Young Humans and the Art of Coping

Coping means (as stated by the Wikipedia) "constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing" or "exceeding the resources of the person."

Coping is how you take all your troubles and worries, and deal with 'em. That's coping.

Every month there's a new story somewhere about some troubled asshole coward loser who can't cope with life and goes and kills people or themselves (or both). We then all collectively wonder how some fucked up maniac could do such a thing, and we wonder how we can prevent it in the future from happening again.

In terms of preventive measures, some point at measures like outlawing guns, some point to censoring violent video games. Those topics are well covered, but the one I think that is most important, in my opinion, to stop this from happening again is to teach kids the art of coping.

Whenever I see a story where some maniac like that loser in Connecticut has lost it and went on a shooting rampage, I have to wonder what could have possibly made this kid go over the edge. These kids aren't living in a famine-ridden third world country with no way out. They are always regular healthy looking rich enough kids, what was possibly so bad about their lives that they had to lose their fragile minds?

Whenever there are reasons provided behind the stories in all cases the reasons are absurd. Sometimes a kid shoots up his school over being unpopular, or because someone called him a name, or some pointless thing. People are going on shooting sprees for the smallest of first world problems.

There's stories about kids killing themselves because their parents took their X-box away, or a story about a kid who killed himself because he lost his Iphone, or a story about a lady killing herself because some Australians made a joke about the queen of England. People are killing themselves over the silliest of issues.

To me, it all seems to boil down to the ability to cope.

How to do Coping

This is all you have to do to cope, when problems arise, this is how you should mentally respond to them:

When someone calls you a mean name: "Who cares?"

When someone makes fun of you: "Who cares?"

When you lose your Iphone: "Who cares? Fuck that I-Phone. Steve Jobs was a shitstain anyway. What does that billionaire need my money for?"

When your parents take away your x-box: "Fuck X-Box. Bill Gates is a shitstain anyway. What does that billionaire need my money for?"

When someone pokes fun at Royals: "Hahaha, good one!"

There, that is how you cope. That's it. When these problems arise, you don't need to start terminating lives (either yourself or others)...you just need to cope a bit, that's all.

I Love Coping

I've been a mellow person my whole life, and the trick is hardcore coping. I actually personally don't care about anything...AND IT'S GREAT!

If you want my secrets to coping, well, I'll give them to you. Because it seems so many young people can't cope with even pointlessly meaningless problems. If you are a young human and you are reading this, please listen to these following three videos...they may save your life. They are mantras to play in your brain when worries take over.

Firstly, when I was six (young age) my parents showed me the movie Meatballs and it was real funny. There's a part in Meatballs where Mr. Bill Murray teaches young campers how to cope with shit:

The Mantra of "It Just Doesn't Matter" stuck in my young brain forever. "It" really doesn't matter at all. Whatever "It" is that is bothering you...Bill is right...it does not even matter. Are you worried about something? Some stupid thing? Well guess what....It Just Doesn't Matter, bro/sis. This is some of the truest shit anyone ever said, and I'm not even exaggerating...it really is. This shit is TRUE.

Nextly, when I became a greasy teenager-style human, I found some coping potential in this song sung by crooner Robert Wright,

Forget Your Life is pretty true too. What is it that you are worried about? It's Nothing. It not only just doesn't matter at all... but it's actually Nothing. Your worries and troubles are Nothing. It's similar to Just Doesn't Matter but thinking your troubles are Nothing is an even stronger dose of mental cognitive coping.

Finally here's the greateast song I ever heard, it is called "I Don't Care,"

Oh man, this song is so true it's not even funny...and there's only like 10 words in the song so it's really easy to turn into a Mantra that can play in your brain endlessly (I might even be playing this song 24 hours a day subconscoiously in the back of my brain for all I know). It's so simple man...but it's SO TRUE.

Lyrics by Joey Ramone:

I don't care
I don't care
I don't care
About this world
I don't care
About that girl
I don't care
I don't care
I don't care
About these words
I don't care

Conclusion

So, in closing, please youth...don't lose your shit over pointless fucking things anymore. When life is getting you down just cope a bit. Life is easy, it really is...there's never a point to buy guns and go do that sort of thing. Life is a pretty sweet fruit...when you don't care about shit.

Edge-Joo-Mah-Cay-Shun

I wrote an article on a kooky guy named N.D. Sickels once (here). I found the old man's writing to be very honest (though pretty crazy). Due to it's quaintness and honesty, his book written in 1919 called "The Universal Panacea" has remained relevant to modern kook researchers.

Another equally quaint and honest manuscript by a bored old man, back in 1990, which has remained relevant for many years now is the one by Ernest "Free" Mann. He shares many things in common with Sickels (utopian, honesty, quaint) but Mann is less crazy than Sickels (yet he's also a far more boring writer than Sickels). Mann was an old retired guy with a lot of time on his hands, who sat down and wrote his thoughts on life and then offered it free of charge as a newsletter through the mail (this was pre-internet of course).

Mann's Manuscript, Free I Got: http://mountholly-lamano.com/freeigot.htm

It's very long and you'll notice right off the bat, it's very utopian and unrealistic. In fact, respected kook researcher Ivan Stang assesses Mann's manuscript in his work High Weirdness by Mail as follows,

Definitely the most idealistic, and arguably the most naive set of pamphlets in our Archives. The author's plan for total world utopia involves, simply, everyone working for nothing; all competition would be abolished. Work without pay - is that too much to ask? It's a pathetic halfway measure, though. We'd still be working. Otherwise, it might be a great idea...on some other planet, using some other race besides humans. [The price of the newsletter is] Free, of course.

-Stang, I. "High Weirdness by Mail", p.159

Ernest Mann tried to push a platform called the "Priceless Economic System" (or PES) in his newsletter and manuscript. This platform involved everyone doing what they felt like doing and work was done by people offering certain skills they had into a "skill pool" which would be shared by everyone.

I like to read these types of things because I like to synthesize many many different opinions on subjects before I develop my own opinion on them. Kook writings are great because you have a good chance of finding a view point that you haven't seen before, which may refine your opinion a bit more. Even if you conclude that everything they said in the article was wrong/bad/crazy at least you've hit another opinion vein. Even disproving an opinion on a subject is still refining your own opinion, it's not lost time.

The other great thing about kook writings, is the rare time, when something they said turns out to probably be right. In a manuscript this long, where probably a few thousand opinions have been released, it's rare that not one of them would be right.

Education

The following are excerpts from "Free I Got" and other writings in Ernie's "Little Free Mann Press,"

Have you ever wanted to learn something new? Like a new trade or profession? Then looked into the cost and time it would take to go to college? One can learn at the library through books, but most books are so vague that one must get more books to understand the first book. This way they make more money from books and classes.

