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.