Quack

If he walks like a killer and quacks like a killer and looks like a killer then, well, you guessed it. Mr. Barack Hussein Obama has decided to murder millions of innocent baby ducks. Yes, no matter how small a group they are, he doesn't want to offend yet another minority - the minority of those whose pagan religion dictates the sacrifice of little baby ducks. As you read this, B. Hussein Obama is allowing bailout money to fund cleat wearing Muslims to find and stomp baby ducks to death. As an American, I am offended! How can this happen in our country? This country – OUR COUNTRY was founded on the boundless inspiration provided by precious little baby ducks. From the Revolutionary War to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the images of little baby ducks waddling behind their mother or swimming carefree have comforted our heroes. Take this away, this quaint comfort, this cerebral sanctuary of gleeful abandon, and what will be next? Puppy sacrifices? Please don’t ignore this and let this offense roll off like water on a duck’s back. Let us take back our country! If you agree, if you love God and your country, copy, paste and forward this! Let freedom waddle!

Commandments

Please read this article by Christopher Hitchens:

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/04/hitchens-201004

Or, in case you just feel odd about going to Vanity Fair’s website, here’s the accompanying video on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_lM61aDyPg

I often disagree with Christopher Hitchens but this article and accompanying video does provoke some thought. It’s funny too. All commandments are touched on and new ones are added. There’s one commandment that has always puzzled me. It’s not that I’m hung up on it or anything but I’ve asked supposedly knowledgeable people, indeed a preacher once, what exactly does the commandment ‘Do not take The Lord's name in vain’ mean (it isn’t worded exactly like that but that’s the verbiage I’ve always heard). I never got a satisfactory answer. The preacher I asked once told me that you can damn Mohammad but don’t damn God. In additional to a notable intolerance, that response really didn’t make sense. The notion that you never should ‘damn God’ seems reasonable but this commandment is usually applied to saying ‘God damn’, not ‘Damn God’ or ‘Damn you God.’ ‘God’ followed by ‘damn’ is a command or request, you’re telling God to damn something, like whatever you’ve just stubbed your toe on. Asking or telling Him to damn something could be a bad thing or at least a serious thing but then again perhaps it’s understandably worth damning. I don’t know. When I was a kid I thought that Charlton Heston cursing out the human race at the end of The Planet of the Apes was harsh and yelling ‘God damn you all to Hell!’ was just asking for trouble - I mean you just don’t say that. Nowadays I think it was justified with the Statue of Liberty sitting there on the beach all banged up. Again, I’ve always heard the commandment phased ‘Do not take The Lord's name in vain.’ ‘In vain’ means to do something no avail, to fail. If during a prayer you ask God to keep Grandma well and she dies, was that taking his name in vain? Perhaps seeking the meaning of the commandment itself is in vain. I don’t know.

I Attend the 2010 Miss Patton Beauty Pageant

Well, I saw the first half at least. Also, it was more than just one pageant, it was for girls K through 12. This was held at Patton High School this past Saturday where my younger son Matthew goes to school. He plays guitar and was one of the people asked to provide some entertainment. He enlisted his older brother Mitchell to back him up and they picked a song for the audience. Apparently the organizers were unaware that my boys merely strumming their testosterone laden metal chords could accelerate the contestants’ young biological clocks catapulting them into womanhood. The boys played just fine but no one in charge seemed to know how to hook their guitars to the school’s sound system so they were forced to drag their amps out on stage tethered by drop cords.

The rest of the show/pageant that I saw went ok I guess. I never really cared for beauty pageants but the girls looked like they were genuinely having fun so I won’t pee on their pageant. Also, it’s one of those institutions that’s just too easy to ridicule so I won’t. Plus, I understand that entering and winning or just running up in pageants is a good way to get scholarship money and nowadays I guess a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.

The one thing that didn’t occur to me until the show started was just how awkward and very uncomfortable it was to watch. You see, there I was, alone, on the front row, to the side where I think everyone including the families of these girls could see me supposedly enjoying the show. If I were the father of a contestant, I’m not sure if I’d been comfortable having strangers, especially fat hairy middle aged men sizing up my daughter. In front of me each girl was strutting her prepubescent, semi-pubescent or fully bloomed sassy pubescent stuff during the casual wear portion of the show. The music for this part of the show sounded like something I’d heard at the Uptown Cabaret. At one point I realized I was slunk down in my seat as far as I could go and was staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t have felt more like a pedophile if Chris Hanson had shown up. Finally there was an intermission and the opportunity to help gather the guitars and amps and leave. As I was exiting with the final piece of equipment I looked back through the window in the door and caught the talent portion of the show starting up. There was a girl, looked about 9 or 10 dressed in her little gymnast outfit smiling, kicking, twisting and bending all over the place – I was glad I was out of there.

