There is growing speculation that we are living in The Final Days and our society is slowly collapsing under the weight of our own decadent excesses. I’m not so sure that our world is doomed, but … look around. Every day there’s evidence that many of us are making some seriously sorry choices. The problem is our benevolent society has created a cornucopia of attitudes that we all believe we’re entitled to – even though they have no intrinsic value. In other words, we’re wasting our time and energy on crap that doesn’t matter and believe nothing should stand in the way of our self-indulgence. Here are just four examples from the last couple of weeks – you decide!
Grumpy Cat is dead. For those of you who never knew he was alive, Grumpy Cat was a cat who – uh — looked grumpy. Apparently, this is enough to merit celebrity status in the 21st century, and a million dollar income, as well. Go figure! Anyway, officially, he died of a urinary tract infection, but I wonder if he’d just gotten curious about who was spending all the money he was generating.
A woman in Saskatoon, Canada decided she wanted to preserve her husband’s tattoos after he died. (Icky – but to each his own!) The thing that blows me away, though, is there’s a company in Cleveland, Ohio called Save My Ink Forever that actually does this sort of thing. They will take your dead loved one, surgically remove the tattoo (think about that!) and frame it. I get creeped out when somebody has an urn on the mantel. I can’t imagine looking over and seeing a hunk of skin with Aunt Meghan’s tramp stamp, hanging on the wall.
Some guy visiting Hawaii jumped over the guardrail and fell into a volcano. One wonders why? It’s not like he didn’t see the damn thing. And I’m sure there were signs, like “Danger! Hot, boiling lava ahead!” Plus, there was a guardrail. Maybe he just thought the physical laws of the universe didn’t apply to him. Regardless, after a daring rescue, the man was treated for serious burns but walked away. Personally, I think somebody should slap the rescue crew for keeping this dumbass in the gene pool.
But my favourite is:
Game of Thrones is over, and more than a million people are pissed off about it. Not that the show’s over, but that it didn’t end the way they wanted it to. In fact, they’ve signed a petition demanding – DEMANDING! – that the entire last season not only be rewritten but re-filmed. That’s not how it works, people. You’re the audience; you don’t get a vote. That’s like going to the Louvre and demanding somebody repaint the Mona Lisa because you don’t understand the smile. I know our society is trying its best to outlaw disappointment, but this has taken entitlement to a whole new level.
WD Fyfe 