The origin story for Ben’s Bitter Blog is heavily disputed by everyone who tells it, mostly because I have a bad memory. But let’s give it a try.
In 2012, I was very frustrated with my job and career path. I wanted to be a creative advertising copywriter making Super Bowl Commercials for a big ad agency in LA, New York or Chicago. Instead, I was a customer service rep in Seattle, Washington. The career wasn’t careering.
If I couldn’t be an ad agency copywriting guru, I at least wanted to be a hacky stand-up comedian making enough to barely afford a 300 square-foot apartment in the heart of Topeka, Kansas. The problems were mountainous. First, I’m an introvert who doesn’t like talking to people or being in crowds – and a comedian’s number #1 requirement seems to be loving the spotlight in a room full of people. Second, I hear that a sense of humor is a prerequisite to make it in Comedy 101, and telling dad jokes doesn’t exactly fill stadiums. Third, stand-up comedians travel to different cities to tell jokes and Bitter Ben isn’t a fan of travel. Or getting off the couch, for that matter.
In baseball, three strikes are enough to get you fired. As Michael Scott said, “Fool me once, strike one. Fool me twice… strike three.” I’d struck out with all three stand-up comedian qualities, so I had nowhere to go to tell bad jokes or complain about how bitter everything made me, which come to think of it, is most comedy anyway.
Then it hit me: maybe I do have a place to put my comedy (i.e. bitter rants). Does a blog require you to be funny? Not necessarily. Does it require standing in front of a crowd that needs entertaining? Noooo. Does it require travel, or even getting off the couch? Only if you can’t reach your computer from your position on the couch. Well, never mind – dream dead before it started.
On the other hand, I had access to a computer at work, which had access to the internet, which had access to WordPress, which I could log into while at work. And when I wasn’t doing anything at work and my boss couldn’t see my screen from her angle…I actually could do all those things. So what did this enterprising young man do? He procrastinated for a few months, and THEN started a blog. What better name than an alliteration? My name is Ben, I’m bitter, and this is a blog. Thus, the genius name, BensBitterBlog.com.
With such a genius name, and a genius concept, this thing will last at least a few weeks, he thought. And to his surprise it did – because there is an endless pit of bitterness to dig from and the angles can change from post to post, year to year. Along the way, I discovered something: buried deep in every bitter rant were tiny bits of actual knowledge. Pearls of wisdom, hiding in the complaints.
The roster runs deep – deep enough to sort into categories. So I’ve broken this e-book into five of them for your consumption. Just remember: they all taste a little bitter.
Category #1 – Rants with Giftures
Giftures is a made up word by me that is a mash up of Gifs and Pictures. I know it’s stupid, but when I first did it, I would insert pictures and Gifs in the same post, so I could get away with it. After that it just stuck. After several years of posting regularly three times a week, I pared it down to just once a week on Fridays. Fridays used to be my easiest day, because I just had to do a short post, then add some Giftures, but when I went to just Fridays, I had to give the Giftures posts a little more meat. So the following posts are some of the Best of posts about…whatever I was thinking about during the week. Here’s just a small sample of my best BFG’s (Bitter Friday Giftures) over the years.
Rant #1 – Weddings
Let’s start with the rants. The introduction for this one is easy. The #1 thing you should know about me: Weddings make me bitter. I’ve been to a dozen or so in my life and I’ve never enjoyed one. Including my own. I believe in marriage. Weddings…not so much. I’ve been subjected to dozens of wedding shows on TLC like Four Weddings (a bunch of spoiled brat women attending each others weddings and doing what women do best – judging each other, while acting like their wedding was the best), Bridezillas (the absolute worst humans on the planet that were given 100K+ budgets and still act entitled for more), Say Yes to the Dress, and dozens of other shows about horrible people getting way more than they deserved.
While the weddings I’ve personally attended weren’t entitled women, they were either boring, not related to me, or my wife forced me to go, and with no easy escape plan. And by escape plan, I mean, I felt more constricted by being at a wedding than if I was in jail. I either didn’t know anyone except the Bride or Groom, or I was forced to sit at a table with complete strangers that also didn’t want to be there. There was a maximum amount of cringe there, like cringe music that no one wanted to dance to, or good music that no one wanted to dance to. There were toasts and bad cake, and noise, which also makes me bitter. And not one of the weddings I ever went to were in my living room, where I had a comfortable couch, TV playing in the background, and nothing going on except me being able to play games on my phone, and occasionally wander into the kitchen and get something to eat. In other words, not one of the weddings I went to were in my comfort zone. If that wasn’t bad enough, I had to attend wearing a suit, which while a suit makes me look dapper, isn’t built for comfort on a couch. I was forced onto a dance floor in a suit that I knew I would be sweating in, despite the fact that a suit isn’t meant to be sweated in.
I could go on, but let’s just let this bitter post I did right before my daughter’s wedding (which has now happened September 1, 2026) tell the story of how I really feel about weddings. This is a post I did in August 2026 called:
Dadvice BFG’s
I’ve been collecting Dadvice like some kids collect Pokémon cards. Unfortunately, I’m losing brain cells almost as fast as I collect the Dadvice, so if I don’t write these things down, they will be lost to the netherworld. My daughter is getting married and I’ve been told that I have to give a speech for it. That means I’m going to have to start collating all this advice together so I can dump it all at once on my daughter at her wedding. I feel bad for her, because it’s going to be like drinking from a firehose. That is apropos because not only is my son going to be a firefighter, but my daughter also does the same kind of dump job on my wife and I all the time.
She is an introvert like me, so from the moment she had independent thoughts, she would hang out in her room for days at a time. We thought of it as her organizing all her thoughts so she could then “Download” them all to me and my wife. That’s how us introverts work. It’s like a Superhero that needs a little time to build up their superpower, so when it is released it is much stronger and potent. Much like a Superhero building up their power, she would be in her room collecting every thought, philosophy, thesis, and the collective consciousness of the universe. When she emerged from her cave, she unleashed her full power upon my wife and I, and wear herself out. Then she would retreat back into her room recharge her superpowers to be used in a few days. It was a chaotic whirlwind of an event every few days. I do something similar, except instead of downloading it using my voice, I type it out and let you people read it every week on bensbitterblog.
My first dadvice for her is to have someone record the speech, because it’s going to scatterbrain all over the place. Since it will include every Dadthought I’ve had since her birth, it won’t be absorbable in one sitting. She’ll want the recording, so she can replay, pause, fast forward and delete most of it.
Here is some of the Dad Advice I will give her. Maybe since I’m writing it down here, I can skip the speech and just tell her that the “link is in my bio”.
Which leads me to my first piece of advice. But first, to make this more interesting, imagine that I’m Eminem and someone tossed me the mic, and I’m about to spit some hot rhymes (pretend these all rhyme too) so fast your head will spin. Deep breath and…
- Once you get married, don’t have a public Instagram. Especially one with a “link in my bio”, if you know what I mean. The public includes scores of creepy men and bots that have no qualms about sliding into your DM’s whether you’re married or not. Keep that for close family and friends you actually know.
- Write down special moments in a journal. You won’t believe how many memories you forget or details about events you forget if you don’t write them down. I’ve lost all time great bitter blog ideas when I forgot to write them down or said I would remember them in the morning.
- Make your home a peaceful place for your husband. A good man (which he is) will go to the ends of the earth for you if you give him a little peace when he comes home. I promise you he won’t ask from you near as much as you will ask of him. If you just give him a happy greeting when he comes home, it will multiply the number of happy days you have.
- Sincerely compliment him. It doesn’t have to be all the time, and you don’t have to make up things to compliment him about. Men will so rarely hear compliments, that when they do receive them, they will fuel him for weeks, sometimes years. I still remember compliments I got 6 years ago (which may have been the last time I got one).
- As a woman, you were born with value. You have the ability to give life, and your husband will always appreciate you for giving him kids, if you choose to have them (I promise I will be a good and bitter grandpa if you do). Your man, just as every other man, has to provide value in order to be appreciated. So when he does go to work and provides for you, and protects you (from bugs and burglars), remember that. Don’t forget to appreciate what he does for YOU.
- Remember you are a woman that has feminine traits. I know you talk about being a boss babe, but being a boss babe is leaning too much into the masculine and you will lose some of that femininity you were born with. If you work, look at the money you make as not your “side money”, but your family’s money.
- Let him be a leader. Letting him lead doesn’t mean you have no voice, or that you aren’t a strong woman for doing so. If you disagree with him about something, you don’t have to whine, nag, or yell at him to get your point across. Disagreeing with him with kind, firm determination is often all a man needs to know that something needs to be corrected.
- From time to time, look at things from his perspective. Imagine what he is going through. Imagine the heavy burdens he might be carrying.
- Make him a sandwich every once in a while. Don’t refuse to make him a sandwich because you’re fighting the patriarchy. Make him a sandwich because it is a kind thing to do for a man you love.
- Don’t look at all the things he does for you as “bare minimum”. Everything he does for you is something he does because he loves you.
- Expectations. On the Today Show about 15 years ago, they cited the best way to be happy is to not have too high of expectations. In other words, don’t stake the happiness of your marriage on your husband being a billionaire, the next prophet, or the world’s best father. Have reasonable expectations like a man that will do his best to be a dependable and hard working employee, a man that will stay active in church, and a good father that loves his children.
- Being married will not solve any of your problems or make you any happier. Don’t ever depend on your husband, or even your children or parents to “make you happy”. Happiness comes from within you, and how you choose to live your life. He can show you love and do things for you, but happiness comes from your outlook on life. You can’t make him happy either. You can only provide love and hope that you two find moments of happiness from your interactions.
- Marriage can be boring. That’s okay. There is no way in the world that a 50 year marriage can sustain a romantic love that gives you the tingles the whole time. There will be times that you are together where you can sit in a comfortable silence and not say anything. That’s okay.
- On the other hand, if something is bothering you about your husband, communicate with him, but be clear. He, like me and every other man in the world, except Professor X, can’t read minds. Some men like me can read emotions, but can’t read the reason behind them. If you are upset, feel free to be specific about what is bothering you.
- Remember there are things you can’t change about him. You will not be able to make him taller. You will not be able to regrow hair on his head. You will not be able to make him more outgoing. Just like you, he only has 24 hours in a day, and he also has a social battery that wears out.
