Don't Fuck With Me....

Or else the truth comes out.

For those of you that read my old blog, remember Mark Connolly? The allegedly high-functioning methhead who tried being the lead singer of Dirty Joe before abandoning the group after one rehearsal on the grounds that we weren't reliable? Well, for those of you that don't, refresh your memory here. Well, he decided to resurface for reasons unbeknownst to me.

Yesterday (well, earlier today AFAIC) Joy and I were walking into the library here in Port Angeles. There were a few people outside the library's front door enjoying a brief burst of afternoon sunshine. One of them was I guy I recognized from the local karaoke circuit. And there was another guy that I vaguely recognized, but I couldn't remember where from. This little fellow seemed to recognize me though, and he wasn't pleased. He began to threaten me, said that he'd heard about what I'd thought and said of him, but I couldn't figure out why he was talking to me so. Then I remembered that he was the meth addict that wanted to be the lead singer of Dirty Joe. I told him that he could take his threats and put them squarely where the sun doesn't shine, because drug addicts don't particularly frighten me. Especially ones that are quite literally rotting away from drug use and disease. As in the leg he was missing.

He claimed that he would sue me for slander - go ahead and try. You see.... well, go read the original post. In order for something to be considered slanderous, it has to be malicious and more importantly false. Read the post - everything I attributed to him was the actual, unvarnished truth. And that's something I'll stand by until the day I die. The truth hurts, Mark.

Mark Connolly may no longer be addicted to meth now, but he was then - he told me so himself. That is an unassailable fact. His behavior was erratic enough then, and it's still erratic now. And violent. And in an ironic twist, a friend of ours that we're staying with - long story, more on that later - told me that she'd been introduced to him some seventeen years ago, and in that one brief encounter had deduced that he was a potential threat to her and her daughter and told the mutual friend that had introduced them to remove him from her sight post-haste.

At the end of the day, I could really care less about Mark Connolly and his hollow threats. He's a bum, a drug addict (though his current status could only be determined with a blood or urine test and I have no interest in pursuing that), and otherwise a waste of space. Considering that I haven't laid eyes on him in about three years, I see the likelihood of encountering him again to be minimal at best. And considering that I have no interest in laying eyes on him again unless it's through bulletproof glass, I see the likelihood of encountering him again to be that much smaller.

Oh, and before I consign him to the dumpster of history yet again, one last thing: threatening someone with violence is a crime. And doing so via the Internet is a Federal offense.

Goodbye, Mark. I don't have time to play. I have a life to live - clean and sober.

Pruning The Family Tree

AUTHOR'S NOTE: In no way whatsoever am I suggesting that I would enact physical violence against my in-laws, unless in self-defense as a last resort.

That said, I just took another one of my in-laws off my Facebook friends list, and she deserved it. Just when I thought all the ruckus from my in-laws' humiliation of my wife from the family camping trip had subsided, she chose to bring it back up again. Oh, she made a weak-ass claim that it might not have been about my flaming my in-laws after all that, but I knew better. And I was able to confirm it with a simple two- word post:

"too bad."

And she had the nerve to threaten physical violence against me after I revealed her true colors! Oh, I have better weapons to use against your cellulite-ridden carcass than my fists, dearie. I have shame, repudiation, vindication, and humiliations galore to use. In so many words, if you think my wife is faking or exaggerating her illnesses, or you don't like the fact that I am more than happy to call anyone out on their bullshit, then get the fuck out of my life. We have no further use for you.

And with that, I award the Fred Phelps Award for The Dumbest Humanoid On The Planet to my former sister-in-law, Nancy Gingrich-Walker. I don't give a flying fuck if you don't like that I air out the family's dirty laundry. That's my wife they've been talking about, and if you'd rather defend them than the truth, by all means - go down with the sinking ship. May (insert they deity of your choice here) have mercy upon your soul.

Fred Meets My Brother-In-Law

Time to rip my in-laws a new one again. I just found out earlier today that my wife's brother Doug had de-friended us on Facebook. I wonder why? Perhaps it was because I'd found out about the shitty way he treated his sister when she told him that she had kidney disease during her family campout last month, and that I'd flamed him, his brothers, and even his mother for their refusal to accept Joy's illness as real. He even went so far as to tell Joy that he couldn't believe her because he thought that the tests had been done by a naturopathic doctor.


Huh?


