“You’re a waste of space, no natural grace, you’re so bloody thin, you don’t even begin to interest me, not even curiosity. It’s not animosity, it’s just you don’t interest me.”
- Wire, “Mannequin”
I don’t mind flipping through Rolling Stone and Maxim in the bathroom, in fact I kind of enjoy it as a reminder of a time when I actually used to pay money for magazines and read them voraciously (never Maxim or its ilk though — the heavy photoshopping they do to “improve” their model shots somehow manage to suck every possible ounce of life and sex appeal from their stale photo spreads). Now they just basically give them away with ridiculous subscription offers in an attempt to keep their circulation numbers up, and the content within has gotten so lowest-common-denominator I often find myself flipping pages madly, fruitlessly trying to find something remotely interesting to while away my time. I mean, with no exaggeration, the most stimulating article I found in the most recent issue of Maxim I finished and deposited in the trash was a piece on the history of NASCAR. I neither know nor care about sports in general, so this was really scraping bottom.
I also consider and reject many current hot discussion points for blog posts here, often because I find even I don’t care what my opinion on a particular topic is. Not that my opinions aren’t always fascinating, but we are in the era of talking exceedingly loud and saying less than nothing. There is more stimulation coming at us all day every day than ever before, but so little is even slightly substantive, why dignify it with my attention?
The typical internet shtick as practiced by such wits as George “Maddox” Ouzounian and his ilk is to work a head of false outrage about some nonissue and then assault said topic in print using many colorful expletives in an attempt to either attract attention from viewers who will either be outraged, or nod in agreement, or simply rack up the number of views and move on. It’s getting to be a fairly common tactic, and while in contrast with the ‘offend no one’ tact maintained by print magazines at least these types pretend to assert some position, it’s no more sincere and just as transparent.
So: things I just don’t care about. Don’t misread this as ‘Things I hate,’ because that would imply that I actively dislike these things. No, these are things that just make so little difference in my world that it’s barely worth the time to consider them briefly and discard them. Some are things that seem to mean a lot to other people; that’s fine, I’m not saying no one should care about these things, I’m just saying I don’t. “It’s not animosity, it’s just you don’t interest me.”
So: Things I Don’t Care About, Part One.
The Pope visiting, or doing anything for that matter. I’m not Catholic, not Christian, not religious, so to me it’s just an old dude in creepy clothes making apologies for a good number of his organization’s employees having sex with so many kids over the years. Yeah.
I mentioned sports above, but let me emphasize again: sports. Nothing is more tedious to me than going to one of those parties where the guys go in one room and the women in another because within two seconds the guys’ conversation turns to the trials of the local football team and holy shit those converations are all exactly the same. Some group of dudes threw a ball through something more times than some other group of guys, none of whom I know or have any connection with. Wow. Truly awesome. And yes, this includes the Olympics.
What actors have to say about anything, especially in interviews. The fact is that no actor who has anything of substance to say ever says any of it while promoting the work they do because they and their handlers don’t want anything to overshadow whatever they’re promoting. Actor interviews are calculatedly boring so there is nothing anyone could possibly take away from them other than “Movie opening May 2nd.” Don’t believe me? Tom Cruise ranting his crazy Scientology horsewash was interesting, and the studio even came out and blamed him for whatever movie he was promoting not doing so well. If he’d sat there like a good boy and just parroted the same stultifying “Oh yeah she was a real pleasure to work with, a real pleasure” bullshit they wouldn’t be complaining. Actors don’t know crap about the movies and shows they’re in, they only see themselves.
Children of famous people. I’m sure I’ll come up with an exception to this rule, but yeah, you’re not automatically interesting because the vagina you popped out of or the sperm that fertilized you belonged to a famous person. No inherently interesting traits are biologically inheritable, and despite the fawning reviews Rolling Stone keeps giving to Sean Lennon, neither is musical talent.
That’s all for now. More will almost certainly follow.
1 comment so far ↓
Huzzah! Although not to the delicious depth of existential nihilism, your apathy towards such sagging social loves rings true with the vibrations of objective sense and subjective worth. You deserve a cookie.
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