W.T. Fallon's Blog, page 3

Sarcasm & Scams, Part 2: The Robot Serves Frozen Yogurt and Money, Come and Get It!

As a follow-up to last week’s post about the ads I keep hearing for some real estate investing scam, I thought I’d bring you another can’t-miss-if-you-like-burning-money opportunity: The frozen yogurt robot franchise.

If you still have any money after investing in “the PERFECT market for my real estate investing plan!” (and every market is the PERFECT market), you’ll love this. Right after the real estate ads ends, the station I listen to rolls right into another “investment opportunity.” This one has two different ads that work out the same way. In one, a couple goes to the mall and runs into some friends of theirs, who are “just checking up on our frozen yogurt robot.” It AUTOMATICALLY serves customers (who are clearly just lining up to shell out their money), and the owners just collect the cash. It’s so awesome! And if you call now you can get in on one of the best locations!

The second version of the ad is even worse. A guy goes to the golf course and runs into a friend. “Hey, how come you’re always playing golf? I thought you ran a business?” he asks his buddy.

Golf Buddy responds by saying that he DOES own a business, he has a frozen yogurt robot and he only spends two hours a week on maintenance, so the rest of the time he can play golf while the robot rakes in the cash for him!

Now, if you’ve ever met a small business owner, you know that’s the biggest line of bullshit ever. One of my favorite Shark Tank quotes: “Entrepreneurs are the only people who work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.” I attempt to eke out a living selling stuff online. A lot of my friends are small business owners. None of them work two hours a week and spend the rest of the time playing golf. The only people who do that are born rich (and sometimes become president). If you think there is any investment opportunity out there that will allow you to start your own business, work two hours a week, and get rich, you’re delusional.

Aside from the fact that this falls solidly into the “If it SOUNDS too good to be true…” category, both ads ends with a pitch to visit a website and invest in YOUR frozen yogurt robot franchise NOW because “all the best locations are going fast!” Strangely this ad has been playing for a couple months, and apparently all the best locations are not already gone! Shocker.

Forgetting all that for a moment, anyone who has watched as much scifi as I have knows that a robot serving frozen yogurt in a mall is a disaster waiting to happen. If you’re going to invest in one of those despite all the holes I’ve poked in the ads, be sure to get yourself some liability insurance for when that thing goes all cylon and decides it doesn’t take orders from lowly humans any more.

[image error]

I can see it now: First, it starts getting customers’ orders wrong. Profitability drops. Then, it starts spraying yogurt all over the mall, covering customers. You get hit with lawsuits. People sue for damage to their dry clean only clothes. Stores sue for damage to merchandise. People sue because their children are traumatized and need expensive therapy for their frozen yogurt phobias. Video of your frozen yogurt robot running amok and spraying yogurt indiscriminately at unsuspecting victims who just want to buy a damn desert goes viral.

And if all that still sounds good to you, well….I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’ll make you a great deal on.

Who Actually Falls for Scams?

As I’m driving around shopping for crap to resell, I like to listen to the radio. I keep hearing these ads for some sort of real estate scam, where people apparently pay a guy to, “teach YOU how to flip houses using other people’s money!”

Yeah, because life works like that.

And it ends with, “FAYETTEVILLE is the PERFECT market for my system!”

The funny thing is, if I change channels to a station in a different city, I hear the same message, slightly modified:

“ROGERS is the PERFECT market for my system!”

“FORT SMITH is the PERFECT market for my system!”

“BENTONVILLE is the PERFECT market for my system!”

[image error]

I strongly suspect if I had the money to drive across the country, I would hear one of these for every city I passed through. Because let’s face it, every city in the entire USA is the PERFECT market for this system, right? Because there’s a sucker born every minute, in every city.

What I don’t get is who is actually dumb enough to fall for this kind of thing? Are there actually people whose lives have been so fucking awesome they something that sounds too good to be true must be true? Who are these people?

Being a lifelong cynic born into a family of liars, thieves, and backstabbers, I have no personal experience with this, so I’m going to poll my readers: Have you ever fallen for a ridiculous scam? What was it that made you buy into something that sounded ridiculous and turned out to actually be ridiculous?

