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.

 

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women, Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night, Part 8

 

'Tis late. Very late, and very early. Perfect time for another instalment in that godforsaken series. My notes are overflowing with rants, some scribbled hastily and nervously. I can still sense the outrage seeping through. Pulsing. The rant itching on the roof of the palate. Them people, them dogs, them fashions. Won't ever rest, won't ever stop. Like a juggernaut rolling over innocents, leaving none unscathed in its path. Sometimes you don't see any of it taking place because the massacre happens elsewhere, as it sometimes seems to take a separate path, if just for a split nanosecond, in a reality so close to our own that they seem to merge. Moments otherwise known and exploited as memes as WTF moments. Life may just be one gigantic meme, or a series of gif, who knows.

I was recently introduced to resistentialism and my mind went [insert GIF of nuke bomb going off]. It's the idea that inanimate objects have a will of their own, and will become hostile at the right time – usually the worst for us. Picture this: you're late to a meeting, you need to print one document. The rage starts building up as no PDF document would open for some reason while it worked perfectly fine until now. Then the printer won't print. The berserker in you comes to the surface. Change the paper, the paper will jam. Some form of head-shaking acceptance seems to take over. Or the coffee machine will signal it's out of coffee, then a few minutes later you see a colleague with a steaming cup of coffee from said vending machine. Now you see resistentialism everywhere. And no, the printer is working fine. PDF not opening? The IT guy looked at it and said it worked fine. Is this our imagination playing tricks on us? Do we emit bad vibes and short-circuit stuff? Or, more plausibly, do machines have a will of their own, and plan on taking over the world by making us, slowly and irrevocably, mad? Like this alarm clock which has worked so well for so long and chose that day when I absolutely had to be on time not to go off. I'm sure I heard it snicker when it went off the next morning.

Such spite is by no means rare, and it leads me to my second segment: being late. A few weeks ago, I could finally delve into the mind of a person who is always late. I don't mean the hyperbolic 'always' we sometimes use to carry a point forward, I mean to carry it home: 'always' as in 'all the frigging time'. Late is by definition 'not on time', and she is that, by an average of 15 minutes. Yes, I'm keeping tabs, but no I don't use those against her, rather I use them to study the pattern. So we can both be late and arrive at roughly the same time. The other day she even arrived later than her “I'm running late” change of time. So I asked what the golden rule was, and she told me this (I'm paraphrasing for brevity):

Rule #1: If you leave your place before the convened time, you're not late.

Rule #2: If it's not too late to change the time, change it so you go back to Rule #1

The concept of “not too late” is arrogantly loose, and of course subject to wind, hygrometry, the age of the captain and the alignment of certain planets. Interestingly, I connected this frame of mind with this article. I have to admit that I was stunned by the practice, even though I had already experienced, like many of you I'm sure, my flight being delayed, leaving late and yet arriving on time. I had never connected the dots. I suspect my friend who is always late believes this to be true for her too.

But I can't really hold a grudge against her, she always has fantastic ideas and feeds my passionate hatred for poodles. She pointed out that poodles were dangerous for society, and even though I detest the pathetic beast I suggested they weren't that dangerous compared to other breeds. But she didn't mean the rather harmless and pitiful-looking maltipoo (yes, that's a thing and apparently the apex of cuteness: a cross-breed between a poodle and a Maltese dog. To think the Maltese is already enough to make the most seasoned seaman sick...I shudder at the thought), she rather meant this. I like how someone bent over backwards to make the acronym fit both something apparently harmless – as if poodles weren't savage monstrosities clad in white wool – and a malignant exploit in the Internet/software to reveal encrypted messages. Or perhaps this person knew how malevolent poodles can be.

While I was waiting for her, not having expected the second bout of lateness, I took my e-reader out and started rea– nope, because people are people, and some are better at it than others. Take those who listen to their phone, but they put the speaker to their ear, the phone horizontal. And then flip the phone to their mouth and yell something unintelligible to the recipient and to everyone around. And to those who try to read. Them people should get a damn headset, because they sure look beyond-word stupid.

Considering I wouldn't be able to read, I then took my notepad and thought to myself: “Sure people, we can play this. I'll observe and you'll be you. Not that my spleen will like it, but my pen shall bask in the absurdity of it all.” Like: I wonder how some people can still take pictures with iPads. And how selfie sticks for iPads still aren't a thing. Obviously, if the fad were to have died out it would've been ages ago. There's a niche in the market, and people shilly-shally about it. Come on, how hard can it be, in this age of carbon nanotubes?

I proceeded to notice a pattern which I had already jotted down, and which I saw repeated right before my eyes: some people sneeze but they say 'achoo' right after the sneeze. You're supposed to make the sound as you sneeze, not say the sound after you foolishly tried to stifle the sneeze in. That's the whole point of an onomatopoeia, and you seem quite adamant in trying to defeat its purpose. Especially since you failed, and perhaps your instinct knows better as you really could hurt your tympanums doing this. Here's what can happen). And it's downright nonsensical to do so – both stifling the sneeze and saying achoo after sneezing. People, le sigh.

