Rants – Sure, Why Not?

Holiday Whining

December 14, 2014

People complain way too much about this time of year. I do too, I suppose. Complaining about complaining is especially annoying. But, fuck it, I’m doing it anyway. 😛

So here are some responses to all the bullcrap you people keep bitching about this season.

“Jesus is the reason for the season!”
Shove a nativity set up your ass.

“Everything about Christmas is stolen from pagans!”
Eat the above-mentioned nativity set.

“It’s too early for Christmas music/decorations! It’s only December 20!”
Consider a diet consisting solely of poinsettia petals.

“Christmas is so commercial!”
Yet you’re making an awful lot of money saying exactly that in Christmas specials and songs.

“Jesus was definitely not born on December 25!”
And you should definitely not have been born at all.

“Why don’t stores say ‘Merry Christmas’ anymore? Why?”
There’s almost half a gallon left of last year’s egg nog. Why don’t you finish it off?

“I don’t call it Christmas. I call it Yule.”
I wish “you’ll” shut the hell up and die.

“Remember what Christmas is all about.”
For you, I hope it involves choking on a candy cane.

“I heard three seconds of ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ while at the store! I’m so sick of Christmas music!”
Maybe you should be tied down and forced to listen to FOUR seconds of it.

“If there is a Christmas tree here, there should be a menorah, too! Why isn’t there a menorah?”
I hope some of that latke grease flies up and hits you in the eye.

“Why is there a menorah here? Why are we catering to the Jews?”
I hope the one who got latke grease in the eye runs you over while driving around blindly.

“Christmas is about family, not presents and stuff!”
I hope your family realizes you’re an asshat and abandons you in a snow drift this year. Without a coat or anything because that’s just “stuff”.

“I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas!”
Neither did I. Which was for you to get impaled on a holly branch.

So apparently a homeless family of five sought shelter from the cold weather with the Salvation Army. Four of them were welcome, namely both parents, their 16-year-old daughter, and their 5-year-old son. The fifth, their 15-year-old son, was not welcome.

According to the guy’s father:

“They said he’s too old to stay on the women’s side, because of the women running around in their pajamas and they said he’s too young to stay on the men’s side in case some pervert wants to do whatever,” Lejeune said.

So he’s too dangerous to be with the women, while the men are too dangerous to him for him to be with them. Oh, God, it’s like wolf-sheep-watermelon riddle!

But seriously… what?! The Reason article calls it pedophile panic, but it’s quite a bit more than that. It’s yet another manifestation of the idea that teens equal trouble, both for themselves and for others. They are a danger to everyone, and everything is a danger to them. The curious ageist paradox that always seems to yield fewer rights for teens, who are never allowed a word in edgewise.

And it’s more ephebiphobic paranoia. “Help! It’s a teen! Is it a child? Is it an adult? Oh, Lord, I just don’t know. Let’s just shove it out of sight and not have to worry our heads with this freaky age-hybrid.”

The result? A young guy, whose only crime was existing and happening to be part of a family that fell on hard times, is forced to stay out in the cold, as is his family.
Continue reading “No Salvation for Male Teens”

You’re a Douchebag

December 11, 2012

So let’s say you’re a parent of a – gasp! – teenager.

And this adolescent offspring of yours – gasp!- has opinions.

This fact somehow makes life just so awful for you. That who was once a helpless baby totally dependent on you is now behaving more independently of you. Probably even gets angry sometimes.

And you just get so frustrated. And you must vent to other parents of teens. And then come the gems. Whether it’s how lazy they are or how disobedient they are or the ever popular “they think they know everything!”

Yeah…

You’re a douchebag.

Okay, okay, parenting is hard. You want to share your frustrations with others who are likely going through the same or who have been at least sufficiently conditioned to sympathize with you.

Doesn’t matter. You’re a piece of shit.

You’re insulting not only your own children but other people who happen to be their same age. And why? So you can look “cool” in front of other adults. Oh, aren’t you so witty and clever? You’re taking shots at people over whom you have total legal and economic control. My, you’re so brave, you should get a medal!

