CSotD: Friday Funnies — Fun with Health!
Skip to comments
We’ll start this week with a humorous Sunday downer from Reply All. That is, it’s humorous on its own as Lizzie and Drew dicker over what to do with their basement.
But it’s kind of a downer if you’ve been around the housing industry very long, because I can’t tell you how many builders told me of couples who were sure that the house of their dreams would make their marriage work.
Not so bad if they’re in the bracket where they just buy one of the base models, because then the Realtor gets to deal with it all.
But when they are looking at a semi-custom or, lord help us, a custom home, the builder gets to be architect and marriage counselor.
Or homewrecker, on occasion. Lizzie and Drew’s talk about finishing the basement puts me in mind of a couple who were designing a pricey, semi-custom condo and had decided on a wet bar in the basement, but then it turned into a ballet style barre with mirrored walls and oh by the way the wife and builder were getting it on and it was going to be her home when it was finished because hubby was out.
Which was okay because it turned out he was not only an abusive jerk but had been stashing money in secret bank accounts.
Then she broke up with the builder and started dating one of the marketing guys from the company that was selling the condos.
I told you it was kind of a downer, but it could have been worse.
Other couples are convinced that their marriage would perk right up if only they had a kid.
Ain’t nobody gonna write a funny comic about that.
Even Maeve hasn’t made that mistake, and yet here she goes, off to have a cup of coffee with her ex. Which ex? What difference could it make, indeed. This is the start of the arc and you should read through.
I don’t know what it is that I like so much about arcs featuring Maeve’s doomed love life. I suppose it could be schadenfreude, but I think, rather, that it’s the pity and terror Aristotle spoke of.
The former is prideful, laughing at someone else’s failure, but the latter is a case of knowing how little it would take to put you in the same place.
And as long as I’m ranting from the vantage point of age, this Knight Life reminds me of the Olden Days, when we avoided bacon and hot dogs and bologna because they were full of nitrates and nitrites and sodium and fat and other deadly dietary mistakes.
This was back when we used to buy milk in glass, returnable bottles and carry it home in paper bags and perhaps you had to be there.
Granted, they still sold fatty salty nitrite/nitrate products, so I’m not sure who “we” consisted of, but we were apparently enough people that the Pork Producers Council got on the ball and began marketing bacon heavily.
And, I would add, with a great deal of success, even unto excess. Even unto making us indistinguishable from our pets.
And if they can make us this nuts over something that will shorten our lives, imagine how they could market something that would lengthen it?
Just kidding. No imagination required.
Someone on social media said the other day that she likes kale but hates having it shoved down her throat as the be-all and end-all of healthy foods.
Which is silly because we all know that the be-all and end-all of healthy foods is pomegranate. Which has three times more antioxidants than red wine and, coincidentally, is three times less fun.
Two thoughts:
One is that we sure are suckers for clever marketing programs and the wisdom of crowds.
The other is that, while bacon will kill you, eating pomegranate will consign you to the depths of Hell for half the year.
Good for the body, perhaps not so good for the soul.
And, in the worst segue of the day, if you think the trip to the Underworld in Charon’s boat is interesting, you should ask for minimal anesthesia and a view of the screen during your next “oldfinoscopy,” which Sherman learned he needed here and in the days that followed.
I woke up towards the end of my first (awake but still numb, mind you) and it was fascinating.
This is another age thing, mind you, because I was imagining Raquel Welch and Stephen Boyd, while a younger patient would, of course, think of Martin Short and Meg Ryan.
Though, for those who think I’m not taking it seriously, I have interviewed Molly McMaster and giggled over Dave Berry, so there.
I have Colossal Colon cred.
Among the other foolish things we believe is that, if you spit in a tube or swipe your cheek, some company can tell you where your relatives came from.
You’re not likely to get a more accurate reading than Grimmy did, though, to be fair, and to include certain presidential candidates, they can narrow things down to a particular continent, as long as everyone stayed put.
And though most of the videos I tack on at the end of the blog are less than five minutes, here’s a portion of CBC’s Marketplace that is longer than that but will convince you not to piss away $75 or so to find out that you probably have ancestors who possibly came from one place or another:
(Best part is that, when I went to fetch the URL from YouTube, one of the DNA testing companies mentioned in it paid for an ad to run first.)
Comments 2
Comments are closed.