Fake It Till You Make It

A royal proclamation from the king

Photo by Bret Kavanaugh on Unsplash

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

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination." 

                                                                           -George Benard Shaw

{Artificial hallucination?}

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

If one goes a googlin' and enters the aphorism fake it till you make it, a plethora of contradictory hits pop up. There are believers, nonbelievers, and a Wikipedia entry that will inform you that there's a band and a tv series named same. 

"Fake it till you make it" (or "Fake it until you make it") is an English aphorism which suggests that by imitating confidence, competence, and an optimistic mindset, a person can realize those qualities in their real life and achieve the results they seek." -Wikipedia

{What's an aphorism, a type of astigmatism?}

"An aphorism is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. ...The concept is distinct from those of an adage, brocard, chiasmus, epigram, maxim (legal or philosophical), principle, proverb, and saying; some of these concepts are types of aphorism." -Wikipedia

{There's something really, really wrong with you, you know that?}

As you know, Dana, while others ran for president last year I ran for king. Although I pledged to be a benevolent monarch who would submit himself to a He Stays or He Goes Referendum after two years in office, my campaign failed.

 

My obvious mistake was the promise of a referendum. People with actual lives who are not obsessed with politics and/or who resist the current trend to politicize everdamnthing are already tired of hearing about next year's midterm election.

{Yeah... that must be it. I'm already tired of hearing about the election of 2024. Are you sneaking up on an actual point of some sort?} 

Certainly. My point is that I've decided to start issuing royal proclamations, acting as if I'm America's monarch. I'm faking it till I make it.

By way of review, in the past, I've mentioned that if I were king: America would be closed on Sundays, I would impose federal term limits on Congress, federal elections would take place over the course of a four day weekend holiday (Saturday thru Tuesday) and that early voting is gone, absentee voting highly restricted.

Also: impose a radically simplified tax code with a sorta/kinda flat tax of two or three tiers and few if any deductions, restrict abortions to 12 weeks (possibly 15 in the unlikely event the Supremes rule that the new Mississippi law is cool), and the phrase have a nice day will officially be changed to have an OK day.   

My first official proclamation as the king who is faking it till he makes it concerns bringing back the use of stocks (but not pillories, a bridge too far). 

{What on Earth are you...}

Henceforth let it be known throughout the Republic that the king has reinstituted the use of stocks but forbids the use of the pillories. Stocks will be installed in an appropriate location. Public buildings with large, ornate lobbies are highly recommended. 

A convicted blackguard/ne'er do well/jagoff, at the discretion of a judge, may be sentenced to serve time in indoor, publicly visible stocks, but never overnight.

Stock time may be in addition to incarceration but must be served first. Stock time after serving time would be like kicking an H. sapien when he/she/they are already down. Stock time is encouraged for crimes that involve one citizen deliberately victimizing another via fraud, bullying resulting in measurable damage, physical violence, etc. 

Please note: Speech is not a form of violence.   

The use of the stocks is encouraged for minor offenses that don't merit incarceration but clearly merit attempting to get the offender's attention. The stocks are highly recommended for attempting to steer adolescents back onto the straight and narrow.   

Royal Proclamation 1a., On Hate Crimes. Henceforth, all hate crime statutes are repealed. A crime is a crime. 

H. sapiens are incapable of reading each other's thoughts. H. sapiens aren't very good at guessing each other's motivations. Actions speak louder than thoughts or words (you may have heard this). If there's a crime it's in the action, attempting to apply thoughts as aggravating factors is politically correct nonsense. 

Trying to suss out thoughts and motivations should be left to judges and juries, not virtue signaling legislators.

Speaking of virtue signaling, please note that I not only don't refer to myself as we, I deliberately don't/won't capitalize king so as to show solidarity with all the little people.       

      

Addendum: On a related note...

Until recently, my take on publicly active and taxpayer-supported royal families was that they were, at best, parasitic anachronisms. Case in point, not so bonny Prince Harry, a product of royal privilege, calling our First Amendment "bonkers."  

Proving, once again, the importance of immigration restrictions. 

However, thanks to the wit and wisdom of polymath Stephen Fry, my position has softened. We were having a drink down at the pub and he pointed out that in a constitutional monarchy the Crown serves to remind people that they share in a common tradition, and provides the pomp, circumstance, and ceremonies that many people find both uniting and enjoyable.

