I was going to write something smart and compelling about Natasha Leggaro and the SpaghettiOs champions who took to the Internet to call her a cunt last week, but I’m tired. Suffice it to say that I agree with her complete and total lack of an apology, and I still think that SpaghettiOs is in the wrong for their totally tone deaf Pearl Harbor O tweet.
Natasha Legarro can say mean things about old people because that’s her schtick. The SpaghettiOs O mocking war heroes is another story completely. As shit-tastic as this country is, we require a higher standard of decency from our alphabet-shaped cartoon food mascots.
Lady comedians, on the other hand, can say whatever the fuck they want. Not least of all because nobody listens to them anyway.
Case in point: “I can see getting pregnant… but, following through with it?”
That’s been on the Internet for five whole years now. That’s far more offensive than pointing out that 90-year-olds rarely have teeth.
Are we so afraid of death that we have to pretend stuff doesn’t start to fall off after awhile?
SpaghettiOs tag line may be “Uh-oh SpaghettiOs!” but we all know that the Uh-oh is rhetorical.
Alternate ending: SpaghettiOs tag line may be “Uh-oh SpaghettiOs!” But Natasha Leggaro’s is “Old people got no teefs.”
I don’t know.
I’ve been writing all day for work. I’m all out of words, people. I realize that, other than my weird lay-off grief vomit in the middle of my Walter Mitty review, I haven’t talked about my real life since we left for Christmas vacation in Oregon. I can honestly say that I am way less stressed out, although I got no sleep again last night, and today was my first official day back to the regular grind, so this has the opportunity to go back to being scary terrible at any moment.
But I think I realized something over the holidays. This is going to sound shitty, but it’s not: I realized that the bottom can always fall out.
Stay with me here.
I thought things were bad at my company when I was having so much trouble, first with fitting in, then with finding another job, but then I got laid off and it got worse. Then I thought my life was stressful enough living off savings while trying to build a freelance clientele. Then our cars both broke down at the same time, and we had to sell one. Eventually, I ran out of savings, leaving us living job to job with no security and an uncertain future. Then the cat needed surgery. Then she needed medicine. Then the car broke down again with a completely unrelated problem (this happened while we were in Oregon).
Of course, I started to list all the things that had gone wrong in the last year or more. But then I realized that, even as all of these things are problems, they’re also solutions.
I stressed over how unhappy I was at my job, and then they actually gave me money to stop having to go there. I worried about the cost of two cars until I sold one, not only making money off it, but eliminating the cost of gas and insurance. I worried about living off savings until that dried up, and of all the luck, work started coming in. Yeah we don’t have savings, but our bills get paid and everybody eats. Then my cat got sick, and we had an opportunity to test run the pet part of our proposed move to Oregon without the pressure of also having all our shit strapped to a truck. Turns out they get along fine in the car once everybody settles down. And the shit with the car this Christmas: for $450, Johnny’s Auto in Corvallis fixed a problem I’ve spent at least twice that, and upwards of 2 years trying to fix at the Honda dealer down here.
And what exactly am I so fucking worried about? That I’ll be homeless? Been there. That I’ll be unemployed? That’s the last six months of my life. So what if the bottom falls out? That’s just an opportunity to change your perspective on shit.