While waiting to pay two months worth of electric bills one day (I realized a while back that Xcel’s late fee is actually cheaper than King Soopers’ charge for processing the transaction each month. Add the extra interest from leaving that money in my bank account for an extra month and I’d be stupid not to pay my bill late…right? But I digress.) I happened to notice a brand of cigar called “Game.” Trendy gansta’ writing and everything; it looked like a Snoop Dogg album cover.

I was reminded of a conversation with Autumn about the inherent meaninglessness of the phrase “change the game.” Ironically, it’s consistent overuse in hip hop and rap has turned the very concept of “changing the game” into a tired worn out cliché.

I’m thoroughly convinced that anyone still uttering these words is simply whipping an idiomatic dead horse.

On a completely unrelated note:

While leaving King Soopers that day, I saw someone wheeling their cart full of groceries towards the boundaries of the parking lot. He edged ever closer to the yellow line on the ground, unaware that crossing it would activate the wheel locks on the cart. I decided to pull into a parking spot just so I could watch the moment where he found himself jerking to a stop. The confused look on his face was priceless. When he realized what had happened, he tried in vain to bring the cart back within the lot’s boundaries. Obviously this didn’t help.

Satisfied, I went home.

Godwin’s Law, as it’s called, states:  “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

When referring to a humorous observation as a law, people tend to take it much more seriously than they should.  Is the adage true?  Well, technically, but no more so than if you were to replace Nazis and Hitler with Puppies and Kittens (In fact, I now decree that version to be Cutaia’s Law).

However, the more widespread this supposed edict becomes, the more people misuse it.  Recently, I saw someone in an online discussion bring up the Nuremberg Trials in an attempt to illustrate that a state of war does not excuse dishonorable actions by those involved.  Immediately, some Wikipedia reading know-it-all showed up with this to say, “Thank you for invoking Godwin’s Law[…]It’s not like that besmirches the honor of the holocaust survivors or anything, you witless turd.”

In the mind of the Godwin’s Law devotees, any mention of Nazis or Hitler is automatically inappropriate to the conversation at hand and somehow belittles the terrible nature of the Holocaust.  It never crosses the minds of these folks that these analogies might possibly be common because, oh I don’t know…World War II was a really huge fucking event in our history about which everyone has a reasonable amount of knowledge?

That’s the issue with accepting the ramifications of such a broad aphorism as absolute truth.  It causes people to avoid actually thinking about what’s being said, instead simply jumping to their own conclusion immediately.

Even worse is when the same people make the leap to Godwin’s Law anytime someone mentions fascism itself.  Fascism, after all, is not a concept unique to Hitler.  It’s a political ideology that comes in many levels of extremity.

There are arguably times when governments and politicians do things that would quite literally be classified as fascist.  The danger behind Godwin’s Law is that its biggest proponents seemingly (and perhaps unknowingly) seek to frighten people out of ever mentioning that possibility.

The Nazis didn’t just appear out of thin air, after all.  There’s a build-up required in order to work a country into a nationalistic, Jew-hating fervor.  Understanding that fact and pointing out trends that hint even slightly towards that direction is in no way a bad thing.  If you ask me, the only thing that would “besmirch the honor of Holocaust survivors” would be to let fear silence you into ever allowing anything even remotely similar to happen again.

A far more useful adage than Godwin’s Law, I would think, is one from philosopher, George Santayana:  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

People who wish to preserve the memory of the immense evil of the Nazis at the cost of squelching speech about the more minor evils of today’s leaders are doing their cause an incredible disservice.  They’re no more reasonable than puppies chasing their tails around in circles.

Oh, hey, look at that!  Cutaia’s Law…

Each Slurpee machine out there has 4 to 8 little lights on it…one for each flavor.  The machines always indicate that you should not pour any particular flavor when its light is lit.  Of course, whenever I want a cherry flavored Slurpee, the cherry light is always on.  It never fails.

I usually try waiting for a little while, hoping that the light will turn off before someone notices me staring at it, pretending I’m trying to figure out what flavor I want.  But I know what fucking flavor I want.  Cherry.

I’m guessing the lights just indicate when the mix isn’t properly frozen and I don’t really mind drinking a melted Slurpee as long as it’s still cold.  In all honestly, I could probably just pour away and enjoy the cherry goodness.

But then I think to myself, “What if it’s poisonous until the light turns off?”

“I guess I’ll just have banana.”