At the Newport Transportation Center, a large, open air bus stop near Fashion Island mall, one night in 2008, I was joking around with another homeless guy. I made some comment, and he replied, "Yeah, but everyone knows you're crazy." I snapped back with a wisecrack that just popped into my head, "I'm not crazy! And if you say I am one more time, I'll send my invisible ninja leprechauns after you!" I don't know where it came from, but my "invisible ninja leprechauns" became an inside joke among us and a couple other guys who frequented or slept at that bus stop. It took 16 years, but I finally made a meme of that line the other day. #steveemigmemes
In about 2004, I took a bus up to Wisconsin to visit my parents. They lived in a ground floor apartment in a former power plant building that had been renovated. They had a patio right outside their front door that faced the Fox river, which made for a great view. My dad, Tom Emig, was a guy who loved telling jokes. Good jokes, bad jokes, mediocre jokes, he didn't really care, he told them all. In fact, for is 70th birthday, I made him a zine called
Water Cooler Hero, with some of his jokes, and pictures of classic cars, because he was always one of those guys at work who would have a new joke to tell his co-workers at the water cooler, or on their coffee break, or at lunch.
During his whole working career, my dad collected jokes, cartoons, and other funny sayings and parody office memos that people made and shared. In those many decades before the internet, and long before the rise of memes, people actually typed these funny things up on paper. They made copies on the down low, on the office Xerox machine, and passed them out to like minded people. On previous visits to my parents' house, as they moved around the country, my dad showed me two, big, D-ring binders, each one 3 to 4 inches thick. He had collected hundreds of those type written and hand drawn jokes, cartoons, and fake office memos. He always joked "These are your inheritance," both of us knowing that my mom spent all of their money, so the joke books probably would be the main thing he passed on to me, father to son.
Then, months before my visit, the Fox River overflowed its banks, and the water caused a sewage back-up in that area. That raw sewage flooded my parents building, and their ground floor apartment, in the middle of the night. Ultimately, their apartment had four feet of sewer water in it, ruining just about everything they owned. The two big binders of jokes, which my dad had spent over 40 years collecting, were covered with the sewage, and destroyed. When my dad told me "my inheritance" was gone, he just laughed. "They got covered in sewage, I guess God was telling me what he thought of my jokes." We both laughed. I was bummed, but even then, my dad made a joke about the loss, that was our way.
I definitely got my warped sense of humor, and my sarcastic wit, from my dad. It was a necessary coping mechanism in our house, while I grew up. While I'm witty, I don't tell actual jokes to anywhere near the level my dad did. I'm more of a sarcastic comment in the moment guy, than a teller of actual jokes. But memes were right up my alley, once I learned the basics of how to work Pic Monkey, and later Canva. These memes here are my three newest memes, and a couple of my classics. I have a whole bunch more, including a bunch of BMX and bike memes, on my "My Memes" Pinterest board. Check them out, if you like these. There are 74 different memes there right now, and I add more, from time to time.
Most people think they really are not capable of making much change happen in the world, so they settle for life, and the current situation, as it is. We all do this at some point. Being the sarcastic fuck I am, I came up with this little saying in 2009 or so, to remind us all, myself included, that we all have the ability to create change in the world. #steveemigmemes
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My dad was a serious car guy, until he got married, that is. In his single years, he owned about 40 different cars, and several motorcycles. Those included three classic Ford Thunderbirds, two 1955's, and one 1957. He had a couple of Chevy Corvairs, a Mercedes, a dragster (didn't race that, but he was a street racer), and a whole bunch more, mostly Fords. We had a cool, old, black and white '55 Ford when I was 5 years old, the only "cool car" I remember.
After getting married, and selling his last T-bird a year or two later, it was all family cars for him. In 1970, he bought a 1968 Mercury Montego, a black 4-door sedan. The Mercury was considered a mid-sized car in that era of the gigantic land yachts and muscle cars of the late 1960's and early 1970's. It was powered by a Ford 302, a reliable, workhorse engine of that era. It also had a huge trunk, big enough to haul a console TV of that era. My dad drove that car for ten years, selling it to a friend in 1980, right before our family moved to New Mexico.
