A Metaphor to Illustrate How “I’m Socially Liberal But Fiscally Conservative" Is a Fucked Up Way to Be

I don’t have any kids as far as I know. But if I did, I’m confident that I would have instilled in them an ethical framework that says one should never stick the head of a fellow human into a toilet and give them a swirly, no matter how deserving that person may seem. However, I’d be very tempted to tell them it’s all right to make an exception for anyone who says, “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative.”

Please allow me to put forth a taxi cab as a metaphor to illustrate how fucked up that “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative” attitude is. Suppose I want to go somewhere in a cab. The socially liberal region of these people’s brains would wholeheartedly agree that I should have as much right to do that as my neighbors who are verts (which is what I call people who walk because it’s short for vertical). They would firmly subscribe to the premise that no cab driver should deny me service just because I use a wheelchair. That would be discrimination, which is abhorrent in all its forms!

But obviously, even if a cabbie opened the passenger door and welcomed me in with a red carpet, it wouldn’t be any good because in order to get around, I need a vehicle that’s wheelchair accessible. So if there aren’t any cabs like those on the street, I ain’t going nowhere! But those cost a lot more than a regular sedan. Giving me equal opportunity doesn’t always mean treating me like I’m a vert because I’m not a vert. Sometimes you have to do things differently and that often costs money.

So the fiscally conservative region of their brain would balk. Equality is all well and good, as long as it doesn’t cost them anything. And I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that how it works with these people is that whenever the fiscally conservative region of their brain conflicts with the socially liberal region, the fiscally conservative region always wins out. When someone says, “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative,” it’s like they’re giving you a warning.

After churning all this about, their conflicted brains would probably declare that as long as I’m given the same opportunity to ride the same cabs the vets ride, I’m being treated as equally as I can reasonably expect to be treated. So what if I still ain’t going nowhere.

I suppose giving a swirly to everyone who says, “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative” would be considered assault. But it can also be considered self-defense. Because imagine how much carnage can occur if that attitude catches on too much. We can’t just stand idly by and let that happen. Somebody has to do something! Maybe giving those people swirlies will somehow knock some sense into them. One can only hope.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Rosie

Some turtles live 100 years or more. There was a giant Galapagos land tortoise that lived to be 175. What the hell is that all about?

Hey, I’ve got nothing turtles. I’ve never been emotionally attached to one but they seem pretty cool to me. I like how they are mostly defensive creatures. If they see danger coming they duck inside their shells and stay there until the coast is clear. That’s probably one of the reasons why they live so long. They don’t go around looking for trouble.

In no way do I begrudge any turtles their longevity. More power to them. But why not dogs, too? How come dogs only get to live about 15 years or so? That’s so unfair it’s sadistic. Whomever made up that stupid ass rule really fucked up big time.

Imagine if dogs lived 100 years like turtles. You could be 80 years old and the puppy you got as a kid could still be by your side. How cool would that be? Imagine how much less heartache there would be in the world if we didn’t have to say goodbye to our pet dogs. Then there really would be such a thing as unconditional love. If you could have your dog around for your whole life, imagine how much more calm and mellow and at peace everybody would feel. There probably wouldn’t be any fucking wars!

So whatever divine power decided to only give dogs 15 years sure blew a golden fucking opportunity. I don’t understand what the hell he/she/it was thinking.

That’s all I have to say this week. Thanks.

Rosie had a curly mascara line around her eyes. She was the color of pancakes.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Cripples Can't Win. Or Maybe it's Just Me

Maybe it’s just me. I don’t know about other cripples. But I find it really hard to enjoy winning, which really sucks because that takes a lot of the fun out of life.

I mean, take for example Ali Stroker, that woman in a wheelchair who won a Tony award last summer for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She starred in Oklahoma. I’m sure she kicked ass and really deserved the award. I hope she enjoyed it. But if that was me, I’d have a hard time enjoying it because I’d be worried that the only reason they gave it to me was because I’m crippled. That’s what sucks. Cripples don’t win a lot of stuff in life and you know the only reason why you don’t is because you’re crippled. Nobody in a wheelchair ever won a Tony award before not because cripples aren't good enough to win Tony awards but because for a long time nobody ever cast cripples in the kind of roles that might win Tony awards. The reason that changed is because some people bitched that cripples aren’t ever cast in the kind of roles that might win Tony awards. So if I was the first cripple to win a Tony Award, I’ d be worried that the only reason they gave it to me was to shut up those people who were bitching. I bet that’s what the uncrippled performers who got beat out by Ali Stroker thought, though none of them would ever say it out loud.

I guess what I need to do to get over this stupid inadequacy complex is take up with the Paralympic cripples. If you win a Paralympics medal you can’t wonder if the only reason you won it is because you’re crippled because everybody’s crippled. But then I’d probably tell myself maybe it doesn’t really count because it’s just a cripple medal, not a real medal.

I guess what I’d need to do to get over that stupid inadequacy complex is remind myself that the only reason the regular Olympics are considered superior to the Paralympics is because most people are uncrippled and uncrippled people created the regular Olympics in their own image. It's probably true that if a cripple tried to compete in the regular Olympics they’d never win. But the same thing is true if an uncrippled athlete tried to compete in the Paralympics. Put a gold medal sprinter in a racing wheelchair and see how far they get. They’ll be left in dust. So who’s so fucking superior, huh?

But maybe it’s just me. I don’t know about other cripples.






(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Equal Time for Idiots

There’s too much bitter divisiveness in America these days. I think it’s very important for all of us to consider the perspectives of those with views different from our own, even if they’re idiots.

Thus, so as to practice what I preach, I’m beginning a new feature where I occasionally bring in a guest blogger to express opinions that are profoundly different from mine. This is my attempt to build bridges and promote healing. I call it Equal Time for Idiots.

So please give warm a Smart Ass Cripple welcome to Aaron P. Smugly, executive director of the American Libertarian Freedom Association (ALFA), our first guest idiot. Take it away Aaron.

Thank you so much, Smart Ass Cripple, for this opportunity. ALFA is an organization that promotes and defends the bedrock American values of personal freedom and responsibility. Our members don’t just believe in those values, we embody them. We begin each day with an affirmation. We look proudly in the mirror and repeat five times, “I am ALFA!”

Let us consider the hypothetical and metaphorical scenario of an individual I will refer to as Mr. X. Mr. X had the misfortune of being born with two fully-functioning heads. First of all, let me say that I know that I speak for all ALFA members when I say that my heart goes out to Mr. X and all those born with defects and deficits. Because of his defects, Mr. X will have additional challenges to overcome in life. For example, he will have to pay twice as much for necessities such as haircuts and dental floss. In order to address this misfortune, many liberals would advocate a confiscational approach i.e the creation of a new bureaucracy to levy additional taxes and redistribute wealth to the Mr. Xs of the world in the form of vouchers for free haircuts and dental floss. Those of us who cherish liberty above all must not be so intimidated by the tyranny of political correctness that we cannot affirm that whereas we sympathize with the misfortune of Mr. X, we did not inflict it upon him. Therefore, we should not be penalized for it. This is the province of charity. Americans have shown time and time again that they will volunatarily rise up to help the less fortunate if they are called upon to do so with the proper deference. I’m sure that if an upstanding foundation such as United Way was to launch a dental floss drive for Mr. X, millions of Americans would gladly purchase dental floss and donate it to the cause. If there was a 5k run to raise money for a haircut fund for Mr. X, generous Americans would turn out in droves.

