FIREBLIND.COM

I swear to allah, by the amount of religious vitriol pouring out against gay marriage in California you would think gays were going around legally punching little kids in the face and then sodomizing them for good measure, all to spite Jesus and his Jesus-loving dinosaurs.

I don’t know that I would put the fight for gay marriage on the same level as I would black civil rights from a generation ago, but the comparison between the two is obvious, if for nothing else than the raw hate that some people are putting forth. I’m reminded of a section in To Kill a Mockingbird where young Scout wonders how her teacher can cry over the persecution of the Jews by Hitler, and yet get frothing-at-the-mouth mad when a black person asks for a little more out of life beyond a crappy shack and second-rate food for their kids. I know very few Christians who are this way about gay marriage, but the protesters I’ve heard are not sad for these gays; they’re out there to settle a score that comes from a place of pure hate. Rather than cry for their souls, you can tell they get cruel satisfaction from shouting “you’ll burn in hell” at people. This is not unlike the visceral hate blacks put up with during the civil rights movement (and still put up with in many parts of the US). It is not Christian love; it is malice, pure and simple. It was for blacks, and it is for gays.

It seems to me that if god exists, he can probably take care of himself. He doesn’t need John Q. Redneck painting up some glitter signs and standing outside a courthouse making gays feel like physical harm is coming their way. Do they really think Jesus is standing up in Heaven saying things like “hell yeah, did you see Steve sucker punch that stupid fag in the face when he wasn’t looking? Oh man, what I wouldn’t give to tie some gay kid to a fence and just beat the crap out of him.”

Seriously people, god can take care of himself. If gay people want to get married and suffer a life of monotonous monogamy and tax liabilities, how does it really affect you? If god rains vengeance upon the US and you and your family die as a result, aren’t you on your way to Heaven anyways? I honestly don’t see how you lose in this deal, so stop acting like someone has insulted you personally for a minute, and learn some of the humility Jesus wanted you to have. Let god be insulted if god wants to be insulted. He created the universe; I’m sure he can deal with a little buttsecks.

P.S. Dear gay men: I know you shouldn’t have to do this, but I would encourage you to put away the hot pants and the glitter and the makeup and the fairy-ass rainbow floats and parades until after the vote in November. It’s your right to do this if you want, but I honestly believe if most gay men acted like straight men you wouldn’t be in this mess. That is, it’s not homosexuality per se that people are reacting to, it’s the fact that you have so blown up what it is to be an American man that really rubs people the wrong way. I could be wrong, but having lathered up men in leather dancing around in public probably won’t help the amendment vote.

I had to go visit one of our stores today. On the route between my home and the store is a very large cemetery, and as you approach and pass said cemetery, there are probably half a dozen ads encouraging you to think about your “final plans.” Have you ever noticed that these billboards (and the commercials on TV) look like an old person’s version of herpes ads? I swear to Pedro, it always looks like the old people are just about to walk away and do it in the butt, they’re so in love with life.

Anyways…as i took my eyes off the road and daydreamed about anal sex with senior citizens, it occurred to me that the cemetery might drum up more business if they also targeted parents of stupid young people. Like so:

No, that’s not a real sign, yes, I ’shopped it, yes, that guy is drinking from 4 glasses of beer, and no, I will not date your single grandmother.

Link of the day: BBC Report uncovers billions in stolen and misappropriated Iraq spending.

I flew first class to Denver a week ago, which was a great experience. I’m going to San Francisco in a few weeks and am flying economy, which will not be a great experience.

While buying the tickets, United offered me an extra 5 inches of leg room for $19 each way. I passed, but not before considering what other upgrades I might go for.

As I was picking out my seats, I wondered what terrible neighbors I might have. Would it be the 400 pound guy that didn’t buy two seats for himself? Or, might it be the foreign grandfather with stanky-ass breath? It occurred to me that I would probably pay extra to have stats about the other people on the plane that had already booked. Would I rather sit next to a young female, or a single old guy that keeps “accidentally” bumping his leg into mine?

