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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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<–

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

 

 

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Carrie Underwood Click-Bait. Meh.

ChickenWe had chickens when I was a kid — White Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds, Barred Plymouth Rocks, Bantams — and I loved feeding them. I’d go out with a bowl of cracked corn and call “Chick, chick, chick, chick-EE!” And they’d come running, looking up at me with their stupid prehistoric faces, brainlessly eager for something tasty. Never realizing that they were OUR food, that this was all a scam to get their eggs and meaty selves on our table in the near future.

I hate to think of people like that, but — all too often — we are.

So here’s the cracked corn:

Atheists Outraged By Carrie Underwood’s Latest Song

In the song, Underwood sings about baptism and “being washed in blood,” which refers to the blood of Christ. The whole message of the song is that we humans are lost without God.

Atheists are outraged that such a hit-maker as Underwood would dare to sing about Christianity, but Carrie doesn’t seem to care.

“Country music is different. You have that Bible Belt-ness about it,” she said. “I’m not the first person to sing about God, Jesus, faith or any of that, and I won’t be the last. And it won’t be the last for me, either. If you don’t like it, change the channel.”

And here are the lyrics:

“Something In The Water”

He said, “I’ve been where you’ve been before.
Down every hallway’s a slamming door.”
No way out, no one to come and save me
Wasting a life that the Good Lord gave me

Then somebody said what I’m saying to you
Opened my eyes and told me the truth.”
They said, “Just a little faith, it’ll all get better.”
So I followed that preacher man down to the river and now I’m changed
And now I’m stronger

There must’ve been something in the water
Oh, there must’ve been something in the water

Well, I heard what he said and I went on my way
Didn’t think about it for a couple of days
Then it hit me like a lightning late one night
I was all out of hope and all out of fight

Couldn’t fight back the tears so I fell on my knees
Saying, “God, if you’re there come and rescue me.”
Felt love pouring down from above
Got washed in the water, washed in the blood and now I’m changed

And now I’m stronger

There must be something in the water
Oh, there must be something in the water

And now I’m singing along to amazing grace
Can’t nobody wipe this smile off my face
Got joy in my heart, angels on my side
Thank God almighty, I saw the light
Gonna look ahead, no turning back
Live every day, give it all that I have
Trust in someone bigger than me
Ever since the day that I believed I am changed
And now I’m stronger

There must be something in the water
Oh, there must be something in the water
Oh, there must be something in the water
Oh, there must be something in the water
Oh, yeah

I am changed
Stronger

I’m free

Now, who do you suppose this headline and this story and this song were for? Who are the chickens that will come running? Is it atheists?

Nope. It’s Christians. Those poor, besieged Christians.

This is a manipulative, parasitic song and article to fuck over people — real human beings, a lot like you and me — who identify as Christians … mostly because they don’t know any different.

Behind the song and article — and probably a lot of preacher-talk to follow — is a millennia-long religious INDUSTRY aimed at fucking over people. Aimed at lying to them. Aimed at brainwashing them. Aimed at sucking the life out of them. Aimed at creating misery that can be turned into profit.

That’s what this is all about. This is one of those things that you can never see until you get religion out of your head. Before, it all looks like sweetness and light, families home for the holidays and Hallmark moments of all sorts. After … you start to see it for what it really is: A sort of invisible monster that eats human minds, human lives.

The way this particular story is presented, that business about Christians being under siege, is a way of deflecting attention onto others for the REAL siege being carried out by the presenters. It’s a dirty little magic act where they pose as your friend — rather than cracked corn, they throw out a scary picture of The Common Enemy — so you never notice them consuming you and everybody you love.

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I actually like Carrie Underwood a lot. I especially like the song and video for “Before He Cheats Again.” It’s beautiful musically. The video is fabulous. But I don’t kid myself about what it’s really about, a young woman vandalizing a man’s truck — to a felony-level thousands of dollars — merely because he’s out with another girl.

Right now he’s probably slow dancing with a bleached-blonde tramp,
and she’s probably getting frisky…
Right now, he’s probably buying her some fruity little drink
’cause she can’t shoot whiskey…
Right now, he’s probably up behind her with a pool stick,
showing her how to shoot a combo…

And he don’t know…

That I dug my key into the side
of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,
Carved my name into his leather seats…
I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,
Slashed a hole in all 4 tires…
Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats.

 

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Several days after, I realize the REAL headline that should be attached to this story:

“Religious Advertisers and Marketers SHIT-SCARED Because Atheists No Longer Buying Into Their Crap.”

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Wait … What? —Take 2

Plane JewMan, those ultra-Orthodox Jews must NEVER get laid.

Ultra-orthodox Judaism forbids physical contact between men and women unless they are first-degree relatives or married to one another

They don’t fly well either.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men Cause Flight Delay By Refusing To Sit Next To Women

I’m not even sure what to say about this that probably isn’t already obvious. The story itself says the women felt “bullied and harassed” — which is precisely how they should have felt.

I’d feel better if one or more of the women were quoted as saying “I told the cheeky bastard to buzz off. I’m not moving. If he doesn’t want to sit next to a woman, he can take a boat.”

There’s a Change.org petition to El Al Airline that is almost too even-handed, seems to me, suggesting fair solutions to solve the dilemma of the men. But the title is just right:

Stop the bullying, intimidation, and discrimination against women on your flights!

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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.

