As I often do, I was listening to 98.7 on my Sunday morning Starbucks run.  Many of you are probably unfamiliar with what transpires on Sunday mornings on 98.7 so let me fill you in, they replay Kasey Kasem’s top 40 from the particular week on the calendar randomly picking the year.

(denim on denim with a tie?  This guy must of been quite something back in the day if he thought he could pull off double denim, there are only two people in today’s world who could pull off a similar look, Justin Timberlake and Adam Levine)

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of the top 40 they play the Billboard top 40 hits of that particular week.  What is somewhat troubling about the format is that at the beginning of the show they replay the top three songs from the prior week as if those songs are going to plummet out of the top 40 and not be heard that week.  What is even more troubling is that they played 40 songs from that specific time period, try to come up with ten songs currently played on the radio that are “new” releases that you think would be worthy of some type of best of list.  No real surprise that they are typically scraping the bottom of the barrel until they get to the top three or four songs, and then it still can be dicey.  The song “Sugar Don’t Bite” made it into the top 40 at one point in Billboard music history and this is how it went:

Could Kenny have come along today and peddled his terrible music, awful movies, and mediocre chicken?  Probably not, he was in the right place at the right time, as were Jon Tesch, Jimmy Buffet (his net worth is north of $450 million, and I have contributed at least $100 to that fortune by attending two of his concerts and drinking to the point that I didn’t hear his awful music anymore) Adam Sandler, and a host of other people who have bamboozled society into thinking they have actual talent.  But to Kenny’s credit he was indirectly responsible for comedy gold and when it is all said and done I’d like to think he will be most remembered for “The Chicken Roaster” episode 8 season 8.

Kenny Rogers’ Roasters sets up shop across the street from Jerry and Kramer’s apartment. Unfortunately, their unusually large chicken sign causes problems for everybody. Kramer and Jerry …See full summary »

Director:

Andy Ackerman

Writers:

Larry David (created by), Jerry Seinfeld (created by) |4 more credits »

Stars:

Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards |See full cast & crew »

Reviews

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The two boys had their Christmas program this past Tuesday and it was the second year the Jansma family attended.  The program consisted of children varying in age from 4 years old to 5th grade and started out, as it did the year before, with the fifth grade orchestra and band preforming 25 second parts of various songs.  First of all, the orchestra was three times larger than the band while at the same time had three times more potential to create audible terrorism.  Violins, Cello’s, and various other instruments with strings that require bows to play all seemed to be incapable of being in tune.  To their credit, they had only two months of practicing to get to the point they were at, and their awfulness was acknowledged by the fact that they didn’t play anywhere close to an entire song.  While the band consisted of much more mainstream practical and fun instruments such as the saxophone and the trumpet, their performance may have been even worse.  The last song they played was indiscernible and I had no idea if it was Joy to the World or Grampa got ran over by a reindeer that they were actually trying to play.  However, the entire time they were playing “Make it stop, Make it stop, Make it stop Please” to the tune of jingle bells was going through my head.

In between the band performance and the actual Christmas play various children played pieces on the grand piano with varying degrees of success.  My oldest is taking piano lessons, while there is little chance he will last beyond the winter in his pursuit of becoming a pianist (he practices an average of 3 minutes a week and is no where near the prodigy that wold allow him to put so little effort into something to be good at it) I can’t imagine hm performing a piece in front of the entire school and an audience of parents.

The problem with the Christmas story is that you can’t really vary it up a whole lot, there’s Jesus, Mary, Joseph, shepherds and wisemen.  Every year the same basic story is portrayed and there is little that can be done to change things up to make it interesting to those who are repeat attendees.  This year there was an effort to incorporate the animals that were allegedly present in the manger when baby Jesus was born.  There was one particular animal that stood out form the rest, a rooster, it stood in the background as shepherds, wisemen, and angels said their various lines (or forgot them) into the microphones at the front of the stage.  It was like having the clown from Stephen King’s IT incorporated into the play.  Pretty sure a homicidal chicken wasn’t in any of the gospels.  There were eleven songs sang during the play (I counted them in the program before it started) along with speaking parts between every song.  This seemed to me to be a bit ambitious considering there were a flock of four and five year olds on the stage along with fifth graders who had been through this thing for 6 or 7 years straight, and looked to be suicidal by the time the play commenced.  I kept a steady eye on my kids for most of the play and they looked to be actually singing the songs about 3 % of the time.  When we got home I asked my youngest how the program was and he first said “good” but then decided to be forthright “boring, it was really boring”. I agreed with him and gave him my condolences since he still has 6 more years of the program to look forward to.  At some point I will have to discuss the importance of doing everything in his power not to land a speaking part in the play.

My mom rode with me on the way home and I made the mistake of discussing some parenting inconsistencies at the Jansma household.  Likely an epic mistake since my mom has not once, but twice tried to get me to read parenting books.  She obviously doesn’t understand that I read for entertainment purposes not so that I can be good at stuff, especially parenting.  The primary inconsistency, at least in my mind, is that I try to follow through on my threats at lest 20 percent of the time and Shirley, if making threats, forgets about her threats when it’s time to make the kids pay the piper.  The biggest issue we are facing currently is the kids desire to sleep on the floor next to us.  Sounds strange doesn’t it?  We don’t live in a third world country where the entire family sleeps together in their one room house on the floor, no we all have beds.  However, the kids have decided that they need to come and sleep on the floor next to Shirley’s side of the bed where she has created a mini bed for them with a comforter and pillows (enabling is one word for it, refusing to cut the cord would be an applicable phrase). Some nights they sneak in like ninjas and we just wake up and they are there and other nights they walk in our room and wake me up, causing me to routinely think I am in the movie the Sixth Sense where dead kids repeatedly popped up just about everywhere.  I have routinely questioned them as to why they want to sleep on the floor as opposed to their bed and their claim is that the floor is more comfortable than their bed.

Unfortunately for my kids, my mom gave me a nice little pep talk on the way home (while judging me as a parent the entire time) and I was ready to do some hard core parenting when I got home.  “did you or your siblings ever come in to our room and sleep in our bed when you were growing up?”  My response should have been no because we didn’t really like you guys, but I just said “no”.   I informed the kids when I got home that if they came into our room that night there would be no TV and no watching things on our phone the following day.  Instead of saying Ok dad,  they immediately started crying as if I told them they would have to participate in the Christmas program every day for the entire week.  Shirley stepped in and indicated that it was too late in the evening to spring such troubling news upon our little angels and began to console them.  Sure enough, that night the kids came into our room and slept on the floor.  When they got up they wanted to watch my phone while they ate breakfast and I told them no way.  I went on to say that they were not watching tv when they got home that evening.  They cried and carried on for roughly five minutes and then they were over it.

Typically they have my phone in the car and watch Scooby Doo, Wildcrats, or something else on PBS kids.  My oldest always asks me if I can put my phone on You Tube (blue tooth) when we get in the truck.  Guess what, with out the phone, I had to actually engage my children and we had a great ride into school.   Shirley created a character this summer named Chucky Chuckerson and the kids always want me to tell them Chucky Chuckerson stories where they are part of the story as a certain type of animal.  So, I crafted a story and incorporated a Megladon shark (not even sure if that is a real thing) and a Great White shark into my Chucky Chuckerson story.  The story involved a Disney Cruise where the Disney characters were thrown off the ship and consumed by the two sharks named after my kids.

That evening Shirley picked up the kids form school and had dinner waiting when I arrived home.  The kids were acting quite strange as if they had something to hide from me, the reality is that Shirley should have had something to hide from me, the kids had watched TV while she made dinner.  Just like anything, choosing your battles is one of the keys to succeeding in life.  Was this a battle I wanted to to fight?  Due to the fact that sex is still a preoccupation of mine that consumes my thoughts from sun up to sun down I decided against waging war on this matter because it would have evolved into a larger conflict than anything that could transpire between the United States and North Korea.  The sad reality is that women have quite a bit of leverage due to the distinct nature of their anatomy and men’s preoccupation with those particular anatomical traits we don’t possess.  You know what has never been thought or uttered by a women “I better not broach this subject, it may put sex in the near future in serious jeopardy.”

Confrontation, some of us are attracted to it like white trash to day time television and others avoid it like an attractive female (that’s probably all they had on the set) NBC producer avoids an invitation into Matt Lauer’s office.  Is it a genetic pre-disposition towards conflict or are we conditioned to becoming confrontational?  Most people who know me know where I stand when it comes to conflict, as the late great Tom Petty wrote “I won’t back down” an example of my illogical unwillingness to back down is exemplified in an e-mail exchange that took place in my neighborhood when the payment procedure for the plow service for the common roads was changed due to a family or two failing to pay their share:  (the names have been redacted to protect the innocent)

Hello All,

My children have evolved into a phase where they prefer comfort over all else.  That has led to them refusing to wear jeans and instead wanting only to sport athletic pants.  However, my youngest is quite particular about his athletic pants as well as his socks.  The pair I had picked out for him this morning he refused to wear due to the fact that they don’t have a draw string and they always fall down, at least according to him, even though when he initially had them on there was absolutely no movement downwards.  Furthermore, he will only wear gold toe socks and he often bitches about those as well, claiming they aren’t comfortable and that they snag on his toes.  The snagging on his toes is likely a result of his refusal to let us clip his toenails, resulting in lethally sharp as well as long toenails that are quite disgusting.  While I get where they are coming from, comfort should rule over all else, unless you are referring to women’s foot wear, particularly dress or formal, because in that instance I know just by looking at them, there is nothing comfortable about a pair of high heels, it may be an issue down the road.

What is problematic about the notion of comfort over all else is the desire of my wife, and probably most other women, to cling to their granny panties, Shirley has one pair that I am certain is older than our dog Allie who just turned ten, yes her granny panties are at lest 70 years old in dog years and in unfashionable underwear years I’d say they are at least 300 years old.  In seeing those very granny panties and old dudes prancing around in the MVP locker room I have often thought to myself will I ever wear whitey tighties again.  The answer is an emphatic no, I would truly have to be down on my luck to ever purchase a five pack of Hanes briefs and would likely just resort to going commando instead of wearing whitey tighties.  Besides, I feel like purchasing white underwear is just setting yourself up for failure.   The truly remarkable thing about old dudes in the locker room, other than how close their balls come to hitting the floor when they are standing up, is the degeneration of their underwear.  The elastic is stretched, the holes are prevalent, and they wear the damn things past their belly button.

(These Guys are in relatively good shape and they can’t even pull off whitey tighties)

While I am somewhat on the subject of the MVP locker room I need to point out something that recently happened there.  There is a television in the locker room with some pleather lounge chairs surrounding it.  First of all, this shouldn’t happen. MVP should not be encouraging guys to hang out in the locker room.  You know what you do in the locker room?  You change, that’s what you do, you don’t mill around in the locker room unless you like seeing naked dudes, and no one likes seeing naked dudes, they are unsightly.  Secondly, by having pleather furniture near a tv in a confined environment where only dudes, often naked dudes, are allowed it makes people feel a little bit too at home.  Particularly one dude who was watching the tv completely naked on one of the pleather chairs.  “This is great, my wife never lets me do this at home, my sack is getting a real good airing out!”  I think I have mentioned this before as well, but they have hair dryers in the locker room and I have seen guys use the hair dryer to dry off their balls.  It’s the only thing I would have use for when it comes to a hair dryer and I haven’t even gone down that road.  There is a small contingent of weird Asian guys who seem to just hang out in the locker room.  I am pretty sure on their initial membership tour when they tried to take them out of the locker room to see the rest the facility they probably told their tour guide, “that’s enough, that’s all I needed to see, do you have a membership that is limited to just the locker room?”

Now, back to comfort, particularly my kids desire to be comfortable.  I have a fear if this trend continues their only options when they move out of our house, if that ever happens, is to either become a physical education teacher or go on welfare.  Seriously, who else is allowed to wear athletic pants all day?  Now, this move form jeans to all athletic wear could have been quite pricey if their dad wasn’t Dutch.  That’s right, I sniff out deals and there was no way I was letting my kids wear knock off athletic wear and there was also no way I was paying full price for the name brand shit.  I took the kids to Marshals and was able to purchase Under Armor, Nike, Puma and Adidas for them, all at a deep discount.  God bless second tier retail, I love it.  While I was shopping for the kids a question popped into my head, who pays full price for this stuff?  Suckers, that’s who.  Honestly, I can’t imagine going to a real store ( a store that doesn’t sell furniture, food items that have been discontinued for years, and clothing all under one roof).

