The Point of the Story

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Month: September 2020

The Earthling’s Guide To Social Gambling

27 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

Oh, man. You’re going to be so ----- rich.

My mom has 11 grandchildren. Of those, the first two cousins missed being born exactly one year apart by less than one day.

Over two decades later, the Boss Lady went into labor with our first daughter (aka “the Elder”) late in the evening two days before the first of these two birthdays. Making the obvious assumption that the Elder would subsequently be delivered within 24 hours, I was all nerding out over the fact that Mom would have grandchildren with birthdays on 3 consecutive days. You know, like some sort of Grandkid Birthday Bingo or what-not.

Well, that rascal took 36 hours to show up, so instead of getting a Bingo, Mom finally got that pair of Birthday Twins she had just missed out on 21 years prior. Oh, right…what are Birthday Twins, you ask? Well, they’re simple two non-twins who share the same birthday.1Typically the birth year is ignored.

I suspect Birthday Twins, like phantom flatulence, must run in our family.2Two of my sisters are for-realz twins, FWIW. When I was in high school in Podunkville, Kansas, there were somewhere between 15-17 of us in my entire class. Yet, somehow within that small group, I was privileged to be a B-Twin myself. Even better, we not only shared the same birth-year (obviously), but we even had the same first name, LOL. What are the odds?!?

Seriously, though: what are the odds?

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll stick with the basic case of celebrating your birthday the same day of the year as someone else. Examining the odds of having the same name and birth-year, as in my case, is, as the academics say, “Beyond the scope of this text.”

I was introduced to this so-called “Birthday Problem”3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem on the first day of my philosophy class in college, and have been infatuated with it every since. This is actually one of the more well-known examples of how, by default, we humans are pretty dang terrible at estimating probabilities and assessing risks. And it all stems from fairly innocent-looking question: “For a group with a certain number of people in it, what are the odds that two people share the same birthday?”

But I say we should, as a shady character might say “make things interesting”–let’s put some hypothetical money on the line.

Say you’re a well-travelled social butterfly with a gambling addiction, living in the times before COVID-19. You attend many parties and gatherings all throughout the year, of all different sizes.

Feeling the irresistible urge to feed your habit, you need to find a sure-fire way to make bets without ending up in the Poor House. Enter the Birthday Problem–which, by the way, is actually a pretty great icebreaker at social gatherings in real life.

You know that since you go to so many parties, you can always put money on two people having the same birthday any time the probability of that being true is at least 50% or above, and bet against it otherwise. Over many parties and many wagers you’re statistically guaranteed to come out on top.

As long as you know roughly how many people are at the party, you can be confident whether those odds are above 50% or not.

Actually, the question that you need to answer is simpler than that: “How many party peoples need there be present to have at least a 50% chance of finding a pair of B-Twins amongst them?”

That’s right: one number. You don’t to memorize any fancy formulas and calculate them in your head in real time. You only need to know one number to guide your foolproof betting scheme.

Oh, man. You’re going to be so ----- rich.

Now, let’s run the numbers…

Bear with me, as I’m doing this from memory, instead of being smart and just googling it. FYI, my probabilities run between 0 (ain’t happening, ever) to 1 (it’s a certified irrefutable fact), which translates to 0%-100% in everyday-speak.

The key to this is asking the right questions. The first questions is: what are the odds 2 people don’t have the same birthday? Then you only need to subtract that number from 1 to get the probability that they do. So:

Pyep(pp) = 1 - Pnope(pp),

where Pyep is the probability that “yep, we got a pair of B-Twins up in heeeer,” while Pnope is the probability that “nope, they all be a bunch of unique snow-flakes in these parts,” and both of these are functions of pp, the number of Party Peoples present.

This one is pretty simple. The first person can lay claim to 1 out of the 365 days in a regular year, leaving 364 days that the other person can have without them making a pair.

So we have:

Pnope = (364/365) ~ 0.99726 (99.726 %), for pp = 2

This puts Pyep at 0.274%–roughly a quarter of 1%.

Now bring in another person. Two days of the year have already been claimed, leaving 363 days for the third person. This probability needs to be multiplied by the probability that the first two people didn’t have the same birthday:

Pnope = (364/365)*(363/365) ~ 0.9918 (99.18 %), for pp = 3

At this point Pyep almost quadruples to 0.82%, so we can see that this isn’t linear. Why is it important that it is not linear? Because linear usually == intuition. Intuitively, humans are pretty good at linear extrapolation: “Oh, housing prices have gone up steadily over the last 5 years; no doubt that will go up by the same amount over the next 5 years!” (Note: this intuition would typically be wrong; see 2008.)

