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Saturday, February 18, 2012

Meteors, Whitney Houston, and Schmucks

Because I got my vehicle stuck in the mud Friday and had to call a tow truck and pay an exorbitant ransom for the towing, I thought I'd write Monday's blog on Saturday, just in case that meteor the size of the runaway stupidity of Texas' judicial system strikes the Earth before I have a chance to post Monday's blog.


In case you missed it, Whitney Houston is dead.  I would normally not mock someone's demise, but I feel the media has made Ms. Houston's death mockworthy.  I will admit that she had a decent voice at one time (and horribly banal songs with pedestrian lyrics and cringe-worthy high-pitched vocal gymnastic gloating), but the media has turned her into a hero.  She was not a hero in any sense of the word.  Heroes go into flaming buildings to rescue helpless quadriplegics and/or children (and not pets of any kind) at great risk to their own lives, or they throw themselves on top of grenades to save their platoons.  Heroes aren't people who can hit ridiculously high notes.  Heroes aren't people who donate to charities for tax write-offs.  Heroes are not people who invent iPhones and make billions of dollars.  Heroes are not people who feed their children properly and raise them right; those people are called parents.  A hero is not a man who survives for eight days wedged in a crevice in a mountain and cuts his own leg off to do so; that person is called a survivor, or a victim of his own desire to experience an adrenaline rush.  The Crocodile Hunter wasn't a hero because he got killed by a stingray; he was a victim of his own adrenaline addiction (as well as the sting of the stingray that stung him in his chest).


We use the word hero too much because we all want to be heroes.  Alas, we cannot -- nor should we -- all be heroes.  And we should not degrade the word to mean anyone who accomplishes anything or succeeds in any venture.  Heroes should be rare.  They're the way we tell the differences among good people, okay people, and total schmucks.


By the way, when that meteor the size of the stupidity of Texas' justice system hits, I'm going to be cowering under a toilet with my knees between my legs and trying to stuff my head up my backside while screaming louder than one of Whitney Houston's terrible songs.  I don't want to be a hero.  I want to be a schmuck.


We all have to have goals.

3 comments:

  1. This we mostly agree on. I think her voice was amazing. Her rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" set the bar for all others to try and reach (unlike Steven Tyler's horrendous performance). That said, you're right. No hero. A talented singer who threw hercareer and life away on drugs!!
    I strive to be good people but, I end up in the 2 lower categories more often than I'd like to admit.

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  2. She had a great voice at one time, but crack is, indeed, whack, Whitney. I have to cut Steven Tyler some slack on "The Star-Spangled Banner," (although I am in no way a fan of Steven Tyler), because the National Anthem is a horrendous song jerked out of a horrible poem by a terrible poet, Francis Scott Key. Most singers detest the idea of even TRYING to sing the National Anthem, because it's so awkward to sing. We should have chosen "This Land Is Your Land" or "God Bless America" or "America, the Beautiful," before the National Anthem Francis Scott Key stuck us with.

    On your striving to be good people ... relax. If you don't harm people, steal, or have a large collection of Whitney Houston music, you're probably good people.

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  3. P.S., My meteor prediction seems to have turned out to be more timely than I actually believed. Asteroid 2011 AG5, scientists say, could possibly hit the Earth in February, 2040. Don't kill yourselves, Nebulous Earthlings -- not yet, anyway -- because it's WAY too early and the thing is only 450 feet long. Also, scientists say the orbit's projected path could change drastically well before 2040.

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