Am I twisted or do I just see the big picture too well?

I ask the header question after watching the third Presidential debate. Obama and McCain bounced over their regular talking points and argued their points. McCain tried to attack Obama but seemed to strike with the accuracy and deftness of an elderly pit viper, that has lost its sensitivity to vibration and just cant seem to sense differentials in temperature as well as he once could, also, he has a partially paralyzed left snake muscle (note: I never claimed to be a snake biologist) and Obama was, well Obama. The guy was top of his class at Harvard and a trial lawyer to boot, not the best person to have to argue against. I was not impressed by either candidate, hell, I dislike both sides of the major political coin anyway. I was relatively bored throughout. Then, towards the end, something caught my mind. It was when the candidates were talking about education. A subject near and dear to my heart because of my seething hatred for the ignorant in our world. What was it? it was when McCain said this...

"We need to encourage programs such as Teach for America and Troops to Teachers where people, after having served in the military, can go right to teaching and not have to take these examinations which -- or have the certification that some are required in some states"

Examinations? Certifications? I don't know bout you but, if I had kids, I would want them to have a certified teacher that can pass an exam or two. That is not what bugs my though. What got to me was the thing about sending people right from the military to teach without exams or certifications. I checked up on Troops to Teachers and, sure enough, they even want some certification to be a teacher, well, they want this...

Who May Apply: (specifically) Former members of the U.S. Armed Forces, including members of the Armed Forces Reserves may apply. Applicants must apply to the Defense Activities for Non-Traditional Education Support (DANTES) for assistance. Applicants aspiring to be an elementary or secondary school teacher must have a baccalaureate or advanced degree and:

• Have retired from active duty;
• Will retire within one year of application;
• Have been transferred to the ready reserve;
• Have been released from active duty after six or more years of active duty immediately before separation;
• Have completed at least 10 years of active duty;
• Have executed a reserve commitment agreement for not less than three years;
• Have been retired or separated due to physical disability;
• Have been involuntarily discharged or released from active duty due to a reduction in force between Oct. 1, 1990 and Sept. 30, 1999; or
• Have applied and qualified under the previous Troops-to-Teachers program statute (10 U.S.C. 1151).

Now this, I have no problem with. I had teachers that were ex military and they weren't all half bad. They new the subject they were trying to teach and the had the credentials and ability to teach it. Sure some of them were gung ho about getting us to sign up right out of school but most of them were alright. Then I thought back to my junior year of high school. I was in my Social Studies class when two Marine Drill instructors walked into the room. They sat for an hour telling us why we should join up and, they had an RV outside to collect preregistration info. That is the same year that our economics class had us take a non-voluntary ASVAB test (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). This didn't bother me at the time, I was just a stupid kid but now that I am older and so much more cynical, it bugs the hell out of me. I have felt, for a good chunk of years now, that our government is trying to form a true, military police state. So this is what I heard in last nights argument.

First, calling Obama "Pro-abortion) that is a buzz word kind of deal used to rile up his religious zealot base. Fine, I can understand being against abortions and, when I look at most of the kids around me as I go grocery shopping, I can understand being pro-choice. Hell I think we should be able to abort certain adults if they don't stop having stupid children. The fact is the McCain wants more babies out there and he doesn't care if having the kid will kill the mom, baby first, mom second.

Next was the education issue. Why is education of such low importance to our government? Most of my teachers were atrociously ignorant and slow witted when I was growing up but apparently now, they are far worse. For decades or education systems funding has been eaten away by things the government has deemed more important and I am not just saying Republican government, it has been both sides of the isle here. Shouldn't teaching children how not to be completely ignorant be a top priority? I guess not.

Then you have all the medical garbage flying about, well, we know it would be near impossible to socialize medicine in America but, we also know that no one is trying to control costs in a market that is running rampant. One thing us poor folk do have on our side is the Hippocratic Oath. That is a help everyone or lose you license kind of thing. The scariest thing about McCains privatization of the medical industry idea is that it would throw that oath out the window and turn your pre-existing condition into the the medical equivalent of having really bad credit. Sure, you can drive or fly to another state for care but that is gonna cost you a hell of a lot more than five grand. Plus, I pay enough taxes as it is I don't need my insurance taxed as well.

