From God, to Rush, to Carl

In the early nineties, when I considered myself a conservative, the movement had a different vibe. For example, Rush Limbaugh was actually funny. Back then, Rush presented his listeners with an upbeat and positive persona that belied the fact he was apparently blowing out his eardrums on prescription meds at this stage in his life. His lampoons of liberals and democrats, if not informative, were at least delivered with good timing and panache. Rush would eat steaks and smoke cigars on the air. His musical parodies were on par with the Daily Show or Colbert Report from our present time. My personal favorite spoof was a song called “sensitive 90’s guy”.  Musical comedy is not easy, and El Rushbo deserves credit for this if nothing else.
As with any hero, my friends and I tended to invest far more significance to the pronouncements that emanated from the golden EIB microphone than Rush’s limited scope and intelligence warranted. The biggest dittohead in my peer group, let’s call him Carl, was also the most conservative among us as well as being the biggest loudmouth I have ever met (those of you with right-wing friends will no doubt be familiar with this trifecta. If you are a conservative, and you don’t know a person like Carl, then you are probably that person).

Carl referred to himself as a born-again Christian. I say referred because, for Carl, Christianity seemed to exist mostly for the purpose of making Carl feel superior to others. In order to pick up on this, one had only to listen to Carl act out his trademark fantasy in which a pious Muslim or Hindu, or even a Catholic, would die and ascend to heaven to meet with God only to be told, in a southern drawl, that “That’s real nice buddy, but there’s just one problem, y’see, I ain’t Allah”( or Vishnu or the virgin Mary) before being dismissed to their eternal damnation.

After high school, Carl went to an evangelical college where, if my memory serves me, he majored in Napoleonic history. Once, while we were driving around listening to Rush on his car radio, I asked him what he hoped to do with a BA in this subject. Carl replied “Once I get my degree I WILL be given a PODIUM,” (you could hear the capitals). “Then I’m going to point out how the liberals are trying to turn this country into a communist regime through Greenpeace and the Democratic party.”
It all sounds ridiculous now, a couple of pretentious assholes trying to make themselves feel important. But we were young men. Neither of us had girlfriends, and the idea of defeating communism still resonated a little with my generation. At any rate, saving the country sounded a whole lot better than masturbating to a tits-and-ass movie on Cinemax, which was closer to reality.

Carl eventually got a divinity degree and worked for some time as a holy man of some variety. I once came across a youtube video of him teaching his flock that they could rest assured Christianity was true because so many of the early Christian fathers held on to their belief even when they were tortured and crucified. If it was a hoax, Carl’s argument ran, they would have admitted it in order to get out of jail. I almost looked him up then to point out that, if a willingness to die for one’s beliefs substantiates that belief, then he had probably backed the wrong horse since the attackers of September 11^th were no doubt the most devout believers on that day. In Carl's video, there was a crucifix in the background, so I assume he has not converted to radical Islam, though if he did, I have reason to believe that he would find himself right at home in their midst.


A couple of years ago, I heard through the grapevine that, while he was ministering to the faithful, his wife left him and his parishioners fired him for being single. I’m not sure if he is still a minister or even a believer and I don’t much care.  A few weeks ago, I saw a clip of Rush on CNN. He was still ensconced behind the mic., but the panache was gone. He was giving commentary on the newest Herman Cain Accuser, Sharon Bialek, and his argument consisted of calling her “buy-a-lick” and making disgusting slurp noises into the golden microphone. I have long since moved on from Rush and his cronies, but I couldn’t suppress a twinge of sadness for the guy. Maybe he just hadn’t got his fix that day.

I murdered a family

I had been stalking them and I knew where they lived, just behind the water heater in a dark corner of the laundry room. I wasn't gonna murder them at first, I swear. Actually, I thought I had bought traps that didn't kill them. I had bought this same brand of trap once before and it hadn't killed any mice. The squeaky little rodents merely got held in the clutches of the trap, which allowed me to fling them out into the field. I liked this arrangement. I had always felt bad about breaking their necks (or even worse, those horrid sticky traps - what sick freak thought those up?). This way, they were at least out of the house, and my hands were clean.

Evidently that first trap was defective. I set the new one with some almond cheddar spread from Figis (mice just can't resist it and neither can I), and placed it, like room service, in front of the little hole where the heater pipes go into the wall. I had only to turn the lights off and wait a few minutes to hear the tell-tale snap of the little trap. Heh heh, gotcha little devil. I thought to myself,  it's back to the field for you.

For a second, after I flicked on the light, I could see his little legs wiggling and I assumed all was on track. But, as I picked up the trap and walked with it through the back door, I couldn't deny that he was...well not so much...anymore.  Sonofabitch, I thought, these traps are deadly! If I wanted to purchase a humane trap, I would have to drive all the way back to the hardware store.  I looked out across the field. The sun was going down.

The next mouse to die must have gone almost instantly because the trap caught him square on the head, before he ever even got to have a taste of Figis almond cheddar which, if it tastes as good to a mouse as it does to me, might almost make the game worth the candle. Well, there he was, my first willful murder. I washed my hands of the first mouse because I didn't know about the trap, but this one...

I had to face him, so I picked up the trap and I looked closely at this rodent...at this mammal (who for all I know was female). I do not know the exact percentage but I do know that, in terms of genetics, there is very little difference between myself and the mouse who's life I had just taken with full knowledge of my actions.

His or her eyes were small and black. His head was not particularly attractive but one cannot look at another mammal and avoid noticing certain similarities to humans. The ears of the mouse, for example, were cute and I would guess, his hearing superior to my own, but I don't actually know. As I dumped his dead body into the garbage, I thought, I can't keep doing this. I've got to call a halt to these hostilities and go get some kind of humane trap, if they even make such a thing. But, after the first mouse, I had drunk a couple of vodka tonics to soothe my nerves, and in my heightened state I felt a certain sense of fate taking over. And my mother (it’s her house), wouldn’t sanction a ceasefire. She whooped with excitement bordering on the maniacal every time she heard the signature snap coming from the laundry room. “We got another one!” she would yell in a sing-song voice and command me to remove the offending animal.  As the ancient Greeks so often demonstrated, character is tragedy; tragedy is character.

After the third mouse, the cognitive dissonance began to set in. Mice are indeed disgusting. They smell bad and they don’t ask before coming in and trashing your house. They spread disease and, even though I feel dread harming another living thing, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a mouse give me some kind of god-damned plague bacillus.

By the time I managed to find a humane mouse trap on the internet the next day, the killing was over. We had “trapped” a total of five mice. My great fear is essentially that of karma. I worry about what will happen if a race of superiors shows up and judges us by how we treat those lower than us…those mammals who coveted nothing more than a warm place to eat and multiply. Who among us could fault them for wanting these things? But if a superior alien race were to arrive on our planet and examine its primary occupant, they might find that we clutter up the place and that our feces stinks like shit.