It’s our favorite time of year, when a very small percentage of Americans vote for their favorite scumbags.

I live in a state where the senate race is hotly contested.  We have Thom Tillis, who hates education (and why not: his teachers couldn’t even get him to spell his first name correctly ((if not correctly, then simply)) and loves toll lanes.  And then there’s Kay Hagan, who votes with Obama (a four letter words in these parts) ninety-six percent of the time.  Kay Hagan took government money for her family business, or maybe she didn’t, because the corporate ties are as confounding as her ethics.

There are some judges, I guess, looking for jobs.  If I’ll be paying their salaries I might as well vote for those with the nicest-sounding names, because I haven’t a clue what they stand for: they all say the same thing: they’re compassionate, but tough on crime.  I want an asshole soft on crime, but oh well ….

I’m getting robo-calls up the whazoo, and I’m pretty sure that no matter who I vote for I’ll be getting much more than that up the very same whazoo!

They all make promises, not unlike the sixth-grade elections where the goody-two-shoes Mary Short ran on a platform of free lunches, and won.  Only then, the teachers rolled their eyes while the kids cheered her on.  Now, there are no adults to reign in the madness.  They promise free lunches, and give away free lunches.  Only someone has to pay, and that someone’s always me.  (Okay, I lost to Mary in that election, but who’s holding a grudge?)  I don’t mind giving to those in need.  Last week I bought breakfast for a homeless man in Louisville, and because no good deed goes unpunished I subsequently lost my cell phone.  Charity is good; we all, in the end, may need it.  Just don’t make it a habit.  Work if you can work, and be wise: don’t buy lobster with food stamps, because those truly in need will inevitably get lumped in with your ass-foolery, as will the entire safety net.  (I made that word up just in time for the elections, as in: I’ll be voting for the Republican ass-fool for the senate seat: Thom Tillis, and the h isn’t silent.)  Geez, even his name has got to be kind of a dick.

My point is this: There are no free lunches, and Mary was wrong!

http://youtu.be/lB5X3CtGDY0

Everyday I find another list in the newspapers, magazines, or social media, telling me why I should eat this and not that, do these exercises and not those, drink coffee, and here’s why, drink wine, preferably red, travel lists of unforgettable destination, and why we should get at the very least eight hours of sleep, so stop reading lists.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of these goddamn lists.

The best make-out songs, dance songs, hip-hop songs, and eighties songs.  The best songs to listen to while you’re ripping up lists.

There’s a top ten list of things that you didn’t know about the movie, Forrest Gump.  Really?  The only thing anyone really needs to know about Forrest Gump is that life is like a box of chocolates … ’cause when you look at the bottom of the boxes nowadays there’s another freaking list of exactly what you’re going to get.  Suck it Forrest, suck it, ’cause your momma didn’t know what in the hell she was talking about!

Fight Club had a list of rules, but I can’t talk about it.

David Letterman has a nightly top ten, ran out, and had to retire.

At work I have a checklist (canopy, cords, harness, crouch, dive and pull – that was the bailout list for the military trainer, but nowadays I fly the airbus, where the captain goes down with the ship), and when I’m packing my bags for the jet I have a list of four important things that I cannot forget.  I’m not going to tell you what that list is, but the mantra goes something like this: one, two, three, four, everything else I can buy at the store.

We have the honey-do lists (yard and paint) and the honey-don’t lists (sex, and sex), but I’m so sick of these godforsaken lists that I can’t even bring myself to compose a freaking grocery list when Lord knows that I need one.  I’ll bet there’s even a list on why we get  Alzheimer’s disease, and I’ll bet I even read that list.

Most of these lists tell us what we’re doing wrong.  They tell us why we’re fat and broke.

The top ten list of reasons why you’re a pathetic loser.

1) Your father ignored the list on the health benefits of birth control, and wham bam, thank you ma’am, you were born.  Mistake number one.

2) You then suckled your momma’s teet, which was loaded with saturated fats.

3) You had the nerve to reach puberty, unregulated with hormones.

4) You discovered beer,

5) and on a Saturday night promised her that you loved her, convinced her that the top ten reason why she shouldn’t trust you was bullshit, and then promptly knocked her up.

6) You then failed to read the top ten list of well-paying jobs, and ended up cutting lumber in the redwood forests until the tree huggers came along and ruined a perfectly awful career.

7) When it was time to buy a home, because your prom date, aka, wife, was insistent, you then failed to read the list about the top ten mortgage missteps.

8) The top ten reasons why you’re going bald, and the top ten most ridiculous things you can do to fake it.

9) The ten most popular places for middle-aged hair growth (hint: the belly button is number five),

10) And the number ten reason why you’re such a pathetic loser, you finished reading this lists.  Boom!

Of course, God was the original list maker, what with the ten commandments and the seven sacraments; and in our quest for heavenly glory it all went to hell in a hand basket.

