THE ART OF LAZINESS

I consider laziness a talent. In high school, I knew a kid who, instead of getting up and walking nine feet to the toilet, he would stand on his bed and piss out of his bedroom window. True story. And, on top of his neighbors no doubt adoring him, I was impressed that he chose to urinate in view of the public instead of using the bathroom that was right next to his bedroom. The effort it took to open the window, open the screen, and lean his pelvis out the window so he didn’t accidentally piss on his bed must have exerted more energy than getting up and walking down the hallway like a normal human being. I guess the way you relieve yourself is a matter of preference here in America. Some people piss into empty water bottles. Some people get up and piss on their lawn. I, on the other hand, use the toilet. I guess that’s because I am a fancy gentleman, but que sera sera I guess?

So what am I getting at here? Well, well, well, so sorry to take time away from you creating that cool “JimBRO’s Summer Jams 2012” playlist on Spotify. But seriously, nobody wants to listen to a bunch of shitty Silver Chair songs from 1000 years ago, so you might as well quit and listen to my point. And that point is this: living in such a great and wonderful and adorable city like New York, you run into all different kinds of people. And many of those people are lazy. Yes, per capita, New York City is probably on the low end of the laziness spectrum. I assume this because not everyone is morbidly obese, and not everyone looks like a thousand hornets stung their face. Regardless, there are still a lot of lazy people in New York City.

What kinds of lazy people? Well, that's what I’ve been getting at all along, you see...

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ROLLING SUITCASES ARE RUINING AMERICA

Under no circumstances should you find yourself purchasing a briefcase that has wheels. In fact, there aren’t enough alternate planes of existence in the entirety of endless space to ever find one single instance where I will say, “Yes, you should put that briefcase on wheels.”

But, for the sake of argument, let's say you do you find yourself at that crossroads, contemplating whether or not you should buy a briefcase with wheels, do us all a favor and retire. Go fishing or something. Go play chess at the park or throw bread at the ducks or complain about the price of a pound of cauliflower to no one because you're the worst and you have no friends. Just please do not buy one of those goddamn rolling briefcases so you can roll over my toes and break them into a million pieces and ruin my goddamn day.

In case that rambling unstructured and unintelligible opening wasn't enough a reason to never buy a rolling briefcase, after the jump are five more reasons why you should never, ever own a rolling briefcase.

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I Want Realism!

It’s easy to get caught up in trying to find justification for every single minute detail of your favorite TV show--we all have an abundance of free time on our hands. Oh, what’s that, single-mom-of-ten-kids, you don’t have four hours to spare just so you can dissect the secular motive of every single character from LOST? Can’t spare a few hours to write an essay on how Walter White’s favorite color of Hanes underwear on Breaking Bad reflects his mood? Well, no wonder you've had such a hard time making any sense of everything always in your life. Yeah, The Others were ghosts, great theory. Don't let the stupid hit you on the way out.

Now...Seeing as though we’re free of all those suckers who have "priorities" and "electric bills to pay," let’s go to the local 'Bucks, crack open our new Mac L-tops, and have a little chat about The Walking Dead.

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THERE WILL BE PLENTY OF TIME TO ENJOY THE WEATHER

If you live in the New York metro area, yesterday and today are the first really nice weather days of 2012. And already, people are starting to bitch and moan about having to work inside. At lunch, I overheard two people complaining about being "stuck" inside on a day like today. That they would do "anything" to work "outside" so they can enjoy the nice weather all of the time. Well, I hate to break it to these dreamers, but I'll go out on a limb here and say that jobs that boast "working outside" as one of its perks aren't always the most desirable. In fact, if presented with the opportunity to transition to one of these jobs, I'm going to bet that when the men in black suits come to take away your precious blackberry and Outlook conference calls, you will run and hide in the supply closet and pray to Siri that they never find you. Because you are an tech ADDICT!

But hey, I like to play to whole, 'what if' game. I loved "Choose Your Own Adventure" books when I was kid, even if I always chose the adventure that led to my death by time traveling dinosaurs in an ancient Indian burial ground massacre. So let's run through those outside jobs and see which ones fit your profile best.

- Fisherman
You're too much of a baby to bait a hook, let alone have to brain a tiger shark with a wooden club as it tries to eat your friend Wayne, who fell overboard again (such a Wayne move!).