When I bought my computer in about 1987, I also bought "Microsoft Word" one of the best word processor software packages. The 3" thick manuals that explained how to use the word processor, sometimes had such vague explanations that it was nearly impossible for a beginner to understand. Of course they had classes one could buy. Microsoft also sold a book that they wrote, explaining their manuals. No! They didn't include that book with the software! How do you suppose the Microsoft owner (Gates) got to be a billionaire in his thirties. Not by helping people, but by charging all the traffic would bear! This is just one of the tricks that people must play to get ahead in the Profit/Wage Economics Game. It is not bad people, just a bad Game.

I didn't buy their "extra" book and I didn't take their classes. The self teaching was really fun. It felt so good to re-discover the thrill of learning. There was agony too, but the thrills out-weighed them, so I succeeded.

What I'm trying to get at is, -- now we have a great new technology with computers for self-teaching. There is self-teaching software already, but the good stuff is very expensive.

When we start using the Priceless Economic System, my guess is that children and adults will prefer to learn at their own speeds and will mostly do it with computers at home. I bet it won't be too long before we have networks within our homes. Like each family member will have his/her own keyboard and monitor in their room and the power unit and printer will be in a central location in the home. I suppose the more affluent families already have this. We won't even have to go to the library to get the software. We already have modems that can copy the software from the library over the phone in minutes on to our own hard disks or floppy disks to keep in our home libraries. This sharing wouldn't cost the libraries anything. But you can see how the Profit/Wage Economic System (PWES) would object. (pronounced, pee wee's)

The only thing that is keeping this from happening is the PWES. Think of the Profit land speculators and industrialists make selling land and construction materials to the government to build school and college buildings, to fill them with furniture and fixtures, to sell them heat, air conditioning and light and to supply them with maintenance items. Think of the Profit the publishing industry makes on all the books. Student housing, clothing and busing industries get in on the bonanza too.

Even now, without the use of computers, parents who home-school their children, side-step the above expenses and some do it in less than two hours per day. Their children are able to pass the same tests as the kids who must spend their whole day in school plus have 2 hours of home-work. Tell me, which looks like the most sensible route to Progress?

-Ernest "Free" Mann, Free I Got, (1990)

For 1990, this is pretty good reasoning. Fast forward 22 years to 2012 and it looks like his prediction came true.

Is the university system a big scam? I think I agree with Ernest on this one. Are people now a days starting to learn at their own pace on the internet? Yeah.

I can't tell you how many times I've searched for how to do something and then learned how to do it from a video on the internet. A video that I watched for free, one that someone uploaded to the net simply to teach someone else how to do something. It seems people all over the world are putting up videos, writing manuals, and instructions on how to learn new things for free.

Wait a sec...

Is this the "skill pool" he was predicting? Was he right about that too? Why is everyone teaching everyone else how to do things for free?

Here's an example of the millions of "How-To" videos on the net right now:

The Precious KHAAAAN! Learning System

Okay, maybe how to tie a tie is not the coolest example of the learnable skills in the vast and deep skill pool of the internet.

This website, which probably everyone knows by now, Khaaaaan! Academy Dot Org (or http://www.khanacademy.org/) is a better example. Khan Academy is basically a High School diploma for anyone who wants one. Heck, it's even a college diploma for anyone who wants one. Who am I kidding, it's a university degree for anyone who wants one. Well, not really...you can't put Khan leaves on a resume so no one's going to believe you're smart even though you are.

It was started by a nice guy named Sal Khan who worked as a hedge fund analyst in the Profit/Wage Economic System (sorry, I'm still stuck in Ernie Mann viewpoint shock after re-reading Free I Got) who got sick of the bullshit, ditched the PeeWees, and started contributing merit to the Priceless Economic System.

Why did Khan ditch the world of sheisters and scammers, to devote his life to free education?

Khan

According to him,

"With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an unlimited amount of people for all time. I can't imagine a better use of my time."

-Sal Kahn
 



Time

That word, "time", comes up about a hundred thousand times in Ernest Mann's manuscript. As an old man putting his thoughts to paper, Ernie must have had time on the brain. Maybe as he was aging and starting to understand his time was in its waning years...maybe he started thinking about what actual contributions and merits he made to human history during his time being part of it,
  

"Knowing I'm 63 years old and counting. Even though I'm trying for 165 years, time is still precious. Realizing I have only "X" number of years left and starting right now to use them (this moments) for my own pleasure and happiness. "

-Ernest Mann

Similar to Khan, Ernest Mann was successful in the business world. He worked in the real estate business in Minnesota before getting sick of the rat race and dropping out of it at the age of 42.

In retrospect, maybe his ideas weren't as crazy as once was thought. Is scamming and squeezing more money from someone else for someone else really the best use of your time? Money which is just a human construct that doesn't even really exist? Probably not.

Are sites like Khan Academy proof that Mann's idea of a universal "Skill Pool" or his "Priceless Economic System" may actually hold some water? Possibly, at least it's interesting to think about anyway.

Conclusion

Sometimes observing subjects from a different perspective is fun. You can form your own conclusions on matters and maybe even alter your belief systems slightly.

"Since then [Mann] has had the time and space to observe economics from a different perspective and has had 21 years to travel to many countries; read, observe, discuss, think, evaluate and form his own conclusions about the economic situation, politics, religion, life and individual freedom. Now his belief systems are far different than they were when he was busily engaged in trying to keep his bills paid."

-Free I Got

Why Hasn't John Wetteland ever Wrote a Book?

I've been a fairly large fan of the game of baseball since I was little, and I've gathered a lot of information on the sport over the years.

I've also been a fairly large fan of kooks over the years, and have gathered a large amount of information on that subject as well

Sometimes it's nice when both topics collide and synthesize together, then I can read one book or article and gather information on both baseball and human kookery at the same time.

The Story of Baseball

I look at baseball as just one long story. One long history. The weird thing about it is that the records, annals, statistics, and data recorded on this story are probably more immense and accurate than any other historical collection on earth, which makes it a pretty accurate story (unlike the rest of history subjects). It's an interesting collection of data dating back to the 18th century and this story has a total of 17,786 characters in it, which is a lot to keep track of.

Guan Yuncheng

One of the first stories I encountered which had an abundance of characters (more so than I was used to) was Luo Guanzhong's Three Kingdoms story which was written in the 14th century. It's still popular to this day, many may be familiar with John Woo's Red Cliffs film which is based on this work, or the dozens of video games based off it by Koei. Most Chinese historians will agree that the names recorded in this novel have stood the test of time (Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Sun Jian, Guan Yuncheng, Zhang Fei, etc.).

Guanzhong's story had 978 characters in its 4 volumes...and I must say, it seemed excessive at the time. Yet, compared to the Story of Baseball, 978 doesn't seem like many characters at all. The Story of Baseball has roughly 18 times more characters involved in it than Three Kingdoms.