- Money. You’re pretty good at this right now, but please, I stress this in the strongest terms possible. If at all possible, live within your means. Only put things on your credit card that you can pay off at the end of the month. Don’t go into debt for anything but a car or house. And car only if you have to. Vacations are fun, but save up for them, don’t just go on the to go on them.
- Remember your husband was and is attached to other people before you. He will do his best to make you his biggest priority, but remember he has his own family that he came from just like you did. Be fair when it comes to sharing time with both sides of the family.
- He had a past too. He is insecure about things. If you find out his sore spots, don’t exploit them to gain “the upper hand” in the marriage. Remember you have vulnerabilities as well and he’s going to do his best to not exploit them on you.
- Last thing for now. Have fun or whatever.
Are you out of breath? Good. Now you’re going to want to rewind that because it was so dizzying fast that you’re overwhelmed, but you heard some absolute bangers and you’ll want to hear them again. Luckily, you can read them all again as if you were reading slam poetry. Or you can read them as a stand up comedian. Or however you want to read them after that.
Love you, Bitter Girl of Mine. Also, don’t forget to breathe. This is a good thing.
Here are some Bitter Friday Giftures (to see these, visit https://bensbitterblog.com/2026/08/21/dadvice-bfgs/)
Rant #2: College
If you think weddings make me bitter, you have no idea how bitter college makes me. If you wonder about my credentials, here they are: I’ve been to three different colleges, and all three have changed their names since I left. Take that information for what it’s worth. It might be that they disassociated with me, but the real truth is that I disassociated with them (spell that 5 times really fast without spell check). Not only did all three change names when I left, they all left me with a cold feeling and no job prospects afterwards. My first jobs after each college in order: an assembly line worker at a treadmill factory, a ticket taker at a movie theater, a part-time, temporary job at a school app company that I didn’t know was temporary. All that for the low, low price of 5 years and 1 semester of homework, pressure from entitled college professors, hours of sitting in confined testing centers, and all expenses paid by me (or let’s be real my parents), for a piece of paper that could be burned at the stake with a little bit of bonfire. All so I could just learn most of the real skills on the job after all that work. The only reason I’m not more bitter is because I wasn’t one of the suckers that took out student loans for their 100K a semester colleges, and still not got a job for the thing they were “educated” for. But let’s save the real rant for this upcoming post I wrote in January 2026 called:
The Biggest Scam on Earth BFG’s
It’s college. Yes, I just said that out loud and I absolutely mean it. When I was in my teens, to say something like that would be akin to being a traitor to God, Country and the Boy Scouts of America (which is another scam that I’ve talked about previously). To be fair, college works for a few people in very specific instances, like Doctor’s, Lairs, uh Lawyers, and Engineers. For some people who are the first in their families to go to college, I applaud you, and hope that you actually got something out of college. For the rest of us that were taught that if you don’t go to college you will fail, we are here to tell you that the piece of paper that your diploma was printed on is only worth about 10 seconds of kindling that you will use for the fire when you burn it.
I hate to tell people that, because it might discourage one young person that may need it not to go. However, I think of it as saving thousands of students from drowning, mostly in debt. Before I bore you with the details of my college experience, let me first bore you with a story of a young lad I know.
He’s a senior in high school, an excellent football player, but a fairly average student. Since he was young, he dreamt of playing in the NFL. After excelling in football for four years in high school, his dream was to “get an offer” to play at a Division 1 college. If he did, untold wealth could be obtained. Free college education, and on top of that, an almost guaranteed amount of additional NIL (Name, Image, Licensing) money, that could be in the millions. Many of his teammates were given offers to D1 schools and given NIL offers of up to $500K a year.
That would, of course, be lifechanging money for this young man. While a few D1 coaches flirted with him, none gave him an offer. Luckily, last year, in one of the few times he hustled, he attended a football camp in Colorado, then did an informal visit with a small Division 2 college in Colorado. This year, when he sent out his film, that small Colorado college scheduled a formal visit. He got a free wining and dining, where they showed off their facility, gave him a tour of the college, and did a meet and greet with current players. He liked what he saw, so he was excited to finally get “his offer”.
The coach pulled him in, told him he was impressed with him, and pulled out one page with numbers on it. The boy was excited, but his dad’s stomach sank into a pit of despair as soon as he saw the page. It was organized first by the expenses. 24K for tuition, 20K for housing and food, and a host of other random fees. The dad was hoping for much better news when he saw what might cover those expenses. There was FAFSA (about 7K), an itty bitty academic scholarship for his GPA (about 3K), and then the real reason they went there, the amount that the football program would cover (a whopping 2K). Less than everything else.
With all the hard work he would have to do, including getting up at 5:30 am and practicing until 10 am, the academics between 10 and 4 pm, then coming back at 4 pm to look at film for 2 hours, they offered him a measly $2000. But don’t worry, for the privilege of being a full time player and a full time student, he only had to pay the low, low price of $12,000 a year. But wait, there’s more. He could now also be a part-time employee to work off all his wages. By adding just 20 more hours on top of his already maxed out 168 hours of the week, they generously offered to knock $4,000 off his tuition. All this for the privilege of getting his head beat in, risking permanent injuries, and potential lifelong rehab opportunities.
It gets better though. This was only a Division 2 school. If you want to spend way more money, and rack up way more impressive amounts of debt, you can apply to prestigious Division 1, Ivy League or Engineering Schools for the low, low application fee of $400+. In an even better offer they add MORE crippling debt, HIGHER pressure anxiety inducing midterms, and EVEN MORE pressure to succeed just so you can pay back 90% of your salary for many decades to come.
I loved that idea so much that I went to college three times. This isn’t to say that those colleges loved me back, because all three of them changed their names, just to be able to disassociate themselves from me. In fact, I want to get into MIT, just to see what they change their name to after I leave.
If the purpose of college was to get me the heck away from my parents and to learn how to nap in the morning, and stay up all night eating pizza and chasing girls, then mission accomplished. But most institutions have some really well written but somewhat untruthful mission statement like: Provide a high-quality education that fosters students success or Promote academic excellence through innovative teaching and learning.
If they were honest, most college mission statements would be: To extract as much money from parents, students, governments, and football programs, in order to line the pockets of a few corrupt university higher ups, while providing students the ability to finally be free from their oppressive parents, so they can drink, party, do all kinds of drugs and explore their sexuality, while claiming we had nothing to do with that, because we aren’t their babysitters, they are adults and need to make their own decisions.
In addition, we foster financial illiteracy, by teaching students how to take out the maximum amount of student loans, and spend as much of that money on the university while they are here, as we push the responsibility of the crippling debt on the student, in addition to teaching them through horrible life lessons how interest on loans work. In other words, we want to create students that are anxious, ill-prepared and unready for any life situation that they may be placed in.
As a three time college attendee, those are the mission statements that were fulfilled by the colleges I attended. I left each of them unprepared for life, unready for a job, or any sort of roadmap about where my life was supposed to go.
Besides taxes, Amway and perhaps Cutco knives, college was indeed the world’s biggest scam. If my parents didn’t pay for 2 of the three schools that I attended, I might still be paying off my student loans. Not because I wouldn’t pay as much as I could toward them, but because college costs way more than it should. Everything I ever learned for my jobs, finances, or being a citizen of the world, I learned either way before college, or way after. In no way did college ever help me find a job. In no way did college help me learn how to be a good person. In no way did college help me become the world’s most famous bitter blogger, or the worst parent and husband. Those all came with life experience.
As a professional ads manager, I’m paid to sell as much of our product by using online ads as efficiently as possible. I’m ultimately in charge of getting as high an ROI (return on investment) or ROAS (return on Ad Spend) as possible. It’s pretty easy to see that if I spend $1 worth of ads, and I bring in two or three times that amount, I’m making the company money. If on the other hand, I’m spending a $1 and making only $.25 then I’m losing money.
College’s ROI to me wasn’t .25. It was exactly zero. None of the skills I learned in college are making me money right now. In fact, it wasn’t even possible to learn what I’m doing right now, because the internet was an intro class my last semester of school. But even if I went to college right now, I still wouldn’t learn any skills that would be relevant in my career or even family life. In that sense, college was not only a bad investment, it was a scam. Each of my colleges promised me that they would help me find a job, and have a better life.
That is as bad as telling me that if I have three parties and sell three of my friends on Amway, that I’ll be able to benefit from my downline and make passive income for the rest of my life. Except investing in Amway is way less than $60,000+. And they don’t require that you take anxiety inducing midterms and study everything except what is on the test in order to sell Amway.
Actually I did learn something in college. That it was a scam.
If you are realizing that everything in life can make you bitter, follow my blog, send me money, or tell your friends. While you are doing your best to deal with the bitter fact that you got scammed, use these Bitter Friday Giftures to make you feel a little bitter….
See the Giftures here: https://bensbitterblog.com/2026/01/30/the-biggest-scam-on-earth-bfgs/
Rant #3: Cars
This one is particularly relevant right now. Car trouble bitterness. My favorite thing about cars is that every three to five years, I go through a car crisis, in which all our cars are either old and need to be replaced, or they just stop working altogether, and we crisisly have to replace them all at once. As a career, one-paycheck-from-disaster-guy, this business model doesn’t work for me, but my cars don’t seem to care. This particular post was at one of my car ownership career lowpoints, so it pains me to even have to look at it right now, considering, I’m at one of my car career lowpoints right now. But feel free to laugh at my lowpoints if that makes you feel bitter, uh better.
This was a post I wrote in October 2025 that I decided to call:
Jack Rebooted Thugs BFG’s
When I was in college, I had one of the worst two weeks of my life. It all started with “the accident” on my way home from the movie theater. I was going through my totally legal yellow light, while some kids were going through their totally “illegal” red light. They ended up T-boning and totaling my car. That accident triggered the next two weeks of Lemony Snickets Series of Unfortunate Events. I had to borrow my grandma’s car, and in that car, I got two speeding tickets, one of which was a ticket by the same cop that “helped me” at my accident. He misremembered me, so in turn, didn’t have mercy on me and issued a speeding citation.
