In honor of my 'day off, after I've finished the book I had on hold through 51 people, and with no food in my house to cook' celebration, I've decided to make a blog post on things about the world that I find to be the most a) retarded, b) hypocritical, c)utterly ridiculous, or d) all of the above. (not in any particular order)
Number 1: Japanese "graphic novels".
Graphic novels being a euphemism for comic books. I understand that there are actually cool and decent ones out there. There are some with real stories that just happen to have lots of pictures. I have no beef with pictures. I am a fan of illustrations, myself. But These good ones seem to be increasingly few and far between. There are growing numbers of these comic books where the only words on the first ten pages are 'whack', 'crunch', and 'boom'. The only redeeming line I hear about any of these is "at least it gets kids to read". Well, assuming that this can even count, which I don't know if I think it does yet, we move to the japanese comics.
Japanese comics might make sense in Japanese... but so far the only thing I've been able to tell from them is that they read backwards, as if they were still in Japanese, but while they are translated into English. Someone explain this to me, because I find it to be severely pointless, and confusing. If you are using comic books to try to get kids to read more, and better, hand them a japanese comic book and have fun trying to help them keep the reading rules straight. "Well, kids, in this English we read left to right, but in this English we read right to left." *rolls eyes*
Not to mention that there are ten thousand of them that are all exactly the same, but with different names. Like 'peach fuzz'. Why am I gonna go read an anime 'graphic novel' called peach fuzz? or "Fruits basket"? I'm not making that up. I shelve them at the library frequently.
BTW, no I don't think Strongbad is stupid. This pic is him making fun of the same thing I'm making fun of.
K, I took WAY longer explaining that than I planned. On to number 2: The NAACP
Once upon a time, things like this were necessary. People who weren't white got treated like crap for a long time. Now, however, people like the NAACP are extraordinarily unnecessary. Because we're all trying to get to a world where things like your skin color have no bearing on employment, college acceptance, or political advancement. And yet here they are, screaming about how Obama is a black president.
Guess what... if you want people to treat you like you're the same as someone else, STOP pointing out how different you are!! Dag. This is like the epitome of dunce-cap, moron activity. That's all the NAACP does. "You're not treating us fairly. LOOK AT US! WE'RE BLACK!"
Just as a side note, I have nothing against people who aren't white. That includes people from Asian or hispanic groups, or whoever else too. I have lots of friends who are 'racially diverse'. And you know something funny? The only people that I actually think about being different, and it actually occurs to me frequently, are the people who go about shouting it to the world. Go figure.
Number 3: The term "African American"
This is along the same lines as number 2. Um, most people who are considered black haven't actually even set foot in Africa for dozens of generations. Combine that with the fact that there are black skinned people from more places than just Africa. A lot of the Polynesian islands have dark inhabitants. So does Australia, with the native Aborigines. It's kind of like taking everyone who's Asian and calling them all "Chinese Americans" or even better, like taking everyone who's white, and calling them "British Americans" just because a lot of us have ancestry from there.
Why is it politically correct to call everyone with brown skin "African American", but it's politically INcorrect to call everyone who's hispanic "Mexican" or even "Mexican American"?
Number 4: On that same note, political correctness.
Honestly, I can't really go into details on this, because there's just TOO MUCH. It's absolutely retarded. But I will say this much, political correctness only serves to cultivate insecurity and arrogance.
Insecurity, because using special terms for something reinforces the idea that it's not ok to be that way. If you're short, you're short. I'm sorry if you don't like being short, but pretending that you aren't doesn't change it. And you don't need to change it anyway. Is it wrong to be short? Is it a crime? No. So who cares if someone calls you short? And anyway, why on earth is it less offensive to use six syllables to describe something, instead of one??
It also creates arrogance. More and more people today think that they really are the center of the universe. That they really are more important than other people. That other people's needs are never quite as necessary as their own. When someone gets offended at one phrase over another phrase, when both of them say the exact same thing, that is arrogance at it's finest. It's saying "I'm so good and important, that you disrespect me by using common, lay-man's language. I deserve specially phrases, just for me."
BULL. CRAP. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for you.
Number 4: Cheap humor.
More and more, people make movies that are comedies, but they fill them full of crap. Sure it's amusing, sometimes, but mostly it's just stupid. The funniest humor is clever. It can be cheesy, or silly, or slapstick, or whatever you want. But it's got to be clever at the same time. Dropping the f-bomb 64 times in ten minutes does not constitute clever. Making 500 jokes in a row about your anatomy is not clever either. It's just dumb.
I use Family Guy as my prime example. I know most of you probably watch it, including my family. But this is just how I feel. The people who make family guy are smart. They're clever. They're witty. They have the potential to be the funniest people on the planet. There are some parts of Family Guy episode's I've seen that make me cry I'm laughing so hard. (this pic is of such a part) But they sink to sheer stupidity and dirty jokes for most of their laughs. They don't have to, but they do. Because that's just what's popular these days. And to be completely honest, I don't find 90% of each episode to be that interesting. The 10% that's crying my eyes out hilarious is just not worth it.
I can't really explain this very well. I wish I could. It drives me crazy that I am tongue tied when trying to make an important point. But alas, such is life.
Number 5: Road Rage
Not only is this part of the center of the universe syndrome, but it makes even less sense than political correctness. We turn on the turn signal. We look into the next lane. We see a car WAY WAY back there. So we move lanes. Suddenly the car is up on our bumper, honking shaking fists, screaming, and stalking us down three different roads. *shrug*
This really did happen. We turn off of one road, on to another, and then onto a third, and this lady in a red sports car was still following us, still tailgating, and shaking her fist. Once we got to the third road, which was two lanes instead of one, she swerved quite violently into the other lane, sped up, and swerved, equally violently, right in front of us. We calmly changed lanes. She swerved to cut us off. We calmly changed lanes again. She swerved again.
Every single person who hears this story is thinking "Jeez, what a nutjob" or something to that effect. Everyone laughs at this lady. All her violent rage served to do was make her a laughing stock. And yet half the people who have heard this story will go out to drive somewhere, decide they've been slighted, and get just as irrationally angry as this lady, even if they don't necessarily act on it.
All for.... ?? Money? Food? Fame?
I don't know about you, but I've never been offered anything like that, just to get furious with another car. In this world of material possessions and me, me, me, you'd think this is something that people would understand... with no obvious personal gain, why should your precious time be wasted on feeling horrible? It's an entirely selfish logic, and yet no one listens.
Haha. I just googled road rage and found two things that are funny. One was a post very like mine, in which the writer coolly demonstrated that the only real winner is the one getting glared AT instead of giving the glare. Because it makes us laugh. It makes us think you're an idiot. And we continue on our merry way. The other is this pic someone snapped of a mid-road, angry road rage fight. Now THAT makes me laugh too. Which goes to prove my point yet again.
Now, as most of you are aware, there are a LOT more really really stupid things out there. But I can't exactly just sit and think of all of them off the top of my head. And I'm not really too bothered by it to try. These are just the ones that have been on my brain recently. So I'll just say that as I think of ones that amuse me, I'll post them. But for now, this will be all. Laters.
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