The Straight Guy at the Gay Bar on Halloween

I'm not sure that anyone has truly lived until they have experienced going to a gay night club on a Halloween-themed night… as a heterosexual male.  I can now say for sure that I have truly lived if that is the case.  On Saturday night, New Beginnings, or as everyone around here affectionately calls it “Newbies”, held their annual Halloween bash.  Somehow, I wound up there and I am still amazed and a little confused.

My wife’s birthday is October 31^st and she wanted to do something different this year.  Normally we just take the kids trick or treating, go out to eat, and call it a night, but this year everything happened a little different.  Our area of the country, the Tri-Cities, always screws up Halloween in my opinion.  Not since I was a little kid have I remembered Halloween actually being celebrated by the masses on October 31^st.  Some secret society that holds their meetings in an underground bunker beneath State Street decides to rearrange holidays every year and everyone blindly follows their silent directions.  They have messed up the 4^th of July, Halloween, Christmas, and I’m waiting on them to somehow screw up New Year’s Eve, although I’m not sure how they can yet but I don’t doubt their power since they were able to move the 4^th of July to June 30^th.  But either they forgot to have their secret meeting or they decided to allow us to celebrate Halloween on the actual date this year because we actually had the weekend free and had the option of taking the kids out on October 31^st.  Katie wanted to take advantage of this rare occasion and celebrate her birthday on Saturday by going to our local gay club.  I’ve only been one other time in my life and that was on one of the cheap beer nights about 4 or 5 years ago with Mrs. Elliott.  I had an alright time but never felt compelled to return.  I love gay people, but I can’t dance and nothing feels more disheartening than seeing every dude in there being built like some Greek god with zero body fat and then looking at myself and my large grizzly belly.  Mrs. Elliott, though, has many friends in the gay/lesbian community and she loves going out with them.  I usually find something else to do when she goes like watch football, eat beef jerky, and drink hot sauce and beer…you know, super manly shit. 

So she did the nice thing and invited me on Saturday night and told me she was going with 4 of her friends and they were all dressing up.  I declined because I knew that I still haven’t learned to dance and I figured she would probably enjoy herself more if she didn’t have to worry about me being internally shamed by my un-God like body.  The sight of me dancing is similar to seeing a polar bear having an epileptic seizure.  I told her that I’d go hang with my buddy Murphy and play some Xbox and do manly things like burping and farting and then laughing heartily about our burping and farting. 

We went our separate ways with the agreement that if she needed me that she could call me and I would come and get her.  (She was celebrating…don’t judge!!!  It’s not her fault that people insist on buying her jaeger bombs.  It would be rude to not drink them…one after another.)  I went to Murphy’s and we discussed manly topics like football and war while playing a manly Xbox game of football.  (For the record, I can’t play video games worth a shit and he beat me with Akron while I was Alabama.)  Surely enough, around 2am I got the call:  “Come get me, my driving skills are broken.”  As I drove out towards the Mecca of Big Gay Parties, she called me and asked if I wanted to come in when I got there.  I could hear all of the happy times being had in the background and she seemed to be enjoying herself so I said “Sure.  Why the hell not?” 

In retrospect, I probably looked a lot like a walking hate crime going in there.  I had a black toboggan pulled down to the top of my eyes and an oversized zipped up hoodie hanging close to my knees.  I normally don’t dress like a thug, but dammit it was cold and thugs always seem to dress the warmest.  You’ll never hear a true gangsta-ass thug complaining about being cold.  I was alone going in and this seemed to make me all the more noticeable.  I watched the older guy, who reminded me of Stanley Tucci if he had hair, check everyone’s ID and collect their cover charge and he was very happy and chatty with each couple ahead of me.  Then it came to me, he was still smiling but looking to see if I was with anyone.  “Just you tonight?” he asked.  “Yep”, I said while watching a moment of confusion and perhaps hesitancy come over his face.  “You know we close in 45 minutes, right?  You still wanna come in?” he asked.  “Yeah, I’m good” I said and handed him my $5.

 I quickly found my wife with two of her friends lounging about in what I would later learn was the calmer area of the club.  They all looked exhausted but I noticed everyone else around me were still pretty amped up.  As they talked, I just observed.  I saw a guy dressed in what I could only guess was an Elizabethan aristocrat complete with a powdered wig, white make-up, and a candycane swirled cane.  I saw a slightly pudgy dude wearing merely a black Man-kini with an oversized afro and sunglasses.  He made me feel a little better since he was the only other guy in the place without six pack abs and I figured if he had enough balls to be running around with zero shirt and a black thong then I was okay.   I saw an oversized female in an undersized latex cop outfit making out with her larger lady friend who maybe should have reconsidered her outfit, I’m not sure what she was dressed as but I think she might have simply been “a fishing net”.  I am not judging, I myself am a large mammal and apparently I do not possess the cojones to let it all hang, but I say more power to you if you can.  In this small “quiet” section of the club, I was witnessing all sorts of fascinating spectacles and Katie took notice at my wonderment.  “Come on, let me show you around” she said and started to lead me away from the calm quiet into a booming techno, strobe-light, packed room.  (Which on the way we actually ran into the guy who was probably there to commit some hate- crimes.  He ran straight into to Katie, gave her the “mean mug” face, threw his arms in the air, and looked ready to fight her.  I didn’t say anything, I cocked my head sideways, locked eyes with him, and he decided to keep walking.  It was strange because he looked like a drunken frat guy who had lost his shirt and perhaps his woman.  I figured that he had come with his girlfriend earlier; she figured out that he was a douchy asshole, and she found a hot chick to go home with.  I don’t know, that’s what his angry face was saying to me.)

