Can We Walk It Back?
The Nuanced Answer To Making Stupidity Endemic
I really want to kick this off by saying this is as real as it gets. I don’t think I can keep this as diplomatic as I’ve posted in times past so there’s probably gonna be some crude language but before you click off to something else, know that I will try to keep it to a minimum because this requires some tough love and a few punches strategically-placed in order to get the point across and make it memorable. With that out of the way, let’s kick this thing off.
Alright, dammit, I pulled out metal, gloves are off and we’re about to go full-bore.
The reason I selected this part of my makeshift, dollar-store CD Storage Solution…I bought some small crates from Dollar Tree and put my CDs in it. They’re stackable so it works, kay? Cool. Anywhoozies, I selected one of the Metal shelves here and you’ll see bands like Acid Bath, White Zombie, Megadeth, Blue Oyster Cult Saxon and the two CDs at the front are Tom MacDonald’s Renegade and The Revolution, respectively. No, you can’t borrow those. They’re autographed. Get your own copies.
But why metal? Why not the goth stuff from before?
Because metal taught a hard lesson to the Stupid. The Stupid marched their self-righteous, wide-loaded asses into metal and objected to it being loud and offensive. Metalheads like myself told them to promptly fuck off, to get fucked and stay fucked.
The entire point to metal music is to be aggressive and to give a loud, sneering middle finger to conformist dickweeds such as these.
Hey, look, if you’re looking for mercy, crack open any version of The Holy Bible. The name’s Raven, not Jesus and admirable in some ways as his teachings were and could be were they followed by some, I’m not among that group so until you spot me walking on water or changing that same water into wine, I think we can drop that angle today? Besides, never been good at the water into wine thing. I once changed beer into milk (It Was An Accident!) and now I’m completely banned from the very bar that is now no longer in existence. Guess we’re even. Fuck ‘em.
Back to it. This is Rock N’ Roll and the older stuff is insanely good. Why? Because these guys wrote their own songs, they expressed themselves without fear or apologies and, furthermore, music just like what you see in that shelf unit pulled me through some of the harshest times I’ve ever been through and still does today.
Just yesterday, I walked into work listening to one of my favorite Metallica songs, Creeping Death. I know the source material from which the song derives but it’s still a bad ass song. I mean that one part that sounds like a death march in the song is pure gold and it was listened to to put me in the frame of mind that this is my damn day and I wasn’t going to be lightly putting up with anyone’s stupidity.
What kinds of stupidity am I talking about? I’ll break down one. See, we have an app where I work and I’m not kidding you, when we ask for it, the two most common responses are the following:
“Ah…left my phone in my car…I’m always forgetting it AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Only gets funnier every time you say it, bud…fuck’s sake.
“How do I get the app?”
At the retail level, I’m not exactly encountering Mensa candidates here. A technology that has been in existence and use for well over a decade and there are people who do not know how to get an app on their phones.
An honorable mention is, “I’m not good with technology.”
You just climbed out of a Tesla Cybertruck…
Here’s the thing, the way I was raised, you have to dress well, speak well, read well, solve problems well and present yourself well in order to have any success and I see that getting punished with excuses while the stupid are being absolutely rewarded.
Bringing us to our question, can we walk it back?
That’s the thing, I don’t know but I know that, if history is going to teach us anything, it’s when history gets revised, so does the entire world around us. Remember what I said yesterday about slogans and bumper-sticker logic? Same applies. We don’t have a system that rewards the things that smart, capable and intelligent people do so the running thought pattern is, “Why fucking bother?” As long as we reward and celebrate stupidity, we’re going to have more of it. It’s as simple as that but this is why it’s important to cede some ground now.
Now, after knowing what I’ve learned in the last few months about the abject nightmare things have actually become, I’m not getting on a fucking plane unless the emergency is dire and I have the cash to do it. Even if I had my own private jet, right now, the air traffic control industry is in dire straits. Last thing I would want or need is a pilot I had to hire getting wrong directions and having a mid-air, takeoff or landing collision. I’m just not taking that chance.
This all comes due to the lack of transparency there has been and I think it’s high time that some of the standards we have in our society return to form.
Hey, I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my life and every single time, it resulted in a lesson learned in the type of pain that Pinhead from Hellraiser would look at, look at his Lament Configuration Puzzle Box and toss it over his shoulder going “Nope, I’ve got fuckin’ nothing dude.” Pain can be a great teacher but we, as humans have done all things, anythings and everythings in order to get the hell away from pain. At the same time, we’ve done away with lessons learned and without that, people don’t become more intelligent. They’re too protected and, over time, they keep doing these stupid things and winding up in situations where someone bails them out of the onset of any trouble, hence the entitlement factor.
See, stupid people can be loud, obnoxious and think they’re non-conformists but they’re the status-quo and that’s the real issue.
Metal, also can be loud, sometimes obnoxious, sometimes it reveals atrocities. Take Slayer’s song from the album Reign In Blood called Angel of Death. That’s a song about the horrific experiments that Josef Mengele performed in the camps during the party’s reign in 1930s Germany. It’s not a song to celebrate him, it’s a song that, to me, condemns him. Slayer took that on fearlessly, loudly and head-on.
Just saying, if it weren’t for Slayer and Iron Maiden at some points, History class could have been a touch more difficult.
Metal: It’s Loud But It Has Substance.
The thing is, it’s not the first time metal music has been in the crosshairs. Music in the metal genre far more tame than that of today faced an actual Congressional Hearing.
Who led it then? Watch!
Frank Zappa and John Denver also testified. This was a hearing that you and I paid for. I’m not bullshitting you in the least. This is history that has been preserved. It can’t be wiped away and it happened a mere 40 years ago, probably less. At present, two of Metallica’s albums are almost as old as I am and I still listen to them.
