I have lots of stuff on my mind this Superbowl Sunday. So many things that the lashing and whirling of my mind woke me up out of a deep sleep. Woke me up to discover I was clenching my teeth so hard I had muscle cramps in my jaw. Good thing I got that biteguard from the dentist last year. Otherwise I'd have nothing but gums left. I find all the things on my mind sapping my energy, my motivation, and all the color seems to be draining out of the world. All these are warning signs that I'm getting depressed again. Sometimes I'm not sure whether I'm depressed or simply recognizing the idiocy of my fellow Americans. Why is it so difficult people to just "get along" on this planet? Is it just me thinking that so many Americans are willfully ignorant-- and aggressive about maintaining that willful ignorance?

I have a college education. I work a job in programming. I make $13 per hour. I recognize the fact that I have a lot more than most people in this country. I don't have an extravagant lifestyle, I have no credit cards, nothing outstanding but my student loans and yet somehow I can barely make even the most basic of bills. I don't even have enough money for groceries let alone what it takes to get my 20-year-old car fixed. Then I think about all the people in this country who are far, far worse off. And when I look at the future of this country, this "New American Century" as forged by Bush & Co., I find no hope.

To be frank, I'm downright ashamed to be an American. I find the behavior of the government under this president to be appalling and even worse is the fact that the majority of people refuse to hold it accountable. Alito's nomination makes me want to fucking puke, because it means the fascists have a deathgrip on every branch of government and they'll be damned if they'll let go. Prepare to kiss your civil rights goodbye, everyone. We're going back to the good ol' days of the Robber Barons. Alito, Thomas, Scalia and all the other goose-stepping "judges" Bush has had installed in every court at every level are standing by to wind the clock back 100 years.

First thing to go? Workers' Rights. Never mind the "Roe v. Wade" smokescreen the fascists have been using to whip up support from the Jesus-People, this "new order" is about fucking over the common person and stripping them of any right to demand anything, even the ability to stand up and say "no". Say good-bye to the minimum wage law, OSHA safety regulations, health benefits, pensions, public education. Say hello to unskilled, ignorant masses toiling at sweatshop-style labor in hazardous conditions for wages equivalent to those in the third world. While, of course, the tycoons responsible for this travesty get to rest comfortable in the knowledge that the government they bought will protect them from the unwashed masses. Those same masses they ensured would remain unwashed and ignorant by buying out the free press and cutting funds to public education. Watch these greedy fucks lean back and stick their thumbs into their waistcoats, buttons straining over their prodigious guts. Watch as they chomp their fat black cigars - which despite Freud's protests is most definitely representational of a phallus; that in particular being Satan's and at which these tycoons greedily suck like piglets. Stand by as they pull said member out of their mouths to shove it squarely in the ass of John Q. Public. Feel that? Bush would have you believe that feeling is freedom.

This year's State of the Union Address felt more like a three-ring circus combined with Hitler's speech at the Reichstag. Since when does the Supreme Court show up for the State of the Union Address? Oh, that's right! When the Neocons feel it necessary to flaunt the power they've usurped. It's not enough to emasculate the system, they have to rub our noses in it too. And the American public applauds them as they do! Am I weird for wishing with all my being that the House of Representatives would spontaneously explode from all that raw evil being in one building? Is it unpatriotic of me to demand where in the fuck my rights went? Oh yeah, that's right. Just over a year ago they evaporated irretreivably into the ether thanks to Diebold's rigged voting machines. I find it interesting that the Nevada Gaming Commission stated "...a voter would have a better chance of ensuring their vote is counted fairly on a slot machine than on one of Diebold's electronic voting machines." ...and Nevada still went red in '04. What irony.

Oh wait. Ha HA, I forgot. Hastert says these are just sour grapes! I guess I've just been taken in by a conspiracy theory! That's it, I can relax, right? Never mind that I spent a three-hour seminar at DefCon in the summer of '04 watching a woman with a pHd in computer engineering point out every instance of jiggered source code and then go on to demonstrate exactly how Diebold could use said jiggered code to count the votes any goddamned way they wanted.

Where is she now, you may ask? Prison. She was arrested for "revealing confidential business information". Arrested like Cindy Sheehan, who was frog-marched in handcuffs from the floor of the House of Representatives just before the State of the Union Address. What for? "Unlawful Conduct". For fuck's sake, she was wearing an anti-war tee-shirt! Not vocally protesting, not making a scene! Sheehan was wearing a tee-shirt. If that's not a violation of First Amendment rights, what is? Anyone? Hello? Was anyone watching C-Span?

The media watchdog has been neutered, ladies and gentlemen. None of the outrage made it into the news. The Sheehan story was plastered over with a veneer of calm. I heard no discussion about the violation of her rights in mainstream media. In fact, FOX and the Washington Post were practically cheering the DCPD for arresting Sheehan! What the fuck?! To add insult to injury, the Diebold story goes undiscussed-- and then anyone who challenges the results of the 2004 election or voices suspicion of electronic voting machines is instantly decried as a "radical leftist conspiracy theorist". Makes me want to goddamned VOMIT. And the Hastert has the GALL to accuse the opposition of "sour grapes", of "conspiracy theorism". Let me clue you in, Denny-boy: just because someone connects the dots and forms a THEORY doesn't mean it ain't HAPPENING.

