Things I can do without in 2009

I don't make resolutions per se, at least not based on any particular calendar date, so anyone stopping my looking for some sort of confessional to all of the sins I plan on abdicating from my day to day living in 2009 can just move along, there is nothing for you to see here.  That being said, there are some things I can do without in 2009, and the sooner they are gone, the happier I will be.  Feel free to add you own in the comments section.

 

1) The International Star Registry - Can there be a bigger scam.  pay some schuck money and he will name a star after someone.  How is this not the pet rock revisited?  It is not like you get mineral rights to a star gifted to you, provided we ever land there.  Nor do you have say over potential colonization or anything cool like that. rather you get nothing, and you pay for it.  How highly unoriginal.

2) NBC - Can someone blow this network up already?  Another run of Fat Camp, this time with the fattest contestant ever, Yay to that.  Also the oldest couple ever on Fat Camp.  Didn't Richard Simmons already cover this is Sweating to the Oldies?  Jay Leno will be on 5 nights a week at 10pm?  He isn't funny now, how is moving his show up where more people can see his unfunniness a good thing?  Momma's Boys - 3 relatively good looking guys pick between 30 relatively attractive women, but the men are so weak willed that they have to drag their moms along to determine who they should end up with?  These are people who definitely ended up taking their sister to the prom.  Really, NBC should just give up if this is what they are going to offer as far as programming. 

3) The Snuggie - A blanket with sleeves?  Don't we call these robes?  Oh, I'm sorry, the opening is in the back, so it is more like something from Obi wan Kenobi's closet.  Yes, I have often laid awake at night saying, you know, this comforter would be so much cooler with sleeves in it.  What's next, the Snuggie wife beater, where you can still stay warm and yet your hands are free to smack your woman around a little.  Wait, we call those shirts, nevermind.

4)  Annoying grocery store shoppers - Nothing is worse than trying to navigate an aisle in the grocery store to find some fat ass is bent over spying some food she can most definitely live without, meanwhile parking her carriage in the middle of the aisle so that no one else can get past.  I am opting for the Star Trek approach this year, and initiating ramming speed.

5)  2008 - Okay, I don't know about the rest of you, but 2008 pretty much sucked here and I would rather not relive it in 2009.  I'd rather just wipe the dry erase board clean and start from scratch if that is okay.

6)  Nancy Grace - If ever there was a self righteous voice on TV that almost made me want to root for the felons, this would be it.  Her holier than thou approach and ability to overblow even the most mundane of facts into more that what they are just annoys the hell out of me.  Prime example her show has been focusing on the Casey Anthony case, where Casey is accused of killing her daughter Kaylee.  Don't get me wrong, I think Casey is guilty as hell and probably did it simply so her daughter wouldn't interrupt her time partying with friends.  That being said, every night ad nauseum (emphasizing the naseum part) we are treated to such astute analysis as "Casey didn't cry in court today.  Why didn't she cry for her dead baby?"  Or "Casey was brought to court today in shackles." (Which by the way, they tend to do when you are incarcerated.)  I don't mind someone going over the relevant facts of a case or updating what of merit transpired in the courtroom (Court TV used to be really good at this sort of thing.)  but the uselessness of what she focuses on makes her program unbearable to watch.

7)  Cold weather - I know I live in a most inadvisable position to bitch about the cold, but damn it if global warming is coming I wish to hell it would hurry up.   I want beach front property damn it, and I need the ice caps to melt for that to actually happen.  That being said, there is an interesting hypothesis surrounding global warming/cooling that actually received the tacit support of one Albert Einstein, one that involves the actual shifting of the poles.  Allow me to elaborate as best as my feeble mind can.  Presumably the continents are all on plates, and those plates to a certain degree move, so that the actual surface of the planet is not anchored in place.  The theory has it that what may have happened, and contributed to the similarities in mythos in various otherwise unrelated cultures is that the poles actually shifted,.  Take for instance a balloon that is being hit by a constant stream of water, when the weight on the top spot of the ballooon gets too great it turns, it shifts, moving the previous wet spot to the side and exposing a brand new dry spot to the stream of water.  Likewise, the theory states that the weight of the ice on the poles became too great, causing the crust of the earth to shift, which in turn meant the ice caps as they were melted, contributing to the flooding stories and aiding in separating the continents, and creating brand new poles where ice began to reform. Peoples that at one time were able to communicate became separated and a sort of great unlearning took place.  Stuff like pyramid design, which is featured in many cultures but no one can explain how or why is knowledge that was lost as the peoples of the earth became more separated and that knowledge was no longer needed.  I know you may ask yourself, how can a culture forget something.  It is easy really, as the knowledge is no longer needed, the knowledge no longer gets passed down to the poiint where it is forgotten.  A current example would be to ask a kid these days to use a rotary phone.  You'll have a 50/50 chance that they will stare at it with a glazed look on their faces.  Liekwise, how many readers of this blog work an abacus on a regular basis?  Certainly we have tools that can do mathematics, so the need for a abacus is no longer required, so the ability to use it becomes forgotten.   The premise does sound iffy I admit, but it does explain why many plants and animals excavated in the now tundra region are flash frozen, those regions quickly became polar regions with the shifting of the earths crust.  Just something to think about in a blog that rarely makes you think.  Onward please.

8)  Bicyclists - By and large I have no disadin for bicycles, nor a love for automobiles, given I am a frequenter of public transit myself.  That being said, somewhere in our past we opted to treat bicycles as vehicles, allowing them to share the road with cars and trucks.  A big move to be sure, but the cyclists want the best of both worlds, and for me that should relegate them back to the sidewalks where they belong.  If you are on the road on a bicycle, then you should obey the rules of the road.  I can't count the number of times I have seen cyclists blow through stop signs/red lights, cut inbetween cars, ingore signaling turns and just out and out create a hazard that doesn't need to be on the road.  If most cyclists were responsible, this wouldn't be an issue, but most aren't.  Bicyclists may be eco friendly and what not, but they are also the most inconsiderate, law breaking people using the roads today, so the best thing to do is get them off of the roads entirely.

Okay, enough with my rantings, feel free to submit some of your own.