable for anyone who isn’t a white male with money. 

Remember all the people who warned you that Trump could win in 2016. Talk to those people now. They will warn you again of what's next. Fascism and white supremacy are happening here, and denying it is enabling it.

People are not safe. You are not safe. And you don’t have the luxury of four more years to make your point. 

Joe Biden is progress. He will be more progress if he chooses a progressive running mate and is serious about his platform. Time will tell. Regardless, the moral equivalency argument between Trump and Biden is absurd. 

I can hear people shutting the door. This essay is what I told you it isn’t. It’s just another one of those bullshit arguments that says that since Trump is so bad, we should take what we can get, swallow our pride and our values, and support things we don't truly believe in while the powers-that-be continue to ignore us. That is, in fact, my biggest fear in publishing this work: that I will sound like an advocate for moral compromise and watery moderation. That is not my stance, nor is it the stance of this essay. I recognize that the engines of progress are the John Adams, the Harriet Tubmans, the Mahatma Gandhis, the Martin Luther Kings, the people who fought as radicals and were silenced, mocked, and murdered. We should all aspire to their level of commitment to justice, and to their philosophies. If you haven't read the Letter From Birmingham Jail, do it today. Reaffirm the dangers “compromise” poses in the face of moral certainty, the molecular anti-progress of the white play-it-safer, the sneaky racism that poses as practicality in laws and ordinances. But.

Don't delude yourself that by not voting for Joe Biden, you are somehow taking a moral stand against the ethical queasiness of the wait-and-see moderate. You don't get a progressive trophy tied with an integrity ribbon for withholding your vote from him. Ignoring the fact that your protest vote will actively cause pain – by working to extend Trump's morally worse presidency and endanger all of us – it’s also a miserable and largely ineffective form of advocacy. You see injustice in the world, and your way of standing up to it is not voting, or voting for a third party candidate you know can't win? (An aside here: I'm a huge third party advocate, but do you honestly think you're furthering their agenda by voting for them in a national election and doing nothing on the ground to help them in places they can actually succeed?)

Voting matters, yes. Getting people elected matters. Protest voting in a presidential election is wildly ineffective as a form of social change. (Ask Bill Clinton how much he felt the national Democratic Party needed to move on its platform after voters sent him a “clear message” in the form of Ross Perot. None at all? Weird. Donkeys can be as stubborn as elephants.)

Do Part One. Vote Biden. But you must –you simply must – you can not proceed without Part Two. It would be immoral and impractical to vote for Joe Biden without Part Two.

Part Two. Don’t compromise. You must do more than vote for Joe Biden. You must.

Your eventual vote for Joe Biden, in fact, would be a mere bumper sticker on the vehicle of progress. If all you did was vote for Joe Biden as a Bernie supporter, you would be a sell-out. You would be doing all the things you're afraid of: emboldening the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, compromising your values, undermining the #metoo movement. Your vote for Joe Biden with no other action attached would be a subscription to one of the most harmful misunderstandings in American politics: the belief that your civic duty begins and ends on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November every four years.

Which is to say that you can't wrap all of your civic obligations up into a candidate, put him in the White House, and expect it to drive the country in a radically different direction. Take the counterexample: our Vermontian socialist cult leader.

I understand – because I am of the cult, too – the appeal of Bernie Sanders as president, and he would probably have been more than a bumper sticker toward progress – a steering wheel and a windshield, perhaps. But.

He wouldn't have fixed the country. For example.

Do you think that the same Democratic Party mechanisms that actively opposed Sanders' campaigns (twice) wouldn't have ground against his presidency? Would Democrats in Congress have had a come-to-Jesus moment and begun to pass his policies through? They've been uncompromisingly clear on the fact that they would not. Look at the impact a handful of “centrist” Democratic senators had on the Affordable Care Act. There was a public option in the initial text of that bill. A few senators – centrist Democrats – killed it. The danger of the white moderate. They did that to Obama. Imagine what they'd do to socialist Sanders. If you picture a Sanders presidency bringing dramatic and immediate progress to the United States, you're being naive. It was never about that. Says who? Our messy-haired Larry David impersonator himself.

