Tag Lies

Lies, lies, and damned lies

Michael 16 Comments

It’s not easy to maintain decorum in what in normal times would be considered a world of bad practical jokes led by the prototypical middle school bully. Actually…it’s impossible. I tried and got various examples of snark, sass, sarcasm, and outright mean. I could never find the intelligent, intellectual treatise so much of my writing resembles. So I decided to go with the version that is just cranky, but in a world-weary, wacky way. Enjoy…not!

It’s quite started already. No I don’t mean the seeming swiftness of idiocy by which Dingy Donald is making his presence known. It’s the swiftness in which most reasonable people, even some of the lame brains who once supported Donny Dingbats, are tuning it out. “Oh, it’s just too idiotic to even think of.” “I can’t bear to watch the news so I’m not going to.” “It will go soon enough and this will be out of everyone’s system.”

If you’re dumb enough to think the constant lies that continue to fall out of his orange face and the incompetent if not outright stupid decisions he and his Kookie Cadre are attempting to foist upon us, you are as big a problem as the erstwhile assistant, Immigrant X-Factor.

I wish I could give you the citation but I am not sure there is a single source. It seems it is more of a truism that those who constantly lie do not do so hoping you will believe them or even to deceive, but that you ultimately become so inured to the lies that you stop caring about them being lies. That and it’s sneaky cousin, increasingly more outrageous acts, are what is going on. Dipstick Donny is out to barrage you with so much that is unbelievable that you stop believing.

You may have notice I have taken a page from Donald Dillweed’s playbook and made up some darling sobriquets for him, not necessarily to disparage, knowing I haven’t actually come out and said anything about a specific and clearly identifiable about any specific person. Consider it to be but just letting you decide who is the f***wad around here. Remember any turdbrain who accuses me of being hard a real person clearly is showing his/her/its true feelings assuming they think it must be DJ the Dipstick. (Did f***wad give it away?)

Naturally this is, for the time being, a free country, so if you disagree with me you have the right. And I have the right to delete any comments I don’t like then later say they never existed. But I would encourage you, to instead start spreading the word that there are bad things happening and its not that the price of eggs has almost doubled since November 5.

It’s the bad things like there is a tuberculosis outbreak going on in the US and the agencies who would be responsible for tracking and reporting have been ordered to not release information to the public. It’s that aid is being withheld from disaster areas until the local government succumb to the once and mighty tv personality. It’s that the $35 cap on insulin was repealed on January 20. It’s that the Department of Labor has been told to cease investigation of and enforcement activity against discrimination in the workplace. It’s that the NIH is no longer allowed to even authorized publication of research.

For every lie or contorted half truth that falls from the face of a perpetual lying machine, we need to make the truth just as loud and just as relentless so the Neanderthal masses understand that being a bully was not the way to get through middle school and it still makes them look like they are as dumb as a bag of rocks and not as good looking.

End of rant.

This is where I’d normally say something about another blog on a different website but it’s too classy to be associated with such drivel.

Blog Art 2

Truthfully?

Michael 2 Comments
A tossed in, not given a second thought aside in my post from a couple posts ago provided the inspiration for this post with a little encouragement from Christi at Feeding On Folly, confirmed by a comment from WD Fyfe – do, or how regularly do, or why don’t people do lie on the security questions that accompanied passwords in “password controlled” sites? You know the ones, first pet’s name, first car, paternal great grandmother’s shoe size. All the things anybody with a little observation prowess can deduce from your Facebook profile.
 
My actual thought was “By the way, those security questions – does anybody lie about them? Wouldn’t that make more sense? I mean if they are the last line of defense and somebody has already cracked your 23 character upper and lower case, number and special character containing password that you change every 4 days, surely they know what street you grew up on. But I digress.” Well, the time has come to, um, er, do the opposite of digress.
 