Each and every one of these characters has a backstory. Each and every player who has been involved in the game was an individual human person with their own unique contribution to the story. Thousands of them have died now and are just memories but at least some facet of their contribution to the Story of Baseball will stand the test of time.

Burt Lancaster

For example, many of you have probably seen the film Field of Dreams (starring James Earl Jones and Kevin Costner). In this film Jones and Costner attempt to track down a man by the name of Archibald "Moonlight" Graham (portrayed by Burt Lancaster) who played only one game in his entire major league career and didn't even get to bat. Jones and Costner want to bring him to their field of dreams and give him a chance to step up to plate.

Archibald "Moonlight" Graham was indeed a real man, who in real life, did indeed make it into one game in 1922 for the New York Giants when he was sent in to replace George Brown in right field for one inning. Like the movie suggests, he did indeed go on to be a doctor after his brief stint as a contributor to the Story of Baseball.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_Graham)

Graham is just one of the 17,786 characters involved, and though he just stood in right field and did nothing for 5 minutes, his name has stood the test of time.

Books

Pitcher Jim Bouton and his 1969 book Ball Four seems to be the likely culprit that lead to a domino effect of every ex-player writing his memoirs and sending it off to the printing press. After players set the ball in motion, soon after it was coaches (Lasorda), then umpires (Luciano), and anyone even briefly associated with baseball wanted to contribute their opinions and memories of their time being associated with it.

Now we don't just have stats, records, dates, and other stuffy facts but we have opinions, thoughts, regrets, observations, and other empirical data. We basically have a big Talmud of baseball writings containing everyone's associated personal interpretation of it. It's kind of interesting, I guess.

I've read some bad books, ok ones, good ones, and some really really good ones over the years. For instance Dick Allen's "Crash" is very good, Dock Ellis' book "Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball" is great, Bill Lee's "The Wrong Stuff" is top notch, Warren Cromartie's "Slugging it Out in Japan" is very interesting, Curt Flood's "The Way It Is" also is very interesting. Oh and No Big Deal by Bird Fidrych is real good too.

I think what makes a book written by an old baseball player good is when they are a bit eccentric and fun. I was thinking about which guys should write books before they die (in order to contribute their opinions to the Baseball Talmud). I'm sure Darrell Evans probably has some funky shit to say, seeing as he has claimed some fucked up stuff over the years. Evans hit over 40 homeruns in two seasons, once in 1973 and again 13 years later in 1985. What rejuvenated his swing to make him belt 40 homers again at the age of 38? According to him, aliens came down to earth and shared with him, and his wife, the secrets of life. I can see him having some interesting things to write about.

It's a boring dimension...

Then there's Darren Daulton, who claims to have seen the 5th Dimension of space-time while lining a ball down the third base line back in 1993, and who claimed to have traveled to the 4th Dimension on several occasions, has just put out a book. It's called If They Only Knew, and I don't think I want to read it because I think his kookiness is just a shtick to sell the book. I don't think he is a genuine kook at all and I'm sure he's just in it for the money. Darren Daulton is a bozo. Besides, everyone knows the 5th Dimension is just a bunch of boring old intersecting fucking tesseracts anyway.

What About John Wetteland?

This guy was a good pitcher.

You know, honestly, one dude who should just sit down one day and knock out a book or two is that guy John Wetteland.

I saw John Wetteland pitch for the Expos at Olympic Stadium when I was a ten year old kid. He used to come out of the bullpen and walk over to the mound while Wild Thing played in the background. He'd come into the game to shut it the fuck down and preserve the lead that the other players took eight innings to create and hold. The man threw 100+ mile an hour fastballs, sliders, and curveballs. His arm was a highly potent and highly efficient strikeout tool.

I watched him again as a thirteen year old kid on T.V., when he joined Tim Raines on the 1996 Yankees and was the MVP in the World Series that year.

Any data or backstory on Wetteland is kind of odd. Any article written about him, or any interview with him, is equally odd. I don't mean it in a bad way though, I mean it, like in way like, that this guy probably thinks about a lot of stuff, you know?

He's absolutely right in what he says around 3:20 in that video. I mean, John could just tell a kid what he did, but maybe if said kid stepped off the mound and stated "chicken salad sandwich" then the advice wouldn't work out for him. It sounds strange at first but John is trying to explain the chaos theory and the effect that tiny minute micro-cosmic actions can lead to a chain of reactive effects that can alter outcomes of future situations...

Chaos Theory:

"Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.^[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.^[2] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.^[3][4] This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos."

(From Wikipedia)

He seems pretty honest and down to earth in his interviews. In any interview, John seems to be able to get off topic and onto some pretty cool tangents. Here's an excerpt from an interview by Baseball Prospectus where he gets to talking about not believing all information you hear,

"Even in science. Just because somebody has PhD next to his name, I don’t just sit there and nod my head. That’s one of the things I hate, and one of the things that really disappoints me about us as a society. We seem to be so spoon fed. “Spoon feed me the information and I’ll nod my head and go on about my day”—disseminate it without even thinking about it. The Big Bang Theory. How come particles exceed the speed of light in the amount of time that they do? Now, you have to take half, because it comes from a single point; it can’t go one end to the other. It’s relative, so you take half. But it still exceeds the speed of light. We all know that. There’s a convenient explanation, but it doesn’t tell me anything.

I want to know, you know. Even the questions I know that I’ll never answer. That’s why I love Michio Kaku. He has this book that I read about things we thought that we would never do, like go to the moon, fly in an airplane, and yet we did, mostly over the last 100 years. What’s in store for the next 50 years that isn’t a part of our reality now? I mean, who would have thought 20 years ago that ion engines are something we’d be using now? And that’s really cool to think about, because we need alternate sources of fuel. You can’t do solids if we’re going to do any real traveling up there. The problem is that you have one hydrogen atom per 10 square feet of outer space. So there are all kinds of things. Garrett Olson and I were just talking about that. We spent about three innings, me, him, and Brian Sweeney.

          -John Karl Wetteland

I think the question asked by the reporter was about the difficulty of changing from a starter to a reliever early in his career, but I don't think it mattered what the question was, because either way, J.K. Wetteland was going to unload a narrative of human mental restlessness that was cooking up in his noodle all day. I know, 100%, that this is not a shtick. He's just an honest guy who thinks about the future. Wetteland is just contemplating the inherent roadblocks associated with light-speed space travel. Oh, like you haven't?

Here's John responding to question about the homerun Edgar Martinez hit off of him back in 1995,

"That was a watershed moment for me," he said of Martinez's grand slam. "I detested failure and all of 1996, I pitched with the memory of my failure in '95. From then on I understood how to process certain things because I kind of went through the fire. You get refined. I'm the kind of guy who likes to kick my own rear end."

"I remember this was before [John] Elway won his Super Bowls and I was thinking, 'Am I going to be another Elway and be great in the regular season, but just can't get it done in the postseason?' " Wetteland asked himself. "So I decided in '96, that I don't care if I throw the ball 30 feet up the screen, I'm just going to let it go."

