 Michael and Rebecca Wong |
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Michael and Rebecca Wong |
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There are certain things that piss me off in this world, as I'm sure there are for all guys. Of course, some of those things are fairly universal, so they're not even worth mentioning. Things like taxes or politicians or aggressive drivers are on everybody's list, so I don't think I need to bother putting them on mine.
Therefore, I'll just list some of the oddball, off-beat things that piss me off. Maybe you'll agree with them, and maybe you won't. Or maybe you'll appear in them, which would mean we have a problem. Oh well ... I was never big on diplomacy anyway.
I
think the pictures speak for themselves, don't they? And you
just know the driver is a scrawny teenager with delusions of
manhood. He probably wears gangsta clothes so he can look
"tough" too.
Obviously, ScrawnyBoy has some of Daddy's money and he wants to look cool, but he can't afford a real sports car. So what does he do? He grabs a little economy car, and dresses it up! Does it have wimpy little wheels? No problem- run out and buy shiny alloy wheels, complete with such incredibly low profile tires that you can barely see any rubber at all. Does the body look plain? No problem- run out and buy ground-effects kits, and wrap all of that useless shit around the bottom of the car! Does he still want more race-car stuff? No problem- buy an over-sized spoiler and bolt it on as if you really need extra down-force at 80 km/h (on the rear wheels of a front wheel drive car, no less). You might even want to cut channels in your hood, for that authentic Ram Air look.
But for the coup de grace, ScrawnyBoy must commit the final atrocity. Yes, we all know what it is. It's the big fat exhaust pipe! He replaced the exhaust system with a "high flow" system, so that little 90 horsepower engine will sound just like the throaty roar of a Dodge Viper's V-10! Of course, that's what he thinks. In reality, it just sounds like a lawnmower with a bad muffler, which is precisely what it is. In fact, it actually robs the engine of horsepower, because the engine's cylinder heads, intake manifold, valve timing, and fuel injection system were all designed for a certain amount of exhaust system back pressure (not that ScrawnyBoy would understand this).
If you drive one of these ridiculous little rally-car wannabes, trust me: you're not fooling anyone. It does not make you look like a real man.
Why
does this guy bug me so much? It's not his music;
I'm not really a fan but there are plenty of musicians whose
music I hate much more. And it's not really his politics; while
I don't always agree with him, I imagine he probably does
genuinely care about the poor.
No, what pisses me off about Bono is the way he and his supporters think his self-aggrandizing world tours actually make a real difference. Well, that and the fact that he goes by just one name, like Prince, Slash, Madonna, and every other egotistical moron who thinks he's too big to have a normal name.
Bono buy a clue: world leaders don't meet with you because they think you're an expert on economics or world affairs: the world is full of people with far better credentials in those fields than you. They only meet with you because you're a rock star and it's free publicity. Get it? They're humouring you, because they're celebrity whores and they can never say no to a good photo-op! If they agree with you on some issue, it's because of domestic political pressure and not because of the mind-altering power of your presence or your nonexistent credentials. Now drop the ego trip and go back to making your annoyingly self-important music.
CNN anchor Thomas RobertsWhen I was a kid, people didn't take a news anchor seriously if he was an overly good-looking man, or an attractive woman. Such a person would have been assumed to be mere window dressing rather than a serious journalist.
Oh my, how times have changed. Today, the news channels preferentially hire men and women who are just attractive enough to be obviously chosen for their appearance. Like Sears Catalog models. I'm sure the people running these networks think they're really clever for choosing people who hover just below the "swimsuit model" threshold of attractiveness, as if that will fool anyone.
And why are they paid so much, or taken so seriously? Not only are they paid huge salaries, but they are routinely interviewed on all manner of social and political issues, as if their opinions are any more valuable than those of Ralph the bus driver. However, in case you haven't been paying attention, television news anchors are not experts in such matters. They don't even have to be particularly intelligent or knowledgeable. A typical TV news anchor is nothing but nice hair. Any trained monkey with an expensive toupee and the ability to read a teleprompter could do the job with aplomb.
