Category: Social Media

Honk If You Love Your Kids

Parents lie.  I’m not talking about those little Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, go-to-sleep-or-Dora-will-get-cancer-like-grandma-and-die lies that they tell their kids.  I’m talking about those supersize whopper lies they tell the rest of us.

Let’s click pause for a moment — just for the disclaimer.  I like kids.  I’m of an age where pretty much anything under three feet tall is basket-full-of-puppies cute with a double shot of “Isn’t that precious?” on the side.  I think kids are wonderful little creatures, mainly because I don’t own any.  Remember this — ‘cause it’s gonna get ugly.

Talk to any parent and, before you can get to politics, religion or celebrities, they will wheel into this sunny story about how having children and raising them is the most wonderful experience since Mary Magdalene looked into the face of Jesus.  What a load of crap!  Anybody who’s ever been around children knows that kids — all kids — are self-absorbed little savages.  Turning them into adults is a full-time gauntlet of soul-eating persistence that would make Job himself learn the words to “Losing My Religion.”  And that’s just until they’re old enough to go to kindergarten.  After that, it gets even harder.  So why do parents lie about it?  They have to.  Who in their right mind would admit that their offspring are whelps of Satan?  After all, it’s mom and dad’s DNA that produced these little demons.

The problem is people (before they are parents) think that those cute little critters in the Huggies™ commercials are children.  They’re not.  I don’t know what they are — munchkins? mutants? cleaned-up leprechauns?  I’m not sure, but they’re not kids.  Kids are nasty little sticky things who leak from every orifice, make the most ungodly noises at the most inappropriate times, and have no respect for time or space or private property.  However, once the consenting adults have made this first mistake, there is no turning back.

It starts with “We’re pregnant.”  That’s the first lie.  We are not pregnant; she is.  Dad’s just along for the ride.  Eight months from now, he’s going to be lying on the sofa, drinking a beer and watching the ballgame while mommy dearest is spending her afternoon getting the hell kicked out of her bladder by Mr. Restless who’s getting tired of solitary confinement.  The only shared experience parents are having at this point is the growing apprehension that that anonymous ultrasound image has just stamped “Cancelled” on casual sex, forever.

Once babies are born, they become Mother Nature’s most efficient food processer.  These are not the cuddly-wuddly little Churchills you see swaddled-up on Facebook.  These are ravenous, cavernous creatures who never sleep for more than ten minutes at a time and can turn any amount of liquid into the most godawful semi-solids known to exist in the solar system – and that includes the sulphurous lava pits on Venus.  You might see their sleeping little cherub faces, but the parents know they didn’t go quietly.  They passed out after a half hour screaming session and a round of gluttony that would do Henry VIII proud.  But parents never mention that — and this is the second lie.  Want to prove it?  Just threaten to wake the little angel up.  You’ll never see such headlong panic short of announcing they’ve just released Charles Manson and he’s moving in next door.

Once parents get past the second lie, it just gets easier and easier.  Pretty soon, every time they open their mouths about their kids, they’re putting Pinocchio to shame.  Personally, I don’t believe anything a parent says about their children, at all – ever — even if the kid is 57 and signing the papers to put the old man away.  But if you want some serious grins, check out the affirmations moms and dads are plastering all over the Internet.  “A child is God’s perfect gift to the world”  “Nothing is as precious as a baby’s smile.”  Puh-leeze!  Why not just “Honk if you love your kids?” and get it over with.  Methinks the parents doth protest too much.

Quite frankly I don’t really blame them, though.  If I were handed a sentence of penal servitude to a ungrateful monster who had the manners of a warthog and the morals of a goat, I’d lie too.

Labour Day

Today is Labour Day — a holiday that has fallen on hard times of late.  I have a long connection with Labour Day.  Despite outward appearances, I have actually laboured.  I was once a member of the now defunct AUCE (Association of University and College Employees) Union.  I have a Withdrawal Card from the International Meat Cutters Union and I belonged to the Rock and Tunnel something-or-other for two weeks one morning.

My father was a union man – a Teamster for most of his life.  He was nine years old during the Great Strike in Britain in 1926, and according to my grandmother, was enraged when he wasn’t allow to eat at the Union Soup Kitchen with his schoolmates.  My grandfather wasn’t a miner; he worked for an insurance company.  After the Great Strike was broken, he was fired.  Apparently, he’d been cooking the books so that the Scottish miners who couldn’t afford the premiums during the strike wouldn’t loss their insurance.  My grandparents emigrated soon after that.

