The importance of tolerance

UPDATE: I've been told that this post comes off as an insane "rant." Upon re-reading it, it does seem that this is exactly what the post is, or at least what it appears to be. However, people who know the guy mentioned below, and who have had to endure sharing an apartment with this person--they could easily relate to and understand the seemingly insane tendencies expressed. Trust me on this.


"I feel like I can tell you anything."

A number of people have told me that. For those of you who know me, it's obvious that the aforementioned statement could be taken in the following way:

"Wow, insert name of guy writing this blog. You truly are a vulgar motherfucker. I can't believe your vile, filthy sense of humor, and I don't think that there's anything I could tell you, outside of a racist joke, that would really offend you. I can't believe that joke you just said about shoving a banana into a camel's--"

Well, you get the picture. But, perhaps to your surprise, this isn't what a lot of people mean. A good deal of people have said the former statement to me, meaning:

"You know blog-writing guy, you're just such a tolerant person, so able to accept people for who they are, I could tell you anything about myself, any devious thing I've done, any vile thought, and you'd just accept that people make mistakes."

For those of you who really know me, you'd know that both of these interpretations are true. Oftentimes, my humor is truly vulgar and, sometimes, downright pornographic. The only thing I require in humor is that it be clever, and it certainly helps if the humor pushes the boundaries of good taste.

But, as with anything, there are exceptions. Racist, sexist humor is not appreciated (which may be why people think I'm a prude at NYC comedy clubs. Seriously: The joke about fucking a goat in the ass while murdering a village? That was fucking hilarious! The joke about slapping your wife, or the "humor" about Black people on welfare? Stick to the goat fucking).

There are exceptions to the tolerance quality as well. There are just some personality traits in people that I can't fucking stand. You broke into a little old lady's house while high on heroin after having sex with your mother and cousin, while simultaneously performing felatio on a baseball team--the fucking Yankees no less!--and then went on kill the old lady's puppy? Well, you know, people make mistakes. But when it comes to the asshole trait--you best be fuckin' off, young man.

I started writng this post, and then rewrote it with the preceding very long introduction after reading the following line, in someone's blog:

Mucho thanks to Trace for all the help with National Grid and getting an electrician.

Ok...calm down...

Ok. Firstly, let's just dispense with the fact that this asshole--and, as we know, all asshole's posess the asshole trait, and everyone who posesses the asshole trait is, in fac,t an asshole--postedto his blog that his electricity went out. Whoopty-fuckin' do! Your electricity went out in the storm! Wow! Do I care? No. Go fuck yourself!

Lest I be accused of hypocrisy--see a few posts previous to this entry--let me point something out. I wrote about the electricity in my crib going out in a way that I thought would at least be humorous to people passing by on the virtual superhighway (is that term still in use? Hey, those of you 18 or under--do you know that phrase?). I tried to point out a few things funny, tried to write in a somewhat clever way, all that shit. This fucking douchebag just writes that his electricity has gone out:

So due to the storm last night, I was without power all yesterday and today it's getting shut off again so it can be fixed. Huge pine branch came down and ripped the power conduit off the house.

No idea when this will be all settled. Out of contact, off the grid until further notice.

Wow. What an exciting post. I read the papers, you know. Most people know there was a fucking storm. Most poeple know that some people lost power. If I didn't know you in person (unfortunately, this guy was a roommate years ago, at a shithole apartment in Massachusetts. We didn't get along very well.), you'd just simply be a person who affirms the relatively unimportant news that I saw without really caring: A bunch of people lost electricity.

Are there actually people who read blogs looking to figure out exactly who lost their electricity? Do they see on WCVB that 10,000 people in the Boston/Worcester area lost power--and then try to find them all on MySpace, Facebook, Blogger?

Anyway, forget all that. I didn't really mean to focus on it. Maybe he's just not very creative (judging by the "music" he used to play on his guitar, and now continues to play in public, a certain lack of creativity seems to be part of his personality. Also, a desire to torture others with revolting sounds...). What I really couldn't help but focus on was that line:

Mucho thanks to Trace...

Trace?! Who the fuck is "Trace"? Who is Trace, and not Tracey? That's such a pompous and ridiculous sounding name. I can't stand it. Maybe, for shorthand, he might call her "Trace"--but I doubt the representative at National Grid referred to herself as "Trace," and I doubt that they are at the level of friendship--given that she's seemingly only spoken to him when he called the energy company--that he can shorten her name. But even if he knew her so well as to call her "Trace"--couldn't he just call her that, and add the extra fucking "y" at the end of the name, just so he doesn't seem like such a pompous ass?

But then, that simple name thing by itself wouldn't be such an issue if he didn't offer her "mucho thanks." Really, when I hear people say "much xxx," I have to supress the urge to stab them in the throat.

"You want to go see Indian Jones? That would be mucho cool."

"There's a mucho great coffee place in the Slope!"

"Mucho love for fixing my computer."

It's not so much the word that bothers me. It's this sort of stupid, hipster slang that has come about--but only in the parlance of people who posess the asshole trait. People who wear too much tye-dye and hang around Washington Square Park, people who've barricaded their lives into the walls, virtual or real, of college campuses, shitty musicians who play pretentious prog-rock, people who really listen to shitty musicians who play pretentious prog-rock, these are the people. And, if that word was ever going to be good for use as slang, they've ruined it by their association with it.

Anyway, if you've read all this, thanks for reading my venting--I'm not sure whether I took offense more to the blog itself or to the person who wrote it: the pampered little rich boy who plays...guess?...shitty pretentious prog-rock...at all hours on a fucking loud-ass amplifier, who attempts to grope every girlfriend/female being/sentient creature you bring around the apartment.