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Get in There and Fuck It: A Record of Annoyance

Monday 5/13/24

I find that there is now virtually no one who can behave sanely, civilly, smartly, normally. When you say something like this, people want to say that you're the problem. That's easier. If one person has an issue with that many other people, it's that one person who is the real issue.


But is it really? Or could that just be how it would go if someone did behave sanely, smartly, civilly, smartly, normally, and had a clue what was happening around them? That is, they were observant. They weren't oblivious.


I'll give five examples from yesterday of people doing typical things--that is, most people are doing some version of what these people were doing--and which make it so that I can hardly stand a single person.


To start: I was walking to Charlestown in the morning yesterday to run stairs and where, as it turns out, the dog was awaiting me. Here in the North End, I passed a woman wearing a Barstool Sports sweatshirt.


It says something about you, does it not, if you are someone attired in Barstool Sports clothing? And it says something slightly different about you, does it not, whether you're a man or a woman?


Buying this merchandise puts money in the pockets of Dave Portnoy, a man who enjoys spitting in the mouths of college women. A man who went on national television and said that women who wear skinny jeans deserve to be raped. Then, doubled-down on that comment.


Deserve to be raped.


Stood by his position.


Yeah...I'm thinking that's pretty evil. That's pretty disgusting. I'm thinking that if you're a man and you worship this guy, you're a number of things. An oaf, an idiot, someone who peaked, as such, in high school and/or college--but probably high school--and definitely a misogynist.


But what if you're a woman? You support someone who thinks you have rape coming to you because of your clothes?


It's kind of like these awful MFA stories we see that are put forward by these publishing system bigots in that it's impossible to defend.


So I'm thinking, yes, this isn't so great, this woman isn't so great, to put it charitably.


Am I wrong there? Seems like you really can't be wrong in thinking this.


So that's one.


Later in the day, I walk to Charles MGH to get the Red Line out to Harvard for a screening at the Brattle. There's a conductor on the Red Line who bellows out the names of the stops and sundry information--"bus line available for...", e.g.--in this over-the-top "wacky" voice. It's this super-exaggerated performance voice that I saw someone liken to that of a maniacal boxing announcer and someone else an especially cartoonish monster truck rally announcer. And it's loud. The T is already horrendous. In a city where less and less works well than at times previous, the T might be the most inefficient thing there is Boston, save for Michelle Wu's group of politico-activists headquartered at City Hall. It's old, it breaks down, it catches on fire.


The speakers are dilapidated and there's feedback coming from them. Then you have this guy--and he does it every time, for every stop--with his insane-person voice. There are no jokes, no commentary, just this guy screaming at you for your ride with this voice that makes him sound like there's something wrong with him. It's not funny, it's not witty. I'm not on the Red Line that much, but there are people on it all the time. And I figured that people being what people now are, and the world being what the world now is, that if I looked online, I'd find comments from riders saying what torture this was, how it was something they had to deal with every day going to work or coming home, this weaponized annoyance, but that those comments would be dwarfed in number by people criticizing those people, telling them to lighten up, and saying--seriously--how talented and funny the annoying voice conductor was. Because that's how simple and stupid people are now.


So there was that going on on the T. Then there was this guy--thirties, I guess, but looked older--with a formidable gut. The rest of him wasn't fat, save for the additional chin, but that gut was impressive. Quite the mound. You're supposed to be like, "Oh, I can't tell anything about someone from such a thing," like there's no possible information to be gleaned about a person based upon something like this. But okay. Let's say it indicates nothing. Doesn't perhaps suggest not even in the slightest that you're lazy, that you have no discipline, fine. I'll put aside the truth that you're much more likely to be mentally, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually lazy than you are physically lazy, because everyone has to move, and no one has to think.


But he has this drink from Starbucks and it's the loaded-with-calories kind. You can see what's left of chocolate and sugar frosted against the sides. The Starbucks Whopper. Okay. But that wasn't even really it. He starts sucking this drink--or its remnants, because it was finished--through his straw repeatedly. So it's making that broken-down wheezy breathing machine sound that a child would make with their drink until you tell it to stop. Again, and again, and again, and again.


