Learning From Mistakes

TOTALLY MADE-UP STORIES 
#1   August 1949, somewhere in America:

Shortly after penning the catchphrase,"Happiness is a warm Pussy", a struggling unknown cartoonist we'll call Charlie S. capitulated to the moral edicts of the church ladies on the editorial board of the local newspaper.

Charlie reluctantly changed the line to puppy and his beloved Mr Whiskers was turned into a dog called Snoopy...

and the rest is history.

The Generation GAPS
There are actually several Generation gaps, none of which may interest you in the least. Well TFB I think it's fascinating.


"You don't know your past, you don't know your future." Ziggy Marley


Because nobody cares aboot Canadian Demographics or Politics, we will examine the American population distribution which is basically the same as Canada anyway, just 10 times larger.

If you look at the Democrat/Republican Party split between the cohorts, it is never more than a 3% diff, so basically a 50-50 tie. The good news is that Independent candidates are continuing to grow in popularity.


Gen Y 100 million
The Gen Yers are the techno-cyber generation who are already changing our world. There are aboot one bajillion of them, and they are going to do whatever they want, and I'll be dead in a few years anyway so.. whatev!
b. 1985-2010
25 yrs old and under
38% Dem 33% Rep 29% Ind
"As a homegrown labor force of epic size, they will stop immigration cold and restore manufacturing."

Gen X 69.5 m
The Xers have always lived under the shadow of the Boomers and Reagonomics and they seem to be perpetually pissed off about everything. I am absolutely certain that they will introduce 'Youth'anization drive-thru clinics to kill off the Boomers asap.
b. 1965-84
26-45 yrs old 
38% Rep 36% Dem 25% Ind
"The housing market is tanking because Xers lack the critical mass to buy up the Boomers’ starter castles and will torpedo Social Security."

Baby Boomers 78.2 m
The Boomers are still waiting for their parents' generation (Silents) to die in a timely manner so that they can finally make some "real" change.
Grasshopper, what is the sound of one foot tapping?
b. 1945-65
46-65 yrs old 
37% Dem 35% Rep 27% Ind
"Boomers won’t stop spending beyond their means and will bring strong opposition to the religious right and finally legalize marijuana."

Silent Generation 35.6 m
The Silents who all smoked like chimneys, ate red meat 3x day, drove drunk without the kids in seatbelts, and tossed garbage out the fkn car window....are already starting to crash the Health Care system.They will squander Trillion$ of the Boomers inheritance by trying to live forever.
b. 1925-45
66-85 yrs old
39% Dem 36% Rep 24% Ind
"The remnants of this tiny generation will give us the false impression that the longevity trend has reversed and will shut down the assisted-living industry"

GI Generation 5 mish
The last few GIs are not long for this world.They grew up during the Great Depression and they saved Trillion$. They are leaving all this moolah to the Silents, who as I mentioned, are unfortunately trying to live forever, but are actually crashing the Health Care system and squandering the inheritance that should have trickled down to the Boomers.
b. 1900-25
85 yrs old +
41% Rep 39% Dem 20% Ind
"They amassed personal wealth of nearly $11 trillion through saving and still wield corporate influence. The few remaining are living longer because they can afford the best health care. The last of many generations characterized by racial and gender intolerance."


Well, is it too obvious that I'm a Boomer? I tried to be fair..sort of.

Here are some of the sources which I manipulated to back up my half-baked, fanciful notions:The Age Curve, Census, Greenberg Research, and my own rash conclusions.

DEM-ographics
"You cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot."
Frank Schaeffer

I recently received a fabulous book from a very thoughtful Blogger.

It's  The Daring Spectacle by Mark Morford...a "kick-ass, take-no-prisoners, laugh-out-loud-funny Liberal writer, thinker and cultural critic.

"Believe that you are part of a groundswell, a resistance, a seemingly small but actually very large impending karmic overhaul, a great shift, the beginning of something important and potent and unstoppable."

Here is an example of his insightful snarkasm:
How to talk to complete idiots

THE DO-DO-DO

After assembling my last post and putting up all of those goofy era-specific hairstyle compositions, I realised that I have looked the same for about 15 bloody years...how lame is that?

The 1950s

....60s...brushcutz

Thanks to the Beatles, I began fighting with my rents to grow out my hair.

I remember that this was a big deal? Dad would say why do you want to look like a girl?

...mid 60s..started growin' out my bangs!

Now that I look back, I noticed that during the first 12 years, my appearance was constantly being altered as I grew and the fashions changed.

