As you all know, I am a very amiable, even-tempered guy; I never get angry or lose my temper. Have any of you ever seen me get angry? But, totally unbeknownst to any of you there are some things that piss me off. I mean, since you all know me as a gentile, sanguine guy who would never think a bad thought about anyone or anything, I thought I would share with you the secret side of Arthur Bacon; a few of the things he hates the most.
As Samuel Butler said, “It does not matter so much what a man hates, as long as he hates something”. That is to say, to have lived and not hated suggests a rather boring, exiguous life.
It is hard for me to say precisely who and what I hate the most. The problem is that there are so many things and people to hate and so little time left to an eighty-year-old. Hate is wonderful, I love it. It’s almost as good as love. Love burns with orgasmic celerity but hate simmers deep inside … forever.
Let me say first of all; I hate “trigger warnings”. What kind of frightened, insecure, obstreperous young people are we coddling nowadays? The English teacher has to inform her students that Shakespeare incorporates ghosts, murder, duplicity and death in his plays? The Physics teacher has to warn his students that we are not the center of the universe. I have to warn my photography students that in my class they will see images of very bad men, naked women, napalm girls and devastated environments. I mean, what is going on? I’m sorry, but if you are studying the history of Twentieth Century Europe you are going to see and read about the humiliation, rape and murder of six million people. If your history teacher is any good you will experience revulsion and nightmares about this monstrosity. Can’t take it? Well, perhaps you should switch your major to flower arranging. Life is shit. The history of the human experience is nothing but shit. But sanctimony does not allow for satire. I was happy to see that the student body at Yale vigorously supports a no-trigger policy. Be shocked in class and then deal with it. It’s called growing the fuck up.
I hate, loathe, abhor, despise every single religion on the planet, including Buddhists, Catholics, Jews, Jains, Mormons, Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Stupidity hath no equal to the devout Christian. And, no. I do NOT respect their right to believe whatever the fuck they want to in their own homes. I do not respect stupid people. I may have to put up with them at work or at the bank, but when people of compromised intelligence insist on using that limited intelligence to believe stupid shit rather than science, my patience is taxed to the limit because their unctuous bullshit is a threat to me, the environment and the democratic republic I love. People who believe that our “founding fathers” were religious are a serious threat to our constitutional democracy. When stupid people believe that a benevolent god will always take care of things, THAT is a threat to our environment and efforts to mitigate climate change because they will say, and I have heard them say this; “Oh don’t worry, when things get really bad God will fix everything”. Bull. . . . shit!
Listen; ALL religions originate in fear; what the fuck is going on with those shiny things in the sky at night? Why isn’t granddaddy here anymore? and what’s with these long dark aqueous winters? So, some old granddaddy dude puffs out his chest, lights his cigar, leans back and makes up a bunch of stories about how we got here and where we are going. Creation stories. Some are quite interesting and even beautiful, but the Christian origin story is so fucking stupid I experience nothing but nausea every time I meet a so-called educated person, somebody who took up space at a respectable university, who believes that a very young virgin girl gave birth to a dude who became the son of God, God himself, AND a fucking ghost; not just any ghost, but a holy ghost! It is like meeting a serial killer who claims to be a lawyer, minister and a nurse practitioner. Right.
I used to love it when I had to wrestle one of these assholes. I went to high school in coal country Pennsylvania where most of the people were Polish Catholics. Before stepping out on the mat the Polish Catholic kid would kneel and genuflect while mumbling, “In the name of the father, the son and the holy ghost. Amen”. Right, a father, a son and a fucking holy ghost all wrapped up in one invisible dude who doesn’t have anything better to do on a Saturday afternoon than help some pimply-faced Pollack win a wrestling match. They call it the holy trinity. I call it holy shit.
The story is, there’s this Joseph dude in Bethlehem who has knocked up an under-age girl; so, in order not to become Sunday’s lion bate in the Coliseum, he concocts this story about god and a virgin birth and gets three buddies to show up wrapped in colorful blankets and pretend they are kings from Orientar and ogle the poor girl Mary as she gives birth in a small goat-shed. This baby Jesus grows up to become a garrulous, narcissistic Jew and wanders around the suburbs of Jerusalem claiming to be the son of god while telling everybody who will listen, that there is a place called heaven where they will go if they behave themselves and believe in HIM because he loves them; but, if they don’t believe this shit they will go to a place called Hell and writhe and scream in pain from all the noise and flames forever after. The guy never had a job and never married, but, like todays’ philistines, lots of people liked his unctuous bullshit. But the government didn’t like his nonsense and strung him up on a cross with a couple other mountebanks and that should have been the end of it but one night some clever followers took his body down from the cross and hid it someplace and came up with the cockamamie story that he had risen and gone to that place called heaven. Phitt, just like that. Not only that, but that now He, spelled with a capitol H mind you, was now not only god’s son, but He was also a father AND the holy ghost we talked about before. The fucker never married but now he was a father and I guess because nobody ever saw his body he was also a fucking ghost. THAT was approximately 2023 years ago and people still believe all that stupid shit. Well, I can tell you it didn’t do the little genuflecting Pollack motherfucker across the mat any good. All three of them, God, the father and the holy ghost must have been playing video games that day while the kid ended up flat on his back after about thirty seconds.
