The Curmudgeon
I am a curmudgeon. I have long been regarded as one and it is an attitude towards humanity that probably won’t adjust to the positive anytime soon. People annoy me and crowds irritate me. The general disregard most people have for my convenience and the convenience of those around them is mind blowing.
Travelling is the worst. People who travel in airplanes who don’t keep to themselves, who need to ask for individual favours, who make special requests, who don’t walk at a speed generally regarded as acceptable, who adjust their seats backwards, who need to use the bathroom on a ninety minute flight, who cannot maintain a civilised body odour, who travel with screaming children, who take carry-on luggage that is big enough it should have been checked, who find it necessary to talk to you even though you have your ear-plugs in listening to Johnny Cash, who hold up the check-in line and who think it is acceptable to sing in public are morons. Each and every one of them. Just act with a bit of civility and a bit of decency. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.
When you check-in, send oversized bags through and don’t stall the line by complaining about your seat or trying to get something for free or joining the wrong queue or asking for something special. When on the plane, don’t get a coffee and then ask two people to move so you can empty your bladder. Don’t bore the people around you with the monotonies of your life or the inanity of your thoughts and don’t annoy people around you by giggling like an idiot, telling teenage sex jokes and singing Spice Girls songs. Badly. Don’t be an inconsiderate and selfish asshole and recline in your seat, reducing the already limited space of the person behind you while potentially spilling any beverage they may be drinking. Don’t meander off the plane, cuddling your girlfriend, speaking on your phone, waddling your fat ass along when people just want to get to their baggage and get the fuck out of there. Just stay quiet, don’t create drama, move at a decent pace and stay out of the way.
Trains, buses and cabs are just as bad.
I am always happy to argue the toss with a cab driver I fancy is trying to bend me over and violate me because I may be drunk, distracted or a long way from home. I have no problem slamming my knees into the back of a chair when someone has lowered it onto me, the selfish asshole needing a broken spine or at the very least a decent jolt for being such a twat. I will, without guilt, wish the fat girl wobbling along in bogan gladiator heels and chatting on her phone while the rest of the line is forced to shuffle along at her pace an instantaneous moment of utter humiliation. I occasionally fantasise about something ironic like her choking on another biscuit but I’d settle for a sprained ankle and broken shoe and some rightful sniggering. Being fat does not excuse holding up a touchy bunch of travellers keen to get their luggage and then get about their business.
The only time I do enjoy the rumbles of travel is when you get two weird types creating a scene. Last weekend, riding a Sydney train, an aging junkie and a geeky trainspotter came together for a long and loud conversation. For a time, they were seemingly brothers in arms, two carnival freaks coming together for one last grand act. The junkie, who had put more heroin in his veins than Lou Reed, was loudly asking for directions. The trainspotter knew exactly where to go. The junkie told him the place he was headed “would save his life”, no doubt the latest in a string of bad promises and false starts that could stretch the distance of Rob Oakeshott’s sense of self-importance. The trainspotter, unable to engage in any other talk, offered alternative routes. I exchanged an amused glance with a fellow, more civilised, traveller.
My sullenness with the world is not limited to travel. It includes any dealings with the public. Shopping for clothing, household goods or furniture is particularly awful. I hate both immovable crowds and shop assistants trying to talk me into something I don’t want. The movies can occasionally be intolerable. I didn’t make it to the cinema to hear some douchebag who cannot keep up with the simple plotline moan to his girlfriend nor did I pay to hear some hipster in an oversized knitted vest offer a running critique bemoaning how “his old stuff was better than his new stuff” but with far more pretension, a chronic polysyllabricator. Public houses and bars aren’t even exempt. I get the urge for instant and extreme violence when, waiting to order a beer, I am stuck behind some skirt ordering three different cocktails or casually just flicking through the menu. Don’t even get me started on Ikea.
I even dismissed the idea that I had just seen Phillip Seymour Hoffman at a bar in The Rocks because the guy who was pointed out “was just a hobo with kids”. I was there with my girlfriend Louise and she leaned over and whispered to me that Phillip Seymour Hoffman was there, sucking down a beer and looking generally disinterested with his wife and three children. He may well have been hungover. I turned around, gave him a glance and made the hobo remark. I was sure it wasn’t him but it was. He was in an oversized Longhorns shirt and was unshaven and he seemed a long way from Hollywood. It turned out I was wrong. He was directing some play with Brendon Cowell in it. He had also attended the NRL Grand Final. My first thought was that I should accost him and demand $16 from him along with an explanation for one of the worst movies I have ever had the misfortune of paying to see, Synechdoche, New York. But I’m a curmudgeon and I just that there thinking about how terrible that movie was.
People, for the most part, tend to annoy me and as such I limit my dealings with humanity to only the necessary.
As such, I became a sports writer. I work from home, I set my schedule, I avoid office awkwardness and the need for congested daily travel and the annoyances of strangers.
My annoyances now are primarily limited to sports. They centre on the fact Shane Watson brings and then lights scented candles in the Australian dressing room, a room once occupied by real men like David Boon. They centre on the failure of Robert Finch to throw himself to the wolves like any decent and honourable human being would do after his reign brought misery and destitution on rugby league fans everywhere. They centre on the do-gooders and politically correct fools who have bitched and moaned about the NBL marketing campaign on One. They centre on people who aren’t gamblers getting genuinely excited about the Commonwealth Games. They centre on the San Francisco 49ers, highly touted and expected to win their division, opening up 0-5 due to a manic coach who has no connection with his players and a quarterback who is a damned fool. They centre on awful human beings like Neil Mitchell being allowed to publicly name two Collingwood players implicated in a rape scandal. They centre on betting scandals, a dearth of serious high school and college sporting passion in Australia, the failure of sporting fans to take roller derby seriously and, of course, rugby union.
Most of all, however, my main annoyance is that football season is over. Hunter Thompson titled his suicide note “Football Season is Over” and I understand the analogy more than anyone. I struggle to deal with no more rugby league. The Four Nations is something but it isn’t the same. It is hangover season and I’m not dealing with it well. The last thing anyone wants is to see me in public. It isn’t going to be pleasant. So keep walking, don’t try to sell me anything, don’t recline your seat backwards and for the sake of peace please go to the bathroom before boarding the plane. Failure to do so could set me or anyone else who is suffering through the end of football season off.