 

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

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Processing Atheist Grief: Some Thoughts

blue roseI continue to think about death and grieving, coming up on three years after the passing of my Cowboy Dad (not a blood relative, but someone more special in my life than any of my real relatives). I occasionally have new ideas about the subject. Here’s a couple:

1) If you lose someone to age or illness …

Ask Yourself ‘What If?’

Consider the pain you’re in, the magnitude of it. Now imagine that you could go back in time and change the events of your life so that you’d never met that person. So that when they died, it would be just some stranger off in some distant place, dying a death that would have zero impact on your feelings.

Okay, here’s the big question:

Would you take that trip? Would you relieve yourself of the pain by erasing the entire experience of having them in your life? Would you rather never have known your son — your sister, your mom, your grandmother, your wife, your dad, your best friend — never have had them in your life for those years (or months!) … so you wouldn’t have to feel like this now?

If your answer is NO!!, as mine was, it’s because you know you wouldn’t trade a day of that too-brief togetherness, even for a lifetime’s freedom from grief. This pain is, in its left-handed way, a GOOD thing, a necessary thing, and shouldn’t be avoided.

Grief is love.

That’s what it is. Love, interrupted. Few of us would trade love for the tepid unconcern we feel for distant strangers.

2) On the other hand, if you lose someone suddenly, so that you don’t get to hear their final thoughts, or tell them yours …

Write a Letter

Not long back, I hit on the idea of writing a letter to my dad. I was thinking it would be cathartic in that I would get to say some things I’d thought of since his death, additional things I would like to have said to him in his final days. And I still intend to write that letter (and maybe some letters to OTHER departed friends), but meanwhile, when I started writing, it was this other letter, the one HE would have written to ME, that came out.

I discovered I really could write his letter. When you know someone so well through the familiarity of years of close attention and love, you can often tell what they might say on any subject. What sort of goodbye would he write to me? In part, it would be this:

Hank, thank you so much for being there in my last days. I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to open my eyes and see, not just a hospital and nurses, but somebody who loved me. And it was clear all those years, even when you were unhappy with me for not calling, that you really loved me. Dying is scary business, and it helped to have you there, talking to me and touching me, in my last hours and days. There can’t be many greater gifts to give a friend than to be by their side at the end, comforting and caring. I want you to know I heard everything you said, and it made those last days bearable, knowing I was loved so much by someone I cared about.

Just like you, I wish we’d had time for one more pack trip, one more fishing expedition, one more Whiskey Ditch, one more shot of Apricot Brandy. I saved up some jokes from the years we were apart, and I would have loved telling you one or two of them.

One of the best things ever to happen to me was meeting you, having you in my life all those years. Partner, I couldn’t have asked for a better heir to remember me and carry on with life in grand style.

I know you’ll do something wonderful with your life. I ask you to remember this: Find someone to love, find someone to love you, and live your life to the fullest. Have your adventures, make your life as full as you can of the things that only you can do. I know you have greatness in you, and the world needs you as your best self.

For whatever mistakes you feel you’ve made with me, I forgive you. None of that stuff ever really mattered to me. For the mistakes I made on my side, I hope you can forgive me.

I’ll close for now. Well, I guess I wish I’d done more with my life, but all in all, it wasn’t a bad one. I got to do the thing I loved, being a packer and wilderness guide, living in a place I loved, for 60 years and more. I met some wonderful people, and had my own adventures to be proud of. And it wasn’t such a bad end, was it? I wouldn’t have chosen this time to go out, but knowing I was going, at least I got to choose the way of it. Despite being in a hospital bed, I think I died with my boots on, as Louis L’Amour would have put it.

Hank, I wish I could always be there for you, but the best I can do is tell you that you were on my mind in all the years I knew you, and I thought nothing but the best of you.  In return, I hope you’ll remember me in all the good times we shared. You called them Golden Moments, and there were a lot of them between us. I hope you live a long time, finding all the happiness and success and adventure you deserve, making your own Golden Moments over the years to come.

You were one of the good things in my life, partner. Thank you for being my friend, my confidant, my audience. My Son.

Take care.

Dan

Final Notes

When it comes to dealing with death, we unbelievers are imagined to be at a disadvantage compared to believers. After all, having no Heaven to hold the spirits of our missing loved ones, we have to live with the constant grim reality of Real Death.

Probably even most of US believe that, on some level. But we stick to our guns, feeling that we’d rather experience this pain than live by lies.

The thing is, my own careful considerations about religion and its repercussions, over decades, has invariably shown that reality-based thinking is better. The chief reason always seems to be that religious thinking is just about 180 degrees opposite of reality.

Atheism itself, viewed through the lens of religion, looks like a hateful assault on all things good, a refusal to accept the glorious wonders of God’s Kingdom on Earth. But what it REALLY is, is the opposite. It’s a respect, a love, for true things and real people, unsullied by a harmful, petty fantasy. It’s the hope that the lives of everybody and everything can be made better, if we only claw our way out of the falsehood and begin to understand the way things really work.

Likewise, I think grief as an atheist is better than that same grief colored with a religious filter.  Far from being at a disadvantage, I sense that we atheists/unbelievers have great advantages over believers. The problem is, having had to exist in goddy culture that has stifled and stepped on non-religious thought for thousands of years, we don’t yet have clear ideas of what-all those advantages might be.

But we will. We’ll find them.

 

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Beta Culture: Blowing in the Wind … Ordinary People.

dust bowlI’m thinking all at once about government and royalty, churches and corporations, unions and cultures. And us.

