I will never understand, to my dying day, why parents allow... let alone ENCOURAGE their kids to lie.
Let me say that I don't consider myself a naif, either. I understand that in 21st century America, “Ethical Behavior” has been replaced with “Situationally Ethical Behavior”, and the truth has become whatever people believe. But still, what can I say? I have this thing for the truth, and still find myself a little shocked when people don't tell it.
Case in point... this will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, but I go to the library once per week. Same library. At about the same time. Taking the same route. EVERY WEEK. Okay?
So, day before yesterday, I'm on my weekly pilgrimage to the library. I am headed north on a road with two lanes in each direction, and a center turn lane. I need to turn west. A car goes by in the turn lane, so I slip into the turn lane behind it. There's a break in the southbound traffic. I will confess that I didn't see the young man who's about to smash in my car door because, frankly, I have the right of way. I don't HAVE to look out for him... HE has to look out for ME. So I turn into the library. And he turns out, northbound, looking solidly left. I start honking and yelling (even though I know that the yelling won't do me any good) and he smacks into my driver's side door.
I pull into the library parking lot. Obviously the kid's first accident, because he just sits there, where he backed up at the stop sign, functionally blocking the intersection. I wait for him for a moment, to see if he's going to clear the intersection so that we can exchange information, and when he doesn't, I walk to his car and tell him to pull into the library parking lot so that he's not blocking traffic.
When he got there, he told me that he didn't see me. No shit. HE WASN'T LOOKING. Okay, no prob. He screwed up. It happens. I call the cops.
Shortly after that, his mommy arrives. So I figure that he must have spent the time sitting there to call her. “Oh no, mommy! I cwashed a car! Help me!”
So, mommy arrives and the first words out of her mouth are “See? You should be driving a bigger car like mom.” Mom drives an SUV. I explained to her that if he HAD been driving a larger car or (God forbid) an SUV, he may have seriously injured or killed me. No answer. Ah, I thought... mom is scheming. Trying to figure out a way to prevent this from being her widdle baby boy's fault.
So the cops arrive, we give our statements, I go about my business. My car still runs okay, I just can't open the driver's side door, and my front end is fairly seriously knocked out of alignment.
Sitting in my car waiting for someone that I wanted to see, I call Allstate, his insurance agency. The person who answers the phone, once I explain the situation to her, seems ready to wrap the whole thing up. She's talking about setting me up with one of their preferred body shops to get the repair done and oh, Mr. Schaffer, let's get you a rental car for while your car is in the shop. I tell her that I'd rather set all that up with their adjuster, so that I can check my schedule and the nearness of the body shops to my apartment. So I get the name and phone number of their adjuster.
Then everything stops.
When I get home that day, as I'm pulling into my parking space, MY insurance company, Geico, calls me. Apparently, HE'S filing a claim against ME. So then everything's on hold while they get recorded statements from both of us, blah blah blah.
I call Allstate's adjuster yesterday and give her my recorded statement. I call Geico's adjuster this morning and give her my statement. Then she drops the bombshell... the little brat is telling the insurance companies that I turned not from the turn lane, but from the traffic lane!
Is it just me or does that sound like something that mommy came up with to protect her widdle boy?
Let me make a suggestion to you, lady. If you EVER want your little boy to be a man and a productive member of society, instead of encouraging him to lie and pass the buck, why not just thank God that neither of us were seriously hurt, and use this as an object lesson to him about paying attention to his driving? It's what my parents would have done. Hell, it's what they DID do when I caused an accident as a teenager.
The biggest problem with lying is that it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The obnoxious thing about the truth is that, no matter how much you examine it, or pick at it, it remains whole. Lies start to come apart immediately under scrutiny. For instance, let's look at this lie. They boy says that he saw me turning from the traffic lane. That begs the question why didn't he STOP? If you someone doing something stupid, you stop to protect your own car, right? Failing that, if he saw me turning and didn't stop, then he rammed me intentionally, and it's STILL his fault. AND he's on the hook for reckless endangerment.
Now that I've started picking this lie apart, let's finish dismantling it with evidence. In police work, there are three types of evidence.
The first is physical evidence. In this case, the condition of the cars is the only physical evidence, and it's a wash. It supports both stories.
The second is direct evidence. This is eyewitness testimony, video tapes, pictures, etc. There is none of this as far as I know. So another wash.
The third is circumstantial. Although this is, by and large, the least reliable, being made entirely out of deduction and supposition, but it's also what most cases are built on. So let's look at the circumstantial evidence.
1) He's a young driver with two... maybe three years of driving experience. I'm a former cab driver with almost thirty years of driving experience and a clean driving record. So which one of us is more likely to make this kind of catastrophic fuck-up?
2) Every month, I drive seven hours each way to Arkansas and back, and either six hours each way to Kansas and back, or fourteen hours each way to Houston, TX and back. If I were this careless of a driver, how can I drive that much and still have a clean record and no accidents?