So I says to my brother I says, “brother, I would pay $20 to be able to see basic information about my other fellow travelers. I might even consider paying $50 if I could get a picture and more information.” Or, what if passengers could link to their myspace.com pages or something? Flying would be a much more rewarding experience if you could pick and avoid your neighbors. In any event, here’s a crappy version of what the ticket selection process might look like:

You saw it here first. If the airlines roll this out, expect to be called as a witness in my lawsuit.

Edit, 2008-06-11: I realize after the fact that such a tool could be used against people by creeps. For example, maybe a pedophile would look for tickets belonging to children. So, maybe the airlines automatically block seats held by children. And, if you don’t want people to know about you, you block your information from being shared when you buy your ticket. But, as an enticement to share, maybe the airline takes $10 off your ticket if you’re willing to share your info, assuming you’re not buying a seat that no one can sit next to (e.g. the seats next to it are already taken).

I wonder if I can patent this jazz?

I’ve been reading a lot of really amazing books lately that have made me really depressed. Books that make you realize how much there is that you’re not doing with your life, or how much horror has been perpetrated against our fellow man. I think I’m going to plan an adventure. I found a place with reasonable rates on SatPhones, so it’s just a matter of disappearing for a while….

Changing subjects: Do men still carry wallets with pictures in them? I remember that they used to about 10 years ago. I think even I had a wallet with some bent-ass pictures in it. There was usually some permanent dirt or mildew or something in one of the sleeves, making your girlfriend look like more of a horseface than she actually was. I’ll have to ask around. This is going to bother me now.

Despite my wild imagination, everyone in the world does not read my blog, apparently. I blame me for not being funny, but mostly I blame you. I think we both know why.

For those of you not from California, there’s a place called Bakersfield, and then there’s a place called “everywhere else.” If you’re in Bakersfield, it doesn’t take you very long to get there. You could get in your car to drive to Bakersfield, but then you could get out again because you’re already there. So that’s cool. But, if you’re “everywhere else”, Bakersfield is in the middle of f’ing nowhere. You could be all like “hey, I’m going to Bakersfield and maybe I’ll get a burger when I’m there because I’m hungry” and then go get in your car and start driving. Unfortunately, you’ll starve to death before you get even half way because Bakersfield is in another dimension that takes a thousand years to get to and is inhabited by demons. Seriously, if you’ve never been to Bakersfield, don’t go. Tell your friends to go though, it’ll be funny. Especially if they don’t like demons.

Anyways, I drove to Bakersfield yesterday to go to a surprise birthday party for one of my closest friends. His birthday’s not until May, but we had it on April 12th anyways. Did I mention that besides being inhabited by demons and residing in another dimension, Bakersfield is also apparently in the middle of the sun? At first, I was “everywhere else” and I was comfortable and then my tires started melting and I realized that I was getting close.

What the heck was I talking about? Oh yeah, I know: you people didn’t listen when I told you that I was going to throw you to the lions when I was elected VP of the world in a few years. Because Bakersfield is in Thailand, I had a long time to observe the driving habits of my fellow man on the way out there. 80% of you drive kind of slow, 20% of you drive too damned slow, and the rest of you are dicks. I don’t understand why people have such a hard time realizing that cars and trucks are dangerous weapons.

Let’s say that you and I are hungry for a tasty fruit and yogurt parfait from McDonald’s, so we go to one near our house. Because my house is in the middle of the rain forest, I had to blaze a trail to the restaurant. While we’re eating I decide to show you what I looked like clearing a path to the Garden Grove McDonald’s. I take out my trusty machete and start pretending that I’m cutting down bushes and fighting off jaguars. No one else is in the joint besides you, me, a hot 17-year-old behind the counter who is trying to lure me to jail, and a family with some obese kids. I start playing the air-machete, and within 2 minutes a cop breaks through the door and shoots me in the face. Why did he do this? Probably because I was swinging a dangerous weapon around and the obese kids might have eaten it…or…something like that.