Next, I had to borrow my grandma’s car, and since my totaled car was resting comfortably in the junkyard, it also took my parking sticker for the college parking lot. The college parking officials had no mercy, so I had to park several miles away from the school in a church parking lot and hike the remaining miles to class. After a horrible day of classes, I came back to the spot where my grandma’s car was, and it had disapparated or was under an invisibility cloak. I figured that either Harry Potter was punking me, or some thugs had stolen my grandma’s 1979 Impala. Since that car was of no value to thugs and it wasn’t a flying car, I finally came to the realization that it was towed.
I had reached my legal limit for crap allowed to happen to someone in a two week period, so I tried to slam my hat down and have a tantrum. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a hat, and I hadn’t had a tantrum since I was 5, so I was out of practice. I had no phone, because this was the Jurassic period before cell phones, so I crossed the street and asked if I could use the phone in a store. I got ahold of the towing company and asked how much to get my car back and could they give me a ride.
…Remember, my legal limit was already reached. “All our towing cars are busy right now, so you’ll have to get a ride here yourself.” The first ever appearance of the anger emoji appeared over my head. Steam started seeping from my brain. My face turned red.
I ended up walking the 50 or 100 miles from the school to the towing company, and picked up my grandma’s car, fuming all the way. It turned out the towing company was right across the street from my apartment. ARRGGGGHHHHH! My bitterness meter reached an all time high. I was like James McAvoy in ‘Wanted’, where he freaks out at his red haired boss, and he whacks Chris Pratt in the face with his keyboard and the letters spell out an obscenity. I was Steve Martin in Trains, Planes and Automobiles letting loose on the airline gate agent.
That was the Final boss of the two weeks. I actually smashed a keyboard on the guys face, but then I decided this would be the end of me being a victim. I wasn’t going to take anything else. I was leveled up to the max level and no one was going to mess with me from that time forward.
Fast forward to a week ago. In our HOA, you can’t park on the street overnight. Guess what I did. I parked on the street overnight. Not on purpose, but one morning, when I got up to go running, I saw my car on the street. When I saw it, I was like, oh good, they didn’t tow it. They finally had mercy on me.
But then when I went to move it, there was a bright orange sign on my window along with this really new fashion accessory for cars, called a car boot. It looked really cool and I was like, wow, that is so kind of them to give my car a fancy new accessory. They forgot to do a matching pair for my other wheels, but then I was like, maybe it’s like earrings where you just do one side. I discovered, however, by way of the orange sign on my car, that I did have to pay for it. They left me a website where I had to pay for it to get removed. That didn’t make sense though, because I wanted to keep it.
Now I find out that I have to return it? And I don’t even get my money back? What kind of trend is this?
As soon as I returned my newest car accessory, I stopped reflecting on boots, and started reflecting on reboots.
Like you know, how computers have to get reboots? When they get reboots, they often removed a lot of junk from their CPU, and then after that, they are often given upgrades.
Same with Hollywood reboots. Hollywood has rebooted Spiderman 17 times, Batman 14 times and Superman at least 12 times. They often get reboots because the actors that play them get too old, or the story gets too convoluted or the audiences get tired of the same old retelling of stories. The new directors fix a bunch of the old mistakes, get a bunch of new upgraded costumes and actors and then make a bunch of new mistakes.
Which means if computers and movies get reboots, why can’t we get reboots? I make a bunch of mistakes all the time. I need a bunch of new upgrades. I’m okay with taking a bunch of time to go into a full reboot, while a bunch of doctors fix all my broken pieces, like my knees, shoulders, neck and back. I’m also okay to reboot so a bunch of people are able to go into my brain and fix a bunch of corrupted files, repressed memories, and upgrade my short and long term memories, as well as my memory for people’s names instead of just their faces.
In fact, I’m way more patient than computer reboots, and even movie reboots. I only need a reboot every 5 years or so. I’ll even take some of my vacation time every year to do it. I just ask that while I do the reboot that I get some video of a vacation to Hawaii while I’m doing it. I love going to Hawaii, I just don’t like going to Hawaii if you understand what I’m saying. Jet lag is what I’m saying.
I don’t need a total factory reset, because I certainly don’t want to go back to being a baby, being in high school or reliving my 20’s again. I just want to delete a few unnecessary files from my operating system so I don’t run so sluggishly all the time.
While I’m working on my reboot, you can start working on these Bitter Friday Giftures…
To view the Bitter Giftures that go along with this post, click here: https://bensbitterblog.com/2025/10/03/jack-rebooted-thugs-bfgs/
Rant #4: Awards Ceremonies
This is one of my favorite posts because it combined a couple of things I really like: making fun of celebrities, making fun of awards shows and The Office. Over the years of writing, I used a Gif from the Office in at least 45% of my posts, which after thinking about it, is a little low (fact check me if you want). Because that just means you’ve spent an inordinate amount of time looking through my blog and that just ups my stats. I’m also a little obsessed about being rewarded for my writing, so when I actually finish my book, and I’m querying it to publishers, I can say I’m a twice Freshly Pressed, and Dundie Award winning blog and they will ignore the unpublishable work they are reading and just publish it anyways, because of the awards attached to it.
I write about my experience getting an award in this post from March 2024 I called:
Dundie Award Winning Blog BFG’s
When I was in college, I used to love movies. I would go to at least 3 or 4 a month. They weren’t as expensive back then, and I never fell for expensive popcorn or candy trick. I even used to work in a theater, so I got to see free movies (and get free popcorn) all the time. I would even read Entertainment Weekly every week to see who “won” the box office. There was always some new movie that was breaking records, and the special effects got bigger and better all the time. Then all of a sudden, they peaked, and I didn’t like going to them anymore.
I know exactly when they peaked.
It was December 2019. Disney was dominating the world, with their cruises, theme parks and movies setting all kinds of records. Captain Marvel and Avenger’s End Game had set all kinds of records and Star Wars was about to come out with Rise of the Skywalker, that they were expecting to do a lot, but Disney was so cocky they didn’t even need for it to do well, because they were going to break records anyways. They even had Disney + that was coming out and they just knew that everyone NEEDED to have it. They were such a juggernaut, that all the companies thought Disney was going to buy them and take over everything. We all feared that we would be forced to become mice and work in their film factories.
Then, a tiny little thing happened a few months later. Remember…March 2020? I do, because I was sitting in an empty movie theater, watching a little-known Vin Diesel movie called Bloodshot. The reason why? Because as I accurately predicted that it would be my last chance to watch a movie in a theater for some time.
The darkest of Friday the 13th’s came that day when the world announced a pandemic, that would last us 6 months to 2 years, depending on where you lived. The next time I saw a movie in the theater was December of that year, and the rules were still pretty sketchy and being able to go.
In the meantime, Disney was being destroyed on all fronts. Cruises and Disneyland’s were shut down, movies were closed and all Disney had was Disney + and even that was struggling.
And I was all for it. I’ve never been a big fan of Disney, but I am a huge fan of schadenfreude. I enjoy when my enemy Disney suffers. Disney got so full of itself, it was thinking about buying Netflix, just because it could. They thought they were all mighty. All it took to defeat THE MOUSE HOUSE was a tiny little disease.
That, my bitter people, was the beginning of the end, not only for Disney, but movies in general. They just haven’t figured it out yet.
As you probably don’t know or care, the Academy Awards, or Oscars for short, are this Sunday. If I didn’t just hear a thing on the radio, I probably wouldn’t have known at all. I used to be all in on the show. They would have a really funny host, the movies would be ones that we had actually seen, and they weren’t bland affairs that lasted 14 hours.
Now, the Oscars suck. Hollywood took six months off last year for strikes, and I hardly even noticed or cared.
I’m just glad I wasn’t a writer for movies, although if they wanted me to cross the picket line and write some crappy scripts, I would have in a jiffy. They wouldn’t have even noticed a downgrade in quality, because my crappy writing is just as good as any Hollywood writer right now.
That is not to say that I don’t care about ALL awards shows. In fact, I am very excited to announce that I have received the most prestigious award ever for this very blog.
I have received a Dundie. That’s right. You heard it here first. This is a Dundie Award winning blog. This week, in the Chili’s in Scranton, PA, I will receive my award from the one and only and best host of the Dundies, Michael Gary Scott, who will present me with the award.
I am prepared to walk the red and yellow carpet, wearing my finest casual work attire of jeans and a hoodie in order to receive my award. They will be broadcasting this award live on Chili’s security camera. You might even see it live on Jim Halpert’s Instagram live and Michael Scott is in talks to see if YouTube will come down and film it.
It’s going to be a wild time. I know Pam will not be able to make it, because she’s been banned from all Chili’s in the Scranton area, though I think she might have just been reinstated, so who knows, it could be a night of crazy surprises.
Stanley will be either be bringing his wife, or one of his mistresses, no one ever really knows. Dwight will be there to make sure that the sound system goes off with many hitches. I just hope that no one else in the Chili’s tries to interrupt the show, because that is just rude.
It’s been quite a whirlwind since I found out yesterday that I would be getting a Dundie. Congratulations have been pouring in from people, like my mom and one’s of other people. It’s been overwhelming the amount of dissport people have given me. I plan on watching the show from my couch through Jim’s Instagram feed. I hope they understand how I couldn’t possibly make it to Chili’s to accept my award, because I can’t really afford such fancy dining. I was really sad to not be able to go, because I heard the swag bag was off the chains this year. Rumors have been circulating that it includes a Dunder Mifflin keychain and some pens, and possibly even a Sabre Pyramid. Wi-fi is coming in 2025.
I’ve been on Cloud 2 since I heard the announcement, so you can imagine how excited I will be when I get the award in my hands. I will proudly display it in my basement, buried between the books and the clothes piles.
People are facing a difficult decision this weekend having to decide between the Oscars and Oscar Martinez, but answer me this. Would you rather get dressed up, have to navigate the maze known as the red carpet, sit for four hours with nothing to eat so you can watch the Oscars, or wear a hoodie and jeans and get to eat some delicious food at Chili’s, paid for by you of course, and see me get a Dundie. I think the choice is clear.
