THE TERMINALLY RUDE
Don’t you hate it when you go out of your way to be nice to someone and they turn around and, metaphorically speaking, shit all over you? Despite the tone of these rants, I do try my best to be polite and pleasant when I come into contact with the other beings sharing this planet (any extra-terrestrials, however, can go fuck themselves.)
I honestly see no reason to be rude to a complete stranger, at least not until he proves himself to be deserving of such treatment. Once that happens, though, he’ll have my undying enmity and scorn, and I will gleefully make him look like an ass in public if at all possible. Alas, these opportunities rarely seem to occur.
Let’s say you’re at a bookstore on a nice Saturday afternoon, just browsing for some new reading material. Now, I love bookstores. I find them relaxing and I enjoy wandering around the shelves waiting for something to jump out at me. But there are times when I’m looking for something specific and, inevitably, I encounter THAT GUY planted right in front of the shelf I need to check out. You know the guy I mean: the self-appointed Master of Bibliophiles who believes his vast knowledge of Star Trek novels gives him the right to squeeze his entire six hundred pound frame into the aisle and to greet anyone trying to get by with a withering sneer. I don’t mind waiting for others to finish their browsing, but this douche bag plans on reading the entire DS9: Odo Gets Laid volume while stinking up the aisle with his unwashed carcass, blinding passersby with the glare off his incompletely combed over bald spot. It just makes me want to slam the book shut on his ridiculously long soul-patch and twist it until he screams to the whole store that he is a giant, hairy cocksmoker in Reeboks. But I don’t because I don’t enjoy being hauled off to jail.
Drunk people in grocery stores also rate high on the rudeness scale. Apparently drunkenness induces hearing loss, because these butt strokes have to bellow from row to row in order to locate one another in such a complicated place. One guy has a case of Whiz Beer under an arm, another guy has an open bag of Mesquite Doritos and their female companion is pointing at the disgusted cashier and laughing for no apparent reason. You get in line behind them and the Doritos guy puts his hand on your shoulder and says, “Howudoin?Youhavegudnight? Wehavinggudnightheehoo.
Uhchrisimgonpuke.” Meanwhile, you’re thinking of crushing his skull with a frozen salmon.
I try to be more forgiving of irritating teenagers, because I know that someday soon the harsh reality of life on their own will replace the arrogant smirks on their faces with wild-eyed looks of sheer terror. I live for that. You can always tell, can’t you? Some twenty-year old kid walks by with his hair standing on end. “Look at that one. He just realized he has to work sixty hours a week just to pay the rent.” Another one trudges by dragging a two-year old boy with green Jello all over his face and a fully loaded diaper sagging to the ground behind him. “Hey Sparky, reality sucks, don’t it? Whoo, you better clean that up! Ha, ha! What a cute kid.”
Yes, I enjoy those rare moments of Cosmic Justice, like when the stereo-on-wheels blazes past me in a no-passing zone and then misses the sharp turn in the road a mile ahead, ending up with a broken axle and a wheel no one can find. I actually witnessed that one, and I laughed so hard I thought my lungs would collapse. Hell, I thought they should have considered themselves lucky. Their stereo was still working just fine, and that’s the important thing, after all.