When all other categories fail (or absentmindedly forget to be assigned), General Cerebral Leakage, fresh off his third tour of duty in the war against wise insurance providers, steps in to save the day!
I looked down at my bright red shirt before delivering my retort.
“What? You expected me to wear blue like every other ----- person at the game? Pffft! Please!”
Despite being a bona fide grad school at the University of North Carolina–and despite getting free tickets to watch our renowned basketball team play some podunk school over Christmas break–something irked me about wearing “Carolina Blue” and being just another drop of water in the ocean of UNC fans.
And this pompous roommate of mine who found it necessary to razz me about it? Well, this asshat was really irking me.
Further, him being a prick about it only served to reinforce my resolve to not be yet another bougie blue sheep in the herd. Screw him–I was wearing my plain Communist-red tee1It’s a reference to the band Plain White Tees, best known for their hit single “Hey there, Delilah.” One of our roommates at the time played it non-stop. True story… for sure now.
So off I went to the game with another of my roommates, Esteban, proud of myself for being such a rebel, but otherwise not giving it much thought.
It wasn’t the first time I had to deal with sticking out like a sore thumb, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. And I didn’t mind the occasional odd look–a small price to pay to march to the beat of my own drummer, I like to say.
In fact, it was kinda fun confusing people, seeing as how the visiting team’s color was orange, so it wasn’t really clear at all by the way I dressed for whom exactly it was I was rooting.
It was good times, indeed.
Later, coming back from the game, I was regaling Esteban with the tale about how P.F. Chaz (the roommate from earlier) was riding my ass about the red shirt.
Now usually Esteban lent a sympathetic ear to my various asinine causes–completely unlike ol’ PFC–so it took me slightly by surprise when he thought for a moment before simply stating, “Yeah, many people take a lot of pride in their team and its colors. I could see how they might find it a little rude…and it just seems a bit unnecessary on your part.”
Oh, it was a classic M. Night2You know, the writer/director of such twist-centric movies as The Sixth Sense, The Village, and Signs. moment, indeed: ’twas I who had been the asshat all along–what a tweeest!
The first point of the story is that there is something to be said about using your criticism sparingly. If you’re a full-time dickhead, your friends and family aren’t going to be able to hear you when that moment arises when they need to be told lovingly that they’re being a bit of an a-hole.
The second point is for all of those ‘Mericans out there who can identify all too well with me in this story. Yup, I speak of those of us who put a disproportionate premium on their personal rights. To all of us in this category, consider the following.
Sure, I could exercise my rights to be different and do my own thang. But at the same time, maybe–just maybe–I could think of it as an opportunity for me to willingly set those rights aside as an act of service and respect to those around me.3WWJD–amiright?!?
You know, and to not be a complete turd for no good reason. So, wear a ----- mask already. Rhonda.
Oh, what’s that? Did you really expect this story to end any differently? Pfft!
It’s a reference to the band Plain White Tees, best known for their hit single “Hey there, Delilah.” One of our roommates at the time played it non-stop. True story…
Now lemme rap at ya about a young man
Who set out on foot across this great land
What he saw 'twas barren, so desperately needing
A strong lad to come along and spill his seedlings
All over her ground, man, so he hatched a plan
Answering her siren call with a firm shake of his hand
Now he was born into the time after honey and mead And his descendants had yet to build the first microbrewery But he had a vision, man, and were his neighbors excited! This land would be overflowing with the finest hard ciders So they sent him off, wishing him luck and shouting "godspeed! Young man, go and fulfill our manifest botanical destiny!"
Now serve up another round of that delicious All-American pie
Fill your glasses with the Sauce, and raise them high
We feast in remembrance of the bounty his hand hath provided
But please ignore any hints that he might have been misguided
Thus we're forced to drink to forget those who simply had to die
Turn a blind eye to all them native plants unwillingly sacrificed
Now if you do your research you might feel a bit conflicted
I'll be damned if he wasn't a man of admirable convictions
Good character aside, hear ye this definitive reckoning rhyme
The same one future scholars will maintain blew their mind
I posit this nation was founded upon this half-baked thesis:
"Let's make legends out of invasive species"
Alien overlords. The Illuminati. Kevin James is funny. 5G causes exceptionally fast download speeds in urban areas. The Moon Landing was faked. The Earth is a flat, crisp, delicious, lightly-salted wafer.
Oh, those rascally conspiracy theories. They seem to be all the rage with youngsters these days.
And by “youngsters”, I really mean “boomers.”
I’m kidding, of course. It’s an established fact that boomers have the true nature of reality nailed down pretty accurately./s
For the rest of us lost at sea, I figured I would share one of the key take-aways from my very own time mentally lost at sea.
From my Surfboard Sessions in Search for Truth, let me paraphrase Rule #1: “whatever I think I know is probably at least partially incorrect.”
