Jew is not a verb

I've never been easily offended. Growing up I adhered to the old adage regarding sticks and stones. I've been called every name in the book and then some. Because I stood only 5’6” at most, wore glasses and was smarter than most everyone else (not bragging, simple fact) I endured a lot of taunts. There were the usual epithets such as four-eyes, shorty, little man, asshole, dick, etc. Along with that I heard queer and faggot, a favorite catch all in my shitty town for anyone that didn't adhere to the rigid white trash customs that seemed to abound. I heard others utter the usual racial slurs and always dismissed the speaker as being ignorant. In the words of the immortal Honey Badger, I don’t give a fuck.

I myself never used the word “Nigger." I had black friends in high school and have black coworkers and acquaintances. If I had ever used that word, my father and mother would have smacked me and would have been embarrassed to be seen with me. Using any of those words was seen as a sign of being poorly educated. (My parents are embarrassed enough by my prodigious employment of profane language.)

You see, my father is a Jew, and while technically that doesn't make me Jewish, being Jewish is more than a religion. I consider myself an ethnic Jew, much as some of my friends consider themselves to be Mexican even though their families have resided in this country for 150 years or more. And while I've never been sensitive about any other aspect of my life, I find myself being sensitive to the use of the word Jew as a verb. I rarely heard it growing up but I've heard it a lot in the past ten years. When it happens I don’t say anything I just stand there silently. At some point, though I work into the conversation that I am a Jew and let it go. I don’t know why I don’t just jump at them and punch them in the face, or at least defend my identity.

 I just don’t know.

There's a HUGE chunk of hypocrisy when someone uses the term Jew as a verb. If a Christian does it, they are considered a "hard bargainer" or "shrewd businessman." But, if anyone with a last name that ends in -witz, -stein or -blatt does it, their a cheap Jew. Christians are frugal, Jews are cheap. In reality, my business dealings with Christians here in Texas make me avoid anyone with a fish symbol in their ad. 

Bonus if you remember this cover

There can be only two reasons why anyone uses this term, or any other ethnic slur; naivete or ignorance. There’s a fine line between the two. Naivete is reserved for those who grew up without knowing any Jews, those who received a transmission from their parents, who probably didn't know any Jews either…at least they thought they didn't know any. Jews aren't always recognizable, especially those outside of the Northeast.  There is no Jewish rock station, although many of the best rock and rollers are Jews (Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Slash, Gene Simmons.) Not every Jew is named Epstein, has curly hair and big ears. Jews don’t typically run around proclaiming their faith and trying to convert everyone. After all, who wants to be a part of a group that has been hated for 2000 years? Naivete, to some point, can be forgiven. Ignorance on the other hand…

Everyone knows that Jewish comedians
 pull the levers that run the world 

Ignorance is the ability to look at the elephant in the room and  call it a giraffe.

Ignorance occurs when someone should know better, and should be able to discriminate between utter bullshit and the truth. Ignorance is looking the truth in the face and still denying it. (Please don’t start debating me on the subjectivity of truth; it’s too early for a Platonic dialogue.) Ignorance is for the uneducated and the closed minded. One would think that it is reserved for those who blindly believe what they are told in order to shift the blame for their laziness elsewhere. I was taught to believe that ignorance is not for the educated, or is it?

Two days ago my wife and I were talking with a person we both know fairly well. She is white, upper middle class, works a corporate job – the very epitome of a mother, etc. In the course of our conversation she asked if someone “Jewed us down.” I had no idea what to say. My wife told me that the remark elicited a rather uncomfortable pause and then the conversation went on. I didn't know what to say. I seriously doubt this woman have used the word Nigger in a sentence in front of a black person. Or Wetback in front of our Hispanic neighbors. But here she was using the only phrase that pisses me off. Although I’m not black, I can relate to what Dave Chapelle says:

Most Jews I know go out of their way to disprove this stereotype. They overtip so as not to look cheap. I've done this myself and been questioned for it.

“Hey Ryan, you gave that waiter a 20% tip on the meal!”

“Yeah, um they work hard.”

