Rangeman Talks to Some Kids

 Rangeman continued to walk all over NYC, wearing the watch which gave him superpowers,

swimming across the rivers, climbing trees and fire escapes and other structures to rescue cats, and spreading his superhero message: "Be nice!"

One day, in Brooklyn, he heard a bunch of small children yelling, "Rangeman! Rangeman!" He ran in the direction of the voices, trying to see what the emergency was which called for his superpowers. The children were pressed up inside a playground fence, jumping up and down and shouting his name. 

Eventually Rangeman figured out that there was no emergency, and that the children were just excited to meet him. "Okay, children," he said, "have you been being nice?"

The kids talked excitedly all at once about how being nice had accomplished so many amazing things in their lives. 

"It's great being nice, isn't it?" Rangeman asked, and the little kids jumped up and own and yelled their agreement. 

Then Rangeman noticed another group of kids inside the playground fence, a little way away, watching quietly. Nervous smiles, hands in pockets, a few pimples. These kids were older. Looked like junior high, maybe. Rangeman had already had some experience with kids in this age group. He knew they could be skittish. He knew that occasionally, kids in the junior high age group got the notion that being nice was uncool -- somewhat like Tony Stark, it suddenly occurred to him. Rangeman called over to the bigger kids, "And how about you? Have you been being nice?"

One of the older kids yelled back, "Did you really choke Tony Stark?" This question occasioned a ripple of nervous laughter among the bigger kids.

Rangeman sighed. "Yes, I really did choke Tony, a little bit. A couple of minutes after I met him. It was wrong for me to do that. Completely wrong."

Another one of the bigger kids yelled, "So why did you do it?"

"He was being a dick. A real dick. But that's no excuse! Tony has a lot of problems. Some people think billionaires don't have problems. But the truth is, Tony's parents both died when he was a kid, his dad had put a lot of pressure on him before that, he has a radioactive thing in his chest and he'll die if it comes out -- in short, children, he has a lot of exactly the same kinds of problems everybody else has. 

"None of that is any excuse for him being a dick. But him being a dick is also no excuse for me, or anyone else, to choke him. It's important to be nice even when it's very hard to be nice." 

After a short silence, the older kids all began shouting excitedly, about how he was right, about all of the problems which had been solved by their being nice, how awesome it was to be nice...

They fell silent again. One of the older kids asked, "Hey, Rangeman. Are you crying?"

"Yeff. I'm crying," Rangeman said, the fluids having turned the s in yes to an ff. Somebody tossed a package of Kleenexes over the fence. Rangeman said thank you, turned away to blow his nose, then faced the kids and said thank you again.

"Why are you crying?" one of the smaller children asked. "Are you unhappy?"

"No," Rangeman replied. "I'm crying because I'm very happy." He sensed that maybe the children didn't understand, so he explained: "Sometimes you get so happy that it's overwhelming, and it makes you cry. But it's not a bad thing. Not at all. You kids here -- all of you," he added, and waved his arms to include both groups, "are so awesome, that it makes me very happy."

A teacher had noticed that a grown man was talking to some children through the fence and approached to shoo him away, but as he got close he realized who it was. "Hey, Rangeman!" he shouted.

"Hi," Rangeman said back. "Outstanding bunch of children you have here."

"You got that right!" the teacher emphatically agreed.

"You got any cats need to be rescued?"

"No," the teacher said, "as far as I know, for now, all of our cats are good."

Rangeman walked away, and called over his shoulder, "Well, if that ever changes, you know how to contact me."

"That's right, Rangeman!" the teacher called back. But after a while he realized that, actually, he had no idea how to contact Rangeman.

Open Letter to the Urban Gentry

You recently gave some advice about dress watches on your You Tube channel and I'm confused: a Richard Mille is wrong because "it draws attention to itself," but the most intense 5,000,000,000-watt design by Swatch is very, very right because it "catches the eye and can be a great conversation starter"? Is it a matter of price: eye-catching and inexpensive is fine, but if it's expensive, please tone it down? I realize too that Richard Milles are sometimes also quite large, but I feel as if there's more going on here than size. Full disclosure: I haven't yet seen a Richard Mille irl, maybe if I did I'd instantly understand what upsets so many of you about them. (Ditto for Hublot.) 

   

 

 

More full disclosure: I'm 6'3" and have big wrists, situated between big arms and big hands, and maybe I'm just a tiny bit defensive about remarks about big watches. Okay -- there's no maybe about it, and it's more than just a tiny bit. For some people, clearly, in some situations 40mm is starting to risk being a bit too big, but just remember: for other people, in some situations 40mm can sometimes be a bit small.  

I myself am quite daring in my fashion choices: for example, I like to compliment a tux not only with a huge shiny Seiko diver, but also with a scuba mask, oxygen tank and flippers. If the host's or hostesses' feelings are hurt by the thought that I might leap into the ocean at any moment and swim away 10 meters below the surface, well then, maybe he or she shouldn't have invited me to begin with! Not everyone fits at every kind of party, I quite agree.

