Parenting Should Require a License

Chances are you had a time in your life where you hated or at least strongly disliked your parents. Either justifiably or out of your own disdain for their rules, you decided that they were bad parents for that period of time and you actively did whatever you could to piss them off to the highest level of pisstivity (©Walter Jackson #highschoolquotes). We've all been there, but this isn't going to be one of those discussions. This is going to be about the truly horrible parents of the world. The people whom you see every day and ask yourself how the state hasn't taken away their children and locked the parents in a dog kennel.

On a bright, sunny spring day back in 2007, I was driving eastbound on good ol' Central Street in Evanston. Just coming home from a rewarding, fulfilling, totally worth it completely horrible day at work. I had my music blaring and I was in complete relax mode. As I'm cruising along, a woman pushing an infant in a stroller just decides to cross the street...directly in front of my moving car. She wasn't at a crosswalk, there was no cop controlling traffic, there was no traffic light; she just decided that crossing in the middle of a fairly busy street while pushing a baby in a GOD DAMNED STROLLER (into on-coming traffic) was a really good idea. I lost it. I screamed "You fucking worthless idiot!" out of my driver-side window at the woman who looked at me as if I had offended her...good because she offended me deeply.

I've had several opportunities to shout at shitty parents in the years since. It almost seems like some parents go out of their way to put their children in the most dangerous situations possible. We wonder how kids drown in the backyard pool or get abducted from the front yard when half of these parents wouldn't notice if you replaced their child with a doberman. I'm not blaming all parents of abducted children for the abduction, that would be obnoxiously ignorant. But we cannot disavow the connection between idiot, non-attentive parents and child abduction, that would also be obnoxiously ignorant.

Bad parenting goes way beyond putting children in danger, though. I'm sure we all have some weird hang-up due to the mental scars our parents blessed us with. Whether they made fun of your weight, or your intelligence, or how you've somehow failed to live up to their expectations we all know from personal experience or witnessing through close friends the damage done by parental berating and nit-picking. There is two sides to this coin: all of the over-praised, you-can't-do-anything-wrong, self-glorifying abominations that live among us. The kind of people who grow up to date-rape women and not feel the slightest bit of remorse. That is an extreme example, but you get the point. It almost seems as if most parents don't understand that there is a middle ground and you don't have to swing to one of the polar extremes. Just like everything else in this country, people assume you have to be on one side or the other, but the middle usually yields better results.

Look, my mom didn't do the perfect job raising us (can't you tell?), but she did a damn good job considering the circumstances. Being a single mom in the projects surrounded by gangs and drugs and not having one of us get involved in anything remotely shady or illegal takes a lot of luck and even more good parenting. We always thought our mom was hard on us coming up, but looking back we see that she had to be. She did the right amount of discipline and encouragement to make us not feel like we had to go out and do outrageous things for whatever purpose kids do outrageous things. Hmm...balance what a novel idea.

If bad parents put half the effort into raising their kids as they did into their outfits and finding out what time the club opens, this country would have something to look forward to. The bad parents far outnumber the good parents (by my totally valid and in-depth research) and, as far as I can tell, have kids like mogwai-rabbit hybrids on Viagra in a swimming pool (let it sink in). What is the answer? Selective sterilization? Maybe. Perhaps we need a government agency that gives a limited number of parenting licenses per year to deserving, responsible adults and we can criminalize unlicensed births? No? Too much like China for you? That's ok, we all know it would never happen (for a million ethical and logical reasons). Besides, the government is much better at doing the fucking as opposed to controlling it.

Just a couple of thoughts as while I sit at my desk staring at the wall:

White People Don't Speak Proper English
I get infuriated when I hear white people talk about how minorities can't speak proper English. It ain't like white folks are out there leading by example. Hell I'm from Mississippi where English is everyone's second language and even there I used to hear white people make fun of folks for having improper syntax or butchering words. In Mississippi where "car" becomes "coar" and "dog" becomes "dowg" in white folks speak, you'd think they'd be a little cautious before pointing out the speaking flaws of others. And it ain't just down south either.

I now live in the Chicago area and I don't think 50% of the population can put 5 good sentences together here either. Here "car" becomes "caarr" and "Chicago" becomes "Chicahgo" or "Chicawgo". I hear white folks use words incorrectly everyday. The real fun comes when you see people write this stuff down. Quick lesson: "you're" and "your" aren't the same word, "then" and "than" are not interchangeable, and disorientated is not a word. Please, please, please white folks get a 'Hooked on Phonics' video and then maybe we can talk.

People Who Brag About What Someone Else Does Are Annoying

I keep meeting these clowns that like to boast about knowing the guy who owns this or keeps yammering about how his cousin in New York is a big shot in this. Who the fuck cares? Listen, no one gives a shit if you know the billionaire who invented duct tape so stop wasting my damn time telling me about it. What do these people hope to accomplish by wasting my time and the precious hearing I'll need when I'm 79? Are we supposed to be impressed because you know someone? Unless this person is cutting you a check for telling people that you know him shut the fuck up and move on.

I have a guy in my office right now who is telling me about his rich nephew who is a big time judge in some city I've never been to. He keeps smiling at me and expecting me to go "Oh, really? That is wonderful!!", but I'm not going to do that mostly because I don't give two shits. It has nothing to do with why he's here and doesn't impact my life in any way possible. Please, when you meet one of these people, tell them you don't give a crap before they talk you into an assault and battery charge.

We Are A Country of Pussies
For all of our American chest pounding and bragging we are a country of subservients. We laugh at other countries for their lack of freedoms and the way they bow down to all powerful leaders, meanwhile Czar Bush is destroying the constitution and turning the US into a 'Demolition Man' knock-off. Millions of Americans jumped on the "Kill a Towel-head" bandwagon and now, years later, we're all talking about how dumb of a decision it was and how our idiot prez lied to us. The reality is, we sheepishly followed. Everyone I knew (save a few people with common sense) thought the Iraq war was a good idea back in 2003...now those people have gladly switched over to their war protester t-shirts. No one has stood up for common sense in the past 6 years. The macho in us cheered for war while the pussy in us all got fucked and the country is now pregnant with a mistake we cannot abort. Americans will bar fight, brawl at sporting events, and kill a man in honor of ignorance, but we won't lift a finger when intelligence and morality are taking a beating.

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.