In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks: And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy (12 page)

RELATIONSHIPS

Let me close out this chapter by making the best case I can for how men and women are, and always will be, inherently different. One need look no further than the bedroom. Men take their sexual mentality and apply it toward women. A guy thinks, “I love it hard and fast. I’d like to be yanked off by a paint-can shaker with tits. So she must love it that way too.” Wrong. When it comes to sex, men and women are as different as dogs and cats. Think about how you are with a dog. You’re rough and tumble with it. You grab it by the ears, chase it around, play tug-of-war, roll it over on its back and slap its belly. You go after the dog. A cat has to come to you. It has to be in the mood. It will rub itself against your shin when it fucking feels like it. And think about when you pet a cat. They will apply pressure where they want and will move their body so you’re rubbing whichever part they want. And it has to be slow and rhythmic. This is why cats will jump onto the fridge when a toddler bounds into the room. They don’t know how to be gentle.

Ladies, I know it sounds like I was a little hard on you in this chapter. But anytime you start feeling sorry for yourselves, remember this—you’re worse drivers than we are but you pay less for car insurance, and you’re worse people than we are but you live five years longer.

A MESSAGE TO
THE FAT CATS IN
WASHINGTON

I’m convinced I could win any election by just repeating the phrase “I’m going to send a message to those fat cats in Washington.”

People constantly label me a conservative. It’s part of that all-or-nothing mentality. The majority of my opinions are liberal. I’m an atheist. I’m in favor of legalizing pot, prostitution, and gay marriage. But because I hold a couple of conservative opinions about national security, the death penalty, and how the government wastes my tax money, I’m considered somewhere to the right of Reagan. I just get behind whatever I think is the smarter idea; I don’t arbitrarily pick a political team. Depending on where they grow up and what their parents’ beliefs are, people get assigned to either the blue team or the red team and have to hate everything the other guys stand for. But it’s not the Red Sox and the Yankees. I don’t need to be forced into picking a side. I root for whichever team has the plan that’s going to fix shit and against whichever one will continue to hold us back. So let me take a moment to bash both the left and the right, starting with the left.

OBAMA, HOPE, AND CHANGE

When Obama got elected, everybody was talking about hope and change. At the time I said, “You won’t even notice the fucking difference after Barack is voted in. Your life will not be different.” Don’t get me wrong. Barack’s a good, smart guy. I think he’s doing a decent job; I have no problem with him. But don’t give me that shit about hope and change and daylight at the end of the tunnel. You’re still at the same shitty job you had, your life sucks just as bad as it did, and your old lady is still as fat as she was when W was in office. I’ve been around long enough to know nothing ever changes. If you were locked in a closet from before the election until now and I let you out, walked you up and down Main Street, showed you your 401(k), told you what was going on in international news, and then asked you, “Who won, Obama, McCain, or did Bush get a third term?” you’d never know.

How much change do we really need, anyway? I can think of several places that need change more than we do. China needs to change, Darfur needs to change. We’re cool. Liberals are obsessed with the notion that we could be better. Yes, we could be 10 percent better, but Africa could be 95 percent better. We could do less polluting and be a little bit better, but those guys could lighten up with the raping and the AIDS and be a shitload better. We’re like someone who got 2200 on the SATs. Yes, we could do better. But hello? Colombia, Yemen, Bosnia. Those guys are in the single digits. They got an eight. Combined. When they get into triple digits, then we can talk about how America needs to change.

And philosophically, it’s wrong. The only person who can change anything in your life is you. You want change? Stop crapping out kids, get some vocational training, then get a job and fight to keep it. It’s so naïve and pathetic every four years when an election comes up and I have to watch all the formerly intelligent people around me start going bananas for one candidate. As if that candidate gives a flying fuck about their lives, as if any policy that candidate enacts is going to affect their lives in any discernible way. A good economy and not being depressed are the only things anyone should ever care about.

THE PATRIOT ACT

When the Patriot Act came back in the news in 2005, every single one of my faggoty, lefty Hollywood friends squealed like a stuck pig. “I don’t want the government eavesdropping on my e-mail exchanges or listening in on my cell-phone conversations.” Everyone had their cargo shorts in a bunch over it. I was the only one I knew who was like, “Hey, Agent Double-O Douchebag, if the government intercepts any of your e-mails, all they’re going to find out is that you’re not funny. And how about spending a little less time worrying about the government and a little more time focusing on your narcissistic disorder, the one that leads you to believe the government actually gives a shit about you.”

