When Jess broke up with me last November I decided I was going to stay as positive as possible, so I counted my blessings. Literally. I had 49 of them, which seemed like pretty good going. I wrote all the blessings in a nice orderly list in my notebook and referred back to them whenever I was tempted to descend into a sweet and sticky pit of self-indulgent misery-fudge.
But as things just kept getting more and more fucked up (see previous post), the blessings list lost its palliative edge. Because life is not all rainbows and sparkles and ponies and sparkly rainbow ponies, people. Don’t believe them when they tell you life is ponies. It is not.
So, recently, I’ve been composing a new list. Of stuff that is shit. It is a highly enjoyable activity and I very much recommend it as either a one or two player game. For the two-player version, simply find a friend and say, “Do you know what I hate?” And when they say “what?” – begin to rant. Rant! Rant! Rant as though your negativity is a sonata accompanied by an angry toddler on an out-of-tune piano. Rant as though every grotesque energy in the universe is spurting through your thorax, slithering through your larynx, exhuming the corpses of all the petty, mean little thoughts you unjustly smothered before you could give them the full expression they so crave. Rant like you mean it. Rant like everyone agrees. Rant it out, baby. You just rant that shit right out.
Then, ask your friend, “what do you hate?”
As a one player game, you may require a blog. Hey, do you know what I hate?
Contemporary Fridge Magnets
Do you remember when magnets used to actually stick things to the fridge? I do. I remember the golden age of magnets, when you could pin 3, 4, even 5 pieces of paper to the fridge with a cheap souvenir from Gran Canaria. Now do you know what you can stick to the fridge with a magnet? Nothing. Today’s magnets only stick themselves to the fridge. And it is rubbish. When was this bastardization of fridge magnets allowed to take place? Why have we all been so complacent in the face of callous corporate erasure of the use-value of fridge magnets? It is a vivid reflection of our society – the new, rubbish, merely decorative fridge magnet is a simulacrum. WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
Sneaky Cucumber
Cucumber is the devil’s penis. I am not saying that cucumber has no right to exist, or that – if I had the power – I would ban all cucumber based agriculture as well as any mention of cucumber in public discourse. I am not a monster. I recognise that people hold opposing viewpoints on a number of important issues, and even when those opinions are wrong – e.g. when people think cucumber is not the devil’s penis – I must tolerate them. But do you know what I will not tolerate? Sneaky cucumber. The kind that cruel degenerates grate into my salad even though there was no cucumber listed in the salad ingredients on the menu. They grate it in as if I won’t notice, as if the fact that the salad now tastes like shampoo will somehow escape my powers of perception, as if I do not even deserve the rudimentary right to pick the cucumber out of whatever otherwise delicious meal it is currently fucking right up. I tolerate other people’s whack opinions about cucumber, but they have NO RESPECT for mine. And I can never have Pimm’s.
Men Who Won’t Wear Condoms
Oh God. I’m single again. Eventually I’ll have to have sex with new people. And there’ll be one, won’t there? There’ll be a man who won’t wear a condom. And he will seem so cool and right on and feminist and we’ll go home together and then he’ll refuse to wear the fucking condom and I’ll be all like “that’s okay, we can do other things” and he’ll be like “no – I am horribly offended that you won’t risk pregnancy and STDs for my momentary sexual gratification and, ergo, am going to sleep” and I will try to figure out if every other woman on the planet is less uptight than me about prophylactics (ARE THEY? Who are these guys who won’t wear condoms having sex with?) before despairing because being single is just so crap.
The Breathing At The Start of Yoga
It is boring
E-mails
Dear Inbox,
You are Sisyphus’s rock, an eternal weight to be pushed interminably upwards, my arms aching, my mind tortured by the knowledge that there will never be relief.
With Best Wishes,
Emer
P.S. I hate it when people use P.S. in e-mails. E-mails are not physical letters. You did not sign off then realise that you’d like to add a witty appendix. E-mails are fully editable. Stop.
The Greatest lie of Western Civilization
Jeans are not comfortable. They leave angry rings of judgement in the squidgy bits around our middles. Jeans look comfortable, but, in fact, they are lies. The sooner we all admit this the sooner we can begin working towards a world in which it is acceptable to wear pyjamas to work
Cleaning
I am considering an experiment called “Schrodinger’s Filth” where I wear a blindfold inside at all times and thus is its always both clean AND dirty in my house. This is called: using my philosophy degree.
And Finally: Positivity
Positivity is over-rated. The world is full of terrible things like cold toes and gender stereotypes and pro-lifers and people on the left who say “yeah, but everyone knows the jews control the media” and yeast infections and networking events and fascists. We don’t have to be sunny all the time. Griping is fun. I, for one, feel much better now. So tell me: what do you hate?
