Legally Blind Observations

legallyblindobservations:

Readership, the fact that this feature is in its tenth installment is a testament to the stupidity of the average person. When I posted my very first “Why Do You Say Such Stupid Shit?” back on Blogger, I had no idea that two years later I would still be going strong with my tenth iteration. Of course, I was also a hell of a lot more naive about people back then.

But anyway.

First off, we have “that’s the coolest thing since sliced bread!” Who the hell thinks sliced bread is cool? And moreover, who the HELL thinks it’s cool enough to be some kind of “cool landmark” - on whose Timeline of Cool is sliced bread an important point? What does the rest of their Timeline of Cool look like? Something like “Lightbulb->Television->Sliced Bread”? Who couldn’t think of anything cooler than sliced bread to have as their Timeline of Cool’s 1928 representative? Charles freakin’ Lindbergh got the Medal of Honor in 1928 for his transatlantic flight! The first ever Disney cartoon featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse was broadcast in 1928! Mr. Rogers was born in 1928, for God’s sake, Penicillin was discovered in 1928 - is none of that cooler than sliced bread? I mean shit, my little sister is cooler than sliced bread, and she’s a loser!

If sliced bread wasn’t an integral part of sammichcraftery, I would go so far as to say “FUCK SLICED BREAD!”

But it is a pretty important part, so all I can do is just shake my fist menacingly and mutter “damn bread…!”

Secondly, courtesy of my Twitter follower JesusIce: “Is the bus coming?” No, dumbass, I just love standing in the rain with wildly ignorant, annoying people such as yourself. It’s sort of my thing.

Seriously? Is that a serious question? Why the hell else would I be standing here, a spot CLEARLY MARKED as a bus stop, with my Metro Card/bus fare in hand, looking down the street at where the bus would first enter my field of vision so I could get all of my shit together and board the bus with as little fuss as possible? I mean, if the bus ISN’T coming, then I must be retarded for standing here listening to you ask stupid questions and try to make smalltalk, right? Thanks for stealing oxygen that could’ve been used by someone who wasn’t useless. Dumbass.

Third, there’s the always classic mainstay “Can I help you?” No. Absolutely not. There is nothing in your power that you could possibly do to help me - shit, there’s nothing OUT of your power, legal or illegal, real or imaginary, that you could do to help me. The fact of the matter is, I’ve been standing in this fucking stationary line for the past three hours, JUST so I could get up here and tell you, “no, there’s nothing you can do to help me.”

What the fuck do you think? After all this time I’ve been standing in line, you’d DAMN SURE BETTER be able to help me, or else I’m gonna be six different kinds of pissed, and small children might be in danger of being kicked if they cross my path. The saddest part is, after all this dumbassery and all this standing in line and shit, by the time the words come out of your mouth, either A) I’ve discovered the solution to the problem myself, B) I’ve completely forgotten whatever it was I had to ask you about (only to leave the line and mere seconds later remember the entire thing), or C) YOU REALLY CAN’T HELP ME, meaning that shits get flipped and small children get kicked.

Lastly, we have something said a lot by my parents as an excuse for not wanting to buy me something when I was little: “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

Well I’m glad ONE of us is a fucking botanist. Here I was - silly me! - just about to go plant a couple quarters in my back yard and grow me some money. What kind of retard would even JESTINGLY presume to believe that through some manner of germination and photosynthesis that a MAN-MADE MATERIAL CURRENCY could be produced? I didn’t ask you if money grew on trees, Mom - I’m not a retard - and if you didn’t wanna buy me the fucking Pokemon cards just fucking say so instead of insulting my intelligence with that stupid bullshit!

Whew.

Stay classy

Going through my rants and laughing at how angry I was. This one jumped out at me hahaha

Whenever I’m home alone and the phone rings, I don’t pick it up unless I recognize the name or the number. My reasoning is twofold.

First off, if someone’s trying to get a hold of me specifically, they most likely have my cell phone number or know somebody who does (and if they don’t satisfy either of those conditions, I probably don’t want them contacting me directly anyway, ya dig?). The only thing I can think of is they broke their phone and needed to call me off their house phone and looked me up in the phone book, at which point I’d pick up the phone because it would say their name after the second ring or so. 

Secondly, given the fact that there’s a high probability that the phone call is for my parents and not for me, any callers can leave a message on our perfectly capable answering machine. Because what would happen if I answered the phone? They’d be informed that my folks aren’t home, and ask if they could — that’s right — leave a message. We got the answering machine for a reason, let’s let it earn its keep, y’know?

