Things I Don’t Care About

[I have “thoughts” assembled for a future series of posts but on a topic of depth. Today I’ll wisely stay in the shallow end of the pool. Enjoy.]

Everyone seems to care deeply about everything. How exhausting! Folks are willing to die on hills that look irrelevant to me.

I can’t muster sympathy over minor shit. Is it strange that I’m not hyperventilating about gluten, plastic grocery bags, or skateboarding on sidewalks? I periodically review, for my own confidence, things that don’t mean shit to me… just to make sure they still don’t mean shit.

You’re welcome to join me. Here’s an abridged list of topics about which I can’t get upset.

Two spaces at the end of a sentence: In the interregnum between lead cast movable type (all hail Gutenberg’s miracle) and the word processor (we’re Microsoft and you will obey) there were typewriters. It was mechanically convenient to use the same width for a narrow letter “l” and a wide letter “o”. With typewriters it became common to put two spaces at the end of a sentence. People learned this. No, that’s not right. They didn’t learn it… they fused it into their fucking DNA.

Time passes. By the 1990’s, everyone and their dog was using a word processor. Word processors effortlessly manage the width of letters, spacing between them, and spacing between sentences. It’s called kerning. Two spaces were no longer needed after each sentence. Transitioning from IBM Selectric to WordPerfect, I switched to using one space. I’m adaptable like that. It didn’t seem like a big deal.

However, there are folks who hate it, hate it, hate it. I’m talking to you Mingo! (Mingo puts two spaces at the end of a sentence and will defend the practice to his dying breath.) Mingo’s not alone. Lots of geezers hammer out a duplicate space at the end of a sentence as a matter of religious doctrine. I don’t get it.

Pluto: Among the quasi-useless errata I memorized in school was a list of planets. There were nine of them. Pluto was the weird little flake on the furthest orbit. In 2006 some folks changed the definition of “planet”. Pluto went from “planet” to “dwarf planet”. This royally pissed off everyone.

Except me. I don’t give a rat’s ass how many planets are in an arbitrary list. I understand it will always be arbitrary to define this orbiting mass as a planet and that orbiting mass as a “not planet”. You gotta’ draw the line somewhere. Haley’s Comet orbits the sun but isn’t a planet. Does this make Pluto fans sad? Is there a “Haley’s Comet got screwed” movement to call it a planet?

I think it comes from folks learning a list at a certain age (elementary school) and becoming dogmatically attached to a familiar factoid. We (theoretically) learn new things with time. At any moment some nerd might refine a telescope and find a new planet or something sufficiently planet like; it may or may not coincide with the list of nine that someone printed in a textbook decades ago.

Ironically, Pluto, circling slowly in space, is exactly what it always was. Pluto doesn’t know what a far distant group of (arguably) sentient apes chose to call it. There’s a move afoot to redefine “planet” to re-include Pluto. This will have absolutely no effect on the actual celestial object. If astronomers redefined it as “an orbiting space turd” I’d be happy with that definition too. I’ve never been to Pluto. I’ve probably never seen Pluto. I don’t give a shit if some list I memorized at age 9 changed with time. I can’t get upset by Pluto’s designation as a planet or not.

Literally Hitler: Everyone needs a foil. Angry “protesters” need tons of them. They need to associate well known evil menaces with their manifold enemies. They consider this to be rhetorically awesome.

Sadly, they’re too dumb to make a good comparison. We appear to be in a cycle where each generation may know less than the one before. Lacking mythical constructs, SJWs can’t call Trump (or any other hated enemy du jour) a Gorgon (Greek) or a Draugen (Norse). You need to know what a Gorgon is before you can say your enemy is like one. Lacking religious constructs, SJWs can’t call Trump a Demon or Satan either. It just doesn’t “sing” to them. They lack the depth for a decent pool of comparative insults.

