War, Liberty, Gratitude, Hot Star Trek Chicks and the Cunning Fennec Fox

18 June 2014

1114 hrs        

(c)Properfessor 

Good Morning Patient Reader,

Well it’s time.  Summer classes begin next week, and I bought $300 in books this morning.  Yep, $300.  For two books.  It surely is a good thing that anybody can get an education in this country no matter your socio-economic background, am I right?

Shall I get on with the rant, already?  Splendid!

I just performed an elegant dance along with who knows how many of my fellow students.  A dance more intricate than the Birds of Paradise; more exotic than the Tango . . .

I had to have a job of at least 20 hours per week in order to qualify for food assistance from the state.  That’s right . . .  I was too poor for food stamps.  Luckily, I had lined up a temporary job as a tutor in the computer lab, but it started after my yearly interview with the Department of inHuman Services.  They stopped my food funding, which actually ran out the third week in May.  So after jumping through the hoops to get that all sorted out, they figured Out that with my meager new salary accompanied by the hours I work, I now qualified for 15 dollars.  A month.

 That's right; the monetary equivalent of a sand-paper hand job.

So in my rough cerebral calculations on how I was going to move funds around, funds that I don't have -hence the whole food stamp thingy in the first fucking place, I then remembered that this job was only temporary. I lose it at the end of the month, which effectively ended last Friday after I tore the art show down.

Turns out that the art department is closed down for the week, and then, except for a few classes, shut down until Fall term. So really, I have lost my job as of Friday. But I have 15 dollars to last me until my financial aid check hits, which will be sometime in July. Woo AND hoo.  And Fuck!

So what’s a Ninja to do?

I mentioned this to my case worker with whom I was still speaking telephonically, and she said, "Well, Fox. We do a student assessment only once a year. So when your financial situation changes, be sure to call us back. We'll adjust your benefits accordingly . . ." 

Well Jebus Harold Christ on a Rubber Fucking Crutch. How the fuck does anything get done in the quagmire of bureaucracy?  Hmm?  Any of you Brilliant and Patient Readers able to riddle fucking me that?  I mean your brilliance sincerely, of course. Only CFF Readers have the smarts to lead the intellectual world. Help me out!  

The money it took to pay the nice lady on the phone with me, and the nice fellow who conducted my interview- we'll call them, erm, Shmathleen and Shmeremy, respectively; with the money it took to push papers and pencils about, to mail me several updates and notices, as well as the man (and woman) hours it took to keep this big wad of shit rolling all over progress, they ended spending WAY more than they would have by just keeping the paperwork the same. Not to mention the electricity that was used (and the fossil fuels burned) to power those computers, and will again in just a couple of days just for me.

I am tempted to ask Shmeremy and Shmathleen to pull their computer towers away from the beige cubicle wall and tell me if they see that big fucking pile of twitching electrons that surely must lie there.

Thank you Gub'mint.  Thank you Congress.  Thank you Repubs, you filthy slimy Pieces O’Shit. 

Except for you of course, Patient Reader . . . surely y’all are not such as these recta.

So let me digress, momentarily, as I tend to do, sometimes.  I know what you are thinking, Patient Reader:  "What?  Fox digresses, sometimes?"  But it's true.

Sure, the fellows and fraus that came from Merry Olde England on the Mayflower were fleeing religious persecution, and even though I am an atheist, I find that just and right.  

Everyone has the right to worship, or not, as they please.  Except for the Native Americans.

  Their pagan sensibilities, their heathen attitudes, apparently were not worth the tolerance of these and following generations of christians.

  Assholes.

      So they did what any god-fearing zealot does:  Slaughtered those blasphemous bastards by the hundreds of thousands.  But that’s the way we do things.  Tolerate all except for those whom we deem intolerable, right?  It’s the American way.  

Kill anybody wearing the Hijab or the Niqab, or Kippah, or Keffiyeh – look them up if you’re unsure- even the christian Sikhs who doff the turban should be wasted right?  I mean anyone who looks different from say, the WASPish Bush family is a Fucking Fur’ner and must be removed from the face of the planet, no?  Oh, except for the Saudis . . . at least the ones with whom our Oil Aristocracy is shared.   

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, close friend of the Bush Klan (sic)

   Oh, and the family of Bin Laden- you remember . . .  they were flown out of the country in the immediate hours following 9/11, even though all other non-military flight was grounded?  Good fucking times. 

