I HATE! Assholes - Part Deux

I have a confession to make. I (gulp) wore my sunglasses on the subway last week. I know! I know! It's awful. But I had a really legit excuse for committing such an egregious hypocrisy. And you know that I wouldn't have worn sunglasses inside unless I had a really, really, really good excuse... I can only afford to look like that big of an asshole once or twice a year!

The excuse is as follows: I went to the dermatologist last week one day after work for a follow-up appointment. My first visit was rather tame - a consultation really - so I wasn't expecting anything too different the second time around. The doctor, apparently, had other plans and immediately went to work on my face. She wiped off all of my make up (with a towelette that was so saturated with alcohol that it could have been used as an anesthesia substitute) and then proceeded to poke and prod my face with some sort of crazy-looking metal tool that I initially thought to be a medieval instrument of torture.

To put it bluntly, I left the doctor's office looking like my face got stuck between a rock and a cheese grater. I had planned on reapplying 'my face' before I went back out in public, but the doctor had just blown up my spot by saying that the "large amount of make-up" I wear was probably the reason for my clogged pores, and even though I am somewhat vain, I'm not a glutton for punishment. So in lieu of the make-up, I searched my purse to try to find something that might help me to conceal my battle wounds. Save covering my entire face with a tissue, the best I could do was my (brand-new!) sunglasses. In MacGuyver-like fashion, I managed to create a disguise for myself using only the sunglasses and my hair, succeeding in almost completely concealing my identity (and the cheese-greater face). Brilliant!

Don't mind the lengthy transgression - on to the real point of this post. So here I am, walking the streets of New York at dusk idiotically wearing sunglasses as if I'm hiding from the paparazzi. I am already self-conscious enough at this point because I'm feeling super hypocritical, like a real douche. After all, I'm the one who always makes fun of those who do just what I was doing at that instant - wearing sunglasses despite the lack of sunlight. If I could have seen myself, I'm sure I would make fun of me.

Anyway, as I'm making my way to the subway, I begin to notice that people are staring at me, without even trying to hide it - just blatantly looking me up and down with expressions ranging from the stifled, cynical smirk to the completely unbridled sneer of disapproval. Let me make something clear to all the morons I encountered on the street that day: just because I am wearing sunglasses does not mean that I am blind and cannot see the way you are looking at me! Are you people retarded?!?! Correct me if I'm making assumptions here, but Ray-Ban Wayfarers usually aren't the type of glasses that might indicate that one is blind. While you may not be able to see my eyes, I can certainly still see yours AND that horribly judgemental expression written all over your face!!! My dark glasses do not obscure my view of you or any of the other people checking me out (sleazy businessman in cheap suit) or giving me undeserved dirty looks (overly made-up middle-aged woman carrying the wonky-eyed lap dog).

I'm the one wearing the sunglasses! I'm the one who should be secretly judging people! If you're going to overreact to me, my appearance, or the fact that I'm wearing sunglasses at dusk, at least demonstrate a little bit of decorum and try to hide your judgement! It's the only way to be :-)

P.S. I just found out that there is actually a song called Sunglasses at Night written and performed by a fellow named Corey Hart. He wears his sunglasses at night so he can "watch you weave and breath your story lines" and also so he can"keep track of visions" in his eyes. Hmmm... I'm not sure I approve.

I HATE! Birkenstocks

You have no idea how long this hatred goes back. My earliest memory of Birkenstocks is seeing my crazy aunt wearing them constantly - Summer, Winter, Autumn, and Spring. She always had Birkenstocks on - no matter the season or the weather. And perhaps, since this particular aunt of mine is a little granola-y and most certainly was a hippie earlier in her life, I began to develop a negative connotation toward Birks.

First of all, I want to clarify which particular style of Birkenstocks I am referring to here. I am keenly aware that Birkenstock makes many different styles of shoes, most of them I find unoffensive and many of which, my mom actually wears. I am referring to the original Bireknstock style that I have featured below.I hate these! And I will admit that the reasoning behind my hatred is a bit odd, but nevertheless, I am steadfast in my convictions. There is something about this particular style of shoe that seems dirty - maybe it's the brown suede the shoe is often made from. It just screams 'I attract dirt, foot sweat, toe jam, and anything else that I can pick up while walking around!' Ick! And there is something about how the Birkenstock displays the foot that totally grosses me out. It doesn't cover any of the toe - it displays the entire thing. Whole toe is not sexy - especially not hairy toe. And this brings me to my next point.