I have never personally done Ecstasy nor LSD, but I’m pretty sure that the room that I walked into was exactly what it’s like.  One giant, moving, interconnected, Ecstasy/acid organism.  I didn’t have much time to take it all in before Katie directed my eyes towards the stage set up in the middle of the club.  Everyone was gathered around and already cheering, I asked her what was happening and she told me to just wait.  A Marilyn Manson tune, “Sweat Dreams” I think, started playing and what seemed to be a 6’4 lady in a black latex body suit with a thong appeared on the stage.  “Ahh, the drag show, I presume?” I asked.  Yep, that’s exactly what it was.  I’d never actually seen a show before but I have seen and met many transgendered people and drag performers.  “Holy shit” I were the first two words to pop out of my mouth as I watched this person who was basically my size, probably a little taller and a little thinner, dance around wildly and give it hell.  Remember how I said that my dancing skills are akin to a polar bear having a seizure, well this person’s was considerably better.  I have never been able to do anything closely resembling a split in my entire human existence.  I have tried in the past for stretching purposes and anytime that I’ve attempted it I’ve felt like my entire groin was going to rip apart like the Grand Canyon.  But this drag queen jumped in the air like David Lee Roth, landed in a split, and then started to hump the floor while still in the split position.  Do you know what would happen to me?  I would never walk again.  I would be rolled around in a wheelchair for the rest of my days and when people asked me what happened I would say, “I tried to do a split.”  After the humping of the ground she continued to dance around and the music switched to “The Beautiful People” also by Manson and I noticed that people were starting to shove money into her bra.  No he wasn’t stripping but I guess if you work that hard you might as well get a little bit of cash. 

She danced down our way and was collecting money on the way.  I got a dollar out and she galloped and pranced her way in front of us, I held it up thinking she would just take it but that was not part of the plan.  He leaned down toward me, thrust his chest to my face, and said “Shove it in there!!”  As I put my dollar in to his bra, my initial thought wasn’t so much “this is weird” but “Wow, he’s sweaty.”  I can honestly say that is the first time I’ve ever shoved money into a guy’s cleavage for dancing. 

After the drag show was over Katie wanted to show me around some more and after what had just transpired I figured that I was okay with everything else.  Now here was the confusing part of it all for me.  I know that this is a gay club that does welcome in straight people, I get that, but I don’t understand how it would work if you were single and looking to hook up there.  I noticed guys kissing guys, girls kissing girls, guys and girls kissing, a drag queen kissing another drag queen, two completely androgynous people making out, and I wondered, “How does you know who is okay to touch or stick your tongue in their mouth?”  If I was single and there I would have no clue, I would probably see a hot girl, try to talk to her, and then be told to go away when her girlfriend showed up.  Or another possibility, I would see a hot girl, try to talk, maybe get to dancing, maybe get to some kissing, and then find that something was poking my leg that was not her hand.  I would be lost.  So thankfully, I’m married and knew I had my lovely wife there because otherwise I could’ve wound up with a hot girl named Frank.

It was a good time, I didn’t dance any, but I did get to do plenty of people watching.  I surfed the crowd and watched all the different combinations of people dance and have a good time.  I left secure in my manliness but with a little bit of sadness, I don’t think one single person checked me out the whole time. 

Go to sleep America, your government is in control

This is what I'm not.  He's crazy, I'm somewhat
sane.

Often we look at conspiracy theorists as nut jobs, quacks, and people who’ve forgotten to take their meds.  We envision them as an unshaven bum holed up in some cabin deep in the forest of Oregon who smokes copious amounts of marijuana, eats berries and leaves, and has a stock-pile of weaponry in their underground bunker.  Many conspiracy people are exactly like this, but there are a lot of people that will look at hard facts from different sources and simply connect the dots.  They base their theories on issues that make logical sense even if the thought is unconventional.  If someone proposes that aliens have come down from the planet Zorax and inseminated all the world’s population of salamanders with genetically modified whale sperm in order to create a race of super amphibian dinosaurs to assassinate Donald Trump in order to take over all of his real estate holdings, then you can pretty much chalk that person up as clinically insane.  There is no evidence whatsoever to support a theory that crazy.  But if someone states that America has occupied Afghanistan in order to protect the heroin trade, then you need to at least look at some facts and make your own conclusion.

Thanks for the Smack, America.
I'm going to sleep now.

The average Joe probably doesn’t know that 92% of the world’s heroin comes from Afghanistan.  He probably looks at the country the way that the media and the government have portrayed it:  poor, desolate, and full of terrorists.  Although these things are partially true it doesn’t tell the whole story.  The average estimated annual income of citizen of Afghanistan is between $300 to $800 per year which means that they are prone to possible bribery.  It’s not an insult, it’s just logical.  If you made even $1,000 a year wouldn’t you do just about anything asked of you for some more money?  If I made that little per year, I would allow a group of Overeaters Anonymous members who just left a Mexican buffet and had been given a cocktail of laxatives and milk of magnesia to take a dump on my chest for the prospect of getting a million dollars.  Well think of this; since 2001 America has poured nearly $500 billion into operations in Afghanistan.  I understand and accept that a large portion of that was to fight terrorism.  Bin laden was from there and we knew that he had terrorist training camps actively going on there.  We knew that the Taliban was stationed there and that they are synonymous with Al Qaeda.  I get all of that, but why have troops been pictured, videoed, and interviewed while guarding huge poppy fields with no threat in sight?  If you don’t know, the poppy plant is the key component in the production of heroin and opium.  These drugs account for nearly all of Afghanistan’s gross income, an estimated $4 billion per year.  America and Russia both love heroin.  American government hasn’t said much about this but in a recent interview with the Russian drug czar, Viktor Ivanov; he stated that since the US occupation in Afghanistan that heroin and opium production has increased 40 fold.  To put that into perspective, if you were making the average of $47,000 per year that American’s make and it increased 40 fold you would be pulling in $1.8 million a year.  Huge difference, huh?  So why would America be aiding a drug that kills an estimated 35,000 Americans per year?  For the same reason that they support tobacco and oil:  Money!! 

