Living at the Zoo

Douglas "Doc" McBride

Description

A very entertaining and humorous fresh look at some of the issues that we face daily in this fast paced and ever evolving planet we call home.
Douglas “Doc” McBride dares you to step outside your door or go to a public area and find someone who does not have their face buried in a phone or some form of global information device.
That’s just one of his many observations in this book that reveals nuggets of wisdom, such as:
• the world and how it spins on a daily basis has changed—and mostly not for the good;
• younger generations are not taught the respect, pride, and the drive that we were growing up;
• today’s parenting skills with the shunning of corporal punishment leave a lot to be desired.
Libraries, toys that were interactive and not on a screen, cars without computers that you could actually fix in your driveway, and three channels on the TV—these are a few of the things that the author believes built a strong generation.
Learn lessons from the past and get to the bottom of where we’ve gone wrong with the insights and observations in Living at the Zoo.

Sujets

• Personal Memoirs
• Biography
• Trump
• South
• Gun politics
• Redneck
• Autobiography
• G.I. Joe
• Guimbarde (instrument)

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 12 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663249166
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

LIVING AT THE ZOO
RANTS AND REFLECTIONS
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DOUGLAS “DOC” MCBRIDE
 
 
 
 
 

 
LIVING AT THE ZOO
RANTS AND REFLECTIONS
 
Copyright © 2023 Douglas “Doc” McBride.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
 
iUniverse
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
844-349-9409
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4915-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4916-6 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022923286
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date:  01/12/2023
Contents
Introduction
 
