Dad Saw the Captain Phillips Movie

Once he got past the disappointment of not getting the lead role, Dad eagerly anticipated this film.  He figured it would validate his earlier assessment that Obama had doomed Phillips but somehow the guys sent to rescue him managed to overcome being sent there.  Okay, it doesn't make sense to me either.  But Dad finds validation for his Obama hatred in clouds, coffee grounds, and everything he sees or reads on any subject.  So yeah, he was pumped when I saw him after he went to the flick.  He told me a few times how gloriously correct he'd been (I don't know anyone else who quotes himself so reverentially), despite his prediction being totally wrong, and of course I nodded in agreement, not wanting another half-hour harangue.  His current wife is faking deafness in a vain attempt to get him to stop yapping about how wonderful he is and how horrible Obama is, but since he never waits for a response, he hasn't noticed yet.  It is a little troubling to hear him refer to himself as the President's "arch-nemesis," but someone whose grasp on reality is that tenuous is going to come out with the occasional comic book dialogue.  He shouts "Flame on!" every time he lights the grill.  As long as he doesn't flip out during a car sale he will keep his job.  People who lie with such enthusiasm are worth their weight in adamantium down at the dealership.

Dad's On Twitter,and He's Not Happy

My friend charvakan called my attention to a tweet from Dad (ExecutiveSuiteJesus, @ExecSuiteJesus ) that accuses me of being ungrateful.  Well, I'm not.  Dad gave me a home for twelve years and showed me as much love as he can show anyone.  (Okay, he has some issues, but who doesn't?)  While I don't share Dad's political views anymore, I respect him on a personal level and I love him.  (No, Dad, I won't buy a car from you.  Just kidding!  I can't get a driver's license yet anyway.)

On My Own

I did it!  I'm now out of Dad's house and living on my own (well, I do have roommates) in Cincinnati.  It wasn't hard to find a job (I'm not in the employee list yet, but I will be after three months).  I can do it remotely, which frankly makes life easier.  You would not believe the prejudice here against orangutans--people stare and point, and only quick reflexes saved me from taking a trank dart last week.

But my roommates are cool.  Jim works at a garage, Bruce is in construction, and Melanie is a waitress.  We play a lot of games.  I'm hopeless at poker, but I usually win at chess and no one can beat me at Twister.  Jim cracks us up with his constant joking.  He ought to do standup.

Politically, I'm seeing for the first time how wrong Dad and I were--and I guess he still is.  It's tough living on what employers pay today; this isn't 1958.  I don't blame the small employers.  They can't pay well or the big chains will kill them.  Forget trying to organize; unions are crushed wherever possible where they already exist, and no new locals can be formed.  We get what we're offered, under the conditions imposed, or we don't work.  OK, that's life in the USA--now.

Daddy Issues?

I suppose you can say I have a complicated relationship with my dad.  His relationship with my mom (holding sign) was brief but passionate; he still can't bring himself to speak of her even though she's been out of the picture since shortly after my first birthday.  I've been living with Dad ever since he opened the crate from Bangkok I was mailed to him in, and he has been good to me.  Okay, we did go through a phase in which he kept referring to me as his "helper monkey", but that lasted less than a decade.  I think he gained respect for me when I refused to continue picking pockets, and I gained respect for him when he discovered he could put to good use his talent for repeating outrageous lies with utter conviction, and make a good living selling cars to the undereducated rednecks that live in our area.

Like any teenager (since we grow up faster than humans, my adolescence began at six and ended at ten), I went through a rebellious phase.  Dad did not take kindly to my tolerant attitude towards people he called "socialists" and "traitors."  But I couldn't stop talking to everyone who didn't wear a flag pin, or harangue my teachers about union thugs and point out that my very existence was strong evidence against Darwin's ideas about speciation.  But his certitude and persistence won me over, and when a friend of his said that Breitbart's death "opened up a slot for another monkey at a keyboard", I started this blog to help him promulgate his political philosophy.  I do love him; he's my dad!

