Sandy, Why Can't We Look The Other Way?

I'm really not on a cranky streak. The World Cup was a nice break from our new part-time job dealing with the insurance company. YHWH is reasonably well; it looks like she'll mend but it will take awhile. I had a very nice appraisal at work and a pull-aside from an upper echeloner.

So, don't think I 'm being cranky when you read this, but for some reason this week I have encountered a spate of things that may have made my all-time list of things I hate. This has caused a certain bit of consternation because I can't find my damn list and I can't remember everything on it. A brightsider would make lemonade of this development and say, "Well, those things obvioulsy don't bother you anymore. Oh, but they do.

I definitely remember #1. You can never forget your #1. Or is that your first one? Well, anyway, it's non-Quebecois Canadians. Before I continue, I should point out that my list of things I hate is deductive. I don't set out to hate Canadians. I don't hate individuals because they are Canadian. It's just that of all the people I hate the most, they all happen to be from Canada. By the same logic, all the people I like that are from Canada, when I look into their background, they're from Quebec.

So, I'm resigned to making a new list. It'll take awhile. But here are some of the things that have donned on me to add to the list this week:

White pants I was walking on my lunch break and I saw a woman wearing white pants and it just struck me, "Those pants really look stupid." And I looked at the woman to see if I was being biased in some way about her overall appearance. I wasn't. She was reasonably attractive, young, well-groomed; but her pants were stupid. I can't even say why. They're like the queen of hearts in the original Manchurian Candidate or that call from Donald Pleasance in Telefon. Whenever I see them I just get really upset like something bad is going to happen. So, I thought about it all during lunch and I couldn't think of anything positive about white pants. Your underwear shows. The slightest gastronomic mishap shows. Socks look stupid with them and then you have to wear sandals or flipflops and I hate those, too. With the exception of naval officers, I just really don't see any redemption for white pants.

"That's so random" and randomly These terms have reached a ubiquity resulting in fingernail-chalkboard status in my sphere of association. I growl under my breath everytime I hear it. And when the Queen used it in her headline earlier in the week it was all I could take - it had to go on the list. I'm into my fourth decade. I know every generation reinvents the language. But most of the time the words are either unusable in any other context (eg gnarly), an exaggeration (eg radical!) or of an already amorphous nature (eg cool). Cool and bad are perfect examples of words that can mean lots of things even among standard speakers that kids have attributed new meanings to. But random? Random only means 'haphazard' or 'without aim'. Queen used it that way, but the kids use it to describe things they don't understand - which when you think about it is so frequent it's not random but sadly predictable. Oh, man - I just checked Urban Dictionary and there are tons of entries on it by detractors! It feels so warm inside to know that I'm capable of belonging to a group! See, this is a positive thing, making this list.

Flipflops I've already opined about this a few posts back.

The Internet It would take too long.

Interviewees asking their own questions and answering them Already talked about this one, too.

The History Channel Like MTV and videos, HC rarely has history on anymore. Today was almost unbearable. While I was folding laundry, I flipped the channel to HC and they had the absolute worst show on about the Masons and Knights Templars. An obvious suck off the teat of Da Vinci Code. The really annoying thing is that HC doesn't even have original content. They buy all the shows from these production companies akin to puppy mills. They're literary equivalents of Nancy Drew at best and Harlequin romances at worst. In this one, all of the 'experts', none of which had an advanced degree in religion or history, had really bad Southern accents. At one point an expert said, the Pope changed his mind about Hitler because of the 'hurting of the Jews'. Huh? Hurting? This is the level of eloquence we get? And then they say that Pope Pius XI planned to stand up to Mussolini ... but died suddenly. He was 80-freakin-2 and in poor health. That's not suddenly. And you know what? The whole topic isn't even history! Here's the best part. When they get to the part where they say that the Masons took over the US, they flash these bad drawings of old white guys on the screen and one of them is - I kid you not - James Buchannen. Yes. James Buchannen. That is so random! OK, first of all, the guy who is largely considered to be the worst president ever should not be the poster boy for the Masonic takeover. I smirk, but I figure, you know, typos happen. But then, they show a painting of somebody identified as Johann Wolfgang. Johann Wolfgang What?! Goethe?! Did you mean Goethe?! Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a mason - but he had nothing to do with us! I spent the next hour walking around the house shouting, "AFLAC!" After that show they present their Real to Reel movie where they show a movie and then compare it to the true history of the situation. Tonight's movie? Road Warrior. Yeah, I know - Road Warrior, the post-Apocalyptic movie set in Australia, is both real and history. I actually watched Road Warrior because I like the movie and because they usually have a panel of experts who talk about the Real part. I thought they might discuss how likely such a scenario would be, which I would find interesting. No panel. And all their factoids were about production costs and marketing campaigns. That's history, folks!

I'm up to seven! That's 70% of my Top 10! If I could just find that list...

I'm knitting an earflap cap with an om embedded in it. I'll let you know.