Catbox

I get mail.

Lately I’ve been getting a lot more nice fan mail than usual.

I’ve gotten quite a bit of email lately from folks who say they’ve just discovered Stonekettle Station, usually through a link from some form of social networking, and that they enjoyed something I wrote.  A couple of my recent essays got spread far and wide, in particular Also, Nazis! and Mitt Romney: A Simple Test of Character, and that seems to be the cause behind a sudden spike in my inbox volume.

Thanks for that.

Especially the nice lady on Facebook who offered to have my children. I appreciate the thought, but I’ve got it covered.  However, if I was a Republican I’d be all over that like a conservative Cahleeforniah governor on his housekeeper. 

Oh what? The guy is a member of the pious holier than thou party, he knocked up the maid, and then kept her and the resulting child in his own house with his wife – and he was surprised when the wife figured it out.  It’s never too soon for that joke. Never.

Anyway thanks to those of you who took the time to be thoughtful and well spoken. I try to reply to as many of you as I can, even if it’s only a quick one-liner.  But sometimes I just can’t find the time to get to each and every one. Life, you know, tends to interfere. Even if I didn’t respond to your email, I am grateful to all of those who take the time to write.

I also get email from people who are, shall we say, somewhat less appreciative of my viewpoint and essays.

Typically I just delete angry mail after reading the first line, if that, unless the crazy seems to be of the extra special crunchy variety.  I’ve got to be honest, sometimes I enjoy those even more than the fan mail.

And occasionally I get one of those that addresses issues I’m already thinking about and essentially summarizes the loony crap et al resident in the rest of the hate mail.

I like to answer those gems publicly:

Somebody posted your blog stone kettle kitchen about Mitt Romneies character on facebook…

Stone Kettle Kitchen.

I see a number of daily search hits for that phrase.  Usually from Yahoo!, which seems to be the wingnut search engine of choice.

Also, some folks need to be a little more discriminating with the Facebook friending thing, I’m just saying.

... I guess you think your pretty cool with your ugly squint face and that stupid hat. What are you thinking some kind of clint libwood? 

Ugly. Stupid. Clint Libwood. Honestly, you couldn’t work in “retard” and a racial slur or maybe a comment about my sex life? No swiftboating?  Frankly I don’t think you’re really trying here.

However, that said, I do want to thank you for so clearly delineating your level of mental maturity right up front.

That way I don’t have to feel bad about what comes next.

I tryied to comment but my blog keeps disappearing. I guess you would rather listen to your "echo chamber" even thou I wasn't a "d#ck."

Pet peeve: if you’re going to live in the 21^st Century with the rest of us, learn the goddamned terminology. 

I blog. You comment.

If you’ve got a blog that keeps disappearing, you need to talk to your platform host. Writing me about it gets you nothing except public ridicule.

OK, two pet peeves: People who bleep out the bad words.  I was in the navy, welcome to Liberty Hall, you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard. Hell, you can call the cat a fucking asshole for all of me. She might rip your head off, but it’s not like you’re actually using it for anything anyway, right?

The rules of my site are clearly posted. Here’s the rest of it, articles more than three days old are automatically moderated by software. This significantly reduces the amount of effort required on my part to deal with comment spam, trolls, drive by assholes, and other unsavory characters such as yourself.  When you attempt to post a comment on a moderated post, the blog clearly tells you that your rambling illiterate gibberish is awaiting moderation. That means my software dumps the obvious spam and queues the rest for me to look at before it’s allowed to post. Since I usually have the internet with me wherever I am, I typically review your comment immediately – unless I’m engaged in wild jungle monkey sex at that very moment, and sometimes even then because I’m nothing if not there for you. 

I get a lot of comment spam, and to be honest sometimes I just can’t tell the gibberish from black market Viagra spam posted in Lithuanian.  It all looks pretty much the same to me and to be blunt I just don’t care enough to put forth any extra effort.  It seems to me the extra effort is something that ought to be on your end.

So anyway, if your comment adds to the conversation I allow it to post, otherwise I dump it in the trash along with the aforementioned spam, troll droppings, empty pudding cups, and your mom.

Every once in a while, I miss a valid comment in moderation or the software makes a mistake.  I’ll fish it out eventually. Be patient.

I’ve addressed the “echo chamber” comment elsewhere, but here’s the thumbnail version: I don’t like you. I don’t like how you behave. You irritate me. You irritate my cat and since my cat is an unerring judge of character, and she thinks you’re an asshole, I bow to her opinion. You can’t spell. You can’t form a coherent sentence. You’re an abrasive idiot. You demonstrate a cognitive malfunction and an intellectual misfire every single time you open your mouth. You think that quoting Rush Limbaugh and/or your particular Holy Joe is a valid substitute for having an actual functioning brain of your own.  Here’s the bottom line: You just don’t meet the minimum standards for membership in the conversation.  You can’t even get the name of my website correct despite the fact that it’s clearly printed in giant black letters on the top of every page.  So why in the hell would I inflict you on the other patrons? 

