COLUMN: Facebook Ban

I bet you were expecting some cutesy column about my cats or something. Tough. I don't feel like it. I do what I want when I want.

What do you guys think? I'm testing out my new bad boy persona. Is it a keeper?

All this time, I've been under the impression that I'm a nice guy and a relatively decent human being. How wrong I was. As it turns out I'm a full-fledged miscreant. A rebel without a cause. A villainous na'er-do-well.

I learned this earlier today when I went to waste time on Facebook but instead was greeted by THIS message:

"You have been banned from posting for 48 hours. Your previous post violated our community standards. You may not post any content advocating violence."

Wait, advocating WHAT? EXCUSE ME? I cringe when I watch boxing. I am a proud and unashamed wuss. I don't even know HOW to advocate violence.

So why did I sent to Mark Zuckerberg's social media prison for 2 days? Prepare to NOT be amazed.

I subscribe to many Facebook chat groups, including a forum for fans of the Sirius/XM satellite radio channel "1st Wave." That's the channel that plays awesome new wave tunes from the 80s. I often blast it inappropriately in the car.

The "1st Wave" Facebook forum isn't affiliated with Sirius/XM. It's run entirely by fans, who usually spend their days arguing circles about the merits of 80s music and new wave nostalgia. But their favorite pastime is complaining. Every day, at least one person will gripe about hearing a song on the channel too often, or a song they don't think should be classified as "new wave." In fact, so many people have complained over the years about the song "Joey" by Concrete Blonde that it's become a running joke in the forum.

"Joey" is a polarizing song, and it IS perplexing that 1st Wave plays it repeatedly. It's a decent tune, but it's far from "new wave." Had "Joey" been released in the mid-90s, it would've been an alternative rock hit. But it pre-dated that movement by a couple years, so Sirius lumps it onto First Wave, where it sticks out like a sore, grungey thumb. 

And yesterday, like clockwork, some random stranger joined the forum just to post, "Dear 1st Wave, please stop playing Joey by Concrete Blonde, as it is not new wave. Ridiculous." This caused a dozen other people to start chiming in, while I sat back with popcorn to watch people yell at a radio station in a forum that the radio station probably doesn't know exists.

Eventually, I posted a snarky comment aimed at the haters. I used the lyrics to ANOTHER song -- the 1st Wave mainstay "Panic" by The Smiths. The chorus to "Panic" goes, "Burn down the disco! Hang the blessed DJ, because the music they constantly play says nothing to me about my life." I changed it to "Burn down the Facebook! Hang the blessed DJ because the Joey they constantly play says nothing to me about new wave."

Minutes later, the great robotic judges of Facebook flagged my post claiming I was legitimately advocating for arson and lynching. Yep, I was banned for posting "violent" lyrics from The Smiths, a band whose frontman Morrissey would often lip-sync into a bouquet of gladiolas and might very well be the lone person on Earth I could beat up, were I ever to become a punch-throwing member of society.

So look out, people. I've experienced my first official dose of rebellion. It's a gateway drug to a life of sin and wickedry. In no time at all, I expect to be ripping tags off mattresses with carefree abandon.

Then again, maybe I AM a bad boy. Several people recently sent me an article about a man suing the Las Vegas police because he was mistakenly arrested earlier this year. He's a 23-year-old black man, and it turns out the criminal the cops were after was a 51-year-old white guy. The only thing this poor guy had in common with the wanted felon was his name: Shane Brown. Gulp.

It's not me, I promise. They eventually arrested the right Shane Brown, and he DOES look like a bad boy. I need to step up my rebel game if I'm going to compete with THAT dude -- so if anyone needs me, I'll be wearing white after Labor Day and burping in public while unnecessarily driving repetitively on the Avenue of the Cities. If you've got a problem with that, feel free to write me on Facebook. You can expect a response in 46 hours and 20 minutes.    

COLUMN: Where Did 4th Grade Go?

Last week, I learned with some sadness of the passing of my third grade teacher's husband.

Memories of grade school are fuzzy, but they're warm fuzzies -- the warmest of which hail from third grade. My teacher that year was amazing, and I remember a classroom filled with music, laughter, encouragement, equality, and support. She was the real deal, and I'm happy we're still in touch.

If there's one thing my mother and I share, it's our mutual sense of caring and compassion. Well, and our mutual love of gossip. I wasted no time calling home to pass along the news to Mom.

"Oh, that's sad," my mom said. "She was your fourth grade teacher, right?"

"Nope," I replied, "she was third grade. Fourth grade was... umm..."

And then it hit me. Or, rather, it DIDN'T hit me. I had no earthly idea who my fourth grade teacher was. My mind drew a complete blank. I remember all my other teachers clearly. But FOURTH grade? It's like it didn't even exist. 

I am nothing without my noggin. My brain contains every essence of my personality, my life's precious memories, and a comprehensive database of what I'd reckon to be 134,704 different songs that get awkwardly stuck in my head for no particular reason. (Today's was "Obsession" by Animotion. You're welcome.) There's no way my brain could let me down and wipe all of fourth grade from my memory. But, alas, it has. My autobiography jumps from third grade directly to fifth.

