Race Riots; Racism in the US

Firstly, I’d like to say that this is how I should have vented about Paula Deen in the first place. I swore I wasn’t going to get involved in politics on Facebook, and I did and all it did was frustrate me to the point of not wanting to be on Facebook or even be my normal fight the good fight self. I just can’t comprehend how people do not understand that racism is rampant in the United States, nor can I understand how people can condone that racism, specifically in a public figure who is known for a warm personality.

But let’s leave Paula Deen out of this for a minute.

You have to admit when people are in an uproar over this commercial:

there is something really wrong. And when the maker of Cheerios has to disable the comments because of racist remarks, there’s a problem. This country has many biracial and multiracial  families and this commercial is representative of our melting pot that we are supposedly so proud of. Of course, that’s only if the melting pot is German, Irish, Italian, you know, white.  Start putting a little spice in that fondue and the racists get all wiggy and start to grumble.

Add to that and the excuses being made for these racist assholes and you have a bomb ready to go off.

And then, there’s this:

Granted, we liberals said something similar about Bush, but it had nothing to do with race. It had to do with the fact that he’s an idiot.
Our President is biracial and it’s perfectly acceptable to continually call into question whether he was born here or not. This is not because people really think he was not born here, it’s racist assholes being pissed about a black man of any sort being our President. And sadly, there are people out there that not only think that this is not racist, but that the promotion of this shit is not racist either. I am not saying that if you didn’t vote for Obama you are racist, that’s ridiculous. I am saying that Obama’s election, an event that should be celebrated (not because of Obama himself but because a biracial man got elected), has been tainted by the fact that for some reason this has opened a flood gate for people who if not racist, are at the least, misinformed. And to be fair, voting for Obama just because he’s biracial is just as racist if you get right down to it.

Again, people forget the history. Which is really continuing on into the present. But let’s look at some of that history and put it into context.

A lot of people throughout history have held slaves. The Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, all of whom we base some of our political systems upon. The Dutch, from whom we got most of our slaves, ended slavery in 1814, although they didn’t seem to think selling human beings was a bad thing.  Slavery didn’t end in Great Britain until 1833, Russia in 1783, and we know when ours was ended. We are not the only people to have used forced labor. The difference is that our slavery was based upon a color, or race if you prefer. The Greeks and Romans enslaved their own people, Mediterranean people, African people, Celts, and whatever they could get their hands on. And those people, as could most slaves throughout history, were more like our indentured servants, and could work their way out of that slavery. Never easy, not always accomplished, but still a possibility.

Our slave system was based on race. There were not Irish slaves. No Asian slaves (notwithstanding the horrible conditions the Asians suffered on the west coast), although there were quite a few Native-American slaves as well, although they were not considered as valuable as the African slaves. We bred people to be slaves, to give us a free labor force, but more significantly, a force that cold be raped, beaten, and murdered on a whim.

Sure, we all know this, right? What’s this have to do with anything? It’s history, right? None of that matters now because it’s in the past.

If I hear this one more time I’m going to puke.

One of the biggest problems with the US is that we make every excuse in the world. We cannot accept responsibility for the things we’ve done, will do, or are doing. Always, always some excuse. My brother once told me that I take too much responsibility, but I’d rather do that than be like most people who either bury their head so far in the sand they’re puking pyramids or are just so oblivious that they perpetuate a problem without knowing about it or caring.

So, why does history matter so much?

Partially because of it making up who we are. I always find it funny when people evoke the founding fathers to prove that they were conservative, then say that history doesn’t matter. They weren’t in the context of the time, but that’s another point. Our history is made up of fucking horrible shit. Slavery. Genocide. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Civil War. The Trail of Tears. Japanese Internment. McCarthyism.

Hmmm. Look at that list. Every single one of them involves either race or limiting freedoms, with the exception of the bombs. Yep, in the land of the free, if you’re white, rich, and male, for the most part.

At some point we have to say, what the fuck? But people don’t. They continually say stupid shit like:

That was another time.
What’s that got to do with me, I didn’t have slaves.
I’m not racist, but I don’t want those thugs in my neighborhood.

OK. Continue to lie to yourself. Everybody else does, which is why things will never get better.

A few moments in our history since 1900 regarding race.

http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/11/4322098/geography-of-hate-maps-derogatory-terms-on-twitter

Yeah, that last one is from this year. And people will continue to say, well that’s not racism. But, it is.

Getting back to Paula Deen, I’d like to go through a few steps with her. I’d like to point out that I liked her, a lot, before all of this. I don’t hate her but I do think she’s a racist.

