Things I find Irksome

Children Wearing Bikinis

As much as I enjoy the sexualization of America, I’m still not a huge fan of pedophilic tendencies. And no, it’s never cute when your ten year old does a Madonna pose in her bathing suit. I promise not to change my mind when I have a kid either. What is wrong with you people?

Let’s just make a rule that no one is allowed to wear a bikini until they are at the very least halfway through puberty. I mean seriously, what’s the point otherwise? A bikini is designed to accentuate certain curves, and if you aren’t old enough to develop those curves it’s a waste of time. My time. And if you happen to have any kind of curves at all at 8, they probably aren’t the kind you want to share.

Cyclists

Lance Armstrong is a beacon of hope for people struggling with cancer. His story is a testament to the power of the human spirit. His yellow wristbands have raised money and awareness for the plague of the 21^st century. And the French absolutely hate him. My kind of hero, no?

No. Our dear Mr. Armstrong has also encouraged legions of men to wear spandex and hike their rears into the air trying to ride their bicycles. If I had to add all his good works with this crap? Hmm… It’s at best a toss up. I’ll be generous and say .02 percent of the population is meant to wear spandex. And none of them are men.

On top of that these people cram into the streets in packs of neon obesity, convinced that they have more rights on the road then I do. They ride in the middle of the street and whine whenever a car merges to the right to make a right turn. Y’know, the way they are friggin supposed to. I hate to break it to you, but the real rules of the road are the laws of physics. Mass and velocity my friends, mass and velocity.

Militant Recycling

Oh…My…God… I threw a plastic bottle into the garbage can. The garbage can! Because that’s where one would think it should go. I must be going to hell for that, because the little children of the recycling movement want me to horde all the bottles of the world until my apartment looks like a pack rat’s den. Hopefully it will get moldy and develop some new kind of organic disease that can decrease the surplus population.

Look, the trash company sorts through my refuse looking for recyclables for me. They probably get some absurd tax rebate, and it contributes to job growth to boot. That and I don’t have to deal with it. Because I don’t have to go through my garbage, it’s one of the perks of not being homeless. So my trash company gets to add to the stockpiles of recyclable material sitting around in dumps across the country because we don’t have the processing capacity to keep up with supply for me. I swear, this recycling business is really important. It’s just working gangbusters.

So keep shaking your head at me whenever you see me throw my empty bottle of water in the trash. I’m half a step away from going back to straight littering.

Year End Evaluations

If you’ve ever had a year end evaluation, you probably realize how utterly useless they tend to be. You go through a list of questions and try to remember what you may have done in January to help the company. Then you get to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 5, wondering whether humility or arrogance is more likely to get you a raise.

Your boss gets to review your answers for half a minute or so and approves with just enough remarks to make sure it looks like they were thorough. Since they have a two-week window at best to go through every employee’s eval they can’t really focus too much on you, kinda like the rest of the year.

This is mindless masturbation because if your boss hasn’t been paying attention the whole year round then the five minutes of giving you a 3.15 approval rating is pointless. You know it. They know it. But apparently their boss never got the reality memo. Wetahded.

Unrated Movies

There’s this trend to release movies in an “Unrated” version. That way you can get more of the fun obscene language and hosts of extra nudist exploits, right? Wrong. That would be truth in advertising, and I could obviously get on board the honesty train for that. But these movies aren’t really all that different; they just re-insert some of the crap scenes that weren’t good enough for the theater release. That’s foking brilliant.

All “unrated” really means is that this particular version wasn’t screened by the MPAA, which is a group of corrupt fuddy-duddies controlling the movie rating system. It can be a special no-nudity version of Showgirls, and if it didn’t get through the MPAA it’s still “unrated.” Awesome. We used to call them “Director’s Cut” and pay $10 extra to see the crap that would have made the movie and hour too long. I’m so glad we’ve progressed past that inanity.

So go on buster boy, go get that unrated version of American Pie. It was a crap movie the first time around; I hope your new version of the exact same thing is just as satisfying.

Pixie Dust

I think we’re living in a pixie dust world in a lot of ways, and I don’t mean in the: my little princess let’s ruin our daughters’ kind of way. I’m talking about grown men and women, though not necessarily grown up men and women. And the pixie dust isn’t a magic powder that can make us fly, but a special naïveté pill that we use when convenient. And it’s always convenient.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most people will not appreciate my accusation. Which is fine, because as you know other people’s opinion of me is pretty low on my list of concerns. However, I do understand some of the hatred here, simply because the pixie dust is easy to believe in, and in many circumstances is something we must hold on to. Because the lies we tell ourselves are always the most convincing.

What kind of lies do we tell? There’s a mumble jumble of little things, and a smattering of larger things. Let’s say you’re dating someone and things aren’t quite working out. Well we’ll just push along and get through this rough patch, that’s the adult thing to do. Maybe if we got married it’d take some of the stress away, that’s what we should do! And everything is copacetic, right? Well no, not generally. But you’re going to act that way, and maybe even believe it. This is normal, it’s not ideal but it’s the right thing to do. Right? When things get too hard again? Let’s have a kid. Sprinkle, sprinkle.

Ever try talking sense to someone who is/thinks they are in love? Talk about pissing into the wind. Does anybody think “When a Man Loves a Woman” is a happy song? If you do I have a bag of pixie dust to sell you. It’s cheap.

What happens when someone’s life isn’t going quite as planned? Y’know, the way it never quite does. Life doesn’t work on a plan or schedule, and fighting that is always a losing battle. Step one in Neverland is to find someone to blame. Blaming your parents was certainly in vogue in the 90’s. I think we now tend to blame society as a whole, which is ridiculous because the 60’s already played that card. I’m more supportive of creative delusions.

My job sucks. It’s because nobody appreciates me. My home sucks. It’s because everyone around me is making my life miserable, probably intentionally. It’s not fair. I’ve got nothing here, if you’re looking for fair I recommend trying to walk on water and turn it to wine. Chances are things are unfair in your favor and you just don’t know it. I think you need to sweep under the carpet, there’s dust everywhere.

I don’t really know what to make of it, and I know that I’m guilty of some of these delusions as well. It’s nice to make the world resemble what we want it to be, even if it’s just by a little. It’s probably part of how we deal with the world; human nature so to speak. And I don’t mind that you lie to yourself, and I promise to try not to burst your bubble. Just stop lying to me.

Musica

I was watching television recently and caught a bit of a Simon and Garfunkel performance. This is more recent footage, with Paul Simon looking like Austin Pendleton after a binge and Art’s fro looking less ridiculous because you don’t want to pick on the old guy. They played The Sound of Silence and a couple of their other main hits. It got me thinking about the music that is passing us by. It’s the end of that generation, and with it that style of music. I don’t mean the singer/songwriter generation, or the sixties per se. Just when music wasn’t predominantly noise.

So I’m watching these old guys, and they are beginning to look old. I’m not trying to knock them either, they are old but at least they still matter. Do you think we’ll look at much of my generation’s musical contributions this way? Music just doesn’t age as well as it used to, or maybe I’m just getting too cynical to see the long-term view. I can’t imagine Sir-Mix-A-Lot performing Baby got Back when he’s approaching his seventies. Maybe his anaconda is big enough that’s he’ll still have the balls to do it. But I’m pretty sure people will find him ridiculous. I didn’t think Paul and Art were ridiculous, I just thought that time passes by to fast.

I don’t know that it matters, but it seems that music is no longer transcending a time period. For the most part it’s focused on something specific. Pop charts, success, money, pissing of someone’s parents, becoming a strip club anthem, etc. I wonder if my kids will give a shit about the music I listened to in my youth. I’m kinda hopeful they don’t.