Your Hot Cup of Rant

But first: Memo to people spamming the comments sections: not that I expect this to stop you, but NO ONE SEES THOSE COMMENTS BUT ME, AND MY PENIS IS BIG ENOUGH, THANKS.

Ahem. Moving on.

Can we please stop with the unnecessary bolstering of the potential ego of others with utterly inaccurate statements that serve to do nothing more than give people artificially inflated perceptions of themselves? I know we as a society are used to doing this sort of thing, but really, there’s no point to it; at best, we’re telling these people filthy lies that serve only to let them down at a later date, and at worst we’re creating egotistical douchebags whose self-worth is substantially larger than is merited.

Here’s a primary example: “You can be anything you want to when you grow up.” This may or may not be followed by some sort of ridiculous job that very few, if any, people ever manage to attain in their short, messy lives, such as “even president” or “even an astronaut”. How many of you were told this by your parents?

I wasn’t. You know why? BECAUSE MY MOTHER KNEW BETTER.

First off: if you’re anything but white and rich, the odds of you becoming president are similar to your odds of winning the lottery, being struck by lightning and surviving, AND developing superpowers ALL AT THE SAME TIME, while having sex with (insert attractive and famous actor/actress here, because I’m lazy). Okay? And if you’re not some kind of Christian? FORGET IT. I don’t care how smart you are, I don’t care how strong your political convictions and speaking voice are, and I especially don’t care how dedicated you are. Our current president is a stuttering idiot with a drawl that would make Gomer Pyle stop and go “Damn”, but he is (say it with me) RICH, WHITE, AND CHRISTIAN, so he’s effectively more eligible than the rest of us by divine right.

And honestly, some of us, no matter how much we WANT to become an astronaut or an archaeologist or a pop star or a model or an actor or a writer or whatever… well, some of us are frankly too stupid, ugly, or otherwise genetically cursed to manage this thing. I mean, okay, fine, Tom Waits sells out pretty much anywhere he plays and Ron Perlman probably makes more money in a year than most of us make in twenty, but they are EXCEPTIONS. When you think back to your parents telling you that you could be anything you wanted, then look down and realize that you’re working in a place that requires you to wear your name on your shirt, all while you get to wonder if the smell of the gasoline around you is giving you brain cancer, well, ask yourself: IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?

No? Then stop it.

Second: “Women can do anything men can do”, often followed by “better”. Can we stop with this please? I mean, I’m not a misogynist and I’m full-on all about equal rights, but if you can find me a woman who can lift the Big Show over her head for longer than ten seconds, I’ll find you a rainbow-shitting unicorn. Look: women can do MOST things men can do, just like men can do MOST things women can do. This is non-negotiable. There will always be aberrations on both side, but Bruce Lee and Chyna notwithstanding, until the day comes where we become a unisexual race undefined by primary and secondary sex characteristics, women will generally be perceived as attractive, graceful, athletic and generally of more artistic thought processes (to certain extents), and men will be perceived as the spider killing heavy lifters who think with our dicks and can pee standing up, and have generally simpler, more tunneled mentalities. Please accept that if you want to play football, you will be the place kicker, and I will be wholly content in return knowing that because of my gender I will be forever subjected to horribly stereotyped sex jokes that I have nothing to do with because “you think they’re funny”. Kay? Kay.

Third: “Handicapped people can do anything regular people can do!” Oh really? Then by all means, Legless Joe, DANCE FOR ME.

Look, I understand the need to make handicapped people feel like legitimate people, as well they should if they’re paying their taxes, but let’s be fair here: Steven Hawking is a once-in-a-lifetime gift from God and should be treated as such, and anyone who’s actually out there DOING SOMETHING, and I mean ANY FUCKING THING, is perfectly fine in my book, but a sufficiently large amount of handicapped people are living on government subsidies and contributing absolutely nothing to the world or anyone living in it, and frankly, fuck them. Deaf people making their children deaf prior to birth as some sort of “cultural” gesture, some way of continuing the “traditions” of the deaf? That makes me fucking ill knowing I’m paying tax dollars to support children whose parents MADE THEM DEAF because having hearing children is TOO EXPENSIVE.

If you are crippling your own children and making me pay for them, fuck you and fuck your kids, right in the ear. People like this deserve NO ego-boosting whatsoever; they are fucking useless and should be told as such, in whatever manner possible, as often as possible. In general, anyone who is incapable of contributing SOMETHING, no matter how minute, to society is a leech. You’re getting government money to do fuck-all with your life; if that’s how you’ve chosen to spend the rest of your life, then fine, but FUCK YOUR SHITTY EGO. YOU ARE USELESS, and the sooner someone tells you so, the sooner you’re likely to actually DO something with your life.

