Running From a Stop and Frisk

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On February 18, 2014, I was walking home on Martel Avenue in Los Angeles, CA heading north from an acting class at my union at 5757 Wilshire Boulevard at about 10:30 or 11:00 pm, which I’ve been doing for fifteen years. At Santa Monica Boulevard, Martel becomes Plummer Park for a block, and I proceeded. As I entered the park, I noticed there was a Sheriff’s patrol car idling to the right of the path that cut through the park. As I passed the vehicle, the Sheriff nodded to me and I nodded back. Once I passed, the Sheriff started inching towards me on the path. I thought he wanted to move on to the path, which was paved and wide enough for a vehicle. I stopped, stepped off the path, and waved for him to pass.

He didn’t want to pass. He stopped. He didn’t say anything. When I could see that he didn’t want to get on the path, I got back on and started walking again. As far as I could tell, I was proceeding into the park with his permission. He started following me again, exhibiting predatory behavior. What I did not know, and what the Sheriff did not tell me, was that the park closed at ten.

When I started walking again, the Sheriff pulled up next to me and began asking me questions. He did not say why he was asking me questions. The Sheriff didn’t tell me the park was closed because he wanted me in the park to create probable cause to “stop and frisk” me. He was corrupting the law for his own unconstitutional purposes. He had two opportunities to tell me the law, but he didn’t want me to know the law.

 “Where are you going?” He asked.

“Home,” I said.

“Where’s that?”

I told him the name of the street.

Then he asked me another question. I can’t tell you what it was. He was violating my fourth amendment rights. I had stopped listening. He repeated the question. He had not identified any probable cause to question me. This was an unconstitutional “stop and frisk.” I ran.

Why did I run? I hadn’t really done anything, but it’s been my experience, after living in Los Angeles for over twenty years, that innocence or guilt really doesn’t matter.  In Los Angeles, you’re either a policeman or a suspect. Not all, but a lot of the police in Los Angeles are just bullies with badges. West Hollywood Sheriffs start out as county prison guards, and some regard everyone as their prisoners. They do their job if you’re guilty, but they do the same job if you’re innocent, because everyone is their prisoner. To them, the City of West Hollywood is an extension of the county jail.

            I did not have the intent to run. I just found myself running.  It was an involuntary reaction to a perceived danger. I’ve been traumatized by the police in Los Angeles. I did not feel safe. Running was instinctual.

            The Sheriff later told me he profiled me because I had long hair and was wearing a long coat. He was convinced I had drugs. But while he was profiling me, I was profiling him. The last time I got “stopped and frisked” by the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department, the Sheriff got friskier than a TSA agent.

            During this “stop and frisk,” I was sexually assaulted. It was more of a “stop and molest.” My civil rights weren’t the only thing being violated. During this “stop and frisk,” the Sheriff asked me a series of questions that were similar to the questions the Sheriff in the park was asking. I was wearing a back-pack and he asked to search it. I let him. I was also wearing a penis and he asked to search that, but not in those words. He said, “I’m going to frisk you now.”

            When he put his hand in my left pocket, he went right. He was fondling me long enough to know I didn’t have testicular cancer. The West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department had a new slogan that day: “to protect and service.”

            Once I had escaped the danger in the park and crossed Fountain Street, I stopped running and resumed my path on Martel. As I said, it was a fight or flight panic response. When I felt safe again, I stopped running. It was a flashback to a sexual assault by a West Hollywood Sheriff.

About three quarters of the way down this block of Martel, between Fountain and Sunset, the West Hollywood Sheriff’s patrol car from the park pulled up next to me in a screeching halt. The Sheriff jumped out of his vehicle and seemed extremely emotionally distressed.

I remained still. The Sheriff grabbed my right arm from behind and pushed me towards the back hood of the nearest car. He said, “Move to the car and stand up against it.” He pushed me down on the hood. I broke the fall with my left hand. A second Sheriff had arrived and he told me to spread my legs.

At this point other Sheriffs were arriving. Eventually there would be up to ten Sheriff’s patrol cars swarming the street. They parked across both lanes with their lights flashing and shut down traffic.

While one Sheriff held my right cuffed arm behind my back, the one from the park was on my left side and he had his hand around my wrist. He said, “Put your left hand behind your back.”

I was suffering from a long standing painful injury in my left shoulder. I had already scheduled a doctor’s appointment regarding it for the following Tuesday. I said, “I have a shoulder injury.”

