What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women, Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night, Part 9

Greetings, dear rant aficionados.

I know it's been a while, but I won't apologise. I do what I fucking want, don't I. Well, perhaps I am more irritated than I thought. In order to appear a tad less irate, I'll let you be my confidant for the night: collecting material takes time and energy, mainly spent in the form of trying not to flare up. Patience is the mother of all virtues and godmother of madness, as Carlos Ruiz Zafón put it in his novel Marina. It's even more time-consuming to sift through all the material I collected over the past few months because I discovered that nothing can be discarded. One teeny-tiny irritating detail you observed once and not any more after that one occurrence may resurface full blast when you least expect it. I'll give you one instance: pen-clickers.

I recall noticing that bothersome behaviour at a meeting during which someone who was particularly vindictive couldn't stop clicking his pen, much to the annoyance of many a colleague. And for months after that, nothing. Even the pen-clicker had stopped clicking pens, probably because he had curbed his ardour. Yet lo and behold, two came up my way not an hour apart, just today. I didn't chat with the first one because he seemed surlier than me, and this is never a good sign. He not even once unfrowned his brow, kept on jiggling his knee up and down in a frantic manner, and clicking his pen for no other possible reason than to calm his nerves. He also chewed the existence out of a piece of gum. He didn't write, nor had he a piece of paper around him. Not sure why he would have a pen if not for the reason mentioned above. The second one did have a piece of paper, sat next to me on the train, and occasionally wrote on said piece of paper. When I asked that person, after about ten solid minutes of continuous pen-clicking, why he would do so, he said he did because he didn't like the silence around him. I blinked several times before I suggested putting the humongous headphones around his neck on his ears as a potentially more viable and less galling-to-others option.

Let me break the situation down a bit. We're on a packed train and there's kids yelling, mothers yelling at them to shut up, people laughing, people flipping the pages of magazines as if they wanted to rip them off, people having loud conversations over the phone, people watching videos without earphones, and of course the frequent screeching of the train on the rails. Where the hell did that guy find silence, I can't even begin to imagine. Yet the funniest of things happened: he humoured me and did what I suggested. He even thumb-upped me after a couple minutes, with the kind of beaming smile which says: “Dude, that's an awesome idea you got there, thanks!” ONLY TO RESUME HIS PEN-FUCKING-CLICKING FIVE MINUTES LATER. I remembered Zafón's quote and prayed the god of patience above to give me the strength not to strangle that guy. At that very moment, I wished I could click my pen. I'd have ripped his headphones off his ears and clicked him into madness, half an inch away from his face.

Anyhoo, I wasn't at the end of my tether just yet. For I would meet, hours from then...the athleisure fashionista! Yes, that's a word. When the woman I saw decided, for a reason unknown to either fashion, good taste or common decency, to wear a track suit and high heels, I wanted to hug her and ask what on earth had happened in her childhood, tell her that everything would be OK...when she would come back to her senses and choose a style, not pick 'n' mix. But there were other sartorial surprises in store for me.

As John Oliver would say: And now, this. Heelless shoes. If you have no idea what it could look like, take a peek here. I was flipping through a magazine which had been left on a seat when I saw this...thing. I didn't know they were a thing, or even could be a thing. You must have noticed when women realise they're making a heck of a noise when their heels, high or low, ferociously strike the wooden floor or grate it like a pack of rusty nails, and they suddenly walk on their tiptoe (with a gait not unlike that of a flamingo walking). If so, you must also have noticed some women who only walk on their tiptoe when walking inside in heels, which defeats the purpose of dignity...but whichever psycho came up with the idea of removing the heels entirely should be made to wear them exclusively. You find them cool? Let me ask you one simple question: which part of the foot do you put down in order to rest? Mh? No heel, no rest. We came up with the expression “standing on your toes” for a reason. Please, fashioner designers, stop hurting women. The only statement you're making is that you hate them.

