Concrete Lunch

Today is the 4 year anniversary of my father’s death.

Every year this day brings some new aspect of my dad to mind. This year, probably due to some things happening with people I know, what comes to mind is my dad’s gentleness. He was a badass. A superstar athlete and minor league baseball player. He cussed, and he had a temper. He could get so mad…

…but he was always gentle with me, my mom, and other people. He was gentle. Not just in his actions, but in his words. There was never anything approaching verbal abuse in our house. There was never a need to fear being around him. Loving, gentle, and supportive to the end. That was my dad.

The holiday season is once again at our throats. Thanksgiving is still a few days away, but the Christmas stuff is already on TV and the retail business analysts are already making their predictions for this year’s consumer orgy.

As I have written in the past, while I’m not a big fan of traditional Thanksgiving food, I do like the sentiment of the holiday. There’s a lot in the world to complain about, and most of us take every opportunity to do just that. We love to get our complain on.

Now, as a secular humanist I feel kind of weird saying I am “thankful” , as that indicates I am thankful to some supernatural being who has “blessed” me. Even if I believed in some personal supernatural life-manager, it seems kind of arrogant and wrong to celebrate the blessings he/she/it/them have conferred on me whilst simultaneously leaving others in worse, indeed sometimes dire, situations. Like the millions in the world who live on essentially no money, don’t have clean water, etc, etc, etc. You get the picture.

Truth is, most of us who celebrate this holiday are just lucky to be in a situation where we can think about celebrating and being thankful for all the good things. Just lucky. That’s it. We’re not “good”, we’re not “better”. Just sheer makes-no-sense, why-am-I-me-and-not-someone-else, born into relative prosperity luck.

But if it makes you feel better to think that for some reason the gods have smiled upon your more than your neighbor, well, then knock yourself out.  It really doesn’t matter, because it’s still just luck.

All that being said, and as I’ve said in previous years, I think it is a good practice to at least once a year recognize how lucky you are. Have some gratitude to the Lords of Chaos for allowing random chance to benefit you. A day to recognize what isn’t fucked up in your life. If your life really does suck, well, there’s always someone with flesh eating bacteria consuming a leg or internal organ, so take some satisfaction in the fact that it isn’t you (unless that’s you too).

So here’s a list of people/things/stuff/etc that I am thankful to nothing in particular for:

• my wife – so proud of her, and thankful that she is supportive of my endeavors.
• my mom
• my aunts and uncles
• the rest of my family – cousins, etc. Such good people.
• my in-law family
• my nieces and nephews, who are a beacon of all that is good.
• skateboarding, of course
• relative health — you know — I have a few aches and pains, but overall I feel pretty good for a beat-up aging skateboarder
• Aikido – which has changed my life and made me better
• My job – I get to work in a profession that does good works for our community, I get to have fun with it, and they pay me.
• My loving grandparents, all of whom I miss, and all of whom were supportive.
• Grateful that thus far in my life a giant meteor hasn’t obliterated Earth.
• Grateful to have had a dad who was supportive, loving, and positive, and who taught me to cuss really well.
• Grateful for the knowledge that this is all just temporary, everything dies, so there is really nothing to fear.
• My friends.
• My Aikido teacher.
• My Aikido dojo – where you can forget all your problems because someone’s fist is heading toward your face.
• Books and literature – through which we can see the world through other’s eyes.
• My cats – all of ’em dead and alive.
• Especially my nephew Alex, who is growing up too fast, but makes me proud every day, and happy every time I think of him.

When someone makes a Harry Potter reference, I enjoy telling them I don’t know what they are talking about. If that person is in his/her 20s, I enjoy it even more.

I’m in that kind of mood this week, and you, my poor reader, are right in the cross hairs. 

Yes, another post that verges on a rant. OK, I’ll admit. It is a rant. I’m good with that. Maybe it’s the impending Holiday Season that is cranking my internal stress level up, as I already wish it was over. Maybe it is the stress I feel knowing that I will have to ramp-up the War on Christmas this year if I’m to have any negative effect on the holiday. I don’t know. But here we go…

There are certain activities in our society that are considered good in almost situations. Today I’d like to cite two such things, and explain why they are both bullshit.

Reading

We like to encourage reading. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that as a society we like to pretend to encourage reading. We say “just get kids to read” and everything will work out. Adults are supposed to be better people if they will just read rather than watch TV.

As a thinking, conscious vertebrate, I can assure you that nothing is further from the truth.

If someone is reading stupid stuff they are making themselves and society around them worse. If they are reading books by Glen Beck, Ann Coulter, or any of that ilk, they are harming themselves. They are harming themselves as surely as if the were sucking on the exhaust pipe of a running car in a sealed garage while gulping down tranquilizers and vodka, and they are making society worse by fueling the publishing business that purveys such stupidity.

If you are reading the Left Behind series, by Tim LaHaye, or any other kind of Christian Apocalypse literature, and you are reading it as anything other than humor, you are contributing not only to your own intellectual damnation, but that of your species as well.

So stop. It pains me greatly to says this, but stop. Change what you are reading or stop. You would be better off in a vegetative state. Read science fiction, a zombie novel, a classic, a cook book, but for the love of Jeebus stop reading that hack political and religious stuff. You aren’t educating yourself. You are de-educating yourself.

Voting

I’m tired of these “Get out the Vote” drives, in which the general population is encouraged to get out and vote. This is not a good idea. Remember, a large part of the population is reading books by Glen Beck. This is the country that birthed Rush Limbaugh. Just because those folks have the right to vote doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to encourage them.

Voter turnout is actually only good if they turn out for YOUR SIDE. And by YOUR SIDE, I mean MY SIDE.

I’m not suggesting that anyone be disenfranchised. Every citizen of this country who is of voting age and hasn’t lost their voting rights due to crime absolutely has the right to vote and that should be guarded, protected, and cherished. That doesn’t mean that every lump of protoplasm with a pulse should be encouraged to vote. For God’s sake, have you been to Walmart? If you have, you know where I’m going with this argument, and I won’t even finish it. Just connect the dots.

Alright, that’s it for today. Remember – Read Well and Vote Well, or don’t.