Appealing to the “better angels of our nature” is the prudent course for those with defects and deficits to overcome their lot. The vast majority of the citizens of this great republic are extraordinarily kind and generous, as long as no one is forcing them to be that way.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Self-made Cripples

There just aren't enough self-made cripples around. Those are the cripples that don’t wallow in their victimhood. They take charge of their lives and they do it the American way. When life gives them lemons, they make lemonade! They don’t sit around and wait for the government to make lemonade for them and then give it to them for free!

The most shining example of a self-made cripple is Greg Abbott, the current republican governor of Texas. No state embodies the self-made, no-nonsense, rugged individualist spirit more than Texas. Abbott became crippled when he was jogging through a park on a summer day in 1984 and an oak tree fell on him. That left him paralyzed from the waist down and he’s been riding around in a wheelchair ever since.

But that didn’t stop him from becoming a millionaire! No way! And he acquired his millions the American way! He sued!

Abbott sued the homeowner of the property where the tree fell and a company that previously inspected the tree. The settlement guarantees him a six-figure annual salary for the rest of his life. He also gets an additional lump sum payment every three years. All told, the settlement can pay Abbott around $9 million tax-free, depending on how long he lives.

So whereas many other cripples expect “society” to pay for all the extra expenses that come with being crippled, Abbott does it himself, dammit!

But the funny thing is, if you want to become a self-made cripple in Texas nowadays, it won’t be nearly as easy. In 2003, the Texas state legislature capped the noneconomic damages a plaintiff can collect in medical malpractice cases at $250,000. Abbott has always said he thinks that’s a fine idea.

However, there is another litigious path to becoming a self-made cripple. You could sue someone for violating your rights. But it’s not nearly as lucrative.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Walmart on behalf of a woman in Maine who became too disabled to continue working as a sales associate . She wanted to transfer to another in-store job she could do but corporate policy prohibited it. So the woman became unemployed.

Walmart settled the lawsuit by agreeing to scrap the policy and to pay the woman $80,000. That’s all well and good, but I think it’s pretty unfair if you ask me. That’s only enough money for her to be a self-made cripple for a year or so. Then it’s back to square one for her.

How come Greg Abbott gets to be a self-made cripple for the rest of his life just because a tree fell on his head? It seems to me that working at Walmart is a much more painful thing to endure.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Cripples with no Crippled Friends

I’m always at least a little suspicious of cripples who have absolutely no crippled friends. Maybe it’s not fair, but that’s how I am.

I get suspicious in the same way I do when I see things on television where there’s a live audience, like late night comedy shows or sporting events. I never ever ever see a cripple in the audience. Even when the camera pans the cheering crowd, there’s never the slightest hint of a cripple.

I imagine daytime talk shows and game shows are pretty much the same. I don’t know. I can’t bring myself to watch them—not even for research purposes. But it’s hard for me to believe that of all the people who show up daily to be in the audiences of these shows, there is rarely if ever a cripple among them.

There has to be a conspiracy at play. It must be someone’s job to be on the lookout for any cripples that happen along and then actively turn away or otherwise dissuade them, perhaps for aesthetic reasons. But that wouldn’t work for some massive event like a football game. You can’t turn that many cripples away. You can bet there are mucho cripples in the crowd of every sporting event you see on TV. So how come you never see any featured in the hundreds of seemingly-random crowd shots on camera or the Jumbotron? The only exception I ever saw was when this guy scored a touchdown and he ran over and gave the ball to a cripple in the stands. But that doesn’t count because that player tricked the camera operator into showing a cripple.

So I’m suspicious that there's another conspiracy going on because this can’t be a coincidence. It seems like whoever is calling the camera shots has to be consciously avoiding showing anybody who’s obviously crippled. If you can’t beat ‘em, ignore ‘em.

That’s how it is with cripples who have no crippled friends. If a cripple wants to find other cripples to hang around with, it’s pretty easy to do. So I figure they must be making a conscious effort to avoid associating with other cripples, perhaps for aesthetic reasons.

And that makes me suspicious.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

The Ignored Man

I hear a lot of cripples, especially those who just became crippled, lament how when they go out in public, they often feel “invisible.”

In all my decades of crippledom, I can’t say that I’ve ever felt that way. Cripples are really the opposite of invisible. We stick out. If there are 50 people going down the street and one of them is a cripple, who’re you gonna notice?

But I know exactly what these cripples who say they feel invisible are talking about. They’re talking about those situations like when you’re out and about with a vert (which is short for vertical, which is slang for people who can walk.) And some other vert starts talking to your vert instead of addressing you, as if you’re not even there. Like maybe you’re getting ready to board a plane and the vert that’s checking people in says to your vert, “Do you have the boarding passes?”

That kind of shit happens to me all the time but when it does I don’t feel invisible because I know goddam well that I’m visible as hell. It’s not that the vert doesn’t see me. It’s that they’re trying to pretend that they don’t see me. I don’t feel like I’m invisible. I feel like I’m being ignored. I’m not the invisible man. I’m the ignored man.

It’s the same insult by a different name. And I also don’t feel insulted when people stare at me. Hell, I don’t even notice if people are staring at me or not. Maybe nobody does anymore. I don’t know. But I do notice when people are trying real hard not to stare at me. Because once again they’re trying to pretend I’m not there. They pretend like they’re looking at something really fascinating, like their phone or their feet or their fingernails.

When verts try to pretend I’m not there, I ought to run over their feet. That should get their attention.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

My Amazing Display of Courage

What makes me nuts more than just about anything else are those news stories about cripples who rise from their wheelchairs and walk across the stage to receive their diplomas or walk down the aisle to get married or that kind of stuff. It's so insulting.

There ought to be a law where any journalist who puts out a story like that has to face a firing squad. And they can’t get out of it by blaming it on the editor or producer who assigned them to do it. You can’t just throw up your hands and say, “I was only following orders” and expect immunity when you commit an atrocity. Complicity is as damaging as instigation.

The crippled protagonists of these stories are always gushingly praised for showing such great courage. But how come it never works the other way around? How come there’s never a story about a cripple who bravely rolled across the graduation stage or down the aisle in their wheelchair? Because that takes a helluva lot more courage. Everybody’s expecting this cripple to spend a zillion hours working out in the physical therapy gym just so she/he can rise up and take a few halting steps so everybody else can applaud and cry soap opera tears of joy. And that cripple has to have the balls and self-confidence to say fuck all that. I’m not ashamed to be crippled.

This summer I was invited to be the commencement speaker at the state boarding school for cripples from which I graduated in 1974, which I call the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT). I call it SHIT because the quality of the education was so dismal that I am perhaps their greatest success story. How sad is that?

At the time, I was just breaking in my new blower, which is what I call the attachment that enables me to operate my motorized wheelchair hands-free by inhaling or exhaling into a straw. I got it because it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to drive my chair with my hand, especially in cold weather and on inhospitable outdoor terrain. I thought about using my hand to drive up the microphone, since the graduation was indoors in a flat, smooth gym. But then I said to myself, “What the hell are you thinking?” This was my chance to be an antidote for that horrifying brave walking cripple cliché. So I drove up to the microphone using my blower.

I doubt that I’ll get married again but if by some strange twist I do, I’ll damn sure go down the aisle using my blower. And if I ever win the Nobel Prize or anything like that, when I come up to make my acceptance speech I’ll proudly use my blower.