The closed and locked door on their imagination cage is a lack of history. They picked up  Hitler as a concept; but almost nothing else. They know Hitler was bad but it’s a vague feeling that “he’s icky”. They certainly didn’t learn about any other bad apples. They don’t know Benito Mussolini was Hitler’s good buddy and an actual literal fascist. They don’t know Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. They can’t identify Joseph Stalin and Holodomor. They haven’t the slightest clue who Genghis Khan was or what happened to eastern Europeans who experienced the Golden Horde. More recently they don’t know what happened to dissidents on Argentinan military flights in the 1970’s, what happened to farmers in Zimbabwe in the 1990’s, or why there were a lot fewer Tutsi in Rwanda after 1994. They’re so dumb they think rebellious English colonists spontaneously invented slavery in 1776. They don’t know a single example of evil except a single nasty German asshole from seventy years ago.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. So, everyone bad is Hitler. When I hear nitwits compare President Trump to Hitler because he reduced taxes, moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, or is insufficiently willing to seize private guns I know I’m in the presence of an idiot. Comparisons to Hitler are officially irrelevant.

Illinois Nazis: (See above.) In 1980 (38 years ago!) the Blues Brothers movie made fun of Illinois Nazis. The joke was this: a handful of uniform wearing nitwits were expounding their dumbass views but they were Nazis in Illinois in 1980. Everyone was inconvenienced and huffy. The Blues Brothers realized the “Nazis” were just a handful of losers and acted accordingly. They charged across a bridge in their battered cop car, terribly embarrassing the supposed superior race. The Blues Brothers didn’t fear they’d be shot, gassed, or bombed, like the real terrors of WW2. Why? Because these were Illinois Nazis.

Jake and Elwood were right. If there are Nazis in 2018 they are few, far between, and totally fucking irrelevant. Protesters dredge up the specter of this hated awful group as if they weren’t militarily defeated in 73 years ago. There’s probably just barely enough actual Nazis to form a bowling league. They’re outnumbered by Furries, octogenarian pianists, left handed master gardeners, and transvestite Latino bikers. I cannot fret about Nazis in 2018.

KKK in modern times: See everything I wrote about Illinois Nazis and apply it to the KKK in modern times. There can’t be enough real KKK members alive to fill a decent movie theater. Protesters act like they’re behind every tree. That’s stupid.

The only real KKK member I recall in my entire lifetime is Democratic Senator Robert Byrd. Byrd “served” in Congress for 57 years until he died in office in 2010. He was 92. He was a real actual Klansman (though repentant later on). He’s dead. He was the last Klansman worth fearing.

And now the short essay portion.

Movie Profits: The news will report; “‘Superheroes In Tights’ earned eighty gazillion dollars this week. It narrowly edged out ‘College Students Get Drunk’ which earned slightly less than expected. But hopes are high for a blockbuster return from today’s release of ‘Not Even Subtle Propaganda’.” So what? There is no reason whatsoever to care how much a movie makes.

How much an actor gets paid: Actor Strongjaw McGoodHair gets $50 million per minute while on the set of “Jackass VII, the Jackening”. Don’t care. It’s not my money. I don’t give a fuck.

What an actor thinks about politics: Actor Strongjaw McGoodHair is in movies. What’s the purpose of a movie? My amusement. He’s a dancing monkey that exists only to entertain me. Like a pet… but dumber and with less personal connection. His opinion on foreign policy, tax structures, or government representation are irrelevant.

Rich guys buying rich guy things: His yacht is made out of pure carbon fiber and it takes a crew of naked supermodels to operate the bilge pump; which is filled with champagne. Don’t care. It’s not my money.

Any opinion about what I need: I decide what I need. It’s my money and I’ll do what I want with it. Do I need a 400 horsepower engine, expensive bourbon, and a rifle that can explode a deer at 300 yards? I sure as hell do! In the interest of kindness I go out of my way to tolerate folks who need shit I abhor; gluten free cookies, soulless cars, music with autotuners, and lite beer.

I could go on forever but I’ve typed enough. Everyone get off my lawn.