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But don't try to talk to me, I won't listen to your lies
Every so often - most recently, yesterday morning - I am confounded by the fundamental bastardliness of inanimate objects.
I was in a hurry putting the recyling out; the bag ripped and threw empty tins and bottles across the floor. I was in a hurry putting the rubbish out, so the binbag refused to come out the bin, and then the back door lock jammed...
Now, on a rational level, I'm quite well aware that being in a hurry makes you more inclined to make these kinds of mistakes. The binbags are made of plastic, are not malicious, and do not exercise free will any more than the laptop did when it sat madly spinning its hard drive and refusing to respond to any input.
On the other hand... I know why binbags refuse to come out of bins. If you have sufficiently mobile rubbish, it gloms onto the bin and creates a small vacuum as you tug on the bag. However, once I'd pushed my hand down the sides to create some air-gaps, and checked that there was nothing large enough to jam on the sides of the bin, and the damn thing still refused to come out I started to give up on physics.
In general, I don't think of myself as a person with much of a temper. I rarely get angry, but when I do it is invariably with inanimate objects. Although I have a distinct tendency to anthropomorphise everything[*], it's the very unresponsive nature of these things that bugs me. If a person is being obstructive, you can reason with them. You can talk to them, find out why they're being unhelpful, maybe even find out that actually you're the one in the wrong.
Even the people with whom there is no reasoning do at least provide some sort of interaction which, while frustrating, is somehow never as infuriating as the vegetable inanity of a bag of rubbish. It's difficult[**] not to see a gleam of satisfaction in the shiny black of a binbag which won't allow you to pull it from the bin. If you listen carefully, you can hear the plastic, rustling chuckle of a black sack that knows it's made you another 30 seconds late for work.
When the drawer won't slide back into the dishwasher, when a coathanger won't let go of its friends, when that stupid top-heavy bottle falls over yet again the passive agressiveness of their inanimacy hangs in the air. "Can't get me out of the wardrobe? Well, that's hardly my fault, is it? I'm just a coathanger."
If I ever have to be led away, wild-eyed, from a scene of destruction you will find not the bodies of my co-workers or family, but the shattered remains of household objects that fell over, wouldn't fit in a cupboard, and refused to co-operate.
[*] Except computers. They don't like it.
[**] If you're me. Count your lucky stars.
I was in a hurry putting the recyling out; the bag ripped and threw empty tins and bottles across the floor. I was in a hurry putting the rubbish out, so the binbag refused to come out the bin, and then the back door lock jammed...
Now, on a rational level, I'm quite well aware that being in a hurry makes you more inclined to make these kinds of mistakes. The binbags are made of plastic, are not malicious, and do not exercise free will any more than the laptop did when it sat madly spinning its hard drive and refusing to respond to any input.
On the other hand... I know why binbags refuse to come out of bins. If you have sufficiently mobile rubbish, it gloms onto the bin and creates a small vacuum as you tug on the bag. However, once I'd pushed my hand down the sides to create some air-gaps, and checked that there was nothing large enough to jam on the sides of the bin, and the damn thing still refused to come out I started to give up on physics.
In general, I don't think of myself as a person with much of a temper. I rarely get angry, but when I do it is invariably with inanimate objects. Although I have a distinct tendency to anthropomorphise everything[*], it's the very unresponsive nature of these things that bugs me. If a person is being obstructive, you can reason with them. You can talk to them, find out why they're being unhelpful, maybe even find out that actually you're the one in the wrong.
Even the people with whom there is no reasoning do at least provide some sort of interaction which, while frustrating, is somehow never as infuriating as the vegetable inanity of a bag of rubbish. It's difficult[**] not to see a gleam of satisfaction in the shiny black of a binbag which won't allow you to pull it from the bin. If you listen carefully, you can hear the plastic, rustling chuckle of a black sack that knows it's made you another 30 seconds late for work.
When the drawer won't slide back into the dishwasher, when a coathanger won't let go of its friends, when that stupid top-heavy bottle falls over yet again the passive agressiveness of their inanimacy hangs in the air. "Can't get me out of the wardrobe? Well, that's hardly my fault, is it? I'm just a coathanger."
If I ever have to be led away, wild-eyed, from a scene of destruction you will find not the bodies of my co-workers or family, but the shattered remains of household objects that fell over, wouldn't fit in a cupboard, and refused to co-operate.
[*] Except computers. They don't like it.
[**] If you're me. Count your lucky stars.
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Last week, for example, I happened to be making a houmous and olive sandwich. Olive jars are for some reason stupidly narrow, so I was carefully extracting olives with a fork in such a way as to not end up with brine in my sandwich. However, I knocked one of them slightly against the edge of the jar on its way out and it fell off the fork, bounced off the corner of the bread and thereby vaulted over the edge of the plate, rolled along the worksurface until it hit my knife, which redirected it off the edge. Arriving at approximately floor level, the olive struck the edge of my shoe and I glanced down just in time to see it deflect into the 15mm gap between the cooker and the kitchen unit. I mean for goodness sake, what are the chances?!
Exactly 100%, apparently.
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I can understand why they use the same jars (it's simpler, cheaper, etc) but why not just miss the sprinkler bit out!
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[*] Always assuming, of course, that I'm not one of those un-self-aware people who say 'oh, I'm very easy going, never lose my temper' and are completey wrong :)
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I like your phraseology, too.
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Paul Jennings' original Resistentialism piece seems to be online, though it is a bit wordier and more interested in taking the piss out of existentialism than I remembered it being...