Now, upon occasion I do allow a trollish comment to post and remain on the blog.  I do this for two reasons, 1) it amuses my rather odd cat, and/or 2) because it underscores the point or points I was trying to make in the post.  For example: I write a post about homophobes, homophobes show up and claim they’re not homophobes and then proceed to make homophobic comments.  QED. Win on two counts, the cat’s happy and I’m happy.

That said, despite the fact that I cannot and will not suffer fools gladly, I am not a socialist liberal communist Nazi hater of America. I am, in point of fact, a free market capitalist.  And to prove it I will allow your deleted comments to post – for a fee. Yes, that’s correct, the liberals I’ll let post for free, you on the other hand are going to have to pay.  I think you and I can agree that it doesn’t get any more Republican than that. The price is $1000 per comment, cash, in small bills, payable in advance.

…Very well Mister Wright, you right very good and you have lot's of adhoring fans but the devil also speaks with a silver tongue and has lot's of fans just like your "messiah" Oblammer.

Look, here’s the thing, your screwy Iron Age religious beliefs are your problem, you’re not going to make them mine. This is nonnegotiable.

And really, The Devil? That’s your argument?

C’mon, seriously? You’re kidding, right?

Horned goat demon snake man hiding down in the fiery  bowels of the earth. Where are you from? The 14^th Century?

I don’t need the threat of some medieval holy man’s vision of eternal damnation to scare me into behaving like a decent human being.  The simple truth of the matter is this: If you need that threat, and the promise of some eternal paradise after death, in order for you to not be a dick in this life, well, you sort of are a dick anyway, aren’t you? Also, on the face of things and given history, that threat works about as well as the one parents use to keep in the kiddies in line around Christmas time.  The difference being that a lump of coal is real, Hell isn’t. Just saying.

Look here, I didn’t sell my soul to Satan in return for facility with words, instead I work at my craft. I write well because I’ve spent a lifetime learning how to acquire, analyze, and present information. I realize you think that’s unfair but look at it this way: if your version of reality is true, you suck so bad at the basic mechanics of putting words down on paper that even the devil himself apparently can’t help you. That’s hardly my fault, that’s all on you, Buddy.

…The signs are lcear we are entering the End Times. You have to be a clusless fool to turn your eyes from that.  If you call yourself a Christian you know that even the blacks are leaving the demoRATS because they don’t want to vote for evil Hussien Oblammer who believes in gay marriage and abortion…

Even “the blacks” are leaving… 

Ah, I see the problem. You’re mixing medications. All by itself undiluted Rush Limbaugh leads to irreversible brain damage and a marked shriveling of the frontal lobes.  But mixing Rush with distilled Anne Coulter in a Talk Radio Speedball is just plain toxic. You risk permanent blindness, copious drooling, and an overpowering urge to snort cocaine out of Karl Rove’s ass crack.

I’ve got to hand it to you though, for a guy who’s obviously operating with severely reduced lobage and in a limited cognitive framework, you managed insult my hat, call me ugly, and work Satan, abortion, and sparkly gay marriage all into the first paragraph.

No wonder my cat thinks you’re an asshole.

…if Mohammid Hussein Oblammer is elected again by you liberal idiots there will be revolution!

Like Dance, Dance, Revolution?

Oblammer knows it because why else would the facists homeland security have been building up their supply of ammo by over 500%? Mitt Romney is right we need to get this lieing muslin out of office before he makes any more treason on the constitution which he keeps changing with one “executive order” after another and new admendments. . Oblammer can’t fix what’s wrong with this country when he says ok half of so-called takers to free loading from the makers America can only be saved by putting God back into the schools and governmetn, because…

OK, stop right there.

For crying out loud, just stop.

Hell and sunfire, I think I need a drink. Or five. 

The cat has stopped calling you an asshole and is now sitting in her litter box using words that make even a retired Chief Warrant Officer blush.

You’re making my head hurt, and it’s not because you’re so sophisticated you’re hard to understand. Honestly, you think like a monkey with a head injury – and that’s probably an insult to brain damaged monkeys everywhere.

Makers. Takers.  Excuse me a minute while I go make water and take a piss on my copy of Atlas Shrugged.  Enough with the Ayn Rand already. It’s a science fiction book. A really crappy science fiction book. Why don’t you just go get your brain scrubbed down at the local Scientology mother-ship and have done with it. Shut the hell up about Ayn Rand.

Frankly, at this point I’m starting to suspect that you don’t actually know anything about your government at all. And by at all, I mean like at all.

