Livin' in America

 The shit show will most definitely be televised... welcome to the asylum circa 2023... a place where logic, rationality, education, facts and critical thinking will not be tolerated. A placed where a certain section of the population feels the need to ban the books you can read, to ban the history that can be taught, to ban the right of half the population (see female) to have control over their own bodies, to discriminate indiscriminately if you happen to be brown or black or anything non-white, if you happen to be any of the rainbow of the LBTGQ+ community, basically if you are anything other than a white male landowner... or damn near that fucking close. Yet if there is one thing the residents of the asylum won't discriminate against, won't touch, won't say a bad word about (at least some of them), give more rights to than women and children and people of color, it is the shiny bright dick of America... the gun... and god forbid (said god being the one they often pray to asking for their enemies to meet a horrible demise while being diametrically opposed to all the shit his so-called son supposedly preached) you try to take away their "right" to own that big shiny dick. We are not the shining light on the fucking hill, we are the bully in the schoolyard, the kid who was abused at home and now is going to take it out on whoever they may find within range to fire at... violence begats violence and a country born of violence will be plagued as such unless it can come to terms with it's history, unless it comes to terms with it's collective psyche and confronts it's problems... which we most definitely seem incapable of doing. 

If it wasn't bad enough that going to the grocery store, bank, synagogue, school, mall, gym, movie theater etal, could get you killed for no other reason than - you needed food or an education or just wanted to see a fucking movie, we have a new game these days. Now it seems one better triple check the address and the car before knocking or approaching, let the guard down here in Candyland and the void may find you sooner than you'd like it to... at this rate death by a firearm in this country will be classified as natural causes. Having made it this far without ever owning or carrying a gun i damn sure don't plan on starting now... yes i realize that puts me at a competitive disadvantage but i'm not about to tote my piece all over town just in case...

Honestly... sometimes i wonder what the fuck is wrong with people... there was the day, while i was working the gig, that i was shopping for someone in Aldi when a guy walks in with his gun holstered on his side, in plain sight, so that we all knew he was packing, a tall white man with a mustache and cowboy boots which for some reason makes me suspicious of both his intelligence and fashion sense, i'm quite sure the guy had never been on a date and all he really needed was a t-shirt with the world incel emblazoned across the front. I could only imagine his stash of MRE and ammo for when Armageddon hit. I mean you're at fucking Aldi man, what the fuck are you afraid of? Then there was the day when some enterprising thief went through all the unlocked lockers at the gym stealing stuff. Which to me begged the question? who the hell goes to the gym and throws their wallet, phone, valuables, into an unlocked locker? They should be ripped off for sheer stupidity... on that day some Greasy Bohunk, all 5'8 of him, stood in the locker room ranting and raving what he'd do to that guy if he caught him, especially because he had stolen Greasy Bohunk's towel (as a cover while rifling through lockers), GB stated that he'd run out to his car, grab his gun and then come back in and pistol whip the offender. Granted GB could have also used a shirt like Tex from Aldi but really, pistol whipped? over a towel? seemed a bit excessive to me but i really wanted to ask what the fuck he was doing lifting all those weights? can't you fight bro? what you need a gun for? Of course that might have gotten me pistol whipped but listening to this clown i couldn't help but wonder when i'd see him on the evening news, being such a level headed, rational owner of firearms. 

And did i happen to mention, this gym i swim at, was the site of it's own little shooting a few years back when another Incel walked into a fitness class and opened fire because one of the women in the class didn't go out on a date with him... three dead not counting the dipshit, and a couple wounded but hey it didn't even make the mass shooting book cuz the asshat needed to kill one more. 

Which brings me to the latest round... it seems like Nashville and Louisville were ages ago yet they were just a few weeks. These days they barely warrant more than a 48 hours in the news cycle before we are on to something else, it's pretty warped and disgusting that as a society we give a shit for the prerequisite amount of time and then forget. As one of the pundits pointed out, it won't ever change until one of the parents, spouses, families, does the unthinkable and releases photos of one of these things, releases something so shocking and horrifying that we finally get up off our asses and do something about it. I keep telling the boyos that i look to them and their generation to fix this fucking mess, kids who grew up in a time when they have more fucking "school shooter drills" or ALICE as they're called, than anything else. I remember fire and tornado drills when i was a kid not active shooter drills... and yet certain right wing muppets want to call these kids soft? fuck those guys. 

Which brings me back to the gig. There have been at least two people who do the same job i do that have been killed in mass shootings. Wrap your head around that... my gig is going to the supermarket and shopping for people and doing that job can get you fucking killed, not by a car accident or anything like that but by being in a grocery store at the wrong time. Being 6'4 and bit scruffy means i now triple check every address i deliver to, the last thing i want to do is wander up to the wrong door with a bunch of groceries, i could get shot. The other day there was a car parked next to mine in the lot, exact same color, make and model, i mistakenly went to open the trunk when i looked at the license plate and realized it wasn't my car, i jumped back startled, luckily no one was in the car but guess what? i wasn't dressed as a cheerleader (like the one poor girl who was shot and sadly the one advantage i have approaching a front door is the color of my skin, which makes me fucking furious) but if some paranoid, Faux News loving, ammosexual happens to be in the front seat i might be getting gunned down in a parking lot at 10am... it sounds fucking insane until one realizes shit like this just happened... 

The solutions to this problem is right in front of us but there are those who are bought and paid for and those who profit greatly from the fear and death this shit promulgates. They won't do a fucking thing until it comes right up to their door and even then i don't think it would deter some of them, they are more concerned with money and power than the lives of school kids,
moviegoers or a woman at a gym... or some gig economy serf just trying to make a few dollars. Collectively we are a society suffering from PTSD, we live in a madhouse, a game of Russian roulette so to speak every time we leave the house and sadly that's more literal than any of us want to admit. I worry about the boyos every time they go to the mall or are at the movies or fucking school... cuz as we all know it can't happen "here" right up until it does. It needs to change. Sadly though i have little faith in those who could change it... a certain segment for sure.. if nothing happened after a classroom full of first graders were gunned down what hope do i have that the current lot of shitheads will ever do anything? And until then? keep the eyes peeled and the ears perked, cross the fingers and rub the lucky rabbit's foot... cuz livin in America is fucking dangerous.  (Back in the day Pop's turned me on to this movie, it wasn't some blockbuster but it's a great flick with a stellar cast, Pitt, Liotta, Gandolfini.. i highly recommend it.)