"But:" The Great Qualifier

"I'm not a Trump fan, but he was our greatest president ever."

Well. Huh. 

Lately, I'm hearing a lot of statements constructed in the same manner: The sentence begins with a bold declarative statement. Then the word "but" always follows (kinda like the butt of a joke). And finally, a complete whopper follow-up statement that completely negates everything that's come before it. Whenever you hear the "but" sentence, you can always count on the speaker swinging high and big for full impact. And it always--ALWAYS--renders the first "I'm not a..." part of the statement totally irrelevant.

I find that the "but" sentence generally can be broken down into three sub-categories: politics, racism, and conspiracy theories. (And what do these three categories have in common? We'll get to that!)

These days, it's common to hear people defend Trump (even though they pretend to start out not doing so). (Yeah, I don't get it either. I am but a mere reporter stating the facts.) But whenever someone starts out with a "I'm not a Trump fan, but..." sentence, you can bank on their turning around and kissing his orange heiny.

Here's another gem I've heard during the last horrible four years: "I'm not a MAGA follower, but the deep-state, evil Liberal satanists eat babies."

Fun in the 21st century.

I tend to glaze over and tune out whenever someone hits me with the "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but..." statement. You know it's going to be bad and there's no escape once they get on their conspiracy-painted soap-box. "I've got a TV dinner in the oven" won't work as an excuse to escape the conspiracy theorist once they have their hooks in you.

Here's a recent example:

"I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but Covid's nothing but a hoax."

"Um...yeah...about my TV dinner..."

"It's true! Fox News says blah, blah, blah, yak, yak, yak...."

The true origins of Covid are also big in the "but" world. "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but Fauci created Covid on purpose to infiltrate the deep-state into.....zzzzzzzzzz..."

Finally, this brings me to the third and final category of "but" statements, and probably the most heinous of all: racism.  Here are a few nuggets of wisdom especially curated and culled from various family members over the years:

"I'm not racist, but Mexicans are dirty."

"I'm not racist, but the colored need to stay with their own kind."

YOW! Sometimes I think I was switched at birth.

I started thinking about the true underlying meaning behind the "but" statement. Since they always begin somewhat preemptively apologetic, the speaker has to be aware of how possibly controversial--and perhaps, out and out wrong--what they're about to say is. So why bother following through? Remember the semi-golden rule: "If you have nothing nice to say, then don't say anything at all." However, the "but" statement is tricky. It's set up to allow the offending speaker an escape hatch if necessary.

Finally, what do the three sub-categories of "but" statements have in common? Simple: MAGA. Politics, racism, and conspiracy theories are the bedrock "values" of this horrible cult. Since the advent of MAGA, "but" statements have been overflowing like lava spewing from a poisonous volcano. And the brunt of the blame has to fall on Donny Trump's orange shoulders. Since his followers see that he says whatever the hell he wants to and damned with the consequences, they believe they should follow suit.

I don't hate Trump...but he truly, truly, truly, really, truly sucks. Gotcha!

Now that I've kicked over my own soap-box of righteousness, let's get back to the silly-ass world of escapism: check out my Tex, the Witch Boy trilogy! Not only are they the first books I wrote, but they formed the bedrock of what was to follow in terms of characterization, humor, horror, suspense, and thematic substance. You're welcome!

Taylor Swift: Psy-Op Agent for Socialism!

Bigger than Elvis! More powerful than Oprah! Charging dupes a single ticket price able to aid third-world countries! And with more masterful secret mind power than Donald Trump! Yes, it's Taylor Swift, psy-op agent of socialism! 

And she's got a license to trill!

It's come down to this. Thanks to those shrewd and integrity-filled investigative reporters at Fox news, newscaster Jesse Watters recently said, "Well, around four years ago, the pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting. What kind of asset? A psy-op for combatting online misinformation."

To which I have to say, "Duh, took you guys long enough to figure this one out!" Watters further went on to elaborate on agent Swift: "She's all right, but I mean, have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?" Thank you, Mr. Watters for uncovering the truth! For some time now (and I know I'm not alone in this), I've pondered how this gawky little farm-girl mouseketeer could seemingly transform overnight into the World's Biggest Entertainer. Now we know why. It's because her meteoric success is due to the manipulations of rich, male liberals with an evil agenda to see that Biden gets reelected. The way of our country! (God forbid we should actually credit a woman for her own success.)

