Arguments move the world, just as sure as gravity and whatever force keeps Cher and Celine Dion locked in eternal battle at the Earth’s core. Ideas are without question the primary cause of human progress. People love to argue because once we find answers the tendency is to protect them – even in the case of Walter Gerber, the heartless monster who invented processed cheese.

Ideas define; a Muslim from Riyadh is going to have a very different set of ideas than a sexually ambiguous agnostic from Saskatchewan – which could make a great fish-out-of-water sitcom:

“…this week in a very special episode of The Big Bang Theory, Penny is brutally slain in an honor killing… [Cue laugh track]”

But is there even a point? Have we all argued so much that it’s just noise in the echo chamber? I pondered this last week as I finished a three hour screaming match with my wife about where to sit in the food court.

Ideas are very hard to split from the person (even with axes and fire) how could you expect to ever really win an argument? If you can’t get your best friends to agree that Watchmen was a crap movie, how likely are you to convince a Tea Bag protester that universal healthcare isn’t a form of fascism?

The first problem is that people don’t mean what they say; most of us are from the generation that first witnessed The CNN Effect. So in addition to wanting to finally surrender to the smoldering sexuality of Larry King, we have all become spin doctors.

For example, when former Miss California Carrie Prejean said:

“I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”

What she certainly meant was, ‘I don’t think gay people are equal to straight people’, but she can’t just come out and say despite her apparent imbecility. As a result, what you know of her position on gay marriage is useless. But as a responsible humorist and commentator I’ll let you know precisely what Prejean’s position on masturbation if the tape is ever released.

Secondly, there are also groups that are simply argument-averse.

1. Children: Children are stupid and this state often persists well into their twenties. There is no point in arguing with them; they are engines of want who, at the first available moment, will get pimples, opinions and spill a milkshake in your car.

2. Normal Religious People: Mostly this is just dull because they’re looking to be all reasonable and not plunge the world into some new Christendom – no fun! I had an argument with a Jesuit about the truth of miracles and he proclaimed that miracles were exaggerated. God did not part the vast Red Sea, for example, but rather a big marsh called the Reed Sea. I said that it’s still preposterous for god to intervene in amazingly unimpressive ways – he didn’t like that. Yahweh spins the entire cosmos on his finger, but can only muster a feeble breeze over a swamp and I’m the jerk? For all you ‘serious’ theologians just let me point out that this is only 2 steps removed from “God didn’t make the ice cream, but he made you for me to enjoy it with…”

Religious folks have really powerful opening arguments that ends in people riding dinosaurs…

And no, I’m not picking on them – if you wear a Thriller jacket, expect people to point (at least).

3. Severely Religious People: If you argue with them they will let Ben Stein be in another movie – ugh. Alternatively they might just stare while they wait for god to kill you with lightning.

4. Skeptics: We will nickel and dime the shit out of you. Skeptics generally assume that they are right and we are. We are always open to being proved wrong but we sure as hell aren’t planning on it and there’s no possible way it’s coming from you.

5. Anti-Vaccine People: This groups has Jenny McCarthy as their leader, a woman whose  sole attribute is that she has special breasts that apparently need a lot of fresh air. Going topless as a way to becoming credible seems difficult, but it did work for Christopher Hitchens. Also, the anti-vax argument sucks. Vaccines caused autism, then they didn’t. Vaccines are toxic, then not so much. There are too many vaccines, but we don’t know why. I’m just as worried that the needle might let all the air out of my kid.

6. Conspiracy Loons: There’s always enough people to cover up anything, and they just can fathom how you are so naïve to not know about the Apache attack helicopter that fired lasers from the grassy knoll.

The folks on either side are just as committed and the chance of them budging is about the same as Jay Leno giving up The Tonight Show while not entirely dead.

I see Leno returning as a talk show wraith like the Black Riders from Lord of the Rings…he would open his mouth and a soul-rending shriek would come out, reducing all onlookers to pure despair.

Oh wait, he does that already.

