Warph strikes again...Is America Going Down The Tubes?

[Teresa Heilevang]

Ok you guys.. Warph wrote another one..  

This guy is good.
I'm telling him to come over here and join in. but so far, he's staying in the Home Forum...
And that's okay. He told me I could bring anything he writes over here..
So here it is:

Remember the movie, "A Few Good Men" .....

Col. Nathan R.Jessep: Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.  Whose gonna do it? You?  You, Lt. Weinburg? I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post.  Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.  You see Danny boy, I can deal with the bullets, and the bombs, and the blood.  I don't want money, and I don't want medals.  What I do want is for you to stand there in that faggoty white uniform and with your Harvard mouth extend me some %#?$# courtesy.  You gotta ask me nicely.  I run my unit how I run my unit.  You want to investigate me, roll the dice and take your chances. I eat breakfast 300 yards from 4000 Cubans who are trained to kill me, so don't think for one second that you can come down here, flash a badge, and make me nervous.  
Col. Nathan R. Jessep: You want answers?
Lt. Daniel Kaffee: I think I'm entitled.
Col. Jessep: You want answers?
Lt. Kaffee: I want the truth!
Col. Jessep: You can't handle the truth!

WOW.... what a role Jack Nicholson played in that film.... Check 'em out:

Or the Movie Original:

But seriously, the Colonel is right.  These days, truth in the Media has been pushed further into the backseat than loose change during a shuttle launch.  Hell, we don't know what to believe anymore.  I think it's a problem that you can't watch the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news without longing for the relative intellectual integrity of those thought bubbles on 'Blind Date.'  Remember 'Blind Date?'  I try not to.

If you're looking for empirical truth on TV, you're watching the wrong kinescope, my friend.  TV news wants you entertained first, informed maybe.  There's more useless eye candy in ten seconds of Headline News than in 24 hours of the Cartoon Network.  And don't try to argue that all that junk on the screen is information I need to know.  Nobody cares about the hotter than hell temperature in Phoenix AZ, not even the people in Phoenix. That's why they've moved to Phoenix. They've given up.  

Look, the truth is that in cost conscious, bottom line America all the major cable news organizations.... CNN & HEADLINE NEWS, FOX NEWS, MSNBC.... have been removing key positions like they were editing an Iranian edition of the Kama Sutra.  Instead of reporters on the scene gathering facts, what we're left with is an overstuffed, oxygen starved fish farm of opened mouth trout swimming in circles with absolutely no idea what they're talking about.  The other night MS/NBC loudmouth Chris Matthews had a leading authority on Al Qaeda and it turned out his only credential was that his name was 'Al Qaeda' ... from Pittsburgh, I think.

In today's information economy, the old journalistic mandate of 'Get it fast, first, and right' has been downsized to just getting it 'fast and first and to hell with the right.'  Today's idea of an 'investigative report' is one they remembered to run a spell-check on.  And the line between fact and opinion gets stepped on more frequently than the feet of a circus clown slow-dancing with a scuba diver.

Also, I don't trust anything said by a news anchor who doesn't have a believable hairpiece.  How am I supposed to take seriously any guy with hair that makes the molded plastic thatch on a G.I. Joe's head look natural?  Why should I believe his mouth when his scalp is screaming 'liar?'  And the women, everyone has the SAME hairstyle. Long, Stiff and Overblown.  They could stand in the middle of a tornado and their hair-do would survive.  And those blown-up,  puffed-up lips... the poor girls talk like they have a mouthful of spittlebug %$!$#.....  and I'm supposed to take you serious too, fish lips?  And, come on, does anyone really believe that chick at the TruTV/CourtTV news desk, Ashleigh Banfield, has an agenda that goes any further than launching her own line of eyewear?  Yeah, I see you too, Ashleigh.

