Haven’t done an blog award post in a while

Our friend and regular Renal Reader Kate saw fit to give us one of those blog awards that function must like the chain surveys you used to get in your email box during the glory days of America Online.  Back then we didn’t have YouTube or Maru or Facebook or most other Internet distractions that we take for granted today, so yeah we had a lot of time to fill out 60-question surveys and send them back to all the friends we knew who owned computers.  But Kate’s interested in our answers, has three kids to chase around all day, and is probably the one person who knows us from before we started Renal Failure who still reads this blog regularly so let’s do her a solid and read the rules:

To be eligible you must have under 200 followers(check!) and follow the rules of answering the 11 questions asked by your nominator, add in 11 random facts*, choose people to award it on to (no repeats, share the love), and make 11 new questions for them.

Ugh… this is a lot of work but we said we would so let’s go to the questions:

Jane Austen couldn’t write a fight scene to save her life

It seems like I’ve had a constant cold for the past month or so, where just as one cold was ending the next one was beginning.  And as I’m in the downswing of my current bout with the cold virus, I’ve noticed I’ve let a few things get past me during this time.  One was the prediction my friend made after the Presidential election (briefly mentioned in this post) when she got mad at all her Obama-aligned Facebook colleagues who were celebrating:

By the end of December, the stock market will suffer a major crash as people pull their money out to beat the new taxes taking effect in 2013. Businesses who cannot afford to cover their employees with health insurance will immediately begin either cutting jobs entirely or dropping most of their employees down to part-time to avoid the heavy fines that will levied against them otherwise. Gas prices will spike back up above $4 a gallon, heading up to $5. Be prepared for this to happen – and I don’t expect to hear any complaints from those who are celebrating this evening.

Even spotting her an extra month, none of this happened. The Dow Jones, NASDAQ and S&P500 are all up over 6 percent since the election. Job numbers for December and January are up.  Gas still isn’t 4 bucks but the idea that oil companies would raise prices just because they have a sad that Obama got reelected is a golden idea, in that it pisses over the image of capitalists as rugged captains of industry and makes them look more like the awful human beings featured on MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen.  So let’s all remember this lesson: don’t make predictions when you’re angry.

We’re also behind on doing the blog award stuff for our friend Kate, who awarded us the Liebster Award that had been passed on to her.  Hopefully we’ll get to that this weekend, considering we’ve blown off pretty much every other one of these blog award things over the years.

What else got past us… oh, it was Valentine’s Day, which I spent coming down with flu-like symptoms and I tried fighting them with a steady stream of rum and cokes to unsatisfactory effects.  Usually we have something bitter for Valentine’s Day, so let’s make up for it with something dumb we saw over at FoxNews.com regarding love: “Four Things Jane Austen Teaches Us About Love:”

1. Play hard to get. Don’t be so aggressive. When women make themselves so available to men, the thrill of the chase is gone. The harder you are to “catch,” the more interesting you become.

“I don’t want to chase your dumb ass,”  says Anonymous Doug.  “I ain’t got time for that shit. You know who’s interesting? A bitch that doesn’t play bullshit games like this.  Thrill of the chase is lie. Ever see a high-speed police chase? Yeah, that shit is thrilling until ends, then that shirtless meth-head gets dragged out of his overturned pick-up truck and beaten retarded by six pissed-off cops.  Fuck the chase – give it up early or don’t give it up at all. Save all of us some time and misery.”

“Seeing the picture of the woman who wrote this article, her definition of interesting probably consists of what popped up on her Dilbert calendar that day,” says Tina the Lesbian.  “And considering her previous article written for FoxNews.com was titled “To Be Happy, We Must Admit That Women and Men Aren’t ‘Equal,” I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mind making less money than her male counterparts for writing dreck just as long as every now and then one of her male bosses pats her on the head and tells her she’s a good patriarchal tool.”

