Category Archives: angry rant

July 20, 2022 · 6:32 pm

Thinkology – Positive Thinking

Back in the early 1980s, when I was a single teacher living in Cotulla, Texas by myself because I was teaching there, I used to visit my parents house every weekend. They lived in Taylor, Texas, more than 250 miles away. And on the long, lonely drive on Sunday evening, after the football games were over, I listened to Norman Vincent Peale on the radio preaching his philosophy of positive thinking.

“Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something special in them. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only the best, be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and too noble for anger.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale

There it is, naked before God, a good example of Bunny Foo-Foo Philosophy.

I am not saying it doesn’t have value. In it’s way, the unqualified optimism of cock-eyed optimists calms the fears of victims in crisis and gives hope to the hopeless. But it is not the magic bullet for killing monsters that Reverend Peale thought it was.

To be fair, President Ronald Reagan, an advocate of Peale’s philosophy, was good for this country in that he made us look at the sunshine available instead of the dark pollution of the soul that had been boiling in the American public’s cauldron since the Kennedy assassination and the Watergate Scandal. His Grampa Goofy-Grin persona gave Ronny Ray-Gun the ability to make people believe problems could be solved by eating a jellybean and aiming Star Wars space lasers at Russian ICBMs. He reassured us with magic-bullet solutions and actually positioned himself to be declared the winner of the Cold War. And people believed he made things better to the point that things actually got better… at least in a visible sense.

There are definite benefits to counting your blessings and cherishing the good things about life.

But you cannot carry that to extremes. Republican billionaires whose wealth is built on the fossil-fuel industry, want to believe that climate change problems are only a hoax by the scientific community committed for nebulous reasons of funding when their own fossil-fuel-funded scientists were among the first to tell them that the problem was real and life-threatening. Positive thinking makes you feel better about problems, and may help keep you on the problem-solving path. But being a pessimist makes you prepare for the worst, and when the worst happens, it gives you the actual tools to solve it.

Kurt Vonnegut was a very wise guy.

Here is the truth about positive thinking.

The thing that is most true about it is that you need to believe that when things are at their worst, you can dig down into the deep places within you and find the solutions and the powers you need to win the moment. If you don’t believe that, you are truly lost.

Beyond that, choose to be happy. You don’t make things better by adding blame, bullets, and bitching to a bad situation. Laugh in the face of what ails you. It can, in fact, work like the best medicine.

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July 18, 2022 · 5:18 pm

Thinkology – How to Think for Yourself

It is important for your mental health and well-being in the present age to question everything. As I laid out for you in the previous Thinkology post, the world is full of mental mousetraps, and evil thinkers are anxious to do all the critical thinking for you. If they can influence what you think is true, they can control you.

To start with, you have to look at yourself naked in the mirror. Now, I don’t mean this literally. The illustration is intended to be a metaphor for self-examination that goes deeper than how you look in your everyday dress…or tutu… or business suit… or even birthday suit if you like and are good-looking like the boy in the metaphor (after all, I have come to believe I am a nudist now, and am supposed to like the idea of birthday suits.)

What you are looking for is not how unsexy your massively fat-inflated abs are, but those things you believe that may not be completely valid (and mentally fattening.) Things that are true (not mere opinions or even supported opinions, but provably true facts) are backed up by measured, calibrated, and repeatable observations and experimental evidence. This means more than one other qualified observer has seen the same proofs as you have and agrees that it is factual. Yes, that’s the scientific method. And as a scientific way of evaluating truth, it is continually questioned and re-examined.

Any news source that you are thinking about accepting opinions from needs to be someone you can trust because they do actually vet their facts and sources. (Not the FOX news sort of vetting where it’s true because Tucker Carlson says so, but vetted through multiple reliable sources.) It helps too if your source is intelligent. Do not take the word of Louie Gohmert of Texas, Greg Gutfield of FOX News, or Mark Levin of talk radio for anything. These fools are clearly brain-damaged idiots or evil people spouting nonsense for evil reasons… or both. But also don’t take the word of Rachel Maddow, Bill Nye the Science Guy, or Niel DeGrasse Tyson without corroboration. While they are usually more intelligent, they are imperfect humans too and sometimes get things wrong. No one is perfect 100% of the time over 100% of the issues they are talking about.

Again, question everything.

Infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters could not have written all of Shakespeare’s plays.

