In case it isn’t clear, it’s time for The Airing Of Grievances. I gotta lotta problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it! Feel free to join in and tell me what pisses YOU off.
Pictured: the living definition of douche canoes.
MEN IN COWBOY HATS
I have never once seen a man in real life wearing a cowboy hat doing anything remotely manly or useful. I have seen grown men in cowboy hats at county fairs, state fairs, and at a fucking rodeo, and the trend continues. Any male in a cowboy hat is looking for attention and accomplishing nothing. Every bit of actual goddamn work was being done by guys in baseball caps, except carrying the riders’ equipment, which was being done by girls.
Wearing cowboy hats is something these guys do to impress other guys. They’re constantly adjusting then, cleaning them, decorating them, then quickly looking around to the little clusters of other guys in cowboy hats to see who is looking at them. They gather in clusters of three or four in the middle of the arena and play air guitar and dance with each other. The should just go out there and suck each others’ dicks. At least that would be more honest. Every cowboy hat should come with a tube of lip balm and a prescription for Valtrex.
INJURED ATHLETES
Here’s another bunch of fucks I could do without. They train and train and train and train, are paid millions of dollars and are given teams of publicists, ad men, and spin doctors, all working to cultivate images of incomparable skill and nearly inhuman physical perfection, but when they encounter the slightest physical trauma their world ends. Whoever Ramirez twisted his ankle sliding into first: out for the season. Captain Whatshisnuts stubbed his toe filming a Nike commercial: out for the season. Ben Rothlesburger got his dick scratched by the girl he was raping: out for the motherfucking season.
These are enormous man-shaped oxen pumped chock full of the most expensive performance enhancing chemicals available on this planet, but at the slightest ache or pain they break like dainty china teacups. I’ve twisted my ankle on the job many a time. I took some Tylenol and finished my shift. I didn’t get to go home; why the fuck should they?
“Ladies and gentlemen, your starting lineup!”
Here’s my suggestion: when knocked to the ground, ALL athletes in ALL sports are given a boxing-style ten count. If you aren’t able to make it to your feet without assistance within that ten count, you’re out of the game. No chance of returning to play. You don’t even get to stay in the arena; you have to leave the venue and are not allowed within five hundred feet of any entrance. You do not get paid for the game. And your team cannot replace you. They have to finish the game minus a player.
Any player who gets to his feet after the five count but within the legal ten count limit will be automatically suspected of malingering, and will undergo an immediate, mandatory physical examination by an attending physician. A portable EKG and CAT scan machine will be brought onto the field so the entire crowd can witness the results. Live x-rays will be shown on the Jumbotron. If the player is legitimately hurt, no problem. They go back in the game. If they were just lying there to get a little rest or were showboating for the camera, they get a malingering penalty.
And no more cheering for players who have to be carried off the field. I’m not celebrating your fragility.
A penalty for malingering is as follows: the offending player must finish the rest of the game in an untied hospital gown and heavy, thick-soled orthopedic shoes with corrective steel arch inserts, an eye patch on their dominant eye, a breathing tube in one nostril, one arm in a rigid cast, Forrest Gump style leg braces on both legs, and one of those giant cone collars that prevent dogs from licking their wounds. If they’re going to pretend to be hurt, they will be treated like they are hurt. This penalty will apply to ALL sports, including bicycle racing and NASCAR. And swimming.
Speaking of athletes…
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Why is college football on my TV? Why the fuck is ANY college sport on TV? Here’s a bunch of people, the vast majority of whom will NEVER be good enough to be professionals, being celebrated and treated as if they were at the pinnacle of their field. It’s like letting first year med students perform surgery. They don’t broadcast table reads or dress rehearsals. Why flood the air with this amateur shit?
GREEK YOGURT
Greek yogurt is fucking terrible. It’s almost as bad as the people who eat it. If I don’t like Greek yogurt, you telling me Greek yogurt is good is not going to make me like Greek yogurt. It’s going to make me hate you. Shut the fuck up about Greek yogurt. It’s a fad food. It’s just like regular yogurt except that it sucks.
