The Angry Jew

The rantings of an Angry Jew in The Pacific Northwest

Thanks to Pink Latex, who posted this video on her blog, emopinups.

Sixteen people were wounded on Sunday after a soldier sprayed a crowd of onlookers with live rounds during a hostage rescue demonstration in  Southern France.

Authorities are investigating how live rounds made it into the demonstration which resulted in the injuries.  Four of the wounded were in serious condition, including a 3-year-old. Fifteen were civilians.

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office said he reacted with “horror and deep emotion” to Sunday’s incident at the base, which houses the 3rd marine infantry parachute regiment.

I think I have finally gotten a handle on the problems I have been having with my assistant at work and while doing so, I have come to the conclusion that I am a dinosaur, on my way to extinction.

You see, even though I have been a union member for going on 9 years now, I  have never learned to think like one. You see, I got my work ethic from the military. You have a clearly , or in some cases, as in Iraq, not so clearly defined mission. It is up to all members of the team to contribute 100% to accomplishing the mission.

Sadly, civilian life has never been that easy.

It has eaten and frustrated me for years. You see a task that needs doing, you do it. Simple. It does not matter if it is “your job” or not. So long as you are helping the unit accomplish it’s mission, you are doing the right thing.

My frustration comes from only having met a few people in my line of work that feel that way.

Maybe it is a misplaced or archaic sense of loyalty to my employer.

The way I see it is, my employer owes me nothing. In exchange for my labor, my company provides me with the means to live the lifestyle that I care to live. Everything I have is because of them. My truck, my DVD’s, my apartment, the food on my table, my medical insurance, all provided as a reward for my sweat.  In return I am asked to make as much of their product as I can in the time allotted.

It is a pretty simple arraignment, but as with most simple things, it is made more complicated by those either do not understand or are unwilling to get with the program.

Day after day I listen to coworkers bitch and moan about how much the job sucks, how unfair the company is, how they hate working overtime.  I see them complicate the job with personal issues, matters of ego or trying to prove their own importance in the grand scheme of things that is the making of a simple product.

To my way of thinking, if you hate what you are doing that much, them maybe you should find some other way to finance your lifestyle, because everything you are doing is simply making the mission that much harder for the rest of the team.

The sad thing is,  my frustrations with my coworkers inability to accept direction and be a team player are turning me into one of “them”.  My complaints to management fall on deaf ears as they are only concerned with the result, not the extra effort required to get to the goals, and rightfully so, they have their mission and I have been given mine.

Lately,  I  have spent more time worrying about the impact he is having on me personally then carrying out my part of the mission, and that is having a negative impact on my ability to be part of the team.

After much soul searching, I had to just let it go.  I will continue to do my best to carry out my part of the mission.  My coworker will either see the folly of his ways on his own or he wont.  It is simply beyond my control.

He will either contribute to the mission, or he will imped it.  My hope is that those above me will see things for what they are and take the steps to insure I have the tools to accomplish my mission.

Its that time of year here in Portland friends.  It is time to renew our souls, refresh our minds and let our inner coon ass out to play.  We are less then ten days away from Oregon’s biggest party of the year, The Safeway Waterfront Blues Festival, the largest outdoors blues festival west of the Mississippi.

Now, if the gods are smiling on me this year, I will be going on Saturday, July 5th for the Zydeco Swamp Romp, and I would like all of you to join me.  Drop me an email and we can set up the details.  Price of admission is $10.00 and two cans of food for the Oregon Food Bank.   Pretty cheap for a full day of live blues on two stages and you get to help out a great cause, The Oregon Food Bank.

Huh?  Whats Zydeco?  Your kidding, right?

Fine, here is just a taste of what you will be missing out on if you can’t make it.

In a landmark ruling handed down just hours ago, The United States Supreme Court, in a 4-3 opinion, said the 2nd Amendment does indeed guarantee the right of American citizens to keep and bear arms.

Now before you go rushing out to your local arms bazaar to buy you constitutionally guaranteed bazooka, their are a few things you need to know.  The ruling by the court does not remove certain restrictions on gun ownership.  If you are an alcoholic wife beater who just got out of prison, you are still shit out of luck, but don’t fret.  I am sure you can still get one off the street and by the time you make it through the judicial system , I am sure it will still be knocked down to a parking ticket if you get caught.  If you want to own a machine gun, you are still going to have to jump through all the federal hoops and pay for the tax stamp.

