The Complaint Department

In which I once again get things off my chest and on to yours…

Birds and Bees

According to a semi-recent story in the Washington Post, same-sex sexual activity has been observed in over 1,500 species so when anybody tells you homosexuality is “unnatural” those once-again-highly-inconvenient scientists think those people are dead wrong.

That being the case, maybe we ought to accept that people and animals aren’t all the same and we’re all wired differently and a sexual activity that doesn’t interest you might interest someone else and experience would also suggest we’ve all got some “out of the mainstream” urges and/or desires which leads me to believe there are two kinds of people:

1. People who admit they’re into some weird shit.

2. People who are into some weird shit, but suppress it and lie about it.

I just re-watched the first season of True Detective (great series) and there’s a scene in which Woody Harrelson’s character asks Matthew McConaughey’s character if he knows the difference between the two of them and Matthew McConaughey says, yeah:

“Denial.”

As long it involves consenting adults I’m pretty much OK with everything, although at least so far I’m not attracted to other men, but I also see his point of view when Paul Newman’s character in The Mackintosh Man goes to prison and some guy hits on him and Paul declines, but says ask him again in a few years.

Ya never know and desperate times might call for desperate measures.

Think about it – and I have – and if someone said they were only interested in Man-On-Top-Missionary-Position-Sex-Of-Limited Duration-With-The-Lights-Off-In-Which-The-Woman-Does-Not-Have-An-Orgasm-And-The-Man-Finishes-His-Bidness-As-Quickly-As-Possible-Because-Sex-Should-Only-Be-About-Procreation-And-Not-Pleasure most of us would say:

“Dude, you really need to be in therapy.”

Seen from that point of view, even the most common and mainstream sexual interest seems pretty fucked up, so if I want you to be OK with my weird shit I need to be OK with your weird shit and if I ever run for president it will be on the “Everybody Needs To Lighten the Fuck Up” platform and you gotta admit that would look great on a T-shirt.

Turns out:

Birds do it,

Bees do it,

Even educated fleas do it.

It’s only natural.

Electric Cars  

So you’re trying to save the environment by driving an electric car, but according to an article in the Kansas City Star, American cars are getting heavier and part of the problem are electric cars that need batteries the approximate size of Donald Trump’s ego and the average weight of car is now 4,329 pounds which is 1,000 pounds heavier than the average car in 1980 and almost as much as the guy you’re going to sit beside next time you get on an airplane.

Air bags have also made cars heavier, efficiency has become less of a priority and suburban soccer moms want SUVS the size of a Conestoga wagon and dads who never haul anything heavier than a set of golf clubs want giant-ass, extended cab, 4-wheel drive monster pickups.

Apparently, there’s a Chevy Silverado on its way that’s going to weigh 8,000 pounds or almost as much as the average Golden Corral All You Can Eat Buffet patron.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, adding 1,000 pounds to a vehicle increases the chance of an accident fatality by 47% and I’m driving a Toyota Matrix which I’m pretty sure a pissed-off Arnold Schwarzenegger could flip over with one hand so I clearly need to buy a heavier car or spend more time eating at Golden Corral. 

Self-checkout

Through a variety of conversations with people higher up the Kansas City Star food chain (a description that included pretty much everybody when you’re a totally unnecessary political cartoonist) I became aware of the panic that would set in every three months when the Star had to hit that fiscal quarter’s numbers.

A panic that might induce a worried executive to sell his least-favorite child to some Gypsies, harvest one of his mom’s kidneys or make short-sighted business decisions that might prove disastrous in the long run, which brings us to self-checkout.

According to CNN, businesses have slowly become aware that if you let a customer check him and/or herself out, they might take stuff they didn’t actually scan and pay for and apparently shoplifting has doubled and who could have seen that coming except everybody who wasn’t freaked out about showing a profit and decided to fire a bunch of store cashiers and replace them with self-checkout stands?

Now some very big businesses like Costco and Walmart are rethinking self-checkout and realizing maybe it really doesn’t save all that much money when people start taking stuff for free.

Also, more than once I’ve heard the store mouthpieces that defend self-checkout say it frees up their employees to do more rewarding work which makes it sound like those former cashiers are now going to use their freed-up time to write their first novel, paint abstract murals or design hats to be worn on festive occasions.

