As the light turned green I let him pull up ahead of me because I didn’t want him to see my “I ♥ My Dog” bumper sticker on
which I had Sharpied over the heart symbol and replaced it with the work
Fuck
. That bumper sticker has turned out to be one of my all-time best pickup lines, by the way. Anyway, as the cop got in front
of me, I noticed one of
his
bumper stickers. Alongside the ubiquitous and highly effective “D.A.R.E to Keep Kids off Drugs” bumper sticker (remember
when people used to sell and/or take drugs before that bumper sticker was conceived and applied?) there was a new, state-sanctioned,
police-issued bumper sticker. At least it was new to me. It read “Don’t Abandon Your Baby.” Hmmm, okay. Thanks for that. I
know that’s not meant for me, as I am not planning on attending any proms in the near future. But has our society really come
to this? I realize that our culture is so violent and we’ve become so coarse that we can support more than three dozen violent
cop shows that feature sick killings nightly, each more shocking than the last. “Chief, we’ve got some sicko out there who’s
killing random male stock brokers.” “Jesus that’s terrible.” “Wait, I’m not done. And he’s sawing off their arms and using
them to rape college co-eds.” “Son of a bitch!!” (excerpted from
CSI: Grand Rapids.
)
Do we really need to be told not to abandon our babies? Especially by authority figures with guns and shoot-to-kill dispensations?
I suppose the answer is yes. It’s one thing when a dear friend or family member asks us not to abandon our baby. Or even a
much-loved celebrity, but the cops? Although I will concede a gentleness to the pronouncement that I find interesting. Unlike
the demanding and suggestively violent “Buckle Up, It’s the
Law
!” one could read their own intonation into it. Say it to yourself (in your head—you don’t want to end up on any lists) like
an Allied confidant whispering in the ear of their lover as they stand on the banks of the Seine during the height of the
student riots. Seems almost sweet. Or try saying it with a bit of wistful melancholy, like a wise old “mammy” talking from
experience and passing on her sage advice to the grandchildren as they snap and de-string pole beans on the porch during a
hot, swollen, summer day in Georgia. Hey! Where’s that NPR lady? Maybe she could try it. She’s probably just now about to
finish reading her story. Just six more words to go and they can leave the station. Anyway, it takes on a different tone.
It’s sympathetic and well meaning. It’s not at all angry. It doesn’t instantly cause your rebellion gene to switch on. It
doesn’t make you think, “Fuck you, cop! I’ll abandon whatever baby whenever the fuck I want, you fucking fascist! It doesn’t
even have to be a baby, either! I think I’ll abandon my car, my pets, and my teeth as well!”
Which leads me to this: what
kind
of person needs to be told, or “reminded,” that they shouldn’t abandon their child? People who sit around all day, daydreaming
and fantasizing about a future they’ll never have because they sit around all day, daydreaming and fantasizing about a future
they’ll never have? What does it say about our selfish, stupid, and cruel society? I guess that we can be monstrously selfish,
stupid, and cruel. The Iraq war (or rather the war we started in Iraq; there really wasn’t much of a fight until we set up
colonization school) is a good example. It’s an amazingly disappointing realization to know just how thoughtless and insensitive
to other human beings we can so simply and predictably be programmed to be.
Tossing a thing you don’t want or no longer desire to the curb is not really that bad if it’s biodegradable, which a baby
is, I guess; but come on now—let’s apply some standards.
Abandoned babies are unfortunate unwanted results of a once urgent desire to have an orgasm. That desire is now long, long
ago in the past. A distant memory. And much like getting a bill in the mail for a nice meal you ate nine months ago, you see
it (baby or bill) and think, “Huh? That was nine months ago? I’m not paying for this!!” And we toss that baby or bill into
the bin. Life is cheap here in America. It’s the living that is expensive. Perhaps that abandoned baby would have grown up
to shoot someone point blank in the face for twelve dollars and some (admittedly) pretty cool sneakers. That’s still no excuse.
