BLACK.... by popular demand!

No, no, no.... that wasn't a racial comment or a shot at the big O. No, that actually used to be the call sign of Walter Williams (not to be confused with Walter White... he's a badass), widely considered a genius economist (who also happens to be black) for his conservative radio talk show which followed Rush Limbaugh way back before Rush got high off his own, uh.... drugs. Rush should call Heisenberg!

It really has nothing to do with anything other than it was the first thing I thought about when deciding to make my triumphant return, and admittedly, its a cheap trick to use the controversial headline to grab your attention.

Walter Williams

It's been a good long while since I've written you all, and a great many things have gone down since, my own life now radically different, but the over whelming response by many of you has forced me out of retirement. You, the people, have called.... looking for a voice, and I have answered!

Walter White

"Just when I think I'm out... they PULL me back in!"

And so, the Dark Knight rises.... BLAC.... er, BACK by popular demand!

When last you heard from me I was busy twittling my one good thumb in a no good environment of dead end jobs and losing cultures into a self medicated downward spiral. My one hope, I knew, the thing I held onto was that all it would take was one positive break in an important life arena and I'd be on my way. Lo and behold, out of nowhere a buddy hooked me up with a good new job, a month later I met the woman who would quickly become my wife, and I wasted no time putting a baby inside of her. Radical change, I know, but finally in a positive manner; I'm a family man now, and I'm happier than I've ever been in my life.

It goes to prove two things, the first being that, of course, I was right again about life and how it all works, and more importantly, that no matter what stain of a situation you may find yourself in, it can all turn around at any moment, and in an instant. Ironically, because if you've read this space and know what an animal I can be, I'm having a daughter. That's either poetic justice or the universe knows what I need; I'm a cave man and this will force me to turn into some sort of human being.

Some sort of human. What sort? I don't know

So now that my re-introduction has come and gone it's time to turn our attention towards some of those worldly matters that often get me so riled up. And there's so much to go over after a near year hiatus that I'm lucky 2012 went out with such a bang. Of course, as things go these days that means precisely one thing.... Facebook fights!

Why, my wife explained, would I engage in senseless arguments with the ignorant when you can pontificate here? So here it is, and now you know why I married her.

Trouble is... you can't speak truth if it goes against popular opinion, that's not the way it works anymore, what you are F'en Crazy?!

We've had Hurricane Sandy, The Sand Hook School Shootings, the fiscal cliff debate, cries for gun control, taxing the rich, Terrorist attacks in Libya, people getting pushed in front of trains everywhere and all manner of craziness, and the one, the one lesson to come out of all of it is this.... 

That it doesn't matter. People have no interest in knowing what's actually going on out there. You can argue until your tongue falls off and your fingers bleed, point out fact after fact, but no one is ever going to listen to you. Their opinion, and this was actually said to me, is more important than the FACTS you present, and the minute you disagree, they turn you off. 

Sandy

On a side note, 2012 also had a number of massage therapists come out against John Travolta. As they put it, he threatened them "Don't you know who I am?! You BETTER let me blow you!"

(And if you don't get the connection here.... well, that would explain a lot.)

So I've decided that my best course of action, since I can't seem to show people the light and turn them away from those cliffs at the edge of the rye fields, (they're not interested, they'd rather be right no matter how wrong they are) is that from now on I'll be speaking directly to my children, my daughter who's on the way and those yet to come, because at any time I can be beaten to death by pacifists protesting intolerance over the fact that they can't tolerate my different points of view.... or the truth rather than what sounds good,  and when I'm gone I'd like for them to know their father.

But before I go I'm going to make some quick points with verifiable FACTS based on empirical data which you can look up on your own, and you can take from them what you like.

As of 2012 the national average high school graduation rate is 78.2%
Which means 21%, more than 1 in every 5 Americans, doesn't graduate from High School.

The Presidents' answer to fix the economy is to send more kids to college. How do you send people to college if they can't get a high school diploma? How does that lead to jobs?

Between 1998 and 2012 more than 160 MILLION background checks were conducted in the United States for the purpose of buying a firearm. Very few checks result in the actual denial of purchase, and you can buy more than one gun per background check. In that span it's estimated that 40% of gun sales were done without any form of background check in all. In short, there are literally Hundreds of Millions of guns out on the streets. No matter how you feel about the subject, the cat is out of the bag on this one, just as it is with drugs and illegal immigrants, there's no way in hell you can possibly reign that in. No ban of any kind will get the guns off the street, no matter what anyone tells you.

Beyond that, the people want what they want and will do anything to get it. Alcohol was banned once, and it gave rise to Al Capone and the biggest organized crime syndicates this country has every known. Drugs are now banned, and you'd be hard pressed to meet someone who can't get their hands on them. The illegal drug   trade has bred life into the bloodiest, most ruthless criminals the world over. Abortion was illegal and women went into back alleys to get their guts ripped out with hangers.

What would happen with the illegal gun trade here if they're banned? People want what they want. Guns, drugs, abortion, prostitution, pirated goods, its all the same. They're never going away. What are we even fighting about?

