Stupidity is the topic today. I read an article in my local newspaper this morning.  The columnist wrote about a Thanksgiving encounter with a friend of hers who posed the question, “What if stupid hurt?”  I found the article very amusing.  It included reference to drugs that assist in addictions like smoking and alcohol abuse.  The writer wrote about how great it would be for someone to invent a pill to assist people with their ’stupidity.” In my imagination, I saw a world where this idea was reality.  First and foremost, I saw a chronic pain triage setup in the breakroom of my workplace and mandatory training classes with step by step instructions on how to utilize the self-service pain management booth.  Then I envisioned employees filing complaints because they were not granted enough time during their breaks to utilize the facility due to the long lines.  Outside of that, I pictured myself people watching at the mall.  I saw a set of parents sweating and crying out in pain as they purchased endless gifts from their children’s holiday wish list.  But then, I snapped out of my little imagination stint and diverted my attention to the television which was acting as background noise for the tragedy playing in my head.  Of course, it was a talk show which apparently only existed to speak about the lives of celebrities.  The show, for lack of a better term, was just plain stupid.  However, it was very entertaining, and when the first guest was a well known comedian who talked about her evening with Cher and Joan Rivers, I was overcome with excitement and pleasure.  Then it hit me, stupidity is entertainment.  Without stupid ideas and stupid people to talk about, we’d have no laughter.  What would our favorite comedians talk about on their late night shows?  Stupidity rules our world.  What would we do at our daily jobs without stupid tasks and new stupid ideas to keep us chasing our tails?  Every time I take one of those crazy online questionnaires, there tends to always be this question, “What is your biggest pet-peeve?”  I always answer, “Stupidity.”  But in reality, apparently, I really enjoy stupidity!  So here’s to you and yours living in a world full of stupidity.  Talk about your senators, your mayors, your teachers, your bosses, your employees, your family.  Talk about them all and rejoice in the quality of entertainment they provide to you, to me and the whole stupid world!

It seems I have developed somewhat of a fascination for clocks.  I love clocks.  When I go to a store, I want to go straight for the clocks or the greeting cards.  I envision living in a home where I could dedicate one full room to clocks.  It’s weird to me that I don’t have a preference for a particular clock style.  I love them all!  I was pondering this morning the meaning of my clock love and determined that it must be the numbers.  Yes, the numbers.  It is the only thing all the different clocks have in common.  Think about it, with most clocks, especially the digital ones, you are not able to see the gears.  So the visible gears cannot possibly be my draw to clocks, because again, I love them all.  And it is not the fact that they tell time.  I have no draw to time either.  Knowing the time only makes me more aware of the fact that time is binding.  People who want to know what time it is all the time seem to be in need of a higher power to control their life.  It’s as if they must have that “excuse” to push them on to the next pathetic event of their day.  It seems to make them feel important.  I don’t even wear a watch, and I recently figured out how to display the radio station instead of the time on my vehicle’s stereo display.  It makes for a more enjoyable trip to and from work.  After re-reading the aforementioned, it’s as if I despise time while loving the items that tell time.  It’s like loving a sibling but hating how they treated you growing up.  Or maybe there is just something exciting about loving something you hate.  Who knows?  The point is, I like clocks and I cannot stand time.  I should write a country song about that.  One more thing:  I don’t own a clock; I don’t even own a watch.

Have you ever stared at a word or said a word so many times that you could not convince yourself that it really was a word?  It seems like I do that all the time.  Take for example the word “smart.”  I started saying, “smart,” over and over and before I knew it “smart” sounded kind of dumb.  So then I had to write it down to get a real good look at it.  It’s such a weird word.  It’s times like these that I wonder the derivatives of such words like “smart.”  It in turn causes my mind to wonder.  If people who came before me simply made up words, why couldn’t I?  Then I thought of all the rules our language has.  I think it would be like THE best book ever if I could write a book called “Gooses, Mooses, Deers and Fishes.”  What a wonderful book it would be.  I’d fill it with crazy things like, “the gooses had fun as they swum in the sun yesterday.”  That’s like the greatest thing ever! Then I could have a volume 2 entitled, “Geese & Meese.”  So weird, yet so what I wanted to say.

Life is like a disposable camera.  You work so hard to get the best results from the least likely place. Deep down knowing that it is impossible to achieve perfection with something labeled, “disposable.”  I mean seriously, you wind the darn thing up until your poor thumb is blistered knowing the only reason you should get a blister on your thumb like that is from opening too many beer bottles.  Then you have to “press and hold” the little flash button thingy until the red light comes on.  It’s ridiculous the steps you have to go through for the type of quality you could find at the village flea market. That’s where life comes in.  We are living our lives with a disposable camera.  We are punishing ourselves unnecessarily.  We are not living to our fullest potential.  We know there is a digital camera out there, but come on, we’re “living in the moment.”  We’re trying to find the best spot to snap our photos so the sun hits just right.  Then we go develop our disposable rectangle of temporary joy, and BAM! it hits us:  We are nothing, everything we have done is for nothing. No one cares, and the fruits of our labor show our uncaring desire for quality and perfection and success.  We are failures.  We are the world’s disposable cameras. Welcome to life; and welcome to my disposable camera “drop box.”  This is where it all comes together; everyone’s failures and fears with an occasional success of finding the right lighting coupled with just the right paper quality.  Enjoy!

If you’re looking for some giggles today (and Lord knows I am), and know anything at all about feminism/ the feminist movement, read this Onion piece.

After decades spent battling gender discrimination and inequality in the workplace, the feminist movement underwent a high-level shake-up last month, when 53-year-old management consultant Peter “Buck” McGowan took over as new chief of the worldwide initiative for women’s rights.

…

“You can’t waste time pussyfooting around with protests and getting all emotional about a bunch of irrelevant details,” McGowan said. “If you want to enjoy equal rights, you have to have a real man-to-man chat with the people in charge until you can hammer out some more equitable custody laws.”

Sometimes satire doesn’t get it right, but this time it’s just bang on.

Via Alas, a blog.

It’s funny ’cause it’s true.