So, how do you follow up a thing like starting a new religion like Quackatoonity? Should you follow it up?
I mean, this is Art Day. And I need a theme for Art Day. How about, “Art with no ducks in it?” Well, Ducks are always watching from somewhere. So, I guess that’s a no-go.
Of course, I could always try to prove the “toon” part is real. I am a cartoonist. I do do cartoons. (Haha! He said, “doodoo!” Shows you the level of humor he will sink to.)
This cartoon is a bit creepy and definitely surreal. This was done more than a decade before I even met my wife. But the two boys seem to be four years apart in age, just like my real-life sons. They do not, however, have visible horns on their heads. This is supposed to be surreal, not photographic.
So, there’s a weird cartoon story for today’s Art Day post on a New Day. And nowhere in sight will you find a duck in it… OH, NO! THERE’S A DUCK IN IT!!! How does Donald do that?
You will have to forgive my terrible poetry at the beginning of this post. I can’t help myself sometimes.
But just because someone is a terrible poet, the way Mickey professes to be, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to them. Mickey has considerable experience with the topic of being bitter. After all, he was a teacher for 31 years, 24 of which were spent in middle school monkey houses.
But nothing is ever made better by being bitter. No matter what was done to you, how you were insulted, or what injustices you suffered, it does not make things better to get revenge or even plot revenge. The fire of hot anger burns while it is inside you, but, in truth, you are the only one who really feels the heat, the only one who really gets burnt.
You can’t even solve the bitterness by reasoning with the one who offended. They will not listen to reason. They will not yield to authority. You cannot make them do or feel anything that you want them to do or feel.
But you can forgive them. You can tell a joke, even if you are telling it on yourself. You can do the one thing that will do the most to make them feel better… listen to their actual concerns.
If you are as goofy and cartoon-obsessed as me, you may remember that Popeye the sailor was known for the catchphrase, “I yam what I yam”. And if you do remember that, it will not surprise you that, when told a yam is another name for sweet potato, Popeye was furious. “It cannot be!” he argued. “I would not say I sweet potato what I sweet potato! That’s ridicumess!”
Well he has a point.
But I would like to talk today about the things that I sweet potato, and why I sweet potato those things.
First of all, I yam a humorist.
I yam this thing not because I am funny. You may think I yam funny because I say really goofy things for no apparent reason, and then keep on talking long enough to convince you that I did have a point to make, but my brain leans so far to the left that I am hardly right about anything.
And I make bad puns a lot.
You see, I have to use humor constantly to deal with all the hard things in life, because being too serious in the face of the world’s basic uncaring cruelty only leads to depression and taking a beating from life. In fact, I can think of any number of situations in my past where I avoided a beating only because I made a joke that made the bully laugh.
So, being a humorist is a survival tactic. Humor keeps you alive.
You see someone like me has to face all the pain and heartache and cruelty the world has to offer by using humor. The real reason is that, when faced with a bad situation, if the humor gland can’t empty itself of all the jokes it produces, it will begin to swell. The humor gland is located either in the brain or maybe in the behind (I am not medically qualified to tell you which it really is), and it can only swell to a certain point, and then it will explode. This is very bad thing for you, if you survive it, and certainly unpleasant for anybody nearby.
But the joke, properly launched at the target, will make somebody laugh, even if it is only the humorist himself. And laughter is the best medicine. Unless it kills you. You have to be careful not to die laughing. The angels will be offended, and the demons will all laugh too.
But I yam not only a humorist. I yam also a teacher.
I began to realize that I might be a teacher when, in graduate school to get a remedial master’s degree to help with the fact that plain English majors all starve to death, I discovered I had a talent for explaining things in simple terms. And then, immediately afterwards, I discovered I had an even greater talent for being ignored while the people I was explaining to made the mistakes they wouldn’t have made if only they had listened to me, before they failed spectacularly, and then realized how the solution I had explained would’ve made them succeed instead. There is apparently no better way to learn an important lesson.
Teaching is, of course, a pretty cool job. You tend to have the summers off. And you get paid for summer because they split the amount of money you earn for the year (which considering what a babysitter makes on average per child and per hour is far too little for the hours you put in) into twelve monthly pittances.
