Category: My Own Damn Freud (Page 4 of 6)

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?

And the answer is…

Three percent. That’s my best–and rather generous–guess at how many Theories are largely true.⁴I’m simplifying things and assuming the remaining 97% is largely false. Even then, that would be what? Roughly 32-to-1 odds?⁵I had to look it up myself to be sure: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042115/betting-basics-fractional-decimal-american-moneyline-odds.asp

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):

On Christians Spreading Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories–Christianity Today

Why Your Christian Friends and Family Members are so Easily Fooled By Conspiracy Theories

Content created on: 23/24/25 July 2020 (Thurs/Fri/Sat)

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.

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)

If it isn’t obvious by now, I’m particularly fascinated by dreams. I find that they provide an interesting–and sometimes terrifyingly honest–peek into our psyches. It’s like saying to your Innermost Self, “No, tell me how you really feel about me.”

The downside to recounting dreams to the rest of the world is that so, so much of them make sense only while you’re experiencing them; the narrative within the dream is consistent enough in the moment, but the second you wake up and and say that first detail aloud (even if just to yourself), you realize, “Hey that makes no ----- sense at all!” At which point it becomes much more of a fustercluck describing to someone else what that experience was like.

I think for this very reason I don’t share here nearly as many dreams I would really like to. I do it for the sake of you, Dear Readers. After all, haven’t you suffered enough trying to make sense of my stories that really happened?

Well, I suppose that’s enough foreplay–let me get to the dream that I’m eager to regale you with today. I was going to share this one with last week’s dream-themed post, but I ran over my self-imposed time-limit. Let’s see if I can keep it short and sweet this time around, ya?

It wasn’t but a week or two ago when I found myself in a classroom setting that seemed to be on the border between a university and a medical center. So far, this makes sense, as I have worked in such a setting for the better part of the last 15 years.

Of course I hadn’t picked up on the detail that I was the only adult in the classroom besides the teacher, though I was clearly one of the students. Actually I’m not 100% certain I was going all Billy Madison with a bunch of 8-year-olds, because I also got the distinct vibe that I wasn’t able to communicate fluently, so there’s a pretty good chance that I was in, of all things, a Spanish-speaking elementary classroom located on a medical campus. Making sense so far…

We were reading from a classic novel as a class, and as a character appeared in the story, the next student with the same gender as that character would be assigned their part for the rest of the story. I was sitting in the front row of the classroom, on the far left side save for two young Mexican school girls further to my left.

All that to say, as soon as the first male character–a young boy–had a speaking part, the orating duties fell on my shoulders. I remember having a real hard time getting through the line or two in front of me. ‘Twas but a real trip on ye ol’ Struggle Bus, indeed.

We read some more, and it wasn’t but a minute or two before my character had another line. However, this time I simply for the life of me could not read the words on the page.

So I improvised.

While my goal was to get me out of the situation with some light humor, my definitely-not-in-the-text zinger turned out to be something of an over-achiever.

I was expecting maybe just a chuckle or two from the crowd, but instead I ----- killed it.

I mean, I had everyone in tears from laughing so hard. The teacher was on the ground unable to breathe. It was ----- near a literal riot–one that lasted for a good 2-3 minutes. Mind you, that’s an eternity in comedy-land.

So though I wasn’t in it for the compliments, I gotta say, the response I got felt good. Real good. I sat there, with my eyes closed, literally basking in my own glory, letting my ego soak up every last drop.

I remember thinking to myself, “This must be what it feels like to be a comic¹Or comedien/comedienne to those not in the industry. when they tell a joke that just absolutely slays the audience…I think I could get used to this.”

My thought immediately after that, though, was “I gotta tell somebody about this!”

Since the Boss Lady–bless her soul–was the first person to come to mind, it reminded me that I was married, thus confirming that indeed I was a grown-ass man, in a classroom full of kids, in a foreign land. No, nothing odd about that…

At that point, the scene segued into later that night in the same classroom, where it was just me and few other random students doing our own unrelated things.

For my part, I was obsessed with writing down my unicorn of a one-liner before it escaped me. I found myself wandering around the room in search of a pen or pencil, when I came across the desk where I had been sitting.

To my delight, I found the scrap paper that I had been doodling on when I had uttered my epic phrase. Hilariously, the first thought that crossed my mind was, “I better save this–the historians are going to want to preserve this piece of comedic history.” Yeah, I know, a bit presumptuous, but it made complete sense in that moment.

On it I found a bunch of trigonometric diagrams and sketches, and scrawled at the top, the phrase “Uncle-Uncle B.J.” I have no idea why, but I found that phrase to be utterly hilarious as well. What can I say? I was on fire that day.