First off, let’s talk about the word and what she herself has done. In no way is it ever ok for a white person to use that word. Ever. I don’t see what the controversy is over that. And the excuse, yet another one, that “they” (see how that is, that construction of the other, calling blacks “they” rather than saying some people) use it is stupid. Let me give you two examples of how stupid in simpler terms.

I am fat. I know I’m fat. But if other people, especially people who don’t know me and my struggles with food call me fat, I go ballistic. It pisses me off. I want to punch them. And this is about being fat, certainly not being considered sub-human by many people in this country. Don’t lie. We all know people who consider women, blacks, Mexicans. and other minorities as somehow less than them.

Another example, or maybe just a point to be made, is that circular reasoning such as “they” say it so why can’t I is kind of like saying Johnnie’s parents let him drive the car without a driver’s license so why can’t I.

Again it’s about personal responsibility. Do you really want to make that argument? It’s petulant, childish, and really just an….well, you get it.

I will say, had this only been an aberration 15 years ago, I could let it go. People do make mistakes, and she’s entitled. If it were a one time event. Apparently, those who are supporting her either don’t care that she’s getting sued, as is her brother Bubba, for continuing this behavior, for hiring light skinned blacks for the front of the house and relegating dark-skinned blacks to the back of the house. That she wanted tap dancing, middle-aged black men to serve at her brother’s wedding. That she continually called one of her employees “the little monkey”. And that the two of them are being sued not by a black person, but a white woman.

What does all of this mean? I’d love to call it all ignorance, but aside from the making of excuses, it’s much deeper than that. Since Obama has been elected a lot of racism has reared its ugly head. And somehow, perhaps with the advent of social media, it’s become ok.  It’s not ok. Just as it isn’t ok to say a rape is the woman’s fault. Or that Asians are exotic. Or that Mexicans are all illegal. Or that all Jews should be exterminated.

If when reading this I make you angry, you should think about that for a minute. Why? Why are you angry at reading why you shouldn’t ever use racist language or make excuses for a woman who has? I’m not angry at you for defending her, but I am saddened by how many of you don’t get it.

And for the record, I don’t think the word should be used by anyone. It’s a huge misunderstanding of both the context and the history when people use it. Makes them sound ignorant and stupid about their own history. It is, however, unlikely that the complete annihilation of the word will happen. And while I don’t think it should be used, I’ m not for censorship, either. It should stay in Huckleberry Finn purely for the fact if we continue to clean up our books and writings (and even gangster rap, if you get right down to it) then we do get to this point. Where we forget. Forget that the Civil Rights movement happened only 50 years ago. Forget that some people are still fighting. Forget that some people are vile just because.

Paula Deen is not a hero and she is probably not really a villain either. What she is is a public figure who fucked up royally and is now trying to cover her ass. I genuinely hope that this is all some crap drug up by a disgruntled employee just for the fact that she had to have been doing this for years and people let her get away with it for such a long time if it’s all true. And that is frightening. Because that means we really haven’t learned from any of our mistakes.

Fairy Tale Follies; or Analyzing Beloved Stories Without Being Shot. Dead.

Ah, the Fairy Tale. Few icons of popular culture illicit such vehement defense. Especially the Disney versions. I know women who absolutely get angry when I espouse how Disney fairy tales are the worst blueprint for women on earth. And they aren’t so great for men, either. But it really isn’t Disney’s fault, not completely. He isn’t the first to alter the original meanings of the stories, nor will he be the last. The problem with Disney is in actuality the problem with our society at large.

1. Make everything sweetness and light.

2. Take away the actual meaning behind why these things are happening to these women, and/or men.

3. Dress the stories up in a pretty package and hope nobody notices how bad they are for young minds that are just forming.

4. Ignore the bad shit.

And that’s the big one. Ignore the bad shit. Why? Why do people continue to turn their head from what really happens in this world?  I maintain that they’re all a bunch of chickenshits who are afraid that if they admit the bad shit happens that it might happen to them. I also think that this is incredibly detrimental to our children. People wonder why kids have so many more problems than the used to. This is often explained as “times were harsher” and they were, but kids today are not allowed to fail, are not allowed to know what small amounts of pain are let alone what real suffering and strife is. We make it too easy for them, and then they are severely disappointed when things do not go their way. Granted, this is a huge generalization, but I’ve seen it, especially in girls and their ideas of what a man should be. Unfortunately, this circles back to Disney and the sanitation of tales that were supposed to warn girls (and sometimes boys) of the horrors that the world has to offer.

