What drove you bonkers this morning, so far? A stale three-dollar bagel with half-defrosted cream cheese? Not having a job at all? Did the cretins next door — the ones with the tattoos around their mouths and five kids crawling around pooping in the weeds — stay up all night blasting “Godsmack” and fighting their pit bulls and ripping out the copper piping? Are you oppressed by the banal horror of American architecture? Sickened by the double anus-burger super-size combo you got for lunch yesterday because it’s that or Quizno’s, every day, forever? While you stood at the pump breathing cancer fumes and funding Al Qaeda, did ABC blast you with some teevee promos, at 7:36 a.m.? Do you feel like crying all the time? Experts say your problem may not be exclusively political.
The New York Times has a curious report today suggesting that people have lots of stuff to be bummed out about, but politics isn’t even on the top of the list. It’s just that we lack the vocabulary to articulate everything that’s cheap and awful about life in this horrid slob nation in its Final Days, so we naturally jabber about “the politicians” or “the Muslims” because, lacking a national culture or any personal dignity, we return to the default “issues” that have been completely defined for us by the jabbering content-mill bullshit of talk radio, cable news and (of course!) the Internet.
In fact, very little, if anything, is even mentioned about partisan politics. Instead, the facilitator asks the half-dozen or so voters to invent their own countries and to compare their idealized versions with the country they actually live in.
The focus group that met here in New Jersey on Monday included a bartender, a lawyer and a school bus driver. The dominant theme of the discussion, in which jobs and taxes came up only in passing, seemed to be the larger breakdown of civil society — the disappearance of common courtesy, the relentless stream of data from digital devices, the proliferation of lawsuits and the insidious influence of media on their children.
One woman described a food fight at the middle school that left a mess school employees were obliged to clean up, presumably because the children couldn’t be subjected to physical labor. A man complained about drivers who had grown increasingly hostile and inconsiderate on the roads, which drew nods of assent all around. Another described the Internet as just plain “bad.”
This is your editor’s 6,000th (six-thousandth) post here on Wonkette since joining this illustrious political gossip/satire publication in the summer of 2006. (Even more tragic: That’s not even half of the blog posts to appear under this byline since about 1997.) And to celebrate this dubious achievement, your editor will spend the next week or three typing a daily post about everything that’s awful in the United States of 2010. Teabaggers and other such staples of our Wonkette diet will not be mentioned! If you’ve got a Special Suggestion, please put it in the comments and then run away from the Internet for a while, because it is actually “just plain ‘bad.’” [New York Times]
{ 194 comments }
Are those iNuts?
They're Ana-Tomix: http://m.assetbar.com/achewood/uua4Fpj9W
Kids pronouncing the word yeah as "yah," like they were god-damned Germans or something.
Ja, das ist die wurst.
Good grief I am just reading that piece and the comments after it. This is after the "how dare you dis us Barry, we gave you everything, we trusted you" story about how the liberals are all going to take their marbles and go home in November.
FML
We pop one hell of a lot of pills these days. And the pills to make us not sad are driving us all insane.
"A man complained about drivers who had grown increasingly hostile and inconsiderate on the roads, which drew nods of assent all around."
I thought we were supposed to be angry… ***Sheepishly pulls out of oncoming traffic***
Oh, Fuck! Joe Biden, please just come and strangle me now!
The American moron tradition of substituting feeling for thought is a special kind of awfulness.
Fucking pussies think its bad just because every day is a relentless, futile fucking struggle to keep breathing in a constant deluge of pointless, stupid, crap, not even epic evil or enormous injustice that you could develop some sense of satisfaction out of at least enduring or even being martyred by, no, an endless suffocating fucking stream of petty fucking minor-league shit. Yup, if you think thats depresssion, yer a total fucking pussy. Just wait till total anhedonia sets in. The only good thing about bad things is that they make you appreciate good things, but when the anhedonia hits, there are no good things, and everything becomes shit, even sushi, even blowjobs, even afternoon naps. Thats when life gets interesting.
No worries…they'll just start making Big Macs with extra dopamine.
I prefer the Serotonin Shamrock Shake, but thanks.
Jesus Hates Pussies
You're saying Jesus was gay?
Strange coincidence: He hung out with a bunch of sweaty men in dresses.
I don't care about much these days, but Prop 19 gives me some hope, and I will be happy to vote for moonbeam over moonforehead and I will be voting for that cunt barbara boxer instead of that cunt carly fiorina, despite her support for prohibition.
