Believe What You Read

Today a friend called. She’s read my first 4 blogs. Her reaction: “Does anyone one like proofread this? You know, for accuracy?”

I pause for a long minute before I respond, cautiously. “Accuracy?”

“Yes. Accuracy.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, you are NOT 28.”

I pause again for a long minute. This time because I’m thinking: That’s it? That’s the only inaccurate thing you found?

To be fair to the friend who called, it wasn’t the only inaccuracy she found. But, it got me to thinking.

Far too many people believe what they read. I experienced it when I was a reporter writing for a newspaper and I find it on the social networking sights. And now, after only 4 days of blogging, I’m finding them on my blog.

For example, I got this email. “What size are your feet? I wear a size 10. If someone tried to sell me clown shoes to run in, I’d sue them. You don’t deserve to be treated like that.”

So, let’s take into account the source of your information here, okay? I am a really crappy liar in person. The only place I can lie is on the computer, where I’m not making eye contact. I’ll say anything on this little box…ANYTHING. And you know what, don’t believe a word of it.

For example, when I promise that I’m going to try to run a 5k this year. Don’t believe it. I’m actually sitting behind my computer right now devouring an entire box of Oreos and washing them down with swigs straight from a bottle of Jack Daniels. In fact, over the years, I’ve managed to gain so much weight that I’m not going to run a 5k, but I am going to get into the Guiness Book of World Records as the world’s heaviest woman.

Seriously, it’s bad. When I sleep at night I roll myself onto my side-by-side king-sized mattresses because one mattress just won’t do. The mattresses are on the floor, too. They used to be on a bed frame, but the metal bent like spoons at a Uri Geller event (take that obscure reference and Google it). For tops, I just use Navaho tepee canvases. Bottoms are a little more difficult, but I find that if I use two full size fitted sheets and sew them together properly they make fine slacks. The fitted sheets are the best because I can use the elastic as a waistband.

Anyway, as I was saying, the internet is a series of tubes which do not wash away excrement because the EPA hasn’t approved those tubes for plumbing purposes.

I’m often shocked by what people believe and what they choose not to. Worse, I think our society is breeding the belief that it’s not okay to question someone. We should be able to question things and we should be able to disagree without calling each other names and hating on each other.

Of course, that’s the utopian society I have dreamed up here in my head, trapped inside my house like I am, unable to fit through the doors of my house. I am, in fact, the Augustus Gloop of my generation.

Of course, this is after I climbed Mt. Everest without oxygen and swam to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. In my twenties, I accomplished quite a bit of athletic feats. They begged me to try out for several Olympic sports – both summer and winter – but I really wanted someone else to have a chance at glory. I’m quite modest that way. I mean when they wanted to give me the United Nations Humanitarian Award in 2000, after I single handedly rescued a native tribe of Amazons from a ruthless logging company in Brazil, I said told them to just leave the publicity out of it, let the tribe live in peace again. After all, they’re the ones who’ve protected the City of Gold which Coronado searched for all those centuries ago and they’re the ones that keep the aliens from making livestock out of the rest of us. They deserve their peace.

So, in short, remember that everything on Facebook or in this blog or in my emails is probably a lie. Everything except this blog because I’m trying to make a point.

It would be longer, but I have to drive my antigravitational device which I use for getting my 2500 pound body over to my encrypted CIA computer and give some advice to a black ops team stranded in the Congo. And I’ve gotten a little lazy and I haven’t yet finished my alien autopsy for the Air Force.