Fourth: “Homosexuality is a lifestyle choice”. Can we stop with this bullshit please? We all know you’re saying it so you can feel better about hating gays, but you really don’t deserve to. You do not, in fact, deserve to feel anything but a railroad tie in the foot, but that’s not the issue here. People who say this are not saying it for any other reason but to make themselves feel better about the fact that homosexuals are, in a lot of respects, treated like dirt; by saying “it’s not biological, it’s a lifestyle choice” they can rationalize being ignorant pricks to other people without having to worry about being good little whatever their fucking religion of choice might be.

I never understood this mentality because it contains a critical flaw: who in their right mind would wake up one morning and say to themselves, “You know, I’m awfully tired of being loved by my family and friends and by not being looked down upon by part of society, so I think today I’m going to start having sex with people of my own gender, because BY GOD it’s time for a change”? How many public officials have to resign from office in disgrace for trying to pay for male prostitutes or getting their boyfriends jobs before you people realize that your warm fuzzies that you’re getting from saying this bullshit are undeserved because YOU ARE WRONG? You are lying to yourselves, and the sooner you stop doing this and the sooner you just accept your bigotry and move on with your day, the better.

Or, alternatively, you could just claim it’s all the fault of evil spirits, but I don’t think this is a good idea either.

Fifth: “You’re special”. See also “they’re just jealous”. I would’ve thought Tyler Durden did a sufficient job explaining why this is bullshit, but parents are telling their kids this more and more often these days, to the point where NO ONE is willing to take constructive criticism anymore (and if you don’t believe me, webcomic authors and DeviantART are all the proof I need). Look, there are more than SIX BILLION FUCKING PEOPLE on the planet; the ONLY reason you are SPECIAL is because of your individual genetic makeup, not because nobody wants to play with you at recess. None of us are “special” in that the world could do perfectly fine without any of us; someone else could do whatever it is you are doing at the moment, and nothing you contribute is so great that the world would mourn your loss. I’m not saying “hey, kill yourself”, but the sooner you suck it up and realize that there are plenty of people JUST LIKE YOU, the sooner you can perhaps develop a coping mechanism so that you stop feeling this unnecessary sense of entitlement you possess, and perhaps rear children who are not needy shits who think everything on Earth is deserved by them and them alone.

And finally: “I will love you forever”. Now, in all fairness, this one is perhaps a touch difficult, in that

1.) we tend to hold onto first crushes and really good relationships that end for stupid reasons moreso than anything else, so it’s wholly reasonable to believe that you may have some sort of feelings for these people, even if “love” isn’t quite the word for it, and

2.) a very small percentage of people actually DO stay in love until they die.

That said, the divorce rate in the US trends around 30 - 50% (depending on what sources you believe), so I think it’s about time we retire this shit and move on with our day. You are not going to love him forever if you come home and find him balls deep in the babysitter or find her being bent over by the pool boy, okay? I think we all understand that, but it needs to be said: if things fall apart, you were just made out to be a fucking liar. And relationships fall apart for LOTS of reasons, not just cheating; lack of communication, lack of time spent together, lack of money, all of these things can cause the two of you to fall out of love as quickly as you fell INTO it in the first place.

And even assuming you DO spend the rest of your natural lives together, “love” isn’t specifically going to be a part of it either. My grandparents are rapidly approaching their 60th anniversary, and while that is indeed a wonderful milestone, to say that the relationship is based wholly upon unconditional love is perhaps a touch… disingenuous. I mean, if you see four yelling matches in the span of two hours in their presence, I have to think that perhaps “love” has about as much to do with the marriage staying together as “consistency” does, to be completely honest about it. Sometimes, after forty or so years of being together, you stay together because no one else would have you and you wouldn’t want to be alone, instead of because you truly love another.

And if you don’t believe me, do some looking around at how many 60 - 80 year old widows of both genders are getting re-married. If you still loved your spouse as much as you claimed to, why get re-married? You’re going to be joining them in a few years anyway. Or maybe you were full of shit…

Look, in the end, it all comes down to this: you are either saying all of the above (and many, MANY more things) either to make yourself feel better or to help others cheer up, and YOU ARE NOT HELPING. There is no reason for you to spend all of your time shielding your ego and the egos of others from the slings and arrows of the outside world, because the longer you continue to insulate these people and their emotions, the longer you continue to propagate the cycle of people developing into egotistical, uninteresting assholes with overinflated senses of entitlement and overly developed senses of self worth and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to back it up with. When these fuckers get out into the population, they either deny reality for the remainder of their lives and essentially act like stuck-up pricks because they’re SO wonderful that everyone hates them because they’re jealous (and not because you’re a prick), or they become cynical and disenfranchised and grow to hate everyone and everything around them because YOU LIED TO THEM.

Your choice, folks. You’re either creating a nation of Hummer driving, frappuccino drinking assholes… or a nation of people who spend four days a week in therapy complaining about how they hate their parents while you rot in an old folks home staffed by people who pee in your underwear drawers. Choose carefully.

And remember: The world needs an enema.