Still Getting Older

Last I checked I'm still getting older. I even shrunk a half inch. I'm not passing on green bananas in the supermarket or opting for fast drying paint just yet, but I am getting ornery. This is my third post in the series of things that make me mad now that I'm an old fart.

1. Frozen French toast

Yes, you can buy French toast in the freezer aisle. I recognize that some people just don't know how to cook, but the only thing easier to prepare than French toast is water. All you need is an egg and milk and some stale bread. It's that easy. If you can't make French toast, then you don't deserve to eat. I hate that.

2. Big children in strollers.

Nothing sets a kid up more on the path to entitlement than rolling him around an amusement park in a stroller. If your kid's feet drag on the ground as you push him in a stroller, then make the little bastard walk. Mothers toting a full array of baby products, food and appeasement toys make me cringe. Don't even get me started on dogs in strollers. I despise that.

3. Twerking

I'm glad twerking has gone the way of the disco ball and clackers. There's nothing less appealing than the sound of butt cheeks clapping together. I especially dislike it when Miley Cyrus does it. It's the kind of thing that's difficult to unsee. It's also probably unsanitary. I loath twerking.

4. People making that stupid two handed heart symbol.

Yeah, yeah. I heart you too. Can we please come up with something more original than the two handed heart thing? I usually follow up the hand heart thing with the international solitary digit of ill will. I abhor that.

5. Movies based on comic book characters.

Hollywood usually milks a good thing until the public relations peeps say it has been bled dry. Superhero movies have run their course so much that second string characters like Deadpool have made it to the silver screen twice. Deadpool is supposed to be a wisecracking expert swordsman who appeals to 14 years old boys, you know, the kids too young to buy a $9 beer at a bar so they buy a $11 popcorn at the theatre. They're the movie goers who laugh at violence and flatulent laden jokes. Not that I'm above that, but I detest super hero movies.

6. Comedies in which all the funny lines are in the trailer.

This has happened to all of us. Since good dialog is hard to come by, characters are often flattened by mediocre writing and numbnuts storylines. So when a comedy rolls around, the marketing experts ensure all the funny lines are in the trailer, giving you the impression that the film is better than it actually is. So you spend $22 on tickets and $12 on a box of Raisinettes and a vat of soda to see yet another stinker movie. When the trailer is the film, I dislike that.

7. Starbuck's cup sizing.

I still don't know what a large is because a "grande" is a small, and I think a "verdi" is a medium or something. Confusing nomenclature is designed to mask the fact that you just paid $8 for café, half-caff double blend, unicorn smoothie chip. Maybe people would order at a Starbucks when waiting for friends if they had some sense of the size of the thing they ordered. That pisses me off.

8. Calling for an apology.

Allen Funt

When people run afoul of common sense, the easily outraged among us expect a Maya culpa in the form of an apology. Rosanne Barr had her reboot situation comedy cancelled after she tweeted a racially insensitive comment directed at former White House senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, even though she apologized profusely. Samantha Bee, going straight for the Fallopian tubes, called Ivanka Trump a "freckles" c-word that rhymes with "Allen Funt" on her TBS comedy, Full Frontal, then apologized as well. Kathy Griffin apologized for her presidential decapitation stunt only to take it back. Griffin supports Bee and was disappointed that she apologized. I think Bee got away with it for the same reason Chris Rock gets away with dropping n-bombs.

Bill Clinton, discussing the MeToo movement during an interview which aired on NBC, claims that he apologized for lying about the time he played “Where’s the Cuban?” in the Oval Office. He said he left the White House "$16 million in debt." He should have apologized to his wife, and by the way, he left the American people $6 trillion in debt.

I object to persecuting people for saying stupid things.

Vin Diesel

9. Vin Diesel.

I don’t hate Vin Diesel as much as I hate his voice which sounds like a nerd, head down in a porcelain toilet. Vin Diesel is a misfired attempt at emulating The Rock. Vin Diesel makes me recoil.

10. Having to ask before reclining your seat on an airplane.

In my day, you did what was allowed by the airline, and everyone accepted that. Now that so many of us are so easily offended, people take reclining a crappy coach seat on an airplane without asking as an affront to their personal space. A passenger in the row behind me was visibly upset by my emboldened act of reclining my seat. I don't know why she was so pissed off since her service pet, a very large dog, was seated directly behind me. I heard her say,

"Some people just recline their seat without asking."

It's bad enough I once stepped in dog shit on an airplane, but now I'm expected to ensure that I don't encroach on Dinckle's personal space when I recline my seat. As a human that actually paid to be on the flight, I hate that.

Getting old is no fun, but it’s better than the alternative.

Editor's Note: Originally posted one June 5, 2018.