The problem with taking my kids shopping at Marshals is that inevitably I was going to wander over to the Men’s portion of the store and browse a bit, and I may have hit the jackpot of all my deeply discounted retail finds throughout the years, a pair of U of M jump man sweat pants.  This is too good to be true, I thought to myself, and then I realized why they were there, they were there because they were originally on sale for $110.  On top of that they were the swat pants version of skinny jeans, they were tapered at the bottom.  Didn’t really matter though, once I discovered that the pockets had zippers I was sold.  How many times have you worn sweat pants somewhere and constantly had to worry about your condoms, wallet, or the candy you smuggled in to the movie theatre falling out?  Problem solved when you have zippers on your sweat pants.  Why did it take them so long to think of this?  Obviously the world could have used squeezable ketchup decades ago, but just think how much better life would have been in the 70’s with all that cocaine and zippered sweat pants, wouldn’t have had to worry about your blow falling out of your pockets when you got blasted out of your mind at the disco.

Sometime in October I had an eventful few days that started with a trip to Firekeepers casino to play Texas Hold em at the cash table.  Unfortunately my companion and I were unaware of the fact that  there was a huge tournament going on that day and the ratio of average people to complete losers was at an all time high of at least 1 to 300.    In all honesty, if you are ever down in the dumps and need a self esteem boost just head to a casino, the only place filled with a higher concentration of burn outs is the DMV.  (or SOS if you live in Michigan). While the contingent of people who should have killed themselves decades ago and unburdened society is relatively high at a casino, as well as relatively depressing, it is overshadowed by the fact that people are allowed to smoke in the casino.  Michigan did a wonderful thing by banning the smoking of cigarettes indoors and I have no idea why they gave the casino’s a way around the best legislation this side of everything Trump has ever done.  Honestly, there are probably people who have no interest in gambling and go to the casino just because their wife won’t let them smoke indoors.

Ultimately my buddy and I were able to get seated together at a cash table and I had to take a look around and make sure there wasn’t a director or any cameras, I was almost certain Cocoon 3 was being filmed in the poker room.  I had three women at my table who had likely been in their “poker” prime during the second world war and I figured they would be easy pickings.  One of the old bags was wearing a T-shirt that at first my buddy and I thought was Bruce Lee’s kid as the Crow but ended up being Allen Rickman

who played Hans Gruber in the greatest action movie of all time, Die Hard.  Oh yeah, and he played some character in Harry Potter and it was him in that role that was plastered on the XXL sized T-shirt grams was sporting.  As luck would have it, I ended up getting a pair of kings and slow played them.  I kept bumping up the pot, but Allen Rickman’s biggest fan was not budging.  Finally on the river I hit a king and had a set, so I really bumped it up.  Wouldn’t you know it, granny had a gut shot straight and rolled my set of kings.    I lost another big hand to her and luckily for her our table got busted up so they could use it for the tournament and we were shuttled to a new table, because if she had beat me again I probably would have flipped the table on top of her and stormed off.  In the end I left the casino up $41, which on a typical day would be A ok by me, however the thrashing at the hands of Alan Rickman’s biggest fan left me feeling a little blue.

My next adventure took place the following evening and was a “pub cruise” with parent’s from my oldest child’s class.  We were hitting three bars on this adventure and this is what we were using to get to those three locations:

the people in the picture appear to be having fun don’t they?  Guess what, the picture must have been taken at the very beginning of the journey.  Now, going in to this thing I was well aware of how this was going to play out, I may as well have asked Rosie O’Donnell to rent a tandem bike with me.  Being the most in shape person in the group, I knew I was going to be the one doing the lion share of the peddling, normally I enjoy a physical challenge but only when I am dressed appropriately.  In this particular circumstance I was wearing pub crawl clothes, if I recall correctly some of which I picked up at Nordstrom rack specifically for my Friday night adventure. Between pub 2 and pub 3 is when it went really wrong, the alcohol mixed with my desire to always give 110% caused me to over exert myself to the point that I was sweating profusely and looked like I had just taken a shower.  After ordering my beer and sweating all over pretty much anyone between the bar and the door, I stepped outside in an attempt to cool down.  However, it was muggy and still quite warm out even though it was October. I’m genetically predisposed to sweating and when you couple that with an inordinate amount of body hair everywhere  but my head, it’s a recipe for swamp ass.

While the pub cruise was a three pub event we all decided to head to another local establishment so that I could savor my swamp ass a bit longer, and engage in some more mind numbingly dull small talk.  I can pretend I’m interested in someone else for maybe an hour possibly two, but when you throw drinks into the equation there is some type of algorithm that likely has me losing my mind when my BAC gets above .10.  Do I care about Shirley’s work stories?  No, but I enjoy having sex with her so I pretend.  Not having sex with any of the husbands and likely none of the wives on this pub tour so I really have no incentive to fein interest in their lives.  “Oh, yeah tell me another story about your kids, that’s great….. you do what for a living?  No, I didn’t ask what exactly that was so there’s no need to tell me because I will probably never see you again, why don’t you just let me use my imagination.  (funny true story, Shirley’s grandma who had Alzheimers kept asking me what I did for a living, after telling her for the twelfth time I was a barrister, sounds way better than an attorney doesn’t it? I decided to be an astronaut, didn’t phase her a bit and she continued to ask the same question)

The Clemson Syracuse game was on in the background and I ended up making it the foreground while I ordered Jamison on the rocks again and again and again, I slowly disengaged from the group.  It was a fun night overall, but an entirely different experience for Shirley “I really like that Jen! She’s my new best friend!”  They haven’t talked since.

The trifecta of my weekend was a doozy.  My youngest had taken a monster dump in our down stairs bathroom and clogged the toilet.  A true sign that our country is going to shit is the fact that it is almost impossible to find a decent plunger.  When I went to unclog the toilet the plunger caved in on itself rendering it completely useless.  Eventually it appeared that it was safe to give the toilet another flush to try and break up the clog all the while knowing that disaster could happen and that I should be prepared to shut the water to the toilet off.   I flushed and the water in the bowl filled up faster than an olympic sprinter gets out of the blocks in the 100 meter dash.  I immediately went to crank off the shut off valve but it was too late, toilet paper and poop spilled over the top of the toilet and on to the floor erupting on to a decent sized rug on the bathroom floor.

