Wednesday, April 13, 2011

These Things Don't Bother Me, But Seem To Bother A Lot Of Other People

1) Steroid use by professional athletes.

I honestly don't understand why anyone cares. The point is for the athletes to be the best they can be, and to win, yes? So why shouldn't they take advantage of a resource that enables them to be the best? And the arguments against steroid use are so irrational! Here they are:
a) "It's not fair to the athletes who don't use steroids." This is ridiculous. The athletes who don't use steroids are making a choice. They make this choice because they don't care as much about winning as their steroid using coworkers, plain and simple. If they were truly fierce competitors, they would enhance their strength and speed by any means necessary.

Besides, the concept if "fair" and "fairness" is retarded. Is it "fair" that I was born short, and female with bad eyesight, thereby guaranteeing that I will never play for the NBA? No it isn't "fair" but I don't sit around crying about it. Life is not about making things "fair", it's about making use of your particular set of advantages. And EVERYONE has a set of advantages. I was born into a poor family. Do I demand that everyone else also be poor, so that things are "fair"? No. I realize that I have some advantages that other people do not, and I make use of those.

An athlete who does not use steroids is simply denying herself access to one of her most powerful resources. And she is also denying sports fans of a much better show. Because from what I understand, the most exciting sports events are ones in which people accomplish almost superhuman feats of strength and stamina and skill. Not the ones where the entire game is average in the name of "fairness".

"Fairness" is a concept developed by those who are bitter about not winning.

b) "Steroids are bad for you." Well, the claims that steroids are bad for you are wildly exaggerated. If you do your research, more people die per year from smoking weed. Yes. Steroids are safer than weed, statistically speaking. Yes, if used in excess they can have negative side effects, but many many people use them - way more than you would think - and you aren't constantly being attacked by "roid ragers" every time you go to the gym, right? No. You aren't.

c) "It's not fair that these young punks are able to break records of famous athletes from the past because of steroid use. It's not fair dagnabbit!" Well that's like saying "It's not fair that these youngsters can write term papers on a computer instead of by hand! Back in the day, we had to sharpen pencils and such! It's not fair!" Or "It's not fair that these youngsters can get on a plane and fly off to Italy. Back in the day, travelers had to go by boat and it took seven years. It's not fair!". Technology changes things. The world moves on. We now have the technology to build stronger, faster people. Deal with it.

2)I don't understand why women get angry when someone calls them "ma'am". Supposedly it makes them feel old. But the fact of the matter is, "Ma'am" is a term of respect, and it has nothing to do with how old you are. I get called "ma'am" every once in a while, and I happen to know I don't look like an old lady. Don't be so senstive, you weird women. It's not like she called you "Old Cow" or something.

3) Living in Southern California, people complain a lot about drivers slowing down to look at accidents. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it though. It's human nature. You want to see where the danger is - it's a biological imperitive. "How bad is it? Can I avoid it? Is the situation being handled? Is it someone I know?" You may not actively ask these questions to yourself, but it's there in your DNA. Your primitive-woman self senses danger in the environment and needs to assess the damage and its impacts upon you and those in your den (car).

Also, even if I'm way off base here, it's still good to slow down when there's an accident, simply for safety reasons. I mean, a person with a head injury could just wander out into traffic, dizzy and disoriented. You could plow into one of the stopped cars, or flatten your tires on broken glass and debris. Lots of stuff can happen if you don't slow your pace.

4)Breast feeding in public doesn't bother me in the slightest. I agree wiht the Puritans. When a breast is being used to feed an infant, it doesn't count as a sex organ. It becomes, for the duration of the feeding, something along the lines of a plate, or bottle or fork. A feeding utensil, is what I'm getting at here. It honestly baffles me that anyone cares. It's not gross - I've seen breast feeding lots of times. And it's just a breast, for crying out loud. Most people have them. Not a secret.

