Writings
Misc. Criticisms » Sun, Jul 31st 2005 8:44 am
I spent much of today in the passenger seat of our Golf while slowly inching our way to my eldest brother’s new home in Toronto. Chris was driving, and we were fighting off the road rage by remarking on the disappointing state of society’s youth. Observations were made and conclusions were reached.
Firstly, after several minutes of “cow spotting”, we realized that the majority of the people we’d seen who were suffering (obliviously) from morbid obesity were in fact female. This is intriguing. Why would women—-supposedly the more image-concious of the two genders—-be more likely to outweigh a Volkswagen than men? Is it because they’ve been brainwashed by the whole “beauty’s on the inside” campaign, or are they just more susceptible to the siren call of the ice-cream truck? I honestly haven’t had time to ponder this, so feel free to offer your interpretation. While you’re at it, please explain why you think they’d be under the impression that us men actually want to gaze upon their rippled abdomens or cheesy thighs while they strut around in belly-exposing tops and skirts no taller than a roll of duct tape.
Obese people seem to hate being judged solely on their appearance, but someone’s appearance says more about them than they realize. If you’re overweight, it tells me that at some point in your life you ate just about everything in sight; you hated yourself enough that despite your noticing the fact that you had to stand further away from the mirror to get the whole picture, you kept eating. You thought “why should I try to look like a supermodel? I’m still a good person on the inside!” That’s completely true, but people don’t care if you look like a super model; I can’t remember the last time I found a super model attractive. What matters is that the “super model” image isn’t just some temporary, superficial ideal; it’s the image of a healthy person. We want you to be healthy, not simply “skinny”. The age of putting on pounds to survive the winters has passed, and never again will the majority of men want their women to weigh 250lbs or more. It’s just plain unhealthy.
I was on my way to obesity only about eight months ago. I had a fat all over, and rolls I could’ve easily used to smuggle bricks of cocaine. I immediately cut the nightly bag of buttered & salted popcorn with can of Pepsi from my diet and vowed to eat much smaller portions of everything. This coupled with biking (something I’ve always done) has helped me lose more than 30lbs since then. Yet for some reason I don’t feel compelled to tell people that it was “so very hard” to make these changes. It was easy as hell. I looked at myself and knew it needed to be done.
Anyway… Once we’d grown tired and disgusted of consciously pointing out fat people, we moved onto “gansters”. In the span of a few minutes, we counted three guys wearing grossly oversized “Jordan” basketball jerseys. How embarrassed they’d be, I’m sure, if they were all to strut to the same street corner at the same time. Honestly, I’ve questioned the thought-process of these people since my first sighting of one in the eighth grade. What could possibly possess a child to abandon all of his unique characteristics in favour of adopting the persona of some shit-talking rap “artist”? (Okay, some rap’s alright, but I think those of us who appreciate music can agree that the majority of it is very much not alright.) These people don’t just dress the same; they walk, talk, and behave the same way too. The reason for this, I assumed, was quite obvious: Fitting in is—-to them—- more important than being who they really are. Rather than wait to meet people who shared their actual interests, they’d take the sure-fire approach and just reshape themselves to fit into an existing group. I go to parties with alcohol rather than hang out with non-drinking people, but I didn’t have to become a different person.
I get the feeling I’m not thinking deeply enough about why these people are the way they are, but I know one thing: some of them are complete asses. Case in point, the 20-something male wearing oversized shorts, a crooked hat, and a “wife beater” shirt who was launching character attacks on my dad for driving into a un-marked dead-end street. He stood behind the U-Haul truck tugging on the bottom edge and shoulders of his shirt as if he were performing some kind of natural pre-conflict ritual as my brother and I just watched from a distance in with stunned looks on our faces. Despite his making a colossal fool of himself, he was presumably well respected by the other sheep in his herd as they stood by and watched with tough faces. Wearing those clothes and listening to that music and walking that walk have apparently instilled some powerful form of unjustified confidence in these people. This wouldn’t bother me if they weren’t such cocky morons with respect for no one but their own kind, and I know many of these guys are great people, but unfortunately it’s the dumb ones who are in charge of “representing”. It’s a shame.
