Today I have very little to say, but I'd like to list a few things that irritate or amuse me. I expect most of my readers to agree with me on these, but you'll probably want to add this blog and its stupid entries to the list of annoying things. I'm still not annoyed by it, but for the fact that I have to keep writing new entries.
First off, has anyone heard about this injury to American superstar skier Lindsey Vonn. As US Americans, we're apparently supposed to be expecting her to utterly destroy the competition in some skiing competition. Or rather, we were supposed to be expecting that. Now we're just hoping she can compete. It seems she has suffered some "injury" that she immediately reported to Matt Lauer and the good people at NBC. The injury is described as a "deep muscle bruise," and she feels quite a bit of pain when she wears her boot. There is no damage to any muscle or bone, nor is there a joint involved. She has some pain when she skis (is that how it's spelled? Ski-s). And her reason for reporting this to Matt Lauer on NBC morning news or the Today Show or whatever it is? To make sure we, the viewers, know that if she fails to impress at the Olympics, she has a valid excuse! Hahahahahaha! I'm a hater, and this is just the sort of thing that makes me think our superstar athletes are whiny babies. Note to self: to create an "American Olympic Dream" story, make up some ailment that most athletes have been dealing with throughout their career with no complaints (you play a sport for a living, how can you complain about a bruise, however serious?!), then report it to the news as a possible tournament wrecker, then do reasonably well in your competition, then write the book about how you overcame all that adversity to bring new Glories to the US Olympic Team! Go Team USA!
On a similarly snarky note, I'd like to point out that, with stories like "Canada welcomes the world" and "The one sporting event that can truly be called a global phenomenon," NBC, CNN, and the rest of our US media outlets are trying to deceive. I know that Jamaica has a bobsled team and all that, I did see Cool Runnings. But seriously? The "World" is involved in the winter olympics? I bet I can list 30 countries that won't be involved and won't care that there are winter olympics. Bringing things closer to home, I can guarantee that, even if the US Olympic Team sweeps the entire event, raking in gold, silver, and bronze in every event, I will gain absolutely nothing from that fact. I will not be particularly happy for the winners or sad for the losers. I will be impressed that the families that sponsored those athletes in their goal to win the olympic event of their choosing have finally succeeded, but I will also be more impressed (in a negative direction) that so many more families have, once again, failed in that endeavor. This is all just another entertaining reminder of how much money we as a society invest in things that, ultimately, matter not a whit. At least the athletes are enjoying themselves, so I guess that's a good thing, right? I'd just rather we spent a bit less on these ego-inflating competitions. I know, same thing applies to international soccer. Leagues still pay for themselves pretty well, so I can't really make the same comparison there.
Next on my list of complaints: you know those people who insist on walking down the middle of the road after it snows? No, of course you don't, they're all dead by the time they reach our age! Ha, but seriously, those people really annoy me. If I'm driving down a very slick street, just trying to avoid getting hit by the other drivers on the road, should I also have to avoid stupid pedestrians who think that the street is somehow safer than a sidewalk? Apparently I should. But if you're a street walker (!), get back on the sideWALK, that's what it's there for. Walking. If I catch you on the street, you had better be running - then you can at least make the "I was afraid I'd twist my ankle" excuse, which is nonsense if you're just walking. If you're going to fall, wouldn't you rather fall on a sidewalk where your worst concern is falling in a frozen dog pile or getting stepped on by another walker? You fall on an icy street, and suddenly you're praying that that car sliding down the road toward you has ABS and a driver who isn't busily texting her bff and checking road conditions on her web-enabled device, all while trying to follow her gps screen so she can get home from work. See? Seriously people, we should walk on the sidewalk, even when it snows.
Finally, in the "amusing notes" section, I'd like to step into the political arena for a moment. It appears that Sarah Palin has used crib notes in some sort of speech or Q&A or something. I'm sure that's a no-no in some places, but I really don't care what she's written on her hand. She's a nutcracker, can't we just ignore her? No, because the news WILL shove her in our faces every day. But we're just The People. By contrast, the President and his staff should (and absolutely can) ignore her. They are not running a campaign, there's not even an election on the near horizon. So why are they responding to her? She's not a politician, she's not even a serious contender for some future position at this point. But now the entire world knows that the White House pays attention to her, and that it is even willing to respond to her insane "ideas." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8507322.stm) If the President of the United States now has to address the idiotic words of every crackpot who appears at any political event from here to 2012, then we're really not going to have much progress on anything between here and there. Let's let late-nite comedians and the generally unsympathetic news media destroy Palin and other lunatics who so love the lime-lite, and get on with the important stuff of running this country. Oh, and let's impose term limits on Congress, stick in a line-item veto to kill off all the BS pork barrel projects, and abolish the two-party system that has us stuck in this sad little holding pattern. Some amusing story, eh?
Keep watching the skis.
postscript: I can't believe I forgot this, but a subject that has become a very sore spot for me is this "recession" that we're currently experiencing. Sure, we're all suffering, so it's a sore spot for all of us. But am I the only person who's completely offended by these pet food commercials where the cat's eating shrimp and salmon, and the dog's too picky to eat the dry food so you have to microwave the little meal container? We can't find jobs, we can't pay our mortgages, taxes are too high, they're repossessing our cars, and we can barely feed our families, but we're not about to feed our animals some crappy dry food. I'll bet you're thinking, "don't these commercials only appeal to a select few members of our society, isn't that why these make sense even in a recession?" But it's time to face the facts: if these commercials didn't work, and work well, they would have stopped running them some time ago. As it is, clearly our country is spending far too much on feeding things that could just as easily be used to feed us (OK, I guess that crack is going a bit too far, but you get the idea). Buy the 50# bag of dry food, which could incidentally feed the family in a bind, especially if you grind it up and make flour and bread from the powder, leave the microwaveable seafood feast for later, when we all have jobs and money to burn!
