Seeing the Light

Some combination of you and me and us are going about this all wrong. There should be no more grieving faces. No more makeshift memorials. No more eulogies. No more somber testimonials.

The next time a dozen people have the gall to get in the way of a constitutionally-protected individual exercising their second amendment rights, we need to seize it as an opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade.

We need to expose the silver lining lurking in this cloud. We need to rejoice.

This isn’t a tragedy. It’s an expression of constitutional strength. Our second amendment is alive and kicking—even if twelve innocent people aren't.

As America’s BFF (NRA head Wayne LaPierre) put it yesterday, this isn’t a case of wanton gun violence further cheapening life in what many of us pretend is the greatest country in the world; it’s a tragic example of the urgent need for better security.

Which is kind of like saying it wasn’t the overflowing toilet that ruined your wooden floor, it was the fact the water happened to be wet.

(Wayne is the Super Fly of semantics. He splits hairs with the facile ease that Enrico Fermi once split atoms.)

So. Freed of our burdens and imbued with the knowledge that in Wayne's world, we need only fear not having enough guns, let us sing. Let us clap our hands and raise our voices in celebration.

The second amendment has never been more potent. Let us lift the world off its axis with our newfound joy. No more tears. No more regret.

We possess the means to kill, and kill we shall.

Dying to Play Baseball

About seven years ago, I began blogging on MySpace. For whatever reason, I fell in with a group that included many people from Australia. I found them to be among the most friendly and good-natured people I have ever known. When international travel was an option, I desired urgently to visit there.

Imagine then, my sorrow when the events of Friday, August 18th became public.

If you don’t already know, a young man from Melbourne, wanting only to play baseball here, was shot to death in order to relieve the boredom of three teenagers.

Christopher Lane was a guest. If first-degree murder isn't punishable by death, shouldn't wanting to play baseball in America be as well?

While not enjoying popular support, a well-organized and monied minority works fervently to ensure that as many Americans have access to the greatest number of guns as much of the time as is humanly possible.

Gun advocates feel gun ownership is the lynchpin of democracy. No guns = no democracy.

Sadly, we will never have the opportunity to test that theory.

It is gun advocates (i.e. the angry and the ignorant) who believe gun ownership is the great leveler which will one day make everything right. Guns are the six-chambered courtroom where the verdict always comes out in their favor.

Their guns will protect them from currency manipulation, global warming and perhaps even foreigners from playing baseball.

In reality, what America has to show for its reinforced Second Amendment is the first world’s highest murder-by-gun rate. Only countries wracked by political instability, entrenched corruption and inescapable poverty enjoy a higher per-capita rate than the United States.

Let me say it again: being the first world leader in gun-related homicides is our gift for our unswerving maintenance of the Second Amendment.

I’m sure the family of Christopher Lane is very grateful.

Australia isn’t perfect. Neither, I suspect, are Australians. But in light of Mr. Lane’s murder, I am well and truly embarrassed to call myself an American.

His death seems an awfully high price to pay for a dream.

Nickel and Dimed

Traditionally, Illinois has been known as the Land of Lincoln. And while the association with a revered public official is certainly laudable, one has to wonder how representative it is nearly one-hundred-fifty years after his death.

To provide a more appropriate picture of twenty-first century Illinois, I propose a new slogan. Call it The Kama Sutra State. Or Land of Kama Sutra. Does the sexy tingle of State of Kama Sutra do anything for you?

OK. You might wonder what the Kama Sutra has to do with Illinois, especially since the former is an ancient Indian sex manual and the latter is smack dab in the middle of the Midwest.

Let me explain.

Within the Kama Sutra are a staggering variety of male-female couplings in all manner of positions. Many of them require an almost inhuman degree of flexibility.

As a resident of Illinois, it’s only natural I would be reminded of the Kama Sutra when I see the torturous contortions citizens attempt in order to meet the needs of state and municipal agencies.

Let me share two small, everyday examples.

Example number-one is our state lottery, which was recently privatized in the belief that the golden hand of business would reduce costs, increase efficiency and send profits soaring.

Of course, the only people who believe business has a golden hand are those who have never been employed by one.

