Farging Bastiches Friday: The Curmudgeon Files

Apologies, dear readers, as I must indulge myself a rant, in bullet point form:

THINGS WHAT HAVE BEEN BUGGING ME LATELY:

•  Being possessed of a pulse, a uniform and a job does not make one a hero.  Being 'heroic' (i.e. showing great courage, exhibiting noble qualities, and great achievements) makes one a hero.  Calling someone a hero because they got out of bed and put on their pants only cheapens the ideal, and means that if everyone is a "hero", no one is a hero.  You want to be a hero? Then do something truly heroic.
• Being possessed of great religious conviction does not equate with being possessed of superior morals or ideas.  If you ask a stranger what faith they profess, ostensibly to have a polite discussion about belief, only to quickly turn it into a thinly veiled lecture on why their relationship with God isn't the "right" relationship, and that yours is, then you have disqualified yourself from being a truly humble practitioner of faith.  No one can truly know the mind of God, so don't even try, you hypocrites.  Corollary:  When the party you have just insulted and patronized by denying the legitimacy of their belief system reacts by disagreeing with you, said disagreement does not constitute persecution of you as a believer of a different faith, nor does it constitute an insult to your faith.  The person simply does not believe what you believe.  Different belief is just that; different, not wrong.  So get over yourselves, you tinpot martyrs.  Cry your crocodile tears somewhere else.
• Being a newly elected Republicanfacisticteabaggernutjob U.S. Representative or Senator does NOT mean you are possessed of a God-given, "will-o-the-people" mandate to enact every ill-thought out piece of legislation in your Big Box of Crazy Ideas.  You won that seat because people wanted to change things, and because this supposed democracy is heavily weighted to the two-party system, the people who wanted to change things voted for you because YOU WEREN'T THE GUY/GAL ALREADY IN OFFICE, not because your stupid ideas and close-minded thinking were so attractive.  There were no real, viable third-party alternatives.  So get your heads out of your own asses, and stop looking in the mirror so damn much.
• Being excited about getting up at 3:00 a.m. on Black Friday does not make you the envy of the neighborhood, or an example to be imitated.  It does not make you worthy of respect, and it does not make you nearly as cool and fascinating as you think you are.  What it does do is make you a tool.  A Pavlovian, programmed consumerist tool, beholden to whatever megacorporations have hoodwinked you into believing that the latest/greatest app/gadget/machine/toy is the only way to show how much you care for the people you want to give gifts to.  Good thing the product life cycles are so short, that way you can do it all again next year!  Seriously, though?  Do you really want to be at the end of your days, thinking "Wow, it was so cool that I was the first one with an xBox 3000, way back in '10!"  Hate to break it to you, Sparky: NO ONE CARES.
• F-book (or any other Internet-intensive New Economy company) announcing it will be "making a play" for the market by offering services that other companies already offer...is not news.  So, all you local news anchors hawking thinly veiled ads for said companies under the aegis of "Consumer Watch" human interest stories? Shut up.  Just shut up.  I. Don't. Care.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
• Putting any humble food (like french fries) on a pretty plate, and taking a glossy picture of it, and adding the word "GOURMET" to the description, does not make automatically that food "gourmet".  If you want to make french fries "gourmet",  let's see them fresh-cut to order, twice-fried, properly drained and served with side of say, chipotle aioli or homemade mushroom ketchup.  Plus, a waiter should bring them to the table.  DO NOT let some bored high school kid dump a block of batter-coated frozen fries into stale grease, oversalt them and dump them (undrained) into what will become a grease-soaked recycled paper boat, accompanied by a fistful of 'ketchup' packets.  Really, if you want to impress people, just make them hot, crispy and with the right amount of salt.  If you can do that simple thing well, you will go far in life.

Here endeth the rant.


All of then above items I have recently heard or seen in person or through various forms of media, and the irritation factor reached critical mass, hence this post.  It may be a long winter, folks...maybe I'll just put my fingers in my ears and shout "La, la, la..."