Things That Are Going To Kill Us All

Hello friends. Me again. Back for more.

This is normally the part in the post how this might be the last post I ever make, since, you know, the Mayans are going to kill us all tomorrow or something.

Except they're not.

We're supposed to all be of the impression that the world is ending tomorrow.  Apparently, our fate as a planet was hewn into a rock a long time ago, and somewhere between the time I go to sleep tonight and the time I wake up, the world will end.  No one is sure HOW it all ends, but it just does.  Galactic alignment?  Dunno.  Great Flood?  Maybe.  The death of the Twinkie?  Compelling argument.

"Now is not the time for fear; that comes later."

But let me tell you how everything is REALLY going to shake out: 2 hours from now, I'm going to go to sleep.  8 hours from now, I'm going to wake up.  99.99998% of the world's population will wake up tomorrow.  Those that don't... well... it won't be because of the Mayans.

But rational people know this.  Rational people know a lot of things.

However, that's never stopped people from freaking out at every tiny little thing ever.

And don't think this whole post is just about Mayans and 2012. No.  This is a generational thing.  Thinking that something is going to kill us all is such a regular occurrence that you can go back through the years and pinpoint, per year or per decade, the thing(s) that were going to kill us all.

Don't believe me?


1950s - The Commies
1960s - Nukes
1970s - Nixon/The Vietnamese/Overpopulation/Global Cooling
1980s - Reagan/The Commies/Capitalism
1990s - Gangs/HIV/AIDS/Ebola
2000 - y2k (to be fair, there was a larger concern about y2k in 1999)
2001 - Anthrax/Terrorists
2002 - West Nile/George W. Bush
2003 - Mad Cow Disease/George W. Bush
2004 - SARS/George W. Bush
2005 - Bird Flu/George W. Bush
2006 - Killer Bees/e.Coli/George W. Bush
2007 - Salmonella/Foot-And-Mouth Disease/George W. Bush
2008 - Global Warming/George W. Bush
2009 - Swine Flu
2010 - Swine Flu Vaccines
2011 - Large Hadron Collider/Higgs Boson
2012 - KONY/Mitt Romney/The Mayans
2013 - ??? (Though I've already been reading that "2013" in and of itself is extraordinarily unlucky, and the kind folks in Times Square in New York City are going to painstaking measures to make sure and mitigate as much of that bad luck as possible)

And yet, despite the massive odds against us, here we all stand, unscathed for the most part, by the very things which, year after year after year, were supposed to destroy us all.

We're a hearty bunch, we humans.  It's going to take a lot more than some calendar on a rock to kill all of us off.

In fact, my money is on the sun going red dwarf on all of us.

In about 6 billion years.

So sleep tight until then.

And seriously, don't sweat the Mayan stuff.

See you all in the morning (well, most of you...)

To worldwide calamities! The alarmists' version of a parent's empty threats!

Hand Dryers

Hey everyone.  How have ya been?  Good? You look well.  I like that shirt.  It really compliments your eyes.

Now I feel like I owe a bit of an explanation... We took the last few weeks off for finals.  It didn't feel right to rest solely upon our amazing ability to recall details and just slack off while the rest of our classmates were busting their humps studying. Plus, you know, we're kind of lazy.

So, with that out of the way...

Hand dryers.  You know the ones.  The ones that sit in the bathroom, mounted on the wall? The ones that sound like a jet plane taking off every time you push that chrome button?  Yes.  Them.

*click* Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

They're worthless.

Yes.  I mean it.  Worth. Less.

Why?  Simple.  They don't work.  When was the last time you used one of these suckers and didn't end up just wiping your hands on your shirt/pants and calling it a day?

You know how I use these things?  I dry my hands on my shirt and then use the dryer to dry my shirt out.  Works like a charm.

But just using the hand dryer for the purposes of drying your hands?  Time-consuming and worthless. The average hand dryer takes 45 seconds to get hands completely dry. 45 seconds.  I try to get in and out of restrooms in less time than that.  I don't want to spend nearly a minute huddled around some miniature jet engine like a hobo huddled around a steel 55-gallon drum for warmth all in the name of not having wet hands.

Notice I said nothing about sanitary hands. The goal of washing your hands, generally accepted, is to remove harmful bacteria and blah blah blah.  Well, air dryers take that goal and drive it into the ground like a Russian-made commercial airliner.  How?  Because these things, contrary to logic, don't sanitize hands. If anything, they make your hands dirtier after you wash them than they were before you washed them. According to a study conducted by TÜV Produkt und Umwelt, using paper towels to dry ones hands after washing led to a bacterial decrease on the hands of 24%, whereas the hot-air dryer  led to an increase of 117%. This is like using a bug spray to fumigate your house leading to a 117% increase in the infestation. Or a food that made you 117% hungrier after eating it.  These things are bacteria traps.  One study even found that the air comes out so rapidly that the bacteria could actually be blown off the hands of person A, and become airborne, possibly contaminating every other person in the restroom.  That's jacked up.

