teh Mexigogue

I got home this weekend to find that I had no internet access. So that’s what all those bills were about. I called Ameritech and they said they would have it back on as soon as I made payment. I told them Monday. Then they said “Pay your bills foo!”

So this weekend my kids and I were stuck doing things the old fashioned way. Instead of drawing pictures with Paintshop Pro application I bought us drawing pads, charcoal pencils, a #2 pencil, colored pencils (they wouldn’t let us buy the ones for white people), an art eraser, and a pencil sharpener. I tried to show them a thing or two about smudging with charcoal for shading effect but they don’t draw stuff like that. They continued making multi panel comic rip offs of the Mario Brothers and Pokemon characters. I drew a picture of some boobs.

Yesterday I was still stuck with no internet access so I took my oldest son to Pockets to shoot pool. We played 9 ball on the big tables for six hours straight and my game was on! I was getting my stroke down for the long shots, getting good leaves, and really upping my confidence. Six hours at Pockets is as many games as month at Leroys so it was a helluva workout. I played so long I forgot to eat so when I got home I had to throw down some sammiches and get some Zs.

At Leroy’s that night I had the table for like 8 or 10 games straight. I finally got taken off the table by an older cat who haunts Pockets but by the time I was done I was like whoa, that was a bad five quarters! I told some jokes and nobody laughed. Then I sang karaoke and everybody laughed.

Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any better the most beautiful chick on the planet came over and gave me a hug. For one second my life was perfect. I said “I must really rock and that’s why you hugged me huh?” “No” says she, “It’s affirmative action for big losers so this act of charity was mandated by law.” “I’ll take what I can get” says I.

This is a terrible blog entry. It’s self serving and anybody who is still reading is like shut up and get to the point. There is no point. I had a good day. And the cat acts like she hates me but I think she secretly likes going airborne.

Kids say the most precious things! My daughter sent me this email:

Mom thought that I was drawing a “demon” just because I drew red eyes.
Did you talk to Hitler?

It seems my one year blogiversary came by on February 5 and I didn’t notice. The Mexigogue is one year and 20 days old now. More than a full year now (358 entries, to be exact) and I’m still doing basically what I did at the beginning which is vying for attention like a quadruple amputee afraid of being forgotten (Look ma, no hands!)

In the beginning posting on the blog was kind of like playing pool against myself. I was spinning my wheels but I tried to post something readable every day, if nothing else than for my own amusement. Gradually other players began to show up and we’ve had some friendly games lots of laughs. We also had other times when people just attacked each other with cue sticks. The early days are now pretty much long forgotten.

One of my very first posts deserves to be rehashed today, both since almost nobody was around to read it the first time and also in response to the recent news of a 12 year old Lansing girl who was abducted and murdered this past week. My second post of all time was in response to a similar situation that came up last year and the logic still applies. Read it here and tell me what you think.

Today’s post was inspired by a post from the “D” where he writes about his reservations about his high school son’s dating. Reflecting back on my high school years I really knew nothing at all when it came to relationships which made me pretty much the same as I am now except for the fact that I’ve gained a few experience points.

The chick I really thought was fine at Lansing Eastern was Sonya Blair. She was this black chick from a middle class family, tall, beautiful, intelligent, and all that. She sat right behind me in Mrs. Sage’s English class but I was too scared to talk to her even though she smiled at me from time to time. On sweetest day I sent her a rose but I only signed it anonymous and like a dummy I never told her it was from me so I got to watch her walk around the school carrying the rose but other than that it was just a waste of money. My five year plan to eventually strike up a conversation with her never panned out so that went nowhere.

About five years later I got the phone number from this other chick I went to high school with. Her name was LaSonya Ware (I swear before God and Mr. T I’m not making that up.) She also was a tall black chick but she was from the ‘hood and had some rather ghetto mannerisms. She’s no Sonya Blair, I thought, but the her name kind of rhymes so I guess this is the no-frills version, maybe it’s almost as good. I called her up and gave it a shot.

