The Frozen People

 

The central tenet of winter theology is not focused on rogue elves, but rather, that God froze a specific group of people, who were notably well-suited to enjoying the elements without the help of an expensive down jacket. The Lord knew that he couldn’t base his decision on who was able to afford Canada goose. One of the great mysteries is that anyone able to wait in a long line out in the cold for a jacket doesn't need a jacket. But again, for him, brand loyalty was never the point. Except for when it meant siding with him and his ilk. Though he never liked idols, he still provides moral and financial support to the Academy Awards. Just watch how many people thank him in their rambling speeches every year.

These people – the Frozen - were selected for their passion and preference for skipping layers. We all know them from the neighborhood. In every community where snow comes into play, there are people who wear shorts and t-shirts in December, skimping on thermal underwear as a way of proving their toughness and showing off their frostbitten calves. They are insulted by regular folks digging out their driveways. Normal people, the Unfrozen, are incapable of concentration while a neighbor prances through a snow drift in clogs and Bermuda shorts. The thing is, entire museums depend on Frozen People. 

When a caveman would go missing, often fighting with this compatriots over pelt wearing, he’d leave the camp in a huff only to freeze to death in a snowbank. Most of the conflicts between humans pre-civilization centered on clothing. What to wear, what not to wear, and this was at a time absent fashion listicles. This sort of natural mummification is preferred by curators in the way many smart shoppers seek out words like “organic” and “Paul Newman” on products before purchasing. It's true, some early men mummified their dead, but like a street tamale, the seal is never perfect. Which is understandable, since both are made under duress. 

This is why the Frozen People have gotten so far. They weren’t snowflakes. Although, they were affected by them. God’s Frozen People are still around – for now. Shoveling sidewalks shirtless and the rest of it, but for how much longer is anyone’s guess. One of the many risks of climate change is leaving these people left to thaw in the sweltering heat. Maybe then, they’ll finally put on a coat.  

Morning at the Bemuseum

Anyone who’s ever studied Greek mythology in school or, during a class trip, fogged up the glass encasing a piece of ancient pottery, toothlessly grinning at the depictions therein, should be more than familiar with the concept of muses. The muses were a gaggle of gals, who served as inspiration for the struggling artist. Can’t tune your lyre? Give Euterpe a holler. Joke isn’t landing? Call Thalia for a second opinion. There are others, focused on history, epic poetry and astronomy – and this was long before decent telescopes were available.

What most people don’t know, even apparent experts, is that there was a lone, marginalized member of the musing community. Surprisingly, she’s the one who’s endured to this very day. Her name? Ladida. She has helped stupid people sound smart for thousands of years. For one thing, she’s not technically a Muse, but a Bemuse. Her concern is not inspiration, but indoctrination. 

She’s responsible for all the smiles associated with the word “bemused.” Somehow, along the way, her hard work paid off and “amuse” and “bemuse” became synonyms. Instead of people being confused at the sight of her, they came to smile, seeing it as a wonderful part of the creative process. 

Bemuse’s transformation is truly baffling, at times puzzling, even perplexing, yet, at the end of the day, it’s quite an entertaining turn of events, considering it was the handiwork of a diligent Bemuse. Amuse and bemuse have become synonyms, thanks to Ladida’s relentlessness, pausing to work in between courses of grape leaves and sticky baklava. 

They became synonyms. No one really knows how this happened. Auger, the imposing tool used to bore holes into the earth or pieces of wood, is not to my knowledge a synonym for booger, what dangles from a neglected nostril. 

Ladida knew what she was doing and that it was going to be an uphill battle. It is only the most impressive of her exploits. She’s had other minor successes. Honing pigeons, for one thing. People who don’t jive with one another, for another. She knows exactly what she’s doing and her goal, if I can safely state here, is to make it so that one day every word is a synonym, rendering language useless. 

Kind of bemusing when you think about it. 

It's a slippery slope

It starts off innocently enough. With a few flurries tantalizingly falling from above. But you don’t think much of it. Like a perp with actual blood on their hands recounting an elaborately constructed, extremely absurd, clearly fabricated alibi, it just doesn’t stick. Not yet anyway.

Let’s remember that your driveway is on a slight incline, facing the busy street below. Oncoming traffic, as it’s often called, awaits your next move. This is the environment you sought out after too much time under the shady palms and shadier people of southern California. Because as slippery as things get in the famed Great Plains, the slopes are never quite like this. 

Before slinking off to sleep one winter night, you check the window and then tomorrow’s forecast. You start to worry about the commute. You’re not prepared. Your boots are in storage and your loafers won’t do the job. Not when show shoes are needed or those ice boots with pointy little spikes for traction. Do you even own a pickaxe? 