In fact, I’m starting to think you learned everything you think you know about the United States from watching reruns of the Back To The Future trilogy, only you thought Biff Tannen was the hero. Because unless you really are a monkey with a head injury, I simply can’t fathom how you could be so astoundingly ignorant. 

Citizens are the heart of a democracy, which sounds like a great idea until one realizes that by definition half the population is below average in the brains department.  Some are way below average

And it’s not like average is all that great of benchmark to begin with.

You would make George Washington despair for the future of any republic and weep in frustration at the utter futility of it all.

Look here, you can’t “make treason on the constitution.” However, that “revolution” you promised? See, that would be treason.

And you can’t amend the Constitution through executive orders.  Executive Orders only apply to, wait for it, the Executive Branch of government.

The president can’t give you an executive order unless you actually work for him, he can’t give Congress an executive order, he can’t give the Supreme court an executive order, he can’t give state governments an executive order. Because, and stick with me here, that would make America a dictatorship by original design – and really, don’t you think the Framers would have noticed that when they penned the Constitution in the first place?  

One thing I’d point out, the Second Amendment you so like? Not the part about guns, the other part, the bit about militias?  Used to be the president couldn’t give the state militias executive orders either, but then a conservative congress gave a republican president that exact authority with the willing complicity of the state governors – including Mitt Romney.  That wasn’t Obama, Biff.   Obama just inherited that authority from his predecessor. 

You ever wonder why the National Guard is fighting so much of the current war? Under command of the federal government? There you go.  Be sure to thank Mr. Small Government States’ Rights Mitt Romney for that, won’t you? But really, I’m sure you can trust everything else he says. Sure. Nothing to worry about.

Speaking of Mitt, he was right? Half the country is made up of freeloaders?

I assume you’re referring to Romney’s 47% comment.

Sigh.

Looks like Rick Santorum was more right than he knew.

I’ve addressed the 47% thing elsewhere, so has every fact checker in the world.  It doesn’t hold water. Period. But you know what? As I said previously, there is a germ of truth to Romney’s comment. That’s right. Some people and institutions that should be paying taxes, aren’t. They get the benefit of living in America, they get protection and infrastructure and subsidies and they rake in huge profits. 

They don’t make jack shit, but they take in plenty.

Yes, there’s a big group of folks who make a lot of money and don’t pay taxes. The only thing they make is bank.

Like Jesus.

You want to talk about freeloaders?

Jesus is the ultimate freeloader.

You want people to start paying their fair share?  No problem, let’s start with the churches. 

You get the TV Evangelicals and the Pope to start coughing up at the corporate rate, you get every church in America to start paying for all the tax free entitlements they receive here in this country, and then you can get back to me.

As to putting God back into government, here’s the thing: God did run the government once.

That’s right.

Christians. Muslims. Jews. Deists. Polytheists. Animists. Hindus. Holy rollers with pointy hats. Each one has had their turn at bat. There was a time when the priests and preachers, the shamans and the witch doctors, the imans and the ayatollahs, and all the other Holy Joes ran their chunk of the civilized world – and there are places where they still do. 

And what did they do with it?

Did they advance the human condition?

Did they make giant strides in science and knowledge and medicine and art and social structures?

Was peace and brotherhood the law of the land?

No.

Instead, without exception, those societies lived in technological and social stagnation and passed the time by burning people at the fucking stake.  And when they got tired of that, they invaded their neighbors. That’s what happens when god runs the government.

So no thank you. God can stay the hell out of my government. And that too is nonnegotiable.

…Gods law is absolute.

Yeah, that’s what bothers me. Laws shouldn’t be absolute. 

Absolute and inflexible laws remove any need for thought, for freewill, or allowances for the various permutations of everyday human existence.

Absolute laws remove equally the option of compassion or ultimate punishment.

Absolute laws lead, always, to tyranny.

And which laws are we talking about anyway? And which God? It makes a difference, you know (OK, not really).

But just for the sake of argument let’s say you’re talking about the Christian God, here’s something funny, those Ten Commandments? One of them is a prohibition against covetousness.  Thou shall not covert thy neighbor’s ass or wife or BMW – or especially your neighbor’s wife’s ass in her BMW.  Since coveting stuff is really the whole entire basis of capitalism (seriously, capitalism doesn’t work unless everybody covets everybody else’s stuff. Everything else pretty much follows that, just FYI) I’m pretty sure God just outlawed free market economics. 

Looks like God is a communist. Well hell, so now what?

Hey, don’t get pissy with me, this is your goofy belief system complete with numerous inflexible mutually incompatible logical inconsistencies, not mine. You got a beef, Biff, you take it up with that socialist hippy you’re so big on. Tell me what he has to say about it.

But I digress. Again.

 

If you need me, I’ll be busy cleaning out the litter box.

Like my email queue, there’s a couple of stinkers in there that need my attention.