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Idiotic minds think alike.

If there’s one idiot in the room, chances are there’s another idiot who shares his opinion. Do note that no one is exempt from being an idiot, and in fact almost everyone is some kind of idiot; the difference is the magnitude.

But ‘idiotic mind’ and ‘great mind’ are just euphemisms for ‘person I do not agree with and whose case I cannot relate to’ and ‘person I agree with’. This is also the reason that my exorbitantly original and witty spin on an old phrase will not reach the same popularity as its elderly counterpart.

And in actual fact, it’s much easier to see the idiots thinking the same than it is the great minds. This might be due to there being a significantly larger portion of idiots in relation to great minds, or it might be due to the fact that great minds are usually great minds specifically because they don’t think alike. This doesn’t mean that they’re anti-mainstream, or that they’re anti-anti-mainstream in an effort to be new and original. It means that they think for themselves regardless of what convention tells them, and if they find the convention to be accurate and useful, then they apply it.

Next time on cliché-busters, is there really more than one way to skin a cat?

Your Very Own Certified, At Home, Business Degree Emulation Kit

What you will need:

1. A TV
2. A printer
3. A piece of paper
4. Any version of Monopoly™

Now the TV is just to simulate the drone of the lecturer while you think about other things, look out the window, or try to get a better look down the shirt of the girl in front of you. Have it tuned to the ABC or SBS. If you can get a tape of parliamentary proceedings or stock market reports all the better.

The printer is for when you’re finished, to print out your certificate when you’re finished. You can frame it if you choose to, but it’s not necessary. You probably won’t be showing anyone your degree because you’ll be too busy making money. The piece of paper is so that you have something to print your degree onto. Regular white paper is fine, recycled if you swing that way, or fancy embossed stuff if you’re already rich (in which case I have no idea why you’re trying to get a business degree).

Finally, the most important component of YVOCAHBDEK, Monopoly™. Basically, you’re going to play Monopoly™ from each player’s (up to eight) point of view. If you have an online version you can play online, otherwise just move each piece as their turn comes by, and watch the movement of the pieces. What does the top hat do? Notice how he only rolls a five from Trafalgar Square so that he ends up on Piccadilly instead of the Go To Jail square? You will no doubt be amazed at the finesse of the Top Hat, even as you are simultaneously stunned by the Iron’s ineptitude.

Continually you will note the Iron’s passage through the prison system, and more importantly I hope you will notice the state in which it leaves his finance. Going to jail seriously impedes any sort of money making endeavour and makes it difficult to traverse the board as you did before your imprisonment. It gets harder to hold your head high in public, and all sorts of lecherous characters leer and snicker from darkened doorways, “There goes the Iron”, “Did you hear what the Cannon did to him in jail?”, “How does he think he’ll ever make any money now, he’s the laughing stock!”

But they don’t know, no, they have no idea the uninhibited passion that torments his very soul, pumping jet stream after jet stream of superheated steam through the core of his being. The desire for business, for prosperity, and for freedom!

Take note of the Iron’s plight. In the game of business, as in Monopoly™, there are winners and there are losers. If you are anxious about the possibility of being arrested, or believe that you may have done something to warrant your imprisonment, then do not lost hope just yet. While you’re still free and have unrestricted access to dice, practice at rolling doubles until you have mastered it. This way if you ever do go to jail you’ll be out again within a turn.

So you’ve reached the end of the game, and you have mastered the art and science of business. Buying things, selling things, renting things, mortgaging things, and most importantly exploiting things without remorse. Business is not a game of ethics. The Thimble never won by saying to the Battleship “oh no, I really do have quite enough money already, why don’t you go ahead and take this property?” or “oh well, you are destitute because of me, I suppose I’ll cancel your debt.”

Now you’re finally ready to put your knowledge to the test, and in less than a very small fraction of the amount of time you could’ve wasted in a university lecture theater. But hey, if you weren’t smart you wouldn’t be spending you’re time chasing after material possessions that will fulfill you more than anything else you could ever imagine. If all else fails, buy a top hat and cane and people will think you’re rich even if you’re not.