Rather like people standing for the National Anthem before they realized America is the work of the devil.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Implicit Bias Training

Image by John Hain from Pixabay 

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

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"Racism must be continually identified, analyzed and challenged; no one is ever done." -Robin DiAngelo, Ph.D. — Critical and Racial Justice Educator

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

I'm retired so if my luck holds I won't be subjected to Implicit Bias training. 

Not from an awokened employer, or an employer who must pretend to be, so as to avoid being turned over to the Intersectional Inquisition by an unhappy customer or a crafty competitor, 

Or worst of all, 

A mob of enlightened employees still fresh from a successful recent indoctrination by a college, university, or even high school. 

Phew. 

To be completely candid, even if I were still working I might dodge this particular bullet as my white privilege apparently got lost in the mail. 

The biologically female half of the Billary, sociologist Hillary Clinton, took it upon herself to enlighten the masses and make them aware of this social pathology (from which no shortage of Citizens of the Republic suffer) and invented a name for those poor souls in its grip, the deluded Deplorables. 

These are the same people that Barack Obama, being a better politician, called the Bitter Clingers, a slightly less offensive term. Seeking a comment, I was able to get him on the phone for a minute when, feeling zany, he was personally answering calls made to the landline of his $12,000,000 vacay cottage in Martha's Vineyard.

He politely explained that he didn't really have time to talk just then as "some bigwig from Netflix" was on the other line about an "issue" with the Netflix children's show that he and Michelle's production company, Higher Ground, put together called Waffles and Mochi to teach people how to eat properly.

{You made that up!} 

No, I didn't, Dana, it's really called Waffles and Mochi. 

Sorry, where was I?  Oh yeah, I imagine/hope that the very last Citizens of the Republic that will be subject to Implicit Bias Training (IBT) — which, I understand, ain't cheap — will be the working stiffs who get their hands dirty while earning their daily bread and/or who can't do their jobs sitting in front of a computer while wearing no pants. And it's not just the cost. 

Any employer of Deplorables with a clue understands that his/her/their help, regardless of what identity boxes they check (or are stuffed into by "experts"), will see through the scam and that any given he/she/they would find IBT as ridiculous as an ancient forklift safety video ported from film to a current video format. 

Although everyone enjoys watching that dude drive his forklift off of a loading dock, time is better served by getting back to the floor, the line, the machine, the dock, the truck, etc., ASAP.

{Scam!?!}

Yeah, Dana, scam. Although I must admit I'm a bit jealous. It's an extremely lucrative scam that I don't think causes much personal damage. If I had a relevant degree I could cash in and I might even be able to justify perpetrating it to myself, from a moral perspective I mean.

But then again, the boss, be it a corporate weenie, or just a mere small business owner that survived last year's peaceful protests and has hung on by his/her/their fingernails through the Wuflu plague might take its effects on morale and productivity personally.    

Scam? 

Yup. 

As any more or less grownup with a pulse is aware, everyone on the planet Earth has biases, they're one of the reasons Mother Nature hasn't been able to delete us (so far...). 

Gorg know hunting and gathering in dark bad. Big, bad, hungry animals see better in dark than Gorg, eat Gorg. Gorg no hunt in dark, even when Gorg have munchies. Gorg keep eye out for animals allatime. Bias maybe keep Gorg alive. 

In 1998 Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, social psychologists, unleashed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) on the world. Now it can be proved scientifically which racists are hiding in the woodpile of your seemingly respectable firm/gummit agency/school/etceterool. 

A multi-million buck business is born. 

Now you can hire experts to flush out all the racists in your organization and retrain, heal, or fire them before the Inquisitional Inquisition comes knocking on your door.

Greenwald and Banaji published a best-selling book, Blindspot, in 2013 and shared their groundbreaking findings with the world. In 2015 they wrote a paper debunking their own test. If you'd like to find out exactly why there's a ton of relevant articles available online including this one.  

  

The bad news is that the test isn't reliably indicative of anything. The worse news is (unless you're one of the scam artists) is that the industry it created continues to thrive.

Addendum: On a related note... 

You may have heard that in 2015 a group of scientists calling themselves The Open Source Collaboration claimed that the results of better than half of the results of 100 Psych studies they looked into couldn't be replicated. A "replication crisis" hit the headlines. 

In 2016, four PhDs, two from Harvard, looked into this study of studies and said it was bonkercockie. That it was riddled with errors and there was no replication crisis. 

In late 2016, an article in the Atlantic reported on another, extensive study of studies that debunked the debunkers... at least I think so. I read the article two or three times and I'm not exactly sure.

But I don't even have an associate degree so, grain of salt gentlereaders, grain of salt.  

