Home is Where the Couch Is

I fucking hate...

Themed homes- While I understand that different people have different aesthetics, there is a certain amount of class in realizing where in the world you live and owning it. For example, throwing doilies on your coffee tables does not turn your NYC studio loft into a New England bed and breakfast. Or, more specifically to my locale, throwing hay down in your front yard and getting a mailbox shaped like a barn with a cow on the front of it does not turn your suburban box into a country ranch. It actually looks pretty fucking dirty. Similarly, I will never understand why people feel the need to pretty up their bathroom in the styles of lame, white-people getaway spots, like the beach or a mountain cottage. Decorative spheres of twine and seashells do not make your poop smell better. Although I guess to be fair, my bathroom is full of dinosaurs and unicorns and pictures of a dog on a bicycle, so I guess I did go for a theme with my bathroom and that theme turned out to be "things that are awesome." So really, I guess what I really hate are boring, white-people themed homes. Do not model your home after either a bed and breakfast, a country cottage, or a shore house (unless it actually is one of those things, and even then only do so reluctantly) and I won't want to take a shit in your living room.

But I do still fucking kind of like...

Awesomely inappropriately themed homes- Is your living room decked out like a graveyard? Do you have an office done up to look like the bridge of a spaceship? Did you transform your bathroom from an "ocean shore-house" to a "rat-infested pirate brig?" I doubt you have as I have yet to meet anyone who has, but seriously, these ideas are all gold. Let's get the fuck on this, people.

Vroom Vroom

I fucking love...

Top Gear- I wouldn't necessarily call myself an Anglophile, but I do love me some grumpy, sarcastic British people. So much do I love them, in fact, that I will watch a show about anything so long as it is hosted by said grumpy, sarcastic Brits. Which, I think, explains my love of Top Gear. Normally, I couldn't give a shit less about cars. I think they're fun to drive, but I don't know dick-all about them, and I certainly don't want to learn. Hence my love of this show would initially seem quite a mystery. What it all boils down to though, are the presenters. Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond have such a fantastic dynamic between the three of them that I am fairly convinced I could watch them discuss literally anything. If they can get me to watch a show about cars then they can probably get me to watch a show about animals taking shits for all I care. Actually, I would probably watch that show even if they weren't on it, so bad example I guess. And it probably doesn't hurt that Top Gear is a show about cars much in the same way that Wheel of Fortune is a show about grammar. When you start reviewing tiny cars by, say, driving them through office buildings or cramming enormous dogs into them to rate how happy the dog stays, then is the show really still about the cars at that point? I guess sure, why not.

But at the same time, I still fucking hate...

Every other program about cars on television, ever- This includes, but is not limited to informational shows (Car and Driver Television), other "entertainment" based shows (Pimp My Ride, Monster Garage), and plain ol' racing. They're all boring, and they're all a horrible waste of gas. If NASCAR would just throw a dog in the back of every car then maybe we would have a deal. But it would have to be a comically large dog though. And so help me god, if any of those dogs got hurt. You know what, let's just skip the dogs and ban NASCAR. Then everyone will be happy.

Friday Quickie

Today's article is short, but it's one that I feel strongly about. I fucking hate...

Invisible bugs- I think the only people who will truly understand what I mean by this are people with hairy legs and drug addicts. Every time I take a pair of socks off after wearing them for hours on end, the hair on my legs starts standing back up, making it feel like there are dozens of tiny, bastard insects crawling all over me. It would be enough to make me shave my legs just to get rid of it, but

A) I'm not 100% convinced it would solve the problem, and

B) I fucking hate stubble. Shit itches.

It is also entirely possible, as far as I'm concerned, that there really is a species of small, invisible insects that like to feed off of some hormone that your body secretes when you're really, really irritated. Just in case, I propose we task someone with developing a pesticide for them. The writers of Lost were good at killing off imaginary things, so I nominate them.

On This Special Episode...

Please welcome special guest hate-monger, M. Timecat. Today, Mr. Timecat fucking hates...

