Angry Shorts

I’m exhausted.

It’s only been four short years since Hudson was a puppy, but in that time I’ve completely forgotten what it’s like raising one of these little poopers. I’m constantly on vigil for Winslow “feeling the need. The need for pee’d” and running him outside in a vain attempt to protect our area rugs.

It’s a pipe dream. He’s peed on the rugs so many times they’ve changed color, like they’ve been stained with tea. Those rugs are gone once he’s potty trained.

Winslow is also still needing to go out in the middle of the night to do his business. I take him out around 2:00 a.m., and The Missus takes him out at 6:30 a.m.. It’s annoying, but it’s a definite improvement on the previous Every Two-Hour Schedule.

Also, both The Missus and myself have been sick since December 20. I had a fever and cough, The Missus had stomach flu.

It was a great Christmas and New Year with me fully clothed and shivering under eighty pounds of blankets, and her running to the toilet every twenty minutes. Just super awesome.

As a result, there’s not much to say in my cold-medicine-addled brain at the moment. So here are a couple angry shorts composed in between my bouts of hacking up a lung.

In search of “double-use” condiments

Apparently all the major problems of modern living have been solved, so it’s high time for Washington state to tackle the scourge that is condiments.

Saw this sign at a local Carl’s, and it made me laugh.

Still on the lookout for "Double-Use Condiments"

Commercials.

Much has been said about the current lack of white men in television commercials. It’s disturbing not just because it ignores arguably the largest market for products and services, but also because replacing white men with (mostly) black men creates a false impression in the minds of consumers.

If memory serves, black people comprise around 13% of the U.S. population. Presumably, half of those are men, so figure 6.5% of the population.

These commercials create the impression that black men are everywhere, ubiquitously pairing up with white (and occasionally asian) women to sell products in nearly every commercial we see. But the math simply isn’t there, and I’m afraid impressionable single women are being misled to think this is just the way things are.

I wish those making the commercials would realize the disservice they are doing to the fragile psyches of lonely American AWFL’s everywhere. There simply aren’t enough black men to go around.

You can’t ALL have one.

Commercials, part 2

They are getting increasingly annoying, these commercials. And loud. I’ll be watching my favorite episodes of Murder, She Wrote (you know, the one where she solves the murder), with the volume turned up to hear the important dialogue that I know by heart. Then a commercial comes on and it sounds like I’m standing behind the engine of a Boeing 747 as it revs for take off.

The irritation is increasing as well. The other day I counted the commercials during each break. The number of commercials I counted averaged around twelve commercials per break with a peak of twenty four. Yes. TWENTY-FOUR COMMERCIALS IN ONE BREAK.

Thank heavens for the mute button. Whoever invented that received a Nobel Prize, I’m sure.

The Missus and I are on the Dish Network, but that’s ending once we get our StarLink operational, which will increase our bandwidth close to eight-fold and allow us to move to select streaming services where the enormous number of commercials is – so far – being kept to a reasonable minimum.

I’ll still keep my finger twitching on the mute button, however.