There are a bunch of things going on in this country that are a completely mystery to me. Really, and I haven’t been around for all that long, so for all I know these things could have been going on forever which would leave only the question of how did we as a civilization ever leave the cave. It all started the other day. I was in Beaver Dam, WI, a small town about 45 minutes away from Madison. And I was walking around a park there, Swan park I believe. Simply, public pools. Public pools are a complete mystery to me. We are all adults here; we all know what is really going on in those pools. Outhouses seem like a more appropriate name or perhaps a nice catchy motto for them like “We put the P in Public Pools.” These places are always empty, always 5-6 feet deep of water that has two identifiable elements to it none of which are water, namely, chlorine and urine. I’ve noticed that recently, public pools are being converted from a come one piss all serve everyone type of public pool to these new children only public pools. Max a foot of water, really just a pretty big puddle for children to play in. Obviously being populated by little kids doesn’t really help the pee issue, but it raises a lot of other ones. For one, parents. Where are the parents in this situation? I understand not everyone has summer vacations, people work, you cant take care of your kid? But is your last resort to drop him off at the public pool to swim around in piss all day? Is that really better than leaving kids at home to watch TV? If I had to choose which habit is more likely to raise a breed of very violent youth, watching TV or swimming in shit all day, I think, yeah, I would go with swimming in shit. And I have proof. Because the other day, at this very same children public pool I saw these two maybe four five year old boys splashing around in their pee pee and well I think they got bored of the pool. The actually snuck past the astute life guards and got out of the pool area. One of them was wearing goggles; the other one was wearing floaties on his arms. So these two hooligans, apparently sick of swimming in urine, wanted to swim in this man made pond in Swan Park. But the problem you see is they were scared of the mucky looking pond water, and if they only knew what they had already been swimming in…So the goggle kid was leering over the bank of this small pond, examining the water before he went in, and as he turned to his friend with the floaties for some assurance, yep, the kid with the floaties pushed his friend into the pond. It was great, he fell in the water, his friend was rolling on the ground laughing it up, and then the kid started crying and got out of the water chasing his friend with his goggles, now a noonchuk style hand held weapon. These two barefoot kids wearing bathing suits, floaties, and goggles were pitter pattering all over this park until finally the kids goggles got a good chunk of his friends back and he fell, defeated onto the floor, his blow only cushioned by the floaties on his arms. But the floaties, they didn’t protect him from the barrage of goggles that his friend released onto his head. This five year old boy beat the snot out of his friend. Why? Marilyn Manson? Eminem? No, because you would also if you were swimming around in piss all day.
Violence, that’s another really mysterious thing happening in our country. I mean well no, I understand that violence has been happening at least since after those hippies got jobs, but not in the way it used to be happening. Remember when wrestling was big? “Remember?” Well I will be honest with you, I do not know whether wrestling was ever big or if it has since become smaller, but the point is that at one point, hand to hand combat between to personas was entertaining enough. Two real people doing not so real fighting, that was entertaining violent TV. And I’m sure people had problems with that whenever it was big, people probably still have problems with it. But see, I understand that, it was fake, it was a ploy, it was fun. What I don’t understand is shows like Battlebots and the more lethal TechTV version. People build these robots whose only function is to absolutely demolish the other robot and anything in its path. They have giant blades, and these metal cutters that spin really fast, they have ramming devices, lifts to flip the other robot, and on the TechTV version, projectiles are legal so you even have robots who shoot things at the other robots. No one complains, people talk about the positive scientific values of the shows, the entertaining fights, the strategy the physics, all sorts of good things are said about these shows. People like the battle robots. Personally, I think there is a real danger if one day, somewhere in, Iran, Iraq, whatever, as enemy forces ascend over a crucial hill they see only an 18 year old whose clearly been battling nothing but acne for quite some time wearing a Weezer t-shirt some corduroys and converse sneakers holding a remote. While the enemy forces with their Ak 47 and missle launchers only want to know where his weapons are, he wants to know, “Hey where the fucks your battle bot?”