Not similar. . . Not even close.

LaSonya Ware invited me over to her house and neglected to tell me (as I’m sitting there making myself comfortable with a 40 oz. Colt 45) that she had a boyfriend living with her!!! How do I know this? Because as I’m sitting there just chillin’ like the proverbial villian, this dude uses a key and just walks in the house! He sees me and his first question is who the fuck is this?? (a question which I was glad she answered because I was actually stumped my damn self.) Not a class act this chick, I ended up excusing myself when they started arguing and what I learned from the deal is don’t try to get with some chick because her name rhymes with that of some other chick who you really liked.

The real deal (Sonya Blair) ended up getting married and I’ve only seen her once since. The Janky Meal ended up having kids by this dude who got a 40 day sentence for beating her up (if I remember the story correctly). I’m getting way past the original point of the story which is yes relationships are fraught with peril and high school is where it tends to starts in earnest. If you need to give you son some advice “D” let him know not to settle for a chick with a rhyming name because that’s just asking for trouble.

One of the best things about blogging is that you have to test your mettle (no, not metal TB, down boy!) Back in the old days if you thought you were smart or that you were upon Right Knowledge you could either just sit back and stew in your own brilliance or you had to actually leave the house to find someone with whom you could intellectually spar. Well no more! Now all you have to do is make the occasional post and people will jump on your blog and call you out!

I say this because The War Professor answered my Dostoevsky question in the negative. I said I wasn’t sure if the Russian author had meant “Crime and Punishment” as a critique of socialism and The War Professor hit back with a resounding no which is probably right because Dostoevsky was actually persecuted as a socialist. It’s also possible that he might have become disillusioned with the movement based on some of the remarks made by his characters in “The Possessed” (alternately titled “Demons”) but I admit I’m only speculating. It would help if I had actually studied literature.

This brings me to my point which is I won’t shrink from a battle but I acknowledge that The War Professor is more educated than I am so I’m liable to slip. I feel like a street brawler matched up against an Olympic boxer. For example the War Professor says:

About your ethical riddle: it makes me cringe when professors pose questions like that, because it implies that an answer is impossible. It’s not–what answer you come up with depends on what ethical philosophy you espouse. 

If you’re a utilitarian like Bentham, your philosophy is “the greatest good for the greatest number,” so you MIGHT agree to kill her.

See, I was gonna hit back and say that wasn’t Bentham, that was Spock who said that. But then I remembered the Vulcan’s words were actually “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” It’s similar, but not quite the same. I barely avoid embarassing myself there.

I like divergent views because they force me to see The Other Side. A good debate should be like a good boxing match, you throw punches and take shots until the final bell is run and then you bump gloves at the end with each side retaining respect and even mutual admiration the other. The debates I don’t like are the hissy fitters and cusser-outers which I would liken to dirty fighters who rabbit punch and jab thumbs in the eye. War Professor is a class act so these things are not going to be an issue.

My point is debate-wise there is no better way to learn your weak spots than to find your position attacked. If I sustain an attack and survive I learn better how to defend myself next time. If I am attacked and lose I have to regroup and think about what I’ve done wrong. If I lose and find that there never was a way for me to win in the first place I will be obliged to alter my point of view. In any case I am better off afterwards than I was before. I think that’s what Malcolm X meant when he said he got his Masters Degree on the streets of Harlem. Oh hell, here I got speculating on historical figures again. I think I’m inviting attack.

Every so often in the pool league you will play an opponent with a physical disability of some kind. Rather than having an easy time as some might expect you will find that these can be some of the most tenacious players you will ever face. I can only imagine that these players take it as a personal challenge to overcome these obstacles and show that they can be just as good over even better than the normals other players.

