There ought to be one.
It seems to me that the general population of assholes has grown exponentially in the past twenty years. There have always been enough to go around and I suppose during the “kinder and gentler” sixties and seventies when daily weed insulated me from most of it I started thinking that maybe it was just me…Maybe it wasn’t that there so many assholes around but that my intolerance had given me a bias that saw more than there actually were. But right here and right now, I think no…there are really more of them. I might even be one of them from time to time and at my age with my various afflictions I’m O.K. with that. While I’m selfishly willing to cut myself some slack I’m less charitable about the proliferation of assholes and identifiable types and sub-types we’re seeing every day. T.V. is full of them and they appear in the streets, in shops and stores, on bicycle paths, and today’s favourite, behind you at stop lights in jacked up gigantic Dodge Ram pick -ups and Ford F150s and big Escalade S.U.V.s. In my car they fill the whole rear window with chrome grill. For a tiny moment I think that if I leave the light too slow…the mother fucker will eat my whole car. Asshole! Now, it might be a perfectly nice person in that urban tank, I don’t know but it is the asshole-ness of the situation that makes it feel unlikely. So that’s maybe partly on me, I should just chill.
The trouble with asshole-ness is that encounters are cumulative. You can only ignore so much until one day you wake up and find that breakfast has turned against you. What was tolerable a year ago is now not so much and from what I hear, a lot of people are feeling that way. And here is the vicious cycle…the less tolerant we are , the more likely we are going to become part of the asshole-ness. If only temporarily.
There are professional ass-holes. No doubt about it. Over officious people with a little authority who take it too seriously and seem to enjoy making others miserable, or who just get too much joy out of flexing their tiny power. Lately (or maybe always) that includes police. I have been bashed a couple of times and bullied more than a few times by police who were far too diligent in “defending the community” from my perceived misdeeds. (Yes, there were some misdeeds). Politicians, I don’t even want to go there. Anybody reading this will certainly have their own idea of who is an asshole in that bunch. Bureaucrats can be great assholes and they can do it almost anonymously. Try reaching somebody at the phone company about a problem. Better still, the tax office.
In the old days I ran into inanimate assholes. I had a green VW that was a true asshole. Wouldn’t start when I had to be somewhere, went to sleep on the highway twice. I’ve had computers that mysteriously vanished pages of work, a drawing table that tipped and dumped a bottle of India ink over a drawing that I had worked on for several hours. Asshole.
My own true love swims several times a week at a local pool. She told me today that she was chatting with one of the older ladies at the pool and they noted that it seems like a lot of the older men there behave like assholes. Crowd the lanes, splash other swimmers and rudely order people out of their way. They need to be careful those old assholes. My old lady is an organizer . She’ll mobilize the other old ladies and sneak up under those dudes and pull them under. Hah!
Blues: 17 09 24
Chagal4's Blog 
September 18, 2024 at 12:09 am |
Who raised those pushy arrogant guys that I also find too often in the pool and on bike lanes… shame on them!!
People are pissy and pissed and I try to avoid the angry ones but getting harder to do! damn!