Now, it’s one thing if my folks are waiting for an important call and tell me about it before they leave, or leave a note about it if they leave before I’m awake (which, given the fact that I seem prone to falling asleep at 5 in the morning and waking up at noon, is highly probable). If I’m asked, I’ll do it, because that’s common courtesy (and it’s not like I’m doing anything else). But if I’m not asked, I’m gonna just defer to the answering machine’s expertise and keep on eating or napping or doing nothing. 

I was grading tests for Momma Duran last night (I’m such a cool dude, I know). She teaches 6th and 8th grade math in an inner city school. 

Anyway, I really wasn’t paying attention to the test questions beyond looking to see if the question I was looking at on the answer key matched the one on the kid’s test, but if you look at the same bunch of questions in succession for a couple hours, you start to remember the questions and the answers. I started to notice that a lot of the questions had distractors in their answers. I hate that practice. 

In test-making, distractors are answers that look right, but aren’t right, put into the answer choices purposefully to “throw you off the scent” of the right answer. For example, say the question was something like “this triangle has base length 6 and height length 7, find the area” and the answers were 21, 42, 36 and 18. To get the right answer you have to multiply the base (6) times the height (7) and multiply the product (42) by 1/2, leaving you with 21. But 42 would be a distractor in this case, because if the kid knows enough to do base x height, when 42 shows up on the calculator and he sees that 42 is a choice, he may think “holy shit there’s my answer” and think he’s done and move on to the next question, and then get it wrong. 

I can’t stand that shit. It’s sneaky, it’s tricky, and it’s not helpful. From an educational standpoint you’re tricking this kid instead of teaching him. Why not just put the right answer and three equally incorrect answers? Using the example above, why not take out 42 (the distractor) and put in something like 24, or 57? Looking at it now, as an adult, it’s easy to see that 36, 18 and 24 have nothing to do with the problem because they’re not related to 7 and 6 in the way they need to be in order to be correct — but as a kid just learning the concept, it’s different. They don’t have the kind of number sense we’ve learned because they haven’t learned those techniques that we’ve learned. Personally, I remember when I would take a test and do some calculation and come up with something that wasn’t anywhere near any of the answers, I would know that I screwed up somewhere and start again. That knowledge that I messed up meant more than me thinking I got it right when I was actually wrong, because it gave me an opportunity to go back and find where I messed up and then actually get it right. 

And from a psychological standpoint, this kid thinks he just got a difficult (for him) math problem right, and then finds out he got it wrong later? That sucks, and now he’s gonna be second-guessing himself in the future. It’s like going to the ATM to check your balance and seeing $100,000 and getting really excited, only for the faulty LED in the ATM screen to flicker back into existence and show you it’s actually $-100,000. Or to find out you’ve won an all-expenses-paid trip, and then find out it’s a one-way ticket to Iraq or New Jersey. That fuckin’ sucks, y’know?

A random Mom-looking lady came up to me on campus today and asked for directions to the office of admissions, and honestly I have no idea where that is. It’s been five years since I’ve even interacted with that office, let alone been there. I ended up pointing her towards one of the campus maps that just happened to be nearby and felt like the equivalent of that Home Depot employee who answers your simple question about nails with “sorry bro, not my department.”

But even when I actually DO know where the place in question is, and could get there personally from any place on campus, actually giving directions to someone else is difficult, especially if they’re not familiar with the campus. Directions turn into either extremely specific shit that only someone who knows the campus would get (e.g., “In order to get to the mailbox near the Law School from Marillac, you have to use the second floor Marillac breezeway exit, take a left at the Freshman Center, walk past St. John’s Hall and take a right at the Law School”), or something vague and bullshitty that isn’t helpful at all (e.g., “In order to get to the nearest on-campus mailbox from where we are, go up four flights, go out onto the windy walkway, take a left at the sweeping stairs, go past the building with all the flags, and walk past two or three buildings until you see the mailbox”). 

Plus, there’s the fact that at any given moment I have like a zillion different things running through my head, and how to go somewhere that isn’t part of my daily plan (e.g., breakfast, walk to class, walk to second class, take shuttle back to apartment, nap, etc.) isn’t one of those things. Thus, it forces me to stop and drop everything mentally and figure out first how to get wherever you’re going and then how to explain it to you. 

And I’m a senior and I’ve just about checked outta here, literally and mentally. I mean, I’m proud that I’ve still got the drive to actually go to class. Asking for directions? Do you want a vital organ too? 

Because with prices like these, I’m willing to negotiate.

Enough already. It’s ridiculous. The most clothing can do on its own is draw attention. We can argue all day about whether it’s good or bad attention, but that’s what it does by itself. It draws attention.