         - J.K. Wetteland (source)

Such poetic language. Why doesn't he just sit down and write a few books? What does he have to lose? They'd probably sell millions of copies. Might as well keep going with some more quotes while we're at it,

"I was always a little different, I'd go to the library, read up on tepees, build one in the front yard and sleep there." (source)

"I’m the black sheep. Everyone else is doctors or presidents of marketing for big companies and all this stuff and I’m just a baseball player." (source)

"There’s so much more going on in this world. Sports is not an escape for me. OK? And I think therein lies the difference. For many people it is. It’s the Roman Colosseum all over again. And that’s OK. It’s awesome. It’s healthy, cathartic. It’s not that for me. It’s something I need to execute. There’s a whole different perspective I have and that’s why maybe I can’t enjoy it the same way. I only watch baseball to learn from it, not to enjoy it." (source)

"I understand sequencing and all that sort of stuff..." (source)

"It’s the small things that count, the tiny tiny things.Wade Boggs ate chicken at the same time every day. Do you think that eating chicken really made him a 330 plus hitter? It’s the fact he did it always at a particular time and after that he was “Everything’s OK.” For me it was getting to the park and doing all the crosswords. That was my transition from my home life. Now I exercised my brain at something that was neither here nor there. Now I could get into my work..." (source)

This next quote needs a bit of setup first. John liked to write quatrains and couplets of poetry on the lockers at Dodger Stadium as a 22 year old rookie. This is a sample of some of J.K. Wetteland's early free-style writing,

          INVISIBLE COWS CONTROL MY DESTINY.
          COSMIC WARLORDS MAINTAIN MY SOUL.
          THE ROOM SMELLS OF BURNT PLAID.
          I AM SERVING DOUGHNUTS ON ANOTHER PLANET. (source)


Conclusion

If there's one of the 17,786 characters in the Story of Baseball who needs to contribute a full length book to the repository (or reliquary) of data which compromises the Baseball Talmud...it looks like its John Wetteland. I guarantee anything he writes is going to pretty interesting.

A Suggested title for the book..."John Wetteland in the Chaotic Cosmic Universe of Baseball"

Wiiiiiiild Thing!

A Critique of Three Canadian Neuro-Scientists and why Their Respective Findings may have been of the Jabroni Variety

On June 7th, of 2011, I wrote a blog about how I sometime think about my brain:
(https://writingsonsubjects.blogspot.com/2011/06/thinking-about-my-brain.html)

I think about my brain a lot when I have the time, and like I said in the above blog post, I'm not a scientist or anything but I still think that because I have a brain, I am thus qualified to think about it and maybe even have some ideas about how it functions.

I am still unconvinced that there are "left-brained" and "right-brained" people, and I am still unconvinced that the findings made by neuroscientists in the last century were conclusive findings. I will try to elaborate a little further on why I believe this and try and argue my position a little more.

Wilder Penfield? The Legend or the Jabroni?

If you lived in Canada in the last few decades then you probably remember seeing this...

 

from: https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/wilder-penfield

Ya, ya, ya..."greatest Canadian alive...", ya, ya, ya.

It might be best to start off the critique by telling you that Penfield wasn't even Canadian, let alone the greatest one of all time. He was actually born in Spokane, Washigton and lived in the USA until leaving to study in various European countries. Penfield only arrived in Montreal at the age of 37...I'm sure if you asked him he'd probably tell you he was American. Right off the bat you know this video is not necessarily accurate.

Penfield and his fellow "Canadian" neuroscience counter-parts of the era, Willie Beecher Scoville (also of American extraction) and Brenda Milner (actually from England) did indeed like to poke people's brains with things and observe their responses but that is only the tip of the iceberg.

The previous era of neuro scientific research was led by findings by Carl Wernicke and Pierre Paul Broca, who tried to isolate which portion of the brain did what. These two men used pigeons or mice as their test subjects. They'd cut off pieces of the their brains and then see what the effect was on the critter. They made some findings and then named portions of the brain after themselves. If cutting up birds and mice and then naming parts of the brain after yourself sounds vain...well it's because it is. At least they were only using critters though. Penfield, Beecher, and Milner were not using critters...

As you can maybe guess from the above video, our three "Canadian" scientists didn't use critters...they used humans as test subjects. Normally, what would happen was a person would come in to their office complaining of epilepsy and then our intrepid heroes would just go to town on the person's brain.

Henry Molaison...poor guy.

One example is the case of Henry Gustav Molaison. In 1957, Henry came into Willie Beecher's office in Hartford, Connecticut complaining of epileptic seizures and requested help from the surgeon. Beecher called up his friends Penfield and Milner in Montreal and the conversation which ensued must have went a little something like so...

Beecher: "Yo, what's up Penny! I got a dude with fucking seizures up in here!"

Penfield: "Oh shit son! That's fucked up bro!"

Beecher: "What should I do to fix this shit?"

Penfield: "You best cut his fucking brain apart dude!"

Beecher: "For real!?"

Penfield: 'Straight up! Just get up in his nose with a drill or cut open his fucking skull and then just rip some of that shit up, or pull some of that junk out...it'll fix him swell, I garuan-fucking-tee it!"

Beecher: "Ok, cool homey...talk to ya later...bye."

Beecher did just that, he went up into Henry Molaison's nose with a nice long drill and fiddled around in there, and then he cut open his skull and took out a few brain chunks here and there of poor Henry's brain.

Molaison's seizures seemed to get a little better in the following weeks, yet a curious thing happened as a side effect. It seems Molaison got really fucked up after Beecher cut parts of his brain off...now who would have thought that would happen? Henry, after the surgery was not able to record any more information to his long term memory.

Beecher was very fascinated by this and called Brenda Milner over to Hartford to help him study his new critter specimen. They interviewed their critter at length and recorded everything he said, and then published their amazing findings and became rich and respected neuro scientists. Good for fucking them. Their paper was titled "Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal lesions," though a more accurate title would have been "We cut off pieces of a dude's brain and were really surprised that he had trouble remembering things after."

Monkeys...

I would like to point you, at this juncture, to another really odd and gruesome neurological study, just to emphasize my main point a little. It's not related to work by Penfield, Beecher, or Milner but it will give you another glimpse into the wonderful world of neuroscience.

I can tell you right now that removing a dude's brain will fuck him up, I don't need to do immense research into that in order to prove it. Why? Because it is obvious to anyone who is not a complete moron that ripping out pieces of a dude's brain will fuck him up. You don't have to rip off pieces of someone's brain and observe him acting fucked up to figure out that it's true, because it's already common fucking sense.

This next case falls under the same principle. Edward Taub was a guy who wanted to prove that ripping out pieces of monkeys brains would fuck them up.

