Happy Festivus!

And boy, do we here at S2N got a lotta problems with you people out there this year. The stupid just flows from everywhere. Let's get started on our personal grievances (if you don't read the Airing of Grievances, you should). While on vacation, I'll try and find someone in NYC to dance around the Festivus Pole. If you'd like to share your grievances in the comments, please feel free.

1) Horrific grammar on the part of journalists everywhere. Part of my day job involves the viewing of CNN (less offensive than Faux News and less moronic than everyone at MSNBC save Olbermann), and not only was I subjected to the regular mistakes of "less" instead of "fewer" and the use of "their" instead of "its", which pisses me off greatly, a reporter on CNN actually used the neologism "brung" in a live shot at 6:30 AM EST. No wonder you're losing ratings to Fox. At least they have no pretense about being stupid, ignorant blowhards.

2) Consumerism for charity: is there any trend so solipsistic and dumb as that fucking RED campaign? Yes, buy a red iPod, Motorola RAZR, or various other luxury consumer item and you will have donated a very tiny portion to help fight AIDS in Africa, or so we have been told. This makes about as much sense as when President Codpiece told us after 9/11 that the best way to keep the terrorists from winning was to keep the American economy going, in effect, the best way to fight a war of words and ideas was to keep shopping. With that sort of logic, being in Iraq seems like a forgone conclusion. Anyway, people buying and hawking these RED items to soothe American guilt (although I suspect a lot of it is liberal guilt) have done their part to assuage their own egos (I'm looking at you, Bono!)

3) Speaking of Bush: I KNOW he's drinking again. Did you see last week's press conference? The rest of it goes without saying.

4) Sports on TV: Fox is the big winner, continuing to employ both Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, but it's as if every network chooses to hire the most obnoxious, stupid, and ignorant-ass people to do their telecasts and studio shows. The latest example is former Heisman Trophy winner and lame-ass pro Desmond Howard, as provided by AwfulAnnouncing. (another good blog to be reading) STOP HIRING FORMER PLAYERS JUST BECAUSE THEY USED TO PLAY THE GAME.

5) Professional celebrities: TMZ, Extra, Access Hollywood, and everyone else make a goddamn fortune off covering people who aren't famous for anything except being famous. Their queen and Shiva is Paris Hilton, who turned being born rich into some from of career, but now people who actually had some form of accomplishment are actually starting to fall into this category. Has anyone watched a Lindsay Lohan movie made since she turned into the party girl? Britney Spears sold millions of shitty albums, but she's also falling into this category. It's sucking people in, and it's actually invading real news now. The most recent amount of stupid on this front: "The Donald" and Rosie O'Donnell, after Mr. Combover executed a public shaming of a party-hearty Miss USA on Thursday as part PR stunt to drive interest in the latest season of The Apprentice. Rosie, obnoxious and stupid as ever, happened to make a honest-to-god point about his humping and dumping, and the war began. I'm damn sure you fuckers coordinate this stuff in back rooms now.

6) Going sans culottes. Britney, Paris, LiLo -- this is for you. Put those panties back on. No one wants to see your vagina, no matter how many inappropriate sexual cracks we make and how much improper lust we express.

7) The BCS. NCAA, sack up and do a 16 team playoff. No other sport looks quite as dumb as Div. I-A college football always looks at the end of the year.

8) The airlines. I'm going to be reminded in several hours on a red-eye flight of how much I hate the fact that you all can't design a seat in coach class that isn't uncomfortable to anyone taller than 5'6".

9) Police, for reasons related to the day job.

10) Los Angeles traffic. This is the reason why I don't come home to visit my mother and old friends as much as I promised I would when I moved. The 101 shuts down once you enter L.A. County, and it takes you 30 minutes to drive two miles on a Saturday.

11) The general parade of anti-intellectualism in this country: Rarely do you get a daily display of the pride shown in being stupid in America. Watch cable news and you'll see this lorded as a virtue, as anyone with even a speck of smart about them gets denounced. I'm not saying everyone has to read three books a day and know the policy positions of every state rep and senator, and even that of their city councilman. I just don't want to hear another thing about X having a better chance to win an election because "s/he seems like the type of person you'd have a drink with" and has the right amount of moral values. We've seen where "the moral values" crowd likes to lead us, and that goes into...

12) Religious hypocrites: Love thy neighbor, my ass. Hate on gay people, anyone who fucks outside of marriage in an unapproved manner, any women who dare decide that pregnancy is their choice, and shame the people whom you think don't belong. The recent expression of these fucks was seen in Ted Haggard and Mark Foley, and then by some Virginia cracker named Virgil Goode, who happened to get himself elected to Congress (please see #11 for a likely shot of how that happened) and then proceeded to say that the folks in Minnesota who elected a black Muslim are basically enabling the enemy to win because he's going to be sworn in on the Koran.

13) Brown people haters: These people came out of the fucking woodwork this year with all the immigration reform talk -- Lou Dobbs got big by riding their coattails and pimping nativist crap. I'd be more sympathetic if you all were as interested in actually changing the business structure that allows for the situation rather than just trying to blame it all on the big bad other.