It appears that after the freakin' 60s, I looked pretty much the same for the next 12 years? 

...70s...

That's weird...

I remember my school years as being marked by a different "look" every year...

but obviously, even back then, I looked absofrickinlutely the same for decades?

late 70s...

..80s...

I'm almost 52 and fortunately I have only begun to grey in the last year or so. But, I've had the same "do" for two decades so I'm growing it out.

To hell with it!
I might start off by growing a groovy "shag".
I prolly won't get to the aging Hippy ponytail stage,
but who knows?

..90s...

it got so bad that I wore a fake mullet at parties!

A question for the Men.. 

Aren't you sick of looking the same for decades?

Ladies..

should men my age leave well enough alone or is the Fabio look still uberkewl?

Wow! This is insanely vapid. 

Hey, don't expect anything insightful from me for a while, I've been schlumping on Facebook for 2 weeks! It's so easy!!!

Everyone is on one page and you can just scroll down and read their fascinating "posts" like
...going to bed...let the cat out...exhaling carbon dioxide...found a rabid calf in FarmVille...
waaaay easy, especially when you're like me and blog fatigued from trying to follow 200 blogs!

BUNIONWRECTOMY

Comforting my sole

Like many of you, I am a survivor of well

intentioned excruciatingly painful

medical procedures.

Last year I had the misfortune of having my

junk lasered thanks to a highly contested and

very public court ordered vaswrectomy...

the entire nightmare is meticulously preserved in my archive.

Today I shall try to summon the courage

to relive the horror of my Bunionwrectomy.

You think that's funny eh?

Think you can handle watching 2 short

animations of Buniowrectomy?

I dare you to watch the SAW thingamajiggy

and the DRILL doohickey!

Time has partially healed my wounded sole(s)

and I take a modicum of solace in the

knowledge that there are important celebrities

who are afflicted by this merciless blight.

If you were to Google "Bunion" one would

discover images of not only the legendary

woodsman Paul Bunion,

but also Iman, Oprah, Posh and Paris who

boldly parade about with gnarly feet and refuse

to disguise their disfigurement

...courageous Ladies one and all!

Nowadays everyone knows that bunions are

induced from wearing high heels, but back in the 60s it had not yet been scientifickily proven.

My Mommy still blames herself for the way

she dressed me in grade school...

but I know that my Mommy and her cohorts

of the Baby Boom Era, 

were unaware of the long term effects of

stylish footwear.

By the early 70s my dogs were barkin' on a

daily basis and my Mommy made the

decision to incapacitate me with her "helper",

an ether soaked rag,

then under cover of darkness,

delivered my limp, unconscious, body

to the experimental podiaphile procedures

wing of the Children's Hospital.

When I awoke my arches had fallen and my

very first thought was that my promising

lucrative career in track & field was finito.

The year before I had surprised the staff,

my schoolmates, and myself, by placing

first in 2 sprinting events.

My dream of being a studly jock had vanished!

Now my school days were ruined!

I know that my Mommy mean't well,

but if I couldn't be a Track Star,

how was I supposed to be uber-popular and

procure a perpetual panoply of spontaneous

random sexual favours from biologically

accomodating nymphomaniacal

cheerleaders plagued with self-image issues?

From that day forward I had been sentenced

to the drudgery of serial monotony!

Were it not for the Morphine,

which was totally AWESOME,

I may have fallen into deep despair.

Yet I went on with my life,

and somehow made the most with what

I had left of my now horribly mutilated

and disfigured body. 

Out of the agony of defeet, 

one can find a deeper understanding of Life,

and soothe their sole.

BEAU TIES?

It's not easy to stand out in a world populated with over 6 billion homo escapeons. We're stuck with our given name throughout our lives and most of us were at the mercy of our parents when that happened.

I was born in the 50s when everybody named their kids Debbie, Ricky, Johnny, Cindy, Davey, Kathy, Marky, Billy, Mary and Donny.

My Mom actually spelled it Donnie.

When I was in college I had the bright idea to drop the "ie". Having grown up alongside Donny Osmond I was sick of it. To make matters worse my surname, Coppens, rhymed with Poppins!

So from that day forth, I would just be Donn.
Nowadays $ellebrities or human "brands" demand instant recognition by having an uber-unimoniker like Cher, Madonna, or Donn.

Anyone notice my apparent predilection for these?

Now there are only a handful of people with my surname on this side of the pond. I've been busy collecting other Coppens on Facebook and most of them are still in Europe. They all have cool "euro" names.

