I'm fairly laid back about a lot of stuff. Not everything, clearly; go to any number of the entries I've written on this blog about commercials that piss me off. But overall, I manage to take a lot in stride. In fact, there are only three things that offend me so solidly and consistently that the very idea of them make my blood begin to figuratively boil and my hands literally turn into very tense fists:
1) Katy Perry - It baffles me that Katy Perry has a career of any kind, but it especially baffles me that she has a musical career. She can't sing on key, she can't sing in syncopation and her music is Just Terrible. Sitting here trying to put my thoughts on this woman into words is making me so angry that my hands are actually shaking. I can't even count how many typos I've had to go back and correct in this paragraph.
I managed to ignore Katy Perry for a very, very long time until Firework became a painfully inescapable song. The first time I heard it I figured it was the innocuous kind of bad and I could learn to tune it out. I held onto that belief for as long as it took the song to reach the chorus, when she sings "Baby you're a FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIREWORRRRRK!" and (I goddamn nearly had a seizure of hatred typing that, by the way) the entire listening audience with half a brain wants to burst its own eardrums with the most painful implement it can find. Nobody ever taught Katy Perry that singing really loudly is not the same thing as singing on key and the fact that a lot of people can't hear how flat she is really bothers me. Has the whole world gone tone deaf? It physically hurts me that this woman has fans.
I would have a paragraph here about how much her lyrics suck but that would involve me going and finding her lyrics online and verifying that the lyrics I thought I heard are the actual ones in the songs, and I just cannot bring myself to do that.
Her music is so awful it makes me mad when I can't even hear it. I was at lunch with a couple of friends about a year ago and in the middle of the meal, for no good reason, I started snapping at everything either of them said and pretty abruptly ended a conversation. To fill the sudden silence one of my friends asked "Is this a Katy Perry song?" It was at that moment I realized that there was any music on in the restaurant at all. Couldn't hear it before then, I was too busy enjoying lunch and chatting with friends to notice it. And that wretched woman's disgusting voice still burrowed into my brain and pissed me off.
My friend Kristin hates Katy Perry, too, but she always says something that I fundamentally disagree with; while complaining that she can't sing and should go away, Kristin always says "Sure, she's beautiful, but..." That's not true. Katy Perry is not beautiful. When you can actually see the arrogance in a person's eyes, that negates any physical beauty they may possess. I have never, ever seen a picture or a video of Katy Perry where not only her eyes but her entire face wasn't shrieking "I am wonderful. Everything I do is amazing and you are shit by comparison." The worst is that one video where she's made up to look "awkward" or whatever; they've given her frizzy hair and braces as though that somehow can hide the fact that she's completely full of herself. That video looks to me like "Look at me, I'm making myself ugly so you peons will think you can relate to the goddess that I am."
I don't ever support assholes on the internet saying famous people should die or kill themselves; that's just mean. I will say, however, with great sincerity, that someday when I'm, like, ninety two and I hear the news that Katy Perry has died of old age, I will not feel anything remotely resembling remorse. In fact, I will probably laugh. Because she's awful. And I hate her. And absolutely everything about her offends every cell in my body.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the preview for that fucking self serving documentary she made about herself. In 3-D, probably just to make sure everyone is absolutely certain how big her boobs are. The entire preview makes me want to vomit, but one moment moreso than all the rest of it: the moment where they show her standing on a stage and telling her audience "Thank you for believing in my weirdness." What are you, twelve? Because going around and telling people "I'm weird" is something twelve year olds do. If you haven't grown out of that by the end of high school, I'm just not going to respect you (unless you're Weird Al Yankovic; he is my personal hypocracy in regards to that rule). You're stupid, shallow, childish and desperate for attention, Katy Perry, and referring to yourself as "weird" is just proof of that.
2) when people tell me I won't know something because it's "before your time" - That's no reason for me to not know something! I know about plenty of things that are considered "before my time." I'm a fan of Peter Lorre, The Beatles and MGM musicals from the 1940s and '50s. I like the Marx Brothers, The Addams Family, Cab Calloway and vintage advertising. I could tell you more about 1930s horror movies than I should know, considering I haven't seen half the movies I know great swaths of information about. How dare you use my age to assume what I know and what I don't!
Generally if I don't know about something, it's for one of two reasons: I'm either uninterested or it's never come up before. That's it. I don't know where Tanzania is because I'm not terribly interested in geography and I don't know who directed Gone With The Wind because I don't care. I fuckin' hate that movie.
3) people who are easily offended - For the past several summers I've volunteered as a counselor for the teen program at a summer camp in the midwest. Every year the teens have a night that for a long time was called Slut Night (a name that originated from an act of solidarity with a girl who was being picked on for wearing club clothes to a dance). This year some "concerns" were raised about the name of the event and the coordinator of the teen program had to sit through meetings with parents and an interested third party about the changing of the night's name.
My immediate reaction to that was "Tell them to go to hell." Do these people really not know how teenagers talk? The kids all know the night as Slut Night; it doesn't matter what the "official" name is, they're going to keep calling it Slut Night.
Various politically correct (which is code for "fucking stupid") names were kicked around. The absolute worst was Respect Night because "we're teaching the kids to be respectful of everybody regardless of how they dress," which makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Someone suggested Come As You're Not Night, to which the interested third party said "Why does it have to be Come As You're Not? Why not Come As You Are?" Because they do that every night, you fucking idiot! That's boring! The point is to get dressed up.
They settled on Costume Night, everybody kept calling it Slut Night in the real world and I nearly gouged my eyes out with how retarded I thought the whole situation was.
"Retarded," by the way, is a word I never used to use for fear of offending someone. Then I realized my immediate reaction to hearing people get offended by words was always something along the lines of "Suck my dick, you uptight cunt" and decided I may as well just use the words that I feel best express what I think or feel at any given time.
And I do censor myself. I don't use racial slurs, for instance, because I'm not fond of them. I honestly think they're kind of horrible; I'm not in favor of the idea of racial superiority. I do, however, have a friend who throws around racial slurs like they're confetti and the most severe my reaction to that ever gets is "Huh. That's not the word I would have chosen." They don't offend me. It's really difficult to offend me with words all on their own.
The attitude of people who do get offended by words, however, offends me deeply. There always seems to be a smugness to it that makes me want to physically hurt something.
A month or so ago I read a story about some comedian (I forget who; it wasn't one I'm a fan of) making a rape joke and, when an audience member got offended, made her the star of her own rape joke. It turned into a whole big thing, people on the internet got all uppity and the guy was forced to make a public apology. Because I was curious I looked up what the guy said and, honestly, I thought it sounded rather tame. I'm fans of a lot of comedians who have told rape jokes. George Carlin, for instance. I don't recall there ever being a backlash against him for it, either. I think the only thing wrong with what this other guy said is that his rape joke wasn't funny. Maybe that's why people got offended.
I hope so.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
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