Christ this has been a lame post. apologies all around, I guess I lack the vocabulary, I can't articulate my feelings, je n'arrive pas à trouver les mots justes…
So just as the Great Depression at least gave us the end of alcohol prohibition, the Great Recession may give Californians the end of weed prohibition. See, at least there will be psychoactive substances; er a, events to give us some hope.
Sometimes you just gotta look life in the eye and say "Ne m'emmerdez pas avec vos histoires. Demerdez vous seul dans la cuisine."
I thought "je n'arrive pas à trouver les mots justes" was the musical countdown to The Kick, but here I am, still in this goddamned nightmare.
Yeah, but they kicked off Margaret Cho instead of Bristol on DWS.
That's just the kinda joy-sucking petty shit that destroys the soul.
And once again Bill Hicks covered this already:
"..Here, here's (INSERT PETTY SHIT). Watch this, shut up, go back to bed America, here is (INSERT PETTY SHIT), here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on the living in the land of freedom. Here you go America – you are free to do what well tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!”
No wonder they call you Troubledog. Bad ! No snarking stereotypes !! Bad boy!!
But they always have – it was just easier to ignore before the intertubes.
Serious
You're righter than you think. Back in the day, news and information came at you in measured doses. You took the morning paper to work and read it on the hopper during your mid-morning break. You came home and read the evening paper before dinner and then watched the national news. If something was actual BREAKING NEWS…it was bound to be portentous stuff. Now everything is marketed as BREAKING NEWS, plus we have overpaid and under-smart "experts" bloviating about the BREAKING NEWS. It's too much like trying to sip water from a firehose…or, perhaps a better analogy is that we're being waterboarded by the media.
/serious
Finally – nice phone nuts. I myself prefer the Solo, by ChatSack with Karl Lagerfeld
Do you think that Chris Onstad is saddened by people taking him seriously, about the phone balls?
Well thank you for justifying my growing dislike of people. Now I know it's not my increasingly anti-social/elitist/intolerant-o- stupid-people tendencies, it's America's fault that things suck.
Retail cunts (actually any given echo-boomer in any given happenstance) saying "Think yheww-ah" instead of "thank you." Or does SNL already have a "Buh-bye"-like skit already about that, not that I'd watch SNL for all the twat in Tahiti.
They also say, 'how ARE you?' in such a way that you know damn well they aren't even pretending to care, which is fine by me, since I am thus free to hate them without reservation. And I'm with you about SNL.
Not everything; I have it on good authority that Christine O'Donnell refuses to suck.
As long as I have an Aztec Princess to eat out every morning I couldn't care less what happens to the American people.
everything that’s awful in the United States of 2010.
Two words, Ken: Wal-Mart, Mississippi. That should get you all the way through Cocktober and well in to Blowvember.
And it's smooth sailing to Jizzcember when we get our country back.
Don't forget South Carolina. Endless billboards filled with hate & fear & teh stoopid.
My biggest non-political problem that crushes my dignity is my obsession over having enough 'p' — do I have enough? Will I be able to look at the children I can't afford to conceive with the p-points they will inherit from me?
Gone are the days of simply writing 'also' and 'trucknutz' and leaving it at that. Now we actually have to risk 'p' in order to be funny — what is next? Fireman coming to my burning home to grade how cool it looks when it burns? Random strangers grading me on my looks? A digital display implanted on my forehead telling everyone what my current 'p' rating is?
Oh, and wtf happened to shortsshortsshorts?
Great idea. I‘m going to go home, make a nice fire, and throw myself in it, rudely.
"Will I be able to look at the children I can't afford to conceive with the p-points they will inherit from me?"
I'm afraid I have bad news. P-points are not transferable. They will die with you.
Yeah, how are Wonkette comments ever going to make grown political figures cry again if everyone is too worried about 'p' to take any ludicrously offensive risks.
I think IntenseDebate and their closed source algorithm that randomly adds and subtracts points based on solar flares and the Japanese stock market, or whatever the fuck other random inputs they have, needs to get canceraids and die.
Please don't subtract points, oh revered, lovely IntenseDebate algorithm overlord. I have a family (a.k.a. cat) to feed.
Scrabbling for credit, kicking at the faces of those below, obsessive score-watching, riding a self-esteem roller-coaster.
