On Parents, Snopes and Email Tropes
If you’re like me (and who wouldn’t be if they had the choice?) you receive an email on a semi-monthly basis that explains a little-known reality to you that you might have missed in your dirty liberal travels. This email can be about the President being a Muslim, Jane Fonda getting accolades, or Bill Cosby despising Mexican immigration.
See, remember how, at some point in your educational career, someone taught you that you have to cite sources to prove your statements or theories? It was probably high school, possibly college, when you had to write a paper based on actual things that were true, not things you made up. There was always a threat there; if you lied or faked your source, you got zero credit. It was a big deal.
Luckily, once you hit a certain age, you realize that the truth isn’t nearly as important as what we wish were true. There are no fact-checking police for grownups. Whether or not President Obama is an actual Muslim is beside the point… he seems like he should be one! So when you get that message in your email, you send it out! This is a message that everyone needs to read, and now! If someone you halfway respect is the sender (or somewhere on the recipient list), it’s more proof!
Some would jump to blame the hoaxers, the assholes who spend their free time designing (and revising as years pass) these lengthy odes to bullshit. Blaming them, though, would be wrong. These emails exist to thin out the herd… to tell us who’s actually engaged in the thinking world, and who forwards fallacies along. The guy who wrote the Bill Gates forward email can still laugh himself to sleep every night. (Since it started in the 90′s, I’ve gotten this one from my mom on two separate occasions, and from a coworker within the last year.)
I imagine the mind of an email-forwarding parent looks something like this: “It’s an internet thing! Email doesn’t mean anything. Sending untruths to 300 people doesn’t necessarily mean anything if it’s over email. Rather than think it through beforehand, or do a little research, it’s much easier to forward to everyone. So you might get back 10, 15 messages saying you’re propagating ridiculous lies. The other 285 people didn’t think so! They got your message and believed it, (or more likely ignored it) so no harm, no foul. The message reaches the true believers.”
It also might bother you that rather than use blind carbon copy, your parent carbon copied you, so everyone’s email address is now available to everyone else. This is a breach of personal privacy, sure, but our parents don’t know about BCC, and if they did, they wouldn’t remember when to use it. If your former church happens to get your email and starts sending you service requests, so much the better, especially if it gets you back to church! Forwarding untruths over email is a win-win scenario.
We have to understand, then, that to our parents, forwarding an overlong lie about immigration, flags, and abortion, is mere wishful thinking. They’re just play-acting! It’s very important to let your parents engage in fantasy playtime for their mental development! Let this be the first step towards loving our parents, understanding their point of view, and tolerating their emails. In the meantime, I’m fashioning an email stating that President Obama is made out of dryer lint… can we blanket the entire populace with it? Yes we can!
Email Rules Of Thumb (If You Don’t Want To Look Dumb)
- A forwarded email is inherently a lie. Don’t forward other people’s messages, write your own.
- Comedy is highly subjective. Be choosy about what jokes you forward to other people, remembering that the more “jokes” in the email, the more likely they will be ignored.
- Cute stuff is fine. Whatever.
- If you ever forward a message that isn’t of your own making, use “BCC” instead of “CC” out of respect for the people in your address book.
(Here is a great Weird Al video that you can use as a reply to every offending email forward you get. Hilarious!) “Weird Al” Yankovic – Stop Forwarding This Crap To Me
An unfunny screed about people who screw up comedy shows…
Last night I was fortunate enough to see the Louie C.K. show at Heinz Hall. We had pretty amazing seats in the first balcony, and it was a great experience. Louie was hilarious as ever, it was overall a great experience, marred by only one thing.
Throughout the show, a dimwitted woman sat behind us and spouted odd moralistic responses to every one of Louie’s comments. If he said, “I get paid for being an asshole,” she would respond, “You got that right!” in a valley girl voice. If he talked about raping babies, she would respond, “What’s wrong with this guy?” Most of the show had this running commentary throughout. She was the kind of person that Louie would love to destroy verbally, and it would have been great to watch.