He then emptied half a bottle of pepper spray into my eyes, onto my glasses, my face, my hair, and my clothes. He then repeated his order: “Put your left hand behind your back.”

The fact that he had assaulted me with half a can of pepper spray did not change the fact that my shoulder was in pain. I said, “I have a shoulder injury.”

He emptied the rest of the can into my eyes, on my glasses, my face, my hair, and my clothes.  Then he grabbed my arm and put it behind my back anyway, which he could have done without emptying a can of pepper spray into my face. I never resisted. This was just something he wanted to do. I’m sure if he had more pepper spray, he would have asked me again. This is what bullies do. It’s what thugs and cowards do. It’s what the police in America do to subjugate the population.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of being assaulted by your local police, when you are assaulted with pepper spray, you are immediately blinded. Mucus glands are stimulated to try to relieve the body of the alien chemical combination that has attacked their host. My eyes teared up and my nose started to run.

They already had me in cuffs so I said, “Is somebody going to wash these chemicals out of my eyes?”

One of the Sheriffs, I couldn’t tell you which one because I was blinded, said, “The fire department is coming. They’ll wash it out.” This seemed reasonable. The fire department often administered first aid and there was a station a couple of blocks over.

Chemical weapons are frowned on in warfare, but I say kudos to the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department for not reading the Geneva Convention. They’re still working on the Constitution, particularly Amendments IV and XIII.

            I was thrown into the back seat of the patrol car and the doors and windows were closed. Not even a window was cracked, which a civilized person wouldn’t do to a dog, although they might do it to a squirrel in the park after ten.

            The thing you should know about pepper spray in an enclosed space is that it recirculates and intensifies. It does not dissipate. The Sheriffs knew this. They were deliberately torturing me, which is a violation of the eighth amendment.

To further exemplify this violation of my eighth amendment rights, the back seat door on the driver’s side opened up, and one of the Sheriffs sat next to me, I assume it was the punk from the park, although, through his amazing grace, I was blind and could not see. He proceeded to ask me a series of questions culminating with, “Were you in the park?” He was essentially questioning me under torture to get me to say I was in the park after ten.

I answered his first couple of questions, which I do not recall---either the questions or the answers. My senses were still reeling from the shock and awe of the police swarm and the gas attack. It’s very much like what happens to the memory in an accident. The purpose of shock and awe is to stun and traumatize. I told him, “I cannot make a statement in this condition.”

At no time during my incarceration was I read my Miranda rights.  They just kept saying over and over again that I was a drug dealer. “Where are the drugs? People who look like you usually have drugs!”

I said, “I’m just a citizen,” which became my mantra throughout the booking process. “I’m just a citizen!”

Profiling is not probable cause. Any spider can catch a fly if it spins a web.

The longer I remained in the car, the more torturous the recirculating gas became. We must have remained in that area for over an hour. As I said, the Sheriffs swarmed. They were probably canvassing the area for the stash they thought I had dropped. They were stupid, but they were honestly stupid. They couldn’t fathom why anyone would run from a “stop and frisk.” ‘Don’t you like to be molested?’

At one point two Sheriffs got in the front seat, I couldn’t say who because I was still blind, and they taunted me for being handcuffed in the confines of the back seat of the patrol car with recirculating gas. “Gee I’d hate to be in here. It smells like pepper in here. I’d hate to be in here.” They were like a couple of giggling stupid high school jock bullies.

So being the only adult in the car, I said, “That’s real nice guys. Mock me. That’s very professional.”

This flustered them. After all, I’m a fifty-two year old man and these were children---punks with guns, tazers and pepper spray. They acted like punks, punks who had been caught. They tried to act like they were talking about something else: “Ooh, this pepper candy is hot.”

“Yea, pepper candy.” They jumped out of the car.

At some point another Sheriff opened up the front door and stuck his head in and I repeated my request to have my eyes washed out. “A medic is coming,” he said. No medic was coming.

At another point I wanted to kick out one of the windows, but that would not have helped my situation.  All I could do was scream and that is what I did. It wasn’t a scream to accomplish anything. It was not a call for help, it was a venting.

The screaming didn’t do anything, so I decided to pretend I was having a seizure. If I pretended to have a seizure, they’d have to open the doors and let in some fresh air. I pretended to have a seizure. They didn’t open the back door or crack the windows. At one point, a Sheriff stuck her head in the front door and said, “Are you all right?” I didn’t respond. Nobody opened the back door or rolled down a window.

