Posts Tagged ‘douchebaggery’

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, a minor holiday in Mexico turned into an excuse to binge drink tequila and watery beer with a lime wedge here in the States. I never even heard of it until I heard Buenos Tardes Amigo by Ween (youtube of Ween doing it live, shot by yours truly, a long long time ago). So some high schoolers in Morgan Hill, CA thought it would be a neat idea to all wear the stars and stripes on shirts and bandanas, presumably as a response to this big Mexican celebration which is about as important in Mexico as Arbor Day is here in the states and has been turned into something that it’s not, in order for the booze companies to sell more booze.

Some students were offended by this showing. Instead of just getting over it, they complained, and it wound up that the school principal gave the flag kids the option of turning their shirts inside out or being sent home to become martyrs for the teabagger crowd. Guess which they chose.

See, this is one of those stories where everybody involved is an asshole. The flag kids were assholes for thinking that this would be some great big statement. The kids who were offended are assholes for getting their panties in a bunch over a lame stunt perpetrated by assholes. The principal is neither a prince or a pal (I’ve been wanting an excuse to say that ever since Xander said it to Principal Snider on Buffy way back when),  but instead is an asshole for not telling the offended kids to man up and stop being such a bunch of oversensitive whiney assholes, and for turning a lame stunt into a potential rallying cry for the real racists (who happen to be enormous assholes). The media are assholes for covering this ridiculous story about a bunch of assholes. The teabaggers who will no doubt make this about how they’re all victims of this and that are all a bunch of assholes. And I’m an asshole for keeping it going on my blog which I keep saying isn’t going to be political while taking tiny little pot shots at the teabaggers here and there like some kind of asshole.

So if you want to waste another second on this, here’s the story and here’s a better comment thread about it than this barely-read blog could ever produce.

And now, if you’ve made it this far into this godawful post, here’s your reward… the new trailer for Robert Rodriguez’ upcoming film, Machete!

Wow, just out of the gate with the new blog and I’m sure not doing much with it, am I? Well there’s been a lot going on in my life lately so writing this blog that barely anyone reads has not exactly been at the top of my to-do list. I still don’t even know what the focus of this blog is yet. I’m not sure if I really have any kind of passion for writing reviews of shows that I watch. I have gotten some very positive comments, vaguely praising my brilliant commentary on various vaguely mentioned subject matter from people running sites about online poker and viagra. Yet there’s some kind of je ne sais quoi that rings hollow with that.

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!