False Values Don’t Grow on Trees, Ya’ Know
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Author Archives: Alan Brech
Biology’s Missing Turds
1. Every animal produces turds.
2. Even animals that eat turds, like my dog, produce their own, and so on down the turd-chain (sorry, turd-network, gotta stay up with the latest sci-talk)—all of which I’m responsible for cleaning lest I be accused of boorish dog-walking and having a dirty toilet.
3. Over the course of any animal’s lifespan, it always produces more turd-weight than it itself weighs (only the good die young).
4. The total global biomass of turd should thus always exceed the total global biomass of animals.
5. Yet the world doesn’t stink that much nor is it quite so shitty. In fact, it’s rather pleasant sometimes especially when you’re a kid unconcerned with everyone else’s shit.
ERGO: Not only do plants not produce turds (we already knew that) but obviously ipso facto they and their micro-minions produce virtually no waste whatsoever, lest the whole planetary surface be but Life and Turd, and eventually all turd, just like Planet Exlax, those poor stinky bastards—no don’t let them in!
My Various Intellectual Afflictions
• Start with the minor stuff first—data blindness. I just don’t get it! But fortunately today’s social culture is basically organized around that condition so it’s no biggie.
• Data-less Certitude: my doctor insists it’s a problem but I insist it’s clairvoyance. Either way, with data-blindness you have no choice but data-less certitude, unless you want to sound weak. Bwuuhh!
• Proof-of-Concept Satisfaction : why actually build-out and patent and sell it if you’ve already attained proof of concept? The idea works? Then ok I’m done here thanks, call the tinkerers.
• Anti-Resonant Discourse: Around intellectuals I like to talk crass and loose, with slapstick pantomime gestures and cheap sound effects for punctuation and emphasis, sometimes in lieu of substance, yes. Plus swearing. Sometimes in lieu of content. But around normal people I like to reply in fact-soaked over-nuanced pedantic paragraphs—their emphatic crass simplifications leave me no choice! ‘Bothers me, bwuuhh!
• Laurel Resting: sure it’s not a whole wreath—I ain’t no Marcus Aurelius—but let me tell you, the couple leaf-scraps I got are damn comfortable. Give me another leaf and I’ll sleep on them for years.
• False Modesty: I actually don’t have this. So it’s true. But I shouldn’t brag.
• Denial: not.
• Pre-Conclusive Burnout: this is similar to proof of concept satisfaction but applies more to written discourses and I guess films and elaborate artworks if I ever tried one. When the discourse is fully rolling and the end is almost in sight—well shit, the rest all kind of plays itself out automatically, I’d be just filling in the blanks like a clerk or an applicant to become a clerk, that ain’t creating, that’s dull… What else is good?
So like this column here, this “Perverted Wisdom” installment bit—we got what, eight jokes? We really need ten or more for a complete column and I certainly have more afflictions to cover but hey, you all see where this bit is going, you see the concept works, more items would just be like filling in a paint-by-numbers image; I’m going to sleep.
On my scraps of laurel leaves I scored through clairvoyance.
(‘Total paint-by-numbers conclusion joke there, simply reprising two earlier jokes so as to “mock” the data-integrating conclusiveness of real discourse. See what I was saying? Bwuuhh!)
Discourse on Shit, All of It
• Shit’s great, til it ain’t
Shit’s okay if it goes away
Shit’s only good if it’s understood
Shit works, so apply yourself
• It doesn’t matter how bad your shit stinks as long as it also smells like money
• If you keep sniffing for it eventually you’ll find that great big pile of negative crap you’re apparently seeking—and then you’ll be happy
• People And Their Shit: An Introduction to Anthropology, Sociology, Social Psychology and History (even though it’s Math)
• When you get really old, every fart’s a gamble. I think I’m safe, for now.
…What was that?!
…Better check, brb
• See: Location, location, location!
• Money talks—talks shit. Lots of shit. Bullshit only imitates it. And you’re always better-off taking Money’s shit than some broke-ass BS
• Shitty people leading shitty lives are the salt of the earth; God is mysterious like that
• Did you hear about the burned out paleo-fecologist?
“It’s the same old shit everyday!”
“…You forgot your tweezers”
• Ah, the doorbell/ phone ring/ alarm clock vs. messy bottom dilemma, yes…
• Scratched out of Alanis Morrisette’s notebook:
It’s like taking a dump after you’ve just had a bath
• I don’t laugh at shit jokes. In front of women.
