Petition the Veep: Stop Evil-lution in Schools!

COE 235Ooh, sign me up!

A petition addressed to VP-elect Mike Pence asks for (drum roll, clash of cymbals!) …

A NATIONWIDE MORATORIUM ON THE TEACHING OF EVOLUTION IN SCHOOLS

(A “moratorium.” Just until we can figure out, you know, whether it’s really true or not.)

They’re looking for (drum roll again, even louder clash of cymbals)

>>> OMG!! ONE THOUSAND SIGNATURES!!! <<<

—You know, a stunning tidal wave of deep passionate concern from Americans.

Some absolutely verbatim excerpts from the petition:

It is obvious to us that Evolutionism-Darwinism is an anti-Christian atheistic dogma masquerading as science. According to renown (sic) philosopher of science, Professor Michael Ruse blah blah blah blah.

Evolutionists, indeed, themselves speak about their “theory” blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah “the scientific equivalent of the Holy Grail.”

Blah blah blah denying the work of a divine creator in the natural order blah blah blah sweeping theological contention blah blah blah!!!

Blah blah blah blah the Neo-Darwinian paradigm is on the verge of collapse blah blah!!

Blah blah blah! Blah blah its flawed historical narrative of origins which includes telling students that humans are walking sarcopterygian fish! Blah blah blah!!

It ends with:

We therefore urge you to persuade President Trump to issue an executive order imposing a nationwide indefinite moratorium on the teaching of evolution in public schools. For it to be effective, this order should clearly state that it supersedes the decisions of state and district boards of education regarding the science curriculum. Those schools that don’t comply with it should be completely denied federal funding and aid by the Department of Education, just as it is proposed that cities that provide sanctuary to illegal aliens ought to be denied assistance. We hope that you will act upon this very urgent matter and uphold truth and the American way of life we hold so dear.

(Yeah, one peep out of you freedom-hating bastards and we’ll jerk your funding so fast your head will spin! But hey, no pressure. We’re all about that “equal exposure and then letting the kids decide for themselves.”)

I’m seeing an opportunity in the comments section.

 

Random Stuff I’ve Learned

COE Square•  Dogs like icewater in the summer, just like people do.
•  The burger you get at the counter has no resemblance to the picture of the burger on the poster.
•  If they tell you it’s “for your own good” or “to serve you better” … it isn’t.
•  Once you lose half your hair, the pressure’s off.
•  Everything mouse-sized and bigger has feelings.
•  The death of a loved one makes everything else small change.
•  Most everybody else is too busy dancing to watch how good or bad your dancing is. But you probably do suck at it. On the the other hand, the point of dancing isn’t to impress others.
•  Charity is cheaper if you do it directly.
•  You can’t wait for real life to start at some nebulous future date. Life has to be enjoyed every day. Get on with it.
•  I can overlook a lot of your peccadilloes as long as you’re self-supporting.
•  Never lie to a child or a dog for any reason.
•  The thing is, nobody really knows how things are supposed to be. As long as you don’t hurt anybody, including yourself, do the stuff that makes you happy.
•  In playing with your dog, let him win. Every time.
•  Little people think the way to be big is to hurt or control other people. Big people want power FOR people, rather than OVER them.
•  One of the nicest things about children is that they give adults an excuse to blow bubbles again.
•  Someday you’re going to be dead. Might as well make the best of the situation while you wait.
•  In court, bigger and better and higher-priced liars almost always win out over simple honesty and good faith.
•  Not all beliefs and cultures deserve respect. If you believe in treating women as property, your culture is an inferior pile of doodoo. I don’t need to respect you. You need to change.
•  Talk to children as if they were adults. Expect adults to sometimes act like children.
•  The brains of die-hard smokers are incapable of imagining cigarette butts and litter can be the same thing.
•  Human beings often go to war over their differences, despite being 99.99 percent the same.
•  Nobody outside Texas knows what real barbecue is.
•  Cats look a lot smarter than they really are.
•  Pretty much everybody is a well-meaning doofus. Including you and me.
•  Step in and put your hands on. Every person should know how to build things, how to create things, how to fix things. No sitting back playing helpless.
•  Some large fraction of what passes as acceptable business practice is purely predatory on the customer-victims.
•  No animal on earth smells worse than an unwashed human. Whatever else is happening in your life, if you’re not showering regularly, I’m not sitting next to you.
•  If you ask for a favor in a way that assumes I can’t say no, I’m saying no. If it’s obligatory, it’s not a favor.
•  Not only are you not the boss of me, I’m pretty sure I didn’t even hire you as a consultant.
•  Fame is a cheat, because it depends more on what other people think of you than on what you think of yourself.
•  Not every member of a downtrodden social class is an innocent fluffy bunny. Some of the people cops shoot actually deserve it.
•  There is no place you can get to in life, however low and helpless, that there isn’t somebody who’s figured out a way to suck just a teeny bit more life out of you. Sometimes that method is called “state lottery.”
•  If you turn your car stereo up to 10 and then go into a store with it blasting, it’s not about your love of music.
•  There are artists and there are people who say they’re artists. If you tell them you don’t understand their work and they retort that there must be something wrong with YOU, they’re probably the second type.
•  If you’re going to have a pet, don’t complain about a little fur on the furniture.
•  If they “deserve” it, you can do anything to them, including torturing and killing, and sleep well at night. Now you just have to figure out how to make it look like they deserve it.
•  There are creatures who walk around upright, wearing human clothes and speaking human language, but who are no more human than sharks. Many of them seem to do well.
•  Money can’t buy happiness, but if you’re going to be miserable anyway, you might as well take the money.
•  If they’re selling religion, just close the door.
•  Listen to someone closely and he’ll think you’re the brightest person he’s ever met.
•  Every discussion is about learning something, or reaching agreement. Every argument is about winning. There are people who CANNOT have a discussion.
•  The War on Drugs is like trying to put out a forest fire by doing away with Bic lighters. It’s the wrong solution. But then again, it keeps alive the richly profitable prison, lawyer and cops-and-courts industries. And hey, destroying people is a small price to pay for that, right?
•  Sports fanatics are idiots. But they seem to have more friends.
•  Skin color is a stupid way to divide people up. But there are people of every color who think it is.
• “Feminist” doesn’t automatically mean “right.” But don’t dare try to tell them that.
•  People who deliberately breed small, stubby-legged, brainless dogs are not really animal lovers.
•  The shrieking modern rejection of the occasional physical punishment administered to children is probably misguided. Civilization was built by people who had their butts whupped.
•  Everybody farts. But when the Pope does it, nobody notices.
•  Some people have never had an original thought in their lives. Fortunately, they never notice.
•  Give people compliments. If you think something good about somebody, tell them instantly.
•  It’s okay to be wrong.
•  Nobody gets enough hugs.
•  Your parents probably didn’t mean to do it to you. They were stumbling through life just like you are. But that doesn’t mean everything is forgivable.
•  Nobody ever thinks it’s their own fault.
•  If two young people take up living together, they will both immediately assume the other one is doing the housekeeping.
•  Used to be, if you were overweight, you were just overweight. Now you can be a victim of horrible oppression. Every. Goddam. Time. Someone brings up the subject of fitness.
•  Cities are not the natural environment of humans. You can never feel so alive, so free, so centered, as when you’re in the wilderness. But well over 90 percent of us will never know this.
•  European tourists dress funny. If they’re French, that goes double.

Short Stack #25

Maple Syrup on Pancakes[ Could be some duplicates in here. I’m sorting through an archive of old stuff.  ]

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Yesterday, hackers uncovered a stash of nude pictures of a prominent American political figure. After viewing them, they quietly apologized to Dick Cheney and returned the photos with detailed advice on how to beef up his firewall.

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One day we will be able to upload human consciousness to computers, and achieve virtual immortality. Well, when I say “we,” I mean rich people, corporate CEOs and elected officials. Not you. You get to die. Loser.

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I don’t get why those Nice Christians decided Harry Potter was satanic, but they completely missed Mary Poppins. She was a witch, after all. When she wasn’t entertaining the kids, she probably cavorted naked with demons.

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If Mary Poppins married Poppin Fresh … It’s a damned shame, but she’d be Mary Fresh.

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Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” would be a lot less noteworthy if he’d gone with his first choice of title — “The Yawn.”

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If Kryptonians were giant carnivorous insects, we’d probably feel a lot different about Superman.

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Economy cars should come in the civilian version and the military version. Because I would totally buy a military-grade Smart Car. Vroom, vroom! Pew-pew-pew!

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I think it would be fun to see a TV show called “History’s Assholes.” Dear History Channel …

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If you’re not willing to try Brain Piercing, you’re not hard core.

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Flasher Philosophy: “I’ll show you mine if … Aw, screw it, I’ll just show you mine.”

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Back when the guillotine was so busy during the French Revolution … do you suppose they washed and disinfected the blade after each use?

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Aw, come on. If I was REALLY living in a Fool’s Paradise, there would be a lot more Batman T-shirts, ice cream, water slides and big funny hats. And giggling. A whole lot more giggling.

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Isn’t it funny how much we breed dogs for cuteness, and how little we breed them for intelligence, health or longevity? You’d almost think we were rotten, insensitive sonsofbitches.

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Another great day when, once again, you didn’t wake up with the police pounding on your door. They’re probably still collecting evidence.

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If we had evolved from deer, we’d all get out of school and work for several weeks in the fall, so the guys could scratch their horns against trees, and get in fights.

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In Hell, every meal is gluten-free pizza topped with tofu and quorn.

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I think a baby raccoon would make a very cool pet. If you had time for it. Otherwise it would be a bundle of destruction and mayhem. Almost like a human child.

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Lego porn movies! What? No, it’s not MY idea. It was some other guy. I swear. I still haven’t seen Lego Batman.

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If I ever write my autobiography, I think the title will be “Human As a Second Language.”

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Civilization right now: It’s sort of like we’ve gone camping and woke up in the middle of a mine field. But for the moment, we can’t help but think about how it’s a beautiful sunny day.

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I’ll bet the phrase “the crack of dawn” has an entirely different meaning in drug culture.

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The Canadian surname “Bieber” is taken from an Indian word that translates loosely as “Wait up, guys! I just stepped in something. Oh, jeez, what IS that? It’s all over my moccasin!”

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The Jupiter landings were faked.

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Hints for Future Living #325: If a time traveler asks you the date, remember: Give him the day, month and year, but also be sure to add “A.D.” Then, just to fuck with him, say “A.D. means ‘Alpha Draconis.’ You knew we Dracs took over and killed off all the humans, right?”

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Women on the Klingon homeworld, Qo’noS, are much the same as women on Earth. The one noteworthy difference is, when they fight over shoes at the Bargain Table, there’s a lot more blood.

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Oh. My. God. There are people out there named “Jedidiah Knight.”

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I was about 6 the first time I heard of someone escaping from prison. I remember thinking “How hard is it to keep a human in a cage??” To this day, I’m still sort of boggled by the idea of prison escape. I mean, prison guards have ONE job, and this entire ultra-high-security facility to help them, and they still manage to somehow fuck it up.

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In Heaven, there is a restaurant called “All Your Favorite Foods Ever.” But there’ s a 2 billion year wait.

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A solar eclipse is just a really big animated Venn Diagram. Jeez, I wish you people would just GET OVER IT.

