Nothing makes me angrier. It’s more contrived than the late Phil Spector’s courtroom hairdo. It’s just as artificial as the Kashmir border dispute (mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a map, land me some land, patch me a patch). It’s processed like a tight package of vacuum-sealed baloney, pronounced the right way, and not as if it’s a large city in the north of Italy. There are no silent gs where I come from – the Garden State. And no, I don’t say gnat. I say “fly.”
I get so mad sometimes I can’t help it. I read about these supposedly incensed individuals railing against straws or potholes. But do they care about either as deeply as I do? I doubt it. Have they ever cried over a semi-frozen root beer float, incapable of digging past the midpoint with their flimsy biodegradable straw? Sure, they can use a spoon, but at that point, why not just order ice cream? Have they ever ventured into a pothole larger than most studio apartments and wondered – with a few rugs and some better lighting, that a person could actually lay down roots there? Understanding, as I did, that root cellars in the olden days weren’t metaphors, but places where bulbs and rebellious youths were left to grow and prosper.
I wonder what they are mad about. It’s probably nothing. They follow the trends. The fads. The breeze. Watching as their town weathervane creaks in the direction of a new target. The difference is that I am actually passionate about things that allegedly don’t matter. I hate when people can’t park between the painted lines in a supermarket lot. I don’t understand why waiters introduce themselves but never reveal their last name, when that’s all that matters. Should you want to report them or recommend them, their full name is necessary. It’s why I always ask for some ID before the ritual reading of the specials. When someone tells me they read a book, only for me to discover they merely listened to an audiobook during their glacial commute, I feel betrayed. I suddenly understand what George Washington must’ve felt like when he found out that Benedict Arnold was dancing with another partner. That isn’t reading any more than staring at a buffet is eating - regardless of how much drool is produced.
Fake outrage makes my blood boil. It gets me riled up. Sweating to the point of changing my shirt. I end up showering three, sometimes four times a day, just to cope. Lastly, isn’t it outrageous with all the poor additions to the Oxford English Dictionary in recent years, that “nutrageous” remains on the outside looking in? Is it the British diet (or dentists) that doomed this word from the start? We could’ve used it last year, to describe a nutty, yet outrageous twelve months. I suppose candy bars aren’t considered intellectual enough for them.
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