5 posts tagged “gripes”

Recently there's a song on country radio--I know neither the title nor the "artist"--that mentions the singer's (or, more likely, writer's) 401(k), and I find myself repulsed by that.  To me, that is a sign of the degradation of country music, the takeover of my beloved genre by the aging Baby Boomers and other totally boring people.  A 401(k)?  You're supposed to die way before you take retirement, from all the years of honky-tonkin and fast women and stuff. 

*sigh*  And now this and this.  Rock has gone lame, too.  Of course, there was a time when rock and country were not quite so differentiated; listen to Johnny Cash's Sun recordings and Elvis Presley's and you'd be hard put to tell which were "country" and which were "rock."  So, I guess it makes sense.  The lameness is occurring in sync. 

And everyone knows punk is dead.  Dead, dead, dead.  Jazz is a wasted shell of its former self.

To hell with the whales.  Whole genres of our beloved and enchanting native music are dying, being eviscerated by whiny white guys who just want to do some cardio and maybe sip some mineral water before surfing the Internet.  DOES NO ONE CARE????*

So, great, that leaves us with Eminem yelping juvenile jokes about his pee-pee or whatever the fuck.

/wrists**

*Yeah, I know, just as there are still whales floating about and polluting our oceans, artists exist in all of these genres who are still rockin and dying young and shouting out great lyrics and all of it.  I know.  Please don't get all up in my face about whatever unknown rock band you listen to who is still so totally rocking and keeping it real.  I don't care.  I'm generalizing about genres here. 

This brings up an important question:  By what miracle is Keith Richards still alive?

**Yeah, I got that from you, Inci.  Enjoy.

I need to vent for a moment.

See, my son is 2.  Well, 2-and-a-half.  Lately he has taken to wearing hair ornaments, necklaces, and the occasional bit of lip gloss.  I think this is a perfectly normal phase, and he actually looks pretty good with a little barrette in his hair.

And I don't want anyone else asking me if this doesn't worry me that maybe my son is going to be homosexual.

First and foremost, I sincerely doubt that there is any connection between wearing hair ornaments in your toddler years and homosexuality.  I find the fact that some people do believe there is a connection utterly confounding.  I know a whole covey of grown men who wear strange hair ornaments, necklaces, earrings--and even a few who paint their nails sometimes--and most of them are a) healthy and b) heterosexual (and also kind of hot). 

Second, if he's gay, he's gay.  I cannot see that banning him from wearing necklaces and lip gloss is going to change that.

Third, if he is homosexual, I DON'T FUCKING CARE. 

That's not quite true.  I guess I do care.  I care that he would trust us, his parents and grandparents, enough to tell us even if he's not ready to come out to the rest of the world.  I care in that I would hope he not be the subject of discrimination and harassment because of whom he wants to sleep with, and I would care about helping him get through it all in whatever ways I could. 

But, otherwise, I don't care.  He's my son.  I care that he is happy.  I care that he is healthy.  I care that he feels loved.  I care that he challenges himself and cares about the world around him.  I care that he remain curious and imaginative.

I also care that, whatever his sexual orientation, he learns the value of a well-placed condom.

I don't care if he's a homosexual.  I don't care if he wears lip gloss.  If I banned him from doing those things and lectured him about how men don't do those things and he's going to be a sissyboy if he keeps painting his lips, I'm pretty sure he would stop trusting me, and I would much rather that he trusts me (and his father and grandparents, none of whom would be upset if he's gay) than that he fits your idea of what men are supposed to do.  Fuck you and your gender roles. 

Also, he's 2. 

So, after I wrote that post that starts out with the charming tale of that Australian fella who hates American women because we have GOALS!, I got to thinking.  Maybe it's just me, but I think this happens to a lot of Americans abroad, and I think it bears griping about.  This is a post dedicated to nearly every non-American expat I met while living in Japan and traveling in other Asian countries but mainly the ones who violated me with their loud and hypocritical America hating.

Let me say at the outset that I don't really consider myself much of a patriot.  I was born in America; obviously, I have lived the great majority of my life in America.  I think American music is the best music.  I like blue jeans and hamburgers and basketball.  I love the Rocky Mountains and the Sonoran Desert and the soft, rolling Ozarks in deep, uncontrollable ways.  I am American.

I am not one of these people, of course, who rides around with an "America:  Love it or Leave it!" bumper sticker on my big pickup truck (sadly, I do not even have a big pickup truck, but if I did, it would more likely be covered in bumper stickers that say things like "Support Conscious Evolution" and "The Owl Cafe, San Antonio, New Mexico" because that's how I roll).  I do not hesitate to refer to our Vice-President as the second coming of Satan.  America has, of course, done terrible things and is doing terrible things, both here at home and abroad, and I know about them. 