What Uncle Socialist gets, and we should, too, is that on November 3, the world will need powerful moral advocates to move it forward, not only as voters, but as volunteers at polls, as truth tellers, as compassionate helpers, as shoppers making buying decisions that support their values. He gets that it will need the same kinds of advocates on November 2; and November 4; and on January 20, 2021; and throughout the entire year of 2023. It will need people to call for that investigation into Tara Reade's accusations against Joe Biden, and Christine Blasey Ford's against Brett Kavanaugh, and Kristin Anderson's against Donald Trump, and Karen Johnson's against Donald Trump, and Jill Harth's against Donald Trump (etc etc), and every woman's at every college campus, high school, and workplace in America. It will need advocates to stand in front of tractors to protect the rainforests, to reduce their own global emissions through their purchasing decisions, to march on Washington for racial equality, to demand a carbon tax and student loan forgiveness and free higher education policies from their senators and representatives, both national and local. It will need people who sit in and stand up for universal health care and continue to trumpet its value forward. It will need boots on the ground. It will need you, it needs you now, and it needs you loud. It will need you long after Bernie is gone.

For now, do everything you can to put the candidate who will less stand in your way in power, then fight like hell using every tool you have to make sure that candidate listens. Make sure he is held accountable for whatever harm he causes. Make sure he knows you are still here. Fight for progressive legislators to do the same on the state and local level. Keep people like Bernie in the House and Senate. You have powerful social tools to take the fights you care about to power. If you don't use them because you only see one way forward (i.e., electing Bernie), you're not being morally certain; you're being unwise and short-sighted. Your vote is a weapon; it is not your armada. November 3 is an opportunity; it is not an end point for your action. Also.

Change doesn't happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up, so start there, stay there, and finish there. You know who would say the same?

Our Jewish war god.

You are at McDonalds in a booty-shorts-onesie. Joe Biden is an overprocessed, still-bad-for-you Impossible Burger cooked on the same grill where they cook the meat; Donald Trump is ebola. Pick your meal as you like, but those are your options, and why in the hell would you pick ebola? #EbolaExit. Seriously. What good do you think that is doing anyone?

Speaking of which, this McDonalds could really use some changes, and like it or not, we’re going to be here forever. Let's start with these uncomfortable seats. 

#famous

Instead of "writing," from now on, I'm going to dedicate my creative energy to social media. I have a lot to say on facebook.com. I'm not sure why people call it "facebook" and leave out the "dot com" part. The "dot com" part seems pretty essential to finding it on the world wide web.

You may not be familiar with facebook DOT COM. It is a web page where someone can create a page all about himself. Or herself. You can actually make a bunch of pages about yourself or someone else or whoever (or an event or something you like, you really should check it out). Then, once you have a page about yourself, you can do useful things like post pictures and stuff, or you can just write something you want everyone who is your friend (on facebook DOT COM, not in real life) to read. For example, you could write, "I am going to vote for Hillary Clinton." And people can write comments on what you wrote. Like someone might say, "I'm not." See?

Also, you can share links. So, after I write this post, I'm going to share a link to it on facebook DOT COM.

What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. I have way too much writing talent to be wasting it on books and plays and failed screenplays about black people. I would rather spend my time using my words to write messages to people, preferably a lot of people at the same time. Like this:

HI EVERYONE

Anyone who comes to this website can read that.

I'm also going to create the most interesting texts. Those are messages, but for just one person at a time. (usually, if you send it to more than one person at a time people get mad at you). I am going to text things like "How are things" and "I have my hand on your butt." (as you can see, sometimes I will sext. That means to text but about sex. Usually it means to text about sex with someone you are or want to have sex with.)

 Who would like to be the recipient of my first text? Or my facebook DOT COM friend? Follow me! Follow me! I have so much to show you. Ready to text here! Ready to fire away! Just let me know you want one, and I'll send it right out to space so it can rocket back down to your smartphone.

Let the writing career begin. Ready when you are!

PS I am also very good at filling in timesheets and writing my name and information on legal documents. If you or someone you know would like to pay me to do those things, I will accept no less that $15 an hour. #Awriterhastomakealiving.

Men Only

When you’re eleven and want to disappear in a puff of smoke, the best thing to do is ask around school. You’ll find that only one kid in your fifth grade class knows how to do it. It’s Max.

You’ll have an initial conversation with Max about smoke, smoking, and smoke bombs. You’ll realize in that microchat that Max has something you don’t. It’s not knowledge, although Max definitely knows where to buy things you haven’t even heard of. It’s not strength, although Max takes Tae Kwon Do and has the jumpkick to prove it. And it’s not anything ethical or spiritual; neither you nor Max have given much thought or development to your reverent side at this point in your life.

