Tag: hate

99 Things I HATE! ~ Part 2

Part 1

21. I drink beverages too fast.


I sit for a coffee with friends. Sluuuurp! Up the straw it goes before anyone has even touched their own beverage of choice. It’s worse with alcoholic drinks… I don’t ever seem to realise that when it’s over, it’s over! And I just sip, sip sip the night away. I also eat and smoke faster than most people when in the company of others. It’s only then that comparison with others’ still full plates/glasses is possible and my worried, thoughtful scratching of beard is only natural. My solution? I just steal from the others’ food and drink.

22. I don’t know anything about Greek Music.

It has happened too many times to count: I’m with a big company at some taverna or place that is suitable for accommodating a number of people in the double digits. Everyone’s having fun, talking vividly and eating more vividly. Then, when everyone’s feeling cheerful, someone, somewhere, utters the words to the first song. And everyone catches on; and everyone sings along; and turn-in-turn everyone butts in with their own favourite Greek words and everyone else follows suit. It’s like that when there’s a live program as well. Guy playing the guitar, singing his songs that everyone knows. It doesn’t take much to take it out of you if you’ve drunk sufficient quantities of alcohol. “All together now!” And we all sing together.

Except me.

These songs… How should I put it. Yes. I might have heard them, I might even remember one or two lyrics just from sheer repetition (this kind of thing happens to me quite often), I usually remember the melody but I can never join the fun. Friends or acquaintances might know every single song by heart but I’m just left there to look around silently trying my best to have a good time but failing miserably, always thinking “wow. This feels so awkward. It sucks.”

Alas, such behaviours never go unnoticed. When everyone’s singing and they catch wind that I am not, they try to encourage me to join them. In the wake of their inevitable failure they look so disappointed in me, so… how should I say. There’s a certain Greek word that roughly translates into “party-pooper” and “killjoy” but lacks any of the playfulness of those two words. It’s kind of a brutal word, now that I think of it. It’s ξενέρωτος. Oh I’ve got that a lot throughout the years. I also get “you don’t know these songs?? You’re not really Greek”. I’ll let the look on my own face by this point to your imagination.

It feels as if knowing about Greek music is such a big part of our culture here that you can’t help not stick out like an alpine fox in the mud if you’ve kept well away from anything that has to do with the domestic musical product for pretty much your entire life. It’s not that I hate Greek music. I want to come to terms with it, explore and discover artists I’m bound to like or already know I like but haven’t bothered looking into more (Pavlos Sidiropoulos, Thanassis Papakonstantinou, Alkinoos Ioannidis, Lavrentis Maheritsas, works by Kavadias turned into songs). Some people in my life have helped me somewhat with discovering and getting to know some Greek music but never decisively and never beyond the realms of satisfying some of my polite curiosity. It’s that it’s polite curiosity at best.

What can I say? Maybe I’m not really Greek after all if I can’t, for the life of me, get into it all. Which is a perfect intro for my next hatred entry:

23. Nationalism.

Some Greeks call me Australian. Some (most?) Australians would call me Greek if I returned to OzzyLand. I’m really both and neither. My national identities sort of negate eachother but at the same time create a completely new existence, like a Yin and a Yang that alone are whole but together are whole-er. This may be the reason I could never exactly or comfortably identify with national ideas except for when I was only little (funny how “nationalist” children can be, or we’ve all been as children).

I don't like nor believe in flags but this could well be the flag of whatever my real nationality is. Designed by me.

This open-mindedness by default comes with a cost, however. A multicultural background always helps you break through the wall of deceit but at the same time alienates you from any and all cultures you might have some heritage from including the one you were born in. You start to inhabit your own space in the cultural web, at first as little more than a means to survive but eventually enjoying this uniqueness of yours, weaving your own new threads and connections, keeping the best from both worlds and inevitably creating a new one while you’re at it.

It’s all very nice and postmodern of course but other people look at you suspiciously. You’re one of them but not exactly. Everyone must belong, granted, but you can’t seem to decide whether you belong somewhere or nowhere. An ultimate decision is unlikely. And then there comes a day when you, tired of all this vagueness, ask yourself: why must nationality form the end-all be-all criteria of “belonging” in the first place? Aren’t there more important aspects to a person?

Nationalism might be one of the things I hate the most. I’ve come to hate it so much, so deeply, I find it hard to express myself, to find words that might accurately portray how deep this hatred goes. I’ll try.

To me, nationalism is a bit like football teams (another of the 99 things, can’t be a coincidence). You support an idea or a group of people just because you belong to it. Also called ethnocentricism for us social scientists. ~^, Having a concrete sense of national identity isn’t a bad thing on its own but most usually, just like with football teams and religion for that matter, it comes with denying everyone else’s right to do exactly what you’re doing: love their country above all else. Of course, again just like football teams and religions, nations are so self-centered they believe they are the only ones in the right, that there’s only enough room for none other than themselves at the top. Nations see everyone else as threats, as others, and that alone creates a self-fulfilling prophecy; when everyone sees everyone else as a threat some kind of threat is indeed created out of thin air. Just like when two people want to trust each other but because they’re afraid that the other will not want to comply, they keep to themselves, wholly generating their own image of untrustworthiness. It’s an endless loop.

Most nations have been founded on lies we now take for granted, unshakable truths, but this isn’t the time for me to go into detail on that. I hope you can understand what I mean. Nations have only served to distill fear, isolationism and hatred into people’s hearts. As a concept they encourage people to look for differences among themselves, not similarities, at least as far as inter-national relations are concerned. The similarities that can be found in the people within the borders of the nation-state are imaginary, arbitrary and never well-defined. Naturally, universal truths like love, friendship, global or special (species-al) co-operation are the first to die for the sake of national integrity and identity. It’s not much different than the ridiculous idea of loving your video game console so much you automatically hate, out of fear perhaps, anyone who might love another console. With the difference that people have died, killed others and created complex and perfectly valid — in social terms — historical narratives to support this madness in theory as well as in practice.

It’s everywhere, from the Olympic Games and Eurovision *spit* to wars of the past and lingering ideologies. In the name of your country you might be made to feel like it’s your duty to protect it against aliens and immigrants, secure your cultural traditions and history including religion and language, avoiding to look out to the world, because you were never taught that such a thing might not be such a bad idea after all. It might be dangerous. People out there are bad, they wish nothing more than the downfall of you and your country.

I’ve seen too many people get obsessed with lies about “racial” traits (I’m tired of listening to Greeks think they’re Ancient Greeks or their descendants… SO tired…), looking back and jerking themselves off with their nonsensical grand histories so that they can avoid looking at the awful present and the grim future while still feeling as if they’re something important or special. It enables people to feel good about themselves when they’ve been good for nothing. How can ANYBODY feel special about something they never earned or fought for themselves? I suppose unhappy times call for such sad measures.

If world borders, nation-states’ cornerstones, were torn down tomorrow, it’s probable that great wars would erupt, everyone still with their mind on national interests battling it out for a better place under the sun. A world without borders would require a world without ownership, another can of worms altogether. But in a world with no nations people might eventually discover the beauty of not having to fit in, of not being caged by your parents or what part of the earth you were born in but by what your actions are.

I wish people could feel the airy and  open-mind they could have instead of the musty, dark closed-mind they’ve had since forever and take sick pride in.

24. Getting distracted for hours on the net doing nothing I set out to do.

“I’m going to log-in. I’m going to check my e-mail, see Kalionatis’s site, download the notes, after that I’m going to see Tsekouras’s site and download his notes. Then I’ll do a little bit of Delphi, after that I’ll send some e-mails to my beloved friends and check out Helix’s workcamps; I really want to take part in some of those programs!”…

*Escapist* *Hotmail* *MSN* *Matador* *Cubimension, writing* *Hotmail* *Game 2.0* *XKCD* *Cubimension, reading* *MSN* *Facebook stalking — I KNOW I DON’T HAVE A FACEBOOK!* *Goodreads* *tvtropes* *Wikipedia hopping* *Random site about some random new interest of mine* *Steam offers* *IMDB* *Flickr* *Some porn site* *MSN* *Couchsurfing* *Various interesting blogs* *Youtube* *Looking into all about that new interest of mine* *Grooveshark, discovering new bands I found out about on progarchives.com and allmusic.com* *MSN* *

Dayum… what’s left to re-check and re-re-check?*

What was it that I wanted to do again?

25. Loose handshakes.

“Oh hi… I’m *insert name here*, pleased to meet you”.

Oh, how many times have people made a bad impression on me just because that first greeting was accompanied by a loose handshake and a fleeting glance? Seriously people. Look at others in the eye when you meet them. Squeeze their palm like you mean it, NOT as if you couldn’t care less. Which is probably true anyway.

26. Moving deadlines.

“OK I’ll have it ready by then”. But “then” never comes. Being a person of the absolutely utter last minute, that means that I can never get anything done, doesn’t it?

27. Delays on booting.

Black screen. Reboot. Black screen. Reboot. BIOS startup holds up at memory testing. CTRL+ALT+DEL, nothing happens. Hard reset. BIOS completes startup, then computer freezes when loading Windows. Hard reset. BIOS startup insists there’s no more than a single core in my dual-core CPU and thus refuses to continue (out of spite?). Hard reset. At last, at some point, Cuberick decides to open his eyes, sweep off his waking grogginess and serve me, more a result of luck than anything.

The funny thing is that when it’s up and running there’s no problem whatsoever. Heh. Maybe it’s like how it’s with cars where you’ve got to get the engine all warmed-up first or something. Hermes knows how on Earth I’ve resisted beating Cuberick to a pulp time after time. Not that it matters. He’s already managed to beat himself to a pulp with no further assistance needed from me.

28. Facts caught up from Wikipedia.

-“Did you know that blah-blah?”
*where blah-blah, insert your favourite fact you yourself have already read on Wikipedia but know plenty of stuff about it from non-Wiki sources*
-“Yes I did, but it sure doesn’t sound like anything you spent too much time looking into. What you did is you just presumed you’re the more informed of the two of us just because you’ve happened to have read the Wiki page. So, you see, Mr/Ms. Smartass, I’m afraid you’re not the only one around here reading and skimming pages on that site more than necessary”.

Asking further questions usually results in disappointment and less-than-accurate answers. And when it doesn’t, it feels so sterile I can almost smell the Dettol in the air.

29. It’s raining and my clothes won’t dry indoors!

I guess it happens everywhere. But my experience from Lesvos has taught me that, if it starts raining, oh, you can be certain that it won’t stop for at least the next few days. If my clothes are caught hanging to dry on their line outside during this humid time, you can foresee the rest. But if I leave them to dry inside, they may well take even longer to reach their rightful place inside by drawer! I recently wanted to wear one of my favourite sweaters. It had been hanging there to dry for at least a week on a drying rack Garret has lent me months now– I doubt he wants it back. I grabbed it, only to find that its hood was still moist! I threw it back to its place in disgust and hatred. Go to hell, humidity.

30. Losing progress in games.

Power cuts. Ancient game design. Human mistakes. “Retry” instead of “Save”. Forgetting that “this game doesn’t have autosave”. A patch destroying the previous versions savegames. Glitches and Blue Screens Of Death. Blue Screens of Death. Screens of Death.

Death.

Loss of progress in games, you’ve sent many good hours of life’s charms to gaming purgatory, to the nether-realm of human entertainment. You’ve made many a player blind with rage, unable to accept that their efforts and pain have only resulted in a mockingly not-up-to-date version of their save files. You’ve destroyed vast amounts of perfectly good faith in an equally good game, sent it down the drain, never to return, never allowing the player to give the perfectly good game another chance due to pure frustration. It’s the synonym of amnesia for gamers, the very meaning of oblivion.

If I could, loss of progress in games, I would slap you till your cheeks were raw and your voice not fit to cry for help.

 

…to be continued…

http://hallografik.ws/archive/?p=1275

99 Things I HATE! ~ Part 1

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.

Lyrics

This is a hate song just meant for you
I thought that I’d write it down while I still could
I hope when you hear this you’ll want to sue

Oh it’s a lonely life in my empty bed
And it’s a quiet life that leaks from my head
These are the last rites
The line is dead

Yes, I’m hearing voices too
And I’m more cut up than you

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…