Where the Smart People are at?
Incompetence is the Black Plague of the new millennium. It ebbs from those infected and rends the very soul of those it touches in two. It is quickly becoming a force of critical mass. Its returns will need to diminish, though. By the very nature of the thing its half-life is nigh.
Its reliance on hosts whose ability to survive in the world of their own manufacture recedes into some backward reptilian brainstem auto-reticulated impulse behavior at even the inset of its infection is like a spelling bee synonym for ‘doom’. It is only a matter of time before the parasitic nature of incompetence strikes us all into the ground and rots the great history of man into a thin rusty line in the sedimentary layer just preceding that of Zaius and the fucking Apes.
Darwin died in 1882. For the last 1.4 centuries he has floated somewhere between here and the after-here sucking massive amounts of kinetic energy from This Island Earth’s orbit, waiting for his chance to give it to the creationists like a god-damned 1986 WWF pile-driver. I swear he’s halfway up the corner-post setting up a drop. When he lets fly the dogs of human intellectual entropy, there will be way too many people kicking off for the order of the universe. This shit is big and I bet it will rip a hole right the hell into space-time. Like a Delorean who’s Mr. Fusion was fed a Columbian coke cache, Columbians included.
Don’t for an instant think that this, what I am writing, has anything to do with ego or pride or narcissism or anything even close to self-affectionate; I’m on the bus to hell with everyone else. You are reading the words of a guy who has, on 5 separate occasions (Yes, the number 5. The one right between 4 and 6. That’s right.) driven over his cell-phone. You know, that plastic thing with the sounds and shiny lights that goes only ever from the charger to your pocket to your head to your pocket to the charger again That’s the one. Ask me how the hell the charger, my pocket (Either one. Shit; Both if you like) or my head got anywhere near the underbelly of my car and I will agree that it makes no sense whatsoever. Its like SARS with a sense of humor, incompetence is. I’ve shaved one side of my face and left the other. No, not on purpose. I’ve dropped items securely gripped by either hand on too many occasions to count. Even if I tried to count them I’d do that stupid dice-groups-of-five thing I do with my head and look like a total tweed. The list doesn’t end.
Imagine, though, that there is some sort of celestial armor taking the brunt of the attack. Let’s, for the duration of this writing, assume that incompetence is not at all a plot by good old Charley D., but instead a subversive attack on our planet’s populous by beings from another planet. Like the kind that shoved all of that flan down Travis Walton’s throat and poured milk in his eyes. They do this crazy shit all the time. Are you with me? No more Galapagos, on with our friends from Frolix 8.
This armor takes the brunt. It dents and we feel very little of it. We lock our keys in our car, we go through that drug phase in high-school, we walk into the sliding glass door. Ok, we can deal with that. That’s only human. It is something, like bathtub warnings on hairdryers, that most humans get around to becoming acquainted with, even if they don’t agree. Something has gone wrong, though. Shit is getting outright ridiculous. Human beings are becoming total fucking asshats in droves. You don’t believe me? Leave your house. Go anywhere a human being works. Anywhere at all. If you have to interact with anyone else you’ve got a 6% chance of getting what you want, a 44% chance of getting what you don’t want, a 35% chance of not getting anything at all and a 15% chance of being killed. Yes, that’s right, you are more likely to die than receive anything but the most banal and idiotic responses from those helping you. It’s true. I made those statistics up. Check my sources, bitch.
The lance of incompetence has pierced the great celestial shield and we are under full alien attack. First they tried taking our kidneys, to no avail. Then they tried making us do embarrassing things with each other and taking our babies. That didn’t work either. Now they have successfully penetrated the barrier of forward progress we’ve been wrapped in since the Cro-Magnon and are kicking the piss out of us with our natural tendency to be complete and total motards.
Look, I sent the god-damned check, ok? You have an entire process to deal with something that, by the concept from which it was spawned, should never ever ever happen. Not once. Ever. Yes, I understand you have no control, and that the computer is telling you that you need to call me. Yes, I get the fact that there is nothing anyone can do at this point, and that I am best off calling my bank and canceling the check. Yes, I am totally synchronized with the idea that you wish you could help me but even your manager has no idea how to figure out what is going on. I just don’t get why I am talking to a human being about something a fucking pineapple could be more productive with.
Off to call the bank. The aliens are winning.
