When I heard they were going to do a Breaking Bad spinoff involving Saul Goodman as the primary character I was quite skeptical.  Saul made a hell of a periphery character but I truly doubted he could carry an entire show, especially an hour long drama.  Boy was I ever wrong,  the first season was tremendous and the second season is getting off to a terrific start.   The start of the second season has Saul (Bob Ordaway) quitting his job as a public defender and working for a large and prestigious law firm in the private sector.  He’s not exactly big firm material, but since he was able to bring in a large class action suit the firm is willing to take a chance on him.  The demographic for the suit is senior  citizens and Saul has some interesting ways in which he recruits potential clients to become part of the suit.  Ethically it is impermissible for attorneys to directly solicit clients.  They can send out mailers, advertise on television, radio, and the internet but they can not directly approach someone who hasn’t requested contact with them.

Saul stretches the boundaries of acceptable client recruitment but determines that he needs to do things by the book or he will likely lose his job and possibly his license to practice law.      He decides to produce a commercial for the firm to use as a tool to recruit potential participants in the class action suit.  However, he does not get permission of the lead partner prior to running the TV commercial and when the management of the firm catch wind of the commercial the shit hits the fan.

Saul, prior to going to work for a big firm was a one man show.  He had what many of us only dream of having, and if we actually do think we have it, it’s often times illusory.  Autonomy, how many of us can say we are completely autonomous.  Everyone has to answer to someone, but Saul as a public defender didn’t answer to anyone but his clients so he was free to do as he pleased.  In one segment of the most recent episode he actually goes back and does some pro bono work and bamboozles a couple of detectives with a far fetched story about his client so that they will put a stop to their initial investigation into his drug dealing.  He’s not doing it for the financial gain, he’s doing it because he loves the leeway and ability to free lance that his old job provided.

Unfortunately, I have also lost my autonomy as I have traveled through life, not only the work place but also in my private life.  My lack of autonomy became quite evident last night when my  wife began reading my blog.  She hadn’t read it in weeks, if not months, and began laughing immediately.  However, it was short lived and it only took a few minutes for her to be upset with the content of my blog.  Her complaints about my blog can be broken down into three categories.

I did a Peyton Manning piece that was entirely what I believed would be his voice, not my voice but his voice.  In the piece I had Peyton use the word lesbo.  Shirley indicated that she works with lesbians and what if they were to read my blog?  This is what I didn’t want to have to do, explain what I thought to be an intelligent and clever piece that was not meant to be offensive to lesbians, and didn’t want to have to defend myself and my writing.  My take on lesbians is that if I were in their shoes I would do the exact same thing.  Men are truly disgusting and I can’t blame women for being attracted to other women, I’m attracted to women.  Now, here is where it gets a bit dicey, an attractive lesbian is akin to a unicorn, they are quite difficult to come by.  My question is, why aren’t there more attractive lesbians?  I’m sure I will receive a fair amount of flack from my toughest critic for this observation, but it’s merely an observation.  If the lesbians of this world want to prove me wrong parade out some attractive lesbians and I will immediately recant my statement.

Gay men on the other hand are a bit more difficult to comprehend.  As I stated earlier, men are disgusting.  I’m not opposed to the whole idea, it’s just one of those things that takes some getting use to and at some point it won’t be remarkable to see two guys holding hands or making out.  The plus to the gay thing that may actually over come the disgusting nature of two men being together (at least in a heterosexual couple there is by definition one women to enhance the over all attractiveness of the couple) is there is absolutely no chance of pregnancy out of wedlock.  One of my biggest fears as a parent (other than one of my kids  becoming a hipster) is knocking a girl up at a young age. My youngest is already a total player and he’s only three years old.  Honestly, part of me is really damn proud of the kid, I can already tell he’s going to be able to pull a lot of tail, but part of me knows the pitfalls of  such an overdeveloped affinity for the opposite sex.  Your son tells you he’s gay and you have nothing to worry about in terms of an unplanned pregnancy, unless your son and his boyfriend forget to spayed or nuder their toy poodle.