No, on a day like this, people would stay home and not work. That's when society starts to unravel. At the top of your driveway you are transported to a childhood of slipping, sliding, and sledding full snow days. It’s perfect. You haven’t calculated the mathematical slope since high school, which, interestingly enough, is also the last time you indulged in this brand of unbridled sledding. The only rise and rise you’re concerned with is connected to the cheap piece of plastic you’re laying face down on. This is much to the dismay of area children with similar interests, who lack the requirements to compete with your skills and body mass. 

This is how the breakdown of civilization begins. You can’t drive. You can’t go to work. But you can break out the ancient sled from storage, taking it for a few spins down the block. The cars give up, with each passing driver growing more envious of your icy recreation. Pretty soon everyone is out sledding. Whole streets are closed down to traffic. People and their families gather at the top of hills all across the city barreling down into a snowier future. It gets colder though, as things melt then they freeze again. 

When the snow clears, we have an entire society that has given up their responsibilites for another shot at a lifetime of slippery pursuits. You’re suddenly skipping breakfast to sled, pawning off clothes and furniture for a fresh shot at the slopes. Imagine going to a big ski resort with a sled, watching as the skiiers and boarders look on in horror. But this is what happens when we build societies that aren’t level. Picture a future where the climate changes to such a degree that a place like San Francisco, with its stupid hills and idiotic topography, gets blanketed in snow. Now that’s a slippery slope.  

Meathead in the Morning

It's me, Meathead in the Morning. Which is why I'm not a vegetarian. I'm meat, for God's sake. If animals want to eat me, they are going to have to catch me first. We’re taking your calls for the next three hours on any subject under the sun. What’s that? This is a podcast? We can’t take calls? Looks like someone has taken too many kicks to the head. My mistake, honest mistake. That’s what PDs are for, I guess. We don't have a PD? Okay then, well, there's a voice in my head. I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it soon enough. Either way, back to that phrase, “under the sun.” How do we know what we’re under the sun and it’s not the other way around? Maybe the sun is under us.

My first and only guest is an esteemed Mixed-up Martial Arts fighter with thoughts on lots of non-fighting related subjects. Although, to be fair, he likes to liken everything to his pugilistic period. I heard him compare navigating the buffet at Waffle House with cage matches. The violence, the resentment, the mashed potatoes. Those potatoes are the perfect metaphor for getting ones face bashed in, especially if the skin is included. What was I saying? My long-term memory ain’t what it…I can’t really say. My short-term memory used to be good a long, long time ago. 

As I was saying, brain damage is a beautiful thing. It’s like an acid trip without the acid. A trip with the ornery gate agent and crying babies. The good acid, not the acid that burns a hole through your engine block. The only thing that dies is your ego. Not mine though. He has risen. A couple hundred million in the bank will lift anyone out of the doldrums. What's a doldrum anyway? A dull drum? That’s a figure of speech. I wouldn’t keep my money in the bank. The bank is for suckers. In fact, where it put it rhymes with bank. I put it in my isolation tank. I tried meditation for years and year with no results. Pillows, yoga mats, it didn’t matter. The second I got this much money, I found my mind was infinitely clearer. I was more surprised than anyone.

What do you think about the earth being flat? Let me answer and see how you react. I think it makes sense that the earth is flat. When I was fighting competitively I started with a rather round head. But a funny thing happened on the way to fame and fortune. I got kicked in the face so many times that my head started to flatten. Look at it. It’s like a roof deck now. So much for the chrome dome. The same thing happened to the planet. I buy that in the early days the earth was rounder than a cue ball. But millions of years getting bombarded by asteroids are going to have some effect. Sorry, they do. They flatten things. It’s like baking. Did you take up baking? You don’t need a baker to know which way the dough rolls. Right?

Now here’s a question for you. Do you like coffee? This coffee here, a sponsor of the program, is made with actual jet fuel. Of course it’s organic, it comes straight from the ground. That’s what I never understood about the anti-drilling people. Oil is like the earth’s blood. We’re vampires, which could be worse. Because one thing I know about vampires is that they live forever. I'm not much of a garlic lover, so the transition from the living to the undead has been quite easy. The point is that this coffee gets me going. You might want a breath mint or two if you’re planning on locking any lips later today. I could do a couple thousand squats after a cup and benchpress a tectonic plate. Another thing that’s flat. 

Thanks for joining the program today. You made me think about a lot of things today and the time just flew by. I’ll be telling poorly constructed jokes that aren’t funny but offset by constant yelling and uncomfortable microphone play. See everyone there. Bye.   

Wack Jobs

As this young year grows ever so older, more and more people are quitting their jobs. The issue is that a good portion of them are doing so for new positions boasting very little real in terms of change. All they’re doing is swapping one boring job for another. If we lived in a culture where wack jobs were valued over other types of jobs, this is one predicament we’d skip right past.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that wack jobs are people. Those wild-eyed psychos, standing on the hood of a car not their own, ranting, raving, and railing against whatever crosses their path. Be it flock of seagulls or a stack of unmarked c-notes. But that’s the old type of wack job, the type our grandfather warned us about before heading for the mall to toss pennies into an overflowing coin fountain.

