Posts tagged with "social commentary"

Don't Be Brash (Cause Your Friends Will Suck, Just Like You)

When the char­ac­ter of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.

—Japanese Proverb

Ever meet some­one whose com­pa­ny was ques­tion­able at best, and think, “Why does this per­son hang out with these peo­ple?”

One may imme­di­ate­ly think of the “friends” in ques­tion, peo­ple who prove to be stu­pid, super­fi­cial, unpleas­ant at best. Ultimately, how­ev­er, the truth lies in the key per­son who keeps such com­pa­ny. The apho­risms have nev­er been more true.

In the case of ques­tion­able com­pa­ny, the answer is atten­tion. A per­son with a mot­ley crew of friends, each one unlike the next, and each one con­sis­tent in their lack of social skills, is most like­ly a per­son who is after atten­tion.

The rea­sons for this are as plen­ti­ful as they are var­ied. Some are only com­fort­able when they are around oth­ers. Others enjoy the feel­ing of being a per­son who knows every­one. And some are so sub­con­scious­ly inse­cure as to need such com­pa­ny to believe they’re of some val­ue. So, to under­stand the seem­ing­ly eclec­tic taste in peo­ple of the key per­son, one must look to his or her com­pa­ny.

And often that proves to be more reveal­ing than any­thing else.

This Is Where My Tax Goes

A tongue-in-cheek bill was passed here recent­ly which says that any­one wear­ing a Leafs jer­sey at a Sens game will be asked to donate to the local food bank. The city was orig­i­nal­ly dis­cussing a com­plete ban on Leafs jer­seys at the games, but some­one must have real­ized how idi­ot­ic that would have been. Supposedly, the bill was passed to show that the city is 100% behind their local team, although it was more to curb the num­ber of Leaf fans, which dwarf the num­ber of Sens fans, at the Corel Centre.

I think the entire idea is in poor taste and com­plete­ly unsports­man­like. If some­thing like this must be done, then I whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port the fact that a char­i­ty is being ben­e­fit­ed. However, putting a con­strain on the sup­port­ers of the oppos­ing team is as imma­ture as boo­ing them. Imagine this being done at a lit­tle league game, where the par­ents wear­ing the jer­sey of their kids teams are asked to donate mon­ey to the league. I believe that one should nev­er, ever, do any­thing neg­a­tive towards an oppos­ing team, no mat­ter what the oppos­ing may be doing. The only hock­ey that I fol­low is the Leafs-Sens rival­ry, and even though I’m a Leafs fan, I don’t go around say­ing that the Sens suck (and shame on the Leafs fans who do), I just say “GO LEAFS”. Which brings me to my next point, where shirts are on dis­play at the front of stores here, sim­ply say­ing in a large font, “LEAFS SUCK”. Do the Senators con­done this? Do peo­ple think that the Sens would be hap­py that peo­ple are walk­ing around with these child­ish shirts? Have the Ottawa fans become so inse­cure about their team that they have to lash out like this?

Are my tax dol­lars going to peo­ple who sit around and come up with shit like this “char­i­ty bill”?

The Fault of Misunderstanding

There’s a rid­dle that goes:

Two chim­ney sweep­ers are work­ing in a chim­ney when one los­es his foot­ing and caus­es both to fall into the fire­place. One ends up with a black, sooty face, while the oth­er is lucky and stays clean. Both look at each oth­er in aston­ish­ment after the sur­pris­ing fall. The one with the clean face goes to the bath­room to wash his face, while the oth­er con­tin­ues work­ing with his dark­ened com­plex­ion. Logically explain the actions of the two sweep­ers.

The answer is sim­ple. The one with the dirty face sees the one with the clean face, and assumes that his face is clean as well. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face, assumes the oppo­site, and wash­es up.

And even though I know the answer to the rid­dle, some­times I for­get that such con­fu­sion exists. For exam­ple, if I had a car, I’d be giv­ing peo­ple rides to Tremblent. And since I’d be going there myself, I would­n’t ask peo­ple for gas mon­ey. Other peo­ple, how­ev­er, see the car ride as part of the cost of going there, and will plan on split­ting the cost of gas when orga­niz­ing the trip. Both ideals are fine, but I pre­fer to not ask peo­ple for mon­ey if I’m not going out of my way to do some­thing.

And, being the igno­rant idiot that I am, I will some­times for­get that oth­ers are not like me, that oth­ers assume that gas mon­ey will be split. Perhaps it can be said that I’m as much at fault as oth­ers who assume the oppo­site, but that does­n’t real­ly mat­ter to me. The best solu­tion, in such cas­es, is that an under­stand­ing be reached when things are planned.

An exam­ple like this, which has been tak­en from per­son­al expe­ri­ence, can be relat­ed so many oth­er things in life. That just means that I need to work hard­er at being con­sid­er­ate of how oth­ers think.

Because some would rather be angry than under­stand­ing.

Double Dipper

So here I am, stand­ing at a table in the meet­ing room with my two slices of meat lovers, one slice of assort­ed, a bot­tle of Coke, and my Pizza Pizza gar­lic dip­ping sauce. I’m talk­ing to some­one, and my dip­ping sauce is on the table, since I always save it for the crust. This ran­dom guy walks by the table, sees my sauce, and dips his slice in it. Not only that, but he DOUBLE DIPS IT.

I had to stop for a few moments to under­stand what had just hap­pened. I was com­plete­ly tak­en aback, about how some­one could just do some­thing like that. Did he think that there was some sort of com­mu­nal sauce or some­thing? WHO THE FUCK DOES SOMETHING LIKE THAT?

There are few­er things more inti­mate than the dip­ping sauce. Sharing dip­ping sauce is as inti­mate as shar­ing bod­i­ly flu­ids, and this man, this black-beard­ed, incon­sid­er­ate man, just stuck his slice in my sauce.

He might as well have slapped his dick on my fore­head.

Double Nervousness

It’s fun­ny to be ner­vous about talk­ing to some­one, and then real­ize that they’re just as ner­vous when the time final­ly arrives. The dou­ble ner­vous­ness makes for some awk­ward paus­es.

I had the chance to wit­ness (as opposed to being involved in) such a thing once on the bus. A guy and a girl, who must have been in their ear­ly 20’s and both rather obvi­ous­ly attract­ed to each oth­er, sat in adja­cent seats sep­a­rat­ed by the aisle. I could just hear the thought process­es going on in their heads as pause time seemed to stretch out towards infin­i­ty. Every so often, they would turn to each oth­er and say some­thing. Of course, they’d blurt out things at the same time and strug­gle to see who would get to talk first, result­ing in fur­ther awk­ward­ness.

I think that the key to rec­og­niz­ing this kind of ner­vous­ness is all in lis­ten­ing to what’s not being said.