How am I still offending people in 2011? Don’t y’all know about me by now? Got a couple angry emails about Tuesday’s post, including this little gem:
“You should man up and apologize and think about all the cops who gave their lives for your safety or you lost another reader.”
Yeah, I’ve been watching that RSS ticker counting down to zero since I re-started the site...feels good. Maybe I can get it down into the double digit range with this one.
You already know I’m not going to apologize, just like I already know that despite your poodle threats, you’re going to keep reading this site for years to come. Since I’ve already started a big ugly conversation, let’s finish it off properly here today. They keep delaying my flight and besides, I can’t stop thinking about Moreno’s last words on that tape recording: “If you stop drinking, I’ll be your boyfriend. I’m not a bad man. I’m a good friend to have.”
Kenneth Moreno is 43 and he’s got 2 kids, at least, according to the papers. On December 7th, 2008, he responded to call from a concerned cab driver who had just driven a “drunk and vomiting” woman to her home but didn’t think she’d even be able to make it inside. Moreno’s accounting of events is meaningless in the face of the story told by surveillance video: they escorted her inside her building at 1 am and came out 7 minutes later. They returned 40 minutes after that and stayed inside the apartment for just over 20 minutes, then exited covering their faces. Then they returned at 3 am, and let themselves inside with the woman’s keys.
Franklin Mata’s soft, sad little baby face speaks volumes. His career as a cop lasted for three years and it’s over now because he had the sheer courage and moral clarity to stand guard as the “lookout” while Moreno raped an unconscious woman. One wonders what exactly he was looking out for. He sat on her sofa and looked around her living room and thought about whatever it is people think about when they’ve decided to wait on the sofa while someone gets raped in the next room.
Wait. Did I say Mata’s career was over? My bad...let me explain something.
Do you remember Kenneth Boss? Just kidding, of course you don’t...shit, half of you probably think that’s a fashion line. Kenneth Boss is the NYPD officer who killed Amadou Diallo, which is a name you really should remember. Kenneth Boss has something horrible in common with Franklin “Babyface” Mata and Kenneth Moreno: he’s still on the NYPD payroll.
Yup. Really.
It’s called the “Rubber Gun Squad” and it’s over 300 of the NYPD’s finest fuckups, collecting about $22 million every...single...year. In the case of Kenneth Boss, he’s been making an annual salary of $104,526 since he put 5 bullets in to Amadou Diallo on February 4th, 1999. For those of you into math, yeah, that’s about 12 years of paychecks, adding up to well over a million taxpayer dollars.
Now, look: obviously not all cops are rapists and blah blah blah. You can even make the case that cases like this are a good thing, because it indicates the NYPD is trying to break down the Blue Wall. Consider the case of Rubber Gun Squad member Alex Cruz, who was busted for falsifying paperwork to cover up the fact one of his fellow officers raped a 24 year old tattoo artist with his police baton in the middle of a subway station. At least Alex Cruz is off the beat, right? At least we catch a few more bad apples every year, right? Whatever.
Just please don’t expect me to give a fuck about any of that when there’s no real consequences for these assholes. That’s not a weird legal wrinkle, that’s a serious cultural problem, and that’s the reason it’s impossible to see these men as anything but...pigs.
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The details are pretty disgusting and you can feel free to google ‘em on up. I’m not rehashing it here, just sharing the single most amazing detail. It’s the part of the movie that suddenly and accidentally shows way too much and cuts way too deep. The mask slips and Big Pathology gets simple honest. This particular virus script will probably seem all too familiar to a lot of readers. (Sorry to get all serious on a random Tuesday, too.)
His name is Kenneth Moreno, and he is NYPD. He was caught on video in uniform. This conversation was recorded via hidden mic onto cassette tape, standing on a sidewalk in Manhattan, in the middle of the day. What follows is verbatim transcription from the public evidence:
Woman: I woke up and you guys were taking advantage of me.
Moreno: Nobody took advantage of you.
Woman: You were having sex with me. I was violated.