By this logic, if a woman is out and about dressed provocatively, she’s gonna get attention. That said, it takes another person’s conscious decision to act on that attention. Clothes don’t cause rape, rapists do.

Or, if a man is out and about wearing a large hoodie and baggy pants, he’s gonna get attention. That said, it takes another person’s conscious decision to act on that attention. Clothes don’t cause murder, murderers do.

Those are extreme examples and people don’t seem to get it, so here’s a simpler one: you’re a die-hard Yankees fan and you see someone down the street with a Red Sox hat on. You immediately drop what you were doing, chase him down, and beat him to death. As you’re getting hauled away in handcuffs, you earnestly repeat, “but look at him! Look what he’s wearing! He was asking for it!” Sounds ridiculous right?

So can we stop with the bullshit?

There’s a difference between being affectionate in public and PDA. If you see your significant other in passing and give him or her a quick kiss on the way by, that’s being affectionate, and I have no problem with that.

But if you guys plan to meet up in the middle of the hallway and make out and bat eyelashes and shit, that’s PDA, it’s obnoxious, it’s gross, and I’m pretty sure I can make an argument for it being a fire hazard. 

Don’t get it twisted now, I’m all for lovin’ and showin’ love and all that stuff. It’s all well and good. But there’s a time and place for all of that. If it’s going past a kiss goodbye/hello, or if there’s visible tongue, you need not to be doing that in public. Get a room. 

I get that it’s getting warmer out more consistently these days and spring love is in the air or whatever have you, but I’m sorry, if I have to wait in the middle of a hallway because I can’t get around you and your significant other tonguing in front of me, I swear to God I’ll boof right between the two of you without so much as an apology, and if you have a problem with me doing that to you, you can either say something about it or just, I dunno, not be tonguing in the middle of the hallway.

Shit.

Stop with the commercials about that guy at the Dominoes in Ohio that “invented” those parmesan bread bites things, and his stupid used car salesman friend. “Did the Dominoes test kitchens come up with this? No, but the guy in Ohio did.” Shut your idiot mouth and go swindle someone stupider than you are out of a couple thousand dollars for a shitty used ‘98 Civic and leave intelligent thought to people capable of it.

First, you’re an idiot. Nobody cares about you or your used car salesman friend. Or that idiot chick that suggested he be the new CEO. Shut up.

Secondly, Dominoes sucks. They always have sucked. They did that little “oh apparently we suck, let’s try to fix our pizza” thing a year or so ago and I’ll be honest, I gave them a try. I applaud someone trying to better themselves. Total failure. There was a marginal decrease in suck, but not enough to warrant me ever having another Dominoes pizza again. Why am I gonna get 16 of your little bread bite things for a dollar after spending $12 on two of your shitty medium pizzas when I can not do that at all and save both the money and my mouth from having to eat your pizza/go to Pizza Hut and pay $10 to get one of those sexy boxes? 

Third, you didn’t invent shit, so there’s no need to feel so proud of yourself dude. You sat down and brainstormed an amazing new food idea and you came up with “small piece of bread with parmesan cheese on it”? And you’re over the moon about it? This is the type of guy that would fix the problem of nobody having money by printing more of it (and we all know how that turned out). 

So shut up about your “new” parmesan bread bites. That shit’s been done already, you’re not innovative, Dominoes still sucks, and your used car salesman friend has the creepiest smile I’ve ever seen in my life.

Stay classy

I’ve been seeing a lot of people talking about the friend zone like it’s some awful shit, and then I read how they define it and see that their definition of it is wrong, and isn’t what used to be the accepted definition of it. 

The friend zone is when Person A is friends with Person B, and Person A would like to be more than friends, but Person B sees them as just a friend. That’s where it should stop. 

But then I see people who are all “shit man, I’m her friend she should wanna be with me wah wah wah” etc. etc. and I’m like dude that’s not being in the friend zone, that’s you being a bitter little prick. You have to qualify under the definition of “friend” to be in the friend zone, and if you’re only being a “nice guy” in order to have “a better shot” at being with someone, then newsflash dude, you’re not her friend — AND, you’re not even a nice guy. 

The point is, if you’re in the friend zone, you’re a friend. Yeah your friend may go out with assholes and then come crying to you when she gets hurt, and yeah you may think that you’re better for her than those assholes and yeah, you may even be right in thinking that (and you probably are!). But it doesn’t matter what YOU think, it matters what SHE thinks. And if you can accept that, then yeah you’re in the friend zone, but you’re a decent person and a good friend. And if you can’t accept that, you’re not in the friend zone, you’re in the bitter entitled asshole masquerading around as a friend zone. 

