Swag this

I put Ada to bed and came downstairs to find Chris watching football. The final 10 minutes of a pre-season football game holds pretty much zero appeal to me, so I wandered out to start dinner. When I wandered back in, the end of "60 Minutes" was on. Andy Rooney was bitching about getting swag. People, Rooney's viewers I am assuming, send him stuff. And according to him, it's crap. He showed off an array of caps, shirts, books and paintings of his likeness that he'd been sent, complaining away about all of it. I know that complaining is pretty much what Andy Rooney does, but doesn't it seem like a bad strategy to bitch about the stuff you get from your viewers? Especially when the complaints are not just about the item as an item ("I never wear t-shirts") but also about the organizations and ideas expressed by the hats, shirts or books. On the rare occasions when I watch "60 Minutes," I have always found Andy Rooney to be grating and painfully un-entertaining. But here he seemed purposefully mean.

Maybe I'm just bitter because no one is paying me to be rude, insulting and annoying on television. (They should. I may be no Natalie Portman, but I'm a damn sight prettier than Andy Rooney.) Even when swag-collecting bloggers get something they aren't crazy about, at least they have the decency to be funny about it (or turn it into a contest prize). I'm into polite, but I figure if that is not possible, people should at least be funny.

I recognize that this post has veered into Andy Rooney-esque complaint essay territory. But to show that I'm no kin to that tired out old ass-clown, let me just say: anyone who wants to send me things, I promise not to insult them. Even if you send an oil painting of Andy Rooney wearing a bathrobe and union cap.