Some Things I Just Don’t Get

Warning: While this piece is not principally intended to disturb or anger a lot of people, it strikes me that it may do just that. Well, as one former reality show star, pathological liar and truly complete idiot said, “It is what it is.” Sorry.

To wit:

The end of winter is in sight and soon again it will be fireworks season where we live. Actually, at almost any time of the year, our neighborhood boys and men that act like boys will set off a barrage of near-professional celebratory explosive missiles, usually without warning or provocation of any kind, some of which invariably come perilously close to the house. They have been set off in the parking lot just behind us, which sometimes leads to burning embers falling on our fourth floor deck. We have a fire extinguisher up there just in case.

Reminiscing about all the joy of that neighborhood snap, crackle and popping got me thinking about all the immensely popular stuff like fireworks I just don’t get. Here’s the quick list I came up with.

So yes, fireworks. They’re dirty, noisy and expensive. They terrorize the stuffing out of animals and sufferers of PTSD, are an air quality nightmare, cause horrible, disfiguring injuries and an occasional death and start wildfires. Otherwise they’re quite pretty and festive. Priorities matter, so let’s get drunk, celebrate wildly, and experiment with dangerous explosive devices.

And golf. Playing it, and especially watching it on TV. Boring! (Boy, will I get some people agitated on this one, eh?) Playing it is really just an excuse for the old boys to be bad boys and spend the day drinking, smoking stupidly expensive cigars and ogling the scantily clad mobile beer gals out on the public course. (I’ve seen them myself, so don’t say they don’t exist.) It’s horribly time consuming and with all the fees, gear and accouterments needed, a relatively big investment. And no, it doesn’t qualify as a sport. Sport makes you sweat. But it’s a nice, leisurely walk on pretty, chemically manicured ground. Yay!

Wow, NASCAR! My wife and I have traveled by car around the southland, and it’s true there are many mighty fine hot cars about and for sale. Once driving home from Nashville on a Browns game day I struggled in vain to find football on the radio, as auto racing was the only thing I could find. Aside from being arguably the planet’s most racist sport with the most racist fans, it’s darn hard to watch in person or on TV, is horrifically stupefying and the only real excitement is when crashes occur, which makes the entertainment value right up there with cage, dog or cock fighting. NASCAR and Mixed Martial Arts fighting demonstrate clearly that our species is no longer evolving and is likely regressing. Professional boxing is right there, as well.

How about expensive cigars? I tried one once in a while way back when, but the truth is it was too darn much money for me for something that just went up in smoke and once I gave up cigarettes some 25 years ago I was afraid that if I crossed the line with fine a cigar that would cause a complete remission of the tobacco disease. It’s a guy thing to be sure, and self-important guys like to flaunt their success and the risk of multiple cancers of various types and spend a lot of money doing it. You might as well smoke rolled up twenty-dollar bills. We can fondly remember the recently diseased and deceased Rush Limbaugh as a chronic cigar smoker. Well, good for him.

Then there’s professional sports. Yes, it no longer makes a lot of sense to me and the salaries especially of the superstars are an amazing perversion of where unrestrained free markets will ultimately go. I gave up when I saw a baseball player spit on an umpire years ago. I was a big fan at one point, and my wife and I even had season tickets in the blue haze Dog Pound bleachers at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. But now the whole thing seems like such an amazing waste of money in all directions. The one saving grace is the jobs provided downstream of the athletes. Otherwise, it is all just supersonically weird to me.

Oh, and Twitter. I tried it too for a while. Made no sense to me. What an amazing waste of time. A few people I followed were funny; I remember Penn Jillette being hilarious, but honestly I wasn’t sure why I cared what people were up to all day long. So Twitter is just the pits, as we found the last four years of following the untethered tweet madman in the White House. Facebook is a highly mixed blessing, TikTok is highly annoying and I just haven’t found the energy to invest substantially in Instagram. Yes, it’s probably an age thing, I get it.

Now high-end cars. For me automobile transportation is a necessary evil and you want to accomplish it as inexpensively and efficiently as possible with minimal environmental impact. Yes, it’s nice to be reasonably comfortable, but it’s not at all necessary to luxuriate. When I retired we stripped down to one tiny little Honda Fit, and it’s just fine for the two of us around town, maybe a little cramped for road trips, but with COVID road trips for us are not going to be a thing yet for a while. We save a ton of money with one very efficient vehicle.

Let’s talk video games. I learned my lesson with Space Invaders when that came out decades ago, and yeah, I’m certifiably old. Played it all night the Christmas Eve before it found its way under the Christmas tree and mastered it. Realized early on its addictive power with no discernible purpose. Also had a similar infatuation with Breakout, but having wasted many hours accomplishing nothing of value with that one, walked away and never looked back. Good for me.

I really detest grass, the kind you grow in your yard and don’t smoke. An ecological disaster and unless you have children or animals that will routinely graze in it, it’s an expensive pain in the neck to maintain and many ground covers with stones, rocks and plants do a beautiful job of reducing your weekend workload and consume just as much carbon and produce just as much oxygen as the well tended chemical waste dump your average lawn is.

Arg! Leaf blowers and weed whackers! Must…be…OUTLAWED. No sound is as aggravating that I can think of. Stir up a ton of dust, often road dust contaminated with lead as it happens when they blow leaves on our street into the woods from which they immediately return. Gas engine versions are stupidly polluting. The same is true with lawnmowers, actually any single cylinder engine like on go-carts and scooters really because they have no emission controls. Simply nauseating.

Finally, Trumpy Republicans. This may be the biggest mystery of them all. Actually not. I get it, but it just makes me sick that so many people can be so openly bigoted, mean-spirited, angry, unfriendly, xenophobic and cruel. That’s the core of the Trumpy Republican Party now: racist, selfish, greedy, mostly Protestant white people deathly afraid of a multi-cultural America. Sad, sickening and true. No longer the GOP. The RWPP is more apt: The Racist White People Party.

Well, there you have it. I’ve probably managed to irritate more than a few people, but admit it, you have a list like this, too, don’t you? It’s a free country (at least now for the next four years it seems) so we’re all entitled to that little luxury.

Have a real nice day!

(Original art by J.E. Hargate)