Tag: behavior

3 Dangerous Lies

crossed-fingers

We all lie: it’s built into our psyche.  I’m pretty sure that somewhere back in caveman days, somebody looked around and said, “Does this sabretooth pelt make me look fat?”  And her mate grunted the equivalent of, “No, darling!  It’s perfect.”  Thus our species continued populating the Earth.  Personally, I think lying is an essential part of civilization.  It gets us through social situations, keeps our friends and enemies in line and helps us not look like jerks – most of the time.  Plus, in general, lying is no big deal.  The rewards are large and the consequences quite small.  However, sometimes lies can be dangerous.  These are the lies we tell ourselves.  Here are just three examples.

1 – Remember, back in school when Brittany, Class President, hooked you into helping with the Annual Charity Drive because “It’ll be fun!”  And remember how is wasn’t because, while she and her friends were up at the dance, “collecting” non-perishable food items, you spent the evening down in the school basement, working your ass off, sorting cans of tuna and packages of macaroni.  Remember that?  So how come you’re phoning everybody in the family (on both sides) and saying, “We’re doing Christmas at our house this year.  C’mon over for dinner.  It’ll be fun!”

2 — Normally, this lie comes right after some celebrity TV know-it-all has created a beautiful gingerbread sculpture shaped like the British House of Parliament.  You watched them fashion this marvel — from finding fresh ginger at the local farmer’s market to carving out the wooden molds on a lathe.  They’ve spun sugar to a transparent sheen for the windows and even installed battery-operated lights – all in less than 30 minutes!  So, you say to yourself, “That looks easy” and go out a buy a Gingerbread House kit from the grocery store.  Two weekends and three Gingerbread House kits later, your own mother won’t speak to you, the kids have filed a restraining order and whatever’s left of the gingerbread mess is sitting in the corner – where you threw it.

3 — Once again, this lie started in school.  Your term project was due at the end of the semester, and that was three months away.  Three months!  That’s a lifetime when you’re a teenager.  So, you decided to do a kick-ass/best ever treatise on the Pre-Cambrian Shield – complete with rock samples, charts, hand-drawn illustrations and a working model of a Canadian glacier because, you say to yourself, “I’ve got plenty of time.”  And you keep saying that for the next 2 months and 27 days while your project slowly melts away like that glacier you’re never going to build.  Finally, you end up with 10 pages (double-spaced) that you borrowed from an encyclopedia (no Wikipedia in those days) a Xeroxed copy of an aerial photograph of Ontario and couple of stones from your garden . . . .

Well, folks!  Today is the 4th of December, and Christmas is exactly three weeks away.  Just sayin’!

 

Food Heretics!

kitkatFor centuries, burning heretics at the stake was a perfectly acceptable practice.  Unfortunately, in recent history (400 years or so) it has fallen out of favour.  Too bad!  I think we should resurrect this little community activity, and get rid of one of the most undesirable members of our society – the food heretic.  These are people who cause anguish and consternation among all good and decent people by refusing to follow accepted gastronomic doctrine.  Here are a few examples:

Ketchup on eggs – Mother Nature has provided her children with the perfect food.  In fact, except for that pesky cholesterol (the bogeyman of the 21st century) eggs have all the nutrients humans need to survive – and they taste good.   So why would anyone drown them in faux pas tomato sauce?  Ketchup is for fries only – FRIES ONLY!  Besides, ketchup on eggs looks totally gross – like somebody just murdered a canary.

Opening snacks from the bottom of the bag/box – There are people (I’ve known a few) who don’t give a damn which end of the package they open.  It’s as if they don’t understand that top is always above bottom.  This is a law of physics as well as linguistics.  For God’s sake!  The writing on the package is upside down.  UPSIDE DOWN!  How can you even enjoy your snack, ya damn hoodlum?

Cutting pizza into squares – Since the days of Romulus and Remus, pizza has been cut into triangles.  TRIANGLES!  Okay, if you’re in Italy, you can eat your pizza with a knife and fork (When in Rome, etc, etc.) but everywhere else in the world, circles are cut into triangles so everyone gets an equal share.  This is a basic rule of geometry.  Sometimes I wonder how we ever even got to the Moon!

