Greetings from Winter Break

::takes shirt off, flashes:: WOOO HOOO!!!!!!

Ahem... sorry about that. Wrong break, apparently. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog.

I suppose that, in my own way, I work very hard at what I do. As you know, my job title is "Professional Student." I call myself this because, since 1989, I've taken a grand total of one year away from academia - this was, in many ways, a horrible year of my life. I found that I craved structure, but hated being bossed around. I realized that I respected the bottom line, but hated corporate babble-speak and generalized bullshit. Further, I came to understand that I didn't want a salary that peaked in the low six figures.

Hence, I applied to - and, by a mixture of incredible luck and poor judgment on the parts of others - was accepted into graduate school for Social Psychology. Graduate school has confirmed that I am (a) a good student, (b) technically savvy, and (c) perfectly capable of waking up at 10:00 AM every morning, even though I am 25 years old and most people my age have grown-up work and grown-up problems to deal with.

No, seriously. I am now at an age where lots of my peers are fucking PARENTS. With regard to the above statement, allow me to explain something to you. I am a responsible adult who pays his bills on time. I've never been arrested, and I don't even hold a balance on my credit cards. I'm a good student and, within the next 36 months, I will finish school and immediately begin to earn a salary that exceeds my every expectation. But there is no FUCKING way that I am even close to borderline FUCKING capable of the responsibility that comes with being a parent.

I like to drink alcohol. Somewhat consistently, I like to drink too much alcohol. Just as consistently, I like to bring my girlfriend with me to drink too much alcohol. When the Giants played the Packers in the NFC Championship Game last January, I drank enough alcohol to kill an Asian family of three. At my age, and because I don't have any kids, doing what I like to do is considered by others to be harmless; I'm "just enjoying my twenties." (NOTE: Even when I spend the entire next day alternately vomiting and screaming "GGGGGG-MEN!")

Now, throw a living newborn post-fetus into the equation. All of a sudden, I would need papal dispensation in order to get legitimately, shit-faced drunk, even on special occasions. All of a sudden, I'm no longer "just enjoying my twenties". Now I'm an alcoholic with a stained, sweaty wife beater and the Department of Youth and Family Services knocking on my front door.

My point is that having this particular responsibility is stupid, and this is why stupid people in this country are the ones having all the children. We're at the point where being truly responsible means not having any kids (or at the very least, waiting a damned long time to have kids). To illustrate this paradox, let's take Couple A. We'll call them Wade and Tawny. Wade and Tawny combine for 27 teeth and one GED. They live in a double-wide somewhere in the Deep South, 20 miles from the nearest person who voted for Obama.

Here's Couple B. (I'm not going to give this couple a name; you probably know 150 people like Couple B, dear reader, so you can come up with whatever names you see fit.) They are both college-educated, both work full-time, and they have a mortgage and two car payments. They both go to school at night for their respective Master's degrees. My question, and this is an easy question to answer, is: Who has more children, Couple A or Couple B?


OF COURSE it's Couple A, you toad-shitting nitwit. Couple A probably has three times as many kids as Couple B, and if you ask me, it's a damned shame. They have more kids because they're not using birth control, because they don't care about their careers, because they're on welfare. Couple B is responsible in a real way, and because they're responsible they're not procreating to have wonderful, intelligent children. In general, this sucks.

At this point, you might be thinking that I'm an asshole (or, even better, someone who favors eugenics). My answer to your line of reasoning is, yes, I am an asshole. And when you really think about it, as long as you're not killing people, forcing smart people to breed and forcing stupid people to be neutered or spayed (like dogs) isn't all that horrible of an idea. (NOTE: In a very under the surface sort of way, that last sentence was the most controversial thing I've ever written.)

If you're a moralist, you may now be asking, "What/who decides whether a person is stupid?" To answer the "who" question, it's going to be the people who write on this blog. (You'd better not piss any of us off. We are judge, jury, and the executioner of your reproductive organs.) To answer the "what" question, I figure we'll go with a standard IQ test plus an informal interview over coffee or baked goods.

***************************************

Since it's a Friday night and I'm writing a goddamned blog post, I might as well throw down the gauntlet and confess that I'm a pretty big loser. To that end, here's some of the entertainment I've been enjoying lately.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Without a doubt, the funniest comedy since Seinfeld. I love the gallows humor, I love that nothing's off-limits. The writing and acting are fantastic (The McPoyle twins, pictured above, are absolutely repulsive in every way imaginable, to the point that I think the show's writers ration their appearances). Surprisingly, the blonde babe with fantastic comedic timing is married to the ugly dude, "Mac", in real life (NOTE: For some reason - perhaps my own latent chauvinism - hardly any other women have comedic timing. This is why men are much, much funnier than women, and it makes absolutely no sense).

Dexter. Psychologically intense, this show makes you actually root for a serial killer. To be honest, I've always sorta rooted for the bad guys in movies. Remember in "Goodfellas" when Ray Liotta's character (in voiceover) refers to Robert DeNiro's character as "the sort of guy who roots for the bad guys in movies", as if this were the worst character trait imaginable? I suppose this was tongue-in-cheek, since anyone who loves "Goodfellas" by definition loves to root for bad guys in movies. Still, nonetheless, wouldn't the following description for DeNiro's character be better: "Demonistic serial killer who enjoys watching the people he murders for personal gain slowly die"?

Degrassi: The Next Generation. You have to put on "The N" to watch this show, but you will be rewarded. (NOTE: "The N" is the Nickelodeon teen network, for those of you who are neither "Degrassi" fans nor about to show up on Dateline NBC.) DG:TNG (I've always wanted to use that for something that isn't Star Trek) is a Canadian teen drama, and BOY is there drama. Everything from school shootings, to teen pregnancy, identity issues, crime, sex, drugs, you name it, is on this show. They use a large ensemble cast - no other show I've seen besides "The Wire" does this so well - every character has a story line and... well, issues with growing up.

Some other, random, awesome tidbits about "Degrassi": (1) Because the show is Canadian and produced for a native audience, there are some things that seem slightly out of place. For instance, everyone loves hockey, there's a lot of snow, and many of the main characters are afraid of the dark. In addition, people speak in Canadian accents, if ya know what I'm talkin' aboot. (2) "Clerks" director and fellow Middletown, NJ-ian Kevin Smith is a huge fan of the show, to the point where he and Jay appeared on several DG:TNG episodes to produce the fictional "Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh?" movie. Awesome stuff, and definitely something you should watch.

******************************

OK, I'm off to shoot a Yeti and club a few baby seals now. BRRRR, it's cold out there. (NOTE: Actually, this is untrue. New Jersey has two, completely different climates. The northern and western parts of the state are in one climate, which is characterized by cold, snowy winters and warm summers. The southern and eastern parts of the state are in another climate, which has cool, rainy winters and hot summers. I'm in the "rainy winters, hot summers" climate, which is awesome in the summer but sucks in the winter. Oh, well, it beats Massachusetts.)

Stay classy out there.