It does seem silly when you think about it. These are the questions they ask if you have to confirm who you are if you’ve mis-entered or forgotten your password or the super secure second level site protection. Password requirements get more complex – 8 to 20 characters long, cannot be your user name, cannot be your email, cannot have been used for the last six passwords, include upper and lower case alpha characters, 2 numbers, and a special character or two, and must be changed every 60 days. But if you forget that password they will let you in if you can correctly answer the name of the city your high school is located. 
 
Christi (you remember her from the opening paragraph) suggested it would be fun making up answers and WD (he’s in that same paragraph if you’re wondering) intimated he had lied on them, so I (you remember me from, well, from here) thought, “Let’s do this!” Let’s consider the most common of these questions, Grandma’s shoe size not among them.
 
City where you were born: Obviously I can’t use the city where I was actually born. To begin with it’s too pedestrian. There are some good ritzy cities out in the world, Tokyo, Abu Dhabi, Manhattan (never New York), but the fictional ones are better. Would I want to have grown up in Emerald City? What kind of childhood would Port Charles provide? Oh, I know the perfect city to be born and raised in. Bedrock!
 
First pet: Considering I spent my childhood in Bedrock my first pet could have been Dino but he seemed loyal to Fred and Wilma and I couldn’t deprive them of that. Unless Fred and Wilma were my parents. That would be a whole different story. Pebbles could have been an older sister and I came along much later. Or perhaps she was the much younger one and I was already out of the house and/or cave by the time was playing Frisbee Rock with Bam Bam Rubble. Either would clear the way for Dino to be my first pet except that seems just too obvious. If I am to stick with Bedrock as home and the long lost child of Fred and Wilma a more secure pet answer would be the other animal living at Cobblestone Way, Baby Puss. 
 
Maternal grandmother’s name: This is taking over the spot formerly held by mother’s maiden name I guess because that was too easy to figure out. But because everybody knows Wilma’s mother is Pearl Slaghoople (you did know that, didn’t you?) I think it’s time to fast forward from prehistory. Think of all the famous women that have graced the world. So many choices. But there is only one that is the most secure. Anna. More specifically Anna McNeill. Most specifically Anna McNeill Whistler famously appearing in Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1.
 
First car: if we’re going to be making things up we might as well make one up with flair. Perhaps my first car would be a Bugatti or Alfa Romeo, a Corvette split window coupe, or maybe a Mustang like the 1968 390 GT Steve McQueen drove to fame in Bullitt. This might be my weak link, the one somebody might be able to puzzle out, the 1964 Aston Martin DB5. If they ask about a chauffeur it would have to be Bo…. But I digress. Again.
 
There are so many other questions and they keep changing them just ever so slightly but well take a stab at one more. High School Mascot: This could be the easiest answer for a hacker to hack. It wouldn’t take much personal history delving to uncover a connection to the Merry Mountainmen or the Fighting Firefighters.  So we have to be particularly suspect in our choice, one no hacker could imagine. Clearly it must be the Hapless Hackers.
 
So these are my “truthful” answers to some of the more common security questions. What would yours be?  And please, please, don’t go blabbing my answers around!
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To Tell the Truth

Michael 2 Comments
From the title of this post you might think I’m taking another shot at advertisers, or politicians, or horror or all horrors, political ads, but no, not at all. Today’s potshots are aimed at us and starting with me. (That would be the collective us not necessary an us that could contain you because you might indeed be the only truthful person in earth. Hey, it has to be somebody!)
 
Once a time up the worse you could do was lie, cheat, or steal. Or perhaps lie, cheat, and steal. A subtle but important difference. But today if it wasn’t for cheating many of the recent sports championship teams members wouldn’t be sporting their championship rings, thievery accounts for 4 of the top 5 reported crimes in the United States (per the FBI the top five in 2020 are larceny, burglary, motor vehicle theft  aggravated assault, robbery) and lies are getting so popular politicians may revert to the truth telling just to differentiate themselves from the common crowd (okay, so I had to get at least one political dig in). And yes, you are in that ground too. You might be so good at social lying that you even fool yourself. Pull up a chair and listen to my tale. (Or read it if that’s easier for you.)
 
