Spring Cleaning

This is nothing like the spring cleaning that Winston was whining about Friday, it’s a lot more speculative. Right now the Washington post has ten things that they would get rid of in a world-wide spring cleaning. The ten things that the Post writers would do away with are the Nobel Prize in Literature, the NAACP, the White House Press Corps, Tenure, the Prom, the term “Muslim World,” Larry Summers, the Vice-Presidency, Television, and West Point. They have essays up about each one of those things if you’re especially interested; I wasn’t, and only read the one about the Nobel Prize, so I won’t be talking about their decisions. Instead, I’ve come up with a list of ten things that I would like to see be swept off the planet.

Twitter: Ok, so now Oprah has a Twitter, Ashton Kutcher has a million people following him, but this is plagued by controversy, and all of this is considered to be news. What the fuck? You cannot convince me that Twitter won’t be responsible for the downfall of America. It’s our lead-lined plumbing and barbarian hordes combined.

Sarah Palin: One of John McCain’s staff members, one who was involved in vetting Palin, recently described her selection as high risk, high reward. Fuck, that’s how I drafted my fantasy baseball team, it’s not how we should govern. I would be a lot saner if she just faded into obscurity.

All the people who got pissed off when Obama said that America wasn’t a Christian nation: It isn’t. Never was, hopefully never will be. Thomas Jefferson certainly wasn’t a Christian. Yeah, the money says “in God we trust,” but come on, that’s not necessarily a Christian god. If you want to, say America is a monotheistic nation; I’ll still dislike you, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised that you know a polysyllabic word. Or maybe go read the Bill of Rights.

Portugal: Xenophobic? Eh, maybe. But what has Portugal done for the world recently? They’ve made no meaningful contributions since pretty much the fifteenth century. If Christiano Ronaldo is at all indicative of the rest of Portugal, and I’m assuming he is, we can do without them.

CNN.com’s iReporter program: I can’t think of one meaningful contribution iReporter has made to my understanding of the world. Seriously, we don’t need to give a voice on cnn.com to every vapid asshole with a camera. That’s what blogspot is for.

Axis of Evil: Not the term, I’m ok with that. I’m mostly talking about Iran and North Korea. They’re both getting pretty uppity again, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them gone. While Iran is putting Americans in jail on specious accusations of espionage, the Israelis are getting ready to bomb them back to the stone age if they even hint about developing a nuclear weapon. I’m ok with that. As for North Korea, they’re doing all sorts of saber-rattling, saying that any sanctions would be regarded as an act of war. You know what else could be considered an act of war? Launching missiles and then lying about it. Crazy people don’t make good world leaders.

Stephanie Meyer: Is this the future of literate? Wikipedia actually lists her occupation as “novelist.” That’s like calling the homeless guy with a rhyming cardboard sign a poet. Somebody needs to do something; between Twilight and Napoleon Dynamite, Mormon propaganda is threatening to destroy American popular culture.

NASCAR: Stop it. I’m watching a baseball game, and FOX is trying to make me like NASCAR. It’s not going to work. And I don’t care how many backflips Carl Edwards does, he’s no Ozzie Smith. My respect for Tim McCarver increased exponentially when he just flat out said that Ozzie was better. And Joe Buck, what the hell, how can you possibly pick Edwards?!?! Jack Buck wouldn’t have put up with that garbage. Disgraceful. But back to NASCAR, it’s not entertaining, it’s just a waste of gasoline. Every time NASCAR stages a race, a Saudi oil prince smiles, and then writes a check to Hamas.

Newspapers: The internet has made them pretty much superfluous at this point. It seems like the only thing that newspapers really write about any more is the death of newspapers. I see why this would be a big deal to reporters, but it bores me. Let’s stop wasting paper.

The NBA: The NBA season started with like six teams being capable of winning the title. Attrition has whittled that number down to two, the Lakers and Cavs. Of course, the NBA is still going to go through with this whole playoffs thing, and it will dominate ESPN programming for two months, and I won’t care. Because the NBA is a joke. The officiating is farcical at best, there’s way too much whining, no one is especially interesting, and it just can’t match the intensity or entertainment of college basketball. I would not miss the NBA at all.