Refrigerator

I meant to write more often this week, I really did. I don't generally believe in New Year's resolutions, despite my wife's prodding to have some, but I had really told myself that I would buckle down and write more often this year. So here we are on day four of the new year and I've done squat. And at the rate I'm going on my travel journal from SE Asia I'll probably finish sometime around Labor Day. I promise not to let that happen.

But this week just kind of got away from me a little bit. After waking up late on Tuesday morning, having been out late at the Dresden Dolls' New Year's Eve show the night before, I headed out to Coney Island. My buddy Joe did the Polar Bear Club thing this year, so I went out to watch him freeze his nuts off by jumping in the water at the beach. He raised money for a good cause, but there is still no way I would ever fucking do anything like that.

Then on Wednesday I had to work for a big chunk of the day. Our TV, that I've had for almost twelve years, died that morning as well. We had DVDs we rented with nothing to watch them on, so I spent the rest of the day looking up TV types and prices on-line and then went to the store and picked one up that night. We finally went HD. I then spent the rest of the night hooking everything up.

Yesterday I had to go searching for a new DVD player because my old one didn't play well with the new TV. This required a trip to Brooklyn since all the Circuit City's in Manhattan were sold out of the Sony they had on sale that I decided I wanted.

And today I'm sick. Caught my wife's cold.

But I don't want to leave all two of my adoring fans without some of my wise and astute observations and witticisms.

Watching yesterday's Iowa caucus results got me to thinking about an annoying conversation I had with my brother a couple of days before Christmas. Probably because my guess is that my brother probably loves this right-wing religious nut who hates gay people and wants to ban the IRS and start a federal sales tax, thus raising taxes on poor people and lowering them for rich people.

As a refresher, my brother is the guy who, along with his wife, is teaching my nieces and nephew that I'm going to burn in Hell because I don't believe in their Jesus mythology.

For some reason he decided to start a political conversation with me when I had called him before Christmas to see about something to do with packages that we had sent to them. Why he decided to do this I don't know. You would have thought he had learned by now.

Somehow he got off on some thing about how our system in America is perfect, specifically mentioning the electoral college. I imagine he loves the electoral college so much because it made the guy he voted for President instead of the guy who actually won. I of course found this laughable.

Somehow this eventually lead to my brother talking about how Great Britain's Parliament doesn't work or ever accomplish anything. I tried to counter with some points about how a parliamentary system is a true representative government and minority parties have representation, etc.

The conversation then went to where it always goes when my brother and I talk politics and he can't actually back up his argument with any facts or good points. He brings up the fact that he took a class on this subject in college, thinking that this will somehow shut the other person up because he has declared himself the "expert" on the topic. My brother did in fact study political science in college, which he graduated from 16 fucking years ago. He has not used the degree or done any other advance study since. He sells dental equipment.

He also tends to lie about the number of classes he took on a particular topic, or claim that he took a class that doesn't actually exist. A person with a PhD hasn't taken as many classes in their life that my brother has claimed to have taken to get his BA with a C average.

He must have have really felt like he was losing this argument big because he really reached on this one. He told me he knew more about it than me because he had taken "five classes on the English Parliament" at school.

I didn't look it up, but I'm willing to bet that the University of Iowa doesn't even offer five different classes on the English Parliament.

This whole tactic is basically my brother's version of "I know what you are but what am I?"

I mentioned at some point, in response to his claim that England's Parliament doesn't accomplish anything, that they created a national universal health care system in that very parliament back in the 1940s.

His answer? "Well, the rich people from England all come to America for their health care."

It was at this moment that I thought about something the great hobo philosopher Utah Phillips once said:

Talking to a conservative is like talking to your refrigerator. You know, the light goes on, the light goes off. It's not going to do anything that isn't built into it. I'm not going to talk to a conservative anymore than I talk to my damn refrigerator.

Typical of a conservative/Republican/religious nut-job, my brother makes a statement with absolutely no truth to it and says it as if it were a fact. Someone from the GOP or FOX News told him it was true, so he does his masters' bidding and repeats the talking points they've spoon-fed to him. He has never actually looked into the topic to find any actual facts. George Bush says single-payer health care is bad, I'll have to wait five years to see a doctor and people will be dying in the streets like in Canada if we have it here, so that's good enough for him. No matter that all the evidence that says otherwise.

Utah Phillips had it just about right. Except in my brother's case the light never actually comes on.

I just decided to hang up.