This thought almost single-handedly wiped out my entire belief structure that I had held up to that point in my life in my early 30s.
To quote French Garfield, “Oof, le OOF.”
Without having 100% confidence in my understanding of some greater truth,1Note that it is my understanding that is lacking, not the almighty deity or whatever the truly correct answer may be. I had to find a way to navigate through life in good-faith. I mean, I still had to function somehow, right?
Enter conspiracy theories. Every. Last. ----- One. Of. Them.
All of a sudden, I found myself unable to so easily eliminate most, if not all, of those pesky suckers. My mind was fertile ground, ready to thoughtfully consider almost anything. This couldn’t be good for business. This couldn’t be good for anybody.2Seinfeld/Kenny Rogers mash-up of a pop-culture reference.
I could wax long about how I came to my conclusions, but let me try to cut to the chase: as a rule of thumb, most likely that conspiracy theory be bullshit.
Which one, you ask? Whichever one you’re thinking of right now. The one right in front of me, piquing my curiosity. The one that you wish your loved one wasn’t buying into. It doesn’t matter–it’s most likely a load of male bovine excrement.
First off, they can’t all be true.3Again, see my post from last week Surfboard Waxes Philosophical. That alone should disqualify a majority of them.
But–and this is a fairly notable ‘but’ here–some of them are most definitely true. The odds that all things slapped with a Conspiracy Theory label are all false? That would have to be astoundingly small.
Given these two almost near-absolute truths, how does one decide which ones are the real ones? The ones worth believing in? The ones worth sounding crazy for? The ones that will save us from becoming alien hamburgers?
In layman’s terms, I like to approach it as if I were a gambling man: how much of my hard-earned money would I wager on the veracity of a randomly-selected Theory?
If I owed a bookie an insurmountable sum of money, and was desperately in need of getting rich quick, then I might consider taking those odds.
But I’m not. I’m just trying to live my life here, man.
Taking those odds would be insanely unwise. I would become one broke-ass mofo real quick. I don’t care even if the payoff is that extra-fuzzy sensation of being “in the know,” that feeling of specialness for being enlightened and not just another brainwashed sheep.
And y’all know me by now: I stand at the ready to not be bougie, so often the Forbidden Fruit offered by a Theory can be a rather tempting proposition for me.
But I gotta stay focused: the more improbable hoops of logic I need to jump through in order to believe some fantastical tale someone is trying to sell me, the more unwise buying what they’re selling would be.
There’s also one more possibility that should be considered: a given Theory’s purpose might very well be to misdirect us from what really is happening. You could easily run the risk of believing in something incorrect and rather improbable, meanwhile you’re dismissing the much more likely and perhaps obvious truth staring you in the face.
…and it’s at this point that I have to confess something to you: I got mad respect for the concept of Conspiracy Theories. You gotta hand it to ’em, it’s absolute genius.
True, it’s evil genius, but genius nonetheless.
It’s actually pretty beautiful in a twisted way: you wanna conspire to do some crazy shit? Well, don’t hold back on the ‘crazy’ part.
In fact, the more outlandish, the better. The key here is to make anyone who tries to get the truth out to the world sound crazy af. That should be your goal.
Then, on top of that, take a bunch of other partial-truths, turn up the fantastical factor a notch or two, and release them into the wild.
All you have to do after that is sit back with your mint julep and watch all the Truthers tumble down one rabbit hole after another, tuckering themselves plumb out playing some twisted game of Wacko Whack-A-Mole.6No relation to Woke Whack-A-Mole.
Alas, given that I will probably never find myself on the fun and cheeky side of a conspiracy theory, this is all a rather disheartening realization.
Not to go too nihilistic on you, but The Truth isn’t always going to win.
The stunning conclusion to this thought rampage of mine was: you want the truth? YOU WANT THE TRUTH?!? You can’t handle the exhausting burden of thoughtfully considering and extensively researching every last one of them to figure out which 97 of them are red herrings and which few you should be rightfully scared shitless of.7I didn’t want to say this out loud, but we are SO f*cked.
In other words, given the assumption that at least one of these crazy-ass theories explains more about the on-goings here on Earth than is comfortable for our small minds, even with the most earnest, open-yet-skeptical effort is almost assuredly fail.
Well, that’s just depressing.
Nevertheless, the path forward in a life lived in good-faith remains.
The point of the story is that being wrong on occasion is inevitable. Accept that and move on. Otherwise, you’re might find yourself unwisely betting on every ----- improbable claim that comes along out of fear of being made a fool.
