Me, Narrow-Minded, Shallow, and Mean-Spirited? Trust Me: You Have No Idea

Last updated on: October 21, 2010 at 12:26 pm by John Shore

Me, Narrow-Minded, Shallow, and Mean-Spirited? Trust Me: You Have No Idea 2010-10-21T12:26:52-08:00 John Shore

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So I’m in a Starbucks—where over the sound system they’re just now playing Sly Stone’s It’s a Family Affair, sung by (I think) Lou Rawls.

BRB. I have to ask one of the Starbucks employees if they happen to have sharp knife in the back that I could borrow for just a moment to cut off my ears.

Anyway, wanted to say real quick: What I care about is the truth. I don’t care what that truth looks like once it’s been dragged out from wherever it’s been hidden—but I’ll pull it out of the bowels of Satan himself if he’ll just hold still long enough to … well, let me sick Michael Rowe on him, because Michael knows how to scare people, whereas when I get nervous I start being funny, and I’m loathe to make the devil laugh because I’m sure when he does he sprays saliva all over the place, and I’m pretty sure Satan spit stains.

Anyway … right.

So what was I saying?

Oh: so, I think I need to be clear about something: I don’t like atheists, okay? They tend to be frothing, logic-challenged reactionaries who’ve transferred onto God their raging anger at their parents. I also don’t like Christians—for all the same reasons atheists don’t.

I don’t like Muslims, either. Every time I try to read the Qur’an, I get so confused I feel like I’ve delved into the middle of a 10,000-page Babylonian tax code. If those people want to believe in something so confoundedly difficult for me to understand, that’s their business. But it compels me to have to dislike them. I hope they’re aware of the cost of their impenetrableness.

I don’t like people who do covers of other people’s great songs. I don’t like people who mistake canines for fashion accessories. I don’t like men who tuck in their Hawaiian shirts. I don’t like women who ask their one-year-olds what they want to eat. I don’t like assholes who complain about illegal immigration. I don’t like people so stupid they’re still driving SUV’s. I don’t like people who leave polling places proudly adorned with one of those insipid little “I Voted!” stickers. I don’t like men with complicated facial hair. I don’t like women who clearly think cute is all life requires them to be. I don’t like anyone who knows too much about wine. I don’t like mega-church leaders—and I’m not that thrilled with regular church leaders, either.

In a nutshell, I think one of the worst things you can say about someone is that they’re human. Because from there I think we can all agree it’s pretty much straight downhill.

So do me a favor, please. Don’t complain to me that my sympathies, thoughts, affections, inclinations, or prejudices lean too much toward one group or another. Instead, trust that they lean in one direction, and one direction only: away from everyone.

I mentioned guys who tuck in their Hawaiian shirts, right? Because one just walked by.

And he was walking a fussy little dog.

You’d think they’d have a sharp knife somewhere in the back of a Starbucks, wouldn’t you? But the guys at this one said they don’t.

Oh, and I don’t like Starbucks employees. They so obviously lie.

I am congenitally, organically, inveterately cantankerous. I’ve tried to be a nice guy—but simply have no talent for it. I end up making comments about people’s clothes, or questioning the veracity of something they’ve said—and from there find an inevitably short distance to markedly unbidden observations about their lifestyle generally.

You might call me (as now few number of you have today, actually) narrow-minded, shallow, and mean-spirited. And to you I say, proudly and without reservation, that you, friend, have no idea.

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