Obama doesn't mention Santa Claus in latest speech

Canadian police file picture, arrested for DUI in 2007

In a speech given to adults concerning the importance of family during the holiday months, President Obama forgot to mention Santa Claus.

"As a reminder, with the economy still struggling, it is best to remember how important family is during these troublesome times," Obama said during a recorded speech to families in need.  "Always donate your time and goodwill to not only your family, but to those who may not be as fortunate as you.  Everyone have a happy holiday season!" 

Immediately reporters seized on the lack of mentioning Santa Claus.

"It's reprehensible that President Hussein Obama would forget to mention the holy man himself, Santa Claus," Rush Limbaugh warbled during his own radio show. "If I didn't know better, I'd say that Obama doesn't believe in Santa Claus!  We can't have a black...I mean, a President who doesn't believe in Santa Claus!"

Glenn Beck provided his own theory during his radio show.  "Obama killed Santa Claus," Beck said between bouts of crying.  "He killed Santa Claus when he killed the free market with his health care plan!"

Despite the faux-controversy, most people did not seem worried about the omission in the speech.

"I'm fine with it," Alex Kingston, a 29-year old from Austin, TX told an ABC reporter.  "Santa never got me anything I wanted anyways.  Always damn socks."

Others were not so sure.

"I can't support a President who doesn't believe in Santa," Jerry Hauganuss said during a survey.  "I mean, what's next?  Not believing in a bicameral legislature and a judicial branch of government?"

When contacted for questions concerning the controversy, Santa Claus himself had a short and explicit answer.

"I don't give two flying fucks what President Obama believes," Mr. Claus said, annoyed by the whole issue.  "I've got shit to do, and the last thing I need are some damn stupid people making an issue out of nothing and wasting my time with annoying phone calls.  Now, goodbye!"

Also of note, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich also failed to mention Santa Claus in speeches given during the holiday season.

Oh Newt.. the gift that keeps on giving

"Hey, poor kid!  Clean your own damn school toilets!"

So I'm sneezing out my sinuses and coughing up my lungs tonight, so for shits and giggles I made my way to CNN. 

I came across this gem: 

Newt calls child labor laws "truly stupid."

If you read the whole article, you'll see that Newt believes poor children under the age of 16 in poor neighborhoods should be helping clean their schools.  Get rid of the janitors (and their unions, of course) and put kids in situations dealing with nasty chemicals and fishing whatever kids flush down the toilet. 

Now, I can't claim to be a genius, but this is pretty stupid. 

A couple reasons:

1.  The janitors working in those poor neighborhood have families to feed, too.  You would put them out of work so a child can learn the great skill of scrubbing toilets?

2.  Rather than improving schools in poor neighborhoods, or helping kids with athletics/educational after-school activities, you would rather show them the importance of never rising above the life of a janitor. 

3.  Child labor laws have existed so that children could not be used by anyone to do labor that would put the children in danger, or work when they should be learning.  

I think I understand it now.  Republicans want to drag down any progressive movement in society and take us back to a Golden Age where capitalism ran amok, and children were hired to be "grease monkeys," who would crawl into tight spaces in big machinery to fix the machines (and sadly, many children died in those machines). 

That's right.  Newt wants us to go back to the Industrial Revolution. 

I am starting to wonder if the Republicans are just trolling the American people.  They have to be.  No one could be this stupid.

Oh, wait.  According to my brother (whose blog is www.brettcottrell.blogspot.com by the way), they are. 

Gus

I love the taste of double standards! Tastes like squirrel!

Double standards are fun.  An example:

Someone makes a satirical joke about your religion.  Your automatic response is to be offended at this, because "how dare someone make fun of my beliefs!"

Then to prove your hypocritical standards, you go watch South Park and laugh at the stereotypical Jewish parents of Kyle, or the satirical idea that the Christian God is nothing more than a gigantic Spider Queen.

That is a double standard.  You can be just fine having other religions mocked or made fun of, but the idea that your religion should be free of such satire is hypocritical.

