Focus: The Simpsons. I've never laughed at that show, and totally fail to see any brilliance in it at all. Yet, everyone loves it and it's been on the air forever. Just don't get it.
Eating green / bell peppers. I cannot stand them. They ruin everything they touch. Anybody who ever tells me that I can "just pick them off" a pizza, as if they don't leave their nasty funkitude behind, needs to be punched in the face. Certain TV shows. I have a habit of latching on to ones that I think are really good, and then they get cancelled. See: Terriers, Life, The Good Guys, The Cape, Go On . . . Juice Edit: Knock it off, Rush.
Focus: Casual Sex: Even when I was a young walking erection I never enjoyed casual sex. The few times I did it I felt dirty and used. I need an emotional connection. I’ve always been a little jealous of those who could so easily engage in it and feel satisfied by it. Sports Obsessions: I will never understand the national obsession with Football, Baseball, Hockey, Soccer, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching many of these sports from time to time and I have my favorite teams, but the obsessive worship of individual players, teams, and stat watching that goes along with it is bizarre. College level sports in particular is an insane world in and of itself that seems to put everything but winning last, and I certainly wouldn’t send my son to any college that does so, I don’t care how Ivy League or prestigious it was. Rap “Music”: Let me be clear: THIS IS NOT MUSIC. Alt Focus: Yard Work: Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more? My greatest wish is to spend the rest of my life high as a fucking kite working on all the projects and plans I have for my front and back yard. A patio with a fire pit, a front and back deck, a storage shed (that’s actually going to be a grow room for weed), there are enough plans and ideas for a lifetime. In fact, I may need an extra lifetime to accomplish it all. Solitude: As much as I love my wife and my family and the very few friends I have, I will never get enough solitude. I am the quintessential introvert. Being around lots of people sucks the life out of me and makes me mentally and emotionally exhausted. Having personal relationships in general doesn't mean much to me, though I do care very much about those around me.
Focus: Karaoke: There is no part of this that sounds fun to me. I think sitting around watching the good singers be good is tiring because they're just looking for validation, watching the bad singers who think they're good be bad is embarrassing to the point of being uncomfortable, and watching the bad singers who know they're bad isn't funny or cute. I don't think singalongs in any format are fun so I don't like participating, and then you can't really ignore it and just hang out with your friends because you have to pay attention to the singers and can't hear each other anyway. It's also expensive. I've done it twice, and one was okay and one was close to being fun but they were situations where I kind of had to go so I was trying my best to fake a good time. Never again. British Humo(u)r: An unfortunate result of knowing a lot of very weird very smart people is that they all seem to loooovvvee British humor and are constanty trying to get me to watch things and I just don't get it. I think the most it's ever gotten out of me is a giggle, Monty Python included. Mad Max: Fury Road: I knew I wasn't going to like this movie and I never planned on seeing it, but after the deluge of "ohmygod this is the best movie I've ever seen"s including from a bunch of unlikely sources and everyone claiming that it was some great feminist movie, I decided to give it a shot. It was so dumb and silly and I was laughing out loud at 90% of the dialogue. I tried holding out for when the women were a bigger part of the story but only lasted a few minutes before turning it off. It was exactly the kind of movie I thought it was going to be and I'm still mad at everyone trying to convince me otherwise. And the worst part is when I went back to talk to my friends about it they kept trying to claim that everyone was saying it was great for just being a silly action movie. NO. People were writing goddamn dissertations about how it was a work of art and really smart and important and not your usual popcorn flick and blah blah blah. Don't you try to weasel your way out of this. Harrumph. Silver Linings Playbook: Similarly, I seem to be the only person who hated that movie. I thought the writing was absolutely terrible and the acting was bad and the whole thing was straight up offensive to people with mental health problems.
Focus: Star Wars: I don't know if this counts as an actual hatred, because I dislike the movies due to how often they are brought up in pop culture. I have no reason to watch any of these films because they have all been discussed to death. I watched the first half of the first movie (Episode 4?) and could not care less about what happened to any of the characters. Despite this fact, I know everything there is to know about the major plot points as well as any spoilers for any of the films. I really just wish my brain was filled with more important information than the fact that "the force" is a high concentration of midi-chlorians in cells. Anti-Focus: The current programming on MTV: These are not shows that I recommend to other people. They are entirely something mindless for me to focus on at the end of a long day. I watch reruns of Teen Mom when I'm having an anxiety attack because it is completely mindless entertainment. It's not even that I compare my own life to the lives of these girls to make me feel better. I just find that I can zone out easily and not think about my anxiety when I watch this mindless shit.
Focus: https://www.theidiotboard.com/threads/no-shave-november.253885/ I had never heard of this before hipsters became a thing. I don't think that's a coincidence.
Things I hate: - Doing laundry. I'm going into my fourth week in my new house, and haven't yet hooked up the washer/dryer. I purposely buy clothes so that I can delay the pain of doing laundry. - Any yardwork of any kind. My mother enjoys and has a talent for gardening to the point where her yard could be photographed for magazines. It has decks and fountains and archways and everything is constantly in bloom. Her only child? Notsomuch. I would literally pave the yard if I didn't think it would negatively affect my property value. I pay someone to cut my grass and shovel the snow, and I am 100% happier for it. - Any repetitive, unending, maintenance kind of chore. I have no issues doing something ONCE, or so that it's done. But something that just needs to be done again, and soon? Ugh. Things I like: I can't think of anything I love that other people don't also enjoy. Maybe moving? There are moments when you just want to cry and not do it anymore, but I think moving every 3-6 years keeps you on your toes. You never get sick of a place and you can't collect too much junk. I'm slowly morphing into my dad; I will throw out photos if it means I don't have to move them across country again. I also enjoy being in large airports alone, at night. Something about travelling and being in-between places appeals. You took care of everything before you left, and no one's expecting you to get where you're going anytime soon. Everything is in motion, and it's all transitory.
