Whiskey Fire

It was a look/ That has driven me/ From the parade/ Left me alone/ Stinking and unafraid

Last night MollyI, who has been taking this shite harder than I have, because (1) she is a nicer person than I am, and (2) because she knows from being a highly competent woman getting shafted from jobs for which she is eminently qualified solely because of yahoo sexism, told me that she's worried about going down to DC for the Million Woman March. This is because that protest is scheduled for the day after the inauguration, and "the city will be full of Brownshirts."

She's not so much worried for herself.

Since we raised her right, my step-daughter of course wants to go. She's 26, wants to march with her gay homosexual partner, and is mouthy and feisty and pissed off. Then our daughter, who is 12, wants to go, because she is already mouthy and feisty and pissed off -- because she's in fucking middle school and already every girl her year knows not to put anything on the floor of her locker, because some snotty little boy will ass-grab. And that snotty little boy will get away with it. And Donald Fucking Trump is now president.

The boys want to go because even if they would sooner gargle hot lead than admit it, they love their mom and sisters dearly, and also it would be an Adventure, and also because they are shrewd enough to know they will get fed and might have a day off school.

But this is the rub:

MollyI is terrified because she might not be able to protect her kids, if we go.

This is not an unreasonable fear.

Trump rallies are indeed Brownshirty. It is known. Trumpite fanatics are rapacious and currently feel themselves uncorked. This is clear.

And you'd have to be even dumber than a Trumpite Facebook troll to think the police would keep you safe.

On the other hand, well, we went to the Iraq war protests; we knew those would not have any effect, but what was the alternative? Sometimes, as an American, your duty is to stand up and say "no." You can't just stay home. And as Americans, you can't just stay quiet because of the threat of physical intimidation. As soon as THAT happens, well, the trigger on the fascist gun has just been pulled, hasn't it? And if that happens, well, they're coming for you anyhow. 

So there's two sides.

Or not.

If we are in nation where one can very sincerely fear for the physical safety of their 12-year-old daughter as regards taking her along with you to a peaceful political event...

Why, we're fucked already!

Rawhide

You know what? These bad motherfucker parents should be in jail because they are absolute SHIT parents.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, a 10-year old Maryland boy named Rafi and his 6-year old sister, Dvora, walked home by themselves from a playground about a mile away from their suburban house. They made it about halfway home when the police picked them up.

Two kids got busted, the police took them home, then the parents verbally abused the cops:

Someone saw the kids walking without an adult and called the police. The police tracked down the kids and drove them home. The hitch* this time is, when the police got there, they discovered that they were meddling with the wrong family.

*They were all white so nobody got shot.

These parents should be in FUCKING JAIL.

First, they say they practice Free-Range parenting, which is a FUCKED UP METAPHOR. Because that means you refuse to factory-murder your children: you will only murder and eat your children after you let them have some exercise. WHAT THE FUCK.

Second, look, I'm a parent. Are you a parent? No? THEN SHUT YOUR FUCKING PIE HOLE. If you are not a parent you can't even TALK. Just because you had a parent and were perhaps parented in some fashion, that only puts you in the MINORITY. FUCK. YOU. APPARENTLY YOU are NOT A PARENT.

THIRD SAID. I said THIRD SAID. YES obviously if you let your children walk home from the park you are a subhuman monster. Speaking as a parent, these parents are just unbelievable garbage:

For starters, teach your children to walk to the playground alone.

FUCK OFF.

***

I call bullshit on this story, by the way.

There's a lot that smells fishy. It's utterly one-sided; the police had no time to respond, and CPS, quite properly, is not allowed by law to comment on specific cases. (Did you think social service agencies have PR people on staff capable of responding swiftly and with precision to very specific WaPo queries? Maybe they do!)

Who turned them in?

Cops really won't and don't stop kids from walking around -- but someone might like to pretend they do...

 

 

 

Shards of the One True Cock Ring

Oh, the gifts that Townhall gives us.

If You Don't Spank Your Kid, Jesus Certainly Will

Yep, that's the title.