Former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan chimed in: "It's possible Taylor Swift, quite frankly, isn't aware that she's being used in a covert manner to swing voters." So...even Ms. Swift's evil machinations aren't her fault. At least these guys are consistent, giving credit where credit is due. (Makes me kinda wonder why Mr. Kaplan is a "former" FBI agent.)

When asked about this new startling conspiracy, pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said, "As for this conspiracy theory, we're going to shake it off." Presumably, she was referring in a cheeky manner to Ms. Swift's deadly lyrics, but the nonchalant manner in which Ms. Singh "shook it off" betrays a callous and evil liberal intent to subvert voters over to the left. 

Now I've known that Ms. Swift has been evil for some time. You can't escape her gawd-awful, ear-worm, bubblegum pop nonsense from the radio to elevators to grocery stores. And now that her evil, powerful, subliminal, and totally terrifying mind powers plot has been unveiled, I'm going to need to stuff cotton in my ears, so I don't suddenly find myself thinking unwanted thoughts that maybe abortion is okay or whatever.

My daughter thinks that the villainous Ms. Swift's insidious plots don't end there. She believes that the nefarious Buffalo Bills have hired Taylor Swift to infiltrate the Kansas City Chiefs via Travis Kelce to wreck his game. And it's worked. Since they started dating, look at Kelce's less than stellar performance.

Yes, the true threat to democracy isn't MAGA or Trump. It's Taylor Swift. Don't let the Swifties For Socialism get to YOU, too!

This has been a paid advertisement from the Beyonce For President campaign.

Speaking of total nonsense, check out my rollicking comic mystery series of Zach and Zora books, the only series around boasting a lead character even dumber than today's politicians. I fully endorse this message!

The Mathematical Division of Household Blame

My wife and I have different duties at home which are pretty evenly split. However, this isn't the case when it comes to blame. For you see, I generally get about 90% of the blame for when there are food mishaps.

Why, I remember it like it was yesterday... (Cue the fuzzy blurred out swirly image for a flashback.) Wait a minute...it was yesterday!

"Your Chinese food leaked juice all over the refrigerator," hollered my wife from the kitchen.

"But...it was for your benefit," I explained.

Silence. Crickets. Even more crickets.

Finally, "How in the hell was that for my benefit."

I finally got off the loveseat to go plead my case in the same room with her. "When you went to bed, you forgot to put your leftover Chinese food in the refrigerator. So I had to move mine to make way for yours. Apparently, when I moved mine (to make way for yours, I'd like to reiterate), it of necessity became canted, thus dribbling out the juice. For your benefit."

"Oh, no," she said, "you're not putting that on me!"

"But it was for your benefit," I said, standing my ground. "So you should be the one to clean it."

"That's ridiculous. Okay...what if I was making cookies for you and I had a terrible flour accident. Would you clean it up?"

"No," I said. 

"'No?' Why? It's the same thing!"

"Because you would eat the cookies, too. Your baking would benefit us both." I mean, this is clear, clean logic, right? Just follow the logic. Perfect sense.

Then she hit me with, "Okay, fine. What if I was making you coconut cookies and flour exploded everywhere?" Aha, I thought. Now she's using the same, strong logic right back at me, for she has an aversion toward coconut and won't touch it.

"That's different," I said. "Coconut cookies would be to my benefit, therefore rendering me the responsible party to clean up the flour explosion."

"Yeah, right. Like you'd clean it up."

I said, "I would! Go make coconut cookies and throw flour everywhere and watch me clean it!" Gotcha, I thought. I didn't think her hatred for coconut would even allow her to bake such cookies.

"Yeah, I'm not going to do that," she said.

Well, even though I laid out a flawless, logical defense in "Kitchen Court," I still lost the case and ended up cleaning the spilled Chinese sauce. (At least the sauce that I saw without moving items, which resulted in yet another Kitchen Court later.)

