I’m working on being a calmer person. This is my constant goal, I am always working on it to varying degrees of success depending on the month. Right now, I’m working on not judging people, on understanding that more often than not, there is quite a bit more to the situation than I can see.
Of course, being an NPR junkie, they rewarded me (push the button/get the peanut) in my quest by playing a commentary by Andrei Codrescu, also published here.
This was it, this is exactly what I am trying to achieve. Mostly it works fine, I rarely get angry at parents with crying kids on airplanes, but I think that the people who do get angry at the parent are gigantic dicks. So it works like halfway, I don’t judge the parents, but I do judge the crabby people (I just can’t stop believing they are dicks). I don’t judge people for their weight, lord knows I understand just how hard it is to lose weight, but I think the people who are all smug about their ‘healthy’ lifestyles are…dicks. Again, I need to work on this. As an atheist, I try to be understanding of all religions and people’s levels of faith, but I think hardnosed atheists who like to think they’re all smart for their lack of belief are a great big bunch of dicks (including Richard Dawkins, I’m sorry, I know, but still, he’s such a dick about it).
So, my goal now is not to be understanding of the underdog, I think i’m doing okay there. I need to be less judgemental of the major dicks. That’s my struggle, do not judge the person who says “god, if they would just discipline their kid it wouldn’t be screaming” or “why don’t you try a little self control on the cheetohs” or “having people believe there is a pink unicorn in my garage doesn’t make the pink unicorn real” (SHUT UP). I will be more calm about these people, I will understand that every point of view is valuable, even if I do not agree.
However, that chick at Hot Plate that was begging her mom for a car (“but i’m almost 19″…”it will be an incentive to keep my grades up”…”it would make it really convenient for me to go to Walgreens when I need something”) is just not getting a pass from me, sorry. If you’re ‘almost 19’ then have some fucking responsibility and get a job. Actually, that’s kind of what her mom was telling her anyway.

My sister had a minor alien removed from her toe today so I decided to pop off work early and take tomorrow off to chill with her (harass her in her weakened state). We were watching tv and chilling when I started to get very upset. I haven’t really watched tv for about 4 years now, I don’t have cable and I don’t have any sort of tv signal. TV just takes up too much time. Anyway, we’re watching tv and the ads are just really upsetting.
Now, I imagine that ads haven’t changed much since I stopped watching tv so I think it’s a mattered of losing that thick cultural scab I must have had. I just could not believe how many products were being pushed to replace perfectly good and functional products. A regular mop and bucket has served our kitchen floors fine for generations (well, not my kitchen floor, I don’t really mop, but that’s another story) but now you MUST purchase a special floor cleaning system with disposable pads and special cartridges filled with cleaning solution that I imagine are also disposable. So now you have to replace the mop head every time you mop and you have to keep buying special cartridges of stuff.
Then there were the individually wrapped prunes. INDIVIDUALLY. WRAPPED. PRUNES. They were doing one of those fakey bits where they were offering up these prunes and people were commenting on how amazingly nice it was that the prunes weren’t stuck together. Of all the problems the human species has faced, I am so glad they decided to solve the problem of prunes sticking together! I can sleep better knowing that moist, delicious prunes are staying seperated AND we’ve finally (FINALLY) found a use for the plastics industry, because god knows they were having some trouble convincing us we needed to use plastic for something.
And of course I need a new car, special moon soap, 4 to 6 different anti-aging creams and softer toilet paper. It’s amazing how different things look when you walk away and then come back.