Oinks on the Passing Scene 2

Since I am melancholy today because of the myriad problems that are facing my friends and relations, as opposed to the usual self pity, I am not experiencing the desire to write about losing weight and instead wish to revisit something I introduced months ago: Oinks on the Passing Scene.

In case no one remembers, “Oinks” are my poor imitation of economist Thomas Sowell’s “Thoughts on the Passing Scene”… with my own irreverent twists thrown in for effect. I hope he forgives me for aping his style; I pray I am not wrong in believing all these thoughts are at least original to me.

With that in mind:

1. The movie “Cloverfield” was better than I could have imagined only because it was obvious, if you could keep from hurling from the jitter camera work, that all the people involved actually put tremendous effort into making the movie look … real. Can any normal person even conceive of how much education, training, and artistic talent it must take to make it look like a 30 story alien actually destroyed New York?

2. The current crop of presidential candidates has me pining away for a return to an old feudal system: We would still all be filthy, starving surfs, but at least we wouldn’t have been responsible for ELECTING our own nasty, idealess, pandering, self-aggrandizing weaklings to leadership.

3. The Universe continues to remind me of the axiom that “you get what you pay for”: Although I have tried for weeks to ignore the tiny bits of bone I have found in my (now infamous) Jenny O’s Chicken Rings, today I nearly cracked a tooth on a fragment that must have been the chicken’s entire leg. It may be time to spend more than $1.99 on three pounds of frozen “chicken” product and pay more attention to what I’m putting in my mouth.

4. Two years ago I purchased a watch that was too large for my rather chubby wrist. Since then I have lost a substantial amount of weight and my jewelry now constantly annoys me by sliding down my arm whenever I look at it. But I refuse to get it adjusted because my twisted mind insists on believing that the loose watch will make me look thin to any observers… instead of like a dork who keeps checking his elbow to see what time it is.

5. Violent wind noise, leaking tops, higher insurance costs, negligible trunk space, and lower safety still can’t hamper a convertible’s ability to induce big smiles on a sunny day across an open road.

6. Yesterday while the world wrestled with mounting hunger, unrest, and political instability my buddies and I spent most of our intellectual talent on coming up with a new radio phonetic alphabet based on “porn words”. I mean Whiskey Tango Foxtrot dudes!

7. Men are pigs.

8. The rise of the middle class in modern Western society has done more to create equality between the sexes than any law ever passed.

9. Cutting edge computer operating systems and text editing software have become so damn “helpful” that it practically takes a learning annex course just to figure out how to turn them on and disable all those wonderfully “helpful” little extras that no one needs and few use.

10. My father was shocked to hear that young men today use as many hair care and hair styling products as young women do. What will I be shocked to hear about the younger generation when I am his age?

Pigassus