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Cultural Marxism and Wikipedia

From a concept to a conspiracy  

Image by diema from Pixabay

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

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy."  -Fidel Castro

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

Cultural Marxism, at least according to the very first hit returned when I recently googled the phrase, is a conspiracy theory. To be specific, Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory - Wikipedia, was what popped up.

Now, I link to Wikipedia entries regularly; I love the concept of Wikipedia.   

An attempted compendium of all knowledge compiled, edited, and updated by volunteers that is in a constant state of flux because we're all floating upon, swimming in, or living on the shores of the ever-rising Information Ocean is an interesting and worthy experiment. 

BIG BUT. 

Wikipedia is by nature and definition bound to be controversial. But it's easy to make the case that given the danger of being caught in an information tsunami and the limits of traditional encyclopedias that something new is called for.

However, if Wikipedia is the answer to taming the dissonance-inducing Dizzinformation Age that we're trying to cope with, even those young enough to take it for granted and who find it slightly less disorienting than the rest of us, it's got a ways to go. 

In spite of that, and knowing that its entries on specific people are notoriously unreliable, I donated a few bucks here and there because I regularly use it and I wished to support the experiment. I'm personally aware of the fact that good writing is hard work and that a lack of material support in any creative endeavor is hard on the heart.  

Unfortunately, Wikipedia has awokened. That is to say, has adopted the set of fundamental precepts of a secular religion, Wokism. Wokism, like any religion, filters everything through its dogma and ideology and is a religion I don't care to support either financially or rhetorically. 

I'm not going to expand on those precepts in this particular column, I'm merely going to provide an example that illustrates my point.

{So far this sounds a bit highfalutin for the likes of you.} 

Sad but true, Dana. Let's hope it doesn't last.   

Long story short, there is no hooge, mind-numbing philosophical tome titled Cultural Marxism. The phrase is more of a reaction to various forms of Wokism, often critical in nature, but/and means different things to different people.

{But/and?}

Lowfalutin enough for ya?

However, Cultural Marxism, according to Wokepedia, is officially a far-right conspiracy theory. Now, given its open-ended meaning, I'm certain there's no shortage of far-right wackadoos espousing their version of it.

However, more than a few H. sapiens, including this one, define the term in a way that we consider to be both rational and reasonable. Given that there's no mention of this/us in the Wikipedia entry, I can't help but wonder if deliberately presenting a one-sided view of a multidimensional concept is where the actual conspiracy lies.    

{Well, I'll probably regret this but I'll bite, how do you define Cultural Marxism?}

Well, it's complicated but...

[Ah geez...]

But, quite simply I'd say it neatly sums up the fact Wokeness is merely a version of Marxism in which the fundamental precept, the bourgeoisie v. the proletariat, has been replaced by the Pasty Patriarchical Hegemonistic Euroimpirialists v. everyone else. 

Or, as one Jermister defines it in the urbanDICTIONARY, "Cultural Marxism is a term used to describe the idea that our society is best interpreted as being a power struggle between different identity groups or cultures (women, men, gay, straight, black, white)."  

Jermister adds that "Cultural Marxists hunt relentlessly to find things to be offended about, and claim to speak on behalf of all oppressed groups, though most of the time cultural marxists are rich, privileged, upper and middle class white college women with multicolored hair."

Pat Condell, a fellow certified crank, provides my personally favorite explanation in the following video, The Curse of Cultural Marxism. Favorite line: "Progressive is a kind of mutation from liberal, like a cancerous growth on the liberal ethos."

America is in trouble. A country made up of people of other cultures from all over the world needs to more or less agree on a "mission statement" at the macro level and ground rules at the micro level to avoid disintegration.

I don't know how to resolve the situation but I do know that the uncompromising (and unforgiving) nature of one-sided Wokism isn't helping.   

Addendum: The power of the Goog

If you're anything like me, a geezer/geezerette who "came up" in a different world and/or having an actual life that takes place more in meatspace than cyberspace, you may find it's easy to forget the ephemeral nature of searching for knowledge via the Goog.

It's not just that like everything published in cyberspace it's subject to endless tinkering in real-time by writers and algorithmites. Worse yet is that the Goog and its ilk can, and do, present information designed by head shrinkers with dubious ethics to manipulate "users" for fun, profit, and fidelity to the church dogma.   

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Printer Ink

A random randomnesses column

What do printer ink, videos, usage data, and soft ice cream have in common?

