Thursday, December 26, 2019

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

One of my online friends, who I will refer to as “KC” here, recently came out as non-binary.  They have changed their first name, and have requested they be referred to by the pronouns they/them.  While I fully support their identity, I have to admit that in practice, I find it a little difficult.  In my head I have to stop myself from using their old name and pronouns.  Whenever I send them a message, I make sure to proofread it several times in case I missed something somewhere.  Even while writing this blog I initially typed “her” instead of “their” a couple of times.

So for those of you who think it’s too much trouble respecting people’s pronouns, I just want you to know that I recognize your discomfort.  It's difficult for me too, and I’m a transgender liberal SJW.  But difficulty is no excuse.  If you’re a good person, you will do it anyway.

What it comes down to is this:
I might have trouble remembering pronouns, but it really is just a minor inconvenience to me.  To KC, it’s everything.  This is not a whim, this is their identity.  You can never fully understand how important this is to them.  Their need for this recognition greatly outweighs the tiny nuisance of having to learn new pronouns.  You don’t have to understand it, but you do need to respect it.  Part of being an adult is respecting things you don’t understand. 

When I was growing up, I was the only kid I knew who didn’t call their father “Sir”.  I still don’t get why some men want to be called that.  As a medieval fantasy enthusiast, “Sir” makes me think of knights in shining armor.  It’s the kind of title one should earn.  Calling an average Joe Blow “Sir” is a bit like calling me “General”.  And looking at my friends’ dads, the ones who demanded to be called “Sir” most were the ones who deserved it least.  Seriously, by today’s standards, most of them were child abusers.  You can tell a lot about people by how much unearned respect they demand. 

And maybe that’s why, to me, “Sir” has always seemed a little disrespectful.  Because all the good people in the world were “Tom” and “Steve” and “Mr. Johnson”, while all the strict, child-beating monsters demanded to be called “Sir”.  To me, it’s a distancing word, one that keeps people at arm’s length.  It’s a cold, dispassionate title, the verbal equivalent of “To Whom It May Concern”.  Calling someone “Sir” is like saying, “I don’t like you enough to ever see you as a friend, or I would just use your real name.”  Or to put it in military terms, “I recognize you as a superior officer, and I will respect the chain of command, but I can never be at ease around you.”  It’s hard for me to truly respect anyone that I couldn’t call a friend.  But that’s just me.

Despite my misgivings, I still call people “Sir”, especially if I don’t know them.  I might be egotistical, but not so much that I expect the world to cater to my opinions.  Society thinks “Sir” is a respectful term, and the proper social convention is to call people what they want to be called.  I might feel like I’m insulting someone by calling them “Sir”, but they perceive it as a compliment, and that’s what matters.  Regardless of my feelings on the word, in the long run, calling them “Sir” is respectful.

Just like it’s respectful to call someone by their new name and their preferred pronouns, regardless of your beliefs on non-traditional genders.  This world changes fast, and it can be hard to keep up.  But that’s no reason to be a wimp about it.  You can do this.  Listen.  Respect.  Learn.  I think you’ll find that it’s really not that difficult.


Wednesday, October 30, 2019

JT: Leaders and Followers

I want to talk about a childhood friend of mine, let’s call him JT.  I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about him, and he doesn’t overlap with any of my other friends.  He didn’t live close by, we went to different schools, and I only knew him because our parents were friends; so I’m not sure any of my other friends ever even met him.

JT was probably the most redneck friend I’ve ever had.  His dad was a mechanic, and JT grew up around cars.  My parents went through an outdoorsy phase, joining a Jeep club and occasionally going camping, and JT’s parents were part of the same activities.  One time JT showed me how to catch crawdads in his creek and cook them on the grill.  So I have a tendency to associate JT with “manly” things, even though he was just as much a dork as I was.

He was a good guy, at least he was when I was around.  I like to think I was a good influence on him.  The problem was, he was like this blank slate with no strong opinions of his own.  He had this older stepbrother who was extremely misogynistic and racist.  JT didn’t actually live with his stepbrother, in fact he probably saw his stepbrother about as often as he saw me.  But I could always tell when he’d recently spent time around his stepbrother.

The first few hours of our visits together often felt like a deprogramming session.  It occurs to me now that his stepbrother probably felt the same way.  I remember one time talking about Scarlett from GI Joe, and he said, “You know that’s all wrong, right?  Women can’t actually do all that stuff.”

“All what stuff?”

“You know, all the running and jumping and firing guns and driving tanks and stuff.”

Now, GI Joe really wasn’t the most realistic cartoon in the world, and the characters probably did do a few things that were impossible in real life.  And at that age, I probably didn’t know the difference.  But I did tell him that he was wrong, and that women could do anything men could do. 

Looking back, I’m actually not sure why I was so enlightened at that age.  Not trying to toot my own horn or anything.  Seriously, I was wrong about a ton of other issues.  And I’m not saying I was a born feminist, either; believe me I had plenty of sexist opinions.  But I really did tell JT he was wrong on this one.

I’ve always thought of myself as wishy-washy and indecisive, and to some extent it’s true.  But the truth is, I really do have strong opinions on a lot of issues, and right or wrong, I’ve been that way my entire life.  Even today, I have some friends who only seem to parrot the opinions of whoever they’ve most recently spoken to, and other friends who are quite secure in their beliefs and opinions.  I’m definitely the latter, but I do wonder if that’s how others see me.

It's weird.  "They say" that people are either Leaders or Followers.  I am definitely not a leader.  I will never consider myself a leader.  But I also do my own thing. I rarely follow the same path the people around me.  I identify more with the Followers than the Leaders, but I don't really follow anybody.  I can't decide if I'm actually a Leader with no Followers, or a Follower without a Leader.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Murphy’s Law in Action

My first job was at a toy store.  One time, a coworker and I were adding up the checks for the day.  I came across a surname I thought was unusual, “Elfrink.”  I showed the name to my coworker, mocking it a little.  She replied, “Hey!  That was my maiden name!”  Whoops.

That was nearly thirty years ago.  In three decades, I have yet to see the name Elfrink anywhere else.  But that’s my point.  It would be my luck to make fun of a name, to someone who happens to have that name.  Even if it’s the only two instances of that name I encounter in my entire life.

It's probably better just not to make fun of anyone's name.

Monday, October 28, 2019

Grammar and Punctuation

If I could contribute a new punctuation mark to society, and force it into acceptance, it would be a quotation mark with a period directly beneath it.  I’m so sick of trying to decide whether it looks weirder to have the quotation mark before or after the period.  At this point I really only care about the look of it.  I don’t give a hoot about which one is technically correct.  Those rules evolve, and some of the world’s greatest books are full of misused punctuation.

People already complain that I put two spaces after a period.  But that’s how I was taught, and it’s too difficult to change that now.  If I ever publish an actual book, I will attempt to find software that removes the extra space, but I refuse to actually type differently.  It would take me months to unlearn that habit, at which point the Powers That Be would suddenly declare two spaces to be the official norm.  The people who think they’re in charge of grammar are a bunch of stuffed shirts, anyway, with no vision of the future.

If you’ve read a lot of my blogs, you may have noticed that I rarely indent paragraphs, and just put an extra space between them instead.  This is how I prefer to write, and for me it’s easier to read as well.  Before the invention of computers, the extra spaces probably would have been considered a waste of paper.  But now, when so many people are reading their books on tablets?  I honestly think this is the future of writing.

Anyway, hi.

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

This Is My Brain On Bills. Any Questions?

I got paid today.  As usual on payday, the first thing I did this morning was log onto my bank account to pay some bills.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had more money left over than I thought I would.  Then I went through my stack of paper bills to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.  My heart jumped when I found a plate renewal notice for my Mazda.  Apparently the plates had expired two weeks ago, at the end of September.

I remember receiving the notice back in early August.  At the time, my wife had a bonus coming up, and I remember thinking, “Well, I guess part of that bonus will have to go to the tags.”  I remember sticking the renewal notice on the shelf, and I don’t remember thinking it about it since.  But, it was morning, my brain was still fuzzy, and I couldn’t be 100% sure if I’d renewed it or not.  I decided to go outside and look at the plate, but I wasn’t dressed yet.  So I made a mental note to check the plate before I got in the car to drive it to work.

It didn’t occur to me that there were at least three ways to check it from the computer I using at the time.  I always keep the receipts from electronic renewals in a folder on my hard drive.  I also have a spreadsheet I use as a checkbook, that would have had the listing for the tags.  If all that fails, I could always log onto my bank account and look for the transaction there.  But no, my brain decided that the only way to know would be to look at the tags.

Except I didn’t.  I didn’t even think about it again until I was already driving, halfway to work.  So I told myself, “When you get to work, check the tags before you go inside.”  Of course, I could have waited until the next stop light, and grabbed the registration out of the glove compartment.  But my brain was still stuck on the idea that my only option was to look at the plate.

Aaaand once again, I forgot to look at the plate when I got to work.  I remembered as soon as I sat down at my desk.  I decided I would check the plate at lunch, and if it was expired, I would get my emissions tested on my lunch hour.  I even told my supervisor I might be a few minutes late getting back from lunch.

Lunch came around.  If you think I remembered to look at my plate before driving off, you haven’t been paying attention to this story.  I was halfway to the emissions place when I thought, “Wait a minute, I seriously can’t go there without checking first.”  I have a very close, personal relationship with Murphy’s Law, and it would be just my luck to pay for an emissions test and then find out I hadn’t needed to.

So I looked for a parking lot to stop in.  I’m oddly picky about that; you know, it can’t be a busy lot, it has to be on the right-hand side, it can’t be a business where the employees can see you through the window because I don’t want them to see me park without buying anything, and did I mention I’m neurotic?  I finally stopped at a bowling alley and got out of the car.  September 2020.  I couldn’t believe it; I honestly have no memory of getting the tags renewed.

Just to be sure, I checked the glove compartment for the registration.  Yep, it even told me when I renewed it, back on August 18th.  To be fair, I do sort of remember renewing it.  It’s just that I renewed both cars within four months of each other, so the memories are kind of overlapping.  When you’re younger, four months is a long time, but I’ve hit the age where two similar events in that time span just sort of merge into one memory.

So the good news is that I have an extra $100 grocery money to get me through the next two weeks.  The bad news is, well, that they let people like me drive.

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Pride of the Spankees

I saw this meme this morning: "As a child, I had two choices for dinner: Take it or Leave it."  I'm not sure I get the point of the meme.  Are they making fun of modern parents who give their children choices for dinner?  Do people really do that?  Is it a common thing?   Because I think it's kind of cool if you can manage it.

I mean, okay, it might be a little too far to actually give your kid a full menu every night, but if the kid truly hates meatloaf, I don't see the crime in offering to microwave them a hot dog.  My wife was forced to eat a lot of things she didn't like as a kid, and to this day she has some debilitating food issues because of it.  Seriously, ask her the pineapple story sometime.

I understand the point of making kids develop healthy eating habits, and I understand they should get a variety of foods early on so they can appreciate more foods later.  But some kids actually do hate certain foods to the point that it makes them nauseous, and parents often force them to eat it anyway.  This is how eating disorders start.  Don't be that parent.

"But we're training them to be adults here!  Adults don't always get choices."  Um... actually, adults do get to choose what they want for dinner, most of the time.  What the fuck kind of adult life do you live, where you think this teaches kids about life?  Are you training your children for a future in prison?

You know, it doesn't matter, that's not even the point of this blog.  Making your children eat "yucky" things isn't what's bothering me, it's being so proud of it that you made a meme.  I understand that sometimes parents have to be cruel to be kind, but this whole culture of "Ha, I'm a crueler parent than you are" is like some primitive dick-measuring contest.

I see tons of variations of, "In my house, if you talked back, you got the belt" or "More kids are criminals these days because their parents didn't spank them enough."  Look, I don't want to tell other people how to raise their kids.  I'm generally wary of spanking, but I understand that different children require different punishments.  Time-outs simply don't work for some parents.  So while I lean toward the anti-spanking crowd, it's not something I'm very vocal about.

But again, it's not about the spanking, it's being proud of it.  At its best, spanking is a necessary evil.  At its worst, it's child abuse.  This whole attitude of, "Yay, I got to spank my child today, I must brag about it on Facebook" strikes me as brutish and fetishist.  Can you imagine if people bragged about hitting their spouses as often as they do about hitting their children?

And it's not just parents who brag about it, sometimes the kids do too.  I know one guy who says, "When I was a kid, I was spanked every day whether I needed it or not, and I turned out fine."  Well, actually he grew up to be an asshole, but I'm not going to tell him that.  It's weird to me that so many people are proud of having been spanked, though.  Are you saying you're proud of your parents for being strict, or proud of yourself for being a rotten kid?  "Oh yeah?  You got spanked a lot?  Well, I went juvie for sexual assault.  Top that!"  But again I'm getting off track.

Or how about those "creative parenting" posts?  You know, where parents give their child a humiliating punishment, like holding a sign that says, "I stole a piece of candy from the drug store" in public?  Again, I'm not criticizing the parents for trying a different punishment, especially if all the other punishments failed.  I'm just annoyed that they were so goddamn happy they got to humiliate their child that they decided to upload it to Facebook as well.  It makes you wonder if it was really about teaching their child a lesson, or more about the attention they got from their Facebook friends.

My parents were pretty light on punishment, or maybe I just wasn't bad very often.  But whenever I went to a friend's house, I paid attention to how their parents punished them, and usually I was horrified.  The parents who had the harshest rules were the ones with kids who lashed out the most, but I make no claims on which was the cause and which was the effect.  Maybe the parents had to up the punishments because the kids kept getting worse.  Or maybe the kids were getting worse because they were starting to realize their parents were monsters.

Regardless, I will never forget this one time...  We were probably in the fourth grade.  My friend and his little brother kept fighting and calling each other rude names.  Their dad ignored it for as long as he could, until they got so loud that he couldn't hear his TV program.  That's another side note - I've rarely seen kids punished for actual sins.  They can punch and kick each other as long as they want, as long as they do it quietly.  They tipping point is always when they damage something or annoy the parents.

