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!
As I was growing up, I was always encouraged to try new foods. With having travelled quite a bit too, at this point, I very rarely refuse to try any cuisine, even if it is a bit out of the ordinary.
Being brought up in Hong Kong in both Chinese and international contexts, I learned very early on that consuming things like duck's liver, bird's nest, shark's fin, and turtle shell jelly (pictured above), was pretty weird to some people - specifically those that weren't local Chinese. But to me, my beloved grandmother, and the rest of my Chinese-side family, it was perfectly normal. (And yes, I've tried and love all of those things.)
Recently, I've been listening to a lot of people give China crap about eating things like dog, because they're a creature that the Western world has domesticated. Or things like scorpion or tarantula, because they sting and they're poisonous and they look too different from us humans. Give China a break, man, it's a big country, with the largest population in the world. I'd be surprised if all 1.3 billion of us were only eating cow, chicken and pig, animals we're 'supposed to eat'.
What, like the French don't eat steak tartare, escargot, or frog legs? The Spanish eat bull testicles. And the Texans deep-fry rattlesnake. Australians eat kangaroo, crocodile eggs and ostrich. The Americans use cod liver oil as a vitamin A supplement. And the English feast on pig's blood every morning in the form of black pudding.
The Americans invented chewing gum - I mean, if you really think about it, that's a pretty weird idea for someone to come up with.
Foreign food should not be looked at in disgust. I respect whatever your personal preferences are, or what you feel about certain animals - I really do. I mean, some things I find weird, too. For example, I find it weird that Ukrainians eat bear, Filipinos eat chicken fetus, Alaskans eat raw fat from whales, and Icelandic people eat puffin. I'm weirded out by it, but I would never feel disgusted by any of these things because it's just what different people in different parts of the world have become adapted to eating. If you're an animal rights activist, well, good for you for trying to conserve different species. If you hate spiders, that's fine as well.
But I'm not pressuring you to like these things. Just accept that others eat these things, just respect that others may even love eating these things. Nobody's trying to force-feed any of these 'disgusting' foods down your throat, so we shouldn't have to swallow our feelings of embarassment when you say that they're disgusting.
Today, for some reason, I seem to be a magnet for filthy slatterns who do not shower. Since I woke up this morning, I have seen nine slobs - oh, wait a minute, that's the incorrect verb - what I mean to say is, on nine different occasions, I smelled particular stenches, looked up, and then found slobs present before my eyes.
Nine times, I've seen long, slick hair sweeped backwards carelessly behind a head all greased up by the owner's own natural oils, and if you were to look down in search of comfort, you would unsuccessfully find instead, moisture, soil, and God knows what excrement, darkening the shade of denim blue at the ankle hemlines, and should you wish to look back up again, you will regrettably observe a great abundance of earwax, shades of yellow and orange, formally watery, initially runny enough to ooze down to the mouth of the ear canal, but on exposure to the air, now dried and viscous enough to adhere to the rim of the concha and remain there as an unslightly spectacle for those unfortunate enough to have caught a glimpse of it, and assuming you draw your eyes downwards again to avoid further analysis of his aural secretions, you will discover sweaty, clammy hands, with nails fraught with rubber shavings-like clumps of dirt, and finally, on the occasion you may look upwards at his face once more, in some morbidly humorous way, for a fifth demonstration of sickly squalor, you will notice a horrifying dentition, teeth ruined by poor oral hygiene and persistent nicotine smoking, yellow like Dijon mustard, reeking a breath reminiscent of grandpa when he used to lean towards you to tell you one of his most valued secrets.
I swear one of them even smelled like vinegar - his sweat was so old and musty that it stank like expired milk, reeked of rotten eggs, funked like decaying meat, the pH level decreased so low that it was caustic, unbearable for me to even stay near him for ten seconds longer.
I'm not asking that people shower everyday like I do... I'm not even offering my hygienical recommendation. If you smell bad, take a shower, because you're upsetting one of my senses, in fact the one that gets disturbed the least, which makes the crime all the more depraved. Otherwise, please, do us all a favor, and don't leave the house at all.
