#23 Trees

So I print out another copy of the crossword because I lost the newspaper and I was only half-done and I really wanted to finish it. And so I'm standing by the printer and I'm explaining this to someone and they murmur half-joking, "oh, you like killing trees, huh?"

Yes. I do. I like killing trees. No, that's not right, I LOVE killing trees. I have xylem-lust. I love the smell of sawdust in the morning. I want the trees DEAD! I want their roots, DEAD! I want their saplings, DEAD!

Everyone just calm down. Print stuff out. Press print and with a clear conscience because hear me now, we do NOT owe trees anything.

First of all, there's way more of them than us. You ever been to a forest? They're all over the freaking place. You can't walk down the street without some tree leering at you, making you feel all short and human. They're huge. They live longer than we do. Try beating up a tree with your bare hands, see who wins.

Oh, but they give us oxygen, the apologists winnie. Precious, life-giving, oxygen. BALLS! We give them just as much CO2! We're square. It's anyone's game, and I'm putting my money on the species that can do things like make buzzsaws and pulp and paper and houses. And rocking chairs?! Are you kidding me? WE do that! With our brains, and our will, and our opposing thumbs, and our ability to move. We make friggin' rocking chairs. Chairs. That ROCK!

I'm sorry but we win, and enough guilt about it. Do yourself a favor. Get a really long knife, go up to a tree and stab it as hard as you can, right up to the hilt. You'll thank me.

#22 Yoga

Ah the reason this whole things started. Yes, SYANATNL has been blogata non grata of late. Why? Because I'mNotBobby's been relatively happy, unfettered, accepting, and filled with all the joys properly attendant to the onset of Spring. But something has been eating away at I'mNotBobby, something he's been neglecting and it occurred to him on this fine morning as he was walking to the library preparing to ensconce himself in the minutiae of international trade and customs law. There they were, Columbia students. Out on the lawn. At 630 AM. On a weekday. A whole group of them. "Surely, that's a mistake," I'mNotBobby thought to himself. "Surely a proper group of ne'er-do-well undergrads are not awake at this hour for anything but a properly resented obligation." And then he saw the butts. A whole range of mountainous glutes stuffed indelicately into stretchpants and aimed skyward and noses pressed to the ground; an unholy inversion -- Yoga.

Yoga is kind of the reason I got into this business. There's something so unpleasant about it, unless you're doing it. Yoga may not be brainwashing; Yoga may not be a cult. But, as I'mNotBobby's grandfather, I'mNotSelig used to say, "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and condescendingly tells you how awesome being a duck is and how they think you particularly would just be so much healthier and happier as a duck, then it's probably a freakin' duck...now go bring me a tall glass of Vodka, that's a good lad."

Isn't it weird how Yoga folks feel no compunction whatsoever in proselytizing? I mean, sure I complain about my back sometimes, maybe my abs aren't what they should be. But does that mean I deserve to have some glassy-eyed narcotized adept telling me how Yoga would be especially good for ME and MY problems? How it's changed their life, really, and how they couldn't imagine not getting up and greeting the sun with outstretched arms and upraised heinie? How, when they don't do it, they feel such a deep and oppressive guilt, and when they return, how good it is to be in back in their Lord's loving grace?

Listen, you want to do yoga, that's your business. Knock yourself out. I'm sure you're happy. I have no problem whatsoever with anyone doing what makes them happy so long as it doesn't impel them to convince other people that they should find the same happiness. Keep it to yourself. It is no different than Jehovah's Witnesses or Jews for Jesus. I'm sure, I have no doubt, that Jehovah makes those people feel good, healthy, whole. That they're absolutely sure that Jehovah is just the thing for what ails me. But it rightly pisses me off when they tell me that. It's simultaneously superior, condescending and just plain creepy and Yogaphiles do the exact same thing. There is no qualitative difference at all. AT. ALL.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but would it surprise you, I mean really, in the end would it surprise you if some megalomaniacal mastermind somewhere in India or something, had a special signal that, when the time is right, they're prepared to transmit and that all these superhealthy, superflexy, superhumans' eyes are going to go all swirly and they're going to blithely and happily march over the earth slaughtering all the helpless non-organic, non-vegan, unbendy and upward-facing people in their wake? I'm not saying it's going to happen, but the brainwashy way these people act has me just a teensy bit worried...

