MikeyOpp.com

I am not a worrywart. I just read a lot of information concerning causal relationships, also known as the theory behind what causes which effects. So when I know a certain fact about how statistically likely a certain outcome is supposed to happen, I can’t help but arm myself with that knowledge, so that I am best prepared for the forthcoming scenario. So when I decide not to drive drunk, because many people who do so, nowadays, end up hurting someone else, or getting arrested, people view my decision as a smart one, pragmatic, if you will. And when I decide not to sleep with a random girl I just met, without using protection, most people also agree that this makes sense, it is again considered pragmatic. But when I refuse to let people film me when I’m drunk, because the footage may end up on “You Tube” or when I fear sleeping with my ceiling fan on, because it may fall and kill me, I’m told that I’m being a worrywart.

One of my favorite quotes is “Don’t rock the boat if you don’t know how to swim.” I’m not sure where this quote came from, but it certainly makes sense to me. Rocking the boat, when you can’t swim, is a bad idea, because if the boat tips over, and you can’t swim, you will drown. Whenever I don’t want to partake in something that other people think is fun, but I see as dangerous, I consider this to be applying the ‘boat rocking theorem’ to life. I have never tried heroin, not because I don’t think it would be fun – heck, I’m sure it’s a blast, but I’ve never tried it because after my experience with cigarette addiction, I don’t think I can swim in the addictive paradise that is heroin abuse.

As a matter of fact, I think that only drama queens, attention starved morons, and complete assholes are the types who regularly rock boats, even if they can swim. If you aren’t on the boat yet with this concept (pun intended) then here’s a fine hypothetical example: Let’s say that you have the power to make your own nation’s military ‘occupy’ a foreign nation, thereby forcing thousands of people to risk their lives for your cause. Now imagine if you made this decision, only the last time your nation was locked up in a ‘foreign entanglement,’ and you had a chance to fight in it, you avoided said risk by using your birthright legacy to join the Alabama National Guard, and once there, you used the same legacy privileges to sleep in, and drink and abuse drugs during your tenure. Well, if you can justify such dramatic hypocrisy, then I think that you probably see no problem with rocking a boat – even if many of the people on that boat do not know how to swim. If that joke went over your head, then the Bush Administration is doing a great job of tricking you through misdirection and properly assuming that you have the short term memory of a gold fish (Oooh, a castle! Where did that come from?). For more on misdirection, please research the famous magician, Harry Houdini, at your local library.

A lot of my friends used to give me a lot of flack for constantly worrying about the future fate of our great nation around the time that the Bush Administration first declared war on Iraq. I warned people that this war was beginning in the same manner as the Vietnam War, meaning that Congress was not declaring the war, but rather, The President was abusing his executive privilege to declare a war, an action that our constitution was originally designed to specifically thwart. Again, when my friends called me paranoid and accused me of being a worrywart, I told them that I was merely being prudent, and I told them to laugh at me in six years time, when we were stuck ankle deep in shit in Iraq.

The only way, in my opinion, that you could have believed in the premise of our ‘easy victory’ in Iraq, back in 2002, was if you were refusing to look ahead into the future by more than six months. I prefer to analogize this sort of ineptitude with bicycle riding. When you are riding a bicycle, you can either look behind you, to see who is coming up to pass you, or you can look ahead of you, to see what you need to avoid. There is a third option, when bicycling, but to me, it’s a really stupid option, and that is that you can look down at your feet, as you peddle, and by doing so, you can get an immense rush as you realize how fast you are gliding over the asphalt upon which you ride – it’s certainly a thrill, and can certainly cause you to experience the emotions of “shock and awe”, but if you look down for too long, and get caught up in all of the “shock and awe”, then you are very likely to crash into something, at a great speed, because you aren’t looking ahead far enough, into the future, to avoid the many oncoming obstacles that you are approaching.

But hey, living in the moment is fun, and probably a lot more fun then regretting the past or reveling in a self-prophesized future. So this so-called worrywart is throwing caution at the wind (okay, more lake carefully handing my caution to the wind) and re-joining the great club that is Team Hypocrite (I’m not just a member…), and I’m going to embark on a ten day voyage to the island of Japan, with nothing more than a cursory high school text book knowledge of Japan’s post World War II culture. Yup, I’m going to travel to a place in which I have no idea what sort of personal idiosyncrasies of mine are going to offend the locals, nor do I even know how to say I’m sorry if do realize that I have brought any significant Japanese cultural shame upon myself. Arigato, Mr. Roboto?

Shame is a funny thing in this regard. I remember when traveling to London for the first time that I was told it was incredibly rude to belch in public, but that to ‘break wind’ (fart) was a-okay. Here in the US, while both are considered rude, stinking up a room by farting is usually considered far ruder than belching into a napkin. My point is that shame is not real, it’s a socially constructed device that keeps us within a relative moral code designed to uphold the infrastructure of our culture and or society. For example, here in America, apparently, one shouldn’t feel ashamed for sitting on their couch in order to watch “National Bingo Night”, live, on ABC each week. Personally, if I ever purposely tune into any nationally televised program portraying people playing bingo, I will feel very ashamed, almost as ashamed as if I ever paid money to text message FOX in order to vote on who my next idol should be (unless you can vote for Kurt Cobain).

Getting back to my tirade on the war in Iraq, I find it interesting that most of the people who were for the war in 2002, but no longer work for the current administration, are ashamed of themselves, and openly saying so on television these days, whereas those who still remain in power show not even the slightest blush, when asked about the debacle that is our current catch-22. I guess shame can be a healthy emotion.

Just like “The Clash,” no one can seem to figure out; “Should [we] stay or should [we] go?” But my solution is simple, and that’s to treat Iraq like you would treat someone the morning after a regrettable one-night stand. To extricate ourselves from Iraq with the least amount of commotion, all we need to do is get up really early one morning, pack up all of our military bases, get all of our soldiers dressed, and then tip toe to the government building in Baghdad, leaving a hand written note that thanks them for a great five and a half years, along with a fake phone number, which is only one digit off from the real one, in case they ever want to ‘hang out’ again in the future (this is in case they ever confront us, so that we can play the “I-was-stupid-and-tired-and-messed-up-the-digit-in-my-own-phone-number” card). Then we just have to remember to look busy anytime we ever see one of their dignitaries at a party (read: UN assembly, world conferences, what have you), and we can all laugh about this over drinks in Vietnam in about ten years…right? And I truly believe that were America to play the ‘I was stupid card,’ given our current president and current situation, it would actually be the smartest example of “playing dumb” since Pearl Harbor in 1941 or even the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915.

Speaking of dumb, did I mention that my sarcastic and rebellious mind is packing up three days worth of clothes and hopping on a plane to Japan in T-minus four days? Suffice it to say that I’m very excited, a little nervous, but mostly in a complete state of ‘pissing my own pants shock.’ I feel a little awkward, to be honest, about visiting a country that we once nuked, twice, killing over 200,000 civilians in less than two minutes. I feel like Charles Manson’s non-existent child, headed over to hang out with Sharon Tate’s parents, or like a German celebrating Passover in Auschwitz with the PLO. Even though I know that very few people in Japan are openly bitter about what America did to end World War II in the quickest manner possible, I still feel a bit of ‘national guilt’ over the whole thing. This is why I’m not into repeating the Vietnam War in Iraq.

So here I am, trying to relate to people that I’m not a worry wart, but after re reading most of this column, I’m pretty sure that all I think I’ve done is further paint myself with whatever color represents the sensation that is worrying (I’d like to think that it’s whatever color makes people feel the most dizzy, because that is the most common side effect of chronic paranoia; dizziness). I further realize that most people whom I accuse of ‘not paying attention to the future’ are actually simply paying attention to the present, and thereby enjoying their own life, whereas I’m stuck in the future, researching statistical permutations and the odds of certain events occurring, in a constant effort to ‘stay ahead of the pack.’

But lately, I’ve begun to realize that there is no finish line that I can get to, before the rest of the pack, and to make matters even worse, I don’t think that it’s even possible to ‘stay ahead of the pack’ at all, because I am a part of the pack, as each and everyone else on this planet is—I’m merely looking at a different focal point than most of the pack is. And what this means is that like it or not, I’m going along for the same ride as the rest of us are, and I am destined for the same destiny, our collective destiny, a destiny that may or may not include unilateral catastrophes like global warming, nuclear war, financial crisis followed by starvation and homelessness, or a mutinous cow rebellion – it’s a crap shoot.

Wow, the whole point of this column was going to be about explaining how ironic it is that I am addicted to sleeping with a fan on, due to the comforting sound it makes, yet how I fear falling asleep nowadays, in my new apartment, because the fan is built into the ceiling, and I just don’t trust that it’s not going to randomly unscrew itself in the middle of the night and whirl right into my head at some intense speed, not only killing me, but butchering my face in the process so that they can’t hold an open casket funeral for me.

Instead, I’ve written scathing remarks about past and present War in Iraq supporters (many of whom are in my close circle of friends), my personal guilt over the nuking of Japan, and my hatred of most network television programming in our modern era. I wish I could stay more focused these days, and write about other topics, like the actual topics on my list of what to tackle this week, which included subjects like “trophy wives” (how do I win one?), the amount of personal shame I experienced when I discovered that I had become emotionally attached to fictional characters on the FOX series “24” this season (Poor Miles!), and a discussion of how to properly say goodbye on the telephone (one goodbye each, then hang up, let’s put an end to awkward silence, people…).

But hey, unless you’re a lot like me, you’re probably not worried about any of these topics, and you’re probably excited for this column to be over. But for those of you who are more like me, don’t sweat it, I’m only going to Japan for about two weeks – so until I’m back, if you sleep with a fan on, just double check the bolts in the ceiling, and you’ll probably be alright. Unless, of course, the wood that the bolts are anchored into wasn’t properly selected by the hung over construction foreman who built your house or apartment building, and then it’s likely to randomly rot, allowing the bolts to fall out of place, and then you’re a dead duck, sleeping underneath a ticking time bomb disguised as a mere ceiling fan…but only a worrywart would think about something like that!