Sooooo.... (Mini-Rants Part Deux)

It's been awhile. Life's kinda been crazy, with work and family and the ridiculous hell of trying to deal with society as a whole, I haven't really found much time to sit down and write. And the time I have found that I COULD use to write I found myself lacking inspiration. Don't get me wrong: I always have problems. With everything. I hate just about everything and everyone and always have shit to complain about, but a lot of the time I can't find a direction for it. It's like I'm this boiling pot of bitchyness and frustration that's been covered with a lid, so all the steam stays in. Eventually, as with a covered pot of boiling water, the lid pops off and the pot boils over. That's when I write. So I've gathered a new selection of random, useless but hopefully amusing shit to complain about. This is...MINI RANTS PART DEUX!!!

1) Cars that stop at lights and settle halfway in the crosswalk. Just....fucking seriously? Its a CROSSWALK, as in a place for people to CROSS while WALKING. How are we supposed to cross the street safely when some douchebag stops his big-ass Hummer or Range Rover (or any other sort of car actually...) right in our god-damned path? We have to step out into the normal part of the street and risk being hit by idiot drivers just because YOU couldn't put your brakes on a few seconds sooner and stop before the crosswalk? Fuck you. (I realize there's still a lot of potential for being hit even inside the crosswalk...but even some idiots know what a crosswalk is and can associate hitting people with bad things.)

2) People who pay in small change. I don't mean 4 or 5 cents because their total at the store came to, say, $4.34. I mean people who ring up like....10-20 bucks worth of shit and can't use anything bigger than a dime. I've seen this. Both in line at the store (any store) and being a cashier at my local supermarket (I can't say the name...don't wanna get fired.) It's time consuming, frustrating and just plain stupid. It wouldn't be so bad if these people didn't gab the whole time that you're counting their little Zip-Loc bag of pocket change. But they do. They say things like "There should be $15.73 there...pretty sure." or "I don't know exactly how much is there, but I hope it's enough." Or "I really hate Jews. They're the reason I have so much loose change." (Okay I made that last one up. But it could happen...) Back to the point: Folks....try WRAPPING YOUR COIN! A big bag of coin rolls costs ONE FUCKING DOLLAR!!! I know it's a pain to roll them by hand, so invest in a coin rolling MACHINE. Yeah it's gonna cost a bit, but it'll pay for itself, both in terms of money and in terms of EVERYONE'S frustration.

3) "Dollar Stores" that sell stuff for more than a dollar. Oh my god. It's SO...DAMN...ANNOYING! I don't know why it is, but it frustrates the hell out of me. If you're a DOLLAR STORE and you have "Dollar" in your name, everything should be ONE DOLLAR! There are plenty of stores that do this. But a lot don't. And to those: YOU ARE NOT A DOLLAR STORE! YOU ARE JUST A STORE! A NORMAL STORE! CHANGE YOUR DAMN LABEL!!!!

4) People who spend so much time bashing pop culture that they become as intricately obsessed with it as the fans of said culture that they claim to hate. I'm not naming names. It's fine if you don't like popular culture. I don't. It's even better if you express that. I do. But DO NOT blow up my facebook feed or my email inbox with shit about how much you hate Jersey Shore or how stupid you think Lady Ga-Ga is. You look like a conceited prick and a closet fan of this stuff. You folks have NO right to call other people "posers". You're Anti-Poser Posers. Just shut the fuck up about it.

5) Rick Santorum
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGHHH

6) Overzealous and overemotional sports fans...The Patriots lost the Super Bowl. The Packers didn't make it into the Super Bowl. You're favourite player didn't make the NHL draft...STOP FUCKING BLUBBERING!!!!!! Seriously! You can go on the internet and find HUNDREDS of videos of people crying-genuinely sobbing like fucking babies with shit in their pants- because...their team....lost a game. Ummm...hello? It's not supposed to be taken so seriously. That's why it's called a GAME. Or a SPORT!! Its for FUN. Even in the big leagues of any Pro-Sport. Yes I was disappointed that my beloved Patriots lost this past Super Bowl to the Giants...AGAIN....but you won't find any video footage of me sobbing and whining with snot dripping down my face, going "Booo-hoo hoo *sniff* the-the patriots LOST!!! WHYYYYYY? Waaaaah!!!!" Why won't you find that footage? BECAUSE I DON'T CRY OVER IT!!! ...where anyone can see or hear me...I keep it private. 

End Rant.

More Bitchy Goodness

All The Small Things

This morning, like every morning, I had to put my shoes on. I just don't feel comfortable without them. So I'm putting my shoes on, but I'm not really paying attention, Im listening to the bustle of the early morning household outside my bedroom. I find that my shoe-donning was taking much longer than usual. I looked down and noticed that no matter what I did, my foot just didn't want to fit in the shoe. Now I know these particular shoes fit very well because I've only worn them every day for 5 months. But my foot was not going in. So I had to focus my attention on wriggling my foot back and forth to worm it into place. Thirty seconds of wriggling later I got my shoe on, but it was horribly uncomfortable, because the heel of the shoe folded under my foot. So I had to reach down and pry the back flap of material out from it's entrapment behind my ankle. Then I was good to go.

So I came out, dressed and with shoes on. I had to go and make a pot of coffee. I'm a zombie without my morning coffee. (I don't need brains...just coffee.) That's another thing. Why does everybody think zombies only eat brains? They're not smart enough to selectively eat only brains. They eat flesh in general. Stop with the brain-eating bullshit. Anyway so I put the coffee grounds in the filter, and emptied the stale coffee out of the pot. I proceeded to fill the pot with new water, groaning impatiently at how long the process seemed to take. When it was finally filled, I opened the back of the coffee maker and tilted the pot to empty it into the water-storing-spot-thingie. And I spilled water everywhere. It covered the counter, rushed onto the floor, flooded underneath the coffee pot. Total mess. So, grumbling and complaining, I went to get a towel. Once I dried up my indoor swimming pool I filled the coffee maker the lazy way: I took the sink hose and aimed it into the opening. That took even longer than using the pot, but I was at a smaller risk of getting water all over again.

So I turned the coffee pot on and set about waiting for it. In the meantime I decided I was going to roll a cigarette to get my nicotine fix. I found the rolling machine, grabbed a pinch of tobacco and set it in the blue contraption. I affixed a tube to the end of the thing and pulled back to roll the cigarette...but...you know how when you use a rolling machine and pack it with too much tobacco, it pulls back and only fills half the tube? Yeah. That happened. So I unrolled the ruined cigarette and tried again. Failed. Tried again. Failed. Five failures later I managed to get a decent cigarette. The coffee pot beeped to signal it had finished brewing, so I made a cup, lit my cigarette and sat down.

Some time later, I decided I had to clean up the massive scattering of tobacco all over the kitchen floor from the cigarette epidemic. I got the broom and dustpan out and set about this new task. I swept the mess into a big pile and proceeded to sweep it all into the pan. Or tried to. Unfortunately my dustpan is plastic and cracked in two places, so the tobacco and dirt slipped through the cracks and I had to make 3 extra passes over the pile to get it all collected in the pan. I stand up and trip over my shoes, who's evil sentience had made them untie themselves when I wasn't looking. I stumble and drop all the tobacco onto the floor.

I finally got the mess cleaned up and sat back down at my laptop. I open firefox to browse the net, only to get an error message. My internet wasn't working. So I strode over to my modem and unplugged it to reset it. A minute later I plugged it back in. Still nothing worked. Did it again. Nothing. Again, nothing. I finally plugged it back in, found a pen and pressed the tiny little reset button a million times. Eventually...problem solved.

The whole morning just seemed to be an endless cycle of repetitive, ridiculous events that I just couldn't get through without wanting to shoot myself. Fortunately I don't have these days everyday, but often enough so that I can see a pattern in them. I wonder when the day will finally come where my head simply explodes?

End Rant.

A Long Running Theme

Mini-Rants

The following “rant” is actually comprised of a series of mini-rants about stuff that pisses me off. It's not complete, as there is an inumerable amount of stuff that pisses me off just in the realm of human nature, let alone in other aspects of the world. As you can guess, all of these “mini-rants” will have varying topics. They will not be in any particular order, as I don't really have a daily checklist of things I need to be peeved about.

1. Couples who are expecting a baby and use at least one form of the following phrase: “We're pregnant!” No. SHE'S pregnant. Guys. Cannot. Get. Pregnant. We don't have the plumbing. EVERYONE knows this. Yet obnoxious people insist on trying to make pregnancy a “team effort”. I'm a father. I saw my daughter's mother go through the nine months and while I tried to play a part in her...I don't want to say “burden”...rather... “adventure”....like doing more of the housework, carrying everything for her, letting her rest when she needed to...I did take credit for the pregnancy. I didn't have a life brewing in my stomach. I didn't get temporary carpal tunnel syndrome, I didn't have cramps or Braxton Hicks contractions. My penis gave me a “Get out of child-bearing free” card. She bore the child, she gave birth, she endured the pains and took the bad with the good. I didn't do any of that, so I'm not gonna go around claiming I was pregnant too. People who do are stupid. (please note: I do see the ONE situation where that phrase is appropriate: A lesbian couple who both had artificial insemination done and both got pregnant. But that's splitting hairs.)

2. Hip hop ringtones. Really? It's just fucking dumb. I find nothing more obnoxious than sitting on a bus, or waiting in a doctor's office or anywhere else and hear somebody's phone belting out a ridiculous, static filled, low quality sound clip from some shitty rap song. Nothing says “You're phone's ringing” like songs about bitches and Bacardi, right? WRONG! Nothing says it better than “RING RING RING!” Yes, as a fan of heavy metal I do have heavy metal ring tones. But I always make sure it is a high quality sound clip and I dont keep my phone up too loud in public. I at least make an effort.

3. Non-stop talkers. Okay. I admit, when I get a good conversation going on interesting subject matter...I can go on for awhile. However. I don't talk for hours on end, I let the other person/people speak as well, and I don't bounce the subject around to a million different things in a span of five minutes. I once had a conversation that started as a simple debate over whether or not Stanley Kubrick directed the Space Odyssey sequels...should've lasted the five minutes it took to look it up on Google. That's where I WANTED it to end. But wham. I found myself, three hours later, discussing the migratory patterns of ducks. There was no break in the conversation, just to let you know. And all because I'm GENERALLY too polite to tell the non-stop talker to “Shut the fuck up!”. It might not have been so bad if I had gotten a word in edgewise other than the occasional “Mmm-hmm...” or “Oh really? I didn't know that.” People like that just rub my fur the wrong way.

4. Johnny Depp. I used to like him. I did. I really did. I thought he was amazing. But now..he's in EVERYTHING!!!!. Aside from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, I've just gotten sick of him. He's in EVERY Tim Burton film, along with-and as I type I have to suppress a shudder-Helena Bonham Carter. I'm just tired of seeing him. He's still a good actor, I admit, but really, just pick someone else to put in movies, for fuck-sake. Specifically you, Mr. Burton. I love your work and all, but you've developed a disorder I invented that I call “Over Depping”. It starts with “Double Depping”, “Triple Depping” and so on. After five I just call it “Over Depping.”

And there you have it. These four are a tiny fraction of what truly riles me up. I will be writing more of these, so don't worry. The world is not my oyster, but it is my big festering pile of shit that makes me mad. So you can best believe I'm going to complain about it.

End Rant.

Another One For Your Eyeballs To Enjoy

The Markdown on Art

Okay. So as a reader and a writer...I like books. I go to the library often and bookstores are like my home away from home. There is nothing I love more than prying open the pages of a brand new hard cover novel in the fantasy section of my local Barnes & Noble. The scent of a fresh book is intoxicating to me. A book could be total rubbish and I'd still open it to sniff the pages for several minutes. During these instances, I imagine that passersby see me and wonder if I'm lining up and snorting cocaine from the inside of the spine. If I did cocaine...that'd be a good way to do it...

Anyway...despite my love of books...buying them is hard. I don't usually have money and when I do it has to go on other, less enjoyable stuff. Thats why I found myself having mixed emotions when I found a particular book at the store I was in. The book was “Stick To Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!” By Scott Adams. For those of you who don't know, Scott Adams is the genius behind the Dilbert comics you can find in almost any newspaper. I love Dilbert, I've read other books my Mr. Adams, like The Dilbert Principle. His work is always awesome. This book that I found was no exception.

The book is witty, intelligent, and makes you laugh with every page. I was very happy that I had found it and am still happy to have it...but I feel sort of guilty for acquiring it where I did...and for how much it cost me. I picked this book up at my local Dollar Tree. Yes...it was just one dollar.

When I saw the book on the shelf I said to myself “Shit yeah! Good deal!” So yes I did buy it. But...let me explain something....the other books of Scott Adams have made the New York Times Best Seller list several times each, and he's earned a lot of fame, respect, and a lot of money from them. And yet this book winds up in the bin in the Dollar Tree simply because it's a book of anecdotes and personal thoughts as opposed to his other works, which deal more with real life economics and business.

Does that difference really mean that Adams put less work into this book? Did he pour less of his heart and soul into its pages than the others? Was he ashamed of it when he was finished? I truly don't think so. This book was, as far as I know, just as much of a beloved brainchild to Adams as any other thing he's done, so as a writer myself, I think I would be a little offended to find MY book sitting in a bin for a dollar.

And you know what? It's not so much the price of one dollar that bothers me...well it does...but its not the main factor to me. Its more of the fact that I bought it at a DOLLAR TREE. Where everything is a dollar. EVERYTHING. So basically what society is saying is that Mr. Adams' book is worth precisely the same amount as that little frog pen near the register thats wearing boxing gloves with buttons on the back that can make him punch (I have two of these...) I'd be truly mad. You wanna mark someone's passion and hard work down to a mere dollar? Put it in the dollar bin at Barne's for fuck's sake. At least give it SOME credit! Its a good book! This book, also, was crammed in with a shitload of self-help books, numerous copies of the Holy Bible and shitty fantasy novels that read like a copy of Clifford the Big Red Dog. Seriously? Scott adams doesn't deserve that. His book, unlike all else on the shelf, is not fiction (Oooooo he just called the Bible fiction. He's going to hell!)

I realize....that this book was published in 2007. Four years ago. The book, admittedly might have run it's course by now, may have gotten as popular as it was going to, then declined. But still...fucking DOLLAR TREE? I mean they might as well rename that store to “Hick-E-Mart” (get it?) Like the majority of the people who use these stores will ever appreciate the writing of Scott Adams (or even be able to read words containing more than two syllables.) So his work is not only insulted by being put into a shitty redneck store, it's further bashed by either being ignored by 90% of the consumer base of Dollar Tree, or being purchased by bumbling, banjo twanging cousin-humpers who are more likely to wipe their asses with the pages than read them. I like to think I'm one of the only people, if not the ONLY person with more than one braincell who bought this book and READ it.

The ironic part is....from what I've read about Mr. Adams, and all I've learned about his thought processes from reading Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain...I don't think Scott Adams gives a flying fuck that his book is at the dollar tree. He's made enough money off of his career that one book won't make much difference. I could be wrong, and he could be outraged by this fact, but as far as I know, I'm the one who's ticked off by a situation I consider to be defamation of character. It's okay. Scott if you happen to see this, please go ahead and continue wiping your ass with twenty dollar bills. I'm totally cool with that, and I'll continue being a grumbling fan.

End rant.

First Contact

SMOKING

I'm not writing this piece to complain about smoking itself. Or preach about how bad cigarettes are for you. I smoke. A lot. At least two packs a day. Usually more. So I can't trash smokers themselves. That would be hypocritical. It's the non-smokers, or those who quit, that bug the living hell out of me. Even worse...the smokers who DO take the hypocrital route.

There is nothing more obnoxious to me than when I'm enjoying a cigarette-whether it be on my front porch, on the street, or anywhere- and I'm approached about it. “You shouldn't smoke!” they tell me. Or “You know that's bad for you, right?” Well maybe I shouldn't smoke. There's a LOT of things in this world that shouldn't be done.

Like having sex with goats. I think that's wrong. I think it's perverse and disgusting and I think that every goat-fucker who still breathes air should be forced to stop (both goat-fucking and breathing.) But despite my views on fornicating with our hooved friends, I'm not going to preach to the people that do it. I'm not going to burst through the door of a barn, where a lonely farm-hand is making whoopee with a member of the livestock and yell “THAT'S BAD FOR YOU!” or “YOU SHOULDN'T DO THAT!” Why? Because its stupid. It's annoying. And quite frankly...if I were plugging a goat, I'd feel extremely awkward if I had to listen to a lecture about how wrong I am while I'm still sac deep in Goat-Land.

But enough about New Zealand, (Oh snap!) I'm talking about smoking. Yes, I know it's bad for me! I've read the countless pamphlets and books, seen millions of Television commercials telling me how it will blacken my lungs. I've seen the warning posters everywhere listing the ingredients of tobacco that most people don't know, like tar, and chlorine....and the blood of newborn babies, (I don't know...I didn't memorize the list...) Point is, I know it's going to kill me, or at least make me sick. The thing that seperates me and all true smokers from the rest of society?

We don't care.

Or at least most of us don't. I mean, if you cared that much about cancer, or lung disease, or dying young, would you start smoking at all? Or if you did start for whatever reason, but you cared about all that, wouldn't you stop? I don't wanna hear “Oh it's so hard to quit.” or “I'm trying so hard to give it up.” You know what? If you care enough about your health, you'll quit. It wouldn't matter how hard it is, you'd DO IT and wouldn't complain. If you're a smoker that tells everybody you're “trying to quit, but can't.” You're lying to yourself. You aren't trying to quit. You're TRYING to try to quit. And you don't care enough to succeed.

That leads me to my next point. Legal smoking age. I've smoked cigarettes since I was nine years old. Nine, that's right. It started with stealing cigarette butts from my mother's ashtray when she was outside. It then graduated to swiping full cigarettes and eventually whole packs from her purse. People say it's wrong to smoke under 18. Why?

Smoking can and likely will kill you. EVERYONE knows this. If you smoke, and you're not just doing it to impress other people, you're taking your own life into your hands. That's a hefty responsibility. You're taking charge of a HUGE aspect of your life. Most people can't handle the idea of playing with their own mortality. So I think that if you're a kid and you make that decision, and realize what you're doing, you should be allowed the buy cigarettes. Seriously. I didn't start smoking to be popular. Nobody KNEW I smoked till I was 15, and even then I didn't advertise it. Why? Because I smoked for one reason: to relieve the stress and anxiety that came with living in an abusive household.

No, I'm not going to whine about the fact that I got the shit beaten out of me on a day to day basis by my mother. Old news. But I will say that it made me a very high strung kid. Smoking helped me cope. I knew what I was doing, even at that age I knew the potential consequences. There are grown men and women that only smoke at parties, or light a cigarette but only pretend to inhale. They think it's cool. They do it for show. These are the people that shouldn't be allowed to buy cigarettes. An ID card showing your age doesn't make you mature. Or intelligent for that matter.

So here's what I propose: Instead of having a law that requires you to be 18 with a card as proof to buy cigarettes, there should be a maturity test. The test will not be a piece of paper. You will be taken to a room. There will be no furniture in the room. They will shut the door, leaving you alone in this bare, windowless room. The only other objects besides you will be a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and an ashtray. The pack of cigarettes will have a label that reads as follows.

“WARNING: Smoking these cigarettes will cause instant cancer. You will grow large malignant tumors all over your body, will have to endure months of chemo therapy and suffer from immense hair and weight loss. You will constantly be sick. One puff from these will make your teeth yellow and your lungs black. You will cough constantly and often times said coughing will bring up lumps of plegm or even blood. Smoke at your own risk!”

Yes it's going to be a very BIG pack of cigarettes. The point of all this being: If the test-taker reads this label and still decides to smoke one of the cigarettes, they will be allowed to buy them. That deals with the “handling your own mortality” bit. But what about the rest? That's part two of the test. The test taker is moved to another, identical room, occupied by them, another man (in the nude) and a goat. The nude man proceeds to make love to the goat, and you have to decide whether or not you're going to say something.

That's what I think the process should be. Not that it would ever happen. Human kind hates new ideas. Especially new ideas that might WORK. Anyway...I've spent a lot of time talking about smoking...cigarettes. But cigarettes aren't the only smokable objects in the world!

George Carlin once said: “Sometimes [a cigar] is a big brown dick!” Cigars do look like dicks don't they? Big, long....brown. One end is always wet. You smoke cigars...and you can “smoke” dicks too! Amazing how obvious, yet unobvious these similarities are. No I'm not saying that cigar smoking makes you a homosexual male. But it does make you look pretentious. Well let me be more specific. If you smoke a cigar, indoors...in a big cushiony swivel chair with a bottle of burbon on the mahogony desk in front of you...you're pretentious. If you smoke a cigar outdoors in a lawn chair in short shorts and and undershirt... you look pretentiously white trash. If you walk down the street in the middle of the day, dressed like a “gangsta” rapper, smoking a grape-flavored cigar and holding it like a joint....you're a douchebag. All pretenses of pretensiousness are dropped and you graduate to full douchebag status.

That's all I have to say about cigars, honestly. On to marijuana. Hey, dude! Wanna go roll a joint, light it, smoke it, and eventually kill any working brain cells we have left? HELL YEAH DUDE! Pot smokers make no sense to me. You have a plant, that when set on fire and inhaled causes you to become lightheaded, extremely hungry and makes you laugh for hours on end at things that aren't even remotely funny. I don't see a point. I'm constantly hungry and I don't even smoke weed. I like to laugh at things that deserve laughter. I like being an intelligent person capable of forming full sentences, containing words with more than two syllables, and not have said sentences punctuated at random intervals by little intellectual nuggets such as “uuuuuh......” or “mmmm....” or, “duuuude.”

But on the other hand...if you want to smoke cigarettes to impress others...suck on a big brown dick-I MEAN-smoke a cigar, or destroy your brain with marijuana...go ahead. I can't and don't want to stop you. Your choice. But just know that I don't like you very much.

End Rant.