Through Effort and Determination Comes This Lousy T-Shirt

Before I say anything else, you should know that I work for some pretty good and decent people. Like any upper management though they feel the need to use motivational devices from time to time. Quite a while back they gave out T-shirts. Nice solid green with our small logo printed on the front. If they’d left it at that it would’ve been a shirt you could’ve worn somewhere with some jeans. Instead they lopsidedly place this motivational crap on it making it something that you’d only wear around the house or use as a wash rag. I think like most people motivational devices rarely ‘motivate me’ but, being easy targets of ridicule, they can be funny so I don’t mind them. The ‘safety first’ floor mats featuring a badly drawn cartoon cat playing a sax that reads ‘Play It Safe’ is kind of funny. Call it a coincidence but I’ve had no work related accidents like burning myself with coffee, falling asleep at my desk and bumping my head or getting anything caught while having to zip up my pants when someone walks into the office. Indeed, I’ve played it safe. Again, I appreciate the free shirt and all things free. I don’t mind motivational crap one way or the other, I know it’s just part of the office environment-I just don’t want to be a walking motivational poster.

Peter Graves

The death of Peter Graves leaves us with some unanswered questions such as ...

Did you ever hang around a gymnasium?
Do you like movies about gladiators?
Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

and, of course, have you ever seen a grown man naked?

I always liked the actors/actresses who normally played serious roles but didn't take themselves so seriously that they couldn't have a little fun. Graves certainly had some fun in the Airplane! movies. By the way, I didn't know he was the younger brother of James Arness, did you? No. No you didn't.

Ethics in Trickery

Once I saw a video of some guy on candid camera (didn’t know this was still on the air after 120 years) in an airport being told he had to lie down on a conveyor belt and be ran through an x-ray machine. He complied, several times. It was kind of funny, but during the prank he asked ‘is this candid camera?’ or ‘where’s the candid camera?’-I don’t remember verbatim and I’ve tried to find the video. At any rate, the host Peter Funt didn’t stop. The guy got angry and sued. I'm not sure exactly what the suit cited as wrongdoing but to me there’s a bigger issue than whether or not it legally had merit. Etiquette and common sense matters more than any legal action. When the guy mentioned ‘candid camera’ it should have stopped. It would have been funny, kind of, and all involved would have had a laugh, halfhearted, forced or otherwise.

I don’t have a problem with fooling people and making the unsuspecting look silly even for profit. I don’t have much tolerance for claims of ‘emotional distress’ either. I do have a problem however with the victim wising up and calling the situation and the ruse not being stopped. When they call it-IT’S OVER. It’s done. There’s a bit of grey area and arguably some wiggle room simply not to answer the victim and continue but at that point the ruse is running on fumes. You don’t explicitly lie and tell the victim ‘no, this isn’t candid camera’ (again, I don't remember verbatim but it was something like that). This is the one lie you can’t explicitly tell. The only ‘integrity’ the ruse has and the only real humor hinges on this. Otherwise it isn’t clever and the victim has demonstrated that they aren’t that stupid. The perpetrator’s lack of persuasive skill to make plausible an implausible situation looks desperate. End it!

Along the same lines I suppose, I remember a kid in school who tried to convince me of something. I don’t remember what it was, something mundane. I didn’t believe him so he started with the ‘I swear to God’s and ‘really man’s and was practically begging me to believe him so I relented and said ‘uh ... ok, alright.’ He immediately horse-laughed and called me stupid for believing him. He did this with everyone-real popular guy.

In the art/science/etiquette of trickery, be clever, be persuasive, be mean even unless it’s completely inappropriate but know how to end a ruse. Know how these things make it funny.

and yeah ... Peter Funt and what’s-his-name from elementary school ... you guys suck

Gandhi

Gandhi was a smart well-meaning guy, a pacifist and a proponent of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience and pacifism certainly have their place and sometimes work. Dr. King and others used it more or less successfully in the civil rights movement. Sometimes though, you have to abandon civility.

Gandhi's advice to Britons in WWII:

I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions...If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.

uh-huh. Also right after WWII, he said of the European Jews:

Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs... It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany. As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.

To me Gandhi seems cold, someone who perhaps values ideas more than people. As far as civil disobedience does, it doesn’t always work unless ‘work’ means you’ve taken the supposed moral high ground completely disregarding the costs which could be your and your family's lives, then I reckon it always works. Realistically it only works if your oppressor has roughly the same moral code as you do and can eventually be reasoned with. Again, he was a good and very thoughtful man. It’s just that you can take any methodology/philosophy too far. Remember what George Carlin said: "Pacifism is a good idea but it can get you killed."