Chicken Soup with America's astronomical divorce rate...

I recently celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary and contrary to statistical expectations, we still like each other and enjoy each other's company. My children have told me many times that most of their friends' and classmates' parents are either divorced or clearly should be. The contrast between my own success and the failure of so many others has given me an opportunity to think about all the reasons so many marriages fail. I've put together a short list of some of the more obvious reasons. Feel free to add to it.

1) Men marry women they don't particularly like and don't even find physically attractive in order to avoid being the only guy in the neighborhood who doesn't have a sex life. In America, celibacy isn't just physically uncomfortable. Men who've reached their 20's and are still virgins or suspected of being virgins are treated in an increasingly unpleasant manner by their peers. If you've ever wondered how women who look like Honey Boo-Boo's mother manage to get pregnant, here's your answer. Men who fear being outcasts will screw anything...just to avoid being teased, ostracized, or otherwise punished for not screwing something.

2) Men marry very attractive women they have no respect for, don't like, and frequently abuse for the same reason rich guys buy expensive sports cars. Nyah! Nyah! See what I have? You wish you had one of these don't you. You're not man enough to get one of these. Nyah! Nyah! What could possibly cause such a relationship of equals to fall apart? Yes...that was sarcasm.

3) Oops! I'm pregnant. Shotgun weddings are like leaking fuel tanks. It's gonna blow sooner or later.

4) Believe it or not there are still a lot of women around who won't have intercourse with their boyfriends before they get married. This used to be the normal way to do things. Today it's almost as much of a disaster waiting to happen as a shotgun wedding.

There's my short list. Feel free to add to it.

Chicken Soup asks, "Whatever happened to David Salmon?"

Whatever happened to Franklin, Massachusetts gridiron hero and all around sociopath David Salmon? To no one's surprise, I received no response to this...not that I expected anyone to take it seriously.

When I do an internet search the latest articles are from May of last year. A few months ago I e-mailed several of the reporters who covered the story, asking for a follow up. No one responded. I even called a newspaper that is headquartered in a town very close to Franklin, Massachusetts and asked for information. I was transferred three times to the reporter "who has been assigned to cover the story." I started feeling like I was asking which of the nuns in Catholic school would be teaching sex education.

Is David Salmon an ambassador's son? What gives?

The reason I'm trying to follow up on His Majesty should be obvious to regular readers. Every present and future bully and most of the assholes who raise bullies were probably aware of David Salmon's criminal behavior. What did they learn from it? Was His Majesty locked up in prison for a few years? Was anything at all done that might convince a bully raising parent to clean up their act?

The fact that no one is covering the story almost certainly means that David Salmon walked with little more than a finger wagging and a slap on the wrist.

Once again...Americans worship violent males, praise their amazing manliness, shower them with female attention, and then whine incessantly about violence. I listened to a report on National Public Radio this morning about the recent massacre in a naval facility in Washington, D.C. It was mentioned that this was the 20th mass shooting in America during Obama's Presidency. There was some loose talk about gun control, but no one mentioned the fact that violent males are treated like gods in America.

Perhaps it's time for Americans to pull their heads out of their collective asses and treat violent males as the cancer they are. Once again...what ever happened to David Salmon?

Chicken Soup offers a little advice for victims of bullying...

In my last post about Izzy Kalman, someone asked a question (September 8, 2013 at 1:39 A.M.) that deserves a post of its own. I was asked if I had any advice for victims of bullying. What can victims do while they're still being victimized? The reader specifically asked how the victims could escape and who could they trust or turn to for shelter and advice.

Until now, I haven't approached the problem from the perspective of offering advice to victims for several reasons:

First and most obvious, I think more like a terrorist than a counselor. Bullies and their enablers are vermin.

Second and almost as obvious, if I offer advice to a victim, it doesn't work, and the victim decides to take his/her own life, you can bet there will be a lawsuit. Vast legions of scum sucking bottom feeders will demand to know what my qualifications are. Do I have a graduate university degree in psychology or some similar discipline?! Who do I think I am offering advice to a teenager who may be contemplating suicide?! You get the idea. Lawyers operate under the assumption that problems are best addressed by suing the party that offers the greatest cost/benefit ratio. It won't occur to them to go after the bully or its enablers. That would be too much work with too little cash to be had.

Third...and this should also be obvious...bullies and their enablers are criminals. They won't magically transform into civilized people if a few of their victims receive good advice. The problem will be solved when the public places bullies and their enablers in the same category of hate mongering vermin as skinheads, wife beaters, and child molesters.

With that in mind...I saw a public service ad just last night involving a website called Stomp Out Bullying. I looked over their site a bit but I haven't contacted them and therefore cannot say whether or not they are effective at solving the problem. Since they spent money to advertise on television, I feel relatively safe passing the information on.

Best of luck.

Chicken Soup with the value of human life...

