You’re happy to believe in something that’s invisible, but if it’s staring you in the face—”Nope! Can’t see it.” There’s a scientific explanation for that. You’re thick. – The Doctor

Cindy and I have lived in Kansas City for a couple of months now, but we just realized last weekend that Missouri is the Show-Me state.

That got me thinking about whether or not some people could, or should, live here.

We all know people who can see something — some fact, or some bit of information that would completely kill whatever golden-calf belief they hold about themselves or others, or the world — staring them right in the face, and they absolutely refuse to see it. It must be completely maddening living in the Show-Me state if you’re this kind of person. At least, it would be for those around you.

Is seeing really believing? Is it that kind of thing? Seeing is believing, but ignoring is also believing. That’s how magic works, isn’t it? Misdirection. Not seeing something right before your very eyes. It’s all an illusion. When you’re a kid, you’re innocent and stupid enough to believe that Presto the Great actually pulled a quarter from your ear. Why wouldn’t you believe that? You like magic. You like people who know magic. Presto the Great knows magic. You like Presto the Great. He’s great! You trust Presto the Great. He pulled a fucking quarter out of your ear, man! How could you not trust him? Even though he totally made you look the other way, while he did something behind your back. And worse, he did something behind your back right in front of your very eyes! (This is not the guy you want around your girlfriend, you know. Just sayin’.)

As adults we know better. We know Presto the Great is just an entertainer, a charlatan; he doesn’t really know magic. He knows illusions. Magic, adults know — and, I mean, we know — that this is just sleight of hand, misdirection. Adults are smart that way.

What we seem to forget is just how fucking stupid we are when we’re not being smart. What we seem to forget is that sometimes we have a really hard time telling which state of mind we’re in at the moment. Misdirection is just words and actions. It’s information. And bad, unreliable information, at that. Unless it’s good, credible information. But then, we sometimes have a problem telling one from the other, don’t we?

Magic for adults is called “the news”, local and cable outlets, newspapers, and the Internet. Just flash some spinning, urgent-looking graphics on the screen and label it URGENT! and some people will always believe that, no matter what the story is, it must truly be urgent and important. And, if it’s bad news, all the better because it adds to the authenticity of the urgency. Worse than “the news” are the pundit shows that too many people mistaken for “the news”.

Have you, or someone you know, ever found yourselves complaining about something you just learned about 20 minutes ago? My dad used to complain about the “death tax” all the time. This is a man who didn’t make or have anywhere close to the amount of money he would need to have to worry about it. But he watched too much TV, was exposed to the same information day after day, and for whatever reason, he felt that he should give a shit about something that didn’t affect his life one bit. “Give a shit” isn’t entirely accurate; he became angry and bitter about it.

Now, that’s a kind of magic.

Some people call it rhetoric, or logic and critical thinking, or psychology, or sociology, or marketing. But, if you don’t know anything about those things, it’s magic.

Trust, misdirection, and distraction. Magic works the same for an innocent 6-year-old kid, as it does for bitter 56-year-old man: they both need to be willing participants, ignorant of how the trick works, and unable to tell the difference between seeing what they were told to see, and seeing what they wanted to see.

Either way, they’ll believe what they want to believe.

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog last week and he had posted this video:

Here’s what he said about it:

My favorite part happens just before the first minute mark. That’s when guy #3 joins the group. Before him, it was just a crazy dancing guy and then maybe one other crazy guy. But it’s guy #3 who made it a movement.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been taking one hour a night and devoting that hour to working on a project. I have about a dozen projects, and, all totaled, I believe they can be completed within a year.

Many of these projects are creative ones. Doing something creative, and putting it out there for the world to see can be scary. After watching the video, I found myself thinking about what it was like being on stage at USAO.

Our drama department put on some pretty damn good shows. They didn’t start out being damn good shows. Usually, they started out as awkwardly-delivered lines and half-understood scenes. But we would stop, re-read the lines, pick apart the scene, the words, we would try saying the lines a different way maybe, we would try out different blocking to see what worked best. We devoted ourselves to understanding the story, and the characters. And, by the time opening night rolled around, we knew what the hell we were doing. We knew how to make the audience laugh, and we knew how to make them cry.

And the reason the performances were good was because a group of people agreed to look foolish together, and to say that it’s okay to look foolish. This permission to look, and act, and be foolish is why members of an acting troupe can be so close to each other. Only by being willing to suffer through looking foolish can we develop our skills.