Whatever Max has—and there’s no fifth grade word for it—it rubs off on you. Soon, he becomes your mentor. He shares with you his physical strength; you do push-ups and sit-ups together. He teaches you courage; you jump off of rooves together. He teaches you to smoke, and how to play King of the Hill, and that fighting trick where you put your leg behind the other guy’s leg and then awkwa-grapple him into tripping backwards. Max turns you into the fifth grade equivalent of a badass. Max turns you into a man.

You and Max scope out turf. You choose a part of the playground to be yours. It’s literally a pile of dirt over by the swings or whatever. A pile of dirt. But it’s yours. One day, you see another young man playing there. You don’t know him. He doesn’t know you. But you know that’s your pile of dirt. You do the awkwa-grapple thing. The kid skins not only his knee but his face. The kid starts to cry. You win. Pile of dirt defended. Manhood defended.

Your punishment is severe. In addition to having your parents called, your job is to go up to the nurse’s office, look that young man in the eye, and apologize to him. Gross. Apologies. Crying. Weakness. Gross. You feel absolutely terrible. It occurs to you then that the you who threw this young man to the ground was never you. You realize that you don’t know you. Then you start to realize some other things, too.

First, you realize that Max’s smoke bombs come mail-order from the back of Boys’ Life magazine. Then, it occurs to you that when you’re “hiding in plain sight,” everyone can see you; they just don’t care that you’re there. And those cigarettes you’re smoking? With open eyes, you see that they’re napkins rolled up and taped into nerd-cylinders.

Your insights fundamentally alter your relationship with your sensei. Suddenly, his way of teaching you to always be on guard by hitting you when you aren’t paying attention—it feels more like bullying. His way of getting you to jump off a roof by calling you a pussy if you don’t—feels like false bravado. And his Tae Kwon Do training that never taught him the best form of self-defense—not to get in a fight in the first place—well, it doesn’t seem like your sensei was there that day.  

In Middle School, Max no longer part of your life, you’ll reflect on your training: how did the dude seem so big so long? How did he remain your Rufio, an artificial man in a world of authentic boys? How is it he got to call the shots for the better part of a school year when you had a perfectly good mind and heart of your own?

The top of your spine spoonfeeds you the answer. You recall. Ah! Yes! There was the thing—the thing Max had that fifth graders (and adults) don’t have a word for. Today, you’ll find it hiding in plain sight in the thesaurus, chilling invisibly near words like “confidence” and “assertiveness.” It’s buried in power philosophies and innocent clichés that talk about “being present” and “showing up.” What Max had was . . . wait for it.

He was there. It’s that simple. Max took up the space everyone else was willing to relinquish.

He’s still doing it today. Max is staking out turf, calling meetings at flagpoles in Rogers Park complete with secret passwords and intimidation tactics. He’s standing on stage at iO turning some female scene partner into a housewife or a whore. He’s designing public bulletins and health care policy, making sure we all know that we all don’t need to worry about the Zika virus. Max is on the rampage, y’all. We just may not notice it, because we probably don’t take him too seriously. Wait. Some of us notice it and take it seriously—those of us who are women.

Okay, gentlemen. Bring it in. (Ladies, please kindly allow us some space. We have to huddle. It’s what men do.) Everyone here? Good. Listen. Here’s the gameplan. Look out across the field. See the other team? Max’s. Millions of them. The game? Manhood. Manliness. Masculinity. The rules? That’s what we have to decide. That’s why we’re here. Who here has an opinion on what it means to be a man?

Nobody? Anybody? Listen, fellahs. Someone’s going to take up space out here, and if it’s not us, it’s going to be them. What’s that, Number 14? You think the women of the world need our support? That we should be including them in this conversation? Get out of my face. That’s ridiculous. Women are fine. They’ve heard enough from us. They’ve been putting up with our shit for centuries. Right now, we’re talking about us. Who are we? Anybody?

Let’s start simple. Are we the kind of men who will allow masculinity to be defined by misogynists? No? Are we the kind of men who will allow the role models our fathers and grandfathers created for us—you know, the men who fought in just wars and provided for entire families—to be openly mocked, shamed, and trivialized? No! Are we the kind of men who will be awkwa-grappled into surrendering our turf to people who are morally inferior to us? NO!?

Well, game on, then. Women, you can come back now. I have good news for you:

We men, the real ones, decided long ago that we aren't interested in being idiots or assholes. We don't want to own your bodies. We don't want to harm your bodies. We don't want to oppress your minds. We don't support an uneven playing field when it comes to health, sex, work, respect, or any of the other areas in which you are commonly oppressed and belittled. That's not the good news.

