Things That Probably Only Bother Me

I might have only recently turned thirty years old this year back in the month of May, but I was a crotchety old man who was confused by the world long before I grew up to become the lame, overweight, khaki-wearing accountant who stands before you today. Although I’ve never been shy about voicing my complaints here on this blog, there has been a handful of topics that never quite made the cut simply because I figured that I was the only person cranky enough to complain about them. People who bitch online usually do so because they’re seeking a way to validate their gripes. With that being the case, what good is it to bitch about something esoteric or obscure if you’re pretty certain that nobody else will care? Case in point: Pierre Bernard’s Recliner of Rage is an amusing comedy bit premised on the futility of complaining about topics that nobody understands.

Maybe it’s the old age talking, or maybe I’ve just gotten crankier lately, but I think it’s time to speak my piece about some of those things that only seem to bother me. Here’s a warning to you, gentle reader: Your level of recognition and interest will very likely waver while reading through these bullet points. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

• Douchebags with Microphones

  Am I the only one who hates those pushy announcers at live shows who are never satisfied with the first round of applause? You know what I’m talking about:

  “Hey folks, how is everybody tonight? Oh come on, you can do better than that. How is everybody tonight?”

  I fucking hate those guys. I swear, they must have been one of the main contributing factors that led to the creation of the sniper rifle. Okay, that’s harsh. But at the very least, they must have been a significant contributing factor leading to the creation of the “backhanded bitch-slap”, am I right?

  When an announcer asks the crowd to applaud once, I usually oblige him politely. The second time he asks, I fold my arms and sigh. If the announcer is especially obnoxious, and he asks the crowd to applaud a third time, I cup my hands and begin to boo. Go work out your middle-child insecurity issues somewhere off the stage, asshole.




The Constipated Anime Grunt



Why do anime characters always sound like they’re either constipated, asthmatic, or like they’re constantly getting blown? If you have ever watched anime while listening to the original Japanese language audio track, then you might have noticed that there is basically no such thing as a silent moment in anime. Actually, come to think of it, there’s no such thing as subtlety in anime, either. Everybody is always grunting in exasperation, stammering on some half-formed thought, or gasping like they’re choking on their bipolar medication. Every moment in any given anime has been compulsively occupied by some form of verbal garbage.

For an example of what I’m talking about, I invite you to watch the first four minutes of Young GTO, Episode 4. Take note of all the grunts, groans, gasps, moans, giggling, and gurgling noises that the voice actors make. Is everyone okay with that?

I grant you, anime characters often have a good reason for making those crazy noises, because somebody is always suffering from a nervous breakdown, or getting their ass kicked in an anime flick. Anime characters always seem to exist between the balance of two basic operating modes: (1) Extremely violent and pissed off; or (2) Flabbergasted and overwrought with miscellaneous emotion. What the hell ever happened to that level place in between, where people react to the world on a neutral setting? For that matter, what the hell ever happened to the subtlety of silence?

Please don’t mistake my meaning, because I actually do enjoy watching anime. I just wonder why anime directors always insist on filling in the silences with all of those irritating grunts.




• The Awkward “Next Gen” Look-Away

  Star Trek: The Next Generation is an awesome show despite its numerous trademark flaws: the sterile off-ship set designs, the tedious battle scenes shown entirely from the bridge, the terrible acting by all of the extras, and all of those ridiculous, “Oh shit, the Holodeck safety protocols are offline” episodes. But above all other gripes, the one thing that bothers me most about the show is the terrible stage direction put on display during all of those two-person, heart-to-heart dialogue scenes.

  Does anybody know what I’m talking about? It seems like every time two characters find themselves in the middle of a private conversation on Next Gen, one of them inevitably interrupts the flow of the scene by walking across the room, and then continuing the conversation while facing their back to the other person. It’s such a stilted, artificial maneuver that absolutely reeks of melodrama, daytime soap operas, and live community theater. My suspension of disbelief immediately vanishes every time I see it happen — and it happens way more often than it should. As a fan of the series, I find the Awkward “Next Gen” Look-Away oddly insulting, because I get the feeling that I was never meant to notice the ridiculous maneuver on a conscious level. It’s as if the show’s writers and directors never gave their fans enough credit to suspect that somebody like me would one day stand up and shout, “Why the fuck do the characters keep turning away from each other like that? Is that how people communicate with each other in the 24th century? That’s completely fucking stupid.”

