...Because Joe Rogan

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This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"I talk shit for a living — that’s why this is so baffling to me. If you’re taking vaccine advice from me, is that really my fault? What dumb shit were you about to do when my stupid idea sounded better?" -Joe Rogan

Dear Grandstickies, Great-Grandstickies, Gentlereaders (and Neil Young),

I'm certain that there are very few H. sapiens that are not familiar with the fact that the Donald — and no shortage of other famous ancient Boomers — can't shut up, get out of the way, and find a way to amuse him/her or themselves without requiring a spotlight and an audience to get through the day. 

May I respectfully suggest:

 

Kids and grandkids? 

Philanthropy (without the need to fashion yourself a self-made expert on everdamnthing and who must share your wisdom and guidance with the little people, like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg?).

Good ol' fashioned drug abuse and sexual debauchery?

New fangled, high-minded drug use? Contribute to/participate in the cutting-edge research being done with psilocybin by reputable scientists that are having amazing, life-altering, highly positive results? 

{Ahem.}

Sorry, what I had intended to say next was that there are probably people not familiar with the (now fading) use of the phrase, ...because Trump, a joking reference to the fact some people blamed the Donald, and many still do, for everything that is wrong with/goes wrong on the planet Earth. 

Thanks to Neil Young, and some fellow perpetual teenagers, ...because Joe Rogan appears to have at least temporarily displaced ...because Trump in certain circles. Not to worry Trumpeters and Trumpettes, I'm certain that the Donald will say/do something appalling enough to displace Mr. Rogan sooner or later. 

But just now, even National Progressive Radio has noticed, and is worried about the impact of, Mr. Rogan -- a sorta/kinda Eric Hoffer of the new millennium -- on the zeitgeist. 

Just the other day I was sitting in the parking lot of my local Gordon Food Service store prior to entering and purchasing a mess o' Purnell's Old Folks sausages (it's "goood-od") — if they were in stock and before the price rises yet again (tip o' the hat to Uncle Joe) — and listening to some over-enunciating women and soy-boy sounding men discussing the Rogan/Young kerfuffle. 

{A brief description of said kerfuffle for the unaware would seem to be in order.} 

Good point, Dana.

Joe Rogan is the host of a wildly successful, long-form podcast (2 - 4 hours) that's simply about Mr. Rogan shooting the sh... breeze with a guest or guests about something that Mr. R. finds interesting, relevant, and/or is curious about.

Rogan is an open-minded, intelligent, man with Deplorable roots who's interested in and curious about a wide range of subjects. He's also a successful comedian and actor with a mixed martial arts background who recently fled Wokistan (California) and now resides in Texas. 

He's not officially a liberal, a progressive, nor a conservative. He's Joe Rogan. He leans left. He's got some questions, he's got some opinions.

Neil Young is a 76-year-old "rocker." He's upset about a couple of Rogan's shows/guests whose Covid opinions don't jive with those of the 81-year-old Anthony Fauci (which may or may not have shifted ,yet again, since these particular shows hit the web). So he played the Covid Disinformation card and demanded that Spotify drop Rogan or stop playing Mr. Young's music. 

Some of his fellow seventy-something "rockers" did the same thing. Spotify wished them well and complied with their wishes; the planet is still spinning.

Mr. Rogan, whose audience keeps growing as much of corporate media continues to implode, is currently under attack by a mob of torch and pitchfork-wielding Wokies, an offensive being led by his Lamestream competitors. 

He's gotta go, and not just because of this particular incident. 

He's an unashamed traditional man and rejects the teachings of the Wokies. He's obviously a nice guy that loves his life, his wife, and his kids. He's grateful for and amazed by his success and regularly points out he's as fallible as you and me so please take him, and anything you hear on his show, with a grain of salt.  

But because of his hoooge following, he's probably/hopefully impossible to cancel... which does not endear him to certain Neo-Jacobins ...because Joe Rogan. 

However, that hasn't stopped them from trying, or from large schools of digital pilot fish stalking him around the Dizzinformation Ocean. 

According to AmericanMind.org, "a media organization called PatriotTakes published a supercut [compilation video] of Rogan saying 'the n-word.'" I went looking and discovered that PatriotTakes has a YouTube channel with nothing on it but a brief introductory video  — about PatriotTakes. They have a webpage that consists of the same video — and a brief pitch soliciting donations. American Mind says they receive money from a shady SuperPAC called MediasTouch. 

Ain't democracy, transparency, and social media in modern America great! I can't find the original video on YouTube, but there are plenty of videos about the video because Joe Rogan.