Well, Ed gathered up 17 cute little macaque monkeys, and for the next 11 years, he ripped out parts of their brains, tied them to torture chairs, and did all kinds of sick depraved Josef Mengle-esque horrible things to them.

(see: Silver Spring Monkeys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Spring_monkeys)

Another case with cute little monkeys, is that of Thomas Gennarelli of the University of Pennsylvania, who's research into concussions back in 1983 was similarly as unnecessary. Gennarelli wanted to see what effect hitting monkeys with a hammer would have on their brains.

If I was the guy giving out research grants at U of P that year, I would have said something along the lines of, "you know Tom...I think hitting a monkey in the head with a hammer will fuck it up. I'm not sure you need a few hundred thousand bucks and lab space to test this stupidity out."

Tom got his grant, and for the next two years, he hit monkeys in the head with hammers, and then noticed that, it did indeed fuck them up. Wow, way to go you fucking moron.

A guy named Alex Pacheco got his hands on footage shot in the University of Pennsylvania's lab from researchers working for Gennarelli and made a video cassette out of the footage. You can now view this on youtube (if you are not faint of heart that is). I don't want to embed the video but you can just google Unnecessary Fuss if you are interested in viewing "researchers" hitting monkeys with hydraulic hammers and then coming to the brilliant conclusion that...yes, hitting monkeys with hammers fucks them up or even kills them.


Are All Brains Different?

In the article I wrote on June 7th, I ventured a guess that every brain wired itself differently during the rearing stages of life and each brain may have individual quirks that may vary from person to person. We are born with billions and billions of brain cells shooting around up there in that noodle and all of them are eager to co-operate and meld with each other to form eletrical synaptical synthesii. The cells might process the information as it comes and make patterns and inter-connections on the fly. I think it is on a first-come first-serve incoming basis, and the chemical reactions between brain cells and receptors are going to be set up differently for every person during the "set-up" phase of their brain's life. As the brain develops from a baby brain into a set-in-their-ways adult brain, the interconnections between cells will not be identical for anyone.

If you want, you can go and chop up a dude's brain, keep him in a home like a guinea-pig, see how fucked up he is, and then name a part of the brain after yourself. But honestly though, that is really messed up and completely unnecessary. For that reason, I do not believe that Penfield, Beecher, and Milner are heroes and certainly not the "greatest canadians alive" as that silly video insisted. I believe their findings may have even been jabroni-esque in nature.

Now, again, I'm not a neuroscientist and I don't really have any evidence for my silly theories. I would like to point out though that scientists have tried to recreate the findings of Penfield, Beecher, and Milner...and they were unable to come to the same conclusions. Poking one person in a certain part of their brain will not lead to the same result as poking another person in the exact same part of their brain.

Edit (Nov. 12, 2012)

I'm not saying neuroscience is a jabroni field. I'm just saying that some neuroscientists were jabronies, that's all. The field itself is very interesting and important.

There's been many many good ones over the years. An example of a good neuro scientist in history would be Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who you can read about here.




(This one was a little over-the-top this one. I was too hard on the people ... I think I just didn't like that burned toast commercial ... I think that's the main thing.

I issued a retraction to this article too: https://writingsonsubjects.blogspot.ca/2013/04/a-small-retraction-of-statement-in.html )

The Highest of High Culture: The Appraisal of Photographs of Willie McGee

In my halcyon days as a vagabond traveling scholar, I engaged in various studies. I dabbled intensely to refine my understanding of economics, history, voodoo, and many other fields of advanced thought. Yet the subject that always fascinated me most, was one I came across while studying at a small university in Montpellier, France roughly ten years ago. A professor by the monicker of Lebrante Lavoisier introduced me to a most curious and captivating subject which widened my mental horizons infinitely. 

Lebrante was an appraiser of antique artworks and handicrafts, the man was the proprietor of massive collections of vases, urns, paintings, and crafts of immense historical significance. His seminars at the university taught inquiring minds how to identify which pieces of art held within them the most historical significance.

On the eve of the last morrow prior to graduation day, Lebrante brought his class to his estate in lower Burgundy to showcase his students his vast collections of relics and dusty chachkies. I witnessed first hand, pieces of significance from as far back as 1976 and even as long ago as 1974.

Celadon urns, wood cut plaques, brocade tapestries, vinyl records, stone carvings, bodkin heads...his collection was utterly breath taking. He narrated as he showcased the pieces of his personal collection using the most refined of language whilst doing so,

L’art est une activité humaine, le produit de cette activité ou l'idée que l'on s'en fait, s'adressant délibérément aux sens, aux émotions et à l'intellect. On peut dire que l'art est le propre de l'homme, ce qui le distingue au sein de la nature, et que cette activité n'a pas de fonctions clairement définies.

-Lebrante Lavoisier

Following the exhibition the professor served mild cognac, and we began discussing art (as such). I asked him which piece in his vast collection was truly his favorite and he responded that choosing a favorite amongst his many chachkies would be like a father choosing which of his children was his favorite. Yet after he consumed more and more cognac and opened up a little more he took the liberty of hunkering down and confessing which of his pieces was his preferred favorite. Lebrante took out an old leather satchel from under his desk and slowly opened it. He said, that the artwork contained in this satchel was the most honest art he had ever appraised and considered it the most meaningful, deep, beautiful, wonderful, and historically significant art that the art world had ever produced. He unwrapped a small book from the leather satchel and held it up high in the air and stated as if to the heavens,

Ceci, mes cher amis, proche de mon coeur .....
sont des photograhs de Willie McGee

Inside this book was photographs of former St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Willie McGee. Lebrante explained that unlike every other baseball photograph where the "joueur" is depicted heroically, poised, proud, and confident...photos of Willie McGee presented a contrast so great that they themselves are within themselves the truest definition of the human condition.

Now without further ado (or even further aplomb) we shall attempt to appraise the value and significance of photographs of Willie McGee...

Upper Deck circa 1990

One can only wonder what was going through the photographer's mind as he/she directed his/her subject's pose in this photograph.

Willie was probably standing all tough, posing in a batting stance that looked pretty normal, cliche, and cool...but the photographer stopped him and said something along the lines of,

"No Willie, drop the bat, it's too cliche...I want you to try and look as bored, lackadaisical, lethargic, bemused, and all around distant as you possibly can. Ok great, yeah put your hands on your waist, stop smiling please, get a thousand-yard stare going, and curl one of your nostrils up a bit...ok there it is...beautiful...and..."

*SNAP*

 Final Appraisal

Facade: A+
Facial Expression: B+
Palette: C
Contrast: D
Saturation: C-
Placement: B 
Historical Significance: B-
Human Value: C+

Overall Median Auction Price: ~ $ 1,400,000


Cardinals Media Yearbook Circa 1989

Stopping time in its tracks to capture happiness in its entirety is every artist's raison d'etre...here the artist has stopped time in an orderly yet sophisticated fashion to truly represent happiness in its purest form. He/she has sliced off a moment in the time frame of continual life to represent one passed yet preserved moment. A moment in which its subject was brimming with human happiness. It is akin to a hunter catching an elusive alligator, or a treasure hunter coming across buried gold. An artiste slicing off a piece of happiness from the winding tapestries of human existence is the call of the minaret in the journey of an artist.

