Keeping them honest, but without Anderson Cooper's tact or reserve

Well, friends, we made it to the other side.  As I write this safely sipping my custom-mixed Bloody Mary, I am grateful another dark time has passed.  Labor Day is over, and with it the iron fist of martial law too shall unclench.  What's that?  You didn't realize we were living in a V for Vendetta-esque police state for the past few weeks?  What's that?  You never saw V for Vendetta?  Children of Men?  Or 1984?  How about Judge Dredd?  No?  Well, the remake is coming out soon.  (Most.  Necessary.  Reboot.  Ever.)  The point is, they all have authoritarian-type, er, authorities in them.  Just like we had here in the real US of A for nearly a month.  Didn't you notice the public service announcements on TV, radio, the Web, billboards, those giant light-up road commission signs counties buy just to announce slogans on, and probably in newspapers, if anyone still read those?

See, a print ad is kind of like a video, only it doesn't move.

Judging by these spots, you would probably conclude the USA was candidly announcing their intention to launch a campaign of oppression worthy of an '80s futurist dystopian political sci-fi novel.  At first, I just dismissed these as the product of my particular state's overzealous approach to crushing any kind of alcohol-related merriment or tomfoolery, like the Puritan at an Irish wake.  But then I noticed nothing in the ads specified my state, and I actually paid attention to what they were saying, more out of polite curiosity than anything else.  I gathered that the purpose was to scare me straight and/or shitless come Labor Day weekend.

I have a number of quibbles with this video.  First, not to debate semantics, but those aren't actually "excuses" so much as "tactics to avoid detection," but nice try with the English.  Second, who the fuck thinks wearing a hat or not has any effect on their driving proficiency or level of conspicuousness?  Third, doesn't that guy with the hat and Jew-'fro look like a young Adam Sandler?  Weird.

Before any of you jump to the wrong assumption, I am not some sort of anti-authority anarchist, nor one of those people whose playlist endlessly loops "Cop Killer," "Fuck tha Police," "Killing in the Name of," and similar odes to angry stereotyping.  I don't rage against the authority the police represent, though I am wary of any ordinary, average human being empowered disproportionately.  And, don't mistake me, I am not advocating drunk driving at all.  As a matter of fact, I have even discouraged it in an article extolling alcohol.  But I am opposing campaigns based largely on fear, exaggeration, and lies.  Are more cops going to be on the roads in the weeks before Labor Day to build a subconscious public paranoia that may possibly slightly reduce the number of intoxicated drivers on said holiday?  Yes, if only because it's easier to hit quotas and make up municipal budget cuts with fines.  Is there some federal directive mandating a stealth operation coordinating every law-enforcement agency nationwide to catch any and every borderline-inebriated driver, as their media blitz suggests?  Of course not.

You see, because I paid attention in government and civics class, I know the USA is not a unitary democracy, where all power flows from the top (federal government) on down to the local level like the droid control ship in The Phantom Menace.  In Great Britain, for instance, all of the police forces, from the quaint, stick-wielding county constabulary to London's badass Mossad-like metro cops, draw their authority directly from and indeed exist at the whim of the central government.  Thus, if Queen Elizabeth decides it is now criminal to spread compromising photos of the Second String King, Prince Wanker Fratboy, no one further down the chain of command is in the position to argue.  Or something like that.  Parliament might be involved.

Obviously, Her Majesty made no such decree: that's the
front page of their #1 national newspaper.

Here stateside, on the other hand, we have a federal system that reserves an awful lot of powers for the individual states.  You may recall we squabbled a few times over this issue. And even though the side that said, "Yes, actually, the federal government can tell you it's not cool to treat other human beings as property anymore" won that war, we still let states and even their smaller constituent municipalities decide for themselves what is and isn't legal on a lot of issues.  So, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a federal agency, tells us there is a massive, coast-to-coast, inescapable dragnet of super-cops being deployed explicitly to crack down on drunk driving, I can call bullshit.

For starters, none of you look remotely like this.

Bureaucratic realities and red tape aside, where did the funding for this crackdown suddenly come from?  It is a logistical impossibility, given that most police departments are presently operating on annual budgets slightly less than that of The Blair Witch Project.  I happen to live in a state where some counties can no longer afford to have more than one state trooper on active duty at a time.  One.  In some extreme cases - the very rural ones where the main crimes are meth production, bestiality, and terrifying combos thereof - our staties may be expected to "patrol" two counties at once.  Right.

He only operates in Detroit.

