The Taco: Source of Endless Strife

At last, the moment you've all been waiting for: After a drought of a month and a half, I have returned to rock the blogosphere. Without a long-winded explanation for my sabbatical, I'll just proceed to the meat of the post - after all, you don't come here to listen to me make excuses.

Speaking of meat, yesterday was the 4th of July. How are the two related, you ask? For the holiday, my sister went to a friend's house to celebrate and spend the night. You can probably guess what kind of classic American food was served at this party: tacos. "Happy Independence Day everybody! In honor of the occasion, let's all have some patriotic Mexican food!" Seriously? Who does that? And as if that sleight against Americana wasn't enough, one of the girls at the party was a vegetarian, so she had a cheese quesadilla. I'll hold off on my vegetarian rant for now, but I'm telling you, it better be burgers, hot dogs, or other forms of grilled flesh on the 4th, kids, or you're doing something horribly wrong.

In the summer of 2000, I got this Arizona Jeans American Flag t-shirt, and I don't remember exactly what it said on it, but it was something along the lines of "100% American Made" something or other. It was designated my 4th of July shirt, and I wore it on the 4th of July every year starting that summer and all the way through the summer of 2008. Of course, it also got regular rotation year-round during my high school days, and so it's become reasonably worn since then. This year, I went to my dresser to get my shirt so I could celebrate the holiday properly... and it was nowhere to be found. I had to hurry up and get dressed (to take my sister to the aforementioned party, in fact), so I didn't have time to hunt around for it, and I wouldn't have had the slightest idea where to look anyway. Instead, I just threw on my red Old Navy t-shirt. This happens to be the very shirt that Andrew Clark gravely wounded toward the end of the Spring 2006 semester at Liberty when he lashed out violently at me after I had performed a rendition of his infamous Sub-Walk. Fortunately, thanks to the sewing efforts of my mom, the day was saved, and the shirt is alive and well to this day. Anyway, it's a solid red shirt, so I figured that combining it with my blue jeans and Yankee hat would create a red white and blue motif, suitable for the occasion. I was a bit sad in light of my broken streak, but then I remembered the circumstances surrounding the day. The 4th of July is meant to celebrate all that is American, and one thing that stands out to me as distinctly un-American is socialism. Thus, what better way to end the era of the longstanding patriotic 4th of July shirt than under the new reign of our wonderful President, Barack Obama? I found it to be a very fitting piece of symbolism, which made me feel better about my shirt... but not so much about the future of our country.

In other news, a few nights ago I was doing the dishes, and at the same time my mom was watching The Nanny on Nick at Nite in the kitchen, so I could hear the TV loud and clear from m post. I gathered that the episode they were airing was one of the last of the series, and the main character, Fran, was going into labor, about to push some babies out into the world. Now, the pain of childbirth is one of those things that women perennially complain about, and they always use their ability to withstand this pain as a means to tout their resilience and overall perceived superiority to men. Barring the testicular torsion argument, I've always conceded that giving birth must be incredibly painful and that women are to be granted this point in the Pain Threshold Challenge. The thought struck me while I was listening to this show, however, that women are notorious drama queens. Seriously, they make humongous deals out of the most trivial of occurrences; what proof do we have, then, that childbirth is indeed as painful as they make it out to be? It could all be a trumped up ploy designed to gain attention and garner the rendition of various other services in light of the allegedly traumatizing experience. The way women regularly react to mundane inconveniences is, in my mind, enough evidence to convince me of this. Of course, ladies, this is your cue to post indignant comments or harass me by a number of other more personal means for my egregious and unfounded attack on the integrity of the fairer sex. If you feel led in that direction, please, I encourage you to do so and prove my point for me.

I think that'll do it for this blog. I don't have any wise words or half-decent advice to offer tonight, and I'm really struggling with bringing this thing to a viable conclusion, so rather than just let it flail about pathetically, I think I'll just take this post out behind the shed and end its suffering here and now.

Come to think of it, I better get a gun while I still can.