Men should never ever be wearing Birkenstocks! Unless you want to look like a 13th century Medieval peasant, please choose alternate footwear! I am not a huge proponent of sandals for men in general, but let it be known that the man in Birkenstocks gives all men in sandals a bad name. They're simply not acceptable footwear for the male specimen. Period. I will not argue this point. It is fact.

And, I was trying to be politically correct and not offend anyone, but frankly, the real reason I hate Birkenstocks is because they are hippie attire. The remind me of unwashed, white people with dreads, playing guitar and singing in green pastures. Maybe I'm just an asshole, but the hippie is generally not one whom i aspire to be like. There's just something about Birkenstocks that is so reminiscent of hippie-dom. And that grosses me out. Sorry.

I HATE! White People with Dreadlocks

So I can't believe I didn't think about this earlier - I really hate white people who wear their hair in dreads. And I'm going to get right to the point here and not dilly-dally around the root of the issue. Dreads on white people are really gross because the texture of white people's hair makes their hair look dirty more or less after one day of not washing it. That's the reality. The texture just does not accommodate this look. If you're white and you wear dreads, your hair will inevitably look dirty, greasy, and unkempt (I get that that's kind of the intention with dreadlocks, but white people hair looks particuarly bad when left unbrushed for 11 months.)

I, for one, could never wear dreads, even if I wanted to, because (let me give you an example) my hair will be dirty by the time I wake up in the morning even if I've washed it the night before. So just imagine what that would look like a million times over: pretty grim, isn't it? By the time my hair would even form the dreads (if it could even do that is debatable because my hair is so freaking thin), there would most definitely be animals or insects nesting there and/or an oil slick would have developed. It's really an unattractive concept.

And I am all for self-expression, etc., but I also can't help feeling that white people with dreads are trying to present an image of themselves as something that they're not. Disagree if you will, but most of the whities with dreads that I've met have all turned out to be HUGE posers. Maybe it's just those few who sully the good name for the rest of the white-dread-wearers; maybe not, but I am going to stand firm on my belief that white people should stay away from dreads at all cost. There's just something icky about it - both to look at and the general vibe that it gives off.

I HATE! Dirty Clean Dishes

When I moved into my very first apartment last summer, I specifically remember one of my roommates (we'll call her Coco) telling me on the sly that the other roommate (we'll call her Muffy) didn't know how to do dishes.' And I assumed that that meant that Muffy just never did them - that she was one of those people who would simply leave her dishes in the sink until someone else would get annoyed that the sink was filled with dirty dishes and do them on her behalf. While this would certainly have been annoying, I later found out that Coco meant that the Muffy actually did not know how to properly wash a dish.

I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that every single dish that I found in our cupboards (and that I did not wash myself) was dirty even though it was supposed to be clean. I don't know what to do! I wasn't going to re-wash all the dishes in the cabinent and I certainly did not feel like re-washing each dish before I went to use it.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but I was under the impression that washing a dish was a pretty simple concept. All you need to do is wet the dish, soap it up via sponge, Brillo pad, scrubbing brush, or whatever your dish-washing weapon of choice may be, scrub off all of the caked-on food, and then rinse under the faucet. Apparently this concept must not be as easy to handle as I had originally thought as I continued to reach into the cabinent and pull out bowls with caked on macaroni, plates sprinkled with green crud, and cups covered in water and soap stains.

First of all, this is gross and second of all, if you're going to wash a dish half-assed, you might as well not wash it at all because when food's been stuck to and dried on a dish for days on end, there's not much hope in getting it off.

Needless to say, I stopped eating at the apartment.

I HATE! Household Pets

Let me first clarify, I actually don't hate all household pets, or even all animals for that matter. Once upon a time (a time when I was much younger, much more naive, and much nicer), I was the proud owner of a turtle named MC Turtle, a guinea pig named Palmetto, and several (the count is probably closer to several hundred) goldfish. And I have a particular (and unexplicable) fondness for elephants.

My hatred is strictly aimed toward household dogs and cats. And, for once, I actually have strong cases as to why I depise them so. Besides the obvious downsides to cats and dogs - they smell bad when not cleaned, they cannot clean themselves, they shed, their fur is allergenic, they have bed breath, they will maul you to death simply because they are excited, they do not clean up after themselves, they crawl into bed with you uninvited, they scratch you in the face while you're sleeping, etc. - I have some very legitimate justifications for my displeasure with these two particular species. I feel like I must explain myself and clear the air in this public forum because every time I mention to anyone that I don't like dogs and/or cats, I am immediately attacked and called a cold heartless bitch. Just because I am not an animal lover does not make me a bad person. See explanations below.