Did you get a multi-billion-dollar boost in funding to pay dozens more officers?  Do you suddenly possess Predator-style camouflaging technology, à la the PSAs inundating the airwaves?  Or do you have a magic drunk detector that works like a radar gun?  Then how precisely are you going to be more effective now than you were two months ago?  For the love of the L'aaaw (as Judge Stallone would say), the actor playing a cop in that first PSA says it won't matter if you are committing no traffic violations, driving defensively, and being the All-Around Inconspicuous Motorist of the year, he'll still pull you over.  In other words, it literally doesn't matter if he has absolutely no material probable cause established or even reasonable suspicion, he'll just know you have been drinking and bust you.  Seriously?  I would like to see you defend that in court.  That's the kind of crap public defense attorneys, not to mention the legal system, love to spend hours on.

"Yeah, I can't find any precedence for 'spider-senses tingling' in this state . . ."

You know what's a lot more likely?  Some council of spin doctors in the NHTSA knew that, generally speaking, most police forces try to step up their presence around Labor Day, completely independent of each other and based solely on the simple fact more semi-functional retards drink heavily at that time, and decided to wag the dog.  "Let's just tell the people America turns into a militaristic police state around major drinking holidays!  The ad campaign is way cheaper, easier, and more constitutional than actually doing that, and it may theoretically produce similar results!  As long as it's for the greater good, we can lie our asses off!"

While we're on the subject, let's dissect those ads that unilaterally declare "Buzzed Driving is Drunk Driving."  Well, not to nitpick or naysay, but no, it's actually not, that's why we coined another term to describe it.  When the law decided to legally define what drunk means, it had to lay out specific terms that are verifiable for enforcement.  In all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam (as the NHTSA proudly proclaims, like some pompous, know-it-all dick telling you how many chapters his fraternity has), that means you can be charged with driving under the influence/operating while intoxicated if your blood-alcohol content is .08 or above.  So, it stands to reason, if your BAC is lower than that, you are not technically drunk, in the strict legal sense, just "buzzed."  Win.

But by now I am used to this sort of fudged thinking being used for the purposes of intimidation and furthering a narrow social agenda.  As someone who has gone through the process of being "rehabilitated" for an "illness" I didn't have, I can vouch for the levels of bullshit they attempt to get away with.  Aside from mandating treatment for alcoholism based on one incident in the first place, the methods of said treatment are laughably transparent.  Among other things, they tried to simultaneously claim that alcoholism is nothing short of a hell-sent scourge, a civilization-threatening epidemic worse than porn, and that less than 50% of "people" drink at all, ever.  As they showed us the widespread, multifarious live-destroying effects of booze with shocking statistics, they also told us that in fact most American citizens don't ever touch a drop.

Pictured: The majority of American drinkers (and, presumably, my whole social circle).

No qualifications, no explanations, no provisos.  Because, you see, they want you to feel the alienation of social stigma, that what you are doing is not what the majority is doing, and don't you want to fit in, you dangerous weirdo?  The old Reefer Madness campaign springs to mind.

Well, sorry, you can't have it both ways.  If a catastrophic wave of drinking is the first sign of the Apocalypse, you can't also tell me almost nobody but me is doing it.  For the love of Bacchus, god of spirits, probably 80% of the adults I know drink.  Maybe not daily or even weekly, but they aren't teetotaling boors either, and what are the odds I just happen to know so many exceptions to the rule?  Sure enough, when I called out the instructor on these statistics, asking where she got them, who collected the data and how, and even what definitions they used to describe "people," I was met with flustered, indignant, and meaningless responses.  My treatment/indoctrination center could not provide a single parameter, specific, or source for the studies.

"Raise your hand if you've never drank alcohol!
All right, that's our focus group done, case closed."

Even as a college student who spent most of his statistics and research methodology classes sketching new uniforms for Captain America, I could tell someone was probably not being entirely honest, massaging the numbers to fit the desired outcome.  I smelled propaganda.  It is a classic media-spin technique, almost on par with "Just Making Shit Up."  Because, obviously, if you are comparing the number of drinkers to the overall population of the country, including millions of children, the numbers are going to skew against the drinkers, but that number is statistically irrelevant, or "fucking useless as a butter knife at a soup buffet," to use the expert parlance.  At the end of the program, the instructor had to admit everything came from a generic data bank that provided no details whatsoever about the studies it purported to represent.  Win again.