#21 Subway Performers

[by way of explanation, I know that lots of people don't like subway performers but the amount of dirty looks I get from people when I express my exacerbation or ask them to stop makes me feel justified in including this as a proper SYANATNL topic]

So you're sitting there on the subway minding your own business and all of sudden a group of kids sets up camp in the middle of the train and turns on some godawful beats and starts breakdancing wildly kicking everyone in the shins. Or a team of trebly mexicans starts mariachi-ing in your ears. Or a group of a capelliacs inflict their insipid harmonies all over you. And you find yourself re-reading the same paragraph in your book 3 or 4 times because you can't concentrate with all this infernal racket. Or suddenly you can't remember whether Eero Saarinen was an architect or the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra completely breaking your crossword flow.

And why? Because these people think they have the right to inflict their "culture" or "art" on you. Because at least that group of kids is not hanging out on the street getting into all sorts of god knows what. But since when are those the only two options (up to no good or imposing your breakdancing nonsense on unwitting subway riders)??? And the thing is, the really insidious thing is, that your average subway rider encourages these people. Easily half of you sit there and smile and enable them. How delightful! How artistic and wonderful! Oh what an enterprising group of talented young kids!

NO! These people are fascists. Do they give you any choice? Do they ask, before they begin whether what they're about to do is going to bother anyone, anyone who has absolutely no choice in what is about to be inflicted upon them? No, they don't. They don't care about your choice. They're fascists.

Listen, when I'm on the subway, I'm stuck there. I'm not at a club, I'm on the freaking subway. I'd prefer not to be there and the last thing in the world I need is to be forced, involuntarily forced, to consume your stupid art. I don't inflict my writing on you. (EXCUSE ME LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO NOT LIKE? KALE!) This is why I wear noise-canceling headphones: NO SPILLAGE. I make every effort to minimize in all ways possible the extent to which other people on the train are forced to deal with me and I (as we all should) expect the same. Subway performers are anathema to the whole program and need to be stopped, not encouraged. They are a blight, a pox, a vile extroverted disease. So please, what ever you do, do not encourage these people. Do not give them money or a kind look. Put on your noise-canceling headphones with an air of extreme annoyance at being forced to drown out their insipid fascism. Heck, if you're really adventurous, do as I do, and ask them if they could kindly keep it down. No one should ever be forced to consume another person's art. It offends even the most basic principles of respect and civility and you should not only be allowed to not like it, you should just plain not like it.

#20 The Dislike Button

Now I know this seems like it's right up my alley, but I don't trust the dislike button one bit. It reeks of cynicism and snark, and it may just be a significant step toward the apocalypse.

Now, as you know, I have no problem with not liking things. I like not liking things or at least support people's right to not like things without fear of being ostracized or otherwise dismissed. But the dislike button isn't about not liking things, it's about hopping on a hate-wagon.

And that makes all the difference in the world. This blog, my friends, isn't about hate. It's about not liking stuff and being able to admit that and have it be ok. And there is a yawning abyssal of space between the two.

 In fact, joining in a communal, giggling, sniggering hate-fest is what the dislike button is all about. It's not even really a dislike button. It's a hate button. People don't want to admit that (and it doesn't present the same ring of counterpoint with the "like" button that "dislike" does), but really that's what it is. It's about gleeful hissing meanness. Disliking stuff should be an expression of independence of thought and aesthetics, not "cold dissing" your friends. "Oooo, this is such a great idea. Just think of all the possibilities. We can just click dislike and then that'll totally pone (pwn?) him, awww yeah, the dislike button is the HYPE!"

No. It is not the hype. It's shallow and cowardly.

If you really dislike something, own it, explain it, spell it out honestly and without fear. Don't press a button. That's weak, petty, childish and small. You're better than that, I know you are.

