Maybe it’s because I’m old but I’m pretty sure I’ve held this belief as long as I can remember, I can’t stand people who are “into” things. Like so into things that it’s all-consuming and it’s all they talk about. I’m not bothered by a person’s nonchalant or cursory interest in a hobby or in a particular interest but when it borders on an all-consuming obsession, I boil inside. I’m willing to allow some grace here in a couple circumstances, one, my granddaughter has what one would describe as an obsession with Pete the Cat but she’s two years old and besides, Pete is pretty freaking cool. Even in spite of her fixation with Pete, she is still able to mix in a few other hobbies like making Play-Doh jewelry and crapping her pants. Two, I am willing to give some leeway like if you’re autistic and you get off on your fascination with plate spinning. Basically, in my mind, obsessing is okay if you’re a child or if you happen to be mentally challenged.
Lord knows that my house is full of equipment I bought in anticipation of my new hobby. Home improvement tools, exercise doodads and low fat cookbooks to name a few. My saving grace is that I had the sense to wise up. Yes, I made a mistake and got all caught up in something for a few days but I quickly came back to my senses and all it cost me was a few dollars. The people who go into something full bore, hold onto it and act like total d-bags with their stories of running fifty miles over the weekend have lost much more than money. They have also lost their dignity and probably all of their friends.
I’ve made a quick list of the things people obsess about that make me the sickest. These are, by no means, the only ones but simply the ones that will make me avoid you like the plague. “Who am I to say these things?” was a comment I’ve heard quite a bit since I started floating this idea out there. I’ve also been told, “Who the fuck are you to be bothered by anyone? You’re one of the most obnoxious people I’ve ever met,” was another observation made by others. The answer is, I’m me. Most things irritate me and this is my forum for venting. By the way, most of the people who made disparaging comments about my subject matter are the very people I loathe so it only stands to reason.
Yoga –
I see some of my people posting pictures of themselves doing(?), practicing(?) yoga and I think, “Okay, fine, so you do yoga or whatever you call writhing around on the floor carefully balancing on your earlobe. Big fucking deal. Whoopee, so what if you can blow yourself. I don’t care. Do I take pictures of myself sitting in a chair watching television which happens to be my form of recreation? What the hell does Namaste mean anyway?
Are you aware that yoga pants can cost up to 150 dollars? What kind of a mindless and pretentious d-bag pays this much for stretch pants that in all actuality are the equivalent of a couple of pairs of nylons piled on top of each other? Don’t get me wrong. I am totally in favor of women walking around in these things but I have a notion that most people are wearing them as a piece of fashion and are skipping out on the intended yoga session.
Very often you’ll find that your hardcore practitioners of yoga are also into eating gross things like lentils and wheat germ. Not only are they annoying about their Indian exercise fixation but they also smell like a hippie food co-op. This odor does not make them more appealing and frequently only adds to their annoying nature as they won’t shut-up about how I’m killing myself with beef or pork.
I went to a yoga class a few years ago at my wife’s insistence. It wasn’t so much that she demanded that I go, she gave up on the hope of commanding me to do anything years ago, but more wouldn’t stop talking about how great it made her feel. Knowing full well that nothing makes me feel great with the exception of complaining and lethargy and in order to make her stop bringing it up, I went to a class. Everyone in the class was a fucking flower-child weirdo and reeked of cumin. What was worse was the constant stream of farting that ensued once the class began. These freaks had been ingesting beans and hummus all day and were probably already on the verge of crapping themselves then thought it a good idea to sit on the floor and stretch the shit out of themselves. Charming. I don’t think I need to mention that I never went back and blame my wife for scarring me permanently to this day.
Bicyclists –
Of all the people who annoy me, bicyclists are the worst. It’s not that I hate cycling, I really couldn’t care less about any aerobic activity. What bothers me are the get-ups these people think they have to wear in order to properly operate the bike. Why do these people think that in order to be a true cyclist that they have to wear tight fitting spandex clothes slathered in French and Italian words, stupid clunky shoes and those ridiculous elongated helmets? Whatever happened to just riding your bike in regular clothes?
When I was a kid, in order to keep my father from going into a tirade about how he had better things to do than to dig my jeans out of the gears of my bike, my mother would give me a rubber band to wrap around the ankle of my pants. This is the only accessory you need to ride a bike. If you’re tooling leisurely around the neighborhood for a little exercise, you don’t need a 200 dollar featherweight, polycarbonate air-cooled helmet. You look ridiculous trying to be aerodynamic at 4 miles per hour. We didn’t even wear helmets, in my day. If you fell and got hurt, you were an idiot. We laughed at you and you got back on and rode some more. When did people start smashing their heads on the ground?
And what’s with all the Italian writing on the shirts? I’m pretty sure that some of those words translated mean “douche bag” and “pretentious snot rag.”