- Archeologist
I bet you couldn't even pass the archeologist exam. Remember when you failed the Biology Regents in 9th grade, and you had to go to summer school, and we used to ride our bikes to the school and wave at you through the window while you sat in the un-air-conditioned classroom and stared at that fat teacher and probably had to hold back tears because we were being such dicks? What an idiot you were.

- Sanitation Worker
Want to be a garbage man? Garbage men get to work outside. They also get to sift through feces and rotting vegetables. Does that sound better than sitting in your ergonomically-designed chair reading People.com?

Ohhhhhhh that's right, you want the outside job where you twirl around in circles and write sonnets about your Egyptian cotton sheets or whatever. Well, those jobs don't exist anywhere except inside your stupid brain. So stop complaining about your "inside" job and be happy you have a desk and a computer and the internet. The internet is better than outside, anyway. The internet has an unending amount of entertainment. All outside has is a bunch of trees and the sun. And all the sun is good for is giving you cancer and making you uncomfortable in your gabardine slacks.

Unfortunately, the whining only gets worse as the warm weather becomes more consistent. People literally spend nine hours a day on Facebook writing fake letters to the sky about how they wish they were enjoying what the sky was giving to the world that day.

Dear Spring,

I wish I were with you right now.

Love,

You

Hey, dummy, the sky doesn't have Facebook, so stop. Now. Stop writing letters to weather, it's insane. But hey, go on being jealous of all those lucky people sitting outside right now. I'm sure all homeless people without jobs or a roof spend their days soaking up the sun and playing flag football together in the park and not worrying about why the decisions they made early on in life afforded them so much free time outdoors. Yeah, I bet that's happening while you IM your friends and talk about how you can't wait for the weekend so you can stand in the sun and stare at the clouds with your magical make-believe boyfriend/girlfriend that nobody believes really exists, because who would date someone who can't stop bitching about the weather and writing letters to rain and sunshine?

But I have the perfect solution for everyone who feels like they just can't go on with their lives any longer unless they spend more time outdoors. Follow these three easy steps to instant and unlimited outside time:

Step 1: Quit your job
Step 2: Start doing heroin
Step 3: Go live under a highway overpass

VOILA! Now you have ample time to lay in a field and enjoy the nice weather. That is, until it gets cold again and you freeze to death in your highway overpass cardboard box duplex.

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Hate Parade - Tapas & Other Consorts

I never wanted to eat anything when I was growing up. Come meal time, I wasn't eating a damn thing, and I was going to make sure the whole room knew about my unhappiness by whining until my father would make me go upstairs and sit in the dark. And rightfully so - if I ever have a kid who pulls shit like that, he's sitting outside during dinner, no bargaining. Obviously I ate some things, but they were all terrible. For example, I used to to eat plain hamburgers from McDonald's. What? Who does this to their body voluntarily? You're better off eating from the dumpster out back. I bet homeless people would turn away a plain hamburger from McDonald's because it's so repulsive that starving and dying under an overpass is a better option. Have you ever seen a plain hamburger from McDonald's? It's so gross. Also, I used to eat spaghetti with nothing but melted butter on top. Another exciting night for me, just some good old-fashioned linguini with a pile of Land-O-Lakes on top. I should have been forced to live in a war-torn Sudanese village for a year with nothing to eat but rice while guerrillas aimed machine guns at my face, just so I could come back to the States and appreciate all of the deliciousness that I had right at my stupid little fingertips.

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Hate Parade - Vanity License Plates are Terrible

When I think of vanity, I think of the movie Se7en. Yeah, I know, Capt. Obvious, I'm not great at word associations. When someone says "pupil," I think of an eyeball, and then I get really grossed out and lose focus for a minimum of forty minutes while picturing a microscopic photo of some weirdo's eyeball. Because really, what kind of normal person would say, "Oh, you want to use a microscopic camera to take photographs of my eyeball? Hmm, that doesn't seem weird at all. What time do you want to come over and do that? 8p? Sure. 8p is fine. I should be done skinning the captured drifters I have in my basement by 8p. See you then."

