In the Kingdom of Eric Parker, we don't need Five Fingers; we only need one: the middle!

In the Kingdom of Eric Parker, Vibram Five Fingers (pictured below) and any derivative knock-offs will be banned. We will be a sensitive people who won’t want to creep each other out, and Vibram Five Fingers are creepy. The non-wearer cannot and will not get used to the sight of what amounts to colorful gorilla feet on a human. “But they’re just like going barefoot,” some will say, "which is more natural than your oversized running shoes." The people of the Kingdom will know that when something is being compared to something else, it’s best to go with the original––the thing to which it’s being compared. We will know that when one goes barefoot for long periods of time, human skin is resilient and adapts by creating a less sensitive calloused layer which allows the foot to become just like Vibram Five Fingers before Vibram Five Fingers were compared to being just like bare feet. We will know this because our king, Eric Parker, has lived at the beach, where he spent much time barefoot, walking on hot asphalt, sand, and cement, which, over time, allowed him to walk over the sizzling rocks of railroad beds without pain. So, if one so chooses, one may go barefoot in the Kingdom. But do not expect to get served in any restaurants.

motorized bicycles in the Kingdom of Eric Parker? hell no!

Motorized bicycles, like the one pictured below, will not be allowed in the Kingdom of Eric Parker. In the Kingdom, we will be a people conscious of our energy usage, and we will know it’s an oxymoron to burn fuel on a machine designed to burn only human fat. We will also understand the complexities of the oil markets, that oil is a finite resource and that burning it causes greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which are needed in small amounts in order for humans to exist on earth without ice covering everything, but bad in large amounts because they cause global warming; whereas, human fat is always renewable. And we won’t want to give our money to dictators or cause civil wars because of our energy usage. We will prefer to give our money to ice cream and beer vendors and bicycle shops.

If you install a motor on your bicycle, or even if you’re found disassembling a small motor, say an unused lawnmower (whose use has been banned––push mowers allowed only in areas where lawn grows without elaborate sprinkler systems) with the intent of mounting that motor on a bicycle, you will be thrown in the movie mouse trap (see this post) where we will be safe knowing you will remain for eternity––eating popcorn and drinking Cokes, building human fat––because you are stupid and make poor decisions.

no one starves in the Kingdom of Eric Parker

In the Kingdom of Eric Parker, you are never to utter the phrase "I'm starving," unless you are actually starving. Do you know what it means to starve? Dictionary.com defines it as 1) to die or perish from lack of nourishment, 2) to be in the process of perishing or suffering severely from hunger, and 3) to suffer from extreme poverty and need. So if you don't look like the photos below and you have food in your refrigerator and cupboards and money in your wallet, don't say you're starving; it's insensitive, minimizes the suffering of others, and makes you look like an asshole. Say you're hungry: having a desire, craving or need for food. We all get hungry; we all have a desire and need for food.

In fact, chances are, if you're an American, you are closer to this, which is stuffed:

In the Kingdom of Eric Parker, if you say you're starving, you will get booted. We will strive to be neither starving nor stuffed. Fat to fit, everyone. Let's go!

new restaurants in the Kingdom of Eric Parker!

People misbehave. People are irresponsible. This is why we have laws (religious and secular) and social sanctions, including talking shit: to define and shape what behaviors are acceptable and desirable. But, King Eric, you say, we have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, with liberty above all else. Live free or die! Fist pump! Yeah!

Cool. I understand. I'm with you. But as John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630), told us back in 1645, "For the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake in the country about that. There is a twofold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do as he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts."

I know what you're thinking: Why are you quoting one of those coffee-filter-collar-wearing dudes from the 17th century, bro? What, are you, like, Glenn Beck and shit? You going to get out your oversized Founding Fathers posters and whiteboard? No, I'm not. But the op-ed, "'Family friendly' but don't bring kids," by Ruben Navarrette, Jr., in yesterday's Fresno Bee set me off.

