Tag: cultural technology

So usually, we people don’t talk about the things we hate. It’s all about the things we like. Laughing, smiling… positive feelings. It’s as being angry or hating something is inherently wrong and should be avoided in proper social conduct at all costs. What’s ironic is that, in a way, anger is one of the strongest forms of commitment to something; if it’s enough to make us angry at all (and consequently hate it), then it must mean something to us, maybe even moreso than the things we like.

However, as much as we want to turn our heads to the fact that hate is wrong, impure and other things, there’s a lot of it around. I suppose one would be better off without hate in their life, that is if they manage to unroot it, which is much, much harder than what we’ve been conditioned to think. But that is rare in our culture; hate is usually buried under those smiles, those good manners. Our society is one that nurtures hate and anger, and it’s been made antisocial venting it, so we’re left with a problem.

I used to think that I was unable to hate anyone and anything. I thought that it was good of me to be like that. I even shared this apparent trait of mine with others: “I just can’t hate on anybody, I can’t get angry!” Years of experience have now shown me that not only can I get very angry, like any “normal” person should be able to, there are also some things that I hate. And I hate them with a passion. Such is my passion that I decided, after years of looking the other way, pretending and liking to think I had a kind, pure and non-hating nature to the point of stupidity, to proudly share them with you.

Why 99? 100 and 101 seem kind of arbitrary and too standard for my ever-deviating liking. You’ve got to admit it has a certain ring to it, ninety-nine. It subtracts, rather than adds. Less is more, and even less is even more, right? 😛 I also like nines. There!

This has been an unpredictably lengthy project. I’ve been jotting down things I hate as they’ve been coming to me since October. By the time of writing I’ve only reached #57 and all the obvious ones, for example cockroaches, are out. Things are getting rough. But you know what? The small, hidden ones are the most delicious, personal ones, the little things that make me hate the world’s guts for 15 minutes or so and then I forget all about. That’s where all the meaning is lying bare, waiting to be discovered by myself catching myself unprepared.

1. Solar glare.

When everything’s so bright but in a sick way, especially summer noons. It ruins my mood almost every time. It combines awfully well with the next one up:

2. Fumes.

I hate fumes. I hate these products of combustion, whether they come from cars, planes, trains, motorbikes, power generators, factories, ships… It doesn’t matter! They’re dirty, they’re quick to give you a headache, they smell bad, they can make even a beautiful place like Mytilini thick with smog. Disrespectful humans! I can’t believe we’re so primitive as to still, use oil so extensively…

3. Motorbikes making noise.

“So what I was meaning to tell you was VROOOOOOOOOO I can’t hear you! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM… *after 5 second pause* OK, where were we?” It makes it far worse when the riders have this smug expression on their faces, as if there’s some kind of hidden algorithm connecting the dB count of the noise they produce to the length of their penis. Yes there is such an algorithm, fellow bikers of the world. THE MORE NOISE YOU MAKE, THE SMALLER MR. DICKINSON IS. GET IT?

4. Cockroaches

Cockies (not the adorable cockatoo). Roaches. These horrible little creepy-crawlies that have made the lives of many a human miserable… What is it in these little buggers that gets to us so much? Is it their unnatural speed? Their apparent foresight by which they can predict any and all human attempts to kill them? Their dirty habits? Their evolutionary talent tree which has put maximum emphasis on survival and reproduction? That some of them have wings? That they can swim? That one means legion? That their legs have special sensors to detect movements of air and react without any input needed from the roach’s nervous system? That they can feed on anything, including glue and detergent? That they can survive without a head and ultimately die of starvation? That they call the sewers their home? That if they’re carrying eggs when they die they just launch them away from their body? Cockroaches are the ultimate answer to Yoda’s question…

Judge me by my size, do you?

5. Passive smoking.

You’ve all experienced it. Going into a taverna, bar or café and finding yourself in the elemental plane of fog. It makes you stink, it makes you dizzy, it’s almost as bad for you as smoking proper. So why is it so hard for people to accept that at some point things in Greece have to move on and that it would be the best for all of us if smoking was forbidden in closed spaces? I’m not talking about a general prohibition, just closed spaces guys. You can still go out to smoke! You and another 70% of the late-night bar-goers, so you can even socialise outside! Win-win, non?

6. It burns when I pee!

Sometimes, not very often thankfully, I go to the bathroom and the horrible happens… For a little while the sensation lingers, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s not that I have any sort of problem. It just appears and disappears at random, and has done so for years. It is very, very annoying.

7. Foam cups.

You order a scalding coffee from the uni cafeteria and they give it to you in this nasty foam cup. There’s bound to be something wrong with having hot liquids in plastic containers… They’re 100% environmentally unfriendly, too.

8. Toilets with holes too narrow.

Alternatively, toilets with flushes too weak. I’ll leave this to your exquisite imagination.

9. Sleeping in — waking up hours after the time I’ve set my alarm clock to ring.

Now, there’s something quite strange about my relationship with sleep. It’s a 1v1v1: trying to sleep early, trying to wake up early and trying to get as much sleep as possible are battling it out every single day. The victor more often than not, almost every time to be exact, being “trying to get as much sleep as possible”. Sometimes, just sometimes, as much as I love sleep, I’d rather sleep less and wake up early so as to start re-adjusting my bio clock. BUT NOOO! My brain think it’s a good idea to wake up at 12:30pm, every single day, no matter whether I’ve slept 6 hours or 10. The alarm clock most probably never gets heard at all. At best, it enters my mid-morning dreams as some kind of ominous speaker blast.

10. The sound of Spanish.

I strongly dislike this language for reasons unknown to me. However, I’d like to learn the language just as an attempt to shake off this prejudice of mysterious origin and also as a tool to travel through America, Pole to Pole, one of my ambitious travel plans…

11. Foam cups — inside bras.

If I find something particularly feminine, it is a hearty bosom. A foam cup filled bra gives false promises, it is hypocritic. It might make a woman’s figure look impressive at first, but when it gets down to it, it’s a flashy gift wrap with no gift! I should make myself clear though: I have no problem with gifts that have flashy giftwraps! TωΤ

Ladies, feel confident for what you are, your body is you, but it is also not you — you can only choose what you’re going to look like up to a certain extent. You have nothing to be ashamed of. If you’ve got large breasts, be proud of them. If you’ve got small breasts, be proud of them. Each case comes with its own pluses and minuses. Trying to be something you’re not is disappointing and not sexy. And this applies to everything conceivable. “Be yourself” might be one of the most cliché phrases this side of “never say never again”, but I find it applies here.

12. Dirty lettuce.

This goes particularly for all the student restaurants that are pretending they’re providing us with healthy food, as long as they’re giving us salad (but it is applicable to every bad restaurant out there). When it’s not cabbage — which has little nutritional value and makes you fart a lot — it’s this lettuce that looks as if it’s been taken from the field and thrown into the plate, no questions asked , including all the pesticides, herbicides, -icides, bugs (mutated to survive the -icides), dirt, you name it. No wonder it tastes bitter…

Long story short: You’re getting paid to cater to us. That includes keeping us healthy. Don’t make ridiculous excuses of yourselves in this way. At least wash the lettuce, for fuck’s sake! Please.

13. Bureaucracy.

Now there, that’s something we can all agree upon. Who doesn’t hate bureaucracy? No, my hatred is so intense it makes your average bureaucracy hating look like child’s play next to the fecking crusades. It might be because I admittedly have a sort of fear of bureaucracy. To be honest, I can’t tell which came first, the fear or the hate? That might be because I’m naturally repulsed by anything counter-intuitive. I have the distinct impression that the term “counter-intuitive” was coined to describe bureaucracy.

Anything that might make me have to go through bureaucracy gets the same treatment, unfortunately. This includes Greek and international volunteer programs, Erasmus, insurance, grants, even working for payment when it demands some sort of paperwork. All of this makes me nervous, as if by my showing up, the state and/or the EU will suddenly realise I’ve been a mistake all along and commence my extermination procedure.  Even though I’m sure I’ll never get past my hatred for bureaucracy, if I want to do anything of value I have to at least conquer my fear of it.

14. Face piercings, especially when done in attempts to fit in and totally don’t suit one’s face.

I’ve been seeing lots of nose and lower lip rings lately. Piercings that look like moles, across the eyebrows, or even in the middle of the cheek! I just cannot comprehend it. Girls and boys alike wear them as if they were trophies. In most cases they detract from the beauty of a face, which leads me to only one conclusion: that they’re done because it is cool to do so, not because they’re particularly pretty. A piercing anywhere but on the easrs is something that immediately separates one from the sheeple and provides admission to the Hip People With No Moral Restraints Club, 2 in the price of 1 with the Social Rejects Club, free sex for the first 25 in line, hurry! Ugh. No thanks. If it’s done properly it can be pretty, which is of course an empty phrase. It’s akin to stating “religion is a good idea, if only people really followed their beliefs!” Again, no.