Of course you are expected to have a university degree (although no teacher college in the world can teach you what you really need to know in order to face that many little monsters… err, darlings… every day) and preferably some grad school, and a certification to teach in your chosen subject, and an additional certification if you are going to teach more than one subject (and ESL and Speech and Journalism, all of which I was expected to teach, are separate certifications) and you have to take hours of additional training every single year, and you have to get re-certified every five years, and… Well, you have to be basically smarter and much better-educated than Bill Gates… But the school janitor will probably be making more money per month than you do.
Anyway, it’s a job you just gotta love. I yam a teacher.
And really, there are a whole lotta yams in my basket yet that I could tell you about. I yam a Red Skelton fan. I yam sometimes a nudist (when I don’t have to put on clothes to keep myself from scratching all my psoriasis-plagued skin off). I yam also an artist (of the type known as a cartoonist). I yam pig-headed sometimes, and I yam Grumpy sometimes (so I go from being Porky to one of the Seven Dwarfs.) I yam a lotta things. And my sweet-potato basket is large.
But I can’t talk about all of my yams today. Too many yams are bad for my diabetes.
But here’s one last yam. I yam a storyteller. And I have a free Kindle e-book promotion this weekend. The book is the first in my series of AeroQuest books. It is a science fiction story with a humorous bent. And I mean, it is seriously bent in some places.
So, click on the link and get yourself a copy. It’s funny. And I will save the other sweet potatoes for another day.
Barbie’s little sister, Stacy, is an incredible nerd (for a plastic doll from Mickey’s doll collection.) She is constantly using one of the laptops to keep up with the latest news in Science. Lately, she has been thrilled to see pictures start rolling in from the James Webb Space Telescope, the superior imaging system to its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.
You may have noticed that Stacy surfs the internet in the nude. She is not a porn-obsessed pervert or anything. She simply found research online that indicated that nudists are happier in many ways than people who are addicted to always wearing clothes. She joined the AANR (American Association for Nude Recreation,) found a local landed nudist club to join and discovered how lovely it is to play in the sunshiny air totally bare.
If you knew Stacy the way I know Stacy, you would realize she now has a real dilemma. She is very intelligent… but her head is made of plastic, and so it stubbornly resists compromises once an idea has found its way inside.
This is called internal conflict. But never fear. Stacy is highly intelligent, smarter than Skipper, and even smarter than her oldest sister Barbie. This is why she is the only sister so dedicated to nudism.
So, Barbie pointed out to Stacy that, being made of plastic, exposure to outer space will simply freeze her solid. And as long as she avoids getting dropped by a doofus while she’s frozen and brittle, and she gets thawed out slowly enough at the end of the journey, she should be fine. Now, all she has to do is convince Mickey to sell her to an astronaut who is not a doofus but is just goofy enough to take a doll into outer space. So, now Stacy is researching non-doofus goofy astronauts online, further preventing Mickey from writing something dumb.
The criminal was led into the courtroom in chains and forced to sit in a box made of metal bars so his influence would not reach out and harm anyone by drawing their sympathy in.
“Mr. Prosecutor,” said the learned judge, “what terrible crime has the perpetrator been charged with?”
“The alleged perpetrator!” objected the defense attorney, a mousy old man who looked like a cross between Santa Clause and Robert E.Lee because of his white beard, stern face, and a twinkle in his eye.
“Shut up please, Mr. Badweather. You will have your turn to speak.” The judge banged his gavel smartly to emphasize the shut-up-ness of his overruling.
“Your honor,” said the prosecutor, “Mister Pennysnatcher Goodlaughs stands accused of being a clown.”
“The people of the State of Texas, home of the free, land of the brave, and place where cowboys can hang their hat on the antlers of a moose they shot in Canada, will prove that Mr. Goodlaughs did willfully, and with malice of forethought, commit acts of supposed humor in order to make people laugh. And we will further prove that in a time of very serious things, he intentionally made light of very serious matters and the very serious men who try to turn those serious things to their exclusive… err, sorry, I mean… everyone’s benefit.”
“Your honor,” said the defense attorney, looking like a cross between Mark Twain and Colonel Sanders, “I would like to request a new venue for this trial. My client will not get a fair trial here.”
“Sir, your stupid request is rejected on the grounds that Mr. Goodlaughs cannot get a fair trial anywhere. We are all conservatives, and are therefore incapable of having a sense of humor. Continue, Mr. Prosecutor.”