It dawned on me that not only do we spend a good chunk of each day lying to each other, each other of us actually expects it because we, in the words of a certain fictionalized Navy JAG officer, can’t handle the truth. Apparently I am one of the very few persons in the television watching world who did not sign up for a free 30 day trial of Disney+ this month, almost all specifically to be able to watch Hamilton. In order to correct the “obvious” oversight on my part my sister asked me if I wanted to pop over and watch it with them before their trial expired. (It just now dawned on me that signing up for a free trial with the foreknowledge that you are so signing up only to watch a specific movie free and then cancelling before getting charge for month #2 could be either or both cheating and stealing but that is (those are?) post(s) for a different day.) “No thank you,” I answered, “I really don’t have any great desire to see it.” You would have thought I said I didn’t want to go to Heaven when I die (or before if that could be arranged). I supposed I could have said, perhaps should have said, “I’d love to!” but I wouldn’t so I didn’t. It’s the truth. I really don’t have a burning desire to see Hamilton. Sorry. Actually no, not sorry.
 
Yes, yes, you’re going to say but those lies we tell in those times aren’t lies, they are niceties, polite nothings, harmless fibs. When did it become necessary to lie to be polite. When you are standing in line at the 12 items or less express lane with your melting half gallon of rocky road ice cream waiting for the clerk to bag the last of the 6 bags of groceries for the guy in front of you and your answer to her “I’m sorry you had to wait,” is “that’s okay, I don’t mind,” that’s a lie! You know you want to say “if you’re so sorry take this portable puddle of chocolate back to the ice cream freezer and bring back back a container I don’t have to eat with a straw! And while I’m waiting I’m going to tell your boss that you lack the counting skills to figure out when you’re being played for a fool!” But no, you want to be nice, it’s more polite that way, so you lie. 
 
You explained 3 times to the auto mechanic that “it goes ‘ker-plunk’ when I turn the steering wheel to the left,” but when he comes back from the test drive he says “I didn’t hear a ‘clunk’ when I stepped on the brakes. When was the last time you heard that?” So you try again, “no, I didn’t say it goes ‘clunk” when I step on the brakes, it’s making a ‘ker-plunk’ing when I turn the steering wheel left.” That sets the tone for a day spent in the service lounge with the 128 cup coffee urn that was fresh three days ago, the magazines with scantily clad muscle cars and girls with big air filters on the covers that were fresh 3 years ago, and the TV in the corner than is permanently tuned to “The Real Housewives of Possum County.” Four hours and 27 cups of coffee later the service manager sticks his head in to tell you you’re all done and he’s sorry it took a little longer than they thought but they had to go to their warehouse to get the part. “It’s okay,” you sort of mumble while mentally visualizing the most recent statement “total outstanding” boxes for your credit cards. Well it’s not okay. You just lied! Four hours earlier you wanted to say “maybe I should try a repair shop that knows the difference between a ker-plunk in the stering wheel and a clunk in the brakes” but then all you said was “uh huh’ and now you lied that it was okay because it’s the polite thing to do.
 
And now we have even more opportunities to politely lie in our daily lives. You know, “of course I’m still washing my hands,” “I love that the whole family Zooms every Friday for Happy Hour!” and “oh yes I wear my mask every time I go out and I’m happy to do it and protect my fellow world citizens!” Yeah, right. You’re probably washing your hands but Happy Birthday, twice, has morphed into the opening line of White Curtain which causing you to pause 9 seconds in to ponder the second line, consider it for another 4, and then dry your hands and walk. What you really want to say is ‘who are all these people, I’d kill myself if I had to do this in person every week.” Finally, you do wear you mask everywhere you go (don’t you?) but be honest, you really want to say “I wear my mask but I’d rather not but because it’s the right thing to do I will so you better too! or “freaking pansies won’t let me in to buy my freaking beer without a freaking mask on but this is freaking America and I have to right to pursue beer so give me a freaking mask.”
 
