Frozen

Of the millions upon millions of things my wife loves about me--my grilled cheese making abilities, the huge hugs I give her, my mad NCAA Football 2005 skills, etc--perhaps the most important to our relationship is my body temperature.  I rarely get cold and--I've been told by multiple sources including an 80 year old woman on Christmas day--my body radiates heat.  This is excellent for Krishni because she is just the opposite: she gets cold with the slightest breeze and loves that she has a smelly radiator laying in bed next to her on cold mornings.  

My smokin' hot body has been especially important the last few days because our furnace is on the fritz.  

Oh, sure...our furnace is creating heat just fine.  It's just not, you know, blowing the heat through our duct work and into our apartment.  As a result, there has been more than a few mornings in our condo lately where our thermostat read "53 degrees".  I wish I was making that up.

Now, I love winter.  I really do.  It's not winter for me unless there is a foot of snow and it is quite rare to hear me complain about the cold.  

This post just happens to be one of those times.

53 degrees really doesn't sound that cold; heck, if it was 53 degrees on a March afternoon, you would probably find me cranking Green Day and driving with my windows down.  But 53 degrees in the "comfort" of your own home?  That is uncomfortable.  

As I type this, the temperature in our house is a balmy 58 degrees.  This I can handle.  I'm hanging on the couch in some sweatpants and a hoodie, watching the Bulls game and eating some deep dish pizza from Gino's East.  And tonight, I'll crawl into bed next to my wife, make sure the space heater that's been blowing for the last 3 days is turned to "lava" and pull 3 blankets up over my chest.  

All of the above is livable.  You know what sucks though?  My shower in the morning.

Those of you that have been to my place know that Krishni and I have separate bathrooms.  Really, separate bathrooms is the secret to a great marriage.  Unfortunately, the "Mens Room" is outside of our protected space heater area.  This means I have to crawl out of bed tomorrow morning at 7, walk into my bathroom which, by the way, has a 5 foot tall window two feet from the shower head, take off all of my clothes and desperately try and keep my fat ass covered by hot water in a shower that can only be described as "igloo-like".  Seriously...while the rest of my house is in the 50s, I have to believe that the temperature in my bathroom--due in part to the enormous picture window of tempered glass inconveniently placed IN the shower--is in the 40s. 

Mornings this week have been awful.  AWFUL. 

Never fear; our favorite handyman is finally getting out here Thursday morning to (hopefully) fix the issue.  However, if we can't get this issue licked, I'm seriously considering moving back to Oklahoma.  

Just kidding!  I'd rather live in Antarctica North on Paulina Street then move back to that shithole. 

Whaaaaaat?

For those of you wondering where I've been, the truth is far less fun than you might imagine.  "Oh," I bet you're thinking, "He must be on another Disney character cruise ship orgy."  

While it's true that it's been a while since I've shared a post-coital poolside Mai Tai with Jasmine and Belle, I'd like to take a moment to announce that Mike Jacklich--winner of the Nobel Prize for "Contributions in Severe Couch Sitting, 2012", has found a job.  A dream job, of sorts.  

For the next--hopefully--few years I will be the Box Office Supervisor of a freakin' minor league baseball team. 

Yeah, it's small time.  The Boomers play in the Frontier League which is an independent league; that is to say the Boomers are not affiliated with a Major League Baseball team.  Also, they pay is awful, I don't (yet) get benefits and I have a two hour, round-trip commute.  But at least the hours are ridiculously long!  Ha ha!

I kid.  There are so many reasons why I should not have taken this job.  But this position is a real, honest to goodness job in professional baseball.  The Boomers are in their second season and the staff is aces.  The team owner also owns the Gary Rail Cats and when he purchased the organization that would become the Boomers, he brought along with him some of his best and brightest from his other organization.  I'll be reporting directly to the General Manager.

Our season--51 home games--kicks off in May and this is minor league baseball at its best.  $2 beer nights, scout camp outs, promotions like the "World's Biggest Water Gun Fight"...and a whole lot of baseball.  And since the Boomers are not affiliated with a MLB team, we play to win.  There is no "we need to get this kid 5 innings so the big club will be happy".  These are just 25 kids, scratching and clawing and dreaming of the big leagues.  

