Spotted this bumper sticker the other day. It wasn't the first time I had seen it, but part of me wishes it were the last. I have been meaning to jump on these Pro-Drum activists ever since the start of the hunger crises in Darfur.
Look at this clown in the picture. Not only does he have a dozen freshly minted bumper stickers to get the pressing needs of organic drummers out there, he's got the 100% cotton T-shirt that amplifies his ardent feelings.
Now you can call me tone deaf. I don't see or hear a world of difference between a hand-made Pearl High Hat and it's electronic equivalent.
But Rich, I can hear you say, surely there must a hundred other worthwhile topics to rant about than those who despise drum machines. And that is exactly my point.
There are a hundred other rant-worthy topics and this guy, and his ilk, ought to look into some of them.
There are children starving and tribal ethnic cleansing going on in Africa, there is institutional oppression of women and Non-Muslims on the Asian Subcontinent, there is the widening gap between the obscenely wealthy and the obscenely poor, there is pollution, there is violence, there is the depletion of our natural resources, there is a host of problems all worthy of a movement.
And all of them of them are infinitely more important than the flitterings of the percussion-obsessed.
While drum machines may have no soul, neither do the people who are so fervently opposed to them.
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I think you'll like this:
Sorry God By Shalom Auslander
It’s the time of year for apologies, but not everyone has forgiveness on their mind. An argument for not saying sorry until God does.
And so we arrive, once again, at that hallowed time of the year when man bows his head to the Lord, trembling in fear, pounding his chest in regret and sorrow while tearfully begging absolution and mercy from the Creator of the Universe. This is a time for admission, for contrition. A time for swinging a chicken—or cock, as the English say—around your head. (No other hook-nosed creature, not even Jews, has suffered as much throughout history as have chickens.) It is a time for an honest taking stock of oneself—one’s failings, one’s sins, one’s mistakes, one’s errors. With one notable exception:
God.
God murders, God kills, God takes revenge, God, by his own admission, is a jealous God. God turns his head. But God doesn’t apologize. Not for war, not for disease, not for Ashton Kutcher, not for anything. We’ve been apologizing to him for years, and—nothing. Not a peep. Not a whoops, not a sorry, not a “My Bad on the whole Hitler thing.” So, seriously: No more apologies. I’m not apologizing for anything (and I say this over a breakfast of a bacon-and-egg sandwich), not for one more goddamn thing until he does, and I think all Jews, all over the world, ought to unite at last and join me: No apologies. No sorrows. Not this year.
It’s God’s turn:
O Mankind, son of your fathers and your fathers’ fathers, let My prayers come before you, and do not hide yourself from My supplication. O Mankind, I am not so arrogant nor so hardened to say, “I am righteous and have not sinned.” For truly I have sinned. I have turned away from you, and I have done evil in your sight.
(God should bend forward at the waist here and upon reciting each sin pound his chest with his fist.)
For the sins I committed against you with diseases of the body, and for the sins I committed against you with diseases of the mind.
For the sins committed by murdering your parents, and for the sins I committed by murdering your children.
For cancer and for AIDS and for heart disease and for emphysema and for Alzheimer’s and for Parkinson’s. For regular leukemia, and for childhood leukemia.
For the commandments I gave you that I don’t even adhere to myself.
For hangovers.
For erectile dysfunction.
For premenstrual syndrome.
For aging, for time, for mortality.
For Miley Cyrus.
For all the Cyruses.
For all the Kardashians, and all the Olsens and all the Duffs and all the Hiltons and all the Afflecks and all the Baldwins and all the Palins and all the Palins-in-law.
For YA vampire novels.
For lynchings and gassings and mass graves and medical experiments and being burned alive.
For broken hearts. For loneliness. For divorce and for dysfunction.
For making it so damned hard.
For judging you, damning you, condemning you, without ever having been for even a brief moment in your soiled, mortal shoes.
For the whole circumcision thing.
For turning my head.
For calling homosexuality an abomination. (I’d just been dumped by my boyfriend.)
For the enduring lies and the broken promises.
For the unanswered prayers and the unanswered questions.
For all those notes in the wall I never read.
For Facebook and for MySpace.
And for Ashton fucking Kutcher.
For all these things, Mankind,
pardon me,
forgive me,
atone me.
(Perfect. Now go swing a cock around your head.)
My sentiments exactly. Shalom nailed it.
Turns out Shalom and I grew up about three miles from each other in Rockland County. He has a very interesting past. And I love the way he turned it on its head.
He also worked at Chiat when I was there. I met him briefly at the NY office. A surly man to say the least. But then he worked in advertising, and we all have a right to be surly.
This was piece I had written on the same topic: http://roundseventeen.blogspot.com/2010/11/please-spare-me.html
Though I think Shalom was a tad more eloquent.
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