Airing of Grievances 2020

Behold ye and gasp in terror at the 2020 Airing of Grievances.

-The Airing of Grievances itself

The universe, in its hilarious wisdom, decided Festivus should occur just a few hours after the shortest day of the year. It’s always a sluggish time now that the days are getting slightly longer. About the only thing more depressing than the dark is that new light. Luminosity aside, the time of year tends to make my blood heavier. The arteries get all tired and I feel a weightiness flowing into my arms and legs. I’ve next to no energy for catharsis. Watch for this year’s list to simply trail off in ellipses. 

-speakers

Hey society, we’ve been in the thick of it for like the whole year. Get some headphones for our Zoom meetings already. You holdouts (like 95% of people for some weird reason) are probably not worried because “the computer speakers are loud enough for you to hear.” Fortunately (and shamefully) for the very worst offenders, that annoying feedback more definitely echoes to the other meeting attendees through those 50-decibel speakers of yours. If you can hear your Zoom meetings fine, then you might actually be the problem. Turn off your speakers and hear the meetings fine through headphones. Mute them when you’re not speaking. If you’re on your phone, plug in your ear buds. I promise you, the year would have been better if you would have. 

-Chrome

It’s theoretically nice that Chrome windows have a large user interface. Hey but good luck moving the Chrome window to another screen or even half an inch over for that matter. Because the available surface area is maybe a single square pixel, grabbing a Chrome window without either closing a tab, creating a new window, or clicking a new link actually takes more dexterity than say, picking a lock or assassinating a world leader. Bring back draggable space! Bring back empty space!

-squeaky table

Ever since I’ve been imprisoned at home I’ve required not just a laptop, but an additional 50-inch monitor (well mostly for YouTube during breaks) and a big fat ergonomic keyboard. A normal desk doesn’t provide the needed space and since I have a natural fear of mount brackets, I’ve needed to set the whole workplace up on my parents’ 50-year old card table. I have lots of memories of this card table, but the legs squeak and shake with every mouse move and keyboard stroke and monitor punch. One day the whole thing will come crashing down and i’ll be forced to look busy working whilst on the floor lying on my stomach attempting not to fold my spine completely backward.

-legs

Work days and Netflix nights lead to two daily acts -- the inevitable crack and near collapse of the knees after sit-clining for ten hours. Sometime in March I predict with one of these standing motions one or both kneecaps will shoot across the room. I’m guessing that’ll lead to one of two outcomes: the lucky one where I fall to the left onto the floor, breaking a rib; or the fall to the right where I hit the side of my head on the aforementioned card table, splitting my ear open and sending a shard of skull through the cerebellum.

-non-legs

As a result of world events, my legs are now frail and shriveled, but that doesn’t necessarily apply to the rest of me. Thanks to a series of various free weights and a newfound interest in various forms of protein consumption, my upper body is now just like way shredded. Perhaps a bit TOO shredded. It’s not usually my scene, but hey, weird year.

-dogs

My new residence has all sorts of non-living grief, but somewhat of a minor grief is that the backyards on either side contain dogs. From what I can tell though, both dogs are pretty cool and seem like the kind of dogs that would save me from drowning in an above-ground pool. My issue is that every week or so they both howl. I’m actually not complaining about the howl so much as it’s only like every week or so. I wish these dogs howled more. It actually sounds like way cool. They only do it every once in a while. I’d love to know how to get dogs to howl. When those lousy dogs are in the mood, it sounds a bit like I’m vacationing at Dracula’s castle, but they’re hardly ever in the mood, the dumb dogs.

-trains

My new neighborhood is right near the downtown train station. Trains are going in and out of the neighborhood all the time, but they hardly ever blow their train horns. When I first moved downtown like 15 years ago the trains blew their horns all the time and back then I sort of hated it. Now, it would be nice to hear the horns just so I could be somewhat reminded of life 15 years ago. Also, the train horns remind me of my grandma’s house when she lived near trains. Grandma doesn’t live near trains anymore. She died.