This isn't to say hand dryers don't serve a purpose.

I mean, just go on YouTube and search for "hand dryer fun" and see all the junk that comes.

p.s. There aren't any videos of people legitimately drying their hands.

Because hand dryers are worthless.

So, here's to hand dryers... they're like paper towels that burn fossil fuels!

-DW

Black Friday Shenanigans

Leading off, don't get too used to themed entries... but today I was perusing the internet and I came across no less than 10 stories regarding Black Friday violence and general ass-hattery and I just knew what the blog was going to be about today.

Black Friday is a tradition as old as... uh... like, the early 60s. Back in the day, stores would lower prices and people would show up like normal folks do and shop when the store opened.  Then, one day, some innovator decided to sleep in front of the store like a moron, to guarantee that they'd be the first one in the door.  Soon, more morons followed this moron's lead, and suddenly EVERYONE was sleeping out in front of the store.  However, because it was, you know, THE END OF FREAKING NOVEMBER, it was cold outside, and people started to grow weary of being outside in the cold all night. So stores started opening earlier to keep these idiots happy. But they wouldn't stay happy (because they're idiots), so stores kept on pulling back the hours on their Black Friday opening.

Last night, the first in-store Black Friday sales began at 8 p.m. On Thanksgiving.  Also known as THURSDAY. Yes, Black Friday started on Thursday this year.  Next year, I'm anticipating an even earlier start date, Black Wednesday.

Now don't misconstrue this as some kind of libel against Black Friday itself.  I don't have a problem with Black Friday.  Being the super-capitalist I am, I encourage Black Friday.  What I have a problem with is people abandoning all sense of humanity and decency in the name of saving a few bucks (Here's the part where any anti-capitalists reading say "Haha, you just contradicted yourself!".  To them I say shove it)

An example?  Last year, I braved the Black Friday crowds here in our quiet little town (which is code for "went to Wal-Mart", since that's all we have) for some first-minute Christmas presents.  Shortly after we left, part of the store had to be closed off so people could be arrested for a melee that erupted over bedding.  As in sheets and pillowcases.  People were literally throwing down to save money on bedding. And this isn't uncommon.  The internet and newspapers are rife with stories about the insane things people do on Black Friday. Like this broad, who, in 2011, PUNCHED A BABY IN THE FACE:

Though, in her defense, that toddler probably DID have it coming...

The worst part about the douchebaggery that prevails on Black Friday, though, is the holiday that it immediately follows.  Think about it... many of the people pushing and shoving and face-punching babies were probably, just a few hours beforehand, gathered with family and loved ones around a table.  Heck, they might even have made a Facebook status about how blessed and lucky and thankful they are for everything they have, etc. etc. etc.

In short, Black Friday shenanigans are weak sauce because they follow up the one day of the year where most people genuinely reflect on the things for which they're thankful.  And somehow, a decent number of those people go from appreciating the stuff they have to acting like complete doorknobs for stuff they want, usually within a matter of hours.

But there may be some hope on the horizon: Recently, "Cyber Monday" has gained popularity. Even more recently, larger retailers have started moving towards holding Black Friday sales online, helping people avoid the crowds and avoid the rush.  It's hard to imagine a scenario under which fistfights would break out between a bunch of people shopping from the comfort of their own homes.  Who wants to fight anyone while in a food coma, anyway??

So, Happy Thanksgiving from all (two) of us here at the Daily Worthless...

And to Black Friday Shenanigans!  When you absolutely, positively have to punch someone in the face for an Elmo doll!

Celebrity Tabloid Magazines/Shows

Last night I was laying in bed, wondering what today's Worthless was going to be.  The first thing that popped into my mind: Celebrities.  So I started writing some big "celebrities are worthless" blog post in my head, when I asked myself a question:

What is more worthless than the life of a celebrity?

The only answer I could think of: Magazines aimed at informing people/making people care about the lives of celebrities.

We've all seen celebrity trash before; in the checkout lanes at the store, on TV, all over the internet (each major browser/search engine site has a section dedicated solely to celebrity gossip) in both serious (E! Online) and snarky (Perez Hilton) formats.  In short, there is no paucity of sources for unimportant news about unimportant people.

I mean, let's be honest... these magazines are trash. All of them.  People, OK!, iN Touch, Star... suck suck suck suck.

