I hope all of you had a decent Fourth of July weekend. I say decent because everybody loves to say a “great Fourth of July weekend” and frankly, the Fourth of July is never great. Okay, maybe the one in 1776 was great but the rest of them have just been sequels, and sequels never live up to the original. If you managed to keep all your fingers, keep out of the all the DUI checkpoints, and keep your hangover to a minimum, well then, that’s about as decent a Fourth of July as you’re gonna get.

More decent than this guy’s.

Personally, the Fourth of July is my ninth favorite of the ten federal holidays, just inching out Columbus Day cause fuck that dude. Throw in the unofficial holidays like Halloween, St Patrick’s Day, and the Super Bowl, and the Fourth of July drops down to somewhere in the teens for me. It’s not like I don’t understand the significance of the day or its importance in our nation’s history. I don’t like the Fourth of July for the same reason I don’t like to see old pictures of myself; because it is just another reminder of how much potential we had and how much we’ve let ourselves go.

How many times have you heard, “America is the greatest country in the world!”? Between Presidential speeches, fireworks shows, and Fox News, my guess is you’ve heard it plenty – especially this past weekend. I am wondering upon what this claim can be based. Now, I want you to really think about that. Freedom? That is the answer I hear the most. “America is the greatest country because we have the most freedom!” First of all, that is not even accurate. Go ask a gay person who wants to get married or join the military how much freedom we have. And secondly, it doesn’t even make sense. If the measure of a country’s greatness is determined by the freedom of its citizens then the greatest country in the world is Somalia. They don’t even have a government. You can do anything you want over there.

“Obama can’t take our guns!”

Granted, exercising your Somali freedom can lead to death by starvation, AK-47 or Navy Seal, but nonetheless, you’re free to do as you wish. So freedom can’t be the reason America is so great. What else? Money? We certainly have plenty of that. Military might? Oh yeah. We can kick ass with the best of them. But if our greatness comes from the fact that we’re rich and can beat up everybody else, then basically we’ve become Johnny from “The Karate Kid” and is that really so great?

Johnny Lawrence: American Greatness

The last time I checked, everybody in America dies just like everywhere else. So we can’t be that great. It would be a different matter if we had some immortals running around. Because, let’s face it, that is what everybody wants, right? Immortality? There is a school of thought out there that hypothesizes that most negative human behavior, from violent patriotism to religious extremism to infatuation with vampire movies, stems from the basic fear of death. Now, if we didn’t have that fear because we actually could achieve immortality then, hell yeah, I’d be onboard that whole “Great America” train. But we can’t, so I won’t.
Now there will be those that read this and say the same bullshit I always hear when I question our country’s greatness. “If you don’t like it, then you can leave!” Like the country where you were born into citizenship is nothing more than a neighborhood full of meth labs you can just pack your bags and move away from. It is that kind of thinking that got us here. I would argue that it is more neighborly and more patriotic to want to clean up this hood. Fix the problems instead of waiting for somebody else to do it. Rather than being the fat, lazy, son of the CEO, who inherits his father’s company then proceeds to run it into the ground through ineptitude and inaction, I want to be the guy who starts off in the mail room and works his way up, improving it as he goes. You know, The American Dream. Remember that idea? It’s what once made this country great and the only thing that is going to save it from going straight into the shitter.

America had it coming. Harsh? Nah. Hear me out, here. First of all, it should be clarified that I’m not referring to America the Country- full of morally responsible, ethically cognizant, humble-hearted patriots. I’m not talking about you, Gus, so go ahead and cancel that noose fetching request. I’m speaking of America the corporation- full of ruthless greed and ulterior motives. As in most cases, my beef is with the Government, not the people. As anyone that is reading this is brutally aware of, Government is sub-human and anti-citizen.

After decades of constructing a bloody legacy of oil-fueled terror and white collar criminal decadence by destructing whatever, and whoever, is in the war path- Mother Nature has shot her proverbial wad all over US. Our unhealthy obsession has led us to die, kill, ravage and pillage in the name of oil; now we’re covered in the shit. Our life source has been spiked by our other life source.