My personal favourite is the Angler Fish, or as the bogan in me wants to shout “the ugly bastard with the maglite on his head.” These creatures are certainly not meant to add a new dimension of human-animal sexuality in the way some people seem to think horses, dolphins, and labradors do. But it’s not my favourite out of my love for everything physically repulsive, though that does contribute, it’s because of that stupid little light on it’s head.

Now if you’re an Angler Fish and you’re reading this, chances are you don’t think it’s stupid at all. For those of you with no idea what I’m talking about, it’s like if humans delved into cyborg technology and created a reading lamp implant.

If you’re not an Angler Fish and you’re reading this, chances are you’re wondering if I’m going to get to whatever point I may or may not be trying to make about this filthy rotten fish.

I’ll tell you why I like this light.

Like a carrot on a stick, this fish follows the goddamn thing around it’s whole life, and the shadow fish are too scared to go near it. They’re scared because they know what it represents, they know that the light is death.

But that’s not all.

Even in the non-fictional, non-metaphorical world of surface dwellers, the light is death. We swim around with the thing damn near touching our faces, all the while trying not to look at it because it’s really bad for your eyes to look at things like that. But it’s the very reason we’re alive in the first place. You can’t see without light, and shadows can’t exist without a light source. To exist is to be overshadowed by death, to follow it your entire life until at the end, you reach the light at the end of the tunnel.

You can deny this. You can say “No. You’re wrong about this.” You can pretend that everything is A-Okay and close your eyelids juuuuust enough so that you can’t see the light from this angle. You can hide in petty fear, and escape to some other death, imagine life as divine or that some perfect truth awaits you and only you beyond the light.

Shoot, maybe you’re right. But you’re going to have a hard time seeing it without that light.

Unlike journalists, conspiracy theorists may or may not do any research at all. Also unlike journalists, it’s unlikely that they’ll ever be paid or receive much respect for their work. You wouldn’t put ‘conspiracy theorist’ on your resume.

I have a theory that doesn’t involve the Queen, Elvis, or tin foil hats. My theory is that conspiracy theories are mostly constructed by government forces to detract from legitimate theories that cover the same intellectual turf. The government hand-picks paranoid schizophrenics from their mental institutions (or breeding facilities!) and sets them loose, into the wild, after feeding them large amounts of psychedelic drugs.

Why do they do this? To make other people’s theories, that might otherwise be recognised as legit, seem obviously the product of some lunatic mind. They make conspiracies into a laughing stock, so that no one will believe the truth, even though they’ve been informed.

This is the reason that people are still so ignorant, even after they have been told that Hitler and Steve Irwin are building an army underground in their ice-palace. No one will even know that we were right about it until they hear the distant battle cries of “crikey” accompanied by the crazed  laughter of the sting-ray peoploids.

Whether you believe that or not, I stand by my original conspiracy theory theory. The government manufacture theories to confuse the masses. Do I have proof? I don’t need proof, that’s just government propaganda. They’re playing mind games, don’t you see? They’d even get one of their paranoid schizophrenic minions to tell you all of this, just so you wouldn’t believe it, just so you’d never realistically consider the possibility that it is in fact true.

This post was sponsored by the Australian Government Canberra.

But here’s the catch, if you’re really cool, then you’ll say “meh” to ‘meh’ and you won’t care about not caring, and you’ll go right ahead and care. Of course, those lower-level non-”meh” ‘meh’ers will think you aren’t cool, but you wouldn’t care about that now would you?

But here’s the second catch, if you’re really really cool, you’ll say “‘meh’” to saying “meh” to ‘meh.’ And so on.

So what’s my point? There’s no such thing as ‘cool.’ It’s a myth concocted of peer-pressure and media influence. Cool is just a selling point on all the latest fashion/cars/products. It’s the marketing of acceptance.

But is there anything really wrong with buying acceptance? As long as you’re accepted, does it really matter how you get there?