2. Wait for sex. I know it’s chic to think of yourself as a sex goddess. And maybe you are. But the truth is, if you present yourself this way to a man—in the way you dress and behave—he’ll respond in kind. If you want to be the one he brings home to mom, make him earn your love. And your body.

“If you’re truly a sex goddess, he will respond by worshiping your sensual form,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “She makes the phrase ‘earn your love’ sound like it’s something you do on a game show rather than through getting to know your partner in whatever ways you consent.”

“Why wouldn’t mom want you to bring home a sex goddess?” says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “Maybe mom wants to see her son happy with a decent looking woman rather than some dour frump who will suck the life out of him until he inevitably cheats on her with his secretary or puts a bullet in his brain to end the misery.”

3. Make your guy feel important. Sure, you’re self-sufficient. And he is, too. But everybody wants to feel valued. Men in particular. What’s wrong with letting him take care of things every once and a while? After all, why would he keep coming around if you give him the impression he has nothing to offer?

“Yeah, the male psyche can be fragile, but it can be easily repaired,” says Mikka.  “But you’re already trying to take sex out of the game, which is like playing hockey constantly shorthanded.  Yeah, you can do it, but you’d do so much better with a full complement of players on the ice.  Fuck him, feed him, let him watch the game, dress up like She-Ra ever now and again… it’s not hard to make a guy feel important.”

4. Put down your sword. Despite what you’ve heard, men don’t love b*tches. They like nice women. Strong and confident women, yes. But nice. They can go hand in hand. Really.

“Fuck you, my sword is awesome!”  says Ninja Vicki.  “Men love women with swords.  If you’re a woman and you can’t think of an accessory to pull your outfit together, pick up a sword and be a bad-ass.  Don’t see that in any dusty-vag Jane Austen novel, do ya?”

“I’m very nice, and my sword makes sure everything stays nice,” says Samurai Cathy.  “And though it pains me to echo the sentiments of my blood enemy – fuck you, my sword is awesome too!”

I believe one time I tried an online dating site and it asked me what kind of woman I was looking for, so I typed in “BITCHES WITH SWORDS!”  Surprisingly they wouldn’t let me keep that, but I fully stand by the sentiment: bitches with swords – those are the ladies I’m giving my attention to.  Oh, you studied Romantic Literature and crochet things on Etsy?  How nice.  See that woman over there?  She’s ready to fight the Kurgan from Highlander.  Enjoy your mojito. Swords are like boots, in that they can up a girl on the 10-point hotness meter by at least two points.  It’s worked for years on the covers of fantasy novels – I’m just bringing it out of Narnia and into the singles bar.

Jane Austen novels would have been a lot more readable if they had more bitches with swords in them.  I know I got halfway through Pride, Prejudice and Zombies before getting bored with it, which is a lot more than I was able to stomach of the original Pride & Prejudice in high school.

BITCHES WITH SWORDS!  That’s what 2013 should be the year of.

When I make shit up, they don’t give me tax-exempt status

When the Pope said he was resigning, I was pretty confused because I didn’t know the Pope could do that.  They go through all that trouble and pomp to give you a position that grants you infallibility and moral authority, and now it turns out it’s  like any other job where you can quit when you feel like it? That’s some bullshit.  I’m supposed to kiss this guy’s papal ass when he can just retire like my grandpa did from his long-held position at the fucking shoe store?

Then it occurred to me that it’s kind of fucked up that God would choose you as the Pope and then make you unable to do your job.  And if God didn’t do that to the Pope then the Almighty dropped the damn ball – and dropped it hard – on protecting his top representative on his planet.  Or the cardinals cocked up selecting you to lead the Church, in that case it’s still God’s fault for not making his will clearly known to the people who represent his holy will.

Really, they’re just making shit up.