"How flimsy Playstation controllers are- Are you fucking kidding me Sony? You know how hard and infuriating video games are, you make them. You damn well know I am going to slam my controller on the ground as hard as I can when Madden fucks me over and makes the Browns beat me 49-0. Not only that, but it’s fucking bogus when you 'Ask Madden' and that fat bastard tells you to 'bang it up the middle with the fullback' even though its 4th and 12 on my own 10. Thanks for making me look like an asshole, John. I remember back in the day when videogames could be beaten by the average person and not just fucking losers who do nothing but play them 24/7 in their Grammy’s basement who would go into anaphylactic shock if their cocks came within 6 nautical miles of bottom-shelf pussy. When I was a kid, video games were way easier. How easy was Japan’s side-scrolling insult to all Italian people, which later became known as Super Mario Bros? Seriously Japan, in 1980 were you still that mad that Italy bailed on the Axis? Did leaving you as the only ones to face 'prompt and utter destruction' mean you had to make a game where every Italian character is a plumber and where the bad guys are 'Goombas?' Yeah well, I guess you can stay as mad as you want to about that one. Maybe that massive blow to Japanese culture and infrastructure is why you can’t design a controller that can survive your average angry white guy who sucks at video games.

But seriously what has happened to videogames? Back in the day the only thing you needed to do to win at videogame football was pop Techmo Bowl into your NES and then zigzag your way across the screen to gridiron glory. Now I have to be able to read a fucking Cover -2 defense or else Madden starts talking shit about how I need to get the ball out of the QB’s hand so you don’t get sacked. Fuck you, Madden, what do you know anyway? What’s that? Super Bowl Ring you say? Ok, well then maybe it’s my fault that I can’t convert 4th and 12s when John is calling the plays for me. I guess the only way to really be good at videogames anymore is to really be dedicated to playing all day and night and buying every expensive new consoles and the latest games. I wonder if that’s why poor people are so good at real sports…"

On the other hand, I fucking love...

How much easier non-sports games have gotten- Did we play the same games as kids? I have nothing but hateful memories from my childhood as I tried to express myself as an eco-conscious nature lover by guiding that stupid fucking hedgehog towards all those gold rings so that he could buy his hedgehog girlfriend a house and a car and earn a slim chance of mating with someone besides a fox suffering from birth deformities. Maybe other people found this shit easy. Maybe I just hadn’t developed fine motor functions yet, even by late elementary school. Nowadays though, videogames at least have save points so that you can quit playing them the 600th time a demonic dog-mannequin hybrid bites you in the ass right after you used your last health kit repairing the damage from an onslaught of shadow-infants just back from the Improvised Knife Festival. You can also save your game when you realize that Jesus fucking hell, you’ve been playing this game for six hours and have to be at work in another two. To me, this makes modern day gaming easier than classic videogames, and I fucking love it.

I do agree with the necessity for sturdier hardware, though. Back in the old days I could hurl a Sega Genesis controller at my parents’ Radiate-Mo-Tron tube television and the only thing that broke was my mother’s temper. Try doing that with these tiny joystick-laden bundles of nonsense and your new plasma-screen bullshit and see how far it gets you. If you ask me, two objects that can’t handle you smashing them together as hard as you can have no business letting you play Mortal Kombat on them. Fucking Goro.

Disclaimer: M. Timecat’s opinions do not reflect in any way my own, nor do mine represent his. Timecat has never given me any reason to believe that he spends his days imagining the married lives of hedgehogs. Similarly, I don’t even know what “banging up the middle with the fullback” is, but I snicker every time I read it.

The Ol' Ballin' Chain

I fucking hate...

