Express your individuality (in 1 of 6 preset ways)!

*NOTE: Sorry, folks, I promise I am working on another full-fledged article for later this week, but I feel the need to vent in an old-school rant before cranking out another finished, polished product.

If you haven't noticed, I am doing a little bit of redecorating around ThisIsMyBar.  With a growing readership, it's important to stay fresh and challenging.  More importantly, the nature of my ongoing social commentary is such that anonymity is essential.  In short, my livelihood would be in serious jeopardy if my customers ever stumbled on this blog and put the pieces of the puzzle together.  Plenty of you already know who I am, and that's why you read, but as more and more strangers check in, I have to take steps to protect my identity.

Which leads me to some shit that really irks me, and by "irk" I mean "makes me want to shoot bitches."  I'll be the first to admit my technological knowledge expired in roughly 2001.  Since then, I have made a conscious effort to ignore as much of the digital revolution as I could without retreating to a cave to write my angry manifesto and mail out nail-bombs to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and . . . whoever their equivalents in Japan are (I'm sure they are the ones behind it all).  During middle and high school, I learned enough of the basics about computers and their bastard offspring that I assumed, especially with the constant updates and ever-growing "user-friendly" wave, I would be able to make technology serve my ends when needed.

And I assumed these would go away.

Then, about three months ago, I tried to add the introduction to my blog you currently see displayed under the masthead.  Do you have any idea how difficult it was to add that?  Do you know how close I was to leaving Blogger entirely to peddle my cynicism elsewhere?  Here is the text I started writing at that time to convey my anger:

Hey, kids, did you notice the new intro to the blog?  Right up there at the top of the page, just below the masthead?  You didn't?  Oh, yeah, that's because it isn't fucking there.  Know why?  Google.  Yes, Google, one triumvir of the Holy Technology Trinity (along with Apple and Facebook), who can do no wrong, is currently screwing me like a Black & Decker.  No matter how many times I click "save," no matter how many times I reload the page, Blogger (one tentacle of the Google-beast) refuses to acknowledge a single change I have made.  No error message.  No obvious glitch.  It just doesn't do anything.  Bearing in mind I am using Google Chrome, a browser made by the same company as the blogging program. 

How to resolve this issue?  Why, contact Blogger, of course, and ask them in the politest way possible what the fuck is going on.  Ha.  I repeat, ha.  Now that we're all more connected than ever before, good luck getting a hold of anyone.  Technical support?  Customer service?  Bitch, please.  That's why we gave you the Internet: to get you off our backs.  By providing you with the illusion of endless information, we supplied you with the tools to solve all your own problems.  So leave us alone.  The sickest part?  These buck-passing bastards have the gall, the bile-boiling temerity, to still list Contact Us on their site.  Click that lie, and you'll see your options are either (a) posting your problem on the Forum of Lost Souls, or (b) choosing one of roughly six pre-selected help tutorials.  The only concerns Google is accepting e-mails on?  Trademark infringement and criminal misuse; in other words, shit that hits them in their ginormous pocketbook.  Well, I cordially invite you to go fuck yourselves, you useless, arrogant, monkey-humping, shit-spewing pieces of-

So, yeah, I was a little miffed.  I would have been slightly less pissed if I hadn't already posted a prior problem, the fact that my hit-counter randomly vanishes, on the help forums and received precisely dick in the way of assistance.  I knew it was pointless.  And if there is one thing technology is supposed to do, if there is one selling-point every tech company touts as Gospel, it's that technology is meant to empower you.  Right up the moment it doesn't work like it should.  Then, lo and behold, you are technology's helpless bitch, frustrated and forsaken in the digital wasteland.  The only thing that stopped me from leaving Blogger in high dudgeon, just to stick it to these callous assholes, was the deeper knowledge that, in fact, it would have no effect whatsoever.  Even this small satisfaction, a petty revenge, was denied me, because my opponent was Goliath, while I was the proverbial amoeba on Daniel's ass.  That was probably the most galling to me.  So, I figured shit out for myself, as per usual, and moved on.

Until this recent remodel.

All I wanted to do was change the color of my title text.  That's it.  Simple, right?  Especially given the retard-proof templates Google/Blogger have provided, which I admittedly use to avoid complex design issues.  Well, guess what?  When I selected a different color from the swatch on the template . . . it did nothing.  Surprise-fucking-surprise.  At this point, my expectations are lower than those of a female Bombay slum-orphan.  I was actually forced to go into the goddamn HTML and change the hex-code through trial-and-error.  I have literally not edited code of any kind in a decade.  Britney Spears was not only pop-culturally relevant, but still pretending to be a virgin the last time I fucked around with code.

No, even in those idyllic days of naivete, we weren't buying it, trust me.

So, if things look a little screwy around here, bear with me as I exorcise the gremlins.

But that led me to something that, while not technically an error, infuriates me far more.  On Facebook, I decided to remove any mention of my specific place of employment and replace it on my profile with the simple phrase, "An undisclosed restaurant."  Back when Facebook membership wasn't required by law, you could put shit like this up all the time.  Virtually every field and category on your profile was freeform, allowing users to make up bullshit like Universal Muppetarianism as their religion and pimp-slapping dyslexic reindeer as an activity.  You know, actually showing some kind of originality.

