Christine the Curmudgeon

What the HELL has happened to Brooklyn since Christine the Curmudgeon was a child there?  Once a working-class borough, it seems to have turned into a place for snobby, entitlement-minded yuppies.  Especially this Park Slope neighborhood, which seems to always be the focus of these stories.

Brooklyn brewhaha: Babies in bars, part #4,563,445,357,654

When I was little, there existed these mysterious places that were the realm of adults.  These included bars and fine restaurants.  I never went to such places until I was almost grown up.  I went to my first “nice” restaurant when I was 16, with my high school French Club (it was a nice French restaurant in Philadelphia).

Bars?  Well, I used to drink beer illegally at the bar at Harbor Lanes, the local bowling alley in the dump town we moved to after leaving Brooklyn.  The first time I ever got carded was on my 18th birthday (the drinking age was 18 back then).

As I said in my last post, there is way too much child worship in this world.  The little buggers are now allowed to go pretty much everywhere, and woe to those who dare to complain about it.  Woe to those who ignore little Sasha (the cranky-looking baby in the article) when she’s trying to “flirt”, while they are trying to carry on an adult conversation, or watch the ball game on TV.  And woe to those who dare to yell, “SHIT!” when their team screws up…we cannot have little Sasha’s virgin ears hearing such foul language now, can we?

This is the way I see it – there are PLENTY of family-friendly establishments out there where parents can get together with their kids.  I would have no problem with one of these “Babies & Brews” groups meeting up at my favorite local TGI Friday’s…as long as they stay OUT of the bar room and sit at a table in the regular dining room.  This particular location has a completely separate bar area, and we always sit in it to avoid the screaming kids, plus we enjoy the sports bar atmosphere.  I always get annoyed when I see a bunch of women having “mommy’s night out” there, in the bar, with toddlers in tow.  Fortunately, it’s rare…I suspect that kids are not allowed on the bar side at all in this place, but maybe they didn’t enforce it on these particular nights.

I hate how these parents expect us to change our behavior to suit their “needs”.  Sorry, but if you don’t want your kids to hear people swearing, maybe a bar is not a good place to visit…especially a sports bar.  I also should not have to risk breaking my neck climbing over a bunch of ginormous strollers just to get to the restroom.  I’m telling you, places that allow these strollers to block everything risk getting much higher insurance quotes when it’s time to renew, due to the safety hazard that these things are.  In the case of this particular Friday’s, the bar area really has no safe place to stash the strollers, there is much more room on the other side; they can more easily set aside a space in which to stash them.

I do not exist to be entertainment for your child.  Shouldn’t you be teaching your kid not to talk to strangers, anyway?  You never know who might turn out to be Chester the Molester.

I would never dream of going into Chuck E. Cheese to use the free WiFi (do they even have free WiFi?), and then complain because the kids are running around and screaming and I can’t get anything done.  I wouldn’t sit in the dining area of ANY family-friendly restaurant and complain about kids smearing food all over themselves (something I find to be extremely gross and vomit-inducing).  So the least these parents can do is stay the hell out of our bars, or, at the very least, don’t try to change the bar culture by trying to control what we say, be is cussing or some other adult subject matter.

I am sometimes afraid that the day will come when the only way to get an adults-only night out will be at a strip club.  Even then the next thing you know, parents will want to start bringing kids into those places, too.

Yeah, you probably saw this post coming from a mile away, so Christine the Curmudgeon is gong to don her asbestos jammies now.  Yep, I’m talking about the story about the air traffic controller dude who let his kids play air traffic controller at Kennedy Airport.

In general, I get annoyed when people find it cute to let little kids do things that are better and more efficiently done by adults.  I absolutely hate it when I’m in line at the stupidmarket behind someone with a toddler, who lets the kid swipe the card and punch the buttons on the ATM thingy.  This isn’t just a case of the kid playing with the thing, this is how they are actually paying, and therefore, are holding up the line because the kid can’t get it right the first time.  Also, by the time they are finally done paying, the whole store knows the parent’s PIN, and it’s open season in the parking lot to mug her and take her card.