“We will show numerous instances of Mr. Goodlaughs putting paint on his face to hide his true features or assume the identity of a character not his own. He has repeatedly used false noses, large shoes, and floppy hats to exaggerate his flaws and scare young children. He repeatedly wears polka-dotted clothing to simulate terrible taste and ridiculous lack of fashion-sense. He employs pratfalls and slapstick humor in his performances, things that, if any school-age child would imitate the behavior, might lead to serious injury or even death. And he has even dared to make fun of our glorious leaders, implying that they make mistakes and may even have hurt people. That they act without thinking about anything but their own pocketbooks. In other words, this clown has knowingly made jokes in order to get people to not take things seriously.”
“Your honor, I object to this jury. I object to the fact that it is made up of fifty percent rednecks and fifty percent kangaroos! My client demands a new, more impartial jury!” cried the defense attorney, looking like a cross between Captain Kangaroo and Ronald Reagan.
“Has anybody noticed?” asked the judge, “that this attorney looks like he could influence this jury unfairly? He looks like two people who could lead the two halves of this jury to the wrong conclusion. Bailiff! Take the defense attorney out back and execute him by firing squad.”
After the entire courtroom heard the gunshots go off, the judge then turned to the prisoner.
“It seems, Mr. Goodlaughs, that the defense’s opening statement is now entirely up to you. Do you have anything to say in your own defense?
“I do, your honor. Ladies and gentlemen, kangaroos and Reagan Republicans of the jury, I submit to you that I have never actually been a circus clown, or wore face paint. Not that I wouldn’t if the opportunity presented itself. I merely claim the right to laugh at anything I think is funny… or can be made funny. Whether I am being what you call a clown, a humorist, a cartoonist, a comedian, a fool, a village idiot, or a witty fellow, I believe I have the right to make light of anything. Life is always better when you can laugh. Especially if you can laugh at yourself.”
“I’ve heard enough,” said the judge. “What say you, jury?”
“Guilty!”
“Yes. And I preemptively waive the prisoner’s right to appeal. Sir, you are guilty, and you shall be executed immediately.”
Everyone in the courtroom breathed a long-awaited sigh of relief.
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.
As you get older and closer to the last page of the novel of your life, it is entirely appropriate to take stock of the treasures you have accumulated in a long and rewarding life. In fact, you will probably have heirs looking to reap their inheritance after your long-awaited passing.
My children, unlike those of certain Republican politicians, don’t have much to gain by discovering the perfect untraceable poison. In fact, if I don’t live long enough to pay off my bankruptcy, they may only inherit medical debt and the rapt attention of Banko Merricka’s relentless debt-collecting agencies. (Since originally posting this essay, I have paid off my bankruptcy and inherited a third of the family farm. So, it is time to start letting the dog taste my food before eating it.)
But, as I am taking stock, what exactly do I need before I get the final handshake from Mr. G. Reaper? It turns out, I probably don’t need anything else. I have written more novels than I ever expected to. My children are grown into adulthood and take care of themselves now. And I am confident my wife, at eight years younger than me, will find somebody new to berate and explain to the myriad reasons that the new person is wrong about everything, and always will be… even if what you said was something she said was true the previous week.
Sure, if I had all the access to medical care and medicine that most other countries see as a human right, I might live longer. But my medical condition is bad enough that I would be seriously prolonging the pain and suffering. I enjoy being alive, but every day is a painful challenge, and, over time, that tends to get you down.
But what more do I want out of life?
Grandchildren would be nice. But none of mine are married yet, and only one of them seems to have found one he permanently likes. The countdown clock is ticking on that matter.
Well, recognition as a writer would also be nice. I came close to winning in a couple of novel-writing contests. A few readers have read and loved some of my books. Only one person ever hated my writing that told me about it, and he was a voice in my own head. There was also one reader who was not me that was somehow traumatized by one of my lesser books. But I have published way more books through four different publishers than I ever believed possible two decades ago.
But I was a successful teacher for three decades. I touched more than two thousand lives with my work in four different schools in three different districts and ten different classrooms… teaching four different subjects. I have no regrets about how I spent my life and what I got in return.
So, I am writing this believing this is not a maudlin topic. I don’t think I am actually going to pass away this weekend. I will probably get to finish at least one more work in progress. But nobody can say for sure that we will survive next month. Or next decade.
