You’d think I’d post a big rant right now, but some things go without saying. I ranted plenty back in 2016, and if I were to mouth off now, I’d be covering a lot of well-worn ground. There’s just not much left to say. A while back I even wrote a short story about you-know-who getting elected the first time. It’s called “Think Tank” and you can find it in the collection “Geek Cutes.” My point is, I’m ranted out.
That said, my community is really suffering right now. The Republicans are acting like their favorite basketball team just won a game. For them it’s nice to have a win, but it was just a game - the stakes weren’t really that high. But the people I follow are worried for their lives. Some of them are contemplating suicide, while others are looking into moving to another country.
It’s seriously insane, the difference in the amount of danger involved. If the Republicans had lost, they’d have been angry, but their lives wouldn’t have been upended this way.
That’s the concept I wish people would get – sometimes the stakes are higher for one group than another.
A scenario: If your next door neighbors – people you like even if you don’t always agree with them – were about to be unfairly executed, but you could pay five dollars to set them free, would you? I know it’s not your problem, and I know you were hoping to spend that $5 on a root beer float or something, but are you really willing to let them die?
Because that’s what’s going on here. Republicans are angry that eggs cost more than they used to (something Trump isn’t likely to fix), and they don’t like that their children are learning actual history in school.
Meanwhile, Democrats are angry because women are dying from ectopic pregnancies while doctors wring their hands, worried they’ll go to jail if they help. Democrats are angry because the new anti-trans laws could force people to detransition. And of course Democrats are angry about the usual issues, such as climate change, wealth inequity, police brutality, and the cost of medicine. Very real issues, and much more important than the price of your goddamn eggs.
Yeah, maybe if Kamala had been elected, your groceries would have gone up another $20 a month. But some of your medicines might have gone down by more than $1,000, so… and I say this with a dollop of sarcasm… “it evens out.”
The point is, Republicans lack empathy. I’d say that’s the biggest difference between the two parties. One side wants to make the world a better place for everyone, and the other says “I got mine, screw everyone else.”
Republicans probably think I’m overreacting. And I hope they’re right. Nothing would please me more than to be wrong on this one. I mean that. This is one time when I’d rather say “you were right” than “I told you so.”
But I predict I will be saying “I told you so” a lot in the next four years.
I mean it, I hate them. When it comes to news, I can read an article a lot faster than I can sit through a video. I hate it when I see a headline online, I click it, and it takes me to a video. Seriously, news outlets: Just write a paragraph or two so I can read what happened, don’t make me turn my sound on and sit through a 10-minute video.
I don't like them, so I don’t watch them. If an article is video-only, I google the headline, and find some other site with the information I need. But that doesn’t stop the “means well” friends from sending me "funny" videos.
My friends have good taste in humor, they really do. If wanted to watch any videos, it would be the ones they send me. But I still growl every time my phone vibrates, because I don’t know whether it’s going to be a funny picture (yay) or an accursed video (ugh).
Reasons I hate videos:
I have to make time to watch them. I like to spend my free time with my wife, or working on my various projects. I have to allocate my time like it was gasoline, and the last thing I want is to have to make a surprise drive to Zimbabwe.
I don’t have a good data plan on my phone, so if I get a video, I have to wait until I get home to watch it. Once I get home, I usually watch TV with my wife, so I have to wait until she leaves the room if I want to watch a video with sound. I know I make her sound like a sleeping ogre, but it’s more like I want to spend that time with her instead of watching separate videos on my laptop. So as much as I hate videos, I hate videos that require the sound on even more.
But what I hate most is Facebook's Reels. Facebook is really inconsistent about how Reels work. Sometimes they won't give me an interface, so I can't see how long the video is, nor do I have the ability to pause it. I thought it was just a matter using my phone vs my laptop, but these options actually seem to vary from Reel to Reel. Some work like videos, others are like really long animated GIFs.
So not only do I have to allot time to watch a Reel, I can't even see how long the video is going to be when it starts. And if I blink and miss something, I can't rewind, I just have to restart the video or wait for it to repeat itself.
You can probably extrapolate the following based on the above, but if you really want me to hate you, send me a Reel that requires the sound on to be funny. Doing so tells me that you don't respect my time or my feelings. At the very least, look up the video on YouTube and send me that link instead.
So the bottom line is, don’t send me videos. If you do send one, make sure it's so pants-crappingly funny that I'll regret not seeing it. The video loses funny points if it requires sound, or if it's a Reel. If you honestly think the video is still funny after losing all those funny points, go ahead and pass it along, I guess. But don't expect me to watch it for several hours, or maybe even not until the weekend.
Look, I appreciate you trying to brighten my day, I really do. But the amount of trouble I have to go through to watch your videos really makes them less funny.
No, of course not. My feelings toward religion are the same as they’ve always been: Believe what you want, worship how you want, as long as it doesn’t affect me.
Except, you Christians aren’t holding up your end of the bargain. Each and every year you try to pass more and more religiously-motivated laws. And they aren’t even actually based on religion, so much as misinterpretations of religion. You can’t show me a single verse in the Bible that states abortion is a sin. But you’ll happily vote for anti-abortion laws that ruin other people’s lives.