#19 Chicken Tikka Masala

So you know when you're with a bunch of people ordering Indian food and everyone's ordering their own favorite things with the intention of having the majority of the thing they like but also sharing it with everyone else and you're salivating over the possibilities and someone always insists on ordering chicken tikka masala? And so then you feel screwed, right, b/c the sharing ratio then gets all messed up because while you don't hate chicken tikka masala, you certainly aren't excited about it and the last thing you're going to do is ladle some of that radioactive pink-orange sauce onto your plate because that vinegar-sweet taste and fluorescent color infect everything else like just so much patchouli or house music. So you don't take your proportionate share of chicken tikka masala but people are helping themselves to healthy doses of the awesome spinach-whatsawhatsa you ordered and you end up totally freaking screwed.

"What do you mean you don't like chicken tikka masala? Chicken tikka masala is sooooo good.

Just try this chicken tikka masala, the chicken tikka masala from this place is some of the better chicken tikka masala. Hey, everyone, I'mNotBobby says he doesn't want any chicken tikka masala. Oh, that's so I'mNotBobby, well screw him, that just means more chicken tikka masala for US! Pass the spinach-whatsawhatsa."

End the Indian food tyranny and the next time you're with a group of people ordering , tell anyone who wants chicken tikka masala that they can go ahead and get chicken tikka masala, but they can't share with anyone else...they just have to sit there and order for themselves and eat chicken tikka masala and only chicken tikka masala. We'll see just how much they love that yogurty iridescence.

Chicken tikka masala.

#18 Football

I don't get football. I mean I guess it's because I never played it, but there's plenty of people out there who live and die for the game who never played. Now, as a baseball fan, I know I have no leg to stand on here, complaining in subjective terms about why football's no good but judging it using my own criteria. I get that. Except that it seems pretty much OK to lambaste baseball (oh, it's so boring!), but coming out against football is tantamount to declaring openly for Al Qaeda or France or something. Flatout unamerican.

But there's nothing elegant or beautiful about it. At all. Mountains vying for position. I don't see it, I never have. How is baseball boring and football not boring? I mean honestly, can you sit there and watch every play in a football game? every referee conference? every play action incompletion? Honestly? Football's stupider. It's always the dregs of the gene pool who play it in school and don't even get me started about the pieces of bauxite who go to tailgate

parties and paint their faces and wolf down beer by the gallon and get into fights and act like complete douchebags.

Also, Super Bowl Sunday is the day with the highest rate of violence against women all year?  You really think that's a coincidence?

I'm indulging in hyperbole here because there's a double-standard at play and there's something defiant and extroverted about football fans. And god forbid you're in a sports bar and you ask them to change the channel to a nice golf tournament or tennis match, or maybe the MLB network's showing some Padres/Pirates matchup from '77.

But no, you're not allowed to not like football. Or farm shares. Or bike lanes. Or rainbows. Or the miracle of childbirth.

Yeah, there's roids in baseball, but it's freaking institutional in football. It's an angry game filled with thugs and wife-beaters. Guys literally trying to kill each other. It's perverse and evil. Football should be banned. No More Football. End the madness and play baseball 365.
Football is boring, stupid, and just plain evil.

#17 New Year's

[I'm not bobby apologizes for there being so little SYANALTNL lately. He's on vacation and has been happily rant-free for a while, but...]

then New Years happened. Hear me out.

Shouldn't new years be at the beginning of spring or, per my people, at the onset of fall, when the summer's over? That sense of newness makes so much more sense associated with the new school year that marked the passage of time in a much more meaningful way when we grew up than this weird anti-climax post-halloween-thanksgiving-and-christmas-and-after-this-everything-is-going-to-be-cold-and-miserable-or-at-least-back-to-normal-back-to-business-so-let's-freak-out-and-go-apeshit-idiot-fest. There's something so kind of sad and desperate about the way people party on New Year's. It's one last grotesque and desperate hurrah.  And I mean how much money does NY waste on that freaking party with the ball, anyway? Meanwhile, I can't get an express train on the weekend???

