For and Against

I'm not a terribly competitive person, and I challenge anyone who disagrees to a sack race. But even with my mild temperament (I only placed third in my age division at the annual tri-county Jerk Festival last month), the animosity that often accompanies sporting competitions and even politics disturbs me.

Now, to a point this makes sense. I understand that our brains are lazy, and it's easier to just cram everything on one side or the other of the us/them fence, rather than consider multiple viewpoints. But the weird thing is how we'd rather spend our time throwing flaming bags of dog poop across that fence than building an awesome bowling alley on our own side.

Case in point: the 2004 presidential election. When I asked any supporters of John Kerry why they were voting for him, this is sort of how it went:

"So why did you decide to vote for him?"

"Bush is terrible! He's gotten us stuck in a useless war, and he's secretly in league with
the Ku Klux Klan!"

"Um, okay. But you must like what Kerry wants to do for the country, right?"

"And he's going to sell our children's organs to zoos for meat!"

On a related note, last weekend, when the BYU football team was being humiliated by Utah State, I saw a fan wearing a shirt that said "Buck FYU." I wish I were making that up.

In conclusion, because I don't know where else this post is going, children are the future.

Comments

Jer said…
As the Jerk Festival Champion, I feel it is my duty to inform you that you are once again, the wrongest person in the history of things that are wrong. Children??? Forget children. They're not the future. You know what the future is? ME! I am against children in all forms. They're trying to take our future from us, starting with their propaganda that they are the future. I say we sell their organs to zoos for meat.
October 5, 2010 at 7:40 AM
Rocky said…
Posts like this brigthen up my day. Thanks for taking the time.
May 15, 2011 at 4:30 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, you couldn't get white onions because of the war; all you could get...

Do you ever get stuck in a conversation that you can’t get out of? I’m not talking about those times when you have to be somewhere else or there’s a rational need to leave, but rather those times when, with every word the other person utters (it’s typically just a two-person conversation), your brain threatens to escape your body and make a break for it. All you can do is try to play some old TV theme songs in your head, or maybe design circuits if you’re the engineering type, all the while searching for an opportunity to escape. Now I’m boring myself just thinking about those situations.
Read more

Thirty Thoughts

1. Is that more hair in the shower drain every morning? 2. What's the big deal? It's just a number with a zero at the end. Why should we consider that significant? 3. Am I still allowed to wear shorts? 4. I need to buy a house within the next five years or we won't have it paid off by retirement age. Then again, my generation won't be able to retire until age 80, so I shouldn't worry. 5. I really should be eating more green, leafy vegetables. If I leave potatoes in the fridge long enough, will that count? 6. Going back to school is getting less and less likely. Then again, sending kids to school will be enough trauma. 7. At least I no longer look like I'm 12, which I did until I was about 23. 8. I will never wear my cell phone on my belt. 9. For some reason, there's a big difference between having a kid and having kid s . 10. You kids get off the lawn! 11. I wonder when my memory will start to go. 12. Inside of me beats the heart of an 18-year-old. At leas...
Read more

Moral Compass

On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being “afraid to step on a blade of grass” and 10 being “I’m gonna kill everyone!”), how bad is it if I were to warm up my car in the morning for 10 minutes before coming to work?
Read more