My Random House Dictionary, the one I use most often because of its modest size and relative completeness, defines a ninny as, a foolish person; a simpleton. But that doesn't tell the whole story of the meaning of this word. A ninny is anyone whose life includes the performance of meaningless tasks.
We live in a culture where ninnies define our reality. We're all quite familiar with the countless professional ninnies whose occupation it is to perform meaningless tasks. They all went to school, received their degrees, as well as the required certifications to become professional ninnies. In fact anyone who sought and received any sort of certification for their professional employment is generally guarantied to be a first-class ninny. These professionals all realize there isn't a job, professional or otherwise that couldn't be taught to any competent individual within a week or two. And those taught ad hoc as it were, would probably perform better than 90% of the ninnies who have the certifications that took some of them nearly a decade of playing the game to obtain.
But this too doesn't begin to define the great depths of what has become the ubiquitous ninny for us either.
We can go to YouTube and view ninnies until the sun comes up the next morning and not exhaust even a small portion of the evident ninnies there.
We can peruse and ransack the Internet to our heart's desire in every direction and in any url, all the while uncovering more ninnies per hour of surf time than any human being is able to stand without some occasional other distraction, likely something more to eat none of us really needs. "Come look at this ninny!" must be uttered and exclaimed into the computer screen of every home and most of the lazier office computer screens hundreds of thousands of times every hour of every day all across the world.
Here's a video of a no doubt highly trained and overly certified animal biologist whose pointless task the day of the video was to relocate a leopard. This ninny gets what he requires, a real education about animal biology. And, all the while, the leopard is saying to himself, "Sure, you're a big man with a stick right now, you ninny, but when I get out of this cage... I'm going to give you an education." Don't Poke the Leopard-video.
We're all familiar with the now common excuse of customer service representatives that heedlessly tell the disgruntled customers they mug, "My computer doesn't allow me to do that..."
Well,, I'm sorry lady, madam or sir, or whatever you are on the other end of this fiber optic line, but your stinking computer has nothing to do with me, or any agreement you have with me. And if you can't get that computer of yours to do what it is I'm telling you is the only thing that is going to keep me as a customer of your company, then believe me, not only do I not need your wretched computer, I don't need your foul company either. (The response to this sort of tactic is usually, "Mr. Robertson, I don't have to listen to that sort of abuse. And I'm going to hang up now.")
Ninnies!
Were I a leopard...
Reality is defined by ninnies today, not leopards. But the leopard in all of us still exists.
Philosophically, this is just another of the horrid examples of what sort of world Aristotles' theoretical categories has imposed upon the reality we each commonly perceive. We all think we're scientists today, empirical, logical scientists, or, if we're not scientists, like my wife who is definitely not a scientist since being a scientist requires some modest math skills... If you're not a scientist, then at least you live your life believing there are scientists who have answers to all the problems for which those truly rotten philosophers, like me, who are skeptics, know there are no answers. And we know there are no scientists either.
All this stuff about science is made up. It's faked. It's nothing but smoke and mirrors. It's sleight of hand. It's a fraud in the basest sense of the word, fraud. These scientists, as they call themselves, they're all liars. The only reality today is the ninny's reality. What's so scientific about any ninny's reality? Not much.
Science is no more scientific than the law is scientific, or accounting is science, or medicine is scientific, or social service, or soldiering, or elections, or campaigning, or cooking, or the construction industry, or farming, or professoring, or condominium conversioning. The world has already been inherited by the meek, and they are all NINNIES!
I know. I have been philosophizing all my life, but until I started writing philosophy down on a regular pot-thrown and broken-shard basis, I was just a part time ninny like all the rest of us. To philosophize one pounds on the keycaps of their computer keyboard. It's a ninnyish and pointless task like the fabulous million monkeys, one of whom is about to write the perfect novel. There is no "perfect novel." Fiction is all trash, and in order to define the perfect novel, this would require a science of novels, and there are no real scientists. And, I can't begin to make a scientific guess how many keycaps are depressed, tapped down, how many times by the tips of how many fingers attached to how many hands that connect to the skinny arms of how many ninnies there are doing all this ninny work every day. But, it's quite a few, and it's all pointless ninny-work affecting the ninny-reality we all live within.