-underpass

Okay I’m only thinking of sounds right now I guess. For those of you who don’t know, I recently got a great new home that fits snuggly under an overpass. The sound of cars actually isn’t too big a deal. Actually at night when cars are driving over me, I often don’t hear them, but I feel them. The whole bed shakes. Again, I’m not complaining. It’s pretty soothing. Well, maybe I’m complaining that I need cars to drive over me in order to feel some semblance of human contact.

-furnace

My new furnace blows air just fine, but is physically pretty far from my room. I can’t hear it when it strikes on. When I was a little kid the sound of the furnace lighting up at night was what helped put me to sleep. Now I have the stupid warmth, but I don’t have the sound. Again with the sound! Curse 2020 and its circus of silent horrors!

--T-shirts

Hey why don’t we have T-shirts with built-in masks that we can pull up and wrap around our faces? All our new shirts should be like this.

-cars

Nowadays I drive about every ten days. Each time I foolishly expect to be like Charleton Heston in his Omega Man Ford Mustang with eight lanes all his own. Strangely I find more traffic than from before the apocalypse. Where is everybody going? You can’t all be GrubHubbers. How are there more of you? While we hibernated did the self-driving cars just get up and drive around? Is this Maximum Overdrive, but with nobody to run over?

-landslides

Look politics aren’t my thing. I should have invested in politics a little bit because of importance and all that, but I never did. Instead I spent the entirety of the 21st century lobbying for more violent fantasy movies, so I’m not gonna get very political with this list. Lemme just mention something as an outside observer. Let’s just hypothetically say that like four years ago this weird orange guy miraculously won an election with 3 million fewer votes than his opponent. Turns out existence became even weirder than we thought imaginable after this guy took office. Also during this time just about every one of this guy’s statements and actions were heavily criticized angrily, publicly, and humorously. The guy’s supporters needed to go out of their way to seek out positive impressions, and with that extra work, many of them came to a conclusion that the guy has been savagely misunderstood and is, in fact, a positive force for this hypothetical nation in this hypothetical situation. I don’t personally believe that, but even if you do believe that, with all the other obstacles and all the things you know and all the people you’ve argued with over the last four years, how could you possibly believe this guy won in a landslide this time?

-melatonin

Taking a bit of melatonin to help with the ‘ol sleep lately. I’m not sure it’s my scene, man. I’ve noticed it tends to invite a few familiar faces to my nightmares. I don’t necessarily have the coping skills for such social engagements during my slumber.

-Boba Fett

In my formative years Boba Fett was my personal hero. He looked real badass and freezing people was similar to killing, but more painful. Over the years I’ve come to terms with him being the doofus of the galaxy. He died by falling into a sand hole. Later we found out that he’s the basis of all those clones in olden times. All his originality kind of got sucked away when we found out there were literally like a billion of him. In a way I kind of respected him for having a tremendous PR team. We thought he was cool for all those years, but he was just really good at having a great image. I even appreciated that the armor he wore was something he swindled rather than rightfully earned. Far from a glorious warrior, this guy was a sniveling scoundrel and I was there for it. Now, with a bit of tough helmetless words and some kind of holographic armor deed, Jon Favreau wants me to believe Fett’s noble again -- even honorable. I don’t know if I can handle that kind likeability whiplash. This is a lot like how once upon a time Klingons were just like swashbuckling land-grabbers but then they get corrugated heads and suddenly it’s all honor, honor, honor. Hey while I’m talking, Baby Yoda shouldn’t be a thing. Original Yoda wasn’t an alien. Original Yoda was a human being who was 900 years old, but because of The Force he was able to keep himself alive and that’s what a shriveled up 900-year-old looks like. Don’t fact check this. It’s true. It’s just not written down anywhere.

