Category: anti-humor

“That’s My Name, Don’t Wear it Out!” 

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“That’s my name, don’t wear it out!” was a sassy, cheeky way to respond to someone calling us out in the 1970s. Generations who weren’t on planet earth when this line was the thing can’t believe we were into it. When I put it in context and informed them that this was our playful way of saying that we did not fear confrontation. I told them it was the equivalent of, ‘Hey, I heard you the first time,’ when someone confrontationally called our name out a second time. When I told them that line could engender a “Woh!” from onlookers, they couldn’t understand it. “It’s not funny, it doesn’t sound effective, and are you sure this wasn’t just a you thing?” ‘No, it was all over the movies, the TV shows, and the commercials,’ I informed them. ‘We really thought we were onto something with this line.’ When I added that this line suggested to all parties concerned that we weren’t just ‘cool,’ in the face of confrontation, we were cooler than cool, they were ready to dismiss that entire time period as desperate, desperately confused, or sus.

When this idiomatic expression, or saying, first hit the streets, I was in grade school, and I either didn’t have the level of creativity or the intellectual heft necessarily to pull it off. It was too situational for me or something. I remember trying to use it, but it always came off as awkward. I didn’t have older brothers or neighborhood kids to teach and torture me into perfecting the nuances required to being cool. I was on my own, and I put far too much effort into it, I was always late to the party, and I didn’t know what to do once I got there. 

Since I didn’t have anyone to teach me, when I’d hear the cool kids around me say the same thing more than once, I would ask them where they got it. How uncool is that? 

“It’s just something I say,” the cool kids responded, and I’d drop it after that. I didn’t know how to be cool, but I knew the pratfalls to avoid to appearing too uncool, and I knew it was so uncool to try to figure out how or why something is cool. Cool is what it is, as they say. I knew trying to define the indefinable was not only difficult, it was self-defeating, but I’d obsess over trying to figure it out. As usual, with someone trying to figure out the nebulous and ever-changing, I overestimated my peers. I was always late to the party, as I wrote, but when I found out that the cool kids learned their favorite sayings from TV, movies, and music lyrics I couldn’t help but find that disappointing. I thought the difference between cool kids and me was their ability to organically create sayings. I wanted to be them, so I copied them, and I thought more of them. Learning that their sources were as simple as mine made it feel like all that I wasted a lot of time idolizing them. Then, when I saw one of their favorite sayings appear in a wiener commercial, it shattered my world for a while. It also left me in a weird place, because I impulsively thought less of them, but I also realized that it said something about me too, because they were my personal inspiration for what it meant to be cool?

Another huge inspiration for my definition was Danny Zuko, but when I heard him say, “That’s my name, don’t wear it out!” I was so late to the party that I didn’t know that all of the cool kids got it from this movie, because they saw Grease long before I did. I was also surprised to hear Danny Zuko say it, because I didn’t think he needed it. I thought he was so cool, so charismatic, and so everything that I wanted to be that I couldn’t believe he was saying what we were all saying to try to appear cool. It was the first time in my life that I thought someone was already so cool that they didn’t need to do anything to achieve that lofty title. I thought he was the personification of cool, and he had that it quality that the rest of us would never know. I wasn’t sure if I considered his effort redundant or overkill, but it tainted the character in a manner I couldn’t quite grasp. 

I was an eight-year-old who knew nothing about screenwriters and directors. I didn’t know that the primary job of screenwriters and directors was to manipulate us into thinking their characters were cool, and I didn’t know that casting agencies were hired to hire supporting actors for the expressed purpose of further manipulating the audience into believing that Danny Zuko was cooler than we were. I didn’t even have a firm grasp on the idea that there was an actor named John Travolta playing the role of Danny Zuko who had makeup people to enhance his skin, hair stylists to fashion his hair, and wardrobe personnel to fashion him into a cool character. I knew I wasn’t seeing 90 minutes of a person’s life captured for my enjoyment, but I didn’t know how manufactured and choreographed the image of Danny Zuko was. I just thought he was the essence of cool, and when I envisioned what it meant to be cool, Danny Zuko became my prototype. 

I’d love to say I quickly processed the difference between the definition of cool and cooler than cool as effortlessly as John Travolta, and the team behind Grease did, but I didn’t. It took me a long time to grasp it. After the writers, directors, and supporting actors manipulated my mind into believing I could form my own path to cool, I developed my personal definitions. We all did. We learned what lines to say and when to say them, but when Danny Zuko used that line we were all saying, it exposed the effort he put into it. If a Danny Zuko needed to learn the lines of the zeitgeist necessary to get in the club, In other words, then everyone did. When I later saw other screenwriters and directors pursue the cool motif for the characters of their movies, it further exposed the effort to me. Danny Zuko and The Fonz were my prototypes for cool guys, and the rest of them were frauds chasing after that characterization.

After seeing some of the effort Danny Zuko and others, put into trying to be cool, I wondered what I would think of them if they hadn’t said those lines we all copied, and what would I think of them if they refused to say those lines we all used to try to get someone, somewhere to think we were cool. We had a formula for cool provided by movies, music lyrics and wiener commercials, but what would we think of someone who strives for a place that leaves others wondering why we refuse to follow their formula? They taught us the formula for cool, but could I find a place that is cooler than cool by refusing to the follow their formula?  

The answer to that was no. No one appreciates a ‘dare to be different’ motif when it’s subtle and silent. We prefer the shocking and provocative definitions. Quiet nonconformity doesn’t sell. It doesn’t impress people to the point that they want to be our friends. It confuses them, and they rarely seek to define that confusion. They often just back away. When we want friendships, especially in our youth, we have to offer the kids around us a comfortable place they know. I struggled with all this, until I lost my conviction, and I didn’t try to find it again for years. No one who knew me then, or now, would ever say I found a “cooler than cool” place, and if you asked them if I was even cool, they’d probably laugh, “I don’t think so.” They would probably also add, “But I can tell you that I’ve never met anyone quite like him.”  

That was kind of it. They knew I was different, but they couldn’t see how those differences were in service of anything, so they didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Between ages eight and whatever age led to my personal age of enlightenment, I had no writers feeding me lines, and no directors giving me notes on how to project cool. I realized that I was on my own when it came to trying to figure this big mess out, because I wasn’t good-looking enough to play Danny Zuko, and my supporting cast was either not able or willing to play their roles in such a way that would manipulate our audience into thinking I was cool. The best course of action I found was “To be [my]self, because everyone else was taken.” I knew I’d run the risk of “impersonating my shadow” and I’d eventually become a shadow of my former self, but I already tried to be other people, I tried those masks on, and while I admit that it was a lot more fun than playing myself in this production, it never worked out the way I thought it would.  

Gomers’ Piles

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If I enter a public restroom and see you, you’re guilty of whatever happened in there until proven innocent, and the more you plead your innocence, the more guilty you look.  

The Gomer

Most of us have been insulted so often and in so many creative ways that it’s almost impossible and pointless to catalog. Nestled within those insults are a few jewels that are so colorful and intriguing that we cannot wait to use them. I’m not exactly sure why I latched onto this particular slang insult from the 90s, but when Ty said, “You’re such a Gomer!” it sounded so much like an insult I would use that if an insult can ‘fit like a glove’ I could almost feel the leather sucking on my contours.    

“Gomer?” I asked. “What is a Gomer?”  

“If you have to ask,” Ty said. “You’re a Gomer.” That reply wasn’t new to me of course, but it informed me that I was stepping into a kafkatrap in which I was The Trial’s Joseph K., accused of an infraction against cultural awareness, and any effort I put into clarifying the situation only deepened my apparent guilt and reinforced the accusation. It also created the perfect insult loop, because any questions I asked only further authenticated the insult and somehow brought the condition into being.  

Most subjects of this insult loop would recognize the kafkatrap for what it was and drop the line of questioning there, which would allow the accuser to bask in their glory. Yet, I found it so delicious that I thought I might want to test drive it on my own one day, so I wanted to fully understand its power base. “Does it date back to the 60s television show Gomer Pyle?” 

“I don’t watch TV.” It was cool back then, as it is now, to feign ignorance.  

“Well, what does it mean then?”

“I don’t know,” Ty said with impatience. “But it fits.”  

After obsessing over this, I discovered that the term began after the prophet Hosea’s wife, Gomer, acted unfaithfully, and it thus served to symbolize God’s relationship with unfaithful Israel, but I was pretty sure that didn’t form the basis of Ty’s insult. I was also sure Ty wasn’t referring to the emergency room jargon from a book called House of God by Samuel Shem that referred to them shouting, “Get Out of My Emergency Room,” to annoying patients who repetitively took beds that should’ve been reserved for more deserving patients. No, I decided, the term was derived from the TV show Gomer Pyle, a character played by Jim Nabors, as a clumsy, unsophisticated fella who was folksy and awkward.

Even though the truth was somewhat anti-climactic, as I expected a more sophisticated and nuanced answer, I still enjoyed the sound of the insult “Gomer”. I don’t know if it was the syllabic nature of the word or the enunciation, but “You’re such a Gomer!” just felt like such an airtight insult that I couldn’t wait to use it on the unsuspecting. It just seemed so me. To my memory, I never got around to it. I know it’s not too late, but I forgot to use it back when it had the flamboyant style and battlefield visibility of prominent feather plumes (AKA panache), and it’s one of the great regrets of my life.

Dads

We all enjoy hearing about the father of an extremely successful person remaining stubbornly unimpressed by their son’s success. The rest of the world cannot believe how talented this man is, but his dad, the man he probably strove to impress more than anyone else in the world is, “Meh.” It’s your child, the little fella you could hold in one hand while you changed his diaper with the other, all growed up ruling Hollywood, and you’re, “Meh.” It’s funny and sad at the same time. 

