Petty or Small - First to Fall.

“In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”
                     ― Jerry Pournelle 

                I do not suffer fools gladly. In fact, I suffer them with maddening rage that is akin to Bruce Banner, “hulking out” or a smash cut to the Hiroshima mushroom cloud. Fools, however, are a dime a dozen, and whether they are cutting you off in traffic or are too fucking stupid to have their money out before they hit the front of the line, they are an evil that my personal crusade is yet to vanquish.

                Fools, however, are only that by accident, and they can be afforded a certain level of forgiveness due to the fact that their idiocy is, for the most part, genetic or perhaps caused by some sort of head trauma. It’s the petty, the small, the lords and rulers of tiny worlds that attempt to destroy my day with what little power they wield when I wander into their dominion. Whether it is the traffic cop, with his small notepad and grandiose sense of purpose, or the high school teacher brandishing an “F” just to prove a point, I have ducked and dodged these cretins my whole life, and so must you I would wager.

                See, I know you, kind reader. I know if you’re reading this, you aren’t one of them, you’re one of the hip, happenin’, men or women about town that catch cool like a cold and are breezier than fall in New England. You’ve got better things to do than fuck with people’s day for no reason, right? Why be the person out to ruin everybody else’s good time? Don’t be the angry neighbor over the fence, shaking his fist while you attempt, fruitlessly, not to look at his wrinkly old man junk revealed by the bathrobes inevitable acquiesce to the wind. Put your old man junk away and come join the party, it really is fun over here.

                Now, I’m no psychiatrist, but I have watched A LOT of Frasier, so basically I am. (It’s a phony science anyway, but that’s a topic for another blog post).  I think I can speculate fairly easily on the root of what causes people to behave this way, and I think it can be boiled down to one, if not all three, of the following:

1.)    Revenge- 

This one is fairly self-explanatory. Basically, these small spineless little fuckwads that harass you over being two minutes late, harp on about forms being filled out or generally just go out of their way to make you feel as small as they do, are probably doing it because someone did something to them first. Maybe they were picked on (I wonder why), maybe Mommy and Daddy didn’t love them enough (you don’t have to love your kids if they suck, by the way, just try again), maybe they couldn’t run fast or jump high, whatever the reason, they are out for revenge. You, in their view, are a metaphor for everyone else that got them to where they are, gleefully signing up to be an R.A when they don’t need the free housing. They will put you in your place alright, next to them on the train to nowhere.

2.)    Genetics-

Small breeds small, as far as I’m concerned. Cats have litters of cats, mice have litters of mice, spiders explode out hundreds of creepy, gross little spiders, and the world keeps on turning. The same rule of thumb applies to humans, somewhere along the chain of human evolution we decided, for some reason, we needed bureaucrats, and wieners beget wienies. These hairless cats were allowed to survive and reproduce with others, creating more wiener sans toothpick (gross and useless, the toothpick makes the flavor in a cocktail sausage and its ilk, trust me.) Now, despite it probably being the most vapid and joyless sex that two humans can have with one another, and probably involves lists and data, it happens, and it happens enough to put more than one traffic cop, hall monitor, red pen wielder et al., in your life.  

3.)    Small brains, small dicks, small kingdoms-

The seemingly worst part about these people is their knack, nay, their talent, to find themselves in positions of power. They are in charge of your green card, your court date, your bank loan. Those of us who consider ourselves bigger than fine print are always hobbled by it, and it’s a sad state. A state that got me thinking about who arrived and got mercilessly devoured for hundreds of years first:

      The chicken or the egg?

Are these people a naturally occurring phenomenon or where they born as a necessary evil due to the positions we’ve created for them and the tools we put at their disposal? Perhaps, perhaps it is our fault as a society that we have created a virus that can’t be cured. I’ll give the working title of “petti douchicocci” but I’m no scientist.

Whatever the reason, we must suffer these tools gladly until computers inevitably replace them and start putting snide post it notes on everything instead.

Just remember, if you feel yourself taking pleasure, even a little bit, in actively causing someone else’s misery, or finding you can help someone but choosing not to because of your own twisted and tiny principles, check yourself before you riggidy wreck, yah dig?

Siz out.