Things That Make Me Smile

I have just about had it with things in general lately, and I doubt like hell I’m alone. I thought it would be just as therapeutic for other folks to read the following, as it would be for me to jot ’em down.

1. Beautiful young women in skimpy clothes, especially Hooter’s waitresses

BrianaI know it’s hideously offensive to a lot of people, but those people can’t articulately explain why such a sight is so offensive to them. And for them to be so vocal about their offense, while characterizing that offense so little, offends me. When those little orange shorts are near, the bitter nattering nabobs must be far away. And that makes me happy.

2. Automatic weapons

Especially 9mm but I like 7.65mm too. And the smell of gunpowder. Oh, yeah.

3. Beer

Bitter. Cold. Two brand-new twelve-packs. On a hot summer day. At 3 or 4 in the afternoon, after you’ve been up for twelve hours, absorbing the full brunt of UV rays (under some sensible sunscreen, of course) doing something fun.

4. The perfect barbeque sauce

Something with liquid smoke, lots and lots of ketchup, and fresh cayenne.

5. Cedar clothes hangers

6. Female conservative bloggers delivering the smackdown to other females who desperately need a good smackdown

Because like Cassy Fiano says over and over again, MEN…ARE…NOT…THE…ENEMY. Well, we’re not, and there are a lot more people who need to be told that than you might think.

7. Diesel generators

Because they’re just cool.

8. People who ask why you do things the way you do things, because they really want to know…

…not because it’s some overly-refined overly-diplomatic way of telling you they disapprove. The former is a sign of healthy curiosity, humility, and maturity. The latter is a waste of breath.

9. Reports of yet another dead terrorist

It just makes my day. I particularly like all the left-wing liberal whining about “waitaminnit, how can this guy be the Al Qaeda Number Two when the last twenty guys were also AQ#2? That can’t be!” They say the opposite of what they really understand — it damn well can be — and they’re terrified of having to admit it.

10. Poorly-behaved children being denied the things they wanted when they behaved poorly

This warms my heart, I can just feel the glow radiating outward from my auricles & ventricles to the tips of my fingertips. I love watching them glower, making their little mental notes to do things an entirely different way next time, hoping none of the grown-ups are noticing, to no avail.

This is such a simple concept, but a lot of us don’t get it. Child misbehaves to get something…the parent dishes out a stern lecture that that is not an appropriate way to behave — but goes ahead and gives the child what the child wanted — the lecturing is just a waste of breath. And what’s more is, you can go ahead and do it the right way the next ninety-nine times, it won’t matter because the brat will keep remembering the one time he wised off and got what he wanted. Good, effective parenting is becoming an extremely rare thing. You have to appreciate it when you see it.

11. Salt air, down by the ocean

12. Three hour movies

Not three hours, as in “Hi I’m Peter Jackson and I see absolutely no reason why this scene should be over-and-done in 45 seconds when it can easily be stretched out to ten minutes…and then we’re goin’ back, Jack, and doin’ it again” until the three hours are up. NOT that; Jackson is a wonderfully talented man with a keen eye for amazing scenery. But I just can’t make it all the way through that stuff. I’m talking about movies that are three hours long because there’s so much story in it that there’s no other way to do it.

The Patriot. The Godfather. Braveheart. The Departed. You know…”I just found out my girl slept with my best friend but I can’t think about that right now because this madman is intent on destroying the entire world and I have to stop him but first I have to go to my son’s wedding and we’re going to celebrate the circle of life before wishing our enemies death and meanwhile I have these sidekicks that are going to be entertaining without being all goofy and by the time we’re done your butt is going to be good and tired and you won’t even notice.”

You know what makes that happen…is when all the love-triangles and the clue-finding and the traitor-discovering is all done, and the final battle takes place, a bunch of important characters get killeed but when the dust is cleared you find it’s just another clue that leads the survivors off to some other “final battle” that takes place half an hour later. It’s an exhausting thing to the audience and it’s really hard to do it right without boring people. But when it is good, it is very very good.