And nothing is more skewed than local news during sweeps. The I-Team takes their hidden cameras down to any business that doesn't advertise with the station to ferret out the potential dangers to the consumer.  You never see them do a story on new or used car salesmen because they pump in too much ad revenue.  Instead they storm the barely English speaking mechanic who is trying to feed his eight kids, who charged the undercover reporter with a forty thousand dollar surveillance briefcase, an extra buck for a sparkplug. And it's all hyped with overly dramatic upcoming-story teasers that sound like Adam West reading 'War Of The Worlds' to the blind.

Look, we know each of our major newspapers comes with an established point-of-view.  The New York Times' is that of a liberal Northeastern academic.  The Wall Street Journal is that of conservative corporate America.  And USA Today is that of Sean Penn's character in 'I Am Sam' after inhaling paint fumes.

The sad truth is, we don't object to the slanted nature of our news because being told how to think is easier than figuring it out for ourselves.  But on the whole, there is no liberal or conservative bias!  Just kidding.  Media bias is just the latest in a long line of American labor-saving devices that began with the cotton gin and will likely end with us swaddled in our full-sensory La-Z-Boys, while a holographic Wolf Blitzer gnome dances on your man-breasts and yips, 'Bad stuff happened to other people in the world today, but not to you, Pumpkin. That's the news. Have another bear claw.'

So where is the class in news?  And where is the class in the talking-heads who give us the news?  Seriously, if your looking for class, check out my favorite talking-head anchor and his family as they hit an all-u-can-eat buffet on saturday nite.  This is for real, people.  He has a family of four box-shaped individuals, one has side-burns, four don't, who barrel in wearing matching pre-stained jogging suits and high-fiving each other when they score a table within arms reach of the food barges.  They all line up and bow before the adversary like sumo wrestlers, then engage in a five-minute flurry of polyester and animal fat that would make Dr. Phil wince.  They then mule-train back to base camp and proceed to dig in like trapped miners running out of air.  After 20 solid minutes of communicative grunting, only briefly interrupted to spit gravy on a napkin fire started by cutlery sparks, the sated quartet of carbo-toadies pushes back from the table, chair legs screeching like a stopping train, eyes the dessert bar, and lets out a long, loud, hauntingly harmonious burp so filled with yearning that it would bring tears to the eyes of an opera critic.  Then the one with side-burns says, 'Does my lady care for jello?'  Now that's what I'm talking about.....  That's Class, baby!

Let's be honest with ourselves.  You want the truth, belly man?  You can't stay awake for the truth.  Come on, you know you want police chases, mudslides, and world leaders caught on tape having sex with their daughter's piano teacher.  You don't give an embryonic rat's ass about illegal immigration; the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard; Hannah Montana's photo shoot; who's running for the prez spot or the new Campaign Finance Reform bill, or Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure.... because it's way too complicated to figure out and depressing as hell.  When we come home from a hard day at the office, all we want is to kick our feet up on the coffee table, pop open a cold one, turn on the television, and be reassured that everyone in the world is more screwed up than you are, especially the TV talking-heads reporting on it.   ..... Warph

[Bidah]

Daaaang!!!  Where did you find this guy?  Fantastic satire, and the truth of it.

-Bidah

[gunman1911]

Well, there it is plain and simple---The Truth!  Some people don't like it because thats what it is.

[leatherman92]

THATS THE TRUTH

[Teresa Heilevang]

More from Warph ( The Rabbit Hole)
(Love this guys' style.. LOL)

Why is it that going somewhere, buying something, calling someone.....
just about any transaction that you can name in America is about as nerve-racking
as a Iraqi grocery run?   

Why is it that seemingly everyone with a job along the great service highway is an
uninterested sociopath with the interpersonal skills of a wolverine? 

Why is it that I can't seem to go through the simplest procedures without a major hassle? 
For example, I recently subscribed to a magazine, and after paying for it they sent me another
of the magazine each week, one addressed to 'Philip Warph' and the other addressed
to 'Phylis Warph.'  Now, I want to know two things: One, how can they not know
they're sending two magazines to the same address... and two, how did they find
out about my cross-dressing?