So go back to the glow of your television sets, Working-Class America. Go back to watching steroid addicts beat each other senseless over a pigskin in that sanitized, farcical simulacrum of war we call "Superbowl XL". Watch your million-dollar commercials and chuckle as you stuff fistfuls of Doritos and Budwiser into your collective mouths. Let your T.V. numb you. Don't worry about the aching in your ass, that's just freedom.

Yesterday I went dumpster-diving.

It's funny how this happened, the connection of events that led my lady friend, myself and our two friends to digging through an apartment complex dumpster-- but never mind, that's what happened yesterday evening. Here in Davis, leases end in mid-August. Hence this is the time when the students who could afford to stay in town over the summer have to move out and go elsewhere -- back to the dorms, across town, under the rock from which they crawled out, whatever. So people move out at the last minute and toss whatever they find inconvenient.

From the first dumpster I found a pair of restaurant-grade Calphalon pots (clean & in pristine condition!), several textbooks, a gorgeous crystal bowl with a ceramic stem, a steel CD rack, a solid silver dipper, and the gem: a Siemens C56 cell phone, its account deactivated but otherwise still in perfect working order. Some friends who were walking with us found a lot more. The odd thing was that all this stuff had been mixed in with "real" garbage -- e.g., rotting food and kitchen & bathroom waste. Thankfully most of the slimy/gooey stuff was bagged up so for the most part I didn't actually have to come in contact with it, but the goods in with it were things you might find at a consignment store, not a dumpster. This especially since a thrift store was barely two blocks up the street.

The retail cost of all the crap the four of us pulled out was well over $1,000. Out of curiosity, Robyn and I decided to investigate other dumpsters in other apartment complexes. Much to my chagrin we found even more; about twenty pounds of freshly laundered clothing (male and female), a spice rack full of spices, a bathroom vanity full of candles & essential oils, a full set of dinnerware, several more textbooks, an unused hard drive (still in its packaging!), a bicycle frame, two 55-gallon aquariums (both broken) and lots of other things. We left the bike frame, the broken aquariums and a lot of the clothing but took the rest.

Three dumpsters and a pile of loot later I found myself in navel-gazing mode. I first assumed someone had to have been in an emergency move-out frame-of-mind in order to throw away such high quality things, especially when in such pristine condition. Nonetheless I discovered that the more I dug out, the more bitterness I felt. The more I found, the more intense my sense of disgust and loathing at the society in which I live -- a society which would rather trash or destroy something rather than give it to someone for free. Giving something to someone for free, especially if they're needy, is viewed with contempt...

"You'll only encourage them." (Never mind that the majority of those in poverty are children...) "Don't help that man, it's his own fault he's poor," (Never mind that most adult homeless are mentally ill or handicapped...)

The universities are all full of spoiled mommas' boys and daddys' girls. Gotta get the next thing, gotta get what's trendy. Nothing but convenience and instant gratification means anything to them. Even the tarantula I've kept for three years was a dumpster find, terrarium and all. Now that I think of it, I'm surprised I never found a kitten or a puppy in the dumpster as well.

What does it say about a society that must enforce reckless spending and waste as a means of preventing collapse? We're told the economy must grow at a particular rate to avoid economic disaster, so we're encouraged to dispose of our things-- no matter how high-quality-- and go out to buy more. Gotta keep the economy strong in order to maintain our nation's "superiority". This *is* God's chosen nation, after all, so it's your Christian duty to shop, shop, shop.

It stuns me to think of all the other people in the world who could benefit from what these spoiled children think of as "trash", never mind the resources that went into the creation of goods that wind up in those dumpsters. We say: "Quick, we need your land! We need your labor! Sacrifice your children to the factories! Never mind the horrendous working conditions, we need the you to make stuff faster because we can't throw it fast enough!" Because, after all, it's our God-given right to hold the world at nuke-point while we gobble all the resources on the planet-- just so we can shit them back out into our landfills. Then we get to go to church and pray to Jesus so he can pat us on our heads and make us feel better about ourselves.

...then we have the gall to ask why they hate us.

Okay, that tears it.

I have to vent about those fucking Jesus People, AKA "Christers". I've absolutely had it up to here with them.

Oh, I'm sure the evangelical community will take my expression of vehemence as yet another excuse to cry "oppression!" because there's nothing so righteous as a vicitmized Christian. *spits* The lengths these people go to in order to claim victimhood -- it truly makes me feel like vomiting.

"What's the reason for this rant?" you ask, twisting your hat in your hands and nervously edging away from the tall, hairy fellow with a maniacal glint in his eye and a dollop of foam beginning to form at each corner of his mouth. "Whatever got you so worked up?"

