I’ve been accused by some of being a “sarcastic SOB”. I’ve been accused by others as being sarcastic when there is no need to be. In both of these cases my attitude remains pretty much the same. “I’m sarcastic, it isn’t going to change, so get over it.” I came by my ability honestly to answer almost anything said to me with a reciprocal sarcastic reply with little or no effort. I began developing this superpower at the age of 10 and I discovered early on that I can deflect parents, adults, and bullies, with sarcasm which in turn kept me from being beaten, spanked, and bothered.09/14/2021
At first I tried to get along with my main bully, Ken Daly, but bullies won’t or can’t deal with anyone they perceive as weak. I remember clearly the first time he was introduced to my sarcastic wit. Unfortunately he was too stupid to understand sarcasm and when I told him after taking a few minutes of his abuse, “Aren’t you just the biggest, scariest, and smartest SOB in the school?” I was stunned, he was actually flattered and just couldn’t stop smiling and proceeded to strut his stuff around the schoolyard. That one statement made me his new good buddy and after two years of his kicking me around, stealing my possessions, and smacking me a few times, I was finally free to live the rest of junior high and high school without that a-hole causing me problems.
I decided then and there that using wit, sarcasm, and glib remarks were valuable tools and I should refine my use of them to become “all I could be”. If used properly along with smiles and clever conversation it can also get me laid every so often. That in itself justified all of the time and effort I put forth to becoming a virtual “sarcasm machine”.
As always when I write about things I try to research the meanings of the words I’m using. All of the intellectuals who are responsible for compiling dictionaries and encyclopedias describe sarcasm very clinically and for the most part in a negative fashion. I find that disturbingly unintellectual. While I can agree to some extent that sarcasm can be used in a mean and aggressive way, I prefer a different approach.
Sarcasm is a tool and a God-given talent but really gets no respect from academia. Viewing sarcasm only as a negative really doesn’t get to the truth of it. There are some people, highly intelligent and educated, who just don’t get sarcasm. I throw sarcasm into a conversation for good reason. It allows me to gauge who understands my humor and those who don’t. For those who don’t I am forever grateful. I in turn use them to entertain the ones who are understanding me. I try not to be disrespectful during these occasions because I never want to be perceived as mean or rude. I like a lot of laughter in my life and when people around me don’t bring anything to the table, it’s up to me to create some and I do it as often as possible. Life’s too damn short.
AND TO ALL OF YOU READERS OUT THERE, HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY
My blog is called everyuselessthing for a reason. Two of the many useless things I like to address on a regular basis are stupidity and political correctness. Whether it’s politicians, celebrities, or your normal run-of-the-mill idiots, stupidity is found everywhere. While I do get quite a tingle shedding light on many of these folks I think it’s only fair that I pass along to each of you the skills needed to identify them from a distance. So read on people and get educated. Here’s a clarifying definition.
Stupidity is a quality or state of being stupid, or an act or idea that exhibits properties of being stupid. According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word’s stupid and stupidity entered the English language in 1541. Since then, stupidity has taken place along with “fool”, “idiot”, “dumb”, “moron”, and related concepts as a pejorative appellation for human misdeeds, whether purposeful or accidental. Read on . . .
The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity
Always and inevitably each of us underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
The probability that a given person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic possessed by that person.
A person is stupid if they cause damage to another person or group of people without experiencing personal gain, or even worse causing damage to themselves in the process.
Non-stupid people always underestimate the harmful potential of stupid people; they constantly forget that at any time anywhere, and in any circumstance, dealing with or associating themselves with stupid individuals invariably constitutes a costly error.
A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person there is.
Now that you have these basic laws of human stupidity you are well on your way to becoming an expert “idiot and moron” spotter. What better way to protect your family than being able to spot the fools before they can infect innocent passers-by with the “stupidity virus”. One pandemic is more than enough for us to handle these days. The following definition is just another clue you can use to find these idiots and morons. They almost always suffer from this affliction (PC) as well.