The actor and theater owner, William Shakespeare, did not write the plays of William Shakespeare. The man could not even spell his own name successfully on public documents, left no handwritten manuscripts behind him, had no personal library, and never left England for any of the places in Italy he referenced so beautifully in his plays. Yet, there are many coherent arguments in favor of the glover’s son from Stratford written by dedicated true believers. And one cannot ultimately declare someone else the author of the plays. So, I have to admit that my belief that William Shakespeare is actually a pen name is only a supported opinion, not a fact. I choose to believe the actual writer was probably Edward DeVere, the Earl of Oxford, aided by Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, and other Elizabethans determined to establish English Literature’s place in the world. What I choose to believe is representative of my ability to think for myself… and my ability to weather ridicule from friends, relatives, and random Shakespeare experts who leave comments poo-pooing my blog and my intelligence. I know how to think and evaluate evidence.

So, think for yourself. Question everything. Weigh the evidence with care. And don’t take my word for it. I am probably crazy. Try it for yourself and see if it works.

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July 17, 2022 · 5:14 pm

Thinkology – Who Thinks for You?

I know you will responId right away, “I think for myself!” After all, everyone believes this even when it is not true.

Ideally, we first learn to think from parents, grandparents, and other significant family members (actually related or not.) Not everyone is lucky like I was in that regard. Especially among poorer families that tend to fracture, be violently unhappy, and often malnourished. And also among obscenely rich families who tend to isolate themselves in self-indulgence and ignore and even disdain others. Their children tend to be raised by servants, friends, and television (or YouTube and streaming services for today’s children choking on silver spoons.) I was lucky in the family I was born into, but I have to confess to being significantly impacted by television, though I lucked out there too in that I watched the simpler, more positive TV world pre-Kennedy Assassination and pre-Vietnam War and pre-9/11. It was a time that was far less cynical and less filled with anxiety and anger.

As we grow, we are influenced too by the educational experience forced upon us by society. We are supposed to learn how to think for ourselves in school, though the opposite is actually true. In your third-grade classroom, you are supposed to learn how to add and subtract, multiply, spell correctly, read at least at a third-grade level, and understand the fundamentals of science and social studies. In truth, however, the school experience spends most of its time teaching you to be obedient. You are expected to sit at your desk in orderly rows, open your various textbooks when you are commanded to do so, study and do worksheets quietly, and generally accept that what the teacher tells you is true and should be remembered.

That, of course, is not how children learn. Children learn by doing, playing, and interacting with others, things teachers spend a lot of time punishing. I found as a teacher that you made more progress in educating kids if you do things, talk about things, and turn lessons into playing around with ideas. Basically, allowing children to be themselves, choose which direction the lesson takes, and answering the questions they ask as truthfully as I could without using bad words. These, of course, are things that most principals hate to see going on when they walk by the classroom. Schools tend to be conformity factories, getting kids to think alike, be obedient, and accept what is considered normal, making them perfect future MacDonald’s and Walmart employees.

Happy Walmart employees (a rare species in my experience) only do what their managers tell them to do. And the managers do only what the policy handbook tells them to do. And problems are solved by corporate. Nobody has to think very much.

And there are people who very much want to control what little thinking is done. If you watch news shows, especially on CNN, MSNBC, and infamously, FOX News, they give you a host talking to panels of experts, talking heads that are happy to tell you what to think.

a malevolent, manipulative monkey

CNN and MSNBC attempt to give you a panel of experts with representatives of three or four different positions. A range of people who will gladly give you opposite opinions of what to think.

FOX News gives you a panel skewed towards the radical-conservative viewpoint with “liberal” commentators present in order to mock them, or, if they are real liberals, gang up on them.

All of these are trying to do the thinking for you. A good word for that is “propaganda.” But if they are honestly providing you with a range of competing ideas for you to evaluate and choose between, they are not as toxic and dangerous as the unabashed propagandists behind the radical-conservative movement.

Conservative media is now highly organized into funneling machines which collect non-thinkers and direct them to the ideas that will make them more supportive of top-down control (in other words, fascism.) This is what allows a political group (ultra-conservative Republicans) to dominate the government and create laws and tax breaks that go against the best interests of the general public and impose an order on the country that a majority of citizens don’t want.

The following video explains how the malevolent, manipulative monkeys do what they do.

So, the next question to be dealt with is, obviously, “How do you think for yourself?” Ah, another post on another day.