Let’s look at the original tale of Little Red Riding Hood (which, as far as I know, Disney has not mangled). Briefly, the tale of her going through the woods has pretty much remained the same throughout the centuries, and yes, I said centuries. The little girl goes to visit her grandmother, has a bunch of goodies in her basket, meets the wolf, innocently (or stupidly, depending on your point of view) tells the wolf where’ she’s going, he eats the grandma and is there waiting for Red in anticipation of eating her, too. And if you are not getting the overtly sexual metaphors here, then your head has really been in the sand your entire life. This is where the story has changed, dramatically, over the years.
In the original version, the oral tale, Red (Cap in this case, not Hood) is treated to her grandmother’s intestines splattered all over her grandmother’s shack, and the wolf offers her her grandmother’s blood to drink, which she does. He asks her to undress bit by bit and get in the bed with him. Naked. Red only escapes by telling him that she has to urinate. He ties her to a large rope which she then ties to a tree and makes her escape, presumably as naked as the day she was born.

Here we have a story that not only is intended to frighten children of the dangers of the woods (which at the time these stories were popular were more dangerous than any city) but to warn little girls of “charming” men. Same old story, there, right? They never had oral tales explaining to boy children how not to be a raving, drooling, rapist. Nope, it’s always on the women.

And, this may seem strange, but the fault there might in fact not lie with a patriarchal society, but with the women themselves. I know, the world has ended, the feminist is blaming the women. But there’s a lot to what I’m saying.

First off, The Grimm Brothers wrote very few of the stories attributed to them. I think maybe one or two. What they did was go to the women of Germany, all over the countryside, the cities, to friends, to noblewomen, to peasants, and gather the stories from women. Women who passed the stories around and down through the generations  as oral tales told while spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting, and perhaps after reading the Bible and before going to bed. The women told tales to scare the Hell out of their daughters, whether out of love or concern for a good marriage, it was still the women who continued the cautionary tales that informed their daughters’ lives and it was those daughters who continued the pattern.

The story of Little Red Cap that The Grimm Brothers anthologized is significantly changed from the original oral tale. In the version many of us knew when we were growing up the blood and gore was mostly gone, Red never had to get naked, and the Huntsman came and rescued her and Grandmother.  Again, the mothers of European girls in the 17th, 18th, and 19th were very much focused on marriage, and a good, hardworking, strong, man was the one to look for. And because girls were weaker in spirit, mind, and body they needed this guy to rescue them.
Looking at this illustration…

…we see the real attitude toward women and girls especially. Here Red is the coquette “playing” the innocent while the ravaging wolf looks on. How can he help himself? She’s there for the taking.
And this is one fairy tale I’d like changed. There have been modernizations, such as Francesca Lia Block’s stunning and terrifying Wolf  which shows the wolf as a manipulative step-father who will do anything to possess his  young step-daughter. It examines pedophilia and molestation in an open and honest way, one that I’ll bet most mother’s won’t let their child read, and they should. Just as those mother’s did around the fireplace decades ago. Wolf is the modern cautionary tale and one that shouldn’t be ignored.

But what does all of this have to do with Disney or even the sanitation of fairy tales? Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t follow the pattern only because it’s closer to its roots than many of the other fairy stories children have loved for eons. But it does show what fairy tales are really all about. They were meant to be stories that warned girls of falling prey to men, whether by charm, losing their virginity, or just marrying a cad in general. These were stories that gave young women, metaphorically, instructions on living life with the least amount of pain and strife.

Cinderella, for example. The original tale discusses mutilations and an apparently moronic prince who cannot even remember who the love of his life is the next day. But Cinderella can marry a prince, high above her social class in reality, if she only remains pure, obedient, and cleans the shit out of the house. Presumably she’s a damn fine cook, as well. Well, she doesn’t really follow the obedience part, otherwise she never would have married the Prince. In the meantime, her step-mother imprisons her, beats her, and has killed her father for his money, and her step-sisters mutilate themselves in order to marry the dolt of a prince who doesn’t even notice the course of blood flowing from the shoe until a bird, a bird, tells him that the shoe does not fit.