Speaking of which, what brings someone to go to Times Square for New Year's Eve? What kind of odd confluence of genetics and life experiences leads someone to go do something that ludicrous? How do you get to a place in your life where you're saying, Oh, I mean no I can't make it because I'm going with a whole bunch of people to west 45th and 6th and we're gonna spend all night standing in the half-rain-half-snow with thousands of drunk and desperate people frenching each other? And then trying to get home and everyone kind of knows the season is over so they're just a little bit belligerent and a little more drunk and a little louder and a little bit more completely-impossible-to-take.

Anyone who's into the idea of changing new years to September 1st let's organize, get a petition together, write your congressman, meet up a nice hotel bar for a drink, something...or just bitch about it and agree not to participate. Who's in?

#16 The First Snow of Winter

So it's the first snow of the year and I'm already pissed off. Everyone's completely delighted at the wonderful winter wonderland and all I'm thinking is that this crap is going to be disgusting grey slush in no time. It's the first real indication that you're basically going to be spending the next 3 months indoors, with outdoor time essentially being spent getting from indoor point A to indoor point B. And in that journey, you're going to half-slip on the ice-slush at least once, your nose and ears are going to burn-hurt, your lips are going to chap and god forbid it's actually snowing, in which case everything you and everyone else is wearing is going to be covered in the stuff and it's going to get all over everything and you can't even walk and do the crossword anymore b/c it's either snowing or too darn cold to hold the pen without gloves on and who can do the crossword with gloves on? I don't know about you, but I like being outside. I like walking on unslushy stable traction-granting ground. I like not having to try to leap over the little pools of standing arctic pond that settle at every pedestrian crossing and falling in at least once a week completely soaking my feet in the icy hand of death. I like my trains running on frigging time.

Speaking of which, so I'm on the subway this morning and the conductor announces "due to the cold weather express trains will be running local between 96th street and Chambers."(emphasis added)

What the hell is that??? That's like saying due to a water shortage, we will be screening "Yentl" in IMax 3-D every day, non-stop, for the next 6 years. But no one even questions it, they just nod their heads, seeming to say Oh, well that makes sense. No it makes no freaking sense. But everyone just expects the entire freaking system to break down just because it's cold or snowing. It basically gives the city carte blanche to half-ass it for 3 months.

I mean, yeah, there's definitely something pretty about snow when it first falls and you're at home all warm and safe, sure, I get that. But the gigantic hassle is completely not worth it. And any time I bring all this up, people will nod and agree with me and say, yes you are totally right,

but then when I say and that's why I hate the first snow of winter, it totally freaking sucks people always say oh no snow's great, it's wonderful, it's so pretty and wonderful and great and wintertime is a time to spend at home, with family and really take stock and enjoy the company of your loved ones. Um, I mean aren't loved ones for the most part best enjoyed when you're not forced to? Isn't being thrown in with your family for long hours out of a sense of holiday obligation or meteorological exigency a sure recipe for disaster? I mean doesn't it basically ensure a total familial meltdown?

#15 The Greatest Love of All

"I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way..."

Ok, so this song really really pissed me off when it came out. I guess if you know me, you can probably guess I was a bit of an uppity kid, and I was hyper-aware of being condescended to and generally treated like an imbecile in the way adults do because, for the most part they resent kids, and simultaneously begrudge them their freedom and innocence while placing all the responsibilities for the future of the world on their shoulders. Maybe it's the home I grew up in, or maybe it's growing up Jewish, or maybe it was just me with a severely underdeveloped denial mechanism, but I never envied adults. I saw (and I think I was right to see) that for the most part we kids had it way better, with other people taking care of our needs in ways they clearly found extremely stressful. I just didn't see, even at that age, the profit-margin in adulthood. Sure, they had more freedom of movement, but at what cost? For the most part such freedom came saddled with the kinds of responsibilities and worries that were written in 24pt font all over their sad, tired faces. Yeah, I resented the fact that adults got to vote and I didn't, especially because I didn't really see any evidence that their opinions were any more considered than mine were, but I was willing to accept that because otherwise, the system really kind of worked in our favor.