5)Insider trading doesn't bother me at all. This goes back to my whole spiel about "fairness". Life isn't fair. Some people live in fancy towns and others live in third world country shacks. Some people are born smart and some are born stupid. Some people have access to clean water and some don't.

So I ask, should a person not act on her "inside" knowledge of the stock market, simply because others don't have access to this knowledge? Should she stop using clean water because others don't have access to it? I suppose that's a touching show of solidarity, but it helps absolutely no one. Your efforts would be better served by doing some insider trading and devoting the money you earn to a water-providing charity of some kind.

I don't mean to sound callous. Of course I think that everyone in the world deserves access to clean water, adequate housing and such. But denying yourself these comforts doesn't help those who do without them. USE your advantages to help them, by all means. But the goal should be to elevate them to a level of comfort, rather than sinking yourself to a level of discomfort.

6) Telemarketers don't bother me at all either. People always complain that they interrupt their dinner time, which is nonsense. First of all, families haven't eaten dinner together at a table regularly since the 1970s. Nowadays, it's pretty much Christmas and Thanksgiving and if you come from a very traditional background, maybe Sunday dinners. That's it. And even if you are eating at the table with your family, it's not like it's difficult to just not answer the phone during dinner, if it's such a big deal to you. But even if you do answer the phone and it's a telemarketer interrupting your beef Wellington or whatever people in the 1970s ate at the table, it's not exactly difficult to say a firm, polite "No, thank you" and hang up the phone.

Telemarketers don't CHOOSE this profession. Something obviously went wrong in their lives, and this is the only legal way they can make a living. Cut them some slack! Show some compassion! I'm not saying you have to buy whatever they're selling, but come on! There's not need to be rude to the poor woman.

7)A lot of people thing that it's wrong to break up with someone via letter. They think it's chicken. They're right that it's chicken, but they're wrong that it's a bad thing to do. Think of it this way - If you break up with someone in person, what will happen? The person will cry and probably beg you to change your mind, or maybe get angry and hit you or whatever. It will be a big, horrible scene that neither of you will ever forget. Maybe you'll even be persuaded to give it another try, simply to quell the distress of your "was" ex-boyfriend. That's not going to be a good relationship, because he'll always know that your heart isn't in it, and you are just humoring him. But even if you stay strong and stick to your guns, the girl you dump has the unbearable curse of having to remember her undignified crying and blubbering.

If you break up with someone by letter, that person has time to digest it, grieve privately, and put a brave face on the next time she runs into her ex. She maintains her dignity. She won't have to remember behaving like some screeching fish wife, sniveling onto the steering wheel, snarling with pain and rage. She'll eat some McDonald's, listen to "Pretty Hate Machine" and "X Ray Specs" albums on a loop for a month and move on.

I'm not saying a letter is BETTER, necessarily. I mean both ways are going to suck for the person being dumped. I'm just saying it's not necessarily WRONG to do it by letter either.

That being said, there is a disclaimer: It is not acceptable to break up with someone via text message, IM, or Facebook message. These media are for casual messages only, and using them to initiate a break up is disrespectful to the person you're dumping. What you're saying by breaking up via IM is: "This relationship was as important to me as arranging a night out with the girls" or "This relationship was as important to me as this picture that my friend took of my that night I was really wasted".

8)Arrogance doesn't often bother me. As I always say "It's ok to be arrogant as long as you're right". Sometimes arrogance is justified. If you are the best, there's no point in pretending that you're not. I'm not saying you should be obnoxious about it, but you shouldn't lie either. If you're pretty, don't pretend you think you're ugly. I mean, don't be rude to ugly girls or anything! But it's ok to acknowledge your strengths as well as your weaknesses. False modesty, on the other hand, annoys the crap out of me.


Anyway, I have a bunch more, but need to eat dinner now. Maybe I'll do a "part 2" at some point.

And for the record, I don't use steroids, or engage in insider trading or breast feed in public. I simply don't judge others who do.

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