Earworms, Flying Monkeys and Fighting Bulls
What more could you ask for?
Whenever you hear something is too expensive or unaffordable ask where the money is going to be spent instead and according to a Pew Research Center poll about half of Republicans say the U.S. is giving too much money to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office, extending the Trump Tax Cuts through 2033 will add $3.5 trillion to the budget deficit which doesn’t seem to bother those budget-conscious Republicans one teensy tiny bit.
And to make sure they have enough money to give tax cuts to the already rich, Republicans are demanding spending cuts in programs and services like veteran support, opioid treatment and law enforcement.
If you want to read about that for yourself, here you go:
And Now A Completely Unnecessary Sidebar on Manipulative People
One of the many tricks Manipulative People have up their sleeves is trying to get you to consider incidents as being totally unrelated like the Ukraine Aid/Tax Cut deal or your annoying (fill-in-the-blank with an irritating family member and I’m guessing we all have one) who does or says some annoying thing for the thousandth time and when you object they say: “Geez, all I did was (fill-in-this-blank with their irritating activity).”
Like it’s the very first time they did it and it’s unrelated to the other 999 times they did the same annoying thing and then act completely innocent and try to convince you that you’ve overreacted.
Two Marginally-Related True Stories:
When fighting bulls get sent into a bullring they run around the arena thinking whatever the bovine version of “What The Fuck?” is and being territorial animals eventually settle into an area they consider all theirs, which if I was a matador would be the entire bullring and several surrounding neighborhoods.
But matadors with less sensible policies on getting along with fighting bulls do that thing where the take a step forward and stamp their foot which is how they test where the bull’s area begins and when he’ll charge and when he won’t.
Once they think they’ve got that figured out, Too-Cool-For-School Matadors might feel confident about turning their backs on a bull and walking away (they think they’re outside the bull’s personal territory) which looks really impressive until you find out a common bullfighter injury is a perforated anus which occurs when some bull decides he’s had enough of this irritating matador bullshit, leaves his designated area and shoves a horn up the matador’s ass.
True Story #2:
A man shot his wife D-E-A-D dead and called the police and when the police asked why he shot her, the man said he had dentures and couldn’t eat anything tough like a steak and despite repeated requests not to do so, his passive/aggressive wife cooked him one too many T-bones.
Had she survived I’m sure she would have said, “All I did was cook him a steak.”
Which ignores all his requests over decades that she ignored and I think the lesson here is if you’re one of those passive/aggressive people who secretly enjoys tormenting a Theoretical-Love One, watch your step because you don’t know which steak will be one too many: steak #187 and you’re still OK, steak #188 and you’re a victim of a homicide.
Also, you may get a well-deserved horn up your ass.
OK, I feel like we’ve gotten way off-track, so where were we?
Right, manipulative people who want you to view events as being unconnected like Republicans saying they can’t afford to give money to Ukraine, but still seem to have plenty to give to their rich constituents.
I once had it explained to me that the money for paying employees was kept in one corporate pocket and the money for new office furniture was kept in another corporate pocket which was supposed to explain how a bunch of my coworkers got fired on the same day we got new office furniture, right up until I asked:
“Who created the pockets?”
Which is just the kind of astute employee observation that makes your employer wonder what in the world they’d ever do without you and then decide to find out as soon as possible.
One of the many valuable lessons I learned while covering baseball is that Analytics Advocates would make things as complicated as possible (like measuring Real Players against imaginary Replacement Players) and then say this stuff is really complex so you shouldn’t even try to understand it; just trust us, in 2023 Salvador Perez was worth 0.5 more wins than the Easter Bunny.
(Which is true, last year the Easter Bunny’s On-Base-Percentage was .000.)
But if you went ahead and made an attempt to understand the complicated formulas anyway, you’d often find holes you could drive a Ford F-150 through (extended cab version) and wind up saying: “It can’t possibly be this stupid, can it?”
Turns out it can.
For instance: everything you need to know about WAR (Wins Above Replacement) comes at the end of a long formula that looks like a recipe for rocket fuel when the people who created the formula wind things up by saying WAR “works best as an approximation.”
So it’s just a guess?
Jesus, I can get that from any Big League Coach and he’d probably tell me three funny baseball stories while doing it.
Which gets us to the economy and economists.
There are certain professions (and economists are on the list) that love to express their vague conclusions with very specific numbers and if at all possible work in a decimal point which gives the impressions their vague conclusions are extremely accurate.
For instance: according to the internet, inflation is currently 3.14% which sounds pretty damn specific unless you read about how those numbers are put together and turns out it’s another one of those less-than-concrete-solid approximations.