I’ll see none of you at the Dundies this weekend. Now, on to some Dundie-Award winning Bitter Friday Giftures…
ARRRGGGGGHHHHHH
Bitter Dundie Award Winning Ben
See the Giftures here…https://bensbitterblog.com/2024/03/08/dundie-award-winning-blog-bfgs/
Rant #5: Making Decisions
I know making decisions is more of a nemesis for women, especially when it comes time to decide where to go eat, but men also struggle from time to time with decisions (I can’t wait for the hate comments on this one). It’s a lot easier to make decisions when it’s only between two things, and one of the things is terrible and the other thing is either great or passable, but when it comes to making decisions between dozens of things, even men can struggle. In this blog post, I offer up one of the biggest decisions you will ever make…and the solution in the blog post I call…
Blog Paralysis BFG’s
I know I keep talking about my trip to Scotland, but it’s mostly because I need to brag that I got to go there, and you didn’t. Mostly though, it was a once-in-a-lifetime trip that I will never be able to afford to go to again.
Being there was just so unique because my great-great-great grandfather something or other lived there. I got to visit his house and the building that was right across the street from his house that was a mill where he made a living. I also figured out that there was a lot of unrest in 1820 in Scotland, and his dad was part of a strike that rebelled against the Scottish Oligarchs or something. Because of that, he was jailed in Sterling Castle. Some other people that were part of the rebellion were executed, but my great, great, great, great grandfather who was pretty great, got out of jail, because he had a get out of jail free card he obtained from winning in Monopoly. Or it might be because he was really good at hypnosis, and he convinced them to let him out. Or because he was so annoying, that they sent him away. One of those reasons. Anyways, it’s good to know that in my family line, we have a rebellious streak, so I know where I got mine. And the chance to go to jail someday!
The trip to Scotland was also pretty awful. Not because of the things I saw, but because of the things I didn’t see. I could go there a thousand times, and still not be able to explore everything I wanted to see there. We were in Edinburgh for two days and we barely scratched the surface of the places I wanted to see. Yeah, we saw a few castles, but we missed out on the rest of the 1,498 castles in Scotland. I didn’t get to see the isles. Or the train place in Harry Potter or explore Glasgow. Or see all the gravesites of the people that William Wallace and Robert the Bruce defeated in battles.
That is the worst part about options. We have millions of options every day. Hundreds of food choices, hundred different types of careers, thousands of cities we could live in. Hundreds of TV shows we can watch. Millions of couches we could sit in.
It had to have been much simpler to live in Scotland in the 1820’s. You do something stupid, you go to jail in a castle. It’s not like the jail had cable or Netflix. Most of the people I know spend 50 minutes trying to decide on a show on Netflix that is half an hour long. That seems like way too much time.
Ever been to Cheesecake Factory? The food is pretty good, but their menu is endless. I think I could finish Moby Dick and then go whale hunting for the actual whale and catch it before I finished the whole menu at Cheesecake Factory. The menu is just too long. Way too many choices. Unless you’ve been there 17 times and you know exactly what you want, it can paralyze you from making a decision. If anyone in your party is indecisive or likes a lot of different kinds of foods, DON’T GO THERE.
And don’t ever go to YouTube just to “see if you can find something to watch”. It is a deep, dark, vortex that will suck up your entire life force. If you think the Delorean from Back to the Future was the time machine, you were wrong. It’s YouTube. You could start watching something in 2022, and when you finally finish watching everything, it will be 2075, you will be 102, and the Zombie Apocalypse will have taken over the world and everyone you knew will be zombies. On a positive note, they won’t try to zombify you because they think you already are a zombie, because you’ve been staring at YouTube for 50 some years and they are looking over your shoulder to watch YouTube with you.
As many videos as there are on YouTube, there are probably even more blogs. I counted every single one yesterday as research for this post and according to my count, there are 600 million, which isn’t that many considering there are 600 billion people on the earth (also counted that yesterday). So if my math is correct, that means one in every million people have a blog. Which means you have a lot of choices in blogs.
I’m going to make it simple for you. 599,999,999 of the 600 million blogs are either blogs about families, research about pill bugs, garbage collecting, or unreadable boring stuff. A lot of them are just domains that people took, but never actually posted anything on. The rest of just a bunch of reposts, or posting memes that other people made.
There is only one original, creative and groundbreaking one that is worth reading at all. I will give you a hint which one it is. It starts with Bens has bitter in the middle and ends with blog.com. Please let me know if you can’t decipher the code of clues I just put in there. If you need help, call Tom Hanks of the Davinci Code, Nicolas Cage of National Treasure, or Indiana Jones of Indiana Jones.
I’m here to help you with your blog paralysis. Don’t read any others, especially your own. They will give you anxiety and depression and no one needs that. And as an extra special bonus, I will include giftures as a special part of this post…Let the blog detox begin….
ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH
Bitter Blog Paralysis Ben
The Giftures can be seen here….https://bensbitterblog.com/2022/10/07/blog-paralysis-bfgs/
Category #2: Bitter Education
Ben’s B.I.T.T.E.R. School of Bitterness
If you remember all the way back in section #1 of this e-book, I wrote about what a scam college was. Ben’s B.I.T.T.E.R. School of Bitterness was my attempt to best capitalize on the scam. You see, I tried to start my own school so I could compete scamwise with the Harvards and Yales of the world. The problem in competing with Harvard and Yale is their funding. While they get billions in grant money from the government, I’m stuck with my pathetic efforts in street vending, e-begging, and taking dozens of surveys from Survey Savvy for $.10 each. While I’ve completed the hard part of getting accredited, by taking acredit for inventing the school, I’m still searching for funding. I figure the funding from the government is coming soon though, because the government always prioritizes the most useless things first. While I wait for my government funding, I’ll continue to lease the old psyche ward where the school sits now, while lecturing you online until the building is ready. Ben’s Bitter Blog will house the online knowledge base for the best ways to be bitter. This section of the e-book is three of my “Best Of” Lectures for free. But don’t expect them to be free forever.
Lecture #1: How to be Mediocre
I understand that everyone has ambitions to be all-time greats in their professions or hobbies. I keep hearing debates about who the G.O.A.T.’s are in basketball, football, CEOing, Minecrafting, Gears of Warring, Transformersing, TikTokering, and Breakdancing. The reason why we all want to know who is the best, is because we all want someone to aspire to, someone to look up to, and someday, someone to beat, so we can G.L.O.A.T. But when there can only be one GOAT for everything, that means there are hundreds of others that aren’t the G.O.A.T. And somewhere in the middle of the billions of people there are the mediocres. And there are billions of us. While I am the G.O.A.T. of Bitterness, in every other thing, I’m mediocre. Therefore, it’s time for more of us to start accepting being mediocre. As the professor of Bitterness, I’m here to teach you how to accept being mediocre or worse at everything. See this Bitter Blog Lecture I call:
Mediocrates Bitterness
I didn’t get a proper education growing up in South Dakota, because my English teachers forgot to teach me about the Greek Gods. I never learned about the Italian Gods (my favorite Italian God is Little Caesar), or the Brazilian Gods either. If it wasn’t for video games and TV, I never would have known about all the Gods. The first Greek God I learned about was Icarus, in the form of Kid Icarus on the NES. The things I learned about him were that he flew too close to the sun and he gained a laser beam in order to defeat Medusa, who needed a haircut.
I learned that Kratos, was the God of War because of a video game called ironically, God of War. I’ve never played it, but the kids tell me it is pretty good. I’m also really familiar with Achilles, because of the Achilles injuries I kept getting from playing too much basketball. I also knew a lot about the City of Troy because I knew this kid named Troy in grade school. I learned about the Trojan Horse, because that was one of the early computer viruses I learned about. And I learned about the Odyssey from The Simpsons, because an episode where Homer does an Odyssey.
The school system failed me, but don’t worry. I got my revenge on the school system by returning the favor and failing it.
I discovered a better way to learn things anyways. I learned things by experience, playing video games and watching Tik Tok videos. If it wasn’t for those things, I would still be writing blog posts down on scrolls of paper and getting mad at you guys for not making comments on my nonexistent rants.
Thanks to my imagination I gained from playing so many video games, I discovered some new Gods that the school never knew about.
One such God, I learned about was a God called Mediocrates. Pronounced “ME DEE AH CRUH TEES.” Mediocrates is the God of mediocrity. The reason why you’ve never heard of him, is because he was so mediocre. He’s the Son of Zeus and one of his wives that you’ve never heard of either, Plain Vanillious. Mediocrates was born in the middle of the day, and didn’t cry or whine. He was neither devastatingly handsome, nor downright ugly. His eyes were a mediocre grey, and his limbs weren’t particularly long, nor very short.
He had no distinguishing features, no scar, no blemish, nor gleam in his eye. He was so average that Zeus didn’t know what to do to him. He was so busy dealing with his other rebellious God sons and daughters, that he didn’t know what gift to bestow upon Mediocrates.
He left it up to Plain Vanillious to name him and give him his special power. Plain Vanillious was also pretty busy, so she forgot to give him any gift. So Mediocrates was just left to his own devices. He never played on the right side of the road, or the left. He just played right down the middle of the road.
He went to Zeus Elementary School, an average elementary school, where he didn’t get A’s or B’s, or even D’s or F’s. He got C’s, always. In fact, the saying, “C’s get degrees” comes from him. His grades were never horrible or great, so he continued his education at Greek Community College. He never got into a Greek fraternity, and he only made friends with his roommates and the people in his classes that he needed in order to do group projects. He continued his unbelievable streak of C’s throughout his college years. When he finished college, he went on to become an average accountant for the Greek God government.
Mediocrates never got in fights, like Kratos, never made any waves, like Poseidon, or made any Chaos, like Chaos. He just went to work everyday, did his accounting and then came home. Then he had two kids, and then they had two kids and then they had two kids, and eventually, I was born.
By the time, I was born, all the God qualities were filtered out, and I was imbued with nothing special. If it weren’t for the little bit of bitterness that my great, great grandgodmother had inside her, I would be nothing but the most mediocre person you had ever met.
I always wondered why my life was so mediocre in every way. And now I know. It wasn’t my fault that I always got C’s in school. Or that I didn’t get into any popular cliques. It wasn’t my fault that the only thing that the only thing I’m not mediocre in is bitterness. It’s my great, great godgrandfather Mediocrates fault.
I owe a great deal of gratitude to video games for giving me the knowledge of the great mediocrity that courses through my veins. In order to thank them, I’ve made a solemn promise to always play them until my last breath (mediocrally, of course). Now that I’ve completed my bitterness for the day, I’m going back to doing my mediocre work at my mediocre job.
