It's a New Year in Hate

In which your humble narrator brings the mad dizdain* to five offending abominations.

1. My house, she is the structural equivalent of  the type of crack-addled, welfare queen that only exists in Republicans' imaginations. She always needs something. A roof, a furnace, a new water heater, new toilets, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.
2. The intimation from students that I'm supposed to respond to emails sent after 9:00 p.m. within an hour or two. Here's the deal students, my kids go to bed at 7:00. Then it's Me time which involves equal quantities of beer and Netflix streaming. Then I go to bed. 
3. Using** the word "utilize" instead of the word "use." Seriously, why?
4. George Stephanopolous. This one isn't entirely rational. He just bugs me.
5. The recent decision on the part of Child #2 to stop saying "no" and "yes" but rather to say "nope" and "yep" which are, in case you didn't infer it on your own, completely impossible to distinguish between when she's got a damn pacifier in her mouth.

*This is an intentional misspelling for comic effect. I can spell. This is a quality blog. Tell your friends.
** See? If I had said "utilizing the word 'utilize'" I would be a heinous douche.

January Can Suck It

In which your humble narrator crowns a new most heinous month.

Named for the two-faced, Roman jerk deity, Janus, January is our most iniquitous month. It's cold. It's dark. It's still snowing, and it's long.

The furnace needs to be replaced. The new roof is leaking in at least one place, maybe two. There is nowhere else to pile snow from the driveway or the garage apron. I've taken to shoveling at night, filling a wheel barrow with filthy snow and surreptitiously dumping it on the property of neighbors who have offended my delicate sensibilities in some way.*

The newly Ph.Deeded wife has still not gotten a raise.

The children have been sick all month. Everyone had a horrible cold last week and both kids got pink eye. This morning I woke up unable to open my left eye. It was cemented shut with dried eye filth. Thank you, so much Child #2, who thought "NO TOUCHING DADDY'S FACE" was some hilarious invitation to a game of "smear mucus into Daddy's eyeballs."

It's an inauspicious start to 2011. February's probably going to suck too, but at least it's short and it can't possibly be colder and darker than it has been.

*"What a hideous jacket, you get three wheel barrows full of dirty snow on your doorstep."

Job Prospects

In which your humble narrator, after a grueling semester of teaching slack-jawed, glassy eyed undergraduates, reevaluates his career prospects.

There's nothing like a lousy class to aggravate one's barely suppressed misanthropy. In my introductory Educational Psychology lecture section I tell hilarious stories, sprinkle popular cultural references and basically jump up and down in order to keep the ungrateful suburban spawn (who happen to be our nation's future educators... Hooray!) awake for a measly hour and fifteen minutes. This particular semester is seeing attendance rates at about 60% of enrollment, a lot of vacant looks and some truly depressing test scores. Adding to this festival of crap, one student, whom I'll call "Hippie Q. Flakington," actually asked my opinion of alien abduction in class.

At any rate, perhaps it's time to reassess my career options. Here are the current contenders:

• Official artificial spine implant technician for the Democratic National Committee. My job duties would involve inserting steel rods into the rear ends of the invertebrate members of the Democratic caucuses in both chambers of Congress and the White House. I will clearly need hazard pay for having to look at David Axelrod's butt.
• Lifestyle Suppression Artisan. My job duty will be to brutally suppress anyone who attempts to use mass media to disseminate their "lifestyle choices." The entire Huffington Post "Living"* section will be replaced with a single HTML page reading: Shut up.
• Language Cleaner. My job duty will be to outlaw stupid, corporate jingo and ridiculous sports metaphors that have entered common parlance. I plan to synergistically bring my A-game to this effort. Also there will possibly be a "webinar."

*Do not click this link. You will be transformed into a vegan, eco-conscious Tibetan doula that constanly emits personal finance expertise for transgendered albinos. 

Monday Morning Hate

In which your humble narrator enumerates five invidious calumnies of modern life.

• The terrible combination of hail stones and 45 mile per hour winds. Sure, I'd love to get a new roof every 18 months.What could be more fun than having workmen scurrying over your house?
•  "Angry electorate" news stories. I get it, but until Grandma gets out of her chair, clicks off Fox News and actually starts lobbing Molotov cocktails, I'm not that impressed. Let's identify the issue correctly, it's the "whiny, uninformed, proudly ignorant, cry-baby electorate."
• Unending upper respiratory infections.
• The fact that Mazda's funky little minivan is just not big enough for someone who is 6'1". Hello Toyota Sienna, goodbye youth.
• This.

Help, help, I'm being oppressed!

In which your humble narrator cogitates on the cruel vicissitudes of life.

I had to help my Mom move at the beginning of the month. My back is ruined. Our house was pummeled by quarter-sized hail and 50 mile per hour winds necessitating a massive insurance claim. We're getting another new roof, new siding and a new garage roof, all before the snow flies (fingers crossed). Child #2 was exposed to Whooping Cough at daycare, probably from some little un-vaccinated kid with jack-ass, hippie parents.

Also this month, I expect to buy a minivan. Life as I have known in is over.

It's August, When a Young Man's Thought Turns to Things He Hates

In which your humble narrator lists the vexations of high summer.

• The unmistakable odor of cheap cologne which wafts off of the business-type business people who ride the train downtown early in the morning.
• Being shiny all the time since it's so damn hot.
• The lack of four hour parking meters anywhere near the University now that the river road has been dug up for insufficiently explained reasons. "Utility work" indeed.
• The barely restrained glee of local newscasters when describing some fresh 'n' juicy, new double murder.
• Summer watchband stink.

It's Saturday, so I hate stuff

In which your humble narrator tallies five vexations.

1. Turning the furnace back on in May when I didn't run it for all of April.
2. The fact that Child #2 predictably sleeps until 7:00 a.m. on weekdays, but just as predictably only sleeps until 6:00 a.m. on weekends. 
3. The term "game changer." Seriously, people. Enough with the sports metaphors. They're a cancer on public discourse.
4. The stock market. It is stupid. How can my broadly diversified (and tiny) IRA dip by $800 and then rebound by $550, in the same day, without a massive amount of stupidity being involved?
5. A-Rod.

Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to avoiding being hit by an Audi

In which your humble narrator marvels at the natives' Jekyll and Hyde behavior when it comes to anything with wheels. 

Minnesotans are not friendly. They are "nice." They will tell you this themselves. There's an entire cottage industry of "Minnesota Nice" merchandise and paraphernalia. There's a freakin' Wikipedia page for Minnesota Nice! But as best as I can tell, the niceness generally only means that they will grudgingly answer direct questions put to them and they generally refrain from spitting on strangers.

All bets are off when you put these people on wheels. Cars, bikes, roller blades, put a Twin Citizen on wheels... and well, you have a wheeled menace. Amazingly this extends even to shopping carts. Back in my old Rust-Belt, Ohio home, people sort of moved out of the way in the Kroger so you could pass by them. Not here. Here, people are so militantly resistant to admitting that other human beings exist in the universe (when wheels are involved) that they will park their carts in the middle of the damn aisle and pretend you don't exist while you glare at them. Then you finally clear your throat and say "Pardon me," and the nasty local glares at you, because you've interrupted her careful meditation on Frosted Spelt Germ Puffs.

Cyclists here constantly write letters to the editors of numerous local publications about bastard car drivers and how we all have to share the road. Of course I've seen one cyclist stop at a stop sign in the last 60 days. Three have failed to stop and turned left in front of my car while I was stopped at the stop sign.

And the drivers are terrible. After an awful winter, the warm weather has made people even more hell-bent on driving like maniacs now that there's no ice or snow to contend with. Drunk driving is tolerated to a degree that's both embarrassing and completely contradictory to our image as a northern socialist nanny-state. Ten people died this past weekend in traffic accidents. In a metro area of 3.5 million, that's high.

Last session, the legislature passed a ban on texting while driving. This was before Oprah's crusade too. But since we only have about 7 highway patrol officers nobody pays a damn bit of attention.

Wheels go on, brains go off.

It's Friday so I Hate Stuff

In which your humble narrator accounts for five rebarbative aspects of life.

1. Sentiments expressed on bumper stickers that are entirely antithetical to the driving habits of the owner of the vehicle on which said sentiment is plastered. While in the car with my children yesterday afternoon, a man in a Buick who exhorted us to "Protect Life" simultaneously attempted to rob us of ours.
2. That weird mold that's been growing on the lawn underneath the snow.
3. Any mention of Tiger Woods, ever.
4. The insistence of newspapers to break their 500-word news articles across three pages to cram in more ads. I know y'all have to figure out a new revenue model. Annoying the crap out of me isn't it.
5. The realization that I am clearly old. Now that the haircuts of twelve-year-old boys regularly piss me off, there's really no point in trying to remain even vaguely cool.

They sailed away in a big cliché, to a land where a donkey goes...

In which your humble narrator declines to smell a donkey.

On today's public radio edition of the Liberal Mid-Morning Middle-Aged Ladies' Lifestyle Hour (LM-MM-ALLH) they're having yet another guest who has made the boldly innovative decision to abandon the fetid stench of the metropolis and move out to the Real America where things are all simpler, purer, more rural and everything is positively saturated with greater meaning. She lives on a farm and writes about it and stuff.

YAWN.

I've decided that I'm going to adopt the outlook that living in a 1948, post-war, ticky-tacky house on a nondescript boulevard in a relentlessly middle-class urban neighborhood confers upon me a penetrating insight into the human condition. As such, every single economic and lifestyle choice I make becomes a part of the narrative of my own personal specialness. Applications for "cult-like followers" will be accepted.

Also, this woman on the radio said she "loves to smell her donkey." 

That's messed up.

The Department of "With All due Respect"

In which your humble narrator decries weasel-speak.

Why is it socially acceptable to be insulting, insensitive or condescending if you preface your remarks by uttering "with all due respect?" I suggest we encourage our elected officials to avoid weaselly idioms.

After watching a few clips of last week's White House health summit I'm convinced we should replace "with all due respect" with, "bitches, please," 'cause you know that's what they're all thinking.*

Except for John Boehner who is thinking about cigarettes, and Joe Biden who is thinking about, oh I don't know... maybe waffles. And Amtrak.

Nickel and Dimed

In which your humble narrator spews invective in the direction of his telecommunications company.

I hate you, Qwest. I hate you so much. You are a very bad telecommunications company. Your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing. I have suffered your incompetence for years, but your avaricious "convenience" fee has gone too far.

I have paperless statements with Qwest for DSL and phone service. Once a month I log on, and pay my bill. Until this month. A new check box appeared at the bottom of the payment screen requiring me to authorize a $1.00 "convenience" fee to process my payment.

When companies start charging you for the privilege of paying for the services you purchase from them, I think we can agree that we're officially living in Bizarro World.

I, of course, wrote an angry letter. I always write letters. I wrote:

The "convenience" fee you've imposed on online payments is the last straw. I will not sign up for auto pay because then I won't be able to review my bill before paying. I sent a check for payment today. Please enjoy processing it manually.

I wish to un-enroll from online billing. We'll go back to expensive paper statements since you've decided to soak your customers for online transactions. I'm so sick of companies trying to nickel and dime me. I'll be looking seriously for a new telecom service in the next month.

I later received a form response from Qwest thanking me for contacting them and informing me that:

The fee is new and was a difficult decision for Qwest.

Oh, golly. Well I feel better knowing that you agonized over it. They continue:

Convenience fees are a common business practice that Qwest is adopting in order to operate more efficiently. Qwest approaches business from two directions: not only providing customers with world-class products and services, but also by operating in the most efficient possible way.

Allow me to translate. "Everyone else is doing it. Qwest approaches being a douche bag from two directions; not only providing outsourced, useless customer service and crappy products but also by nickel and diming your sorry butt for whatever we can get away with. Get bent, Qwest."

I wonder if Tamera McCurry of Qwest Customer Care had to go to school to learn how to do corporate double speak of if it's some sort of natural ability.

It's Tuesday, so I hate stuff

In which your humble narrator lists five things that get his Capra aegagrus hircus.

1. The five ancient Buick drivers in front of me in line at the car wash WHO ALL HAVE CLEAN CARS.
2. Encountering unexpectedly damp objects. (Child #2, I am looking in your direction.)
3. Diaper rash.
4. Students that email you the night before an assignment is due and then expect you to answer their questions within an hour or so. Sorry, kids, I don't actually spend the 24 hours before your deadline hunched over the Gmail waiting to answer questions you could have asked last week.
5. NBC Winter Olympics Commentators. Let's put them all on a bobsled, set it on fire, and push it off a mountain.

Smurf Impression

In which your humble narrator recounts his latest health care adventure.

Child #2 abruptly turned blue on Thursday. She got fussy, started panting, demanded to be held and turned blue in the arms, legs and around her mouth. Needless to say this put a damper on my morning. After several frantic calls to our clinic and some discussions with spectacularly unhelpful people, I packed her up and took her to the emergency room at Children's Hospital in St. Paul. Sister-of-me came over to watch Child #1 and to call Wife-a-roo.

By the time we had been through triage, Child #2 had slowed her breathing and turned a nice, healthy looking pink color again. The doctor checked her out and ordered a couple of chest x-rays to rule out any lung problems. In case you don't know, babies do not like being tied down to tables for x-rays.

She seems to be fine now. The doctor suspects that she has some vascular weirdness which is unsurprising since I have something called Raynaud's Syndrome which makes my blood vessels act all crazy in response to temperature fluctuations or stress. So I'm used to seeing my hands turn blue, but it's a little different when it's your infant daughter. 

I think I hate children's hospitals even more than the regular variety. The attempt to decorate in kicky, fun ways to lighten up the place always manages to sink me into a greater and greater depression. It's like hiring a clown to be a funeral director.

Virus Revisited

In which your humble narrator purchases stock in Kimberly-Clark, makers of Kleenex.

The third hideous virus of the winter has laid the entire family low. In one of last night's fever-dreams, I dreamt  that I died from this particularly nasty cold and went to the underworld where Charon waited in his boat to carry me across a river of snot to the far shore. I had no coin under my tongue and he wouldn't take the only thing in my pocket as payment, a booger-encrusted pacifier. Bastard.

 All I'm saying is this, my (expletive) kids better shell out for a pretty (obscene gerund) nice nursing home when I'm old and feeble.

Lets Bring Back Shame

In which your humble narrator gets his scold on and rants about the sheer ugliness of the ethical egoism that permeates modern life.

What ever happened to shame? Having been raised by quasi-hippies with a wide puritanical streak, I seem to have this unpopular notion that when you do stupid/evil/nasty/rude/hypocritical things, you should experience shame. Good ol' Pascal said "the only shame is to have none." Of course Blaise was a little too in love with his ability to turn a phrase, but I admire the sentiment none-the-less.

This week we have a president seemingly torpedoing his own agenda because he's now only got +18 majority in the Senate. From the New York Times Caucus Blog:

“If there’s one thing that I regret this year,” Mr. Obama said, “is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values.”

Goodness. Mealy-mouthed are we? This sounds like the trite response to the "what's your greatest weakness" job interview question.  "Oh gosh, America, I was just too darn focused on getting things done that I abdicated any responsibility for putting pressure on Congress to accomplish anything. Also I never bothered to communicate what it was that I wanted from a health care bill. I let opponents define the bill because I was too busy gettin'-r-done. Then I let the process drag on so long that Teddy Kennedy's seat is now held by a formerly nude Republican." Spare me the verbal curlicues, you tragic weiner.

Then there's our illustrious Supreme Court's conservative wing's (the one that has traditionally railed against judicial activism) decision to throw our 100+ years of precedent in a sweeping ruling where none was required. This was of course, not hypocritical. Just ask Antonin Scalia, he'll tell you so. Don't question him or he'll make a rude gesture to distract you while Dick Cheney sneaks up to shoot you in the face.

And last, on an entirely non-political note, what's up with the line-cutting, people? I frequently have middle aged persons try to cut in front of me in line. Are you all graduates of the Ayn Rand School for Tots?

Have you no shame?

Of Deviled Eggs, Bad Science and the Psychology of Stupidity

In which your humble narrator makes a mistake.

First, I confess. I read the Huffington Post. A college friend of mine used to work for her Greekness, and I've read it for years. I rationalize it by claiming that it's just like the New York Post, but for urban, liberal types.

Last night I made the mistake of clicking on the "Living" tab on Huffington Post. For the love of God, if you enjoy food, don't feel particularly like mediatating, doing yoga or actualizing your dream states, don't visit. All food is viewed through the prism of it's effects on your health. The headline article today is "GLUTEN: What you don't know might KILL you." This article takes a surprisingly individual tack toward self-diagnosis. First, the author tells you to cut all gluten from your diet, then reintroduce it. If you feel bad at all after reintroduction you should never eat gluten again. And this guy is an M.D. Really? A single trial test? Shouldn't doctors have some familiarity with, oh... I don't know, SCIENCE?

I think that the vast majority of these articles are really about two complementary psychological desires. The first is to find an explanation for your illness/addiction/fatness/compulsive sexual behavior with Peruvian mountain goats that relieves you of any responsibility at all. That goat was asking for it. And the second desire is to individuate oneself from all the other wealthy boutique liberals so you can be unique like everyone else. For additional examples of these two complementary psychological drives please see: Oprah, Dr. Phil, daytime medical television and the entire self-help industrial complex. I'm pretty resigned to most of this silliness, but please, leave food out of it.

To help us move past this idiocy, here's a nice picture of some deviled eggs from one of my Mom's family reunions a couple of years ago. They're a pain in the butt to prepare. They're not good for you. You should still eat them and enjoy them. I do.

The Fat Capitalist Pig Fascist Controller - Sir Topham Hatt

In which your humble narrator delves deeply in to the political machinations of Imperialist Oppressor, Sir Topham Hatt and his hegemonic stranglehold on the Island of Sodor.

Apparently we need to take a careful look at the conservative indoctrination of our toddlers. Sister-of-Me sent me a couple of links regarding a political analysis of Thomas the Tank Engine. The next day it was picked up as a story on CBC's As it Happens,* the Canadian radio news magazine show.

Exhibit A (from Canada.com: a bitchin' Canadian News Aggregater):

"Shauna Wilton, an associate professor of political studies at the University of Alberta's Augustana campus in Camrose, Alta., analyzed two dozen episodes [of Thomas and Friends] and found a strong conservative political flavour to the show.

Thomas inhabits a world where efforts to gain individual power or to upset the social hierarchy are punished, good citizenship is the ultimate virtue and episodes revolve around the morals of everyone having a role to play and the importance of teamwork and doing a good job, she says.
"One thing that's really clear when you watch Thomas is that there's a really strong social hierarchy and Sir Topham Hatt, the controller of the railway, is at the top and the different types of trains and characters fall below him," Wilton says."

Oh horrors! A children's program extolling the virtues of good citizenship and emphasizing the importance of having a role to play? But how will the little darlings learn to express themselves?

"It's a recurring theme on the show that Topham Hatt has a duty for the trains to fulfil and they try to make him happy and do a good job, she says -- a helpful theme for raising co-operative preschoolers, but not so good for teaching them to think for themselves or to question things as they grow.
On the show, any attempt by the trains to act on their own or go against orders has "fairly disastrous results,"she says, citing the story in which Thomas is temporarily replaced by another engine after he whistles impatiently at a police officer."

For pity's sake. It's a show for pre-schoolers. We don't really need to to teach them to think about things or to question authority BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THEY DO. The idea that, as parents, we should be encouraging rugged individualism in 2-5 year-olds is unmitigated idiocy. There used to be a word used to describe a young child who insisted on always doing things his or her own way, never following the rules and not bothering to learn basic rules of manners and morals. That word was "brat."

Predictably the response I've read and heard to this analysis generally falls into the hyper-moronic, tabloid style that one sees in the U.K.'s Guardian. And that's too bad, because the issue isn't some stupid liberal trying to ruin the teevee for our kids. This issue is that this analysis entirely misses the point that the developmental differences  between children and adults demand that children's programs contain different messages. Toddlers need to understand the social power relationships in their family. And if that family is going to function in any reasonable way, the toddler better not be the one in charge.**

When people ask me about my political philosophy I tell them that I'm a liberal because I believe in progressive taxation and active government regulation of the markets. But I'm not into all that other hippie bullshit.

*Which you should listen to. 
** Because small children are insane.

It's Thursday, so that must mean I hate things (Winter Edition)

In which your humble narrator comments on five examples of awfulness, worthy of hate.

1. Undergraduates complaining about how cold it is when they're wearing what amounts to pajamas to class. It's cold. Wear layers. Sweats and a jacket aren't going to cut it when the high is 9 degrees.
2. SUV drivers who have four wheel drive and still park 4 feet from the curb, because, you know, it's all snowy and shit. 
3. Black ice.
   
4. Trying to get change out of your pockets to feed the parking meter while wearing gloves.
5. Frozen boogers.
   

It's Thursday, so that must mean I hate things

In which your humble narrator tallies five hated things.

1. The "environmentally friendly" detergent at Costco that proudly proclaims its greeny-goodness but only mentions its "lavender fragrance" in extremely light, 8-point font. All of my clothes smell like old lady.
2. Living down-wind of a down-scale apartment complex from whence much trash blows into my yard. Did you know that Frito-Lay is still manufacturing Funyuns? I didn't until we moved to this house. I thought they had gone the way of the Dodo, betamax and fluffy chest hair.
3. The media omni-presence of Sarah Palin. Congratulations, conservatives. You've found a right-winger as annoying as Susan Sarandon. I suspect if they ever meet, the universe will collapse into an inky-black hole of self-righteous incoherence.
4. The invention of medical-themed daytime television. Please see "The Doctors" and "Dr. Oz." My prescription? Cancellation.
5. People who have blogs about "maintaining a simple life." 
• Step One: stop blogging. See? Simpler already.