Parables and fables are stories that serve to illustrate a moral or ethical lesson. Welcome to Dr Strangejob’s Pair-a-ball(s), the Doctor’s new series of life lessons learned in the trenches of bureaucratic befuddlement. For your viewing pleasure, below find a reasonable facsimile of a pair of the Doctor’s balls gifted to him back in his university days. I would often take my balls to meetings, just to show those in attendance that I actually had a pair. Otherwise, my steel cast balls served as paperweights on my office desk, providing a visual cue for students that the Doctor was, all in all, not just another dick in the hall.

Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that standing up for what one believes rarely works unless your beliefs happen to coincide with the gestalt of the current work environment. Otherwise, you are branded an agitator or chastised for not being a team player. Too bad, because those doing the branding are usually just bullies dressed up in business suits.

My favourite fable as a child was Aesop’s The Ass in the Lion’s Skin. The fable tells the story of an ass that stumbled upon a lion’s skin left out to dry by hunters. The ass decided to wear the skin to the local village in an attempt to instil fear in the community. The ploy worked, at least until the ass decided to roar at the crowd, at which point the citizens recognised the ass’s bray and realised that what they thought was a formidable beast was only an ass dressed up in lion’s clothing. The moral of Aesop’s fable is that fine clothes can disguise, but silly words will eventually disclose the fool inside. Sound familiar?

Speaking about President-elect Donald Trump, I wonder if Aesop’s fable can be applied to the recent U.S. election. If we were to replace the ass in the original fable with Trump, then once Trump starts pontificating the world should quickly learn that he is just an ass in disguise. In the original fable, the ass was beaten with a stick by his owner for spreading fear throughout the community. Director Michael Moore argues that satire is the best way to beat Donald Trump. In my version of Aesop’s fable, satire would triumph over Trump who would be beaten with shtick.

Anyway, the moral of this Dr StrangeJob Pair-a-ball is that a person can have balls without being a dick, but a person who is a dick is still a dick whether or not they have any balls.

Dr. StrangeJob

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