Since I’m 50 years bitter today, I’m supposed to be having my mid-life crisis, but since we all know that I’m not making it to 100, that means I’m well past my mid-life crisis and should have had it a while ago. But since nobody really tells you when this life is over, it’s not really fair that some people get mid-life crisis’s when they turn 50 and others like me should have been having mine at 35 or some ridiculously young age to be having a crisis.

Needless to say, here I am having a crisis wondering if being a cranky old man makes you live longer, and if so, why am I being a cranky old man instead of a bitter old man, which shortens your life. Either way, let’s stop talking about how my life is going to be shorter and how it just keeps getting longer. And how my list of reasons to be bitter keeps getting longer every year, but the amount I get to list on this post is only one more than last year, which seems unfair, because every year, I have multiples of 50 more reasons to be bitter. The reasons multiply exponentially, but the number of reasons I get to put on this list only grow by one. Seems a little unfair. Which reminds me, I need to list this one on a bitter seller list.

1. Watching parking lots from my perch at the gym. Why do these people work so hard to get one spot closer, when I’m done with my hour long session at the gym before they actually find a good spot?

2. My dependence on drugs. Tylenol, Advil, Ibuprofen…all just to get a base level of excruciating pain.

3. People following me, but not following me. Also, people that aren’t following me, that should be following me.

4. Bloggers that are famous for crappy blogs, and famous people for being bad at blogging.

5. Advice from people. It’s bad enough that I had to listen to my dad dispense advice for every little thing. Now I have to hear it from people I don’t care about.

6. Red Herrings. I prefer blue herrings for their straightforwardness and not fooling me.

7. Pasta puns. Pasta la Vista, baby. Macaroni grill cheese sandwiches. The world is full of Pastabilities.

8. Monsters that live rent-free under my bed. They should at least pay me for their time underneath.

9. Harvard and Stanford. Every single movie with an ambitious teenager HAS to get into Stanford or Harvard. Seriously? They’re just rotting colleges with a few alumni that went on to make something of themselves. Everyone else just got into them because daddy got into them. Besides, they aren’t real. They’re actually just movie sets.

10. Treasure Hunts. They all lead to the end of rainbows and none of them actually have gold.

11. Leprechauns. The only one actually seen is on the box of Lucky Charms.

12. Monuments. Just like people, we build them up, just so we can tear them down.

13. Inches. I think they just de-feet the purposes of backYARDs.

14. Creepers. No, not those hostile green creatures in Minecraft. I’m talking about those invasive plants that in gardens, like clovers and spruces.

15. Idiot attractors. Stuff like meetings, donuts, candy and being entertaining. Stop being fun if you jsut want idiots around all the time.

16. Rye bread. It is denser, heavier and earthier and linked to better health. If I wanted to taste the earth, I’d live in a cemetery.

17. The underratedness of Band-aids. They get a bad rap, because people think they only solve surface situations. But they actually look cool on action heroes after fighting terrorist.

18. Terraforming. No, not terror forming. Terraforming, like when the Decepticons wanted to take over earth so they could build Cybertron onto the earth. Or when Zod wanted to build Kryton on earth. Aliens love the earth for the resources, and just need the annoying non-resource (humans) to get out of the way.

19. Feng Shui. If they changed the requirements to putting speakers in each corner of the room to maximize the surround sound, I’d be down.

20. Street Magic. I’m okay with magic, but I’m not a fan of being in the middle of the street.

21. Roads. In Back to The Future, we were promised that where we were going, we didn’t need roads. It’s past 2015. I believe it’s high time we get rid of the roads.

22. PAX (Penny Arcade Expo). I can’t remember the last time any arcade only cost a penny, let alone an expo that cost a penny.

23. Kings. Most of them only have fake monarchical power, except for the King of Obvious, which is me, because I have the power to annoy my kids appropriately for a king.

24. Morning talk shows. They would be great if they weren’t in the morning, or involved talking, or were a show.

25. Contrarians. My brother used to drive me crazy with his contrarian personality. Now I drive him crazy with mine.

26. Surviving the drama at work. I hate surviving in the wilderness, but I could do it if I tried. But having to survive in the workplace…not doing so well.

27. Berating celebrities. I know they are people and have personalities, but most of that is acting. If you knew their actual selves, you’d see they are bitter ragemonsters like me.

28. Dreaming at night. I prefer day-dreaming, because it’s a more productive way of avoiding work.

29. The BBA’s. The Bitter Blog Awards are almost as important as the Dundies, way more important than the Oscar’s. Still haven’t been televised, because they care about ratings or something.

