Why do people keeping have sophomoric arguments about wars for the sake of religion?

You know why we have wars?  We put forward a lot of pretexts, but the real reason is that people are and always will be asshats.  It doesn't matter what creed they follow or don't, whatever they claim.  The root cause is asshattery.

Sometimes an asshat invades Poland and a number of other countries.  Sometimes an asshat wants to build a summer home on the Jordan.  Sometimes an asshat shells Fort Sumter.  Sometimes an asshat thinks, "Hey, Indochina went super well for France, let's try that too."  Sometimes an asshat considers that Saladin looked at him funny.  Sometimes, or in fact frequently, an asshat decides that other people are the wrong color.  Sometimes an asshat crosses the Rubicon.

Everyone who starts a war flies the asshat banner ahead of his own flag, whether that flag bears cross, lilies, lions, crescent, or swastika.  Or flying spaghetti monster.

NB Sometimes one must fight: when the question is, "Xerxes has crossed the Hellespont, what is your next move?" the answer is, in fact, "War."

Why are we making movies about stuff we all watched on TV?

Like, yesterday?

Look, I know Julianne Moore is the perfect real actress to play Sarah Palin, and you don't want to miss the window on her being age-appropriate.  (Although, as a side note: I'm not sure Julianne Moore ages.)  I'm just not sure 2012 needs a movie on Mrs. Palin in 2008.  We know how that played out.  We were there.  We have the t-shirt.  We are still, alas, reading about it on the news.

Can't we at least pretend to get a little distance?  Or at least not relive times before we've actually finished living them in the first place?

Why are multivitamins so nauseating?

They're supposed to be good for you, but they make you feel more or less as if a mass of minerals is going to burst out of your abdomen Alien-style.  It is really, really unpleasant, and I believe that flamethrowers are no help at all.

Sure, anaemia is worse than this, but I'm not sure by how much.

Why does Alexandr Dolgopolov now have cornrows?

We have already been through this with Diego Forlán, several times.  When you have progressed so far as to realize that your face is so bony that it needs long hair to soften it, complete the thought.  If your face has not gotten less bony, you should not do anything to the hair.

Even Diego looked like a crazy person with cornrows, and he's working with slightly better material than young Dolgopolov.

Why can't anyone go anywhere without headphones?

On a run, or when working, or when the music in the café is Bob Dylan (again), headphones make a lot of sense.  Your own music keeps you from going insane, and makes a little private space for you.

But when you're just walking somewhere, do you really need to be listening to music?  Do you really need constant sensory input?  Might not some quiet contemplation help just as much as some Lady Gaga?

The other issue here is that people appear to think that headphones actually create a bubble for them, in which other things--particularly automobiles--do not exist.  If you can't hear it, apparently, it's not there.  I can't count the number of times I've seen pedestrians listening to their iPods wander blithely into the street without pausing or even looking.  So far I haven't seen one get hit, but I'm half-tempted to plow into them myself.

Also, how loud is your music that you can't hear a car?

Why do we now have advertisements for sugar?

"Only 16 calories per teaspoon!" they boast.  "Not made of cancer!" they claim implicitly.  "And only made a little bit of diabetes," they mutter shamefacedly.

This is absurd.  It's sugar.  I understand the necessity of advertising the calorie-free sweetener du jour, because it's not real, and it has a stupid name.  But sugar is a real thing.  Are we next going to advertise flour?

I am reminded of Mr. Ingleby's response when Lord Peter wonders helplessly why one would buy butter when bombarded with advertising for cheaper and allegedly just-as-good margarine: "You don't need an argument for buying butter. It's a natural, human instinct."

Why is Clym Yeobright a moron?

There is no point at which marrying Eustacia Vye is a winning proposition for him.  She doesn't even pretend to like him very much, and it's clear from the outset that they expect different things.  Now, that's pretty common, but it's as a rule less glaringly obvious.  Also, she has Damon Wildeve dangling after her and a wildly over-active imagination.  These things don't make her a horrible person, but they do make her a bad Mrs. Yeobright, and could never do anything else.

Clym, who has left England and done at least a few things with his life, should see the flagrant warning signs, and not take advantage of Eustacia's naïve selfishness.  It's not fair either to her or to him, and the blast radius of his poor decision is extremely large.

At least, unlike most Hardy women, she doesn't wake up each day and make a list of the lives she plans to ruin.  So there's that.

Why did people swoon over Atonement?

