Still Crazy After All These Years…But Much, Much Worse

You know things are getting worse. What would have cost me $35-40 dollars two years ago cost $84.00 this afternoon. It will not get better. But I’m not here to tell you about prices. You know they’re worse. I know they’re worse. But could someone please tell me what the fuck this is?

If there’s anyone who can actually wear this, leave a comment, please. I won’t believe you, but I could use a good laugh right now.

Things are grim. There is no denying it. Especially if you check with Republicans because, that’s all they do when a Democrat is in the White House. If it were a Republican, things would be worse.

I don’t like to think about it.

So, from a few years back, here’s a Last Week Tonight episode that’s still very much relevant. It concerns the one biggest fear I have. Not a phobia. A terror.

If you’re thinking that I’m terrified of mountains, yes, I’m not going to go near one again. I was on the Appalachian Trail once. Once.

That was 1972, in Boy Scout Troop 632, which was in Maryland. It disappeared and the number was assigned to another troop.

I hated the scouts. Too fucking wholesome for me. I hated everything about it. An overnight hike and camp on the trail on a night when it got so cold that I couldn’t sleep, that’s all I needed to know that mountains are pretty from a distance, but climbing and hiking wasn’t for me. First of all, do you know how many people vanish annually from our national parks and hiking trails, and what happens to folks who try to traverse the Appalachian Trail from one end in Maine to the other end in Georgia? Neither do I. Nor anyone else. Oh, it’s been done, but some just vanish. It’s like that with Mount Everest as well, but for pity’s sake, worse. And you can’t avoid the question: why?

In the video above, look at that mass of idiots up there. And consider those who die up there, and can’t be recovered. Hauling a dead body down that far ain’t easy. Usually it’s impossible. But then also consider that while the Sherpa guides can die up there, it’s a true puzzle that more people don’t die than statistics show. In fact, I never trust statistics, especially when it comes to body counts or missing persons. They are always too conservative.

Climbing Everest is, to me, just plain stupid. “Because it is there” is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard, and besides, it’s no real accomplishment anymore. Why not tell yourself the truth and decide it’s stupid, deadly, expensive and there’s lots of other things to do for recreation? Safer things, like chumming for sharks and then going swimming, wrestling alligators or throwing yourself in front of a bull elephant and trying to kill it with a BB rifle.

You could go canoeing in the Congo basin. Without mosquito repellent or netting on your pith helmet. Or just maybe have your mother-in-law over for a month. You can also consider skydiving without a parachute.

You’re going to be a statistic, but with the exception of the Congo trip, at least everyone will be able to put your name in the “stupid ways to die” category. In some cases a medical examiner would not even need to be involved. Easier for you, easier for insurance, easier for everyone.

Getting back to the show, it isn’t really Everest that scares me so much.

One of my biggest fears is what John Oliver does to his audience completely at random and when you don’t expect it: being rickrolled.

If that ever happens to me, if I live through it, I swear to do something far worse to the culprit. Like one of those traps Batman and Robin went through every week before the cliffhanger: “Will the Dynamic Duo escape the giant clam? Tune in tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!”

Now, I must be very careful here. By “trap”, I simply refer to a seemingly inescapable physical threat. Like setting a mouse trap. I do not mean that ambiguous term referring to ambiguous-gender people who “trap” others into believing and acting on the assumption that they are another gender than the person thinks.

I have no wish to offend.

Except Bob Hope and Danny Kay used to do it in comedy sketches all the time. Nobody got bent out of shape, either. It was all in good fun. Couldn’t do it now. Be sure not to watch Tom Hanks in his old TV series Bosom Buddies. Holy shit.

Everyone takes everything so seriously now. Too seriously. Like they take offense at one word, just one, and now someone’s gonna get shot. What the hell is wrong with people?

Don’t they know that there are things that need clear minds to solve? You can’t be so intolerant that you miss the important things and stew over being called a name.

I spent too much time stewing over a name or a single act that I shouldn’t have noticed, and missed far too many good things I could have done for others. It was only recently that I decided to let that shit go.

Watching the wars going on in the world killing mass people including children needs to be stopped. Israel is going too far, running the risk of losing the support of the United States. You have to be especially barbaric to do that, seeing as how, many times, we’ve backed the wrong side. But Netanyahu is a barbaric son of a bitch. He’s sleeping while people die. And what about Ukraine? Why do conservatives want to abandon them and funnel money and resources to Israel when the ceasefire was doomed from the start, and what Israel is doing is just going to radicalize more Palestinians? Hamas are butchers, there’s no denying that. But it makes no sense, shelling and bombing Palestine because they refuse to release more hostages, invariably to kill some of them in the process.

And whose bright idea was it to appoint some oil baron as head of a summit on global warming? Didn’t they know what he would say? Because, sure enough, that’s what he did say: cutting back on fossil fuel production and consumption would not impact climate.

It’s exactly the same as global warming denial, only interpreted differently by journalists who don’t want to offend the idiot. Wait. Scratch that last. I meant greedy idiot. He argued that it would cause people to “live in caves” again. What’s he think we’re going to do when people start dying by the thousands from thirst, poisoned water, heatstroke and diseases that are suitable to warmer climates? Because yeah, you can pump oil. Sure. You can mine coal. But what are you gonna do when all the people who buy it die off? Your fortune becomes useless. You can live your entitled life now, but when the labor force dies and you can’t even have internet service, what then?

Wars will continue to grow and spread. Fat cats can’t stop it, either, nor will they. Wars make money. Tanks, aircraft…need fuel. Lots of it.

Okay. I’ve overstayed my welcome enough. But please, will someone tell me what that fucking shoe is for?

Good. There is justice.