Jesse's Theory of Better Emotional Understanding, via Not Trying To Understand Emotions At All, Really

"I know what it's like to have anxiety and depression. I feel anxious and depressed sometimes, too!"

There's something distinctly obnoxious about having mood disorders that also fall into the realm of words that everyone uses to describe themselves whenever anything mildly unpleasant happens to them. They're always so pleased with themselves, because they can actually understand what someone less fortunate is going through, which is a noble and wonderful thing for them to do, they think. As well-meaning as they may be, of course, they're wrong. Feeling a little bit down once and awhile isn't the same thing has having a clinical depression, which makes you feel really, REALLY down, more often than not! Feelingly mildly anxious when doing something that's generally regarded as being stressful isn't the same thing has having Social Anxiety Disorder, which entails heart-pounding terror when doing things as simple as checking the mail!

You can blame it all you want on simple, harmless ignorance, but making such rash assumptions about things that can actually make people so very miserable is anything but harmless, I'd think...

Pride and Prejudice (and Jesses)

If you've spent any amount of time on the Internet, you've either participated in, or at least been an uncomfortable witness to, unwinnable arguments with mindless bigots. Mindless prejudice is, after all, among the many things the web has greatly simplified. Never before has it been easier to anonymously tell the world about how whichever minority/religion/gender/sexual orientation/phase of the moon is destroying the world! And, if you've spent any amount of time on the Internet, undoubtedly you've noticed that these arguments are unwinnable because every mindless bigot in the universe has the same irrefutable argument against anyone who might question their prejudices.

"You people are all awful awful hypocrites because you're prejudiced against people with prejudices!"

Wait, did I say "irrefutable"? Of course, I meant "completely invalid and illogical and silly". It's like criticising someone who's being shot at for fighting back against their attacker because it makes them every bit as violent and immoral.

Jesse vs. Plumbor, Master of the Shower Underworld!

"Support local businesses", they always say! After all, small businesses are the real America or, um, something. It's a stance I can usually understand, unless you live in a small, particularly rural town, where small businesses are usually run by morons incapable of properly owning a gerbil, let alone an entire business. Absarokee, as a whole, is locally sort of infamous for this. I've lost count of how many times some local twit decided to start a restaurant, rented commercial property, made up some surprisingly professional signage, and maybe even backed it up with some decent sandwiches, only to quickly lose interest in the completely gross idea of actually having to be there and have the doors unlocked so customers can come in. Despite actually having a local customer base more than willing to give them money, a mere month or two after starting up their shiny new business, they'd give up and shut their doors, forever, due to laziness. Meanwhile - and this is something that seems to happen more in Columbus - plenty of thoroughly awful local businesses manage to keep going, despite having no discernible positive traits, I suppose because it's far easier in the long-term to commit oneself to less-than-half-assed work. In no case in recent memory has this been more obvious to me than in an extended kerfuffle involving the only plumber in town apparently.

Mandatory Commentary on Some Sort of Newsworthy Happenstance

A Word From The Future: I am not exactly proud of this piece. I'm a better nerd/humourist than I am a political commentator. Not that I'm good at being either of those two particular things either. By which I mean, I certainly didn't need to be so callous about, well, any of this.

Remember Osama bin Laden? A truly evil man, but also, Baby Bushie's excuse for launching wars that, for the longest time, actually had pretty much nothing to actually do with him? The fella whose first name sounds similar to our incumbent President's surname, a fact pointed out by right-wingers as if it has relevance to anything at all? Remember how it used to be notable every time he released one of his little student films about how America is bad? Remember how he kinda faded out of the news? Well, he's in the news again. By being dead.

Something in that non-beef apparently makes Jesse bitchy

A Word From The Future: Of everything from early in this blog's life, this HAS to be the most inexplicable. I must've been hella bored that day.

With so many better fast food joints nearby, I'll never understand why Jim still likes to drag us to the mostly meatless Taco Bell so relatively often. Today's lunch was particularly hellish. We'd had no reason to suspect so much business at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, but....ughhh. Some chick was in there with, like, fifteen or so kindergarten-aged children. I don't know the story behind this. Is she some sort of babysitter who wanted to partially pass on her paid duties to the general quasi-Mexican-eating public? Is she a teacher and am I witnessing one of the lamest field trips ever? Did this woman devour a truckload of fertility meds six years ago and shove out a load of pentadecatuplets? At any rate it was awful and the children are being raised so terribly today and when did they stop having manners back in my day if you didn't have manners your parents beat them into you with a frying pan and we had to walk to school and it was uphill both ways and the snow was up to *gestures toward his neck* here!

As is generally true, Taco Bell likes playing terrible music. It encourages diners to hurry through their eating and get out of the wretched establishment more quickly, as per their fastness-based business model. One of the not-good songs they were playing in there today was Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream". Now, it seems all the professional music critics seem to like it because it's sweet and earnest and what-have-you - "Isn't young love just beautiful? Surely nothing purer than sexual intercourse wherein neither of the participants is legal!" - but, oy, I just couldn't get over the fact that it's a song that is apparently quite literally about fucking some dude solely because he's a brainless grovelling sycophant. How romantique! (Also, I'm bitching about a song that was released over half a year ago, I believe. How timely!) "He thinks I'm funny when I get the punchline wrong," notes Katy Perry. I suppose that this is not at all surprising to me, since pretty much her entire career is based on people lying to her about having talent. At any rate, I guess I should just take it as a victory that she wrote a song whose basis is neither lazy contrived homophobia or lazy contrived lady homoerotica.