Horrible Etiquette 2.0

All right. It’s become pretty clear that neither parents, schools, or other dispensaries of run-of-the-mill good sense have either gone on strike or got caught under a building during a Haitian vacation (eh, fuck ya), because there’s been a sudden rise in too-obvious-to-ignore cases of people airily doing incredibly stupid things in public. In fact, I’ve had to start gagging myself before boarding mass transit just to keep myself from screaming at idiots behaving as though they’re invisible. In the spirit of public education, then, here is a very brief, “Mister Horrible’s Don’ts and Don’ts List” for anyone thinking about leaving homes this year:

 

    1) Men: no matter how strong much the animal grooming urge in you becomes, simply do not dig a digit from either hand into a orifice on the idea nobody will notice the attempt to itch, dislodge, or extricate. Body will. Body do. Body spend lots of time vomiting as a result. Body know that’s nose-picking you’re up to—and also know you aren’t going to deposit the bounty found in your pocket.

Body also not fooled by your Oscar-winning performance of “I’m just plucking my bunched up undies from the painful, puckered spot they’ve become wedged in”, and quite aware you’re giving that dangling ‘roid such a hearty scratch that it’ll remain hooked on a rib for much of the week. You’re in public, for chrissakes.

 

    2) Ladies: make-up, if it must be put on, should be put on at home. Even if you don’t have a natural face that looks like it should be staring angrily out of a glass cage at gaping school children on a visit to the Reptile House, you lose far more points applying your eye-liner, lipstick, and pancake base with a fucking paint roller than you gain in looking less anemic, ring-eyed, and acne-scarred.

And the “fuck you; I don’t care if this is about one percent better than me squatting down and peeing in public, either” attitude you convey in no way intimidates the people trying to divert their gaze anywhere else. In fact, I often find myself inspired to follow public-make-up-appliers around all day with my iPhone, shouting “Anyone wanna see what this skag looks like before she adds 20 kilos of Max Factor to her mug?!”

(Yeah, you didn't have a nose job, either. Nah, someone just replaced that fucking road kill potato nailed to your face at birth with a, ah, road kill carrot. Sure.)

It’s call “personal hygiene” because it’s “personal”—keep it that way. Applying make-up in the bus isn’t much different then a man who plucks tufts of his abundant ear hair out in the subway. Oh, and now that I mention it: no plucking the eye brows, either.

 

    3) Both genders: Don’t eat in the subway. Don’t eat in the bus. Don’t eat in the train, tramway, don’t eat in the fucking rickshaw. Don’t eat. First off, you look like a fucking cow that was either too disorganized or stupid to figure out a way to eat somewhere civilized—say, sitting down, at home or in a café—and therefore has to masticate its plastic-wrapped cud standing up among repulsed commuters? Why are they disgusted? Because, Julia Child, your sandwich invariably stinks like dinner time in the trailer park; your croissant flakes the fuck everywhere, leaving greasy little smears; the package of cookies you mechanically snarf snow crumbs all over and are sure to make you look like an over-sized toddler waiting to get obese; and anything you’ve picked up in McDonalds—including a paper napkin or sterilized ice cub—is going to reek the joint out of Happy Meal. It just will. 

 

Oh, and if you won’t hold off for other people do it for yourself: you know how, when you were a semi-retarded, disgusting child, you actually didn’t quite understand why it was mummy repeatedly told you not to put coins in your mouth? Well, public transport makes metal currency look more pure than Mother Theresa’s gennies. Millions of people touch, cough, shed skin, and—as we’ve established—dig, scratch, extract, and de-hirsute themselves in public transport; eating inside such a system is like daintily spooning up macro-biotic gourmet faire during a hurricane in an over-crowded morgue. If you want to be disgusting, leave the fucking sarnie at home and just lick the subway pole or French kiss the bus flood.

 

    4) Both genders (but mostly women): there is, in fact, no law of nature or social obligation to have a cylindrical container containing a beverage in your hand during ever second of the commuting day. I know looking around suggests otherwise, but it’s true. You don’t need the cup. And it’s quite clear you don’t actually want the beverage, because you simply clutch it without ever taking a fucking drink from it. What’s worse is, over time, you wind up not just looking like some scabby parrot holding some kind of asshole bird toy in your scaly claw; as the weeks of this must-always-be-holding-drink obsession wears on with time, you actually start to hold the container out, away from you, with arm nearly fully extended as though the fucking thing contains the secret power that will lead you to the places fate has destined you go each day. Swap the cup for a knife and you suddenly look like a slightly better-groomed Charles Manson looking for a Sharon Tate clone.

Forget the cups and drinks. You pee enough as it is. 

 

     5) Men: you’d be stunned—no, incredulous—to learn this, but neither your weenie nor your scrotum are so ponderously voluminous that you must sit with your knees at least two feet apart. There are no muscular reflexes that prevent you from keeping your legs together when seated, thereby creating more room to the people to the right and left of you whose space you’ve invaded with your fat fucking pegs. 
And don’t give me the shite about your fat stomach handing down and needing space—that makes the entire scene even worse. Believe it or not, people really don’t want the legs-akimbo invitation to imagine what kind of impossibly tiny plumbing must be smothered under that gut.

 

    6) Women: don’t push your man’s blackheads. Yes, you do. You do it in buses, you do it in subways, you do it in trains, planes on the beach—even at café tables if you happen to spot one that looks ripe. Don’t Do It. Fewer thinks could be more revolting. If you need to make everyone around immediately nauseous, reach down and give your man’s dangling ‘roid a finger boost upwards—he’s dying to do that himself anyway.

 

    7) Both genders: you know this—we all know this—but no one wants to hear your cell phone conversation. If the person isn’t dying, it can wait (and if they are, how long does it say, “Well, can’t do much for you from here. Nice knowing you”?) If work is that important, go back to the office. If you’re late, telling the waiting party where you are—and giving them a real time demonstration of “how this bus just won’t get moving” won’t change anything. Oh, and special mention for those commuters aged 13-20, who seem to thing cell phone conversing in public is a performing art: when you find yourself winding up each sentence after three or four words with the incessantly repeated additive “blah blah blah” or “etc. etc. etc.”, it’s an indication that both you and your interlocutor know what you’d be saying if you completed the phrase using actual language. That, in turn, is a sure sign you both—and everyone forced to hear your chat—pretty much know everything you’ll possible saying before you even try. So don’t—it’s a waste of time. Shut the fuck etc. etc. etc.

Comments

[Sidwaddel]

I wish you'd told me earlier. But my arse really does itch. A lot.

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Impressive blog! -Arron