The most problematic thing, other than having to clean up my kid’s shit two years after he was out of diapers, was the fact that I had had to poop the entire time this was happening.  I have a list of things I fear, clowns, a zombie apocalypse, a female stand up comedy special, but what I fear most is missing my window to poop and never being able to poop again.  I haven’t googled this phenomena, but if it could happen it would likely happen to me due to the sheer pleasure I get out of dropping a deuce, and the pride I take in my regularity.  Every morning when I walk in the office between 8 and 8:30 I walk by my secretary and head immediately to the restroom for five to ten minutes.

Now I don’t recall my youngest eating anything out of the ordinary, and this isn’t the only time I have thought this, but how did that come out of there?  My kid has child size hands, feet, legs, arms (an adult sized head which comes from his mom’s side of the family) and also a child sized pooping system.  So, how is it possible that my kids dumps are adult sized?  They should be much smaller, much much smaller.    Should I be proud or should I be concerned?

“Little Jimmy just finished first at the math olympics for his school district.”

“Oh, your the guy with the bumper sticker, great, well take a look at this, doesn’t even seem like it would be physically possible does it?”

My oldest was faced with an opportunity that was likely to shape the trajectory of his school aged years.  Fortunately, he had no idea how impactful his trip to Marvel Live could actually be.  Before I get into the specifics of Friday night I need to give a bit of a back story.  Shirley decided late this summer that he would benefit from play therapy.  What is play therapy?  That questions will be answered as I get into the back story, but basically an excuse for a therapist to take money from helpless parents who aren’t quite sure how to deal with an unhealthy level of anxiety in their child.  Shirley attended the initial session which was basically an intake and then scheduled the following appointment.  However, she missed the next appointment and rescheduled the new appointment for a date that required me to take our oldest son, along with our youngest who appears to have about as much anxiety The Dude from The Big Lebowski.

So, the big day rolled around and I picked up the kids from school with a pretty nice window to make it to play therapy on time.  However, Shirley had given me the wrong address and Siri kept directing me to an address that didn’t actually exist, my anxiety and anger levels were at such a level that I was probably going to need some therapy as well and I called Shirley and asked her where the F is this place?  It had been pointed out to me a couple of times by my oldest but I believed Siri, who isn’t even a real person although I hate her just as much as an actual human, over my son.  Shirley found the actual address somehow, the therapist still had her old address on her archaic website which belonged to a demolished office building (red flag number one).

Ultimately we were a few minutes late and there was really no way to be sure the therapist actually knew we were there since there was just a waiting room with no receptionist.   More anxiety as I wondered if we would ever actually get in front of the the therapist but she did eventually make her way out to the lobby and greet us.  The first thing she hit me with was a $100 no show fee for Shirley failing to attend the initial therapy session.  Other than her criticizing my blog, I don’t think there was a worse way she could have started things off with me.  I begrudgingly handed over $100 and she proceeded to ask me what’s wrong with Kid 1.  Typically I would just say look at him, but I dint’ want to reveal immediately what his biggest obstacle in life was going to be, having a dick for a dad.  Furthermore, while there is plenty wrong with my kid, I felt like rattling all of his problems off right in front of him would only compound his problems.  (red flag number 2). I was able to divulge one of the biggest issues with both kid 1 and kid 2 and that issue is that they refuse to stay in their beds all night and end up sleeping on the floor next to our bed.  I disclosed that I had toyed with the idea of locking them in their rooms and the therapist immediately said that that ins’t allowed and CPS (child protective services) would have a serious issue with that.  (Red flag number 3, how is CPS ever going to find out?). She suggested a reward program to get the kids sleeping in their own bed, I almost laughed out loud, tough to use the reward system when your kids have every earthly thing any four and six year old could ever dream of having.

The therapy room had a couch and chair and then a door to a room containing a bunch of toys. (my kids have an entire playroom above our garage dedicated to their toys and they have about as much interest in it as sleeping in their own beds, but somehow this new toy room with a quarter of the toys was irresistible)  Child 2 wanted to hang out and play with Child 1 and the therapist instead of joining me in the waiting room where there was absolutely nothing to do.  To keep child 2 entertained I had to hand over my phone leaving me entirely bored for the half hour remaining in the therapy session.  So, to answer the question that I originally asked, play therapy is torture.  I scheduled another appointment while I was in the therapy room but called back a few days later to cancel, it was quite gratifying to tell the therapist we wouldn’t be coming back.

I’m not sure how this happened, but Child 1 was invited by the mother of one of the cool kids to accompany them to Marvel Live at Van Andel arena.  I love child 1 but he is kind of a weirdo, to his credit he’s funny but he has some idiosyncrasies that could be problematic when he is exposed to normal people who aren’t use to his behavior.  One of the things he does is hand holding, he feels the need to hold hands with adults whenever he is going from one place to another and apparently he held the hand of the cool kids mom whenever they were in transit.  I’m quite certain that there were other remarkable things that took place that I will never know about, but I’m fairly confident his peer group will be impacted at some point by the trip to Marvel Live.  Now with all that being said, he came home with a Toy from the show.  This was troubling to me because this thing was so last minute that we didn’t get a chance to give him or the parents money.  The tickets were free according to the the parents, but nothing else was.  Did my kid come out and ask that they purchase a toy for him?  I have no problem saying no to my kids (their other parent does) and I definitely have no problem saying no to other kids so I would have been able to thwart this, but I’m not so sure about other people, especially if they aren’t Dutch and frugal like me.

(This is the toy, it looks a lot cooler in the photo, and part of it already broke)

My estimate for what the toy set the cool kid’s family back was a bit low, and the only reason I know that is because my buddy invited me to take my kids with him and his kid to the Sunday matinee show.  I was a bit hesitant to agree to it after my experience with the dinosaur exhibit but the tickets were only $15 a piece and what else is there to do on a Sunday in November at 5pm?    My estimate for cost of the toy was $10 to $15 and upon entering the arena and going by the Merchandise stand I was immediately blown away, $25!

