Oh! A Gime!

I am confident that Queen Elizabeth sweats. I am equally confident that she does not grunt like a baboon or groom her nose hairs in the gym. She manages to keep her composure at the age of 82 years young. So what is your excuse you ill-mannered sack of crap? I will never for the life of me understand why people find it acceptable to behave so disgustingly when they are working out. At any rate, I will not let that deter me from my purpose of cataloging the depths to which human civilization has sunk.

I think it only fitting to begin with the beginners. I know you have seen these individuals. They stroll in chattering with two or three of their flabbiest, most irritating friends, all decked out in matching track suits (or for men, those ridiculous over-sized basketball shorts that hang down to your ankles because they are designed for folks much taller and more athletic than you). They then gather around some complicated, and inevitably popular machine and stare at it like they’re in an art museum. You’ll notice them hide their confusion by continuing to chatter as they sit backwards in the seat, put their hands tentatively on the foot rest and thrust outward just hard enough to give themselves a hernia. Eventually they roll onto the floor clutching their side and crawl over to the next machine you want to use so that they can further injure themselves while also keeping you from getting on with your workout. Ordinarily, I’d say killing two birds with one stone is great, unless you happen to be one of the birds.

The beginners are followed closely behind, literally, by a hoard of wife-beater wearing steroid junkies who love the gym more than life and themselves more than the gym. They identify themselves as members of this genus by pausing after every three reps to check themselves out in the mirror. Adding to the freakishness is the fact that they perform this ritual in pairs.

“Wow, Franz,” says Hans, “that last set really makes the hairs on your arm look especially buff.”

“Thanks Hans,” says Franz, “if you check me out from a forty-five degree angle I hardly look pudgy at all in this wife beater.”

While I find this whole production odd, I would not necessarily commit these folks just for a bit of delusional body dysmorphia. What is clinically nutso, however, is when the same individuals press themselves right up against the mirror to explore the various orifices of their face. I know you know what I’m talking about so you can just take your guffaw and muffle it. It continues to baffle me that people who take no care to groom themselves at home, suddenly feel a social pressure to inspect their faces for deer tics while they are in the gym. I suppose what I’m really asking is why are they susceptible to one form of shaming and not another? Surely there’s plenty of shame to go around.

Last but not least, we have the screamers. This is a subset of the steroid junkies who manage to be irritating both during and between exercises. Now it is worth mentioning that in whatever gym you frequent, no one is going to the Olympics. They are probably not even going to make it past the Krispy Kreme next door. The only point then of their loud panting and vociferating seems to be to draw attention to their narcissistic mirror-loving selves and their heterosexual gym partners. While I try not to get graphic, I hope you’ll humor me with a little exercise. Imagine that these grunting primates are sitting on a toilet rather than a weight bench. If you’re as disgusted as I am, you’ll take advantage of the next available opportunity to drop an unfortunately placed free weight on one of their hormone swollen feet.

Back that thang up. . .

. . .at your peril. Since we all seem to be having so much trouble understanding the basic tenets of human decency, maybe we can start by taking a lesson from the machines. Have you ever noticed how trucks, tractors, forklifts, boats, barges and even the occasional dirigible all make a beeping noise when they back up? Why do you think that is? (I’ll pause while you let that sink in). So it turns out that this irritating chirping has a valuable function, alerting whatever detritus has been stashed behind said object to get out of the damn way. Ok so that’s one for the mechanical engineers (licking finger and gesturing to make a vertical line in the air).

In fact, I dare say the beeping feature is so useful that the science club even has a leg up on the almighty on this point. This is because you, clunky and mechanical though you are, do not possess such a talent. When you back up, no one sees it coming. Your generous hind-quarters turn you into a human wrecking ball and woe betide your mother’s porcelain kittens if they should be in your path. You have knocked over drinks, trampled on toes, and even ruined a few priceless antiques all for want of a horn and a sense of direction. Actually, if we’re honest with ourselves, the real problem is that you are completely oblivious to your surroundings. This has become so common a theme that I’ve given up trying to get you to change.

What would please me to no end, however, would be for you to stop randomly backing into stuff. At the lunch counter, the water fountain, even getting tickets for a move, just turn and walk forward. It’s that simple. Indeed even if you are from New Jersey, or are Zoolander, you have no excuse because I am completely indifferent as to whether you turn right or left (insert lame political pun here). What I cannot abide is the idea that you are so egoistic that you think what you cannot see does not exist. You have no idea whether there is someone behind you and therefore, in the wheel inside a ball inside your empty skull, there must not be. So there you go arms a’flailin’, backpack bustin’, treating the world as though there weren’t 6 billion other people in it who might not have gotten the memo that you’re entitled to go lumbering around wherever you please.


As I foreshadowed in the last paragraph, it is worth mentioning the exponential irritation that the addition of a backpack adds to this situation. Given that you do not even have functional control over the appendages that are attached to you, I cannot comprehend how you could expect to manage a contraption that adds such heft and girth to your already unmanageable frame. But I suppose you have proven me right yet again, because you do not expect to manage yourself at all. Instead, you expect to bump and push and maneuver through whatever objects, non-living or otherwise, that happen to be situated between you and the precise spot on the floor you have selected to place your feet. Part of me has to admire that kind of confidence and determination. Another, less forgiving part of me thinks there’s a special place in hell for people like you where the devil uses his Jansport to beat you to a pulp.

Shut Your Mouth

If the good Lord had intended for you to use your tongue to give someone a dental exam, we would not have Hepatitis. It so happens, though, that your last round of collagen injections is not what is causing your lips to be all puffy and filled with toxins; that friends, is what we call natural selection. Despite what you may be thinking, I am not here to admonish your “cavalier behavior.” What you do in plain view of the neighbors because you forgot to close your blinds is your own business; which brings me to my point. If you want to slobber all over your significant other like a Saint Bernard, that is none of my business and I’d like to keep it that way.

It seems our fair city has been afflicted with an epidemic of offensive public displays of total lack of self control. Everywhere I cast my eyes I encounter young people making soft core on city streets without a paycheck or a camera. Of course the reason they are not getting a paycheck is because no one is buying what they are selling. Eyes Wide Shut notwithstanding, do not be fooled by the idealized portrayals of romance purveyed by that most honest and productive of our American industries. Watching two people trying to suck the saliva off of each other’s uvulas is not an attractive sight.

What continues to gall me is why people find it acceptable to succumb to this temptation while forgoing so many others. Other than our striped-shirted friends who from time to time take the trouble to cross the great water, we do not defecate in the streets. Nor do we clip our fingernails in a library (sigh, that is a story for another day). Nor do we throw our empty plastic bottle into the spokes of the bicyclist who nearly killed us running a red light (though one of these days, one of them is going to get it and then we’ll see them try to ring that damn bell with a broken wrist). When dogs cannot control their urge to hump things, we put them in crates and don’t think for a second that I would not do the same to you if anyone made a crate big enough.

A related issue is the need for 1) fat and 2) insecure (see #1) men to always grab onto areas of their unsuspecting female companions’ anatomy that normally require a special doctor. This looks as though they are addressing one of two concerns. Either they are worried that their conquest will somehow escape (and who could blame her?), or they are checking to make sure that all of the expected parts are indeed there. In any case, whether she has designs to flee or is somehow missing an essential component without which she is worthless to you is none of mine or anyone else’s business (so long as your story does not wind up on a very special Law & Order). So we must find some solution to my having to watch you attempt to reduce to possession that poor waif who only wanted a big diamond and modest domestic staff. Here again, we can look to Mother Nature for guidance. When animals in the wild want to mark their territory, they just pee on it. Alright then gentlemen, button up those striped shirts and let ‘er rip, so long as you get that out of the way at home.

English M*!@#*f*!@#*...Do You Speak It?!?

The other day at the Barney’s warehouse sale, I saw two Russians invade and occupy a rack of neckties marked up to 70% off of their original prices. At least, that’s what I thought they were doing, I don’t speak Russian. And lucky for them because they were talking loud enough for the whole room to hear them; and believe you me, I would have gladly sacrificed the armload of goodies I was holding to keep that treasure trove out of the hands of the Reds. But a moment’s hesitation caught me flat footed as I wondered whether they maybe just thought this was a black market of some kind (after all, there was a shockingly high number of security guards (who demonstrated a shockingly low level of productivity)). If they thought they were going to find a crucible of yellowcake under the discarded remnants of DKNY’s bad year at the office, I wasn’t going to be the one to stop them.

This raises the much larger but less national-security-related issue of people speaking foreign languages loudly in public places where others cannot understand them. Now I’m going to pick up where your mothers left off (or rather never started) and pull a page straight out of Miss Manners: this is RUDE! No one cares what you say in your home or what you whisper privately to the boy walking with you hoping that you get laryngitis. What makes this behavior so abhorrent is that it shows a conscious disregard for the other human beings in your presence.

I know I’m not alone in this. Joe Biden can’t even stand to be around people who speak English with an accent. Having to deal with someone who doesn’t speak English at all would probably make his hairs stand on end. And who could blame him? If you don’t take a stand early, you could end up with some kind of fungus.

On the other side of the coin (which ironically contains words in Latin) there are the feelings and sensitivities of the non-natives to consider. Perhaps carving out a bubble of isolation in our helter-skelter discount-seeking marketplace of ideas is exactly the respite they need after a long hard day of enjoying personal freedom and living under the blanket of protection afforded by our massive national security apparatus. After all, George Washington was mister isolationist (he would have won Mister Universe as well but it turns out he was bald as a ripe tomato without the powdered wigs).

Coming back to my side of the coin, I say go isolate yourself at home. The world is filled with enough misunderstanding and egoism to sink the ship that brought you here. I’d prefer you not go to such pains to make it clear that you see me as a household moveable that you are free to alternatively ignore and hold your drinks without a coaster. I am a human being, not a human thinking, not a human doing, and not a human who is afraid to knock the teeth out of a mouth that does not treat me as such.

STFU...Seriously

Alright girls, I don’t know which of the X chromosomes contains the gene that causes you to squeal like a stuck pig every time you experience an emotion in public but it has to stop. My ears are still ringing from an encounter with a couple of 18 year old coeds shrieking with delight over their discovery of a new way to lace their Chucks. At least I think they were delighted. The noise is virtually indistinguishable from the apparent cries of anguish I heard moments later when they discovered that someone else had already discovered that lacing method.

Yes it seems one can’t walk a city block without a blood-curdling cry puncturing one’s ear drums and there’s a particular demographic to blame. Young women all over the country are using more words in more ways (well, probably repeating many of the same words over and over) than ever before using text messages, instant messages, Blackberry messages and carrier pigeons; yet when it comes time to express any sentiment more complicated than “I want a Diet Coke,” they return to a state of nature and scream like a howler monkey without the charm. I find it hard to believe that the fairer sex has picked up so foul an affectation by accident and I have a few theories about the true culprit.

I’m no Dr. Phil, but I’d say safe money is on you ladies being desperate for attention. You’ve already had a swing-and-a-miss trying to use looks or personality to get people to notice you so you turn on your siren and try catch some pedestrian off guard long enough to get your hooks in. I’ll tell you why this is a terrible idea just a minute but suffice it to say (not “sufficeth” for you Rhodes scholars out there) that this is sure to fail.

Think about this from the perspective of your prey. They are temperamental, narrowly focused, and easily distracted. They get one taste of your best banshee impression, do a quick over-under on how long it will take before they have to kill you to get the ringing to stop and decide that they cannot prepare a justifiable homicide defense by next week. So they keep moving and the dance begins again.

The much bigger issue here is the girl crying wolf. Eventually, humans will evolve to the point that they can tune out all the sound in your register, and then we have real problems because one of these days the hem of your dress is going to get caught in an escalator or your hair will catch on fire because you leaned too far over the candle on the table at that nice restaurant (how I wish this had not really happened) and no one will pay you any mind, thinking it’s just your usual mating ritual.

And don’t come crying to me when that happens. If I haven’t already learned to block you out by then, I will just laugh and laugh and laugh. So it’s time to take a stand for feminism ladies. Save your dresses and your tresses by corking your pie hole next time you have the urge to get vocal.

Consumer demands on the rise…so is my disgust

Check it. I’m in the airport at 0-dark-hundred trying to juice up my computer by a Starbucks kiosk. Of course, I cannot leave my bags unattended, especially with the K-9 team just yards away and a baggie full of beef jerky in my suitcase. So there sits the holy grail, taunting me, mocking me and there I sit, paralyzed with longing for what can never be.

Now, I tell you that to tell you this. There was a line full of people of all stripes queuing up for all sorts of complicated libations and all I want is hot, black coffee. These jokers have the gall to get snippy about the perceived Spartan conditions at the airport Starbucks. “There’s no cinnamon, well fine then!” “Excuse me, I ordered a regular triple fat calorie-laden fake-coffee chocolate drink, not a medium double fat half-calorie fake-chocolate coffee drink…gosh, get it right!”

I’m so appalled by this display I don’t even know where to begin, so I guess I’ll begin with me. If you’re looking for an analogy, I guess you could say I’m the Christian Children’s Fund kids and the fussy patrons are Sally Struthers. I don’t need to bear witness to your excesses while I make due without. Some of us have no coffee at all and you’re making a scene over a powder that you’ll never be able to taste anyway? I would have traded places in a heartbeat. You sit here by the single electrical outlet in the entire terminal at the international airport in the nation’s capital. I’ll take your place in line and be damn glad of the opportunity. Ok, that’s thing 1.

Thing 2 is, you’re in an airport filled with places to get coffee. In fact, I don’t think there was a single food outlet that didn’t have some kind of coffee drink available. But you’re here at Starbucks because a) you’re a sissy who can’t take it straight, or be b) you’re a status “lady of the night” and wouldn’t be caught dead with a cup that didn’t have that weird mermaid lady on it. So as far as I’m concerned, your frustration with the airport barrista is a kind of cosmic justice. Of course they don’t have cinnamon. It’s an airport, not a grocery store. They also don’t have turnips or beef tripe. Are you going to whine about that too? Probably not, because putting all that junk in coffee would be weird. Well then, I think I’ve made point (folding hands behind head and stretching out legs while crossing them).

Just in case some of you are not catching my drift (perhaps because you’re berating some poor service employee to cover up your own sense of inadequacy) I’ll put this another way. The world is not here to serve you. If it were, then the check-out lady at the WalMart would not have let you leave the store looking like that. But she did because it’s not her place to stage an intervention about your horrible, horrible life choices. If you ever find anyone that can stand you, maybe they can take a crack at it. Although heaven help them if they forget to bring the Sweet ‘n Low.

What’s Wrong With America: Part I

The problem that I have with human beings is twofold, keeping in mind that I take as a given the fact that the only difference between humans and dolphins is that humans have invented language (both animals are mammals with blowholes). First, there’s the physical annoyance of noise pollution, which seems to be most pronounced in the females of the species between the ages of 13 and 40. Second, there’s content component of speech which is like a kind of demented Google where people blurt out all sorts of incoherent and useless information as though it were fact…so I guess, actually it’s like actual Google. Though, unfortunately, I don’t have the capability to make this an audio-visual experience, I think an example might serve as a good jumping off point for our conversation (and yes, this exchange did actually happen, though I desperately wish that it hadn’t):

(Scene: It’s 7 pm on the Washington DC metro, which means you have a lot of irritated bureaucrats who just want to sit in silence and be pissed that their incompetent bosses made them work past the 5pm quittin’ bell.)

Man on Metro: Hi, how long have you been here?

Apparently British woman: Just a few days.

Man on Metro: I find it very confusing to get around this city, don’t you?

Apparently British woman: No, not really.

Man on Metro: I’ve been here three days, I just moved to Virginia from California. Where do you live?

Apparently British woman’s husband: We’re just visiting.

Man on Metro: I noticed you had an accent, where are you from?

Apparently British woman’s husband: We’re from London.

Man on Metro: I visited London once about 30 years ago. I really liked it a lot. Although, isn’t it true that the women there do not have a lot of educational opportunities?

Apparently British woman: Not really. Our daughter goes to university.

Man on Metro: Well, I guess things are changing. Who is going to win the election?

Apparently British woman’s husband: I wouldn’t know, we don’t really follow that stuff very closely.

Man on Metro: I’ll tell you [long pause, then says knowingly:] Barack Obama.

Apparently British woman: [Getting off at next available stop.] Nice meeting you.



Everyone please stop talking. It was one thing when you were just pissing me off…I’m fairly docile and I can’t find the key to my gun cabinet. But this is getting out of hand; you’re becoming a national embarrassment. The problem is that the world thinks Americans are stupid, and this is based solely on the fact that only the stupid ones don’t know when to shut their yap. So please, if you value world order, pipe down before I cause an international incident with your face.

I Have Lots of Questions…Number One…How Dare You?

When I speak to the organ grinder, I don’t expect the monkey to answer. So why is it that whenever someone has the opportunity to interview a living legend in front of an audience the baboon with the cue cards ends up doing most of the talking? I got to witness just such a display the other night at a talk by Elie Wiesel (and if you don’t think he’s a living legend, I’m blackballing you from the island). Here you have a guy who has probably taught humans more about humanity than anyone on the planet, and the jerk asking the questions is all like “Oy, if you think that’s bad, let me tell you about some farshtinkener delicatessen in Brooklyn.” Now listen you cradle-robbing blowhard, no one cares what you have to say so kindly shut your gob.

This episode brings to mind an episode of Katie Couric’s daytime dramedy a few years back: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=&vid=ce93bf2c-9fde-4c96-945c-1cdaa941c1eb. Katie, what are you doing?!? You are sitting across from a national treasure and you cut off her sentences? I have a news flash for you (pun INtended), when the flaming ball of failure that your primetime show has become finally runs out of gas (pun INtended) and is replaced by a gameshow where people compete to see who can belch the loudest, folks will still love Maya Angelou and they will still not give a rat’s patootie about whether you like corn.

Sad to say, though, the outrages committed by the appointed moderators are only the tip of the iceberg. I know we’ve all been held hostage in a Q&A where there’s too much Q because some A has decided his BS doesn’t stink. Every weirdo with a fanny pack and an ax to grind bellies up to the front of the line to give his or her view of philosophy and world events as if the honored speaker is going to say, “You there in the hemp pants, that’s the most brilliant question slash alternative short lecture I’ve ever heard! Will you co-author my next book?” If that ever actually happened, I’d probably wet myself. Fortunately, you’re more likely to hear the guy go “I don’t really understand you’re question and we’re out of time anyway.” Thus, my drawers are dry, your face is red, and we all live to pester each other another day.

But it boggles the mind that people could be so self-absorbed and slash or so oblivious as to steamroll over the words of thinkers so much smarter and more eloquent than they. I’m even more surprised that these folks abide this kind of indignity. Although, I suppose it is because they have charitable and generous souls. I do not suffer from this affliction so I’m going to give it to you straight: if I ever catch you horning in on the few short moments that an audience has with our most beloved public figures, I will clobber you over the head with your own microphone. Then at least you’ll look as foolish as you sound.

This post has been brought to you by the letters Q and A and by Dennis Prager and Kelly Kapoor.

Into the Drink

My drunk friends always tell me, “alcohol is a social lubricant.” I always tell them that I want to see what dictionary they are using because the last time I checked, spilling a 40 down the front of your shirt doesn’t facilitate anything. I suppose it removes a barrier between me silently judging you and me sharing a full-throated critique of the hot mess you’ve become after barely sniffing your preferred lube, but I doubt this is what you were going for. So I feel that this is an opportune moment to dispel some of the myths surrounding the greasing qualities of booze.

Alcohol transfers people to a parallel universe, divorced from reality. Like the good people of Lake Woebegone, all the men are strong, all the women are beautiful, and all the STDs are in remission. But once you put the cork back on your Garrison Keillor fantasy land you come crashing back to reality where all the men are unemployed, all the women are fugly, and that itchy burning won’t go away. And the kicker is that no one will ever know just how shameful your walk home the next morning really was because any pictures of your fugly, unemployed one night stand will have been magically deleted from your camera…or if you’re lucky, you’ll have spilled some social lubricant on it and it will be fried.

This raises the broader issue of waste. There are children starving in third world countries and you have gone through three digital cameras in two years because you get all butter fingersy around any drink with vodka and something fruity. And that doesn’t even begin to address the outrages your cell phone has suffered. It’s a wonder no one has picked up one of your lost cell phones and used it to stalk you or send you cancer or something. They totally could because you leave your cell phones everywhere. Heaven help me I cannot understand who you need to be calling at 1 am with a lime ricky in one hand and a ciggy falling out of the other. I guess you could say that alcohol speeds up the process by which you part with your money, but again, I don’t think this was what you had in mind.

Then we have a flotilla of awkward social encounters that will cause you even more angst than the drawer full of Plan Bs in the bathroom. Do you remember going up to that attractive person and waxing philosophical about how super-awesome it is to live rent-free in your parents’ basement and play video games all day? How about the drunken text message to your ex that came out like garbled Morse Code except for the one coherent sentence that you managed to mash into the keypad with your fingers which was “I m drnk…”? It seems that social lubricant only works well at sending you into a shame spiral that you won’t even discover until you wake up the next day with a raging headache and vomit in your hair. You’ll listen to a series of voicemail messages that start out extolling your wicked awesome drunkenness but will steadily deteriorate as friends ask you to call them back when you get up to make sure you lived through the night, and finally, the rehab clinic calls to tell you there’s a van waiting outside.

I raise this issue here not because I care about emotional toll that drinking takes on you; I could not care less about you. Rather, drunkenness is a problem because you are no fun to be around when you’re drunk and I have no interest in babysitting some sloppy disaster at the bar. You are smelly and incoherent and take up a lot more space when you’re sloshed and I am in no mood. If we add up the costs of the externalities you impose when you drink, the total would be enough for Sally Struthers to save an entire village. The bottom line, here, is that it is not polite to get so lubed up that you turn into a puddle of deadweight loss for humanity.

Peep Show

I paid zero dollars for this newspaper and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some mooch read it over my shoulder for free. It’s not even so much the mooching that bothers me; I was probably going to just throw the thing nonchalantly on the ground after I was finished anyway. What really steams my milk is the invasion of personal space. At one level, I do not need all of your carbon dioxide and methane gas creating a thick smog right over my head. At a deeper level, how do I know you’re not going to shiv (see: shank) me? Lurking up behind a person to catch a glimpse of the latest Doonesbury cartoon is not worth the awkward standoff between us and our carefully sharpened sporks, I promise.

Also, let’s not forget the space invaders that come with instructions:
“Wait, I’m not finished with that page.”
“Hang on, scroll down to the bottom real quick.”
“Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re reading this filth.”

If I’m looking at something and I know you’re there, it means I have made a conscious decision not to talk to you. When you interject your two cents, you have not only broken the fourth wall that was so tenuously supporting my sanity in the first place, but also severed whatever loose thread of an idea was holding my reading material together, allowing me to learn something in the process of ignoring you. At least make it worth my while to have you ruin my day if you’re going to do this and share something enlightening. Usually though, people like to use a topical snippet from my reading material to drag me kicking and screaming into the social quicksand I was trying to avoid in the first place. “Speaking of the Pope, my mother had a bunion the size of my fist removed the other day.” And eureka, we’ve found something more noxious than your personal gas cloud.

Sticking your big bazzoo right behind a person’s head is also a safety hazard. If I were to read something hysterically funny and rear my head back with uproarious laughter, I might accidentally break your nose sending small pieces of shattered bone back into your brain where they would cause you to stop living. I would feel just awful if that happened and goodness knows I have enough guilt issues without pulling a Marsha Brady on your schnoz.

I think the biggest problem, though, is that your surreptitious spying is a proxy for behavior in which even you would be too embarrassed to engage. You would never walk up to a stranger and ask, “Hey, can I borrow your laptop real quick so I can check the box scores from last night’s baseball match?” But this is exactly what you’re doing when you sneak a peek in public. And lest you think I’m the only one getting all hot and bothered about this problem, the good folks at 3M (who brought you Post-It Notes, and Scotch Tape, and the letter M, and the number 3), also saw a social malady that needed a cure: http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/ComputerFilter/Home/. So I suggest you take a hint before I find a way to whittle a Command Hook into a throwing star.

Click it Good!

Damn that “reply all” button. It has a way of turning every clickster into an amateur comedian and floods my inbox with groan-worthy puns and a raft of highly personal RSVPs that constitute TMI to the max. I think it is that everyone is so starved for attention and validation that they can’t help their itchy trigger finger when they see a long recipient list and the opportunity to memorialize their wit in the bowels of the Google servers until the second coming. Maybe they think that if there’s a William Morris agent hidden somewhere on one of these lists, a well-timed “your mom” joke will mean sweet release from their cubicle and the guy who smells like bad gouda sitting in the next cell over.

You should know at this point that I can already hear you fuss-budgets clicking your tongues and saying exasperatedly, “Why don’t you just delete them you lazy so-and-so?” My reasons are multi-fold. For one, I like to keep an archive of all my correspondence. If there’s ever a mass-tort litigation over the scheduling of a lunch meeting to discuss the schedule of meetings for the next three months, I want to have all of my ducks in a row. Besides, if I’m ticking off a list of e-mails to delete, I might accidentally get rid of the one with Giada’s Passion Fruit Mousse recipe and there’s nowhere else that I would possibly be able to find that again. Thirdly, why should I take more time and energy sifting through someone else’s e-diarrhea when that person couldn’t be bothered to distinguish between the button with one little arrow and the button with two little arrows?

This e-mail phenomenon has taught us that people cannot be made to shed their animal instincts just because they’ve started to walk upright. This is the major flaw in Darwin’s theory. If a hundred monkeys locked in a room can produce Shakespeare, why can’t people at least bother to spell out “lol” (which I doubt they’re really doing anyway) when they decide to broaden the radius of people disturbed by their self-absorbed attention grabbing beyond those within earshot? We could all take a lesson from the monkeys to form a nice heuristic for when it’s appropriate to use this powerful feature. If your message is not ten syllables with beats at 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10, keep it to yourself.

Notwithstanding a penchant for hyperbole, the reply-all abusers are not the drum majors in the parade of horribles that we’ve been discussing. They’re more like the baton twirlers…mildly irritating, totally useless participants in a larger spectacle that is a black mark on our civilization. Put differently, it’s the social engineering version of the law of large numbers. How many pointless megabytes of social desperation will it take to clog our information technology infrastructure? Send out an unflattering picture of Hillary with a shotgun and a 40 to a bunch of people and wait ten minutes. If you can resist the urge to take out a hammer and smash your own computer just to stop the dinging, you’ve got an iron will or a defective eardrum. The rest of us are going to have to re-learn how to make fire.

Crossing the Line

“I’d like a double tall, half-caf….hold on a sec…no not you….what?....double tall, half-caf., low foam, high fiber…No way! I can’t believe he said that to you!....Wait, where’s my latte? Do you need me to repeat my order?” If your blood is not as boiling as the hot coffee I’m about to spill on all of those line-clogging cell phone junkies, I’m sorry that my little dramatization has gone over your head. Standing in line (or “on line” if you’re in New York where everyone else seems to be able to see some imaginary line on the ground leading up to every cashier, ticket window, and gyro cart) is frustrating enough without having your ears assaulted by the conversational table scraps of a would-be socialite who may as well be gabbing with the time-teller for as much substance as she’s transmitting through that cancer machine. I know this sounds harsh, but let’s be honest, if you’re waiting for someone to make change for a $20 because you just couldn’t live without a fresh role of Bubble-Tape, you’re probably not having philosophical debate about Jesus v. the Constitution with the person on the other end.

Not that I have a Marxist regard for service employees, but I find this behavior to be rude, largely because it is demeaning. Who do these people think they are that the poor barrista (Fritalian for “slave-wage coffee jockey”) doesn’t deserve their undivided attention when trying to serve them efficiently so they will get back out onto the street where they will be everyone else’s problem? If we’re honest with ourselves, you guys and gals would be cleaning that barrista’s toilets if you did not have someone else’s money to spend on gourmet French roast and oversized sunglasses. So it seems the least we could do is show a little human courtesy to the folks by whose good graces you are saved from having to figure out how to work that damn contraption in your kitchen with the glass pourer-dealie and the pouch with the black powdery-thingies in it.

I raise this issue because we’ve stumbled onto a societal prisoner’s dilemma. I too would like to be pouring over every detail of what I had for breakfast with whoever accidentally hits the “talk” instead of the “ignore” button when they see me calling. But I refrain because I’m not self-absorbed enough to commit the offensive behavior discussed above and still sleep at night (although who could sleep when there are so many interesting things to say about the piece of chewing gum I saw on the sidewalk this afternoon?). Other than personal shame (which, to be honest, has not been much of a barrier in the past), what’s my incentive not to pick up the phone as well? At least then I’d have something to distract me while Liz Smith over there narrates the menu to her conversation partner to help her decide which Egg McMuffin will go best with a Bloody Mary. And thus the problem snowballs to the point where our poor cashier has capitalized on our absent-mindedness to embezzle more than the GDP of Mauritania out of the change drawer.

Not that I’m shilling for Visa, but to illustrate my point, see if you can spot the most offensive person in this ad: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6332303939470321646&q=visa+commerical+food+court&total=2&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0&hl=en . I’ll give you 2 guesses. Then I’m calling in the soup nazi.

You Are a Waste of Space

Do you remember those clever signs on the Washington Metro that were made up words with fake definitions as public service announcements? My favorite was “escalump: n. a person who becomes a human speed bump by suddenly stopping at the top or bottom of Metro escalators.” Apparently the mass transit officials in town felt that not stopping to check your watch at the bottom of a crowded escalator was such an underappreciated social norm that they had to alert people to the proper way to ride a moving staircase (it really boils down to walk, stand there, walk again). If it were any easier a child could do it…wait…children can do it, which leaves you on very thin ice.

I have to say that I think this sign is very unfair to speed bumps. At least they help to slow traffic on dangerous roads and do not waste precious resources like air and food as do the humanoid forms of social detritus that we’re discussing here. It seems like any place that serves as a choke point is also a magnet for gatherings of the self-absorbed and oblivious. We saw a version of this when discussing our clogged city sidewalks. The same is true of a crowded restaurant entryway. By all means, please finish picking the broccoli out of your teeth and dumping the bowl of mints into your purse before moving your recently expanded waistlines out from between me and my three hours worth of complementary dinner rolls.

But we see this problem in other places as well. We’ve all seen the i-bankers so absorbed in conversation that they have to stop just outside the main entrance of a 50 story office building to finish sharing their brilliant insights into the role of agricultural commodities in their getting hammered at the bar in 20 minutes. It’s almost as if the further they get from the building, the dumber they become so they have to drop all of their impressive knowledge within a 5 foot radius of the front door. This theory makes sense given how dumb they seem to be by the time they get to the bar.

We also see a strange phenomenon in revolving doors. Turns out, there is some mechanism placed just inside the center pole that causes cell phones to ring only once, maybe twice at most. This is evidenced by the fact that no matter where a person is in the process of walking forward while also possibly pushing the door, he or she feels a keen sense of urgency about fumbling through every pocket on every garment on his or her person to answer the phone. “Logjam be damned, this could be Ed McMahon and if I don’t catch this by the second ring, I’ll never forgive myself.” Of course, the odds of it being Ed McMahon, or even a worthwhile long distance offer, are about as good as you using the word logjam, making the discounted, risk-adjusted value of this phone call about half a cent. So let’s make a deal. I’ll pay everyone a penny to just let it ring until they get through the door. You get some positive NPV out of the deal and I get a decent shot at putting my groceries away before the plastic bag handles sever the finger I would need to effectively communicate with you.

About Face

We are having a bathroom crisis in this country. It seems that more and more people are choosing to forgo this household feature, knowing that the subway will be a perfectly satisfactory place to carry out their morning regimen (not “regime”, as some of you over-achievers like to say…that would be a different kind of subway ride altogether). Either that, or people are confused by the name “bathroom”. Surely you can take baths in it, but you can also do so much more. You can comb your hair, brush your teeth, and put on your makeup. You can even put some salve on that flesh-eating virus that is causing your face to fall off in the seat next to me.

We’ve all seen these people. You’ll be in class and some girl will whip out a pleather bag filled with all manner of brush and powder and goop. She’ll jab at her face with each one for about 15 seconds and then move onto the next. After ten minutes she’ll look like the ‘tute you passed on your way to the hot dog stand because she looked too desperate. In the meantime, she’s stunk up the place with a stench reminiscent of Crabtree & Evelyn but mixed with like ammonia. And all this beauty is an ugly business. In the process of tarting herself up, this chick has felt the need to pick all the glop and schmutz off of each item in her accoutrement and flick it “down at her side” which functionally is “on your leg.” It’s the same thing as sausage-making, folks; no one wants to see the process and they have to be hung-over to appreciate the results anyway.

Sad to say the fellas are not immune from this disease either. Gentlemen, there are no holes in your head in which it is acceptable to stick your finger when you’re in public. If your ear or your nose or your trachea is bothering you, this is either a non-emergency, in which case there’s plenty of time to excuse yourself to the bathroom, or it is an emergency, in which case you should be using that finger to call 911. In either case, you should not be anywhere near me when your head is being serviced. I do not think I’m being particularly sensitive about hygiene here. If a guy sneezing in an elevator can cause SARS, surely the skin dander that you’re setting loose as you pick at your face could set off a fresh batch of leprosy. And now that I am on record, no one can say I didn’t warn them. When I’m hunkered down with a radiation containment suit and tissue boxes on my feet but am Ebola-free, who’ll be laughing then?

But there’s a part of me that has to laugh at the irony of this public grooming epidemic. Isn’t the point of getting ready before you leave the house to appear as you want to be seen by others? When you’re smearing lipstick across your cheek as the train makes a sharp right, the cat’s out of the bag. We know what you look like with makeup and without it, and frankly, we’re indifferent. But assuming you think there’s a difference, let’s put your best face forward and emerge from your hovel ready to receive the onslaught of judgment and disdain that we are waiting to hurl at you with a stiff and perfectly outlined upper lip.

Clothes that Make a Statement...That We'd Have to Bleep Out

This site is about to get a little blue. Brace yourselves; I’m going to tell you where you cannot wear jeans. I can already hear your indignant scoffing and you can just save it because I’m not having it. Spending $200 on indigo-dyed cotton does not make you look rich and it does not make you classy. It does make you a sucker. And I have absolutely no idea why being a sucker should qualify you for entry into the last bastions of civilized society like the opera, or a fancy restaurant, or a house of worship, or your great-aunt’s funeral.

On one level, I’m complaining because I don’t want to have to look at you in all your muffin-topped glory while I’m trying to pry my $40 worth out of the business end of a lobster claw. Most people have no conception of what they look like to others and most people wear jeans too often, which begs the question, did the fun-house mirror come with the jeans or is it just my good fortune that you happen to own both? Likewise, Gd may not care what you wear to commune with a greater power, but I would rather not spend the hour seeing you constantly adjust yourself in the next pew, so if you’d be kind enough to wear something that involves folding your hands neatly in your lap, maybe both our prayers could be answered.

Even more than the fact that your sartorial impropriety is an eyesore to the general public, there is something sinister which transforms this indiscretion from a fashion faux pas into outright violation of your obligations under our social compact. By wearing denim without regard to time, place, or occasion, you are sending a signal to the world that this gathering is no more important to you than loafing around on your sofa watching a NASCAR re-run from 1997. True as this may be, it is rude to flaunt it in others’ faces. Those little old ladies did not spend fours hours in a salon gettin their hair did just so you can roll straight in from plowing the back 40 with a toothpick hanging out the side of your disrespectful mouth. Which brings us to the second point you will try to make in the midst of your self indulgent whining. “Why you gotta narc [do the kids still say this?] on my good time? Why can’t you just let me be who I am?” Well if who you are is a self-centered slob, then be my guest, just be yourself in private, or in a saloon, or in Canada.

If I haven’t given you reason enough to buy a pair of real pants, consider the fate of Britney and Justin. After stepping out in the best blue-jean patches that could be sewn together by third-world refugees living in a garage in east LA, this May-June romance wound up on the same trash heap of cultural scraps that produced the outfits they were wearing. So the moral of the story is, if you don’t want to end up 40 pounds heavier and back in the double-wide where you started, let’s show a little decorum in public.

Put Your Bun Back in the Oven

I think this would be a good opportunity to clarify the record on a few things. It’s not that I don’t like children; it’s that I don’t like your children. To be specific, I don’t like the way your children behave. To be more specific, I don’t like the way that your inept parenting has created an army of pocket-sized hooligans (in certain parts of the Spanish speaking world, they say “bichos” which translates to “critters”) scuttling about under foot causing untold spoilage to the world’s supply of seersucker fashions. Parents these days seem to have decided to raise their children free-range, allowing them to pitter patter around any locale no matter how public, or crowded, or dangerous and to rub their grubby hands all over anything that catches their fancy no matter how shiny, or pointy, or mine.

In the event that parents are simply misinformed about the quality of their child-rearing skills, let’s take a moment to provide some helpful feedback.

Your children are not cute. I know you thought that mewling, puking bundle of joy you brought home from the hospital was so adorable that you could just eat it up, but you are the only one. No one else in the room was wearing their pregnancy goggles; they were just glad to see you had quit craving Chunky Monkey with roasted red peppers on top and didn’t want to say anything that might knock you off the wagon again. The consequence of this perception disconnect is that you think watching your little apple dumpling “explore its surrounds” is cheek-pinching cute, but, here again, you’re out on a limb on this one. Knocking over every piece of breakable merchandise that’s fewer than 3 feet off the ground is not cute. Squealing loud enough to puncture my eardrum whenever you shove that stupid noise-making toy in its face (which you insist on doing every time you find yourself someplace the child would find boring (which of course is because the child is not supposed to be there)) is not cute. And toddling around a busy restaurant with hot plates and sharp knives is not cute (and it’s not even funny, this is just plain dangerous).

No one is impressed by your parenting. I think this is the issue that really gets us to the crux of your pathology. I always see the parents with the worst behaved children making the biggest show of what great parents they are. But this only exacerbates the underlying problem which is that you pay more attention to appearances and to other people than to your own child. You shower your child with excessive praise whenever it poops its pants; or you try to engage in calm, rational pro-con analysis when the little monster has hoisted a glass jar of tomato sauce over its head with a terrifying gleam in its eye. These would be perfect “teachable” moments for you to step in and be a parent rather than a two-bit child psychologist. How would a good parent have handled this situation? “Madison! [it’s always Madison] You put that down or I will slap you into next Tuesday!” No fuss, no muss. And there’s no need to worry about onlookers calling child welfare on you. With so many kids with stupid names being raised by so many parents with a penchant for giving their kids stupid names, they’ll never be able to track you down.

Lest anyone think that I have just been drinking too much haterade (shout out to “red” for that one), I’ll end on a positive note by talking about kids I can stand slash find mildly amusing. There are of course kids whose parents made them dress up like adults out of a need for some sort demented Gypsy Rose Lee kind of vicarious fulfillment. I also heart the kids who are a little too honest about their parents’ private business to strangers; like those Chewy granola bar commercials where the kid is at a wedding and goes, “My mom says she can't believe you wore white." It’s not that this latter category is particularly well behaved; I just think they offer a deliciously ironic sort of revenge for the sloppy upbringing of which the general public usually bears the brunt. Now if only every parent would shove a granola bar in their kid’s mouth when they started acting up, the world would be a happier place.

The Ants Go Marching Two-by-Two...and I Put a Quick End to That!

I know for a fact that the story of Noah and the Ark is bunk. I know because the Bible claims he boarded the animals onto his watercraft two-by-two. But ask anyone who has ever slogged through the crowded streets of New York and they will tell you that pair-wise foot travel is the most rage-inducingly inefficient way to do anything.

When I first noticed myself getting angered by this (which, coincidentally, was also the first time I encountered this), I was concerned that my gag reflex might just be a little too sensitive. I said to myself, “maybe you’re just a sourpuss and no one else really cares.” Perhaps, I thought, this was really a displaced reaction to those tacky paparazzi photos where you see a B-list celebrity couple try to ugly themselves up when they walk out of the house and hold hands walking through the parking lot of the Gulp ‘N Blow so that everyone knows that 1) they’re in a relationship with someone who is so pretty that any effort to uglify him or herself is just futile, 2) money can’t buy taste, and 3) they have a total disdain for the American public.

I think the real answer is jealousy. I’m jealous that these gimpy slackers have the luxury of ambling along the sidewalk shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the day clutching shopping bags and furry dogs that would have been eaten already if we lived in another time and place. Where are these folks going? Or, the better question would be, where are they not going? Don’t they have jobs? Don’t they have somewhere to be (besides right in my way)? There is absolutely nothing to stop and smell in New York that won’t give you cancer so I cannot fathom why people refuse to move it along when they’re out in public.

To add insult to injury, these are the same individuals who will be talking on their cell phones recounting every tedious detail of their miserable failure of a social life. Judging from the way they zigzag across the entire width of the public commons, they’re still feeling the effects of last night’s strike-out fest, and I in turn am feeling the emotional effects of communism writ small. I pay through the nose in taxes (well not “I”, but like, the “royal I”) in order to not have to walk in traffic. In hogging the sidewalk, our useless, dog-toting, social lepers have taken a part of my soul, but more importantly a part of my money, and that would be enough to make anyone angry.

Clogging up a crowded place involves a form of self-absorbed obliviousness that I think society should not tolerate. Apropos of our chewing discussion, the most obvious contraption to combat such a problem would be a cow-catcher. A blunt instrument to be sure, but if you are one of the perpetrators of this offense you have shown yourself to be impervious to all of the more subtle social cues in your surroundings. And I can assure you that a light but forceful love-tap from a half-ton locomotive attachment will not be nearly as unpleasant as the world of pain it would prevent me from unleashing on your jobless ass.

Mastication in Public

A little something to chew on as you consider whether we have evolved or devolved from our chimpanzee ancestors: why do people gnaw on food with their mouths agape like some sort of inbred mongrel? Setting aside the question of people who have colds (who should be 1) eating soup anyway or 2) not in public), this is among the most disgusting displays of which the human body is capable. And you don’t even have to take my word for it. There is an airline affinity group that is simply agog over this epidemic: http://www.airliners.net/discussions/non_aviation/read.main/1824645/ . And just so that this powerful irony is not lost on anyone, these are people who like airlines and are still so disgusted when someone is chewing his (excuse me, his or her) cud within earshot that it gets their tea kettles rattling. I myself am so apoplectic about this problem that I’m having trouble getting through in a compelling way.

Let’s try this. Let’s take the often used cud-chewing metaphor. I’m speaking now to the perpetrators of this crime against human decency.

This is how people perceive you:

So your presence conjures up images of a barnyard animal that eats grass, regurgitates it, swallows it again, lather, rinse, repeat. But I see no reason why this should deter you since everyone around you is probably already regurgitating anyway thanks to the quick work you made of that week-old banana.

Now, coming back to those members of society who’ve learned to walk upright, create fire, and keep our digestive processes entirely inside our corpuses, I do think there’s hope for the future. I think we have to believe that we are the change we know we can be. When the cynics tell us we’re naïve to think that we can live in a world where we believe in the power of our own sense of self-satisfaction, I say we turn the page to a new chapter in our civilization.

And so, here is my modest proposal. First, we must model the behavior we expect to see in others. I myself have been tempted to crunch on a big bundle of celery sticks one at a time, tongue wagging, food bits falling out of the largest hole in my head, just to make the point to these mouth-breathers how displeasing their behavior is to others. However in this situation, two wrongs don’t make a right, but they do make me want to jab myself in the temples with a fork. So for the love of creamed corn, do not solve the world’s problems by demonstrating its worst qualities.

Not to worry, though, I would not leave you without recourse. Nothing is more satisfying or efficient than violent self help. To that end, I propose a proactive measure. You know, I heard once (and I really should try to attribute it because it’s so true) that it takes 247 muscles in your face to frown but only 5 muscles to reach out your hand and bitchslap someone across the face. An alternative for you pacifist Code Pinkers out there would be to go to the offender’s office or place of business and shout obscenities at them while wearing the Keds you tried to dye with Pepto-Bismol in your sink last night. This also, is an effective approach.

Finally, don’t under-estimate the twin Judeo-Catholic powers of guilt and shaming. It might go something like this, “We spent all that money sending you to fancy college so you could sit in the basement smoking pot with your friends all day?!? And chew with your mouth closed!” It might also be along the lines of, “I blame myself for not raising you with manners or respect for others. I am sorry to have failed you, and everyone in the world that now has to put up with you, so miserably.”

Places Not to Talk, Part I: The Quiet Car on Amtrak

Folks, do I have a sign on my back or something? Does it say, “please both bother me and disobey clearly posted signage” on my forehead? It seems like every time I ride the train I get stuck sitting by the bitch on rails who can’t keep her damn yap shut, and suffice it to say, I am less than thrilled about this cosmic phenomenon.

There is of course the obvious irritation of trying to decipher one Ruthie’s 30 page diatribes on how men have done her wrong while having some she-devil squawking about the synergies that she’s going to help create when she gets to whatever low-level strategy session (it’s always a strategy session) the fates have cruelly (for me) scheduled on this day. Although, even this I could abide if we were both left to our own devices on whatever train car we happened to board. But I, I planned ahead. I followed the rules. I knew I would want to sit in peace and quiet and listen to the sound of my brain cells atrophy while I leaf through the latest inTouch magazine. So I picked the one and only car that Amtrak has made available for just this purpose. I asked the station attendant which car this was. I made a b-line for it, knocking over 2 grandmothers and what I can only assume was a liver-transplant patient in order to choose my seat at one of those table dealies by the window so I could plug in my ipod whilst I travel. It so happens that my view from the seat I chose includes no fewer than four, four signs assuring me that I am indeed in the right place for people who have already had their glass of “shut the hell up” for the morning. But my antagonist, she took a different approach. She decided that signage was a waste of time. She could not be bothered to take advantage of her literacy for even the fraction of a second it would have taken to avoid giving me this ulcer. Alternatively, she did see the signs and decided that her synergies just could not be contained, by space, time, or human decency. She did, however, take the time to pick out a seat right across the aisle from mine with her gay (allegedly) traveling companion. Surely she must have read whatever bulletin has been going around telling people to come sit by me and demonstrate that selfishness is the new black, even though the four signs were too much trouble. So to summarize point one, disobeying rules designed to keep our society ordered and respectful makes me want to create synergies between my foot and your pooper.

But there’s selfishness and there’s selfishness, which brings us to point two. When you are in anyplace that is otherwise quiet, and start talking, you make the choice for everyone else that it will no longer be a quiet place. How self-involved and oblivious does a person have to be to think they should get to do this? Evidently, as self-involved and oblivious as this synergy chick across the aisle. If I were not so disgusted by her behavior, I’d have to stand back and marvel at the kind of mind that gets a person up in the morning, knowing that she will have to be selected out of the gene pool in order for us to have an ordered society.

In conclusion, if you are talking in a place that is designated as one that should be quiet, you are stopping the march of human progress and that makes you a terrible person.