Some of what I try to do in attempting to understand the world around me is to take a distant look at what’s going on, rather than a close-up look, searching for broad patterns and underlying motivations. I sometimes even joke that I’m an alien just visiting here to study Earth humans, expecting that eventually my real people will show up and take me back home.

I’ll tell you something of what I think I see:

Much as we’re hatin’ on government these days, the IDEA of democratic government is a really good one. The top-down chief/royalty/big-muckamuck model works very well in enforcing obedience and tribal solidarity, but not so well in encouraging independent thought and creative innovation.

Democracy is actually a rather inspired invention, when you think about it in evolutionary terms, bringing with it all sorts of advances. Coupled with freely-available education, a natural adjunct to democracy, it freed the inventive power of the individual in a way that produced leaps in progress rather than plodding sameness.

The royalty model is democracy’s natural enemy, seeking as it does to concentrate power in the hands of a fortunate few. Traditionally, these fortunate few were kings, emperors, etc., rising to the top (being born into it, actually, most of them) with just about zero input from the public they came to rule, and remaining there with just about zero broad concern for that public.

Something interesting I’ve noted in the past was the power of churches as it related to government. Though a king might rule his subjects through fear, with the open threat of murder or violence, of military might, there was a social power that could nevertheless threaten the rule of the king. That power was religion. The king who defied the dictates of a religion deeply held by his subjects, was potentially subject to overthrow.

And yet the model of religion was itself based on royalty – an unelected, somewhat mysterious priesthood that answered to a single supreme authority. As to the supreme authority, the window-dressing of a central divine personage served only to hide the real power, the pope or other leader who could wield the power of life and death over his subjects.

This power that could challenge kings coincidentally relied on the exact same motivation, fear, for control of its subjects.

In a way religion and royalty were natural allies. Each used the other as a prime tool of control. It was historically rare that one openly warred with the other, but their relationship was probably always a tense one, due to the fact that they were different forces, each with their own goals and values.

So: Democracy came along, creating something new.

The previous idea was that power originated in the king, but could be lent out to deserving subjects or officials. For any herd animal with a dominance hierarchy, this was a natural idea to have, as it tied in well with the reality of our natures.

The new idea was that power originated in the individual, and could be lent out – temporarily, and in small amounts – to people who were not leaders but, theoretically at least, servants of their tribe. This was a pretty radical idea in some ways, as it seems to overturn a basic aspect of our natures. Some part of us very much likes standing subordinate to a chieftain. In practice, those “servants” have typically acted as leaders, meaning the new idea keeps the hierarchy intact, but arrives at it, through voting, in a more cerebral, less violent way. It also provides for the periodic replacement of current leaders with fresh ones, mostly preventing generational dynasties.

Even better under this new model, rather than frightening your subjects you had to gain their trust, promise them something for the loan of their power, and at least nominally adhere to that promise.

Too, the amount of power lent was that minimal amount necessary to do the job of serving public needs, and nothing more. All of us clearly recognize when public servants are stepping beyond the bounds of their lent power; using public offices for personal aggrandizement or wealth-gathering is offensive to the nature of this unspoken agreement of borrowed power.

(On the other hand, the Catholic Church — though dramatically lessened in relation to its historic peak — still exists, and enjoys a fairly royal approach to leadership. Though popes are “elected,” they are elected by an cadre of insiders, they serve for life, and they enjoy power over the whole of the Catholic “kingdom.”)

Meanwhile, in a reverse of the royalty-to-democracy trend, yet another somewhat royal power has entered the stage – corporations.

Though initially dependent on government for their existence, and very much subject to the laws and regulations of the countries and states in which they resided, they’ve gotten to a point of wealth and power that rivals, and surpasses in some cases, nations. Certainly they have little to fear from governments in the sense of penalties beyond the monetary. The people who make up corporations are shielded from punishment for crimes committed by the corporation. Though those acts are in reality ordered or allowed by the leaders of the corporation, rather than the corporation itself (which has no real existence), they are shielded from arrest or penalty in the same way royalty would be shielded from arrest or punishment for acts that, by ordinary citizens, would be considered crimes (or criminal negligence).

In theory, corporations are subject to the will of their customers but other than committing blatant, egregious human rights violations, they have a fairly free hand to do whatever they want. (Including, in at least one noteworthy case, maintaining a private security force that amounts to a standing army, complete with military-grade weapons.)

Here’s the thing that worries me: Corporations these days, and the fantastically wealthy people who run them – in the body of Fox News, the Koch Brothers, etc. – in many ways enjoy power OVER the U.S. government.

From TPM:

Asking “[w]ho really rules?” researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argue that over the past few decades America’s political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power.

Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters

Quoting Noam Chomsky:

In the work that’s essentially the gold standard in the field, it’s concluded that for roughly 70% of the population – the lower 70% on the wealth/income scale – they have no influence on policy whatsoever. They’re effectively disenfranchised. As you move up the wealth/income ladder, you get a little bit more influence on policy. When you get to the top, which is maybe a tenth of one percent, people essentially get what they want, i.e. they determine the policy. So the proper term for that is not democracy; it’s plutocracy.

Where once government was an arm of public service, it is now very much a tool of wealth and corporate power. The rich warred against the power of government in subtle ways, co-opting elected officials, judges and laws. Even the public dialog upon which our understanding of the rights of individuals and the duties of government was based, is now so tweaked that plenty of people have little or no understanding of what’s going on. The people government once served can now be persuaded to vote against their own well-being. To whatever extent government can still be said to serve at the will of the public, it nevertheless acts in opposition to that same public’s interests.

