Pronoun Police

The pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented.

― John Fowles

Goodly readers on occasion complain that my old-school use of pronouns and impatience with pronouns of choice reveal insensitivity and bias.

Under the hot lights of these pronoun police, I'll admit, I'd probably cop a plea.

But for the moment suffice it to say my one true bias is a bias for brevity.

Brevity speeds communication; and life's too short to stuff a mushroom.

But, incisive as it is, brevity almost always ruffles feathers. 

By fostering favoritism, brevity can't help but trigger the aggrieved.

• Men at work. 
• Boys will be boys. 
• Drama queen.
• All men are created equal.

We could easily enough scrub favoritism from these phrases, but what value would we really add?

• Proletariats laboring up ahead.
• Youths will behave as they frequently do.
• Histrionic person.
• All human beings either are created equal or turn out that way due to randomized instances of syngamy.

I wish I could be as cheery about our current obsession with wokish circumlocution as the linguist John McWhorter, who recently applauded this sentence:

• The boy wants to see a picture of herself.

"There are times when the language firmament shifts under people’s feet," he wrote in The New York Times. "They get through it."

And if they don't, the pronoun police will be there to assist.

My Motto for 2022

People are drawn to the easy and to the easiest side of the easy.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

"Easy does it" is a core principle of the recovery movement. 

It's also my motto for the new year.

It means, according to Alchoholics Anonymous, that whenever you’re flustered, slow down and chill; good ideas will emerge in their own time.

The author of Alcoholics Anonymous borrowed the slogan from the Oxford Group, a Christian fellowship that owed much to Jesus' advice in the Sermon on the Mount: "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself."

Jesus' advice was also central to the teachings of Emmet Fox, a Depression-era leader of the New Thought Movement and an AA guru. Fox interpreted Jesus' advice as follows:

"Try not to be tense or hurried. 

"If you try to unlock a door hurriedly, the key is apt to stick, whereas, if you do it slowly, it seldom does. 

"If the key sticks, stop pressing. To push hard with will power can only jam the lock completely.

"So it is with mental working. In quietness and confidence shall be your strength."

In other words, easy does it.

Happy New Year!

You've Got Omicron!

Symptomatic dolts are stampeding Atlanta's hospitals and Covid-19 testing sites, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. 

According to local healthcare workers, 94% are unvaccinated. 

Georgia's governor has called in the National Guard to restore order.

Too bad the Guard can't restore sanity.

These chowderheads have had nine months and more to get their shots, but haven't.

And now they're panicky.

A former HHS employee has told me that to expect all Americans to become vaccinated is unrealistic.

Through the entire history of medicine, at best 85% of the population accepts the need to be vaccinated and complies.

A steady 15% of the population remains vaccine-resistant.

This figure corresponds precisely to the portion of Americans classified as "idiots, imbeciles and morons" by the medical establishment.

Coincidence?

No way. 

So I guess we shouldn't judge the people lining up for tests in Atlanta.

They can't help it.

They're buffoons.

Love, Work and Bullshit

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanity.

— Sigmund Freud

In 2017, I predicted the "gig economy" would soon enforce downshifting and make a universal guaranteed income mandatory.

But Mother Nature had other plans. 

She used a pandemic to enforce downshifting and PPP to guarantee income.

The pandemic has also unpredictably spurred a popular uprising known as the Antiwork Movement. 

Marxist in nature, the Antiwork Movement calls for an end to slavish, fear-based jobs in favor of "idling" and finds voice within industries like high tech, hospitality, and healthcare—the same sectors leading the Great Resignation.

Whether Covid-disruption or the Antiwork Movement have lasting traction is anyone's guess. 

My money says they don't. 

Covid will soon morph into a common cold, and there will remain plenty of workers eager to step into jobs abandoned by "idlers" (we call those eager beavers "immigrants").

What Covid and the Antiwork Movement have done is cast a bright light on "bullshit jobs." 

Bullshit jobs are those make-work occupations first described in 2013 by anthropologist David Graeber: stupid jobs such as concierge, bailiff, closet organizer, medical coder, tax attorney, Instagram marketer, and human resources executive; demeaning jobs so pointless they represent, in Graber's words, a "scar across our collective soul."

As 2022 progresses, I predict, we will see Covid-19 and the Antiwork Movement run out of steam and be replaced by an Antibullshit Movement.

We'll see more and more workers move from meaningless, dead-end jobs into jobs that combine Freud's cornerstones, work and love. Jobs like school teaching, woodworking, art conservation, investigative journalism, firefighting, farming, fundraising, truck driving, and hospice working.

And we'll see fewer and fewer workers becoming dog washers, pizza deliverymen, telemarketers, community organizers, diversity trainers, celebrity chefs, and professional shoppers.

Idling, too, will fall from grace.

After all, there's no money in it.

Grandpa Niall

People who mess with me should beware: they're their messing with a royal.

My 23andMe test shows I'm directly descended from a High King of Ireland, Niall Noigiallach—best known to the ages as Niall of the Nine Hostages.

Niall had a lot of kids, including 14 sons. Geneticists today estimate that a full 8% of the world's Irishmen and 2% of the Irishmen from Greater New York carry his genetic signature. 

The latter include the likes of Bill Maher, Bill O’Reilly, and me.

Operating from atop the Hill of Tara, Niall ruled from 445 to 453 CE. His kingdom encompassed nine vast provinces in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, and France. Niall earned his nickname from a fondness for kidnapping members of opposing royal families, the most famous of whom was the wealthy Englishman who'd later become Saint Patrick.

Abandoned by his queenly mother, Niall was raised by a poet, who saw in this son of a king future greatness. 

When the young Niall on a dare kissed a witch in the forest, legend has it, she granted him the High Kingship of Ireland, and promised his clan would rule for 26 generations.

As it turned out, the witch was right on target: Niall's dynasty lasted 500 years.

Niall was a badass, pure and simple; so bad, he beat back not only the the Saxons, Britons and Franks, but the Roman legions.

But, bad as he was, he couldn't escape death. Niall was killed in France by an archer, near the River Loire. His troops brought his body back to Faughan Hill, in the heart of his kingdom, for burial in 453.

In 2006, Trinity College professor Dan Bradley showed through DNA analysis that Niall, the "early-medieval progenitor to the most powerful and enduring Irish dynasty," has three million living descendants, nearly on par with Genghis Khan.

In 2015, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates showed through DNA testing that two of Niall's descendants are Bill Maher and Bill O’Reilly.

You can learn more about Niall of the Nine Hostages here.