Big Mike: Cold And Gray

Just to top off what has been the worst winter in Bloomington, Indiana in more than 30 years, I’m now fighting off a miserable cold. Check that — I’m no longer fighting. The rhinovirus has won.

There was a strange yellow-orange ball in the sky a couple of days this week. It was bright and warm and it cast shadows, even though we’re in the midst of yet another frigid snap — the temp dipped into the single digits Thursday night. A couple of people told me the ball is called the Sun. I told them I’ve never heard of it.

Bloomington, February 2010

All this has put me in a rather ugly mood. Ergo, I offer for your consideration a few things that are irking the crap out of me.

The Olympics. I loathe the Olympics. I hate all the emotional pornography the mainstream media attaches to it. I don’t care about any gymnast’s brother who has a rare kidney disease and isn’t she courageous and plucky for pushing on even though she’s worried sick about him? NBC’s wet dream would be to have another Dan Jansen storyline. You remember Dan Jansen, no? The speedskater from West Allis, Wisconsin was a big favorite to win the gold medal in the 1988 Olympics but the morning of the big race he learned his sister had died of leukemia. He raced anyway and but fell down halfway through. He raced again a couple of nights later and was ahead, on a pace for a world record, and — he fell again. NBC practically dubbed violin music over its coverage of the races. Jansen came back four years later and did indeed win a gold medal — overcoming all the odds and so on. The whole thing was so hyperglycemic that the conspiracy theorist in me wondered if it hadn’t been conjured up by a hack screenwriter. It seemed too improbable even for the Lifetime Movie Network. Since Jansen, network bosses pray for another athlete’s sister to die of leukemia the day of the big race.

The Poor Guy Fell — Much To The Delight Of Network Executives.

(A late addendum: a guy got killed yesterday in a luge crash in Vancouver. Luge. The only reason the luge exists is for the Winter Olympics. Have you ever seen a luge anywhere else on this planet? And now one of them has killed somebody. I rest my case.)

Facebook. I despise it. The next interesting thing I see on it will be the first. (That is, besides anything I write on it.) People actually talk about how many Facebook friends they have. I listened to a woman the other night complaining that her total of 600 or so friends seems paltry compared to some others she knows who have more than a thousand. I resisted the urge to take her by the shoulders and shout, well, anything. Maybe I should have just barked at her. Here’s my idea of a friend — someone who’ll come over and help me tear down the ratty old basketball hoop the old owner of my house left in the driveway. A person’s desperation to show the world pictures of his new cat is not among my top 500 reasons for becoming friends with him.

Swear To God — I Found This Picture Posted On Facebook.

Cat Urine. Boutros, the old calico who patrols Chez Big Mike, peed on my bathroom rug early this morning. I found out about it in the usual way — when I took a bleary-eyed, squishy step on it. I picked up the offending rug and, holding it between two fingers while I walked on my right heel so as not to make pee tracks, marched right up to Boutros and demanded, What’s the big idea? Boutros, naturally, stared at me for a moment and then turned away. The Loved One said it wasn’t his fault; he just doesn’t like his litter right now. I looked at her through narrowed eyes. I still don’t how the hell to respond to that.

What’s The Big Idea, Boutros?

Disease Celebration & Identity. Barbara Ehrenreich beat me to the punch on this one with her most recent book, Bright-Sided. In it, she bemoans the rage for seeing things like cancer and autism as positives. America, she says, has fallen in love with a weird new kind of positive thinking — to the point that we’re losing touch with reality. I believe her. I notice that the American Psychiatric Association is getting its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th edition, ready for publication in 2013. The APA is considering grouping Asperger’s Syndrome in with autism spectrum disorders. Now a bunch of parents of kids with Asperger’s are up in arms. The new diagnostic grouping, they claim, will somehow make their kids less special. “This is their identity, which is really being taken away,” one person was quoted as saying on CNN.com today. “If everybody’s sort of lumped together, we’re going to lose that.” Another told CNN, “[P]eople with Ansperger’s see themselves as having an advantage in life.” This follows on the heels of the relentlessly untalented Jenny McCarthy becoming the spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement. They believe vaccines to prevent measles and diptheria actually cause autism. She sticks to this line despite the fact that scientists the world over — you know, people who actually know things — say it’s false. Her kid has autism which she says makes him very special and wonderful. Isn’t disease fabulous? Before she became a spokesdope, she claimed her son was an Indigo Child. Go to the link — trust me.

Well, that’s all…, wait! I forgot — it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow. Goddamned Valentine’s Day. I hate Valentine’s Day more than all other evils (except Jenny McCarthy, cat urine, and commodified pathos.) This year’s television commercials for the desperation fest reflect a greedy meanness that would do Lloyd Blankfein proud. One commercial features a couple of sexless office drones sniping cruelly at each other over their respective beaux’ puny offerings. Women left and right are driven to orgasmic frenzy by their lunkheaded boyfriends’ cut rate floral bouquets. Housewives finally unlock their rusty chastity belts when their old men at last unbelt and pop for some gaudy bracelet. The only positive about Valentine’s Day is that The Loved One abhors it as much as I do.

Jeez, I really am a bastard! Maybe when this goddamned cold goes away, I’ll feel more charitable toward my fellow humans.