Brutally Honest Rant - 12/06/06

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: December Issues
Audio Transcripts
12/06/06

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – "American Idiot Remix" – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening, and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

We’re getting close to the end-of-year break here at the Brutally Honest Command Center, and I’ve got a couple of quick issues that I need to go over before then, so now is a good as time as any to get them out of the way.

First up… Blonde Celebs Self-Destructing!

Okay, every time I keep on telling myself that I shouldn’t even bother getting into this sort of subject, I end up talking about it. Seems like every time I turn around, there’s some blonde female celebrity making the news, and it’s usually not nice.

First there’s Anna Nicole Smith popping out a tax deduction, losing another tax deduction, and then marrying her attorney. And all within the span of a few weeks! What’s wrong with this picture? This seems like a storyline straight out of a Mexican soap opera!

Then there’s pop-tease Britney Spears, who dumps her husband on the same day that the voters dumped the Republicans, and now she’s partying big-time with the mistress of the party, Paris Hilton… and doing so without pants… or panties!

You know, there was a time when seeing Britney do more than just tease would have been a dream come true for most people. (Unless, of course, you’re a longtime subscriber of Hugh Hefner’s magazine…like me.) But I don’t think anyone would be willing to see Britney’s "Full Monty" complete with a recent C-Section scar! UGH! Britney, please, at least wait until that area fully heals before you start going commando in public!

And listening to her whine about how the public is being "too hard" on her soon-to-be ex-husband, Kevin Who-gives-a-crap, is just a little too much. I’m sorry Britney, but you were the one that decided to make your personal life a TV series. You dragged "K-Loser" out for us everywhere you went. Now it’s OUR turn to let you know just what we thought of him. And since you obviously ignored what the rest of us though about it before you got married, you get to listen to us now. By the way… that can also explain why she’s hitting the party circuit pretty hard. The truth hurts, but it doesn’t hurt as much after five or six drinks.

And then there’s Pam Anderson, who decided to terminate her marriage of all of a couple of months with Kid Rock. My thought was… they really got married? Seriously. I thought it was just a joke. A scam to play on the stalker-nazis for hounding them for so long. The good news is that at least they didn’t produce any tax deductions from their brief union.

The bad news is… wondering where does Pam Anderson go from here? She went from Tommy Lee to Kid Rock… and it’s not TOO much of a leap before she starts hooking up with Pauly Shore.

The sad part is that she’s pretty much an exaggerated parody of her former self. All of those plastic surgeries, all of those tattoos… you take a look at her now and compare that to what she looked like ten years ago when her star was just rising and there’s very little between them. Where is that Playmate of the Year that I remember ten years ago?

Three blonde celebrities… each of them self-destructing in their own way, and like it or not, we’re riding along with them like Slim Pickens on top of that nuke from Dr. Strangelove. They would probably do themselves well to stay out of the celebrity fishbowl so they can figure out what they want to do with their lives now, but obviously THAT is never going to happen. After all, this IS what their lives are all about now.

(Quick pause)

Okay, second subject… there have been a couple of police shootings in recent weeks in New York and in Atlanta that basically should not have happened. In New York, an unarmed man was executed by the police on the night before his wedding. In Atlanta, three drug enforcement officers raided the house of a 92-year old woman in the middle of the night. She thought she was being robbed by thieves pretending to be police officers, because that is what was going on in that neighborhood. So she had a shotgun and she opened fire, wounding one officer before all three of them shot her.

And now both departments are trying to excuse these murders. They’re trying to justify what they did and what led to the series of events causing these murders. They’re trying to whitewash what happened because these things make their respective cities and departments look bad.

And I can spend an entire rant about these things, but I obviously can’t do that tonight, so I’m going to go ahead and give you this little anecdote to get my point across.

Way back when I was a child, someone tried to break into our house. My father fought him back and our dog tried to stop the intruder, but it wasn’t enough. Our dog had been around me and watched out for me pretty much since I was born, but she wasn’t a watchdog. My father was committed to making sure that nobody else would break in again. So he brought in another dog. An actual watchdog. A dog designed to go after people breaking in.

The problem is that this dog was TOO good of a watchdog. He went after ANYONE that he saw as an intruder. That included myself and my little sister. After a few scary moments, my father realized that this was not the way things should be, so he returned the watchdog.

THAT is the real problem, boys and girls… we BRING IN these officers and we ALLOW this mentality to be generated that ANYTHING they can do to cut down on crime or clean up the streets or to make us safe is okay. ANYTHING. Any single thing. Even if it means executing some unarmed innocent man on the night before his wedding, and even if it means raiding the house of a little old lady using tactics that can easily cause them to be mistaken for burglars. THAT is what "anything" means. We ALLOWED that mentality to be created and now we are seeing the consequences of those actions.

That’s something for everyone to think about the next time you get goaded into supporting some politician who promises to clean up the streets.

(Quick pause)

I finally got to see "The Da Vinci Code" on DVD this past weekend, and quite frankly I don’t see why the Roman Catholic Church would get their fancy hats out of joint over this. It was A MOVIE! A very good movie but still JUST A MOVIE! I don’t watch "The Ten Commandments" and think that it was how it actually happened. I appreciate the movie for what it does… it tells a story. A story based on some elements that may be factual, but it is still just a story nonetheless.