When
it comes to TV quiz shows, I don't discriminate.
Whether it's Jeopardy, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, or
Weakest Link, my opinion is the same. I hate them all. And
Trivial Pursuit? I hate that too. It didn't have to be that
way; as a meaningless game to waste time on a Sunday afternoon, one
could make an argument in favour of trivia games. But it seems that
everyone correlates success in those games with
intelligence, which is simply ridiculous.
Get something straight, people: the ability to memorize trivia does not denote intelligence! Doesn't anyone remember why they call it "trivia"? Look up "trivia" in a dictionary, ladies and gentlemen. According to Websters, it refers to "unimportant matters". Get that? Unimportant, as in not worth memorizing, as in useless shit.
I am really tired of televised sound bites from that idiot bitch on Weakest Link, insulting her contestants' intelligence because they didn't know who wrote some goddamned play that opened on Broadway the same month JFK was assassinated. Could someone please explain to this haggard witch that Intelligence is learning ability?
Intelligence is the speed at which you can grasp new concepts, and it is measured by your ability to quickly figure out how to apply those concepts. It is not your ability to memorize useless shit! Albert Einstein would have done very poorly on those kinds of games, because he thought about far more grandiose things than the middle name of the offensive coach of the 1982 San Francisco 49ers, or the year in which the Thirty Years' war ended.
Someone,
somewhere along the line got the idea that sports is
not about running a quicker mile, or throwing a javelin farther
than the next guy, or even team competition. Today, according to
the "extreme sports" crowd, sports is about risking your
life in incredibly stupid ways, and then bragging about all the
places in your body where you need steel pins to hold your bones
together.
They say that one only feels truly alive after having a close brush with death, either by nearly plummeting to your death during freestyle mountain climbing or by nearly pancaking in any of a number of other bizarre activities (such as the jack-asses who try to skateboard off their parents' houses roof). All I can say is: if you think you need to risk death in order to appreciate your life, then your life must really suck.
Somewhere
along the line, people with horrible language skills got the idea
that they were some sort of persecuted minority, like the Jews in
WW2 Nazi Germany. If someone has lousy math skills and someone else
corrects his bad math, you don't see him call the other person
a "Math Nazi", do you? No, he will admit that his math
skills are poor and accept the correction.
Unfortunately, people with horrendous grammar seem to take a certain perverse pride in it, perhaps because it is a tribal marker and helps identify your allegiance to a particular peer group (as an aside, poor diction can perform a similar purpose; notice how George W. Bush invariably used the mispronounciation "nucular" in place of "nuclear", even though someone must have told him it was incorrect).
Of course, laziness is also a factor: people are increasingly handing in job applications and résumés which are filled with spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors (and they're so stupid that they don't realize what an employer typically does with such carelessly crafted résumés). Another example of laziness is the dreaded phenomenon of SMS speak, where words are compressed into barely recognizable abbreviations:
SMS: "you ned 2 stop bn a snob. who cares if i spell wrong o do grammar wrong? i still get d point ax."
English translation: "You need to stop being such an elitist. Who cares if I misspell words or get my grammar wrong? I still get the point across."
Laziness is a flimsy excuse for such behaviour. Does it really save that much time to create such an unreadable statement? The incomprehensible SMS version is still ¾ the size of the original one, and it is nowhere near as readable. And what about people who use a spell-check, but who clearly don't understand which words they're supposed to use?
Moron: "i went to the grocery store to pick up some cookie's for you're mom but their closed."
English translation: "I went to the grocery store to pick up some cookies for your mother, but they're closed."
Sorry, but if you are an adult and English is your first language but you can't grasp the concept of capitalization or figure out the difference between "they're", "there", and "their" (or the difference between "your" and "you're"), then you're a moron. Similarly, if you always use an apostrophe when you pluralize a noun, then you're a moron. By the way, don't tell me language is unimportant: the greatest advancement in the history of the human race has been the development of written language. It is hardly something we should take lightly.
Now I'm not saying everyone has to be perfect, but quite frankly, it appears that an increasing share of the population is not even trying. You should at least make an effort, for fuck's sake! And you certainly should not get the idiotic idea in your head that you're being unjustly persecuted. When someone corrects your bad grammar, take it the same way you would if someone corrects your bad math: grow the fuck up and admit your error, instead of whining like a bitch and pretending you're an oppressed minority.
Pretty
girls trying to read maps are usually a bad combinationDo you ever get directions which sound like this?
"OK, you come up towards us, and then you make a left at the Dairy Queen just before county road five. After that, go through four stop lights, and then make a right turn at the street with the red brick house on the corner. Now, go two stop signs, jog left, and it will be the fourth house on your right, with the white garage door."
For all you country bumpkins who love to give directions like that, that was not a set of directions! That was a prescription for migraines, lost time, and marital strife!
It is incredibly easy to mess up directions like that (was it three lights, or four?), and it is also easy to make a mistake when trying to follow them. Moreover, once you get lost, it's hard as hell to correct.
If you want somebody to get to your house, here's a few suggestions:
Make a map and fax or E-mail it to them.
Use compass directions: north, west, east, south instead of right and left. This allows the driver to perform some basic orienteering, and it makes it easier for him to get back on track if something goes wrong.
Always give street names and numbers instead of (or in addition to) counting the goddamned intersections. It's too easy to mess that up, and it's a disaster waiting to happen. If you forgot the street names, the least you can do is get in your car, drive through the streets in question, and memorize their names. If you're giving someone directions to your house, this would mean that they are guests, and it would only be a common courtesy.
Make sure that if you give a street name, that name is the same as the one on the signs! Country bumpkins are bad for this: they'll often give a local, informal name for a street rather than the one on the signs, they'll give the name that the street used to have when they were growing up, or they'll give the street name rather than the county road number even though the intersection in question has a sign for the county road number rather than the street name.
If it's at night, turn on all of your damned exterior lights! It's not always easy to see the house numbers at night, and it doesn't help when your host doesn't bother making the house any more visible than its neighbours.
Why
does Internet-based advertising have to be the most annoying
fucking form of marketing on the planet? Think of the innovations
that have come from this band of fuckheads:
And the worst thing is that it takes almost no effort for the fuckers to do it! At least old-fashioned snail-mail spam had to be carried to your doorstep, and they had to pay money to get him to do it. Now, any asshole with one of those motherfucking "3 million E-mail addresses!" CDs and an Internet connection can become a spam king for a day.
Here's my proposed solution to Internet-based advertising: find all of the people who buy things from these assholes and beat the crap out of them. Because the really sad thing is that you could exterminate every spammer and more would pop up. The real problem is demand: nobody would be doing this if they did not get a real, albeit tiny percentage of responses. This means that somewhere out there, there's somebody sitting in his Dorito-encrusted basement who actually clicked on one of those links and bought something, thus encouraging this behaviour.
He must be found, and punished.
I
mostly use Linux to surf the Web. Do you know what happens
when I come to one of these websites that was written by a
knuckle-dragging troglodyte using Frontpage, and it tells me that
it doesn't work unless I'm using IE? I go elsewhere.
On at least one occasion, I have actually made on-line purchases from the second website I found rather than the first, because the first website told me that I couldn't come in unless I was using IE. Let's get something straight, people. I'm the goddamned customer! Any business manager who isn't incompetent or insane will make every effort to make sure that a potential customer is never turned away at the door.
Web designers used to defend this idiotic behaviour by saying that IE controls 90% of the browser market. Even when this was true (and it is certainly no longer the case), it was a stupid defense. Can you imagine a brick-and-mortar store where they had a security guard at the door who would turn away every tenth customer? The manager would immediately march out and fire the bum. But when it's a "web designer", the store owner shrugs and decides to defer to the "expert"; this is the danger of hiring someone to do something you don't understand at all. Educate yourselves, people! You don't need to know how to do his job, but you need to know enough to keep him from fucking you over.
Today, IE has a market share comparable to that of Firefox. And yet, despite this huge drop in market share, there are still websites out there which are "Optimized for Internet Explorer". What kind of incompetent twit creates such a website? What kind of incompetent business manager hires this incompetent twit to create his website?