So, there you go. Tell me you haven’t done the same especially now, during these trying times. But don’t worry – “it’s going to be okay.”
 
 
truthhed
 
 
 
 

The truth, the whole truth, and anything but the truth

Michael 1 Comment
Even in the midst of world wide crises, nation wide closures, and seeming interstate competition of who can develop the most animosity among neighboring states by being either ridiculously lenient or unnecessarily harsh with their approach to virus control, US Presidential elections go on and with them the quadrennial exercise in truth stretching, whopper telling, and general misrepresentation we call political ads.
 
My memory goes back only as far as the 1964 election (I was here for the ’56 and ’60 go ’rounds but I was more interested in the Ringling Brothers’ version of three ring circuses those years) but I can tell you without a doubt, to my knowledge the only occupant of the Oval Office to get there without casting aspersions on his opponent’s reputed good name was Gerald Ford.
 
I suspect it will be nastier than usual this year what with so many people having nothing better to do than to get on social media and join in with the professional besmirching. Truth goes out the window when people spend over 2 billion dollars (yes, that is a “b”) to get a temporary job than pays a mere $400,000 a year. (To give you a little perspective, that is less the minimum salary for all the major American sports leagues and well less than half the minimum NBA salary. As the old saying goes, but they had a better year.) 
 
You would think with that kind of money floating around people would be able to find something their candidate did right to qualify him or her for the position rather than using it to dig up what the opposition did wrong. Or often, to fabricate something that looks like wrong doing. As I wrote 4 years ago, there is actually a regulation that forbids any media outlet from vetting, editing, or refusing a Presidential political ad regardless of content. Truth. The Campaign Reform Act of 2002 takes pains to not mandate the veracity or any requirement to confirm the veracity of any claim made in a campaign ad. With the party conventions about a month away and the election another 3 months after that, the airways, social outlets, mailboxes, and road sides will soon be overflowing with effluent.
 
This is where I usually wrappings up with some pithy saying or on rare occasions actual insight. Sorry, but for this mess I got nothing. I’ll borrow a line from old TV. While you’re out on the mean and nasty streets of American politics in a Presidential election year, remember, be careful out there.
 
truth

To Tell the Truth

Michael Leave a comment

I hate liars. Everybody tells a little fib now and then. (That’s the best cauliflower rice dough pizza. You can’t even tell it has no gluten, cholesterol, fat, calories, taste, or appreciation for a life worth living.) But outright “I know this is blatantly false and I’m saying it only because I want to trick your ass” falsehoods are just wrong. And professional lying like done by every politician and used car salesman since 1959 is the worst.

Those professional liars are getting really good at it. Much of their lying is so subtle we don’t even recognize it as not true. Take the word “free,” a perfectly good word. I think if you ask anybody what the word means you would be told “enjoying personal liberty as in freedom” or “given without cost.” Lexicographers would differ. Well … not so much differ as embellish, just like the liars. Dictionary dot com list 40 definitions for “free,” Cambridge English has 24, Merriam Webster 20, and even the venerable OED lists 14 definitions of the word. That’s why people can take a perfectly good word like “free,” put it in front of another word like “shipping” and feel justified telling you how much it will cost to ship your purchase if it doesn’t meet a minimum amount spent.

The local supermarket where I do most of my grocery shopping has taken to telling the truth. I must tell you, it confuses me sometimes. If you join their loyalty program you get a weekly e-mail offering some incredible value at not just a ridiculously low price but almost always free. A couple weeks ago this deal was a case of their bottled water for 49 cents. This week it’s a can of Coca-Cola for free. And they really mean free. Not with the purchase of another can. Not with a minimum total spent. It’s free. You go into the store, grab a can and take it to the checkout lane where someone will scan the can and scan your loyalty card, then the cash register will total up $0.00 and off you go. Of course they hope you buy something else but you don’t have to. Free means free.

