Rants

                    Member Rants

Pharmaceutical Companies:
Drug companies say they will lower their prescription drug prices once they recover their research costs
....and Hell freezes over. 

Now when doctors prescribe pills they say,
 “Take one of these as often as you can afford it.”

Celebrity worship:
Today’s celebrities tend to be great because they are famous rather than famous because they are great.  

Doesn't it seem that for quite a while the nightly news was becoming "The Charlie Sheen Show?"

Coupons:
Do they really want all of those little pieces of paper? How often does the person ahead of you at the supermarket have a handful of coupons of which some are expired and some are for the correct product, but good for a different size. That slows down the flow of the checkout line. Just give us the best price you can. Don’t make us cut out little pieces of paper. 
(See "Getting Even" below.)

Congress:
Congress only has two major problems.
The House and the Senate.

Here’s an ugly thought. Imagine the disasterous war that would erupt if the Navy and Air Force quarreled like the Democrats and Republicans.

Social Networking:
In the late 60s the neighbors invited several couples to their house. We soon realized we were traped in their front room. Without warning they started showing slides of their vacation. (Their front room sleeps 8.)

People no longer have to invite you to their home to show you vacation slides. Thanks to Social Networking, they can now just send the pictures to you.

Assertiveness Training
What they don't teach in assertiveness training is that, when  you  are  wrong,  no  amount  of  assertiveness
will  change  the  fact  that  you  are  wrong.

Christmas:
I love Christmas, don’t get me wrong. What I hate is:
Christmas decorations, Christmas carolers, Christmas music, Christmas cards, Christmas fruitcakes, Christmas stockings, Christmas shopping, Christmas trees, Christmas presents, Christmas cheer, Christmas parties and Santa Claus. Otherwise it’s great.

Carlinisms:  (Manipulating statistics & percentages) 
Language is a tool for coloring the truth. You can say one thing and appear to be saying another.  

Example: 50% of the doctors practicing today
graduated in the lower half of their class.

"Just think how stupid the average person is
    and then realize half of them are even stupider."
       -George Carlin

The National Anthem:
When is the last time you heard a Diva get up
and sing the National Anthem at a pro football or
baseball game and actually sing the original melody? 
They always add notes that not only aren't part of
the original melody, they are 1 ½ steps higher than
the diva is capable of singing. 

Devine Intervention:    (Grandstanding)
After a touchdown, or a homerun, more-and-more pro athletes now stop and go down to a knee or point up to the sky as if, with all the world’s real problems that go uncorrected, God somehow offers to help out
in something as trivial as a sporting event. Come on!  

Chain letter Emails:
We need to rein in those “friends” who inundate us with emails promoting their various extreme positions on, what otherwise might be a worthy cause. And they tell us to: "Forward this email to everyone you know!"

And some even have the guts to tell you to also include them in the forwarded emails.  That's so they can check up on you to make sure you're doing what they told you to do. And most often the email has a font text size of about 36, which amounts to textual yelling. 

Too busy to use upper case and punction:
Nobody is so busy that they don't have time to use punctuation and uppercase letters in their emails. 

Spitting at MLB Baseball Games:
There is so much spitting at MLB baseball games the stadiums show up as “light drizzle” on weather radar.

Crime:
In an effort to reduce the high level of crime in the U.S. we should  give California back to Mexico.

Disclaimers on TV Commercials:
Disclaimers in TV ads should be required
to use the same size text as the text
used in the rest of the scam ad.

Inflated English:
Ever notice corporate executives and politicians 
             use $50 words to express 2-bit ideas?
 
“Utilize” instead of "Use.”  
      We utilize our methodology expeditiously.  
"Endeavor" instead of "Try" 
      We endeavor to utilize efficiency going forward. 
"Finalize" instead of "End"        
       It's time to finalize this verbose verbiage. 
"Problematic" instead of "problem"             
                 That approach will be problematic.  

Using big words is a crutch intended to make the users
seem more intellectual than they actually are.

Over the past 10 years trendy words have included:
 epiphany, surreal, decadent, benign, synergy, eclectic.
 
Reality TV:   (Humiliation as entertainment.)
The good thing about Reality TV is; if you totally humiliate yourself on National TV you will not have done so in vain. You will have entertained the nation.

Just pay additional processing: 
TV commercials sell something and then claim they will: 
  "...send a second one free. Just pay additional processing."

Guess what? They just sold you two! Somebody should nail the huckster's tongue to a stump and set the stump on fire.

Daytime TV & Soap Operas:
Prisoners at a maximum security prison were asked why they watched so much daytime TV. They said,  "We thought it was part of the punishment."

Saturday Morning Cartoons
Did you ever notice that all the Saturday morning cartoons that you used to watch as a kid have become 30-minute commercials for action figures?

Today's Youth:
A respected crotchety old man describes today's young people this way: “Today’s youth have bad manners, contempt for authority, they are disrespectful to their elders and torment their teachers.” Sounds about right, however...the youths Socrates was describing lived in about 400 BC.

Getting Even:
When you are in the checkout line at the supermarket you can drive the check-out clerk crazy by carrying a little coin purse  and digging around in it as you say over and over, “I’m sure that I have the exact change here somewhere.” And alternately bring out and return various coin combinations.

ASCOM suggests that members who are not already doing so when driving on an Interstate Highway, should slow down to just below the posted speed limit and drive in the left lane with their turn signal on. 

You can usually bore any younger person to death by regularly blurting out personal observations that start with the phrase: “I remember when…”