Well, grab your ankles and spread it wide for Zuckerberg's compensatory digital penis, America.

These days, you cannot add anything to your profile unless it already has a page on Facebook.  That's right, unless someone has gone to the trouble of establishing a page for whatever, you are not allowed to post that shit on your profile.  Work for a local company that doesn't need to social-network to stay afloat?  Too bad, dick-cheese, get a real job.  You like a band that has committed the unholiest of holies and not put up a Facebook page?  Forget about adding them to your "Music" field.  Trust me, I tried, just as a test.

Once again, why is this not an option?

Like the old-school "Choose-your-own-adventure" books, you can only pick from three options.  How the hell are we supposed to jumpstart new memes with this kind of authoritarian control?  What, am I stuck in the Jedi Archives being told Kamino doesn't exist just because there is no data-file on it?  (Points if you caught that reference.)  All joking aside, the more insidious side of this is the none-too-subtle message Facebook is sending: if it's not here, it's not real.  Existence as determined by Mark "the Messiah" Zuckerberg.  Plug in or fuck off.  Scary.  Where the hell is my red pill?  If you want to reduce me to a series of 1s and 0s, just another unit in the machine to be quantified, tabulated, and appropriately stored, well . . .

"A website once tried to digitize me.  I ate its server with some Doritos and a pale ale."

Back in my day . . .

. . . Jesus, I'm doing it.  I actually sound like a snarky geriatric already.  Times have changed enough, the sociopolitical tectonics have shifted, and my worldview, the paradigm I took for reality as a child, is now outdated, even antiquated.  Well, fine.  I can deal with that.  Do you know why?  Because, goddamn, I am right (as usual).

The recession is not over.  We still have limited economic growth in this country, especially compared to the 90s, and millions remain jobless.  College education as a sound investment is being questioned by talking heads and even a few people who may have some idea what they're talking about.  Across this great nation, in dozens of cities, thousands are unintelligibly voicing their dissatisfaction with . . . stuff.  Quite a few of them are getting maced, bludgeoned, and/or imprisoned for it, so they must be striking a nerve with someone, which means it's not totally off-base.  As a country, we are still figuring out how to disentangle ourselves from several international conflicts, while dancing around others we would just be itching to get into 15 years ago.  We're trying to figure out how to reinvent the USA for an era without superpowers in the traditional sense.

So what are the legislators in my state busy doing?  What bold measures are they taking to address these issues?  How are my tax dollars being spent to improve my life and those of my fellows?  Passing laws against bullying.  Yes, bullying, truly the greatest threat to our union since the Civil War.

Pretty much the modern Hitler.

As much of an obedient drone as I am, even I have to question just what this legislation's practical upshot will be.  What are we going to do, fine 12-year-olds?  Send them to jail?  The worst part is that I seem to be one of very few people who realize how ludicrous this measure is, how anyone who genuinely supported it 20 years ago would have been laughed off stage (right after their milk money was taken).  It's a testament to how stupid and sensationalistic our society has become that lawmakers feel obliged to intervene.  I think it started when we freaked out at even the merest suggestion of childhood violence.  I recall a case in which, I shit you not, a little boy was suspended from school for taking a discarded chicken-bone in hand, pointing it at another student, and exclaiming, "Bang!"  Up went the Paranoid Post-Columbine Massacre Flag, and the kid was booted.

Whoa, watch where you're pointing those things, asshole!

Do you know how many times I would have been expelled as a kid?  My primary form of playground entertainment was staging reenactments of fight scenes from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  In fact, the majority of boys' games consisted of mostly-feigned violence, which wasn't even prohibited at my school until the umpteenth kindergartener got his teeth loosened playing Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.  Even so, I never heard a mediagasm about the epidemic of traumatic injuries and shell-shock resulting from these destructive episodes.  No, the press hadn't yet perfected the bullshit spin-machine of hysterical pseudo-news.

But no longer.  Now, I can't go two weeks without reading some entirely serious commentary on the "bullying crisis" or the nuanced psychology of adolescent harassment, unless it is superseded by some tragic story of a teenager or even preteen killing themselves over it.  Don't get me wrong, it is sick and sad, but really?  Your existence is so unbearably miserable, your self-worth so degraded, that you no longer want to live?  Because Cheyenne keeps telling you you're ugly, because Derek always pushes you into the lockers, you feel compelled to put an end to the miracle of your own life?  Yeah, sounds logical.  Most inmates of Nazi concentration camps didn't do that, but what did they know about suffering?

The media has even coined the term cyberbullying, for Steve Jobs' sake. Cyberbullying.  Oh, the agony of having to read mean-spirited texts!  How do these kids cope?  Had my childhood transpired during this golden age of technological intercession, I would have been impervious.  Dickish post on my Facebook wall?  Instant messages telling me to eat shit and die?  Sticks and stones, motherfucker.  Meet me under the monkey bars.

No, please, just make it stop . . . oh, wait, I can close the browser.

Shit, I laughed off taunts to my face, once I'd gotten used to them.  Badass, huh?  If you are such a passive-aggressive pansy that you can't even insult or threaten me without using a digital mediator, bring it on.  I like my odds.  The only thing that could make someone a bigger coward?

Actually being intimidated by this tactic.

