This evening, I went shooting pool with two of my chums back in cold, rainy Durham, the city that birthed me. Cutting through the niceties and getting to the point (a talent of mine, to be sure), my buddy Moose Tracks can be heard saying two things quite frequently whenever we go to The Pool Hall I Shoot At. One phrase, “Fuck,” is usually used to denote an error on his part, like blowing an easy shot or sending the cue ball rocketing off the table and across the room.
The other phrase requires a bit more backstory.
“That's that bullshit I'm talkin' about.”
Whenever I hear this, I know that I just made a shot that Moose Tracks doesn't approve of. Perhaps it's a hard shot that puts me one game closer to that drink he owes me when I win three games in a row. Maybe it's a ball pocketed by blind luck after my initial shot goes in. Probably it's just him making himself feel better knowing that I made a shot that he wouldn't have.
“That's that bullshit I'm talkin' about.”
Whenever I hear this, I know that Moose Tracks feels that there is something wrong in the world. That I'm a lucky sonofabitch. That I shouldn't be playing as well as I am. That I'll take that drink now, please.
Now, following Moose Tracks' example, I think I'm gonna start saying this catchy little phrase a lot more. When I see something wrong with the world, when I see a happening happen that shouldn't have happened, I'm gonna let the world know. Wherever there is injustice on this crazy, mixed-up planet, so too will there be Tyler Haggard, happy to let all within earshot know that “that's that bullshit I'm talkin' about.”
I walk down Hillsboro Street, a main road near NC State campus packed with bars and take-out restaurants and a bowling alley and a hookah bar and bums. Lots and lots of bums. Not Hobos, the noble nomadic peoples who willfully choose a freelance life riding the rails, but bums. I'll pass a bum who asks me if I can spare a dollar for some food; he hasn't eaten in a week. I've got a little cash in my pocket, so I hand the man a dollar and keep walking. Ten minutes later, I'll pass the same bum lighting up a smoke, freshly taken from a cigarette pack that would have netted him three dollar-menu offerings at any fast food joint, provided he was actually hungry.
That's that bullshit I'm talkin' about.
I'll be sitting outside my dorm, drunk, lighting up a cigarette ('cause I smoke, y'know), enjoying the brisk North Carolina air leaving my lungs as tar and asbestos fill them. Then, my RA will inform me that I have to be 25 feet from the building to smoke. Not so, I'll say; I just read in the school paper that the new law does not effect the residence halls until the summer. He will then inform me that the student housing director was misquoted in said issue, and that as much as he doesn't care if I smoke there or not, his boss does. He'll apologize as he walks away, but I'll be just as pissed.
That's that bullshit I'm talkin' about.
I'll be watching CNBC, keeping abreast of the financial news, when my favorite insane financial pundit comes on his show, criticizing the Federal Reserve for failing to cut interest rates at the appropriate times, causing the economy to flounder, causing an already crippled housing market to continue teetering on the brink of destruction, and causing thousands of people to lose their new homes because mortgage rates are skyrocketing. The Federal Reserve, which answers to no one, has no system of checks and balances, and sits idly by while the once-great American economy slowly dives to earth, digs a trench, and takes root in a recession. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Fed, who wouldn't know his ass from his hand if one didn't have to wipe the other.
That's that bullshit I'm talkin' about.
An American political system which, when we should be concerned about issues such as The War, economic stability, immigration, and America steadily losing our respect and honor around the world, instead makes headlines when non-racist remarks are interpreted as such, or when campaign finance becomes the biggest factor in determining our next leader. Americans with half a brain left (not many of us, anymore) are left to shake our heads at the state of our once-great union, asking a political machine that hasn't listened for a long time, “Is this the best our country has to offer? Out of the hundreds of millions of Americans… is this really all we've got?”
That's that bullshit I'm talking about.
A society where child molesters get paroled, murderers get time off for good behavior, and protesting the funerals of soldiers who gave their lives in Iraq is sanctioned by the laws of the country they died serving.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is that bullshit I'm talkin' about.