California is my home state and I love it and never thought I’d live anyplace else and back in the 1970s laughed at my best friend who went to med school in Kansas City (Watch out for cattle stampedes!) and then he finished med school and came back to California and I moved to Kansas City and stayed there.
God – assuming there is one and I think it’s a longshot – must have a terrific sense of humor and sticking me in Missouri because I made fun of Missouri must have been a Heavenly Knee Slapper right up there with asking Abraham to kill his son and after that episode of Punk’d; Biblical Edition God must have turned to St. Peter and said:
“That moron was actually going to do it!”
(And for that blasphemous joke, God will probably change my mailing address to Nome, Alaska and according to Google it hardly ever gets below -26 Fahrenheit and only has an average of 76 inches of snow a year, so Kansas City, Missouri will seem like Shangri La by comparison.)
So…
Even though I’m a liberal and love California, every so often my home state engages in some goofy shit and last time I was here they were debating whether a person taken into custody by the police could be forced to declare their gender and as far as I know Folsom Prison does not have an “Undecided” section. (An observation which is no doubt politically incorrect).
Moving on unless you’re so offended you stop reading now which I’d strongly advise you to do if you’re already offended because I’m about to say more stuff you won’t like.
Bryan Cranston/Bill Burr story alert
Stand-up comedians tend to be politically incorrect (it’s a job requirement) and on one of his Netflix specials Bill Burr told a story about actor Bryan Cranston (Walter White on Breaking Bad) getting in trouble for portraying a quadriplegic in The Upside because Bryan isn’t paralyzed and if Hollywood were just a little more sensitive they’d get a quadriplegic to play a quadriplegic.
Burr pointed out it’s called “acting” for a reason and The Upside complaint made about as much sense as arguing they should get real murderers to play murderers which, come to think of it, would probably result in some Oscar-worthy performances and the death of a certain percentage of the murderer’s fellow cast members and if you let me pick the actors I might be OK with that.
Danny Trejo story alert
I’ve told this story before, but it’s too good not to tell again.
Actor Danny Trejo went to prison and when he came out he was in a 12-step program and the sponsor of a guy who was in the film crew for Runaway Train. So the film crew guy was having trouble, called up Danny and asked if he could come to the set.
The guy who wrote the screenplay saw Trejo on the set and they’d done time together in San Quentin (which indicates writing is a way tougher gig than you non-writers might think) and convinced the director that Trejo would add authenticity to the prison scenes.
So they got a former prisoner to play a prisoner and so far it’s worked out OK for Trejo and Hollywood so I guess me and Bill Burr can take a long walk off a short pier.
“It’s the exception that proves the rule.”
Which is one of those sayings I never understood because if you get enough exceptions the rule isn’t valid so it sounds like something somebody pulled directly out his ass after he said something stupid and someone said, but what about Danny Trejo?
Moving on.
As quickly as possible.
CYA Warning labels
If you ever decide to look up the side effects of whatever drug your doctor decided to give you without much regard for the other drugs he’s got you taking at the same time you might come across confusing side effects like:
May cause:
Diarrhea
Constipation
Which is not a made up example even though I wish it were. I wondered how the same drug causes diarrhea and constipation (which seem to be on different ends of the intestinal spectrum) and a friend in the medical industry set me straight. When it comes to side effects, apparently they list everything they can think of because it covers their asses no matter what happens:
“Hey, we warned you that your head could explode and fireworks might simultaneously shoot out your ass and you took the drug anyway so don’t blame us.”
Anyway…
I picked up my rental car at the airport and at the top of this post is a picture of the warning label I found on the driver’s window. So I wondered what Proposition 65 was and found an article on the Popular Science website called:
California needs to stop saying everything causes cancer
Here’s an excerpt from that article:
You may have heard that coffee gives you cancer. Or that everything gives you cancer—if you live in California.
The reason: Proposition 65. It’s a California state law that requires businesses with 10 or more employees to provide reasonable warning about the use of any chemicals the state has decided could cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm. One of these chemicals is acrylamide, which a rodent study pinned as a possible carcinogen. It’s found in almost everything that’s cooked at a high temperature. And because a particularly litigious law firm recently sued the state for not properly warning residents about acrylamide in coffee, California is now on the verge of requiring all coffee shops and manufacturers to include a warning on the beverage that it may cause cancer.
The problem, of course, is that coffee doesn’t cause cancer. Acrylamide might cause cancer at very high doses, but the amount that you’ll find in your food is harmless. You’ve actually been unintentionally eating it for your whole life, because it’s in everything from potato chips to roasted asparagus.
As the article points out, if you warn people about absolutely everything then pretty soon people start ignoring warnings and you’ve defeated the purpose of warning labels, assuming you think warning labels are actually there to keep the public safe and not there to cover the ass of the people who might get sued.
If you want to read the entire article, here’s a link:
https://www.popsci.com/california-coffee-cancer-warning/
It’s about time for me to wrap this up and go get dinner, but before I go I have one more thing to say:
WARNING: The consumption of this article might cause cynicism. To minimize exposure read this article in a well-ventilated area while thinking about the Statue of Liberty and listening to Lee Greenwood sing “God Bless The U.S.A.” If you persist in reading this kind of trash and wind up spray painting graffiti on the Washington Monument, don’t blame us…
We warned you.