Since we’re talking thankfulness (I assume that’s what the other columnists are writing about this week; I only read Heloise, because I frequently find myself with leftover scraps of fabric for which I need clever hints on making useful), I’d like to mention that I’m thankful to be out of Provo this weekend.
Oh, dear, that sounded like a slam against Provo, and I didn’t mean it to be. I’d better hurry up and clarify before the angry letters start coming– oh, shoot. There’s one already. Man, you angry people are fast!
(Speaking of angry letters, I got quite a few about my hunting column two weeks ago. Several of these letters pointed out that I was wrong when I said deer were harmless, and that a deer could actually hurt you pretty bad if it wanted to.
Of course. Hunting is done out of self-defense. Thank you for explaining, those of you who wrote letters, many of which contained correctly spelled words.)
Anyway, all I meant was that since most of my friends are college students, Provo can be a bit boring during Thanksgiving weekend, so I’m glad to be out of town. The rest of the time, of course, Provo is a fine place with all manner of exciting activities, including 12,000 movie theaters, 8,000 of which are currently showing “Pokemon.”
I’ve also noticed a lot of people heading down to Johnny B’s Comedy Club to watch the hypnotism show. Many of these people, after seeing just one show, inexplicably return again and again and again as if by some uncontrollable force. Odd.
I saw one of these shows once, and I can sum it up in one word: creepy and strange. The whole point is that the hypnotist can make people’s inhibitions come down. Things they would normally feel embarrassed to do in front of others, they have no problem doing while hypnotized. And that idea is unsettling to me. I mean, there’s a REASON we have inhibitions. (By “we,” I mean “most people.” I have no inhibitions, as anyone familiar with The Naked Story can tell you.) There’s a reason most people are embarrassed to sing in public, for example. It’s because they suck. Why mess with that? Are we so short on professional entertainers that we have to start using mind-control to recruit new ones? I personally know about a hundred amateur performers (actors, singers, strippers, etc.) who would like to be professionals, and who are actually GOOD at it. Let them have a shot. Once we’ve used them up, then I guess we can start drafting the civilians.
I read somewhere that women are more susceptible to hypnotism than men are. Men like to think this means that their minds are stronger than women’s, but as usual, the men should just take out the trash and quit trying to analyze things. The reason men are less susceptible to hypnotism is that most hypnotists are men, and guys have trouble subjugating themselves to other guys. A woman hypnotist could get the men to do anything. In fact, I think hypnosis is at the root of most male/female relationships. The women tell the men what to do, and the men do it. They even use post-hypnotic suggestions: Every time a woman is angry, the man automatically buys her flowers, without even thinking about it. Every time a woman cries, the man automatically apologizes. And so on.
But back to my original point, which I believe was Thanksgiving. I like turkey. Yummm. I’m glad some courageous hunter faced the angry, snarling beast and shot it for me. Hoorah!
You know what this column was originally supposed to be about? The Shane Company radio ads. I was going to segue from Thanksgiving, to being away from Provo, to the things about Provo I won't miss, to the hypnosis thing, to the diamond company radio ads. But I got distracted somewhere along the way, as is often the case.
The slam against hunters was, again, just to make them more angry at me. I can't explain it, but I get some kind of perverse pleasure in having that particular group mad at me. In general, I don't like making people mad (seriously, I don't). But hunters rub me the wrong way, and I enjoy working them up into a dither.
If you've never read Heloise's column, you're missing out. It runs every day in The Daily Herald, as well as in hundreds of other papers. Basically, people send her stupid household hints, like what to do with leftover bread-wrapper twist-ties, and she prints them. She's insane, and so are the people who read her column, and ESPECIALLY the people who write to her.
There really is The Naked Story, and I told it a few years later in another column.
