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Showing posts with label Grab Bag. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grab Bag. Show all posts

Monday, March 30, 2020

Grab Bag of Irritation

Folks, I’m long overdue for a good old fashion rant. The past few weeks of the global pandemic has brought out some things that have really irritated me to no end. Here they are.
The Action-Adventure Story Teller 
Suddenly every media writer and every social media post is filled up with breathless stories of how they or someone they knew suffered through Covid-19. “My chest was caught in a vice grip” is a line I’ve seen over and over again. Or subheadings like “Day 5, The Worst.” It honestly reminds me of a paperback I’d read in the checkout line at the grocery. I guess trying to be an “influencer” extends to global pandemics too. Not only are these not helpful to people who experience anxiety, but they also incite panic AKA what we don’t need now. Social media is an awful place for something so private. Why do they feel the need to tell their illness stories? How does that help? It really, really doesn’t, assholes.
”We will never be the same again.”
This line has to go away forever. It’s so fucking played and not really special just for this occasion. Isn’t this true of ANY life experience? Or, perhaps, something positive that happens on a worldwide level? Where is the wall to wall coverage of rising life expectancy in the world that has made us “never the same again?”
Insanely Negative People
I had someone tell me the other day that my son won’t get to play baseball for the rest of the year. And that all sports everywhere is done for the year because of how awful this is going to be. First of all, thanks for the positivity, fucknut. Second, how the fuck do you know? No one really knows what’s going to happen so being dire, again, doesn’t help people (like me) who dread excessively. Far too many normally negative people are feeding on this. They love how miserable everyone is. Let’s not let them do that.
Insanely Positive People
Donald Trump is an example of this. This is not going to be done by Easter. It may be that parts of the country are going to shift back to normal but some may need longer amounts of time and testing.
The fucking toilet paper thing
Seriously, why? And I’m also tired of the psychological explanation that “people need to control something and feel comfort.” Barf. This is a great example of how dumb people can be. TP is what you need for this pandemic? Really?
Imperial Declarations of Certainty in Uncertain Times
I’ve seen this a lot from the overly positive and overly negative sides of the issue. Everyone is basically guessing right now how this will play out. You can’t look to Italy and say that it’s going to happen here. Our country is so different and more spread out. Some areas might be the same. I heard one of my favorite pundits say, “By the time this is over, every American will know someone who died from Covid 19.” Really? I don’t know anyone who has died from the flu. I know one person who died in a car accident. Many more fatalities from that over the years, even with the direst predictions.
Gleeful people who “saw this coming.”
I like the U’s, Mike Osterholm. He’s a much-needed epidemiologist that is largely helpful right now. But he seems a little too happy about this. So do some other health care professionals and analysts. So do doomsday preppers. This isn’t “cool,” guys, and you being right makes this a tragedy, not an accomplishment. Osterholm is fond of saying “Hope is not a strategy.” Ok, but can we work on strategies that give us hope?
The doom and gloom from the media
Why aren’t we seeing recoveries listed along with deaths? They are showing this in Minnesota, thankfully, but I don’t see it anywhere else. Many people are recovering. Let’s fucking celebrate that as well as mourn the deaths of those who we have lost.
As we move along through this, more rants could be in the future😎

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Not


Ah, yes...The Walking Taco...a sign that our nation truly is on the decline....

Monday, April 16, 2012

Grab Bag Of Irritation

I thought I'd take a break from politics today and put up a Grab Bag. It's been far too long since I've done one and I'm honestly in the perfect mood today.

Soda Popped!

What is it with virtually everyone I know these days completely freaking out about soda?

Somehow, all of the conversations I've had about health and/or food recently have all gone the same way. One of my friends will say something like, "And soda...OH MY GOD, Soda is just the worst thing in the world. It's SOOOO bad for you" followed by semi-violent head shakes and then something like..."Horrible...it's just so horrible for you" as if they were talking about Chernoyl or something.

Yes, I know that soda is bad for you if you drink 89 cans a day but having one on occasion is not the same thing as smoking two packs a day, for pete's sake. It's as if you are instantly going to get diabetes if you have one can of a regular, sugar filled Coke. The descent into anaphylaxis is nearly instantaneous whenever the subject comes up and is blown so far out of proportion that it's driving me completely nuts.

Speaking of which...

The Land of Exaggeration 

I know that being Minnesotan means taking some small thing that happened to someone once and turning it into an everyday occurrence that now happens to everyone everywhere is par for the course. But, seriously, I just can't take it anymore.

The other day I was talking with a friend of mine about how I talk about sex quite a bit and in great detail. "You can't do that, Mark. People just don't like it," she pleaded with me. "But why? So what?" I asked.

"Well, you can't go around raping people either," was her reply.

WTF???!!!

So, talking about sex is the gateway to rape? Seriously?!!?

But it's not just with such a touchy subject...it's with fucking everything! I was telling a parent of one of my son's friends that I was going to celebrate my birthday in Nord East (a tres hip area of Minneapolis). She, being the TOTAL suburban mom, commented, "Oh, that's an awful section of town. Back when I was 18 (20 years ago) someone I dated stole a car there once."

To this day, she has never gone back there!

Even smaller things like...it takes me five minutes to drive from my house to pick up the kids at school. They are out at 410pm so I usually leave at 405pm. Yet my wife is constantly on me about leaving at 350. Why?

Or in the past few years (and for some inexplicable reason), people have started freaking out about snow here in Minnesota. The weather douches issue warnings if it is going to snow more than an inch and tell everyone that it is literally going to be the most awful storm in the history of the earth. Again, why?

Because we live in a land of gross exaggeration. This isn't simply true of politics, mind you (Barack Obama is a socialist or Hitler). This is true of just about everything and it seems more prevalent in the Midwest. People that talk about sex are rapists, a car robbery in NE Minneapolis means that it's now East St. Louis, it takes an 20 minutes to get somewhere that's 5 minutes away, and the world is going to end when it snows a few inches in Minnesota. IN FUCKING MINNESOTA!!!

AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Please, enough, people....

A Titanic Obsession

Alright, enough already with the Titanic shit. I realize it's the 100th Anniversary and all but has anyone else noticed that our obsession with this profoundly sad and tragic event is perpetual whether it's the anniversary or not? Seriously, there's something emotionally....well....just fucked about it.

And James Cameron's underwater explorations (which, b to the w, have been waayyyyy over reported) aren't helping. He made a movie about 14 years ago that made a lot of money...big fucking deal. I hated it. The dramatic hysteria literally made me sick to my stomach. It just wasn't that good, folks.

Yet, he continues to revisit it with documentary after documentary and re-release after re-release. Now, it's out in 3D. Whoopee! The only film the guy has made since Titanic was Avatar. How about exploring some new territory there, Jimbo and, oh, I don't know, make a film every five years or something rather than continuing to revisit that awful fucking film every other month.


Whew, I feel much better now that I have gotten all that out!