You can tell I was already passably irritated. My friend was nowhere in sight, and she was twenty-five minutes late. So I observed further, fed the fire raging inside, watching those couples, those groups of friends, or businessmen with their clients...who refuse to walk in single-file in narrow corridors or on on pavements. Pretty much like escalator-clogging people. Not that I'm rushing all the time, but I know some people are so I have the courtesy to make way for that one time when I need to rush myself. I mulled and decided that this obnoxious was still better than those deserve-a-good-slap people who stop short while walking, especially in busy areas. And then getting all cranky because they're being shoved in. But then they realise that there's this massive wave of people surging their way, so they suddenly shut up. Next time, effing walk on. But some of them don't, and don't even realise that they are in the way. They just stop. Some people do deserve the juggernaut, sometimes [insert grinning devil emoji].

 

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night, Part 7

Dear readers,

I woke up a little while ago, and looking out the window makes one legitimately confused as to whether it's today or tomorrow, today or tonight. Technically, it is now, and more precisely today, albeit very early. Looking at my notes, I decided it was time to let some of the bile ooze out of the system, to rage quietly against the dying of the night. One has to run the risk of becoming cantankerous too early in one's career.

I previously addressed people picking their nose, but now another category has emerged, in which men seem to have a facetious upper hand: the ones who manage to successfully wring out, singlefingeredly, a reluctant-because-it-was-warm-up-there boogie while you're talking to them, then proceed to roll up and casually let the balled bogey fall. Yet the casualness needs to be dropped when the gob gets too gooey and persists like a sinful thought in the mind of a 12^th Century flagellating Carmelite monk. The innocuous “You don't happen to have a tissue, do you?” has, since I paid attention to the practise, been a test of my character, for I have rarely been able to keep a straight face. It's also a tell-tale reminder that Murphy and his Infallible Set of Laws watches over us mere mortified mortals...who also eat their cuticles. Also while talking to other people. The worst part of it all is when they gnash at the flake of skin and tear too much off it, and end up bleeding. Now that I have written this, I think the worst part is that I have become so used to people's eccentricities – actually just them being themselves – that I simply go on talking as if nothing were happening, while my soul shrivels and cringes and suffocates. I am a blend of weltschmerz and whateverism.

Speaking of German loan-words: Schadenfreude, primum motum of the humanverse. Probably the sole valid reason to remain on this godforsaken piece of mud that is Earth. The vindication of the statistics. The serendipitous theatre of chance dramedy. The habit you didn't know you shared with some mammals. The glint of light that brightens your day. Yes, all of this. The following anecdote be ample proof.

The weather has been nuts for some time now, and we have had almost constant rain or snow for the past two months – and people have the knack not to wipe their feet off the mat at the school's entrances. Students and colleagues alike. Some will even go to great lengths to avoid wiping their feet on the one metre by three brown mat, thereby muddying the corridor and especially the tiled floor right after the mat. Why they don't want to wipe their feet remains to be asserted with certainty. My wild guess is that they believe the mat to be dirtier than the sole of their shoes – which would fall short of so many logical properties pertaining to the existence and usage of the doormat. Anyway, I had warned people that it became slippery and increased the chances of somebody falling. They called me a killjoy...which is potentially what I was to them, but not to me. The Oh-so-pleasurable moment when I saw a colleague – who shan't be named for obvious reasons – throw his leg in a hubristic attempt to step over the mat, and slip on the slush – mind you, with a bang not a whimper. Grin I did, but I didn't sport the expected I-told-you-so look on my face, for it's a much less pleasurable facial expression to feel it than the I-was-so-waiting-for-this look. Schadenfreude, je t'aime.

The next phenomenon is not recent, but it has gathered momentum in the last five years. People who heard from somebody who heard from somebody who heard from somebody very knowledgeable that you shouldn't say stadiums but stadia, that you'd have to be a total moron to write octopuses instead of octopi – they get my goat because they think they are so much smarter than you because you don't know how to form plurals properly. Well. How am I going to put this. You insufferable piece of S...tadia is the plural for the Greek or Roman unit of length (i.e. circa 185 metres, what an average stadium would measure back in the day) which, retroactively (linguists style this as a 'backformation'), became an alternative form of stadiums. So please stop correcting people because both forms exist. Same thing with forum...when you so smartass-ly use fora, you describe the public square or marketplace in ancient Roman cities, not the web page where people post comments. Aquarium accepts both aquariums and aquaria. Octopus comes from the Greek, by the roundabout way, so stick to octopuses unless you want to use octopodes as scientists do.

There is no hard-and-fast rule about plural formation, as each word behaves according to the language from which it has been borrowed, and also because more importantly we speak bloody English, not Latin or Greek. Thus, considering how many people already struggle with simple syntax, grammar, and plurals, perhaps we should stick to regular forms in -s/-es...unless you all want to be ignoramuses (yep, it's a verb in Latin you numbnuts, not a noun). You're welcome, xox. (Now go back to the beginning of the paragraph and find the plural for the two underlined words in the first sentence...you'll probably infer why 'agendas' ought to be wrong).