We love to start lists, read lists, but we simply can’t finish lists.

So when it’s time to tackle that bucket list, don’t worry about reaching the end.  Simply climb that mountain and cross that bridge.  And the number one reason why, when you get there, you should go ahead and jump?   No more freaking lists!

Let’s be clear: Donald Sterling, owner of the L.A. Clippers, is foolish.  He obviously has deep-rooted feelings towards minorities, feelings that don’t seem to be particularly kindhearted.  But if you listen to the tape his mistress clearly goaded him into discussing a topic that he wasn’t comfortable talking about, with her or anyone else, let alone for the world to hear.  What happened to privacy?  Are we to police every dark thought?  And if so, how many of us would be immune?

It seemed to me that Mr. Sterling was upset that his girlfriend was making public her relationship with black men in general and Magic Johnson in particular.  Furthermore, and reading between the lines here, it sounded like he was being ridiculed by his friends or colleagues that his girlfriend was taking up either social or sexually with men of color, which alludes to the stereotype of black men being well hung and thus good lovers.   Mr. Sterling said that he didn’t care if she fed him or fucked him, just don’t bring him to his games, which sounded to me like the desperate pleas of a cuckold wishing to avoid the public shame.

Yes, he is a foolish man, for his outdated and misguided views of race, but more so for taking up with that girl in the first place, who history won’t remember despite her wicked attempts.  She cornered him, sweet talked him, knew what he might say and was intent to capture it on tape to ultimately destroy him.  She was cunning, fully aware of the trend or fad in social media.  It’s a typical group-think response, and whoa to the social commentator who takes the opposite view.

Society has embarked upon a mission of persecuting dissenting opinions, however unenlightened, and thus exposing our own biases and prejudices, the consequences of which will be silence and backlash from those who have been oppressed against.  No, better to expose the man’s hatred, and then shame him with forgiveness than to banish him from the very sport that he has helped along the way to prosperity.

But those are not the days that we are living in, are they?  No.  In the name of righteousness we condemn.  In goodness we ruin.  It won’t end with Mr. Sterling, either, for someone else will come along and utter something ridiculous, in private or in public, it won’t matter.  We have formed our posses, and we have called them Twitter.  With this we will rally our men and our women, for we are outraged, empowered and bloodthirsty.  Yes, not a posse at all but a pack of hungry wolves, stalking through the cold mountains until we are sated.  Be careful lest you stray from the pack.  Hide your thoughts, words and ideas, pretend not only in public now but in private, because the walls have ears.  The world is listening, waiting, and the world is hungry!

I didn’t have braces and my teeth are fine.

There’s only one reasonable conclusion: their mother; her genes.

The kids’ bad behavior?  Yep, blame it on mom.

My son can’t dribble a basketball to save his life.  I want to cry.  Growing up, basketball was my religion.  He got this from his mother.  (I’ve seen her shoot hoops.  It isn’t pretty.)

My oldest daughter punched my youngest in the nose, and sprang a leak.  Where does this violence come from?  Moi?  No way.  Just because I joined the Marine Corps doesn’t mean that I’m not a pacifist of the highest order.

I’m a neat freak, and no one cares.  (Tell me that this isn’t because of you know who!)

At night, the entire house is lit up, and and there I go on a rant, flipping switches room to room.  They look at me like I’ve lost my marbles.

“Seriously, dad.  What’s the big deal?”

I tell them about the big deal.  In unison they roll their eyes – a defiant, all-too common act that I swear they rehearse when I’m not around.

Okay.  The farting antics.  I’ll own those, and why the hell not?  Farts are funny … until the little miscreants cut one in public and blame you, run away gagging and holding their noses.  What are you going to do?  Tell everyone that it was your kid and not you?  I’m a bad parent, not a monster.

And the thing about turning their underwear inside out to stretch another day, all me.  (I know, brilliant, right?  Flip them again and you got yourself another.)

Sadly, a side-by-side comparison of their parents’ report cards explain the bad grades.  I yell at them to shape up and stop making me look bad.  To be more like their mother.

The hugs, yeah, that’s mom.  When one of our little criminals comes up and “shares” with me a hug, I put them in a headlock and demand answers.  “You drop my iPhone in the toilet again, butterfingers?”

Scientists believe that soon they’ll be able to splice the best from both mom and dad.  If that isn’t good enough, they can splice from a third-party donor, and wa-lah: the perfect child.

Of course, the intent is to wipe out genetic defects, which is noble.  However, it will only be a matter of time before medical boutique shops promise perfect smiles and grades?  Every kid money from the three-point line.  Home work done, hands washed, and lights out by nine.  (Am I dreaming?)

But if that’s the future thank God I’m not in it.  We got braces, bad grades and bloody noses.  We got lights, cameras, and action.  Tantrums and defiance, and really lame excuses.  In other words, we got it all, baby.  (And they got the best from me!)