Listening to people bitch about their marriages- Never mind the fact that it's disrespectful to your spouse to sit around whining about them when they're not there. Never mind how rude it is to tell someone, upon hearing that they're engaged, to "run while they still can" weeks before they make one of the biggest commitments of their life. Never mind the fact that all across the country there are same-sex couples fighting tirelessly to publicly proclaim their love in the same fashion that you're shitting all over with your ceaseless torrent of petty criticism. The real reason it irks me so much when people go off on stereotypical tirades about their husbands/wives is that it's pure, played-out comic horseshit. There is nothing funny, entertaining, or remotely of value for me to listen to you talk about how your spouse is messier/cleaner than you are, like you've hogged the stage at a shitty open-mic night. If you want some cheap laughs about how boys are from Planet of the Apes and girls are from Pretty Woman, get a spot on Comedy Central. If you want some legitimate advice on what to do when your partner drives you nuts, get a therapist. But whatever you fucking do, don't think for one second that I want to hear about it. Comments like, "Whenever I clean the garage Bob goes right back out there and messes it all up again! Men!" and, "It doesn't matter how much money I put in my savings account, my wife'll just redeposit it at the mall! Am I right?" do not endear you to me. Although they do make me want to give you a high-five. Directly in the face. With a brick.

But I fucking love...

Mutual sass in relationships- For every sorry sod I have to listen to who prays for the sweet release of death to take either themselves or their "loved" ones out of the shackles of marriage but doesn't have the balls or brains to do something about it (divorce and murder ain't hard folks, they both just take good lawyers), I do get some relief from watching couples who clearly know how to make each others' lives a living hell, and love every second of it. It seems like all relationships involve a healthy amount of irritating the shit out of each other, but the couples I can respect are the ones who do it right in the other one's face and don't try to sneak around whining behind their back. There's got to be a reason that some of the longest and seemingly most happily married couples I witness on a daily basis are openly hostile to each other in entertaining ways, and I can't imagine it's all for my viewing benefit. So go ahead ladies, tell him that shirt makes him look like a horse's ass. Or gentlemen, feel free to let her know that you don't give a shit about going shopping. Just make sure you're talking to each other about it, and not to me. Never, ever, ever to me. Or, you know, just don't get fucking married in the first place.

*Please note, Google Image searches of "marriage" turned up nothing but boring white people, so I decided instead to search for "animals doin' it" and put up results from that. I hope it helped.

This Town Ain't Big Enough For All Six or Seven Of Us

I fucking hate...

Having split identities- I'm a lazy man. A lazy, lazy, etc. It's not so much that I hate physically doing things as it is that I hate devoting mental exertion to thinking about how to do things. As such, one of the more irksome points in my life as a post-college resource-hog has been the need to create a "professional" image for myself in the workplace. Immediately after graduation, I think I took a lot of appropriate steps: I bought some ties, I cut the dried semen and whiskey out of my hair, I started bathing regularly. I even took down the Myspace where I pretended to be a girl in order to disappoint local perverts and, hopefully, confuse them on a profoundly personal level. As soon as a company hired me, I put my facade into practice. I began showing up for work on time, in neat dress, and with a kind, unassuming smile. By all accounts, I seemed a perfectly pleasant, well-adjusted young man. The illusion was complete.

Unfortunately, my work persona falls in direct conflict with the way I prefer to live my life on my own time. I hate waking up before 10am. I hate wearing sensible colors and clothes that don't cling tight enough to show the outline of my balls. Showering, and washing my hair in particular, makes me want to shake with such titanic fits of rage that I was briefly employed as an eco-friendly paint mixer. I also hate being nice to people who are mean, listening to boring stories, and making coffee for strangers. This creates a disconnect, then, between my personal and professional selves. Which was fine for a time. I went to work as one person, got through 9 hours of that, metamorphosed back into my real self through a baptism of rage on the drive home, and was ready to be fun and sassy for the evening.

Except cracks have started to show. Sometimes at work I slip up and imply that I might still be drunk, or make lewd, aggressively homosexual innuendos around people I think it might bother, or suggest how much I would like to light someone's house on fire. Worse yet, sometimes my Labor Face slips out in my personal life. I find myself organizing my money to make sure the bills are all facing the same way, or accidentally putting on the television and being boring and white all night.