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Hate Parade: Lack of Information

You know what's fun? When stores and shops and restaurants don't post their hours of operation. Oh wait, did I say "fun"? Whoops, I meant "more fucking annoying than cab drivers who ask you where you are going and then act all pissy when you mention a place that isn't five blocks away." Oh sorry, pal, sorry I ruined your fucking day by asking you to do your job. Don't want to drive me somewhere in exchange for money? Don't be a cab driver. Be a truck driver. Or a van driver. Go re-stone patios or something. No one will ask you to drive them anywhere if you have a patio to fix. Although a coworker might. And what then, shithead? Are you going to give him the same attitude that you gave me because he's politely asking you to take him to buy a sandwich from the Deli? Yeah, exactly. Stop being a fucking baby. It's Brooklyn, not fucking Guam.

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Hate Parade: New Year's Resolutions

Well, it's January again. Time to break out your go-getter hats and swear to quit doing something you love, or do more of something that you really hate/love. You like McDonald's? Make it your "New Year's Resolution" to stop eating it. Because that's what you're supposed to do once January rolls in: make some God awful proclamation to a bunch of shitheads only to fail miserably at doing whatever it was you didn't want to do in the first place, and then you go home and shove seventeen cheeseburgers into your face and drink a 50 oz fountain Coke and keel over and die while you watch reruns of "Empty Nest" on your plasma TV. Who still has a plasma, anyway? That shit is for the birds, bro.

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Hate Parade: Alec Baldwin Sucks

Alec Baldwin is a fucking asshole. All of you who think he's great and wonderful and want to high-five him for getting into a confrontation with an American Airlines flight attendant over not switching off his iPad can go fucking shoot yourselves in the face with a cannon. Seriously, imagine if you were on the plane for this carnival? Imagine your fucking life was delayed because Alec-fucking-Baldwin refused to turn off his goddamn iPad? Just thinking about having to spend an extra few minutes on a plane because some surly old celebrity wasn't getting his way makes me want to heave a cinderblock through his windshield.

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Hate Parade: Being Unaware

If you haven't noticed already (and that's very possible seeing that you failed to recognize my new dope haircut last week, assholes) it's the holiday season here in America, home of the free. And as is tradition with the holiday season, it's time to import lots and lots of oblivious people into an already overcrowded city so they can meander through their days like children entering the enchanted land of Oz. Only this is not Oz. It's Manhattan. And we all have shit to do, morons, so please stop being so fucking obtuse and get your shit together. Maybe people get like this around the holidays because of all the heroin Starbucks is putting into their coffee? Good thing I don't drink Starbucks, because it sucks. Put my own milk and sugar in my coffee? What am I, a PEASANT?

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Hate Parade: Lunchtime Food Critics

This is America, right? And as Americans, we have the right to pursue whatever it is that makes us happy. Maybe you like to paint portraits of homeless people eating bell peppers? Well guess what? Paint away! Maybe you like to dress up as Marilyn Monroe and teach kick-boxing classes? Again, have at it! I am in full support of the general population's crazy taste for doing/enjoying weird shit. There's a reason why 200+ years ago a bunch of wig-wearing slave-owners shot each other in the face with muskets from nine feet away and then hacked off their limbs to survive another ten years only to die by scurvy or something equally as horrible - so we can have the right to do all this crazy shit and not give a fuck about one another! USA USA USA!

But one thing I am not in favor of is when people's interests infringe on my God-given right to not fucking want to hear or care about your opinion on anything, ever. Especially food. Even more especially (real thing): lunch food. Lunch is great. I love lunch. I like to each my lunch and read stuff on the internet. I sometimes eat really slow so I can read a lot of articles and giggle and clap my hands while I think about how much fun I am having. I eat and sing in my head and really enjoy my lunch, and this happens mostly when I'M LEFT THE FUCK ALONE.

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I HATE THE ROCKEFELLER CENTER TREE LIGHTING

Tonight, thousands of people will flock to Rockefeller Center to watch some asshole flip a switch that ignites a bunch of Walgeens string lights. Everyone will clap and cheer and maybe cry, and I will be fighting my way home through the crush wishing someone would shout "STAMPEDE" so it would all end a little quicker.

What can I say besides I hate this day so much because it's horrible and stupid. And I think I speak for everyone who works in the vicinity of Rock Center when I say that this is one of the most absurd traditions us fat Americans have cultivated and turned into a Pagan ritual annual holiday event. It's right up there with New Year's Eve in Times Square, when hundreds of thousands of morons stand dick-to-ass and piss into coffee cups and freeze to death just to watch a tinfoil ball slide down a lamppost. If either of these two events are on your bucket list, do yourself a favor, fill that bucket with fire and pour it all over your face and house.