30. Youtubitterness. No watches Youtube anymore, because videos are longer than 3 seconds. Which means they only got to the first four words of this blog post. That’s bad, because it started with “Since I’m turning 50 this year” Guess I can forget about Millennials or Gen Z’s ever reading this post.

31. Bitter Lowlights. Shaq does a show called Shaqtin a Fool, where he shows the few times NBA pro’s mess up. My show is the opposite where I show you the things I did right (by accident).

32. Desolation of Smog. In Utah, we have really crisp, clean mountain air. You just have to search for it in the middle of the smog.

33. The Inversion. No, it’s not a Leo Decaprio movie about getting inside people’s dreams. It’s where bad air gets trapped inside the Salt Lake Valley, like I get trapped at parties.

34. The Phoenix Rising. From the ashes of the fire that burnt down Smokey the Bear’s house comes some really good honey.

35. Klout. It was a website that used social media analytics to give everyone a score and how relevant they were. Sadly, Klout didn’t have enough Klout, because according to Klout it didn’t have a good enough Klout score to stay in business. Maybe it should have pretended to have Klout like me.

36. Google +: Klout integrated with Google +, which might have been its downfall. What is Google +, you say? It was Google’s version of Facebook, except it was bad and never made any sense.

37. The Bentalist. It was a show on the Bitter Entertainment Network where I read the minds of people to solve crimes. If you’ve ever seen the show The Mentalist, that was based on my show, the Bentalist. It’s currently in Season 25, Episode 3. Most of the show is just me talking to birds and trees. But don’t worry, the special effects make it look like I’m talking to birds and trees. The first episode was me talking to a tree. “I want more carbon dioxide. Here’s a little oxygen in exchange.” Compelling stuff.

38. Bitter Latin. It’s similar to the pig dialect, but more just me raging about things in a bitter dialect.

39. Bitter Blog Coming Attractions. Instead of having to go to YouTube or a movie theater for Coming Attractions, you just have to login to a website on the dark web, and read a phrase or two about what I will blog about next. It’s the next big thing.

40. Kid book reviews. I critique kid’s authors for their less than stellar work. They think they can get away with short books with fewer words, and less intelligent plots, because their core audience can’t read. I hold kid authors accountable for their horrible work and make them step up their game and write longer 80,000-word novels if they want to get a good rating from me.

41. Fairy Tails. I don’t know how they can call themselves fairy tales when fairys are rarely in them, and most of them have tails. And most fairys don’t have tails either.

42. Discontinued museums. I’m pretty bitter that there is no museum where we can walk through hallways of discontinued stores, products, or websites. Imagine showing your kids a Blockbuster store, a Circuit City, a Borders Books, a KB Toys, a Sam Goody, or a MySpace, Vine or Facebook. That would be a history museum for me.

43. Motivational speech. If you want a speech teaching you how to bankrupt your business, make everyone around you upset, or how to waste time, I’m your man. If you want to be motivated, go sit on the couch and wait for an idea to come to you.

44. Frankenbitter. Just like Frankenstein’s Monster, I come from a lab, where a bunch of bitter parts and cells decided to get together and form a bitter creation that blogs a lot and avoids work at all costs.

45. Exits. Why does it seem like exits look eerily similar to entrances?

46. Where are you from? I hate this question, not only because I don’t know, but why is it their business? I’m sure they are going to use that information to invade my privacy. But then I remember that you will only have privacy if you are interesting, so I know I have privacy.

47. The dying language of Sarcascrit. While I learned a few words of sarcascrit when I was younger, I became fluent in college. Much like Latin it is a dying language, so others don’t quite get it, which makes me super bitter.

48. Bionics not being popular enough. I’ve always wanted to be 50% robot and 50% human. I have a lot of body parts that are wearing out, and I need them replaced by smartmetal, metal that includes free secured wi-fi, 10G and a fast charger for my phone and car. Also, a video game controller as part of the hand. I hope I don’t get hacked though, because that would make it uncomfortable when my bionic middle finger sticks up on its own.

49. Er’s. In honor of the 49th place, I give you…the 49er’s, an NFL team I’m not a fan of, and the gold prospectors in 1849 that took all the gold that was in my backyard.

50. Popularity. As I age, I get less and less of this. Which is why I’ve worked so hard at being bitter. Because it also makes me less popular. By the time, I’m 100, even my kids will have had enough.

So there you have it. Unfortunately, you only get that. I have thousands more reasons to be bitter, but you only get the ones that made my bottom 50 list. But you probably couldn’t handle the rest, so just take what you get.

I’ll be spending the rest of the day getting annoying phone calls from relatives. Can’t wait!

ARRRRRGGGHHHHHH

Bitter 50 Reasons to Be Bitter Ben