Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Remember what the Dormouse Said

The other day I stumbled across something and immediately shared it on Facebook that made me smile, and wince, in equal parts and simultaneously, “skinny jeans are easier to obtain than skinny genes.”

I long ago abandoned drainpipe trousers for relaxed fit jeans (so named because Big Butt didn’t test well with the marketing folks, I guess) and recognize that I’m right in the middle of the “surrender the things of youth” portion of the maturation process. I actually cheated to a certain extent, growing old without ever growing up.

Then I fell across this article buried in a Google news summary and am weighing whether or not to renew my gym membership. Kidding of course as this item, I’m surmising, may be quite a while yet in development before it’s generally available (by prescription I’m guessing), though none of that stopped any of the commentators who posted beneath the story from not only knowing everything but knowing everything better.

It was Evelyn Beatrice Hall, and not Voltaire, who offered “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Had she lived to see the trolls, worms and gnomes of the Internet she might have added, “but never mind.” 

I enjoy watching how one comment sets another different anonymous stranger off on a tangent until within five or six postings the comments and observations have NOTHING to do with the news item whose appearance originally precipitated the discussion and EVERYTHING to do with the intelligence (and lack thereof) of the previous poster.

Between knock-knock jokes and cat memes, we’re chewing up bandwidth like it’s going out of style and don’t seem to have managed to make anyone of us a whole lot smarter which, considering we have the keys to the universe in our hands, is more than a little embarrassing. 

But at the end of the day, we’ll still be much more successful at piling on the pounds than getting and keeping them off. We are, after all, only human.

-bill kenny    

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