Several months back, I ranted of how my rage burned with the fire of a million suns. I called out Western Digital for their hard drives, I called out Jerry Lewis and Jerry Lee Lewis for being the same person, I called out Mike, the guy who fills the vending machines at work for addicting me to Hot Pockets. My rage was tempered by the outburst, and has simmered at a low boil on the back burner since then. You know the burner - it’s the one on the electric range that doesn’t work properly, so it’s either on “low” or “nuclear furnace akin to the center of the sun”, and your macaroni and cheese always burns and sticks to the pot, and people tell you to just give up and get a gas range, but you’re too proud but you’re really secretly afraid of a gas range since you think you’ll somehow blow up your kitchen and everyone will say “Didn’t he understand how to use a gas range?” but you’ll be too dead to answer them? That kind of rage.
To O’Reilly & Associates
You, with your Foo in a Nutshell books. I’ve been given ten days to become passably fluent in Java. You have made this doable. Thanks to you, I’m going to get far more responsibility and authority than I had before. Could you have stopped with that? Nooooooo. You’re the cog in the machine that’s going to give me a raise. Bastards. Because of you, I’ll now get more money every two weeks. You folks probably think that money buys happiness, dontcha. That’s why you’re making me earn more money. I’m on to your scheme. I know that you can’t buy happiness. You can only rent it, and usually by the hour at exorbitant rates. And don’t get me started on the problems when your S.O. walks in while you’re renting some happiness.
To Avalon Hill
Yeah, you. Just try to blame this on being bought out by Hasbro – sorry, buddy, no dice. You’re still at fault for everything you did before Hasbro set its sights on your successful enterprise. I used to be innocent and pure [sub]relatively speaking[/sub] before I was introducted to Diplomacy. The sun used to shine, the birds used to sing, the Beatles used to release good music, and people used to believe me when I said “Look, there’s no reason for me to want Munich. I’m busy keeping tabs on the other players.” Nowadays, I look at a map of Europe and mentally overlay one of my current Dip games onto it. I feel like Henry Kissinger looking at a map of Southeast Asia. You folks are entirely to blame for every problem in my life. Some people try to say that I should look inward for the sources of my problems, but I ain’t got no time for that jibber-jabber. This is the go-go 90s. Or, the go-go 00s. Either way, I can’t be bothered to be introspective. It’s my way or the highway, baby!
To Henry Kissinger
You too, while I’m at it. No, I’m not going to rant about Cambodia or intervention or Nixon or the traditional Kissinger rants. I’m going to rant that you were the commencement speaker at my graduation two years ago. No, we didn’t get some graduate who became a CIFTEO or whatever at Mr Bojangles Corp. We got one of the chief architects of American foreign policy in one of the most turbulent decades of our country’s history. I WANTED to hear what you had to say. I WANTED you to speak coherent English. I caught the words ‘Kosovo’, ‘Serbia’, and ‘You’re short and fat and pushy, but at least you’re not insane.’ Maybe the last part was from a Monty Python routine, but it still applies.
To the Minnesota Twins
Look. This is really simple. You won the World Series both in the 1980s and the 1990s. What other major league team can claim that? That’s right, not one. Then, logically, you had to follow up on your deal with the devil, and suck harder than the vacuum I have at home with the hose attachment that is really useful to get spiderwebs and stuff out of the corners of the ceiling. (That’s pretty hard suckage, for what it’s worth.) And follow up you did, by sucking for the past decade. But let’s see if I get this straight - let’s see - you’re having the best season in a decade and you’re only behind the Seattle Mariners for the best record in baseball. You sent three players to the All-Star game. You’ve rekindled the small flame in my heart. But you deserve to be called out in the pit for one very good reason, and that is because you didn’t put off this non-suckage for another few years. I remember the strike that lasted through the 1995 season. I remember that ALL TOO WELL. I felt betrayed. I felt robbed. I felt up a few freshmen women since it was my first year in college. I vowed to boycott baseball for ten years (well, except for getting to second or third base. I’ve never boycotted that). 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. I told myself that I wouldn’t watch baseball, I wouldn’t follow baseball, that I would deride and insult baseball until 2006. And you successful small-market no-payroll hick team, you’re making me cheer.
To Fred, the spider in the corner of my garage
Look, Fred. We’ve had a deal. The deal has worked pretty well so far. You don’t move out of your corner, I don’t shriek like a little girl. We’ve each lived up to our respective sides of the bargain, even if I have to keep my eye on you the entire time I’m in the garage. You haven’t webbed my car to the concrete floor, I haven’t improvised a flamethrower with a lighter and a can of hair spray. This is all good. Thus, my question is, why the hell didn’t you tell the other spiders of our deal? Fred, you’re a pretty big spider. You can handle yourself. I’m sure the other spiders look up to you for advice and recommendations. The sins of the sons are directly attributable to the father. I don’t care if you’re not ACTUALLY their father, but you’re still responsible. I’m giving you this one warning; either you straighten out the other spiders, or I take matters into my own hand. (Or, into my own blazing torch, as the case may be. If necessary, I’ll get a pitchfork, too, just to complete the rampaging-villager schtick.)
To CONvergence
Specifically Ethel Party 2: Samba de Ethel. MiniCon used to be a fun way to spend a weekend in March or April. Eventually I lost interest, until one day a little over a year ago a friend of mine commented on CONvergence, and said that she was hosting Ethel Party 64 in one of the hotel rooms. A weekend of classic video games? Intellivision, Atari 2600, ColecoVision, et al? How could I go wrong! I dug out the 80some Atari 2600 games I had in the closet, provided them to Ethel Party 64, and had a blast of a weekend schooling these namby-pamby kids in games of Asteroids and Combat. It ain’t bragging if you can back it up, and I can back it up bigtime in Decathalon for the 2600. And what happens now? Ethel’s hosting the same thing again this year, except now she’s got full arcade versions of Gauntler II and Tron set on free play all weekend long. And that’s not all – but free beer and cookies, too! GODDAMNIT, Ethel! Look, I had NO plans for the weekend, and now you’ve gone and thrown a party that’ll be impossible for me to miss? I could have SLEPT IN this weekend. Can I now? Hell no. You’re going to make me have the best weekend in months, and for what? Bah. ‘Friendship.’ Pfeh.
To those who complain that I’m not really complaining
I refer you to the rage I described at the top of this post. Stay clear of me. I’m a powderkeg of rage. The most minor things will set me off, and I won’t be stopped. I think I get this temper from my father. There were times he’d be so angry that he’d go into the kitchen and cook for eight hours. You could tell he was royally pissed off by how many courses were served for dinner that night. I’m warning you. If you really piss me off, I’ll have a lot of rage. It’s the kind of rage when you bend over to tie your shoe, but the shoelace breaks, so you tie the shoelace back together, but then you realize that the lace broke back before one of the eyelets, and the knot in the lace is now too big to fit through the eyelet, and you untie it and try to thread the broken lace through and then tie it off again, but then it still doesn’t work, and you realize that you’ve been bent over in the middle of the road for the past four minutes and cars are lining up behind you but because of Minnesota Nice no one’s honking, and now you feel really guilty and embarrassed but you also want to hijack one of the cars and fill it with fuel oil and fertilizer and blow something up but preferably something far away from people because you don’t want to hurt anyone but you’re really full of rage? It’s that kind of rage.
[sub]What do you mean, no one has that kind of rage? I thought it happens to everyone.[/sub]