But then this song came out and it just literalized how goddamn condescending and disingenuous adults were. You know how old Whitney Houston was when she recorded The Greatest Love of All? 22 freaking years old. 22!

How about you be the future for a little while?! I thought to myself. How about you lead the way and let me be a freaking kid instead of trying to pawn off all your frigging problems on me?! OK?! How about that?

And, you know what? You're not allowed to not like The Greatest Love of All. We've all been to that party at the end of the night when the DJ plays it and everyone starts singing it in the worst possible drunk-screech like it's the most profound freakin thing and every time I hear it, every single time I hear it, I'm that kid again, thinking about how shallow, how cowardly and impotent and flat-out unfair the sentiment of that song is.

And that's just the first line!

"I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadow" What? When you were 12?

"They can't take away my dignity." No but you're doing a pretty good job of that yourself.

"Give them a sense of pride, to make it easier, Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be." You're 22! How about reminding yourself how you are right now! and get the frack out my face trying to recapture the youth that hasn't even gone away yet, no matter how much coke you shove up yourself. It's creepy and annoying. I've got my pride ok, pride comes from within, which is what the frigging song you're singing is ostensibly supposed to be ABOUT! so not only is it condescending but it's also internally illogical!

Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. Now that might be the first honest thing you've said because if this frigging song demonstrates ANYTHING, it's that you completely and totally love yourself so much it isn't even funny.

Ok, so maybe I'm channeling a young and mixed up I'mNotBobby, but I mean, you know what I mean, right? It's wrong. It's just all wrong.

#14 Beer

You know when you're, I don't know, 13, 15, 9, and someone older gives you your first taste of beer? And they're invariably older than you and this pretty much always happens at that time of your life when "older" means "better" in pretty much every conceivable way that matters to you. And so it's 2 in the afternoon and you've spent the afternoon out in the heat and there you are, and your older brother's hanging out with his friends and Danny, the one you know they all think is funny and cool and he's athletic and kind of a dick and there's something in the pit of your stomach that tells you this guy's bad news but all the girls in your class totally love him and talk about him all the time, and he's like, hey I'mNotBobby, c'mere, you ever had a beer before? And he hands you a cold bottle of Flitzenflachen and you're not sure, but you've thought about it before, I mean by that age, you've seen enough beer commercials and ads to think of it as this beautiful, translucently gold, foamy, cold-sweating-glass wunderbeverage and but while you're kind of scared of taking that oddly sacred leap away from your childhood, you're also anticipating this almost nectar-of-the-Olympian-gods type experience?

So you decide to do it, to have your first beer.

And then you open your watering eyes and can see them all laughing at you, laughing at this kid whose face looks like the entire world has gone through an enormous amount of time and trouble to play this lame little practical joke on him. And then it occurs to you, wait a minute, that makes no sense, people must actually really like this crap, and that's even more bewildering. So then you steel yourself and take a long deep gulp to show Danny, show him you're tough, you can take it. And he smiles at you, acceptingly, and the whole group of them are watching by now, encouraging you to drink drink drink and then confiding in you like you're one of them now, and saying yeah, it's a bitch when you first try it but you have to keep drinking it and you'll learn to like it.

But that concept is just completely and entirely foreign to your experience. Kids don't "acquire" tastes. Your body tells you whether you like something or you don't and for the most part, when you're a kid, you like what you like and you don't what you don't and you may for the sake of your parents force yourself to eat certain things you have a natural revulsion for but it's not really until you get older that either your tastes change or your power of denial is deft enough to start convincing you that you like things you don't really like.

Beer is one of those things, and I never developed a taste for it. I can't tell you how many times over the years friends have said to me "What? I'mNotBobby, you don't like beer? That's weird." And then they insist on getting me to try this one beer that they're absolutely sure I'm gonna like because it's "really good beer." And you know what? It tastes like friggin' beer. You know why? Because it's beer.

The cult of beer is pernicious. For some reason we go on and on about smoking and transfats and DDT and sugar-water soda and genetically-engineered food or the overpriced scam that is

organic vegetables and meat but beer is somehow completely off the table. I mean beer gives you, over time, that distended, perfectly round beach-ball gut that has to cause so many health problems it isn't even funny. Not to mention the physical violence of all kinds that attends its sacred position in the pantheon.

