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.
Rally-car wannabes
I think the pictures speak for themselves, don’t they? You can just picture the driver too: trendy tough-guy tattoo wrapping around his bicep, “cool” fashion statement with wife-beater shirt and baggy pants (but with gay-looking highlights in his hair for some reason), and rap music blaring on the radio.
But as the guy on TV says, that’s not all! In order to complete the package, he has to have oversized alloy wheels with super low-profile tires, a lot of fake ground-effects bolt-ons for the body so it looks like a race car, and of course, the ridiculously oversized spoiler wing on the back (as if he actually needs the down-force, especially on the rear wheels of a front-wheel drive car). He might even cut channels in the hood, for that authentic Ram Air look.
But for the coup de grace, he must commit the final atrocity. Yes, we all know what it is: it’s the big fat exhaust pipe! Remember: it’s not enough to have a trendy car: you have to make sure that nobody around you can ignore it, by making it as loud as possible! Ironically enough, this actually robs the engine of horsepower, because the engine’s entire aspiration system was designed for a certain amount of exhaust system back pressure (not that TrendyBoy would understand this).
“Bono” from U2
So why does this guy bug me? It’s not his music; I’m not a huge fan but I don’t hate it either. It’s not his charity work; it’s hard to be against charity work.
Perhaps it’s the fact that he is held in such unreasonably high regard for his work. Nobel Peace Prize, Man of the Year, a knighthood, etc … why doesn’t Bill Gates get the kind of accolades for donating his own money that Bono gets for convincing others to donate theirs?
It seems to me that Bono’s praise is disproportional to his material contributions for the simple reason that he’s a famous musician. I honestly can’t think of any other reason. It’s like the screaming teen fan-girl phenomenon writ large. Politicians and journalists fall over themselves to praise him, and it’s not because he’s accomplished so much more than any other philanthropist. It’s because he’s the only philanthropist who also happens to be a rock star.
This, of course, begs the question: what are they really giving those accolades for?
TV news anchors
What happened to TV news anchors? When I was a kid, a TV news anchor was supposed to be a serious journalist, not just a pretty face. News shows avoided putting overly attractive people in front of the camera because it was feared that the public wouldn’t take them seriously.
Oh my, how times have changed. Today, the news channels are totally unashamed about putting a woman in that chair who looks like she should be in a lingerie ad, or in a softcore blue movie on the Playboy Channel.
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. Any trained monkey with an expensive toupee and the ability to read a teleprompter could do the job with aplomb.
TV quiz shows
You know, I didn’t always hate quiz shows. The idea itself isn’t bad, but it seems that everyone correlates success in those games with intelligence, which is absolutely 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.
So hey, play trivia games all you like, but don’t convince yourself that because you’ve memorized the answers, you’re any smarter than anyone else. The ability to memorize trivia does not make you smart. It makes you a human filing cabinet.
Intelligence is your ability to learn new concepts, 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 baseball statistics or the precise names, dates and places to attach to historical events.
Extreme sports
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.
People who use the term “Grammar Nazi”
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.
In fact, some people even seem to take a perverse pride in their linguistic incompetence. George W. Bush never fixed his mispronunciation of “nuclear” as “nucular”, and you can’t seriously believe no one ever told him, or that he never heard. No, he never fixed it because he had no particular desire to pronounce it correctly. Or, to put it another way, he was not embarrassed to pronounce it incorrectly. Similarly, if you point out to a redneck that “I seen you at the park on the weekend” is incorrect and should be “I saw you at the park on the weekend”, he’ll get angry at you. Nobody gets angry at you when you correct their math; why do they get angry when you correct their grammar?
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”, or the difference between “weather” and “whether”), 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.
People who don’t know how to give directions
Do 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! No, 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 are 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.
Rosie O’Donnell
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.
Parking Spots Which Are Too Small and the Assholes Who Use Them Anyway
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.
Telemarketers
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.
Tight Clothes on Fat Chicks
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.