Speaking of people hating people, those who let their trolley run wild on the parking lot of supermarkets make the exact same statement, albeit more generally. “We couldn't give less of a crap about you, person giving us the mean look and taking our trolley back to the trolley bay, because once the last item we bought is out of that trolley, it no longer belongs to us, even if we put a plastic coin to unlock it. The next time we'll be at the gas station we'll ask for another one, simple. Suck it up, buttercup!” I hope there's a special place in hell for them, where they have to put trolleys back into the bay or their limbs are hacked off them, but imps keep on dumping trolleys left and right.

One last thing before I move on to our favourite bit of my vitriol. Dating apps are a treasure trove of gems of all sorts, so much so that it's difficult to choose one item in the list. I don't want to devote one post entirely to this as it quickly becomes boring, so I sprinkle every now and again what I deem to be fit in such and such entry. Today I want to talk about pictures, and the supposed powers vested in them. A common saying stipulates that a picture is worth a thousand words. I am of the opinion that some of them are, indeed, yet if you spend any amount of time on dating apps, you'll find yourself confronted to head-scratchers. Case in point: the portrait with a duck face. How in the name of all things goaty is this worth a thousand words? Perhaps as a diatribe against duck faces, sure, but in itself? Meh. Add to that a Snapchat filter, any of them. (No, you can't possibly believe, in your heart of hearts, that even a few of them are okay. Fathom thy soul, heathen.) Add to that the V sign with your fingers, in a swanky car, showing your abs, legs, or other unseemly part of your anatomy. Add, finally, the emojied faces of your kids sitting at the back of the car and you'll get, let me check quickly, exactly 237 words total. Quite far from a thousand words, and even if this picture was worth this much, you'd still look pretty fucking moronic. You're welcome. Moving on.

Now I suggest you read the next bit carefully, and remember it for a long time, for I'm going to side with poodles. Yes, I'm right about doing that: to honour a breed of dog I resent with (almost, now) every fibre in my body. Today I learnt that in 1988, some daft, idiotic, nincompoopy son of a motherless goat ran the Iditarod race with a pack of poodles. For those who don't know anything about this race: it's a 938-mile (1,510 km) sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome, in Alaska, run at the beginning of March. Participants, called mushers, usually complete it between eight to fifteen days, with a team of 14 dogs. So this nutter, called John Suter, and his team didn't complete this insane race just once, but four times, placing in the lower middle of the pack. The which is, all things considered and it doesn't even pain me to write so, a freaking admirable position. He raised the poodles alongside huskies to develop the “urge to pull”, which is smart, but he should have factored in the fact that poodles aren't dogs initially bred to resist whiteout conditions, blasting blizzard and -70°C wind chill. I have to give it to them though: this is highly commendable. Only the Yukon quest is longer at 1,000 miles (the Hope race covered 1,200 miles but it's no longer run), yet it is a crazy thing to do, putting oneself and dogs through such terrible meteorological conditions. Inasmuch as I hate poodles, these ones were brave, or John Suter as thick as a regular, not-bred-with-huskies poodle (which I don't think was beneath him). The story can be read here. 

Incidentally, the Iditarod race was created to commemorate the 674-mile race against time by 20 mushers and 150 sled dogs, run in five and a half days in 1925, to save the town of Nome from diphtheria as they transported the antitoxin which eventually saved the town from an epidemic. Since the page recounting the story doesn't exist any more on the Iditarod website, here's the Wikipedia entry.

This has been fun, as per usual, but we need to part. I can't be raving and ranting until the start of day, because my doctor says it's bad for my health. I asked her if it's as bad as the doctors' handwriting for the eyes, and she said yes, so I knew she wasn't kidding. The which reminded me of a quote I was told ages ago, the one with which I'll leave you, which applies to everyone, even to the best of us. That quote was given me by my gastroenterologist who said I should never forget it:

“I feel fairly certain that my hatred harms me more than the people whom I hate.”

Max Frisch, Swiss architect, playwright, and novelist (1911-1991), in Sketchbook 1966-1977.

That's why God created antacid medication, so we could keep on berating people. True story.