In which I bitch about annoying phrases people like to quote

People have the capability of saying some really profound things. Some can string verbs and adjectives together in an effortless Shakespearean manner to create staggering sentences that can induce Claude Monet inspiration. The rest of us just breathe out useless concoctions of grammatically lined up words on a day to day basis. That’s cool though. We, the talentless and less eloquent, instead can rely on quoting. Like parasitic speech bacteria, one line from Thomas Jefferson or The Beach Boys makes us seem as if we have something worthwhile to say about our slipping futile realities. If not just that, quotes and sayings are fun. Scrolling through a liege of Oscar Wilde’s quotes on being a decadent asshole is a night’s worth of entertainment. And when you can actually remember a quote you earn the benefit of sounding passably intellectual (which can be a redeeming feature if it’s 3am and you’re about to projectile vomit tequila shots on the person you are quoting to*).
*all scenarios on this blog are fictional. If they bare any resemblance to reality that is purely coincidental. Purely. Stop judging me.

But with great power comes great responsibility. Between ‘I have a dream’ and ‘THIS IS SPARTA’ there are a bunch of shithouse cliché quotes that people like to verbalise over and over again to the point that I want to staple-gun the words across their foreheads.  These are the ones I cannot stand.  And when I say cannot stand, I mean schizophrenically-stuffing-a-gun-into-my-mouth-to-blow-out-my-temporal-lobe-bukkake-style cannot stand.

Seriously.

Hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn…………………………….to these fucking annoying quotes/sayings.

Live in the moment/ YOLO

There is truth to this saying in its organic form.  We are all skeleton structures on a dying rock hurtling through space, with the past unchangeable and future unsure. Any moment a bus could accidentally ram its lights into your vital arteries and cease your existence. In fact as you are reading this very sentence you could be taking your last breath**. You just never know what’s to come, besides the fact one day this will all end. As a result, and as Buddhist like to say, the present it sort of the only thing we’ve got going for us. In this sense we do and should live in the present moment. We only have one shot at whatever this is.
** If you died reading this, I am sorry.

But unless someone comes up to me with this rationale before screaming out ‘LIVE IN THE MOMENT/YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE’ don’t be surprised if I squeeze lemon juice into your eye.

People who quote this are usually drunk. They scream it out in the middle of a dance floor, whilst someone is deep-throating a goon sack and your friend is smashing your face into the mouth of some hairy kid wearing a suspiciously stained singlet. Basically, people like to scream it out when they want to do some really dumb shit.

That’s okay, dumb shit is hilarious. I’ve done a lot of dumb shit. Once I was binge drinking at night and decided to trespass a pre-school (because I am a probably a closet paedophile) and got caught by the police. Another time I dyed my hair blonde because I thought it would be funny. This other time I told these chicks to ‘come at me’ on the internet, and they did indeed come at me. Eight of them. With friends. Whilst I was studying maths at a tutoring college.  In hindsight, all these things probably happened because people were giving me the advice of ‘live in the moment’ or ‘YOLO”.

On top of that, it gets annoying when you wake up after a particularly bitchin’ party and you have the word YOLO written all over your arms and legs in permanent market and the hot water in your house is all gone. That’s just mean.

Another reason why I hate this quote is because people who say ‘I live in the moment’ are usually wankers who disregard the future. I know what you’re thinking, I just had some massive spiel about how the future was uncertain and blah blah blah, but that doesn’t mean you discount doing anything practical that could potentially benefit you in the future. We all want a roof over our heads and food on our table when we are older. No one wants to live in a trailer park with five kids and a husband  that is never around, so alcohol and cocaine become your best friend.

Conclusively, finish school kids.

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.” –Marilyn Monroe

I love Marilyn Monroe, but god dammit do I want to hurl a deluge of flaming ball sacks at people who like to use this to describe themselves. I hate it on so many levels.

