The first round of asshats are of course the people who want to put this thing up there. I mean seriously, what are you thinking? Yeah, sure, I realize you mean it as some sort of peace thing, but if people aren’t taking it that way, you don’t do it. While most rational people don’t see what happened on 9/11 as being an attack from all of Islam, it was still Islam (sure, it was the most fundamental extreme wingnut variety, but still Islam) that inspired this attack, it’s not unreasonable to view putting a mosque there as an act akin to planting the flag of an invading army on freshly conquered ground. And despite any good intentions, if it could be taken that way it’s not the right thing to do.

So instead of coming out with a reasonable argument against it like I just did, the other asshats in this story (and let’s face it, they’re pretty much asshats in every story they make their way into) are the right wing teabagger crowd who have to make everything about intolerance and racism and say mind numbingly dumb shit like this…

“We feel it would be more appropriate maybe to build a center dedicated to expunging the Quranic texts of the violent ideology that inspired jihad, or perhaps a center to the victims of hundreds of millions of years of jihadi wars, land enslavements, cultural annihilations and mass slaughter,” Geller said. [full article]

It takes special skill to cram that much idiocy into one little sentence. Hundreds of millions of years, huh? I’m no fan of Islam at all, but don’t even get me started on all the violence committed for Jesus, too. Who could possibly take that kind of talk seriously? Asshats, that’s who. The same asshats who protest our current administration doing the same things that they didn’t have a problem with when the white guy was doing them. The the same asshats who whine about their oppressive taxes while enjoying the lowest tax rates ever. The same asshats who defend the Christianization of every last thing in our society. The same asshats who have an awful lot going for them but still always whine about being the victim of something.

There’s a part of me who almost wishes they’d build the biggest mosque in the world at ground zero just to piss these people off. But two wrongs don’t make a right (while infinite wrongs do make a right wing). So the first group of asshats, please reconsider this. I realize you want peace love and understanding, but please don’t do it at the cost of alienating a lot of people who might not be as lame about it as your more vocal critics. And the second group of asshats, please consider mass suicide. You’re never going to be happy in a world with diversity of ideas and races and religions. Perhaps things might be better for you on the other side.

UPDATE: That second group of asshats  are so racist… (how racist are they?) They’re so racist that they almost beat up a couple of Egyptian Coptic Christians who flew 9 hours to join their protest. Nice job, people. Way to represent America.

And for everyone who slogged through this miserable post, here’s your reward. I lied about there not being any more Dino Jr. in this post. Enjoy!

I should probably blog about myself because who wouldn’t want to read all the exciting exploits of a late 30′s guy with a wife and a kid and a job and a band that may or may not be a midlife crisis?  So at least for this post, here goes…

For one, I’m getting extremely musically frustrated. It’s been almost a month since I’ve been to band practice. We’ve had to cancel or I’ve had to bail for a while, then I went on vacation (more on that vacation later), then my drummer and singer went on vacation. My keyboardist is having all sorts of trouble with his living situation (leaving an apartment with a spun out meth dealing neighbor who keeps him up at all hours – and then couch surfing until he can find something more stable) which may lead to him missing more practices which really sucks because he’s the musical genius glue that holds us all together.

When I don’t have the outlet of playing music, I get a little nuts. I’ve had this disastrous trip home where various parts of my family did not get along and I got stuck in the middle of all the high drama. There was very little time to recover from this trip as I had to get right back to work and caught up on a bunch of things that needed to be done there while my wife did the same at home… until she fell down in the parking lot of her doctor’s office and was all sorts of out of commission for almost a week. Add a kid who rages against sleep almost every night on top of all this and a supporting cast of wacky neighbors and their wackier pets and you’ve got a situation without a whole lot of enjoyable moments to offset the stress. Ordinarily knowing that I’d have at least a few hours in the week to play some loud rock and roll will get me through times like these. Having a new job that I don’t dread going into every day certainly helps, but it does not scratch the itch like music does.

The other negative effect of not having my usual creative outlet is that I start thinking about politics. I am a recovering political blogger. No good can come from blogging about politics. It just made me angrier and angrier. Today’s political landscape is making angry people take it to the next level. You’ve got Americans flying planes into IRS buildings, shooting at guards at the Pentagon, hanging nooses around college campuses, going to these “tea parties” and engaging in all sorts of asshattery, douchebaggery and wingnuttery. You’ve got blogs, talk radio and a certain ideologically driven cable network masquerading as news stoking the fires of the crazy and I am not going to be part of that anymore. I once believed that there could be good done through politics. I no longer believe that. I’m probably going to stop voting. Why bother? There is no point participating in this system that is broken beyond repair.

So what do you do when your county is circling the bowl and there’s not a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it? You make music and try to enjoy yourself. Play the fiddle while Rome burns. It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!