As a for-instance, an overwhelming majority of voters in the U.S. oppose the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case, in which corporations were ruled to possess “free speech” rights allowing them unlimited contribution to political campaigns. Yet, four years later, that ruling is still comfortably embedded in U.S. law, and has received only tepid opposition from elected officials.

Let me talk about another non-royal organization — unions — for a second. A union is organized by people, for people, and is neither government nor corporation. Further, the stated goal of a union is to fight for the rights of its members, AGAINST corporations and even governments. If I was trying to pick out any organization that was the fullest expression of democratic, non-royal principles, I’d have to say it was the union.

But unions too were warred upon by corporations, and with government help during and after the Reagan years, became critically weakened shells of their former selves. Meant to be defenders of citizen-workers, they are now almost powerless in any large sense.

So, here’s one side with multinational corporations which in many ways enjoy the equivalent of royal power, largely free of government interference and serving our interests only as it coincides with their own profit motive. Here are churches which are autocratically ruled profit-making bodies that rarely take stands in favor of ordinary people against either corporations or government. And here is government itself, co-opted to serve as a funding source, protector, lawmaking body and close ally of corporations.

And on the other side, our side, the side of ordinary people, we have unions, created to serve and defend the interests of their members, but drastically weakened for actually doing it.

And damned little else.

There are plenty of narrowly-focused online organizations which fight for fairness and right action by government and corporations, but the power they generally wield is persuasive or revelatory power only. A corporation or a government official might be embarrassed into right action, but as far as compelling the target to act fairly, these organizations are toothless.

In light of all this, I again see a place in our lives for Beta Culture.

I imagine Beta Culture as a place of ease and familiarity for people like us – metaphorically a sort of big friendly dog that can wag and comfort – but also, once it progresses past puppyhood, a creature with the teeth and strength to fiercely defend us when the occasion arises.

And yet again, that’s something I really want.

Corporations have the wealth and power to look out for themselves. They also, frequently, have government and the legal system looking out for them. Government has a multimillion-person force of career employees and elected officials, as well as its own army and police forces, to look out for itself.

Ordinary people have little or nothing to fight for them. The happy fiction is that the corporations, government, and all the aforementioned uniformed might are on our side, but to me that appears to be true only as long as we are rich, secure, and don’t actually disagree with them.

Hopefully someday we will have this other thing.

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Off-Topic Musings #1

off topicI’m often moved to post things on Facebook that are far beyond the short-subject stuff that plays most well over there, and I’ve thought many times that that stuff should be HERE instead of there. After all, assuming a limit to writerly energy, every long piece I post on Facebook is a piece that cheats my might-be readers here.

And yet a lot of that stuff doesn’t exactly fit here. My main writing these days is on Beta Culture, and I want it to be.

On the other hand … I want to be VISIBLE to the people who read this blog. I say things here that I believe in deeply, but there are things worth saying off my main subjects, things that catch my interest or impress me with their profundity. And I’m not exactly a single-facet monolith. There are things I disagree with, or think about in different ways, compared to typical atheist/freethinker allies.

Meaning: I like to hope there are plenty of things to like about me, and I hope I can convey some of them. But I’m also pretty sure there are some things you should DISLIKE about me. In some ways, I sort of consider it necessary. I don’t want to be roundly loved …

First, because the only way to do that is to either think just like you — in which case there’s no reason for me to exist — or to monitor everything I say in an attempt to be liked by you, and I don’t want to do that either. I want to be wrong about stuff sometimes, both so I can learn better from the input I receive here, but also so that I know I’m taking chances with my thoughts and ideas. If I’m not wrong sometimes, it’s probably because I’m fencing myself in and declining to say certain things that I actually believe.

But second because I expect there will be times when people will dislike me for expressing an opinion because THEY are wrong about it, and I’m right. I want to be disliked, disagreed with, in that case. Hopefully so they will think about it, but also so that I’ll know I was true to my own ideals, and had the courage to express the unpopular thought.

For instance, as you may know about me, I’m an immense fan of science but not a big fan of GMOs. The subject annoys me every time it comes up on Facebook, when I hear even professional scientists repeat the misleading “Why, humans have been genetically modifying plants and animals for thousands of years.” Argh.

I’ve gotten into spitting fights with people who insist that eating horses and dogs is exactly equivalent to eating any other type of meat. I hate hearing that so much, I’ve said more than once that I wouldn’t sit in the same room with (or keep as Facebook friends) people who’d advocate eating a horse or a dog. “It’s their culture!” I hear. And I think, “Yes, well, fuck their culture. I have a culture too, and in my culture, dogs and horses are off the menu. You don’t eat things you love.”

(Fair warning: If you do believe the eating of horses and dogs is exactly the same as eating any other type of meat, kindly go elsewhere and read some other blog. I seriously don’t want to hear your opinion, and will delete it.)

I’ve gotten into fairly heated arguments with those who insist you should never use words that hurt the feelings of certain demographic groups (I’m NOT talking about the N-word, which I never use and which I think white people have no right to use). I hate the very idea of attempting to take words away from language. There’s a much longer discussion — and maybe I’ll even get into it someday soon — about why I feel so strongly about it, and what I think the effects would be if we gave in and just all agreed to be polite and sensitive to every single delicate-feelinged person out there.

Anyway, I’ve decided to throw in this post heading, “Off-Topic Musings,” a sort of catch-all I’ll use on occasion to express some of that iffy “me” stuff. And here’s the first. See what you think.