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July 11, 2022 · 7:52 pm

Thinkology – an Introduction

We each only know one thing for sure. I am here. I am aware. I know that I, at least, exist, even though everything around me could be a complete lie… even a lie I tell myself.

You will have to forgive me if I give you a second introduction. Or, rather, an intro-Duck-shun. You see, the opposite of Thinkology is Daffology.

I don’t THINK, therefore I am Daffy.,

So, even though practicers of Thinkology like me often overthink everything, the important thing is that we do think. If you don’t think, if you are a Daffologist, then you will probably vote Republican on issues that make your rich Congressman richer but will leave you poorer. And Daffologists believe in UFOs just because the guy with the hair, Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, says they were the ones who resurrected Christ.

A Thinkologist like me will believe in UFOs, and I do, based on numerous statements by whistle-blowers, photographic evidence, credible reports by credible witnesses, and personal encounters. but will never be able to say with any confidence that UFOs are real. (Although they are, but I can’t prove it, so I can’t say it without the caveat that maybe the entire American government is engaged in a misinformation campaign to make me believe something is true that really isn’t so they can somehow do their secret evil deeds to my detriment without me actually knowing it.)

When a Daffologist learns that he has been duped, he jumps up and down, swings his fists, says the worst swear words and profanities he knows, and dissolves in incoherent rage. Likely also stomping with his webbed Duck feet.

When a Thikologist learns that he has been tricked, he may utter his favorite swear words and profanities (because it helps the thinking engines to blow the soot out of them), and then rethinks what happened in the hopes that next time he will be less gullible and will have learned something important about protecting himself from falsehoods.

So, I am saying, to be a good Thinkologist… doubt everything.

If you are determined to be a Daffologist instead, then, by all means, accept everything Tucker Carlson says without reservation. Better the Republican People-Eaters feast on your children rather than mine… WAIT A MINUTE! I can’t think that either. Nobody’s children should be preyed upon for reasons of greed, Capitalist manias, or tasty meat! I need to work on identifying what is actually evil, and find a way to curtail it.

Now you know what I think Thinkology is all about… I think… subject to further experiment and evidence… and so, once again I am giving you fair warning about what I am probably going to post about in upcoming essays.

“Ah, if I only had a brain,” said the Scarecrow. “Then I could do some Thinkology about witches.”

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June 27, 2022 · 9:55 pm

The Writer’s Own Opinions – 2

Every writer, especially a fiction writer, has an opinion about what his or her work really means.

I have opinions that are going to get me backlash because my friends, my birth State, and the State I now live in all have opposite opinions that are based almost entirely on fear and hate preached by the so-called conservatives in Iowa, Texas, and the farm towns I grew up in. Recent events in government are getting blamed on the more liberal of the two parties that thankfully defeated our future Führer, former President Pumpkinhead. My friends in Iowa now tell me they don’t feel safe under Grandpa Joe Biden’s administration. Apparently, the inconveniences of inflation, broken border policies, and the threats we still face from the pandemic are all Joe’s fault, because, even though the Trumpalumph set it all in motion with his incompetence in office, none of it would still be happening if the mango-flavored Twitler was put back in office… because apparently the election was stolen from him without leaving any evidence of the crime. I can’t argue with these hate-filled so-called conservatives. I am apparently a liberal groomer of school children and pedophile who wrongly calls these hate-filled screamers on the internet “possibly” racist-leaning. So, all I can do is make it clear what my actual opinion really is.

Abortion and the Supreme Court

My personal opinion is much like the opinion I expressed about trans people. I have no say in this issue. If a woman that I supposedly loved enough to make a baby with her wanted to terminate that pregnancy, I would do everything within my legal power to try and convince her not to end the fetus’s life. I would want that child to be born. But if she didn’t choose to listen to me, it is between her and her doctor. And I would have to accept the decision.

By the same measure, I don’t believe the Supreme Court Justices, especially these spotty old men, have any more right to impose their will than I have. Four of these anti-abortion rule-from-the-benchers were appointed by a President who did not win the popular vote. Alito is a Bush appointee. And Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are appointed by Mr. No-Russian-Collusion. Chief Justice Roberts is there because of the Bush who didn’t win the popular vote.

And what about the fact that by the constitution Gorsick should be named Merrick Garland? And if you accept Mitch the Turtle McConnell’s unconstitutional excuse for stealing the seat, then there should be a Biden appointee in Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the court. The so-called conservative Republicans are not only hypocrites, they are criminal hippo-crats. (Oh, excuse my exaggeration. I am not entitled to call them that even though they call me a pedophile.)