Imagine you live in Utah and one day you find out that you have a brain tumor. Brain tumors have to be removed by doctors with the help of special nurses in hospitals. In Utah, your doctor, and all those nurses not only believe all that stupid Christian shit but they also believe in Christianity on steroids, called Mormonism. The virgin girl, baby Jesus, water-into-wine, walk-on-water, resurrection shit wasn’t enough but they had to come up with more cockamamie bullshit on top of that. Mormons get to wear tactical underwear that will protect them from harm. If you are a dude you get to have as many wives as you want. When you die, you don’t just go to heaven but you get to have your own private planet where you spend the rest of eternity as a twenty year-old.
I estimate that religion takes up about ¼ of a person’s brain. It is a lot of shit to remember: virgins, kings, a special star, heaven and hell, resurrection, transubstantiation, not to mention all the shit that came before in the Old Testament; all that stuff about Job, Jonah and the whale, Delilah, Susana and the peeping Toms, David and Goliath and the fucking ark.
So, in your Mormon doctor, you have a seriously compromised mental faculty poking around in your brain looking for that tumor. I want a surgeon who is 100% focused on me. I do not want to hear him mumbling shit like, “In the name of the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost please help me get this tumor out”.
You know who else I hate? Dumb fucks who won’t pass me. I’m driving the speed limit or a bit slower, because I’m in a big cumbersome Ford Econoline van on a curvy two-lane road in rural Nevada and I see a car coming up behind me obviously going much faster than I. There are too many curves in the road for regular passing lanes but up comes a ¼ mile straightaway with a double yellow line and nobody coming toward me. I roll down my window and wave for him to pass as I put on the brakes and pull over and slow way down. I am half off the road in the fucking gravel, almost at a standstill, waving my arm in a circular motion and the stupid fuck refuses to pass me. Is he just stupid? Is he blind? What does he think, seeing my arm making circular movements while I have slowed down almost to a stop? Sure, it is a double yellow line but I am half off the fucking road going five miles an hour and he won’t pass me? We’re talking rural Nevada where there are only five state troopers in the whole state working between Reno and Las Vegas and this dude is scared to cross a double yellow line. These guys are always in fast cars. The local guy in his beat-up pick-up truck gets it and passes me and honks a thank-you.
Which reminds me of another kind of asshole. I approach an intersection and the cars are jammed up in front of me. To my right is an alley with a car wanting to come out into the street so I hang back so he can pull out in front of me. The light changes up ahead and the traffic moves and the guy just pulls out in front of me without so much as a glance in my direction. No wave, no glance. This is probably the same guy who, while driving down a narrow street this guy and I are heading toward each other and I pull into a space so he can pass. The arrogant little fucker just drives right by without so much as a glance, much less wave in my direction. What’s wrong with these people? Are they blind to my inconvenience? Indifferent to common courtesy? Who the fuck do they think they are?
Speaking of driving . . . across country for example. You stop in a Pilot truck stop to take a dump. You’re sitting there and when you’re done where is the fucking toilet paper? It is in an opaque gadget a foot off the floor. You grope down and try to find the end of the paper and spin the roll a few times before you can grab the end of the paper but it is way the fuck down and you bend way over and pull the stuff down almost to the floor before you have enough to wipe your ass. I mean, what cretins install these things? Why aren’t they at eye level so it is easy to make your evacuation experience pleasurable?
I hate people who tell me I don’t really mean “hate’. I say what? When I say I hate Donald Trump they say with Christian sanctimony, “Oh, you don’t mean hate”. And then they go on to tell me I am supposed to “love” my enemies. They say stupid shit like we should love Stalin and Hitler because “Jesus is love”. Right; Jesus is love if you love him but if you don’t love him he has a very hot place for you without sound-proofing or air conditioning (Mathew 25:41). I hate that love shit. And now they politicize it with stupid lawn signs that say stuff like, “Love trumps hate”. Very clever. Lot of good that did the Jews in Germany the blacks here in Amerika or the people in Charlottesville. See how far you get against the Oath Keepers with your love-pillows against them with their AR-15’s. Love is not going to win a fight. Love is something you do at night in bed with your sweetheart. Hate is what you do in the day time against people who hate you and want to kill you. Fuck that love shit.