Exclusive: Donald Trump Jr. Does Not Know How to Sit

Years of Being Told to Stand Have Permanently Damaged Junior’s Ability to Sit Comfortably

Guest Post By Kennith Doglog of Such Politics

While often in the shadows, Donald Trump Jr. (Junior) perfectly exemplifies what happens when Donald Trump takes an interest in you the same way he has done with American politics. Unfortunately for the United States, Junior lacks the capability to operate as a normal human being, and struggles with even basic functions such as sitting down comfortably.

[image error]

Throughout history, it is often a common theme to overlook the effects wealth and power have on the spawn of our nation’s leaders. At times their drive and ambition have rubbed off positively on their children, which can be seen in families such as the Kennedys and Clintons. However, sometimes their parent’s rigorous schedule and high stress positions strain the growth and development of our leaders’ kin.

Much like Patricia Nixon’s inability to blink with both eyes at the same time, Donald Trump Jr.’s frenzied childhood resulted in a lifelong shortcoming which still haunts him to this day. Growing up around the power hungry real estate tycoon, it was rare that Junior was allowed to sit. Trump demanded that whenever he was in his presence the small boy would stand like a military man, and salute him when he entered and left the room.

Since their house was filled with cameras that ran 24/7, Junior was constantly afraid that his father would be watching him and disapprove of him resting his legs. As a result, it was rare that the young millionaire ever sat down at home. Years of therapy have helped correct this issue in private, however he is still unable to sit down properly around his father, even when he is told to do so.

“It’s something that has burdened me my entire life,” Junior said. “Every time I’m around him and try to sit, you know, like a real boy, something goes off in my head that tells me I’m being bad. Father taught me never to be bad, so I am often conflicted about sitting around him.”

To intimidate Junior into not sitting as a child, Trump would often threaten him with flying first class on a public airline rather than use their private jet for their monthly European vacations. If he ever entered a room and the boy was sitting, Trump was also known to make the boy sleep in his smaller room in the east wing of their home rather than his spacious west wing suite. There Junior would only have access to pay-per view television and room service until 10 pm, instead of the full-time room service and private movie theater accommodations he was accustomed to.

Since Trump has become president and the family is being scrutinized by the public eye, Junior has had multiple mental breakdowns with his inability to sit for pictures with his father. It is rare that you will see the two sitting next to each other, and Junior has nightmares about sitting down in the Oval Office. While Trump refuses to comment on any of these issues, it is clear that his intuition has failed him on more than one occasion.

Note: Unfortunately, these days it’s necessary to explain to people when you publish a piece of satire. This is a piece of satire, not real news, or fake news. A definition of satire can be found here.

A Playlist for the Chump Presidency

Sometimes you have two choices: Laugh or retire to a room with padded walls. The next four years will be one of those situations, so I’ve compiled a playlist for dealing with the Chump presidency:

The Gap Band, “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.”

For the record, I have no idea why these guys are wearing sequined cowboy hats and camo, but I’m sure it makes every bit as much sense as anything the guy in the Oval Office does these days. I’m sad that I’m not old enough to remember the eighties, when fashion was crazier than our president! Good times, apparently.

Ace of the Base, “The Sign.”

For all you Chump voters out there, here’s one for that inevitable moment when you open up your eyes, see the sign, and realize what a mistake that was…

Meghan Trainor, “Lips are Movin’.”

If there was ever a song that summed up old 45, this would be it. You know he’s lying when his lips are moving and he’s talking round in circles. Bonus points for the pussy…cat dress.

Green Day, “American Idiot.”

This one needs no explanation, and if it does…you wouldn’t get it anyway.

MC Hammer, “U Can’t Touch This.”

 

This one goes out to 45 from all the women of America. Hands to yourself, chump.

What songs would you like to add to the Chump Presidency Playlist? Let me know in the comments section.

How Marie Antoinette Could Have Kept Her Head: An Alternative History

After a recent Google-fest, I learned that there is no record of Marie Antoinette actually saying the quote famously attributed to her. In response to reports the peasants were starving and had no bread to eat, she supposedly said, “Let them eat cake.” While there’s no proof she actually said that line, she did spend lavishly on dresses and other expensive crap of the day—I guess they had no Porsches in the 1700’s—and probably said a lot of things with the same sentiment. Anyway, this is a look at an alternative history in which she kept her head, so for the sake of argument let’s pretend she did say it.