Seriously, how weak and fragile have we made this up-and-coming generation's collective psyche?  For the most part, the younger set nowadays are the offspring of late Generation Xers and the early . . . whatever my generation is called.  The two generations that produced the video game Bully.  For those who don't remember, Bully was a game in which you assumed the titular role at a private academy, distributing noogies, wedgies, trash talk, and the occasional kneecapping until you ascended to the top of the schoolyard food chain.  Or something.

Strangely, your avatar looked like a cross between King of the Hill's Bobby Hill and Vincent Crabbe, Harry Potter's portliest perennial tormentor at school.

While this is something of a sick role-reversal/revenge fantasy for dorks (think Inglourious BastNerds), it is also evidence that most of us rarely took bullying all that seriously, certainly not in retrospect.  Sure, it sucked like Nickelback, but it was part of growing up for the majority of us, at one point or another.  I didn't emerge emotionally-scarred (much), let alone depressive or suicidal.  And you know what?  Neither did anyone I knew.  If back in 1995ish, one of my classmates had killed himself because he was tired of his ridiculed life, I believe the primary reaction, aside from obvious abhorrence, would be What the flying fuck?  And I think the media would have had a similar - if less-colorful and more judiciously-worded - response to the event, because that shit just did not happen back then.  I refuse to believe the blackboard jungle has changed this drastically in a decade or two (damn, I am old).  It has gotten to the nadir that Googling images of 'bully' brings up this:

And that's just the hall-monitor.

I mean, really?  This is what is considered an accurate representation of the phenomenon these days?  A Tarantino-esque curb-stomping?  Get real.  Yes, the above picture was obviously staged for shock value, but it says something about the state of our society when anyone would realistically consider using such an exaggerated depiction, for any effect other than parody.  This looks like a scene from Schindler's Hall Pass.

My point?  Not to flog the bloody, rotting remains of a long-deceased horse, but our culture fosters hyperbolic victimization.  In our quest to protect children from everything, we prepare them for nothing.  We pad, censor, and sanitize their world to spare their delicate little minds and bodies, reassure them that everyone is a winner no matter what, refuse to discipline them properly for fear of inflicting irreparable damage, and medicate the hell out of them at the first sign of a parental challenge.  Then reality kicks in, and they freak out.  Cue the violins, the 60 Minutes special report, and every other conceivable form of sympathetic validation to reinforce helpless victimhood.  Ad infinitum.

It's a sad day when this is one of the better outcomes you can hope for as a parent.

I did not have this problem, and I'll wager few in my age-set did.  Maybe by the time I was fifteen, I was nearing Ferris Bueller levels of popular immunity, but for my entire life I have been short, underweight, quiet, smart, and curly-haired.  In other words, as obvious a target as a paraplegic albino deer.  Seriously, God painted a bull's-eye on my back.  I won't claim I was incessantly picked on or thrashed daily in the name of sport, but I was always on my guard, and with good reason.  A year or two down the road, my school tried to teach us all a brilliant psychobabble program called "conflict resolution," which stressed using specific steps and clear language to express your hurt feelings and desire for a peaceful end to hostilities with your antagonist.  Which was, of course, the surest way possible to get a royal asskicking, and we all knew it.

"But I said 'Please stop beating me, it hurts my self-esteem'!"

Back then, I feel like kids just had an innate sense for dealing with this stuff on their own.  Indeed, the few times throughout my life that I involved higher authorities only served to reaffirm my suspicion that they were really powerless to do shit for me.  My parents never taught me a thing about fighting, and I truthfully can't recall them telling me anything about standing up for myself; I just knew to do it.  In all their endless obsessing over this "new" hot-button topic, I rarely see any media outlet suggesting, let alone advocating, the most patent and simplest answer: don't back down.  Fight back.  Bullies are never going to go away, so you'd better prepare your kid for them.  It irks me that the sole recent example of this mentality I can cite is Captain America: The First Avenger, in which the wimpy, pre-superpowered Captain, Steve Rogers, says of bullies, "Once you start running, they'll never let you stop."

He knew even chiseled cheekbones wouldn't spare you a beat-down.

And it's true.  So I never ran.  Nor did I often end up in all-out fisticuffs, and that's the point: if you showed no fear, a willingness to get your ass handed to you, most bullies wouldn't follow through.  If they did, well, what was the worst that could happen?  Surely a split lip and some bruises are preferable to suicide.  The fact that I feel compelled to point this out shows just how deluded the discussion has become in this milieu of drama-based media coverage, which glorifies the victims and only encourages more youths to see themselves as similar martyrs.  And, because it's anathema to condone any type of violence, even self-defense, in children (let alone crack down on the mentally-anguished bullies) the harassed kids see little alternative.  Yet the simple fact of the matter is, sometimes, people don't need therapy; they need to get some blood on their knees.

As for verbal abuse, I quickly learned the basic truth that assholes aren't bright.  As such, I could pretty easily outspar them, humiliating them right back.  My tongue only got sharper for the practice, my wit quicker and my eye more critical.  Which has led, bizarrely enough, to this very blog.  So you can thank my adolescent tormentors for that.

*NOTE: I didn't mean to put so many World War II references in this article, it just sort of turned out that way.  Also, sorry if you didn't find this particularly funny, but I feel pretty strongly about the subject.

