When you're drunk, you lean every way

If you have been following this blog for a while, you have probably come to certain conclusions about me, allowing you to paint a mental picture of the man who is KP.  Aside from the obvious godlike physique, unerring fashion sense, sword, and accompanying choir of scantily-clad feminine angels, you most likely have come to think you know my personality and tendencies.

At least this level of awesome.

From the easy jokes I drop about Limbaugh, Bush, God, and "the Man," you might well assume I am a dyed-in-the-wool, uncompromising liberal, a left-wing pinko kook with pie-in-the-sky notions and a dim view of reality.  *Insert over-the-top caricature of a liberal that I could not find on Google, weirdly.*  And in terms of actual politics, I admittedly skew blue.  But when it comes to my world-perspective?  Your feeble mind has no doubt forgotten how I outright advocated ass-kicking to stop bullying, blatantly idolize Captain America, and actively oppose political correctness at any opportunity.  It's not my fault conservatives just make better targets in general.

Ahem.

Truth to tell, there are plenty of liberal stances, practices, and vocal dipshits that raise my blood-pressure just as much as right-wing dumbassery.  I am an equal-opportunity critic, and I call 'em as I see 'em.

So we may as well start with the more obvious bullshit, right?  I hate what I have come to dub Yippie Trends.  These are, in the most general of terms, fads that seem like hippies must have come up with them on some drug-fueled bender, only to have them adopted and spread by yuppies, the perennial clueless fuckwits of American society.  Eager to conform, mindless in their pursuit of the Next Big Thing, they will latch onto anything, leech-like, and make it their own without the slightest attempt to understand what the hell they are doing.  This ranges from propounding the superiority of anything "organic" (read: brownish and/or cardboard-like), to deciding, sans medical consultation, that they are acutely allergic to wheat gluten (which, by the way, is not the same thing as intolerance, which, by the way, only afflicts a minuscule percentage of humanity), to breastfeeding their offspring until child protective services intervenes.

I live in a world where this is a thing?  Really, God?

I mean, in all seriousness, look at the image above.  That.  Is.  Disgusting.  It is not a matter of opinion, let alone medically justifiable.  And the first person who breathes the word "natural" gets a frontal lobe adjustment, courtesy of my electrified knuckles.  Tell me 20 years ago most Americans would not have said, "Um, excuse me, what the almighty flying fuck is this about?"  Now, however, we have become desensitized to improbable feats of anything-goes dipshittery that do not so much fly in the face of common sense as chloroform it, bend it over a hazardous waste skip in a Bangkok alley, violate it, then blow a gonorrheal load in common sense's unconscious face.   Case in point?  Most people can see this cover on a reputable national magazine and laugh it off, if they don't take it seriously. I cannot do either.  I am not being prudish about the bizarre indecency, I am the fool pointing out the emperor has no clothes.  The fact that this cover was published at all is sad enough; the fact I have to point out that it is mind-fuckingly ludicrous borders on criminal.

This child-rearing style - and, yes, we have styles of those now, not just philosophies - is called attachment parenting, and its entire purpose is, as the name suggests, to make your kids attached to you, "attached" here meaning "codependent and most likely maladjusted to society."  There are easier ways to keep them living in your basement into their late-20s, ladies.  Simply introduce them to Dungeons & Dragons and MMPOs at a young age.  Then again, they will achieve pariah status pretty quickly when they tell their horrified fourth-grade buddies that they "just got off the nip" three years ago, so the consequent social stigma should force them back into your loving arms faster than you can say "Oedipus complex."

Then there is vegetarianism.  In theory, I have no problem with this choice.  You don't want to eat meat, fine.  If the thought of cuddly cud-chewing bovines bleeding turns your stomach, go ahead and abstain. You are doing so solely to placate your own conscience.  And that's A-OK by me.  But before you get up on your soapbox, let's make a few things clear: (1) what you are doing is not inherently healthier, nor (2) is it "more natural" than a balanced diet.  Strand a human being in the butt-fuck wilderness and see what it eats to survive - that's our natural diet.  Animals eat other animals, plain and simple.  For the love of the Mouse, even The Lion King conceded this point-blank, in a world where half the sentient, talking, lovable characters would devour each other.

Classic.  Yeah, I'm man enough to admit I like Disney cartoons, what of it?  Notice how they all just kind of drop the subject without further comment?  In their world, there are no easy answers, so they have to carry on and pretend the incredibly disturbing scenario that would have happened if Simba had shown up five seconds later never occurred to them.  If the fauna all around me sang, danced, and made witty pop culture references willy-nilly, I would feel a lot more conflicted about them dying to feed me.  But here's the thing: they don't.

Keep it classy, PETA.  And sexually-confusing.

