Shit that Pissed Me off – 12/30
Most people who read my column are, like me, from Minnesota. If you aren’t from Minnesota, you probably know that the weather this last week was – in the language of the locals – “chilly.”
A couple of guys decided it would be extremely nice if US Bank Stadium would allow homeless people to take shelter there because football stadiums are huge and the weather was deadly.
And they were right. It would have been extremely nice.
So what they did was start a rumor that US Bank Stadium was going to do exactly that. They tweeted how the Vikings were totally willing to open up the stadium and the city just needed to approve it. Essentially, they wanted to force the city and the Vikings to do what they wanted by trying to make everyone look like assholes if it didn’t happen.
I’m sure they totally had several thousand cots just lying around for such a situation.
The city and the Vikings basically said “uh – no – that rumor is false and we can’t really do that” for all sorts of reasons including the fact there was a football game in the stadium at noon the next day and the stadium is not set up or staffed to be a homeless shelter.
Now it’s easy to say that they should have let folks in anyway but then you have to figure out how to get them out in the morning before the football fans started to show up at 10:00 AM. It just isn’t something that can be done without – you know – planning.
However, because this fake news story was picked up as being a real news story, some homeless people made their way to the stadium for shelter. Shelter the stadium was not equipped to provide.
And when the rumor mongers were called on their bullshit ploy, they basically said “why are you angry with us when the stadium was the one who didn’t provide shelter?”
Guess what assholes? Neither did you.
You were pissed about public funds paying for the stadium (I am too) and you decided that the Stadium should do something that was important to you. Not important enough to, you know, open your house to a homeless family or work at an existing shelter. No, it was just important enough for you to create a fake story and then act like a whiny toddler when it didn’t work.
Writer on Slate Basically Tells Vegetarians to go Fuck Themselves
I love meat. Others don’t. Some people love meat but choose not to eat it for moral reasons.
This writer decided it’d be a great idea to tell vegetarians that their dietary choices are an inconvenience because he likes to cook with chicken stock and all the other options are awful and he’s not going to change his style of cooking just because of your choice to not eat meat. He’ll just sneak that shit right in there.
The most entitled moment comes when he says this
When I have vegetarians over for dinner, I’m already making a sacrifice by forgoing a real entrée in favor of a meatless one. (emphasis mine)
So they are having someone over for dinner and he is sacrificing for them already by cooking vegetarian. Except he isn’t because he’s using chicken stock.
I guess that he just cooks with peanut oil when his guests tell him they have an allergy to tree nuts. Or maybe he adds extra milk when they say they are lactose intolerant.
If this guy was a decent cook – I mean a really decent cook – he wouldn’t be sacrificing anything by cooking for vegetarians. He would be enjoying an exciting challenge. He would recognize that he’s the fucking host and he should realize that a meatless entree can be extremely fucking real if he could just put away the chicken stock and spend a little time actually cooking.
Teenager Who Claimed She was Assaulted by Trump Supporters Made the Whole Thing Up
Teenagers make shit up. It’s been happening for generations.
This young Muslim woman, however, managed to take a bad situation (a country that is unfairly biased against Muslims) and make it worse because her story was complete bullshit. We don’t need fake Trump supporters attacking Muslims on the subway.
Real Trump supporters are doing it on the internet all day every day.
And by creating a fake story, she has inadvertently sent the message that maybe the real stories are just as fake.
Or maybe fake stories are just as real. Like stories about a stadium opening up for homeless people.
Why did she make up the story? I don’t know. Maybe because she was doing something that she didn’t want her parents to know about. Maybe because she is genuinely scared by the Islamophobia that is about to be ensconced in the White House.
Whatever the reason, she made things harder for a lot of people. And she made things easier for our soon to be racist-in-chief
Anti Vaxxers are Upset that They Are Included in Apples to Apples
If you haven’t played Apples to Apples, it is a really fun game. It’s a lot like Cards Against Humanity but without the swear words and poop jokes.*
Their most recent addition included two cards, that, for some reason, have a few Anti Vaxxers super upset. The first is a card that says “Measles.”
I don’t understand why that upsets them. I mean, measles is a disease that exists, right? In fact, it is a disease that is making a comeback because of stupid Anti Vaxx propaganda. The fact Measles is a card in Apples to Apples is a success! They took measles off life support and now it is part of an amusing family game!
The other card they find objectionable is a card that says “Anti-Vaxxers” and then explains that anti vaxxers think vaccines may cause autism. The card doesn’t even include an eye roll emoji to suggest the game makers think Anti Vaxxers are stupid, crazy, or both.**
The fact the description calls out their (idiotic and demonstrably false) belief that vaccines and autism are linked has upset a few of them because they think vaccines are bad for all sorts of reasons. Apparently, they think the game should include hyperlinks on the cards so people can make up their own lines.
I’d just include this link to an explanation of all the ways vaccines cause autism. But I’m an asshole.
*That’s because Cards Against Humanity is literally the same game with swear words and poop jokes.
** I vote for stupid because I know a lot of people who suffer from mental illness and are totally cool with vaccines.
Carrie Fisher Killed Debbie Reynolds
OK, not really. Reynolds was probably ill before her daughter died of complications from a heart attack. I have to think, however, that Fisher’s death expedited Reynolds’.
I also need to note that at the end of the last paragraph, my word count for this blog post was 1138. No lie.
What upset me in the wake of Fisher’s tragic death was the way so many people didn’t seem to give a shit about how much it was affecting others. Let us begin with the caveats:
- No, Carrie Fisher was not someone anyone of us knew personally.
- No, Carrie Fisher was not actually Princess Leia. Or General Leia.
- Yes, Carrie Fisher (by her own admission) abused drugs and alcohol in her youth to a degree that makes it somewhat miraculous she lived to be forty.
Given all this information, it is still an asshole move to respond to someone’s heartfelt comments on the loss of an icon by commenting that she’s lucky she lived to be 60 given how much coke she did in the eighties.
Talk about obnoxious – Santa has been doing Coke for a lot longer.
Nor is it an appropriate time to mention how many people she slept with during her career. As if what consensual things she did with her vagina have any impact at all on someone’s response to her death.
I’m a comedian and I think you can joke about someone’s death. I think it is even an important part of the healing process.
But I hope I understand the difference between establishing an environment where you can tell jokes and respecting someone’s right to their own grief.
Fisher being dead pisses me off. But the way some people make light of other people’s very real emotions is even more annoying.
Debbie Reynolds dying the next day, by the way, just makes it all a little bit worse.
Thanks Debbie and Carrie. I’m going to miss both of you.
Grail Diary 