At any rate, my basic opinion is that the pretenders on the new Supreme Court should not be ruling on anything in a way that takes away people’s basic right to decide personal things for themselves. I have fought through volumes of philosophy searching for the best, most moral way to live my life. And nowhere have I seen that it is acceptable for one person’s prejudices to take precedent over someone else’s right to decide for themselves.

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June 26, 2022 · 9:40 pm

The Writer’s Own Opinions

Every writer, especially a fiction writer, has an opinion about what his or her work really means.

Of course, their readers have their own opinions of what it means. And the two different flavors of opinion, author sauce or reader ragu, rarely are the same flavor, and often work at cross purposes to spoil the whole stew. Look at how the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird went over with readers for Harper Lee. Or how J. K. Rowling’s opinions about trans people have affected the most recent movie trilogy made from her works of fiction.

So, maybe I should clarify where I stand on certain issues before anybody threatens to make a movie from, or ban and burn any of my books.

(As if either of those things are ever going to happen.)

Trans People

In Texas now, it is generally agreed because of laws passed and pronouncements made by Fox-News-influenced Republican leaders, that trans people are 20-or-30-year-old male perverts putting on dresses and trying to get into middle school girls’ locker rooms, or worse, trying to play and win female sports with the advantages that come with testosterone and male aggressiveness.

My opinion on this issue is… you don’t get to have an opinion on this gol danged issue unless you yourself are a trans person. This is based on knowing two trans people in the entirety of my thirty-one-year teaching career. Not enough to make me qualified to open my stupid mouth about it, but more than any Texas Republican knows about it despite the large amount of foul-smelling opinion-gas they fill their speech balloons with in public.

One of these two people whose real names I will never utter was a confident and highly competent young lady whose sexual identity you could never doubt. I only knew about it because I was the teacher tasked with sitting in on her ARD meeting (a Special Education status update that she needed only because her situation qualified her as a Special Education student under the Emotionally Disturbed category.) She was at the meeting, so she knew that I knew. She would later warn me not to tell anybody, because it was no one else’s business what shape of genitals she was born with, and her hormone therapy and entire life experience made her a girl. Other teachers had leaked her secret in the past, and that was unfair to her. She was definitely a female in mind and personality. She was sweet, intelligent, witty, and capable of laughing at my classroom jokes… if they were funny. I suspect only a few if any of her classmates knew she was actually trans. She was all girl. I never told anyone. I never heard another student bad-mouth her. Although she did tell me that bad things had happened to her previously in elementary school. Nothing she was forced to endure was in any way deserved. And I am confident she is doing fine now.

The other trans student I was aware of, didn’t have it so good. I will call him a “he” because he never transitioned. But he was actually a girl. He had a penis, but it was only on the outside. His interior plumbing included a uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. His hormones were, judging by what puberty did to his body and behavior, mostly feminine. But he didn’t have the other girl’s advantages of being from a wealthier, big-city family with relevant health services available to him. He was a member of a poor, Hispanic family that lived in a small rural Texas town. He was not treated as a trans person. He was considered a homosexual. And Hispanic culture in South Texas is not kind to homosexuals. He had serious mental problems. He tried to talk to me about his problems late one Saturday night. But the conversation ended when he tried to proposition me, and I rejected his advances. I was not a homosexual either. Months later I found him crying in the hallway and bashing his forehead against a metal doorpost. I got help from the Reading teacher to get him to the nurse. He wasn’t in class very often after that. He did not pass any of his classes that year. And he didn’t come to school at all the next year. I heard rumors that he went to Laredo and became a drug dealer and a prostitute. I also heard from one of his relatives that he had attempted suicide more than once. At this point, I feel sadly certain that he never got the help he needed and is probably now dead.

I have now told you everything I actually know about the subject of trans people. And I can safely say I had no measureable effect on either one. I still cry about one of them. I still feel a small bit of pride about the other one. As a teacher I loved both of them, but not the kind of love he asked me for on that late Saturday night when I probably should not have opened the door to him. But I am not entitled to have an opinion. It is not my business no matter how much I care.

