09 May 2006

tuesday-things that displease me

like the man said: hell is other people.

specifically, i think hell is other people on public transportation. the top three offenders:
  • people who talk loudly on their mobile phones for the entire ride (we don't care, and you're not cool or important)
  • people who let their children crawl on, kick and generally molest the people sitting next to them without so much as telling the child to stop or apologizing to the poor guy in the suit who is just trying to get home from work
  • people (and i may have complained about this before) who think that the train is an appropriate place for personal hygiene. i've gotten so i can laugh at the 20 minutes of make-up application, but please people--do not pare your fingernails on the train!

6 comments:

k. said...

nix just called me a little misanthrope! i prefer curmudgeon, thank you very much.

k. said...

okay - we have moved beyond the point where it's funny. a guy (and let me reiterate that this was a guy) spent half an hour plucking hair from his face with tweezers on my train this morning. i am not kidding. and he was just dropping the plucked hair onto the train floor. this was a fairly crowded train and there was nowhere for me to move away from him.

Simeon Berry said...

My mother used to put her makeup on in the car while she was driving. Scared the bejeezus out of me.

I feel like if you can't get done to your person what you need to get done before you leave the house, then it need to fall under the category of an acceptable loss.

I would say that one graduates from being a curmudgeon to a misanthrope if you have a systemized plan to right perceived wrongs, such as the revoking of universal suffrage for people you deem to be whackjobs. Curmudgeons are whimsical creatures of the moment, not crusaders.

k. said...

wait, do you think i'm better or worse? i like to think that i'm fairly whimsical.

thus far i have no plan to police the train. i wouldn't be averse to href="http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Martin/>Judith Martin coming to town and teaching this backwater berg some manners, however.

k. said...

well, that didn't work

that sould have said i wouldn't be averse to judith martin coming to town and teaching this backwater berg some manners

and linked in a clever way.

guess i'm not that clever today

Simeon Berry said...

I think that you have curmudgeonly moments and some misanthropic convictions. As to which is better, it's a matter of style. Curmudgeons are free-lance, whereas misanthropes usually have a program or agenda. Curmudgeons don't get out the vote, as it were.

For myself, I'm aiming to become a crank, as this makes one even more capricious and cryptical and weird, without having to be as consistent or intelligible.