3) By lying, he profits. He gets out of a ticket and his mommy avoids having her insurance rates raised. By lying, I gain NO profit. I didn't get a ticket, and the worst that can happen to my insurance is that it comes out a wash – he collects from his, I collect from mine. They may raise my rates based on that, but they may raise my rates anyway, simply BECAUSE I was in an accident. Insurance companies are capricious.
4) Logic argues AGAINST his lie. Occam's Razor applies here, I think. Occam's Razor says that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is often the correct one. If you hear about this accident, with no statements from either of us, your first thought is that he turned in to me. This is the simplest explanation and, thank you Occam, the correct one.
So parents, don't teach your kids to lie, okay? It sucks.
Peace.
Rev. Randal
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Republican Crybabies
Honestly, I don't know what bug got up my butt that prompted me to write this right now.
I will say this... I rarely sleep deeply enough to have any kind of coherent dreams that I can actually remember, but last night I did. I dreamed that I was at some kind of function featuring George W. Bush. For some dream-reason, this event was being held at a huge ice rink. When the function broke up for lunch, I suddenly found myself alone in the lounge area with Mr. Bush. So I did what I've wanted to do since the 2000 election... I demanded some answers from him. I won't relate his answers here, because they weren't “his”, they came from my own subconscious.
When I woke up, an hour before my alarm went off, this piece was in my mind. All of it. And I tend not to question my muse when she wants me to write something down, I tend to just do it. So here it is.
I'm tired of listening to republicans whine. TIRED of it. So I'm going to list four of, in my opinion, the whiniest and address their crybabyness.
SARAH PALIN
The queen of the crybabies. I get so tired of the fact that her followers take everything that she says as gospel, using the media as her platform, while all the while whining that she can't get a fair break from the media.
First off, Sarah, are you really God-rottedly STUPID enough that you didn't realize that as soon as you stepped onto that stage at the republican national convention you would become a celebrity? Or have you somehow missed the fact that our media treats celebrities (at best) like freak-shows or (at worst) like dog shit? That it treats celebrities as a commodity to get ratings, and makes them look however they it needs to in order to feed its own never-sated wallet?
Also, I hate to break it to you, but compared to how the media treated Hillary Clinton when she was first lady or Condoleeza Rice, you're getting a freaking pass. These two women, who are each worth five of you got ROASTED by the media. And they both handled it much better than you are. When Ms. Clinton saw that whining wasn't going to help, she just quit it and started letting all the media crap roll off her back. And Ms. Rice did the really sane thing – she got the hell out of the public spotlight. You could do the same, you know, and then “the media” would leave you alone.
Oh, and one other thing? The deep-water oil drilling ISN'T the result of environmentalists refusing to let oil companies drill in ANWR. If we opened ANWR, they would have been drilling there AND on the ocean floor. But I'll make you a deal. You get the oil companies to agree to closing all of their deep-water wells if I can get the government to agree to let them drill in ANWR, and we'll make it happen. Frankly, I don't think that it'll even be that hard to get that deal, because even though we environmentalists would miss the natural beauty of ANWR, we'd ultimately get the better part of that deal.
JOHN MCCAIN
John, I used to have huge admiration for you. Back when the 2008 primary season first started, I used a site called Unity America to make a bumper sticker that said “Obama/McCain 2008: my dream ticket”. But over the course of that election, and the years following, I lost all admiration and respect for you.
This loss of respect reached a nadir when, after the health care bill passed, you got on national TV and said “We're not gonna play with youse guys no mores!” You know what, you big crybaby? YOU WEREN'T PLAYING BEFORE! You and your republican cronies have been doing everything that you can to obstruct EVERYTHING!
John, please... instead of spending the rest of your life demanding respect for the hero that you WERE in Viet Nam, how about you get your head out of Rush Limbaugh's fat ass and be a hero NOW?
FOX NEWS
I listened to you crybabies demand that we respect the president for eight years. Of course, now that a president that you DON'T like is in office, all bets are off, right? You vilified the fringe left for comparing Bush to Hitler, but now you're perfectly okay with the fringe right comparing Obama to Hitler or Marx. That makes you not only crybabies, but hypocrites.
And Bill O'Reilly – as far as your nasty, barely-veiled threats against Al Franken go, I think that you're just jealous that he as an entertainer, got elected to the senate while you, as an “entertainer” couldn't get elected to the sewage commission.
THE TEA-PARTIERS
First off, learn your damned history. The tea parties were about taxation without representation. If you take a good hard look at your tax returns for the last ten years, you'll discover that most of you paid less in taxes last year than you have in a long, long time. You don't like paying taxes? Fine. I don't either. But if we're going to have things like a military, they're a necessary evil.
You guys claim to be non-partisan, but where the hell were you during the Bush years, when all of these fires that Obama has failed to put out were lit. As a matter of fact, I'd be willing to bet that most of you were right there calling those of us who were trying to prevent them from being lit to begin with “traitors”.