It was mindblowing to me. These tickets were over $50. It’s hard to imagine the shocking narcissism it requires to be so unaware of the world around you that 2,400 people can all love a show, and you think you’re the one who’s right about it. Taking offense to a comedy show is one of the most pointless things a person can do. Every night comics have to listen to idiots who complain to them while they try to tell jokes, essentially saying, “I want to hear the kind of jokes I like!” Toddler activities.
I have been in shows at which the comic has offended me. In these scenarios, I have always considered it a “me” thing, and not a performer thing, with one exception. A few years ago I attended a variety show at which a musician friend was the opener. Later in the show, a particularly awful comic took the stage… he was new to standup, and he was a stranger to funny things. For this guy, “then I raped her” would have been his end tag, punchline, and callback. He was terrible.
I was stuck front and center, completely unamused, and apparently very threatening to look at, so this shithead opted to integrate me into his crowd work. During his tirade at me (for not laughing) he told me that I should go on crack to lose weight, and repeatedly hit me with fast food restaurant insults that any 2nd grader would have loved. I didn’t say anything, however, because I knew I was in the “fair game” seat… front and center. I also I knew then as I know now, that heckling is wrong. The heckler is always wrong.
In retrospect, though, I should have stood up and said, “I’m not laughing at you, you fuck, because you suck and you’re not funny. Get off the stage and stop doing this forever, you piece of shit.” It would be heckling technically, and yet not. Because this guy was already heckling me FROM the stage. He was picking on me for being fat and not laughing at his rape screeds. If you go straight to insulting before you were funny in the first place, you’re the one who was wrong.
This event stuck with me for a long time, though… I did nothing in the comedy scene for a full year. (Being hugely fat isn’t normally a raw, humiliating experience, but it will, once every few years, expose a person to a core-shattering insult that will regress a person back into their childhood, and it sucks. And it’s MUCH worse for women, I’m really not complaining.)
Towards the end of his show, Louie did a few minutes of material about someday being hugely obese. They were jokes I could have easily taken to heart, but I didn’t choose to. I can bristle at a few things, but I know that Louie is an amazing comic, and I’m with him for the journey. He’s earned the right to hit a little too close to home, and he does it skillfully, so that it’s not him insulting me, it feels like us insulting ourselves.
If you ever find yourself stuck in a comedy show you aren’t enjoying because you are offended, it’s very easy to get up and leave. Don’t stick around and devalue the rest of the crowd’s experience with your infantile commentary. If jokes offend you, you’re really better off not going to comedy shows.
Original Lyrics to Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue”
Johnny Cash was an artist who was famous for bucking the system, for always writing songs in his own style. But did you know that one particular Johnny Cash song was changed due to pressure from the record company? Originally Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” didn’t have the saccharine happy ending as the version we’ve all come to know. Following are the original, rarely-seen lyrics to the classic hit.
The song is about a boy whose father left him at a very young age, but not before saddling him with the name “Sue”. The lyrics are the same for the entire first section of the song. But after the protagonist meets his father, the original lyrics are quite a bit different. Finally we can see the original, true version of Johnny Cash’s great work before the busybodies and censors took their scissors to it.
You can see the recorded version of the lyrics in full here for comparison: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnnycash/aboynamedsue.html
The changed lyrics start right after this stanza of the song:
“I tell ya, I’ve fought tougher men
But I really can’t remember when,
He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile.
I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss,
He went for his gun and I pulled mine first,
He stood there lookin’ at me and I saw him smile. “
-Johnny Cash, A Boy Named Sue (recorded version)
The original lyrics that ended the song:
And he said, “Son, the fact that Sue’s your name
Is not my fault, I can’t take the blame
And your mother’s just as complicit as anyone
It’s not my fault she was such a fool
When she signed you up to go to school
And actually wrote that name on the stupid form“It’s not that hard to get your name changed
As long as you’ve got the court fees arranged
Or you could have just used your first initial “S”
And when people asked you what the S stood for,
You coulda just lied and said “Steve” or ignored
‘em and your life would be better than you’d ever guess“The reason “Sue” is on your record of birth
Was a transcription error by the nurse
Did you ever find it strange your middle name is “Perman?”