“But he kicked you in the balls!”

I don’t come from a wealthy family. Not all Jews are wealthy doctors or lawyers or financiers - don't believe all the bullshit on the Internet.  My father was an MBA in steel-toed boots. He spent his life working outdoors running scrapyards. He was (and still is) a though motherfucker who spent his days in the freezing cold and the burning heat surrounding by mud, dirt and rusting steel. He could never get all the grease and grime from under his fingernails and his favorite overalls were practically flammable from all the oil and grease. His crews comprised blacks, whites and Latinos, and he didn't care what you were as long as you got the job done.  I think am bothered by this because it is disrespectful to my old man. Maybe I’m actually disappointed that people still use this old trope, but it latter makes no sense since I don’t hold people in general in high regard, so I am left only with this as a sign of disrespect.

So from now on I will treat  it as such. 

We're All Doomed

It’s been awhile since my last entry because I’ve had a tough time finding things that piss me off.

Scratch that.

There are so many things that are pissing me off, that I have to mitigate them a bit, lest the Missus get sick of my bullshit.

I told myself I would try to make this blog apolitical, but asking that is like asking me to stop eating cookies. I love cookies. Cookie monster ain’t got nothin’ on me. I love talking shit about politics, it’s practically a family sport. When my family gets together it’s like a bunch of Rabbis arguing over the Talmud or bunch of bears fighting over a fish. Sometimes we argue from a point of view that isn’t our own, just to make it interesting.

So, you ask, what is bothering me today? I’ll tell you what churns my gullet and chaps my hide; the elections.  I’m sick of them already. To me, it’s just two different flavors of the same shit.

“Would you like peach flavored shit or strawberry flavored shit?”

No matter how you flavor it, it’s the same old shit. Faecal matter by any other name should smell so bad.

While I’m sincerely disgusted by the rhetoric from both parties, I’m even more disgusted by the ignorance of the American populace. Those who know me, know this is a recurring theme in my work. I make no bones about my misanthropic bent; as a matter of fact I wear it like a badge of honor. I am never surprised by the stupidity and ignorance that flows from the pieholes of the bipedal cattle that inhabit this country; yet every time a spokesperson for the genetically damaged opens their mouth I act as if this is something new, as if this utterance has shattered my entire worldview.

She ate the Ubermensch

Every year, it seems the electorate becomes dumber and dumber, and worse yet, we celebrate the stupidity and ignorance of the common man.  Americans laud the supposedly wise, sagacious everyman, who knows the world through an innate lens of practicality, who stands in opposition to the effete intellectual who processes the world through theory and method. The common man is born with an innate sense of right. His moral compass is installed by God at birth, he does not spend time in the impractical pursuit of thinking, he is about action!

Practicality is valued more than intellect. Practicality is “useful” whereas intellect is daydreaming and theory. Practical knowledge is conflated with applied knowledge.

By nature some people are more easily manipulated than others. Those that wield the Noble Lie know that it is a weapon that works best on those that are frightened and dumb. Like the animals that cower at the sound of thunder, or Unfrozen Caveman Lawyers. The wielders of such power rely on the ignorance of the masses. The hatred of intellectual life or book larnin’ gives the Liar the medium in which the lie will grow. Ignorance is the Agar in the petri dish of mass opinion, it feeds and strengthens the lie allowing it grow and spread. The Lie is an infection of the mind spread through close contact. The lie mutates like a virus, modifying its genetic makeup to better suit the host.

The only way to kill the virus is through intellectual integrity and truth, but in our current age of internet bullshit, plastic fuckery and simulated intellectualism, it’s difficult to kill off the half-truths and lies. Then again, many of those being lied to would have it no other way. The lie gives comfort and verifies what they already “knew.” The Lie gives them the feeling of being superior to the experts and the pointy headed intellectuals. The Lie helps them sleep at night by verifying their delusions and quieting the voices in their head that tell them are slowly going mad. It changes their biases and prejudices into accepted party platforms and gives them the ability to relax and escape from the real life that surrounds them.