King Kong, Part 2

 (It is 1937. Ann Darrow and Jack Driscoll, the actress and playwright portrayed by Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody in Peter Jackson's 2005 version of King Kong, are sitting at the breakfast table.)

(They don't look happy. They're not eating, and they're silent for a long while before Ann finally speaks.)

ANN: In love with your hair, aren't you? You can't go a minute without touching it.

JACK: I'll tell you what. You seem to think about my hair much more than I do, my hair seems to be much more important to you, so why don't we put you in charge of it? You can slick my hair back so there's nothing for me to brush away from my forehead. You can braid my hair if you like. Or you can shave my head completely bald.

ANN: I ruined the eggs again, didn't I?

JACK: Don't be ridiculous, they're fine.

ANN: You can't even tell me truth about my cooking.

JACK: Okay, you want the truth about it? The truth is, you can't cook worth a damn. The truth is, I've never eaten eggs worse than yours, and I've had breakfast in a lot of truly horrible dives. The truth is that it drives me crazy how you make a fuss any time I bring up the subject of hiring a cook. The truth is we'd eat much better even if we hired the worst home cook in New York.

(They glare at each other for a moment, then they smile, enjoying this rare moment of frankness, and then they go back to looking sad.)

JACK: The truth is I'd work so hard to make you happy, if you'd give me some idea how to do it. Why are you making that face?

ANN: I wonder whether you yourselves believe what you say, you men.

JACK: "Men"? Are there some other men wearing themselves out trying to please you? What other men?

ANN: I was thinking about Carl, something he said to me when he first met me, when he hired me, the day we set sail -- that was a rather busy day for me, all in all. Now, he said a lot which was obvious nonsense, the sort of nonsense we women hear constantly, but one thing he said seemed absolutely honest. It seemed to come out of him spontaneously, without him wishing to say it or thinking about how it sounded. An earnest expression suddenly came over his face, and he said he was hiring me because I was the saddest girl in the world. And you, too. You fell in love with my sadness, didn't you? And yet you sit there and talk to me with a straight face about wanting to work so hard to make me happy, if only you knew how.

JACK: You, you, you talk about honesty, but that cuts two ways. You can't be honest with me. You went to the zoo again yesterday, didn't you? You visited the gorillas.

ANN: (screams) Yes! Yes! I went to the zoo yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that! I've been to the zoo every day it's been open since we got back to New York, since before he died!

(Jack puts his hands over his ears, squeezes his eyes shut tight and screams.)

Explaining Jack Daniel's to an Irish Friend

About the Mississippi River: as you said, my friend, it runs through OR ALONG several states including Tennessee. The river runs ALONG the extreme western EDGE of Tennessee, making, in fact, the western border of the state, with Missouri and Arkansas across the river. Down in the very southwestern corner of Tennessee, right up against Arkansas and right up against the STATE of Mississippi, is Memphis (pronounced "mah-AYEM-fus" by the locals), where, as every schoolchild knows, rhythm n blues was stolen by white people who played it ineptly, called it rock n roll and claimed it was something new. Despite this legacy of shame and despite the startling accent of the locals, Memphis is the home of some fine barbecue.

Jack Daniels is made in Lynchberg, Tennessee, in CENTRAL Tennessee, quite some ways away from the Mississippi and mah-AYEM-fus, not very far from Nashville. Tennessee is very short from north to south and very long from east to west, so that mah-AYEM-fus in the west and Knoxville in the east might as well be in two separate worlds. Last I heard, Lynchberg was still dry: that is, they can make whisky but they can't legally DRINK it. Yes, the home of old Jack is dry (or at least was until very recently), amazing but true.

You might like Tennessee, my friend: many, ay, maybe most of its people trace their descent back to Ireland or Scotland. Or you might hate it: you might say, "*****, I traveled thousands of miles to try to get AWAY from these people and their ******* fiddles and clogging!" How am I to know what you might like?

Vaguely Humorous

"Yes -- successfully."

That's an entire diary entry by a character played by Michael Palin in "Monty Python's Flying Circus." I can think of 2 things to which it may have referred.

"Yr gonna hurt somebody with those."

That's what Andy Garcia's character says to Bridget Fonda's in The Godfather, Part III, when they first meet.

For nearly 3 decades I've been wondering which of 2 sets of things Andy might have been referring to -- and today I just thought of a 3rd which may be much more likely than the other 2.

I don't want to ask Palin, or the people who made Godfather III, what was done successfully, or what Bridget was gonna hurt somebody with -- and by the same token, I feel that I would be doing you, my readers, a disservice, if I told you what my guesses were. To me, that would be missing the point of what made those moments brilliant. These are two prime examples of letting the audience do some of the work. At both of those moments, I laughed right away, and then immediately asked myself whether I had misunderstood what was said, and I've been enjoying both moments for decades precisely because I can't figure them out. I don't know whether there are a lot of moments of this type of humour.