My quibble--and there are those who are going to think that this is just whining, and so be it--is that I do not want to hear about how terrible America is from every freaking non-American I meet when I am overseas.  Particularly not in a bar, where I only went to water myself down in a nice beer and sort of bubble away to the epiphanic stream or at least to linguistic play.  And really especially not from a know-it-all wearing blue jeans, eating a hamburger, listening to Green Day on his iPod and likely as not having just come from watching Ocean's 13.  Mmm, American culture is terrible and/or nonexistent, isn't it?  And yet you are completely saturated with it.  You don't seem to be really resisting the hegemony in any meaningful way, so just get out of my face with it, eh?

It would seem to be an unfortunate fact that some particularly insipid aspects of American culture are shipped to all other countries on Earth, and the residents in those countries come to believe that they know what America is all about via Hollywood films and McDonald's.  Those same people who are alternately consuming Big Macs and cursing them then blame me, personally, while I'm just strolling down the street minding my own business, for the fast food restaurants and the Tom Hanks movies and Internet Explorer and the use of nuclear weapons in Japan at the end of World War II and all of it. 

If you are one of these people who are thinking of approaching me and blaming me for the downfall of civilization as we know it, let's be clear about a few things.  The first is that you probably don't know shit about America, and I do.  You may know about our popular television programs and movies and music; you may also know something about our foreign policy, and you probably like to think that you know about our domestic politics as well, although you can't believe everything you see on CNN, and they don't exactly tell all there is to tell to begin with.  However, no country deserves to be judged entirely by its television and its politics.  You do not despise France for the existence of the National Front; you do not denigrate the citizens of Tokyo for the presence of Ishihara.  You know, of course, that there is much more to Japanese and French culture than their worst politicians.  You would also never claim to understand Japanese culture, for example, just because you eat sushi and watch Pokemon, would you?  Yet that is what you think of America, and here we sit with me becoming increasingly bewildered by your incredible idiocy. 

It is very likely that I know more about American history than you do, and I certainly know more about American culture than you do.  I have always especially loved the foreigners whose understanding of regional differences in America is limited to the old "red state-blue state" lines.  Feh.  If you don't already have an idea of how different the South is or the Rocky Mountain West is from the LA/NYC culture that is largely what gets exported, then I cannot explain some things to you because the starting point is way too far back, and I only have so much patience.

America has problems.  America has done terrible things.  [And by the by and not to get all self-righteous back at you, but we've also done some nice things, at home and abroad.]  I know.  I know already, probably better than you do, so just leave me be.  Pretend I'm Canadian or something.   

Hi, Vic and the grumpy old man who lives on the other side of us!  How you doing?  I understand you guys are retirees and have a lot of free time on your hands.  I also understand that you come from a generation that really valued the aesthetics of vast expanses of unbroken green lawn.  I understand.

However, have you noticed that it does not rain here?  June, the month that was supposed to be our "rainy season," brought nary a drop.  We're having a bit of a drought.  I'm guessing, judging by the astounding verdancy of your lawns and the fact that your sprinklers are sprinkling at all times in some portion of the country club you call a yard, you didn't notice.

Sadly, though, this is a drought, and by all accounts, it is a serious one.  Yet you are dumping hundreds of gallons of potable water on ...GRASS?  Do you not think it might be better to save some of that water for later for, maybe, DRINKING?  Or for raising food, maybe? 

Listen, guys, I know you're from other places, places that got more rain, and you're used to being surrounded by green.  I am not opposed to the color green, not at all.  It's a nice color.  Our lawn is brown because grass--at least this kind of grass--goes dormant during droughts.  This is a drought.  Hence, the lawn is dormant.  Should it ever rain here, it might come back to life.  It might not, but it doesn't matter because we're ripping it all out and replacing it with two kinds of plants:  those that are drought-tolerant and those that provide us with food.  There is some happy overlap between those two categories (would you like to see a Venn diagram, perhaps?), but any plants that we plant for the sole purpose of ornamentation must survive the drought with little help from us.

Why?  Well, it seems silly to throw our ever-dwindling supply of potable water down in a vain attempt to recreate the scenery of places where it rains.  This is not England; this is not the Deep South.  Nay, this is not even Minnesota, Vic.  This is Idaho, and if you look around, the native vegetation is--well, yes, much of it is ugly, but it is also willing to suffer the slings and arrows of the hot, dry conditions in which it finds itself living.

Aren't you guys supposed to be from the "waste not, want not" generation?  Didn't your moms make, like, crosstitch samplers and all that?  Didn't you survive the Depression and live to lecture us kids on our wasteful ways?  Am I getting this right, or is that a totally different generation?  Because I'm looking at your sprinklers and thinking you are some wasteful motherfuckers.