After reaching the pinnacle of success in Hollywood, Jerry Lewis decided he wanted to share the wealth with his father. Lewis came up with what he considered the perfect way of doing it. He approached members of the General Motors corporation and asked them to build his dad the finest automobile they could possibly build. When the father, Danny Levitch, was presented with this gift, he said, “What you couldn’t get me a convertible?” That’s so cynical it’s funny, right? It’s Seinfeld funny. We can’t decide if it’s so funny it’s sad, or if it’s so sad it’s funny, but it strikes us as sounding so true that it is funny … and a little sad.   

This story provides a small window into Jerry Lewis’s relationship with his dad. Due to the comedic nature of it, we might consider it a highlight, but what happened in the days in between? What happened to Jerry Lewis when he was too young to understand it all, then old enough to know that he was being raised in a loveless home? The car story provides a laugh, but what happened on those boring Thursdays and during the Holidays in that home Jerry Lewis grew up in? According to Lewis, he was never close to either of his parents.

Danny Levitch was a failed vaudeville actor who may have been jealous of all of Jerry’s success, and he may have considered the car an example of Jerry Lewis rubbing his nose in his success. Hard to know what happened in the inner sanctum of the family dynamics, but Jerry and his parents never reconciled, and Jerry was later known to be a distant father to his own kids, as all six of them had a strained relationship with him throughout his life. He even went so far as to cut them all out of his will before he died. 

I don’t know if Mr. Levitch was a “tough love” proponent, who was constantly pushing Jerry harder, because he thought praise weakens, or if he did what he did to try to keep his wildly successful son grounded, but at some point he probably should’ve closed the loop. These loops are facades we create to force our children through for their betterment. Some parents create beautiful! and wonderful! facades of too much praise, because they believe it strengthens their child’s self-confidence, their morale and resolve, and some parents do the opposite to keep their kids grounded and to prepare them for the perseverance required for the rough world that awaits.  

My dad was an opposite. Whenever we accomplished what we accomplished, he spotted the possible fly in the ointment that no one considers while in the glow of accomplishment. He often talked about how luck always plays something of a role, and the lucky should always prepare for the times when they aren’t so lucky. “It’s great advice dad, but how about we take a moment to bask?”  

Whenever we saw an individual driving a high-priced vehicle, my dad would say, “We don’t know how much he owes.” When everyone else was buttering our bottom, our dad was warning us about the other foot landing a solid blow to the keister. It was what he considered “the real” side, which just happened to be the critical, cynical side. He did this throughout our maturation and into adulthood. The difference between my dad and Mr. Levitch, and all those negative Nancies who focus far too much on the dark side of life, is that he eventually closed the loop.

“I’m so proud of you and your brother,” he said one day, almost out of the blue. If someone threw out a hypothetical scenario, beforehand, in which my dad offered me unqualified praise without conditions, I would’ve said, “First of all, it will never happen, but if it did, it probably wouldn’t mean a lot to me.” Much to my surprise, it turned out to be one of the more meaningful moments of my life. I still remember the intersection we were approaching when he said it, and it’s been fifteen years since that happened.  

Did Mr. Levitch build a facade for his son by withholding praise, love and forgiveness for the expressed purpose of making his son a hard man who is invulnerable to insults and criticism? And did he maintain that facade, even on his deathbed? We don’t know, but we know Jerry Lewis did by cutting his children out of his will. While I’ve never been on a deathbed, I have to imagine that would be a pretty good time to let bygones be bygones and let our guard down to express love, pride, and forgiveness. It’s also an excellent time to close all the loops we’ve created for their own good, and … it’s actually hilarious when we don’t. Except to those who want to hear their loved one say one kind thing to them before they go to the great beyond. I didn’t have to go through this, because my dad eventually closed that loop, but if he didn’t, I can only imagine that all of the holes in my soul would’ve coalesced into one big, hilarious black hole. 

Mary

“You don’t like Mary?” I ask. “I can understand not liking Trisha and Natalie, they’re 50% people; 50% of us like them and 50% don’t, but Mary? How can you dislike Mary?” Mary has her flaws of course, and we all become qualified professionals when it comes to spotting other people’s flaws, but with Mary, we really need to dig deep to find them. The next question we will ask ourselves, soon after we find ourselves in the depths of Mary’s caves and caverns, is why am I here again? That’s right, we started this whole expedition because there was something about Mary that exposed something we didn’t like about ourselves.  

Funny is a Funny Thing

I knew a life-of-the-party type who could just dominate a room when he was “on stage” at various get-togethers and various shindigs, but he couldn’t even make you smile one-on-one. I knew “a quiet guy” who could drop you with a perfect comeback, a great one-liner, and an incredible story. Call him out at a party, and he clams up. He said things in those group settings, but they were all self-conscious. “I get nervous,” he’d say. He basically experienced stage fright in front of seven or eight people, even when they were just family members. I met a guy who was a hilarious writer, but in person he could never quite pound a joke home. He was one of those joke tellers who was always editing, and by the time he got to the punchline, we were basically exhausted, and we laughed sympathetically. As an amateur student of psychology as it pertains to humor, I’ve never met anyone who was funny in person, on stage, and on the page.