The Pussification of Men
When and how did so many men become such whiny crybabies? Just look at the following mission statement from the website mensactivism.org:
The underlying purpose of The Men’s Activism News Network is twofold:
- To provide pro-male activists with news and information that will aid them in working toward establishing equal rights for men and the improvement of men’s lives.
- To encourage participation in activism projects, and to promote membership in men’s rights organizations which coordinate activism efforts and serve as a supportive network for men.
Did you catch that? Men trying to form support networks, as if we’re an oppressed minority? Is this a joke? Unfortunately, it’s not. The “men’s rights” movement has gained steam in recent years, and it’s a much bigger phenomenon than Rush Limbaugh’s infantile feminist-bashing.
So what’s unmanly about the men’s rights movement? Well, let me take a stab at this by pulling up an old quote. The following is the “Code of the Knights” from Lord Baden Powell’s book “Scouting for Boys”, which was published in 1908 and became the inspiration for the Boy Scouts movement:
“Be Always Ready, with your armour on, except when you are taking your rest at night.
At whatever you are working, try to win honour and a name for honesty.
Defend the poor and weak.
Help them that cannot defend themselves.
Do nothing to hut or offend anyone else.
Be prepared to fight in the defence of their country.
Work for honour rather than profit.
Never break your promise.
Maintain the honour of your country with your life.
Rather die honest than live shamelessly.
Chivalry requireth that youth should be trained to perform the most laborious and humble offices with cheerfulness and grace; and to do good unto others.”
Roll that over in your mind a couple of times. Do you notice anything interesting? You should: there’s nothing in there about fighting for our own rights, our own after-tax income, our freedom to offend others, our freedom to behave in a boorish manner, or any of the other things that the right-wing promotes as “manly” today. And there was certainly nothing about lame displays of faux-manhood, such as wearing a “Tapout” UFC T-shirt or voting Republican.
Those who speak most often of traditional manhood tend to be clueless about what traditional manhood actually was. Traditionally chivalrous men saw themselves as protectors and benefactors of the rest of society, and like the men who stayed behind on the Titanic, they understood that this sometimes meant we would get the short end of the stick. In fact, they were proud of it.
Today, what we have are millions of men who think the biggest problem with society today is the loss of what Bill O’Reilly called “the white Christian male power structure”. They see it being threatened by Muslims, feminists, blacks, atheists, gays, socialists … all groups which threaten this supremacy.
And what do they do about this? They whine. Oh, they whine. They whine, they whine, they whine, and then they whine some more. They even have an entire 24 hour news network devoted to this whining. They have copied every tactic of the feminists from the 1970s, and made them their own. And all of it in the service of material self-interest: the ethos promoted by the philosophy of Ayn Rand (who happened to be … a woman).
Of course, they’ll argue that the feminists do it, so why shouldn’t we? But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? If “manhood” is to mean anything special, then it’s not enough to say that the feminists are doing it too. Women are allowed to have hormonal mood swings once a month; should we demand the right to have absurd mood swings once a month too?
Seriously, stop crying on TV. Glenn Beck, I’m talking to you.
Also, stop whining about mens’ rights, when you know perfectly well that we still hold most of the power and wealth. Divorced dads are even worse: stop pretending that child support payments are unreasonable and punitive, when the median support payment in 2002 in the US was $263 per month (link). That’s less than a lot of car lease payments! Is your own child worth that little to you? Yes, there are some really bad family law decisions being made out there, but there’s no systematic conspiracy against men. Some of those really bad decisions hurt women too; it’s called “incompetence”, and family court is not immune to it. Besides, to be quite honest, whenever I run into one of these divorced “mens’ rights” guys, I can totally see why his wife divorced him. Whiny, bitchy crybabies. Their wives probably ran into the arms of a real man.
A lot of men think that masculinity is under threat, but it’s under threat from these whiny crybabies, not from feminists. A feminist can’t make you stop being a man. She can’t make you turn into a whiny crybaby. She can’t make you shirk your responsibilities to your children. She can’t make you act as if you have no duty to anyone but yourself. Only you can do that to yourself.
