“The Finger Thing Means the Taxes!”

December 17, 2020March 1, 2022 / Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

Greetings, gentle reader. It’s been a while since I wrote anything, and as usual I have as many ideas as I have excuses, but today I had a rare day off to myself, so I decided to sit down and hammer something out. I then decided to delete half of it and rework the remaining half, and now I’m left with this half-assed whole blog post, and you get to reap the “benefits”.

What an absolute piece of shit this year has been, eh?

Sorry, I’ve never been good at small talk. But here’s a “large talk” thing that’s on my mind right now, in part for reasons that were included in the deleted half of this post (and which may still surface here someday). Don’t worry, I’m barely making sense to myself here.

Someone I know told me recently that their taxes are going to go up under Joe Biden’s tax plan. I assume Trump told them this, but I don’t know for sure, because I don’t listen to that fuckin blowhard. Regardless of where they got that information, the fact is I don’t know anyone who makes over $400,000 per year, which means I don’t know anyone whose income taxes will increase under Biden’s tax plan. And don’t mistake this as an endorsement of Joe Biden; I didn’t vote for Joe Biden so much as I voted against Donald Trump. Some members of my family might be bothered by that, but I sincerely couldn’t possibly care any less about that than I already do. I would’ve voted to eat a turd every day for the rest of my life over another four years of Donald Trump.

Watch this:

I just think it’s really funny, is all.

On an at-first-seemingly-unrelated note, I learned today that Tiffany & Co. sells a sterling silver dog dish for $2,500. Here’s a screenshot, in case you don’t wanna give their website any traffic:

“Add a whimsical touch to your home with this bowl that any dog will love.”

True story: I once saw a dog eat cat poop, throw it up, and then eat the throwup. Dogs will drink antifreeze. I love dogs more than I love most people, but it’s a fact that most dogs are pretty dumb about a lot of things, and I guarantee you there isn’t a dog in existence who cares one way or the other if its food and water are served in sterling silver bowls, as long as you give it food and water. And if I’m wrong, and there is a dog in existence that expects its food and water in a sterling silver bowl? Well then that dog is an asshole.

On a side note, if sterling silver adds a “whimsical touch” to your home, your home is probably as whimiscal as the average tomb.

There is a smaller version of this bowl available for “only” $1,800, but that’s not any less stupid.

Speaking of “Bone China”…

Anyway, that whimsical-ass silver dog dish isn’t even almost close to being the most expensive item listed on the Tiffany & Co. website. They offer a non-functioning decorative greenhouse for $275,000. That’s approximately two times more than I paid for my real house. Granted, my real house wasn’t “hand-assembled by the finest Tiffany artisans”, but I can stand inside my real house, so that’s gotta be worth something.

Peep those dimensions on the bottom right, folks.

And even that Barbie Dream Artisan Greenhouse doesn’t approach the most expensive item on the Tiffany & Co. website (the most expensive thing I could find that didn’t require booking an appointment just to be told how much it cost was a $630,000 necklace). Stuff like this is designed for the kind of assholes who pay $400 for plain white t-shirts. Like Patrick Bateman-level shit.

Here’s a stone cold fact (with apologies to Stone Cold Steve Austin): if you can’t afford to throw your money away on a $2,500 sterling silver bowl for your dog to eat thrown-up cat poop out of, you will not be paying more income taxes under Joe Biden’s tax plan.

I was unable to find any sterling silver diamond studded hand-crafted artisan guillotines on the Tiffany & Co. website. Maybe Armani makes a nice leatherbound model.

I’m sure I would’ve had to book an appointment to look at them anyway.

Thanks for reading. As usual, I don’t really know what the point might be, or if I even have a point, but I do know this: the world can be pretty goddamn shitty and unfair sometime, and while I may not always act like it it, I do sincerely believe kindness and compassion will win in the end. It’s just a matter of making it happen. Be the change you wish to see, and all that shit. The eviction of the Current Resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave on January 20th will be a breath of fresh air, but it has to start with each of us. Look out for each other. It literally costs nothing to not be a dick.

Finding Something New

July 15, 2020July 15, 2020 / Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

“Tone deaf” is certainly an appropriate word to describe Ivanka Trump’s entire life, but this “Find Something New” campaign that she rolled out yesterday reaches Beethoven levels of deafness. Some rich asshole who’s never worked a day in her charmed life is gonna tell me to get a new career just because her piece of shit dad fucked up by pretending like this pandemic wasn’t real? How about you get a new career fucking off, Ivanka.

In all fairness, Ivanka isn’t the only tone deaf member of that family, but as the most attractive of the Trump kids (just ask her dad!), everything she does has bit more of a sinister edge than if Eric or Don Jr. were presenting the same ideas. When you see those two assholes, you expect a certain amount of chicanery.

I mean, these two dickheads are obviously full of shit.

On the surface, the idea is not without merit – learn a new skill, get a career in a field that pays relatively well, leave your low-paying job behind. But what happens when everyone who is currently laid off, or who is currently working a low-paying, “unskilled” job “finds something new” and leaves their low-paying, “unskilled” jobs behind?

