The Assassination of Common Sense Pt. 6

Long time no bored to death, huh?

So, I'll just jump right into this: common sense must be some sort of rare degenerative mental disorder that only a few people in the world get the pleasure of being stricken with. I've long held true the cliché that "common sense ain't so common", but now it's time to put away polite little sayings and deal with the reality that most people are lucky to not drown themselves while attempting to drink bottled water. Don't believe me? Read on...

Bumper Stickers are Billboards of Idiocy


Today as I'm making the drive West on Main St. in lovely Evanston, I pull up at a stop light behind a woman in a Prius with a bumper sticker that reads "Abortion is child abuse". Immediately I want to ram her car into the Chicago river and dance maniacally around her watery grave, but not for the reason you may think.

Now we won't get into my personal feelings on abortion because they have nothing to do with this story and you don't give a damn anyway. Her little tag of opinion incontinence just made me wonder why the hell people feel like you want to have their personal beliefs vomited all over your brain while driving. Are you actively looking to argue with people? Are you actively looking for your tires to be slashed and/or have your car keyed? Why, oh glorious lord, why?!

Secondly, have you ever had your opinion changed by a bumper sticker? (If you have, please let me know so that I can stop calling you a friend of mine and begin to pepper your car with sticky flags of my opinions.) The answer to the question is no, of course you haven't. Anytime you've seen a bumper sticker that wasn't humor-oriented, you've either A) agreed with what it says and wondered why the person felt it necessary to put it on their car or B) really wanted to ram that person's car for thinking you give a shit about their dim-witted beliefs.

Bumper stickers are for egotistic, self-centered, nut jobs who think other people deserve to witness their amazing intellectual discoveries...or simply put, douchebags. Moving on...

Are You Asking Me to Stab You?

After my foray into the mind of a moron, I stop at Jewel in Skokie to pick up some crackers to go with my lunch. I walk in, meander over to the cracker aisle, and then scramble to pick up my jaw when I see the price of saltines. Seriously, an 8 Oz box of Nabisco saltine crackers was like 3.70 or some shit. The fuck? So, now I'm just standing in a row of crackers being pissed off about the price of a small box of saltines when I notice that the box next to the ones I'm looking at is 2.69. Fuckin' Score!

Then my jaw hits the floor again when I see that it is the same Nabisco crackers as the box I was losing my shit about...only the cheaper one is 16 Oz. This can't be right. So, I try to make sense of this using my Mississippi public school (read: shitty) math skills. Magically, no math known to man can explain to me why one product is priced higher than the exact same product while giving you 100% more in the cheaper item. "Fuck it" I say and make my way to the self checkout. Ah, the self checkout.

So, I get to the line and realize that there are three self checkout machines in the line that I'm in, but only two of them are being used. Meanwhile, there is a line from here to the mythical location of Iraqi WMDs for the two machines that are already in use. I take one look at the empty machine, while not leaving my place in line, and I see the huge symbol for "This shit ain't working" on the screen and go back to standing in line with the other normal people.


Ex: This shit ain't working sign

This little trick doesn't work for the chick in the Metallica jacket who gets in line behind me. She proceeds to look at all of us in the line as if we're from West Virginia (Hey, you're the one in the Metallica jacket asshole!) and promptly walks over to the broken machine. After staring at it for about 15 seconds she finally becomes familiar with the aforementioned sign. Realizing that she is the one from West Virginia, she gets back into the line.

Moments later, as the line has grown to include several other West Virginians at this point and I have moved up to the front of the line, I hear "Excuse me, sir" from a very effeminate male voice in the line "Are you going to use that machine right there?". I turn around to see a freckle-faced kinda man who looks a lot like his voice would indicate and before I can ask him "Are you asking me to stab you?" Metallica broad politely tells him that the machine is broken. This brings me to the point...WHY THE HELL WOULD ALL THESE PEOPLE BE STANDING HERE IF THERE WAS A OPEN, WORKING MACHINE RIGHT THERE YOU FUCKING DOUCHESTAIN!!!!

Why must there always be some asshole in the line who figures everyone else is an idiot and only he/she has a working brain? No matter where you go, Albert Einstein's inbred cousin is always there to show you that he is an even bigger dumb ass than you thought God could ever grace the planet with. I wonder if that person goes home and rants to everyone about his inability to deduce much the same way that I rant about his propensity for making me want to beat them with a frozen ham?

Beware, these people live among you.