Oh, the sad irony of it all8By this I mean, how sadly ironic it would be that, ones desperate attempts not to be made a fool directly resulted in them being a ----- fool.…
A quick note: It just so happened that in the midst of planning out this blog post, HBO’s Emmy-Award Winning humor/news show Last Week Tonight did a much more thoughtful deep dive on the topic barely a week ago. I highly recommend checking it out, because, as you can imagine, they did an infinitely better and more thorough job than I ever could have. Plus, they actually have created a practical resource for constructively talking to your friends and family about questionable theories.
Other interesting articles on the topic (from a Christian perspective this time):
Ladies & Gentlemen, Boys & Girls, The Point of the Story proudly presents, straight from my Sophomore year of high school:1Sorry, no refunds.
Dilbob the Happy Alien Episode One: Dilbob and the Bare Beavers
*See end of post for uncensored version*
“If you can’t read this, then this book is 4 you!” Books 4 the Illiterate Copyright 1997“Stungun-45: the Universal Fermented Beverage of Choice”The uncensored inside cover, which regrettably included some very explicit spoilers.Rest in Power, PuppisFake Reviews!
Content created on: Spring 1997 & 23 July 2020 (Thursday)
Oh, the places your mind will go! (When your surfboard sure as shit ain’t going anywhere…)
(all apologies to Dr. SeusS)
Back in the day when I was a post-doc in Hawai’i, Mr. Boss Man Vandy highly encouraged his minions such as myself to take up surfing. As you can imagine, I was more than happy to oblige.
The one problem? I’m not the most athletically inclined. On top of that, it turned out that I was pretty much illiterate when it came to reading the incoming waves.
The end result of all this being that I would spend a lot of time just floating in the ocean, alone with my thoughts.
Now, when combined with the “Nowhere-to-go, nowhere-else-I-need-to-be” mentality that comes from living on a remote island such as Oahu, I found that I had an abundance of time to just…think.
Turns out, I forgot how much I thoroughly enjoyed just sitting and thinking deeply about something. And it was such a delight rediscovering my long-lost love of philosophizing.
So there I would sit on my board, just pondering the meaning of life and deeply examining my beliefs and values, unwittingly inviting a fate of becoming shark bait.1”Death by shark attack–that’s my final goal!” There, Stephen, I finally got a Grand Buffet reference in. And one of the earliest–and most uncomfortable–conclusions I came to was “most likely, I am wrong.”
Approaching it as a statistician–or if you wanna think of me in a bit sexier light, as an economist–I had to ask myself: “Of all the Big Questions in life, what are the odds I have nailed the answers to any of them?” And the humbling answer is, “Um, statistically speaking, probably not too many of ’em.”
Of course life isn’t that conveniently black and white, and so I should acknowledge that saying that I’m flat-out wrong on a matter might not be completely accurate. I have to allow for the possibility that my understanding is–if I’m lucky–merely incomplete.
Now, this isn’t exactly groundbreaking, or even the most original thought.
Heck, just recently when I was investigating the source of a loved latest one’s conspiracy theory,2Oh, I have thoughts on those too–just wait a few days and I should be writing on that topic as well. Michael Tellinger,3After reading his Wikipedia page, I feel, uh…”conflicted.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Tellinger I came across this quote in his intriguingly entitled book Slave Species of the Gods: The Secret History of the Anunnaki and Their Mission on Earth:4Tellinger, M. (2012). Slave Species of the Gods: The Secret History of the Anunnaki and Their Mission on Earth. Inner Traditions/Bear. ISBN: 978-1-59143-807-6.
Figure 1. That uncomfortable moment when you realize that you might be on the same wavelength as Michael Tellinger…
Ugh. I haven’t had such an awkward moment of self-realization since that time Alex Jones proclaimed he was prepared to “eat [his] neighbor’s ass”5https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfZcKCIcug8 if all societal hell broke loose, and all I could think was “way ahead of you, buddy.”6I had planned on writing a post or two on similar unorthodox thoughts that I independently had at the being of COVID quarantine; my apologies for not striking while the iron was hot.
Digression and complete lack of originality notwithstanding, it was still very much my own thought. And perhaps that is why it has had such a deep impact on my values and worldview–so much so that I would say it is a key pillar of who I am today.
So, as you often find yourself listen to this humble surfer-wannabe wax long about the various philosophies of life–from the mundane to the incredibly profound–it might be helpful to understand this critical detail. I don’t have the answers. I’m fumbling around in the dark just like the rest of us. And maybe even more clumisily than most!
I ain’t gonna lie: it’s not easy being much less certain about the true nature of reality. But I have discovered that, almost paradoxically, there is profound freedom in the midst of so much self-doubt.
Such a mindset can’t help but impart a deep sense of humility and a refreshing sense of wonder. In the end, the only “truth” I have full confidence in is that no matter what the truth is, it is well beyond my wildest imagination.
If we’re lucky we may catch glimpses of The Profound here and there, but there always be More.