Honestly, is the above image supposed to conjure up subconscious cannibalistic impulses or bestial ones?  Good message, either way.  Anyhow, my point is this: Is consuming two McDeathables five days a week normal and healthy?  No, of course not.  But is it less-natural than subsisting on soy imitations of meat products and half a dozen supplements?  Not much.  As far as I have read, there is no substantial statistical evidence that vegetarians on the whole live longer, healthier lives than people with inclusive, well-balanced diets (not the average American's diet).  This is not to say I haven't enjoyed many a delectable vegetarian meal myself, but we homo sapiens have canine teeth for a reason, people.   There are obviously ways to be very healthy-conscious while maintaining a vegetarian diet.  It certainly beats a meat-exclusive diet, despite what the United Carnivores' Council of America may tell you (it consists mostly of uppity lions, wolves, and Ted Nugent fans).  The problem is that many people are under the illusion that going vegetarian is health-conscious in and of itself.  Simply by avoiding meat, they proclaim, you can enjoy immortality in peak physical condition from atop your moral high horse of self-righteous sagacity.

Or, y'know, the food chain.  Either way.

Well, guess what?  You have to plan this shit out.  You have to compensate for the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients you're not getting from meat-products one way or another, either by learning a certified ass-load of information about the content of non-bleeding food or popping lots of supplemental pills.  You want to eat half a pound of peanuts per day to get your protein intake up?  Knock yourself out.  I have enough on my mind without thinking about the precise nutritional value of everything I shove in my craw.  While I will admit there are some exceptions, do a quick mental sketch of the average vegetarian.  Robust?  Rosy-cheeked?  Able to lift that sack of lentils they will subsist on for two weeks?  Once more, I will defer to my colleague, the eminent social commentator Ronald White.

Have you ever seen a healthy-looking vegetarian? They look like shit! They're all gaunt and yellow. After a while, their bodies become intolerant of other things. I'll give you an example: I was out to lunch with a comedian friend of mine, and later in the day he said, and I quote, "I feel nauseous and I have a headache. That soup I had must have had beef broth in it." Your system's kickin' back broth? You're a manly man, aren't you?

Sad but true.  Most of them have 5% body-fat and they can run, and that's about it.  They'll go like the fucking Energizer bunny, at least until the anemia sets in.  For contrast, I can bench-press my own body-weight 15 times, without regular weight-lifting, and most of my major muscle groups are apparent, not because I have no flesh to speak of, but because they actually stand out.  *Insert LMFAO-inspired joke here.*  Carrots and tofu did not do this.

As usual, I side with Cap on principle, but Deadpool is kinda how I feel inside.
*NOTE: I did not make up those captions, I just cleaned them up.  Really.

On a side note, you vegetarians out there have to realize what would happen if we all suddenly bought into your paradigm.  Millions upon millions of cows, pigs, chickens, and sheep would first overrun the world, then starve to death over the course of an agonizing few months, barring a spontaneous evolutionary event, a Planet of the Livestock, if you will.  Either way, they all die, so I think I am doing my civic duty as the apex predator of planet Earth, albeit vicariously.  As for vegans . . . you're just doing it to piss me off.  Stop it.  Kind of like activists who enjoy drenching unsuspecting meat-eaters in blood.

In fact, that brings me to my next point.  While protesting is actually a method of mass-annoyance used by all sides, I believe it is most-closely associated with the left-wing, probably because when people hear the word "protest," this springs to mind:

Patchouli, not showers.

Protesting is one of those things I have mixed feelings about, but one of those feelings is definitely please-get-a-goddamned-life in tenor.  On the one hand, protests like those of the angry, active citizen's heyday - the 1960s and early '70s that Dr. Hunter S. Thompson lauded - clearly helped achieve a lot, from expanded civil rights to America's withdrawal from Vietnam.  You know, after the fire-hosings and thousands of casualties.  Still, kudos, for sure.  Conversely, just last year we had Occupy . . . Anything, a surprisingly broad-based, widespread, months-long series of loosely-connected rallies, marches, and sit-ins that championed, by its own definition, the overwhelming majority of America's populace.  As mostly represented by wannabe hippies, lemming-like yippies, posturing hipsters, and confused hobos.  Which achieved precisely jack-shit.

Down with stuff we don't like!  We want more other things!

I hate to be the one to say it, but the main thing we got out of the Occupy movement was the term "the 99%."  A buzzword.  A few memes.  That's about it.  A sizable, very vocal proportion of the masses stood up for the rest of us and declared to the powers that be, "We want something new!"  And the powers that be said, "Oh, yeah?  Well, fuck you."  That was the end of that.  So, I think the last shred of faith I had in protesting as a facilitator of change died at that point.

It was already on life-support, admittedly.  As an example, I am going to bring up the bogeyman, the white elephant of casual, non-politicized blogging: abortion.  I am not weighing in on the subject itself, nor disparaging any particular views on the issue.  Seriously, though, the people who protest this are just sad.  You are passionately committed to your cause?  Great.  Go do something that actually furthers it.  Believe it or not, most pro-choice people, and even neutral parties, are aware that there is an opposition to abortion already.  It gets the occasional news coverage.

In my town, the unmarked but universally-recognized abortion clinic typically has between 1 and 11 (but never more than 12) people standing outside of it on the sidewalk silently touting signs.  Way to go, active citizenry, you are really striking a bold blow for your ideals.  Just keep standing there for another few months and the institution you oppose will surely crumble.  The same could be said of most causes, on either side of the fence.  If marches and incoherent chants make you feel better, protest away, but unless you plan to light yourself on fire, understand that most of the people in charge are just waiting for the rabble of easily-led nut-jobs outside to disperse, à la any South Park town hall scene.

