I was cleaning out some old boxes a few days ago attempting to rid my residence of old junk and a host of bad memories. These boxes contained books, papers, and other assorted BS from the absolute worst employment experience of my life. It was two years of hell on earth for me and went a long way to making me the cynical and pragmatic SOB I’ve become. This is why I have such a dislike for political correctness. I became a victim of it working with this company and it’s employees.
Most people don’t like to name names when talking about their past bad experiences but I have no qualms about doing it. Many of you have never heard of the Hechinger Corporation and I’m happy to let you know they no longer exist. It was a small family-run hardware business that had grown to many hundreds of small stores across the country. The company philosophy, as directed by the Hechinger family, seemed more interested in liberal causes and making political contributions than actually making money.
I’m getting off my main point. Political correctness has always been in my crosshairs since the day this blog was started. I don’t spend time complaining about it just for giggles. Experiencing it firsthand is not fun and not something I would wish on my worst enemy (well maybe on my worst enemy). It’s a very dangerous tool when used by people who care more about being PC than anything else. I was one of the unlucky few management members from a very dynamic company that they’d purchased who survived the personnel slaughter. The Hechinger brainwashing machine kicked in almost immediately and I was sent to a steady stream of team-building seminars, personality testing, and spent hundreds of hours getting my head filled with their liberal politically correct BS.
For over a year they attempted to change my approach to my job and how I did business. I wasn’t about to change because I’d been very successful for years at what I did and they had not. They kept the pressure on me with all of their PC crap until I simply lost it. It was the day I was to receive my first evaluation from my new bosses. I stood up from behind the table and told them in no uncertain terms that I thought they didn’t know what they were doing. I begged them to just fire me. Being the PC idiots that they were they spent the next hour trying to convince me that I should calm down and relax. I ranted and raved for a while and again begged them to fire me. They wouldn’t do it and abruptly ended the evaluation session. I think they felt they could still save me and convert me to their way of thinking.
The next day I was given a better-than-average evaluation, a decent raise, and sent on my way back to New England. Any good businessman will tell you that if an employee begs to be fired, just do it. I was let go a few months later after they destroyed the company and it went out of business. That’s why I continuously bitch and complain about PC issues. If the minor issues are ignored by intelligent thinking people more will likely follow.
So as I’m delivering these books and papers to the trash can what falls out at my feet but a book I hoped never to see again. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. He was God Almighty to the Hechinger Corporation and they beat me over the head for more than a year with his book. If I never hear the term “paradigm” again it will be too damn soon. Did you hear that loud “THUD?” That was Covey’s book hitting the trash can.
Eight years ago during one of my funky moods I posted a list of 100 things that I hated. All these years later I stumbled on that list and decided it might be worth updating since so many things have happened to change my way of thinking. It would take more brainpower than I have to come up with 100 things that I hate these days because in fact I really hate nothing. But as you well know I’m certainly irritated and annoyed by a hell of a lot of things. I decided to go through my list of 100 step-by-step, taking my time, and reducing that list to just 50.
My first list included many things that were meant to be humorous but I think now I’ll be a little more truthful with myself about the 50 things that annoy or irritate me. Becoming a senior citizen changes a persons perspective on many things never before thought of. I’m now at the point in my life where I can say whatever the hell I want about anything. Make your own list and then match it to mine just to see how far apart we are or aren’t. Here comes the list . . .
Stupid people, dirty fingernails, criminals, backward baseball caps, large groups of people, dumb cashiers, stinky feet, bugs crawling on me, hospitals, Oprah Winfrey, Will Ferrell, women missing teeth, political correctness, liberals, drug users, stinky cheese, Jehovah witnesses, anti-vaxers, vegans, ass kissers, waiting in line, stinky breath, illegal aliens, ugly feet, noisy radios, crowded elevators, screaming brats, texting while driving, saggy pants, granny panties, penis caught in zipper, tailgaters, body odor, ex-wives, nosy people, boogers, clowns, wet farts, bums, night farts, unibrow women, Rosie O’Donnell, performing artists, smell of urine, hairy nipples, yellow nail polish, liars, corpses, jeans with holes, and of course all salesmen.
Believe me it took a lot of mental effort to eliminate 50 from my original list. Many of the ones eliminated just weren’t pertinent any longer and I’m glad I finally was able to trim the list down. Also as you can see by the title of this posting they are no longer things that I hate, just things that are currently major irritants. As you’ll notice, only a few things refer to the pandemic but that could quickly change in the near future.