The second issue that is problematic to Shirley about my blog is that she works with fat people.  Who doesn’t?  What if someone who was overweight read your blog, they would be quite offended.  Offended enough to go on a diet I should have asked.  Fortunately I didn’t.  “You know a lot of people think that husbands and wives share the same viewpoints and  I would hate people thinking that I have the same viewpoints you do.”  This had me a bit puzzled, I’ve never actually thought husbands and wives share the same viewpoints.  Granted, I’m sure many wives think their husbands share their viewpoints but chances are they really don’t.  “Oh yeah honey I’m totally fine with having sex once a month, that’s a terrific idea!”   I would hope that anyone who knows what I think would not leap to the conclusion that someone who is either related to me by marriage or blood doesn’t share my viewpoints.  My viewpoints are entirely my own and are  shared by no one.

As far as overweight (fat) people go, in my  mind the ones I am really going after are not the fat people who like to eat.  It’s the fat people who like to eat and then do absolutely nothing ever.  The people who  are so lazy they ride around on an electric shopping carts and have one and only one hobby, stuffing their face, are the people I am going after, at least for the most part.  If you have a healthy appetite, sweet tooth, or love the salty snacks I’m not going to hold it against you if you at least get out there and exercise a little bit or exhibit enough self control that electronic carts aren’t your primary mode of transportation.  I will add a caveat to this though, those people who are on a perpetual diet, but never seem to lose any weight, and often times manage to gain weight while dieting, they deserve to be ridiculed.  Just tell the world you are overweight, you have come to terms with it, and that it’s no one else’s business as long as you aren’t a drain on the health care system (which you probably are, when I was at the hospital frequently for my mom’s surgery 90 percent of the patients were morbidly obese).  Stop thinking you are fooling people into thinking that you are actually trying to combat your weight problem by merely claiming you are on the latest diet fad.

The last objection Shirley has to my blogging is my use of shocking words and phrases, primarily the F word.  If you looked at my F bombs per word this blog would barely get a PG-13 rating.  I realize the F word isn’t naturally funny like a fart is.  (My kids laugh every time they fart and I didn’t even teach them to do that, ok it probably didn’t help that when I farted in their presence I automatically laughed, I couldn’t help it it’s innate, but honestly they have a keen grasp for what is funny, and farting is hilarious).   What the F word does is it really drives home a point.  Shirley was complaining about my use of the term fat F#ck.  So, I edited it to fat people, I’m sorry but fat people doesn’t adequately describe the people who were waiting in line to get electric wheelchairs at Bush Gardens.  There are other terms and phrases that are also  seemingly unnecessary to Shirley, she indicated that shocking phrases don’t add any humor so why even bother.

What troubled her even more was how upset I was that I was loosing creative control of my blog.  “You don’t get paid for this, what’s the big deal?”  What she doesn’t understand is I have at lest 3 or 4 loyal readers and they need me in order to get through their boring and miserable existence.  My blog is that refreshing warm breeze at the end of a long winter.  Besides, I like writing and it is a creative outlet that does little to no harm to anyone, at least in my mind.  Granted she did bring up a point, what if your parent’s friends read your blog?  Well, I’m not gearing my writing to people in their 60’s but hooray for them if they have managed to find a way to get on the internet and stumble upon my blog.

The harsh reality is that happy wife =’s happy life.  As long as I continue uninhibited blogging it will be a cause for concern at home.  So, I need to reboot the blog to maintain my autonomy or I need to lose some of my autonomy.  I’ve been toying with new blog names and new pen names that will allow me to be somewhat anonymous.   Like Saul I just can’t lose my autonomy, there are certain things one must stand up for, and the freedom to express myself is one of those things.  My hope is that I create a name and an alias that brings about an increased readership and also allows me to enhance the blogging experience by adding pictures and other cool shit to my blog.  As I brainstorm I will be rolling out new site ideas to my loyal readers and should be able to come up with something much better than serenitynowinsanitylatercom.com.  Stay tuned folks.