Meanderings 44

First, some tremendous photography done by Michelle Garner and her "engagement camera." She came over last Sunday to take some Christmas photos of Callum "little Dickens" Goldsmith in his two Christmas outfits--from his two grandmothers. The first outfit we had him in was from his Nannie: Black valor pants, black and white checkered shirt, and reindeer vest. I sang his "Moose" song to him to make him smile!

Grammy got him an "Eddie Bauerish" red checkered shirt, along with some fresh Osh Kosh's. But, by the time we had done his "costume change," he was done having his picture taken for a while.....If you blog this picture up, you can really appreciate just how RED this little man's hair is!

And I think he looks so big here!
Now, on to the pissing and moaning.....

1. Did you ever notice that, when considering the religion of Judaism, saying someone is "Jewish" sounds a lot better than saying "he's a Jew." For some reason, using the noun form of the word somehow carries with it the connotation of sounding more negative and pejorative. Think about it: "Milosh is simply Jewish" versus "Milosh is simply a Jew." Jew, just like "Jap," is somehow offensive. Maybe words without a lot of letters are offensive...."WOP" comes to mind too.

2. "He's a self made millionaire." Who are these millionaires who are NOT "self made?" I mean, even if you get your money the lazy way by winning the lottery, you still dragged your fat ass into Cumberland Farms, bought a ticket, and made the effort to watch the news for the winning numbers. Everyone does some kind of work "themselves" to get the money they have. Unless you simply inherit your money from a rich parent or uncle....then you are blanketed with the stigma of never actually growing up, because you're a "trust fund baby." Apparently there's a lot of infants inheriting money. The irony of trust fund babies is that they usually can't touch their money until they are like 30 or 40--when they are clearly adults. Yet, they are still called "babies" all their lives. So, in essence, putting up with this aggravation is "doing" something...which reinforces my notion that EVERYONE is a self made millionaire.

3. Being a weatherman is, quite possibly, the only job in America where you can screw up EVERY SINGLE DAY and still not be held responsible. Well...that and being president......

4. But the thing is with weathermen is that their whole entire profession is left to chance; sure, they try to wow you with all this new age equipment and HD Dopplers and satellites, etc. But, when it comes down to it, and they still "screw the pooch" on delivering you accurate information, they completely take themselves off the hook by giving some simple, juvenile excuse like "well, the storm took a different track at the last minute," or "clearly the storm did what "'I' thought it was going to do the whole time...." And guess what: they're never reprimanded for screwing up. In today's world, with all the technology we have, there really is NO EXCUSE for weathermen to mess up anymore. If there equipment is as good as they brag about it to be, then GET IT RIGHT

5. Another thing about weathermen: They must be such depressed individuals. First, their work consists mostly of "looking" for problems. Which is funny, because of the whole "finding a silver lining in the cloud" thing. I wonder if that's related? Anyway, I digress. Their whole job is spent trying to look for every bad outcome possible. Second, they must get so damn sick of people giving them crap all the time about how they get the forecast wrong or are somehow responsible for the snow that falls, etc. I equate this to the whole idea of waitresses at Vinny T's "having to ask" if their party wants dessert, yet hearing the same BS, unfunny responses every single night about how full the patrons are. Third, they clearly have commitment problems with their rhetoric, and I wonder if this translates into their romantic and intimate lives as well. "Well, there's a chance that I love you, but that remains to be seen," or "I'm going to partly satisfy you later," or "We'll say I'm mostly sure I want to be with you forever." Finally, they must get so depressed using the same, trite expressions all the time: mostly cloudy, chance of rain, partly sunny, high pressure system, low pressure system, etc. There job really must be pretty awful actually.

6. "Hey, I think you're really fantastic....and I swear I'm not just trying to blow smoke up your ass." Will someone please tell me what the hell this means? Who, in history, did actually blow smoke up someone's ass? And why is this supposedly such a pleasurable and pleasing thing that somehow we innately "want?" What a weird, freakish expression.

7. In our completely liberal country, how derogatory and politically incorrect is the universal sign for "handicapped?" The logo portrays handicapped people as WHITE, EMACIATED, CHAIRBOUND individuals. Come on...is that the only kind of handicapped there is? That's such generalization. Like I've said many times: If we're going to let the ACLU run this country, let's let them do it all the way. Dont half ass it, for crying out loud. I was on facebook the other day, and the page I was on asked me to type in a series of letters, in order to make sure I really was a person and not a mass-mailing list, telemarketer, virus inducer, etc. Next to the letters was the "handicapped" logo, for people who had trouble reading or typing the words. And it dawned on me: Just because you sit in a wheelchair doesnt mean you cant type or read, right? C'mon folks. Its 2009 just about. Let's change. How about a nice vermilion "H" or something?

8. I'm absolutely convinced that, at some point in our venerable United States Army's history, there HAD to have been a new recruit named John Parts, Michael Parts, Howie Parts, etc., who, inevitably, was called "Private Parts" by his drill sergeant. And, I'm sure, everyone just about peed their pants--drill sgt included. Think about all the comedy:

"You need to move faster than that Private Parts!"

or

"Stand at attention Private Parts."

or

"Are you ready for inspection Private Parts?"

or

"Private Parts, I want you to take up the rear."

Have a great day!!!