A few months back I was sent an e-mail by a longtime friend who just happens to be female. She’s been reading this blog for a very long time and felt it necessary to tell me that she thought I was blatantly ignoring women’s issues. I vociferously disagreed but to no avail as usual. As always, arguing with a female no matter what the subject remains a fruitless endeavor. So, in response to her questionable claims I’m publishing the following. As it’s always been said “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it”. Here we go . . . .
ODE TO BREASTS
(o)(o) Perfect Breasts
( + )( + ) Fake Silicon Breasts
(*)(*) High Nipple Breasts
(@)(@) Big Nipple Breasts
oo A-Cups
{ O }{ O } D-Cups
(oYo) Wonder Bra Breasts
( ^ )( ^ ) Cold Breasts
(O)(o) Lopsided Breasts
(Q)(Q) Pierced Breasts
(p)(p) Hanging Tassel Breasts
\o/\o/ Grandma Breasts
( – )( – ) Flat Against the Shower Door Breasts
IoIIoI Android Breasts
( $ )( $ ) Jenny McCarthy Breasts
( o )( o ) Stripper Breasts
x x Flat Chested Breasts
And God created woman and she had three breasts. He then asked the woman,” Is there anything you’d like to have changed?” She replied,” Yes, could you get rid of this middle breast?” And so it was done, and it was good. Then the woman exclaimed as she was holding the third breast in her hand,” What can be done with this useless boob?”. . . .
As I was paging through some of my records I came upon a posting that I wrote 11 years ago. My thanks again go out to a Kansas City contributor who assisted me in this endeavor. It had been prompted by a State of the Union message by the president at that time, King Obama. My posting was initially about how democracies tend to destroy themselves financially and as I read through it again I began to realize that since Biden’s election absolutely nothing had changed from then until now. Disregarding the costs of the pandemic to this nation which have been considerable, there are many other things that need to be looked at as well. Read these and weep.
The folks who are getting the free stuff don’t like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.
And… the folks who are paying for the free stuff would like the free stuff to stop. And the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting.
Now… The people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are receiving the free stuff that the people who are paying for the free stuff are being mean, prejudice, and racist.
So… The people who are getting the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff and giving them the free stuff in the first place.
Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between two hundred and two hundred and fifty years after being founded. The reason? The voters eventually figured out they can vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money in exchange for electing them. The United States officially became a republic in 1776, two hundred and forty five years ago. The number of people getting free stuff is beginning to outnumber the number of people paying for the free stuff. Failure to change this terribly inequitable system could spell serious financial problems for all of us and for future generations. Do we as a people want to become another sad statistic on failed government?
Have you ever had something piss you off so bad you felt a sharp, stabbing pain behind your eyes. If you have then the following list will be perfect for you. I love reading lists and I also love writing them from time to time. Over the last few years I’ve experienced almost 60% of the things listed below and it seems to be getting worse each year instead of improving. The pandemic has done nothing to stop these annoyances, it has possibly increased them.
The person who insists on explaining at length something I have absolutely no interest in.
People who snore the paint right off the walls and then deny ever snoring.
People who love to talk over me during a conversation make me want to scream.
Waiting in my car at the ATM for 15 minutes for some moron on a bicycle making a deposit.
The guy in the next men’s room stall at Walmart who opens a stolen package of underwear, puts them on, and leaves his old pair on the floor when he departs.
The attractive woman driving the gorgeous new Lexus who rolls down her window and spits a huge oyster into the passing lane.
People who will stand quietly in line at a movie theater but can’t shut the hell up once the movie starts.
Screaming out-of-control children in public places with parents shopping elsewhere.
The woman chatting on her cell phone as she smashed into my left front fender.
Loud and obnoxious beer drinking morons at any sporting event.
People who are “close talkers” with chronic “stench breath” who won’t stop talking to me.
Finding short and curly hairs in my restaurant food.
Waiting endlessly in a register line for a customer to be trained in the use of their own debit card by the cashier.
People who loudly bitch and moan about their meals and the service at a restaurant.
City workers who insist on destroying my mailbox every year with a 10 ton snowplow.
I feel much better now that I’ve gotten all of those off my chest. It’s a very cathartic experience to say the least. I wrote these items in less than 15 minutes and I’m afraid if I took a bit more time the list would’ve doubled.
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
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