Enlightened minds may perceive this man made catastrophe as a wake-up call. Others might choose to hit the snooze. For the most part, the World’s energy seems to be consumed with hatred for British Petroleum. Everybody knows that justified hatred is the Cadillac of hate.

Most decent people witness something irreprehensible happen to their home planet and squirm accordingly. Ben Stein, however, is not most people. He expressed more empathy for the distressed BP C.E.O. than he did the “poor little sea birds”, as he so prickishly put it; making no mention of the eleven flightless rig workers that perished in the mother of all fuck-ups. Granted, the Man was entertaining on The Wonder Years and that game show where he gave away his own money (I believe it was called “The Jimmy Kimmel Show”), but underneath the façade of the cool nerd that is equally monotone and engaging, enlies a elitist jerk-ass. A stark Republican that slangs Clear Eyes to our Nation’s stoned youth, thus abetting them in their attempt to evade the naturally clear eye of the Pig that has their hot box on wheels pulled over. Thanks to Mr. Stein, the cop can’t tell that the kid is lit, assumes everything is Code-4, sends him on his way; next thing you know- SPLAT! There’s a pancaked five year old laying next to her mangled tricycle in a fast food drive thru. When will the Right stop drugging our teens and crushing our precious toddlers with their slow-moving murder vehicles. Not soon enough, that’s when. The spill did occur on 4/20, after all…The plot thins.

When reached for comment regarding the matter, former Vice Devil Dick Cheney confessed that he felt sorry…for the oil. Oil that will never realize its potential as genocide incentive. Obviously, Big Oil’s imprint of evil has minimal effect on voters in this Country. Why else would a former Oil company C.E.O. be elected Vice Devil? While I agree with the outrage directed toward BP, I know to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. To look at who’s sustaining these oil monsters. All of the pseudo-rage and concern Obama can fling at me will not compromise my stance. Where was the deafening outcry against Big Oil prior to the spill? Where is it now? It’s all being centered in on a single entity, rather than at the Beast as a whole. BP is merely an indication of a much more dire issue.

The Government loves war and they love oil. Luckily, the two go hand-in-hand. If they were serious about utilizing an alternative energy source, they would have done it by now. The technology to make an engine that is powered by water has existed for over half a century. If meager Brazil can achieve independence from the oil companies via the magic of corn, then so can we.

It’s not about what’s best for Americans. It’s not about what’s best for the World. It boils down to one word: Power. If oil was replaced as our “mother’s milk”, a legion of very powerful, corrupt Swine-people would stand to lose a substantial amount of existing and forthcoming wealth. So for now, we’ll seek out short term fixes in lieu of attacking the problem at its core; and with the help of Government, ours and others, the BP’s of the World will do their part in speeding along the entropy process. The sky will rain oil (here), bullets (there) and doom (everywhere).

If I’m going to continue to idle in my Hummer with the A/C on while I type this, I’d better go fill up.

Somebody keeps keying cars in my neighborhood and I would like nothing more than to watch the son-of-a-bitch die. That may sound like a harsh statement to read. Even to me, as I read it back, it seems like a harsh statement but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t true. Should I feel this way? Probably not. Do I deserve it? Probably. Without going into any of the self incriminating details, I’ve done enough vandalism in my day to deserve plenty more than a scratch in the paint of my car. Yet I can’t help but fantasize about catching the motherfucker in the act. The pure joy I would feel in being able to seize the, all too rare, moment of teaching somebody a lesson they would never forget.

Of course, I’ll never get to fulfill this fantasy. Even if I did catch the asshole do it, I’m not sure what I would do. Probably something lame like call the cops. Let’s face it, we as a society have become so impotent and litigious, that justice can only be dispensed through the justice system. Street justice has been corralled and sectioned off from our civilization, only to be practiced by the most criminally indifferent. In short, I wouldn’t have the balls. But I know somebody who would. Somebody who has never been restrained by the conventions of society. Somebody who grew up in a time where an eye was truly for an eye and sometimes even a head was for an eye. Who is this somebody, you ask? Well I’ll tell you. It is my Dad.

