Oh, you gotta love Wal-Mart. I know I do. After all, the smell — it’s the same in every store, trust me, The Bitch has done her research — is addictive, kind of like the secret 361 unpronounceable ingredients in every Happy Meal that keep you coming back for more. That smell wafts out through the auto-opening doors (because, ya know, we’re too lazy to actually pull open a door ourselves and instead will LINE UP behind the automatic doors to get inside with the least amount of effort possible), hitting you with a hot, oppressive wave of low expectation. The smell of Wal-Mart reeks with the stench of failure and hopelessness. Like an Atlantic City casino, except with more lighting.

And the people of Wal-Mart, well they’re just all kinds of awesome. Take Robert Stephens, for example (he’s the friendly-looking dude in the photo — charming, isn’t he?), the 61-year old guy who just had it with someone else’s crying toddler in a Georgia Wal-Mart, threatened to shut her up, then later delivered four or five whacks to ensure that she did.

Astoundingly (or maybe not, because people suck), some people are calling for a variety of actions:

1. KILL THE DUDE! STRING HIM UP BY HIS BALLS!

2. What kind of parent lets her kid scream in a Wal-Mart, for chrissakes? Go after the mom, it’s clearly her fault!

3. The race thing (eye roll, because you know this guy would have slapped a crying baby giraffe — let alone a kid ‚ black or white — but it happened in Georgia, after all, and since when does Georgia think it’s a crime to whack a little black kid?).

4. Can’t even comment on this, but the title (“Older Gentleman Politely Slaps Stranger’s Crying Baby at Walmart”) and the name of the blog (Christwire.org: Conservative Values for an Unsaved World) are not only big hints but also serve as their own punch lines. WTF?

Last year I had the pleasure to be on an airplane to somewhere. In the back. You know, in steerage. Where the seatback in front of you touches your knees and where you are breathing the person six seats away from you and where the permanent odor of airplane fuel makes your head pound and where you suddenly have an understanding of what it’s like being a cow on a cattle care bound for slaughter and you decide to become a vegetarian on the spot, that is, if you make it out alive. And there was a kid just in front of me. Who screamed. For two hours. His mother, clearly having already lost the power of hearing from having six months before jabbed a fork into her temple thus bursting her eardrum and rendering her into blessed silence, ignored him entirely. He beat his little fists on her, raised the window shade up and down and up and down, and poked his grubby little hand between the seats at me. While screaming.

I sent him psychic darts to explode his little brain and render him unconscious.

As we began our descent, the screamer fell asleep. The entire steerage section relaxed as one. The sky looked bluer. The air smelled less like body odor and the disinfectant used in the toilets. All was well.

And then the little fiend woke up. And started screaming again. And people started looking around for objects — blunt, sharp, whatever — with which to commit seppuku.

I blame the mother. Clearly, she had given up. She let this little tyrant rule not only her, but an entire airplane full of people. It’s not hard to keep a kid occupied on a flight, unless the kid is sick, in which case there’s duct tape and drugs. And if it’s not manipulation and is just a case of not caring about the kid, why not sell him? All sorts of people want to buy kids these days.

I blame the flight attendants. Give the kid a coloring book, or cheap plastic wings to poke his eye out with or something. Make the airplane land in Kansas City and have everyone deplane. Deploy the tranquilizer blow dart gun. Something. But ignoring a screaming kid is ignoring the other 200 passengers.

I blame the kid. Because it’s not that enjoyable to scream for two hours unless you’re paying someone to make you do it. Find something else to do.

I blame the passengers. Not me, of course — I was sending psychic darts, remember? But people look away when there’s a problem. Look away enough and some whack-job like Mr. Wal-Mart Slappy gets involved, and then there’s trouble.

Which brings me back to the Wal-Mart whack-job. Lots of all up-in-yo-face mommas are leavin’ comments all up in yo ass like “If he tried that with my kid I WOULD HAVE KICKED HIS BALLS UP INTO HIS ASS,” and “I would put the beat down on him,” and “He’d be on his way to the morgue if he even flicked a finger at my child.” Way to go, people! Like hitting the old guy is a solution. About as good a solution as hitting the screaming kid was. I’ll bet I know how you handle the discipline at your house!

No, that’s not the answer. But The Bitch has an answer. You want the Short-Term Solution or the Long-Term Solution?

Fine, you can’t decide. I’m feeling generous so you can have them both.

Short-Term Solution for Screaming Wal-Mart Kids

Leave the store. How badly did you need that beef jerky and those Chee-tos, anyway? Also, earplugs. Or, hello, examine why you shop there to begin with. I mean, look deep into your soul and say, “Wal-Mart, how much do I need your soul-sucking presence in my life?”

Long-Term Solution for Screaming Wal-Mart Kids

Once everyone is inside, seal the doors. Identify all the kids. Sedate and tag them with an invisible chip that injects a small amount of a nerve agent that causes temporary paralysis whenever a certain decibel level is reached. Erase the parents’ memories and implant in their brains the ability to parent with the least amount of stupidity possible (results vary). Then, implant a chip inside each employee that causes them, on the store’s anniversary, to appear on the front steps of the Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters and to sing “Feelings” until every employee is paid a fair wage and receives health benefits.

Gives Wal-Mart’s slogan, “Save money. Live better,” a whole new meaning.

