A State Of Perpetual Humbuggery

There are a lot of reasons why I don’t like people.
One of the big ones is the fact that whenever I go anywhere they always seem to be in my way. I mean, show me a day on which people aren’t in my way and I’ll show you The Rapture.
Then there’s the obsession with celebrities and pseudo-celebrities and all the nonsense that said obsession entails. When the time comes (which it has) that the daily happenings in the life of someone as utterly useless as Paris Hilton becomes news you know that the greater mass of humanity has a problem.
Of course, the biggest reason I’m disdainful of humanity is somewhat paradoxical, in that what I hate most about people is the way they treat other people. “Man’s inhumanity to man” is pretty much my biggest gripe.
In general, the behavior of most people is utterly reprehensible and makes me ashamed for the species.
Am I saying there are no good people in the world? Of course not. I know plenty of good people and there are no doubt countless more that I don’t know.
I’m talking in the most general terms. Taken as a whole, humanity’s behavior is pretty shitty, despite the efforts of individuals to make it otherwise.
I’m reminded of two quotes that pretty well sum things up. One is from the movie Men In Black when Tommy Lee Jones, in response to Will Smith saying that people are smart, says, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”
Similarly, there was sign that once hung in our break room at work that read, “Meetings: None of us is as dumb as all of us.”
In any case, the point of all of this is that this morning I read an article over at John C. Dvorak’s blog about a 14 year-old boy who was chased down and shot to death by the driver of an SUV because – the driver believed – he’d thrown an egg at the SUV.
(Turns out the kid’s friend threw the egg)
Now, that was a bad enough example of what I have against humanity, but things only got worse once I started reading some of the comments on the article.
(In a remarkable bit of cosmically comic timing, my Nano, playing in the background, just shuffled onto the Nick Cave song People Ain’t No Good.)
In any case, that article and the comments set my mood for the day as I ventured out into the world for my dentist appointment.
The girl with the big boobs wasn’t quite so thrilled to see me this time around, moving the needle back more in the “disgusted by the simple fact of his existence” setting. This visit was over pretty quickly, and at the end of it I learned that I can cover the cost of about four crowns with the money in my Flex account, so I made another appointment for next week.
Not wanting to immediately turn around and head home, I gave Kathleen a call at work to see if she could/wanted to meet for lunch, as it was close to that time and I was in the area. She wasn’t available, so I headed over to the Town Center.
Having finished – and thrown away – that book on “personal accountability” I was bitching about the other day I found myself in need of something new to read, so I went into the bookstore where I picked up a copy of A Scanner Darkly.
I never got a chance to see the movie when it was in theaters, and I had never read the book, so I figured now was as good a time as any.
I haven’t read much by Philip K. Dick apart from the story that the movie Blade Runner was (loosely) based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I’ve also read Deus Irae, which he wrote with Roger Zelazny.
So basically, given how little I’ve read, you could say that I know dick about Dick.
(I wouldn’t recommend saying it, though, as it is pretty groan-worthy.)
While I was there I had lunch in the food court. Spotting the Sbarro made me think of that episode of The Office when Michael Scott goes to New York and tells the camera about this little place he knows that makes the best New York style pizza and it turned out to be a Sbarro, which made me laugh and decide that I’d get a slice from there in gratitude for it providing me with my first real laugh of the day.
After that it was off to the grocery store (where, I just discovered, I bought the kind of Little Debbie brownies with the nuts rather than the ones with the little hard candies, which is what I actually wanted), and then home.
Obviously, as most people who know me can attest, I tend to live in a state of almost constant humbuggery, but I have to say that after hearing Santa Claus is Coming to Town in all three of the establishments I entered today, I’m already sick to death of Christmas music. I think that hitting that point on December 4th is a new record for me.