And so it goes: with each new person, the number on top decreases by 1 day, and that fraction is multiplied by the previous Pnope. At this point I’m going to cheat and use a screenshot from Wikipedia4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem to show you the general equation:

Figure 1: A more general formula for what I call Pnope.

It may look kinda scary, but don’t worry: we don’t have to do this by hand or in our head. It’s not that bad if you have a good calculator or math software. To that point, I took the liberty of plotting it for you in MATLAB:

Figure 2: Odds of finding Birthday Twins, as a function of Party Peoples.

TWENTY-THREE PARTY PEOPLES. Not only is that going to be the name of my next band, but it is also the answer to your poverty problems. Twenty-two party peoples or less? Bet against Birthday Twins. Twenty-three party peoples or more? Bet on there being at least 1 pair in the crowd.

That’s all you need to know!

The point of the story is that if you can accept that your intuition might not always be right–and you know how to ask the right questions–you’re going to be rich.

Oh, man, you’re going to be so ----- rich.

Content created on: 10/25 September 2020 (Thurs/Fri)

Footnotes & References:[+]

No-Shit Sherlock’s Mystery Of The Disappearing Fingers, Act 3

24 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
3 Min Read

“This too, shall pass.”

Oh shit, did I just come up with the perfect motivational poster for bathrooms?!?

Previously on NSSMOTDF, Act 2: What’s Up Doc?…

“S’pose I better double-check and make sure that there isn’t anything more serious at play here, like, say, a tumor…”

*snaps glove a bit too enthusiastically*

Doctor about to perform a Thorough Digital Analog exam

Act III: Following In His Footsteps

To put it succinctly, the week around Labor Day 2019 was a rather emotionally intense time for me. Everybody’s Favorite Blog had just gone live, and I was grappling with my impending internet fame (or lack thereof) which is quite a trip when you lean heavy to the introvert side of the social spectrum.

Trying to get my mother on a plane to California for her granddaughter’s once-in-a-lifetime event was such an utter and complete clusterfuck that that fiasco warrants a 3-part series on its own. For today’s purposes, you just need to get the drift that it was pretty ----- stressful.

And then the icing on the cake was that just about everyone in our household caught a fun-times virus that would make you vomit exactly every 30 minutes for exactly 8 non-stop hours. Did I mention we have 2 young children in our household?

But something much deeper than all these “This too, shall pass” type of worries was a’brewing…

Deeper in my bowels, that is!

To spare all y’all the glorious details, suffice it to say that my body must have decided to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original No-Shit Sherlock saga that you recently read about,1Just in case you hadn’t click here for Act 1 and here for Act 2. and I found myself with some seemingly inexplicable digestive “irregularities.”

Typically such [fecal] matters wouldn’t be such a drain on one’s spirit, but I had some reasons to strongly suspect that some non-pooping related organs might be physically interfering with me taking care of normal human business, per se.

To understand the danger this thought posed to my emotional well-being, it is critical to remember that that Labor Day portended the 12th anniversary of my father’s passing.2As I recently alluded to in the Racist Ventriloquist and Dying Rancher posts. While he ultimately succumbed to a combination of pneumonia and lung cancer, the first step towards his relatively early demise had all begun years earlier when he he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

If you’ve lost a close loved one, it is not uncommon to find yourself in an existential funk every year when the season of their passing rolls around on the calendar. Not one to ever be an exception, I was already in that frame of mind before all this shit started happening–or not happening, as the case was.

So, with the inevitable fate faced by every member of humanity already simmering somewhere in the back of my mind, you can only imagine where my train of logic raced off to once the idea popped into my head that I might literally be following in my father’s footsteps towards Death’s door.

Making this all even more intense was that I found myself wrestling with my own mortality all alone, on account of the Boss Lady never really having liked my regular3Yes, that was indeed a bowel movement-themed pun. attempts to discuss my, um…”solid waste management” throughout the course of our marriage. You know, that makes it kinda hard to have a heartfelt conversation when “I can’t poop” is a critical plot point leading up to the denouncement of “I think I might be ----- dying” and all.

You don’t know how many September evenings I just laid next to my dozing-off-to-sleep daughters, hugging them tight with a tear in my eye, wondering if I was destined to haunt them with the smell of my farts.

Oh, you may think I’m joking, but I swear that I’ve smelled the Ghost of Bob J. in the bathroom with me on multiple occasions. I know it’s not the point of the story, but I can’t help but wonder if phantom flatulence runs in the family…

“Well…so did you die or not?” you may be muttering to your computer screen right now. “DON’T LEAVE ME HANGING LIKE A CHAD!” you are indubitably screaming right now, out loud and/or in your head.

