Get Off My Lawn

by myerman

Okay, because it is Festivus, I will follow @imtheq’s lead and Air Some Grievances™.

1. I am disappointed to find myself constantly explaining to non-Texans why/how Rick Perry keeps getting re-elected.
2. It’s nearly 2012. No jet packs. No ray guns. No lightsabers. But we have Twitter. #aggrieved
3. I’m seriously wondering who you people are who like and/or demand 3-D movies. Can I punch you in the face?
4. The world is run by morning people. I find you distressingly disappointing. Now go get me that cup of coffee.
5. You people who say “lightening” instead of “lightning”? What the fucking fuck? Stay in school.
6. All of you folks who tweeted death threats because of #godisnotgreat trending–way to go.
7. Copious and capricious non-productive sexism. Get your shit together — this is why you’re not getting laid.
8. Any cop who tases/pepper sprays/beats a peaceful protestor, anywhere on earth: we do not forgive, we do not forget.
9. All you assholes who have given “patriot” and “patriotic” a bad name with your hijinks–you offend me to my core.
10. The constant bedwetting and uber rhetoric of both left and right. Pipe down and let’s jut talk this out, okay?
11. People who don’t pay attention to my twitter stream. What the hell? It’s all about me, okay? @technosailor
12. People who don’t put apostrophes in the right places. Jeezy Creezy.
13. Ignoramuses who actually believe there is a war on Christmas. Listen, just buy your gifts and sing your carols and STFU.
14. You people who dress up your dogs and cats and then post images on the interwebs? I hope those animals eat you.
15. Austinites. You suck at driving, okay? Seek help. Green light != tap the brakes as you approach intersection. GAH!
16. WWF pluggers. I know what you’re doing. Let’s throw down with a Scrabble board face-to-face. Twats.
17. Patrick Stewart, you haven’t aged a day since you leveled up in the 1990s. What the hell man?
18. Any fanboy geek, anywhere. Yes, yes, yes, they left out Tom Bombadil in LOTR movie. Deal.
19. Misleading headlines in blogs. Die.
20. Newt Gingrich. The worst of the 90s come back to haunt us. Feh.
21. Tebow. I don’t follow sports, but you are an egregious moron. Keep your faith to yourself, you little pimple.
22. Cialis commercials. What do sitting in bath tubs have to do with sexy time? WHAT? WHY?
23. People who say things like “it’s always the last place you look.” Of course it is! Why keep looking once I’ve found it????
24. Companies that send you SMS spam. Hunt you down with a machete.
25. Finally, you Facebook pokers. Really?

by myerman

Attention all of you people who participate in planking: you’re not that funny. Or clever. Or postmodernist. Or whatever you think while you’re doing it.

Don’t know what planking is? Oh, you lucky sonofabitch. Here, let me infect your mind. Plankers are those people who lie face down in unusual places (for example, a railing on a balcony that’s say, 100 feet off the ground) and then have photos of themselves posted on the interwebs. Of course, it’s always better if you survive the ordeal, which Acton Beale of Australia neglected to do. Survive, I mean.

Apparently if you get really drunk and do this kind of stuff, you end up dying and/or maiming yourself. Ditto if you find yourself in a “competitive planking” environment  (I fucking CAN NOT believe that those words just rattled themselves onto this blog) — I guess there are some ineffable rules of free-market planking, pushing plankers to bigger and bigger risks to get the most extreme, err, face-down posture or something.

You’d think these people would do something useful, like plank in front of public buildings or the train station so I’d have some place to park my bike, but alas, no.

I won’t include any “traditional” images of plankers, there are plenty of those in the story linked above, or you can google “planking” to get the general idea. Essentially, it’s a bunch of bored people sharing their “hobby” with a bunch of other people who have the attention span of a stunned fly. Wait, I just categorized 90% of humanity on the Internet.

However, there is one extremely hilarious animated GIF of a planker doing it wrong, and I share it with you only because I myself cannot stop watching it and laughing my ass off.

by myerman

If you’re like the driver in the video below (and yes, I did shoot that video myself, yesterday, while driving along Burnet Road) then I can only assume that you’re:

A) totally jamming out to Metallica (I hope) or something else, and the music’s so loud you can’t hear the blinker noise (or see the light blinking on your dashboard). If this is the case, good for you, you also won’t hear the screams of agony when you run over pets and small children as you re-enact that drum solo from last summer’s MONSTERS OF RAWK concert;

B) on the goddamned phone and only have enough brain cells to steer the car and plan your next trip to Davos, Switzerland or whatever the hell it is you’re talking about. Well, at least for the sake of the people you run off the road, I hope it’s something important, and that you’re not using your drive time for something inane like asking your spouse which brand of foot cream you’re supposed to get on the way home;

 

C) shooting video of the moron driving in front of you, and so engrossed by that activity that you don’t notice that your blinker is on.

