Lackawanna, NY—Seeing a glowy orange picture of a setting sun above Woodlawn Beach on a friend’s social media page, which implores viewers to be grateful for this beautiful gift from god, Angus Ireful, a sewer tech at the Erie County Water Authority, became annoyed. He responded to the friend’s post: “This fucking sunset isn’t a gift from god—it’s the earth spinning on its axis, some gravity shit, light scattering and a whole bunch of other sciency stuff.” For good measure he added that he doubted god had any free time these days with all the hating required for gay people, the poor and women who want agency over their bodies.
“I know, I know . . . I go too far,” he said. “But I’m sick of all this gratefulness nonsense.” Ireful pointed to the constant memes that tell him not only to be grateful to god for the glowy sunsets, but also for his family, friends and his good health. “I mean, my family, I should be grateful for those assholes?” he said incredulously. “I spend my days knee deep in shit and then come home and all they do is whine and complain and want more stuff: a newer car, more games, faster internet. I tell you what, they’re the ones that should be grateful—grateful I don’t pound the shit out of them.”
Ireful is especially disturbed by all the Charlie Brown-Snoopy memes. “Snoopy is as big an asshole to Charlie Brown as my kids are to me. After rescuing him from that puppy farm the little beagle can’t even be bothered to learn Charlie Brown’s fucking name. He sits there with a pile of bones reading the Wall Street Journal, but the guy who provided the bones and paper is that “round headed kid?” And, furthermore, when the “round headed kid” is trying to find the meaning of Christmas does Snoopy offer encouragement? Does he look at Charlie Brown with big dewy eyes that say—you can figure this out Chuck? No. He hops on the consumer bandwagon and wins first prize in a decorating contest. Dumb, thumb sucking Linus helps Charlie Brown out instead. It’s bullshit.”
The sewer tech wondered why we had to trick ourselves into believing all this stuff is good—the daily struggle to put food on the table, dealing with family and little animated beagles who are assholes—when all these things are hard and frustrating. He didn’t think it was necessary to hate on everything, he just wished the world stop insisting he always be fucking grateful.
