Posts tagged with "social commentary"

The Modern Grushnitsky

Let’s see…what’s on the hate plate today?

I hate it when peo­ple, sequa­cious, super­fi­cial, pre­ten­tious, igno­rant peo­ple express false emo­tions. I hate it when peo­ple feign the extent to which their emo­tions take over them, for what­ev­er rea­son. This is all ESPECIALLY true when the per­son hap­pens to be my age or old­er.

I sup­pose I’m over­sen­si­tive to things like this. I see fake emo­tions almost as a mock­ery of any true ones that I have. I hold my emo­tions as an impor­tant part of my life, and try to expe­ri­ence each one with grav­i­ty and appre­cia­tive­ness. It’s rare that I can be affect­ed by things so much that my emo­tions take over me, so I don’t take hap­pi­ness or sad­ness light­ly, espe­cial­ly when some­one else pre­tends to expe­ri­ence them. I’ve lived too long as an unfeel­ing being, as some­one who cared for noth­ing, to have some idiot pre­tend to appre­ci­ate what has become an essen­tial part of my life.

Some peo­ple nev­er grow up.

And On It Goes

Is it just me, or are beer com­mer­cials becom­ing more and more insult­ing? Every oth­er beer ad I see nowa­days says noth­ing about the beer itself, but has some images tar­get­ed at a spe­cif­ic mar­ket. For exam­ple, there’s the Labatt Blue “Cheers. To Friends” cam­paign, with it’s enter­tain­ing but point­less Jackass exploits. This hap­pens to be one of the bet­ter series of ads (along with the Alexander Keith’s “Spilly Talker” series), which is not only well done, but does­n’t only show attrac­tive women.

Other com­mer­cials, such as the one telling us that “guys can con­cen­trate on things oth­er than hock­ey” while show­ing a bar full of men star­ing at a female bar­tender, com­plete­ly piss me the FUCK off. Why the fuck would some­one show some­thing like that? Do they expect guys to say, “Yeah, that’s true!! Ha ha!”, give each oth­er a high-five, run to the beer store and buy that brand?

Or how about the “Less is more” series, with some mild­ly amus­ing sit­u­a­tions involv­ing peo­ple wear­ing clothes that don’t fit, due to two work­ers fab­ric com­pa­ny try­ing to save costs on mate­ri­als? The “punch­line” to these com­mer­cials is a woman wear­ing a tiny tube top walk­ing into a bar (the size being due to the sav­ing of fab­ric, no less), the two work­ers real­iz­ing that they’ve done the right thing, and as a result, are able to dance with the woman. The list goes on and on.

What the fuck are these com­mer­cials try­ing to say? That guys are so base as to be swayed by pret­ty colours and images? That we would choose a shit­ty tast­ing beer based on the women or humour in the com­mer­cial? Why would­n’t you just describe the beer and the char­ac­ter­is­tics, so that peo­ple who like pale brews can know about what makes a brand unique? At least say some­thing about how good the beer tastes, instead of try­ing to tell me about how women will have sex with me if I drink a cer­tain brand.

Jesus fuck­ing Christ.

Don't Look

The idea that social pea­cock­ing occurs sea­son­al­ly has recent­ly been brought up. My friend and I both agreed that win­ter is the time for males to wear their nicer, thick­er clothes in order to empha­size their shoul­ders or face or even class. Summer, on the oth­er hand, is the time females show skin and curves. Thus, appeal becomes a sea­son­al­ly based idea. Both sex­es, fol­low­ing evo­lu­tion­ary instincts, are attract­ed to fig­ures and faces.

Another thing to con­sid­er is the fact that girls are com­mon­ly born with the appeal­ing curvy shape, where­as guys are born with­out strong mus­cu­lar def­i­n­i­tion. This caus­es the empha­sis of the male appeal to lie strong­ly on the face, and reveal­ing clothes become less impor­tant.

On cruis­ing the sum­mer streets, my friend told me that he hoped girls have as hard a time keep­ing their eyes straight dur­ing the win­ter as guys do in the sum­mer, assum­ing that the above is true. I real­ized that what I find appeal­ing is more com­mon in the win­ter, which is quite the oppo­site of the believed norm. I’m more of a face per­son than any­thing, and a nice turtle­neck, suit, or drag­ging skirt makes me notice some­one of the oppo­site sex more than tank tops or tight jeans.

I’m rarely one who is caught check­ing some­one out since I don’t real­ly care enough to become fix­at­ed on boo­bies. Darren tells me that he com­mon­ly notices oth­er guys star­ing at the racy lit­tle blond walk­ing by, but just as before, it’s not some­thing that I notice. We both agreed that the worst case is catch­ing old men tilt­ing their heads for an ass-check. How ter­ri­ble would it be to find out that one’s grand­fa­ther is an ass man?

It makes me won­der whether girls also leer at guys in the same dis­gust­ing fash­ion or maybe they are much more sub­tle. Perhaps some girls do have a hard time in the win­ter.

I’m sure that guys would like to know.

Music On The Bus, Living With Nick, Infernal Affairs

Whenever I ride the bus, I lis­ten to my music at a vol­ume which drowns out any out­side noise. This is not only due to the fact that the bus­es here are obnox­ious­ly loud, but the fact that I can’t stand lis­ten­ing to the insipid con­ver­sa­tions going on around me as well. I’d rather not lis­ten to you hit­ting on that girl or how fun­ny you think you are. I don’t want to hear about your opin­ions on The Latest Movie or how rude that cus­tomer was at work or how many times you decide to add “like” in a sen­tence. I sup­pose that it’s no one is real­ly at fault, since the roar­ing engines in each bus pre­vent con­ver­sa­tions at a nor­mal vol­ume. I can only hope that I don’t annoy oth­er peo­ple as much as they annoy me if I’m trav­el­ing with a friend.

Nick has been accept­ed on the lease and will be mov­ing in at the begin­ning of August.

I watched Infernal Affairs and enjoyed it. I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked the cool colours of the film, which con­trasts with how Hong Kong is nor­mal­ly por­trayed in the movies. Anthony Wong is great as the super­in­ten­dent, but all the oth­er guys look too good to be cops.

I Don't Dance

Home at last, with time enough to write. Still busy, errands, etc.

I took a short walk before going home by bus from down­town. The bars and clubs are still busy from the big game, and the streets were over­flow­ing with crush­es of short-sleeved, tight-fit­ting peo­ple. I walked by the canal, and it was beau­ti­ful­ly lit on one side from street lamps, com­plete with spher­i­cal fix­tures.

A few peo­ple tried to get me to go out, but my fatigue would have pre­vent­ed me from hav­ing a good time. One of the peo­ple was fair­ly adamant in hav­ing me at the club. As flat­ter­ing as it was, I quick­ly grew tired of being harassed. On the oth­er hand, anoth­er per­son asked, and it was the first time that I did­n’t feel both­ered about being asked to go out. I think the dis­tinc­tion lies in the fact that the for­mer per­son gave off the impres­sion that she knew bet­ter than me about how good a time I would have (which is how I find I’m usu­al­ly asked out), where­as the lat­ter seemed more dis­ap­point­ed than any­thing that I could­n’t go.