If you're an on-line retailer and your website is designed only to work with IE, you can just suck my cock, because that's as close as you're ever going to get to my wallet.
She
used her wealth and fame to jump the queue and adopt a child
ahead of more deserving couples who have been waiting for years.
Welcome to America, where money can get you anything. Even
babies.
She wants a baby, but she has never demonstrated the ability to maintain a committed relationship, either with a man or a woman (she has now revealed that she is gay, which is not that surprising). What makes her think she can be a good parent if she can't even hold up her end of a relationship?
Ever the staunch education advocate, she vented on mathematics, by saying: "I think there's no way they should have to teach it now. We have computers. We no longer need to know why 3X equals 2Y over 4." Gee, thanks Rosie. You're a fucking moron. Way to go ... using your public visibility to promote the destruction of public education standards. Perhaps we should also stop teaching history because you can look it up on the Internet, science because you can watch science shows on PBS, English because computers have grammar and spell checks, and phys ed because kids can always play sports on their own time, eh?
She has people who do all her chores and take care of her kid whenever she's working, travelling, or attending celebrity shindigs. She complains that single parents get a bad rap. She ignores the fact that few single parents have her resources, and she helps sustain the belief (increasingly common among teenage girls) that a baby is not really that much of a disruption to your life.
She makes me sick. 'Nuff said.
That
picture really speaks for itself, doesn't it? Owners of parking
lots have made the spots skinnier and skinnier over the years, to
the point that you have to pretty much resign yourself to door dings
if you park in one of them. Worse yet, the world seems to be full
of assholes whose reaction to this phenomenon is not to park
farther away where there's room, but to simply turn up their
already-high asshole quotient and park right there.
The fact is, you can't stop an asshole from acting like an asshole by posting a sign. If the owners and managers of these parking lots don't give a shit about enforcing those rules, what is the point? Decent people avoid these special spots (like compact car spots, spots for handicapped people or families with babies, etc), but assholes merrily park in them anyway. Even if they have to park diagonally across two or three of them.
Do I really need to explain this one? When is someone going to
institute the death penalty for telemarketing? Call your local
government representative, and ask them to get on it.
Look,
I don't want large womens' advocacy groups sending
me hate mail, but will somebody please explain to fat girls that
certain kinds of clothes are simply not meant for them? I
don't want to get into a war over body image and "fat
acceptance", but these women have got to learn that you should
dress a certain way when you're carrying those extra
pounds.
For example, a fat woman will often wear a loose-fitting dress. But she should not wear the kind of pants which are so tight that you can tell which kind of underwear she has on! Tight pants go in and out of fashion, and when they're in fashion, they're meant for a woman who has a certain kind of figure (read: not fat).
Midriff-baring shirts, tight stretch pants, short shorts, and low-riding tight jeans look great on women who have the body to match. But they are downright scary when they're stretched over a woman who's carrying a hundred extra pounds on her. Please, somebody stop the suffering. Hot slut clothing on a fat chick is a sight that no man should ever be forced to see.
They
say that it's now OK for men to cry. In truth, it
always was: it was said that Alexander The Great wept in his tent
when his army rebelled against him, and of course, men have always
had a license to weep at the death of a beloved family member or
pet, although they have traditionally done so in private.
But there's a difference between allowing a man to weep and encouraging him to wallow in public emotionalism. It's gotten to the point where men deliberately have public displays of emotionalism. When eight American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan during the early phase of the invasion, I saw President George W. Bush bawling his eyes out on TV that night (obviously, this was during the early phase of the invasion, when Bush still pretended to care). Now think about this: was it really the "spontaneous outpouring of emotion" that his supporters claimed it to be? How could it be, when he had plenty of time for such outbursts in the many hours that passed between hearing news of the event and going on TV to talk about it? He was reading a written and rehearsed speech off a teleprompter, for fuck's sake. Nothing about that TV appearance was spontaneous. He chose to have an emotional outburst on TV. And Bin Laden and his fellow ass-wipes were probably pointing and laughing at him the whole time.
