Sideswipe: August 17: Underwhelming fortune cookies

Knowledge gaps

A flight was delayed due to snow on the runway, a woman complained: "Damn it this happens every year, why don't they put a roof over the runway or something?"

Someone asked me how the guy that donated his heart to me was doing.

One of my college roommates wandered in while we were watching Jaws. It's the final 15 minutes. The shark is tearing the Orca apart. It comes to the scene where the shark heaves itself up on the stern, the roommate says: "It's pretty neat how they trained that shark to do that."

My friend once thought Aloe Vera was some European model who was hired for every cosmetic commercial because they would always say the product name and then "with aloe vera" as they showed models in the back dancing or washing their face or whatever. He thought she was one of them. I believe the direct quote was something to the effect of "it's crazy how she gets hired for literally every single commercial".

During a foreign language class, when learning the names of different countries, someone stopped the lecture and asked why this language we were learning made up names for different countries. Why can't we just use the real names like Germany, Japan etc? Total silence. Then 10 minutes of the entire class trying to get this person to understand that Germany is not the name of Germany in German. That all these country names they know are all English "made up" names for those countries. They did not comprehend.

That wearing a face mask mid-pandemic meant that I support the Taliban/the suppression of women in Afghanistan and want it the same in my country.

My boyfriend's dad said the vaccine was full of Aids and shards of glass.

People it's impossible to feel sorry for

Landlords: Has a volatile housing market slightly dented the massive profit you reap from your tenants? How ever will you cope? At this rate, you might have to sell off one of your assets and actually do a hard day's work for once. And even if you're a responsible landlord who looks after your property and tenants, you have been unfortunately tarred with the same horrible brush as the others.

Influencers: So what if their media empire has crumbled because they were exposed for being a particularly nasty non-entity? If your career is built on saying "don't forget to smash that subscribe button" with a straight face then perhaps you're owed all the bad karma coming your way.

The privately educated: Despite having all the leg-ups that money and good connections can buy, privately educated people will still piss and moan that spaces at schools are being snapped up by the lower classes. And who cares if your Latin qualification makes you feel alienated from the common man? The misplaced confidence you picked up along the way means you'll always be fine.

Fussy eaters: A person who's been served a steak that hasn't been scorched exactly to their liking will act as if a close family member has just died and expect you to be outraged too. They'll send it back to the kitchen while fighting back tears, apparently overlooking the fact they've just casually consigned a cow's entire life achievement to the bin. (Via The Daily Mash)