It's an article by this person.

This article is every bit as fart-full of rainbow-lickin' lunacy as you'd expect.

Prominent egg-heads have opined ad nauseam on Adrian Peterson’s recent arrest on charges of child abuse.

The hyphen in "egg-heads" makes this sentence Art.

As usual, progressives have seized this opportunity to besmirch a time-honored and Biblical practice—corporal punishment. This shouldn’t surprise us, since progressives abhor the notion of personal responsibility. And, why not? The entire progressive edifice is built on the foundation of unbridled hedonism and man as his own chief deity.

Beg parsnips?

The whole frontage of the building that I am constructing is constructed atop horses that like to have a good time and can't be steered, and also I'm Captain God?

Fair enough.

It's all very ghastly, but this is a good bit:

Only love can impel a parent to punish a treasured child who careens toward the abyss. Corporal punishment may be the only action which imparts one of life’s most precious lessons, that the universe is rational and that immoral actions redound to destruction.

There is no monster more horrible than the one who beats the shit out of you and tells you it's "love."

It is known.

(Also, the English language: please be nicer to it. Thanks awfully.)

Programming Note

I've been off the grid for the past week for Reasons Personal: the 9-year-old contracted a completely out of left field staph infection.

A tiny cut somewhere led to staph getting into a hip muscle, and from there it got into her bloodstream.

Last week she started complaining about a sore leg, and then she got a fever. Molly I&I didn't think too much about these things, or that they might be related. These are both common & usually inconsequential childhood complaints -- she's an active kid & bangs her arms & knees often, & kids get 24-hour bugs. But then she spiked a scary high fever, we took her to the ER, they did blood work, and holy toboggans, she had staph in her bloodstream and suddenly we were terrified about sepsis. Fast forward a few days, and some twists and turns in the story, and she's in Syracuse.

So it's been kind of scary. The good news is that she's going to be fine; she's responding well to the IV antibiotics, so much so that she might not need surgery. We're still waiting for more tests, but she seems to be out of the woods.

This episode, though, has been the occasion for much reflection. What happened to our kid was frighteningly random -- one of the Syracuse docs was apparently quite worried that we might Blame Ourselves. "This is bad luck," she said, "nothing more or less or else." (A nice turn of phrase, that.)

And we get that, and appreciate it. But we think a lot about what would have happened if our kid had not just had the bad luck to get sick, but the bad luck to have parents with bad luck.

MollyI&I are pretty damned lucky, first of all, that we have good insurance. And we're lucky that we have jobs where one of us can at all times be with our kid in a hospital an hour away. And we're lucky that we're educated enough to understand and consider what health care professionals are telling us, and confident enough to insist upon what we decide will be the best treatment for our child.

Absent these bits of luck, our child would at best be more miserable, and at worst be dead.

Not a joke -- if we'd listened only to the hack ER doctor ("just a virus!") and didn't have a close relationship with our awesome family pediatrician, if we'd been scared about losing our job and put off getting our kid an appointment or three for fear of boss retaliation, if we were terrified enough about paying for treatment in wan hopes she'd get better from what at first looked like typical, trivial childhood complaints... we could have lost our daughter.

I have no human understanding of anyone who argues against universal healthcare.

My Daughter Cool

SCENE. 8:30 PM. Humid July NYC evening. The Uncle's house. The 9-Year-Old yells back and forth with the kids on the other side of 26th Ave -- a Busy Street, thus constituting an Impermeable Physical Abyss, utterly uncrossable without Grownup Aid.

NEIGHBOR KIDS ACROSS AVENUE. That was FIREWORKS.

9YO. That's dumb, that was FIRECRACKERS.

LOUDEST NKAA, PERHAPS 10. Nah-ah, that was FIREWORKS banging, your green dress is DUMB-UMB.

9YO. YOU'RE DUMB.

Erudite debate continues in this vein for perhaps two minutes, long enough for Dad to consider intervening, when Dramatic Events ensue.