Ah, 1997. Remember Teh Internets back then*? Prodigy. AOL. Dial-up! The height of technology was the Hamster Dance, one of a horrific endless plague of cute little tiny animated GIFs. Remember them? Those little suckers were everywhere, at least until somebody discovered they cause the mass repeated application of a fork to the eyeball.

Ow.

But 1997 was the year The Bitch discovered the concept of Ascension. That’s right, Ascension! It’s The Rapture, except with patchouli! What, you’re unfamiliar with The Rapture? Not to be confused with the raptor (although they’re alarmingly similar and both involve lizards!), The Rapture is the concept that Jaysus is returning amid the noise of a zillion celestial trumpets, and when He does he’s taking a bunch of deserving folks with him, beaming them right up into heaven from their cars on the freeway or from digging in their fridges for a midnight snack or from whatever other clean and holy daily activity (not sex) the 144,000 super-special Chosen might be engaged in.

You just can’t make this stuff up. People believe this.

But hello, the New Age has sprouted its own can of woo-woo. So let’s talk about the Year 2012, shall we? People pay good money to hear The Bitch talk about this stuff all the time. Here’s what she has to deal with:

1. The Mayan Calendar ends! In 2012! OMG!

2. And look! The solstice! DECEMBER FREAKING 21st — THAT CAN’T BE A COINCIDENCE! THE WORLD IS FUCKING ENDING!!!!!!!!!!

3. Those Mayans, they were onto something! So! Freaking! Wise! They predicted the internet!

Back in 1997, the year 2012 seemed a million zillion years away. It was safe to scoff. And The Bitch was sitting there hunched over her dusky purple Sony Vaio PC, madly Googling (Google didn’t exist yet but whatever, The Bitch cleverly thwarted this problem by 1) knowing the future and 2) using the simultaneous nature of time to simply transport herself ahead a few years to 2006 by when Google The Trusty Search Engine That Could had become Google The Omniscient and All-Powerful, and 3) the Vulcan Mind Meld) the word “ascension” and coming up with things like “Ascended Masters.”

Woo-woo alert.

This is a test. This is only a test. If this had been an actual case of woo-woo, the signal you just heard would be followed by instructions telling you how to access the 5th Dimension and to dematerialize your body into its crystalline form.

Oooo, Ascended Masters? Just so you get this straight, there is no concept of “up” or “better” when it comes to human spiritual evolution. In fact, using the word “evolution” implies that there’s some sort of linear action going on. Humans learning lessons and advancing to the next class in the next lifetime. And while that’s a semi-useful analogy that allows people to grasp the fact that HEY PEOPLE, LIFE IS ABOUT HAVING EXPERIENCES AND MAYBE LEARNING FROM THEM, the whole thing of “older is better” is a load of crap. Old soul? Sounds awesome, right? Old souls are, like, enlightened, right? Not fucked up. They meditate every day. They’re so pure! OMG I EVEN TOUCHED THE HAND OF AN OLD SOUL, I’M HEALED!!!!

(However, I’m just better than you, let’s face it.)

So, What Up, Bitch? What about the ascension thing? People want to know! And is the world ending or not? Because I need to know whether these tightie whities I just bought are gonna last me for the duration or if it’s safe to buy some new ones between now and 2012, you know what I mean? (Men buy less underwear during a recession, you just can’t make this stuff up, people!)

So here’s the deal.

Humans, we are a-changing. You think evolution was a thing to get us to HERE and then stop? Why, how egotistical of you! Can’t you imagine something DIFFERENT or maybe even BETTER, genetically-speaking, than what greets you in the mirror every morning? (The Bitch sure can, she’s SEEN your ass in the mornings, and it is NOT PRETTY) So yeah. DNA and all. It’s changing, ever so slightly, all the time. Into what is your best guess but The Bitch votes for the power of flight. Also the elimination of farting (hey, if you’re going to dream, you might as well dream big) and maybe also grammatical errors, although without those The Bitch will have one thing fewer to mock people about, so we may be rethinking our Evolutionary Wish List.

2012 is just a year, sort of. Hello, who came up with this year-numbering thing, anyway? Oh, oops, the Chinese don’t use the same number format, do they? Also the Hebrews. Is their world ending in a different year? Or not at all? So numbering is arbitrary. In fact, almost any time you come across numbers (unless it’s The Bitch’s bank account and you are making a large deposit of small unnumbered bills), they’re arbitrary.

And 2012? It’s sort of a tipping point. A marker. You can look back 100 years afterward (providing you’re still alive then, which hello, looks unlikely) and say, “Oh yeah, looks like things changed. Huh.”)

You’re creating the world we live in. (NOTE: The Bitch did NOT say “you create your own reality.” Here’s why.) So we agree the life is changing. People are changing (if you want to say “evolving,” fine, I won’t stop you, but let’s agree that what we really mean here is learning how not to pick our noses, or at least how to pick them without getting caught doing it, not that “evolving” means anything remotely special unless you figured out the flying thing). We agree on that. And since we’re changing, and the world is changing too, why not agree to change it in a way that’s meaningful to all of us? More porn? Why sure, and thank you! (Oh, we figured that one out already. Fine, go on to the next one.) Holding hands and singing Kum-bay-yah? Uh, okay, but is that really the world you want to create? I’ll pass on that, thanks. But give me a world where people feel connected to who they are, and can communicate without using fucking guns or bombs to do it, and that’s a start.

But let go of the 2012 thing.

*Fast forward to 1:00; you’ll thank me.