exchangeAnother perfectly good word is “exchange.” This word even has the dictionaries agreeing there is little room for ambiguity. “An act of giving one thing and receiving another (especially of the same type or value) in return” is the number one definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, and except for references to where stocks are traded and a short conservation or argument, every reference to “exchange” is pretty much the giving and getting of something similar. Our general use of the word confirms that. Next week, if next week was fifty years ago, elementary school kids across the country will hold a “Valentine Exchange” at school and everybody gives and gets happy heart shaped cards. (Who knows what they do today.) Just a couple months ago at Christmas time you may have participated in a “Holiday Gift Exchange” at work when to keep in the spirit of exchange a dollar amount was stipulated. Even businesses know that to be an exchange a transaction must be of equal value. Gold and jewelry exchanges all over swap fresh money for old gold at a specifically noted “rate of exchange.”

So when I got a card in the mail from the local Chevy dealer saying it was time to exchange my 9 year old Malibu for a new one I rushed right over!

[sigh]

 

 

 

Let’s All Fall Back a Bit

Michael 5 Comments

This weekend Americans (and some others) go through that twice yearly madness of figuring out exactly how to open the back of the antique mantel clock or adjust the electronic version in the middle of the dash of your mid-nineties jalopy while reciting (mentally, hopefully) “spring forward, fall back” as the debate over the necessity for Daylight Saving Time and/or Standard Time plays out on the nation’s talk radio shows.

While that is going on I’d like to ask everybody to fall back just a little more than the proscribed one hour. Let’s shoot for, oh how about 60 years. That would make it 1958. The legendary ’57 Chevy Bell Air would be just a used car (and it’s Nomad counterpart a regular old (eww) station wagon, Jack Paar was hosting the Tonight Show, “It’s All in the Game” was in its 6th and final week as the Billboard #1 Single, and I was not yet allowed to cross the street by myself.

Ok, I’m not a nostalgia freak. I could really care less that Conway Twitty would wrest the top spot in the charts from Tommy Edwards next week with “It’s Only Make Believe.” (But I was pretty tickled that later on in the year The Chipmunks with David Seville would have the top selling record with their iconic Christmas song.) And 1958 had a lot going against it also. Unrest was escalating in Vietnam, the U.S. and Russia (then the USSR) were both putting the finishing touches on the first intercontinental ballistic missiles while they and Great Britain began conducting atmospheric nuclear tests, and a three year famine would begin in China ultimately taking 30 million lives.

Something that happened in 1958 that could be good or bad actually went on a little earlier than early November. September 12 actually. That’s when Jack Kilby discovered (developed? perfected? made usable?) the microchip, the heart of integrated circuitry. Because of him we have cars that can let you know when you wander out of your lane, phones we can carry around with us, computer assisted tomography that allow doctors to see inside us (that’s the CAT in CAT scan in case you – yeah, you knew, sorry), and (drum roll please) the Internet.

Most days I’m OK with the cars and the phones and even with the CAT scans. But lately I’ve been really ambivalent about this Internet thing. Of course if it wasn’t for it you’d not be able to read these ramblings, and for that you might be more grateful than I’ll ever know. But without it I’d not be able to see firsthand just how two faced, insincere, hurtful, and to be blunt, disgusting people have become. To not be exposed to such constant streams of hatred I’d gladly give up everything new from these 60 years.

It’s not been a week since eleven congregants were gunned down in a Pittsburgh synagogue. A day after that horrific occurrence a vigil was held to remember the victims and speaker after speaker including local politicians stood before the community and said hate cannot win, everybody should be and is welcome here. A day after that momentous event those same politicians were denouncing members of the opposing party, urging other politicians to stay away, and continuing to air the most vile political ads to date  while jockeying for position ahead of next Tuesday’s general election. It only took two days for politicians to revert to being their typical unsavory selves, to letting the public know how unsuitable, untrustworthy, and dishonest their opponent is and oddly saying little about themselves (or perhaps much about themselves) at the same time. With the help of the Internet and news sites’ comments areas, the followers of this party or that have marched in line spewing the insults that they’ve taken the last two years to perfect.

