Larry Nocella

Category: Blog Rewind

  • How I Defeated a Depressing Workplace With a Tricycle

    How I Defeated a Depressing Workplace With a Tricycle

    Now It Can Be Told: Why I Performed For Two Minutes On a Tricycle While Wearing My Beanie Copter In Front of Hundreds of Co-Workers and the CEO at My Old Job Many Years Ago

    Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

    Nervous and Sweating

    I was nervous, sweating, close to passing out, but I had my mission and I said to myself, I will not fail.

    I stepped to the front of the packed, humid ballroom. I was carrying a tricycle. I was not dreaming. The whole experience was utterly ridiculous, yes, but also horrifyingly real.

    Days ago, I had purchased a cobalt-tipped drill bit and convinced a confused salesman at the hardware store to help me drill through the trike’s center shaft.

    “To allow the tricycle to support my adult body,” I explained.

    To my surprise, he didn’t have any questions and set to work helping me. Maybe he could sense larger forces at work, the approaching roar of destiny. More likely he wanted to give me what I wanted so I’d go away faster.

    But now? Now it was go-time show-time.

    Go-Time Show-Time

    I strolled onto the stage. I set the tricycle down. The ballroom was filled to capacity, standing room only. Hundreds of my co-workers were there, and my boss. And my boss’s boss, and so on several more times on up the corporate ladder right up to and including the CEO. He was there, too.

    This was the yearly corporate mandatory fun event. I had volunteered for the talent show and I had something special planned. Wait. Scratch that. I hoped something special would happen. I actually had no plan at all.

    Performances were limited to two minutes. I just had to do something for two minutes. My hands were freezing, but also sweating. My heart was thundering and my skin warm.

    Spots appeared on the edge of my vision. If I didn’t get control of my nerves I was going to pass out. I took a deep breath.

    I put my foot on the tricycle. I was, naturally, wearing my beanie copter that you can see in some of my profile pics when I need to use my superhero alter-ego (example). The rest of me was dressed in typical business-casual for a summer company quote-unquote fun event: sneakers, khaki shorts, and a dark blue polo. Two minutes. I had to do something for two minutes.

    Just do something. The problem was, I hadn’t given much thought to what that something was.

    The previous act (a woman who sang some karaoke song) ran off. The D.J. introduced me.

    “Now performing to Panama by Van Halen, let’s welcome Larry!” boomed through the speakers. Panama was the song I had selected. All systems were go.

    Two minutes. How hard could it be?

    Two Minutes Can Actually Be a Long Time…

    Let me tell you something I learned that day. I’m not really sure this has application in anyone else’s life, but you never know, so here goes:

    When you are wearing a beanie copter and riding a tricycle accompanied by Van Halen’s Panama in a ballroom filled with hundreds of your co-workers and the CEO of your company, and you have absolutely no plan for what you are going to do, two minutes turns out to be an excruciatingly long time.

    So what happened?

    Well, I ran around like an idiot. I got the crowd clapping. Then I pushed off and rode the trike like a scooter. I lept off the trike, did that Irish tap dance-thing (like in Riverdance) around the cycle, and jumped back on. And the rest?

    Hell, I forget. More of the same, essentially.

    Later, someone told me they were impressed with my song selection. Paraphrasing: “If you had selected a silly circus tune it would have just been goofy, but a rock song made it something special.”

    Another critic was less generous. “We all looked at each other and said, ‘What the hell is he doing?’” she scoffed. Word on the street was, two of my managers (whom I loved) jokingly argued over who I actually reported to.

    Many moons later, someone asked me to name the performance, and I called it “The Final Voyage of the Starship Fantastic.” Because it was a one-time-only show. It then became a point of importance to me that I give the tricycle to charity (which I did.) I never rode it again, to ensure the fulfillment of the finality in the title. Things like that matter to me.

    Cute but… um, like… Why?