See this soldier has no idea why he's guarding
"heroin" plants.

We hear the popular theory/argument all the time for why we invaded the Middle East.  “It’s about controlling the oil” is most often heard and most of us accept this theory as part of the reason we are over there.  Our entire nation is “addicted” to oil and we know that we need it.  It’s been shown that we will pay whatever the cost is to get it.  I just paid $3.28 a gallon a little while ago!!  Well, a large population of the poor and undesirable are addicted to heroin and are willing to pay whatever they can to get it.  They will sell a kid if they have to.  Well, if America is over in Afghanistan guarding these valuable, addictive, expensive plants with automatic weapons and since they’ve been doing this the heroin business has been booming, what does that tell you?  Is our government getting a cut of the exporting money?  That’s possible, even 20 or 30 percent of $4 billion is pretty substantial.  The reason I feel it is plausible is that our prison system is one of the biggest, most stable money makers our country has and our country is chock full of various rehab facilities with ties to many government agencies.   Both of these “businesses” must have drug addicts or criminals to fill them in order to make any money.  So if America is helping keep the heroin business going, they are assuring that prisons and rehabs will have both plus they will be making their percentage cut.

See there's a lot of drugs and there's the plane too.

You probably think that sounds ridiculous but check this out.  In September of 2007, a CIA plane that had made numerous confirmed trips to England, Guantanamo, and Columbia crashed in Mexico carrying what was first reported as 6 tons of cocaine and 1 ton of pure heroin.  That’s 7 tons of dangerous, mind altering narcotics.  If a regular drug runner was caught with that much weight our justice system would bury him in prison.  The funny thing about this report is this though, the initial report was the 6 tons of blow and 1 ton of smack then they came out and said 4 tons of coke and no heroin, then a week later they said 3.6 tons of coke, then 3.4 and they finally settled on 3 tons of coke.  I can understand being off a little on the estimate and would’ve probably accepted it if they said later that it was more like 5 tons of coke and a half a ton of heroin but they cut the total nearly by half of the coke and pretended the heroin never existed.  Don’t believe me?  Go ahead and Google it, I’ll wait here.  (Waiting, waiting, waiting…)  See I told you!!  What does that say to you?  To me it says that the government couldn’t make it all disappear so they took what they could and said screw the rest.  It sounds pretty feasible that America is in on the drug game.

This is something they do sometimes, I believe, to distract from real tangible issues.  When the Occupy Wallstreet movement began, Obama made a move to crack down on the marijuana dispensaries in California.  There was no real reason behind it.  No logic.  But he wanted to take a little attention away from the real issue.  It happens all the time.  Every time something tragic happens either here or overseas the government distracts us with some unimportant stupid issue.  Take the war for instance, almost every time some controversy sparks up about the war, all the talking heads will pop off about gay marriage or drugs.  Don’t get me wrong, I do believe both are important issues but for the wrong reasons.  Gay marriage, to me, is a no brainer.  We should not care who gets married as long as it doesn’t affect us negatively.  Two dudes that love each other and want to commit to each other for the rest of their natural lives does not affect me negatively (nor does it to anyone else), thus I say “Go ahead, be married.  It’s none of my business.”  As far as drugs are concerned, I don’t think that cocaine or meth or heroin should be legal because it does cause negative effects on the people who take them and to the people around them.  They are all dangerously concocted chemicals which will kill you if you take too much.  Marijuana, mushrooms, peyote, and mescaline are all natural substances that have never killed anyone.  Yet they are illegal.  Why?  Because lobbyists have told the government to keep them illegal.  If they were legal it would mess with the pharmaceutical and tobacco companies.  Several doctors from Harvard have gone on record that marijuana is the most medically beneficial plant known to man.  I could go on and on with this tangent but for more information go and watch “The Union:  The Business Behind Getting High” and that will answer any questions or concerns you may have.  As I was saying the government and all of the special interest groups use these subjects to distract us from the actual problems.  They do not discuss the various bank executives that had to be bailed out getting 1 million and up bonuses.  They don’t discuss companies like Monsanto controlling nearly every aspect of the food industry.  Hell, they don’t talk about anything of any real importance, they simply distract and remove.

Yep, that's about right.

All of this is not even close to comprehensive; there are thousands of little stories out there which don’t get any attention.  Every day these mega-corporations are pulling off deals that ultimately screw the people.  There are horrifying things happening everyday but in order to find out about it you have to dig.  You have to not accept everything that is fed to you, you have to ask questions, you have to go out on your own and find truth, and you can’t believe everything you hear.  I know I probably come off as some nut job but I’ve been digging into a lot of stuff lately and I just find it all so gross.  Our news channels are nothing more than mouth pieces for what our elected government wants us to hear.  Our government no longer cares about the needs of the people as a whole; they care about keeping the lobbyists happy.  Before every vote, the congressmen look over and say, “Is this okay?  Yes or no?”  I don’t know what the ultimate solution is but I know that we all need to start asking more questions of our elected officials and let them know through voting and protesting that what they are doing and allowing to happen is no longer acceptable.  As the late comedian Bill Hicks stated sarcastically, “Go to sleep America, your government is in control.”

