hey, maria shriver and susan g komen, beggars can't be choosers, but philanthropists can be punch-you-in-the-brainers.

designer charities...

what the what?

you know, i'm against breast cancer. further still, i would very much like to help out the developmentally disabled.

so when some charity or organization puts together a run/walk, or some other such thing, i am happy to consider offering my time and effort to draw attention to the cause, and even donate some money.

now there are a handful of orgs out there that are smart enough to go a little farther, and make the PR event something really really big. for example, susan g komen foundation has their three day, 60 mile walk for breast cancer, and maria shriver's best buddies challenge has a 100 mile bike ride for the mentally disabled.

great ideas!

it doesn't cost anything to walk or ride a bike, no matter how far, or for how long. cuts the overhead down to like nothing, plus these ludicrous distances and time frames will surely draw attention to the event, consequently the cause, and in turn bring in lots of donors.

where do i sign? says i.

sixteen hundred dollars, please. says maria shriver.

twenty-three hundred dollars please. says the ghost of susan g komen. or, more likely, says nancy g brinker, as the ghost of susan g komen rolls over in her grave.

we'll take whatever help you want to offer. says every person actually suffering from these or any other incurable disease or disability.

look, you a-holes, if i'm willing to be a tool in your little PR scheme to get donors for your cause, i actually shouldn't have to donate any money, what with me doing all the work and all. so if i'm still willing to donate some money to the cause, and do all the PR work for you, then whatever i want to donate should be just fine with you. don't tell me i can't help you unless i pay you an unreasonable amount of money for the opportunity to do so.

my god, between the majority of the population not donating anything to charity unless the GAP gives them a t-shirt to show off their fancy pants good will, and the charities themselves demanding that nobody can participate unless they have the means to become upper class by the time they show up at the event, it's a wonder god hasn't smote us yet for our incredible lack of compassion for our fellow living things.

you know, i can go to a surfrider beach cleanup event, and they don't make me pay shit, plus when i am done, they still offer me things like t shirts, CD's concert tickets, bumper stickers, reusable grocery bags, hats, magazines... the list goes on.

and what's cool about that, to me, is that i can go help out this cause, and they don't ask me for money, and i don't have to take the things they offer in return, and even if i did, they aren't things that scream to the world, "hey, look at me! i donated money to a cause, and in return i was physically rewarded for my 'donation', which was whittled down to almost nothing by the corporate middleman who is taking most of it for itself, and getting a tax kickback on the rest!"

and don't tell me i that the ghost of susan g komen, or maria shriver are offering me an experience i can't get anywhere else, and that is worth the ginormous "fundraising commitment".

let's use the shriver event for an example. first of all, your overhead on the event itself is nothing. volunteers are providing all the legwork (literally), and the post event party is being held at hearst castle, a state park. must be so hard to book that location... when your husband is the governor. and as for the band, and BBQ, let me guess, the food was donated, the servers/cooks are also volunteers, and the band is playing for free (and they probably suck). and as for the final piece of the puzzle? the part where this is all put together, and money raised? well, apparently the participants are also doing all the fundraising, and as for setting the whole thing up? once again, her hubby probably helped secure permits, and getting a band and a BBQ together isn't exactly difficult. one person with a cell phone and a BBQ could do that in the span of a standard workday.

"oh, but dave, shriver is doing 2 of these events, and one of them isn't in california, where she is first lady of the state"

true, dissenting voice in my head. the other event is in new england, starting in boston, and ending at the kennedy compound.

now those locations must have been hard to book... for a kennedy.

look, i can ride my bike up highway 1 for 655.843 miles, if i really wanted to, and on the way i could stop at hearst castle, take a tour, grab a burger for lunch somewhere, and maybe see a (good) show later, all for under $50 (the registration fee, or non-refundable cost of even attempting to participate in the shriver event), then give any amount of money i can afford to help out breast cancer research, or the mentally disabled, and know that that money is going straight to the source.