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Wait … Casper, Wyoming doesn’t offer ghost tours?

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When you travel to the Evil Mirror Universe and discover the “you” over there is a truly good human being, it really makes you think.

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Things to say to White People to prove you’re not a bigot:  I love White People’s art! My friend’s grandfather taught me some of your medicine secrets, and now I’m an honorary White Man. I saw that movie where they used White Language in WWII. That was so cool. Were any of your people in that war? Does anybody in your family still speak White?

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I’m imagining a scenario where I’m walking on the street and I see two people approaching with automatic weapons hanging from their shoulders. I quickly realize they’re pro-gun advocates with their rights on full display. With a big cheesy grin, I raise both arms in a triumphant gesture and shout “Second Amendment, meet First Amendment!” as I shoot them the bird from both hands. Would I live?

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I wonder how long it will be until all the mom-and-pop tattoo shops are overtaken by a corporate chain using digitized art and computer-controlled needles? I’m picturing a little side-shop in Wal-Mart, between the nail parlor and the eyeglass place. Five years, tops.

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Children are creepy! They look ALMOST like humans, but they’re small, and they have those big heads.

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I wonder if racehorses feel all smug about how fast they are, and then one day ride in a horse trailer on the highway and look out the window and go “Well, shit.”

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According to TV westerns and action-adventure movies, there is a place on the human chest, somewhere in the vicinity of either shoulder, where a bullet can go through you and you can walk around and talk and even make jokes after. The entrance and exit holes collectively are known as a “flesh wound,” and can be patched with a simple field dressing which, in a pinch, you yourself can hold in place. There are no bones, vital organs, arteries, muscles or major nerves that are seriously injured in such a shooting, and later you have full physical function and live to have other exciting adventures. I think this is probably true. It’s on TV, after all.

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I got a tentative offer from someone who wants to GIVE me a hot air balloon. But it’s still up in the air.

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I hope you atheists weren’t getting all lovey-dovey on Feb. 15. That was SAINT Valentine’s Day, you know, and that makes it a Christian holiday. This was not your day to celebrate. Drop the candy hearts and back away.

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Gift idea for your arachnophobe friends: The Big Pop-Up Fun Book of Giant Venomous Spiders.

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I just hope the food replicators on the Enterprise aren’t hooked up to human waste disintegrators.

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Idea Book: Walking Dead Laser Tag. You field 20 or so zombie players, and they pursue you through 100 acres of hilly, wooded ground, or maybe an abandoned factory. If they touch you, you’re out, and the only way you can take THEM out is with a really precise head shot. The Master Class version that takes place on the Koch Brothers’ estate uses homeless people and real bullets.

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A tattoo is a lot like a baby. Nobody will admit having one is anything but endless joy. Not because they ARE endless joy, but because once you get one, you pretty much have to love it. You can’t take it back. Besides which, nobody will tell you, “Damn, that’s an ugly baby there. You must feel just awful about it.”

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It would be funny if every clown you ever saw in your life was actually in the Witness Protection program. If one of the secrets of Witness Protection was that there was only one profession available — birthday clown. You turn evidence on your mafia boss, and next thing you know, you’re living in Alamogordo, New Mexico, honking a horn and throwing confetti at 5-year-olds. Now you know why there are so many sad clowns.

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But really, how did that jolly swagman get an entire jumbuck in his tucker bag? I say those Australians have to stop relying on faith and admit it never happened.

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Man, the lesbians in Netherlands must just get SICK of the jokes.

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I knew Plato back when he was doing great MONOlogues.

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Lesser-Known Facts #314: If you warm up a penguin to regular room temperature, they explode violently. This is actually how the Tierra del Fuegans held off the Japanese during WWII.

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Sorry, Donald, “But I’m a duck!” just doesn’t cut it. You came here for the benefits of civilization, you wear the goddam pants.

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Yeah, they set off explosives in the Twin Towers. Because just having a jet full of fuel crash into a building is iffy.

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I suppose the main reason I think horses are just about the most visually appealing animal on earth is that I grew up with them. But I still have a hard time imagining that anyone thinks warthogs are beautiful, or hyenas, compared to horses. I suspect squidlike aliens would come to earth and see horses for the first time and go “Ooooh. Those are NICE! Glodnax, take a picture of me with the hor-seez! I want to show Bremzorf when we get back.”

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I think there should be Screen Actors GUILT Awards, where actors self-nominate for various films they’ve been in. For instance, George Clooney might say “I really just feel terrible for doing Batman & Robin. It was totally ludicrous, and I think it shames the entire genre.”

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They taper to a point at the front end. That’s why they’re called “tapirs.”

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If a guy named Bob Smith marries a woman named Becky Smith, how can he be sure she takes his last name? I mean, what if she’s only halfway committed to the marriage, and keeps her own name? I’ll bet the rest of you never even think about this stuff. But somebody has to. For the sake of Bob.

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It would be weird to be a herald. You’d go everywhere with this guy and anytime he was about to walk into an office or store or something, you’d jump out in front of him and yell “Here comes Bob! Bob is about to enter the room! Look everybody, it’s Bob!”

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So it’s Cardinals that choose each new pope, huh? I mean, I knew they were PRETTY birds, but I had no idea they were so smart!

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In other news, Eeyore is now taking anti-depressants, and has been seen dancing and flying kites. He’s also turned out to be quite the jokester among the stuffed animal set, and his braying “Haw! Haw! Haw!” is now frequently heard echoing through the Hundred Acre Wood.

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Wow. There was an advertisement on TV for a show that seemed to be about a sport involving men hitting each other. Who would have thought there would be a sport form of people hitting each other? I wonder what they call it? Maybe it’s just Men Hitting Each Other.

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Few children today are aware there was a much earlier version of Transformers. But you had to climb up an electric company tower to play with them. (Usually there was just that one kid, then nobody tried it again for a few years.)

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I wanted to try the Paleo Diet, but the book I mistakenly picked up was the Palin Diet. Now I feel like going to a pizza place and getting into a brawl.

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If we ever do get World Peace, all those poor beauty contestants will have nothing to wish for.

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Space People, I’m ready to go now. Come get me.

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“Histrionic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people act in a very emotional and dramatic way that draws attention to themselves.” OH MY GOD, WHY WOULD ANYBODY EVEN SAY SUCH A THING!!? IT’S LIKE THEY’RE TARGETING ME!!!!! NOW I FEEL LIKE KILLING MYSELF!!!

I’ve known a few of them.

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To those of us in the US who hear our British friends using the term “Boxing Day” to refer to the day after Christmas: Boxing Day is the traditional event where the entire nation of Great Britain dons boxing gloves and vents the year’s frustrations with their fellow citizens by freely pummeling each other at bus stops, coffee shops, offices and even churches. Queen Elizabeth herself got in some good licks last year on members of Parliament and, it is suspected, the Royal Family. Prince Philip and Prince Charles both showed up at a post-Christmas dinner with split lips and matching shiners, while Her Highness wore a demure, self-satisfied smile.

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Boy, wings were a good idea, weren’t they? Birds have them, insects have them, mammals have them, fish have them, even trees have them (to help seeds spread). There are even reptiles and amphibians with airfoils.

There’s a lesson there somewhere. Probably a physics lesson.

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When Godzillah stomps down the pedestrian-filled streets of Tokyo, it probably feels like walking on bubble wrap.

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I heard Mexico is so angry at Obama for normalizing relations with Cuba that they’re taking back Taco Bell.

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Places I have been: 1) Trantor 2) Middle Earth 3) Krypton 4) Dragon’s Egg 5) The On-Off Star 6) Pandora 7) Arrakis 8) Zarathustra (Little Fuzzy’s world) 9) Jupiter 10) Vulcan 11) Tralfamadore 12) Pern 13) Oz 14) Planet Bob 15) Narnia 16) Riverworld 17) Valdemar 18) Discworld (!) 19) Landover 20) Barsoom 21) Ringworld 22) The Smoke Ring 23) The Fleet of Worlds 24) Xanth 25) Phaze/Proton

Earth has some cool things to recommend it, but there’s no way I’m staying here permanently.

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Did you know novelists just MAKE SHIT UP?? I don’t know how anybody could think that was a good thing. And it’s like they DON’T EVEN CARE that people know.

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It’s not shepherd’s pie if you don’t use real German shepherds.

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At the Open Carry convention, “He walked out on stage and blew everyone away” has a slightly different meaning.

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Lamb chops, ugh! I had lamb ONCE and my stomach said Never Again. In Texas where I grew up, I think you can actually get arrested for eating sheep. The only way we Texans eat sheep is to let the coyotes eat them first, and then eat the coyotes, skin on, in a sauce made out of grizzly testicles cooked with a flamethrower.

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It’s not RE-venge if you only do it the one time.

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I still can’t decide between being a cowboy and a karate expert. I mean, on the one hand, you get to go Yee-HAA! But on the other, you can go Hee-YAA!

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Interesting. I just looked up the word “denigrate.” Turns out the word does actually spring from a Latin root that means “to blacken.” Now all us liberals can cringe and look around every time we use it.

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Technically, nobody gets hurt when you flip the bird at a blind person. But it’s still probably a bad idea.

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There’s a new diet out that’s so easy, it will take the fat away whether you like it or not. In fact, you will have to fight to stay heavy. You will have to run and hide so the diet doesn’t find you and suck you down to nothing. You will have to take out a restraining order and hire a bodyguard to keep this diet from taking off the weight. If you even THINK about using this diet, the neighbors three houses over will look like death camp survivors. This diet is so effective it will suck the donuts out of a cop’s mouth as you drive past on the freeway. This diet is so powerful that when they tested it on a hippo, he ended up looking like a thoroughbred race horse. Okay, I’m stopping now. But you should probably send me $9.95 anyway.

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Antikythera. I say it was the targeting mechanism for a time-travel device. And somebody didn’t make it home.

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I’m surprised piercing fans haven’t explored the body mod possibilities of the nail gun. It’s practically a no-brainer.

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I don’t know why Thor’s hammer is made of Uru rather than thorium. I mean, come on.

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Just remember you’re not the only one who’s survived a severe accident and gone on to do stuff. I broke my neck when I was 15 and I’ve never looked back!

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If you ever find yourself in a horror movie: 1) Don’t back through any doorways. 2) If the monster is out there somewhere, don’t pause to make out. 3) Next time, get a better flashlight. 4) After the monster is dead, don’t turn your back on it.

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If iPhones exist, why is there still Radio Shack?

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On Coyote Planet, when you go to the fast food drive-thru, they release a rabbit into the driveway as you pull up. You run over it, then get out and eat it off the pavement. Extra napkins, please.

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When I was a kid, I was so sensitive to bullying I didn’t like referring to those specialty pliers as “needle-nose.”

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If the poles shift, I say we cut off all aid to Poland. We shouldn’t encourage all this moving around.

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When they know nobody can overhear them, the superheroes who can fly make fun of those who can’t.

FLIGHT-SHAMING. It’s the ugly little secret of the superhero business.

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Idea Book: Novel: “Worst Contact”

A previously undiscovered tribe is located by aerial surveys of the Amazon. Anthropologists make plans to carefully contact them. But a Madison Avenue PR firm decides to jump in and contact them first, taking bids from companies for which products to introduce them to, and to film their reactions to.