It is something I have come to expect in this nation, where drinking is starting to be demonized as a crime in and of itself, a shameful vice that needs to be weeded from our society, despite society arising from alcohol production, as I have pointed out before.  Remember how well that Prohibition thing worked out?  It has reached the rather ludicrous point where a CNN contributor asked whether it is acceptable, ever, to give a minor even a sip of alcohol, including in her article this quote:

"If parents have a liberal idea about alcohol, kids may get the wrong message," says Dr. Vivian Faden, director of the Office of Science Policy and Communications at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health. "Underage drinking can lead to injuries, fatal car accidents, risky sexual behavior, and there's also potential risk to the developing brain."

As opposed to the day you turn 21, when magically all of these negative side-effects vanish, as proven by the perceived necessity of the scare campaign I outlined at the start of this post.  Remember when your negligent parents let you taste their $9.00 table red and you became a hopeless, lifelong addict?  Of course you don't, you braindead degenerate drunkie.  That's because even minute amounts of alcohol introduced to your delicate physiology before majority, an arbitrary legal definition, target your brain like neuron-seeking missiles, turning you into a maladjusted booze monster by age 20.

Because you can never have "just one," kids.

Or so some would have us believe, despite the fact human beings have been drinking for thousands of years, and up until a few centuries ago, most did so on a daily basis from childhood onward.  These are the same people who wrote the health questionnaire I had to fill out at one of my doctors' offices.  It asked which best described my alcohol consumption:

(1) Never drink.
(2) Drink on special occasions.
(3) History of alcohol abuse in my family.

I am not even kidding, that is what it said.  Seriously.  Judge much?  And this was a hand-specialist's office.  I felt a strange tingling in one of my fingers right then, specifically the middle one.  All personal umbrage aside, this sort of blanket generalization is offensive to common sense and simple truth.  When your redefinition of something is so out of whack with reality, it is an affront to intelligent thought.  In yet another article (this one has a nice, dumbed-down video, too), CNN's Alina Cho pointed out how the latest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - the standard psychiatric handbook for what kinds of crazy people are - is changing what "addiction" means, broadening its scope to the point that 40% of college students could be classified as alcoholics and as much as 60% of the population suffers from some form of abusive indulgence and/or dependence.

Would an alcoholic waste all that perfectly good rum?

Pornography, tanning, shopping, and even gaming are all potential fixations requiring professional diagnosis and therapy under these guidelines.  And why not?  It lets impulsive fuckwits write off their self-destructive behavior, maybe getting some pills or pity in the bargain, while the placebo-pushers line their pockets with extra green for supplying treatment.  Just to be clear, these are the definitions that will be officially accepted by the government and your medical insurance provider, and we all know how accommodating they are.  Can you see how this brand of grade-A anal leakage might make me sociopathically distressed?  At what point does someone raise their hand and say, "Um, wait, what?  Are you sure the problem isn't how we define 'the problem' here?"  Wake up, America, before someone tells you that you need prescription medication to do so.

Do you have trouble waking up?  Do you describe yourself as just not a morning person?  You may suffer from a potentially serious medical condition known as Interrupted Anti-meridian Functioning Syndrome That Might Eventually Kill You, or IAFSTMEKY, and require a prescription waking aid like Awakenar (tetramazaplaxinol) to help you get up.  Ask your doctor if Awakenar is right for you, before it's too late.  Make the most of your morning with Awakenar!

KP, out.

"Dinosaurs eat Man, Woman inherits the earth."

Cue the string section, pour a Scotch, and hold on to your testicles, it's time for another edition of the code we live by, the Gentlemen's Agreements.

Save your money

Testosterone is a cruel master, I know.  It is the dick-shaped cross we males bear.  But try not to let this chemical imbalance cloud your brain, at least when it comes to your finances.  If not for your own dignity and that of our gender, then to stick it to the women who exploit this weakness, knock it off.  Unless a woman is a confirmed penny-pony, stop paying for her beauty and feminine wiles.  Avoid businesses like Jude's Barbershop, Hooters, and basically any place you are paying extra explicitly to be surrounded by hot women whose job has absolutely nothing to do with hotness.  This goes double for any guy who tips the waitress excessively for leaning over the table.  If you are going to pay for sex appeal, just go ahead and pay for the sex as well.  Get yourself a hole for hire.  Then you don't have to go through the creeping stage where you act like a horny 20-year-old who has no clue how little chance he has with his intended victim.  And the venue being a bar does precisely jack-shit to change your odds, unless she is the one drinking, as opposed to you.  Even then, don't bet on it, Cialis Man.  I am talking about yet another manifestation of the many-headed beast that is That Guy.

I spy with my little eye something rapey.