Disney keeps most of the tale intact, remarkably. He omits the bird and we never really see the evil step-mother as anything other than mean. Sure she uses Cindy as a slave and locks her in her room, but we never really fear for Cindy’s life as we do in the tale. Maybe little children shouldn’t be exposed to death threats, but being sent to your room also shouldn’t be seen as evil personified. And that’s all that really happens in the Disney version. Cinderella is being punished for defying her step-mother. Wah. Get over it, kid. At least this step-mother didn’t go to the ball dressed as a young woman with her breasts exposed, which she did in the Grimm’s version. Hell, if the ugly sisters can’t get the Prince, then mama can!

The point is, Fairy Tales were supposed to scare girls into behaving. Most of them are sexist and focused on finding a husband even before Disney made them so happy and full of light. The husband’s were just as dull, by the way. Remember, these are stories told by women, so not only are they promoting marriage, they’re warning their daughters that the husbands of the time are really dull and don’t care much for anything other than begetting and moving on.

But, they also had a deeper purpose. One that was to warn against the evils of men, or the devil, or even other women. That evil can walk on this earth and harm all of us, especially young and innocent girls and boys.  Disney forgets this in their attempt to satisfy the larger demographic. It certainly isn’t the worst thing a filmmaker has done, and I watched the movies along with my children. But  I also read them the originals so that they knew what the literature looks, sounds, and feels liked.
The mermaid does not get her man, but she gets Jesus in the end. Sleeping Beauty is raped in her sleep and her Ogre mother-in-law wants to eat her and her offspring. Peter Pan wants a mother and has a fairy by his side who has a boudoir and wants more than  his fairy dust, if you know what I mean. While not a fairy tale, Pocahontas dies rather quickly after leaving the US and John Smith doesn’t make it back to England and she marries someone completely different.

Does any of this matter? Probably not to most people, but I see an increasing amount of people saying things such as we do not want to know the bad parts of the holocaust, as an example. They’re belief is that just knowing about it is good enough, why experience the pain of seeing and reading about what happened to those poor people. Because, you moron, if you don’t feel and see and experience this shit it doesn’t feel real and it happens again. So is Disney awful? No. The stories that the studio tells are lovely little interludes of brightness and light. But beware! If you do not explain to your daughters and sons that those stories are pure bullshit you will have a generation of disillusioned adults who will never find their perfect partner because Prince Phillip never existed.

Why I Like to Kill Prostitutes; or Playing Devil’s Advocate in a Time of Violence

Spurred on from the continued cry over mass murderers killing innocents and their connection to video games, I decided I’d weigh in in more than a posting crap on Facebook sort of manner. I’ve always been an advocate for video games, and don’t mind the more violent of the bunch to be played in my house. Granted, I didn’t let Spencer play them until he was a little older, although I’m sure he was able to at other places, but that was me being a parent. Which personally, I think, is most of the problem.

We need parents. Also probably why people get irritated at me for being a liberal. We all want big government in one way or another, I just don’t lie to myself about it. I’d rather put people first rather than corporations and the lobbyists, and in this case the NRA. but I digress, as usual.

My point is, people are violent, greedy, dirty, willing to murder, asshats. We need to be governed, because unfortunately we are unable to govern ourselves. Personally I think  once we all realize this, the better off we’ll be.

OH NO! You shout! NO BIG GOVERNMENT.

OK, then. Shut up about violent video games, and stop using them as a scapegoat for this country’s (US) inability to understand that mass murders, and murders in general, have several causes, not just one easy fix that make s all of you gun totin’ constitution spoutin’ people feel good about protecting your family. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sort of ambivalent about the whole gun thing. I don’t particularly like them and won’t have them around, but if you think you need one for protection, so be it. But I don’t like disingenuous people who are jumping on a bandwagon so that they’re guns aren’t taken away. You didn’t give that much of a shit before, so stop pretending you do now. And really, the NRA and gun enthusiasts, who KILL THINGS (and yes I know there are some who never kill things, but apparently like the big boom sound, and the skill related to sport shooting) are going to complain about video game violence???? YOU KILL THINGS!

For fucks sake.

Let’s look at some numbers. You know, those things that lead to facts and proof and the like? Yeah, those.

About 9 people have died related to or from video games more or less directly. One had a seizure, which is why all video games come with a warning. A baby was shaken to death because the mom was obsessed with Farmville and it cried. A couple of boys have starved to death.

That’s pretty minimal.

Now on to the correlation between violent video games and mass murderers. Let me state here that I am not saying that there is NO correlation or causality. I am not a social scientist, nor am I a mental health care professional, and I’m sure there are some neural pathways that are affected by visions of death and destruction. Hmmm, which makes me wonder about some form of PTSD, hmm. Will have to research that!