Every year. More laws against abortion. More laws against LGBT people. More laws against women. And then random laws that come out of nowhere, like requiring schools to post “In God We Trust” in schools.
YOU broke the contract. I was perfectly happy with the old system, where everyone lived how they wanted, and we all just stayed out of each other’s way. But when Christians try to force non-Christians to live by their rules, that’s when they go over the line.
So yes, you certainly deserve to be told, “Your religion is illegal.” You certainly deserve to have your religious freedoms taken away. As much as you like to shout “I’m being persecuted! I’m being persecuted!” it’s never actually been true. At least, not in your lifetime. If there were any justice in this universe, you would find out what religious persecution actually means.
So no, even if I had the power to make religion illegal, I wouldn’t. As much as you deserve it, and you really do deserve it, that would still be hypocritical of me. Because I still believe in religious freedom. The freedom to follow whichever religion you want, and the freedom not to follow any of them.
But there is one thing I would do if I had unlimited power. I would make it illegal to pass any religious-based laws (you know, like it already says in the First Amendment), and any politician who even proposes a religion-based law would immediately be banned from holding office ever again.
I heard a neat theory the other day. Why does Yoda use such backwards syntax? Because he's old. Well, duh, everybody who gets that old is going to have a hard time speaking correctly. But Yoda speaks that way because he's older than the current version of language. In other words, he's speaking correctly, but the language has evolved around him.
William Shakespeare lived about 450 years ago. That's only half of Yoda's age in the original trilogy, and yet look how much language has changed since Shakespeare's time. If Shakespeare showed up today and started talking to a redneck farmboy from Tatooine, they'd probably understand each other eventually, but not without some difficulty.
But that's not what I came here to talk about. You know what grinds my gears today? One of Yoda's most repeated aphorisms: "Do or do not, there is no try."
Look, I get it. Don't allow for failure. If you visualize success strongly enough, you will succeed. Put failure out of your mind, those thoughts can poison your chances of success.
But that's a pile of bullsith. There is no appreciable definition of "do" that doesn't include trying first. Trying is the act of doing. Until the doing is done, you are trying. If you don't try, you just sit there. "There is no try" leads to "there is no do." When Yoda said his famous line, Luke should have answered, "Fine, guess I'll go home now."
Plus, that line of thinking leads to people not having backup plans. If you're so sure you can't fail, why bother taking safety precautions? Why wear a seatbelt? Why buy car insurance? You're not going to wreck, Yoda said so. All you have to do is do, not try, and you'll never wreck.
Plus, I'm not sure it's good psychologically to rule out the possibility of failure. I mean, sure it's good for people to give everything their all, to not take no for an answer, to push ahead until they succeed. It's good, that is, until they actually do fail. Some people aren't mentally prepared for that. If they spent a little time deciding how they'll handle failure, then they might not be as devastated when it happens.
And should we really be taking this advice from a guy who fled the senate to go brood in a swamp for twenty years? He's had two decades to mount a counter offensive. We've seen how powerful Jedi can be, and we've been told that Yoda is one of the most powerful. If Galen Marek can pull a Star Destroyer out of the sky, why can't Yoda toss them at the Death Star like paper airplanes?
But no, he failed once, couldn't accept it, and went into seclusion. Not exactly the role model for chasing your dreams.
So, could Trump be any more obvious at this point?
Look, it's always been obvious when Republicans try to suppress voters. Historically, voter suppression favors Republicans. Whenever they close down polling places, it's usually in poor neighborhoods that tend to vote Democrat. If everyone who wants to vote were actually allowed to vote, we'd probably have more blue states than we think we do.
It's a despicable practice. Engineering who can vote and where, gerrymandering, and now sabotaging the Postal Service - it's like they admit they can't win without cheating. And yet, Trump is the one who keeps saying, "If I lose in November, it will be because of voter fraud."
That's not idle prattle. As usual, he's trying to plant the seeds to support whatever lies he might need later. Even if he says nothing more about it (yeah right), if Trump loses in November, Republicans will doubt the results. They won't need any further evidence of tampering, they'll only need those seeds Trump planted in their highly suggestible brains.
We can't leave any room for doubt. We need this to be a landslide, so no one tries to overturn the election on some "hanging chad"-style technicality. Do whatever it takes to vote. If you're not allowed to vote by mail in your area, take the risk. Wear a mask, stand six feet apart, take whatever other precautions you can, but go. Keeping Trump out of office is one of the few things worth the risk of leaving the house during a pandemic.
Four years ago, some of my friends couldn't decide between Trump and Clinton. Some of them didn't vote. Others threw their vote away on third party candidates. Under normal circumstances, with normal candidates, I'd support voting for third parties. You won't win, but if they get enough votes, it sends a message that the world is ready for new ideas, which could influence future elections.
But too many people stayed home four years ago, and now people are dying. Many people are dead now, people who would still be alive under any other president. If you didn't vote for Clinton four years ago, you share some responsibility for those deaths. I'm not going to flat-out declare you responsible, because you didn't know. This time you do. If you don't vote for Biden this election, more people will die, and you will be responsible.