Now, this is where I stretch it all apart and smush it into my point. What happens in a world full of poorly educated, babies that are worried about their future health? They join the military. It becomes really easy to assimilate kids when they grow up with teachers that talk about their service all the time. especially if those teachers don't really have the credentials to teach anything other than Phys-Ed. Sure, maybe I am reaching but, with all the other crap going on in our government, all the shady deals and over the top, secret "spy on your own people" kinda crap. I feel that reaching a little is fair. Maybe, if a few people caught it in time, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin (even though, Stalin came in pretty well set up) could have been stopped just short of their little plans for world domination to really kick off and get a lot of innocent people killed.

I know, not as funny as usual but I think, if I ever win the lottery and move to the South of France like I would like to. Then the American police state comes to fruition. Then I will feel that this is much funnier, to me at least.

Damn you WE network

It was 2:30 AM and I was up, couldn't sleep, lazily flipping through the channel guide on my tv when something caught my eye. A show called "Transgender women in prison". I thought that sounded like a winner, figuring, since it was on that late it was probably one of those poorly acted and edited, soft core pornos that used to be run on "USA: Up all night" back in the late 80's. Regretfully, I did not take notice of the channel on which this movie was being broadcast. It was not on USA, Spike, The CW, TNT or even Telemundo. No, it was on the Womens Entertainment network and, also to my chagrin, it wasn't even a movie but a documentary about the lives of transgender inmates. How appauling. Here I am, bored out of my mind at 2:30 in the morning, thinking I have scored a late night BDSM flick that has been edited for content, which makes them, oh so funny, yet, there I was, faced with the horrors of a chickumentary that was like watching an episode of "Lock up, Raw" but everyone in it hated their birth genitals. Granted, when I realized the ow humor value of the show, I moved on. I would have taried a while if, say, a mustachioed gaurd holding a fire hose, would have, at any time walked up to a cell and said, "shower time ladies, get those uniforms off", then he licks his lips as if drooling. I am not kidding, that scene is in every movie of the "in prison/ in chains" genre. That is one of the things that makes them so beautiful to watch. So I will just say, I was saddened and disappointed, so I went back to the menu and reactivated my thumbs search for anything to relieve my ennui. Suddenly something else caught my eye and it looked like a winner. "Confessions of a go go dancer". "Hooray" I though, this one had to be a video nasty, with all the nasty spliced out. I immediately highlighted the selection, pressing the enter button, hand trembling in anticipation of getting to see a woman, strung out on cocaine and her ever budding hatred for the male gender as she grings her hips and breast on the body of a woman that she only ever thought of as a friend, until the night her no good, drunk, abusive boyfriend smacked her up a bit and left her crying on the couch, the slightest drip of blood on her quivering lip. Seriously, you gotta watch these movies, it is always like that. Well, the channel comes on and what do I get? Some "more than just friends" girl on girl dancing? No. How about a scene where a bad ex boyfriend gets hit by his ex girlfriend who stole his car out of the garage? Nope. Anything good and sexually and mentally degrading in any way? No. What I did get was a show about a girl that became a go go dancer to pay the bills and then her life went down the toilet and she went to therapy to figure it all out and blah, blah, blah. Boring. I went back to the channel guide and low and behold, I was on the Oxygen network.

So, in conclussion of this story I would just like to say this. Damn you womens entertainment networks of the world. Your misleading titles are ruining television for the surly, latenight viewer with an eye for the depraved, class C movie. Is it funny to you? Some kind of joke? You are ruining the lives of men and women everywhere that can't abide soft core movies unless they have been hacked to bits by an editor with one eye and Parkinsons disease. I know everyone loves when a woman is ripped out of her prison jump suit, hit in the face with delousing powder as three female guard approach her and they say something to the effect of " Let's get you cleaned up and, all of a sudden, there is a horrible jump cut and the same inmate is crying in her cell, the only evidence of any mistreatment is the utter lack of lice. These are the moment fans of crappy movies live for and you had to go and ruin them womens entertainment networks. Well I say damn you, damn you, damn you, damn you all to Hell.

