You Compensating For Something?

Fact: Most Americans aren't happy with everything they have. They wish their car was a little nicer, their job paid a little more, their wife was a little hotter and a little less inclined to cheat on them with the muscular pool boy. Alright, that last example was probably a bit of a stretch (it's much more likely that they're doing it with the gardener instead.), but you understand my point. In this country, people are always looking for a little more, and when they've obtained what they wanted, they quickly get bored and find something else to want instead.

Here's the scene: Several of my friends and I are at the gym, working out and talking amongst ourselves and having a jolly good time. Now none of us are muscle-bound behemoths, and none of us are liable to be mistaken for a beached whale. We all fit rather snugly within the confines of "average build". For us, working out is as much of a health thing as it is a social event.

Occupying the same workout room as us are a couple of thick-neck chest-thumpers. These are the kinda guys who have made a habit out of bench pressing smart cars and would probably headbutt a cinder block if you told them that the cinder block called them a pussy. These guys were absolute leviathans, stomping and thumping about the weight room while growling to each other in some sort of primal communication. My troupe of perfectly average teenagers watched these giants, who couldn't have been more than a few years older than us, with a healthy mix of envy and fear. It's very emasculating when you're struggling to bench just over 100 lbs, and the guy next to you is exerting less energy lifting twice as much weight.

Suddenly, I heard one of them speak. He seemed to be the alpha-male of the group, clad in a torn bright-red tank top and possessing enough muscle to make 80's era Arnie feel slightly insecure. When he opened his mouth, I expected a bass-deep rumble to roll out of his maw like a great boulder. Instead, I was greeted with one of the most adorable and pitiable voices I've ever heard in my life, as the man-bear quietly confided in his burly companion.

"I wish I was stronger."

Sad lump of muscles is sad.

My brain took about 4 seconds to reboot upon hearing this statement due to the difficulty I had connecting that statement with the guy who said it. A violent sneeze from this man could blow my house into the next county, and he wishes he could lift more?

As I've never been out of the country, I can't accurately gauge how severe the issue is elsewhere in the world, but I can see that it is very pronounced here. Woman are force fed unrealistic expectations for their physique by our beauty-obsessed pop culture. Men, on the other hand, seem to harbor the idea that if their penis isn't long enough to be confused for a submarine, then there must be something wrong with them (I'm gonna go ahead and chalk this one up to the popularity of internet porn here in America, because from what I hear, guys are the only ones who seem to care about the size of their lady pokers. Moving on). Girls seem to prefer compensating for their inability to live up to impossible expectations by wearing 1 metric shitload of makeup on their face. Guys seem to prefer massive compensation trucks, because apparently chicks dig a guy that commutes in an impromptu bulldozer.



"If you look at the grill closely enough, you can see the remains of the orphanage that I accidentally plowed into this morning."

What I'm saying is, if you're insecure about something (and everybody in the world is insecure about something), do your best to either (a) not make a big deal of it, or (b) not make an absolute idiot of yourself trying to remedy it. Otherwise you'll turn out...well...yeah.

Ahem.

Newspapers

So the other day I realized that nobody I know understands the concept of satire.

Like most high schools, my school runs a student newspaper. Usually, the articles in our paper consist of whatever regurgitated horseshit the editors decided would be most likely to leave the biggest lipstick mark on the administration's collective ass, which tends to make the paper a burden to read. As a general rule of thumb, I tend to avoid the thing whenever possible for fear of the utter disappointment I feel in people whenever I read an article.

I was in the cafeteria during lunch, idly shuffling along in my own little world, when a friend of mine grabs my attention. He informs me that the student paper contains one of the most outrageous articles he's ever seen in his life. Knowing that I'm a sucker when it comes to mocking what I perceive as ignorant opinions, he conned me into following him to a nearby table. There, a large group of aquaintances of mine were ogling over the article and discussing the sheer stupidity of the author. Upon my arrival, they handed me the paper and pointed out the article in question, which I skimmed over briefly before making the following statement:

"This isn't real."

The others were confused. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean is, this article is making fun of hardcore conservatives. It's satire."

"....What?"

It was at that precise moment that I felt the force of 10,000 figurative facepalms smashing into my head with all the force of a well-thought out metaphor. The article in question was basically a smorgasbord of barely-concealed societal commentaries masked as an ultra-conservative rant about the immorality of young Americans. It had all the subtlety of an autistic whale and, at the risk of sounding like a conceited asshole (which I may be, but that's beside the point), I was appalled that nobody had managed to see that.

HERPADERP AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

Needless to say, I was both extremely sad, and impressed with the author for having gotten such a hysterical reaction to his article. Whoever you are, mystery author, I tip my hat off to you.

Unfortunately, I have no real way to conclude this post, so here's a picture of a jar.