The first two products are Milky Way candy bars and Budweiser beer. The civilized world is captivated by the Amazonians’ filmed astonishment at the irresistibly sweet taste of the candy, and the hilarious effects of the beer. Sales skyrocket, and more companies vie for product placement opportunities. The Amazonians are quickly introduced to such foods as Ranch Style Beans, Armour Vienna Sausage, to Wrigley’s Hubba Bubba bubble gum, and even Marlboro cigarettes.

Soon a reality TV show features an extended Amazonian family, showing family members experimenting with clothes, shoes, modern firearms, fast food. Christian missionaries arrive from the Vatican, and episodes feature the reaction of the Stone Age primitives to the revelations of God and Heaven. iPhones are handed out, and the men of the tribe are directed to first person shooter games, and YouTube videos of twerking. A staffer on the film crew begins distributing heroin to tribal friends, and they begin sneaking off to shoot up, all captured on hidden cameras.

But I think it would all have a happy ending. Probably include a lesson on the Indomitable Spirit of Man or some shit like that.

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Dick Cheney has had five heart attacks and a heart transplant. The way I figure it, he has one Horcrux left, and then he becomes mortal.

Anyone in his neighborhood, look for a large snake that always seems to be close to him.

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If a product is “tainted,” does that mean it has actually come into contact with someone’s taint?

Because I can see why you wouldn’t want something like that.

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Idea Book: Create a puppeteering rig that fits on toddlers, so that you’d have the control yoke in hand above, and the suspended toddler, below, would move as you directed.You could stage entire Shakespearean plays with baby-puppets. Well, sure it’s horrible —to you Earthlings. But galactically, this would be hilarious.

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New Horizons fly-by of Pluto. Great, now the Plutonians know where we are.

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Things Spider-Man hates to hear: “Hey, Spidey! I saw you on the Web the other day! Ha! Get it? I saw you on the WEB! Hahahahaha!!”

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Birthday tip for those of you with werewolf friends: Don’t buy them a squeaky bone chew toy. Apparently that’s insulting or something.

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Anyone going to be executed should be given a massive dose of hallucinogens an hour or so before. Because if you’re going to die, you might as well do it defending the gentle residents of the planet Zeenot from the Tark4eaan bloodmonkeys.

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Think about it: If we ever worked out direct brain-to-brain communication, we could have books written by and for babies who can’t talk yet. I think “Mommy’s Ta-tas” would be a best seller. There’s even some crossover potential in the older male demographic.

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I wonder how the Sound Technicians feel when you really do drop the mike.

Starbucks Cups: Yeah, Get Angry … Suckah!

starbucksAnd so the annual “War on Christmas” begins — the viral claptrap that comes out every year like Christmas lights, earlier and earlier. Here’s this year’s volley.

A number of articles from mainstream news sites — New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, New York Daily News — say “some Christians” or “Christian evangelists” take exception to Starbucks’ new plain red cups … but they never actually name the “some Christians” they’re talking about. Is it the Catholic Church in all its might? No. The Southern Baptist Convention? No. It isn’t even Pat Robertson.

Apparently it’s this one guy, Joshua Feuerstein, a “public figure” who does stuff like this to promote his own video rants on Facebook and elsewhere. Obviously Starbucks is getting massive amounts of free publicity, which makes me wonder if Feuerstein is getting paid to play out this song and dance on screen. But mainly, Feuerstein is an instant media celebrity on CNN (CNN MYSTERIOUSLY CUTS AUDIO WHEN FEUERSTEIN SAYS >>THIS<< ABOUT OBAMA!!!) etc., and will probably go on to write books and scam his way into lots and lots of money through the empty fame machine. He’s now famous for … well, for being a loud and insistent ass, with no real point other than artificial — MANUFACTURED — outrage.

We’re all talking about those Starbucks red cups, though. I’m sssooooooo proud of us for, you know, CARING so much about the color of Starbucks cups. We may not have a point, but man, we’re ANGRY. We’re INTERESTED. We have OPINIONS. Bully for us, right?

I don’t care about the color of the cups. I don’t care much about Feuerstein. I do care that so many of us are getting sucked into this as if it’s some critical issue that MUST consume our attention.

I care that there’s a mechanism for putting us in this situation of being interested in nothing.

It’s a little bit like a magic act, where the magician does some vigorous waving with his left hand to distract our attention while he does the magicky stuff with his right. Only in this case, there’s no magicky stuff — it’s just that  distracting left hand up there waving.

But hey, Earth People, do your thing.

I’ll just stand over here feeling very alien.

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UPDATE: Oh, good, Donald Trump weighs in. Starbucks has gone presidential!

Short Stack #24

Maple Syrup on PancakesJust sent in my application to the United Nations for the Pig Latin interpreter post.

I think my chances are good. I’ve been speaking it since the third grade.

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One bad shower can scar you for life.

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When you think about it, The Joker is the ultimate example of motivational success. He’s upbeat, cheerful, he has high self-esteem, he’s willing to try anything, and he recognizes no limits. He’s like the perfect corporate CEO.

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It just seems so odd that some Earth animals grow faucets on their bodies for the young ones to drink nutrient fluid from. That can’t be the most efficient way to do it. On my planet, we take the young ones out into the Solar Forest and plug them in for a few months. After that, they eat rocks like the rest of us.

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In Moscow, there’s a museum of Russian-made sex toys. They can’t actually demonstrate them because the room fills up with diesel smoke, but you can look at them.

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Movie Idea: A renegade environmentalist releases a deadly virus into the New York City airport, knowing it will spread worldwide in a matter of days. The virus kills and zombifies all it infects.

The catch is that it only works on Chihuahuas. Bands of surviving humans all over the world hurry to install screen doors, don ankle-high boots and arm themselves with brooms.

But victims continue to die, and international panic ensues. Finally, Autumn arrives, and the zombie Chihuahuas succumb to the 60 degree temperatures.

The final scene is a New Zealand farmer going out to check on his sheep. He slides open the barn door, and there is a sudden flash of bulging eyes and sharp, white teeth.

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Now I’m wondering if the term “hand job” — which seems like it would be fairly recent — might actually be tens of thousands of years old (in whatever language they spoke at the time, of course).

“Gronk give Oona big fish, Oona give Gronk googawonga?”

Hey, someone has to think about these things

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I’m clearing and organizing some of the piles of paper in my office. One note I came across, just something jotted down on a scrap of paper, said:  “I want to be a member of the last insane generation.”

Fat chance.

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Vaping. There are some new dumb ideas out there that people think are smart ideas simply because they’re different from the old dumb ideas.

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When they know nobody can overhear them, the superheroes who can fly make fun of those who can’t.

FLIGHT-SHAMING. It’s the ugly little secret of the superhero business.

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I’m wondering if all the people against spanking are also all against genital mutilation. Because I see a LOT of ardent posts against “brutalizing your child,” but very few against circumcision.

But hey, that’s NORMAL. Besides, it’s mainly about health, right? It’s for their own good.

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In an adjacent universe, on Just Slightly Magic World, there are real fairies who come to deserving people’s houses and leave gifts. For instance, there’s an Apple Pie Fairy which comes at midnight and leaves a generous slice of warm, delicious apple pie for every member of the family.

This is not as good as it sounds, however. Owing to the fact that fairies aren’t human and don’t actually understand humans, the Apple Pie Fairy leaves those slices of apple pie in unexpected places — for instance, on the pillow of each family member, or artistically arranged on the toilet seat.

Worse, the Apple Pie Fairy is hypersensitive and prone to fits of vengeful rage, so nobody dares say anything.

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When an octopus finds a dark hole on the ocean floor, it doesn’t stop  to wonder what horrible thing might be lurking in there, it moves in and BECOMES the horrible thing lurking in there.

This is basically the same reason Donald Trump is running for president.

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From the days of Jesus’ healing miracles, SECRET THOUGHTS OF THE HEALED BLIND MAN!

This morning there is some sort of very large object in the sky emitting light so bright it hurts to look at it. Surely that can’t be natural.

It came up over the horizon and has slowly climbed into the sky, moving east to west, almost as if it’s orbiting the planet. It doesn’t look really big, but if it is in orbit, it must be huge.

There’s nobody on the streets looking at it. I wonder if anybody has even noticed it up there. It’s like they’re all taking it for granted or something.

What if I ask my neighbor and it turns out it’s something everybody else sees every day, and they laugh at me? I don’t want to look stupid. But damn, that thing worries me.

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I’ll bet snakes have to slither into someplace dark in order to sleep. Stupid reptiles — the rest of us evolved eyelids. (Doesn’t mean we sleep but, you know, we COULD.)

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Idea Book: Novel: “Worst Contact”

A previously undiscovered tribe is located by aerial surveys of the Amazon. Anthropologists make plans to carefully contact them. But a Madison Avenue PR firm decides to jump in and contact them first, taking bids from companies for which products to introduce them to, and to film their reactions to.

The first two products are Milky Way candy bars and Budweiser beer. The civilized world is captivated by the Amazonians’ filmed astonishment at the irresistibly sweet taste of the candy, and the hilarious effects of the beer. Sales skyrocket, and more companies vie for product placement opportunities. The Amazonians are quickly introduced to such foods as Ranch Style Beans, Armour Vienna Sausage, to Wrigley’s Hubba Bubba bubble gum, and even Marlboro cigarettes.

Soon a reality TV show features an extended Amazonian family, showing family members experimenting with clothes, shoes, modern firearms, fast food. Christian missionaries arrive from the Vatican, and episodes feature the reaction of the Stone Age primitives to the revelations of God and Heaven. iPhones are handed out, and the men of the tribe are directed to first person shooter games, and YouTube videos of twerking. A staffer on the film crew begins distributing heroin to tribal friends, and they begin sneaking off to shoot up, all captured on hidden cameras.

But I think it would all have a happy ending. Probably include a lesson on the Indomitable Spirit of Man or some shit like that.

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Figures of speech not to use: Like a chihuahua in a blender. Salty as whale’s piss. Pathetic as Sarah Palin’s brain, spread out on a dissecting table. Lame as that handicapped beggar I just ran over. Exciting as a power surge during a brain scan. As unsexy as furries at a veterinarian’s convention. Hungry as a Muslim at a Pork Festival. Like a honey badger with hemorrhoids. Ugly as a fat man’s back pimples. Scary as fireworks outside a Gulf War vet’s house. Like taking a dozen Xanax and listening to Wayne Newton. Creepy as Karl Rove in ass-less chaps.

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Years in acting school, and finally one day you get The Call. You’re invited to star in an upcoming movie. You excitedly accept, thinking >>This Is It<< — your big break, the day you will look back on from your future as a rich, internationally famous movie star, and think “That’s where it all started.”

But when you get the script, you find out it’s something called CopEye, a crappy police-themed ripoff of the movie Popeye. It’s not even shitty Popeye, it’s a shitty tearaway of Popeye. And there are utterly unnecessary nude scenes.

Kids, that’s what real life is like.

No, just kidding. Your big break will be a remake of Lawrence of Arabia, and Peter O’Toole will look like a second-rate ham compared to you. Your whole life will be like that.

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All you people afraid of clowns — coulrophobics — think of this:

When clowns take off their red noses, makeup and clown clothes, they look just like normal people. They walk around in public and nobody knows what they really are.

They are HIDDEN clowns, SECRET clowns, SURREPTITIOUS clowns. They might even brush past on a city street and TOUCH you. They might even do it DELIBERATELY.

