Tag: Life

Are You Happy?

happy

One of the things I love about Americans is that, when they set up their government, they took the trouble to guarantee the right to life, liberty and (this is the best bit!) the pursuit of happiness.  They didn’t go nuts and say Americans have the unalienable right to BE happy; all they said was they have the legal right to try.  Not everybody does that.  For example, in my country, the government doesn’t give a damn if I’m happy or not.  They’re far more concerned that I keep my mouth shut when I’m pissed off.  Anyway, happiness is a relatively recent invention.  Before those good old boys from Virginia came along, survival was the biggie.  Singing in the sunshine and laughing every day took second place to making it through the winter, the war, the plague, the drought, the fire, the flood, the famine or any of the other 1,001 calamities that used to regularly wander by.  However, now that happiness is on the menu, everybody wants a slice, and nobody’s sure if their piece is quite big enough.  Here’s a quick and dirty guide to find out whether you are happy or not.

Do you own a rocking chair?  It’s scientifically proven that rocking chairs release enough endorphins to fill a room.  Add a sleeping baby or a cat on your lap and you’ll practically drown in the stuff.

Do you have a pet?  Dogs are better than cats: cats are better than fish: a platypus is the best, but even a well-loved houseplant will change you from a miserable self-centred bastard into a caring, sharing person of quality.  Thinking about something other than yourself will always make you a happy person.

Do you live west of the Vistula River?  For some reason, Europeans are happier than the rest of the world.  I don’t know why.  It must be the wine.

Do you have lunch money?  Money will not make you happy, but if you don’t have any — uh — you’re kinda screwed.  And constantly getting screwed will definitely make you grouchy.

Do you get earworms?  Ohrwurm in German.  (Those people have a word for everything.) These are those stupid songs that get stuck in your head and won’t go away.  Yeah, they’re annoying, but washing the dishes to “Barbie Girl” by Aqua isn’t all that bad.  My personal favourite is “All About The Bass.”  And, quite frankly, it’s impossible to be depressed if your brain is playing “Call Me, Maybe?”  (Are any of these in your head yet?)

Do you procrastinate?  The truth is procrastinators are cockeyed optimists.  They actually think that sometime in the future, they’re going to get their act together and clean out the closet or vacuum behind the refrigerator.  They probably won’t — but believing in a better future is one of the key components of happiness.  Therefore, procrastinators, by definition, are happy people.

Do you laugh at stuff that’s not supposed to be funny?  This is the stuff that catches you off guard and you giggle — even though you know you really shouldn’t.  Stuff that’s inappropriate.  Stuff that buttoned-down people might even find offensive.  Stuff that you really can’t repeat to anyone except your most trusted, trusted friend.  Here’s the deal: being silly in the face of all the pompous ass seriousness in our oversensitive world is a sure sign that you’re happy.

But I’ve saved the best for last:

Are you in love?  If you’re in love, you’re happy — full stop.  Unlike “relationships” that you have to “work at” so hard they eventually just turn into a total pain in the ass, love is the real meal deal.  If you look across the breakfast table and can’t think of any other place you’d rather be, then you’re in love.  And folks, if you do that often enough, you’re not pursuing happiness anymore: you’ve caught it.

 

Let’s Fix The World — Part 2

As I said on Tuesday, the world is a mess (“Let’s Fix The World”) but here are three more things that would fix the problem — if only we’d start thinking outside the box.

fix the world

Bring Back Bullies! — When we eliminated bullies from the classroom and the playground, we unintentionally created a bigger problem.  We produced an entire generation who a) don’t understand the world is full of nasty, evil bastards and b) don’t know how to handle them when they show up.  I’m lookin’ at you, Vladimir — or Donald ( whatever your pleasure.)  So, every time some pipsqueak Kim Jong-Un dick-tator starts waving his nuclear weapons around, the entire world has to come to a screaming halt while we try to figure out what to do with the guy.  This is a waste of time.  It would be far better to have the bullies show up in the first grade (like they used to) and we could learn how to deal with them long before it gets to nuclear-warfare-scary.  That way, we’re not playing around with these nutbars for years when we should be concentrating on serious things.