What's important is the fact that a cracker used that word at all; the actual context is irrelevant. Virtue signaling and/or accumulating readers or viewers is all that matters. Find a dog bites man angle and damn the facts! Full speed ahead! Keep stirring the shyte or you're gonna have to get a real job. 

No less a beloved, storied institution than Inside Edition has reported that internationally renowned thespian and public intellectual, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, is upset about the crisis and has canceled his wildly anticipated cage match with Joe "The Racist" Rogan.  

 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Hopin' For Some Global Warming

A Mr. Cranky's neighborhood episode. 

15% more words this week at no extra charge!

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent." -Dave Barry 

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

Unhappily, Neo-Hooterville was hammered by a horrendous heavy snowfall followed by single-digit temperatures not long ago. The majority of the resulting iceberg-covered sidewalks are still untouched by human hands or feet and I'm hopin' for some global warming because for some reason, this, or something very much like it, happens every year. 

As this is being written we're eagerly anticipating the arrival of a few days of temperatures in the balmy low-forties that the weatherpersons are predicting. Fingers crossed.

But as everyone knows, malevolent butterflies on the other side of the world regularly get together in the parking lots of their favorite bars after closing time and flap their wings so as to screw up the predictions of American meteorologists.

Personally, I think the Pooteen or Xi Dada is behind this phenomenon, maybe both of 'em.   

 

Nowadays, as you might imagine, passable driveways are important, sidewalks not so much. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled back in 1993 that homeowners have no legal obligation to shovel their sidewalks and no shortage of Hootervillians take them at their word.

However...

A gaggle of aggravated citizens that managed to get out of their driveways showed up at a city council meeting to demand that the "city" should clear their sidewalks for them. I wasn't there but I'll betcha a bottle-a-pop the fact that Hooterville has been shrinking for years and can't afford to properly maintain the sidewalks currently hidden under the frozen tundra was not discussed. 

And...

I know for a fact that no one suggested merging with other surrounding "cities" and townships that have the same/similar problem(s) and should've joined forces a looong time ago.

{If you weren't there how do you know they didn't?} 

It's the local equivalent of saying Voldemort out loud, Dana, it just isn't done. 

On the other hand...

The good news is that the Hooterville School System, which has been on fiscal watch or in fiscal emergency (with the exception of 2016 - 2019) every year since 2003, was officially released from its current fiscal emergency on 1/27. 

Go Dragons!   

Unfortunately, at nearby Youngstown State University, which despite quite reasonable tuition rates (comparatively speaking at least), enrollment is so far down this year (I can't imagine why) some academic programs and staff have both been cut. Fortunately, the budget for the athletics program was increased by $885,000.

Go Penguins! 

The condition of the campus sidewalks after our recent blizzard made the local news. One freshperson was quoted as saying, “The roads and the sidewalks were disgusting...and it was definitely a slipping hazard for some of the people that have disabilities on campus.”

I know what you're thinking, gentlereaders, why didn't they pass out snow shovels to the students with athletic scholarships and tell them to have at it? I'll betcha a box-a-donuts it's against union rules.

{Feelin' folksy this week, Homer? I know for a fact you came up on the mean streets of Pittsburgh, and Sister Mary Mcgillicuddy taught you not to drop letters when pronouncing words.}  

   

Dang straight. I call it muh Dan Rather, pre-packaged folksy quips strategery. He's got FU-level wealth and he's still workin' at 90 in spite of the Killian controversy. I need a new columnist's chair, and I don't know how much longer my ol' space heater is gonna' hold up.   

{Do you smell smoke?}

Which brings us to Duuude, Dude's little brother and one of the Stickies that reside here at Casa dé Chaos.   

Duuude, who only a few months ago was a tiny kid with a big heart (that he wore on his sleeve), is now a broad-shouldered young man with a topknot and a big heart (that he wears on his sleeve) who once tried out for the middle school football team but was defeated by a combination of 90° weather and a mild case of asthma. 

Now in high school, while lifting weights in an afterschool program he was recruited to play football next season for Hooterville High by the coach. 

A lot of kids young men who have been on the team since ninth grade are graduating this year and there's a dearth of volunteers clamoring to replace them. Nowadays, all sorts of parents would prefer that schools switch to playing flag football, even in Hooterville. 

So the coach is doing what a high school coach has gotta do, find replacements wherever he/she/they can. Duuude is training hard four days a week after school and loving it. He's also discovered what his mom uses Epsom salts for. 

The morning after we got six feet of snow, and before the dramatic temperature drop the next night, Duuuude and a buddy were out shoveling sidewalks and getting all the work they could handle. I thought it was only for the money but I later found it was homework assigned by the coach. 