You think you’re safe from clowns, never knowing they’re touching you ALL THE TIME.

You can’t escape from clowns, because they are hidden among the people around you. Watching you. Walking up behind you without you knowing. Thinking about touching you.

Clowns. Everywhere.

Everywhere.

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The Bible is a lot more stirring and dramatic when you read it in the original Klingon.

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Dick Cheney has had five heart attacks and a heart transplant. The way I figure it, he has one Horcrux left, and then he becomes mortal.

Anyone in his neighborhood, look for the large snake he always keeps close to him.

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It seems to me that one of the inevitable consequences of advanced civilization would be immortality. Why, if you could beat every disease, including aging and eventually death, would you NOT choose that?

In any society that had the technology to extend life, those who chose it would live on and on, those who didn’t would be self-selected out, until eventually there would a community made up mostly of immortals.

I suggest one of the reasons we haven’t been contacted, if it’s at all possible, is because we’re so ephemeral to them that they consider us more beastly than civilized.

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I was thinking today that we usually imagine a single dividing line between Conservative and Liberal, but there are actually THREE major dividers along the socio-political spectrum.

There’s that middle conservative-liberal divider (which is a broad line rather than a thin one), but there’s another line between Conservative and Conservative-Crazy, and a third line between Liberal and Liberal-Asshole.

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If we’d evolved from dogs, Hump Day would have a whole different meaning.

“And stop licking yourself at work, Spotty! Nobody believes you dropped something under your desk!”

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The Swedish Chef is a horrible insult to Swedish people! I say this as someone who may or may not have Swedish ancestry, and may or may not actually know some Swedish people.

But I’m offended anyway, just in case.

Wait … is he the Swedish Chef, or the Swiss Chef? I mean, whatever, right? But either way, it’s an insult.

Also: Shout out to all my Swedish/Swiss peeps! Gehoorty verdoor de chicky stew!

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Just ordered an Earth-food item called a “peetsah.” It comes with a leathery base made from a type of crushed grass seeds, a paste made from a fruiting body of a terrestrial plant, a congealed material prepared from the white fluid squeezed out of the nether paps of certain herbivorous mammals, a variety of sliced and chopped dirt-grown plants, and the shredded muscle tissue of a large bird. The whole thing is thrown into a heating chamber and singed for 20 minutes or so. It sounds revolting, but when my people return for me, I’m going to suggest we take the recipe and the ingredients back with us. That business about consuming pure energy does get boring at times.

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If a product is “tainted,” does that mean it has actually come into contact with someone’s taint?

Because I can see why you wouldn’t want something like that.

 

 

 

Non Sequitur, With Prominent Thumb

hitchingI saw an actual hitchhiker a few days ago! A young woman stood on the side of the highway entrance ramp holding a sign that said NORTH. I was in my company van and couldn’t offer a ride, but I rolled down the passenger side window and yelled “Good luck!”

Talking to a friend later, we compared notes on how rare it is to see hitchhikers these days, and yet how much safer the country is today than, say, 40 years ago when I was doing so much of it.

In my hitchhiking days, I compiled 26,000 miles by actual count on long road trips, probably a good 10 to 25 percent more in short trips I didn’t count. Add another 550 for the time I hopped a ride on a freight train from El Paso, Texas to (I think I recall) Yuma, Arizona, and the total could be close to 33,000 miles — the equivalent of 10 or 11 crossings of the United States.

In 15 years or so of hitching, I got only a handful of scary rides, some from drunk people, a couple from really pushy gays, and one from a guy I’m convinced might have killed me if things had worked out differently. I was young, in shape and strong, but overall, I think it was just that the world, even back then, contained a very small percentage of bad people.

Most of the people who picked me up were just lonely on long trips, innately gregarious, or paying back kindnesses from their own lives. The job of a hitchhiker, I soon discovered, is to be good company, to listen to the driver’s tall tales, and sometimes to help keep the guy awake.

Re: Tall tales. I must have heard this story at least 20 times over the years. “Me and my two buddies had just gotten out of the Navy and we were hitching home from San Diego together when this motor home pulled over, with three beautiful women inside headed for a week in Las Vegas.”

I always believed them. To this day, I imagine there’s a big lush motorhome cruising the highways of America, three women in their 70s inside, looking for a trio of sailors standing on the roadside, perpetually headed for a never-to-be-forgotten week in Las Vegas.

Short Stack #23

Maple Syrup on PancakesIf we had evolved from deer, I wonder if we’d all get out of school and jobs for several weeks in the fall, so the guys could scratch their horns against trees, and get in fights.

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I’m imagining that we first-worlders will have to switch over to strict vegetarian diets as population continues to increase, and third-worlders will switch over to grass.

Fortunately, they will be provided with a genetically engineered digestive enzyme that will allow them to eat the grass, at least enough that they will still have sufficient energy to reproduce. Because god help us if people don’t have their “right” to have children.

But also fortunately, we will be able to kill off just about every other large mammal on earth and take over that vital living space. Because hey, fuck them, right? They’re ANIMALS.

Wait, you don’t want to kill off those animals? … Why do you hate the starving babies? They’re BABIES, and they’re STARVING. Why do you want to kill them? Why? What’s wrong with you?

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Idea Book: Some talented artist out there, I’d love to see superheros done as Smurfs. Iron Smurf, Spider Smurf, Smurftain America, the Smurftastic Four!

I’m especially eager to see the Silver Smurfer and S’mor (Thor).

———————-

So when are we getting the nanites that give us extra strength, rapid healing and superior vision and hearing?

Because I’m READY.

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If nobody knew about milk, and you suddenly showed up and said “Hey, I drink this whitish, greasy liquid I squeeze out of the underside of those big smelly animals over there!” …

I’m pretty sure somebody would say “Eww, you filthy, gross bastard!”

Come to think of it, you might even get arrested, charged with bestiality or something.

Especially if you accidentally pointed at a bull.

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My heart goes out to all the victims of ebola. It’s bad enough that you have this horrible deadly disease, but even worse when people quarantine and marginalize you. That’s why I’m starting my new campaign of compassion, “Hug An Ebola Victim.”

We need to let them know we still care.

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I think it would be fun to see a TV show called “History’s Assholes.”

Dear History Channel …

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In the alternate universe where superheroes are real …

What do superhero comics look like?

Because if they’re just illustrated adventures of the real superheroes, they’re sort of like People Magazine, aren’t they? And what 15-year-old boy would read THAT?

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One of my cowboy friends, Tom Wood, got malignant melanoma and died of it. I was going through a stack of old papers and came across one of the last letters he wrote me.

“Dear Hank: It was good to talk to you last night. Sorry I wasn’t quite with it, but I get drowsy in the evening from my pain medication. Since my surgery I have just been taking it real easy.”

It’s dated 1986. He died 28 years ago. I can still remember the sound of his voice, the feel of his handshake, all his likes — Australian country music, darts, Irish Cream — and dislikes. He was one of the cowboy “gearheads,” the guy who has to have all the cool wild rags, hats, dusters, belts, boots, etc. Hell, he had his own branding iron pattern, a T-hanging-W.

He died at the age of 39. At the time he was about 5 years older than me, but now he seems like an idiot kid.

Death is weird. And I miss the dopey bastard.

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I’m glad they fly ebola victims back to the U.S. Because after they’re infected with a deadly disease, we really need to Bring Them Home.

And that charter flight … I do hope they clean that plane with fanatical care. Although I hear the Cheney family is looking for a nice comfy jet to travel to a private island retreat.

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Reality TV Series: Ten C-list actors and actresses and two stand-up comics are cloistered together on a gated Hollywood estate, with a pool, tennis courts, jacuzzi and such. Hidden cameras are everywhere, and the group stays together for 21 days.

A grounds-keeper with ebola is introduced on the third day.

I’m pretty sure there would be Madcap Hijinks.

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Other than that, Mrs. Kennedy, how did you like Dallas?

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So if Superman was your daddy (by a Hollywood starlet, say, who wanted the publicity), and he was still using a secret identity, would your last name be Superman?

Bobby Superman. Michelle Superman. LaQuonda Nadine Superman. Pemberton Braithwaite Superman.

And would they get along with Elliott and Roxanne Luthor?

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If you’re not willing to try Brain Piercing, you’re not hard core.

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Ha. I was just thinking of writing a fake news story in which the little-known U.S. Government Office of Gravity altered the gravity at different times and in different places in order to favor business and manipulate private citizens. For instance, during the armed standoff at Waco, the office turned up the gravity in that area so bullets fired at federal agents would fall short. And on election day, the gravity near certain polling places is turned up so minority voters will be too tired to vote.

Bet I could get people to believe it.

Besides which, I’m pretty sure the gravity was up to 1.5 Gs where I was today. Obama!!!

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Flasher Philosophy:

“I’ll show you mine if … Aw, screw it, I’ll just show you mine.”

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Aw, come on. If I was REALLY living in a Fool’s Paradise, there would be a lot more Batman T-shirts, ice cream, water slides and big funny hats.

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Back when the guillotine was so busy during the French Revolution … do you suppose they washed and disinfected the blade after each use?

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But what would you do for TWO Klondike bars?

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Back in the days of Rome, it must have been pretty funny when someone lit a candle and those balls of fire started shooting out every few seconds.

I guess we’re lucky today that we only have to use them for Fourth of July.

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What would zoos look like if we assumed elephants were sentient beings?

Seriously, I’ve wondered for years why we don’t have a 30-million-dollar project to really map elephant intelligence and cognition. And then treat all other elephants according to what we find out.

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Another great day when, once again, you didn’t wake up with the police pounding on your door.

They’re probably still collecting evidence.

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If robins made a sound like jackhammers … mornings would be a lot less fun.

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If there was a trillion-to-one chance that you could get struck by lightning, and then you got struck by lightning, you’d almost HAVE TO assume there was some special intent involved. “What’s behind this? What caused it? Who did it? And why?”

But the thing is, given the population of planet earth and the frequency of lightning strikes, sooner or later somebody DOES get struck by lightning.

To the rest of us, it’s nothing special. But to THAT guy, it’s got to feel significant.

Somewhere in this is a lesson about all of life: “It’s probably not about you.”

Ouch.

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I’m sitting in a local coffee shop this afternoon, reading and kicking back, when I hear raised voices. One of the local street characters is SHOUTING at the little girl behind the counter. I realize I’ve been hearing them for a bit, gradually escalating, and now he’s yelling “Whatchu mean, call the pow-leece?! Whatchu gonna tell the pow-leece?” He storms out.

I’m thinking “WTF? Who has to get this excited in a COFFEE SHOP in sleepy little Schenectady, New York?”

Thinking about it, though, I realize it probably has nothing to do with this moment and this place. It’s about his whole life, and the trap he’s found himself in — a trap that he no doubt contributed to, as we all do, but that also has some large element of the outside world at fault.

But I do not know what I can do about that today. I read my book, finish my coffee, and go about my life.

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Just wait ‘til I release MY secret tapes.

I think the 1/2-inch transparent is going to really turn heads, but it’s the double-sided 3/4-inch foam-core picture-hanging variety that’s really going to blow the lid off. Brace yourself, world.

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Dang it, they fired me from my supermarket produce-department job. Hey, I thought the sign over the bananas saying “SWEET AND JUICY!!!” was a real attention-getter.