    Why did the talent show committee let me perform? In previous years, people had sung karaoke songs with naughty words, so each act had to be approved first by a committee. I have no idea why they gave me the okay when I smuggled my tricycle into the office to show them I was going to do something with it.

    I was very vague about what I was going to do, being as I didn’t know myself, but they trusted me. Which is funny to me, because I wouldn’t have.

    But why do it at all? Was it a bet? How did things get to this point?

    Why? I get that a lot.

    I often defer to a lyrical snippet from The Doors’ song The Crystal Ship: ‘Deliver me from reasons why.’ Sometimes humanity’s lust for reason gets in the way of enjoying life’s craziness, of letting wonder and mystery carry you on its cosmic current, of riding along just letting things be.

    On one level, the only answer is the rhetorical “Why not?” or the faux-mysterious “Because.”

    I’m not a fan of those answers, because I prefer a more precise approach. Also, neither non-answer comes close to the truth. There was a reason for the silliness and an important one. Let me explain.

    Reasons for the Weirdness

    First, an observation: have you ever noticed how people with an authoritarian bent are extremely annoyed by goofiness? By behavior they cannot understand or control? Especially if such behavior generates laughter?

    The goal with my tricycle performance was to display a symbolic obscene gesture in the direction of those types. See, this workplace was overrun by such beings. Not completely, as at the same time, I met many beautiful folks I am honored to call friends these many years later. The place wasn’t exclusively assholes, but it was infested with them, and they shared the trait I just mentioned: they were overly serious and full of superiority complex.

    As I’ve noted, few things enrage wannabe dictators more than someone who doesn’t conform to their morose natures. It could be because laughter is something they can’t control, or because weirdness takes attention away from them and their boring commands.

    Whatever the reason, random fun and silliness infuriates them. And random fun and silliness happens to be one of my specialties. What better way to mock these control-freak jerks than to do so without them knowing? What better way to annoy them than by showing them that I was free and crazy and laughing and there was nothing they could do to change that?

    Okay maybe there’s lots of better ways, but none so fun.

    A Not-so-Subtle Obscene Gesture

    They would hate my tricycle “performance” for its unabashed absurdity, but in no way would they see it as a direct attack and invoke their petty wraths. Yet it would irritate them immensely because others would never stop talking about it. It would be so strange an event that it would come up often, resulting in an itch the authoritarians couldn’t scratch, a bold expression they could not suppress with contempt.

    So, did it work?

    How the hell would I know?

    They were miserable before and miserable after. As for me, I had a great time rising to the challenge and now I have this weird story. If nothing else, it was a lesson for me. In the dark days of a miserable work environment, I thought I would never emerge. But I did and did so laughing. My sense of humor — mystical, childish, and inexplicable as it is — saw me through.

    Hopefully, you’re feeling the silliness too and can share a laugh with me. Or at least you’re a delightful mix of amused and confused. I’ll settle for that.

    I get that a lot.

    A strange man-boy wearing a beanie copter holds a tricycle in his right hand. He signals victory, pointing to the sky with his left index finger.
    Our hero wearing a beanie copter holds a tricycle in his right hand. He signals victory, pointing to the sky with his left index finger.

    Image by Bing Copilot AI. Prompt: create an image of a tricycle floating in outer space all alone – no one is riding the tricycle. Photo by anonymous

  • Helping a Depressed Friend Buy a Gun

    Helping a Depressed Friend Buy a Gun

    Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

    What We Can Learn from an Appalling Lack of Situational Awareness.

    “I’m depressed,” my acquaintance posted on Facebook.

    You’ve probably seen similar testimonials. Someone shares a deep secret on social media. In this case, as expected and warranted, many friends offered their support, their love.

    It was one of those moments when you think social media can be a beautiful thing.

    Then, a week later, the same guy posted requesting advice on how to buy a gun. His friends began offering tips on what handgun would be best for him. The same so-called friends who one week ago promised support for his deep depression were offering advice on how he might purchase a firearm.

