Month: January 2019

Truth, and Eight Types of Lies

“Would you prefer a lie or the truth?” – V for Vendetta

thetruth

Never let Jack into your house.  When he leaves the deli drawer will be empty, you’ll have to burn your seat cushions, and your cat will be pregnant.

I believe in Truth.  Objective, verifiable Truth.

Gravity works.  100% of the time.  When I toss my keys on the table they never fall off the side and shoot up toward the ceiling, unless it’s after 3AM in Australia, and only then if Australia’s had a lot to drink.  When the Earth rotates so I can no longer see the Sun, the next morning the Earth will have rotated so I can again see the Sun, provided we killed all the groundhogs.  See, simple true things.

There really is Truth.  Are some things not certainties?  Sure.  There are things that are governed more by probability, and at the quantum level there may be events that exceed our understanding, but none of those things say that Truth doesn’t exist.

Somewhere a campaign against Truth started.  The big proponents of it during the last century were a group of (mainly) French philosophers who had day jobs as postmen that smoked a lot of cigarettes while wearing berets and scowling and thus became known as the Postmodernists.  But digging back further in time, the French got this idea from that German, Friedrich Nietzsche.  Nietzsche went hopelessly slobbering Daffy Duck® insane by the time he was 44, so, of course he was a great role model for the French philosophers. “Truth doesn’t exist?  Can you tell us more?  What does purple taste like?”

download

Rumors were that the mustache remained sane.

The concept that “there is no Truth” is infectious and has become the herpes of philosophy.  Mankind only dabbled with it once, but we just can’t get rid of it.  Anti-Truth has successfully taken over a pretty big chunk of our education system.  An example:

I saw a tweet on Twitter® on Saturday night from a college professor.  She noted that she couldn’t get a classroom to admit that rape was wrong.  From the students:  “Other cultures may have different views.  You can’t always say that what we [the enlightened students] consider rape is really rape in another culture.”  Rape wasn’t a Truth.

When the professor made the statement that the United States didn’t have a “Rape Culture”, however, the class exploded.  How could the teacher make such a statement?  Thoughts so muddled can only come from those that reject Truth.  Thankfully, all of those kids majoring in Pre-Barista (Miles, see, I told you I would steal it) can argue Truth while they make Pumpkin-Spice non-fat decaf lattes for doctors’ wives.

barista

But that brings us to Lies.  I think I’ve established that Truth exists, so that must mean that there are Lies.

What kinds of Lies are there?

I came up with eight kinds of Lies.  I’ll be the first to admit that there is subjectivity in my categories, and that I might have missed some, but I’ll assert that 99% of the lies you will ever encounter will fall into one of these categories:

  • Direct Lies – these are the Lies of a five year old, or a Congressman. But I repeat myself.  These are simple:  “I didn’t steal the cookie.”  “I didn’t touch the intern.”
  • Lies You Tell Yourself – The mirror is an amazing device that allows me to completely miss how I really look. I saw a picture of myself the other day, taken from fifty feet away.  “Oh, crap, that’s me!  Where did my hair go?  Oh, yeah, my ears.  At least I can braid those luscious locks.”  My mirror doesn’t lie, it just reflects photons.  TLEBME – The Lie Exists Behind My Eyes.  This lie makes me think of Bobby Burns and the end of his poem, To a Louse:  “O, wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us.”  Burns could not spell, and was Scottish.  But I again repeat myself.  But Burns was awesome in understanding that, when viewed from outside, we’re neither as noble as we think we are or as interesting.  Except for me.