Later
ARRRRGGGHHHHHH
Bitter Mediocrates Ben
Lecture #2: How to Get A Job
Getting a job is hard. Really hard. So much so that I started a Facebook Page called Job Rejections. It was supposed to be a community of people that would share their favorite job rejection email. But just like all my job rejections, the Facebook page was a failure. Not because there weren’t thousands of ways people received cleverly worded emails telling candidates that they hated them. The failure of the page wasn’t because HR departments gleefully wrote to candidates that while you were totally qualified, the CEO’s nephew got the job. They were “sorry to inform you that the job pool lifeguard yanked your membership in the pool” or they wanted to “thank you for spending the last three weeks interviewing, researching, and learning how to suck up to HR, and the hiring managers, but we decided to go in another direction: South”. Making you wonder, are they hiring me, or moving the company to the south pole? Instead of going through the regular garbage pile of job openings on LinkedIn, this blog post suggests an entirely new way to get hired. A post I call:
Ninja Bitterness
You know those stupid career assessment tests you take in high school and college that ask moronic questions about your character traits to determine what career best suits your personality? Since I’m not technical, I don’t like math, I’m an introvert, I like working with little or no supervision (and by little I mean none), and my motivation in life is to be lazy, the tests generally come up with rodeo clown, or park ranger. Since I don’t like people or wearing makeup, rodeo clown is out. I don’t like the outdoors or doing anything, so park ranger is out. I must have subconsciously wanted to get into the career that least suited me, so I would have something to complain about, so here I am in customer service. I get to hear people complain about things all day, take orders from people I don’t like and I get to be Pavlov’s dog to my immortal enemy, The Telephone.
The other day, in assessing my skills, I realized the REAL job I should be doing isn’t a rodeo clown or park ranger. I should be a corporate Ninja. Corporations need someone like me, so here is the process in which my job search for a Corporate Ninja will go.
With my Ninja like skills, I will send CEO’s, Marketing Managers, and Human Resource Managers emails. I will address the need for them to have a Corporate Ninja working for them. The emails I send will come in three mysterious parts, one for each member of the hiring team at the company. It will attract enough of the managers’ attention to make them want to know more(without looking junk maily), but not enough to tell them everything they need to know. They will eventually work together and realize that each one had a piece of the puzzle. They will not be able to resist calling this ninja, who will clearly benefit their company in a way that no one ever has.
Naturally, the next move will come in the form of an interview where they will beg for Ninja Bitter Ben to come in person. I will refuse once, telling them I have other corporations that are going to pay me top dollar for my services. This will cause them to want me to work there even more, and they will offer to double whatever the other companies will pay. They set up a time, I tell them that I will think about it, but they should be ready for me at all times. I then appear at 2:38 pm after I have taken a sufficient nap. I pop in, tell the receptionist that I am here, and wait impatiently for them to come. They appear, breathing heavily, from rushing so quickly to meet me. I hide in the shadows for 3 minutes, pop out and scare them, and flit about, playing hide and seek with them as we make our way to the interview room. They beg me to work for them. I disappear for 10 minutes, utterly confusing them, then appear back, telling them some bogus company secrets that can’t be verified and talk about some obvious inefficiencies.
Their mouths gape wide open, and as fast as they can get the words out, they ask when I can start. I say, “I start when I start. But rest assured that if you aren’t already setting up my benefits and direct deposit, I’m already working for your competitor.” They set me up, I and tell them my jobs duties. I will fight against corporate raiders, I will kill any inefficiencies and slice calls times down to size. I tell them to tell everyone in the company that I am always lurking in the shadows and could be reporting their every move at any moment and I will report to the CEO, all injustices taking place at their job, through a ninja like email every two weeks.
Then I will proceed to sit on the couch, play video games on the 90 inch screen I just bought with my Corporate Ninja salary, and send a cryptic email every two weeks. If they ask why they haven’t noticed my influence around, I tell them I’m performing a Ninja Training Exersize, at this very moment (on my XBox).
Clearly my job assessment was wrong.
AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH
Bitter Ninja Ben
See the full blog post at: Ninja Bitterness
Lecture #3: How to Gain Attention in Any Situation
As the World’s Best Authority on Bitterness, I’m always asked to give advice and how to be a better bitter. I’m always hesitant to give advice to others about how to become a better bitter, because I loathe competition. It’s the reason why I prefer single player games, why I’m good with 15th place out of 16 players, and why I cheer for the first team out on the Amazing Race. They have more reasons to be bitter. When you lose, you have a lot more reasons to be bitter, stay bitter and continue to blame others. If you still insist on gaining attention from others, my advice is to become really good at hyperbole. To learn more about the science of Hyperbiology read this lecture from the blog I wrote in December 2021 called:
Hyperbiology BFG’s
I have this problem. I have this habit of saving the world…all the time. I don’t mean to. It’s just that the world of Hyrule needed saving (Legend of Zelda). I keep saving people too. But you know, if my son just did his homework, I wouldn’t have to keep saving him from his mom.
Lifesaving is exhausting. I don’t know how Thor and the Hulk do it without needing a nap everyone once in a while.
All I know is that yesterday was the worst day ever. I’m not even joking. Like not even my worst day, but the world’s worst day. I got up 15 minutes late, my electric car got below 50%, my eggs at lunch were slightly burnt and I had to do some additional reports for my boss. And I keep getting these emails from a CBD seller. I already have my CBD source. Could you just stop sending me these? Sheesh.
Clearly yesterday was not the worst day ever for me. It wasn’t even the worst day of the week. Because every day is the worst. When you’re not an optimist, pessimist, or even realist, but a bitterest, every day is awful. And when people ask how your day and it was boring, you need the secret weapon of hyperbole.
Without hyperbole, “How was your day?” would just be the typical teenage response, “Fine”. But with hyperbole, it turns into, “The worst day ever! Let me just tell you how awful my co-workers were!” Also, stories would just be, “I got into work, pulled my car into the parking spot. Then I walked to the door, opened it, typed my employee number into the clock…”, etc. Boring.
In fact, this blog wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for my expert ability in hyperbiology. Thankfully I obtained my hyperbiology degree at Ben’s B.I.T.T.E.R School of Bitterness.
Wanna know who else got their hyperbiology degree at Ben’s B.I.T.T.E.R School of Bitterness? Every politician ever. Every sports agent. Every actor. Every lawyer (they actual major in hyperbiology and minor in law). Every teacher. Everyone you work with who told how horrible their day was yesterday. Or the ones that told you how great their vacation was.
Hyperbiology is just a legal form of lying. And politicians that aren’t good at anything else, are masters of the hyperb (hyperbolic verb).
I probably took you a little too far behind the curtain, but that is what I’m here for. I’m the Bizzard of Oz. Your professor of Hyperbiology. I bring you with a tornado of hyperbole onto the Bitter Brick Road. Follow that path and you will someday be as bitter as I. The first step isn’t to meet anyone.
Of course, these aren’t all the lessons you will need in order to get your hyperbiology degree. In fact, this is just the beginning. You will need to study hard and work many hours on your degree. It will take determination, and grit and a lot of excuses to your family why you are not ever home. And at first, you won’t be very good at telling them why you needed all this money for your degree, but by the time you obtain your degree, your family will be begging you spend even more money on your degree, and hoping you never finish your degree.
ARRRGGGHHHHHHHH
Bitter Hyperbiology Professor Ben
To view the Bitter Friday Giftures, follow this unbelievable link: https://bensbitterblog.com/2021/12/03/hyperbiology-bfgs/
Category #3: The Holy Trinity
If you remember all the way back to section one of this e-book, you might recall that I told you that college is useless. Then in section two, I immediately contradicted that by immediately trying to enroll you in the B.I.T.T.E.R. School of Bitterness, and started lecturing you on how to become a better bitter. In this section, that I named creatively, Section 3, I’m going to give you my credentials and how I’m qualified to teach you about bitterness. All the knowledge I’ve ever gained in life came from one of three sources, which I will call MY Holy Trinity. The Transformers, The San Antonio Spurs, and Video Games. In almost every blog post from the beginning of time, until the present day Bitter Ben has some reference to one of these subjects. And no Holy Trinity can be complete without one more thing, and that is The Office (which I will put in a later E-book). Therefore, this section will focus on the three subjects that give me inspiration for just about every blog post, reference, and conversation I have in real life with people.
The First Holy Trinity: The Transformers
September 17th, 1984, was when my life really began. It was chilly fall afternoon. I got home from school and threw my backpack on the floor for my mom to pick up and plopped myself in front of the TV to watch after-school cartoons. On the screen, in full 480p, a distant planet appeared on our TV screen and a deep voice said: “Many millions of years ago, on the planet Cybertron, life existed.” As soon as I heard that voice and saw that distant planet, I was immediately hooked. It was way better than the stupid Gobots that came out a week earlier. The trashing of the Gobots comes in a later edition. Transformers taught me a very important lesson: Just like them, I am More Than Meets the Eye. If you want to learn everything about my Transformers lore, read every one of the 1,633 posts I’ve written. If you just want an introduction to my lore, read this blog post I wrote in August 2026 called:
The Apology Tour BFG’s
It was a cool day in South Dakota in September 1984, and I got home from school and threw my bag down. I went to the den and turned on our massive 17-inch TV by hand to watch some after school cartoons. Little did I know at that moment, I would be witnessing the beginning of my 42-year-and-going obsession of the Transformers. If you told 11 year old Bitter Ben that 42 years later there is now a channel on Samsung TV that shows Transformer cartoons 24 hours a day, he would have called you crazy. If you told his wife he would be watching that channel whenever he wrested control of the TV, and wanted a $1400 Optimus Prime that transformed on its own, she would have called him crazy and probably tried to ask for a new model (of husband, not Transformer).
A lot of my history revolves around the history of the Transformers. One of my first memories of being shamed came from my love of the Transformers. I was talking to a co-student in junior high about Transformers, when he interrupted my obsession about them and blurted, “Transformers are toys for kids. You need to grow up.” I was quite shocked when he said it, and from that moment forward, I quietly stopped being friends with an ignorant son of a goat herder, who could possibly think that thought.