One More 
I am with you on the jeans! I haven’t bought a pair in at least five years, and my life has only improved as a result.
I am Team Cucumber, but have a very bad relationship with cilantro, so I get where you’re coming from.
On bigger themes, it’s hard to be optimistic about gender equality, but we just keep doing the best we can, and sometimes it’s exhausting, which is why thewineandpizza.
Onwards and upwards.
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And now it appears I can’t delete my insomnia induced rant. Are you able to delete it? Thanks!
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Done! If you’d like me to send you the text of your insomnia induced rant, let me know, because it’s really quite brilliant and you should let insomnia induce more things.
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Coat hangers. MF coat hangers. They’re useful for hanging shirts on, and maybe jackets and jumpers, but wide v-necks, boat-necks, polo necks, maxi dresses…? Useless. Plus the moment you try to remove them from your wardrobe, they gang up on you, beoming instantaneously tangled with several of their own kind and everything else in their wake. I want a magical wardrobe that dries, irons and levitates my clothing in colour and item order please. Surely not to much to ask?
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Coat hangers are DREADFUL
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The left shoe. It’s always smaller than the right one. Come to think of it, so is the right side of any bra.
Thank you for the ranting opportunity and for your writing in general. It keeps me borderline sane.
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LEFT SHOES ARE TERRIBLE.
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Thank you, Emer, for this wonderful rant (this is Kenneth Z — sorry, I have a wordpress pseudonym). I love rants and have been doing it for ever. And what has been eating me for a couple months has been the torrent of articles blaming Hillary for not doing enough to attract Republican voters — either because the Republicans are actually socialists who would have voted for Bernie or because she “over” emphasized social justice issues. (I have been perseverating about a much longer version of this rant…and I’ll keep you posted, so to speak). Anyway, thanks again!
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Yes but her eeeeeeeeeee-mails
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There’s a denim embargo in my closet. Why feel like a failed sausage, for the discount price of $200?
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Down with denim sausage!
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I love emails P.S.s!! I hate people who are rude to children. Contributed by coworker — when people lean on the bar in the metro – or are otherwise have no spatial awareness.
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I love that your one is basically “I don’t like mean people.” You are too lovely to play the “what do you hate” game.
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Wow! Emer………….I’ll have to practice this a bit but I’m sure I can come up with some shit that bugs my ass………..every friggin fuckin day!!
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I believe in you!
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I hate talking about football, cars or weapons, they are totally uninteresting matters for me. I also hate that so many people( mostly males) expect me to join a conversation going around one of these topics, only because I’m a male. And another thing, I don’t like when people expressed their disappointment after they found out somehow that I can’t drive, and they say or think, I am a strange.
Yes, it’s true. But not in this way, I think. Just because I am a male, why must I do the same like any other males do?
This whole shit around expectations based on my gender started when I was in the nursery school and it didn’t stop. It’s exhaustive.
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http://explosm.net/comics/2861/
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Sorry, but I can’t cook,bake, etc.:-) But I do the dish washing, or the hoovering. It is more than nothing, even if it’s less than something.
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This is so good it’s almost joyous, and none of us what to live under the threat of that so I’ll leave it there.
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Great post. I totally agree with you on the fridge magnets and yoga. Guys who refuse to wear condoms aren’t worth a second of your time, that is absolutely ridiculous. Can’t agree with jeans, however, men’s jeans are made for comfort.
I recently read your book, I thought it was great.
Rock on.
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But you can’t know which ones they are just by looking at them. They are not wearing t-shirts that say “feminist in the streets, MRA in the sheets” even though it should be legally required for them to do so.
So glad you enjoyed Girls Will Be Girls! Right – I’m off to fast forward to breathing bits at the start of a yoga video and buy some men’s jeans.
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I am often stung with a whip-pang of (self)hate when I have moments in which I lucidly realise that there have been many, many people in not just previous centuries, but previous millennia, that were oh-too-readily able to fully understand concepts that I still have to strain my greymatter over, in the hope of availing myself of even the smallest whispcrumb of insight…
I think to myself [in chainsaw tones]: “All those millennia of human history! – Why am I not more intellectually evolved! – I am but a monkey in a tree!”
…and then I put-on some music, or tidy, or watch a documentary (- to try to passively gain some knowledge by osmosis). I may be saying that I hate (my own) procrastination, hehe…
I have also read and loved your book, by the way – (it now resides in my bookcase horizontally, atop some Behan, Synge and Joyce books, and next to Aristotle’s ‘Politics’; I hope that you would approve 🙂
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I DO approve.
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Ah, grand… In which case, I’ll leave the books resting in that configuration, and maybe tis still not too late for the osmotic process to endow ol’ Ari’ with some new insight…
I look forward to the next Emer O’-tome.
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