The burden of being Tom Garrett extends beyond my profound lack of social interaction, incompetence at parallel parking, and maintenance of an inexplicably-large retro video game collection (although it occurs to me that the former and the latter points may be hopelessly intertwined).

You see, I am nearly incapable of suffering fools.  I feel compelled to fight a lifelong war against stupidity, even to my own detriment, and even if the stupidity is unquestionably well-intentioned.  A picture posted by our local CBS affiliate on Facebook provided a helpful example of this peculiarity of mine.  The image was a promotional design crafted by the Salvation Army (a very worthy cause) that included a slogan that irritated and perplexed me.

Here it is:

Ok, so, let’s talk about the problem with this.

The slogan says, “This is one bucket you don’t want to miss,” or, as I prefer to read it, “This is one bucket you don’t want to miss.”

There are two issues right off the bat.  One, it’s not readily apparent that this is a reference to basketball.  The Harlem Globetrotters logo is fairly small, tucked away in the lower-right corner.  Being a sports geek, I assume a basketball connection when I see “buckets,” but I don’t think most people would.  Still, this is a minor concern compared to the other issue.

The slogan is based on a false (or at least illogical) premise.  Namely, that there is a kind of “bucket” that one would want to miss.

The slogan is saying, implicitly, “There may be some buckets you want to miss, but not this one, because it’s for charity!  Missing this bucket would mean that your money wouldn’t get to the Salvation Army!”

As opposed to what?  Missing another kind of bucket that costs your team points during a basketball game?  Not missing that bucket is the object of the sport.

Stupid.

I’ve wasted enough time on this, and the fact that the imbecile who came up with the slogan probably makes two-to-three times my annual income is certainly little comfort.  But I’m happy I could provide you, my adoring public, with yet another glimpse into the dark chasm of my soul, and my undiagnosed autism.

And, of course, this all naturally reminded me of this: