Stand-Up Activism

Stand-up comedy really changed, huh?

In 1982 it was okay to stand up on a stage and just tell jokes, but there's been a cultural shift, and now I think it's seen more as a forum to discuss issues.  I think we have to blame Jon Stewart for that.  I would like to point out that I think Jon Stewart has made me laugh many a time, but the success of his old TV show is probably what helped killed stand-up.  He made a name for himself calling politicians on their bullshit by intertwining jokes and playground insults with (sometimes) fake outrage.  Funny for sure, but I think hard to sustain the tongue-in-cheek for too long.  It's funny to make a bunch of jokes around a politician caught contradicting themselves on video, but after you've seen that a couple dozen times the joke wears a little thin (it was funny until you realized it happens all the time.)  So where do they go with it?  They ended up digging a little deeper and some of the topics started to get pretty heavy.  Eventually the show kind of just turned into Jon acting outraged at all the hypocrisy.  People were still okay with it because now the point of the show wasn't so much to make jokes but to show you what a joke the political scene was.  I think that's about where comedy fell off the rails.

I don't know when he left that show but there have been so many sobering issues brought to light since, it's become a very rough climate to make casual observations in.  If Mark Twain took to the stage today and said "Golf is a good walk ruined"  Someone might heckle him with "Why - did they finally let black people in your Country Club?"

Or... I don't know.  Maybe not.  The point is, now things have evolved (devolved?) to a place where almost anything can be a trigger word for real, actual, and important issues.  

Observational humor basically challenges people to look at a subject in a different way, but today there's an entire culture of people who pride themselves on already having a more enlightened viewpoint.  It's not a game you want to play.

Rage Culture!!!

Calling it Cancel Culture misses the point.  It's really Rage Culture®.  Cancelling is just how the rage manifests.  Seems too many people use moral superiority (oh, sorry... virtue signaling) as an excuse to be incredibly short fused and intolerant toward those who hold a more narrow or naive view.   Pretty ironic considering most of that offending behavior itself (racism, sexism, homophobia...) is based on intolerance.

"I hate what you stand for and I'm cancelling you!" is far easier than trying to improve the situation.  Greeting the intolerant with intolerance solves nothing. 

My Hometown

Just an update on where some people think we're at.  Are they right?  I suppose time will tell, but... yes?

This pizza costs $34

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This egg sandwich costs $16 if you add avocado and vegan sausage

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Have a nice day!

 

How Do I Know This Vaccine Is Safe?

If your favorite ammunition manufacturer claimed they had invented a new gunpowder that was twice as potent, would you go buy it or would you do your own research to find out how it could be possible?

If an automotive chemical company said they had developed a fuel additive that would dramatically improve the performance of your ATV, would you take their word for it or do you want to research the formula?

Would you take a chance on a new type of spray-on bedliner that promised to be more durable, or would you want to know everything it's made of first?

If you buy a pound of ground beef, do you just kind of assume someone actually knew how to slaughter the cow?

Have you ever bothered to figure out how Tylenol®, Advil®, Bayer®, etc. work or did you just pick one and take it?

If you're like most people, you don't know any of this stuff.  You trust that people who know about these things figured it out for you.  It's sort of how we get through about 99% of every day of our lives.

Good luck!

Attrition

I'm starting to think the anti-vax movement is going to work itself out all on its own.  Full disclosure: I'm 100% guilty of basing this opinion off headlines only, but these headlines keep saying yet another prominent anti-vaxxer has either fallen seriously ill or died from COVID.  More and more each day who have run out of luck escaping the Delta variant.

Seems like that would poke a pretty big hole in your anti-vax argument, or at least weaken your stance.  But even if it doesn't, I'm starting to get the feeling that anti-vax is a fight that won't last much longer because the movement will literally die off.

SB-8

Well, these were all elected officials, no?  The people of Texas have spoken.  SB-8 is law.  No one seems too sure how they got around Roe v. Wade, but for now SB-8 is law.

I’m not hearing a lot of outrage about it in Texas. I think the people got what they (thought they) wanted.

Maybe that doesn’t fly in Portland, but that’s in Oregon or Maine.

What’s going on in Texas is the result of Texan culture and I can only conclude that SB-8 is an idea that most of its residents agree with.

Thank You For Your Service

I would love to see all the young people who choose to get a job working at a fast food place added to the list of modern day heroes.  How do we get that started?

(If it involves me actually buying fast food then forget it.)

HORSE Pills?!

You’ve probably read headlines or heard news about people taking...  HORSE PILLS...  for COVID treatment.  Like most everyone who didn’t take horse pills, I thought this news was somewhere far, far beyond absurd.  One of those “we’re all dumber now just having heard this” moments.  Aren’t you left wondering how someone could possibly get to horse pills as a possible solution?  Did they just start indiscriminately grabbing any drug and taking it?  It’s like the more you try to dig into this logic, the less sense it makes.

Well here’s what I have found most news stories leave out of this story which barely makes any sense.

Ivermectin, which totally is a horse drug, actually is sometimes prescribed IN MUCH SMALLER CONCENTRATIONS to treat humans suffering from rosacea, head lice, and some parasitic worms.  Never for viruses, but at least now I know that some version of it is sometimes intended for human consumption.  It’s also available (IN HORSE DOSES) at farm supply stores.  I bet it probably costs less there, and I’ll bet you sometimes people do sneak a little horse medication for their own ailments from time to time.  I think we all just got a shocking little glimpse into the world of farm life homeopathy.