A few weeks back I stumbled upon a French poodle into one of James Thurber's fables (The Owl Who Was a God – hilarious) who wasn't the smartest cookie in the jar. Made me wonder if he thought poodles were dumb (bull's eye?) or if he thought the French were dumb (ditto?), or even if adjoining the two would make the aptest personification of dumb (c'est la vie?).

On a different, but poodle-related note, the trend-scouting will undoubtedly have noticed the Rise of the Floodle (sounds like a 1950s sci-fi movie title). Otherwise known as the Flatdoodle, it is a cross between a Flatcoated Retriever and a poodle. I suspect that the people responsible for this atrocious mix have come across the various denotations for “floodle” on the Internet, one of which being the flaccid state of the penis during the sexual act (aka floppy noodle) – hence them frolicking casually back to Flatdoodle. For once, I can't seem to be able to find fault with that.

Quick side note: sure, I can't deny that poodle puppies are cute. That's because they are puppies. Puppihood, puppiness confers great advantages regardless of the breed and the end result. Puppies are meant to be heart-meltingly clumsy and stoopid. The fact that poodles remain so (replace 'heart-meltingly' with 'heart-burningly') is both evidence and motive to continue picking on them.

Apparently the latest sartorial fad in France is to wear an oversize jumper (aka “pull-over” in French, true story) and stuff it into your jeans. Only you don't ram the whole shebang in, you only jam the front, and even then you leave the sides near the hips out. Combine this with high-waisted pants and you might see some, granted unintended, comical effects. So much different than the cheek-peeking, thong-showing, navel-nagging low-rise pants we had a decade ago. “Whale tail” to this day remains a valid entry in Wikipedia, perhaps dormant in case fashion as it so often does needs to resurrect the practise, perhaps to prove to posterity (mmmhmmmh, that pun was intended) that ridicule doesn't kill as long as enough people join you in the same ridiculous action.

It is too cloudy for the sun to even peek through, but I can tell it's day. Or time to go about my day. I had other stories to tell yet they will have to wait, pouring as they are from the tap of human idiosyncrasies. I hope you enjoyed reading this gerondic jabber, the gruffness of which the act of telling has not abated, nor fuelled. But watching the snow gyre nimbly in powdery clouds, murmur like starlings at dusk between the building in its peculiar, hypnotising fashion, I somehow feel tranquil, appeased, unraving at the nascence of the light.

 

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night, Part 6

Here we go again. Blame it on the insomnia and the appeal of the late-summer, rosy-fingered dawn. Blame it also on the vanity of this pigsty of a world, on my compatriots' chlorinated confusion. The will to prove one's existence never has paved a clearer path to ridicule than now, making the happy sarcastic few even more sarcastic...inevitably making this series long-winded ad absurdum. I'm not sure one can run out of stuff to rant about when one looks long enough at the thriving state of worldly affairs, but I'm certain that one needs a hand, every now and again. Tonight, baboons will lock hands with us in a firm, brotherly handshake across the Sacred Order of the Primates to show us The Way To Go.

One disclaimer before I start: as indeed the title so titularily stipulates, it is very late at night – so late at night it is that it's actually the same night as two nights ago – ergo I shall be eternally indebted to your disregard of the syntactical, punctuational and logical lack of substance my barbarous sentences will doubtless show.

I have addressed this issue before, but I am still dumbfounded by the very-short-term memory of some men who dry their hands after “el numero uno” – those who have completely forgotten to wash their hands in the first place. Yes, those one. Sure the wetness is there, and needs to be addressed...but this...is beyond my capacity to respond rationally. Keeping toilets clean doesn't amount to how much detergent and efforts one puts into its cleaning, but how one incites – dare I say 'tricks' – its users into washing their hands: automatic taps, automatic soap dispenser, automatic hand-dryer. Seeing how some still fail at shifting their hands vectorially in the (obvious) designated spots to soap up, clean and dry would baffle a two-week-into-training baboon. The non-automatic door spells 'death by germs' on its handle.

On the podium of (literally) stupendous stupidity might undeniably stand the morning-after-pubescence-hit vacuous missus recently beheld at my local bar (there's no way she could have been 18, but hey, it'll all make sense in a couple sentences) pole-dancing (complete with ass-rubbing lasciviousness) against every man in the joint, regardless of their being with someone. Her make-up wasn't as grotesque as one might have expected, but her dress was stupidly short, and by stupidly I mean that one could almost see her buttocks when she stood up – it's actually an unsolved sartorial feat to me that it didn't pull all the way up to her waist when she danced. One understood why she was even allowed to get in when one discovered that the testosterone-bursting males – obviously the single ones and one of the bouncers – were actually queueing up (I kid you not) to serve as a pole-dancing bar. It wasn't a pretty sight: one could see glassy eyes, drooling chins and bulging zippers; one could hear coarse, ruttish laughters that only seemed to spur her on. I mean, even the women in there were fascinated by the girl's boldness, the awkwardness of the moment because she was a frigging awesome dancer, I'll give her that. Her dance was sensual and enticing and boner-inducing (even I had to look up once in a while), in keeping with the rhythm of the music. It all lasted about thirty, perhaps forty-five minutes, and then she was gone (not from some people's memory, of course).