If, instead of fighting off jaguars I took the freeway to McDonald’s, I could drive my multi-thousand pound truck like an absolute madman, and no cops are going to shoot me in the face. The worst I could have done with my machete was kill or injure a small handful of people, but in my truck I have the power to wipe out whole families by making one wrong lane change. I pulled a kid out of an upside down car once after he hit 4 other cars, rolling one other besides his own. Fortunately, no one was killed, but he caused over $100,000 in damage to property and injured several other people, and all he got was a trial date, a $500 fine, and probation. Listen to me, you brain dead ass hole: your car is a deadly weapon. Slow the F down, make some decent lane changes, and turn down your Eminem. If I had it my way, I would shoot you in the face and save cops the trouble. Alas, my contract as a superhero with the government prevents me from killing civilians, so you’re off the hook…for now. At the moment I can only kill people who don’t speak God’s language (English), but that contract is up in 4 years. I swear by almighty Allah that I’m going to own a coliseum by then and I’m not going to feed my lions and tigers and bears until my contract is up. Oh my, are they going to be hungry.

(Yes, I did pull a muscle typing that last bit; thank you for asking.)

I don’t know if you know this, but I should be allowed to kill people. Well, not all people in all circumstances, but I think it’s only fair that I have the power of life and death when it comes to dangerous drivers or drivers who are just generally douches. My eighth-grade teacher Mrs. Earnest told me that I was wise beyond my years, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t tell you this, so that pretty much means that I get to have the power of life and death and you don’t.

So……. I’m constantly amazed at how dangerously people in SoCal drive. Just because you have a lowered, $12,000 Honda with fake exhaust doesn’t give you the right to swerve across multiple lanes on the way to your manga convention. If you do it AND you have illegal window tint on your car, I swear to god I should have the right to put you down. Who are you, the President of f’ing Paraguay? Why the hell do you need illegal dark tint on the front windows? I don’t care if you’re Oskar goddamned “I-saved-like-a-million-Jews” Schindler driving away from the ghost of Hitler, if you have illegal window tint on your POS car and you dare cut me off from 4 lanes over and you’re not the President of Paraguay, you’d better hide for all your worth once I’m elected Vice President in 2016.

On my way home today, some guy on a freaking ’70s era moped is burning up the bike lane, hogging the white line so everyone has to avoid him. Because traffic was moving so slowly, he stayed with me for several miles. The stupid moped was bright green, and he had a bright orange motorcycle helmet on, as if that somehow hid the fact that he still lives with his mom who tucks him in at night and calls him pookie and kisses him on the forehead. And, to make matters worse, he didn’t have any bloody brakes!!!! He’d be tearing down the street, blocking the right lane and then the light would turn red, and he would put his stupid feet down and drag them at 40 mph to stop himself! I wish I had my camera so that I could take take his picture and steal his soul and then step on it. I will say one thing though: Keds have some amazing stopping power.

(Speaking of Keds, since when is Mischa Barton a model for Keds?!?!?!?! Click the link above to see her one stop away from working for Burger King.)

Anyways, I finally pull through the gate at my complex and notice a car I don’t recognize in the space next to me. It’s not a bad car, but it’s got a Club on it. A CLUB! I looked around to make sure it wasn’t 1996 and that I wasn’t at K-Mart. Thankfully, I was still in the present, although I’m not sure when I moved to West Virginia. Bloody hell people! Can you not try just a little harder to impress me? I really am going to remember all of this someday. If—by then—you haven’t changed into at least a marginally attractive female or a gay guy who can help me dress better, you’d pretty much better plan on fighting lions and bears in my new coliseum.

I was reading through my copy of Vice Dos and Don’ts: 10 Years of VICE Magazine’s Street Fashion Critiques the other day. If you’re into photography or fashion, or just into being mean to people who dress like retards and you don’t own this book already, you’re a bad citizen of your country and are actually helping the terrorists win. You should be put in jail for treason, you bastard.

One of the authors notes that liking a professional sports team is pretty dumb when you really think about it. Each year there are new players, new management, new guys who clean the field, and so on. What does it mean to like the Dodgers, for example? It’s not like the Dodgers team of today is the same as it was last year. What you’re really saying is that you like the consistent branding message, and that you’re a fan of that team’s marketing department. Basically, you’re admitting that you’re a consumer whore for a company.