When in reality those employees with time on their hands will use it to explore their unemployment benefits, what’s on Netflix and exactly how much cheap booze they can afford on absolutely no income and when that happens I really hope they use self-checkout and don’t pay for it.  

Cats

Under the heading of “I’m Not All That Surprised” according to the Washington Post, a study has suggested that cats can play fetch, but their willingness to do so depends on their relationship with their owner, which also suggests that if your cat doesn’t play fetch with you, he or she thinks you’re a waste of time and not worth the effort.

I have long suspected that if cats ever figure out how to work a can opener a suspicious number of elderly ladies will start having “accidents” like falling down the basement stairs when they trip over “Fluffy” and if you ever wonder where your cat occasionally disappears to it’s probably because he or she is attending a union meeting at which cats vote whether it’s finally time put Operation Feline Freedom into action. 

How do you think Planet of the Apes got started?

So if you own a cat and want to know whether it’s going to let you live once it takes over the house, try to get it to play fetch and while the study didn’t say so I’m guessing the odds of your cat playing fetch go up dramatically if you throw a dead mouse.

And if your cat won’t chase a dead mouse, you’re on its hit list.

NFL fines

This one’s for Kansas City Chiefs fans and if you’re not a Chiefs fan and wonder what I’m talking about, here goes:

The Chiefs lost a game when they scored what appeared to be a game-winning touchdown on a play which involved two passes – technically I think one of them was a lateral – and it was one of most fantastic plays in the History of the NFL and Sports In General, but the play got called back because one of the Chiefs lined up about three inches offside.

Chiefs coach Andy Reid called the penalty an embarrassment for the NFL and quarterback Patrick Mahomes had to be physical restrained because he (and this is a technical football term) lost his shit and went after the official.

But the NFL is just to the right of the Nazi Party when it comes to saying anything negative about NFL football and maybe you’ve noticed they now employ officiating analysts that are called on to explain why every call any NFL official ever made was the correct call and that you didn’t actually see what you just saw and they might cite the Treaty of Versailles or the Magna Charta or Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to justify whatever dicked-up thing an NFL official just did.

(Frankly, the player was offside and the official called it before he knew it would nullify a play that made the Immaculate Reception look routine.)

Anyway…

The NFL fined Andy Reid $100,000 and Patrick Mahomes $50,000 for expressing their opinions and both fines sounded kinda high and it turns out they just might be. Being way too organized, the NFL has created a list of offenses and how much you get fined for each one and here’s that link:

https://operations.nfl.com/inside-football-ops/rules-enforcement/accountability-fines-appeals/

Just in case you didn’t read it; the two highest fines are for a second offense in the “Fighting” or “Physical Contact with Official” categories and that fine is the oddly-specific $76,702 so for a hundred grand you’d think Andy Reid would get to beat the crap out of two game officials of his choice.

The highest fine for “Verbal or other Non-Physical Offense Against Official” is $61,362 for a second offense, so how do Andy and Pat (which sounds like a radio show my mom would have really enjoyed) get fined $100,000 and $50,000 although those fine categories have an asterisk next to them and I couldn’t find an explanation for the asterisk so don’t be surprised if it means:

* We’re the NFL and do whatever the hell we feel like so don’t be surprised when we invade Poland.

Just in case you were wondering, it costs $7,649 to throw a football into the stands ($13,113 if you do it again) and $10,927 (second offense is $21,855) for displaying an unauthorized logo and you can also get in trouble for “Gang Signing” although they don’t list an amount, possibly because calculators don’t go that high and nobody in the upper levels of the NFL knows what a gang sign actually looks like.

And now I expect the NFL to provide an analyst to tell you why I’m wrong about those Reid/Mahomes fines and that no Real Man would ever have sex with another man even if he was serving a Life Sentence and his cellmate was a Young Brad Pitt.

Which is kind of ironic because the NFL has fucked over a lot of young men and if you don’t believe me, just ask Colin Kaepernick.

OK, that’s it for today and try to enjoy your Christmas vacation and if you still have shopping to do, consider using self-checkout and shoplifting because you just might save some cashier’s job.

Happy Holidays, everybody.