If you don't make a conscious effort to curb this instinct early on, it will only become harder (no, not that - it gets softer) as you advance in years.  It never ceases to amaze me how many dirty old men seem to be under the laughable impression that, because they are mildly intoxicated, the women around them, all of them, are much more likely to overlook receding hairlines, outdated facial hair, and beer-guts (to say nothing of wedding bands) and just go for it with Mr. Touch of Gray.  Especially when the female in question is the server or bartender.  Yes, being a tease is often an implied, if not acknowledged, part of their job, but it is precisely that: a cock-tease.  A false promise with no reward except sexual frustration.  Why bother?  Are you that desperate for hollow attention from anything with a uterus?  That's worse than throwing money at a stripper to keep her pretending she's into you.

Yeah, dawg, I'm sure she likes you for reals.

Truly, there are few spectacles as pathetic and disgusting as fortysomething men at a commercial sports bar none-too-subtly coming on to the bartender who is just out of braces and saving up for her first year of college.  Just because she's not jail-bait doesn't mean she is on the menu.  And if you "know that" and are just partaking in sexual harassment "for fun" . . . why?  I don't shamble around shady neighborhoods in urine-soaked rags pretending to be another one of society's dregs for private amusement, so why would you?  Perhaps because you are a scumbag.

She was five when you punched your V-card.

Her coy replies and half-smiles are not flirting, they are her way of tactfully telling you to fuck off back to your 10-year plan and loveless marriage, you pervy sad-sack, because she is already banging her coworker of consenting age in the cooler every night.  Trust me.

Bro-toos

This is going to be a touchy subject for a lot of you, my brothers-in-ink.  The tattoo is a risky thing, and I am not talking about hepatitis or rare forms of heavy-metal poisoning.  Those just make tattoos more badass.  A tattoo, at least if you are a man, is supposed to say something about you - don't let that something be I am a chotch who all should revile.  Chinese lettering, generic tribal patterns, and barbed wire are now the brands of douchebaggery.  It's like a lilac polo with a popped collar you can never take off without a laser skin-peel.

If you see nothing wrong with this pic, just skip this entire subsection.

I would think the interwebs have sufficiently spread this Gospel to the point everyone knows it and all reputable tattoo parlors should by now refuse to produce such work, but freshly-minted douche-nozzles sporting bloody kanji keep proving me wronger than hentai (NWSF, tee-hee!).  It doesn't make you tough, interesting, or multicultural, it makes you a tattool, if you will.

To a lesser extent, the placement of your tat should also be taken into account.  If you already have ink in half a dozen places on your body, don't sweat it when you get your next one, so long as you avoid the stereotypically-feminine regions (feet, lower back, crotch . . . God, women are masochists).  But if, like me, you are particular about how many tattoos you are going to get, consider carefully where you place that Tasmanian Devil.  Longtime comedian, anger-management failee, and social commentator Denis Leary has homed in on the calf as the location most likely to indicate a strong potential for toolage, which he describes in his Denis Leary & Friends pretty accurately.

"You got a tattoo, a Chinese symbol on your calf, which you think means 'infinity,'
but actually in Chinese means 'kill me first when you invade America.'"

Not that everything Leary says should be immediately enshrined in the Constitution, but he makes a fair point.  Having the calf tat doesn't actually make you a loser of Pauly D proportions, but odds are strangers may make that assumption by association.  Why chance it?

Cool it, turbo

Nothing screams "I am sexually insecure about something!" like revving your engine for attention.  No, it doesn't matter how sweet your ride is, though, at that point, it's probably already pretty obvious you suffer from compensatory syndrome.  The fact that the motor inside the vehicle you are operating can make loud, obnoxious sounds in no way reflects positively on you, even less so when said transport is a tricked-out 1997 Pontiac Sunfire.  Same goes for peeling out of the 7-11 parking lot.

"Whoa, did you see that?  His dick must be enormous, rivaled only by his monstrous libido!"

It's called a burnout for a reason.  You are impressing no one, save perhaps your fellow asphalt monkeys.  The only legitimate reason to rev your engine when not performing maintenance is to challenge another macho motorist to a pointless, ego-fueled, criminal, dangerous road race between traffic signals, and only then if it is a reasonable matchup where the outcome is debatable and acceptance of the gauntlet likely.

"Hey, Old Man River, you want to race?!?  Huh?  What?  Yeah, that's what I
thought, fag!  Score one awesome point for me!  I am fucking sweet!"

Nothing seems to bring out this behavior like the midnight premiere of a Transformers or Fa5t as Fuck movie, which is why the police generally camp just outside the theater lot on those nights.  Believe me, risking a reckless driving or speeding ticket does little to boost your rebel credentials.  Try trolling dark alleys for random muggers, Billy Badass.

That is all for now, gents.  KP, out.