Welp, you’re just going to have to tune in next week (or, if you’re from the future, click here) to find out whether or not I’ve actually figured out how to blog from the Great Beyond…

Content created on: 23 September 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Dying Rancher Only Wants To Be Put Out To Pasture

20 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

We’re all going to die.

Some way, somehow, there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to happen to you someday. So we all might as well buck up and try to gain a healthy perspective on it.

Oh, maybe I’m being a bit presumptuous when I just assume you don’t have a tenable relationship with your inevitable demise.

After all, many cultures and religions world wide understand that it’s all part of the Circle of Life (thanks, Disney’s The Lion King!). Nevertheless, in modern Western society, death is all too often bandied about as a weapon of fear. And that’s part of the reason why I am here today.

There are two deaths in particular that stick in the gullet of my memory–one of a distant acquaintance, and the most personal one to me yet, that of my father, the beloved Bob J.

Out of respect for the life of the former, I won’t use his real name, I’ll just call him Superman instead.1Those of you who knew the man in question will get the reference, though it’s not meant to be humorous in the least. Superman was a respected member and leader of a community I was once part of, and was in his 60s with a life full of love and service under his belt.

A few years ago, he tragically went missing on his anniversary, only to be found a few days later in a nearby state park, dead, with his neck…tightened “under his belt.”

Plans for a community-wide memorial service celebrating his life were abruptly cancelled shortly after his body was discovered. It wasn’t long before it became clear why his family would make such an odd choice, given that he was literally loved by just about everyone that was even remotely acquainted with him (present company included).

Him going missing and subsequent passing was a pretty big deal in the local news media, so when his body was found, there was a certain sense of duty to publicly disclose the circumstances of his death. A sad choice, as those details were better left unsaid.

Let’s just say that those circumstances were less than flattering. Suffice it to say, he went behind his family’s back and got himself in a compromising position that went sideways. The result being him suffering an unspeakable death at the hands of another–but with his own belt, no less–and his body left to the wild animals.

I’m leaving out many details partly because they are simply sordid, and were incredibly devastating to his family and other loved ones upon learning. It was probably one of the worst ways to find out about the skeletons in a family member’s closet.

In the end, a worthy and noble life dedicated to loving others was lost in the long shadow cast by the indignity of the death which ended it.

When my dad passed, he not only lost his battle with cancer and pneumonia, but he simultaneously lost his lifelong battle with agriculture. He had spent the majority of his life as a farmer, trying to build something of a future for his family. However, having a bipolar disorder go undiagnosed until he was almost 60 largely undermined his efforts, and he literally “lost the farm” right around the time he should have been thinking about retirement instead.

Though he fought to make a living until the very end, it all eventually caught up to him. In particular, his living circumstances in the few weeks leading up to his final admission to the hospital were in no way a befitting reward for the life full of hard work which he had put in.

In a word, it was heartbreaking.

Shortly after his death, a sibling confidentially related a story to me that opened my eyes to just how humbling his last month on this earth was. The image is so heart-wrenching for me, in fact, that I keep it largely suppressed, and it is notable that I’m even partially acknowledging it here.

All I can really say is that he deserved so much better.

While ultimately he was fortunate enough to be surrounded by a wife and six of his seven kids when he finally ground his teeth one last time and gave up the ghost, the knowledge of how his last days were spent is what has haunted me.

Without going down a complete rabbit-hole, what you need to know is that after much thought I came to an interesting conclusion. When I think of all that a society could be–i.e. “What does my version of Utopia look like?”–I would argue that a fundamental right that would be guaranteed to each citizen is the right to die on their own terms.

What does this look like? Well it could look like a lot of different things.

Some may want to go out, surrounded by their adult kids fighting over a handsome inheritance.2I heard this somewhere, but can’t find who said it. I thought it was Adam Carolla, FWIW.

Others may want their last memory to be of holding the hand of the love of their lifetime.

I can imagine that many would like to leave this earth, knowing the ones they care about are in good hands, spiritually, financially or otherwise.

For my dad, his final request was to go see his cows one last time–he literally wanted to be “put out to pasture” (in the end the doctor denied this request, which, no pun intended–I thought was complete bullshit).

You get the idea, right? The sky is limitless on this one…as is the rabbit-hole is bottomless, so I’ll just leave it up to you what this might look like in your case.