Oddments

My cynicism knows no bounds, and as a result it's sometimes hard to focus it onto a particular subject.  So I won't.  This is pretty much a freestyle rap of criticism inspired by the photo-dump I just did on my camera phone.  If you can't find something to take offense to in this one, you are more jaded than I.  Congratulations. In the verses of one of my favorite musicians, "You need to slit your wrist, get pissed, and go jump off a bridge."

I love wandering bookstores, but sometimes I find it impossible to heed the old adage about books and their covers.  Because, let's be honest, sometimes the book damn well has it coming.

I wasn't aware the Second Coming had already happened.

Seriously, who is this smug bespectacled bastard?  Based on the titles of his "self-help" manuals, I would have to conclude Paul McKenna is at least in the running for Biggest Douche in the Universe, with all due (dis)respect to the "Situation" and John Edward.  In essence, every one of these tomes of wisdom could be renamed Your Life: You're Doing it Wrong, Bitch.  This no-doubt self-proclaimed guru of New Age doublespeak is telling you - despite probably not having experienced any of these problems himself - what a dipshit you are for not seeing the obvious ways to fix anything and everything wrong in your life.  Luckily, he's here to help you, benighted masses.  Be grateful.

Whatever happened to good ol'-fashioned book burnings?

First off, brilliant title.  I can tell it sprang from the bleach-fried brain of a pompous shithead who's neural circulation is further inhibited by the pair of sunglasses he refuses ever to take off the back of his fat dome.  Second, really?  This was the best cover you could come up with?  Guy Fieri, clad in his vintage 1998 gear, throwing cheese-balls at the camera while flashing his signature I'm-so-muthafuckin'-cool doughnut-smile?  I think there's some sort of sexual metaphor about us taking it in the face from him, but it's not even worth the joke.  There was a time when becoming a TV personality actually meant having a decent one, but those days are long over and we now settle for this kind of shtick.  In fact, I am coining a new term to describe Fieri and his ilk: douche-tool.  Feel free to use it.

Blunt, aren't they?

But at least they're unbiased.

As long as we're on the subject of dubious belief systems, here's another one that drives me up a wall:

Stop.  Lying.

I don't care if you love cuddly-wuddly animals too much to consume anything that came from their bodies, even though our own bodies are unarguably evolved to subsist on such products, you should not be doing this to your unborn baby.  It was only a few years ago when some idiot hippie Georgians (yes, they have hippies down there, apparently) starved their newborn to death by feeding it a vegan diet.  We are an omnivorous species; deal with it.  Sure, it is possible to live on zero animal-products, but claiming it's natural or somehow better for you is 100% wholegrain-fed freerange bullshit.  Is it as horrendous as the McDiet I roundly derided in my last article?  Doubtful.  However, you can propound the superfood/organic/wholistic/holier-than-thou lifestyle as much as you want, yet the fact remains that your diet is far less natural than mine when you have to take a dozen supplements and vitamins, and specifically seek out certain food to compensate for the lack of balanced nutrition on your lentils-soy-milk-and-tofu menu.  Particularly, babies, both in- and outside the womb, need a metric ass-load of nutrients, minerals, and fats for proper pre- and post-natal development, which are found abundantly in, you guessed it, animal byproducts.  If being vegan is so uber-healthy, why aren't all the Olympic athletes doing it?  When was the last time you saw a vegan with defined musculature?  Exactly.  It's just another case of people taking a good idea to illogical extremes. In comedian Ron White's words, "I didn't climb to the top of the food-chain to eat carrots."  (Watch his bit on the subject right here http://comedians.jokes.com/ron-white/videos/ron-white---vegetarians.)

Moving on from the bookshop, what's up with this?

*Facepalm*

My brain reels when I see this kind of insidious, weird marketing.  I don't really have much to say, except what kid just has to have Facebook and Twitter rubber ducks?  In fact, shouldn't the Twitter duck be a songbird?  It's confusing.

Like this.

Some of you are probably too young to remember (which says something), but there was once a truly atrocious movie called Air Bud.  It was your traditional Disney sap story about growing up and reconnecting and reaffirming your self-worth and all that other shit.  Oh, and it had a basketball-playing golden retriever.  Yes, you read that right.  I swear on the Holy Mouse I am not making that up.  Putting aside the moronic oddity of this premise, that flick came out in 1997, and they are still making sequels.  Fourteen goddamn years later.  What the fuck?  The first few were predictably sports-themed, as the titular dog proved to be a multitalented prodigy, kind of like Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders, but then it spun off into surreal strangeness as Bud knocked up some bitch (what? that's the proper term) and had puppies.  Who could also play sports.  And talk.  Talking animals are not unusual in the Disneyverse, of course, but bear in mind they couldn't at the start of the franchise.  Then it stopped being about sports altogether.  And I somehow doubt that's why this latest installment is called Spooky Buddies.  To put it in perspective, this would be like, say, Pixar's Cars franchise starting with the fun-loving anthropomorphic vehicles (bizarre as well, now that I think about it) and ending over a decade later, only the cars no longer talk or do anything themselves and are driven by Paul Walker and Vin Diesel.  Except that has a vague aura of coolness.

Anyway . . .

Blatant ripoffs are Jesus-approved.