and so, i am proposing the circus' first annual (or whatever) any K ride/run/walk/swim/eat/(fill in the blank) -athon against designer charities and their corporate partnerships.

there is no entry fee, there is no fixed distance, amount, etc you must donate, complete, or overcome, and there is no particular charity you have to donate to.

all you have to do, is do something awesome that shows a willingness to sacrifice your comfort for a cause. go jog around the block, for all i care, see how many donuts you can eat before you throw up, see how long you can hold your breath underwater, but while you do it think about the cause you want to donate to. now obviously it would be better if what you were doing had some loose connection to the cause you were donating to (using a wheel chair all day, to support amputees, or playing beer pong with o'douls to support mothers against drunk drivers, for example) or had some interesting quirk that drew attention to you (jogging in a sequined unitard, or putting on a monkey suit and climbing every tree in your local park, you get the picture). but i won't dictate the commitment, because that goes against the storied tradition of the circus' first annual (or whatever) a.K.r./r./w./s./e./(f.i.t.b.)-a.a.d.c.a.t.c.p.. the only thing i deem necessary to be a part of the a.K.r./r./w./s./e./(f.i.t.b.)-a.a.d.c.a.t.c.p. is that you do something interesting and unusual (to your normal routine, or lifestyle) with a charity in mind, then you donate money straight to that charity, receiving nothing in return, except some sort of proof of donation (a receipt/confirmation email/thank you card, not a t shirt, coffee mug, gift basket).

if i can get enough people on board for this, maybe the circus will provide some t shirts for this event (that you will have to pay for, at cost, because if i gave it to you just for participating, or if i made any money off of it, it wouldn't be in the spirit of the a.K.r./r./w./s./e./(f.i.t.b.)-a.a.d.c.a.t.c.p.).

but here's what i can give you in return: for every odd thing you do for your charity (and i must have proof that you did it, take a picture, shoot some video, whatever, it must be hard evidence), i will match your effort (so long as it doesn't physically harm me to the point of outside medical care, cost me a large amount of money, or break any laws or morals deemed by myself to be just).

how's that for incentive? that ought to up the ante.

and so it was... the (fill in the blank)-athon was born, and it was good!

butterflies under glass. to an anonymous friend: an open letter, that turned into something more universal.

here's what i think ails you, and forgive me for simplifying: social networking is the cause of, and solution to, all of your problems. think about it, if not for facebook, would you have felt connected to all those people? or even had the opportunity to be? (well, yes, but pretty much, no), but on the flip side, how many updates do you wade through daily about how so-and-so is "having a great time with the wife/hubby/girlfriend/whatever", or how they "just posted new pics of the baby", or how they "love the new job!", or how they "just bought the cutest bedroom set for the new place" et cetera, infinitum, ad nauseam?

here's where a little cynicism goes a long way: most people who are facebook/twitter excited about things that can only be exciting if you get excited about conforming to societal norms (follow?) are full of shit.

and this is where a little counter culture relieves a lot of stress: say you have 150 "friends" and each one posts an update, on average, 5 times a day. on average, i'd say 1 out of 10 people has a day interesting enough to update their status twice, and that person is too busy doing interesting things to do so. therefore factor out interesting persons (numbering 15, based on my math) on the grounds that they actually fall to the low end of (or off) the posting curve due to being too busy getting awesome. your list of "friends" has already been reduced to 135 people who are not doing anything particularly enviable, and can't wait to tell you about it. multiply by 5 and thats 675 posts about how completely great it is to live a completely normal and bland existence so long as no one can accuse them of being more than one standard deviation from center.

but you are not that friend.

you should be mr 1 out of 10, too busy getting awesome to have to filter out the facebook noise, or report back to the web-o-sphere about living life in the slow lame.

and insert counter culture in 3... 2... it's ok not to care about other people.

that is, it's ok not to care about who they claim to be on their social network.

is this counter culture? not to care about other people? absolutely.

most of the time we wander about the real world not caring about actual people, then get on our social network, and care way too much about their facebook/twitter profiles.

