A collection of thoughts that I didn’t feel like writing an essay about, but they needed to be said . . .

> How many kids have died & will die because Jenny McCarthy and her ilk are telling people not to get vaccines?  The basis for this highly-inaccurate stance was from a single discredited 1998 article by a nutbag, in my opinion.

> I used to lament how stupid the average American is, and I’m not surprised when TV crews take their video cameras to ask the “man on the street” what they think about something, or ask them questions that any reasonably-intelligent person should know, yet their answers are constantly wrong & their ideas are ridiculous.  I used to get very upset at this widespread ignorance, then I realized that if everybody were smart, it would be very difficult to make money in this economy.  Our economy depends upon people being stupid enough to not shop for prices, not vet out things before trying them, not reading the information that’s there for all to see, not handling their money or businesses properly, and there are a host of other reasons why stupid & ignorant people are necessary for the economy to flourish.

> It’s not necessary nor wise for a writer to rape a thesaurus when they write; in fact, it usually makes them worse.  Besides the fact that they’re simply showing off either their alleged wider-than-average vocabulary (or their ingenious use of a thesaurus), considering that the average person doesn’t understand those words simply prevents them from getting their point across, and it’s highly pretentious (virtually everyone knows that word — just because it’s long doesn’t mean it’s bad; I mean, “mayonnaise” is both long & a foreign word, but we all know it, right?).  I’m not ask them to dumb it down necessarily, I’m simply saying that it’s not important to use words that are not normally used in colloquial (everyday) speech.  See, I provide explanations when I dip into my thesaurus, but why not just say “everyday” like I would have, had I not been wanting to make a point?