It seems he also acts as a life coach who has taken it upon himself to instruct his charges in the sort of old-fashioned values and virtues, like community service, that I thought would get him censored by the teachers union or the school district.

"He's an older guy, like you, Poppa." 

It would seem that our tiny high school could teach our local mid-sized college some big lessons. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

P.S.1 As I put the finishing touches on this missive a new winter weather advisory is in effect. As my cursor hovers over the publish button there's an additional three feet of snow on Hooterville's sidewalks.

P.S.2 Apropos of nothing above, recently some world-class economists released a meta-study, a study of studies, that concludes that lockdowns didn't do much to stop the spread of Wuflu, but did cause a great deal of collateral damage. 

This story has received almost no coverage by our (alleged) news media. 

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Wouldacouldashoulda

Hooked on drugs phonics profits

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"I have worked out that I am virtually Chinese, because everything I own is from China." -Sean Lock

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

I'm so old that I can remember when Chairman Mao's Little Red Book went on sale here in the home of the free and the land of the brave. 

Given the fact China has rapidly gone from an enormous, dirt poor, overpopulated, retro-kingdom run by a ruthless emperor to an enormous, rich, fertility challenged, postmodern kingdom that's embraced capitalism/mercantilism with "Chinese characteristics" run by a different ruthless emperor... 

"...mercantilism, economic theory and practice common in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century that promoted governmental regulation of a nation’s economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers." -britanica.com

...I wonder if Henry the K suffers from Wouldacouldashoulda Syndrome?

{What on Earth are you...}  

Time for a long story short, Dana. 

In 1949 Mao Zedong (a.k.a. Chairman Mao) and his merry band of communists won the Chinese Civil War, set up a socialist paradise, and Mao became the first emperor mentioned above. But you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs and by the time he dropped dead in 1976: 

"The government was responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution, prison labour, and mass executions." -Wikipedia

The Little Red Book, a.k.a. Quotations of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, was/is a compilation/distillation of the wit and wisdom(?) of the emperor, a collection of quotable quotes to guide the lives of the peasantry. It was eventually distributed globally and literally was/is a little red book. 

Ironically, early editions are now collector's items in certain capitalist circles.

{Was/is?} 

It's still for sale, and there are various versions of Maoism/Maoists loose in the world although China now regards Mao as a lovable but crazy uncle who made some honest mistakes. Nowadays, the Chairman is a tourist attraction. 

 China's current emperor, Xi Jinping, a.k.a. Xi Dada, a.k.a. Winnie the Pooh...

has, so far at least, killed a lot less people. His cutting-edge surveillance state that the FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and the Goog), so far at least, can only dream of makes it possible to enslave his techno-peasants with much less wetwork, with the notable exception of the Uyghurs. 

But they're not actually Chinese, so... and are in process of being swallowed whole like the Tibetans before them.    

Henry the K(issenger), repeatedly declared the H. sapien with the most boring voice on the planet Earth by the Guinness people...

{You made that up!}

Perhaps. In his defense permit me to point out that he's allegedly a ladies man, or at least he was, but that would prove that women are biologically attracted to men of power and accomplishment regardless of...

{Would you stop!}

What? I was just going to point out that this serves to keep those of us who have never been famous for our good looks to strive for power and accomplishment... or at least to try and convince the ladies we're bad boys. Anyway, Mr. Kissinger is, and will forever be, famous for being the diplomat that "opened" China, among many other accomplishments. 

Big BUT...  

Given what's happened since, I wonder if he's ever subject to bouts of Wouldacouldashoulda syndrome given that Cold War II has broken out and our adversary is much more powerful than in the last cold war. Well, at least we don't need a younger version of Mr. K. to declare peace in some Vietnam-like situation and then get out of Dodge. So far at least. 

{What about Afscamistan?}

All that was declared this time was that we fucked up again and we're outta here by both the Donald and Uncle Joe... who preceded to fuck up the fleeing.

{GASP! Didn't you write somewhere this is a family-friendly column?}

I believe I used the phrase "well, mostly".

In case you somehow missed the intensive coverage by the American media, in other news from the Middle Kingdom, a former NBA player, Sonny Weems, who nowadays plays for the Guangdong Southern Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association was verbally assaulted after a recent matchup with the Liaoning Flying Leopards.

 According to Vice.com, "Racial slurs against Black people are commonly seen on the internet and often ignored by censors [the emperor's minions] who otherwise diligently remove politically sensitive content."

And people claim there's no such thing as free speech in China. 

I went a-googlin' and curiously, as far as I can tell, neither the NBA nor LeBron James has commented or issued statements about the matter. Go figure... 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Feel free to comment and set me straight on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays, other things other days. Cranky don't tweet.