House of Eratosthenes

I’m not completely clueless about all these things. But being able to explain something is a different thing from knowing about it. I just hope, in the decades to come, nobody comes askin’…I do not consider these things easily explained…

1. Timothy Geithner getting his job.
2. Timothy Geithner keeping his job.
3. Liberals putting up with people who say we need more abortions to take place. They seem to think the Watergate burglary is the ultimate evil. Do they realize it’s much more evil to want more abortions to take place? Don’t they understand that’s more evil than a billion Watergates?
4. The whole global warming thing was exposed and disgraced in the third quarter of 2009. By 2010 we still have some people talking seriously about it.
5. President Obama keeps saying all these socialist things. Nobody’s been able to supply a good logical explanation for what socialists are supposed to do and say, that He hasn’t done or said. Why is there any disagreement, anywhere, that He is one?
6. The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement of 1998: If tobacco is that bad for people, why not just ban it?
7. Avatar. James Cameron started writing this in 1994? He spent fifteen years writing it? Writing what, exactly?
8. Health Care. Barack Obama didn’t write it. Everyone knows He didn’t write it. He told Congress to come up with something with “health” and “care” in the title, and He’d sell whatever it is. Everyone saw Him do this. It was an act of salesmanship and nothing else.
9. Apple. Are people seriously pretending they have some idea what these products do, before they buy ’em?
10. Traffic lights that aren’t synchronized. Why do we still have those? How come some of them make me sit there, idling, for two or three minutes, maybe more? Global warming? I thought we were supposed to be really concerned about it?
11. The View. Fox and Friends. All that stuff; what is the appeal of watching people pretending to drink coffee around a table?
12. Men wearing clothes that are too big for them. Why do you want to look like a little boy wearing his dad’s clothes?
13. Californians and weather. Why can’t they drive in it?
14. Pants that sag. Who wants to see someone’s butt crack? How come people who expect to run away from cops, wear pants that are wholly unsuitable for this purpose?
15. Bill Maher. He’s the best that cable teevee could find huh?
16. Bond, James Bond? Everybody loves him, men and woman, across the generations? Most profitable movie franchise ever? And a typical special-effect is a car crashing or a guy getting shot…nothing really expensive like a spaceship blowing up or a vampire turning into a bat…how come it’s so much trouble to get ’em made?
17. What Gerard calls Vaginism and Fai Mao calls Womynism: Feminism sees a gender disparity that has to do with stature or privilege, feminism works overtime to eradicate it; feminism sees one that has to do with assuming responsibility for things, feminism leaves it alone.
18. Opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Four years earlier there was universal agreement this guy was a bastard and the sooner we were rid of him, the better. And then, taking him out was an ultimate act of pure evil? People want to pretend they were thinking about this independently, really?
19. Hollywood continuing to pump out America-bashing anti-military movies that everybody hates, and that don’t make any moolah.
20. The First Lady is still considered “off limits” even when she attacks people.
21. Schools cannot spank kids anymore. Schools cannot yell at kids anymore. Schools cannot put kids on the spot, or pressure them in any way. In short, schools cannot give kids any incentive whatsoever to pay attention to anything. A new disorder is invented called “Attention Deficit Disorder”; diagnoses freakin’ skyrocket. Nobody makes a connection?
22. Hope and Change? That was enough to get Him elected? Seriously? Heartbeat of Stupid? We may have to become mature enough to learn some things, but for heaven’s sake, we can still write things down.
23. We had a budget deficit, and these new entitlements were supposed to close it up? Really? From where, pray tell, did people think the money was supposed to come?
24. No long form birth certificate? Not before the inauguration, not after? Nobody insisted on it?
25. Ted Kennedy was “The Conscience of the Senate”??
26. Rahm Emmanuel gets caught saying “never let a crisis go to waste.” And then…for months afterward, years even…his boss continues to stuff His speeches chock-full of the word “crisis.” Nobody says anything about it? And He still wants to do this? For all that time?
27. Sandra Bullock. She makes this movie guys love called “Demolition Man.” She makes another movie guys love called “Speed.” She becomes a superstar…then makes a zillion and one movies chicks love that bore the guys to tears. Then she makes a zillion more.
28. Affirmative Action. We make a national holiday out of the birthday of one single man who said we should judge each other by the content of our character not by the color of our skin. Clue?
29. Paul Krugman. Joe Biden. If you were to make a list of gentlemen who’ve been wrong about things, you’d have those two pegged at the top…with a big, big gap before you get to third place. People still listen to ’em?
30. Horatio Caine. My God, what a joke. Does anybody think this guy looks cool just because he talks like he has strep throat and keeps whipping his sunglasses off?
31. Tomagucci toys. Wouldn’t this be a big red flag to the parents, that the kid needs more chores?
32. Couples walking around on the weekends, with the guy showing off his legs and the woman covering hers up. Sick.
33. Little tiny dogs being carried around in purses. What’s the dog going to do to the purse? Shit and piss in it, of course. How expensive is the purse? Gawdawfully. Cheap purses are never used for this purpose. Who’s paying for all this?
34. Joe McCarthy was on a hunt for communists? That made him a bad guy? Because of something called “guilt by association”? This was a bad idea? How?
35. Speaking of McCarthy: The Venona papers came out, and then we still made fun of people who said so-and-so was a communist spy…after it was proven so-and-so was, in fact, a communist spy. You’re entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts.
36. Iran going nuclear. We let this happen?
37. We were opposed to racial bigotry, and we kept Franklin Roosevelt’s face on the dime for all that time?
38. Before the United Nations, wars ended in decisive victories; after them, they ended in periods of peace so tenuous, so fragile, they might as well not have ended at all. Somehow, we still let the U.N. negotiate things? Why?
39. Politicians telling whistle-stop lies in the age of YouTube. Why do they think they won’t get caught? How did they get as far as they did, telling lies that are so many decades behind the technology?
40. Gay couples told us we had to recognize gay marriage, and if we didn’t we were somehow prohibiting them from loving each other? We bought into that, really? Why?
41. Labor unions. How come after all those years, we still let them make decisions about things?
42. You people thought you’d be so inspirational to future generations, and yet you let Obama shut down the manned space exploration? Without rioting? Seriously?
43. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009…plus George W. Bush’s Act of 2008. They were tried, they failed. Why did anybody ever utter a syllable in support of such plans from that moment forward?
44. All the rage directed at Richard Nixon. He ran for President on a platform of: The hippies are taking over the country and I’m going to stop it. Then, the hippies got mad at him for not representing them. He got caught lying, breaking the law, obstructing justice. Thought himself entitled to special privileges. But what made him more contemptuous than a typical congressman?
45. The wire-work fad in action movies. If you want to be dazzled by a physical feat that is so awesome that it isn’t even possible, that’s what cartoons are for isn’t it?
46. Obama is thought to be a healer of divisions, an agent of hope and a reminder of responsibility; He is thought to be engaged in a process of getting other countries to like us. If you read over His transcripts, you see He does not say healing, hopeful or responsible things. He does things that inspire other countries to giggle at us, and find out how much they can get out of us, but not to like us.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

