Useful Idiots.

My handy dandy Blogging for Dummies book (which has been oh so helpful thus far, as I'm sure both of you who will ever read this will attest) says that I can create the "implication of community" (my wording) by linking to other blogs I find interesting.

Unfortunately, the book doesn't ship with a suitable pair of cajones of a size sufficient to empower me to do so.You see, I've never compared myself against those who would arguably fall within my "realm of capability", but rather those just outside and above it. I toyed for a moment or three about posting the most random collection of blogs I could find, but then I remembered what the book said:

Your future identity is inevitably and forever defined by, if not constrained, by the information posted on the Internet. Controlling the actions of others, in that regard, is nearly impossible and a felony in most states. As such it becomes doubly important to assume that every future lover, future employer, the private investigator your (soon to be) ex-spouse hires, and technically saavy members of the law enforcement community will read everything you post, with great interest and attention to detail and implication.

You're right, that was in fact my interpretation (again) of what the book actually said, and going along with it's earlier advice, I decided to "own the information", and "make it my own" while I "put my own spin on it"............................. Ahem. Sorry. Got distracted a moment. As I was saying, any future lover I own will no doubt appreciate any information on the spin I might happen to put.

Where was I? Oh yeah. My growing offense at the term 'Dummies'. How dare they! Just because I'm incapable of speech DOES NOT MEAN I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING and I resent any implication to the contrary! I sure as hell don't need any condescending know-it-all publisher to put out a series of books on every topic they can find an author to write on (and then some), with such an offensive titling scheme as to suggest otherwise!

If you're gonna do the series thing, why not Blogging for the Soul and piggy-back one empire onto another? I do agree, however, that Blogging for Dummies sounds a whole lot more friendly and impulse-buy-ready than Blogging for the Mute, so maybe they didn't mean "dumb" in the medical sense, but then again, I'm not really "dumb" in the medical sense either.

Oh, you say, it's only the English who refer to the mute among us as dumb. It's the Germans from which sprang the modern assumption of "dumb" to mean stupid, unintellectual, and pointless. Oh. Well that makes sense. So what word do the English use to describe someone or something with those characteristics?

"Idiot" comes to mind… but before you say "takes one to know one", I managed to look it up on Wiktionary where, to my amusement, I find that as far as the Greeks were concerned, etymologically speaking (words, not bugs), we are all idiots:

Idiot… "a private citizen", "individual", also "one who has no professional knowledge, layman" and "unpractised, unskilled"…

So what word did/do (didgeridoo?) the Greeks ascribe the meaning that we in the modern era know as "idiot"? Please let me know if you find out.

Wiktionary was no help, and all the twenty seconds of effort I expended with Google delivered were some links to an American rock band, popular with the kids, I hear (and NBC programming executives). They look cool, sure. Suits and eye makeup… almost (but not quite) distract from the music they make—piss-poor excuses for punk, sung with British accents. Lyrics about tired, populist political notions relating mostly to the lack of leadership, and apparently, honesty and intellect, of an unamed American President (as if the qualifiers narrow the field with any significance, despite the disqualification of JFK in a worldwide effort to assuage the phantasmagoria of the worlds great activists and trouble-makers of yesteryear.

These same yahoos (the activists, not the band), having been recently granted membership into the most powerful lobbying organization known to man. Famous for hotel and rental car discounts intended to simply annoy the young, and ensuring that every working person, regardless of race, creed, or color is fully and completely exploited to ensure the flow of social security dollars continues, at least until the last boomer kicks it during an episode enhanced with Medicare-provided Viagra.

Their fight (the band, not the yahoos), is with neither the mute nor the mildly mentally deficient (ahem) but, ironically with the very same establishment hell-bent on pressing any bit of spittle that might erupt from their mouths onto petroleum-derived discs to be distributed via innefficient gasoline combustion-engines of one kind or another, to communities rich and poor throughout the world (well, mostly rich -- the poor are too busy responding to RIAA lawsuits and finding something to watch on their DirectTV entitlements).

Discs (compact, not satellite), designed and intended for one thing and one thing only -- the promotion of the massive-scale irrational consumption of the particular brand of capitalism defined by said multi-national monopolistic corporation. The suits just flick that same youthful American band enough coin to convince them anybody would care what they carry on about, and keep on hauling in the loot.

We are a nation of idiots (pardon my Greek). American Idiot, indeed.

Of course I applaud the publishers of Blogging for Dummies for their nerve, or chutzpa as my VW-owning Jewish friends would say. The publishers chose to demean and attack the one group who can not speak out.

Seriously, though, the other options really are quite interesting. Early in the last century, they might have considered Blogging for the Dull, Blogging for the Borderline, or Blogging for the Feebleminded.

Sometime later, based on a more legitimate basis for conclusion (so I'm told), we might have seen Blogging for the Defective alongside Blogging for the Dull, and Blogging for the Borderline, both back for a return engagement.

Then they cut the crap, and as late as the mid-90's, we loved and hated Bloggin for Morons, Blogging for Imbeciles (I like that one!), and at last, Blogging for Idiots.

But those days are over. At least that's what my Psychology for Dummies book says. The appropriate terminology is to speak in terms of degree of mental retardation, rather than deficiency (thank God… sanity at last). By use of an assessment of a person's adaptive functioning, the publishers could have gone with Blogging for the Mildly Retarded, Blogging for those with Moderate Retardation, Blogging for the Severe 'Tard (taking a more sensitive approach), or my favorite, Blogging for the Profound Retard.

Actually, I rather enjoyed a similar turn of phrase I heard on The T.V., that would lend itself rather well to this discussion, at least in sentiment if not basis—Blogging for the Chromosonal Retard.

That reminds me, I have to call my sister.