anything can be made to seem interesting when there's no one to refute the details, and when copy/paste/delete are right at your fingertips before you let anyone read about it. if someone wants to post about pics of "perfect" them and "perfect" wifey with "perfect" baby and "perfect" labradoodle having a "perfect" day out, ask yourself...

why?

anyone important to them would easily otherwise have access to this information, thus the facebook post is merely fishing for reactions. a cry out for popular reinforcement... validation that what they are doing is ok, and a litmus test for who they themselves deem worthy of caring about, because today, who you care about is all about reciprocation. if i don't comment on your tweet, ratchet me down a notch on the friend-o-meter.

but you know what? if you don't care, it doesn't make you a bad person. and i'm not saying that people who happen to conform to, or fall into, or actually enjoy the things deemed normal by society are boring, or invalid, or wasting their lives. i'm saying, if you are really excited about your baby (new car, etc), then great, i'm happy for you. if you're really excited about me being excited about your baby (job, etc) then why not invite me to meet this baby, or take me for a ride in this car, or tell me all about this job over a drink. and if we are not willing to go that far, then we have to admit that we just don't find the same things exciting, and on those points, it's not necessary to force feed one another the "good news", nor is it necessary for us to force ourselves to pretend it's exciting to us personally (ergo i can be happy that you are happy, but i don't have to be happy because of why you are happy).

i will tell you right now: you don't care what i did today, and if i posted about it (wait, aren't i... i mean, this is...) you don't have to comment on it to be my friend, and i have no right to judge you on whether or not you do so.

here's my tweet for today "up at 5. all work and no breakie, make dave a dull boy".

and i don't want your comments on that. if i had to receive feedback on that useless nugget of my life, i'd rather it be, "sorry, dave, couldn't comment on your idiotic tweet because i was: having spectacular sex/learning conversational pashto/interviewing for a spot on the first manned mission to mars, and there's no reception: in the sub-basement levels of the white house, for security reasons/atop the amazon rainforest canopy/in the uncharted tunnels of the french catacombs, and besides my hands were: sticky from all the meringue in maddona's hottub/broken when i failed to land that ski jump over the low flying helicopter/wrist deep in a birthing indian elephant.

let's get flowery (because you know what? i heard some smarty pants professor say that language in the texting age has evolved for the better, because flowery metaphors are being edged out for more efficient rhetoric, and fuck him). imagine each one of us is a petal on a blossom, and as we grow, we find ourselves connected to other petals, and eventually this group of connections will bear fruit (not kids, but, umm, lets say "compassion"), and if we step back to see the bigger picture, there are innumerable blossoms growing from each little twig on each branch of the big tree that is our world. kinda cool, right? we are all connected, in one way or another.

well, some asshat has convinced the world that the tech age has created that tree.

ASShat.

tech networking has done no such thing.

imagine now that we are all butterflies, and we have the ability to flit about on the warm summer breezes, and like the monarchs of the santa barbara mesas, we occasionally conglomerate in small groups, large swarms, or even hordes that block out the sun.

then you bought your phone, or opened your facebook account, or started twittering, and that's a pin.

a pin stuck through your self.

and now we are all butterflies pinned under glass with a little labelmaker 140-character description posted below (order: lepidoptera, species: ego singularis, domain: cyberspace, diet: corn-based artificially flavored nutrient supplemented amorphous food logs, bacon, ranch dressing), and we may have a few friends in here with us, or maybe we don't, but most of our friends are under a different piece of glass, across the room, or even just next to us on the wall, but contained, and partitioned off from us, and we're all screaming for attention, crying for help, but there's no one listening in this big old dusty room, anymore (did i just metaphor up the death of "god"? i think i just did. goddamn, i'm awesome. i mean ___damn, i'm awesome.). and we aren't questioning what happened to the world we were promised.

fuck, man, why aren't we questioning what happened to the world?

instead we are screaming, "this is awesome! u should c my glass box, its way better than urs! imho, lol!"