Instead of openly admitting she didn’t give a shit about the poor peasants, Marie should have pretended to care about them—lip service only, of course. So they wouldn’t see through her lies, she should have found another scapegoat for problems like poverty and starvation. “Oh, you have no bread to eat? You know whose fault that is? It’s the recent immigrants from…”

(Hang on here, having never been able to afford a trip to Europe, I actually have no idea what countries border the land of (some of) my ancestors, so I need to do some more Googling. Well, shit, there are eight countries that border France. Who knew?)

[image error]

Okay, let’s try this again.

“Oh, you have no bread to eat? You know whose fault that is? It’s the recent immigrants from Andorra, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain, and Switzerland. They’re coming over here, they’re taking your jobs, and leaving you with no bread to eat! Obviously people in poor countries like Switzerland aren’t sending their best and brightest, they’re sending criminals over here to steal your jobs. And some, I guess, are good people, whatever.

“You know what we need to do to fix this problem? We need to build a wall, people, a big wall to keep them out. It’ll be the greatest wall ever. Okay, some parts of it may be invisible because stones are expensive and labor ain’t cheap and I’ve got the fancy ball coming up and I need a new dress to wear, but still, the solid parts of that wall will be great! They’ll never get over it!

“Oh, and once we deport all those sneaky immigrants back to their own countries, don’t worry, I’ll get all your jobs back for you. We’ll open a bunch of factories to make cave-man age stone tools again, then we’ll start producing all our products here in France. Well, except for the stuff my companies produce over there in China. We’ll keep producing those things over there because it’s way cheaper, what with sweat shop labor and everything. But you guys will have to start making shit the expensive way, here at home, so you can get your jobs back, mmkay?

“How are we going to pay for the wall, you ask? We’ll make Andorra, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain, and Switzerland pay for it, of course, with a fifty percent tariff on all goods made over there and imported. Yes, you’ll have to pay twice as much for your bread, but they’ll be paying for the wall, not you, and hey, you can always eat cake, right?

“Oh, you don’t like that? You think I’m guilty of treason? I guess I’ll just have to start bombing Andorra, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain, and Switzerland, or throwing rocks at them, or whatever the hell we do for weapons around here in the 1700’s.

“Oh, you think I’m a self-serving spoiled child? Well, of course I am, but most of the peasants are too dumb to care. They all just voted for me to be queen again!”

 

Brad’s Wife Fired: Cracker Barrel Under Fire Because The Internet

I’m going to be honest: I get jealous over stupid shit, and I bet if you really think about it, you do too. When I saw a story this weekend about a fired Cracker Barrel employee whose husband demanded answers from the company’s corporate Facebook page, I got jealous. Not because I ever wanted to work for the company—their food is gross, they have almost no options for vegans except baked potatoes, and all that old-fashioned crap in their gift shop is just for people my parents’ age—but because of all the viral attention she got after being fired. I mean, I’ve been fired. Lots of people get fired every day, and most of us don’t get the kind of viral attention that will surely lead to tons of new job opportunities for Brad’s wife, Nanette.

Although I know absolutely nothing about Nanette or the Cracker Barrel she worked for, I’m going to go ahead and take a guess at why she was fired. She worked there for eleven years, and they probably wanted to replace her with a less-experienced employee they could pay less. (Again, I know nothing about this situation and could be totally wrong. For all I know, she was fired for forgetting to order more Clark Bars and made-in-China ceramic crap for the lobby gift shop or something.)

But I know firing people and replacing them with cheaper, inexperienced idiots is common. Last year around this time, I was fired from my job for a very similar reason. When I asked if I had done something wrong, my supervisor said, “No, we’re just reorganizing the department and going in a different direction.” The following Monday, I applied for unemployment benefits, and a few days later I was told I wouldn’t be getting them because my employer claimed I was fired for cause. I should have known they were going to screw me over on benefits when I read my termination letter, which said absolutely nothing but, “As of February 12, 2016, your employment at Greedy Bastards, Inc. is terminated.” (Name of company has been changed to protect the guilty, me from a libel suit, and also for sheer accuracy.)

So I’m sitting here thinking I went about things all wrong. I’m not married, but I could have had a relative demand justice on social media. Not because I would want to work for Greedy Bastards ever again—truthfully, I hated the job and the only thing I miss about it is the money, plus who wants to work for someone who might stab you in the back like that at any time? Fuck that shit. BUT I bet Nanette is getting tons of job offers right now, and will likely have her pick of jobs, and that’s not something most people get when their fired. Hell, she doesn’t even need to take another job—she could probably start a blog or a YouTube channel and actually make money off it right now, unlike the vast majority of people like me who toil in obscurity, writing blogs no one reads, because they don’t have the popularity of this one person out of thousands who get fired every year, and that makes me jealous.

