I wish they'd all shut up

I'd say I have a very well tuned bullshit detector. Not only am I able to sense the slightest bit of lying for lying's sake, I think I can also catch a lot of the more difficult to detect types of bullshit. I can hear the doublespeak of politicians, left and right, the ones I support and the ones I don't. I can also hear the doublespeak of my corporate bosses, my university administration, and just about everyone on television.

Then there is the whole category of indeliberate bullshit spreading. Email hoaxes and schemes are removed from my in-box faster than Coach Z can manage a good "DE-LORTED!" And finally there is the whole "telephone game" type of bullshit. One person hears something from another person, and so on, and each time it is passed on, the carrier of the bullshit somehow exaggerates the piece of news until it is so unintelligible that even my four year old nephew wouldn't believe it.

Maybe I'm just cynical. Ok, I can deal with that. Maybe I'm also a jerk. I can deal with that too. But why, oh Lord, do people insist on believing everything they hear? Why do people turn off the filter for these kinds of mindless propaganda and other crap that You have so graciously given each of Your creations? And why, please tell me, do people feel it necessary to speak loudly in public places about things that are so obviously not true. Or at very least are gross hyperbola of a warped truth? And in this case, why don't the poor souls beside them tell them to "Shut the fuck up" or, you know, at the very least, question the validity of the story, fact, proverb, news, statistic, etc...

There was a time when I could just ignore this rubbish and move on with my life, undamaged. I can't help but notice though that the world is slowly filling to the tops of the highest peaks with the incessant shouting of people about nothing, and the consequential automatic believing of the shouting because it happens to be loud. Whatever happened to people taking responsibility for what they said and believe, and why don't people, in this age of instant access to enormous research resources, take two minutes out of their life, now and then, to check out whether something is true or not before spreading it further, like the virus this shit is. If I had a cold, I wouldn't sneeze in your face, don't smear your lies in mine.

Wednesday night I sat on the one hour bus from Toronto, the whole way a 30 something failure three rows behind me spewing forth in an elevated voice on and on about his success and all his belongings. For the life of me, I can't understand why the girl beside him didn't try to get a word in edgewise, or tell him he was full of shit, as I would have within five minutes. Luckily, I had music to drown out the sound, but in the silence between each song, there he was again parading on about how great he has it, and how jealous everyone is of him. Maybe it never occurred to the others on the bus, including the idiot himself, but why, if he is such a wealthy landowner, is he forced to take the bus home? Seems to me, that someone of his stature might be able to insure his "tricked out Charger" so that if in the unlikely case that it did "get chopped" when he left it in a Toronto parking lot for a day, it wouldn't be such a horrible loss. Nice excuse for taking the bus, loser. Even the Dukes of Hazzard drove right into Atlanta, and I doubt they even had insurance.

So please, if you're reading this, don't send me forwarded emails, don't tell me that story you heard from that guy who is a friend of your neighbour's sister, and please, please don't ask me to sign your petition. If you do, I might just stab you in the gullet. Repeatedly. You have been warned.

Keep on Tranglin,

Anthony