The most hilarious part of this?  They are claiming to be quoting an actual Bible verse, namely Psalm 139.  I checked my KJV Bible, and it goes a little something like this:

1	O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.
2	Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising;          thou understandest my thought afar off.
3	Thou compassest my path and my lying down,          and art acquainted with all my ways.
4	For there is not a word in my tongue,          but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
5	Thou hast beset me behind and before,          and laid thine hand upon me.
6	Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;          it is high, I cannot attain unto it.
7	Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?          Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8	If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:          if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
9	If I take the wings of the morning,          and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
10	even there shall thy hand lead me,          and thy right hand shall hold me.
11	If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me;          even the night shall be light about me.
12	Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee;          but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
13	For thou hast possessed my reins:          thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
14	I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:          marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
15	My substance was not hid from thee          when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16	Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect;          and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
17	How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God!          How great is the sum of them!
18	If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand:          when I awake, I am still with thee.
19	Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God:          depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.
20	For they speak against thee wickedly,          and thine enemies take thy name in vain.
21	Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee?          And am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
22	I hate them with perfect hatred:          I count them mine enemies.
23	Search me, O God, and know my heart:          try me, and know my thoughts:
24	and see if there be any wicked way in me,          and lead me in the way everlasting.

Paraphrase much?  I thought Christians were all about the literal accuracy of the Bible.  Pandas, let alone "Pandamania," were not mentioned once, nor were the words "where," "wild," "about," or "you."

"Can U Psychoanalyze Her?"

Not even joking, that was the actual text under this image on my Facebook sidebar.  And I am supposed to believe this is for a legitimate institution of higher learning where psychiatry is taught.  Right . . . Much like I am supposed to believe this:

"Singles."

If you're thinking this girl looks kind of familiar, it's because it's Hilary Duff of Disney Channel fame.  As much as her career has fizzled into nonexistence, I have a hard time buying that she is trolling Facebook for a boyfriend.  Especially given the fact that she's married.

On the plus side, our society is progressive enough that this is also an actual dating service ad.  And I am so cool with that.

  

This is evidently the approved way to deal with downed power-lines in my town.  Anyone else find that weird?  Speaking of weird . . .

Times have sure changed, haven't they?

A lot.  "Smoking - The Healthy Alternative to Candy!"

WARNING: This product may make you look like a dumbass.

But, seriously, I fucking hate these things.  What I hate even more is that they have become wildly popular.  What I probably hate the most is that I found this picture alongside an article on CNN.com about how manufacturers are actively looking for "the next big thing" in retarded lounge-wear.  Really, it's a fucking robe you wear backwards.  Grow up.

Yup, that's a dude.  For reals.

Just . . . yuck.  Go to hell.  Nothing more to say to that.

My wish: that you would stop wearing multiple polos with popped collars, you douchey dying kid.  Yes, I said it.  What?

Oh, yeah, and screw people who are wearing Christmas sweaters right now.  I couldn't take a picture, because I was working, but I had a customer on November 1st wearing a bright red, bulb-embroidered Christmas pullover.  I guess this is sort of an addendum to my guide to women's fashion, but it goes for both genders.  The fact that she was wearing it on the day after Halloween tells me this bitch was literally counting down the days until it was "acceptable" to don this hideous abomination of wool.  My coworkers can attest to the fact I nearly had an aneurysm at the sight of this, a garment that should have gotten the shit kicked out of you often enough as a kid to preclude you ever voluntarily wearing one again.  The easy way to avoid this faux pas?  Never wear a themed sweater at all, you fucking twat, or I'll torrefy you.

*Mic drop*

Celebrity Encounter!

I don't live in the big city.  My town is a conurbation with a greater metro population of less than a million.  The traffic is still bearable (when it's not being rerouted through BFE due to stagnant road construction), the ghetto relatively safe for those who aren't idiots, and the entertainment scene, though growing, modest in scale.  And you run into the same dozen-odd people everywhere you go, like a damned sitcom.  So, aside from the off-chance run-in with a popular DJ, you don't encounter celebrities often.  That's why I was so psyched just a few days ago when who should wander into my place of employ but Dr. Ivo Robotnik, AKA Dr. Eggman.

Who's that you ask?

Well, for those of you 90s babies who are too young to recall, Dr. Robotnik/Eggman is the archnemesis of Sonic the Hedgehog, undeniably the coolest platform mascot of his time (suck it, Mario).  Yeah, Sega crashed and burned after the failure of its not-quite-next-gen Dreamcast, but the company was on the scene, kicking ass, and taking names long before Xbox was a pixelated gleam in Bill Gates' eye.  Sonic was the definition of a 90s kids' hero: laid-back yet defiant, funny, fearless, infinitely savvier than his enemies, as fast with his quips as his feet, and naked save for a pair of white gloves and red shoes (it was a weird time).  And his counterpoint was Dr. Robotnik, a morbidly obese, rage-prone, humorless megalomaniac who mostly moved around via motorized chairs and armed hovercraft, trying to turn the world's furry fauna into automated soulless simulacra.

Trust me, whenever this fucker showed up on-screen, your heart skipped a beat.

In short, he was exactly the kind of dickhead you wanted to see Sonic stick it to in every game and cartoon.  So you can imagine my surprise, and perhaps fathom my traumatic gaming flashbacks, when Robotnik showed up at my workplace less than an hour before close.  My first instinct, as soon as I recovered from shock, was to jump on his head, the only known weakness of such bosses.  Then I realized, to my chagrin, it was not in fact a video game icon, but just a really fat, angry dude in bright red who couldn't get his electric wheelchair through the motherfucking doorway.  He was that obese.