The first level is the fact that it ignores all social skills. Now I’m the last person to be lecturing on social skills, but even I know that if I start off by meeting with a person at my ‘worst’ and expect them to stick it out until my ‘best’, then I’m going to have a load of printer cartridges hurled at my face. You don’t want me at my worst. My worst is crying in a heap of insecurity telling you to leave me alone, and calling you names like: ‘douchebag mc fart fart’.That’s why I trick people at my ’best’, lull them into a false sense of security, until they’re stuck with me.

 You don’t make a good impression by acting like a brat. In fact, you don’t get to act like a brat around other people in general. That’s just being an immature douche. No one wants to deal with you if you’re going to be an uncompromising ‘selfish, out of control, hard to handle’ bitch. No one will want you. All your friends will leave you. You’ll live alone with cats. Then those cats will leave you because cats are intuitive and realise how much of a brat you are. Then you’ll die alone. And when you do die, no one will know until your body starts stinking up the third floor of your apartment block (you live on the ground floor). No one will come to your funeral.  Then in six months, a bunch of drunken teenagers yelling ‘YOLO’ will come along and kick in your tombstone.

The second level on why I hate this quote is because only someone like Marilyn Monroe can say shit like this.  She was a talented Hollywood star with a shitload of accolades and money. People fell to her feet. Teenage boys and girls masturbated to her face at night. I still masturbate to her face at night. I mean, she didn’t even bother making her affair with JFK a secret. She earned the right to be a crazy, drug-addled, unhinged bitch. Only when you have achieved this much, can say something this dumb.

If you love something set it free, if it comes back then it is meant to be.

When I was four, my pet mouse ‘Spotty’ chewed through the cage and ran away.  I was devastated, but then my mum told me this quote to cheer me up. He never did come back.

This story just shows how nothing is meant to be, because if anything was meant to be, it was me and my goddamn childhood mouse. Everything in this universe is random, coincidental and magnificently strange. There is no divine order. Once my dog walked into his own faeces and I had to spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning his feet.  If you can summarise in dot points on how that event had any profound impact or meaning within the universe’s grand plan, then be my guest. Until then, realise there is no such thing as 'meant to be'. 

In fact there is a higher chance that the reason that something ‘comes back’ to you isn’t because it was’ meant to be’, but probably because they failed to find something better, And probably because Switzerland wasn’t all that cracked up to be.

Anyway, years later I found out that my mouse was actually mauled by a cat. He was dragged along the ground, blood and guts smeared across the veranda, and decapitated in our vegetable patch.

My dad threw his body in the compost bin.

You are beautiful in every single way – Christina Aguelira

I was once sitting at a bar innocently sipping on a bourbon and coke making eye contact with no one in particular. This is a euphemistic way of saying that I was once drunkenly running around a bar wearing a skanky top, a skirt too short and makeup so thick that I looked like the victim of a paintball attack. My chest was out, my game face on and I was staring down any unsuspecting victim who gave off the vibe of having an Asian fetish in the most unapologetically whorish manner you could imagine.

Sometime during the night a semi-drunk guy with a clean shaven face and a cap on backwards came up to me, cross-eyed, grabbed me by the neck and drunkenly whispered into my ear:

“You are beautiful in every single way.”

Now I know I should have taken this as a compliment. I should be giggling, flicking my hand and twirling my hair. This dude not only summed up the courage to approach a fine looking chick with spectacular hair and a great piece of ass but he also called me beautiful. Coming from someone who has tried to pull chicks, in the hopes of setting off my lesbian college phase, not only is that shit hard but it’s also more than most dudes would do.  In a bar scenario, most drunk guys just grind their dicks up against my thigh on the dance floor in hopes that I will throw my drunken vagina at them.

But I’m an asshole, and this gronk just quoted the most fucking annoying line in the history of Christina Aguelira hits.

So because when I get drunk I think I am wittier and cleverer then I really am, I replied with:

“Bitch please, you have never seen me at 3am in the morning. Also wearing your hat backwards makes you look like a lesbian elf.”