It’s in everybody’s best interest to live kindly and peacefully. Yes, you get to pick and choose who you are going up like just as others can decide to like to you or not. But nobody – NOBODY – has the right to hate. Lies are hate. Saying what you think people want to hear then doing the opposite is hate. Being a sheep isn’t hate but it is stupid. If we can’t rely on those we look to for leadership and guidance to take the time to demonstrate their commitment to not letting hate win, then we’re going to have to do it ourselves.

Maybe a starting point would be to spend some time face to face with your neighbor. Of course you’ll have to put down your phone to do that. Fortunately because of the efforts of Mr. Kilby, you can fit it into your pocket while taking that time.

Fall back this weekend. However far you’re comfortable going.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

Michael Leave a comment

We were driving down a country-ish road when jogging on the shoulder toward us was this woman, her legs striding, arms pumping, head bobbing, and face frowning.  It was not a look of determination, nor was it one of concentration.  It was one of displeasure.  It was one that said “I am two miles from home in any direction and I want to be there, not here.”  What we knew, from knowing others who jog along the shoulder of country-ish roads, is that when she gets home there will be a husband, a parent, a partner, a child, or maybe a cat or dog who will very innocently ask , “How as your run?”  And then the lies will begin!

It was fine. I had a great run.  It was the perfect morning to get an extra mile in.  And the check’s in the mail, too.  Truth be told, there are some instances that we know have never had the truth be told of them.   Early morning joggers are amateurs when it comes to the really smooth lies.

Whether it’s taking a little blood out for a blood test, a lot of it out at a blood drive, or getting an annual flu shot, “You’ll just feel a little pinch,” is not exactly truthful for any of them.  We are both blood donors.  We’ve both had flu shots.  And we’re ready to tell anybody who comes that close to us with those sharp objects that we know we’re going to feel more than a little pinch.  Save the lies, tell it like it is.  This is going to hurt but just for a little while and once that goes away you’ll feel much better for it.

Every day millions of people ask another millions of people how they are.   We’re not sure why because we know that an answer is neither required nor expected.  If so, no one would ask “Hey, how are you?” of someone who is getting on the elevator one just got off.  Yet it happens.  The appropriate answer to that question at that time should be “buy high, sell low” just to see if anyone is actually listening.  Quite often, then and at the millions of other times when the inquirer can actually hear the answer, the answer is “Oh just fine, thank you.”  You know you aren’t.  No one is ever just fine.  Ever. 

Whether we’re asking or are being ask, almost always “Do you want help with that?” is followed by “Whew!” when the answer comes back or goes out as no thanks.  Nobody ever really wants to help, at least not with physical assistance.   Maybe if the help needed is of the mental type we’d all be helpers and then when someone asks why we’re just sitting there we can answer with another collective lie, “Yes so, I am working.” 

Just a little bit longer.  No, that’s not a commentary on this post, although here it is truthful.  Most other times that one hears those words it is going to be longer but not by a little bit.  We hear this when waiting for a table at a restaurant, for a meeting with the boss, for a refund check coming in the mail, for the doctor to take his or her turn with us, or for an opponent to finish a Scrabble move.  The funny thing is that everybody on the delivery end of “a little bit longer” knows exactly how much longer it will be.  Why not tell us.  We suppose either they aren’t confident that we find their services worth waiting for or that their services aren’t worth waiting for.

It used to be a little more sensible when business was conducted by letters, phones, and secretaries.  Now to tell someone you never got the message, meeting reminder, or new project deadline in the time of email and shared electronic calendars is a bit far-fetched.  Yet not so far-fetched that by personal experience we can say that just about every time a meeting is missed, a deadline goes by, or a message is ignored, the guilty party still tries to claim ignorance.  “Must be something wrong with the server,” is the new “the check is in the mail”

Can you think of any others?  We’d love to hear them!  Ummm, errrr, let’s do lunch.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?