You’ve been reading about it for months, it’s all over the newspapers. It’s leaping from continent to continent, it’s been found in almost every country. People are changing major life habits, from where they travel, to what they eat, just to avoid it. Every day, you can’t escape the headlines, papers filled with horrific statistics, predictions, and gruesome tales of this pandemic. Yes, it’s time to get serious this week, and to discuss the modern plague that is beginning to infest itself upon many human beings on earth. I am, of course, speaking of the dangerous and deadly, worldwide “Moron Pandemic.”
Before I begin, I’d like to thank everyone for their positive support and feedback for this column, but a lot of my ‘faithful readership’ has elected to take it upon them to Google (fact check) my writing. I think I should make two things clear, before all this Googling gets out of hand: One, this column is nothing but subjective surveillance of my reality – meaning that there are no actual facts to be found herein, only my extremely warped opinion, which a surprising many of you apparently share! And secondly, most of the questions I ask are rhetorical. Okay? That was a test; the last question was rhetorical.
In an attempt at someday having my jersey retired in the writer’s hall of fame, I’ve decided to unveil a new punctuation mark for the English language. It’s called the “I am a moron double-asterisk” and it can end any sentence with it’s mark: ** For example, the following statement should end with **, and not just the traditional period: “I like Adam Sandler comedies because they make me think**.” Just think about the possibilities this punctuation mark holds! Anytime you write anything stupid, you can immediately, retroactively, concede that the statement holds true if your reader understands that you are indeed a moron. But you don’t have to waste time writing that! It really works**!
And If you have a short attention span, and I know most of you do, then I can ellipse droves of boring text from others’ writing, and save a lot of time in getting a message across, without having to constantly type out the tired, overused “I am a moron” sentence that so often traverses these friendly pages! Want to hear the latest Presidential address on immigration? I’ve got a transcript of it, using the “I am a moron double-asterisk:” “Dear America, **. Lately, some of you may have noticed a developing problem in our nation; **. So we must admit, together, that **, and if we follow my new plan, I’m sure we can agree, and come to full terms with the fact that **, because**, and so, in god we trust **. God bless.” See how much time that saved? And you still got all the necessary facts; I’m a genius**.
Did you know that if you look up stupid in the online dictionary that I use, you’d find 57 synonyms, whereas if you look up smart, you’ll only find 26? Go ahead and Google me. What does this say about our culture, and the lengths we’ve already gone to try and describe something as prominent as stupidity? Clearly, our language suffers from articulation on the subject of morons and stupidity, but I can help and clear things up. For we must study the moron strain if we wish to avoid and defeat the Moron Pandemic!
I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression; it’s okay to be a moron. I see plenty of morons all around me, all the time, and I don’t mind them when they’re being quiet. It’s when morons collect, and try to create moronic changes in the world that I begin to ‘hate on’ the morons. Here in America, for over 200 years, we have moronically degraded and abused a lot of minorities that have moved to our country, and it frightens me that a bunch of morons now control the majority of our electorate, and we’re reverting back to a moronic society, akin to the one that once was okay with telling an entire race that they counted as 3/5 of a person. Those morons weren’t just cruel; they also couldn’t count.
But in order to subdue the morons, we have to identify and classify exactly what makes someone a Moron, as opposed to a Screw-Up, or an Asshole. I will use the example of a bicycle trip to best articulate my point**. A Moron should avoid taking back roads while riding a bike, because he or she will get lost; a Screw-Up should avoid bicycling because they are likely to get injured or injure someone else; and an asshole will purposely give bad directions to a moron, and then run a Screw-Up off the road. In short, President Bush is a Moron, Donald Rumsfeld is a screw-Up, and Dick Cheney is an Asshole. But before any democrats get on a high horse, I should add that John Kerry is a moron and a screw up, and Clinton is no moron, but quite an asshole. It is easy to spot a moron on a bicycle, as opposed to an asshole or a screw up, because only morons wear spandex in public.
Working in Food Service for four years has helped me to become quite an expert on splitting the hair of a difference between a moron and an idiot – but there is a difference. An idiot does stupid things and doesn’t realize that they are stupid. A moron is an idiot-in-the-closet, who doesn’t want to be labeled as an idiot, so he or she will try to prove to strangers and friends alike that they are smart. Unfortunately, this moronic process of defying the inner-idiot ends up turning the in-the-closet-idiot into a moron, and the rest of us have to deal with the aftermath of their moronic actions. Get it (rhetorical)?