One of my favorite characters that I have used in multiple stories, Blueberry Bates, is a trans girl. How realistic she is as a character is probably still up in the air. I have revealed what I know about trans people that she is based on. But I love her, just as I loved the two of them. I think people like that are worthy of love and whatever you have to invest in them to be of help to them. I do not think they need to be legislated against. Their lives are hard enough as it is.

My glitchy computer published this before I got to write the conclusion. But having opinions is a matter of glitchiness anyway. And if you find you need to cancel me for my terrible opinions, you don’t need my permission to do it. I doubt you would even think about asking anyway. I hope I have made what I think clear. These are my writer’s opinions. And it is obvious from this essay that this is probably not the last one I will inflict on you.

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June 19, 2022 · 8:38 pm

Moving to Mars

Apparently the plan is, “Let’s use up everything on the Planet Earth to make ourselves excessively rich and possibly even happy, because the more you have, the more you are likely to be able to buy happiness. And if it destroys the Earth and all life on it, we will just move to Mars.”

That, of course, is a laughable solution to a problem that really isn’t funny. If we have the scientific knowledge and technology to transform Mars into a new home, why don’t we simply use that knowledge to fix what’s wrong with the planet we already live on?

Of course, I know the answer. Because it will cut into Koch Industries’ profit margins and provide less money and power to the shareholders that will survive Earth-death to live on the new Mars.

Cute rat, huh? Cute enough to merit space on the spacecraft to Mars?

Profit margins for shareholders are the whole reason for life on Earth. We can’t have the life and deaths of millions of the mere peasants and working poor to interfere with Ivanka Trump and Jared having chocolate cake with dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Right? Vermin don’t have rights.

I recently started a whole new life in a whole new world myself. I finished paying off my Chapter 13 Bankruptcy caused by medical debts and Bancko Merricka’s lawsuit. It gave me enough money to put in savings, and afford not only to pay off the incredibly high fees for Medicare Part B, but also to see an eye doctor and a glaucoma specialist. With treatment for my glaucoma, I see things more clearly, and with more vivid color than I have seen it all in a decade. And, although both of my parents passed away during the pandemic (but from health issues other than Covid,) I have inherited a third of the family farm along with my two sisters, actual wealth to leave to my own heirs. It would be nice to live in and enjoy the new world for a little while.

Of course, there is the problem that people like me aren’t really allowed to have wealth and keep it. Wealth is intended to get scooped up to benefit only the elite class of shareholders for whom the system is really designed to benefit. It has always been a tilted playing field.

I have paid off massive debts twice now where more than 75 % of the debt was created by compound interest. Bancko Merricka is full of pirates and cutthroats who are paid to make the money off the backs of those who really do the work and funnel it to the investors and shareholders who get to make lots of money because they already have money. I have sworn off credit cards from predatory banks, but life gets more expensive by the day, and there are limits to how much you can save on a teacher’s pension. Passive income is another thing tipped toward the people who own everything whether they worked for it or not.

The January 6th hearing is bringing out more and more of the criminal behavior of President Pumpkinhead and his MAGA Minions. These people who control whether or not we can mitigate climate change or protect ourselves from predatory banks are obviously never going to accept the good guys overcoming them and restoring democracy. Instead, we appear to be headed for the bad guys getting away with heinous crimes and instituting a minority ruling class by cheating, making us as bad as the German or Italian fascists of the 1930s and 40s. The Pumpkinhead will probably be President again in 2025. And we would be better off on Mars.

But the Mars solution won’t work for you and me. The vermin won’t be welcome like they were back when Noah built the Ark. Elon’s Ark will be for the rich and powerful only.

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June 16, 2022 · 7:49 pm

Don’t Do What I Say…

If you tell a middle-school child not to do something, do you know what the only thing they are thinking about doing is? Yes, you know it. The thing you told them not to do is the only thing they desire to do. Republicans in general, old white guys with lots of money, and everybody who follows their lead will be exactly the same. If you want to see middle-school kids try coming to school naked, tell them the dress code specifically requires them to wear clothes. And it won’t be the pretty ones, the smart ones, or the poor ones who try to become in-school nudists. It will be the fat, ugly, wealthy ones. In fact, it is the reason private schools for the rich concentrate on telling them what they must wear, like ascots, diamond cufflinks, and polo shirts in school colors. And they never have a rule that states, “You must wear clothes.”

So, let’s see if we can really confuse the disobedient and contrary masses of the world by telling them not to do what we really want them to do. But don’t tell them we want them to do what we are telling them not to do. Make them figure it out for themselves. It’s the only way to get them to do what you want. Make them think it’s not what you want and forbid it.

