We all need a break periodically if, for nothing else, so that we can process all of the dumb stuff we encounter every day … and, make no mistake, we need to address dumb stuff out in the open, clear it from our mental queue, or else we will all be stricken with a higher level of general dumbness.

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Each year around this time Major League Baseball takes an all-star break which amounts to four straight days without any real sports happening in America – it’s a dumb idea. Why do they need a break? The game is not that strenuous and they only work three or four hours a day as it is and they get free sunflower seeds and Gatorade and gum and someone does all of their laundry for them and then arranges their jock strap and socks and cleats in a nice little pile so that they’ll know exactly what to wear every day … enough of the break time already.

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The ESPYs are really dumb. Even a square old dude like me knows that ESPN and sports talk radio and Sportscenter and sports-every-waking-minute is so yesterday. An invented-out-of-thin-air awards show where overpaid sports stars kiss each other’s ass and essentially have a pathetic party for themselves is the epitome of being out of touch and self-absorbed. Nobody cares about your dumb network or the sports cliches you make up or the scores of NBA games or the other unimportant games you try to talk into existence. Dumb idea by a brand that’s too dumb to see that life has passed it by.

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In other sports news, the general population seems to have confused nationalism with a genuine like of women’s soccer. It happens. If it’s America versus the world, in any sport, the Nation can rally a remarkable amount of temporary love and attention. It could be ski jumping or team handball or fuckin’ judo and if the Americans have a chance to win a medal, all of our citizens will be gung ho and all of our televisions will be tuned in. We’re a nation of front runners, we’re not judo fans, we’re winning fans, and so it goes with women’s soccer. No one cared about girls kicking a ball the day before they won the golden soccer cleat and no one cares the day after. It was a state of temporary patriotism … when does football season start?

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Tell me if you’ve seen this one before? A guy goes to a rock concert, stands in line to buy a t-shirt and then as soon as he buys it, he puts it on right over the t-shirt he’s already wearing. This is a breach of concert etiquette going all the way back to Elvis … so dumb. The band shirt was invented so that you can tell the world what shows you’ve been to, it’s a measurement of cool. If you’re at a Sabbath concert in 2018 but you’re wearing a real shirt from a Sabbath show in 1971 then, A) you’re older than dirt and B) you’re a pretty hip dude. Putting on a concert shirt as soon as you buy it is amateur hour, it’s like eating your groceries while you’re still in the store and, besides, it means you’re wearing a concert t-shirt from a concert that hasn’t even happened yet. Stupid is as stupid does.

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How dumb was it that Nike pulled products off the shelf that featured our original thirteen-star flag? Someone complained that the history surrounding the thirteen colonies gave them a tummy ache and made them feel “unsafe.” They implied that Betsy Ross is a big fat white racist. Being so sensitive and politically correct so that we can’t learn from our collective history is dumb and so is name-calling and race-baiting.

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Using a credit card to make a purchase at a snack vending machine is dumb. And making said purchase because you don’t walk around with that kind of cash – $1.25 – makes you a dummy. Why? Because purchasing a little fuckin’ bag of CornNuts should never require a bank transaction. Because have you seen the dudes that service vending machines? The guy with a thousand little keys hanging from his belt loop and a cardboard box full of random snacks that have been sitting in his front seat since 1993? Why would you give your PIN number to that guy or his company? If you’re fortunate enough to have a debit card, then you should put a little more thought into your food purchases, and here, try this, take your card to the bank and withdraw one twenty-dollar bill, ask the teller if you can exchange it for one ten, one five and five ones. Then put two of the one dollar bills in your velcro wallet and think about how liberating it is to walk around with money.

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You know, being a bum or a hobo was a perfectly good occupation before f’n homeless people had to go and spoil it. There was a day when, as a hobo, you could ride the rails, have a cool knapsack on a stick, warm your hands by a drum fire and generally live off the land. Hobos stayed out of town and no one was afraid of them, they were just free spirits who maybe lacked some interpersonal skills and wanted to get back to nature. Now the hobo and the bum has been replaced by a “homeless person,” a catchall term that’s inaccurate and really dumb. The term homeless implies that a dude has simply lost his home, he can’t find it. In point of fact, the thing he’s lost is his fuckin’ mind, his common sense and any semblance of personal pride. People and publications and media call him homeless hoping that society at large will feel sorry for him – if only the poor fucker had a home. It’s a political tactic designed to make homeless guy a victim when in actuality it is the rest of us – mainstream society – that is the victim. And it would be crystal clear that we are the victim here if we stopped using the dumb term homeless and started calling these people what they are – criminals, addicts, perverts, slackers, derelicts. Labels that distort the truth are dumb.