As for all other matters pertaining to the human experience and beyond, I probably should always lead with this caveat I once heard uttered by some wise guy in a wetsuit:
“Oh, I am most indubitably incorrect, Good Sir!”
Suck-at-Surfing Socrates
Oh, and believe it or not, the point of the story is: if you believe that you’re probably right, well then, my friend, you’re probably at least half full of shit. And that’s being optimistic about it…
Content created on: 16/17/18/19 July 2020 (Thurs/Fri/Sat/Sun)
I had planned on writing a post or two on similar unorthodox thoughts that I independently had at the being of COVID quarantine; my apologies for not striking while the iron was hot.
Do y’all remember “The Most Interesting Man in the World”? You know, that suave-but-insensitive jackass who would implore us to “stay thirty, my friends” while much of the world still didn’t–and doesn’t–have potable water? Yeah. That guy.
I’m pretty sure I heard a few years back that he had passed away. Sad, indeed.
But fear not! For I, your humble servant, have found his real-life replacement: Tom Morello.
If you don’t know who my boy Tom is, you’re in for a real treat.
He’s probably best known as the innovate and super-creative guitarist for two different prolific rock bands, Rage Against The Machine, & Audioslave, the former of which is well-known for their super-woke social activism, and the latter of which might be ironically rethinking their use of the term “slave” in their name.
For the most part, that is about all the more I myself knew about him, until a few weeks ago when I was watching instructional guitar videos on YouTube when an ad for his Masterclass popped up:
If you didn’t take the time to watch it, about halfway through, he starts talking about his background, and mentions being “the only Black kid in an all-white town” and “the only one into heavy metal at Harvard University…”
**Record scratches**
Wait, what? He’s Black?
Call me racist and/or ignorant, but I guess I had just lazily extrapolated the presumably Hispanic heritage of Zach de la Rocha (lead singer of Rage) onto the rest of the band,1After doing my research, boy was I wrong. The other two band members are a straight-up white dude and Jewish guy. so this information significantly altered my view of Tom.
AND he went to Harvard?!?
I figured this guy was pretty interesting to begin with, but my face was being melted in real time, yo.
I simply had to know more.
Enter his entry on Wikipedia. If you have the chance, click the link and explore the richness that is Tom Morello for yourself.
If you don’t, here are my Top 3 highlights that I believe support my case for him being the new Most Interesting Man in the World (in addition to the previously related facts, of course):
#3: In Junior High he was in a band with a future legend in his own right, Adam Jones of Tool (another immensely successful rock band you probably never heard of):
#2: After graduation, he put his Harvard diploma to real good use:
Brick House? How can you not love this guy?!?
…and finally, #1: You’ve got to be ----- kidding me:
Oh, in case you were wondering what the “Stripping In The Name Of” is referencing, then please enjoy this video of Rage’s “Killing In The Name”. Seriously, though, if this is not a song for this moment in time, I don’t know what is. These guys were indeed Prophets of Rage2If you did the ----- Wikipedia homework I assigned you, you would know that this was yet another band Tom has been a part of. before their time…
Riddle me this, my friend: How did the hipster burn his hand? From touching the stove before it was cool!1Not my joke; author unknown. Bwah-ha-ha-hah!
Ok, righteous hipster slam aside, let me make something clear upfront: I am no hipster–a fact that should have been patently obvious from my most recent post, Here Comes The Pog Master.
What’s that? You thought my little vignette about Pogs was just another random story of mine? Well, amigo, don’t forget one simple, unshakeable truth: I have a story for every occasion. The Prize Pog Story2Get it? Get it?!? It’s a reference to The Prize Pig Story! was merely setting the stage for today.
So please, when it comes to social activism, don’t mistake me for a hipster–I can’t pretend that I stood up and supported Black Lives Matter “before it was cool.”
You may be aware by now that I’ve started dipping my toe in some politically-tinged waters with my blog posts. Since this is a major departure from my self-imposed No Religion No Politics rule for this blog, I thought it would be worthwhile to go down the rabbit hole of the whys and hows I came to this not-so-light decision.
I attempted to explain it in one go in I Was Told There Would Be Pitchforks, before quickly realizing that–surprise, surprise–I had way more thoughts than what would fit in a 2-minute read.
You may find it helpful to go back and read that real quick; otherwise, suffice it to say that the point of that story was that I believe that there are a significant majority of people who, like me, have wondered to themselves why something as seemingly Golden Rule-ish as Black Lives Matter was so politically divisive, and have not previously supported it more openly because of that.
This is Logic Building Block #1, working towards the original thought that I wanted to communicate: please don’t slander thoughtful, giving people by dismissing and vilifying them as “A Mob/The Mob.”
An even more important point that I would like to eventually make is that it’s okay to support Black Lives Matter. Don’t listen to the haters–it won’t make you a terrorist.