Then, he takes the lid off and begins to work the straw with his tongue. He's actually tonguing the straw. Not once, not twice, not thrice. He's tonguing it good, time and again. Still not done. When he completed that stage of the tonguing--and bear in mind, the conductor is doing his thing as we pulled into the various stops--he took the straw and starting using it as this kind of probing lance for more drops of sugary drink hidden away at the bottom of the cup. This cup has been drained dry. But now he begins bringing the straw to his mouth and tonguing it more delicately.


The thing is, everyone on this damn T is doing something like whatever this guy is doing. Not a drink thing, but something that says, "I am in no ways a fucking adult. I shouldn't be in society even if these times didn't represent the ass end of the ass end of it."


He does this for my entire time on the T. Other people wouldn't have noticed, because they are oblivious and busy doing their own annoying things.


Got to the Brattle and there was this guy who was there the day before. Huge, awkward--but with seemingly no clue or concern that he was--loud, never shuts up. Voice ringing out in the theater. Having the loudest conversations with himself, with the even bigger guy with him, and with strangers. I was up in the balcony the day before, no one else up there, and this guy comes up and starts making a speech--to me, I guess?--about how he just wanted to see the balcony. Crazy. People are crazy.


The program director gave this intro on the stage before the screening, and he'd say things like, "It's an old cartoon," and this guy, out in the audience, would yell out, "How old is it?" He would not shut the fuck up. Something happened in the movie, and he'd play announcer down front. Freak Fred Cusick here. And no, he wasn't someone with special needs, because obviously I wouldn't be chronicling this then, would I?


The film starts, and I'm in the last row of the balcony. In the middle of the row was another guy, about sixty, and what he decided that he would clap throughout the picture. Only him. He was just going to start clapping. And he was going to pretend-laugh in a very-exaggerated way and actually slap his knee. Like he was one of those people who "extra got" things and wanted the world to know it. What a zesty sense of humor he had.


But he did this at the most random times. The movie was 1953's Robot Monster. So, on the screen at the beginning you get the credits, and one of them said that the score was by Elmer Bernstein. Cue hysterical wild-man laughing from this guy, and vigorous "Oh my God you got to be kidding me ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha" clapping, with some powerful knee slaps at the finish for good measure.


Again: I can do this with basically everyone when I go out now. This is how people are. Trashy and insane. Uncivil. Immature. Dumb. Not an adult. Not anyone who ever thinks about anyone else. People who can't manage a modicum of manners.


I began this by saying that if you point things out and say "Here's how it is with all of these other things/people," people want to blame you. You're the problem. But should I have loved all of this? Liked it? Thought it was great? Should I behave like this? Is this the way to go? And you can't be like, "Ignore it," because you might as well say, "Be a fucking idiot who has no clue what is happening around him, find a way to do that."


You could say, "Wear headphones!" I looked into that. People said that the subway conductor, for instance, is so loud, that when they're listening to music or a podcast on their commute, they have to rewind because they can't hear it over him. And I shouldn't have to.


People should be able to act like civil, sane, adults. You shouldn't give money to and endorse an "adult" frat boy cretin who thinks women should be raped at all, for anything, ever.


You shouldn't be screaming at people and subjecting them to you in some confined space where they have to be and can't shut you out or get away from your antics.


You shouldn't be tonguing a straw for ten minutes such that someone else might think, "Why don't you just pull down your fucking pants, get out your dick, and start fucking the cup? What's stopping you? Get in there and fuck it."


You shouldn't be doing play-by-play on a movie from the front of the house so that everyone has to listen to you, and you shouldn't be clapping like some unbalanced hyena on intermittent doses of crack during a film so you can think things about yourself like, "See? I told you--me--it would be good to get out today, we're having a good time, we're really really really really really really really having a good time!"


Seems really basic to me. But that's me.



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