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When I didn’t recieve my absentee ballot in New York this November I wasn’t too concerned. I was sure that everything that I wanted was a sure thing. I woke up to an Obama America with a text message on my phone that read “Shame on you America! Lets protest…”. Prop 8 had passed and everyone that I knew was pissed.  I was pretty sad that my vote was neutral and not on the loosing side.
Gay marriage is always going to be an issue, and i think i’ve figured out a good way of dealing with it. Let’s illegalize marriage all together. People feel very strongly about marriage, but there’s no reason the state should. Prohibiting marriage would solve everyones problem by democratizing the couples, save the state millions of dollars, and clean out those pesky green card citizens( I’m looking at you Gerard Depardieu).  Marriage isn’t a political issue, its a religious act. let the church marry anyone they want, but keep my bachelor dollars our of dirty family pockets. Tax breaks should come when children enter the family, because marriage alone rarely warrants any extra money.
I read a paper on Gay Politics, and it talked about how gay marriage is a Christian issue, because the act of marriage validates gay sex in the eyes of God. God is a strange figure in politics, because he never votes, and everyone is always talking about how he feels on the issues. I just don’t see why 2 women cant get married and i can still order the Red Lobster Endless Shrimp Basket. God talked about shellfish forever(rrrrrrr), and didn’t mention a single lesbian. I always wondered why he made so many shellfish if he felt so strongly against them, and why would he made them so delicious? I feel the same way about gay people. Why would God make so many of them if he didn’t want them, and why did he make them so delicious?

Sometime in the last few years, I’ve started obsessing about pig hunting. I’ve fallen in love with the idea of taking down a wild pig with my bare hands, gutting it with a knife and cooking it over an open fire. I’ve never been into hunting and/or gathering, but I’ve come to respect the pork so much, that I feel I must fully experience the process from start to finish. To actively engage the process, to better appreciate what I already love so much.

There is a prejudice against pork that I’ve never understood. Certain cultures don’t eat pork because of outdated dogma, set into place because of sanitary conditions of the time. They say that modern pig raising processes have created a very clean and lean meat, that no long resembles pork of previous centuries. Chickens are ceseptable to all the same diseases, yet somehow escaped such culinary persecution. The Chinese have always considered the pig the most noble of all beasts. They are loyal, smart, and above all, delicious. I dare anybody to befriend a pig, and not come out of it with some respect for the species. There is a misunderstanding with pigs, that since they don’t sweat they’re meat is tainted; that its filthy. But no one seems to realize that pigs, a very emotional animal, cry themselves to sleep most nights, releasing any excess salt that would spoil they’re delicious flesh.

I know its not going to change. It just makes me so angry when people relegate pork as a secondary meat. We’re the secondary meat, and we should bow down to such savory gods. So I’m getting to get ready, I’ve polished my brass knuckles, and tightened my belt. And if you want, you’re more than welcome to join me.

Its not often that I love something more than myself, but there are a few exceptions. Speed Racer is one major exception. When I was a little kid, they used to play it after Beavis and Butthead, and I instantly fell in love. But staying in love has been an incredibly hard task, because Speed Racer, though the best show ever, is the worst franchise of all time.

To be a Speed Racer fan, you have to have a good understanding of kitsch. This is why recreating the magic is so hard. Kitsch is something that you can’t try to create, it has to happen naturally. Every itteration of the show, besides the original, has been so heavy handed or completely aweful.

Around the time I got into Speed Racer, The New Adventures of Speed Racer debuted. It was the first American attempt to capture the magic. It was so stupid, it only lasted thirteen stupid episodes. A race car driver, and dimensional time traveler, Speed Racer and his Mach 5 battled against mutant aliens, for the safety of earth. Even as a 9 year old kid, I knew this was the worst cartoon I’d ever seen. Its angry jingle metal theme song, embarrassed me, yet didn’t stop me from watching the cartoon every sunday morning.

Along time passed, and I heard rumors of a reprisal. A Japaneses version of the show, and a new hope for Speed Racer bliss. This animation studio, took the Digimon approach,using computer drawn characters with really thin lines. The show had very little to do with racing, most storylines focusing on Speed’s high school life. The racing that did take place looked like it was lifted out of Tron. This series never made it to the states, and was incredibly hard to find when it came out. But that didn’t stop me, unfortunately.

Now in 2008, theres a new Speed Racer push. A new movie and a new cartoon series. And if you didn’t already know, they’re both art directed vomit. I’ve come to terms with the situation, and I’ve learned a few things. Speed Racer is deceptively simple. People that love speed racer, really love speed racer. But if you truely love Speed Racer, leave it alone. Please.

So i got into an interesting conversation last night about hair. My friend’s friend Carol was talking about these pictures that appeared on the internet exposing a certain celebrities unmentionables. Carol was disgusted by the presence of hair, and that got me kind of angry. When did hair become such a bad thing?

We were all once cavemen, and cave women. Our hair was free flowing and probably very dirty. The first recorded case of the hair cutting act came from the egyptians royalty, who would remove all their hair, adorning their heads with wigs and elaborate makeup. Early societies chose hairlessness to detect leprosy and protect from lice. The Greeks prefered the hairless look, as depicted in most of their art. Manscaping was a common practice amongst Greek homosexuals of the time.

I understand the appeal of a well maintained lawn, but what I’ve always found puzzling, is the inconsistencies within gendered hair identities. Was it a caveman that decided that men can have underarm hair, and females can’t? Why is body hair considered a male attribute, Females go through puberty first. They get it first, they should have dibs.

But what really gets me, is how ugly a hairless body actually is. Almost everything looks better with hair on it. Have you ever seen a hairless cat? They’re frightening! I’ve always wanted a partner with a fine coat; thick, shiny and full of body. I would comb them before they went to work, and flat iron their body when we’d go out. I really don’t see a downside to a hairier existence, besides having to buy a lot of mouse and a gigantic hair dryer. Clothing would be optional, aging would be more graceful, and I’d finally know what its like to be black in America.

For the longest time I was strongly against buying Macs. They were expensive, lacked a large third party software library, and I was never that impressed with them. The operating system lacked the customizability of my windows laptop, that cost $500, and ran 90 degrees cooler. So I used my dell for 5 years, and I was happy. Sometime around 2007, I started working at this ad agency. It was very mac-centric. Seeing all that brushed aluminum got my salivary glands moist, and I started to feel ashamed of my plastic laptop. It seemed like a toy compared to the Macbook Pro, Apple’s flagship laptop, forged in molten metal. So when I saw an opportunity, I bought one, and I’ve regretted it ever since.

Have you ever walked into a party and you see someone wearing the same top as you? Thats how I feel anytime I walk into a cafe. Now I can’t pride myself in my recalcitrance towards the fascist regime of Steve Jobs. I’m an Apple person. It doesn’t matter that I have windows installed on it. I am an Apple person. And now I see the irony of buying into a company whose tag line is Think Different, because now I look like everyone else.

read the Cult of Apple

I remember the first hair that sprouted where it wasn’t suppose to be. I was twelve years old, and I’d check my armpits every hour. Danny Smalls was the first in our grade to have a full pit full of hair, we were all so jealous. He was short and smelled like cardboard, but he had our respect, because he had entered manhood. It was the easiest verifier of puberty; Some hair under the armpits = your unmentionables were getting huger by the minute.

So when I saw that first hair, I was ecstatic, and my attention shifted from the under arm, to southern regions. I got the pubes, got the happy trail, but when it came time for some chest hair, all I got was 5 nipple hairs, and back acne. Danny Smalls looked like teen wolf by 8th grade, and I was stuck with a baren chest, and man boobies. I would shave them everyday, hoping the hairs would descend, and convince their friends that it was safe to come up. But that has yet to happen.
I’ve come to terms with my barren chest. I know now, that a man is not defined by the hair on his chest. But still, anytime I see some guy with tufts of hair pouring out the top of his tshirt, I think of that boy, who looked out into a night sky, and prayed for a hairier day.

So what the fuck happened to Howie Mandel?

When i was a kid, Howie Mandel looked like the non-asshole Billy Crystal. His Jew-Fro was transcendent; big, full of body, yet still able to compact nicely into a latex glove. His Canadian warmth shined through his toothy smile. One tooth more socialist than the next. But sometime, quite suddenly, he became a time traveler.

Now I’m not against progress, but there are three things that are never futuristic. 1. people named Howie 2. Canadians 3. Jew-Fro s. That’s time tested truth. Now he looks like Morphius in a Jewish retelling of the Matrix. I haven’t been this disappointed with a comedian since seeing carrot top’s unfortunate transformation.

I always wondered what would happen to Howie. I don’t blame him for wanting a change. There didn’t seem to be a place for him after Bobby’s World. But sometimes redefining yourself is just stupid, especially when it could rip a hole in the time space continuum. So next time I see you, keep your damn future hand shake away from me.