Okay, so now that you have something of an idea what my overall train of thought looks like, let me focus on the today’s topic: risking something valuable for a cause.
As more and more people stand up and say “It is okay to be excellent to each other,”4That’s totally a Bill & Ted reference, and therefore you should go and read my instant-classic post, A Most Excellent Life Lesson, most immediately. the less risk there is for others who might want to stand up as well, but have more to lose.
But the nation is in the middle of this dynamic situation. While it is significantly less polarizing to express support for Black Lives Matter than it was even two months ago, there is still a long ways to go. True, it is increasingly being openly (and much more accurately) described as a human rights issue, and that’s incredibly encouraging progress.
Though the tide of public opinion seems to be turning in favor of BLM, the corresponding backlash is likewise increasing in terms of intensity, fierceness, and violence. After all, many have much to lose in a change to the status quo.
Well, there a few that have a lot to lose, but they tend to be somewhat effective at convincing others that they have much to lose as well.5This is a whole ‘nother topic, but I wholeheartedly believe that most of those that think that BLM will negatively affect them are listening to voices that don’t have their best interest in mind.
Anyways, you may be tempted to think that it is now trendy to support BLM. You know…the idea that it’s easy to mindlessly follow the mob mentality, without really thinking about or knowing what you’re doing.
But to this point I say there is still real risk.
If you go back and last Sunday’s post (and I highly recommend you do), Woke Whack-A-Mole, you’ll see that I darn6I really mean to say “d@mn well” but it kinda loses its edge once my Censorship code gets to it. well knew that my neighbors have already been targeted for having a BLM sign in their yard before I put up one in my own.
So if you think that I all willy-nilly spent $12.50 on a bi-chromatic sign and planted it in my yard without giving it much thought, you might want to reconsider that position.
The Boss Lady and I thoughtfully and deliberately wrestled with whether or not doing so was the right move for us.
We are risking relationships with our parents and neighbors who still might have a negative perception of Black Lives Matter and its supporters. We do not take that lightly at all.
We are risking unexpected violence towards our home and family by essentially putting a clear target in front of our house. Our girls’ bedrooms are at the front of our house, so if some armed anti-BLM folk gets too amped up on the rhetoric going around, there is a non-zero chance that our precious babies might catch a bullet or some broken glass.7In fact, my father-in-law has already brought up his concerns about this exact scenario.
So don’t tell me we’re blindly following the latest popular craze by supporting the BLM cause. Please understand that we are putting our most valuable possessions on the line when we do so.
I confess that I’m scared shitless at the thought of what I may have gotten myself and my loved ones into. I’ll admit that I am a huge coward by default, naturally running from danger in full risk-aversion mode.
I’m not the moral hero of the story here–otherwise I would have been bravely screaming “BLACK LIVES MATTER!” loudly and proudly since somewhere around 2016.
No, we gotta give credit where credit is due: I look at those who have gone before us and risked much more than I can even imagine. Thanks to them, I feel like the risk to us is at least manageable.
Now. you yourself may be curious about whether becoming privately and/or openly supportive of BLM is right for you. From my journey, I can say that I understand that what that risk looks like is very different and very personal for each person.8I mean, I can’t even imagine being back home in the woke wilderness of SW Kansas. I can’t say for sure that I would have the same courage as I find myself with here in not-completely rural North Carolina.
In the end, everyone has to make the decision for themselves, and I don’t fully expect anyone to hop on board just because of my public stance on the matter. My hope here is to follow in the footsteps of my more morally courageous trailblazers.
I hope that with the risks I take by putting a sign (give or take 127) in my yard and publicly blogging about it, that my neighbors, my family, and my friends will not have so much to lose in doing so themselves.
It’s sad that it should be so dangerous to stand up for what is right–but I have faith that we can change this.
So what if you haven’t been the loudest vocal of social justice all along? You’ve had plenty of good reasons not to put your neck on the line, especially when for so long it has seemed like an impossible uphill battle.
Just remember this, though: when it comes to building a better world, there simply aren’t enough hipsters to get the job done.
No, they’re going to need every last one of us cowards that they can get…
Content created on: 2, 9, & 10 July 2020 (Thurs/Thurs/Fri)
This is a whole ‘nother topic, but I wholeheartedly believe that most of those that think that BLM will negatively affect them are listening to voices that don’t have their best interest in mind.
I mean, I can’t even imagine being back home in the woke wilderness of SW Kansas. I can’t say for sure that I would have the same courage as I find myself with here in not-completely rural North Carolina.
In my neck of the woods of North Carolina, we have ourselves a proper Con-federation in-festation problem afoot.
For some reason, uh…shall we say “Dixie enthusiasts” have been flocking to our sleepy little hamlet to exercise their 1A1If you don’t own a gun or at least wish you did, that is a “2A” reference–short for Second Amendment. The More You Know, Mofo. rights and show their support for their Stars n’ Bars heritage.2In other words, pro-Confederate flag demonstrators.
You typically would get excited when your small town makes the regional news, but lately we’ve been popping up for not-so-exciting reasons. I mean, who wouldn’t want to open the newspaper to see the headlines teeming with such beunas noticias3Spanish for good news. as:
So naturally, what does one do when the Confederate-flag-on-a-hockey-stick games begin?
Put a Black Lives Matter sign in their front yard, of course.
…and that is exactly what the neighbors directly across the street from us did! After all, the wife, “Alexa,”9Not her real first name.is a key figure in the local George Floyd-related activist group.
Well, actually they had had their sign up for well over a month by the time the hockey stick incident occurred, so it had become a regular part of my front-door vista.
Last Friday, which would have been the day after the incident in question, my mother dearest noticed a suspicious vehicle parked nose-to-nose with her Jeep in its usual spot on the street in front of our house. She couldn’t tell what they were doing, but about the time she noticed it, the guy in the car seemed to see her peeping out our front door, and took off.
Later that evening, she and I stood out in the spot where he had been parked, looking around trying to figure out what he had been up to. Our first guess was that he was from our HOA checking up on us, as we had recently received notice that some a-hole busybody in our neighborhood didn’t like the aesthetics of the tarp tree-fort mom and the girls had made out of the tree in our front yard.
The only other thing I noticed different was that the neighbors’ Black Lives Matter sign was not in its usual spot across the street, nor anywhere else to be seen for that matter. No pun intended.
I made a mental note of it to follow up on that theory later, but that would have to wait a few days, as Alexa and her family would be out of town until the end of the weekend.
It was probably just the HOA-hole anyways, but you can never tell…
Now you may need to brace yourself for this next part (unless you read my last blog post, of course).
It just so happened that, at that very same moment in the history of the Universe, we were in the market for a Black Lives Matter yard sign of our very own.
This idea had been brewing for a couple of weeks already, and I had heard rumors that Alexa had extra signs for sale for any wokals10Yes, Virginia, that is a portmanteau of “Woke” and “Local”. No, Virginia, that is not an Asian-oriented racial joke. And no, Virginia, the use of “oriented” in this context is not meant to be a pun or otherwise humorous. wanting to show their support and solidarity to the cause. So it was a happy coincidence that I could cover both topics when I reached out to her.
It wasn’t until Wednesday by the time I got around to actually working up the courage to potentially procure a BLM sign of my own. Fortunately Alexa responded to me in a timely manner. This was her response to my twin questions of “Can I have a sign?” and “Uh, you have any issues with your sign over the weekend?”:
So first the bad news: sadly, their sign had been stolen while they were out of town (but I love the idea of her “putting them on blast” if it happens again).
Also, a quick but very relevant side note: in a later email she revealed that this was at least the second time this has happened…and that these incidents just happen to coincide with our local Confederate flag hoe-downs. Go figure.
And now, the good news: she had one last sign for us, available at the below-market price of $12.50–from a black-owned business, nonetheless! The wokeness is getting out of hand real quick…
I decided to jump at the opportunity before someone else came along and snagged the last one, and tapped out a response as quickly as my fat fingers could go.
Unfortunately, the Mystery of the Missing Sign weighed heavily on my mind…
I mean, what would we do if our sign were to be stolen? And–on an unrelated note–is merely putting one meager sign in our yard doing enough to show our neighbors support?
Before I realized it, those quandaries were pouring out of my finger tips and into the email.
Let’s just say my train-of-thought was going a little too fast around that last curve…
To quote the Boss Lady’s secret hotty, Bane, from the 2012 Nolan Brothers blockbuster hit, TheDark Night Rises:11https://youtu.be/6GzUoK8VDAE?t=109
Let the games begin, you racist ----- dipshits.
ONe good ----- neighbor
***Subject to the approval of Boss Lady Matosha.Huhn…where have I seen those initials before?
Yes, Virginia, that is a portmanteau of “Woke” and “Local”. No, Virginia, that is not an Asian-oriented racial joke. And no, Virginia, the use of “oriented” in this context is not meant to be a pun or otherwise humorous.
You might be tempted to think that today’s topic would be about holding public servants and/or private corporations to account, but alas, it ain’t that woke.
It is however, about trust. As in, we implicitly tend to trust the world at large to have its proverbial shit together.
So when tiny bits of incongruency flash past our eyes, it can leave one questioning the fabric of reality itself. You might even be asking yourself “Is me nuts, but…?”
Here are three tales of that trust being broke…our, if you prefer a more sensational, clickbait-worthy description:
“The Stories The [Name of Institution You Want To Feel Justified In Distrusting]1Such as Media, Government, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Police, Scientist, Industrial Meat-packing Industry, Koch Brothers, and/or Man (to name but a few). Don’t Want You To See!”
Now, where’s that ----- eye-rolling emoji when you really need it…
The Dyslexic Byo Scout
Did you know…that there is such a thing as legal insurance? Ja, it’s true. We had signed up for some through the Boss Lady’s job for the identity protection, and only later discovered that we could use their network of lawyers free of charge for quite an array of basic legal needs.
So far, we’ve probably saved around $1500 using it to make out our wills and covering a chunk of the closing costs on a recent real estate purchase, to name but a few examples.
I haven’t had to take legal action against any of the neighborhood canines [yet], but my spidey sense is all tingly and telling me that just might be right around the corner…
Anyways, they have a handy app for helping you find the services and lawyers to meet all your day-to-day legal needs. Not too long ago I opened it up and was mindlessly waiting for it to load up.
Now I had promised myself I wouldn’t waste time making a little video of the experience, but what’dya know, here we are…
Well, Hyatt Legal Plans, it seems you weren’t preapred for Eagle-Eye Cherry here to get all up in your business, now were you?
…to which they replied, “Oh no! We made a typo–THE HORROR! THE INJUSTICE! What are you gonna do? Sue us?”
2 + 2 = 5
Just today I was watching an instructional video about how to perform a certain relaxation technique by a certain Sifu who shall remain unnamed.
I thought I was imagining things or that maybe there was a glitch in The Matrix, but upon further review, it would seem that he indeed hates the Number 3 so much he won’t even say her name:
Now You’re Just Being Lazy
Recently I was indulging in my #1 vice, playing FreeCell (TM) on the toilet, when an in-game ad caught my eye:
Did they…did they just put the seat down for the “After” picture? I mean, I’m almost insulted by the utter lack of effort that went into this ad.
I even thought to myself “This is Object Permanence 101, here, folks. Who in the world would be fooled by such a transparent marketing scheme?!? Who’s the target demographic here? What a bunch of morons!”
Then a disembodied voice boomed out of nowhere: “Dude. You’re sitting on the toilet playing FreeCell. Just sayin’…”
Such as Media, Government, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Police, Scientist, Industrial Meat-packing Industry, Koch Brothers, and/or Man (to name but a few).
Did you know…that there’s such a thing called Childhood Amnesia? Most people can’t recall memories earlier than four years old, while the commonly accepted limit is around two and half years old.1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia#False_memories
Yeah, in fact, it happens to pretty much everybody.
I had no clue such a phenomenon existed until I was 30 or so, when one day I was regaling my Hawaiian coworkers2They were actually mainly German & Indian–we just worked together in Hawai’i. about some extremely early memory of mine from when I was around a year old.
Very much to my surprise, those asshats absolutely refused to believe me, saying it was impossible to remember events before 3ish. Again, this was the first I had ever heard of childhood amnesia, so it never occurred to me that having such early memories would make me a particularly rare specimen.
…rare enough that your supposed esteemed colleagues would flat-out call you a liar to your face, nonetheless!
Okay, so enough #HumbleBragging about my memory. The point is, childhood amnesia exists, it is the norm, and for some reason I was passed over.
During my first year of graduate school, most of us had to earn our keep by teaching undergraduate physics labs. Now, at some point in time, I will get around to sharing with you the tale of how I know, with an embarrassing degree of confidence, that teaching is not my calling in life. Long story short: I absolutely hated having to teach.
The one saving grace that made this bearable was that for about the first 15-25 minutes of each lab I had a captive audience that had no choice but listen to me talk.
I was supposed to use that time to refresh the students about the physics concepts that day’s lab would be featuring. And sometimes I did that.
Other times, when I was feeling particularly loquacious, it would look more like a half-assed stand-up comedy routine than a scientific lecture.
By the way here’s a tip: turns out, they hate it when you do that. Apparently most of them only care about getting their lab work out of the way so they can get back to partying or whatever it is youths these days do in their spare time. After all, my childhood stories probably aren’t going to be on the test.
One day, for reasons that I ironically cannot recall, I felt compelled to share with them a particularly porcine-themed story from the days of my youth.
I grew up in rural southwest Kansas, and like most of rural America one of the most anticipated events of the year would be the county fair. And, as a yung’en, one of the most exciting events at the Morton County Fair was…the Pig Catch.
Well, at least that’s what we called it. It may often go by other names such as pig wrestling, greased-pig chase, and pig scramble, to name but a few.3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_wrestling That reminds me–help me remember to tell you about the time in college that someone made the mistake of putting me in charge of a spring social event–just mention “Hawaiian County Fair” and you’re guaranteed to jog my memory.