The one about the Death Penalty

I had asked a friend the other day what a good topic to write on would be and he said, “I always think its best when you do something a little controversial.”  I agree but at the time I couldn’t really think of anything.  I sat uninspired for a while and was scrolling through the news and came across two different stories that sparked a bit of inspiration.  The first was about the shooting in the California hair salon yesterday that killed 8 people and wounded another.  The guy, Scott Dekraai, seemingly opened up at random on a little independent hair salon in a quiet community in California.  I thought to myself, “What an asshole, why is he even here?   Why keep this guy around?  Is he going to cure herpes or multiple sclerosis?    Couldn’t he have killed himself and saved everyone a lot of time and money?  I mean if you are going to go on a killing spree at least have the decency to off yourself beforehand or let the cops kill you.  If statistics prove correctly his case could potentially cost California over $25 million before all is said and done (that’s if the death penalty is sought).   The next article I read is about a Republican Representative from Florida, Brad Drake, who proposes that Florida abolish the lethal injection and bring back firing squads and the electric chair.  He feels that the murderers have had it too easy with getting a nice little injection that kills them.  He not only wants them dead but he wants a little suffering to go along with it.  As if sitting in a cell for 10 years knowing that you will never be free again and your fate is going to be an injection shot into you intravenously in front of a live audience isn’t enough suffering.  Kind of makes me wonder where his intentions are.  Is he just as bad as the murderers?  Didn’t another one of his representative buddies give him a nudge and say, “Jesus, Brad what is wrong with you?”  Death is death, either way they go they aren’t coming back.  After reading these two contrasting articles and other recent stories about the West Memphis Three and Troy Davis, I really realized that I’m torn on this death penalty issue.

As far as personal views on the subject, I have the feeling that probably several of these guys on death row deserve to die.  John Wayne Gacy deserved to die.  Ted Bundy deserved to die.  Jeffery Dahmer deserved to die and I found it much more satisfying that he died at the hands of another inmate.  But did Troy Davis deserve to die?  Were there questions left unanswered about his guilt/innocence?  Is it fair that Damien Echols, of the West Memphis Three, had to sit on death row for over 10 years when his innocence was so clear?   Isn’t possible for some people to change in prison?  But the biggest question of all is this, “Is our justice system infallible enough to always arrest and convict the right man?  And am I confident enough that our justice system is competent enough to decide who is executed?”  My initial opinion is no, on both accounts.  Since 1977, 1,271 men and women have been put to death in the US.  We currently have 3,251 inmates awaiting death (numbers as of April 2010) in our American prison systems costing around $250 million annually.  Death row inmates cost substantially more than a standard prisoner.  And one of the most damning statistics is the number of inmates that have been exonerated since 1973…139 men have been found innocent for crimes that had them sitting on death row.  In the scheme of things where we think in terms of global numbers in the millions and billions, 139 doesn’t sound too bad and is actually a pretty good margin of error.  Some people are willing to accept that margin, but I wonder if the principle was applied to them would they feel the same.

The recently freed West Memphis Three
Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelly

Imagine that you are asleep soundly in your bed, just as you would be any other night of the week.  Your day was pretty uneventful; maybe you went fishing or went shopping with your friends.  You are going about your routine as you would any day of the week.   You wake up the next morning and as you are eating your Eggo waffles and bananas, you are watching the news and a horrible triple murder is all the talk.  You feel bad for the victims, “its awful what people do to one another” you think to yourself.  You get ready for your day but a knock on your door interrupts you.  You go and answer the door and its two cops at your door asking you questions.  “Did you know the victims?”  “Where were you last night?”  “Can anyone vouch for you?” etc.  You answer the questions honestly but unbeknownst to you, the cops already have their eye on you because they feel you are a little weird, you aren’t like everyone else, no one can really figure you out, and this murder sounds like something some weirdo would do.  So they hone in on you, they put the idea out there that possibly you had something to do with the murders by just bringing up your name when questioning other potential witnesses.  People are always open to suggestion and the mere mention of your name sparks something in them.  “Yeah, I did see him acting really weird that night.  Looked like he might have had some blood on ‘em” says the “witness”.   It’s not true but it doesn’t matter.  The cops want justice and they have no leads.  All it would take is to get a few people out there with the right idea planted in their head to get a case against you.  Next thing you know, you are being arrested, shoved into a car, handcuffed behind your back, and off to jail.  You are innocent but it doesn’t matter, others don’t think so.  The court of public opinion has deemed you guilty and eventually so does the court of law.  The judge is a hardass who is trying to look tough on crime because he has that big election to win next year and he sentences you to die.  Sound improbable?  Sound like some dumb made up movie plot?  Yes, but unfortunately this has happened in the real world.  Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley went through a very similar chain of events almost 18 years ago.  They were accused and convicted of murdering three 8 year old boys, stripping them naked, and mutilating their bodies.  The problem was there was no physical evidence to point to them.  Damien was the “weird Goth kid” of the small West Memphis community and he was immediately zoned in on from the day the bodies were discovered.  The police disregarded evidence to the contrary of their innocence because it didn’t fit in with nailing Echols and the other two boys.  Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life and Echols was sent to Death Row.  Fortunately, after years of people rallying around the group and new uncovered DNA evidence the former boys, now grown men, were released but under a strange sneaky legal maneuver called the Alford Plea.  The state of Arkansas saw that it was inevitable (and they have admitted this) for a new trial to come for the West Memphis Three because of the DNA evidence and other glaring mistakes made in the past prosecutors office.  Not wanting the open embarrassment of having to admit they wrongfully imprisoned these men and opening themselves up to a huge lawsuit, they offered this tricky Alford Plea which would set them free.  The deal was that they all three plead guilty to the murders based on the assumption that the prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them, they would be able to maintain their actual innocence, and they were free to go.  Initially Baldwin didn’t want to take the deal because he wanted to prove in an actual trial his innocence, but the prospect of the trial was still a year or more away and he knew that Echols was wasting away on Death Row, sealed off from the rest of the prisoners in complete isolation.  The deal had to be agreed upon by all three of them in order for it to go, and in an act of compassion and childhood friendship Baldwin agreed and they were freed.