After a short interval, I pretended to have a second seizure with similar results.

I asked for a third time for someone to wash the pepper spray out of my eyes. I was still blind, so I couldn’t tell you who said, “You can wash it out when you get to the station.”

I said, “That’s great. You bring the disease, but you don’t bring the cure. That’s very professional.” This became my second mantra.

After being tortured in the back seat for an hour or more, the Sheriff got in the car and took me to the West Hollywood Sheriff’s jail for processing. I asked to wash the pepper spray off, but they told me I could wash it off when I was put in a cell.

I got put in a holding area while the arresting officer interviewed me from behind a glass barrier. He said I was lucky it wasn’t before the Rodney King beating because then they would have beaten me. The Sheriff who processed my release gave me a similar warning that I was lucky I wasn’t beaten---typical bully behavior.

They put me in a cell and I tried to wash off the pepper spray with no success. There was a tiny push button cold water sink that was set up to be more of a drinking fountain. Trying to wash off the chemical just reactivated it. They would not let me take a shower until the next afternoon, shortly before they released me. I had to sleep on my back. If I slept on my face or side, I would just be inhaling the pepper spray. It was freezing in the unheated cell and I couldn’t use my coat because it had been doused in the chemical.

I grew up in a different America. I doubt if Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison or Benjamin Franklin ever envisioned a country where the state regularly molests citizens, whether in “stop and frisks” or the TSA. This is what occupying armies do. This is how you terrorize a population into submission. Maybe we should amend the third amendment to include “no officer of the law shall molest the citizens.”

Perhaps my interpretation of the constitution is out of fashion, but if it doesn’t come back, this country will not last long. I acted like a citizen with constitutional rights. The West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department acted like I was a prisoner in their county jail. I’m a citizen, not a suspect, or a prisoner. I am a free man. My rights are unalienable and not granted by the state.

The West Hollywood Sheriffs are a protected criminal class of prison guard thugs. They have no regard for the constitution or civil rights. They are the Hells Angels at Altamont. I was assaulted, mugged, tortured and kidnapped and my property was destroyed. I now have a record and my fingerprints are on file because I was walking home through a public park.

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Trippitorial - Privacy and the N.S.A.

I started following the N.S.A. on Twitter. Now they’re following me! I’m glad the N.S.A. is spying on everyone…just in case I lose my car keys, maybe they’ll know where to find them. If it wasn't for the N.S.A., no one would be reading my blog.

Privacy is for the guilty. It’s for the instigators. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you won’t mind the government feeling up your girlfriend. And your girlfriend won’t mind the government feeling her up. By the way, has anybody checked your balls lately?

This is America. Love it---and when you do, use a rubber, because it has a disease. If America were to be psychoanalyzed, I think you’d find it has a military industrial complex, caused by too much love for the mother, and a hatred for the father.

I don’t need privacy. I need a hi-def camera for the next time I jerk off! Privacy is for privates. You want to be an enlisted man?

I love the N.S.A. I just think they ought to pay my internet bill.

Privacy is for the old. I’m young. Young people don’t care about privacy. Young people are sexting each other pictures of their private parts! A lot of parts aren’t even private anymore! Some parts get favorited. Some parts get retweeted. Some parts get their own web series.

Nobody wants privacy. They want followers! Everybody has a website. Everybody’s on twitter and facebook and linked in and vine and instagram and pinterest and YouTube and up my ass! You don’t need the N.S.A. to take away your privacy. You’re taking it away yourself! I’m being poked by grown men on facebook, and I’m not too sure what that means, but I don’t like it.

I’m leaving an internet trail that Hansel and Gretel could follow home, especially if they did a search on Google. Every time I look at a website, Google has an ad for it on the next website. They know where I’ve been. I can’t wait until they know where I’m going, because I don’t.

 Privacy is for the weak. I got nothing to hide, and I hope nobody finds out!

I’m just glad this is being recorded right now. It saves the government the trouble.

You’re better off without privacy. There’s less bullshit. Most people spend their lives trying to cover up all the fucked up things about themselves. They’ll be a lot better off when there’s nothing covered that hasn’t been uncovered by a government agency!

I’m James Tripp, and that’s what you can do with your privacy!

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Trippitorial - The Debates II

The debates are over and it’s about time. If this is the price for living in a democracy, I’m glad I don’t live in one.

