Let's bomb Long Island!

Seriously, maybe I'm just pissed cuz my cat woke me up at 6:30 am, but is anyone else sick of stupid, spoiled teenagers and their parents who throw them lavish parties?

I don't know, maybe I should just stop watching/reading the news, but it seems like there's a lot of these kids out there. It could be bullshit media hype, but I doubt it. I mean, I know My Super Sweet Sixteen is probably highly exagerrated, but it's just more fun to pretend it's not.

The issue seems to be that these kids were raised in an environment where they were coddled from birth. I'm paraphrasing something I saw on 60 Minutes, but they've never ridden in cars without seatbelts, never been on a bike without a helmet on and never even gone to a school cafeteria that serves peanut butter.

Basically every one of these little monsters has been fed the idea by their parents that they are special. They're not. Throw in affluence, where they're given everything they could ever want and you have a recipe for disaster.

I don't know why any teenagers would be reading my blog, but if you are, let me reiterate: YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. You are not smart, you are not clever nor are you original in any way.

You know how you never did well in school and before you could even start to feel like a dummy, your parents jumped in and told you that it wasn't your fault cuz you have ADD? And they pumped you full of drugs and let you take 3 hours longer to take your tests? And you still got C's? Everybody was lying to you, you really are a dummy.

Once again: YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL. Your poetry/music/short stories about ponies sucks. I know your friends tell you it's great, but they're lying. Nobody really cares about you because you're a stupid retard. Soon enough, you will find this out. You will deny it for years to come but eventually, you'll get it. The problem is, you might be 40 by the time it happens. So maybe it's better to just quit now and fulfill your destiny as a sandbag or a paper weight for a really big stack of papers.

Now, like this story is quick to point out, it's not really the fault of these kids, it's the parents. But it's not just the parents, it's everybody. We live in a fearful society. Anytime you get together in a large group of people, you will create fear. It is both the stimulus and by-product of socialization. Originally we got together because we were afraid of bears or tigers or whatever. There was strength in numbers. But this, in turn, created disease, murder, poverty and illness.

Sometimes, this fear is (at least in part) based on rational things. If you lived in Europe during the black death, you should have been afraid. If you were a Jew in Nazi Germany in 1937, again, you probably had a good reason to be fearful. One thing you should not be afraid of is terrorism.

Now, don't fly off the handle here. I'm not saying terrorism is not a big deal. I'm not saying 9/11 was a conspiracy. I'm not even saying it's something you shouldn't be concerned about because it does affect us all. What I am saying is: you should not be afraid that terrorists are going to kill you.

9/11 was the biggest terrorist attack in our history. Approximately 3000 people died. Their loss should not be trivialized in anyway. But, consider that we have rougly 300 million people in this country and you will realize that the odds that you, yourself will be killed by terrorists are not very high. It's like shark attacks: how many people a year die in shark attacks? In America, I mean? 6? 7? Yet how many people are genuinely afraid of getting attacked by a shark?

Even if there was a really bad terrorist attack, that managed to kill 100,000 people and believe me, that would be horrific, chances are more likely than not that it would be someone else and not you. Sure, there are factors that increase this likelihood, depending on where you live or what you do, etc. but my point is that the fear of terrorism is based on the idea that something bad will happen to you. Not someone else.

Fear is really an extension of hyper-inflated ego. This idea that we're special in the bad ways, as well as the good. I'm going to be the one bitten by a shark. I'm going to be the victim of a terrorist attack. My child will be the one who gets abducted. Parents love their children, generally speaking. They want to protect them. So in addition to just telling them that they are loved and that they are special, you are re-enforcing this idea in their little heads when you make them wear a helmet and knee pads so they can ride their bike in the driveway. Am I anti-helmet? No, of course not. But for every good idea like that, there's 20 bad ones that come with it.

For example, in the state of Rhode Island, every school bus has a "monitor" on it. When the bus stops, the monitor gets out and checks under the school bus tires to make sure there are no kids under the bus that will get run over when the bus leaves. AT EVERY SINGLE STOP. This is somebody's fucking job! I mean really, how many kids could have gotten run over before this happened? 2? 3? And now there's literally an army of these people riding around, checking for kids so they don't get squished? Why would a kid even bother to learn that maybe it's a bad idea to play under a moving bus when they've got someone there to watch them and make sure they don't?

So flash-forward ten years and its prom time. What kind of message do you send your kids when you pitch in with some other parents and rent your kids a mansion in the Hamptons for them to party in after the prom for $20,000?? What the fuck do you think is gonna happen there anyway? Here's a rational fear for you: that your kid is gonna get raped/rape someone! After all, they're special! Who is this girl to dare say no to your son! I mean really, how many thousands in Mob hush money has been paid out cuz of those Growing Up Gotti kids? I bet it's a lot.

So, in summation: you and your brat kid are stupid and not special.

Good night.