Quick side note: I was sitting on my own with a beer-and-book combo (I know it sounds weird, but I like reading in that bar on an early Friday evening because the music is chill and the crowd usually super-friendly, so feck off) and she did glance at me, but she perhaps didn't feel up for a challenge, or perhaps thought she had enough males for one night. Or perhaps the raised eyebrow deterred her altogether. The mandrill baboon in me was touched, but not aroused...perhaps I'm really a cul-de-sac in the chain, but the girl's forlorn eyes dug deeper than I cared to admit back then. The loneliness in people is something I highly respect, not something I take advantage of.

Speaking of baboons, one never fails to recognise modern primates for what they really are in a crowd. I was attending a Celtic event this summer in a reconstructed Viking village in a small town. It was Sunday, the day was hot and the sun had this buttery quality which I like. There were workshops with metalsmiths, woodworkers, tailors. The whole modern-day Viking she-bang. Archery and thatchers. Dancers. At some point there was a call in a loudspeaker saying that some children in period costume were thrust onto a stage to perform a rather fancy interpretation of a Morris dance to the springy tune of drums, oboes, lutes and flageolets. OK, perhaps the call just mentioned that some dance was about to take place and the rest is my own interpretation. Perhaps. Doubtful Viking-y costumes at best, but a ridiculous parody of Morris dance (come on, it's a 15^th Century English thing) and an even more ridiculous choice of instruments. Flageolet, for Pete's sake. I know that organisers try their best to emulate and entertain...but that's just the grumpy me. Anyway, so these kiddos are on stage and hold hands and parents see their offspring in cute attires smiling and dancing cutely so their first instinct is – of course – to just come as close as they can to the stage and record the whole darn thing, mayhap trampling some other parent in the process but hey, that's social Darwinism. A hungry troop of baboons (or a shrewdness of apes, for that matter) would be more orderly at lunch-time in your local zoo.

Essentially, they were blocking the view of the parent behind, who was blocking the view of the one behind, and the one behind. From where I stood, at a safe distance, I could see a mobile phone screen recording another mobile phone screen recording another mobile phone screen recording another recording some fuzzy dance in the distance...a perfect “mise en abyme” that was comically farcical, because even the first parent, who obviously had a clear view, was pressed to the point of suffocation against the protective railings. Perhaps they all meant well, in some dimension yet unknown to science, but the fact that they cannot argue their case convincingly when asked not to push which pulls the WTF trigger. They either give one another the same look as a rabbit caught in the headlights' glare, or that of the driver looking at the lifeless body of the half rabbit protruding from under the tyre.

I plead guilty, on this rather hot and cloudless day, of schadenfreude watching all of this unfold.

Talking about misery and joy, let's turn to one of my favourite species which is their perfect epitome: the poodle. Of course I have to have a go at them, or the raison d'être of this rant would proverbially be thrown at them. My liebestod towards them is legendary, but this passionate hatred is well-founded, believe me. I recently learnt that their hair-do actually had a purpose back then (not the rather personal, dubiously aesthetic one it's supposed to have in our modern era): as they were used as water dogs (even though they don't have palmed paws...go figure), their self-conscious owners would shear their curly mane in strategic places so that the dogs wouldn't be weighted down by too much soaked fur...because you see: the shining coat of the poodle doesn't stop growing. It doesn't shed excess fur. Sure, you could contend that they don't smell and are non-allergy-inducive, to which I will respond that somewhere in that matted fur of theirs, in these dread-locks and impossible-to-comb knots, given enough time, there must be some bacteria or some germ snugly proliferating in silence.

I have to hit the sack now, as I sense my sagacious sarcastic side might keep me awake for longer than is reasonable, especially after two sleepless nights in a row. Sometimes, it's also good to let some things go. Alternatively, we all have other fish to fry, and baboons to feed.

 

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 5

It's been a long while. Not long enough I can hear some say. Well, sure right you are, I haven't missed you either. Yet for all I know, you might very well have been craving my refractory, longitudinal diatribes for longer than you'd care to admit. So without further ado, here it comes, Ladies, Gentlemen and Poodles...

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 5

I know for a fact that many of you have wondered, in this festive period, if you could push your depravity to the point of asking for a pair of crutches for Christmas. In the school I'm in, Oh boy they've become trendy, like the latest, must-have accessory in any respectable fashionista garderobe.