-water heaters

My water heater apparently has solid deposits of salt or something banging around in there. Sounds like popcorn. Going with the theme, I kind of like the sound. At least it’s something, as what few other sounds I hear are just the sounds of an unfamiliar world. The bad thing, I suppose, is that Google says this popping sound is a symptom of the water heater possibly exploding in the future. The home warranty people contacted the water heater guy, but he hasn’t returned my calls. Hey Jeff, call me back! The heater is behind the oven so we’ll probably need to move that out of the way. Yeah, I know it’s a totally weird configuration. I’m no houseologist.

-pretty people

I’ve seen every version of every pretty person in the world. I want a few more shows of people who look like me. And I want them to be cool. Let’s cut a few steps here. I want to be on a TV show.

-leaves and bark

One of the reasons I moved to this new house is because of a gorgeous neighborhood Seuss-like tree that bends over into my yard’s airspace. Another reason is the excessive xeriscaping of the yard that’s mostly just bark. What I didn’t anticipate is when autumn came along, all those leaves collected in the barky basins. Raking the leaves is an option, but only if I want to rake away all the bark as well. If I want to maintain the set-up xeriscape, I practically need to individually separate each leaf from the bark by awkwardly gloved hand. Do you know how many leaves fall in an average backyard? I started counting but gave up after 30. There were way way way way way way way more than that.

-attic

I have a wonderful attic that’s actually a lot more difficult to get into than Narnia. The closet ceiling passage is eight feet up. Fortunately with my expanded upper body physique I’m able to pull myself up through the vertical opening, but then there’s another opening to the attic two feet above that. Internal access is therefore quite impossible, but good news! There’s actually a door to the attic on the outside of the house. Bad news. It’s a second story door with no stairs, ladder, or escalator. The door is just comically 15 feet in the air. I’d attempt to get up there with the ladder I have, but the uneven ground leaves two or three inches of gap between the ladder and house/earth. I’d need to have a witness record my fall in order to make any meaningful collection (although now that I think about it I’m not sure who I could sue in that situation). I think there’s paint up there? Maybe wasps.

-2021

Will we be better? There’s light now. Suddenly, just in time for Christmas, more people are dying than usual, so that kind of sucks, but nevertheless, maybe this science thing will pull through. Don’t be a total dick and ruin everything so close to the finish line though. This year, spend your Christmas alone and sad if you’re able. Next year, award yourself and the people you love with two Christmases. But speaking of the ones we love, one thing we gotta remember as we’re heading into this light, is that even though we’re striving to get back to this normalcy, this wackjob of a year has enabled us to choose what few people we’ve dealt with. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t set out to hang with my enemies in 2020. Perhaps not so much physically, but rather socially in our cyborged-out way, I’ve chosen more than ever to hang with people I knew would keep me sane. When we’re back in the office or the movie theater or the DMV and we’re dealing with the devil’s children again, a tiny little part of us will miss this year where we spoke and laughed with the great ones more than ever. Will we be better? Remember that movie Independence Day? It’s a quaint movie where the overall message is that The United States saves the planet from aliens. Okay but do you remember that tiny little part where it shows the alien ship in the Middle East and Iraqi and Israeli soldiers have gathered together to jointly make a plan against the aliens? The same phenomenon happens in the original Watchmen story (the comic book, not the movie), when it takes a catastrophic alien invasion to rally society to work together. Btw, there are layers of nefariousness in Watchmen, but it still plays with a phenomenon we learned as children when we stopped fighting with our siblings long enough to fight whatever bully may have picked on any part of our family. We humans fight the greater threat. In 2020 we were invaded by aliens, but somehow despite a common enemy, we still found lots of reasons to yell at each other. We even still found some reasons to endanger each other. Will we be better? The light is on its way, but what if we need more time in the dark? I stupidly think I may actually still need the time. Good luck 2021. It’ll be great to finally make it to the Sealab year. Will we be better? Will I be better?