we think this is the world. we think that if someone cool told us this is right, then to feel like it's wrong is our mistake.

not so.

don't do that to yourself.

but herein lies the conundrum of the social network.

if i feel happy for you, but not with you, i still want to tell you. maybe just a little note, 140 characters or less, and maybe i wouldn't usually have the time stop by and tell you in person, or send you a hallmark card, but i can certainly take the time to post on your wall. because you know what? i love you, and that's the least i can do.

so where does the world go from here?

is it ok to accept that the absolute least we can do is good enough, if we do it for as many people as possible, as often as possible?

or is it better to do a little more, a little less often?

and whichever the case, is tech networking helping or hurting the effort?

that question was not rhetorical, because this time i don't have a smart ass answer...

* * * * * * *

p.s.- an anecdote about the usefulness of facebook:

last year, when i was on facebook, i received lots of "happy 30th birthday" comments from close friends and family alike, on or around august 16, when facebook alerted my friends list that it was my birthday. some of those friends and family have been in my life so long that we actually graduated highschool together, some have even participated in throwing me birthday parties over the years, and the family? well, what can you say about family :) so for all those lovely birthday wishes, may i say: i'm not 30, and mid august is not even close.

mayor of roubaix, france wages war on mayor mcCheese. declares, "you promised we would eat cheap crap... you lied!"

and who pays the price?

the mayor of flavor country (that's you, stupid!)

the mayor of roubaix, france has filed a lawsuit against quick, a belgian fast food burger chain that came to being when a quizno's franchise raw dogged a mcdonalds out back behind the long john silver's, and offers such delectable comestibles as the long bacon, the long chicken, the long fish, and the long painful shit.

i say, pick your battles, and don't pick on the little guy!

france is the king of fine cuisine, america is the king of fast food. you wanna fight the fast food industry, you pick on someone your own size, france.

the good ol' US of A is good at two things, eating insane amounts of nasty crap in one sitting (sidebar, we are also pretty good at sitting), and repeatedly penetrating more respectable cultures with our giant figurative ameripenis.

quick is a feeble showing in the fast food market when compared to america's more overtly sexual long john silver's, in-n-out burger, and wahoo's fish taco. sadly, quick missed the obvious sexual reference when they opted against the marketing slogan, "stop in for a quickie", whereas bold american fast food offerings such as, "finger lickin' good" and "if it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face" seem one step away from declaring "pop in for a nooner, we'll get all up in them guts" or "stick it in your mouth, then we'll go to the bathroom where it really gets rough". and while the big mac has become so synonymous with large cock, that customers have been known to find condoms under their crinkle cut pickles, quick's softy banana hardly smacks of raw passion and greasy meat between your buns. hell, quick ads have some cheesy soccer player happily autographing a hamburger bun, we got kim kardashian licking ranch dressing off her nipple in the bathtub! when it comes (cums?) to fast food, you can't outsex a country that has secret menu items called the mcGangbang, and "animal style". why we haven't invented a strap on dildo made of pulverized hamburger and fried potato is beyond me at this point (i call it the double bacon penetrator, and it's patent pending, as is the spicy chicken penetrator, capt'n tasty's wee willy fish fingers of passion, and the deli select artisan paninitrator. these are the jokes, people. if you ain't laughing, i got nothing else for ya)

but the veritable vacuum of sexual prowess exhibited by quick has nothing to do with why the mayor of sexe de bout, france is suing them. no no, it's the impending void of disease ridden, knuckle, bowel, and beak meat in their sandwiches.

oh, france, you complain about american cuisine, but when it all comes down, you are the namesake of our fast food staple, the julienne fried potato (or freedom fry, if you will). though you may mock a country where arby's roast beef sandwich offers fully 9 variations of it's basic roast beef before vegetables enter the condiment spectrum (is horsey sauce a vegetable?), lettuce and tomatoes trumped a whopping 4 times over by hot nacho cheese, when quick burger decides that they will switch from the traditional fast food offering of ground lips and assholes on a bun to halal meet only, well, we certainly see your true colors, don't we? oh, when it's time to insult the americans, you bleed blue white and red, but when your greasy meat pucks are at stake, it's the good ol' red white and... blue. uh, anyway.