Anyhoo, the simplest way to negate the “video games are creating mass murderers” is to again, look at the numbers. Over 18 million copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops have been sold since 2010. Grand Theft Auto IV has sold 15 million copies. I could go on, but you should see what I’m saying here. There are not 18 million school or theater shootings every year.  Since 1982, which can be considered the video game era, there have been 61 mass shootings, with 28 of those in the 9 years since the Assault Rifle Ban expired. Meaning that prior to 2004, in an almost 20 year span, there were 33 mass killings in the United States. Still a lot, but not nearly as many as before the weapons ban was in place.  Personally, if I’m going to see correlation, this is where it would be.

Another aspect, which a lot of people ignore, goes back to what I said in the beginning. We’re a fucked up species. Really fucked up. Historically, which people often ignore as unimportant, dolts, we have had not only mass murder, but mass genocide. GENOCIDE. The Mongols were brutal, ruthless killers who obliterated entire villages in order to scare the shit out of the rest of the population in order to take over. Carthage. The Anasazi. The Armenian Genocide.  Native Americans. Germany. Even the Irish Famine is in reality a genocide because the English took all of the food for themselves, leaving the Irish to starve.

Where were the video games? Damn, Hitler must have loved his Wii.

You see my point?
People suck and like to kill things. If you’re mentally ill, power hungry, charismatic, you might even get to kill legally. But they’ve been doing it for centuries, killing. Mostly because they like it in some sick fashion, regardless of what society expects, wants, etc.

This brings me to why I like to kill hookers. When I am stressed, I get angry. I sometimes have things I can do, go for a walk, cook, yell. But the best thing to alleviate this is to play a game in which I can kill things. When I was in school I was incredibly stressed. I wanted to keep my GPA high, had to take care of my kids, had parents who needed some assistance, although not that much at the time, and had a husband who’d never had kids and didn’t really understand why they needed shit. And there was always some jackhammer who thought he was cleverer than everyone else at school who would determine that it was his purpose in life to make the rest of us feel somehow inferior. Thankfully, I rarely felt that way, hah! but it still pissed me off.

So, I’d come home, turn on the PS2 and kill things. Shoot thugs, crash cars, and find prostitutes. Why prostitutes? Because they don’t have guns and they had money in the GTA games. So I could go get a tattoo or a gun or something in game. And it is so alien to my actual personality that I can live vicariously through a thug and blow off steam. And go to bed, when I dragged myself away. I certainly don’t go and kill prostitutes in real life, and neither do my children. Hell, according to Pat Robertson, Dungeons and Dragons is the Devil’s Work.

The issue with these mass shootings, and violence in general, is not video games, media, or even the gun itself, although I do believe that the Assault Weapon Ban should be reinstated. It’s an issue of responsibility. Not just in terms of your own children, but in terms of children and the world at large. Seek mental health for your kids. It’s not shameful to have a child with a disorder, it’s shameful to let them loose on society. And this is where bigger government comes in. We have to have some form of socialized medicine that cares for the mentally ill. We cannot continue to hide from the fact that there are some crazy people out there and even though we may love them they may be so batshit crazy they may kill us with our own guns.
And what kind of parent, knowing about their child’s illness, has those kinds of guns in their house? Because almost all of these mass shooters have those parents.
It isn’t about what you want. It’s about what’s best for all of us. And that’s the problem. People don’t give a shit as long as they can keep their guns. Until a four year old boy accidentally kills his father, a soldier who served for our rights.
If that isn’t tragically ironic, and if it doesn’t touch you and make you rethink the importance of a thing, I don’t know what will.

And yes, I get that to you it’s protection. Fine. But don’t moan and groan when people like me say we don’t like guns. We have rights too. Like living. Yeah I kind of like that right.
As long as the Constitution, as it is interpreted right now, says that you can have guns, I guess I have to support you, because I actually do believe in a living document that can change as we evolve. And even though I don’t hate guns, I fear them. A 14 year old friend shot and killed his step-father accidentally when I was 12. My two year old daughter held a handgun to my head because her father was an idiot. They are dangerous. Dangerous and even more dangerous in the hands of a moron who does not control access to them. And there are many, many of those.

But in this case I am not really angry at the gun owners, but the NRA for deflecting. Have your guns, but stay the fuck away from my ultra-violent video game. Last time I checked it was people with guns who actually kill things, with real blood and everything. These mass shooters may be gamers, and many of them are, but they are also in the age range in which mental health issues worsen for boys and men. Possibly they might beat someone to death with their Xbox 360 or throw a Wii nunchuck at someone’s head, but why the Hell would they do that when they can go into mom’s bedroom or dad’s basement and get an object manufactured for the express purpose of killing people?