DOCTOR WHO
This same thing goes for Doctor Who. It’s just not what it’s hyped up to be. Doctor Who is the Greek yogurt of science fiction. Stop trying to convince me it’s amazing. At it’s best it is a tolerable but unignorably inferior substitute for more palatable alternatives.
CUSTOMERS WHO DON’T KNOW IT
If you’re paying money – an entry fee for an obstacle course, a tithe at a church, a donation to a political group, or cash for a few rocks from your dealer – understand that you are a consumer, and you are being sold a product. The product is your temporary sense of satisfaction, and ANYTHING said to you before or after you hand that money over is advertising. Not encouragement, not teambuilding, not witnessing, not rallying, not preaching. Advertising. And, like all advertising, it comes from a BUSINESS. I find it depressing that, of all the examples I listed above, it’s only the crack addicts that seem to grasp the nature of this arrangement.
BODY SHOTS
Hey, internet photographers, do you find headless women attractive? Would you have sex with a smoking hot decapitated chick? Me either. Stop cropping models heads. It’s creepy.
JIM FUCKING MORRISON
I have a thousand treasured unpopular opinions, but today’s the day for this one: Jim Morrison was a showboat, and easily the least talented of the Doors. He in no way deserves the mindless adulation he continues to receive. Ray Manzarek was the one who made the Doors sound like the Doors.
SELF-WORSHIPPING MOTHERS
You know what’s great? Telling a mom how amazing she is on Mother’s Day. You know what makes me sick? Moms telling us how much better they are than other moms on Facebook.
If you want to congratulate a mother for doing a great job, I’m all for it. Being a mother – an actual good, full-time mother – is one of the toughest, most relentlessly demanding jobs on this planet. It’s the only truly 24/7 job that exists. Even slaves get time off to sleep. Not mothers. That’s why men don’t do it; we’d fold. We’re not up to it. But if you get on a social media site to tell us how amazing you think you are, and how hard you struggle to maintain your level of matronly awesomeness, then just go fuck yourself. You didn’t design a rocket that safely landed a human payload on a distant planet. You didn’t cure a crippling disease. Stop breaking your arm patting yourself on the back.
You got knocked up and squirted out a kid. It doesn’t make you special. Dogs do it. And they have like seven at a time. And sometimes they eat one. Or, if its too weak to survive, they’ll let it starve to death. Do you have the fortitude to choose which of your children is the weakest and purposely let it die a slow, agonizing death? Do you have it in you to eat that child alive so that your remaining children will be healthier and your family will be stronger? No? Then your mothering skills do not impress me. Don’t tell me how great you are. In the immortal words of an immortal poet, “real gangsta ass niggas don’t flex nuts, cause real gangsta ass niggas knows they got em.”
AUTOMOBILES
It seems a faulty $20 hose can utterly ruin over $500 worth of brakes, rotors and calipers, not to mention devour my entire weekend. I hate cars. I fucking HATE them. I never noticed how bad my luck with cars was until Carrie Lewis pointed it out to me years ago. Now every time I get in the damn thing I just wait for something to explode.
It honestly got to the point that, in my head, I was weighing the idea of clamping the line and just removing the brake entirely. I was giving serious thought to changing the way I drive in order to more safely operate a vehicle with 3/4 of its designed stopping power. I was done. My dad’s the only reason I’m driving with four brakes right now. His patience outweighed my rage. But only by a hair.
CORPORATE CONDOLENCES
Getting pretty fucking sick of seeing “Our thoughts are with those in Boston” from corporations. Individuals, fine. But using an act of terrorism or tragedy as a platform and excuse to plaster your corporate logo feces all over a social networking site is not solidarity. It’s a fucking ad. And it’s repugnant.