I once heard that there are two particular events that largely dictate how you feel when you think back on a specific period of your life. I looked it up, and as it happens, I was thinking of what’s known as Peak-End Theory. Allow me to allow someone else summarize the essence of this idea for you:3https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-peak-end-theory/

It seems that our memories of positive and negative experiences are dependent upon two things: what we were feeling at the most extreme (peak) point and how the experience ended. 

Karen Doll, Psy.D., L.P., via positivepsychology.com

The point of the story is simply this: the death we die is almost as important as the life we have lived.

This is particularly important to remember as we’re in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. You may hear arguments that COVID-related deaths are not that big of a deal, largely because many of the people who are dying are those who would have probably died from other causes within the next 5 years otherwise (or something to that effect). They have had their turn at a long and fruitful life, so the loss of a year or two in the twilight years should be taken in stride.

And there is some truth to this, as death is an inevitable and natural part of the human experience, especially when you get past a certain age. People dying is simply part of the business of being alive. If I’ve already said this, I’m gonna go ahead and say it again: “We’re all going to die [sometime].”4I should note that people who subscribe to such alternate theories as “The Rapture” and “An Inevitable and Impending Singularity” might disagree with the absolutist nature of this assertion.

But what these sick ----- are conveniently omitting is the fact that so, so many of these people die in complete isolation, deprived of the privilege of spending their final moments with the ones they love. Even the luckier ones are usually stuck with FaceTiming their loved ones there at the end.

Those are moments that neither the living nor the dead will get back.

So if you’re tempted to think that maybe the best course of action is to largely just let COVID run its course through cluster after cluster of our elderly population,5Not to mention the smaller yet still significant non-elderly population that succumbs to it. I mourn for you when it comes for your parent and you’re forced to watch them suffer the loneliest of ways to leave this planet.

Just imagine it was your father, suffering the greatest indignity imaginable for a dying rancher: having to sit through a Zoom meeting…with his cows.6Alternate Ending: “They gave us life; the least we can give them is a death worthy of the best of who they were.” I probably should have stuck with that one…

Oh, the Humanity!7Forgive me for awkwardly trying to lighten the mood here at the end.

Content created on: 18 June & 19 September 2020 (Thurs/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

No-Shit Sherlock’s Mystery Of The Disappearing Fingers, Act 2

17 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
2 Min Read

“Hey doc, whatchya gonna do with that tube of gel?”

Sometimes, you find yourself asking a question that you really wish you didn’t already know the answer to…

Previously on NSSMOTDF, Act I: The Setup…

…and, boy, was my ass tired…

Guy who Accidentally Added A 22-Mile Detour to His 3-mile Bike Ride

Act II: What’s Up Doc?

No, literally, my ass was tired. And real sore. Little did I know that my Tour de Middle of Nowhere was going to cost me the ability to poop for an indefinite amount of time.

I kid you not, I could not give a shit for the life of me. It sounds funny now, 21 years later, but having food go in one end of you but never come out the other end for weeks on end can cause some serious mental distress.

To make things worse, I lived in the dorms, so all my, uh, “efforts” to defecate weren’t exactly private. My futile attempts at producing even the slightest of turds usually only resulted in a staccato of high-pitched poots echoing loudly throughout our common bathroom.

And there was this one guy from Ecuador who found it particularly humorous. On multiple occasions when he would see me come out of the stall (and later in the hall) he would make a comment in between laughs in his slightly imperfect English: “Ha ha. You sound like a machine gun: dat-dat-dat-dat-dat!”

What an asshole.

After 3 weeks of being backed up, I finally caved in and went to the student health clinic, where the doc eventually came to the conclusion that my 3+ hours on my bike seat must have temporally damaged some important pooing-related nerves in my, uh, how you say “undercarriage.” He figured mineral oil would get me back on track and I should be just fine.

But before he let me go, he decided he needed to double check and make sure that there wasn’t anything more serious at play here, like, say, a tumor.

And, yada, yada, ya, that was the first time getting a finger stuck up my ass.

The point of the story is, with proper consent, a finger up the ol’ butthole isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Oh, and always take the time to read your dang map.

Now, if only I had a time machine, I know somebody who desperately needs to hear at least one of those two messages….

“But wait!” you say, “Isn’t this supposed to be the Mystery of the Disappearing Fingers? So far, by my count only one finger has gone missing in somebody’s rectum1…damn near killed ’em!…wait a minute…no, no. No. It can’t be.

Surely you wouldn’t have a Third Act…would you?”