Generations
The Rant
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
GI Joe and Barbie
Friends
COVID-19
Boys and Girls
Presidents
1917
How I Put My Pants On
The Homeless Folks
Stupid Shit
What Others Think
Stuff
Automated Shit
Influences of the Church
Twenty Years In and Counting
Pro Athletes
What I Don’t Know
Guns
When You’re Done, Your Done
The News
The Things I Miss Most
The Popo
Grateful and Appreciative
2020 WTF?
A Few Final Words
Introduction
First off, I reckon I need explain—or maybe warn y’all—that seeing as how I’m from the South, this is pretty much written the way I speak and think. I cuss a lot, sometimes in Technicolor, but I won’t apologize, because it’s my book and I’ll speak the way I want. Anyhow, it gives the book character, and we down here are all about characters. If I offend you … oh well, get your money back. This is the place where you close the book and go find some comic books or something. I don’t have a dog in that fight, and none of this is directed at you personally.
In my first literary composition (and I say that with tongue in cheek), I didn’t include a foreword because really, I had no clue what it was. Come to find out, it is supposed to be written by someone other than the author. Well, no one I know is dumb enough to attach their name to this literary junk pile, and who could blame them. So we’ll just name this Introduction and call it done.
When I started this manuscript, I believed I had a clear line of thought about what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I think … maybe … well, sort of … ah, shit, just try to stay with me if you can and maybe this will eventually make some sense. The point I wanted to make a case for was the state of the planet today as opposed to when I was a wee lad and the world was perfect. Of course, as I grew up, I found that it was not so perfect at all, and we had our issues. However, to my way of thinking, they are nothing compared to the shit we are dealing with right now. Not even fucking close.
So that idea went to shit in a real hurry. I was able to get some then-and-now pieces into it, but mostly I think I just ranted about shit, pointed out some of the problems we face today, and cussed a lot about it. Believe me, I was not short on material.
Methamphetamine, for example. Someone actually sat down one day and thought, “You know what? If I take all the cleaning shit from under the sink and mix it with ephedrine, paint thinner, lithium from batteries, brake fluid, red phosphorus, ammonia with a dash of sulfuric acid, and just a pinch of sodium hydroxide, then I can cook it and shoot it into my body!” Geez, really? Yup, someone actually sat down and worked that one out. Who in their right fucking mind does that? What was so shitty in their life that day that they needed that in it also? Is it just me, or is that OK with y’all?
By the way, those of you who are partakers of said product, that’s not a high or a buzz you’re feeling when you shoot up. That’s the feeling of your brain permanently disappearing into the twilight zone a few thousand cells at a time. Congratulations! You’re well on your way to becoming a plant.
There seems to be some kind of race or contest these days on who can kill the greatest number of people at one sitting. I’m talking about people losing their shit and gunning down folks just because they can. Here’s the part that pisses me off about it: if they don’t kill themselves, then we put them in jail and clothe them, feed them, and give them a TV to watch, a gym to work out in, access to education, free legal aid and medical care, and protection from other inmates by putting them in seclusion. Why? Why are we spending millions of dollars on these assholes who have zero regard for others’ lives? I tell you one reason: pussifica tion .
I doubt that’s a word in Webster’s dictionary, but it is in mine. It means we have grown into a culture of pussies afraid to say the wrong thing and to do what we know to be right for fear of public retribution from other pussies. Case in point to me would be these mass gunmen. They are guilty, and we know they are guilty—we saw the motherfuckers do it. So why are they still alive? Do we really believe a trial is going to change what we know to be the truth? These fuckers should have been dead the next day, no if, ands, or buts. Of course, California wouldn’t let it happen, but who cares? They don’t do a lot of things the right way.
I believe this pussification has to do with the way we raise our kids and the things we allow generations to get away with.I’m not really happy with the past few generations and, in a word, disgusted with the most recent one, Gen Z. Unbeknownst to me, we have names for the past six generations as well as a record of their accomplishments, tragedies, and fuckups. It tickled me no end to know I finally had some way to compare these generations and back up my bitching and slandering with facts. In some ways, my research on the generations was one of the catalysts for this project, among others. More on the generations stuff in a minute.
When I say the generation discussion was one of the catalysts for this project, I wasn’t bullshitting. I am always interacting with people in my career, and I see some very distinct differences in age groups—so much so that it often leaves me confused and dismayed as to where we are as a human race. It’s very disheartening to see what we will do to others with no more thought than taking the next breath.
Granted, my jobs set me up to deal with the population on the bottom of the food chain, but that’s no excuse. It makes me long for things the way they were when I grew up. We felt safe. It was nothing for my siblings and me to be gone for hours along with the other kids in the neighborhood. No one bothered us; we weren’t in fear of anything. These days, you wouldn’t dream of letting your kids out like that. Hell, some parents have trackers implanted in their kids. A good idea if you ask me. We do it to dogs and cats, so why not kids?
When I was a kid, there was this old man who was always sitting on a bench in one corner of the park we played in, his legs crossed, doing nothing but smoking, just sitting there. I say old man because he looked it, but I had no idea how old he really was. It seemed that whenever I was there, he was too. He didn’t say anything or talk to anyone that I saw. He would just smile and wave when we were close by, and all the kids in the neighborhood had their own version of who this guy really was—everything from a mass murderer to an escapee from a mental institution. He would never get away with sitting in a park staring at kids playing today. He would be viewed as a predator.
Anyway, his hair and beard were long and stringy and obviously hadn’t seen soap in a while, and he wore clothes that for sure had seen better days—but he always wore a tie. The thing about him I remember was not being afraid of him. In fact, I wanted to talk to him and ask him why he lived in the park. Being a kid, I just assumed he lived there because I never saw him anywhere else that I recall. Course, how much traveling around town was I doing at that age, right?
One day, my friends and I were playing at the park, and we got a game of dare going. You know the game—by draw you get dared to do something or you take a shot in the arm from all present. Anyway, my dare was to go up to this guy and ask him his name. I told you I wasn’t afraid, and that is true, but I was a little leery; however, I didn’t want the shots in the arm, ’cause Andy Terrel hit real hard.
As I walked up to the old man, what struck me was the way he stared at me, like he already knew why I was there and what I was going to say. I kinda just stood there a second or two, then blurted out something like, “Hey what’s your name?” I don’t recall the exact wording.
He just laughed and said, “Ben. What’s yours?”
I told him mine, then ran off to tell my buddies mission accomplished . That was the first and last time I ever spoke to him.
It wasn’t too long after that in a child’s concept of time that he never came to the park anymore. I always wondered what had happened to him and what his story was. How was it he lived in our park? Where were his mom and dad? These and other qu