But with maturity comes independent thought (at least for me), and I have come to realize that "I hate Obama" leaves much to be desired as a philosophy.  I also have developed a sense of humor, something that Dad still does not suspect exists.  (The only time I've heard him laugh is when the news reports an execution, and it's more "Mua-ha-ha" than "Ha ha" even then.)  Dad's hinting I should find my own place.  I get along with his current wife (he goes through them pretty quickly--I've lost count), so that's not a problem.  He just can't deal with my refusal to toe the line he's drawn politically.  He lost it the other day when I questioned the need for photo IDs for voting, for instance.  Now I have to show my passport to get into the house.

As long as I have to move out, I may as well relocate to a place that's a little less, shall we say, butt-ignorant than the town we're in now.  That doesn't narrow my search much at all, but that's a good thing.  I'm open to suggestions.  The nice man who's helping me with this blog has offered to let me stay with him a while, but I was brought up to think that the DC area is Satan's orgy room and I don't know if I'm ready for such a dramatic repudiation of Dad's lifestyle.  Maybe someplace midway between my current town and DC on the liberal/conservative scale would be better, like Iowa.  Any thoughts?

What--If Anything--Went Wrong?

Maybe it's just the hangover talking, but I'm beginning to reassess a few things.  During the back and forth about calling the election for Obama between Karl Rove and one of the interchangeable blonde bimbos on Fox News, I had some heretical thoughts.  Dad was weeping into an empty tumbler that had four fingers of scotch in it a few minutes earlier.  Could it really be that more Americans preferred the current occupant of the White House to the guy running against him?  It seems so.  While most of my acquaintances from Party HQ speculated about busloads of jihadis who voted at multiple swing state precincts, my thoughts were more introspective.  I looked at Dad with new, yet older, eyes, and saw a bitter partisan whose resentment blinded him to facts that were directly in front of him--facts he walked into face first on election night.  I could not cry with him, because I didn't know what I would be lamenting.

I sense a change of direction in this blog.  I'm a champion brachiator, and I grab the branch that's there, or I'd fall to the ground.  Reality, even when it's an unwelcome surprise, is better than self-delusion.  More later.

Sorry, Dad.

FiveThirtyHate

Are you as angry with liberal hackmeister Nate Silver as I am?  This guy takes data, sends it through his Democratic spin cycle, and thinks he's brainwashing the electorate into voting for President Poopy-Pants.  I don't care what the polls say, because they're all skewed.  No way is that magic underwear going to fail.  It's gonna be Romney-Ryan--they said so.

I'm going over to Dad's place after the polls close for a victory party.  The banana liqueur will flow like scotch!  (Hey, we're not Mormons.)  I'm going to tweet Silver all night, taunting him about his ridiculous "model" which consists of calling DNC HQ and asking what numbers to publish.  Seriously, this guy is predicting that candidates will get, for instance, 294.3 electoral votes!  You don't need a PhD in mathematics to know that's gotta be wrong.

And after all, we've got the ground game going.  We send out robocalls to Democrats telling them to report to the wrong polling place, or on the wrong day.  We throw out Democratic registrations, provisional ballots, and absentee ballots.  We're suppressing every vote we can right into the ground, and it's no game.  Democracy is OK as long as we win, but if it looks like we won't win a fair election, then fuck democracy.  That's what Dad says, and he's hit the minority voter on the head.  Really, he just hit a minority voter on the head--he was trying to vote early.  Can't have that.

Gravedancing or Maximizing Opportunity?

We patriotic Americans take a lot of gas for jumping on every dead American to see how we can twist the circumstances to our political advantage.  What the pantywaist crowd doesn't understand is that waiting for facts to come out is for losers.  We make up our own facts.  It's not enough that Captain Phillips was kidnapped; we skip straight to the assuming he's already dead. (Hi, Dad!)  Ambassador Stevens was killed, which was great--uh, I mean tragic, but that isn't enough.  He has to have been butt-fucked by mobs of greasy A-rabs.  So we just say he was and defy you to prove that he wasn't, and deny the video proof when you do provide it.  Just getting the mental image out there is a victory for the forces of Right-eousness.  We slur Obama, gays, and Muslims all at the same time!  It's a three-fer!  Look, if defiling the memory of brave Americans is what it takes to defeat President Poopy-Pants and install our (regrettably heretic, but you can't have everything) friend of the people (well, the incorporated ones, anyway) Mitt Romney in the White House, that's what Jesus would want.  And if he doesn't, it's what Jesus should want.

Gravedancing?  Maybe.  But it's a victory dance, wimps, and we'll do it every time.