But pessimist that I am, things always turn out better than I think they will.
And afterthoughts?
If I had a magic lamp with a genie in it, my three wishes for the future would be;
That Americans would invent a pill that makes everybody into a genius filled with empathy for all creatures, even the vilest, human beings. And they would share it for free with the whole world.
That we would handle the climate crisis and all the future crises at least as well as we handled the nuclear crisis of the ’60s, the Cold War, the Coke vs Pepsi War, the Bugs vs Mickey War and every other war that didn’t wipe us out as a species in the past.
There will be no Monkey’s Paw consequences for our wishes being fulfilled. So, that’s how it is.
Well, here we are again at the start of the part of the space opera that begins a new volume, and it is the part after the last intermission where I summarize all the crazy stuff that happened in this somewhat-true-but-also-somewhat-exaggerated history of what, to you, is a history of the far future. And I usually go over only a few main points before launching into a complicated story that you will never be able to follow because you’re not a genius like me, Googol Marou, scientist, historian, and really cool witness to a lot of these events.
And I usually assure you that you can pick this up and read it even without having read the previous four volumes. But, come on! Can you really skip that much wonderfully insightful narrative and historical analysis and still truly understand the masterfully written material of this volume? Don’t you need to at least buy the most expensive copies of all four books you can find and put them under your pillow so that story particles can irradiate your head in the night while you are asleep and make your brain mutate into super-genius levels of intelligence because the books are written so well?
Or you could just go back and read them.
Part One is called Stars and Stones.
In that first wonderfully written part, the two brothers, Ged and Ham Aero are fleeing from civilized space because, although they’ve already had a good career as space hunters, Ged’s Psion ability to change his shape has gotten him persecution from the Orion Spur Empire known as the Imperium. As they flee, they are joined by a criminal boyhood friend, Trav Dalgoda, who is escaping from space pirates that he stole a valuable Ancient artifact from along with a kidnapped Nebulon Princess and her young son.
They escape from known space to a periphery planet called Don’t Go Here. Here they legally lay claim to an entire planetary star system because they are the only people there with a spaceship. But it is not an uninhabited planet. There are millions of marooned spacers on that planet left there by the pirates that stole their spaceships. They have developed a unique civilization there based on ancient holo-cartoons called The Flintstones.
And so, the Aero Brothers liberated the planet by using Trav’s Ancient artifact to build an AI-self-aware starport whom Trav names Frieda and then commands her to design and build new starships.
Of course, the pirates who lost the artifact to Trav have to come to terms with the new power in with the Orion Spur, and so decide to start a rebellion against the Imperium and Grand Admiral Brona Tang.
But then we move into the part of the story that becomes Part Two, Planet of the White Spider. In that part, Ged has to face the fact that a mysterious prophecy about a Psion called the White Spider seems to be directly describing him as the next chosen one to be the White Spider.
Being the White Spider of Prophecy requires Ged to move to the planet Gaijin with a previously marooned Psion Master from Don’t Go Here called Tkriashav. Ged takes the Nebulon Princess’s son, renamed Ham Aero Junior, along with him to establish a new school for Psions. Junior has Psion skills.
Ham Aero decides to go along with Tron Blastarr, the leader of the pirates to fight for the Imperium and hopefully also stop Trav Dalgoda from destroying the entire universe for giggles. The rebels try to conquer some new planets after taking and losing White Palm. They gain allies and more Ancient-artifact troubles and one assassin on the trail of pirate leaders. They settle on the idea that if they win, they will establish a new interplanetary government called the New Star League.
Ged finds allies in the leader of Gaijin, a goofy old Mandarin called Shen Ming, and an immortal from ancient Earth, Dr. Naylund Smith. Dr. Smith’s charming young daughter Sara turns out to be a gifted Psion healer.
And then Ged must defeat the planet’s Black Spider leader in order to establish himself as the new White Spider. This he does in a ninja-battle contest by using his shape-changing ability to turn into a dinosaur and eat the Black Spider, ironically absorbing the ninja skills as he eats his enemy.
Then Ged seriously begins putting together his Psion ninja class from the gifted but outcast children that Tkriashav finds and brings to him.