Moreno: No you weren’t — nothing happened.
Woman: You’re lying.
Moreno: OK. It turned from us trying to help you to getting really crazy.
Moreno: What do you remember?
Woman: I remember getting up the stairs and waking up on the bathroom floor. The next thing I know, I’m in my bed, you’re taking off my clothes and having sex with me.
Moreno: OK
Woman: OK?
Moreno: It wasn’t done intentionally. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just got caught up. I’m sorry.
Woman: I need to know if I’m OK. Did you wear a condom — yes or no?
Moreno: Yes, I did. You don’t have to worry about any diseases or getting pregnant.
Woman: Was it only you?
Moreno: It was only me.
Moreno: If you stop drinking, I’ll be your boyfriend. I’m not a bad man. I’m a good friend to have.
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It’s weird that our culture holds such a dim view of sex workers, because it seems pretty clear to me that we’re all getting fucked for money, and at least five days a week, too. There’s no shame in that game, folks...there are, however, a few huge problems with that proposition. Namely, there’s more competition in the streets, overhead costs are going way up, and our pimps keep taking a bigger cut every year.
There’s nothing hypothetical or theoretical about class warfare—in fact, it’s really been the only game in town for centuries now. It’s no secret that a vast majority of the human beings living on the Planet Earth today are on the losing side of that war. That will change whenever they get around to waking up, which will probably be at least another 500 to 50,000 years. Meanwhile, I recommend finding a hobby you can really enjoy.
Alex Jones is sounding sane enough for Glenn Beck to bite his whole schtick and still be considered a Conservative. All the Zero Hedge rhetoric about “bond vigilantes” got hella real last week when Bill Gross pulled the plug on his US Treasury life support. The fact that such a goofy little turd would be in any position to make decisions worth hundreds of billions is completely insane, but hey, here we are. It’s 2011 and reality is completely broken. Pucker up.
This isn’t some kind of Eat The Rich, sore loser diatribe, though—don’t misconstrue me. This is actually about sympathy for the devil. You see, what’s always lost on the proletariat is the high cost of actually winning the class war. Freedom is insanely expensive and dangerously temporary, and worst of all, pretty everyone who’s already made it is a fucking asshole...at best. Most of them are far worse than that, like the Saudi Princes who spend decades in London hotel rooms beating up hookers, or fat greaseball cokehead pedophiles...you know, like the current Prime Minister of Italy.
Isn’t that photo insane? The story tells itself, huh? Would Barack be the first US President to knock a foreign head of state right the fuck out? The Kali Yuga will only continue to get crazier from here, so enjoy the calm sanity of 2011 while it lasts. Sure there was an 8.9 earthquake in Japan this week, but someday soon, you’re going to look back on this as The Good Old Days...you know, back when the earthquakes would actually stop…
I have good news, though: there’s no way for you to fully understand how fucked you are, so this really is as bad as it gets. This constant, low-level panic that’s eating at the soft corners of your mind? It won’t get any worse, and once Homeland Security starts drugging your water in 2015, it will all fade into perfectly acceptable background noise. For most of you, it’s already been there all along.
For those of you still awake, though: Cheers. Uncle Humpasaur is here to party with you beautiful mutants until none of us can remember what we were crying about, why were were laughing or what we were drinking for...and it’s all the same question, on the road to 2012.
I love you all.
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In the scramble to actually get paid for work I’ve already done, prior to #PaxBostonia going down, I had one of those lurching Moments of Clarity. I realized that I have, intentionally or not, chosen the single greatest profession available to an American boy. Being a freelance writer gets a bad rap for some reason. I don’t know how this perception got established, and shucks, maybe I should just hold my peace. Maybe I should be grateful that my potential competition doesn’t realize what a bountiful goldmine of E-Z money this is.
In the interest of providing a public service (which is what this site is all about) I’d like to share a couple of my favorite things about this non-industry.