But it's off-limits, and has this odd kind of regular-guy credibility that is so completely retarded that every politician has to be seen out there forcing down a frosty cold one with a pandering, [literally] shit-drinking grin on his face. The fact that beer-drinking was a factor in the '04 election demonstrates just how ubiquitous and retarded the beer-cult is. To say nothing of the fact that people thought sharing a beer with a privileged little nancy who doesn't even drink sounded fun.

I mean if you want to drink the disgusting brain-killing wheat soda knock yourself out, but why does it have to be this showing-off competition kind of thing? Because I think, I really believe this, that it's kind of impossible to really like the taste of beer. I mean to PREFER the taste of beer over say, Ginger Ale or a Pina Colada. That's ok, I don't have to. I just hope I pass on my distaste for the stuff to my kids, because beer is stupid, people are stupider when they drink it and encourage each other in their stupidity in the process and eventually get into fights and punch each other in their mouths or have sex with people they don't like. There's really nothing good about it. There's plenty of other stuff to drink.

[SYANATNL would like to thank Serps at Learning to Crawl for this post's idea...although Mrs. ImNotBobby reminds him that she gave him this idea months ago and she is absolutely right and deserves full unabridged props for it....thanks honey!]

#13 PAIN!

No pain, no gain! Push! Do it! Keep going! 2 More! GO GO GO!!!!

And that's when my foot cramps up.

Pain is your body's way of telling you to stop doing something. I know we learn from pain, probably more profoundly than from anything else, but that's kind of misleading. What we learn from pain is to not do the thing that hurts. Pain avoidance has to be highly correlated to genetic advantage, that's why the learning mechanism is so strong. Now of course women have to endure a certain level of pain for obvious reasons, but for the most part, our anti-pain instincts have to have served the species better than the pain-seeking aberrations. I mean the caveman who was really into burning himself was probably not the most attractive prospect for procreation.

But if Nike commercials and pilates-fascists tell us anything, it's that if we're not constantly pushing our levels of endurance and cheerfully working through the pain we're not worth our

weight in child-labor.

People with high pain tolerances don't understand how much it hurts for the rest of us, and that doesn't mean we're weak. Yeah, there're genetic predispositions toward variant pain-thresholds and I'm ok with that, I mean if you've got a high threshold and you don't mind feeling that burn and even kind of get off on it, well, OK, mazel tov, G-d go with you, go get 'em buddy. You're probably gonna look better for the first 30 or 40 years. But don't condescend to the rest of us. You're the freak, you're the aberration.

But you can't say that, you can't complain about the pain because that makes you a wuss and G-d in heaven if there's one pariah-class in this lonely, busy world, it's the wusses. Well the wusses inherit the earth. The wusses avoid situations that might get them into trouble and pay people to move their pianos and grandfather clocks and sofabeds and consequentially don't get crushed by them (at least as often). The wusses say, you know, I know getting hit in the face hurts and so I'm going to avoid situations where that might happen, and, over time, in the long run, they get in fewer fights, and survive longer. Sure, fighting toughens up the winners, but Goliath went through a whole bunch of young go-getters before that punk David suckered him with a lucky shot. It was the cowerers, the wusses, who carried on, married, had babies and passed on their wussful genes.

I say, "no pain, no pain."

#12 Voting

[I vowed never to make a political post, but I think, really, this post is resolutely apolitical, or at least politically neutral.]

Do you ever feel kind of icky when you're standing in that booth? Apart from the sincerely urinalistic feeling?