I went back to the love-seat, while she was still banging away in the kitchen. Soon enough, she's in the refrigerator and hollering about all the food that's gone to waste.

"Do you hear me?" she shouted. "You've got to quit letting food go to waste!"

"How is this my fault? You eat the food, too."

"Okay, I'd say it's about 85% your fault and 15% mine. We share the burden of responsibility."

"Wait a minute, hold on a second! That's not sharing. That's still blaming me for the majority! Where'd you come up with that over-inflated equation? Trump's accountants?"

I need a specialized slide rule or something to dole out arbitrary percentages of blame to my wife the next time we enter Kitchen Court. Best to be prepared.

Speaking of horror stories, you'll find a lot of 'em in my collection of creepy tales, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. Check it out!

"One horse SOAP and sleigh!"

Yep, you read that right. Throughout my childhood, I always thought one of the lyrics to "Jingle Bells" was "one horse soap and sleigh." I never questioned it, just went along my merry juvenile way singing my lil' foolish, gleeful, songbird head off like naïve kids who haven't yet been introduced to the Big Bad Real World do. My parents were no help, they didn't correct me, probably because they thought it was "cute" or something. (Kind of like how I would pronounce "S's" with a lisp which they found adorable, and thus encouraged it, while sending me right into an embarrassing remedial speech therapy class. Thanks, Mom and Dad!) Or maybe they thought those were the lyrics as well,

But I digress. As I grew older, I wondered what a one horse soap and sleigh was. At first, I thought maybe the soap on the sleigh's rails made it slicker in the snow. Then I thought not, for surely the snow would melt off the soap. Then I wondered if maybe EVERYBODY got the lyric wrong and it was supposed to be a "one horse souped up sleigh." Now that made sense. Yet it didn't. I knew the song was old, but it was probably even more ancient than beatnik slang like "souped up."

As the years fell away and my cynicism grew along with my height and awkwardness, I thought that maybe the songwriters were just as sadistic as fairy tale writers and they were hiding a morbid message: the horse would be slayed (most definitely not "sleighed") and turned into soap. Yikes.

Actually I forgot all about it until this Christmas. One groggy morning in bed, I asked my wife, "What does 'one horse soap and sleigh' mean?'"

She gave me her patented crazed look and said "What are you talking about?"

"Um, the song 'Jingle Bells.' There's a one horse soap and sleigh."

Her eyeroll was astronomical. "It's 'one horse open sleigh.'"

I said, "Ohhhhhhhhh," while pretending to have some semblance of dignity and intelligence left.

But my wife's no one to talk. If you were around in the 70's, undoubtedly you guys were throttled by that awful, maudlin Little River Band song, "Lonesome Loser." You know, the song where the groups singing is supposed to be celestial harmonies, but sounds more like a bag of cats thrown into a dog pound? Yeah, that one. For years, my wife thought the song was "Lonesome Lizard." Which makes absolutely no sense, especially for the poor lonesome reptile.

I think everybody has some song in their past where they got the lyrics wrong, A friend of mine who I lived with in college was one day singing along to the stereo. He was bebopping around the apartment, singing at the top of his lungs: "Mid-Summer's Dayyyyyy! Mid-Summer's DAYYYYYYYYYYY!"

I said, "Whoa! What the hell are you singing, Jerry?"

"'Mid-Summer's Day' by Men at Work. Duh."

Well. At least he got the band right. But the song was "It's a Mistake." How he got Mid-Summer's Day out of that is anyone's guess. Yet I made sure I laughed and laughed at him for too long a time.

But I think I'm just deflecting attention from my bonehead decades long Christmas song faux pas.

While on the topic of boneheads, it takes one to write one, I guess, and characters don't come any more boneheaded than one of the two leads in my Zach and Zora comical murder mystery series. You see, Zach is a male stripper (he prefers "male entertainment dancer") who constantly stumbles over dead bodies and is blamed for the murders by making really dumb life choices. It's up to his (usually pregnant and highly irritable) sleuth sister, Zora, to find the real killer and save her dumb brother's neck. Join the fun with the first book, Bad Day in a Banana Hammock!