And even if in one or both of those moments, the creators knew exactly what was being implied, and it didn't occur to them that the statements could sound ambiguous -- even if that is the case, it's better, more entertaining, my way.

Maybe this is all not entirely unrelated to why those painters wouldn't explain their paintings to me.

Coincidence?

Two headlines on the front page of Yahoo! First:

Washington Post Editorial Board Shreds Donald Trump: "Stark Incapacity For Leadership"

And then, immediately below that story, the next headline reads:

"America, Throw Out This Vegetable Immediately"

Allegedly, the 2nd headline has nothing at all to do with politics. Allegedly. It's about some "Leading Gut Expert" who is frequently on Dr Oz' show.

So what is this really about? Nutrition? Or what the leadership of Yahoo! really thinks of Trump, but doesn't have the guts to say clearly in a 2-inch-high banner headline?

Is this an example of Yahoo! almost having had the guts to do away with the horrible thing which has enabled Trump so much: "objective journalism"?

12 Rules to Change Your Life and Make it Swell

1. There is no such list of rules anywhere. There is much too much diversity among human personalities, bodies and predicaments for one book to be able to help all of them. The whole self-help industry is a scam. Which doesn't mean that none of the self-help gurus are sincere. The sincere ones are fooling themselves as well as their followers.

Repeat Rule #1 11 more times if necessary.

2. Now that we've got that nonsense out of the way, there are 11 more slots in which I can say something interesting, edifying or otherwise useful (to some).

I wonder whether the world is divided up into Giorgio Moroder fans and Dario Argento fans? Moroder and Argento were both born in 1940 in Italy and they both compose music and produce musical recordings, although you might not know it from Argento's Wikipedia entry. Moroder has produced albums by the Bee Gees (disco version), Donna Summer, Blondie, David Bowie, Janet Jackson and many others, as well as composing and producing some movie soundtracks. "Stayin' Alive" and "I Feel Love," that's him. The soundtracks to Cat People, Scarface and DC Cab, that's him too.

Argento, on the other hand, may be more well known as a movie director than for his music. He made the soundtracks for some of the movies he directed and for some movies directed by others, notably, George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

Anyway, back when I used to hang with a bunch of film aficionados, it seemed we were divided into those who liked Moroder and those who liked Argento. And I can't remember anyone from that group except me who liked Moroder. Anyway, it just seems to me that it would be very difficult to really like them both.

3. There's a squirrel who lives outside my house who's as black as the blackest black-eyed cat you ever saw.

4. I had schwaerma for the first time yesterday. It was okay, I'll probably get it again. I first heard about schwaerma toward the end of the first Robert Downey Jr -- Scarlett Johannson Avengers movie. I wonder how many other people first heard about Schwaerma this way. (It is also spelled shawarma and other ways.)

5. I spend a significant amount of time, maybe too much time, worrying about whether the populations of cities are measured in ways which are similar enough around the world that people from one part of the world can get a good idea of the sizes of cities in other parts of the world without quite a lot of world travel and attention to population statistics. For example, the population of Detroit is around 700,000, or a little under 4 million , or a little more than 4 million, or almost 6 million, depending on how you define it. Which means that Detroit has less then half the population of Phoenix, or almost as many people as the entire state of Arizona, depending how you measure it. Forget other countries -- is Phoenix measuring even close to the same way Detroit does?

6. I finally figured out, a little while before I stopped hanging with New Atheists, that New Atheists define religions much more strictly than most of the adherents of those religions do. A New Atheist may well insist, "A Christian literally believes that an old man in the sky created the entire universe, and gave souls to humans but not to any other forms of life, and that there is no life anywhere in the universe except Earth, and that Jesus was born without his mother becoming pregnant or having sex, and that Jesus died and then rose from the dead, which was necessary to give humans a chance of not spending an eternity in Hell [...]" and they may go on in this vein for quite a while, adding more and more items to the list of things which Christians, they say, literally believe, when in fact many people who identify as Christian don't believe any of those things.

7. I keep reading the figure 750,000 for the number of copies Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules has sold. I think that figure might be out of date. Or maybe it only counts US sales. The damn thing is still selling, #52 just now on the Amazon bestsellers' list, and hasn't yet come out in paperback, I believe. Peterson has claimed sales of over 2 million (perhaps he was referring to worldwide sales), threatened to sue one reviewer for a negative review and to slap another one.

8. By the end of WWII over 40 countries were at war with Nazi Germany.

9. When Pulp Fiction was filmed, there were no Red Apple cigarettes and there was no restaurant named Jack Rabbit Slim's. Since then, several bars and taverns have opened which are called Jack Rabbit Slim's. I do not know whether Quentin Tarantino has sued or slapped any of the people who opened those establishments.

10. With few exceptions, mostly within the Soviet bloc, cars have only been exported in significant numbers from companies headquartered in the US, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Korea, Japan and China.

11. Some of the earliest watches were made in Switzerland, and they say it had something to do with Calvinism. (Make as much much money as you can but be sure not to enjoy it? I don't know.)