What it does mean, is that individual states, such as The Peoples Republic Of Kalifornia or The District of Colombia can not bar law abiding citizens from owning a firearm for self defense.  If you live in a state that allows concealed carry, you will still need a permit.  If you are unable to pass the required Federal background check, you will still not be able to buy a gun.

Is this a good thing?

Depends on who you ask.  The Anti-Gun Lobby will tell you that with D.C.’s gun ban struck down, the streets of our capitol will run red with blood.  Seeing that D.C. already has one of the highest gun violence rates in the country, I figure it can’t hurt let Joe Citizen pack some heat while he is sitting on his couch.

Ask the NRA and you will probably not get an answer for a few days.  These guys have to partying like mad dogs at having the court support the stance they have taken for years.

Who’s right?

In my opinion, neither.

You all know how I feel about extremism.  My take on the matter is simply this.  Until Law Enforcement and the courts, at all levels, are given the tools to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, I will hang on to my .45.  I support background checks and carry permits, with the caveat that if you want to carry a concealed weapon, you better be able to show that you know how to use it and more importantly, when.

Apparently I am supposed to have more sympathy for child rapists.

Today, the nations highest court, in a 5-4 decision, struck down an Louisiana law that would have made the rape of a child a capital offense.  “The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.

It has been 44 years since there has been an execution in The United States in which the crime did involve the death of a victim.  The only such crimes that currently exist are Treason and Espionage.

Now if this was not enough to get my blood boiling, a Massachusetts law maker said it would be his job to torment children who take the stand if the state passed tough mandatory sentences for child rape.

“I’m gonna rip them apart,”  Rep. James Fagan, a Democrat, said of young victims during his testimony on the bill. “I’m going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined, that when they’re 8 years old, they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old, they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody.”

Fagan said as a defense attorney it would be his duty to do that in order to keep his clients free from a “mandatory sentence of those draconian proportions.”

The bill that he opposed eventually passed the House and set mandatory minimum sentences of between 10 and 15 years for a set of different offenses against children ranging from assault to sexual crimes.

Calm Down.

Deep, relaxing breath.

Count to 5.

1, 2, 3….OH Fuck That.

What the hell is wrong with this country when someone can rape a child and we are worried about the consequences they face.  It’s an obscenity.

Listen, I believe that every criminal has the right to a fair trial, that they should be considered innocent until proven guilty, and that it is the responsibility of the defense attorney to see that his clients rights are protected, so my anger with Fagan is directed not at WHAT he said, but how he choose to say it.

Now, The Supreme Court siding with , what in my opinion, is the worst scum on the planet, well that is a whole other matter.

If someone has been tried and convicted by a jury of their peers, although I can not think of anyone who would want to be considered a peer to child rapist, and the state wants to fry them, well, just let me know when and where and I will bring the marshmallows.  We can laugh, chat, and then join hands and sing campfire songs around the smoking corpse.

If you wan to get to the core of why this country is in it’s decline, all you have to do is look at Justices like Kennedy and the rest of his ilk.

How can you sleep at night knowing that you have saved the life of someone who raped a child?  Would you still feel all smug and liberal if this vermin had stolen your child’s innocence and condemned them to a lifetime of therapy and nightmares.

Somehow, I think not.

If you can’t be honest with us, at least be honest with yourself.

It is sad but true, as recent events have proven.  Childhood training can over ride common sense and logic.

A few Sundays past, I was enjoying the last of my coffee and a smoke as I indulged myself is my ritual Sunday breakfast at Sheri’s Family Restaurant down the street from my apartment.  Yes, their are better places I can go for my Cholesterol and Sunday paper, but Sheri’s has one of the few “Social Leper” sections left, so it is there that I go.

So, I am chatting with my waitress and somehow the fact that she did housecleaning on the side came up in conversation.  Now, I am a pretty neat person by nature, but I am far from anyones ideal of a house keeper.  I will go around and put things back in their place, sweep the floors, maybe run a Swiffer over them, clean out the cat box and even spray some scrubbing bubbles on the shower when it gets icky.  You know, typical bachelor cleaning.