What, this ho???
• I love my fuckin’ country so much I could just shit!
“So don’t test me, Commie!”
• What do you call a dude taking a shit out in public during a famine?
Answer: A show-off
“Not that pick up line again…”
“Player please…”
“Yeah, but is that corn on the cob he’s been having?”
• Jesus took dumps. Think of it. Think of it and repent for thinking of it, you swine dog!
Now, what have you learned?
Inappropriate Comments about the Infant Formula Crisis
• What’s the deal with tits?
• A National Wet-Nurse Corps would have solved this.
• Instead, Biden’s using the National Defense Production Act to commandeer your white nipples.
(Yes, them!)
• They were born too soon, said everyone convicted of deliberately killing their babies prior to this crisis.
• Give me monopolistic capitalism or give me famished infants!
• What about bleach?
• Kids are too spoiled nowadays anyway.
• When I was a kid we had formula—shut the hell up and stop your crying was the formula. We had plenty.
• It’s punishment for our sins. Those kids were mean. And God hates fags—none of those babies had any interest in the opposite sex.
• Cityfolk got so many issues…
• You may be against immigration but there are a lot of lactating foreigners out there.
• But seriously, whats the deal with tits? What’s the failure rate on a mammary gland anyway? Isn’t there also a back-up unit? (I think there is…) And what’s the Gross National Shortfall of breast milk and how can we best extract that tonnage?
Alien UFO Glyphs Translation
From “Britain’s Roswell,” the December 1980 Rendlesham Forest Incident, a well documented mass sighting by several dozen US servicemen at a base in Suffolk with nuclear weapons at the time.
• Their concerns and their justification for interference must be much greater than just us human beings—it must be the global ecosystem as a whole that is most important to them in the short term. (Not that we have no importance at all.)
• The top center glyph ¥ looks almost exactly like the scientific notation for “down regulation” in both ecology and genetics!
• The obvious glyph for human beings is just to the right of this down regulation glyph, suggesting a grammar of verb-to-object being written left to right, and therefore the overall semantic flow of the glyphs is left to right.
• The similarity in shape between the leftmost glyph and the rightmost glyph, plus the semantic flow of left to right, suggests that the two glyphs to the left of the ¥ verb are antecedents and that the rightmost glyph is the goal or purpose.
• The large circle glyph below the verb is the grammatical subject of the glyphs, a self-identification, perhaps like a badge with an encoded number and self-iconic imagery.
There are other internally consistent nuances derivable from this translation that I’d love to discuss further, but for polite brevity I want to end by pointing out that a recent abduction case from Georgia featured a drawing of glyphs similar to Rendlesham (and binary code messages post-encounter). One of the differences is that the center glyph looked like this )|( which I believe is an ominous symbol for genetic bottleneck.
I sincerely hope they haven’t given up on cognitive down regulation and decided on saving the biosphere by bottlenecking it’s pathogenic apex omnivore, us.
Jokes Aliens Tell About Us
(With some terrestrial comments)
• Earthling sidles up to the Bar. He’s asked if he wants the Fruit of Knowledge or the Fruit of Life. “Neither,” he says, ”my science says they don’t exist and my religion forbids me from partaking.”
“Well, we have a kids’ menu…”
• Earthlings are smart. At the latest Interstellar Science Conference, Neil deGrasse Tyson proved the conference didn’t exist. Very persuasive fellow. Lots of gravitas. We gave him a silent ovation out of politeness.
• John the Baptist tells Advanced Visitors ”Repent!”
“But I’m a robot. My companion, however, is fully submersible and plagued with glitches.”
• Funniest Earthling theories about why we’re here:
~ ”They want our shiny rocks!” (Gold, etc.)
~ ”They want our highly inefficient labor!”
~ ”They want our under-powered, easily distracted minds!”
~ ”They’re jealous of our amazingly stupid self-centered culture!”
~ ”They want our precious DNA we shed everywhere.”
~ ”They want our precious sperm we cast about.”
~ ”If you build it they will come. And if we build it big enough we can defeat them and take their technology and kill them all!”
• Do you ever wonder why God created such a vast universe with so many different forms of life just to be a backdrop and supporting cast for Great Story of Earth and Humanity?
No? Then you must not be from around here.
• Bullets.