   
   

  The Awkward “Next Gen” Look-Away is such a weird, unnatural maneuver. In a television show where the actors walk around wearing automobile air filters for eyeglasses, and crazy rubber prostheses glued onto their foreheads, any additional displays of outlandish theatricality are simply redundant. There’s no subtlety or subtext added to the scene by something as lame as the Awkward “Next Gen” Look-Away. That maneuver is about as subtle as Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge lifting his VISOR to wink at the camera before delivering the following monologue:

  “Commander Riker, I believe this is an appropriate time to tell you something deeply personal about my past. Before I do that, however, please allow me to awkwardly walk five steps in this direction. I’ll keep my back turned to you for a while, which will enable an awesome, over-the-shoulder camera shot with my face in the foreground, and with your face slightly blurred in the background. You see, with these five steps that I am taking while walking away from you, I am providing a visually symbolic representation of my desire to ‘walk away’ from my past. Then again, I am walking away while I’m reminiscing; so am I, in fact, walking towards the past instead? I’m going to turn around now, mid-sentence, in order to face you and to add further ambiguity to the question. The past may always be behind you, but it also always faces you no matter which direction you face.”

  

  Pretty awful, right? I quoted that speech verbatim from an old Dr. Pulaski episode. Every episode centered around that bitch is total trash. Anyhow, all I mean to say is that Lieutenant Commander Data’s oft-derided poem,“Ode to Spot”, has ten times more nuance to it than all of the Awkward “Next Gen” Look-Aways combined throughout the history of the show. I love you to death, Next Gen, but your people have got to look each other in the eye a little more often in order for me to take them seriously.




• Insulting Assumptions at the Crosswalk

  Call me crazy, but I consider it a personal affront whenever somebody walks up from behind me and presses the crosswalk button when it’s clear that I’ve already been standing there at the street corner for a while, waiting for the “Walk” sign to turn green. I know how to cross a street, asshole. Do you believe me to be such a helpless person, that I would so passively stand on every street corner that I encounter, praying for the winds of fate to sweep you into my life each time just so that you could enable my journey forward by helping me click a befuddling, magical button? Get the fuck over yourself.

  Show me enough respect to assume that I understand the concept of a crosswalk button, and maybe I’ll spare you the intricate details about the many ways by which you can go fuck yourself.




• Bizarre Self-Censorship by The Roots

  This is an old gripe of mine from way back in the day. First of all, do we have any hip-hop fans in the house? I’m a longtime fan of hip-hop myself, and I’ve learned over the years to take the good along with the bad. Although I can think of a lot of good things to say about hip-hop music, there are also many embarrassing aspects of the genre which put me on the defensive, and which compel me to justify my reasons for listening to it. The one thing I’ve always appreciated about the hip-hop band, The Roots, is that they have never given me a reason to be embarrassed about being a fan of hip-hop. The Roots are all about consciousness, intelligence, clever lyricism, and skilled musicianship. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of their work.

  

  Even so, there is one small thing that has been bothering me about The Roots for the longest time now. On the explicit, “uncensored” version of their hit 1999 album, Things Fall Apart, The Roots have scratched out the word “bitch” from at least two of their audio tracks. That is to say, at least two songs on the album include the word “bitch” in the lyrics — and for some reason, somebody saw it fit to censor the portions of each song where that word is spoken. Now, I’m all for the eradication of misogynistic lyrics in rap songs, but I think the approach that The Roots took on their album is completely ass backwards. Why would you even include that word in your lyrics if it was your intention, down the line, to censor it out of the end product? What makes this self-censorship even more ridiculous is the fact that the album is full of all other kinds of profane words, like “shit”, “motherfucker”, and the N-word. Why is it okay to say all of those other words, but not “bitch”? I really don’t understand the point that The Roots were trying to make with all of that self-censorship.

