Spring Cleaning

There's an accumulation of stuff cluttering the inside of my head so I decided to do a little spring cleaning. I believe any of these topics could be worthy of their own blog posts - and some may yet end up with that distinction - but right now they're only distracting me.

• If you're going to text - send or receive - and you're walking in a crowd, please, get out of the way of the rest of us. You're clearly not paying attention to the world around you, so step aside. Slide up against a wall, or maybe stand next to a tree or homeless person...something the rest of us are prepared to walk around anyway. Stay out of doorways. Simple courtesy. Just get the fuck out of the way. I believe it should be socially acceptable for you to hit someone if they are texting while walking in front of you, oblivious to the rest of the world, and then stop dead in their tracks. I'm not saying ball up the fist and crack them in the face, but anything on the order of an open-handed, Three Stooges slap across the back of the head should be considered reasonable. You can even use your best Moe Howard voice and add a little "Get outta the way, ya numbskull." Same thing if you're in a line and the line is moving but you're not because the person in front of you is updating their facebook status to "Holding up the rest of humanity." If the gap exceeds three people...a middle finger flick to the back of the earlobe should be justified as a little something to bring them back to the here and now.

• Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen set off a mother of a controversy by stating that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, never worked a day in her life. This brought out all sorts of media backlash in support of motherhood being the most difficult job in the world. I will concede that the process of giving birth is difficult. But raising kids? I don't know about that. I considered myself to be about 50% or more into raising my two kids. I did probably everything their mother did almost equally as much, and as well, if not better - diapers, bathing, entertaining, feeding. Okay, except breast feeding, although given the male anatomy it would have technically been more difficult for me than for her. So while raising kids is not an easy task, calling it a job is pandering. Making it a woman's job is sexist pandering. I'm sure if being a mother was a job I'd have heard about it if only because I'm a man taking work away from a woman. (Didn't happen.) So it ain't a job. If, however, motherhood was to become a class of employment, then we need hiring standards before anyone has kids to make sure the workforce is qualified for the job. Nothing too challenging. An application, a few personal references and a piss test.

• I hate people who prevent me from going down the aisle in the grocery store because they park their shopping cart in the center of it. If you do that and you're not within range to move it, I may be tempted to put something in your cart. And not something good, like candy. It'll be a box of embarrassment, like condoms. Have fun at the checkout counter.

• If you are standing at an uncontrolled intersection that has crosswalks and you're not going to cross, step back from the curb. If you are going to cross, make some eye contact. I don't know what happened to looking both ways before crossing a street, but I'm getting fed up with people thinking they can step out into moving traffic as if those white lines of paint on the ground are high enough to stop a car from rolling through. I realize the law says I have to stop for you when you're in the crosswalk, but you still have to exercise due caution getting into it. It's not wise to assume that once your foot leaves the curb mine will leave the gas pedal.

• White Hispanic. Yeah, like that changes everything.

• Weather forecasts are bullshit, especially the "percent chance of rain" predictions. You know what the difference between a 40% chance of rain and a 60% chance of rain is? Neither do weather people. A 40% chance of rain means that if the same weather conditions exist in a location similar to yours, it'll rain 4 out of 10 times. That also means 6 out of 10 it won't. If there is a chance of rain, the chance is 100%! Either there's a chance, or there's no chance. There is no in-between. So stop putting Vegas odds on my weather. There should only be three rain forecasts: ain't gonna rain, looks like it could rain, and it's raining. You want to know how to plan your day around rain if you aren't sure? Drive by a car wash, or call a roofer. If they aren't working, carry an umbrella.

• Here's something relatively sexist. I was thinking about old job titles - mailman, policeman, repairman, etc. - and how they've changed to become gender neutral - letter carrier, police officer, repair person. I was trying to think of any titles still in existence that end with "-man." I couldn't. Then the irony dawned on me that there are two male-gendered titles feminists hadn't been able to change: "woman" and "female." (*Blogger's note: If you come up with a male-gendered occupation or title, send it to me so I can research why an attorney hasn't made a buck changing it.)