Diversion aside, I’m trying to provide an explanation of what a pig chase entails, for those uninitiated souls out there. In the kiddie version that I’m acquainted with, you would have somewhere between 25-50 kids line up on one end of a dirt arena or otherwise enclosed field. Then, the adults would release a predetermined number of unlubricated piglets. According to my calculations, I figure that they would be shooting for a Kid-to-Piglet Ratio (KPR) of ~5.
After that, the local celebrity rodeo announcer would yell “Breakfast is served, now go get you some bacon!” and the kids would make a mad dash trying to pin one of the little porkers down for at least 10 seconds.
Do that, and the prize of a sweet, sweet $1 bill would be yours, along with the unmitigated respect of your peers.
Now, the pig catch is strongly tied to the earliest of my many memories of the county fair. Indubitably, the most likely reason for this was because my brother a couple years my senior, One Skinny J, aka 1SJ, was a ----- pig-catching champion.
I think you had to be at 2-3 years old to participate, and by the time I could throw my hat in the ring, 1SJ already had 3 years and 3 pig-catching titles under his belt. Naturally, I wholeheartedly expected to follow in my big bro’s foot steps and be a regular champion myself.
Okay, class, if you’ve been paying attention, the current setting of the story is the Morton County Fairgrounds, August 1984. And it’s my time to claim the glorious pig-pouncing destiny that awaits me.
My 3-year-old self took his spot amongst the 30 other kids, and nervously awaited the signal to go get ’em. After what seemed like an eternity, finally we got the green light to go tackle some livestock.
Turns out, it’s harder than it looks.4That’s what she said! ALOT harder.
As I was bearing down on my first prey, another, slightly more athletic kid came out of nowhere and straight-up knocked the pig off its feet and 5 feet to the side of me.
Nuts. On to the next one then!
One after another, though, some other kid would get there first.
I was running out of piglets fast.
But then I noticed something odd. As soon as a piglet was caught, several other kids would rush in to help keep the rascal pinned until a judge could come over and verify the take-down.
Before my eyes, all the kids were clustering into groups of 4 or 5. Usually the kid who actually caught it would be holding it by its neck, while their associates would be entwined with one of the various limbs.
Quickly realizing that I probably wasn’t going to be catching a pig myself that day, I decided, like every other literal hanger-on, that I could at least get credit for an assist.
Soon enough, all the piglets had been downed, so I found myself trying to find a group that appeared to need some help.
Instead, I ended up repeatedly pre-creating one of the more heart-wrenching scenes from the 1994 Robert Zemeckis classic, Forrest Gump:
I shit you not, I was the only kid not touching some part of a bacon-making machine. I, alone, was the sole non-pig-catching fool that day.
Or so it seemed.
At the last second, I spotted a lone hind leg that didn’t already have a child hanging off of it.
I rushed over to the group, and towering over 4 very much unwelcoming faces, I mumbled, “Umm, you guys need some help?”
Then with a grunt, I tried to pin the leg down with my foot. However, in my attempt, I ended up kicking at it instead, missing the pig altogether, losing my balance, and kind of lightly stomping on its foot as I came down.5Don’t worry, it wasn’t hurt.
Needless to say, I earned neither a sweet, sweet $1 bill nor the unmitigated respect of my peers that day.
And, class, what lesson have we learned today?
It was in that moment that I realized that I had whole life full of socially awkward moments ahead of me…
In retelling this story, I have to somewhat appreciate the meta nature of sharing that with my physics lab group. You know, since I decided the best way to explain to them why they were being forced to needlessly suffer through my own private therapy session…was by providing the origin story of my awkwardness in a very inappropriate classroom setting.
Anyways, the point of the story is be thankful if you were blessed with childhood amnesia like a normal person. Heck, I would give up bacon if it meant having my prize pig story zapped from my over-active memory.
Damn. Didn’t work.6This makes more sense if you have read Death By Hangnail…I’ll wait here.
Oh, and if you’re wondering about how 1SJ “fared” that year, yes, of course that beast7bastard would sound so much better here… won his 4th consecutive $1 bill moments later when the older kids got there turn.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s a picture that should be more than enough proof:
![Dilbob the Happy Alien is an alien with some real problems. In Dilbob the Happy Alien, Episode One: Dilbob and the Bare Beavers, Dilbob has flashbacks to an abduction by Hippie Earthlings. Whatever they did to him makes him involuntarily shave all his little beaver friends with his teeth.
In his first book since the "THE" series (1985-87), B.J. {name redacted] explores the world of that teenages alien known as Dilbob. Episode One: Dilbob and the Bare Beavers is his first installment in the Dilbob the Happy Alien series.
Be on the lookout for more Dilbob the Happy Alien Episodes with Dilbob and his favorite beaver, Harrieta. (Books 4 the Illiterate/3 Men & a Lot of Ladies, Book Co.)](https://i0.wp.com/thepointofthestory.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/img_5152-4.jpg?resize=676%2C890&ssl=1)
The latest word on the street