Facebook and political rants don't mix

The “highly decorated soldier” ABC news reporter Martha Raddatz spoke about at the vice-presidential debate Oct. 11 is not only one who is dismayed by this election.

Raddatz told Democratic Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan that the soldier told her on the subject of this presidential election “the ads are so negative, and they are all tearing down each other rather than building up the country.”

I too am fed up especially when it comes to all the negative postings I have seen on Facebook from friends regardless of their right or far liberal left-wing ideals whether I agree with them or not.

To quote a friend of mine on Facebook several weeks ago whose fake name I will refer to as “Silent Bob” based on that silent character Kevin Smith played in "Clerks" (1994), using his exact words and lettering, “If ALL you’re posting is political or religious opinions, I am opting to UNSUBSCRIBE. There is nothing you can say that will change my mind. Honestly, I couldn’t give a shit.”

This posting was followed a couple weeks later by another of my Facebook friends whose fake name I will refer to as “Mace Windu”, the Jedi Knight character Samuel L. Jackson played in the Star Wars prequels (1999-2005). Windu asked all his Facebook friends to post both the good and bad things about both the Democratic and Republican parties. Last week he threw in the towel.

“I tried to get everyone from all political parties to share their opinions with an open-minded approach,” Windu wrote. “What I’m still reading is the same as always. Each post is something bad about the other political party. My goal was to have us view things as a whole and not one sided. Meaning, I wanted you to post the good and bad about your political party as well as the other political party. My intention is not to agree or disagree or even debate on what you post. I was hoping to see how well versed you are in the political arena. If all we can do is post bad things, then we are just like the news media (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, ABC).”

This only proves my theory that social media and political rants, regardless of how passionate one is about President Obama or Mitt Romney don’t mix. If the unwritten rule in the workplace is that employees refrain from discussing politics, race issues and religion with others especially if it’s among those who don’t share the same opinions, the same applies to Facebook.

I have had enough of the US versus THEM attitude people have adopted when it comes to politics where not a single person it seems can come up with just one good thing they can say about the Democratic and Republican parties or about President Obama and Mitt Romney. I can at least come up with two positive things I can say about President Obama though I disagree on 99.9 percent of everything else he has done the past four years. From Congress and talk radio to social media, the bile foul smelling attitude has always been and continues to be “I’m right”, “You’re wrong,” “Liberal is a cussword,” “Republicans are nothing but a bunch of rich, white, racists who want dirty air and water and will do anything to throw grandma off a cliff,” and “I will not rest until every Democrat is voted out of office as per Rush Limbaugh and the conservative right wing.”

I’d much rather see my Facebook page inundated with pictures of cats and dogs up for adoption, updates from newly married husbands who can’t wait for work to be over so they can be with their significant other, trivial postings that say “so-so” is off on vacation somewhere and depressing photos of me in a tux at my sister’s wedding back when I had hair and was 80 pounds lighter, which by the way is the only time you will ever see me dressed in a suit and tie other than at a job interview or at a funeral, be it someone else’s or my own.

The negativity I have seen from friends on Facebook has gotten so bad in recent months that I have gotten to the point of saying to myself, “You know, I like you but if you continue to go on your political pro Barack Obama soapbox and Mitt Romney slam-a-thons then I am going to delete you almost as quickly as it takes for me to either register or drop a course through the Dallas County Community College District’s software program.”

I don’t want to be “that guy.”

For the time being, as the days wind down to election day and as I continue to see friends’ one sided political postings, I’ll just wish how much CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the powers that be at Facebook could come up with a “hide political posts” button so I can still like all my contacts after this election is over to quote that Someecard cartoon I saw weeks ago.

©10/21/12

Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse

So, there I was browsing the Internet early one morning last week when while listening to the TV I heard an ABC news anchorwoman report the following.

“It has been established that persons who have recently died have been returning to life and committing acts of murder. A widespread investigation of funeral homes, morgues, and hospitals has concluded that the unburied dead have been returning to life and seeking human victims. It's hard for us here to be reporting this to you, but it does seem to be a fact.”

Ok. Maybe it didn’t exactly happen that way. Actually, it didn’t happen at all. The quote, however, is real as I got it from imdb.com researching useless trivia information on director George A. Romero’s black and white 1968 horror classic, "Night of the Living Dead", in which the undead come back to feast on the living.

If such strange events were to happen and this was the beginning of “The Zombie Apocalypse”, I imagine such news reports would sound reminiscent to those live press conferences seen in Romero’s film.

With all the many life-threatening catastrophes we are faced with, I’d like to think the one thing we don’t ever have to worry about is the dead coming back to life and attacking the living.

Personally, I have never understood horror fans’ obsession with zombies. Director Martin Scorsese said it best when he told Movieline that he prefers vampires over zombies, though I am not too fond of bloodsuckers either.

“A vampire, quite honestly, you could have a conversation with,” Scorsese said. “He has a sexuality. I mean the undead thing. Zombies. What are you going to do with them? Just keep chopping them up, shooting at them, shooting at them. It’s a whole other thing that apparently means a great deal to our culture and our society.”

Indeed. Zombies have no real personality. They move slow, make howling type noises and I am fairly certain given they either just came out of their coffins or at the local morgue that chances are they give off a foul odor.

The only time I have ever seen zombies in movies exhibit any life like personality is in "The Return of the Living Dead" (1985) where the undead actually spoke, albeit less than maybe 50 words which was either “Brains!” and “More brains!” whenever they saw a live human walk in on them, or after chomping down on an entire police department, one zombie tells someone on the radio to “Send more cops.”

I won’t deny that when the Dallas area had that outbreak of tornados last April, the first thing I did in case one touched down where I live was grabbed my wallet, credit cards, check books and two USB flash drives with all my files on them. Prior to that, however, I have never once given a thought about preparing for a national emergency, zombies or not. Disaster preparedness is not the first thing on my mind. Sure, I have a flashlight somewhere in the house, but I have no idea where it is, nor do I know if it even works.

That’s obviously the thinking behind the Homeland Security Department’s mock announcement a few weeks ago educating the public on how to better prepare themselves should a zombie apocalypse actually happen which includes having an emergency evacuation plan, a change of clothes, water, medications and flashlights.

“The theory: If you’re prepared for a zombie attack, the same preparations will help during a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake or terrorist attack,” said an article on The Huffington Post’s website.

I can’t help but feel how sad that is where the only way the public might actually pay any attention to this is if a national emergency is inspired by a cheaply made horror film that spawned five sequels, several cannibalistic imitations, a comic book series and a current TV series on AMC the past four decades.

On the other hand, art has a funny, or in most all cases, a not so funny way of imitating life.

Should the day come in which I see a crowd of slow-moving figures coming out of the cemetery down the street and start dragging people from their vehicles causing traffic jams, rest assured before leaving work, I’ll make sure to check the back seat of my car should a zombie be waiting for me lying on the floor. Then I’ll drive off jamming to such tunes as “The Sun Ain’t Gonna’ Shine Anymore” by The Walker Brothers and Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around” on my iPod.

Like those four survivors who took refuge at a mall in the 1978 original and 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, I’m racing to take over the nearest shopping center.

I got dibs on Dallas’ NorthPark Mall. They got a Lego store and a movie theater I can spend my remaining end of days in.

©10/2/12