12. More than 7% of the electricity generated in Germany is solar.

The Latest Liberal "Bag of Nothing"

How dare these "Hollywood liberals" imply that anyone has ever suggested that anyone from the Trump administration has ever had any contact with anyone or anything which is Russian? I was hanging out with Jared Kushner recently, and he happened to see a bottle of vodka, and he had no idea what it was. He was about to try to use it to remove some dirt from ones of his shoes before I explained to him that vodka is something that people drink. By the way, he also had no idea what Russia was. He thought that Russia was a skin disease which cats sometimes get if they aren't ingesting a proper mix of vitamins. I had to explain to him that Russia is a large country extending from eastern Europe in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east.

Imagine Kushner's consternation, when I told him that some "liberals" like Mueller are trying to frame him for having improper dealings with people from a foreign country which, until recently, he had assumed was a feline skin disease!

Just try to imagine to shock felt by Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, Anthony Scaramucci, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Wilbur Ross, Michael R Caputo, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Roger Stone and others, including Michael Cohen, Nigel Farage, Erik Prince (who some liberal hotheads describe as the founder of something they call "Blackwater") and Peter W Smith, at these so-called "allegations" that they have unreported business ties and contacts with officials, business people, banks and intelligence agencies from a country which they all had assumed was a cat's skin disease, and not a country at all, and that intelligence operatives from this so-called "country" are in possession of compromising personal and financial information about the President of the United States, and that there are all kinds of photographs and video and audio of half or more of them actually in this so-called "country" consorting with its government officials and various cronies of this murky figure to whom liberal refer as "Putin"?!

I mean, really! Who's kidding who, here?! Or should I say WHOM?!

Bar Jokes

Horse walks into a bar, bartender sez, I keep telling the owner that front door is too big.

Horse walks into a bar, bartender asks, Why the long face?

Guy walks into a bar and orders a fruit punch. Bartender sez, "Pal, if you want a punch you'll have to stand in line." Guy looks around, there's no punch line.

Guy walks into a bar, bartender asks, "Why the long face?" Guy sez, "I just found out my wife is sleeping with another man. I've decided I'm going to drink myself to death." Bartender sez, "Sorry, I'm not going to help you kill yourself." Guy asks, "Well, what would you do in my situation?" Bartender thinks for a minute, sez, "I found out a guy was sleeping with my wife, I wouldn't sit around feeling sorry for myself, I'd kill the guy." Guy yells, "That's a great idea! Thanks!" and runs out of the bar. A couple hours go by, the bartender starts to get nervous. The guy walks back into the bar. Big smile on his face. Bartender asks, "You kill the guy?" Guy sez, "No, I slept with yr wife! Gimme a goddam drink!"

Guy pulls up to a gas station, attendant notices there are 5 penguins in the back seat. Attendant says, "You have 5 penguins in your back seat!" "I KNOW!" the driver says, "They jumped in at the light, I don't know what I should do with them." Attendant thinks for a second and says, "Tell you what I'd do, I'd take 'em to the zoo." Driver sez, "That's a great idea!" Week later, same driver pulls in with the same 5 penguins, only now they're wearing sunglasses. Attendant sez, "I thought you were gonna take those penguins to the zoo." Guy sez, "I did. Thanks for the suggestion, we had a great time. Today we're going to the beach."

Some Texans are standing at a bar when an Englishman walks in. “Howdy, stranger,” sez one of the Texans. “Where you from?” The Englishman sez, “I come from a place where we do not end our sentences in prepositions.” Texan sez, “ Oh, pardon me! Where you from, jackass?”

Amnesiac walks into a bar, goes up to a beautiful woman and asks her, “Do I come here often?”

Penguin walks into a bar, asks the bartender, “You seen my brother?” Bartender sez, “I dunno, what's he look like?”

Dyslexic guy walks into a bra.

Pair of jumper cables walk into a bar and ask for a drink, bartender sez, “Okay, but I don’t want you starting anything in here.”

2 nuns, a penguin, a man with a parrot on his shoulder and a giraffe walk into a bar, bartender sez, “What is this, some kind of joke?”

Duck walks into a bar, asks the bartender, "Got any grapes?" bartender sez, "No, we only sell beer here". Duck leaves, comes back the next day, asks the bartender, "Got any grapes"? Bartender sez, "I told you we only sell beer. You ask me again, I’m gonna nail your bill to the bar!” Duck leaves, comes back the next day, asks the bartender “Got any nails?" Bartender says no, Duck asks, “Got any grapes"?

Be Very Afraid: We Are Already At the Mercy Of AI

If, that is, AI has any mercy at all.