Your Fly is Down 

As a failed student of comedy, I cannot abide by the “Your fly is down!” joke. One character in the series Stick made a funny, insightful comment about how wolves must be embarrassed to see what we’ve done to manipulate their species into yorkies, pomeranians, and shih tzus. The other character says, “Your fly is down.” This is now so common that it’s a trope in most comedic productions, and I don’t understand how it became something we consider a pointed, substantive, or even clever comeback?  

If someone asked me my least favorite joke, I probably couldn’t come up with it on the spot, but if someone else said, “What about the ‘Your fly is down’ joke?” 

“That’s it!” I’d say. It’s one of those jokes that only works in-person. In a situation comedy, written in, presumably, a writer’s room, how does this get a thumbs up from a head writer? How does the head writer not say, “We can do better than that, c’mon guys. That’s a Friends joke. Surely, we can do better than recycling a Friends joke.” If I were writing this exchange, I would have the butt of this fly joke say, “Okay thanks,” as he zips his zipper up, “but that doesn’t take away from my observation.” The ‘Fly down’ rebuttal is somehow viewed as one character putting another in their place, and it must be viewed as effective in some quarters, because so many writers write it in as dialogue. Personally, I’d like to have a word with the world to have them help me finally put this insipid “Your fly is down” joke out of its misery. 

Tictacs de un Reloj 

The ticks of the clock in Mr. Harrington’s Spanish II class were so painfully slow that I still remember looking up at that clock with clenched teeth. When the second hand descended from one to six, that clocked performed its functions as we’d expect. When it ascended from six to twelve, the most important part, it struggled. It bounced a little, as if the mechanisms behind its ascent were lacking power. Even though I had nothing better to do at the time, I thought nothing was better than anything we did in that classroom.

As we age and look back at our schooling years, most of us regret not paying more attention in school. I’m as guilty of that as anyone else, but after crossing that bridge o’ regret, I now recognize that I would be just as bored in Mr. Harrington’s class today as I was as at sixteen-years-old. I now have corporate boardroom meetings to remind me how slow a clock can tock. 

Prison guards often say that after spending years in their profession, they often begin to feel held captive as much as the prisoners. Mr. Harrington was our warder, as he appeared to loathe being in the class as much as we did. He often joked about how many hours he was away from his retirement package, and he obnoxiously calculated that over the course of two years of in-class hours. 

Now that I’m old and happy, time ticks away so quickly that the only thing that makes me a little unhappy is watching how efficient our clocks are now. Yet, if I were on my death bed watching those clicks of the clock bounce by far too quickly, and an entity appeared offering me six more months of life, I would accept it of course, until he offered me the requisite “catch” of such offerings. “The catch is you have to go back in time and attend Mr. Harrington’s class for one hour of each day you’re being offered.” I would still eventually accept his offer, because life is life, and I have to imagine I would recognize its value in that moment, but I might ask the entity to explain the glory of the unknown to me to weigh it against my personal definition of earthly hell.   

Permission! Permission

“It’s pointless to give advice to young ‘un’s,” old people often say about the young. “They don’t listen.” True, but we didn’t listen either. We heard them, but everything they said went in one ear and out the other. Before it went out the other, however, it did hit a way station. We were teenagers, we had our first job, and we were cashing our own paychecks, so of course we weren’t listening.

I’m not going to say, “I never got nothing,” (triple negative) but everything I got, before those paychecks, came with a whole lot of begging, pleading and badgering. I’m not still complaining about that but illustrating that everything “I got” came with the most evil word in the teenage lexicon: Permission. 

Those first, sweat-drenched paychecks taught me about something I only heard about when I was a teen, purchasing power. Purchasing something without permission was the greatest high I received to that point in my life, a high no drug or alcohol could duplicate. To me, it was better than a girl’s smile. And the “Theys” in my life tried to coach me into being more responsible with my money. It didn’t happen right away, as the dizzying feelings of euphoria lasted long after I went broke displaying that power. It took a number of paychecks and repetitive feelings of embarrassment, humiliation, and feelings of utter powerlessness before I tried to find that way station again and the advice therein to try to put it back in the other ear. If that young ‘un you’re trying to advise is anything like I was, give them that advice and realize that “they won’t listen,” until they make their own mistakes so often that they try to remember what we said.  

The Relative Quality of Relative Quality

“That’s such an awful book (album or movie),” they say about the works with which I develop a relationship. “I can’t believe you liked it.” Tommyknockers is often deemed one of the worst books Stephen King ever wrote. The ending was so anticlimactic that I think it left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, but there were moments, in the buildup, when Tommyknockers captivated mein a way few books ever have. Rock critics and KISS fans say that their Music from The Elder album was not only KISS’s worst album, but it might be one of the worst rock albums ever made. I’ll never know the truth, because my connection to that album is so strong I’ll never be able to analyze it objectively. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the greatest divide between my friends and members of family and I arrived with a production called The Blair Witch Project. I’ve never watched the movie again, after seeing it at midnight on the night (morning?) of its release, but that movie reached me on a level no other movie has. “Isn’t that the whole point,” we ask critics and fans. To paraphrase Picasso, “The writers’ job is to create something and then give it away.” When they create it, it’s a nutshell of their passion, and they hope to give that passion away to us. Those of us who love these artistic creations cannot answer questions of quality in a dispassionate manner, because the authors of these creations reached us in a way that led us to fall in love with them in a manner similar to teenage, puppy love that is so irrational that it cannot be factually supported or refuted.  