Before I gave that commencement address, I should have sent out a press release about how a local cripple was going to display his amazing courage at a graduation by using his blower. But I'm sure nobody would’ve covered it.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Because I'm a Grown-ass Man

I hear a lot of cripples who live in nursing holes (not a typo) talk about how they can’t even go out of the premises without first getting permission from some dumbass doctor.

And it blows my mind to little pieces. If it was me, I know what would eventually happen. I’d just roll out of the front door one day and soon someone would track me down and say, “Hey, why are you leaving without getting a doctor’s permission?” And I'd say, “Because I’m a grown-ass man!”

But I’m not naïve enough to think that would be the end of it. Because I also hear people who live in nursing holes talk about if they break the rules they might get put on restriction, which means they’re not even allowed to leave their rooms.


And that not only blows my mind to little pieces, it dumps the pieces into a blender and purees them. So surely I would be hauled back to the nursing hole and restricted to my room as punishment. And thus I’d feel duty-bound to venture out and soon someone would say, “Hey, why aren’t you in your room?” And again I’d have to say, “Because I’m a grown-ass man! What part of grown-ass man don’t you understand?”

But I’m not naïve enough to think that would be the end of it either. They would surely haul me back into my room and barricade me in or chain me to my bed or something. And so I’d have to sue them. I’d line up some lefty lawyers to represent me and they’d prepare a diligent document citing all the various civil rights statutes the nursing hole is violating by treating me like I’m 10 fucking years old. But forget all that stuff. I would want the document to simply say they can’t treat me like I’m 10 fucking years old because I’m a grown-ass man. What more justification do I need?

It’s not that I ‘m some big badass ready to take down Goliath. It’s just that of all the things I value most, at or near the top is my status as a grown-ass man. If I had to write an essay entitled What Being a Grown-ass Man Means to Me, I’d say that first and foremost it means not needing to get some asshole’s permission to do a simple little thing.

Sometimes cripples think they’re never going to reach that point. But I earned that status a looooooong time ago, goddammit! And I can’t imagine giving it up without a helluva fight.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Those John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt Cripples

I really reacted harshly to that John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt cripple I knew way back when. But at the time I felt an urgent need to make it clear I wasn’t one of them.

I was a teenager at Jerry Lewis cripple summer camp. One of the more famous crippled campers was this guy who got up on stage every year and sang John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. That’s what made him famous. It was a big tradition. And everybody loudly and gleefully sang along. It was practically mandatory.

But I sat there silent with a pouty scowl on my face. I refused to have anything to do with this patronizing display. And I avoided coming anywhere near that John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt cripple. I didn’t want to be seen with him. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I condoned such behavior. The problem with cripple summer camp was that everybody in charge was a vert (which is short for verticals, which is slang for people who walk.) The verts that were famous at Jerry Lewis cripple summer camp were famous for being in charge. But if a cripple wanted the spotlight, we had to get up on stage and sing a sing a silly children’s song. It was a microcosm of oppressive society: the verts are always and forever in charge of a world where cripples pass the lonely day away singing children’s songs. It was infantilization, cultural castration!

It was all I could do to keep from heckling the John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt cripple off the stage. I’m surprised I didn’t demand equal time and then went on stage right after him to read enough of my dark, nihilistic, teenage poetry to smack the sugary aftertaste right out of everyone’s mouth. I wanted to lead the Jerry Lewis cripple summer camp revolution, where the cripples overthrew the verts and took charge! And if I was the head of the cripple junta calling the shots at summer camp, the first thing I’d do is outlaw any goddam utterance of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. Or, better yet, I’d make some vert sing it.

There are still many John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt cripples around today, or many variations on the theme at least. But I don’t feel threatened by them anymore. I don’t feel the need to emphatically distance myself from them or silence them. Times have changed. First of all, I’m not a teenager. I don’t have to turn my nose up at everything like a finicky cat to prove I’m cool. But mostly, things are much better for cripples than they were back then. In those days we were much more vulnerable in the wild and we couldn’t afford to show any sign of weakness.

But since then, cripples have gotten out and about a lot more. We’ve even taken charge of a few things. So a lot more people have dealt with enough cripples to know that we’re pretty much like all other humans in the sense that some of us love singing John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt and some of us don’t. We don’t have to constantly prove it.

Would I get up on stage and sing John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt today? Hell no. Would I sing along? Probably not. But I wouldn’t consider it my sworn duty as a cripple not to.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Barred from Bars

I went to a bar and had a frustrating epiphany. This bar was newly-constructed and a lengthy section of it was about half as high as the rest of it. There were removable chairs at that section instead of high stools.

In other words, that section of the bar was intentionally constructed at cripple height. I could roll right up to that section and sit at the bar. And I got real excited about it because even though I go to bars a lot, I never sit at the actual bar because they’re all about chin high for me. So I just find a table and get served there. And seeing this cripple-high section of bar made me realize how passively I’ve accepted this callous exclusion.

It also hit me how particularly heinous this bit of exclusion is. It has taken a terrible toll. There are some things I have been excluded from for which I believe I am better off, such as churches and Catholic school and military service. But just think about how many important cultural transactions and negotiations take place at bars—everything from sealing business deals to getting laid. Think about all the classic jokes and tales that are told at the bar.

But bars naturally exclude a lot of cripples. They are built at inhospitable heights because, well, that’s the height we’ve always built them at, dammit. It’s tradition! We don’t notice the dearth of cripples at bars because we don’t think of bars as places where cripples want or deserve to be. We don’t think cripples are interested in things like sealing business deals, telling and hearing classic jokes and tales and getting laid.

When I saw that cripple-friendly stretch of bar, I wondered how much of life I’ve missed out on by being excluded from bars. I felt a strong wave of grief. I thought about people who suddenly become crippled and how they mourn lost abilities. A lot are sad because they can no longer walk or stand or whatever. If that was me, I’d probably be most sad about no longer being able to sit at practically every bar.

But rather than stew in paralyzing bitterness about it all, I vowed to take action. What I really should do is get together with like-minded cripples and form an organization with bar access as the only item on our political agenda. We’d picket every bar without a cripple friendly stretch until they all capitulated.

But that takes a lot of time and energy. So what I think I’ll do instead is spend a shitload of time drinking at this bar with the cripple friendly stretch, partaking of bar culture. That’ll keep me busy for a good long time. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

To Bitch, or Not to Bitch

I want to write a cripple version of Hamlet, where Hamlet says this:

To bitch, or not to bitch, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to bitch
And by opposing end them. Or maybe not.

Because the thing is, although I bitch all the time, I never set out intending to bitch. I never say to myself, “What a gorgeous gift of a day. I think I’ll go find something to bitch about.” Lord knows if finding something to bitch about was the goal of each day, my ambition would be easily fulfilled. Every day I pass some place I can’t get into. Each day would be as challenging as playing tic-tac-toe.

So if I stopped to bitch about every little thing that deserves to be bitched about, I might not ever make it off my block. And fruitful bitching, beyond the token bitching that we all do at some point to some poor powerless boob on the front lines of customer service, requires investing a lot of time and energy. Like for instance, the last time I went to the convenient store downstairs, the aisles were so crowded with cardboard pop-up displays that I couldn’t fit through without knocking a bunch of shit over. I bitched to the clerk, who shrugged. I demanded contact info for the manager, which the clerk wrote down and handed to me. But did I ever follow up? Hell no! Who the hell’s got time?

If I bitched every single time I should, I’d be super stressed out all the time. But when I don’t bitch every single time I should, I’m still super stressed out. Because I know that if I don’t bitch, when someone in the future bitches, the person they’re bitching to may well say, “Nobody ever complained before.” And I fucking hate when that happens to me. Like for instance again, I went to this lefty political event a this bar that hosts a lot of lefty political events. I heard this venue had two whopper steps on the entrance so I called but they told me don’t worry, there’s a ramp they put down and wheelchair cripples roll right in all the time.

But when I showed up the ramp was just two planks that were way too short so it was steep as hell. How any cripple got up that ramp without popping a vicious wheelie and wiping out was a mystery to me. So I bitched. And the owner of the venue said, “We’ve been doing this for 18 years. Nobody ever complained before.”

That’s what I mean. That’s why I feel an obligation to bitch. Sooner or later, somebody’s gotta do it.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Asshole Judges

Yeah yeah I know I know. Lawyers and lawsuits are important. Cripples have gotten a lot of good things out of suing for our rights. Hell, I’ve been involved in a few of those lawsuits myself.

But the big problem with suing is a lot of judges are assholes. Yeah yeah I know I know. It’s not just judges. There are assholes in every population and every human is, by nature, as asshole to some degree. Assholishness is like racism. We have to view it as a spectrum and recognize that we are all positioned on it somewhere. Nobody can honestly say they are never in any way an asshole. Assholishness is too ingrained in our culture for any of us to be unsullied by it. The best we can do is acknowledge our assholishness, humbly recognize and learn from those times when it manifests and try to adjust our behavior.

But judges seem to me to have a higher percentage of abject assholes among them. Maybe it’s all that “your honor” shit. When everybody has to call you your honor all the time, even if you’re pretty much an asshole, it’s gotta be hard not to get full of yourself.

Or maybe it’s just that asshole judges stand out more than your average Joe Six Pack asshole because they have so much power. There’s nothing worse than a powerful asshole.

Whatever it is, the problem with lawsuits is you can do everything right and still lose. You can hire the most brilliant lawyers and employ the most brilliant strategy. But if your case ends up in the lap of an asshole judge, you’re screwed. And it can easily happen. History is full of court decisions that are so monumentally boneheaded that the only conceivable explanation is the judge was a colossal asshole.

So when it comes to my rights, I’m not ready to settle for letting some asshole determine what they are. I’ll join in a lawsuit or legal action because why not? Sometimes they actually work. But I prefer street protests because I feel much more in control of the eventual outcome. In a street protest, you call an asshole an asshole. You mock, challenge and defang false authority rather than submit to it. That’s the way to wear the bastards down. You don’t have to call some asshole your honor.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Viva Marca Bristo!

Once in a very great while, there’s a disturbance in the force that’s so significant that it compels us here at Smart Ass Cripple to take a brief break from our incessant smart assery in order to pay homage to one of the greats. It then becomes our task to attempt to convey, in our own feeble way, the magnitude of this person’s greatness.

Such is the case with Marca Bristo. First, let’s get the resume' stuff out of the way. She founded and was President and CEO of Access Living, the center for independent living (CIL) in Chicago. Marca served as the chair of the National Council on Independent Living for many years after co-founding the organization in 1982. President Clinton appointed her as chair of the National Council on Disability. She was given the Distinguished Service Award of the President of the United States in 1992. Etc.

When she died September 8, her obit appeared in publications all over the world. Statements of condolence were issued by the mayor of Chicago, the governor of Illinois, both Illinois U.S. Senators, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and whole bunch of others. Barack Obama put out a statement that said,
"Marca had a remarkable way of bringing out the best within us. For me, she was a trusted voice and a persistent, buoyant spirit."

But what does all that mean for mopes like me? Well, let’s start with Access Living. It was one the first CILs in the U.S. when it opened in a cramped storefront in 1980. It was the kind of place cripples like us hadn’t seen before. Just like the first CIL, which was founded a few years earlier in Berkeley, California, it was operated by cripples and they set the agenda. They pushed for things like accessible public transportation. Holy shit! We were used to dealing with, or should I say trying to avoid dealing with, behemoth cripple charities like the Muscular Dystrophy Association that were practically useless. There were never any cripples anywhere near in charge of these charities. They never asked you what you needed and they would never do anything to rock the boat. If they decided to give you a fucking pony, you were expected to take it and be grateful.

Soon, some of us who hung around Access Living began doing wild shit like organizing actions where we blocked streets and city buses and disrupted meetings of the Chicago Transit Authority board with bullhorns and noisemakers to demand public transit access.

The point is, all of us who did this stuff found each other at Access Living. We realized we shared many of the same frustrations and a desire to do something about it. When cripples acted uppity like this, especially in the 1980s, it often put Access Living in a tenuous position. It sometimes pissed off elected officials and funders who could make life hard for Access Living if they wanted to. I’m sure Marca was tempted to forsake us, but she never did. She never joined in our street actions as far as I remember, but she always let us use Access Living’s office to gather and plot. We used the phones and copy machines to communicate. Access Living staff often joined in our actions. And in later years, some of us got jobs at Access Living and we were actually paid to organize! Holy shit again!

I can’t say I knew Marca well personally. We only hung out socially maybe four or five times, though I always thoroughly enjoyed it when we did. Our relationship was mostly business, but the nature of the business made it an intimate relationship to me. I guess you could say we were teammates. We spent nearly 40 years on the same team that started off as laughable underdogs but slugged it out with the big boys and won enough to be taken seriously. When you lose a teammate like that, it really hurts.

But the team plays on, largely because Marca introduced so many incredible people to this incredible team and signed them up to be a part of it. She was wise and humble enough to not make it all about her so the team could take on the complex and vibrant personality of the thousands of people that propel it. Because of that, the team can somehow survive her loss and be stronger than ever. That’s exactly what she wanted.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

I'm a 99 Percenter!

They took my vital signs. They put that clip on my finger to measure the level of oxygen saturation in my blood. It came up 99 percent

I had no doubt that that would be the outcome, but for some weird reason I felt a strong sense of vindication. I felt arrogant and defiant. I felt like going outside and shouting out, to no one in particular, “I got 99 percent oxygen saturation so fuck you!”

It was sort of like I felt after I aced my latest colonoscopy. The doctor said I wouldn’t need another one for five years. And I said to myself, “There you go all y’all mofos! Look at me! I’m cleeeeeeeeeeeean as can be!” But that buzz didn’t last too long because then I said to myself, “Now you only have to worry about the other nine million types of cancer you could have.” I swear to God, sometimes I’m such a fucking party poop.

But my oxygen high lasted all day. The first thing I wanted to do was call all the doctors who said I’d be lucky to make it to age 30 and leave a message saying, “Guess what? I’m 63 years old and my oxygen saturation level is 99 percent! So suck it!” But, sadly, I couldn’t call any of those doctors because they’re all dead.

Later on I watched a baseball game and I said to myself, “You players think you’re so goddam superior to me because I’m crippled. I know how you guys are! You visit cripples at the local children’s hospital with camera crews following you. You give the cripples autographed balls and pat them on the head and when the cripples are out of earshot, you say stuff to the camera crews like, 'Geez, when I see what these kids are going through, I feel so lucky.’ Well let me ask you this, superstars. What might your oxygen saturation level happen to be? What’s that I hear you say? Somewhere around 99 percent? Hah! Who’s so superior now, bitcheeeeeeeees!”