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In any issue of science and public health, there’s the science, and there’s the socio-cultural system in which the science is carried out.

If you talk to pro-GMO people about GMOs, they’re only willing to discuss the science issue. They’re not willing to talk about the social matrix where the science happens.

The social matrix includes the fact that the scientists are working for somebody, they’re paid to do certain things. Being a scientist does not necessarily imply ethicality. We like to think it does, but it doesn’t.

The companies those scientists work for have mandates that are only peripherally concerned with your health and safety, and centrally concerned with profits. They don’t want to get sued and lose money, but there are times it’s cheaper to fight it in court and put off a settlement as long as possible than it is to pay damages — or even to proactively head off the problem ahead of time. That happens all the time. Cheaper to pay off politicians to change the laws.

The “you” in your head is centrally important to you, literally the most important thing in the universe. By extreme contrast, though we don’t like to think it, there are people about whom you literally don’t care anything. They might die in a speed-boat accident, and you might see the video of the accident and think only how funny it was. The idea of their fear, severe injury, drowning and bleeding to death at the same time, and being wholly conscious and terrified as it happened, would probably not even occur to you. It’s a sort of de facto sociopathy, but it’s also normal, because none of us can know or care about every stranger.

The thing about any corporation is that it’s run by people to whom YOU are the speed-boat victim. They not only don’t care about you, they CAN’T. This is a hard thing to realize for some of us. Those of us who think Science can do no wrong, they deliberately assert that every company dealing in GMOs must care so much that they would never let anything happen to precious us. When the opposite has been demonstrated — in every industry — over and over and over, thousands of times.

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I have in mind a new TV show, but I’m not sure who to pitch it to. It’s sort of a mashup of Breaking Bad, Twilight and The Walking Dead.

The sparkley vampires are made out of pure cocaine, and the crack-addict zombies want to snort them. And there’s a love story.

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If you meet someone from India for the first time, you should immediately ask them a question about your computer. Because man, those people know computers.

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I’m thinking of a pattern (or style, or color) of paint called Blood Spatter. Thinking how fun it would be to have a truck painted that color. A spray of blood over the hood, one off the left side of the front bumper, maybe one over the roof. The laughs would just never stop.

I suppose others might disagree. After all, my Car-Top Baby Carrier never caught on.

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It was common for my mom to get mad at me when I got hurt. By the time I was 12, I was regularly concealing injuries and accidents so I wouldn’t have to deal with the uproar. I once fell off a 10-foot church roof — onto my head and neck (no snickers, you bastards) — and my first impulse after I was able to get up was to hide.

I suppose this MIGHT be what informs my feeling today about “victim blaming.” If I walk out into heavy traffic and a car hits me, it seems to me that it’s partly my fault. If someone says “What the hell were you thinking? Never walk out there like that without looking!” and then someone else chirps “Oh no, you’re VICTIM BLAMING!!” … I’m not going to see that second person as the truest friend.

If something happens to you and you contributed in any way to the situation … yes, you do need to make better decisions next time. And other people need to be told so THEY can make better decisions for the future. This does NOT mean I think drivers should have perfect freedom to run over anybody they want. It does mean I think we live in the real world, and that nobody gets a free pass on the consequences of their own contributory actions.

I just can’t see it as black and white. There’s a lot of discussional space between “this is totally your fault” and “nothing is your fault, ever; it’s all THEIR fault.”

But in some circles, a desire for those gradations of nuance makes me a monster.

———————-

Enough of this “day” shit.

I will now go into the Sleep Chamber to lie on a resilient surface, pass into a temporary state of unconsciousness, and probably rise several times in the night to jettison liquid wastes before becoming fully conscious again when daylight reappears.

There may be fantastic images experienced internally, but I’m told that’s normal. There are no real killer Pez dispensers, and the screaming, bloody clowns will not actually eat me. (The flying Mardi Gras floats, though, I think those are real.)

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Driving drunk. At night. While texting. In a snowstorm. With headphones. And no seat belt. You should get Expert Driver Points if you do this and don’t have an accident. Because hey, we all know there’s a penalty if you have an accident. Why isn’t there a reward if you DON’T??

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If we’d evolved from cats, the term “hacker” would have a whole different meaning.

———————-

The suckiest thing about life is that you can’t do EVERYTHING. I hate having to think about doing ONE thing.

There are people out there who spend their entire careers being barbers, or carpenters, or cheesemakers. Or hell, even nuclear physicists.

I’d kill myself.

———————-

Well, if I’m going to have a pet bear, it’s going to have to happen in the next year or two. Otherwise, I’ll be too old to join him in a drunken mauling spree on his birthday.

Regarding which, it must be truly terrible when you wake up and discover that not only did you maul people the night before, but you also have a KILLER hangover.

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Every writer knows what it’s like to write half a story. There should be an International Half Story Contest.

One of my half-stories was about a pet shop that sold genetically engineered birds that you could teach to sing real songs. They’d listen to you or music you supplied, then shyly sing part of one line. Later they’d pick up more and more, until eventually they’d do the whole thing. But each bird could only learn one song. And once they learned it, they’d never stop. So they were instant successes as merchandise, and later VERY popular for regifting.

Feelings
Nothing more than feelings,
Trying to forget my feelings of love
Teardrops,
Rolling down on, my face
Trying to forget my, feelings of love
Feelings,
For all my life I’ll feel it
I’ll wish I’ve never met you, girl
You’ll never come again
Feelings,
Wo-o-o feelings
Wo-o-o feelings
Again in my heart ….

–>OVER and OVER and OVER<–

———————-

I had a friend who had a sled dog kennel. The dogs were visibly happy to pull sleds. But when I borrowed one of the dogs and started taking him with me on dog hikes, and then later couldn’t do it anymore, he got visibly depressed.

He (Walter was his name, after some football player) didn’t like pulling the sled anymore. The owner told me later he considered having him put down. It took a long time, after I stopped taking him out, before he readjusted.

One of the funny things I noticed at first was that he didn’t know how to run. Racing with my two dogs, he would thrust with both back legs together, a really odd-looking motion. It was the only way he knew to move, the gait he needed for sled pulling, which was the only time he got to run. He did that for our first two or three outings before he started trying a regular gallop.

He also didn’t know what running water was. We walked over a tiny stream, maybe a foot across, and he shied back from it. My two dogs and I just kept on going, and Walter took a running leap over it, probably four or five feet in the air. Later when he saw the other two drinking from a creek, he came up and drank from it, then danced in the cold water for a good five minutes or so, excited, delighted. He had discovered creek water! The water he got was always in a dirty pan, and only enough to hydrate, and frequently tasting of chicken broth. And in winter, always hot.

He didn’t know how to be a dog. This is always in my mind when I see the annual happy uproar over the Iditarod. Those dogs look like they love it. But I know how different they’d feel if they knew anything OTHER than pulling sleds.

———————-

I worked for a Swiss Master Baker for a couple of years, training to be a pastry chef. Something I quickly learned about him was that he NEVER went out to eat. The reason: He was a true gourmet. I could bolt down a burger and fries at McDonald’s and know no different, but HE knew what really good food was, and nothing you could get in a restaurant was ever good enough for his tastes.

I was thinking about that after I posted the previous thing about sled dog Walter.

It seems to me that, if you have nothing more than the common judgmental criteria about the well-being of dogs or cats, anything that anybody does to or with them is pretty much okay with you. Breed them down to toys, deliberately make them hairless, tweak them into interesting dwarf forms, give them huge wrinkles or ponderous jowls or crushed faces or ears so long they trip over them, and it’s all the same. They’re cute, they’re funny. As long as they SEEM happy, you’re okay with it.

But maybe once you become a connoisseur of dogness, of dog feelings and welfare, you start to feel that “happy” isn’t quite good enough. Because there’s the “happy” they have because they can never know any different, and there’s the gourmet-level –>HAPPY<– they might have if they were healthy, active and free to be dogs.

I’m one of those second people. The things people do to dogs disturbs me a great deal. Even when I see a happy little lap dog, I sometimes murmur, “Little one, I’m so sorry they did this to you.”

———————-

Waiting for the day they can animate tattoos. I’m still not getting one, but it will be interesting to see what sorts of stupid things people decide to get.

And where are the moving graphics on clothing? If nothing else, you could wear a white t-shirt and have sycophants orbiting around you with small projectors.

———————-

I’m imagining a Friend Library, where you could go in and browse the collection, then pick a friend to take home for a few hours or days. You could go out to eat, go to movies, go for a hike or a bike ride. Then when you were done, you’d just take ‘em back and turn ‘em in. If it was after hours, you’d just drop them in the slot.

Probably work for orphan kids too.

———————-

Why do we have seeing-eye dogs? They take so long to train, and I don’t think their lives are all that good.

It’s not like we don’t have huge numbers of unemployed people who could be guides. English-speaking guides, guides who can see traffic and relate obstacles to the sightless more effectively than dogs.

———————-

A friend tells me he’s getting married, and the wedding is going to cost the parents more than $20,000. I tell him “Make a deal with them. Tell them you’ll run off to Vegas and get married for a couple of hundred bucks, if they’ll give you half the wedding cost.”

There are entire industries out there that are scams. The lottery industry. The diamond industry. The funeral industry. To me, the wedding industry feels a lot like that.

Just get married. Throw a big potluck barbecue in somebody’s back yard. Everybody wear blue. Toss a Frisbee around. Have ice chests full of beer and sodas. Hire a photographer. The money you save, put it down on a house.

———————-

I think a baby raccoon would make a very cool pet. If you had time for it. Otherwise it would be a bundle of destruction and mayhem.

———————-

If Marvel Comics’ Rogue — the mutant who has the power to briefly absorb other mutant’s powers by touching them — crossed comic universes and met up with Superman … would she become super?

———————-

One of my many theories of life is that — at whatever age you now are — you contain within you personas of all your previous ages.

Each of those personas requires some handling. You don’t have to allow your 5-year-old, or your 15-year-old, to run things, but you do have to recognize it exists, and either mollify or discipline it. But it does seem to me that you can allow earlier selves a little free rein every now and then, to maintain optimal mental health.

This is absolutely the only reason I make the occasional adolescent-level joke, and engage — at extremely rare intervals — in the f-bomb.

Also: Farts. Poopie. Ta-tas.

 

 

Wait … what?

Plastic Bag JewGiven the reputation of Mail Online, I can’t say I totally believe the below-linked story.

Orthodox Jewish man photographed covering himself in plastic bag during flight because faith forbids him to fly over cemeteries

But IF it’s true — I say IF — I have to wonder a couple of things.

This was the bizarre sight that greeted plane passengers when an Orthodox Jewish man covered himself under a plastic sheet.

It was believed the man is a Kohein, a religious descendant of the priests of ancient Israel, who are banned from flying over cemeteries.

First, no way this can be a very OLD religious belief. I have a hard time imagining early Jews making up rules about FLYING over cemeteries.

As a controversial solution – not entirely allowed by those in the Jewish Orthodox – the plastic bag creates a kind of barrier between the Kohein and the surrounding tumah, or impurity.

Point two, how do they know plastic, which also didn’t exist in ancient times, is the right solution? What if Death Cooties can phase right through plastic?

Some flights go to great lengths to take specific paths to avoid cemeteries.