Mumia Abu-Jamal:  Is he on death row
for politcal reason or is he innocent?

Now this might sound like a one in a million case and pretty unlikely, but what would’ve happened if the State of Arkansas shoved that needle into Echol’s arm years ago?  Echols came within 1 week of execution before but was granted a stay.  Imagine the terror and crushing depression that he probably felt, knowing that he was going to die for a crime he didn’t commit.  Imagine how many others could be out there like this.  It’s not completely uncommon.  In 1993, Kirk Bloodsworth, a convicted child murderer and rapist sentenced to death, was the first man to be exonerated by DNA evidence after spending 8 years in prison.  Oddly and ironically enough, years later when the DNA database was instituted it was found that the man guilty of the rape and murder that Bloodsworth had been convicted of was actually one cell down from him for years.  In 1981, a black janitor at a predominantly white high school in a fairly racist section of Texas name Clarence Brandley was convicted of the rape and murder of a student based on the testimony of three other white janitors who worked with him.  The Texas Ranger that investigated the case actually had the three white janitors concoct a story against Brandley because, as the Ranger so eloquently put it to Brandley, “You’re the nigger, you’re elected.”  Of course as it turned out one of the janitors felt guilty years later and came forward with his story and it lead to the arrest of one of the other white janitors and his friend that killed the student.  Brandley, unfortunately, spent 7 years behind bars and was denied any monetary reimbursement from the state of Texas.  These are just a few of the stories and there are countless more out there.  Cases with questionable guilt or motive, cases that are seemingly politically motivated like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and cases like the West Memphis Three are out there and the justice system is doing them no justice.

It makes it increasingly difficult to trust our justice system with these issues.  The fact that two states, Texas & Arkansas, refused to fully admit that they were wrong and denied monetary compensation to the men whom they destroyed is a “justice abortion”.    If you had just had a significant part of your life stripped away and were threatened with death by your state wouldn’t you want some sort of apology and some cash?  Just some food for thought.

Now, I know one of the biggest arguments for the death penalty is that it deters murderers from murdering.  Well, that’s not the case.  There are 34 of our 50 states that still have the death penalty on the table for people who enjoy murder (and the two other capital crimes that don’t involve murder; treason and espionage).  Quick tangent:  Treason and espionage are tricky because treason can be looked at in two different ways and espionage is really just a fancy way of saying spying.  Treason can be the attempt to over throw the government or violating one’s allegiance to their country.  So does that mean that we can kill the Tea party people?  Can we execute the Occupy Wall Street protestors?  Should someone stick a needle into the arm of Sean Penn and Oliver Stone?  Because under that definition all of these people have either tried to force a change in the country or have “bad mouthed” America.  Anyway back to the topic at hand, the death penalty has never proven to be any sort of effective deterrent in the murder rate.  Out of the top 25 states with the highest murder rate per capita 22 states are death penalty states.  In my opinion, I don’t think there has ever been a case of when a potential murderer was getting ready to kill and they stopped and thought, “Wait, what state am I in?  Oh hell, I’m in Florida.  I better drive up to West Virginia to do my killing if I don’t want the death penalty.”  As a matter of fact, year after year it is shown that states with no death penalty have lower murder rates.  So are these death penalty states just so pissed at its citizens that they want to join in on the killing with them?  I don’t know what the rationale is, but if I saw that it was really not making any sort of difference it would weigh on my conscience that I was killing all of these murderers.  It’s kind of like when I see parents spanking their kids while yelling “We do not hit!!!” 

Now that I have spouted out all of my hippy liberal stuff, I can go to the darkside for a moment…the conservative right, pro-death penalty side.  If someone were to rape and murder my wife, of course I would want to see him pumped full of deadly poison until the life was snuffed out of him.  Serial killers, child molesters, and the mass shooters like the Virginia Tech guy all deserve to die a long and horrible, painful death.  I see the point of all the pro-death people, I really do.  These killers and kiddie-diddlers have no function in society and are better off dead.  None of them are going to cure cancer, they aren’t going to help stabilize the economy, and they aren’t going to solve world hunger.  They are useless stains on the fabric of our society.  However, (you knew that was coming didn’t you?) the system is so flawed and inconsistent with its “justice” that I don’t think the death penalty is right nor is it effective.  I have already listed a litany of reasons as to why it’s obviously flawed (false convictions, DNA evidence, coerced stories and confessions, and bias) but the inconsistencies are nearly as bad.  I have always wondered how it’s determined which murderers’ get the death penalty and which don’t.  How do we place value of one life over another?  Is a priest’s life more important than a child’s?  Is a cop worth more than a pregnant woman?  Is a white stock broker’s life more valuable than a homeless Hispanic man?  I have wondered this forever but just recently bothered looking it up.  Each state has its own weird guidelines as to who qualifies for state sanctioned death and who doesn’t; these guidelines are called aggravating factors.  Each state has different sets of these factors and some want several factors to be in place while others only require one to be in effect.  I found some interesting ones during my research and would be remiss if I didn’t share them.  Tennessee has the option to kill you if you murder anyone over 70, anyone who is handicapped, and if you mutilate the body AFTER you kill them.  So as long as your victim is a 69 year old, well bodied person whom you only mutilate while killing them, you are probably safe.  Virginia has an oddly specific factor when it comes to age as well; if your victim is under 14 and you are over 21 then they will shove the needle into your arm.  I just wonder what the judge says when the victim was 12 years old but the killer was only 20, “Sorry ma’am but your son’s killer was only 20 so we can only give him a life sentence.”  Washington state and Arizona have even further oddly specific factors.  Washington states that the convicted can face the death penalty if they were a reporter who killed their victim in order to obstruct their own activities.  You know there had to be some reporter in Washington at some point that they really wanted dead in order to add that to the list.  Arizona’s was probably the oddest of all.  In Arizona, if you kill your victim with a stun gun the state may put you to death.  How would that even work?  I’m sure it would be a long process killing someone with a stun gun.