Vocal acrobatics
I just don’t get the singing style where you try to squeeze a dozen different notes into a single word. You hear it in modern “R&B” music, not to mention many public performances of the national anthem. Is it really so boring to have a word contain only one or two musical notes? Why put entire scales into each word?
It seems to me that people who do this are not really interested in musicality: they’re interested in showing off what they can do with their voices. It’s like the long-winded guitar solo syndrome of 1980s hair bands: it’s just a person showing off what he can do, even if it doesn’t help the music at all.
Anti-Elitism
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, Ralph 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.
The Yearly “Put the Christ Back in Christmas” Bullshit-O-Rama
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.
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 long weekend 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 another long weekend.
Idiots who don’t try to decide until they get to the front of the line
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?
Guys who think their big tough dogs make them more manly
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. Your “bad-ass” dog does not make you any more of a man.
The Same Shopping Centre Everywhere
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.
Excellent posts! Must have had a healthy dose of Penn-Teller Bullshit!! (the only case when figuratively “eating shit” is tasty….)
Can only add a further comment from my experience in paying child support..,
Though my award, when heard by other soon-to-be payers caused them to wet their pants, I paid it and schlepped pizza on the side (made more than my CS each month, got laid a ton with lady customers and female co-workers, AND still had plenty of time to spend with my boys). Just proves that when life hands you a lemon what to make of it…BTW, after four years of PAYING support, I got primary custody and didn’t have to pay (but didn’t get anything either)…if only money were the issue, it would have been a loser, but the welfare of my then adolescent sons were a far bigger issue than dollars. Would do it again and again….
As a long-time reader of your site that hasn’t recently visited it, I was very pleased to find out you’ve updated. Though I must give special credit to your new “Pussification of Men” rant, with you calling out the idiotic “men’s rights” movement for what it truly is: a bunch of assholes crying oppression, blaming women for their problems and whining about having to make child support payments. Your old one about men crying on TV, with it’s talk about “bullshit feminist suppression of manhood” sounded a bit too similar to the whole “feminists are out to destroy masculinity” business that is espoused by the right (and ironically, what your aforementioned new rant decries now). Though I tend not to view traditional manhood in a positive light, as traditional manhood is the reason why men still hold most of the power and wealth.
Thanks. I only updated it because I updated the software, and figured I might as well rework some of the content while I was at it. It took me a while to figure out what was driving me so crazy about recent changes in how men view themselves. My first attempt at explaining it was more based on my own emotional reaction to the phenomenon rather than the problems with the phenomenon itself. As a result, it focused on superficialities rather than substance. This one makes a much better argument, I think.
Speaking of update, I came here to find those as you put it, stupid pro microsoft arguments (wanted to show one to a friend) did you remove those?
Wow your a douche. But I guess that is okay because your not white and as such you do not have to worry about being politically correct. Don’t get me wrong there are quite a few things you said that I agree with, but I am curious where you get some of your facts since you only sited one site in your entire little rant.
What facts are you referring to, in particular?
By the way, the contraction of “you are” is “you’re”, not “your”, and “sited” is not the same as “cited”.
Ha-ha! Robert, I suggest you take a look at the following link: http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Racism.html. Here is a hint: Look under “Definition of Racism.”
THOSE WHO KNOW AS LONG AS “THE PRIMARY PURPOSE OF LANGUAGE” IS MET, WHICH IS “THE SUCCESSFUL COMMUNICATION OF WHAT EVER THE PERSON SAYING OR WRITING IT MEANT.”
ALSO KNOW LITTLE THINGS LIKE POOR GRAMMAR, MISSPELLING AND INCORRECT PUNCTUATION ALL ONLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO “THE GRAMMAR POLICE” (IE THOSE WHO ARE BEING “ANAL RETENTIVE”)
I swear there used to be a bit about mobile phones in here, or am I going senile?