When Winston Churchill defiantly declared that his people would fight in the streets, fight on the beaches, fight in the air and at sea, he didn't cry. When FDR declared war on Japan, he didn't cry. Both of these men rehearsed and planned those speeches; whatever emotion they displayed was intentional. Churchill showed defiance, FDR showed anger. And when Bush went on TV, he chose to weep, because we've reached a state where we actually applaud men for being unable to control their emotions even in highly public situations. They can actually score points with strategically timed weeping! If this reminds you of the treatment of women, it should. Recall the success of Hillary Clinton's carefully timed tears during her 2008 presidential primary race with Barack Obama (although she did eventually lose, that stunt gave her a short-term boost in the polls).
And it's not just the crying game. It's also a wholesale surrender to bullshit feminist propaganda. I once saw Ben Affleck on TV and a (hot) reporter asked him what he found to be the biggest turn-on in a woman. Ben, having been fully programmed, responded predictably by saying that he was most aroused by "a woman who can assert herself". Can you say "bullshit?" When he sees a woman asserting herself, he finds that a huge turn-on? That's a bigger turn-on than a woman with long legs, a round, firm ass, smooth skin, a pretty face, long hair, or a nice rack? Assertiveness? I know it takes more than physical beauty to build a long-term relationship, but let's face it; we're men, and everyone knows what really turns us on. Enough politically correct bullshit already.
We are men. Some of the things our society considers "manly" are not really universal, but there are certain near-universal traits of men. Of course, we're always horny. But it's more than that: we have to be the ones who take responsibility. We also have to be the ones who create emotional stability, since we don't have a monthly estrogen cycle to keep our emotions fluctuating wildly. It's part of our job to be capable of controlling our emotions in public. And yes, men do have a job in society. We always did, from the most primitive tribes to the most modern civilization. Let's be proud of that, instead of running away from it.
What
is it about celebrities and national anthems? At major
sporting events, they always get someone to sing the national
anthem. And way too many of them have to "customize"
it, with unnecessary vocal flourishes and extra notes. Every
note in the original anthem turns into a fucking arpeggio in
the customized version. The anthem is not about YOU,
asshole.
What the fuck is that shit on the radio that they call "R&B music" nowadays?
HELLO!!!! McFLY!!! *knock knock knock* You want R&B music? Try B.B. King. That fucking bullshit on the radio with its ridiculous "look what I can do with my voice!" singing style is not R&B; it's a fucking abomination against music. Yes, I know, it's very impressive that these singers can squeeze 42 different tones into a single word. SO WHAT? If I wanted to hear people doing voice warm-up exercises, I'd go to choir practice.
Have
you ever had someone call you an "elitist?"
Let's say you mutter something about how people who flunked out
of high school are obviously too stupid to vote (which they are),
and someone retorts: "that's the most elitist thing
I've ever heard". Are you supposed to feel ashamed? Fuck
no, you should say "thank you"! During the 2000 US
presidential campaign, Roger Ebert commented that George W. Bush
sounded more like a longshoreman than a president, and was
promptly slagged for being an "elitist" What a sad
commentary on society: it's bad to want a leader who exudes
intelligence now? It is hardly unreasonable to demand public
speaking skills from a public speaker, folks.
What the fuck is wrong with intellectual elitism? Should I be ashamed that I would value the opinion of an educated historian on historical matters over that of, say, the bus driver? Should I be ashamed that I value the conclusions of the scientific community on matters of Big Bang cosmology or evolutionary biology over that of the fucking Bible-thumping minister at the local Baptist church? Should I be ashamed that I value the information in my university physics textbook over the ignorant drivel being spewed by GreenPeace in its idiotic campaign against nuclear power?
Let's look at what the word "elitism" means: in ancient times, "elite" meant "noblemen", ie- useless aristocrats who inherited their money. But today, "elite" means "the best". When people say "elite Delta Force operatives" or "elite athletes", they aren't talking about people who inherited their status; they're talking about people who earned it.