Just had to get that off my chest.

Oh yeah, that's another one. When the sexy lady warden says to the hot prison yard snitch, " Is there something you want to get off your chest?" then she touches the snitches shoulder and rubs her tits, or twirls the snitches hair. If the warden is a man, he will usually smell her hair and the snitch will look down at the ground, to timid to say anything.

'Til death do us part?

So I have recently been besieged by people wondering when I am gonna get married. I just want to put this out there for everyone. Why is it so damn important to get marriaged? Maybe I am weird, in fact, I can damn well guarantee that I am but I am very good at seeing perspectives and ideals of other people, yet this marriage thing, the older I get, the less I get it. Sure when I was nineteen, living in a small town and worried that I would never find love as pure as the psycho hell bitch I was with at the time, I thought marriage was a good idea. Get hitched, pop out a couple a brats, accidentally shoot myself in the throat while while watching Austrian mongoose porn and masturbating with a handgun to my face, you know, the small town American dream. Now, many years later I find it absurd. Why get married? Is it a religious thing? I have read the bible, a few of them and I gotta say that there is no real definitive "get married or else" clause that I can find. It says a lot about not being an adulterer but, since adultery is for the married, the unmarried can't really commit it. Not a loop hole the pro marriage folks like to dwell on. The bible does say this though and I just like to write it out for you.

"You have heard that the law of Moses says, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust in his eye has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So if your eye , even if it is your good eye, causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your hand, even if it is your stronger hand, causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Thank you King James Bible for that image. I always wondered why there were all those eyes and hands laying in the parking lot of my local, neighborhood strip club. So if it isn't purely religious, how about political? The government seems to be pretty keen on all of us finding our one and only and staying with that person, even after we decide that we hate the very flesh their blood ozzes through like bile through a cold sieve, just because we don't want to lose half our stuff. Really though, it seems that the government boosts marriage for another reason, taxes and children. If you are single and owe someone money, dieing pretty much stops that in its tracks, sure the people you once owed can harass your kin folk but good luck squeezing a dime out of them. Yet a spouse, they can be squeezed nasty, anaconda on the scrotum style. If you once owed, they will pay what you owed. Nothing like getting a bill for grieving. Then You have children. Apperantly being married makes it more likely that you will have kids. I don't know who came up with that idea but I can say, with tempered certainty, that they have never been to a McD's in North East Minneapolis around wellfare check day. Eight thousand screaming children and two women, both on cell phones, both ignoring said kids and, of course, talking to eachother via said phones. Get a recruiter in there today and you have your Army of tomorrow, all with out one single diamond band or " I take thee".

Which comes to another of the many things that bug me about marriage...weddings. What a waste of money, resources and time these things are. An average wedding costs about ten thousand bucks in this country, so for every Justice of the Piece wedding that costs about a grand max. There are weddings that are getting up to the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wow, that much money to prove that you love someone, I always thought the bast way to show someone that you care was to not eviscerate them with a sharpened Weeble-Wobble but I guess to each their own. And forbid that you get a religious wedding, you have to rent a tux, a church, a limo and a priest. That's another strange thing about weddings, you rent a church for them. If the church feels that marriage is so important, why don't they do all that crap for free? Also, if adultery is so wrong, why do bridesmaids always show so much more cleavage than the brides? It's like saying to the poor groom," Look at all these tits, they are forbidden now, you will be with the tits that hide 'neith the lacy death throw, forever" (insert evil, Vincent Priceian laugh here)

So why is marriage so important to people? I guess it is this simple. For hundreds of years it has been beaten into our heads that we need to live life like everyone else has since the dawn of history. Well I say, screw those guys, they're dead, I am not, yet. So see how all that worked out for them. Suckers.

Oh yeah, in answer to when I am getting married, I say PPPffffffftttttttt!