I never found watching a baseball game to be more satisfying.

I ought to have my oxygen saturation level tested every day.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Madame Curie's Dirty Little Secret

Every veteran wheelchair cripple has been forced at some point to play a game I call, “Where’s the phantom person with the key?” You’re rolling along just minding your own business and you are confronted by steps. Ah but never fear. There’s one of those wheelchair lifts to take you up or down to the next level.

Now all you have to do is find the person who has the key to operate the damn thing. And that person is never anywhere to be found. They’re always on lunch break or in the bathroom or taking a six-month world cruise or whatever. And they always took the key with them.

A few years back one of my friends who’s a veteran wheelchair cripple moved into a building with one of those lifts on the entrance. So building management gave her a copy of the key. One day her husband was talking to a guy doing maintenance on the lift and the maintenance guy let him in on a dirty little secret. Before I reveal it I will give my friend a Smart Ass Cripple alias because I fear that now that she is blowing the whistle there could be a price on her head. So I’ll call her Madame Curie.

Anyway, the dirty little secret the maintenance guy revealed to Madame Curie's husband is that the lift key is universal. One size fits all!

Since then Madame Curie has used her key to operate several lifts she’s encountered while out and about and it’s worked every time! She’s no longer at the mercy of the phantom person with the key!

Not only that but Madame Curie is going around liberating other cripples by making copies of her key and giving them away to those who might need them. And every grateful recipient who’s reported back to her so far has said the key has worked every time.

I told another friend about Madame Curie’s magic keys. This guy used to work on road construction crews and he said he found out the same secret about Caterpillar construction vehicles. The same ignition key works on every one.

Oh shit! I’ve probably said way too much! If you don’t hear from me you’ll know what happened. I’ve gone into witness protection.

Cool Stuff I Got Because I Bitched, Volume II

Cripples have plenty to bitch about. Sometimes it’s so overwhelming. It makes you feel like going home and hiding under the bed to avoid the bombardment. You’re tired of bitching. You feel all bitched out.

That’s why every now and then I pause and take stock of all the cool stuff I got because I took the time to bitch. It reminds me that it pays to bitch.

Here’s some cool stuff I got because I bitched:

A free feast at Sears Tower with a panoramic view of Chicago. Back in the 1980s, not a single public transit bus was wheelchair accessible. So a bunch of us cripples got together and bitched about it in an adult, civilized way. We sued the Chicago Transit Authority. Well for a couple years the CTA board of directors fought back hard, just to be pricks. They couldn’t help it. It was their instinct. Whenever CTA board members felt threatened, the acted like pricks. But after we won some court victories, even they were smart enough to realize that the tried-and-true prick strategy wasn’t working. So they did a complete 180 and invited us to a settlement conference. It was held in the conference room of some big shot law firm way up in Sears Tower. It had a panoramic view of the city and there was a ton of food all laid out fancy on a buffet with a white tablecloth. I remember whole salmon on silver platters, mounds of fresh fruit. As I ate like a pig for free, I said to myself, “Aren’t you glad you bitched?" And now all the buses are accessible.

Free tickets to four Bulls games. Also back in the 1980s, the Bulls played in the Chicago Stadium, which was built in the 1920s. So there wasn’t a single damn wheelchair seat in the whole place. So if a cripple showed up they’d sit us on what was the ice for hockey games. It was almost like having a courtside seat. So I‘d do what a lot of cripples did and purchase the cheapest ticket for Row Z of the upper balcony. And since the ushers couldn’t get me up there they’d just shrug and sit me on the ice and I’d get a courtside seat at a nose bleed price. Well one time an usher told me if I tried to pull that stunt again he’d make me buy a courtside ticket. So I filed a complaint. By the time that all played out a new stadium was built with lots of wheelchair seating. So part of my settlement was tickets to four games.

A $100 discount on a United Airlines flight ticket. When I fly and the plane lands, first every other passenger gets off. Then I wait for the baggage people to bring up my wheelchair so I can get off. Well one time it took about an hour for my chair to arrive. I was so hoppin’ made that by the time I got into the terminal I was spitting sparks. I said I wanted to see a supervisor and when she arrived she immediately offered me a discount coupon for $100 off my next flight. So I took it. Maybe I could’ve held out for more. I don’t know. But I figured I‘d save up some bitching energy for the next time.

And so the moral of the story is, keep bitching, my friends.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

I'm Not Amused

When you’re as crippled as I am, who needs amusement parks? Life is just one big rollercoaster ride. And I don’t mean just emotionally so.

I hate amusement parks because the big features are the rollercoasters and I don’t find them at all amusing. My balance is so fucked up. The wind can knock me over. So putting me on a rollercoaster is like putting Raggedy Andy on a coked-up rodeo bull. I'm bound to end up with whiplash and brain injuries. Maybe that’s some people’s measure of whether or not they had a good time, but not mine.

And for me, going to the damn drug store can be like a rollercoaster ride. There I am maneuvering my wheelchair down a sidewalk and all of a sudden a big drop off threatens to pitch my torso forward. Or a sudden slant lurches me sideways. Or a big chunk of the pavement is all chopped up so driving over it is bumpy as hell and I’m hanging on tight, trying not to be pitched or lurched. Or if I really want to go for a kamikaze thrill ride guaranteed to upset my delicate equilibrium, all I have to do is drive over gravel or some evil shit like that.

It's me versus gravity. There’s nothing amusing about it.

I’m challenged by pretty much any surface that’s less smooth and even than a basketball court. And at least when I ‘m out and about in my chair I’m the guy operating the rollercoaster. So when I hit the rough patches I can slow way down to minimize the impact. That’s quite unlike those sadistic mofos who control amusement park rollercoasters. They go full throttle down the steepest inclines and barrel around the sharpest turns.

So when I’m aiming to have a good time, I want to get far away from all of that rollercoaster shit. I don’t know, maybe I’d go to an amusement park that wasn’t quite so amusing and didn’t have any rollercoasters. Is there such a thing? I guess it would be called a bemusement park.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

Cripples as Billboards

Here’s a new thing that gets me all riled up! I’m seeing more and more people working as sign holders. They stand on the sidewalk brandishing a brightly-colored sign that says something like Going Out of Business Sale and there’s an arrow on the sign pointing in the direction of the sale.

Apparently some new market research must show that a human holding up a sign draws more attention to that sign than simply erecting it. This seems like a good way to put a lot of cripples to work. Hell, I could do that job easy. Just attach a sign to my chair and I can sit there for hours doing nothing. I’m good at that. And I’ve got a lot of experience carrying protest signs. I'm sure there are tons of cripples with the same unique qualifications

And I guarantee you more people will look at us than they’ll look at some everyday mope carrying the same sign. But that may the reason why I‘ve never been seen a crippled sign holder, even though it’s the cripple dream job. I bet that same market research says that the perfect sign holder looks nondescript, so as not to draw focus away from the sign. A lot of passersby will take note if I’m carrying a sign, but are they staring at me or the sign? What will be their takeaway?

I bet the people who hire sign holders are purposely freezing out cripples for that reason. They’re afraid we’re going to upstage their signs. That sucks. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission really ought to look into it.

It riles me up to the point of wanting to start my own business, just to show all those fuckers that they can’t treat cripples like that! I feel like writing on the back of my wheelchair Place Your Ad Here. I’ll be glad to roll around displaying a Budweiser logo, for the right price.

I bet soon I’d have a whole fleet of cripples renting out advertising space on their wheelchairs. Why not? We’ll be like cabs with signs on their roofs. Or how about what they do with city buses sometimes? The wrap a skin around the whole damn bus and turn it into a rolling billboard for the Lion King.

I can do that too! I’ll happily let my chair be wrapped in a skin and become a rolling Lion King billboard. I’d love to get in on some of that Disney cash! I can even do better than the city buses. I can wear a lion suit, thus making myself a three-dimensional billboard.

I’m not too proud! I’ll do anything, for the right price.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)









ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!

Mommy, What Brought on the Nuclear Apocalypse?

I betcha Trump’s absolute fave day of the whole year is March 21. That’s gotta be the day when he loves being president most of all! That’s the one day of the year when he gets to act like he gives a crap about someone other than himself and nobody gives him any shit about it.

March 21 is Word Down Syndrome Day. This year he invited some adults with Down syndrome to visit the White House. And of course there was a photo op. That’s the whole point of inviting them.

On that day Trump tweeted, “Today we celebrate the lives and achievements of Americans with Down Syndrome. I will always stand with these wonderful families, and together we will always stand for LIFE!”

I betcha Trump thinks the most wonderful thing about Down Syndrome people is if he invites them to the White House, they’re not going to boycott his sorry ass. They’re not like those uppity black athletes or those snooty girl soccer players who won’t come if he invites them because they think he’s a jackass.

But I'm sure Trump’s convinced he can trust the Down syndrome people not to pull a stunt like that. He probably doesn’t even screen them before letting them into the White House. “Down syndrome people? Bring ‘em all on! These people are loyal.” And there’s nothing Trump loves more than loyalty. “Down syndrome people don’t worry their little heads about things like political issues.”

I betcha Down syndrome people are his favorite cripples because he thinks they’re warm and cuddly and they don’t talk back, just like a stuffed animal. That’s how all cripples used to be back in the good old days.

But there are plenty of Down syndrome people who would gladly blow Trump off. So I hope he makes a mistake someday and invites some of them to the White House. A bunch of Down syndrome people hold a press conference and say, “We don’t want anything to do with that jackass!”

Wouldn’t that be great? Imagine Trump’s twitter tantrum: “Don’t listen to the Down Syndrome BOOBS! Fake cripples! They should all go back to Mongolia!”

That would rock the shit out of Trump’s world. But as much as I delight in the thought of that happening, part of me hopes it never does. Because if Trump is betrayed by the Down syndrome people, he wouldn’t trust anybody anymore. The only way for him to regain a glimmer of his shattered self-esteem would be to start a nuclear war.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!

My Brother in Bathroom Exclusion

I was heading down a secluded ramp on a public thoroughfare when I encountered a great big pile of shit in the middle of the ramp. It was a very enlightening experience.

Because I couldn’t go any further without rolling through shit and the ramp was too narrow for me to turn around so I had to drive backwards up the incline I just descended. Of course I was pissed. But at first I was pissed at whoever was responsible for taking that shit. And there was no doubt that it was the work of species homo sapiens sapiens because not only were the turds human-size but the pile rested atop several neatly arranged sheets of newspaper. This was proof of premeditation. I wanted to call the cops and demand that a turd be sent to forensics so the DNA data base could be used to identify and apprehend the perpetrator and bring them to justice!

But after having some time to reflect, I realized my pissed offedness was grossly misplaced. The person who took this dump was probably some poor sap who had nowhere else to take a dump. They were probably shooed from all the nearby restaurants and everywhere else because they weren’t a “paying customer” or that kind of thing. They were probably turned away from place to place, like the Virgin Mary. They were probably told, “You can’t take a shit here until you get off drugs and get a job first!”

I should know all about that kind of stuff because I’ve peed in many an alley myself. Lots of times my wheelchair won’t fit in bathrooms and I can only hold it for long. So I look for a dark corner the nearest alley.

So here I was blaming my brother in bathroom exclusion instead of blaming the system. I lost sight of one of the most fundamental things all humans share in common: When ya gotta go ya gotta go.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!

My Wasted Reign as a Poster Child

Believe it or not, I was a poster child for the Muscular Dystrophy Association about 55 years ago. I have to say that I regret the way I behaved during my reign.

I really wish I would have cashed in on the opportunity a lot more than I did. But I was just a dumb kid. I had no idea how occupying that role gave me such a uniquely powerful political pulpit.

I mean, let’s say, just for example, that the drinking water in your neighborhood is poison. Let’s says it’s full of lead. And let’s say you organize a campaign to shut down that lead processing plant that’s wantonly dumping its toxic waste into the river. Don’t even bother to talk about the adults that are being poisoned, not even if you have a thousand of them. Nobody will give a shit, especially if they’re not white. Right out of the gate you need to trot out the poisoned kids. This will pretty much completely disarm the evil lead processing tycoons and their hired defense goons from the public relations firm.

Kids wield the potent political weapon of shaming. You can fuck over adults but it’s much harder to fuck over kids in the same way. When demands are issued on behalf of kids, they’re hard to ignore. So whatever it is you’re trying to do, say you’re doing it for the kids.

But when I was a poster kid I issued no demands. And there sure as hell was plenty to complain about. There were no ramps on curbs back then. Suppose my mother and I had gone to a busy downtown intersection, called a press conference, pulled out a sledgehammer and smashed the curbs to bits to dramatize our demand. What kind of headlines would that have made? And the movement that brought about all the ramped curbs we see today might’ve started a lot sooner.

Of course if my mom and I had pulled a stunt like that, the Muscular Dystrophy Association would’ve shit a brick. They probably would’ve had to do something to discredit us so they could cut us loose, like plant a bag of heroin in my mom’s purse and rat us out to cops.

But I probably never said a word as a poster kid, except to ask everybody to please give money to a stupid charity that would never have the balls to do anything about anything like ramped curbs. And for that I am very sorry.

But there will be no do-overs. I’ll never be an adorable six-year-old again so I’ll never have that inherent political power again. But the good news is, sometimes old people find themselves with the same awesome power to shame those that fuck them over. And that’s something I become more and more of each day— an old person.

So I need to put together or join a group of ornery old farts and target some deserving politicians for us to shame. That’s how I’ll find redemption.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!

I Will Not Bankrupt the State. I Will Not Bankrupt the State. I Will Not Bankrupt the State.

There’s no such thing as a free ride anymore, goddammit! Not even for cripples! A lot of states are cracking down. They’re getting permission from the federal government to make people who want to receive Medicaid do something to earn it, like get a job.

And even cripples aren’t exempt. That’s why I’ve had to start doing community service in order to remain eligible for Medicaid. Once a week, a Medi-car is dispatched and I’m taken to a secret location where there’s plain white room with a blackboard on one wall and a one-way mirror on the opposite wall. The reason I say it’s a secret location is because as soon as I ‘m loaded into the Medi-car I’m blindfolded so I’ll have no idea where we’re going.

My act of community service is to write on the blackboard a thousand times I Will Not Bankrupt the State. The problem is, I can’t move my arms around enough to do that. But that won’t get me off the hook either. The state makes a reasonable accommodation to empower me to perform my job duties. They send in a guy receiving Medicaid who has Down syndrome to be my “scribe.” He mans the chalk and I dictate. That’s his community service. I say, “I will Not Bankrupt the State” and he writes it on the board. And we repeat the process 999 more times.

