Happy Centennial to Us

I’ve spent a few days now trying to decide what to put up for this, our 100th post.  I thought it should be something light-hearted, joyful or inspiring, if not a combination of all three, and since if you haven’t noticed I’m not exactly Little Miss Mary Sunshine, that was a real stumper.  I mean, I once stayed at the DisneyWorld resort on a trip for a business meeting, and while my colleagues spent the day off visiting the Magic Kingdom, or Epcot, or doing something else appropriately Disney-themed, I spent my day puttering around the shopping area close to the hotel and making observations.  What I came away with was this:  DisneyWorld is like the former Soviet Union, only with better weather and brighter colors.  Everywhere I went, there were long lines of tired, unhappy people waiting to purchase overpriced, shoddily-constructed merchandise they neither wanted nor needed, and looming over it all, wherever I looked, was the larger-than-life-sized portrait of one Mickey Mouse.  He’s the Vladimir Lenin of DisneyWorld.

Don’t think I didn’t enjoy myself – I did, completely.  It’s just that what I find enjoyable and what the vast majority of the human race finds enjoyable are two very different things.  I’m not a pessimist so much as I am an incorrigible cynic; pointing out the dark cloud around the silver lining is my default setting and as much as it irritates everyone else, it’s what makes me happy.  If it wasn’t for cranks like me keeping you tethered, all you happy campers out there would OD on your own dopamine.  You need us, dammit!

So finding something appropriately uplifting for our centennial blogpost was particularly challenging for me.  But thanks to Tbogg’s link to Lance Mannion’s blog, where this was posted:

… I was reminded of this video from several years ago:

It still makes me smile – most especially the New Guineans and the crabs on Christmas Island, but also the lemurs on Lemur Island, the dog who danced with him in Kuwait, and the guy in gay leather bondage gear in London.

Even a hard-core malcontent like me can’t find anything bad to say about either of these – other than to admit I’m pissed that I went to college in the pre-YouTube era, and so it never would have occured to me to find a corporate sponsor to underwrite a year-long vacation – not to mention that I’m a much better dancer than Matt is.  So yeah, there’s your black cloud.

Happy Centennial to us!

Now, where the hell is Lyta, and when is Beth going to get back from her umpteenth trip this year to pick up the slack here?