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!