Except for "Weekly World News".  WWN was awesome.  They had Bat Boy, Robotic Dick Cheney, and the Page 5 Girl.

Poor Bat Boy.  He always had that same stunned look on his face.

As bad as the magazines are, however, the TV shows might be even worse.  In the magazines, you'll sometimes have human interest stories about "regular" folks (Life After The Storm, Our Battle With Dyslexia, etc.).  These TV shows are wall-to-wall crap.  Does it honestly matter who was spotted canoodling at a trendy metropolitan hotspot?  Or which stunning Hollywood power couple is expecting?  Or who is wearing what to an awards show?  Or which of two celebrities wore the same outfit the best?  Do these things matter in anyones daily life?

Recently, though, there's been a trend emerging among the fame whore crowd: Ironic sarcasm.  These people fascinate/annoy the pants off of me.  Take, for example, a certain near-octogenarian and former talk show host/stand up comedienne whose name may or may not rhyme with Shmoan Shmivers... there apparently exists a television show that consists of her and a panel of other celebrities rating (but mostly mocking) the clothing worn by other celebrities.  And Ms. Shmivers is generally dressed like a throw pillow during said rating.  I don't care who you are, if you look like a human Bratz doll wrapped in drapes, you probably don't get to call anyone out on their choice of fashion.

Along these same lines, we find the "ambush tabloid" crowd. You all know the show... the one with the smarmy ex-lawyer who stands there with a cup of Starbucks and a dry erase marker, taking field reports (about what celebrities were seen where, or said what, or were with whom) from his camera-armed, unwashed miscreant army. Unwashed Miscreant 565624a will usually say something snide about a celebrity at which point the entire room will laugh, blissfully unaware of the tremendous irony to be found in mocking the same people who quite literally keep them employed.

I, however, don't receive pay from these people, so I'll mock away, completely justified and completely unironically.

I mean, tabloids and gossip shows gave us Paris and Kim and LC and Audrina and... if this isn't enough to make everyone hate them, what will be? Does the Editor of US Weekly have to burn down an orphanage?  Will Entertainment Tonight have to partake in ritualistic animal sacrifice? What more proof of worthlessness do you people need?

Now I understand completely the importance of escapism.  And mindless entertainment.  Believe me, I watch some dumb stuff.  But as soon as the program is over, I leave it at the door.  My wife is SUPER into these tabloids, too. (One of the first presents I ever bought her was a subscription to People) And she will cut you if you try to turn off the E! Channel when she's watching.  But there's a fine line between being entertained and being hopelessly wrapped up in a celebrity wedding. When people go from being fans to being sucked into the illusion that they're a part of these peoples' lives, it gets dangerous.  We get people trying to kill President Reagan or stalkers breaking into peoples' houses.

Or worse, we get people like this guy (language warning):

"SHE'S A HUMAN BEING! LEAVE BRITTNEY ALOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE"

Honestly, I don't think I've ever been that upset about anything in my life, let alone a pop star who is on the downward slope of her career.

Is this all to blame on celeb tabloids? No.  You can probably blame the internet, the 24-hour news cycle, and good old-fashioned crazy a lot of the time, but in our celebrity-obsessed culture, things like tabloids certainly don't help.

Eleven percent of voters even admit that celebrities had some sway over who they planned on voting for in the recent Presidential elections.

Now that's just plain crazy.

So join me in a salute... to celebrity tabloids, the bastard stepchild of news and entertainment!

Tweens

This one might anger some folks. But don't worry... if I know you personally, odds are I'm not talking about YOUR tween.

You know what's normal?  Growing up and watching your friends get married and have kids.  You know what's not normal (at least not normal-feeling)?  Getting so old that your friends and people you went to school with start having tweens.  It seems odd to think that some of my friends have kids that literally are on the verge of starting middle school. I was a middle schooler once. My friends were middle schoolers once.  I myself have a daughter who is a scant 4 years away from tweendom. It's weird growing up.

Especially today.

Not to go all old-assed man on you guys, but kids these days are a totally different ballgame from even my generation.  And this is nowhere more evident than in tween culture.

Now, for the uninitiated, a "tween" is a "person who is between the ages of 10 and 12 years old (although some say the range is 8 to 12, 9 to 14, or 9 to 13, or 11 and 12), in grades 5-7 or 4-8"

Basically tweens, in Britney Spears talk, are "not a girl, not yet a woman" (feel free to substitute masculine gender nouns where applicable).

p.s. Brit, puberty called... you're definitely a woman.

