Competition

Who’s more annoying? Person A, who knows her behavior is annoying but persists anyway Person B, who is entirely oblivious to the annoyingness of her behavior?*

When I was in high school and used to ride the subway an hour to and from the last stop on the Brooklyn F train five days a week, I used to have elaborate fantasies about retaliating against the dudes who carried boom boxes and made whole subway cars suffer their music at top volume. I dreamed of bringing my own box and blasting Metallica or Iron Maiden and completely drowning out their gangster rap. I couldn’t think of anything more obnoxious than this completely self-centered, in-your-face disregard for the other passengers. The answer to the above was clearly Person A.

This was before the invention of cell phones and the advent of “ring tone testers”.

We’ve all experienced the person who, with utter absorption, scrolls through all 203 of their phone’s potential ringing sounds, bombarding everyone around him with tinny renditions of every sane person’s most reviled songs at ear piercing volume, totally unconscious of the pain and suffering he is inflicting upon his fellow passengers. This person--Person B, AKA Ring Tone Man-- I now know is vastly more annoying than Person A, the Boom Box Dude. The utter self-absorption of Ring Tone Man completely blows my mind. Ultimately, his failure to notice the glares, the rolling eyes and the remarks being hurled in his direction annoys me even more than his annoying behavior itself.

Ring Tone Man actually makes me feel a certain respect for Boom Box Dude. Now there’s some irony for you, huh? But seriously, I can respect (at least from the comfort of my kitchen) the disrespectfulness of Boom Box Dude because by flaunting his disrespect Boom Box Dude shows he is at least conscious of the people around him.

Ring Tone Man had a friend, a friend who I also hate. Her name is Useless Headphone Girl. Useless Headphone Girl, who’s never noticed that her headphones actually serve as amplifiers, who’s never tested their volume, is clearly a Person B. She has a fraternal twin sister, who knows that her headphones don’t keep things to her ears alone but doesn’t care. This sister is a Person A--she couples up with Boom Box Dude and she tends to enjoy singing along with her music and, occasionally, dancing in her seat.

This (highly insightful and cutting-edge!) analysis was prompted by a recent, amusing encounter with a Person A. It was late on a Friday night, my friend Sam and I were heading home from a night of bad cinema, scurrying subway rats and puking drunkards, and we were looking for a little peace on our train journey. Unfortunately, we sat down next to three bored teenagers. A couple stops into our ride, one of the teenagers, a lanky boy in a cap, picked up the lid of Snapple bottle and began incessantly snapping the pop-top button. Ignoring a few half-hearted requests/threats from his friends, he continued to pop, clearly relishing the annoyance he was causing.

Sam and I tried to hate this kid(well, Sam probably tried to ignore him because she is nice and I am not) but it was hard to hate him because he was trying so valiantly to make that happen, and somehow, this was slightly, if absurdly, endearing. In the end, I offered him a dollar if he would stop popping the pop-top. This turned out to be a brilliant idea. His friends cracked up, he stopped popping, and when I opened my wallet to get out a buck, he refused to take it.

See, that’s the thing about Person A--you can win. You can ignore his intentional annoyingness and deny him the clout he seeks, or you can acknowledge his annoying behavior so he will feel satisfied and cease it. With Person B--Ring Tone Man and his lot-- you have no means of retaliation. To Person B, you do not exist, and this makes you powerless. So I say pack your wallet with singles and hope for Person A. And if you are unlucky and wind-up in a subway car with Person B, I don’t know what you can do except hope that the exit to the next car works and that cell phone companies will finally get over Yankee Doodle Dandy.

*Note: If you read the earlier, unedited version of this and the whole Person A, Person B thing made no sense at all to you, know that it was my fault and not yours.

There's a Thesis Waiting To Be Written

There is an anthropological science that is not being used to its fullest potential: the semiotics of spices. I'm telling you, there are secrets of human existence being left untapped in kitchen cupboards across America and the world. The secret that is currently of chief interest to me is this: what convergence of cultural factors can explain the invention of "pizza seasoning"?

Someone needs to explore this urgent question. I myself have been pondering it since purchasing a lovely wooden, rotating spice rack for two dollars at a stoop sale. Either Mark and I have some decidedly weird cooking habits, or times and tastes have changed a lot in the last couple decades. Out of the 16 pre-labeled canisters that came with the rack, only eight of them were intended for a spice that we already had shoved onto the cluttered top shelf our kitchen cabinet. Yesterday I spent an hour dusting the floor with mustard seed and cinnamon, feeling like a serious drug lord as I loaded up a plastic bag with a massive pile of crinkly, dried green herbs.

Alchemy

Now "Savory" (I refuse to believe that sprinkling my dinner with an adjective will enhance it) houses dried chives, and the pizza seasoning has been replaced by ground ginger. The disgusting celery salt was dumped to make way for dill, and the crushed mint (??) container is the new home for cinnamon. The pizza seasoning (basil, oregano, marjoram and garlic, apparently) now contains basil because there was no separate container specifically for basil alone. Can you believe that? Pizza seasoning has a place on this rack, but basil on it's own is left out entirely? Fascinating.

Honestly, pizza seasoning is simply not a part of my gestalt--I can't interpret it. I can't place it in its cultural context. It's time for the professionals to get on this subject. I want some answers--don't you?

Weddings Galore

My dear friend Hillary is getting married. This weekend my fellow bridesmaids and I descended on Baltimore to join aunts, childhood friends, grandmas, cousins, and soon-to-be in-laws for a celebration. The weather cooperated and showered the future bride all day Saturday and all of Saturday night, making our matching one dollar "emergency ponchos" not just fashionable, but useful, and we swished around the city turning heads with our noisy clear plastic garb. We viewed a kinetic sculpture race from the side of a mud pit, and saw a ten-foot high pink poodle, a “Kafkaroach” and a birthday cake, all of which were mounted on bicycles, compete for the finish, went salsa dancing and duck-pin bowling (apparently Babe Ruth's favorite sport) and watched Hillary’s elders play with a fart machine. It was a wedding shower in true Hillary fashion: loopy, fun, and decidedly out of the ordinary. My favorite part might have been when I discovered that the snow cone maker and 4-pack of flavored syrup that the future bride had unwrapped and greeted with such glee had actually been purchased from her registry. (Further exploration of her registry just revealed such necessary items as KRISPY KREME 6PK FUDGE ICED GLAZED ($3.99) and STICKER MINI MIXED DOGS ($1.99))


The bowling bride.

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