I lost a friend today. But for the most part, it was not my fault. I ran into her as she was walking towards the computer store with her laptop. She saw me, smiled, gave her laptop an angry tap and said, “Guess what I broke again?” I, of course, immediately replied, “your low-carb diet?” She is at fault in this situation for two reasons: 1. Oversensitivity and 2. Asking me to play some sort of devious guessing game in which I wasn’t really supposed to guess at all. Yet, she has the nerve to be angry with me. I’m sure she handled it fine, calling up her girlfriends and eating a half-gallon of Ben and Jerry’s (Coffee Annan or Jesus Pieces or some crap) while tearfully watching “Bridges of Madison County” and menstruating.
Don’t ask me to guess something unless I have full freedom to actually guess. And you know what makes me want to skin a harp seal and suffocate you in its pelt? Rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions like “wuddaya think of that?” or “who would have guessed it?” or “why did you kick me so hard in the crotch?” drive me crazy. If you talk like that, I suggest dusting off that fifth grade grammar book and flipping to the lesson called “Unnecessary Question Marks are for Pussies” (it is right after “Ellipsis: The Period’s Menage-a-Trois).
These rhetorical devices lead me to my point. My point is that I bought an awesome trucker hat the other day that says John Deere on it. You might not get the joke. See, I am an educated, successful, Northeastern liberal, not an ignorant conservative hick who might actually drive a truck or purchase farming equipment. Get it? It’s my keen sense of ironic humor derived from the fact I am too hip to actually wear something like that. It’s funny because you wouldn’t expect it. Like a non-asshole wearing a Yale sweatshirt. See, here is the problem with your ”ironic value.“ For me to appreciate it, I have to actually care about you, which I don’t. I have to understand who you are because your humor is only about you. I bet you have a Web Diary. I bet that behind your smile, you’re actually crying and dying inside and that, behind my stoic countenance, I’m laughing at your death.
We need to stop trying to understand and care about each other because, really, none of us are worth the effort. The problem with trucker hat guy is that he loves himself so much that he finds humor in showcasing who he is by condescendingly emphasizing the opposites. I, on the other hand, hate myself and try to showcase other things that I hate by dragging them down to my level of misery. I don’t think I’m better than trucker hat guy or the actual redneck whom he is mocking. However, that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t love to see that toothless truck driver hopped up on methamphetamine, Schlitz and the sperm of Tanyanita, the 6-foot-5-inch woman he met in a New Jersey rest stop off I-95, careen his 18-wheeler through the doors of a Built To Spill concert thus crushing faux trucker hat guy and also opening act Guided by Voices beneath its massive wheels.
This imbecilic, personalized, ”ironic“ humor is a direct result of thinking about ourselves too much. Or possibly fetal alcohol syndrome. People who need to ”get in touch with their feelings“ or ”take a little introspective me-time“ or ”analyze their syzygy and mana to understand their Jungian archetype of the collective unconscious“ should be beaten about the face with their massive collection of Get Up Kids records. When someone tells me they aren’t sure what they’re feeling, I grab their hand, put it on my crotch, and say ”feel this.“
Of course, some blame needs to be put on parents. If you encourage your kid to always talk about her feelings, she’s going to end up wasting everyone’s time with her crappy slam poetry. When I was six years old I said to my mom, ”Mommy, I feel sad and I don’t know why.“ She put me on her lap and said, ”Aaron, look at this picture.“ ”What is it, Mommy?“ ”This is your Bubbe Tzeitel’s shtetl being burned down by the Czar, sweetie.“ I didn’t quite understand, but I stopped complaining about being sad.
Irony is no longer clever or funny when it becomes a tool to project your image. If you are going to show how much you hate corporate sissy rock by wearing a Matchbox Twenty T-shirt, then you can’t stop there. You need to go to Mandy Moore movies, rodeos and Klan rallies. If you are wearing a belly-bag with a picture of Menudo’s original line up on it, I have no problem with punching you in the mouth. If you then tell me that the bag is an ironic statement, I have no problem punching you harder for misleading me in the first place. If you don’t want me to guess what you broke again, don’t tell me to. If you don’t want me to answer your question, don’t ask it. And if you don’t want to get punched in the face, don’t wear the T-shirt that’s asking me to. Or, just stay away from me. Like everyone else does.
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