Well, if you’re okay with buying more and more you’re entire life, then there’s nothing wrong with it. As long as you understand that by buying into the myth, you’ll be surrounding yourself with people who also buy into it, and as a result are shallow, vapid, shells of people. If you’re fine with that then I’m fine with that.

People who reject the myth end up copping some flack for not following the trend. Sometimes it’s not so simple. There is after all, the trend of not following trends, and the only way to not follow that trend is to follow trends and by following trends you are not following the trend of following trends.

The whole thing is ridiculous. The whole thing is a joke, and once you see it’s a joke you can laugh with the kookaburras about how funny it really is to watch people scramble around trying to like the things that other people like, or preemptively like things that people don’t like yet but no doubt will when they see just how gosh-darn cool it is.

Of course, you’ll get a sore throat from laughing all the time, and then you’ll probably come to realise how laughter isn’t, and even jokes aren’t really funny because ultimately, even if it’s not your throat that’s sore from laughing all the time, someone is getting hurt over all this tomfoolery.

Then you’ll meet the kookaburra’s eyes and burst into laughter, because you both just realised that jokes not being jokes is a joke, and that this is not funny at all.

But isn’t this an opinion on opinion? A thought about thought? No, I refuse to think this. I don’t think this at all, my fingers are just typing it. If I was forced to think something I guarantee you it wouldn’t be this, it would be something a lot better. I’d tell you about it, but I haven’t thought of it and I have no opinion on what would be better than this, because I have no opinion on this at all.

In fact, I refuse to endorse this typing of mine altogether. I hesitate to even say ‘mine’ because in the same sentence I’m disowning it. I don’t want it though, you can have it if you like. But I don’t think it even exists really, so you can’t have it, or so I would suppose if supposition wasn’t thought in one of its many disguises.

So what’s left after you remove opinion and contemplation? Questions? Then what? Answers? Should I believe in fact, when in fact I don’t even believe in belief? And if there are no answers then will there only be one question?

Ah! But I won’t be fooled into thinking that easily, no, not by a simple diversion through questioning, a self-interrogation. I’d propose a solution if I could. If I could the solution I would propose would be that all I would have left would be awareness, consciousness. But I haven’t thought of that yet, and never will. And even if I had thought of it it wouldn’t be my opinion. And even if it was my opinion, I certainly wouldn’t think it was my opinion.

Yes, this is going to be very productive I think.

And you know, I’ve been working on a theory ever since this Tiger Woods thing got out. You know, Tiger likes to be on top, he likes to be the best. He’s been saving up these extra-marital activities for a while now, and he’s timed it juuust right so that he can claim the biggest celebrity scandal of the decade.

But the countdowns are really the best to watch. I mean, as if the mundane activities of actors and musicians wasn’t awesome enough to behold the first time around, the second time, well you really think about the people, and gain another perspective on your own life and actions through an analysis of theirs. Yeah.

What I really want to see is a countdown of the countdowns. The 20 best countdowns of all time. Of course, the countdown of countdowns would make the number one spot, but what would the others be? Tune in to find out.

Really though, I’m considering doing my own countdowns. I think I’m going to start with “the ten worst moments of the last decade.” The list will include: being cut in front of at the post-office, dropping a two dollar coin down the drain, cutting myself shaving, and over five more thrilling escapades of the last ten years. Gee I can’t wait.

I think I might wait though, at least until next year. It’ll make it easy to count down the top moments of the year when a week hasn’t even passed yet.

And so in this prototype for collective consciousness the dissonance isn’t hard to find. Collectively, humanity is one big, neurotic mess of contradictory opinions and egos big enough to believe that they are right, despite the fact that every opinion they had before that one was wrong.

It’s tempting to believe that being wrong in the past means you get closer to the truth, but it only really happens in an abstract way. The only way you can get to the truth and always be right, is to realise that you’re never right. Then you can sit back in your deck chair or hammock and watch the vast aggression of the ego take its course.