I drive home from work thru a national park and it doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, the roads are full of these people. “It’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon and you’re riding your bike? You must have jobs or you wouldn’t be able to afford that expensive bike costume you’re wearing so I’ll just assume that you are so much cooler than I am and run you off the road into a ditch.”
Religious zealots –
I don’t expect that I will have to go too far here to make my point as you can turn on the news at any given moment and some ass wipe is blowing up a street full of innocent people who are just living their lives, not interested in being killed for God. We all despise those people, it’s a no-brainer. Why do people find it necessary to post chain letters for Jesus on Facebook? “Repost this if you love Jesus. Ignore it at your own peril.” What? Now I feel pressure to pass this on to my friends to avoid terminal damnation? What’s worse, hell or being blocked as a friend?
My loathing does not only apply only to the devout. Atheists have a belief system that is as much a religion as any, no matter what they may say. They, just as often as the fundamentalists, try to cram their side of the debate down our non-soliciting throats and it’s equally irritating. Why can’t people just believe what they want, no matter how stupid it is, and just shut the fuck up about it? You believe that Grimace from McDonalds is the New Age Messiah? Cool. I don’t care. Just leave me out of the proselytizing.
Meanwhile Pearl Jam and others are cancelling tour events in North Carolina because the people there voted to keep their public restrooms gender specific. Why does it seem that this debate is really about religion? Your hardcore fundies and God, apparently, don’t like women peeing in the men’s room. Frankly, having been in many a men’s rooms myself, I would rather use the chick bathroom. Women seem cleaner and they sit down to pee which eliminates sloshing through the soup of every man’s pee pooling around the base of the urinal station. You ladies need to be careful of which side you take in the transgender bathroom debate. All of the politics and the humanity of the whole thing aside, I’m pretty sure that a man who opts to wear women’s clothing and use the ladies room is still a man and will still pee all over the seat.
Women have nice public restrooms. If I happen to be walking by at the right time at just the right angle I often see a furnished and carpeted lounge area. Why do women have couches in their bathrooms? I make an effort to spend as little time as possible in a public men’s room and women have furniture? I don’t see the need to take a breather on the couch wallowing in the odor of someone else’s fresh dump but women maybe don’t mind so much. Men don’t have any entitlements in our cold tiled men’s rooms. Once in a while, if you’re lucky, you’ll have that jar with the metal lid, filled with some mysterious blue juice and cheap black combs. Like, yeah, why shouldn’t I feel safe combing my hair with those vermin infested things?
You can recognize one of these people who refuse to welcome urine on what was their once untarnished toilet seat by a number of traits, snake handling, blowing up of perceived infidels, rolling on the floor speaking in tongues, protesting soldier’s funerals and / or rallying support at a Trump demonstration. They would also be the ones punching black people for having a differing opinion, sporting a cheap baseball style hat proclaiming the benefits of one of the many truck manufacturers or that they are “retired and have gone fishing.”
Sports fans –
I love sports. I can give you a baseball player’s lifetime batting average from any age of the game within 5 points of the actual. Yet and still, I have never painted my face and refuse to wear a team jersey until somebody pays me for the advertising.
I’ve been an Indians fan my entire life. I don’t know how to root for another team. I have friends who were born and raised in Cleveland and are Yankee fans. I don’t understand that but what I hate more are the people who are so wrapped up in sports that they decorate the entirety of their home in Dallas Cowboy colors or morph their car to look like a Browns helmet.
Hipsters –
Everybody has problems with Hipsters. My particular beef with them revolves around them thinking they discovered every damn thing when, really, they’re just going back and grabbing things from the past, my past mostly.
Take this obsession they have with music, specifically how they listen to their music. Vinyl, as they call them, are really called, records. I grew up with vinyl records so I know. Hipsters are, for the most part, under the age of thirty and don’t remember how shitty records were. They scratched easy, got stuck and we large, heavy and cumbersome. When CD’s came out, the first thing I did was either sell or throw my records away. You know why I did this? Because they sucked. The sound of CD’s blew vinyl out of the water. I couldn’t even listen to records anymore because all I heard were irritating scratchy background sounds. CD’s ruined vinyl and justifiably so. Hipsters act like they discovered this vinyl shit when in reality all they did was just dig through my garbage.
I hate the term “craft beer.” Hipsters drink that shit. Where I come from, one doesn’t pay 15 dollars for a beer. My age group would call you a jackass for doing that but the hipster set thinks it’s cool to piss away money, literally. If you see the words “artisan” or “artesian” before any product get ready to be ripped off and / or stampeded by a group of Hipsters thinking they’ve found the next best thing to prop up their uncertain self-esteem in partaking.
I like to think that this whole Hipster craze is based in being anti-establishment. I get that if that’s the case, and applaud it. But going against the grain set by “the man” does not mean to be a giant sucker buying things that are inferior or pay 12 dollars for a jar of pickles that are holistically bottled by a guy with a beard and a criminal record because it make you look cool.
JP Shaver Says.... 