Anyway, my friend's dad reached that tipping point, and he went to get his belt.  But… I will never forget the gleam in his eye when we went to punish them.  That look was not “This will hurt me as much as it hurts you” or “I don’t like doing this, but it has to be done.”  It was just for a second, but his expression very clearly said, “They were bothering me and I will enjoy straightening them out.”  I sat in their living room and stared into space while I heard the loud thwacks and cries of pain from their bedroom. 

Afterwards, I went into my friend’s bedroom to comfort him.  My friend wasn’t thinking about what he’d done, or pondering how to be a better person.  He just talked about hating his little brother for getting him into trouble.  The assault had not put the fear of God into him, only the fear of Dad.  It was pointless pain, and the only outcome was that it widened the rift between all the family members involved.

Was there a better way?  Could he have resolved the issue without violence?  That’s not for me to judge.  He did give them a couple of verbal warnings before he stood up, so there’s that.  Maybe they wouldn’t have listened to anything but the belt.  That’s a debate for another time.  Today’s gripe isn’t about the action, but the attitude behind it.  The sociopathic egoism it takes to hurt someone out of so-called “love”, and then to feel proud of it.

Bill Cosby - you know, the rapist - had a whole bit about his children’s nightly beatings.  To be fair, that’s just a comedy routine, and I used to find it funny.  It might be based on actual experience, it might be exaggerated for comedic effect, or it might be made up from scratch.  But then, my point isn’t that he beat his kids, but that he thought the act was so funny it was worth describing it to an audience for laughs.  And isn’t it kind of interesting that the kind of person who made those jokes is the same kind of person who drugged women for sex?  No, I’m not saying everyone who spanks their child is a potential rapist, I’m just saying… it’s an interesting coincidence.

Look, I'm not a parent.  I know it's a tough gig, but I'll never know just how tough.  And the last thing I want to be is one of those judgy non-parents who criticizes parents for doing what works for them, without ever having had to deal with it myself.  But having to punish your child should upset you as much as the child.  It's not something to be proud of, it's just something you felt you had to do.  It's fine to commiserate with other parents about how tough it was, but spanking/beating is not something to joke or brag about.

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Another Video Game Dream

I had another video game dream last night.  Okay, I dream about video games a lot, but they’re usually either based on real games, or just generic zombie games. 

The game I dreamed about last night was like a cross between Final Fight and Tapper.  The game was probably inspired by the recently released “River City Girls” game, because the main characters were teenage girls in school uniforms.  Like most of my video game dreams, my point of view would switch back and forth, from being a character in the game, to playing the game on a TV with a controller.

In this game, you walk through the streets, getting in fist fights with gang members.  So far, that describes half the games Capcom made in the 90s.  However, you’re also pushing a food cart.  It’s about the size of a hot dog cart, but full of cupcakes.  Your character parks the cart by the sidewalk, and customers start lining up.  You have to serve each customer, occasionally putting cakes in the cart’s little built-in oven.

Meanwhile, gang members walk up and start harassing your customers, so you have to beat them up (the gang members, not the customers).  If you ignore the gang members, they harass and scare off the customers.  But if you spend too much time beating up the gang members, your customers starting leaving because they had to wait too long.  If you forget to put more cakes in the oven now and then, you run out of cakes and more customers leave.  If the oven timer goes off, you only have a certain amount of time to get the cupcakes out of the oven before they burn.

Like any Final Fight style game, once you beat up a certain number of gang members (or in this case maybe sell a certain number of cakes), an arrow flashes “GO” for a few seconds, your character pushes the cart down the street to the next stopping point, and the whole process starts over.  When I played with two players, there was still only one cart, but there were twice as many customers and gang members.  But I think there was also a competitive mode where you each had your own cart.

Some customers would stand at the cart for a few seconds making up their mind.  I don’t remember the exact “serving” controls, but I think it was pretty simple.  Just make sure you’re standing at the counter when a customer is ready to order, and press a button to serve them.  The serving and paying animations took a couple of seconds, so you really had to manage your time between serving, fighting, and baking.

I also vaguely remember a bonus level that involved decorating the cakes, which reminded me a little of Overcooked.

Sunday, September 22, 2019

This Post Is Literally Ironic




Note:  Any grammatical inaccuracies in this blog are probably intentional, for comedic effect.  Yeah... that's the ticket.

Someone once asked me, "If you could have dinner with any famous person, living or dead, which would you choose?"
And after some thought, I was like... "Um... Living."
I mean, seriously, who chooses dead?  Why would anyone want to have dinner with a dead person, except maybe Hannibal Lecter?

Buuuut... it's possible I misunderstood the spirit of the question.  I'm like that.  I don't always understand language the same way as most people, and it can get me into trouble.

There are three things that are getting on my nerves today:
1. People who misuse the word “Literally”.
2. People who misuse the word “Ironic”.
3. People who complain about people who misuse the words “Literally” or “Ironic”

Okay, let’s start with Literally because it’s easier.

Literally literally means “Actually, not figuratively, not a metaphor, not an expression.”  In other words, if you say it’s literally raining cats and dogs, that means actual cats and dogs are falling from the sky.  There are a lot of words and expressions you can use as an intensifier, like saying something is “as big as a whale” when it’s really not.  But “literally” is supposed to be off limits.  The very nature of the word literally means you shouldn’t use it metaphorically.  It’s the last word you should ever think of using to mean something it doesn’t.

Buuuuut… I also hate the people who complain about it because they always say the same thing:  “Don’t use literally when you mean figuratively.”  You know what?  The don’t MEAN figuratively.  They may be using the word figuratively, and yes, if they were to replace the word literally with figuratively, the sentence would technically be more accurate. But if the word “literally” suddenly ceased to exist, these people wouldn’t suddenly start saying, “I figuratively had a cow.”  No, they’d use a different intensifier, like seriously, or extremely, or incredibly.

I mean, which sounds more like something a real person would say: "I figuratively had a cow" or "I seriously had a cow."  So whenever you correct them by saying, “You mean figuratively,” you look like an idiot.  If you want to correct them, great, but at least suggest a proper substitute.

You know I’ve come across a second way to misuse literally?  I used to know a guy who would use it for extremely dull situations, like, “I literally drank a glass of milk.”  Which isn’t… technically wrong, I guess?   I mean, there probably wasn’t any danger of me thinking he metaphorically drank the milk, but I guess he wanted to be extra clear?  It seems like a waste of a good word on an everyday situation.

Ironic is a bit harder, but that’s because it’s an almost useless word when the grammar cops get a hold of it.  There’s a meme going around that says “There needs to be a word that means what people think ironic means.”  Well, there is, and that word is “ironic.”  Common usage leads to official definitions, that's literally how language evolves.

I’m going to make a confession here.  I have no idea what “ironic” actually means.  I used to know, but then too many opposing forces kept changing the definition on me.  I first learned the word in elementary school.  We were taught that it meant “when something turns out the opposite of what you would expect”, which is pretty close to the third entry on Wiktionary:  “Contrary or opposite to what may be expected.”  Okay, I hate that definition, because it relies on me having normal expectations.  I mean, who decides what is to be expected?