I honestly don't give a rat's ass what people believe, though that doesn't mean I won't point out inherent flaws in their beliefs that deny people basic human rights and equality.  My brother and I both use sarcasm, irony and satire to make the point that religions believe some pretty remarkably wacky things (shameless plug, my brother's blog is www.brettcottrell.blogspot.com).

You can't have it both ways.  If you consider your religion above satire and sardonic wit, you need to do one of two things:

1.  You need to be offended across the board for ALL religions
OR
2.  You can accept the fact that not everyone believes what you believe, and people will use humor to provoke thought, or use sarcasm simply because they can.  Accept the fact that your religion is not perfect, and work towards creating a more fair and just religion for ALL humans. 

Even if you take option 1, that doesn't mean my brother and I are going to stop, nor are the billions who don't believe as you do.

So please, choose option 2.  It will make the world a better place.  Who doesn't want that?

Rant over.

Facts, Fictions, Prophecies!

I've come to accept a couple pretty reliable facts/philosophies in life, along with some prophecies I've stumbled onto.   I've decided to share them with you, the audience, in list form.  Everyone loves lists!

If there is a God, it doesn't give a shit anymore about its creation.

Religion gives you values, morals, and an in some rare cases, a superiority complex.  Also Herpes. 

Speaking of herpes, STD's aren't funny, unless you believe that the planet Mercury is full of the Clap instead of metal.

Music is paramount to human happiness.

George Lucas always sucked ass at writing, and got lucky with the first movies. 

YOU SHALL NOT PASS.

500 channels of television is 500 channels of utter crap.

The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and nature shows are about all that are worth watching.

Risk is still the greatest board game out there.

Dogs, though fun, still have nothing on cats and wombats.

Heh, chinchilla...hehe.

Bacon is tasty.

So are artichokes.

And good coffee.

Sleep is a necessary evil, despite my best efforts to make it not so necessary.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, unless someone stole your eyes and replaced them with coal.  Then everything is horrible.

The world needs people who promote humor.  Humor drives humanity to its finest social moments.

Fight Club is one of the greatest movies for men of my generation.

Just because you wrote a big-ass book centuries ago doesn't mean you are a great writer.

Zombies are funny.  They won't be so funny when become real.  (Note: I fully expect the breakouts to occur at Walmart.  You heard it here first).

Tool will retire after their next album is released. 

This list ends here.

Meet Sergeant Bronson

The sound of a jet engine rumbling to life filled the slight silence.  The lights flickered off, followed by a ear-stabbing engine fly-by.  Fireworks exploded in a fiery rage above and around a gigantic screen on one side of the arena, splaying their sparks in nearly every direction.  The arena crowd went crazy as a song could be heard above the sonic booms of the pyrotechnics, something about being in a danger zone.  The bloated screen played a video with dizzying images of jets, jets taking off, military salutes, a shirtless muscle-bound man posing in various silly poses, and more jets. 

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” an announcer rumbled in a deep baritone voice, “Please welcome to the arena, the reigning CWF Champion and Wrestler of the Year, SERGEANT BROOOOONSON!” 

More fireworks as a man around six feet tall walked out of the pyrotechnical show.  He sported a buzz cut hairdo, a lack of a neck, jet-blue speedos and boots with gigantic tassels.  He soaked in the crowd noise as it rose to a near-deafening level.  He walked down to the ring near where I was sitting, saw me, winked and then hopped into the ring.  He rose up on one of the corner posts and did some strange symbol, which seemed to spur on the crowd even more. 

The music changed to a jarring, head-hurting death metal as images of a crocodile appeared on the screen.  It appeared that the crocodile was also posing in the same manner as Sergeant Bronson. The crowd started booing as the announcer raised his lips to the microphone for a second time. 

“Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the challenger for tonight’s match: KING KRUUUUUSH!” 