I mean I know our forefathers went through etc etc etc so we could have the privilege to whatever whatever whatever, but I mean honestly. We don't really genuinely ever really know who it is we're voting for, do we? I mean 99% of the people you vote for or against are people you've never even really heard of. And even when we do there isn't often any real correlation between the reasons people vote for X or Y and what actually happens with respect to those reasons. And people's reasons are, for the most part, completely ill-informed anyway. I'm not blaming people for being ill-informed. Hell, I'm ill-informed. And so is everyone else. Because really, in reality, it's kind of impossible to be well-informed on any particular data-driven issue (as opposed to "moral binary" issues like abortion and gay marriage, which, for the most part are not data-dependent or predictive, they're just judgment calls and I have no problem with making those because I don't need to understand anything to make them) over which there's controversy, because there are people who are way smarter than you (or me, or the politician running for office) who have devoted their lives to studying just this one particular thing (e.g., tax policy or the effect of CO2 on the climate or energy policy or international political and defense policy), and they disagree. Those people have way more information than you could ever hope to have or process and they disagree (and not because they're corporate hacks or self-delusional hippies despite what either side will tell you...for the most part all of these people have good faith reasons for believing what they believe). And why do they disagree? Because, really, these issues are, for the most part, unknowable. At least insofar as predicting what SHOULD be done about anything. No one really knows what's going to happen if, say, we have public healthcare, or alternatively, if we don't. And yet everyone gets so riled up over the thing. The thing they don't really know or understand or could possibly understand because the whole system is way more complex than it is possible TO understand.

And that's assuming that you know, when you vote, how those names on the thing relate to the issues you've made these arbitrary decisions about, and that the people those names represent are actually going to behave in the way, vis a vis those issues, that you think they are going to. Which they aren't. And you, the voter, also probably don't know any of this anyway. I mean honestly, what do you or I really know about who should be the City Public Advocate or State Senator or Congressman or President or School Board Member and why? Most people who vote have no idea who they're voting for or why.

Which is fine, but it certainly doesn't fill me with a sense of pride in fulfilling my civic duty when I vote. Mostly it feels hypocritical or disingenuous or as I said, icky. But you're not supposed to feel that way. You're not allowed to not like voting. Rock the Vote, Choose or Lose, participate in the great American Democracy, the great debates of our time.....by punching little holes in this card for people you don't know, based on opinions you don't understand, and odds of predictive accuracy that favor the house big-time and in a way that is completely insignificant statistically anyway. That just sets off my internal absurdity-meter. Voting is annoying and impotent and kind of ridiculous when you think about. It should be OK to admit that, instead of participating in this gigantic denial-fest where everyone takes the opportunity to not only applaud themselves, but get in your face about what you should do and how you should feel about it.

#11 Liking Stuff

I get a lot of flack for being a hater. Or a hay-tah, or whatever the insufferable pronunciation is these days. I prefer to think of myself as a hateur, but who cares?

See, there's a lot of stuff I just don't like but it seems like, in toto, if you don't like more stuff than you do like, people start to notice and tell you that you just don't like anything, which isn't true at all, you tell them, there's plenty of stuff you like, you tell them and mean it, it just doesn't happen to be the same stuff they like, you say, or that most everyone else seems to like -- or pretends to like because that's what everyone else likes -- and so yeah, if you're sitting at some restaurant and the price correlates more to decor than food or you're in a movie theater being lectured to by sycophants or you're even at home staring at the TV hoping against hope simply to be entertained rather than subjected to so much human offal and bile, you're pretty much going to react in the only way you know how: by acknowledging that you don't really like the restaurant or the movie or the show or whatever for all the specific reasons that they're terrible.

And but see the thing is that the world really is really filled with a lot of really crappy stuff, really, that you're just pretty much constantly bombarded by and yes, of course, you know you'd be happier if you liked all of it but you just can't bring yourself to like stuff you don't like and what's worse is that then, the people who are able to manage it and enjoy the things that you don't and are actually able to achieve a level of happiness that is closed to you, these people insist on rubbing salt into the experience by deriding you as a hater.

And you hate that.

Because you like several things. Good things just not bad things...really you just differ on the distribution is all.