Okay, so I saw a movie once where a guy was looking at himself in his bathroom mirror.  Then he opens the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, grabs his toothpaste, closes the cabinet again… and BAM!  Nothing.  Nobody was revealed to be standing behind him.  No ghost, no psycho killer, no scare chord, we were just back to seeing the guy’s reflection again.  A lifetime of watching scary movies has taught me that anybody who opens a medicine cabinet is going to see a monster behind them when they close it.  Never mind that this was a romantic comedy.  It still subverted my expectations, so apparently that makes it ironic.

Except of course it isn’t.  No one in their right mind is going to argue that it’s ironic for someone to use a medicine cabinet without getting eaten.  I’ve also seen enough crime dramas that if the camera focuses on the ignition when someone starts their car, I expect it to explode.  That doesn’t mean it’s ironic when it doesn’t. My point is, you can’t use a definition that’s so subjective. So, that definition is useless.

The problem is, there’s like, eleventeen different types of Irony, and the definition of each has been in dispute for centuries.  Classical irony, Romantic irony, Cosmic irony, Verbal irony, Situational irony, Dramatic Irony, Tragic Irony, Comic Irony, Historical Irony, Socratic Irony…  I’m not going to go over each one, but if someone says something’s ironic, there’s a good chance it fits at least one of the definitions.  But the grammar cops will get mad at you if you use anything but their favorite one.

But if you go strictly by a grammar cop’s restrictions, the word “irony” is both nearly unusable and almost never used correctly anywhere.  Even Twilight Zone endings are no longer considered ironic by some people, and I refuse to live in a world where Twilight Zone endings aren’t thought of as ironic.  You are dulling the English language every time you correct someone.

The definition I see used most often in casual conversation is “A funny little twist of fate,” which the grammar cops don’t consider a proper use of the word.  But the first use of it in this manner supposedly happened in, like, the 1600s, which is far enough back for it to be considered a valid definition by now, in my opinion.

Now, you know I couldn’t get through this video without mentioning… the song.  You know which one.  Here’s my take.

The first time I heard anyone complain about the song “Ironic”, was on the TV show Lois and Clark.  This is important, because that episode is about twenty three years old now, and it wasn't like the show was known for brilliant observations. So if you're still ragging on the song Ironic, you were scooped more than two decades ago by a silly show based on a comic book.  You're not exactly being edgy.

The problem is, everyone who complains about it says the same thing: That there’s not a single actual example of irony in the song.  Some even make the joke that the song actually is ironic because it’s called “Ironic” despite not having any legitimate examples of irony.  The problem is, unless you’re just using the strictest possible definition of irony, at least one or two examples in the song can be considered ironic.  But no, you said NONE of them were, that is what you said, I heard you.  Which makes you a liar, and I can no longer trust anything else you say, you slimy piece of worm-ridden filth.

Okay, admittedly, rain on your wedding day is not ironic.  Depending on your attitude towards rain, and where you were planning on having the ceremony, rain can be unfortunate, a mild inconvenience, or even a bad omen, but it’s not immediately ironic.  But maybe we don’t know the whole story here.

Maybe the singer has a deathly fear of rain, after her parents were killed in a flood.  Her fear of rain was so great that she started her own company, “Rainstoppers INC”, who specialize in predicting long term weather trends.  When it came to her own wedding, she intentionally booked the ceremony in the driest place on Earth, which Google informs me is the Atacamba Desert in Chile.

She consulted her companies weather predictions as well as public weather reports and even the Farmer’s Almanac so she could be absolutely sure it wouldn’t rain on her special day.

But when it did rain, it was the result of a hurricane that hadn’t been predicted by any of the weather sources.  Worse yet, this hurricane never would have formed if it hadn’t been nudged by the pollution put in the air by the singer’s own company, Rainstoppers, Inc.

So, you really don’t see any irony in that story?  Yeah, I know it doesn’t say any of that in the song, but you have to learn to read between the lines!

And how about those ten thousands spoons, when all you need is a knife?  That's not a normal occurrence, there's obviously a story there.

After pissing off the cutlery mafia, you find yourself trapped inside a burning knife factory.  You’ve been locked inside one of the storage rooms.  The building is burning around you.  There’s an emergency exit door in this room, but the handle has been bound shut by heavy rope.  The knots have been pulled so tight that you can’t untie them.  If only you had a knife!  But wait, you’re in storage room of a knife factory, surrounded by crates.  You hurriedly open the first crate, and find it’s full of spoons.  You open another crate… more spoons.  You soon find that every crate in this room is full of spoons.  The funny part is, this factory doesn’t even make spoons.  They were storing them as a favor to the overstocked spoon factory next door.

Now, you’re seriously telling me that you don’t see any irony in that story whatsoever? None?  Really?  No dramatic irony, no situational irony, none of that?  Are you really so uncreative that you can’t stretch your imagination just a little and meet Alanis halfway, you pathetic little squidlicker?

Like, the song doesn’t say, “Isn’t it ironic in the literary sense.”  The song just asks, “Isn’t it ironic?”  Which could… literally… imply any one of the eleventeen definitions, even one of the informal definitions.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter.  That song made bizillions of dollars, and every time someone complains about it, Alanis gets another nickel, so I doubt she has trouble sleeping at night.

One last thing... We have a cat named Wicket.  A few years ago my Mom found him abandoned as a newborn.  Since he was found in a gooseneck trailer, Mom named him "Goose."  But when she gave him to us, we decided that "Goose" wasn't a geeky enough name.  We renamed him "Wicket" because he kind of looked like an Ewok at the time.  Flash forward a couple of years, and thanks to Captain Marvel, having a cat named Goose actually would have been pretty geeky.  Isn't that ironic?  No seriously, is it?  After researching this blog, I honestly can't tell any more.

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

9/11 Memories

I will always associate 9/11 with Gallagher.

When I was a kid, I was a big fan of the comedian Gallagher.  I loved prop comedy, so his Sledge-O-Matic routine was especially hilarious to me.  I also loved how he made fun of words and pronunciations.  Some of his content wasn’t really appropriate for children, but my parents were cool with it.  We didn’t have cable growing up, but we had several of his specials someone had taped off of Showtime for us.   Some of his jokes were mildly racist, but I didn’t get the impression he was racist himself, so much as he just saw the humor in everything and loved having fun with stereotypes.  Which was typical for comedians, really, both then and now.

In August of 2001, I found out he would performing in downtown Nashville the following month.  It was the same arena where I used to attend wrestling matches as a teenager.  My wife had never seen his routine, so I hoped she was in for a treat.  We also brought one of my high school friends.  I wondered if Gallagher was still as funny as he used to be.  His signature act was so full of energy, I wondered if he’d slowed down as he got older.  Plus I was older and wondered if my tastes had changed.  But good or bad, the three of us looked forward to a night out.

So… between the time we bought the tickets and the night of the concert, 9/11 happened.  I was on my way to work when I heard about it on the radio.  They said an airplane had hit the World Trade Center.  I didn’t realize it was a passenger plane yet; in my mind I was picturing a private, one-person plane, maybe an amateur pilot who got off course.  When I got to work I immediately turned on the radio, and soon heard about the second plane hitting.  Now we knew it wasn’t an accident.

It was hard waiting to get off work that night.  I wanted to get home so I could e-mail a friend who lives in New York, and make sure he was all right.  He was fine.  He’d made a lot of posts about it on a message board I frequented at the time.  I found out that somebody had already posted a T-shirt in an online store that said, “I flew into the World Trade Center, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”  The seller’s location was NYC, and (supposedly) the shirt had already been posted before the second plane hit.  People on the message board were furious, but my New Yorker friend advised them to let that one go.  “This is how New Yorkers grieve,” he said.  “We make jokes.”  I guess I’m not cut out for NYC.

It was a while before anybody was in the mood to laugh again.  A lot of sitcoms didn’t air that week.  When time for the Gallagher concert came around later that month, I almost wanted to give away the tickets.  In retrospect I wish I had.  But just enough time had passed that I was ready to see if I could laugh again.  I should have realized that 9/11 affected comedians too.

Gallagher was not funny that night.  He was angry.  He told a few jokes, but he spent the majority of the time making racist rants about people from the Middle East.  He must have been funny to someone, because he did get some laughs.  There was an extremely drunk woman behind me who spent the concert laughing so loud we could barely hear Gallagher.  But I don’t remember any actual jokes.  Several times he mentioned wanting to bomb the Arabs back to the stone age.  By this time, the world knew that the attack was the result of terrorists, rather than a government, but he was still happy to imagine an entire country being bombed to rubble.  He didn’t even do the Sledge-O-Matic bit.  He got the hammer out, and then let audience members line up and smash things.

I don’t blame him for being angry; we all were.  I’m not even sure I blame him for the racist bits – everyone was hurting at the time, and wanting to retaliate against someone, anyone within reach.  I’ve seen the same misaimed anger on crime shows.  The family of the victim often wants to convict the first guy the police catch, even when it becomes obvious they’re innocent.  Because it’s easier to punish the target in front of you, than to come to terms with the killer still being on the loose.  And it’s easier to say “Let’s blow up the continent these bad guys might be on” than to accept that it might take years to find the terrorists.  People think they want justice, when they really just want closure.

So I don’t blame Gallagher for feeling the same.  But I do blame him for not simply cancelling the concert.  He had to know he wouldn’t be funny, he had to know he wasn’t in the mood for comedy.  Maybe it was therapeutic for him, getting to air his grievances in front of an audience.  But it’s not our job to pay for his therapy.  I’m not mad – How can I be mad about a stupid concert when so many lives were lost earlier that month?  I’m hardly the first person to have to sit through a disappointing concert.  I was lucky to be alive and attending bad concerts; too many people weren’t.

But for me, Gallagher and 9/11 have a permanent connection in my head, and I can no longer look at him without thinking about the tragic event.  Maybe he doesn’t deserve it, but he will never be funny to me again.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Pour Painting

My wife has started making "pour paintings".  These are beautiful works of abstract art, made by pouring layers of paint onto a canvas.  You can see some of her work here:

https://www.deviantart.com/thecraftykj



And as long as you're looking at DeviantArt pages, I've got one of my own as well.  Mine's mostly cat pictures, but I've also uploaded a few of my bad drawings.  Here's the link:

https://www.deviantart.com/xinefury


Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Video Game Dream

Last night I dreamed I was playing a video game.  The graphics reminded me of “No More Heroes”, and the gameplay consisted of a variety of mini-games with different controls and rules.  The overall theme was very Japanese, the kind of game that rarely gets exported to the states.  I don’t remember the title.

At the beginning of the game, your best friend is murdered by the CEO of a major corporation.  The opening has your character visiting your friend’s grave, then performing some sort of mystic ritual to guarantee the friend gets his revenge.  Then, believing yourself to be the instrument of your friend’s revenge, you enter the CEO’s downtown skyscraper and try to make your way to the top.  Your intention is to confront the CEO and challenge him to a duel.

Your character is tall and thin, wears a business suit, and carries a sword.  However, you never use the sword until the very end of the game.  The building has 100 floors.  You have to complete one encounter on each floor.  After each encounter, your character runs up a flight of stairs to the next floor.  Apparently there are no elevators, or maybe they require keycards. 

Your character doesn’t want to hurt anyone but the CEO, so the encounters don’t involve combat.  Instead, each floor is its own minigame, with a bizarre and eclectic mix of puzzles and stealth.  On one level, you might avoid employees by hiding behind potted plants and support columns.  On another, you might have to talk your way past a security guard by picking the right dialogue choices, or by doing a short fetch quest for them.  Some of the levels were really bizarre, like having you compete in a Parappa-style rap battle with a security guard. 

It was one of those games where weird things happen for weird reasons, like “Feel the Magic: XX/XY” or “Incredible Crisis”.  Some of the mini-games would repeat themselves, with harder versions occurring at higher floors.  You never had to go back down a floor; everything you need to complete a floor was found on the floor itself.

When you finally reach level 100, the CEO accepts your challenge and you fight.  It doesn’t control like a fighting game, instead being more of a drawn out quicktime event.  However, it is impossible to win regardless of how well you perform.  If you do poorly, he kills you.  If you gain the advantage, he cheats by having a henchman grab you, and then he kills you.

You are buried next to your best friend.  The ending shows the CEO standing over your grave, making a villain speech about how he always wins.  Then, thanks to the ritual you performed at the beginning of the game, your friend’s animated corpse bursts out of his grave and drags the CEO underground.  So you were the instrument of revenge after all – your death was the only reason the CEO ended up standing so close to your friend’s grave.

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Dinner With Dorks

My wife has started a YouTube series called "Dinner with Dorks".  In each episode, she and I make dinner, play a video game, and watch a movie, usually sticking to a specific theme.

You can find the playlist here.

Saturday, August 10, 2019

I Just Got It!

From "Star Trek Generations":
Data: (laughing) I get it! I get it! When you said "The clown can stay, but the Ferengi in the gorilla suit has to go!"
Geordi: Data, what are you talking about?
Data: During the Farpoint mission; we were on the bridge, you told a joke, that was the punchline!
Geordi: The Farpoint mission? Data, that was seven years ago.
Data: I know! I just got it! Very funny!
Anyway, I just got a joke a friend made 27 years ago.  I drew a lot of sci-fi comic books in high school.  In one issue, several of the characters go to an intergalactic carnival.  One of the rides was called "Bump -N- Hover".  When my friend Bryan got to that page, he started singing "Bump... and Hover" over and over in a sing-song voice.  Honestly I just thought he was making up a tune as he went along, and I laughed.

Today I was browsing YouTube and came across an old "Duck and Cover" PSA.  I immediately recognized the tune as the one Bryan had been singing.

The whole thing reminds me of an old comedian who compared his jokes to grenades.  You pull the pin, toss it to your audience, and wait for them to get it.  Sometimes they take longer to detonate.  In this case, decades.

Thursday, August 1, 2019

This Didn’t Happen Either

One time, back in the 80s, a friend and I decided to go to a costume party.  We agreed not to tell each other what costumes we were going to wear, so it would be a surprise when we met there.  We arrived separately, and I looked around until I finally spotted my friend.  Imagine our delight when we discovered that we’d both worn the same costume: a California Raisin.

I guess grape mimes think alike.

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Fast Food Woes

I never wanted to be one of those “kids these days” old fogies.  You know, the ones who fail to realize that it’s not the kids who have changed, but our perception of them as we reach certain ages.  But here we are.

I have always stood up for fast food workers.  The world is full of people who’ve worked nothing but cushy office jobs, who often look down on fast food workers as if it’s the easiest job in the universe.  But let me tell you, there are a lot of dangerous or back breaking jobs I would take before I went into fast food again.  Fast food work is tiring, sweaty, and thankless.  Honestly I would rather work my current job at fast food pay, than work in fast food again at my current pay rate.

That said, what is going on with service lately?  It’s probably just coincidence, but this has just been a very bad week for me, service-wise.

On Tuesday, I picked up Taco Bell after work, and found that the lobby was closed.  No biggie, except that it was the second time this month that the lobby has closed early.  The first time, one of the employees told me it was because they were understaffed.  If that location keeps having staffing issues, that’s probably a management problem.  I’ll admit that when I worked fast food, I occasionally closed early.  But I’m talking five or ten minutes early, and only if it looked like the world was dead outside.  The owner even encouraged it.  But lately I’ve been encountering more and more restaurants that close the lobby hours earlier than their posted hours, only taking drive-thru orders.

On Wednesday, we ordered DoorDash.  The first order never arrived.  We saw a car start to pull up to our house, then drove off.  A few minutes later we saw what we think was the same car off in the distance, stopping at a different house.  This is when the driver marked it “delivered”.  We believe they gave the food to the wrong house, and whoever lives there just took it without saying anything.  We contacted DoorDash, who refunded our money right away, plus $10.  We immediately used the money to order from somewhere else.  This time the driver did fine, but whoever made my wife’s calzone misread “green olives” as “green peppers”, rendering it inedible to her.  She just couldn’t catch a break on dinner that night.  We’ve been using DoorDash, UberEats, and GrubHub for about six months now, and I have to tell you, something goes wrong at least 50% of the time.

On Thursday, I picked up Burger King on the way home.  The lobby was closed, much earlier than the posted hours.  So I went through the drive-thru.  The employees weren’t exactly rude, but they were very stoic.  No smile, no “thank you” or “have a nice evening”, they just used the minimum words required to get the order taken care of.  I saw they had at least five employees working, so I’m surprised they felt they had to close the lobby.  Maybe some fast food restaurants are starting to do that so they don’t get robbed.  If so, they need to update their signs.  Anyway, they also got our order wrong, by putting onions on my poor wife’s burger.  I know they heard me because the receipt had it listed correctly.  It’s enough to make me go on a Joe Pesci-style rant.

I filled out the surveys for both Taco Bell and Burger King.  If the managers don’t know their employees are closing the lobby early, they need to be told.  As much as I want to side with the employees, that’s a serious thing.  If you’re turning customers away, that’s not much different than stealing from the company.

As a customer, I avoid doing things that bugged me when I was an employee.  I never go into a fast food restaurant that closes in less than ten minutes.  It’s not about what time you walk through the door, it’s about what time you leave.  If you know it usually takes five minutes for them to make your order, and you walk in four minutes before they close, then as far as I’m concerned, that’s premeditated trespassing.  You know your actions are going to keep you in there after their posted closing hours, and that makes you a criminal in my eyes.  When I was working at a Subway that stayed open until midnight, I once had a guy walk in at 11:59 and say, “Whew, just made it.”  No, no you didn’t.  “Just made it” would be coming in at a time that had you walking back out the door at 11:59.  You, sir, are a dirty, low-life reprobate.  Of course, I didn't actually say that.

I know from experience that managers have unrealistic expectations on how long it takes to close a restaurant.  They’ll give you a list of closing duties that have to be done before you leave, a list that honestly should take about an hour, but they’ll tell you to be out of there fifteen minutes after closing.  The only way to keep your job is to start some of these duties in the last hour before closing.  A last-minute customer’s order may only take five minutes, but they can cause you to stay an extra twenty minutes.  Because now you have to re-mop the places they walked, you have to re-clean the drink machine they messily used, and redo all kinds of other little things that wouldn’t occur to people who’ve never worked in fast food.  The managers don’t care that the final customer brought in more money than the extra twenty minutes they now have to pay you.  They never make that kind of connection.  If you weren’t out in fifteen minutes, it must be because you’re lazy.

But that’s just one example of how I try to be understanding to fast food workers.  My point is, the employees I’ve encountered lately aren’t like I was.  Yes I was lazy, and apathetic, and I took shortcuts wherever I could.  But my customers never would have known.  I did everything with a smile, a please, and a thank you.  I had many a customer piss me off, but I doubt any of them ever knew it.  To their faces, I went the extra mile.  Behind their backs, I cursed them to fates worse than the lowest levels of Hell.  But the point is, I made sure they got the same fast food experience that I would want to receive myself.

And that’s all I’m asking.  If they want to make fun of me after I leave, that’s fine.  If they want to gripe about that customer who had the audacity to order a burger without onions, I have no problem being the bad guy.  But at least keep your lobby open the posted hours.  And keep the onions off my wife’s burger.  With all the food allergies people have these days, an extra ingredient is practically attempted murder.

I’m not asking fast food workers to be perfect.  All I’m asking is that they work at least as hard as I did back when I was a lousy employee.  That can’t be so hard, can it?

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Social Anxiety Ups and Downs

I’m so disappointed in myself. 

Over the weekend I went to Pride.  I got to march in the parade, which was cool, definitely a first for me.  It was euphoric.  I cannot begin to describe the feeling of walking through the streets while people cheer you on.  For a few minutes I actually didn’t hate myself. 

Before the parade, they had to evacuate the area for impending bad weather.  I had to hide in a post office until the weather was nice enough to continue.  It only delayed the parade by about 45 minutes, so that was a nice bit of excitement.

I’ve been wanting to put together a new D&D group.  Specifically, I’ve been trying to connect with other LGBT gamers.  I want a group where we all have similar interests, where I if I wanted I could show up in a dress without ridicule.  I probably wouldn't, but I'd like the option to be there.

I’m also only free on Saturdays, and only interested in D&D 5th Edition.  Yes, I know, it’s a lot to ask.  It’s hard enough to get a regular group together, much less one so specific.  But D&D is getting a huge influx of new players right now, mostly because of Stranger Things, so it’s the perfect time to meet more gaymers.

A few weeks before the event, I used a free business card service to print up a bunch of “Looking for a group” cards.  My plan was to pass them out at the event.  My rainbow d20 shirt (and matching necklace) was to be the conversation starter.  People would see it and think, “Cool, another D&D player, I wonder if they have a group I could join.”  They’d say hi, we’d talk a bit, and I’d give them the card with my e-mail address on it. 

Well, the shirt was a hit.  At least twenty people complimented my shirt at the event.  I told every one of them “Thank you,” but that was the most my social anxiety could handle.  I did not give out a single card. 

Now, to be fair, sometimes it would have been awkward to do so.  Sometimes the person giving me a compliment was going in the opposite direction, and to stop and talk would have held up foot traffic in both directions.  And sometimes the other person was just so much younger than me, it would have felt icky.  “Would your parents be okay if I came over and played dice games with you in your basement?”

But those are just excuses.  I still had plenty of encounters where I could have drawn out the conversation, but I dropped the ball.  I just did my usual at the festival – walked around the entire event several times, took a handful of pictures, sat down a lot and watched people.  I didn’t even go around collecting buttons and free samples like I usually do, because I didn’t feel like standing in lines.  It was too hot to stay the whole time, and while I did stay longer than usual, I still left earlier than I originally intended to.

So now I’m depressed.  All that euphoria I got from being in the parade?  It’s gone now.  I keep kicking myself for wasting my money on two Lyft rides when I didn’t stay very long or pass out any cards.  I won’t get another chance to be around so many LGBT people until next year, and who knows if people will still be interested in D&D by then.  Plus, next year’s festival probably won’t be as big, since this year was the 50th anniversary of Stonewall.

I want to be proud of myself for marching.  It was something that scared me, and I did it anyway.  Heck, even using Lyft for the first time scared me.  Getting in a car alone with a stranger?  In the South, while wearing a rainbow shirt, headed for a Pride festival?  But it was important to me, so I overcame my fear long enough to do it.  Now I just wish I could enjoy the memory.  At this point I barely remember the festival, I mostly just remember the sunburn.

Maybe someday I’ll learn how to be happy.



Sunday, June 23, 2019

When Real Life Taints Fiction

On October 10, 2010, a webcomic called d20 Monkey published this strip:


I apologize for not being able to find a high resolution version; they did a pretty good job of scrubbing it from the internet.  I wouldn't want to post a high-res version anyway, since it's not my work to redistribute.  I can't read all the words, but here's a transcription of what I can get:
Panel 1:"What's the big damn deal, (anyway)?  The (issue) is handled."
"You have no idea what you've done, do you?"
Panel 2:"Enlighten me, Frodo."
"You Bizarro'd us.  You demanded no 'Emo Church Girls' and now, through the law of Bizarro we will get just that.  Emo church chicks forever."
"What are you boys talking about?"
Panel 3:"Hey pops.  Count Chuckula here thinks the Bizzarro law is crap."
"It's true.  I once specified 'no trannies' (? ? ?) for new players.  Someone answered the ad and the following week...  I opened the door and Bam!  Tranny.  And I don't care what they say, a good looking tranny is still a tranny."
Panel 4:A good looking tranny is still a tranny.
A Public Service Announcement from d20Monkey.com
Basically, the punch line makes fun of trans people.  Now, you could argue that it’s just that one character who’s transphobic, and it doesn’t reflect the views of the writers, but I don’t buy it.  I think you would have to be transphobic to think of the so-called “joke” in the first place, or to find it funny.

When that comic was first posted in 2010, it had only been a few years since I realized I was trans.  I was brittle at the time, evangelical about LGBT issues, and ready to be offended by everything.  I also should mention that trans issues weren’t in the news back then the way they are now.  Trans people were acceptable targets, a group you could mock without as much fear of retribution.

I was also fairly new into D&D.  I learned about d20 Monkey from an RPG forum, and enjoyed the first few strips.  Then I came to that one.  I tried to laugh it off, but it just bugged me.  I posted a reply to the comic, complaining.  I checked back for a response or apology, but never saw one, and eventually they took the comic down.  But I could no longer enjoy the comic any more, and soon stopped reading it.  I didn’t think about d20 Monkey again for years, and honestly forgot they existed.

Until one of my favorite webcomics, Dork Tower, let d20 Monkey do guest strips for a week.  During Pride month, no less.  Now, I have no idea how involved d20 Monkey has been with trans issues in the years since I stopped reading.  For all I know, their comic now features a gay main character and they contribute thousands of dollars to trans charities.  All I can tell you is that seeing them temporarily take over a beloved webcomic was a bit like seeing the White House taken over by transphobic white supremacists.  A flood of emotions came over me.  Memories of the severe depression I fought through when I first realized I was trans.  Remembering when I first noticed just how much anti-trans “humor” permeated our society.

It's a fine line.  When actors or writers turn out to be bad people, it can taint their work to a such a degree that it’s completely unenjoyable.  Sometimes I have to remember that it takes hundreds of people to make a movie, and I shouldn’t let one actor bring it down for me.  But then, if the movie hinges on that actor’s performance, it’s hard to enjoy watching them.  Books and comic strips always hinge on the writer’s performance, so they’re right out.

For example, I still enjoy older Mel Gibson movies, even though they’re not quite as fun as they were before I disliked the actor.  Same goes for Johnny Depp.  I have no pull to see any new Mel Gibson or Johnny Depp movies, but I would still see a movie if they were in it but not the main star (Crimes of Grindelwald, for example, which sucked for entirely different reasons).  At least I know my money is being divided among hundreds of people.

However, I can’t enjoy Orson Scott Card’s books any more.  Books are too intimate a medium, like you’re walking through the author’s mind to explore their imagination.  If I don’t like an author as a person, it’s almost impossible for me to enjoy reading their work.  I’ve also stopped reading Dilbert, and I sold all the Dilbert books I had in my house.  I just haven’t found them funny since Scott Adams went off the deep end.

In the case of d20 Monkey, I only found it sporadically funny in the first place.  I enjoyed it because it was a D&D themed comic at a time when D&D comics weren’t quite as common as they are now, but I only really laughed at maybe one out of five comics.  So it’s not a big loss for me.  I have no idea how progressive the comic is now.  I have no idea if they ever posted a public apology anywhere, or just quietly removed the offending comic hoping nobody would remember it.  I don’t know if the author’s opinion of trans issues has changed in the past nine years.  They’re allowed to have mistakes in their past, as long as they learned from them.  I know I’ve got plenty of regrets of my own.  I don’t expect other people to stop reading the comic just because I personally found one of their older strips offensive, and I’m not pushing to get the comic taken off the internet.

But it did bother me enough to write a blog about it.

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

The Greatest Insult

Everybody has their idea of the worst insult, the worst thing someone can say to you.  For Marty McFly, it was being called chicken.  For Sheldon Cooper, it’s disrespecting his grandmother.  For some people, insulting is an art form, while others just randomly pull words from a bucket of obscenities.  I had a friend in high school who had written and memorized a page-long insult that took several minutes for me to read, but he could recite it in 20 seconds like he was channeling Dennis Leary.

I once saw an insult comic at a RenFest, who would take money from the audience to insult other members of the audience.  He ended the show with a $100 insult, and it was pretty impressive.  Everyone laughed their heads off, including the one being insulted.  Nobody got offended, because his insults could have applied to anybody.  The comic didn’t actually know the people he was insulting, so they were just words.  His insults didn’t point out physical flaws – he didn’t make fun of anyone’s weight or height or baldness.  Instead he made long, baseless accusations about things he couldn’t possibly know.  So if he ranted at someone for being a chronic masturbator, the words meant nothing because he would have said them to anyone.

If the movie “Roadhouse” has taught me one thing (and hopefully it hasn’t), it’s that most insults are just words designed to provoke a specific response.  If you give in to that response, you’re giving them exactly what they want.  The words themselves mean nothing if the insulter doesn’t know you.  Did he call your mom a bitch?  Well, does this person actually know your mom?  Did he say you have a tiny penis?  Well, has he actually seen you naked?  If the insulter would say these things to anybody to get into a fight, then the words are hollow, and you have no reason to feel disrespected.

The greatest insult has to be from someone who already knows you, or at least knows things about you.  If a customer calls you lazy because you made their burger too slow, they don’t know if you were up all night taking care of the baby and had to mow the lawn that morning before coming into work.  But when your wife calls you lazy, it’s because she knows you didn’t do either of those things.  She also knows you played video games all weekend when you were supposed to be fixing the car, and now she has to take the bus to work.  When she calls you lazy, it should hit hard, and you should feel guilty about it.

The greatest insult, in my opinion, doesn’t involve any offensive words, doesn’t involve any references to your mother, and can only come from someone who knows you at least a little.  And drumroll please, here it is, the worst thing one human being can say to another:

The world would be a better place if you weren’t in it.

That’s it, that’s all, but it has to be said with sincerity.  The idea that your existence not only causes the insulter pain, but many others as well.  That you are doing more harm than good in the world.  That if you would simply fade away, society would benefit.  That anything good you’ve ever done is outweighed by all the bad.

When someone criticizes you for your political opinions, they don’t know all the reasons you voted the way you do.  Maybe you don’t like Politician X, but still vote for them because Politician Y is so much worse.  Maybe you don’t like your candidate’s position on Issue A, but you overlook it because Issue B is so much more important to you.  I get that, I really do.  Sometimes you just have to hold your nose and push that button, electing the lesser of two evils.

Lately I’ve heard a lot of people ask why we can’t just get along, saying we should love our neighbor regardless of their political opinions.  And I want to believe that.  But your politics don’t exist in a vacuum.  Your vote directly helps or hurts people besides yourself.  Sometimes I’m the person your politics hurt.

If you vote for Candidate X, and Candidate X believes that the world would be a better place if people like me weren’t in it, it’s hard not to take that personally.  Your vote is a direct insult to me, the worst possible insult, and it may even put me in physical danger.  So as much as I want to reconcile with the other side, as much as I want to accept people’s politics the same way I accept other differences, it’s a much harder sell.  Politics are a choice, and if you’re making the choice to hurt people like me, we’re going to have a hard time being friends.

Sunday, June 2, 2019

My Pet Monster

So I got into bed last night, after watching several spooky videos on YouTube.  A few minutes later, some mysterious creature jumped up on the bed, and curled up into a ball on my back.  Intellectually I knew it was my youngest cat, Kara.  However, it felt a lot heavier than Kara, and the way she initially curled up, it felt like she had more legs than cats usually have.  I pictured a giant hand pressing against my back, or some large tarantula-cat hybrid.

I started picturing all sorts of weird, demonic animals that could touching me.  I kept wanting to reach out and touch it, but I didn't want to get my hand bitten off by demon spawn.  But then it occurred to me, so what if this is a demonic spider-cat.  It's curled up next to me sleeping.  This means it loves me, and I make it feel safe.  If it is a demon creature, then all the better, because it's my demon creature.  You can't get better protection than your own little monster.

I finally did pet it, and it was, indeed, Kara.  Kind of disappointing, to be honest.

Saturday, May 18, 2019

Shut Up, Shut Up, SHUT UP!

Random gripe of the day:

When I eat lunch at work, I usually read.  I love reading, but often I only get about three pages read during my lunch hour.

Here’s what happens:  I sit down to read.  Three minutes later, someone will walk into the break room to get coffee.  They’ll talk to me the entire time, because humans are basically gibbering monkeys that are afraid their jaws will atrophy if they aren’t constantly making noise.  Okay, more realistically, they think it will be rude to walk by me without saying hello.  A note to such humans:  It is rude to speak to someone who is obviously reading.  But the way they figure it, they’re only taking three minutes out of my day, and that’s not enough to really interrupt my reading.  What they don’t seem to get is, thirty seconds after they walk out of the break room, someone else walks in the process starts all over.  My entire lunch hour ends up spent making small talk with twenty different coworkers, each of whom thinks they’re the only one I’ve spoken to all hour.

So, I started wearing earphones.  I can’t listen to music with lyrics while I read, but that’s fine, I have plenty of MP3s of instrumental music.  Movie soundtracks are my favorite, especially Danny Elfman.  Sometimes I’ll match the music to the fiction, like listening to John Williams while reading Star Wars novels.  I even listen to nature MP3s, like crashing waves  or thunderstorms, just to drown out my coworkers.  Once or twice I’ve forgotten my phone, and still wore the earphones to keep people from talking to me.  Yes, I’m antisocial, I’ll cop to that.  But I also just have different ideas about what should be considered rude.

The earphones/book combo keeps about half the employees from talking to me.  Some of them even look a little relieved, like “Good, he has earphones on, I don’t have to make small talk.”  Well, if you didn’t want to make small talk, why did you do it before?  Because for some reason you thought it would be rude to ignore someone who might as well be wearing a “Do Not Disturb” sign?  I swear, our society has issues.  Anyway, as I was saying, earphones+book stops half the yakkers.  But the other half just greet me louder.  “HI MATT, HOW ARE YOU DOING?  IS YOUR WIFE DOING OKAY?  HOW’S THE CAR?  DID YOU WATCH THAT SPORTSBALL GAME LAST NIGHT?  MY KID JUST TURNED THREE, ISN’T THAT GREAT?”  Oh, thank goodness you came along.  I’ve been dying to speak to someone, but I accidentally got these earphones stuck in my ears.  I’ve been waiting all lunch hour for someone loud enough to talk to over my music.

This is why I prefer to eat lunch in my car, but that’s only feasible for about half the year.

Look, let me make this clear for those in the back:

It is not rude to ignore someone who obviously wants to be ignored.

It is rude to interrupt someone who is reading.

It is rude to engage someone who is listening to earphones.

If someone is both wearing earphones and reading, it is a clear sign that they do not want your attention.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a coworker in the break room, or a single woman on a bus, these are signs that the person doesn’t want to be disturbed.  Like a rattlesnake’s rattle, or the quills on a porcupine, this is how nature says “Go Away.”  It’s not a secret, it’s blatantly obvious, and if you don’t pick up on these signals, you’re an idiot.  Just.  Shut.  Up.

You would think it gets better when two coworkers come into the break room at once, because they’ll talk to each other.  But people are just loud in general.  They’ll stand right next to each other and shout loud enough to hear across the building.  They’re not angry, they’re not arguing, this just seems to be how people speak when they’re happy.  I can turn my music up until my ears hurt, and I’ll still hear them over it.  Heck, it’s not just in the break room.  When I’m working at my desk, I can hear every single word of three distinct conversations, all from different directions, each over 50 feet away, sometimes in offices with closed doors.  Seriously, why do people shout at each other when they’re standing three feet apart?  Indoor voices, people!  And don’t get me started on people who insist on using speakerphones.

Another weird phenomenon I’ve noticed:  When an employee gets a personal call on his cell phone, he will walk somewhere else to have a more private conversation.  Makes sense.  Except, he won’t actually go somewhere that doesn’t have people, all that matters to him is getting away from his own department.  So he’ll walk away from one group of people, only to disturb a different group of people.  Apparently it’s socially acceptable to annoy your coworkers as long as they’re not the ones you specifically have to work with.  For some reason, my cubicle wall seems to be the popular hangout for other departments to make private cell phone calls.

*Sigh*  At least I know I’m not going deaf.