These new wack jobs are different. They are occupations where little or no thought is given to them. By employer or employee. They put freedom first. The freedom to take a five hour lunch, dip paint chips in hummus, or construct the world’s largest rubber band without any protective eye gear. Wack jobs give a person the ability to make the most or least out of their position. Ambition is not a requirement. Nor is productivity. The only thing that matters in wack jobs is the story you tell the next day. “Can you believe Steve tried to walk down the elevator shaft and climb up the stairs?” 

The truth is that any job can become a wack job with the right hire. This goes for everyone and everything. From president on down, the person makes the position. 

When the day finally comes to quit your wack job, you don't do it with a polite phone call or e-mail. You do it without shame and usually when done right, it involves the disrobing and calling security. It should be a Broadway production in its theatricality. What's wonderful is that quitting a wack job like this will help you get your next wack job. Because help isn’t always all that’s wanted. 

New Year’s Desolutions

We asked morons, managers, and middling marketing-types to cue us in on the wild working world as we pile up the e-papers and e-prepare for another year of e-business. Some are qualified to expound on this subject, while most are not. So we asked anyone we could find, ignoring their “title” or “resume.” What we got is quite interesting.

Teri Devolve, Marketing Airhead

“Too many board rooms are full of smart people. It’s time we opened the doors to imbeciles and dum-dums.” 

Pesky Dogooder, Head of Jargon

“While I’m elated to see certain things set forth in motion by various members of the c-suite, it’s disheartening to realize that what’s happening is neither sustainable nor mission-driven, meaning, the time is now for us to all come together and hold leaders accountable for what they don’t do as well as what they do do.” 

Diane Ferentz, Pardner

“The opportunity to be a difference-maker can make a difference in the lives of others. And to always remember to leave comments in fun colors. Even the cruelest remark, when written in pink or yellow will put a smile on an underling's face."  

Connie Fusion, Chief Chief Officer

“We can tell people what to think. We can tell them what to say. We can tell them how to say it. Like, I was living in France for six months before something told me that the s in “Paris” was silent. Ah, like Perry Como. I caught on quickly, as you can imagine, but I couldn’t have done it without generous boulangerie boys and others wandering around the town square at noontime.” 

Liza Rationale, None

“You hear a lot about karma, but dogma is just as important. I want to see more of the latter and less of the former. Hit someone’s fender while parking? Forget it.” 

Ben Thair, Brand breeder

“What can I say that hasn’t already been said by my esteemed colleagues and rivals? I will say only this: say you’re standing in front of a window in a 20 story building. Don’t press against the glass and assume it's locked. As a student of stained glass, fenestration is awfully important to me. Be careful up there, people.”

Dave, Some Guy

"What was the question again?"

Norm Chomsky, Status Quoter

“I wouldn’t change a thing.” 

John Wasn't Maddening

 

There are lots of ways to be a sports broadcaster these days. Some like to dress the part, wearing a loud suit with a louder tie, even though shots of the booth are rare and often undesirable. You could recite idiotic statistics for the viewers at home to ignore. You could recall inane stories from your past as a way to show you have rubbed shoulder pads with the likes of minor, helmet-wearing celebrities. You could shoutout friends on their birthdays. You could try and predict the plays before they happen as sort of cheap parlor trick – not that anyone asked you to do this. You’re supposed to analyze the plays not guess them.

You could pretend the game on the field is more intricate than the moonshot. That each new play is more complex than anything NASA attempted in the 1960s. That a player’s body is more impressive than the Saturn Five, and much more durable, since those pieces of hardware were used once and then sent into the abyss. You could compare the sideline geniuses with Gene Kranz, likening his white vest with a cutoff hoodie. You could talk over your play-by-play partner, ruining big moments, quiet moments, any moments at all. You could act like your goal is to disrupt the solemnity of certain major events. You could never get excited, treating each play the same, with an unrelenting monotone that puts lots of people to sleep and makes everyone else wish it had. 

You could speak in clichés and use more words than necessary. Saying this player is a real downhill runner, even though the field is totally level and any elevation changes would be a real cause for alarm. Remember the '89 World Series?  You could say the quarterback “fired the football into the open arms of an uncovered receiver, who’s now dancing into the endzone untouched.” You could read ad copy for gambling sites without a hint of irony, even though decades earlier the practice of wagering on games was derided and criticized as the end of professional sports in America. You might comment on the weather, speaking at length about the size of flurries on the field versus what they look like through a standard camera lens.

Or, you could just explain the game as clearly, as simply, and as entertainingly as you can. It’s harder than it looks though. And while you’re at it, cut a holiday feast with your hand instead of a knife. If the meat is tender enough, it shouldn’t be a problem.