You know, nowadays, half the people you ask for help say, "It's not my job,
man."  And the other half don't have a clue about how in the hell to do their
job.  See if this sounds familiar: Hotel clerks who, even though you requested a
nonsmoking room, give you a suite that smells like your dogs butt; maids who don't
give a crap about the "Do Not Disturb" sign and come through the door like
Sheriff Joe Arapio raiding the kitchen for green cards at El Pollo Loco; movie
ushers who constantly ask you to remove your feet from the seat in front of you,
but refuse to even shine their flashlight on the kiddie gang-initiation golden shower
taking place during "Chicken Little".

And excuse me for wandering into your restaurant, Olive Garden 'wait-person,' in a
quest for sustenance to jam in my pie hole.  But from the time you strap on the
Buford Pusser pepper mill to the time you drop your check on my table, do all of us
hungry patrons a favor and use your sense memory to portray a 'wait-person' who
gives a crap about the customer you're serving even though that customer rudely
insists on not being O.J. Simpson.  Okay, Garlic Breath?

Once I had a job cleaning toilets for a living--on the night shift, for chrissakes.  I didn't
even rate cleaning toilets during the DAY shift.  My bosses actually thought to themselves,
"Yeah, Warph's good, he's REAL good.   He's just not ready for the 'Big Show' yet."

I know jobs can be unrewarding, but talk about inefficiency.  I'd like to go on vacation for
a couple of weeks, call the paper boy, and ask him to suspend delivery during that time and
not come back to twelve newspapers sitting outside my doorstep, screaming to every lowlife
in the area, "Yoohoo! Over Here! Nobody Home!";  I'd like my groceries in a bag that will
actually contain what I purchased, and not open up like the bomb-bay doors on a "B-52"
as soon as my pickle jars are over the cement driveway; I'd like the universal remote I bought
to change the channels on my TV and not shut off my neighbor's home dialysis machine. 
And you know, while we are on the subject of inefficiency, why doesn't somebody warn you
that the "stay hard cream" will short circuit the "auto-suck?" Are you with me on that?  A little
too specific?  All right, let it go, walk away from it... it never happened.

And another thing, we're living in a time when personal boundaries are more blurred than the
camera lens in a Cher photo shoot.  You would think that thiswould help to generate more
openness between people, but all it seems to have
done is increase our mistrust.  We feel perfectly comfortable spending hours
online, sharing our innermost thoughts and yearnings with complete strangers,
but we don't even meet the people living next door until there's a huge
earthquake and everyone's out on their lawns at one in the morning.  As a matter
of fact, that's the scariest part of an earthquake... is hearing your 78 year-old
neighbors, Velma and Gus, explain how they had just strapped her into the
Vietnamese 'more bang for your buck' basket, when all of a sudden, she started
swinging back and forth, like King Kong's balls on a hot day. "Well, thanks for the
visual, Velma, I think I'm gonna go pick up a downed power line now, OK?"

And then there's this one.  One of the most disturbing trends in the demise of
personal privacy is the proliferation of hidden cameras.  They're everywhere now.
So what's with this?  I just don't think that's right.  When I'm by myself, I do things
that I would never do if I knew I was being videotaped.  I pick my nose.  I scratch
my itchy butt.  I squeeze blemishes.  I work at my stubborn dandruff patch.  I kick
off my shoes and bite my toenails.  I use whatever's lying around to scrape my
tongue.  I pull nostril hairs out and measure them with a small silver ruler I carry
on a chain around my neck and record their length in millimeters in an embossed
spiral notebook.  I pinch my nipples until my eyes tear up, and I straddle things
and yell "giddy-up," while slapping myself on the ass with a Victorian carpet beater. 
The point is, I should be able to pass my time waiting in line at the Post Office any
way I want to.

More important, I've had it up to here with corporations pushing the freaking
unions around.  You know that if you haven't been laid off by now, you're
working overtime.  Most large companies are lean and mean.  And so is the
service they give you: lean and mean.