The good news is that we decided--just now in our huddle--not to be quiet about it anymore. (Right, gentlemen?) See, most of us are taught to just abide by the fuckfarts of the world, to bite our tongues and spend time around people we like and respect, to live our own lives and go about our own business. ‘Just don’t be that way,’ we’re told. Well, we in our huddle just called bullshit. We in our huddle just decided that being a good person is not enough, that passive support is not enough, that not being Max is not enough. Furthermore, we in our huddle just decided that we don't want to be reactive anymore. This is our gender, too, and our timidity has been the strength of Max's everywhere.

Instead,we're going to be men of action. We're going to go out and be policy-makers. Educators. Writers. Funny comedians and talented improvisers. We're going to be bosses and office managers and flight attendants and sports stars and fathers and partners and friends. And when we see some phony who doesn't get what it is to be a man, we're going to stand up, not one at a time, but in droves, and teach him. In doing all of this, we're going to create an entire culture based on what it is to be a real man, and we're going to let the fake men try to live in it.

Gents, I'll repeat: reacting is not enough. 

Yes. The Kings of Cock cancelled their meeting when everyone threw a fit. They retreated back into the internet. We won; they lost. But these boys were just a distraction. Look at all the facets of misogyny that haven't retreated, haven't even been asked to. (Do I need to name them? If you're not familiar, ask any female friend what one day in her life is like. She'll tell you that Return of Kings is the least of her worries, and she'll be happy to provide you specific reasons why.) Regardless of whether any particular group will be meeting in our streets and near our homes on Saturday night, please don’t forget that what they represent remains “out there” in ways we all see every day, and wherever the Max's are allowed to take action, they are also allowed to shape the definition of our gender and our world.

So bid them farewell and laugh at them if you want, and flick them off as they go. Good riddance, Max. Good riddance, Return of Kings. While we’re at it, good riddance to rapists, misogynists, egoists, narcissists, abusers, haters, terrorists, Rush Limbaughs; to the Señor Ceréns of El Salvador and the John Belushis of SNL. Thank you all for yielding, ultimately, to the glacial wall of progress. We love it when you lose. We love to celebrate your disappearance.

Puff.   

But men: here’s the real question we better be asking ourselves. What do we do with the space left behind when these assholes finally shut up? Now that the flagpole stands unguarded, will we quietly allow a deluded silence to still the public domain? Or will we charge in, voices strong, and loudly claim our turf?

Picture the Clarion Inn in Ronkonkoma, Long Island, New York . . . Now Picture Yourself Leaving

1. There are no refrigerators in the room.  

2. The microwave at the communal Microwave Station is an odd, Frankenstein's monster of a machine.  The glass turntable was clearly pilfered from a different, larger microwave.

3. Rooms 141 - 168 are in the same direction as Rooms 143-175.

4. The pool is cool.

5. They take all comers.

6. The complimentary laundry service is  not complimentary.

7. The breakfast buffet offers near-limitless combinations of brown and yellow.

White Heat

Write what you know.

Write about what makes you angry.  

Well, okay.  Here goes.

1) Doors that are heavy and close on their own. 

I am an adult.  I am capable of closing a door behind me.  I don't need you, oh apartment building administrators (et al), to rig it so that as soon as I stop pushing on the thing with all my might, it snapdragons back at me like a venus fly trap, closing with a "thud" or a "bang" or a "slam," usually on my rear bike derailer*.  I understand security, but I'd also like to be able to buy groceries and move things in and out of my home.

Furthermore, every door should be open-able with one hand.  If I put the proper key into a door lock and turn it, I should gain access through that door.  Anything that requires me to use two hands - whether it be to push or, worse, to manipulate two handles at once - should be illegal.  

It's kind of like that part in The Last Crusade, where the penitent man shall pass?  The penitent man kneels before God - sure.  But did you notice the vertical blade that followed right on the heels of the two horizontal ones that are avoided through "penitence?"  Penitence is only the first step.  Then, you have to roll, jump, and whip just so to stop the gears before you're decapitated, regardless of your knowledge of the Old Testament.

Kneeling should be enough.  Stop making doors that resist their primary purpose - to open.

This makes me so angry.  

2) Standing in front of empty seats on public transit.