It's just like back in college. Ugh.
I'm trying not to obsess over my 'p'-ness shrinkage over the past few weeks.
63 is average though right?????
Judging by other commenters' 'p'-nesses (yes, I do sneak a peek from time to time), 63 is a tad small, but does 'p'-ness size really count in commenting?
It's not the size, it's how you use it, as men have uselessly told women throughout history.
Hah, I fiercely defend my right to be unfunny.
Is…..is my p growing?
Fret not, fair Facehead — I shall hereby bequeth all my 'p' to thee:
ppp
ppppp
pppppp
ppppppp
ppppp
ppppp
ppppp
ppppp
ppppp
ppppp
ppppp
ppppp
ppppp
ppppp
ppppp
ppppp
pppppp
Now, go make some goddamn babies!
Yeah, where IS shorts?
How do we find him/her/it? ShortsShortShorts was a mainstay of fun and beloved insanity here.
As far as I can tell, Replies will show automatically only if your p-score is a prime. That's what I shoot for.
At the risk of discovering BanHammer 2.0, http://twitter.com/shortsandpants and http://www.shortsshortsshorts.com/ give us breadcrumbs on the trail. Looks hindenburgish, but I don't know the guy, so I should STFU.
I miss Newell and Shorts, the throbbing bursts of Neilist, etc, but it's a new pee-pee paradigm, appppppparently. Mine's always going to be too short (SEE WHAT I DID THERE), but what the hell. Still funnier than most other shit.
We'll always have the Larry Craig Super Tuber. ALSO TRUCKNUTZ
Anybody who texts/types things like "R u going 2 c her tomm? Hope u do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
I'm just sitting under my desk rocking back and forth and awaiting the rapture.
If you're humming a spiritual, I think I used to work in the cube next to you.
So a bartender, a lawyer and a school bus driver walk into a panel discussion in a strip mall in New Jersey. The facilitator asks the three to invent their own countries. The bartender says, "my country would have big tippers and more well-behaved patrons." The School Bus driver says, "I'd like a country with good kids and more respectful drivers." The lawyers looks at the moderator and says, "if this is supposed to be a random sampling, what the fuck is my son's bus driver and my neighborhood bartender doing here?"
that was brilliant!
Try the veal!
And the moderator says "I was talking to the duck!"
But when does the horse walk in?
1. Other fucking people
2. Other fucking places
3. Other fucking choices
4. Other fucking words.
There, that should keep you busy. Glad to help.
PS: Oh, I also think it's awful when you're crying and snot gets in your mouth.
Ken, quick! Go take one of your walks. I just did and it helped me shake off the grifter post.
Heh. I was just getting ready to go out and cut more firewood. It's Wednesday, my day off. A day to sweat a little, outside in the woods. The best of days.
Yes.
I can't be pissed off unless the six idiots in somebody's living room validate me to a recycled has-been pollster and a couple of MBAs?
At least it is not another Frank Luntz (c) focus group.
It's not that everything sucks now – it's just that Facebook allows people we haven't spoken to in years to finally reach us with their messages of how much they hate Mondays, Tuesdays, etc., and how very unhappy/whiney they are at any particular moment. Things are the same as they've always been, we just hear about it more now.
Also – fuckers.
So, why am I so fucking miserable when I get their happy fucking stories about their goddamn kids and fucking baseball tryouts?
Answer that one, Mr. Answerman.
The worst and most depressing thing of all, the most soul-destroying, searingly painful, ultimately numbing thing that in the end leaves you hollow and dead, turns you into that pair of ragged claws scutttling across the floor of some ocean in the cold blackness of empty, lonley, futile existence, is observing the sucess of undeserving shitbags, palins, trumps, hiltons and each and every one of the many many nepotistas.
YOU go take a nice walk as well, promster. Then maybe smoke a bowl or two and mix up an arid martini. (Oh, and when people add "ster" to the end of a name, that bugs the living shit outta me).
I've gotten over that but Jersey Shore depresses the shit out of me
Yoga. Good for the head.
Until some asshat pulls you out of your mellow.
Yes, children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. This is new in history.
This is so true.
They are tyrants because their parents have given them terrible first names, usually surnames that have absolutely no link to their actual family tree. They are also annoyed at being named at random inanimate objects their parents happened to see during conception, pregnancy, or delivery. It's understandable, really.