So, yeah, this whole thing was pretty much a lead-in to a fat joke.  Sorry, it's a slow week.  But I still have a point to this article, a touchy issue I am about to manhandle with all the sensitivity and compassion of George Carlin.  And I am not promising it will even be as funny as his take on social issues.  You've been warned, and that is as close to an apology as you will get out of me.

Few times in my career have I felt guilty about supplying our company's fat-, cholesterol-, sodium-, calorie-laden food to all and sundry, but I couldn't help feeling a bit dirty in this instance.  The man, if he could have stood, was probably no more than six feet tall, and had to weigh in excess of 450 pounds, judging by most gorillas I've known.  It was all I could do to stop myself laughing at his predicament, which I achieved only by pretending he wasn't there while he looked over our takeout menu.  When he asked me where the burgers were listed, I had to restrain the urge to direct him to the salad page.  My manager quietly suggested I offer him a drink while he waited, and I could not believe it - the guy was in all probability dying of Type 2 diabetes on the spot, and I'm supposed to push more calories and sugar on him?  Before you call me a callous, mean-spirited, opportunistic twat, let me just say, I am one.  Happy?

At least I do it for free.

But, seriously, where do you draw the line?  You do not become that overweight without giving up at some point and outright embracing it.  How can you find yourself repeatedly ramming a doorframe to enter an unhealthy restaurant without pausing to reconsider your situation?  It's sublimely absurdist, almost surreal, humor.  Likewise for those people who discover they cannot comfortably fit in the booths we provide.  Your first reaction should not be, "Why don't they build these things bigger?"  In America, we love to call this an "epidemic" of obesity, as if it is some manner of uncontrollable disease, feeding into our culture of victimhood and absolved responsibility, which I have discussed previously.  Wicked little fat-cells are floating around in the air, burrowing into our otherwise-chiseled physiques and multiplying like insidious, Viagra-powered rabbits, according to this theory.

Oddly enough, they look just like another classic video game boss: Kaid of Metroid Prime.

Granted, there are people who have genetic and contracted disorders that can lead to excessive weight-gain.  I am not talking about them.  And some people are more prone to pudginess than others.  But there's a reason gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, right up there with its bastard half-brother sloth, and if I of all social commentators am siding with the Vatican, you know the problem is a genuine one.  Yes, I am officially labeling myself a "social commentator" now, because it sounds better than "arrogant, opinionated tool with a blog."

I hate to say it, but this is a byproduct of modern American fuzzy thinking, which intentionally blurs the lines of reason, accountability, and simple reality in favor of political correctness, pop psychobabble, and trendy "thinking."  To put it bluntly, nobody wants to call a spade a goddamned spade.  I am sick of hearing people claim that being fat is natural and we need to appreciate it.  Obviously, homo sapiens can fall into a plethora of body-types depending on the individual, but let's take a gander at the rest of the animal kingdom, shall we?  How often do you encounter morbidly obese whitetail deer?  Or coyotes?  For that matter, in countries where food is available but limited and generally healthy, why don't some people just grow up to resemble Chris Farley if that's part of our genetic makeup?  No other mammalian species has the massive weight-range we do, because it's not truly natural.

A lot of this has to do with knee-jerk reactionary sentiment, or, as I prefer to call it, people being dumbasses.  When starving yourself became a trend in professional modeling, the masses felt obliged to follow suit.  Well, now the pendulum has swung the other way.  Hard.  I think it started with the public outcry to re-proportion Barbie's smoking figure, because little girls apparently felt a deep pathological need to emulate their toys.

I empathize.  My childhood was a tormented, fruitless quest to look like this.

Nowadays, some commentators actually condemn fit female celebrities for projecting unrealistic, unhealthy images of feminine beauty when it's patently obvious the ladies in question are just well-toned and most likely health-conscious.  God forbid!  "Don't be fooled, little Sarah, you'll never look like that when you grow up, unless you exercise and watch your diet!  Only celebrities can do that!"  This bullshit has even reached the point that when I attempted to search "healthy model" on Google, one of its suggested alternate searches was "fat model."  Are you fucking serious?  We are now required to equate the word healthy with a word that means the opposite to avoid hurting feelings?  There is a difference between not hating yourself for being out of shape and blithely accepting it as an unalterable fact of life, or even lying to yourself.  It's not healthy, so why should you be perfectly all right with it?  Case in point?  Fat pride rallies.  No, I'm not making that up.  These happen.

*Not pictured: more fatsos, because they didn't fit in the frame.

I'm all for self-acceptance and healthy perception of body-image, but, really, flaunting your cellulite as if it's something to celebrate?  Where the hell is my alcohol enthusiasts' parade?  *Insert Saint Patrick's Day joke here (rimshot optional)*  Notice most people have no problem with taxing the hell out of habitual smokers and hiking their insurance rates to roughly 2032 levels, but throw their hands up in horror when we talk about doing anything similar to the horizontally-enabled (or whatever the PC term is now)?  Both are results of choices made, and anyone who says otherwise is sugar-coating the pill, which makes sense, because everyone loves sugar.

