I hate sports.
I think they’re a colossal waste of time and money that exist solely for the purpose of preempting The Simpsons way too fucking often.
The only sport I have any amount of respect for is boxing, simply because it distills physical competition down to its purest level without getting bogged down in all of the rules and other nonsense that permeate other kinds of sports.
That being said, though, I still don’t actually follow boxing and will only watch it if compelled in some fashion.
Some people assume that I don’t like sports because I don’t understand them. That’s not true. I understand, I simply don’t care.
There was a stand-up comic who once pointed out that when you root for a team of any sort, what you’re really rooting for is the uniforms.
After all, lets say you love a football team called, for the sake of the example, The Guys Who Run Around In Too-Tight Pants Playing With Balls (TGWRAITPPWB).
Conversely, you absolutely despise their arch-rivals The Other Guys Who Run Around In Too-Tight Pants Playing With Balls(TOGWRAITPPWB).
Your favorite player on the team is Quarterback Guy. You absolutely love QG. I mean, you’re not gay or anything, but sometimes you can’t help but wonder what it would be like to slap him on the ass after an especially good play, and maybe, you know, you’d like take a quick peek in the locker room after the game, and sure, you can’t help but imagine yourself cradled in those powerful pigskin-hurling arms, and…anyway, he’s your favorite player, in your estimation he is the God of the Astroturf.
Except now he’s been traded to TOGWRAITPPWB.
QG is now the lowest form of scum on earth, and you don’t know what you were thinking about when you considered going gay for him.
QG was great when he wore the right uniform, but now that he’s got the wrong one, he sucks. Did you ever love QG at all or were you just taken in by the fact that he had previously been a snappy dresser?
Maybe they should get rid of referees and have games officiated by Mr. Blackwell.
But whatever. I hate sports, whereas most people love them. I’m used to being on the losing team (the one in the wrong uniforms) when it comes to the things that I enjoy and don’t enjoy, so you can have your sports and your sports announcers and your sports analysis and your ass slapping and your hot man on man action and whatnot.
I’m not telling you that you can’t get excited about the victories of your hometown/home state team (which probably has very few people who are actually from your hometown/state on it) or while away your afternoons jumping up in the air and screaming like a brain-damaged gerbil (if we assume that brain-damaged gerbils scream like crazed sports fans), or really even making fun of you for investing so much passion and attention into something so utterly pointless and meaningless and such a clear demonstration of just how fucked up our collective priorities really are (Who needs universal health care when you got you some NASCAR?).
I mean, I have interests that no doubt seem just as lame and retarded to you (Though I would submit that I’m unlikely to jump up and yell “Whoo!” when I encounter an especially well-written issue of Sleeper, or walk around shirtless with the DC Comics logo painted on me while I hold up a John 3:14 sign, or go out rioting and looting because Neil Gaiman wins an Esiner. I’m just saying.), so go on and root root root for the home team. Sis boom etc.
In fact, that I hate sports isn’t even the point of this entry.
Growing up, I tried to develop an interest in sports as part of my periodic attempts at being a normal person, but ultimately I had to acknowledge that there just wasn’t anything about sports that could make me care, or not yawn angrily, so I gave up on it.
(For the record, I also eventually gave up on trying to kid myself into thinking that not being normal meant that I was “special” or extraordinary and not just plain weird.)
The one consolation I took, though, came from the fact that as I was growing up I was constantly exposed to complaints from women about how much men love sports and how they wished they could find guys who weren’t so into sports.
Surely, thought, as I listened to the lament of the “football widow,” I could turn what was a liability in terms of interacting with members of the same sex into an asset when dealing with the opposite sex.
(I will point out the irony in the fact that I eventually became involved with a girl who was active in sports as a cheerleader and as a basketball player, though, again, that’s not really the point. While I have you in a parenthetical aside, on an unrelated note I should mention that women’s gymnastics and figure skating are both worth watching, but that has nothing to do with the sports aspect of it and everything to do with the well-toned bodies, skimpy outfits, and the contorting. Oh yeah, and women’s beach volleyball. So I guess there is some value in the case of these sports, though it’d probably be better if, like boxing, they simply distilled it down to the basics. And if they added a pole.)
But here’s the thing.
Somewhere along the line women stopped hating sports.
In fact, they became vociferous sports fans.
It was a patently unfair move on their part and I think that there should be a flag on that play. You are not supposed to change the rules in the middle of the game, dammit!
Beyond simple apathy, this is the other reason I hate sports: I suck at them and am constantly losing.
I never have the home field advantage.
Okay, I’m going to stop with the sports metaphors.
But honestly, I can’t help but be exasperated by this development. On those occasions on which, in utter desperation, I’ve skimmed through the online personals, I’ve been greeted with ads that prominently state “You MUST love the Redskins/Patriots/any random sports team if you want me to like you.”
Non-sport watching weirdoes need not apply.
The problem is that women do this kind of thing all of the time. They went from wanting “macho” guys to wanting “sensitive” guys back to wanting “macho” guys, and so on and so on and so on, changing their collective minds every time guys changed their collective acts.
Of course, for me it’s not an “act.” I am who I am, and change doesn’t come easily or naturally (and obviously wouldn’t do me any good if it did). It’s not like I was pretending to not like sports just to score (not counting that as a sports metaphor) and that I could go back to actually liking them.