In the piece, he takes issue with Mike Vuick's ban on children under six in his Monroeville, PA, restaurant, McDain's, because Vuick "[feels] that McDain's is not a place for young children. Their volume can't be controlled and many, many times they have disturbed other customers." (Vuick also said he has nothing against children, but he "thinks that crying and screaming in restaurants is the height of being impolite and selfish.")

Navarrette opens by arguing, "None of us were promised that we could make it through our lives without ever being bothered, inconvenienced or made to feel uncomfortable. When that happens––and it will––you do what grown-ups do: Put up with it, or you leave the environment that is causing you so much misery and go someplace else." He also said that "the proper response isn't always a smoking ban, a profanity ban, a fast food ban, etc. Sometimes, all you need to do is speak up and ask people to be more considerate." Yeah, that usually turns out well. Turn that liberty fist pump into a fist-fight!

To answer his first statement, you merely have to rephrase it toward a different situation––sexual harassment, por ejemplo (yes, we speak Spanish poorly in the Kingdom)––to understand how utterly misguided it is. And Even though Navarrette openly admits to being a father of [poorly behaved] young children, it can be assumed. He can't be objective because he clearly has a dog in the fight. (Can we also assume he's also a smoker, since he's so bummed on the successful indoor smoking ban in California?) There are no people less objective than sleep-deprived smoker parents, except maybe pet owners.

Now, I don't want to turn this into a breeders versus non-breeders argument, but the kids in restaurants issue happens to close to my heart since I worked in several restaurants. I cannot tell you how many times parents sat idly by drinking beers or sipping wine while their childabeasts ran wild through the restaurant, or tracked mud in after a ball game (take off your cleats!), or executed something just short of an IED at a table area with food, only to have the parents look up at a clearly frazzled me, shrug and say, "Ha! Kids!" Like being a parent with young children is a free pass to do whatever the hell you want.

Navarrette goes on to admit just this: kids cannot be controlled like "television sets or boom boxes," and, "[When] one of your children is screaming, you aren't thinking about people at 'neighboring tables.' [. . .] you're just trying to put the fire out." Well, dude, if something is on fire and can't be controlled, I would prefer if you took it outside (to smothering it, of course). Yeah, over there by the sad smokers, twenty feet from the front door.

Look, we all have laws we don't like. I don't like booze being banned on the beach because families don't like a bunch of young and not-so-young drunk people misbehaving. And the bans come down to what Winthrop argued: "liberty to do evil as well as good [. . . but] this liberty makes men more evil."

We're also a democracy and can pass any laws we want, as long as they're Constitutional. We've banned people under 21 from being allowed to buy booze or enter a bar. We've banned people under 18 from seeing certain movies without an irresponsible parent that will allow them to see rated R movies (and we have NC17. Take that, irresponsible parents!). We've banned people under the age of 35 from being President. So if one man wants to ban children under six from one restaurant in some obscure town, not only do I support him, I would eat there every chance I got, just like I prefer bars without smokers.

I guess the thing that bothers me most about Navarrette's argument is the underlying classism involved. If I go to McDonald's and kids are running around screaming, I know I signed up for that. (They have a Play Palace.) On the other end of the spectrum, if you (notice the switch to second person, here) go to the most expensive restaurant in town, and you're dropping serious cash on a meal and wine while a man softly plays the piano in the corner, you're probably going to be bummed if someone's kid orders the anarchy burger. So, really, the battleground is the middle class breeders versus non-breeders.

Horn sounds: I hereby announce that all children in the Kingdom of Eric Parker under the age of six are banned from any restaurant not expressly catering to children. (Don't worry; we're going to have TONS of crazy kid friendly eateries.) Children under five will also be banned on any flights longer than 2 hours. Sorry.

My suggestion to any of the middle class breeders who want to enter McDain's or restaurants in the Kingdom of Eric Parker is to do what all underage people do: get fake IDs. Dress your kids as small people. Use Magic Markers to draw beards on your young sons. Dress your young daughters like those creepy children's beauty pageant contestants.

Navarrette ends his opinion piece with everyone's favorite logical fallacy: the slippery slope argument. He says, "But the real problem with Vuik's proposed 'child ban' is that it's a harmful enabler. It'll only encourage more complaining by customers at 'neighboring tables.'" Next thing you know, those complaining customers will want to ban the post-dinner cabaret and donkey show. And on and on . . .