(From www.damninteresting.com) "In the scientific and medical communities, the technical name for using one's finger to extract boogers is rhinotillexis, and doing so compulsively is termed rhinotillexomania. The act of eating the resulting harvest is called mucophagy."
There was a Dr. Friedrich who professed that eating your boogers is a healthy venture. The premise behind this conclusion was the fact that boogers, chock full of germs, when consumed, would lead the body to develop more antibodies, and make it more resilient to bacterial disease, thus improving the overall immune system. This is definitely one of the most stupid, senseless, dim-witted, annoying, ridiculous, laughable and mindless things I've ever heard in my life.
If you want to prevent getting sick, you best avoid germs, by washing your hands a lot, cooking your food thoroughly, clearing the grime from under your fingernails, dispose of tissue papers properly after blowing your nose into them, and separating the cutlery you use for raw food from those for cooked food.
Also, it's best you not ingest dried bits of mucus infested with them. I don't know. Maybe a number of your readers need me to point that out to you.
It's also quite gross for other people to witness you doing it. I don't get sickened easily by sights of unsightly things - blood and gore, hardcore violence, explicit sex, death and illness, mental dysfunction, or claimed evidence of supernatural manifestations - but for some reason, even just picturing a booger going into someone's mouth gives me a sick feeling, a slight inclination to vomit out of disgust.
So, I have to catch two buses in order to reach ASDA, which, if you didn't know already, is a British supermarket chain that sells foods, clothes, magazines, and miscellaneous paraphernalia. I need to go there because the stuff that they sell in the university supermarket is overpriced, and there isn't as much of a variety on campus. The ASDA in Canterbury is big, and they do a lot of good deals, the choices you have to pick from is great.
Basically, I was waiting for the second bus that takes me to ASDA. It came eventually, and I stepped on board. As the bottom deck of the double-decker bus was crowded, I decided to go upstairs.
Sitting in the front of the second storey of the bus, were these five chavs and chevettes - for all of you unfamiliar with those terms, a stereotypical chav is a British-made derogatory term for a young adult who often engages in rambunctious public behavior, and have little-to-no money and education under their name. A chevette is the female form of chav. The first thing they did, was say, "It's Jackie Chan walking up the stairs."
...No.
One of these stuck-up morons was eating a packet of fries. For what seemed like no good reason at all, she would put one fry in her mouth, then take an alternate one and throw it down the stairs. To me, it seemed like she found it amusing in her own mind. But she wasn't laughing out loud, though, so maybe it was just 'cause she was bored?
She would eat consume one, then throw one on the floor, at the front window, or down the stairs. I watched as her friends didn't seem to give a damn about her littering. One of those friends was actually too busy sticking up the middle finger at random bystanders on the streets and in the windows of some buildings. I was trying to read a book, but this was simply too fascinating to me. I certainly don't think that all English people act this way, I've observed a few lunatic kids back in Hong Kong - but they were definitely some interesting specimens.
The girl with the fries started getting a bit full, I suppose, so she stopped alternating her ingestion and her disposal of fries, and instead, just stuck with throwing them down the stairs.
Maybe her arm got tired?
Because then she just threw the whole packet, still half-full of french fries, down the stairway.
At my workplace, I am not the sole bartender there is. There is one other, and he is a tall, Nepalese man in his twenties. He has a lot more experience doing this than I do. He can make a large variety of drinks, tell a lot of good jokes to keep the atmosphere buoyant, reach bottles and glasses on high shelves effortlessly, and perhaps best of all, spot the beautiful ladies at the bar as soon as they appear. There are some things that he still has to learn, though, and one of them is the fact that he has bad breath.
Restaurants and bars get pretty noisy, especially around 8 to 9pm. The music is blaring, people are chit-chatting, and the boss, the waiters, the waitresses, the barmen, the chef, and the sous-chefs, are all shouting at each other about this table and that, in order to keep the food and drink running smoothly.
And since it's so loud, us bartenders must sometimes resort to approaching each other, up close, to communicate. And when my partner comes up to me, and wants to clandestinely mumble something to me about this red wine nearly running out of stock, or how that customer over at table 28 is a total asshole, that moment is when I get a whiff of his odorous sigh.
