I’m Better Than You!

When I was a kid, “He knows martial arts” was impressive. When I was a teen I wasn’t impressed unless it was, “He’s a black belt in Okidoki.” I still have no real grasp of what the belt system is, but having a black belt must be impressive by the way people talked about it. Then somewhere along the line “degrees” were added. I’m no longer impressed by someone just having a black belt in Déja Fu*, but now they have to be a “fifteenth degree black belt” in order to be impressive. Again, I have no idea what the degrees really mean, but throughout my life the numbers I hear seem to be getting larger, so bigger must be better.

This trend seems to be happening in almost all aspects of life… We (and by “we” I mean “me”) demand to be impressed, awed by everything. I can’t just be impressed by a car, it has to have words like, “454” and “big block” and “hemi’ attached to it – as if I know what those words mean… (Well, I do, but you know what I’m getting at.)

The speedlight I bought for my camera is a YN565EX. Seriously, why the numbers? They’re made up – they don’t MEAN anything. And “EX?” There’s only one version of the 565, so why put the EX on the back? I guess to make it sound impressive…

*The martial arts Okidoki and Déja Fu belong to Terry Pratchett’s “Diskworld” series. Okidoki was described as “nothing really but a bunch of bunny hops,” and Déja Fu as “The feeling you’ve been kicked in the head before.” 

I kinda feel bad for them…

…but it is kinda funny.

Can someone tell me…

…why we need to interfere with Crimea’s decision to merge with Russia? It’s not like Vladimir Putin sent in 500,000 troops to take over Crimea – the Crimeans themselves held an election and opted to break away from Ukraine. This really isn’t our business.

Look at it this way. Pretend the US got embroiled in a political upheaval. Congress has been dissolved, people kicked the President out of office, there is no government, but there is economic chaos happening throughout the land. The Maine state legislature gets together and decides, “Hey, we really have more in common with Canada than we do with the US. Most of us have family there, we all speak Canadian already, and we generally identify more with New Brunswick than New Hampshire. Let’s let the US have its revolution, we’ll just quietly join Canada if they want us.” The people of Maine voted 95% to join Canada, the Canadian Prime Minister said, “Sure, sound good, eh.” If that scenario would play out – how would we feel if, say, Russia were to step in and say, “No, you can’t do that, and if you do, we’ll invade.” Seriously…

I like these people

This could change disaster relief for the better!