The last debate was the debate of the smiley face versus the serious face. Obama had a different face for each debate. Romney just had the one---smiley face. In the first debate, Obama didn’t bring a face. He wasn’t there. In the second debate he brought a smiley face like Romney, but it didn’t fit him. In the last debate he brought his serious face, which sometimes bordered on annoyed. At one point during the last debate, I thought Obama was going to turn to Romney and say, “Mitt, you ignorant slut.”

In the second debate, Romney said he had a five point plan. He never named any of the points in his plan. That’s a good plan. In the third debate Mitt Romney said he had a plan for the future, which he will tell us about in the future.

Romney said pay equity for women was an important topic, but not to him. The first question in the foreign policy debate asked the candidates what they would do if there was a threat from abroad. This sounds like a question for the GOP! “You do what you’d do to any dame who gets out of line. You take away their charge card! And their reproductive rights.”

Romney has a bold plan for day 1 of his presidency: "on day 1, I will name it day 2!" his five point plan has six points. I would prefer 9-9-9.

Romney’s talking point on Benghazi was wrong, but he kept going.

“Go on.” That was the smiling Obama.

Romney wasn’t backing down from his debate prep. “That’s not how we rehearsed it! I just want to make sure you repeat what you said because that’s not what your understudy said in rehearsal.”

“Go on.”

If Mitt Romney gets elected president, he’ll send a Mormon mission to Iran. That’ll get them to disarm, or to zero in on a new target.

Romney’s plan for Syria? It’s worth more broken up.

Romney wants to be the education president, as long as the kids aren’t educated about him. "When I was Governor, our 4th graders came out number C."

When Mitt Romney talked about Israel, he started rhyming: “If Israel is under attack, Mitt Romney has got your back. Word to your mother. And would it kill you to call?”

Mitt Romney said he was a son of a…you’re darn right he is. At one point he referred to the audience as “folks” because he’s “folksy.” Mitt said he wanted to be America’s leader, but he needed the support of American voters and the support of magic underwear.
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Trippitorial - The Debates

If I learned anything from the vice presidential debates, it’s that clearly, Joe Biden likes a good laugh. Laughter is the best medicine, although that’s not what the Doctor wrote on my prescription. I wonder if my stand-up act could get as many laughs from the Vice President as Paul Ryan’s answers. If Joe Biden was in the audience, I’d book Paul Ryan to headline a night of comedy.

I expected them to be standing at podiums like the presidential debate. Instead, it looked like Charlie Rose, although this Charlie had long, blond hair. Joe Biden acted like a schoolmaster and Paul Ryan was Peck’s bad boy. I was expecting the vice president to give him the switch. “Stop lying, boy!”

Biden was the big dog, Ryan was the puppy. Biden schooled the boy. Paul Ryan got his ass kicked. He needs to go back to the gym. What distinguished Paul Ryan was how much water he drank. He must have been getting a work out. “I have to stay hydrated.” He probably needed to pee half way through the debate. No wonder he didn’t do better.

If that debate were a prison, Paul Ryan would have been Joe Biden’s bitch. It was like shooting a dead horse. I think I heard Karl Rove's head explode during the debate, which may be a good thing.

Joe Biden’s face stole Ronald Reagan’s line, "There you go again!" He also alluded to another vice presidential debate when he said, "Now you're Jack Kennedy." That joke always works.

When asked what he could give to this country that no one else could, Paul Ryan said, “Honesty.” He is a pretty honest guy except for that answer. He didn’t even believe it himself. He couldn’t finish saying it. When he caught himself saying what he was saying, he tried to stop himself from saying it, but it was too late, because he had already said it, so he just started talking about something else. That’s why Joe Biden was laughing.

Maybe Paul Ryan would be a good student government vice president. I’m not so sure about Vice President of the United States, or on second thought, student government vice president.

Paul Ryan’s smile was even more uncomfortable than Mitt Romney’s. Romney had a smile on his face the whole debate that made me wonder about the material from which his magic underwear was made. “Boxers or magic underwear?” Whatever magic underwear he was wearing for the first debate, he should keep wearing them. Not only are they magic, they’re lucky too.

Romney finally figured out how to win a debate. Defund the moderator. PBS is too Big Bird to fail.

The first debate was on domestic issues. Romney prepared by making sure all his household servants had their green cards. Domestic issues. Hmmm…

I would have liked to see a debate between candidate Mitt Romney for President vs. candidate Mitt Romney for Governor. I wonder who would win. Candidate Mitt Romney for Governor showed up at the first debate. Obama wasn’t expecting that. He was prepared for that other Romney. But Romney thought, “This would be a good time to shake my Etch A Sketch.

