It Doesn't Mean Everybody Isn't Out to Get You

It Doesn't Mean Everybody Isn't Out to Get You
by Brian Dykstra

Okay, so I'm at the gym the other day trying to melt fat into muscle, but that's not what this Rant is about. Great hook, huh? I bet y'all are reading with baited breath on the whole "okay, so I'm at the gym" tip, and not only that, but I'm already spinning off on a tangent at the top.

(Note to myself: Hey, Brian! Be a better writer!)
So this terrorist wanders in with an uzi and shoots up the place with a spray of burning metal.

No, that didn't really happen.

I'm StairMastering with a magazine I've brought along because I go nuts without something to kill time while killing calories from the fudge sauce from last Thursday, and the bank of television monitors are not only tuned to the afternoon talk show wasteland(34k .au), but the sound is off.

That ain't the point of this Rant either.
When I've finished with my calorie burn and magazine (Sports Illustrated), I move to the rack to leave my sports rag for the next cardio wonk, and I do something that I always do, and that everybody else seems to do as well :

I rip a little corner off the cover. I rip the mailing label area, bunch it up, and toss it in the trash. Then I stop, notice all the other magazines with a similar rip, and still can't figure out why I do it.

My wife tells me it's because I don't want something out there with my name and address on it. When I counter with the phone book example, she gets right to The Stalker Argument. I guess the thought process goes something like this:

Some severely damaged Fatal Attraction(15k .au) in spandex bike shorts watches me work out, falls for my less-than-Adonis body and David good looks, lifts my magazine out of the rack and now has all the information she (or, God knows, he) will ever need to make my life a living, breathing nightmare!
That's the theory, anyway. It is the same theory that holds

we must always bury mail deep in the trash,
credit card applications must be ripped into at least quarters,
air hand dryers turned on with elbows (if we are wearing a long-sleeved shirt, otherwise it's shoulders),
zippered handbags or backpacks carried with zipper (always closed) in front and in sight,

and any number of other paranoid(17k .au) behaviors that are practiced as a matter of course, and that no longer seem anything but totally normal, acceptable practices.

We live in a society of greater and greater
paranoia.(127k .au)
We triple lock our apartment doors as if the burglar who is willing to kick through the door with two locks will be repelled by the addition of that last one. We lock our car doors at the sight of a member of a racial or ethnic group different from the box we check on the census and wonder what in the world "they" are doing "here."
We fear the remembered dangers of long-ago newspaper accounts of otherwise forgotten crimes, or well-played villains in movies that convince us that Hannibal Lechter is amongst us. And then someone or something comes along to let us know that we're right. Something gives credence to our worst fears (or at least some of the nagging ones) and now we can forgive ourselves this chicken-or-the-egg dilemma of what came first: Our paranoia(96k .au) or our excuses for it?
Three and a half years ago Pat Buchanan gave us his Republican National Convention, Hate of the Union Address. Lately, he siphoned votes away from the "mainstream" Republican nominees -- and look who's "mainstream" all of a sudden: Bob Dole, the guy who if he lived on your block would be the cranky old fart(36k .au) whose house you have to run past, and who if your ball went over his fence is the classic "Hey, you kids! Outta my yard!" mean-spirited, dog-hating curmudgeon.
Sorry, I had to laugh at the "Now we're going to get the 'real' Bob Dole" quote that came leaking out of his pie hole after yet another disappointing primary.

My God! The "real" Bob Dole...
Gosh, and he's been so likable up to this point, giving us only what he thought we wanted to hear from a candidate.

The first Rant in the first issue of this Webzine asked the reader to hearken back to what I called the Nominate-George-Bush-Rally-in-Nuremberg. Remember? Now the Republicans are bitching that Mr. Buchanan is not a "real" Republican and that his views are not shared by the party. Sorry boys, all the cliches now seem so appropriate:

The Nixonian advice, "Far right for the nomination, then scramble like mad back to the middle for the election," will jump up and bite you in the ass if the right is as far as Patrick Buchanan.
Appeal to the lowest common denominator and their paranoid(140k .au) fascinations at your own risk. All of a sudden last year's Joke on the ballot sweeps into the Chancellorship -- oops, no that was Hitler. I should have said the Presidency but, of course this is America. That could never happen here. And those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.

Welcome to America,1996.
And how does Mr. Buchanan feel about jews, gays, and gypsies?

Or am I just being paranoid?(63k .au)

Brian vehemently denies being a gay jewish gypsy.
And he'd like to see you prove it.