With Thanks to Stephanie McKeon
Bicycle Monkey
Reply
Monthly Archives: June 2006
Uranus!
Trite Phrases Examined
“One Person Can Make a Difference.”
Obviously we all change the world every day, simply by existing in the set designated “everyone in the world.” The problem is changing the world according to your own wishes in well-documented series of actions. Meaningful, but pure egotism. Ask anyone how Sargon the Great changed the world; they won’t know…and in the same way, your own actions, no matter how significant they seem, will eventually be forgotten.
“The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side.”
So, your neighbor’s stuff is better and you want it? This is such a common behavior that it actually shows up in the Ten Commandments. It’s simple enough; of course we spend all our time wishing or daydreaming about acquiring things not currently in our possession. After all, you don’t need to wish for things you already have.
“Slow and Steady Wins the Race.”
No, this is a race. A race is defined as a contest of speed where the prize goes to the competitor with the highest velocity. Slow and steady might get you through an algebra examination, but it’s not going to win you any races, in the way unprepared and illiterate aren’t going to get you a good score on the SATs.
“Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right.”
This depends if this involves multiplication or addition. If you add two negatives you get a negative sum, but if you multiply two negatives the outcome is positive. In order to prove or disprove this you first have to determine how morality works mathematically which is unfortunately beyond the scope of the world’s numeroethicologists at this point.
“Never Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth”
Essentially this is telling us not to worry about the quality of things we get for free. It makes sense; compare a free socialist punk zine to a real glossy, compare Jewel-Command-Metris to Halo 2 or compare the soup kitchen’s fare to dinner at The Four Seasons. No, you shouldn’t complain, but simply because no one cares about the opinions of people who read poorly Xeroxed socialist punk zines.
“It’s Always Darkest Just Before the Dawn.”
This is pure wishful thinking designed to comfort us in times of trouble. Of course, it’s wrong. Say two people crash their cars in the desert and have to crawl, bloody and scorched for days until they’re rescued. Then, one dies in the hospital. In his case it was brightest just before dusk.
You Are All Stupid
A Specialized Editorial by Samuel Sharrington IV
If you’ve ever heard the expression “it’s not the dress that makes you look fat” then you understand the concept that it’s not the love that makes you stupid. You are being stupid, plain and simple. Just to reassure you, here are my Stupidity Credentials.
In high school I dated Lenore. An evangelical Christian at the time, she obsessed over the idea that we would never spend eternity together and gave this as a reason we couldn’t be together.
Not being together essentially involved being together when she felt like it and her feeling guilty afterwards. For months. Did I take the hint? Nope. I walked into it like the biggest slack-jawed yokel you ever did see. I might have unwittingly left out anything reflecting poorly on me, but we do have space limitations.
Later I fell for Penelope. We were together for some time and I never screwed up. Not once. Really. While at college she started spending time with Peter. Letters went unanswered and calls were less frequent. In each rare call Peter was mentioned more frequently. It’s easy to see that it came as a surprise when we broke up. Later Penelope and I dated intermittently.
I noticed several weeks into one Summer that while the season began with sex it was currently at a state of fully-clothed kissing. Like a puppy I was weaned, but unlike a puppy I didn’t know enough to raise a fuss about it until it was too late. Smart cookie, that one.
The next serious relationship was Scarlet. When she ended the relationship, I in no way behaved like a stalker and don’t suffer awkwardness with anyone involved to this day. Anyway, it took months to realize we were into each other. Things strolled along quite well for a while, but then something happened. That something was The Moon.
She stopped sleeping with me and rather than tell me it was over (or me realizing it was over) Scarlet blamed it on the phases of some four and a half billion year old rock in the sky. I don’t remember the breakup very well. Maybe it was based on chicken entrails or a Ouija board. Again, I did not behave in the worst, creepiest fashion of my life at the termination of this relationship. Really.
After some intermittent dating, I think I became smart as evidenced by my newfound desire to date a heroin addict. Melissa was rather active for a heroin addict and only occasionally (every third day or so) looked sickly, pallid and weak.
Her roommate Katrina was more fun. She liked to snort coke off of a framed picture of Captain Picard (which might have been autographed). I wanted her and she wanted me. She also wanted a few other people on the side. (I may have been the one on the side.) By gumption, I wasn’t falling for this again!
Right now I’m in a long-term relationship with the third roommate, Octavia. She rocks, and even so I’ve done plenty of stupid things. But we’ll have to leave those out for, again, lack of space.
So I’ve pretty well locked down my authority to say that the love’s not what makes you stupid. The stupid’s all on you. Remember: the next time you feel like telling someone that you have a rare tropical disease, rather than tell them you don’t want to be with them, just own up; and the next time you want to believe such a tale, don’t blame love for making you stupid.
Sharrington is the author of several books on national Middling-Seller Lists, including Nobody Understands Me, No Really Means No, Things Were Never That Good to Begin With: A Rebuttal to Things Will Never Be That Good Again, and Bleak Expanse: A Positivist Outlook on Relationships.
The March of Progress: Vespril 2006
Sydon, WD: While it now sits silently on its railgun launch assembly surrounded by miles of empty wasteland, sources close to Asterstar’s leading engineers claim the new private space shuttle could be ready to launch in as little as two weeks.
The three new shuttles; Explorer, Winnifred and Avenger are far more advanced than their NASA counterparts, the nearly 30 year old space shuttles. Asterstar’s shuttles feature digital computers, two-way radio communication, automated ventilation and a propensity not to disintegrate into atrocious fireballs upon launch or reentry.
This is a great leap forward since NASA’s shuttles still rely on hand cranks, pulleys, steam and candles. While impressive, NASA’s use of the largest team of mules ever assembled to haul the aged space plane from its storage facility to the shuttle assembly area is a woefully outdated concept.
Continue reading