A Deaf Registry to Promote Harmony Among Cripples

I don’t think we should be so quick to pooh pooh this idea of registries, where certain groups of people are entered into a government data base so the rest of us can keep better track of who and where they are.

A lot of people talk about a Muslim registry. I think we should be talking about a deaf registry where all deaf people are required to sign up so we, the hearing majority, can keep better track of who and where they are. I think this could really promote harmony among different factions of cripples. Because what’s the point of these registries? The point is to make those of us who aren’t members of the group we think needs to be registered feel more secure about living among them. That way they can’t sneak up on us as easily and take us by surprise. Deaf people are like that. Any hearing person who has ever been to a party where there are a lot of deaf people knows what I mean. Deaf people are really sneaky in the sense that unlike most other cripples, they look perfectly sane and normal, unless they look insane or abnormal for some reason besides being deaf. So when deaf people are mixed in with a bunch of hearing people, I feel off-balance and awkward because I never know whom I can just step up to and talk to. And forgot about trying to figure out who’s deaf by who’s talking sign language. That guy talking sign language could be an ASL interpreter or a deaf person’s hearing brother or something. And whenever I talk to a deaf person I talk all rubber-faced, exaggerating my enunciation so as to make it easier for them to read my lips. I’m real considerate that way. But sometimes at a party full of deaf people I start talking to someone all rubber-faced and it turns out that person can hear and I feel like a real bozo. And then when I see that person over in a corner later talking in sign language with others, I’m convinced what they’re saying is, “That bozo over there was talking to me all rubber-faced.” So then I’m afraid to talk to anybody until I know for absolute sure if they’re deaf or not.

But suppose deaf people were all required to wear a government–issued identification marker of some sort, at least when they’re out mixing with hearing people. I know that would sure make me feel more secure around them and I’d be a lot more relaxed at their parties. The identification marker can be something stylish, like a nice necklace or bracelet. It doesn’t matter, just so it makes it clear to the rest of us that these people are deaf. And in the spirit of full inclusion, the deaf identification marker would have to emit a periodic sound, so as to be accessible to blind people. Because when blind people go to places where there are a lot of deaf people, I bet they’re as off-balance as me times a zillion. Because they can’t even see who’s talking sign language. So the only way for them to figure out who’s deaf is via audio cues. The audio cue can be something pleasant, like chirping birds. Actually, maybe not chirping birds, because then a blind person might be embarrassed to learn that they’ve been trying to talk to a parakeet. And that would make their insecurities about being around deaf people even worse. But if the sound is too irritating and grating, it may cause hearing cripples who aren’t blind to avoid deaf people altogether. So maybe the sound can be on a high frequency that only blind people can hear.

Man, promoting harmony among cripples sure is complicated.



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Love Crimes

A hate crime is a very specific thing. A hate crime occurs when somebody commits a crime against somebody who’s black or gay or Jewish or Muslim or whatever just because that person is black or gay or Jewish or Muslim or whatever. You can be sentenced to more time for committing a hate crime than you would be for committing a regular crime.

But a love crime is an even more specific thing. A love crime occurs when someone murders a cripple. It officially becomes a love crime if the killer claims the love defense by saying, “I really loved her/him and it broke my heart to see them all crippled up like that. So I took mercy on them and killed them.” Quite often you can be sentenced to a lot less time for committing a love crime than you would be for committing a regular crime. And it helps if the cripple you kill is a relative.

Love crimes happen all the time. In 2013, Dorothy Spourdalakis killed her 14-year-old autistic son, Alex. With the help of Alex’s caregiver, she stabbed Alex in the chest repeatedly before slitting his wrists. She claimed the love defense. She was sentenced to only four years in prison and was released last week six months early.

And she ain’t the only one. In 2009, Kim Yarbrough of Austin, Texas, put a lethal dose of prescription drugs into the feeding tube of her husband, Lloyd, who had brain damage from encephalitis. But she claimed the love defense so she was convicted of “injury to a disabled individual” and received 10 years probation. And this was in Texas, where they execute litterbugs.

And she ain’t the only one. It goes on and on and on.

The love defense seems to only apply to crimes against cripples. I don’t think anyone has ever killed a Jewish person, for example, and then said, “I really loved her/him and it broke my heart to see them all Jewed up like that. So I took mercy on them and killed them.” Good lock selling that one.