Obviously, there are people who will say that I am a Scrooge for not liking the tree lighting ceremony, but I assure you, these people are idiots. In fact, I LOVE Christmas. I go bat-shit over Christmas. If Christmas were a stray dog I would adopt it and feed it boiled chicken and pumpkin because pumpkin is good for a dog's fur. I love Christmas so much that I want to paint my face like candy cane and wear elf ears and a build snowmen until I die of exhaustion. I love Christmas movies and Christmas songs and Christmas food and even goddamn Christmas caroling. Want to go caroling? I'll go caroling right fucking now. Let's go carol everywhere until someone shoots us in the head with a shotgun for trespassing on their property.

And I don't know why I love this season so much, considering it increases stress levels by roughly 6,000%. Maybe it's because these precious few weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day make me forget that humanity is fucked and gives me hope that maybe one day we will all dance around Douglas-firs and give each other gifts and not be greedy fat assholes who try to undercut and back-stab everyone we know 24/7/365.

But the tree lighting? Nope, sorry. There is nothing magical about plopping a giant tree in Midtown so that the city can shutdown every street within a 500 block vicinity so a bunch of Midwesterners (who no doubt have much better-looking trees in their own backyards) can flock to Rock Center to watch a stupid tree get lit up with 9,000,000 tiny bulbs and then take their fat and shitty kids to the Nintendo store. How about taking them to the exercise store? It's called OUTSIDE.

I really don't understand the lore, and I'm being 100% serious. Not one person looks happy to be there - everyone looks genuinely pissed off. Every mom is hitting her kids for wanting more Pepsi and every dad is wishing he had a pint of moonshine to drink and every kid wishes he was at home playing "Call of Duty." Everyone would rather be doing something else and yet, here there are, standing in the cold wearing a Santa hat.

The whole accompanying entertainment really isn't that impressive, either. Neil Patrick Harris is really wearing thin his delegation as America's Gala Hosting Darling, and every celebrity in attendance is covering a classic Christmas song poorly, no doubt driving my mother into fits because GODDAMMIT THEY ARE NOT NAT KING COLE. And then there's Tony Bennet. Jesus Christ, he is old. Trotting him out there is not adorable, it's horrifying.

But just in case you are still on the fence, here is a quick quiz to help you decide whether or not tonight's festivities are for you.

- Do you like smelling the body odor of European men with weird mustaches?
- Do you like being pinned against police barricades by a 400 lb pound woman who's using a baby-stroller as a weapon?
- Do you like having security guards scream in your face to move off the corner because you are blocking traffic, even though you have nowhere else to go because your other option is to be crushed against a police barricade?
- Do you like being goosed by homeless men wearing Santa Claus outfits that look and smell like they've been rolling around the dead fish section of the dump?

If you answer 'yes' to any of these, then the tree lighting is the place for you.

And just in case I've derailed your plans for tonight, here is an alternate set for you and yours to follow for a guaranteed exciting night: go to the liquor store, buy a bottle of whiskey, drink the whiskey, go to a highway overpass, light a garbage can fire, sing doo-wop with bums, drink some toilet wine, get in a fist fight with a guy name Rascal over who was cooler McQueen or Newman, call a cab, go home, go to bed. There, a guaranteed recipe for a better and more memorable night than standing in front of a stupid tree.

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Hate Parade - Bad Meeting Places

This picture has nothing to do with my rant, but I just love it so much I felt it needed to be here.

This morning I spent half of my commute wishing I had a time machine so I could go back in time to last Thursday and pour mashed potatoes and gravy all over my hair and face (again), and the other half wishing everyone would stop fucking complaining about how much they ate on Thanksgiving, and just be thankful that they had food to eat and didn't spend the day working a twenty hour shift for three pennies making shoelaces in a Pakistani sweatshop. Wah wah wah, so what, you ate a lot, stop declaring to the world your insecurities and go do pilates or whatever quietly and stop fishing for fucking compliments on Facebook.