Having read this, I can feel my blood boiling in sympathy. Public manners and civil behaviour are my obsession too.
Glad I found your site, Mr Wong. As a nerd, I am a big fan of your Star Wars essays and analyses, and missed them a lot. So when I got here via TVTropes.net, my little nerdy heart skipped a beat.
I’m in your blog site, trawling your archives.
I have to totally agree with you regarding the “big tough dogs” and the “same shopping center everywhere” items! As a related item to the dogs (hahaha!), you can say the same thing about guys with big pick-up trucks, especially with larger wheels, and especially here in the southeastern U.S. Also, why can’t towns today build unique shopping centers and open themselves up to mom-and-pop retail venues? And why does EVERY Target (or every Wal-Mart) have to have the exact same items as every other Target?!?!? Forbid it that you should carry something unique. I know mom-and-pop stores tend to offer items at a higher price, but at least they actually know about the stuff they are selling, as opposed to the majority of employees as the “big box” stores.
That telemarketing one really resonated with me. I’m very tempted to vote against any government official who supported exempting charities from the National Do Not Call Registry.
Same with the one on elitism and the one on parking spots. How some people think their ministers understand science as well as or better than trained biologists is beyond me. I also saw some douche bag’s car in a crowded parking lot parked diagonally across two spaces today and it pissed me off greatly when I was trying to find a space.
Re: Pussification. I heartily agree with your point of view. I was a boy scout and still remember the Code off the Knight. While I won’t claim to be the most chivalrous man alive, and yes, I’ve cried (losing a child evokes strong emotions), I don’t bitch and moan for my lot in life or my take-home pay. I drag my tired ass out of bed every day to provide for my family and I endeavor to do a good job because I hate looking like an ass. Soldier on, Mike. Real men still abound!
Hello Mike! First time poster to your blog, new fan to your Stardestroyer.Net website.
The “Parking Spots Which Are Too Small and the Assholes Who Use Them Anyway” rant is a personal favorite of mine. I especially hate the morons who park their 1 Ton oversized truck across three different parking spaces the wrong way just to avoid getting a chip on their precious paintjob.
Telemarketing should be illegal. At best, they need to be drug out into the street and shot, especially when they’re calling me up in the middle of the night to sell me something that I don’t need in the first place.
Great Blog! I can’t wait to read more!
Hey, Michael. Can’t help you on the things that piss you off, but this one may cheer you up… You may remember me as romans1423 @ phpBB.com. Many a good time we had on there with our infamous debates.
Well, now i blog at BrazenlyAtheist.com.
And no, the name is not a joke. I’ve come to the “dark side” (~1 year ago) and found it to be brighter than i could have imagined.
Cheers.
About the Grammar Nazi thing.
The typical people who people call Grammar Nazi’s are people who read a multi-page long article and then point out a single grammar mistake in the article, and then say nothing else.
Grammar Nazi’s don’t just point out bad grammar when it’s utterly hideous, but when there’s been a single minor error in the whole article.
you are very right.
“And what do they do about this? They whine. Oh, they whine. They whine, they whine, they whine, and then they whine some more. They even have an entire 24 hour news network devoted to this whining. They have copied every tactic of the feminists from the 1970s, and made them their own. And all of it in the service of material self-interest: the ethos promoted by the philosophy of Ayn Rand (who happened to be … a woman).
”
I know this is an old blogpost but I’ll still comment This is exactly the same bullshit reasoning that causes so much trouble for men nowadays. It’s just immediately accepted that men shouldn’t whine and should just accept their lot in life because well, they’re men and privileged. It’s nonsense.
As for men staying on the Titanic and the glorious male protectors of yore, I think that’s also bullshit. Throughout history men have simply been seen as the expendable gender, whatever methods that could have been used to make them sacrifice themselves for women and children was used. Shame, pride, concepts like honor and chivalry? I can get where it comes from for barbaric societies that had high death rates and so on, but we simply don’t need that crap, why should men follow the same tired road when there’s little to no benefit in it for them?
