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Word of the Every So Often

gallus: (adj.) Mostly Scottish, meaning mischievous, cheeky, or bold, but it can also be used to describe an act of daring, especially if it’s something you probably shouldn’t be doing. Such as... The president’s attempt to take over the country was quite gallus.

The Almost Daily

Today is the Wiccan holiday of Ostara, which we’d love to tell you more about. It’s also the Spring Equinox, which we’d love to write about, too. Unfortunately, it’s also Shut the Fuck Up Day, a day devoted to, well, shutting the fuck up. If you have a social cause you feel strongly about, or whatever other opinions you might have, just for today, give it a rest. And that includes social media tirades, and... well... everything. And it doesn’t matter who you are or what country you run. Just for today... Shut the Fuck Up! Please.

The History of the Future: STFU

By the Spring of 2038, it became increasingly apparent that the average person was a moron willing to believe any nonsense anybody would tell them after 1000s of people made themselves critically ill by drinking motor oil (the real stuff, not the synthetic kind) thinking it would keep them safe from Covid 85.

A group of concerned citizens, which included some of the smartest people in the country, all came to the same conclusion: The greatest threat to humanity was that darn near everybody was willing to believe anything anybody told them, and then tell everybody else as if it were true. They decided the only hope for humankind would be if everybody would just shut the fuck up. Everybody should keep their opinions to themselves.

And so began the STFU Campaign. Hundreds of thousands of T-shirts were printed with STFU across the front. There were bumper stickers, coffee cups, ballcaps Frisbees, pencils and pens, all emblazoned with the acronym STFU. You name it, they put STFU on it.

It was the day before the worldwide release, on July 3, 2038, that an intern at the STFU Campaign Headquarters, more of an aside than anything, happened to ask, "If we want everybody to keep their opinions to themselves, then why are we putting ours on bumper stickers and T-shirts?" And, of course, he did have a point. In less than a week, the only people working for the STFU Campaign were the few who were trying to figure out just what do do with all that stuff.

The T-shirts, along with everything else, were all eventually sent to the obscure Middle Eastern country of Unostan, where, in the local dialect, STFU was the acronym for "Tell More Lies."

Cartoon of the Week

Had the other rider been passing to his right, then it would have been proper to have offered him a greeting.

STUFF

Maggie

Maggie was a cat.

She was a good cat.

She did what cats are supposed to do well.

She slept, she ate, she laid around,

and she caught mice.

Maggie was good at catching mice.

She ate them, too,

which her people found rather disgusting,

but they were willing to ignore it,

because they really didn’t like the mice.

Maggie’s life was good.

But it wasn’t enough.

So Maggie decided to go to college

and major in philosophy.

Well, sure, most people in her undergrad classes

noticed that she was a cat,

but the further she went

the less anybody seemed to care,

until she got in grad school,

and then nobody noticed at all.

The trouble began

before Maggie finished her Ph.D.

She started to question things, like:

Was the unquestioned mouse

really not worth eating?

Was any mouse worth eating?

Were there really any mice at all,

or were they a collective illusion?

Perhaps Maggie herself

was an illusion of a mouse.

And the more Maggie thought,

the more she came to realize

that she could never stop.

The logic followed QED:

If you meow,

and therefore you are,

then if you don’t meow,

then, therefore, you’re not.

But perhaps she wasn’t anyway,

for after all,

how could you ever know anything for sure?

And Maggie became totally useless as a cat.

Of course,

it took the mice a whole three minutes

to realize that not only was Maggie

not going to chase them anymore,

but Maggie wasn’t even going to move,

even after they discovered

that the quickest way to the kitchen

was going over Maggie.

And in marginally less time

than it took the mice to realize

that Maggie was less than useless,

the mice had overrun the entire house.

It was about that time

that Maggie got the boot.

She was replaced by a tomcat

who was so stupid,

that he thought his tail

belonged to somebody else.

He had the mice whipped into shape by nightfall.

Maggie might’ve starved

had she not made her way to the University,

where she came to stay,

spending the rest of her days

in the Philosophy Department.

Well, yeah, she was just as useless there,

but nobody there noticed the difference.

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