burns

  • Lies of Omission – Leaving out a word or two makes all the difference. Heck, sometimes just inflecting the wrong word is a lie.  “No, dear, those pants don’t make your butt look big.”  Another way to inflect that sentence is, “If you grow into your butt you will be eight feet tall.”  See how a small change just in word inflection changes the whole meaning of the sentence?  Regardless, omitting important details can turn a statement into a lie.
  • Lies of Word Choice – Love or hate Trump, you have to admit he is the single most entertaining politician of the last 100 years. But whenever Trump says anything, the Press™ (looking at you, New York Times® and Washington Post™) has to editorialize even the most mundane news story:  “President Trump today made the unfounded claim that water is wet.”  Want proof?  A Google® search of “Trump unfounded” led to 2.3 million hits.  Google© search of “Obama unfounded” led to 1.1 million hits.  But, if you look at the first page, it’s all “Trump’s unfounded statements about Obama” type stories.  Exclude Trump from the search results?  400,000 hits, and EVERY SINGLE result on the front page is a defense of “unfounded” attacks against Obama.  Any time you see the word “Unfounded” know that you are being lied to.  It’s the “I love you” of political journalism.

unfounded

  • Lies of Vagueness – this is putting together a statement that can be filtered by the user to mean whatever they think it means. “I believe children are good,” might be a statement that reflects a belief that children are wonderful and full of hope and possibility.  It also might mean that they’re tasty when cooked to medium with ketchup.  I am coming to believe that Jordan Peterson is perhaps pretty good at this method of mendacity, even though I have reviewed him positively in the past.  I’m now of the belief that I reviewed what I thought he said, rather than what he really meant, which nobody may really know.  These are tougher to sift through – and require study.  Beware of the vague.
  • Lies of Exaggeration – it’s been a decade since Al Gore predicted an ice-free (summer months) Arctic in 5-7 years. Yeah, about that, the Danish Meteorological Institute says no ice trend at all in the last 12.  You tried, Al.

gore

  • Lies of Timing – ever wonder why you’re hearing a story at a particular time and place? Perhaps manipulation is to blame?
  • Lies of Confusion – Marxists are the worst/best at this. They toss together salads of multi-syllable words that they’ve self-defined to the point of nonsense.  An example from the Web:  “Here is where the Marxist claim for the explanatory superiority of a class analysis comes into the mix, and the distinction between oppression and exploitation becomes crucially important.”    Words.  Meaning?  They’re trying to cloud it – they use unusual words defined in mysterious ways to divorce you from Truth.  Listen long enough?  Pretty soon you become convinced that Venezuela is the true Socialist Worker’s Paradise and you’re being oppressed by your boss because he won’t let you FaceBook® all day on your phone because you have to make nonfat decaf pumpkin-spice lattes for doctors’ wives.  That wouldn’t happen in Venezuela!

But I’ll toss one other thought out there:  If you believe that a lie exists, which no rational person would argue against, then you must agree that truth exists.

And if there’s truth?  There’s Truth.

Oh, and there go my keys floating by . . . Australia must be drinking again.

Wombstyles of the Rich and Famous, Sexy Handmaids, Insurance, and Insulin

“Don’t listen to him, man.  The insulin, it made him crazy.” – Con-Air

unibrow

How do you tell the number of Kardashian women in a room?  Add the eyebrows and mustaches and divide by two.

Health care is important to people – both as individuals (Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough), Readers Write: Early Retirement, Health Care, Canada, and Averting A Ben Affleck Marathon) and to Americans as a group.  It has become so critical that I think that its current level of mismanagement will sink the country within 15 years (More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck), or (more likely) lead to a drastic reduction in overall care for the people who don’t live like The Rich and Famous.  But I have popcorn, I’ll probably have the weekend free, and it should be pretty fun to watch, so why not enjoy?

What led to this observation?

Kanye West and Whatever Kardashian have three kids, which surprised me – I always thought that the Kardashians reproduced like a virus – infecting their host cell and then making it explode with millions of copies of Kardashians that go on to infect other cells.  I guess not, and even my second guess – reproduction through egg-laying was wrong.  Kardashians reproduce just like a normal human does.

Or, maybe not?

I found out about the West/Kardashian reproductive habits not because I follow them on the news or have a link to their Amazon® Echoâ„¢ – my Amazon© Echo® eavesdropping is generally limited to listening in on Tom Hanks – he’s much more interesting than you might imagine.  No, the West/Kardashian pregnancy was front and center on Google News Wednesday morning and they won’t allow me to install a Kardashian blocker on my work computer.