Still, a lot of the blame falls on us. There seems to be this notion that good,
honest, hard work is something to be viewed down our collective snout.  That
doesn't make the workers at the bottom of the pole feel very good.  Does it?
If you want better service, the next time you see one of those workers in an
'Employee of the Month' photo in a fast-food restaurant, suppress your urge t
o make your friends laugh by ridiculing the guy as a dork loser with a bad haircut.
Instead, why not seek out the guy who actually took pride in doing his job the
way it was supposed to be done and thank him for dotting the i's and crossing
the t's and making sure there is toilet paper in the stall, and ketchup in the dispenser. 
Make that person feel good because he is the last thin blue collar line between a
frayed but still functioning society and full-blown "We'll be there anytime between
8 a.m. and 6 p.m. or maybe we won't even show up at all, butt face" anarchy.  All right?

And let's grab the reins as customers.  Don't stay on hold forever.  "What's that?
I should press one if I am calling from a touch-tone phone?  Hey butt-wipe, I'm
pressing flash, 'cause I'm hanging up now and taking my business to a human operator
that speaks english!"  Also, don't settle for the fish nuggets and the green spooge,
turn the car around, go back, and demand the triple bacon cheeseburger with the
chili fries you ordered!

And lastly, let's get our pride together, go to the whip, and regain our position at
the head of the socioeconomic pack!  How about less billions spent on getting the
'Political Pork' cherry, and a few more billions on tightening up our educational system. 
Forget the 'moment of silence' in the morning.  Let's shoot for a moment of SCIENCE, okay?

And it's time we stopped looking up Iran's ass, and you know why?

Because that is definitely 'not our job, man!'  ......Warph

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[Teresa Heilevang]

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[unique]

Okay, I guess I've got to open my big mouth and reply.
Stupid (and crooked) politicians, stupid service people, hostile drivers, evil big business.  The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!
No, it's not.
Then why does "everybody" say it's so?  I think there are a couple of reasons;
Attitude.  I make mistakes.  In fact, I make a lot of mistakes, so I don't get upset when others make mistakes, and I don't automatically assume that others make mistakes because they are stupid, negligent, or incompetent.  I assume that they are just like me, they made a mistake.
Attitude.  I like people.  Not in large numbers, because I'm basically a hermit, but I really like people.  And I treat them all the same, whether they're the janitor or the company president.  I have a smile for everyone, and I'm considerate to everyone.  Funny thing is that people treat me the same way.
Perception.  This one will get me hate mail.  I'm a great fan of the NRA, I've been a member for around 45 years now.  Around fifteen years ago, I was constantly angry, the sky was falling, I was sure of it.  I also started getting a "rumbling" feeling in my  chest.  The solution?  Get off the caffeine, stop watching the news, talking politics, I asked the NRA to stop sending me their magazine, and I stopped reading their mailings.  I know, I know, but you can only take so much of the sky is falling.  The NRA is doing just fine without my worrying, and the world doesn't seem to miss me.  The point? Do what you can do to make the world a little better and stop worrying about what you can't control.
Point of view.  Several years ago, we were at a party and a wife was complaining about her husband's snoring. My wife's comment was; "I don't mind Art snoring, at least I know he's still breathing."
Some of you may be old enough to remember the Peace Corps. question; "Is the glass half full, or half empty?"  I never really appreciated the importance of that question until I got older.  If you view it as half empty, you really, really, will find life that way.
Me?  I'm happy that I woke up this morning.  I'm not hungry, I've got a job, I'm pretty healthy, I have a wife that loves me.  Life's pretty good.  Will the sky fall tomorrow?  Maybe, or I could get run over by a beer truck, but that's tomorrow, today's pretty damn good.

[Hazcat]

Great post, Unique.

Especially about how to treat others and your outlook on 'mistakes'.

The writer (Warph) is witty but not inspiring, merely whining.

[Teresa Heilevang]

He writes simply for entertainment..
Maybe cynical.. but I get a hoot out of it.
Probably because I see the truth in lots of it.

But then again, I don't take everything I read on the chin.

[Teresa Heilevang]

Last night when I posted.. I was very very VERY overtired...
It had been a long day at NRA and I was on overload.
But...............
That is no excuse for being short and rude in my reply...to those who my heart is so soft on.