Annoying?  Yes.  But dangerous?  No. (other than the possibility of the woman getting mugged in the parking lot, but that’s her problem)

I am just floored by the number of people who claim that this air traffic thing was “CYUUUUTE” and “harmless fun”.  I say the guy and his supervisor are idiots, and should be damned grateful that nothing bad happened.  The world is not your kids’ playground; workplaces, grocery stores, etc, do not exist for their entertainment.  As for the air traffic towers, the law is quite clear is to who is and isn’t allowed up there.  If Mr. Curmudgeon were an air traffic controller, even I would not be allowed up in the tower.

When did this happen, this whole child worship crap, this “kids rule the world” crap?  When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to grow up and have freedom.  Now that I am grown up, little kids seem to have more rights than adults.  We are expected to excuse behavior that would not be acceptable from adults, “because it’s a kid”, even if the “kid” is 16 years old and shot a convenience store clerk to death.  Now I can’t even use a swear word in some bars, because they want to be “family-friendly”.  WTF?  It’s a BAR, dammit!  Since when do kids belong in bars, anyway?  What’s next?  Breweries making fake beer to market towards kids?  Maybe Sam Adams could come out with “Lil Sammy” for the kiddies, and offer coloring books that tell the story of Sam Adams before he grew up to become a brewer and patriot.

I understand that kids need to learn stuff, but NEVER AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS.  If they want to play with an ATM, I think they make little toy ones, and for older kids, they have Monopoly with an ATM (a game which will never enter the Curmudgeon home, I go for the traditional one all the way!).  Also, these kids need to be taught to show consideration for others, and holding up a grocery store line teaches them anything but.  No wonder so many kids are such brats these days, they never learn the meaning of the word NO.

As for bringing kids to work, it should only be done on the official, organized day for this purpose.  The kids in question should be old enough to understand what’s going on, and be able to participate in the planned activities.  Of course, there are certain workplaces where it should never be allowed, such as an air traffic tower or an operating room.  Good thing that the heart surgeon who did Mr. C’s surgery last summer didn’t decide to bring HIS kid to work that day!  Okay, kid, I put the implantable cardioverter defibrillator in, it’s working fine, you can go ahead and stitch him up now!

In the case of the air traffic dude, although I think he and his supervisor are idiots who made poor choices, I don’t lay any blame on the kids.  They probably didn’t know that it was illegal for them to be up there (I’m sure they know NOW, though).  But if the father loses his job permanently, I don’t want to hear one word of whining because he has these kids to feed.  He should have thought of that before he did this stupid thing in the first place, he had to have known it was wrong.  Even if the kids were just sitting there and not talking to pilots, they are still a distraction that no air traffic controller needs.  One little distraction could cost hundreds of lives!

Good thing I don’t fly much, if I ever do fly again, I’m first going to look for some term life insurance quotes I might well need it, especially if this guy gets away with this, and opens the way for EVERYBODY to bring their kids to the towers!

Anyway, I call for an end to this child worship, letting them do adult jobs and tasks, at least when it either inconveniences others (as in the supermarket example) or could possibly cause outright danger (as in the air traffic controller thing).    It’s one thing to love your kids, it’s another to allow them to walk all over other people, and never learn anything about consideration for others

So Christine the Curmudgeon has been under the weather (warning:  think LONG and HARD before listening to the gub’mint and getting that stupid Hamthrax vaccine).  And what does one do when sick in bed, but watch mindless TV?

Now I need someone to tell me if I saw something correctly, or was I just in a brain fog?  It was on today’s episode of The Price Is Right (Friday, March 5).  It was during the Tic-Tac-Toe pricing game, and the contestant had to guess the prices of a couple of items in order to win X’s for the Tic-Tac-Toe board.

One of the items was a pizza cutter, which announcer Rich Fields declared, “made pizza fun again!”  This was a big pizza cutter that fits over the whole pizza, it had blades on it, you push it down onto the pizza and it cuts it into even slices, all at once.

The two prices that the contestant had to choose from were $190 and I think $220.  Anyhoo, he guessed it right at $190.  I almost peed my pants at that price…$190 for a PIZZA CUTTER?  What are these people smoking?  I think that even Drew Carey thought it was stupid, he was joking about how he wasn’t aware that pizza stopped being fun, or something like that.

