Complete and Utter Nonsense

The Most Stupid Motivational Story Ever Told

It was the archetypical pep rally, repeated no doubt since the days of Caesar and his legions, and probably countless times before. But at this time, this moment, it was being repeated in schools across the continent. And boy, was everybody pepped up! You know the routine. We can do it! We just need the will, the motive, the desire. Just repeat the mantra of success and surrender to the enthusiasm of the crowd. Nothing can stop you if you really want it. And the reward was respect, prestige, and the right to shout from the roof tops: we’re number 1 !!!

So with mounting enthusiasm they all listened, and en masse marched off to earn their place in the sun. Unfortunately, what most of them earned was an unmarked place under the ground. It was August, 1914, the beginning of World War I, and the month of the can do attitude. Of course, a collision with reality can derail even the highest convictions. But in the meantime, we got motivation!!

Now inspirational platitudes can be sometimes be a good thing, as we need a little delusion now and then as we go down with the ship. But inspiration, if held by the gossamer thread of an unrealistic perception of the world, is a lemmings ideal. Unfortunately, in spite of our intellectual and cultural sophistication. We still follow the crowd, surrender to the metaphors of God and country, and do as we are told. But in the meantime, as all of the pundits and self-help guru’s keep telling us, the question’s not the thing, for all we truly need is motivation.

MEZMER’S MODEST PROPOSALS FOR THE 21^st CENTURY

First, kill all the lawyers. Nuff said

Second, lobotomize all the psychologists. Easy enough to do, just take away all of their certificates. You see, psychologists, like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, don’t have a brain until they get a diploma. So take them away, and soon they will fade away in the distance, like that annoying mother in law you never had. Of course, if this proves impractical, then issue Ph.D.’s in psychology to everyone who passes a driver’s ed course or graduates from high school. This should represent just enough ‘life experience’ to equip everyone to administer to others in need. Besides, if John Gray (Men are from Mars, etc.) can buy his Ph.D. from a diploma mill and if Dr. Laura Schlesinger can preach platitudes with a doctorate in physiology, then you and I can certainly also dispense sage advice.

Third, neuter all the politicians. The Chinese did it to all those who served on the Emperor’s retinue, and the Chinese government lasted millenia. A side benefit of this is that politicians will have less aggressive impulses, won’t leave their DNA everywhere, and will have great singing voices.

Then hire Aunt Madge or Uncle Charlie. There is always some person you know who has more wits and wisdom about him or her than anybody you will ever know. This is your proverbial great aunt or uncle who knew the right cold remedies, the right fishing holes, and the right way to tie your shoe. We need wise old relatives in the right places, and its easy to find them. They are the one’s who make great apple pies, coach little league, and with impressive omniscience always remember your birthday and are quick with the I told you so. So hire them, put them in control of everything. Then sit back, and soon we will see the thousands of Pottervilles in America slowly morph back to the Bedford Falls of our imagination. Indeed, it would be a wonderful life!

VIRTUALLY REALITY

We are more like TV sets than we know. So what does a TV set know but what it receives, which to us is but a bunch of static. We of course do one better than TV sets, since we can get incoming signals from 5 information channels (we call them senses). Evolution has pre-wired our brains like some organic cable box to take it all in, interpret it, and then proceed to bore us all day with the soap opera that constitutes our lives. So, what is reality? It’s all in your head, and indeed, can only be in your head. For in your head is all there is.

And that’s metaphysics.

Now that we know what reality is, how do we improve upon it? Naturally, you can improve upon the story, get better actors, and have intriguing and gritty plots that have happy endings every time. As technology improves, physicists see no end to its exponential capability to control reality. The best way to do that it not by rearranging reality, cause reality is but an illusion anyway. The secret comes by copying it. All civilization is geared to making better copies or emulations of the world. Why? Because we can control it, stupid. After all, isn’t it a far better than having to receive 54 boring TV channels to have the ability to program those channels yourself with weird, tasteless programs of your very own devise. Ah heaven, or maybe the real heaven.