Lebrante has coined this piece..."Happy Willie" and it is his favorite amongst his collection (but not mine).



Final Appraisal

Facade: C+
Facial Expression:B
Palette: B
Contrast: C
Saturation: B
Placement: B+ 
Historical Significance: A
Human Value: A

Overall Median Auction Price: ~ $ 1,750,000 


Donruss Diamond Kings Circa 1985

Ah yes, the famed oil on canvas painting of Willie McGee which once hung in the Deutsche Guggenheim Museum of Berlin.

This piece is more famous for its many thefts and counterfeit scandals than for its humanistic value. It was thought destroyed in 1996 when Bundeskanzler Helmut Kohl ordered all art which was not post-neo-nihilistic to be burned in Germany. It was counterfeited and attempted to be re-created dozens of times but each counterfeit could not compare to the lost original.

The painter of the original piece, Stanisław Szukalski, fully captured the distance of Willie's eyes as well as the curl of his upper lip in such a fashion that appraisers can almost assume Szukalski was one with his subject before even beginning to paint him. The flare in the right nostril of Willie is as close to perfection and reality as one can possibly come. A true masterpiece in every sense of the word.

Szukalski attempted to recreate the piece after it was burned, yet he never even came close to re-capturing his original creation. A pity if there ever was one...

Final Appraisal

Facade: A
Facial Expression: A+
Palette: A
Contrast: B
Saturation: B
Placement: A 
Historical Significance: A+
Human Value: D

Overall Median Auction Price: Unapplicable  (due to untimely destruction)


Topps "Charter Member" Circa 1991

Here, Wiilie on the surface is taking practice swings for the photographer...yet the photographer has managed to burrow deep beneath the surface to uncover the truth in the human condition. Willie's body may be taking practice swings yet his facial expression shows us a weary and unamused man...distantly staring at the past.

His eyes represent sturggle,
His nostrils symbolize cohesiveness
His gangly uninvolved hand represents Life.

This is the haute culture of everyone's midwest.

This picture...is.

Is.


Final Appraisal

Facade: A+
Facial Expression: B+
Palette: A
Contrast: A
Saturation: A
Placement: F 
Historical Significance: D+
Human Value: A

Overall Median Auction Price: ~ $ 1,175,000

Topps Circa 1986

Oh Willie, where art thou Willie...and what are you thinking of?

How does an aritist capture a facial expression which doesn't exist? How can you convey an emotion which doesn't belong? Why do the fish swim and the birds fly around in V formations in the sky?

Here the impossible has been done, the artist has captured an expression that has yet been defined by culture.

Willie has seen a funny looking dog and is thinking to himself,

"Geeee, that's a funny looking dog over there."

We don't need to see the dog to know it is funny looking because Willie's face explains it to us vicariously. Willie's expression is the explanation...

Final Appraisal

Facade: C
Facial Expression: A+
Palette: B
Contrast: C
Saturation: D
Placement: C- 
Historical Significance: D
Human Value: A-

Overall Median Auction Price: ~ $ 3,650,000


Cardinals Pre-Season Program Promotional Magazine Circa 1987

Bwaaaaaaaah ahahahahahahaha ahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahah ahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahaha hahaha hahahah ahahaha hahahahahahah ahahahahah ahahahahah ahahahahah ahahahahah woooooo oooooo oooooooooooooooooooooo oh hoooo ooooooo hooooo baaaahhh hhhhhhhahahaha haahahahah!!!!

Oh come on now Willie, who takes a fucking picture like this? You know this is a promo photo, you have plenty of time to conjure up a semi-normal presentable expression. Why? Why would you make this face for? You're not even trying to be photogenic here.  You're giving ZERO effort.

Hahahaaaaaa aaaaahahahahahahahah ahahahahaha haha! 

Final Appraisal

Facade: A+
Facial Expression: A+++ (+) (+)
Palette: A+
Contrast:A+
Saturation: A+
Placement: A+
Historical Significance: A+
Human Value: A+

Overall Median Auction Price: ~ Over Nine Thousand Billon Dollars!!1!!!


Donruss Circa 1984

What the fuck are you looking at in this one? Was there really something so important going on to your peripheral right that you had to not look at the camera while they were taking your baseball card photo?

Willie, you look like you haven't slept in years.

Drink a cup of coffee before baseball card photo day next time, jeez Willie.

Maybe it was an inside joke on the Cardinals roster that whenever Willie was getting photographed someone would yell "Hey Willie!" and he'd look over and go "Wut?" or maybe there really was funny looking dogs walking around the park everytime Willie had to get his baseball card photo taken.


Final Appraisal

Facade: 88.6
Facial Expression: AAA
Palette: 44.87
Contrast: AAA
Saturation: FF
Placement: S+
Historical Significance: ***
Human Value: AAA

Overall Median Auction Price: Lotsa Monies!


...and thus concludes our appraisal of photographs of former St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Willie McGee. Thank you and good night.

Stayin' Up All Night? Oh, That's All Right....

The great ham radio enthusiast Jean Shepherd once said,

"night is the time people truly become individuals because all the familiar things are dark and done; all the restrictions on freedom are removed." -Shepherd, J.

Jean hosted a radio show late at night where he said whatever he felt like saying and developed a following of other "night people" who listened and called in to the program. I think I happen to agree with his assessment on "night people" because it it really does seem to be the case.

I think there's a lot of people who finish their daily trials and tasks in the heavily constrained hierarchical red-taped "outside world" and then come home to their little corners they have carved out in this crazy place. The little corners that are the only place on this earth which is all to themselves with no distractions. It's in these secret little corners that these night people read quietly and think about stuff.


I Like to Stay Up All Night Myself...

For as long as I can remember, I have been a night style person. I've been thinking hard to try and remember my first self-aware "all-nighter" and I think I got it.

It still works to this very day...

When I was 3 and a half years old back in 1986, my paternal grandfather (who referred to himself by the self-monickered title "Paw Jack") gave me an Atari 2600 and it was the hands-down highlight moment of my third year on this world.

I had some cool games for it like a baseball one (I threw a no-hitter to my next door neighbor once in this one), one where some bear collected precious gemstones, and this one where a little white triangle shot little dots at different colored shapes which exploded into smaller different colored shapes.

The Legend: Scott Safran

It was the little white triangle game that kept me up all night for the first time in my life. This game (if you haven't guessed yet) was called Asteroids and it was as addictive as all heck. How addictive was that silly game? Well, for example, according to the internet a guy once played Asteroids for 3 straight days and racked up an unheard of 41,336,440 points. This man's name was Scott Safran and this name will forever be remembered through the ages. Sadly, Safran passed away in 1989 while trying to save his cat Samson from a third story ledge. Safran is a hero in every sense of the word. RIP Scott...