Isn’t that Jesus’ job anyway? Shouldn’t he be whispering in the fevered hallucinating imagination of the drug-addled mom while
she passes by one of the hundred of thousands of churches in this country? Why is the cop forced to clutter up the back of
his car with a sticker like that? That space might be better used to remind people that if a cop wants, he can beat the shit
out of you and can often count on the tacit silence of a thoroughly corrupt force to get away with it. I think that might
be a much more effective deterrent to would-be baby leavers. “I
will
beat the shit out of you so that you lose the sight in your left eye and pins will need to be implanted in your jaw so that
you will be able to eat again if I catch you so much as even thinking about abandoning your baby!”
Now
there’s
an effective bumper sticker!
T
HE PREVALENCE AND SHEER AMOUNT OF
“
GOOD FOR YOU
,” “healthy” snacks is nothing short of amazing, yet completely understandable in America. Understandable simply because along
with our gullibility and consumerism, we are very much fat and lazy. And we are fat because we are gluttonous. And we are
lazy because we are conditioned to achieve as much pleasure as possible with as little exertion as possible. Thank you to
computers for helping with that. There’s no “Dear Leader” here making us eat an un-researched diet of rice and fat. No one
is mistaking ice cream and candy for oatmeal and tuna fish. We just love to fool ourselves by lazily believing that massive
international companies with holdings all over the world producing a hodge-podge of products like tires, C-4 plastique explosives,
and paint thinner can also make “Healthy Acre’s All-Natural” wholesome chocolate caramel cups—and that they really are healthy.
Have you ever been to the airport in Minneapolis/St. Paul? Or stopped in at a random Wal-Mart in wherever? They’re like fat
museums, half the people crawling along in those scooters. I deeply resent the existence of those scooters, by the way. You
know the ones, the “Rascal” and the “Git-Along Tubbys.” And they are becoming more ubiquitous by the day. I believe their
initial intent was for use by people who had circulation problems or couldn’t move their lower extremities very well for whatever
reason. Now people who are simply fat are using them because they’re just lazy… because they’re fat… because they’re lazy…
because they’re fat… and on and on ad infinitum (because they’re fat). Not to say that Americans are not wonderfully grotesque
simply because an evil company tricked them into thinking they were eating pure, sugar-free manna from heaven and not the
irradiated, fatty, chickenish-like nuggets filled with nitrates and ground-up chicken bones and genitalia (although the nitrates
were
heaven-sent. Fact!). No, they know what’s what. It’s the same thing as someone under the age of 70 suing a tobacco company
for millions of dollars for not telling them that cigarettes were addictive. I have mixed feelings when I hear about that.
I am (because I read) suspicious of large companies when they claim through cynical, multimillion-dollar ad campaigns designed
to “nice” up their image, that they are humanity’s best hope for cleaning up the mess they made in the ocean or air or ground
or children. It is they and they only who are the ones who should be employed in getting impoverished communities cleaned
up and lily white again. Too many people are too quick to carelessly glance at a bag of Professor McGulliver’s HyperHealthy
Squiggle Rinds sold in the “health food” aisle of their local supermarket and see a guilt-free snack. In fact, in a brilliant
and complete understanding of their target audience, there is a line of snack food called “Guilt Free.” Being “Guilt Free”
can only be acquired by the practiced absence of guilt. And that’s not really a good thing, when you think about it. If we
didn’t have guilt we’d all be figuratively fucking over our business partners while literally fucking sixteen-year-old girls
in Thailand. It’s not simply a matter of the physics of nature. There is certainly no shortage of wistful daydreamers of the
new-age, hippie variety in America. Hell, we invented them! India jumped on
our
bandwagon! And whether it’s Dr. Prometheus’s Magic Agave Butter Soap Soup, or Sista Mustaffa’s Hypo-Allergenic Hair Kinkifier
with Nefertiti Oil, there is undoubtedly someone out there to unquestionably buy it for themselves for as long as they shall
live (and/or the business isn’t shut down by the FDA). And they mindlessly do this with no questions asked. Does it say “organic”
on the label? Well then, by Vishnu, it’s good enough for me.
With this in mind, and with a nod toward the inarguable power of placebo, I present this guideline for use by the multibillion-dollar
health-food industry in order to better exploit the gullible. I’ll see you on the Forbes 500 List!
Anything with “Dr.” in the title is acceptable. It doesn’t matter if it’s food, vitamins, or sea sponges. And even if the
doctor in question is a veterinarian from Greenland who got his or her license off of the Internet, it doesn’t matter. What
matters is that a “doctor” has given his or her seal of approval.