The fact that someone bought my kid a $25 toy is mind boggling for a number of reasons.  First of all, on rare occasions my parents would take a friend of mine with us to various things but primarily a movie, and if my memory is correct my friends always had to pay their way.  That’s how people rolled back then and this was when movies were like five bucks tops.  My parents were unwilling to spring for a child priced movie ticket and they never would have purchased me an over priced toy let alone one of my companions. Secondly, now we are placed immediately in the debt of the cool kid and his parents and have to figure out a way to pay them back.  There’s a monster truck thing at Van Andel in the spring but I don’t know if I can have that debt sitting out there for months having the cool kid and his family thinking I am a dead beat.  The other possibility is a movie but merely paying for a ticket isn’t going to cut it, I’ll have to purchase something tangible for the kid to take home and show his parents so they realize we are square.  “Mr. Jansma, why are you making me take this popcorn bucket and fountain drink cup with me home?”  “Just do it kid, and make sure your mom knows I sprung for extra butter”

I had very low expectations for the Marvel show.  However, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the show along with the choreography and the special affects.  There was a motorcycle jump that was pretty cool by Captain America and Black Widow (girl power!) as well as some acrobatic stunts that were pretty cool.  I assured the kids that they could have snow cones at intermission but wasn’t aware that they were $15 because I only saw the spider man light and not the snow cones as I was initially walking in.  When I saw the actual price of the snow cones every Dutch bone in my body was on edge and I immediately told the kids no.  Of course there was an overwhelming amount of brush back with my kids claiming I was a liar.  Fortunately they were also selling dipping dots (it’s been the ice cream of the future for the past thirty years) and I convinced them that a small dippin dots was an acceptable substitute for the snow cone, especially in light of the fact that it was only $5, what a deal.

The intermission lasted what seemed to be an eternity likely due to the fact that they are trying to peddle as much merch as possible.  On top of that I’m pretty sure the chubby kid sitting next to me on my right was dropping ass the entire first half of the show so I wasn’t that pumped about returning to the gas chamber.  However, I managed to survive the second act unscathed and was mentally preparing for what was about to transpire as we were leaving.  Kid 1 had a spider man web slinger light that he decided to bring along with him so there was absolutely no chance that kid 2 wouldn’t ask for one.  I was prepared to cough up the dough for another one if it was in the $10 to $15 price range but I wasn’t blowing $25 on that plastic piece of junk.  As he begged and pleaded for me to buy him one because his brother already had one, I was starting to think that maybe I don’t have a debt to the cool kids family due to the predicament I was currently facing due to their “generosity”.  Fortunately I can think on my feet and I told him that we would find him one on Amazon for much cheaper and that seemed to solve the problem. Maybe Amazon isn’t such a bad thing after all.

These two women were exposed to what could possibly be one of the most awkward threesome’s of all time.   First of all, I have never found Louis CK to be all that terribly funny, I even attempted to watch his show on FX but couldn’t get into it.  It’s a shame that other awful comedians such as Terry Fater, Jeff Dunham, George Lopez and every comedian who has participated in the red neck comedy tour don’t have the hang up that Louis Ck has, because then their careers could also plummet like the ratings for the NFL.  In my mind masturbating is best when done in complete solitude.  However, Mr. Ck seems to think that adding a couple of extra people to watch makes it that much more fun.  In my opinion broaching the “do you mind if I take my penis out and masturbate in front of you?” question would take some thorough vetting.  Mr. Ck would have been better served presenting these two women with a questionnaire, instead of just inviting them up to his hotel room and getting completely naked in front of them (wouldn’t just pulling it out of your pants suffice?  I realize George Costanza liked to completely undress when he dropped a deuce but a completely naked man jerking off in front of you is twice as awkward as a guy who keeps at least his shirt on).  Here are a few possible questions:

• Do you find penises attractive?
• Do you find me attractive?
• Have you ever seen a grown man naked before?
• Would you like to see this grown man naked?
• Can you keep a secret?

Hard to believe a guy like that would have to force women into watching him jerk it.  In trying to wrap my head around this whole concept what really throws me for a loop is the ability to even get into performance mode under these circumstances.  My dog walks into the bathroom while I’m in the shower enjoying some much deserved alone time and it can send me into a complete tailspin even though she is pretty much entirely blind.  I can’t imagine trying to get the job done with two distraught women helplessly watching me.  “just give me another couple minutes ladies, I know I can get there, it’s been a tough. day.”  Once I saw the first yawn I’d be done for.

A second issue with this whole deal is the fact that this was premeditated.  He invited these two women to his room after a comedy show.  I am pretty sure he didn’t get the ball rolling by saying “you know I invited you guys up here to run a few different ideas for my new act by you but for some reason I really feel like masturbating instead, you guys mind?”  On top of that, jerking off in the corner while you make them watch is possibly the creepiest thing a guy could do, (a chick masturbating in front of two dudes, erotic, a guy in front of two chicks disgusting) he would have been much better off propositioning them to also get naked and see where things lead.  Had that been disclosed years later the reaction probably would have been “oh yeah, that’s completely normal.”  The reality is that it may have not even been newsworthy.

This happened quite a while ago as did the other things disclosed by women centering around Mr. CK’s jerking habits.  While I haven’t followed his career all that closely, I am quite certain back in 2002 when the this originally happened he wasn’t to the point in his career that he could be certain his celebrity would allow him to do this kind of thing and end up completely unscathed.  While there were indications that his manager attempted to black ball these two women, the fact that they were female comedians was probably enough to keep them from being successful, and their only real opportunity at setting themselves apart from all the other unfunny female comedians was to come out with this story.  Louis Ck had to know at some point this shit was going to surface and when it did it would likely torpedo his career.

In light of that fact, and also the fact that he was a successful comedian who likely had money and a hotel room to himself,  why not just get a prostitute and or two and jerk away?  I realize it’s not the same jerking off in front of a complete stranger as opposed to people you work with, but can’t you just pretend?

I know how sex typically ends, you clean up and go to sleep, or if you are really tired you just go to sleep.  Typically when a guy blows his load he goes from 7,000 rpm’s on the horny scale to negative 3,000, I can’t imagine what Louie was thinking immediately after accomplishing his goal.  “man I really should have planned this out a little better, I’m completely naked and I don’t have a towel or anything else near me, could one of you ladies do me a favor, grab me that robe over there and a washcloth from the bathroom?” Did he shake their hands on their way out the door?  Possibly go in for the hug and a kiss on the cheek.  Seriously, what is the proper good bye after you have just jerked off in front of two of your colleagues?  “man I am famished, you guys want me to order up some room service?  Shit, room service ends at 11, I saw a Taco Bell down the street, what do you say we make a run for the border?”