Last year my team played otherly-abled people three times and we took a beating. The chick in the wheelchair took two out of three against us, the man with one arm won all three, and the guy with a hook for a hand got all three as well. This kind of stuff wrecks your average, it ruins your self esteem, and it will leave you wondering aloud like my sub did last year if you should go lay your arm on a railroad track so you too can have a hook for a hand.

So last night as our opponents filed in at Leroy’s Classic Bar and Grill I saw the guy in the wheelchair and I thought not him, not him, dear God not him. I didn’t ask who I was playing but when the other team’s girl played first and another guy played second I thought to myself here it comes. Sure as ships when I went to rack the balls he wheeled out to the table. Relax Mike, just chalk up and play.

They guy shot well but I shot better. I played some good safes which are especially hard to answer back on from a sitting position but when the guy got out of the chair and leaned on the table I had to keep from shouting NOOOOO! After I won the first game he wheeled back to the table and told his teammates “I guess I shouldn’t have shot so cocky.” He clearly expected to win all three.

I ended up taking two out of three games so my fear of playing the physically disabled is at least partially overcome. I’ve gotten over the hump, so to speak (this part would have been funnier if I had actually played a hunchback). My opponent’s average which had been higher than mine goes a little bit down and mine goes a little bit up. My two wins totalled 18 points minus the 8 he got for beating me equals ten. Oh, since his average was higher than mine he had to spot me a ball a round which means I got three handicap points so as far as the stats go our roles are reversed. Now where do I go apply for a parking sticker?

I’ve been re-reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” and I’m surprised to have happened upon the answer to an ethical riddle. The question which was asked in philosophy class I sat in on once was “Is it ethical to kill one innocent person if in doing do you save the lives of ten other innocent people?” At the time I was first confonted with that question it seemed to be a case of the ends justifying the means. You wouldn’t like to do it, I reasoned, but it would be the right thing to do.

Doestoevsky’s novel confronts that logic head-on with his protagonist Raskolnikov contemplating the murder of a stingy old pawnbroker woman so that her hoarded wealth can be used to benefit a thousand needy souls, thus blotting out that one sin. He continuously turns this idea over in his head, apalled at the ghoulishness of it but time and again he arrives at the same conclusion.

“No, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it. Granted, granted there is no flaw in all that reasoning, that all that I have concluded this last month is clear as day, true as arithmatic. . . My God! Anyway I couldn’t bring myself to do it! Why. . . why then am I still. . .” 

When you think you’ve got the answer to an ethical question and there’s still a bad feeling in your gut you’ve probably got a flaw in your reasoning. In this case the reasoning supposedly justifies the murder of an innocent (if contemptible) woman due to the good that can be accomplished by helping the needy thereafter (please note I refrained from saying “so everyone can get some of her booty”).

The flaw in the reasoning is the premise that a person’s need gives them a moral claim to someone else’s money. It is this premise that Raskolnikov uses to justify the sin of the murder itself. The one murder will be outweighed by the good that is done when the wealth is resitributed to the poor who so richly deserve it by virtue of their being poor. It is when this idea is taken to its logical conclusion that Dostoevsky reveals the true horror of such a worldview were the ends justify the means and force takes precedence over mutual consent.

Whacking an innocent old woman in the head with an axe, as entertaining as that might seem, is not justifiable on any grounds. Tearing one person open so that four might feast off his innards is not an ethical way for human beings to act. Poverty is not a vice but neither is it a moral value which entitles one to the profits or work product of another. Simply put there is more need in this world than there are resources so if wealth redistribution and force are our moral premises then we must all fight each other to loot and redistribute until we’re all beaten up and equally poor.

I’m not sure if Dostoevsky intended his novel as an argument against socialism but that’s what I saw in it so there you have it. Argue if you must that I’m like Bruce Wayne seeing a bat in every ink blot but wealth redistrubution by force is unethical and this novel clearly shows it. Is there a flaw in that logic?