Why you ask, Two Dogs Fucking?
Blame my generation of breeders who wanted so desperately to be their kid's friend that they forgot to be parents.
Dear Ken; Here is my suggestion. Reach under your desk, grab the brown paper bag with the bottle, tilt your head back in a "say ah" position and drink until the gurgling stops. Then walk down to Union Station and sleep it off while riding the Metro. When you awake start on your next 6,000th and remember, New Jersey will never be optimistic as long as Jersey Shore/Fat-Boy Guv is busy FaceBooking and firing all the teachers. After that you could possibly write about something really interesting, like telling us why you are not a Witch whenyou run for Mayor of DC.
Ya had to mention fat fuck, didn't ya?
The problem with alcohol is that it wears off.
Yeah, but then you drink more and everything's okay!
After my latest drinking bout, ok, daily I admit it, I passed out and got up in the middle of the night to take a piss and was shocked to find my liver already in the bathroom being sick in the toilet. Well, maybe shocked is the wrong word.
Yes, but when it's worn off, you have a hangover. I find it comforting to be unable to tell if I'm genuinely depressed or if it's just the hangover that's making the daylight hours so hard to get through.
There's your problem. You stop drinking.
HELTER SKELTER
Health Insurance that doesn't cover your kids needs when they need it the most.
Dickheads who say cutting taxes and lowering the deficit at the same time is possible.
Remakes of movies that sucked the first time. (see also TV shows as movies)
People who order a triple fat fatty fat burger with extra cheese, Godzilla fries and a diet fucking soda.
People who don't use their goddamn turn signals.
I'm fine with everything except this mortality and aging thing. That shit is a real bummer and I'll vote for any candidate promising change.
I am sick of fake tits.
I know, right? Just watch "Boardwalk Empire" (dubbed "Boobwalk Empire") and marvel at the real thing.
I feel you. At least we now have the Hoff instead of Jenna. As Dan Rather used to say, … Courage.
I live in my fantasy country, which also happens to suck. The point is not to get sucked in and enjoy the small blessings.
And eat well. (You are in France, non?)
Well, we do get good cheese with our whine.
Nah, sorry, Demme, but genuine crises, real oppression, existential struggles, no matter how painful, these things are often joyful for the purpose and meaning they give to your existence, when just enduring and surviving are real accomplishments, hating yourself for never writing that novel and now you are 50 stuck in a dead-end, boring job and life is over angst becomes insignificant in real hard times. No, the worst is the petty disappointments andd discomforts of life during a time of at worst slow spiralling decline.
Thats why the teabaggers and the fundies stoke their rage and panic all the time, thats why they love thinking they are living in a moment of crisis or the end times, they love thinking they are brave soldiers engaged in an existential struggle against an implacable enemy (us). That gives them purpose, makes them happy.
We are cursed with being too smart to fool ourselves.
That's actually a well-documented phenomenon. For most people on the Allied side who were not directly affected by the more gruesome aspects of war – for instance, having their whole family starve in the Leningrad blockade and being reduced to consuming their frozen corpses in the winter of '43 – WWII was a great old time. They fought an objective, unjustifiable evil without having to feel all this moral ambiguity of, say, the invasion of Iraq ("Wait, are we the evil invaders here?"). They got laid. They had awesome propaganda songs to listen to on the wireless ("Lily Marlen," "Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer"). There was all this hell-a-neat espionage shit going on everywhere. They all pitched in to help the country with victory gardens and scrap metal. And they won. I mean, that's the stuff that makes a life well-lived, right there.
White folk with money. The Negroes got to put their life on the line for freedom while the Army segregated them to keep their Negroness from rubbing off on the nice Whities. And don't get me started on the Japanese citizens who had their citizenship revoked, were placed into camps, and treated like trash. Things suck all the time throughout history for most people.
But at least we had the sweet, soft RAF Widow's Knickers…
I grew up hearing about how my Grandfather fell to his knees and cried with relief (my Uncle was in the Navy) when peace was declared.
Glamorous, yes, (at least in the US), but extremely stressful too.
Weed not being legal totally sucks
I'd like it if "morph" and "amazing" were gone from our vocabulary. Change was just fine, and nothing is achieved or emphasized by morphing instead. And if I hear someone say someone else is amazing just because they can't think of a damn other thing to say, I will clock a motherfucker. Also there should be more good natural food, less time spent doing stupid and useless shit at work, and cheaper weed.