You want proof? Here's proof, from today, that AI is already far ahead of us. Today, a computer, a machine, made this translation from Croatian to English:

"One famous German Der Spiegel told me quite a long week Commons Balkans. Now as to what would be the message, my loved ones, but that they do not they are willing to share with his neighbor: :: it's barely 48 hours later I was already contacted me for the first time the German and in the office of Der Spiegel and The expansion the muscle dijasporski Croat need to be trained to Croatia, with the part of the Balkans is no exception. No matter what the LOST theme incidentally designating the view that because of lot of problems sofisticiranijim Croatia in one direction or carrots just as some dismay that I express Croatian-German author solidarnom poured out of the Balkans in the case that the symbolic true meaning of its ( of course it is much harder to define). I'm trying here to read this e-mail, and remember how to describe them: Chestnut Scallion in one hand and a cigarette in the other pocket ... and a piece of lamb. Of course Mitteleuropa uljudjeni. Since writing this I agreed that Croatia Mitteleuropa, so he used the Latin Congress. , But today, as some Congress are pretty stupid. And I decide to check Jurich pavicic. He says that a Jurica jugonostalgičar. I just got a beautiful smile. Chestnuts, now song dedicated to him."

Now there's absolutely no way that a human could have done that!

Just keep this in mind:

Trump threatened the results if they will feel bad with the Republican and the GOP Obamacare and then clear the host Senators, senator. (News flash: Republicans are set to replace the current laws.)

What effect? The question I wonder if the Republicans smart. Rating trumpet sound, and 37% declines. According to the survey, only 3% of the voting sorry for him. I think it can look too much force. This is equally great, and how you and the people who complain they voted in 2016 to establish a presidential election Frank J. Garrod, Cicero, or someone else, for Hilary did not vote? More than 110 million votes to vote to vote 4,489,221 Cicero, Stein elected 1,457,216, and 1,884,459 elected Trump, Hillary, Frank J. Wilstach and general. This is the 117,830,896, than those who did not vote for Trump or on behalf of Hilary 's. What is your opinion of Trump? Do you vote for the future? Perhaps something could be missed, but it can not hurt the Republican Democrats, especially bad news near the end of Trump number of Republicans invent. Feel my skills, donkey donkey donkey donkey!

I Am A Tiny Kitten

Clearly, some people don't see this. Some call me "Big Dog," but in reality, all stretched out in a catlike stretch, front paws to back paws, I'm barely as long as a big dog's paws are wide. When I meow it's barely audible, that's how small I am. In a strong person's hands I'm featherlike. I'm just saying, please keep in mind how fragile I am. I'm helpless. I'm at your mercy. I hope you have some.

Like all cats, I am an alien from outer space. So there's the answer to that question: No, you are not alone. We are among you and we are friendly. We mean you no harm. Take me to your leader -- no, wait, don't do that right now. Impeach your leader and remove him from office. Then I'll wait for the other guy to serve out the rest of the four years and have his party get trounced in the elections. Then, take me to your black lesbian wheelchair-bound Communist leader, the one who will convert the US to over 80% solar and wind power in her first 3 months in office, triple taxes on millionaires and give guaranteed incomes to the (up-until-then) poor. That's the leader I want you to take me to, not this scary clown. Wow, I'm tired of him. Surely even Republicans will eventually be tired of him. How many are waking up and going, "Hey... ?!" right at this minute, as it begins to penetrate their thick skulls how badly they're being shafted? How many are shafters rather than shaft-ees, and were never really fooled, but are beginning to feel a strange, uncomfortable emotion creeping over them? (The emotion is what you and I would call "shame." They've been unfamiliar with it until now.)

We're not ultra-intelligent, we're not judging you and testing you and reporting back to some inter-galactic council. In fact, we crash-landed on Earth a long time ago and have completely forgotten how we made our spacecraft. Sorry. Except for being cute I guess we're pretty useless. But we're very cute, let's face it, I'm just saying.

Meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow meow. Meow meow. I'm just a tiny little kitten.

Being Autistic, Part 47

I used to wonder whether my life would have been better if I'd made a different decision in this or that situation. I no longer think that way: Now it's not a matter of "if," but of "how much, and in how many unsuspected ways." Of course my life could have been better if I'd made better decisions.

And I'm autistic, which compounds the whole thing. It means that I constantly misunderstand people. It means that they constantly misunderstand me. These misunderstandings can go on for years before they're straightened out. And of course that's not counting the misunderstandings which I never even notice. I sometimes notice a misunderstanding years after it happened. Who knows how many I've never noticed?

A very significant sub-category of these misunderstandings is humor. I think I do okay, generally speaking, in understanding humor having to do with 3rd parties. But when someone makes a joke about me, suddenly things become very mysterious. What is the intent of the joke? Is it friendly or unfriendly? Does it come from affection for me and mean to make me laugh, or from frustration with me, meant to make others laugh at me? There seem to be very frequent misunderstandings when I make a joke about someone else too. A group of us may be joking around and laughing our heads off, and then I chip in with a joke and suddenly no-one's laughing any more, and I'm all, Oh no, I did it again. And explaining that I was just trying to joke around, and really meant no harm, can be much easier said than done.

Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm so interested in history: no matter what I say about Julius Caesar or Charlemagne, I know that it's not going to bother them.