Outside of the room, I imagine tour groups are passing by regularly and watching through the one-way mirror as my dutiful scribe and I work fluidly together to complete our task. Our chemistry is inspiring. The tour guide explains that even though we are crippled, we are at least showing contrition for the damage our incessant Medicaid dependency is doing to the fabric of the nation. The tour guide also explains how this demonstrates that my partner and I are willing to engage in humiliating activities in exchange for sustenance, just like poor people who aren’t crippled have always been required to do. Thus, we too are now paying our proper debt to society.

Those taking the tour are reassured that their Medicaid tax dollars are being efficiently spent serving only the truly deserving. They also see how much progress our culture has made when it comes to treating crippled people the same way we treat people who aren’t crippled. This makes the tourists feel good about themselves and bullish about the state of the union.

And I have performed a community service.




(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!

The Man from the Department of Sterilization

The phone rang. It was my doorman calling. “Hello Mr. Mike.” My doorman calls me Mr. Mike. “The Man from the Department of Sterilization is here to see you.”

Department of Sterilization? My doorman man is from Turkey. I figured he misunderstood. Perhaps it was the exterminator or somebody like that. So I said send him up.

A knock on my door. I opened it. A man wearing a trench coat entered. “Hello,” he said. He politely tipped his Irish gentleman’s tweed hat. “I’m from the Department of Sterilization and I’m here to sterilize you.”

“Whaaaaaaat?” I said. “I didn’t consent to being sterilized!”

“Au contraire,” he said. “Didn’t you read the terms and conditions of your internet service provider? In paragraph 637, it says that in exchange for using the internet, you consent to being sterilized.” He showed me page 637 on the screen of his cell phone.

“Are you a social worker?” said I.

“How did you guess?” said he.

“Well I withdraw my consent!” I said. “You can’t force me to be sterilized! I would never cooperate with such a blatant violation of my rights and intrusion upon my privacy!”

“That’s quite true,” said the Man from the Department of Sterilization. “You most definitely do have a choice in the matter. No one is going to coerce you. But if you refuse to be sterilized, I’ll have to permanently suspend your internet privileges.”

“I don’t care,” I said “I would never cooperate with such a blatant violation of my rights and intrusion upon--- Wait. What? Did you say no more internet?

“That’s what I said.”

I must admit that when he put it that way, I began to have a change of heart.

Sensing my lingering reluctance, the Man from the Department of Sterilization said. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re recalling that inhumane chapter in American history when the government tried to sterilize people with special needs. Let me assure you that we learned a lot from that failed experiment. This time we’re going to get it right. This time we’re doing it humanely. The sterilization procedure is quick and painless and completely non-invasive. All you have to do is drink this.”

He reached under his trench coat and pulled out a tumbler full of a bubbling, steaming concoction. It looked like mixture of lava and snot. “Don’t worry ,” he said. “It tastes like lemon drops.”

So before I could give myself a chance to reconsider, I gulped down the potion.

The Man from the Department of Sterilization was pleased. “There now, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Well I must bid you adieu.” He tipped his hat again. As he exited he said, “Enjoy the internet.”

Sometimes I have to reassure myself that I made the right choice. I mean, when I think about it rationally, I realize that I really wasn’t planning on having kids anyway so it’s not much of a loss compared to losing the internet.

And the Man from the Department of Sterilization was right. It did taste like lemon drops.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!


>

Proud Digit Donor

I think I’m about ready to sign up to be a body part donor. I’m still using my vital organs so I don’t want to part ways with them. But I might be willing to jettison a limb or two.

Take my feet. Go ahead. I really don’t use them so maybe someone else can. To be honest, I feel kind of guilty having feet. They’re such an extravagance for me. And I’m probably better off without them. All they are to me is another part of the body where sinister infections can harbor. So why not be proactive and stop that from happening in the first place? It'll be one less thing to stay up all night worrying about. And my heart would probably appreciate not having to work so hard to pump blood to my distant and useless feet, freeloaders that they are.

And my feet get so damn cold too. I should just chuck them. The thing that really sucks about being an organ or tissue donor is that you don’t get to enjoy your generosity. Somebody gets a new lease on life because of you, which is cool and all, but you’re dead so you don’t see it. And that’s half the fun. But I can watch somebody run and jump and dance a jig on the new foot they received from me. I’ll experience the joy of giving in real time! It’s like going to your own funeral and hearing all the nice things people say about you.

But I admit that in spite of all this, I’m still reluctant to sign on the donor dotted line. Because I fear when the time comes to actually pay up, I’ll get cold feet, so to speak. I like to think that I ‘m above cosmetic vanity. But I know I ‘m probably not. I’ll fear that if I ‘m missing a foot, people will look at me funny. Let me rephrase that. I’ll fear that if I’m missing a foot, people will look at me funnier.

So maybe I can start small. I could be toe donor. I definitely don’t need them and I don’t think there would be much separation anxiety. I have no particular emotional attachment to my toes. I’m even willing to give up both my big toes to someone in need. Where do I sign? I'll do it right now!

I’ll feel good about myself. I’ll wear a t-shirt that says Proud Digit Donor.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!

Amazing Crippled Actors on the Stage and Screen

A lot of people think it’s a great big deal when an actor who isn’t crippled plays the role of a crippled character. It’s considered to be the ultimate in acting and it usually wins an Oscar.

But that’s nothing! What about crippled actors who play the roles of characters who aren’t crippled? Now that’s some amazing acting!

But these actors get no attention. For example, there’s British actor Andrew Bollox, who is currently staring to rave reviews on stage in London as Hamlet. Bollox has cerebral palsy so he’s all spastic and he rides around in a motorized wheelchair. He even talks using one of those Stephen Hawking talking boxes. But when he plays Hamlet he leaves his wheelchair backstage and walks around on stage and says, “To be or not to be” as plain as day. He doesn't even drool. And wow, you should see him sword fight!

How does he do it? It’s simple. He’s acting! It’s just like when an actor puts on a foreign accent. Bollox spent many hours studying how people who walk and talk walk and talk. With the help of top-notch dialect and gait coaches, he soon got it down. Using his amazing powers of concentration, when Bollox embodies the character of Hamlet, he rises from his chair and speaks eloquently. It’s as if he’s in a hypnotic trance.

Also be sure to see to see the soon-to-be-released biopic about the superstar Brazilian soccer player Pele. It’s called Kicking Up a Storm and starring in this movie in the role of Pele is Brazilian actor Paulo Besteiro. It’s truly astonishing acting when you consider that Besteiro was born with no legs. But in this movie he plays soccer with reckless abandon. No, that’s not a stunt double. It’s all done through the miracle of special effects. I call it the reverse Forrest Gump effect. In the movie Forrest Gump, Gary Sinese plays the part of Lieutenant Dan, who loses his legs in war. But Sinese has both of his legs so in order for him to authentically portray Lieutenant Dan, his legs were lopped off virtually using special effects. Well in Kicking Up a Storm, special effects are used to give Besteiro legs! It’s an Oscar-worthy performance indeed!

So screw you, Meryl Streep! Compared to these guys, you’re crap!


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!

Autism Detox

Apparently autism is a toxin. Who knew?

And all people with autism have to do to get rid of their autism, some people firmly believe, is get rid of their toxins. Then they won’t be toxic anymore.

Amazon removed from its virtual shelves more than a dozen books promoting chlorine dioxide as a miracle treatment for autism. The stuff is also marketed as MMS, which stands for Miracle Medical Solutions. But it’s basically just bleach. This whole idea about bleach curing autism was thought up by some goofball Scientologist. (I know goofball Scientologist is redundant.) Are you surprised to hear that?