Content created on: 10 September 2020 (Thursday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

The One Weird Trick That Will Make You A Racist Ventriloquist Overnight

13 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
4 Min Read

“Man, your brother’s friend is racist. Like really racist.”

Oh, Douglas, what have you done now?

A few days before Labor Day 2007, I got The Call that everyone dreads. My dad, who had been in the hospital in Kansas with lung cancer and pneumonia, wasn’t expected to pull through; I officially needed to haul ass back ASAP if I wanted to say my goodbyes.

My brother that you’re probably most familiar with, One Skinny J (1SJ), lived about 3 hours from me in Virginia, so we had planned on flying out together from RDU as soon as he could make it down here.

So the day before Labor Day, his buddy Doug drove him down to NC. After crashing at my bachelor pad, Doug took us to the airport bright and early around 4:30 the next morning.

Well, things with Dad and the family took longer than expected,1Yes, that should be interpreted in the saddest and heart-breaking way you can imagine. and 1SJ and I ended up staying in Kansas for 2 1/2 weeks before flying back. Even though it had only been 17 days, as you can imagine it seemed like an eternity since I had been in my own bed.

For the return trip, Doug had come straight down from Virginia, picked up 1SJ, and headed straight back. Though I only saw him for a brief moment at the airport, I made sure to thank him for helping us out in our time of grief. He had been a true friend, indeed–a man of unquestionable character, even! At least in my book…

At the time, I was living with two of my friends from my church. Now, not to brag about my [ill-advised] Race-Relations Resume (TM),2Okay, so this actually two separate references. The (TM) was a well-worn inside joke between me and one of the roommates. The Resume was hinted at in I Am White And Here To Be Incredibly White. but we were so ethnically diverse that I was actually the token white guy. Chicken Dinner,3Obviously not his real name. my best friend/partner in crime at the time, was full-blooded Vietnamese, while “Oliver”–more of Chicken Dinner’s friend than mine–was full-blooded American.

And Black. Oliver was Black.

Anyways, Chicken Dinner and I had a lot of catching up to do, especially the part where while I was gone I had decided to propose to the girl I had been dating4Yes, I indeed speak of the once and future Boss Lady. for a full 6 days before I got on that plane to Kansas.

But before I could get to that, he randomly brings up Doug, who he had spent a whole 15 minutes with when he had stayed the night at our place. And he comes out with the charges of blatant racism full force.

“I think you should know that Doug is like, super-racist.”

Well, this conversation took a rather unexpected turn…

“Really?!?” I was almost flabbergasted at the confidence in his statement.

“I mean, sure, Doug is a bit of a white country boy, but then again, so am I,” I continued. “Seriously, what in the ----- are you talking about?”

“Yeah, he threw Oliver’s toothpaste in the trash that night he stayed here. I mean, it was kind of an odd way to express his racism, but hey, at least he gets points for creativity, trashing the Black man’s toiletries, right?”

Oh. My. ----- This shit absolutely made my day. I howled in laughter for A good 5 minutes, desperately trying to catch my breath.

When I finally composed myself enough to form coherent sentences, I explained to Chicken Dinner that no, Doug had not been busy workshopping new forms of micro-aggressions on our unsuspecting roommate of color–it was me! Poor Doug, getting falsely accused of such a heinous act!

No, what had really happened was almost a plotline straight out of NBC’s hit Nineties sitcom Seinfeld. The morning before we flew out we were running late, so I had been in a real rush to get out the door. In the bathroom we all shared, the toiletry cabinet was situated directly above the toilet, and in an unfortunate series of events, I had managed to bump Oliver’s tube of toothpaste just enough to tip it over.

Well, gravity took it from there, and my reflexes weren’t quite quick enough to catch it before it went splashing into the toilet bowl with a dramatic “PLOP!”

Shit. Neither of the roomies were awake yet, and I was really late, so I had no easy way to warn Oliver of his toothpaste’s questionable history before he would indubitably brush his teeth a few hours later (I didn’t have a cell phone at the time, FYI).

Seriously, I had no other choice but to throw it away and figure out a way to let him know what happened when I got the chance. I simply could not live with myself if I had let him use it after its little trip to the potty.

As you can imagine, I totally forget to let one of them know before it completely slipped my mind. Until this conversation that is…

After hearing my alternate theory of what had happened, Chicken Dinner paused for a moment before busting out laughing.

“What’s so funny now?” I inquired suspiciously.

“You know Oliver wasn’t about to let that toothpaste go to waste, so of course he fished it out of the trash. He’s as been using that shitty toothpaste the whole time you’ve been gone!”

Le ooops.