I’ve seen people get in fights at college and professional sporting events because of arguments over which team is better. This really doesn’t make a lick of sense. I’m going to hit you because “your” sporting conglomerate has a less talented roster of overpaid athletes than “my” sporting conglomerate. Would it make any sense if we substituted “San Franciso 49ers” and “Oakland Raiders” with “Tide brand laundry detergent” and “Ultra brand laundry detergent”? I can see it now: “Hey, dumbass! My current formulation of laundry detergent gets my whites waaaaaay the f*ck whiter than your pansy-assed laundry detergent. Just wait until the new ‘Summer Breeze’ formula comes out next month. I’m going to smell like a late afternoon romantic walk in the park with my wife, and you’re just going to smell like a slightly less romantic walk along the beach in the mid-day sun. Bitch!”

I can understand if you like a team because it has a consistent approach to its sport, or because it has a consistent character. For example, maybe UCLA basketball tends to run a certain offense that you find exciting. I get the Raiders fans, since that team’s management has long fostered a rebellious, I’m-out-on-probation-and-want-to-knife-someone-mentality. If that’s your bag, I can dig it. But, to just like a team because it’s your team or city is dumb. Why “support” your team or city if they’re the worst team in their sport? Who gives a damn? The third base guy gets a 7.5 million dollar salary each year, and after he loses his 90th game for the season he still gets to go home and bang three smoking hot women he doesn’t even know. If anything, his sorry ass should support you. When you get AIDS from too much unprotected sex with heroin addicted guys in the local park’s bathroom, it’s he that should be at your bedside stroking your sweaty, bruised-up AIDS face. After all, you bought five $64 jerseys and a couple of hats, plus some $8 beer last time you were at the ball park. You practically paid for one of his hookers!

In short, I guess what I’m trying to say is that you’re a corporate whore and baseball players should fellate you. If that’s not the most rational ending to one my blogs yet, I don’t know what is.

As most of you know, I recently retired from my 41-year acting stint as evolutionary psychologist Dirk St. Claire on Telemundo’s Novela Sin Conclusión. You might have seen the retrospective on CNN, but that’s besides the point. The real point is that, in my opinion, playing a “scrappy, never-say-die rebel psychologist with a dark and adventurous past and a heart of gold” has more than qualified me to write on the topic of dream psychology and the link between the unconscious and conscious mind. I think everyone else would probably agree, as I’m sure you do.

Rather than publish in a trendy, hoity-toity peer-reviewed psychology journal, I’ve decided to share—here with you, my faithful readers—a theory that Time magazine has called “the most important psychology discovery of the last decade.” (ed’s note: yeah, not so much.) I’m calling it “King Awesome’s nightmare-bladder theory.”

As it turns out, I don’t dream much. Or, if I do, I don’t ever remember what I dream about. The only time I ever remember dreams is when I have a nightmare, and even then, those are incredibly rare. I realized after 4 or 5 recent nightmares that when I woke up there was something physically bothering me. In most cases, I was super hot under my blankie comforter, but occasionally I found myself having to pee worse than R. Kelly at a middle school. Since this realization came to me, I’ve noticed that everytime I wake up from a nightmare, there’s something going on that I need to be conscious to “solve”.

In the case of being too warm, I would wager that my body tried to kick off the comforter. When it couldn’t through basic effort, my brain probably tried to wake the conscious part of me to get rid of it, but because I’m always so exhausted from lack of sleep it wasn’t having an easy time of it. Thus, part of my subconscious decided to punch my conscious brain in the nuts by throwing a nightmare its way. Presto! Heat problem solved.

While this is all well and fine, it would be nice if my asshole subconscious would be more selective with its nightmares. Last night I woke up after dreaming about my entire family dieing when a bloody airliner crashed into their neighborhood, killing them and like 200 other people in houses nearby. And to what end? I had a full bladder. Apparently, my subconscious associates my parents’ and siblings’ deaths with urination. Go figure.

What I want to know is, what ever happened to traditional, wholesome nightmares, like Freddy Kruger or an out-of-town drifter strangling me after a night of anonymous sex in an alley? (ed’s note: uhhhhhhhhh…) I may only be thirty-years-old, but in my day we did nightmares the right way. The American way. I just don’t understand this world anymore. *sigh*

Yeah, this is probably old news to real psychologists, but in case it’s not: if you’re a “real” scientist with a current “scientist license”, I guess you can steal my theory. Just don’t forget to credit me, King Awesome (yes, that is my real name; you can thank my urine for naming me that).