So, to my cross-grained mind comes a question: How to casually use a pair of crutches, and why? Perhaps, say, to attract pathos, eyes, attention? Mayhap you want people to open up doors for you? Here's some of the postures I've witnessed, which might be of some help to the newbies (because obviously owning the crutches isn't enough, you've got to have style). Step on your heavily-bandaged foot, your elbows akimbo on your crutches, back slightly bent over and crooked. Or, you can roll skull-printed bandanas around the handles, with matching handbag and tee-shirt. You can also remain the kind, helpful person who you've always been and point to a direction to someone while still holding a crutch. Or hold them diagonally so that people have to avoid any potential shin-breaking crutch in a 4-metre radius. But I'm being sarcastic there, for next to no reason, really. One warning, though, in all this merriment: do not get too confident that nobody is there to see you when you walk without as much as a limp without the said crutches...there's always somebody, somewhere, to see you (much-revered Murphy's Law) walking straight. And as much as it pains me to admit it, I have seen this ridiculous tendency in women only. We men have yet to find the crutch in us.

These postures will enable your foot to take twice as long to mend, and it will actually mend twice as bad, leaving you more than ample time to attract more pathos...or boredom. And let me tell you this as straight as I can: people don't care a straw, for they won't open up doors for you and even though they may ask what in the world happened to you, it's only because the weather's been the same for weeks now and because it might be a great opportunity to snicker. Crutches trigger pathos in sensible people for about as long as a blind poodle would. Interesting, for about two and a half minutes. Right about the time it takes to realise that at some point you'll have to lug the dratted thing about (and for once, believe it or not, I'm not speaking about the poodle).

Speaking of which, where on Earth did all the poodles go? It's been a while since I last saw one alive. As if someone had decided to put them out of their misery, or as if their wanting genetic pool had finally hit them back in the end, as some late-coming retaliation. Perhaps they deserve a place of mention alongside the dodo now they're gone. IF they're gone. If you see one, can you please send a picture my way? That's for the obituary, thanks – or Part 6 of this series.

The other day, the leaves were falling hectic orange and frantic yellow all over the place, for Autumn had come. I like this season a lot, for the bright colours, the fantastic sceneries they show or evoke. It's also a tad dreary, by the same token, for you can now see the bare branches, the knots and scars on the bark, the general sorriness of the leafless tree. Slightly less majestuous without their shiny robe...somewhat like everyone else on this planet. We can also note the equally drab birds perching in there. All of this makes you less reluctant to park your car under trees during this season. No fruit, no bird dropping on your windscreen. So I parked confidently...and come evening I damned those birds who could still find fruits in them scrawny trees. Droppings of orange and red all over my car. And the ones parked on either side of mine. Luckily, it rained quite hard that night so my car was laved of their evil-doings. The next day I paid especial attention and chose a treeless spot. No tree, no bird; no bird, no dropping. When I saw what had happened to my car in the evening, I knew the world was making me pay for something. Bad karma attracts birds. For only my car had been Pearl-Harboured. And the consistency (I'm passing over the details) of these droppings excluded everything but fruits, or berries. How on Earth could they find fruits in November so far up north? For Pete's sake, even elderberries had been gone by then. Some mystery I'm still paying for as we speak...there's no avoiding trees in this world. Someone must pay.

And someone will pay, someday, for their bungling up a McFlurry (jumping from pillar to post, I know). Why is it that in McDonald's they always serve you a McFlurry which is never flurried, the hollowed spoon sticking out right from the centre, erect, ready to fit onto the flurrying machine? Perhaps it's just a French language thing where they don't care to see WHY it's called a McFlurry. In any case, this defies any structural and gustatory sense: you can't remove the spoon without actually taking half of the ice-cream out with it, along with half the M&Ms (my all-time favourite) and the caramel topping. While everything should be blended into one great flurry (hence the name) of flavours, everything is stacked into one one-taste-at-a-time, uninviting heap.

You feminists are waiting for me now to spit my venom at men, a vulture-like look about you, malice in your eyes. And while you could just look at us to find enough fuel for your warmongering, I'm going to disclose what happens in the Men's room. That should fuel it for a few days at least. While few of us know for certain what happens in the Ladies', you mightn't know either the delicacies that the observant can find in this hellish place. Graphic details ensueing (so if you've leaving us now, fare thee well dear reader, and may you find a safe path through this nightmarish jungle of poodles, pigeons and crutches!).

The smell. First thing to greet you. Ranging from ''just acrid'' to ''astounding blocked-due-to-cold nose opener''. Sticky feet. Usually around the wall urinals, but if you get lucky around, on or across the regular bogs. The walls themselves, the doors, handles and partition walls can be sticky too, so mind your fingers. Absolute absence of toilet paper, at all times. Don't count on a forgotten newspaper, or on that last leaf of drying paper – we've got airblades now.

There's many a different style to roam the johns, but I particularly like the blokes who come for the number one and either: 1- leave the johns altogether without washing their hands 2- re-arrange their hair in front of the mirror and then leave 3- don't wash their hands but still dry them in the airblade (to avoid a potential case of sticky fingers, while I think they're actually creating it) 4- start drying their hands but realise they don't have time to do so – so use the back of their jeans to wipe them clean. All before grabbing that door handle.