Build Some Useless Stuff — This isn’t my idea, but it’s brilliant.  What we do is take all the students coming out of university with worthless degrees (art history, media studies, leadership, philosophy etc., etc., etc.) and put them to work building a bunch of massive, useless monuments.  Things like Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid or the Great Wall of … uh — well — maybe a wall isn’t such a good idea — but, anyway, stuff like that.  This would keep these half-educated cretins so busy they wouldn’t have time to sit around bitchin’ about their lot in life, blaming the 1% and causing trouble on Facebook and Twitter.  And they’ll be too tired to be constantly yipping about “safe zones” and “cultural appropriation” and why we have to change the he/she pronoun to some made up “ze” bullshit.  The result would be the rest of us could quit wasting a ton of time, trying to placate these malcontents — and we can get on with trying to solve the world’s real problems.  Plus, we’d get a pile of new roadside attractions for selfies and such.

Buy Things — It’s pretty obvious that our world is crap at solving problems.  Just take a look!  When we tried to feed Africa, we ended up with Sir Bob Geldof, stumbling around like a tramp looking for a hot meal.  When we tried to halt Global Warming, we ended up with Al Gore whose personal carbon footprint is the size of Milwaukee.  And now that we’re trying to solve the refugee crisis, who do we find on the front line? George Clooney and Susan Sarandon!  (Why don’t we just ask Sean Penn to run the UN and get it over with?)  However, there is one thing our consumer society does extremely well: we know how to buy stuff.  We need to use this ability to our advantage.  For example, if we’re serious about saving the African White Rhinoceros, why don’t we just buy them all?  (There can’t be that many left.)  We buy them all, stamp them with “Property of …” and hire a bunch of Los Angeles policemen to look after them.  Poachers might be mean and ruthless, but there’s nothing on this planet meaner than the LAPD!  And, honestly, how much would it cost?  The EU spends 100 billion Euros every year on foreign aid: a few rhinos would be a drop in the bucket.  Another example.  Want to end poverty in Mali?  Buy it!  Then send a couple of boatloads of  liberal arts graduates (from item #2) over there to build pyramids, and you’d probably get your initial investment back in a couple of years from tourism alone.  This could work for everything from saving the rain forest to stopping the cocaine trade.  Plus, if we just use the money Western politicians waste every year, nobody’s going to feel the financial pinch.  So this year we buy all the whales and tell the Japanese and Norwegians to go hang; two years from now, we buy all the heroin in the world and burn it in the Libyan desert — because we bought that the year before.

Actually, the sky’s the limit.  All we have to do is quit wasting our time and think about it.

 

Let’s Fix The World!

fix the world

Let’s face it, folks!  We’re screwed — like totally.  Western society is in an unholy hole, and every time some bright-bulb-somebody shows up with a shovel and tries to fix things, they just end up digging us in a little deeper.  In my lifetime, the poor have gotten poorer, the hungry have gotten hungrier and the homeless have gotten — uh — well, you can’t actual get any homelesser, but given the wretched state of things, they probably would be — if it were at all possible.  The point is, we need to do something — yesterday — or we’re going to find out rock bottom has a basement.  Unfortunately, our world has been hijacked by stupid people.  We all know there’s no cure for stupid, but with a little ingenuity, we can limit the ability of these morons to control the agenda.  This is not a quick fix, and it could take a generation or two to get things under control, but if we act now there’s still time to save our society.  Here are three things we need to do immediately, or the next voice we’re going to hear is President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho from Idiocracy, declaring war on asparagus.

1 — We need to make people take a test (and pass it!) before they’re allowed to vote.  Here’s the deal: plumbers have to take a test (and pass it) before they’re allowed to play around with your sewer pipes; electricians have to take a test before they’re allowed to install a light switch; even cab drivers have to take a test before their allowed to drive you home from the bar.  Yet, when it comes to politics and selecting the folks who are actually going to run the world, we abandon all due diligence and let every dumbass who can make an ‘X’ have a say — an equal say, BTW.  No wonder most of our leaders have nice hair, good teeth and no brains.

2 — We need to make people who want to become parents go to Parenting School.  Here’s the deal: if you want to be a teacher and teach kids, you have to go to school.  If you want to open a Day Care and look after kids, you have to go to school.  Hell, in some places if you want to be an occasional babysitter — you have to go to school.  Yet, if you want to become a parent and be totally — 100% — responsible for a helpless child’s comfort, nutrition, safety and education, their physical, psychological, moral and spiritual wellbeing, and work diligently 24/7 for 18 years (without a day off) to turn them into responsible adults — all you have to do is have one too many tequilas, let a foot massage get out of hand and 9 months later — Shazam! — you’re a parent.  Does this make any sense?  Letting a bunch of people who haven’t got a clue about life have kids and pass their cluelessness on to the next generation is what’s exponentially killing our society.

But first — before we do all that:

3 — We need to take the warning labels off everything.  This is Darwinism at its best, and it might be exactly what our world needs right now.