Yes, there were some actual elements of history brought up in the movie that doesn’t really make the Catholic Church look good. But guess what? That’s the fault of the Church. The truth, in and of itself, doesn’t judge what is right or what is wrong. It simply is, and we get to interpret it from that point on.

Is there a grand conspiracy to hide some facts about Jesus? I wouldn’t be surprised if there was. But absent of any kind of fact, you only have one thing… belief. You choose to believe that there is a grand conspiracy. And it is also belief that propels people to defend the Church at all costs even WHEN the facts – if any exist – are presented to them.

And by the way, the Catholic Church has a hard time dealing with the sins they committed in the past fifty years, i.e. not keeping Father O’Gropper away from the boys choir… do you really think that they’ll even entertain looking at the sins committed by their predecessors several CENTURIES ago? I don’t think so.

Look, take the movie for what it is. It is a story. If you think that there is something more to it, then by all means try to look into it to your hearts content. But otherwise, just accept it for being what it is and move on.

(Quick pause)

Okay, these last two quick rants are more social complaints than anything else…

What the hell is up with store coupons? You know which ones I’m talking about. The ones that are generated by the store register when you pay for your groceries… or the so-called "value rewards" that some stores offer if you’re a part of their data-collecting program. They’re always promising sales but only if you buy in numbers LARGER than what you would normally buy.

For instance: I buy a lot of cat food every week, which obviously goes to feed my cat, so it’s not uncommon to get a register-generated coupon that offers me fifty-cents off if I buy 18 cans of cat food. I normally buy just six cans a week. That’s all that my cat needs. The store’s data-collecting program knows that I normally buy just six cans a week. And yet it will not offer me a coupon for making anywhere near that kind of a purchase. It always wants to reward me for spending far more than I would want to or possibly afford to. Or they’ll give me coupons for things that they know I never buy. What’s up with that? I’m not looking to buy a five-gallon jug of lard just to redeem a coupon for ten cents.

And then they have the nerve to ask me why I’m letting all of these coupons expire. Well maybe if they actually put their data-collecting resources to proper use they can come up with coupons that we all can use so we wouldn’t feel like we’re the ones getting the short-end of the deal.

Just something for you to think about.

(Quick pause)

Okay… one more…

Whatever happened to the kind of messages that start out with "Hi, how are you?"

I’m wondering that because a lot of the emails that I’ve been getting from friends and family members have been pretty much about jokes and little wisdom thoughts. I go visit my parents and they ask me if I know what went on with my sister’s family or my cousin’s family and I’m having to tell them that I’m clueless as to what’s going on. Oh I get emails from people all the time, but lately it’s just to pull out some viral video or online joke that’s been circulated about the Internet fifty or so times.

Let’s get brutally honest here… one of the reasons why people like me feel so disconnected from this horror show we like to call our world is because we are INUNDATED with messages from our friends and family members and coworkers and acquaintances and people on our "friends lists" that are… well, let’s face it… fluff. And there seems to be very little interest in how other people are doing.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind little words of inspiration, but I’d rather see pictures of my friends and relatives than rehashed pictures of kittens and dogs. I’d rather hear how these people are doing instead of hearing the latest blonde joke or how some no-name redneck redefines patriotism and religion. Send me YOUR well-wishes, not the well-wishes of some total stranger contained inside a chain letter that violates every single online rule of etiquette.

You know all of this communication is supposed to BRING us together… to get us more connected. But that only works when you are actually trying to COMMUNICATE instead of being the messenger of someone else’s rehashed words.

And, hey, I’m just as guilty as anyone else in sending cute little subjects or online articles over to people, but at the same time I know that there’s a whole lot not being said. And sometimes that little bit that doesn’t get said is important.

So the next time you come across something cute that someone else might like, don’t be afraid to toss in a quick personal message or two. You know… something along the lines of "Hi! How are you doing?" I don’t know about anyone else, but I actually get a wider smile on my face when I get an email from someone telling me how they’re doing instead of getting an email forwarded over from a dozen other people just trying to make me smile.

(Computer – some timely stuff… gotta hear it to appreciate it of course)
(Fade Music In – "Mythodea" by Vangelis)

There’s something I’ve noticed in each of these little rants… and I hope that you noticed it too.

Think about it… our obsession with celebrities… our concentration of group security over personal safety… our obsession about what movies tell us about religious beliefs… even the whole thing with coupons and with our preferences of re-sending other people’s jokes instead of communicating with friends and family members… they all have something in common. Do you know what that is?

It’s all part of the gradual removal of the SELF… of the individual.

If you’re thinking about celebrities, then you’re not focusing on the things going on in your life. If you’re listening to what church leaders tell you about what movies are "good" for religion, then you don’t have the opportunity to decide for yourself how to view them in relation to your own beliefs. Police departments don’t want you to defend yourself; they want you to be willing slaves to their programs. Protect you when THEY decide to, and willing to storm your house at any time using the same tactics as the neighborhood criminals, and you’re supposed to accept it, because YOU don’t matter… only the results matter. Stores want you to buy more than you normally do because that’s all they see you as… consumers, not people. And it’s easier to just rehash other people’s messages… because when do people have time for their own thoughts, never mind have the time to convey them?

Someone once lamented about the lost art of letter writing, and I’d agree that it is something of a lost art nowadays, but there’s something else that doesn’t get mentioned. The people who made letter-writing the art form that it appears to be now had two things that many of us don’t have… time and a sense of self.

Just something for you to think about…

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production, all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/"End of Recording")

[End of program]
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