I was speaking to a friend yesterday about The Affordable Care Act. She said she was against it because Congress and their staffers were exempt. I allowed as to how that was untrue. They just didn't have to sign up because they were already covered...just like any of us who are already covered. She said that she didn't like it because government could screw up a wet dream and they were running it. I said that she was right about the government sucking balls mightily at doing just about anything part, but that they weren't providing the insurance or the care, and that the insurance companies were. She sighed and said it was just too expensive for the government. I said that the tax payers would individually carry the cost and that eventually it would become self-sufficient as everyone joined up. She said, "How do you know all this? Did you read the law?" I told her that as much as I'd love to, no, I don't have time to read even the 1000 page condensed version of the law. So I go to sites I trust and get summaries. If I find a site that leans one way or the other, then I try to get confirmation or dissent from the other side. I went to Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. I looked at BBC articles. I went to factcheck.org, and politifact.com and then checked their sources as well. I'm no slouch on research, because I expect to defend my position and defend it well. She wasn't impressed with my sources. She asked who was behind THEM? I said, Steve Forbes, Rupert Murdoch, Eugene Kiely, The Tampa Bay Times and other sundry writers and researchers. I am as familiar as I can be with the politics of these people. These publications, and the others I refer to are about as neutral as can be found. I asked what sources SHE used for her "facts". Her one source was her fucking mother-in-law. This is what I'm dealing with day in and day out.
I am not an instant fan of "Obamacare". There are issues with the law...but it is the law and it has been deemed constitutional by The Supreme Court of the United States. I know several people who will pay more than they used to for insurance. I know people who were willing to play the odds and forgo insurance that will no longer be able to do so...at least not without a penalty. Insurance companies already had too much power before this law. They collect too much money and look for any reason not to pay out. That is bad. And look at the odds. The fact that they make so much money shows that many people do not need insurance. What I am for, however, is an end to lifetime coverage limits, preexisting condition restrictions, and the idea that with coverage people will get preventative treatments and examinations where they haven't previously.
My friend was unimpressed with my facts and my neutrality. Nothing I could say would sway her. Why is she so entrenched in her beliefs? I am going to look into this, because when I figure that out, I'll have the answer to why this country is in the shape that it is.
Caustic the Clown
Monday, October 7, 2013
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
On This 9/ll, Please Keep Your Silence To Yourself
Lots of assholes will be jumping on the 9-11 bandwagon today. As you watch them spew their nonsensical and poorly reasoned requests for silence, take a moment and really think about that day and what it means to you and your country. Think about the real heroes that died trying to help save the person in the next cubicle, or who stopped to help a co-worker when they may have made it out in time on their own or the heroes that rushed into the collapsing WTC in the hopes of saving anyone at all. Think about the heroes that tried to clear rubble in the hopes of finding anyone alive at all (and they did). Also think about the work-a-day schlubs that died no more heroically than a simpleton who stumbles out into oncoming traffic, but let's not make them heroes. They're just dead people. Did they deserve to die? Most likely not, but let's try to reserve the word hero just a bit, can we? Think about the sorts of businesses that could afford to have offices in the WTC. Maybe think about the people who worked in the insurance companies, and law offices and financial institutions some of whom made their livelihoods out of dicking over Americans. Not heroes at all, really. Think about what drove men to hijack and crash the planes and the people on board who tried to stop them. Think about a plane smashing into the outer wall of our own Pentagon and then remember the international atrocities which have been planned and executed from that building. Think about what over-reacting to this day's events in the first place has done to our rights and our freedoms. Think about all the people, Americans and otherwise, who have died in our mission to fight something that cannot triumphed over using violence...terrorism. Think about all these things...and the silence will come of its own accord.
Caustic the Clown
As always, I welcome your comments below as well.
Caustic the Clown
As always, I welcome your comments below as well.
Friday, December 14, 2012
How to Piss Off Hundreds of People In The Aftermath of a Tragedy or How I Learned to Be Sickened by Facebook
So let me try this again. You know that thing people say about not digging your ditch deeper? F%&# that. Hand me a shovel.