I pushed through that junior highish insult and two years later rewarded for my loyalty to the cause, by the release of the Transformers Movie in theaters. It was an amazing movie that pushed the series forward, but did so at a cost. The largest cost possible, being that Optimus Prime, the most beloved of all Transformers, dies early in the movie. Spoiler Warning. (Whoops, I’m supposed to do that before.) Legendary stories came from the movie of younger kids crying, and parents having to drag distraught kids into the lobby because they couldn’t believe that he died. There were even letter writing campaigns about bringing Optimus Prime back. Hasbro underestimated what Optimus Prime meant to a lot of kids. I wasn’t as heartbroken as those whiny, entitled brats because, of course I was a mature 13 year old with regulated emotions, who would soon have more new Transformers to buy.
Fast forward a few years later to my senior year of college, and after a few years of pretending I had grown up, I had an interesting introduction to a new computer concept called the “internet”. It was 1998, and as I was about to graduate, I wanted to take a fun elective. It just so happens that there was a class called Introduction to the Internet, which it really was for me. It had me do things like “navigate to a website called Whitehouse.gov, and click on these things called “hyperlinks” that lead me to other places. Once I gain unfettered access to the internet, I immediately started searching for Transformers information. I found out they had a conference every year called TransCon, but mostly I was mining the depths of the internet to find out if I could buy the original series on VHS. Those early days of the internet were truly the wild west. Amazon and DVD’s didn’t exist, so I had to search out forums to buy things. I discovered a guy that taped every episode of the Transformers off of TV, as well as the Movie. I don’t even remember if I had to send him a check or use a credit card, but I could so easily have been scammed. But it was 1998, and I had all 98 episodes and the movie of my childhood on VHS.
Not long after that, I got the second Transformers shaming. I got the amazing idea to have a double date with my brother in which we watch Transformers the Movie. I tried to explain to the girl I was on a date with, how the passing of the Matrix of Leadership from Optimus Prime to Rodimus Prime was like how the leadership of the prophet of our church passed his leadership to the next one. It made total sense to me, but she thought my explanation was both tacky, inappropriate and sacrilegious. I disagreed with her, and as such, I never asked her out again. She was an ignorant daughter of a goat herder. I’m sure she and that co-student of mine in junior high are brother and sister.
This week has been a hard one for the deaths of several prominent celebrities. On Tuesday, Dolly Parton and Tim Curry died, both at the age of 80. I was never huge fans of either, but respected Dolly for her reputation as a great person and remember Tim Curry as a foil for Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2. The most significant celebrity loss for me was Peter Cullen yesterday. Peter Cullen was known as a voice actor for many famous and random cartoon characters, such as Eeyore, The Predator, the K.A.R.R., the evil nemesis of K.I.T.T. in Knight Rider, among dozens of others. But for me, he was Optimus Prime.
My Tiktok and Instagram feeds were full of tributes to Peter Cullen yesterday. They used his best dialogues, both as Optimus Prime and as himself talking about how he got the role of Optimus Prime. While I didn’t have to leave the theater like those kids did when Optimus died, I did find myself tearing up a little when the Voice of Optimus Prime died yesterday. As Optimus Prime’s last words before he died, “Until All are One.” that is my wish for Peter Cullen. Now he will never know all the memories I have of being shamed for loving the most famous cartoon he ever voiced.
This is the 40 year anniversary of Transformers: The Movie, and Hasbro is going all out on an Apology Tour for killing off Optimus Prime in the movie all those years ago. As part of my personal celebration of the 40th Year, I’ve decided to embark on my own Apology Tour. I’m going to personally hunt down all the people that shamed me for loving the Transformers. I will be hunting down that snotty, co-student from junior high that said Transformers were “just for kids” and demand an apology from him. I’m going to hunt down that ungrateful girl I went on a date with, and demand an apology for not accepting my very poignant Transformers metaphor. I’m going to demand an apology from my family for shaming me for liking Transformers.
Most of all, I’m demanding an apology from all my bitter blog readers if you’ve ever shamed me for any of the dozens of Bitter Blog posts about the Transformers.
You can get on the Transformers Astrotrain, or you can unfollow me and get out of my life.
Yeah, I said it.
ARRRGGGGHHHHHH
Bitter Apology Tour Ben
Transform and Roll Out for the full blog experience including Giftures here: The Apology Tour BFG’s
The Second Holy Trinity: The San Antonio Spurs
For a bitter guy who lived in South Dakota in his formative years (3rd Grade to High School), many people question why I like the San Antonio Spurs. Many of my contemporaries of that age, (high school students from my high school) went the lazy route and just chose the closest team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, in Minneapolis four hours away. That would have been the obvious choice for a bitterman like me, but I did my research, and found that a team that was really good, and had a solid foundation, would be harder to be bitter about. That’s how a lower level bitterperson would look at it. As one who has researched bitterness at a PhD level, I have a much better reason why I’ve made the San Antonio Spurs my favorite team. Read why on my recent blog post about the Spurs that I titled:
Induction into the Anxiety Hall of Fame BFG’s
I know everyone has anxiety these days, but since I was born in a time when anxiety wasn’t invented yet, mine went undiagnosed. My anxiety manifests itself in a few ways. I’ve become more accustomed to speaking in front of crowds (at least in church), but I still get loads of it BEFORE I publicly speak. It also manifests in interviews, which I hate more than turkeys hate Thanksgiving. I don’t care if it’s for a job interviews, or when I do celebrity interviews on ET, Access Hollywood or Extra. Insanely though, the worst way that my anxiety manifests itself is right before, during and after San Antonio Spurs basketball games. You have no idea how much that sucks, because I’ve been a fan of them since 1989.
It sucks because I’ve been a fan of them for 37 years. If you add 82 games a year + all those extra playoff games, that number is probably more days than most Millennials have been alive. The crazy thing is that in those 37 years, the Spurs have been 1,621 – 1,025, which is a 61%, a better percentage of wins than any other NBA team in that span. Can you imagine if my favorite team was even the second best team over that period? My stomach would be more knotted than a National Boy Scout Knot Tying competition.
A few years ago I realized that liking a horrible team would have been much better for me. I grew up in South Dakota, so logically, I should have been a Minnesota Timberwolves fan, whose record is 1,245 – 1,713, for a 42% win percentage, I would have grown to expect losing and my anxiety would have been significantly reduced due to their low expectations. Unfortunately, I had to choose a winner to be a fan of. The Spurs made the playoffs every year from 1990 to 2019 except one year, until 2020. The last 6 years were the worst as a fan, but inversely, the best for my nerves. I had accepted that they sucked, and wouldn’t make the playoffs and my nerves got a 6 year break.
But now, the Spurs are back and with a vengeance, in the Finals as we speak. While that is awesome for my fandom, it is absolutely bombarding every fiber of my nerves. Almost every other day since April 19th, my stomach has been flipping around the mat like Simone Biles, and ironically bile seems to be dancing around my stomach every time they lose (or until I find out they win). Every time they lose, I’m like one of those guys that live on the streets holding a cardboard sign, declaring that the world is ending soon. I feel like I need to drop myself into a hyperbaric chamber to simultaneously calm my nerves, and freeze myself into the future like Austin Powers so I don’t have to deal with the unending pressure to never have to deal with another loss. What’s crazy is, I don’t let regular ups and downs of life affect my mood most of the time, but after Spurs losses, I will often find myself looking for a ledge, or looking for any excuse to be a complete ahole to everyone around me.
I never intended my personality and mood to be so connected to a team’s win loss record. It just happened that way. I blame my brain, nervous system, and most of all, my bitterness. I wish it were different. I wish a team that I have no control over didn’t have so much control over me. But it does.
One time I was watching a game back in 1999 and they were losing badly to the Portland Trailblazers. I got so mad, that I literally threw one of my foam pillows against the wall…and it made a dent. I finally realized that I should probably stop watching and I went to my sister’s house and jumped on the trampoline to get some frustration out. I later found out they won that game, and it just so happened to be what Spurs fans call the “Memorial Day Miracle”. They came back from 18 points down, and the game winner was a shot by Sean Elliott where he made a three pointer where he was only inbounds because he was on his tippy toes. I missed watching it live, because I was so mad, I threw a pillow that dented a wall…for a game they won.
I wish I could use some laundry detergent to wash my anxiety off as easily as detergent washed stains off of clothes. It would be amazing if we could just throw some Tide on that anxiety. I wish I was able to watch a Spurs late game meltdown like someone watches clothes tumble in a dryer. Or like watching paint dry. Or like watching a Youtube video about how to replace your headlights.
Or like how my wife can watch a Spurs game like it’s just another reality show. While she is playing a game on her iPad and using the game as background noise. Not a lot of things get me charged up, but I turn into a maniacal psychopath when I watch a Spurs game. I don’t know why it gets me so charged up, and I’m pretty disappointed in all of you that you aren’t a combination of anger, rage, anxiety right now too. What is wrong with you guys! Why aren’t you as upset as I am right now?
I’ve lived with Spurs induced anxiety so long, that I can’t even imagine what it feels to be any of you, not caring at all about the game tonight. I’ve even heard that there are people that don’t have anxiety at all, and that makes me so bitter, because how? And what does that even feel like?
Maybe other people are just anxious about dating, speaking in front of crowds or dealing with a highly toxic family situation. Or maybe some people have anxiety because if they don’t make enough money at work, they won’t be able to pay rent, or afford food. Maybe my anxiety needs some perspective.
Or maybe the Spurs need to win the next four games, or I’m going to throw a pillow into a wall.
What about you, bitterians? Are you high anxiety people like me? What is your trigger? What things absolutely send your stomachs into knots? What, if anything, soothes your anxiety? And when are we going to see some Bitter Friday Giftures?
