Peer Pressure Works!

Up until an hour ago, I was totally unaware of some horrible, monstrous yuletide thing that is apparently a tradition for lackwits and freaks. Then my sister Pam sent me an email linking to a stupendous mom rant about this ridiculous thing. The name of this denizen of Hell? The Elf on the Shelf.

The premise of this horrendous shitball of stupidity is that you put this in your house so that your children will feel they are being watched by Santa. Yes indeed, it’s encouraging better behaviour through fear and the threat of Santa deciding your kids are unworthy little mongrels, so he’d better give those gifts to the neighbour kid with the lazy eye and the ‘I’m a future serial killer’ facial expression. How DARLING. How MAGICAL. Who dreamed this thing up, an especially hard core member of Homeland Security?

“If we get them used to constantly being under observation during childhood, they’ll be used it it by the time they’re grown!”

And you are apparently supposed to continually move this thing around so that your children never know where to feel safe…ERRRR…where that rascal might be this time. When do you do this? When the kids are sleeping. Because stumbling around in the darkness of your own home and smashing your feet in to various unseen obstacles and discarded toys is a perfectly wonderful idea to help get you in to the spirit of the holidays.

And imagine it from the other side…you’re a kid. You go strolling in to the living room and are suddenly face to face with this little bastard, who has unexpectedly moved from a different room during the night. That isn’t a source for Christmas mirth…that is pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel of the purest octane.

And what do these parents do the rest of the year? I mean, if all that’s keeping their little hellions in line during the Christmas season is a tiny figure who looks like a child molester perched on various household objects for a month, what replaces that when we hit January? Is there an Easter Bunny on a Shelf? A Cupid on a Shelf? Perhaps am especially demonic looking Kool Aid Kool on a Shelf for those hot summer months, threatening to juice your precious little angels and force their brethren to drink the soup of their entrails?

Is ANYONE surprised that something this utterly fucked up originated in Georgia? I’d imagine it takes a significant quantity of bathtub corn whiskey to dream up something that positively fucked up. I notice that they also produce Light in the Night, a character designed to help kids deal with fear of the dark…a fear more than likely caused by a certain elven creep moving around the their homes at will and shattering any feelings of safety and normalcy they might have while their parents chuckle about the whole thing. Kudos for absolute business brilliance there for both creating AND exploiting a product market. Perhaps they also produce a series of highly absorbent sets of bed sheets and children’s footie pyjamas, all custom designed to soak up the most ‘AUGH! THE ELF FOLLOWS ME IN JUDGMENT!’ fear pee of any product on the market.

And man are there going to be some FUN conversations with mom and dad when the time comes to explain that there really isn’t a Santa at all.

“Wait, so that whole elf thing wasn’t real? It was the two of YOU moving it around the house in secret and terrifying me?! What the Hell is WRONG with you! You passed off your parental responsibilities to creepy, fake elf?! You either buy me a goddamn pony RIGHT NOW or I grab mom’s car keys, smash the station wagon in to the fire hydrant out front, then call Family Protective Services and explain that I was trying to escape a house of lies and cruelty!”

I’m a sports fan. Not really a shocking statement. I also enjoy coffee, beer and steak. WOO! Mind blowing revelations!

So yeah, sports. Good stuff. Entertaining. But there comes a limit when fandom ends and reality has to enter the equation, or you’re just a complete fucking loon.

There are a lot of complete fucking loons at Penn State University.

Turns out a long time assistant coach (Jerry Sandusky) has been indicted for sexually assaulting troubled kids. Where does a coach find victims? Why, by founding a charitable organization to help troubled boys! You know, the sorts of kids who don’t have anyone else in their life who they can go to for help.

In 2002, a Penn state graduate assistant with the football team walks in to a shower room when he hears a noise and finds this subhuman shit heap (who is by this time an ex-assistant coach, though still heavily involved on campus through his charity) raping a 10 year old. Now, I’m pretty sure that if I’m in his place, I’m probably currently serving a life sentence for crushing said shit heap’s head against the wall like a melon. I’d assume most people would likely not react much differently, and at the very least would call the cops.