Make more “healthy” snacks featuring people of the clergy as mascots. Reverend Josiah Tumn’s Deuteronomy 4:12 Oat Pops, or
Shiek al Abu’s Koran-ified Nutty Bumblers, something like that. L. Ron Hubbard’s Thetan-Free Pina Colada Practical Signifiers
from Planet Teegeak would all be big sellers.
Clearly, people like to feel better about themselves through a snack that is made by ex-hippies who promote meditation and
astrology. And I know that it’s a bummer that sometimes those snacks have to be subjected to the vindictive whims of the Imperialist
Facists over at the Food and Drug Administration. But really, no one cares about how much marmoset hair there is in a bar
of Jeannette’s Flax Seed Spittle Bars! Let the lady sell her wares!
I would encourage someone to market the following snacks based on the ghosts of heroes past: Harriet Tubman’s “Now That’s
What I Call Freedom” Twisters, Doc Severinsen’s Beauty Flakes, Jimmy Cliff’s High Times Protein Photo-Shopped Cookies, Jim
Valvano’s Pumpkin and/or Coconut Golden Bricks, Anne Boleyn’s Pussy Juice Bars. Ewww, really? Forget that last one.
Also, one last thing, if someone could get back to me on it: I believe that there is a cream you can buy that is owned by
the Dutch that has been marked down to around eight dollars. This cream, when rubbed liberally on your target area, will “melt
the pounds off.” Why isn’t this cream more popular? People should know about this cream!! Tell people about this cream, godammit!
W
ITH AN APOLOGY AND ALL DUE RESPECT TO
L
OUIS
C. K.,
WHO
has done a bit using this premise, I think rich people are boring (too). And by that I mean unimaginative. I’m sure they
are at least somewhat interesting. Telling tales of throwing up in different countries with diplomatic immunity and hiring
the Rolling Stones to play their daughter’s christening and then giving Mick an extra hundred to let them blow him in the
bathroom while he hums “Start Me Up.” But besides the obvious, what do they do with all their money? Sure, they buy things,
and companies, and peoples lives to assure their continued wealth for generations to come, but outside of that, what? I mean,
if you’ve literally got
billions
of dollars and you buy an island, several mansions, yachts, and planes and shoes and lobster dinners and you still find yourself
with 800 million left over, take at least
some
of it and have some fun! I saw footage from Jack Welch’s wife’s birthday where everyone was upset at the lavishness. I was
way way more upset at how lame it was, given that he spent a gazzibillionish dollars on it. “Living statues?” Come on, that’s
bullshit. You’ve got billions and billions of dollars! Get creative! How about choosing one species to make extinct. Just
randomly pick one and buy them all and then kill them. You get to play God. That’s one thing that I might do.
“I don’t want any more Nicklebacked Stingface frogs.”
“Daddy, what ever happened to the Nicklebacked Stingface frog?”
“David Cross bought them all and killed them.” Wow!!
I would buy the rights to a word, maybe the word
maybe.
And every time you used it you would have to pay me. And you would have to pay me in kisses. Or every time you used it you
would have to say “David Cross’s maybe.” As in, “Hey, if we get there early enough, David Cross’s maybe we can get tickets.”
Or, “Fuck you! Did you ever stop to think that David Cross’s maybe, just David Cross’s maybe that I love you? David Cross’s
maybe you’re right.”
I would have a HUGE fireworks display, I mean the biggest, grandest one ever. It would be an annual event and it would last
for, like, almost twenty-four hours. It would fill the sky and be able to be seen for miles. And I’d have it on July 3 on
the Canadian side of the border.
I would have bionic shit installed in me exactly like the Six Million Dollar Man. Actually, I take that back. It should be
a lot more than that. I mean, what’s six million dollars to me? That’s like twenty-five bucks to you. So no, let’s make it
60 million dollars of bionic shit.
The Six Million Dollar Man
was on thirty years ago, back when six million meant something; now a third of all children under ten in America have six
million dollars. “Hey kid, where’d you get that six million dollars?” “Oh this? The Tooth Fairy.” My bionics would get me
super hearing and super seeing (but just in one eye), super touching, and the ability to do upper, genius-level yoga without
an instructor present.