Fix-It Man!

Some of us are perpetually caught between our inability to fix our things and not wanting to spend the money to have another fix them. It’s always kind of embarrassing to admit we were not born with the ability, or more importantly the patience, to fix things. I make a mistake, and it becomes clear to me that I’m a total screw up who can’t do things. Other people make the same mistakes, and they simply start over from scratch and fix it correctly. My inferiority complex leads me to panic when I don’t do things perfectly. 

The Conditional Secret

Just out of curiosity, I read Secrets to a Happy Marriage articles. I’m not going to write that they’re totally useless, but they contain advice that falls under the term The Forer Effect. The Forer Effect is most often witnessed in horoscopes, in which their writers apply descriptions, advice, et al. that could apply to everyone. Personally, I think the best advice I’ve ever heard is that relationships between adults are not unconditional. My guess is that most marriages end because the participants mistakenly believe that their marriage should be unconditional, and one or more of the spouses fail to express what their conditions are. Unconditional love should be reserved for the parent/child relationship. As fortune seekers often say, in their quest for treasure, more adventure and glory is found in the chase than in actually securing the pot of gold. If we want to make an individual, who happens to be our spouse, happy, we should know that there are super-secret elements to a happy marriage to be found every day. If you’re a great spouse who wants to have a happy marriage, you’ll seek those super-secrets and capitalize on them when they make their appearance, but there will probably be more glory found in the chase.  

Hiding in Hyde

In the movie Entourage, based on a TV series of the same name, the main character secures the rights to a movie called Hyde. The main character (of Entourage) informs his agent that for him to participate in Hyde, he wants to direct it. The agent begrudgingly concedes, and to make a long, boring story short, Hyde turns out to be: “Brilliant!” of course. If you watched the TV series, you know the main character is a leading man who has leading man, movie star good looks, and he gets everything he wants in life. No one, agents, directors, friends, family, or women, dare say no to the man. He’s the top of the list, king of the hill, and an a number one of the charmed life demographic. 

Those of us on the outside-looking-in know such people exist. We’ve met them, viewed them from afar, and we’ve even developed relationships with some of them. Some of them are athletically gifted, intellectually superior, and/or charismatic types who light up every room they enter, but in my experience, they’re almost never creative types.

The typical creative type is not born with the gifts of the charmed. Their creatively is honed through effort, failure, and the struggle to succeed. Failure is often the key, because the typical creative type starts out awful, laughably awful, and some of their beta readers are not afraid to laugh. The typical creative type perseveres, not because they want to prove their detractors wrong, but because it’s who they are, or who they’ve become.  

Those of us on the outside looking in must grapple with the idea that we’re jealous of “IT!” guys, because we are. Who wouldn’t want to live one day of their lives? If we can step beyond that argument and have a rational discussion, I don’t see how anyone can lead such a charmed life and be creative. We all know there are exceptions to every rule, but it just seems implausible that this charmed individual can create something “Brilliant!” in his directorial debut. (It should be noted that the Vincent Chase character did not write the screenplay for Hyde, but there are so many ways in which a director creatively shapes a script that requires creativity.) 

If Entourage: The Movie wanted to have a deep, psychological hook, it should’ve carried a central message that this main character could have it all, in all of the believable ways he did, but he could not achieve creative brilliance too. He’s never had to struggle to develop such skills, and he’s never failed to the degree that he scorched the earth of his initial plans, started over, and learned from all that humiliation and embarrassment to create something “Brilliant!” It should’ve carried the message that something “Brilliant!” is often created in the ashes of all that. 

The main character, as depicted throughout the eight seasons of the Entourage series, never had much of a struggle. The fictional film in the movie, Hyde, should’ve bombed critically and commercially, as a superficial film of no substance. It didn’t, of course, as the star proved his detractors wrong, which in effect made the film Entourage: The Movie, a superficial film of no substance. 

Hoomans, Ha!men, and Humans 

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Taxonomists and biological anthropologists classify modern humans as the Homo sapiens sapiens species. No, that is not a typo. The reason for the double-word is that we are a subspecies of the Homo sapiens species. Taxonomists and biological anthropologists created this distinction to separate Homo sapiens sapiens species from the Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, or Neanderthals, the Homo sapiens idaltu, or Herto man, and the debatable inclusion of the Homo sapiens denisova, or Dragon man. We’re all homos, in other words, under the genus Homo, and the biological anthropologists break us down after that.

