I don’t get haircuts very often. For the past few years, it’s been pretty much a twice-a-year thing. When I get a haircut, my hair goes from being long and shaggy to very short. It is completely obvious when I get a haircut. And yet sometimes, people will ask, “Did you get a haircut?” I realize they’re just trying to be nice and make conversation. And they wouldn’t want to compliment me on a haircut if I hadn’t gotten one. But trust me, when I get a haircut, you’ll know. I know that many people get haircuts far more frequently than I do. If you go to the barbershop every week, people won’t be able to notice if you just got a haircut. Or if you have really long hair and you get a few inches trimmed off, people may not notice, or could just think you’re doing something slightly different with your hair.
Ultimately, this goes back to my hatred of stupid questions. Asking me if I got a haircut when it’s obvious I had one is a really stupid question. So save yourself the trouble. If you’d like to compliment or criticize my haircut, go straight to that.* You don’t need to ascertain whether I got it cut or not.
* BTW, there is absolutely no consensus whatsoever as to how long I should keep my hair. Some say it looks better short, some say it looks better long. Personally, I don’t give a shit, so I figure that I please everyone at some point in the period between haircuts.
The homeless guy at I-10 and Elysian Fields. The can-shaking sports teams at Carrollton and Claiborne. The Salvation Army bell-ringers. Your alma mater calling and asking for a donation. Your 8-year-son who wants a snowball. What do they have in common? They’re all people asking for money. Maybe you give them money, maybe you don’t, but surely, it’s annoying. (Okay, if you have an 8-year-old son, his asking for snowball money would probably be one of the least annoying things he does. I’m just guessing here, but I imagine I was pretty damn annoying at 8.)
But people need money. It makes the world go round. And in some cases, the best way to get money is to ask for it. The homeless guy doesn’t have a job but needs money for beer.* Universities have billion dollar endowments but still need more. And so on. For example, bloggers who can’t make any money with Internet advertising sometimes resort to begging for money. It’s annoying, and you probably would never give any money to them. But I figured hey, I’ll put a little “Donate” button in the sidebar and see what happens. Do I need the money? No—I’m an unemployed Latin teacher, but I’m in no danger of going broke anytime soon. Am I going to stop blogging? No. Do I have more money than the starving college students who make up most of my readership? Probably. To avoid being annoying, I’m only going to bring this up once, and I won’t mention it again. If you feel that you have a surplus of money and would like to direct some to me in appreciation of my brilliant blogging, that’d be great. Or just buy me a drink next time you see. Or let me crash on your couch during my month-long vacation binge.** Continue reading ‘people who beg for money’
On Friday I was walking down the sidewalk of Freret Street in shoes that were already completely soaked thanks to walking through the puddles. That’s bad enough. Then, as I’m on the sidewalk minding my own business, some asshole driving 30 mph makes no effort to avoid the puddles on the side of the road and splashes me with water. I ran down the street shouting profanities and making obscene gestures at the car, but to no avail. To you, asshole driver, I say: what the fuck is your problem? First of all, you shouldn’t have been driving that fast in the rain. Second of all, there was no oncoming traffic, so you could have moved to the middle of the street to avoid the puddle. Third, you could have slowed down to avoid splashing so much water around. Fourth, you could have at least stopped to apologize. I’d have been upset, true, but I’d have calmed down to accept an apology if you were sincere about it—I’m sure it’s possible that I might do something like that not realizing how big a splash was likely to be caused. And if I did that and realized what I’d done, I’d feel pretty bad about it and would hope that an apology would be accepted. But you were completely oblivious, you asshole. Or perhaps you’re not an asshole, you’re just an idiot. Either way, you suck.
P.S. Thanks to the motorcyclist who shook his head in commiseration as he passed by. It almost makes me reconsider the post I made about motorcyclists.
I know you might not guess it from the title of this blog and from my usually introverted personality, but I think of myself as a nice guy. And while I’m no extrovert, I love throwing a party. Actually, to be more specific, I love it when my parents throw a party and I get to take the credit.
I always strive to be pretty inclusive; if I’m having a cast party for a play I’m not going to hide the party’s existence from anyone in the cast or crew. For my Tony parties, there’s nothing I love more than seeing a huge, diverse group of theatre people; some of them I’ve just worked with, others I may not have worked with in years. Some people prefer small groups of their best friends, but not me. The more, the merrier, in my opinion. So I invite tons and tons of people.