Thankfully the world will be blessed with what it needs most, an additional celebrity child.   This birth, however, will be special.  Whatever Kardashian is not using her own womb, but is renting one for her baby.  There will be tons of tests, probably a minimum ACT® score, and payment for services rendered.  I’m sure it will all be wonderfully legal.

mother's day

Different people celebrate differently.

Furthermore, this is the second child of the West/Kardashian hive that will be born via surrogate.  Now, Internet, I did open up and read an article about this, all for you.  You really must appreciate the sacrifices I make, this was worse than many horror novels I’ve read.  Whatever Kardashian told a thoroughly gruesome description of a previous birth complete with details that I would not tell to a priest during confession, were I Catholic.  Heck, I remember when I was younger and would go to confession just to brag, but this Kardashian story wasn’t bragging, it was gagging.  I do NOT recommend that you read about it if you’re at all squeamish.  Let me rephrase – I don’t recommend you read it at all.

I can understand the desire for more children.  I understand she alleges that her doctor says she shouldn’t carry another one.  But when Whatever told the scandal sheet entertainment magazine that she really found it convenient to outsource the breastfeeding of her child, I was as stunned as a kitten in a quantum physics class.  Here is the class divide in America – a princess grown woman deciding to hire a commoner another grown woman to create and nurse her offspring.  Maybe I wasn’t too far off with the whole virus analogy.  Heck, they could even hire a surrogate father to help the surrogate mother raise the kid.

I looked up what this would cost, and it’s probably at least a quarter-million dollars to have a surrogate deliver your kid in California, but that’s probably the entry level cost.  I’m willing to bet that the Kardashian/West family has a great number of requirements, like having the surrogate mother eat the Royal Kardashian Jelly while she’s pregnant so it smells like a Kardashian when it’s born and therefore won’t be eaten by the other Kardashians at birth.  I even imagine they pay her to live with them for up to another year to nurse the child, and likewise restrict her diet and activities.

handmaid

I’m sure this is how Margaret envisioned the costume.

The Handmaid’s Tale was a novel from the 1980’s by Margaret Atwood.  In it, Atwood raises the ever so certain prospect that evil Christians were going to institute a Christian theocracy and force women to wear red outfits and have babies for powerful men.  I suppose this has parallels the popular allure that zombies have for kids, but for liberal women, but it amuses me the situation has come to pass as an actual Hollywood scheme and nobody seems to mind.

I have a lot of sympathy for childless couples who resort to surrogate mothers for one reason or another, and (really) are generally supportive of new babies being brought into the world – babies are our future, unless the robots take over, in which case I welcome our new robot leaders (who can look this up in my blogging history, and then they will know I always wanted them to take over).  Also, the surrogate market appears to be (kind of) based on the free market – how much will you pay for another woman to bear your children?  I’m also willing to bet that free market competition has brought the prices of surrogate mothers down over the years, especially at that clinic at the unmarked door behind the Dairy Queen® in Encino.  Whether or not bringing a fourth child into this world via surrogacy is ethical, well, that’s beyond this post.

But what isn’t beyond this post is that the medical system is still broken.  Basic procedures and medicine (like insulin, or Epi-Pens®) have increased in prices drastically, even though cost of production has dropped.  Somehow, the market has completely failed.  Humalog™ (a form of insulin made from elf tears) was $21 a bottle back in 1995.  It’s now $225 a bottle.  That’s 1071% in 20 years.  Based on that growth rate, in 2037 it’ll cost $2,400 a bottle.  At some point it will become cheaper to kidnap elves and chain them in your basement for their precious insulin tears.

insulin

I think the solution is a drastic one:  make prescription drug coverage via insurance illegal.  Once the market takes over, prescription drug prices really will come down.  The alternative?  Make importing prescription drugs into the United States legal.  In Canada, a vial of Humalog® is $50.  The price discrepancy isn’t the free market at work – it’s a controlled market where Congress™ and the FDA© have managed to create billions in additional profit for drug makers.  At your expense.