Our Homo sapiens sapiens subspecies is characterized by advanced cognitive abilities, language, and complex social structures. We’re the most complex subspecies in this regard, but if aliens from another planet were to meet us, greet us, and play in all our reindeer games, they probably wouldn’t agree that we all belong in the same categorization.

When we talk about Alien Life Forms (ALFs) here, we’re talking about Spock, S’Chn T’Gai Spock from the original Star Trek. Spock was half-human, half Vulcan, but we’re going to characterize our ALF as a full-on Vulcan, a full-on reason and rational thinking Vulcan with no empathetic or sympathetic emotions. In this ALF’s After Earth report home, it would write, “Even Earth’s scientists refrain from proper delineations in their Homo sapiens subspecies, because the scientific community thinks that a proper breakdown of various individuals in their subspecies might hurt feelings, but there are clear delineations. Some Homo sapiens sapiens have not fully evolved to the point that they belong to that species. Others have.”

If we never meet Spock-like ALF, or fail to prove they exist, we’ll never be able to verify this characterization. Thus, we will have to turn to the closest thing we have to an Alien Life Form in our universe, one with intimate knowledge of the Homo sapiens sapiens that is dispassionate enough to provide objective analysis. I would nominate the cat. Anyone who has owned a cat knows that we share an off again relationship with them. The cats definition of our relationship might even be punctuated with a “I really don’t care that much what happens to you” exclamation point that is furthered by a “As long as I get some milk and food every once in a while, and someone or something keeps me stimulated every once in a while I’ll continue to exist near you.”

Some might say the dog has as much, if not more, knowledge of our species as the cat, but the dog is biased. Dogs love us. They are so loyal that if they were commissioned to analyze our species, they would tell us what we want to hear. There’s a reason we call them man’s best friend, and it is largely based on the idea that they accept us for who we are. They don’t analyze us in the manner a cat will, and they know nothing about our inadequacies or failures, because their sole goal in life is to make us happy. They know when we’re happy, they’re happy. Cats are almost 180-degrees different.

Instagram posters have characterized this on again, off again, “I really don’t care that much what happens to you” relationship we have with cats with a somewhat humorous, somewhat condescending term that their cats use to describe us, hoomans. Hoomans is a cutesy eye-dialect, similar to that of the “No Girlz Allowed” sign that moviemakers put outside the door of a boy’s clubhouse. The cutesy error is employed to enhance the cutesy idea that cats and young boys can’t spell. The moviemakers might even add a backwards ‘R’ to further emphasize the cuteziness of the boy’s sign.

Another intent behind the cutesy hoomans contrivance is to inform us that we’re not viewing this interaction from the customary human perspective. We’re viewing this particular interactions from a perspective we may not have considered before, the cat’s.

In that vein, the unsympathetic delineations of the cat would suggest there are Homo sapiens sapiens who fail the “advanced cognitive abilities, language, and complex social structures” standards put forth by biological anthropologists. They might suggest we introduce a Homo sapien confusocortex, or Confused Man, subspecies for those who haven’t evolved completely. 

These hoomans were born at full capacity, and their schooling years proved that they were able to achieve full functionality, but as with any muscle, the brain can deteriorate with lack of use. We’re not attempting to make fun of them, but there is a delineation between those who know how to operate at an optimum, and those who fail to make necessary connections.

In the cat-world, I’m not sure if they would characterize me as a human or a hooman. I think they might develop a separate category for those of us who measure up, but we enjoy disrupting the meticulously crafted model they’ve created for human actions and reactions. The cats view such joyful interference with their carefully designed understanding of human nature and its patterns with something beyond skepticism. They’re alarmed. If we watch cats in the wild, they study their prey carefully to gauge whether or not they’ll get hurt. If after examining us completely, they developed a full categorization, it might be ha!men. My brief experience with cats informs me that they don’t have a sense of humor, so it would be impossible for them to properly categorize ha!men without some form of condescending insults. My guess is they would spit out something like, the symbolic, or ironic inversion of their cultural input often critiques the very idea of cultural output, then twist it into recursive satire. Their social systems resemble Escher prints—technically sound, emotionally disorienting. “They are players, jokesters, and fools,” the cats would conclude, “and we say that in the most condescending way possible.”   

Ha!men know that pets and children create profiles of humans based on patterns, and I think cats are quite comfortable with the thought that hoomans were put on this planet to serve them. Hoomans are to provide the cat food, milk, a place to relieve themselves, and various forms of stimuli. It’s a tenuous relationship that suggests if hoomans fail to fulfill the expectations of their relationship the cat will simply go to another hooman who can. Those hoomans who fulfill expectations can, could, and probably should receive the reward of affection. They know adult hoomans need this every once in a while, and they don’t mind occasionally playing that role for them, as long as the bullet point, requirements are met.

They also know we arrive home at around 5:30, feed them and themselves, and sit before the glowing box for a couple hours before it’s time to go to bed. They grow accustomed to these patterns, the way we conduct ourselves, the way we make sounds at one another, and our gait pattern. When we meet their criteria, they might sleep or find some other stimuli to occupy them, as they probably find most hoomans as boring as any other superior would find the actions of their underlings.

