Tag: contemporary life

Let’s Kill “Awesome!”

awesome

It’s time to shoot “awesome” in the head, drag the corpse into the street and fling it into the gutter.  I’m not opposed to hyperbole, but in the 21st century, we’ve tossing around “awesome” as if it were confetti at a high school graduation.  And the problem is people are beginning to believe that everything they do is a titanic effort of will that deserves congratulations. Here’s the deal.  I don’t care what your friends say; you’re not “awesome” when you’re doing stuff that doesn’t take any effort.  Let me demonstrate.

I don’t eat fast food – If, indeed, you are the one person on this planet who has never French kissed a Big Mac™ – so what?  There is no moral advantage to eating food that’s good for you.  After all, rabbits, giraffes and gophers do it every day.  All you did was walk past Pizza Hut, Burger King and KFC.  And hey, lady: that’s what you’re supposed to do! 

I love my kids – What’s the alternative?  Locking them in the basement?  Parents, you don’t get extra points for actually loving those obnoxious little buggers – it’s your job!  And quite frankly, if more parents spent more time doing that job instead of constantly yipping about it, we’d all be better off.

I do yoga – So do three billion other people.

I’m a feminist – To be brutally honest, being a feminist west of the Vistula is a pretty easy gig.  If you’re so truly committed to the fight for women’s rights, show up in Tehran and lead a troop of bikini girls through the streets, doing the Lambada.  Then you can brag about it.  Here in the West, being in favour of equal rights isn’t “awesome;” it’s ordinary.

I just take things one day at a time. – This doesn’t mean you’re a free spirit or a child of wonder or any of the other New Age clichés.  Why?  Because everybody takes things one day at a time – that’s the way they come.

But my favourite is still:

I’m not on Facebook anymore — Yeah, I know: you mentioned it — on Twitter.

 

Dog Shit Without Tears (2018)

I was prowling around the archives, looking for stuff to put in a book I’m going to publish next autumn – WD Fyfe: Collected and Bound.  Anyway, some stuff is good, some stuff is bad, some stuff is extraordinary (good and bad!)  However, a couple of things stood out because they clearly demonstrate the reason I write a blog in the first place.  Here’s one of them from the summer of 2015.  (gently edited)

dog

Dog Shit, Without Tears!

On occasion, everybody steps in dog shit, literally or metaphorically.  It’s inevitable — like puberty or menopause.  It’s how we handle it that’s important.  Recently, I witnessed a dog shit incident and — Wow! — did I ever get a look into life in the 21st century.

I was standing outside an office building, having a coffee and sneaking an early evening cigarette (it’s an occasional vice) when a well-dressed woman (not a child, nor even a girl) came stumble-running around the corner.  She was clearly in distress.  She looked at me in shock, lurched forward, grabbed at the construction fence as her only means of support, and hung there, gasping and weeping as if she’d just seen an axe murder.  I hit the adrenaline button, dropped everything and stride, stride, stride, went to help.

“Are you alright?  What happened?  Are you okay?”
She turned to me, and in a voice overwhelmed with crisis, said, “I stepped in dog poo!”
I tilted my head like an inquiring beagle, but before I could register a WTF reaction, her support group came wheeling around the corner.  A mixed-gender bag of 30-somethings, they brushed me out of the way as if I’d been mansplaining their friend and surrounded her in a two-deep comfort zone.  I stepped back to my spilled coffee to give them room, and for the next 10, 15 (I gave up at some point) or even 20 minutes, I watched as they conducted an impromptu crisis intervention.

Okay, so what have we learned?

Despite the contemporary habit of sprinkling obscenities through every conversation, curiously enough, at unguarded moments, 21st century adults use words like “poo.”

Remember, our girl came around the corner first, so at some point, overcome by the trauma (drama?) she must have panicked and fled headlong into the night.  Think about that!

There were plenty of kind words, a lot of hugs, and tissues for the eyes, but nobody actually dealt with the offending shoe.  To be fair, one Sir Walter Raleigh did take his jacket off, but I never saw what he did with it.  (Only his drycleaner could tell us that.)

The group, all dressed up with obviously some place to go, actually stopped the evening’s activities cold to deal with this emotional emergency — at some length.

And finally, no one in the group gave any indication that this was the least bit odd.  There wasn’t one dissident voice.  For example, nobody said, “For God sake, Madison!  Scrape it off, and let’s go!”

The thing that blows me away about this little ad hoc soiree is these were ordinary people.  I didn’t accidently run into a drama queen convention.  Nor was it their first emotional rodeo.  They’d been there before — lots! — and, despite their lack of dog shit removal skills, they knew exactly what they were doing.

My point is, emotionally fragile has become a way of life in the 21st century.  We are easily angered, eagerly offended and regularly resort to “the meltdown” to prove our emotional stake in the game.  It’s our way of demonstrating our humanity, sensitivity and depth of character.  The problem is it works.  People take this stuff seriously!

Me, I’m from a different time and, call me old-fashioned, but I prefer dog shit without tears.

 

7 Modern Scams (Plus 1)

scamsEver since Achmed the Unwashed tried to sell the Pyramids to a couple of unsuspecting Greek tourists (Herodotus, you idiot!) there have been scam artists bent on separating the terminally naive from their money.  For example, the Brooklyn Bridge has been sold so many times it’s become a cliché.  Likewise, if you were to stack all the bits of the Berlin Wall sold since 1989, they’d probably reach into the stratosphere.  Over the centuries, there has been no shortage of con games and no shortage of victims.  However, it’s only in recent history that the ripoff has become institutionalized.  Here are seven perfectly legal scams (plus one) that are perpetrated on all of us every day.

Diamonds – Diamonds are so expensive because of one unassailable principle: a man will spend an obscene amount of money to avoid looking like a cheap bastard – especially when it comes to a probable wife or potential mistress.

Coffee – Retail coffee out of a paper cup is absolute proof that most people can’t do math.

Water – Here in the affluent West, water is so cheap and plentiful that we pee in it, yet millions of people spend billions of dollars, pounds and euros buying it in bottles.  Folks, bottled water is — water – in a bottle!  It’s no coincidence that Evian™ spelled backwards is naive.

Extended Warranties – This is air.  You just bought a handful of air.

Weddings – Weddings are so expensive because of one unassailable principle: a woman will spend an obscene amount of money to impress her friends.

Funerals – The place where sadness meets ruthless.  Funeral parlours have you by the emotional short hairs — and they know it.  What are you going to do?  Toss Aunt Sarah into a ditch?  Burn her in the back garden?

Skin Products – There is no magical formula that will stop the aging process.  If there were, do you really think you could buy it in a tube for $19.95?

And my personal favourite:

The Apple Logo – The grandfather of all con jobs!  The only difference between Apple™ and ordinary is – uh – nothing!  Apparently, the half-chewed Apple logo is worth somewhere between 200 and 1,000 dollars — depending on how badly you want to get robbed.