This was a movie billed as the "most passionate war drama since The English Patient," or some garbage like that.  There are several problems with that.  First, it assumes that passionate war dramas are desirable things in themselves, which is not true (see: Pearl Harbor).  Second, it assumes that you wish to recreate the experience of watching The English Patient, which probably made you want to die.  Third, Atonement was terrible.

Was there a single choice in that movie that didn't just make you want to break someone's nose?  Robbie, maybe you could not write two letters and then send the unfortunate one by way of Cecilia's preternaturally curious younger sister.  Paul, maybe you could be, you know, not a rapist.  Briony, maybe you could not ruin people's lives for no particular reason.  And then maybe you could not write a stupid novel and pretend it makes it better that you killed your sister and her lover.

And Mr. Wright, maybe you could not put all of your artistic energy into an eons-long tracking shot of Dunkirk that everyone will talk about forever even though it has even less to do with anything else that happens in the film than the D-Day scene had to do with the rest of Saving Private Ryan.

Finally, James McAvoy, maybe you could stop looking like a toad.

PS: Yes, I know there was a novel, and that many plots require asinine decisions.  Asinine decisions in print are not better than those on celluloid; let's just take it as read that I'm full of hate for Ian McEwan as well.

Why does Starbucks hate the environment?

I was in an airport last week, and it was five in the morning, and I needed a cup of coffee.  Now, slightly because I'm a dirty hippie but mostly because I like pink things, I have a Lilly Pulitzer travel mug.  Rather reasonably, I think, I go to a Starbucks and ask for a coffee in it.

The young lady asks, "Is that a Starbucks mug?"

I, because I have not learned to lie quickly, say, "No."

They cannot give me coffee in my non-Starbucks mug, so I have to get a paper cup.

Really?

I understand places that won't fill your travel mug because it probably has ebola.  I even understand places that won't fill it because they don't know what size it is, and neither do you, because that's a silly thing to know.

But because it's not their mug?  And they had to ask?  Seriously?  I am now even more Starbucks-alienated than I already was.

I am not going to buy their damn mug, because it's hideous and I don't need two.  And next time I might walk even farther across an airport to get other coffee, even if it is stupid o'clock, because, yes, I hate things that much.

Why are there so many kinds of Peeps?

In my house, we buy yellow chicks and blue bunnies.  Sometimes pink bunnies if we can't find blue bunnies.  I guess this makes us Peep-racists.

Anyhow.  There are too many colors and shapes of Peeps now.  Who wants to eat a green chick?  That's obviously not healthy.

Moreover, Peeps are an Easter candy.  I know there's Easter candy corn now, in pastels and spring shapes--that too is an abomination (well, even more than regular candy corn).  That doesn't mean that Peeps should retaliate by casting their sinister marshmallow shadow over the confectionery world.   And yet, there are Christmas Peeps.  Who wants to eat a marshmallow tree?  Still worse, there are Hallowe'en Peeps.  Who wants to eat a black cat Peep?  All food coloring that gives you grey or black is clearly made of cancer and despair.  Plus it gets on everything.

And all this is after the cognitive and gastronomic hurdle you have to leap before you even admit that they're comestible.*

* Well, they sure ain't food.

Why do kumquats always have those moments of total regret?

They are a completely delicious fruit, after that miserable instant of horror.  Perhaps they would be less delicious without the bitter contrast, but that is a price I would happily pay.

Kumquats are cute!  They're orange!  They're tasty!

But they're also evil.

Why is there so much crying in sports?

It's true that only baseball claims not to have crying, and that baseball's claims are dubious.

Everyone: suck it up.

I don't need to see Peyton Manning lose it as he leaves the Colts.  I don't need to see Roger Federer try manfully but unsuccessfully to keep it together while Nadal bites a trophy.*  I don't need to see David Beckham weep as he resigns the England captaincy.  Maybe I need to see Heinrich Haussler burst into tears on winning a Tour de France stage.

You shouldn't cry when you lose.  It makes you look like a child.  And if you are a child, it makes you look like a wussy child.

Plus, it shows no consideration for my nerves.  Watching a grown man cry is incomparably painful.  Or it should be, and would be, if they weren't all ridiculous wimps.

* Don't tell me this isn't still a worry.  That may be a true thing, but it's a true thing I hate.

Why is Andy Schleck so bad at time-trialling?

Step it up, kid.  You need to be faster than Jens Voigt, for crying out loud.  He's old enough to be your dad.