How about this; you’re driving down a busy two-lane street and there is a stoplight up ahead. You’re behind a guy in a Subaru Legacy and the light turns red and he stops. There are 13 cars behind you. The light turns green and the guy in the Legacy turns on his left blinker and just sits there. In the other lane coming at you are at least twenty cars. Does the guy in the Legacy move up into the intersection so you and the other 13 cars behind you can squeeze around him? No, he just sits there with his fucking blinker on. Finally, the light turns red and THEN he turns leaving you and a dozen others to wait another five minutes.
Here is something to hate: Grafitti. Notwithstanding the fact that it is vandalism, it is ALWAYS THE SAME. Big, stupid, rounded block letters outlined with darker pigment. “BLAM. SMACK. SUCK”. Always the same stupid words on the train car or freeway overpass. Don’t these people have anything better to do than defile our trains and buildings at three in the morning? And they all think they are artists. How about that; buy a couple cans of spray paint and call yourself an artist.
Another thing I hate is The Burqa. I hate all religions and their stupid, misogynistic, sartorial insistences, whether a ridiculous skull cap, cross, curly side-burns or silly orange robes. But the Burqa pisses me off the most because it is unarguable bullying. The Quran does not require that women must cover their bodies with an opaque garment. Mohamed didn’t give a shit if women cover themselves from head to foot. The Burqa is the physical manifestation of jealous, suspicious, misogynistic men. These are the same kind of men who do not allow their wives to take birth control pills because they are jealous. One beautiful effulgent spring day I saw a couple walking in Carkeek Park. The birds were singing and the air was redolent with the sweet, fecund smell of apple blossoms. The guy was wearing jeans and a tee shirt. The woman wore a full-length burqa that allowed only the merest glimpse of spring through a narrow slit for her eyes. Fuck the burqa. Fuck Islam.
And fuck Israel too. I am sick of Bibi Netanyahu and his Likud orthodox nationalists who keep building settlements in the West Bank. I am sick of being called an anti-Semite just because I hate the Prime Minister of Israel. I like Jews and I like Israel but I do not like being held hostage by semantic terrorism. I hate Putin but nobody accuses me of being a Russophobe. Why do Jews insist on such rhetorical tyranny?
A word I hate is “finest”. The only time this word is used is when they are talking about cops. Cops and robbers are separated by nothing more than a piece of blue fabric and a badge. Don’t you love the way the finest beat up Rodney King and killed George Floyd. How about when 40 of the finest, armed with tear gas, machine guns, assault rifles and pistols could not take out a sixteen-year-old boy in Uvalde, Texas. I hate cops.
You wanna know what other “people” I hate? Southerners. That’s right, I hate everybody living south of the Mason Dixon Line, everybody living in what used to be The Confederate States of America, not “The Red States of America”. I hate the way they think and even the way they talk. These are bad people. First it was slavery, then a treasonous secession resulting in civil war, then Jim Crow and lynching, then segregation and now Christian evangelism. If you want a definition of hypocrisy just go to Alabama and visit a church where they will sing all kinds of happy Christian bullshit and then as they are driving home they will shoot some poor black dude out running along the side of the road. You cannot get an abortion in any of those states any more than you can get a decent education down there. A little piece of protoplasm on a Petri dish is worth more to these ignorant fucks than a woman bleeding to death from a miscarriage. These are all bright red states with the lowest teacher salaries and concomitant lowest academic test scores, waving their Trump flags while screaming against gays, trans, drag and abortion rights. They say, “The neegra slave was better off than the puh white cracker down the road. The neegrah had a roof over his head, food on the table and Sundays off”. Right, the poor fuckers had shitty roofs over their heads and only enough food so they could work 16 hours a day and their children and their grandchildren would be doing the same fucking thing a hundred years from now.
There are two words I really hate: Off Road. Why does every godam 4wd pick-up truck have to have a sign on the side that advertises the fact that this truck is made to fuck up the environment and drive off road where only the feet of horses, deer and man should go? The American Psychological Society and PEW research studies have found that the smaller a man’s penis, the larger his truck. And these guys LOVE driving back home in their 4wd “Off Road” monsters covered with mud to illustrate the extent of nature they tore up with their turbo-charged environmental wrecking machine over the weekend.