Anyway, it seems as though whatever women decide they’re looking for is pretty much always whatever I’m not.
Is it any wonder I don’t even bother trying anymore?
There’s one thing that I think sums the whole situation up pretty well.
A while back Kathleen told me about hearing the founder of an online dating service on some radio talk show. He said that the one line that guys use in their ads that women find to be the biggest turn off is when he says that he “knows how to treat a lady.”
He went on to report that the number one thing that women say they’re looking for in their ads is a man who “knows how to treat a lady.”
That’s not changing the rules in the middle of the game, that’s tearing the rulebook into pieces and setting the pieces on fire.
Back in regular Threshold entry territory, today is one of the last Thursdays that I’ll have off, as come July 6, Thursday becomes my new Monday.
To celebrate the occasion (?), I had lunch at Chili’s with Kathleen, who, upon arriving, asked if she’s restored my trust in her. I told her she’s on probation.
To balance out the act of fatassery that was eating an entire order of Southwestern Egg Rolls I’d ordered as an appetizer, I opted to have a salad for lunch, which I wasn’t able to finish thanks to the “appetizer.”
Before heading to Chili’s, I killed some time at Best Buy. While I was checking out the HDTVs some employee (an older guy) came along and asked, “What’s the word?”
I was tempted to respond that “the word” was “Leave me the fuck alone,” but opted to say instead that “the word” was “Just looking.”
Later, in the digital camera department, another employee asked, ‘Can I help you find something?”
My response? “No, you sure can’t.”
I don’t understand why Best Buy employees feel the need to come up and ask if they can help (or rather, why Best Buy mandates that its employees do so). I mean, it’s not a used car lot, and as far as I understand it they don’t get any sort of commission on sales, so what’s the point? If people need help they’ll seek it out.
Beyond that, why would anyone approach me? It’s been my understanding for years that I radiate waves of hostility that people register as a clear sign to stay away.
Then again, I guess it’s been my experience that the hostility waves only serve to keep women away, and further they have a tendency to actually attract crazy people, though fortunately now that I don’t hang out in bars I run into fewer of those.
The girl who waited on Kathleen wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, and seemed confused as to how to go about splitting up our bill, but eventually she figured it out.
After lunch I stopped at Wal-Mart for the latest segment in our continuing series “What The Fuck Is So Difficult About Using The Self Check Out?”
As I was preparing to check out, I found that there were two self check outs that each had only one customer. I got in line behind the woman who had already finished scanning her items and was preparing to pay.
She had to call the cashier over for something, though the cashier didn’t do anything before walking away. The woman swiped her card. Then she swiped it again. And again.
I noticed that the mother and daughter over at the other register had finished scanning, so I considered moving over there. However, they appeared to be paying with pennies, so I stayed put, watching the lady swipe and re-swipe her card.
Eventually the little girl stopped putting coins into the register, and I saw the mother grab the receipt, so I swooped over, scanned all of my items, and was just starting to write my signature when the lady at the other register finally finished paying for her purchase.
Granted, I had some issues at the Giant self check out last week, but even that didn’t take as long as whatever issues this lady had, and since when are the self check out lines a dumping ground for people’s pocket change?
I mean, Chevy Chase Bank has free coin counting machines that even non-customers can use, so there’s no need to dump your change into the self check out.
Of course, the related issue of getting the hell out of my way continues to be the single greatest problem facing this country. 9 out of 10 Americans simply cannot manage to get the hell out of my way. I don’t know if it’s a question of ability or education, but clearly something needs to be done, and as soon as Congress is finished with the important business of debating non-binding resolutions of support for our troops, inquiries into the video game rating system, or pointless amendments to “protect” marriage from imaginary assaults, I think they need to examine possible solutions to this problem.
It’s obviously pandemic, as it happens everywhere I go, so I can’t understand how our elected officials could overlook this assault on traditional getting the hell out my way values.
Personally, I think the easiest and most cost-effective solution is for me to be allowed to carry an electric cattle prod which I’m free to use with impunity.
Just a suggestion.
As for the self check out problem, the simplest solution is to include a countdown timer. If you can’t manage to figure out how to pay for your purchases within a defined time limit, you forfeit those purchases.
They could even make it exciting by having a clock that ticks away the seconds while the Mission Impossible theme plays.
Or for the old people, they could play the Final Jeopardy music.
Alternatively, since it’s the older people who seem to have the most trouble, they could get slot machine manufacturers to build the self check out registers, as it would give the old people a familiar interface that they’re intimately familiar with. I mean, these people can’t figure out what to do when the screen says “Select Payment Type,” but they can figure out what it means when you’ve got three Cleopatras and a four pyramids on a 9 line penny machine, so there should be a way to capitalize on that. It would add to the fun factor, too, as you could pretend that you’re not just buying ointment and adult diapers, you’re actually pissing away your children’s inheritance.
Wait, that’s a terrible idea. If the registers were like slot machines the old people would never leave.
In any case, that’s going to do it for today’s over-long entry.
I hope you all have a weekend that’s as devoid of people who can’t stay the hell out of your way as possible.
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