Friday Open Forum: I’m a Moron, and You’ll Do Better

/ Jack Marshall

Life competence lesson learned: Always bring your cell phone.

Resisting “progress” on principle is a self-defeating and futile exercise, not to mention stupid. I find the cultural influences of smart phones particularly, cell phones generally, toxic, deplorable and obvious, as I have noted periodically here before. Thus I only use the thing when I have to, eschewing doing business on it, keeping my email account off of it, and restricting its use to online research and actual phone calls and texts. (I have never used the camera). The remote guidance system has been useful several times too, and would have saved me an ordeal last night. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t take my phone to a performance by the Georgetown Gilbert and Sullivan Society, still producing shows after 51 years (which is how long ago I founded the group as a defiant first year law student), because I detest hearing phones sound during theatrical performances, especially mine.

Everything was going swimmingly by the end of the evening: the oroduction of the musical “Cinderella,” was really good, the student talent was exhilerating, boding well for the group’s future, the audience was large and enthusiastic, and it was nice to have positive thoughts about the Law Center for a change. Then, a bit fatigued at 11:15 pm, I took the wrong exit on the way home (on a route I have navigated literally hundreds of times without incident) and ended up completely lost in the bowels of D.C.

Trust me, you don’t want to be in the bowels of D.C.

Even using the Capitol as a visual guide, it took me 45 extra minutes to find my way home, by which time I was furious at myself, hoarse from screaming epithets at the stop lights ( must have hit 20 of them), and worried about Spuds, who had already been traumatized by Grace’s disappearance and who had never been alone so long since we adopted him.

No, I do not have a good sense of direction (an understatement), and I have never been able to see street signs clearly at night. Obviously my phone’s GPS would have saved me time and terror.

I’m a moron.

Now please start discussing ethics while I continue to flagellate myself…

21 thoughts on “Friday Open Forum: I’m a Moron, and You’ll Do Better”

  3. Sooooo. What is going on with this eclipse? States are declaring states of emergency. I have been told that the National Guard is being deployed for ‘hazmat response’. I am being told that I need several weeks of food, extra gas for generators, and communications other than phone or internet. OK, but why? The media is hyping this as a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to see an eclipse, but we had one in 2017 and there is another one this good in 2045. 

    What is all the hype about? The options I have come up with so far are…

    (1) Smokescreen to deflect from how bad the economy is and how bad the Trump prosecutions are. Although the media keeps saying the economy is great, all he data says otherwise. With Jack Smith claiming that the Presidential Records Act doesn’t apply to Trump because if it did, he had no case isn’t good for the government case. The fact that he also needs to exclude Trumps current security clearance at the D. of Energy to prosecute him is also a problem. In Fulton County, GA, it was revealed that 147,000 mail-in ballots in 2020 did not have their signatures verified, those bins of ballots we saw on video coming out to count after the observers were removed WERE bins of ballots that were counted, there was no investigation of any of this, and there were NO chain of custody documents for any of the ballots (not that they didn’t preserve them, there never were any) in the 2020 election.

    (2) Our society has actually become so paganistic that eclipses are a major religious event again. The mystical excitement the media is claiming people are having about this hints at this. Niagra Falls declared a state of emergency and in the article about it, it was stated that for 30 minutes, the rays of the sun will not touch the earth and it described that in really spooky terms. It could just be that our elites have become so paganistic that eclipses are a big deal for them.

    (3) There is going to be a major terrorist attack on that day. We have been capturing a bunch of ISIS and other terrorists coming across the border. They have said that their goal was to make as many bombs as quickly as possible. We have had major communications outages recently across the country (most haven’t been widely publiciczed ) that could be trial runs for a bigger event. The hype would allow the government to blame it all on ‘the eclipse’. I have already heard mainstream media talk about how eclipses cause major interference with communications. 

    (4) States of Emergency are supposed to be for actual emergencies. I see no evidence that Indiana is having a major emergency right now. I see no evidence for an emergency in my state now. I see the casual declaration of States of Emergency as a problem because it gets people used to this happening all the time. Have we gotten so used to States of Emergency that eclipses now count? Will we get another State of Emergency before this election because of (checks Magic 8-ball)…bird flu that will determine the outcome of the election.