Since we are talking collective action and the Occupy campaign, let's take a moment to address the economic models liberals love to wax intellectual about.

I never realized it was so simple!  Thank you, not-John-Nash-Junior!

First off, we need to make some semantic distinctions here: capitalism is purely an economic system, communism is both an economic system and a form of government, and socialism is what lies somewhere in the gray space between.  None of them are, as a rule, mutually exclusive of one another, despite what Bill O'Reilly or Bill Mahr might tell you.  Want proof?  I refer you to the example of any country anywhere on planet Earth in the history of ever.  None exists as a pure model of its respective proclaimed preference.  Much as all men know all women, especially hot ones, are bisexual on some level.

I submit my irrefutable evidence.  And that Katy Perry song.  (Don't ruin it for me.)

But I digress.  Just because you are not fabulously wealthy does not mean capitalism "doesn't work."  Don't get me wrong, I hate corporate greed and corruption, the disproportionate wealth distribution in this country, and the way the system is rigged to perpetuate the status quo as much as the next dirty, starry-eyed liberal.  But I am not under the delusion that capitalism itself is out to get us.  It works just the way it is supposed to - the problem is the way it works is kind of meant to screw over some people.  But it is a very human system that plays on human mindsets and tendencies, so naturally some parts of it suck donkey testes.  That was basically the thesis of one of my numerous papers in college, slightly better-worded and less-blunt, and I got an A on it, so you can message me if you want to read the long and roundabout version.

They smile because they know death is coming coon.

Capitalism is as capitalism does.  It is human nature, and anyone who denies it can give up their iFollow 5.0 DS.  In fact, if you are out tagging street signs with sociopolitical agendas, odds are you are mostly pissed off that Daddy made you drive his used Acura instead of that brand new hybrid you really wanted.  You are not a communist or an anarchist any more than I am the Easter Bunny or Carson the Flag Day Aardvark.

However, on the flip side, communism is not a devious instrument of the Fallen One either.  It never ceases to amaze me how people still let leftover Cold War propaganda inform their view of the modern world (*coughDickCheneycough*).  If you are one of those people, catch a ride on the clue train: we won.  It's over.  Not because the USA churned out more pants-shitting nukes, not because Ronald "the Messiah" Reagan cleverly outmaneuvered Gorbachev in the international superpowered pissing contest, but because communism isn't a viable form of government.  Especially when your bloc's main domestic industries are snow, vodka, and forms of insanity.

In point of fact, communism might actually work out great, if it weren't for the pesky humans running it, who have a bad habit of turning into James Bond villains.  Just ask North Korea, Cuba, or China, the only countries that still claim to be communist, even though it's pretty obvious one comrade isn't equal to another in any of those places.  But we aren't going to become those countries, even if we decide to, Red-White-and-Blue God forbid, socialize medical care.  This is not something to fear and bemoan and demonize.  No matter your opinion, all sides need to make like a pole-vaulter and get over it.

A sexy pole-vaulter, for preference.

While we are on the subject of things hippies like to whine about . . .

I am fully in support of a careful, progressive, well-regulated decriminalization of marijuana.  Do you know why?  Not because of the sinful waste of tax money and civil servants' time, not because of the bajillion pot-related cases clogging the court system and resulting in overcrowded prisons.  Certainly not because I give a skeevy stoner's munchie-induced fart about the moral/ethical ramifications of punishing people for smoking down.  It's because I am sick of hearing "cannabis enthusiasts" bitch and moan about it like it's goddamned slavery.  What kind of society would stop us from smoking weed?  What is this, Nazi Germany?  Next, they'll be rounding us up and shoving us into rehab centers at gunpoint!  Shut the hell up.

There, have I offended everyone now?

There are worse things happening than the Man slapping a joint out of your hand.  And stop trying to dress it up in other terms, oh righteously baked ones.  You want marijuana legalized because you want to legally smoke marijuana, period.  You are not trying to rectify some obscure form of racial injustice, revive the long-suppressed hemp industry, selflessly help cancer and AIDS victims, or save the fucking world via ganja-magic.  You want to get blazed and sit around moronically laughing at nothing with your buddies.  Nonsmokers can cite those other reasons.  End of story.

This does not qualify as a talking point.

It is not a "lifestyle choice," it's a habitual indulgence, not that different from drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, no matter what you keep telling yourself.  None of these quasi-arguments holds any water with anyone other than your own circle (pun, like, totally intended, man).  If you want to smoke weed, that is your prerogative, but stop pretending it is some sort of noble crusade.  And, for the love of Jay and Silent Bob, stop reading High Times, it does nothing to help your case.

All right, so this article may not have turned out quite as right-leaning as I intended at the get-go.  Just as murder will out, true colors will show.  If you don't like it, feel free to orally service a copious quantity of male genitalia.  After all, we didn't create the Internet for you, rednecks.  A followup on this topic may be forthcoming, depending on how much I want to polarize my readership.  Stay tuned . . .

KP, out.