This is the 200th post on this blog. It seems only fitting that it would be about hate. Get your hate now while supplies last.
- I hate that society is geared towards married people with children. The practice of favoring people with families is in everything from the workplace to health care to paying taxes. It seems discriminatory to me. It implies that there is something wrong with me, that I am not normal, because I haven’t procreated and should therefore pay extra for it. Special liberties and discounts are given to those that breed. It is simply not fair. It almost seems as if the government is encouraging people to have children in a world that is grossly overpopulated and where so many unwanted children already exist.
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Airplanes. Damn, do I hate flying. It’s not that I have a fear of it. On the contrary, I like that moment during take off where your stomach does a belly flip and the G-force plasters your head to the seat. I look at it as the world’s most expensive and underwhelming amusement park ride. It’s the process of getting into that seat that positively sucks. It’s all that queuing in line, waiting around and sitting in tiny, uncomfortable chairs. On a flight across the country, I actually got nerve damage from jamming my arm between the armrest and myself since the man next to me took up the whole shared armrest for the entire flight. Plus, taking off my shoes and belt is annoying.
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I hate when people don’t give back what you loaned them. After writing A Fictional Character I’d Like To Hang Out With the other day, I decided that I’d like to reread Transmetropolitan. I went searching for my copies and found that half of them are missing. My roommate owns the series, too. Half of my pile was actually his. I know they are his because he smartly has bookplates in all of his books. Even with both of ours together, we still don’t even have a complete set. I had to go through and find out which ones I am missing, and then re-purchase them. One of the books I used to own, which fortunately isn’t part of the sequential series, is out of print and now costs $120. I will never be able to replace that since there’s no way I’m spending $120 on a comic book. So, thanks a lot whomever took my Transmetropolitan and never gave it back. Asshole. While we’re at it, I’m missing at least three of The Walking Dead hardcover books as well. I only have the fourth book. There’s no way I would have bought the fourth one if I didn’t have the first three. From now on, anything that leaves my house will have a bookplate in it which clearly states to whom it belongs, namely me.
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I hate when people I know recommend things for me to read, watch or listen to that they created themselves. Odds are pretty good that it will be below par and I will never look at that person quite the same. I don’t want to have to lie to people about it. There’s a reason I don’t promote my blog: I don’t want people I know to have to placate me with opinions. Having to lie to someone and tell them their garage band’s performance is awesome when it is clearly not is something I try to avoid. Generally, when someone tells me to listen to their garage band and it sucks, I will try to come up with something truthful and positive to say, but sometimes it’s nearly impossible. The best I can muster is “The sound recording is good. It doesn’t have any skips or scratches on it.” This brings me to my next point…
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I hate placating lies. If I ask your opinion of something, I want the truth. I don’t want to be told that my hair looks good when it obviously doesn’t. Society has become so used to white lies that we do it for everything and honesty seems to have no place in polite society these days. Whatever happened to constructive criticism? Are we all so fragile that we can’t take a mild dose of reality?
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Hair. I hate having it. What is the point of hair anyway? I know from an anthropological perspective, it was to keep us warm, but most of us have evolved past having a thick coat of fur all over our bodies. I hate trying to decide what to do with it. I hate having to cut it. I hate having it in my face. The best haircut I ever had was a shaved head. Unfortunately, it came with a lot of assumptions attached to it. People thought I was either a lesbian, a skinhead or was undergoing chemotherapy. They never assumed that I had a shaved head because I was lazy, which was the real reason.
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I hate when people wear their pants so low that they might as well not be wearing any pants. I was driving around yesterday as the local school was getting out. I passed gaggles of teenage boys who had their pants on well below their butts so that their underwear was all you could see. Just an FYI, I don’t want to see anyone’s underwear unless we’re engaged in a fairly intimate act, and even then, I don’t spend great gobs of time looking at it. Why even bother wearing pants at all if you’re going to let your entire underwear-covered butt hang out? Just walk around in your underwear instead. Seriously, how do your pants stay up at all without the convex assistance of your butt? It’s a mystery. I guess I should be thankful that they’re wearing underwear at all.
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And while we’re on the subject of butts, I hate skinny jeans. The female gender isn’t immune to my askance scowls as regards their buttocks either. Generally, skinny is a pejorative term. It means that you are emaciated, scrawny, spindly, gaunt, gawky, undernourished or underweight. There are countless words to describe the desired human physique that don’t have negative connotations like thin, svelte, slender, trim, slim, etc., yet clothing manufacturers decided that we need to be “skinny”. Unless you are actually skinny, they look terrible. And if you really are skinny, all they do is draw attention to how skinny you are. Eat a sandwich once in a while. And for those who eat sandwiches all too often, yes, those skinny jeans do, in fact, make your ass look fat. It’s not like the adjective “skinny” attached to the noun “jeans” actually has some magical power to make you that way. I don’t want to see your muffin top.
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I hate it when people touch me without asking. I’m not talking about accidentally bumping into someone, but purposely reaching out and touching someone without permission. I have fine, blonde hair. It’s straight and shiny and everything that hair should be I suppose (even though I just described how I hate having it in #6). Some people will compliment me on my hair and then feel free to just reach out and touch it. Really? Am I a display in a store? Am I part of a petting zoo? No, I am not. Do not just go willy-nilly touching people without their permission. It makes me want to go home and take a shower. I don’t know where your hands have been.
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Positive thinking. Specifically, this ridiculous notion that, if you think positively, things will work out just fine. If you have cancer, you’re not supposed to be upset by the fact that you have cancer. You have to be brave and think positively! I call bullshit. If I had cancer, I probably wouldn’t be all perky about it. The worst part is that children are indoctrinated with this unrealistic expectation that, as long as they’re thinking positively, great things will happen. If great things don’t happen, they just weren’t thinking positively enough. It’s the same thinking that gives every child a trophy just for participating. “You came in last place. Here’s your trophy!” It’s crap. The sooner that children learn that life is unfair, the better prepared they will be for the real world, which is harsh and doesn’t give you a trophy just for showing up.
Fish Of Gold 