Political Correctness (adjectivally, objectively, politically correct; both forms commonly abbreviated to PC) is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual context, and doing so to an excessive extent. In current usage, the term is primarily pejorative, while the term “politically correct” has been used as an implicitly positive self-description.
BEWARE MY FRIENDS . . . STAY ALERT . . . THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE
I love looking back at this country’s politics in my attempt to learn where all of the bad habits of our political elite have been learned. One of the major criticisms of our current politicians is that they are only concerned with “soundbites” rather than substance. Since I agree with that criticism I decided to try and pin down where it all started. The rise of the Mainstream Media has always been blamed for “sound biting” every candidate until we could just scream. What I discovered was more than just a little interesting. The use of campaign slogans began well before the media became so powerful. The following slogans are sometimes cute, sometimes hurtful, but always entertaining. This is just a small sampling of old and new campaign slogans that started the “soundbite revolution”.
Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too -1840
Fifty-Four or Fight -1844
Equal Rights to All, Special Privileges to None -1900
Stand Pat With McKinley -1900
Keep Cool With Coolidge -1924
A Chicken in Every Pot, A Car in Every Garage -1928
In Hoover We Trusted and Now We Are Busted -1948
One Good Term Deserves Another -1934
I’m Just Wild About Harry -1948
To Err is Truman -1948
Phooey on Dewey -1948
I Like Ike -1952
I Still Like Ike -1953
In Your Guts You Know He’s Nuts -1964
Never Been Indicted -1980
It’s the Economy Stupid -1992
I guess we’ve come by it honestly. Apparently we citizens always were suckers for cheesy “soundbites” even when they were just called “campaign slogans”.
HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE “TIME FOR CHANGE” AGAIN IN 2024
This is my former owner “Stormy” who passed away 3 years ago after suffering a heart attack. He spent 17 years with me and is sadly missed. This post is in his memory.
He was a sly and subtle cat who was laid back and always appeared aloof and uncaring. I’ve been acquainted over many years with seven cats and each one has had its own peculiarities and personality quirks. After years of observing them all I’ve determined that one characteristic was common to them all. I call it the 20 second, Delayed Response Syndrome. With dogs you shout a command and they spring to their feet wagging their tails and just begging to do your bidding. I think cats get the same rush from our attention but they choose not to show it quite so openly. They’ll sit and wait for 20 seconds then nonchalantly stroll over to see what’s going on. Try it out yourself if you’re owned by a cat, it’s amazing.
You’ll also note that I continually say “owned by a cat” and I’m not kidding. Years ago I read a Sci-Fi short story that went a long way to convincing me that an actual alien invasion of the Earth had already taken place. Apparently thousands of years ago the first cats landed on this planet and began their slow and deliberate takeover. Many people say the Chinese are people who think long-term. Compared to cats the Chinese have the attention span of a moth around a flame. I consider myself a well trained and officially certified pet belonging to a cat.
Let me explain further. My better-half was a dog person and when we finally decided to cohabitate I was concerned about her relationship with “Stormy”. He and I had been together for almost 10 years at that time and had been living the swinging bachelor lifestyle. It appeared to be a Mexican standoff with my better-half and her son for the first month but slowly and surely Stormy began to reel them in.
We bought him only the best food, fresh water every day, and we shoveled and cleaned his disgusting litter box all too often. He also had access to an outside deck where he could lounge all day in the sun and chase a bird or two. He had the good life and he knew it.
We mourned the loss of Stormy but life must go on. After a year and a half we finally decided we needed a new owner and we made a trip to the local shelter. Now let me introduce you all to the new Queen of the World, “Lucy”.
She is a handful. She is snippy, sassy, and opinionated. She is the center of her own universe and therefore so are we. She is attitude personified and has enough for ten cats. If we feed her food she doesn’t like, she just walks away. She also expects special treats each and every time someone walks near her food dishes.