And it’s obvious that you’re not-so-bright
If you went by “Sue” your entire life
You’re a dillweed and a pud who I can’t stand”So I looked my pa right in the eye
My eyes got moist, and I started to cry
And then I slit him neck to nuts before he could speak again
And I think about him, now and then
As I mail his viscera to every congressman
And if I ever have a son, I think I’m gonna name him…Nancy or Bill or Slipstream Yip Yeehaw!
Everybody Pees
It's Calvin Peeing. You've seen it.
For several years spanning the late 90s and early 2000s, Bill Watterson’s Calvin appeared on the backs of vehicles in hundreds of configurations. Sometimes he pees on the logo of a car brand’s competitor. “I drive a Ford. Pee on Chevy!” Sometimes it was a statement against foreign cars. On rare, stupid occasions, it was a statement against the person’s own car. “He’s peeing on my car logo! I just like things to be peed on!” You could use a Dallas Cowboys sticker, an IUP sticker… pretty much anything you disliked could fit into the “Calvin Pees” universe.
Bill Watterson, of course, never designed this artwork, nor would he sanction it. Calvin and Hobbes fans and purists (of which I am not one) found the stickers to be an offensive denigration of a beloved character. It occurs to me now that if the sticker featured Bart Simpson, the fans wouldn’t have nearly as much to be upset about, as the behavior is much more in-character.
This is all long-since-ancient news, but occasionally I still see the old stickers and am swept up in nostalgia for a more urine-soaked time. If I would have released decals, I would have gone with these.
Calvin Pees on the real Calvin & Hobbes
Calvin pees on Bill Watterson
Our Daughters’ Daughters Will Adore Us
I saw this on the back of an SUV this morning, and immediately thought to myself that 1. the driver is stupid, and 2. that’s so derivative! Because I know there was a Kerry version from the ’04 election. I think the font for the Kerry one was probably a bit more elegant… but that’s probably still political bias.
Then I immediately realized that the subject of the sticker was unimportant, as long as it’s made clear that the current holder-of-office is doing a poor job. Here is my own revised version of the bumper sticker.
My Version
If you feel strongly enough, just grab a white paint marker and write in a candidate! But I’m just using mine as pictured.
I thought this was a weird thing to print on the back of my rice package.
Followers Part the Third
The Billy Joel We Didn’t Start The Fire Followers Project has so far been a 100% bust. I have progressed through to the end of the first stanza, through Joe McCarthy, North Korea, all the way to Marilyn Monroe… still not one indication of a follower based on these tweets. Marilyn Monroe! I would have expected no less than five spam followers from that tweet alone. I guarantee I will get spam comments on this blog entry just for mentioning Marilyn Monroe.
To add insult to injury, I made one tweet mentioning Meatloaf earlier this week and almost immediately I got a new follower: @MeatloafRecipes.
The Mr. Ed Conundrum (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Set Up Us The Bomb)
Mister Ed: I Heart Huckabees Prequel?
I got the Mister Ed theme in my head today, and realized for the first time that this song creates a paradox out of the show that makes it extremely self-referential. Was Mister Ed the first postmodern sitcom?
“A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course
That is, of course, unless the horse
Is the famous Mister Ed.”
-Theme to Mister Ed
But if you’ve ever watched Mister Ed, you know that he is not famous, at all, for being a talking horse. In fact his owner, Wilbur, never tells anyone about Mister Ed’s speaking ability, not even his wife. He is the unknown Mister Ed.
In other words, the only reason Mister Ed is famous is because he has a TV show, thus a reason to have a theme song. The song is not referring to the character Mister Ed, but the pop culture icon Mister Ed. In other words, Mister Ed was a meta show, referring to itself within itself. The horse might have become famous within the show for other achievements (winning a race comes to mind) but never because of his talking. Having met this famous horse, you couldn’t, as the song suggests, “Talk to Mr. Ed.” Only Wilbur could do that.
What’s more, since the show opens making this statement about the “famous Mister Ed”, it is bragging right out of the gate. Pun intended. It’s basically like an early 60′s black and white Tenacious D. “Yeah, I’m famous. I may be stuck in this barn talking to only one dude, but you know I’m famous… how else would you know about me?”
