Daily Ambivalence - saying "God Bless You" when someone sneezes

It seems strange that someone needs to be blessed just because they have allergies.

For that reason, I suspect Spring is probably God's least favorite time of the year. Someone sneezes. Someone says "God Bless You." And here comes God because someone asked for him and it's just a stupid allergy.

Sometimes I wonder if praying to God too much is a little like kids calling 9-1-1 and jamming up the line. Someone else calls because they have a severed head but gets put on hold.

I guess people are just trying to be polite but they should really think about what they are doing.

This next April when you say "God Bless You" to the guy sitting next to you on the bus, you better hope there isn't a story in the paper the next day about meteor showers in London knocking down Big Ben. Totally your fault.

Saying "God Bless You" when someone sneezes . . . eh.

Daily Ambivalence - you smell like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup

If you have ever used that to insult a person then I question your insulting ability.

Insults work best when you say that someone is a bad thing and most people like the smell of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

That's why so often you hear poop or fart slurs when it comes to insults. Very few people want to be a poop or a fart.

You see?

Frankly, I'm a little surprised that something this obvious needed to be addressed. But there you go.

You smell like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup . . . eh.

Daily Ambivalence - major awards

Leg lamps aside, a major award is typically presented to an individual when he or she accomplishes something noteworthy.

Only, I don't think we as a society are all that good at establishing the boundaries around actual "noteworthy" acts.

Take saving a busload of children from an oncoming train.

Now saving a busload of children is great. I'm not denigrating bus saving. I'm just pushing the idea that saving a busload of children might not be noteworthy. At least not major award noteworthy.

Stop reading this and pick up the newspaper lying there next to you. There on B2. Busload of children saved. Happens all the time. It didn't even make the front page.

Noteworthy should be one-of-a-kind territory.

Just give it to me in a glass

Like the person who invented the Mexican sauce called mole. Do you think he or she got a major award for that? We don't even know who it was! The inventor of mole!

I rest my case.


Major awards . . . eh.

Daily Ambivalence - proliferation of different fonts

Dude, I'm not going to use
Broadway for the first edition
of the Gutenberg Bible

From the genesis of printing presses, people with the urge to be different started creating fonts, (i.e., new and more exciting ways to draw lines). I have a friend who loves fonts and has firm opinions (mark that, firm) about font choice. This friend loves names like Verdana and Garamond, Euphemia and Gungsuh, Gotham and New Baskerville.

I suppose it could be argued that different fonts are helpful for birthday cards and the like. Jokes about being mostly dead because you're 40 might look better in Fangsong than Times New Roman.

I'm not sure that's a keen enough argument to account for drop-down boxes in Word that have 10,000 options. Please give me one good reason why Tempas Sans ITC should even exist.

That's why, although I do acknowledge there could be a downside to this, I'm arguing for the establishment of an Emperor of the World.

If there was an Emperor of the World he or she could limit the allowable fonts to a number somewhere south of 2. Which would be great.

My font friend would complain for a while, but then the Emperor of the World would say something like "Off with his head!" and that would be it.

I'd buy a sympathy card for his family. The problem is, it would look just like the card about premature balding and turning 30. It's the thought that counts though, not the font.

Proliferation of different fonts . . . eh.

Perfect Movie Scenes - Fringe (I know, not a movie)

Still have no idea what this means

My daughter and I have been Netflix binging on Fringe lately. A couple episodes ago there was a scene that I thought was worth mentioning on PMS.

Here's the set up:

SPOILER ALERT. Peter is the name of one of the main characters. 

Okay, that's not much of a spoiler, but here is the real spoiler. SPOILER ALERT. As you watch the seasons you find that Peter was kidnapped as a boy from a "father" from an alternate universe. This alternate father lost his own Peter (sounds funny, but not meant to be funny) to a disease and then he crossed over to the alternate universe to save Peter from the same disease and then ends up taking him back.

The PMS is what comes when the alternate father brings Peter home. In the world alternate to the one Peter came from, he meets his alternate mother. She has just burried her Peter (sounds hilarious, but again, not meant to be hilarious) but here he is again, seemingly there for her to love and cherish like nothing happened.

The look of longing in her eyes is amazing. I'm not sure something like that has ever been done better. The mother looks like she wants to inhale the boy.

As this moment was approaching, I remember thinking that the actor playing the mother would really have to bring it, and I was prepared to be disappointed. I wasn't.

This had more to do with acting than writing. It was a really good moment in the story, one that I rewound and watched again. A mother reunited with a son she just buried.

Nailed it.

Boogie Fever Sign Guy

I just drove by a guy dancing and flipping a sign on the side of the road. I don't know what his name is but I suspect it's probably something like Boogie Fever Sign Guy.

I certainly lost myself to his dance

He was so good at sign flipping I felt guilty not paying for the show.

Typically I feel sorry for guys flipping signs on the side of the road. It seems to me the ultimate form of punishment for not graduating from high school.

There the guy is (I've never seen a female sign flipper), doing his show for every person in every car, all of whom only look at him from the corner of their eyes in case he looks at them. He is a neon sign flashing "I'm an adult making minimum wage." Poor sap. Every second of his long eight-hour shift there's the chance someone he knows or knew will drive by and recognize him.

"Hey, isn't that . . . " someone in the car might say, and then their words stumble to a halt. Everyone in the car looks and then feels bad because they looked and viewed a friend or acquaintance on the low side of low.

Sign flipping is insidious.

Except for Boogie Fever Sign Guy. Really, I mean, he was amazing. I did a circle around the block just to drive by him again.

I'm kind of rethinking my whole human sign prejudice now. Our society tends to venerate doctors and engineers, teachers, CEOs. Writers, of course.

Knowledge. Learning. School. Degrees. Those are all apparently good things, and flipping a sign doesn't require any of them.

But Boogie Fever Sign Guy might actually be the best sign flipper in the entire world.

I'm not the best in the world at anything.

And you know what? Boogie Fever Sign Guy looked like he was having a good time.

Daily Ambivalence - Lou Ferrigno

There was that dream where Lou Ferrigno is in the make-up chair for the first time and the stylist presents him with the green wig. Lou Ferrigno protests saying that the Hulk is mostly drawn in the comic books with black hair but the stylist pleads creative liberty and that's when Lou Ferrigno reveals that he actually is a super hero. But he isn't the Hulk. He's Nick Fury in real life, though in keeping with his name he has anger management issues of his own. So he starts throwing people through walls and does some drop kicking but then he realizes that all this violence might be counterproductive if he still wants to play the part of Hulk in the television series. So he makes up a story about a tornado on the set and everybody believes him.

Somehow he still has to wear the green wig.

Daily Ambivalence - people who know words that I don't know

And not just people who know words that I don't know but who actually use words that I don't know in their everyday language.

Who do those people think they are?

Like the word galifiniakis. I heard a guy use that word the other day and it sent me into a flying rage.

Shakespeare apparently had the biggest vocabulary of any writer in history. He knew lots of words that I don't know. I would have totally wasted that guy if I knew him.

It's just something about people using words that I don't know that sets me off. That's why I never visit foreign countries.

This is not Zach Galifiniakis

Anyways, back to galifiniakis. It turns out that galifiniakis is actually not so much a word as it is a name.

Which makes me feel really horrible. When I heard that guy say galifiniakis he was actually referring to an actor. I should have known that.

I just get so angry sometimes.

To conclude, I am wracked with guilt right now, but at the same time I'm glad there weren't any witnesses.

And that I burned any incriminating evidence.

People who know words that I don't know . . . eh.