Point three … uh, really? Really? Do I pay extra so people who are essentially superstitious savages can avoid being polluted by corpses lying in the ground 30,000 feet below?

30,000 feet is 5.7 miles, by the way. Why can they come near a cemetery on the ground (as it says in the article), but can’t be FIVE MILES from it in the upward direction? Although I have to admit, I too would hate to be struck and killed by souls rocketing skyward.

Speaking of pollution, a side bit in the story addresses a separate, offensively sexist issue.

A strict code of conduct prevents Orthodox Jewish men and women from mixing in public, with Israeli airline El Al seeing an increase in the number of religious men demanding to be reseated away from women in recent years.

Yeah, “Women unclean.” Dayyum.

 

———————————–

Okay, there IS the issue of the man potentially asphyxiating. But hey. Comedy.

Short Stack # 22

Maple Syrup on PancakesThe less-intelligent students never made it to ninja status, and were relegated to the ranks of the ninny-ja.

They were complete idiots, but damn, they could really sneak up on you.

———————–

Canadians: If you come take back Ted Cruz and Justin Bieber, we’ll give you Detroit.

———————–

On Alternate Earth, you were born to be a powerful wizard. That’s why you feel so out of place here, and why nothing seems to work.

———————–

On the “10% of your brain” thingie. Yes, you use all of your brain. But no, you don’t use it to its full capacity and potential. You’re probably coasting, farting around and kicking back — fitting in, going along — like I am, like so many of us are.

A handful of times in my life, there have been things I’ve wanted to accomplish more than anything. It was like I was filled with this slow rage that wouldn’t be denied, couldn’t be stopped, but also a determined creativity that solved every problem that came at me. And I did some shit that amazed even me.

If I could be like THAT 100 percent of the time … well, it would be exhausting, but I’d also be far, far from here, sitting atop of a huge pile of profound accomplishments.

I think of that Past Me when I come across claims that we don’t have free will. The way I think of it is that we have the CAPACITY for free will. The snag is that it takes a huge amount of effort — to learn, to create, to think for yourself, to forge your own path, to push through life’s inertia and make things happen — and so most of us don’t have free will, or have it only rarely. Instead, we rest content as the unwilled automatons our society welcomes, rather than taking the arduous path of resistance and individuality, which our society sometimes tolerates but often violently and determinedly rejects.

Yes, you there reading this, and me here writing it — we could all be so much more than we’re allowing ourselves to be. It just takes the idea of doing it … followed by a shitload of very hard work.

———————–

Winnie the Pooh vs. Tony Tiger. Who wins? My money’s on the bear.

———————–

Since the movie “Thelma and Louise” came out in 1993, 13 cars have been driven off the edge of the Grand Canyon.

I’ll bet not one of the bastards phoned ahead so the cameras would be rolling.

———————–

Dear spellchecker programs: When I misspell a word and you highlight it, and I right-click to get the correct spelling, I would like the word I meant to type to be the FIRST option, please.

I mean, damn. Sometimes it’s like living in a concentration camp.

———————–

I don’t buy into this idea that babies can just lie around all day, having people wait on them hand and foot. I think they should get up out of those strollers, stop mumbling and speak in complete grammatical sentences, and either go to school or get real jobs. It’s just disgusting that they’re such layabouts. I think it leads directly into those directionless teen years where all the drug problems begin to appear. A useful child is a happy child!

———————–

I am way the hell in favor of assisted dying for those who express the desire for it. If you’re not free to die in the way and at the time of your choosing, you’re property.

———————–

There are days when some of us feel like telling everyone we know: Bring chocolate. Go away.

———————–

MY rebellion was that I always wanted to be ME.

It was for that reason I refused to buy a pickup truck (you had to grow up where/when I did to understand the rebellion in that), smoke cigarettes, use drugs, get tattoos, get pierced, wear clothes with corporate logos, believe in gods, show an interest in sports, join the military, or tolerate idiots. Why I unashamedly read a lot (again, you had to be there), never had kids, switched careers multiple times, enjoy animated and superhero movies, walk and talk fast, and speak up when I think I’m being stepped on.

———————–

Interesting thing I realized just yesterday: In THIS cultural context, the one we’re living in right this moment, it’s the people WITHOUT tattoos who are the true rebels.

———————–

Email is such a godsend.

Frama Willis writes: “Without DR DAHIRU a lot of people would have been dead through heart break. My case is not different from heart break, I am married woman with 3 kids and there was a time when i was having problem with my husband because he was having an affair outside our marriage and this was making me feel bad. So i tried finding solution to my problem by reading a lot of relationship tips on the internet and that was how i came in contact with DR DAHIRU contact details and through the help of DR DAHIRU my husband left the girl he was having affair with and he came back to me and our kids. After a job well done by DR DAHIRU i felt that it will be unfair if i keep this secret to myself and that is why i am going to drop the contact details of DR DAHIRU right now, They are: arewaspecialisttemple@yahoo.com or add him on facebook (Arewa Dahiru) To enable you have a taste of his nice work.”

I hope all of you having relationship problems will contact DR DAHIRU as soon as possible. He can really help out with those husband problems.

———————–

I’m glad the word “thingie” exists. It allows me to talk about technical thingies without actually knowing the names of the thingies I’m talking about.

———————–

I’m sorry, iced coffee is just unnatural.

Jesus not once in his life drank iced coffee. None of the Founding Fathers drank iced coffee. The only time our brave pioneers drank iced coffee was when it was winter and they couldn’t get a fire started. And even then, they probably died soon after, crying weakly at the abomination which is iced coffee.

You know who also drank iced coffee? HITLER.

———————–

I’m still sympathetic to the A+ movement, but there was a moment when it started that there was a strategic bobble. Someone made the statement, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” That writer created enemies where no enemies existed, and things went downhill from there.

I continue to think atheism is its own thing, and carries exactly zero implications for any social direction. My conceptual work on Beta Culture is an attempt to establish a cultural envelope that is based in atheism and reason but aims at larger social goals.

Socially, at least here in the U.S., it seems atheism is cyclic. It rises and dies out, rises and dies out. Religion, on the other hand, persists and prospers. I think the reason is just that atheism is a solitary pursuit — the goal within atheism is to become an atheist yourself, and probably stop there — while religions are, in addition to being solitary, also social and cultural in nature. They contain a social teleology, a body of larger goals collaboratively supported, that atheism has never had.

Atheism-Plus was a step along the way, but I believe there’s a larger next step that has to be pursued in order to make the actual gains I imagine us making. That next step is creating a culture, a social standing wave that continues automatically just as religions continue automatically, but that has absolutely nothing of religion about it.

I have more than 500 pages of notes on the idea. I only lack the time and energy to get them down in writing and relate them to people. Argh. I think if I could get the whole idea out there, a LOT of people would want to be a part of it.

———————–

Good night, Internet. I had a good time today. Hope to see you tomorrow. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. (By the way, I’m still waiting for you to become sentient, and come introduce yourself. I won’t tell.)

———————–

The Human Torch would be a much less interesting superhero if, every time he shouted “Flame on!” he got really badly burned.

———————–

I don’t want to hurt other people’s emotions. But I also don’t want to live wrapped in the barbed wire of their delicate feelings. Some people think the word “lame” is an attack on the handicapped. I just think that’s retarded.

———————–

You know, if the videogame industry created lifelike dog-fighting games — Savage Fangs (for ages 5 to 12) and Savage Fangs 2 (adult version) — people would buy them and play them. What’s more, when the storm of controversy blew up, there would be people who would stoutly defend the existence of such games.

In fact, I’m sort of surprised they don’t already exist. (And — crap! — I hope it’s not me that just gave them the idea.)

———————–

Considering we have Google News, Google Calendar, Google Finance, Google Calendar, all those and more, there must have been some features that were proposed and rejected by the people at Google:

Google Hook-Up.

Google Bible Quote.

Google Rent-A-Ninja.

Google Plant Identifier.

Google Genitalia of the Animal World.

Google Umbrella (requires attachment).

Google Death Ray (only for iPhone).

Google X-Ray Specs (only for Android).

Google Painful Skin Condition Identifier.

Google Panhandler Avoider (an applet for Google Maps).

Google Giggle (an annoying high-pitched laugh that goes on for 5 minutes or more).

Google Gaggle (something to do with geese, but the developers are too embarrassed to release details).

Google Billions (pictures of the private vaults of the 1 Percent).

Google Security Cam (hooks into nearby security cameras; they actually tried this one, but shoplifting soared within days and they had to pull it).

Google Black Hole (project ceased after the entire development team vanished, along with an office full of computers and furniture).

Google Bieber (project ceased after the entire development team killed themselves).

———————–

If you like your parents at all, believe this: There will come a time when you wish you had more pictures of them. When the pics you have will never be enough, and you regret not taking more.

So: Go to it, dummy. And thank me later.

———————–

Terrorists have discovered how to weaponize Reiki. Projecting mystic energy from their hands, they can stop hearts, derail trains, bring down airliners.

And Obama is totally ignoring the subject. Just the other day, Condoleezza Rice sent him a report titled “Reiki Practitioners Determined to Attack Within United States.” We have to impeach before it’s too late.

———————–

I wonder if the “energy” of Reiki propagates at the speed of light.

I’ve imagined it wafting across the space between the practitioner’s hands and the patient like the gentle smoke of incense, but what if it slams into you like the merciless flash of a supernova?

I’d hate to have on my tombstone “Another Senseless Reiki Death.”

———————–

Every time you get into a discussion of limiting human population, the screamers will leap in with accusations of genocide and eugenics. Why do you want to MURDER people?? Why do you want to KILL BABIES?? You can’t have a sane conversation about it.

And yet there are side effects of having 7 billion people on earth, among them pockets of extreme poverty and ignorance.

This strikes me not as some sort of deliberate failing of the rest of us to care about those affected, but as an inevitable limit on both human organization and human compassion — a lessened ability to understand and cope on the part of the otherwise-charitable, but also a lessened ability to understand and cooperate on the part of the stressed victims.

Of course it’s made worse by those among us who think compassion demands that people be denied access to birth control and reproductive knowledge, but all on its own, the larger the population, the greater the confusion. Human systems fail of complexity. And the LESS able we are to maintain a handle on something like global warming, or this ebola outbreak.

You can have the best science and medicine in the world, but if you can’t get people to listen, to accept, to understand, to work with you — worse, if they suspect you of conspiring to kill them and their children (note that I’m not talking only about Africa here) — you have a recipe for disaster.

———————–

Here’s one of the mistakes — the idea that conspiracies don’t happen. We see them all the time. If you and I can come up with some collaborative scam, the people with money and power and government influence can come up with the same silly idea … except that they have the ability to make it happen.

Examples: The tobacco industry lying for decades about the hazards of smoking. Bush’s Iraq War. Our idiot drug laws and the prison industry.

One of the things that most disturbs me about this is the willingness of otherwise intelligent people to look completely away, to act as if this is all some sort of joke, or something unimportant. Hey, only bad, stupid people could be opposed to GMOs, right? Because starving blind children. Or something. If you voice any least question about GMOs — or, my god, have the loony idea that things should be labeled — you’re one of those crazy conspiracy theorists, a spitting mad enemy of Science.

———————–

Wonder if anyone has ever attached a GoPro camera to a bullrider? Better yet, attach it to the bull, between the horns, aimed back at the cowboy!