John Wayne Gacy:  Ok, so they got
one right.

So I guess what I am saying after all of this is this:  Our justice system is too flawed, inconsistent, corrupt, and close-minded to have the death penalty.  It simply doesn’t work.  I would hate to see even one innocent man put to death in order to kill 10 monsters.  Some would like to argue that “Well, in that case we should only put to death the ones that killed without question like Ted Bundy.”  However, that argument only further proves my point.  Any man or woman who is in prison in the first place should be proven without question that they are guilty.  See?  It just doesn’t work that way.  We can’t risk killing innocent men in the name of killing bad men.  It would simply make us just as barbaric as some of the countries we always shame.  When we see a news story out of Iran about how some husband threw hydrochloric acid into his wife’s face and gets 30 days in jail and a woman shows a little too much leg in public and she is put to death by stoning, we get outraged.  But the same concept can be transferred over here.  Maybe the Iranians watch the news and say, “I can’t believe they are going to kill that man who did not kill another.”  Probably not but you get the point.  So, I will never be fully supportive of the death penalty even though I know that people like Susan Smith, Andrea Yates, Anthony Sewell, Gary Ridgeway, and many others deserve to die because I don’t think our justice system is competent enough to do it right. 

I'd be a Terrible Veterinarian

What Barney looked like in my memory as there
are no actual photos of this thing.

When little kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up a whole lot of them want to be veterinarians.  I don't know why.  I never thought about it, it never so much as crossed my mind.  Animals, to me when I was young, were just these unintelligent beings that we coexist with and some of them were quite tasty.  Nothing more and nothing less.  My folks really weren't big animal people either.  We got a Cocker Spaniel when I was about 4 or 5 years old.  With Cockers they are one of two things and sometimes both; they are either borderline retarded or they are mean savages hell bent on destroying everything in their path.  Our dog was like a dumbed down version of Forrest Gump.  My dad never referred to the dog by its given name of "Barney" but rather unaffectionately called him "that stupid dog".  Barney wasn't mean at all he was just a goofy, dumb canine that slobbered and drooled all over everything.  I liked the dog well enough but wasn't really that invested with him.  I would listen to my father mumble "stupid dog" as he picked up wet, drool covered toys and sneakers.  And like most kids, I would just kind of emulate what I saw from my folks.  So when Barney ran away (according to my parents) they were driving around the neighborhood looking for him and I was kind of off in my own little world without much concern and my mom asked me, "Dusty, are you sad that we can't find Barney?" to which I replied, "Why?  It’s just a dumb dog."  So, yeah this was my attitude towards animals.  I could take them or leave them and often times eat them. 

***(And I said "according to my parents" because I seem to have a different memory of what happened.  I have this vision and occurrence of a conversation in my head that Barney had actually committed "doggy suicide" on accident.  He had a fenced in thing around his dog house and he was attached to a chain and what I remember is that he jumped on top of his doghouse and tried to jump over the fence and it got caught and he hung himself.  My folks said I was crazy and they deny many of my early memories so it’s hard to tell what happened.)

So all of my vast animal experience brings me to last night.  My wife had a cat named Bonnie that she had had since she was 10 years old and has been living with her parents for these last several years.  So, last night was supposed to be our nice quiet evening alone.  The kids were all taken care of safely with their grandparents and we had planned on watching some movies and just relaxing.  The cat had different plans for us.  My father-in-law called me at around 9pm and said, "I need to talk to Katie.  Now!!  It’s an emergency."  I had left to run to the store and Katie wasn't with me so I asked him if I could help him.  "No, there is nothing you can do!!  Her 17 year old cat is dying and she needs to come say her final goodbyes"  I laughed because I thought he was joking, but when he didn't reciprocate the laughter I gathered myself and said "Really?" in my best concerned voice.  So I called Katie and was kind of chuckling as I told her, "Katie, your dad called and your old cat is dying if you want to go see it."  I didn't think she would honestly care and she's like "Of course I do, get home now so we can go."  My wife and I have made numerous attempts over our years together to get animals and each time we give up because we both lack the patience to take care of them (having kids is hard enough without a dog to worry about).  So based on that logic I didn't think it would be a big deal to her.
I ran home to pick her up, and I kept thinking to myself about how this was going to kind of mess up the whole night and other selfish things. 

When we got there it was her mom, her sister, and her husband Jeff all kind of gathered around the sickly cat.  They were all talking about what to do and how sad it was and I was sneaking off into the other room to watch the Falcon's game.  I understood they were attached to it but it just didn't register on my level.  As I was enjoying my game, I overheard them talking about putting her to sleep and how it would cost something like $75 for the visit alone and like another $75 or so to put her to sleep.  My logic wouldn't shut up, it kept screaming in my head "They want $150 to kill a cat?!?  That should be free, cats are everywhere."  So I walked back in the room, I had hatched a more economic plan for them.  I stood above all of their sad faces and said, "Listen, I'm not trying to be a dick about this and I'm really just trying to help but that's kind of expensive to put an animal to sleep don't you think.  So my idea was this, I'm not attached to the cat in any sort of way so I could just kill it for you all and I won't charge a dime to do it."  My sister in law looked at me with a look of hurt confusion and said, "How?"  I continued, "Well, I guess the quickest way would be to break its neck she would ...."  She said "What?  No, no, no, you can't do that.  You don't even know how."  True enough I am not up on my animal anatomy but I thought I could figure it out, so I offered my alternative which in hindsight sounds pretty bad but sounded like sound logic at the time, "I could just take a brick or heavy stone and...."  In unison everyone in the room shouted "NO!!"  My wife asked me what the hell was wrong with me and if I realized how crazy that made me sound.