So Facebook is full of attention whores. It is designed for the expressed use of said whoring. That is why it works. Here's what I ate today. Here are my pics of Asscrack, Indiana. Here are my butt-heinous kids, etc... I get that. But when you post your prayers and well wishes to people during a tragedy, what is the purpose of that? The families certainly won't see the posts. Only your followers. That is whoring. even if you don't know it. I guess I can't blame you. I like posting so much I have this stupid page. So, I've been using dickishness to call people out on this attention hounding today. Turns out people don't like to be called out on that sort of thing. People have unfriended me (Seriously? I just had to add unfriend to this dictionary thing). So what to do? You could pray silently in your home. You could sit cross legged or lotus style and send love or energy across the country or world to these families. Maybe that works. Then the only people that would know about your prayers, wishes and energy would be you and your maker...oh, and possibly the families receiving these bucketfulls of space wishes. But crap in one hand and send wishes on Facebook and see what you get at the end of the day.
Am I any better? Is the whore that runs around the streets of FB pointing and yelling "Whore! Whore!" any better? Probably not. Way more fun though, and at least I feel like I'm contributing to society.
So what is the alternative? Jimmy Carter. He used to build houses for people who needed houses. That's pretty cool. I think that was before Facebook. Don't get me wrong. HFH has a Facebook page, but they don't use it to send energy. They use it to promote their habitat construction cause...which is pretty awesome. Before Facebook people had to get off their asses to contribute to the world and could only tell people that they were praying for other people a couple of friends at a time. I miss that.
Next, turn off the news. Right. Now. In two days or a week or a month all the details will be out. Don't let CNN grab your whole Friday night (or worse your whole damn weekend!) for the same footage over and over and the same sad sacks doing nothing and saying what a tragedy this is or the pro-gun and anti-gun dildos duking it out and miniscule updates every hour on the hour. Fuck Wolf Blitzer. At least for today, fuck him right in the facehead. They get us during hurricanes, blizzards, wars and elections. Take the night off. Wait until they have something useful to say. Tonight---go out drinking with your friends and tell some positive stories. Hang out with your family and watch Home Alone or The Santa Clause or something. Hug people. Hugs are good. Not enough hugs in the world. Incidentally, I'm a huge proponent of hugs! Creepy clown hugs for all!
Tomorrow--think of a way that you can improve your life and the lives of those around you: family, friends and strangers. Then do the thing that you thought of. Yes you can wait until after the holidays. We're all busy...I know. Make at a New Years resolution. No, not one of those fake ones where you don't quit smoking, or drinking, or kicking your dog, or beating your children, or cheating on your wife. Make a really real one and follow though with it. If we all do that, there will be a lot less terrible tragedies for CNN to report on...at least ones as bad as this.
Caustic McGee
P.S. Fuck you if you don't like my attitude. Maybe my medium sized penis of truth hurts just a little too much when I pound it (minus lube) into your sensitive rear of ignorance!
Bwahhhahhahha!
P.P.S. I'm on Chantix. It may be making me more caustic than ever. Whatevs. I love it.
So Facebook is full of attention whores. It is designed for the expressed use of said whoring. That is why it works. Here's what I ate today. Here are my pics of Asscrack, Indiana. Here are my butt-heinous kids, etc... I get that. But when you post your prayers and well wishes to people during a tragedy, what is the purpose of that? The families certainly won't see the posts. Only your followers. That is whoring. even if you don't know it. I guess I can't blame you. I like posting so much I have this stupid page. So, I've been using dickishness to call people out on this attention hounding today. Turns out people don't like to be called out on that sort of thing. People have unfriended me (Seriously? I just had to add unfriend to this dictionary thing). So what to do? You could pray silently in your home. You could sit cross legged or lotus style and send love or energy across the country or world to these families. Maybe that works. Then the only people that would know about your prayers, wishes and energy would be you and your maker...oh, and possibly the families receiving these bucketfulls of space wishes. But crap in one hand and send wishes on Facebook and see what you get at the end of the day.
Am I any better? Is the whore that runs around the streets of FB pointing and yelling "Whore! Whore!" any better? Probably not. Way more fun though, and at least I feel like I'm contributing to society.
So what is the alternative? Jimmy Carter. He used to build houses for people who needed houses. That's pretty cool. I think that was before Facebook. Don't get me wrong. HFH has a Facebook page, but they don't use it to send energy. They use it to promote their habitat construction cause...which is pretty awesome. Before Facebook people had to get off their asses to contribute to the world and could only tell people that they were praying for other people a couple of friends at a time. I miss that.
Next, turn off the news. Right. Now. In two days or a week or a month all the details will be out. Don't let CNN grab your whole Friday night (or worse your whole damn weekend!) for the same footage over and over and the same sad sacks doing nothing and saying what a tragedy this is or the pro-gun and anti-gun dildos duking it out and miniscule updates every hour on the hour. Fuck Wolf Blitzer. At least for today, fuck him right in the facehead. They get us during hurricanes, blizzards, wars and elections. Take the night off. Wait until they have something useful to say. Tonight---go out drinking with your friends and tell some positive stories. Hang out with your family and watch Home Alone or The Santa Clause or something. Hug people. Hugs are good. Not enough hugs in the world. Incidentally, I'm a huge proponent of hugs! Creepy clown hugs for all!
