the only thing worse
than bad memories
is no memories at all..
[dismemberment plan]
8.11.2003
Dissatisfaction with the General Complacency of the World Today.
Sure, there's a lot of things wrong with the world today.
War, terrorism, pollution, slutty 11 year old girls at the mall, daytime television, pop music, the list drags on.
But the biggest problem, sociologically speaking, at least, is that people are being way too damn nice.
Ridiculous, you say?
What the hell happened to society?
Old people that come into my work always tell me about the hard times they had in the past.
If a guy messed with you, you shot him in the kneecap or take a baseball bat to his cranium.
First guy to cry or bleed (or die, I guess) loses.
Easy.
But today, everyone's a sucker for the outcast.
People overly sympathize with fat people, hyperactive children, feminists, starving Ethiopians, idiots, and everyone else who has no excuse for gaining the tears of bleeding hearts everywhere.
I was eating a burger at a diner the other day, and seated at the table directly next to us was a morbidly obese mother with her two morbidly obese children.
They proceeded to order the lardiest, oiliest, fried foods on the menu, and the sugariest, fattiest desserts smothered in whipped cream.
And then they stuffed their faces, hovering over their plates with food dripping down from their chins.
At one point, the boy spilled his glass of carbonated sugar water (soda) all over his sister, and I don't think any of the three even realized until much, much later.
I mean, come on.
Speaking from the point of view of a former adolescent fatty, there is absolutely no excuse for those eating habits.
Especially if you're the mom in that situation, what the hell are you doing?
Lock the kid in a closet with a bucket of water, a few Richard Simmons exercise videos, and a loaf of bread for 3 months and don't buy him lollipops and french toast every time he whines for it.
That's the best thing my mom ever did for me.
I think this is from too many kids growing up watching horrible shows like Barney and Teletubbies (which, in my opinion, is actually the most terrifying show I have ever seen), and later in life, watching garbage like Oprah and the Sally Jesse Raphael Show.
These television progams broadcast the idea that everyone is equal, everyone is a-okay, everyone should be loved for who they are on the inside, everyone is special--
Kids grow up learning to tolerate everything and everyone.
You're not allowed to call the dorky kid in class "Four Eyes."
You can't make fun of the kid in the wheelchair.
You can't call the fat girl names like "Tubby Tina" or "Fatty Patty (which was, incidentally, my moniker)."
You can't tell that weird kid eating paste in the corner and picking his nose that he smells like farts and onions mixed together.
Why not?
Because it's "not nice."
If you can't make fun of the geeks, the fatties, the smelly kid, the loner, if you just "accept" these kids as being a normal part of society, if you give in to just letting these things just slide by because it's "not nice" to point them out and say, "HEY YOU'RE PRETTY FUCKING WEIRD," then when, I ask you, will these things change?
If you don't tell Mary to wash her hair, there's a bird building a nest in it, when will she learn that she needs to shower on a regular basis?
If you don't tell Bobby that he has man-tits and a buddha butt, and tease him about wearing a t-shirt when he goes to pool parties, when is he going to stop shoving sandwiches and deep fried lard down his throat?
If you don't tell Sally that her teeth look like they would be more at home in the mouth of a braying donkey that was hit in the mouth with a crowbar, when will that silly honky get braces (also something that I could relate to during my childhood at some point)?
Never.
If people just keep going down the path of trying to avoid ever offending anyone in the whole cotdamn planet, you know what's going to happen?
The world is going to be filled with big, sloppy, fat, idiotic losers that don't even know that they have a problem.
These people are going to live their lives thinking that it's okay to live as a worthless sack of flesh in their La-Z-Boy recliners, playing Pokémon on Gameboy Advance, eating large pepperoni pizzas, flipping through 500 channels of crap on satellite television, wearing oversized Big Dog t-shirts, never realizing that they're at the lowest level of human waste, always thinking that they're "unique and special" in their "own way,"
all because people are too considerate, too sympathetic, too understanding to criticize them.
Parents are getting way too lenient.
And lazy.
Don't let your dumbass kid roll around on the floor and scream and throw tantrums in public just because he has some "clinical affliction" called "ADD."
Smack that little bastard around and let him know who's boss.
Don't let your fat 12 year old son out of your house wearing black lipstick and things picked out of the bargain bin at Hot Topic.
Ship him off to fat kid boot camp indefinitely and straighten that kid out.