And the love defense also seems to apply only to the crime of homicide. I mean, suppose somebody commits a lesser offense against a cripple, like stealing their lawnmower. That person would get laughed out of the courtroom if they said, “I really loved her/him and it broke my heart to see them all crippled up like that. So I took mercy on them and stole their lawnmower.”

So if you ever get a hankering to commit a hate crime, you might want to play it safe and make sure your victim is a cripple. And always remember that if you want to claim the love defense, make sure you kill that cripple.



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The Proper Way to Piss Off the Riot Cops

The way things are going, it sure looks like there’s gonna be a whooooooooooooooole lotta street protesting going on in the upcoming years.

There’s gonna be a lot of scenes of tense standoffs where a frothing mob marching behind a banner encounters a line of cops wearing turtle-shell chest protectors and riot helmets. And that means things are gonna get ugly. There’s gonna be a whooooooooooole lotta skull busting going on.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s possible for protesters to piss off the riot cops without getting their skulls busted by them. Yep, protesters can have their protest cake and eat it too.

So here’s a key tip for anyone organizing a frothing mob of protesters: make sure that frothing mob includes a whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooole lotta cripples. Because we still live in a world, so far, where it’s considered uncool to bust the skulls of cripples, even if they’re protesting. This causes riot cops to have existential identity crises when confronted by cripples. “If I can’t bust skulls, then what’s the point in being a riot cop? I don’t know who I am anymore!” When confronted by cripples, riot cops feel emasculated and powerless. And that really pisses them off.

So it’s vitally important to not only hustle up as many cripples as possible for a protest but also to put them all at the front of the march. But even then there’s no guarantee nobody will get their skull busted. When the riot cops can’t bust the skulls of cripples, they do the next best thing. They bust the skulls of the nearest verts (which is short for verticals, which is slang for people who can walk). I pity the poor verts standing directly behind the frontline cripples.

But there’s a way around that dilemma. Again the solution is to round up as many wheelchairs as possible. The wheelchairs don’t have to have cripples in them. As a matter of fact, it’s best if most of the wheelchairs are unoccupied. There should be a wheelchair for every protester. So if there are 10,000 protesters, 10,000 wheelchairs should be rounded up. And every protester should get in a wheelchair. That’ll really piss off the riot cops because they’ll know damn well that a lot of the protesters must be verts faking like they’re crippled. But they won’t be able to tell for sure who’s faking it and who’s not so they won’t know for sure whom to single out for a good skull busting. I realize that rounding up a shitload of wheelchairs like that can be logistically and financially prohibitive. But fortunately there are other easier ways for protesters to pretend to be crippled. They could tap a white can around or use crutches. Or they can flash a bunch of hand signals and pretend like it’s sign language.

But whatever you do, if you want your frothing mob to piss off the riot cops without getting everybody’s skull busted, don’t forget about the cripples!




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Is Katherine Hepburn a Scumbag?

So if somebody cheats and pretends their pet dog is a service dog just so they can get that dog into a public place, does that automatically make that person a scumbag?

Most moral, decent, God-fearing people would answer this question with a resounding. “Hell yes!” This is a crime against crippledom that ranks right up there with parking your car in their special parking spaces or hogging up their bathroom stalls.

Fake service dogs will eventually blow their cover. We’ve all heard stories like about a guy who got his dog into an art museum by swearing it was a service dog and then the stinkin’ mongrel went and pissed all over Rodin’s The Thinker. Real service dogs don’t do stuff like that. In order to become official service dogs, they must survive a rigorous etiquette boot camp.

The service dog fakers ruin it for the real cripples with real service dogs. And service dog faking is big business. Anybody can go online and buy a service dog vest, no questions asked. Law-abiding citizens are starting to get pretty pissed off. There’s a bill in the Colorado legislature that would impose a fine of up to $1,000 for anyone faking like their dog is a service dog.