Now, I SUPPOSE you could say I'm not exactly a spring chicken anymore, and the dimming of distant memories is perfectly natural. It might even be possible to think my brain just (gasp) isn't exceptional and perfect. 

Naw. That's silly talk. My brain's awesome and I'm a genius. This leaves only one rational explanation: Clearly, somewhere along the way, I have been abducted by aliens.

I've watched enough paranormal documentaries to know when my brain's been monkeyed with. I've watched countless testimony of people who claim to have been sucked out of bed and beamed aboard motherships where they were poked and prodded before being deposited back to Earth with strange gaps in their memory. Darn you, aliens!

Obviously some interstellar visitors must have been toodling past in their UFO, caught a load of me and my massive intellect, and wanted to study my tremendous brain and its wealth of human knowledge within. And they obviously must have kept my fourth grade memories as a souvenir. As the hard-hitting journalist I pretend to be, I needed answers.

I've lost touch with most classmates from those days, but I found three on Facebook, so I sent them identical messages. This wasn't awkward at all, considering I can count on one hand all the words I've said to them collectively since the 1970s. But that didn't stop me from greeting my long-lost friends with, "HELP! Who was our fourth grade teacher? DID WE HAVE ONE? WAS I ABDUCTED BY ALIENS?!" 

The first to respond was Dee, a fellow Galesburg ex-pat who also now calls the QC home. She couldn't remember, either. "But I just messaged Amy T. She'll know."

Amy Z. was the next to respond. "I think I remember his name," she said. "I can't picture his face, though. I just messaged Amy T. She'll know."

I don't ever fancy being a fly on a wall, but I would've liked to have seen Amy T.'s face when she innocently opened Facebook to be assaulted by three names from the distant past all urgently demanding the name of our fourth grade teacher. To her credit, she DID know, and it WAS the name Amy Z. remembered as well. The name sounds right, but I still can't picture the guy or anything that happened in his class.

Clearly he had an immense impact on my life. I'm not saying he was a bad teacher. He might have been a great teacher. He might have been a Martian. I have no conscious recall either way, and that's a bit alarming. But it's refreshing to know my classmates are fuzzy on it as well. Either memories fade over time, or the spaceship that abducted me was big enough for our whole class to fit.

Maybe it was just a forgettable class. Maybe I learned my 134,705th song, reached the capacity of my brain's hard drive, and something had to be deleted. Maybe I'm just a human being with flaws and forgetfulness.

Or maybe that's exactly what the aliens want us to believe.

COLUMN: #Canceltok

I think it might be high time that we consider cancelling cancel culture.

There are several online content creators who spend their days gleefully destroying people's lives in the name of moral crusading and social justice. Is it deserved? Oftentimes, yes. Is it fun to watch? Absolutely. But is it super dangerous and a giant red flag as to where society's headed? You betcha. 

It's no secret that our world is full of truly horrible garbage nightmare people. Racist, sexist, and just plain awful folks live and walk amongst us every day. They always have. But in today's world, if you're a terrible person doing terrible things in public, there's a good chance someone's pointing a camera phone in your direction and your terribleness could live on the internet and haunt you FOREVER.

That's what the cancel-culture creators do. They post videos of awful people being awful, attempt to identify the offenders, and then sit back whilst the internet ruins those people's lives by any means necessary. They'll deluge the offender with calls and messages. They'll find that person's employer and deluge THEM with messages. They often won't stop until the offending party has lost their job, their reputation, and their livelihood.  

Is it fun to watch? Oh, for sure. There's nothing more satisfying than watching jerks get what's coming to them. But after you've watched a few of these videos, that allure goes away and you're left with the realization that watching terrible people suffer terrible consequences is... kinda terrible. It just makes me feel gross about humanity in general.

A couple weeks ago, video came out of a terrible person being terrible to the young staff of a smoothie shop. The irate customer yells and screams at the clerks, throws a glass violently, and at one point unsuccessfully tries to gain access to an staff area while the frightened clerks call 911. Then he calls one of the employees a "dumb immigrant" before the video cuts off. It's a hard watch.

There's absolutely no excuse for such behavior. Its reprehensible and shouldn't be tolerated by any society that calls itself civilized. Content creators pushed the video viral, and in no time at all uncovered the identity of the jerk and put his name on the internet for all to see. Not only was the guy found and arrested, but he was also fired from his lucrative finance job at Merrill Lynch. 

Kind of a feel-good story, right? It's great to see a garbage human held accountable for his garbage actions. But then a few days later, more information came out.

It turns out the guy was having a meltdown because hours prior, he had been in the shop and ordered a smoothie for his son. Due to miscommunication, he was given a smoothie that contained peanuts. His son is deathly allergic, suffered a bad reaction, and had to be ambulanced to a hospital. 