And the newest exhibit to back up that assertion was found on the Facebooks recently.  This letter from the Archdiocese of New Orleans regarding whether you can eat alligator during Lent:

“alligator is considered in the fish family”

Look, we already know the Church will totally ditch the entire “no meat on Fridays” deal for a bitching party, but you can’t go calling an alligator a fish.  If you called an alligator a fish in your kindergarten class, you would not get a gold star that day.  You would not even get a silver star.  You would not get a happy face sticker either.  Fuck, I wouldn’t even give you a juice box either because I’d be afraid you’d hurt yourself with the straw.  Put on your helmet and try not to eat all of the glue.

“alligator is considered in the fish family”

But this is Louisiana, where gator is good eatin’, and that’s fine.  But if you want to sell me on the idea of the Lenten season being one of solemn sacrifice, you can’t make outrageous loopholes for its most basic rules, especially ones that completely ignore established biology.  I know the Church ain’t too big on science, but now we’re getting into “There are four lights” territory here.  No wonder most members of the Catholic Church use birth control despite the Church’s negative position on it.  You have ranking members of its hierarchy thinking reptiles are fish.

We already know the Church is in the pocket of Big Seafood (which is why Lent exists in the first place, but now they’re bowing to the local gator lobby now?  Have the lawsuits for all the child buggery reduced local archdioceses to do the bidding of lesser industries now?

Reptiles are fish, sure!  Women should have autonomy over their reproductive organs?  FUCK NO!  You broads can’t even become priests!  Go sit in the convent and hang back while the men make the important decisions for the Church, like what is a fish.  Shit, it’s like you’re not even trying to hide that you’re just making shit up, like you’re saying it’s not worth the effort to try and trick people anymore. Forget justifying our archaic stances with two millenia of doctrines, scripture, and theological debate – we’re just going to do a bunch of arbitrary shit now.

This has lodged in my brain because it’s a much easier thing to wrap my head around than institutionalized concealment of decades of child molestations.  The callousness and detachment by Church officials to cover up child molestations takes a lot of effort to imagine and comprehend, let alone to begin to fathom all of the resources put to work to hide these deeds.  But alligator is a fish – that’s an easier devil to understand because it’s just fucking retarded.  It’s like this archbishop decided to give up knowing what shit is called for Lent.

I’m going to eat a Baconator on Ash Wednesday, and it’s going to be delicious.  And Lent is bullshit.

I bet Allah gets tipped 20%

It’s a prudent idea to always be nice to the people who serve your food.  Waiters and waitresses get shit on enough as it is, and half the time the shit they get isn’t even their fault or anything they can control, so they certainly don’t need me or anyone else raining down another level of shit in the middle of their current shit tsunami.

We bring this up because of this recent story of an Applebee’s waitress posting the receipt of a pastor who stiffed her fellow waitress on the tip with this uplifting message added to the bill (and we are thankful for this story coming to our attention because we’re getting tired of writing about guns):

But the diner has scratched out that tip, writing instead that “I Give God 10% Why do you Get 18″ and adding the word “pastor” above his signature. And instead of leaving a tip that was merely less than the 18%, just wrote a big “0.”

Ah, theology vs. the customary gratuity of having a party of 8 or more.  Did Jesus and the Apostles tip 20% at The Last Supper, or did they stiff the waitstaff and create the stereotype of the cheap Jew?  These are the questions the Church should be answering.

Anyway, let’s order up some venom…

“Does the Lord only make $3.50 an hour?” says Tina the Lesbian.  “I would think God could at least get himself a position with a salary, and probably benefits too. ‘Cause he’s God.”

“This was a portion of a bill that was part of a party of 20,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp.  “I personally don’t mind automatic gratuity regarding large parties because when you bring in a big group like that, you are going to be a lot more work for that restaurant. So it’s a trade-off: you get to eat with a large amount of people while the staff gets some guaranteed coin for their trouble.”

“Hey pastor, next time the Lord can get you your fucking quesdillas and diet soda,” says Ninja Vicki.  “I’m thinking that 10% you give to the Lord isn’t a tithe but an asshole tax levied by the Almighty against you.”

