Episode I

I realized today that I quite literally have a 0 average in my sociology class. We’ve only had one grade – she doesn’t take role and has no idea what the majority of her students even look like (therefore we are definitely not getting any kind of participation grade) – and she gave a 1-question pop quiz. The question was “who coined the phrase survival of the fittest?” and I definitely got it wrong. Therefore I literally have a 0. But hey it’s probably my own fault for not being engaged enough in my classes isn’t it? It definitely couldn’t have anything to do with my teacher being a devil.

A couple of days ago I caught myself doing something way out of line while I was walking along the street on the way to work. There is a law in Montana that requires you to shovel your sidewalks.. but they never enforce it so it’s really more of a courtesy to keep your neighbors from hating your guts and resenting the shit out of you for thinking you’re above the rules. Anyway, there’s this one house on the way to work that never shovels their walks. The result is a 3 inch thick sheet of ice over cement. It sucks to walk on. Anyway – as I was walking along it on my way to work the other day I caught myself judging them super harshly – like unreasonably so. I literally thought “that fucking piece of shit never shovels his fucking sidewalks, he’s probably the kind of useless old fuck that’s responsible for our shitty economy” about 30 seconds later I had the thought “wait, what the fuck, did I really just think that based off of his not shoveling? How on earth could that possibly relate to our economy? I’m an asshole” apparently I don’t have a very good filter on my thoughts.. I curse so much to myself mentally. Just as long as I don’t drop any f-bombs around the kids at work it’s all good. Anyway, the best part of the story is that on the way to work today I found a steaming piece of dog shit on our sidewalk. I guess I’m responsible for the economy too. For any wondering, I’m not normally anywhere close to that judgmental – but I do believe that the yard-condition is a legitimate base for some degree of judgment. It’s just a faux pa to have your stairs turn into a ramp because your lazy ass never shovels the snow off of them. I mean think about it, the equivalent in Houston would be 4 foot high grass with mud and manure all up in it. It’s just not cool. So remember to shovel your sidewalks next time you come to Montana.

All the conservative Buddhists in the world would be thrilled to hear that I landed myself in a conservative propaganda class. It would probably give them some sense of kharmic justice since I spent the last 3 months actually making liberal propaganda. My microeconomics teacher lectured for an hour and 15 minutes about how capitalism is good and beneficial and increases wealth and makes our country greatest country in the world. USA is number one exporter of capitalism. It literally felt a bit like Napoleon and Squealer trying to convince me that profits had increased 300% - but the pigs up top still have to keep all my apples to power their fucking brains. (if you don’t get the reference, try reading a book sometime. It’s called Animal Farm and its under 100 pages so you should probably actually read it. It will only take about two hours of your life and it will make you at least 12 hours more cynical) I actually asked him about the idea that capitalism creates an environment with 5% of the population controlling 95% of the wealth and he denounced it as anti-capitalist lies. He then drew this picture on the board:

His point being that capitalism is actually responsible for the three healthy classes of the USA and that any other option can only support socialist lies. But he’s a loveable guy so I won’t hold it against him too much. The thing that gets me is that he mentioned in class the other day that America is actually no longer considered to have a free market.. but he glossed over that. America’s no longer the land of the free,. No big deal. Don’t worry about it, America is still greatest country in the world! It has been proven that socialist brain is size of squirrel.

Here’s some of the propaganda I made.. just for shits and giggles:

That dude is the CEO of Goldman Sachs (Lloyd Craig Blankfein) and he’s all up on honest Abe. The point I was attempting to communicate is multifaceted. Abe Lincoln was working to free the slaves – ironic since we’ve become slaves to the banks/corporations – almost as though Sachs was responsible for the assignation of Lincoln. :O Anyway, the other point is that Corporations have more influence over our government than the rest of us do. Like that time that the higher ups decided to bail out banks with billions – remember that? Yeah, why didn’t they ever let me touch some of that? That’s some bullshit man. So the impact is that we should hire John Wilkes Booth Jr. to shoot ol’ Blankfein.

Okay so this is my favorite find of the last 24 hours – taco bell’s beef cannot legally be considered “meat” by FDA standards any more. For curiosity’s sake, CNN posted that the beef is “35 percent beef - the other 65 percent of the meat-like mixture is: water, isolated oat product, salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato powder, oats (wheat), soy lecithin, sugar, spices, maltodextrin, soybean oil (anti-dusting agent), garlic powder, autolyzed yeast extract, citric acid, caramel color, cocoa powder (processed with alkali), silicon dioxide (anti-caking agent), natural flavors, yeast, modified corn starch, natural smoke flavor, salt, sodium phosphate, less than 2% of beef broth, potassium phosphate and potassium lactate.” And yet they’re still serving billions and billions. I think I am going to blame this one on people who don’t shovel their sidewalks. See how easy that was? I totally could get a job in the Bush administration.

I have a confession to make. I wrote most of this post last night because I was afraid I’d forget what I was planning on writing I didnt write it right away. Anyway, I saved it on a flash drive that I promptly lost. So I was originally planning on arriving at school at 7.30 (an hour and a half before my first class) to finish this up but instead I spent a half hour finding my USB. It was my pocket after I’d already given up looking for it. Oh and the evaporated milk never turned up. My sociology teacher is to blame for that one though.

This paragraph is a shout-out to anybody still reading. I am realizing every day just how cynical and sarcastic I am. See? Self discovery. And nothing really pleases me more than sharing it with other people – especially in a humorous way. It’s like a win-win-win because you get to read about all the stupid shit that I go through on a daily basis and I get to get it out of my system and everybody is happy, see? So yeah, thanks for reading this.