Image by Magnascan from Pixabay

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

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"It's called a pen. It's like a printer, hooked straight to my brain." -Dale Dauten

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

I don't for a fact know that it's true, but I'm told that if you buy printer ink for your printer manufactured by the same firm that made your printer that the tiny bit of ink contained in a given cartridge costs more than gold.

Personally, I buy my replacement cartridges from obscure Chinese firms via Amazon that are manufactured by slaves and save so much money that I'm inclined to believe the gold story is true. 

{Wait-wait-wait. Slaves? You don't know that for a fact, right?}   

Well, technically speaking, Dana, no, I don't.

{I'm shock-ed that you would be so irresponsible as to...} 

But given the fact that Emperor Xi Dada has rounded up a million or so Uyghurs who are reportedly living and working in concentration camps/reeducation centers (po-tay-toe/po-tah-toe)...

And, that according to an article from the New York Times, are linked to the supply chains of manufactures of All-American brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Campbell Soup Company, Costco, H&M, Patagonia, Tommy Hilfiger, et al., 

I'm willing to go out on a limb given that my wild-eyed libertarian side thinks that anyone living in a country run by a dicktater is a slave. But let's move on. 

{I know that you think you're clever but...}

It's a very enlightening article, I can't recommend it enough.

As a former successful small business owner...

{You owned an ice cream truck for a while, had to find a job to get ya through the winter, and the word successful should be modified by the word moderately.}

I confess I actually sorta/ kinda admire the perfectly legal strategery of giving printers away at cost and then generating a highly profitable, long-lasting revenue stream via ink sales. My um, modest adventure as a greedy capitalist taught me that turning a profit in a country lousy with competitors, gummit regulators, and taxes at every level ain't easy.  

I keep encountering videos and articles lately that have taught me/reminded me of profitable variations of the printer ink strategery.    

For example: 

When you buy an ebook or a video from Lord Jeffry's retail arm, Amazon, you don't actually own it. In the fine print, it says that you've bought a license to view the content, which Amazon may delete whenever it feels like it. And, you don't own the usage data that you generate when you shop at Amazon.com.

{Usage data?}

How long you were on the site, what you looked at, what you clicked on, etceteron. 

As everybody (well, hopefully, most bodies) knows by now, that data is sliced and diced and sold to the highest bidder so that targeted advertising can stalk you around the internet. 

As I've pointed out, repeatedly in some form or fashion, we should be paid for our data. Redistributing other people's money is an article of faith for the Wokies. Doesn't social justice require that the gajillionaire Oligarchs — whose citadels are staffed by woke, progressive minions — give the proletariat a taste?  

Ever wonder why the soft-serve "ice cream" machines (better living through chemistry) at Mcdonald's don't seem to be working half the time?

Well, I don't/didn't but I recently came upon a video, while mindlessly scrolling through YouTube videos, that explains the phenomenon in detail. Being a cutting-edge, multimedia sort of columnist, here ya go:

Bottom line: The machines are made by a company called Taylor. Taylor makes a particular ice cream machine, that till a few years ago, had to be used by all McDonald's franchisees. They stop working regularly and generate obscure error codes that mean nothing to users.  

To get the machine back online ya have to call in an expensive Taylor repairman repairperson. Taylor brags that 25% of its revenue comes from servicing machines. 

McDonald's has reacted to software sold by a third party that makes it much easier for a user to solve problems themselves by announcing that using it can void the machine's warranty. However, new software from McDs/Taylor is on the way! 

It's being developed by a company that's owned by the same company that owns Taylor.  

A person that's more cynical than me might suspect that McDonald's has found a way to make more money by pretending to sell pseudo ice cream than actually selling it.

Addendum: On a related note... 

There's a non-profit, repair.org that, well: "Our goal is to advocate for repair-friendly policies, regulations, statutes, and standards at the national, state, and local levels."

That is to say, there's an organization that's fighting to get laws passed that will not only give ya the right to open your complicated gizmo to try and fix it yourself without violating the warranty, they also want documentation to be made available by the manufacturer to help you out.

Manufacturers, understandably, are worried about giving away trade secrets. However, the fact that they turn a hefty profit by preventing you from fixing your own gizmos has led to some full-fledged kerfuffles.

Fine arts majors deeply in debt to Uncle Sugar take note, here's a nonprofit you could try to hook up with that might actually do some good while still keeping you from having to working directly with Deplorables.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Rush Limbaugh, RIP

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. Reading via monitor/tablet is recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Intended for H. sapiens that are — in the words of the late, great bon vivant and polymath, Professor Y. Bear — "Smarter [and cooler] than the av-er-age bear." 