    As far as ‘once in a lifetime’? Either the media thinks we will all be dead before 2045 or they don’t know what the phrase means. Of course, they also don’t know the meaning of ‘freedom of speech’, ‘literally’, ‘existential threat’, and ‘democracy’, so ignorance is probably the answer to that one.

    You can consider these ‘conspiracy theories’. Whenever the official account makes no sense, ‘conspiracy theories’ need to circulate to try to give a rational explanation.

    Reply

    • Yeah, I wondered many of the same things. I attributed the superstition aspect to the, “Great Stupid”.

      I’m also questioning the state of emergency; it seem to be related to traffic. I drove down the interstate the other day and saw LED signs, “Eclipse Monday, Arrive Early / Stay Late.” When I first read it, I figured it was two messages and the, Arrive Early / Stay Late, was just the normal message for safety. But, it’s all one message.

      Once in a lifetime? Well, I’m in my late 60s and I’ve seen at least 3 – maybe not in the path of totality every time but at least once when I was in high school.

      The media is just a bunch of hype now. It’s just a solar eclipse. I had a person ask me if it was going to be dark all day. I said, “No, just a couple of hours.” – WTF – do people know anything any more?

      If it’s cloudy on Monday I’ll bet there will be some people asking to reschedule the eclipse for a nice weather day. LOL

      Reply

    • I’m not sure states of emergency are necessary, but I do understand some precautions.

      Traffic at key points in Indiana where there are eclipse events, such as Bloomington, could get severely congested and an extra presence could be necessary.

      Many schools are closed here in Indiana on Monday, despite the fact that most schools are out by the time the eclipse is scheduled to be its darkest. But having children board and disembark buses in the dark may involve safety concerns (though it doesn’t seem to be a concern during the Winter). Stupid drivers have a hard enough time paying attention to school zones and bus stops during the daytime.

      But some of this other stuff? Having emergency supplies on hand is just smart under normal circumstances. Why, specifically, should a couple of hours of darkness require extra fuel, generators and food?

      Reply

      • A good question is, why are they expecting 100,000’s of people to travel to Indiana (not to mention southeastern Oklahoma) for an eclipse? When has an eclipse been a ‘cancel work, take vacation time, and travel to the middle of nowhere for 30 min’ event? Do you really think that will happen? Have people gone insane or is it just that they do whatever the media tells them? 

        I remember solar eclipses as a child. At school, we put a pinhole in a piece of paper and used it to focus the image on the ground so we could safely watch it. Then we went back inside to continue school. I missed the eclipse in 2017 because of an unexpected e-mail.

        Reply

  4. We watched the ID documentary “Quiet on the Set: The Dark Side of Kids’ TV” this week. Nothing should be a surprise at this point. Predators go where there are prey and child predators go where they will have access to vulnerable children, preferably in a position of authority or influence.

    While appalling as it was to know what was happening on Nickelodeon’s sets, it was worse watching as the adults described lame-brained decisions. This, dear readers, is exactly why Hollywood is corrupt and bereft of most ethical values. 

    When you listen to two full-grown women explain how they accepted a split salary because writing for the network was their big break, on top of submitting to juvenile jokes and cruel demands by their boss, you want to yell at the television, “Were you nuts?”

    It gets worse as you become aware that untold numbers of adults watched adolescent girls give creator Dan Schneider massages and were either too intimidated or too obtuse to realize how inappropriate it was.

    Clip after clip of middle school girls mimicking sexual pleasure, being hit with water or other liquids in the face and squeezing a large potato are icky, to be sure. Former Nickelodeon TV host Marc Summers watches a clip and seems surprised that something like that got shown. Did he not watch his own network’s shows? Did Network execs not watch their own shows? The parents of the kid actors? Parents of children watching the shows at home?

    A mother of a child actress reveals she had wanted to be an actress herself but her own mother had experience with the behind-the-scenes aspect of the business and refused to allow her to do it. So when she had her own daughter who then expressed interest in acting, Mom let her go for it. She let her audition! She let her get roles! She let her befriend and exchange emails with an adult crew member! She let the adult male crew member play video games in her daughter’s bedroom. 