Does that give him the right to hurl racial epithets and glassware at the employees there? Absolutely not. Like I said before, there's no excuse for his actions. But should any consideration be given to the circumstances? There's no justification for racism or violence EVER, not even on your worst day. But have we all said and done sincerely stupid things in our worst moments that we later regret? Absolutely. This guy DEFINITELY needed to learn a lesson, but did he deserve his life and his family's income to be irreparably destroyed? 

I honestly don't know. And that's the point -- what gives any of us the right to cast final judgement? I'm certainly not qualified for the job. Are you? There are people out there qualified to judge. They're called judges. As much as I seethe when I see anyone treated with disrespect or pointless hatred, I also don't want to find myself succumbing to the same hatred by casting judgement from miles away behind a keyboard. When smoothie guy got fired, the TikTok creators who made it go viral then posted videos of themselves gleefully dancing jigs for destroying this guy's life. 

My fear is that some of these proud cancel-lors are less motivated by social justice and more by a desire to become the self-appointed judge, jury, and executioners of the court of public opinion. If they were only in it for social justice, they wouldn't have merch stores where you can buy their faces on t-shirts and coffee mugs. 

I've been worried about the repercussions of cancel culture for a while, but it might be fixing itself. Last month, someone uncovered evidence that one of the internet's leading cancel-culture crusaders had himself made some pretty questionable posts a decade ago. Now other creators are trying to cancel HIM, and the whole of TikTok's #canceltok is turning on itself. May the strongest survive, I guess.

I'll just sit back, watch with concern, and maybe enjoy a smoothie. I plan on tipping my server well.     

COLUMN: Coroner

People sometimes ask what compels me to be a columnist. Simple: to become famous and all-powerful so I can procure a horde of evil minions to rule the world with an iron fist. Duh.

But let's be honest. My path towards global conquest has thus far NOT been speedy. As of press time, my fists continue to be softer than iron, and so far I've only managed to recruit three minions, and that's only because I feed them and change their litterboxes. They're certainly evil, but I've yet to notice any of them do my bidding (unless my bidding requires hairballs.)

But an opportunity just crossed my path that could change everything.

True story: I just received an e-mail that says, and I quote, "The Rock Island Democratic Party is looking for folks in our county to run for local office. Would you like info on how to run?"

(Cue evil laugh.)

I've never had political ambition in my life. I can barely make eye contact with strangers, let alone govern them. I've been to a few city council meetings, and, umm, no thanks. Unlike Alexander Hamilton, I have no earthly desire to be in the room where it happens. All things considered, I'd rather be in the DJ booth in the dance club down the street from the room where it happens. 

If I'm going to run for office, it needs to be something innocuous. One of those jobs where most people don't even know what it is that you do... Clearly, I need to be your next comptroller (whatever that is.)

I'm pretty sure I have exceptional comptrolling skills. I will troll the meanest comps you've ever seen.

Other candidates might not be brave enough to make bold promises on the campaign trail, but not me. I'm a man of action. When you elect me, on my VERY FIRST DAY in office, I promise to waste no time before looking up the word "comptroller" in the dictionary to find out what it means. Heck, I'll do it right now.

Oh. Never mind. It involves numbers. Yuck. I can barely keep track of my OWN money, let alone anyone else's.

Trolling comps is a no-go for me, but that doesn't mean I'm thwarted. I just need to find some other public office that would be a perfect fit for a nerdy newspaper columnist with an extensive resume of music collecting, litterbox cleaning, and television consumption. There's only one obvious choice.

I need to be your next coroner.

Sorry, current Rock Island County Coroner Brian Gustafson. I've never met you and you seem like a decent guy. But the people demand I seek public office, and coroner seems pretty swell. I might not have any experience, but I did watch that one episode of "Quincy, M.E." where he confronts the troubling and dangerous fad of "punk rock," so I think I've got the basics down. (Off topic: If you haven't seen that episode, seek it out. It's magic.)

There's only a couple roadblocks to me being your next coroner: I have no medical experience and no earthly desire to ever see anyone's innards. But I have a plan: If you elect me coroner, I'll skip the icky innards and save a ton of time by simply labelling everyone's cause of death as "sexual misadventure." Not only will the county save money on fancy autopsy equipment, but if every death in town suddenly gets attributed to salacious and tawdry unmentionables, we could probably heat the entire county on the power of water-cooler gossip alone. Clean, renewable energy derived from pure, locally-sourced rumor mills. Good for the environment, good for Rock Island.

But alas, my dreams of public office were dashed once I discovered I'd have to quit THIS job. If I ran for office, I'm pretty sure the paper in fairness would have to legally give humor columns to anyone else running for the same office -- and if there's one thing prospective coroners are known for, it's their ability to make people laugh. I don't need competition like that in my life.

So, Rock Island Democrats, I sadly decline your kind offer -- for now. Maybe someday. Until then, I'll be hanging out with my minions and launching an exploratory committee (which will likely involve watching many more episodes of Quincy, M.E.)