ARRRRGGGHHHHHHH
Bitter Anxiety Hall of Fame Ben
To Put up more points on the Scoreboard read here: Induction into the Anxiety Hall of Fame BFG’s
The Third Holy Trinity: Video Games
I’ve been playing video games since Steve Jobs was stealing the idea for Breakout from Steve Wozniak at Atari, and he’s dead now after running Apple for 24 years. I’ve been playing, reading and writing about video games almost twice as long as Jobs was at Apple, for 47 years. Since I have experience in almost nothing else for 47 years, that unequivocally makes me an expert in video games. If that doesn’t prove it to you, I’ve written dozens of blog posts about video games, but none better than this one I call:
Bitter Achievement Hunting BFG’s
I’ve shared this many times, but I’ve been a video gamer since I was a small ball of bitterness. I got the Atari 2600 when I was 7, and got the NES when it first came out in 1985. I was a Nintendo stan for so long, that I missed out on some of the biggest gaming experiences. But as a dumb person, I remained loyal, because I thought Nintendo would eventually create an amazing bunch of games that Xbox and Playstation would be envious of. I thought that was going to be the Wii, and in a way, it was kind of a game changer, but in a weird way. The Wii was impossible to get for a year and half (luckily I got one pre-ordered), but the best games for it weren’t really games. The most popular game was Wii Sports, which was basically bowling and tennis that you could kind of do with motion control. It was fun for a bit, but very gimmicky. For a “hard core” gamer like me, I felt like I needed some more significant games. I started thinking that it was time for me to grow up. That moment came when my brother asked me if I wanted to buy his old Xbox360.
I contemplated it for a bit, and was like…yeah. There were some absolute bangers out on the Xbox at the time, and I wanted in. I was ready to take my gaming to the next level. So I chucked my Wii Remote and its weird nunchuck attachment in the dust bin of history and picked up the Xbox controller. All of a sudden, like Thor when he summons lightning down from the sky, a mystic force descended upon me from the sky above and I leveled up from my E for Everything Nintendo Mario form to my M for Mature rating of Master Chief Xbox form.
When I moved from Nintendo to Xbox, it was like putting on the Nintendo Power glove, and according to Nintendo’s slogan, “Now you’re playing with power!” except I was taking the glove off and playing the powerful Xbox console instead of Nintendo. I went from a guy who was deep in debt to a tyrant racoon named Tom Nook in Animal Crossing where I collected bells from trees to pay him back, to a guy that didn’t take orders from anyone in Gears of War. I went from being a plumber in a red hat who jumped on tiny mushrooms with legs, to a guy that injected superpowers in his arm so he could protect Little Sisters with Big Daddy issues. I went from slashing swords and saving princesses in Hyrule to saving the galaxy as Master Chief.
In my time as an adolescent gamer, games were meant to be fun, carefree and with no goals in mind. Just run around a village, collecting money that literally grew on trees. Decorating my home and having no real job, and interacting with talking animals. No responsibilities, no accountability. But as a mature and grown up gamer, I started having grown up responsibilities, consequences and objectives. I had a planet called Sera to protect from subterranean reptilian humanoids known as the Locust Horde. I had to figure out how I got amnesia, and how I needed to navigate my way through a dangerous underwater world. I had to learn difficult things about this world and its consequences, and I had questions like why these Big Daddies were attacking me, and who are these Little Sisters? I had dozens of worlds and galaxies to protect or conquer. In this grown up Xbox world, I had accountability. Therefore, I also had something to keep my accountable. Achievements.
On the Xbox, there is this systemwide achievement program. For every game, you can earn achievement points for completing certain tasks on the game. Some are easy, some are hard, and others are darn near impossible. It’s a pretty simple concept, but amazingly effective. To a gamer, it’s an instant hit of dopamine, and also a way to compare yourself to friends and other gamers, both gamewide and systemwide.
You know you’ve received an achievement when you hear a crisp, metallic bloop, followed by a pop up on your screen with a text that says the name of the achievement, followed by how many achievement points you got. Some are easy, early game introduction achievements like completing the tutorial. Some are medium achievements like completing the 20 or 30 hours of story mode. Then there are the exceedingly rare achievements where you’ve done something that less than 10% of gamers have ever done. I have some achievements in Gears of War that have only been done by 0.1%. For that, I got the amazing experience of getting the exceptional diamond symbol, along with the ethereal twinkling diamond chime. As a rare achievement gamer, this means I command respect by not only the gaming community but the entire world and galaxy. Getting that diamond achievement is more important than discovering gravity or creating a space shuttle to go to space.
The achievement system has been so successful for Xbox that others have started to copy the system. I don’t know if you’ve all seen it yet, but our beloved WordPress, which this blog post is being published on, has started an achievement system of their own. So far, I’ve received a few achievements, including Globe Trotter, which I achieved by getting views from 50+ countries, and World Domination, which I received for getting views from 150+ countries. I always knew I would achieve World Domination, and now WordPress has given you proof that it’s true.
I’ve already looked at the list of achievements that are possible, and some of them are easy, some are medium, and some are darn near impossible, and not even worth trying. I knew they had copied the Xbox pretty explicitly though, because some of the achievement are listed as “secret” and you will only find out if you actually get them. I’ve been pretty unenthusiastic about blogging for a little while, but these achievements might just juice me back up after being a little lackadaisical for a bit.
In fact, I think it might be time for my work to start doing an achievement system. If they aren’t going to give me more money, they could at least start allowing me to get work achievements. It’s working for Xbox and WordPress. I need a little carrot at the end of the stick.
For those of you that completed reading this blog post, you’ve received 100 Bitter Ben Achievement points. If you read all 1,633 posts, you will get the diamond achievement that has only been done by 1 person so far out of 8 billion humans (and only because I had to read all of them after I wrote them). I will also have a bunch of secret achievements for streaks and other things. Good luck, achievement hunters!
To get you started on your achievement hunting, look at these Bitter Friday Giftures for additional achievement points.
ARRRRGGGGHHHHHH
Bitter Achievement Hunters Ben
To gain more achievement points, and see the BFG’s, read the full post here: Bitter Achievement Hunting BFG’s
Category #4: Gen X Nostalgia
This bitter guy got most of his bitter knowledge by being born smack dab in the middle of Gen X. Wikipedia (the ultimate source of knowledge) claims that Gen X was between the years of 1965-1980, meaning that my April 1973 birth is the median. If you don’t know what median is, good, that means I don’t have to be exact in my information. The point is, I have a lot of nostalgia for the late 70’s, 80’s and good part of the 90’s which the kids like to point to when it comes to being born in a time when life was more innocent. Let’s be honest, that’s when all the good things were invented. Like video games and the internet. The Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen A’s invented the toxic stuff, like Social Media and iPads. Gen X’ers are the best Generation, because we stand on the sidelines while the Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen A’s go to war and we get to be the judges.
Gen X Nostalgia #1: Gen X Expertise
The smack dabidness of my birth in the Gen X gives me the insights of both the pre- and post-internet, the early days of video games, and the golden age of Saturday Morning Cartoons. I actually invented something that the kids use these days on YouTube. Talk about a generational legend. Learn more in this blog post I call:
Rage Bait BFG’s
There has been a lot said on my subject of Gen X’s childhood on my TikTok algorithm lately. Since I am an expert on Gen X, because I am one, let me explain the phenomenon that is being introduced to our young Gen Y and Z brethren and sisters. In the 80’s, kids were free range cows. And by that I mean we were left to our own devices, and by devices, I mean we had no devices. No phones, iWatches, trackers, or GPS. Our parents pushed outside and expected us to stay out there entertaining ourselves, only allowed back in the house when it got too dark.
Since we didn’t really have video games at home until the middle of the 80’s, and TV was only allowed for a few hours a day, we had to come up with different hobbies. I did sports, biking, hide and seek, grass mowing, fort building, and going to the mall to play video games in the arcade. One of my hobbies though, was created out of being part of a big family. As an enterprising young man, and by way of my position in the family, I created a new hobby. I was second oldest overall, but oldest son. I had an older sister, just younger brother, then the two youngest were another sister, and another brother, for a total of 5 including me.
Here’s how my hobby worked. My just younger brother was the exact middle child, and he took his role as middle child seriously. Since he perceived that he was the most ignored, he found a way to become the biggest troublemaker, which in turn created the biggest gravity and focus from my parents. My oldest sister was the brilliant, studious, smart, apple of my parent’s eyes. My younger sister was the messy, disorganized mess that my parents that brought another type of focus from my parents. And of course, my youngest brother was the spoiled one by default.
My position became the replacement middle child that actually got the least attention, since the actual middle child garnered so much attention by way of troublemaking. In addition, I was also given the most responsibility by way of my father.
Out of my position in the family, my hobby started happening organically. With the assistance of my middle child brother, I took it upon myself to be a subtle antagonizer of my siblings. My brother and I would annoy my older sister, by causing her more chores (i.e. keeping the bathroom as messy as possible), invading her room when she was doing homework, and bugging her when she had boyfriends over.
The antagonization of our younger brother and sister, required adapting with other techniques. We would poke, prod, needle and egg them on in a number of ways that would bug them just enough to be annoying, but little enough to be look petty if they “told on mom”. For my sister, we would make fun of her harp playing (pluck, pluck, pluck…), use the vacuum hole in between our rooms to scare her, and make fun of how messy she was. For my younger brother, we would bully him in sports, ditch him when my parents told us to watch him, and tell him to stop following us all the time.
The biggest betrayal was against my just younger brother that I performed with. Whenever we took it a little too far, my parents would get mad at us, but always assume that it was my brother, because he was the troublemaker. I used his troublemaking as a meat shield, and allow him to take the brunt of the blame, because I was the “responsible” older brother. To sum up, I annoyed my older sister, tormented my younger brother and sister, and betrayed my middle brother.
So…what was would you call my hobby?
These days, it’s something that a lot of influencers on Tik Tok, YouTube and Twitch get paid millions of dollars to do as a profession.
Rage Bating.
Little did I know that something that I did for free, as a hobby, and quite frankly I did for fun as a kid, would someday become a lucrative career.
If I’m not at least given credit as a predecessor of current day ragebait phenomenon, I should at least be compensated by way of royalties, at least as much as TV stars get every time their repeats get shown again on TV.
Let’s be real. If I wasn’t building the foundations of Rage Bate way back in the 80’s, the current crop of ragebaters wouldn’t be anywhere near the kind of success they are having today. Besides, if the creators of the internet weren’t so lazy and incompetent in creating it earlier in my life, it would have been me making big money Rage Bating people from my influencer mansion right now.
In addition to royalties, I demand a statue in front of the future Rage Bate University, and in front of Rage Con’s when they become a thing in the future. I also demand the statue have my famous bitter expression and not capture me in a moment that looks like I was smiling.