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"I say what I mean. I don't speak in code. That's why I am a star and ace communicator." -Rush Limbaugh

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

From the proceedings of the joint Committee For the Investigation of Intersectional Iniquities, established by order of Her Royal Highness and President for Life, Kamala Harris, 1/21/25. Senator Samuel T. Stumblebum presiding. 

"No, Senator, I declare, under oath, that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a ditto head." 

While I tuned in occasionally to the late Rush Limbaugh's radio show if I found myself out and about in one of my family's fossil fuel burning vehicles — now all recycled and replaced by battery-powered vehicles owned and assigned by the Ministry of Transport, of course — it was only for a few minutes at a time. 

I confess I was/am a bit of a Luddite and that while I love music, to this day I store no songs on my phone, nor do I have a clue as to how one would get them to play on what I still refer to as the "radio" in a car if I did. 

Thus, I used to check out talk shows on AM radio whenever FM music stations were getting on my nerves:

KRAP 99!  All soulless hits, all the time, created by celebrities with very odd hair and computer geeks with laptops!

Or, 

RUST 93! Your station for classic rock! We will play no song you haven't heard a thousand feckin' times!

Until I couldn't stand it anymore and turned the "radio" off... If I could figure out how to do so."

"And nowadays?" asked Senator Stumblebum. 

"I just let the vehicle do the driving while I hum to myself or read comic books issued by the Ministry of Entertainment." 

"Comic books?"

Sorry, Senator, my age is showing, I mean graphic novels, of course. 

"Did you ever listen to the two pastry patriarchs hired to replace Mr. Limbaugh after he passed away?"

"Briefly, I gave up because I couldn't tell which one was which, among other reasons, and of course, now that they're both locked up and waiting, and waiting, for trial by the Intersectional Inquisition...

While I never, as I said, considered myself to be one of Mr. Limbaugh's ditto heads, he was, well, think of a real Italian hoagie with everything and not made by Subway, Mr. Hero, or some other corporate sandwich shop. 

As compared to his replacements who... Sorry, their names escape me just now. Think of a pair of boiled ham and American cheese with mayonnaise sandwiches, made with Wonder Bread, and wrapped, tightly, with Saran wrap." 

"Mr. Mehlmar, I must ask you to refrain from outdated and/or obscure cultural references and speak plainly, sir."

"Sorry, Senator. Let me put it this way. I didn't usually find him, or the shows prerecorded 'bits' particularly funny. I couldn't grok how he stayed motivated to keep talking about politics for three hours a day/five days a week, year in and year out, long after he had accumulated FU-level wealth. 

I never understood why fans would go to the trouble of struggling to have their phone calls answered, and then be screened, and then be placed on hold, hoping that their hero might permit them to speak for half a minute,

Before 

cutting them off and using their comment to launch yet another speech by a man who just couldn't seem to stop talking and never got tired of the sound of his own voice."       

"Mr. Mehlmar, you realize that you're under oath, correct?"

"Of course, Senator Stumblebum."

"Well sir, this committee has it on good authority that you have spoken highly of Mr. Limbaugh on more than one occasion," said the Senator, making a show of rustling some of the papers spread out in front of him in an exaggerated fashion.

"Hmmm... That explains why my "cellmate" vanished. I was afraid he had an appointment with a guillotine."

"Do you deny the accusation then?"     

"I do sir, I do. I merely expressed my admiration for the fact that in an age when even rock 'n' roll has been swallowed whole by our corporate masters, who no longer even had/have to pretend to be cool, cool in its vanishing original sense, Mr. Limbaugh was always looking for the line so he could step over it. 

Most importantly, he appeared to be having fun, and didn't give a tinker's damn if he triggered anyone. He was performing his art and shining a light on what he perceived to be the truth."   

"Take this, "columnist," back to his cell, immediately." 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column or access previous ones. If you enjoy my work and the fact I don't run adverts or sell things, please consider buying me a coffee via PayPal or plastic.    

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Earmarks

I've got questions... E.g., how do you make a silk purse out of sows ear?

Image by Karl Allen Lugmayer from Pixabay

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

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer." -Will Rogers

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

They're baaack, but they're not earmarks anymore. Nowadays, a given representative of the people can propose spending other people's money on Community Project Funding. 

The brief era of no pork (theoretically) permitted is over. The Associated Press (AP) put together an informative story a while back that you may have missed; the title of the piece is a question.

As Congress returns to funding earmarks, who will benefit?

