Recently in growing up Category

I started my most recent tattoo last week. It's a big one. It's my 7th. I started getting tattoo'd when I was 20, and I've never really looked back. I've had pieces in magazines, placed in contests, and had internationally known artists work on me.

Then I read this article. Basically, according to Mr. Carpenter, I am a subhuman freak. On par with prostitutes, pimps, people with mental illness, and ancient tribal people. Frankly, I was offended by what he said. And I'm not offended very easily. While I understand everyone doesn't appreciate or agree with my choices of self-expression (my parents being in that category), it certainly isn't mutilation. And putting the artists in quotes, as to infer that they aren't indeed talented artists? I'd like to see him attempt to draw something with a vibrating pen on a squirming person.

But he can't. But he's too busy making broad judgments. Like assuming that Mike Tyson's face has anything to do with my ink (it doesn't) or that, in his own words, "No one can deny that the heaviest concentrations of tattoos occur in the lowest segments of society -- prostitutes, pimps, pugs, prison inmates, Ku Klux Klansmen and the members of street and motorcycle gangs." (they don't).

So basically, in Mr. Carpenter's world, I'm a freak. And yet, on any given day, Mr. Carpenter would have no idea I'm the kind of person he knows nothing about, yet feels the need to chastise. Heck, he may even think I'm a nice family man. As stated by one of my favorite bands, Good Riddance, "hatred is the stillborn child of ignorance and boredom". Sounds like Mr. Carpenter has too much time on his hands.

Well, tomorrow is the start of my new round of daddy-duty. With Mamma beginning her legal career, and Cash starting daycare, I've now become the Norcross Child Shuttle Service. I'll be bringing the boy to daycare in the morning, picking him up after work, then making dinner for the family. No more sleeping in, or getting to the office around 8-ish. Nope, it's schedule time! No snooze button. None of my famous "5 more minutes" that I've pulled since the 6 am swim practice at the age of 8. Nosir, it's daddy time.

I can't wait. While he'll basically be too young to know, this is my chance to introduce him to some of the things I like. Music, sports radio, and just chattin! Since the birth, Mamma has done most of the child-rearin, with me doing a majority of the working. Now with her working as much (or more, at least for now), it's my time to pitch in. And considering my child is quite possibly the best baby in modern history, that should be cake.

Hillary won Pennsylvania tonight. Which, from what the people who know these things have said, make the race viable again.

Hooray. More time spent on things I don't care about.

I'll just come out and say it. I don't care about the election. I don't care about the candidates. And, to be honest, I don't care about the system anymore. It's not a red vs. blue thing. It's not a liberal vs. conservative thing. I've come to this realization lately. The system is broken beyond repair. So whomever wins, whether it's Hillary, Obama, McCain, or Burt Reynolds, is just perpetuating the same BS that we've been force-fed since...well...as long as I can remember.

For those of you who care to expand your historical knowledge, I recommend the book Everything You Know Is Wrong, edited by Russ Kick. It's quite the eye opener. Now granted, I've always loved to read and learn about the other side of things. History, sports, life in general. Because as we all know, history is written by the winners. But I'd like to know what the losers had to say.

We're all playing with a stacked deck. The machine, as Abby Hoffman so eloquently put it, moves on regardless of who's in charge. Parties no longer matter. Ideals no longer matter. Too much is at stake, too many people have a vested interest in things staying as-is. Do you know that many large corporations pay little or no taxes? That the "activist" shareholders of Washington Mutual had to fight to have the recent sub-prime write downs factored into the executive bonuses? Or that Merrill Lynch paid out more in bonuses ($37 billion) than they did in profits last year, even when they had to adjust down billions upon billions of bad debt? What's wrong with this picture? And why aren't people upset?

More people care about abortion than they do about healthcare. About immigration than government spending. About the price of fuel than the fractured education system.

I know I sound bitter and angry about the whole thing. You'd be right. But the thing that I'm most upset about? That I'm in the minority.

With tomorrow (today) being Easter, I like to sit back and think about all the hypocrisy that I'll deal with tomorrow. You see, I am going to church with the family. My father is a protestant minister, and my mother is Irish Catholic. From the age of 11 until 23, I was an atheist. Nothing to do with my parents, because they are good people, not to mention incredibly liberal (my father HATES the religious right, and my mother is pro-choice).

But back to my point. I had a 'experience' when I was 23 that changed my perception of life. I came to believe in god (notice the lack of capitalization), but here's where it starts and ends: There is a god, and I'm not it. Anything beyond that is someone else's ideas. And I'm not really into other people's ideas. So no Christianity for me, thankyouverymuch. And tomorrow's zombie celebration (religion or not, rise from the dead = zombie. That's how it works) will be filled with a bunch of people who assume, by my attendance alone, that I agree with them. And I don't.

I deal with this at work, and in my life, more than I'd like to admit. How often have you just stood aside and allowed a policy or a decision to be made, without even voicing a single thing about it? It's one thing to have a discussion with co-workers or friends and be out-voted, or if nothing else the disagreement mentioned. But to say nothing? Does that mean you agree?

Think about that before communion.