Michael Vick has been reinstated by the NFL.  Well, sort of.  It is now time for the great bleating to begin; this is where a large amount of people who should know otherwise start a vast chorus of moaning and wailing about the inherent unfairness of the NFL justice system.  How terrible it is, they'll say, that this man who has dutifully served his time in the prison system should be denied the opportunity to re-enter the league.  How tragic, that we simply cannot leave this man alone and insist on extracting every pound of flesh we possibly can.

You know me, people.  I believe in plain, simple talk.  So believe me when I say that I'm one of those people who'd love to get an extra pound of flesh or two from Vick, and my implement of choice in removing it would be a pair of rusty vice-grips.

For the last two months, I have listened to some of the most inane arguments ever leveled in print, radio or television, and the one that crops up over and over again is as follows.  Dante Stallworth, another player in the league, served a 30-day jail sentence and will serve a lengthy stint of probation as well as dropping a 2-5 million dollar settlement against the family of a man who, while Stallworth was high and legally drunk, struck and killed with his Bentley.  Vick did 23 months in federal prison for dogfighting, animal cruelty, racketeering and conspiracy to commit felonies across state lines.  How then, these people ask with perfectly straight faces, can one man do less than five weeks of league time in the pokey for causing a human death while the other kills dogs and is confined to a federal institution for 23 times as long?

The answer is distressingly simple, and the gall it takes to even pose the question in the first place speaks to a vast ignorance the likes of which I will never personally experience.  What Stallworth did was a tragic accident.  His actions resulted in the death of another human being, true, but he did not get into his car that night with the express purpose in mind of slaying somebody.  The last time I checked, intent is the difference between accidental vehicular homicide (five years if the judge is feeling peckish) and premeditated first-degree murder (in Florida, you ride the lightning).  That's intent, people.  It's the difference between being a passenger in your buddy's car when the cop's dope-dog starts going nuts and being the driver of said vehicle.  Intent makes all the difference in the world.

Stallworth did not intend to cause a death.  Vick did.

In fact, Vick went quite a bit further.  There are so many things associated with the gruesomeness wrought by Bad Newz Kennelz and the monsters running the joint that many of the details were reported once and never spoken of again.  People seem to find the particulars of this case unpleasant; therefore, it's better to simply not talk about them.  It's better and more palatable for most to talk about this case as the question of how much the life of an animal is worth against that of a human being, and by that simplistic assumption, it's a cut-and-dried case.

This case is something different.  Maybe we don't like talking about the "rape stands," the devices that female dogs were tied onto in order to facilitate matings to produce more puppies, lashed into place so they had no choice but to submit.  We definitely don't like talking about the metal bars and devices used to pry apart the jaws of dogs who had locked a death-grip on their opponents, or the fact that blood was sprayed nearly up to the ceiling in the fighting room with the subterranean pit.  Ditto with the dead dogs buried on the property, or that dogs which didn't cut the mustard were simply killed outright, and not in allegedly humane ways like with the gas chamber.  They were beaten against the ground, or electrocuted, for starters.  Didn't I say something before about riding the lighting?

Oh, and we definitely don't like thinking about the concept of bait animals.  It's just--

Bait animals?  Yeah.  See, this is where the arguments breaks down for me, the comparison these empty-headed clowns try to make between Vick and Stallworth being reduced to utter nonsense.  This is where the story tales on a whole new horrifying angle, one that has never been brought up by any of Vick's so-called "defenders."  The thing is, even a pit bull doesn't always want to get the motor running for a gladitorial match to the death.  You have to get them psyched up for the event.  Sometimes you do it by starving them.  Sometimes you do it by beating them.  And other times, you take a dog, cat or some other type of animal, you duct tape its jaws shut (or file down its teeth) so it can't fight back, and you throw it, alive, into the pit to be torn to shreds.

If you're Michael Vick, you do this despicable act with your own household pets.  Now you see why the argument has become so simplistic.  You can't defend this with a straight face if you know all the facts.  When you get to the subject of bait animals, you have officially passed the event horizon.

