In 1927 in the mythical land of Austria, where they seem to know how to make candy… a condensed form of peppermint was created in a lozenge form and then placed into a plastic toy dispenser. The spells that were cast to make this magical item probably had nothing to do with toad warts and bat wings and eye of newt. It has more to do with Mickey Mouse, then Katzenjammer Kids, and Marvel Super Heroes. I have been caught under the spells of a PEZ fixation since childhood. I remember begging for a Bugs Bunny dispenser in Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines when I was probably six years old. My parents wisely said no hundreds of times when I was a kid. Who wanted to spend a nickel on a penny’s worth of candy? Just for a Pez dispenser. If they ever caved to my begging, even once, I don’t still have the dispenser. But now I am supposedly a responsible adult. I have money. Well, I used to have money before I spent it on collecting PEZ dispensers. I can’t even eat the the stupid candy. I have diabetes. So I feed the candy to my kids and risk giving them diabetes.
Here, my minion Stuart is showing off my Avengers collection. It took him nearly thirty minutes to line these six dispensers up so that they were all standing at once. The Hulk kept falling on him repeatedly.
I am proud of my Toy Story collection. I had to go to some lengths to find some of these (particularly Slinky Dog and Rex).
Disney Princesses were easy. Both at Walmart and Toys R Us they were all grouped together on the Disney hooks.
The Muppets were also grouped together with the Disney Pez.
Winnie the Pooh is Disney, too. I got some of these on discount at Toys R Us. I still need Piglet and Owl… and Christopher Robin. I don’t have an unbroken Minnie Mouse either. I had small children when I first started collecting these, and now I have fat children and a lot of empty Pez dispensers.
My Star Wars collection seems to be evil Pez dispensers and Yoda.
And poor Stuart is getting tired of standing up Pez dispensers, so I will end here without having shown you all of my PEZ dispensers. Besides, I have reason to keep the newest dispensers a secret from my minion.
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) true things (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 Neil 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.
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.
Leave a comment
Filed under angry rant, commentary, conspiracy theory, humor, insight, irony, metaphor, Paffooney, philosophy
Tagged as books, literature, Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, writing