Think And Grow Nervous

The purpose of this article is to make you feel better. How many times have you had an experience like having your college professor form your class into groups to do a project and announce that he's going to grade you not just on the quality of your work, but based largely on the drivel contributed by tattoo boy who still isn't sober enough to be sure whether this class in English 1010 or Human Sexuality 350, who will turn in the same paper he has turned into every other class he's ever taken, namely the 150 pages his girl friend wrote on Jon BonJovi to keep him from being flunked out and having his dad cut off his expense account, and who hasn't been sober since his freshman year in high school. A normal, healthy reaction to this would be to think, "This doesn't seem right and to ask ones' self "Am I nuts?" While it is possible that you are indeed nuts, a more likely possibility is that a high percentage of the people around you, including your college professor have lost their collective grasps of reality and are existing in some parallel dimension, which could cause your healthy perception of reality to look odd by contrast, elevate your blood pressure and trigger the primordial fight or flight mechanism in your brain stem that causes you to want to kill something, skin it, and hang its remains on the barn.

We have written this piece because we have recognized the need to make a whole bunch of money and because we have recognized that you need something to make you feel better and this could be it; at least we hope so. So you will definitely want to read this article from cover to cover over and over and over until you start feeling better or until you start killing animals and hanging their carcasses on your barn. And then you will want to encourage your sane friends to buy it, too, and do the same thing. Then we will both have a fighting chance to succeeding at our goal of feeling better. Me, because I will have my car payment covered, and you because you will be proactive in your quest to deal with these nut cases who are injected all over your life.

Part of this feeling better sensation will come when you realize that people in extremely important positions of power are nuts and their insanity will have a huge bearing on the quality of your life and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, but that's alright because there are other intelligent people in the same boat and you can spend a good portion of your future commiserating and moaning and better yet, using their behavior as a backdrop for some pretty fun and entertaining sarcasm and wit.

A case in point: I once questioned my very own sanity when a vice presidential candidate used one breath to very sanctimoniously lecture his audience about how the decision to terminate the life of an unborn child is a personal choice that only the parents involved are competent to make it, and then with the next breath tell all the parents in the country that they're not competent to take a voucher and choose which school their children will attend. With his third breath he rants about the depth of doo doo the social security trust funds are in since he and his colleagues have embezzled 100% of the money and spent it to buy votes and to cover up other poor financial choices they've made over the years, and in the fourth breath to explain that his constituents are not competent to invest their own social security retirement funds into stocks because they might drop by 25%. I thought I was going crazy because these clowns got elected! And then re-elected! The only rational way I figured they could keep getting elected is through massive voter fraud. Then I had my theory shaken to the foundation by realization that they're not smart enough to pull that off, and then I started feeling better until I realized they were still in charge, and so I finally concluded that the only rational explanation is that we are surrounded by idiots.