Stormy was always a quiet unassuming cat but she is anything but. She never shuts up. She walks through the house showing her annoyance with just about everything. God help us all if the litter box isn’t kept clean enough. She’ll just squeal a little and then poop on the floor next to it and then just strut away. As you can see in the photo she has that “evil eye” thing going on. She gives me that stare at least ten times a day.
Finally last night as I was just dozing off she jumped up on the bed and allowed me to move the hell over and make room for her. What a sweetheart. Because I didn’t immediately begin to pet and cuddle her she turned her back on me and left the room. I found her later sleeping on my chair in the living room.
I’d like to continue this story but the sun’s coming out and Queen Lucy has been bugging me for the last 20 minutes to open the door to the deck. She gets a tad grumpy if she doesn’t get her deck time.
I’d like to discuss balance. All of us are bombarded on a daily basis with terms and phrases about balance. How often are we reminded by government, TV, family, and friends about eating a balanced diet. Most religions also suggest a well-balanced lifestyle makes for a harmonious existence. It seems to be a never-ending but critically important theme.
“The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.” Euripides
“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter – a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.” Henri Matisse
RICHER/POORER – BETTER/WORSE – SICKNESS/HEALTH – PLUS/ MINUS – GAIN/LOSS
Even the scientific community is required to deal with balance because it is a universal constant. The third of Sir Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion explains that if you push on anything, it pushes back on you. The quote “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” is part of what we are. It can’t be ignored or avoided but must be understood and used to our best advantage.
I’ve seen many unhappy people over the years who are simply out of balance. I was one of them for more than three decades. My job, career, and prestige were all I focused on but that made me totally out of balance with my personal life. Work your life and keep trying to find your balance. It’s certainly not an easy thing to do in this day and age and just so you don’t forget, money still can’t and won’t buy you happiness. I didn’t listen to the warnings back then but I wish I had.
We come into this world head first and leave feet first.
I’ve been called a lot of kind and unkind things in my life but the most recent nickname being overused is the term curmudgeon. It’s not a word I’ve ever used regularly and it really didn’t become well-known to me until the sitcom, Everyone Loves Raymond, made its appearance on TV all those years ago. Peter Boyle laid claim to the term and has become the curmudgeon poster boy since. I can’t forget to mention another of my favorite curmudgeons, Andy Rooney, who like Peter Boyle has long since passed away.
I’ve been branded by friends and family alike as an apparent “growler and grumbler” but I just don’t think that applies to me at all. This name calling has increased since I started blogging and thankfully no-one but my friends and family have used the term up till now. That’s not a request for any of you to start using it, so don’t.
After months and months (sarcasm on) of meticulous research (sarcasm off) I’ve discovered that since the death of Peter Boyle and Andy Rooney we no longer have any famous or infamous curmudgeons to ridicule the powers that be and that just doesn’t seem right to me. If I’m truly a curmudgeon then I must be filling a basic human need. Maybe people subconsciously need someone like me to observe their activities, comment on these activities, and to criticize them as needed. I have to admit that’s what I do and you’re very welcome. I religiously pick apart stupid and politically correct activities of people and shine the spotlight of mocking and silliness directly on them. Am I doing a public service? I think I am.
I also realize that many of the people who read this blog are bloggers themselves. I can’t put a number on it but I’m not afraid to say a large percentage of my readers are just as curmudgeonly as I appear to be. So to all of you blogging curmudgeonly curmudgeons out there, keep up the good work. This society needs to hear opinions from real folks not just paid mouthpieces of the mainstream media and the US government. And as stated by our forefathers, “It’s the duty of every patriotic American to question and criticize their government.” , so don’t stop now.
Say these following words to yourself as often as you can.
I really love spending time on the internet. The amount of information available for viewing is mind-boggling to say the least. I stumbled onto a website recently filled with information on the sexual habits of animals which told me way more than I ever wanted to know about how insects and slimy things have sex. It did make me think, what about people? What kind of strange, dumb, or interesting things could I find out about us?
