Possumblog

So, you think YOU'RE angry?!

Well, what better place than here to blow off steam? No one likes it when you're angry and pouty, so take a second to tell everyone what's got you all hot and bothered. Sure, folks blessed to live in modern industrialized countries really have nothing worthwhile to complain about, but when has that ever stopped anyone!? NEVER!! Which is probably something worth complaining about, right? RIGHT!!

ANYway, what's your beef?

Me?

You want to hear MY beef?

Well, today, I have a whole herd of beeves.

Yesterday? The Volvo wouldn't crank. Not right off, at least. I think I've got a idle control valve about to sail off to Valhalla, and when it's really cold outside, the first crank has been just barely been enough to get the engine turning. It idles way down low for almost a minute before it finally picks up and gets to a normal idle speed. But yesterday, I was just about to abandon it on the driveway because I couldn't get it cranked. Finally managed after about five minutes of running down the battery. Grr.

Last night?

Well, as you know, I love my wife, so obviously this is all somehow my fault.

She got the idea it would be fun to get a little collar with bells and tiny Santa hat and put them on Lightning, The World's Most Expensive Free Kitten, and take a picture of him in front of the tree. Apparently, the idea that L,TWMEFK is an actual sentient life form and might have an objection to being treated as a photo prop seems not to have occurred to anyone.

Other than me.

But being that I'm a good husband and doting father, when it came time to wrangle the kitty and get him bedecked, I came downstairs to help. Rebecca had gone and gotten him and had him held in her arms wrapped in swaddling clothes (i.e., a towel). Mom was gamely trying to put the bell collar on him, but he seemed not to like this. So I took the kitty from Rebecca lest she get scratched. Which meant I got scratched--right across the back of the hand. But by golly, that collar got on him!

And then he jumped down and ran upstairs and I had to get him.

This, combined with Catherine's squealing and the general mayhem usually present in the house made Kitty somewhat nervous. But I love my wife, and wanted her special picture to somehow get taken, lest I suffer the blame for that failure.

Having gotten the kitten (all five hundred pounds of him) back in my arms, she began trying to attach the small Santa hat around his head. Cats don't really like such treatment, believe it or not. "NO HAT!!" I said in my usual calm and soothing voice. So it was decided by others to simply take a picture of him with his collar on.

While Daddy held him aloft in front of the tree.

Which cats don't like.

And a displeasure he had, which he demonstrated by taking a swipe at my fingers, connecting with the end of one and opening a gusher.

Well, time to put Mr. Kitty back outside and endure the frosty dysfun that comes when the wife (whom I love) has a project that doesn't go off as planned. And with the added bonus of said project being undertaken during that peculiar time that women monthly undergo.

When they are already rather on edge and looking for any excuse to feel pitiful and insignificant and defensive and willing to lash out at anyone who would dare suggest it might not have been such a good idea to dress Kitty in a costume.

SO, all that was my fault, and I'm angry about my lack of sensitivity and my brutishness and mean-spiritedness and lack of concern about the feelings of others and not being a better cat herder and a host of other things.

OTHER THINGS? Well, there was a wreck this morning at 31st Street, and by the time I got there, the cop directing traffic was having a nice chat with one of the collisionists. Which would have been better done OFF TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD so as to block fewer lanes of traffic. OH--and to the trail of four cars that were drafting behind an ambulance passed me (and a host of other disgruntled drivers who had been courteous enough to pull over) that had been slowly making its way through the traffic tangle, I wish you nothing but the worst for the rest of the day.

AND ANOTHER THING--the local ballet company is doing a production of The Nutcracker, and their radio commercial has one jarring line in it, and no one seems willing to correct it. "...blah blah magical blah blah holiday blah--you will cease to be amazed!--blah blah..."

"You will cease to be amazed"!? NEVER cease, dimwits! The bad thing? The script had to be written, it had to be reviewed and approved by the ballet folks, it had to be READ by the narrator, and now it's been on for at least a couple of weeks, and yet no one thought this sounded weird, and no one has said anything to that would cause anyone to have enough shame to pull the ad and correct it?! Look, I realize ballet doesn't require a whole lot of grammar, but still, you'd think someone would be a bit more on the ball about this.

FINALLY, this was sent to me by Jimbo Smith yesterday, a story about the conviction of a sailor who deserted and tried to sell secret information. He's a despicable little worm, and frankly I would like nothing better than to see him hung from the yardarm or keel-hauled until he was dead, but the thing that caught my eye was this little blurb--

[...] Weinmann told the judge, who had yet to accept the plea, that he deserted the Navy in July 2005 because the service did not meet his expectations.

"I had a very idealized view, basically what amounted to a World War II Navy," Weinmann told the judge. [...]

You miserable, ignorant, stupid, disgraceful piece of garbage.

We got anyone else out there in the military who feels this way? I tell you what, you put your little whiny complaints in here with all the rest of our whiny complaints, and get over it! Darn sight better than selling out your fellow citizens.

ANYWAY--what's your complaint du jour?

Posted by Terry Oglesby at December 5, 2006 08:48 AM