Finally... and this brings us back full circle to the title of this piece. Try not to be too offended, these are purely statistics taken from government websites that you can verify. In all the talk of the economy, rich against poor, you often hear of the plight of the poor black kid....

As of 2012 just 12.2% of the U.S. Population is African American, or around 40 Million people. 1 in 6 Americans, 46 Million people, are currently collecting some form of welfare or another. Of that 46 million, 39% of welfare recipients are African American, more than any other group. That comes in at about 19 Million people.  Look at those numbers again, around 19 Million of the 40 Million (nearly HALF) African American people in the United States collect some form of welfare.

Many people will shout racism over this. Please be objective, there are an incredible number of reasons for why this is, but these are the statistical facts of the situation. Add in crime rates and school drop out rates which I won't even go into here and there is clearly a very serious problem within that community.

So why do I bring this up? Simple. The Struggles of the poor, the economy, racism, gun violence in America, failures in education, over spending on Government programs, every single one of these factors are inseparably tied together. The fix to all of America's problems lies in the answer to what ails the Black community. If we stop being over sensitive, worried about public perception, and take a good hard look at the problems and solutions within that populace, well, if we learn how to fix that we learn how to fix all of us.

Join my fanpage John LaSota - Writer

Or our creative team's page The Mad Doser Presents

Unemployment, Shootings in New York City, Labor day and acting right...

Now that Labor Day has passed the summer is officially behind us (though not scientifically speaking until Sept. 23). It's 62 degrees in New York and, of course, raining some more, but what else is new. College Football has started and Notre Dame sucks once again, their season over before it began due to the sort of mistakes that can only be categorized as bad coaching. It was a weekend full of that sort of negative vibe.

What the hell is she doing?

I mean, yeah, that's one big ass tree, but she's been

standing like that staring at it for hours. There's been an

epidemic of people doing whacky nonsense out there.

39 people were shot in New York city over a 2 day span from Noon Saturday until Monday afternoon this labor day weekend. A lot of that may be attributed to the West Indian festivities that kicked off, or at least that's what the papers claimed, apparently this sort of thing happens every year during the West Indian festivities. I don't really pay much mind it, but that's downright disturbing. Most of the shootings were in Brooklyn; most of the shootings happened at parties, or at the hands of people who just left a party. There's no better way to celebrate anything than shooting up a room full of teenagers I tell ya!

I suspect this guy is behind it all.

Just look at him. If that's not a kid toucher, I don't know

what is. Last time I saw him he was trying to capture

the Ambiguously Gay Duo.

This is an old stat back from around 2005 or so, but 44 Americans are murdered every day, and that's not counting other violent crimes, just when they were actually killed. That's compared to 4 soldiers dying per day combined in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can get the figures off the FBI's website if you really want to do the research, but it just goes to show you that it's still not all that safe out there. Just because something bad hasn't happened to you... YET... doesn't mean you're protected in your magic bubble. Especially if you live in Brooklyn. That's not a shot or a crack at Brooklyn, it's just the truth.

Whatever it is that he did,

he was just following orders.

That's what henchmen do.

But don't try to get him to rat

out his boss... he aint talkin...

 I can't imagine that those numbers have gotten any better; if anything they're probably worse. We're not just facing an economic crisis, a depression, we're also facing a crisis of conscience. Somewhere along the line we stopped holding ourselves to higher standards, we stopped enforcing the basic rules of decency out there which holds firm that there are things that are acceptable and things you just don't do. People really just don't know how to act anymore, and that doesn't come out of weekend shootings, those are the end result. The shootings are a result of the little things built up to an explosion, it's talking in movie theatre's, driving in the middle lane all the way to the end of an exit ramp and cutting in on the line of cars doing it the right way, not saying "thank you" when someone holds a door open that's got us here.

Look at this poor woman. She's hunched over in

embarrassment, grabbing her ankle, crying in pain

while he tosses her around in front of a cheering

crowd like its a damn Roman arena.

Can you really blame him though? Just look at that

shirt. You can't pull off pimp without beating your women.

He's going to blame Dr. Venture there up top.

Until we fix the breakdowns in the very fabric of our society and restore that sense of pride in doing the right thing nothing that happens economically will make much of a difference. We'll only destroy it all over again. Greedy people will take advantage because they can get away with it. Animals will continue to act as if might makes right because we prove to them that it's true everyday. Stupid people do stupid things, and desperate people do desperate things, and when you throw millions of stupid desperate people together with no vision of a better way, a better world, a better you and no hope for a better life.... whoa, that's a powder keg sitting on top of 100 year old unstable dynamite, isn't it?

Its good she's not reading in the dark, but

someone should tell he that sitting a foot

in front of a 4 foot tower of ultraviolet light

isn't good for the eyes either. Her eyesight was

perfect until she bought that damn lamp. Dr. Zeus

made her do it. I told you... whacky!

