The problem with flashing...in mobs.

Our winner asked me very simply if I had done a rant on flash mobs. This one I can feel the heat from certain folks I know who do flash mobs. But in earlier posts I have taken no mercy on saying exactly what I feel so I cannot in good conscience do the same thing here no matter who hates me for my opinion.

That being said...I fucking hate flash mobs. I have never seen one in person. I have never participated in one. The concept of them sorta angers me. I understand that the concept is fun to execute and that your intended arena gives people something to look at outside of their daily grind...OK I get that part. What I don't get is the failure on the part of these mobs to understand a basic fundamental part of theatre. Understanding your audience.

Now I have seen certain groups do flash mobs that sounded fun and caused a good time for those watching. Improv Everywhere based in NYC is pretty good about doing shit that is not very disruptive. But I have seen whole mobs do dance routines in a department store. A fucking department store! Who the fuck does that? If I take the time to go out shopping I either want to enjoy the shopping process or I want to get the fuck in and get the fuck out. I don't need 300 jackoff, cum guzzling, fuck biscuits dancing to whatever half assed no talent cunt with half a voice made the fucking billboard charts for 5 minutes while I am trying to get through my fucking day.

The issue is conformity. The first flash mob was designed as an experiment to make fun of social conformity. To make fun of those people who need to belong to some group. Now they have become the perfect vehicle for those who belong to make some show of force in the fucking world. Imagine everywhere huge cliques of people you hated in high school showing up and ruining your fucking day.

Even worse are the flash mobs that deign to put an element of fun into your day and just violate peoples space. Such as pillow fight day. Imagine walking down the street when 5000 people just start pillow fighting all around you. Now I don't care how fun that sounds. If you aren't a part of it you have just been included in a giant puffy ambush. And lets not fucking forget the word fight is right in the title. You are unwittingly made a part of a big free for all fight. Which if just one person is in the wrong mood the whole thing can go from fluffy pillow fight, to actual fight, to big ass fucking riot.

Long before this idiotic and played out trend started there were protests and groups of people that organised and even those well thought out groups and organized parties still turned to shit. peaceful protests turn to riots too. And they weren't thought out in 20 minutes.

I know that being so far afield from these may cause people to believe that I am just a jackass who pisses on the good time of others who are just trying to express themselves.  And I am. Get the fuck out of my way you useless pricks! Other people who want to perform find venues and places where an audience can choose to go see you. If no one wants to go see you perform. Those are the fucking breaks. Find a new hobby.

And If you need to flash mob. Be fucking creative and non disruptive. Because if I get hit by a pillow on a walk downtown or cant to the section of the store I need because 500 people in gold pants are dancing in my way. I just might start start punching people.

With deep and aiding affection,
Gabriel

christmas vs. xmas...which side are you on.

My winner of the blog contest said she was having an argument with a relative about the words Christmas and Xmas. Her relative said some variation on the quote' "if you forget the Christ in Christmas than Christ might forget you." Rather a harsh statement if you ask me. Especially coming from a christian.

Now for a moment let me focus on just the words. Christmas and Xmas, if you believe they are the same thing, are a ridiculous jackassed pairing. It would seem that in further shortening and cutesying of our language that we believe the letter x having really no sound of its own can take the place of anything. With all the fucking places x has been it must be the fucking superman of letters. You mean it can sound like a z, a k-s sound, and apparently the the entire fucking word Christ.

Let me just piss of any true believers for a second and now make the suggestion we start referring to Malcolm X as Malcolm Christ.......yeah, fuck you too.

So linguistically the swap from Christmas to Xmas doesn't work for me. But that is if you view them to be the same thing.

I however don't believe them to be the same thing.

Christmas is the celebration by Christians and their kin to mark the day of Jesus' birth. (Hang on, I will get to that in a minute you impatient fucksticks.) It is the religious holiday for those of the christian faith. These are the people who shove Jesus in your fucking face and say shit like "he's the reason for the season."

Xmas is the celebration of the same day but is for the secular crowd who don't believe in Christianity but don't wanna pass up a good party or the chance to shop. They get saddled with the burden of why Christmas has become so fucking over commercialized as well as the fact that there is a non existent "war on Christmas."

Now both of these have there crosses to bear. (No pun intended) The Christians are overbearing shit guzzlers who feel it is necessary to remind us that they are celebrating the birth of their savior. Despite the fact that most scholars can't really pin down the man's birthday. I have heard that is actually during the summer, I have heard that it is probably in early fall. For sure though we can remember one thing. And that is that religion has lied to us before. Religion will do what it wants in order to get an end result. So the Christians absconded with the winter solstice celebration in order to give the holiday a religious bent. So Jesus is powerful enough to change his fucking birthday to whenever he wants, since we don't know when it is anyway, and in the same swift stroke beat out the pagans for a holiday because evidently the Christians could throw a better party and make everyone forget about the pagan rituals just up the street on December 21st. But don't remind the Christians that a lot of their Christmas traditions still come from pagan lore. That will be our little secret. it upsets them too much and they tend to start crying.