And I like the logical fallacy of “men have most of the powah!!! So situations where there is an imbalance do not need to be rectified or looked at!” The disparity between prison sentences or perceptions of rape on males by females or just in general how issues that are detrimental to men, castration, which has happened many times is written off because men are “strong” and powerful and therefore are somehow responsible when these things happen.
Apparently men are just supposed to shut their mouths and try to conform to a gender standard that is outdated and wrong.
But of course when political issues are involved it’s not whining. When feminist do it, it’s not whining. When you go into a tear about religion or whatever it’s not whining. It’s generally only whining when a man is standing up for his perceived rights. Because doesn’t he know? He should shut up and eat it! that’s what being a man is all about. Christ. All activism can be declared whining, it’s only in the case of men-specific issues that we let macho bullshit come between us and our interests.
I can understand if a person isn’t fulfilling his financial responsibility to his children and other such issues but jesus. You act as if people can’t possibly have any issue to complain or want to fix.
Did you know that they have a sale on tampons at the local pharmacy? Perhaps you should run out and get some.
Or perhaps you could just get a brain transplant, since you are apparently too fucking stupid to understand that I was not saying that it’s not whining when feminists do it. I was saying that feminist whining quickly became annoying, and that “men’s rights” whining is even more annoying, because we do have the power.
You say it shouldn’t matter whether people enjoy an advantage when they whine. I say it does. When someone is winning the game and he still complains, then guess what: he’s a whiny bitch. You know, like you. I never said people should never complain about anything; I said that men should not whine that life is hard for a man. Because it’s not.
PS. Just because you call something a logical fallacy does not mean that it actually is. You didn’t even bother to identify which type of fallacy it is, or describe the fallacious logic disconnect.
And I’d like to point out the internal sexism of deciding for men what exactly makes a man a man, imagine the bruhahah if it had been the other way around.
“Re: Pussification. I heartily agree with your point of view. I was a boy scout and still remember the Code off the Knight. While I won’t claim to be the most chivalrous man alive, and yes, I’ve cried (losing a child evokes strong emotions), I don’t bitch and moan for my lot in life or my take-home pay. I drag my tired ass out of bed every day to provide for my family and I endeavor to do a good job because I hate looking like an ass. Soldier on, Mike. Real men still abound!
”
Yes, it’s totally shameful and worth noting that you have emotions and would ever express them, because you know, you’re the iron rod! You must never shed a tear! Must never falter! Must never be human!
Jesus.
The fact that you are personally too much of a pussy to suck it up and be a man is not my problem.
Go on, please continue to exaggerate and attack the idea of not being a whiner, as if it’s totally unreasonable or tantamount to shutting down every emotion you have. Most of us have many emotions we can express other than whininess.
In addition to the food outlets and shopping malls, the documentaries “Paperback Dreams” and “Indies Under Fire: The Battle for the American Bookstore”, show that the independent bookstore has been devastated by internet companies and the big-box selling model.
http://www.military-quotes.com/Eisenhower.htm
“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog”
– General Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 1958. Republican National Convention
Who cares what pisses you off? I know I don’t. You’re just a know it all who knows nothing. You can talk for a hour and say nothing. Try spending some quality time with your family. It probably pisses them off that you spend more time ranting than you do with them. Loser.
Wow, such a brilliant rebuttal! I can only gasp in wonder at the sparkling intellect which produced such insightful commentary.
And yet here you are, Mr. Emms, griping about someone’s blog. Who needs quality time now?
I have to agree with terry. Michael, you are simply a dumb bitch. The people have spoken.
Hmm, four messages in a row, all basically saying the same thing, and always with that silly-ass username “someonewithabiggerdick”. Clearly, you have sexual inadequacy issues.
Lol, “I don’t care” Terry you just did… lol keep it up, Mike!
