Some mornings, before the caffeine kicks in, my mind tends to wander. Here are a few thoughts. I’ve dressed them up a bit for public consumption and there is a connection here — somewhere — I think.
The F-bomb is not a bomb anymore. In fact, it’s not even a firecracker. Once a powerful part of speech, it was used sparingly for shock and emphasis. Unfortunately, these days it’s so common it’s become nothing more than punctuation. Suburban moms use it at the spa; the suit and tie boys attempt to play badass with it and high school students wear it on their t-shirts. However, if you still insist on using it as an adjective, for God’s sake don’t pronounce the “g” — you sound like a middle class moron. We have different and more powerful naughty words now, and if you want a gasp from the crowd, drop one of those babies into a casual conversation (but be prepared for the Social Media storm — and unemployment.)
Social Media is beyond relentless. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all the rest are like a Pantheon of Greek Gods: ever watching us, picking favourites, interfering, directing our lives, soothing and punishing at their whim. And we, mere mortals — we — are Sisyphus endlessly toiling to satisfy their will. It’s like waking up every morning and a couple of thousand people climb out of bed with you, put their shoulders to a boulder and before you know it, there’s this massive cocktail party going on as we all struggle up the hill.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is not a very good movie. Everybody thinks it is because the first time we saw it we were young and awkward and full of hormones. Bueller is that confident teen we all wanted to become. Watch it as an adult and you realize Bueller is actually the asshole kid that always got away with murder. He’s the one who conned the teacher into extra time on the project that you just pulled an all-nighter for. The guy who got the girl he didn’t deserve — notably Mia Sara. And he probably grew up to be a ratbag lawyer (no offence ratbags.) Incidentally, Matthew Broderick was 24 when he played Bueller and his buddy Cameron, Alan Ruck, was 30.
It’s totally unbelievable how old men always get the hot chicks in the movies. Check out Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment. Connery is probably one of the sexiest men who ever walked the planet, but by the time Zeta-Jones came calling, he was nearly 70 and she was barely 29. Sex is a powerful motivator but there isn’t enough Viagra in the world to make that hookup palatable.
Huffington Post is going to conquer the world. They’re re-running Randolph Hearst’s winning combination of bad news, snake oil, self-help and boobs and it’s working beyond their wildest expectations. Not since Hugh Hefner dressed nudity up in a sports jacket and cool-J jazz has a media outlet made such an effective use of soft-core smut. Try typing NSFW into Huffington Search and you’ll get over 150,000 items in less than a second. And that doesn’t include all the salacious photos of Paulina Gretzky, Jennifer Lopez, one or more Kardashians, or any other available female. Then to balance it out, Huffington features a phalanx of bloggers decrying sexism as if nobody ever heard of it before.
One more cup of coffee while I check out Facebook real quick.
WD Fyfe 
Hi, WD!
I think you’ve really got something here–especially on the Social Media point. Sometimes I wonder whether I should be replying to someone’s reply to my email–when all the other person had said was “Thanks” There’s no end to it, and you can’t escape. “Shoulder to the boulder,” indeed.
Cheers!
KML
manners for social media should be a required course in high school