Pet Peeve #16 – Can I Ask You A Question?

“Can I ask you a question?” What kind of answer do you expect from this? First of all, that is a question, so you have already asked me one; do you need to ask me another? If I do not wish to have any questions asked of me, you have probably already rubbed me the wrong way with your initial question. However, I will still proceed to answer it with a firm, “no.” If you want to ask me a question bad enough, I assume you will proceed to ask me the question even after I tell you not to, assuming my negative response was one of sarcasm. It wasn’t. Will I answer the question you ask me? No, since I told you not to ask it I will argue with you until I am blue in the face to let you know just how serious I was.

                Some people will even go as far as putting two questions in one sentence. Sometimes I will fall for it, but if I catch it I will give you nothing short of a sarcastic, smart-alecky response. “Can I ask you a question? Why do you have so many pet peeves?” There will never be an ask-one-get-one-free day with me. You get one question and one question only. If you attempt to double up like this I won’t even be able to answer one of these questions because my brain will begin to overheat due to a sarcasm overload. “Sorry, no two-for-ones,” is a typical response.

                “Can I ask you a question?” is a space filler. If you need to ask a question – ask it. Don’t ask permission to ask a question. That is absurd. A similar filler is, “Let me tell you this.” What do you mean let me? Nobody is holding you back, if you have the capacity to say let me, dare I say you have the capacity to tell me what it is you want me to “let you” tell me. Are you nervous? Is the filler just a warm up for what you are about to say? If so, maybe you should do some warm ups first thing in the morning, not during conversation. It’s not like athletes take a seat and start stretching in the middle of the first quarter. Get it together.

Mr. Nice Guy

I’m a nice guy, and women think I’m a nice guy. Unluckily for me women don’t want nice. When you want to be with someone nice is bad. Nice is scary. Nice is too much. What kind of sick society are we living in where nice is undesirable?

                Nice is what we were taught to be as we were growing up. Nice kids get presents from Santa. Naughty kids get coal. It’s a shame that being nice has no reward after a certain age. Sure, people like you and you make a good friend, but people will blow by you in every other aspect of your life. People are not afraid to be asshole’s in business to get ahead. Competition was created by assholes – there was originally one guy with an idea, he put this idea into action, his idea got ‘borrowed’ and sold for cheaper, and people stopped buying from the original guy and went to the cheaper competition. If the second guy was nice he would have just let the first guy continue being successful, but that is not how the world works.

                Why are women afraid of nice guys? There are a number of reasons. The first is the fear of nice guy syndrome, which is a guy whose nice deeds are only motivated by manipulating women into a relationship or sexual encounter. Once these guys get what they want there is no telling how they will act afterwards. Rather than going for a nice guy who could possibly end up being a colossal disappointment, women would rather go for a bad boy, expect the worst, and hope to be surprised. Women also enjoy the ‘challenge’ of being able to change a man, so if they choose a bad boy or jerk, they have a little project to keep them busy for a while.

                The second reason is the misinterpretation between being nice and being clingy. Some guys are genuinely interested in what you do and what you have to say. However, too much communication can be misconceived as being clingy, protective, obsessed, or anything alike. This is not always a delusion; there are plenty of guys and girls out there who are like that, so how can you blame someone for trying to escape that?

                If you are a nice guy you are probably wondering, “Do nice guys always finish last?” No they don’t. There are different girls out there just like there are different guys. These different girls have different ideas about the nice guy definition.

                Nice guy 1: committed, caring, respectful of women.
                Nice guy 2: boring, lacking confidence, unattractive.

                If you find a girl who defines a nice guy with definition 1, you can potentially finish first with her. Just like they have different definitions for nice guys, women also have different definitions for jerks.

                Jerk 1: confident, sexy, attractive, exciting.
                Jerk 2: manipulative, unfaithful, disrespectful of women, only interested in sex.

                Odds are that these definitions will not be surprising as there should be a direct correlation with their level of crazy. Nice guys tend to put others ahead of themselves and wind up getting their feelings hurt. If you want to be a nice guy, choose your targets wisely.

Pet Peeve #15 – Autocorrect

Autocorrect thinks it’s smarter than me. Well it’s not. I know what I’m trying to type when I text, but Apple thinks it knows better than me. Well Apple, where is your fucking cancel button when sending a text? Because God knows I could use that about five times a day.

                I appreciate the increases and upgrades in technology, but when I text it is rare that I use proper English. It’s cool that it capitalizes names for me, punctuates when it needs to, but I can’t cope with entire words being replaced with a nonsensical 18^th Century words which have no place in my 21^st Century slang-filled sentences. I don’t even know what swensen means.

                On the other hand, autocorrect is a life saver when I am out drinking. There are now no more texts that say, “Tou knie I lobe ypu bsby!” Autocorrect can now change small decipherable errors into a string of words I don’t know the definitions to, “Sanitorium frippet isotope hydropneumatic activism.” Thanks again, Apple.

                No matter how much we hate autocorrect though, there is an obligation we cannot ignore, an obligation to leave autocorrect on. We need it. Without it we have fewer opportunities to stroke our egos. Autocorrect makes us feel good, it makes us feel smarter than artificial intelligence. When we switch it off we realize how stupid we really are. It corrects more than we think. I hate auto correct because when it sends words that I did not want to send I have to pull a little DIRTY DESPERADO to correct myself. And as if that is not enough, it is making our society increasingly incompetent, increasingly antisocial, and increasingly obnoxious. And Siri, even with your upgrade you suck at understanding my accent. Don’t discriminate.