    It was one of those moments when you think social media can be an awful thing.

    I didn’t know the guy well. “Friend” has become a loose label thanks to social media. To call this guy a friend would be too strong, “Acquaintance” was more accurate. Still, even though I’d only met him a few times, I felt I had to say something.

    A generous conclusion would be his friends were oblivious. Maybe they didn’t remember all the bro-hugging about support against depression from the previous week. I hesitated. Would this be some sort of social overstepping?

    I thought about it overnight. The man’s safety was urgent enough that I was willing to risk our acquaintanceship. I couldn’t be silent, and so I replied to all the responses to his “What’s a good gun?” request. In essence, I said this: “How dare you help your friend buy a gun when he just said he’s severely depressed! Are you all stupid?”

    Speaking Up with Surprising Results

    The replies came back much as I feared. I don’t need to tell you what they said. You already know. They were the same logic-free NRA talking points that have been circulating for years.

    • “He has a right to a gun.”
    •  “If he’s going to kill himself, he’ll find another way, so why does getting the gun matter?”
    • The one I remember most was the context-free one: “We don’t want to become Europe.”

    Who said anything about Europe? I wasn’t discussing gun control, hadn’t even mentioned that topic. This wasn’t a debate. I was addressing a very practical matter: our acquaintance/friend recently told us all that he struggles with extreme depression. Then, mere days later, he expressed interest in buying a gun, and many of his so-called friends gave him advice on how to do so.

    What about that sequence sounds okay to you? To ANYONE except those in the thrall of gun cult mythology?

    To conclude this sad tale, the depressed guy answered all our comments with some mush about appreciating “both sides” of the discussion.

    I wanted to say, “You need some new friends, stat.” But it never came to that, because soon after his “both sides” comment, he deleted it all: his request for gun-shopping advice, his dumb “friends” telling him how to get one and which would be best, and my post scolding them.

    That was the last I heard of it.

    I hope I made a difference but I’m not optimistic. Since he was but an acquaintance, I disconnected from him on social media. I did not want to be around should the obvious happen.

    The Mental Component

    That’s what happened and it is a true story, but I don’t blame you if you don’t believe me. A skeptical person would think I made the story up to promote an agenda. There’s a lot of that going on.

    People make up anecdotes that support their views. They make claims, say, that a person in the military came up to them and told them (in tears) how bad the current president is. Or some religious person claims that dozens of atheists arrived at their temple and wept because they were so hopeless. Or whatever. The sales pitches are never-ending.

    I appreciate skepticism, but if you look around you’ll observe your own stories just like the one I mentioned earlier. Here in the USA, there’s no end of firearm owners who lack situational awareness, that is, the mental component of competent action. Here’s some samples: A person knocks on a door because they’re lost and gets shot. Police arrive at the wrong address with tragic results. A sound of a falling acorn, a plastic bag thrown, all result in shots fired.

    Knowing HOW is not the same as knowing WHEN and WHY

    What worries me most are these amateur commandos think that just because they have shown competency at a firing range, that they understand all there is to about shooting and killing another person. They think that just because they have proven that they know HOW to shoot a weapon, their work is done. They don’t seem to devote much time to pondering or training about WHEN and WHY to shoot one. Their noble impulse to defend themselves and others becomes dangerous because their practice is incomplete.

    They haven’t tested themselves under real-world less-than-ideal conditions. Such as, if they are half-asleep and they think an intruder is in their home. Or if they are exhausted. Or if they are afraid, or babysitting an infant, etc.

    I personally do not own a firearm, and despite my leanings and preferences, I’m not as anti-firearm as you might suspect. I see a use for them, but I see far much more carelessness and very little attention paid to the mental component of action. 

    This isn’t just about weapons, though — this is about anything and any action. When you’re planning for action remember there’s more than just HOW, there’s also WHEN and WHY. There is always a mental piece, and often an emotional piece. All of these play into it and we need to train on them just as much — if not more.

