For centuries, Catholics called the Jews “Christ-killers.”
I didn’t know this until I was sent to private school.
A Catholic school. The only private school in the area.
I didn’t have to go to Mass. Instead, I was sent to Study Hall.
I’d read quietly, until the bullies showed up.
“I’ll tell the headmaster,” I said.
“He’s the one who sent us,” grinned O’Brien.
I stabbed him in the face.
After I finished with the others, I went to see the headmaster.
“Self-defense,” I said.
He confessed to molesting those boys, and thanked me for helping to cover that up.
Tag: society
Madness
I don’t give a crap about March Madness.
Professional sports are a waste of time, but college sports are a waste of academic institutions.
Instead of focusing on educating students and researching the frontiers of knowledge, these colleges and universities train and babysit these gargantuan kids to perform for the crowds.
Where there should be a series of lecture halls and labs, producing results around the clock and year, massive stadiums and arenas sit idle, waiting for a few home games a year.
Forget that slam dunk… give us a cure for cancer! A pollution-free engine!
The ignorant crowd cheers.
Border
After years of debate and finger-pointing, Congress finally got to the business of working out a fair and complete overhaul of immigration policy.
Citizenship would be extended to illegal aliens who had demonstrated all the qualities America was looking for, while the borders would be protected and secured.
The President smiled wide and signed the bill into law.
The next day, the country was overwhelmed with a flood of immigrants demanding amnesty.
“None of them actually stepped on the border, right?” asked the President.
Sure, the border itself was safe, but nobody thought to protect and secure the country, too.
Juicer
Rumors spread across the sporting world that the greatest athlete in the sport was using performance-enhancing drugs.
But then, everybody was doing it back then. The sport was rotten with cheaters and juicers. Everybody doped and juiced to keep up with him.
He just did it more effectively.
Finally, on his last race on the last tour in his career, he performed clean.
No drugs.
No blood doping.
No enhancements at all.
And he came in last place.
Until, of course, he ratted on everybody.
He was the only one to pass the tests, and was declared winner by default.
Whispering Trees
It all started back in the Sixties when an advertising executive was sitting on his back porch, listening to the wind whisper through the trees.
“I’m listening to trees,” he said.
And that’s when the idea hit him: Trees that whisper advertising when the wind blows through them.
He mastered botany, genetics, grafting, and meteorology.
Then, he raised generation after generation of trees to perfect a single strain that whispered advertising.
“Eeeeeeat Hossssstesssss Twinkeeeeeeees,” whispered the tree.
By then, of course, Hostess had gone bankrupt.
So, the ad man used the trees for firewood.
They screamed curses as they burned.
Crapmas
When I was very little, mom took me to the mall. Two strangers picked me up and stuck me in Santa’s lap.
I screamed.
Santa asked me “What do you want for Christmas?”
“DON’T TOUCH ME!!” I yelled.
“No, what do you want for Christmas as a gift?”
I said “I already got Hanukkah gifts. Sucky socks and sweaters. I had to write thank you notes. Mom made me write them again because I said they sucked.”
Santa waved his hands angrily.
The strangers picked me up again, I yelled even louder, and we were thrown out of the mall.
Menorah
The kids hate going to visit their Grandmother in the rest home.
I don’t blame them. She was a royal bitch before the stroke, not much better now.
But if I don’t teach them to respect their elders, how will they treat me and their mother if something happens to us when we get old?
“See that pretty menorah?” I tell them. “We wouldn’t have it if your grandmother hadn’t have smuggled it out of Poland. Shoved up her ass.”
Okay, so she bought it for a wedding gift. And it’s fucking ugly.
But it sure shuts the kids up.
We Wish You A Merry Come In Peace
Every Christmas, the weather guy puts Santa’s sleigh on the radar display.
This year, I’m going to hack into the system and replace Santa with a gigantic meteor.
That way, when he pulls up the map, instead of convincing children to go to sleep, the entire broadcast area will run screaming through the streets with panic.
I hacked into the television station’s network and did the swap.
That night, I watched the weather report.
Right there on the map, for all to see:
A UFO?
Most people ran screaming into the streets.
I didn’t.
Maybe Santa traded in the sleigh?
Awareness
Remember when people wore yellow ribbon pins to raise awareness of AIDS?
Then came ribbon pins of other colors for other causes.
Red for this.
Green for that.
White for some other thing.
I don’t remember all the colors and their meanings.
So, I stopped wearing any ribbon pins.
“Don’t you care anymore?” people would scream at me.
“It’s bullshit,” I said.
So, they gave me a hemp ribbon for Bullshit Awareness.
Well, not as much a ribbon, as a rope.
A hangman’s noose.
And they put it around my neck.
The other end just went over a tree branch.
Zymurgist
Due to budget cutbacks, the school district laid off all the guidance counselors. They were replaced with hats that contained strips of paper with the names of careers written on them.
Students line up, pick a career name out of a hat, and then pick classes based on the skill requirements of that job.
They used to flip through a book and stick their finger on a page to pick out a career.
But the book was in alphabetical order, and word spread fast that the last career in the book was Zymurgist.
Speaking of which, care for another beer?