What does this guy do? Goes to talk to Joe Paterno.

Quick little fill in here for people who don’t follow football. Joe Paterno is 84 years old. He has been the head coach at Penn state for approaching half a CENTURY. He’s pretty much a football God. This is a man who, when the Athletic Director and other school officials asked him to retire in 2005, basically told them to fuck themselves and kept coaching…and that was that. How many people could do that and keep their damn job?! He essentially IS Penn State.

What does Joe do? He goes and talks to the Athletic Director…and then goes back to work. You’ve just been told that someone was raping a kid in your shower room, and that’s the extent of what you do? Really? And what happened after that?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Well…okay, that isn’t entirely true. CNN is now reporting that Jerry Sandusky was advised that he should stop showering with kids. I find myself hoping that whoever decided that advice was a good enough response ate a shotgun blast. Oh, and after meeting with the graduate student, the AD and the Director of Finance decide to take away Sandusky’s shower keys. So that’ll take care of that, right? Oh, and that grad assistant? That would be Mike McQueary! He’s the Penn State Receivers coach! How nice for him.  Joe briefly talked about him a day or two ago.

"He’s a good kid and a tough kid. He did what he was supposed to do, and all of this has been very hard on him. Everything from this and about this (case) has been difficult for him, but he’s a strong person and will be OK."

Oh, is the poor lamb struggling? Good. I hope it haunts that little son of a bitch for the rest of his life. It is beyond my understanding how a human being can witness that and basically do jack shit. Not only do jack shit, but take on a coaching career where he would have contact with a person who he witnessed sodomizing a ten year old. Witness that person WITH OTHER KIDS. And continue to do nothing. I don’t even know what to say at this point, because I simply cannot compute that.

Then again, he fits right in because the entire University did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And this was no one time thing. Campus police actually listened on to a conversation the worried mother of one kid had with Sandusky where he admitted to repeatedly showering with children. They go to the DA, and he does…nothing. A Janitor sees Sandusky performing oral sex on an 11 year old. He, deja vu, just tells his supervisor. A few conversations get passed along the chain of indifference, resulting in nothing. The sheer level of disgust I have for these wastes of skin is indescribable. I often talk about really wanting people to, say, die screaming in a fire. This is the rare time that I am in no way joking.

Anyway, Joe announced he would retire after this season. THANKFULLY, the trustees decided that no, he’s gone. In fact, a clean sweep of everyone involved in the sickening cover up of all of this is being booted out the door, and it is my hope that many are charged with something that would result in prison time. Hey, rape apparently isn’t a big deal, so what’s there to fear, right? Oh, and did Joe have anything to say?

"I grieve for the children and their families, and I pray for their comfort and relief," Paterno said. "With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more."

Fuck you, you sanctimonious windbag. The only thing your withered ass wishes is that this had been kept under wraps until you’d died, thus protecting your fucking legacy. And a man who wields the kind of power on that campus that you’ve had for decades probably knew a fuck of a lot more about the other allegations as well. You’ve been protecting a child molester for who knows how many years. You are human shit.

Oh, but as we speak, thousands of Penn state students are PROTESTING THE FIRING. Alumni are filling the Internets with their screeds about how ‘Poor JoePa shouldn’t have been screwed over like this’.

I cannot even manage to wrap my head around being such an insane fanboy that you’re willing to just forget all about a COVER UP OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE because their precious football team’s season is ruined. Their pigskin deity’s reputation might be sullied! Christ, the support protest has become a riot now. What kind of a mental midget smashes up their campus in rage because their molester protecting head coach got fired for the cover up? Fuck, round these idiots up and expel them…pretty safe to say moronic fucktards like these people aren’t ever going to be doing much educationally, anyway. Oh, and the target of their rage? the media. Damn those bastards for DARING the bring this to light…

It is times like this when whatever scrap of faith I have left in humanity just curls up in a corner to fucking die.