(Is the king wearing his new clothes? Not if you can see them, peasant!)

Let’s start with the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSaniflush. Do not vote him out of office. Only support those ideas that benefit his political career no matter how badly they will hurt the people of Florida. Happily pay the extra tax burden he has laid on Florida residents because he rescinded the special deal Disney has as a major employer and corporate entity in the Orlando area. The Disney corporation is guilty of a terrible thing, not wishing to demean any of its LGBTQ employees by following his “Don’t Say Gay” law, and don’t deserve to have the special deal where they have the right to maintain their own roads and county services in the Disney World region of Florida. Those Floridians need to assert their rights by paying for those same maintenance and service issues with their own tax burden. That will show those Mickey-on-Pluto-going-at-it perverts.

Get what I really mean? Listen very carefully. Some of those words are dog-whistles and bell-ringers, and Floridians are too stupid to figure out what we really want them to do. They will never prove us wrong. Am I right?

This honorable gentleman, current Emperor of Texas, Greg “Gunslinger” Abbott, also should never be voted out of office. After all, he is the anointed successor to the former Emperor of Texas, Rick “I’m Smarter With My Glasses On” Perry. You don’t become Emperor of Texas by being voted in, but, rather, by preventing certain people from possibly voting against you.

You see, what Emperor Abbott wants to protect us from is something called Critical Race Theory. This is an evil cloud of educational ideas intended to make innocent white children, specifically rich innocent white children, feel guilty and ashamed by knowing about things like civil rights abuses, inequality, slavery, racially-motivated lynchings, the South losing the Civil War, and Jim Crow laws not being about birds. This will be achieved by accusing and firing teachers and principals, especially teachers and principals of color, for promoting CRT through books like the ones about Ruby Bridges.

Here are the kinds of books CRT police want to ban;

For the good of white children in America, regardless of how children of color will feel about it, you should not buy these books to read them and risk liking the story of how young Ruby passed the test as a kindergartner in 1959 that allowed her to integrate William Franz Elementary as a first-grader, the only black child in her first-grade class in the previously all-white school, escorted to and from school every day by four U.S. Marshals and her mother, running a gauntlet of foul-mouthed racist protesters that threatened her, and attended an empty classroom where white children had been removed by their white parents in order to break the color barrier in Southern schools as a sort of heroine for the ages at seven years old. No, you should only buy these books to use as evidence against teachers or to burn them in a public display of CRT contempt.

So, here are the things you should not be doing. (And remember, you are not supposed to do what I say in this article.)

  1. Do not develop tolerance for people and cultures that are different than your own. We are not stronger when we are diverse. That is a lie the bad guys tell.
  2. Conservative and Republican are words that mean, “the good guys.”
  3. Democrats, liberals, progressives, fascists, communists, socialists, and terrorists are all the same thing. They are all “bad guys” and all the same.
  4. It is more important to hate the “bad guys” than it is even to love the “good guys.” After all you never know when a “good guy” will develop a conscience and become a RINO, socialist, or some other kind of “bad guy.”
  5. “Bad guys” never have ideas worth listening to. What you don’t learn about can’t hurt you. So just ignore them… or better yet, hurt them.
  6. Loving one another without conditions only works for perfect people like Republican Jesus. Don’t try it. Hating everyone works better.

So, these are the things I am saying when I say, “Don’t Do What I Say.” So, now you should go out and NOT do them.

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Filed under angry rant, commentary, Disney, feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, Paffooney, politics

June 8, 2022 · 8:01 pm

The Darkest of the Coming Darkness

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Egghead  might be slightly batty.

I do not claim to be prescient.  But like any overly smart and perceptive person, I often see what’s going to happen before it happens.  Sometimes it is almost as eerie as a Vincent Price movie.  Sometimes eerier.  After all, on the 60’s Batman TV show, Price played the ridiculous villain Egghead, and was completely creepy while doing it, but still, you know… Egghead.

One thing that I have to predict about the coming darkness is about politics.  I mean, the current Republican administration, where it is decisions by all Republicans all the time, has become nothing more than a monster movie.  Not merely a bad monster movie, but a super-creepy-bad monster movie with a gigantic orange rubber rooster as the main monster.

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This is what the great orange rooster looks like in black and white.

The reason it is bad is because, basically, to become a member of the Republican Party’s elected elite, you basically have to have your heart removed.  Heartless, soulless monsters have a tendency to do things like take away Meals on Wheels for invalid seniors, health-care services from Planned Parenthood, and any hope of ever having affordable health insurance that actually pays for health care.

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                                                                          Senator Ted Cruz grinning about taking away Obamacare

And now, the monsters who have taken control of the theater are pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement because… well, apparently clean air isn’t good for decaying, desiccated monster skin and shriveled monster lungs that don’t breathe air anyway.

So here are my predictions for the coming darkness.

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What people like me will look like in the future.  That’s me in the middle.

I won’t live to see it.  My body is breaking down at age 60. My lungs are compromised by years of bronchitis and flu.  I am diabetic, so my very body chemistry is betraying me.  There is a family history of heart disease.  And I have already gone broke once on health care bills that the health insurance people really don’t pay for.  (They are in the business of collecting premiums, after all, not making people well.)

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What a lovely oxygen-free environment we will have!

As the climate changes take away large parts of our food production and resources, and the sea rises to take away land and major cities, people will be at war increasingly over diminishing resources vital to a population of seven billion souls.  Graveyards and unburied bodies will become a part of every monster-movie scene.

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Kiss me, Baby!

Love will become more complicated, because people who are selfless and put others before even their own life will die out first.  The heartless, selfish, and often stupid ones will have the best chance for survival because they put themselves ahead of everyone else, and so have an unfair advantage over those who are not content with mere survival and exhibit self-sacrificing love.

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You’ve never had a friend like me.  And I can always eat you later if need be.

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So, if you find my black-and-white monster movie post upsetting with the darknesses I am sincerely predicting, please remember, this is a satire post in a humor blog.  The way it is supposed to work is that you wake up to the factors that make it upsetting and decide to do something for yourself to change them.  Everybody doing a lot of the same little thing to make the world better can move mountains and fly to the moon.  Big things don’t happen without everybody taking a hand.  Maybe we can dream dreams once again and make some good things come true.

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Filed under angry rant, battling depression, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, horror movie, humor, monsters

June 6, 2022 · 7:32 pm

Try Again, Mickey, Get it Right

Trying and making mistakes is how we learn. Trial and error built empires, created revolutions, and changed the very nature of reality. How do I know this? I tried. I failed. I tried again.

If I am not satisfied with the way things are, I must take steps to change the way things are.

Small steps at first.

But bigger things come along in time.

For today, I try again to get the tall grass cut in the yard. I walk the dog. I plan what I am going to do about the sorry state of air conditioning in the house. Every problem has a solution if only you can find it.

Right now, the world around me is direly concerned with mass shootings and how to control them. Especially after Uvalde lost 19 kids and two teachers to bullets from an AR-15.

Gun laws would help. But a Republican-controlled government refuses to regulate them sensibly.

Voting the morons and the evil, corrupt bastards out of office would be a good start. Men like Representative Louie Gohmert, Senator Ted Cruz, Governor Greg Abbot, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, one moron and three bastards, have to no longer be in control. And voting in good, capable people like Beto O’Rourke would help. But too many idiots, fools, racists, and evil people have the privilege of voting, while minorities and people of good conscience face increased barriers to voting.

My privileged white friends and relatives I knew well in my school years long ago, have developed powerfully potent hate glands from listening to racist fears and hate-filled propaganda from FOX News and various elected leaders who’ve duped them into buying the bull-puckie.

So, what do I do about it?

Remind them who they used to be. Remind them they don’t want school children to die from bullets in their classroom on the next-to-last day of school anymore than I do. Remind them that I am a friend and a relative of some of them who will continue to listen, continue to care, and continue to point out where they are allowing their preferences to become prejudices and their fears to foster cruelty to certain groups of “others.”

Even though I have been retired for eight years now, I am still a teacher. I believe every kid and every adult who was once a kid has value and needs to be treated as an equal and worthy individual. I also believe in responsibility, and holding people responsible, but not in punishing someone for failing to live up to a responsibility… rather, letting them pick themselves up to try again to do it better.

We are not without hope for the future.

We trust that a leap of faith is worth taking.

And though we may fall…

We will live to get up and try again.

Until we don’t.

But at least we are trying to do it better.

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Filed under angry rant, Liberal ideas, Paffooney, philosophy, soliloquy, strange and wonderful ideas about life