I mentioned above how different kids were today from when I was a kid.  Considering I'm only 30, that's kind of saying a lot.  12-year olds today have cell phones, iPods, iPads, designer skinny jeans, banking accounts, XBOXes... they're completely plugged in.

You know what I had when I was 12?  A Super Nintendo that I could only play between 3-5 and on the weekends.  That was it.  That was the extent of my electronic distractions.  We didn't have the internet (Windows 95 and AOL didn't come about until the next year) or cell phones (well, my mom had one, but it was the size of a shoebox and had an hour-long talking time battery life) or cable, but we DID have imaginations.

We rode bikes, we played in washes, we played tackle football and broke each others' collarbones for making fun of my mom (sorry Ryan)... long story short, we had fun. And not the destructive, selfish jerk kid kind of fun.  Good, clean fun. As far as I know, we did no lasting property damage.  Again, as far as I know.

But I had something most tweens today don't: Responsibility.  Over the summers while I was in middle school, I would work for my grandpa. Doing construction. June through August. In Las Vegas. For $2 an hour. 

But it taught me how to work. It taught me pride in that work and, most importantly, how awesome pay day was. If you mentioned work to a tween today, I'd imagine their eyes would glaze over.

"Work?  Like, as in DO stuff??  Ugh.  Whatever.  Does it have, like, wi-fi??"

Remember how I wrote about toddlers, and training them to bring you things? Tweens are like those toddlers, who now just disregard their orders. It's infuriating because they're infuriating, but not yet legally old enough to beat up or abandon.

Now, before some of you parents of tweens start to bombard me with comments and emails about how awesome and sterling and fantastic your tweens are, read this:

You're probably right.  Your tween is probably awesome. 

But for every awesome tween, there are 3 or 4 that are giant pieces of poop pie.

I'm no behavioral therapist, but a lot of it might just be the culture.  Kids today are the first real products of the "Barney Generation"... you know, the "I'm special, you're special, we're all special in our own little ways" generation? 

He's lying.  Some of you just aren't that special. At all.  Sorry.

Somewhere along the line, we stopped giving kids Fs in school, and handing out trophies to the winning team, or even keeping score.  Somewhere along the line we started grading papers in purple because it was "too abrasive".  

I guess, in some small way, tweens are kind of society's comeuppance.  Kind of a karmic pimpslapping for getting away from teaching kids to have balls.

Before I signed off, I thought I'd leave you with a small list of things we have to thank (blame?) tweens for:

1. The Twilight Saga books and movies
2. Skinny jeans
3. Justin Bieber (partial credit/blame to Canada, as well)
4. YouTube sensation "Fred" (this dude has almost 1 BILLION video views on YouTube... the History Channel has about 25 MILLION.  Let that sink in for a minute)
5. Anything NOT cartoon on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel
6. The Backstreet Boys (tweens in my day weren't perfect)
7. Rebecca Black and "Friday"
8. My Super Sweet 16 (though some blame should be meted out to the parents as well)
9. The crash of MySpace
10. The impending crash of Facebook
11. NBC's Chris Hansen and Dateline: To Catch a Predator
12. #YOLO
13. Textttt messagesss thatt r typedd liek thissss <3
14. The kissy face and peace sign pictures

The list really could go on and on, but I really must stop.

So, with all that said... to tweens, the inventors of the awkward 2-4 year pit stop between not knowing and not caring!

Artificial Sweetener Packets

Right off the bat, I feel like I should let you know some things:

1. This post will not be about the "evils" of artificial sweetener.
2. This post is not about artificial sweeteners as a whole.
3. I really, really dislike artificial sweetener packets.

Okay, now that that's done.  So yeah, about these packets. You know what they're good for? Getting moved out of the reach of children when you're out to dinner. That's it. I kid you not, these things are magnets to tiny hands.  If we ever go sit down for dinner at a restaurant, my 2-year old will have these packets overturned and spread out around the table in amount of time it takes for me to sit down and start looking at my menu. Ultimately, this leads to me spending so much time cleaning them up that I don't get to read the menu and I end up ordering the chimichanga for the 235,915th time. I mean, you know, hypothetically.

Also, they're just gross.  And this isn't an indictment on artificial sweeteners, as I said above.  In full disclosure, I drink enough diet coke to quench the thirst of a small village.  Honestly, I'm a case study on artificial sweeteners, because if they really caused all the health ills that some people attribute to them, I'd be a walking formaldehyde tumor with Alzheimer's. I'm clearly not ripping sweeteners. No, I'm ripping drinks sweetened with packets of artificial sweetener.