In any case, this is exactly why I don’t trust drivers who fly down the road with their turn signals on. Sure, sure, most of you are law-abiding citizens who will actually turn when they have their blinker on, but it only takes one dipshit like this guy to cream you and then you know better. So everyone who is sitting behind me in the parking lot of Whole Foods waiting to exit, just give me a break, I ain’t going to the morgue because people like that can’t be bothered to turn off their turn signals.

P.S. If liking Boston is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

by myerman

I started Get Off My Lawn as an antidote to all the happy-sunshine I’m-so-positive-I-make-everyone-vomit-around-me isn’t-everyone-just-awesome and isn’t-life-great type blogs that seem to crop up everywhere. I wanted a personal place to vent. I figured I’d get the occasional traffic from those who also viewed the world through curmudgeon colored glasses, and to my surprise, I found a whole community of fellow grumpy bastards who also wanted to vent.

And vent they did: about their fucked up neighbors, about people’s driving habits, about Justin Bieber, and about those damn kids and their droopy pants. It’s been a grouchapalooza here, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

I’ve also managed to attract a whole other group of people, and they’re just about as much fun as anything else that’s Get Off My Lawn related, but for entirely different reasons. I’m talking about the easily offended. Yes, yes, I get emails from Christians who object to my poking fun at those who believe in the rapture (and by the way, it’s Rapture day, what happened? I guess you guys are wrong!). And yes I get emails and DMs from people who don’t care for my f-bombing, which is such a fucking shame.

But even funnier, I get emails from other under-represented grump targets….like people who drive giant trucks. Yes, I get emails from these people, how I’m picking on them for their God-given right to buy and drive any damn thing they please. Oh, and I once received an email from a guy who was offended that I made fun of flat-taxers.

So I’d like to take the time to share little snippets of emails and other messages received over the past few months, and then respond to these notes in public. But before I do, I’d just like to say that if you’re a big giant truck owner and don’t like our obvious liberal media stance on big giant trucks and their owners, then submit a rant about tree-hugging hippy Prius drivers and then get off my lawn while you’re at it.

Okay, here goes, and again, I’m only offering up snippets, I wouldn’t want your brains to cramp from the stupid.

I would not want my children to read your blog.

Sooooo, I didn’t start this blog with children in mind, but I’m guessing you’re home schooled and don’t understand things like irony, sarcasm, “age appropriate material” or responsible parenting. Listen, even if your damn kids were to encounter my blog, I assure you it’s probably the least offensive thing they’ll find. Try googling “tits” and see what you come up with, for starters.

Note: Dear breasted readers: I don’t mean to imply, with that previous statement, that tits are offensive. In fact, I rather like tits. Thank you.

Why do you feel the need to use an excessive amount of foul language publicly?

It’s because I’m a craven little bastard (quite literally, my parents didn’t marry until after my birth) who, despite having both an undergraduate and a graduate degree in English/Linguistics, doesn’t feel the need to waste bigger words on simpletons such as yourself. Besides, now that I know it pisses you off, I’m gonna cuss like a one-legged cross-eyed motherfucker.

I believe in God. Your blog is offensive to both me and Him. [I get a variant on this every other week]

What, does God not approve of my blog? Are you trying to tell me that the Almighty has read my blog? That’s fantastic! Why hasn’t he commented–never mind, he’s a lurker, I won’t judge. Listen, if God is reading my blog, that’s just a bit scary, ya know? Shouldn’t he be making sure that galaxies don’t collide or that genocide doesn’t happen in Africa or something? That’s it! Bad things happen because He’s reading Get Off My Lawn, we distracted Him.

I bought my truck before gas prices went up. You’re slamming people like me for not knowing the future. [paraphrasing about 10 emails]

Alas, no, I’m slamming people like you for not paying general attention to the conversation most of us have been having for about, saaaaaaaaaaaay 30+ years now. Peak oil ring a bell? Global warming? Depleted natural resources? And even if you somehow believe, as Rush Limbaugh does, that there really is a whole bunch of undiscovered oil out there ready to tap, have you noticed the general trend in gas prices in your life time? Has it ever trended down? No? You think that’s an important pattern, something that might, I don’t know, influence a buying decision?

Why do you feel the need to spout negativity all the time?

