By John Mattingly
Inner Old Man (IOM) understands that these New Year’s Reservations are written one fiscal quarter late, but IOM is, after all, old and forgetful. He spends an alarming amount of time each day hunting down things he has apparently hidden from himself, so keep in mind the views and opinions of IOM should never be confused with those of the author.
1. IOM decided at the start of 2014 that it would be a better world if it was run by women and atheists. When you look at the holy men in Congress, the best you can say is that they’re high-functioning morons. Well, OK, some of them aren’t high-functioning.
The most important thing any of us can do in 2014 is empower women. The human species depends on it more than ever before, and specifically not for making more copies of ourselves.
2. It’s interesting to IOM that worldwide, men who oppose educational opportunities for women, family planning, contraception and abortion on religious grounds also have three or more guns, and use them. Conversely, men who favor education for women, family planning, contraception and abortion either do not own a gun, or own one gun, seldom used.
IOM suggests that men who oppose abortion and own lots of guns are suffering from Male Enhancement Deficiency (MED). Those affected want all their seeds to have a chance of sprouting in women, and they have backup erections on hand at all times.
3. Which reminds IOM, our corporate health care system seems to depend on all of us being non-fatally afflicted at all times with something: ED, restless leg syndrome, COPD, plague, plaque psoriasis, flu, insomnia, cold, indigestion, BPH, a-fib, leptospirosis, RUH, acid reflux, EPOD, macular degeneration, prostate problems, rusting replacement joints, nerve damage, CAD, reflux, PPOD, DTT … such that we need to add at least one more pill to our daily diet.
4. But listening to the side effects of pills – blindness, stroke, rash, deafness, mood swings, blood clots, trouble breathing, strange dreams, suicidal tendencies, early onset idiocy and sudden death – IOM decided in 2013 to take his chances rather than the pills. The most ridiculous side effect warning of a four-hour erection was calculated to be more of an incentive. It’s as if your statin drug came with the warning: SEEK IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION IF YOU FIND YOURSELF RUNNING AHEAD OF KENYANS IN A MARATHON.
5. It’s interesting that almost every financial advisor in the business today claimed at the end of 2013 to have “predicted” the financial crisis of 2008-09, and therefore is offering worthy investing advice for 2014. But after fact-checking and plugging the results into IOM’s Great Grand Thinkalator, it turns out that none of them actually predicted anything. The 2008-09 crisis was a surprise to all but a small group of people who actually shorted the market. And they haven’t said anything lately. Hmm.
6. IOM held an analysis to determine the most ridiculous game played by humans in 2013. The winner: golf. And not only because the ball is too small. Golf courses are a ridiculous and elitist use of land. The U.S. has over 21,000 golf courses that collectively use more toxic chemicals than all the farmers in Kansas, just to keep the grass green for people who think that putting small balls in a hole with the fewest strokes is success.
7. When negotiating with Iran and their nuclear ambitions, IOM suggests President Obama simply explain to Iran’s nuclear scientists that nukes aren’t really useful any more. They’re not even weapons, really. They’re like a double-barreled Wyoming Express, with one barrel aimed forward, the other at your face.
If we brought Iranian nuclear scientists to the U.S. to visit our installations, they might get it: nukes are no more than expensive dildos. The illusion of prestige in having nuclear weapons isn’t cost effective or sensible in 21st-century warfare. IOM suggests asking the Iranians, “Are you real men who fight with guns and computers, or do you want to wag fancy dildos?”
8. IOM hates to mention it, but NPR in 2013 has been sneaking in a lot of ads, such that it really isn’t listener-supported any more. The ads are soft sell, to be sure, but they’re like the way Holden Caulfield, in Catcher In the Rye, described his pastor sneaking his little finger up to pick his nose.
9. IOM now understands that the human brain evolved a small section in the hypothalamus that is specifically adapted to deal with the fact of human’s Ironic Death Knowledge. This brain part evolved a heartwarming capability to believe in life after death, managed by an all-loving supreme being who also has all our dead relatives waiting for us. IOM learned this following a study in which confirmed atheists became believers after receiving electrical stimulation to this special brain part. But they returned to being atheists when the stimulation was removed.
In the deepest, darkest hour of the night when each human is alone and unfettered by life’s more attractive delusions, no human really believes they, as one person of many billions, is so important in this gigantic universe that some supreme being gives a tinker’s fiddle about them. It’s just a brain part that evolved to tell us a comforting story that lets us overcome our fear of death long enough to get out of bed in the morning to do the things we have to do and some of the things we want to do.
If someone really believed in an eternal afterlife, the rational option would be to go directly to it. Why waste time blowing on your dice and going around and around the board, collecting a few hundred bucks every time you pass Go? Better to skip your next turn and go straight to heaven. If more believers did, it would do the planet a lot of good, given that the actual carrying capacity of Earth is around two billion humans, not seven billion, and certainly not ten billion – the current projection for the end of this century. If all believers in a heavenly afterlife moved on, it would reduce the endless circles of ruin wrought by humans killing each other over whose afterlife is better.
10. Happy New Year!
John Mattingly cultivates prose, among other things, and was most recently seen near Poncha Springs.
