Gin and Tacos: A Beginner's Guide

Gin and Tacos is a political satire website. This is the first and foremost guideline for beginners. If you read something there or on the Facebook page that serves as kind of a Fight Club for over educated, underemployed, and cynical Gen Xer types that doesn't make sense to you, then you should seriously consider refraining from commenting on it. The boss's name is Ed, and I for one am tired of him having lecture the community when their friends and family show up and bleat about him being a communist, socialist, elitist, and whatever ad hominem attacks bubble up from random synapse firings, with no sense of humor. Or worse, take the satirical posts as sincere. However and wherever you come into a GnT post, be assured that most members of the community (at least the politically left-leaning ones, including me) were once outsiders as well. Surrender your pride and go to the back of the line if you want to be a part of this rogue's gallery. Be prepared for hazing and ridicule if you comment and didn't get the joke, they aren't laughing with you.

We all wish we had had that friend to take us aside and explain the joke while growing up. The eldest child in a family, the youngest kid on the block who was lowest in the pecking order, the transplant from another school, or any of a million reasons why you are the new guy/gal. What happens when you are exposed to some new form of art, humor, pop culture, or biological function? Usually it's not pretty. Pull up a chair stranger, and let ol' Uncle Kraken slip a sticky, slimy tentacle over your shoulder and explain what's what around the barnyard. Like Fight Club, we have a few rules for clean livin'.

1. Ed is smarter than you. Lay aside your ego and remember that fact before popping off an indignant or self-righteous quip in the tone of "well I never!" Or a comment to the tune of "this can't be serious" because no, it's not. His essays on the actual site are often serious, as well as insightful and necessary analysis into the evils of right wing government and political types but many of the Facebook posts are sturdily-constructed jabs at rural baby boomers who have been such a drag on progress. If these upset you, reexamine your life.

2. This is our clubhouse, we are under no obligation to dumb it down for you. If you don't catch on to the satire or obscure pop culture references, remember that Google is your friend.

3. Everyone has a sad story to tell. Your's isn't unique. Unless it will add something immediate and relevant to the thread, save it. There's a reason many of Ed's posts include a section about their relative's friend's roommate, etc. Anecdotal evidence is dubious at best. If you can't prove something, don't bother introducing it.

4. The humor here is often on the dark side. As evidenced by the sometime slogan of "Everything is terrible, all the time" employed by Ed and occasionally featured on GnT-branded merchandise. If you believe in a limitless future where things will be significantly better, stow that dream sunshine it's not going to do you any good here.

5. Be prepared to defend your arguments and be on the unpopular side at least half the time. About the only thread tying us together is the intelligent observation that we were too young to have made it in the old economy but too old to have prepared for the new. There is great comical significance to things like "retirement", "paying off student loans", "finding a fulfilling and prosperous career." Everything else is debatable.

6. You can comment but you can't publish original posts. If you have objections to this, see rule #1 above.

7. Remember, most of #1's posts are satire but the rest contain a heaping dollop of irony. There is very little that is straight-forward. Ed likes it this way to confuse the low-information trolls. See rule #1 and #2, political analysis does not need to be dumbed down to a childlike level just because cosmopolitan sophistication makes doughfacedonny's supporters' heads hurt.

8. If you see satire and immediately take offense because it sounds like you... Just leave, we don't want to deal with trolls. You'd be happier somewhere else.

9. Pop culture references have a pretty long shelf life here. If you recognized the Joker's voice in #8 you might be okay. Jack Nicholson's Joker that is.

10. #1's influences include H.L. Mencken, if you are familiar with Mencken's work, welcome. If you had to look up the name and cannot fathom why we need a voice like Mencken's (minus the racism and other 1920s vices) in this insane asylum of a republic, seek political engagement elsewhere.

So, depending on your circumstances, this list forms a baseline of introduction. And again, this is only for the impulse-control issues crowd that MUST. COMMENT. ON. ANYTHING. THAT OFFENDS. ME. IMMEDIATELY!

On "Being Cool"

Let not the last post fool you. I hold a considerable amount of contempt for most of humanity, especially those residing in the United States. I don't even hold particular animus for teenagers, after all older generations made the world they grew up in and they have to live in it. Then there are the baby boomers, so many trees have given their lives in the service of plumbing the secrets of this singularly obnoxious group of entitled, spoiled, greedy, rotten, depraved, drug-addicted assholes that there is no way the youth of today could compare as a waste of material.

By contrast Jessica Wright wrote a great analysis of her own millennial generation, stating:

To be a millennial is to hear constantly about how awful your generation is.
And to agree, kind of politely.

Depending on where you cut off the arbitrary generational lines I'd have to agree with Wright, they are nice. William Strauss and Neil Howe put the dates at 1982 and 2004, which I guess makes 1965 to 1981 Generation X. Yeah, how unhelpfully nonspecific. Not to mention that the very size and diversity of the US makes even the broadest generalizations problematic.

So is it even the generational status that makes one "cool?" Probably not. I just walked outside for a minute and heard a loudmouthed old guy screaming and swearing about... nothing. From a block away. Grumpy, loud, and obnoxious; definitely not cool.

That brings me to the young man I wrote about in my last post. It was not my intention to offend the band Decrepit Birth, or Jungle Rot, or any other group that unfortunately got into the metal game after more than half a century of band names. I used to always think Pink Floyd was a great name because it meant that some normal name was still available for another group. But this guy is all "death metal" clearly to compensate for being small. And the first time I met him he spent at least an hour going through The Misfits' boxed set and railing about how lame they were. This is where being judgmental and ignorant crash into a wall.

I get it, each high school class or generation or whatever has to prove it is harder than the last. Since most are puny runts as freshmen they have to jump on something else to make them feel "cool." But this definition of cool is not what I had in mind. This is the juvenile cool that leads practitioners to mindlessly put down others' tastes. "THEY SUCK!" "THAT'S GAY!" Perhaps the latter not so much anymore, I hope anyway.

To the point as simply as possible. No Misfits, no Decrepit Birth. Each new thing has to have built on something. For my Dad it was Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, for me it was Slayer. The Misfits practically invented the whole death metal horror speed thing. Sure you can give British bands like Venom or Motorhead a lot of credit too.But Glenn Danzig, Jerry Only, and the other misfits injected the kitschy violence and death imagery of B-horror films that has become the standard of the genre.

Ignorance is one thing, informed judgment is important but being a judgmental prick when you do not have a clue is just screaming and swearing from across the block like some grizzled old man.