3 Dangerous Lies

crossed-fingers

We all lie: it’s built into our psyche.  I’m pretty sure that somewhere back in caveman days, somebody looked around and said, “Does this sabretooth pelt make me look fat?”  And her mate grunted the equivalent of, “No, darling!  It’s perfect.”  Thus our species continued populating the Earth.  Personally, I think lying is an essential part of civilization.  It gets us through social situations, keeps our friends and enemies in line and helps us not look like jerks – most of the time.  Plus, in general, lying is no big deal.  The rewards are large and the consequences quite small.  However, sometimes lies can be dangerous.  These are the lies we tell ourselves.  Here are just three examples.

1 – Remember, back in school when Brittany, Class President, hooked you into helping with the Annual Charity Drive because “It’ll be fun!”  And remember how is wasn’t because, while she and her friends were up at the dance, “collecting” non-perishable food items, you spent the evening down in the school basement, working your ass off, sorting cans of tuna and packages of macaroni.  Remember that?  So how come you’re phoning everybody in the family (on both sides) and saying, “We’re doing Christmas at our house this year.  C’mon over for dinner.  It’ll be fun!”

2 — Normally, this lie comes right after some celebrity TV know-it-all has created a beautiful gingerbread sculpture shaped like the British House of Parliament.  You watched them fashion this marvel — from finding fresh ginger at the local farmer’s market to carving out the wooden molds on a lathe.  They’ve spun sugar to a transparent sheen for the windows and even installed battery-operated lights – all in less than 30 minutes!  So, you say to yourself, “That looks easy” and go out a buy a Gingerbread House kit from the grocery store.  Two weekends and three Gingerbread House kits later, your own mother won’t speak to you, the kids have filed a restraining order and whatever’s left of the gingerbread mess is sitting in the corner – where you threw it.

3 — Once again, this lie started in school.  Your term project was due at the end of the semester, and that was three months away.  Three months!  That’s a lifetime when you’re a teenager.  So, you decided to do a kick-ass/best ever treatise on the Pre-Cambrian Shield – complete with rock samples, charts, hand-drawn illustrations and a working model of a Canadian glacier because, you say to yourself, “I’ve got plenty of time.”  And you keep saying that for the next 2 months and 27 days while your project slowly melts away like that glacier you’re never going to build.  Finally, you end up with 10 pages (double-spaced) that you borrowed from an encyclopedia (no Wikipedia in those days) a Xeroxed copy of an aerial photograph of Ontario and couple of stones from your garden . . . .

Well, folks!  Today is the 4th of December, and Christmas is exactly three weeks away.  Just sayin’!

 

Some Guy vs McDonald’s

mcdonald

As I wrote on Tuesday, our world is going crazy.  And the sad thing is we’re not even “slouching towards Bethlehem” in a dignified, poetic journey to the apocalypse.  No, not us!  We’re twittering around Wonderland in a Johnny Depp-esque rendition of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – utterly convinced we’re on the road to salvation.  Let me give you yet another example.

Some guy in Quebec, Canada is suing McDonald’s because, he alleges, they are breaking Quebec law by advertising their Happy Meals™ directly at children.  Whoa!  I’m no expert on marketing, but I’m fairly certain that when a restaurant gives away toys with its food and has a clown as its spokesperson, children are involved somewhere.  Anyway, Monsieur Bramante, a father of three kids under 13, came to the same conclusion and decided somebody should do something about this – and that he was just the boy.  He hired a lawyer (on spec, probably) and launched a Class Action Suit.  M. Bramante maintains that he, his family and anybody else who’s ever bought a Happy Meal™ are being victimized by McDonald’s flagrant flaunting of the law.  According to court documents, he says he “eats at McDonald’s about once every two weeks on the urging of his children.”  Plus, he estimates that he has spent hundreds of dollars on Happy Meals™ over the years.

So, what’s wrong with this picture?  Sounds pretty typical, for the 21st century — find some corporate Goliath and go David on their ass for media attention, fun and, perhaps, profit.  Unfortunately, there are a couple of flies in the ointment.

First of all, suing somebody just because they suggest you buy their product is ludicrous.  Unlike death and taxes, McDonald’s is not inevitable.  You don’t have to go there.  Like drugs, you can tell your kids to “Just say no!”

Secondly, you’re the dad!  No matter how much they “urge” you, taking nutritional directions from your kids is not a good idea.  There’s a reason we don’t allow children to vote, drive or operate heavy machinery.  Duh!  Counting on them to decide what (and where) the family eats is exactly ass-backwards.

Finally, and here’s the WTF moment: YOU’RE THE DAD!  Your kids may very well have motivation to go to McDonald’s but if they end up there, you’re the one providing them with the means and opportunity.  What’s wrong with you?  Downloading the responsibility onto Ronald McDonald doesn’t cut it.  Honestly, you need to spend a little less time dicking around in the legal system and a lot more time being the parent.

No wonder half the people on this planet want to blow us up!

PETA vs Wool

wool

If you haven’t noticed, our society is going nuts.  We seem to spend our days wandering around Wonderland, looking for the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party — and last week we got a couple of steps closer.

PETA, a band of uber-bored rich people who think the rest of us spend our leisure hours kicking puppies and slaughtering chickens, has ventured out onto the last looney branch of the crazy tree.  They’ve decided that a village in Dorset, UK is promoting cruelty to animals because – and here’s the good part – its name is Wool.  Whoa!  That’s a bit much!  It’s kinda like saying St Louis, San Francisco and St Moritz are raising awareness for the Catholic Church.

Anyway, PETA wasn’t done.  They wrote to the parish council and promised 2,000 “cruelty free” blankets if the good people of Wool would kindly change the name of their village to Vegan Wool.  Publicity stunt?  Maybe.  Unfortunately, I have this nagging idea that the people at PETA actually believe the local bumpkins are spinning their wool into garments to keep warm.  Not only that, but I’m pretty sure PETA also thinks that by generously providing the peasants with a reasonable alternative, they’ll put an end to this cycle of agrarian abuse.  Woke is woke — right?  Either way, there hasn’t been this much condescension hanging in the air since Peter Minuit offered the locals a big bag of beads for Manhattan.

The problem is PETA, being PETA, failed to do its homework – again.  The truth is the village name Wool doesn’t have anything to do with wool — or sheep — or any other kind of animal husbandry.  The name is derived from the Old Saxon word “Welle” which means “flowing water.”  The original village took its name from that – a local stream.  Over the last 10 centuries (since the Saxons held sway in England) the inflection has been corrupted.  Thus Welle became Wool.  Oops!  It turns out the only thing the citizens of Wool are guilty of is mispronunciation.

Personally, I think it’s one thing for a multinational, multimillion-dollar organization like PETA to bully a pastoral little village, but I’d like to see them try this crap on a tough town like Buffalo, New York or HAMburg, Germany.  Then we’d see how far their 2,000 blankets gets them!

 

Image: Peter Trimming