# 10 Bacon

Ok, so I'm torn about this one, because I, like most of you, really love bacon. It's just delicious. What's more, there's sacrilege written all over it; sacrilege against the health-crazed vege-nazis, tacit acknowledgement that halal and kosrhut laws are just anachronistic nonsense perpetuated by the stasis upon which the power-structures of those religions depend. Bacon's as much a symbol of defiance as a foodstuff. Think of the hordes of chubby faithful straining to outdo one another in proto-baptist fashion as Emeril bams pork-fat into his roux. I get it, I do, and I feel the same way, but there is something a bit unnervingly cultish about it. I mean we all ask our vegan and vegetarian friends, "yeah, but I mean, what about bacon? don't you miss bacon? How can you live without bacon?" and almost invariably, even they will tell you, "Oh, well yeah, I mean, listen, bacon's great..." etc. etc. etc.

Which is just to say that I think bacon's become one of those things you're technically not supposed to not like. When you see some super-skinny lettuce-nosher waxing rhapsodic about bacon, doesn't it make you kind of what to slap her in the mouth and say, "right, you love bacon, sure you do, you love it so much, clearly, given that you weigh ninety-eight friggin' pounds. Give it a rest."

There's just something so, I don't know, extroverted, about people's insistence of their love of bacon that fills me with distrust and skepticism. And I'm as guilty anyone. I told my wife when we got engaged not to make me choose between her and bacon, because, of course, I would choose her, but I would resent her for it and never forgive her really because I mean this is bacon we're talking about and man alive do I ever love that delicious bacon.

That's freaking retarded.

I guess what I'm saying is, yes, bacon is great, but just calm down about it already and don't protest too much because it's kind of poseurish and over-the-top. Eat your bacon. Eat the crap out of, I don't care, but calm the frak down and stop congratulating yourselves about it.

#9 Hiking and/or Camping

You're not supposed to not like hiking or camping; it's getting right up in there with nature and being natural and exploring and sleeping in the wondrous beauty that is the natural world.

But, I don't know, nature makes me uncomfortable and I kind of think that's the natural response. Look at most every creature in the wild, they're all basically terrified of anything that moves. As well they should be, because they're probably either close to starving or close to being some starving creature's dinner. The flora's nice, but you don't really have to sleep in it or trudge 10 miles uphill to get that, do you? My people have a word for hiking: it's called "shlepping" and believe you me we don't mean it all happy-like.

Hasn't the whole project since the beginning and we started to get smart and figure this stuff out been a pretty continuous effort to shut out the random perniciousness and flat out filth of Mother Nature? Haven't we been continuously applied to the task of figuring out ways to withstand and cordon ourselves off from the earth because our experience has taught us that we're a lot better off that way? Don't get me wrong, I love going to parks and setting up a nice picnic in a grassy lea and gasping in rapturous delight as lo! a sweet antelope comes bounding along to the music of the trees sighing in pleasure from the wind's dear caress as much as the next guy, but do I really need the shlepping and the sleeping with the bugs in the dirt on the rocks without the plumbing and the cooking on the fire and the freezing or the sweating and the overall dearth of chairs or couches or air

conditioning to enjoy that stuff? I can drive to some nature or go to a nearby park and set up a picnic blanket for a nice couple of hours and then pack up and go home to my shower and bed and fridge and air conditioner and electricity and bookshelf and sofa. We have brought millennia of ingenuity to bear on the problem and, outliers notwithstanding, the structurally sound, safe, climate-controlled, cushioned, be-toileted, insect-and-dirt-free (at least as far as we are capable) have won the day.

Which makes the whole camping and hiking thing seem, I don't know, kind of forced right? I mean don't you get the sense whenever you're camping or hiking that everyone's always trying to outdo one another in their insistence of how awesome the camping or hiking is and so you feel obligated to stifle that part of you that wants to bitch about what a frigging shlep this mountain is, or how much you'd give to sit in a nice armchair with a cup of hot chocolate and a book like Watership Down (because there's nothing wrong with enjoying nature from a distance, in comfort, like Bilbo) or how you can't sleep because you're absolutely sure that as soon as you doze off some lithe and enterprising spider is going to have its way with your ear-hole? Doesn't their insistence feel like they're trying to convince themselves of something and make you feel like you're not supposed to contradict them? It's environmental fascism and it needs to end here, buster. Hakuna Matata.