“So the Lord gets 10% of that pastor’s entire income,” says Mikka.  “I don’t know how much the pastor makes, but it’s a hell of a lot more than whatever that check was for.”

“And that 18% gets split between the waitress, the bus boy, and the bartender,” says Samurai Cathy.  “The Lord pockets everything himself, and he doesn’t pay taxes on it either.”

The story gets more infuriating with this development: the pastor – who is a woman – got the waitress who posted the receipt online fired from her job at Applebee’s. And here’s the kicker:

Some time on Wednesday, Chelsea says the customer who had left the receipt contacted her Applebee’s location, demanding that everyone be fired, from the servers involved to the managers.

“Fire everyone? It’s not like you got AIDS from the food, lady,” says Anonymous Doug.  “You wanted to show that you were a bad-ass to the help, and the help threw it right back at you.  Congratulations you biopsied cervical tumor for reinforcing the the caste system we pretend doesn’t exist in America.  Have yourself a cookie and then drown in a septic tank.”

Note: it was just the waitress who posted the receipt who got fired, no one else apparently had to lose their job over this.

“In a world with a just God, this pastor would never eat in a dining establishment again for fear of the staff pissing on all of her food,” says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat.  “But we don’t have a just God because you people don’t pray to cats anymore, so now you all must suffer the indignity of this woman not eating urine-soaked food for the rest of her life.”

Always remember, peak asshole is a lie.  And Applebee’s food isn’t very good to begin with.

Y’all can’t kill me!

Today is my first day of my mid-30′s, which doesn’t feel that much different than my early 30′s but are still slightly better than my late 20′s and way better than my mid-20′s.  Not as good as my early 20′s though.  I got laid a lot more back then. That was awesome.

Renal Failure started in my mid-20′s at a real low point, and because it helped me get out from that depressive pit it makes a lot of sense why the frequency of posts have lessened from the original post-a-day pace to one every week or two.  You stop taking the medicine after it’s driven out the illness.  At least the writing in these more intermittent posts is superior to the earlier posts, though those early posts are what created the deep Renal Failure mythology that long-time readers enjoy.

But I certainly do more in my life now than when Renal Failure started.  I’ve been performing improv for the past two years, practicing Israeli Krav Maga for almost five.  I actually have a job now where I write for my paycheck rather than participate in dull office tedium. I drink way better beer, often times out of an actual glass or goblet or chalice.  Me at 34 is kicking the shit out of me at 26.

I ran into an old high school friend at a bar around Christmas and he said he was surprised to see me still alive.  And I replied “Y’all can’t kill me!  I’ll outlive you all!”  Yes I was drunk but I’m pretty sure I would have said the same thing sober, because I’m right.  And I stole that line from Tag Larkin.

I probably said this before but I’m too lazy to look for it: I was asked as an alumnus of my college to pass on some advice to the future students, and my advice was this: Don’t let these be the best years of your life.  And if I can remember to take this advice myself as I grow older I should have a pleasantly awesome time getting to 35, maybe even 40.

If you don’t tell your guns you appreciate them, they will become sad

Rassles once told me “Firefly is like the Dave Matthews Band of science fiction. Fans are obnoxiously devoted, and non-fans are usually more frustrated with the fans than the show itself.”  There is truth to be found there, but recently I’ve found it to be a more truthful statement regarding guns in America – it’s their most ardent fans that critically annoy me more than the guns themselves.

Case in point: yesterday was Gun Appreciation Day in America – scheduled conveniently by the marketing firm hyping the event on the holiday weekend commemorating civil rights leader, non-violence advocate, and gun shot victim Martin Luther King Jr. because irony is an effective way to remember dates on your calendar. If you schedule your divorce proceedings on Valentine’s Day, you’ll damn well remember to show up.