Milk in the bowl before the cereal – There are people who do this to children.  CHILDREN!  I have no words for this godawful habit.

Buttering toast with a sharp knife – Sharp knives are for cutting things; dull knives are for spreading things.  If you absolutely must, you can cut your toast with a dull knife, but never, under any circumstances, stick a sharp knife in the butter.  NEVER!  People who are capable of that are capable of anything – theft, arson, extortion, socks and sandals, Hawaiian shirts with lederhosen?  There’s just no end to it.

But the worst:

Randomly biting a KitKat™ — Since 1935, first Rowntree’s and now Nestle have been making KitKat bars to a specific standard.  In those 80 plus years, this cute little snack has spread all over the world and mutated into a plethora of flavours — including soy sauce, sake and banana.  And every minute of every day, someone, somewhere is carefully breaking a KitKat apart and eating it properly.  Yet, every once in a while, a wild-eyed anarchist will rip open the package and just take a bite.  A RANDOM BITE!  And people are surprised that some religious nutbars are calling these The Final Days?

 

6 People At The Grocery Store (Plus 1)

shopping-cartI’m not a shopper.  I don’t have a philosophical problem with shopping. In fact, I’m a huge fan of our consumer society. It’s just that I’m too many civilized generations removed from The Hunt to appreciate the joy of finding that perfect item — on sale.  This doesn’t mean I don’t shop — I do.  Every week, like my Cro-Magnon ancestors, I go out into the urban wilderness to claim my rightful place in the food chain.  It’s called grocery shopping, and in North America, it’s a mutant hybrid of a scavenger hunt, an obstacle course and a futile battle against stupidity.  Here is just a sampling of the moronic forces arrayed against us every time we venture forth to buy food.

My Real Name Is richard.petty\943 — Even before you get into the store, there are the people who think that, just because they have a video screen in the dash of their car, they can drive as if the parking lot is a RealTime simulation of Nascar Heat 2 from Playstation.

Where Am I? — These are the folks who enter the store and stop dead –as though they’ve just broken the Time/Space continuum and have no idea what dimension they’re in.
“It’s a grocery store.  That stuff on the shelves is food.  You came here on purpose!”

Me Go Here Now — There are the people who have no reasonable sense of direction, nor any concept of organization.  They stop in the middle of the aisle; back up, turn around, start again; think about it, stop, turn, bash into the cart next to them; stop, try again and then nonchalantly head off in the direction they started with.  And even though you get stuck behind these idiots three or four times, when you see them at the checkout, all they have in their cart is a frozen pizza, a package of disposable diapers and two cans of dog food.

Me Stop Here Now — These are the folks who stop their cart sideways in the middle of the aisle, tying up traffic in both directions, while they contemplate the pickles.
“It’s a condiment, for God’s sake — not the Bayonne Tapestry!”

There’s A Reason I’m Lonely — These are the people who ambush you into listening to a long-winded monologue that starts with the price of sugar, goes through the hurricanes in the Caribbean and finally fades away — somewhere between the guy next door who won’t cut his grass and the drug dealer across the street — but only because you quit being polite and just walked away.

OMG!  I Haven’t Seen You Since Tuesday — These are the friends who meet at the congested intersection of Dairy and Frozen Food, or in Produce, or — oh, hell, it doesn’t matter — because they invariably launch into a protracted conversation about how much they loved their vacation, how much they hate their vocation or Henry’s hemorrhoid operation.  You can’t get past them, around them or over them without pulling out a gun.  And on particularly bad days, Henry and his proctologist are standing there, as well.

And finally, just when you think it’s over:

I Forgot You Have To Pay —  These are the people who stoically stand in line at the checkout for twenty minutes; then, when it’s their turn, wait patiently while the cashier beeps every item — until, at the very end, they suddenly realize they’re in the middle of a financial transaction and start fumbling for their money.