Tag: general grumbling

My irrational anger at a clothing company.

I walk by the Free People clothing store regularly and look at their displays with a kind of anthropological interest.  These are not clothes designed for me, nor am I meant to wear them.  I find some of them kind of cute (the dress on the left, the skirt on the right) and most of them puzzling.

But today I saw the Van Halen 1984 shirt and stopped short.  Why are they marketing a shirt for a band consisting of members who are too old to be this demographic’s fathers?  Is there some Van Halen resurgence among the young set I don’t know about? (Possibly.)  I suspect they just thought the logo looked cool and made it into a shirt.

And who might be standing behind you?

I’m waiting for Matt at the gate.  I pick out a good spot where I can see people coming through the gate and where I’m not standing in front of anyone.  I know not to sit in the chairs, because my view will be blocked for sure.  So my place along the wall is working well for me.  A woman comes and stands along the wall next to me.  All is fine.

And then she stands in front of me.  IMG_5629

Not a little bit in front of me.  The kind of in front of me where she blocks my entire view of the gate.  The kind of in front of me where Matt was past me before he noticed me waving.

I’m sure she was excited to see whoever she was waiting for, but so was I.  And I was there first.

(I projectile coughed on her, but the only effect it had was that she put her hair in a pony tail.)

Society says it’s okay for this guy to have this bumper sticker.

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Let us bypass the obvious, that this guy is a jerk and not worth anyone’s time.  Let us move on to the implications of a man who is not called out for putting this bumper sticker on his truck.

If you replace “fat chicks” with any other type of group, this becomes a bumper sticker that isn’t okay.  Why hasn’t there been a confrontation, a general hue and cry?

This catalog makes me want to gnash my teeth.

I have no idea how I got on this mailing list, because we are not a match.  C.C. Filson Co. may have got their start outfitting miners, prospectors and lumbermen in Seattle, but they have strayed far from their roots.  $300 for a flannel shirt?  You know where the last few miners, prospectors and lumbermen buy their shirts? Walmart.  Because that’s what they can afford.  You know who buys $300 flannel shirts?  Software engineers who think they are the same ilk as miners, prospectors and lumbermen.  And they aren’t.  So don’t pretend they are.

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And every modern outdoorsman needs a bag for his tablet and computer.  Grrrr.

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(I liked quite a few of their tablet and computer bags, but again, not my price range.)

Stepping right over a generation

IMG_4486I took umbrage to this on several levels.  One.  I think of Baby Boomers as giving birth to Generation X.  They would be too old by the time it came time to procreate the Millennials.  But I did the math and it seems that it’s those younger baby boomers (the ones who were born nearly two decades after WWII ended) who seem to have sired the millennial generation.  I never think of these people as Baby Boomers, having come so lately to the selfish party that is the Baby Boomer generation.

Two.  Really?  Is it one generation versus another?

Three.  Um, is this how it’s gonna be?  Generation X has to listen endlessly to how cool the Boomers are, and then pay for all the things they never got around to fully funding like social security?  And then we don’t even get a mention?  It’s like no one was born between 1964 and 1984.

Four. And now I’m annoyed by how much this whole thing annoys me.  Do we really have to have distinct generations?  Can’t we all just work together?  Answer: no.  Because the stupid Boomers need constant reinforcement as to how cool they are.

Five.  In the relief category, I’m glad I’m in a generation designation that I know how to spell.

And what has HE been doing?

From an article in People magazine about the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Garner breakup.

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Weird.  I don’t really understand what’s the driver behind magazines/media emphasizing how happily domestic famous women are, all while building their career and taking care of the children.  There is no such emphasis or constant need to reassure people that the male half of the couple is also happily domestic while building his career and taking care of the children.  Hands-on dad?  So nice that men can have that as a goal, instead of what’s required of them.

*This is not to say that the reporting in this piece accurately reflects anything about the Affleck/Garner relationship.  For all we really know, he could be the hands-on dad and she could be the person who builds her career and ignores her children.  I think we’re all media savvy enough to realize that what we read in the magazines might not (and probably isn’t) actually what’s really going on.

Here’s the number one thing that drives me crazy about the Oregonian.

Longtime readers know that I am quite frustrated with the shell of the paper that the Oregonian has become.  But here’s my number one hatred.  They are so namby-pamby with their changes.  Don’t want to publish a paper copy of the newspaper anymore?  Fine, stop doing it. That would be better than this four-day a week hybrid we’ve got.  Don’t want to have certain features anymore? Just print an announcement that you are discontinuing them.  That would be much better than just ushering said feature/person out the door and  waiting for us to wonder what ever happened to the guy who wrote the local political cartoons for 30 years.  Don’t like the name Oregonian anymore and want to be called OregonLive, even though it’s a stupid name?  Fine!  Just change the damn name. Don’t start using this weird, wordy, dumb looking hybrid Oregonian/OregonLive.  Be the newspaper you want to be and see if we all follow.  We probably will.  We’ve got nothing else.

For the love of all that is holy, it’s a conversation, not a Mother May I game!

Stone Soup is usually pretty normal in their family relations. However, we’ve started a plot where Val, the redhead is having upheaval because of confusion about the direction her relationship with her longtime boyfriend Phil is headed.  They were both happily plunked in “not getting married” but now the waters have been muddied.
What drives me crazy is her reaction.  She doesn’t know what her feelings are about marriage, which is fine.  But she reverts to the classic “he must ask me” stance that is not in keeping with the tone of the rest of the strip.  
Val, all you have to say is something like, “Let’s have a chat about where we are now with the whole marrying thing.”  And boom!  You and your partner can come to a conclusion together.