So you don't want to sit next to a stranger.  Fine.  Totally up to you.  But don't turn your back (figuratively) on an empty seat just so you can stand right in front of the damn thing, facing (literally) the abandoned possibility of sitting.  If you're afraid of other people, that's your business, but unless you're playing in the NBA, nobody benefits from you using your entitled ass to prevent people from getting where they want to go (in this case, sitting).

Move.

3) Poor snow etiquette.  

Today, I could have legally inherited three dozen milk crates, four dozen buckets, some basic patio furniture, and a trash can or two.  Nothing unusual there.  But apparently I am unaware of the true value of a parking spot, because I could also have inherited a nice wooden barstool, a baby pool, some shelving, and a stroller.  A stroller.  Doesn't your child need that?  If not, doesn't somebody's child need that?  Also, didn't that cost you over $100?

Also, chairs, buckets, milk crates etc are for the purpose of marking a spot that you personally dug out for a short duration of time while the streets and sidewalks remain unshoveled.  A week after the blizzard, you might be getting just a little possessive of that particular piece of pavement.

Also, who are the dicks going around claiming spots they didn't dig out as their own?  Let me give those dicks some advice.  Hey dicks: Moses didn't dig out that parking spot.  Someone else did.  And they didn't piss in it when they left because they are part of a community, and they're trusting that other people are too, and that we're all working together to get through adverse conditions.  By claiming that spot as your own when you leave it, you are pushing us closer to a society ruled by Jeb Bush and measles.

It's not yours.  Don't pretend it is.

5) Who's proofreading this shit?.

Look - nobody's perfect.  We all make mistakes.  And nobody needs to be perfect, especially when it comes to language, grammar, and punctuation.  We'll probably figure out what you mean.  But there's a huge gap between not being perfect and completely not giving a shit.

For example, here's a sign from the House on the Rock in Wisconsin:

I get what you mean, but I'm gonna take as much care not to climb on those rocks as you did in spraying punctuation all over that wooden post.

Also, if you're in the business of something intellectual -- like for example, you want me to use your lawyering service -- maybe spell words correctly and avoid comma splices, apostrophe s's to pluralize, and confusing sentences like this one.

How did I do?

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* Expensive!

My Friend Who Is a Dog

I hesitate to endorse other bloggers, lest it redirect traffic* from my blog to other, less valuable parts of the internet.  However, given the near limitless number of views this blog now gets from "like"-rs and the fact that, as we say down home, "they ain't goin' nowhere," I've decided that it's time for me to share the wealth and give my very first shout out to another internet Dickens.

Y'all, check out 10,000 Puppies.  It's written by my friend who is a dog.

Here is a quick sample from his blog to whet your appetite:

[/

I don't know what he's trying to say exactly, except maybe "Let me go and throw me my ball.  I don't want to put my paws on your keyboard."

Genius.


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* I think Kubrick would have put Soderburgh to shame.

I Guess That's Why They Call Back the Blues

The blues sneak up on you.  They're subtle.  They catch you by surprise.  One day you're happy, the next day you're blue - or being considered for it, anyway.

Yesterday, I auditioned for a show I never intended to be part of.  See me?  I'm the one slightly off camera, near the feet of the guy in the Pink Floyd shirt.  Yep!  That's me.  See* what I'm doing?  I'm masking myself.  That's what blue men do.  

See, I know a little about it.  After that video was taken, around 1:30 pm, I was taken into the back room and given an interview in which I learned a little bit^ about what it is to be a blue man.  Then, I was put on hold for another hour.  Then, I was taken out of the theater and over to a church a few blocks away, where I was seen by four men.  They asked me to look at them.  They made me walk and imagine.  They made me drum.  Then, they made me go home.

Then they made me come back.

Isn't this a thrilling narrative?

Today, I saw those men again.  Again they made me walk.  They made me look.  They made me imagine.  Then, they made me go home.  Again.**  This time, I stayed home.  

All of this is to say that I got past the first two cuts on the way to being a blue man.  That's not really very far, but it's far enough to get someone's hopes up, and to (ready for it?) cut when things don't work out.  

So now I am indeed a blue man, because I didn't get something I never wanted.  See what I mean about the blues?  Sneaky. Subtle.  Surprising.  

If you don't know what I mean, look in my eyes.  See it?  No?  Well, look in some other guy's eyes who got further in the process.  You'll probably see it there.  

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* No.  Clearly, you don't.

^ By "little bit" I mean "nothing."

** You can never go home again.