There's an old joke that goes something like this:

It's your anniversary and you're on a cruise ship with your wife and your mother. The ship starts to sink and neither of them can swim. If you only have one life preserver, which one do you give it to?

The answer is of course...you'd give the only life preserver you have to your dog.

This joke may be intended to make you think about who's more important to you: the woman who brought you into the world, the woman whom you found attractive enough to want to spend your life with, or a four legged animal that drools on you, chews holes in your sneakers, and urinates on the rug. It could also be just another petty insult to women, something familiar to those who enjoy mother-in-law jokes. Or it could be a reminder that your dog might really be man's best friend. As readers are hopefully aware by now, I don't perceive the world the way most other people do. I see something else entirely when I think of this joke...

It's your anniversary and you're on a cruise with your wife...and your mother?!! Why is your mother there?

Is your mother so possessive and controlling that she has to accompany you and your wife on your anniversary cruise? Is she like the mother in Pink Floyd's, "The Wall?"

Mother's gonna screen all your girlfriends for you. Mother won't let anyone dirty get through."

Goodness...what could go wrong with that kind of parenting?

And what sort of woman would marry a man who was so thoroughly controlled by his mother? Is your wife so out to lunch that she thinks this is normal? Or are these two women good friends and you're just the sucker who brings home the money? Or...and this is just my opinion...is this joke just a thinly disguised story about three very sick people who share an extremely dysfunctional relationship?

I used to sell real estate many years ago. This allowed me to closely observe how people lived, how they managed their homes, and how they interacted in those homes. I routinely encountered some very sick, dysfunctional families. More about that later perhaps...

Did you catch the most important word mentioned so far? "Relationship" is a word you hear a lot on the Oxygen Channel and on daytime talk shows like Oprah and Dr. Phil. The word "relationship" tends to get shuttled into the category of petty female concerns, but it's actually quite important. The relationship you have with others determines whether you want to save their lives or watch them drown while you pet your dog. And since this weblog features people who commit some remarkably uncivilized acts, the kind of relationship that exists between men like Eric Harris, Timothy McVeigh, Adam Lanza, and the rest of humanity is probably worth devoting a little effort to understanding.

And now for the value of human life...

The primary reason for having laws against homicide is simple. People have to be intimidated into pretending that other people's lives matter because human life has no intrinsic value. If you don't believe me, just consider all of the thousands of people who die every day without affecting your life at all. As long as you have no significant relationship with any of them, their deaths simply don't matter. In other words, human life, like gasoline, cotton socks, and crescent wrenches only has utility value. And the utility value that any individual places on any other individual's life is a function of the relationship that exists between them.

I'll be adding to this post in the next few days. Until then, think about the sort of relationships that exist in your life.

Chicken Soup with Izzy Kalman...yet again...

Izzy Kalman is at it again.

His latest criticism of anti-bullying laws published over at Head Shrinkers Monthly (from which I am banned from expressing an opinion by the way) is basically the same badly flawed argument he's been making for years. He's once again arguing that anti-bullying laws increase rather than decrease bullying, possibly because he's confusing an increase in the willingness of victims to complain with an increase in bullying. That's as flawed as equating an increase in the willingness of rape victims to file criminal charges with an increase in the commission of the crime. It's a common misconception, but his readers should expect more from a guy with a masters degree in psychology.

Let's begin with a few basics about human behavior, a subject that Izzy Kalman should be somewhat familiar with.

Laws that are widely perceived as necessary are reasonably effective when enforced. No one argues that burglary increases when victims file complaints with the police and even Izzy Kalman isn't dumb enough to promote a Burglars2Buddies program. Anti-burglary laws are effective because the public does not look upon burglary as a right of passage or some other legitimate activity. Burglars are considered to be criminals...period.

Anti-bullying laws are difficult to enforce effectively because the public is extremely bigoted toward low status individuals. Americans envy, admire, and fantasize about the sort of cocky, belligerent sociopaths who enjoy hurting others, and absolutely despise kids who are physically weak, unaggressive, non-athletic, lacking in social skills, or otherwise different or non-conformist. Americans shamelessly enable bullies and don't give a damn about victims.

And don't let the fact that we elected a black guy to be our President fool you. Bigotry is still alive and well in America. Only the demographics have changed. If the jocks of Columbine concentrated their attention on black students, they would have been expelled and probably subject to criminal charges. But since they primarily bullied students who were simply low status, their criminal behavior was and still is considered to be normal and acceptable.

There was a lot of noise in the media about the claim that one of the Columbine killers referred to one of the victims as a nigger, yet when a high status student sunk a basket in gym class and screamed, "another Jew in the oven," it attracted relatively little attention. In the eyes of the good Christian citizens of Littleton, bigotry is charming, clever, and riotously funny when displayed by a genetically superior member of the gridiron elite but absolutely unforgivable when displayed by a student of relatively low social status.

The American public's tolerance for bigotry obviously varies with the status of the bigot.