That’s what it is. It’s narcissism. The government wants to listen to
my
calls. They want to invade
my
privacy. This is the religion of the secular. You never hear this Patriot Act shit from the religious right. Religious people don’t fear Big Brother; they already have a personal relationship with the biggest brother of all. Here’s the deal. The human brain can’t handle the idea that there is nothing. There’s no God and there are no rules. We can’t deal with our own responsibility for our actions and choices. So we invent an eye in the sky that is watching us. For some people it’s Jehovah, Allah, or Santa Claus. To the San Francisco atheists, it’s a government satellite.

Not that the conservatives don’t have their own form of narcissism. The counterpart to the privacy pussies on the left are the paranoid gun nuts on the right who think that Obama is going to take away their AK-47s. He’s coming into
my
house for
my
gun. Listen up, dipshits of all political stripes … No one from the ATF is coming for your gun, and no one from the NSA is reading the e-mail you wrote your life partner about
Top Model
.

And this is the challenge I always make to the contrarians: It’s the same one I offer to the secondhand-smoke idiots. Cite me one instance, one time when you or a family member or even a coworker got their computer confiscated, and I’ll apologize. You can’t. So shut the fuck up and focus on your Master Cleanse.

Unlike you, I don’t believe the government is evil. I know there’s this fear that once the government is allowed to monitor your cell-phone conversations the next thing you know it becomes
Soylent Green
or
Logan’s Run
. When I was born, I was assigned a number. When my two twins were born, they each got a nine-digit number assigned to them. And guess what, when you were born, the government gave you a number, too. It’s a Social Security number. They assigned it to you so they could keep track of you and take money from you your whole fucking working life. So we should all be over this. Don’t pay taxes for a couple years and see if you don’t receive anything in the mail from the government. Believe me, they know who you are and where to find you. And if you don’t pay them the money you owe them each year, they’ll take it out of your check without your permission.

To all my Hollywood liberal friends who are worried about their civil liberties being invaded, I’ve got news for you: You’re already living in a police state, you just don’t know it. Don’t believe me? Try converting your garage into an office without asking the city for permission first. And if you go through an intersection a millisecond too late, a camera will take a picture of you and send it to your home address. You can’t even smoke a cigarette on the beach. If you grow a pot plant in your backyard, you’ll be arrested. Your stoner flunky kid can’t apply for a job at the post office without a background check and a urine sample. Yet you fucks are worried about the Man reading a couple of your e-mails? It’s one of the few activities the government participates in that doesn’t involve extracting money from us and may possibly prevent a commercial airliner from hitting a football stadium. And you narcissistic douchebags want them to stop? If you really want to focus on the government and your civil liberties, how about the fact that every cent I make from January 1 until the middle of May each year goes to the government? How about you self-righteous fucks start working on that?

BIG PHARMA

Another thing my liberal friends like to complain about is “Big Pharmaceutical.” I like big—big grapes, big linemen, big houses. I don’t understand why when you put
big
in front of anything except
tits
it becomes bad. I want the drug companies to be loaded. For some reason, as a society we understand there are certain things that you pay for—cars, homes, vacations, and things like that. And then there are other things that we just think are God-given rights, like health care. So if you make luxury yachts, you’re not a bad guy, you’re just trying to make a buck. If you’re Donald Trump and you want to open a championship golf course in Scotland, you’re an entrepreneur. But if you’re a drug company and you’re trying to get rich, you’re the devil. I want them trying to get rich. I want them motivated by greed. Everyone thinks the drug companies should just pour a bunch of money into research and development without a payday. I love the fact that almost all the innovative drugs come out of this country because in other countries the government has gotten involved to such a point where there’s no entrepreneurship. AIDS isn’t a death sentence anymore because drug-company guys are greedy. I know there’s a balance that needs to be struck so they don’t rape the rain forest or whatever, but overall, when the dust settles, I want the greediest guys in the world trying to cure cancer. I want the greediest guys in the world trying to make a car that goes two hundred miles on a gallon. I want the greediest guys in the world trying to get me to New York in one hour instead of five. I want the greediest guys in the world trying to do all this shit so it will actually get done.

Let’s talk about AIDS pharmaceuticals. I find it ironic that the people who were most vocal in bashing the pharmaceutical companies are the ones whose lives were saved by those same companies. All the tears Liz Taylor shed, all the wisdom of the Orient, and all the quilts strewn across the National Mall in front of the Capitol didn’t cure one AIDS patient. It was big, greedy pharmaceutical companies. Once again, the evil white devil intervened and saved lives. All your coffee enemas and holistic healers couldn’t replace a couple hits of AZT. I only wish the big pharmaceutical companies would take the same approach to handing out the AIDS triple cocktail as I suggested with the profilers. “Hey, Mr. HIV positive. Sure, we’d love to rid you of your death sentence using our wonder drugs. Let me just check my clipboard. Oh, I’m sorry. You called us greedy capitalist pigs. Have fun butt-fucking your herbalist, and I’ll see you at your funeral.”