in case you don't know what halal meat is, it's a lot like kosher. basically, you have to know where the meat came from, it can't be nasty parts of the animal, or something that you had to rinse feces off of, or come from an animal that lived or died inhumanely or unnaturally. so what we might consider free range, grade A, organic beef in the states would fall short of halal only because it hasn't been blessed in the name of allah.

quick has decided to switch to all halal meat in france because france has a large muslim population, but this apparently doesn't fly with mayor mcFromage. he thinks that a restaurant that wants to serve a certain kind of food is discriminating against people who don't want to eat that food.

huh?

so an oyster bar is discriminating against people who are allergic to shellfish? and pubs are discriminating against recovering alcoholics? (actually those two would be more like how a burger joint in a muslim neighborhood in france that refuses to serve halal meat is discriminating against muslims, if one were so inclined to cry discrimination, mr mayor). are mexican restaurants discriminating against people who feel like mediterranean tonight (anyone else feeling like mediterranean tonight?)? is best buy discriminating against the amish? are george clinton and the parliament funkadelic discriminating against yodeling fans?

what are you, simple?

this restaurant can serve whatever kind of food it wants, and if you don't like it, don't eat there.

that's how a free market works.

if i want to stand on the corner and offer to step on your testicles for a dollar, that's my prerogative. nobody's forcing you to pay for my services, though, so quit bitching. and don't sue me because you'd rather have some angry dominatrix in stilettos step on your testicles (anyone else feel like having an angry... ah, i'll just check craigslist), and certainly don't sue me because i'm a muslim, and you hate my people and want us to live miserably until we all die off.

but this story shouldn't come as much of a surprise from france where there has been a growing anti-muslim attitude in the cheese and menthol scented air.

so let's bring 'er on home, shall we?

france loves nasty, questionable fast food, and don't want to healthy up for nobody, nohow.

france hates muslims for seemingly no reason at all.

france is law suit happy.

france prefers food with names that sound like novelty dildoes.

france is america?

tiger woods made the oldest mistake in the book: he got married.

but he ain't a sex addict.

tiger woods has grown up a lot since he recently took a break from knocking his balls around.

he has negotiated a reconciliation with his trophy wife, he has converted back to buddhism, he is seeking therapy, his eyes have become chronically red and teary, and he has admitted to being a "sex addict".

mosteligiblemarriedmanontheplanet, say what?!

sex addict, he says.

i disagree.

first of all, sex addiction is not a psychological disorder as defined by the american psychiatric association's diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (it's a page turner). some "doctors" hope that the impending revision of the manual will include hypersexuality as a mental disorder, but full disclosure requires me to mention that i don't put much stock in a book that once listed homosexuality as a mental disorder, and calls obnoxious spoiled brat syndrome ADHD so they can sell prescription drugs to toddlers.

so, definitional parameters of the APA'sDASMOMD aside, let's consider what sexual addiction has meant in recent years...

a married man cheats on his wife.

were you waiting for more?

because there isn't.

hypersexuality is what people claim they have when they get caught fucking around on the side.

i couldn't help it, i have a disease.

spare me.

hell, wilt chamberlain fucked just about everything with a hole in it (prolly even some bitches from cleveland), and he's a legend, considered one of the best (little known fact, he also played basketball quite well). what's the difference between legendary beaver hunter wilt the stilt, and depraved sex junkie "swingin'" tiger woods?

chamberlain wasn't married.

nobody had to chase him down like the terminator and bust through the back window of his car because he told some cocktail waitress (no, really, she was going to be an actress...) that he wanted to beat that stuffin' up.

now i'm not saying it's wrong to get married, and i'm not saying it's okay to cheat.