THEN WHY “PISS FOR BRAINS” ARE YOU READING AND COMMENTING ON IT?
YOU MUST EAT STUPID PILLS BY THE HANDFULL!
Stumbled onto this via your AmWay rant and must say this was a refreshing read on a boring Monday at work. Thankfully I have 15 to burn on some comments: While I hate the bondo-tastic 92 Civics, the one you have pictured is almost such complete piece that I have to give it begrudging respect. Even some craps are works of art.
What made my day though was the most recent post before mine. Oh Terry Emms, where to start First of all, you are complaining about something you voluntarily read through… which is a little like placing an order at the McDonald’s drive-thru and then screaming at the woman who hands you your food that “I HATE McDONALDS!!”. I’d say typing up rants is vastly superior to feeling compelled to read things that actively annoy you. It’s like a flaming liberal who listens to Rush Limbaugh every day just to get bent out of shape… I would worry about your sanity more than Rush’s. Also, not that it matters, but talking about the family of someone you don’t even know is what we call “ad hominem” in class and “being a dick” in real life so just wanted to say Terry is probably the bigger “loser” all things considered. Maybe a jilted AmWay affiliate?
You should really listen to Adam Carolla’s podcast and/or check out his book “In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks”. I was never a huge fan of him on the Man Show but he has a knack complaining about the everyday bs we all put up with in a hilarious way.
Well spoken. One other thing that annoys me is shopping carts across the parking lot. You know what I’m talking about. You go to the grocery store to get, say, potato chips, and there are six shopping carts that are expected to return themselves to the cart return. The only thing I disagree with you on is the Keep Christ in Christmas notes. However, the other things more than make up for that.
I found your blog after reading your analysis of Star Wars vs. Star Trek. This is excellent…keep it up!
-Barry
I think the whole SMS thing (tlking lk a cnt) was created in a time when the character limit for a text message was too small and if you went above the allowance it would send two messages, thus charging you twice.
anyone agree?
Possibly, but why would it continue into the present day? It’s frankly just ghetto and trailer trash behaviour. Have you ever tried the Google auto-complete test? Try typing “how do u” into Google and see what you get on auto-complete. Then try typing “how does an individual” into Google and see what you get on auto-complete. People who type proper English want to improve themselves or change the world, while people who type trailer-trash English apparently need to find out about whether they have pink-eye or herpes.
Totally agree with the pussification of men…i cannot belief the amount of guys who think they are tough driving a big ass truck, goatee, tattoos, pitbull, set of balls dangling from the rear of the truck, baseball hat on backwards, sunglasses, wow what pussies…retired Marine and I believe if you can serve your country you need to do it.
Very awesome… this is my first time here and I agree with a lot of what you have said here. But, you know a couple things that piss me off to no end… men that wear earrings among other piercings. Have some men become completely feminine or what? I’ve seen men over 70 years old with earrings… what the fuck! No amount of current youth culture will turn back the clocks. Hey old guys… try to grow old a little more gracefully.
Another thing that really pisses me off is the Miss America pageant. What’s the goddamn point and why bother when nobody really gives a shit anymore? What is the real purpose other than winning and what is Miss America’s noteworthy functions once she has won? “World Peace” is certainly not part of the fucking equation!
TV news anchors
-Search YouTube for the female weather presenters. This is where the sex appeal is heavily used.
-http://www.youtube.com/
The Pussification of Men
-http://www.cracked.com/article_19780_5-gender-stereotypes-that-used-to-be-exact-opposite.html
-#4. Crying Used to Be a Symbol of Manliness
The Yearly “Put the Christ Back in Christmas” Bullshit-O-Rama
-The other holidays, such as Halloween and New Year’s, have been pushed aside for Christmas. Can you name a month long celebration before Thanksgiving?
The Same Shopping Centre Everywhere
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsc3C2-GED0
–The 1950’s: The Life of an Average American
—2:50
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indies_Under_Fire
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperback_Dreams
PISSES ME OFF:
1) remakes of already famous movies.: KARATE KID,ROBO COP,FOOTLOOSE ETC.