(That’s it, just the word bullets by itself is some kind of inside joke to them or a dismissive term similar to our “bullshit.” My best guess is that ”bullets” means any vain stupid thing or idea that makes you feel strong and right but really doesn’t mean shit and actually makes you an asshole for thinking it does.)
• Earthlings long to explore space and not find anything better lest they be unable to kill it. Nothing is more disturbing to them than something they can’t kill.
• They say a bad alien is one who frightens them that they are living wrong and need to adhere to the highest ethical codes of their religions, philosophies, and science, and that a good alien is one who secretly gives them technology to help them kill their enemies and their planet.
So yeah, we’re evil.
Very evil.
December 30 = Still Christmas Day
Child to parent on Dec. 27: ”Is it still Christmas?”
Parent: ”No, but soon it will be.”
Child: “It’s going to be Christmas again soon?!”
Parent: ”No, it’s going to be Still Christmas Day. That’s the 30th; Christmas is the 25th.”
Child: ”How can it be still Christmas without actually being Christmas?”
Parent: ”That’s the miracle of Still Christmas.”
Child: ”Are there presents?”
Parent: ”No, its just to get you to New Years Eve day.”
Child: ”How can it be an Eve if it’s a day?”
Parent: ”Alcohol.”
Child: ”What’s that?”
Parent: ”It’s a liquid that instantly makes you feel good and takes away all your problems.”
Child: ”Can I have some?”
Parent: ”No, its bad for you.”
Child: ”Are you going to have some?”
Parent: ”Yes, lots. That’s why we need to play with your toys today while it’s Still Christmas, because tomorrow we’ll be too drunk.”
Child: ”Yay, I love Still Christmas!”
A God Joke
He is the greatest painter–every second a halo of infinitely varied sunsets and sunrises sweeps around the globe; the greatest storyteller–supreme in all the genres and their seamless blending; the greatest sculptor–look at that ass!; the greatest scientist, the greatest friend, the greatest patron, the greatest dramatist–
“But I”m not funny and there’s nothing funny about me at all.”
Verily his deadpan is killer.
How the Nazis Made Love
SHOCKING Implications of the God : Man :: Man : Dog Analogy
IF: God is to Mankind as Mankind is to our pets, THEN:
1. We can love a dog that is vicious to other dogs as long as it has other good qualities, such as being nice to people, or good at hunting, etc.
ERGO: God can love murderers.
2. Most of the immediate concerns of dogs–barking at rivals, sniffing their pee spots, chasing squirrels–are of no concern to us at all.
ERGO: Most of our pressing worries and concerns are of no interest to God.
3. A little bit of mischievousness and playful naughtiness is usually tolerated and even appreciated by pet owners. Too much bad behavior, however, can get a dog abandoned or euthenized.
ERGO: God is not a stickler for the rules but the rules are still important.
4. No one wants their dog to suffer needlessly but neither does anyone spend all their time entertaining their dog and trying to make it happy.
ERGO: Human suffering has meaning; human happiness perhaps a little less so. And God certainly doesn’t have the inclination to keep you happy and entertained all the time!
5. Everyone wants their dog’s rapt attention some of the time, but not all of the time.
ERGO: Don’t pray too much.
6, Different dogs have different jobs. Some have no job other than looking cute. Technological advancements and lifestyle changes have eliminated many of the old jobs dogs used to do; nowadays most of them just look cute.
ERGO: If you’re not going to be a working stiff then you’d better be damned good-looking or charming about it. But, like it or not, the course of modern history is away from working stiffs and towards charming rakes.
7. If your dog is vicious to your newborn baby then the dog has to go, no matter how good a dog it is. But if the dog is just jealous and avoids the baby, then it can stay, even if its not that great a dog.
ERGO: You don’t have to be a Christian or even like Jesus; you don’t even have to be a good person; but if you’re a persecutor you’re gonna get zonked.
MORE ECUMENICALLY: The main thing is not to mess with God’s “babies,” whatever those babies might be. But remember, we are not the babies in this analogy, we’re just the pets.
Is Your Pet a Reincarnated Doctor?
1. Most doctors don’t do anything. Most pets are equally unproductive.
2. Most doctors can’t diagnose anything. Most pets know when you’re hurting and can smell diseases from across the room.
3. Most doctoring relies on the placebo effect. And it’s not just the pills–the white coat, the diplomas, the waiting room, they’re all placebos too. But this is as it should be, given that the 30 to 50 percent baseline of success via the placebo effect exceeds the beneficial bump above the placebo effect that constitutes successful medicine. It would be malpractice not to harness the placebo effect in standard medicine. Its only fraud if you rely on it too much.