I’ve got to disagree with your dissing of the lovely Sandra Bullock. I’ve been a fan since the dreadful Love Potion #9. Sure, she’s made a lot of movies that I don’t enjoy that much, but I typically enjoy her work in them. I had similar views on the work of John Candy. He made some crap movies, but I always enjoyed HIS part in them.

Besides, Ms. Bullock looks like the girl next door, if the girl next door were to marry a guy whose ex-wife was a porn star.
- Physics Geek | 05/04/2010 @ 09:56
Sandra Bullock is always wonderful.

I suspect she either has a relative who is acting as her agent in a Macaulay Culkin’s Dad sort of a way, or she doesn’t care about the career or the money and just likes to make girly-girl movies. But she’s made some real stinkers. She, by herself, is a wonderful argument for how much better the word works when guys make the decisions.

Yeah, Sandra Bullock in a bikini mud wrestling match for two hours would waste time and kill some brain cells maybe. But no more than While You Were Sleeping, The Proposal, Practical Magic, et al. It’s gotten to the point where, if you see her face on the DVD cover, you know the movie isn’t for you unless you’ve got a verginer. Maybe there’s a whole lot more money involved in that market than I thought?
- mkfreeberg | 05/04/2010 @ 10:27
This one really ought to be cross-posted at RWN.
- cylarz | 05/04/2010 @ 13:43
Gah!! You brought up the exception to the rule: Practical Magic sucked all kinds of balls, the big hairy green drippy ones. Of course my wife liked it. Of course she did. And when I asked her to explain some of the more incomprehensible pieces of the “plot”, she’d look at me like she didn’t even know who I was.

I will admit to liking a fair number of chick movies (I have an unabashedly romantic streak), but Practical Magic should be resigned to the Ninth Circle, which is where I thought I was while it was on.
- Physics Geek | 05/04/2010 @ 13:52
Yay, I win another argument. Lovely as she is, even with short hair, she is guilty of having made all sorts of magnitude of bagfuls o’crap.

And for reasons nobody has ever quite managed to figure out, women like crap.
- mkfreeberg | 05/04/2010 @ 14:06
[…] Mark Freeburg has a pretty good list. […]
- DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Forty-Six Things I Cannot Explain to my Grandchildren, or to the Alien Living in my Laundry Room | 05/04/2010 @ 17:44
And for reasons nobody has ever quite managed to figure out, women like crap.

I’ve got no problems with them liking crap. What I do have a problem with is the presumption that I should like those same crappy things.
- Physics Geek | 05/05/2010 @ 08:25
All the interesting items on this list…and you guys single out the Sandra Bullock thing for discussion?
- cylarz | 05/05/2010 @ 23:31

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