When they try and remake the GODFATHER i will protest..get an origional fucking idea..remember those?
2) people who are experts on nothing.they just regurgitate information and dont research it themselves,people who havent watched :ZEITGEIST THE MOVIE,and still preach to me
3) girls w guts wearing half shirts..be proud of yourself doesnt mean showing your flab while im eating.
4) postal workers,dmv lines,walmarts with 20fucking registers and only two lanes open yet unemployment is at 10%!!!
Hi Mike, I enjoyed a lot of this, except for the bit on:
“she has now revealed that she is gay, which is not that surprising”
Really? After reading your really nice “Our Story” page, the above came as a shock to me. Do you really look down on homosexuals?
—
A fellow engineer way out East
I don’t think gay people are bad, or immoral. I just thought Rosie O’Donnell seemed pretty obviously gay, long before she admitted it. There are plenty of celebrities out there who came out as gay, and the average person’s reaction was “well duh, I think we all knew that for a long time”.
no surprise that this guy is a hypocritical piece of shit.
HAVING A BIG DICK DOES NOT MEAN YOU KNOW HOW TO USE IT!
AND GUYS WHO ATTACK OTHERS WHILE HIDING, LIKE THE COWARDS THEY ARE, BEHIND A SCREEN NAME ARE BIG DICK HEADS!
It’s funny to me how you open this site with some underdog bullshit statement about dealing with the hardships of an inter-racial marriage (this isn’t 1960, and you live in fucking Canada) and then proceed to call someone “gay” in another post. I’ve made a point of reading a bunch of this garbage (strictly out of pure boredom) and I’ve got to say that on all fronts you’re a little bitch with something to prove to the world. Please go build a star wars model or something and get off the internet.
Awwww, poor baby. I must have hurt your widdle feelings. Dry your tears.
I gotta agree with kyle. Michael, you are a stupid and immature person who needs to grow up and get over yourself.
@someonewithabiggerdick
You seem to be one of those idiotic jackasses who goes to a site purely to act like a asshole to its owner. May I suggest that YOU get off the internet? You call Wong “stupid and immature” while you make childish insults against him. What an asinine double standard.
Get a life you worthless rambling crybaby. Who gives a shit about your worthless 2 cents?
THIS AGNOSTIC ATHIEST ACTIVIST, PARATROOPER (ONCE ONE, ALWAYS ONE) FORMER BOUNCER, DEEP SEA, FREE & SCUBA DIVER, LIFEGUARD, SPELUNKER AND BY PURE CHANCE, A MANY TIME “CRIME STOPPER” SAYS:
I WAS A PROUD DUES PAYING AND CARD CARRYING MEMBER OF NOW! AND I AM VERY PROUD OF THE THINGS I HAVE DONE TO HELP WOMEN GET THE EQUAL RIGHTS THEY WERE DEPRIVED OF FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS!
I ALSO, ON OCCASION CRY, WHICH I AM NOT THE LEAST BIT ASHAMED OF DOING.
LAST, ANY MAN WHO FEELS HE HAS BEEN “PUSSIFIED” ONLY HAS HIMSELF TO BLAME.
“the ignorant drivel being spewed by GreenPeace in its idiotic campaign against nuclear power?”
What an ignorant twat. Oh yeah. Let’s blow up the fucking world. I hope the “rapture” is true and cunts like you will be sucked up into the ether so the rest of us can in peace.
