Friday, November 11, 2011

Made Up

People misspeak a lot, and when they manage not to it is often because they are saying the wrong thing deliberately, or because they are simply ignorant of the truth. Regrettably, some of the things people say which fall into one of these categories become accepted as truisms. This must be one of those Goebbels things. In any case, I deplore the fact that people would believe anything that is so patently untrue as something I hear all the time.

You'll hear people say, "You can't make this stuff up". Often you hear this after something like a pair of twin brothers both winding up as quarterbacks of their respective high school football teams, and then facing each other in a title game. I'll allow that it's improbable, as are a whole host of scenarios that play out in real life. Is it impossible to make such things up? It absolutely is not impossible. It's very easy- easier in fact than making up the probable.

Why would someone say that you can't make up bizarre or unlikely events? Why would they say such a thing after watching (and enjoying) a movie in which a cyborg police officer triumphs against a cyborg druglord (or something of the like)? I can only conceive of one explanation. Quite simply, they must not be very bright. If they are, then at the very least than it must be agreed upon that they lack any semblance of imagination, and could only concoct a story revolving around people, things and events observable in front of them that very second.

Perhaps I'm making too much of this, and you want to say something snide like, "Boy, you've thought about this a lot". Maybe I have, and maybe I am. Maybe the dissection of this saying is of no importance, and the saying itself doesn't matter. If that's so, then I must retract my prolonged criticism, and I will gladly do so. I reserve the right, however, to wait until people stop doing such a dumb thing as refuting nothing less than the idea of fiction. What could such people be thinking?

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