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Hate Parade - Exotic Animal Owners

Charla Nash was on The TODAY Show this morning. Never heard of her? Well, DO NOT GOOGLE HER. I'm not kidding - your eyes will be violated in a way that you will never be able to recover from. Trust me, I know from experience. You see, I have the willpower of a three-year-old, and I Google everything that people tell me to NEVER to Google. Then, after I finish hating myself, I tell everyone around me that I Googled something repulsive, and subsequently they all think I'm insane. But honestly, I just can't help it. I assume this is what heroin addiction feels like - the inability to not look at terrible images. Same thing right? Anyway, it's a horrible, horrible way to live. But since I'm such a nice person, I'll save you the trouble of finding out who Nash is on your own.

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Hate Parade: Shoeless Joe A*shole

People perform some disgusting acts while riding New York City's public transportation system. But who can blame them? Well, since you asked, I guess I can. I can blame them, actually. That's sort of what I'm doing here - blaming these people for being savages. Because seriously, who hasn't seen someone eating, drinking, smoking, crying, cutting their toenails, eating more food, singing, picking their nose, talking on the phone to someone who I assume is hard of hearing, and/or vomiting? It's gross. Have some discipline, morons, your horrible smelling food will still smell horrible in ten minutes when you get back to that shithole apartment you call home. But nooooo, that's too much to ask, isn't it? ISN'T IT?! So instead I/we am/are forced to be within three feet of your chewing and grunting. You are awful. Just, just awful...

But disrobing? Not so much. Not so much, that is, until last night.

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Hate Parade - Plastic Packages of Death

A few weeks ago, I went on a trip. HOW EXCITING! In our absence, my wife decided she would like to have our lights put on timers to fool all of the bad guys who are trying to rob our house and steal my Playstation 3 (obvs). I asked her if she had ever heard of a little movie called "Home Alone" because, if the Wet Bandits could figure out that houses are on timers and an entire fucking neighborhood went on vacation all at once, then I assume any half-ass real-life criminal could too. She stared at me blankly and walked away. Guess she's never seen it.

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Rewind: Continuing Controversy

Over a year ago, I wrote a Hate Parade article about how much I hate pickup trucks. For some reason, this article generated the most hate-induced comments from people. And they are still coming in. How/Why people are reading this article, I have no idea. It's not like I have some loyal following of people who give a shit what I write. But I guess I touched a nerve when I decided to bash pickups. My favorite part of the comments is how one guy thinks I am trying to "rid America" of pickups. Wait, what? I'm flattered you think anyone besides my wife and mom read anything I write, but yeah, that's the stupidest comment in history.

Anyway, I think it's funny how people take things personally, but it is in the spirit of Hate Parade, so I guess, hate the fuck on, Silky.

Here is a link to the article: I Hate Pickup Trucks

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I Hate FML

I hate the acronym FML. I hated it when it first became popular. I hated it when people adopted it as a way to state the obvious or be ironic or whatever. And I hate it even more now that it's old and stupid and cliche and been beaten into the ground like a dead horse up shits creek without a pot to piss in avoid it like the plague strong as an ox blah blah blah. Fuck FML.

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I Hate Your Feigned Shock at Holiday Music

It's officially the Holiday Season™, Ladies and Gentlemen! Time to start buying tons of shit your friends and family don't need so you can put a monetary value on how much you care about them. Lots and lots of fun to watch the fear and panic in shopper's eyes as they barrel around Macy's at the eleventh hour looking for a belt for their stupid nephew. Here's a piece of advice, lady, your nephew doesn't need a belt. What he needs is a nice fucking smack to the face, because he's a punk.

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I Hate You, Metro North

For almost a eighteen months now, I've wanted to write about how much I hate Metro North. Every morning I wake up, am inevitably delayed/angered by my commute, and want to start pounding out a 9,000 word essay on how much Metro North fucking sucks. But most days I would just sit there, staring at a blank screen, because trying to formulate a rant on how much I hate Metro North is like trying to formulate a rant on how much I hate all of my least favorite things on this fucking planet - traffic; sore throats; "Entourage"; terrorism. It's almost impossible to weave together a narrative (not that I ever do, anyway) about something that makes me so angry on a daily basis.

So it's probably best that I jump right into it, because just thinking about Metro North makes me shake with anger, and it's probably better that I get it out of my system before I have stroke and fall over and crack open my head on the lip of my desk.

So, away we go...

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