Gun Control Legislation < Common Sense

I'm a Southerner; Mississippi born and raised. Over the course of my stay in the Midwest, which is now in its 9th year, I think the hands down winner of the "Argument Most Likely to Cause Violence" award has been the ongoing debate on gun control. I mention that I'm a Southerner solely to highlight the fact that guns are as much a part of the South as summer heat and Jack Daniels. I grew up around guns, feel very comfortable around guns, and advocate the right to carry a gun (although I don't own one myself...my wife would go nuts). Most people I know are anti-gun and pro-gun control legislation. I can understand people not liking guns or even having a fear of the very sight of a gun. What I cannot understand is this ridiculous idea that if you ban guns violence will disappear from the face of the planet.

Gun violence is a major problem in this country; no one with common sense is going to debate that. What has always bothered me about supporters of gun legislation is their unrealistic ideas as to what this legislation is going to accomplish. People think that if you make it illegal to own a gun it will therefore become tougher to buy a gun and that will cause gun related crimes to go down while simultaneously ridding society of all violence. BULLSHIT!

Allen Keyes is a moron of the highest pedigree. He said one of the smartest things I've ever heard in my life. During a failed attempt at the Illinois Senator position currently held by Barack Obama back in 2004, Allen Keyes stated that gun legislation does nothing to deter gun violence because criminals don't follow laws. That is something that I've been trying to tell my gun control advocate friends for years. Making guns illegal will accomplish the same goal that making heroin, marijuana, and cocaine illegal...absolutely nothing. People who buy firearms that they will use for criminal activity are 9/10 times not the same people who are going to walk into a gun store and fill out the necessary paper work (school shootings aside). They are going to buy one on the streets; the same place people go to purchase heroin, marijuana, and cocaine. Assault rifles have been banned for years yet, in some strange coincidence, every time the authorities bust some multi-state drug ring they find a slew of assault rifles, cash, and hand guns in the stash. If you ban guns you are only taking protection out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. The people who keep that gun in the nightstand praying to God they never have to use it to defend their families in the face of danger. The car jacker will have a gun whether you legislate them away or not, but will the single mother of three? She is the person who stands to be hurt by gun legislation.

Currently in Chicago we are in the midst of another year of where a multitude of our young people are dying in gun-related violence. This has sparked Mayor (Emperor) Daley and community leaders to shine the light on the gun control issue and are calling for tougher gun laws. I compare this to replacing a blown light bulb with a tomato...it ain't gonna work. We aren't striking to the root of the problem when we passively lobby for legislation. We aren't addressing poverty or single parent homes or poor schools or gentrification; we don't want to talk about those things because they don't make good news headlines. The gun is only the instrument used to kill...it is not the driving force and until we start to make attempts to locate and dismantle this driving force we will continue to have a gun violence problem in this city, in this state, and in this country as a whole.

It doesn't take Al Einstein (or even Al Yankovic) to understand why most gun-related violence occurs in poor neighborhoods; the same neighborhoods with poor schools, high drug sales, crooked cops, little opportunity for prosperity, and no one making a REAL attempt to do anything about it. We want to point the finger at the inanimate object because we don't want to face the facts. So we seek to ban it just like the cocaine, heroin, marijuana (and even alcohol, remember?) when we want to find something to vilify.

Just like most other issues concerning America today "it's the economy stupid". Just like in the '90's, if you give people a chance to earn a living and feel like a decent human being crime drops. It's not useless legislation that makes soccer moms and fat pocketed politicians sleep better at night that is going to make the difference. Take away the driving force and the instrument rusts...

Debbie Should Have Done Dallas With Protection

As I was giving a lift to my work buddy JJones the other day, we some kind of way got to talking about age and exposure to what many would call "adult themed" entertainment. The argument was going in the usual conservative/liberal (not politics) back and forth with the stances being children shouldn't be completely shielded from adult themed content because at some level it is a part of everyone's life (her position) and the counterpoint of the ramifications of a 9 year old watching a Jenna Jameson flick before he's not mature enough to process the built-in fantasy. We then drifted into a convo about something that I had always thought and never really thoroughly examined: the complete failure of sex education.

Sex education in this country usually takes one of 4 avenues: 1) don't talk about it at all and hope nothing happens 2) talk about it but only just enough to not make any person involved feel uncomfortable 3) the "you'll catch an STD and your balls will fall off" method (my personal favorite) and 4) the sex is great get all of it you can theory. Now keep in mind all of these settings don't take place in an academic settings. Also keep in mind that there is a 5th method that we will get to later, but for the time being let's talk about numbers 2 and 3 shall we?