So, you won’t deconvert anyone, and maybe you’re a jerk if you try. But if you’re lucky, maybe the person three seats over will hear you let some things roll around in their brain. If you’re very lucky, they might even think it over and realize too, that Letterman is way funnier.

I don’t think that was even my point…never mind.

Filed under: Blogging, Hollywood Sucks, Humor, I’m A Whore!, Media, Medicine Kills, New Ego, parenting, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, science, Skepticism, Teh Internets, vaccination, vaccines Tagged: argument, ben stein, boobs, children, christopher hitchens, CNN Effect, conspiracy theory, jenny mccarthy, Larry King, Religion, skeptics, truthers, vaccine conspiracy, vaccine controversy, vaccines
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I have not written here much in a very long time and this absence has no conceivable justification beyond my housecat work ethic and a drought of creativity. This should not stop me, since even a cursory glance at the crud I’ve churned out that I clearly don’t care what ends up here.

But my point is that the Earth (beyond my house) currently seems dull and depressing. As a result, I have replied with a steady stream of sloth and indifference.

Don’t get too close; it will stick to you, but is not poo-related.

When questioned on my inactivity by a friend of mine (or perhaps my helpful Walgreen’s pharmacist) I was asked why I don’t write about my kids. After all, I was reminded, I have a casual custodial relationship with two of them and they are around me all the time talking, eating, sleeping, shitting, knocking things over and making my paychecks disappear like a stream of gangland snitches.

Firstly, children are not funny. Children are cute and precocious but they are also stupid, rude and smelly – just as they should be.

Secondly, I am not a Daddy Blogger. I do not recount stories about how my children say things like “If the sky we’re shorter, dead people would need to duck” or “Mommy’s drinks her medicine from a wine glass”. These things are not interesting and offer no more attraction to me than daily updates about your farts. Of course, now someone will write The Daily Fart and sell it to AOL for sixty million dollars.

I hate you all right now.

Don’t get me wrong; when you do the Parent Blog thing, it’s just the best damn thing ever. I laugh and I cry and I have precisely whatever emotional response you were hoping for (send me directions be email if you need me to be more gushing). Further, I wish that you would win a Pulitzer Prize in Commentary About Your EntirelyAverage Children for that post you wrote about how your kid asked how the statue in the town square sneaks away at night to use the bathroom.

I hope for that with all my heart. I hope you get twenty million dollars in gold dropped on you from a helicopter.

But I just don’t find that stuff very compelling as a topic and I’m not that interested in what little kids have to say. Don’t misunderstand me, when one of my kids reminds me that cats poop in a box but people generally don’t, I think it’s golden; they are my girls and everything they say is golden. But if your kid said it, the instant you were out of my sight I would look at my wife and we would knowingly share a nod to the effect that your beloved offspring is dumb like a sack of corn husks.

I also fully understand that you do the same thing to me and mine. I appreciate that you do this. I take it as a good sign that deep down we all somehow understand that children mostly just make noise, but still treat their mewling with an appropriate amount of “aw, shucks”. Let’s be fair, most children barely make sentences and they generally gabble their way through asking for fruit and pudding. They are far less likely to say anything meaningful as they are to say “Daddy, you’re a trombone banana butt” and then laugh until they need a facecloth.

I earlier wrote that kids aren’t funny but that is not entirely accurate. More specifically children are funny but only in the precise way that a flatulence is funny. Allow me demonstrate:

-    It’s only funny if it comes from you or someone you like a whole lot.
-    It had better not stain the furniture, or else it is worth zero laughs.
-    If it happens at the wrong time and ruins your dinner party, there will be nary a chuckle.

I think you see my point.

But this is not about children, this is about parents. Parents insist on accepting the myth that their kids are special to someone outside of their tribe and we all know that this is just not so. Our feelings for our children are amplified because it’s a genetic imperative to make sure we take adequate care of our spawn.

And no, this does not mean that I love my children any less, but it does mean that my precious snowflakes are precisely  that and you are not required to give a shit about them.

But you should, because they’re frigging awesome, you jerk ass.

(I have another post up at the stuffy old James Randi Educational Foundation. If you’re inclined, please stop over and comment. Maybe we can outnumber the people with very-sour-lemon/rectal disorder.)