I don’t know cats would characterize me, but I highly doubt they would consider me boring. I’ve been their sole focus more times than I can count, and there have been occasions where these rooms housed a half-dozen people. I noticed how cats study us with more intensity than any other pet at a very young age, and I found it creepy in the beginning. “What are you looking at?” I wanted to ask, as if that would help matters. I noticed, early on, that when I acted somewhat out of sorts it only intensified their study of me. After numerous interactions over the years, I found their study of me fascinating, and I began tweaking my actions to destroy their research.

Just to be clear, I never touched one of these cats. I just enjoyed playing the role of their anecdotal information, their aberration. I exaggerated my differences just to be different than any other human they’d ever met, just to see how they’d react. The minute the cat owner I was dating left the room, I would walk across the room in a decidedly different gait pattern. I might slow turn my head to them in the manner an alien would in a movie, and I’d repeatedly stick my tongue out at them. I might even take a drink coaster and throw it across the room in an erratic manner. The list of things I did just to mess with their heads is long, but those are a few examples I remember. I’ve found that all we have to do is act a few deviations away from the normal hooman actions to make their pupils expand with increased scrutiny or fear.

Do the same things to a dog, and they might raise their head for a second, their ears might even perk, or they might even bring us a toy, thinking we want to play. Whatever they do, their reactions suggest they’re either less alarmed by abnormalities among the hoomen population, more forgiving of those who suffer from them, or they’re less intelligent than the cat and thus less prepared for an eventual aberration that cats foresee. Cats immediately switch to alert status. They don’t care for these games. If they don’t run from the room to avoid what they think could happen, they watch ha!men with unblinking, rapt attention. Even when they realize it’s just an act, as evidenced by our return to normalcy when the woman-owner returns to the room, they continue to study us. “I’ve decided that I don’t like you,” is the look they give us ha!men throughout.

***

Suzy Aldermann wasn’t a ha!men, but we thought she was. When we heard what happened at a corporate boardroom, we thought Suzy’s portrayal of a ha!man might’ve been one of the most brilliant portrayals we ever heard. Prior to that meeting, she appeared to abide by so many of the tenets of human patterns that when she deviated, we thought Suzy was employing a recursive inversion technique known to all ha!men as the perfect conceptual strategy for dismantling normative frameworks from within.

Prior to her “full-fledged panic attack!” Suzy successfully presented herself as an individual of advanced cognitive abilities, language, and complex social structures. So, when she experienced this panic attack, this “full-fledged panic attack!” after she opened the door to a meeting room and saw Diana Pelzey conversating with her chum, we thought she brilliantly portrayed a ha!man to the uninformed. As the report goes, Suzy whispered to a friend that she would not be attending the meeting because Diana was present. “BRILLIANT!” we said. “Absolutely brilliant that Suzy would pick the least threatening person in the room to initiate her alleged panic attack!” We all agreed to keep Suzy’s ruse secret to see how it would play out, and we expected a lot of hilarious high-brow hi-jinx as a result. The joke, it turned out, was on us. We either overestimated Suzy or underestimated her, I’m still not sure which, but it became clear that Suzy decided to run away rather than up her game to match, and/or surpass Diana’s presentation. It was, according to Suzy, a full-fledged panic attack.

In the aftermath of our misreading, anytime we met a melodramatic hooman who was having a “full-fledged panic attack!” over a relatively insignificant issue, our instinctive response, based on our understanding of human patters is to think either she’s a ha!man who is joking, or she probably needs to experience some real problems in life to gain proper perspective.

Yet, when we’d talk to Suzy, she’d detail a relatively rough upbringing that included some eyebrow-raising experiences. Those incidents were real issues that Suzy had to manage, and she had to claw through the tumult to reach a resolution. The normal human progression, for those of us who study humans with relative intensity, is that when a human experiences a number of real problems, they become better at resolving them through experience. Suzy worked her way through all of those problems, but she never developed better problem, resolution skills.

We’ve all heard from other souls who purport to travel some tumultuous avenues. Wendi Hansen, for example, detailed for us her “rough life,” but when she was done, we couldn’t help but think that much of her self-imposed trauma was the socio-political equivalent of first-world problems. Suzy was no Wendi Hansen. Suzy’s issues were real and severe, and they were backed up by eye-witness testimony. Our natural assumption is that if she’s experienced problems far worse than a colleague purportedly interested in stealing her job, it would be nothing compared to what she’s experienced in real life.  

If we were to view the humans, the ha!men, and the hoomans from the perspective of the Alien Life Form (ALF), or the cat, without empathy or sympathy, we would conclude that some humans get stronger, better, or gain a level of perspective that allows them to see minor problems for what they are in the moment. Some hoomen, on the other hand, deploy the tactical maneuver of retreat, and they do so, so often that they never fully develop their confrontational muscles.