To call my father old school would be like calling Abraham Lincoln a politician – a gross understatement. He is the epitome of old school. Born on a farm in Louisiana in 1935, he grew up in a time and place where you handled your own and you got what was comin’ to you. My Dad’s biography reads like a Jim Croce song and to this day, people still know him by name in the small town of Natchitoches. Now, I’m not going to write you a report about my Dad, my hero. I just wanted to share a couple stories with you about my childhood and what it was like to grow up as the son of “The Badest Man on Cane River.”

We moved to Kent, Washington in 1980. We lived in one of those suburban housing developments where every house was identical to the fifth house away from it and everybody’s mailbox sat in a quaint little maibox house complete with its own little shingled roof. For whatever reason, the lot across the street from our house was never built on and it served as a playground for me and my friends for several years until a developer, much to our chagrin, finally decided to build two more houses on it. As is often the case with track home developers, certain details went overlooked and our new neighbors moved into a house with no mailbox and, more importantly, no little mailbox house. It needs to be mentioned that on our block, the little mailbox house sat in front of our house, right next to our driveway. I needed to tell you those details so I could get to the real story.

It took about two weeks before our new neighbor attempted to remedy his mailbox dilemma by nailing a 2 X 4 to the exterior of the mailbox house and mounting an ugly aluminum mailbox to it, jutting out from the quaint little mailbox house like an undeveloped fetus of a conjoined twin. Unfortunately for us, but more so for our neighbor, the 18 inches of new mailbox stuck directly into the path of our driveway. Being the fair man that he is, my Dad left a note in the mailbox, explaining our problem with the driveway obstruction. A week went by. Nothing happened. My Dad left another note. Another week. Another nothing.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning in the summer. The sun was shining. Everybody in the neighborhood was outside mowing their lawns and watching their kids play, including our neighbor. My Dad went outside too. But instead of bringing a lawnmower, he brought a saw. Very calmly, he walked over to the Siamese mailbox and began slicing his way through that 2 X 4. Our neighbor watched the whole time. He did nothing. What could he do? After my Dad cut through the 2 X 4, he turned and, with mailbox in hand, walked about halfway across the street. He stopped, looked our neighbor in the eye, and threw the mailbox at him. It came to rest right at our neighbor’s foot. My Dad turned and went back into our house. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. A few weeks later, our neighbor put up his own quaint little mailbox house right in front of his own. We lived happily ever after.

Until…

Another time my Dad was disrespected only this time it was by kids. We lived very close to an elementary school. I went to that school. My sister went to that school. It was cool because we could ride our bikes there. In fact, right next to our house was a bike trail that would lead to the school. Dividing the bike trail and our front lawn were 10 small pine trees, about six feet tall and separated every three feet. I was in high school when my Dad, who was retired, began complaining about some sixth graders who would venture off the bike path, ride through the pine trees and through our front lawn. They would power slide and skid and basically tear up the lawn. Yes, my Dad became that old guy who would tell the kids to keep off his lawn but he was justified. The kids would either ignore him or flip him off or laugh as they rode off. Being a man who didn’t take kindly to being disrespected, my Dad devised a plan. One day he was watching television as school let out. He didn’t get up. He didn’t rush to the window. He waited and waited, patiently. Then he heard the crash. He, very calmly, got up and walked out the front door to see the kids sprawled out across the lawn, bikes mangled, faces horrified. You see, when riding a bike full speed through six-foot pine trees separated every three feet, it is very difficult to see the metal chain strung between each one. Those kids never rode through our lawn again.

I can go on and on. There are a million of these stories about my Dad and I love each and every one of them. A man who never took any shit from anybody. A man who lived by a simple rule, don’t fuck with me and I won’t fuck with you. As I sit here typing this, I wonder how he would handle the mysterious keying cocksucker that is roaming my neighborhood. Actually, I don’t wonder. I know exactly what he would do but like I said earlier, I don’t have the balls. Still, maybe one night soon, I’ll stay up late, wait in the shadows, and try my best to impersonate my idol.