Friday, March 30, 2007

IRONY ALERT! Complaining about a complaint-free world

So somebody here at the Cerebral Itch Scratch Pad offices busted the channel knob off of the old Zenith console TV we have in the lunch room. So now thanks to this intra-office hooligan, we have to watch one channel until someone finds the needle nose pliers. Well, Oprah is on this trapped channel and as chance would have it I recently caught an episode that made me just a tad cranky. It featured Pastor Will Bowen of Christ Church Unity in Kansas City, Missouri. Pastor Will has whipped up a dangerous idea: a complaint-free world.

First off, Pastor Will is high. Anyone who thinks he can live on this planet in 2007 and refrain from casting an aspersion on something or someone is generously self-medicated and delusional. But to be fair, Pastor Will lives in Kansas City so once you weed out all the bitching you would do about living in Kansas City your list gets pretty short (we don't have any shops in K.C. that carry our cards, so f*ck it). This is yet another attempt by the humor and irony challenged population to compensate for their inability to crack wise. When you're funny, complaining is seen as irony, wit and/or sarcasm. When you're not funny, it's called "complaining" or in its feminine form, "whining".

Pastor Will gives away little purple LiveStrong knock-off bracelets that remind you to live a complaint-free day and also to let other people know you're an idiot. He encourages people to try to go complaint-free for 21 days and if successful, you will lead a happier life. Do you know what would happen if I or practically all the people I know tried to go complaint-free for three weeks? There would be a rash of homicides, strokes and alcohol poisonings by people who have ground their teeth down to nothing.

Spare me the platitudes, I'll keep admiring the genius of Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde, Groucho Marx and today's gold-standard in bitching, Lewis Black, et al. In short, Pastor Will can kiss my ass and go complain to someone who cares; oh wait, he can't. I win.

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