Look over at your cat or dog right now and imagine them, terrified and doomed, being thrown to a rapacious monster who will eviscerate them alive without even a puncher's chance to fight back or at least get in one solid bite.  See that person throwing them in the pit?  Now, try to see that person as being one of your friends or co-workers.  That's not enough.

To truly appreciate how vile this, you must visualize the monster doing this as yourself.

That's why Vick deserves a lifetime ban, and that's just for starters.  What he did was not a mistake.  It wasn't a tragic accident, done by a person under the influence who didn't have a straight head on their shoulders.  It was deliberate.  It was premeditated.  It was carried our with cruel intent and callous disregard for life.  It was some of the worst of human behavior, done in the name of a barbaric "blood sport" whose supporters should die a slow, cancerous death in a part of the world where morphine does not exist.

We have a word for acts like what Vick did.

That word is evil.

Our neighbors across the street suck.

I know, I know.  That's not being positive.  That's hurtful.  That's making a blanket statement about people who are all unique snowflakes, all of which are God's creatures and each brings something special to this world we live in.  It's a close-minded statement.

I repeat: our neighbors across the street suck.

Allow me to don my Superiority Hat for a moment and explain the situation.  I have already posted in the past about the general suckiness of our neighbors, and this is the third set that we have rubbed elbows with since buying our house.  To be brutally frank, there has been virtually no difference in the first awful collective and the current terrible one.  Neighbor Set Two was a nice woman who worked as a teacher, but was unfortunately forced to move all-too-soon due to cutbacks in the district she lived in making her unable to afford the rent.  Trust me when I say that it was a sad day when she moved out, because she opened the door for the current mob we are forced to deal with.

This is being posted because as I arrived home at just before 9 AM, there was a full-bore yelling match going on in the front yard where the lady of the house (nattily attired in a sports bra and cut-off sweatshorts that were not even remotely up to the desperately-needed task of covering her woefully substandard body) was stomping off down the street while her man took off in her car.  At least, I think it's her car.  I don't know.  Anyway, he took off in a squeal of tires, groaning of fan belts, clatter of gaskets and merry shouts of "BITCH!" while she walked two houses down, stood in somebody's front yard to yell about what an ass he was, and then went back inside the house across the street that I have christened The Crap Zone.

Now we start getting mean.  You've been warned.

( Not Too Late To Turn Back, You Know... )

So the King of Pop has passed on.  I liked Thriller very much, and thought he did some good material after that.  Having dispensed with the usual saccharine comments that as a society composed of allegedly civilized people we are required to regurgitate, I will now ask the real question: can a person moonwalk on a lake of fire?

If anybody is egregiously offended by this, I'm happy to listen to the "pro-kid-fuckers should lead long and rewarding lives" theory.  Don't think I'm going to hear a peep about this aspect, though.  I expect what will happen instead will be some very well-meaning but whiny remonstrations about how one should not speak ill of the dead, and that every life is sacred and--

PPPPPPHHHHHHBBBBBBBBTTTTTTTTT.  Please, don't.  If you don't want people to speak badly of you after you go to whatever awaits in the Great Hereafter, I have some very succinct advice for you.  Ready?  Here we go.  BE A BETTER PERSON WHILE YOU ARE ALIVE.  Period.

As Ron White famously said (and I hope he will forgive me while I paraphrase): "I understand that when the police searched Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch, they found one of those realistic sex dolls, in the form of a little kid and it was dressed as a Cub Scout, complete with uniform.  Now, if the police searched my house and they found a sex doll of a woman, everybody would assume I was fucking it... and they'd be right."

Farrah Fawcett I have sympathy for and good wishes.  She helped kids.  She didn't grope them after getting them liquored on "Jesus Juice."

Hey kids, it's a visit from that friend of hurt feelings everywhere, Mister Truth!  What do you have to say today, good sir?

Popular culture is so anti-minivan today that driving one is so counter-culture, so in the face of popular biases, so keeping-it-real, that it's almost punk rock. In a utilitarian way, anyway.

