Get Off My Lawn

by I hate everything

Any person above the age of say, six, who spouts the term millennial needs to see a doctor. Hopefully they can get the oxygen flow restored to their brain and continue functioning if they end up getting help. But frankly, most are the social media ninjas that have double-jointed their arms to pat themselves on the back so much you’d think they’re giving themselves reach-arounds the wrong way full time these days.

‘Millennial’ is the adjective form of ‘millennium’, which as most people who’ve managed to pass elementary school should now know stands for one thousand years (that’s a one followed by three zeros, or, 1000 years). If you’re referring to a millennial person, then, you’re referring to someone who’s managed to live from before 1012 at this point. They’ve lived through the rise and fall of the Eastern Roman Empire and are still alive and kicking. Frankly I’m not sure why they’re even using the internet and working, they should have invested a little more wisely in their 200′s perhaps in order to avoid such things.

If you’re the mouth-breathing sort that enjoys saying shit like “This will appeal to the millennial crowd”, get off my lawn, before my decadial ass goes medieval on yours.

by Don't Get Me Started

Just get the hell off our collective lawn, Rick Perry. Asshole.

I mean, I could write out this whole post…sending links to all the articles about misdeeds, misappropriations, mishandling and misogyny during his endless terms as Texas governor, but the net result is that I just want him to go away.

I could talk about how he claims others are treasonous, while out of the other side of the mouth he talks about Texas seceding.

I could talk about how he preaches Tea Party values while being a lifelong politician and creator of big government.

I could talk about the complete lack of support he appears to have generated for people in our state who are burning up and losing their livelihoods. He’s too busy promoting himself.

I could talk about the rumors that he is gay. With apologies to my gay friends, I sincerely hope he is and that he is outed in a BIG way.

I’m pretty sure he’s behind A&M’s move to the SEC. Good luck not getting your asses handed to you over there, Aggies.

I could talk about how he’s an entitled, self-serving, short-sighted douchebag and yet somehow he’s gaining momentum in the national polls? W.T.F.?

But no one listens. No one cares. Good hair and pointy boots seem to be all one needs to win the presidency.

Ugh. I have Perry fatigue. Gag.

by Slavetofashion

I’ve lived in Austin my whole life with the exception of the first 18 months (when I was in San Antonio getting born and stuff). I tried going to college in Dallas which lasted all of 5 months before I hightailed it back to my hometown. I love it here- it’s fun, it’s home…. it’s a blueberry in a bowl of tomato soup. But what drives me insane are all of the faux Austinites.

You know the ones right? The ones who’ve been here five years, but they’re a total native. They go to ACL like, every single year. They don’t own a single Bob Schneider album, but they’ll got to his show because he’s soooooo Austin. They gush over every new trailer park eatery because it’s so quirky and cool and Austin. They look at you like you’re insane for not biking to SoCo for every single First Thursday. Basically, those people who want to shame you for being so un-Austin for not buying local only, grocery shopping somewhere other than Whole Foods or Wheatsville, and for drinking something other than a local beer.

Look sunshine, this is my city. I’ve been here since Liberty Lunch was a place to see 311 and since Southpark Meadows was the home of Lilith Fair and Dave Matthews Band not JC Penny’s and Steak ‘N Shake. I don’t have anything to prove to you. I’m just as happy going to a chain restaurant and shopping at the mall as I am eating at Hyde Park Bar & Grill and shopping at Lovely Boutique.

I’m truly happy that you are enjoying all of the great stuff Austin has to offer, and I’m even happy to share my city with you. But do not roll your eyes when I say I hate SXSW. Don’t gush to me over seeing Leslie. And for the love of sweet baby Jesus, don’t try and tell me where to get the best tacos. SXSW sucks, I’ve seen Leslie more times than I can count, and the best tacos are from my grandma’s kitchen. So shut the hell up and get off my lawn!!

by Don't Get Me Started

Thanks to some nasty weather, I’m 12 hours into what should have been a five-hour trip, and still haven’t left my home state. With that in mind, just a few points I’d like to make to the other 10,000 people in this airport with me.

1.) Please don’t stop suddenly in the middle of the concourse. Please don’t stop slowly. It’s best not to stop at all, really, because the 9,999 passengers also trying to walk on the concourse will either barrel into you from behind, or have to go around you – attempting to merge into the endless stream of people and babies and roll aboard suitcases. You wouldn’t suddenly just STOP in the middle of the freeway for no reason, would you? Then why are you doing it now? If you MUST stop and re-evaluate your path of travel, you need to move to the shoulder.

2.) When sitting in the waiting area prior to a flight, it is acceptable to consume one or more chairs. That is, until the area fills up with other passengers. At that point, you need to remove your bag, or your leg, or your book, or whatever item you have flung across the chair in order to hog it. In this age of completely full flights and shrinking seats, it’s absurd to assume that you will enjoy personal space at any time during a trip aboard an airplane so trying to create a false sense of it while others are left standing is just douchey.

3.) When you get to the baggage carousel, stay a step or two back from the belt. If all passengers stay a step or two back, then each person can see the approaching bags and step forward to retrieve his or her luggage. Stepping in front of me and blocking my access to the belt will not make your bag arrive sooner. And now I have to poke you on the shoulder to get you to move so I can get my bag. Dumbass.

4.) Weather delays and mechanical problems suck for everyone. All of us have delayed flights and are tired and stressed because we are going to be late to whatever thing we had to do at the other end of our trip. There is nothing special about your delay and no reason you should act so assholically because it just puts everyone in a worse mood. Don’t contribute to the problem. Just suck it up and deal.

5.)Why are you choosing not to wash your hands IN AN AIRPORT BATHROOM??? The germs of 10 million people live there. Disgusting.

6.) Really, just try to be a little self-aware. It would make a world of difference. Don’t bump into my head with your bag. Don’t roll over my toe. I’m happy to see you reunite with your long-lost whomever, but if you could just move over to the left to do your hugging, the rest of us could continue on our way.

7.) Stop cutting in line. Asshole.

8.) Lady in the platform heels, tight pants, gold jewelry and too much perfume. Yeah, I’m talking to you. You’re being ridiculous. Stop it. Hang up your phone and get busy disrobing so the rest of us can get through security before our flights leave.

9.) And finally to the man sitting next to me on the plane. Yes, It’s 1 a.m. and we’re all tired. Glad you can sleep. But, please, for the love of all that is pure and good in this world, remove your hand from inside your waistband. You’re not Al Bundy and you’re not at home.

Take heed or else you leave me no choice but to channel my inner Harrison Ford: “Get Off My Plane!”

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 Kati

I EAT MEAT. I eat chicken, pork and beef on a regular basis. I think God himself created bacon. But hey, you know what? I also eat tofu and vegetables. I have a lactose intolerance thing (sorry! I’m not going there!) which has made me quite familiar with the myriad varieties of soy products, many of which I think are quite wonderful.

You know what I never do? Judge other people based on their diets. I think millions of people enjoy healthy tasty diets which don’t include meat and I think that’s cool. Food is awesome. Eat food that makes you happy!

You know what I RESENT? Sitting at lunch with a bunch of vegetarians who start talking about how HORRIBLE meat is and how MEAN growers are to the chickens and how they use the HORMONES to grow the meat that will kill you, and I’m supposed to just sit there with my chicken-based dish and smile politely and act like they’re not implying anything about my character.

So here it is. I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE CHICKEN. I’ve spent time on farms. I think chickens are kind of obnoxious, stupid little creatures and I DON’T CARE what their housing was before I eat them, because honestly I believe that THEY DONT CARE. They’re not people.

I think pigs are mean bastards who would just as soon kill me as look at me. I think cows are possibly not even as smart as chickens. AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE? I’ve lived in EUROPE and I’ve eaten HORSE and I THOUGHT IT WAS TASTY.

But that’s me. I don’t expect everyone else to be like me, and I don’t rant about how I HATE CHICKENS and I LOVE LOVE LOVE EATING THEM when I join other people for a meal. And I expect the SAME FREAKING COURTESY when I join you. I don’t believe that I’m better than you because I eat chicken, and you need to get over the idea that you’re better than me because you don’t. YOU AREN’T, you manner-less twit.

Get off my freakin lawn.

by noahvail

Hi, Moms -n- Dads!

If you don’t get your kids vaccinated, you are a goddamn idiot. If the tomes of scientific research aren’t enough to convince you—I realize that all “facts” and “science” are suspect these days—let me try a different approach.

Imagine your child with the following diseases and symptoms:

Diptheria: Sore throat, lesions, coma, death.

Hepatitis A: Nausea, jaundice, death.

Hepatitis B: Nausea, vomiting, lifelong liver disease including cancer, death.

Influenza: Fever, chills, aches, death.

Measles: Rash, fever, cough, seizures, brain damage, death.

Mumps: Swelling, encaphalitis, meningitis, death.

Whooping Cough: Coughing, choking, seizures, brain damage, death.

Tetanus: Lockjaw, spasms, death.

Polio: Fever, paralysis, death.

To name just a few of the diseases prevented by standard vaccines in the U.S. Yes, there are occasionally adverse reactions to vaccines. It’s highly improbable that it will happen to your kid, and I’m sorry if it does, but is it worth the very real risk of contracting Hep B?

Some people think vaccines cause autism. They don’t. And even if there was a 1% chance that they did, again: POLIO?

Because so many Americans believe in celebrities more than science, we’re seeing outbreaks of whooping cough and other supposedly eradicated illnesses. But why should I care whether you decide to vaccinate? Because it’s not just your kids you are putting at risk.

