Fight the Power! (company)

I was on the train this morning, doing my usual routine of reading over people's shoulders and eyeing attractive women in the creepiest manner possible, when I saw some smarmy ads placed courtesy of the local NY energy concern, Consolidated Edison (ConEd for those without a moment to spare). There were multiple choice questions regarding energy conservation, with three goofy answers and one obvious one. 'Cause that makes learning fun! This example is from memory so bear with me:

Brooklyn residents can save the most energy by:

A) staying in bed when hungover
B) eating their neighbors' garbage instead of cooking
C) keeping the AC on a low setting
D) braining a cheating spouse with a tire iron, instead of a plugged-in appliance such a curling iron

Now, even if you don't live in NYC, I think you probably have experience at some point in your life with a public utility that is run like a gangland racket. ConEd is just such a utility. These people have a serious set of onions hanging on them to be this pedantic towards their customers. They are constantly raising rates, dragging their feet on updating the grid, and generally stretching their middle finger to the fullest at all the people that hand them money month in and month out.
A few years ago, I was living in Sunnyside, on the western side of Queens, where the Reggaeton is loud and so are the women. Along with several other neighborhoods, we were with little or no power for about two weeks. My neighbors thought I was a rich man when I told them one of my outlets was working.
It was summer, naturally, and hotter than Satan's chili. Businesses struggled, a few failed. ConEd showed up with.....an ice truck. Know when an ice-truck was a helpful thing in NY? The Depression. That's where they sent us back to. Crises such as these can bring people together, though. Once the power went on, there was a meeting of the neighborhood elders. I was invited, since my working outlet had made me quite the local luminary. The agreement was made to never discuss the details of our survival with any outsiders. The houses we chopped up for cooking fuel, the fair-skinned individuals selected for sacrifice to Ba'al, the heftier community members that were eaten, all of this will be taken to my grave.
There were also incidents around that time of people being electrocuted simply by standing on metal plates ConEd had placed over work sites, and also managed to run current through. A lady died. Did anyone lose their job? Get a pay reduction? A stern talking to?
Course not, public service and accountability are mutually exclusive in New York, as in many populous places in America. The people at the top are still raking in ridiculous salaries for doing nothing. Thomas Edison, for whom the utility is named, would be turning over in his grave, if not for the fact that he also liked ripping people off and is also not in a grave but shambling about Menlo Park, NJ in a unspeakable state of living death (there have been sightings).

AAAH! 'DEYS ALL CROOKS!!
(shakes Grandpa fist, goes back to VHS tape of Sonny Liston fight)

Coincidence? Bah!

A dear friend emailed me this link earlier today.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-talk-eng-slaughter-column-20100826,0,225489.story
It was a really odd coincidence, since I had gone to sleep last night thinking of Clarice Starling's titular childhood experience in "The Silence of the Lambs". No, I had no good reason thinking about this at bedtime. The mind takes us to odd, dark places in the wee small hours.
I was thinking about all the pain we cause in order to serve ourselves young, tender meat. I ain't no hippie tree-hugger, I hate patchouli and white people dreads and I understand that we eat animals in order to keep them from eating us. All the same, the idea of all the many thousands of tiny lambs bleating as they are slaughtered in the most painful way possible (at least in the kosher tradition) gave me pause.
Getting rid of the factory farms and the methods in which the meat industry operates is next to impossible. They got the juice and are integral to our economy as well as the average diet. It's not really a secret that their products can be hazardous, (this USDA report from last April ain't great news http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/24601-08-KC.pdf )but very little is ever done to curb their practices or tighten their oversight, mainly because they give a free side of beef to every FDA and FSIS inspector.
I'm not going to get in to how the cow farts have contributed to ozone depletion. We all know about it, and it's a little too predictable that we would bring about such a vulgar apocalypse.
Alls I'm saying is, we've made progress on the veal front, no one likes what goes on there. Maybe we can work on all the other animal children we eat, just let them get to adulthood before we slaughter them, like college interns or graduates that join Teach for America

Oh, tell me more, racist idiot!

In popular media over the past few years,there has been a dramatic paradigm shift. No, this is not going to be an entry about how there are now vampires in everything from Garfield comics to toaster oven instruction manuals. We're all tired of it, but complaining about it has obviously proved useless. I'm talking about our old friend prejudice. The subject was taboo for so long that now it's 'ok' to make fun of ethnicity and creed again. The racist comedians (I'm looking at you, Carlos Mencia and Larry the Cable Guy) excuse themselves with the rationale that they are saying what everyone is thinking. I think about setting cars on fire and finding ways to disrupt the power grid. I also think about starting a terrible improv group and murdering people that work for lobbying firms. I would never think a comedian making jokes about these things is ok, just because I think them. Personal bias, much like the constant dogfight of voices in my head, is not something to be proud of, it's something that needs to be healed so our kids are slightly less terrible than ourselves.
The problem is not new, I know. I have just noticed it creeping into normal interpersonal interactions more than they used to. At the risk of being labeled a knee-jerk, PC, whiner, let's look at some examples:
The "I have lots of black friends" guy:
Yeah, and I'm sure none of them would have an issue with you dropping N-bombs in public. Even if they don't, I do. How far does this justification reach, anyway? If a Klan member or Mel Gibson had black friends, does that make their activities ok?
The "A Mexican took my job" guy:
If a guy that just got here, probably with a limited command of the language, took your job, then I think you probably should have stepped up your game. You may also need to examine the possibility that your old boss just took the opportunity to get rid of a jackass who can't take responsibility for his own life.
The "I am well educated, so all of my theories about other races are actually facts." guy:
You can make all the circular, self-serving, and overly verbose arguments you want, it all comes out like "I don't want to pay for all the blacks on welfare!" There were people like you once, they thought they had science behind them. Our science beat their science because it was centered around the principle of killing self-important fascists.
The "What do you think you're doing in my neighborhood, white boy?" guy:
Hey fuck you buddy, I live here too!
The "Chingy-chong chang, this is how Asians talk." guy.
Seriously, if I have to tell you what's wrong with making that kind of hacky-ass joke, you need to stop watching old Mickey Rooney clips. It was already old when he did it, and that was about fifty years ago. Stick to knock-knock jokes and your Jeff Foxworthy fan club.

I could go on and on, but let's leave it here for now. Suffice it to say, you want to speak like trash? Fine, go sit in a garbage can. I don't need to hear it, I've heard enough.