There's also this thing:

That monstrosity is called the "Brat-a-Boom".  I'll let the website describe it:  "The Brat-a-Boom!, available exclusively at the third base concession stand at the home of the Schaumburg Boomers, is a giant 4.5 pound custom bratwurst made with Bobak's Sausage on a two-foot pretzel bun, slathered with Levy Restaurant's special beer cheese, topped with sauerkraut and diced applewood smoked bacon, finished with deep-fried onion strings."  There's even a challenge to eat the thing:  "The contestant will attempt to finish the Brat-A-Boom! and a side of cheese fries. The Challenge time limit is 30 minutes and only a tray of crumbs and scarce cheese stains will constitute a Brat-A-Boom! Victory. The Challenge must be completed alone and water will be provided for free."

I don't know about you, but the plate of cheese fries feels dangerously superfluous.  At any rate: 
Jimmy, the Brat-a-Boom is calling your name. 

So, I have a job in professional baseball.  Because of the hours and the fact that I won't be able to afford anything fun this summer, you may not see a lot of me.  

But understand this:  I could not be more excited about this job.  Come on out and see us this summer...tickets are only $10.  You'll also be happy to know that I've promised my wife I won't go anywhere near the Brat-a-Boom.  

But I've told little white lies before.   

And now back to your regularly scheduled dick jokes

I've been losing my cell phone a lot lately.  Not like I used to do, drunkenly in the back of a cab.  This new version is far more annoying.  I'll come home from work, put my cell phone down somewhere, take off my coat, hat, gloves, etc, collapse on the couch and realize I have no idea where my damn phone is.  I have a place by the door that I always--without fail--set my keys but my phone has ended up by the TV, in my coat again, thrown on the couch, in the kitchen, on our book case...I have no hope of finding it in the small amount of time where I go from the whimsical "Ha Ha, Mike!  You did it again!" to the extremely frustrated "Jesus titty-fucking christ!  Where the hell is my phone?!"

Part of the problem, I've discovered, is our big, bad-assed book shelf.  It's a simple equation:  awesome black bookshelf + black iPhone = hilariously aging 34-year old questioning his sanity.

Be honest:  did you see it at first?  

It seems like once a night, I ask my wife if she's seen my phone.  I think she's getting annoyed as I recently caught her looking at "No fault divorce" websites during 30 Rock re-runs.

Alright, I'm aging.  I get that.  I can no longer eat 3 McDonalds double cheeseburgers and not gain weight.  I can no longer drink an entire case of beer without sitting out the next two days.  And I'm constantly losing my phone.  I always joke with Krishni that she married an old man but what if there is a gigantic slab of truth to the joke?  Am I really aging that quickly?

As it turns out, science says no:  "Viewing online pornography 'Can make you lose your memory'."  That explains so much!  I'm constantly losing my phone because of Asia Carrera!

It's all her fault.  She's a bad girl.

The German study takes a comically small sample size of subjects and concludes that men will better remember pictures of naked ladies in a big game of memory than they'll remember pictures of other dudes playing golf.  And 7 billion people collectively said "No shit." 

Now, am I to be angry at pornstars and, to a lesser extent, the San Fernando Valley in general?  I mean, I could never really stay mad at Asia.  Again, as it turns out, "science" says no:

"...men who view pornographic material 'every day or almost every day,' 54 percent 'strongly agreed' that gay and lesbian marriage should be legal..."

I put the above link in quotes because it links to a study by this ass-hat named Professor Mark Regnerus who did a different "study" on kids in gay and lesbian families faring worse than kids in straight families.  As point of fact, the study says nothing at all about gay families.  Rather, the study looks at kids in broken homes, of which exactly two families fit the criteria of actually being gay or lesbian, start to finish.  That didn't stop him from jumping to the conclusion that gay folks shouldn't be able to raise kids.  Incidentally, this study has been shot down by nearly every legitimate scientific community.  Darren E. Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, called Regnerus' findings "bullshit" and Wendy Simmons--a Sociology professor at Georgia State University--said "Regnerus’s 'data' on gay and lesbian parents are unrepresentative of gay and lesbian parents, and, in my view, are presented so as to advance a homophobic agenda.”

So he's a hack.  However, when this dick comes out and says that young guys who watch porn think gays should be able to marry, I say let's all watch some porn together! 

I don't really believe that the numbers he quotes are accurate.  Really, I think there's far more support for marriage equality than his numbers suggest (42% of men aged 23-29 and 47% of women) but seeing how this "study" is proudly being hawked by the horrific pieces of shit at NOM, fudged numbers should come as no surprise. 

But hell, if a little girl-on-girl action is what is needed to get America on the side of the LGBT community, then I say we should all be giving subscriptions to HotandMean.com this year as last minute Christmas gifts. 

Go to work, ladies.  LGBT families need you!