And according to the Associated Press, Democrats can’t understand why people aren’t happier about the economy because inflation is way down and a Democratic pollster said voters no longer want to just see inflation rates fall, they want an outright decline in prices and the pollster went on to say:
“Honestly, I’m kind of mystified by it.”
Let’s see if we can clear up the mystery with an allegory, which is what you call some bullshit story you just made up (kind of like the State of the Union Address) and here goes:
Let’s say before the Pandemic I’m selling apples for 5 cents apiece and then the Noah’s Ark of Consumer Goods gets stuck in the Erie Canal and suddenly everyone is raising prices because they have “supply chain issues” and I used the Erie Canal in my allegory because it’s Really Fucking Erie how all these different businesses suddenly had “supply chain issues” at the same time.
Anyway, sensing a chance to gouge my customers and blame someone else, I start charging $10 for an apple in 2020 and three years later I’m still charging $10 an apple.
Because the price of apples hasn’t gone up in three years, inflation is low, but people are still paying $10 for a Granny Smith and pretty pissed off about. And if the Democrats are actually “mystified” by that, get ready for the sequel, Trump Administration 2: This Time It’s Personal!
U.S. Representative Kevin McCarthy (who helped turn the House of Representatives into a Steel Cage Death Match by sucking up to Hard-Right Extremists and developing the same relationship with them that a Flying Monkey had with the Wicked Witch of the West) then couldn’t control the Extremist Mob he helped stir up and lost his dream job, Speaker of the House.
McCarthy’s crime was compromising with Democrats to keep the government up and running when the Extremists wanted to run the government into the nearest brick wall at high speed and, if at all possible, disable the seat belts and airbags before impact.
(And for some odd reason, the word “Tesla” just popped into my mind.)
Anyway, being a grown-up, mature adult McCarthy felt Butt Hurt and Bitter (which would be a great name for a folk duo specializing in protest songs) and decided to take his ball and go home early.
McCarthy quit the House of Representatives before his term was up which is a slap in the face of his party and the people who voted for him because now they have to hold a special election to replace him.
And according to Yahoo News (which you might incorrectly assume is part of the Fox News Empire aimed at one of their largest demographics) on his way out Mr. Mature may have punched one of those Republican Extremists in the back, which is extremely unprofessional because as we all know it would have been much more appropriate to kick a Republican Extremist in the nuts.
In his farewell address McCarthy said he would “serve America in new ways” so I depicted one of the possibilities.
Back when Donald Trump and His Flying Monkeys were lying their asses off about getting cheated in the 2020 election, Rudy Giuliani got into the spirit of things and said that two Fulton County election workers had – among other election hijinks – double counted ballots.
The Trump Flying Monkeys needed no further evidence than the word of a man who appears to use Kiwi shoe polish for hair dye and got busy harassing and threatening to kill the two election workers.
Meanwhile back on Planet Earth, the FBI and GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) looked into Rudy’s accusations and quickly determined they were false, which didn’t slow down the Trump Flying Monkeys one bit.
So the two election workers sued Rudy and once he got into court – where unlike the rest of the world, you can get into trouble for lying – Rudy agreed that the allegations were false.
But now they’re in the part of the trial process where they decide just how much Rudy has to pay in damages and Mr. I-Really-Don’t-Know-When-To-Shut-Up told reporters when he gets back on the stand he plans to once again say the charges were true which really pissed off the judge, because Rudy already agreed they were false.
As the judge pointed out, it looks like Rudy is willing to commit perjury to play to another audience, which is a point worth thinking about.
When they get in court where lying can get you fined and/or sent to jail, Election Deniers have admitted they’ve got no evidence, but once they get out of court they go right back to lying their asses off.
Beware the Earworm
In yet another example of my mind latching on to useless information while forgetting important things like – but not limited to – anniversaries, birthdays, what company insures my car, where I last saw my garage door opener and when I’m supposed to pick up a family member from the airport, while working on the Giuliani cartoon this song kept running through what’s left of my mind:
That’s right, it’s the 1965 hit song Liar Liar by the Castaways.
In the same year the Beatles put out A Hard Day’s Night that featured on opening chord that NASA and MIT are still studying in an attempt to figure out how the hell the Beatles made that sound, the Castaways had a hit song with lyrics that rhymed “sad” and “bad” and “true” and “blue” and the song might have been #1 if they’d managed to work in “moon” and “June” as well.
But despite its lack of sophistication, 58 years after I first heard it “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire, Your Nose Is Longer Than a Telephone Wire” was on a loop in my head and now I’m guessing it’s in yours too.
Now have a great weekend and good luck killing your new earworm.
Pretend it cooked you a steak.
Great earworm! Since my most recent earworm was from a TV commercial, I’m truly grateful!
Good thing he shot his “wide,” first that typo might have been her “One too Many.”