My God! What a moron.

Lighten Up, Will Ya?
By Joseph Walther

Writing for public consumption can be one of the most rewarding endeavors a person can undertake. For that matter, any endeavor that puts you into the public limelight can be a real life-affirming hoot, assuming that your intentions are sincere and that you have the stomach for nonstop criticism, much of which is tenuous at best. Conversely, if you’re highly emotional, touchy-feely, and supersensitive with an easily bruised ego, it’s probably best for you NOT to publish your thoughts.

I definitely fall into the former category described above. During my sixty-three years on this planet, I’ve lost count of the number of threats against my life. At one point, I received a combination of ten anonymous notes and phone calls in a two-week period; all of which described the tenuous nature of my living past the end of the month. Did I run for the tall grass? NO! I didn’t even report the threats to my high school principal.

Nothing has changed. Controversy attracts me the way that fecal matter attracts flies. I love it, the controversy not the fecal matter; although I don’t mind stirring it a bit, the fecal matter not the controversy.

Take, for example, the recent column I wrote titled, You Could Win Millions. I stated that the odds of being hit by an electric train while swimming under water on any given Tuesday morning are slightly better than winning the million dollar prize from the Wawa coffee cup sweepstakes. This upset the local Wawa manager.

“Who are you to criticize us over the Internet?” she asked. “The odds of winning our million dollars beat the hell out of winning the Powerball”, she said. “That article was so unfair”, she hissed as she continued starring daggers at me. Being the caring type that I am, I had to respond. “For Christ’s sake, don’t get your panties in a wad!” I told her.

“Let’s say that I am one of only one hundred participants in your sweepstakes and that only one of them has the opportunity to win the million dollars. The odds are stacked against the possibility that I’ll win the million dollars”, I told her. “Furthermore”, I continued, “if anyone wins the million, it’s going to be the same person who has won all of the other lotteries and sweepstakes: a person by the name of Someone Else.”

Wawa will draw the name of one finalist. That one finalist will then draw one envelope from among one hundred, only one of which contains the million-dollar prize. There are odds of 99 to 1 that Wawa will NOT have to pay out a million dollars.

Forrest Gump said, “The chances of winning a lottery go up significantly when you buy a ticket.” His statement seems profound only when you consider that the purchase converts impossibility to possibility. From a practical standpoint, however, a 1 chance in 124,000,000 is quite slim. Granted, 1 chance in 123,999,999 is better, but it’s still slim.

Relative to another matter, I am still receiving hate email from the fanatical God people. According to Jason, from Alabama, I am “a blue-state, left-wing communist, Godless tofu-eater, who perverts our kids.” I think that he’s upset over the fact that I don’t believe that God created the world around 10,000 years ago and that we should not teach such nonsense as part of public high school science curricula. I have not changed my mind, nor will I.

Scientific consensus approximates Earth’s age at around five and a half billion years. Biblical analysis, on the other hand, estimates the Earth to be between six thousand and ten thousand years old. In fact, John Lightfoot and Bishop Ussher, both of 17th century fame, calculated the Earth’s age at 6,009 years. According to these two dudes, God created the earth in 4004 BC. The precise date was October 23rd and it included the 6-days that God took to create it.

I swear that I’m not smoking any of those plain-wrapper cigarettes with the green specks in them and that I’m not making this stuff up. There are numerous web sites to back me up on this. Click here for just one of them.

Hard evidence, as always, has shown some of our past science to be in error. There is no reason to assume that it won’t happen again. This is the essence of the scientific method. However, in order for the estimates of Earth’s age to be that far apart, ALL of our dating science techniques have to be wrong. A single dating system could be wrong. Not all of them, considering the sizeable collection of intellect that went into their development, are likely to be wrong.

Jason, I categorically deny that I eat tofu. I am, however, a member of a generation that did not consider ignorance to be a point of view and never will. I certainly would not accuse you of being a knuckle dragging, gun carrying, cousin-marrying, redneck religious zealot simply because you disagree with me. This is not to say, though, that cousin-marrying and Alabama are mutually exclusive.

Tradition, while we may want to grant it a vote, should never have veto power. Old does not necessarily translate to being good any more than new necessarily translates to being better. The sooner we embrace this idea, the better off we’re all going to be.

American politicians are not helping the situation, either. But, ours are not the only ones doing and saying stupid things. It’s a world-wide problem. What makes American politicians unique, however, is that they’ve become quite adept at conning the American press into asking the wrong questions. Combining this ability with a growing apathy and ignorance on the part of the American electorate has become a godsend to them. It relieves them of all worry relative to their answers. When you can do this, answers become meaningless and we keep voting for the same idiots every time.

I have never been one to worry about what people think of me. I’m not going to start now. We live in a big world that is growing exponentially in issue complexity. The diversity of ideologies is too vast for any one country to control. As such, humanity’s survival does not depend on finding other ideologies that are compatible with ours or forcing ours down the world’s throat. Barring a natural disaster wiping out the human race, if we are going to survive and flourish as a species, we must learn to deal with our incompatibilities.

I will fight to the death in order to preserve my way of life or that of future generations. However, I’m not about to die because the jackasses of the world want to have a hissyfit over whose is the best imaginary friend.

Tune in again next week. Some of the stuff that I’m researching is going to blow your mind. Earl’s been sending me emails again. He’s found more evidence, substantiated primarily by his opinions, which he thinks proves conclusively that aliens are behind George Bush’s quest to relieve all of us of our personal freedom.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.