  • What I Learned From Catching a Foul Ball With My Butt

    What I Learned From Catching a Foul Ball With My Butt

    Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

    Surrendering to the Common Wisdom

    Being non-conformist should be done wisely. Many have observed before that if you just think the opposite of something on reflex, you’re just as confined as a conformist. You’re “conforming to the non” as I like to put it.

    Still, there are some clichés, some bits of common wisdom, that I resist because of their pessimism. For example, one cliché I don’t like – but I have to acknowledge is true – is, “Life isn’t fair.”

    I used to hate the idea of calling life unfair. It just seemed so… unfair. I tried to say that it was people that are unfair, not life, but that’s wrong. Some people are born with horrific diseases, that’s not the fault of optional human action. That’s biology. That’s life.

    Fine. You win. I lose. Life is unfair.

    Now when it comes to calling life unfair, I burn with the passion of the converted. I look back at my ultra-naïve youthful self and laugh with contempt: “You once believed in the Tooth Fairy. Even worse, you clung to the idea that life could be fair!”

    So what finally convinced me? What does this have to do with catching a baseball hit foul with my butt?

    Well…

    Getting What You Don’t Want

    I have realized life is really unfair because it seems to have this annoying tendency to give you things you don’t want, and keep things away from you that you do want.

    For this story, let’s review people’s tendency to lose their minds trying to catch balls that go out of play in major-league baseball games.

    There’s the story of a man who fell and died.

    There’s a guy who almost died.

    There’s a woman who stole a ball from a child.

    There’s a guy who dropped his child as he went for a foul.

    There’s plenty more examples of injuries and bad behavior as people chase baseballs if you want to search for them.

    People really really really want to get their hands on a ball at baseball games. I don’t understand it, and never have. It’s fun, but not worth dying over, or acting like a horrible person. It’s just a ball. And that’s exactly why life, being the unfair jerk it is, delivered one to me with the greatest of ease.

    Catching a Major League Baseball Foul Ball

    Back in my early teens, my father scored some good tickets from his job. The seats were a couple dozen rows from third base for a Philadelphia Phillies game. It was a great day, just me and pop watching a daytime, weekday ballgame. I wasn’t that into baseball. Never was, but it was fun.

    I was bummed the game wasn’t televised. Being a kid, I wanted to be on TV!

    The date was August 9, 1983 [game stats]. Greg Gross [info] knocked a pitch foul. Everyone around us stood up. I felt confident it wasn’t going to come near me, but I stood up anyway, so as not to get hit in the head, just in case.

    The ball entered the crowd a few rows in front of me. Everyone was shoving and grabbing for it. The ball hit the back of someone’s seat and took a crazy bounce. The feeding frenzy was on. People scrambled and flailed trying to snag the ball. In the chaos, the ball tumbled closer. After a bunch of weird bounces off people, chairs and the cement of the stadium, just like that, the ball landed in my seat. I sat down on it.

    And that’s how I caught a foul ball with my butt.

    Totally awesome, right? Well yeah. It was fun and funny how it happened, and I felt lucky, but once the foul-hunters sat down again, I grabbed the ball and stood up with it triumphantly. That’s tradition! And it’s also customary to show the lucky fan on the jumbo screen! Now that was something I wanted. If I couldn’t be on TV, at least I could have that.

    But whoever was running the camera for the jumbo screen didn’t care to show me. People around went back to their seats, and the game went on. Dang it. But so what? You’re saying. You caught a foul ball! Years later a man would fall to his death in front of his son trying to get one!

    True, but I wanted to be on the jumbo screen! Life is unfair!

    Being Lucky in Ways You Don’t Want to Be and Unlucky in Ways you Want to Be Lucky

    After the game, I gave the ball to my dad. He’s the baseball fan. I’ve always been a follower of faster-moving sports, like… well, like anything. After years of my dad holding the foul ball he finally insisted I take it back. You caught it, he said, you should have it. And I still do. In a plastic box, that’s in a cardboard box, under my bed, under a fine layer of dust.  