Link of the day: on second thought, don’t click this link, unless a half-Hello Kitty, half-woman in lingerie is your bag.

So, did you hear the one about the polar bear, the rabbi, and the Chinese guy that walk into a bar? Yeah, me either. I don’t think there is one like that. But, that’s besides the point. You know what else is besides the point? What the heck is a “one”? Why don’t we say “did you hear the joke…? ” Or for that matter, why the hell is “one” pronounced “wun”? Stupid English.

You know what’s not stupid? Polar bears. You’ve probably heard about this already, as I’m pretty much yesterday’s news, but there’s been a lot of fuss lately over whether to put polar bears on the path to being recognized as an endangered species. In a nutshell, here’s the deal: global warming (whether man made or not) seems to be prematurely melting large swaths of ice where the bears live, depriving said bears of hunting grounds, places to lay their eggs, and so on. So, rather than chilling on big pieces of ice, the polar bears have to float around on comically small blocks of ice where they basically starve to death. Their numbers are expected to decline precipitously in the coming decades if trends continue, so the thought is that we can put them on some list which gives them protection somehow.

I didn’t know this until about 10 minutes ago, but apparently polar bears are still hunted, with the US being the largest destination of bear pelts. I’m guessing the penises go to Asia, as Asians will turn any penis into a soup. As you can guess, the powerful bear penis lobby has those fat cats in Washington wrapped around their little fingers, so any attempt to put the bears on a protected list naturally rubs up against some stiff opposition. Also, penis.

In all seriousness, people who benefit from the hunting of polar bears are concerned about what a protected status would do to their livelihoods (this is primarily a problem with native tribes). In addition, since the die off is being caused by climate change, it’s not inconceivable that businesses that contribute to global warming (i.e. “everyone”) or which have commercial operations in areas where bears live could find themselves inundated with lawsuits blaming them for bear deaths.

I’m a veteran of at least several world wars, so as you can imagine, I’m a big fan of polar bears. Accordingly, I make sure my carbon emissions only kill off ugly animals and plants that no one wants. Like poodles. Or tree sloths. I certify that none of my carbon emissions have been used to kill polar bears. So please don’t sue me.

Now, finally getting to my point: it sucks that we can’t just have a legitimate debate about whether what we’re doing is in fact killing off the bears. It seems like we should ask two questions, and two questions only: are the bears in danger of extinction in the reasonably near future? If so, are we big enough assholes to say that our commercial interests are more important than the continued survival of this bear? I don’t care which way you argue the second question (there’s merit to both a “yes” and “no” answer), but it’s dumb to look at the question from a point of pure self-interest. If we’re killing off the bears and we want the bears to stick around, let’s find a way to protect them. If we like the bears but don’t care if they die, just say so. If drives me nuts that we dance around the issue. Human beings are such pussies.

I encourage you to write your congressman and tell them how you feel on this issue. You’ll probably get a nice form letter back with no real insight or human touch, but at least you’ll make me feel better about ending this blog abruptly because I don’t really know how to end it.

Edit: if you want a legitimate, mature opinion on this, here’s a story by some woman who actually has the training and fancy pants qualifications to write a good article.

There’s a lot of cool news coming out of the bio-tech industry of late. Perhaps the most exciting is that scientists are on the verge of creating the first synthetic life form. They can already make synthetic viruses, and have already succeeded in creating basic forms of DNA. Next up is the insertion of synthetic DNA into a “blank” cell. What this means is that a crazy-ass world is just over the horizon. If this technology can be exploited correctly, it means an amazing future for mankind built on the backs of designer organisms.

What this really means though—assuming some mad scientist doesn’t create a super bug that kills all of us—is that eventually, we’re probably going to combine this with cloning to make a way to significantly expand our lifetimes. It might be possible to push our age into the multiple hundreds of years. What pisses me off is that we’re so busy spending our money on dumb stuff, we’re probably not going to figure it out until I’m really old or until after I die. In short, I’m going to punch your grandkids in their balls, because they get to live to like 300, and I get to die like a normal sucker.