Tag Archives: classic repost

The Truth Is No Laughing Matter (Classic Paranoid Repost)

19 Sep

September 19, 2012.

Wow, this is nearly five years old. And what lunacy! Paranoia abounds but don’t worry, I’m all better now, that’s what they keep telling me, I’m all better now, all better now…

from October 8, 2007

So I’m working on the yearbook and we have a Hollywood theme, and it seems to have carried over to my blog-slinging (and damn if I’m not sticking with that word ’til it hurts.) As I type this I am wearing cool shades, sitting in a director’s chair, and I refuse to talk directly to anyone, preferring to let my assistant do all that.

OK, you caught me in a lie. (Read any blog at random and you’ll catch me in anywhere from three to infinity lies.) I am not wearing shades, nor am I sitting in a director’s chair, nor do I have an assistant, though I do prefer communicating through emails rather than actually talking to people, so I guess there is a modicum of truth there.

And a modicum is enough nowadays. Who wants the truth? As a wise man once said; “You can’t handle the truth!” And no, we can’t.

Would you like to know the truth about such dangerous topics as “grave robbers from outer space”? While I won’t spill any secrets of NATIONAL SECURITY, I will merely point out that in 1959 a courageous young documentary filmmaker named Edward D. Wood Junior attempted to inform the public of an immediate crisis that endangered not just the citizens of Hollywood but the entire world. He had discovered, through long weeks of research in hidden national archives and secret military installations worldwide, that aliens were about to attempt a conquest of Earth, with our own dead as their invading army. Try as he might, Mr. Wood was thwarted at every attempt to rally the public into action, and for his efforts, the government poisoned his image in the eyes of the public. This once promising Harvard graduate with a PhD in Psychology and an MBA in Business Management from the Wharton School of Business, was ruined and became a laughingstock in an angora sweater.

Would you like to know the truth about atomic testing in the South Pacific?  For decades, the government has suppressed knowledge of the radiation-induced abnormal hyper-growth of certain reptiles, both prehistoric and contemporary, to gargantuan size. Similarly, the abnormal growth to epic proportions of common ants in the American mid-west due to atomic testing has been suppressed. Newsreel footage of fire-breathing dinosaurs have been leaked to the public from time to time by intrepid truth-seekers, but the government’s black-ops division has managed to convince the public that these actual films of dangerous creatures are really just Japanese movies with men in rubber suits, not monsters.

Would you like to know the truth about asbestos? It is a well-known fact that asbestos is NOT a carcinogen. It is totally harmless and may in fact cure acne. Asbestos was first used as a government cover-up in 1941 when the Air Force claimed that the area around Roswell New Mexico was contaminated to keep the public far away from what was really going on- a flying saucer crash. After the debris was moved to Area 51, the government continued to use the asbestos story for any operation they wanted to keep classified. To this day, CIA incursions into Hanoi during the Vietnam War are blamed on asbestos. Famously, when the Soviets captured Francis Gary Powers after his Blackbird spy plane crashed in the USSR, the US government claimed that he was not spying, and that his plane entered Soviet airspace because of asbestos in the cockpit.

Would you like to know the truth about the Yeti? The Yeti is not a hoax, nor is it a sort of prehistoric “ape-man” as the press (well-known as the propaganda arm of the government) would have you believe. The Yeti are in fact a well-organized and well-hidden militia created for the sole purpose of protecting the nation from a Soviet invasion in 1978. In the late 1970’s the Soviet Union prepared a full-scale invasion of The United States using mercenary Indian Monkey-Man soldiers. These soldiers had, among other futuristic technologies, invisibility-rendering pants. Facing a “primate-soldier gap,” the President authorized the creation of “an elite Yeti squadron,” capable of repelling the Soviet mercenary Indian Monkey-Men. These proved more than capable, and all knowledge of the Yeti had been suppressed, often violently. The Yeti remain America’s ever-vigilant first line of national defense.

Would you like to know the truth about the moon landing? The popular conspiracy theory states that we never landed men on the moon, and that the 1969 moon landing was filmed on a soundstage. That is just not true. We did land on the moon. In 1952. During world War Two, Germany was creating advanced V-2 rockets capable of reaching England. They also created, just as the war was ending, the first jet aircraft. Using German scientists and technology smuggled out of Germany after the war, America created the first lunar rocket in 1952 on a small hidden base in New Mexico. When we reached the moon, astronauts discovered a lunar base constructed on the dark side by aliens from Alpha Centauri. Soon after reaching an agreement, we received advanced alien technology (Did you really think we created Velcro?) in return for turning a blind eye to the mass abductions of humans.

