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On my facebook page, and it’s been there for a few days because there’s always somebody  new commenting  on it, a sucker born  every minute and what not, there is this math challenge: 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1×0+1=? and there was a warning right there that most people would get it wrong but I went ahead anyway and, hedging my bet, said it must be either 1 or 0 and everybody said “haha, you’re stupid, it’s 12,” some nonsense about order of operations and I guess it’s fair enough because grammar nerds (and I count myself as one) will happily argue for hours about whether to use the Oxford comma or not (I am against it, except in emergencies) but the thing is, i think it’s important for us to realize that it is  just  a trick question, something purposefully designed to elicit wrong answers, for humor, and not real mathematics.

Mathematics, like English or French or music, is a language.  It is a way to communicate, to convey information.  When it is being used for that purpose, you would find some easier way to express the equation, like maybe putting the 1×0 at the end, or in parentheses, or both.  But, so much of our communication is like that, made up  of attempts to fool someone, or trick them for humor.  Sometimes, I must admit, it is funny.  That’s what puns are all about,  and I do enjoy puns.

I guess I’m just bothered because I am not good at math, and I feel “why are you trying to trick me, for fuck’s sake, math is hard enough.  You could have written the equation in some more normal form and I might have still got it wrong.  Even just counting to 12 can  throw me, because that is 2 more than I have fingers.

I’m also not great at music, which is a bit of a problem because sometimes I write songs. (Well, song parodies for the most part.  I wouldn’t actually know how to write a song because I can’t read or write music, and I’m also tone deaf, people talk about key of this and key of that and I have no idea what the hell they are talking about and probably never will)I’ve also written some poems that other people have turned into songs.

So, tonight at the January Alchemy poetry reading  I sang a song called “Somewhere in Montevideo,” an ode to the joys of legalized marijuana, to the tune of “Don’t Cry for Me , Argentina,” trying to release my inner Madonna, but it sounded nothing at all like Madonna, because first of all I’ve got a man’s voice, I don’t know if it would be called a baritone or a bass or if that even applies if one isn’t hitting actual notes, but also my voice cracks all over the place when I try to sing something like that.

It’s all meant for humor but I’m sure there are some musicians in the audience who are thinking “OMG, this worthless character can’t sing for shit” and  they therefore don’t even recognize the cleverness of the lyrics.

What we have, sometimes, in the immortal words of George Kennedy, is a failure to communicate.

One of the risks of writing a blog every day is that I might repeat myself, like forget that I wrote about something two weeks ago and say almost exactly the same thing, and the only way to do that would be to actually check but bugger that, it’s not like I’m getting paid to write this or anything like that which would induce me to do anything that resembles work.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that I have touched on this topic before, how the addle-pated cretins (what is a pate, and how do you addle one – damned if I know, but it sounds right) over at The Currant are the most unfunny people to appear in print since Mitt Romney.  They remind me greatly of the character Hawk in Goooooood Morning, Viet Nam!  In fact, Currant Dudes, you suck the sweat off a dead man’s balls.

They call themselves a satire site, but they are not, unless they are using the word satire satirically.  Satire is supposed to be funny, absurd, to take a real situation and draw it way past any logical conclusion, to the point where everybody knows you are kidding.

At The Currant, they just make shit up and throw it out there and if there is any attempt to make it humorous, it is completely imperceptible.  That’s the thing about humor.  It has to be perceptible.  You can make the funniest damned joke in the universe, if people don’t know you are joking they might not laugh and, in some circumstances, they might punch you in the face.  I’ve had that happen.  It’s no good to say “I was joking!” after they’ve already punched you in the face.  They aren’t going to laugh then.  Even if they do, it won’t be as satisfying.

Their latest transgression is a story in which they said 37 people died of overdoses after marijuana was legalized in Colorado.  That joke has been tried before.  It was a film called “Reefer Madness.”  It was made in about 1873, and showed people going crazy from smoking marijuana and playing the piano with great intensity.  When they made us watch it in Junior High School, everybody laughed, and half of us hadn’t even ever smoked yet.  (When I was 13, I looked like I was 9 and none of the cool kids ever invited me to their reefer parties).

They could have said something funny about Colorado.  There was a picture circulating around the internet of a giant smog-like cloud over Denver, that was kind of funny.  They could have said that Safeway ran out of Cheetos, that traffic slowed to a halt (which is funny because stoned people drive really slow), that the entire state had broken loose from continental North American and drifted off into space, leaving an embarrassing gap between Nebraska and Utah.

That might not have been hysterical but, since no reasonable person would have believed it, it would have at least fit the technical definition of satire.

But no, they just said 37 people died and a lot of people believed them, and therein lies the problem.  As stupid as the people who write The Currant are, there are even stupider people who believe them.   They are to comedy what Fox News is to news.

I find this fascinating.  A team of Czech and German scientists (mostly Czechs, guessing by the names) did a research study and found that dogs, whenever conditions permit, align themselves on a north-south axis when they poop.   Like birds, sea turtles, and maybe cows, dogs are sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field.

Of course, most people commenting on the story just wanted to make jokes about dog poop or say “I can’t see why scientists are wasting their time on stupid stuff like this.”

He’s probably facing either due north or due south

Morons.  Maybe it will lead to a better understanding about evolution and the diversity of life, different survival strategies of different species.  If we eventually do meet an intelligent species from another planet, and they can perceive magnetism as easily as we can see, we will be darned glad this research was done.

Maybe, eventually, we will be able to train dogs to poop in designated spots, and a few well placed magnets will be the canine equivalent of kitty litter.

I don’t know how it will  prove to be useful, but I am confident that it will eventually prove to be useful.  That’s the amazing thing about pure science.  Some people are researching the direction dogs face when they poop.  Some people are researching why butterflies see colors people can’t.  Some people are researching sun spots.  Some people are researching the migration patterns of birds.  Some people are researching whether there’s a difference in IQ between people who prefer regular fries and curly fries.  Some day it will all come together.

Knowledge does not go away and every piece of it helps us to put the whole puzzle together.

Marijuana is legal in Colorado now.  You can buy it in a shop and you don’t even need a doctor’s note, or pretend to have lower back pain or some such twaddle.  We’re into the 2nd day of legal pot now.

There have been long lines, but it’s not like Black Friday or anything.  Nobody’s pushing and shoving or even cutting in line.  Stoners aren’t like that.  Well, maybe some are, but most aren’t. 

There have been lots of people driving in from out of state, but I haven’t heard any roports of traffic jams, or an increase in accidents.  Nor do I expect to.  Generally, people who drive while stoned are fairly safe drivers.  Yeah, their reaction time is slower.  They compensate for that by driving slowly and almost never changing lanes because, why?  Stoned drivers are generally very content with the lane that they’re in.  Yeah, there’s been a few times in my life when I was too stoned to drive.  You know what I did?  Pulled over and waited until I was a little less stoned.

As expected, most of the people lined up to buy legal pot are regular stoners, but a few were experimenters.  Little old grandmothers who figured hey, if it’s legal, why not?  We welcome them to our ranks.  Or, if they just try it once and don’t really join our ranks, that’s cool, too.  We still  appreciate the fact that they gave it a shot.

There’s a bit of worry that supplies will run out, but I doubt if that will be a factor.  Maybe in the very short term but it will get sorted.  Even in places where it’s illegal, there is generally no shortage.  I haven’t seen an actual shortage of pot in over a decade.  Maybe two decades.  It grows everywhere.  It grows in greenhouses.  It’s an easy plant to grow.

I hope everything works out.  I expect everything to work out.  And, so far, so good.