Seriously though, even criminals get the brush off.
At Lowes, we had to watch 3 hours of "security training" videos.
Basically, here's what we were taught.
If an employee sees a customer stuffing his pockets:
You are not allowed to jump out from behind the shelves and scream,
"HEY, STUPID! I SAW THAT!! STOP THAT!!!"
You are not allowed to take the item from him and put it back.
You are not allowed to detain (i.e. tackle, restrain, tie down, shoot tranquilizer darts at, etc.) the customer.
You are not allowed to potentially create a scene.
However, here's what you CAN do.
The employee is permitted to walk by the customer, try to make eye contact with him, and say, "Can I help you with anything?"
The goal here is to make him so "uncomfortable" and "ridden with guilt of a good conscience" that he will drop the item and leave.
So basically, if someone walks out with 10 grand's worth of merchandise stuffed into his overall pockets, sets off the alarm at the exit doors, the only thing you could do is let him go and write down the license plate number of his getaway vehicle if he's stupid enough to drive past the front of the store while exiting the parking lot.
This is all for the sake of "customer service."
In reality, it's actually a case of the store's management being complete pussies.
I know that this post has reached the length at which people have lost interest, but if you're still reading, here's what I beseech of you.
Make fun of fat kids.
Make fun of skinny kids.
Make fun of dumb people.
Make fun of hicks.
Make fun of stupid bitches.
Make fun of nerds.
Make fun of that kid that sits alone picking his nose and eating his boogers.
Otherwise, think about it:
When will they learn?
Some people save the whales.
Some people buy highways.
Some people preserve rainforests.
Do your civic duty to society and make fun of some weirdos.
Note: Some of you may have already read this post on RS.
The subject matter was "Worst Relationship Ever."
It was October 30, 1999, the last day I spent in Freehold Boro High School before I transferred back to Marlboro.
I was getting my transfer sheet signed by all of my teachers, and on the way down the second floor staircase, I ran into Joey.
Joey.
I had never spoken to him before this, but I had often found papers covered in caveman-esque doodles on my desk that he'd left behind in the class before mine.
They usually consisted of scrawled out stick figures smoking blunts wearing backwards caps with little word bubbles saying things like "YO I BE SMOKKIN DIS BLUNT WIT MY HOMIEZ."
Joey was not my type in any stretch of the imagination.
He wore bright colored football jerseys and was the biggest wigger I had ever met in my entire life.
Maybe the novelty of the situation was what attracted me to him, I'm still not sure of it today.
He gave me his number that day on the staircase, and I, the naive, ugly, awkward freshman, was so flattered and full of red-faced bashfulness, that I called him that night, and we started going out after that.
Our "dates" always consisted of my mom dropping me off in the minivan at his huge house (his parents were supposedly in the mafia, and loaded with money), me watching him smoke in his basement, watching rap music videos on BET, listening to the Kottonmouth Kings (who he at one point sold pot to extensively), and making out on his pool table.
I soon found out that his nickname was "Probation Joe"-- he was on probation for various drug charges.
The first night we hung out, he showed me the shrooms he had in his pocket.
For some reason, despite the fact that his mouth tasted like ashes all the time, or that he could most likely be classified as a highly functional retard, or that he always said, "Yo I'm totally wigging out, yo" at every occasion, I still fell hard for him.
Maybe it was his slackjawed, blank-eyed stare, his fat sausage fingers, his drug addict stepmom, the cigarette burns on his hands, or his fascination with glowsticks and going to clubs to rave that attracted me to him?
Or maybe it was the fact that I found it so hard to believe that someone would like a sloppy, nerdy, shiny faced loser like me, fresh out of braces and eager to learn Algebra II.
So the months went by, and one night, I realized I hadn't talked to him in a week or so, so I called him.
His stepmom answered the phone:
"Hi sweetie! How are you?"
"I'm fine. Is Joey there?"
"What? Honey, he didn't tell you?
.. HE MOVED TO FLORIDA."
During the next few weeks, he wrote to me.
His letters were always on ripped out notebook paper, covered in heart and penis drawings.
It's totally stupid (to my defense, I drew it on notebook paper in a nearly comatose state during Spanish class), and completely neanderthal-esque compared to Dorothy's comic, but you can see it here.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with C&G, here's a few of their best ones:
[Peek-a-Foo]