Filed under: Blogging, daddy blogger, Humor, kids are awful, kids are great, New Ego, parenting, trombone banana butt, your kids suck Tagged: al capone, banana, bloggin, butt, children, daddy blogger, i hate you, kids, smart kids, stupid kids, trombone
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In my previous post, I stated that despite writing for the James Randi Educational Foundation, I would be posting here on a more frequent basis than before.There was no reason for anyone to believe that – especially you. How often have I written a post about how I’ll be writing more? I don’t know because I forget this drivel as soon as it’s posted, but it’s probably frequent.

I may be the lying sack of animal nuggets, but all of you are my enablers. I can’t quite figure out how to turn that last sentence into a sex joke, but I really want to.

Well, in the three and a half months that have passed I have been able to get precisely three damn posts onto the JREF site and have decided to renew my efforts here while I see if they have any continued interest in me making fun of people for an audience of folks who (admirably, of course) will nickel and dime and nitpick the shit out of you as a frikkin’ hobby.

There’s nothing wrong with that, and the sentiment behind it – making people responsible for their statements – is big with me. Having said that, a few of these folks are wearing hats that are much too small for their heads sadly causing the center of their brain that detects humor to be squished like Christina Hendricks’ boobs at the Golden Globes.

Double entendre! Ha!

I’m not talking about people who don’t think that I’m funny since that is the club with the most people in the world in it – I’m talking about people who did not know that I was trying. I’m not going to go back and argue the point in each comment because there are a few hundred of them and to do so would be pitiful beyond measuring, but allow me to cite you one example:

I was lampooning evangelical Mega Pastor Rick Warren. In so doing, I explained that as a ‘mega’ pastor, Rick Warren could join with any four of his colleagues and form Voltron.

I know, huge laughs – where’s my Pulitzer? One guy (in the comments) got the joke and another twenty lamented that such ad hominem attacks had no place within the hallowed halls of the JREF. These halls share the internet with Two Girls One Cup, so there’s that too. There’s not exactly a Lucasian Chair to protect…

Sincerely though, I do believe that fundamentalists pose no greater threat to secular society than their capacity to hand out annoying Jesus literature in the form of a giant robot.

Here I have the self-indulgent privilege about writing however I want about whatever I want. If I wish to spend my eight hundred words belittling the Internet for lusting after sultry TV chefs or complaining about David Hume, then that is what I write and you can either read it or get the hell off my porch – I don’t care. Sometimes, people would leave comments and lie about how they liked my writing, or alternatively that I was a big, stupid faced man whose head was made of egg shell and wookie poop.

Either way, it was footloose and fancy free…the salad days of my Internet.

Now, I have an editor and he has the onerous task of making me not suck. I’m not going to make a joke here, but do a Google search for Sisyphean and see what turns up. In any event, between their need to put up real material about the important work of spotlighting the bull shitters and my compulsion to not write what they want, the growing pains have been pronounced.

I want to be clear, I have not been injured and the folks at JREF are doing nothing wrong – quite the opposite in fact as they try to vary their content and open up a very good resource to more people. The problem is that they are doing it to a website that previously considered a joke to be “suffice it to say, I will not hold my breath!” after daring a lying weasel of a psychic to come and be tested in the Million Dollar Challenge.

Woe is us.

Then, to top it all off (well, not all of it – I am a married man) I return here to find that my previous syndication pimp, the great and terrible Rob “United Nations Dangerous Goods Number 1202” Kroese has gotten out of the business after writing a book that is no less terrific for the fact that I have no intention of reading it.

Seriously, he’s good people; buy Mercury Falls.

But I am now without an Internet distributor who brings me traffic and tells me nice things. What am I supposed to do to get readers, actually work at this dreck?

There’s got to be another option…

Filed under: Humor, I’m A Whore!, Media, New Ego, Skepticism, Teh Internets Tagged: Blogging, boobs, editors, golden globes christina hendricks, Humor, james randi, JREF, million dollar challenge, psychics, rick warren, voltron, writers
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