Our new and improved lottery has mostly succeeded in missing revenue targets and failing to pay agreed-upon penalties. As of this writing, Northstar Lottery Group owes the state of Illinois roughly twenty-million dollars for not boosting lottery sales to the heights promised.

As a result, Northstar has taken the path all businesses take when they need to increase revenue. With no appreciable payroll to cut, they have raised the price of their product.

They didn't devise an irresistible lottery game that has Illinoisans lining-up to play. Or initiate a clever and attention-grabbing marketing campaign that has us seeing the lottery in a fresh new light.

No. They just doubled the cost of a lottery ticket.

This is the inspired business acumen for which the state ponied up one hundred twenty-five million dollars.

For those who play the lottery, this means ten bucks now buys half as many numbers as it did before privatization. Or ten instead of twenty. Five instead of ten. You get the idea.

I’m guessing you’ve been waiting as anxiously as I for just the right opportunity to cut your chances of winning the lottery in half.

What I really want to know is how long it’s going to take for Northstar to cough-up the twenty mil it owes the state. According to my calculations, it should be half as long as it was before the increase.

But that’s just me. And this, after all, is Illinois.

And then there’s the Chicago Transit Authority and their no-change ticket dispensers, which pocket surfeit cash from hapless riders unarmed with exact change.

But even the retention of unearned money hasn’t kept the CTA from declaring yet-another cash shortfall, necessitating yet-another round of talk about service cuts and rate hikes.

You’re already keeping my change! What more do you want? My socks?

We could always drive, but after the giveaway of the city’s parking meter revenue in a seventy-five year contract to Chicago Parking Meter LLC, the CTA is definitely the lesser of two evils.

(Unless of course you take some kind of perverse pleasure in paying the nation’s highest parking rates.)

None of this would be so irksome if Illinois didn’t boast the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation. Or if Chicago’s wasn’t stuck at ten percent.

Or if our thirty-dollar-an-hour bus drivers were occasionally a tad more polite and understanding of those who don’t ride their bus five days a week.

But it is. And they aren’t.

So yes, the comparisons are apt. We are the Land of Kama Sutra.

Because like the figures in that text, we invariably get fucked.

La Piazza Gancio Finds His Flow

Several years ago, I wrote about an old friend named Lucky. He has the distinction of being the only person I know to spend twenty-five years with a single employer.

But it hasn’t been easy. Nor is it.

Interacting with twenty-first Americans in the context of retail frequently resembles punishment. One which should be meted out to deserving folk like congressmen, state legislators, city councilmen and garden-variety felons.

Misled by corporate marketing and an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, a public temporarily ignorant of corporate priorities demand that things happen the moment they wish them.

The problem is, unless possessed by multiple personalities, most employees can only be in one place at one time.

Exacerbating the situation is that, like your employer, Lucky's also believes that payroll must be kept to an absolute minimum, lest still-more emaciated corpses pile-up in the executive wing.

Maximum stress, minimum wage. Where do I apply?

One memorable day, Lucky found a “guest” rifling through the contents of the department stockroom. It seems the guest was time-challenged and could not wait for Lucky to finish with his customers.

When confronted, the guest took great exception to Lucky’s contention that the stockroom was off-limits to customers. The guest channeled his howling, righteous indignation and repeatedly attempted to intimidate Lucky by yelling “Are you through? Are you through?”

To his credit, Lucky resisted the urge to escalate the encounter and merely asked the guest if there was anything he could help him with. Frustrated (and perhaps even embarrassed), the guest stalked off.

I regret that Lucky wasn’t more familiar with the films of Groucho Marx, who famously asked in one “Shall I call a cab or would you like to leave in a huff?”

Inspired by this incident and by my own experiences, I wrote this.

It’s dedicated to retail workers everywhere.

Put shoes up
Take shoes down
Carson’s is a circus
And I’m their clown

Please don’t stare
I’m painfully aware
Of just how long
I been there

It makes me ill
I wish I could fix
The fact that I been here
Since eighty-six

Employer’s clueless
The public’s shoeless
I keep thinking
How long I gotta do this?

Beat up beat down
Self-esteem is just a noun
Like the bosses Rolex
I get wound

I caught this chump
In my stockroom
Bitch kept asking
Am I through?

