Maybe shut the fuck up about politics around your kids

 

Kids. They’ll parrot any old shit they hear. You know why? Because compared to most normal grown ass adults, kids are dumb. Kids don’t know shit.

For a quick second, think about what you were like in college. After the fall semester of your sophomore year, you thought you fucking knew everything. Shit, you were a goddamn college student now, after all – you got yer learnin’ on! Now think about how much you actually properly knew back then. That’s right, you knew fuck all. You barely understood anything about all the shit that really matters in this world.

Now think about a little kid – maybe one of yours if you have one. Maybe an eight year-old runt who’s trying to perfect his delivery of two dozen fart jokes, but also thinks mac and cheese for breakfast is totally OK (sure, why not). And for some reason you might think your kid is brilliant. Except he’s not. Because he’s a fucking kid. For fuck’s sake, even your teenager walks to school in shorts when there’s three feet of snow on the ground and you know it – how smart can they be risking frostbite?

As functioning members of the human collective, kids are dumb. Are we clear on that now? This means kids shouldn’t can’t be trusted with certain things. Grown up things. Things like Kitchen shears. Your car keys. A martini.

And most definitely: your bullshit political tendencies.

Seriously, shut the fuck up about politics and the election around your kids. I’m being serious here. Shut. The hell. Up. There is no reason on God’s green earth for you to be talking about politics and the election with or around anyone who’s still bringing PB&Js to school in a lunch box.

I don’t talk politics with my kids. Not one bit. They’re way too busy getting up to speed on everything else being a kid that the last thing I want to do is boggle them further with comical election bullshit.

So when my elementary schooler comes home and starts mouthing off about Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, all the blood rushes from my head while I do everything I can to not completely lose my shit.

“Donald Trump hates Chinese people!” “Hillary lies a lot.” What the fuck. That’s not coming from me, that’s for sure.

Upon some further incredibly restrained enquiry, said elementary schooler confesses that he heard all these Trump and Cruz and Hillary tales from his classmates.

“But what does it mean, buddy?”

“I dunno, I just heard it from them.”

His response is exactly the sort of response I’d expect from a kid his age. Kids his age just repeat shit, even if they don’t know what it means – they all do it. Maybe it all just sounds funny to them. Maybe it’s because they just want to fit in. Maybe they wanna talk and act all grown up. I’m not clear why, I just know they do it.

Which stands to reason that his friends are likely also just parroting this political rhetoric they got off someone else. They sure as hell aren’t coming up with this shit all by themselves. Unless little Pablo is secretly DVRing Bill Maher and Meet The Press? So where or whom are these kids getting this political shit from? Perhaps an older sibling? Sure, it’s possible. Equally possible – and more than likely – is perhaps from an overzealous parent or two who’s getting all too wrapped up in the election dramz. That’s what my money’s on.

You know what, go bananas with your political rantings all you want – it’s your goddamn right as a grown ass person to give a shit about whatever you want to give a shit about. But leave the kid alone. Your kid is not your ally in your deranged political leanings.

Here’s the thing, on their own volition, your kids don’t care about any of this political shit. It’s petty, it’s tedious, it’s confusing, and it’s packed with premium grade bullshit. No, kids care about Minecraft and milkshakes and farts and Vines and Hotline Bling. They couldn’t possibly give two shits about Hillary’s email servers, they couldn’t possibly understand the viability of Trump building walls, they definitely don’t give a fuck about China or Mexico. Unless it affects where Friday night’s takeout is coming from.

Do you think you’re somehow raising some wunderkind by shoving all your political wisdom down their throats? That they’re somehow going to be really fucking intelligent because they now repeat what your ideology? They have no firm grasp of what you’re yammering on about, I assure you.

And if they tell you they’re backing one candidate over another, it’s not because they love that particular candidate – it’s because they love you, and they want to say things to make you happy. They can’t tell one asswipe politician from another asswipe politician. Reasonably informed grown ass adults can barely do that.

So, please for the love for God, knock it off and leave your kids outta this election bullshit. Just let ‘em be kids. Let ‘em watch cartoons. Make ‘em watch Full House reruns so get what the hell is going on with Kimmy Gibbler. Let them pee outdoors. Let them eat Nutella right from the jar.

Anything’s better than some eight year old mouthing off about Ted Cruz’s supremely punchable face.

No, you don’t need that goddamn SUV

This is almost not worth my time.  It’s fucking ridiculous that I’m actually taking time out to rebuff some stupid article I just read.  Because the subject of SUVs is so fucking old and tired, and it’s been done to death, and it’s fucking boring.

Yet, THIS CANNOT BE A REAL ARTICLE.

Surely this is some shitty troll write-up that’s meant to rile up certain gearheads who are stupid enough to get riled up (me).  I mean, most of the time, I love Gawker – Deadspin, in particular – but holy shit, do they come up with some massively pointless articles every so often.  In fact, that’s the problem with a lot of these sites that used to be sites that just reposted someone else’s stories.  Somewhere along the way, they decided that they need to compete as content generators and not just content aggregators.  And in so doing, often they struggle to come up with some minimum amount of original content for our insatiable appetite for said content.

And that’s why we end up with such a seemingly banal yet thoroughly retarded write-up assuming to validate SUVs.

If you can’t be arsed to read the article, here’s the sum up of what the whole stupid write-up is driving at:

OMG, your mom must’ve gracefully descended from the heavens, with all her hyper intelligence and miraculous supernatural powers, to have managed the herculean task of carting your stupid ass all over town without some swollen, overpriced pretend-offroading vehicular monstrosity.  Just how DID she manage?!  What a saint!  Oh, the humanity!