Initially I was suppose to go on a trip to NYC with my wife, her sisters, and their respective husbands.  However, due to certain things that can not be mentioned in this blog, the husbands were uninvited and my wife’s female cousins took our place.  I have no desire to go to New York so it didn’t bother me that much, besides it never hurts to have the “you went to New York for five days” as a card to play when needed.  That being said, who was going to watch my kids? I need daily me time and my two kids were not going to have any of that, especially since my oldest refuses to go anywhere in our house unaccompanied by an adult.  There’s a word for him, but that may offend the three female readers currently reading this blog, although if I haven’t lost them yet, they may be here to stay.

Thursday at noon my wife jetted to NYC and I was left on kid duty until Monday morning.  Thursday went by smoothly primarily because I allowed them to each purchase a movie at Meijers to watch that evening, my oldest opted for Cars 2 and my youngest picked a Shrek Halloween DVD.  There’s an old saying that goes “while the cat’s away the mice play!”  My saying is “when Shirley is away I throw things out.”  A few years back  I ordered a roll off container so I could empty our house of unneeded shit.  You would think my wife grew up in the depression as difficult as it is for her to part with anything.  My attitude on the other hand is if I have any reservations about tossing something out I pitch it.  After I had finished filling up the roll off container with our unneeded items, Shirley came to me upset because I had thrown out her green bag.  I said you mean that green bag that you haven’t used in two years?  Yes, that green bag.

On Saturday morning I realized the clock was ticking and I only had 48 more hours to rid the house of things that served no purpose other than collecting dust and taking up space.   For some reason I decided to start with my closet which Shirley has no interest in.  It took me roughly an hour to get it organized and decide what to donate to goodwill and what to keep.  In the end I actually donated one slalom water ski glove along with a lot of other stuff.  Do you think they actually try to sell one glove?  What do you think they do with all of the socks they get that don’t have a match?  Do they just put them with other socks that are unmatched?  Oh, these look good together.  I have a feeling that if you are purchasing socks from goodwill, matching pairs are the least of your concerns.  Yeah doc, I knew I was taking a pretty big risk buying gently used socks from goodwill, who would have thought you could get an STD from a sock?

The next item on the agenda took a bit more courage than my closet task.  I’m not sure if anyone out there has done this, but I pulled our bed back from the wall and almost threw up.  Now, we aren’t the cleanest people, but we aren’t the type of people who just leave piles of dog shit lying around, at least not piles that are in plain view.  There was an empty yogurt container, a pacifier (it’s been two years since Ted had a pacifier), and a whole lot of smegma.  I spent about fifteen minutes cleaning the baseboard, vacuuming, and eradicating stubborn smegma that had worked it’s way into the carpet.

I’m not trying to brag hear but we actually have a coat room with lockers, it’s quite amazing, unless you are one amazon purchase away from being a hoarder, then it is no longer a coatroom but a place that causes unnecessary anxiety due to it’s disorganized state.  On one side of the coat room we have a wall that has a contraption that was an add on that has 9 drawers to house various odds and ends.  I wasn’t planning on eradicating the coatroom of it’s clutter but once I brought some hats down to put in the drawers I realized it had to be done.  The contents of the drawers were primarily winter ware, specifically hats, gloves, and scarves.  There were at a minimum 60 pairs of gloves and mittens and at least 20 hats along with a number of scarves and even some hoods to coats that we may not even possess any longer.  As I made my way through the winter wear I asked myself this, “Do designers intentionally make women’s winter hats ugly or is this done by accident?”  All my wife’s hats are hideous but I obviously couldn’t discard all of them, so I left her the two that were the least objectionable.  If she doesn’t like those she can wear the hoods that I didn’t throw out, they will look a little strange without the coats they came with, but they will get the job done.

The rest of Saturday was fairly uneventful but the kids were a bit disappointed because the didn’t get to go to jurassic quest.  Somehow, Jurassic quest, which I was planning on attending with my mom and sister and the kids, was sold out.  Hell, if it sold out it must be awesome, right?  My logic was quite flawed and I should have used my personal experience to realize sold out does not necessarily mean awesome.  Jimmy Buffet concerts sell out and they are the opposite of awesome, I’m ashamed to say this, I have attended two of his concerts, but in my defense I was black out drunk the first one so that’s probably why I agreed to attend another one.  The black out drunk one was by far the better experience.

I decided to order tickets for Sunday so that the kids wouldn’t be disappointed and so that I would have something to threaten taking away form them to use as leverage to get them to behave somewhat until Sunday afternoon.  Unfortunately, I didn’t do any research and thought hey I should probably purchase VIP tickets for them so they can do all the cool stuff.  Prior to attending Jurassic Quest we had to make a pit stop at my parents for dinner, now there is a lot of reasons I wanted to tell my mom no thanks, but the primary reason is that she has attempted to give and get me to read parenting books on two occasions.  Do I have a complex about my parenting due to this?  Hell yes I do and bringing my kids to my parent’s for dinner could only end in complete disaster.  Sure enough, we get to my parents and my kids immediately start demanding things without saying please.  I want some….. which would be a fine way to ask for something if it was followed by please, but it wasn’t.  This immediately got things off on the wrong foot.  However, Tod needed to bring it up a notch and said as loud as he could while my mom was in the kitchen and we were in the adjacent dining room, “Grandma’s food is gross!”  Fortunately my mom is Dutch and has no feelings so I’m pretty sure his comment bounced right off from her and was a merely a negative reflection on my parenting.  Can’t wait to see which parenting book she gets me this Christmas.  My mom’s go to drink for lunch is sparkling grape juice that looks like wine, not sure why this is, but she loves it.  Unfortunately, my kids don’t share this love and let her know about it immediately. Strike two!  For dessert my mom made an apple pie, her apple pie is the best around,  she is a wizard when it comes to baked goods.  “We don’t like apple pie, we want raspberry pie!”  Strike three!

Ultimately, I skated out of my parents as quickly as possible and made my way to Devos place for jurassic quest.  Upon arrival there was a line that could only be rivaled at the Secretary of State’s Super Center in Centerpoint mall.  However, the people who hang out at the Secretary of State’s office are of a much higher quality than the people comprising the line at Jurassic quest.  I patiently waited in line all the while realizing this was an epic mistake, I have made a lot of poor decisions as a parent, hell I even thought about taking my kids to Thor this weekend, but even if I had done that, going to Jurassic Quest was the worst decision as a parent I have ever made.  All I can think is that the people who created this thing new it sucked, but they also knew if they created price tiers and priced it just right they could get people to believe it was going to be great family entertainment.  The VIP pass was $30 per kid.  At $30 it has to be close to the amount of fun you would have at an amusement park since it is similarly priced.  To add insult to injury, an adult ticket is $16.  My guess is the majority of the people attending heard $30 a ticket and thought hell this has to be worth getting a couple of months behind on lot rent, we can get caught up when we get our tax returns back.

