I pay nearly 300 percent on the markup to get a can of soda in a gas station versus buying a whole case at the grocery store. I tolerate with people who need to be protected from themselves on what seems to be an hourly basis. I even learned to share the roads with drivers who have the memory and mental acuity of a soap dish.
Some days, though? Sweet Jesus, does it get to be difficult.Case in point is the local news tonight.
(Side note: We only really watch one channel for news in Minneapolis - KARE 11, the NBC affiliate - because the rest are embarrassingly awful. No joke, we have seen "investigative journalism" about college hockey players who were sneaking into bars underage -Oooohhhh... - countless scare tactic stories that were meant to draw us in at 10 p.m., but never did and the temperature of milk. No, really, the temperature of milk. That's still ridiculed in this house on a weekly basis and is one of the cornerstones of any good debate on why we need to move as quickly as possible.)
Well, tonight has just been one of those nights for stupidity on parade, but I'm almost happy to say it's not a direct result of the reporting.
First, we had a story of a heroic substitute mail carrier who - again, not kidding - saw a spider in a Meals on Wheels bag and then went to call the first responders. The elderly man who'd spent days on the floor was there because his daughter had gone out of town for the week.
She'd assumed that there were safeguards in place to help prevent those types of problems.
Gee, doctor, you think?
If your dad is your responsibility, has limited mobility and needs you to live at home to lend a hand, maybe calling home once or twice a day to make sure the old coot answers the phone should be one of those safeguards.
Unless you vacation in the Amazon River Basin, find a phone and call your dad. Don't wait for the mail carrier - who thinks God helped her find the victim on the floor - to clean up your mess.
As if that story wasn't bad enough for my blood pressure, the next knucklehead up was the drunk who had a few too many, bull-rushed a window at the hotel he was staying at in downtown Minneapolis and then fell to the ground when the window totally punked out and gave up without a fight.
(If I remember correctly, the only thing that saved this guy was that he landed on the hotel's awning, Tom and Jerry style, and that broke his fall)
As they interview this mouth-breather, he's admitting on camera that a.) he was pretty drunk and b.) any attempt to recreate what was going on in his mind at the time he was rapidly approaching the window is pure conjecture.
Wonderful.
So, he gets so hammered that he crashes through a window in a high-rise and manages to survive and I'm expecting the story to end well with a nice little life lesson and how much he loves his family these days, but no.
The camera pans back to reveal a Goldschlager ad on a wall as it becomes apparent that our favorite flightless partygoer is doing his interviews in a bar.
To recap: So drunk he jumped through a window on the something-teenth floor of the hotel. Now holds interviews regarding the incident in a bar.
Now, I had my share of alcohol-related injuries and many of them fell directly into the dumbass-induced category. However, I think falling 17 stories would be enough to scare me straight. I guess Baby Huey was boozed up to the point that he thought it was a ride or something.
You can train earthworms to learn from past experiences faster, campers.
(Update: So, it turns out the guys who fell out of his hotel owns the bar he was being interviewed in. Do I regret this post know that fact?
Well, I might, until I saw him quoted in the Star Tribune as saying:
"Hanson's reflections in recent weeks have been frequent, though he still doesn't know why this happened.
"Maybe it will come to him when he gets on his motorcycle again. Or maybe, he said, the episode is a sign that he should cut back on drinking." )
(Photo from OxfordRadcliffe.nhs.uk)
1 comment:
The AP reports, "The fall has made him more contemplative and given him a fresh perspective, he said, though he didn't know whether it would cause him to drink less."
Seems he's still not convinced he should cut back on his drinking. So, no, don't regret the post.
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