Dear Otus,
I'm just about ready to bail out of Facebook. I'm not getting anything done because I'm spending all my time answering people's idiotic opinions and posts.
Disclaimer: Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of 👉 humorous fabrication 👈 appears every Saturday.
Shouldn't Facebook be limited to pictures of what you had at the restaurant and cute kitten videos?
-- Al Agorie,
Bentonville
Dear Al,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and to gently admonish you about the benefits of egalitarian access.
Just imagine the pent-up frustration that would explode across society if the Facebook safety valve of perceived self-importance were to be removed and people realized nobody gives a flip about their opinions.
I can't tell you the number of hours I have spent in futile Facebook discussion with the profoundly and proudly ignorant and myopically and resolutely intransigent.
I'll relate one pithy example with an excess of pith. Let's call him "Balourd from Bella Vista."
Balourd claims to be a regular Otus reader and frequently contributes to the Voices page and my Facebook page. Last week when the 2016 World Happiness Report was released, it found that Burundi was the world's most unhappy country, based on corruption, weak infrastructure, poor access to health and education services, and hunger.
Balourd became obsessed and in his xenophobic ignorance claimed that Burundi did not, in fact, exist. He posted that opinion on Facebook and the commentary thread eventually deteriorated into personal ad hominem denunciatory and abusive language.
I tried to intercede, but Balourd called me a specious boor and an insipid, anal-retentive sophist.
Those weren't his exact words. He actually said I was a superficial moron and educated idiot.
One poster disagreed and said Balourd was "a dipstick." I suggested the tone be elevated and that he call Balourd "a skulking poltroon and sanctimonious reprobate without peer" and totally ignorant in matters of geography.
"Burundi," I pontificated from memory, "is a small, land-locked nation in central Africa about the size of Maryland."
"Maryland does not exist, either," Balourd insisted. "Have you ever been there? Have you ever seen it?"
"No," someone said, "but I read about it in the paper."
"Ah, ha!" Balourd countered. "And you believe everything you read in the paper!?"
He had me there.
Balourd then launched into a diatribe on my legendary June 29, 1991, column about the Velcro farms of southwest Arkansas. I had some good-natured fun writing about how the Velcro crop had failed and the small farmers were in danger of having to sell out to the vast Velcro conglomerates.
It was all humorous fabrication, but two couples from Forrest City drove all the way to Blevins in Hempstead County to view the fields of ripening Velcro waving gently in the summer breeze. They weren't there.
Afterward, I got a nasty letter from one of the guys who warned I should never let the sun go down on me in Forrest City.
Balourd's contention was that if he had not personally seen something, it did not exist. Sadly folks like him reproduce and also vote.
According to Balourd, not only did Burundi and Maryland not exist, but neither do North Dakota, Delaware, UFOs, double eagles, pi, public television, the ichneumon fly, and that fellow in Rogers who keeps pet beetles on a stick.
I argued to no avail and then gambled that Balourd was a believer in a higher power.
At the bottom line of many things is faith -- faith in our institutions and the basic good will of man. Faith that there is something greater than ourselves.
Balourd admitted that as a kid he had a beloved beagle and that he believed all dogs go to heaven. I pointed out he had thus exhibited faith in heaven's existence. And faith, by definition, was belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
And if North Dakota did not exist, we would have to invent it. Otherwise, parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba would run down into the United States. Faith also confirms the existence of Burundi, microwaves, germs, the fifth Beatle, calculus, ipecac, nits, mustard seeds and, indeed, faith, itself.
Balourd devolved into a babbling mass of contrition. My work was done.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that if it's in the paper, then you can believe it. Except what you've just read.
Disclaimer
Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of
Z humorous fabrication X
appears every Saturday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
HomeStyle on 06/25/2016