And why would we be desperate? Because not only is the unemployment rate in the U.S. at 9.2% as of this weekend, but the underemployment rate is at 16.7%, thrilling news that also came out of this Labor Day weekend. In case you don't know, the underemployed are those of us that have jobs but don't make enough money at those jobs to pay the bills. The underemployed are the ones working 2 part time jobs at 70+ hours a week just to get by, only to have to do it all over again tomorrow.

Right now 25% of the country can not take care of themselves. Yet adding to that desperation, in our consumer driven materialistic party all the time society, we're still putting all the value on the "Haves" while looking down on the "Have Nots". Worse still... no one has any answers as to how to fix it.

Blame the Chinese, they're behind everything.

Who do you think is funding Dr. Moreau up there?

Outsourcing your devious plots for total global domination

keeps the hands clean and frees up a lot of time for

more important activities like....

KARAOKE!

All of this has even made the likes of self improvement guru Anthony Robbins go on a Labor Day Rant! This is a long video, but you should really listen to what he has to say in it. There were some specific points he made in it, things I've said a lot and got slammed for in the past such as:

"I'm not talking about positive thinking bullshit"
"Everyone wants a piece of you when things are good. When you're down the people who are full of it disappear and you find out who your real friends are."
"You need a breakthrough"

He says these things straight out in this clip, and it points out why, of all of these people cropping up doing what he does, that he's still the best. What he acknowledges that the "positive thinking" crowd refuses to is that even if you do everything right you still need opportunities, you still need something to happen, and for many of us, those breakthroughs just don't come, and they certainly haven't or aren't coming any time soon.

And there it is, the evidence, the crux of the plan....

they're going to replace all of our women with

cardboard cutouts.

If you want companionship you'll have to go through

them now. Cardboard cutouts are just fine. You can even

talk to them a bit. Its when they start answering back

that you have to worry.

Robbins hits on the same rock wall that I've been smashing myself against for the better part of my lifetime, and certainly over the past few years, and that's that no matter how hard we try to improve our situation, there are times that nothing you do can change it and there's really nothing that you can do about it. This follows right along the path of Eastern philosophy when they say that life has pain, all we can do is decide how we feel about it, how we let it affect us. As Anthony Robbins says, when it really hits the fan and everything is out of our control, all we can do is focus on the things that we CAN do something about. Often the only thing that is is how we think or how we act.

They're letting us keep one or two of the ladies

around, just in case we need a little something extra....

like two front teeth... or are those the bottom teeth?

And as if the Universe needed to hammer that point home, that sometimes things just don't go your way and there's nothing that you can do about it but accept the situation and let go of the frustrations caused by fighting a fight you just can't win and stop fighting just for the sake of fighting... I got word Friday night that Jess, my ex that left me in the middle of the night, is now engaged to be married.

It was an odd feel that washed over me; I wasn't upset at all. Quite the contrary, I'm actually about as happy for her as I can be. Whatever happened, I take the blame for it; I could have loved her a whole lot better than I did, and marriage was what she always wanted. Hopefully she'll be able to squeeze out a kid or two too. I gained a large sense of relief because I couldn't give her what she wanted, but she didn't lose out on it because she wasted time with me.

Of course, ever since it's seemed like the whole world has stopped. You can't help but think in these situations "what about me?", and I've done my share of that. I've accomplished so much since she left, but every bit of it has felt completely empty because I've had no one to share it with (another thing Robbins mentions often), and nothing I've done has done anything to change that.

But never fear... These guys are on the case.

Have you ever seen a sight that's filled you with

a greater sense that all will be well.

No matter how heinous the plot devised by Dr. Evil...

These guys will save us!

For everything that's happened over the past couple of years, all the hard work that I've done, all the life lessons learned, all the goals knocked off the list, I find myself right back in the same exact situation I fought so hard and did all of those things to get out of 5 years ago and more. And the people that I carried with me all that time, the ones I've been scarred by, have all moved on to other lives and seemingly left me behind, no longer even a dot in their rearview.

Hearing of the engagement took all the fight I had left out of me. Not in a bad way, but in that way you only find through acceptance. This is what it is; this is life. Maybe not for others, but this is what life is for me. And so it's time to stop fighting for all those things out there, focus on the few things you can actually do something about, and try to enjoy whatever it is that does come to you.

And we'll all live happily ever after...

THE END!

I like myself a lot, even if very few others do. I just don't like the situation I'm in, and no matter how hard I've tried I can't do anything to change it. I wonder how many of us have said the very same thing, felt that very same way. But being depressed about it doesn't work either. How does that make anything better?

Instead I said "Fuck it", the 2 most powerful words in the English dictionary as the best teacher I ever had, John D. Vasques, said often. I spent Labor Day weekend watching 3 kick ass Phish concerts and eating Barbecue with The Man and caught my favorite Elvis flik.

And there was much rejoicing.

So what really is the point then in today's ramble if it's not to say how bad things are and we're all screwed? It's this... even when nothing's working for you you can still always decide how you feel about it. Work on being a better you, even if that means saying "to hell with it" and having yourself a good time. Sometimes it's all you can do.

Later People! 

Join my fanpage John LaSota - Writer
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