Why do I get jealous over stupid things? I don’t know, but I do, and I’m not going to stop. Please don’t tell me the grass is always greener, or to be grateful for what I have, or to have a positive attitude, or any of that other bullshit the richest one percent spread around to encourage the masses to settle for less. (As far as I’m concerned, all this gratitude crap is code for, “I’m rich and I want to stay that way, so stop wanting my money.”)

[image error]

This is not the first time I’ve gotten jealous over stupid shit, and I attribute all these incidents to my lack of money. Period. I remember one time I was running on a treadmill at the gym, and the TVs were all muted but had closed captioning, but usually the commercials weren’t captioned. So this particular day an ad came on that I hadn’t seen before. It appeared to be for some sort of spa—there were all these shots of palm trees, swimming pools, people getting hot stone massages. And I became insanely jealous, thinking how much I hated the people who could afford to go to this beautiful spa when I couldn’t even afford to drive to my cousin’s wedding or get a room at the Motel Fucking Six.

Then the ad ended at they popped up a slate, and I finally got to see what this place was that I so desperately wished I could afford: It was a rehab clinic for addicts. Okay, I’ll admit I felt a little silly when I realized it was basically a fancy prison and they just edited out the bars on the windows. I mean, you would have to have bars on the windows at rehab, right? But ultimately, I still wished I could afford to go to a place that nice—just one where I was free to come and go as I pleased.

Another time I was watching one of those extreme makeover shows—I don’t normally watch that kind of crap, so it must have been rerun season and I was desperate—and this woman lost a whole bunch of weight. Now, she didn’t do it alone—she had a chef cooking her healthy meals and a nutritionist telling her what to eat every day, she had a personal trainer forcing her to go to they gym every day, and all those things were provided to her free of charge by the show. And she had encouragement. When she couldn’t get up off the floor after doing one push-up, they all patted her on the back and told her she was doing great. At the end of the show, they bought her a brand new car to celebrate her success in losing fifty pounds.

And that made me insanely jealous. I mean, I lost fifty pounds too, about seven years ago. Yeah, I used to be a fat couch potato. And I did something about that, by myself, with no support. I didn’t have a personal trainer or chef. I didn’t have anyone patting me on the back and telling me good job when I ran a mile or forcing me to exercise every day. I did it myself. I started doing steady state cardio, then switched to high-intensity interval training (HIIT) after reading a magazine article about it in the checkout line.

[image error]

With HIIT, you basically go as fast as you can for twenty seconds, then at a moderate pace for forty seconds (or some other interval in which you sprint for roughly half the time you run at a moderate pace). I had not lost any weight doing steady state cardio for even an hour a day, but after only a week of doing HIIT for ten minutes a day, I had lost five pounds. The next week I lost five more. HIIT is hard, and you’re only supposed to do it every other day, but I did it every day, and it’s a hell of a lot more taxing than one push-up, and I didn’t have anybody patting me on the back or telling me to keep going, but I fucking did it on my own, and I’m okay with that, BUT WHY THE FUCK DID THAT LADY DESERVE A FREE CAR AND I DIDN’T?

Because it made good TV, that was why. As with Nanette and her awesome new platform, having millions of people interested in you makes all the difference.

What stupid thing have you been jealous of and why?

 

Reasons People Write: Why We Write Fiction to Tell Our Truths

Why do authors write stories? There are a lot of reasons people write, and I can’t speak for everyone, but I think we make up stories to tell ourselves the truth.

When I was a kid, my parents wouldn’t let me have friends over because they didn’t want anyone to see how badly our house was falling apart inside—like the splintered holes where the doorknobs were supposed to be, or the hole in the wall where the air conditioner fell out the window because the wood below it had rotted away, and the only carpenter they could afford couldn’t fix it for more than a year.  Not that it looked that great outside, with the peeling paint and rotting wood and corpses of old cars decaying on the lawn, but we couldn’t really stop anyone from seeing that shit if they drove by. I was supposed to tell anyone who saw the house from the outside that we were “in the process of remodeling.” Hey, I learned some big words at the age of three thanks to that.