Differently, but not any less efficiently, the blokes who come for a number two and 1- leave the johns altogether without washing their hands (yeah, I know) 2- have to wash their hands but prefer to dry them in the airblades (remember my theory on sticky fingers?) 3- start drying their hands but realise they don't have time to do so – so use the back of their jeans to wipe them clean. I have also witnessed 4- the necessitous who had to come here for a bossy number two, knowing full well there'd be no TP and a faulty airblades, perhaps even no water at all. I can't tell you the rest of that story, I still wake up at night because of it.

I hope you had your fill of filth (and I carefully avoided the subject of pubes smudging the sink). As for me, I avoid public urinals like the plague.

 I'm about to hit the hay, and content though I be to have poured my bile over those and that which irritate me, I'll still hold an intractable grudge against poodles for not showing me the way to complete spleen. Godspeed.

What Really Irritates Me in Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 4

Thank you, Cécile, for putting me back in the saddle! It has been a long while since I last posted in this section, and now my notebooks are full to the brim. High time I relieved them of their atrabilious content.

Ladies and Gentlemen and Poodles, here comes...

What Really Irritates Me in Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 4

Aaaaah poodle, how do I love thee? I love thee not, indeed, but I love thee anyhoo for pawing me the material to my cantankerousness! How have I missed thee? I have missed thee not, of course.

The ostentatious joie de vivre these quadrupeds effortlessly display when they greet anyone borders on the indecent. Wait, it IS indecent. Why do they frolic about as if they'd found a pot of gold? I know every dog does that, but not to the extent poodles do, and not with a certain relish at their own excitement which make their eye lustre...I guess the absence of survival instinct must be accounted for. On a different topic, I heard recently that the smaller the breed, the longer they live...dear Lord, protect us from tininess.

A good friend of mine directed me to a silly page on the Net (http://www.funfacts.com.au/cachi-the-killer-poodle/4/) The story has it that a poodle named Cachi fell from the 13^th floor onto a woman's head, unexpectedly killing her in the process. A passer-by was hit by a bus whilst beholding the stunning scene, and all this foofaraw caused a man to have a heart attack. This...article, for lack of a better word, is highly dubious and probably means to poke fun at an unfortunate series of events. Made me raise an eyebrow, I must admit. Because I believe that the said poodle must very well have been trying to greet the woman below with a well-deserved hug, and must have greatly misjudged the distance. I don't think this is beyond their capacity. Doesn't say if the dog survived, though. Tough little blighters, might have, for all I know.

It does seem I can't get enough of poodles, doesn't it? Well, believe it or not, I still haven't exhausted what seems to be an antediluvian hostility against them. But let's move onto other things which nark me to no end, for if I don't do it here and now, it'll start growing on me...and I'll turn into my great-grandma, which will be way more unfortunate than Cachi hurtling down on someone's head.

I recently joined a dating website. That wouldn't be such a great deal if this hadn't sparked a helluva lot of concerns. For instance, why on earth must fifty to sixty percent of all the pictures in there show a woman, age ranging from 18 to 50+ with

• rounded or pouted lips
• her index and middle finger held in a V shape near said mouth
• rounded, glittery eyes
• heavy make-up
• tilted head
• a blinding flash?

There should be a limited number of selfies allowed. I know that the first selfie to be shot was achieved by a certain Robert Cornelius back in 1839 (more accurately a daguerreotype), but man, why would you lovingly debase yourself in such a fashion? I know ridiculousness never killed anyone, and that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but ridiculousness DOES NOT MAKE YOU STRONGER AND NEVER WILL. This syllogism is a complete fallacy.

I understand the selfie-in-the-mirror trick though, for obvious, pragmatic purposes. But please, PLEASE, do pay attention to what's in the background! We don't want to see knickers scattered all over the place (actually we do), dildos (true story), a kitchen sink full to the brim with dirty dishes (another true story) or the general mess you live in. Which could easily make me rant against pictures of men sporting a dubiously immaculate whitish tank top over a dubious/sculpted/tattooed build, but as I haven't seen them myself, I'll deal with them hollow men later.

Something else which peeves the bejesus out of me is when I look up at the profile of a woman and it says...nothing. Just plain as day : Such-and-such – I can't discuss pseudonyms...I consider this way below the belt because they range from the purely pathetic to the downright ludicrous and/or ridiculous, though inventiveness ought to be lauded – well, Such-and-such hasn't filled in her profile yet. She's been on this site for six months, and she hasn't had time to write a single word? You kidding me? Too busy trying to take the right selfie? Duh. Sometimes a woman visits your profile, “likes” it, and you visit hers, as common courtesy wills it: no picture, no personal description, no desiderata. How do you want us to react to this buffet? How should we judge your “likeability”? What in this vast ocean of nothingness would trigger us to “like” your profile and make us think we would match?