I mean, sheesh, for that money, I could probably get myself dental implants Mexico style. I paid almost that much for our New Hampshire Fisher Cats season mini-plan.  Who the hell has that kind of money to blow on a lousy PIZZA CUTTER?  How often do most people cut pizzas, anyway?  I have a Farberware nonstick pizza cutter that I think cost about $7 at the grocery store.  It’s good enough for me!

The prices of stuff on TPIR are “manufacturer’s suggested retail”, and usually are found for less in stores.  I did try searching teh interwebs for this pizza thingy, so see what it was retailing for out in the real world, but was unable to find one anywhere.  Obviously not a real hot item, huh?  This is why I think that I imagined the whole thing in teh fog of teh Hamthrax.

If anyone did see it, please let me know, so that I know that I’m not totally losing it.  kthxbai

Christine the Curmudgeon laughed, over the knowledge that the Smithsonian does NOT want O.J. Simpson’s suit…the one he wore when he was acquitted of murder.

The ego of this guy knows no bounds.  The whole world knows that he really DID commit those murders, but got off the hook due to a “dream team” of very high-priced lawyers.  Being acquitted may be something for HIM to celebrate, but most of the world does not want to see something like this in a place like the Smithsonian.  You know, where Julia Child’s kitchen is now?  And Dorothy’s ruby slippers, Fonzie’s leather jacket, and Archie Bunker’s chair?  Yeah, that place.  Anything worn by O.J. Simpson is NOT worthy of being placed anywhere near the above-mentioned artifacts.  If I had something worn by that murderer, I’d use it to wipe cat gack up off of my floor.

The Smithsonian would sooner accept Julia Child’s used humidifier filters, before they’d take anything from O.J. He’s a thief and a murdered and doesn’t deserve any recognition by this great museum.

I hope he just dies in the slammer.  Then, he can no longer pull any more of this attention-whoring crap.  Th news of his ass being dead will be the last of it, and that’s fine with me!

This is not something that Christine the Curmudgeon hasn’t ranted about before…once in a while, usually at the local Stop & Shop, there is some dumbassed bimbo cashier who cannot identify produce that I am buying.  Very annoying.

But it turns out that this may be getting more and more common these days.  British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is doing a new show for U.S audiences, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (warning: auto-play video).  In one episode, he visits a school, where the kids dismally fail at identifying basic produce items.  Here is a clip:

That was painful to watch. And no wonder sales of fat burner pills are going through the roof…when kids eat fatty, greasy JUNK, rather than healthy fruits and vegetables, of course they will become obese and have all sorts of health issues.  Being fat is just the start…there are also heart issues, diabetes, and so much more, all of which can kill if left unmanaged.

Hopefully this show will give some of these idiot parents a good kick in the ass, and force them to change their shopping and cooking habits.  I know times are tough, and that some so-called financial *experts* are actually telling people that the dollar menu at the local chain burger joint is cheaper than cooking and eating at home…but is it really, in the long run?  What about the medical bills when your kids develop complications due to obesity, heart problems, or diabetes?  Mr. C. is a Type 2 diabetic, and I can tell you that it is a very expensive disease to live with.  Sure, we have good insurance.  But if you don’t, and end up needing insulin, it can get super expensive, perhaps $400 a month or more.  Just for the insulin, not for the needles, or the testing supplies, or any other medications that might be needed.

I guess you could just skip the insulin to save money, but then you could end up as we did nearly a year ago, in the ER, with something called diabetic ketoacidosis.  Mr. C wasn’t trying to save money here, he was just being a lazy-ass.  But there is no excuse, he could have died, he learned this the hard way, now he’s not so lazy these days.  Hospitals are no fun.  They don’t let you out to go to a ball game or anything, no pay-per-view porn flicks on the cable TV,  and they keep waking you up in the middle of the night to poke you with needles.

So, parents, why not just skip all of this crap, learn to buy and cook better food now, and everyone will be better off.  And best of all, maybe the day will come that I can go to Stop & Shop and ALL cashiers will be able to identify the fresh produce that I buy!  See?  Win/win for all!