Medicine is broken.  Burn it down.

I do find it odd that the Kardashians met their latest surrogate at an unmarked door behind a Dairy Queen® near the Taco Bell© in Encino (okay, I do listen to their Amazon® Echo™).  I would have thought they would have had better insurance than that.  Nah.  I’m sure it’s legit.

Silly Predictions for 2019. Bonus? Golden Bikini Force.

“Wait till my real crystal ball gets here.  I’ll show you I can predict things, you dumb ol’ turkey brain.” – Beverly Hillbillies

2019

Okay, I did real predictions last year.  They weren’t fun.  This was more fun.

I was thinking about writing a post dealing with collapse of civilizations as brought about either through hard physical limits or via failure of financial and governance systems.  But I hadn’t done the research that I wanted to do and was too tired to make stuff up, so you’ll have to wait until next Wednesday for that post.  Instead, you get:

Stunningly Specific Predictions for 2019

January:

  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will become the first member of Congress in history to wear pink unicorn yoga pants to a swearing in and will commit a gross breach of House decorum when caught sticking her bubblegum under her chair. Further, she will explain that socialism means “cute rich Kennedy boys for everyone to date” in an editorial she writes for Tiger Beat® which is later picked up by the New York Times©.
  • The New Horizons space probe, having passed Ultima Thule, will discover the Weapons of Mass Destruction that Saddam Hussein cunningly hid in the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of Pluto. Neil deGrasse Tyson explains this makes sense, as there are “no Kurds in the Milky Way.”
  • Ted Nugent is named as Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, and performs guitar solos during Senate confirmation hearings in response to all questions by Senators. Nugent is confirmed 89-3 after his second encore.  Kid Rock is confirmed as Secretary of (Sweet) Homeland Security.

canada

February:

  • Donald Duck® will be the next victim of the #metoo campaign, when it is alleged that he walked into Minnie Mouse’s™ dressing room without his pants. Donald Duck’s™ defense that he “never wears pants” is largely ignored.  Porky Pig™ currently fighting extradition from Yemen.
  • People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will declare a steak and bacon exemption on their ban on eating animals. “We had steak and bacon on a sandwich that was supposed to be free-range tofu, and we were shocked at how really good this was and how quickly our anemic arms developed the strength to lift more than a soy latte.  We are so sorry that we ever told people not to eat steak.  And bacon?  This stuff is delicious.  We’d issue a longer statement but we have a lot of catching up to do.  Yay, ribeyes!”
  • Robert Mueller concludes his investigation into Russian Collusion and submits his report to Rod Rosenstein. Mueller is given a C- for his work and told, “You can do so much better, Robert, I expect more than this level of effort.”  Mueller is passed to the next grade.  Mueller notes in his defense that he “wrote the entire report during first hour on the day it was due, so a C is actually pretty good.”

ford

March:

  • Christine Blasey-Ford will demand additional Congressional hearings with Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh, claiming to have found unwanted notes saying, “Do You Like Me? Check Yes□ or No □  If you are my girlfriend I won’t tell that you were eating paste,” on her desk while giving testimony to the Senate in October.  Kavanaugh’s spokesman will respond, “Nuh-uh.  Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
  • The 731st Gender will be discovered and announced. It is described as an unusual sexual attraction to teak side tables with white lace doilies.  This will bring the number of preferred Gender Pronouns up to 2,432.
  • Canada invaded. Resistance minimal.  Sarah Palin confirmed as “Queen in the North” by the Senate, given dominion over everything north of Wisconsin.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau captured, his Eyebrow still at large.

truebrow

April:

  • Ruth Bader-Ginsburg will announce that she has transplanted her brain into an immortal 2000 foot (2 meter) tall android body, and will henceforth be known as RoboJustice Ruth Bader-Ginsbot 2000™. She still smells vaguely of mothballs and carries hard butterscotch candies in her purse.
  • Sauron nominated to fill vacancy left when RoboJustice Ruth Bader-Ginsbot 2000© declares herself the supreme voice of justice on Earth, going on rampage to destroy climate change.