On the whole though, I'm so much happier now that we don't have a professional dumbshit who tries to interpret the world through a book he probably hasn't even read, who had no understanding of any part of the known world and whose every move turned something decent into absolute shit, that it's hard to complain. I'll even enjoy the constant battle to keep fuckers like him out of office forever, as long as we keep going in the right direction.
This was amazing. Almost as amazing as the Mighty Morphing Power Whatsits.
Actually, I feel like I am living in the last days of Camelot. I think I will go hear a concert on the village green and ask Doc Jones to take a look at me before November, after which I will have to sell my blood plasma for police protection, and pay Bechtel to use the "public" sidewalk.
I don't have anything funny to add.
But I kind of want to cry.
Myself, I miss the Snowdens of yesteryear.
Where are they? And where is the maid in the lime green panties? And General Dreedle's secretary, with the nipples like Bing cherries?
The worst part about quote-battle threads is that if you join in, you look like a show-off, and if you stay out, you look ignorant. There's a word for that sort of thing, can't remember what it is now. Oh yeah, a no-win.
Certain Americans have mastered this formula for feeling unhappy and despondent constantly:
In any group of people/places/situations, overlook the normative, the good and mildly bad. Find the worst possible example of something. Bitch about it to everyone you know, until it seems to you and those listening to you that this worst example is in fact an examplar, and represents at least 75% of the people or places or situations out there. You and those listening to you will now feel very depressed. Those only pretending to listen will be spared.
No no, thats not my way, other things don't depress me, its the pointless futility of my own existence.
You have provided the gift of snarky chuckles to many of us, some who may not have gifted you with the up thumb but nevertheless found amusement. There can be no greater gift to mankind than that.
Awwww. Can we hook up? (I do it all for the nookie)
Um, Ken, this is your 5999th post.
Maybe AMERICA would be better if its writers could count.
No, you are wrong, and you must die.
(The post-count number only resets at the end of the day.)
WAIT. You determine who lives and dies? KEN LAYNE IS TEH LORD!!!111!!!
The future, he knows.
Ken,
In a world of Ass Fuckin', Teabaggers, Cocktober, Blovember, Diaper Sex, Tall Nymphs, teh Gheys, Socialist, Communist, Libtards, Wingnuts, Nazis, Glen Beck, Conservatives, Even More Names for Nazis, Hitler Mustaches, Truck Nuts, Whore Diamonds, Gingers, Bachmann, Palin, O'Donnel, Masturbation, Witchcraft, Joe Biden, Centerfold Senators, and a Negro President, I will always consider you someone I have read.
Thanks for helping keep a least a part of this world, if not sane, at least in its rightful place. May the glorious Pope Cat have at least 60,000 more posts! All Hail the glorious Pope Cat! Also.
That first paragraph is a far more interesting litany than in the REM song. You should record it.
heeeenngngghghghhhhh 5.5 years my friends jeebus Clintonsniper shoebomber shoethrower buttsechs NOPE UR DOING IT WRONG DEMRATS
Thank you Ken, for giving us a reason to be sane through our relationship with all this alcohol…. Furries.
Not to be contrary or anything, but my life is actually pretty darn good as a general rule. I encounter occasional buttheads and I wish the Sarah Palin would sink into grifter obscurity and take the tea partiers with her, but really that bunch is balanced by some great things.
You can choose to concentrate on the bad stuff OR you can enjoy the good things while working to correct, eliminate, ignore, or marginalize the bad.
Have a nice day, and I actually mean that.
Hahahahaha. You freak.
(Me too.)
And that goes double for you, you fuck!
Fuck you, asshole!
Just kidding, you guys — though my life is really quite terrible, I hope you both have a nice day as well.
(I don't really mean that, but still…)
I agree, too.
Two words. Sarah. Palin.
I can only imagine how much pain and misery in this country would be eliminated if she just passed from the national consciousness.
Huh. I just knew things were going well for somebody.
"maybe you don't like your job
maybe you didn't get enough sleep
well, nobody likes their job
nobody got enough sleep
maybe you just had
the worst day of your life
but, you know, there's no escape
and there's no excuse
so just suck up and be nice"
Ms. Ani DiFranco.
Why does New York City have such crappy, overpriced weed?