We were “in the process of remodeling” for eighteen fucking years and never remodeled anything. Oh, my parents started a few times, but they never had the money to finish. Ironically, my parents were also always telling me not having money was nothing to be ashamed of, but they were always trying to hide it, so guess which one of those mixed messages actually stuck?

So anyway, they didn’t want me to spend too much time at my friends’ houses either, because then they’d feel obligated to invite the friends over, so basically I just spent a lot of time alone, and that is how I started making up stories—which I still do, as a writer. Anyway, my parents thought this pen pal program—back in the nineties snail mail was still more popular than email—was a great option because I could be friends with someone who would never want to see our house. So one day my pen pal wrote me this letter describing her home because, I don’t know, that must have seemed interesting to her at that point, and she asked what mine looked like, so I told her. She told me what the outside of her house looked like, so I described mine, and I believe the phrase I used was, “The paint is peeling.” Well, it WAS peeling.

Well, my mom got pissed and insisted I erase that line or change it. I asked her why, since she always said lying was bad. She said it wasn’t lying, just leaving out details no one needed to know. Maybe she was hoping I’d pursue a career in politics. Anyway, she refused to mail the letter until I changed it to “The paint is green.”

To this day, I am still mad about that edit. It was my truth to tell, and maybe if she hadn’t made such a big deal about it,  I would not have such a strong sense of shame about my lack of money today. Maybe I wouldn’t cringe every time I spend a dollar. Maybe I wouldn’t feel guilty for wanting to replace the holey running socks I’ve been wearing for three years. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like such a failure because I don’t have any money, despite spending most of my adult life in the pursuit of the green stuff. (And don’t fucking tell me money doesn’t matter, unless you know what it feels like to be told you can’t have friends over because your house is falling apart inside. Also, here’s another article on why money does matter, and you will never convince me otherwise.)

Shame, however, does not mean a desire to hide things. To me, the only thing worse than feeling ashamed is having to hide something because you feel ashamed. I’m not saying I’m proud of my lack of money or that it makes me happy, because that “you don’t need money to be happy thing” is bullshit. (Seriously, there have been scientific studies proving people are happier when they make $75,000 than when they make less, although there is no additional benefit to making more than $75k. This makes sense, because when you don’t have to spend every waking second trying to figure out how to pay your fucking bills, I bet you can concentrate on things that might make you happy. I mean, I don’t know what that feels like, but I bet it’s pretty fucking sweet.)

[image error]

But as much as I hate being broke, I don’t want to lie about it. Somehow that makes the whole thing more shameful and embarrassing. I’m not going to pretend to have money I don’t have. If I can’t afford it, I will say so. And I do. All day. And it gets old, seriously fucking old, but I know I would feel worse if I spent my time lying and making excuses that didn’t involve lack of money. I am who I am, and that is a broke-ass failure who lives with her parents, runs in socks that have had holes for three years, and can fit her whole tongue through the space between her upper and lower front teeth because braces weren’t affordable either. If you don’t like me for that, there’s the fucking door. Watch out for the splinters where the knob should be on your way out.

But back to the writing. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve come to realize when I write fiction I’m really just trying to tell my truths about real things. I lost my job last year. It was the only job I’d ever had in my adult life that paid like I was a two-time college graduate and not a kindergarten dropout. No, it wasn’t the $75,000 a year that would have allowed me to concentrate on things that would make me happy. It was $37,000 a year, which might sound like nothing to you, but to someone who previously only made about $17K a year, it was like winning the fucking lottery. Finally, I could get my own place instead of the humiliation of living with my parents.

But then I did the stupid thing and decided to pay off my car note first so I could be out of debt. I wanted to be free of bills, and I wanted to avoid paying some of the interest on a three-year note, so I paid extra every month. Then I was finally going to get my own apartment. I didn’t care if it was only one room, at least I’d be able to live there ALONE. That was all that mattered.

I made my last car payment, and a week later I was abruptly fired and replaced with a ten-dollar-an-hour intern. The supervisor who fired me said I did nothing wrong and they were just “reorganizing and going in a different direction,” then she turned around and told the unemployment office I was fired for poor performance, screwing me out of the pathetic $170 a week I might have gotten (after paying in for  years, I might add).