Fuck off.
roachpatrol.tumblr.com/post/146861556842/pinkprogram-roachpatrol-featherquillpen
anyway something I hate about video games is when they make some assertion about the fictional society not being homophobic and yet the society is still heteronormative like. that’s not how things work
example: skyrim
sexual orientation isn’t really talked about at all afaik and every person who can be married can be married with either character gender but like: everything is straight. I haven’t played skyrim in a while but like it’s all straight I feel like also there’s things people say in it that are heteronormative and are in there bc the people creating it didn’t see it as a problem or at odds with their apparent homophobia free society and like how can you create a fictional homophobia free society when you ain’t free of your real life assumptions. Anyway
I’ve noticed this with misogyny too, like when you go to pick your character’s gender in dragon age it says something about how men and women are considered equal and there are equal numbers of men and women in the army and in leadership positions etc.
and then you go to actually play the game and the overwhelming majority of the soldiers are male, soldiers are constantly referred to as “men,” there are characters who will say blatantly misogynistic or sexually aggressive things to you (like, blatant enough that it must be misogynistic on purpose)
and it makes me die
Some of this has to be because the people who made these games are almost exclusively straight white dudes – and while they may have had the intention of being inclusive, they literally cannot imagine what a world without heteronormativity and misogyny would look like. They give us the game mechanics to be a woman warrior or to marry a character of the same gender, but they didn’t extend this train of thought to imagine how a society where this was normal would be different from ours.
In Dragon Age, for example, the major world religion is centered on a woman, lead by women, with all-female priestesses. AND YET in everyday life characters still interact as though men are naturally in charge and express surprise at a woman issuing commands. This is directly contradictory and frankly lazy world building to suggest that people raised in a system lead exclusively by women would still somehow end up expecting male leadership, as though sexism was a sort of natural law that would happen in any society. It’s not. Also, the founding myth of their religion has the original sin as sexual jealousy rather than punishing female sexuality, which would suggest totally different social norms around monogamy, sexual orientation, and the whole idea of promiscuity. Instead they’re… More or less exactly the same as our society, slut-shaming included. This makes no sense!
It’s a complete failure of imagination, not to mention frustrating and sad.
There are books that have this worldbuilding problem too. One of the many reasons I couldn’t stand the book Kushiel’s Dart is because it’s supposed to be this sexual utopia where sex work is respected and everyone can sleep with whoever they want but slut-shaming and misogyny are still rampant.
a lot of classic, revered writers in sci fi and fantasy want to sort of have their cake and fuck it too, like heinlein and niven: they want to imagine a world where they themselves could have free sexual access to as many hotties as they could bang, but they can’t actually manage to really empathize with or listen to women in this universe, much less understand all the ways their concept of gender specifically defines women as subordinate to men. so they don’t realize that for women to actually have fun banging a dozen strangers a day, men would have to be really different. so these dipshits go and write stories where women have a ton of sex and yet are still subject to subordinating sexism, and it actually just further degrades every woman in the story—not because they’re sluts, but because they exist to be a man’s sexual fantasy.
It actually is normal for humans to be heterosexual though… Homosexuality is an outlier for the most part. Bonobos on the other hand have no concept of Hetero or Homo so it is one big orgy in a bonobo troop regardless of sex or gender.
okay but i was specifically talking about heterosexuality in fiction, and the way a lot of men don’t understand the ways their behavior and philosophy would have to change in order for women to safely enjoy more sexual promiscuity.
also, you don’t even have to look at another species for examples of how much better and more integrated same-sex relationships can be. there were plenty of recent human cultures that did just fine with entirely different concepts of gender and sexuality before western patriarchical imperialism came along.
even historically, the norse and romans, who many fantasy and sci fi universes draw superficial inspiration from, had some really different ideas about masculinity. for example, vikings considered magic, mathematics, and weaving as different expressions of women’s power. and many roman city-states thought that it was an important part of adolescence for teen boys to be sexually courted and mentored by older men, to teach them how to be men, but it was nasty for older men to have such relationships with one another. this is kind of related to how so many roman statues of heroic men have little prepubuscent penises on developed adult bodies: they had a totally different concept of masculinity, a different set of ideas about sex.
these are all things that are public record, that sci-fi and fantasy writers and game developers could take into consideration. but instead they make only the most superficial details of the world different, and fill the rest up with their own unexamined assumptions.