And for that, you are a douchebag. Not enough people tell you this, but you need to hear it. That makes you a terrible person. Your “ugh! teenagers!” whining is significantly less mature than you insist these teenagers are. You completely disregard their personhood and basic right and need to be respected. You trivialize everything about them and make it all about you. Therefore, you are a piece of shit douchebag.

Have a nice day.

Tanner Upstaged

August 13, 2012

Now for a feminine pubescent edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Anyone who says anything along the lines of “Girls today are starting puberty at younger ages!” And goes on to treat it like some utter catastrophe. A serious problem for today’s kids. Something we must absolutely do something about to protect little girl innocence! Eeeek!

*facepalm* *sigh*

Oh, concern trolling, such a frequent opponent to youth rights feminism!

Okay, time for some unpacking of bullshit.

1. Not only is the claim that the age of female puberty is steadily getting younger questionable, but those shrieking about this “problem” often either don’t specify ages or the ages they do specify, usually around 10 or 11, are still within the normal range of puberty (ages 8 to 16). And even so, they’re usually talking about onset, which is the development of breasts (which doesn’t exactly happen overnight), as opposed to first period, which is often a couple years later. Breasts budding at 10 or 11 means the period shows up around 12 or 13, which is totally fucking normal! And even the ones who get their periods at 10 or 11 might be earlier than average but it’s not abnormal, and for every one of them, there are girls who start it at 14 or 15.
Continue reading “Tanner Upstaged”

Mmmm, Candy Hearts 7

February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine’s Day!

And now, for a candy munching, romance crunching edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

There’s no such thing as the “friend zone”!

It’s called… she’s just not into you romantically/sexually, but you can’t accept that, so you instead misogynistically pathologize it.

It’s the idea that a girl who to chooses to remain platonic friends with a guy has put him in the supposedly dreaded “friend zone”, but he doesn’t want to be her friend because he wants to be her boyfriend, and he hates it oh so much when she dates some other guy or expresses dissatisfaction with said other guy or with prospective romantic partners in general, because how dare she say that when she turned him down!

Come off it. Seriously, girls, just like guys, are just into someone that way right now or not. It’s not more complicated than that. There are no special “zones”. Nor is there something about being someone’s friend that kills the possibility of it being something else later (though that of course depends on the people involved).

We’ve all heard it. The self-proclaimed “nice guy” can’t understand why a girl he’s interested in isn’t interested in him. So instead of just, you know, accepting that it’s not going to happen and moving on with his life, he assumes she’s the one who has some “female problem” and that’s the real reason she’s not into him. Because why else would she turn down such a Nice Guy like you?

But wait, there’s more!
Continue reading “Mmmm, Candy Hearts 7”

Participating in Life

December 11, 2011

Now for a generational, sneering edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

I’m really getting sick of the same canned “complaint” about the younger generation, whether my own or ones after or even a little before, that we expect life to be fair all the time. This is blamed on school and maybe parents that supposedly give out awards just for participating, hoping to squash competition in order to prevent anyone from “feeling bad”. Or occasionally blamed on pop culture telling stories implying nothing seriously bad will ever happen to you.

And that all these messages have supposedly spoiled us and made us think life is perfect or that we’re good at things even when we’re not.

Speaking as someone whose schools and teams and such did have participation awards…

Bull-fucking-shit.

How stupid do you think we are?
Continue reading “Participating in Life”

Driving Is Not Probable Cause

August 19, 2011

Drunk drivers are fucking idiots. The fact that often the penalties for drunk driving are milder than those for underage drinking is absolutely boggling. If you’re going somewhere to drink, have a non-drinker friend drive you. Take public transit (though this is often tough, especially if in DC, where everything shuts down for the night earlier than convenient for late night drinkers). Stay where you’re going overnight if possible. Or at least allow a decent amount of time to pass between your last drink and when you’d be driving again.

All that said…

Sobriety checkpoints?! Seriously?!