The hard part is that we need to sacrifice here to get our country back on track. I saw John Boehner, king of the republican crybabies on TV about a week ago, and, God help me, I agreed with what he said. He proposed raising social security taxes ON ME and cutting MY future social security benefits to try to help our country out, and I thought that they sounded like great ideas.
So how about it, you republican crybabies? Are you ready to shut the hell up and quit trying to move our country right and start moving it forward instead?
Seriously.
Rev. Randal
I will say this... I rarely sleep deeply enough to have any kind of coherent dreams that I can actually remember, but last night I did. I dreamed that I was at some kind of function featuring George W. Bush. For some dream-reason, this event was being held at a huge ice rink. When the function broke up for lunch, I suddenly found myself alone in the lounge area with Mr. Bush. So I did what I've wanted to do since the 2000 election... I demanded some answers from him. I won't relate his answers here, because they weren't “his”, they came from my own subconscious.
When I woke up, an hour before my alarm went off, this piece was in my mind. All of it. And I tend not to question my muse when she wants me to write something down, I tend to just do it. So here it is.
I'm tired of listening to republicans whine. TIRED of it. So I'm going to list four of, in my opinion, the whiniest and address their crybabyness.
SARAH PALIN
The queen of the crybabies. I get so tired of the fact that her followers take everything that she says as gospel, using the media as her platform, while all the while whining that she can't get a fair break from the media.
First off, Sarah, are you really God-rottedly STUPID enough that you didn't realize that as soon as you stepped onto that stage at the republican national convention you would become a celebrity? Or have you somehow missed the fact that our media treats celebrities (at best) like freak-shows or (at worst) like dog shit? That it treats celebrities as a commodity to get ratings, and makes them look however they it needs to in order to feed its own never-sated wallet?
Also, I hate to break it to you, but compared to how the media treated Hillary Clinton when she was first lady or Condoleeza Rice, you're getting a freaking pass. These two women, who are each worth five of you got ROASTED by the media. And they both handled it much better than you are. When Ms. Clinton saw that whining wasn't going to help, she just quit it and started letting all the media crap roll off her back. And Ms. Rice did the really sane thing – she got the hell out of the public spotlight. You could do the same, you know, and then “the media” would leave you alone.
Oh, and one other thing? The deep-water oil drilling ISN'T the result of environmentalists refusing to let oil companies drill in ANWR. If we opened ANWR, they would have been drilling there AND on the ocean floor. But I'll make you a deal. You get the oil companies to agree to closing all of their deep-water wells if I can get the government to agree to let them drill in ANWR, and we'll make it happen. Frankly, I don't think that it'll even be that hard to get that deal, because even though we environmentalists would miss the natural beauty of ANWR, we'd ultimately get the better part of that deal.
JOHN MCCAIN
John, I used to have huge admiration for you. Back when the 2008 primary season first started, I used a site called Unity America to make a bumper sticker that said “Obama/McCain 2008: my dream ticket”. But over the course of that election, and the years following, I lost all admiration and respect for you.
This loss of respect reached a nadir when, after the health care bill passed, you got on national TV and said “We're not gonna play with youse guys no mores!” You know what, you big crybaby? YOU WEREN'T PLAYING BEFORE! You and your republican cronies have been doing everything that you can to obstruct EVERYTHING!
John, please... instead of spending the rest of your life demanding respect for the hero that you WERE in Viet Nam, how about you get your head out of Rush Limbaugh's fat ass and be a hero NOW?
FOX NEWS
I listened to you crybabies demand that we respect the president for eight years. Of course, now that a president that you DON'T like is in office, all bets are off, right? You vilified the fringe left for comparing Bush to Hitler, but now you're perfectly okay with the fringe right comparing Obama to Hitler or Marx. That makes you not only crybabies, but hypocrites.
And Bill O'Reilly – as far as your nasty, barely-veiled threats against Al Franken go, I think that you're just jealous that he as an entertainer, got elected to the senate while you, as an “entertainer” couldn't get elected to the sewage commission.
THE TEA-PARTIERS
First off, learn your damned history. The tea parties were about taxation without representation. If you take a good hard look at your tax returns for the last ten years, you'll discover that most of you paid less in taxes last year than you have in a long, long time. You don't like paying taxes? Fine. I don't either. But if we're going to have things like a military, they're a necessary evil.
You guys claim to be non-partisan, but where the hell were you during the Bush years, when all of these fires that Obama has failed to put out were lit. As a matter of fact, I'd be willing to bet that most of you were right there calling those of us who were trying to prevent them from being lit to begin with “traitors”.
The hard part is that we need to sacrifice here to get our country back on track. I saw John Boehner, king of the republican crybabies on TV about a week ago, and, God help me, I agreed with what he said. He proposed raising social security taxes ON ME and cutting MY future social security benefits to try to help our country out, and I thought that they sounded like great ideas.
So how about it, you republican crybabies? Are you ready to shut the hell up and quit trying to move our country right and start moving it forward instead?
Seriously.
Rev. Randal
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