Bin Laden and Family.  Also good friends of the Bush-i

To continue further along this tangent for a moment (please indulge me, Patient Reader), a high-ranking official from the FBI has noted that when a criminal act has been perpetrated, the FIRST thing you do is interview the suspect's family.  Way to go Bush; glad you attempted to appropriate funds to find the Garden of Eden, you stupid fuck.  

Glad we saved the oil fields 

while Assyrian and Babylonian artifacts were destroyed or stolen from the museums in Baghdad and elsewhere . . . 

    they (Repubs) would have taken them for their own personal art collection, these wealthy, fat-cat sunsabidges, had they been velvet Elvis paintings or dogs playing poker instead of ancient artifacts from a culture of sub-human brown-skinned Cradle of Civilization inhabitants.

       But I don’t want to rant about  that, necessarily . . .  I know . . . Too late!  But make yet another point regarding the fleeing of religious persecution by the Aldens, et al.  

       There were the French and Indian Wars . . . remember that Glorious Part of History?  In case you forgot, the French and British were involved in a dispute over the Ohio River territory and the allegiance of the Native American nations found there.

The Victor side: Great Britain and British America.

Iroquois Confederacy: Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, Tuscarora, Mohawk, and Cayuga Nations.

Additional Native American participants: Catawba, Cherokee.

The Opposition side: France and New France.

Native American Nations: Abenaki, Algonquin, Caughnawaga Mohawk, Lenape, Mi'kmaq, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Shawnee, Wyandot.

       Important victor leaders: Jeffrey Amherst, Edward Braddock, James Wolfe, James Abercrombie, Edward Boscawen, George Washington

       Important opposition leaders: Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, Marquis de Vaudreuil, François-Marie de Lignery.

How do you like the fucking irony of this picture?

       But again, the indigenous, Noble Savage didn’t fucking matter.  Sure, they helped out; helped along the eventual destruction of their own and put in motion the whole Manifest Destiny, Sea-to-Shining-Sea thing we had to have.  But these were dirty brown-skinned heathens, not worth the religious freedom the pilgrims wanted for themselves.

       Which brings me to the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers who sought

independence from the George III British Empire.  A bunch of rich white men who didn’t want to pay taxes . . . so much has changed in the last 238 years, right?

           

       All of America’s enlightened Religious Tolerance.  All of our New Colossus mentality . . .  New Colossus?  You remember the sonnet by Emma Lazarus, right?

            New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

            Any of those lines sound familiar to anyone but the Faithful Patient Reader?  Yeah, they’re on the Statue of Liberty Plaque, you pseudo-patriotic dipwads.

            So the Protestants hated the Catholics that came over, who thought the Irish were a sub-species, who in turn thought that the Irish who were already here from an earlier immigration were the sub-humans, who both thought that the Italians were the sub-humans, who thought that the Chinese . . . etc.  The list goes on and on and on.  Yeah, America, good thing we overcame those biases, hmm?  Do I even have to mention the kidnapped Africans?  Remember them?  You know, the ones you Racist Fucks out there tell to go back to Africa?  Really?  Goes to show you the mentality of the Redneck and their boundless idiocy.

            A Star Trek Society in our future?  Not by a fucking long shot.

  OK, so I went a little overboard . . .

       You know the reference; no disease, no wars except for defense against aggressors of a Cardassian 

All Right, All Right!  I'll Stop!

or Klingon or Borg nature (damn the Collective; I shall NOT be assimilated); subject to no one or thing save the whims, the ennui, of the Q . . .  

       A society where exploration for the further evolution of our own knowledge and for the betterment of the species; the Prime Directive our compasses, moral and otherwise.

            I have said it before, “The world is a terrible place and worth fighting for.” (Peacefully, of course).

            And I shall leave you with another thought; another something I have said before:

            “I have the utmost faith in Humanity’s Potential, and absolutely no faith in Humanity itself.”

            So I thank you once again, Patient Reader.  For your well, erm, Patience, and your indulging of my perpetual rantings.  And my neologisms.  Haha.  I said Jism.

            Stay tuned for further rants, poems, short stories- autobiographical and otherwise, and my art which will still consist primarily of photography.

Always, 

The Cunning Fennec Fox