Content created on: 9 September 2020 (Wednesday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

No-Shit Sherlock’s Mystery Of The Disappearing Fingers, Act 1

10 September 2020 / / 1 Comment
2 Min Read

“Nebraska…I’m pretty sure you didn’t plan on biking to Nebraska when you woke up this morning.”

I was lost, and the last thing I needed was some sass from a road sign…

Act I: The Set-Up

By the time Labor Day 1999 rolled around, I had been a Freshman at Kansas State for a whopping 2 weeks and had made only a handful friends. Of those few friends that I had managed to make, every last one of them returned to their respective hometowns for the long weekend.

Given that my hometown of Rolla is literally the second-furthest Kansan town from Manhattan (KS, where K-State is), driving 11 hours in one weekend to guaranteed boredom never even occurred to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the memo that every other college student was getting the ----- out of Dodge,1Fun fact: yet another town in Kansas. so that Saturday morning I woke up to a ghost town and nothing to do.

At that time I was passionate about two things: dying my hair obscene colors and exploring my new world on my $100 Walmart mountain bike. I decided that my hair was starting to look a bit too natural, so first thing I did was make an appointment to get my hair trimmed and subsequently dyed half bright red and half bright blue.

That took up way less time than I had hoped, so around 2 that afternoon I found myself with plenty of time mercilessly to slaughter. Just a couple of miles outside Manhattan is Tuttle Creek Dam & Reservoir, so I thought why the heck don’t I hop on my bike and go check it out.

I had a general idea of where how to get there, and I figured that there would be more than enough road signage for me to find it without exact directions. I mean, it’s a dam towering over our town–it’s not exactly hidden.

Well, after piddling along for what seemed to be over an hour, I was certain that I should be coming up on a sign saying “Tuttle Creek This Way ->” any moment, so I kept forging ahead. Another good chunk of time passed and still nothing? Then I was starting to suspect that maybe–just maybe–I had missed my turn.

I was rather disappointed when I came to an intersection with another small highway, and in one direction the sign read “Riley, 4 miles” and in the other it said “Nebraska, I’m pretty sure you didn’t plan on biking to Nebraska when you woke up this morning.”

Confused that after all that I still hadn’t seen any signs of Tuttle Creek, I started to realize that the day was waning and since I was probably 5 miles from town, I was going to have to give up and head back from whence I came. I turned around and started to peddle home, when I almost immediately came across the mileage sign: “Manhattan, 13.”

Wait, what? THIRTEEN MILES. Oh, jeez, I had wandered in the wilderness more than I had realized. Welp, it was a good thing I decided to turn back then instead of going even further.

About a mile before I got back to Manhattan, I came across yet another sign, “<-Tuttle Creek Dam, 1 mile this way.”

Oh, ----- a mother. I guess had slightly overshot my destination, wouldn’t you say?

And, boy, was my ass tired…

What? You think this is merely a tale of a missed turn? Oh, just you wait…(until next week, that is!)

Content created on: 10 September 2020 (Thursday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Kaptain Kimchi Makes The Case For Social Responsibility

6 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

“I hope there is a special extra-toasty, extra-pointy anus-bound-pitchfork place in hell for them.”

Whoa, that really took at turn there…

Okay, so today’s carefully-crafted thoughts are an extension of last week’s long overdue update of The Prissy Pet Project. If you need to get caught up on the glorious details of the whole project, you can check it out here.

If you don’t have time to go back to last week’s post, the relevant detail is that Amazon essentially blew up my internet kimchi business plans when they drastically cut the commission I–or any other so-called Amazon Associate–would earn by sending them customers. Like, a HUGE cut–5% down to 1%!

Unbeknownst to me, this happened back in April, at the beginning of COVID quarantine. Why did I have no clue Amazon was being huge Amazon-holes to us Associates? Because I was taking a break from the kimchi biz while I focused on more important things.

Now you can consider yourself contextualized for the two thoughts I’ve had in response to this particular situation…

Fortunate. I should consider myself fortunate, actually.

Why? Because I had invested a relatively minimal amount of time/energy/money in this project. Further, I’m not dependent on that income to pay any bills or other financial obligations.

So the fact that I got side-tracked by technical difficulties and quarantining turned out be a blessing in disguise, sparing me from the heartache of building up the business, only to have it demolished literally overnight.

Now, one critical thing about working on Be-My-Own-Boss projects is identifying assumptions that are likely to hold up in the longer term. And you know what has blown the ----- out of so many normally reliable assumptions? ----- COVID.