It should also be noted that the character of Mister Ed is credited in the show as “Mister Ed as Himself”. The two actors most responsible for Mister Ed’s fame, the voice of the character, Allan Lane, and the horse himself, Bamboo Harvester, were never credited.
Followers Part Two
Bad news on the followers front…in a sad turn of events, I have managed to lose the very two followers I mentioned in my last post, @Carsurance AND @Vertfreak_PA. Carsurance I get… that’s clearly a company of some sort, my follow might have been a clerical error. But Vertfreak Pennsylvan and I were going to be good buddies… I guess it wasn’t meant to be.
Luckily, though, I have gained @DeloraStreitenb, whose last tweet was “How to fit or replace a shower pump – Plumbing Tips http://tiny.ly/DA97″. I don’t know exactly what a shower pump is, but it sounds fairly self-explanatory. I’m sure the knowledge will apply to other things as well!
I haven’t seen any followers directly related to my Billy Joel project yet… but it’s early. The song starts out less incendiary… which is necessary, because the titular fire isn’t mentioned until the chorus. If Harry Truman had started the fire, the whole need for the song would be nullified!
The last post was “Red China”, and with those shitty right wing propaganda ads currently on TV, I’m hoping that one will bring me some serious spam action.
“Now they all work for us!” Evil laughter.
The Billy Joel We Didn’t Start The Fire Twitter Followers Project
Last week I posted this on Twitter:
@EricSDonaldson Quick tip to increase followers: First tweet all lines to “We Didn’t Start The Fire” one by one, then REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”.
While I consider it funny, I’m also sure it will increase followers. Being on Twitter these past two years has taught me that a mere mention of any popular item will earn the tweeter one or more unsolicited followers. These followers are mostly spam-bots set to search for certain phrases. Many of them are set to automatically unfollow after a few days if the “followship” goes unreciprocated.
What better, then, to quickly inflate your followers, than a pre-made list of historical and pop culture references that has built-in irony?
I’ve decided to embark on the project, which I’ll call the Billy Joel We Didn’t Start The Fire Followers Project. Every night I will tweet one lyric from the song, adding the hashtags #billyjoel and #wedidntstartthefirefollowersproject, so I can find them and delete them easily when I’m all finished. (I don’t want my feed to always be polluted with this silliness!) I’ll also get the follower benefits from any Billy Joel spambots. The tweets will go out at 4:30 am, to avoid any legitimate follower fallout during the waking hours.
Why inflate my followers? While I enjoy Twitter a lot, and find it a great place to write and get jokes out, it’s kind of a lonely place. Like anyone, I’m writing jokes that I want the world to see. (And laugh at, if they so choose.) The world can find my tweets, but the world isn’t taking advantage, so much. I’m not getting myself out there. I’m not really competitive about followers, but I want my stuff to reach more than the 125 or so people who I have me in their feed. It’s quite possible that what I’m generally doing on Twitter doesn’t actually warrant any more followers, which is fine too. This is just a silly way to get myself out there a little more.
I should mention that I’ve been a Billy Joel fan since childhood. What started as an irony-free love for the man’s music has morphed over the years to a somewhat more caged enjoyment, but I still think he was a great songwriter. I hedge to even mention this, because being a Billy Joel fan is somehow uncooler than anime fandom, band geekery, or counted cross-stitch. It’s uncool to the uncool kids… a rare hotspot of universal disdain. (Billy Joel Fans excepted, and when you find them, you usually start up a 12 step group together.) I can stand prouder of my fandom of ABBA, Barry Manilow, and Neil Diamond much more readily than of Billy Joel.
Last night, my first night of posting, I accidentally mis-dated two of the tweets, letting Johnny Ray and Marilyn Monroe out into the ether too early, for maybe five minutes. They’ve been course-corrected now. Harry Truman is the first entry.
I have woken up to two new followers: @Carsurance and @Vertfreak_PA (Vertfreak Pennsylvan by name). As I glance through my tweet timeline, both of these seem entirely unwarranted, though I am probably missing something.
Bait & Switch