Hospitality, however, goes both ways, and I find it frustrating when hospitality is not reciprocated. First of all, I consider it a faux pas when people show up at a party (my place or elsewhere) and don’t bring anything. I realize sometimes this isn’t practical—you go to a late night cast party when grocery stores are already closed, you find out about a party at the last minute, and so forth—but in general, it’s almost always possible to bring something. It need not be expensive—even a bag of potato chips will do—but you gotta bring something. Didn’t your momma raise you better than that? I don’t know if people are lazy or poor or just ignorant, but if it’s the third, then I’m here to fix it. And if it’s one of the first two, I think I’ve shown that those shouldn’t be obstacles. Continue reading ‘unreturned hospitality’
I can’t stand motorcyclists. Their vehicles are obnoxiously loud. They drive like maniacs with little concern for their safety or the safety of anyone around them. They die at a much higher rate than automobile passengers and drivers, and the number of deaths has been steadily increasing over the past decade while automobile deaths in the US have plummeted. (See here and here.)
Now, I’m sure there are plenty of responsible motorcyclists who are only going to get into an accident if a nearby automobile is driving irresponsibly. But even the responsible motorcyclists are still assholes for driving such obnoxiously loud vehicles. The only ones I don’t have a problem with are the people driving those little tiny Vespas that hardly make anyone noise. I mean, I may make fun of those people, but at least they’re not douchebags. Continue reading ‘motorcyclists’
I could have a whole blog about how much I hate clueless drivers, but for today I’ll limit myself to one thing: not using turn signals! I can’t stand those morons who steadfastly refuse to use their turn signals. It’s stupid, it’s dangerous, and it pisses me off.
The other day I was driving on a four-lane road when a woman swerved in front of me. Not only was it a dangerous move—there was a lot of traffic and she didn’t have much space to pull it off—she couldn’t be bothered to use her turn signal. And just in case I was thinking about giving her a break this one time, ten seconds later she swerved back into her original lane, again without using a turn signal, and again, despite the fact that there was a ton of traffic. If you’re going to drive like a maniac and race through traffic, at least have the decency to use a turn signal so that I know to get out the way. Continue reading ‘people who don’t use turn signals’
One of the great thoroughly average things about facebook is the ability to be friends with people you barely even know/haven’t seen since fifth grade/don’t really know but have a lot of mutual friends/met once at a party or bar. It’s wonderful to know what these people think about health care reform, see their drunken escapades, and know how they’re doing in Farmville, but it can lead to awkward real-life interactions. When you barely know people it’s usually not too difficult to avoid them, but what happens if you have a facebook friend you barely know (or haven’t even met in real life, or haven’t seen in years) and you run into that person? Stare at them awkwardly? Keep your head down and look the other way? Hug them? Start up a conversation? It’s practically impossible to know what to do in such circumstances. So, I would like to propose a solution:
If you send someone you barely know a friend request and they accept it, it’s your job to acknowledge the other person’s existence should you run into them in real life. This acknowledgment may vary tremendously depending on age, gender, sexual orientation, race, personalities, and a host of other factors, and it may or may not involve a lengthy conversation, but at the very least it needs to be a look and a nod. The thing to note here is that it’s on the person who sent the friend request to initiate things. I absolutely hate when someone sends me a friend request, I accept (as I do for pretty much anyone I know or have a lot of friends in common with), I run into them and they say nothing. As I said, I’m not asking for a much here. A nod and maybe a quick “Hey, how’s it going?” is fine. If you want a more in depth conversation, that’s fine too. One time I ran into someone who had friended me and she explained who she was and that we knew each other even though neither of us could remember exactly where we’d met. (Where we’d met finally dawned on me a year or two later.) But after that we could run into each other and have a friendly conversation, as opposed to the awkwardness I feel when I see other people I barely know who aren’t willing to say “hi.” Continue reading ‘awkward meetings with facebook friends’
Since my post on suburb bashing drew lots of attention, I figured I’d return to a topic I’d said I would cover: bashing New Orleans residents who aren’t natives. This strikes me as downright inhospitable. Continue reading ‘bashing New Orleans transplants’
Life was tough in the old days. To learn something new, you’d have to—gasp!—read a book! So you’d have to actually have the book with you, open it up, and find the information you needed. The last two steps were easy enough, but the first was a doozy. You might have to go to the library or something. These days, though, you can find pretty much any imaginable fact right away. You should never have to ask a stupid question ever again when you’re at you’re computer. And if you have an iPhone or Blackberry or whatever, you’ve got the Internet with you all the time. So you should NEVER have to ask a stupid question. You simply go to google, type in some information about your question, and presto, you’ve got your answer. Continue reading ‘stupid questions’
Chances are you’ve probably been involved in at least one secret santa exchange. In case you haven’t heard of it, the way it works is this: you get a group of people, and each person writes his or her name on a slip of paper. Then you take turns drawing names. You give a gift to the person whose name you pick. There are a number of variations on this theme, but they all go something like that. It’s a great idea—until it goes horribly wrong and, due to poor planning or whatever, one person gets completely screwed over. And the sole time in my entire life I’ve participated in a secret santa, I was the person who got screwed and ended up with nothing. I’m not really opposed to the concept in general, but I am still a little bit bitter. Click here for my heartwrenching tale of the great personal tragedy I suffered by being deprived of trinkets of almost nonexistent monetary value.