american nerd survey

What is the saddest thing you know?

bryan: The film Point Break.

Mark Kalar: Answer #1: We are all utterly and completely insignificant. Most likely, none of us will be remembered past our grandchildren's generation. And it is even more likely that in the big-picture grand scheme of things, all of humanity is less than a microscopic blip on the radar screen of whatever the hell the universe is.

Answer #2: It is incredibly sad that I know Adrian Vandenberg was the lead guitarist of Whitesnake and went on to form his own band called Vandenberg. That is space in my brain that could be used for something, well, useful. Except, given that my life is essentially meaningless (see answer #1), I guess it doesn't really matter.

Stephen McClurg: Daily, maybe the saddest thing I know is my dog's whimper when I leave for work. At times, after a hurricane has passed and there is no power, you try to go to bed with your windows open to thick humidity and sometimes the sound of someone weeping. Hearing my mother cry. Brian Wilson's song, "Surf's Up."

But there are much sadder things in the world.

Reed Miller: This is hard to dig into but the saddest thing I know today is that my cousin, a fine bright, courteous, kind, athletic kid, is going to a college where Michelle Malkin recently gave a talk under the misnomer "Freedom Library Featured Speach." In case you don't know, Malkin is "the Asian Anne Coulter." She advocates racial profiling, thinks the internment of Japanese-Americans (and other ethnic minorities) during World War II was a good idea, even though the US Government that did it has since admitted that it was a bad idea. She has also called for the ouster of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, claiming that he couldn't be objective on the issue of racial profiling because of his personal experience as an interned Japanese-American. My cousin is a good kid. He chose this school because it was near his home, supposedly well-respected, relatively cheap and has a baseball team that he can play for. I don't think he came to it with a political bent. But I'm worried how he's going to turn out.

Keith Pille: That at this point in history, many people (including me, from time to time) seem to fall into this default worldview that they are the only person who's really experiencing anything, and everyone else is just a prop in the overarching story of Their Fascinating Life, and that it's therefore ok to do pretty much whatever you feel like to anybody else because they're just supporting actors at best.

Alternately, to borrow from Achewood, the saddest thing is a little girl who is told by her own mother and father that she will never be pretty.

Don Pizarro: Here's something I've sort of known intuitively, but that a silat guru I know put into words.  To paraphrase, if a human being perceives that he is forced to choose between his interests and yours, it's a safe bet that you're the one who's going to get hosed.  It's just human nature, one of those genetic imperatives from 100,000 B.C. that we've never been able to completely eliminate as a species.

Simon Riordan: How much does Sally Struthers weigh in those "Save the Children" commercials anyway?  Sad.

Clint Weathers: The saddest thing I know is that the only sad things I can think of aren't actually sad so much as ironic.