I know that there are a whole lot of things I understand as well as the average person or better. I realize that many misunderstandings happen all over the place all the time which wouldn't have happened to me, and wouldn't have happened to others if I been there to explain things. But then there's this other category of things, where most people are operating at a level of communication that's way over my head, and always will be.

All my life people have been talking about how intelligent I am. For most of my life it was very hard for me to believe that they meant it. Now I realize that they usually do. However, now I also realize that very often, the context in which people pay me these compliments is some situation or occurrence which has made it seem as if I'm pretty stupid. They're saying that I'm very intelligent in spite of something which would suggest that I'm not. And even more than that: now I realize that they may be referring to something of which I'm completely oblivious: for example, I may have just said something which seemed really stupid. And the person paying me a compliment is saying, implicitly -- sometimes just to me when no one else is around, sometimes to a third party: "Yes, if you'd just met Steven this minute, and were judging him just from that, you might reasonably conclude that he's an idiot -- but he's actually very intelligent." Except that they just say the last 4 words.

The rest of it, they say non-verbally. Maybe they implied it by clearing their throat and doing something with their eyebrows, or with the tone of their voice, or in some other non-verbal way which most of you never give much thought to, because for most of you it's all instinctive and it all works. And if they don't know me well, or if they don't know I'm autistic or understand very much about autism -- or even if they do -- they may have no idea that there's a very good chance that I will miss most or all of the non-verbal part of the statement.

The truth, the part of the truth which people seldom say to my face, is that I actually am an idiot. That's seldom said to anyone's face. The truth is that I'm brilliant part of the time and an idiot part of the time. That's how an autistic person can seem to most people. You might be confused because you've known me for just a little while and up until know I've seemed pretty smart, and now suddenly it seems like I'm 5 years old. Or maybe for most of the time you've known I've behaved like a 5 year old, and now you're confused because I've just said something which sounds very intelligent. That's autism. Some of the time, if you want me to understand something, you're going to have to explain it to me like I was 5 years old. And of course, that means that I'm just not going to be able to understand some things no mater how they're explained to me. Other times, I'm way ahead of you. And there's no clear set of signals to tell you whether you're dealing with the genius or the 5 year old at any given time. There's also no clear set of signals to tell you that I get what you're implying non-verbally. Maybe there's something going on which ordinarily you wouldn't have to spell out, and maybe spelling it out is extremely uncomfortable for you. But if you don't spell it out, maybe I'll never understand what the problem is. And it's exhausting for both of us sometimes, and I'm sorry.

Carry On And Keep Smiling!

I Agree With John Cleese And DL Hughley That PC Speech Rules Are Bad

Cleese says that political correctness "began as a good idea." I disagree, I don't think it was ever a good idea. I think that the GOAL of political correctness is good: greater power and autonomy for people who historically have been abused and exploited. I'm 100% in agreement with that goal. I just think restrictions on speech are a particularly stupid and useless way to go about achieving that goal. You can use politically correct speech and still be a horrible, evil, hateful person. You can break every PC language rule and still be a good, loving person who enriches the lives of all those around him.

Cleese says you can't have comedy with political correctness. He's right. Well -- at the very least, you can't have comedy which is very funny at all.

Over and over on this blog I've praised Bob Fosse's movie Lenny, released in 1974, about Lenny Bruce, a stand-up comedian who broke every PC language rule and was a good, loving person who enriched the lives of all those around him, and about his fight for freedom of speech, and wondered whether that movie could even have been made after decades of political correctness.

Another comedian opposed to PC language rules is DL Hughley. Hughley and I are far from agreeing about everything, but, as he puts it: "Either you believe in freedom of speech or you don't," and we both do.

Some time during the last few years Hughley did a stand-up special for cable TV, on which he talked about the word "(n-word)" and how white people like me aren't supposed to use it. He said that the white people in the audience were getting all tense, because he, Hughley, was saying "nigger," and because everybody knew that Hughley and all the other black people were allowed to say it, but they weren't.

And then Hughley said something like, "But as soon as those white people are in their cars going home tonight, they're going to be all, 'Ohhhhh -- (n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word) [...]'"

And I was offended when I saw that. I was all: I've never talked that way in my entire life. And it's true, I never had. Until then. But since I saw that comedy show, many times, when I've been alone, I've said, "Ohhhhh -- (n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word) [...]" And laughed, and laughed.

And it's all DL Hughley's fault.

Anyway, when DL Hughley said that stuff on his comedy show, it seemed to have the same effect on the audience as when Dustin Hoffmann, playing Lenny Bruce in Bob Fosse's movie, intentionally and pointedly used every offensive ethnic slur he could think of in the space of 30 seconds or so: both times the audiences laughed hard, and seemed to relax. It seemed to lessen inter-racial tensions, not increase them. It seemed to get people to look at each other and think, Wow, what silly things make barriers between us! Smashing the barriers is exactly what PC-speech advocates are trying to do by trying to get everybody to stop saying certain words. Bruce and Hughley go 180 degrees the other way: the smash the barriers by using those very same words. They use the words in a way that takes the hurt out of them.