So when I google mons nom, I still expect to see something related to moi.

Imagine my surprise when I did a quick check yesterday...OOPS

*Don't forget the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of Law thingamabob..

Bear in mind that I'm much younger and prolly look completely different than the other Donn Coppens.

This sort of thing is bound to happen to all of us as the Interwebs eventually connect all the dots. I also thought that my blog title was quite original until I found this clever fellow .

Have any of you ever encountered a similar incident and proceeded to add another consonant or change your name completely?

"IT" doesn't matter,
Who's Wrong Or Right

Yesterday I left a comment on a Blog posting dedicated to the passing of Farrah Fawcett. The texan beauty whose wholesome face and feathered blonde hair were made famous by her ubiquitous bonerific 70s poster made her rich N' famous. Farrah lived her life and her final showdown with Cancer out in the open.

She was 62.

I stated in the comment section that once MY cohorts (50ish year old celebs born 57.58) start expiring, then I'll start to feeling mortal. The two shiniest stars in my age bracket are Madonna and the most famous person on the planet, Michael Jackson..

shown here as he should have looked at our age.

Some of my other cohorts are:

Sharon Stone, Annette Bening, Madeline Stowe, Holly Hunter, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rachel Ward, Andy McDowell, Jennifer Tilly, Daniel Day Lewis, Gary Oldman, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Bacon, Viggo Mortensen,Christopher Lambert, Tim Robbins and Spike Lee, Prince, Kate Bush, Simon Le Bon, Donny Osmond, Sid Vicious, Joan Jett, Neil Finn, Grandmaster Flash, Paul Weller, Sheila E and Belinda Carlisle, Ray Romano, Jon Lovitz, Denis Leary, Ellen DeGeneres, Bernie Mac, Megan Mullaly, Keenan Ivory Wayans and Dan Castellanta (DOH!) and Osama Bin Hidin.

Then I learned that the frail, tortured, gloved-one had beat it.

Michael was as gifted as he was cursed.

One look at his Father (JW) Joe, a clinic in his own right, and it's easy to see why controversy would shadow his career from the getgo.

A few days ago I had tossed Michael's name in with other famous Bad Dads..mainly because he dangled his child over a balcony...

I should have included his monstrous stagedad!

I prolly got more schadenfreude from Britney's very public meltdown (shame on me) because at least for a while, Michael was a genuine musical phenomenon and trendsetter...thanks in large part to the brilliant Producer, Quincy Jones.


You have to admit, that as far as having "IT", few other performers in the 2oth Century could compete with the innate charisma of Michael Jackson.

Jackson's life has all of the important ingredients required in creating an icon although he would have been better off had he passed after Thriller.

At that point he was still hip N' happenin', before the scandals and scalpels era which has overshadowed his showmanship for well over a decade.

Timing is everything in Show Biz/Life.

A huge part of being an Icon is the whatif factor...

what if James Dean had made 4 movies?

What if Marilyn wrote a tell all book about the Kennedys?

What if Martin Luther King had to face the music about his adultery?

Humongous Elvis trolling around the slot machines in his jumpsuit...we don't want the truth..we can't handle the truth.

These STARS should have been taken down a notch that's what! Their stock should have dropped when all of the evidence is in right?.

Most people assumed that Jackson was descending into weirdness even if he had soldout his London concerts. Most of us figured that he was "done" and headed for his Vegas-Elvis stage...wow that would have been a perfect ending :)

Unfortunately Reality dillutes the Fantasy.

Icons, are essentially a Lie.

We choose to believe and cherish the good stuff.

The empathy factor overrides the culpability and voila..a teflon icon is born.

Thanks to the Internet, the frail bleached performer will become an instant Icon, in the truest sense of the term. Unlike most of the present I-Cons who are fabricated pretentious poseurs or I-conjobs (infamous for trying to be famous) Jackson actually deserves to be famous.

I wonder if Michael had any real friends who looked out for him?

Maybe Liz Taylor?

Taylor certainly knows how fickle fame can be. She was also a child star who was later villified as a slut and then reborn as an Aids crusader.

Being a Celebrity SUCKS.


The troubled man who never had a childhood, and chose to live as a child in his adult years (because he could afford to do it) won't need to worry about what other people think about him anymore.

The great thing about being an Icon is that we, the great unwashed, remember the good stuff...it's called selective memory. Jackson will now take his rightful place in the pantheon of the American Iconosphere.

You either have IT or you don't and his lyrics in the song Beat It testify...

IT doesn't matter,

who's wrong or right.