everything I want to talk about today insists on transitioning into another topic which I do NOT want to talk about, and yet I hate to waste a decent transition.

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Generally, i am not scared of BEARS.

That’s generally, and not for my life.

Unless, however, they wear forest ranger hats, denim pants and no shirts. And also carry a shovel around. A bear may not be able to follow you up a tree, but one with a shovel can certainly swat at you. Or maybe dig up the ground around the tree so you can’t get down without injuring yourself. Why does cb radio jargon in that MAD magazine article from the 1970s that I read in a reprint once refer to the police collectively as “smokey?” Because of that frightful bear who wears the same hat. The scary police who wear brown clothing instead of blue. Is that the natural color or do they just roll around in dirt to make their clothes look more brown and rugged? I always associated that bear with the West and having your car break down on a desolate road in some horrid place and having a sheriffey fellow drive up alongside you and say “you’re not from AROUND here, are ya, son.” Not even a question! Somehow it’s an order, despite no command being issued, and you will be punished for disobeying the non-command. “You’re a LONG way from conneddiggit, BOY.”

Smokey’s not like the cartoon all stars or the ninja turduckens or Kirk Cameron*, who will plead with you to not use drugs and tell you about some fictitious abusers who had hard times. Smokey will point right at YOU and tell YOU to cut it out, lest he maim you with mining equipment. Smokey is scary and he knows it. HE’S not going to prevent forest fires, but he’s going to make you wish you had. Smokey doesn’t beat around the bush; he beats you into the ground for lighting up near a bush. Or maybe he’ll just eat you and use the shovel to dig a ceremonial grave for any bones he doesn’t fancy swallowing. There was an ad recently in which some dirtbag is smoking a cigarette and someone else TRANSFORMS INTO SMOKEY and starts leering at the smoker. Sure, this is because of the FIRE risk of DISCARDING a cigarette carelessly, but it would not be a hard transition to make for Smokey to just hate smokers in general. They’re getting a little too close to his name. Only YOU can prevent Smokey’s lunch.

I have to get a painting painted and framed by Friday. How did that have time to happen?

I like this Smokey from 1944, the year he was introduced. This one has big eyes and big ears, is putting out a fire himself and seems to almost be smiling. I’m not afraid of this one and thus he is not effective and was rightfully phased out in favor of

this wrathful oaf by the time I was paying attention. Forty years of people continuing to start fires anyway will do that to you.

To be fair, however, the same group was using Krauts and Japs to scare childrens around the same time and probably figured bringing in an angry forest beast might be excessive. Or worse, encourage kids to start more fires to burn the brutes alive. Kids these days lack the initiative to start a fire out of spite for a cartoon bear, much less go to a forest for any reason. They’ll drive to your house and murder you for talking trash about them specifically on facebook, but bears are safe.

I stole these off of the slow loading Smokey the Bear website, and I give it credit for not pretending they didn’t stereotype America’s enemies back when that was kewl. However, I’m still not linking directly to it because apparently Smokey is copyrighted and the only thing worse than setting his home on fire is cutting him off from his royalties. It’s been over fifty years by now and Smokey still hasn’t made enough money to retire.

*Kirk Cameron once starred in a drug awareness video which featured Kirk showing kids in a class room other videos of other kids turning into cartoon characters when threatened by drugs in some sort of parody or SLAM to the other drug videos but it didn’t really work because the “real” examples were considerably less entertaining and not a whole lot more plausible; those kids just said “no way man, you jerks aren’t COOL.” and that was the end of their troubles. True enough; nobody’s going to chase you down and MAKE you eat drugs for biting your thumb at them; that stuff’s expensive. They’ll probably just murder you and call it even. Additionally, In order to gain access to the kids he imposes his videos upon, Kirk outwits and outmaneuvers a bumbling hall monitor who for reasons that aren’t stated but I can fully understand does not want Kirk Cameron in that classroom. That doesn’t put us in the right frame of mind to compare fiction to fictitious reality. You might as well have brought Moraff in there.

Also, based on the online appearance of and reactions to the “nobody turns down drugs” scene from the video within the video, nobody also turns down realizing or caring that this part is supposed to be ridiculous. This clip, incidootily, was blatantly ripped out of another youtube video featuring brief strange clips from uncited sources, in which context it could be argued, due to its presence not being announced (6 minutes, 13 seconds in), this weirdness is far more effective (apart from the annoying “static” transitions, but that’s irrelevant because the person who reripped out the drug clip didn’t bother to omit the annoying fake 1970s static).

I’d like to tell you what the film is called but I forgot approximately the moment I learned it back in 1995 (and I had to watch it twice!), and Mr. Cameron may have since lobbied to have it removed from his filmo graphy. He’d much rather be known for classics like Firepoof, featuring a wicked computer screen that creates pornography to tear a marriage apart so that nothing less than Chick Fila product placement can heal the wounds.

And here, because I love to end on a depressing note, I shall mention the link currently in the upper right corner from the first clip I linked to.

Nobody turns down drugs, and nobody turns down REAL-TIME SUICIDE, either, judging by that view count. You know, that title isn’t enough! We’d better write this on the actual video in IMPACT, the world’s least sympathetic font.
I assume this is some gimmick to get people to click on a video which does not actually depict a suicide occurring. It potentially even scolds people for daring to look at it. However, the idea that the promise of video of suicide, real or not, gets one million people to watch it does not give me comfort. Even if some outrage group linked to it with “this is disgusting and should be banned but watch it anyway” that wouldn’t likely account for more than a few thousand additional views. Somebody influential has FEATURED this.

Whatever’s in the video, the real tragedy is that anybody takes this guy’s recommendation for anything.

Aye yi.

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