Petty Grievances Continued

I guess it’s no secret that I like to complain. Sure, I’ve been known to build things up on occasion during upswings of optimism. But at heart, I’m just a cantankerous old crank who fixates on the tiniest of gripes — the pettiest of grievances. I am all too aware that the world is full of some genuinely pressing problems, but that’s never stopped me before from sweating over the little things. So here we go, kids. I’ve come up with a short new list of trivial things that either baffle me, or just plain piss me off. It’s just what I do. Listen up and pay attention.

• Awkward endings to news articles

  Did you ever notice that online news articles often conclude with inelegant, poorly written endings? I’m not even talking about bad wording or syntax; I’m talking about those awful, lazy, awkward conclusions that only have the slightest bit of relevance to all of the information that precede them. These terrible endings always include some bizarrely inappropriate, non-topical point of fact that seems more jarring and confusing, rather than informative. It’s almost as if the authors just ran out of time before they could wrap things up satisfactorily, so they just reached for the nearest piece of trivia that came to mind, and they jammed it in at the end.

  I admit, this may be an esoteric thing to complain about, but don’t tell me that you have never read a single online article that ended as badly as the following example:

  . . . .
  
  Having run out of bullets during the sixteen hour standoff with police, the unidentified gunman killed his oldest and final hostage — 94-year-old Maurice DeCampo — by savagely beating him to death with a Snuffleupagus stuffed toy. The gunman then turned the toy on himself, somehow managing to jam the trunk of the stuffed Snuffleupagus down his own throat, thereby blocking his windpipe. The gunman had died by asphyxiation before SWAT team members could secure the building.

  

  Snuffleupagus is the lovable, woolly-mammoth-like Muppet sidekick of Big Bird on the Emmy Award winning public television series Sesame Street.
  

Who the hell are the editors who are letting this sloppy bullshit slide? I mean seriously, are these journalism professionals actually trying to be terrible at their jobs?

“Bullshit” is a common American English expletive, often used as an interjection, which connotes disapproval due to unfavorable circumstances, or disapproval in relation to misleading, disingenuous, or false language.

See what I did there? Somebody from the Associated Press should be calling me any day now with a job offer.




• Regular strength first aid ointment

  
  
  

  Why does Neosporin offer both regular strength and maximum strength healing ointments? What market segment is Neosporin trying to capture with a product that has inferior healing qualities? I can picture some guy standing in the first aid aisle of a drug store who would be thinking to himself: “Well, I like the idea of treating my cuts with an antibacterial cream, but I’d like to bleed as much as possible before my wounds are healed.”

  
  

• Talking like Yoda from Star Wars

  Yes, Yoda is an awesome character. I dare say he was too good for the travesty that was the Star Wars prequels. He deserved so much better than that.

  

  Yet as much as I love Yoda, I can’t stand it when lame motherfuckers try to capitalize on Yoda’s awesomeness by speaking in the little green Jedi’s backwards vernacular. For a taste of what I’m talking about, try opening up a new tab on your internet browser and running a Google search for the phrase, search. You’ll find plenty of examples of jackasses on the internet who think it is clever and cute to imitate Yoda’s signature cadence.

  I’m sorry, but there is nothing remotely cool about talking like Yoda unless you happen to be Frank-Fucking-Oz himself. I tend to group those people who attempt to talk like Yoda into the same category as those pathetic people who think they can do a dead-on impression of Austin Powers. Both endeavors are equally capable of making a rational listener cringe. Both endeavors are equally lame.

  Imitating Yoda’s speech pattern is about as cool as young Anakin Skywalker’s “Yippee” in Episode I.

  Yeah … remember that shit?

  
  

• People who mock the Chinese for mispronouncing the letter “L”

  I understand where the jokes about bad driving come from. And I get it that our slanted eyes make us look wacky and blind. I’ll even let it slide that there are those who talk shit about about Chinese people eating cats and dogs, because there are other ethnic groups out there that eat far crazier things. But Jesus, people, get a clue about basic cultural and geographical differences. China and Japan are two completely different countries. I mention this because it’s primarily the Japanese who famously have trouble distinguishing their Ls and Rs, because generally speaking, there is no true “L” sound in the Japanese language.

  

  Many westerners lazily assume that if one rule applies to a single group of yellow people, then it must be that way across the board. I assure you, though: the phonetic “L” sound is alive and well in China and Taiwan. Haven’t you people ever heard of the Shaolin monks, or Lao-Tzu, the father of Taoism? How about Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Ling Ling the giant panda, Lucy Liu, movie director Ang Lee, or even Chun-Li of Street Fighter fame? That whole “Asiany” side of the globe isn’t exclusively populated by an interchangeable mass of “Chinese” people, you know.

  Now that I’ve done my part to dispel that popular misconception about the Chinese, why don’t I set my people back a few more decades by reveling in the self-parody of Notorious MSG?

  China White, bitch.

  
  

• The “Legitimacy” of Twitter

  I am hardly the first person to hate on Twitter, but I sincerely hope that I am not the last. Why the hell is this gimmicky website so popular? The concept of Twitter is asinine and shallow. If you have something to say, then why would you arbitrarily limit yourself to 140 characters? I liked the original incarnation of personalized online expression back when it was called “blogging”.

  

  Yes, I realize that young people in Iran launched a would-be revolution back in 2009 with the help of their incendiary tweets, but I believe many of those protesters sacrificed substance for the convenience and immediacy that Twitter provided. Imagine how much more impressive it would have been to read a whole host of blog entries decrying the corruption that enabled a tampered presidential election, versus bullshit like, “Protesting Ahmadinejad ftw. The Green Movement shall prevail! Gather @ coffee shop by 14:00. Farrokh: Bring your bongo drums.”

  Honestly, am I the only American who’s irritated by the fact that Twitter has gained so much undeserved legitimacy, that our politicians are now embracing it as a viable means of communicating their thoughts to the public?

  For the sake of illustration, I have randomly decided to pick on Chuck Grassley, the republican United States senator from Iowa. On September 2, 2010, Grassley tweeted the following message:

  Great Qs @ Moravia Senior Hi They have good perspective on fed govt thanks to good teacher

  Notice the abbreviations. You understand what Grassley is saying when he talks about “Qs” and the “fed govt”, but it might take you a second to realize that “Hi” is short for “High School”. It also doesn’t help matters that this tweet lacks any kind of punctuation, presumably due to the fact that Grassley was worried about capping out his 140-character limit. For the record, Grassley’s tweet is only 74 characters. I don’t know very much at all about Senator Grassley. My opinion of this elected official, however, has lowered considerably because he seems to have no qualms about communicating his thoughts in text like an illiterate, net-speaking teenager.

  Why are so many public officials enamored by Twitter? Why do America’s news outlets pay such deference to what famous people are tweeting? Reporters quote tweets all the time in their news stories, as if the American public has been clamoring to hear incoherent, yet topical commentary by somebody whose online handle might as well be “xXbigdixmcgeeXx”? Fuck Twitter up its stupid fucking ass.

  Do you remember when actress Brittany Murphy died in December 2009? Apparently, more than one news outlet saw it fit to quote Ashton Kutcher’s eloquent eulogy tweet during that sad episode:

  2day the world lost a little piece of sunshine. My deepest condolences go out 2 Brittany’s family, her husband, & her amazing mother Sharon.

  I don’t think any further explanation is necessary for you, the reader, to grasp just how much I hate the previous two sentences. But I will say this: If, when I die, anybody ever tries to euologize me in 140 characters or less by employing that abbreviated, internet shorthand garbage, I promise you that my corpse will rise out of the grave as Zombie-KZ, and with whatever portion that’s left of my departed consciousness, I will hunt you down and punch you in the fucking face.

Like I said, I’m just a cantankerous old crank. The world is full of things that I love to hate, and thank God for that.