7.18.02

Hey all! How’s it goin? I can’t complain and even if I did no one would listen. Been a pretty uneventful week really. Leading up to what will hopefully be an eventful weekend. I doubt it, but a guy can dream, can’t he?

Now last weekend, on the other hand, last weekend was eventful. We had out big housewarming party celebrating the inaugural year of Monte’s debt. Friends from far and wide came for the event and a good time was had by all. Granted, we had planned on a few other people showing who didn’t, but, frankly, their absence wasn’t going to keep us from having a good time. However, it did leave us with way too much food leftover – 16 hamburger patties, at least a dozen of various types of bratwurst, a few half-bags of chips and quite a bit of a keg of beer. We even had a ton left of everyone’s favorite beverage, The Chief, who claimed a few more victims over the weekend.

So where are the pictures? Right HERE.

Anyway, I’d like to thank everyone who came by, especially Butch/Joanne and Travis/Chris who drove from as far away as Ottawa, IL to be there. To those of you who said before that you couldn’t make it, “Maybe next time.” To those of you who said you’d be there and didn’t show, “Blow me.”

I watched a movie the other night that I hadn’t seen in easily 10 years called “Pump Up the Volume”. PUtV, stars Christian Slater, the oddly attractive Samantha Mathis and features an apparently pre-nosejob Seth Green. Ringing any bells yet? In the film, a quiet kid whose family recently moved to the burbs decides to start using his short-wave radio set to broadcast a pirate, one-man talk show. While on the air, the kid spouts off about school, society, parents, sex and just about everything else under the sun, all under the anonymous safety of a nickname, “Happy Harry Hard-on”. (It makes sense in the film, trust me) Does this sound like anyone you know? “Well, not lately”, you might respond, but I think that’s going to change.

Yes, I’m going to try to get back to my rants and philosophizing like I did back in the day. Will every entry be me going off on “the system” like the aforementioned radio host? Nah. I’ll still have entries where I’m just letting you know what’s going on in my life, but I am going to make an honest effort to get back to what SMX was once all about: my big, fat mouth running on and on about stuff I probably don’t fully understand, but I’m going to give you my opinion on anyway. As usual, you’re welcome to shoot me an email and let me know what you think of my stupid opinion and maybe we can start a good conversation, possibly one highlighted on the site.

So, I’m thinking there’s no time like the present to kick this new/old direction off. However, rather than type 30 pages about one subject, how about we play a little “catch up” and get some quickies out of the way. Let’s see…where to begin…where…to…begin…

The Pledge of Allegiance: “…one nation, under God…” Ya know what? I could give a shit if they take this out of schools or not. I didn’t even know they were still saying it in schools. Why? What’s the point? It’s not like it means anything to Mrs. Jensen’s third grade class when they say it first thing in the morning. (At least I think she’s still teaching third grade). Oddly, I think the only people who care one way or the other are people who have way too much time on their hands. There are a lot more important things to worry about in the educational system as far as I’m concerned. How come no one ever seems to want to fix the important stuff? All I know is the parents who got it banned must be so proud of themselves. They saved little Johnny from having to say “God” while inside a public school. Thank God…excuse me, thank goodness, they didn’t help stop the flow of drugs into Johnny’s school; or counsel some kid in the A/V club who threatened the quarterback of the football team with a fully automatic Uzi; or tutor some star basketball playing senior who can’t even read at a fourth grade level. Thank the stars and stripes they got rid of the pledge instead! They might be able to overturn the ruling now, then the overturn will be overturned, and we’ll go back and forth like this for decades while millions of America’s children take thirty minutes to sound out the word “illiterate”.

Enron, WorldCom, Martha Stewart, etc: Why is everyone acting so surprised here? Wow! You mean to tell me that wealthy businessmen are not the moral pillar of the community!? How do you think they became wealthy businessmen in the first place? By walking old ladies across the street and volunteering down at the local soup kitchen? Hell no! They shoved that old lady into the middle of rush hour traffic and then charged her $25,000 for a new hip (after the insurance she’s been paying into her entire life covered only $150 of the operation), $6,000 for a Tylenol and $2,400 for a plate of “meat”loaf and mashed “potato-like food product”. Right after fixing up that old lady, they tore down the soup kitchen to make room for yet another Starbucks and an IKEA furniture outlet. C’mon people! Wake up and smell the coffee…actually, make that a double tall, skinny, choco-moco latte with just a dash of nutmeg and charge me $6 for it.

The Middle East: Boy, I do not envy ol’ Uncle Dubya. My main concern right now is Iraq. If we attack Saddam, we’re going to find we’ve stuck our Willies into a hornet’s nest (I’ve tried it, trust me, you don’t want to). All he’s going to do is pull an Osama on us and start an even larger-scale terrorist campaign against us. But, if we don’t do anything about him, he can continue to work with, train, fund and supply terrorists, which isn’t good either, all while rebuilding his bio/chemical weapons and trying to acquire (if he hasn’t already) nuclear capabilities. So what do we do? Well, this is one I simply don’t have an answer for. All I know is, the Mayan calendar, considered by many the world over as the most accurate calendar ever produced, claims the world is going to end on December 23, 2012. At this rate, we’ll be lucky to last that long.

On that cheery note, I think I’ve covered enough for this week. Who knows? Maybe next week will be a full-on assault about capitalism run wild. Maybe it will be about which member of The Golden Girls is the hottest (Oh, Rose, you she-devil, you). Maybe I’ll have such an exciting, fulfilling weekend that I have to tell you every minute detail of what happened. You never can tell around here, can you?

So, go read The Boundry tomorrow as I continue July’s month o’ horrors. And until next week, in the immortal words of Happy Harry Hard-on, “Talk Hard!”

Space Monkey X