Ever Boil A Snake Alive? This Asshole Has

Now, here's some more fucked up shit and an example of how to not treat animals.

I know this piece of shit. I've been in that household. I've been in that kitchen. Many times. Watched the Seahawks fumble the big game there.

I've had that guy try to sell me his "collection" of nudies and scantily clad in high school, and was particularly proud of the ones he got of his alleged childhood best friend, but he was upset when she rejected him.

Typical nice guy, right?

Once, we actually pulled some fun pranks together, but the guy always needed to be mellowed down. Cardboard kitty, sticking random detour signs in roads around construction sites then chucking water balloons at people who got out to move them back, he actually helped me get the industrial sized roll of plastic wrap I used to TP and plastic wrap the car of a teacher I didn't care for, cause I'm a jackass. He also was my hook for LSD in college, which was cool.

Kristi Noem, if you're here, turn off the vibrator and go away

But this isn't about good times in one paragraph. This is about how people change and how it can be for the worse, when their worst tendencies are enabled. My experiences with Franklin are a stark contrast to this.

When I called him out on the (~40 second)  video, it was deleted from Snap, which I expected and is why I took the screenshots beforehand, and, I presume, why he mocked me later with "take your screenshots. Are you drunk?" 

Being an alcoholic is a problem, which is why I recently hopped back on the wagon. It's a much smaller problem than, say, boiling a snake alive for shits and gigs. Or being the guy who got his buddy and his buddy's mom's partner to chase you down when you walked away after they started throwing rocks through windows. (Interesting how alcohol is always used to discredit me: for this asshole, horror at animal cruelty can't be horror at animal cruelty; it means I was drunk).

Sometimes I really just pace and get upset when I think about the awful things bad people do. And are rewarded for. Cause I also distinctly remember at least two times he's posted videos from box seat football games. So then I write. Or go to a meeting.

Back to our golden child: he once bragged in another neighbor's basement that he swatted around his girlfriend to make sure she gave good head. And I also walked out. That time, I got away safely.

These are the kinds of people I grew up with and who raised me. I have to be grateful, to some extent, because I'm not a good guy, but I'd be a lot worse, I think, if they had embraced me instead of making me an Invisible Child; I would have found acceptance in being that way, and how much worse would I be? Instead, I felt alone and rejected and learned to try and empathize with others.

I digress, these are the people who raised me, when I showed them the pictures above:

"Money, get away 

Get a good job with more pay, and you're okay 

Money, it's a gas 

Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash!"

(I should add: I moved out in my college years, early twenties; mom found out I’d tried LSD [or some variant] and told me she’d rather find out I’d done what Catholic priests do to altar boys—or, more viscerally, what my half-brother likes to do to kids. I was so disgusted I moved out. For the record, a mellow acid trip is not as bad as sexually abusing a minor.

For years after, I’d hear from my folks about this asshole, still living at home. Not showing up for work but keeping his job because he works for his dad. Screaming at restaurants when he was out with his parents and storming out. Not paying rent. I saw the stories on Snap of his nice vacations, his box football seats, his fancy restaurants where he’d ask about wine pairings from the sommelier, his expensive snake in his parents’ house—and I remember when I was a kid, dad said this was the kind of behavior spoiled rich kids do and how getting money at a young age is bad for people. That was when he said he’d stop being so greedy once he hit critical mass at $1 million. Then he made that money, decided it wasn’t really that much after all, and now he thinks behavior like this is cool, I guess.

When I was a kid, he liked to talk about Sylvia Bloom as a success story and had another story he liked to tell about a millionaire who made his kids dig their own swimming pool because he wouldn’t pay, teaching them the value of hard work. He also used to say, “Your actions speaka so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying.” Last time I quoted him on that last lesson, drilled into me so hard as a kid, he said he’d never heard it before. People change and money corrupts).

Because something being expensive has always protected it from harm. This is a historical truism and Constantinople has never been sacked, just like Stephen King didn't buy the minivan that hit him intentionally to destroy it. And memory's fuzzy, but I want to say there's a story of a rich dude who bought some piece of art mocking him intentionally to destroy it, as well. Point being: something being expensive doesn't mean shit—a life is worth an incalculable amount and can never be replaced.

And yet I've seen plenty of Dateline episodes where some shithead's willing to kill someone for a few thousand bucks.*

I digres; understand seeking and desiring a social safety net, a bit like FDR's Second Bill of Rights, along with looking after others, and kinda like what pops'd call "critical mass." Or, if you would rather, Epicurus' philosophy: freedom from pain and fear is an essential component of happiness. Another comparison is Abraham Maslow Hierarchy of Needs.

This is not that.

I can't understand selling your soul in the process. And for them, the soul isn't even a question. It's just how many dollars ya got and whether you can enjoy being cruel for cruelty's sake, it seems at times, from boiling a snake to—well, I'm sure it won't take a genius to guess with sadistic candidate he's all in on for 2024.

Hint: it's a party with a lot of Christians who seem to have missed the entire fucking point of the story of the Golden Calf

Anyway, to end by borrowing from Californication, "All my fucking life, people have been telling me I do things wrong. I’m always the fucking asshole. I look around and I see everybody else is infinitely more fucked up than I am."

—

*Hell, I knew a guy who was involved in a murder-for-hire plot involving his own grandmother for an inheritance. It was quite a large case, a prominent family, and there's an airport in Washington named for the family. He was the dad of a close friend of mine. When I found this out around, I think, fourth or fifth grade, it took me a lot of time to grapple with. I started by being unable to believe it; I don't know that I fully did until I read some of the newspaper articles years later.

Based on what I saw of him, and trying to piece it together with the benefit of hindsight: he feels remorse over his involvement. Odd to find out his past years later and today think how peculiar it was hanging out with and feeling more comfortable around a guy who hired a hitman to kill his grandma than I did around my fucked up family. At least the worst this guy did to me was favor his son a bit in Monopoly and ping-pong.

Doing some volunteer work in college with Books for Prisoners was also a very informative and eye-opening experience. Taught me a lot about empathy, as well as drilling home a lesson taught by my old law teacher, this great guy named Don N.: we get to choose whether our prison system is retributive or rehabilitative.

Seeing the remorse expressed in some of the letters included, the explanation of what they'd done to land themselves in prison, why they regretted it, the gratefulness for maybe receiving a book, and the genuine desire to try and improve while in prison so when they got out, they would have a chance at making it in a world not particularly helpful with preventing recidivism was incredible and inspiring.