As we entered the main exhibition hall we were greeted by an animatronic dinosaur that was fairly large and my oldest seemed genuinely frightened, living up to what I had earlier labeled him in this blog.  My youngest wasn’t phased at all and we gradually made our way around the dinosaurs that were put on display.  Jurassic quest was basically the Ionia Free Fair crammed into 10,000 square feet accompanied by a bunch of rubber dinosaurs.  On top of that, the thing was being run by a bunch of carnies, now I know what they do in the off season.  After making our way through the dinosaurs the kids finally settled on going into one of the bounce houses.  The line was equally as long as the line to get in and when we finally reached the front there was an impoverished looking women with a whistle “you all know the rules of the bounce house?”  I thought to myself that they couldn’t be all that complex if she knew them off the top of her head.  “You get two minutes in the bounce house and when I blow the whistle you have to gets out of the bounce house.”   Immediately I started thinking of ways I could bribe my kids and get them to willingly leave.  Ice cream, Thor, a Porsche when they turn 16?

Honestly, my kids didn’t even seem to enjoy the bounce house all that much and Ted even said he was sick of waiting in lines.  However, they did spot the dinosaur shaped balloons that were filled with helium and looked to have the life expectancy of the women running the bounce house.  The balloons were listed at $6 a pop, seemed a bit steep but they may as well get something out of this whole debacle.  When I told the guy I wanted two dinosaur balloons he told me $31.  I would have told him to F himself had I not had my kids with me (the $6 balloons were the ones you take home and blow up yourself, the only thing worse is a take and bake pizza) I just walked away.  Lets get out of here kids, I think we can catch the next showing of Thor if we hustle.

(Note the kids are somewhat standoffish around the kid dressed as the clown from IT, it’s either because the kid crapped his pants or they are legitimately terrified of him)

I’m not going to say that the day after Halloween brings about the same level of depression that the day after Christmas does, but I definitely feel a bit down in the dumps today.  Is it because November 1 is a signal that winter is right around the corner and there is very little to look forward to until Thanksgiving and Christmas?  Possibly, but Halloween does elicit joy, likely because we are allowed to dress up and pretend to be something we aren’t.  Or, even if you are unable to dress up as an adult you are able to put costumes on your kids and pretend for at least an evening they are something else other than your annoying ungrateful kids allowing you to forget for a brief moment they are 99% to blame for their frequent late arrivals to school.

Before I get into the alarming picture I have pasted on my blog, (hopefully it isn’t a link and actually the picture, but my ineptitude with technology makes me think the picture will no longer be there once I post this blog) just a few thoughts on Halloween from a parent’s perspective.  First of all, the costumes are way better now days.  Back in the day if you were going to purchase a costume it came with a plastic mask that had an elastic string on the back which was solely responsible for keeping the mask in place.  It was pretty much guaranteed that by the third or fourth house you visited the elastic string broke and you were left holding your mask up with one hand and your trick or treat pumpkin in the other hand.  On top of the elastic string issue, most of the masks had a mouth hole that was about the size of a dime resulting in the constant fear of suffocation and inevitable brain damage due to lack of oxygen.  Unfortunately, the body of the costume was also made out of plastic as well and only came in one size so wether you were 3 foot 2 or 5 foot 9 the thing looked completely ridiculous when worn.  My kids were a police officer and a ninja and were they not 6 and 4 respectively they could have easily arrested someone or starred in a Bruce Lee movie, that’s how legit their costumes were.

While the quality of the costumes have increased exponentially over the years so has the candy.  Skittles, Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, Milky Ways, and a variety of other name brand and popular candy bars were handed out at pretty much every house.  Back in the day you would get stuck with at least 3 or 4 Bit of Honey’s, Mamba’s (they come in banana flavor that right there tells you how horrible they are), Milk duds (great a candy that will stay stuck in my teeth for at least 24 hours just in case I get hungry again) and those peanut butter flavored things that came individually wrapped in either orange or black wrapping, they were so bad that they didn’t even have a name.  If you were handing those things out it was pretty obvious that you had given up on Halloween and possibly life.  Had they had the quality of candy my kids have when I was trick or treating I would have started canvasing the neighborhood immediately after school and probably not returned home until November 1.  My kids on the other hand hit maybe 15 houses and then were willing to call it a night.  Fortunately I had a costume and drove separately from my wife and kids to the trick or treat location so I was able to stay out until midnight.

The picture that I have posted and hopefully appears on this blog and not just as a link brings one central question to mind “what were this kids parents thinking?”  I believe there are a couple of possibilities here:

“Honey, you know how Stuart (I’ve never met a normal Stuart) wants to dress up as Mathew McConaughey in the Lincoln commercials?  Well, I have a way better idea.”

“He has had his heart set on that for quite some time now, but I do feel like an alternative costume would be ideal due to how gigantic of a douchebag McConaughey appears to be in those commercials, do you think he is that big of a douche in real life?”

“He’d have to be one hell of an actor if he wasn’t, and he’s not much of an actor, so probably yes.  The tag line should be “want to be a douche, drive a Lincoln”. So, I was thinking as a way to get him off that costume we dress him up as a clown, what kid doesn’t’ want to dress up like a clown?  but not just any clown, the clown from IT, it will be one of the funniest things ever.”

“First of all, no one likes dressing up as a clown, on my top three things I fear, clowns are number three right behind the Zombie Apocalypse and missing my window to poop and never being able to poop again.  Granted, it would be hilarious but is it worth the risk of Stuart being labeled a psychopath the rest of his school aged years and ostracized to the point that his only option for friends are either the theatre crowd or future farmers of America kids?”

“It happened again, Randy came home crying, the same kids keep picking on him because he still hasn’t learned to stop eating his boogers.  It also doesn’t help that he continually says poopy butt in response to just about everything, often at the most inopportune times”

“Well, we have two options, we can either cut off his fingers so he can’t pick his nose anymore, which seems somewhat extreme but may be necessary, or we can send him to school dressed like the clown from IT.  Nobody will fuck with the kid if he shows up in that costume.”

“Definitely no to option one, but I feel like sending him to school as the clown from IT  results in a 99 percent likelihood that he would either turn into the next John Wayne Gacey or possibly even worse and become one of those people who does kids birthday parties dressed up as a clown so they can be around kids and their unsuspecting parents.”