I was driving back from the NYRA Annual Meeting a couple weeks ago on Wisconsin Ave, when way ahead I see a lot of flashing police lights. At first I figured maybe a huge accident or something weird going on. Then I pass some signs lit up by flares that said “Prepare to Stop. Sobriety Check Point.”

Oh, HELL no! So I turned right around and went a different direction.

Checkpoints?! What is this, fucking Israel?!
Continue reading “Driving Is Not Probable Cause”

No Sugar for Students

April 6, 2011

Dear Overzealous Anti-Sugar School Official,

Awww, isn’t that cute? You hear that sugar is evil and want to keep kids away from it. You’ll go to any ridiculous lengths to keep them from buying it themselves!

What’s this? You soooo badly don’t want students drinking anything other than water ever that you’ll bully stores into not selling anything to them? Stores that, I might add, have no connection to your school whatsoever? Oh, well, isn’t that just lovely. I mean, that’s totally justified seeing as the students aren’t people or anything and as their principal, I believe they are officially your own property! Goodness, why stop at dictating food and drink choices? But I digress.

Or, wait a minute. That’s not right. I’d say that students are PEOPLE. And as real individual people, they belong only to themselves. You aren’t even their parent. All you do is act as administrator of the place they’re forced to spend several hours of their day whether they like it or not. Does that make them constitute your property? And doesn’t the idea I even have to ask that question raise concerns over whether you should be teaching or even being near any children ever?

So sugar is just sooooo bad for children that it’s abuse if an adult were to allow a grain of it to touch the child’s lips. Is that what you believe? No, moron, I’ll tell you what’s abuse. The abuse here is dictating the living shit out of every little thing a child does, denying her the choice of what food and drink she consumes, and preventing her from exercising even the tiniest bit of economic autonomy just to buy a goddamn bottle of juice if she wants it!

In short, go die in a fire. Or at least stay away from kids. You’re a thousand times worse for them than sugar ever could be.

Wishing You Great Pain,

Katrina

Kids Aren’t Any Fatter Than Your Head

June 21, 2010

Now for tubby, chubby edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

I’m so fucking sick of hearing about childhood obesity everywhere I look. It’s all “oh noes, kids are fat, kids are unhealthy, aaahhh!”

Alright, some of them might be above a healthy weight. So what do you do about it? Maybe they go play in the park a little longer. Maybe they eat some healthier foods. In any case, maybe the adults so involved with these kids’ lives should give the kids healthier options if they aren’t already. Maybe help them (and set an example by doing it themselves) develop healthier habits in general.

Of course, since when do adults actually take personal responsibility for helping young people do better? In ways other than finger pointing and berating the youth, that is. That’s right, they don’t, so they blame everything else they can. So the blame gets put on what mascots fast food chains are using or even, stupidly enough, whether the cartoons they’re watching depict fat characters! (Not to mention the slimming down of Santas I mentioned a couple years ago.)
Continue reading “Kids Aren’t Any Fatter Than Your Head”

Headlights

January 8, 2010

A little message to fellow motorists out there. You know those two bright things on the very front of cars? Those are called headlights. Turn them on.

Oh, what, you think because you can see the road pretty well you don’t need to turn them on? If it’s a bright sunny day, sure. Oh, but you think that even though it’s dawn or dusk and it’s not very light out, you can still see the road alright? Maybe so. Oh, you can still see the road alright even though it’s overcast? Perhaps you can.

Just one problem. Headlights exist for two reasons. Sure, you may figure you don’t have to be bothered to turn them on if magnificent you can see the road. But you still need them on, because, what you fail to comprehend… nobody else can see YOU!

So don’t bitch if someone from the other direction making a left turn in front of you may do it without leaving you ample room. Because, chances are, that driver did not even see you approaching! You’re lucky it was only a close-call, dumbass. And the myriad of other situations on the road where it’s helpful for the preservation of one’s life to be able to, you know, see the other cars. If I get into an accident because I can’t see one of you assholes trying to preserve your headlights or whatever, I’m going to punch you in the face. And, hey, I just might find a blunt object and break your precious headlights!

So turn on the headlights, jerkass!