Mediocre Apologist

Category: Become Average! — A Polemic

  • The Prodigal Son

    Imagine a politics concerned about the well-being of the common man; a politics criminalizing the exploitation of the American ethic by corporate fiends; a revolution upending fat-cat politicians that pledge to consolidate power at the behest of the very, very few. May I introduce you to the political movement called Populism. Wrought in the 19th…

  • A Heimlich Maneuver

    Guys, I think I just solved choking. The Origin It’s a hot, mid-April afternoon in Merced, California. My doubles partner and lifelong best friend are playing high school doubles. The winner goes to sectionals. We’re up 5-2 against two of Merced High’s best doubles players. But our lead starts slipping. Our double break advantage teeters…

  • Far from the Tree

    My entire life I’ve been lookin for a way to get rich quick. When you grow up poor in the cuts of Fresno, California, with a father slaving away fifteen hours a day installing windows, you develop the hunger for the good life. And that hunger makes you sharp as a knife. I am as…

  • A Title Isn’t Everything…

    They say “don’t judge a book by its cover;” but what about judging a book by its title?

  • Son of a Sycophant

    People accuse ChatGPT of being sycophantic — meaning that it tells you what you want to hear . Assuming this is true , consider how this behavior affects our human-to-human interactions. The argument is as follows:  Conclusion? The more we use ChatGPT, the more it trains us to be sycophantic. But not just towards the…

  • Ice

    Why is it the case a fountain beverage without ice feels like it’s missing something ? Why does ice “perfect” a fountain beverage, if you will? Have you ever seen an ad for Coca Cola that didn’t include ice in the cup? Or ice in the background ? Every fountain beverage dispenser has ice right…

  • Was Tony Montana Noble?

    I know this may seem strange to you, but society used to not be so just and egalitarian as it is today. Before the modern invention of “equality,” there used to exist castes that you were born into, and couldn’t break out of, no matter how hard you try. There were the plebs and there…

  • Writing on the Wall

    Words can’t hurt you; but they can surely become “sticks” and “stones.”

  • I Forgot

    what’s the word that best describes what I’m trying to say: definitive, definite, determine, discern, decide, define, decipher, demonstrate, disentangle, delimit, distinguish, or dictate?

  • Beginner’s Luck

    Are athletes born or made: I’ve spent my life trying to solve this riddle. As a child of the Athletic Director at the University of Miami, I was exposed to the nation’s most elite athletes from a young age. I observed them practice, compete, and lose over and over again. When I became a collegiate…