Luke Ma [blog.lukema.net]

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Posted by:
Luke

Things Wrong with the World

Posted at 10:33 AM on
February 06, 2004

Oh don't get me wrong here. The world is great, in a general I should be appreciative sense. It's also great in an "I'm a damn lucky guy with privileges" sense. And this also doesn't reflect my own sometimes bleak and stupid outlook towards my own sphere of life. This is just the little list of annoyances that has popped up in my mind repeatedly recently.

AOL Instant Messenger Ads - Yeah, pop up ads are bad. AIM doesn't have those. What do they have instead? Commercials that play sound at RANDOM FRIGGIN' TIMES WITHOUT WARNING. So you're sitting there, happily writing a paper and then the sounds of a car chase scenes scares the shit out of your. It's coming from your speakers. huh? Oh, it seems AIM has decided to play an ad. So you click the "pause" button because you don't like being scared the shit out of. And then the ad pops up. But there's no way of stopping the ad without clicking the pause button and you don't want to listen to the friggin' annoying ad now that it has scared the shit out of y...you see where I'm going? It's like saying you can either endure the pain of having your right leg sawed off by a rusty machete, or you can push a button and guillotine it straight off. What a choice! SCREW YOU AIM! I know I know. I should just use GAIM or somethin'. I'm a lazy bastard.

People trying to use things out of context or getting all uptight and anal about context - Now, I'm as anal and academically hoity toity (how do you spell that?) as the next professor wannabe. You cross me and I will question the hermenutical validity of your being, nevermind positivistically exploring the epistemology of your apparently teleological retardation. Don't make me get post-modernist and desconstructionist on yo' ass. But even that's within a context. I can't stand people being anal OUTSIDE of context though. For example, if somebody is being casual and uses a german word, don't tell them they're wrong by citing the german definition when they're using it IN ENGLISH!!! Which makes the original guy-with-a-prob wrong. "What?" "What ain't no country I heard of! They speak English in what?" "What..." "ENGLISH MUTHAFUCKA!!! DO YOU SPEAK IT?!?"

Sexual predators - this one is for you, Al.

Imposition of Morality/Ethics/Opinion/Whatever - Empirically, if you have something to back up your opinion and you state it as such, well, that's probably ok if you're stating it as a fact to prove. But if you have an opinion, a way you think things should be done, don't force it upon others. PLEASE. I'm guilty of this. I know. But I try not to be. Even if people piss me off or if I think there's a much better way of doing it, I try to tell them once my opinion and leave it at that. Even if I can't reason it out why people have their reasons, I try to just let it be. I'm perfectly fine if you disclaim your exhortations as such and but don't get righteous. Don't get "this is for your own good" and don't get defensive "I'm only trying to help, only stating an opinion" when and if a person gets annoyed or shrugs off your advice because for them to have done so, you were probably more forceful about your own "opinion" as your way or the highway than you thought.

But I'm an ungrateful and hypocritical bastard. I have ridiculous amounts of things to be thankful for and I'm lucky as all heck. What I criticize in others I'm quite likely guilty of in myself as well. Still, the little things can annoy me, when repeated ad inifinitum.

Update: Little things I'm thankful for, as an antidote to the above. Laundered clothes. IRONED clothes...hanging and sorted categorically in my closet. Tux jackets. Reversible belts. detachable rollerblades, Herbal Essences, iPod, cheap Spiegelau wine glasses, and the like.

Comments

Oh yeah, well at least nobody cut a whole in the side of you and put there hand in your stomach.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/304213.html

Posted by: Brandon Fuller at February 6, 2004 09:41 PM

Dear Lord! Poor cow! I mean...posthumous humiliation...

Posted by: Luke Ma at February 6, 2004 09:58 PM