A Half-Drowned Cat

I knew it would happen.

It was only a matter of time.

Pride cometh before the fall and this kitty didn’t land so well on all fours.

The Tiger Woods debacle finally vindicates my feelings about his negative effect on golf. The hero worship I’ve had to deal with from over-exuberant fans over the past 12 years since he came onto the scene has been nauseating.

I certainly can’t say that I thought it would have been a series of lustful trysts in all parts of the country. I probably would have gone with tax evasion or maybe that infamous tongue of his would’ve lashed out at some ninety-year old grandma that got in his way trying to get an autograph for her grandson after a tournament, all the while being caught live on camera dropping the f-bomb more times than Max Hall.

No, this was much better. This was much much better.

The noble persona of a debonair gentleman, which made me cringe at every news conference, has now crumbled in pieces and beheld the true nature of a man caught up in his own ego. The façade of humility that placated the media and masses, shuttered. Little did we know that he had already accomplished what we thought was that elusive Grand Slam. He just did it with four women, (3 + his wife) instead of the way we thought he might.

Now before you haul off defending him or accusing me of being a racist, bigoted, opportunist who only covets his fame, fortune, and golf swing, all of which couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Rather it’s similar to what happens when in meeting someone for the first time and something just doesn’t feel right. You can’t put your finger on it, but your gut is telling you that the numbers just don’t add up. Then later down the road you find out they are child pornographers and you exclaim to yourself, “I knew it!”

Well I knew it. I just knew the day would come when Tiger would fall from grace. It was only a matter of time before the tall tales Tiger was telling (his wife) would leave him caught with his tail between his legs. (or someone else’s)

This time the true tiger turned out to be his wife and she caught him by the ‘tale.’ Apparently the only person who can beat Tiger with a club is his wife.

The question now remains, does Tiger have nine lives?

A Nation Enslaved

The words of Mark Twain resound a simple truth blatantly not understood in today’s time: "Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul."

Never before has the discouragement and sorrow of my civic soul been enslaved by the haunting of what tomorrow may bring. While pessimism may be present, the hope and knowledge of my Creator’s existence is well rooted. The context upon which my doubt lies has nothing to do with God, yet everything at the same time.

The previously hallowed virtues of American life have seemed extinguished. There are glimmers of light in the rarest of places. The circumstances that we find our country, even the very fabric of our being, have digressed to levels unbefitting the principles upon which this nation was consummated.

How has this come upon a once great and proud citizenry?

The French historian Tocqueville wrote: “I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.” This he observed in the middle part of the 19th Century.

It seems that every man from the intellect to the journeyman will contend that one side be right and the other wrong. Neighbors battle over sound bites and distorted words, from media beholden to their benefactors, while others war over the semantics of the symptoms causing this universal despair. The honorable George Washington foresaw this problem when he said, “One of the expedients of party to acquire influence, within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart-burnings, which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those, who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.”

Cheap words are volleyed back and forth like right wing, liberal, socialist, capitalist, communist. Most do not understand the true meaning of the rhetoric they use to challenge their verbal opponent.

These terms were easier to grasp in simpler times. Americans knew where evil was and what it looked like. They knew what the Soviet Union was and what it stood for, an evil that was clear and present. Now the great deceiver of all that is good and virtuous has brought the same evil as before, but in a newer package and by enhanced methods.

This world has good and evil. Virtue is still better than vice, not just different. A child can and should be taught the difference between right and wrong. However, we have increasingly allowed ourselves to become led astray by rationalizations and the twisting of terms such as tolerance and equality.

The truth of the matter is that the fear-based loyalty to one ideology over another has enslaved the beholder to forget the very essence of where he or she came. First and foremost, a child of God; and secondly, blessed with the gift of being an American.

September 11th, 2001 was a tragic day indeed. One we immortalized with phrases such as, “We Will Never Forget.” Yet we have forgotten. We have forgotten what it was like to mourn, to be angered, and to be proud to be an American. We have forgotten that we returned to our churches and our synagogues in droves to find peace, healing, and direction. We have forgotten the virtues upon which America became a divine nation.

