Un-Commencement Speech

Once again, I’m forced to decline all commencement speaking engagements¹ due to my hectic schedule of investigative reporting on microwave popcorn and getting ready for summer reruns. However, I have prepared some remarks suitable for the occasion. School administrators, please direct your students to read the following.

This ceremony is called a commencement to highlight the idea that it’s not an end, but a beginning. It’s the beginning of a new life.

Or at least, that’s what they’d like you to believe. Really, it is the end. Your carefree school days are over. From here on out, it’s just going to be work and more work to make ends meet.

This is the opposite of a commencement speech in another respect. Commencement speeches are usually full of inspirational advice, telling you to aim high, and to follow your dreams. But not this one. I say now’s the time to wake up from those dreams. Forget what you love. Do something you hate. No one ever got rich doing what he or she loved.

Do you think Lady Gaga enjoys dressing up and performing her songs? Did Steve Jobs like having to design cutting edge computers and technology? Does Tom Brady enjoy playing football? Did John Malkovich choose to talk in that annoying nasal voice?

What do you think would happen if we all followed our dreams? We’d have a world full of dream followers, that’s what! Who would put the little twisties on our iPhone cables?

No. Hate is where the money is. Boring, menial, repetitive jobs. You’re not supposed to like it. That’s why it’s called “work.”

Life is not about having a good time, or doing something meaningful. It’s about being useful. And useful people are the ones who buy stuff, thus helping to enrich others.

So remember: Do what you’re told and keep your noses to the grindstone and you’ll do just fine next year in Kindergarten.

¹ None.

World War IV

The Last Bug

RSI

Job Security

Last Request

Talking the Talk

Thrilling Careers

Late Boomer #7

Virt U.

The Avengers ... The Untold Story

Evolution and Its Discontents

The general idea of natural selection, Darwin's explanation for how evolution happens, is pretty simple: organisms that can't survive in a given environment don't. Moreover, organisms that can't attract mates and reproduce won't propagate, so their genetic make-up will die out after a generation. (Of course, this leaves open the question of why there are still geeks in the human population.)

So from this, you can see that interfering with this natural selection process will affect evolution. If we help weak or unfit individuals survive and reproduce, we alter the outcomes. Yet we do this all the time. That's what health care is all about.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, is opposed to universal health care. They would rather see the 99% eliminated from the gene pool, so the human race can evolve into a species that can afford health insurance.

So the political party that doesn't believe in evolution is actually doing the most to support it.

Campaign 2012