If you voted for Trump four years ago, you were a fool. I can forgive fools. If you let him win this November, you're a murderer.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Just the other day my wife said something like, "Remember that episode of (some sitcom) where they met a doctor that was wearing (some odd outfit)?" I racked my brain trying to remember this doctor, and couldn't. Then she added, "You remember, she had that (further description)?" Upon hearing the word "she" in that last sentence, I immediately remembered the episode and character my wife was referencing.
When she'd said "doctor", I'd immediately pictured a man, and trying to match up a male character with the rest of her description kept me from remembering the character. It was an instinctual, sexist moment on my part. It wasn't intentional, but it's one of those little bits of internalized sexism that says a lot about our society.
To use someone else's example, it's like when a someone says, "Bob killed his neighbor's wife" instead of just "Bob killed his neighbor". It's a distinction that's difficult for most people to notice, including myself. Both phrases are technically accurate, but the former shows how deeply ingrained sexism can be. The wife is Bob's neighbor too, why does she have to be identified by her relation to her husband? It describes the wife as if she's not her own person, but someone's possession. If it was the husband that was killed, you would probably never hear "Bob killed his neighbor's husband."
I'm afraid that my blogs come across as I'm holier-than-thou. But a lot of the sins I point out in society, I'm guilty of as well. That's how I know them so well. I identified them in myself first. Remember, I was born in a Christian Republican family, and kept those values until after college. I might be evangelistic about my liberalism, atheism, and gender issues, but I'm not saying you're stupid for disagreeing with me. I'm saying I used to think that too, and here's what changed my mind.
But more importantly, I'm not saying I'm never wrong. To this day, I still say and do little things that are racist, sexist, or homophobic. Identifying these mistakes is part of the journey to being a better person, and I'm still on that journey. I don't hate people for making mistakes on their own journey, I'm just disappointed with people who refuse to take the journey at all.
No one is perfect, especially not me. I'm trying to be a better person, and I hope you are too.
I think my biggest problem is a lack of focus. It’s been this way all my life. I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. (I still don’t.) My brother had a laser-guided focus – he wanted to be an artist from a very early age, and never strayed anywhere else. Sure, he had other hobbies, but none of them were potential careers. Meanwhile, I kept going back and forth between wanting to draw comic books, write novels, and program video games. I think I had a natural talent for some of those things, but I just couldn’t concentrate on any one hobby long enough to become competent.
I created several video games for the Commodore 64. Nothing particularly complicated, mostly Defender-style shooters. I didn’t actually know a programming language, I used a program called “Garry Kitchen’s Gamemaker”. Additionally, I bought every game I could find that allowed you to design your own levels. Excitebike. Wrecking Crew. Lode Runner. More recently, Super Mario Maker. I loved level design. But I never got so into it that I learned how to make games from scratch. Learning a computer language would have taken a level of dedication I didn’t possess. I still sometimes think about learning to program, but I just can’t make myself start. I’m afraid of investing money into classes I might not finish.
I drew comic books. On notebook paper, just for my friends to read. I started around third grade, and kept going until I was in my mid-20s. My art did improve during that time – how could it not improve at least a little – but I never took the time to get really good at drawing. I still sometimes get the urge to start a webcomic, but something shiny always distracts me before I go too far in that direction.
I’ve always been attracted to hybrid hobbies, ones that combine two or more skills without demanding you be an expert in any of them. Drawing comic books took both writing and drawing skills – but less writing than a novelist and less artistic skill than a painter. For a few years I made virtual paper dolls for a program called KISS (“Kisekae Set System”), which required small amounts of art and programming. I even wrote short stories to go along with some of my KISS dolls. I spent over a year designing a persistent world module for NeverWinter Nights – which took small amounts of computer scripting, writing dialogue, and general creative worldbuilding.
I have random weird skills without the secondary skills required to make the primary skills monetizable. For example, I’m very good at proofreading (as long as I didn’t write it). When I read books, spelling errors just jump out at me as if they were written in bold type. Unfortunately, I don’t read fast enough to proofread for a living, and the invention of the spellchecker probably cut down on the number of professional proofreaders out there anyway.
Successful people have passion, usually for something very specific. I don’t have specific passions. I don’t latch onto specific hobbies. I get caught up in odd minor aspects of hobbies that never result in me finishing a project. I’m certain I fit in somewhere in the world. I’m certain there’s a job or hobby out there that would fit me like a glove. Everyone wants to be a rock star or a famous actor, but nobody dreams about being a key grip or lighting director. I’m pretty sure I’m designed to have one of those technical jobs that nobody ever talks about, but the fact that nobody ever talks about it is the reason I haven’t heard of it. Something in the entertainment industry, that requires minor knowledge of two or three fields without needing expertise in any of them. Nothing that would put me on camera, nothing that would make me a household name, and I’m fine with that.
I know there’s a job out there that I could be passionate about, I just don’t know how to find it.
So I kept hearing about the uproar over Gillette’s new “anti-man propaganda” commercial. I had to wonder, what did they do? Did they say all men are rapists? Toxic masculinity is a tricky issue; not everybody understands what it is, or why it’s just as bad for men as it is for women. I wasn’t sure a razor company could really do the subject justice, and it might come off as if they are complaining about all men. Ready to cringe, I watched the video:
…that’s it? Really? This is what is causing men everywhere to throw tantrums like cranky two-year olds? The commercial basically says, “Don’t be a bully, please treat women with respect, and always be the best person you can be.” It doesn’t say, “You, yes you specifically, are a bully who sexually harasses women.” Nor does it say, “Only men can be bullies, women are perfect.”
Apparently in this day and age, the phrase “Don’t be a jerk” is considered part of the Liberal Agenda. When America elected a bully for president in 2016, I was disappointed but at least there were explanations – a lot of people didn't vote, gerrymandering gives disproportionate power to certain voters, underhanded voter purges kept some people from voting, etc… basically, the outcome of the election doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual attitude of the average American.
But this does. As I write this, the YouTube video has a million dislikes, and only about half as many likes. I browsed the comments, and couldn’t find a single post that sided with Gillette. This is what bothers me most. This isn’t die-hard Republicans saying, “I hate Trump but I like his tax proposals better than what the Democrats are offering, so I’ll vote for him and try to ignore his childishness.” This is people actually saying, “Bullying is fine. Sexually harassment is fine. Toxic masculinity is fine.” I can not put into words how disappointed I am in the people who hate the commercial.
Let me ask you this: When you watch the Gillette commercial, do you feel personally called out? If so, why? Are you a bully/rapist? If not, then the commercial isn’t really talking about you. If you still feel called out on some level… maybe you need to explore why you feel that way. Do you subconsciously feel like maybe you are a bully, and don’t like the commercial for pulling at that particular string? If so, use this as an opportunity to explore those feelings. Introspection is good.
Some of the complainers simply said variations of, “A razor company shouldn’t be spouting political opinions.” And that’s fair, except:
1. “Don’t be a bully or rapist” shouldn’t be a political opinion. It should be the default.
2. I seriously doubt these people would be complaining if Gillette’s “political opinion” was something they agreed with, or at least something they felt neutral about. If Gillette’s ad said, “Here at Gillette, we like mustard more than ketchup,” people would probably just say, “huh, that’s a weird ad” and get on with their lives.
The Gillette ad is not attacking masculinity, it is attacking Toxic Masculinity. This is defined as "the constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia and wanton violence" (Terry Kupers). Maybe the commercial doesn't make it clear that it's only attacking one type of masculinity, but it gives plenty of examples of activities that are clearly wrong. It's not like it's saying, "have a penis, go to jail."
I just don't know what to think any more. The country has become so polarized the last few years, and while we like to think of it as Republicans/Conservatives vs Democrats/Liberals, more and more it looks like the divide is between bullies and people who actually care about their fellow humans.
Do you ever lie awake at night berating yourself for things you said more than thirty years ago? Sometimes it helps to purge those inner demons by writing it all out.
In sixth and seventh grade, I was kind of a jerk. I don’t think I was a horrible person, but I was extremely full of myself, and I always thought I was the smartest person in the room.
Let’s look at the TV show “Cheers”. If you watch the first episode, it looks like it’s going to be the story of Diane Chambers. She’s framed as the “Only Sane Person” in an environment full of kooks, kind of like Dick Loudon in Newhart. When she got a job at the bar, it was like Dian Fossey doing research by living among the apes. At least, that was my interpretation at the time. It didn’t take the writers long to realize that the audience was identifying more with the lowbrow characters than with the intellectual Diane, who many viewers found annoying. The focus shifted appropriately, and Diane’s intellectualism was treated more like a character flaw than an advantage.
But not for me. I continued to identify with Diane, because that’s how I saw the world. I was the only smart person in a school full of idiots, the only nice person in a school full of jerks, the only refined person in a school full of lowlifes. I would use words like “au contraire” because I thought it made me sound smart, when I actually just came across as pompous. I still remember the first time one of my classmates called me “conceited”, and while I took offense at the time, he was definitely right.
Pop psychology often suggests boosting your child’s ego. “You should constantly tell your children how smart they are, to build their confidence and make them more self-assured.” It sounds like good advice, but the problem is, the kids who need it don’t get it and vice versa. It seems like behind every raging egomaniac, there’s a parent who won’t stop gushing about how smart their child is. My own parents ran hot and cold on me. I can remember specific instances of them bolstering my ego (and sometimes even seeing through it as empty praise), but they (well, my mom) also tore me down a lot too. It’s a wonder I’m as well-adjusted -Cufflinks! Nostrils! –as I am.
I don’t know at what point I grew out of my conceitedness (not that it’s completely gone of course), but I imagine the stresses over the next few years changed me a lot. Not just the migraines and related problems, but I actually started to fail at things for the first time in my life, and it was a huge blow to my ego. Today… well, I’m not good at self-awareness, so I’m not sure how other people see me. Nor do I think I want to know. But internally, my self-confidence is shot. If I say anything egotistical, it’s either a joke or an act of self-preservation, because in my head I’m worthless.
I’ve never been accused of being the sharpest tool in the shed, but I have been accused of being a tool, so at least that’s progress.
Some people see the world like it’s all sports
teams. You don’t have to have a real reason for hating another group,
it’s enough to know that you’re on different sides. That kind of thing
flies when you’re in high school, but not enough people drop it when
they become adults. I mean, this is hatred here, not friendly rivalry.
People are actually getting hurt, but some people only care about the
ones on their own side. Everything is Hatfields and McCoys. So many
feuds go back so far that no one cares who threw the first punch.
We are constantly at war with various middle
eastern countries. Sometimes their citizens only know what their
government tells them. All they know about America is that we keep
sending airplanes to bomb their schools. No matter what our intentions,
there is no reason in the world they should think of America as the
good guys. Their kids grow up, they hate America, they fight back. We
still call them the bad guys, even though we’re the ones who killed
their parents. It is a war fought out of ignorance. I’m not even
saying we should stop – we have to defend ourselves, right? But we do
need to step back and examine they psychology of it sometimes. Figure
out if there are any other possible solutions besides sending in more
bombers. Find ways to win over the populace, so they overthrow their
own evil government, or arrest their own terrorists.
The fact is, there are bad people on both sides
of every issue. You shouldn’t judge an entire group for that. But
also, in every fight there are people who are second/third/fourth/etc
generation fighters, people who don’t remember when the first punch was
thrown, and only know that the other side has always been mean to them.
A white child might not know that his father started a feud by burning a cross on their neighbor's lawn. He just knows that the black kids next door won’t play with him, so he gets the wrong impression and grows up to be a second-generation racist. But are we really going to blame the neighbors for being afraid of letting the kids play together?
A friend once told me he didn't like gay people. One of his reasons was that once saw some GLBT people at a protest, and they were acting angry. He said the protestors were so hateful, and shouting
so many mean things, that he was convinced they were a hate group. I
wasn’t there, but my feeling is that if they were so hateful, it’s
probably because they’ve been stomped on by society. When all you see is the response, without seeing the what caused it, you get the impression that the defenders are the aggressors.
I follow Gail Simone on Twitter. She's one of the best comic book writers in the business, and also an outspoken feminist. A lot of sexist male readers dislike her. Gail is happy to humor them, and often openly debates them on Twitter. She uses logic and class, and her arguments are sound.
But if people are rude to her, she has no problem calling them out on it. If you act like an asshole, she will say so, in so many words. If she is weary from debating all day and wants to focus on positive posts, she will mute the jerks for the night, so as not to distract from the new topics. Remember, this is not her job. She uses Twitter for fun, and she has no obligation to engage jerks at all.
Meanwhile, the jerks will post on their own Twitter pages examples of Gail calling them an asshole, or muting them, without any of the context that led up to it. They call her unprofessional, even though she just spent an entire day debating with idiots in the most professional way possible. Because she won't consent to be insulted by idiots 24/7, she gets branded the rude one.
I see the same thing in every debate out there. There are enough hateful people on both sides of every debate, that either side can cherry pick their opponents' responses and pick out rude ones. Conservatives are literally killing people with their policies, but they have no problem finding examples of bad Liberals and saying, "Look how evil our opponents are!" Because no side is perfect.
To me, Republicans are obviously in the wrong lately. They are doing everything possible to make sure only rich white males have the most freedom. From my point of view, it is the party of hatred. And yet, it's my Republican friends who keep posting memes that say, "Why is everybody so mean, can't we all get along?" I could easily post a long ranty thread about how it's a sign of privilege to wonder why people won't stop fighting, but for now I'll just say this: Republicans don't have to fight because they already won. To those who are in power, any challenge to that power looks like hatred. Even if that "hatred" is just underprivileged people fighting for their rights.
I’m not going to tone police you. I’m not going
to say, “You should only protest this way.” All I’m saying is that when
you act as hateful as the people you’re protesting against, it doesn’t
change minds. It just gives the other side more ammo. That is an unfortunate fact, but it doesn't mean you should stop fighting.
More importantly, just because you see an example of a stupid/evil/rude person in a group, it doesn't mean that side is wrong.
Once upon a time I was working at Subway. A customer came in and started to order, but before he got far a police officer came in. The officer pointed to the customer, smiled, and made a “come here” gesture. Both men left the building, and I could see them talking outside. After a few minutes they both laughed, the officer left, and the customer came back inside. I looked at him quizzically, and he told me what happened.
There was a Little Caesar’s next to the Subway. The customer had ordered a pizza by phone, but he got there right after they closed. Looking in through the door, he saw a pizza on the counter, which he assumed was his. Now, ordinarily he probably would have thought, “it’s closed, I’ll go somewhere else.” But it looked like they’d just closed a few minutes ago, they’d already made his food, and all they needed was for him to pay for it. In his mind, where was the harm? So he knocked on the door.
A young employee poked her head out from the back room, surprised by his knock. Using exaggerated motions, she pointed to her left. The customer found out later that she was trying to indicate the sign with their hours. But he took it to mean, “Our front door is locked, come around to the back door for your pizza.” So he walked around the building and knocked on the back door. The employee saw him through the peephole and called the police. When she never came to the back door, the customer decided to get Subway instead, and that’s when the officer showed up.
Socially comfortable people are reading this and thinking, “Wait… how could ANYONE think the employee meant for him to go to the back door? It’s unsafe to be opening the doors for anyone after hours, and the back door just makes it more dangerous!” But those who are socially clumsy, like myself, can relate instantly. Navigating social situations is a skill that comes more naturally to some people than others, and people like me often find themselves completely misunderstanding what’s going on around them.
Usually it's little things. Like one time in college a girl I liked told me she was going to start swimming more often, so she could lose weight. I replied, “Good idea!” I meant the swimming, but it sounded like I was responding to the “lose weight” part. My life is a series of wrong responses like that.
There’s an old Dilbert strip where he meets an attractive woman and he says, “It’s a pleasure to meet me. I hope you never find a live turtle in your soup.” Dilbert’s next self-berating thoughts indicate that even he doesn’t know what he meant by that sentence. There’s a Big Bang Theory episode where Leonard tries to say “hello” and “hi” at the same time, and it comes out “Hi low”. That’s what we socially clumsy people do. We try to say multiple things at once so that they come out as random word salad. We change our mind halfway through sentences. Then we mentally beat ourselves up and become strangely quiet, sometimes halfway through a sentence.
When I first moved out of state, I missed a lot of my old friends. This was before e-mail was very common, so I sent out a lot of letters with my new contact information, hoping at least one of them would call or write me. One day the phone rang, and the caller sounded exactly like Apu from the Simpsons. One of my high school friends was good at doing cartoon voices, and Apu was one of his favorites.
Calling me up while imitating a Simpsons character was exactly the kind of thing he would do. So after he said his hellos, I responded with a very familial, “Hey, buddy, what’s up?” It wasn’t my friend. It turned out to be a telemarketer, and that was his actual accent. He sounded confused for a second, but went on with his spiel. I listened to everything he had to say, politely turned down whatever he was trying to sell, and started to say goodbye.
But before ending the call, he asked me, “By the way, when you first picked up, it sounded like you recognized my voice…”
“Sorry, yes, I thought you were a friend of mine.”
“Oh, is your friend of Indian descent?”
And then I said one of the stupidest, most racist things I’ve said in my life. “No, he just likes doing funny voices.” I swear, I could hear his face fall over the phone. All the animation went out of his voice, and he flatly said, “Well, it was a pleasure talking to you, have a good day.” I hung up the phone, and just sort of stared at the wall for several minutes, feeling as if I’d just kicked myself in the stomach, wondering how I could possibly have been dumb enough to say that.
Not that it makes a difference, but I probably wasn’t using “funny” to mean “humorous” so much as “unusual”. As in, “The engine is making a funny noise.” I don’t find anything inherently funny about Apu’s accent, but my friend’s ability to mimic so many voices was delightful. I’m well aware of the “Problem with Apu”, but from my friend’s POV he wasn’t making fun of people with accents, he was doing impressions of TV characters.
But still… yeesh. Of all the things to come out of my mouth.
These are the little things that keep me up at night.
Well, now I've done it. Yesterday I mentioned all the lesbian romance novels I've been reading. Well, they've triggered my dysphoria something fierce. I loved every minute reading "Solve For i", but I've felt depressed ever since I finished it. Why can't I have Gemma's problems? Why can't I have that life? Her life isn't perfect, she has all sorts of problems. I'm not asking for a perfect, problem-free life here. What I want is something more than half the humans on the planet get for free, due to simple random biology.
I often woke up and lay there in the dark. Usually this was about a quarter to four. I'm the wrong person, I thought. I'm living the wrong life, in the wrong body.
To which I would respond:You're a maniac. An idiot.You have a life a lot of other people dream about, a life so full of blessings that your heart hurts.
To which I would respond: I know. Still.
To which I would respond: Well, what do you think you're going to do about this now? Have a sex change, at age forty? Abandon all the love that has made your life whole, so that you can enter into a new life, about which you know nothing? What kind of woman do you think you'd be now, having never had a girlhood? What kind of person do you think you'd be, leaving your children without a father, your wife without a husband?
To which I would respond: I know. Still.
To which I would respond:Well, you go on and have a sex change, then. Just leave me out of it. I'll just say my prayers so I can appreciate the things I have and not launch off like an imbecile into a life of lurid marginality.
To which I would respond:You know, don't you, that no amount of wishing that this were not the case can make it not the case. No amount of praying that you are not transgender will make you some-thing other than what you are. No amount of love from anyone will make you fit inside a body that does not match your spirit.
To which I would respond: Well, I'll be goddamned if I'm going to break anybody's heart. I'll be goddamned if I'm going to let my family down. I'll be goddamned if I'm going to give up everything I've always wanted just so I can fit.
To which I would respond: I know. Still.
To which I would respond: Well, all right, then. You'll be god-damned.
I read this book more than 10 years ago, and it's still one of my favorite books about transgender issues. The passage above really resonates with me. It sums up just about every feeling I have about my gender identity.
There are times when, from a logical standpoint, I don't even believe in the concept of gender. It's just a made up social construct. Would I still feel transgender if we lived in some sci-fi future where there were no gender roles? Would I still want to live as a woman if I lived in a country where women are treated like slaves? Can't I just live my life as gender neutrally as possible, and let people assume I'm a normal guy?
I know. Still.
In the grand scheme of things, it just seems like such a First World Problem. There are people out there fighting for survival every day, and here I am whining because I don't look cute in a dress. Even in my own life, I've got bigger problems. I have debts, the house needs repairs, and so on.
I know. Still.
Life is short. What's the point of changing my life now, when I've missed all the years I'd want to enjoy most? What do I really get from it? Why risk all my current friendships? Why alienate myself from my family? Why risk my job? Why make my current life harder? Why not just focus on my hobbies, and let my identity go on the back burner?
I know. Still.
I make all these arguments, but I always come back to the same thing. The logical reasons don't fix anything. I still feel like I'm pretending my way through life, unable to show my true self. Every night I picture myself in various lives. This is how I fall asleep: imagining myself as a woman, in different scenarios. Sometimes I'm a redhead who lives in Seattle. Sometimes I'm a brunette who lives in Wales. I'll picture potential jobs, entire house layouts, what sort of friends I have, and so on.
Some of these fantasies are mundane, with me working a 9-to-5 job and barely making ends meet. Sometimes I'm unbelievably rich. Sometimes I have super powers. If you're going to fantasize anyway, might as well go big, right? But in all the scenarios, I'm female. I simply can not fantasize about a life where I'm male. There is no "dream life" where I'm a rich, good looking man.
I've given up
getting cispeople to understand it. I really don't think it's
possible. The best I can hope for is for them to realize that it's
important to me.
I've probably said this before, but this is the best way I know how to explain it: When you see a movie, and there's a character you think is really cool, to the point where you fantasize about being them. It's usually someone of your own sex, right? How many cis-men do you think saw Tomb Raider and though, "Gee, I wish I was Lara Croft?" No, but you can bet a lot of them had Indiana Jones fantasies. Me, I identify with the cool female characters.
Or when
you look in the mirror, and decide that your body isn't perfect, and
want to shed a few pounds or gain a bit of muscle. You have an
idealized image of yourself in your head, whether it's something possible (like losing weight) or something a lot less likely (like being six inches taller). Mine is female. Ideally, a cute thin redhead. Some guys might envy Vin Diesel, and not just because they think it would get them laid more. They just really like the look. Me, I envy Felicia Day.
But I am not going to transition. Not only is it just about impossible in so many ways - economically, socially, logistically - but even if I was rich and alone, I'm not convinced it would be fulfilling. I have no way of knowing if I would ever feel 100% a woman, or if I would forever feel like some sort of imposter.
I have to accept that this is what life is. It's not fair, but I have it better than a lot of people. Some people wish they had legs. Or a roof over their heads. Or their children's lives back. And I'm sitting here wishing I looked cute in a dress. It's time to stop pining over what I'm not, and work on improving the life that I have.
I have a lot of if/then beliefs. For example, I don't believe in ghosts. However, if ghosts are real, then I believe that cats can see them. The second statement in no way softens the strength of my conviction of the first. I don't think I could ever be convinced that ghosts exist. Even if I saw one, I would find another explanation. But it's a quirk of my mind that if somehow I were convinced, I already have side beliefs that go along with it.
Religion's a bit easier. I've probably never believed in ghosts, but I've been Christian before. So those side beliefs are already there, lying dormant, waiting to be activated in case my primary theology ever changes.
I've been an atheist for more than ten years, and I doubt I'll ever go back. I'm not sure I would even know where to begin at this point. According to Wikipedia, there are at least 4,200 worldwide religions. Christianity alone has at least 30,000 denominations.
I like to think of it like a hotel with thousands of rooms, each room representing a different religion or denomination. If you're currently in a room, then it seems black and white - everyone's either in your room or they're not. But for those of us in the hallway, there's a seemingly infinite number of doors to choose from. There's not much to indicate which one is the "right" door, they all look the same from here.
For every bit of evidence you have that your hotel room is the right one, I guarantee you that hundreds of other hotel rooms are offering the same evidence. Your religion may use the cop-out, "We don't need proof because faith is what gets you into Heaven," but again, your opposing religions are saying it too. Being in the wrong religion might be just as damning as being without one, so I'll just stay out here in the hall.
Yet despite my unwavering atheism, I have some strong ideas about the nature of God. Do not take the following list as any indication that I'm warming up to religion again. These are just my if/then beliefs.
IF God exists:
Basically, I believe God is both a scientist and an artist. He's playing the ultimate game of SimCity, and after a lot of effort he has created a world that is both beautiful and scientifically sustainable. More than anything he simply wants recognition for all the hard work he put into it.
I believe God wants us to study science, in order to understand and fully appreciate his work. It's like the authors notes in some books, where the author tells us where they got their ideas. God wouldn't have made science decipherable if he didn't want us to peek under the curtain.
I believe evolution is real, and that God guided it. I believe the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and that the "7 days" mentioned in Genesis are written in God-time. The dinosaurs may have been an early experiment at creating life, but when that was unfulfilling, God wiped them out and started again, multiple times, until he finally decided to try his hand at a sapient species capable of actual civilization.
I believe the Bible was written in such a way as to be understood by the people of the time. It was not meant to be taken literally 6,000 years later. Why hasn't he given us an updated version? I imagine he was hoping our moral code would evolve along with our scientific understanding, so that we wouldn't need to keep following an outdated instruction booklet.
I believe that a lot of the sins in the Bible were actually listed to keep people safe. Certain animals were declared unclean because they had to be cooked thoroughly to prevent disease. They were later made clean because humans were better at cooking. In a similar vein, monogamy was encouraged at the time because sexual promiscuity could spread disease and could result in unwanted children. Since the invention of the condom, God probably has a more relaxed view of sex.
I believe that a lot of the time when the Bible talks about the world, it actually means the universe. I believe we are meant to eventually spread out to other planets. I believe that God has put other civilizations elsewhere in the universe, and he hopes that we will eventually meet.
I believe God wants us to appreciate the beauty of the human body, rather than being offended by it. While nudity can certainly be exploitative and sexist, people should not be outraged by nursing mothers and other natural nudity. I believe that the reason we find nature so beautiful is because God wants us to preserve it and protect it. The way humans carelessly destroy our planet probably angers God greatly.
I believe God is opposed to sexism. A lot of misogynists think the Bible supports male domination, but I think that's just a sign of the times. Back then the world was a much harsher place to live, and it probably made sense for the physically strong to make the rules, while keeping their weaker partners safe from harm. In modern times, this power differential is no longer necessary.
I believe God is fine with homosexuality. It's a natural human variation, like hair color or left handedness. God may have even thrown it in to slow down population growth. Yes, there are six verses in the Bible that supposedly condemn homosexuality, but those are misinterpreted, taken out of context, and/or only apply to people who lived 6,000 years ago.
I believe God is fine with abortion. If God truly knows the future, then he knows which fetuses are going to be aborted, and therefore he wouldn't bother to put souls in them. To claim otherwise is to admit you don't believe God is omniscient. Therefore, being pro-life is blatantly sacrilegious. You might think I'm stretching there, but my logic is no more ridiculous than a lot of widely believed religious doctrine.
I don't believe the Second Coming or other apocalypse is meant to happen any time soon. I'm absolutely horrified that there are people in positions of power who believe the world will end soon. How are we ever going to save the planet if the world leaders believe there's a rapture coming up?
I believe most of the world's religions are really the same religion. The same way urban legends change as they spread, so does religious doctrine. Any religion that says, "be good, worship the creator, and you'll be rewarded after you die," is probably talking about the same deity. People are willing to wipe each other out for worshiping what is essentially the same god by a different name. I seriously doubt God wants anyone to kill anyone in his name.
I believe God disapproves of the rich. That's a no-brainer, the Bible is pretty explicit in is disdain for wealth. A rich person is someone who had the opportunity to help the poor, and chose to buy themselves more stuff instead. It's pretty obvious they're not bound for Heaven. But conservatives have convinced themselves that the poor deserve to be poor, and therefore it's okay not to help them.
I believe that Hell is just separation from God. I simply can't believe that a good-aligned deity would punish people with eternal suffering. The entire point of punishment is to correct bad behavior; there's just no logical reason to inflict everlasting pain on anyone. Frankly, it sounds petty. I believe that following God's moral code earns us the right to join his kingdom in the afterlife. Those who fall short will be left on Earth, and their souls will simply cease to exist when they die.
I believe that a large majority of modern day Christians are doing it all wrong, and are going to pay the price. The world is full of sexist, homophobic, racist conservatives, who somehow believe they will make it to Heaven by worshiping the rich. I believe they will be quite surprised when the end comes.
Or Maybe...
Okay, now let’s change gears. Above are things I would almost definitely believe if I believed in God. The following are speculations - things I would think
might be true, but only if I believed in God in the first place.
If there is a God, then I'm not sure he's actually magical. I tend to lean towards more "sufficiently advanced alien" theories, or that this world is just a simulation.
If this is a simulation, maybe the history of the world came about in an attempt to bring about a smarter
AI, one that can mix compassion with logic. Perhaps those who pass
the test have their minds copied to a higher folder when they die, while
less useful AIs just get deleted.
I wonder if maybe Heaven is just what we're meant to turn the Earth into. Those who follow God's teachings will make this world into a utopia, while those who embrace hatred will die out. Perhaps we will eventually cure aging, fix world hunger, and create a world where nobody is ever poor or sick. Maybe society will split into science-lovers and sun-worshipers, the former building giant bio-domes while the latter die out in the open from climate change.
Or perhaps we really will find a way to transport our minds into computers, and the biblical heaven actually describes a hard drive that "saves" our souls while our bodies are destroyed by some future apocalypse.
Assuming God has a gender at all, I wonder if God might be female. It honestly makes more sense to me for the Great Creator to be a woman. Letting us think she's a he, maybe that's just a test. Maybe the ultimate final test will involve how society treats women. I have this fantasy where the second coming occurs, and Jesus is an olive-skinned lesbian, ready to mete out judgement for all the racism and sexism by those in power.
Back to Reality...
But again, the above beliefs and theories assume I believe in God, which I don't. In the real world, I believe that God is a myth that started with ancient people trying to explain things they didn't understand. It amazes me that religion is so prevalent in 2017, and shows no sign of slowing down. It also amazes me that despite most religions preaching about love, so many people use their religion to discriminate and hurt others.
Bottom line: I firmly believe there is no God, and we're destroying each other in the name of an urban legend. But if there is a God, his followers are greatly distorting his teachings, and they're going to be very surprised when they get to the afterlife.