15. Can’t you see I want to be alone?

Sometimes I try to find a little cozy spot somewhere at Uni Hill or perhaps at a café somewhere in town to read, write, or otherwise do my thing. Nuh-uh! Not if people feeling particularly chatty have a say in it! Color me anti-social. Maybe I am. Maybe I want to be social when I’m feeling like it. Go on then! Seclude me from society. Maybe then we can throw a party at the Social Rejects Club together with all the pierced people.

And it’s not like I look as if I have a big green sign over my head flashing “Online/Available” for all to see. Usually, (note)books or laptops in your immediate vicinity might signify that they are there for a reason, they could work as the equivalents of a “Busy” sign. Tough luck with that.

There’s no “Appear Offline” to get away from people who just can’t take a hint or are feeling particularly itchy to share with the world (case in point: me) that they had tea instead of coffee this morning, or that they watched a documentary on Ancient Egyptian religion (which might have been interesting if they tried to remember, or were able to reproduce half of it, and not say: “I think it said… hmm… nah I’m not sure” after the first question) or that they downloaded a huge torrent of hentai last night. It’s as if what’s deemed important to share with others over the internet has spread to real life! Blame Facebook. That’s what I do and it makes me happy. Maybe I should be more… expressive of this hatred of mine? Should I draw the line when necessary? Should I stop worrying about other people’s feelings so much? Do I honestly expect too much of people even with this simple little thing? Bah humbug!

16. Why won’t it just focus?

DSLRs, and most notably my own Olympus E-510, which I love and hate dearly at the same time, really hate focusing. They do. They have tiny viewfinders, stupid digital MF rings, their AF is sluggish and annoying. Low-light conditions are the worst, of course. Taking photos suddenly becomes unbearably unwieldy, especially if you have live subjects that — just — won’t — FOCUS!

17. –“Are you on MSN?” – “Yes”.

– “…”

18. Dark for dark’s sake.

A lot of people, friends including, seem to be very much attracted to “dark” stuff. Vampires, blood, death, paranoia, horror, pessimism, doom & gloom ltd, goths, spikes, guns, guts, disease, (post-)apocalypse, BLACK BLACK BLACK, oh-my-life’s-story-so-dark-and-melancholy-I-can’t-share-it-with-you-at-will-sorry-’bout-that, emotions = compulsive depressive. It’s so fake, yet so… cool. Yep, scratch that off the hate list. Not to mention the real horrors of life are carefully veiled, tucked away and far from sight. But most people who are dark and all won’t dare look that way, of course.

19. Cell phone service messages.

“Έχετε τέσσερα λεπτά και 58 δευτερόλεπτα διαθέσιμα γι’αυτή την κλήση”. You have 4 minutes and 58 seconds available for this call. Every time I call Cosmote to find out my remaining credits they force a needless advertisement down my auditory canal. Cheap, guys. Very cheap. Or when suddenly your remaining credits get to minus due to excessive texting combined with the service unresponsive credit reduction, forbidding you to even perform an αναπάντητη. Customer service and satisfaction is a non-entity in Greece.

20. “Cultural Technology? What’s that?“

Of course! I get it. All. The time. From taxi drivers, to distant relatives, to dates, to long lost acquaintances, to random encounters at parties, everyone feels the need to inquire on what it is exactly I’m doing at Mytilini. Which is normal I suppose. Yes, it is normal, and a sign of polite curiosity. I don’t like going into depth on what I do,though, because more often than not, people aren’t that interested. Then, I figure, why spend the energy telling the truth about my “primary” occupation if it’s not to be appreciated? It’s a hard task. Since the dept does not really know what it’s about itself, it’s a different story I have to invent on the fly every time. There’s no “official”, easy answer. If I spot that the person with which I am holding palaver is genuinely interested, I’ll describe what I’m doing over here in Mytilini gladly. But I must admit I’ve done my fair share of over-simplification or flat-out lying about my field of studies…

to be continued…