These are just my initial thoughts after having been inspired only an hour or so ago (except this last paragraph which I’m writing at 7:40 the next morning). Feel free to harshly correct any errors you think I’ve made or add your own criticisms. I hope everyone realizes that I’m only commenting on one major facet of these people and that I’m aware that many of them have redeeming qualities but, to make it easier to write, I pretended they didn’t.
1 Andrew on Mon, Aug 1st 2005 4:52 am
It sounds like you’ve been hanging out in trashville. I very much agree with what you’ve said here. People suck.
It’s time to point some fingers. Who is responsible for the disgustingness of all these people? The greedy corporations that have capitalized on humans’ susceptibility to be told what to do? The republicans that are widening the divide between the rich and the poor and driving this country down the gutter?
I sound … lefty. I’m just tired of the bullshit. The ‘slums’ are something I avoid thinking about. And I consider myself cowardly for it.
2 Aaron on Mon, Aug 1st 2005 8:20 am
Well I blame the victims, personally. They’re the weak ones, to begin with. The corporations capitalize on peoples’ weaknesses rather than break them down until they’re weak. Maybe I’ll learn otherwise when I get done my marketing program.
It affects me personally as I’ve a young cousin who’s been sucked in by the gangsta crowd. He lives in a poor-ish neighbourhood with his mother and sister. He walked into my room once while I was listening to Placebo (I think?) and asked what the hell I was listening to… Then proceeded to ask me which rap songs I had on my play list. It was a revealing few moments, and I knew he was completely lost from that point on. I’ve known him since the day he was born, and seeing him turn into a rap-loving “wigga” was difficult; all within a year, too.
I was recently interrogated by a young (13) female gangsta as to why I wore a helmet when riding my bike. “Are you like totally clueless?” she asked with a genuine look of shock as I told her my age. “I’m 13 and I don’t even wear one.” My reaction was typical to most of my encounters with children in this town: stunned and awed. I couldn’t even come up with a witty response. My brain was in some kind of panic as it tried to wake itself from this dream world where children actually said things like that. I told her to “stay safe” and rode away laughing. She ought to be wearing the helmet…
3 josh on Mon, Aug 1st 2005 10:10 pm
Hmm, a girl who believes her self to be more adult then a 19 year old boy probably has some pretty shit ass parents at home. Ones that don’t think enough to educate their child on the fundamentals of bike safety. Bad parents are everywhere but I know what it’s like on my street. I constantly see children under the age of 5 playing outside running back and forth on the road with no parental supervision. And I know, if one of those kids where to run right in front of my car one day that crack ass parent would not think twice of suing me despite the accident being their negligent fault.
As for wiggers I think it’s just a lack of exposure or lack of confidence. I think it takes a lot of confidence to be people like us, people who don’t really fit into a category, not because were striving to be individuals but just because we never bothered to become a stereotype. My mp3 play list is all over the place. The only genre I don’t have is maybe country, but I have lots of folk and bluegrass. Right below that is my hardcore, electronic, rock, rap, trip hop, drum and bass, ambiance. Music does not define a person, because to many people have eclectic taste like my own, and can not be defined as such. So when a kid associates everything he is by a genre of music I think its just laziness almost, it’s just easier for him to assume this pre-carved personality then make his own.
Don’t have much to say about fat chicks though, lot of fat dudes. Don’t know the hard facts so I’m not going to say anything.
4 Chris on Mon, Aug 1st 2005 10:18 pm
Yep, lots of fat, disgusting people. Like he said, mainly women… which is something we sort of realized all of a sudden… and then verified in our continued observations.
The guy who was being a dick, when my dad was trying to do a 3 (17?) point turn, needed to see the undercarraige of that uHaul. I’d have crushed the fucker, with that aging F350.
And good point Josh… on the adopting a genre of music to define oneself. It is exactly what these people have done, and it is beyond lazy.
5 Josh on Tue, Aug 2nd 2005 12:01 am
I was just thinkning, I remember years ago I asked my friend Joe honeslty what makes a good rapper. He had no good answer, all he could say was "I don’t know they dont’ sound stupid". Given Joe was a dumb kid, but he is the kind of kid that we are discussing so I think you get my point.
