What the World Could Live Without

What the World Could Live Without

New Year’s is a time for resolutions, usually resolutions that will be hastily discarded like strip club pamphlets on the Vegas strip before those brand-spanking new 2016 calendars even get turned to February. So let’s not fool ourselves. Let’s just take a meaningful glance forward and consider how the world would be a better place without…. (fill in the blank here…) and resolve to do our darndest to make it happen.
For example, we all know the world would be a better place without greeting cards. Well, except for the employees of Hallmark. I love the sentiment of buying someone a card, but can’t we do this in the 21st century without chopping down a tree? Somewhere Al Gore is encouraging me. I should send him a card thanking him for that…
The world would be better off without controversies over something as ridiculous as breast feeding in public. Ladies, please just use a modicum of discretion. To anyone else self-absorbed enough to actually get offended by what is a perfectly beautiful and natural act, let me give you one simple piece of advice: turn your head 20 degrees. Period. Now shut up and find something more important to occupy your obviously troubled mind.
The world would definitely be better off without Kanye West. I so wish Beck had invited him to come up onstage to vent his frustrations over another Beyonce disappointment only to knock him square in the face just as Kanye’s right foot hit the stage, saying only, “Never step on me again, bitch” before walking over Kanye’s prostrate form and tossing his Grammy aloofly down atop of him.
The world would be better off without cowbell. Or at least less, not more, of it.The world would be better off without car alarms. Seriously, when was the last time one of these things actually prevented an auto theft? Meanwhile, my neighbor seems to have an uncanny ability to set his own off in the wee hours of the morning. I think the next time I might have to steal the car and joyride it to the swamp in Jersey where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.
The world would be better off without pedophiles. That’s probably a given, but I thought I should throw it out there. I know some disturbing people.
The world would be better off without boxing. Let’s not even get into the social impacts of licensed violence, boxing has just lost interest. Did you see the Mayweather versus Pacquiao fight that was supposed to revitalize and save the sport? Good luck. Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee….
The world would be without false moral dichotomies that grossly oversimplify the debate for the sake of weak-minded defenses of imposing one’s own moral choices on others. Enough already with the slogans suggesting that pro-choice folks are baby killers. I do not have to approve of abortion to believe that this moral choice should be left up to each individual for themselves. Just like I don’t have to smoke weed to believe it should be legal for those that do make that choice. I don’t have to- I just do.
The world would be better off without horror movie commercials. I have never been able to understand why people enjoy getting the snot scared out of themselves, but hey, that’s their prerogative. But do we have to have commercials for this stuff come on while I am watching a baseball game with my kids? The kids try to assuage my fears, but I still have to sleep with the nightlight on afterwards.
The world would be better off without phone gapers, you know those people who sit there engaged with their phone even though there is a perfectly good human being sitting right there in front of them.
And finally, the world would be better without self-indulgent blogs written by pompous blowhards who think they know everything and thus have to proffer up their opinion just to satiate their own unquenchable egos. Yeah, those assholes really need to go.

Steven Craig is the author of the best-selling novel WAITING FOR TODAY, as well as numerous published poems, short stories, and dramatic works. Read his blog TRUTH: in 1000 words or less every TUESDAY and FRIDAY at www.waitingfortoday.com