I began a diligent search to collect well-known, little-known, and quite possibly unknown facts about human sexuality. The amount of that available information was even more incredible than what I was able to find on animals. I accumulated a list of some of the things I thought were truly interesting and not just bizarre and strange. I just thought it might be fun to spice things up a little on this blog and at the same time distribute a little sexual trivia you may not have heard before. Hold your applause it may not be as good as you’re thinking.
* * *
During any given period, women who read romance novels have a tendency to have twice as many lovers as those who don’t.
-321 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which sperm banks store donor semen. At this temperature, semen can be stored indefinitely,
In one hour, the average sperm can swim 7 in.
The testes increase in size by 50% when a man is sexually aroused.
Hetrosexual anal sex is something 43% of women have experienced.
During an average man’s lifetime, he will ejaculate approximately 17 liters of semen, which amounts to about half a trillion sperm.
It takes two tablespoons of blood to get the average man’s penis erect.
The penalty for masturbation in Indonesia is decapitation.
75% of Japanese women own a vibrator. The average worldwide is 47%.
22% of American women aged 20 gave birth while in their teens. In Switzerland and Japan, only 2% did so.
* * *
Well there you have a collection of 10 sexual facts collected from here and there and everywhere. I have to admit I did learn a few things I didn’t previously know about our sexual proclivities and I guess that’s a good thing. I also know I would have been beheaded at age 11 if I’d been born in Indonesian. This was only a small portion of the facts I discovered. More to come . . .
If you read this blog at all you know how much I detest political correctness. I come by that honestly due in part to a man who assisted me in setting up my first blog many years ago. His ideas and writings on political correctness are exactly the same as mine. He is what you might call my “blog father” and his name was Rob “Acidman” Smith. Unfortunately for us all he passed away on June 26th 2006. He’s been missed by me and many others and his blog remains online, maintained by his family. It will always hold a place of honor on my Favorites List. I visit him there on a regular basis to read his old postings because they’re still as pertinent to the discussion today as they were back then. If you’re interested, his blog is called gutrumbles.com, check it out. You are missed Rob.
Acidman
As you are well aware there are many bright people in this world who see the dangers of political correctness and the ongoing damage that it’s causing within the society. It’s become so ingrained in our society that it’s now the norm rather than the exception. My main question, can it be reversed? Seems to me correcting political correctness will be a long-term and difficult process. As anyone can see it’s taken a few decades to drag us down to this level and very well may take a few more decades to correct it.
It seems to me that the fault belongs primarily with academia. Public education systems in this country are being run by a liberally biased group of academics whose whole purpose is to brainwash each upcoming generation to embrace political correctness and to revile those who don’t. The amount of power wielded by the teachers unions across the country has made it virtually impossible to root out these individuals and to reclaim control over our education system.
There you have it folks, responsibility for correcting political correctness is once again in the hands of the parents. I think it’s time that PTA groups across this country become better organized so they’re able to rein in the administrators and not rubber-stamp every stupid and ignorant idea being shoved down their throats by school committees. Lazy parents concede control over school subject matter and then blame everyone but themselves for the results. Stand up, be heard, and take back control of your children’s schools. I’m all for turning the kids into productive citizens and not just people who worship social causes, the environment, and poo poo personal responsibility.
Do you consider yourself a food addict? Unfortunately every human being on the planet is, like it or not. We’re obsessed with food for our entire lives and without it we would cease to exist. That’s obviously an addiction I can and have learned to live with.
As I watch TV everyday the constant stream of food-related instructional programming is enough to drive me up the wall. Never in my life did I imagine just how wrong I’ve been eating and drinking and truly enjoying myself. Actually if the experts are right, everything that I eat is unhealthy, lacking nutritional value, and will eventually kill me. Fifteen years ago eggs were the killer and a few years later, whoops, all of a sudden a couple of eggs a week is no problem. Drinking coffee is bad and then it’s good. Eating sugar is dangerous and then it’s good in moderate amounts. Drinking soda is bad, turn it into diet soda, then it’s good, closely examine the sweetener in the diet soda, and then it’s bad again.