It dawned on me that my place could definitely use the services of a professional.  She gave me her number and quoted me a price of $25 dollars an hour for the first two hours and $20.00 an hour after that.  She gave me her number and a few days later I called and booked two hours of her time.  I figured that would give me a chance to get at least a portion of my apartment cleaned and to see if her service was any good.

As the appointed day drew closer, I began to feel a sense of dread and unease whose source I could not put my finger on.  It got worse as our appointment drew closer.  “What the hell” I thought.  Why am I getting so neurotic about getting my apartment cleaned?

Then it dawned on me, the source of my uneasiness.

I HAD TO CLEAN MY APARTMENT BEFORE SHE CAME TO CLEAN IT.

The day before our appointment,  I was a frenzied cleaning machine.  Laundry done and put away, cat box emptied.  Stack of newspapers, gone.  Dishes out of the sink, bathroom straightened, I was unstoppable.

Why was I doing this?  What was driving this compulsion?  I had hired someone to do this for me.

Then the source of my anxiety dawned on me.

I had become my mother.

You see, back when I was a kid, we had a cleaning woman who used to come in once a week to help my mom out.  She would come on Thursday, so every Wednesday was “Clean the house so the cleaning woman won’t think we are slobs” day.

And here I was, a grown man, doing something that didn’t make sense to me when I was a child.  Damn, that training really takes hold, doesn’t it.

I managed to reign myself in, yet still in the back of my mind was the image of Rachael walking into the apartment, looking around, screaming “Fuck This” and leaving in a cloud of lemon scented Pledge.

Well, as it turned out, that would have been impossible as Rachael showed up at the appointed hour with a cast on her foot.  It seems she had taken a stumble and sprained her ankle.  I offered to reschedule, but she was determined to show me what she could do.

Now enter another wonderful part of my upbringing, Jewish Guilt.

Without a conscious thought I was running down to her car to gather her supplies, putting pillows under her foot when she would sit down for a second to take a break, and otherwise acting like a yutz.

Given her injury, I have to say she did a great job of turning my apartment into a livable space and had the kitchen and living room sparkling in the two hours she had to work.

So there you have it.  I am going to be having Rachael come on on a regular basis to make up for my lack of cleaning talents.  Now if I can only manage to break this whole pre-cleaning habit, I might actualy be able to enjoy it.

Thanks Mom.

If you are on Portland’s West Side and looking for some help with your housework, drop me an email  and I will pass it on to Rachael for you.  

Grammy winning Comedian and Actor George Carlin left us Sunday, succumbing to heart failure at the age of 71.

Carlin’s jokes constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the “Seven Words” - all of which are taboo on broadcast TV and radio to this day.

When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.  When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

“So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” in 1989 - a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (and sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

Well thats the official story.  My personal relationship with this comedy great is what I really want to write about today.

My childhood friend Jeff Kasten was the one that first turned me onto Carlin.  He was a year older than me and  I can remember with great clarity sitting in his bedroom, listening to an LP of Carlin doing his “Indian Sergent” bit.  I was hooked.  This was before his comedy became political.  He was just doing observational humor then.  It was sharp, crisp and cut to the bone.  I can still do most of his old bits from memory.  I played his albums constantly, learning every nuance of timing.  He was the one who taught me how to combine deadpan delivery with outrageous observations.  It was his comedy that made me want to make people laugh.

Later, he almost lost me as his liberal values and my conservative values clashed, but yet I continued to listen and laugh.  I had the great honor of seeing him perform at Bud Freedman’s Improv Comedy Club in Hollywood, sitting damn near right up front.  It will always be one of my most treasured memories of this great man.

I think if you were able to ask the cream of Americas comedians who most influenced them, I am pretty sure that George Carlin would be near the top of everyones list.

And that my friends, is the greatest epitaph that any man could ask for.

In keeping with my belief that weirder is better, I give you “Night Of The Hell Hamsters.”

This is a 15 minute British short that is definitely not meant for the kiddies. You have been warned.




“The gene pool needs chlorinating.”

Rachael

House Keeper par excellence and new friend of The Angry Jew