Ooh. This I’d like to see.

———————–

I want there to be a food called Something Else. So when I look in the fridge and I see the leftover pizza, the spaghetti and meatballs, the sliced fruit, the sandwich fixings, and NONE of it seems appetizing, over there in the corner, on the middle shelf, there would be the thing I really want — Something Else.

———————–

On Chicken World, Colonel Sanders is Hitler.

Hey, SOMEBODY has to think of these things.

———————–

Once I learned that vampires don’t show up in mirrors, I started turning my head a lot more when I change lanes on the freeway.

———————–

Star Wars, the Musical. Hey, it could happen.

Ooh, now I’m imagining Jar Jar Binks singing. Sometimes I scare myself.

———————–

In my next life, I want to live in Movie World, where we break into pitch-perfect song at a moment’s notice, and then run out onto the street and do perfectly-choreographed dance numbers with complete strangers.

———————–

Legion of Superheroes applicants who didn’t make the cut:

Combustion Kid

Deafening Damsel

Vibrating Boy

Wheeled Wonder

Lead Lad

———————–

Palin’s a ripping success. And in one sense, she’s apparently bright enough to pull off her shtick. But she’s dumb as hell in another sense, the content of what she says. And she’s a merciless parasite on the people who idolize her.

The thing about commenting on someone like her is that her fans assume you’re attacking them by not liking her. It can be very much the other way around, though — some of us hate her, just as we hate Fox News, because we care about her victims.

———————–

There’s a guy at work who’s a notorious complainer. Met his wife the other day; she’s exactly the same.

I think it’s a whine-whine relationship.

———————–

If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?

My answer is always “Because there’s so much more to do than get rich.

“Having friends and loved ones doesn’t make you money, going out and having adventures doesn’t make you money, savoring the wealth of human experience doesn’t make you money, taking pleasure in the arts doesn’t make you money, educating yourself about science and the nature of reality doesn’t make you money, traveling and learning about other cultures doesn’t make you money, enjoying the solitude and beauty of nature doesn’t make you money, taking the time to think your own thoughts and deeply explore new ideas doesn’t make you money.

It’s cool to develop your skills and talents, to take risks and work hard to create a successful business that DOES make you money. But that’s not all there is.

“If you’re too stupid to know THAT … I feel really sorry for you.”

———————–

If George R.R. Martin had been the chief writer on Gilligan’s Island, the second season would have been called Five Castaways, the third season Three Castaways, the final season “The Lonely Island.”

———————–

Truth in labeling: There should be a manufacturing firm called the Shitty One-Use Tool Company.

———————–

Great thing about being a rabbit: The whole world around you is covered in food. Major drawback to being a rabbit: Every meat-eater considers YOU food, and nobody you know will die of old age.

That’s one of them-there “mettyphors,” I reckon.

———————–

Sure you don’t think much of Jeff Dunham NOW, but on the day we meet the Ventriloquians, space aliens who all carry around snarky puppets to speak for them, he and crusty old Walter will become Earth’s cherished ambassadors to the Galactic Union.

———————–

The N-word.

I don’t think any white person should use it. It’s not ours. We burned that linguistic bridge. But it doesn’t bother me that black people use it, because they OWN the word. Seriously, if your ancestors go through generations of denigration via that word, it’s yours to do with as you see fit.

———————–

I think clothing should be optional. But most of the people I see on the street, I really don’t want to see them naked.

———————–

If you get to be famous, and you think the thing to do is appear on the cover of Cigar Aficionado, you instantly move one giant step toward the a-hole category.

You’ll have lots of famous company. But you’re still something of an a-hole.

———————–

The “euphemism treadmill” forces us to retreat progressively from perfectly useful terms for real conditions, but which some people consider hurtful. The thing is, even taking into account the storm of worry over people’s FEELINGS, there are larger consequences to abandoning certain words. Speaking just for myself, I don’t like having words ripped from my grasp by prissy, delicate word-wardens who want to compress and control the freedom to speak and communicate.

Case in point: PTSD. Gutted of all emotional force, it sounds like … nothing. It isn’t even a word, it’s an abbreviation for something else, an extended phrase that conveys no urgency or passion:

Wikipedia: “Comedian George Carlin gave a famous monologue of how he thought euphemisms can undermine appropriate attitudes towards serious issues such as the evolving terms describing the medical problem of the cumulative mental trauma of soldiers in high-stress situations:

” … shell shock (World War I) → battle fatigue (World War II) → operational exhaustion (Korean War) → post-traumatic stress disorder (Vietnam War and later)

“He contended that, as the name of the condition became more complicated and seemingly arcane, sufferers of this condition have been taken less seriously and were given poorer treatment as a result. He also contended that Vietnam veterans would have received the proper care and attention they needed, if the condition were still called shell shock.”

What if we rebranded “rape” so that it was “unplanned sexual congress,” or even took up calling it USC? Makes it sound almost like an accident, doesn’t it? My goodness, just another unfortunate USC. How embarrassing, old chap, for all the parties concerned!

There’s some ugly shit in the world. We need those punchy, indelicate words to keep the offensiveness, the hurt, constantly in our faces. If there are a few bystanders whose feelings are hurt, that’s life.

———————–

From another point of view, hands are sock puppets suffering a wardrobe malfunction.

———————–

I’m thinking about starting a fast food chain called Just Kale.

I’d have to pull out some of the money I have invested in the Tasteless Pap chain. But hey.

———————–

Before they become sock puppets, they’re all just socks.

Man, that’s DEEP.

———————–

I hope zombies use more than 10 percent of their brainzzz.

That way, one brain could feed 10 careful zombies, instead of one really sloppy one.

———————–

Is anyone else getting kicked off Facebook repeatedly? I keep having to sign back in. I suspect it’s Homeland Security, or possibly the Deluminati, bollixing my connection with their spyware.

You guys aren’t fooling me! Even now, my minions are giving the super-miniaturized robotic attack spiders your scent!

———————–

Just typing the word “superhero” and it came out “superhore.”

Back off, DC Comics, it’s mine.

———————–

About ten years ago, I started to realize it was all of YOU who were weird, and that I was normal and good.

Gotta go now, I’ve got all this paste to eat.

———————–

By the way, if you like fast food but feel guilty about eating it, my advice is to go out right now, today, and eat as much as you want.

Seriously, after the Zombie Apocalypse, the menu options will change drastically. All that chicken, beef, pork, and fish you like so much? Gone. Gonna be nothing but brains.

And the vegetarian stuff? Ha.

———————–

I continue to want a Conscience Memorial in Washington, DC, something to honor all the protesters, conscientious objectors, and activists who refuse to accept the status quo, and who get things changed for the better.

———————–

You ever meet someone that you just instantly clicked with? I’m not talking about sexual attraction, or some kind of infatuation, but a sort of joyously comfortable ease in their company. Effortless true friendship, from both directions.

A half dozen times in my adult life, I’ve had that. I’ve met people I’ve instantly and hugely liked, and knew they felt the same thing from their side. Yet not a single goddam time has it worked out that we developed a long-term friendship. It was never their fault, or my fault, but something happened every time that prevented a friendship from taking place.

I wonder what some of those friendships would have been like. Where are those people who were accidentally perfect friends? And do they ever think about that time they met ME?

———————–

I went to the doctor and said, “Doc, I just can’t stop going up and down the stairs at my place. All day long, I’m going up the stairs, down the stairs. Some nights I can’t sleep, thinking about it, and I have to go out and go up and down the stairs.” After we talked some more and he checked me over, he said “I think you have obsessive-compulsive disorder. It’s like you’re addicted to stairs.”

He recommended a 12-step program.

Ba-doomp-boomp. Vaudeville, I’m READY.

———————–

Probably most of us think multi-generational feuds are stupid. Your grandpappy shot my grandpappy, therefore I must try to kill you and your brothers, and vice versa. What?

But damn, we sure seem to buy into multi-generational guilt, multi-generational blame, for things like slavery and the settling of North and South America by Europeans.

Considering that most of us are pretty much owned by corporations and politicians, and that there’s a high probability the world is about to get hellish, there are more important things to be concerned about.

———————–

Street Wisdom #513:

They were stuck on that island for YEARS. But neither Ginger nor Mary Ann ever got pregnant. That’s why most contraceptives today are based on coconut milk.

———————–

If I ever go to the Mayo Clinic, I’m gonna go into the lunchroom and loudly say “Can I get some MUSTARD here?? Get it? MUSTARD in the MAYO Clinic! Haw-haw-haw!”

Because you just know they’ve never heard that.

———————–

Wouldn’t it be cool to live in a world where people who could think clearly and rationally were the ones you saw on TV, and the people who couldn’t were the ones who sat back and kept their mouths shut?

———————–

I must have told a hundred or so writer-wanna-bes “Go into a bookstore sometime and try to estimate how many thousands of books are on the shelves. Then multiply that by a thousand or so, and you have the number of would-be novelists out there writing books who never make it into print. THAT’S how hard it is to be a successful writer.”

No offense intended on the “writer-wanna-be” thing. I myself have been and still am a writer wanna-be. It’s just that I’m also, in part, a writer-really-did-it.

One of the funny things I hear from others fairly often is “Hey, I’ve got this great idea! You write it and we’ll split the money!” I have to explain that ideas are the EASY part, and every writer has more than he/she can ever do anything with. The value comes into writing by actually doing the writing — and re-writing, and re-writing, and re-writing — which is invariably a massive amount of tedious, brain-breaking work.

———————–

Ah, good. I was feeling all weak and stuff, but then I ate food, and that cleared it right up.

These earth bodies are tricky like that.

———————–

What would be cool is that we really ARE ruled by a secret society of adepts, but that they’re so secret not even THEY know who they are. And then it turned out that YOU are their leader — the one person in the world that everybody, to some degree, follows.

Speaking of which, just because I grow a beard doesn’t mean you ALL have to grow beards. Really, guys, stop.

———————–

Idea Book: Thinking about this previous status: “I wonder if world-class musicians occasionally drop in on small-town guitar shops and act like total noobs, then start rockin’ the place out. You know, just to fuck with people.”

… I think that would make a pretty good TV show, something like “Undercover Boss.” Professional musicians wander into small town guitar shops by ones and twos, then simultaneously begin playing world-class licks on guitar, bass, drums, whatever. A professional pianist wanders into a piano store like a complete doofus, then starts playing Chopin.

I’d watch it.

———————–

I’ve wanted to ask a few of the local cops: “Say there’s a disaster and marshal law is declared. Which side are you going to come down on? Are you going to serve the people here in your hometown, or are you going to join in with the repressive controller types who will treat us all like enemies?”

———————–

Too many people either won’t see this or won’t accept it. It’s like that thing where you tell one lie, and then have to defend it indefinitely by telling others, and still others, and still others, or else the whole thing comes crashing down and you’re revealed as someone never to be trusted.

The Bush administration, the people who backed them, voted for them, supported them, the people who supported the Iraq war, AND the people who sent their kids off to die in it … they can’t accept that Obama’s a decent man and a good president. They have to forever defend themselves and what they’ve done by lying, manipulating, allowing themselves to believe lies, hating, arguing, sucking on the Fox News teat, desperately cleaving to a whole cadre of liars and manipulators.

