Uncle Sam, Like Nana, Can Never Remember Your Birthday

Independence Day commemorates Will Smith's slaying of invading aliens the vote by the Continental Congress to approve the wording of documentation explaining their previous vote on July 2 to legally separate from the British empire. Signing of this Declaration of Independence occurred between July 4 and August 2, 1776.

Basically, the Declaration was a giant post-dated check like your grandma sends you for your birthday a month early. She doesn't know when exactly you'll receive it, but you couldn't actually check it until an arbitrary later date.

Worse, the 4th of July is like setting your anniversary after you and your sig-oth have already been banging for a few weeks pretty regularly and you've just decided to make it official. Yeah, the date's important and you'll celebrate it every year from now on, but we all know that one of you secretly counts from the first time you tickled the pink dolphin.

On Cultural Discrepancies

I drove down to Wendy's at 9 o'clock last night to pick up something I could eat while watching fireworks down at my lake. This sounds amazing.

Pulling into an empty parking lot so I can make a legal U-turn and getting a giant pink heart with a green starburst at its center RIGHT IN MY (car's) FACE sounds even better. All-in-all, it was a good night.

Here's the thing: except for one Hispanic lady I heard yelling angrily from inside, clearly the shift supervisor, and of course excepting Skinny Black Kid With An Afro who has been the night manager for at least seven years now, every single person I saw staffing this Wendy's, a restaurant usually staffed exclusively by Latina women shorter than 5'1", was an intelligent looking, down-to-Earth white teenager.

I have no problems with this on a social level. I'm aware that outside of the New York City Metro region, most restaurants are in fact waited by non-immigrant persons. What I'm more confused about is the logistical reasoning behind it.

Why were all the non-young, non-Caucasian employees missing? Is it simply that young, low-income individuals do not have the financial means or señority to request off on holidays? Or is it perhaps something more sinister?

As I said, that one lady I could hear yelling in heavily accented language was rather miffed to be working at all, it seemed, and she was clearly barking orders. A top-level supervisor who could not get out of work that evening fits the profile.

Are all immigrants of questionable-legality super excited for July 4th? Is it, like, a thing for them? I know we white people freaking love Cinco de Mayo; maybe this is a revenge holiday? Like Boxing Day mixed with "A Day Without A Mexican." Or maybe they simply love freedom and independence so much that this is like their Labor Day. Maybe they get little Washington-shaped piñatas and beat them with muskets made of hope and licorice.

July 4th Draws Near | Are You Evolutionarily At-Risk?

I'm a pretty smart guy.

I like to think of myself as the disaffected, slacker genius type. If they made a movie about my life, at least in like 1999, I'd be played by Ethan Hawke. I've got the brains, I've got some looks that might be better suited to 18th century France but get the job done, and I'm not terribly out of shape. I'm feeling pretty good about myself.

And then yesterday I bit my tongue.

Normally, you wouldn't think that's enough to wave away eight straight semesters of dean's list and a Phi Beta Kappa Gamma Delta Whatever Secret Handshake Club, but it is.

I have to come to grips with the fact that I am, evolutionarily, not a great leap forward. I'm not a tall, hulking powerhouse. I'm not even that speedy, as far as humans measure it. My greatest advantage to natural selection would be to outwit my opponent and hopefully dodge its attack before tricking off a cliff or something. I'm not going to be punching out a mountain lion any time soon, and that makes me a little sad.

Because I totally know guys who could punch out a mountain lion if they had to. They'd be scared, and confused, but they'd fucking do it.

I would die. A lot. Quickly.

Biting my tongue is just proof to me that as hard as I might try to be cool and suave and powerful and sexy, and as convincing as I my be in every single one of those endeavors, I'm still capable of chewing through my own tongue and drawing blood while eating a fucking sandwich.

It's depressing to realize that, quite rightly, if natural selection had any involvement left in human society, I'd breed rarely if ever, late in life, and produce slow, easily picked-off offspring.

Then I watch Jackass: The Movie on basic cable and I remember that even the people who could punch out mountain lions are squishy and easily injured, and that generally I will be smart enough to not get a Hot Wheels car stuck up my ass.

Ah, progress.