Doug isn't an evil man, just one that's about as sharp as a bowling ball. Blood tests of that type aren't done by your average family practitioner. In fact, I don't think I've ever had my blood tested for anything by a doctor him or herself. But having been with Joy now for nearly eighteen years, I know the drill well enough. The doctor, whether or not they're medical or naturopathic, orders the blood tests to be done by another clinic. We go to said clinic, and a phlebotomist gets a blood sample from Joy or myself, and said sample is analyzed seven ways from Sunday to get results for whatever illnesses and/or conditions can be determined from a blood sample. Once the analysis is complete, the results are sent to the doctor, who then informs the patient and determines a course of action for whatever ailment is in play. What was Doug thinking - a naturopath would take a sample, then what? Drop some herbs in the sample and see what happens next?


We've all reached an age where we know how the process goes, but his ignorance of medical procedure, not to mention his sister's health, is unforgivable in my book. Joy and I have long suspected him of being the source of the misinformation that has poisoned my wife's immediate family against her, and this recent course of events pretty much confirms it. I wonder what his beef is with Joy, what he knows, thinks he knows, what he's hiding...... who cares any more.


So, it is with great pride that I announce the latest winner of The Fred Phelps Award for Dumbest Humanoid On The Planet - my brother-in-law, Doug Walker. But to be totally honest with you, I'm basically ready to wash my hands of Joy's entire family, and so is Joy. Their treatment of her these past few weeks has been so shitty, I'm glad that I wasn't there to see it. I'm glad that I wasn't there, either - had I been, I'd probably be in jail for multiple counts of aggravated first-degree murder. Maybe this is why when I'm around, he doesn't get in our faces. But then again, I don't think he's ever liked me either. After all, he didn't bother to show up at our wedding. All Joy's other siblings showed up, as did several of their kids - including the nephew who'd just been in a horrible car-wreck and arrived in a fucking halo - he broke his fucking neck and he showed up, why not you, Doug?


Oh well. Enjoy the award, Doug. It's the last thing you'll ever get from us - unless you'd like to receive my fists to your face - over and over again. May whatever deity you believe in have mercy on your soul, asshole.

The Fred Phelps Award Rides Again!

As I've said before, when I'm online I often tend to find little articles that pique my interest out of nowhere, things that I've never really paid attention to. But this article I found through Yahoo's homepage as I was clearing out my email hit my outrage button in a real hurry. In so many words, Science writer Mara Hvistendahl has blamed Western governments and businesses for the shortage of females in Asia, for importing the technology to determine the sex of an infant while still in the womb and to abort the child, with no understanding of possible repercussions.


Before you go thinking, 'What the fuck is Joe smoking?', listen to some statistics first. Gender imbalances in Asia are real, have been real for a very long time, and are getting worse, with ratios of men to women in some countries as high as 121 men for every 100 women. Why? Well, in many Asian societies giving birth to daughters is no cause for celebration - in fact, historically it's often led to infanticide. That's because traditionally women have never been allowed roles outside of the household (like getting an education and having a job), and that marrying off one's daughters can be an expensive business, from paying of dowries to a groom's family to paying for the actual ceremonies themselves, which can be quite lavish in some places. This has often led to poorer families simply disposing of newborn female infants, either abandoning them at orphanages and monasteries, or killing them outright. And while society and culture have changed and gender-equity is becoming more more and more the norm, the practices still exist. Female infanticide was outlawed in Asian countries decades ago, though enforcement since can has often been quite lax, as old ways die hard.


That said, I found Hvistendahl's accusations to be at best, tasteless. Apparently she suffers from severe guilt over what's known as "white man's burden", or "cultural imperialism". In short, her accusation is based on the principle that the Western world imposes its will upon cultures and structures elsewhere in the developing world, demolishing them and forcing native peoples to adopt Western customs and mores against their will. It is a very real thing though, and saying otherwise would be total bullshit. But this gender bias is older than any of us, and sadly is not going away any time soon, not so long as Asian cultures continue to prize sons over daughters to the point of selective infanticide, whether it is pre- or post-natal. Technology did not change the cultural standard, it only changed the time frame. It's still wrong no matter how you slice it, but laying blame at Western governments and businesses for the latest version of a cultural practice that has been around far longer than any Western government or business - no matter how wrong the practice may be in our eyes - is simply ludicrous.


Therefore, the latest winner of the Fred Phelps Award for Dumbest Humanoid On The Planet goes to Mara Hvistendahl, for her misguided guilt-trip upon Western society as a whole. For while she illuminates a serious problem, her choice of villain leaves much to be desired, and seems in my opinion an easy way out, blaming someone only partially related to the problem at hand, rather than to actually lay blame where it is most needed - the societal and cultural forces that are the root cause of the problem.