Chanel 5 news in Akron Ohio posted a story about a mother who attempted to jump off a bride with her six year old daughter. The police showed up on the scene and grabbed the woman before she could jump and arrested her for child endangerment. The child is safe now so that makes for a happy ending. I would have done it differently though. If I was the cop I would have jumped out and said “Hold it!” then grabbed the child from the woman and then said “Ok now go ahead and do what you gotta do.”

I was someplace last night watching a game of poker in progress. It might have been Texas hold’em, I’m not really sure but it was a game in real life which is the only way to play it, damn the internet gaming industry that keeps spamming my blog. Part of fun is just being there in the smokey environment watching the cards get dealt out and listening to the trash talk at the table. Old school hustlers are interesting to observe but there’s no way you could have convinced me to get in on the game. I would have been eaten alive.

I think it is unconscionable that you can be prosecuted for private gambling but that the state runs a lottery and sanctions casinos for the purpose of generating tax revenue. If gambling is a crime then the state is a compound criminal for both running the business and imposing a monopoly on the practice. That’s why I like seeing a local card game or money put down on a pool game. If I win $20 on a bet I don’t have to deal with the government sticking its hand out as if they put in on this. Damn that, if I lose the $20 I’m not looking to the government to recoup my loss so if I win they’re not entitled to my money either.

That’s another reason I don’t play the lottery: I would rather if I lose a bet that my money remain in my neighborhood than to disappear into the government machine. And the odds on the Lotto are stacked in the state’s favor whereas the local guy playing me in pool or cards is matching wit against wit and even odds on the luck factor. That is true gambling rather than what the state does which is to just sit there and suck blood because there is no way for them to lose when they set the terms.

That plus if I win $20 in a pool bet I don’t have to deal with my opponent making me choose between getting paid over the course of many years or taking an immediate payout with a huge penalty. That’s worse than shady, that’s just dirty pool.

So I’m at Leroy’s last night and there’s this dude there who is flaming, flamboyant, whatever you want to call it. We’ll say he was fancy. Well fancy-boy is singing scary-okey and got all the female mannerisms, an awful voice, and he looks gumpy. He’s the kind of guy where you go hey, if I was even thinking about being gay I wouldn’t stick nothing in that! Anyway the dude is singing terribly and flouncing around so we’re all doing the right thing which is to laugh at him. No harm done, we can all peacefully coexist as long as you understand that if you’re deviant and bizzare you’re going to get laughed at.

I play pool, play video golf and shoot the shit with the regular crowd. The “D” and I follow a pair of tits around the bar that might or might not have been attached to an entire person, I’m not sure as I couldn’t get my eyes off the breasticles. Later towards the end of the night I make a trip to the restroom. I usually leave this part of my stories out because with all the beer-drinking it’s implied and plus who wants to hear about what goes on in the pisser? But here is the where my story gets fucked up.

Any dude who’s been to Leroy’s can tell you that the bathroom has a urinal that’s about two feet wide and it’s got a stall with a toilet. Bathroom etiquette dictates that if you go in and somebody’s at the urinal then the place for you to go is the stall with the toilet. While a two foot wide urinal is technically wide enough to be used by two people at once, guys don’t normally want to stand side by side with their junk hanging out and standing too close in case somebody’s spraying gets out of hand.

If both the toilet and the urinal were occupied you might could get away with being the second guy at the urinal in the case of emergency but you would have to accompany it with an explanation like “Aw dawg I’m sorry but I gotta go now or I’ma piss on myself”, but I digress.

I’m at the pisser and this fruity guy comes in and SPITS in the urinal that I’m using. He didn’t spit from normal distance either, he bent his head down right near where I got my junk out and spit into the pisser with his head at about my waist level! Then he unzips and stands right next to me at the urinal even though the toilet stall was clearly unoccupied! I say “MOVE mothafucka, this ain’t no communal. . . ”

To my amazement, he just stands there pretending to piss as if I hadn’t said anything (we’re here, we’re queer, we don’t want any bears). This is the biggest affront. In ‘hood ethics if you directly challenge someone and they simply turn their back and ignore you, they are basically saying you ain’t @#*& and you’re not even worth a response. I should have knocked him out but short term justice can lead to long term consequences so I simply zipped up and left.