While I still think it’s as bat shit crazy as ever, I have to say I honestly do feel a little better knowing it is sometimes prescribed for people without tails, because this was one tough pill to swallow. 

I promise I did not go all this way just to make that stupid joke.  I bet the real truth is that whoever was doing this probably cut the pill into smaller pieces and took what looked like one regular-size pill.

It's all still incredibly wrongheaded, but at least now I can connect some of the dots, and I think some of those dots are connected to sensational journalism.  Did you know owners give their horses Tylenol, and there is an apple-flavored aspirin?  Well now I do, and trust me, the next time I see someone take Tylenol I’m going to say “That’s crazy - why are you taking Tylenol?  They give that stuff to horses!”

Root Down

“We’ll just explain the facts to people and everyone will do the right thing.”

I think we're doing a poor job of educating people about Coronavirus and the vaccine.  I suggest that there were a lot of people who knew 16 months ago that they were going to get the vaccine, and there were just about as many who knew they weren't going to get it.   As far as education goes, I think we've been preaching to the choir.  Not so sure we've even made a dent in terms of convincing those who actually needed convincing.

"Oh - 'listen to the science' not good enough" you ask?  Well, I do have thoughts on that, but in a word - NO.  Clearly that approach hasn't been working.  We need to find another way in.

I'm not going to attempt to turn this into a comedy piece on how we should try explaining it with crayons or by using sock puppets with tiny little Kid Rock t-shirts on them.  SORRY.  I'm going to afford the non-vaxxers a little more respect and suggest that they just need to reach an understanding in a different way.  I'm not sure what that is, and I'm not sure that it's hopeless.  I just don't think we've gotten to or addressed the root cause of the refusal to get vaccinated.

Yes, But As A Noted Scientist...

 "Listen to the science"

TRUE AND SAD FACTS: science only shows you how things work.  It doesn't tell you what to do.  I mean, it should tell you what to do, but it's only data - it ain't yer mom. 

For example, I'm sure a lot of people who pour gas into plastic bags know that gas is flammable, and I suppose most people understand the concept of a contagious virus.  

Gathering information is one thing, but putting that information to use is quite another.  The "answer" it presents can really depend on your own ideals.  Probably the basis for the concept of the Evil Scientist.  

Plus anti-vaxxers.

They Doesn't Know About Us

I don't have any negative judgement regarding gender identity.  You do you (no pun intended).  With that in mind...

Dictionaries have capitulated to a new definition, but singular "they" does NOT work.  Every defense I've read is essentially an example where multiple people may be involved.  If you refer to yourself as "they", I think you're confusing the hell out of people.  The word is context sensitive, and you can't just change the plurality of its antecedent pronoun - e.g. "Gary is from my hometown.  They have been a swell friend." That sucks.  Try "Gary is a swell friend from my hometown."

Here's OED's example of singular they we are told dates back to the year 1375. 

"Each man hurried . . . till they drew near . . . where William and his darling were lying together."

Uh huh... OED is reasoning (quite by mistake if you ask me, and they didn't ask me) that "they" here means one person, but this is really a plural scenario.  "Each man" of course implies that there are more than one man.  You could swap some words out there and not change the meaning at all. "All of the men hurried till they drew near..."  

Every other example I've seen that tries to establish precedent for singular they makes the same mistake of selectively forgetting that more than one person is implied.  I really don't think an effective writer would say "Tom hurried, till they drew near."

Wait... who is Tom with?  Did I miss somebody?  Crap! RE-READ.  

"Tom moved to the area in 1984.  They have been living here ever since."

Who does Tom live with?  Did I miss that?  Is it Gary?

While it may seem like a way around the gender issue, "they" ultimately doesn't get you where you're trying to go.  I think defaulting to "they" might just be kind of a lazy way out.  There are other ways to word things that don't require us to co-opt the meaning of an existing and simple word, and many times a person's given name works interchangeably with he/she/them.

"Tom hurried near."

"Gary has been living here since moving to the area in 1984."

The above was written by a single writer, who would like to end this piece now because they are tired.  

Sorry - they is tired.

MLB

It would be pretty foolish to think that nothing objectionable or reprehensible ever went on in Georgia politics prior to March 2021.  Hey MLB, probably don't want to look too closely at whatever city is your next pick or we'll never get this game off.

O.J. Simpson and the Boeing 737-Max

It's either that people don't care what really happened, or news reporters just can't help themselves.  I was complaining not long ago about how you can't find unbiased news anymore.  Okay, so big deal.  Let's embrace it.  It's been going on long enough that I have to assume this is the way people want it - bias doesn't bother people and is in fact welcome.  We don't want to just hear what happened and sort it out for ourselves.  We want someone to tell us who the bad guy is, which is a lot easier than trying to distill the information yourself.

I still can't get over the fact that newspapers endorse candidates, but I guess that's a problem with my expectations.  It was my mistake to think that a news source would remain neutral.  I thought I had learned that in grade school, but... I don't know - grade school was a long time ago.  Plus, everybody just rolls with it so okay... that's how we do it.  We like our news to be presented with a slant.

Honestly I'm probably overestimating the difference that 100% guaranteed unbiased news reporting would make.  As I think the title to this post shows, no matter what you have to report, the reader is probably going to make a few assumptions going in.  I think news is ultimately presented to us the way we expect it to see it.  Unfortunately.

Because I Said So

High ranking politicians should probably stay off twitter and all those, simply because it leaves them subject to terms of service that are created, edited, and enforced by someone (who could be anyone) from the private sector.  Ultimately, anything Pelosi or Biden or Harris, etc. have to say on twitter goes through the Filter of Jack Dorsey.