Hell yeah I’m smart

Is swearing a sign of intelligence?

According to the following CNN article, swearing is a sign of intelligence which means every professional baseball player I ever met is qualified to pilot a space shuttle or conduct brain surgery or debate Neil deGrasse Tyson on the international ramifications of the Infield Fly Rule.  

But since I myself have been known to utter the occasional profanity (if by “occasional” you mean one in every other sentence I write and/or say) I’m going to accept CNN’s conclusions about profanity being proof of intelligence.

(OK, that was two sentences without a swear word so I’ll try to pick up the pace from here on in — goddammit.)

The CNN expert on intelligence also believes swearing shows you have verbal skills and are chock-full of social awareness which means knowing when you can and can’t swear, so clearly that CNN expert wasn’t there the night I dropped what I considered a mild profanity during a Kansas City Public Library presentation and all the Miss Marples in attendance were shocked to their core and I believe one or two of them fainted and had to be revived by patting their hands and putting a cool cloth on their foreheads while listening to a reading of the 23^rd Psalm delivered by the farmer in that Grant Wood painting.

They look fucking miserable, don’t they?

I hope you appreciate that completely unnecessary F-bomb I just inserted, but I promised I would use profanity and I want to keep that promise because the CNN article also said swearing was a sign of honesty.

No shit?

(Man, who wrote this thing, Sam Kinison?)

Apparently, swearing also improves pain tolerance so if you’re having a hard time swallowing all this bullshit, go ahead and yell your favorite swear word.

The genius who wrote this thing also says swearing is a sign of creativity which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because we’ve all been using the same swear words forever and according to the internet the word “fuck” has been in use since 1475, but isn’t as old as the word “fart” which has been used to describe flatulence and old men wearing bow ties and fedoras since the 13^th century.

Interesting side note:

One of my brothers was a fireman and he once asked a cop what type of people gave the police the most trouble, expecting to hear about motorcycle gang members or robots from the future or Satan Worshippers from the local coven, but the cop said:

“Old men in hats.”

Which also reminds me, I recently read a novel about a lawyer evaluating possible jurors and the lawyer avoided men wearing bow ties because he believed nobody in the entire world is more strident in their views than bow-tie wearing men.

And if you don’t believe me or that author, just look at this…

And this…

And this…

A surprising number of charisma-free men have made the mistake of thinking wearing a bow tie gives them a personality and says something positive about their character when what it actually says is:

“I look like I should be sitting on a ventriloquist’s knee.”

The CNN expert also said profanity was to be encouraged because it was a substitute for violence, a statement which ignores all the violence profanity causes.

I was in Boston with a friend from Texas and I had to stop him from getting out of a car and beating the living shit out of a Bostonian after the Bostonian said “fuck you” over a disputed parking spot.

From my point of view, it was an interesting social experiment because saying “fuck you” in Boston is considered par for the course and might be uttered right after saying “Please pass me the salt, Monsignor” but “fuck you” in Dallas means you want to fight.

So while I’m reluctant to quibble with anyone who says my use of profanity proves my intelligence, turns out saying “fuck you” to a short-tempered and quite-possibly armed Texan isn’t all that smart.

But…

The intelligence expert also said profanity is a universal language and that much I agree with because if you’re like me (and you should really hope that’s not the case) I can lip-read an F-bomb even if the person drops it in the middle of a Sanskrit sentence.

So while you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet and that clearly includes CNN and quite often me, in this case I’m happy to agree:

Hell, yeah, I’m smart.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/health/swearing-benefits-wellness/index.html

As regular readers already know, I quote CNN fairly often despite their debatable views on profanity and don’t miss too many chances to dump on Fox News, so in the interest of fairness and lack of anything better to do at the moment I’m going to write about CNN firing their Chairman and CEO, Chris Licht – which depending on how you pronounce it, really sounds like a porn-star name and probably should be – and Mr. Licht’s firing wouldn’t be all that notable except it provides some insight into problems at CNN and with the media in general.

Apparently…

CNN’s rating are down because we’re all cancelling regular cable TV so we can get streaming TV and watch that circle go around and around while our TV “buffers” and I pretty sure it’s called that because while waiting to find out what happened on that 3-2, bases-loaded pitch, you might need to take some Bufferin.

And the Bufferin phenomena also means we get programs at slightly different speeds and when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl I found out before it happened on my TV because the people across the street were getting the game streamed faster than we were and they celebrated the Chiefs’ win by setting off a small tactical nuclear device.

(When I heard the explosion I thought the Chiefs had either won the Super Bowl or Vladimir Putin had decided to invade Kansas City, starting with my neighborhood.)

Sounds like Mr. Licht thought the answer to declining ratings was trying to appeal to the people who turned off CNN because they didn’t like its reporting on Donald Trump and that’s why he held that town hall meeting where Trump got to tell a lot more lies and talk over the moderator while his MAGA zombies cheered him on.

In an attempt to appeal to mobile home owners, Licht also decided to criticize his network’s reporting on the COVID pandemic as “high-strung” and apparently those high-strung reporters proved Licht was 100% right by saying, “Fuck this guy” which had the added benefit of proving how intelligent they were.

The audience is fragmenting and now everyone can find a news source that matches their beliefs and never tells them anything they don’t want to hear (which must lead to some pretty inaccurate weather forecasts) and trying to please both sides means you wind up pleasing nobody.

https://apnews.com/article/chris-licht-leaves-cnn-

Why indicting Trump probably won’t hurt him

According to an Associated Press article published last month, Donald Trump losing a lawsuit and being found liable for sexual assault and defamation was a “rare moment of accountability” and I’d like to agree, but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. 

Trump lost that lawsuit back in early May and he hasn’t changed his behavior one bit and doesn’t seem likely to, even though he’s done everything but make the FBI’s 10 Most-Wanted List.

Trump has told his followers over and over again that the people they both hate (Liberals, the Deep State and quite possibly Left-Wing Druids) are out to get him so when Trump loses a lawsuit or gets indicted it’s just more proof that he’s right.

So while some Liberal Prosecutor decides to make a name for him and/or herself by “holding Trump’s feet to the fire” unless they’re actually going to put Trump in jail all they do is make him more popular with his followers.

Frankly, I kinda wish I’d done the same thing: claim (fill-in-the-blank and you’ve got a wide variety of choices here) is out to get me so when I get caught doing something I shouldn’t (and it’s only a matter of time) I can say:

“See? I was right.”

And if I throw in a “goddammit” at the end of that sentence, it will also prove I’m intelligent.