Ok seriously you guys! No, two things. Americans used to survive usually on the salary of one parent, (even if it was always the dude, boo hiss!) and now both have to work, leaving raising the younguns to….?
And, at that work, we rarely see and take pride in what we do. If, for example, you work at a mortgage firm, what chance do you have to step back and say "hey, I did that and it's rad!"? We have a psychological need to see and take pride in the fruits of our labor.
When Henry Ford started the production line, he had to hire a thousand every time he wanted to fill a hundred slots, because he knew that even though he offered much higher wages, 900 would quit in the first year. The men he hired had worked their lives as craftsmen, and they hated standing on an assembly line doing the same thing over and over. Now we consider such a job a good one.
Not to sound all postgrad slacker, but hierarchical corporate work sucks, and it makes us unhappy. Our alienation from nature in our daily lives makes us unhappy. As Annie Leonard said when I saw her last year, we're killing ourselves, wrecking the planet, and not even having fun doing it.
We need to go back to some sort of simpler direct transactional life. I mean, who is ever sad at a farmer's market?
Oh, and get the hell out of Victorville Ken Layne! Humans were never supposed to live there!
what we really need is a simple thrill, just one cool new thing we need to know about our city every day. That would make me happy. If only there were such a thing.
Is this an update of a certain classic song?
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again, Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock, Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline, Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan, "Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide, foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz, hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law, rock and roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore
Hey!
We didn't make the 'baggers!
They were always lurking while we were out working!
We didn't make the 'baggers!
Though TV will promote em we can try to outvote em!
And yet Allentown is now full of them. Sigh.
And they've taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled awa-a-a-ay
And they've turned against their own interests
Voting on the basis of their race instead of class
Fooled by a fat oxy-head
And a Moron in colonial clothes
And we're waiting here in Allentown
I'm upset that real life lesbians tend to be far less attractive than I had been led to believe by the performing arts.
erm…you're hanging around with the wrong lesbians. Not that it matters, because they're all taken
Having to live in Jersey is enough to disgust anyone, all the time, forever.
Yes, but you also have some AWESOME Italian food.
Don't you hate pants????
I'm pretty peeved that real life lesbians tend to be far less attractive than I had been led to believe by the performing arts.
That's true DemmeFatale. They had it much worse what with living in awful economic times and having to fight several wars.
Ken, I hope you'll focus your subsequent analyses this week on the urban sprawl that is the source of 95 percent of the discontent of these whiners. If they all lived in high-rises (not near me of course) everything would be better. Just the way the teabaggers believe that if gays were sent the ovens and Mexicans could be shot on sight, or vice-versa, everything would be better immediately.
I bet a threesome could cheer me up. There's a thought. I do still have something to look forward to, after all.
Ah, but would a threesome with Monica Lewinsky and Christine O'Donnell? Katherine Lopez and Rush LImbaugh? You need to be careful what you wish for, my friend. Specifics matter.
The reality is never as good as the fantasy. Either someone ends up jealous, crying, or balls end up touching.
Believe me, you're better off not trying to get in between the women. You'll ruin their fun and get little for it. Step back, enjoy the visuals, knowing you will be amply rewarded soon.
–The voice of much experience.
P.S. Quads!
I'm bummed that my cheeto's aren't indidually wrapped in biodegradable wrappers. The effort of opening the bag and having to wash my hands occasionally is just too much. I'd also like colostomy bags built into all recliners and office chairs, please. It bums me muchly to have to haul my bum to the toilet every few hours. Disconnecting my corn syrup drip and walking those 25 feet is time consuming.
No, no, no! Some of these things are blessings in disguise. Take, for instance, your awful terrible humiliating job. To paraphrase the poet Philip Larkin: You wake up in the morning wanting to kill yourself, you go to work… and then within fifteen minutes you want to kill somebody else instead. Problem solved.
People who say anyways instead of anyway. The replacement of thoughtful letter-writing with the free-form casualness of emails and texts. Facebook and blogs being the only means by which people keep up with each other.
You know what? You can live quite well without Facebook.
The South, generally; Louisiana in particular. Why did we have to keep them in the Union anyway?
Moms who drive their air-conditioned, windows-closed SUVs with a cigarette dangling out of their mouths, holding a cell-phone in one hand while attempting to negotiate a left-hand turn in front of oncoming traffic with the other, and are screaming at their 3, 4 and 5-year olds who are crawling around the front seat and laying on the dashboard.