I have been very careful, in the writing of this blog, not to name actual names or reveal too many specific details. It is not safe to do so. In fact, I was very careful to couch it in vague terms and even to write it as if I was being silly with all the “Hollywood” nonsense in the first paragraphs, in case this was being monitored. But it is all real and the truth must get out.

It’s funny. I’m sure I’m all alone. I know I locked the door. But I can swear I just heard footsteps and saw a shadow creeping along the wall. It is funny how the mind can play tri

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Binded for Glory (Classic Back-To-School Repost)

5 Sep

September 5, 2012

Back to school time is here, a parent’s happiest time of the year! I experienced this last year and though I like to post older reposts, this is too sad and/or funny to ignore.

from September 15, 2011

This may come as a surprise to longtime readers of this blog, but I am a professional writer.

I will wait a few seconds for the laughter to die down.

But it is true. It is in my official job description at The Company, which shall remain unnamed. And please, for security, it is central that you don’t use your intelligence and google the agency I work for.

Of course, I suppose the guy who makes the “out of order” signs for gas station rest rooms calls himself a writer too. But he doesn’t have to wear a suit and tie to work like I do. In fact, seeing as how he has to spend part of his day unclogging toilets he probably shouldn’t wear a suit and tie to work.

At any rate, as a professional writer and former English teacher, I tend to notice bad grammar, especially when I hear it coming at me out of the mouths of a couple of loudmouth illiterates at Staples.

I was on line at Staples the other day to have something faxed. Surprisingly, the place I was faxing some documents to would not accept scans sent to their email. They insisted on faxes. Faxing is increasingly becoming useless with everyone and their dog owning a scanner. And if someone does not own a scanner, I guess they should upgrade to a push-button phone first. BTW- I know an otherwise normal man who still has a beat-up rotary phone for no other reason than “it still works.” Not that it works very well when customer service tells him to push “1” for English.

Anyway, I was at Staples (who charged me over a dollar a page to send eight pages, plus tax. What a rip off.) waiting for my faxes to go through. The place was packed because I was there less than a week before school began and it was full of adults, but fuller of kids, buying school supplies. And surprisingly, a lot of kids seem to need Staples Easy Buttons.

While I was waiting at the business counter a couple of people needed an old book bound. I saw it, the thing was almost falling apart. They told the woman behind the counter to be very careful with it, it was very important. I judged the book to be about twenty years old, and when I got a glimpse of the cover I saw that it was more like forty.

The important book? Secrets of Success in the Modern Technological Office. And below the title? “New 1974 Edition.”

And not only was it being bound, they were having a copy made, which I am sure is a violation of copyright.

But had you seen the people you would not be surprised. I don’t think they were prepared to work in any office, certainly not the modern technological office of 1974. Let it be sufficient to say that they appeared almost, but not quite, totally unemployable.

However, what drove me nuts was that while they were technically having the book bound, they said they were having it “binded.” As in “my spell check keeps telling me that binded isn’t a word.” You’re on a computer, try it and see for yourself.

They must have used “binded” a thousand times in a ten minute span. And in a variety of ways, more ways than you’d expect a non-existent past tense verb to be used.

“I need this book binded.”
“The binded on here is bad.”
“I hope you do a strong bindeding on this shit.”
“I tried to get it bindeded a couple of months ago but they machine was broke.”

For the record:It is an easy mistake to make. I used to tell my students that when in doubt, the ear always knows. Which sounds right, “I runned to the store” or “I ran to the store?”

Say it out loud. “I swimmed at the beach” or “I swam at the beach”?

“I need this book binded” or “I need this book bound“?

Before you ask (not that I could hear you anyway) these people were not foreign. They sounded like they lived here all their lives, and they seemed to be from forty to fifty years old.

So I stood there a little while longer and listened to how their book was getting binded by the bindeder, and how the bindeding better be damn strong “or else there’s gonna be some shit at that.”

My fax had gone through but I was still waiting on the confirmation. Good thing too, or I would have missed the big debate about if red bindeding looks good on a blue book, and if they change their minds could they get it rebinded?

When I finally left they were looking at the receipt and one was asking the other “why the government was charging taxes on their personal books.”

Thank God I am educated.

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