    Wait…what?

    Fortunately, the daughter and mother had healthy enough communication skills that when the man sent the child a naked picture of himself, Mom was told right away. 

    And didn’t call the cops. 

    “Show business parents are like rabbits on a highway at night. Bright lights blind them.” ~ A Minor Consideration. 

    The most heartbreaking story of all is the tale of Drake Bell. His divorced father, Joe, wanted something to do to spend time with Drake so Dad took him to auditions. Drake hit it big on Nickelodeon. Dad, however, felt uncomfortable with his son’s dialogue coach and occasional on-screen participant Brian Peck. Peck spent a lot of time with Drake, seemed to go out of his way to visit him, come to his dressing room, touch his arms and shoulders a lot. When Joe expressed concern about this, he was told that Peck was gay and was just a touchy-feeling kind of guy. If Joe had a problem with that, he must be homophobic. 

    Yep, Joe said he was called homophobic because he felt that a full-grown man shouldn’t be touching his adolescent son so much.

    He tamped down on expressing his concerns when he saw he was being ostracized on set. Then Peck began whittling away at the trust between father and son, telling Drake that Dad was mismanaging his money, that no one on set liked his father and other lies meant to distance them from each other. When Drake inevitably decided he didn’t want his father as his manager anymore – see how easy it is to influence teenagers into making significant life-altering decisions when you cut the parent out of the equation (especially when you identify a weak link like Drake’s mother whose divorce from Joe had been difficult)? – Joe warned Mom that she should avoid letting Drake be alone with Peck.

    But, ya know, Mom didn’t like to drive in Los Angeles and they lived an hour away so it was just more convenient to let her son be picked up by good ole touchy-feely Brian. In fact, it was even more convenient if Drake spent nights on Brian’s couch so there wouldn’t be so much time wasted commuting.

    Which is where Drake found himself being sexually assaulted by Peck one night.

    I do recommend watching all of this. It was so popular that a new installment is supposed to air this Sunday. 

    This the industry that produces entertainment for Americans. The people that we trust with making appropriate entertainment for children. These are the people that think they know what’s best for our country and throw their money and influence behind organizations and political candidates that support their worldview.

    And what a worldview it is!

    Reply

  5. I recommend this short documentary (25 minutes) that does a nice job of cataloging and correlating the COVID responses from the feds that were so incompetent. The title is actually a little misleading, because the film does not cut Pres. Trump that much slack in the process. None of this comes as a surprise to me, but I was involved in vaccine litigation from 20 years ago with the military’s mandatory anthrax vaccine, and saw all of this play out before. worth your time if you are interested in how we ended up dumping almost all of our previously established guidance on dealing with a pandemic in favor of ruinous policies that had little to no effect on the course of the disease.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjadCd0VRBw

    Reply

    • A secondary tragedy is that this was the last straw that basically destroyed modern science. Modern science was on the ropes already with Global Climate Change cult, but the ‘the Science’ cult finished everything off. When the editors of major science journals bowed to government pressure to change papers, when they published papers knowing they were lies and slandering people speaking the truth, when they refused to speak out about ignoring what is known about social distancing, lockdowns, and masking, it destroyed all credibility in science. 

      I wonder if this was intentional. The ruling class has been trying to destroy all intermediate institutions, leaving only ‘the government’. They destroyed the churches, the family, and now science.

      Reply

  7. College Player Prop Bets Ban Really Cost Sportsbooks $200 Million

    Allowing a system which could easily target low NIL earning players? What could possibly go wrong?

    77Zoomie…yer up!

    PWS

    Reply

  8. Getting lost the way you did, on a route you’ve traveled hundreds of times without incident, is a classic manifestation of grief. Wishing you well.

    Reply

  9. DC is the most incomprehensible place to drive I have been. My wife and I found that out, to our woe, on a visit to Annapolis that featured a “day trip” to DC (one that consumed far more vacation time than visiting the monuments or the Smithsonian.

    I share your pain. Fortunately, I expect never to have to do so again.

    Reply

  10. the district of confusion’s street layout is great

    if your a dark sorcerer wanting wander the symbols

    I only go in during daylight.

    Reply

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