Now armed with the knowledge that you are indeed surrounded by idiots, you can go forward with confidence knowing that there is enough material out there in every day life to keep your friends in good sarcasm and humorous material until you die or go insane. Enjoy!The purpose of this article is to make you feel better. How many times have you had an experience like having your college professor form your class into groups to do a project and announce that he's going to grade you not just on the quality of your work, but based largely on the drivel contributed by tattoo boy who still isn't sober enough to be sure whether this class in English 1010 or Human Sexuality 350, who will turn in the same paper he has turned into every other class he's ever taken, namely the 150 pages his girl friend wrote on Jon BonJovi to keep him from being flunked out and having his dad cut off his expense account, and who hasn't been sober since his freshman year in high school. A normal, healthy reaction to this would be to think, "This doesn't seem right and to ask ones' self "Am I nuts?" While it is possible that you are indeed nuts, a more likely possibility is that a high percentage of the people around you, including your college professor have lost their collective grasps of reality and are existing in some parallel dimension, which could cause your healthy perception of reality to look odd by contrast, elevate your blood pressure and trigger the primordial fight or flight mechanism in your brain stem that causes you to want to kill something, skin it, and hang its remains on the barn.We have written this piece because we have recognized the need to make a whole bunch of money and because we have recognized that you need something to make you feel better and this could be it; at least we hope so. So you will definitely want to read this article from cover to cover over and over and over until you start feeling better or until you start killing animals and hanging their carcasses on your barn. And then you will want to encourage your sane friends to buy it, too, and do the same thing. Then we will both have a fighting chance to succeeding at our goal of feeling better. Me, because I will have my car payment covered, and you because you will be proactive in your quest to deal with these nut cases who are injected all over your life.Part of this feeeling better sensation will come when you realize that people in extremely important positions of power are nuts and their insanity will have a huge bearing on the quality of your life and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, but that's alright because there are other intelligent people in the same boat and you can spend a good portion of your future commiserating and moaning and better yet, using their behavior as a backdrop for some pretty fun and entertaining sarcasm and wit.A case in point: I once questioned my very own sanity when a vice presidential candidate used one breath to very sanctimoniously lecture his audience about how the decision to terminate the life of an unborn child is a personal choice that only the parents involved are competent to make it, and then with the next breath tell all the parents in the country that they're not competent to take a voucher and choose which school their children will attend. With his third breath he rants about the depth of doo doo the social security trust funds are in since he and his colleagues have embezzled 100% of the money and spent it to buy votes and to cover up other poor financial choices they've made over the years, and in the fourth breath to explain that his constituents are not competent to invest their own social security retirement funds into stocks because they might drop by 25%. I thought I was going crazy because these clowns got elected! And then re-elected! The only rational way I figured they could keep getting elected is through massive voter fraud. Then I had my theory shaken to the foundation by realization that they're not smart enough to pull that off, and then I started feeling better until I realized they were still in charge, and so I finally concluded that the only rational explanation is that we are surrounded by idiots.Now armed with the knowledge that you are indeed surrounded by idiots, you can go forward with confidence knowing that there is enough material out there in every day life to keep your friends in good sarcasm and humorous material until you die or go insane. Enjoy!"

For more on how to cope with the idiots in your life check out our site www.apricotpress.com.

First Blog

Yes, we are now blogging. (Notice that we use the pronoun, "we". We do this because we want to acknowledge the valuable contributions of the voices in my head and tendencies toward subterfuge, and mean-spiritedness.) Having resisted the urge to blog for many years, we have finally succumbed to the changing financial markets and the need to make some actual money in this rotten economy. Travel to exotic places where our books are displayed like Grand Canyon, Vegas, Yellowstone Park, and Drummond, Montana is down substantially from a few years ago, which has adversely affected our loyal readers' ability to get to our books. We are therefore bound and determined to bring bits of humor to our readers via the web. We are doing this partly because we want to try to generate some money, but mainly because we want to reduce the time some of our loyal readers have to do more devious and destructive things with their extra time since they don't have access to our latest offerings. We know our readers (don't we voices).

So we hope you will enjoy these bits of thoughts and perspectives. Our intent is to try to bring a guffaw or two into your otherwise pathetic lives, not to just make people confused or angry as has sometimes been alleged. Therefore, if you enjoy these blogging bits, please feel free to share them with friends; if you don't enjoy them, feel free to keep it to yourself. Also, check out our books at www.apricotpress.com

Ben Goode

PS. The plan, for now, is to put a little bit of material out here each week until I lose the rest of my faculties.So we hope you will enjoy these bits of thoughts and perspectives. Our intent is to try to bring a guffaw or two into your otherwise pathetic lives, not to just make people confused or angry as has sometimes been alleged. Therefore, if you enjoy these blogging bits, please feel free to share them with friends; if you don't enjoy them, feel free to keep it to yourself.Ben GoodePS. The plan, for now, is to put a little bit of material out here each week until I lose the rest of my faculties."