When my family went to see the movie Herbie the Love Bug, about the VW bug that was alive (sort of), my little sister named the big Mercury "Herbie." She was about three at the time. My dad told her the real Herbie was a Volkswagon. But Cheri insisted, "No! This IS Herbie!" From then on, the big, black Mercury was Herbie.
Herbie, the Mercury Montego, is the car my dad would do donuts in during the winter in Ohio, when I was a kid, and he took me out to run to the store or something at night. There were a bunch of those "Don't tell mom" times in Herbie. It's the car I most identify with my dad.
A couple years ago, while watching a Count's Customs TV marathon one day, I decided that if I ever came into a huge amount of money, I'd search the country for a 1968 Mercury Montego, and have the Count and his crew trick it out, and make it into Herbie II. Not much chance of that ever happening. I couldn't even find a decent photo on the internet of a black, 4 door, 1968 Montego, for months. Recently I found this photo, which looks just like Herbie. So I made this meme, and put it on Pinterest, just as a reminder of that car from my childhood. This meme is just for me and my sister. #steveemigmemes
George Orwell, in the dystopian future classic novel, 1984, envisioned "Big Brother," an authoritarian state with all kinds of surveillance to control the civilian population. Much of that, at least the technology and omnipresent surveillance, has come to pass. But our 2024 world, crazy as it is, operates differently that Orwell imagined. One thing he didn't see coming was that almost everyone would also have cameras, and video cameras, built into a small, portable super computer that we call a "phone." That device can share text, audio, still photos, and video, with potentially billions of people around the world, instantly. That's "Little Sister," all of us with our own cameras, keeping an eye on Big Brother. That's the idea behind this meme. #steveemigmemes
Right now, literally as I'm writing this blog post, the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a case where they are being asked to literally outlaw sleeping in public by homeless people, even if those people have nowhere else to go. This is another step in the continuing Far Right wing march towards facism in the United States. It's a step towards the building of concentration camps for homeless people. Human history is full of examples where poverty was criminalized, making poor and homeless people criminals just because of their financial status. Those examples usually led to forced labor, and sometimes to mass executions, or other human tragedies.
I am homeless, and have been for years. I've also been sober, and working at some level, the whole 15 or 16 years that I've been homeless. I worked 80+ hours a week as a taxi driver while homeless, which is what led me to full blown, living on the streets homelessness. I literally worked my way into homelessness, which is far more common than you might imagine. Read the book or watch the movie
Nomadland, if you don't believe me.
So I'm really hoping sleeping isn't outlawed. Now 57, I really like to sleep. In any case, I shot the photo above at a Park 'n Ride, that turned into a big homeless encampment during the pandemic, when all of you were stuck inside. Us homeless people were left out to die. But we, in most cases, didn't die of Covid-19. While all kinds of politicians and non-profit groups TALK about creating affordable housing, I watched actual homeless people build some pretty creative hovels out of scraps they found in the area. People will always create some kind of place to live, if no better options are available. That thinking led to this meme. Either a city creates legitimate affordable housing for its residents, or the homeless residents will create their own "affordable housing." #steveemigmemes
Not all of my memes are about heavy subjects like some social injustice or homelessness. Sometimes I make a meme about a funny thing I observe in the world. #steveemigmemes
History is filled with examples of underdogs and unexpected people coming up with big ideas and making meaningful change in the world. As a long time BMX freestyler, and bike rider in general, I made this meme to remind us all not to write people off because they have a crazy idea, or because they may be down and out at the moment. #steveemigmemes
I've been doing a lot of writing on Substack lately, longer posts on a variety of subjects. Check it out.
Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack
Steve Emig: The White Bear blog- countdown to 1,000 blog posts- post #992
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