The last appreciation day we covered here at the Failure was Chik-fil-A Appreciation Day, which was day where people said “Fuck you gay marriage, we’re eating shitty food!” (Remember that day!  Remember how that totally destroyed gay marriage and no gays ever got married again?) So it comes as no surprise that not only was Gun Appreciation Day inspired by the previous Chik-Fil-A Appreciation Day but that it also comes with its own “Fuck you” message – as read on the graphic on the Gun Appreciation Day homepage:

On 1.19.13, go to your local gun store, gun range or gun show with your Constitution, American flags, and your “Hands Off My Guns” signs to send a loud and clear message to Congress and President Obama.

That message apparently is “Fuck you, I’m easily startled, and I’m bored on a Saturday.”

Also, Gun Appreciation Day was scheduled around Obama’s Presidential inauguration – which sends a message similar to this classic scene from Blazing Saddles…

Now I can’t find a sword appreciation day (although Feb 28th is International Sword Swallowers Appreciation Day) or a knife appreciation day, however those deadly armaments don’t have a wealthy lobbying outfit propping them up. Guns apparently have low self-esteem whilst edge weapons are comfortable with who they are.  Your stockpile of pistols and rifles is a needy girlfriend who must be continuously told that she is pretty and smart or she will have a meltdown at your next social gathering, forcing you to spend the next hour out on the patio trying to make her stop crying.  Your knife is perfectly fine if you want to go watch football at the bar with your friends.

I don’t much care for the important weapon which supposedly protects us from guv’mint tier’ney being treated like a sports team’s promotional event (Come on out to the ballpark for Fan Appreciation Day – get a free t-shirt and bobblehead doll).  Sort of undercuts the solemn, serious nature you’re trying to bestow upon the gun.  And have you ever been to a store on Customer Appreciation Day?  Yeah, it’s just another sale, but it doesn’t come with all the overwrought Freedom-Emo bullshit that’s attached to Gun Appreciation Day.

Note: Freedom-Emo bullshit will be the new hot phrase of 2013.

I’d like to know what is considered the tyranny tipping point in these Gun Appreciators minds, because I’m getting a feeling this is just another flavor of your relative or friend who said they were moving to Canada when the last election didn’t go their way.  They didn’t move, and your gun appreciation people aren’t going to rise up against tyranny because their only working definition of tyranny seems to be “shit I don’t like.”

Fighting for freedom is a full-time job, which will require you to throw away your current career and uproot your family’s comfortable lifestyle to a war-time footing of rationed food, constant vigilance, and the threat of being snipered at any time by a well-trained member of the US military. So what will trigger your transformation from member of society to VIVA LA REVOLUTION? What will cause you to irrevocably disrupt your life and your family’s? Are you using the “I know it when I see it” method of determining when to go to DEFCON-1?  It doesn’t help your case if you don’t have some sort of specific answer. All it does is turn your “patriotic arsenal to protect freedom” into a “pile of guns for when I get mad.”

Fuck, the Swiss don’t have to deal with this shit, and everyone has a gun there. I guess neutrality allows you to have a more reasonable view of firearms.  Maybe I can just be a gun hipster. “Yeah, I have guns, but I’m more into the Swiss way of ownership. You haven’t heard of it, and even if you did I was into before you.”

Oh, do I have a large, menacing weapon on my back? I didn’t notice…

The world is driven by the deep insecurities of its people, regardless of whether those insecurities have any factual basis to them.  I find this belief becoming more and more plausible as the post-Sandy Hook shooting discussion over guns in America has devolved to “THEYS COMIN’ TO TAKE ALL OUR GUNS!”  and “MAH ARSENAL IS THE ONLY THING KEEPING THE KING OF ENGLAND OUT OF MY REC ROOM!”

Front and center regarding my “insecurities as catalyst” theory is this story about two guys in Portland walking around the streets with assault rifles on their back for the purpose of, according to one of these geniuses, “exercising my rights with a rifle to try to decrease the demonizing of peacefully exercising your rights in public.”  Apparently it’s legal to walk around in Oregon with a firearm in the open, but like with all things just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.  People kept calling 911 to report seeing men with guns walking down the street, prompting the cops to keep coming out to make sure nothing was going on.