Which might not even be so disastrous if I then didn't have to factor in online personae as well. How do I maintain a mental division when I also have to take the effort to sign onto message boards and be a condescending know-it-all? Or log into a Steam gamer tag and be so purposefully obtuse yet such a good shot that I give the impression of being some sort of mute, idiot-savant? This double-triple-quadruple life is tearing me apart.

And yet at the same time, I kind of love...

Getting away with it- There's some sort of sick, double-agent appeal to knowing that I can be such a bastard at certain times of the day, and such a goody-goody at others, and pass successfully as both. And every time a slip between the two goes unnoticed, whether it's forgetting to shower here or singing off-color songs under my breath there, it feels great. Like I shoulda been an actor, or low-level, local politician. I suppose this could all be a normal part of the "adult" life I'm still adapting to. Either way, I think I'll be okay as long as I manage to avoid any major screw-ups. Like going into work with a flamethrower looking to play capture the flag. Or coming home and issuing loans to my neighbors. Or logging into Team Fortress and failing to be taken seriously as a writer.

I'm Tired of Sitting Here Pretending I'm Not Fucking Dangerous

I flipping hate...

Second-hand smoke bashing- I know this is by no means a new topic, but everyone in the entire fucking country seems to have such a permanent stiffie for whining about second-hand smoke. Let's all take a second to think about this. I agree that certain areas should be kept smoke-free: hospitals, airplanes... I don't know, day care centers? I would like to argue, though, that state-wide indoor-smoking bans are entirely unnecessary. Don't want to smell smoke while you eat at a restaurant? Don't sit in the fucking smoking section. That seemed to work out well. Don't want to smell like smoke when you come back from going out to a bar? Grow a fucking pair. Who goes out to get drunk in the neatest, cleanest way possible? I'll tell you who: people who don't understand the fucking point of drinking. I understand that you may not want to return to the office smelling like cigarettes after your liquid business luncheon (you posh twat), but what kind of shithead goes to some local dive and expects to come out squeaky-clean at the end of it? I live in a town full of shitty bars, and if I can go off-topic for a minute, if you want to bitch about smelling cigarettes then I want to bitch about having to smell your fucking pheromone-infused body spray and whore wash.

So indoor smoking bans are dumb. But you know what's even dumber? Outdoor smoking bans. A few years ago, Pennsylvania state colleges instituted some ass-hatted rule where you were no longer allowed to smoke on campus. This immediately lead to one of two results: smokers being late to return to class from smoking breaks, or everyone collectively deciding not to give a shit. When the whole argument against second-hand smoke comes up, I've noticed that people like to go about saying that second-hand smoke personally gave them cancer and was the direct cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs. "It's unhealthy!" six bazillion moms in turtlenecks and high-waisted jeans have cried for years. You know what else is fucking unhealthy? Car accidents. And heart-attacks. And being allergic to bee stings. And fucking life in general. I know we've already started working on the bee stings part by mysteriously killing off an entire species of animal that we probably need to live, but that doesn't change the fact that EVERY FUCKING THING INVOLVED IN YOUR LIFE IS KILLING YOU SLOWLY AS WE SPEAK. So let's all just calm the fuck down and live a little. Or let's at least stop bitching about the health hazards of smoke while we eat a 6,000,000,000 calorie quadruple-bacon-fatburger at our local TGI McAppleBarrel.

Which, as you can probably guess, means I fucking love...

Smoking just to piss people off- It probably would have been worth mentioning earlier in this article that I don't consider myself a smoker. I mean I go through a pack maybe every 2 months or something, but basically I smoke so little that if I ever identify myself as a "smoker" REAL smokers come out of the woodwork to collectively bitchslap me. The reason I have my panties in such a bunch over anti-smoking campaigns is that even without nicotine pulsing through my veins I can still spot a social injustice when I see it. That's why it gives me such great pleasure to light up a cigarette, even if I'm just going to let it burn and not smoke it, in front of doctors and moms and elementary schools everywhere. Or at least right off school property. It's kind of like an indirect middle-finger to groups of people I don't give a shit about. It also makes me look cool as hell.