Everything Else

Motivational quotes and little stupid phrases that help us keep perspective are okay, I suppose. That is, if you are a mouth-breathing chucklehead who doesn't have the gumption to pick the underwear out of your butt without some stupid daily calendar with pictures of cats saying things like "Go back a little to leap further". God knows there are enough suckers out there that the whole thing has become a cottage industry.

Whatever. I can deal with most of it. But I heard one the other day that I'd never heard before, or if I had, I managed to block it out with things like kids, and work, and sports, and the lyrics to "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Yoda" (which is a parody of "Lola", by The Kinks. Hard to say which is better, really). The phrase in question is as follows:

"I complained because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet."

GAAAAAHGHGGLACCAKCVLFKDACKAACKACK. Sorry, had to throw up in my mouth a bit. This may be the emptiest, most useless phrase since a "Mission Accomplished" banner flew on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln a few years ago.

Where to start with the debunking of this verbal chlamydia? For starters, if I want to complain, I'm going to. This country was founded on complaints, or else those whiny-a** Puritans wouldn't have left England in the first place. "Ooh, I'm so tired of religious ritual, Chauncey! Why, we should found a country with freedom of religion, and instead of those darned Catholics molesting little boys, we can instead have Protestants and Baptists stealing money and buying hookers! Fancy the notion!"

Even if I don't want to complain (which I do, trust me. I'm a big, fat, hairy man-woman who complains about every little thing), this is still a trite, stupid sentence. If I don't have any shoes, you can bet your sweet bippy I'm letting it be known how unhappy Daddy is about his feet being cold.

You know who doesn't have cold feet? The guy without any feet. Tell me how I'm better off than him, when I have severe frostbite on my toes, but his nubs are most likely safe inside of his pants. Advantage: random footless stranger.

Also, a guy without feet is probably getting disability. He gets a check (and rightfully so) that allows him to have an income, income that he is losing otherwise due to his footlessness. Meanwhile, Shoeless Joe over here, who happens to have all his feet but nothing to put them in, gets to stand barefoot running a meat-press at the Spam factory all day, just knowing that, at any time, a rogue piece of processed, not-quite-yet-a-meatless-nasty-food-product premature Spam lump could fly off the sander belt and land on his exposed metatarsals. I wouldn't want Spam on my feet even I was wearing shoes, much less barefoot.

Now, imagine you and the footless guy are both competing for a girl. She's a sweet young thing, and you both fancy her quite the catch. So what happens? You ask her to go dancing. That'll show Hop-along a thing or two! She accepts, you hit the local line-dance club, and you suddenly remember that you dance like old people fornicate: it's ugly to see, and there's a good chance someone is getting hurt. You tangle your feet trying to turn it out during the "Cha-cha Slide" and fall into a group of middle-aged women on a girl's night. Glasses break, wine gets spilled, blouses get stained, and menopausal women freak the eff right out. Even worse, your date is so embarrassed she never calls again.

So what does the footless guy do? He rows her out into the middle of the lake on a beautiful, starry night. 'Neath the romantic light of the full moon on a clear night, they share a passionate kiss, a kiss that leads to their courtship and eventual marriage, which in turn leads to children, children who grow up to be strong, handsome, athletic specimens who make straight A's and who feel sorry for your kid, a stupid, stupid child born out of wedlock to you and a truck-stop waitress with a glass eye that you hooked up with one night in a moment of desperation after drinking yourself blind over your lack of a loafer-filled existence. Advantage? I think we know.

So, the next time you want to complain about not having any shoes, go right ahead. It's a rough life. And if you should happen across a man who has no feet?

Beat him down. He deserves it.

Updated January 28th, 2012 at 12:13 AM by Chris Minton

Tags: "weird al", motivational quotes, puritans, rant, spam, stupid people

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Hi. Welcome to Mint's Two Cents. I hope to use this thing often, mainly to complain about stupid people and discuss the Arizona Cardinals with myself. I also hope to keep it entertaining and worth checking out regularly. If you find it to be neither, you obviously have standards that are unreasonably high. Do something about that, please.