Guns and 'Merica

There are many reasons to be frustrated by the extreme far right ideology:  medieval views on sex, the uterus and abstinence, a belief that no American—ever, under any circumstances—should pay taxes, hilarious-if-they-weren’t-so-common-and-terrifying statements about rape…so many things leave me shaking my head and wondering where these folks went to school.  They can’t all have gone to the “Alabama School of Jesus and Book Learnin’ ” can they?

But our nation’s love affair with guns truly confounds me.  Allright, I get that people love their guns and want to protect their family and possessions against a home invasion.  That is entirely understandable and it is my understanding that there are many safe gun owners out there; I know and admire a few of them.  What I don’t understand is the steadfast belief that more and bigger guns in the hands of anyone and everyone somehow makes our nation “safer”.  I know I don’t feel entirely safe walking around Chicago at night.  Or even in the day, in certain neighborhoods. 

What frustrates me most, however, is that anytime a politician or someone in the media attempts to have an adult conversation about guns, this person is shouted down by very angry and—let’s face it—clever gun advocates.  The mere mention of gun control elicits an immediate and vile filled tirade about the “scoring” of political points in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting or, more colorfully, “socialist pussy liberals” comin’ to grab the guns.  “It’s too soon to have this conversation,” a gun advocate might say, “The bodies aren’t cold yet!  We’ll have this conversation at another time!”

When is that time?  When can we have the conversation?  If it’s too soon the day of the tragedy, when is it ok?  In a week?  Well, “We’re still in mourning,” they say.  What about three weeks?  “What?  That shooting is old news.  Let it go already.”  In the wake of the mass shooting at that Portland shopping mall three days ago—victims who had the gall to sit down and eat at the food court after a day of listening to holiday music and cheerily Christmas shopping—I vented a bit at my favorite news blog, Slog.  I’m not making this up when I tell you this; just yesterday, I posted a snarky-but-thoughtful reply to such an unhinged gun advocate (“It’s too soon!”), never actually considering that this would contain an important truth:

“Just so I'm clear on the rules: what IS the proper amount of time that should pass after a mass shooting incident before we have an adult conversation about guns? And what if, in the immediate aftermath of that time there's another mass shooting? Do we have to wait for another period of time to pass or are we grandfathered in from the first shooting?”

Which brings us to today:  27 dead.  So far.  Mostly children.

Fuck.

This news has made me physically ill.  That's not hyperbole...I’ve wanted to throw up since hearing of the story.  Maybe it’s because I have 9 nieces and nephews in various levels of school.  Maybe it’s because unlike Columbine, Virginia Tech, NIU, etc, these were little kids…the school was K-4^th.  Maybe it’s because it hits home; I was a wee lad in school when Laurie Dann went on her little spree up in Winetka in 1988. 

Or maybe because this type of event is so damn common these days.

One doesn’t want to jump to too many conclusions here.  We know very little about the circumstances thus far; all we know is that 20 or so kids won’t be around to open their presents on Christmas day. 

What we do know is that the NRA will issue a statement filled with sympathy for the victims and condoning the action of the shooter.  Someone will suggest things would have been different if the teachers at the school were armed, as if bringing more guns onto school grounds is a sensible idea.  Many crackpots will say that a day like today is the price America pays for freedom.

And this scene will replay itself in 100 days or 30 days or—god help us—2 days when this happens again.  Because if there is one thing we all know, another mass shooting is not an “if”, it’s a “when”.

**********

I’ve always said that if you want to defend your home, buy a shotgun.  You don’t necessarily have to aim a shotgun with pin-point accuracy, it’s intimidating as all get-out and if you buy a pump action shotgun, the mere sound of the pumping itself gets your point across to an intruder pretty damn quickly.  You never, ever read about a 3 year old accidentally picking up a shotgun and killing him/herself or a sibling.  It just doesn’t happen.

What you do hear about all the time is a lone gunman taking a handgun to his ex-wife’s place of work, concealing it until the perfect moment—very difficult to do with a shotgun, by the way—and killing his ex, her gay BFF, two patrons of the establishment and then himself.  You constantly hear about a child picking up a handgun and playing with it, knowingly or unknowingly, and killing his/her parent, sibling or themselves.  And what kind of gun is typically used in Chicago gang violence?  Why handguns, of course!

The only purpose of a handgun is killing someone quickly and efficiently, with as little damage to the upholstery as possible.  This is true whether you’re defending your home, dealing smack or standing your ground against a group of black teens who happen to be playing their music a little too loud for your liking in a 7-11 parking lot.  The handgun is the only instrument of death embraced by our culture.  Why on earth is that?  Why is this ok with people? 