Then the secularists come along with there big business and there tendency to shorten words to make them fit on various purchasable objects and take the Christ right out of the season. Which seemed to disappear quite easily if you ask me. I mean fuck! Give the Christians 30% off and they run screaming to the store just as fast as the non-believers. But they also gave the Christians something to bitch about. And Christians LOVE to bitch about things. They bitch that people forget why we are celebrating. They bitch that they can't scream merry Christmas at you in stores because it might offend non Christians. They bitch that people buy too much shit and don't go to fucking church enough. They bitch that it would seem secularists are doing to them exactly what they did to the fucking pagans a couple thousand years ago.

Fuck off!

Look...I like the holiday no matter what name you put it under. The decorations put up. The lights. The shopping for people you love. The charity given to others. It is all fine by me. So why ruin it with fucking semantics. Who cares what the fucking reason is. Give til it hurts and then give some more. Love others and be a decent person. After all the teachings are more important than the man himself. We should be following ideas not people. And we should not be ashamed to celebrate a holiday that at its heart is just about giving and kindness no matter what your religious beliefs.

I guarantee if you forget the Christ in Christmas Christ won't forget you. But you might get to say it to more people in public. Because if it isn't about Christ then everyone can get on board. And if everyone is on board then we can stop fighting each other and focus on what is really important.

Happy Holidays

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel

Are you fucking kidding me?

A few weeks ago I had a friend in need of some help. I rushed at great risk to myself to help this person and get them what they needed. My act of self sacrifice was applauded by many around me. But why?

Why do we get such accolades for doing the right thing. Believe it or not I do the right fucking thing for people all the time. If my friends need help and I can feasibly be the one to help them then I make sure I do it. That is what a friend does. And yet the act is treated like the fucking second coming.

Now I have no problem taking credit for my good deeds and I have no trouble giving credit when they are done for me. But why do we act so fucking ecstatic when we are helped out? When we should just be fucking angry as hell at those people who do nothing. Why is inaction the normal?

We should be bending over fucking backwards as the standard action one takes to help a friend. Those who sit on their ass and help no one but themselves should be treated like fucking lepers.

To all of them who fit that profile, and you know who you are, FUCK YOU! You worthless spineless fucking gelatinous pus fuckers. Anyone so heartless as to not give a shit about those they profess to love aren't worth spitting on.

I have a love in my life and she and I have both seen friends act as if we are doing the wrong thing. You know what fuckers? Yeah there is a 13 year difference in our ages. You know what? Fuck you! We make one another happy which is what friends and loved ones are supposed to do. The age difference doesn't matter and it never has and it never will. You can think anything you want but the reality is this. No one is going to change my mind about how I feel based on an arbitrary number.So either get right with it or go the fuck away!

Look we are mostly all friends here. So I guess what I am saying is be good to one another. Your real friends should be there for you whenever you need them. And If they aren't then you should kick there ass to the curb. I should know. I have been kicked to the curb before and have learned my lesson. The curb is cold and fucking lonely. I would rather put forth some extra effort and be with friends, rather than be there again.

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel

P.S.  I am starting a little contest. Since I am running out of things that piss me off, I want yours. when this link gets posted on facebook it will come with a question about me or it will come with song lyrics be the first to guess it correctly and I will let you tell me the topic of my next hate filled venom spiked tirade. Just remember that you can only pick the subject...you have no control on where I go with it. Good luck you fuckers!

Snow: an open message of hate

I fucking hate snow. I hate it so sincerely, so purely, that it consumes my whole being.I truly cannot fathom those who think it is such a wonderful occurrence. Those who do look at it with a child like innocence that i wish I could muster. The most I can say is that it is pretty to look at.

When I was just a 5 year old boy we moved from Phoenix, AZ to Denver, CO. Until that time the  most severe weather I had encountered was 100 degree weather and the occasional lightning storm (to this day I still think lightning and thunder is sexy but that is another story). We moved in the summertime. so the transition from Phoenix to Denver was incredibly smooth. Denver is a lot cooler in summer and it never dawned on me what I was in for when September and October rolled around. The shock to my system was tremendous.