LNKAA's SISTER, perhaps SEVEN. (Chanting) Name-Indistinct thinks she's cu-ute! Name-Indistinct thinks she's cu-ute!

LNKAA. (In voice like steam-whistle) I DO NOT I DON'T SHUT UP SHUT UP I DON'T! (Storms off into backyard in manner of thwarted Joffrey Baratheon)

9YO. (Pulls self up haughtily, & in majestic silence climbs stoop with regal dignity befitting a Queen of the Universe. Coolly re-enters Uncle's home, shuts door with Proud Finality.

Once inside living room, does the eminently predictable: excitedly scurries to window, peeks out under blinds with intense excitement & rapt fascination, as peals of pure, cruel delight from 7YO-NKAA Sister ring out across the hot Bayside night, & perhaps the Entire Galaxy)

Kids Today

In the car, radio on. Advertisement plays.

NINE YEAR OLD: (singing) Nation-wide is on your side... AHHRG. Why is that song in my head!

ME: It's an ad jingle. It's supposed to get in your head.

9YO: Why?

ME: So you buy whatever stuff they're selling.

9YO: But it's stuck in MY head, and I'm NINE, and I don't understand and can't buy their stuff!

ME: (Astonished) Wow. That's a good point --

9YO: (Bored) Can I play on your phone?

NO FLIRTING

NO FLIRTING.

A recent column by Fr. Thomas Berg, Is Flirting a Sin?, caught my attention.

I appreciate Fr. Berg’s distinctions and precautions. As a married mom myself, I am deeply sympathetic to a woman who finds herself aging and is tempted to boost her ego by turning a few heads. I am very concerned, however, about the fact that so few of us take the steps we need to protect our marriages. In a sex-saturated culture, marriages need vigilant protection. Even the very best of marriages can fall prey to temptations brought on by innocent (enough) flirtations....

NO FLIRTING, sugartits.

Every woman’s desire to be attractive is natural and good. Feminine beauty is meant to be a gift to the world, and in special way to our husbands.

NO FLIRTING. Dress hot, but also, like a nun.

The problem arises when a woman seeks not just to be beautiful, but to be sexually attractive to a man who is not her husband. It’s hard sometimes for women to recognize the difference, and for men it can be an easy line to cross.

NO FLIRTING. Gotta re-tune that slut vibe there, Mrs. O'Malley, we can see your ankles through the wool socks and glaoshes.

Flirting among singles can be a fun and healthy way to explore the possibility of a relationship, but when flirtation turns “sexy” outside of marriage, we use our sexuality as a means to an end—to garner ego-feeding attention in a way that can inspire the sins of lust and covetousness in others.

NO FLIRTING. It's your fault Mr. Gallagher got arrested jerking into your begonias. He saw your ankles.

Human sexuality is meant to be a gift between spouses alone.

NO FLIRTING.

I would encourage any woman tempted to look outside her marriage for sexual attention to think carefully about why she is seeking this attention. Chances are, her marriage needs some work.

Even if her husband is a lazy clod who never looks up from the video game he’s playing to notice her stylish new hair color, her vocation is to that man in that marriage, and her job is to make a full gift of herself to that man, in that marriage.

NO FLIRTING. You may think it's all fun and games, missy, but remember the sheer joy of official Catholic boinking: he gets to play video games all he likes no matter how many tassels you strap to your tatas.

In conclusion, NO FLIRTING.

Missed Two Classes and NO HOMEWORK

Shit.

After a 10-hour day at work, the last half of which was spent dealing with a Sudden Holyshit Desperate Do-It-Now Project, I come home late, and the 9-Year-Old has homework.

Math homework.

Common Core math homework.

Oh God oh God oh God.

The little girl is frustrated, frenetic.

MollyI already did the chauffering after work for this night's 7YO after-school activities, & she is now wrassling with dinner & laundry. So I'm up to the plate for the 9YO homework. Swing batter swing!

Oh God oh God oh God.

The Common Core math homework.

Oh God oh God oh God.

The 9YO, she's grouchy; she's trying to figure out what she's supposed to do. She's trying, but is NOT into it.