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No Man’s Land

Was thinking today about something I decided to call a “compressed dialogue.” That’s where one issue in the subject before you is so all-consuming of attention that no other aspect of the thing can be spoken of. In the context of the compressed dialogue discussion, to speak of those things would brand you as a hater, or crazy.

For instance, for the longest time, you couldn’t say ANYTHING, not one approving word, about the rights of Palestinians, without being branded an anti-Semite and perceived as attacking Israel’s right to exist. The dialogue was compressed in a way so as to exclude any discussion of the lives or well-being of Palestinians, and if you broached the subject AT ALL, you somehow automatically approved of the Holocaust, and wanted Jews worldwide to be murdered in their beds.

Likewise, there seem to be compressed dialogue conditions in many of the ardent issues my side of the political aisle supports.

For instance, I’m pretty well convinced George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin. But I had people tell me privately they don’t actually like or trust people wearing hoodies. They don’t like not being able to see people’s faces, and lamented that one side-effect of the incident was this insistence that we should all wear hoodies to show solidarity with the murdered man.

Yet if they were to make such comments in public, they would have been branded as approving Martin’s murder, or of being virulent racists. Any possibility of a more complex discussion that included this side issue was shadowed out of existence by the sun-bright focus on racism and murder. You simply couldn’t talk about hoodies in any terms but gushingly positive.

I’m absolutely certain compressed dialogue conditions exist on the other side of the aisle. I have a hard time believing every Republican legislator is an ardent Tea Party supporter, or thinks global warming is a hoax. In fact, I’d suspect compressed dialogue conditions exist MORE on that side of the aisle, and that the penalties over there are even stiffer. But I sort of expect that; some part of me insists right-wingers are fearful idiots.

It’s the stuff on my side of the line that bothers me most. We live in an era where apparently even the best and brightest of us think the way to conduct a discussion is to scream with rage if the slightest off-script comment escapes the lips of our fellows.

Aside from the specifics of any issue, I think it’s important to know that compressed dialogues exist, that even our oh-so-rational selves will occasionally fall into them, and that there SHOULD be a better way to talk about things.

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Beta Culture: The Story Behind the Stories

ÿEvery culture has stories. I don’t mean the entertaining fictions of story books or novels or other popular entertainment. I mean this other kind, something out in plain sight, but also sort of hidden.

Stories about how things fit together. Stories about relationships, about the duties children owe to parents, and parents to children. Stories about how man and woman relate, and the ways to create family. Stories about the regard each person owes to neighbors. Stories about how to do everyday things, and how to handle the unexpected. Stories about social currents, and current events. Stories about strangers, and how they should be viewed and treated. Stories about intertribal war and fighting. Stories about the mishaps of life, and how to deal with them. Stories about death and how it takes us. Stories about babies, and the renewal of life. Stories about vast forces that can deliver a fortune one day and disaster the next.

You may not know any of this, and might even be under the impression that you aren’t affected by story-making in and around your life. The stories don’t care. They’re out there whether we believe in them or not, all the time, and you and I both are subject to them.

“Stories” as a subject is a funny one, in that … well, we’re so used to living our lives according to these stories, using them to guide our thinking and daily actions, that we’re largely unaware it’s happening. If we do stumble across the idea one day, we dismiss it almost instantly. Me? Subject to stories? No, I’m a 100-percent self-willed rational being!

Big Man, Little Man

I’ll tell you about one that I saw happening, that sort of opened my eyes to the idea.

I worked for a newspaper for 8 years, and it was a fairly illuminating experience in a number of ways. I had an article come across my desk one night, something written by one of our local reporters about a tragic event that happened in a nearby town. At a junior ice hockey game, two attending fathers got into a verbal confrontation. Might have been over a play, a referee call, I don’t remember.

I do distinctly remember one of the hockey dads was a rather large man, the other was more my size – shrimpy. The confrontation included these details: The instigator of the confrontation was almost entirely the little guy. We had a saying in Texas where I grew up – “You’re about to let your eagle beak overload your hummingbird ass.” – something that fits this situation to a tee. The little guy had a mouth on him like a dock worker, and he verbally flayed the big guy, goading him until, eventually, the big guy popped him a good one with his fist.

The little guy went down, hit his head on the concrete floor, and died.

Of course any event like that has follow-up details that go into following articles. There was the arrest, the arraignment, quotes from both families on what they were going through. But the follow-up stories said nothing at all about the little guy goading the big guy. They were written so that the factually-detailed account faded, and a STORY took its place.

The STORY was this: Big man hits little man and kills him, without provocation. The half-hidden narrative developed over a period of weeks, until it was eventually something like “large, violent bully hits peaceful inoffensive little nebbish and kills him.”

Let me pause a minute and toss something at you. You might find yourself even now silently saying, “Well, whatever the little guy did or said, he didn’t deserve to DIE for it.”

And yes, yes, you’d be right. I’d never say he did. But in the heat of the moment, I think you can imagine a little Napoleon-complex guy goading another person – even a big, gentle man – into such heated anger that one little punch might seem like the thing to do. Certainly if he goaded and ridiculed a woman like that in public, we’d all cheer if she finally hauled off and slapped him. If he did it to a cop, most of us would understand if the cop took him down and arrested him.

Besides which, the dying was a wholly unexpected end to the confrontation, something nobody, including the shocked and mortified big guy, could have foreseen.