The truly disgusting part of this is the way parents doom the next generation to the same fate.  For whatever reasons, you're fine with being overweight.  That is your decision.  Fair enough.  But turning your offspring into little porkers when they are malleable and don't know any better is borderline criminal negligence.  As a server, I have seen far too many moms and dads let their child suck down cup after cup of Coca-Cola.  Or, if they're really responsible guardians, Diet Coke, because we all know carcinogenic artificial sweeteners, sodium, and empty calories are just what growing bodies need.  They're just kids, they can worry about working off the fat-rolls when they're older and it's ten times harder, right?  Nice logic.  And then you have the gall to encourage them to eat more unhealthy food?

CUSTOMER: (as if I already know or care what the kid's name is) Devin here will have the chicken fingers.
ME: (extremely reluctant, very fast, and barely audible) Any dipping sauce besides ketchup?
DEVIN: (enthusiastic) Ketchup!
CUSTOMER: Devin, how about some ranch?  Do you want ranch?
DEVIN: (insistent) Ketchup!
CUSTOMER: But what about ranch?
DEVIN: (whiny) I want ketchup!
CUSTOMER: He wants ranch.
ME: Fuck you. (but only on the inside)

Wrong on more levels than hell.

Why don't you just start poking them with needles now, so they're used to it by the time they hit 12 and have to take blood-glucose tests every day?  While you're at it, remind them frequently that they can expect to die years sooner and in much worse condition than humanity on the whole.  Teach them how to drive the superstore's Rascal carts at an early age, too.  That way, maybe they will be proficient enough to avoid getting lodged in the doorway of my restaurant.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot the obligatory hot girl picture.

I mean, really, how dare she promote such a dangerously unhealthy, unattainable standard?  Whore.

On the Subtle and Noble Art of Proper Imbibation and Consequences Arising Therefrom

We all have our specialties.  Some people can play music or sing, others execute trigonometry in their heads or skateboard as if gravity were more a guideline than an actual law.  Talents are as varied as the people who possess them.  But I have noticed over the years that one skill is relatively rare, despite the droves of people trying to master it day and day out.  No, I'm not talking about driving again (yet).

It's drinking.

More specifically, drinking alcoholic beverages.  For the record, I am good at this.  Really good.  As in, I am to drinking what Jordan is to basketball.  What Michelangelo is to painting.  What Criss Angel is to . . . whatever the fuck it is Criss Angel does.  (Scare the shit out of tourists, I think.)  Simply put, I am at the top of my field, a master of my medium.  When I say this, I am not referring to simply the ingestion of intoxicants, which many people excel at, but the subtler Art of Drinking.  I am one of the few to elevate it to an art-form in the Modern Age.  Benjamin Franklin was reputedly a prodigy at this as well, which is why they bypassed however many presidents and gave the kite-flying, bifocal-crafting, French-debutante-slaying motherfucker his place on the $100 bill; the highest denomination currency in regular circulation, and America said, "George Washing-who?  Fuck that, B-Frank's the man!"

His most commonly-cited quote on alcohol consumption, right after the more-popular, but oft-misattributed, "Fuck you, I'm drunk."

So what is the Art of Drinking?  Simply put, it's drinking to awesome effect.  I know that sounds suspiciously like an addict's reasoning, but we prefer the term "enthusiast," please.  Drinking is a delicate balancing-act, finding that perfect point of inebriation at which your full potential is realized before tipping the scale into drunken dipshittery.  It's like adding just the right amounts of each chemical into a beaker to achieve the formula for trinitrotoluene, except the test tube is your body, and the chemicals are working against you the entire time, hoping you blow yourself up.  Can you appreciate the skill this requires?

I am not saying my drinking career is devoid of inglorious episodes.  Far from it.  It took me eight years of hangovers, regretted decisions, and damaged property to hone my art, which I still haven't perfected.  Everybody has off-days, right?  Do LeBron and Manning win every game they play?  Of course not.  Some days you crank out Hamlet, others you can only write Henry VIII.

Methinks that wenst a bit over thine head, didst it not?

Point is, if you're good enough at something, the people will generally praise you no matter what you do, even if it's not your best every time.  I have garnered such a reputation in the drinking circles of my town.  "But," you whiny, self-righteous, judgmental boors opine, "think of all the terrible consequences of drinking, all the bad decisions and damage to your body!  How can you glorify such vile behavior?"

Like this, bitch.

Beer and society go hand-in-hand.  The leading theories of human civilization argue that the cultivation of crops en mass led to increasingly complex societies where non-starving folk could spend more time inventing shit like law, medicine, scientific methodology, bitchin' pyramids, and pimp flying machines.

Wait, that might have come a little later.

Not even touching upon the creative powers drinking unlocks in our species, beer in its primitive form was one of the ideal crops to produce because it was easy to make, easy to store, and easy to drink (thus was born the first beer slogan).  Consider: it's already fermented, so it takes a long time to turn bad, and vermin won't nest in it (the first failed beer slogan).  What do you think kept day-laborers farming the shit out of the fields in those days, tofu?  Why do you think beer is still considered the workingman's juice?  Because it has been since roughly, oh, the dawn of freakin' time.  It's high in calories, carbohydrates, and nutritional value, plus it gives you superpowers.  Well, maybe only the delusion of that last, but, seriously, real beer (ie. not Milwaukee- or St. Louis-made fizz) is real fuel, and when it's relatively low in alcohol content, most of which you sweat off during hard labor, you're not getting wasted in a hurry.  So, notice how your loved ones are living past 35?  Love that Audi R8 you drive?  In part, you have alcohol to thank for those advancements.  Beer=Society.

