CSotD: Old Jokes, in the demographic sense
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F Minus (AMS) offers an explanation for what’s gone wrong with the world which is both funny and, as is usually the case with funny things, thought-provoking.
On the most mundane level, it’s a case of blaming yourself for what’s gone wrong in the world and, certainly, that’s a valid point, particularly if you’ve sat around grousing instead of becoming involved in your community. That doesn’t necessarily mean registering voters and such. It could be as simple as being active with the PTA while your kids are in school.
The gag raises the question of defining “our generation,” since Madison Avenue has succeeded in promoting marketing targets including “Boomers” which aren’t a coherent group but simply a bulge in the normal birthrate.
When you blame “Boomers” for what’s wrong with the world, who do you mean? Elvis Boomers or Beatles Boomers? Very different groups with very different impacts.
In any case, I suspect people have little sense of being in charge of anything. We’re more like ants, and, while the whole colony may sometimes rally for a particular task, it’s still just a lot of individual ants going with the flow and most days that doesn’t amount to anything remarkable.
If you ever come across an ant colony in the middle of a mission and look closer, you’ll see some ants out on the fringe, wandering around randomly while the rest of the ants are busy with the task at hand.
Once the task is completed, they’ll be the ones bragging about what “we” accomplished.
Juxtaposition of Wise Sayings
I reckon my anthill metaphor is a bit of a hangover from having encountered these three strips on the same day, but, then, Facebook is full of folksy wisdom, most of it misattributed to famous people who never said anything remotely like that.
And, as noted in Daddy’s Home, most of it being utter nonsense anyway.
Back before the Internet, we used to paint that kind of drivel on plaques and sell it at craft fairs. Now everybody expects to get it for free.
And, boy, do they.
Here’s something more frank and direct from Moderately Confused (AMS), and it comes right at the time when I’ve begun to quit using the cane around the house as I rehab my new hip but am still feeling like somebody more than my age.
I have found that doctors respond to intelligent comments and questions by leveling with you, and when the guy who did my hip heard that my goal was to go back to long walks in the park with the dog, he told me I could skip the physical therapy and just work towards that.
The actual exchange was that I told him I’d come to the point of the old joke, “It’s hurts when I do this,” to which the doctor replies, “Then don’t do that,” but that, if I said it to a physical therapist …
At which point he filled in the punchline, “Give me 10 more” and laughed.
Anyway, I’m hoping to be walking around like a somebody my age by the AAEC Convention next month.
My more immediate goal is to get out of the apartment more often and this Non Sequitur (AMS) tells the story.
Certainly, the news can be pretty depressing, even in the normal course of events. But tie yourself into a recliner for four or five weeks and you’ll really find out what news fatigue is.
Watching panels dissect the same three stories over and over for an entire day — each time declaring it “Breaking News!” — is sufficient motivation to get working on rehab in hopes that you can soon get up and find something, anything, else to do with your time.
I’ve gotten to the point where I prefer CNN to MSNBC not for political reasons but because CNN doesn’t have those commercials for fruit and vegetable capsules at every break.
One health benefit of this confinement comes in watching Law and Order reruns, knowing that when they have a commercial break, you’ve got four or five minutes during which you can go do some dishes or something to rehab yourself while they’re busy scamming the more permanent Daytime TV watchers.
I like the interplay between the ads telling you to buy life insurance and the ads telling you to cash in your policies, but I’m also starting to enjoy the ads where some million-dollar celebrity tells you to buy a maintenance policy for your car, knowing that, if their car wouldn’t start, they’d just throw it away and buy a new one.
I will say this in all seriousness, though: When, after a month confined to comfy recliner in a three-room apartment, I hear about people being sentenced to a few years in jail, it sounds a whole lot worse to me than it used to.
If they weren’t squirrelly when they went in, they’ll surely be squirrelly when they come out.
Arlo and Janis (AMS) appear to be serious about selling their house and moving to the seacoast to be closer to Gene and Marylou, and we see here the benefit of a roving lifestyle.
I like the concept of families living in the same home for multiple generations and all being buried in the graveyard on the hill, but you’d better plan on being buried there because you surely won’t want to have to move.
Both my mother and my ex-in-laws moved out of houses where they’d been for about 40 years, and the process was, as Arlo suggests, daunting. Do you sell it? Do you scrap it? Do you bring it along?
Whatever you do, you have to make a decision about each item, from furniture to knick-knacks.
I used to speculate whether an insurance investigator would believe me if I said I was sitting in the yard, playing my guitar and leafing through my photo albums, when I turned around and noticed that the house was on fire.
But I’m okay: I’ve lived in eight different places since college and, while acquisition was a theme in my married-with-children years, I’ve managed to shed stuff in each move since. At this point, I’m down to just three rooms full of stuff.
I like to think George would be proud of me.
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