Join me in welcoming the Cranky Old Guy back to the blog. Cranky Old Guy is a fine writer in his own right and can produce entertaining prose on just about any subject, yet all he ever seems to write about is the dumb stuff that happens all around him – supply is always robust. It turns out that the main thing that turns old guys into cranky old guys is, well, dumb shit … and so we have the latest diatribe by the gray-haired chapass.

Pharmaceutical commercials are so, so dumb. Heard one the other day that had something to do with the pancreas and it listed the main symptoms should you come down with this specific pancreatic malady (each and every one disgusting). The commercial said that, if not treated, this condition could lead to “oily stools.” I would like to know how these poor patients find out that their stools are oily? Hands-on examination? Trying to light the stool on fire? Maybe the stool in question is slippery to the touch which would lead me to tell the patient, “If you’d just stop handling your stool the problem probably goes away.” Okay, so let’s just go along with the fact that it is determined the stool is oily, so what? People have oily hair, oily skin. Drivers leave oily spots on the driveway and no one starts popping pills or mainlining anti-oil serums. If a dude produced enough of these oily stools, would he not have a free source of fuel? Holy hell, stick the turd in a Coleman lantern on your next camping trip. In the end, of course, I don’t wish oiliness on anyone’s stool, but so much of what you hear about the fragile human condition from the world’s pill-and-potion makers strikes me as dumb.

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Here’s a dumb one. Apparently, two zoo apes tested positive for the “cornavarious” and the news said this is the first instance of human-to-animal transmission. First off, why are we testing animals? I wonder what the ape-testing budget is, seems like something I don’t want to spend my tax dollars on. Did an ape interview produce testimony like, “Hey, man I don’t think I have a fever but for some reason, I can’t taste the bananas anymore?” And how do they know that the ape got the Chinese flu from a person? For all we know, the apes could have been trapping their own bats and eating them, hence the virus. Hell the apes live outside, rats and all kinds of vermin must be constantly passing through their enclosures … a dirty possum after an especially long weekend could have exposed all the primates. Maybe apes naturally had the virus for hundreds of years – ever think of that? Dumb. I have a rule, I don’t breathe on apes and I don’t let them breathe on me.

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Trying really hard to get on television, say, while at a football game, seems dumb. You know what I’m talking about, ya? It’s that dude that tries to jump behind the announcer who’s doing a live shot before the game at the stadium. Why? This guy and his drunk friends will never see themselves on the tube, and the odds of anyone they know seeing them is zero. “Hey man, we got on TV last night before the Octopus game. It was so cool, we snuck in behind the announcer and we did that thing with our hands that means that our team is #1.” “Really? I didn’t see you.” No one watches the pregame show, the postgame show or anything with a bunch of old football players standing on a fake football field in some Midwestern town. But wait, it gets dumber … virtually dumber. Have you seen that collage of all the fans sitting at home in their stupid-ass jerseys? Ya, the networks have been throwing up these jumbled screens, screens with seventy-five tiny shots of fans Zooming themselves watching the game. This is a new level of mindlessness. How this works is that the network provides a generic Zoom meeting invite that it distributes to millions of lemmings. In return, these easily-amused fans with a closetful of cheese hats and pennants agree to sit in front of their laptops for the duration of the four-hour game. If they get on the TV their images are the size of a postage stamp. “I logged-on to the game Zoom call and I’m pretty sure we got on TV after the third commercial in the first quarter! So bitchin’!”

It’s dumb what passes for so bitchin these days.

Photo credit: sjrankin on Best Running / CC BY-NC