1. You never get paid on time.Especially when there’s a clearly defined “pay day.” You could be forgiven for thinking that a set schedule would work to your advantage, but that’s just not the case. Getting payment will generally involve three to five additional emails to your client and a delay of at least one week after the precise point that you actually, desperately need the money. This is great because it makes you appreciate the value of money so much more than the cheap, instant gratification of normal professional employment.
2. Social media and function creep. Take it from Uncle Humpasaur: never agree to do social media updates. This is not a “slippery slope” situation, this is the first and last step off a steep cliff. Every single one of your employers would, ideally, like to see you transition from a freelance copywriter working a single discreet project...into an unpaid intern, doing never-ending social media shitwork. Wanting to impress a client by going the extra mile is a classic rookie mistake.
3. Competing with Kerala. I gave up on eLance years ago—there’s no way to compete with people who think $4 an hour is good money. So I quickly evolved into a more upscale, boutique operation: Real Estate, Currency Trading, Credit Repair, and worst of all, US Politics. What’s funny is that most of my gigs are more “clean up” than creation. Inevitably, my clients tried to save money first by settling for that Kerala-grade quality. The result, of course, is barely coherent alphabet soup, a mash-up remix of hyperformal Victorian English and the dead language of a vintage VCR manual. I get called in to convert it to actual English and do all the necessary research to make it factually true. (Pro Tip: editing these turds is a waste of time. It is actually faster to simply delete everything and start over.)
4. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Working for the devil is not a situational ethics question for me, it’s a daily reality. I’ve done landing pages for the Tea Party, autoresponder scripts for the Christian Coalition, and worst of all, I’ve written bios (and fake testimonials) for NLP Trainers. I realize you’re probably deleting all my music off your hard drive instead of continuing to read this, but I do have good news: I won’t even bother defending that work. I will quote my own lyrics, though:
...besides, dude, what do YOU do exactly? How do you extract meat from the human trash heap? Your contribution may be small...but every slice of the pie, there’s a blade involved.
5. You never get paid on time. Did I already mention that? Whatever. I’ve gotta go leave another round of voice mail messages anyway…
To hire me, or just pump me for real advice that’s actually useful ==>
The Westboro Baptist Church has a special place in my heart. I know a lot of my liberal friends can’t look past their “hatred,” but I see the WBC Family as some of the most honest Christians in the English-speaking world. See, unlike most Christians, I’ve actually read the Bible. And just like Megan Phelps, I know that the good book is very clear: HELL AWAITS. The Lord God Jehovah gives no quarter and has no mercy whatsoever.
So I respect Megan Phelps-Roper for confronting Americans with the last thing they want to hear: God’s not answering your prayers because he fucking hates you.
Megan Phelps-Roper wasn’t always such a good Christian, though. Ephesians 4:15 instructs me to “speak the truth in love,” and I know that someone reading this could learn from her life story. You see, Megan Phelps was briefly led astray in 2010, and I happen to know the bastard who almost turned Megan against God. Worse yet, he’s a rapper. Worst of all, that rapper wasn’t me.
Nope...it was this guy. Goes by the name of Witness. Apparently making great albums is not enough for this shameless deviant—he’s got to test the faith of a beautiful virgin flower like sweet, sweet Megan. Now, I realize that Phelps haters will jump on the family secret I’m divulging here. I’d like to seriously, earnestly apologize to Shirley for what I’m writing. She’s a tough mama bear who’s beaten the odds and raised her children right. The last thing I want is to get inadvertently caught up in a WBC Fatwah...there’s nothing more tragic than casualties from friendly fire.
Besides, the point here is redemption. Megan was tempted, yes. What matters is that she rejected that temptation and without question, the experience made her Faith stronger. To this day, Witness is harassing her on Twitter, still trying to weasel a crooked, heathen finger into her pants. He shall not prevail. I just want Megan to know that I support her 100%. I want her to know that I understand her struggle and I respect her mission...and more than anything else, I want her to know how much I appreciate the fact she’s saving herself for me.
Direct Thy Outrage Unto ==>
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