When I got back to the pool tables I immediately start telling the story to Ken and Dave. I’m not telling it quiet either because I’m outraged! As I’m telling what this mufa did, he gets right behind right when Dave says WHO? I point to the guy and say THIS MOTHAFUCKA RIGHT HERE!!

One again I describe what happened all the while pointing at the troll. I’m not talking to him but rather talking to Dave and Ken about him. At this point he says “I wasn’t trying to hit on you” (not the point) “I was -”

“STOP! STOP!” I turn to him. “DON’T SAY ANYTHING TO ME! THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN SAY TO ME THAT. . . . UUUGHHH!!!”

You see, I didn’t say anything homophobic. I’m not homophobic, I’m just scared of gay people. The guy ended up sitting down because I was giving this look in my eyes like I was about to snap. I wasn’t really going to but I know how to give that appearance and it shuts up people who aren’t willing to call your bluff.

The point was not that he’s a flame but that in bringing his activities to Leroy’s he is upsetting the social norm. We can take having George Michaels on the mic, in the restroom is another matter. That’s not the way we do things there. I would expect him to clown someone else if they were to go to a gay bar and act flamboyantly straight. What a night. I think I need some coffee.

I was reading an article in the Detroit News this morning about Detroit residents finding suburban jobs inaccessible due to transportation. It’s one of the things that struck me when I first started driving to Detroit for my job. I’d look at the neighborhoods and say where do people around here work? I’d see houses, churches, restaurants, and hairstyling places but I didn’t see any place I would care to work. Apparantly all the good jobs are in the suburbs.

I’d see lots of abandoned buildings and houses that looked like a scene from Iraq (not capping on your city “D” just trying to describe the problem.) This is the issue that was being addressed by the News article. This quote jumped out at me:

“Unregulated employment growth has social and economic consequences. It means black households are isolated from employment opportunities,” said the study’s author, Michael A. Stoll, a public policy professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

If the blame is being placed on unregulated employment growth, I think it’s safe to assume the author is advocating regulated employment growth.

What does that mean? That companies will be require to open any new offices in the troubled areas? Or is it a tax break for those who voluntarily do so? If companies are not opening up businesses there it must be for a reason. Is it even advisable to compel business to open up shop in neighborhoods where the local Subway sandwich shop is bulletproof and even the local denizens are wary about making a trip to the corner store?

Perhaps instead of regulating business to bring the jobs there the people who live there should do what everone else did: flee. Bugging out for you own good doesn’t mean you don’t know where you came from. Perhaps you know only too well.

Flee like Barry Sanders did from the Lions when he knew they weren’t in it to win it, like Tina did from Ike. Like Nichole tried to from O.J. When unemployment, crime, and lack of good transportation are major issues what more reason do you need to look out for you and your loved ones? The Motor City is no longer a Mecca for people seeking jobs in the automotive industry. Those days are long gone and it’s time to adjust. The reason people flocked to Detroit fifty years ago is the same reason they should leave now: jobs.

Move to where the jobs are, even if you have to room with friends or relatives for a while. Malcolm X said there are two kinds of people in the ghetto: the half that works and the other half that live parasitically off the first half. That’s not a burden I would be willing to bear. Don’t stick it out waiting for the jobs to come back. They won’t. I can safely say this because the government is trying to make it happen and we all know how effective government anti-poverty programs are.

Move anywhere. Move to Lansing. It’s more multicultural here anyway. And then maybe one day when The City starts to empty out new businesses can creep in and start redeveloping Detroit block by block. And not because the government says to it but because it will one day become economically feasible.