There’s no way to argue with these people or try to show them the errors in logic or truth, they pass it off as being “you truth” or they want to “agree to disagree’ which really means fuck you, you’re wrong.

And that is why we are doomed.

Self-check and Walmart

Those self-check kiosks are ubiquitous or so it seems. The purpose is supposedly to prevent the necessity of hiring those pesky things called "workers" that corporations seem to despise.
The idea behind them is to speed up the process for those people with a small volume of items. Inevitably some idiot gets in line with a cartful of crap and a headful of nothing. Because they are intellectually stunted mouthbreathers, they fail to recognize that the crap in their cart far exceeds the space allotted for bagging. Then  they proceed to attempt to scan their Chinese junk while simultaneously attempting to put it back in the cart. It makes me want to punch them in the head. 

Should be sold at Walmart

I detest these people not only for being morons, but for failing to realize that there are other people waiting. They should be dragged around the store by one of those motorized fat people chairs. 

I can tell you this: If you are in front of me at the U-scan at Walmart you better live up to the following code.

a) No more than ten items. If you've got a lot of stuff, then you need to get your monkey ass over to the express lane.

b) Know how to run the damn thing. If you haven't used it before, or aren't sure about it DON"T USE IT! Again, get your monkey ass over to the express lane.

These are the two main parts of the code.

Know it, Live it, Be it! 

Words

Certain words drive me insane. These are usually words that someone in the Marketing/PR abyss gloms on to and then deploys until they lose all meaning.  Some words are completely misused (gift,) some are meant to make the orator sound smarter (myself, utilize,) and others are simply beaten to death (debacle.) But every so often, some marketing genius hands us a word that travels from precise meaning to utter nonsense at warp speed. Last year it was Artisan and all the attendant variations. Originally it meant an object that had been designed and created by a craftsman individually. The meaning slowly transformed into meaning “expensive” and ultimately passed into the zone of non-meaning.  Another word co-opted for the purposes of Marketing. This year I am declaring war on Artisanal’s cousin: handcrafted. I see this word used to in the most ludicrous of circumstances.  I have no qualms with using the word to describe the handmade glycerin soap in the shape of Lego men for sale on Etsy. Nor do I object to it’s use on the webpage of one who casts custom chopper taillights. My main objection is to its use in the area of food.  When a bar announces “handcrafted cocktails” it makes me wonder if they were previously mixed by a machine. Was there a Robby-like robot behind the bar mixing martinis previously?  Because if there were, I would find it more interesting than the hirsute, tattooed mixologist  currently occupying that space.  The non-ferrous keeper of the bar is less likely to tell me about his band, his shitty art that adorns the walls and how much he likes The Smiths. Aren’t all cocktails crafted by hand?  I and my friends consumed hard liquor long before Sex and the City made it trendy and I’m reasonably certain we were never served a drink by a robot. I will admit that my memory is somewhat faded, but I would definitely remember that. Like so many trends adopted by the bourgeoisie, the cocktail has become an affectation, a way of being noticed.

Being noticed is important to some degree, there are social aspects to the practice, but in some cases the need to be noticed is annoying. The most recent example of this is the scuffing/shuffling of feet I hear so much, especially from younger women.  Go to any suburban mall and you’ll see them; unwilling to pick up their feet, their bipedal motion punctuated with the sound of plastic momentarily scuffing tile. In one hand a purse and in the other a cell phone, they move forward in a motion previously seen in Thorazine- laden mental patients.  Only short the drool, these bastions of bad habits shuffle along, leaving their dark graffiti along the floor. Is this a manifestation of man’s need to leave a mark as a reminder of his own existence, or are they simply a bunch of lazy fuckers. In fact, they are a byproduct of a culture that indulges anything and anyone. Who makes the rules about shuffling one’s feet? Are they, like many other social rules, simply a product of the bourgeoisie? Or does one shuffle one’s feet because one has a right? I’ve said it before: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. The pervasive attitude of not caring what others think about you or your actions could be twisted to imply some sort of Stoic philosophy a la Epictetus, but it’s more likely due to the KarTrashians.