    I can hear you now: you could sell it online. I could. Online sales have created a reason for people to collect anything and everything, because surely someone else will pay more for it than you did, even if it is intrinsically worthless. What’s that? No, I didn’t intend that as a critique of “investing” in gold, but yes, it does serve as one.

    Anyway, yes, I could sell the foul ball. I could even donate the money to charity, but I won’t now. It’s become a symbol to me: a reminder that life is unfair. That sometimes annoying clichés are true and that the grass is always greener on the other side.

    I think the trick is, for the things we want, we should pretend we don’t want them and sneak up on them. Then when life isn’t looking, we make a quick grab. But when isn’t life looking?

    It might just be easier to appreciate what we get, even if it’s not what we want. That’s a good defense against life’s unfairness.

  • Blog Rewind: Is it okay to cheer or laugh that someone died? Or, are The Darwin Awards funny?

    Blog Rewind: Is it okay to cheer or laugh that someone died? Or, are The Darwin Awards funny?

    Here’s a bit of philosophy from 28 January 2008. It’s a blog titled, in a most un-SEO-friendly way: “When is it okay to cheer or laugh that someone died? Or, are The Darwin Awards funny?” This first question re-appeared recently, following footage of stalwart opponent of the working class, Senator Mitch McConnell, freezing mid-sentence at a press conference. The questions arose again. Is it okay to wish someone dead? What if that person is a known oppressor?

    So, I ask you, when is it okay to cheer or laugh that someone is dead or has died? Is it ever okay?

    The question occurred to me while browsing the internet. Death-wishing is a tradition that spans the spectrum of political belief. A convenient way to eliminate someone annoying is to have death come calling, a liability-free assassination, if you will.

    Regardless of my politics, the act of death-wishing makes me nervous. When I hear that someone has died, I don’t consider it an opportunity to make a joke. Especially if they are some kind of entertainer and nothing more.

    Test of Righteousness

    Now that I’m riding my high horse, let’s test it: what if a terrible person died? What if a sponsor of mass murder like George W. Bush died? Would that be something worth cheering or mocking?

    That’s a tough question for me. Let’s review facts. George W. Bush caused the occupation of Iraq. All the death, sorrow and suffering that follows — and is ongoing — is due to in large part to him. Could his passing be a good thing?

    Maybe. Even so, it’s not something I would cheer about. It’s too sobering. The guy led the destruction of an entire nation, got lots of Americans and Iraqis killed.

    At such a time, it might be time it’s time to breathe easier. It’s a hope that one death might put an end to the war or speed its end. Still, I’m left wondering: how did we get here? How did things get so bad that a clown like George W. Bush became president and caused all this destruction? How did it come to pass that I would feel relief that someone died?

    It all reminds me of a guy I once heard interviewed who watched the execution of his daughter’s killer. Did it make him feel better? “I thought it would,” he said, “But I still feel awful. Nothing is going to bring her back. Nothing is going to make me feel better.”

    Still, we’re talking about nasty people dying. That’s a gray area.

    A time when it is without question immoral to wish another’s death is when the deceased is just an entertainer or someone non-famous.

    Death as Entertainment?

    Which brings me to the Darwin Awards. They’re “awards” given out to people who die because of their stupid actions. The idea that their death helps the gene pool. I’ve never been a fan of the Darwin Awards. Stupid as the award-winners may be, they had loved ones who grieve their absence. That’s not fodder for a chuckle.

    Some may think I’m being uptight, but I’ll parry and counter that. The Darwin Awards are for lame-asses who think they’re superior. Every great story in your life involves you as a potential contender for a Darwin Award. If you haven’t done something crazy and reckless, then you haven’t lived!

    Any “I was so drunk and/or stoned” story is only improved if it involves a brush with death. It’s a great story if it comes terrifyingly close to making you a Darwin Award winner.

