List of Grievances

1. Drudge Report’s Global Warming Headlines

So Drudge has discovered that there’s money to be made in questioning the overwhelming consensus among scientists that man is causing global warming. And that’s not even why I’m annoyed,even though no peer reviewed scientific article (at least until 2004) has ever challenged that man is contributing to the warming of the climate. Rather, for me the bigger problem with the Drudge Report is that it has been encouraging people to think global warming doesn’t exist at all. Apparently this winter is colder than those of the past few years in some cities. So Drudge has been linking articles like these with labels suggesting this disproves global warming. That’s just annoying. I know I’m picking the lowest hanging fruit here in my post, but it’s still hanging fruit and so it needs to be picked. (Relatedly, you ever wonder if farm workers take their dates apple picking?) A) It’s winter. It’s supposed to be cold in winter. Global warming doesn't mean it's always 80 degrees. It just means average global temperatures are warmer than they used to be. You can't say, “Man it’s cold today. Global warming is ridiculous.” B) You also don’t insinuate global warming is a myth since winter 2008 is the coldest since 1999. Temperature rise doesn’t occur in a linear fashion.

Essentially, the problem with both of those arguments is they have a ridiculously narrow focus that miss the big picture, and it’s just so annoying to adopt this narrow focus when we are talking about such an important issue like the warming of the planet. Much like how ridiculous it is for Stu Lantz and the Kobe groupies to go nuts when Kobe hits a last second shot against the Rockets even though Kobe's 13-32 shooting performance made the game much closer than it should have been in the first place. We need to focus on the big picture people. That's what separates us from the autistic.

2. Jon Cornyn’s Petty Grievance

So Obama had a good inauguration speech. I especially liked it when Obama asked us to put aside our petty grievances to advance the interests of the nation. So it was especially heartening to see that Jon Cornyn doesn’t want to do that. Instead he wants to spend three hours discussing, or investigating or whatever the hell he hopes to accomplish by highlighting the link between Bill Clinton’s foundation’s donors and the possible improprieties this could create at the State Department. If there’s one thing this country needs in its efforts to move past partisanship it’s another investigation into the Clinton’s “questionable” financial affairs. Seriously, what could the angle possibly be? That donors gave money to Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation, a foundation that helps eradicate AIDS around the globe, in the expectation that his wife would be Secretary of State and then would…practice friendlier diplomacy with a country of this particular donor’s choosing? Anyways, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe if we only give Jon some room here, maybe if we designate a special prosecutor, and give that prosecutor 7 years and $60 million we can find out whom Bill has been banging since he left the White House.

3. Pauly Shore’s Standup

Apparently Johnny Carson wrote a paper in college about what makes something funny. That sounds like an interesting paper, and hopefully I come across it some day. In the meantime I want to talk about something that’s easier to discuss, why things aren’t funny -- like Pauly Shore’s stand-up. So Pauly went on for an hour with only eight minutes of laughable material (the laughable stuff was self-deprecating to the state of his career). The remaining 52 minutes were racist remarks (he dropped an n-bomb and adopted an absurd caricature of what a black person sounds like) and stories about how he has had sex with women. This really isn’t a grievance on the same level as the others though. Basically I just wanted to point out that I saw Pauly in Tahoe this weekend, and that I was in Tahoe snowboarding because I’m cool and cool people snowboard, and that the temperatures in Tahoe were really warm because there’s this thing called global warming and there hasn’t been snowfall in the Sierra Nevadas in weeks.

The remaining grievances are pretty self-explanatory:

4. Those that Think God Wants them to Occupy a Certain Section of Land

5. Those that Think God Wants them to Kill Nonbelievers

6. Those that Think God Wanted them to Be President

7. Ann Coulter

8. The Happiness of Others

9. The Laughter of Children

10. Those that Put Others Down, Including Former A-List Celebrities who Are Forced to do Stand-up in Podunk Towns on Holiday Weekends, to Feel Better About Themselves