Another word I hate is Pho. Why the fuck is Fa spelled pho? A vowel preceded by a consonant is long for Christ’s sake. Every time I see a sign saying Pho I think fo. But apparently, we are supposed to say Fa. WTF? Some asshole in Nam fifty years ago ate out one night at a place that served soup and they said it was fa, so he wrote that down in his notebook but somehow the “a” he wrote got smudged and when he got home he thought it was Pho; what the fuck, I can’t figure it out but it offends the hell out of me to have to say the wrong vowel. I refuse. It isn’t that good anyway.
And what about this word that inspires countless discussions; gyro? Is it hero, Jiro or euro? What the fuck!
I hate so many things; I even hate bad grammar. Let me give you a quick grammar lesson regarding the two pronouns I and me. To figure out which to use simply say the sentence without the other pronoun. My mother bought tickets for my sister and I. How does this sound, my mother bought tickets for I? How about this, me and John are going to the store? Me is going to the store? If you don’t like the sound of I and John, simply turn it around to John and I are going to the store. Another grammar thing I do not like is double negatives as in I don’t want none, I can’t find them nowhere and I didn’t tell nobody. This is the kind of ignorant prattle I hear in the pool room and it really pisses me off.
Another thing I do not like is throwing in an adjective where we want an adverb. How did your team play last night? They played good. The only time this kind of bad grammar is acceptable is when talking about an automobile. You should never say your car runs “well”. I also do not like hearing people ending sentences or phrases with prepositions, most often the word “at”. Where you at? The golden fleece is where it’s at. Where is the library at? There is an occasional solution. A guy from Seattle was thinking about going to Harvard and was visiting the campus when a couple Haaahvad guys were walking toward him on the quad and the Seattle guy said, “Hey, can you guys tell me where the library is at”? One of the Haahvaad guys said disdainfully, “My deah fellow, at Haahvaad we do not end our sentences with prepositions”; whereupon the Seattle dude said, “Ahhh, I see. Can you tell me where the library is at asshole”.
I hate it when people say, anti-Simetic. The ancient people from the Fertile Crescent are Semites, not Simetts. The whole Semite thing is based on a ton of biblical “research” bullshit interpreted inaccurately by 18th century German philologers encompassing the entire Fertile Crescent and beyond. Anyway, the irony is that both Jews and Arabs are Semites.
I hate torn jeans that sell for $400. I had torn jeans when I was a boy and my mother fixed them with iron-on patches that never lasted for more than a week before I was embarrassed again going to school with torn pants. Making a fashion statement on top of the travails of poor people is an affront. If people wear brown tee shirts in support of Ukraine, that is one thing but to mock the penury of the poor is egregious. Then, to take a perfectly good pair of jeans and purposely tear holes in them so they can be sold at GAP or Abercrombie and Fitch is sheer effrontery. How about doing that with cars. Sell brand new Teslas or Porsches with cracked windows and dented doors. Besides, seeing affluent kids wearing torn jeans is just about the dumbest thing I have ever seen. Recognize a really stupid fashion gimmick and just say no.
I can’t talk about hate without mentioning Donald Trump. This is a hate we all share but for me it is different because I will not live to see a united, optimistic, democratic America again in my lifetime. The damage Trump has done is equaled only by the examples of Hitler and Stalin; and we see that Stalin’s ravages remain firmly entrenched in Putin’s Russia. For example, never again in my life will I see free and uncontested elections all across this country. Just like we saw last year in Arizona; Kari Lake followed Trump’s playbook and still refuses to concede. The confidence in free and fair elections is a foundational pillar of our democracy and Trump has single-handedly blown this pillar out from under us. Like I said at the beginning, it is important to hate some things. Hatred built this country and only hatred will save it.
One last word, appropriately at the very end. Passing. What the fuck? They all say, “He passed on the 7th of June”. Passed where? I guess they mean he passed on to another life in heaven. Well, he is fucking dead so forget about another life anywhere. What if he fell off a mountain? Would they say “he passed” on Mt Rainier? No, they would say he died on Mt Rainier. What if she died in a car wreck; “she passed” in a car accident? No, they only say “passed” when the poor fucker died from some disease; you know, like she leaned back on the pillow and closed her eyes, then her head sagged to the right and she passed on to wherever the fuck people pass onto, into, over; whatever the fuck preposition you want to throw in there. Bloody hell, I hate euphemisms. She DIED. We live and we die. We don’t pause, turn on our blinker and then pass for Christ’s sake. Are we so afraid of death that we cannot say the word “die”? We cannot say penis, pussy, vagina, vulva, anus or even breast. And, apparently, we cannot say “DIE”. When I DIE I hope nobody says “he passed”. I am not going to pass anywhere. I am going to die and be fucking dead. Period. Full stop. Dead as a fucking doornail.
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