what i am saying is that

a) wanting to have sex with multiple partners is not a mental dysfunction. it can't be. a mental dysfunction must be something that goes haywire with our natural programing. as living creatures on this planet, our greatest natural instinct is to create and preserve optimum conditions for breeding and expansion of the population of our species (don't believe me? then tell me: why is suicide illegal?). having sex with multiple partners is step one in creating optimum conditions for breeding, but do we really need to have the birds and the bees talk right now? it may not be kosher, or moral in a modern civil society to fool around on your wife, and it's never cool to be disrespectful to people with regards to sex (unless i, um... they like it... call me a bitch! say it!!), but the desire to have many partners is perfectly natural.

b) stay out of tiger woods' business, dick.

the only reason tiger is claiming to be a sex addict is because he is now forced to explain to the world why he would do such a thing, and frankly it's nobody's business but tiger and elin, and their two genetically perfect super babies.

and let me tell you one more thing...

if any of us was in tiger's position... if you or i was some hunky mulatto, stanford educated, bazillionaire athlete, with a flawless smile, our own classy but casual clothing line, and a fully loaded buick lacrosse that runs on pure charisma, i'd be willing to bet that more than most of us would either have done the same thing tiger did, or we would have gone the wilt chamberlain route, but very few would be doting mr mom types, who slog around our 7,000 sq foot mansion in ratty house slippers and tell the waitress at applebee's, "thank you for writing your phone number on your cleavage so i could see it when you bent over to refill my beer, but as you can see by my wedding band, i am a happily married gentleman, and after i inform the manager of your lascivious behavior, i will need to be calling my wife to apologize for engaging in conversation with a woman who attempted to lure me with her tender, impure flesh". hell no. you're tiger damn woods.

but that's just the problem.

he's tiger damn woods.

even if he did tell the waitress he was happily married, etc, some TMZ douche is still there to take a picture of a waitress with her tits in his face, while he talks to her, and when photos of tiger damn woods show up on TMZ, harvey levin is gonna be there suckling out of his over sized novelty 80's water bottle like some emaciated hairless rat, throwing out asinine "too cool" comments like, "tiger should have taken a mulligan on that one. or whatever. is that what they call it? a mulligan? i don't know anything about golf. i mean who watches golf anyway? like, old people?" guffaw guffaw guffaw from the painfully unironically unhip "journalists" in the room, "yeah, uh, like richard nixon," guffaw guffaw, "richards nixon's like, old and stuff," guffaw guffaw, "so what did john mayer have to say about it?" "hey i'm john mayer, and that nigga fucked up... it's cool i got a hood pass, but i don't fuck with no black bitches, cause my body is a wonderlaaaaa-a-ah-and."

sorry, i just sort of spun off into my own little TMZ skit right there.

back to the point.

here's how we make this tiger woods thing all better,

1) as a society, we shouldn't have this bizarre unnatural expectation that everyone is going to get married and have 2.5 kids and a dog, and a big house with an SUV in the garage, and that they will be happy with that. if people want to be swingin' singles, let them be swingin' singles, everybody finds happiness in a different way.

2) people who know they like them some sexual healin' don't get married, but especially don't have kids. that creates an ethical and moral quagmire.

3) as a society, don't accept things that go against a social norm as dysfunctional outright, and as someone who gets called out for going against a social norm, don't play victim and hide behind some "mental disorder" that you can't control. it's time to take some responsibility for our own lives. your kids are obnoxious brats? sack up and be a parent, damn it! don't just dose them and say it's a disease. you like fuckin'? marry someone you like to fuck, or don't fuckin' get married.

