Fraidy Cats

I just can't keep up.  Seems that everyday brings just one more thing to hide from.  Now I have to dig some sort of a super deep hole in the ground, cap it with a 24 inch thick slab of concrete and make sure the access door is strong enough to withstand being bombarded by pieces of a huge satellite. 

Holy Meteorite's From Outer Space!  What's a guy s'posed to do?  Long ago I broke my back working just expressly to escape worrying about stuff like this during my retirement years.  Ya know, those Golden Years ya see advertised on the TV?   Can someone, anyone, tell me just how the Dickens a guy with my back problems is gonna be able to dig a hole that deep before next Friday?  I've worked hard enough I should not be bothered with this crap.

I'd enlist the aid of Paul Newman and George Kennedy but both of them are dead by now.  If any of you are old enough to remember "Cool Hand Luke" ya know why I want them on my team.  But, that's just one more reason the entire world is messed up - all the guys with the right experience are dead - or have bad backs.  I'm tellin' ya, nobody can win these days.

The movie industry managed to put sound effects with a motion picture in late 1900, but it took another twenty-seven years for the synchronization and the sound itself to be good enough that people would actually pay real money to sit and watch a "talkie."  Al Jolson stared in "The Jazz Singer" in October of 1927, and that's when most folks date the start of talking movies.  'Course now all you readers know most folks are off by 27 years - see how much smarter you are just because you manage to wade through all my gibberish? 

I know, not much of a reward for all the effort you put in, but if you'll keep going, I'll add to your knowledge.

That movie used a "sound on disk" process that required both a roll of film, with the pictures, and a 33 1/3 RPM record, with the sound, to be played at the same time.  A year later, in 1928, the process we use today, a sound track on the film itself, came into existence.

I told you all that so you can see that it took 28 years for the movie guys to figure out how to make a motion picture capable of making an audience do something other than laugh when they watched a movie.  It took only nine more years for the biggies to realize how much money there was to be made by scaring the tar out of people who watched.  In 1936 a church group produced a little movie called "Teach Your Children." 

In 1937 that little movie was purchased by another bunch of people who gave it a new title, "Reefer Madness."  Soon it was being shown in theaters across the country and scared a whole bunch of folks.  Scared them enough that Hemp production was outlawed shortly thereafter.

Now I'm not gonna point any fingers, but maybe you can read between the lines.  In 1936, Hemp was the most commonly used fibre in this country.  It was used for ropes, clothes, food and even lamp oil.  In 1937, the same year "Reefer Madness" started gaining traction, the DuPont Company patented nylon.  I leave it to you to do some research and then use any crayon you wish to draw a conclusion.

But, where was I when I got so far off the track - oh yeah, meteorites from space.  All that stuff above was just to let you see how easily and quickly entertainment can be turned into propaganda, and scary propaganda is the best kind.  It keeps folks up at night and makes them spend money in hopes of protecting themselves and their families from any harm.  Harm they feel will come their way because of some silly thing they've been told is gonna happen to them by any number of sellers of safety.

In 1937 it was cannabis, by the early 50's it had turned into "Duck and Cover"  type films designed to scare the bejeezus out of little kids, and now, sixty years later, everybody is afraid of everything.  The media has to find something new everyday to scare us.  Hurricanes, floods, viruses, peanut butter, darn near anything at all.  If it's bad enough, we'll have to buy something or other to save ourselves from it. 

I believe the last peanut butter scare required a jelly vaccination or some such but maybe I'm wrong about that.  I'm not real good at paying attention.  But just listening, even without paying much attention, is almost enough to keep a guy like me in bed all day. 

Except I have this really big belly and I'm rather proud of the success in life that implies.  It takes a lot of expensive food to maintain my belly; it also means I must leave the safety of my bed on a daily basis to prepare the calories that keep it round.

So, here comes the important part.  I'm not falling for all the stuff the government and all the big businesses want me to be scared about.  Nope.  They can aim all the propaganda at me they want and I'm not gonna buy it.  Every talking head on the tube can look concerned and tell me about all the stuff that's gonna kill me stone cold dead and I'm not gonna flinch.

All rest of you guys can be Fraidy Cats if you chose but I'm just gonna go about my business.  I really am too old to dig a deep hole, and have already lived a good life.  It's like totally OK if I get vaporized by some sort of falling spaceship I helped pay for with my own tax dollars this coming Friday.  Better to die that way than by the hand of some dufus with a gun who wants the seventy-eight cents I normally carry in my pockets.  If a 67 pound piece of US tax dollars really does land on my head and causes this to be my last post, I'm sure most of you will be better off because of it.

I am afraid of one thing, though.  I'm afraid we're gonna elect a President next year.  Nothing scares me more than that.