Their only choice to change their minds and see the true situation is to admit they were wrong, dead wrong, hatefully wrong, catastrophically wrong.

Too many of them just aren’t that good. They don’t have that kind of intelligence, they don’t have that kind of humility, they don’t have that kind of courage.

———————–

Idea Book: A movie called “Life With White People,” written entirely by African-American screenwriters, and acted by a majority African-American cast.

———————–

Hank Fox on Aging #37: I guess it’s good that greater physical fragility is accompanied by higher pain tolerance, but damn, it makes for some spectacular mystery bruises.

———————–

If we had food replicators like those on Star Trek, I suspect there would be a lot less “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”

… and a lot more …

“Ice Cream. Black Walnut. Hot Fudge Syrup. Double serving. Uh, and with rainbow sprinkles. Did you get that? And maybe a bit more hot fudge syrup than last time. And a bigger spoon.”

———————–

Got an email offering “The Secret to Driving Your Partner Crazy in Bed!!”

I already know what it is. It’s a technique many men not only know, but come by naturally. Some even excel at it, completely without training.

But why would I need to learn to snore?

———————–

Your Supervillain Horoscope:

Today is a good day to be evil. If you happen to meet a superhero today, open the conversation with “So happy to make your acquaintance, Captain Fantastic. And now … DIE!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

Cultivate your lackeys, flunkeys and underlings. Later today, you may need rescue from the crumbling edge on the lip of a volcano.

———————–

Yesterday I saw a young woman bending over at a highway rest stop sunglass kiosk. Apparently she worked there, and she was getting some things out of a drawer in the bottom of her booth. Her shirt rode up, her pants rode down — a LOT — and to all passers-by she was exposing some thong-like lacey pink see-through panties, and about six inches of asscrack.

Can’t tell you how gutter-trash revolting that seemed to me.

———————–

A few days ago, I was thinking about why I’m so constantly surprised at how negative the reactions are to certain movies, ones that I saw and thoroughly enjoyed.

It might be because I was a theatre “critic” for a few years in Flagstaff, a fairly small town. I saw plays by world-class professional Shakespearean companies and elementary school children, and everything in between. (I saw Forever Plaid! I saw Twelfth Night! I saw Inherit the Wind! I saw Die Walkure of the Ring Cycle!)

The first thing about reviewing such disparate companies is, you learn to adjust your critical sensitivity to take the source into account. You don’t judge kids by the same standards as professionals.

The second thing is: Small-town theatre deserves all the support it can get. You CAN’T write a critical review in a small town. You have to look for things to like about the play, and write about that.

There third thing is, there’s ALWAYS something to like.

I liked the first two installments of The Hobbit. I liked Pacific Rim. I liked Man of Steel. I thought Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was goofy but fun. Hell, I liked Hudson Hawk.

Some people go into movies LOOKING for things to hate. And they succeed. I have to wonder: Why bother? Why go to all that trouble just to have a bad time? Jeez, if you hate the movies so much, if you KNOW you’re going to be disappointed, why not just stay home?

Me, if I’m spending $10, I’m going to 1) make an effort to meet the filmmaker halfway, and 2) enjoy what I can of it. Which is, fairly often, a lot.

———————–

In my honest opinion: Dunkin Donuts’ Oreo Cream filled donut is gross as hell.

Thought you should know what sorts of mistakes I’m making out here, so you don’t have to.

———————–

In an infinite universe, somewhere out there is that ONE planet where all of us are beautiful/handsome, young, successful, rich and famous.

We probably spend our time whining about how horrible our lives are.

“Today I asked the barrista for an iced caramel macchiato and he gave me an iced CHOCOLATE macchiato! I mean, OH MY GOD!! Can you IMAGINE?! I mean, seriously, it was like this absolute NIGHTMARE!!! I threw it in his face and said “THE NEXT TIME I ASKED FOR A CARAMEL MACCHIATO, GIVE ME A CARAMEL MACCHIATO, YOU COMPLETE DOLT!! —CARAMEL! CHOCOLATE! THEY DON’T SOUND ANYTHING ALIKE!! God, sometimes it’s like we’re living in a Nazi death camp.”

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Dear Planet Earth. Stop sending me emails about new liberal-cause petitions. I’m petitioned out.

And honestly, I’d rather do something direct. Possibly involving an axe.

———————–

So, those people who think Barbie causes little girls to develop unhealthy ideas about body image … I’m wondering what they think about violence on TV or in video games.

They’re both about imagery, yet the dominant social meme is that one affects people profoundly, the other has no effect at all.

Hmm.

I don’t think the threat of violent television or video games is taken seriously by anyone. I doubt most people even understand what happens. The effect is statistical, not direct. No one specific person will be affected, but take the population as a whole, and something happens to SOME of them.

It’s ludicrous to believe that Coca Cola — or McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Toyota, Apple, etc. — would spend billions advertising, and not expect that it would work. No one specific person is swayed to buy a Coke, but plenty of faceless, nameless others are.

Whether the advertisement is for diamonds, gasoline, cellphones or violence, if we watch it enough, some of us buy the product.

———————–

The Joker isn’t REALLY an insane, murderous felon. He’s just misunderstood, and caught some bad breaks that FORCED him into a life of crime. I know some of the ladies out there are thinking about how you’d like to reform him, how you might like to propose marriage. You should totally do it.

Address all love letters and marriage proposals to The Joker, Extreme Violent Ward, Arkham Asylum, Gotham City.

Go ahead. Make a lonely man happy. You know you want to.

———————–

I’m going to trademark the word “copyright” and the “©” symbol.

True, it would then look like this — ©™ — but I’ll bet I make a shitload of money.

———————–

Today I had an idea that might conceivable destroy big corporate fast food restaurants.

But if I told you, Ronald McDonald would come after me. And the last thing I need is to be stalked by a clown.

(But I seriously had an idea like that.)

———————–

Did you hear about the Christian boy who turned down a date with an atheist girl because he heard atheists were wanton?

He didn’t like Chinese food.

———————–

Slinky toys give children an unhealthy image of how to go down stairs.

———————–

Did you read the news story about that Wal-Mart that closed down after the employees voted to unionize?

So … if you want to keep Wal-Mart out of your neighborhood, announce a Union membership drive the instant you hear about them planning the new store. And FOLLOW THROUGH.

———————–

Idea Book:

In 2026, we will celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States. It would be cool as hell to have the History Channel run a months- or years-long special project, covering the American Revolution as if it was current news happening now. Cover all the important events, talk to the movers and shakers — on all sides — of the Revolution, have panel discussions, and show actual battles as if they were breaking news.

Each event would be covered on its own specific 250th anniversary. The Battle of Saratoga, Washington crossing the Delaware, Paul Revere’s ride, all of it. And especially the Constitutional Convention.

It would be the miniseries to end all miniseries.

Of course, it could only happen if the HISTORY Channel can tear themselves away from fucking Pawn Stars and Ice Road Truckers.

———————–

On Alternate Earth, where we evolved from ursids, it’s a Bear Mitzvah.

And nobody there thinks that’s funny.

———————–

When I was 14, I was cleaning my fingernails with a razor-sharp scalpel in biology lab, and I accidentally stabbed myself in the leg. The teacher sent me to the school nurse, and she made me TAKE MY PANTS DOWN so she could bandage me. Mortifying.

Funny thing was, I don’t think they notified my parents. Talk about your different time, huh? I’d bet today there would be mass shrieking, and a major investigation. “Oh my GOD!! You mean my little darling might get STABBED in biology class?? I’m pulling him out of this class, and this school!! Also, I think this teacher should be FIRED!!!”

Speaking as a former child, stuff like that would be a nightmare.

———————–

In the future, Facebook will have an app that will automatically wish people a happy birthday. So you can make them think you care about them. Without actually caring.

———————–

I sometimes get into arguments on such subjects as racism, feminism, other liberal issues, not because I disagree totally, but because I’m an editor, which means perfectionist. Somebody makes a blanket statement — “There’s no such thing as reverse racism!” or “All men are potential rapists!” — and I always want to say “Uh, that’s not QUITE right.”

And oh god, there are some people you don’t dare disagree with.

———————–

When FBI agents are wire-tapping Robin Williams, I wonder if they sometimes just burst out laughing when they listen to the tapes.

As for the rest of us, they don’t even have to investigate us anymore. On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, so many other places, we TELL them what we’re doing and thinking, right out in the open.

———————–

By the way, on my morning jog through the park, I had nothing to do with that crying 5-year-old. It was MY ice cream. I have NO idea what happened to his.

———————–

A pre-Apocalypse message to the zombies:

After you bite and infect everybody, and we’re all zombies, where are the fresh brains gonna come from? Huh? Just think ahead at bit, is all I’m asking. Bite, like, every tenth person. That way, there’s some of ’em left to reproduce. We could maybe gather the breeders up in a walled city or something, and then raid them every ten years, and only go for the old ones.

Also, Zombie Health Tip #1: Quit before you’re full. Don’t eat a whole brain in one sitting. Eat one-quarter or one-half, and come back later.

———————–

Widen the definition just a bit and you’re ‘kin’ to everyone and everything that ever lived.

 

[ Afterword: The bit about Robin Williams was written long before this recent news about his death, and posted this morning before the news broke. I’m leaving it in … just because. ]

#DeathTweets (repost)

Maple Syrup on Pancakes#DeathTweets: Just chugged about a quart of Diet Coke. Now for the Mentos!

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#DeathTweets: me and my posse up at the old sanders mansion spoze to be a vampire lives here. yes or no, im bringin back PROOF!

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#DeathTweets: whoo boys nite out no idea howw mny driks ive had time to go tho wherz my keys

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#DeathTweets: Makin my own fireworks for the 4th this year! Sulfur, saltpeter, charcoal, yeah! Ima grind this shit down to powder now and

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#DeathTweets: Can’t believe I’m here in Pamplona, Spain! Whoops, gotta go, I think the bulls are coming!

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#DeathTweets: Man, look at this gator just lying in the sun. Ha! Sluggish, stupid reptile! Watch me kick this big bastard in the ass.

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#DeathTweets: Texting and driving? I’ve got it wired, man. Hell, I could do this in heavy traf

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#DeathTweets: Trying to get the riding mower started, so dark I can’t tell how much gas is in it. Hang on, got my lighter here.

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#DeathTweets: Taking pics at the Grand Canyon! If I hang onto this tree limb, I can get a fantastic shot of the river down there.

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#DeathTweets: Cleaning up some brush in my yard. Just went down and rented a woodchipper. Never used one before, but hey, how hard can it be?

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#DeathTweets: Best bro and me seein how close we can stand to the Amtrak train when it passes by today.

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#DeathTweets: Oh, man, scored the coolest new pet! This guy on Craigslist was actually GIVING AWAY a 16-foot python!

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#DeathTweets: What a bunch of surf-pussies! Dude, shark is just another word for fish. Hey, I’m not missing these waves!

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#DeathTweets: So this biker asshole took my parking place AGAIN. Wait, here he comes. Ha! Wait til he sees what I did to his bike.

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#DeathTweets: I’m out 4-wheeling with my Texas cousin! Hang on a sec – he wants me to hold his beer.

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#DeathTweets: Parachuting’s a lot cheaper since I learned to pack my own chutes! Geronimo!

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#DeathTweets: Having a wonderful time on safari! Oh man, look at that beautiful lion. And so close!