CK: Swallowing your own vomit(unconscious physical reaction): A lot of unfunny bloggers have made this medical happenstance pejorative, but it’s really not that bad. Swallowing vomit isn’t all that different from swallowing Jägermeister, all things considered. Underrated.
How terrible is vomit, really? After all, it’s made up of the food and/or liquid that you recently and willfully decided to shove into your face. Its texture has likely changed, but that texture never stops smoothie bars from being mobbed during lunch hour. Sure, it smells a little unpleasant, but that’s just a trained biological response. Most human beings stopped being mindless slaves to their biological impulses generations ago (with the exception of obese people, drug addicts, alcoholics, sex addicts, compulsive masturbators, gambling addicts, children under three, those with horribly low self-esteem, and massive, massive sluts). Plus, if you vomit in your own mouth, you don’t even have to smell it. It might taste a little acidic, but I’m always hearing judges on cooking shows suggest that dishes could use more acid. Don’t whine about vomiting in your mouth just because you have an unsophisticated palate.
“Eww! I just threw up in my mouth! SMH! LOL! FML! POOP!” It all boils down to the simple fact that people just love complaining. Internet culture fully indulges this snide, crotchety world view. (Actually, crotchety is the perfect word to describe internet behavior: crotch▪ety adj 1.) subject to crankiness or ill temper; 2.) play or activity involving the crotch region. Ex: The man logged onto the internet in order to engage in crotchety entertainment.) If people loving to complain is a blow job, then the internet is the hand that cradles the balls. Everyone’s favorite pastime is slagging off everything within their field of vision. You’d think the bile supply would eventually run out and people would exhaust their complaining muscles, but there seems to be no end in sight. I, for one, have decided to take a stand. Enough of this senseless derision; enough of shitting on things just to feel like a shitter instead of the shittee. Whatever happened to “turn the other cheek,” to “live and let live,” to “look on the bright side”? Just like the vomit in my mouth, this world is mine, damn it, and I intend to take some pride in it. In this spirit, I’ve made a list of things regularly criticized, debased, besmirched and besnarked and have come to their defense. Someone needs to inject some positivity into our cultural conversation, and I know just the wealthy, Midwestern, middle aged, white, heterosexual, prudish, sheltered, self-satisfied, nettlesome, verbose, intrepid, smug, wealthy, middle aged, white contrarian for the job.
Discrimination
Imagine going to high school in the charming Midwestern heartland. Picture walking home from classes gazing at the sun hung high above the golden plains, dappled light shimmering across the mud groves; a lone goat bays to the sky as if to say “don’t eat my testicles.” Your senior class of 22 is split evenly between students of German descent and inbred Scotch Irish dirt bags. The German kids derisively call the Scotch Irish “McMacs” and in turn they call the Germans “Klinks” thanks to Hogan’s Heroes. When you read The Outsiders in seventh grade you could easily relate to the socially divided world of Greasers and Socs, and you imagined yourself an astute, upwardly mobile south side Soc trying to succeed in a world filled with Greaser/McMac landmines.
There is, of course, a girl from across the tracks. Rebecca Sorley was the only Scotch Irish girl who could move between the two worlds without too much fallout from either side. She stayed above the fray, maintaining an aloof but not overtly condescending attitude, as if she had already seen herself outside of this false high school dichotomy, knowing she just had to bide her time before becoming a dean’s list Animal Husbandry major at UND. The color of her shimmering copper red hair reminds you of the “soil surplus” your dad has going in the backyard (it is his favorite pile of dirt) and she speaks to you with a glint in her eye like it’s all just your little secret. Finally the day comes when she slips you a note asking you to meet her underneath the bleachers. “Come alone,” it says.
That afternoon your heart jackhammers in your chest as you make the trek across the school grounds to the football field. When you see she’s actually there, your heart pounds even harder. “Over here, Chuck!” she yells playfully as you draw closer. Just when you get close enough to touch her freckled hand, you hear a rustling from the woods behind you. Before you know it, the McMacs have rushed around you – there’s no way out. A sucker punch in the stomach doubles you over. From the tree line, a younger McMac hurls a rock that drills you in the thigh. You look around for an escape route just in time to see Dave McDevitt up on the bleachers over you. You already know what’s coming before the first drop of urine hits your head. The McMacs all fall over laughing. Rebecca laughs too, but not quite as hard as the others. The look in her eye says something like, “Yes, this is kinda funny, but they put me up to this, Chuck, and it also kinda hurts because I care about you no matter what I say later at our twenty-year reunion.” After Dave empties his bladder, they let you run home. You call your friends to tell them your harrowing story of love, loss and betrayal. Revenge plots are hatched. The next night, your friend Jerry Tollefson strikes back by sneaking into Dave McDevitt’s backyard and having sex with his golden retriever. No one is sure why that was an appropriate revenge tactic, but you keep your mouth shut. As the days go by, the battle continues – throughout the rest of high school and onward, generation after generation.
What’s the point of this hypothetical tale? Does it really make sense for this bitter conflict to exist between ethnic groups? Are the McMacs and the Klinks really so different? The answer is simple. Discrimination is a galvanizing force that unites one group against another based on prejudice. Let’s look at this sentence in detail. In high school English we all learned that prepositional phrases contain modifications or extraneous details that are not essential to the main idea. Therefore: Discrimination is a galvanizing force that unites one group against another based on prejudice. You see, discrimination unites us. It brings together in a way few things can. In this deeply divided world, there are few sanctuaries where people can come together under a common purpose. Thank you, discrimination. Thank you.
Genital Mutilation
Were you really going to do something that great with your genitals?
Sharks Killing Baby Seals
Thanks in part to “Shark Week,” these underwater predators have become considerably overexposed, which inevitably leads to a just-as-overexposed backlash. The preponderance of Animal Planet footage containing shark attacks has resulted in a snark attack (He drills the jumper! And one!) of titanic proportions. With the assistance of high definition and slow motion, these creatures are made to look like vicious killing machines hell-bent on the violent destruction of every baby seal from the Exxon Valdez to the BP Deepwater Horizon. Since when has the blogosphere been an advocacy group for marine life? Sharks have a biological imperative to prey on animals further down the food chain. If you want to stand up to a brutal, senseless killer, tell your alcoholic uncle to stop hunting deer with a semi-automatic and use a bow and arrow like a real man. I agree that seals look cute, but think about it from a shark’s perspective. Seals are waddling tubes of blubber and meat. If chicken fingers (not chickens, but straight-out-of-the-deep-fryer chicken fingers) were just walking down the street, don’t tell me you wouldn’t routinely grab them and shove them in your mouth. Even if they had googly eyes and little nugget children, you’d bite the shit out of an entire family without even blinking. What an amazing world that would be. We could install honey mustard dispensers at every street corner. You could athletically scoop up a chicken finger that was trying to escape and everyone on the street would look at you like, “nice grab!” and even some of the chicken fingers would think, “Wow, I hate to admit it, but that was pretty cool.” I fucking love chicken fingers.
The Baltimore Orioles
For the last couple decades, the Orioles have become easy shorthand for sports futility. The confluence of bad luck, bad situation (AL East), bad decisions and bad play has led to a team aura of absolute, crippling failure. It’s like the franchise is perpetually under a dark cloud. They should be renamed the Eeyore-rioles. Their fan base anticipates the start of each season like a battered woman anticipates her husband coming home from the bar. Ever since Kevin Costner banged Cal Ripken’s wife Cal Ripken retired, things have not gone well, to put it mildly. And yet, look at them now. They’re in first place and tied for the best record in all of baseball. (Unfortunately, this is akin to the likeable nerd getting the hot girl in the beginning of an 80s movie. By the end of the movie he’ll probably be dragged behind the jock’s pickup truck while the hot girl laughs in the passenger seat. But it’s still a nice story while it lasts.) If the Orioles can rise above all the negativity that surrounds them, can’t we? Come October, I think we’ll have our answer. And it’s NO. NO WE CAN’T. But thanks anyway, Os.
Rape
I don’t want to make light of this subject or insinuate anything positive, as it is a truly horrible occurrence that, in a just world, would not exist. However, our 33rd President, Harry S. Truman, was a product of rape, so it can’t be all bad.
NBA Lockout
The lockout was the subject of much pundit handwringing, brow furrowing, key stroking and Baylessing. (Baylessing: when smug idiots in suits put their idiocy on display by stating idiotic things on stupid TV shows watched predominantly by idiots.) For the players, it was a time of much couch sitting, Cheeto eating, club up-inning, and groupie plowing. Then it was over, and now we have all almost forgotten why it happened in the first place. Yet the specter of the lockout continues to hang over these playoffs. The condensed schedule is now the scapegoat for injuries to Rose, Noah (and almost every other Bull), Pierce (and almost every other Celtic), CP3, Griffin and now Bosh. Blaming the lockout for ruining the playoffs is, of course, a wrongheaded approach to this entire situation (hey “society” – can’t you get anything right?). If it is indeed the cause of the playoffs veering off the script, we should not be cursing it. We should be grateful.
Isn’t the whole point of watching sports to be impressed, thrilled, surprised, astounded? If the outcome of each game was predetermined, what would be the point? Take internet pornography. Why is there such an astronomical amount of content available? I mean, why don’t people just grab a few favorite clips and be done with it? People want novelty, that’s why. Sure, just like basketball, there are “rules” that govern these videos. Tab A goes into Slot A, or Slot B, or maybe even Slot C, maybe all three, or maybe gets slid between some things or smacked on some places or maybe a Tab B comes along and goes for Slot A while Tab A is totally sliding into Tab C. The point is, it’s not the actions themselves but the way in which these events unfold that make it compelling. Just like sports. Everyone predicted the Bulls and the Heat meeting in the Eastern Conference Finals. Guess what – it’s not happening. And that’s a good thing. If you don’t agree, go watch Cleavagefield for the 3,547th time.
Dying
You’ll never have to see the Budweiser commercial with Pitbull ever again. Case closed.