Disregarding the second part of that line, this unnecessarily long anecdote brings me to the point that no, no we are not beautiful in every single way. No one is. At best we are ‘pretty okay-ish’ in some ways. Tell this line to me when you have seen me blazed out in sweat pants, no make-up, my hair unwashed and unkept, where I am lying in a pool of Doritos packets in front of a television and my face is squashing out fat tears because Cilian Murphy has just found the windmill he made as a child in the safebox next to his dying father***, then call me beautiful.
***I am sorry if you haven’t watched Inception, but it’s really your own fault. That masterpiece has been out for fucking ages.

Most of us are ugly all of the time, and that’s okay. Beauty is a short lived tyranny. In time, everyone’s skin looks like it’s melting off their faces. It’s the glorious passage of life.

That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. - Friedrich Nietzsche

That which didn’t kill you probably didn’t finish the job.

Come at me Friedrich.

Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down – Socrates (apparently)

I had never heard of this quote until a few Sunday nights ago when I found myself in a deep and meaningful conversation with this chick who I did not want to be in a deep and meaningful conversation with. This lady was wearing really purple shoes and had super big ears. We were sitting at the bus stop, rubbish and old copies of torn up “Big Issues” swirling in the wind, getting all bambi-eyed and sentimental in nostalgia and insecurity.

Then she hit this bombshell on me.

After she said this, she proceeded to go on a five minute rant about her terrible break up that had happened four years back, which changed the mood of the entire conversation because I was getting spit on my face and the twisted contortions of her face were beginning to scare me.

Anyway, this quote annoys me for numerous reasons. The first is how self-absorbed it is. The lady who was emotionally bomb shelling me quoted this in a manner that made it seemed as if she was the only special person who acted this way. In reality, just about everyone I know has ‘walls’; especially the older, jaded, more hilarious divorcees.  I know plenty of people who have met really great people but because they've built themselves emotional walls made out of iron, they force people to jump through of hoops and hurdles. The reasoning is always some murky back story involving a broken heart or a Chihuahua rejecting your love.

 ‘Walls’ are the natural defence mechanisms created out of fear or insecurity because someone once planted an explosive shit bomb in the centre of your universe.  But while a lot of people suck ass and will do this (and take your Maxibon while they're at it), there are also some pretty shiny gems out there who won’t. It is, however, not the job of these gems to ‘break down your walls’.  Nor is ‘breaking down your walls’ a measure how much someone cares for you. So stop making us buy ropes, gadgets and WMD’s to break down your wall. It’s fucking expensive. Sometimes I feel like that Wolf in the Three Little Pigs. I’m huffing and puffing, but your walls are layered with bricks. Quit that bullshit. No one is here to baby you. You’re not that special or cool. We all have our own thing going on. If you actually want to connect with someone, breaking down your walls isn’t their job. It's your own.

It’s like what Coketalk said:, walls are fear-based defence mechanisms that you take down and put up over and over again to protect yourself from your own vulnerability. It’s dumb and exhausting. What you need instead is a filter. A filter is not fear-based but instead defined by your own set of personal standards and values. This brilliant device allows you sieve out the assholes and, most importantly, embrace your own vulnerabilities.

So don’t feel so high and mighty with your wall. Walls are annoying to maintain. Also, if you think about it, pretty pointless without rooves. I would know. I practically built the Great Wall of China. Then I was attacked by a load of angry, stealthy and clever Mongolians. Now I have tourists walking all over me and that is not as fun as you think.

I love you –anyone who has ever said that ever

YEAH SURE YOU DO. THAT’S WHAT THEY ALL SAY. THEN THEY LEAVE YOU. THEY  LEAVE YOU SO THAT YOU ARE A SHADOW OF YOUR FORMER SELF.

Anyway, those are the quotes that grind my gears. I really never know how to end my posts, so I'll just leave you with some quotable Bukowski.

I met a genius

today

about 6 years old,

he sat beside me

and as the train 

ran down along the cost

we came across the ocean

and then he looked at me

and said,

its not pretty

- Charles Bukowski

(Comment section has been fixed, so now anyone can blog comment. You should give me validation)