Hypergamy

                Hypergamy is the act of seeking a spouse of higher socioeconomic status and ‘marrying up’ to a higher status. This can go male to female or female to male, but evolutionists have stated that females have developed through evolution a preference for higher status males because they offer greater genes and greater resources for reproduction.

                The confusing issue here is the ‘settling’ that the so-called greater half of the couple must reduce themselves to. Why is someone who is perceived with such greatness in our society settling for less than they can have? Is it a below average sense of self-worth? I don’t think this is a question that can be answered without directly asking someone in this situation – which would be so rude, I mean like stereotypical mean girl movie rude.

                Another issue which I think goes alongside hypergamy is what I like to call careerin’. Careerin’ is when I see a couple walking together and one is way too good looking to be with the other. I call it careerin’ because there is no way in this world they should be together unless the ugly one has a job that makes his/her unfortunate looks forgivable. It is just crazy to me that someone would marry a person who they literally struggle to look at, just to marry up into a higher socioeconomic status. Materialism today is testing our values as a society and the scores are making us look less civilized than a pack of wild dogs. What’s next? Cannibalism?

Pet Peeve #14 – Blind Waving

Why is it that when we see someone we have an automatic compulsion to wave? Even if they aren’t looking at us our arm flings up involuntarily like a Jim Carrey comedy. I can’t stand it.

                When I am the wave receiver there is a good chance that I won’t be looking. It is likely that I am on a mission or interacting with other people. I don’t generally go out without a purpose, so why wave at me if I’m not looking? You can’t be mad for not getting any wave reciprocity. And if I get a text that says, “Thanks for waving back L” I might delete your number. Make sure there has been definite eye contact before waving. I’m talking alley-oop eye contact.

                When I am the wave giver I find it incredibly hard to forgive myself. Standing at 6 feet and 7 inches tall, people see me wave. All of the people, except the person I was waving at. So when I take down my hand and scratch the back of my head trying to fool everyone like I wasn’t waving – I look like a giant moron.

                What is this compulsion to wave anyway? Are we rude if we don’t wave? If we haven’t made eye contact, should we have been looking for you? What level of friendship do we have to be on before the waving begins? I say we eradicate waving from non-verbal communication. Once we rid ourselves of waves, we rid ourselves of the stressful responsibility of ‘polite’ reciprocation and we rid ourselves of the embarrassment that may follow if we are not seen by our target.

Microwave Society

Today we want everything to be instant, especially our generation. We buy our salads in bags, we get our news on Twitter, and we have 2 minute noodles and 3 minute rice and complain about the wait, we expect something for nothing.

                We are all idealists while we are young. Some of us grow out of this and become realists, but it seems that an increasing number of us are not making the shift from idealism to realism. We all reach for the stars; we have eyes for the road to riches, a big house with nice cars, fame and all the shiny things that go with it. We just don’t want to work for any of it.

                As we become more self-centered, materialistic, and greedy, we also become increasingly impatient. We can’t all be lottery winners. We can’t all be famous actors. And we can’t all be sports icons. So why are the people who get into these positions so dissatisfied? Greed.

                Being an athlete myself, and an amateur athlete at that. The dream is to become a professional and be paid to do what I love. I can’t even imagine getting 100K a year to play a sport. 1M a year is unbelievable. But then we witness lockouts in two professional sports in one year, both salary related. I understand that once you get out of school it is your profession and you need to do what is best for your family, but when you are making more money than you can spend, more money than regular people would ever dream of, where is the line between the love of the game and the hunger for more material things?

                Kids who were stars in college make it to the big time and they are suddenly not the stars of their professional teams. Instead of working hard to climb the hierarchy, they sulk like babies who have not been given what they cried for. This is a perfect example of people not wanting to work for rewards. Something makes us think we deserve the world. The world which others before us built.

                This applies to anything in life. If you want it, go get it. Take it. Work for it. Get it yourself. Do what you have to do to deserve it. Your world will not be given to you, you have to earn it. We are all given a path, follow yours. It will not be direct, there will be obstacles and adversities along the way, but no one said it was going to be easy, so why do you expect it to be. The year is now 2012. If 2011 derailed you, get back on track. You will get where you are supposed to be if you put the right amount of work in. And then some.

                Happy New Year.

Pet Peeve #13 - Just In Case

                I am not mentally disabled. You do not have superpowers. So why do people act like either of these could be an option?

                If I am with a group of people and I try to open a door to a house, car, room, or anything of the sort, and it is locked – why is it that someone else who also does not have a key thinks that if they try the door will open for them? Odds are that I tried to push and pull. I tried to turn the knob both ways. I tried a little jimmy – the door is just locked. But there is always that friend that watched you fail to open the door. That friend who will push past you to give it a try themselves. That keyless friend who will try to use his powers to open the door. What are you the kings of the doors? The doormeister?

                This same person will stand next to you while you wait for an elevator. They will watch you press the button. They will watch the button light up. But their simple, impatient ass will still press the button again just to make sure the elevator is coming.

                When you want to cross a road and you press the button, this friend will see and hear the button get pressed. The traffic however, still has a green light. So of course your friend has to press the button again. Not once. Not twice. But infinite times. And yes, I understand that 29 seconds feels like a long wait, but I can wait until my little green man shows up. My friend, after pressing the button so much that it needs replacing, will still J-walk. Sometimes I hope this friend gets a friendly little ticket from a police officer.