Last diatribe and then I'm out for the day. However we lonely men appreciate the efforts some of you lonely women put into self-portraying your pushed-up cleavage, your long, spotlessly-shaved legs, your fluttering eyelashes and your smouldering look...we don't quite understand why you take the pains to specify in your description that you really DON'T want us to choose you because of your looks or to think you're superficial. And sunglasses, when worn, have that irking tendency to cover a part of the visage I tend to be interested in – but that is the sunglasses' fault, not yours, right?

See you soon for another piece of rambling harangue!

*keeps mumbling* 

 

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 3

Poodles really are a peculiar fork in the evolutionary tree. The Wikipedia article concerning them is one of the most ridiculous panegyrics ever written, to men and animals alike. Pudles, as the Old English wills it, are not water dogs: they are etymologically puddle dogs. How come this breed, deprived of any instinct for the most part, became the staple royal items to have? How did they rise to such prominence over, say, the basset hound? I can't imagine a lambda night watchman unleashing a poodle in the dark of night and shouting “Have at them, Troy!” Nor can I imagine them jumping overboard to save the life of a drowning man, nor sniffing their way through the toe of an avalanche. Mephistopheles making his entrance as a black poodle is as ludicrous as having designer dogs, or names such as the Scandinavian clip or the English saddle clip. Poodles were clipped in such fashion by French circus people who, for obvious comical effects, decided to make it look laughable. They succeeded beyond expectations.

The women – pardon me for pointing this out so near after Women's Day, but none of the menfolk have been reported to be clad in similar fashion – who dress themselves and their dog(s) in matching clothes are equally derisible. The interchangeability of the posture of the two is, on the other hand, if you picture it with reasonable accuracy, quite worthy of a laugh.

But enough of poodles, let me direct my irked pen to alternative targets. Others (men and women alike, I can't be picking on the same all the time – bar poodles, they deserve it) who get my goat are those who gesture with their phone as if the person they are talking to were in front of them. They draw aerial charts or point to such and such direction. I can't imagine the bewildered face of their interlocutor at the other end.

Equally irking are those irascible hoi polloi who comment on a movie at the cinema and/or chomp on pop-corn. I sometimes feel like packing an old shoe in my bag beforehand, in order to throw it at them. The cover of darkness shouldn't benefit mosquitoes only.

The effrontery of the rollerbladed post-juvenescent swooshing an inch past my elbow galls me to no end, but more nettling perhaps are the literary parasites who read from your book, above your shoulder, in the tube: their impatience at your slowness – whilst you're trying to enjoy the novel – is baffling. Had they got the nerve, they would turn the wretched page themselves. I drive them around the bend by flipping the page halfway, stopping in mid-air, pretending to finish the page in candid rapture and then turning around and ask: “You done? Because I can't wait to turn that page.” Life, sometimes, has such simple pleasures it would be a sin to let them pass.

The race – or should I say melee – to obtain the last parking space at any supermarket bears witness to the prodigious capacity of man – yes, usually men are up to scratch in this regard – to contrive ingenuous plans of action in a fraction of a second. The ensuing foofaraw between the protagonists more often than not makes your day and appends a flourish of newfangled contumelies to your vocabulary. Unfortunately, we don't usually have time to follow-up on any retaliation taking place once the two belligerents are in the said supermarket. Love is all around.

This being said, I still can't say I'm crustier than my great-grandma, and that means something.

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 2

Hey guys,

I know it's been a while and that it's only the second post in this series, but I hope the wait was worthwhile. Here comes:

What Really Irritates Me In Men, Women and Poodles, and Other Sartorial Considerations Very Late at Night - Part 2

I met a poodle the other day, at a relative's. I write 'met' because I was led to disbelieve that it was a normal dog and had a persona of its own. That she -  for it was a she - literally had a character quite peculiar to her and the tenacity of a dog on a bone. This one rather had a hangdog look, with lots of hair and an indecently long fringe covering its/her eyes. I was wondering how it/she made its way between people's legs without bumping into them. Fact is, it/she couldn't. Not all the time. But with eponymous dogged determination it - she, SHE - pursued calculating angles of approach at the last second and avoiding collision, not avoiding collision. Worst thing was that when someone just patted her on the head, she couldn't help herself and had to relieve the content of her bladder on the floor. So you could follow her path in the house by leaning at light's angle and spot the tiny, light-yellow droplets. Well, I guess my aunt was right, this...dog definitely has a character of her own.

Delicacies abound in our world.

I particularly distaste the people who do not smash their cigarette stubs underfoot. I always think they could save a few atoms of oxygen.

Pigeons that fly right above your head could drive me to buy a gun and start an aviary war.

People who go to Chinese restaurants and who obstinately try to eat with chopsticks and can't are mildly irritating. I'd rather see them skew the food rather than hold the chopsticks in each hand like pens or garden forks and take up the food from the plate from each side.

I have seen a few feathered birds wearing sunglasses inside a building or at night when there's only one streetlamp. Fashion never got so blind.