“My campaign office will gladly issue a retraction Tuesday for my statement today.” Romney will say whatever you want him to say. His campaign can always disavow it later.

Mitt Romney’s biggest concern in the debate was that corporations won’t buy corporate jets if the corporate jet buying tax break is eliminated. I know I won’t.

Everybody was expecting zingers from Mitt Romney. In preparation for the debate, I drank Red Zingers. That was gonna be my drinking game. I was gonna drink every time Mitt Romney scored with a zinger. It’s a good thing I was already drunk. Mitt Romney needs to take my comedy class.

It was a boring debate. It could have used a streaker…As long as it wasn’t Chris Christie.

I live tweeted the debates this year. Who is reading debate tweets when everyone is tweeting? Nobody. Nobody’s reading anybody else’s tweets. It’s not social networking. It’s social masturbating.

During the debate Romney said he knew what to do with government land; sell it to corporations. There are no small businesses, only small business owners.

The next debate will be in the form of a town meeting. That’s my kind of town.
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Trippitorial - "Doping"

Recently I have been accused by the Olympic committee of using performance enhancing drugs to write my Trippitorials. I would like to categorically deny this. I don’t think the drugs I’m taking are enhancing anything.

No doctor who has seen my act has ever thought there was a drug that could help it. If there was, believe me, I’d be on it. I wish there were drugs that could help me write, or even to understand the things that I’ve written.

I once wrote a joke tripping on acid: “As a child I wanted to be a commercial pilot. As I grew older, I realized, where am I gonna go in thirty seconds?”

A lot of writers do drugs. President Thomas Jefferson used to grow and smoke marijuana. Unalienable rights are something you think about when you’re high, even if you own slaves. It’s like he told Congress, “While I did once experiment with drugs, I never exhaled.”

This is not the first time I’ve been accused of being a dope…doping. When I was in school, a drug test was the only test I could pass.

As a child I had a drug problem. I was addicted to Flintstone chewable vitamins. I had to check myself into the Betty Rubble Center. I wish I was on drugs when I wrote that. Vitamins are a gateway drug.

And remember, the Constitution was written on hemp, but that’s no reason to burn it.
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Trippitorial - "Pledge to America"

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Trippitorial - "Guns Are People"

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Trippitorial - "Election Money"

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Trippitorial - "Supreme Tax"

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"Comedy Nation This Week" - July 6, 2012

Here's today's podcast with panelists Laurie Buckley, Dave Plunkett, James Tripp and host Bill Bronner:

 Panelists discuss the SCOTUS Affordable Care Act ruling, Presidential politics and the weekly Trippitorial.

Trippitorial - Supreme Tax

America’s health care system is ailing and I don’t feel so good myself. The affordable Care Act is compromised legislation. It’s compromised because the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists had to let some of the politician’s staffs write part of it. Instead of implementing a streamlined one payer, not for profit model, it preserves a failed model of limited coverage based on profit, not patient care. It preserves a market not worth preserving and insures increased future profits for those corporations with little thought given to cost containment. This happened because the campaign contributions politicians get from the insurance and pharmaceutical interests are too big to bail.

The for profit private insurance model of health care is a failed model whose life should not be prolonged. It’s time to pull the plug. The constitution does not begin, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect market…”

Chief Justice John Roberts said the penalty for not participating in the private market is a tax. The whole thing is a tax. It’s a tax we can pay to a private corporation, or for a smaller fee, to the government. I would prefer to pay it to the government for a single payer non-profit model like Medicare. The government should not be coercing its citizens to buy products from corporations, although I did recently incorporate.

Probably not since Rome hired private companies to collect taxes from their conquered territories has a citizen been mandated to pay a tax to a private corporation. And we all know what happened to Rome…What happened to Rome?

It’s like the government ordering us to send our taxes directly to Halliburton to pay for the Iraq war with no other bidders. Oh, wait, that happened. Halliburton was essentially the single payer provider for the Iraq war and yes, they did have death panels. But the affordable care act does not have death panels. Private insurers have death panels that deny coverage or delay it until you are dead. “The doctor will see you now…oh. Next.”

Forcing everyone into the private market keeps the unfair market alive. It’s like making us pay for protection: “I’d advise youse to peruse a primary plan from Blue Cross. And I put the emphasis on ‘blue’ and ‘cross.’”