I see his ass
Just one more time
He gonna wish
He stayed in line

The shoes get stocked
I get mocked
Maybe you should know
My Uzi’s cocked

Ask me again
Am I through?
My other gun’s a Glock
It’s loaded too

Employer’s clueless
The public’s shoeless
I keep thinking
How long I gotta do this?

Beat up beat down
Self-esteem is just a noun
Like the bosses Rolex
I get wound

The biggest irony
The seventh circle of hell
Is that fate demands
That I must sell

You the shoes
That walk on me
And kick me
Til I bruise

I’m a slave
You don’t need to behave
It’s the sale
I got to save

You want a better deal?
A bigger coupon?
Then log your sorry ass
On to Groupon

Employer’s clueless
The public’s shoeless
I keep thinking
How long I gotta do this?

Beat up beat down
Self-esteem is just a noun
Like the bosses Rolex
I get wound

Like a Dog

This is how to become a judge: go to law school, play a little golf, cut some checks to the right foundations and political campaigns and voila! One appointment later you’re a well-compensated dispenser of justice.

Note that none of these activities prove you are someone unusually qualified to arbitrate on matters of law. Just that you're well-connected.

Keep a low profile, don’t piss anybody off and the job is essentially yours for life.

While the rest of us do the work of several and sweat the vagaries of shareholder dividends and corporate profit margins as related to the company payroll, Cook County circuit court judges like James Obbish merely have to breathe.

Inhale, exhale. Yeah, it’s good to be judge.

Perhaps it’s too good. Maybe a life spent on golf courses and at lavish fund-raisers is so far removed from the increasingly-grim realities of life in the 21st century that one becomes detached. Isolated. Out of touch. Perspective is warped.

Which might be the only way to explain Obbish’s decision in the Kyle Voissem case.

Kyle Voissem is a twenty-one year-old man who, after his puppy had urinated on the floor, threw a pot of scalding water on it. The mountain cur puppy suffered second and third-degree burns on more than half its body as a result.

Instead of Judge Obbish seeing this as (at best) an inappropriate expression of anger and (at worst) the path at least one criminologist cites as the first indication of a serial killer within, Obbish lashed out at animal-rights groups.

Obbish sided with Voissem’s attorney, saying that as a result of their campaigning, Voissem was now saddled with an “internet tattoo” which precludes him from landing gainful employment.

Awww.

Ensconced in his judicial cocoon, Judge Obbish is unaware of our current recession. He is ignorant of the fact that millions of people—with and without tattoos—are unable to find work. And that animal rights groups have very, very little to do with it.

I don’t belong to the anti-cruelty society. I don’t go out in my car and collect stray cats and dogs. I’m not even a vegetarian. But Voissem's appalling cruelty should be crystal clear to all—especially a judge.

We’ve all muttered “I’m gonna kill him”, or words to that effect under our breath. But very, very few of us have acted on them.

There is a world of difference between entertaining a fleeting thought and lifting a pot of boiling water, taking aim and discharging its contents on the four-legged equivalent of an infant.

Let’s be clear Judge Obbish—Kyle Voissem isn’t the victim here. The puppy who peed on the floor is.

This is the creature who suffered. Not the selfish, unfeeling young man who dissolved into a tower of rage because a mere animal had inconvenienced him.

You get that, right?

Does Kyle Voissem have any idea of the indignities that life has in store for him? And more to the point—is he even equipped to deal with them?

The fact that Obbish let the conduct of animal rights groups determine his decision is an act as disturbing as Voissem’s.

Commenting on the “organized campaign to destroy a human being” Obbish asked “Is everyone out there so perfect that they never made a mistake, never reacted in anger?"

Sure, Judge. But it didn’t involve inflicting third-degree burns on a puppy.

What’s next? Letting serial rapists off the hook because they’re getting bad press?

Finally, in Obbish’s infinite empathy for the unemployed Kyle Voissem and his internet tattoo, Obbish wouldn’t even prevent Voissem from owing a pet while on probation.

Wow. Let me think about that one.

I can't help but wonder how Obbish would react if he had a daughter and Kyle Voissem expressed a desire to date her.

Think words like “No way scumbag! You keep your dog-scalding hands off her or I’ll put you so deep in prison they’ll need to pump air to you!” would find their way into the conversation?

