If there's ONE THING I hate...or is it two...it's...
POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE!

I TOTALLY DETEST "CEREMONY". And I was reminded of that this evening when I tuned in Fox Sports' broadcast of the World Series, game 1. For a half-hour before the game, Jeannie Zelasko (who I refuse to watch or listen to) and her former-baseball-player cronies were all rattling on and on about various aspects of baseball. I immediately hit the mute button, and didn't un-mute until just before golden-throated sportscaster Joe Buck and his trusty sidekick, "Quick Draw" McGarver, began doing the play-by-play. I'm pulling for the Sox, but I haven't seen Colorado play this season, and I understand they're good. I'll probably update this blog when the game's over. We all know the big reason FOX airs the World Series is so they can promote all of their moronic programs that I wouldn't watch if you duct-taped me to a chair in front of the TV and held a gun to my head. If indeed the TV was tuned to FOX, I'd say, "be merciful, and pull the trigger NOW!"

Whether it be the World Series or the Super Bowl or the Olympics, I just hate it when athletes are forced to run out to the middle of the field as the stadium announcer excruciatingly announces every player, one-by-one in best pompous official-sounding announcer-ese. BORING!!! Then, all during the sportscasts, the broadcast crew airs little "vignettes" about every player, so that by the end of the sporting event, you'll know what kind of food they like, what music they listen to, as well as their shoe size and whether they wear boxers or briefs, or in the case of female athletes, whether their bras are "living" or not. Irrelevant detail. WE DON'T NEED TO KNOW THAT MUCH, people!

I'm reminded of something else that had a lot of pomp and circumstance; our family used to go to a Lutheran Church...Stand-up for this, Sit-down for that, stand up again, sit down again...and then lay down and pass out as the Sermon bores you to death. I wouldn't be surprised if a per-capita survey of Lutherans showed they, as a group, are really healthy, probably 'cos they get an aerobic workout at every church service. How about GRADUATION ceremonies? You march in with the rest of your cap-and-cloaked peers, all lined up like a row of penguins, and then you sit for hours while you're bored to death with a listless graduation speech. BORING. And I went thru THREE graduations. All BORING. I woulda rathered they just mail my diploma home, but my folks made such a big thing out of going to see me graduate. Maybe I sound impetuous (in fact, I know I do), but I just despise doing things that I really don't like to do. Don't tell me "that's life". I already KNOW that.

I used to work out there in the business world; I've endured Chamber of Commerce functions, business ribbon-cuttings, staff meetings, presentations, seminars, luncheons, ceremonies, coffee klatches and all kinds of other stuff I could have easily lived without. I actually kinda enjoyed the coffee klatch until I realized it was really just more of the same B.S. I heard everywhere else. So, I quit coffee-klatching. And I didn't miss it a bit. Nor do I miss the rest of the stuff I've listed in this paragraph now. Sometimes I think that human beings complicate everything. Just go out there, keep it simple, do what you have to do, get it done, and then do something else you have to do. I don't like to stand around prognosticating, analyzing, predicting, or debating, and I don't like going to meetings of any kind. These days, I just "DO", and if I don't want to "DO", I "DON'T".

When I was out there in the work-a-day world, I came to a realization: STAFF meetings are basically nothing more than glorified chewing-out-sessions. Management takes the high road; rather than informing just one employee of his transgressions by telling him to his face, they instead assemble everyone under their tutelage, present the information 'just that one employee' should have heard, and instead, lay it on everyone, making EVERYONE in the department feel BAD. Oh, and you'd better not have a bad ATTITUDE either. And, that little "HANDBOOK" you're given when you go to work for someone? Handbooks are nothing more than an assembled packaging which lists the many ways you can lose your job. That way, if one day you walk into work and there's no longer a job for you, the boss doesn't have to tell you anything. "It's all in the Handbook", you see.

Wow. I've just read everything I've typed here. It began with the World Series and led to my total indictment of everyone in the human race. Well, I'm tired of jerks and wannabees and poseurs and egotists, and I don't like labels or political correctness or attention-seekers or demagogues or any other kind of "false prophets" that lurk out there. And sometimes I can't even stand MYSELF, but I'm stuck with me. So I try to keep things simple so I don't complicate things for me.

Blog Update: Boston avoided a shutout by winning game one of the World Series 13-1. And I switched channels as fast as I could. I don't need to hear know-nothing Fox sports people exalting themselves in the post-game show.
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I'm thinking of some folks who may be losing their jobs soon. They work at a newspaper I used to read a lot, located in the area I used to live in. I wish all of them well. But it's a tough world out there. I know what it's like to face layoffs, having been laid off myself. It's never pretty. Hang in there, guys.