Tomorrow--think of a way that you can improve your life and the lives of those around you: family, friends and strangers. Then do the thing that you thought of. Yes you can wait until after the holidays. We're all busy...I know. Make at a New Years resolution. No, not one of those fake ones where you don't quit smoking, or drinking, or kicking your dog, or beating your children, or cheating on your wife. Make a really real one and follow though with it. If we all do that, there will be a lot less terrible tragedies for CNN to report on...at least ones as bad as this.
Caustic McGee
P.S. Fuck you if you don't like my attitude. Maybe my medium sized penis of truth hurts just a little too much when I pound it (minus lube) into your sensitive rear of ignorance!
Bwahhhahhahha!
P.P.S. I'm on Chantix. It may be making me more caustic than ever. Whatevs. I love it.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Stop Filling My Inbox With Lies
G'afternoon, Clownies. So I gets this email today from a relafriend. Attached to the email is a power point about the history of the song "Taps". The text of the power point is a powerful story that takes place during the U.S. Civil War. In the story a Union captain hears a severely wounded soldier on the battle field moaning and beefing his way to the great beyond. This crazy ass captain crawls halfway across the gut strewn battlefield, dodging bullets and rebel flags to drag this soldier to safety. When he gets back to his camp he discovers that the soldier is a confederate. There's more! As he gazes down upon the soldiers face in the pale moonlight he discovers that the young man is not only his son, the solder is also a werewolf! Ok. So I made that last part up. The guy being his son is plenty enough Jerry Springer without the stupid werewolf thing. To make a fake story short the captain asks for a burial with honors for his son which ain't gonna happen cause his kid is a Southie. Cappy asks for the Army band to play at the funeral and the army says, FU...ok, we'll give you one guy. But what to play when "Taps" hasn't been written yet. We'll guess what. It was! It just happened to be on a piece of paper in the dead kid's pocket. And the musician that the Army provided? He was a damned bugler.
It didn't take me too long to call bullshit on this story. I double checked on Snopes to be sure. So I replied back to the sender, "Great story. But totally untrue...sadly." Unfortunately I replied back to the whole send list. My relafriend replied back kindly and thoughtfully, but one of the persons who I accidentally cc'd on my reply sent me this:
Harmless; I never check validity of such stories. Sorry.
Well guess what? You should fucking be "sorry". First of all, when I get an email like this I check it. Why? Because if it is a good story and it's not a bunch of made up monkeyshit then I will forward it along. There are good stories that deserved to be shared. But I'm not going to forward tripe, because there's enough fucking trolling on the internet already without me aiding and abetting. And please have no illusions, these emails are created and propagated by the trolliest of trolls.
Harmless? Is it really? Here we are as a nation of nincompoops passing around a bunch of phoney fakey crap and getting our jollies by reading and sharing made up drivel when there is some seriously sick shit going on that needs our attention. Also, there is some seriously awesome shit that needs our attention. So we allow ourselves to be suckered in by the easy win and get choked up when we hear about how Mr. Rogers wore a sweater to hide his badass marine sniper tats or how the cockpit mic recorded an entire plane worth of prayers onto the black box as the plane went down. Can't we appreciate Mr. Rogers awesomeness without someone turning him into a blood thirsty sniper? Can't the plane have gone down with a bunch of solemn or horny atheists and agnostics?
Here's the harm, folks. These lying liars have an agenda. They take a story that is just fine and twist and pervert for one of two goals...furthering their cause or just plain fucking with us. It is too easy to read a story of fake history and be taken in by a glorious tale. Take a look at real history and learn your lessons there. Real history is gritty and unpleasant and frequently does not have a happy ending. Those who learn fake history are doomed to repeat the fuckups from real history. And don't just read a story in an email (even with pics!) about how a mother dog who had just lost her puppies ran into a house and saved a litter of kittens, because here's the thing:
You are doing absolutely nothing.
Passing along a made up email of fake heroics might brighten somebody's day for a second or even a minute. Ya know what's better? Read today's news and send someone a summary of an awesome story you find there. And include the link? You bet your sweet patooty! Even better than that? YOU go do something worthy of a viral email. Go do something great that helps people! Someone might write an email about it! If they don't then just create a fake gmail address like fakebillhawkins1967@gmail.com, import your email contacts, write a blurb about yourself (or better yet a power point) and have fakebillhawkins tell your family and friends what you did with a catchy title like Guess what your pal (your real name) did! He (your real awesome deed which you did and is really real)!