Did I mention the first children's restaurant in the Kingdom of Eric will be called The Super Duper Slippery Slope Pizza Emporium?

introducing the Kingdom of Eric Parker movie mouse trap maze!

All utopias have controversial ideas and rules. Plato suggested in his Republic that children should be taken from their parents at birth and raised communally in order to avoid favoritism in a true meritocracy. The island in Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia has no lawyers and adultery is punished by enslavement. So I'm not going out on a limb here by introducing the movie mouse trap maze into my Kingdom.

It's simple. Here's how it works: there are two movie theaters in the Kingdom. One that shows brainless movies and one that shows movies with some form of cinematic integrity and purpose.

If you go see a stupid movie, one you can tell from the trailer is totally ridiculous and void of cinematic merit (best current example: Zookeeper), you will exit through a door that leads to another room with two more doors. The door on the left will have a marquee with another stupid movie, say Paul Blart: Mall Cop (I'm not trying to pick on Kevin James, but we all make choices in life), and the door on the right will have a marquee with a legitimate movie chosen by me, of course. To be fair and not expose my own bad taste, I will only choose movies from The New York Times "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made." That gives us a lot to work with and drives home the point that you don't need to watch––and we don't need to waste money and time and valuable resources to produce––schlock.

The movie on the right from the Times "Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made" will have an exit into another theater room, where you will be introduced to another film from the best list. This section of the theater will have ten rooms. After watching ten good movies in a row, you will exit back into the Kingdom, where you can go to a pub or ice cream parlor or bookstore (we're readers) and discuss the great movies you just watched.

You choose the door on the left with the stupid movie again, and guess what? You're ushered into another room with another two marquees. You see where this is going? You will be stuck in a circular movie theater for eternity choosing to watch stupid movies in a liminal space of the Kingdom. Don't worry: all beer and ice cream and books in the kingdom will carry a special small tax to pay for unlimited popcorn and hot dogs and Cokes for those trapped in dumb movie land.

But be careful. As the people who choose to watch dumb movies when there are perfectly good movies to watch numbers dwindle, the need to have the stupid movie theater and produce these films may cease and the theater may close, and then you'll be stuck inside for eternity with people just like yourself. But, hey, you can eat popcorn and hot dogs and drink Cokes and wonder how long this fun time will last. Until you explode!

this is erosterous!

I said in my last post that I was fascinated by how words enter a lexicon and spread throughout a population. When I was just out of high school, I remember hearing about an impressionable young former co-worker whom moved to Tahoe to snowboard and attend the questionable Sierra Nevada College, located in Incline Village, NV. He became the president of, I believe, the venerable snowboard club. As a person who felt he needed to lead, to set standards for his fellow snowboarders attending a questionable college, he sent out an email exhorting them to use the word "solid," meaning "cool," as much as possible, and he would too. Although this word was already in use by questionable students who attended questionable colleges all over the country, he thought by pure exhortation he could cause its use to spread like a sexually transmitted disease. But that's not how these things work. People must decide on their own that a word is cool or useful enough to repeat.

For example, last weekend, I was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for a friend's birthday/graduation/going away party, and I was driving across town to the IHOP with two other friends: Rhodes, who already graduated from the University of Alabama and is about to enter law school, and Angel, who is about to graduate with a degree in religious studies. While these two dudes aren't pedants, they know quite a bit about religious traditions, among other things, and are capable of using big words when needed.

It was no surprise, then, that during our drive, Angel used a word I'd never heard: erosterous. (Quick disclaimer: being an American––even one who has studied English at a state college and holds two degrees––means I have a very limited vocabulary and am extra self-conscious about it.) I sat in the back seat, thinking, What the hell does "erosterous" mean? Will I remember to look it up by the time I get to a computer, or will I just forget it? A few minutes later, the word was casually dropped again, making me feel dumber, because now I'm thinking it's a common word I should know. When we were finally seated in the IHOP and looking over their extensive menu (have you seen the variety there lately?), he let it fly again: "It's completely erosterous."