Stay tuned.
To illustrate this truth, I have created a chronology for the advance of baseball over the millennia, as if baseball was the only thing worth thinking about.
1950 Play ball in sandlot
1960 Watch TV baseball
1985 Nintendo baseball
2001 Virtual reality baseball with headset and force feedback
2112 Virtual Reality room (i.e. a holodeck, like in Star Trek)
200 Billion Years AD Play ball in sandlot that perfectly simulates sandlot, or the ultimate computer, God, may be thinking about going to the ball game, and He just happens be in the grandstands, munching a hot dog, and watching you try not to strike out in life.

MEZMER’S DSM V

SYMPTOM GUIDE

In times past, our problems were much simpler than today. That’s because then we had only a few basic emotions like fear, love, and hunger to worry about. But although our emotions haven’t changed, our delusions certainly have, and we need more imaginary mental problems than ever before to satisfy our hypchondriacal urge to have the trendiest illness. So bring in the metaphors!! As our dynamic American culture has increased our productivity in this century by leaps and bounds, American psychology has been equally as productive in coining new mental diseases. Nonetheless, in this supercharged global village, America needs to keep up its lead in meaningless soporific verbiage that can be used to create more and more efficient alibis.

Thus, as a public service, I have created Dr. Mezmer’s Dimwitted Syndrome Manual (Version 5). Since I am sure the reader would rather have needles stuck in his eyes that read my 450 page original, I have handily reduced the manual to a simple tabular form that contains all the permutations of every mental disease, past and future, that you can possibly contract.

The benefits of such a useful tool should be immediately obvious. Instead of saying little Johnny is a naughty boy for staying up to late, why not say that Johnny has a raging codependent disorder that is symptomatic of an underlying explosive extemporaneous psychosis. Impressive sounding, not? The DSM table should be used whenever you need an excuse for your own stupidity that you need to shift to some hidden defect, disease agent, or evil spirit. I would heartily recommend you use the DSM table when your are late for work, forget your anniversary, or when you are defendant in court.

Severity	Type	Disease
Myopic	Limbic	Syndrome
Raging	Codependent	Disorder
Regressive	Anxiety	Disease
Intrinsic	Neural	Personality
Hyperactive	Depressive	Dysfunction
Immersive	Involutional	Reaction
Passive	Catatonic	Neurosis
Global	Obsessive	Complex
Polarized	Conversion	Hysteria
Explosive	Extemporaneous	Psychosis

Patton’s rude solution to a final solution

It was 1944, and times were tough all over. These were hard times for the workers of the Himmler Machine Works factory. There was negative energy everywhere. Production was down for Tiger tank tops, the Panzerfunwagen SUV, and the V-2 vacuum cleaner engine. The Mr. and Messrs. Schmidts of the Greater Reich were simply not buying, and there was a real fear that these products would simply bomb out, or just get bombed. In spite of doubling the moldy crust allowance for their immigrant guest workers, and the placement of motivational slogans like ‘Work will make you free’ on the barbed wire fences and guard towers, worker productivity continued to fall, with ominous results for product quality (see below for the sad history of the Panzerfunwagen SUV).

Something had to be done to get the workers concentrated at their campus. Thus there was great anticipation when motivational consultants Marv Slugman and Micky Czikenfri arrived to get the workers into the flow again. As leaders of the Positivity School of psychology for the Jung at heart, Marv and Mickey went to work like busy beavers, and interviewed all the workers, who candidly revealed under the watchful eye of their guards that their malaise was due to not enough positivity in their work. They were simply not looking at the bright side of things, such as the evident promotional opportunities due to weekly worker turnover, the free room, board, and showers, and the fact that they were helping their company to achieve world market domination. Marv and Mickey helped the factory commandant set up better employee selection procedures to choose workers with high positive attitudes as they arrived at the train station, and then got the rest in the mood with positive affirmations, positive thinking, group whistling of Disney tunes, and delusional training sessions.

Sadly, it was too late for the Himmler machine works, as foreign competitors made a hostile take over. As the American auditing firm of Patton, Eisenhower and Zhukov inspected the new properties, they summarily lined all the higher and lower management they could find, and had them summarily fired by a squad rounded up for that very purpose.

And as for Marv and Mickey, they remained positive about the experience, and applied their wisdom in the American workplace, which soon became the happiest and most productive in the world.

The End