I lost interest in the sequence of events midway through the thing, but I imagine that STORY, “large, violent bully hits peaceful inoffensive little nebbish and kills him” followed the big guy into the courtroom and weighed heavily in his eventual fate.

The thing I’m saying is that, in this case, what got out to the newspaper’s readership wasn’t the simple facts of the case, it was a STORY. A comfortable, familiar narrative that included certain facts, left others out with a sort of weird deliberateness, and delivered a satisfying, and even expected, conclusion.

I’m often surprised at how often I find myself buying into stories like this. I’m always a little bit disturbed when I realize that I’m doing it, but I’m VERY disturbed when I see that everybody else is doing it too, no questions or doubts expressed. What could a thing like that mean? What is the effect on the society in which it takes place?

Uncle Joe

I’m take a detour for a second so I can make a slightly different point: I had an uncle who lived with my family for a year or two when I was in junior high. He had some serious health problems that included MS and diabetes, so he was pretty much of a mess physically. He also sometimes flew into rages for no good reason. From this end of my life history, all of that is understandable, but at the time, the focus of those rages was often me. He was insulting, goading, verbally abusive to a 14-year-old, 4-foot-something tall, high-strung, sensitive kid. He was, in short, an asshole. A bully.

It took me years and years, long after Uncle Joe was dead, to formulate a conclusion about this sort of thing. But the conclusion was: Handicapped people can be assholes. They can be bullies. Verbally and emotionally, they can be the aggressors to people who are strong and healthy, but who have no recourse but to sit and take it.

Yet this flies in the face of the STORY we have about handicapped people: Because we are all so much bigger and stronger and healthier, we have to give handicapped people special leeway, special help, overlooking whatever little inconveniences they might visit upon us.

Out in the real world, I’m fully on board with the idea of helping handicapped people make their way in the world. But I’m also cognizant of this allied issue – that politeness is something EVERYBODY owes his fellow man. I know that I myself have a certain amount of independent pride, and I imagine everyone around me feels the same way. Even in the face of accommodating the needs of the handicapped, nobody deserves abuse.

If you think about it, that sort of “so far and no farther” reaction is an honest one, a reaction that treats the handicapped person not as a pitiful permanent victim, but as a PERSON. An equal, at least in the vein of recognizing each other as individuals from whom is expected certain bare minimums of respect.

I suspect most of us learn this lesson late, if at all, and when the STORY of “handicapped person” comes into our lives, react with predictable generosity and understanding, even sometimes to the point of taking undeserved crap.

Stories of the Downtrodden

So the point is, STORIES – even those that parallel deeply held humanitarian sentiments – can vary from the facts of any specific case. They can be false.

We have a STORY about Jews. “Jews are the downtrodden, the once-and-forever victims of the Holocaust, and the world owes them generous special treatment to make up for that historic horror.” According to this story, Jews could never be the aggressors. They are an inoffensive people give to study and thought, and know nothing of the arts of fighting and killing. All they want is to be left alone  to raise their families, to quietly go about their lives and live in peace.

We have a STORY about race. Part of that story is that there are BLACK PEOPLE and WHITE PEOPLE, and the WHITE PEOPLE are the aggressive subjugators of the BLACK PEOPLE. The BLACK PEOPLE have been held down for too long by the WHITE PEOPLE, and now deserve a certain amount of generous accommodation as they try to bootstrap themselves back up from poverty and slavery.

WHITE PEOPLE, meanwhile, are the permanently advantaged descendants of slave masters, and even today, bend themselves to keeping down the BLACK PEOPLE. Every WHITE PERSON enjoys vast advantages over every BLACK PERSON, living in the ease and the comfort of permanent privilege.

At the same time, some of us have this different STORY about black people, that they are lazy, shiftless social parasites, drug addicts and sex fiends who have baby after baby so they can get more and more welfare.

From the modern feminist camp, we have a STORY about gender relations. MEN are the sole source of problems for WOMEN, with every MAN a rapist barely held in check, every WOMAN a helpless victim of never-ending abuse and sexual harassment. Furthermore, though we live in a fairly rich country, and enjoy huge material and social advantages over people in other countries, this is RAPE CULTURE, and every woman is under constant threat of being thrown to the ground and brutalized. Meanwhile, no MAN is disadvantaged in relation to WOMEN, and the idea there is any need for a movement to establish equality for MEN is laughable. Rather than equality-ism, the only thing we need is feminism.

Understand that all of these STORIES may have elements of either truth or falsehood, or both,  in them. In any particular case, the story may be wholly true. But also, in any specific case, the story may be completely false. It may be somewhere in between.

Those of us watching the events in Israel at the moment, where Israelis are bombing Palestinian cities and killing civilians, including innocent-bystander women and children, have certain evidence that the STORY of the inoffensive, victimized Jew, may not be entirely reliable.

Those of us watching the events in Ferguson, Missouri, where a young man was shot and killed by a policeman, are being treated to the STORY of an unarmed young black man brutally killed by an out-of-control cop, for no reason at all. Initially I myself leaned toward accepting that interpretation. Yet as facts of the events become more available, it turns out the situation is slightly more complex than the first-presented STORY, and I feel much less certain.

The Coloring of Thought

The point of all this is that, for most of us, some large part of how we relate to the world around us is through the filter of these stories. They give us ready ways to interpret events as they happen around us, but they also put us at a powerful disadvantage if we aspire to be independent rational beings who live our lives in close accord with reality.