What the fuck was this cold shit?! It falls from the sky makes it cold and wet and turns everyone into a raving fucking lunatic. Now I was 5 years old for fucks sake and all I could think was that the world had played some sort of cruel joke on me. I remembered snow from the television when we lived in Arizona. It always looked like fun and people were always happy to be in it.

I then learned people were happy to be in it because they were mentally ill.

Not only that but it turns normal asshole children into fucking psycho nutjobs. As a nerdy misfit child who didn't have much in the way of popularity and no prior experience with the phenomenon of falling frozen droplets. I was the victim of some of the worst child crime ever. Its as if god hates you and is now sending your oppressors a weapon that only they know how to use. Oh sure you can fucking make the snowballs and try to defend yourself but just try and you will soon find out you should've just run because now while you try to put shit together for a return volley that will inevitably miss. you are being pelted by snowballs at a rate that you were certain only a machine could muster. And these cock bags just don't quit.

When asked once why I hated snow my answer was greeted by the idea that i needed to look at it from the fucking perspective of the positive. The only people who reap any positives of snow are kids and I wasn't very good at being a kid. Adults get all the shittier parts of snow. They don't get to wait anxiously to see if work is going to close up today. and if you are throwing snowballs at thirty...you are a douchebag. It isn't funny anymore you are just a fuckhead that likes to hit people with shit. Adults have to wade through the frozen tundra to go to work. they have to drive and slip on black ice, they have to deal with electrical outages. And they are expected to do it with aplomb. But adults are shitty human beings and they are stupid and inconsiderate. This is what leads to accidents and people stuck in traffic for hours and destruction of property. And that is all without snow.

Throw in the massive unpredictability of ice and cold and your normal idiot turns into someone slightly more intelligent than a brick. they always think they can do shit that they can't and chaos ensues.

So when snow starts falling I get cold I get cranky and I get pissed off. I am reminded of fear and pain from childhood. I am reminded of stupidity and destruction in my adult life.

But maybe I am sentimental or maybe I am just hoping that I can have that same childlike wonder that others get when the snow falls. But somewhere in my brain a little flower is blooming in the cold. and forces are at work to change my mind. They may never get there...but I appreciate the effort.

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel

Abuse by numbers

About a month ago the guardian of one of my clients at work directed my attention to a study performed by the GAO on the rampant abuse of power of DD and elderly clients by their court appointed guardians.

The study was supposed to give an accurate portrayal of just how bad the abuse of power was. Now normally a study like this focuses on the amount of people who abuse power and those that don't coming to a general average and coming up with a result.

However what did the GAO do? They fucked the general model in the ass. They didn't come up with a fucking average. Instead they took 20 cases where abuse occurred and showed their findings as an amount of money that had been swindled and a looming crisis of guardians being appointed without background checks. Without ever mentioning in the study that there are in fact guardians who don't abuse their clients.

So now there is a big media storm about another way our government fucks us. All because Some piss poor researchers decided it was better to wear their own ass as a fucking hat rather than do some actual work.

It got me thinking about studies and polls in general. We all quote scientific studies we have heard about to prove numbers and what not so we can win some piss poor debate with a friend. I certainly have. But for every fuckass study that proves one theory, there is another one that proves the opposite. How are we expected to know which one is right and which ones are proved under more dubious circumstances?

We aren't. We are supposed to swallow these answers and spew them out to people as truth so we can sound smarter than we are. Then we feel the smug satisfaction of some victory that isn't real.

Poll numbers are the exact same to me. every time I see a poll all I can think is that I don't fucking care. I have my own opinion. Why do I give a shit what the chickendicked cornholers who watch CNN or Fox news think about an election? Am I supposed to care simply because it is a mass of mindless cuntfungus who have nothing better to do but to call Wolf Blitzer or Sean Hannity and give there useless opinion that others may not agree with, much less care about?

All I am truly saying is that we need to be smarter than this. Polls are generated numbers that mean exactly fuck all to the reality of life. And studies don't show anything. It is all useless knowledge that we probably paid for. A few years later another study will show that the study before didn't know what it was talking about.

People...stop looking for answers to be simple. With almost 400 million people in the United States, no answer is going to be simple or all encompassing. And anyone who tells you different is lying to you and just wants to prove to you another bullshit study.

The GAO study showed that in 20 cases where abuse had been proven 5.4 million dollars had been stolen from 158 victims. These numbers are terrible and mean nothing if you take into account that there are approximately 4.3 million developmentally disabled clients and exponentially more elderly clients. these numbers are meant to confuse and create anger and possible action on the part of the public. but going off half cocked like that is going to create a huge mess. Especially for guardians who treat their clients with respect.

Well done people. Once again we prove my theory that even the smartest people who have power and money to fund such things are incredibly fucking stupid at times.

