In light of personal miseries, I have been feeling rather irritable lately. Off the top of my head, here is a fun list of shit I absolutely hate.
1. Death. OK, universe, real funny joke. Even if we finally find someone we love who won't break our hearts, they're going to die anyway. And we die. And our pets die. And our grandmothers die. And everything dies and you aren't reincarnated and there's no afterlife and that's all horseshit because it's so obviously wishful thinking. And why wouldn't you wish that death would go away? Death, fuck you in the eye.
2. The expression "give 110 percent." There's only one situation in which this isn't absurd nonsense, considering the fact that "100 percent" means "all that it is possible for a particular person to give"? This is only non-nonsensical if you redefine "100 percent" as "all that it is possible for a particular person to give WITHOUT DYING." Since nearly 110 percent of the time this stupid fucking phrase is put into play, it's at work, the usual meaning of "give 110 percent" is "work yourself to death for me while I underpay you, serf." I hate people.
3. People.
4. Arrogant people, particularly intellectually vain people, who can't spell or use grammar properly... especially when they're posting all over the internet and clogging up its possible utility. Yeah, genius, you may be a software-writin' badass who makes ten times what I do an hour, but unless you can express yourself without giving me a headache, shut up and get off the internet. You got paid to set it up, now take your money and let literate people take over the debate.
5. The GOP today. I understand the classically conservative impulse; for fuck's sake, I went to school to study ancient Greece. But you people aren't conservatives. Your only real philosophy, insofar as it can be articulated, is "Life in a political party should be a competition to see who can be the most hateful, arrogant, and blatantly insane member of this frighteningly powerful freakshow." Fuck off, you're all mad as hatters and far less cuddly. You'd be hilariously funny if only you weren't running half a continent into the ground.
6. The Democratic Party today. Oh, the things you say sound so nice. TOO BAD YOU'RE FUCKING LIARS! (I guess I can make an exception for the senators in Wisconsin. Obama and Feingold only seem to lie when they really need to, and there's a handful of current senators whom I trust, but most of 'em... nah, I wouldn't hire them to cat-sit.)
7. Me, when I try to make sense out of politics. I might as well try to film my cat's hallucinations and use them as a doctoral dissertation in 19th-century French painting.
8. Noisy optimists. Just because you're either unusually fortunate or especially stupid or both doesn't make it OK to power-hose your fucking sunshine up the rest of the world's fundament. SHUT UP. Life is not good, and it never has been, for the vast majority of your fellows.
9. Pro-natalist tax and social spending policies. I can't seem to bitch about this enough to get it off my chest, it just keeps burning. When I have money, I get taxed so breeders with no jobs can live on welfare. But when I don't have money, there is NO SOCIAL SECURITY NET FOR ME, apparently because nobody feels bad for people who haven't bought into the life-lie and brought more sufferers into the world. "You aren't playing our little game, so we don't give a shit if you suffer. But we'll gladly steal your money when WE need it." And tax breaks for parents to boot?! That's just adding insult to injury, especially when the rest of us are already paying all kinds of child-related tax expenses. You cause more expenses, but you pay less. On which planet is this fair? If it wouldn't get me into so much trouble I'd almost be tempted to steal a child and tell the government it was mine; people who are irresponsible enough to make children probably shouldn't be trusted with them anyway. Fairness aside, these stupid policies actually give people an economic incentive to bring more suffering onto this accursed world.
10. Heartbreak. Why is the human psyche set up so that the uncontrollable fickleness of another being makes us feel like we're being repeatedly kicked in the stomach? So literally so that it's almost impossible to climb out of bed? Well, for some of us. The heartbreakers probably don't feel very much stuff. What a miserable world.
11. And finally... winter. The little death. Why are all the good big cities the ones with the brutal winters? Fucking hell. If I don't get some warm air and sunshine on my skin soon soon I am going to peel it all off so I can't feel anything anymore. It's not like it's making me any vitamin D. I guess I could move to Los Angeles, but I hate cars even more than I hate winter. (Yeah, having a monkey, possibly drunk, maneuver an unrailed two-ton hunk of metal at 60 miles per hour is a GRAND idea. I sort of want to set this aside as a separate item of hate, but I want to stop short of a neat dozen so that I might cause a fraction of the irritation I feel at the moment.)