With all due respect – and complete sincerity – do fuck off.

ZOMG, sedans aren’t “convenient as something with a big tailgate”!!!  WE NEED A TAILGATE!!  Everyone needs tailgates!!  And sedans can’t accommodate large car seats!!  “OMG, these soft, pudgy, fast food-fed kids are too big-boned to fit to a family sedan!!”  “We must pack lightly – the horror of not being able to cram the entire contents of my house into my car!”  “Honey, there’s no way I can’t fit little Maddie’s Barbie dream house, her pack-n-play, the bottle warmer, her DVD player, all her Baby Einstein discs, AND your mega-duty breast pump into our normal car so that we can go to the mall – WE TOTALLY NEED AN SUV!!!”

This writer’s a fucking idiot.

As a father of two, I’ll just say that anything larger than a four-door sedan is completely pointless and unnecessary.  We have comfortably survived – fuck it, thrived! – with only four-door sedans.  Imagine that: a simple sedan, four wheels, four doors, a trunk, and we’ve managed fine.  Car seats, strollers, diaper bags, toys, foldable playpens, all the shit that you *need* (:rolleyes:) when you have little kids – they all fit nicely into our humble Volkswagen sedan.  AND a little dog, too, beeyotch.  I never even had a roof rack on my car until very recently (hey, it’s not my fault that paddleboards are 12 feet long).

I know some families with one or two kids, and they all have some beastly SUV with an enormous engine in it.  They clamp on some equally enormous luggage carrier to the roof rack.  The rear of the car’s got some a massive bike rack.  And it’s got a hitch.  I have no idea if the luggage carrier on top ever has anything in it, but those bike racks are always empty, and everything’s permanently bolted to their SUVs ALL THE TIME.  Really?!  The fuck you need all that shit for?  It looks like a prop from the upcoming Mad Max movie.  It’s like they’ve just bought some monstrous car and they’ve got to further validate this purchase by attaching all these extra bits and pieces on it because “that’s why we needed the big SUV!”

I’ll tell you what this is: fucking gluttony.

So what you end up with is single-digit mpg, a heavy lumbering shit box that handles even more poorly than it already did, awful parking jobs (because, admit it, you can’t park that thing for shit), and maximum carbon monoxide for maximum earth scorching.

I speak from the perspective of having two kids.  And I get that there are many families who aren’t limited to two kids.  God, you feel like such a fucking underachiever these days when you have only two kids.  “You have only two kids?  Fuck that, we’re going for more kids than the Brangelinas, loser.”

Yet, it matters little whether someone’s got two kids or nine.  Fact is, most of you are gonna buy an SUV no matter what.  Because you want more, MORE, MORE, MORE!!!  Just don’t use your goddamn kids as the excuse.

And I’m not suggesting that anyone has to make do with less (though that’s hardly a bad thing).  I’m suggesting that maybe we can all learn to live without so much fucking excess.

 

This Week in WTF

 

The Delta girl

I have gobs of miles logged with Delta.  I’ve travelled so much in the first half of this year that I jumped a membership grade in 3 months.   That’s too much time in the air and in shitty airports, dealing with other dumbass travellers and asshole flight staff.  And speaking of flight staff, Delta’s inflight safety video is ready to make me switch airlines and loyalty program.  What the fuck is up with the Delta girl’s face?  Before every flight, her horrific plastoid face pops up on the screen and shoves a cargo load of sass in your face.  It’s a double whammy – you’ve got to deal with the fucking attitude and that face that looks like it’s constructed from some alien-grade polymer.  If Joan from Mad Men fucked one of those androids from “I, Robot”, this girl would be the spawn of that unholy union.  Fucking nightmares from this video.

 

Whole lotta bumper stickers

I’ve bitched about those Euro car stickers before.  But it takes a whole ‘nother grade of douchebag to turn your car into what looks like hyperactive child’s scrapbook.  What the fuck is up with this practice of trying to wallpaper the rear of your car with shitty stickers?  Are they like gold stars – you get one every time you cut someone off or veer recklessly across three lanes?  Or maybe it’s driven by sheer embarrassment of driving such an asshole car that you’re trying to cover it up with bumper stickers.  I wonder if this rule works with people, too.  I’d practically smother a few annoying relatives in stupid Hello Kitty or leftover McCain/Palin ’08 bumper stickers.

 

 

Salad dressing

If I want advice on buying a new Mac, do I hit up some Amish folks for some suggestions?  Like fuck I do.  So why the fuck are steakhouses peddling salad dressings?  It’s fucking retarded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Questionable content in my kid’s magazine

This, found in one of my kids’ magazines.  What.  The fuck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elevator buttons

People who push elevator buttons that are already lit.  What is the point of that?  Every fucking day it’s the same thing.  People walk up to the elevator bank in the lobby, look at the lit ‘up’ button, then stick their stupid finger out and push that lit button.  Or fuckwits who pour into an elevator, all going to the same floor, and each one looks at the lit floor button and without hesitation, reacts in some mindless Pavlovian manner and sticks his/her finger on the lit button.  It’s fucking lit, there’s no fucking point to pushing the button again, asshole!  What possible outcome do you think you’d get by pushing the button again?  As if the button would say, “Oh, I didn’t think you really meant it the first time, now that you’ve tapped me repeatedly, maybe I’ll go the floor you want.  I was going to just sit here and finish my cup of tea otherwise.”  Or maybe you think it’s some sort of trick elevator button – it’s lit but the elevator doesn’t really move until you tap the button a certain number of times.  Like a Nintendo cheat code.  Maybe the faster you tap, the faster the elevator will move!  You’re a fuckwit.  It’s such a fucking stupid OCD-esque thing to do.