Of course, I realise that I’m always wrong, and that’s why I’m always right. What’s more I realise that that statement is completely wrong, and everything I’ve said up until now is also wrong, which just proves the entire thing to be right (and wrong).

But there’s a chance that wrong is the wrong word here, and that it would be better to use “not right” in its place, because even though you might not be right, it doesn’t mean your necessarily wrong.

It doesn’t entirely matter whether you try to be right, or whether you just accept that you’re wrong and move on, taking up any opinion you feel like defending, and then switching the moment you feel like it. Either way you’re going to be wrong.

Right?

This is the same reason that the important parts of a contract (you know, the parts that have you signing away your vital organs to Tesltra while you’re getting that new phone for $0 upfront) are in small print.

The big opener of the small talk world is “how’s it going?” or any number of variants, the answer to all of which is something like “good,” “not bad,” “getting there,” or “okay,” regardless of how it’s actually going. At first it seems innocuous enough, but on closer inspection you can see the every day fabrication that people surround themselves in, in the hope that in fooling other people into thinking that they’re “getting there,” they’ll actually start “getting there.” It also reveals the fake concern we have for other people, because while small talk is almost always begun with this question-answer combo, the answer is rarely listened to. The entire sequence is just a polite way of being upfront about the deceit that is about to take place.

What comes next varies between current events, the weather, a comment on the surroundings, or a further questions about the participants of the small talk.

When discussing current events, people usually stray from the more morbid cases, unless it’s so morbid that it’s all anyone’s talking about. In the case of the weather, well it goes much deeper than “fuck it’s hot today” initially seems. People use this to test the person they’re talking to. For example, it was hot today, but the last two or three days have been quite cool, and the days before that were even hotter than today. When meeting someone for the first time, you can test to see if they work in an air-conditioned work space, by talking about the last few days and noting any signs of fear on their face while they try to uphold to appearance that they have any idea what you’re talking about. The other give-away is when they agree with you on all counts. If this happens, be sure to throw in a comment about the weather that you know for a fact isn’t true, like the warm North-Westerly that blew through around 10am. If they still agree with you, then chances are they work in air-conditioning and should be treated suspiciously in all subsequent small talk.

There is another possibility that the weather can help identify, and this is whether the small-talkee you’re engaging with is in fact an android. Except for the highest quality androids, they are not equipped with individual temperature measuring devices and can only rely on the weather forecast that is sent to them via satellite. So before you mention the weather, jump online and try to find out where the actual weather and the forecasted weather didn’t match. This should not take more than a few seconds. When engaging with the suspicious small-talkee, specifically mention the day on which the weather differed from the forecast, and watch their confused reaction.

Of course, since robots are robotic and known for their data collection, it may be the case that they, or another droid in the local region, have picked up the correct weather data from small talk not unlike that which you are currently engaging with them in, and transmitted it to each other to better fool the pathetic humans who don’t know any better at all. So if your conversational compatriot appears to have a firm grasp on the recent weather, do not immediately assume they are not android.

For this, there are other tests. You see, because androids are incapable of emotion, they are programmed with the most widely socially accepted point of view on every major issue, and divided roughly in half on those issues that divide people roughly in half (e.g. the use of the guillotine in capital punishment). So when you come across a small-talkee you suspect of being a suspicious android, engage with them on such an issue, and present the opposite viewpoint in such an unfriendly and aggressive way that any human conversationalist would be quite offended and refuse to interact with you any further. Androids, being incapable of offense due to the rusty exoskeleton hidden beneath simulated skin, will only react in simulated offense, which unfortunately is quite hard to differentiate from genuine offense, except in that the small-talkee will appear more offended than you would expect to compensate for their lack of true emotions.

This is true of all simulations and is one of the key components of identifying and annihilating android small-talkers. If someone appears to express genuine emotion of a higher level than your emotion-level calibration facility informs you, then be very suspicious, and rub a strong magnet against the back of their neck to determine whether they are in fact an android.

Remain cautious at all times during talk small and large, and you will no doubt succeed at android identification.