    Then it’s something to share the next time you’re drunk and/or stoned. Cheating death makes a good story.

    When death wins, that’s another day at the office, and who wants to laugh at that?

    Rewind Review

    My opinion hasn’t changed much here, but it has become more articulate. We’re not evil for hoping someone dies or falls ill – if our goal is simply to get them to stop hurting us. If we’re wishing death on someone for no reason, that’s psychotic. If we’re wishing death on them because we don’t like their opinions then maybe we don’t like freedom as much as we claim to.

    But in the case of Senator Mitch McConnell and his recent health scare, we are reacting to his repeated, conscious, chosen actions over a decades-long career of making life harder for most Americans. The one most recently sticks out in my mind is when he dithered on paltry subsistence payments to the American people at the height of COVID lock-down.

    Summarized: I don’t want to wish ill on anyone, but I also wish they’d stop being dicks.

    We ill-wishers are desperately seeking a way for the pain McConnell causes to stop. I fear our mistake is blaming an individual and not a system. We incorrectly think if he were to leave the Senate, that Congress might stop being useless. That’s probably wrong. Another morality-free scumbag would replace him.

    I don’t claim to know what the fix for Congress is, but I do claim to know the obvious: they are not serving the American people. They are serving the rich. Until there is a fix, I do hope the immoral clowns running it step down. How that happens I leave to fate.

    Photo by Lina White on Unsplash

  • Blog Rewind: Hustle Culture before there was Hustle Culture

    Blog Rewind: Hustle Culture before there was Hustle Culture

    I’m Done Reading Get-Rich-Quick “I Made X Dollars Writing About Y” Articles

    Blog Rewind: This one was published a while back in 2022, when I got sick of these types of articles. Nothing has changed except I’m no longer disappointed because I avoid them.

    Before the internet, before “hustle culture,” there were print and classified ads. These ads were a mix of anything. Some read simply, “Send me a dollar and I’ll tell you how to make $100.”

    When you sent in your dollar, the reply you got — the secret to making money — was to repeat the process. Do what the person who placed the ad did. The advice? “Put an ad in the classifieds that reads, ‘Send me a dollar and I’ll tell you how to make $100.’”

    Cute, right? Very neat, very circular.

    Now, let’s come back to the present. If that trick sounds familiar, it’s because a lot — and I mean A LOT — of hustle culture articles remind me of that.

    I guarantee you’ve seen them. Like me, you probably clicked a few. These blog posts hint that you too can make money writing for the internet. If you just write articles about writing on the internet.

    I don’t have a problem with people wringing every last penny out of SEO trickery. If a website is going to be lazy and pay people to write the same old stuff, fine. Maybe they’ll even have AI compose the article for you. It can’t be hard for predictive text to assemble marketing articles that tell you how to write marketing articles. Fine, make that cash. Exploit that algorithm. Work the system.

    Just don’t expect me to read it. Ever again. That’s why I’m done.

    Here forward if an article’s title is something like “I Made X Dollars Doing Y” or “I Made X Dollars Writing for Website Z and You Can Too” or some variation, I’m avoiding it. Maybe I’ll block the person sharing it, maybe I’ll even avoid the site it’s on.

    Just for kicks I went on a bender and read dozens of hustle culture articles. I can’t remember one that gave me an insight beyond, “Write a lot and publish a lot. When you have between one hundred and one thousand articles, you’ll make money.”

    It’s likely true. If you have one thousand articles, and they each pay a penny a day just from random clicks, that’s $10 a day. Ten bucks a day for a month is not bad at all. Again, if that’s your gig, do it.

    I would advise everyone I know not to bother reading it, but hey, you do you.

    Now that we’ve come to the end of this rant, I regret to say I sound a bit like those annoying social media posts where people make a point to announce they are un-following an account or leaving a group.

    As if their absence (or in this case, mine) will be cause for alarm. Let me say I realize it’s not. I’m just sharing why I dislike internet filler.