I return to the words to Tocqueville, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” I believe the time has come that America has ceased to be great and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Our elected leaders are absolved of any blame for this. Why? Because it was the vote we each cast that placed them where they are today. We have only ourselves to blame for the direction that our country is going. We have settled for mediocrity. We have missed the signs of evil that were so easy to see in years past. We have forgotten that which brought us to this land and raised us up to be the land of the free and home of the brave.

The chains continue to ensnare our souls, the soul of the United States. Nevertheless, they are chains that were not brought about by foreign oppressors. The evil resides internally among our own. They are chains, which slowly over time we have placed upon ourselves. We can never be free by heeding petrified opinions and being engaged in a civil war of political misfortunes.

It is time to open our eyes. The blindness and fog of human intellect must be repelled. It is time to become more educated and knowledgeable to the environment in which we reside. Taking heed to the truth rather than the fiction. The lamp lights need fuel and the fire must roar again for the pride of being an American. It can start by loving our neighbors and doing unto others as we would have done to us.

It can only come by an individual willing to labor to truly learn. It will take more than the evening news, or one or two biased websites. It will take more than reading forwarded spam email and social networking status updates. It will take work America. It will take doing a job that you may want someone else to do for you.

In the end, it should be a labor of love. A love of country, of family, and of fellowmen to break the chains of apathy that bind.

The 6 Minute Gum Purchase

I’ll bet you had no idea that this weekend is the final round of the Cheetah Championships of the Lumber Liquidator Pro Bowling Association Tour. This event is being held in the fabulous metropolis of Allen Park, Michigan.

The type of person that watches the PBA could be described in this brief yet painful experience.

I walk into a local convenience store to buy a pack of gum. I see a display for my favorite brand which states, “2 for 1 - $1.39.” It must be my lucky day. To add some excitement to my selection I grab a spearmint flavored box and a cinnamon flavored box.

I give them to the clerk who rings them up and says, “$2.86.” I’m no math genius but it’s easy to tell that he didn’t charge me the equivalent of the special. I calmly and politely inform him of the sign that offers the special. One note here on this, the display is directly in front of the register.

He looks down again, clears out the register, rings them up and as if he completely forgot the conversation just moments before says, “$2.86.”

I again remind him of the special. At this point he says, “Oh. They have to be the same kind,” referring to flavor. Ridiculous, but not unfathomable, I acquiesce and tell him to ring up two of the spearmint as I grab another off the shelf.

Again, he clears out the register, rings them up and yet again says, “$2.86.” He still is saying it in a way that he either forgot what the previous amount was or he possibly thinks it is different than before.

Still calmly, but not so much patiently, I remind him of the special. At this point it seems to begin to set in and he starts working with the register a little bit. He eventually comes up with a different value. He looks up and says, “2.06.”

I said, “I’m sorry. It says $1.39 for two.” He replies, “I have to charge tax.” I explained to him that there is no way that the tax on $1.39 is .67 cents.

The other clerk who was helping other customers has been watching this exchange for a little while. She finally says to me that I must select the gum that actually has the promotion sticker on the front of the package that says, “Buy One Get One Free.” Apparently the two packages of gum I picked up were not good enough for their brother and sister packages to meet this requirement and obtain a sticker.

I swapped them out for the stickered packages and remarkably the computer rang it up as $1.52.

At least I remained nice and kind to the guy, but come on!

I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised, but it was the longest gum buying experience of my life. He went back to watching bowling on the television behind the counter as I left the store. That’s a man that may not know his in-store specials, but he does know good bowling when he sees it.

Stupid People

I recognize that what I am about to write may be interpreted as judgmental, offensive, and or rude…
...but has that really ever stopped me in the past?

I Hate Stupid People!

Let’s break this statement down a little bit. What I’m trying to say is that I hate much of what the American society typifies.