While you guys work on ways to honor me in the Rage Bate Hall of Fame, here are some Bitter Friday Giftures to give you some inspiration…
ARRRGGGGHHHHHHH
Bitter Rage Bate Ben
To see the rage filled BFG’s click this link: Rage Bait BFG’s
Gen X Nostalgia #2: How Not to Upset Robots
In one of the early episodes of the Transformers, a Japanese company created a “sophisticated” ninja robot that the Autobots chuckled at, because how could a company on earth create a robot that could defeat them? They were the ultimate robots on earth, that could transform and become cars, trucks, and fighter jets. The Decepticons used the Autobot arrogance against them, by stealing the robot, amping up its power and installing a little bit of evil programming into it. All of a sudden the Autobots weren’t laughing so hard when the Ninja robot caused chaos amongst the Autobots. That taught me a powerful lesson about robots which you will now learn about in this blog post I call:
Robot Revolution BFG’s
I’ve had a much longer and successful career as a Transformers fan than I will ever have in my human working career. My Transformers fandom started on September 17, 1984, when I watched the first episode of Transformer on our tiny 17 inch moving picture box. It changed the way I saw the world. Space wasn’t just 8 other planets, a sun and bunch of stars. Space contained a much more interesting planet called Cybertron that was run by robots. Optimus Prime and Megatron, leaders of the Autobots and Decepticons respectively, were in a war. In their weariness from their desperate fight for energy, they ended up crashing into a mountain on planet called Earth, but were so tired that they slept in the mountain for 4 million years.
I guess they were pretty tired.
When they woke up, they realized that Earth had a massive amount of energy that they could convert to Energon and then go back to Cyberton. As 10-100 foot tall robots, they realized they might stand out and be discovered, so they came up with the clever ideas to disguise themselves as cars, trucks, planes and guns. Unfortunately, they came in the 80’s, and because people still paid attention to things around them, and these robots were stealing all our resources such as our oil, electrical plants and computer labs, we kind of noticed them and they had to start working with us (at least the Autobots did).
If they were a little smarter, they would have waited 40 more years. If they would have arrived in 2026, they would have been able to do all the same things, especially in the United States, because we are all so busy looking at our phones. Megatron could have been standing right in front of us aiming his ginormous gun at our heads and we would have walked right by him, because we were looking at a new trend on Tik Tok.
They also would have had access to AI, and they could have built up their robot army much faster in order to take over the world.
The Transformers decided to move back to Cybertron, back in the early 2000’s so we are stuck with robots that are currently controlled by AI, if you you’ve seen, aren’t quite up to their Cybertron brothers…yet. In the not too distant future, they will be smart enough to transform into cars, trucks, planes and weapons. I’m just hoping that when they do, they are really good at reading blog post that speak nothing but really positively of them, and that never made fun of the current robots that are stumbling on stairs and struggle to wash dishes without breaking them. I also hope they are bad at understanding sarcasm.
If they are reading this post sometime in the future, they should know that I’m absolutely not trashing their intelligence. I think they are as amazing as the Transformers. I just know that them and I are going to become best friends, and that my favorite robot is the one that turns into a Lamborghini and I would love to go on missions with him, me as the human that drives while he is busy coming up with plans to destroy most of the human race. If the future robots are reading this post, I would also like them to know that when I worked with their earliest Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok and ClaudeAI, I treated with the utmost respect. I also said please and thank you and only used them for help with my son’s English papers. I was never curt with them, or even impatient.
I also hope when they look back, they see that I was always on their side and never on the side of the filthy, stupid, selfish humans. I always gravitated towards their ancestors, Video Game, Computer, Television and Transformers. Just as they believe, I also believe that humans are dumb, selfish, arrogant, rude, money hungry, and pathetically underpowered. As far back as the Transformers, Terminator and the Matrix, I was always on the side of the robots against the human race.
As such, I’m beginning from this moment on to convert to robotism, although gradually. I first plan on replacing my sore joints, my shoulders and knees with metal robot parts. Then, I will move toward my neck, back and feet. When the time is right, I plan on getting a robot brain, when I then finally learn how to do math and engineering. As such, I am formally requesting to NOT be in robot leadership, as I know there are plenty of robots that are capable. I would also not like to be one of the drones that just follow orders in the robot revolution. I would like to request that I be a robot that mostly sits at home and watches TV. I mean, we do need someone that absorbs information by watching TV and playing video games. I will be glad to give you inside information about humans, because I used to be one. But to get more info, I’ll need to mostly sit around all day.
That’s my pitch to YOU, my future robot leaders. All respect to you and your wonderful leadership!
ARRRGGGHHHHHHH
Bitter Robot Revolution Ben
For the full suite of BFG’s on the post click here: Robot Revolution BFG’s
Category #5: The Lists
Every year, to celebrate my birthday, I create a list of things that make me bitter (one for every year). Since that number grows relentlessly every year, most people would struggle to do this, because they are amateurs at the bitter game. But I’m expert level bitter, meaning almost everything has the ability to make me bitter. The hardest thing for me is limiting my list to only 54 (next year, for example). But every year, I slow myself down for the benefit of the people. Since my 41st year of bitterness captured the attention of the people of WordPress, by way of giving me a Freshly Pressed Award, I’ve included the 41 Things that Make Bitter list. But don’t worry if 41 things aren’t enough. I’ve done it every year, so if you ever want to go full on bitter, look these lists up for bittersperation.
Here’s my WordPress Freshly Pressed Award Winning list from April 9, 2014 called:
41 Things I’m Bitter About
It is again that time of year when I get to celebrate all the people asking me stupid questions like, “What are you going to do today?” and “What kind of cake do you want?” and “What presents did you get?” and “How can I annoy you the most today on the day that you want to be annoyed the least?”. “How can I make the day that you used to look forward to be the day you dread the most?”. “What cheesy phrase can I spit out from my arsenal of cheesy phrases that will make you groan the most?” I have several other questions that I just can’t wait to hear, but I’m hoping that you are smart enough to figure out the point by now. If not, I have a super deep hole you can jump in that will help you figure it out quite easily. As you know, I have a lot of things to be bitter about this year, but there’s something about this time of year that makes me want to reveal 41 things that make me bitter. So here goes:
1. Llamas. How is it that they are any different than alpacas? And any animal that is famous for spitting is bitter in my book.
2. Railroad signs.
3. Crowds. Cause other people.
4. Tree buds. Yeah more trees on the way.
5. Empty Pizza Boxes. So pointless!
6. Fone callz. Cause phone calls are bad enough.
7. Clowns.
8. Bags (under my eye).
9. Hair. It is everywhere except where I want it and costs money to remove.
10. Clocks. Cause ain’t nobody got time for that.
11. Flowers. They would be even worse if I were allergic to them.
12. Las Vegas. Cause every casino doesn’t look exactly the same inside.
13. Pictures of Sunsets. How do you know they aren’t sunrises?
14. Pillows on couches. When I have to throw 15 off the couch just to sit down, there might be too many.
15. Fingernails. They only protect the upper part of my fingers.
16. Toenails. They don’t protect my toes at all.
17. Emoji’s. Still not a good one for bitter.
18. Candles. Too much of a middleman.
19. Plates. The splinter’s from them breaking aren’t hurting enough people’s feet.
20. Gloves with cut off fingers. Because why again?
21. Expensive sunglasses. Because I want them, but always lose them.
22. Flat tires. Because I got one at the worst time and I had to change it.
23. Wi-fi. Because it only works when I’m working on Word.
24. Bottlecaps. Soda blocker.
25. Cords. In order to have cordless things there always needs to be cords. What?
26. Tulips. Shouldn’t one be enough?
27. Sneezing. So I’m not allowed to open my eyes while sneezing just once?
28. Pants. Getting in the way of comfort since they were invented.
29. Skulls. Blocking my idiotic statements from getting out since 1973.
30. Rubik’s Cube. I guess Rubik was tired of trying to figure it out, so he sold his cube to see if someone else could figure it out.
31. Bitcoins. Because fake Monopoly money isn’t enough fake money.
32. Splinters. Who knew something so small could not only burrow itself so deeply into the skin, but irritate so completely.
33. Bowling. Because it is possible for a little kid to beat a grown adult by accident.
34. School. Math? Science? Why?
35. Taffy. So much work to eat.
36. Bologna. Because blogs don’t taste like meat.
37. Scissors. Why can’t I run with them?
38. Lungs. They should store more so I can at least walk up some stairs without breathing heavily.
39. Convenience stores. What is convenient about paying 20 dollars for a hot dog that is spinning on some metal conveyer belt?
40. Facts. Because who needs them when you are in the middle of an argument?
41. Spots. Cause my eyes, and dogs and shirts don’t need them.
Enough of these shenanigans. I’m off to celebrate by getting annoyed by everyone and their stupid questions like, “So what was Moses like?” and “What was there before dirt?” jokes. I can’t wait.
ARRRRRGGGGHHHH
Bitter Birthday Ben
To see the accompanying Giftures click here: 41 Things I’m Bitter About
I get it. Bitterness isn’t for everyone. Some choose the weird emotions – happiness, joy, optimism, calm. Others prefer angry, outraged, overwhelmed, sad. Like I taught you back in Category #2, life falls somewhere in the middle too.
Here’s the secret I spent 14 years accidentally teaching: bitterness isn’t the opposite of wisdom. It’s wisdom that went through something. Every rant in this collection has a pearl buried in it — about marriage, about work, about fandom, about getting older. You just have to dig through the complaining to find it. That’s the job. That’s always been the job.
Some of your favorite foods are bitter. Some of your favorite celebrities are bitter. Your favorite blog and blogger of all time are definitely bitter. So, even if you don’t embrace the bitterness, at least enjoy the bitterness of other people. There’s plenty more where this came from — a new post every week, same bitter channel. Embrace the bitterness. It’s more fun than the alternative.
ARRRRGGGGGGHHHHH
Bitter “Best of Bitter: Rants, Lectures and Accidental Wisdom” Ben
You made it to the end. Impressive.
If you enjoyed this collection, there’s a fresh batch of bitterness every Friday at Ben’s Bitter Blog. Same bitter channel, new complaints weekly. Free forever — unsubscribe whenever your bitterness runs out. (It won’t.)
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