Number two is the preferred method of stuffy parents who think their child wouldn't dare have promiscuous sex and those who feel so uncomfortable with their own sex lives that they can barely stand to think that sex exists. It is also sadly the method your parents probably gave you. We've all had those delightfully strange sex talks with your parents where they try to explain how sacred/evil/wonderful/life-altering sex is and why we should not have any unless its with someone we love and plan to grow old with but give you some long, rambling, confusing story about how a whale's blow hole is his lifeline (pause). The obvious problem with this method is clear no real knowledge or information is actually being exchanged so the parent walks away feeling like they've done their job and the kid is more confused than Michael Jackson at an all black whorehouse. Then the parents are shocked and awed when the boy/girl comes home with an STD or a little bundle of unexpected grief. It's giving a deaf man an Ipod.

Number 3 is the one that is taught most in our schools. First schools start out by giving you all the scientific names and functions of your reproductive organs to inform you while simultaneously making putting a penis in a vagina the most boring and mundane process known to man. Then when that doesn't work (and it never does) the focus shifts over to the gross-out method. We've also all seen this. Sophomore year of high school Health class, the bring you in and make you watch a video (or a slide show in some cases) about people with genitals mutilated by the horrors of sexually transmitted diseases. You feel sick, you never wanna think about sex again, you're thinking of joining a monastery. Then you leave class and see the nicest pair of breasts you've ever seen attached to a body anchored by an ass that'll make you cuss out (insert deity here) and you spend the next two weeks masturbating while imagining said girl rubbing that body all over you...that is to say that this method fails miserably. Yeah you talk to all your friends about how that video scared the crap out of you, but I've never met a person who turned down sex because of that video alone. You'd think in a institution made up of (alleged) academics that a better and more effective deterrent could be fathomed.

NEWSFLASH! This deterrent already exists and it goes by the name common sense. Just like every other problem in this country, this can be solved most easily by just using that hat rack of yours. When parents talk to kids about sex they need to apply this God-given device by A) talking to the kid like a human being instead of some kind of otherworldly idiot. Your 13 year old knows more about sex than you can even imagine (or want to imagine) so when you approach him/her about sexual responsibility remember they've seen the internet, HBO, MTV and a thousand other media outlets where sex is prevalent B) being mature about the conversation when it is had and C) instead of coating sex wit a fresh coat of evil, talk to your kids openly and get to understand their thoughts on the subject. You're never gonna get a teenager to NOT think about sex all the time, instead focus on getting them to think about sex responsibly.

I dread the day in X amount of years when my son or daughter comes up to me and asks me those intimidating questions on sex. I dread even more having them not ask me and sending my child out into the world as a sexually repressed being.

The Assassination of Common Sense Pt. 4: The Music Edition

Everyone talks about how music sucks these days, but no one addresses the fact that music fans swung the ax that killed good music. Tune into any radio format these days and you'll hear the same 10 songs on every dj's show and you'll get treated to 5 other songs that sound just like the 10 heavy rotation songs. Yet we keep listening and complaining.

I haven't been a radio listener for about 10 years now (which I'm sure most music snobs can't wait to tell you) not because I don't think there is good music on the radio (which there really isn't), but because I need variety in my music. If you like pop-punk (why?) and you listen to the radio you've probably been listening to Blink 182 sound-a-likes for the past 8 or 9 years. Same thing with rap and rock music. There just aren't a lot of unique and intriguing sounds coming from mainstream (or independent) music these days. The topics are the same and the music is of a very bland color-by-numbers philosophy because it has been shown time and time again that the fans will listen to what you give them and like it.

Here is where we failed: instead of getting music we have been sold bastardized versions of different subcultures and done nothing to prove that we deserve better. In our rush to categorize ourselves as a part of whatever the popular misinterpretation of a genuine article is we've stopped short of asking ourselves a very important question: WHERE IS THE MUSIC? Record companies, as I've said before, have proof that we are indeed sheep. They can sell pop music in the form of Pink or repackage it in the form of Lilly Allen or give it a new face and call it Beyonce and people buy it all. The funniest part of the whole thing is that the biggest difference between those three artists is the way they dress and whom they are dressed to impress. No one is listening to the MUSIC because if they were they'd notice that a lot of these songs have the same lyrics in the same melodies with very similar instruments accompanying them. So while teens and adults alike rush to call one genre cheesy and another the soundtrack to their lives, they are essentially just pointing out their own ignorance by not looking past the packaging and trying the product.

I've heard people who say they love punk music glorify Fall Out Boy and call NOFX pointless. I've seen rap fans turn up D4L and tune out Rakim. We have based our decisions of what good music is on the ambitions of music executives and the tastes of 14 year olds...common sense is nowhere in sight. You don't have to have talent and stand out from the crowd anymore, just hire a good wardrobe designer and you've got it made.