Mini Suck: a new 10

As usual, I have more rage than time, so here's another from my new line of snack-sized hate. This week, the people, places and things who should suck it include:

1. Anyone who belts pants below the ass. While I'm sure your underwear is fascinating to you, to me it's just more information than I want. This is just stupid, and I don't care if that makes me sound old or out of touch. I keep seeing this on campus, and I simply don't get it. Sagging one's pants is one thing, but this doesn't look like a choice so much as an error--like someone just got distracted after doing their bathroom business. I should never look at a person walking away and wonder if they got confused or lost after wiping, unless that person has Alzheimer's. Not to mention, if you insist on showing your underwear to me, make sure it's clean and unstained, Skid Mark, okay?

2. People who share their personal names for their genitals, breasts, or other body parts with anybody who isn't already sharing their bed. It's bad enough that people persist in this cutesy nonsense, but I shouldn't have to be subjected to your body-phobic bullshit unless I'm trying to get in your pants.

3. Shiftless, lazy, unwashed hippies who make liberals look like unemployable miscreants. Don't get me wrong, Moonbeam: be free. It's just that your failure to bathe regularly, groom adequately, listen to recognizable music, find reliable transportation, find legal and non-parasitic income or, at least, retire the bong makes those of us who want social justice but live closer to the center of the spectrum easy to ridicule and ignore. You are not helping the causes you claim to care about so much as you're dropping out of society and refusing to grow up.

4. Those who refer to anyone critical of them as "haters." This gets extended into a little faux-street bit which says "Don't hate the player, hate the game." There are so many problems here. First, sometimes criticism is perfectly valid and has nothing to do with hate. Calling someone a hater suggests that their position is unreasoned and the criticism unearned. It's worse than an oversimplification; it's a complete dismissal. Second, you're not a pimp, so stop talking like you think you are. You are not part of The Game just because you saw American Pimp. Finally, even if you are a pimp, why shouldn't I hate the player, as well as the game? The game is usually demeaning, frequently violent, and always exploitation-based. Anybody playing The Game as usual is worthy of pity at best, and deserving of serious jail time at worst. Without the Players, The Game as we know it wouldn't exist. Stop the player, stop the game.

5. People who get tribal markings and other cultural symbols indelibly etched on their body when they don't belong to the culture it represents. This just bugs, though it does present a good opportunity for tattooists and other artists to manipulate the perceptions of the public a great deal in a kind of subversive way. I mean, if you don't speak the language or have a lived-in familiarity with the complex cultural connotations of your chosen symbology, then you're trusting that the website or book where you found it and the tattoo artist you took it to for inking are faithfully representing the image and honestly sharing its meaning. While the potential for a bunch of culture vultures to get royally screwed does amuse me, this is just a sad shame in a larger sense. Why do people feel the need to "borrow" other people's cultural experience? Everybody already has a culture; in fact, each of us probably belongs to quite a large number of "tribes" in a broad sense. So, why co-op someone else's? I don't care how many tattoos of Asian characters or Totem animals you get: you're still you. And if "you" is white, live with it. Yep, our people are responsible for an awfully lot of the problems. Don't make it worse. Own up. We've got some highlights, too. Learn your own history before you steal someone else's.

6. Door-to-door religion salespeople. In this, the Jehovahs and the Mormons are about equal offenders, with everybody else a very distant finisher. Stop trying to force your book report projects on me. I've read the Book of Mormon, and it's ludicrous. I've read enough of The Holy Bible to know that taking it literally is nonsensical. I have my own faith and values. But, even if I didn't, I do not see how your interrupting my day and insinuating yourself into my life is doing me any favors. If your Gods won't let you into their paradise without your having to recruit others, then it's not Heaven--it's an Amway convention.

7. Any person or corporation that patents life-saving cures for highly treatable illnesses. How dare you pretend to work in the interests of scientific progress and the betterment of humanity and then block the possibility of saving lives, improving life expectancy for entire sectors of the world, and fostering international cooperation--all of which can and does come from the successful implementation of health care into the most impoverished areas. Any company that charges more than 10% over cost for any medication is exploitive. But to take it even further and suggest that, while you've found a cure, nobody can make use of it without your being paid is unconscionable.

8. Habitually tardy people who attribute their rudeness to culture. I hear that people are on "Mexican time," "Mormon time," and even "Mommy time" constantly. You are not on a special time frame. You are not so damned interesting and unusual that we should all make special allowances for the fact that you do not keep your promises and instead selfishly waste everyone else's time in waiting around for you to show up. This is not something you share with an entire category of people, nor is it some unpreventable consequence of membership in the group you were born into or have since joined. You're just rude. But now, in addition to being rude, you're showing that you agree with and perpetuate stereotypes, and you think that doing so is cute and funny.

9. Fame whores willing to behave like animals, exploit their children and families, and shamelessly peddle themselves and their loved ones for unwarranted celebrity. While this is particularly relevant to cretins like the Gosselins, it also applies to Kardashians, the Lamas clan, those weird hillbillies with the 14 kids who run a B&B, and all the rest of them. We get it: you want to be famous. But you're boring, vapid, narcissistic, shallow, wasteful, tactless and greedy. These are not qualities in a person, they're serious deficiencies of character.

10. Parents who blame the schools, the government, the education system, the teachers, television, video games, movies, peer groups and anyone else on Earth that they can think of for their child's poor learning and underachievement. I've got news for you: if you know the name of all the characters on your favorite TV shows, but you don't know the names of all your child's teachers, principals, coaches, and guidance counselors, then the person not making the most of that child's educational experience is likely you.