Look. People might not like what I’m about to say. Political takes are black and white these days and I still believe in nuance. I don’t think drastic intervention is the right answer. My penis may be stuck in a colander due to an unfortunate pasta-draining accident, but I’m also a centrist. We exist.
Do I want to not have my penis stuck in a colander? Sure. Do I believe in taking the right steps towards not having the colander around my penis? Of course I do. But I don’t think removing my penis would solve any problems. Maybe the colander would be off of my penis, but it would be somewhere else. Maybe the pasta water would stain a priceless signed Larry Bird basketball jersey. Maybe it would fall on the floor and a bunch of kids would slip on it and fall into a fast-moving river. That’s why the only safe thing to do is to keep it just as it is, stuck on my penis.
I like to see both sides of every story. I feel like my penis is stuck in the colander, but maybe the colander feels like my penis is stuck in it. Look. I am a simple person and I only believe in a few things. I want to solve the penis-colander thing rationally. I like when my politicians compromise. I don’t like murders but love guns. Climate change can be fixed by giving the rich air conditioners. People of Color are allowed to go to Disneyland. Women with short hair should – and let me shout this for the people in the back – also get to go to the doctor. Replace all icecaps with Amazon storefront bookstores. All I want is moderateness, in all facets of society, but especially the with the whole thing where my penis is one of the tiny little holes that you’re supposed to use to drain the water from a nice freshly al dente boiled pot of ravioli.
I’m never going to get my penis out of the colander by unilaterally taking it out. I am only going to get the penis out through compromise, by which the colander will free itself out from around my penis. I believe that reaching across the aisle is the only way to go forward with what I am now referring to as the “colander problem.” Arguing is never going to allow me to be able to wear a pair of pants in time to attend my niece’s christening. It just won’t.
We must work together to find a common ground. I mustn’t villainize the colander. This is how colanders get radicalized. It’s easy to blame the whole situation on the colander, but what about my penis, which I was trying to place gently in the colander so I could pretend that it was wearing a big metal hat like they wear in the army? Calling the colander “the thing my penis is stuck in” is too reductive. Colanders are people too. The only difference between me and the colander is that I am the person that has my penis in the colander. Other than that, we are exactly the same.
I’m always skeptical of any purported “science” about colanders, or penises. I like to keep a cool, rational head, even when my penis is stuck in a colander and I have a big job interview coming up this week and I’m going to have to wear clown pants from a circus costume because they’re the only pants big enough to put the colander in. But even I know that there’s a lot of false information out there about when penises get stuck in colanders. What’s next, if you try to tell people how to take their penis out of a colander? Take out their teeth from their mouth? You put a tax on petting dogs? Ban on teeth? It’s a slippery slope, much like literal slope I have just slipped down because I was so front-heavy with the colander that is stuck on my penis. Now my penis is stuck in a colander and some mud.
I am certainly not promoting compromise on social issues about the colander. It absolutely pains me to see colanders getting stuck on the penises of LGBTQ+, for example. But, semi-related, I just wish they could call it a different thing. Maybe for gay people, it’s not called “penis stuck in a colander.” It’s called something like “the beef-dilemma.” Just something to differentiate it from when straight people get their penises stuck in a colander. “Penis stuck in a colander” to me is a very traditional method by which a man gets his straight penis stuck in a straight colander. I’m a traditionalist. No – I’m a centrist.
Look. I hope I’ve changed some hearts and minds. Centrists are just like you – they too are just trying to get their penises out of colanders as efficiently and smartly as possible. Just remember what we always say: The devil you know is better than the angel you don’t. Now, I must be going. I have some strongly-worded letters to write to the hole in this colander that my penis is stuck in.
my favorite part is that the guys just go along with it in spite of confusion/misgivings because they don’t want to miss out on stickers.
No like, this is just proof that they’re not Kindergarten tactics. I’ve taught from 6-60, and there’s so many methods I’ve used across the board because they genuinely do work for students of all ages.
I haven’t even read any communist stuff my ideology is “share and be nice” like the first two rules of a kindergarten
When you get out of kindergarten you might learn that stealing isn’t sharing.
Literally who is talking about stealing get outta here you absolutely giant jester
Do you know what redistribution means?
You sit back in your dark leather chair and run your fingers through your greying hair. You’ve just set up your preparations for owning some random kid on the internet and now all you have to do is wait for the fish to get the bait. You chuckle and close your eyes.
The door to your office opens up, letting in a flood of bright light from the world outside your cave, and a messenger stands squarely in the middle of the door frame.
“Telegram for giant jester!”
You walk over, take your telegram, and read.
“READ FIRST SENTENCE AGAIN STOP”
You smile confusedly and think it might be a mistaken delivery. You throw the telegram into the bin beside the door. The deliverer still stands like a gatekeeper, blocking the exit.
“Another telegram for giant jester!”
You think this is all very strange. People usually don’t send two in a row, and now this messenger won’t leave you alone. You are beginning to sweat lightly in your cheap cotton suit. You open this new telegram and read it.
“REDISTRIBUTION INVOLVES TAKING MONEY FROM PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T WORKED FOR IT YOU THINK JEFF BEZOS MOVES EVERY PACKAGE HIMSELF THE BASTARD SITS THERE AND MAKES THE SALARIES OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN A MINUTE ALL BECAUSE HE EXPLOITS THE TIME AND ENERGY OF HIS WORKERS HOW IS THAT NOT STEALING WHY ARENT THE WORKERS GETTING PAID FOR THE EFFORTS THEY GIVE IN FULL”
You have no idea how the sender got all this text on one telegram sheet. You’re feeling queasy from this anomaly. The text is clearly too much for the sheet but it hovers delicately off the edge anyway. Youre unable to process the contents of the message due to a dark, evil sickness in your stomach. The sentry stands tall and firm at the doorway.
