A blog written by a guy trying to get his mind around the existence of all the stupid, senseless, dim-witted, annoying, ridiculous, laughable and mindless things that people do every, single, day.
In the year of 2008, having lived in Hong Kong for more than eighteen years, I, Michael Rivera, felt the need to reach out to the wider global community, to have my voice heard, through the World Wide Web. At the time, I pondered how I could possibly write in a way that would achieve the world's attention, and what else is more universal, more relatable, than the beautiful emotion of hate?
Feel free to e-mail me if you have anything you want to share, suggest, criticize, inquire or comment on!
I'm sure we all agree that our parents, our spouses, our children and our boyfriends and girlfriends are the biggest drama queens and kings in our lives. A while back, I blogged here about how my mother once found cigarettes in my desk drawer while I was out of the house. She was utterly upset by her nicotine discovery, and called me up to say that she would be taking these away from me. The fact that I had only smoked (half of) one didn't matter to her. She told me she didn't care if I went to another convenience store to purchase some. She was going to take that packet of cigarettes and that was the end of the story, according to her, as demonstrated by her hanging up the phone.
But not on my terms was that the end. I thought she had blown the whole thing in her mind way out of proportion, so I called her back to try to explain to her that I had only tried one cigarette and I didn't even like it. The dial tone rang and it rang and I tried again and again, each time I dialed, it was picked up by her voicemail service.
On the sixth or seventh time, there was no ringing sound - instead, it went straight to voicemail - and upon realizing that my mother had turned her phone off altogether to avoid more argument with me, in a compulsive fury, I raised my own mobile phone up high above my head, and smashed it on to the ground. Before I could even fathom what had just happened, battery, buttons, and bits of screen were scattered all over the ground in front of me.
Talk about overreacting.
People freak out about a great number of things, like lip piercings, and grades of B- or lower, and little boys who may or may not have drifted away in helium balloons.
Does this mean my daughter's having sex with her new boyfriend?
Does this mean we're all going to die in 2012?
The guy over there is sneezing and sniffing a lot, could he have swine flu?
Take the following story as a prime example of what I mean.
On December 19th, thanks to such social networking sites as Facebook and Twitter, over 200 people were able to gather beside a street in downtown Washington D.C. to have a friendly neighborhood snowball fight. As the snowball fight was well underway, a large maroon Hummer drove by the neighborhood, and members of the public decided to launch snowballs towards the vehicle.
It turned out that the driver of the car was a detective who, I guess, just wasn't liking the snow that day. He got out of his car holding a walkie-talkie in one hand, and waving a gun in the other.
Why on Earth would he take out his gun?
Apparently, it was because of the simple reality that he had been hit with snowballs.
I wonder if at any point he had considered throwing snowballs back at them instead of pointing a gun. Or considered throwing his phone at them. I also wonder what his mother was thinking when she heard about that.
A seriously bad habit of mine is my tendency to lose my temper easily, otherwise known as flipping my lid, throwing a fit, hitting the roof/ceiling, flying off the handle (what?), going mad, flipping my wig, blowing a fuse, having kittens (huh?), blowing my stack (...whatever that means), 'combusting', going ballistic, going crackers, going bananas and being driven up the wall.
The word 'temper' comes from the Latin word, temperare, and it used to refer to the balance of certain elements within a mixture that would soon be 'tempered' into metal. People later used the word to refer to mental balance, and when one loses that balance, they are said to have 'lost their temper'.
I guess it's not the getting angry part that I dislike. What I dislike is the childish behavior that comes with it. I'm talking about the long, quick, dramatic strides while walking around, the loud slamming of the door, the exaggerated heavy breathing accompanied by larger nostrils, the obvious glares one sends towards the guilty party, the pounding of books, canteen trays, coffee mugs, pencil cases and other items upon the table, the refusal to speak, the crossing of arms and just the general temperament that radiates one, single message to everyone around you: I'm f***ing pissed, living in my world SUCKS, I'll make YOUR world suck, by SLAMMING doors and POUNDING books on the table, so that YOU can have a taste of the suckiness I'M experiencing.
All of that is really immature, don't you think?
I remember I had this one birthday, where I got this cool, new watch as a present. I was trying to put it on myself, but then my grandmother offered to put it on for me. She took the watch right out of my hands, and started to help me, but I just lost it completely. My independence must've been a big deal, even then, 'cause I threatened to step hard on to her foot if she attempted to help me a second time. My mother made that mistake, I slammed my foot onto hers and stormed out of the house crying. Crazy stuff.
I guess if you do get mad, you need to have good reason. I remember there was one occasion where I was trying to throw a paper CD case to my friend. It ended up hitting a girl in the face and she got really mad at me for... a day or so. I apologized on the spot, but she still had good reason to be angry for a while. And I know she reads this blog. Sorry again!
When you win a game, you still get your sore losers though, and at school/work, you get the rebellious classmates/co-workers that don't get treated 'fairly'. Oh, and when people do any of the things that I've discussed in this blog, I can get quite irritated if my mind dwells on it for too long. When things don't go our way or when they irritate us, handling it is quite a test of patience, tolerance and character. I lose my temper a lot and it does get quite awful at times.
I'm talking about the clingy type. They constantly ask to hear about your opinions and your life. They follow you everywhere you go like a puppy. They tell you about their life because they think you care about them enough to listen. They find every opportunity to talk to you at school or at work. They try to sit next to you when you're at the movies or when you're eating in a restaurant and worse yet, they calculatingly forbid others from taking 'their' place. Even in the privacy of your own home, they call you up, they text you, they talk to you online, they comment on your blogs, they come over in the morning, just to be with you, just to talk to you, just to live alongside you.
I'm talking about the clingers.
So, the inspiration behind today's thoughts. On Halloween night, I went out with a few friends of mine to have a few drinks and a bit of dance. Within our little group of friends was one girl and five guys, one of the guys of which was the girl's boyfriend. He wasn't much of a dancer, probably insecure for whatever reason, and he stood there, stiff as a rock, while the loud music played. I asked him if he'd like to go have a drink with me at the bar if he wasn't going to dance with us, but he said he was going to stay with his girlfriend. And I just found it really weird. He was a clinger.
I've known several couples in my time, and there's always a few couples where either one of the partners is clingy. I can also think of a clingy friend or two, and I can sadly say that I know I have been clingy on many occasions. While it's very kind and affectionate to get so attached to someone so deeply, one still needs to find the balance between treasuring a relationship and over-treasuring it.
The brutal truth is, it's only annoying when the feeling isn't mutual; when one starts to cling on to the other with a significantly greater intensity. My most loyal friends and I, I reckon, have formed a variety of different systems that work for us, in order for us to interact smoothly and avoid the least arguments. Even though I am deeply satisfied (and incredibly fortunate) having them to brighten up my world, I at least try to keep an open mind toward those that try to lay the brickwork for a new and friendly road into my heart. I try to look at the good side of people (that's irony for you on this blog) and I find that bonding with other humans is the most humane thing people do in the world (as I am, again, ironically trying to do with you, using this blog).
In my experience, however, I have had a few clingers and it has been difficult rejecting them, not rejecting them per se, but just trying to incorporate my feelings of you're coming on a bit too strong into my everyday body language, by intertwining my arms across my chest to barricade myself from them, slouching as a sign of boredom and averting my gaze to demonstrate disinterest. It isn't easy telling them to take a step back and turn it down a notch using honest words, but I guess clingers are simply something we all have to deal with at some point in our lives, advisably in a friendly and humane manner for the sake of human compassion, or perhaps in fear of karma biting us in the ass.
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