4) stay out of people's business, and don't be hypocritical. it's none of your concern what tiger woods does with his personal life. he's a public figure when he's at work, not any other time. chiding him for his sex life makes no more sense than scolding him for sleeping in too long, or skipping breakfast, or lifting with his back, or worrying if he's having regular solid bowel movements. and even if his personal life does leak out into the public eye, as is bound to happen, don't hassle the man. how would you like it if you got caught running a red light because you were talking on your cell phone (dialing and driving is illegal here in california, for you non-CA readers), and suddenly you were rushed into some press conference where people were pulling out all kinds of pictures of you talking and driving, and one time you were even eating a burrito with one hand, while you steered with the other, and people were calling you reckless, and telling you about how their sweet baby daughter was hit by someone who was talking on the phone while they were driving, and throngs of disappointed friends and family were shouting their disdain, and your legal advisor whispers in your ear, "tell them you're addicted to multitasking, and the danger of driving with one hand really gets you off."

well, now we're just getting ridiculous...

aren't we?

where's your god now? a peek into the wonderful world of missionary work.

today, 10 american baptists faced a haitian judge to find out if they would be held to trial in country, or shipped back to the US to face charges of child trafficking.

real nice.

go down to the crumbling third world country under the guise of salvation (whatever that meant at the time), and then try to smuggle a bunch of children into the dominicanRepublic to sell on the black market.

i discovered this story on news hour, where the slant was partially biased toward neutrality (if that's possible), in that key details were left aside to make it sound like things were more up in the air. sort of like, "this is what we know, and this is all we know. we won't say anything else that might incriminate." but world focus had a lot more details, and it doesn't look that great for these bible beaters.

what the baptists referred to as "spiriting away" the "orphans" to a better life comes across more like kidnapping when you look at the details...

exhibit A: many of the children had families (some even still had living parents) to take care of them. one of the girls even says she was telling her captors that she was not an orphan and she wanted to go back to her parents, and was told in response that they were only taking her to the DR for a vacation. another child was wearing a sweater clearly marked with symbols used by the rescue workers to indicate that he was not an orphan.

exhibit B: these children were being kept in a shelter that could be called squalid even in comparison to what they were living in in the immediate wake of the earthquake. this is your salvation?

exhibit C: the children were not fed (not even a baby so young that she was not yet weaned from milk) while in the "care" of these particular good samaritans.

exhibit D: let's forget that the border patrol stated for the record that these children were being taken to the DR to be sold at 10 grand a head. we'll forget that because this statement was not qualified, and might simply be an assumption based on past incidents. let's talk about first world entitlement.

even if these children were being "adopted" and taken to a "better" life in the states, you can't just assume that children in poor or developing countries are public domain like so many soiled couches on college town curbs.

you can't just go down there and pick out one you think is real cute and take him home.

they're not just growing on trees down there, or falling off an assembly line. they have parents and families, too.

and you have to check these details out before you just stuff them in your carry-on and head home.

beyond this idiotic notion that undernourished brown babies are fashion accessories to prove that you were really there like a henna tattoo, or a puka shell necklace, who the fuck told us that our life is so much better?

scant days after the earthquake hit, some family in washington state had "adopted" some haitian siblings, and brought them back to the states. at this point in time people were still digging screaming victims from rubble with their bare hands. most rescue workers hadn't even hit the shore yet, and these kids were being "rescued" to a life where suddenly, rather than a mat on the floor and bare feet, they had boxsprings and mattresses and down comforters, and nikes in every color.

is this a better life?

a better chance at a good education, sure. a better chance at growing up healthy, maybe (we'll see how this healthcare thing pans out).

but there are serious faults in our lifestyle that we overlook. namely down comforters and nikes in every color.

a child in haiti would be beside herself if you gave her $100, but when she comes here and learns that $100 is just a pair of designer jeans for this year's back to school wardrobe, what have we done to her?

parents could put their children through the best schools in haiti with what the average american parent spent on one child's xmas haul last year.

the american hero is a farce, the american lifestyle is deeply flawed in its own right, and these so called pious good samaritans we've sent down there are nothing but selfish, entitled a-holes with no common sense, whether you think they are criminals or misguided do gooders...

if they thought they were doing the right thing, they have to live with the fact that all that religious dedication and they still have no idea what "the right thing" means. if they had criminal intent, they have to live with that the rest of their lives, in or out of prison.

at this point, i only have one question for these idiots:

where is your god now?

...chocolate rain!