Mood: I don’t like Mondays
Drinking: Morning caffeine injection
I have a low tolerance for a great many things.
It may be one of my most irritating and endearing character traits. I used to fight the urge, used to pretend that 99% of humanity didn’t make me want to tear my face off, used to try the kindler, gentler thing. I got over it.
It’s one of the things I enjoy the most about getting older. The wise ones will tell you that you’ll experience this whole “getting comfortable in your own skin” thing, which is sort of true. But there’s also this whole side effect wherein you just don’t give a shit anymore. You like what you like and you hate what you hate and you stop apologizing for it. (Confession: I hate onions, and I always have and always will and you can’t make me eat the slimy things!) It really is a wonderful thing.
Which is why I am not going to apologize for my sudden and irreversible disdain for the sweaty, arrogant technogeek I saw on TV last night. I was innocently folding laundry while Boy clattered away on his laptop with the TV tuned to some random HDTV channel. (Sidenote: HDTV is awesome, except when you’re watching a panel of mostly middle-aged, overweight, overdressed “experts” sweat in the limelight. Because the wonder of HD lets you see every single bead of sweat in all its overheated glory as it slowly sliiiiiiiiiiides down one bulbous, balding forehead after another. It’s so realistic, you can almost smell the condescension.) Anyway…
Most of the dudes on this panel were gray-haired and suited up, but then there was the t-shirt wearing, greasy-haired thirty-something braniac behind BitTorrent. (An admittedly clever bit of technology.) He was demonstrating his uber-coolness and obvious superiority to all his fellow panelmates by sighing loudly, smirking to himself, muttering, threading his ballpoint through his fingers and clicking it on the table, and generally acting like every smelly, arrogant know-it-all slumping in a desk in the front every high school chemistry class.
Since I was doing the housewifey thing with the laundry and not really paying attention, I don’t know what the panel or discussion was about–something web- and technology-related. Mister BitTorrent, Boy Wonder, was yammering on about how the market is saturated with wannabe musicians today, and then somehow segued into poetry. “There’s just too much out there,” he said (paraphrasing). “In fact, I think some people need to take it upon themselves to just stop writing poetry.”
moment of silence
WHAT?
Ok. I’ll give him the point that there is a lot of crap out there. A lot of people who think they can rhyme and therefore write. A lot of people who are very good at crafting steaming piles of shit that they pass off as art. Hell, there’s a lot of published work that is just embarrassing. (*cough*Jewel*cough*) And I will be the first to admit that I don’t like very much poetry. BUT. I’m not sure that I can agree that there is too much out there. I mean, if you’re going to start getting rid of an overpopulation of something, why pick on poetry?
How about road rage. There’s definitely too much of that. Homophobia. Violence. Abuse. Scams. Hunger. Litter. Poverty. Disease. War. Big hair. Greed. Pollution. Inequality. Racism. Genocide. Purple fingernail polish. Conspiracy. Fear. There’s too much of all of that.
But you won’t see me marching against poetry anytime soon.
-Lo, who would definitely march to ban Jennifer Lopez from producing any more albums. If only such a thing would work…
LaDonnaWitmer 