Readership, I know enough to know I don’t know shit (what what Socrates!). As such, from time to time I find it necessary to ask you guys things. Thankfully, Tumblr has this nifty little thing where you can click a box and it turns the post into an answerable question.

In the past I’ve been quite lucky to get a multitude of very good, thought-provoking answers whenever I’ve asked questions, especially when it’s a case of A over B. However, invariably and inevitably, I always get a few confederates who do the only thing that’s less useful than just scrolling on by.

They like the post. 

Not to be an asshole, but what in the sam-holy-shitstain does that do for me? You’ve been given a choice between A and B and I’m assuming you’ll choose one or the other, and hopefully give me some insight into why you chose one or the other. Liking it is literally useless, besides showing enthusiasm, which is all well and good and appreciated, but unless I know which side is receiving your enthusiasm, it stops at all well and good, painfully short of “useful.”

So yeah. If you have an opinion, share it. Please?

And whatever you do.

Stay classy.

Readership, I hate when people try to argue with me about something I know a lot about, especially when I know that they know little about it. For example, psychology. I’d like to think I’m a psych major in good standing. I’ve been studying psychology pretty extensively for the better part of the past four years, five if you include senior year of high school when I got into it. If you’re not a psych major or a psychologist or even someone who just randomly likes to read psych books in their spare time, don’t try to argue psychological principles with me, because I can almost guarantee you’re going to be wrong. And furthermore, when the argument reaches the point where you’re so wrong and yet still so certain that you’re right that you start to make me angry and I start arguing a little more abrasively, don’t try to make me out to be the asshole. If you wouldn’t have opened your mouth trying to talk about stuff that you really don’t understand very well, we wouldn’t be in this situation. I’m not trying to sound like a douchey know-it-all here, but it’s common sense: if you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t talk about it.

You wouldn’t argue physics with a physicist unless you were one, or were studying physics. You wouldn’t argue medicine with a doctor unless you were one, or were studying medicine. You wouldn’t argue semantics with a linguist unless you were one, or were studying semantics. And if you did, you wouldn’t try to make him look like the asshole when he told you repeatedly that you were wrong.

Stay classy

Readership (Christ it’s been a while), I hate when I say something completely earnest and people don’t believe me. It’s understandable in some situations (although I still hate it), especially if what I’m saying is a little out there, but regardless, 99% of the time, if I’m telling you something is true and I seem serious about it, it’s true. And when I’m being serious about something being true and you’re laughing it off and saying it’s not, you’re playin’ with fire man, because you’re slowly but steadily pissing me off. 

Why, you ask? Well first off, I’m being serious. This is a rare occurrence and as such, should be taken seriously. If I’m being serious, then you KNOW shit is getting real, and if you’re trying to laugh it off (aka not taking me seriously), you’re gonna make me punch you in the mouth (because then you’ll know for a fact that I was serious, right?).

Secondly, by you laughing and telling me that what I’m saying isn’t true, you’re essentially calling me a liar. I hate when people call me a liar, because I’m not a liar. To be honest (see? not a liar), I’d hate to be called a liar even if I WAS lying to you, so imagine how much I’ll want to strike you if I’m NOT lying. 

But yeah. The whole “you’re not serious tehe” thing is bad enough. What’s worse is when, in lieu of beating you with a blunt object to show I’m serious, I try swearing over something. You all know the variations: “I swear to God,” or “I swear on my [deceased relative]’s grave,” or if you have children, “I swear on my children,” or if you don’t, “I swear on my unborn children,” etc. etc. 

So here I am telling you something important and serious, and most importantly, true. You see me serious and, ignoring the fact that me being serious is rarer than a holographic Japanese Charizard card, you try to laugh it off as me being ridiculous/lying. Resisting the almost overwhelming urge to strike you severely, I instead say, “listen dick, I swear to God this is true.” And suddenly you tense up — the smile is gone from your face and now YOU’RE on the Serious Express — and you say, “chill dude, don’t swear to God.”

Fuck you! If you would’ve believed me when I told you the first time I wouldn’t have had to go to such lengths to convince you, ya prick! Now I’m even MORE pissed off because, on top of you not believing me/calling me a liar, now YOU’RE butthurt about the situation? You have nothing to be butthurt about, especially because I chose to swear to God instead of stick my foot up your ass to convince you that I was serious. That’s like me saying “dude I could totally backflip and kick you in the jaw and land on my feet,” and you saying “sure you can dude, I’d pay money to see that,” and dropping twenty bucks at my feet, and then getting mad when I do it and knock you the fuck out. 

Asshole.