They wouldn’t. And neither would any of the other sick fuckers throughout history who have killed. Pretty sure Jack the Ripper and Cortez never had to play a video game to get ideas about how to kill, nor were they desensitized to violence by killing prostitutes on the small screen, no pun…well, you know.

If these killings don’t stop, however, it is a measure of us as a civilization. We as a country must take responsibility, admit that there is a problem beyond quick solutions, and look at ourselves in the mirror. Is this who we really are? Unable to identify mental illness, treat it, or institutionalize those who are that crazy. . If we really care about these children, and I mean the shooters as well, then we must acknowledge that we have failed as parents, failed as protectors, guns or not.

And we will all continue to suffer for a “right”.

In the Interest of Time

You watch as she cleans the toilets and wonder if she washes her hands before she cooks you dinner as your wife is at the club and she won’t have time to order anything out which makes you laugh a little inside since you can never laugh on the outside unless it’s about money in which case you laugh, literally, all the way to the bank and you see her in the kitchen scrubbing her hand and then your dishes before she puts them in the dishwasher and you wonder why people do that and if she knows you’re intent on how she cleans since you’re in a petulant mood and would love to fire her and she sighs but doesn’t make any mistakes and besides she make a Hell of a roast chicken one that you can’t get when you order out something about the hint of rosemary and maybe some lavender maybe herbes de Provence  ha! something nobody knows that you know about and then she walks through the livingroom to get the vacuum which will be the last thing she does before she leaves through the back door and gets on the bus to go to her second job stopping only to check on her kids witht the cell phone that she buys by the minute and won’t turn on during her time in your home becuase she doesn’t want to waste the minutes those kids that you could have taken away from her if you really wanted to fuck with her life they stay home at nights and they’re only 7 and 9 and she doesn’t know you know that but you make it a point  to know shit even if none of it matters and especially if it doesn’t seem to matter and most of it is easily forgotten if it needs to be but every once in a while something does make a difference like knowing that Atherton was using speed and when you wanted his job it was so convenient to convince him to come clean as it were to the bosses and then you sat behind his desk in the corner office with the big window and basically doing a little paper pushing and being able to smoke cigars and buy the wife her car that she zooms around town right now she’s going to the club and there’s the woman you know her name but it’s one of those ethnic things that you hate why can’t they just be Daisy or Rose or Ethel like in the old days now they’re Carmen or Gabriela or Ignacia and sometimes Olga or Sveltana or Elana but those ones are too damn mouthy and demanding they expect more from their employers even if they don’t belong here and are just biding time until they can find some fool to marry and pop out twenty kids with have to give this one some credit she just had the two and works two jobs one at the company you supposedly run and you see her occasionally when you go back to get something you left or cover the tracks of your affair with Marta another eastern European type but one who can suck you off like you’ve never experienced and you know she knows and that’s why you’d like to get rid of her but the wife is already suspicious and you figure you can’t really afford this house and the Lambo out in the garage if you have to give half of it away so you go on the vacations and you pay for the tennis lessons and you watch this woman who you give five bucks to at Christmas for the last four years and you watch your wife drive past her and wave from the convertible as the woman goes to the bus stop to do the swing shift with her huge brown suspicious nosy fucking eyeballs and you think of those kids and how you could fuck her life up royally because what else does she deserve coming into this country and expecting expecting expecting and making it so that other people start thinking that maybe minimum wage isn’t all that great while you just don’t give a shit about their hungry fat assed whiny kids who only know what a watermelon tastes like because of the free lunch program your fucking taxes pay for and then you think that it would be worth it to see those burdens on society gone forever those small maggots who will just expect as much as their fucking revolting mother it grows what’s the word yes exponentially and then they have more and more kids unless they kill themselves which would be a blessing and you rustle your newspaper, fold it and go to bed until you wake up in the morning to a pounding on your door and you find uniformed policeman asking you if you know Gloria Tevez and they inform you that there was a fire which you later find out was started in the kitchen when the woman got home from work and left a burner on and the battery in the fire alarm was missing probably because she had to buy food instead and she was so exhausted that she didn’t wake up when the smoke killed her and the flames took them all and the apartment next door also and you shake your head at the officers and you sigh and you wring your hands and say it’s a tragedy and as you shut your door you think you’ll get an eastern European next time after all.