From under the gigantic monitor came a 10-11 foot crocodile, rapidly running on all fours towards the ring.  The crowd booed the animal mercilessly, and to King Krush’s credit he snapped his jaws in anger at a few people.  As the croc closed in near me I saw blue war paint spread across his back and snout. 

To my complete surprise, King Krush pushed off his front legs and stood up on his hind legs, using his tail to balance.  He then climbed into the ring as a referee waddled into the center. 

That’s right.  My alternate self, “Sergeant Bronson,” was a professional crocodile wrestler. 

September 11: Never Forget.

Everyone has their "where were you when the planes hit the towers?" moment. 

Mine?  I was asleep. 

I worked swing shifts at Vital Processing down in Phoenix, and usually didn't get to bed until 2-3 a.m.  I turned off the ringer on my apartment phone so I could sleep until 10-11 a.m. 

When I woke up around 11:30 I was shocked and surprised to see 24 missed calls, with nearly 20 being from my mother. 

Instead of listening to the voice mails I called Mom and turned on my television.  As the phone rang, I thought that the images on the television were a new movie trailer.  It was almost surreal.  When Mom finally answered her phone she informed me of the attacks, and the Pentagon attack.

"Your brother, he's okay," she informed me.  My brother had just barely moved to D.C. to go to law school at George Washington. 

"Well, of course Brett's fine," I said. "He doesn't go to school at the Pentagon." 

The whole day was remarkable.  I called my work to see if they knew (they did) and mostly just sat there, like the rest of America, stunned and glued to their chairs in horrified shock and anger.   But I wasn't awake for the initial live shots of the towers' rapid descent. 

There is something unique about the emotional response to 9/11.  Part of me wants to desperately forget the atrocities that took place that day almost ten years ago. Forgetting can help heal, but this is something that we cannot forget.  It truly changed the nation.  For a short period, we were united as one nation.  Political affiliations didn't matter.  We were Americans.  Patriotism became a societal norm for the first time since World War II. 

And though we will become united again tomorrow as we remember and tell children about the importance of the day, we will soon forget, and the nation will again risk drowning in the mire of "your side vs my side." 

I hope we remember.  I hope we never forget what it was like to have this country unified.  It took a terrible tragedy, but for a short time we loved our country again, and would do anything to protect its values.  We rallied behind a polarizing president.  We would do anything for our neighbors because it was American to do so. 

Though I may never forget what happened that day, I will also never forget how proud I was to be an American afterwards. 

Let us never forget that. 

"The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission." -- John F. Kennedy

The Shinning, and other Musings

So, I'm watching The Shining, which of course deals with a writer who goes batshit insane with cabin fever.  I had forgotten how creepy the movie is.  It also sends flashbacks to when I was 10 years old, and I was up at our cabin in McCall, Idaho in the winter.  For some reason everyone thought it would be okay for a 10 year old to not only watch the movie, but watch it in the middle of winter.  The icing on the cake was having to walk home, in the dark, across the snowy road to get back to my cabin.  When I asked someone to walk me back to my cabin, I'm pretty sure the response was, "you're fine."

And that got me thinking.  For the most part, writers write what they know.  If I was to write about my father's troubles with alcohol, and my experiences dealing with it, that would ring home because it was something I experienced. 

If I wrote about my experiences at being so horrified at the idea of walking across the road late at night, the story would be true to my own life.

Where am I going with this inane rambling?  Just a bit.

So we write of our experiences.  We write what we know.  So what happens when we have an idea that occurs our own experiences?

We escape into that world, and that world, for a short time, becomes our reality.  It becomes our experiences.  When I write about Vincent going to other realities, my experiences become altered by the world in which I place the characters.

The fact that the human mind is capable of such things is pretty astounding.  It is this escapism, this idea of experiencing new things that drives me to write.

I can't wait to finish my degree so I can focus more on what I want to do.  The desire has never left; only the time to feed my desire to escape and experience new things has dwindled. 

So.. there you go.  Now, to finish watching the Shining...I mean, the Shinning.

Gus