Again, I guess reading comprehension wasn’t your strong suit, and hey, that’s okay I guess. (See, that was sarcasm. It’s really not okay.) We’re being negative for a purpose–to have a little fun, and maybe in the off chance that the targets of our ridicule might just wake the fuck up and stop being assholes. But more than that, it’s a free country. I get to publish what I want thanks to the First Amendment. You get to read it or not read it depending on your desire to actually follow a link to my site. If you don’t like it, then go away. If you’re too weak-willed to not look away, well, I’m not qualified to help you.

Besides which, if you were to ask any of the grumpy fucks who make up this august body of Get-Off-My-Lawners, every single one of them would say we were having a good time, and that you’re the Debbie Downer. So eat my shorts.

I really liked [whatever movie I trashed, usually the Star Wars prequels] — why are you so mean to fanboys? [that's a total paraphrase, but honestly, you don't want to read the originals, it'll make you break out in hives]

Son, there are people in this world who will convince you that there is no such thing as an objectively bad piece of art. I can tell you, after having sat through Ishtar, Godfather III, the last 2 Matrix movies, and the Star Wars prequels that utter pieces of crap do exist and do get made. I wish I could say that I’m sorry that I stepped all over your fanboy toes with my big old grumpy boots, but then I’d be lying. I’m not sorry I did that. In fact, thanks for the feedback, I’ll do it again sometime.

You must make a lot of money from Get Off My Lawn!

Okay, that’s not really a complaint email, but since I’m answering fan mail, I need to address this. Yes, I’ve made a fuckton of cash off this thing, you wouldn’t believe how much. Just the other day I got a report from my click throughs on Amazon and I’ve made $1.07 in the past 180 days, total. That’s almost a coffee at Dunkin Donuts.

Seriously, people, I don’t this for the money. I do this for you. All of you.

by myerman

For those of you who don’t already know, apparently all Christians are going to be raptured away to heaven on May 21, 2011, leaving all the rest of us infidels/unbelievers/Democrats to suffer through 7 years of The Great Tribulation.

That sounds terrible, right? All kinds of horrible stuff will happen to those of us left behind during this awful period, at the end of which the Anti-Christ  will reveal himself (probably Obama, but I’m still hunting through Revelation for his name) and then ka-plooey, the Mayans from Planet-X/Nidiru show up and tear our hearts out and then drive around in our Priuses.

Okay, I’m only making some of that up. Mayans don’t know how to drive, silly!

In any case, back to the fire and brimstone stuff, and how it’s not gonna happen. How do I know? Because it failed to happen before. Story time….

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home in the 1980s, so I was well-acquainted with a book titled The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. In this book, Mr. Lindsey believed strongly that the Rapture would happen in 1988, or 40 years (“one generation”) after the founding of Israel.

So instead of thinking rationally about it, or having adult role models who would help us with rational thinking, we were filled with fear and existential crisis. In short, we witnessed to unbelievers, we prayed our little asses off, and prepared for the great Rapture.

We even had church lockins to prepare for the Rapture, and then one final dry run….and guess what? We were all still there come morning. And there weren’t volcanos spewing hellish magma and giant scorpions with women’s faces running around impaling unbelievers on giant pitchforks.

Looking back, I really don’t appreciate the fear and paranoia that the adults put into all of us kids, but I also kind of thank them, because it was about a month later that I came out as an atheist. Not such a smart thing to do while I was still in high school, but hey, at least I wasn’t in thrall to some religious lunacy.

People, listen, this isn’t going to happen on May 21 or ever. It’s a fairy tale. But let’s just say that it did happen, you all understand where this is going, right?

• The airliner you’re in loses its Christian pilot, and everyone left on board plummets to their death.
• Countless cars, subways, trains, trucks and other vehicles become un-manned, causing mass fatalities and injuries.
• Any number of surgeons, doctors, first responders, and other people disappear in the midst of caring for others.
• Pregnant women who are Christians get raptured, but I guess their fetuses get left behind. (Ironic, ain’t it?)
• A bunch of congresspersons could be on the verge of passing a really important bill ….and, no wait, that’ll never happen. Carry on.

So basically, anyone who believes in this apocalyptic vision of mass chaos and destruction really has those loving Christian bonafides locked down good. Just don’t get me started on the people who have given up their jobs and medical school and will use up all their money by May 21 to prepare for this thing. Yeah, wow. (Of course, that’s an NPR story, so it’s full of facts, and other heathen stuff.)