Um, no.  It isn't.

Reality check time in the old corral, kids.  The minivan is not, has never been, and never will be cool.  Period.  There is quite a movement underfoot these days to try to convince us that really, this laughed-at and put-down six-cylinder suburban transport vehicle is actually a great thing to have, and that people who scorn these contraptions simply "don't get it."  Actually, we do.  We get it, all right.  Minivans are fucking lame.

At first, the minivan was seen to be a terrible choice of vehicles by its association with the dreaded Soccer Mom, the dumb suburban bitch who helped put Bush in the White House (twice) because "he seems like a regular person."  As a quick aside, it should be pointed out that a "regular person" is the absolute last person you'd ever want to have holding the job title of Leader Of The Free World.  I know regular people; hell, I'm a regular person.  You know what I would do if I were the President of the United States?  I'd hook up all my friends with high-paying jobs involving doing no work that they are qualified for, spend as little time as possible in the office and be vague and evasive when asked what my glorious plan for the future is.  You know, just like this jackass.

But I digress, as usual.

The minivan is a crappy vehicle because of the main elements that makes every bad vehicle laugh-worthy.  Aesthetic-wise, it's absolutely terrible.  At least a standard van has a sort of boxy charm, not unlike that of a Volvo, that can't be denied.  It's nice if you liked The A-Team, awesome if you're a budding serial killer and gets a thumbs-up from contractors who work in rainy climates.  Plus, if you were really industrious, you could outfit your van as a kind of rolling No-Tell Motel, which my wife did back in her teenage years, much to her frequent delight.  You can't do this with a minivan.  In fact, the only thing you can do with a minivan is cart around obscene amounts of children that you and your baby-drunk spouse have unleashed on the world and go buy equally horrific amount of groceries to feed your awesomely terrifying brood.  If you don't believe me, look at the comments left at the end of this product review and ask yourself if this doesn't seem like a Uterus Wagoneer testimonial ad nauseum.

Okay, next point.  People have this wacky idea that having one of these symbolizes that any cool factor you once possessed has now been torn away, along with your manhood/hot chick status, and guess what?  It's so true, it should be bronzed.  It's really not so much the vehicle as it is the class of people being scorned, because in the 1970's the station wagon was the Devil incarnate, and in the 1980's it was the minivan, and in the 90's it's been the SUV.  However, guilt by association is still guilt.  As a result, there are really only two types of minivan drivers:

1)  People who drive so carefully and slowly, due to the astounding amounts of over-caffeinated and under-educated children bouncing around inside that they make bluehair grannies in their Lincoln Town Cars scream "Get out of the way, you pussy!" out their power windows, and...

2)  The guy who in his early 20's had the barbed wire tattoos, Limp Bizkit CD's and now, due to his never-ending quest to get laid, today finds himself in his early 30's with a receding hairline, pot belly, a hefty mortgage, three kids and a once-hot now-frumpy wife yet desperately clings to the inner image he once had of himself as a badass.  Consequently, this douchebag is the biggest menace on the road as he tries to prove to the general public that no, his manhood is still intact.

The thing is, it's not, brother.  It's not.  You're a minivan driver, and therefore, you are a dweeb.  Suck it up and face reality because really, there's nothing more pathetic than trying to hold onto an iota of cool that gave up the ghost years ago.

Oh, and last of all, I love this quote:

People rightfully rave about the cargo-carrying flexibility of wagons, hatchbacks, crossovers, SUVs, and even oddballs like the Honda Element and PT Cruiser, but all of those pale in comparison with the humble minivan.

Um, no.  My Dodge Ram 1500 quad cab will bury your Kid Wagon every time, pal.  Can you say "half a ton carrying capacity and 6,000 pound towing ability?"  If you're talking about carrying capacity with one of those yutz vehicles, get even a small pickup and watch how fast your friends start to beg, "Can you help me move?"

Minivans.  Even the very word makes my tongue squirm.  Long live the sedan and pickup.