In the video above, John Cleese says he's been advised not to perform on college campuses, because the political correctness there has become so extreme that he's bound to cause a controversy. And when I heard him say that, I thought: All the more reason for you to perform there. If we're against PC rules, we should confront them. But I don't know whether Cleese in fact does disregard that advise, and perform on college campuses, in order to confront the political correctness with which he disagrees.

I should not neglect to mention that I don't know whether or not it's true that political correctness is particularly extreme on college campuses.

In writing this blog post, I debated with myself whether to write, as I ended up doing, "Ohhhhh -- (n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word) [...]" or if I should write out the n-word. I don't know whether it's cowardly for me to praise Lenny Bruce and Cleese and Hughley for sticking their necks out, and then not stick my own neck out.

On the other hand, I don't know how funny this post is, and the positive effect that those comedians have had has been in large part because they've been so funny.

I'm conflicted about this. On the one hand I feel like a (p-word for female genitalia) for not sticking my neck out, for not putting my money where my mouth is, so to speak; and on the other hand I don't want to increase tensions instead of lessening them because I went about things in an unskilled manner. I know that good intentions by no means always equal good results. I've done a little bit of stand-up comedy myself, and I wasn't very good at it at all.

If You're Debating Something With Someone,

and you and the other person completely disagree, neither budging an inch from either of two completely contradictory positions, and suddenly the other person says, "Okay then, goodbye," how do you react?

A) I won the debate! The other person simply didn't have the good manners to admit defeat. (Typical!)

B) That was not a win on my part, it was a failure! Someone doesn't want to talk to me anymore. I've driven them away. In what Bizarro-World is that a win?

C) Could be A), could be B), could be the other person actually has something else to do.

D) Leave me alone!

E) I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your blog.

F) Smell my finger.

G) kittiez arr verr nice

H) None of this means anything. Existence has no meaning, it makes no sense, it has no point.

I) That person from H) just needs to get laid.

J) I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME ALONE!

K) No rational answer is possible at this point, much more data is needed.

L) Jesus is Lord.

M) Jesus never existed.

N) L) and M) are both nuts, I wish they'd leave the rest of us alone.

O) Aio, quantitas magna frumentorum est.

P) Everything always depends upon your point of view. Heisenberg's principle applies to a lot more than tiny particles.

Q) munkeez arr allso awesumz

Literally

It literally makes my head explode when people say "literally" when they mean "figuratively."

My head literally explodes, and I die, and I'm buried.

Literally.

Michael Mcdonald and Nancy Sullivan know what I'm talking about. This sketch of theirs satirizing people who misuse the term "literally" is the best thing ever done on the face of the Earth. Literally. It's literally better than baby animals, the invention of writing, Albert Einstein, vaccination and chocolate, combined. Literally.



Every time I hear someone say "literally" when they mean "figuratively," it makes me so angry that I literally slap stone walls, breaking the bones in my hands, and bite iron chains, cracking my teeth, for the next 17 years, howling so loudly the entire time that it wakes up astronauts sleeping in the Space Shuttle.

Literally. Seventeen years. Every single time I hear it. And I've heard it literally 23 trillion times this week alone. Some of the people I hang out with are literally dumber than rocks.

Literally. I have literally seen actual rocks outwit these people and steal their money. Literally.

"Knock knock!"

"Who's there?!" I called back to the voice outside my door.

"A big crate filled with $18 billion in $100 bills, all for you!"

This is great! I thought to myself as I walked to the door. Now that I have $18 billion, all of my financial worries are over. I can live quite comfortably on $18 billion, and have some money left over to help other people!

But when I opened the front door, I saw no big crate, and no money anywhere. Someone had played a cruel practical joke on me, making me think that suddenly I was worth $18 billion!

But then I said to myself, Wait a minute! $18 billion in $100 bills?! That would weigh almost 200 tons! And stacked neatly, it would be 15 feet long, 20 feet long and 20 feet high, give or take!

Pffft, yeah! I'd like to see a crate THAT big! I'd like to see the truck that could carry a crate that weighs 200 tons! Yeah, whoever it was, that joker really fooled me, making me think there was a crate with $18 billion in it, right outside my door! Good one, joker!

And, hey, next time, don't try: "It's a somewhat smaller crate filled with $18 billion in large-denomination US bearer bonds!" either, because I happen to know that there are only about $100 million in US bearer bonds still outstanding!

Modern Marketing

Interestingly enough, this is the main slogan from eHarmony's new advertising campaign. There are rumors that not everyone at eHarmony's advertising agency was on board with the new slogan. But apparently they all agreed that anything would be better than any more of the commercials featuring eHarmony's skeevy old CEO. It seems a study done by the advertising firm's (They asked not to be named, and who can blame them for that?) marketing division indicated that no-one, anywhere, ever, had been made to feel romantic, or horny, or pleasant in any way whatsoever, by seeing eHarmony's CEO. Orville Redenbacher he ain't!

Google Thought That ToDAY Was My BIRTHday!