Maine being the place that it is, it has over the last eighteen years worn a hole only slightly smaller than the hole the whole world has worn in my patience. Almost everyone in Maine is a ninny. No, that's too kind. Most Mainers think they're shrewd and crafty ninnies, but, "Let me do that job for you by the hour plus actual material cost," isn't shrewd and crafty, it's a self-invitation to laze around and waste time like a god-damned ninny. "Let me send you a bill for that, I don't have the chart to tell me how much to charge handy," isn't shrewd and crafty, it's an excuse to sit over the computer while contemplating how much ninny-sense can be compounded upon a bill for services already rendered, but which we're still thinking about in a ninnyish way, how much can I get out of this sucker?
Maine is like that. When I first moved up here, I hired a guy to do some foundation work on my farmhouse. I found him by stopping into the Caribou Police Station in January and asking for the name and telephone number of a decent carpenter who hadn't worked in a couple of months due to the forbidding weather in northern Maine in January. So, I hired the guy that day, and he proceeded to do his ninny-best for the next three months an amount of work that could have been accomplished in one month, or less, if he really was a decent carpenter.
So I've been looking for a change of venue out of Maine. I don't expect to find anything any different anywhere else I go in Ninny-Land, but, I've grown tired of the rural ninnies so aptly described by Bob Newhart in Newhart. Darryl and his other brother Darryl and how ever many other brothers they have named, Darryl, I just don't care any more. So I'm looking at apartment buildings in Cincinnati.
What I found is that Cincinnati's apartment buildings are all run by slum landlords, or so it seems from a distance. And I got to thinking. I don't have a degree in slum-lording. I don't have any certification that allows me to be a slum lord in Cincinnati. But like the ninny I am, I said to myself, I'll bet I could do that as well as or, better than the rest of those slum lords.
And then I looked into it further. What I found is that Cincinnati is in the decades-long throes of watching its good apartment building stock be converted into condominiums. All the local, long term resident families are being run out of Cincinnati, or are being forced to double up with the in-laws, to make room for the upwardly mobile fools who think living in an apartment in an apartment building and calling it a condominium, while paying from three to four times as much for the privilege of living in the same space, makes a world of economic sense.
Ninnies, that's what they are, and it's the reality they're intent upon creating.
I know from observation condominium-ization is one of the most destructive byproducts of urban redevelopment effects, like special effects in the movies, that can occur in any city neighborhood. And, I found myself compelled to step in and do my part to save Cincinnati from the evils of condominium-ization by seeking out one of those wonderful old apartment buildings in order to become one of the chosen, the proud, the best and the brightest, if wholly and also entirely uncertified, next generation of slum landlords.
Honestly, I'm going about it philosophically, and doing this as an art project. I think I have a great idea, and I know I can do better than keep a building empty as the one I have my eyes on is right now. I want to save it from condominium-ization before it's too late, and before the ninnies get into it.
So, if you're interested enough, here's a link to read all about my socially and philosophically driven efforts to become a slum landlord, 1732 Vine Street in Cincinnati There's a vile plea for donations at the very end of this web site. All the ninnies in the world will probably find this particularly offensive to their ninny-purist tastes set in their ninny-made reality. There's a leopard in your future, if that's you.
I'm through being just a ninny like everyone else in this country. I'm going to do something socially conscionable. I'm going to be a better slum landlord to help keep all the condo-fools from destroying the City of Cincinnati with the evil of condominium-ization that is so popular with all the unthinking ninnies of the world.
I'm taking a philosophical stand against the reality imposed upon all of us by ninnies.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
--------------------------------------------------------
