Little White Lies with Black Black Hearts

At some point it was decided in this country that it’s cruel to tell someone the truth. Rather than deal with each other in a straightforward manner, we’ve decided it’s better to hide all our true feelings in the vagaries of euphemism and omission. Rather than have serious conversations and say things like, 'Sir, you may not realize this but you have some serious body odor and the boss is going to fire you because he can’t stand to have you around the office,' the response is to gossip endlessly amongst ourselves and let the person’s career decline while the victim wonders what happened to cause their sudden termination of employment. If it were you with the body odor, would you rather lose your job or would you rather have one really uncomfortable conversation?

If someone in your vicinity is doing themselves a disservice, then it’s your duty as a human to tell them about it. This doesn’t mean you have to critique the style of dress of everyone you see on the street but if they’re doing something to their own physical or material detriment then the least considerate thing you can do it to keep mum about it. It’s not a hard thing to do and it’s very rewarding. In this spirit, I’ll start by telling a few groups on this planet how wrong they are...

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Republican War Mongers, got yourselves into kind of a mess didn’t ya? Think next time we might want to think things through to the end a little more? Hmm? Yeah, the next time you decide to take over a country, you might want to have a little better plan for getting OUT of the country afterwards. You realize don’t you that Iraq was actually pretty progressive for an Arab state, right? Sure they had their problems but so does the U.S. You don’t see Iraqis over here with machine guns trying to protect the Native Americans or free all the low-income people working in Republican sweatshops do you?

Democrats, you can’t honestly think we can just leave after the mess we’ve made do ya? If we owe the Iraqis anything then it’s to at least leave them with a country as good as the one they had before. Yes, I know the country can’t be perfect and yes this whole thing was one big political maneuver by the President to clean up what his daddy left behind but the fact is that we’re there now and we’re stuck. Don’t demoralize our troops with talk of how much of a mistake this is because truth be told they don’t need to hear that. Is it true? Sure. Should we support them anyway because it wasn’t THEIR mistake? Doubly sure. So just sit down and shut up for a minute. The Republicans got us into this war and they’ll eventually get us out. If there’s one thing the religious right knows how to do, it’s wage a war in the middle east. Just look at the Crusades.

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Intelligent Design Crackpots, ID is NOT science. You don’t do science by looking in a book for the answer you want and then going out to find ‘evidence’ to support your wacko theory. Real science works in the reverse; take the evidence and from that generate a reasonable theory to explain your observations. Then you TEST your theory over and over again.

Scientific Dogmatists, they’re not doing science but even so, we cannot dismiss their premise out of hand. Was the entire world created in 7 days from nothing? Exceptionally doubtful. There’s no evidence and even if there was it’s unprovable speculation. They do bring up an interesting question though. Did life evolve independently on this planet? I’d say there’s at least a 40% chance that panspermia is in fact the real answer to the origin of life for us. Life’s damn complicated to build from scratch but boy once it happens in one place it sure is good at getting from A to B. There’s even logic in the argument that perhaps life was placed here on purpose. In all probability it wasn’t by some fictitious all-powerful being but from the perspective of primitives, any entity more advanced than an ape would have been looked upon as a god. Heck, maybe we should be combing Norway looking for Slartibartfast’s signature on a glacier. All these theories are within the realm of possibility and I think if we’re going to start teaching Intelligent Design in our classroom that these other theories deserve equal time. In my book, the Christian view of genesis makes the least sense of all. I mean come on, seven days for an entire planet by a god who made us in his own image? I’m not believing in any God who’s as unattractive as the average human.

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To the Exceptionally Rich, you did NOT get rich because you’re smarter, better or work harder than everybody else around you. You got rich because you’re a bit smarter than the average person, a bit harder working and REALLY lucky. Just because you have vast millions does not make you better than everyone else. In fact, chances are that since you’ve become rich you’ve completely lost touch with reality. If you were suddenly transported into the position of someone who’s really poor you’d probably starve and would NOT work your way up to being rich again. Nobody gets that lucky twice. So get off your high horses and be thankful for what you’ve got. Realize that no matter how hard you worked to get where you are, there are a million people who worked harder but still ended up dead in the gutter because the right opportunity never came along.

To the Exceptionally Poor, it’s probably your fault that you’re poor. Unless you have some congenital physical problem that keeps you from doing much of anything, you’re probably poor because you screwed up somewhere and not just because you were ‘unlucky.’ Can’t pay the rent? I’m not surprised, I saw you at the gas station the other day buying $50 in lottery tickets and cigarettes. Didn’t bother to pay attention in school? Well you’d better pay attention to those fries. When the buzzer goes off, take them out. Can’t buy your child a coat? Well, maybe that big screen TV at the Rent-to-Own place wasn’t such a great idea. Luckily for you, there’s hope. Don’t buy those lottery tickets for a month and you’ll have enough to take a class. Then you’ll just need a bus pass and you can actually go downtown to the community college and educate yourself. The government is all about handing out checks to people but what they really need is life management skills. Throwing money at the problem just makes it worse. If you feed a feral animal long enough, it forgets how to hunt on its own. The same applies to people. Why should they bother to improve themselves if the government will subsidize their continued inactivity and waste?

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To the Readers of this Blog, congratulations on having waded through 1,186 words! If you made it this far, you must be having a problem with insomnia. I’ve found that it’s all about routine. Think up some relatively unexciting scenario and each night before you go to bed go through this scenario in your head. If the scenario ends before you fall asleep, repeat it until you do. Be warned, the first night will suck big time, especially if the scenario is too interesting. Each night, you’ll go to sleep in less and less time. Oh, also, don’t read or watch TV in bed. Train your brain that bed equals sleep and only sleep. (exceptions given for intimate relations) The more different things you do in bed the harder it’ll be to actually sleep.

To the Non-Readers of this Blog, so what HAVE you been reading then? Clearly, my reading list is at an end if I’m writing rather than reading. I could really use some good suggestions. PLEASE! This blog is sapping my will to live...