Tag Archives: shame

On litter and trashy people…

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A few months ago, I kicked around the idea of starting up a weekly limited feature focused on topics that some people might consider controversial, unpopular, or otherwise not appropriate for polite company. Nothing much came of the idea then, but it has stewed in my head ever since. This is the next of what I like to think will be a recurring series of Friday evening contemplations. If you’re easily offended, or for some reason have gotten the impression that your friends or family members have to agree with you on every conceivable topic, this might be a good time to look away. While it’s not my intention to be blatantly offensive, I only control the words I use, not how they’re received or interpreted.

Any time I’m forced out of the house on such mundane errands as going to work or picking up groceries, I can’t help but notice just about every road I travel is hopelessly trashed with anything small enough to fit through the window of the average passenger car. There are a few predictable spots where a couple times a month you can count on finding a couch, a mattress, tires, or other large items that “feel off the back” of someone’s truck. 

The average person seems to go out of their way to avoid actually using trash cans even where they’re readily available. They’re satisfied with throwing whatever’s at hand directly on the ground in the parking lot, on the sidewalk, or wherever they happen to be when they have something to discard. 

That people can’t collectively be trusted to do something as basic as not throw an entire bag of McDonald’s wrappers out their car window isn’t surprising, but it’s a sad commentary on exactly how low the bar of expectation really is. It would make me wonder what the conditions are in people’s homes. Given that they can’t or won’t keep things clean when they’re in public, I can only assume they live in utter filth in private where there’s no one at all to judge them.

Based on the sheer volume of trash that’s piled up alongside the road over the winter, I can only speculate that it’s the result of a sizable minority of the population who just well and truly doesn’t give one single shit about anyone or anything around them. Since there are already laws that “prevent” littering, I don’t suppose we can legislate our way into making people any less slovenly. We could, however, enforce the hell out of the laws already on the books – fine people into oblivion, throw some of the worst offenders directly into jail, or hey, maybe even seize the vehicles that were used in the commission of the crime.

Until being an absolute shitbird is made prohibitively painful, I don’t see any other means of getting after yet another issue that stems from a complete lack of personal responsibility and non-existent consequences.

Purge…

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I’ve been quietly purging my Instagram follows for the last few days. It was a more monumental task that I expected. It turns out that years of indiscriminate adding anyone that catches your attention will eventually stack up to be something entirely unwieldy.

I’ll make no apologies for the number of scantily clad e-girls, Insta models, cam girls, and porn stars who still pepper the feed. The Puritans left us with a centuries old sense of shame when confronting anything that even hints at nudity, let alone confronts that notion of humans as fundamentally sexual creatures – so much so that I even question the wisdom of saying this out loud here on my own platform. Fortunately, the amount of shame I feel about anything is inversely proportional to my age… and I appear to be reaching the stage of life where I have almost no shame at all. 

I hadn’t really set out today to write a post about my appreciation for the partially clothed human form, but here we are.

Instead of getting too focused on that, let me just say I’m sorry if anyone I actually know in the real world has or gets caught up in my ruthless sweep of the “following” list. It absolutely wasn’t intentional so feel free to send me a nudge to add you back.

Who to blame or, Bad intentions…

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I have a very simple rule here at Fortress Jeff: When bad things happen as a result of piss poor decision making, the buck stops with me. I get the credit for the good stuff so it’s only fair that I take the blame when my decisions go awry.

When I was 20 years old and walked into the cave-like bar in the basement of the Hotel Gunter, I knew damned well and good I was under the legal drinking age. I also knew they’d serve me. When the local constabulary arrived asking to see everyone’s papers, I wasn’t the victim of a totalitarian police state. I was the victim of being a stupid 20 year old making my own bad decisions.

Four years later, when my beloved Jeep was broken into. The slash and grab cost me a few hundred dollars of CDs and an ashtray full of change. Yes, I blame the criminal for breaking into a locked vehicle, but I share the burden of blame because I left an easy target sitting in plain sight. If there hadn’t been something of obvious value in clear view I wonder if he’d have passed on to the next target of opportunity.

If nothing else, social media has shown me that we live in a world where people think we should just all love one another and there are butterflies and peppermint sticks at every turn. The reality is that we live in a world where bad things happen and where there are natural consequences that accompany every action. When you play stupid games, there’s a strong probability that you will win stupid prizes. No amount of wishing it different will change that.

I’m not here to shame any victims or absolve the fault of any criminals, but I am here to say that we’re all responsible for our own behaviors and actions. Bad things happen to good people all the time. The very best thing we can do as individuals is to understand the important relationship between action and consequence and the do our best to mitigate our personal risk factors. One awfully easy way of reducing the number of bad things that could happen to you is to give it some thought before you walk down a dark alley alone, or leave your computer laying on the back seat of your car, or drink until you’re blind drunk. People with bad intentions are out there already and they may do horrible things anyway, but it damned well doesn’t mean we should make ourselves an easy mark because we think we’ll be untouched by other people’s bad decisions and immune to the consequences of our own.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Filling up the quiet time. Some people assume that because I’m not talking they need to find a way to fill in all the quiet time. Rest assured, if something needs said I’ll say it in front of princes, profits, potentates, or presidents without regard to their rank, race, or religion. I’m quiet, not shy. There is a difference. On the other hand, when I don’t have anything of substance to add, I’m happy sitting quietly. I don’t need an endless nattering buzz of small talk in my ear to make me feel connected. Most days I desperately wish some people didn’t have a pathological need to fill in the quiet times with pointless chatter.

2. iPhone. I love my iPhone 5. It’s been a workhorse since the day UPS handed it to me. Since then, we’ve gone everywhere together. We’ve been inseparable. Sure, the UI could use an update and I wouldn’t mind a bigger screen sometimes, but those aren’t the issues that make up the hate end of my love-hate relationship with this phone. It’s the battery life. It wasn’t great right out of the box, but over the last few months it’s gotten progressively worse. Through resets, wipes, switching off functions known to draw lots of power, and aggressively managing what apps are open, I can sort of slow the battery drain a bit, but that’s not exactly a substitute for a battery that doesn’t suck. I’m trying to think of a good reason why after three hours of pretty limited use, my battery is drawing down towards 50% and none really come to me. I’ll limp along with a handful of cables and a external battery pack until the 5S comes along… but if that battery doesn’t show some significant performance enhancements, it might be time to reevaluate iPhone’s place as my daily carry.

3. Turning left. When you’re the first vehicle in the left turn lane, you should go ahead and pull all the way forward to the stop line. That way the invisible traffic gnome knows that you’re trying to turn left at the intersection and can wave his green light wand to change the signal. When there’s a line of traffic 40 cars deep sitting behind you in the left turn lane, it’s sort of a bad time to be confused by basic effing driving skills, you useless excuse for a meat sack. I have no idea why it’s socially unacceptable to drag people from their cars and beat them with a Stick of Shame for such mindless asshattery.