But at that point, I still hadn’t written the phrase down, and I just knew I was going to hate myself forever if I somehow forgot it. While my insurance policy was to just keep repeating it over and over quietly to myself, I just couldn’t take any chances.

Right about that time I had found a pencil, and just as I was about to jot it on my collector’s edition piece of scratch paper…the power went out campus-wide. Of course it would. How timely.

I remember having the sense that I, along with the other few students, really needed to make our way to another, safer, location on campus where everybody else was. That detail doesn’t matter too much, but my guess was that they were all at a football non-Americano²I.e. “soccer”.game.

We found our way out a side door and could see some stadium-like lights off in the distance, and determined that’s where we needed to head. Unfortunately, we were completely surrounded by a maze of tennis courts.

While the other students headed off to get lost, I stayed behind, desperately trying to write down My Precious words. However, given that I was using a pencil, laying on a not-so-smooth tennis court, and had virtually no light of which to speak, I wasn’t able to get more than about a word and a half down, so I had to resort back to muttering it to myself while I tried to find my way to somewhere–anywhere–else that had light and a smooth surface.

I eventually found another building, and so I let myself in via a nondescript side door, hoping that I wouldn’t be more lost inside than I had been outside.

But as soon as the door shut behind me, the loudest, most piercing alarm I had ever heard blew out my right ear drum, as I was still slightly turned with that side towards the door.

Simultaneously, as the power came back on, a blinding light/shock wave combination utterly blasted my right side.

The only thing I could think in that moment was “nuclear explosion?” and “welp, I guess this is my death.”

However, I remained conscious as it felt like the right side of my face was being melted off, so I shielded that side with my arms as best as I could, and kind of leaned into the curiously continuous wall of energy.³Ultimately, the best waking theory I have for what happened was that I had wandered into a particle accelerator lab, and I happened to be right in the path of the particle beam as it unexpectedly turned back on with the power. But it was never revealed in my dream what had happened, so I’m just guessing here.

This went on for about a minute, the whole while I kept thinking “Am I dead yet? No? How am I still alive? Okay…now am I dead? What? Not yet? Dear lord put me out of my misery already.”

Next thing I remember is opening my eyes to find that, no, I was not in heaven nor hell, but rather in (what I presumed to be) a burn victims’ ward of a hospital.

Two nurse-type ladies were with me and saw that I had came to, but continued to discuss me in the third person. I soon realized that one of them didn’t have any legs, so I wonder if they were not nurses, but rather victims of the unidentified blast as well.

One of them said, “Well, no, he sure isn’t dead, but we’ll see yet if he can handle being like this the rest of this life.”

Though I didn’t have a mirror, it become clear to me real quickly that I had suffered third-degree burns to my body, but especially to my head and face.

As I went to make a comment to one of them, much to my horror I discovered that my lips had been melted off, and I would never be able to speak again.

Noooooooo! The world must know of my turn as the Wittiest Man-child in the World!

I tried desperately speaking, whispering, grunting–anything–but I had been rendered a completely ineffective communicator. I’m not clear on this point, but I’m thinking the fingers on each of my hands must have been melded together, because you would think I would at least be able to write it down, right?

The remainder of the dream was mostly a Rocky-style montage of me going through vocal physical therapy, trying to regain my ability to speak. I was on a mission: nothing was going to stop me from telling me somebody how funny I had been that one time.

I don’t ever remember fully gaining the ability to speak. However, right before I awoke, the last scene involved me walking to some sort of rally with a group of prep-school teen-aged boys. The last thing I remember is approaching them, hell-bent on telling them the Wittiest Quip in the World. I just knew they were going to appreciate it.

As I neared them, I opened what used to be where my lips were, but before I could moan my line, I saw fear flash across their faces.

Oh, right. I forgot. I look like my face has bent by the flames of hell…

And that’s where the dream ended. It’s perhaps the most unfulfilled I have ever felt after awakening from a dream.

However, thanks to repeating it to myself over and over, I could remember what the line was, and could tell people in the real world!

Before I could forget, I turned to my phone and opened up my Notes app, where I furiously tapped out those words which would change the course of comedy forever:

Behold World, I have created the first-ever Dick(ens) joke.⁴Seriously, though, Dream B.J.?

Yeah, anyways, still not seeing how this could fail, I tried that out on the Boss Lady as soon as I got the chance…

Turns out, it wasn’t quite as funny in real life. Go figure.

It was definitely a bummer to realize that I may not have come up with the One Joke to Kill Them All after all…

But, hey, look on the bright side: at least I still got my big, beautiful lips, right?

Content created on: 29 January & 1 February 2020 (Wednesday/Saturday)