THE THOUSAND-EYED GODDESS

I usually leave the job of stating the obvious to those media entities that get paid to do so, but an important truth seems to have fallen by the wayside in our little valley in recent months, and so I find myself forced to remind everyone that...

...If something sounds too good/weird/unlikely/impossible to be true, then it probably is not true.

Is that really so hard to grasp?

So difficult to comprehend?

Or maybe it sounds... too good to be true?

The Greeks were right to depict Rumor as the goddess with a thousand eyes and a million tongues, but they didn’t go far enough with that.

The Goddess Rumor has a thousand very, very near-sighted eyes, a million ears with severe and daunting ear wax problems, and a thousand thick and cleft and otherwise deeply impaired tongues. Regard her not as an authority to be feared or respected, but as a creature worthy of your deepest pity and compassion, like a sick old dog that keeps trying to attack a table leg, thinking it the offending limb of a vandal or burgler trying to invade the family home.

Scary economic times like we’re facing, when we’ve taken it in the shorts in so many ways and are poised, if we sit here and continue to do nothing about the Forest Plan and other delights, to get creamed even worse, do not bring out the best in us as a polis even before the bullshit factory cranks up.

And it only gets worse if we don’t remember to take the output of said factory with all of the seriousness it deserves, a.k.a. none at all, most of the time.

If it sounds at all plausible, by all means investigate it and see if it’s true. Is there physical evidence? Documentation? Horse’s mouth testimony?

But for pity’s sake, if there’s none of that, shut the hell up and find something constructive to do with all of that worry and angst and air. The Forest Plan beckons. Oh, and we’re probably going to war. Remember the outside world, people? There’s a president and a Congress out there who do.