If you want to learn how to roller-blade, you have to be willing to look foolish. You’re going to scream, flail your arms about wildly, and fall flat on your ass. Somebody will laugh. You might be tempted to give up, but you shouldn’t.

Give yourself permission to look foolish, and over time, you’ll scream less, you’ll perform fewer gravity-induced gyrations, and your bruised ass will heal.

Now, that first guy in the video? He’s brave and/or crazy. The second guy? He’s also brave and/or crazy. But that third guy, the one Godin says turned crazy dancing into a movement? He’s the tipping point, the one that gave everybody permission to look foolish, to do the thing they wanted to do when they saw Guy #1 and #2, but couldn’t because they were too afraid. He’s the one that gave them permission to express themselves, and have fun.

But it all started because Guy #1 didn’t quit, and we need to remember that. So, if you have your own creative project, you and I, we’ll be Guy #1. Our friends? They’ll be Guy #2.

And let’s keep going until Guy #3 shows up, okay?

I had to go to Sam’s to pick up some kind of hyper-super eye drops that I’m supposed to use the day before my Lasik. I was a little thirsty and had twenty minutes to kill, so I went to the food area. This is what happened after I sat down with my drink:

A sizable woman and her son (looked about 4-years-old) made their way passed my table. The woman, carrying a huge purse, two jackets, and an empty 32 oz. styrofoam cup (that’s the only size Sam’s sells), struggled toward a table so she could unload her items. The boy, also carrying an empty 32 oz. styrofoam cup, did not follow her to the table, but stopped at the soda fountain. He walked back and forth between the two machines.

BOY: Which one is water, Mom? Mom, I want water. Mom, I’m thirsty. I want some water.

MOM: Stop it. Wait ’til your grandpa gets here.

BOY: I want some water.

MOM: No! Now sit down! I did not pay a dollar so you could drink water. We can get water for free.

I mean, what kind of stupid-crazy do you have to be to force your kid to drink soda instead of water…when he clearly wants water? What the fuck, people?!

So, I was talking to my friend Chris (Traci’s husband) while he was standing at the door, handing out candy, and he was telling me that tonight he had seen two weird things in kids’ Halloween candy sacks.

The first thing he noticed was that some lame jackass had given out those stupid Jesus-crispy how-to-avoid-burning-in-Hell comics.

And the second weird thing was that some other crazy jackass had stapled little “Vote for Ron Paul” cards to candy, and for some insane reason thought this would be a good thing to hand out.

I told him if anything like that shows up again, trade the kid some candy for it, and about 5 minutes (and a fun-size pack of Sour Patch Kids) later, a kid showed up at the door with this note in his candy bucket.

Maybe this person and the Vote-For-Ron-Paul person should get together and go bowling.

Looking at the news this morning, we found this puzzling image from a story on Thanhnien News Online.

The caption says it’s a picture of “Policemen”, but I’m not sure. It could be Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany or the “Soviet monument”.

Either way, it’s usually a bad idea to put a chicken in charge of anything other than laying eggs or playing tic-tac-toe.

I’m just sayin’ is all.

Instant karmas gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head in the face

From the Inbox:

For all those people who believe you get what you deserve in life…

A couple of kids are driving down a residential street when the kid in the back seat tries to knock some kid off his bike by opening up the driver side back door.

Watch the Video.

When Cindy and I first saw the commercial for Hasbro’s new Super Soaker Oozinator, we were shocked, stunned, and stupefied. Over at Dorkeriffic, another blog I contribute to, Potatobiker’s post has reminded me about the new “toy”. (So, you can consider this a sort of double posting, I guess.)

From Dorkeriffic:

As the kids say, “DISGUSTING!” Seriously, your jaw will hit the floor. And it appears this is actually on the Hasbro site. In Oklahoma, we worry about books makin? our kids gay. Guns are manly!

Hey, guns are manly! Gay and manly. Kind of reminds me of that scene in Reservoir Dogs where they all draw their guns on each other. Now there was some homo-erotic, pistol-pulling, phallic-waving action. And, wow, what a climax, huh?

Anyhoo…if you missed the links…

– Watch the Super Soaker Oozinator commercial.
– Visit the the Oozinator page on the Hasbro website.

Some of my favorite naughty bits from the Oozinator page (with comments):

Sneak up on your opponents with a surprise bio-ooze attack! (Sneak up…because running and masterbating at the same time is hard to do…so they tell me.)