Oh, just about the constant hectoring I got from them working next door to one of those stripmall "ministries", to begin with... But that's a long story, too long for me to tell here. Suffice to say I am infuriated with their constant attempts to re-form the United States into a specifically Christian environment, one where non-Christians are forced to live as if they *are* Christians and are barely tolerated until they convert. Which they eventually will given the constant pressure they'll be under from everyone and everything they encounter.

Let's take the latest outrage, the attempt to ban the teaching of evolution theory in public school biology classes. Ban, you say? "I thought it was just Intelligent Design they wanted taught as a competing theory!" The science classroom is no place for religion. The place for creationism is in the church. If every competing religion's creation myth had to be taught alongside genetic science and evolution theory, there would be no time to discuss coursework! This is beside the fact that the first thing anyone learns in any given science class is that theories are fallible; one must continally test theories as one works-- hence evolution is not a religion as many claim, it is a theory.

On "All Things Considered" I heard one youth pastor inculcating his 'flock', attempting to disprove the idea of evolution by asking if anyone's ever seen a 'CatDog' -- and using that as an excuse to rail about how that the fact that animals don't instantly change for the observer disproves evolution. I ask that man to buy a jar of fruitflies and then track the iterations of their breeding. Keep one in a closet and the other in a lit room. He'll notice that the future generations of fruitflies kept in the closet will have lost the powers of sight within a few weeks.

But then again, facts have never played much part in sermons.

I suppose the thing that really gets under my skin is the absolute lack of respect for other ideologies. There's a very slim tolerance, to be sure, tolerance in the sense they don't firebomb people who don't subscribe to their ideology. But let's take the whole gay marriage issue. I got into a debate with a Christer once about this. His whole reason for lobbying against gay marriage was that marriage was "a contract with God" and homosexuality was "against God". Well, technically, eating pork, shellfish and cheeseburgers is against God too but apparently that's not AS against God as being a homosexual. I digress however. The point I made to him was that marriage, in a legal sense, is nothing more than a legal contract, an binding and exclusive incorporation of two individual citizens. If the Constitution and Bill of Rights state that all citizens are equal under the law and cannot be discriminated against according to gender, race, religion or what-have-you, then specifying that said contract can only exist between citizens of differing genders goes against the Constitution - e.g., is *UNCONSTITUTIONAL*. He said that he couldn't support anything that went against his god. I suggested that he may not worship Allah, Vishnu or Zoroaster, but I don't hear him attempting to deny marriage to these followers of supposedly false religions. He said they were still enjoining a contract with their Gods. "What about Atheists?" I asked. "They're allowed to get married and they don't believe in any God." The conversation just sort of... stopped at that point and he walked out of the room. I didn't take much to tell he was pissed off and didn't want to talk about it anymore.

These sort of conversations drive me totally batty. Whenever I seem to be making a point against which a Christer can't form an argument, they shut down and walk away rather than consider the option that their opinion may be flawed. Like the above guy: instead of grudgingly agreeing that yes, believe it or not, "faggots" have human rights too, he shut down and refused to talk about it further.

He has a right to disagree-- on religious or any other principles-- with a person's homosexual "lifestyle". This is America, people have the right to disagree on principle with a lot of things. I disagree on principle with charging interest - and supposedly, so does the Christian Bible -- but that doesn't stop institutions claiming "Christian lending principles" from charging interest either. I guess they subscribe more to the part of the Bible that states "God helps those who help themselves". But disagreeing on principle, regardless of the solidity of your religious and/or philisophical convictions does not give you the right to interfere with another person's Constitutional rights.

Now that I think of it, here's a quandary to stump the Jesus People. Their arguments go something like this: it was God's Will that the United States became the "Greatest Nation on Earth" and that God influences Constitution through His will. If the Constitution deems that all citizens are equal and cannot legally be subject to any sort of discrimination, does that mean God made a mistake?

I'm getting a bit cranky here, I know. But let's take another instance of something that drives me batshit. Turns out that the majority of military chaplains are Evangelical Christians -- 60% of all chaplains by last count. Well, those chaplains are pissed off that the military has a ban on proselytizing and are suing the military for discrimination. Once again the oppressed Christian bit. Real cute. Personally, I can imagine nothing more aggravating than having to deal with someone-- usually a superior officer in the case of most chaplains-- following me around a combat zone and attempting to convert me. Or trying to convert me while I vent during a counseling session. Yeah, real morale builder there. Not that I've ever been in the military mind you, but hey, Jews are asked to fight on the Sabbath -- Muslims must place the call of duty above and beyond the sacrosanct call to prayer... But Evangelicals are being oppresed by being asked to put aside their religious prejudices in order to minister to the soliders equally? Fuckin' A.

That's all for now, but as this a pet peeve of mine I'm sure it'll come up again. It's like an acute case of vomiting - something's always coming up.

--Mekkis, the Eyeconoclast--