She has no idea what the hell she is supposed to do, and is thus Acting Out in a very 9YO way. Bouncing around. Being alternately cute and then resentful, charming then spiteful. Anything to NOT DO THIS.

Her teacher, whom I like, has helpfully modeled an answer for the first question. There's a word problem. There are prescribed steps for solving this word problem. I look at the teacher's model. You have to a diagram. Then you have to do subtraction. Then you have to Explain Your Answer in Your Own Words.

Or at least that's what I fucking THINK you're supposed to do.

My eye drifts to the bottom of the assignment page, where, I have been taught by Grim Experience, I will encounter the True Horror: the Official Common Core Explanation of Why I Have to Cope with This Shit.

I quote.

I FUCKING QUOTE.

Use place value understanding to decompose to smaller units once using the standard subtraction algorithm, and apply the algorithm to solve word problems using tape diagrams.

OK then.

The weekend... needs booze.

Can't Remember What the Problem Was

Welcome always are the innovations of Kerrymen.

Parents in Co Kerry will be encouraged to take their teenage children to the pub to teach them to drink sensibly.

The pilot scheme, backed by the Kerry branch of the Vintners Federation of Ireland and some teachers, is due to be introduced at Christmas.

Pray continue.

Publicans who participate will hold promotional events aimed at parents and their 18- and 19-year-old children. The project is designed to tackle the culture of young people drinking fast to get drunk and drinking before they go out at night. VFI Kerry chairman Ger Counihan said he accepted the campaign would be controversial. However, he added: “The amount of alcohol being consumed by young people is frightening. We have to educate them on how to drink or we will have more trouble down the line.”

This is a brilliant plan on the part of the Vintners Federation of Ireland. Making parents spend time out in public with their teenage spawn is a certain to lead to a dramatic spike in parental binge drinking, all of which will be done in pubs by people with much more disposable income than 18-year-olds. Profit!

Hark! to Mr Counihan's cold inexorable logic:

Cheap alcohol in off-licences is a factor, he said. “As long as a can of beer is cheaper than a bar of chocolate, we’ve got a problem.”

To be sure. Yet one supposes another solution, one perhaps surprisingly even more sensible, would be for the Republic to lavishly subsidize the domestic Irish chocolate industry, which is not now what it once was, faith, in the time of our fathers. In short order the costs of chocolate bars would plummet and the fine lads and lasses of Kerry would be dancing chastely and chocolate-cheeked at the crossroads, the costly lager cans at the off-license growing dusty and cobwebbed, forlorn and unpounded.

And if the kids start to chocolate-binge? Haul their asses into the fucking pub and make them slam some pints. That will cure those sick little candy-asses of their disgusting addiction right fucking quick.

 

Whoa, Nially: Or, Some of My Best Friends Are Also Pompous Idiots

Over There, I think I pretty much said all there is to say about Niall of the Nine Wankages, but since the only purpose of this blog is malice aforethought* there is no reason not to chew through the whole godawful slice of fried dung with a view towards pointing out that Ferguson is an absolute tit.

Last week I said something stupid about John Maynard Keynes.  Asked to comment on Keynes’ famous observation “In the long run we are all dead,” I suggested that Keynes was perhaps indifferent to the long run because he had no children, and that he had no children because he was gay. This was doubly stupid. First, it is obvious that people who do not have children also care about future generations. Second, I had forgotten that Keynes’ wife Lydia miscarried.

What an asshole.

Ferguson didn't slur "people who do not have children," he slurred homosexuals, because he does that shit.

Because this is trebly stupid. Gay people as it happens can raise children! No kidding!

As for the rest, "I am only hatefully glib in my public appearances, here are the books where I am thoughtful, and by the way Sullivan" is a load of crap. 

--

*If I were a Drag Queen or Roller Derby Bruiser Chick my name would be "Alice Aforethought."**

**Actual Drag Queens or Roller Derby Bruiser Chicks are welcome to steal this, though a Whiskey Fire plug would be welcome, as well as amusingly baffling to your immediate audience.