If you live your life by stories and never pull back the curtain to see what lies behind them, you’re a sort of unwitting servant of the stories. See that word, “unwitting”? UN-WIT-ting. You’re NOT THINKING. Instead, you’re … following along. Reacting. Reacting AUTOMATICALLY in certain ways and not others. Ways that have unintended consequences for you and the society we all live in, but also ways that can be predicted and used by people who understand how all this works, and who consciously and deliberately create some of these stories.

For instance, the STORY that George W. Bush was a great president who kept us safe, who never made a mistake, who to this day is not responsible for any bad thing that happened during the post-Sept. 11 era. Or by contrast, the STORY that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, a socialist and an enemy of America, out to destroy everything good. Or the related STORY that the people believing this are not racists, nothing like racists, and have good reasons to want to impeach this coincidentally-BLACK president. Believe it: These stories were deliberately created to build and maintain political power, and to avoid certain unpleasant consequences of the truth. Whatever side you happen to be on, automatically buying into the STORY of your side might make you feel good, but is not the most useful life-strategy. Unpleasant facts, things you don’t want to believe in, can still be facts.

The worst part of all of this is, if stories are all that informs your thinking, you are a puppet – not to another person – but to something that isn’t even alive and conscious. You’re being run by a THING.

This is not something you can tolerate if you aspire to the status of a reasoning being.

In a way that modern U.S. culture decidedly does not, I’d like Beta Culture to understand that these stories exist, and to have a permanent mechanism for recognizing and revealing them for public consideration. Every Beta adult could more carefully study those stories that interested them, hopefully to make enlightened, independent, rational conclusions about the facts of each case.

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The Other Side of ‘Poor Robin Williams’

Robin WilliamsSome part of this is probably gonna make you uncomfortable, but I’m gonna just toss it out here anyway:

Robin Williams died today, of an apparent suicide. It’s strange how much it affects me. Years back when I was on vacation and Stephen Jay Gould died, I called home crying. That guy MATTERED to me. He was one of my people, a smart man and a scientist. The world was a colder, dumber, less interesting place when he died.

And now Robin Williams is gone.

On Facebook, a lot of people are posting and talking about this, and most of them are saying how great he was — as a comedian, a dramatic actor, a humanitarian, so much more.

But I’m also seeing a number of posts about depression and mental illness, along the lines of “Anyone can suffer from depression, etc.” About how terrible it is. About how none of us really understands what people with depression and mental illness are going through.

And yes, I agree with that. Hey, I had it. There was a year, back in about 1985, when I got so far down I felt … nothing. No feelings at all. I didn’t even feel suicidal, because that would have taken effort, and I just didn’t have the juice.

There is a depression beyond anything normal people know about. It’s like a black beyond black, a whole new spectrum of darkness that opens up once you get past all the colors and the light goes out. It’s the depression of no energy, no emotions, a place where even pasting an expression on your face is something like lifting heavy weights.

I was there for most of a year.

And then I got better. Part of it was getting a dog, something I had to rouse myself to care for. Another part, a big part, was I had my supportive, patient Cowboy Dad. (If you don’t know who that was, it’s a whole other story.)

But another part of the healing, I’m pretty well convinced, was because I got out of the family situation, and home culture, that put me there. Honestly, I haven’t felt a day of depression since then. I’ve long since concluded I wasn’t the type of person who simply has unworkable brain chemistry or whatever. I was depressed BECAUSE OF STUFF THAT WAS DONE TO ME. And once I got away from it, I started, and continued, to get better. There were definite lasting effects of the whole mess, but whatever problems I have today, depression isn’t one of them.

Anyway, here’s what I want to talk about:

I’d characterize Robin Williams as a certifiable genius. I don’t mean “genius” in the general fluff way, or as some sort of pun on his role of Genie in the Aladdin movie. I mean GENIUS. Fantastically, unbelievably brilliant. A 200-watt creative intellect in a world of 100-watt (and below) standard human duffers. A guy so energetic of mind and body he gave off HEAT when he entered a room, and everybody turned to see.

It’s genius I want to talk about. Because I don’t know anybody else’s experience, I’ll have to talk about mine:

I am NOT a genius. But my IQ is pretty high. Though I’ve dropped out now, I was a Mensa member for five years or so. Mensa is the worldwide high-IQ society, and I qualified from the time I was in the 6th grade. I didn’t actually join until decades later, but my IQ score was, as my 6th grade teacher told me, the highest he’d ever seen. (Ha! Bear in mind this was Houston.)

Guess what that’s like.

On the plus side, the journey of my life has been a very cool one. I feel that I’ve gotten to see things most of my friends and family didn’t see, couldn’t see, gotten to understand things they could never understand. Of course, I also got to make some rare mistakes, mistakes they never would have made, doing things in ways that never would have occurred to them. (And sadly, some of the things you see – things that other people blithely miss – are scary and depressing.)

On the minus side … Growing up in Texas, my closest friends were rodeo cowboys, and we lived in a backwatery country culture that prized cleverness but not intelligence. Hell, I had people on my back all the time because I read BOOKS.

Here’s my stepfather from when I was 15 and on: “Yuh ort to git yer nose outta them books, Boy. Quit that goddam school and go git chu a job.”

Yes, this is me saying it, but the fact is, I was a LOT smarter than every one of my close friends. But I expended a great deal of energy at masking it. Every once in a while, I’d slip up by using a big word, or by expressing an unapproved interest or an unusual viewpoint. I would forget where I was and just be myself for a moment. I would think about stuff and then tell people what I’d thought. Or they’d catch me writing – WRITING!! – in my Journal. And damn, if your home culture doesn’t value intelligence and thoughtfulness, or sensitivity, or writing (!!), you don’t want to do any of that.