See, there’s this thing called herd immunity. When enough of a population is immune to a disease (usually around 85%), the disease dies off. With herd immunity, even newborns and people who for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated will not get these horrible diseases and die. But because of your selfish, misguided decision not to vaccinate, we might no longer have herd immunity. So if your kid gets measles, mumps or whooping cough, there’s a strong likelihood they’ll pass it along to another kid, or a newborn baby, or pregnant mother, and so on.

It’s terrible and unthinkable enough when your kid gets sick and dies; but please don’t drag other kids into the grave. Vaccinate. Now. And get off my lawn.

by myerman

So I went for a run a few Sundays back, mostly in my neighborhood. I saw these two teenage boys going door to door with flyers. Not an unusual occurrence. I had three more miles to run when I saw them, so I forgot about them.

When I got home, my lovely wife mentioned that some kid had put something on my car. So I go back out to the driveway and take a look. Sure enough, the kids I saw walking around the neighborhood before had put a flyer on my car.

Not under my windshield, but on my car door. At first I thought it was stuck there with some kind of adhesive, but no, it was attached with a magnet. Real classy. This kind of shit is intolerable.

I wonder if Papa John’s Pizza is aware that this is going on? And I also wonder if they think I’m ever going to order pizza from them ever.

by MyPeeve

This may not be for you, but you simply MUST tell your parents or grandparents to stop this shit right now! This is not 1998. We did not all just jump on the “interwebs” yesterday and start forwarding stupid emails from other stupid people. I say ‘other’ because we ALL did it at least once before we clued in.

Whether you would ever admit it to your friends or not, you, at some point in your early web-aware days forwarded some urban legend email crap like the one I received this morning and had to debunk via:

http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cancerupdate.asp

Whether it was (my personal favorite) a “don’t click on a link about happy kittens or it will delete your hard drive” email, the imminent Facebook Shutdown in March of this year (on no!), or the plethora of post September 11th fear-mongering stupidity, we’ve all seen it/done it.

What I don’t understand is why it continues to happen today. If I get an email with some form of copied text (usually with cutesy background colors and an other-than-black text color) or a million and a half forwards about Foo Research Company findings, I’m immediately suspicious. If Foo Research Company has indeed done valid research, then send me the link to their fricking web page.

And for crying out loud, if you receive one of these damn things, YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY to Google whether it’s an urban legend or not before forwarding it on. What’s more, you should know this by now.

But we all have to hand-hold the old folks. Granny and Grandpa don’t know that Crazy Cousin Clare sends this shit out to everyone on her email list because if it’s on the web, it must be true! We have to explain to them that this stuff is unwelcome spam. Think of it as doing your civic duty. It takes a village to educate the elderly about the pit falls of the internet.

So lets all get out there and save someone from themselves. Then tell them to GET OFF MY LAWN!

by Don't Get Me Started

To the asshat who designed the Voice Controlled Phone System at my bank (it rhymes with Bank of Duhmerica / Feral Finch:

You suck. I hate you with the blinding white-hot heat of a thousand suns.

I just want to hear my checking account balance to find out if a check has cleared. Not so very long ago, I could do this surreptitiously at a store or at work by merely pressing buttons on my telephone keypad. It took less than a minute. The menu options made sense. You knew who I was.

Now, though. Now I have to listen to an ad for refinancing before I even get to the menu and tell you that no, I really don’t want to take this opportunity to configure my telephone banking relationship. I just want my account balance.

Now, I have to TALK to the system. No more quietly pushing buttons. Now I have to speak loudly and over-enunciate and everyone in the vicinity knows my business AND my whole account number AND birthdate AND the last four digits of my social security number because YOU MAKE ME SAY ALL OF THEM. And now, not only do I have to talk into the phone, but your menu is cluttered with a bunch of options that I rarely need but can’t be skipped. Really? Do you really think that I want to have the option to order checks every time I call in *before* I can find out what my balance is?

And why won’t you let me say “agent” and give me an agent right at the beginning? I really did need to speak directly to someone the last time I called but you made me talk to the phone system for a full four minutes before your computer suddenly recognized that me saying ‘agent’ 10 times meant that I was asking for an agent.

I realize it’s expensive to have real people answering phones. I realize that an automated system can help route calls to the proper place and that many people prefer it. I was one of those people. But now, Bank of Duhmerica / Feral Finch, now you’ve created what can only be some sort of sadistic torture device. I’m pretty sure this was instituted as punishment for people wanting accountability in the way you spent TARP funds. It’s really the only explanation for the twisted mess I encounter when I dare to call that number.

I imagine your VPs sitting in their offices, listening in to calls, sipping martinis and giggling while hapless customers shout their personal information into the ether and weep in frustration as the needed piece of information is dangled just out of reach.

And I don’t know what YOU’RE laughing at, Office Depot’s customer service line. You suck too.

Until there’s an app for it, we’re stuck with the phone sometimes. So to all the phone system designers out there who seem to take such pride in jacking up a perfectly functional system: give me back my touch-tone option, put press 0 for the operator right at the front, and GET OFF MY LAWN.