Sometimes you watch life’s rich pageant and gape in wide wonder. There sure is a hell of lot going on in this world, a bazillion things to do and see and taste and touch and experience, some of them really cool. Other things? Not so much. No biggie, that’s why they make chocolate and Cherry Garcia. One man’s meat, and all that. There are some things, however, pretty much everybody wants to seriously avoid. Things like this:
Face tattoos: What seemed like a fine idea when you were young, adventurous and blind drunk might not feel like such a brainstorm at that job interview, or your daughter’s wedding.
Steroids: If you are not a professional athlete with a serious shot to make $15 million a year, taking steroids only makes you one more angry, lumpy jackass with shrunken testicles. Good luck with that whole deal.
Pacific Rim ferries: If you find yourself traveling in the Far East, avoid those 1,000-plus passenger ocean-going ferries. It seems like a month doesn’t go by without one of those overloaded, under-maintained bad boys sinking with massive loss of life. There’s sharks in those waters, too, so not only do you drown, you’re Jaws bait.
Any “Extreme” Sport: As if snowboarding isn’t dangerous enough, now you want to jump off a rocky cliff into a bottomless abyss? Don’t worry, Spike, we’ll send flowers.
Psychiatrists: Unless you enjoy taking powerful sedatives until you’re a personality-free zombie and talking about things like “empowerment” and “finding your center” (which pretty much mean nothing at all but sound helpful), avoid these maladjusted creeps. Those people are crazy!
People delivering detailed instructions from God: Possibly the only people nuttier than psychiatrists and more full of rules for the rest of us to live by, and even more devoid of tolerance, reason or love. Take a detour around these fools, too.
Ostrich meat: Even hyenas only kill and eat those things when they run out of rotten carcasses to scavenge.
Karate lessons: If you’re planning to fend off Ninja assassins anytime soon, check the calendar. Firearms were invented a really long time ago. And if you think you’re fooling anyone that you’re learning to fight only to “keep in shape,” why not go swimming or something? Hard as it is to believe, not everyone is an ardent admirer of all that kicking and chopping.
Taking polls: Why bother to encourage people with a political axe to grind by taking one of their polls loaded with questions that are impossible to answer in a way that does not confirm your agreement with their idiotic, aggressive agendas, such as: “We should take which of the following actions against Iran: (A.) carpet bomb their cities, (B.) Kill all their leaders, (C.) Invade, conquer, pillage and build a pipeline from their oil fields to U.S. soil, (D.) poison their water supply and salt their fields, (E.) All of the above plus any other diabolical acts we can think of.”
Real Estate Seminars: Life is too short to waste time on get-rich-quick schemes where the only guy getting rich is the joker you just paid 150 bucks to hear brag about his Jacuzzi, his Porsche and his retarded ex-model wife.
The Green Gestapo: While it is smart and proper to recycle, avoid waste and pollution and to respect our environment (in brief, don’t shit where you eat), avoid the fanatics who would have us employed full time eating only locally grown vegetation, surrendering our leather shoes, belts and down-filled parkas while bicycling everywhere we go. Don’t waste your breath trying to convince them that science and technology actually work and a varied diet of flora and fauna is what enabled us to evolve from puny, filthy and disease-ridden scavengers to robust, long-living creatures able to adapt to any conditions, even the sad state of affairs of having to tolerate their counterproductive asses.
Meals for $1.99: Usually these meals are worth every bit of the 2 bucks you fork over to swallow mystery meat and grease-sponges disguised as potatoes. The money you save can be applied to that quadruple bypass you’ve always dreamed of.
Jaegermeister: Whatever sort of alcoholic beverage Jaegermeister is, and no one is really quite certain, there seems to be an ingredient in it that ensures maximum embarrassing behavior to go along with its gagging-sweet taste. Have your cell phone camera charged and ready to take lucrative blackmail photos the next time you hear the phrase “shots of Jaeger all around!”
Anyone nicknamed “Bonecrusher”: Odds are this is one guy you don’t want to get excited.
The Joke Police: Only our black comedians had the nerve to hang onto the only good thing about racial tension; ethnic jokes, a lot of which are hilarious and insightful. The rest of them have obeyed the humorless cretins who took it upon themselves to decide what is and isn’t proper to laugh at. Fuck them. We’ll decide what’s funny to us, and what crosses the line, thank you very much. How about some jokes about these PC assholes, like how many of them does it take to screw in a light bulb? Seven. One to actually install the bulb and six to make sure that unpleasant truth never sees the light of day.
Polka dot bow ties: Only clowns and unreasonable people wear them.
Man purses: See above.
Pre-fab homes in Florida: They don’t call southern Florida “Hurricane Alley” for nothing. The next time Mother Nature huffs and puffs and tries to blow your house down you can be at least as smart as that third Little Piggie and surround your wrinkled, sun-baked ass with brick and mortar, or smarter still and move someplace safe, finally figuring out that any place where you need hurricane-proof shutters and doors isn’t exactly an ideal environment for creaky old codgers on Mobility Scooters. Sounds like a paradise for Extreme Weather Reporters, though, that breed of junior newscasters who love nothing more than bellowing over the howling din of nature’s wrath while nimbly dodging flying retirement homes, palm trees, poodles and other small mammals.