I’ve been convinced over the years that all of these so-called experts haven’t got a clue. Every expert that I can find tells me of food products that are bad. The problem is, I can find just as many that will tell me that they aren’t. Don’t even get me started on all of the other things these alleged experts tell us. Don’t drink the water, don’t breathe the air, why not just drop over dead and get it over with.
I’m not here to try and explain their motives, their inaccuracies, or their self-righteousness. I’m just saying that even the dumbest person I know can eventually figure out how ridiculous it all is. Now I’m going to fill your head with some ridiculous food-related information that is just as educational as all of the nonsense supplied from food manufacturers and also from our friendly know-it-all government. Let’s get started.
500 million Hostess Twinkies are sold every year.
In America, Coca-Cola out sells Pepsi. In Saudi Arabia and Quebec, the opposite is true.
The average ear of corn has 800 kernels.
Black olives contain 10 to 30% more oil than green olives.
Watermelon is a vegetable.
The national drink of Iceland is a potato schnapps called Black Death.
M&M’s were named after candy developers Forrest Mars and Bruce Murrie.
The Marquis De Sade loved chocolate so much he had it sent to him in prison.
The Aztecs considered avocados an aphrodisiac.
I’ll bet my information is just as factual as all of those expert’s and a helluva lot more interesting and silly.
Today I’m concentrating on hair. Not the lack of it but the overall abundance of it. I discovered as I aged with the help of certain women that hair is almost as important to them as penis size. The trends these days for men seem to be the metrosexual look, the less hair the better except of course for the hair on the head.
As I began to lose my hair a few years back I was actually traumatized by it for a while. As the hair slowly faded away a strange thing happened, I felt an odd freedom. I swore then and there I would never become that guy with a bald head and a fringe around the bottom. When the time came I didn’t hesitate to rid myself of all my head hair once and for all. No more freaking haircuts, no more hair products, and no more competing with other men for style points. I thought I was home free from hair issues but once again I was wrong.
This isn’t me . . just so you know.
Soon I met and fell head-over-heels for Miss Right. After dating for months she informed me in no uncertain terms that I had way too much hair everywhere on my body. Trust me, I’m not a very hairy guy and I thought at first she was just messing with me. I found out later she wasn’t. My ear hair was found to be too untidy and too long. My eyebrows were too bushy and too unkempt. Hair on my chest and arms needed constant trimming and I wouldn’t even mention the pubic hair discussions we had.
It became a day-to-day battle between us because the constant inspections were making my hands all sweaty. I felt like I was back in the Army. Then came the night of too much drinking, too much laughing, and too much schnapps. While under the influence of alcohol I agreed to certain hair removal requests and told her I would take care of the hair maintenance issues in the morning. And then went to bed and fell into what was a deep alcohol-induced dream-state. Upon waking in the morning I discovered that while I was dreaming she had been clipping. I was brought into the 21st century, hairless, with a whimper and not a bang.
The battle continues to this day and I have long since regrown most of the missing hair she removed that night. I did manage one act of defiance in an attempt to regain possession of my testicles. I grew a mustache and beard just to mess with her. The daily inspections continue and I guess I’ve adjusted to them as best I can. Her inspection routine was recently updated and now includes the beard and mustache, so I guess I really haven’t made much headway in the hair wars after all.
And neither is this.
I was shopping recently and observed a rather lovely young lady with three times as much hair on her arms and legs as I have. She was also showing some little dark puffs peeking out from her armpits. Maybe I’ll finally be safe if the current trends are shifting back to the 1800’s. Then my better-half will be buying me gallons and gallons of Rogaine to spread all over my long and beautiful body. I can’t wait.