I left the room with the offer still on the table and explained from a distance that I was only trying to help to which they explained if I was ever on my death bed and was hit over the head with a brick not to worry that they were just trying to help.  So apparently basic logic does not figure into putting an animal down.  I had seen enough Westerns to understand that if an animal was suffering that it had to be killed and they either shot the horse or hit it over the head with something heavy.  I had no gun nor any bullets so I thought a brick would be the answer.  But nay, I am a bad person, a shitty veterinarian, and the worst candidate for President of PETA.

Mmm..tastes fresh from the factory farm.

As anyone who knows me would say, "Dusty loves to eat!"  I have been an avid fan of food for my entire life.  When I was a baby the doctor made my mom quit breast feeding me because I was so insatiable when it came to eating.  When I was in high school, I would often eat an entire pizza or bucket of chicken on a dare (or to be honest I would just for the heck of it even if no one dared me).  When I was 22, I entered a Krystal Burger eating contest and won handidly (13 burgers in 2 minutes).  I've slowed down quite substantially since then but I still appreciate some good food.  Now that I have fully qualified myself as a food aficianado, it probably goes without saying that food-related documentaries had been true horror films to me in the past.  I have seen YouTube clips of various PETA propoganda and none of it really affected me at all.  Sure, it was sad seeing people kick chickens, gut pigs, and blast holes in the sides of cows but I kind of accepted those things as necessary evils of the food companies.  I also figured with those PETA propoganda videos that we were only seeing the worst because they feel that every animal life is equal to a human life and was therefore pretty damn bias.  I don't hate animals, I think they are delicous as a matter of fact, and I also don't think that a person should treat them like crap but I think that PETA goes a bit overboard.  To paraphrase and add to a quote from Hunter S. Thompson, I feel the same way about PETA as I do about herpes!!  They are the most annoying, self-righteous, ill-informed, ass clowns I have ever seen aside from the people with the Westboro Baptist Church.  As a matter of fact, I wouldn't blink an eye if both groups got together and went the way of People's Temple in Jonestown with a little cyanide flavored Kool Aid. 

If only someone could get them a nice glass of
 Jim Jones' Kool Aid.

But I digress, I got off on a tangent.  As I was saying, none of those videos changed my eating habits at all.  I would intentionally eat a double Whopper with Bacon after seeing one of their videos, I would go outside and kill a fly in their name if I had no meat to eat.  But recently, like in the past 3 or 4 years, I have gotten to be quite the documentary nerd.  I had grown a little weary of strictly seeing fictional movies with contrived story lines and brain dead TV sitcoms, so I started to watch a lot of documentary movies and shows.  I started to watch the History channel like an old man, I started watching the Discovery Channel the way my dad did when I made fun of him for it, and thanks to Netflix I started to avidly throw new docs into my instant que with wreckless abandon.  I always saw these food docs and avoided them because I figured that they were going to be PETA videos on a grande scale.  I had zero interest in any of them, but people started to really go on and on about how good and informative they were so I gave in. 

I watched "Food Inc." about a week ago and I was pissed.  I was pissed at the makers of food but really pissed because I loved all of that good garbage.  I love Whoppers, I love Chik-Fil-A, Sonic is the shit, and Hardee's breakfast is fantastic.  We have not gone on a full scale ban of these foods in our household, but we have started buying some organic stuff (which is something I swore I would never do).  After grocery shopping and after watching the doc, I understand why we eat the crap that we do.  Our grocery bill was astronomical.  I understand that growing this stuff on a smaller scale makes it less efficient and thus more expensive but my God, there has to be some better way around this.  I looked at the situation with the Hispanic family they had in the film and I could really relate.  If you haven't seen the movie, in one section of the film it features a family living on a budget trying to find suitable food to eat at the grocery store and in restaraunts.  The family sees that buying organic lettuce would cost just as much to buy two hamburgers from Burger King and the point is that many poorer people can't afford, as far as money goes, to buy "good" food.  I know the point of the movie was to say that if we all started making these small changes that eventually the food industry would have to change their ways, but how many poor people eating Spam out of a can are really watching documentaries?  We aren't poor but we are no where close to being rich, and I will say that buying this organic stuff may be far and above better for us but I wish there was a way around it.

I think my favorite part of the movie was that they didn't discourage eating meat, because I swear to God I would've turned it off the moment that they did.  I love meat and that will never change.  I don't care how cute and fluffy the animal is as long as they are delicous.  The movie even showed a organic farmer cutting the heads off of chickens as he was talking to the camera.  So at least I can feel safe in buying organic meat with the knowledge a super brainy farmer is out there cutting up chickens in his backyard.  The meat aspect was the only part I really gave a crap about.  After watching how they raise these animals, I was kind of disgusted.  I want all of my hamburger to come from one cow at a time.  I don't want my chicken sandwiches full of steroids.  I would like to know before I eat the bacon that the pig had a decent enough life.  So for now I know that we are the very least going to eat, as often as possible, organic meat.  Its hard so far because I want a Whopper so bad but then I think, "Oh yeah, only about half of that patty is actual cow and the part that is cow came from about 15 different cows.  Oh, and it was flash frozen on an assembly line somewhere in Ohio."

I guess I don't care about the veggie aspect so much right now because I pretty much try to avoid vegetables.  I know that they are good for me and they are supposed to make you feel better about yourself but they taste like crap unless you add a bunch of salt, butter, and grease to them.  I will let my wife worry about the veggies. 

So my days of entering eating contests and downing an entire bucket of chicken are over but I am interested in seeing if changing any of these foods will make a difference.  I have always been skeptical about the whole issue and I still sort of am.  I felt like organic was just Spanish for expensive and all natural meant that it was completely natural to eat whatever was in front of you.  I guess time will tell along with the scales.