My first thought when I read about this story was “I bet these two are white.”  And sure enough they were.  That’s the joy of being white: honkeys can get away with doing crazy shit like this.  When it comes to white people and ridiculous notions, there’s no limit to level of absoludicriousness we can reach. But the flipside is that as nutball as white people can get, we also get freaked out just as easily.  A member of the Black Panthers stands outside a voting precinct with a billy club and a scowl and the FOXNews crowd shits its pants like the Race War has started, but two crackers walk down a street with rifles on their backs and it registers nothing.  We had people pissing themselves over Muslims having a cultural center a few blocks from where the World Trade Center used to be, so imagine the cardiac shit-fit that would have been cast if they had guns too.  This is the shit you don’t have to worry about when your complexion is lighter than a cup of coffee with four creamers in it.

Again, just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, as seen here:

Officers said carrying firearms openly is legal in Oregon and carrying a concealed gun is legal with a valid license. However, doing one or both may generate 911 calls and possibly tie up resources that are needed for a true emergency.

Warren said he hoped people would approach them and talk to them, instead of calling police.

“Hey, that man has a large gun, let’s go up and talk to him,” said no one ever.  An exposed weapon is not a conversation starter with a stranger, it’s a warning.  And while you and your friend know that you’re not going to start shooting people, the rest of us don’t and we’re not going to take your word for it.  At least with concealed carry we don’t have trust that you’re not going to shoot up the place because we don’t know that you have a weapon, and therefore have no basis to conceive you could do such a thing.  You’re actually taking other people’s feelings into account when you don’t peacock around with your semi-auto self-worth validator.

You don’t trust your fellow man enough to leave your house without a rifle on your back, but you expect me to trust you?

And we get dumber with every passing day…

“What they really should do is observe the person to determine if the person is aggressive,” (Warren) said of seeing someone with a gun in public. “We’re not doing anything threatening to anyone.”

Again, only you know that.  We can’t read your mind, we can only observe what we see and what we see is two guys armed with rifles that can easily be swung around into a firing position in less time than it takes to say the word Onomatopoeia.  Are we to deny our instinct that someone with an exposed weapon is inherently dangerous, or are we to trick ourselves into thinking the counter-intuitive notion of  “No, they can’t be potentially dangerous, that’s just what they’d be expecting.”

And what is the precedence for this? What other country has random citizens walking around with rifles in the open?  Somalia?  Uganda? Mexico?  They don’t even do this bullshit in Israel, and they’re surrounded by people who hate them.  If someone’s walking around in public with a rifle in Israel, they likely have a military rank high enough to warrant their doing so.  In Oregon, it’s just some insecure yahoo.  And no one gets rockets shot at them in fucking Oregon.

It’s probably another evolution of the “Fuck You” default setting that Americans come pre-loaded with upon birth, like so much useless software on your new computer.  When you have so many people yelling “Fuck You” at each other, you need to find bigger ways to assert your “Fuck You” as the dominant one.  And what better way than by strutting around with a big gun.  Are you going to say “Fuck You” to the guy with semi-auto in plain view?  “I’m gonna do what I want and you ain’t gonna say shit to me because I got a gun and I want you to know it.  Look how big my balls are!  LOOK AT THEM!  Don’t call me insecure!  I’VE GOT A GUN!  I’M SECURE AS A MOTHERFUCKER!”

Bill Hicks told us that we have a simple choice to make if we want to change our lives – a choice between fear and love.  I take that as a prompt to examine why we do the things we do.  Are we doing something out of fear, or out of love?  Adding to that notion is are you acting in ways that make people want to act out of fear or love toward you?  Something tells me carrying a rifle on your back through town isn’t something you’re doing out of love, and it’s not encouraging any love toward you either.