FOCUS: LORD OF THE RINGS, the books, the movies, the fan-fiction, all of it. Many of my friends are fans of this stuff; I don't know if there's a term for them... Tolkieniacs? Tolkienoholics? Tolkienophiles? Anyway, I'm ashamed to say that I paid full price (for two tickets) to see every LOTR movie in the theater because my ex-wife wanted to see them, including a midnight preview that featured a lot of nerds dressed up as hobbits, wizards, elves, hobbit-wizards, and elf-hobbits, or whatever the fuck they are. Yes, the movies were reasonably entertaining, and they had decent CGI, but I never understood fantasy fiction; to me, "magic" always seemed like a cheap cop-out for lazy writers. About the books: I tried reading The Two Towers when I was in prison, when my unit was on lockdown. When on lockdown (which usually lasts at least two weeks), inmates are restricted to their cells at almost all times. We would get sack lunches ("Johnny sacks") for every meal, and we could only take showers 3 times a week. So someone passed me a copy of The Two Towers right after lockdown started. "Wonderful, a long book to take my mind outside of these four walls!" is what I thought. I made it about 100 pages in to that dense morass of words. Tolkien just wouldn't get to the goddam point. If I have to learn a whole new vocabulary that does not apply to real life (unless I'm talking to geeks), I think it's a waste of time. The moral of this story: With literally nowhere to go and nothing to do, I couldn't muster the patience to finish a Lord of the Rings book. Maybe if I had started off with the first book in the series, I would have a different impression, but I doubt it. Alt. Focus: Godzilla/kaiju movies. I've been a fan of giant monster movies since I was a little, tiny Bandit, but my favorite has always been Godzilla. I even rooted for Godzilla over King Kong in King Kong vs. Godzilla-1962 (that movie was a big disappointment...), or Japan over America, as most people saw it. I know that they're corny as hell, but my inner 6-year old still loves it. (Although for the record, the 2014 Godzilla was too fat.)
Gambling. I don't hate it, but I don't get it. It's the ultimate "money for nothing" scenario and unless your casino is owned by Donald Trump the house always wins. I think roulette is fun at times, I never play cards or bet on sports for any reason. It almost got really out of hand for my friend before he quit cold turkey out of the blue and never relapsed once. Thank god. I get that it adds a layer of excitement to life for many but I never got into it. It fucking DESTROYS lives for nothing. At least drugs got you high.
focus: outdoors stuff. I have become a giant baby as time goes on, and can't deal with outdoors stuff. The more likely it is that I will need to shower when I get home, the more I hate it. Even sitting at my daughter's soccer game for an hour and a half annoys me. Also, events where there are going to be a ton of people and parking is going to be terrible. If I was rich enough to afford valet parking or taking a taxi or whatever method would drop me off at the door, I'd probably deal more. I regularly miss out on stuff I would love, like our Saturday farmer's market, because parking is a complete shit show. anti-focus: fandom stuff. I love geeking out and being around people that geek out. My daughter is the right age for this sort of thing, so when we went to the Wizard Con this past summer we had a fabulous time. I think the most reserved I am about it is at work, but even there I have my DYAD Institute coffee cup and a tiny little Spock hanging from my bulletin board.
Focus: Game of Thrones. I tried to read it and abandoned it within a few chapters. I just didn't care. Fantasy novels have never held much appeal for me, and despite the hype, I just couldn't get into the chapter-by-character style or have any semblance of sympathy for the incestuous drivel. It just ain't my bag. Subsequently, I haven't watched the show, purely on principle.
VICE. I used to love it. Shane Smith would do things no other journalist would think about doing and do some great interviews. Over the last year or two its become sensationalist nonsense. I dont even follow them on social media anymore because half of their articles is just click-bait junk media. Maybe its the influx of investors they've had or the low quality of writing staff, but its noticeably shittier than it used to be.
I bet part of that has been a by-product of their foray into television... they now have to compete with other shows, using the same techniques.
Sitcoms: Back in the 90s Friends was watchable if I had nothing else to do, but I can't understand the appeal of these shows, or how they're frequently among the most popular in America. The humor is so contrived, the episodes are so formulaic and repetitive, with humor usual centering around oddball character quirks that are supposed to be funny over... and over... and over again. Most of the people I know watch these so I've sat through way too many, and I still can't find them funny. I can never get past the weirdness of a laugh track to tell you when something is supposed to be funny either. Excessive texting: Why do you want to have a conversation that moves at 2 miles an hour? How does this not annoy the shit out of you? I get the practicality of texting and I use it like everyone else, but if I have a lot I want to say to someone I need to see them face to face or at least call them. Why anyone would want to text back and forth for sometimes hours on end baffles me. Backwards hats, sagging pants, or any manner of wearing shit the way it isn't supposed to be worn: Not only does this defeat the purpose of wearing it, I don't get how it's supposed to look cool, or edgy or whatever it's supposed to be. Why would you buy new pants that are 'artistically' torn up and have holes? Is it supposed to look old and worn in? Not even Goodwill would accept that shit for merchandise. Whatever the point is supposed to be, I don't get it, don't care.
First thing I thought of when I read that. And look, he's an A&M fan! (Stereotypes exist for a reason.)
To be honest, during the summer when I was on my tractor the first thing I did was turn my cap around backwards. Not as a fashion statement, but to prevent my neck from becoming actually red. The bill wasn't pointed straight back, but rather straight down my spine. I had sunglasses and a visor to keep the sun out of my eyes.