ANTHONY JESELNIK
The only thing offensive about Anthony Jeselnik’s show is that I’m supposed to buy it as comedy. I’ve seen fewer pulled punches in Wii boxing. Get this smug, soft, self amused waste of human protein off my television. He’s got about as much edge as a fucking baby spoon.
TYLER GODDAMNED PERRY
It occurs to me that, despite all the advancements in civil rights we have made over the last 100 years, Black people in America will never truly be free until they band together in resolute moral solidarity and stop Tyler Perry from making one more piece of shitty entertainment.
JENNY McCARTHY
Jenny McCarthy got famous by showing off her tits and pussy to any sleazebag with a camera and a handful of cash. Not, it must be noted, for her advancements in immunology, which do not exist. If her children are mentally disabled, it is not because they had a vaccine. It’s because they are Jenny McCarthy’s children. Give your kids their fucking shots, dipshits. I don’t want to live in a world where polio makes a comeback just because you believe every conspiracy minded has-been with a sob story and five minutes of misbegotten air time.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
It comes down to this: if someone wishes you “Happy Holidays” and the first thing that enters your mind is to take offense, then you are a cunt.
A total stranger came up to me on the street today and gave me $50. It was all in fives, which pissed me off, so I threw it back in his face and said, “You’re supposed to give it in tens, asshole!” That is EXACTLY how petty and stupid you sound when you complain about “Happy Holidays.”
You are not OWED a “Merry Christmas.” You do not have a right to a “Happy Hanukkah.” No one has to give one teensy fuck about your Ramadan or Kwanzaa or whatever let’s-pretend-this-isn’t-a-pagan-solstice-celebration holiday you hold so dear. Someone is going out of their way to say something nice to you. Someone is taking the time to wish you pleasantness, just because. And because it isn’t worded in exactly the way you would have it worded, you decide to entirely ignore the sentiment and instead turn their good gesture into a platform to display your offense and willingness to take umbrage at anything that doesn’t fit your narrow, side blind view of how things should be. If you are one of these joyless cunts, remove me from your friends list immediately, please. You are exactly the kind of oversensitive, selfish whiny bitch that the phrase “Happy Holidays” was created to appease in the first place.
But let’s be honest: it’s never a Jew or a Black or Hispanic person complaining about “Happy Holidays.” That is the exclusive territory of white American Christian crybabies. Every year these fucking wastes of protoplasm come out of the woodwork to pretend they are under some sort of attack by people determined to remove Jesus from Christmas.
Don’t get me wrong, there really WAS a war on Christmas at one time. But – surprise, surprise – Christmas was under attack by the same group that always tries to ruin everyone’s fun. The fucking Christians.
“The Surprising Truth: Christians Once Banned Christmas“
THE INTERNSHIP
If you’re dying to hate Google, might I suggest watching The Internship. On a positive note, it did help me invent the phrase “smug asshole hipstercunt.”
TELEVISION IN GENERAL
I’m thoroughly sick of TV shows about doctors. Even worse are the billion shows about fucking rednecks. Worse still are the ones featuring smug, too cool for everything would-be hipster “comedies.” And there are WAY too goddamned many shows about Alaska. And series that endlessly try to glorify and glamorize New York City can universally kiss my ass. Strangely, though, if you combine all those detestable elements, you get Northern Exposure, one of the most original, oddly charming programs ever broadcast.
DEEPAK MOTHERFUCKING CHOPRA
You know who else can kiss my dick? Deepak Chopra. There’s a reason we use science, not “ancient remedies” and “alternative healing.” Because we have no evidence any of that shit has ever worked AT ALL. I don’t believe in karma or chakra energy or spirits or ghosts or goblins or any other similar bullshit. You might as well tell me you believe in voodoo. At least voodoo is interesting. It doesn’t hide from the fact that it’s balls out fucking crazy. I can respect that.
Deepak Chopra is a con artist who preys on people who are just smart enough to understand his individual words, but too stupid to realize they collectively mean nothing.
And now it is time for the Feats Of Strength. Until you pin me, Festivus is not over. Let’s rumble!