After experiencing so many different souls who maneuver around their tumultuous terrains differently, I now wonder if hoomans, who’ve experienced real problems in life, blow otherwise insignificant issues up into real problems, because they’re more accustomed to handling their problems at that level. Either that or they know if they retreat during the relatively insignificant phase, it might never progress into more severe phases. Whatever the case is, their experiences have taught them that they can’t handle problems, and as a result of retreating so often, they never do.

***

“It’s a lie,” Angie Foote told me, regarding something Randy Dee told the group.

“It’s not a lie,” I said. “It might be an exaggeration, a mischaracterization, or something he believes is true but is in fact false. It’s not what I would call a lie.”

“Barney, he told everyone that this is what he does, and I’ve seen how he does it. He doesn’t do it that way. He’s a durn liar is what I’m saying.”

Angie is what we in the biz call a simple truther. She sees everything in black and white. A truth is a truth, and a lie is a lie. There is no grey matter involved in her universe. I respect simple truthers in this vein, because I used to be one. I’m still one in many ways, but experiencing precedents in life can wreck the comfortable ideas we develop in our world of simple math and science. Facts are facts and truth is truth is their mantra.

Some of us hear a lie, and we know it’s a lie. When we’re telling lies, we know we’re lying, and we can’t help but view the rest of humanity from our perspective. When they’re lying, they know that one plus one equals two. I know it, you know it, and most importantly, they know it. We witnessed them doing one thing, and we heard them say they do something else, and they said it as if it was something they truly believed happened! How can they do that with a straight face?

My asterisk in the ointment, my new definition of a lie, is that a lie is something someone says that they know to be false. There are good liars who are so good at it that they can convince themselves that it’s true before they try to convince us. The other liars, the fascinating ones, fall into a greyer area. They don’t know they’re lying.

One of the most honest men I ever met, a Randy Dee, taught me the grey. Randy Dee told some whoppers. He told some untruths to me, regarding events that happened the previous night, and I was there for those events. 

He misinterpreted the truth so often that it affected how I viewed him. When I viewed him, and the way he’d lie, I’d watch him with the rapt attention a cat would when encountering a ha!man who proved an aberration to my study of human patterns. While involved in this study, I became convinced that we could put a lie detector on him, and he’d pass with flying colors. “He’s just a durn liar!” I said to myself. Yet, if you knew this guy, and I did, you’d know he’s not lying, not in the strictest sense of the word. By the standard of taking everything we know about lying and inserting that into the equation, Randy Dee never told a lie.

I knew Randy well for a long time. I knew him so well that I learned he was incapable of lying. He was a law-and-order guy who despised deception and all of the other characteristics inherent in criminality. Yet, by our loose standards of truth v. lying, the man was a big, fat liar.

He was incapable of detecting the lies others told him, because he just didn’t think that way. He was somewhat naive in that regard, and after getting to know him well, I considered it almost laughable that anyone would consider him a liar.

Randy Dee was an unprecedented experience for me, and I would have a lot to sort through before I fully understood what I was experiencing with him. If we took this to a social court with a simple truther sitting in the role of a judge, we would experience an exchange of “He’s lying.” ‘I’m telling you he’s not. You have to get to know him.’ “You’re over-thinking this.” ‘If you know the guy as well as I do, you’d know he’s incapable of lying.’ “All right, he’s an idiot then.” ‘If idiot suggests a lack of intelligence,’ I would reply, ‘You have to meet him to know he’s anything but.’

If this argument reached the point of no-return, one of us might suggest using a lie detector. If Randy Dee passed the lie-detector test, the simple truther would then suggest that there was something wrong with that mechanism, and there might be.

When lie detectors first entered the scene, their findings were considered germane to cases. Judges, lawyers, and juries not only thought their findings should be admissible in proceedings, they considered them germane to findings. 

“Did he take a lie detector test?” a judge might ask. “Yes, your honor,” the defense attorney said, “and he passed with flying colors.” Lie detectors eventually became less prominent, because they were deemed wildly inconsistent. How can a machine with no powers of empathy, sympathy, or any emotions differentiate between hoomens, ha!men, and humans to produce inconsistent findings? What progressions occurred? Were so many Ha!men and Hooman able to beat lie detectors so often that the machines lost their relevance in criminal cases?

Randy Dee, a man who was so honest that it seemed almost ridiculous to suggest otherwise taught me that the reason lie detectors are wildly inconsistent has more to do with the idea that we’re wildly inconsistent. We can convince ourselves of a lie, so thoroughly, that it’s not a lie anymore, and we can do it without ever trying to deceive anyone or anything in the case of lie detectors. Ha!men might do it just to see if they can defeat the machine, and its ability to detect different biological reactions, but hoomens might do it because they lose the ability to make those necessary connections that produce truth. The latter provides a wild ride to those of us who once viewed human nature in the ritualistic patterns cats will, and if we continue to view hoomens with the rapt attention a cat gives a Ha!man, until we find the truth, it will wreck every simplistic truth we thought we knew about lying liars and the lies they tell.