Elucidation of Popular Culture

In accordance with federal legislation prohibiting discrimination, after a lengthy & expensive legal battle to prevent me from contributing a monthly column presenting views contrary to all antiMusic represents, I am pleased to announce the launch of your new favorite feature on antiMusic: a lone voice of sanity in the insanity that's antiMusic, the place where you can come for reliable advice on what to think, the Veridical Polemic a.k.a. "I'm Always Right" column with Dolly Doppelganger! Read my words and obey them if you want to be right all the time, just like me!

What a horrible tragedy that the singer of the Vines has Asperger's Syndrome! Now everyone knows that such a thing makes assault & maliciously damaging a photographer's camera perfectly justifiable. What a great judge, to set this 'can't help it because he's handicapped' criminal free! I know a kid with Aspergers, he blew his piano teacher away on his first lesson. I don't mean with a shotgun- yet. In light of this legal ruling, I'll keep a closer eye on him. Obviously he's going to become a dangerous threat to everyone he knows. I'm so relieved that Vines guy had the manly courage to admit in open court that even though he committed crimes that non handicapped individuals would have been harshly dealt with over, since he has a very mild form of Autism, he is completely absolved of any and all future charges against him for anything he does. I just hope he doesn't decide to become a serial killer!

All I ever noticed about Aspergers people is that before this affliction turns them into a violent, deranged criminal, they have unbelievable musical or artistic prowess. When this kid went for his first piano lesson, his violently unbelievably first attempt left the piano teacher on the floor, gasping for breath & clawing at her bottle of nitroglycerine, in shock at this young prodigy's untapped brilliance. Now we know the real reason for that behavior, don't we! He must have smuggled a ball peen hammer with him to meet the teech. This young kid performs live concerts without the sheet music. Hopefully this disease doesn't ravage him to the point where he's holding up convenience stores & pistol whipping the clerks to pay for his piano tunings! But if he does, what a relief that this might one day help him in court by documenting that since he can't help what he does, all charges against him must be dropped. Now that this singer of the Vines has revealed the truth for all of us, I now know that Aspergers apparently has nothing to do with musical talent in some of it's victims. I had no idea that sometimes the only talent it gives people is in evading their responsibility for their actions. I guess everyone has a little touch of Aspergers, I can't wait to see how Paris Hilton's new CD sounds like for that reason!

Everyone knows that self discipline is for suckers. Now that it's illegal to spank your kids, or hold them responsible for any of their actions, we are closer to realizing a dream of many, myself included- no personal accountability, for anything! We're still too far from this, but we're getting closer! Every time I read about certain lawsuits that some deem 'frivolous', I know we're getting warmer. Some kids, for instance, were throwing rocks off a bridge, onto the traffic below. One of their missiles destroyed the windshield of a semi-truck, smashing into the empty passenger's seat. The truck driver nearly caused a multi car pile up swerving off to the side of the road to illegally park his rig and go chasing those scared little lambs up the hill. He caught one of them, a young, underage boy. The furious, terrifying truck driver then injured the boy's arm by squeezing it tightly with his adult strength & refusing to let him go, screaming in his face & berating him to tell him private, personal information like who & where his parents were. I am so glad those wise parents had that trucker arrested for kidnapping, which is the legal term for holding someone against his will, as well as sued him for the emotionally traumatizing experience he brutalized the boys with. No one got hurt in the truck driver's life, the rock was just startling. In the boys' lives, however, they both probably now suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, since they both probably were terrified that the out of control truck driver was going to kill them, or kidnap them, and one of them ended up with a hurt arm as well. It's lawsuits like that that give me hope for a better future for kids of tomorrow by clearly defining "victim" and "victimizer".

I hit a 12 or 13 year old kid with my minivan a few summers ago. It was absolutely terrifying! He came flying out of a tree & shrub hidden driveway, looking at his front tire. Since he was only about 10 or 15 feet in front of me, I could see clearly what he was doing. I hit the brakes and after roughly 4 months, my death ride finally came to a full stop, on top of him and his bike. Before I could even get my seat belt off, or open my door enough to get out, this little Jack in the box that I almost killed came popping up from underneath my front end saying, "I'm OK!" I was shaking so badly I about couldn't stand up, but I managed to choke out, "Well good. Let's go talk to your parents." He responded by jumping on his bike & saying, "No way! I'm fine!!" and took off in the opposite direction as fast as he could pedal. I yelled after him, "But this is the kind of thing your parents need to know about!" He yelled back, "Nope! Besides you don't know where I live anyway!" Who was at fault in this case? Not me & not that kid! The shrubbery was at fault. And the kid's parents are at fault, for being too zealous in their discipline of him. This little boy obviously can barely function, he is so obsessed with his terror over his parents' version of discipline that he can't even look both ways before crossing the street. The government needs to fix those problems as well as people's bushy hedges before someone gets killed!

That event in my life made me realize that people need to stop punishing their kids when they have done something they think is "wrong". What a poor, traumatized kid, being forced to endure the indignity of being run over, yet too terrified of his probably abusive parents to even tell them about the events in his exciting day. It's families like this that stand in the way of progress. Parents who use any form of discipline at all on their kids should have to take parenting classes, and agree to have a family monitor come live with them until their kids are out of the house. I think this will go far toward the goal of centering society around more feelings oriented outcomes. This idea will make for much less wars, I bet. Think about the national mood right after the World Trade Towers were hit. The country was awash in friendly sentiments like 'this was our own fault & it's good this happened to teach us a lesson about how bad we suck as a country and anyway, religions that advocate death to the enemy are really peaceful ones that we should explore & embrace!' Wasn't life all warm & fuzzy then? It sure was! We need to go back to that, to only pointing the finger at inanimate objects, ideologies or finding even better justifications for crimes committed. Everyone knows that a life where everyone is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want is the only life worth living. We may have to put up with more assaults, robberies, murders, and things we consider "illegal" right now. But this is a small price to pay to be utterly free of all constraints. Too bad anarchists won't unite with us for this excellent cause. We could make that Vines guy our leader!

Words of week.
Acerbic: Sharp or biting, as in character or expression

Puerile: marked by or suggesting childishness and immaturity

Calumniatory: (used of statements) harmful and often untrue; tending to discredit or malign; modern documentary filmmaker

Atrabilious: Having a peevish disposition; surly