sauron

May:

  • RoboJustice Ruth Bader-Ginsbot 2000® will be destroyed by the Japanese Defense Force acting in concert with Godzilla on the outskirts of Tokyo. Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will participate in the defense of Tokyo using his golden-bikini clad “Workers Girl Force,” which distracts Ginsbot long enough for Ted Nugent, riding atop a white stallion, to play a killer guitar solo while Godzilla dismisses her case.  With prejudice.
  • The Boy graduates from High School.
  • Government still shut down, but everyone forgot, what with the Ginsbot attack. Most positions and programs eliminated.

kimtroops

June:

  • The DNA of the 37 Democratic Presidential Candidates is mixed in a secret lab in Bulgaria, and the result is slightly more Native American than Elizabeth Warren and results in the creation of a 732nd It also has the hair of Biden, the hips of Hillary, and the lower jaw of O’Rourke.  It immediately gains the support of 47% of the electorate despite walking in a shambling manner, and making a shallow sucking sound each time it takes a step.  It is unable to communicate except through a deep, mournful moan.  It is known as Democraticus, but goes by “Dave.”
  • “Dave” defeats Bernie Sanders in every debate held in June. Dave triumphs via physical combat.  The debates have the benefit of being short, especially the last one, effectively ending the Sanders campaign and his ability to floss.
  • Archduke Franz Ferdinand will be assassinated in Sarajevo. Trudeau’s Eyebrow spotted leaving the scene.

July:

  • Paris burning, again.   Macron, realizing that the French can go totally overboard, heads to a secret hideout on a volcanic island in the Pacific.
  • Trudeau’s Eyebrow partners with former French President Emmanuel Macron to form the League of Deposed Heads of State. They are soon joined by Zombie Chairman Mao and his henchman, Ché

August:

  • The DOW-Jones Industrial Average will drop 3400 points during August.
  • Royal Family of Britain to revive beheading: “Really tired of Meghan Markle’s crap.”  Tickets sell out in record time.
  • Richard (Dick) Nixon cloned and mass produced, but is miniaturized to 12” tall for environmental concerns. During August, you can get one with a $5 footlong at Subway®.  Yeah, not the joke you were expecting . . .

meghanhead

September:

  • September to be cancelled by general agreement.

October:

  • The DOW-Jones Industrial Average will drop another 5000 points during October.
  • President Trump will declare an economic emergency, and will appoint Ted Nugent as Special Economic Czar. Nugent forms the “Cat Scratch Economic Prosperity Plan,” which consists of him playing Cat Scratch Fever in a loincloth nonstop until the market begins to rise.  Market gains back all losses in five hours, interest rates drop, and student costs to go to college (except for books) drop by 50% in the same time period.  Loincloth nominated for Nobel® Economics Prize.
  • Trudeau’s Eyebrow bombing plot will be thwarted by Wal Mart© clerk. “We came within a hair’s breadth of having that bomb go off.”  Police now concerned that Macron will wear Trudeau’s Eyebrow and become the Unibrow Bomber.

November:

tofurkey

  • Health care problems all solved! It turns out it was simple all you had to do was . . . oh, I don’t want to spoil this for you.  You’ll see.
  • Thanksgiving saved as you remember to take the turkey out on time. Still moist.  Now your mother-in-law can’t complain.  About that, at least.

December:

guitarofhonor

  • President Trump presents Ted Nugent with the Congressional Guitar of Honor for saving Tokyo and the economy.
  • RoboJustice Ruth Bader-Ginsbot 2000™ crawls up from the thick mud of Tokyo Bay, having reconstituted herself into her new form, a submarine of nuclear fire and justice, and joining forces with the Deposed Heads of State. The Ginsbot offers Macron a “whole quarter” to massage her corns.
  • Trudeau’s Eyebrow laughs menacingly as 2019 comes to an end.

 

Markle Picture via Northern Ireland Office [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons