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 o
ne 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.
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.
ne 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.
1 comment:
Here's what I really resent: so these happy couples are marching down the street blocking me in the opposite direction, and I'm somehow expected to run myself into the nearest wall or street in order to clear them a path, or else get smacked by their bony shoulders or Pottery Barn shopping bags. I don't get why just because they found some joker to date them and I am still single, that I'm the one expected to deviate from my trajectory and do some stupid zig-zag dance around these human asteroids. Young lovers, stop gazing into each other's eyes and have the common decency to shuffle in unison two feet to the right.
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