TEN THINGS THAT DON'T FLOAT MY BOAT

I won’t go so far as to say I hate these things, but they really do irritate me, fail to float my boat, don’t ring my chimes, tick me off, whatever,  just fill in the blank

1.      Talking heads that talk and talk and talk and don’t really say anything. Or take five times longer than they need to get to the point. This is especially irritating when I’m very tired or getting over a bug (and very tired from the bug). The more they talk, the more the words ricochet back and forth in my skull.

 

2.      News that isn’t. I think I’ve mentioned this one before.

 

3.      Hunters and fishermen who begrudge every fish, deer or bird caught by the predators who actually need to hunt to survive. How dare those greedy sea lions catch “our:” salmon. I’ve got a newsflash for you folks. We may like to eat them, but we don’t need to eat them to survive. If the fish runs are crashing don’t blame the sea lions, go look in the mirror.

 

4.      And on the same subject, restaurants who advertise “we fly our fresh seafood in from Alaska (or wherever) daily. We’re fighting a war in the Middle East over oil. Yeah, I know the spin is we’re bringing democracy to the huddled masses but it’s the oil stupid. Using an increasingly scarce resource to bring fresh fish to my local restaurant does not float my boat. And the more I read about pollution levels in seafood the less likely I am to eat it anyway. And I guess I'd have to add trying to grow free ranging animals like fish, cattle and poultry under factory conditions. I hate to sound like a luddite, but animals aren't meant to be raised under these condtions. Now we're facing e-coli in vegetables as well as meat, antibiotics that don't work anymore, and disease carrying farmed seafood. Pass the beans and rice please.

 

5.      Religion. Yes, Russ I’m with you on this. Religion and faith are two different things. In fact they are so different I’m not sure they’re even in the same universe. Faith is that still small voice within, that “feeling” that the puzzle is being solved even if you don’t have all the pieces yet. It’s recognizing what’s the same in so many different traditions. Religion is, well to me it’s what you get when human beings start mucking about trying to make sure all the pegs fit into a certain number holes whether they’re the right size and shape or not. And God/dess help you if you have more pegs than holes. It’s what you get when people try to reduce the infinite to what we can perceive and describe with our five very limited senses. I could go on and on and on………

 

6.      Cauliflower. Yeah, I'm with you on this too, Russ. There are so many other great veggies out there. Mom made a wilted spinach salad last night that was to die for, if you'll pardon the expression. But, cauliflower does taste a lot like cabbage. I wonder…….? Cheese, tomatoes, bacon, buttered bread crumbs. Sorry, this isn’t working, Big blank here.

 

7.      Drivers that ride my bumper until I get out of the way and tool on down the freeway at the speed we were going in the first place, if not slower.

 

8.      Which brings us to drivers that are incapable driving anywhere near the speed limit unless they have someone to follow. Otherwise they go slower and slower and slower until you try to pass and then they fly like eagles.

 

9.      Phone solicitations of any kind. If I want satellite TV I’ll let you know.

 

10.  PBS begathons that run heavy on musicians I’ve never heard of and self help gurus that I've also never heard of. There was one show last week on the benefits of yoga. We spent ten minutes listening to talking heads talk about yoga over shots of people doing yoga. But nobody was talking about what the people were doing. You want to do a program on yoga, fine, let’s do yoga, not talk about it. Ditto on the rest of the talking heads during pledge week.

     So there's ten things or so that I may not hate, as in raise your blood pressure to lethal levels, at least not most of them Except for the religion/faith thing it's more the death by a thousand cuts or the Chinese water torture sort of thing. Just drip, drip, drip, drip...............