So I fire up the ol laptop this morning, open up Firefox, and Google is spelled out of birthday cake and party favors. I'm thinking, What? is it Google's birthday? I mouse over the logo and it doesn't say "Happy Birthday, Google!" It says "Happy Birthday, Steven!"

What?

My first thought was that they had me mixed up with some other Steven Bollinger -- there's more of us than you might think -- so I clicked on the logo expecting to see the search results for Steven Bollinger, the prominent and wily Texas Democrat, or one of the several leading Steven Bollinger, MD's -- but no, I was taken to my very own Google+ page. I clicked on my profile and saw that my birthday had been given as May 4, 1986.

This was very confusing for a while -- then, slowly, very slowly, I remembered that some time ago, before allowing me to do something or other, Google insisted upon learning the date of my birth. I guess I was kind of grumpy at the time -- Hard to picture, right? Me, grumpy? -- and felt that they didn't need to know, but they wouldn't let me proceed without the info, and so finally I lost my temper and just filled in a random date.

So, now, my Google+ profile correctly gives my birthday as June 17. Google very politely left it up to me whether or not I would put the year of my birth on my Google+ profile, and I declined.

Almost a month and a half until June 17. Still time to plan for something extravagant. You know what I want -- that's right: a freakin Nobel Prize in Literature. And I know, I know, millions of you are now wailing at the screens of your computers and mobile devices and the screens of the computers and mobile devices of libraries and of your employers and friends, "But Steven! I can't give you a Nobel Prize! I'd do ANYthing for you, but THAT's not within my POWer!" And I say and I say again to you, it IS within your power to tell others how incredibly awesome this blog is, and how much finer this world will be once I've won that Nobel and am dating someone like Scarlett Johansson or Reese Witherspoon and am the unoffical 2nd sidekick to Conan O'Brien (Andy Richter's words, not mine!) and also guest quite frequently on Kimmel, I'm a big Kimmel fan, and am up to my neck in free platinum Omegas and Rolexes. It's within everybody's power to spread the Good News.

I apologize to my religious relatives if those last 2 words seemed blasphemous. I just meant them to be funny. I hope it goes without saying that none of this -- none of this post, none of this blog, none of most of what I say or do -- needs to be taken especially seriously. (Except for the part about me WANTing the Nobel. I really, really want it. Do I deSERVE it? Did Eyvind Johnson? Did Joyce and Freud and Doeblin and Borges deserve not to get it?) As the name of the blog implies, I'm just an eccentric monkey banging away on a keyboard and hoping that life doesn't squash me today so that I can bang away on a keyboard some more tomorrow. A monkey who -- okay, a 2nd thing is also meant quite seriously -- needs and will gratefully take all the freakin help he can get.

So, Google, or you NSA guys or whoever else is reading along here and is actually in charge of these things -- if the false birthday info was the reason my AdSense got cancelled and I can have it back now, that'd be swell.

Seriously, though, it's currently not millions of you wailing at screens, and that's kind of the problem. A Nobel Prize; Andrew Wylie acting as my agent; you, my readers, telling others about my blog -- any of those things would help a lot. PLEASE HELP ME!

So, to sum up: birthday June 17, silly monkey scribbling away, attempts to make you smile or laugh, want Nobel, need help!

The Salon Capital-G "God" Fake Outrage

"jeeberz! wee awl hav t start ritin 'God' sted uh 'god' cause sum dweeb at salon sez so."

"No we don't."

"o thatz rite, wee dont."

"Nope. We can write His name however we want to, the same way everybody else in the Western world can, ever since the Inquisition closed up in the early 19th century, if not for much longer than that."

"so whyz so mennie peeple so upset bout this?"

"That's a darn good question, Sparky. I think maybe sometimes people who have no real problems like to pretend that they do."

"i meen -- in sum partz uv th whirled, atheists actually R persekyootid!"

"That's right, Sparky."

"i meen - whut if sum atheist iz n jale n packastan jest fr bein a atheist, n mabee sheez gunna face eksuhkyootion jest fr bein a atheist, n what if shee heres bout theez doofuses ovr heer screemin bluddy merder n nobody DID nothn tue thm? howz shee gunna feel?"

"I wouldn't blame her a bit if she felt disgusted, Sparky."

"i mite start ritn 'God' jest to spight sum a theez doofusuhz with no reel problums!"

'Again -- you and I are free to rite Gawd however we feel like writing it. Just as free as we were before Salon's grammar Nazis stirred up all these dweebs. The other day I decided to started capitalizing 'He' and 'His' and so forth, when referring to God and Jeebus. I stopped capitalizing those pronouns a couple of years ago because I felt peer pressure from dweebs just like these ones."

"good fr yu, perfessr! yu no, uv kors, whut most peepl uv dun t grammr notsees az long az thair hav bin grammr notsees."

"What's that?"

"ugnor um! yu nu that, perfessr!"

"Oh, yes. Yes, of course. This dweeb at Salon must be elated. He probably hasn't gotten this much attention in -- ever."

"i NO, perfessr!"