So yeah, passing your dog off as a service dog is a scumbag thing to do. But really, aren’t there other forms of cripple impersonation that are a lot more scumbaggy? Like how about faking like you’re a make-a-wish kid? That’s the height of scumbaggery right there. I’ve never heard of an actually case of that happening but I’m sure some scumbag out there has tried it. It’s inevitable. Are those make-a-wish kids vetted at all to make sure they’re legit? They probably have to furnish a doctor’s note or something. But hell, if you can get a fake service dog vest online, you can probably get a fake doctor’s note declaring you to be an official make-a-wish kid.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending scumbags. I’m just saying that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Take the case of an actual woman I know who confessed to me that she once committed service dog fraud. She’s a strong, intelligent, successful and beautiful woman. And since I just exposed her as a service dog faker, I will give her an alias so as to protect her from the mob. I’ll call her Katherine Hepburn. Anyway, one day this strong, intelligent, successful and beautiful woman named Katherine Hepburn was out zipping around in her wheelchair accompanied by her per Chihuahua on a leash. Katherine Hepburn passed a grocery store. Picking up groceries was on her to-do list for the day. She knew that taking the dog home and then returning to the store unaccompanied was the morally upstanding thing to do. But she also knew that since she was in a wheelchair, everyone might just assume it was a service dog. So, when faced with a weighty moral conflict, Katherine Hepburn did what millions of humans throughout the centuries have done. She said fuck it. She took the dog into the store and nobody said a word.

Now granted, she didn’t misrepresent her dog per se. It was more of a case of don’t ask don’t tell. But I ask you, does this make this strong, intelligent, successful and beautiful woman named Katherine Hepburn a scumbag?



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How the Oppressor Expresses Remorse

Who says the oppressor doesn’t have a conscience? Evidence abounds of his attempts to express remorse and make amends to those he fucks over. But it’s subtle because the oppressor is like a spouse abuser. He apologizes not with words but with gestures. The spouse abuser beats the hell out of you and then buys you flowers. The oppressor fucks you over completely and then eventually acknowledges your nobility by allowing shit to be named in your honor.

The oppressor must really feel awful about how he fucks over American Indian tribes because look at all the shit that's named as a tribute to them. It’s everywhere. There’s Winnebago motorhomes, Tillamook brand cheese, Shasta soda pop, etc., etc., etc. There are also natural wonders, like bodies of water, named to honor tribes. How about Lake Erie and Lake Huron? (However, the oppressor continues to insist that the largest of the Great Lakes remains named in honor white people: Superior.) The oppressor must feel especially shitty about fucking over the Shasta tribe because they have a soda pop and a mountain named after them.

But notice how it doesn’t work that way for cripples. Yep, the oppressor fucks over cripples on a daily basis as well, but we receive no such symbolic restitution. Now in all fairness to the oppressor, cripples don’t have tribes, which makes it a lot harder to figure out how to name shit in honor of us. The closest thing cripples have to tribes are diagnoses. Instead of Apache, Cherokee and Sioux, we have Muscular Dystrophy, Spina Bifida and Osteogenesis Imperfecta. And nobody goes to the deli and says, “Gimme a pound of Polio brand cheddar.” Nobody spends a romantic honeymoon on the soothing shores of Lake Cerebral Palsy.

But why not? Could it be that when it comes to fucking over cripples, the oppressor feels no remorse? Or could it be that the oppressor hasn’t even thought it through that far? Maybe fucking over cripples is such a matter-of-fact constant in the oppressor’s daily routine that it hasn’t even crossed his mind that his treatment of us might officially qualify as “fucking over” and thus deserving of amends.

Or maybe it’s just a matter of marketing. Maybe there are no Fibromyalgia brand motorhomes because cripple tribes are not perceived as tribes of honor and pride. Cripple tribes are perceived as tribes of shame. And nobody wants to associate their product with that. But is that not still the fault of the oppressor? Did he not create the concept of cripple shame for his own fun and profit?

My self-esteem will not improve until I see something named in tribute to a cripple tribe. Just one thing. It doesn’t have to be anything big. It can be a pair of Lou Gehrig’s Disease brand shoe laces. I won't be picky about it. It’s the thought that counts.




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Send a Gay Cripple to Washington

It’s was the mid 1990s or thereabouts. It was Anna, my late first wife, and me. And Mark was with us. He was an itinerant activist. Tall and thin with long hair halfway down his back. He probably wore jeans with the knees worn away like he always did. He was a vegan, a cancer survivor. It seemed like every weekend he attended some “grassroots” fundraiser of some sort. And this weekend we went with him to a fundraiser so a group of gay cripples could send some people to Washington. I believe the event was in the backroom of a bar. And there was a silent auction. I know how these “grassroots” silent actions work. I’ve been a part of many a one. Some people hustle up donations from their neighborhood mom and pops. And so you end up with a lot of gift certificates from laundry mats, dry cleaners and liquor stores.

One of the auction items at the fundraiser for gay cripples was from a store called Mexican Folk Arts. Anna put in a bid for that. Mexican Folk Arts was a new place just a few blocks down the street from where we lived. She figured she could get something cool with a gift certificate from there. Another auction item was a coupon good for a free weekend at the Melrose Hotel. I wondered who the hell hustled up that donation. The Melrose Hotel was a fleabag flophouse. Weekly and daily rates. I'd like to see the look on the face of the poor sucker who won that prize when he shows up with his suitcase at the Melrose Hotel.

So after a potluck supper and some speechifying, it was time to announce the winners of the silent auction. “And the Mexican Folk Arts winner is—“

Anna! She was excited. She rolled her wheelchair up to claim her gift certificate. But the auctioneer instead reached under the card table and proudly presented her with a sculpture of a skunk. The sculpture was about the size of a dachshund. I think the sculpture was made of cement. It must’ve weighed at least 10 pounds. The skunk had a rough texture like cement. You could strike a match on it. And the skunk had a badass look on its face, like it was staring you down. It was in full attack mode, its tail raised like a curled plume, like a question mark.

“And the winner of the free weekend at the Melrose Hotel is---“

Me! Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? How the hell did that happen? Mark leaned over and told me he felt bad that nobody wrote in a bid so he put me down for ten bucks.

So those were the souvenirs we took home from the send-a-gay-cripple-to-Washington fundraiser: a cement skunk and a coupon for a free weekend at a flophouse.

But it’s amazing when you think about it. When cripples go to Washington, we’re fighting against assholes that, when they need to buy politicians, hold fundraisers where people pay $10,000 for bacon and eggs. And the silent auction items are original Van Goghs.

But somehow, the cripples who go to Washington have managed to get the Americans with Disabilities Act passed and a whole lot more. So whatever we’re doing, it works, so far. I don’t know how or why it works but who cares? It works.




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Baby Chick Ass Wipes

Well hell, now that the election is over, I’m going for it, goddammit! I’m going for it all!

And I don’t give a sweet flying fuck what anybody thinks! Why should I? I got this great business idea not long ago. It was a brilliant idea but it was vulgar. I held back moving forward on my business idea because I thought maybe it was just too vulgar to fly. But after that election, shit, I feel like nothing’s too vulgar anymore! Vulgar won big from coast to coast. Vulgar is cool. Vulgar is hip. Vulgar is chic. The more vulgar the better. If you’re not a graceless, self-indulgent, pathologically self-absorbed prick, you ain’t shit.

The people have spoken! So fuck everything. I’m going for it! I see now that the reason my business idea is so beautifully brilliant is precisely because it’s so beautifully vulgar. So I’m investing all my money in live baby chicks. And at just the right moment, I’ll kill them. Now before anybody gets all blubbery and outraged about killing baby chicks, I’ll have you know that I plan to kill them humanely. I’ll inject them with honey or something. I don’t know. I’ll figure that part out later.

And then I’ll immediately pack the freshly-killed baby chicks into special refrigerated containers that’ll look like fancy hat boxes. And I’ll quickly ship the dead baby chicks off to the richest people on earth, so they can wipe their asses with them.

Yep, then we’ll all know a truly classy bathroom when we see one. A servant stands outside the entrance and opens a hat box.

“Baby chick, madam?”

“Are they fresh?”

“Oh most definitely, milady. They were flown in this morning.”

So then the rich shitter carefully selects just the right baby chick, maybe two, maybe three. It’s okay. Servants are sworn to secrecy. After performing her duty, madam feels the luxurious stroke of baby chick down, so exquisitely sort and absorbent. So deliciously vulgar. But most rewarding is the rush of superiority she gets from exerting her Biblical dominion over the animals.

I’ll mark up the price of my baby chicks a thousand percent, maybe even ten or twenty thousand percent and I bet the rich fucks will still happily pony up. Because apparently the way to get ahead in the new world order is to be the most vulgar shithead of all. They won’t want to be left behind.

And soon I’ll be more rich than any of them. So fuck it! I’m going for it! Who cares anymore?



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