Lunches with old people who rant about the government and the immigrants and the social security and insecurity and blahblahblah and the state of their prostate and blood levels re-blahblahblah what can we do it's the ways of the youth and I really liked the old Franc system and Charles Martel could have done a better job re-re-blahblahblah I really like your napkins and the carrots were cooked to perfection and my uncle Robert had a glass eye and a wooden leg blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahblahblah the price of the petrol wasn't the same before the war - yes, the Gulf war - no, no, after World War II blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah really make my amygdala and angular gyrus go banana.I could throw a spider monkey at them. And those are helluva nasty bastards, 'scuse my French.

I now have a heartfelt antipathy against the men and women, girls, boys, brats, old badgers and cronies who don't care a whit when they see a wheelchair, in distress or not. Luckily, there are still nice people to help you push it. 

I wondered the other day if I hadn't become cantankerous before my time. 

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

Hi guys,

Today, I'm starting a whole new series. I'll be adding up as I go along and meet gems. So I guess that the quantity that I will add depends on the progression rate of humankind. By 'progression' I really meant 'regression', and if you ask me, a good few people would agree with me. Let's cross out 'good', right?

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

I have always been dumbfounded by the very short-term memory of men who dry their hands after making pee-pee – that is, they have completely forgotten to wash their hands in the first place, as if toilets were the cleanest places in our modern world.

We really fail to recognise the gen(i)us of the homo automobilis who not only swerves onto the same lane of an incoming pedestrian, but accelerates.

Surpassing him in stupidity might undeniably be the pre-pubescent brat or the pre-adolescent pimple-ish jejune fille who is wearing outrageous make-up that would deter even the most ruttish mandrill baboon and who unashamedly allows her phone to play that latest Lady Gaga ringtone full blast in a cinema and then picks up the phone to resume the savvy narration of the latest piece of gossip her friend could lay her hand on.

Another palatable delicacy is served by the mosquito who basely awaits the cover of night to lash out at any patch of skin we might have foolishly left uncovered. Which triggers the question: “What could be more nerve-racking than a mosquito hovering an inch above your ear?” To which I would answer: “It would be knowing that there is a mosquito hovering an inch above your ear but no longer hearing it buzz” – which means either landing on the said patch of skin (I defy anyone to deny having then slapped his or her face with forceful rage) or the desertion because of the absence of said patch of skin. The incommoding itchiness and rash one commonly experiences a few minutes later sadly points out to the former.

People who light a cigarette right under a “No Smoking” sign make me go bananas. They cannot only read, they also cannot feign casualness convincingly. The rogues smirk. I could shove the aforementioned cigarette up their nostril.

If someone could come up with a simple, one-step guide on how to walk in a crowd, I would do whatever is in my power to have him or her canonised. People usually roam the malls just like they visit a museum: mildly interested as they are by the exhibits, they might approach the caption in a genuine effort to know what's going on inside that frame but lo! they suddenly step back, abruptly change direction or stop and stare in every direction like a chicken that has just found a knife, clearly disorientated by the amount of reading the naive curator expects them to do. Needless to say that they usually disrupt the flow of the perambulation, i.e. bump into you and give you the same look as a rabbit caught in the headlights' glare. They usually reassure themselves by rushing off to the nearest highlight available, i.e. the grand opening sale at the new Gap outlet.

People who pass in front of everyone in a queue because they are “busy” should be kindly reminded that apes and chimpanzees – as have many species, but I picked apes and chimps as they will prove my point in a more efficacious way as they are deemed “stupid” and “irrelevant” by those same people – have a millennial sense of order and an innate discipline.

So-called uptown girls carrying a handbag the size of a two-week-holiday suitcase would only look ridiculous were it not for their high, infuriating propensity at giggling, gloating and making loud borborygmi while sipping the last dregs of a Mocha Frappuccino with their straw at a Starbucks terrace.

Poodles have been used as gun-dogs for hundreds of years – may I ask where did man go wrong, as nowadays most poodles seem to have lost both their survival instinct entirely, along with their self-esteem? Could it be because their loins are clipped bare and clad in briefs, that their paws are shod with genuine leather shoes? Where are now the barking packs of poodles roaming the Wild?

Men picking their nose whilst they think no one is looking is another feature that would have me climb up the curtains. They would indeed be excused, thinking they were going about their business unnoticed, only if the said business were taking less than five minutes, if they weren't so carefully and conscientiously inspecting their findings, i.e. the sticky content of their nasal cavities and if they did not try to discard the said sticky content in some conspicuous location near us. Rarely are those three conditions unfulfilled.

The pigeons, usually the club-footed, the one-legged, the bandy-legged, the one-eyed and the just-been-hit-by-a-bus specimens, which flock at strategic locations to wilfully – I maintain it and I'm ready to prove my point to anyone in situ – shell whatever is under them may receive the palm of the species bearing the closest resemblance to some human beings, minus the survival instinct, much alike that of the aforementioned poodle. I. Hate. Pigeons.