And since anything can be a placebo, why not your dog? One could argue that the healthiest attitude is one which views the entire universe as a placebo, but lets be realistic here and stick with reincarnated doctor-dogs.
4. If there is a morality-based system of reincarnation, karmic logic would demand that useless, over-applauded egotists would come back as humble servants with unrecognized genuine healing power.
5. Cats have nine lives so you can always steal a few. You paid for them. And dogs in their prime are indestructible compared to people, so by laying next to them you can sometimes get your malfunctioning system to “quorum sense” with a much more resilient one. The success rate equals the placebo effect +19%! That’s damn good medicine by any modern standard.
6. For truly incurable diseases, treatment is by definition palliative, and what’s more palliative than a pet?
7. There has to be a place between Heaven and Hell for people who try to do good and heal people but who somehow end up as callous, BMW-driving ego-pricks.
And there is: that place is your living room floor. So crawl your ass down there and get some placebo+19.
The New Honest Lottery
I’m not sure I like this new “Honest Lottery” scratch-off game…
Precepts of Moderate Religiosity
Praying too little means you’re probably only praying when you need something.
Praying too much is disrespectful. You should pray more than you need to but less than you “have to.”
Make it special for Godsake!
Religion and edifying spirituality is the salt of the earth, not the dirt; it should not be everywhere all the time.
Turn the other cheek so the second punch misses.
It’s better to shop for churches than to go to just one.
All of the world’s Holy Books have many edifying qualities, and many, many stupid parts as well. See, ya gotta keep shopping.
It’s possible Jesus and others have been apotheosized into someone super-supernatural. But it’s a certainty that none of the Advanced Aliens believe in him. They might have their own. Point is, if any earthly entity has become godlike, its only in these parts. Not Andromeda. Those Crab Nebulans aren’t preaching our gospels, and why should they? ‘You gonna send a whole nebula to Hell?
The concept of hell need not be abandoned, just radically downsized. Hell is surgery not needless suffering. It makes things better or else God wouldn’t have made it. But its probably surgery without anaesthesia, so watch out.
The parts where Jesus sounds like a hippie are the best parts. But that still doesn’t make being a hippie the right way to go.
“This church is the only true one” is virus code.
Be fruitful and multiply has become virus code. It used to be good and therefore holy. But that was then.
The fruit by which ye shall know them is when they forbid you to look at the rest of the garden and they talk shit about it. That’s when you know your fruit has gone bad. And all fruit go bad.
That’s why you gotta keep shopping.
I Remember Jokes
But most people don’t. They should. Then they’d be more like me. Strike that–I don’t want a bunch of me’s out there.
Remembering jokes is like remembering dreams for most people; it just slips through. Because they’re slimy. Jokes slither where few else dare to tread, leaving no tracks in the memory.
I was looking at this pack of incense sticks in the hippie heath food store when I noticed one with a very strange name. “Virgin of Guadalupe?!” I asked aloud. “What would the Virgin of Guadalupe smell like?”
“Fresh,” answered the passing hippie store clerk.
See, I remember that. It’s a good memory. Jokes make for good memories if you just take the time to grab ’em by the tail before they slither off. You should always be able to make yourself laugh just by recollecting funny shit.
Because if you can do that then–then–then you’d be more like me… Strike that, keep yourself laugh-deprived.
People who make jokes need to start a tradition of occasional allusions to other jokes. All the other art forms do it. They keep each other relevant that way, like academics who quote other academics who quote them. It’s part of the inherent circle-jerk nature of culture.
Here, let me show you–look into this microscope:
See?
Now that was a Python joke, from the Scottish UFO skit. Relevant once again thanks to me. And you were going to let that joke die!
Great jokes shouldn’t die. Not right away. They should last as long as great poems, which is like what, 100 years? Something like that.
When great jokes live on within you then you live on within their greatness. And you become more…more…more like me.
Strike that, let ’em die. You don’t want to be like me and laugh out loud by yourself in the supermarket. You can get hauled off for that. And for good reason too–out of context laughter is a threat to any decent social order.
Here, let me show you:
They say that if our memories were too distinct we’d die from all the recollected pain. So if we could remember all the laughs all at once we’d get hauled off.
And then you’d really be like me. And that’s no good.
Perverted Wisdom 