And if the bad guy is such a dirty-rotten-creepy-jerk (DRCJ) that you just flare your nostrils every time he does his DRCJ stuff…when he gets his come-uppins, the come-uppins should make you wince. That just drives the fatigue straight out of your body. YEAH!! Take that! Mmmph!

13. Coffee and newspaper before the sun comes up

14. C.O.P.S.

Especially that shirtless guy thrashring around with the big fuzzy dot over his face. And that redneck woman screaming at the cops to “leave mah man alone!”

15. Being called an “angry white male”

It means someone non-white, or non-male, and angry and bitter as all holy hell just failed at something, and better-than-even odds it was something petulant, petty, juvenile and stupid that would’ve divided people even further.

Feminine Hair16. Women who wear their hair like Agent 99 from the old “Get Smart” show

Or Samantha from Bewitched. It’s coming back — that look where she can be facing away from you and you can still tell she’s a woman. In other words, you can’t see the bare skin on the back of her neck. The Hillary look…the Terri Hatcher Lois Lane look…it’s going away. Good bye and good riddance.

17. Wounded warriors

Especially the ones that lose several pounds of flesh, pick up their prosthetics, and volunteer to go back again when they don’t have to. This is your world, guys & gals. The rest of us just live in it.

18. Old sci-fi movies

I find the male protagonist most amusing. If it’s from the fifties, he’s got a buzz cut, stands just an inch taller than everyone else, is constantly barking out orders and nobody ever gets tired of it. If it’s the sixties he’s sporting the “wet look,” is well into middle age and yet these twenty-something vixens just can’t get enough of him. If it’s the seventies, he’s dispensing lots of pop-psych about how the traumatized beauty shouldn’t blame herself for anything, even though not a word’s been said about whether she blames herself for something or not. Oh, and he has mutton chops and wears blue jeans. The blue jean legs are as big around as dinner plates down by his ankles, but they cling like a second skin to his ass, which is a size sixteen.

On other planets, the aliens all speak perfect English. There are no young men. There are no old women. There are never any handrails around bottomless pits. The distinguished-looking humanoid old guy runs the entire planet, and his lovely daughter (that he produced without the benefit of any female companion worth mentioning) desperately needs to be taught how to kiss.

Oh yeah. If the titular character is named “Sinbad” or “Aladdin,” he’s played by a six-foot-one caucasian guy with a dimple in his chin and really bright blue eyes.

Great, entertaining, unintentionally self-parodying funny stuff.

19. Leapfrogging

Oh, you know what I’m talking about. You need to merge into the other lane and you’ve got four tenths of a mile to get ‘er done…the dickhead won’t let you in…the dickhead still won’t let you in…now you can see that he sees you and what you are trying to do — and the dickhead won’t let you in.

So you spot a gap three car lengths ahead, and steer in there easy as pie. Forty yards in front of the dickhead.

It’s one of life’s little pleasures, like finding a five-spot in the jeans as you’re tossing them into the laundry.

20. America-bashing movies…

…that tank at the box office. Which they always seem to do.

21. Six-speed transmissions

22. Dr. Laura Schlessinger handing selfish, narcissistic women their own butts…

…when they call up with questions that begin with those five magic words, “How Do I Make Him…?”

It’s an added garnish when they follow up with questions that begin with the two magic words “Even If…?”

23. Pineapple

When you’ve been neglecting your diet and loading up on salts and processed food without realizing it — big, drippy chunks of pineapple. One of life’s pleasures.

24. Working on things that matter

Those little signs you get. When you send in pieces of it by e-mail, you get a reply within seconds, and feedback of some kind that same day. Your name is spelled correctly on things.

25. Belated corrections of inequality

Like…lots of pressure put on liberal democrats to prove they aren’t racists. Global warming alarmists getting in trouble due to “funding” from environmental activist groups, just like global warming “skeptics” getting flak for “funding” from “big oil companies.” Wives getting in trouble with the law for beating the holy bejeezus out of their husbands. People starting to notice how government programs screw them over at least as often, and at least as thoroughly, as “big business.” Jetsam for the flotsam; quo for the quid. Stuff like that.