The special meeting of the Ostrich Society was called to order by the President at precisely 7:30 p.m. All members of the Society were in attendance. Since a special meeting had been called to raise the price of each “two fingers” pour of bourbon and only 10 or so members showed to vote, no one missed a special meeting.
Actually, the price didn’t go up, Oleg Johansen – Official Bartender of the Ostrich Society, – went on vacation and a replacement had to be found to pour “two fingers” at a time. The replacement was chosen from those in attendance and had small fingers compared to Oleg…hence the ensuing anarchy which resulted in another special meeting to undo the effect of the first special meeting. No member missed attending a special meeting since.
This meeting was called to clear the air about the veracity of the internet when a problem arose when one of the members was given an iPad by his kids who wanted “dad” to get with the times. They meant well, but for a while, it was touch and go whether the iPad was going into the trash or not. It seems after several “two fingers” the written word with pictures, became everyone’s gospel – most of the members had cell phones, but only Bill Polanski had an iPad, and of those with cell phones, most were flip-phones.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Bill Polanski and Jake Grumpgardner went fishing for brookies. As was to be expected, they engaged in a friendly competition of who caught the biggest brookie, each putting up a dozen flies. The problem arose when photos were taken of each one holding their catch and they thought they had to take the iPad to Walmart to get the photo developed where they learned the photos were ready to be seen and were stored in the iPad’s photo app. They also learned about something called Facebook.
What a gadget! All was well until it came time to decide who caught the biggest fish. Looking at the photos over “two fingers,” Bill claimed victory. Though he wasn’t sure why, but that brookie in the photo was the biggest he’d ever seen. It was huge. When he told Jake he owed him a dozen flies, Jake balked and said, “I don’t know how you did this, but that’s not the same fish you caught on our trip. I don’t owe you a thing.”
They argued, filled their glasses with more “two fingers” of bourbon and decided to let the members of the Ostrich Society decide and be the final judges.
As was expected, half of the members congratulated Bill for the State Record Brook trout and the other half accused him of doctoring the photo. Finally, after much argument and more “two fingers,” Clarence Blueblood, one of the youngest members (somewhere between 40 and 65) chimed in and gave a tutorial about taking pictures with any camera and how proportions can be deceiving. “The further you hold an object from you, the larger the object appears. The closer you hold an object to you, the truer the size.”
Finally, after taking several photos with the iPad, Clarence made his point. So after some thought, a special meeting was called to warn members about the pitfalls of believing everything they see and read on the internet, and a list of five axioms were agreed upon:
- Do not indulge in “two fingers” when judging a photograph on the internet.
- If a hand stretches from the gill to the anal port, it’s probably not the width of the person’s chest that’s holding the fish.
- There is no editor on Facebook; there may be a distortion of facts, maybe.
- “Friends” are just people you’ve chosen to see your posts, and may have a different truth than you.
- If you want to play Bingo, go to the American Legion Hall; don’t click on a shared site from a “friend” and give your credit card number.
The preceding is recorded as The Truth, Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth …give or take a lie or two!
TD