But people are still falling for it even though the Food and Drug administration put out a warning five years ago that this stuff is a crock. The same FDA warning also included other bizarre snake oils some people were pushing as a cure for autism, such as raw camel’s milk. Where the hell did that one come from? Who analyzed the chemical elements of raw camel’s milk and decided they’d be good for snapping people out of their autism? Did they then pour raw camel’s milk on some pour autistic kid’s Cocoa Puffs? Must’ve been some goofball Scientologist.

And some people must’ve also been shoving kids with autism into hyperbaric oxygen tanks in an attempt to detoxify and purify them because the FDA felt compelled to warn that that doesn’t work either. That should be as unnecessary as putting a label on a deep fryer warning people not to submerge their head in the hot oil. You’d think it would go without saying

The FDA also warned that, despite what some people say, there are no miracle suppositories that cure autism. Oh a clay baths also don’t work. Clay baths are products that, when added to bath water, supposedly draw out toxins and pollutants that make people autistic. It’s easy to see that’s a fraud because if it really did work that way, what would we do with the tainted water? I mean, it would be full or autism germs, right? That sounds like the kind of toxic material that needs to be hermetically sealed in a haz-mat container and hauled away to a distant waste dump. But I bet those that tried clay baths didn’t do that. I bet they just casually opened the drain and let the bath water swirl down. And all their toxins would have contaminated the public water supplies. And we’d all have caught autism by now!


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!

Selective Deafness

One fine summer afternoon, I visited a botanical garden. Within in it was a rose garden with a tranquil pond in the center. It looked like the perfect place for meditation. And in fact, there was a guy sitting by the pond upright and motionless with his eyes closed and a blissful grin. But at the same time there were what looked like field trips of middle schoolers bustling through and you know how noisy they can be. But the meditating guy was completely unfazed. Somehow he tuned it all out. I said to myself, “Damn, that the guy’s good.” And then I said to myself, “Or maybe he’s deaf.” Wow! I guess sometimes deafness comes in handy.

There are a lot of times when I wish I was deaf. Sometimes I travel with the hell-raising cripples of ADAPT. We come from around the country and gather in some city, usually D.C., and we protest hard. In order to save money, we stuff four people into a hotel room. So it’s inevitable that sooner or later, you’ll end up sharing a hotel room with somebody who snores like an asthmatic grizzly bear. And I would give anything to be deaf then.

And because I live in the middle of a big city, often there have been guys working with jackhammers outside of my window. I think that’s when I wish I was deaf most of all. I don’t know why guys who own construction companies don’t make a big push to recruit deaf people to do the jackhammer jobs. It seems like it would make good business sense. They’d probably save a lot of money on earplugs.

I’m not saying I want to be deaf all the time. Only when it works to my advantage. Selective deafness. I wish I had the magical power to do something like blink three times and turn off my hearing when something cacophonous is going on and then blink three more times and turn my hearing back on when the coast is clear. I imagine some people feel the same about me when it comes to parking. They want to be crippled long enough to snag that sweet parking space right outside the front door. And as soon as they leave, they don’t want to be crippled anymore.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!

Playing God

Sometimes you see these leg amputees who run marathons and 50-yard dashes. And the prosthetic legs they run on don’t look anything like human legs. They look like they were put together with an erector set. (Does anyone remember what those are?)

This is a good thing. It used to be that people who made false legs seemed to go way out of their way to make them look like real human legs. They were trying to play God. But they weren’t very good at it. There was a kid with two false legs who attended the segregated elementary school for cripples that I attended. His legs sort of looked like real human legs in the sense that they were shaped like human legs, basically, and there were joints at the ankle and knee. They were pretty much the same skin tone as his real skin, though I think he just got lucky there. I bet in those days false legs came in two standard-issue skin tones — one Caucasian and one African. (I guess Asian amputee kids were just screwed.) This kid’s skin tone happened to be pretty damn close to standard-issue African.

But still, there was no chance of any sober person seeing that kid's prosthetics lying on the floor and saying, “Oh my God, look at those severed human legs!” There was only so much that could be done to make fake legs look real. I suppose technology is better today, but fake legs still aren’t fooling anybody. It’s like a comb-over.

And I’m glad to see that makers of fake limbs stopped trying to play God, or at least it some cases. It’s good that being aesthetically pleasing isn’t always their top design priority. It really gets in the way. The purpose of getting a fake leg isn’t to try to convince everybody that you still have two actual flesh and bone legs. If I had a leg cut off, I wouldn’t bother to get a fake one because that would be stupid. I don’t even use the legs I have. A fake leg would be purely decoration. My current legs are purely decoration but getting rid of them is too much trouble. But anyway, the purpose of having a prosthetic leg is to get around, right? If those badass amputee runners tried to run on bulky-ass legs designed primarily to render the user more cosmetically assimilated, they would never win a race even if all the other runners were in potato sacks.

So it’s good that these cripples say fuck it to doing what they do the normal way and do it the cripple way. When cripples do that things go a lot smoother.


(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!

Cripple Collateral

But you know I see these commercials for car title loans and I wonder why nobody does the same thing for wheelchairs. Car title loans are designed to soak people who are so broke that their only asset is their raggedy–ass car. Well I’ve known many cripples who are so broke that their only asset is their ragged-ass wheelchair. The same goes for prosthetic limbs, commodes, ventilators and all the other pricey shit cripples need. Our equipment is often our only remotely valuable possession because someone else paid for it, like the government or an insurance company or some smarmy charity.

But those things are some mighty valuable collateral. Anybody who doesn’t realize that hasn’t hung around with cripples very much. If their wheelchair is on the line, a cripple will do whatever it takes to pay back the loan plus the 50,000 percent interest. They’ll rob a bank if they have to. There’s no sadder sight than a cripple in the throes of wheelchair separation anxiety. I know how it is. It hits me hard whenever I fly and they take my wheelchair away and throw it in the cargo hole of the plane. Boarding and deboarding passersby probably think I’m a junkie going through withdrawal. I’m fretting and sweating hard until that glorious moment when I arrive at my destination and I’m safely reunited with my chair.

For many cripples, putting up their wheelchair as collateral will only buy them a few months before it’s time to pay up the loan and they have to cough up the chair. But the loan sharks won’t have any trouble unloading the chairs they seize. There are plenty of cripples out there who’d be more than happy to purchase a discount “pre-owned” wheelchair under the table. The sharks could also chop up the wheelchairs and sell the parts to desperate cripples with broken chairs.

That’s why I ‘m also surprised that I never see wheelchairs or prosthetics or stuff like that in the windows of pawn shops. I bet there are lots of people every day who would see that and say to themselves, “Hmm, I wonder how much they want for that?” But are there any shops where you can remove your false leg, pawn it and hop out? I doubt it.

These sharks are missing out on a big market of pre-owned pricey cripple shit.



(Smart Ass Cripple is completely reader supported. Purchasing Smart Ass Cripple books at lulu.com, subscribing on Amazon Kindle and filling the tip jar keeps us going. Please help if you can.)

ANNOUNCING: Smart Ass Cripple's Little Chartreuse Book. A new Smart Ass Cripple book hot off the presses at lulu.com. It still has that new Smart Ass Cripple book smell. Get yours today! Help keep Smart Ass Cripple going!