Stay classy

Readership, I called for a pizza to be delivered tonight at approximately 9pm. Before I hung up, I asked the woman on the line how long it would take to get here, because I was quite hungry and wondering if I would have time to have a little something to nibble before the pizza got here, or if doing so would ruin my appetite for the pizza. She told me with a high degree of confidence that it would be between thirty and forty minutes.

At the moment I’m writing this, it’s 10:07pm. I looked outside to see if my light was on (so the driver could see the number on the door), and it wasn’t, so I turned it on and called back. I very politely told the woman (it was the same one) that I had called for a pizza about an hour ago, and that she had told me it would be here in about a half an hour. I told her, still very politely, that I had just noticed that the light outside my door hadn’t been on, and jokingly asked her where the guy was, and if he had gotten lost. 

AND THIS BITCH COPPED AN ATTITUDE WITH ME. “The driver has already left, sir.” Click. Dial tone.

Excuse me, silly bitch, for expecting you to know what the fuck you’re talking about when I ask you how long it will take for YOUR people — the guy who ALWAYS makes YOUR pizzas, and the guy who always drives YOUR pizzas — to do their jobs. It’s not like you work with them EVERY FUCKING DAY. 

Now, if I had been an asshole about it (which, at an hour for what was supposed to be a half-hour wait, I feel like may have been excusable to some degree), I would’ve expected attitude. But I was raised to be a little more polite than that, and I was EVER SO polite with this woman (a lot more polite than she deserved, considering she was essentially bullshitting me out of eating pizza, which is something that should be punishable by law), yet she still gave me some bullshit prissy attitude.

This guy better get here soon, Readership, or I’m gonna start flippin’ out and starting fires and shit.

Ugh.

Stay classy

Readership, I hate, hate, HATE, when I ask someone a question, and instead of answering the question, they give me more information, hoping maybe that I’ll figure it out myself. My parents are notorious for that shit, but it’s my sister that got me all riled up just now. Here’s how the conversation went down.

Me: Have I had my phone for two years yet?
My sister: Well you got it from Mommy and Daddy for Christmas.
Me: …so have I had it for two years yet?
My sister: I was in seventh grade when you got it.
Me: THAT DOESN’T HELP.
My sister: No, you haven’t had it for two years.

Like, for fuck’s sake, idiot. If you knew the fucking answer, why wouldn’t you just fucking answer me straight? Why would you give me pretty much every bit of information BESIDES the one I’m looking for? 

Now, I could understand if you didn’t know the answer yourself, giving me other pieces of information so that we could pool our intelligences and try to figure it out together. But if you already know the answer, then why are you fucking with me? Just answer the damn question. 

And whatever you do

Stay classy

Readership, this shit is ridiculous. These people get harassed by random strangers who claim to be the next owner of their car. First of all, who the fuck cares if you’re going to own my car after me? That shit has no bearing on what I’m gonna do with MY car now, so how about you go take a fucking step or two somewhere else? Second, how the hell do you know that you’re going to have my car after me? Who told you? Miss Cleo? Fuck outta here.

I wish that shit would happen to me.

“Oh hey, you may wanna put a lid on that cup of soda.”

“Sorry, but who the hell are you?”

“Oh, I’m the second owner of this car.”

“Yeah… fuck that buddy. I’ll give you ten seconds to step the hell off before my inner assbeater comes out and I beat your ass with a stick, and then call the cops as you lay bleeding and broken and tell them that I caught you trespassing and was forced to defend myself physically.”

“…o-ok..”

Readership, I just saw one more that I had to add, so here it is.

Things that make me wonder #6: Healthy people that have no physical injuries and aren’t carrying anything, that feel the need to take the elevator down several floors instead of taking the stairs

I can understand somewhat not wanting to climb the stairs to get to the third floor and up; it’s definitely tiring, and depending on your fitness level, exhausting. And after like the sixth floor, you’re crazy not to take the elevator, regardless of whether or not you’re in shape. But going down the stairs? Where you literally only have to put one foot in front of the other, maintain your balance, and let gravity do the work? Why the fuck would you wait five minutes for an elevator when in those same five minutes, you could have walked down three floors at least twice? I mean, nobody wants to walk down stairs forever, so past some amount of floors (for me, it would probably be like ten), you look for the elevator to go down. But shit, why can’t people take the stairs down?

And then we wonder why obesity rates are so high. True story: last year, I was going up to the fifth floor in my dorm via elevator. As the doors were sliding shut, huge thundering footfalls came from down the hall, and the most morbidly obese person I’ve ever seen wrenched the elevator doors open, got in, and pressed the button for the next floor up. Are you fucking serious?

End rant.

Stay classy