$17 million raised to get a $400k per year job??

I know that good ol' Rick Perry is certainly not the first nor will he be the last person to run for President and raise exorbitant amounts of money.  In a recent news bukkake, several (almost all) news outlets have reported that thus far Rick Perry has raised $17 million for his campaign for Presidency with $15 million of that in cash since August.  In two months, a man has raised $17 million.  Can you really wrap your mind around that?  Our current president amassed a reported $750 million dating back to his initial run at the presidency starting in 2007!!!  Good God, who the hell are these people giving these crazy politicians this much juice?  I understand the concept that a candidate has to raise a certain amount of funds to campaign.  They have to cover travel expenses, food, a large staff of people to tell them what to say, pay-offs, hookers, booze, and other assorted necessities that come along a road trip plus they have to pay for all of those silly commercials and signs with their names on them.  The goal of the presidency is really no longer about change and people's rights and all the other stuff that people want to believe.  No, it’s about who can raise the most money and put down the guy with less.
I can use one of my little analogies to make this better understood.  Did you ever go to school with some rich kid who was the same as you in many ways but was a dick and got ahead because of his parents money?  Of course you did, I won't even allow an answer.  I bet the guy or gal was probably your friend in elementary school and maybe even a little in to middle school but once they hit high school full bore, you were no longer a friend but more of a liability or perhaps a fan.  This kid would impress all of the others with his newest crap that daddy bought him.  He would brag about his new 150 inch big screen, his new Segatendo X-station Box gaming system, and his 450 horse-power sports car and everyone would look at him and think "Aww, that guy knows what it’s about, I'm hanging with him."  Well, that’s how we make presidents (one of the ways at least).  These candidates raise huge amounts of cash from these "private" donors and go out and "press the flesh" with some handshaking seminars and shout out about how right they are for the country.  It’s the same thing, they are really bragging based on the deeds of others.  Imagine that you were given $10,000 for simply smiling, shaking a hand, and agreeing with everything the person says that writes the check.  Tell me that you wouldn't do that all day long!! 
And that's kind of what these guys do or as I like to say, "It's EXACTLY what they do."  Find a special interest or cause that has backers with large pocket books, agree with them, tell them that you will help them out, and watch the money roll in.  Its basic politics. 
The thing that looks so silly in all of this is that all of this money that they are raising is in effort to get a job that pays a mere fraction of what they are earning.  The salary that Perry can expect (if he got elected) would only be 2% of what he made the past two months in the span of a year.  To me this always begs a couple of different questions or thoughts (because no one ever gives me answers to my questions):  What kind of megalomaniacal narcissist runs for a President?  How pissed are all of these private donors when their candidate losses?  And, how often do you think the candidate secretly thinks to himself about taking all of that campaign money and hopping the next flight to Switzerland?  I can answer the last one in short...Every single day!!
First, I think that it has to take a narcissistic freak to run for any huge position of power.  Why?  Because to them this might not even be about the money to start off with, of course it doesn't hurt either, but it’s more about the power.  Here we have people spending all of this time and money into a job that they know will give them insane amounts of power and notoriety.  Everyone knows that the president's past and present get scrutinized on both a micro and macro level, every move they make will be analyzed by every news outlet, every word out their mouth will be turned and twisted to fit the agenda of others, they have no privacy, the eye of the nation is always upon them.  It takes a pretty twisted freak to want to take on all of that.  And no, it’s not because they feel some obligation to serve the citizens, it’s because they are attention whores who love themselves more than any other man, woman, or child could ever love them.  They spend not only their own money, but that of all of these donors in the name of getting some powerful job.  This is the only job in America that this is totally acceptable to do.  You don't see Billy working at Burger King, collecting donations, and running a $4 million campaign to become the manager who only makes $40,000 a year, do you?  Everyone would look at Billy like some sort of demented creature with severe mental problems, but a guy raises $750 million over 4 or 5 years to make $400,000 a year and no one bats an eyelash.  I don't know maybe I'm just crazy and just overanalyze stuff but it seems to be narcissism in its purist form.

As for the poor, private donors who are basically betting on their candidate to get in?  I don't feel sorry for them when their guy loses.  I feel uncomfortable for them, but not sorry.  It’s just like gambling, they put some heavy cash out there hoping to get the results they want and sometimes they win and sometimes they lose.  I just cringe at hearing about candidates raising these vast fortunes from donors and then losing.  It’s kind of like this Perry thing, within something like 48 hours of the news coming out about him raking in $17 million, the news started reporting how he plummeted in the polls due to him being a racist who likes to hunt on a property named Niggerhead.  Could you imagine being one of those donors who gave $50,000 and heard that your candidate hunts on Niggerhead?!?!?  I am sure when news like this breaks out there is simultaneous non-stop vomiting occurring all across America from donors.  This is one of the primary reasons I would never donate any more than $1 to any campaign or candidate and I probably wouldn't even donate that much.  I don't want to put my money into a person because all people are flawed and they all have some sort of skeletons lurking in their closet.  Clinton liked to screw and smoke pot, Bush Jr loved cocaine and booze, Obama has the middle name Hussein and Trump doesn't think he was born here.  See they all have these flaws or perceived flaws that at any point during their campaign for presidency could have derailed them.  Over the course of history we see it all the time from the people who lost, they almost always had some sort of minor skeleton hanging out in their closet.  I can't feel sorry for these people in losing their money on a bad candidate but it does make me feel uncomfortable that people are that naive to put their faith, trust, and money on a human being who has some weird intentions of being in control of everything.

Having said that, I will now announce my intention to run for the Presidency of the United States under the great Hunter S. Thompson's "Freak Power" Party, please give me all of your money and trust.