Do we really create our own reality? Or is it all scripted out over at Universal Studios?  The debate has raged for as long as debates have been the rage, and I can provide no definitive answer either.

Certainly some really big blockbusters have come out of Universal recently - and more disasteroid scenarios and predicted for the near future. And yet, small independents continue to write and star in their own successful movies.

As more and of these alternative scripts get produced, this is helping to bring about an alter native reality. And that is a good thing, because the reality we have today in quickly losing popularity. Consider the political scene, for goodness sakes. All those endless buttals and rebuttals. The media baits us into arguing and we keep falling for debate.

Tell-A-Vision

Everywhere you go, it seems, you hear people complaining about their reality. I say if you don't like the current programming, step out from behind the remote. It's time to change the channel and tell a vision. Instead of being just another divisionary taking sides on the latest televised drama, become a visionary who uses the spectacle to help us all see more clearly. If enough of us do this, even the mainstream media will have to replace its commentators with uncommontaters who have an alter native vision.

I have a dream that sometime in the very near future, a talented inventor will manufacture what is perhaps the most feared weapon known to civilized man-a fullproof B.S. detector. In my dream, it is being readied for mass-production under the trade name "Truth or Consequences," and will feature a Beulah-like buzzer just like on the old TV show. When the buzzer goes "burp-BURR-P" the user will know that whoever or whatever it is being pointed at is full of you-know-what. While this devastating weapon will have the power to destroy such established icons as daytime TV, the legal profession, the advertising industry, academia, not to mention our current political system, it will pose no real harm to human life. In my dream, it is the exact opposite of the neutron bomb. Institutions will crumble, but people will be left standing!

Well, this device I dream about may or may not be invented. So in the meantime, I have another dream-that we each learn to use our own God-given skeptic system to do the job. The good news is that all this bull I've been rambling on about is the richest source of irony on the planet. As FUNdaentalists and Fu Ling practitioners, we have the happy task of absorbing these ironies and using them to neutralize all of the toxic bull inundating us. I look forward to the day when even the biggest piece of bull can be broken down into joyful laughter and harmless jokes that actually improve the atmosphere.

Irony Deficiency

Irony has been called a social disease because it is often transmitted through the mass media. For example, it is now known that sleazium, a key element found in daytime television, interferes with our ability to utilize irony. Not only that, but the constant barrage of information most of us get through television, radio, junk mail, junk faxes, email, etc., allow many ironies to pass through our systems undetected and unused. Irony deficiency is quite common among infomaniacs-people so addicted to information that they can't go more than an hour without getting some. Your typical raving infomaniac will notice no irony in spending all of his waking hours finding out about life instead of actually living it.

Make a Fool of Yourself

In case it hasn't become clear to you by now, we are all fools. The wise fool knows this, and takes fool advantage of the situation. The sooner we see our situation from a God's-eye-view, the sooner we laugh. The sooner we laugh, the better we feel. The better we feel, the heartier we laugh. The heartier we laugh, the easier it is to see things from God's perspective. And we've come fool circle.

Thanks to Swamibeyondananda (talented comic member Steve Bhaerman) for the excerpts from his hilarious new book, Duck Soup for the Soul: The way of living louder and laughing longer. Visit the Swami at his own website: www.beyondananda.com .