So, an idiot likes something idiotic, like decaf coffee, which is a stupid, because the caffeine removal process removes chunks of flavor from the coffee bean! But a moron, always trying to appear clever, will go too far, and not just order decaf, but claim to like it. They will thus order an ultra specific, and moronically pretentious espresso beverage, like a triple decaf, extra hot, organic breast milk latte; much to the chagrin of a Barista. My co-worker has re-named the complicated decaf espresso purchase as a “Why bother.”
Right now, I view the current global mess between the East and West as the great civil war of the morons. The problem is that assholes are taking advantage of the morons, and manipulating the morons into acting like assholes. An asshole will kill you to make a point; but a moron will kill you by blowing himself up, because an asshole told him to do it. But since these moronic assholes don’t survive to see any changes in their world, they truly die a moron’s death. But what do I know? I read Harry Potter books and I’m 24**.
So when morons and assholes combine their forces, it’s truly dangerous, because there’s no telling what a moronic asshole will do! A moron will increase government spending without raising taxes, while an asshole will try to cut taxes for the rich, and disregard rising debt, thereby creating tremendous cumulative future debts for the working class and the poor to pay off. But things get ugly when you have a moron and an asshole in charge, because, evidently, they will not only cut taxes and increase spending, but they will also have the audacity and arrogance to brag about it on television. To learn more about moronic assholes, tune into C-Span’s coverage of their habitat: The U.S. Senate.
The only thing more moronic than politicians is insurance plans. I think that Americans’ dependence on insurance epitomizes the Moron Pandemic of decisions based on irrational fears and worries. Don’t misunderstand me; getting back money in a time of tragedy is helpful – but money doesn’t actually remove the tragedy, nor does it do anything to prevent it, so it seems to me that investing money into a fund that only pays off if you suffer is self-defeating, and moronic. If you don’t want me to be right, but fear that I could be, then please begin sending me a check for ten dollars every month, for “Mike could be right” insurance, and if before you die, I am proved wrong, then I’ll give you back 2/3 of the total amount of money that I received from your moron insurance payments, but only after a lengthy investigation. Meanwhile, I will be earning interest off your hard earned money the whole time that I’m collecting these payments, and you won’t be saving any money, or getting interest. I do not offer any Co-Op or 50/50 plans.
In closing, I’d like to point out that many of you probably think that it’s hypocritical for me to harp on morons because you think that **. But I maintain that I am not a moron, I am just out of touch with my peers and my culture, and I sometimes say stupid things. As I mentioned in STBY #2, I’m an eighty-year old man trapped in a twenty-four year old body. I don’t fall for modern hype, but it’s not because I don’t get it. I know I’m not a moron because I don’t like American Idol, because I’ve never attended a “meet n’ greet,” and because I don’t care about Brad Pitt’s sex life. But I have trouble using my cell phone, and I’m still learning how to text message, so I’m not exactly a genius either.
But could a moron come up with the following idea? I think people should install quarter cashew machines in their houses, like the ones that I often find at bars. I hate when I’m a guest in a house and I have to ask for food, because I feel guilty about eating someone else’s food. If houses had vending machines, it would be real easy, and guilt free, to simply grab a quarter from my pocket, and enjoy a delicious snack, without feeling like I was taking someone else’s food for free. And I think they could be fashionable too.
But I also know that I’m not a moron because I can plan my life with a series of cold, calculated, and pragmatic decision making trees and mathematical expressions. For example, I plan my bar purchases with a carefully programmed logarithmic equation that involves variables such as alcohol percent, cost of a pint, the number of cigarettes I have smoked, and how much time is left in the quarter of whatever sports game I’m watching.
Morons don’t realize things, like if you’re dining out, and you think you have something hanging out of your nose, you can touch your nose, and see if the person opposite you does the same. If they do, then you don’t, because you just made them paranoid that you were trying to signal to them that they had something in their own nose, whereas if you do have something hanging loose, they’ll remain still and allow you to remove it. It can also be a fun game; because you can make people get paranoid and touch their face. It’s like “Simon Says,” only you don’t have to speak, and the other person looks like an idiot. But as proven herein, manipulating an idiot makes you an asshole – And that’s how this whole pandemic began. So be careful who you manipulate because it’s all fun and games until some moron gets on a soap box and gets an audience that actually listens to him **.