more: hate list.

I figure that it's been entirely too long since I've bitched about a bunch of stupid shit that infuriates me, so here we go:

White people with dreadlocks.  This is just not OK.   There is such a dense, complicated history of racism and identity politics bound up with black people's hair, which various trustifarians, gutter punks, and other douchebags seem to think they can just ignore, then co-opt as their personal style.  I guess gutter punks mostly have dreads because they're filthy.  But they're still douchebags.  Stupid gutter punks. 

Women who have baby voices.   I seem to remember reading and/or hearing something a long time ago about how women who talk in baby voices were sexually abused as children.  I don't know if that's true or not; it sounds like some sort of weird urban myth type thing.  What I do know, however, is that adults should not talk like wee bairns.  It's fucking creepy.  Is it conscious?  Do they think it will get them places?  Free bottles of Carnation Good Start baby formula?  I used to have this coworker who always talked in a really high pitched, "cutesy" voice--kind of like a cartoon woodland animal who eats love and rainbows for breakfast.  I found it incredibly creepy, especially when I heard her on the phone one day talking to godknowswho and her voice dropped an octave.  Oh, so you've been faking your disgusting little voice for the benefit of your coworkers?  Wow, thanks.  I kind of want to punch you in your little button nose.      

People who think that a meal isn't a "real" meal unless it involves meat.  Yet again, a former coworker comes to mind: a lady who always insisted, despite my constant explanations to the contrary, that I was a vegetarian.  She believed this because my meals frequently didn't contain any meat.  She also provided a weird variation on another related peeve of mine, people who won't even try anything with tofu in it because it's "gross."  That is so, like, 1980s (or something)--you know, back when only hippies ate yogurt and shit because it was a wacky "health food."  Anyhoo, this coworker believed, apparently, that a meal which doesn't contain any meat is both "not a real meal" as well as "disgusting."  A typical exchange during lunch went like this:

Coworker: Hey, that burrito looks yummy.  What's in it?

Me: Oh, it's just beans and cheese and some vegetables.

Coworker: You mean there's no meat in it?

Me: Nope.

Coworker: [making a disgusted face] Yuuuch.  How can you be a vegetarian!?

Me: I'm not.  This just happens to be a burrito without meat.

Coworker: I don't know.  That's weird.

Me: O-kaaaay.

There was an article on Slate recently that is somewhat on this topic, btw.

Socially inept/horribly awkward people who hide their awkwardness with "wacky" personalities.  OK, so I totally already bitched about this before, but I really just feel the need to restate it:  Oh god, could you be anymore boring and horrible?  If you know that you have a difficult time maintaining a conversation, just don't talk.  It's OK--really.  But don't subject the rest of us to your painful, self-deprecating "jokes" or your thinly veiled allusions to being "different" and "cool."  Also, tone down the loud talking and bad karaoke singing.

People who are rude to wait staff/service people.  Seriously, what is up with this?  Even before I was subjected to various humiliations in the service industries--even as a child, for chrissakes--I understood that you respect other people, and particularly people who are making shit wages to help you pick out a new bathroom scale or get you your grilled cheese.  I'm very sensitive on this matter, and so my definition of rudeness frequently expands to include: curtness, not saying please and thank you, and starting your order with "I want" instead of "I'd like" or "Can I have."  Observing this type of behavior can make a formerly liked person drop in status to a mere somewhat liked person, and a somewhat liked person plummet to a despised person.  For serious.

Women on reality shows who cry when their hair gets cut (this is mostly aimed at ANTM).  Grow a pair, people.  It's hair.  It grows back.  I understand that your identity/femininity/insecurities/sexuality is all tied up with your hair, but jesus--seriously?  And besides, you almost always look way better with a pixie cut than with your stupid layered horse hair down to the middle of your back.  Unless you're all mannish or have a face shaped like a boxcar or something (coughDominiquecough). 

Comments

[Husband]

I love the way you hate.

[france]

this is a comment for this entry as well as the march 30th one...

#1 I too hate the baby voice and the white dread man. My first boyfriend was a white dread guy and the night he got tazed i knew it was all over.

#2 i've been calling keith "plebort" all evening. me thinks he likes it.

#3 i hate when people say jesus h christ. What the f does the "h" stand for?

-france