THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND

Every once in a while, I'll just be living my life and something happens that confuses me. I'm sure no one else can relate to this. Usually I can (and do) come up with reasons for the existence of most things. Chocolate? Happiness. People who don't understand sarcasm? Entertainment. Babies? The perpetuation of the human race. It's all quite simple, really. But over the last little while I've realized that there are a few things whose existence can't be summed up so simply. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that they CAN'T be explained. And I have illustrated each of them to better articulate my feelings. Proceed.

1. Dust. Just...dust, man.

I'm not a messy person. I keep things #clean. But no matter what I do, no matter how tidy I keep my room, dust somehow lands on everything. EVERYTHING. I understand it landing on the objects that sit on top of my shelves and desk, but underneath shelves and cubby hole things? What? How does it get in there? What is dust, anyways? Where does it come from and how does it find its way into every nook and cranny in my apartment? How can it both fall down on things and travel sideways into under-hangings? Does it have some sort of intelligence that allows it to fly wherever it wants? I DON'T GET IT. WHY DOES IT EXIST. So because this stuff is so strange and inexplicable, I've come to the conclusion that it comes from an equally mysterious and diabolical source: The Dust Fairy. Like her cousin the Tooth Fairy, or her more distant relative Santa Claus, The Dust Fairy enters your house while you are either sleeping or out at work and uses her dark magic to shoot dust all up in your business. She is omniscient and omnipresent, and never sleeps. She also can't be destroyed, and that is why dust shows up EVERYWHERE and always will. I'm sure you believe me. But, I mean, it's as good an explanation as anything else that's out there.

                                                                                                                              
2. How mattress stores stay in business.

For as long as I can remember, every time I have driven past a mattress store in my life, it is completely deserted. Like, an open sign is flashing and everything, but no one is in the parking lot. No one is in the store. How do they stay in business? Why are there so many of them? Not only are mattresses super expensive, but they last basically forever too. So how do all these stores sell enough mattresses to stick around—especially when NO ONE IS EVER AT THEM. It just doesn't make sense to me. As depicted in the illustration above, I just assume the mattress store salesmen sing show tunes while bouncing from mattress to mattress each night because no one is there to know otherwise—and no one's going to buy the jumped-on mattresses anyways.

3. The microwave "popcorn" button

Sometimes I buy microwave popcorn, and sometimes I put it in the microwave in order to eat it. But do I ever use the "popcorn" button? NO. NO I DO NOT. Why? Because it burns it. EVERY TIME. I don't get it. I feel like the guys over at the microwave factories need to have a little chat with the guys in the microwave popcorn industry and talk this issue over so they can get it right. Either that, or they need to stop assuming they know the right duration of time necessary to perfectly pop my popcorn and just get rid of the button. Because they're wrong. And I know this is probably surprising, but I have no desire to eat black, ashy, looks-like-the-remains-of-a-cremated-person popcorn.

4. "One Size Fits Most"

Every now and then at the store, I'll run into an item of clothing for sale that is labeled "One Size Fits Most." This type of label is typically found on scarves, hats, gloves, and the occasional rain poncho. And yes, one size may fit most, but it can't fit everyone, right? What about people with really long necks, or freakishly large hands? What about people so morbidly overweight that they would need an entire tarp to shield themselves from the rain? What about the man in the illustration above with a ginormous noggin? What do these people do? I feel bad for anyone who tries on a hat at the store meant to fit everyone that doesn't fit them. Is this a form of bullying? Probably. "One Size Fits Most...except for YOU Billy Fat Head!" I am convinced that if this ambiguous size did not exist, we'd eliminate the need for approximately 74% of therapists.

 5. Tuxedo Shirts

I think this one is self-explanatory.

6 CHRISTMAS SONGS THAT SHOULDN'T EXIST AND SHOULD GO AWAY RIGHT NOW

You know those people who adamantly oppose any mention of Christmas until after the turkey's crammed into tupperware for leftovers and everyone's knocked out on the floor from excess amounts of tryptophan in their blood? The ones who hear even the slight tinkling of jingle bells in a song prior to December and tense up in rage? And who can't function until they tell everyone about what an abomination it is to listen to Christmas music before the stroke of midnight after Thanksgiving? 

Yeah. I'm not one of those people. I'm more like this:

I promise I'm mentally stable.

I just love everything about Christmas too much to let myself join them....but even I have my limits. Because honestly, some Christmas records just need to be used as target practice for the tributes in the Hunger Games... or thrown into the ocean and then ripped apart by sharks...or, like...run over by a reindeer. And then everyone would be happy. Because they're just that horrendous.

Allow me to explain, in song. Just kidding. I'm just going to make a list like I always do because I'm original and stuff.

1. The Dolly Parton & Rod Stewart version of Baby It's Cold Outside

Whose idea was this collaboration? Really, I want to know. Probably someone evil. It's like someone was just like "You know what? I just decided that I hate everyone on the earth. Let's get two of the most annoying singers ever together and ruin a perfectly good song." It's basically the equivalent of someone today pairing up Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber together to sing this. Rod Stewart sounds like he has a life-threatening case of emphysema and Dolly Parton sings like what I'd imagine a Barbie to sound like. Which is bad. So I'm basically convinced that the decision to put them together on this one was some kind of sick conspiracy. 

2. Feliz Navidad

Not that I'm, like, xenophobic or something, but seriously- just pick one language and stick to it, people. It's like they wanted to make a Christmas song in Spanish, but they didn't think people would understand what they were singing about so they just awkwardly added the English parts in it. And also, it's not like we play Christmas music that's also in Russian, or Afrikaans, or like, Yiddish or something. How is that fair to everyone, hmm? But I think the worse part about it is how ridiculously redundant it is. If you want to wish me a merry Christmas WHY DON'T YOU JUST DO IT ALREADY. WHAT'S HOLDING YOU BACK. I'M SITTING RIGHT HERE GOSH.

3. Christmas in the Northwest 

I'm pretty sure that most people have never heard this, but anyone who lives in the Northwest knows that this song is the reason we're all terrified to listen to Christmas radio stations. We live in constant fear that this might start playing and that we won't be be able to turn it off. I really don't need to say anything else about it, because its atrocity speaks for itself.

4. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Most of these songs just annoy me, but this one actually makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable every time I have the misfortune of hearing it. Everything about it is just disturbing. Kissing? Tickling under beards? The fact that the kid singing is totally fine with his seemingly adulterous mother making out with a hairy stranger who broke into the house? Gross. Just gross. Whoever wrote this one must have thought, "Yeah, let's take an innocent holiday tradition and make it as creepy and perverted as we possibly can." This clip accurately expresses my thoughts about this song.

5.  Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer

All I have to say is that if we all don't live in a trailer park, why should we have to listen to music that makes us feel like we do? Food for thought. And maybe I'm the only one here, but I actually like my grandparents. Whose idea was it to write an upbeat song about their grandmother's death? "I believe in Santa Claus because he killed my grandma." That's a lovely sentiment, isn't it? But radio stations keep it around because apparently nothing says 'Christmas' like banjos and a morbid tale of nonchalant seniorcide. The only reason I can even moderately condone this song is because it chronicles the consequences of drinking eggnog...and I hate eggnog with a passion.

6. Christmas Shoes

And because one song about death wasn't enough, this exists. This song is the horrible equivalent of every cheesy, badly-made Hallmark movie ever filmed. Instead of making me emotional like it's calculated to, it just leaves me with a lot of questions- questions I would ask the kid in the song if I had the chance. Like, "If you love your mom so much why aren't you spending her last moments with her instead of at the shoe store?" or "You do realize that when she dies she won't be able to take anything with her...like those shoes. They will just be glued to her cold, lifeless feet." And since when do a pair of shoes make someone look beautiful? I don't know about you, but I tend to look people in the face. Not their feet. GET IT TOGETHER KID.

When it comes down to it, the only Christmas song we really need is this one. Yep.