“Serial killer, possibly, birthday party clown no way, he doesn’t have the coordination to make animal balloons nor will he ever.  I realize the current radio and television ad campaigns about anti-bullying brought us a lot of hope that this behavior would stop but surprisingly elementary age kids don’t really care how uncool bullying is to society as a whole.  I’ll grab the face paint and clown costume tonight on my way home from work.”

There has been a lot of media coverage of the NFL players attempts at protesting what they seem to think is white oppression.  The owner of the Houston Texans just last week put his foot in his mouth by stating “we don’t want the inmates running the jail.”  The most common version of this phrase is “we don’t want the inmates running the asylum.”  Would his remark have been less objectionable had he used the most common phrase and compared NFL players to mentally ill people as opposed to criminals?  He probably would have caught flack either way, but I’m sure the African American players were particularly incensed even though African Americans comprise a majority of the population of those who are currently incarcerated.  And that’s the issue, isn’t it, why is the black population the primary component of the penal system?

Guess what isn’t going to solve this problem?  Kneeling for the National Anthem.  Kneeling for the National Anthem does even less than someone taking a dump on the 50 yard line while the Star Spangled Banner is being played.  At least taking a dump on the 50 yard line is the type of behavior that you don’t want repeated.  Who gives a shit if a bunch of over paid professional athletes refuse to stand for the National Anthem?  If all the players took a shit not the field during the anthem that’s 106 people shitting on the field per venue (all teams have a 53 man active roster).  I’ll say this my 4 and 6 year olds take some epic shits and they only way a combined 90 pounds.  After they have taken a dump I have often wondered how did you fit all that in there?  But then I think back to what my wife is able to cram in her purse and realize anything is possible.  However, when you do break it down what kind of damage do you think the Cowboys offensive line could do?  Those guys probably eat a lot of bbq’ed meat during the week and they alone would likely create a toxic epicenter that FEMA would have a tough time cleaning up.

Am I really advocating for NFL players to drop a Duce on the field?  While I think it would accomplish more than kneeling, it still falls significantly short of accomplishing what the players seem set out to do, rectify the racial inequity in society.  For example, do you think a police officer now after the latest protests by NFL players thinks twice when he follows a car full of African American teens for no real reason but for the color of their skin?  Hold on, wait a minute here, I really shouldn’t be doing this, those NFL players are going to keep kneeling for the anthem if I don’t quit this type of unconstitutional behavior that could possibly be perceived as racial profiling.  Nonsense, cops are going to keep doing what they have been doing for one specific reason.  Just like any other job in order to move up the food chain you need to perform.  You’re not going anywhere if you sit in a parking lot eating doughnuts all day and looking at porn on your phone, granted that’s much less dangerous than chasing alleged criminals, but rarely does such conduct result in a promotion.  So in order to move up the ladder and get a better gig with better hours and a more lucrative financial package you need to make arrests, preferably big arrests.  Now if I want to see naked women dance on a stage where do I go?  Not to Byron Center where there is a church on every corner, I go to a “gentleman’s club”.  So, as a cop do you go to Byron Center? (the whitest suburb in all of West Michigan, which is saying a lot because there are a lot of white suburbs to choose from). No, you go to the inner city where the action is.  Is this on it’s face what these players are bitching about?  I hope not, it’s what happens after these cops get into these neighborhoods that seems to be problematic.

I’m not going to go into all the racial injustices I have personally witnessed carried out at the hands of the police, but there have been quite a few.  However, I am going to go into better solutions to solve the problem than the mere lip service the NFL players are engaging in as a protest to perceived improper conduct by law enforcement across the country.

The first solution that would have the most dramatic impact on things is if the players said fuck it, we aren’t playing anymore until there are some changes.  This would have the white billionaire owners and their douche bag yes man, Roger Goodell, scrambling.  I love how the owners for the most part pretended to care about the players when this started and responded to Donald Trump’s questionable comments by joining the players on the field for the National Anthem.  “Ok, we can do this one time, but we are not going down there more than once, I can’t be that far away from my luxury box, I need to have fresh caught jumbo cocktail shrimp, caviar, and beautiful women around me at all times, not smelly athletes who have tattoos and untamed facial hair.”  So, if the players said we aren’t playing this Sunday, and did it, say on Saturday what would happen?  The owners wouldn’t get replacement players, they tried that once and it didn’t work.  The owners would actually be forced to use their influence, which they probably have quite a bit of since they are all billionaires, to attempt and rectify the racial injustices in American society.  Guess what?  They aren’t going to do it, in all reality, even though they engage in one of the manliest sports on this planet, risking life and limb every time they strap on a helmet, they can’t handle the thought of losing their game checks.

They will kneel for the Anthem but there’s no way they are going to take on financial hardship to prove a point.  Furthermore, what if they didn’t show up to play and the owners did nothing?  They would have to do the same thing the following week until there were legitimate changes. Eventually an absence of football would lead every one to realize what I already know, the NFL is terribly boring and for every good game there are dozens of unwatchable games.  The referees suck, the coaches suck, and a lot of the players suck.  It’s not a quality product and on top of that every five to seven minutes of play is followed by five to seven minutes of commercials and dead air.  Now I’m not saying the NFL is as boring as going to a pumpkin patch with your family on a Sunday afternoon, no, I would never take that stance, at least you can drink and fold laundry while you watch football, but as far as sports entertainment goes, it has to be one of the least action packed sports for its fans.

My second offering is the more likely way to have an impact on racial inequality in our justice system.  Currently, most African Americans are shuffled through the justice system without the financial resources to obtain their own legal counsel.  Often times they are appointed an attorney who has a heavy case load and they are not given the time and attention required to thoroughly explore the options that are available to them as they work their way through the system.  Once these people end up in the system they typically make their way back into the system and it creates a vicious cycle with the ramifications for their actions increasing significantly every time they reappear.  However, NFL players make millions of dollars and the owners make billions.  The financial resources are there to set up a defense fund in all 50 states that could have a dramatic impact on how these cases turn significantly impacting the lives of the people caught up in the system.  Is it idealistic to think that this will remedy the problem?  Yes, however such a fund can have a positive impact on the lives of the oppressed by giving them advocates who have the time and resources to combat some of the intolerable behavior that is at the root of the players well meaning but entirely ineffective protests.