The insurance companies are the pimps of our whore health care system. That’s why you see their executives driving around in pink Cadillac’s.

Corporations want to be people? I say let’s let some of them die. And hopefully they’ll be uninsured. Let some markets die. Corporations may be people, but guess what? I don’t like people.

Mitt Romney says the penalty is a tax unless it was signed into law by Mitt Romney. He’s an idiot. He said he wants to repeal Romneycare, although he may be confused. Republicans would repeal common sense if they had any.

Getting money out of politics is the real cure for health care reform. Any elected politician who is not actively pursuing campaign finance reform is corrupt and should be voted out of office, although he’s probably not in his office. He’s probably at a fundraiser somewhere. And I think that describes most of them.

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"Comedy Nation This Week" - May 25, 2012

Here's today's podcast with panelists Laurie Buckley, Dave Plunkett, James Tripp and host Bill Bronner:

Panelists discuss Net Neutrality, the Facebook IPO, the Space X launch, the latest Trippitorial and more.

Trippitorial - Space

This week, corporate America launched itself into space, and that’s a good place for it. Besides Earth, most of the rest of the Milky Way is unincorporated, which means, according to the United States Supreme Court, no persons live there.

I remember when NASA sent a probe to look for intelligent life on Mars. First, they should look for some here. Of course, instead of a probe, they’d probably use a drone. Maybe there’s some intelligent life in Yemen. Drones are better than probes because if you find an intelligent life form, you can blow it up, especially if it’s more intelligent than you.

Every year, NASA spends billions of dollars trying to contact alien life forms to let them know we're here. Maybe I don't want alien life forms to know that I’m here! You didn't see Native Americans sending up smoke signals to the Europeans: 'come get us!'

We can't let the aliens do to us what we’ve done to indigenous populations, even though we were just kidding. Besides I, for one, don't want to be running a casino in two hundred years. Maybe in thirty years...

Anyway, if man were meant to go into outer space, he wouldn't burn up during re-entry. Oh, you can go up there, you can go right ahead. Just don't come back.

That probe they sent to Mars indicated that there may have been life on that planet. I have enough trouble with the life on this planet. The probe found microscopic bacteria in a Martian rock. No wonder Martians are an extinct race. Who'd have sex with bacteria? Other bacteria, but that's not the point. The point is, if your species is gonna be around in a billion years, you have to be something somebody wants to have sex with. Maybe that’s not the point either.

I knew a girl once who said she'd had sex with aliens. She wouldn't have sex with me, but she had sex with aliens.

That’s definitely not the point. The point is it’s about time someone privatized space! It was getting too expansive.

I claim the second asteroid on the right for Queen Isabella of Spain!

Trippitorial - "Robbing Banks"

Trippitorial - "Side Effects" - May 11, 2012

Trippitorial - "Zoos" - April 27, 2012

Trippitorial - "Words" - April 20, 2012

Trippitorial - "The War On Women" - April 13, 2012

"Comedy Nation this Week" - April 6, 2012

Here’s today’s podcast with me, Laurie Buckley, Dave Plunkett and host Bill Bronner:

Panelists discuss strip searches, CISPA, cell phone tracking, Oaksterdam and more.

Trippitorial - Editorials

I am so tired of people who write editorials. Every week they whine on and on about what they believe and they think that’s what you should believe and if you don’t believe what they believe then you’re an idiot, when all along they’re the idiot.

Who do these people think they are? And why would anybody listen to them? I hope you’re listening.

You don’t see me giving my opinion…unless you’re watching this. And you don’t hear me give my opinion unless you’re listening.

Nobody wants to hear anybody else's opinion. When’s the last time you woke up and thought, “Gee, I wonder what somebody else is thinking?”

Probably never. In fact, most people woke up this morning hoping the person sleeping next to them would just shut-up.

Sure, maybe you have an opinion. Does that mean I want to hear it? No.

Maybe I have an opinion. Does that mean you want to hear it? Of course not.

What do you care what I think? You don’t care what I think? What do I care?

What do I care what you think? If you were thinking, you wouldn’t be listening to me hoping I’d tell you what to think.

Maybe you’re not even listening. How do I know there’s anybody out there? Maybe I’m talking into a microphone for no reason. Maybe somebody ought to write an editorial about that!

What makes somebody think that other people want their opinions? I can’t think of what makes them think that. Maybe that’s something I ought to think about.