Me, too.

While I’m not inclined to believe Voissem should spend the rest of his life in prison (three-months in a minimum-security facility sounds about right), a year’s probation which fails to even keep Kyle Voissem from owning another dog seems wildly and extravagantly generous.

As does reappointment for Judge Obbish when his current term expires June 30, 2015.

I’ve got my calendar marked.

Putting L.A. in the Rearview

I hate the Los Angeles Lakers.

They’re the popular kid everyone seeks validation from. They’re the fortunate kid who effortlessly succeeds at everything. They’re the smirking kid who never gets caught. And needless to say, never suffers.

Yeah, I hate them.

So imagine my delight when one of this summer’s most-coveted free-agents publicly turned them down. With apologies to Stevie Wonder, for once in my life there was a player who didn’t lust over the prospect of wearing purple and yellow and playing in the lurid land of glam.

Wait. Is this really happening? Did the quarterback-slash-prom king just get snubbed?

This is OMG rare. Rare like an issue of Cosmopolitan without the word 'sex' on the cover. Or congress enacting legislation. Or middle-class wages rising.

It just doesn’t happen.

But there it was in yesterday’s sports section: ‘Dwight Howard headed to Houston’.

Predictably, the popular kid didn’t react well.

Even Shaquille O’Neal, who left the Lakers in a huff following an unsuccessful showdown with Kobe Bryant, re-discovered his loyalty and chided Howard’s decision, saying Howard couldn’t handle the pressure of playing on a stage as prominent as L.A.’s.

Maybe.

But at the age of twenty-seven and in his athletic prime, perhaps Howard didn’t see the point of committing to an aging team whose prima dona centerpiece is a year or two (or one unsuccessful rehab) away from retirement.

And I’d be a little more reluctant to call Howard’s decision to play in Houston (where he’ll be compared to the luminous Hakeem Olajuwon) ducking the limelight. Ducking the limelight would be Minnesota. Salt Lake City. Charlotte.

Not the fourth-largest city in the United States.

Dwight Howard spent a season playing basketball at the end of the rainbow, and he didn’t like it. For once the popular kid gets to see what it’s like on our side of the rainbow.

Yay.

Kid-Free? Finally!

It’s an idea that is long overdue.

The Sushi Bar, a restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia, has declared itself kid-free, advising potential patrons that no one under the age of eighteen will be permitted to dine.

And I say hallelujah.

But judging from the torrent of outrage, you’d think the government announced it was going to begin confiscating personal property.

First off, let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a kid hater.

But in the overheated, finger-pointing hysteria that passes for civilization here in the United States (and perhaps where you live as well), children have attained an almost god-like status.

And those who don’t buy into the idea that everything must be sacrificed for their benefit all the time are regarded with suspicion. It’s kind of like being a communist in the McCarthy era.

I ask you: what’s wrong with the idea of kid-free? Is there something intrinsically evil about the concept of stores or restaurants free of hyperactive/tired/poorly-behaved children and their inattentive and exhausted parents?

Not a thing.

Everyone—childless or not—can cite an experience impacted by a child shoehorned into a setting in which it didn’t belong. Concert halls. Weddings. Slow-food restaurants. Movie theaters. And those are just the beginning.

All, with the occasional exception of a movie theater, are kid-inappropriate.

Whatever presumed selfishness I possess by remaining childless is dwarfed by parents who seem to feel that if they must suffer their children’s tantrums, then by god you shall, too.

There are always plenty of excuses: babysitters are child-molesters, I can’t find one, I can’t afford one, I don't have time, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The currently-embraced psychological fashion says that everything is a choice. And there isn’t an option—Cosmopolitan magazine to the contrary—that allows you to have it all.

Having kids means you might have to sacrifice a visit to the symphony to hear Bach’s Violin Concerto in E major when a sitter can’t be found. Just as not having kids means you’ll have to do without the joy found in a child’s first words.

No one gets everything all the time.

An old expression says crying children are like good intentions—they should be carried out.

With parents who understand where children do—and don’t—belong, and without kids forced to endure events which hold absolutely no interest for them, we might find the market for kid-free zones diminished. If not eliminated entirely.