Again, I reiterate, this ain’t gonna happen, which means I get to have a laugh at your dumb asses. Now, if the impossible happens and you all do GTFO, those of us left behind are throwing one hell of a party, and not just because we suddenly get our grubby hands on all the loot and real estate. Nope, a bunch of us will just be happy that Fox won’t have a viewing audience any more.

Oh wait, one last thing, there’s this Bible verse about no one ever knowing the day or the hour of Christ’s return…?

P.S. I’m writing this on May 18 not because I think I won’t be around on May 22 (puh-leeze, there’s no way I’d be raptured) but because I want my snark and derision on the record well before the non-event.

P.P.S. If you want to have some fun, go ahead and Google TEOTWAWKI. You just gotta do it. Dooooo eeeeet.

by myerman

I recently had to go through the kind of hateful, agonizing, vile conversation with someone, the kind I don’t enjoy having, but have learned to expect in these crazy times. You know what I’m talking about–you start talking with someone and then they start spouting all kinds of stupid crap that just makes you think, “Huh, you think you know someone and then…”

In this particular case (and I really don’t want to recap the whole thing, because it makes my brain hurt) the person was spouting all kinds of hysterical bullshit about Muslims. Basically: don’t trust them, they are evil, they want to kill us all, we need to repudiate them, ostracize them, maybe even scapegoat them. That other people in her social circle seemed to be okay with this just made me crazy.

So I did what no one else seemed willing or able to do: I confronted this person, and called her out as a vile, ignorant bigot. Along the way I corrected her on basic facts (the holy book of Islam is not the Torah,but in fact is the Koran, stuff like that). Then I basically walked away.

Folks, I’ve reached my limit. I sincerely believe that the Internet is a big friend to people with fringe beliefs, and they sure get good at spouting their flat earth, missing birth certificate, CIA planned 9/11, all muslims are terrorists, and Satan is trying to trick us with dinosaur fossil ideas. Before the Internet came along, people with kooky fringe ideas had to say their stupid shit in private, or pay good money to create and distribute newsletters, but now, NOW they have Tumblr and Twitter, and holy fucking Christ….

So here’s the issue. We, the rational, sane people, are part of the problem. We aren’t confronting these assholes. We’re too polite, apparently, to tell them to shut the fuck up already. We’re too civil, it seems, and now we have this giant festering pustule of Stupid in our public discourse and society.

Of course, I may be totally wrong about our need to confront Stupid. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that I am absolutely 100% wrong about it. And it has nothing to do with their being right, it’s that we are outnumbered at this point. Nothing we do will have a real effect, it’s like spitting at an oncoming tsunami.

Let’s test that thesis. Even the President of these United States has to take time out of his busy day to address his fucking birth certificate, an issue that for 80% of Americans was settled 2.5 years ago. But no, the vocal 20%, they’re like fucking morons beating on their drums, and we have to go over and appease the little bastards.

The result? “Why did it take him 2 years to show it?” (He already showed it, this is the second time, fuckwit.) “Wait a minute, they should have said his father was a Negro, not African. In 1961 they would have said Negro. Negro Negro Negro.” (Frankly, I think people of the birther mindset just love saying the word Negro out in public.) “Oh well, whatever, his mother was 18 at the time he was born, and the law states that she had to be at least 19 to confer citizenship.” (Damn, I’m losing brain cells just listening to you talk.)

I saw a comment yesterday on a mainstream article (I think it was the New York Times, for pity’s sake) that even if the birth certificate were real, there was no evidence that the man who says he is Barack Hussein Obama is actually the person referenced in the document. How did they know? They heard a story once that Obama is using a Social Security Number from someone who died in Connecticut in 1890.

The fact that Social Security Numbers weren’t issued until the late 1930s probably wouldn’t faze this person one bit, but I still felt compelled to respond. For my efforts I got jumped on by 3 other jackasses, a jackass gangbang if you will, and so I walked away. My walking away hurts the public discourse, but so does my decision to not have children. The latter means the world will just fill up with more cretins, I guess, while the former means that we will just see a continuing decline in rational discourse.

So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe some varieties of Stupid can’t be fought. The birthers certainly don’t respond to facts, and I guess neither do the young earthers. If God said he made the earth in seven days, well okay, then. Maybe that’s why we’re all so fucked up–He should have taken more time.

by myerman

You go to a store anywhere in North America, and I guarantee that you will see a variation on the attached photograph: the shopping cart left on a patch of grass, or in a parking space, or even just a few feet away from the damn shopping cart return area.

All you fuckers who do this, listen up…..are you REALLY that busy and important? Really? You can’t take an extra 20 seconds to return the goddamn cart to its proper place when you’ve finished unloading your fucking Costco 90-day supply of toilet paper?