Slow-walking or abandoning other such projects that were under consideration has actually allowed me to dodge multiple COVID bullets. This list represents the a notable proportion of my pre-COVID candidates for income-producing projects:

  • Purchasing a property to rent on AirBnB? I’ve heard horror stories of people with those extra mortgages, finding themselves having to come up with thousands of dollars out of their pockets when all of a sudden they can’t rent their properties for months on end.
  • Brokering tickets to various events? Thank ----- the Boss Lady convinced me to drop this side hustle last year! It makes me sick to think that I could have been stuck refunding thousands of dollars in tickets when everything got cancelled. And it would have been 10x worse being a small-fry middleman…
  • Amazon Associate-centric businesses? Thanks to COVID and quarantining, Amazon no longer has any real incentive to fairly compensate Associates for the value they add. That, and they don’t really need the Associates to drive in customers, since everybody in America is an Amazon customer by default now.

I know my lack of progress on building passive income may seem disappointing, but in the end my family has been way better off because of it. To the tune of TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars!

Who says there isn’t a method to my madness?

Let’s back up a second to those poor souls that had much of their assets and income tied to being Amazon Associates. For example, I watched a video on YouTube of one very pissed off Russian internet entrepreneur–oh, you know what, just let me share it here because I thought it was humorous just listening to his bombastic style of speaking:

Anyways, buried in that video, he implies that he had an income-producing blog worth ~$36,000 that he was getting ready to sell when this shit-show went down. Overnight, without warning–poof! About $29k just vanished.

Yeah, I would be pissed, too.

Amazon Associate shenanigans is not just “a dollar here and a dollar there”–it’s serious business. Or at least was.

But no, Amazon had to go and prove unequivocally true your suspicions that they be evil af.

And the worst part of this is the context: the worst economic downturn we’ve seen in a lifetime or two. Household after household are now finding themselves doing every last thing they can to try to keep their heads above water.

Of course, not so for Amazon, who is profits amidst the pandemic are mind-numbingly large–for example MacKenzie Bezos, was worth $36 BILLION when she divorced Jeffy-Boy last July. Thanks to the pandemic she’s now worth $62 BILLION.1https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2020/07/11/amazons-jeff-bezos-and-ex-wife-mackenzie-add-combined-22-billion-to-fortunes-in-one-week-walmart-walton/. Let me just say this: if you weren’t hurting for that $26 BILLION before, you ain’t hurting now. Like what the hell is one person going to do with all that money?!? (To her credit, I’ve heard that she is donating huge chunks of it.)

So I was shocked when I heard the news that Amazon was benevolently sharing in its new-found wealth by giving healthy bonuses to all the Associates upon which much of their business was built, to help them survive these tough times.

JUST. KIDDING. As you already know, in the midst making record profits off the misery of the average man, instead of doing good and helping out their fellow citizens, they can’t even be bothered to do nothing.

That’s right, if Amazon had done nothing, i.e. made no changes to their Associates program, then many of these households could have relied on that income and wealth that they had rightfully built. Even more, this would be safe income, not requiring them to put themselves in harms way to try to support their families.

What kind of bunch of ----- assholes are the people who made this decision?!?

I hope there is a special extra-toasty, extra-pointy anus-bound-pitchfork place in hell for them.

I really thought I was going to wrap this post up with the advice to only use Amazon for tracking down products, then trying to find the actual company that sells it via Google, and then purchasing directly from that company. It may not put Amazon out of business, but there comes a point when you know too much and consequently feel squeamish about actively contributing to such a ----- up system of greed and exploitation.

“Burn Amazon to the ground”–that’ll have to be the sub-point of the story for now.

Clearly, as I write this I can sense the Universe guiding my fingers to a bigger message…

I can’t help but wonder: Is this the exact result that would inevitably happen when the national religion of one of the biggest economic powerhouses in the world is Capitalism At All Costs?

Is this display of utterly shitty humanity on such a massive scale merely the natural extension of 200+ years of worshiping at the Altar of Free-Flowing Capital?

Folks, there is more to this life than the Almighty Dollar.

Health. Relationships. Education. A sustainable future for our children. An empathetic and caring society that will give a ----- when you–yes YOU–are down on your luck.

I could go on. But I probably should stop rubbing in your face all the wonderful things that other economically advanced countries have valued over the naked pursuit of cold-hard cash–and thrived because of it.

I may not be into true-blue Socialism, but ----- if I can’t stand anyone who craps their pants in faux horror at the mention of our nation doing anything that could be remotely described as Socialist.

