The Art of Shutting the Fuck Up

“Never miss a good chance to shut the fuck up." -  Will Rogers
   
"To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful.  At all other times it is essential to shut the fuck up." - Edward R. Murrow
 

It’s all too true that Silence is golden, but each of us knows that a fool and his/her gold are quickly parted.  
   
I hear everyone talking about this and that and what their opinions are on the state of things, all these thoughts and intricate feelings they’re having.  But, I gotta ask: have they ever thought about just shutting the fuck up?  Seriously now.  Do they ever wonder what will happen if they just shut the fuck up?  Will the world stop or shift radically on its axis?  Will the sun go out?  Will the world be less rich and textural without his amateur standup routine or her endless whining about her grim love life?  Would it hurt anything- or anyone- if they just generally shut the fuck up a lot more than they do?  
    
I’m picturing it now.  But my ability to concentrate on this picture is fractured by the sound of someone’s goddamned mouth!
   
What!?
 
Does your mouth fear it will die from lack of exercise?  Are you afraid my ears will feel empty without your words filling them?  Conversation ain’t noise pollution, someone once said.  The key word here is conversation: the lost art.   I require, ne demand, stimulation during a conversation, but you, dear insensate being, only stimulate me to pull my ears off (followed by your lips and tongue), and shove them all UP your throat by way of your ass.
   
We Neurosicrucians place a high value on shutting the fuck up and one of our most recurring thoughts, as an organization, is that we want more — more collective STFU, more silent spaces, more stifling en masse and more techniques to shut these forces down when their lips and tongues are generating too much waste material for our ears to sanely process.
   
What’s it going to take? Do we have to create a behavioral modification center so radical that you learn how to keep your prolific gob shut by cattle prod or our patented High Db Cognitive Restructuring?  A gloomy place, in a cavernous storage facility (filled floor to ceiling with the cages that will be your sleeping pods) where you can engage with others like you who just cannot seem to shut the fuck up?  Do you need a rehab program for people, like yourself, who can’t get a handle on the fact that nobody cares what they really think most of the time anyway?  Okay.  You’re asking for it and… boy… have we responded!  That very place has been created and, thank the Pantheon, is located in Nelsonville, Ohio... twenty miles underground and far away from decent people.  It’s a place of enforced listening and mandatory introspection. For those who don’t respond to the above mentioned techniques, we’ll just keep your mouth full and your mind occupied, so you’ll have no choice.
   
Well, we’re listening…
   
No we’re not.  So, SHUT THE FUCK UP.
 
Air pollution from NON STOP BULLSHITTING is ten times higher inside designated socializing areas like bars, offices and living rooms than it is in Mexico City. Have you ever been at a tailgate party?  Why do you think everybody gets so drunk?  Often, alcohol as a "tonic," brings all the bullshit to the forefront, forcing expulsion in great roaring flares from the monstrous orificia of all involved.  The participants are literally bathed in these toxins, rendering them immune to their own verbally transmitted poisons.  Otherwise sensible humanimals are alchemically transmogrified into superhuman bullshit dozers who’ll annihilate any type of quietly meaningful thought processes under their rusted, crippling tracks and blades without a thought or care.  
 
Average air pollution levels from mindless chatter directly outside designated socializing areas, like bathrooms, are also about three times higher than levels in graveyards, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Why’s this, you ask?  Because some people can’t even shut the fuck up IN THE BATHROOM!  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to chat about the decline in the quality of the American moral code while I’m trying to pinch off what ails me.  What's more disturbing is that the current ‘noisy ghost’ trend seems to indicate people aren't even shutting the fuck up after they've expired.  This is truly a low-tide benchmark in our civilization.
 
A study conducted in five large hub U.S. bullshit capitals also showed that air toxicity levels inside key bullshit zones were 23 times higher than levels in Chernobyl.  In the study, conducted by an elite team of degreed and tenured bullshitters, designated bullshit zones included business and governmental districts as well as major college campuses in most major cities.  The prognosis is grim indeed.
 
What’s most alarming: all the most toxic bullshit zones in the United States are infested by the public with no escape plan for those who don’t trade in that currency.  In the listing and lurid world of the future, the reserved and the prudent will have no respite.  
 
A GOOD RULE OF FIST: When in doubt: shut the fuck up.
When you don’t know what to say: shut the fuck up.
When someone else is talking: shut the fuck up.
When you’re in a bad mood: shut the fuck up.
When you’re in a good mood: shut the fuck up.   
When you’re sick:  stay home and keep that filthy blow hole- that sadly only exists to spread discontent and germs- CLOSED (or packed with, preferably, a whole box of Kleenex brand antiviral tissue).
    
Absorption of someone’s bullshit causes heart disease and all types of cancer in both smoking and nonsmoking adults living in Oregon, so that should tell you something.  Verbal diarrhea (a.k.a. not knowing when to shut the fuck up) is the LEADING cause of sudden tragic death syndrome (or STDS), respiratory problems, constipation and nervous collapses in “people who are too big for their britches.”   Infants, houseplants, family pets as well as the insane are often immune to the effects of bullshit avalanches.  Even brief exposure to some forms of bullshit can trigger acute cardiac events such as a white knuckled heart vs. brain death match.  Useless chatter kills an estimated 443,000 Americans (not to mention a staggering one trillion new ideas) each year, including 46,000 misunderstanding deaths and 3,400 he-said she-said deaths among non-bullshitters from exposure to secondhand bullshit.
   
Having a big fucking mouth affects people of all ages, races and economic levels. An advanced education doesn’t help- it even seems to aggravate a preexisting condition.  Excessive expression, fact quotation and other idle talk can lead to psychological, social, work, financial, legal, and physical problems or make a person into a psychiatrist, social worker, financial ANALyst, physical therapist or- the lowliest of all the motor mouths- lawyers. Talk for talk’s sake is a crime against introspection and thoughtfulness and ultimately, against Humanimality itself.
   
There are even times that voicing your opinion can lead to death or incarceration- and maybe it’s for the best.  But the point we’re addressing here is this: it takes strength to stop and shut the fuck up.  And I’ve got news for you… you won’t receive much support in this undertaking.  You’ll have to invent creative resources to help yourself (or a loved one, if you dare).  You’ll be vilified and outcast.  Filling the mouth is okay as long as it’s not with something equally as addictive as senseless bullshit.  Good luck with this.  Food is certainly an option, but you don’t want all those stuffed opinions going directly to your ass do you?  Gum is ok… if it didn’t destroy both your stomach and your teeth.  An adult pacifier is recommended as a starter M.F-er, but you must stop using it at once if you find yourself getting constant ear infucktions or developing a speech impediment.  I find that injecting the nipple with sizzurp helps at least in the beginning phase.  The effect of your paci on others will undoubtedly stir comments out of your fellow bullshitters.  You won't win any popularity contests if you stick to your guns... but this will bring the humility and "down time" necessary to travel this glorious new path.   Warning: these “pre-loaded” pacis are, admittedly, great for parties but they tend to be ice breakers (for better or worse) thus throwing you back into the cycle of inane conversation, verbal one-upmanship.  ‘But’, you say, ‘it’s a party’.  Parties are for showing off your shiny personality, right?  Imagine going to a party and actually listening to people.  Might people think you’re boring if you’re not showcasing your STAND-UP-ROUTINE-PERSONA?  Let’s face it, at that point you’re positively ate up with Everyman’s Disease, and you might as well ‘join the group’.