I have several Special Suggestions for things that are terrible and responsible in small or large part for our nation's rapid ascent up it's own asshole. For your consideration, in no particular order:
TVs in cars
Malcolm Gladwell
GoGurt
Tumblr-to-book deals
The re-emergence of BIlly Ray Cyrus
Crocs, wearing of (shoes, not the animal. Exception for doctors and nurses, I guess)
"women's fiction"
Baby Boomers
grass lawns in the desert (see also: Baby Boomers)
Bieber
E!
mommy blogs
jeggings
great rooms/mud rooms
toddlers on leashes
Doga
commodification of disease (that may not be the right way to say it, but I hate this whole "lets turn funding breast cancer research into an adorable pink product every October!" thing that's been going on the last few years. It's out of hand. And yes, I have had several family members who have had the disease.)
Arbitrary lists about America's decline written by cranky Olds
I guess that's it for now.
Nice list. Lost a spouse to breast cancer, and couldn't agree w/you more. B-but what about Jerry's Kids©℠®™? Won't someone please think about the children?
I'm very sorry for your loss. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has an issue with the pink-a-thon at retail outlets each year.
Jerry wants to smack a Lohan, so I'm kind of torn on that one.
…oh yeah, and Facebook.
And Sponsored posts (e.g., by Thrillist)…
This morning on my way to work, I was euphoric. A perfect, sunny, crisp Fall day, a song I like on the radio, driving my short, easy commute through the woods and over the river to my job at a company I co-founded. We've been hiring and having record billing months all summer. We're doing things that have never been done before. I can smell the possibility and promise in the air. You and your America-in-Decline misery can suck it.
Since I am an optimist, I give you an up-fist for subtlety, Mr or Ms bravo_s.
I grew up impoverished in the South and rasied by a crackhead, so I typically don't get all angst-y about anything. If someone grows up in the gutter, a cardboard box is moving up in the world.
If I had to make a list, though, I think student loans, inflated housing prices, and stupid-ass, lazy parents with horribly dumb dumb dumb kids would be things that always sadden me. This is only because I believe those intractable problems will exist at least until I am too old to reap a benefit from their demise.
You're my hero by your first paragraph. Damned whine sessions are less than useful.
Bob be with you.
I told you guys weeks ago it was all about the garmonbozia. Oops, wrong Bob.
The American Coma. Poor and rich alike living to the same flaccid effect. The richer ones have a flatscreen and improved digital feed, the poor have their rabbit ears and analog-to-digital converter complete with a big sticker for the 24/7 tech support hotline. What other appliances come with that accessibility to tech support?
When it comes time to finally leave the house everyone does it in another insulated box, and everyone affords one of those too. The poorer rigs have exhaust leaks and the cherry rides have modified or commercially designed signature exhaust notes, so that in the off chance you're actually padding down a sidewalk (making eye contact with no one) the city is all rude noise and toxic gas.
The only time people converse on the street is when one of them is crazy or desperate. And when you get to the bar you're going to you awkwardly negotiate the deal with a service person at the place before you look up at another flatscreen and watch it, committedly and silently, like everyone else.
You might be new here, but you certainly captured the spirit!
Fried beer…. 'nuff said. WTF America?
That would actually improve some beers.
I'm crushed because I don't have my own furby – also
What, are you kidding? There are millions of them.
Happy birthday sort of.
"Did the cretins next door — the ones with the tattoos around their mouths and five kids crawling around pooping in the weeds — stay up all night blasting “Godsmack” and fighting their pit bulls and ripping out the copper piping?"
It's like you actually live next door to me. Put that family in a rowhouse in Philadelphia, and that's pretty much my neighborhood. Except that it's probably their kids ripping up the copper piping and the grandkids who are pooping in the weeds.
This is why escaping into nature is essential. A few hours with no cars, buildings, iPods, people is healing. Sorry to be serious, but it is true. I count nature treatments as a requirement like food for me.
What is nature?
OK, good point. Not all of us are lucky enough even to see trees.
Gas pump advertisements are the worst. As are digital advertisements in malls. Also:
-The things people in Chicago wear to work. Depressing.
-"Awkward Family Photos," the fledgling TV series.
-Broadway musicals adapted from movies. I SAW THE ADDAMS FAMILY, IT WAS AWFUL.
-The unapologetic cheapness of rich people. My boss' wife once asked for 50 cents back from a cab driver.