That's why these types hate booze.

Bearing that little history lesson in mind (you're welcome), my area of expertise doesn't seem quite so disreputable, does it?  Who was it that said, "The first sign of a cultivated society is the cultivation of spirits and a parlance pertaining thereto"?  Oh, yes, it was me.  Moving on . . .

In essence, the Art of Drinking is based on one central precept: hold your liquor, even if your liquor is beer or wine.  All other principles and rules flow (no pun intended) from that basic tenet.  Getting back to our old drinking buddy Franklin, "Do everything in moderation, including moderation."  From the ancient Greeks to the Buddha, a lot of wise old dudes have basically said, whatever you do, just don't overdo it, and you'll be fine.  And Ben's tongue-in-cheek maxim above suggests it might even be all right to go overboard every once in a while, so long as it doesn't become habit.  Unless your only true objective every time you drink is to become the proverbial "That Guy" - a shit-faced and blacked-out specimen of singular and unenviable oblivious stupidity - you must recognize how your liver and brain cope with your intake of intoxicants.  If you are a lightweight, own it.  If you can drink with the likes of Hemingway, Dr. Thompson, and Wolverine, drink on, soldier.

A few general guidelines will help you stay on top of your game, no matter your skill-level.

(1) Know what you're drinking 

Seems obvious, but I am always amazed at how many people seem unaware of the alcohol content of their beverage.  God did not create all spirits equal.  If all you drink is beer that features bikini-clad chicks and foam-finger-sporting morons in their ads, or the brand is actually too cheap to afford a marketing campaign, chug away.

Go ahead, see if you can get drunk.

On the other hand, if you love IPAs, Imperial anything, or Rumplemintz, pace your fucking self.  One of those drinks every hour will get you where two of those piss-water pilsners would.  Which reminds me . . .

(2) Lay off the straight liquor

Perhaps you've heard of John "Bonzo" Bonham, the virtuoso drummer of Led Zeppelin.  The dude could literally destroy a full drum-kit in one show with his bare hands.  That's how hard he rocked.  Unfortunately, he drank even harder, meaning he died of vomit-asphyxiation after downing roughly a fifth-and-a-half of vodka in 1983 (no, not in the whole year, in one night, dipshit).  Sweet.  The moral of the story is don't try to put all the liquor on the planet into your body at once.  A few shots per session will provide the desired effect, believe me.  And remember Rule 1: Watermelon-Kiwi Pucker is not the same as Sailor Jerry, despite both sounding equally gay.

(3) Drink often

If you want to succeed at something, practice.  Getting hammered once every two weeks is not going to transform you into a drinking champion, just like skipping training and being a total jackass during games didn't get Allen Iverson a single ring.

If this guy's "the Answer," the question must have been, "Who's the NBA's biggest douche?"

In spite of what AA may tell you, your body will adapt to having alcohol inside it on a regular basis.  That's not to say your blood-alcohol content will be any lower, but you'll be more-accustomed to the effects of the booze and better able to gauge your status - Awesome, Awesomer, or Awesomest?  Notice how teenagers are typically wasted after three Smirnoff Twists, while middle-aged men can put away a six-pack in the same time with barely a slurred word?  There's a reason for that, and it's called a built-up tolerance.  Just as your immune system needs exposure to various contagions to raise its defenses, your digestive and neural systems will only handle alcohol well if they recognize it.   If you have not worked at it, you'll forever be that idiot you were when you turned 17 and ended the night at 12 AM rolled up in a piece of outdoor carpeting in a sheet-metal outbuilding next to a five-gallon bucket of puke and esophageal lining.  (What, just me?)

That being said, we all know the main reason people drink is to break down social barriers and lower inhibitions, plain and simple.  Sure, booze can be tasty, and sometimes you just need to self-medicate after a hard day at work, but we drink for fun.  Alcohol is the social lubricant that renders your otherwise dubious behavior acceptable in public.  And you know what?  Sometimes that's just fine.

Feel like dancing to the Thong Song on a table?  Cool.  Want to talk to that hottie you'd normally spy on creepily from the darkest corner of the taproom?  Go for it.  Pretty sure you can take the loudmouthed asshole who looks like a WWE reject, only more 'roided out?  You can't, but odds are a lot of people would love to see you try.  Epic nights of mind-erasing indulgence are what separate the true barstars from the chaff.

However, a word of advice: accept the consequences of your actions and, for the love of Bacchus, don't drive home.  Every plastered jerkoff who smears someone else's life across the pavement gives a bad name to lushes everywhere, resulting in ever-harsher punishment for any alcohol-related offense.  As someone who has been through the legal ringer once, I can tell you this is something you want to avoid if at all possible.  My preferred modus operandi?  Recline that car seat, toss the keys in the back, and sleep that shit off.  Think of it as an impromptu camping trip.  If that doesn't work for you, try taxicabs or DDs (though I don't think I have encountered these semi-mythical people more than a handful of times).

Whatever you do, heed the Man's word:

"Stay thirsty, my friends."