Izzy Kalman is correct about one thing. Anti-bullying laws alone will not solve America's bullying problem. Our culture needs to change and Izzy Kalman could inspire some of that needed change if he chose to do so. If you don't like men who want to emulate the behavior of Eric Harris, Timothy McVeigh, and Adam Lanza, then stop creating them. Think of, speak of, and treat bullies as you would treat any other bigot. When you hear someone refer to a victim of bullying as a faggot, pussy, or wimp, just imagine someone in a white sheet referring to someone as a kike, spic, or nigger and you'll have a very accurate assessment of their character and the sort of values taught to them by their family and community.

Perhaps Izzy could add his two cents worth here.

Chicken Soup with Sucker Punch Athletics dot com...

I've given up on the idea of taking a serious break from blogging. Every time I make the attempt, I see something that tops the last colossally stupid example of why terrorism exists.

A few weeks ago I was in my local Home Depot when a man secretly hoping for another school massacre walked by. He was wearing a black t-shirt with the words, "I'm not a BULLY. Your just a Pussy!" in big, white letters. I would normally expect to see such a shirt on the back of one of those wedge shaped Mad Max extras one can find on the Ultimate Sociopath Channel. But the wearer was anything but muscular. From the way he artificially held his arms out as he walked, he clearly thought he was a body builder. He wasn't. When I got close to him in the checkout line, I was able to get a better look. He could have been in his late twenties, or his late forties, or anywhere in between. His physical condition suggested someone who'd possibly eaten out of a dumpster at some point in his life.

Enough about homeless Harry.

My real concern is with an industry that shamelessly promotes criminal behavior in the wake of media events like the Newtown Massacre. The individuals who designed, manufactured, and advertised the shirt in question obviously place no value on the lives of the next group of kids to be slaughtered. If you place a bit more value on human life than they do, here's something you can do.

Write to the knuckleheads at Sucker Punch Athletics and ask them why, 14 years after Columbine they've chosen to display such a heinous level of depraved indifference toward the next group of parents who have to bury their children...and there will be a next group, and probably many more groups after that. In a culture that glorifies brutality and lavishly rewards the most violent sociopaths the American Family can produce, a steady supply of mass murderers is almost inevitable.

After you've written to Knuckleheads, Inc. courtesy copy a few other interested parties like Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis, some of the gun control advocates in Newtown, Conn., Sports Illustrated, Izzy Kalman, etc. Be imaginative.

Chicken Soup with Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and the American lynch mob...

Let's begin with the facts.

Trayvon Martin was a healthy looking 17 year old man. (And stop calling him a boy. It's very insulting.) George Zimmerman is a pudgy looking 29 year old man. Trayvon Martin could easily have sprinted the 70 yards or so to where he was staying and been contentedly munching on Skittles in front of the television before George Pudgymon Zimmerman had a chance to exit his vehicle. He could have called the police and reported being followed by a weird, pudgy looking pervert.

Trayvon Martin chose not to do that for reasons I consider obvious. In the environment Trayvon Martin grew up in, running away is considered to be pussy. A man...a real man doesn't run away. A real man doesn't attempt to deescalate conflict. A real man escalates conflict until someone is injured or killed.

Trayvon Martin wasn't raised to take the most prudent course of action. He was raised to be confrontational. In his environment, a man who isn't feared by others isn't a man. He's a pussy. Trayvon Martin did exactly what his real man role models taught him to do. He turned on a pursuer whom I could probably out run and escalated the conflict until someone was dead. He just didn't expect the life lost to be his own.

George Zimmerman has been widely accused of practicing what is generally referred to as "racial profiling" usually by individuals who are shamelessly displaying the same behavior. Here's how the racial profiling practiced by America's Zimmerman hating lynch mob works:

All young black men who are accused of a crime are innocent...period.

All members of the law enforcement community who arrest young black men are racists...period.

Anyone who openly admits that the demographic group known as "young black men" boasts a stratospheric rate of incarceration and a tendency to react to every conflict or disagreement with violence is a racist.

Trayvon Martin was a young black man and was therefore innocent, just another tragic victim of racism.

I'm not buying their story and contrary to what many would like to believe, I'm not a racist. I've spent my entire life, the better part of half a century in America and I cannot recall a single incident where a young black man made me feel unusually threatened. I spent my adolescence in the 1960's and 1970's in a community that was politically progressive, yet had only a handful of black families residing there. There was nothing particularly threatening about the few black kids I went to school with. They behaved and talked like everyone else...

Then came middle school and something called the "Metco Program."

In the sixth grade I suddenly came in contact with a dozen or so kids who grew up in an inner city environment. I wasn't abused or threatened by any of them, but they were clearly different and reminded me of characters I only saw on television. At the age of eleven, I learned an important lesson. Skin color did not determine your behavior. Your behavior is determined by your environment and especially by your role models.

I'd like to learn more about Trayvon Martin's environment and role models before the lynch mob hunts George Zimmerman down. What do you think?