Which means exactly this: It was lonely. And boring. (There was a price on that last bit: Because I almost never needed to study, I ended up developing very bad study habits that would cost me dearly in later years.)

I must have thought a thousand times over the years, “Where are the classes that would be exciting and challenging? Where’s the school that I’d fit in? Where are MY people, the people who think about things? Where’s MY world?”

In every school I attended, there were special programs and classes for the slow and mentally handicapped, but nothing for the gifted. It goes without saying that any normal class you were in usually moved at the speed of the slowest kids in the room. The speed of glaciers, it seemed to me. Some of my teachers would even stop calling on me, so the other kids could have a chance to answer questions or go the board and work problems. I took to sitting in the back of some of my classrooms, sneaking in novels to read. By my senior year in high school, I was skipping an average of one day a week, forging notes from my mom that said, literally, “Please excuse Hank for missing class Friday as he did not feel like coming to school.”

[ All those teachers that covered for me, if you’re still out there, thank you soooo much. You rock.]

The obvious assumption by the people who plan classes and academic help is that the bright kids don’t need anything, that with limited time and money, it’s the slow kids who should get the help.

Outside school, there were social things that happened. I learned that boy, oh boy, you definitely didn’t want to toot your own horn in the field of brain. If the subject of your musical ability came up in conversation, people would chime in with compliments. If it was your athletic ability, people would gush about it, with admiring comments and even envy. Your artistic or performing gifts – rave reviews.

But your INTELLIGENCE … no. Nothing. You didn’t even dare bring it up. You might brag about your other gifts, but damn, you did NOT want to say anything about your intelligence. Because while some of the guys might be jealous about your athletic ability, they didn’t dare be too critical, for fear of turning the spotlight back on their clumsy, wimpy selves. But one and all, they could – and did – make fun of your brains. “You dumbass! For somebody so smart, you sure are stupid.”

It got to where I was hiding everything I could, never letting on that my friend’s interests and topics of conversation bored the hell out of me (Race cars? Shooting pool? Soupin’ up your truck? Coon huntin’? Coon huntin’ DOGS? Gah.)  I liked THEM, but not a lot of what they did or said.

So: Lonely. Boring. For years and year and years.

The best thing I ever did was when I was 22, I lit out for California, settling in a little ski resort town, where I made new friends, found a whole new world of interests and activities, and met my Cowboy Dad.

Witness the fact of the Tea Party here in the U.S., as a data point for the argument that intelligence is not much prized. Even among some fairly bright people, talking about your intelligence is not something you do. Again, you might actually brag about being a great tennis player, or an accomplished cyclist, or even just play up your handsome/beautiful looks, and people will agree with you. People will admire you. But if you say anything about your brain, much less your GENIUS, it’s embarrassing to everyone in earshot.

You simply DON’T talk about your own intelligence. Not at any time, not in any place. Instead you make jokes. You self-deprecate. You act goofy. You distract from the subject. You laugh at yourself. In a way that you never would with any other gift.

Yeah.

So here we are talking about Robin Williams. And yes, some of us are talking about his genius. But at least as many are talking about his depression, his Mental Illness.

Poor Robin Williams was MENTALLY ILL. We should do more for the MENTALLY ILL. We should be more sensitive to the needs of the MENTALLY ILL. Oh god, most of us have no idea what the MENTALLY ILL are going through.

And I’m all for that sort of discussion, every bit of it.

But I’m going to suggest that there’s this other thing we might think about, talk about, at the same time.

Let’s talk about the needs of the MENTALLY GIFTED.

Let’s notice the kids with extraordinary gifts. Notice the young adults of quiet intelligence, and do something for THEM. See if they need anything. Set up programs to feed them, nurture them, value them, challenge them. Value the bright adults in your life. Tell them, show them, that they matter to you, and that they matter because of their gifts.

Because some of those brilliant people who suffer depression, maybe they don’t suffer depression because hey, those creative types are always on the edge of suicide, aren’t they bro? Maybe they suffer depression because, to them, they live in Bizarro World, a place that runs a half speed too slow, that delivers a constant stream of depressingly dumb social and cultural whitewash, a place that can never value them, can never give them the same sort of welcome it gives the average and the less than average, a place that forces them, as the price of acceptance, to make jokes about their own best attribute.

Maybe they suffer depression because there is no place for them here, and they know it isn’t going to get any better. Because we’ve never built a place for them, and indeed, can’t even talk about them without qualifying every sentence with “Well, you know, INTELLIGENCE ISN’T EVERYTHING. And besides, IQ IS JUST A NUMBER.”

Maybe people like Robin Williams aren’t mentally ill. Maybe they’re so good, so bright, so creative, so sensitive – all of this in a world that can’t give them what they really need, a sense of being SEEN, of being VISIBLE (and no, being on screen is not, or may not, be that), of being known and loved for being their brilliant true selves, and by people whose opinions they value – that they eventually run out of steam and just … die.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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

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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.

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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.)

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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On Chicken World, Colonel Sanders is Hitler.

Hey, SOMEBODY has to think of these things.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

Combustion Kid

Deafening Damsel

Vibrating Boy

Wheeled Wonder

Lead Lad

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

Man, that’s DEEP.

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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.

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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!

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

Back off, DC Comics, it’s mine.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.”

———————–

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. ]