I don't bust fake emails because I'm a Debbie downer. I don't do it to feel superior in any way (it does make me feel superior, but that's not why I do it). I don't go to snopes to make my friends and family feel, look and possibly smell like idiots. I do it because there is enough foolish falseness out there without people I know and love adding to it. The trolls have taken over our very existence, but nobody is forcing us to feed them. Conversely, there is enough real good and there are enough real heroes and truly heartwarming stories to brighten up our lives...for realz. THOSE are the stories that need to be shared. We don't see it because we're cleaning the meaningless freaking garbage out of our crowded-ass freaking inboxes all the time!!! And if you cannot find the heartwarming heroic good that I write of (try stepping away from the fucking computer for a second) then go and make it happen yourself. THEN you can email me about it! (but I'm still agonna Snope it!)
Woot!
Caustic the Clown
Comments welcome...below me.
It didn't take me too long to call bullshit on this story. I double checked on Snopes to be sure. So I replied back to the sender, "Great story. But totally untrue...sadly." Unfortunately I replied back to the whole send list. My relafriend replied back kindly and thoughtfully, but one of the persons who I accidentally cc'd on my reply sent me this:
Harmless; I never check validity of such stories. Sorry.
Well guess what? You should fucking be "sorry". First of all, when I get an email like this I check it. Why? Because if it is a good story and it's not a bunch of made up monkeyshit then I will forward it along. There are good stories that deserved to be shared. But I'm not going to forward tripe, because there's enough fucking trolling on the internet already without me aiding and abetting. And please have no illusions, these emails are created and propagated by the trolliest of trolls.
Harmless? Is it really? Here we are as a nation of nincompoops passing around a bunch of phoney fakey crap and getting our jollies by reading and sharing made up drivel when there is some seriously sick shit going on that needs our attention. Also, there is some seriously awesome shit that needs our attention. So we allow ourselves to be suckered in by the easy win and get choked up when we hear about how Mr. Rogers wore a sweater to hide his badass marine sniper tats or how the cockpit mic recorded an entire plane worth of prayers onto the black box as the plane went down. Can't we appreciate Mr. Rogers awesomeness without someone turning him into a blood thirsty sniper? Can't the plane have gone down with a bunch of solemn or horny atheists and agnostics?
Here's the harm, folks. These lying liars have an agenda. They take a story that is just fine and twist and pervert for one of two goals...furthering their cause or just plain fucking with us. It is too easy to read a story of fake history and be taken in by a glorious tale. Take a look at real history and learn your lessons there. Real history is gritty and unpleasant and frequently does not have a happy ending. Those who learn fake history are doomed to repeat the fuckups from real history. And don't just read a story in an email (even with pics!) about how a mother dog who had just lost her puppies ran into a house and saved a litter of kittens, because here's the thing:
You are doing absolutely nothing.
Passing along a made up email of fake heroics might brighten somebody's day for a second or even a minute. Ya know what's better? Read today's news and send someone a summary of an awesome story you find there. And include the link? You bet your sweet patooty! Even better than that? YOU go do something worthy of a viral email. Go do something great that helps people! Someone might write an email about it! If they don't then just create a fake gmail address like fakebillhawkins1967@gmail.com, import your email contacts, write a blurb about yourself (or better yet a power point) and have fakebillhawkins tell your family and friends what you did with a catchy title like Guess what your pal (your real name) did! He (your real awesome deed which you did and is really real)!
I don't bust fake emails because I'm a Debbie downer. I don't do it to feel superior in any way (it does make me feel superior, but that's not why I do it). I don't go to snopes to make my friends and family feel, look and possibly smell like idiots. I do it because there is enough foolish falseness out there without people I know and love adding to it. The trolls have taken over our very existence, but nobody is forcing us to feed them. Conversely, there is enough real good and there are enough real heroes and truly heartwarming stories to brighten up our lives...for realz. THOSE are the stories that need to be shared. We don't see it because we're cleaning the meaningless freaking garbage out of our crowded-ass freaking inboxes all the time!!! And if you cannot find the heartwarming heroic good that I write of (try stepping away from the fucking computer for a second) then go and make it happen yourself. THEN you can email me about it! (but I'm still agonna Snope it!)
Woot!
Caustic the Clown
Comments welcome...below me.
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