How dare we give a shit about our fellow citizens. How dare we focus on the humanity of our fellow men and women, instead of inventing new and creative ways to dehumanize them. How dare we invest in the well-being of our society.

Spare me the excuses. When you’re ready to get over the romantic notion that American-style Capitalism is unquestionably the best economic system the world has ever seen (hint: it’s not), then get back to me.

We need to find some real solutions–and find them fast–if we think we’re going to be passing on anything other a steaming pile of foreign debt and massive socio-economic inequality to our kids (amongst other things).

Seriously, have we learned nothing from The Unfortunate Allegory Of The Gift Of A Lifetime?

Content created on: 28 August 2020 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Rhymes Revisited: The Butcher, The Baker, And The Candlestick Wanker

3 September 2020 / / 0 Comments
3 Min Read

“Son, you really gotta stop rubbing-your-dub.”

Welp. This was going to be awkward…

Is it wrong to feel a sense of satisfaction to see yet another beloved children’s nursery rhyme fall from grace?

Okay, maybe “fall from grace” isn’t the right term. Perhaps “really is not child-appropriate at all” or “was about a bunch of perverts” would be more accurate.

Take, for example, the 1798 hit rhyme, “Rub-A-Dub-Dub,” whose original lyrics went something like this:1https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5038237 

Hey! rub-a-dub, ho! rub-a-dub, three maids in a tub,
And who do you think were there?
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,
And all of them gone to the fair.

According to that same source,2https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5038237 this is essentially the modern-day equivalent of a tabloid publishing photos of Tom Hanks, Dr. James Dobson,3Of Focus On The Family fame/infamy. & Barack Obama at a strip club. No matter who you are, you would probably be shocked by the moral failings of at least one of those three fellows, amiright?

But, to clear up a misconception4If you work hard enough, you can see how this “spilling your seed on the ground” type of pun. that is most assuredly forming in your mind right now, “rub-a-dub” is not a euphemism for any type of rubbing you might suspect at such a venue of ill-repute, but rather a form of disapproval like “tsk-tsk, you naughty boy”5https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rub-a-dub-dub…

When I was a Sophomore in high school, I was living with my dad and my stepmom “Daisy” out on our farm in rural SW Kansas. I didn’t have my own vehicle, so I often found myself stuck all alone on the farm with nothing to do.

Now, some people are completely content being bored all the time, but I’m not one of them. I’m one of those so-called “creative types.”

The problem with being a creative type who is constantly on the verge of mind-numbing boredom is that so-called “creative juices” tend to get pent up, and thus I was always looking for ways to find some so-called “creative release.”

Given the pre-existing condition of being stuck in the middle of nowhere, combined with a general lack of monetary resources, said release wasn’t always easy to come by. Fittingly, this is where being creative came in handy.

One dreary winter evening I got the notion in my head that nothing would be cooler than making a wax copy of my face. Yeah, I know, pretty awesome, right?

And it was simple enough: all I needed to do was take a couple layers of aluminum foil and press my face into them to make a mold, then burn my scented candle down while pouring the melted wax into that mold, and voila!

It was simple “in theory” at least. I sat there on my bed for a good hour or two trying to create my masterpiece, without seeing a single ounce of success. I don’t recall whether it was the aluminum mold or the recycled wax that was the fatal flaw; I just remember being rather disappointed that it was an utter failure.

Oh well. At least I had given it the ol’ high-school try6This is clearly a play on the phrase “the ol’ college try,” though I’m not sure what the hell that means either… …

A month or so later, my dad and I were having a random conversation when the topic of laundry somehow came up. It puzzled me, then, why all of a sudden he got an embarrassed look on his face.

“I didn’t want to say anything, but…Daisy was in your room last week and decided to do you a favor and wash your sheets and bedspread.”

“Aw, that was thoughtful of her…”

“But, um…she said, um…she said she discovered, er…crusty ‘stains’ all over your comforter…”

“Wait, what?”

“Now son, I’m not one to judge…”

“WAX! IT WAS WAX, DAMMIT!”

“…but it’s kinda rude to the woman who does your laundry when you–“

*Buries face in hands*

“Let me stop you there, Dad. I was making candles, okay? I was making candles on my bed and spilled some red wax. How could she have even mistook that for–“

“It’s okay, you don’t have to lie about what every boy your age does…”

*Under my breath* “Shit. They think that I like to rub-a-dub-dub with reckless abandon all over my room. I’ve forever soiled my reputation, haven’t I?”

“I’m sure you were just ‘making candles,’ wink wink. I suppose I should at least give you points for creativity…”

Content created on: 3 September 2020 (Thursday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

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