Oh, you want a decaf pumpkin spice latte with skim milk? Too fucking bad asshole, all the laid-off baristas found something new, and are now repairing elevators. You wanna order the Cobb salad but you wanna sub cheddar for gorgonzola and you wanna sub steak for chicken and you wanna sub spinach for half the amount of lettuce? Sorry fuckwad, all the furloughed servers and cooks found something new, and they’re working as electricians and plumbers now.

Look here: I’ve been cooking professionally for more than half my life, and I’m fucking good at it. It’s not considered skilled labor, but I promise you it is, and I challenge anyone who disagrees with that statement to step into a busy kitchen in the middle of a Friday night dinner rush and prove me wrong. That shit is exhausting, both physically and mentally.

Unrelenting heat, flames and steam and smoke shooting out from all over the place, slip-and-fall hazards that can’t be dealt with right away, sharp knives moving everywhere, dehydration, never-ending noise coming from every imaginable direction, 7 tables order at the same time, and one of those is a 20-top who wants to modify every goddamn thing they order, food being sent back because a surprising number of people don’t seem to know what “medium rare” actually means, all while trying not to piss yourself because you haven’t been able to step off the line to go to the bathroom in over 4 hours. And when it’s all over, you get to start restocking and cleaning!

That’s not something any random person can do. The list of people I’ve worked with who found that out the hard way and moved on is much longer than the list of people I’ve worked with who are still in the industry.

But don’t just take my word for it. Watch the late, great Anthony Bourdain step back into his kitchen for the first time in years.

And I’m not saying my job is anywhere close to being the hardest job. Hell, I’ve worked harder jobs myself. I once spent the absolute worst three consecutive weeks of my life as a construction laborer, and I left there to go back to foodservice, because fuck every bit of being a construction laborer.

What I am saying is that it takes a certain set of skills to be good at working in the service industry, regardless of the specific job. Cooks, waiters/waitresses, bartenders, baristas, manicurists, hair stylists, estheticians, hotel workers, retail, bowling alleys, convenience stores – all of it. Shitty, unskilled employees exist in all areas of the service industry (as in every industry), but the ones who are good at it, and who can make a career of it, are skilled, and if you can’t see that, you’re big ol’ shit head.

But Ivanka Trump thinks I should use my time while I’m furloughed from my relatively well-paid job at a beloved locally owned restaurant that offers health insurance and PTO to pay for classes and training and “find something new”. Simple, right? No way a 43-year-old man would have any trouble getting a job in a new industry in the midst of a recession.

I know, I’ll just ask my dad for a small loan of one million dollars, and I’ll find a new career making guillotines!

Y’know, for Alice Cooper. In case he ever gets to play live again.

Thanks for reading. And good luck finding something new.

Current Situation, 06/17/2020

June 17, 2020June 17, 2020 / Rev. Joel / 3 Comments

Here are the current contents of my brain, in no particular order:

The cops who murdered Breonna Taylor should be in jail.

I really miss my mom, and I wish I could show her what I’ve done with yard since we bought our house.

Systemic racism is real, even if you don’t believe in it.

My friend Chris is making a comic out of one of my old short stories, and it’s awesome.

The only appropriate response to “Black Lives Matter” is “yes, they do.”

There’s a cricket in the garage, and it might drive me to madness.

Corporate-backed media isn’t telling you the whole story about anything, and you should seek out alternatives.

I only have old short stories, because I pretty much never write anymore.

The new Run the Jewels album is fucking amazing.

Police departments need to be de-militarized immediately.

My hibiscus is getting so tall.

Donald Trump does not care about you, unless you are Donald Trump.

I’m very sad that Darn Good Soup is closed forever.

If you are Donald Trump, you can and should go fuck yourself.

I like my job, but I really wish I didn’t have to go back to work.

Defunding the police does not mean abolishing the police, it just means reallocating funds into programs and services that are designed to help the people rather than the state (i.e., “protect and serve”, but for real).

If you haven’t watched What We Do in the Shadows (the movie and the series)(and especially the series), you should change that.

Fox News and MSNBC are state media, and you should stop watching them immediately.

If you don’t appreciate absurdity, you probably shouldn’t bother with What We Do in the Shadows.

“White privilege” doesn’t mean your life hasn’t been hard, it means that your life hasn’t been made harder because of the color of your skin.

This song has been speaking to me a lot lately.

Climate change is real, even if you don’t believe in it.

I’d eat tacos every single day if my health would allow it.

The majority of confederate monuments were erected in the era of Jim Crow laws, and their purpose was to intimidate black people and reinforce the losers’ backward-ass belief in white supremacy, and that’s why those monuments belong in the museum or the ash heap.

Look at this fine specimen of confederate pride: “master race”, indeed.

I wish I could get paid to write without having to sell ads.

Antifa just means “anti-fascist”, and being opposed to facism is not up for debate.

Coffee is just the fucking best.

Seriously, fuck Donald Trump forever and ever.

I started laying this thing out just before I got into bed last night. As I was drifting off to sleep, I realized that if I’d started writing regularly when I first got furloughed back in March, I’d’ve kinda been getting paid to write this whole time. I’m not especially smart sometimes. Thanks for reading, though.