Part Three, Juggling Planets tells about the rebel pirate bands going from planet to planet, recruiting and invading worlds to add to their new planetary alliance. Tron and Ham Aero add allies and friends to their cause, retrieve some of their captured minions, and learn certain secrets that advance their cause.
Ged and his students hone their skills and learn to work together. The students get to know each other and form relationships.
And then Part Four happens, The Amazing Aero Brothers. More characters come into the story. Some characters die. Some new villains arise and are defeated. I give you even more historical and scientific insight into what happens. And everything gets even more complicated.
What you most need to know is that Grand Admiral Brona Tang is defeated in the Battle of Planet Coventry by a super-powerful Ancient artifact called the Tesserah. And then Trav Dalgoda immediately uses it to commit the worst war crime in the history of the universe. After this battle ends, Ham Aero and everyone aboard his spaceship, including yours truly, are captured and held prisoner by Grand Admiral Brona Tang.
Ged Aero defeats his worst enemy who turns out to be a sort of clone of himself from the future. And then he is handed the evil artifact known as the Tesserah and tasked with destroying it to save the entire universe.
Now, do you have enough information to read Volume Five, It Ain’t Over Yet? Or do you need to do some more reading first?
Yes, I am the utter genius who brought this story to you.
Cartoon villains take note; Super-Mickey’s secret identity is Filbert Hazelnut. I make that revelation without worry. After all, Mickey is not really me. So, if the Messmaster, Badnose the Clown, or Daniel Quilp are going to try to apply the Mickian version of Kryptonite, not laughing at the jokes, in order to slay Super-Mickey, Filbert is immune to that. I am too for that matter. If you are a school teacher who uses humor in the classroom, you soon learn that only the smartest kids actually understand the jokes, and half of them are just too cool to laugh when the teacher wants them to. (Although they will tell you years later that they still use concrete details in their writing because you said that if you routinely whack the reader in the head with verifiable concrete examples, they will be totally stunned enough to believe you know what you are writing about. That was, you must understand, a concrete detail I just whacked you with to help you remember what it is, not to make you laugh… even though it was a joke… but you are permitted to laugh if you want to.)
The basic point of this essay is Mickey is not really me. I never went by that name as a kid.
I was always called Michael, sometimes Mike (though they were usually talking about the Other Mike when anybody said Mike in school back then… circa 1963 to 1969). In high school I was given the nickname Superchicken after the Saturday Morning cartoon on the George of the Jungle Show. In college I was given the rhyming nickname Spike by my college freshman roommate because he ludicrously thought I was the opposite of a Spike, like calling a huge football player Tiny Tim, or a midget Big Bad John.
When I started teaching school, they called me Gilligan because I was thin and they wanted to pretend I was a hopeless stumbling fool (Which I was at times my first two years, just as all beginner teachers are.) My classroom became known as Gilligan’s Island on the day in third period when I made the comment, “Gilligan is lucky enough to be the only really eligible bachelor on the same island with Ginger the movie star and cute little Mary Ann. I would find out later that same day that three eighth grade girls in that very class had huge crushes on me and were fighting over which one was Mary Ann and which one was Ginger and, unsurprisingly, which one was the other girl.
And, of course, Rudolfo Hernandez tried to get everybody to call me Batman because I bought a used Ford Torino with fins on the back. But to promote the nickname, Rudy came to class wearing a Halloween Batman mask and afterwords had to learn to live with being called Battyman himself. (I wish i could take credit for calling him that first, but I am sure I did not. I distinctly remember it coming from a girl in his class that made fun of him for every stupid thing he did because she apparently adored him. I just reinforced it about a thousand times.)
Mickey is a name that I have only ever been called by me myself. It was a name I signed some of my cartoons with (using The Little Fool, Le Petit Fou, Leah Cim Reyeb, and Dr. Seebreez on the rest.) It also became the name I use to refer to myself on this blog when I talk about myself in the third person like a crazy person.
I have given myself other pseudo-pen-names in my writing. Googol Marou, as the only first-person narrator of the AeroQuest series, speaks with my voice as the primary storyteller in the tale. In Norwall, the fictionalized version of Rowan, Iowa in most of my other books, Branch McMillan, the writer-character, is actually me. (Like Charles Dickens switched his initials to write the semi-autobiographical David Copperfield, I created that one by switching the M and the B.