Just when they think you’re coming at ?em with water, blast ‘em with a shot of icky bio-ooze! (Think you’re getting a golden shower? Well, you’re right…but first…)

Shoot out globs of gooey bio-ooze and then drench ‘em with water! (Pretty much speaks for itself, I think.)

It’s a double blast attack… (Bring a friend!)

…that’ll keep your opponents on their toes and running during every water fight. (Don’t cross the streams!)

With the OOZINATOR blaster you don’t just get soaked, you get drenched! (Promises, promises.)

…drench your opponents with powerful blasts of water or globs of gooey bio-ooze! (Seriously, “bio-ooze”? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?)

Hit targets up to 35 feet away with a 27-ounce water-supply capacity or up to 20 feet away with a 10-ounce bio-ooze capacity! (Just like Peter North! – Link Not Safe For Work)

Blaster comes with 10-ounce cartridge of bio-ooze. (Just like Peter North! – Link Not Safe For Work)

That it shoots “bio-ooze” makes the action of pumping the gun in a back and forth motion horribly suggestive. And then, at the end of the commercial, the kid looks at his gun and says “Awesome!”?

Are you kidding me? Who approves this shit?

This is probably the worst idea to come along since the vibrating Harry Potter broomstick that kids were expected to put between their legs.

You better get a Super Soaker Oozinator while you can. One day, you’ll tell people about it and they won’t believe you…and you’ll want to have proof.

Nice.

You know, it’s not like this mistake was buried somewhere in a block of text where an easy glance might not catch it. It’s right there on the front in big bold blocky letters where you can’t help but notice it. And yet, no one did.

But the important thing to remember is to have someone witness your “X”.

We have Simpsons checks. We’ve had them for years, and it’s not uncommon for a cashier to says “I like your checks”. But what happened at Sam’s was a new experience:

CASHIER: Oh, I really like your checks.
ME: Thanks. (I continue writing the check out, and then hand it to the cashier)
CASHIER: (She turns it over and over, really looking at it) That is just too funny. (Turns around to yell at the cashier one lane over) Hey, Joanne, you ever seen a check like this before? (She holds the check up for Joanne who squints at it) It’s that cartoon guy.
JOANNE: (Squinting) Homer Simpson?
CASHIER: Huh?
JOANNE: Isn’t that Homer Simpson?
CASHIER: (Angles the check so she can look at it again, thinks about it for a second) No, I don’t think so. (She turns back around to finish ringing me up) That is just too funny.

Funny? Or just awkward?

It’s that time of year. The holiday season is upon us and kicking off the Just How Crazy-Stupid Are People? Contest 2005 is Microsoft with the launch of its new pretty-damn-sweeeet gaming console, the XBox 360, which had nerds waiting for the stroke of midnight last night when the 360 officially went on sale.

The XBox 360 isn’t just a next generation game console; it’s this year’s Tickle Me Elmo. Remember a few years back when people were spending $600 for a $30 Elmo toy? People just had to have one. Ahhhh, isn’t it worth the extra $570 just to see the look on your child’s face when he/she/(it?) unwraps it on Christmas morning?

Uh, no.

You want to see a look? How about this: when the kid grows up, assumingly into a responsible adult, tell them you spent $600 on a frakkin’ Elmo doll. Let’s see what look they give you then. It never occurred to some people that, maybe we should wait until next month? In the meantime, $600 while buy a hell of a lot of toys. Why squander it on one stupid item?

A quick search of eBay shows the XBox360 selling for ridiculous prices. Thousands of dollars! These idiots can’t wait until January? Stores will be restocked floor-to-ceiling with XBox 360s by then. And the “extra” $1600 you spent on the console would have bought a nice library of games.

Check out this article:

By mid-morning, though, one premium system sold for $3,050, with well over a dozen following suit, coming in between $3,000 and $4,000. By mid-afternoon, one buyer was so eager to own one of the new systems paid $5,100 for a hard-drive enabled machine and a copy of “Need for Speed: Most Wanted” – and the eager beaver will have to wait another two weeks before the console is shipped, according to the seller.

Okay, if the market will bear that, then there’s no reason people shouldn’t spend that kind of money if they’re willing to, right? Well, no, not really. But that’s not the point. Of course they have the right to be stupid with their money. It’s their money. That’s not in dispute.

The point is they are idiots.