When I was a union member, I went to all the meetings and once I even got to speak.  I don’t remember what I was for or against, but I was part of the process.  I have both walked picket lines and tried not to cross them but to me, as to most people, Labour Day in just an end-of-the-summer three-day-holiday.

It’s not supposed to be that way, you know.  Labour Day is supposed to honour the men and women who took the early bus, worked hard and stuck to their principles when the people they worked for had none.  It’s supposed to show us where we came from and how we got here.  Unfortunately, in 2012, Labour Day is more about barbeques than collective bargaining.

The problem is, since the 60s-going-on-70s, the trade union movement has been steadily losing the PR battle.  Even as far back as the 80s, when Reagan told the Air Traffic Controllers to take a hike, there was no general outcry of union-busting — even though that’s exactly what it was.  During the 90s and after the turn of the century each economic crisis pushed union membership further into the background even though it should have been taking centre stage.  So, for the most part, these days, if you don’t already belong to a union, you’re not all that enthusiastic to join one.  It’s more a condition of employment than a utopian vision of the future.  In fact, union membership in the private sector has been declining for half a century.  It’s only the big public sector unions that can boost an increase in membership.  It’s strange, but just as the need for unions is increasing, their appeal in dissolving away.

The unfortunate truth is that the trade union movement hasn’t kept up with the times.  They’re fighting 21st century labour battles with 19th century thinking.  Most union members in today’s economy make decent money.  They don’t toil in sweatshops like their grandparents did.  They have paid vacations and pensions and medical leave.  So when it comes to the public face of the union – the strike – it’s hard to convince anybody that union workers are downtrodden.  Likewise, the ridiculous rhetoric that all employers are closet robber barons, whipping the proletariat and pouncing on widows and orphans, lost its credibility years ago.  The antagonistic stance most unions still take was born in a day when some negotiations took place at the point of a gun.  The world has moved on since then.

The trade union movement needs to quit being production’s nasty little brother.  Back in the day, it was perfectly acceptable to shout its demands with a clenched fist.  But that adolescence is over.  With maturity comes greater responsibility.  Unions (especially in the public sector) have to become willing partners in the means of production, not cunning adversaries.  Most importantly, unions must demonstrate their relevance to the here and now.

Labour Day is a mostly forgotten holiday because–instead of reflecting on and honouring its turbulent past– the trade union movement wants to continue to live there.

The Retort: A Fading Art Form

Even though I spend most of my time running a losing race with technology, I love it.  I look at kids phone-thumbing their way across the virtual universe and think “What a wonderful time to be alive!”  However, like most people my age, I’m already nostalgic for some of the finer points of the old world that technology is destroying.  First among equals on that list is the retort, that verbal slap that says: “Throw down!  ‘Cause this conversation just got serious.”  It’s impossible to retort electronically.  First of all, there’s too much lag time.  The retort has to be on the fly, swift, offhanded and sharp as a rapier’s thrust.  Secondly, there’s way too much nicey-nice in the digital world; too many LOLs and those sucky little emoticons.  The best you’ve got to be demonstrative with is the cap lock key, and that’s just sorry.  Finally, the retort has to be face to face; half of its power is delivery, half is tone and the other half is the nanosecond of recognition in the other person’s eyes that says “Gotcha!”

It’s really too bad the retort is fading from our world; however, I’ve collected a few to save them for posterity (like memorized books a la Fahrenheit 451) in the hope that, one day, the retort will be resurrected for general use.

I’d agree with you if you were right.

We can’t have a battle of wits; you’re an unarmed man.

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?

That argument is an encyclopedia of misinformation.

If you’re trying to be a smart ass you only got the second half right.

Obviously, the only thing on your mind is a hat.

I could drive a truck through that argument and never hit the truth.

You’re not the village idiot; you’re his apprentice.

There are only three things wrong with that argument: the beginning, the middle and the end.

If thought were a symphony orchestra, you’d be playing the bagpipes.

I could make a better argument out of Alphabet Soup.

What did you study in school?  Recess?

Ideas that are that stupid should be put in solitary confinement.

That isn’t a painting; it’s paint.

That idea is about as bright as Cassiopeia on a cloudy night.

If stupid was an Olympic event, you’d be in the medal round.