The music and the lyrics are loud but when the bands deliver a message that’s spoken, you can see that they don’t get loud and hysterical about it. That’s what the music was for, leaving it all in an artistic expression to which you and I can relate but we may interpret something like Creeping Death by Metallica different. I might see it as a killer theme song to walk into work with, you might see it as a reinforcement of your faith if you’re Christian and both of those can be true at the same time.
Walking the stupid back is going to take some doing but there’s a way we can start and it’s actually pretty simple.
Adults, especially parents, start an EDC (Everyday Carry). Know the things you carry and why and tailor it to your specific situation and then expand a little to cover emergencies but the key thing, mindfulness.
Teaching mindfulness to your children and practicing it yourself prevents a lot.
What the two have in common is the same principle as when I dropped 40 pounds. Start small. I’ll show you my setup right here.
So what you see in these two pictures (save for my phone which isn’t pictured) All of these things are in my pockets at all times. Let me break down each item and why.
Wallet: Jeez, people, it holds your ID, your cash and your cards. Why would you not pack that with you?
Leatherman Wave: This bad boy is an entire toolkit. I’ve got the drive extender, bit kits and a spare flashlight on the side all in a (I’m not kidding) two-pound package on my belt.
Keys/Kubotan: The keys should be self-explanatory but I have some smaller light-weight tools on there. Got a Utilikey, a Swiss Army Minichamp and then I have the coupler because the Kubotan is a self-defense weapon and don’t let the little six-inch bar of aluminum with all the paint gone from it, the thing is a badass and if I decouple my keys during escalation, then my mind’s made up. It also helps carry plastic bags, breaks car windows to save pets and kids and operates as a probe for picking things up I’d rather not touch. While it’s a weapon, it’s also a multi-tool and I hope I never have to use it for defensive purposes but it’s there in case I ever do.
Bandanna: It’s a handkerchief, it’s a bag, it’s a rag, it’s a mask, it’s an eyepatch. It’s just a handy bit of cloth to have around and if you have one, you’re ahead of the game. I pick camo colors because they aren’t gang colors. Pretty simple.
Wallet II: This one doesn’t carry money but it carries a Swiss Army Compact Model, a Fisher Space Pen, flashlight (hey I’ve had one break down on me before when the battery went dead) a Rite In The Rain Notepad and some Gorilla tape wrapped around an old gift card. Just a wallet to keep things in my pockets from banging around.
Cellphone: This isn’t a gaming device or something for me to watch a bunch of shit on, it’s in my pocket as a music player AND communications device. I treat it like what it is, a tool for me to call for help or for updating and receiving updates.
All of this lives in my pockets and everything has a purpose. If someone needs a pair of scissors, I got you. If someone needs a knot undone, the corkscrew is a banger if you decide to use it like a Marlin Spike and it houses a tiny little screwdriver in that corkscrew to ensure the legs on my glasses stay right there on my face so I don’t get an eyeball full of the very thing that will ensure I won’t see a damn thing for a few hours, the sun.
That’s what works for my situation, now you’ll need to examine your own. The box? Got a waterproof box from Walmart to store it all in and, as you’ve seen, it all fits. Why store it all in a box like that? Simple, keeping it together means keeping it together. If you don’t have it together, you’ll leave your wallet at home and I did that a couple of times before I figured out that perhaps storing it all in one place and stuffing it all in my pockets before I leave the joint was a great idea. In any case, the important point: Prepare For Your Day!
If you’re prepped for your day, you’re prepped for nearly anything. Now look at other points in your life where maybe having a couple extra packs of water or a few extra packs of batteries might work.
Everything, if you can’t do it all at once, should just be done incrementally if for nothing else than to separate you from the completely stupid who absolutely refuse to get their shit together, making everyone else around them bend to their ineptitude.
Take it a step at a time, employ some of that other thing we all need to have a metric fuckload more of, patience. Look, in this fast-paced, up-to-the-fucking-nanosecond, instant-gratification, on-demand culture, is it any wonder some of us are worked the hell up? When’s the last time you were able to disengage and unplug for awhile.
In short, hold on to your horses, fucko and give someone a damn minute, willya?
Also, you might be late but I’d like to you get gander at this gaggle of gregarious gab.
“Piss Poor Prior Planning On Your Part Does Not Constitute An Emergency On Mine.”
These are the words of my father to me at a very young age when I’d frustrated him with something I’d probably just forgot to grab on the way out. Harsh words borne of frustration and they were directed at me. I took that day to reflect on him. Patient as he was with me, it had hard limits and I was reaching one of them fast. Didn’t take long but I decided to start packing things the day before and that way, grab and go.
Soon, he never had to utter that phrase ever again.
See, we may not be able to get relief on the stupid fast enough. There’s really only so much that our employees on The Hill can really do to turn the tide here, it’s really up to us. No one’s asking you to plan for Apocalyptic Events. Just prep for your day, then maybe try doing it for the week, then try the month if you want but try to live more mindfully and develop a random skill somewhere. Never know when it will be useful and that’s really where it begins and ends, with us.
We can hardly complain about the stupid around us if we’re not going to step in and do something about it. The only thing we can do is work on ourselves and when stupid games net stupid prizes, perhaps it’s best as we count among our responsibility to warn our fellow human beings about things and, if they choose to ignore salient advice, well let those lessons be painful…within reason.
Maybe we can’t cut stupid out like a cancer and send it to the incinerator but we can slow it’s metastasis. With more people doing things like this and possibly just being a bit more polite than we have been, we can set an example until this shit goes into remission at long last.
In the words of Chris Boden, “and that’s pretty cool!”