Recently, I have had the opportunity to engage more directly with the political arena. This has caused me to do a little more reading and research than usual. In my findings, I have realized that the current issues at hand are not quite what most would think. There isn’t a conspiracy afoot either.

With all of the debate about politics, social issues, or even religion it isn’t the issue of whether there is health care reform, for example, but it is the way in which people react to it. I am deeply concerned over the state of our societal behaviors that are considered appropriate. When the United States was merely a group of colonies in infancy, there was a deep division among the colonies as to whether or not to publicly cede from Great Britain. Many of our founding fathers who we esteem so highly now, were not in favor of separating from a government that had taken care of them monetarily for establishing the new land. Basically, some were afraid to bite the hand that feeds. Let’s be honest, I don’t blame them; it is a difficult position to be placed in.

However, when the time came to discuss the merits of the decision they were facing, they were able to respectfully disagree with one another on the issues. For the most part, even when there was a personality conflict, these great men were able to set It aside and respect the other, his background, his experience, and most importantly his opinion.

This is a stark contrast to society today. Issues such as global warming, illegal immigration, health care reform, wars, nuclear weapons, incite such negative rhetoric between either side of the line that the divisiveness is much greater than the singular issue. The individuals bantering back and forth in chat rooms and on comment boards is more sickening to me than whether there really was weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or not.

Take a moment and read the comments made by readers of a story on a current hot-topic. These wasteful monologues and tirades are emblematic of the fabric of the nation. People who get there information from sound bites and then spew them with hateful and inciting rhetoric to other fellow citizens, without doing their own personal education on the subject, has removed us further from what America stood for in the late 1700’s to where we are presently. Being beholden to a political party, societal clique, or even religious movement is not completely immoral unless we remember that we are all Americans collectively. Though we may disagree on the method of which we might get from point A to point B, the lack of communal respect for our neighbor has done more to decimate the standards of American life than terrorists, democrats/republicans, or any other ‘evil’ that one side labels the other.

The American people are imploding from the inside. They are stupid to think that attempting to impose an opinion based upon garbage information is truly going to help motivate or convince others. What we end up with are the ‘town-hall’ meetings that we are hearing about in the news where people are yelling and physically fighting over a 30-second sound bite they heard from someone else.

It doesn’t matter whether it came from Rush Limbaugh or James Carville, the fault lies on both sides. The bigger problem is that the American people are too gullible for their own good. Americans are not much different from North Koreans in believing everything they are told. The cynical behavior and thoughts have moved beyond the political issues now and reside even in the most tragic of circumstances. As a test, I invite you to open up the website for your local paper. Find a headline that references a sad or tragic accident or event. Then read the comment board. I will almost guarantee there is a comment within the first ten that exemplifies a gross level of ignorance, bigotry, hatred, or is attempting to incite such.

This is the America we have become. Not a socialist, progressive, conservative, right wing, communist state but rather a cynical, sarcastic, contemptuous, disparaging, abusive, disrespectful, and unloving nation.

I am not a hippie, nor do I play one on TV. This isn’t about peace, love, and kumbaya. This is about the paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln gave when he proclaimed a house divided against itself cannot stand. America won’t be around long enough to see the effects of global-warming, whether it exists or not, if the people cannot find a way to honor and respect their fellowman in a way that honors the country as it was intended to be from the beginning. A place where men and women could be free from tyranny, both external and internal. To become such is going to require its’ citizens to stop being so stupid.

From Russia With Love

I wish I could take credit for this, but for the first time on The Lint Chronicles I will be posting the words of another. This is from a column in a Russian news outlet:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.
Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
Stanislav Mishin
The article has been reprinted and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina

Shangri-La has been Found!

I know I’ve been lacking in intellectual creativity over the past 6 months. Heaven knows that could be an excuse for the sporadic blog entries.

But then, when you least expect it, a dandy morsel falls out of nowhere to be devoured upon like a rabid dog.

The latest: Utah is the Happiest Place on Earth.

Just don’t tell Walt Disney.