I had never felt more like a failure in my life, and I’ve pretty much felt like a failure my whole fucking life, since the day I had to start lying to people about why the paint was peeling on my fucking house.  I was angry and depressed and hated my miserable life, stuck living with my parents in the middle of nowhere. Was I ashamed? Sure, but I still didn’t want to hide it. I wanted to tell my truths.

I had been working on this book about the presidential election as a reality show, and I realized I suddenly had the free time to finish it. But it wasn’t just about making fun of Donald Trump and other rich morons/politicians. Yes, there are a lot of jokes about politicians in my book, Fail to the Chief, and I did imagine an alternate world in which the president is elected by reality show. But there’s a lot of truth in that book, too, and not just the truths of dumb, useless rich people getting elected over and over again. I make fun of those people, but this isn’t their story.

Instead, this is the story of people like me whose truth is being broke fucking sucks. There’s the guy who tells an anti-minimum-wage-hike politician about the struggles of working three minimum wage jobs as a college graduate. That guy was telling one of my truths, which is that a college degree is more often a ticket into poverty than out of it these days. The rich politician hears this story and announces he’s solved the unemployment problem in his state because a guy who can barely afford ramen noodles has three jobs. Another one of my truths—dumb rich people never get it.

Then there’s the personality-less guy at the unemployment office who tells people to call another state office and “someone who’s doing absolutely nothing will help you.” Yeah, that was someone I met at the real-life unemployment office. Another truth—I get to pay taxes to pay his salary. And the salaries of those people sitting around doing nothing.

And then there’s the bazillionaire with zero political experience who offends everyone imaginable and still somehow gets votes. Another truth, although this one isn’t just mine—it belongs to everyone not-rich who hashad to watch a useless rich moron get everything handed to him on a silver platter: It is better to be rich than smart, useful, skilled, or ethical.

My books and short stories are fiction, but I write them to tell a million truths. I may not be able to change any of my truths, but I can acknowledge them, and I won’t pretend they don’t suck. What truths do you try to tell when you write?

 

 

Pennywise for President—Clown in the Oval Office?

I get some of my best ideas from talking about random crap on social media. (I’m not wasting time on Facebook, I’m working on my writing, hello?).

This week I was inspired by a post about how the number of people who saw Fifty Shades of Grey somehow means no one should be offended by a billionaire grabbing a pussy.

Naturally someone intelligent pointed out that there’s a bit of a difference between fiction and reality. Another person argued that if you spend money on a book or movie, you are condoning whatever actions happen in that piece of entertainment, real or not, and you shouldn’t have a problem with a real-life politician doing the same thing.

[image error]

As evidenced in the second meme, I found the idea that people condone every action in every piece of entertainment they consume pretty bizarre, and I started thinking about all the ways this could be applied:

If you watched Breaking Bad, you obviously condone drug deals and you should write in El Chapo next time you vote for president.

If you liked The Walking Dead, you must support zombies taking over the world:

This also sort of explains how our current commander-in-chief got elected, if you think about it. All those people who read Stephen King’s It or watched the miniseries apparently condone crazy clowns, and therefore they had no problem with voting for a crazy clown to be president!

 

[image error]I can’t tell the difference, can you?

Correct Me If I’m Wrong: Challenge Accepted

Recently, a Facebook friend I don’t know personally and probably only friended because we both play the same game, posted a meme full of misinformation about the chump, er, Donald Trump. It ended with the phrase, “Correct me if I’m wrong,” so I decided to do just that.

The first line of these meme claimed that Trump “never said don’t get an abortion, he said pay for it yourself.” Well, no, he didn’t. First of all, since the Hyde Amendment of 1976, no federal funding can go to pay for abortions. Not that I expect Trump to know anything about the laws of our country, but still, if you’re going to make a meme supporting him, get your fucking facts straight. Furthermore, Trump actually said there should be “some form of punishment” for women who got abortions, although he later walked that back after receiving backlash. He also said he’d leave the issue up to the states, meaning a state could make abortion completely illegal if it wanted. So no, he didn’t just say “pay for it yourself.”

As for the line about refugees, Trump’s recent travel ban affected many people who had already been properly vetted, including some who already had green cards. And the United States has never funded anyone entering the country without proper documentation. We are going to fund a wall that will cost $20 billion dollars, and anyone who wants to enter without documentation is just going to go around it. Talk about unfunding things that should never have been funded in the first place.