-The concept of scent marketing.
-Experiencing the natural light of the sun twice a day, for a total of 20 minutes, walking to and from the train.
-"Rebooting" "franchises."
-The experience of actually being inside an Urban Outfitters.
Ahh, 6,000 at last … kind of satisfying, in a fiddling-while-Rome-burns kind of way …
So sort of the homeopathic like-cures-like method? Gallons of a depressant makes your depression go away? Could work.
Leeches suck. Remoras suck. Milkshake drinkers suck. A boot in mud sucks. My goddam cat sucks on my neck 'cuz my beard reminds him of his momma that he was ripped from at too early an age. Now that sucks!
Mummified. Lasts forever. Good with salsa.
Albeit a bit dry
And just think — the people in that focus group just have some rich fat fuck as governor. Imagine if they had Jan Brewer.
Special Suggestion:
Modern things that suck: pharmaceuticals are getting more addictive and more brain damaging, weaning from them is difficult, and after you've damaged your brain, you don't even get a happy high anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_use_of_ben... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine_withd...
Fuck, anyone who's unemployed could have told us this.
Great job, NYT.
I'm really starting to worry about you, Ken. And also hate you, because you depress me even more than I already am.
In the words of the late, great Lux Interior, "People ain't no good."
Most god-awful horrid excruciating thing in America is easily the leaf-blower . . behind Palin, its the leaf -blower. .. nothing even comes remotely close… will you mention this please in your america: culture of the asinine blog. We just need to drop these things into the fucking pit of Hell and get rid of them forever. Friends, the rake works just great ! it s Wonderful, a truly great, wonderful invention.. . especially outside my apartment window at 915 in the morning…
guys with the infernal blowers– hear ye hear ye: you dont even have to rake up all the leaves ,, i understand those rakes make you tired, just do a few ,leave the rest lying around; they look quite nice this time of year . I enjoy looking at them very much,,stepping on them too and hearing them 'crunch.'
i guess it's too much asking someone in a position of American governance to do something about this… they have other pressing issues and important things to contend with , like protecting the interests of corporations and getting re-elected and. . aaand whatever else it is that they do.
I too hate those fucking things with a white hot heat. A perfect example of lazy American idiocy. Especially when the operator blows dirt & debris everywhere as people walk/bike/drive by…who the fuck cares about dirt on their driveway? Is that's what is important to people? Really?
You know what I miss? Fucking Fraggle Rock.
Fuck this, I'm out. Someone check on my cat later.
Just don't take pictures of her junk and send them to Mush Palin.
there are reindeer blow jobs, chin up kids
That list hits most of my pet peeves, too.
The fact that Americans seem incapable of apologizing and regard it as being a pussy.
Litterers–really? Who the fuck do you think is going to clean up after you, asshole?
People being crude in entirely inappropriate settings (think ballgames/kids everywhere/drunken assholes swearing at a bunch of people playing a game)
The unrelenting love of all things violent. You'd think that there's a mass murder on every corner if all you saw was American film and TeeVee. BloodGunsBloodGuns
Reality TeeVee–all of it should die die die
AutoTune
high school principals who stand around and watch small female teachers get beat up, as they try to break up fights between larger high school boys.
"People say that life is fine, but I just piss and moan. I got one foot on a banana peel and the other in the Twilight Zone. People say that life is good, but I don't know why! As far as I can tell, life sucks, then you die!" — The Fools, ca. 1985, but true as ever.
Scented fucking everything (except women).
Here's something awful about America–relentless streams of whining and negative bullshit from the most privileged, well-fed, safest and best-equipped people on the planet. Listening to people fucking complain all day about "how bad things are" is like listening to your hot friend bitch about not having had sex in a week. Suck it up, you fucking crybabies. You sound like mopey 8th graders.
I would only add reality TV. Great list.
Awful:
- Foursquare
- Half-eaten brunch pics
- The comments section of any Atlanta Journal-Constitution article
- The Villages, Florida
- Kids today
Neck tattoos.
In fact, most tattoos.
The Palins.
A Steve Carell-less "Office".
Most politicians from areas south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Mechanically Separated Chicken.
Producers who are remaking films from the mid '80s.
TMZ.com.
"Robust, masculine Christianity."
I guess I'm just bummed that I'm not independently wealthy and that people are basically lost when you take away their electronic gizmos.
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