It’s that day again. Can’t we stop this nonsense and keep the sun out past 3pm in December?  Show of hands if an extra hour of sleep is compensation enough for making us more like dreary, too-dark-too-long Norway.

The other kind of fall back, the position that far-thinking people are supposed to keep in reserve for whenever the present situation isn’t working out so well, is another matter.  I’m sure the idea was that you head off on a life’s adventure, risky or benign, with a sense of purpose, but in case your…investment in knee sock futures, commitment to the heavily tattooed and pierced barista, co-signing a loan for your cousin’s third husband’s all kale diner, booking a ticket on the first Virgin Galactic flight, or a gut feeling that a Republican controlled Congress is the answer to anything…you are prepared to regroup and take another path.  It’s a universal and sometimes very public practice. In politics, it can be witnessed, often in the course of a single sentence. A safety net, (unless you’re a Wallenda), is a logical practice, n’est pas? (see, “I hate rhetorical questions” in last week’s blog).

But…

I guess Tim Cook’s ‘Plan B’ was to pre-scoop the scoopers by announcing his gayness, like a new Apple product release, if he got wind that he was going to be outed. His choice, to extol his PRIDE, was not really helpful to the disenfranchisement of gays and lesbians.  I’m certainly proud to be 5’-7”, (I’d be prouder to be 6’-3”), but I’m just kidding, because that would be dumb. Don’t be dumb, Tim!

Al Qaeda’s the worst…no, it’s the Taliban, I mean ISIS, (pronounced ISEL), ooooo Boka Haram, or that Assad guy, no…no…it’s all of Iran…oh, fuck…let’s just bomb everything. In this case the fall back is the same as the fall front.

Treatment of medical personnel who bravely give their time and talent to stemming potentially epi- and pandemic diseases should at least have a ‘Plan A’; some protocol to safely and respectfully monitor their condition past the incubation term.  The fall back of idiots like Chris Christie, mandating the equivalent of incarceration or South Carolina’s Todd Kincannon, (former GOP chairman), who tweeted, “the protocol for a positive Ebola test should be immediate humane execution and sanitation of the whole area”, needs a bit more, (any), thought…just sayin’.

You would think that educators, or we, the people, or somebody with a loud public voice who isn’t just plain stoopid, would be making a better case for the fact that the US fall back for public education is…well, to fall back.

There is no fall back for drinking the fundamentalist religious Kool-Aid®, irreversibly polluting the planet, blowing away your classmates, co-workers, or strangers in a shopping mall, movie theater or battlefield and I don’t think the extra hour of sleep is helping in any way.