Previous Hypothetical Bear Campaign #1

for

The World Famous Sweet Livin’ Productions World Best Bear Poll

“Johnny” (“John Doe” on his hypothetical social security card) is a Cal-Berkeley alum (but the Registrar hypothetically lost his records, a mistake that a fake hypothetical employee in the Registrar should have been disciplined over—we’re not going to call for anyone’s job, so a firing would not have been necessary).  Johnny grew up with the dream of one day owning a chain of used car dealerships (“Doe’s Dealer” was to be the name, as Johnny was making wordplay on his surname and the fact most of the cars he sold had gotten into collisions with female deer) so he could effectively become an illegal Cal booster who would slip unmarked envelopes full of cash into handshakes with football players who got sacks, scored touchdowns, or made other big plays the previous Saturday.  He also wanted to provide higher-ranked recruits with used, lightly-collided-with RAV4s and other such automobiles “bought by their parents, a somewhat close relative, a friend” (wink). 

Unfortunately for Johnny, he suffered from a rare facial muscular condition that prevented him from being able to wink, an essential part of being such a booster as alluded to above, in the previous sentence.  Additionally, Cal football did not partake (at least not to the traditional degree) in such traditional college football illegal boostering practices of the time (citation: their record) and then the United States courts came around and allowed college players to profit off their name, image, and likeness, further dampening Johnny’s dream of using his Cal education to delve into the world of dark alley (a hypothetically alley, of course, not to be found on Google Maps or Google Earth or anywhere else on the Other Internet) deviousness.  

But dry your tears.  There is no need to cry for Johnny because he did not give up on his dreams and exchange them for hard drug use to cope with deep, dark, depression of regret and despair.  Instead, “Though his dreams [...] lost some grandeur coming true[he had] new dreams, [...] better dreams” (citation: Mitchell, Joni), specifically: use his used car money and Cal-Berkeley smarts to campaign for his Cal Golden Bears in this World Famous Sweet Livin’ Productions World’s Best Bear Poll (a hypothetical previous version of it).  To do so, Johnny used his Cal-Berkeley education to recall how JFK allegedly may have won West Virginia in 1960 by putting cash in items (like the travel device of a suitcase or the mailing device of an envelope) that were handed to people rather than spending hours on the campaign trail with poster board and colored pencils in hand to make grassroot posters to hang in Appalachia and ascend to the Oval Office via the demonstration of high-level (or at least persistent) crafting skills.

“You don’t find successful politicians in a craft store,” the saying goes. As such, John “Johnny” Doe decided to forego unnecessary expenditures at his local craft store (purchases that would have incidentally bumped the long-time owners’ income just out of eligibility for government health care, which would have caused one of them to miss a routine checkup that would have caught a serious health condition in its early changes while it was still treatable) to allow that wonderful couple to live happily in their Golden Years because not only does Johnny like the word “golden” because of his great loyalty to his alma mater, this is also a feel-good story where you have dried your eyes in learning Johnny did what was right and just wasted his money by handing out large envelopes with large amounts of money in various currencies to people who would vote—and get their families and communities members to also vote—just not in the 1960 presidential election and not in West Virginia (Johnny was born after 1960 and has never been to West Virginia). He got all of those now happier and slightly-more-wealthy people to vote for his favorite bear, the Cal Golden Bears.  That is what a better dream looks like, for those Joni Mitchell fans who were curious all of these years of what happened to the young boy from “The Circle Game.”    

He grew up and became Johnny, to be clear.

Such a success story would be happy enough and would have only made you slightly late to work for reading it if it ended there.  But it didn’t (so maybe you better call in to work). 

It only got better. 

Not only did the good, trustworthy people whose votes Johnny bought keep their word and vote for whom he paid them to and thus reinstill faith in humankind (nothing was forcing them to actually vote for that particular bear; they could have taken the money and voted for any bear or not voted at all and there would have been no repercussions as there was no way for Johnny to enforce the agreement), but many of them also went on to purchase Black Velvet Whisky with the money Johnny gave them and subsequently drank it with a partner resulting in procreation that otherwise would not have happened and thus a new generation of Cal Golden Bears voters for future World Famous Sweet Livin’ Productions World’s Best Bear Polls.

This also reinstilled faith in in the popular saying, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime,” which is very appropriate hear because of bears dietary preference for fish. The only difference here is that this was going beyond the one lifetime of that saying and creating positive change for a subsequent generation.   This also helped to reverse demographic crises in the regions where those people lived, which had been negatively affecting the economy in ways that had caused people to have less access to education, dreams, and the internet and thus less voting access to World Famous Sweet Livin’ Productions World’s Best Bear Polls and unfortunately more access to hard drugs and sadness.

But fortunately, all of those negative things are in the hypothetical rearview mirror (the hypothetical past) of this hypothetical campaign.

Bad things get relegated to history when people do what is right, like Johnny. In this way, Johnny was truly “paying it forward,” a lot like the 2000 movie Pay It Forward starring Jon Bon Jovi, leaving some to speculate that this Johnny was actually Jon Bon Jovi.  If Jon Bon Jovi is not actually the hypothetical Johnny discussed here, he should be.   

Joni Mitchell could not be reached for comment to determine if her circular song was both about this Johnny and Jon Bon Jovi. But we looked closely at a few circles and came to our own conclusions.

We have provided some circles here for you to draw your own conclusions as well, for we wish not to push our conclusions on others as we tout open-mindedness and free thinking, including the free interpretation of circles. As they say, “Let circles do the talking, when famous public figures won’t give you their phone numbers in a Google search” (citation: limitations of the Other Internet).

Those circles aren’t providing you with the clarity you were hoping for? No need to panic and take more than your prescribed dosage of anxiety medication; we’ve provided you with more circles.

Those circles not speaking to you? It’s okay—it may not be you; it might be the circles. But don’t worry, we’ve provided you with some other circles to look at.

Those circles haven’t quite shined light on the subject for you? No cause for concern, we’ve provided some other circles that may do just that.

Now you can see it.