Answer: Anyone whose delegate to the Swamp can get an earmark inserted into a bill that becomes law. 

According to the article, about a hundred Republicrats, and one, lone unnamed Depublican, "have declined to participate" in the latest update to the ever-popular, long-lived game show Sausage Making, Log Rolling, and Ear Marking.

However, as the article points out, only about $14,000,000,000 will be spent on Community Project Funding this year, a mere rounding error in Swampton, D.C. A small price to pay for a potential win/win again scenario. 

Any given Citizen of the Republic whose Swamp Delegate is on the ball might be the winner of the equivalent of a, um... 

{Fedrl scratch-off ticket?} 

Perfect, Dana! Odds are you won't be but ya gotta play to win, right? Regardless, your Swamp Delegate will have to keep their log rolling and sausage-making chops sharp. You win again! If he/she/they leaves money on the table some other S.D. will pick it up. 

Question: Why do men have nipples?

And why can't the experts who never tire of telling us that no one should start collecting Sorta/Kinda Social Security till they are 70 use their powers for good?

Dr. Malcolm McGillicuddy, 79, head of the economics department of Bonkercockie University,

And, 

Who collects a second paycheck for advising the Board of regents on managing the schools HOOGE, honkin', tax-free endowment that's larger than the economy of several developing countries, 

And, 

Who oversees a small army of postdoc wage slaves that do most of the actual work in his department, speaks:

"As everyone knows by now, Sorta/Kinda Social Security is running low on Congressional IOUs. Soon we will have to raise taxes, or cut benefits, or both. Raising the minimum retirement age to 70 would be an immense help.

People are living and working longer than ever before. Also, I must note that voluntarily waiting till age 70 generates a significantly larger benefit check. Sure, blue-collar jobs lasting for 50 years or more can cause health problems, such as death, but that's why people need to learn to code. 

If something isn't done soon, we could be forced to adopt a system in which Social Security taxes are invested in a transparent sovereign wealth fund of some sort wherein fund managers of The Fedrl Gummit would be forced to perform well or fall on their swords like in the real world.  

Deplorables of all stripes would know how much real money was in their retirement accounts and could add to it whenever they enjoy a cash windfall, like when they hit on a lottery ticket for example. 

Granted this would be real Social Security but might lead to layoffs of gummit employees and deny Congress (defined pension plan) the ability to pretend to be worried about our current I.O.U funded Ponzi scheme when they're running for reelection, 24x7x365, because the longer they "serve" the better fed their pensions will be and/or the greater the chance they can pick up a lobbying gig once they're out of office. 

{Too impractical, could never be done.}

Singapore doesn't think so, Dana, as is simply and clearly explained in this article. "...this is an alternative to the welfare state that works."

Answer: You'd think there'd be a thousand jokes in which this question was the set-up, funny answer to follow. I once asked a doctor, in a social setting, and he/she/they laughed so perhaps the set-up is the punch line.

Question: Where are surplus belly buttons stored for safekeeping?  

And given that "Black Lives Matter stands in solidarity with Palestinians" and is "...a movement committed to ending settler colonialism in all forms and will continue to advocate for Palestinian liberation."

Do they have any thoughts on the rape of Tibet by the Chinese? 

Or for that matter, the Chinese crushing civil rights in Hong Kong?

Or for that matter, the Chinese enslaving a million Uyghurs to make sneakers?

{Well at least the Uyghurs are learning a skill.}

Would they care to explain their support for Cuba's dicktater?

Answer: The Navel Reserve. 

Addendum: On a related note

The Princes of the Senate also enjoy making sausage with other people's money. 

How do we protect our economy from the ethically challenged Chinese — who believe that all's fair in love, war, and becoming the world's largest, most powerful economy — without screwing up our free market?

The Princes, preferring meat cleavers to scalpels, passed a $250,000,000,000, 1,500-page bill, the Innovation and Competitiveness Act, which is a collection of smaller, individual bills. It includes, among many other things, $81,000,000,000 for the National Science Foundation (NSF) so they can spend more money on basic research.

Sounds good till ya discover that the bill creates a Chief Diversity Office and Chief Diversity Officer (the CDOO?) at the NSF (which sounds like a jobs program for Wokies with useless degrees that are tough to monetize) to make sure the sausage is distributed "equitably."

The House, not to be outdone, has passed a pair of similar bills, so some sort of compromise needs to be hashed out. No actual sausage produced yet, stay tuned. In other news, supply problems (e.g., chip shortages) continue to depress American-made car sales...

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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