Rage of the Day - greeting cards

come on, Hallmark. really? oh, it's a woman's bday. better make a card about sagging body parts or chocolate bonbons. how about father's day? nothing more unique than a card about beer, duct tape and golf. and if it's not some painfully lame joke, it's a ridiculous flowery poem that a normal human being wouldn't write to their hippie english prof, let alone someone they supposedly love.

finding a card that's actually funny is akin to loosing a genuine chuckle at the saturday comics. i envision sweater-clad mid-Westerners wearing loafers and chortling in self-satisfaction at the card layout on their Windows 97 system.

why do greeting cards suck so much? standing in front of hundreds of terrible cards, trying to look for one even partly acceptable fills me with exasperated rage. as the clock ticks by, the floor-leve bar i set for card quality begins to lower and lower until i no longer care about the cornball message about 'wisdom with age' or the tired, tired joke about candles being a fire hazard. i just grab and go lest the store's lameness rub off on me and i start cracking jokes about farts and fire extinguishers.

can we not find a new social convention to replace stupid greeting cards? post-it note, used napking, old movie ticket...? with every passing milestone, i fear for the safety of Hallmark cashiers.

and that dear Reader, is my Rage of the Day.