Anyway, I got pretty good at Asteroids myself back in 1986, certainly nowhere near the level Safran played at, but for my age I wasn't too shabby. I clearly remember going to the basement to play it while everyone was asleep and playing it all night long. When my mom woke up the next morning and came down to find me already awake and playing Atari 2600, I totally straight up lied to her and said I just woke up fifteen minutes ago. Not only did I successfully stay up all night, but I didn't even get in trouble for it thanks to my expert 3-year old lying skills.

By 1991, I was doing it regularly. There were two cartoons I wanted to watch saturday mornings, Fantastic Max and Mr Bogus to be exact, and they started at 4:30am and 5:00am respectively. I noticed I was having trouble waking up at 4:30am on Saturday and was missing the opening end of the cartoons...so my idea was to stay up all friday night and that way there was no way I'd miss Fantastic Max and Mr. Bogus.

I used to play videos game all night long when I was a kid. I developed good cover up techniques to get away with it too. I remember later on in the Super Nintendo era it became a problem because there were games that needed to be "saved" before you could shut it off. One technique I developed was to have a pillow near by to put over the blaringly bright and very noticeable red power light that shone when the SNES was on. I certainly didn't want to lose my progress by shutting off the machine before I shut off the TV, and jumped onto the couch to feign sleep. The pillow (or sock sometimes) kept the red light hidden in the dark and the SNES powered up so no progress was ever lost.

My parents constantly developed and deployed anti-stayin'-up-all-night-counter-tactics against my stealth procedures and eventually they succeeded in thwarting my endeavors roughly around 1994. Subsequently, the year 1995 was probably the only year in my life that I was ever on a "get up in the mornin' and go to bed at night" style regimen.

Then in 1996 I got right back into stayin' up all night. During a holiday from school, I managed to stay up and catch an episode of a show called Late Night with Conan O'Brien and there was a cliffhanger going down on this show that implored me to see the conclusion of it. The next day was once again a school day but I had to stay up to 12:35 in the morning to see if Conan and Andy had resolved this issue that captivated my attention the night before.

What implored me to once again become a night person? What could possibly have been so edge-of-yer-seat exciting that I had no choice but to develop new stayin' up late stealth methods?

The search for Grady Wilson....




Yes, call me insane, odd, or even dumb but I gradually regressed into not sleeping again because I had come down with an extreme case of the Grady Fever.

Conan had many old obscure celebrities on his show like Abe Vigoda and Nipsey Russell. It seems he wanted to get Grady on his show too but to his dismay, no one knew where Grady was. Was he okay? Was he dead? What happened to Grady? It was too much for me to handle, I had to know where Grady was. I had to stay up each night and follow the Search for Grady. The search for Grady went on for 47 days, and I managed to stay up (despite all efforts to stop me) for each of those 47 nights.

The show ended at 1:35 in the morning, so then I thought, "hey now, I hafta be up for school in like 5 hours, what the hell is the point of going to sleep for 5 hours?" Naturally, the sanest thing to do was just to stay up all night long. After Conan, I'd switch to the cable channel 18 who had the GREATEST all night programming I'd ever seen to this day...

1:30 am to 2:00 am: Rocky and Bullwinkle (this show had class)
2:00 am to 2:30 am: The Young Ones (starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson)
2:30 am to 3:00 am: Bottom (also starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson)
3:00 am to 3:30 am: Speed Racer (oh man, this song was so catchy!!!)
3:30 am to 4:30 am: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (with Captain Lou Albano!)
4:30 am to 5:00 am: Muppet Babies (shit's tight yo...)

Shhhh be quiet...Toshiro is sleeping.

Then I'd go to school and sleep with my eyes open in class. I heard of that technique in a late night movie once where Toshiro Mifune and Charles Bronson were walking through a desert. Mifune said he can sleep while he walks...so I figured if he can do it while he walks, it shouldn't be too hard for me to sleep while faking to pay attention in class.

When I was sixteen years old, the first job I got was an 11pm to 7am shift at my local greasy shitty Tim Whoretons donut shop. I liked that shift because I was the only one in the store and I could do my duties myself and my way without any other people or "managers" around.

Slowly I started to notice that the world was full of night people and they all seemed to hang out in bars, drink, and have fun. Staying out late and getting into zany adventures around town with other "night people" is a nice break from quietly absorbing data from time to time.

Hey, it's like Neil on the Young Ones once said...

"Listen, man. Sleep gives you cancer. Everyone knows that." -Neil (Young Ones - Oil...(listen here))

Why Would Night People Do This?

I dunno, maybe it's like that movie Lawnmower Man and we're just trying to absorb as much data as possible into our brains with books, tv, radio, and internet and become really smart or something. Or maybe there's something more to it than that.

I mean life is pretty short, why would you want to waste time sleeping? It seems like a bit of a waste, no? That guy from the film Roadhouse put it best when he said,

"I got plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead..." -Guy from Roadhouse (hear it: here)

Patrick Swayze's bouncing mentor from Roadhouse is dead on with that statement. You will have more than enough time to do sleeping when you are dead in the cold ground, so what's the big rush to do sleeping while you are alive?

End

Grady...

Dogs. Are they in Revo, Evo, or Devo?

I've been looking into a rather odd subject over the last 12 years or so. I've been carefully looking into the possibilities of dogs achieving total evolution and cognitive skills on par with humans. Doggie-volution, you'd call it...I guess.

I became interested in this field of study in the year 2000, after coming across a song called Where are Your Dogs? Show us Your Ugly on the internet. Well, maybe it is not exactly a "song" but more like an audio story tune, or an audio story dirge...or something.

It's an audio story tune about this dog who escapes from a plastic surgery test lab on Christmas Day (and is thus referred to as The Santa Dog). While he was in the lab, the Santa Dog got injected with human growth hormone and soon after his escape he began walking around town on his hind legs...and the "ugly humans start staying home in record numbers" in fear of the Santa Dog.

This whole concept of dogs evolving was something I found really interesting, and after being introduced to the concept, I naturally began a thorough investigation soon afterward.

From Wolves to Dogs: The Birth of the Dog

Dogs back in the day...used to be feral, vicious, ravaging beasts who traveled in packs who killed and ate all kinds of birds and deers. No one called them "doggies" back then, they were called "wolves" and everyone was dirt scared of them. You had to be scared of wolves because a pack of wolves would fuck you up back then.

