What Really Grinds My Gears

1. That applying to 6 cultural studies/law dual programs requires over $1000. This will buy you an entire undergrad degree in most EU universities, and it’s just the tip of the depressing iceberg that is grad school expenses. I would love to fuck that couch, but I also hope to sleep on it. Damnit.

2. Fakers. Not situational fakers but people who habitually walk around with an insincere veneer. This is lifetime overall #1 gear-grinder, but since I’m in the midst of exam prep hell, I am superficially relegating it to 2 for the time being. Americans have a bad international rep for being incredibly fake, like soap opera, oozing fake. A blanket generalization, sure, but I don’t think the degree of fakery - which I see many display, daily even - is an exaggeration. There are hyper fakers: for example, girls that squeal, “heyyy!!! How are you??? Oh my god!” Then there’s the really devious faker who shows nothing but sweetness to your face and then turn around to a different friend and say, “I can’t fucking stand that son of a bitch. Why do they even exist?” Some people consider this trait politeness. Like furtively stabbing someone in the back is more polite than shooting someone in the face. I’m a face shooter. Harsh, but you see it coming a mile away and affords you the opportunity to run.

3. When people buy into/put trust in fakers despite seeing them as fakers because they too would like to be polite and don’t want to upset the social balance or whatever. Part-time fakers - in the same category (but not necessarily the same thing) as cowardly liberals. Thank them for the policies of brash fundamentalists.

4. Brash fundamentalists.

5. The potentially negative transformative powers of couplehood. Either they are suddenly so much wiser now for having bagged a significant other and thus condescend upon lowly singles still so lost and unaware in their life direction. Or, they’re so ensconced in their love bubble that everything must be “we”, and any individual trait/interest/friend must either be adapted to become a mutual one or disposed.

6. People who have to constantly claim or remind you that they’re “something”, be it smart, older than you, charitable, artistic, cool, etc. if you really are something, just be it man. People will get it on their own.

If I’ve sounded bitter and foul lately, that’s because I am. I hope those sweet clear waters of Hawaii cleanses me. (i ordered this new tankini --> i hope it fits or that will also grind my gears.)