This Week in Rage – 8/25/13

This Week in Rage – 8/25/13

This Week in Rage, a blog about the top three things that pissed me off this week:

 

Lampshades and switches: My family puts the kill in Kilowatt.  I’ve renamed us the Kill-a-watt family.  I went into the kids’ room and the lamp on their end table was on.  So I had to do the move where you reach up under the lampshade like I was checking for a hernia to look for the switch. I’m not a lamp gynecologist.  Here’s how this usually goes.  The light is on so you have to look down the barrel of the lampshade at the blinding shaft of light while you feel around and you burn your hand on the bulb in a fruitless attempt to find the switch.  So then you think, “I’ll go down to the base.”  You feel the base and still, nothing.   So you pick it up spin it around can’t find anything and then decide that maybe the switch is three feet down the cord.  I hate that shit.  I have stayed at hotels where the switch for the lamp was a yard down the cord behind the desk.  I shouldn’t have to move furniture or slide under shit on a mechanic’s creeper to turn my light on.  It should just be uniform.  It should be at the base.  That way you’re not searching down the cord that’s tucked behind furniture and you’re not reaching up the lampshade like some perv coping a feel on a teenage girl at the mall.

 

Force feeding inmates: We have a serious situation in the California penal system.  A lot of the inmates are on a hunger strike over prison conditions and being in solitary confinement and blah blah blah.  My thinking is this – if you have issues with being confined perhaps you shouldn’t shoot strangers.  That’s one way to avoid being put in a small place with not a lot of daylight.  At the same time we’re due to release 10,000 inmates because the prisons are overcrowded.  I have a solution.  If some gang-banger wants to stop his heart from beating by stopping his mouth from eating I say “Vaya con Dios.”  This is a problem that’s going to solve itself.  In fact, you always hear about guys on death row who are on suicide watch.  They take away your belt and the shoelaces as soon as you get in the joint.  How about this?  Anyone who is in for more than 10 years is issued a belt and we’ll make sure their cell has a pipe that can support at least 220 pounds of weight.  I won’t have any purpose, it’s not a fire sprinkler, just a hangin’ pipe.

 

Daytime TV Ads: I remember as a kid the days I would tell my mom I was sick so I could have a day out of school.  The joke was on me.  I would sit around and be punished by whatever was on her 13-inch black and white Zenith.  Every commercial was about how you could become a nurse or get a welding license.  And there were many choices for schools to learn how to be a trucker.  “Hi, I’m Wally Thorpe for the Wally Thorpe School of Trucking…” or “At the Dootson School of Trucking, we can get you your Class 7 license and get you behind the wheel of a big rig and making big money in 3 weeks. I should know, I’m Debbie Dootson.”  Nowadays what does every single commercial if you’re home during the day sound like? “Did you slip and fall at work?” “Were you exposed to asbestos?” “Do you have an annuity?”  The message used to be “what are you doing at home during the day? Get a job”.  Now it’s “don’t get off your ass, we’re gonna get you some money.”  This is a little PH strip for our society and how off the rails we’ve gone.  Instead of getting a career and hitting the open road in your big rig and earning your pay it’s all about sitting on the couch with your Big Gulp and getting the grocery store you slipped and fell in to pay you.

-Ace