Fears and Loathings

"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music."
-- Vladimir Nabokov

Here's five of each.

Fears

1. Losing it.

2. Being lost.

3. Losing them.

4. Finding nothing.

5. Finding nothing and calling it everything.

(5a. Emitting in a crowded elevator what I thought would be an SBDF [silent but deadly fart] but which tragically turns out to be a VLBDF [very loud but deadly fart].)


Loathings

1. Mainstreaming of the word "pimp" (despite a dumb advertisement that shows up on this site).

2. The concept of so-called multitasking. (See The Laughorist's June 22 post on "Age Quod Agis" = "Do what you are doing.")

3. Weed-whacking devices and leaf blowers -- and the horrid sounds they make.

4. Not replying (to "thank you," or to something one said in the cubicle although the cubicle neighbor expects a ready reply to every comment he or she makes, or to emails, because you need not deign to reply to factotums, or not replying to whatever ad nauseam. Not replying. It bothers me. I see the therapist tomorrow, okay?).

5. Pushing forward in line ("queue" is the word in the British Commonwealth, is it not, ol' chap?) while saying, "Excuse me" or "pardon" (or, don't you invoke "sorry" in the U.K. in such instances?).

5a. Littering. It strikes me as a solipsistic blow to civilization. I suppose the concept of "littering" can apply to verbal littering (but how can you pick up and properly dispose of words once they are said? And is blogging a form of verbal littering?) and to the proliferation of consumerist crap (CC). One of these days you are likely to read of my demise because I had the audacity to challenge a litterer directly.

5b. Politicians who cannot say these three words: "I was wrong," and by extension a climate that ruins a politician who utters those words, and by further extension a society that does not allow itself to admit the wrongness of any of its actions on any level (also known as imperial arrogance), and while we're at it, the hollowness of politicians of all stripes -- a hollowness that prevents them from exhibiting one honest thought, one original idea, or one authentic emotion.

Now give me five. (More or less).

Of yours.

Laugh. Or....
Else.