Yes, I know, our lawn is hideous.  The one part is all vegetable garden, which is starting to look reasonably nice with all the things coming into bloom (and wasn't I clever to put the scarlet-blooming green beans just there?  They look so nice!).  The other part, I know, the dogs have trampled to death, and we haven't watered at all, and I know the one dog chews up everything so there are miniscule bits of children's toys scattered all through our forlorn turf.  And the front yard--I don't know why my husband planted popcorn at random points in the front yard, and I'm also not sure how that gigantic squash plant (we think maybe it's pumpkin, but it's hard to say) got there, but I blame that on my husband as well.  The front yard is somewhat green, owing to our watering of the random popcorn and pumpkin plants that share the space.  Oh, and yes, that is...well, we're not sure.  Apparently, my son planted birdseed there, so...sunflowers, maybe?  Yes, it's an odd place to have sunflowers coming up, but won't it look festive?  Anyhow, sorry all around about the general appearance of our outdoor spaces.  We have plans.  Those plans include the installation of trees (I'm guessing the former owners of our house had some religious objection to shade, preferring instead to simply bake inside the house as the sun beats down like an angry god.  Did you know that in our backyard, in that shadeless space where the afternoon sun radiates between the white walls of the house and the white walls of the garage, there in that space, the temperatures have been around 120 degrees Fahrenheit of late?  Yes, that hot.  This grass we have here is not made for those conditions).  We promise--we're going to do some landscaping, and it will look nice.  There are alternatives to the expanses of turf.

Also, and I hate to be a nag, but when you mow your lawns, we do not really love the fumes.  Yes, the gas fumes.  From your riding mowers.  You both appear to be in good condition for your age, and your lawns, while large, are just lawns and not really acreage, so I think that perhaps the mini-tractors are unnecessary.  It would be nice, if you're going to waste all the water, if you could not also be simultaneously polluting the air and depleting yet another limited natural resource. 

We won't even mention the bags of Agent Orange and the fact that both of your wives have had cancer, because that would be tactless.  Really tactless. 

I also won't mention that I apparently have a severe allergy--not severe enough to require me to stock EpiPens, sadly--to whatever type of grass you have.  Every time you mow, and especially on days when you both mow, I can hardly breathe at all.  Still I can't expect you to change your ways just for my health.  Thankfully, I have the choice either to suffer along without breathing or dose myself up with medication.  Fun!  It's true that I am also allergic to, for example, lilacs, but that allergy is short lived and goes away entirely once they stop blooming.  The grass thing will continue as long as you keep watering it, apparently.  It's a good thing they have generics of the medications.

Hey, did you see my nasturtiums blooming there?  Pretty, aren't they?  They're very drought-tolerant, although we are having to water them a bit in a drought this severe.  Incidentally, they are also fully edible. 

But seriously, guys, I wish you would reconsider the lawn thing.  It's a pity to see all that land and all that water and all those chemicals used for nothing that will ever amount to anything at all.  It would be ideal if you could grow food.  If not that, then at least something that didn't require the constant watering and the profusion of chemicals to maintain.  It'd be great if I wasn't allergic to it as well, but that's asking a lot, I know.

Now, hey, would you like some zucchini?

5ive for Friday:  Major gripes.

1.  When I'm sick or have a headache, I really don't want to wrestle the medication packaging to the ground, whip out my trusty Leatherman, and hack the bottle to bits just to get some pills.  Give me the pills already!  Fuck!  [NB:  I have the flu currently.  Not your pansyass bad cold that you just call the flu.  No.  The real influenza.  I have spent the last two days in shaking chills alternating with occasional bouts of coughing spasms to liven things up a bit.  Who needs the chills in winter in Idaho, I ask you?  Not me.  Ack.  Like I said, just give me the pills.]

2.  Since when are women supposed to be divas and goddesses?  Who needs it?  I'm OK with just being a woman.  It's kind of ordinary, and it doesn't come with a lot of champagne, but I'm OK with it. 

3.  People who think country music began with Hank, Sr. and ended with the Outlaws.  Oh, right, or only exists today in alt.country.  Oh, bite me, you fucks.

4.  Even worse:  The suburban soft-rock refugees who think country music began with Ronnie Milsap and ended with Shania Twain.  You're the worst of the worst.  I'm no purist, but I don't want to turn on country radio and find myself in the grip of some soccer mom's Harlequin fantasy.  It gives me the skeeves.

5.  How exactly did Paris Hilton get famous anyway?  That must have happened when I was in Japan because I went over there not knowing anything about any hotel heiresses at all, and when I come back, the succubutante is everywhere.  Why did you let this happen, America?  My once proud nation has let herself go.

However, "succubutante" is one of the greatest words ever.