Wake the fuck up, people. This isn't the 18th century, and there's nothing wrong with thinking more highly of the skilled than the unskilled. The world already has enough problems without demonizing the perfectly reasonable tendency to respect people who know more than the average monkey.
Christmas is the coolest holiday of the year. Everything is so festive, there are coloured lights everywhere, seasonal music, egg nog, brightly wrapped gifts, mistletoe, Santa Claus, decorated trees, and people exhorting others to show generosity of spirit. What's not to like?
Unfortunately, the answer to that is "plenty", at least for "old-school" Christians. You see, they think that Christmas is not Christian enough. Look at the above list: how much of it has a Biblical basis? Coloured lights? Songs like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"? Egg nog? Wrapped gifts? Mistletoe? Santa? Trees? Just about the only part of the traditional Christmas celebration which has any Biblical basis is the bit about generosity and "good will to all men", and let's face it: judging by the aggressive behaviour of people in shopping mall parking lots, most people are only paying lip service to that part.
There are a wealth of websites and books which will explain in great detail why the Christian roots of Christmas are a fraud: that they have no idea when Jesus was born and that they chose the date in order to co-opt the traditional pagan winter solstice festival. There are numerous sources in which you can research things like the Roman "Saturnalia" festival, which predated Christianity itself. But what you need to understand is that commercialism is saving Christmas, not destroying it.
But Christians should not resent the commercialization of Christmas; they should be thankful for it, because it is the only thing propping up their bogus fraudulent co-opted Christianization of a pagan holiday. Do you know why it's virtually impossible to ignore Christmas? It's because of business. Specifically, retail businesses which bank on Christmas for a big chunk of their annual revenue. They are the ones who make Christmas inescapable: they are the ones who blanket the airwaves with reminders, who festoon the stores, who make Christmas so ubiquitous that almost everyone celebrates it, regardless of his personal beliefs.
Without these corporations spending literally billions of dollars every year to publicize Christmas, it would be reduced to the status of something like Easter: a major holiday for the church, a minor holiday for everyone else. Christian supremacists like Bill O'Reilly boost their ratings by complaining that Christians are being "persecuted" if they can't put nativity displays on government property (as if they don't have churches or private property they can use instead), but every Christian should give thanks to the forces of secular commercialism which help them keep this fraud alive. Without those evil secular commercialists, Christmas would be nothing more than a long weekend.
From time immemorial, mankind has debated the great questions. Where do we come from? Why are we here? And why the fuck can't people figure out how to behave in a goddamned lineup? Today I was waiting in line behind some idiot and her daughter at a ticket redemption counter in Playdium. Simple, right? No. The woman was patiently asking her daughter: "OK, we have a hundred and ninety tickets left. Do you want the furry bunny, or do you want the earrings?" And her daughter was jibber-jabbering with her as the two puttered about the counter looking at all the options ... with a half-dozen people lined up behind them!
Meanwhile, I was waiting with my son and we already knew exactly what we wanted. Hell, we had known what we wanted for so long that we were already talking about where we were going to eat once we finally got out of this fucking lineup! So I eventually got fed up, elbowed my way to the counter, and redeemed my tickets. Naturally, the idiot thought I was being rude. Well fuck you, I wouldn't have done that if you weren't taking longer than a fucking Catholic Mass to pick your stupid dinky little trinkets.
It's the same all over: people get to the front of a lineup after waiting for half an hour, and they actually have trouble deciding what they want to order. What the fuck? Didn't you have more than enough time to make up your mind while you were waiting in line for a goddamned half-hour?
Yes, I have a little lapdog. And yes, Mr. Wannabe Tough Guy has a big tough scary guard dog. Does he think this makes him more of a man? Does he think that those moronic little put-downs like "that's not a real dog" or "my dog could eat that little rat dog for breakfast" will somehow assert his manliness?
Guess again. There's this psychological phenomenon known as "compensation", and people who brag about their dogs' manliness are compensating for their own lack thereof. If you're one of these idiots, I'm going to let you in on a secret: no matter what you may have heard, you will not impress girls by owning a dog whose schlong is bigger than yours.