Of course, the many me-characters in my fiction books are also basically me. Superchicken is me. Milt Morgan is a combination of me and the Other Mike. Brent Clarke is the football-player me combined with two other football teammates. Certain parts of Todd Niland’s story are really about things that happened to me, and things I was afraid of at his age.
In some ways Tim Kellogg and Dorin Dobbs are me too, though both of those characters are actually based on my eldest son. It is possible, I suppose, that you could consider my actual son to be a me-character too, as people do live on through their own children.
But, while Mickey might be me more than I care to admit, Super-Mickey’s secret identity is definitely Filbert Hazelnut.
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.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Case for the Clown
The criminal was led into the courtroom in chains and forced to sit in a box made of metal bars so his influence would not reach out and harm anyone by drawing their sympathy in.
“Mr. Prosecutor,” said the learned judge, “what terrible crime has the perpetrator been charged with?”
“The alleged perpetrator!” objected the defense attorney, a mousy old man who looked like a cross between Santa Clause and Robert E.Lee because of his white beard, stern face, and a twinkle in his eye.
“Shut up please, Mr. Badweather. You will have your turn to speak.” The judge banged his gavel smartly to emphasize the shut-up-ness of his overruling.
“Your honor,” said the prosecutor, “Mister Pennysnatcher Goodlaughs stands accused of being a clown.”
“The people of the State of Texas, home of the free, land of the brave, and place where cowboys can hang their hat on the antlers of a moose they shot in Canada, will prove that Mr. Goodlaughs did willfully, and with malice of forethought, commit acts of supposed humor in order to make people laugh. And we will further prove that in a time of very serious things, he intentionally made light of very serious matters and the very serious men who try to turn those serious things to their exclusive… err, sorry, I mean… everyone’s benefit.”
“Your honor,” said the defense attorney, looking like a cross between Mark Twain and Colonel Sanders, “I would like to request a new venue for this trial. My client will not get a fair trial here.”
“Sir, your stupid request is rejected on the grounds that Mr. Goodlaughs cannot get a fair trial anywhere. We are all conservatives, and are therefore incapable of having a sense of humor. Continue, Mr. Prosecutor.”
“We will show numerous instances of Mr. Goodlaughs putting paint on his face to hide his true features or assume the identity of a character not his own. He has repeatedly used false noses, large shoes, and floppy hats to exaggerate his flaws and scare young children. He repeatedly wears polka-dotted clothing to simulate terrible taste and ridiculous lack of fashion-sense. He employs pratfalls and slapstick humor in his performances, things that, if any school-age child would imitate the behavior, might lead to serious injury or even death. And he has even dared to make fun of our glorious leaders, implying that they make mistakes and may even have hurt people. That they act without thinking about anything but their own pocketbooks. In other words, this clown has knowingly made jokes in order to get people to not take things seriously.”
“Your honor, I object to this jury. I object to the fact that it is made up of fifty percent rednecks and fifty percent kangaroos! My client demands a new, more impartial jury!” cried the defense attorney, looking like a cross between Captain Kangaroo and Ronald Reagan.
“Has anybody noticed?” asked the judge, “that this attorney looks like he could influence this jury unfairly? He looks like two people who could lead the two halves of this jury to the wrong conclusion. Bailiff! Take the defense attorney out back and execute him by firing squad.”
After the entire courtroom heard the gunshots go off, the judge then turned to the prisoner.
“It seems, Mr. Goodlaughs, that the defense’s opening statement is now entirely up to you. Do you have anything to say in your own defense?
“I do, your honor. Ladies and gentlemen, kangaroos and Reagan Republicans of the jury, I submit to you that I have never actually been a circus clown, or wore face paint. Not that I wouldn’t if the opportunity presented itself. I merely claim the right to laugh at anything I think is funny… or can be made funny. Whether I am being what you call a clown, a humorist, a cartoonist, a comedian, a fool, a village idiot, or a witty fellow, I believe I have the right to make light of anything. Life is always better when you can laugh. Especially if you can laugh at yourself.”
“I’ve heard enough,” said the judge. “What say you, jury?”
“Guilty!”
“Yes. And I preemptively waive the prisoner’s right to appeal. Sir, you are guilty, and you shall be executed immediately.”
Everyone in the courtroom breathed a long-awaited sigh of relief.
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