Sharing ridiculous things we enjoy is a special part of love

By David McElroy · March 11, 2019

I haven’t seen “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” in a long time. It’s not a film classic that comes to mind when people ask about my favorite movies.

It’s more like the comedy equivalent of junk food. The premise is ridiculous. The story is unbelievable. The protagonist is embarrassing. The supporting cast is filled with actors who will look vaguely familiar to anybody who’s seen enough very old sitcoms.

But it’s a movie that makes me happy. It makes me laugh like the child I was when I first saw it on late-night television years and years ago.

I’ve been wanting to watch it again recently, but I haven’t. I downloaded a copy and started, but I turned it off quickly — because I realized that I didn’t want to watch the movie as much as I simply wanted to share it with someone I love.

When we think of being in love with someone, we think of all sorts of romantic things. Our ideas have been clouded by images from romantic films and even by romantic memories we have of times in our own past relationships.

But one of the most underrated aspects of being in love is sharing the things which mean something to us — even if some of the things we want to share are a little ridiculous.

After I started thinking about my desire to share this movie with someone, I realized that this is true of a lot of things for me. What’s more, it made me more conscious than ever that one of my favorite parts of loving a woman is sharing the things that matter to her, even if they’re things which might have otherwise meant nothing to me.

I want to share with someone the places and stories and films from my past which have mattered to me. I want to experience with her the things from her past and present which have mattered to her. How could you possibly love someone and not want to experience the sights and sounds and joys and sorrows that have meant something to her (or to him)?

I’d like to take a woman to a newspaper where I’ve worked. I’d like to be able to show her where I sat and show her the bound volumes of my old work — to point to things I did which I was proud of. I’d like to be able to show her the places that mattered to me.

I’d like for a woman to take me to the places in her past — her hometown and her college and such — for her to show me the places where she had triumphs and defeats early in life, places where big things happened in for her, places which live in her memory even if nobody else thinks about them.

If you love someone, a movie which you might never have paid attention to becomes special — not because it was part of your past or even that you think the film is great, but simply because it meant something to her.

When we love, we certainly share our daily lives — and all the things that go with living a normal human life — but it’s also really important to experience what’s important to the person for years before. It’s important to understand what mattered to that person. It’s important to get to know the likes and loves and passions of that person.

So I’ll save this old copy of this ridiculous old movie. I don’t need to see it all by myself again. But I’ll save it to share with someone — the ridiculous faces of Don Knotts, the scary old organ that plays by itself and the hilarious old spiritualist ladies with their seances.

I miss a lot of things about being in a loving and caring relationship with a woman, but I realize — painfully — that one of the things I miss most is sharing these ridiculous wisps of our shared memories.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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