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel

I am positive.

So a huge revelation occurred a few days ago. It began with a phone call from a friend to go apply for a job. Which I did. It continued with an interview that went very well and I am currently waiting for the results on. What is the subject I am talking about today? Support. Something that recently I came into with great abundance.

Now I have always been supported by my family and that in itself some consider a fucking miracle. A lot of people don't have that. But since i am used to it I have kind of taken it for granted. Which is wrong. My parents have supported me so much that I owe them about 6 lives now. My brother is pretty much the same story.

What I realized that I had now but didn't before were people who supported without judgement.

No offense to my oldest friends who support me in all my endeavors but in their need to care it comes with the question..."Are you sure this is the right thing to do Gabriel?" I know they love me and I know that they are watching out. But I am 32 years old and have been around a little bit. I am not a total fucking moron. I love you guys too. Just tone it down.

What I have seen in the past few days has blown my fucking mind. When the job opportunity came around, from a woman who is trying very hard to get me different employment, I have friends old and new telling me that it is fantastic that I am going out for this job. There were no added phrases like, "well if you had been really looking you would have found a different job already." There was no apathy to my situation. No snide remarks no questioning of my choice. Nothing but pure love from people I have only known a short time.

This post was intended to be an angry diatribe about how I felt cheated that this didn't exist before. But with a little help from the watcher in the thicket, and one of the most insightful and beautiful women I have ever known, my rantings and ravings have shifted to celebration.

It doesn't matter why it wasn't there before. What matters is that it's here now and it is not going anywhere.

To all of you who have supported me in the past and the present...Mom, Dad, Christopher, Penny, Hayley, Athene, Patty and Philip DoAne, Calvin, Sean Raybell, Josh, Ron, Sam, Bill, Jessann, Steve and Erin, Stephen Borsuk, Kate Holland, and now Sami and the Bruce, Maria, Bob and Carla, Hally, Marcus Walker, Scott Campbell, Brie, Kat Inserra, my zombie zebra Kayti, Anna Baskett, to anyone else who reads this blog fervently without my knowledge, But mostly to Kate L. (While all these people are shining stars in my life...you dearest are the sun.) I love and cherish all of you. You keep me going through life without even trying. Just by being in my life I am a better person.

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel

post election blues

Let me begin by saying that I voted. Are you all fucking happy? No? Did your candidate of choice lose his/her ass. Did The measure you really want to pass/fail not do so? Tough shit.

Politics has a lot of things to be incensed about and no matter what enrages you, there will always be someone who is made almost gleeful by the notion that upset you. What I cannot abide by is the fact that such piddly fucking bullshit is the object of our political arena.

I live in Washington State. In this state we had several measures to vote for and only a few of them were amending our political process. Yet there were also a few that dealt with the taxation of candy and the fact that the government owns the alcohol trade in Washington.

I actually spent time considering whether to vote to repeal candy taxes or make alcohol a private industry.

FUCK!!!!!!

You fucking assmongers are wasting my time. If this is the caliber of shit you are going to bring me then fuck off. I don't care what you fuckers think about these issues. Let's get one thing straight. If you go to the store and the candy bar costs 75 cents and then the next day it cost 85 cents. The extra dime isn't going to stop you from buying it. Yet you would think we were signing petitions and voting in elections to fucking free slaves in this state.

So the government owns the liquor industry. Can I still buy booze? Yes? Then I don't care who sells it.

Now mind you I am not telling you how I voted on these issues. I merely am stating that people out there call others bad Americans when they don't vote. That you cannot bitch if you didn't participate. I am sure I have said it myself. But is it any wonder that people grow complacent in the face of measures like these? I am sure whatever state you live in had some like it too.

It defies logic to be just as rabid about petty stuff when we have real problems. Did the mid term elections change any of those problems? No they didn't. They won't change anything. Because fundamentally we don't agree on anything. People are dying in foreign soil. People are dying here at home. The world is fucked. It always has been. If you think some fuckass politician with his American flag pin and his briefcase full of agendas and intentions will ever change anything you are wrong.

You affect change in your life. Take back your fucking power and stop giving it to god, to politicians, to other people. You are the instrument of change in your life. Only you limit yourself to the bullshit future you have made. You can change that.

I am just so sick of petty bickering by people who are supposed to be adults. Grow up you fucking jelly assed dick snoggers. The politicians the corporations the media and everyone else on the planet aren't responsible for us. We need to affect our own change. We need to have our own hope. We need to stimulate our own jobs, our own economy, our own peace. Because we cannot wait for democrats and republicans to stop playing around with heads up their asses like they are gods gift to the political system and actually give a shit about us.

Do it yourself.

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel