Thanksgiving? How About an Airing of Grievances Instead?

I suppose I should blame it on my Mom, my contrarian streak. It always seems to come at inconvenient times. For example, this time of year when everybody is talking about how thankful they are for this or that, I feel overcome with the desire to write a Festivus-style airing of grievances post. Its mostly little things, but still irritating annoyances. So, if you’re here looking for one of those Ten Things I’m Thankful For posts, you’ve come to the wrong place. Here goes…

1. I’m increasingly annoyed by the ubiquitous overuse of the F-word. Look, I’m known for my occasional salty language, believing as I do that profanity, properly understood and used, is a unique and effective form of communication. But, the F-word has become the…like…of popular discourse, and because of this, it has lost its meaning altogether. It appears in even the most benign communications in every imaginable part of speech, verb, noun, adjective, adverb. It’s ridiculous. Note to the worst offenders — if you think using the word is shocking, that train left the station a decade ago. It just makes you look boring and uneducated.

2. 

Why is it that every single time I encounter a worksite that features a giant hole in the ground, there are always 1-2 workers down in the hole actually working and 6-8 guys standing around watching them work, hands folded or jammed in pockets, big smiles on their faces? I mean…every single time. And this photograph doesn’t even show the dude sitting in the cab of that backhoe reading the newspaper.

3. It continues to both astonish and annoy me that people in this country look at the same political figure and see wildly different things. My son, a liberal, is supremely disappointed in Joe Biden for essentially going back on most of his campaign promises and governing like a Republican (the deportations continue, no student debt cancellation, no raising the minimum wage, flip flopping on off shore oil leases, etc,..etc), while many of my conservative friends are convinced that Joe Biden is in the grips of the radical left of his party, a veritable pawn of international Socialism. This is what happens when nobody trusts the media and out of frustration, retreats to like-minded social media platforms dominated by partisans. Alternative universes emerge that drive our narrative, neither of which can be trusted. 

4. Nobody understands supply and demand, the laws of scarcity and abundance better than me…but this is opportunistic bull-s**t.

What? You expect me to believe that somehow COVID has stunted the growth of the Christmas tree crop? The supply chain problems off the coast of California have somehow shrunk the supply of Frazier Firs? Are truck drivers suddenly refusing to ship trees down 95 because of the higher cost of fuel? Or…is this just a money grab by greedy grifters taking advantage of people who read articles like THIS…

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.denverpost.com/2021/11/21/pay-more-christmas-trees/amp/ “Expect higher prices” all you want. I say, refuse to pay!

I simply refused to be scammed, picking up a six foot beauty at Food Lion for $50.

5. I’m done with people who drive minivans into crowds of people. I have no interest in examining root causes. I couldn’t care less about what race the driver is or the race of his victims. I say, bring back public hangings for these maniacs.

6. And now…yet another “high profile trial of the century” has the country sitting on the edge of our seats, this time in Georgia. We all wait around for the verdict, then the rioting aftermath to come. No matter the outcome, my Facebook feed will be filled with F-BOMB outrage by people who set through exactly zero of the testimony, examined none of the physical evidence and only heard journalist’s summations of the proceedings, yet can tell you for a fact that the jurors were all idiots, the judge bought off and the defense council (or prosecutors) incompetent. 

There.

I feel better already!