Flower Power

Don’t peo­ple some­times freak you out? Or some sit­u­a­tions maybe? Here is my top list… Feel free to add your per­sonal pet peeves. And yes, in case you won­der, I had a bay day.

Peo­ple who quote from a reli­gious book: I’m sorry. As much as I respect your reli­gion, I just don’t under­stand why some peo­ple quote from the Bible, the Koran, the Old Tes­ta­ment (or the new one for that mat­ters) for what seems no rea­son. If a politi­cians speaks on T.V, I do not want to hear you say: “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:17… not that I would know). And when Bush, com­ment­ing about Iraq, said: “in the words of the prophet Isa­iah, “To the cap­tives, ‘come out,’ — and to those in dark­ness, ‘be free.’” — I really freaked out.

Med­ical com­mer­cials on U.S tele­vi­sion: I know your health sys­tem suck. Sorry about that. But do you really need to adver­tise all these freaky drugs on national T.V dur­ing prime time? I’m sick and tired of hear­ing about Via­gra, incon­ti­nence or weight loss drugs when I’m eat­ing diner. There just isn’t a good way present your prod­ucts, no mat­ter how many metaphors you use: “ED” (erec­tile dys­func­tion), “Love Life Again” (get it hard, finally), “mir­a­cle diet pill” (take a placebo pill and eat less) or “it’s time for an hon­est voice” (get out and exer­cise, lazy ass!). Not to men­tion the freaky side effects, usu­ally mut­tered very fast at the end of the com­mer­cial: “Dur­ing sex­ual activ­ity, if you become dizzy or nau­se­ated, or have pain, numb­ness, or tin­gling in your chest, arms, neck, or jaw, stop and call your doc­tor right away”. Really, right away? But I’m in the mid­dle of… nevermind.

Argu­ments in the bus: Repeat after me — start­ing an argu­ment in the bus will get you nowhere, espe­cially not home. Think about it for a sec­ond. In a bus, you have: 1) Peo­ple squeezed in a very tight space 2) all tired and eager to be home 3) a gen­er­ally moody bus dri­ver. It’s an axiom to remem­ber. Some­one com­plains qui­etly about being squeezed, next per­son says louder he can’t move because two punks sat on the pri­or­ity seats, the two guys say they sit there because the bus dri­ver told every­body to move to the back, every­one agrees the bus dri­ver is dri­ving like a maniac and approach­ing sharp bends like a For­mula 1, woman with a stroller says she fears for her baby’s life, bus dri­ver hears and threat­ens to stop the bus and call secu­rity etc etc etc. The only good way to get out of an argu­ment in the bus is to not start one. Believe me.

Health advices in the news: it seems that every­day, sci­en­tists are dis­cov­er­ing a new health threat. Eat­ing. Not eat­ing. Sleep­ing. Not sleep­ing. Water. The sun. Infin­i­tes­i­mal quan­tity of some­thing in some­thing. Com­mon behav­ior (i.e drink­ing from a plas­tic bot­tle, jog­ging, sit­ting at a desk) is now linked to the devel­op­ment of some fatal dis­ease. And this is reported on prime-time news, with many footages of doc­tors in white coats talk­ing seri­ously and hand­ing out sta­tis­tics on spread­sheets. Yet, we have never been health­ier… go fig­ure. Mean­while, a lot of peo­ple are wor­ry­ing sick that they might catch a dis­ease they don’t know yet about.

Bumper sticker: it’s not the stick­ers them­selves but the mes­sage they carry. So far, I have yet to see a sticker that isn’t racist, fun­da­men­tal­ist, extrem­ist or sex­ist. Lately, I spot­ted “I have the dick, so I make the rules”, “God said it, I believe, that set­tles it!” and “dia­pers are dis­pos­able, babies are not, stop abor­tion”. That pretty much proves my point… doesn’t it? Besides, I don’t see how a small piece of paper is going to make me change my mind about a polit­i­cal can­di­date or a phi­los­o­phy. The only thing I do when I see a despi­ca­ble bumper ticket is to park as far as the car and the owner as I can. Not pray. No buy a Bible. Not recon­sider my left-wing bor­der­line social­ist beliefs.

I promise I’ll be in a bet­ter mood tomor­row (and note that my mood has noth­ing to do with any of the above!)

Related posts:

1. Things That Suck
2. Ten Things I Can’t Do (and really, does that matter ?)
3. Things I Learned In 2007
4. Seven Things About Me
5. Pic­ture of the Week: 33°C