Gun advocates like to quote statistics about the lethality of cars.  While it is true that you are far more likely to die in a car accident than by some dude who flunked out of college and takes out his anger on a movie-theatre full of people, cars do have other uses than killing people.  Honest to god, it’s true.  Cars are sometimes used to get people from location A to location B.  Many times, these drivers make it to their destination without killing a room full of kids and teachers. 

Again: the purpose of a gun is death. 

And don’t even get me started on assault rifles.  No one—NO ONE—that is not in the military or on a police force should have access to an assault rifle.  Seriously, the Queen of England is not about to kick down your door and force her way in to your house…you don’t need a gun that is capable of killing the entire staff of Buckingham Palace in 30 seconds or less.  

**********

 Sigh.  So what’s to be done?  Many things really, most of which will anger the tea party.  Greater access to mental health facilities and doctors would be a great start.  These unhinged folks need a place to vent and heal without ending their lives and those of a few worshipers who were joyously making dinner at their Sikh temple.  I would like to see an out-right ban (and subsequent government buy-back program) of any high-magazine gun, be it a hand gun or assault rifle.  National—and comprehensive—back-ground checks are needed and instead of just closing the gun show loophole, since we’re no longer selling assault rifles, I would end gun shows themselves.  If a gun is used in a crime, be it murder or liquor store robbery, I would give a jail sentence not only to the perp, but also to the owner of the gun.  If that means grandpa goes to jail because he didn’t secure his gun properly and his meth-head grandson stole the firearm, so be it.  No sweat off my sack. 

Can we ban guns?  Not bloody likely.  Should we?  Probably not.  Like I said, responsible gun owners do exist.  You know what I’d do?  While we may not be able to ban guns, I think it would be a spectacular idea to tax the shit out of bullets.  Kind of like the cigarette tax but for death. 

This isn’t a new idea; making bullets prohibitively expensive has been spouted out before and will be spouted out again.  In my opinion, people should only be able to buy, say, 10 bullets per, I dunno, 3 months.  I would tweak this plan, however:  when people buy guns they (theoretically) have to register for said gun.  Under my plan, people purchasing bullets will also have to register.  This way, big brother can keep track of any yahoo trying to go from store to store purchasing enough bullets to really do some damage at his ex-wife’s salon.  I think it’s appalling that in this day and age someone can go and buy a few thousand bullets without raising any significant eyebrows.  

**********

Now, I don’t think that any of these ideas will gain any traction.  Maybe, however, today’s school shooting was the tipping point.   Something has to be done now, right?  27 dead—again, including many, many children--in the 2^nd worst mass shooting in US history? 

What we can’t do is just fall back on the old “If we ban guns the only people who have guns will be criminals” type of thinking.  Again, guns are not going anywhere.  But we can’t just sit idly by and wait for the next attack. 

I think what is readily apparent is that there is no single, problem solving solution.  Of course nothing will stop a truly determined guy who absolutely has to kill his former boss at the foot of the Empire State building.  Think about this, though:  according to former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt, there are 20 mass shootings per year in the US, on average.  Look at this list from the last calendar year alone:

December 14, 2012: At least 27 dead, approximately 18 of whom were children in Connecticut Elementary school.
December 11, 2012: One injured, two killed at a mall by gunman in Clackamas, OR.
December 8, 2012: Four killed and two injured on the Tule Indian Reservation including the shooter's three children only one of whom survived the initial attack.
September 28, 2012: Five killed by a recently fired employee in Minneapolis, MN.
August 24, 2012: Two killed, 9 wounded in 'Empire State Building' shooting.
August 5, 2012: Seven killed in Sikh temple shooting in Oak Creek, WI.
July 20, 2012: Twenty killed and 58 wounded in Aurora, CO.
April 3, 2012: Ten shot, seven killed in Oakland's Oikos University.
March 31, 2012: Two killed and 12 injured in shooting outside Miami funeral home.
March 2, 2012: Fourteen injured in mass shooting at concert in Tempe, AZ.
February 27, 2012: Five shot, three dead in a Chardon, OH school.
February 21, 2012: Four killed in Korean Spa shooting in Atlanta, GA.
December 25, 2011: Seven killed in Grapevine, TX on Christmas Day.
December 1, 2011: Four killed in Bay City, TX mass shooting.

This is not ok.  This is not the price of “freedom”.  As far as I’m concerned, the NRA can go to hell.  And quickly, too, if their 3 year-olds accidentally shoot them.    

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to call my congressman.