Scaring Scenario One: When I was in elementary and middle school, I had a very close friend named...let's call her CP. I spent a lot of time at CP's house. CP's house, however, was a disaster. She had four dogs at one point, none of whom were ever completely house trained. I can't even tell you how many times we stumbled across one of CP's dog's misgivings on the living room carpet. Her dogs were rambunctious - attacking, jumping, and licking you all over whenever you walked in CP's front door - even if you had just been inside and thay had already given you the sniff-down. I think I may have even been knocked to the ground on a few occasions. These were not small dogs, mind you. The house was covered from top to bottom in dog hair. You couldn't wear dark colored clothing to her house - unless you wanted to walk out visibly coated in labrador hair. I know CP and her family washed and cleaned their dogs, but somehow, they always seemed to be dirty and smell bad. I recall specifically the dogs' disgusting breath and the trauma it reeked on my nostrils. The dogs also always seemed to have that gook in their eyes that they develop when they're sick. I'm talking always and that stuff REALLY grosses me out.

Scaring Scenario Two: There was also another experience that, I think, cemented my hatred of dogs: I dog-sat for one of my friends one summer for a few weeks and basically all I had to do was come into the house twice a day and walk and feed the two dogs. Simple, right? I don't know what I did to those dogs, but literally everytime I came in to feed and walk them, there would be a HUGE puddle of diarea in the middle of the kitchen floor. And it always smelled like death. I'm talking really really horrible. I don't want to get to intricate with the description because I might loose my lunch, but it was runny and emitted the most foul smell I have ever smelled. And just imagine, I had to clean this shit (literally) up EVERY DAY.

Obviously these were very traumatic experiences for me and I maintain that this is what is directly repsonsible for my hatred of dogs.

Scaring Scenario Three: Cats, on the other hand, I am allergic to, so that is the main reason I don't like them. When I'm around cats, my eyes become bloodshot and begin to water, my throat and ears itch, and I sneeze uncontrollably. Attractive, I know.

Scaring Scenario Four: Also, I house-sat one summer for a couple who had a cat (yes, obviously a dumb idea when I'm allergic to cats and obviously something I should never agree to do based on prior experiences, I know!) and over the course of the summer, the house developed an incredibly horrible odor. I could never figure out what was causing it, and I looked up and down and inside and out for the cause of the smell. But when I couldn't locate the origin of the smell, I just automatically assumed it was the cat. That also helped to drop cats down to the bottom of my list.

Scaring Scenario Five: Finally, I once slept over at a friend's house who had just acquired a kitten. The kitten was cute in every way. I had no complaints, that is, until I woke up the next morning to find that my face had been slashed by the cat during the night. Like I literally looked like a cat had attacked my face in the middle of the night. It was not only painful, but embarrassing as well.

So I think this is all the explanation I need to give as to why I am not an animal fan. Totally legit, right?

I HATE! Newspaper Hands

I guess this is something that no one can really control, unless the world's newspaper printers want to rethink the way they've been printing newspapers for hundreds of years. And while I can accept that fact that I may never see the change I so desire, I still do sincerely hate the ink residue that comes off on your hands as you leaf-through and read a newspaper.

It never matters what paper you're reading, when you finish leafing through your chosen periodical, you inevitably find that your hands are covered in a subtle, yet unmistakably annoying newspaper ink-film. This is a phenomenon that I have come to call "Newspaper Hands."

You can't wipe the ink-film off. It will inevitably stain your white shirt. It will leave a black mark on your face. (One that you will probably not even realize you made when you went to rub your eyes or scratch your nose and will remain there until someone is kind enough to tell you it's there. Is it obvious that I've walked around for hours with black smudges on my face and no one's bothered to tell me? I have - and it's embarrassing. Why wouldn't you tell a person something like that? Come on!? But that's an entirely different sitaution that should and probably will have it's own post.) Anyway...back on track - "Newspaper Hands" makes your hands feel dirty and gross - like you can't do anything with your hands until you've washed or Purelled them. It's like your paralyzed!

As annoying as it may be, this is one of the few pet peeves that I have been forced to come to terms with; I understand that printers will never stop using the materials they've been using since this country was founded (isn't the printing press one of the most revered colonial inventions or something like that?), but I do wish that every paper came attached with pair of gloves you could put on before reading - just like a at-home hair coloring kit. Think about it New York Times! I'd appreciate you so much more!