After a recent study determined Utah as the happiest place to live it dawned on me, “Well no kidding! When you’re the state with the highest porn subscribers and equally as high amounts of folks doped up on antidepressants, is it any wonder?”

Doesn’t take a statistical genius to figure that one out; you know what I mean? The fact is Utah is a good place. A lot of pro’s and definitely its share of con’s, but overall nothing too bad to seriously complain about.

One thought this recent study did spur is an on-going question I’ve had for some time. When it comes to happiness is the backwoods hick living in a double-wide in the middle of nowhere; that can’t wait for the next reality TV episode to start while sitting in a rocking chair spitting chewing tobacco into a can, happier than a wealthy sophisticated aristocrat with the penthouse apartment in some metropolitan hot spot, who lives his/her life in somewhat of a celebrity fashion?

Given the top three states were Utah, Hawaii, and Wyoming I think I’ve finally found my answer. We all know Utah is over-medicated so that’s out for cheating to be happy. Hawaii comes in second due to the fact that it’s Hawaii. This makes for an unfair advantage over all other states. So next on the list being Wyoming it occurred to me that happiness must be a desolate barren wasteland of sagebrush and un-plowed winter roads where your neighbor is a day’s walk to the other side of the valley.

And all of this time I thought I had it all. If any of you try to out bid me for this piece of land in heaven, then I just might sue.

Seriously...

...nearly 5 months since the last blog? Pathetic. One would think some major incident occurred of some sort which would have caused the lengthy sabbatical.

I have an announcement: The world is coming to an end.

Pack your bags. Head for the hills, (or Missouri if your theological beliefs suggest).

Hell has most certainly frozen over. Be looking for that big tidal wave to come from that doomsday movie from a few years ago. It's REALLY going to happen!!!

Why? I'll tell you why...

...Oprah is fat...

...again!

Not to mention:

Gas is at $1.25 a gallon, (and quickly going back up even though the price of oil continues to fall...hmm)

A black man is president. Which I hope the best, but expect the worst. (Two words: Pan - etta?)

The Yankees did NOT make the playoffs.

The stock market is crashing... ...or is it?

Gays still can't marry in California.

and an undefeated college football team, who crushed a historically perennial powerhouse, will not be the national champion.

What is this world coming to? Seriously! It is just me or does it seem that everywhere you look these days things that should be in a certain place seem to have been turned upside down, on it's head, or so half bass-akward that it's hard to even tell which end was supposed to be up in the first place?

I'm not a doomsday theorist, nor am I really that pessimistic. Cautiously concerned? Absolutely! But I just can't seem to understand why people are panicking in virtually every facet of life. Many panic and don't even realize it. Example, the shopping carts barreling at you three abreast down the aisle at Costco. Not one willing to give an inch to on-coming traffic. And it's not even the Christmas shopping season. NOTE: We drive on the RIGHT-SIDE of the road in America people, even in supermarkets!

I still have yet to understand the 'mosey' method down the middle of the aisle when all the person is really is doing is staring blankly into space not quite knowing what exactly they are looking for. (It's a metaphor which could be used to illustrate many other facets of their lives.)

Seriously though. Life ain't that bad. Sure your team may have lost the election and your home value has dropped 20% in the last six months. Maybe you've lost your retirement savings in a ponzi scheme and now you'd like to take Madoff's headoff!

But the fact of the matter remains, we're all in this together. No sense freaking out. It isn't going to help anything. Fear is such a powerful entity. It controls the lives of so many people. What happens in life, happens. Love it or hate it, it comes. Do we really lack the self-confidence as individuals and a nation to not remember the basic laws of physics? What goes up, must come down; and what goes down must come up.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Unfortunately it seems that the actions have become so outrageous that people tend to react with equal outrageousness. (I don't think that really is a word, but you get the point.)

I think it's high time to stop for a moment, breathe, smell the roses or what's left of them, and find time to enjoy the simple things in life.

After all, do you really want to end up like this guy?