  To hear what I’m talking about, go ahead and take a listen to the YouTube clip of the song, “Dynamite!” down below. You can hear the word “bitch” scratched out of the audio at 1:29.

  For further illustration, check out the clip below for another song from the album titled, “Don’t See Us”. The word “bitch” is scratched out at 1:13. Interestingly, the word “whore” is not censored out, and can be heard clearly just a second before, around 1:12.

  I’ve been Googling this album for years, and it seems as though nobody else out there is complaining about the censorship inconsistencies on Things Fall Apart. I’m going to go out on a limb here and proclaim that I am the first person in the world to call out The Roots on the issue of self-censorship.

  Personally, I would prefer to listen to an album without any obnoxious audio censorship scratches at all. If I wanted to hear all that noise, I could have just dialed into my local hip-hop radio station instead of listening to what was supposed to have been a polished, professionally produced album. The Roots should have either left all of the profanity on their album untouched, or they should have had a band meeting a day before entering the recording studio in order to come up with an alternate, friendlier word for “bitch”. Might I recommend the word “Pulaski” for future reference? I’m just saying.




• Terminology Inspired by the “Good Samaritan” Parable

  Is it safe to assume that most people who grew up in Westernized societies know the biblical parable that Jesus tells of the “Good Samaritan”? As the story goes, an unfortunate Jewish man gets his ass kicked by some bandits, and is left for dead along the side of a road. Two fine, upstanding Orthodox Jewish men (a priest and a Levite) pass by the injured man, but they don’t offer any help. Later on, a third man, who happens to be a Samaritan, comes along and shows the injured man an extraordinary amount of care. The point of Jesus’ parable is to illustrate the importance of showing compassion to your neighbors, which is hopefully a sentiment that we all can get behind, regardless of our beliefs. What made Jesus’ parable so provocative for its time, though, was that it portrayed a Samaritan in a positive light.

  Back in those days, Orthodox Jews and Samaritans despised each other due to their fundamental disagreements over religious doctrine. By casting a Samaritan in the role of the helpful neighbor, Jesus was making a point of showing that the qualities of kindness and human compassion are far more important than our individual beliefs in esoteric, religious dogma. I can’t help but think, though, that the spirit of Jesus’ lesson began to tarnish as soon as people started referring to this parable as the story of the “Good Samaritan”.

  

  The way I see it, the phrase, “Good Samaritan” is basically an archaic variation of a centuries-old, prejudicial slur. When Jesus originally told the story, he just referred to the guy as a “Samaritan”. Later on when people started retelling the parable, they started calling the dude a “good” Samaritan, implying that the majority of other Samaritans out there are bad people.

  “Samaritans? They only adhere to the Pentateuch, so they can all go eat a dick. Oh, but not that one, though. The Samaritan from that biblical parable which Jesus tells is one of the ‘good’ ones.”

  Am I being too touchy about innocent terminology? I don’t know, maybe. It just seems odd to me that in this modern day, we would chastise a person for making a remark like, “You’re a credit to your race”, all the while the phrase “Good Samaritan” has become so ingrained in the lexicon, that you could find hundreds of examples of hospitals, laws, and charitable organizations all over the world that bear that very name.

  I’m telling, you man: If, one day, I ever came across a hospital named “The Good Chinaman Medical Center”, I would flip the fuck out. I couldn’t be held responsible for the inevitable shit-storm that would follow. Like, you know. I’d probably stomp home and blog about it in a very stern tone. Or something.

As always, there’s plenty more to bitch about, but I think I’ll call it quits for now. I can only dish out so many complaints in one sitting before even I want to slap my own damn self.

So, this is what it’s like to gripe as a thirty-year-old. It’s funny, because even though nothing much has changed between twenty-nine and thirty, everything somehow seems a little more significant these days. Maybe that’s wisdom catching up to me. Ain’t that some shit?