I said, "You're really into that word today, huh? What does it even mean?" At that point, Rhodes and Angel began laughing and told me it's from a Swedish skit comedy series called Grotesco, which is based on using malapropisms. One of the skits spoofs a John Grisham movie, which is where "erosterous" came from (minute 2:02 of The Trial, part 2):

The funny thing about erosterous's use is that you get its meaning from the context. In the movie, the guy is using a malapropism for "preposterous." Throughout the weekend, Rhodes and Angel kept overusing the word in various ways with various meanings, and by the end of the trip, I found myself occasionally using it as well (welcome to the club, bro). Everything became erosterous or erosterously absurd.

Which reminded me of a community college paper I wrote where the instructor commented "redundant" in red pen above a certain sentence, by which he meant the entire statement was redundant. Instead of looking the word up, I inserted it in the sentence below where it sat, making the edited sentence read, "Vegetarianism has been an age old redundant argument . . ."

So I'm wondering, since most of us pick up words through television and movies and friends, and many of us want to sound intelligent (you're not wearing your hat crooked), yet are too lazy to look words up, could something like erosterous spread? As the ruler of the Kingdom of Eric, I command you to use the word erosterous as much as possible, and I will too. I'm just kidding. Don't. You'll sound like a parrot and an asshole.

false incredulity? really?

I find it fascinating how trends start and spread and disappear. Take, for instance, super baggy cut-off pants. You probably associate them with ravers (remember those fucktards?), but skateboarders started that trend, and then it moved to ecstasy popping, glow stick watchin' fools. Afraid they'd be associated with those kind of people, skateboarders stopped wearing baggy cut-off pants and moved on to skinny jeans (whoops!). I can even tell you, because we're close friends, the exact skateboarder who started the whole dang thing: Jason Pritchard, a little-known am sponsored by Santa Cruz in the early '90s (ask Consolidated Skateboards owner, Birdo).

One of the most fascinating trends to me is the origin and spread of words, phrases, or intonations in a given vernacular. Sure, the nerds over at the Oxford English dictionary do a fairly good job of tracking the etymology of written words through literature, but it seems no one is able to accurately track oral trends. And that's unfortunate, because besides wishing to know whom the first Californian to say "dude" and "gnarly" were, I'd like to track down the asshole who introduced that process of stating something not all that unbelievable and following it up with the false incredulous "really?"

Again, I can only assume the speed by which this trend spread and how deeply entrenched in our culture it is that it originated in office speak by people talking shit. "Kevin just had his seventh cup of coffee. Really? Really? You're going to drink a whole pot?" Yes, some people drink a shit-ton of coffee. Others don't. And I know you're not all that incredulous.

"Kevin just left an original in the copy machine, again. Really? Really? You're going to leave the original in the machine every time?" Yes, some people are more forgetful than others, and at one time or another you probably left an original in the copier. And guess what? It didn't really matter at all.

And then there's the biggest "really?" of the year: the Casey Anthony trial. "You can murder your child and walk free? Really? Really?" Yes, in our justice system the burden is on the prosecutor to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone is guilty of a crime and sometimes guilty people walk and, more often, innocent black men go to jail. Public opinion and feeling someone did something, could possibly be the only one responsible, does not matter. Really, they don't. But you're going to spend months watching a murder trial with no precedent implications (no, you cannot go kill your child now) when you could be watching the Brandon McInerney trial with deeper social implications and precedents (the "gay dude made a pass at me" defense!)? Really?

No, seriously, stop. It hurts my ears every time you say that "really?" I turn my head and look out the window and hope you don't do it again. I can only pray to the holy gods of vernacular trends that this trend passes as fast as women's pirate pants (you know those ridiculous tight knicker-looking capri-ish pants in the late '90s?) and doesn't stick around like "dude."

(this is the closest image I can find to women's pirate pants. but I think they were shorter and had a slit on the side of each leg. remember them? it was a flash and then gone to the thrift store racks.)

But "really?" is going strong. Not even close to dead yet. And I'm not all that incredulous.