I'll admit, I don't have the best oral hygiene. For the past few years, there are times when I'm just too tired and lazy to brush my teeth. I try to brush my teeth during my morning shower, but you see, keeping my teeth clean is not the point. The point is, I chew on gum, and I nibble breath mints, and I eat mint chocolate chip-flavored ice cream, in order to keep my breath fresh. (Okay, that last one sort of works against me in the long-run. I'm just joking about that.)
I don't mind if people don't use any soap when they shower, so long as they use deodorant/perfume before I see them (but of course, using soap is... preferred). There are just some things people need to do to be presentable around others. My bartending friend is fit to be seen, but his breath is utterly revolting.
I'm in a very moody state right now, but I have no idea why. My hair is sort of messy as I've been in bed all day, my back feels like being curved today because I'm too lazy to sit up straight, my whole body feels tired, I'm hungry but not really bothered to go out to the kitchen, my hands and feet are cold but sweaty, my neck aches when I bend it like this and I could really use some company. I really feel like going out right now.
Argh, yuck. I grabbed my mouse just now and there's this grayish grime that's been building up on the left and right clickers. I'm just going to get a tissue to wipe it off... (that's what she said)
It's disgusting how hands sweat so much on keyboards, mouses, phones, game console controllers, iPods, and the like. I hate how keyboards accumulate the greatest mass and variety of filth, everything from hair, through dust, fingernails, staples, ketchup, dandruff and bread crumbs, to tiny paper circles that were punched out with a hole puncher. In my experience, the worst thing to enter the crevices between your keys are just liquids in general, such as tea, water, Coca Cola or coffee. The beverage, together with the other stuff, forms this sticky, yellowish guck, which is just horrible to look at, and unappealing to clean.
What's worse is that time when you come around to cleaning the back of your desktop computer, or to clean the filter in your laptop... Yuck. How dirty and gross is your hardware?
This has nothing to do with tattoos but may I have your attention for just a second?
My aunt has just launched Charma International Limited, her own online boutique that sells jewelry and household accessories. They make very good gifts (albeit a little late to buy for Christmas) and I would love for all of you committed readers to check her website out.
------------------------------------------------------------ (Be forewarned: Explicit photograph to come. If you are a sensitive perceiver, avert your eyes and come back for the next post.)
It's known amongst my friends that I have a phobia of frogs and lizards. Now, when it comes to tattoos and piercings... I think they fit into Top Fear #3 and #4. But hey, this specific form of tattoo is utterly horrid. Skin removal? Yikes.
I might get a tattoo if there's one that really suits me enough, but really, I think there are better ways of expressing oneself.
Back in primary school, I had a classmate that would eat his own dandruff. He had an awful lot of it to indulge himself with and as a thoughtful young boy back in the day, I really had to convince myself to believe that eating dandruff was wrong. It's dangerous to have a kid with such a habit go to school with lots of other kids and have the other kids potentially see it and practice the bad habit themselves. It reminds me of Fat Bastard in Austin Powers: Goldfinger. It's horrible. It's like those horror stories you hear about people that eat their own boogers or suck on their own earwax. It's enough to make someone vomit. Yeuck.
I went to get a couple of injections about a year ago because I was going to Thailand and I didn't want to get malaria. As I sat in the lobby waiting for my name to be called up to signal me into the doctor's office, I noticed that the 20-something man sitting next to me had many, many white flakes all over his hair. What made it even worse was the fact that there was a fan in the room that moved from left to right and left again. Every time it pointed toward us, the man's dead skin would depart from his head and arrive on my lap. It took every little drop of willpower inside me to resist standing up dramatically, shouting at the guy to suggest he use some special shampoo or something, risk getting bitten by a malaria-containing mosquito and leave without getting my injection.
I take pride in having relatively clean hair. I used to wash it with three shampoos and two conditioners everyday because I had this whole germaphobe phase. It was quite troublesome and expensive to do that on a daily basis. Now, I wash it everyday with one shampoo and one conditioner. I changed my ways. Go me!
Anyway, having dandruff is something I really can't stand about some people. As for consuming it after it's fallen from one's head, I hate that with a much greater intensity. It's utterly revolting.
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