Concentrating on what’s really important
If
you’ve ever wondered about the origin of the word vomit, wonder no more. It stems from the IndoEuropean root wem, which gave rise to wamble, which is in no way related to what Elmer Fudd does when he goes for a stroll in the woods.
Wamble is both a verb and a noun, meaning to feel nauseated, or a feeling of nausea, which was what I was getting the other day while browsing through one of those women’s magazines in which the vacuous inanities and egocentric self-absorption of middle-class life in 21st century North American society take precedence over all else.
According to the World Health Organization, in 2010, malaria, which is both preventable and curable, caused an estimated 655,000 deaths, mostly among African children.
A third of the world’s population is at war and there are something like 27 millions slaves worldwide.
The world, in short, is in sad shape, and yet here was I reading about Mason jars as a means of containing clutter, why we love chickpeas, removing red wine stains with undiluted lemon juice, the importance of taking a little “me time,” losing weight, going green, and three things to do with a tennis ball other than playing tennis.
Then I ran across a piece they had featured listing 10 ways to make the world a better place.
Aha!, I thought, finally, a much needed dose of reality.
But I was wrong.
In spite of the subhead, the list had nothing to do with making the world a better place.
In keeping with the rest of the magazine, it was all about me, me, me, no doubt having been thrown in as a sop to the sloppy sentimentality and trite, self-congratulatory, mommy-blog banality of what H.L. Mencken referred to as “the booboisie.”
By the numbers
Here’s how it went, starting with No. 1:
Sign up for a run or walk for a cause.
Isn’t that a wonderful idea. And how wonderful it will make you feel! I’m sure it will also bring some small measure of comfort to an impoverished Ethiopian hill farmer earning US$1.50 a month with barely enough energy to lead his one malnourished goat out to pasture some 15 miles distant from the termite-riddled and vermin-infested packing crate he and his family call home to know that you are plodding up Bonaventure Avenue in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in your $60 Nike moisture wicking tank top and $50 North Face “Eat My Dust” shorts on his behalf.
No. 2: Bake a bunch of muffins for your coworkers.
Oh cripes! Here comes the crazy lady again with her stodgy old bran muffins. God only knows what she puts in them. After that last batch she brought in and made us eat I was on the toilet all afternoon. No. 3: Compliment a stranger. Yeah, right. Try walking up to some muscle-bound ape with tattoos adorning his forehead, both cheeks and the back of his neck and complimenting him on his simianlike appearance.
No. 4: Next time you’re on vacation in a foreign country, give all your currency to someone who lives there before you leave.
Small wonder they hate the gringos, with their fat wallets and even fatter wives, the condescending way they have of talking to the natives and the tawdry trinkets and spare change they casually leave behind in their luxury suites when they go back to their affluent lifestyles and comfortable homes up north.
(Personally, I don’t believe in travel. If God had wanted us to go places He would have given us something less scary than jet planes in which to get there. Also, ever since the resurgence of the bedbug population in the Northern Hemisphere, I’ve been prone to delusional parasitosis, a condition in which the victim believes that tiny biting or bloodsucking creatures are crawling over his body. The mere thought of encountering even one of these creepy-crawlies gives me the heebie-jeebies.)
No. 5: Be nice to the customer service person helping you with your technological problems.
Looky here, you arrogant, pimply-faced geek. I haven’t been waiting on hold for the last half-hour for some kid to tell me that nothing can go wrong with my machine and that if it’s not doing what I want it to it’s because I’m too stunned to figure out how to work the cursed thing properly. Up yours and have a nice day! Click.
No. 6: Tip a restaurant server generously, even if it wasn’t the best meal you’ve ever had.
“I think 20 per cent would be sufficient, dear. After all, he did spill the soup in your lap, our table is right next to the bathroom, there was a bunch of hairs holding the mashed potatoes together, the mussels were definitely off by several weeks, and that certainly looked like a beetle leg floating in the gravy. And there was no need for him to call you a cantankerous old cow when you complained about your steak being overdone.”
No. 7: Make a donation of your time or money to an organization you’ve never supported.
I guess they don’t mean the KKK, the Aryan Nation or the Republican Party. They’re probably thinking more along the lines of those weird sorts of groups who look after orphaned lemurs on the island of Madagascar or push for free trade coffee at NDP conventions.
No. 8: Visit a senior who lives on her own.
One of the main terrors of growing old, as I see it, is being patronized by perky young do-gooders who figure that anyone over the age of 60 is either senile or hard-ofhearing. This explains why they tend to speak to the aged very loudly … and ver…ree…slow…leee.
No. 9: Mentor someone without them asking you to.
Mentoring, in case you didn’t know, is a trendy way of “developing insight to turn hindsight into foresight,” to quote from some of the catchy jargon they put out. Basically a New Age load of crap.
No. 10: Be patient with someone who isn’t quite getting what you’re saying.
You think that the reason they are not getting what you are saying is because they aren’t as smart as you and are incapable of appreciating your intelligence and learning. In actual fact, they recognize what a patronizing pain in the arse you really are.
But then, this whole business of saving the planet and making the world a better place isn’t really about the rest of the world, at all. Or the six billion human beings resident therein. That’s not what’s important. What matters the most in this narcissistic age is feeling good about yourself, which isn’t surprising considering that most people are only interested in themselves.
However, it’s when they come to believe that everyone else shares their main passion in life that stomachs like mine start to wamble.