WELFARE

Welfare doesn’t work. It’s monetary methadone. Let me explain. You either need to kick heroin or OD. But methadone is just a perpetual circling of the airport in a plane with shitty seats and a Kate Hudson movie. I believe most people who need welfare are depressed. The welfare lowers their self-esteem and compounds their depression, making it even more difficult to find a job. I’ve seen enough promos for
The Biggest Loser
to know that even the laziest and most pathetic individual is capable of soaring to great heights given some structure and motivation. Welfare is the equivalent of the government sending them a jumbo bag of Bugles in the mail twice a month.

The Carollas have a rich history of not being rich. My mom was depressed and on welfare. One time when I was a kid I asked her about getting a job and her response was, “And lose my welfare?” People need to get out of the house and find some work and the sense of purpose and dignity that comes with it. Ironically, this wasn’t a problem during the Great Depression. People went down to the docks or the factory every morning and tried to find some work to provide for their family. Again, purpose and dignity. If you took that same person and told them, “We’re gonna drop off a check, just enough to get by on,” they’d stop moving. They’d completely lose their sense of pride and spiral deeper into hopeless apathy.

I don’t care if you’re sweeping out parking lots or scraping bird shit off of awnings, you’re doing something. It doesn’t matter if you come home at the end of the day with ten dollars in your pocket, you’re doing something. When you remove that part of life, you end up with people lying around who then turn on themselves and eventually, and ironically, the government. Constantly bailing people out does nothing but create resentment for the people giving them the money. Has anyone on the dole ever seemed thankful? Never. It’s more like, “How am I supposed to get by on seven hundred and forty dollars a month? I have six kids.” You’re not supposed to get by, you’re supposed to fucking work. But you’re trapped in the quicksand of the welfare system.

SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAMS

People say, “Oh, Adam. You’re so heartless because you’re not for giving free lunches at school.” Yes, I want the parents to cook their kids a fucking meal. I don’t want them to have a free corn dog at school. I want the parents to boil some beans and make their kid a goddamn lunch. It’s the superliberal a-holes who grew up with silver sporks in their mouths who think, Oh, they’re incapable of doing it. Yes they can.

Nowadays food is practically free. Nobody is so poor that they can’t go down to the Food for Less, get a huge sack of rice, throw in a couple of chicken bouillon cubes, and whip it up. And believe me, that shit will be healthier than whatever mystery meat and Korean War–surplus canned green beans the school is cooking up. You’ll hear the Tim Robbinses of the world defending this garbage by saying, “These kids need a hot meal every day.” That’s bullshit. Kids don’t need a hot meal, they need a nutritious meal. Your kid would be better off having an apple and a hard-boiled egg than fried fish sticks, canned corn, and a box of purple sugar water. And the dickheads who are complaining about not getting a hot meal are the same ones who are complaining that the meals are not nutritious. I feel qualified to speak on this subject because I was a recipient of the meal-ticket program. It was a delightful trifecta of deep-fried empty calories combined with a soul-crushing “I guess my parents don’t love me enough to pack me a fucking lunch” followed by a dignity-robbing “What’s wrong with your loser family?” So mission accomplished, L.A. Unified.

And if you can’t accomplish the simple act of feeding your kids, they need to go into foster care. If you can’t provide an orange and a Triscuit with a piece of cheese on it, shouldn’t your kids be taken away? It’s literally pennies a day. Isn’t that the most important yardstick to measure parents by? Providing food is the most basic of parenting requirements. In nature, if a mama bird can’t feed her chicks, she is unfit and it’s time for Darwin to take out the trash. Education and health care come well below feeding your kids. And if you can’t muster the drive to provide sustenance for your children, God knows what other kinds of neglect and abuse are happening in that house.

One evening I was having a conversation with Olga, my Guatemalan nanny, about her past. She told me that she was at one time a struggling single mother and that all her friends told her to get on welfare and put her daughter on the free-lunch program. She told me that she didn’t think it was right to take money without working for it, and more important, she wanted the dignity of feeding her own daughter. She didn’t think that should be someone else’s responsibility, and if it meant waking up a little bit earlier or putting a little more effort in the night before, it was worth it to say she was taking care of her child. I said how much I respected her and then told her to finish feeding my kids, I’d be in the den watching
SportsCenter
. My point is, nobody who’s receiving free lunches is any worse off financially than Olga was at that time in her life. Yet we didn’t rob her of her dignity by feeding her kid for her.

How did people get along before the school lunch program? We didn’t have poor people at the turn of the century? How did those people feed themselves before the fucking food tickets? The goddamn parents cooked goddamn food.