It is theorized that humans thousands of years ago, in different spots of the globe, came upon wolf packs where the all the old wolves were dead and the only survivors were wolf cubs who could not fend for themselves. Humans adopted these wolf cubs and raised them and the wolves grew up to consider humans as friends and not food. Soon the wolves bred more baby wolves and the humans kept the friendliest ones in the human tribe and kicked out the ones who were too violent and feral. Basically, thanks to human influence, only the friendliest and least violent wolves got to breed and pass on their genes. Scientists call this phenomenon artificial selection.

After humans and doggies became fast and bestest friends, humans began to breed doggies more methodically. They got the dogs with the maddest skills (like hunting, smelling, running, seeing, etc.) and mated them with other dogs who displayed the maddest of skills in hopes that the puppies would be born with even madder skills. Often the puppies were indeed born with the sought after mad skills (as such).

Now we have huntin' dogs, seein' eye dogs, smellin' dogs (bloodhounds), racing dogs (greyhounds), and all kinds of skilled dogs. We even have funky dogs and nasty dogs and Dogs...woooooo!

These bad boys were being selectively pushed by humans to get better and better and in only about 100 years of breeding (1750-1850) dogs were gaining skills at alarmingly bad ass rates. In fact, with human help dogs were evolving super fast. You might go as far to say that dogs were not going through evolution...but revolution. 

The Decline of the Dog in the Victorian Era

The British Empire's Victorian Era and its legacy was notoriously bad. The English Royal Family applied all kinds of silly and odd rules to speech, writing, diction, fashion, manner, behavior, and everything else you could possibly think of. For example the measuring system they created (the imperial system) measured a unit of length known as a "rod" in regard to "the length of the left feet of 16 men lined up heel to toe as they emerged from church." It's almost as if the dumbest people in society were running it.

The field of dog breeding had the same silly and odd rules applied to it in the Victoria Era. Dogs stopped being bred in hopes of getting puppies with mad-ass skills, but instead dogs started to be bred in hopes of getting a dog who's teeth were 0.01 "rods" apart, or who's eyes looked really funny, or in hopes of getting a dog who's hair looked retarded. Basically, they bred dogs for novelty and social status reasons. It was really in style to have a dog with little beady eyes who's legs didn't work...it meant you were richer than your friends.

Another huge factor that helped the decline of the dog in the Victorian Era was the notion of "pure breeding" which was big in all of Europe back then. It's not a secret that Royal Families in Europe engaged in incest and brothers, sister, mothers, and fathers all mated with each other (I'm talking about humans now, not dogs by the way). Incest in the British Royal Family is the reason they all have fucked up teeth and are morons.

Charles: a Pure Bred creature.

The current Queen Elizabeth and her husband (Phil) are both descended from Queen Victoria. They have the same blood (source). It is said Royals have to inbreed because their blood is pure and better than commoner's blood but let's be sane for a moment...inbreeding makes fucked up kids.

Take Liz's son Prince Charles for example, that's what "pure breeding" does to offsprings...it makes them look awful and have the intelligence of a peanut.

Pure Breeding when applied to dogs was not a good idea (just like it wasn't a good idea for humans). The Victorian Era bred dogs with their sisters, brothers, mothers, and fathers in order to keep their genetic features "pure" and fashionable and in accordance with the silly rules they invented for dog breeding. Pure bred dogs are dumber, and far less healthy (they have all sorts of genetic problems which lead to health problems and shorter lives) than dogs who were bred for mad skills.

British and other Euro-Trash Royalty stopped the Doggie-volution (which I may remind you was no longer an evolution but a revolution) and turned it backwards. You might even say that the Euro-Royals selectively de-evolved our canines.

Oh shit. Wait a sec, that would mean we have a concrete example that devolution actually is possible and is not just a theory! AHHHHHHH! BOOGIE BOY WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG! IT'S TRUE GENERAL DAD! WE REALLY ARE ALL DEVO!!!! IT'S POSSIBLE FOR EVERYONE TO D-EVOLVE!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!

OH NOOOOOOO! WE ARE ALL DEVO!!!!!

Poor Doggies...What did we do to em' ?

To sum it up so far, humans put dogs into selective Revo, and then as quickly as we did we snapped them back and put them into selective Devo...and all these poor little puppy wuppies ever really wanted was just to naturally Evo.

100% De-Evolution Completed...

Poor Doggies, now that the Doggie-Volution is over, they have been reduced to pulling our sleds or being fashion accessories for skinny blonde bimbos.

The purse dog (as they are known) is a dog who is 100% de-evolved thanks to selective human breeding. It's sad, it really is. I hate seeing purse dogs, it's so stupid and it really represents the hallmark example of how humans have fucked up our doggie pals.

Dogs had no choice to team up with us. Humans are mean creatures, we would have just killed all the wolves if none of them agreed to befriend us. I wonder, on a hypothetical alternate time line, one which humans didn't survive the ice age and died out...how wolves/dogs would have faired. If humans didn't make it out of the ice age, but if every other animal did...I bet things would have been different for wolves/dogs.

Wolves would have continued hunting, foraging, and ravaging in their ecosystem for aeons and would eventually have evolved naturally with no human aid. They would have lived proud lives as warrior dogs, tailor dogs, doctor dogs, and other noble lives.

My Bias

At this point in the article, I must admit that I have a personal bias in favor or doggies. When I was a young boy, my best friend was a dog named Cubby. Me and him was tight, he was like my little brother, I even nicknamed him "Little Brutha." Me and him used to be together all the time, running all around town pulling all sorts of hoodrat stuff. Me and him played ball together and all those things. I grew up with that dog (I had him from the age of 5 to 19), he was a good dog.

So when I look at what humans are doing to our dog pals, I take it seriously because my best pal as a child unit was a dog.

What if Dogs Manage to Evolve Despite Our Efforts to Stop Them?

What if dogs are just one or two positive random mutations away from hitting a massive evolutionary growth spurt? Walking on their hinds legs, opposable thumbs, vocal chords for speech, brain development. What if dogs who display and excel in those traits manage to breed with each other for a hundred years or so? Wouldn't they gradually keep building on those mad skill sets?

Say by the year 2400, despite human efforts to make them our sled pullers, sheep herders, and purses...doggies still manage to level up a few evolutionary echelons. Would they still be our friends?

Would the dogs look at what we are doing the planet and approve of it? Would they approve of us doing everything in our power to pollute and ruin up our home? Would evolved dogs band together in tribes and launch a rebellion against humans? I dunno, but that would make a really good movie though (anyone readin' this can steal my idea if they want, I don't care).

Should we be living in fear of the inevitable doggie-volution, and their righteous and justified rebellion against human-kind? Should we ugly humans lock ourselves in our homes in record numbers? Is Santa Dog really out there waiting.....biding his/her time....for the Doggie Revolution?

......?

(This dog is walking on its hind legs because she was born without her other two...so, it's not like they can't already figure out how to walk on their hind legs. Maybe it is just a  fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves. Will dogs have a presence in the future? More importantly will these highly evolved Santa Dogs have presents in the future? I dunno.)