NO YOU ARE NOT IMPORTANT — you are lazy degenerates. In fact, you take lazy to a whole new level, giving us real lazy fuckers a bad name.

by myerman

I don’t even know where to start with you people.

I realize that to complete outsiders, the entirety of Twitter seems pretty pointless and stupid, and therefore this rant would qualify as “one chowderhead complaining about another variety of chowderhead” but JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!

Okay, here’s the best I can describe what you’re doing. Remember when you were in high school with all the other dweebs and jocks and loadies? Just trying to fit in or at least hide that case of godawful acne?

Okay, well, in that world, you Team FollowBack people (I’m sorry, #teamfollowback people) are the fucking cheer squad, those hyperactive little nitwits who led the entire school in pep rallies four times a year.

That’s right–pep rallies. Not even something useful, like an actual game (but that’s another rant for another time); no, just a pep rally. You’re the people who memorized the goddamn school fight song, while the rest of us were just trying to score behind the bleachers or just forget that we knew each other.

Whenever I see a #teamfollowback person in my stream, I not only unfollow, I block and report as spam. Because that’s all you do: retweet other people’s followback requests. You’re worse than useless.

by myerman

Yes, you, twentysomething chick in the Toyota, I’m talking to you and your entire sisterhood. Don’t give me that look when I honk at you, you little bitch, you’re the one who is backing up the entire road because you’re slapping on makeup when the light turned green.

Listen, I get it, somehow it’s not your responsibility to stop partying at 4am so you can get more than 3 hours sleep, and it’s somehow not your problem that you kept hitting the snooze button so you only had time for a quick shower and now you’re making up time right here in front of me.

You gotta look good at the office, even though you’re gonna fuel the whole day with Red Bull. No sense walking in like the reanimated dead, very bad for you I guess, so instead of putting on makeup at your house or in the parking lot of your job, you do it here, while flying down the road at excessive speed. Thanks.

Yes, yes, I’m impressed you can steer with your knees while applying lipstick. I hope it’s a hydrating lipstick, you probably dried everything out with all the partying last night. I get it, hey, I’m not a bad guy, I never said don’t take care of yourself.

I swear, one day I’m going to get run down by a 25-year-old idiot applying mascara instead of watching the fucking road. I’ve got my tombstone ready.

by myerman

Yup, one thing I don’t miss from corporate life is the 3-powerpoint-per-week minimum brain-cell-annihilation sessions that every company in North America thinks is mandatory to maintain profits.

I would say I’m sorry for being mean, but then I’d be lying. 90% of you suck at PowerPoint. Your slides have no power. Your talks have no point to them. Everything that you do is the antithesis of those two words, power and point:

* Don’t crowd your goddamn slides with 8 bullet points apiece, and 10 words per bullet point.

* Don’t fucking read your presentation word for word, you’re interrupting my reading experience, asshole!

* For most presentations, that old chestnut about “tell ‘em what you’re going to say, then say it, then tell ‘em what you said” is 1000000% overkill. As in killing me by stabbing me in the brain with a pencil.

* Please please please don’t weigh your slides down with internal acronyms, pointless secret project code names, banal redundancies (“update assessment”) and other quasi-militaristic bullshit whose only purpose is to cover up your lack of objectives and strategy.

* Also, please note that even the most brain-addled person in your audience (aka, me, after being subjected to your moron ray for 6+ minutes) can tell when you have NOTHING OF FUCKING VALUE TO ADD to the room, the company, or the human race. Stop repeating yourself in different ways to get your point across.

* Marketers, stop slapping hugely intricate “market architectures” or whatever the fuck you call those chutes-and-ladders diagrams onto slides. We can’t see them very well and they don’t make a lot of sense to anyone who gives a damn. Stop trying to cover up your job, which is basically “we trick people into buying our shit.”

* Coders and technology people, stop snickering, you’re next. Stop cramming 80 lines of stack trace onto a slide and then explaining it to us. Even the coders hate that shit. And no, we’re not impressed by your hacking skillz, I’d rather go drink now thanks.

Try this instead: limit yourself to one word or image per slide, then prepare an honest-to-god presentation around those slides. Use humor. Warmth. Connect with your audience. Ask them to jump in with questions. Present your ideas, don’t just read from the slides.

Please stop punishing us with your fucking slide decks.

One more thing, and then I’m done. If you’re going to insist on lowering humanity’s IQ one presentation at a time, then we insist that you provide coffee and high-quality baked goods.