6 Kevin on Tue, Aug 2nd 2005 2:14 am
Man, you guys never finished the story of the roughian calling on your dad, you keep teasing me like an underpaid hooker trying to get a few more bucks.
As for the wiggronese, a neighbour of mine recently fell into the one way track to the wellfare line. She grew up in a fairly nice house with both parents, who spoiled her, and a brother who is so nice he is questionably gay. This apparently was unsuitable, so within a year she started stealing things at school, admittedly trying to get expelled, got a boyfriend from Toronto which is always a good sign, ran away from home to live with her wellfare feasting friend, and she tried to frame her mother with child abuse. I’m not quite sure where I’m going with telling you all that, but the fact is high powered rifles might not be such a ridiculous method of routing out this evil as once thought.
I’m also reminded of a lady I know who lets her children run freely on the street near where I live. She sits at the end of her driveway with another neglectant mother, in lawnchairs. Both are armed with mugs of coke, but we all know its not just coke, they must think we are as dumb as her Fetal-Alchohol-Syndrome poster children, who choose to get on either a bike, rollerblades, or a skateboard, without a helmet, just to up the Reepers ante, and fly aimlessly past swirving cars. This is a perfect example of where the parents will definately be the reason why their children end up on Ricky Lake complaining that their baby-dad “don’t pay no bills” and they are forced to prostitute themselves for their snortable groceries.
As for the fat people, they make us look better so they are alright by me, just as long as they don’t touch me or think they “have a chance”.
7 Aaron on Tue, Aug 2nd 2005 9:38 am
Actually, Josh’s point about us not starving for individuality sort of got me thinking that whenever someone seeks out individuality, they always end up in one of those classes: Emo, goth, wigger, whatever. They wanted to be different so they became wiggers, who at the time probably seemed very different? I don’t know. I can’t seem to put myself in their shoes. It just seems like such an embarrassingly shameless way to live that I can’t fathom anyone consciously choosing that lifestyle. They seem to value respect, but only among themselves… We should catch some, tag their ears, and observe them in their natural habitats so we can make a Discovery documentary and get people active in helping these lost souls.
If their love of the music came before their love of the lifestyle, then we should be doing everything we can to censor them from the likes of Hitler’s audio-recorded speeches or we’ll have another Nazi Youth on our hands as they all nod to the rhythm of his sweet, soothing German voice…
What’s more, I love that many are so outwardly religious but still support hateful rap and violence. I guess it’s just cool to be religious because it adds that extra dimension to their otherwise 1-D personalities? Or maybe the cross is just something else to wear around their necks to chime with their other bling like the oversized “G-Unit” chain and/or a chromed middle finger? I guess whatever takes the focus of their retarded faces; they’re poster children for apathy (or stroke victims…
As for fat people, I’m not surprised nobody has much to say about them. There’s nothing controversial about them. They’re fat, they know it, and they just don’t care. There’s a nurse at our hospital who is—-without question—-the largest human I’ve ever seen in person. Maybe she tried for a doctor’s position but the hospital refused for fear of bad publicity? I can’t imagine what constant state of mind someone would have to be in to let themselves get that large. Fat isn’t like cigarette smoke. It’s not like the surgeon general has to plaster his warning of obesity on every stick of butter, but after driving around Toronto for only an hour or so, that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
And Kevin, as for fat people making us look better: What about the women?! There are probably thousands of 10’s out there disguised as 2’s and 3’s under a hundred pounds of Hershey bar. Surely you wouldn’t be opposed to an increase in the hawt-lady population?
8 Aaron on Wed, Aug 3rd 2005 9:10 pm
Today I was riding along King St. (our main street) on my way to my usual playing ground when I caught the eyes of some surprisingly witty jocks cruising around scoping for chicks or other such things. I braced myself for their remarks only to burst out in audible laughter as the guy in the backseat yelled "nice helmet, fag."
"Nice seatbelt, moron" would’ve been an excellent retort, but once again my brain was busy adapting to its new level of cynism.