You know why diet sodas are awesome?  Because the level of artificial sweetener is predetermined.  A bunch of company scientists in a lab somewhere figured out the best ratio of sweetener-to-beverage, and made a drink.  This drink then went to focus groups and taste tests.  Then, if it passed with approval at that stage, it gets bottled/canned/bagged, and hits the market.  When you drink a can or bottle or fountain diet soda, you're literally drinking the best product that whichever soda company produces, in terms of diet soda.

Sweetener packets?  Not so much.  You basically have to guess.

"How many packets of 'Sweet-n-Equal' is it going to take to make this water with lemon taste like delicious lemonade?"

Let me save you some time: All the packets of sweetener in the world won't make that lemon water taste like anything but lemon water and butthole. 

Making "ghetto lemonade" is an art.  Even when using sugar, nothing is certain.  And you're just not going to do it with artificial sweetener.

Spoiler alert: This is not going to go well.

Finally, what good ARE artificial sweetener packets?  No one orders a soda and then adds their own sweetener.  Why mess with perfection?  You can only use artificial sweetener packets in 3 things: Water, coffee, and tea.  Water we've already been over.  Now, I don't drink coffee or tea, so I can't testify as to their use in those drinks.  However, I DO live in the South, and sweet tea is practically a religion down here.  I'd imagine someone offering artificial sweetener packets to sweeten someone's tea  is liable to get smacked in the mouth.  And coffee?  When have you ever heard "I'll take my coffee with cream and 3 packets of sweetener"?  Sugar?  Sure.  Sweetener?  Nope.

p.s. Def Leppard didn't sing "Pour Some Sweetener On Me" for a reason.

So, in short, artificial sweetener packets are worthless not because they CAN'T be used, but because, when they ARE used, they make whatever they're used in worse. And that's just worthless.

So, to artificial sweetener packets!  The Geraldo Rivera of restaurant drink additives!

Decorative Towels

What women see...

I want you all to close your eyes and... wait, if you closed your eyes, you couldn't read this...

Nevermind.

Okay, just read this and bear with me:  Think of an item you use every day. Where do you keep this item?  In your pocket? Near you? Probably somewhere logical, like next to the place where you tend to use that item the most.

Now imagine you need to use that item.

But you can't.  At least, not that particular item.

As it turns out, you own several items identical in form and function to the item in question, but they're usually in places other than the most convenient location for the item in question. Isn't it annoying to have to go out of your way to get an item to use, when there is a perfectly good item to use right within arm's reach?

Welcome to the dilemma of the decorative towel.

Fun story: At least once a week, I take a shower, and forget to grab a towel.  Sometimes, I'll luck out and remember before I get in.  However, sometimes, I'll find myself, at the end of the shower, standing there in the tub dripping, realizing I've forgotten the ONLY thing that is truly necessary when it comes to showering.  I'll then walk past no less than 2 decorative towels to get a clean, regular-use towel, by which time I'm already cold, and mostly dry.

What men see.

But does the thought of using the decorative towel ever enter my mind?  No.  And why?  Because men have been conditioned, over the decades (centuries?) that decorative towels have plagued our lives existed, to never EVER use these towels, under threat of either death, or, even worse, annoyance of wife.  We're simultaneously pissed and mystified.  We're... pisstfied.  Yes, I did just create a word.

...that you remember to never use the fancy towels ever again!

And what's more infuriating about the decorative towel is where they decorate.  It's a freaking bathroom.  Do you know what goes on in a bathroom most of the time?  Nothing worth decorating, that's for sure.  Notice that this blog post isn't about decorative window treatments, or dining table centerpieces, or coffee table books. Because those things are PROMINENTLY DISPLAYED IN HIGH-TRAFFIC AREAS.  Who is coming into my master bathroom to admire the scenery?

Even more confusing?  The rare "hand towel/decorative towel on-the-same-rack" combination. Which one is which?  Which one can I use?  Are they both decorative? Can I dry my hands on the handtowel, but not my body on the bath towel?  If not, why not? AND WHY AM I THINKING THIS HARD ABOUT FREAKING TOWELS?!

Let's see what the dictionary has to say about decorative towels:

Worth-less (adj.) 1. Without worth; of no use, importance, or value; good-for-nothing;

That's the decorative towel to a tee.  It is a towel that can't be used as a towel is used.  You might as well have decorative toothbrushes that you can't brush your teeth with. Or a decorative toddler that you can't train to bring you things.

Now, to be perfectly frank, I don't suppose I'm doing anything groundbreaking by complaining about decorative towels.  I'm sure I'm neither the first nor the last to comment on the uselessness of decorative towels. But this blog is devoted to worthlessness in all its forms, regardless of popularity.

So with that...

To decorative towels, the wisdom teeth of household accoutrements!