    And I will be careful not to let the door hit my ass on the way out. Thank you.

  • Blog Rewind: How Hate Can Bring Us Together (Is the Path to Heaven is Paved with Evil Intentions?)

    Blog Rewind: How Hate Can Bring Us Together (Is the Path to Heaven is Paved with Evil Intentions?)

    Over the years, I’ve posted several blogs all across the net on now defunct websites. Blog Rewind revisits these old posts, touched up for modern times. This one, originally published April 2010.

    I’ve always distrusted pretty-sounding quotations. Too many people think that just because a statement is said concisely, or a famous person said it, or it has a poetic ring, that it’s true. Context doesn’t matter. It’s “set it and forget it” for the mind. More like “just repeat and your thinking’s complete.”

    This happens all the time when people quote America’s “Founding Fathers,” but just because the founding fathers said something doesn’t mean the thought was codified into U.S. law. Or worth listening to.

    Tangent: Notice there are no “Founding Mothers.” I guess we can only conclude the USA had two daddies. (At least.)

    Anyway, one quotation I’ve found to be true as often as not is, “The path to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

    Tangent: So Jesus himself is in Hell?

    What especially interested me about that quotation was flipping it around. Since it’s often true, that would imply the precise opposite is also often true. But how can the path to heaven be paved with evil intentions? Hold that question, we’ll come back to it.

    You may have heard of this horrible news story (link.) Here’s a summary: a man’s son was killed in Iraq. At the funeral, the Westboro Baptist Church showed up with their obnoxious signs, claiming that God was turning away from the USA because our nation tolerates homosexuals, and soldiers can expect to die due to God’s wrath.

    This is something the WBC does often. Sick, right? No matter what you think of America’s endless war(s) anyone with a shred of decency can empathize with a grieving parent burying a child and searching for some measure of peace.

    So as the story goes, the father sues the Westboro people, and wins. Awesome! But the Westboro jerks appeal the verdict, and then they win. So now, this poor man is required to pay their court costs, but he refuses, which I believe means he could go to jail.

    Now here’s a twist that supports the “truth is stranger than fiction.” Professional blowhard Bill O’Reilly offers to pay the court costs. (Link.) That right there should be a warning to the Westboro cult: when Bill O’Reilly makes you look like a douche bag, your douche-baggery is off the charts.

    Yet even as I bust on Billo, I have to say I’m not entirely surprised at his kindness. No matter how much I disagree with him or anyone else, I am sure of one thing: most would never sink low enough to turn someone’s funeral into a circus for an agenda unrelated to the deceased or their family. Most would never dream of turning someone’s funeral into a circus, period.

    To do so is disrespectful, foul and the lowest of the low. Just as free speech has some common sense limits (the “no shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” clause) funerals should be off limits to demonstration. I say that as a lover and frequent user of the First Amendment. I promise you that small restriction on free speech will not cause the U.S. Constitution to spontaneously combust.

    While I wouldn’t know what goes on in the Westboro cult’s theoretically existent minds, and they clearly have no hearts or souls to speculate about, it’s obvious they want to divide. They want people to turn against gays, kick off an orientation-ocide, if you will.

    However, Westboro’s attempts at division have the reverse effect because they serve as a common ground. Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans, Democrats, Straight, Gay, Black, White, I’m confident we ALL realize that the Westboro Baptist Church’s habit of disrupting funerals make them the most vile creatures on earth.

    So in the most oblique way, the Westboro Baptist Church, by being so hateful, gives me hope. They bring Americans together under one big tent of disgust. Their hate brings us l, shows us that despite our differences we share a common bond, and maybe even paves the way to heaven with evil intentions.

    Retro Review: this blog sounds a little naive in retrospect. It turns out there are people even more vile than the Westboro Baptist Church. I’m referring to Alex Jones, and other psychos harassing the parents of children who died in shootings. (Link.) Hopefully such cruelty still unites most of us under disgust.