“One last telegram for G. Jester!”
Your shaking legs buckle and you fall to the oak floor and slowly rest yourself on your side. You pray to all the gods you know (and a few you don’t) that everything will be okay. You don’t understand what is happening. The messenger turns to you and begins to speak the telegram:
“No one was talking about stealing or redistribution anyway. You believed you were reading between the lines when in actuality you read past it, drifting off into space instead of staying with earthly affairs. And now you lay on the ground and beg with tears and snot soaking into the floor beams that we may spare you. Pathetic, isn’t it? You swung at a dummy and still managed to miss. Where is your sense of self respect? Of keeping your mouth shut when you need to? Did you lose it somewhere? Did you never have it in the first place? Why did you comment on this post in such a way as to assume the intent of its author when you clearly know so, so little about the world, about people, about yourself. We will leave you for now to contemplate on this.”
Your face sits in a puddle of bodily fluids as you watch the messenger dissipate slowly, burning up in holy and righteous fire. You don’t know what you have been visited by. But you feel that you should listen. Your world turns black. You dream of impossible architecture, horrible creatures, and inhuman languages.
“Fresh is the album of a lonely man, trying to convince himself that in his loneliness, he is free.”
proud of this one.
My therapist told me about something called Incongruity of Affect. At the time, I was telling her about something awful, and smiling ear to ear. It’s a tic of the jokester. Wou wrap pain and depression up in a smile. “I mean can you believe it?” you say. I don’t know if you hope it’ll go over better, or maybe hope you can convince yourself. On the cover of the Sly and the Family Stone album Fresh is a picture of Sly, taken by Richard Avedon. Sly is in midair. He’s wearing leather pants and an open shirt, and his big platform shoes are extended into the sky in a karate kick. His face is lit up by a broad, beautiful smile. It promises joy - a man fulfilled, a dream no longer deferred. But Fresh is an album of incongruous affect. (intro of in time comes in) The first track on Fresh is In Time. As drums weave in and out of the plinking of a primitive drum machine, Sly argues philosophically on behalf of taking care of business. Never the strength of a guy who missed a third or so of his own concerts. There’s a mickey in the tasting of disaster, he sings. In time, you get faster. He seems to say he’s grown from his mistakes, from the depressive madness that surrounded him as the 60s curdled into the 70s. But by the time he gets to bragging about switching from cocaine to amphetamines, the hazy, lonely atmosphere betrays him. Sly’s charm is immeasurable. His smile is sparkling. But this is not what happiness sounds like. (In Time) Sly always felt like he was trying to will happiness into the world. How can you listen to Hot Fun in the Summertime or I Want to Take You Higher or Dance to the Music and not feel uplifted? How could a dream like that *not* change the world? But by Fresh, the dream was stumbling. The world wasn’t didn’t change in 1966 or 1967 or 1969. The world was mostly the same. Maybe with a little less hope. So after There’s a Riot Going On, the dark, mumbling masterpiece of 1971, Sly receded further into himself. Much of the band was gone. His sister and brother were there, when they had to be. Sly was playing parts himself, track after track, alone. Fresh is the album of a lonely man, trying to convince himself he can be free. (Skin I’m In) Doris Day’s hit Que Sera Sera is transformed by Sly and his sister Rose. Day’s version is a precocious tribute to the possibilities of childhood. Rose and Sly sing it as a beautiful, bluesome declaration of… of a sort of liberation that comes from accepting that life is defined by pain. (Que Sera) The aesthetics of the album were transformational. The drum machines intertwined with the real drums, Sly’s own muddy basslines pushed to the front of the mix, the delicate, aching vocals. It’s easy to caricature funk as all platform shoes and spaceships, but Fresh is as homemade and intimate as any four-track cassette singer songwriter, and twice as beautiful. There is no Prince, no Andre Benjamin, no Frank Ocean without Sly’s heartache, without us sitting close to him as he reaches vainly for hs freedom. In the middle of Fresh is a reworking of one of the band’s signature hits. Thank You falletinme be mice elf becomes Thankful and Thoughtful. It turns the thrill of the original upside down, into an almost suicidal sounding paean to… simple still being here. Still rectifying, yeah, and straightening things out I know what a good feelin’ you’re never in doubt Sometimes I’m by myself, feelin’ alone I just look around and check it out and then it’s all gone I’m still happy to be here, Thankful and Thoughtful. He says, unconvincingly. (Thankful / Thoughtful) And the peak of the album is the greatest song Sly ever wrote, If You Want Me To Stay, a love song by a broken man who knew he could not change himself. One who just asked in vain for acceptance. If you want me to stay I’ll be around today To be available for you to see But I am about to go And then you’ll know For me to stay here I got to be me (If You Want Me To Stay) Fresh is Sly’s last great album, as his life and his health and his sanity and his career started to slip between his fingers. He’s just one man, alone, plunking out bass notes in a studio his bassist long ago abandoned. Thinking about how he thought he could change the world. Wishing just to be alone with his heartbreak. He smiles beautifully, but we can see beyond it. That’s my outshot. (If it were left up to me)