So, I pointed out the factual errors in this post, because hey, it said, “Correct me if I’m wrong.” The poster came back with, “Well, you are going to think I’m wrong and I think you’re wrong.”

She didn’t get it. We might have different opinions on things like abortion and refugees, but the things her hero Trump did and did not say are verifiable facts, not opinions. She can think whatever she wants about them, but she can’t change what he actually said. That’s not an alternative fact.

The next day, a Trump supporter took issue with this meme that I posted:

Now, I’m all for a good intellectual debate, based in reason, logic, and actual facts. If he wanted to provide some evidence that Trump, in fact, isn’t one of the most enthusiastic liars in the history of politics (and that’s really saying something, if you think about it), I would be happy to consider it. But instead, he decided to start railing that “liberals hate America.” I pointed out to him that I consider myself an independent, and my extreme objections to Trump as president have more to do with his being a morally bankrupt individual than his political affiliation. I mean, the way I look at it, this guy is so corrupt he makes other politicians look honest (which, clearly, they’re not, being politicians and all). If he was a democrat who said and did all the same things he has, I would still say #notmypresident.

So then this loyal Trump supporter then said it was unfair for people to make fun of Trump for being orange. I asked him how he felt about Trump calling women he didn’t deem attractive “pigs” or “dogs.” Also, did he think it was okay for Trump to mock a disabled reporter, but not okay for anyone to mock Trump’s orangeness, and if so, why?

He never answered, instead getting into arguments with two of my friends about sexism and spelling, telling one friend she shouldn’t criticize his grammar because some people has dyslexia and other learning disorders. I asked him, at that point, how he felt about our Secretary of Education saying she wasn’t sure if children with disabilities deserve an equal education, since that seems to concern him. He then responded that “Liberals hate America and promote violence.” I asked the same question again several times, and not once did he attempt to answer it. Eventually, he accused everyone else on the thread, including me, of ganging up on him and being mean, even claiming we made him cry.

Even though I never called him any names (which is more than I can say for him), I issued this apology: I’m sorry I made you cry by asking a logical, direct question and then asking for a logical, direct answers. I thought we non-Trump supporters were supposed to be the fragile snowflakes here. My bad.”

The conversation finally died at that point, but I was disappointed I never got the intellectual, reason-based debate I would have liked to have about the issues. I guess I should take these words from Thomas Paine seriously:

Or this political argument meme:

Or this one about how to win an argument on Facebook:

The Lost Art of Sarcasm

I sometimes think that if sarcasm and snark were marketable skills, I would be rich right now, instead of broke and living with my parents.

The other day I was at the store, buying widgets to resell online. I had found some at a pretty good price (in other words, I could resell them profitably with a comfortable margin in case another seller started a Race to the Bottom). So I bought a lot of them. I filled a whole cart. Now, I much prefer the self-checkout, but the store’s backwards register system isn’t set up to allow the usage of a tax exempt card, so I had to go stand in line for a human cashier.

[image error]

So the cashier was about fifteen years old. He still had peach fuzz on his face, and the manager had to come ring up the guy in front of me because he was buying a bottle of that cheap shit big box stores pass off as wine. That was okay though, because my hundred-something-item purchase was going to take a hell of a lot longer than the guy buying grape-flavored mouthwash, so whatever.

So finally it’s my turn and I have about half my items unloaded onto the conveyor belt. I manage to get the cashier to scan my tax exempt card first, which is a major accomplishment because in that store, I always give them the card first, and half the time the cashier ignores it, rings up my items, then has to start over because they didn’t do the tax exempt thing first. So I think we’re doing pretty good as he starts ringing up my items. I have probably close to a hundred individual items, most of them small enough you could fit 2-4 to a bag.

So then he says to me, “Do you want these items in bags?”

[image error]

No, I want to put them in my car one at a time, and when I get home I want to remove them from my car the same way. I mean, I’m as concerned about the environment as the next person (unless the next person works for the White House), and when I’m buying one item I usually turn down the bag, but there’s no way I’m going to take an entire cartload of crap out to my car sans bags. (Also, I reuse every single plastic bag I take as packing material, so it’s not like I’m just going to throw them out.)

He didn’t appear to get it, so I explained that because I don’t eat meat I already have a carbon footprint much smaller than a person who never uses plastic bags (also smaller than someone who doesn’t shower for a whole year).