I'm not sure when it happened. Somewhere along the line, big-box shopping centres (also known as "power centres") started cropping up all over the world, with the same stores in them. There's a Wal-Mart, a Home Depot, a Best Buy ... you know the shopping centre I'm talking about. It's ruining the sense of excitement when you travel. You can go anywhere, and no matter what you do, you find yourself driving by the exact same goddamned shopping centre. I even saw pictures of a shopping centre in China that looked like it could have been in Toronto or New Jersey. And it goes without saying that this pattern is devastatingly uniform across the United States. Wherever you go, there's the same fucking shopping centre.
I'm sick of it. I want to see local businesses! When I go on vacation, I want to eat at restaurants which are not carbon copies of restaurants I have at home. It pisses me off when I go into a mall in some far-off place and if I didn't know better, I would think I was at the mall ten minutes from home. Worse yet, if there's a McDonald's in the food court of that mall, it will usually have a huge line-up even while nearby eateries are struggling to stay solvent. Why the fuck do people eat that goddamned warmed-over McDonald's shit when they could try something new? There are people out there who are working hard and pouring their hearts and souls into a business, and watching you morons ignore them without even trying their food, so you can line up at the fucking McDonald's.
This page has been around for many years. As a result, some of the entries on this page have been obsoleted by subsequent changes in society, pop culture, or my personal attitudes. I keep them here, just for fun and as a reminder that things do change.
Segregated TV
Did you ever notice that TV shows tend to either have no black people in them at all (eg- "Friends", "Cheers") or they are composed entirely of black people (eg- "The Cosby Show", everything on UPN)? And did you notice that you almost never see black/white mixed couples on TV?
What racist asshole decided that TV shows should be actively promoting segregation? This seems to be the new version of racial equality: "separate but equal". Black people are upset because they're under-represented on shows like "Seinfeld"? No problem- just create a black version of Seinfeld! Let's get something straight, people. In case you didn't figure it out 30 years ago, "separate but equal" is not equal.
This entry became obsolete because TV shows started ignoring the colour barrier in relationships, and freely portraying black men with white women, white men with black women, Asians with either, etc. People growing up today may even have trouble believing that colour barriers were so common in TV as recently as the 1980s and 1990s. Of course, there are still racial issues on TV, but the situation has improved dramatically.
Musical Cell-phone Ringers
I can almost tolerate the constant ringing of cell-phones that I hear whenever I go into a shopping mall. I can almost tolerate the morons who talk on their cell-phones at restaurants, as long as they keep their voices down. I don't need to complain about the motherfuckers who drive like drunkards while talking on their cell-phones, because everyone else complains about that already. I have a cell-phone myself (which I keep switched off most of the time), so it's not as if I'm intolerant of cell-phones in general. But I can't stand those fucking little songs that people insist on playing whenever they receive a call.
It's bad enough that a meal or worse yet, a movie is disrupted by some goddamned cell-phone chirping in the pocket of the fashionable little ass-wipe at the next table. But when that fucking piece of shit phone has to sing some imbecilic little song instead of simply ringing, that's the last straw. Time to buy an air horn and start using it.
This entry became obsolete when cell-phones became more sophisticated. In the old days, cell-phone musical ringers could not play real wave-form audio. They would just play synthesized notes in that incredibly annoying (not to mention audibly piercing) 1980s kiddie keyboard computer tone. Modern cell-phones can play actual audio samples, which are nowhere near as jarring and irritating as those old single-frequency computer notes. Modern cell-phones also tend to incorporate unobtrusive ring modes for venues like movie theatres and restaurants, such as vibration. And finally, the message about cell-phone etiquette seems to have reached the general public; people are now aware that they should be acutely embarrassed if they get a cell-phone call at the wrong time. In the old days, when cell-phones were expensive and rare, they were seen as a bit of a status symbol and a lot of narcissistic types seemed to take pleasure in loudly flaunting the fact that they had one. It was not unusual to see some guy sitting in a restaurant or movie theatre, unashamedly talking very loudly on his cell-phone while everyone else tried in vain to ignore him.
Last changed: 2008-12-27
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