A MarketPlace of Ideas                        

One of the funniest crook stories I ever heard was the story of how a ranger had been called out to capture and transfer a bobcat to a more appropriate location.  The only thing the ranger had to put the bobcat in was a toolbox.  He did so after capturing it and left it in his truck.  While he was away from his truck a couple of car thieves made off with truck and contents.  They found the truck skidded off of the road with the interior bloodied up.  Seems the greedy crooks had opened the toolbox while driving. The bobcat was of course highly annoyed at having been in the box and proceeded to go medieval on them.  Note this story was told to me in 1990 before the internet so it must be true.

The practical fact is its lame being a follower.  That’s what you are doing when you play for acceptance.  I had a friend in middle and high school. His name was Nick.  Nick was always thinking about what was cool.  He had a black leather jacket.  He was an adrenaline junky. He liked his rushes.  He was my best friend all through that time.   When we graduated high school I went off to college.  After a couple of years he headed out to San Francisco. Do you KNOW how uncool it is to be such a follower ? ….latching onto every lame fad and fashion including global warming? A person is never so uncool as when they are playing for acceptance. Go your own way. Think for yourself for a change.  You will wonder how your life got so much better! Nick should have learned that from me.  When we were in high school he got into trouble on various occassions.  I had a knack of knowing when he was up to something and finding something else to do.  He and another friend of his used to act like I was not cool.  I didn’t care.  Because my ego is big enough to accept that others don’t approve of me for one reason or another.  In fact its one of my most self cherished traits to be so stubborn and so confident and self assured.  But Nick did not learn.  About 1987 he called me up and asked for money.  I poor mouthed and said I did not have any. Later I found out he loaned some money off of his brother and did not pay it back. He went to San Francisco.  Up to that time he had managed his risks and come through untouched.  But Nick loved his rushes.  And he did not have the self discipline that comes from being "uncool" and saying no when its the right thing to do.  So he ended up shooting up meth with one of his cohorts up there.  Only problem was he didn’t take the time to get his own needle.  Any needle would have done.  He probably could have soaked any old needle out of the dump in Clorox making sure to pump it through the needle.  But no that would have been uncool.  And nothing got in the way of being uncool for Nick.   I mean really even if you’re a tweaker you don’t have to be stupid. So he ended up with HIV.   Since he had tried to rip me off he never called.  I never called him because my spider sense that I had developed around him in high school told me not to.  There is no helping an accident waiting to happen.  Believing in global warming makes you look like a true sap.  But let me repeat there is no time when you are more uncool as when you are following the crowd.  Especially if a needle is involved.

And I do mean environ-MENTAL-ists. Global Warming is a scam and the people who believe it are hysterically uncool. They elect themselves petroleum hall monitors and try to bully the other kids with their hall monitor environmental badges.  I imagine Paul of the Wonder Years tv show including the mouth breathing.  Nothing is so uncool as when a person goes with the current trend.  Yes nothing is as gauche as being a follower. Energy prices are only going to get better if we drill drill drill for oil everywhere we can including ANWAR and the continental shelf of the USA. Now I can hear the reader saying but we can not because of environ-MENTAL reasons.   The reader should hear the future answering very loudly: JUST WAIT TILL THEY GET TIRED OF THE HIGH PRICES OF GAS.   No amount of green talk bamboozlement with K-Y Jelly for lubrication is going to make this canard work after a while. I predict we will soon we will solve the energy problems by burning environmentalists at the stake to heat our homes.  I love to hear them scream!

Its said that there are approximately 20 delicately balance variables that determine the balance of the universe we live in.  Its also said that if any one of them were different we would live in a very different universe. I have a slightly different reaction.  If all these constants need to be so delicately balanced it seems more probable they result from a single underlying reality that results in their values.