Some stuff I don’t get

It’s a slow news day here at MyMac Towers, and so in the great traditional of newspaper lifestyle columns, instead of reporting on something worthwhile, I’m simply going to rant a little. Mull over a few of life’s little absurdities that I just don’t get. The more I think about modern life, the more I find it inexplicable. Am I the only person who doesn’t care about this stuff?

Tennis shoes

Kicking off my list of things I just don’t get are tennis shoes. I can get that athletes need footwear. If you’re a rock-climber, you need those shoes with the spiky things at the front. If you’re a footballer, then something suitable for whacking pig-bladders around the place is probably essential. And, I’m sure, tennis players need shoes suitably adapted to tennisey type things for use on grass and clay. This is all well and good. What I don’t get is how tennis shoes became the standard issue footwear for Americans and Europeans alike.

Tennis shoes — a.k.a ‘sneakers’ or ‘trainers’ — are not flattering. They get dirty quickly, they make your feet look big, and they look old and scrappy in next to no time. For what they are, they seem extraordinarily overpriced. You can buy a pair of handmade brogues for about the same as the high-end tennis shoes. Tennis shoes don’t go with anything much except perhaps tennis whites; it’s hard to imagine tennis shoes making an outfit in the same way as a really nice pair of leather shoes.

Perhaps the most bizarre thing about tennis shoes is the people who wear them don’t play tennis. Or indeed any sports. Tennis shoes seem to be the footwear of choice for the fat and the lazy. People who consider lacing up their tennis shoes to be quite enough exercise for one day. Why wear something that advertises your fatness and laziness? I don’t get it.

Designer dogs

I like dogs. I like cats better, and fish even more, but I am willing to share time with a dog. I like that they’re smart and loyal, and most seem to be rather better in these regards than their owners. But, at the end of the day, a dog is a dog and I don’t feel any need to lavish huge amounts of time and money on one. And when I say huge amounts of time and money, I mean it. Labradoodles, the current flavour of the month in the designer dog market, sell for anything between $1000 and $4000, with some breeders having waiting lists of over six months.

Just think what else you could buy with that money, and still be able to get a perfectly pleasant “bit of this, bit of that” doggie from the local animal rescue. Said dog would likely be just as smart and friendly, and you’d have the added satsifaction ofknowing you’d rescued the poor creature from almost certain doom. With the $4000 you saved, you could fill out your wardrobe nicely, or get an awesome computer system, or maybe just take you and that someone special on a trip somewhere hot and sunny. I have nothing against people keeping labradoodles or any of these other designer dogs, it’s just I can’t see how anyone would want to spend the money on something they could get for free.

Faux-lesbians

I’m a guy. And like most guys, I like girls. A lot. I like it even better when they like me. But apparently, even more than one girl at a time, I’m supposed to like them in pairs. Preferably when the two girls in question are scantily clad and making out. So says, at least, the picture editors of the ‘lads mags’ like FHM and Maxim. And so, apparently, do movie directors and television producers. Whether it’s Basic Instinct or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a splash of lesbianism is apparently just the thing to get some male attention.

But here’s my thing. One girl, interested in me, that I understand. Two hot girls interested in one another but not in the least interested in me, well, that I don’t get.

Reality TV

One reason to watch TV is to get away from all the stupid, ugly, interesting people that make up modern humanity. I can appreciate that everyone on The West Wing is kinder, smarter, and better looking than anyone I’ll ever meet in real life because they’re made up people. So why would I want to watch ordinary people doing ordinary things?

Take MTV’s Real World. Teenagers are bad enough as it is. They’re whiney, self-absorbed, and lack any sense of perspective or responsibility. Teenagers who’ve won a competition to find the whiniest, most self-absorbed teenagers in the United States will have had to beat some very stiff competition. Stick ’em in a house full of cameras, ply with alcohol, and leave for an entire season, and you have the televisual equivalent of toothache.

I can just about understand the shows following wannabe-doctors at medical school and that sort of thing, but Big Brother? The Bachelorette? Not good. And possibly the very worst of them all, My Super Sweet 16. Not only are the children featured repulisvely obnoxious, utterly spoilt little brats, but its very popularity raises the stakes for parents often strapped for cash just covering healthcare and education. Total cost of one material girl’s sweet-sixteen: $200,000.

Tattoos

This is the big one. I just don’t get tattoos. I can understand them if they’re cultural. And I’m not about to argue with Popeye about the anchor on his arms. But has anyone, in the history of the planet Earth, ever looked more attractive after a tattoo than before? I don’t think so.

And it seems that, along with breast implants and bellybutton piercings, every woman alive seems to want to get tattoos. Whether its Chinese characters on their ankles, butterflies on the butt, snakes on the shoulder, it’s all in style. Men aren’t much better, though frankly I don’t care that much about how men look. But when I see an otherwise good looking woman with some stupid tattoo on her wrist or whatever… I just don’t get it (or her). People aren’t that pretty to begin with, but why make things worse?

Anyway, that’s enough whingeing and complaining for one week. Enjoy the rest of the summer!
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