“You’re the same kinda bad as me!”
-Tom Waits, “Bad as Me”
If we drove our cars like we walked down a crowded street, we’d all be dead. Stop and think, no, wait, please don’t wait or stop and think, learn to think and move at the same time, like you do when you’re driving your car— which you spent more on (yes I said moron) than anything you will ever spend in your pitiable life. I live and love and work in New York City, the world’s worst transgressor of pedestrian ethics, save that poor old New York City has an excuse: New York City got killed a long time ago by cell phones. Now the madding throng is struck even dumber by staring straight down, at the empty palms of their sweaty, empty hands. Like I said, if we drove our cars like we walked down a crowded street, we’d all be dead. Or there would just be fewer people.
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Especially Florida. And New Jersey. Which could be good.
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You should see the shitheads stop smack dab in the midst of such the smallest egress. Pause and check the weather, check the sidewalk without stepping, check the fair and saddened moments that surround you until your ultimate demise you godforsaken fool because you’ve stopped in the middle of 12 people walking briskly to attend to something, anything, other than your glacial maneuvers. On a second by second basis, the secure estimate would range somewhere between 500-1000 people making stupid moves as walkers down the street. Note the wide expanse three feet from you where you might pause and eat your empanada. You’ve stopped me in my ever precious 35 seconds of silence in order to look up at the sky on a tread as thin as half of your immense and overwhelmingly oppressive frame.
Please pay better attention as you walk.
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Just a few simple reminders as to the definition of our subject matter as adjective: lacking inspiration or excitement; dull. Also dull, boring, tedious, monotonous, uneventful, unremarkable, tiresome, wearisome, uninspired, unimaginative, unexciting, uninteresting, uninvolving; MORE.
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A MACHINE FOR DISAPPEARING might well be the way our sorry ass country might do some good. Give us a MACHINE FOR DISAPPEARING to 39 stand up chaps and truly lugubrious gals (chicks) and we would triple the world’s productivity simply by aiming the gun at undesirables. Spend 1/3 of the budget on missiles for Syria’s disappearing on this newfangled machine and we win as a race of humans, death to those seriously deserving by dint of being in the way.
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And the clowns move forward with the snow men.
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Now I am unable to go about my urgent business being dull or boring, because you just got in my way. Now I am unable to be tedious or monotonous because your ass just decided to stop in the middle of traffic for absolutely no reason whatsoever and most definitely not because your dog had stopped to take a shit in the middle of heavy foot-traffic. I am unable to remain uneventful, unremarkable, uninspired, unimaginative, unexciting, uninteresting or uninvolving because you had to pause on a sidewalk and check your pockets (which were still empty once you stopped moving, by the by). Actually, I can’t get by because you stopped in the middle of the skinniest passageway in all of New York City.
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Mongolian font to be sure. Retarded as China, retarded as America in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, as dumb as America in America. Mongolian as my hillbilly tattoo, got from my vice-rid hometown downtown whence the passersby are truly scary now. My hometown is a Mongolian football on the flat, middle American Mongolian horizon. A football full of beer with a platter of cheese-stuffed sausage and several dips for several bowls of heavily salted snack chips, my hometown. Most of it is made in China. There are no pedestrians in my hometown, however, they are in their cars, going to get more dip.
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Hey lady now would be a good time to tell your kid to stop making that noise.
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We give the average traveler very long shrift. Afraid to ask our slow-witted companions to lower their volume in a public sphere, we assume every jackalope at the gate is a first time traveler. The average traveler is a pedestrian and evidence of the lowest common denominator of human behavior.
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AIRPORT GROTESQUE— Girdles avail for your obese subjects. If you are fat enough to require the lifting of arm rests at your airplane seat, you need to purchase two seats. Airports as Leisure Zoos. Airports most definitely qualify as pedestrian examples of etiquette.
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Manhattan at Xmas as idiocy pure and simple. New York City as exemplary of pedestrian idiocy. Note for instance the Fifth Avenue clog about two weeks before Xmas. About a dozen blocks stock still, stopped to a stock still stand still. If a poor terrorist sleeper cell could’ve only had five simple office windows they could have doubled the amount dead in September, 2001. The sudden idiocy dawns on a fairly normally well heeled and level headed 50 year old father of two and absolute panic sets in, as in attack. Attack! But the terrorists are as stupid as the tourists, they, too, are staring at their cell phones.
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This city is duly ridiculous. Propped on droopy sea scaffold rank with mildew.
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An immodest proposition to be sure. If the selected few might waltz with gun-shod, bullet-shy freedom, offing those deserving of the simplest, unspoken codes, like don’t take up more space than you deserve, fat-ass. Gimme a gun like my American obesity deserves. The guns wouldn’t kill, but remove, revoke, make utterly certain those folks who are not intelligent enough to walk down a simple city street on their own two feet without ruining someone’s day for their brain dead disrespect of every other human being’s right to personal space do not deserve to remain on this place rent free. The peeve is for people who take up more space than they deserve. They should be eliminated along with child molesters, rapists and murders. Their violations are as severe. Maybe we could tax them special. The stupidity tax. Or better to simply eliminate them. Enough money in the world already.
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But yet any airport gate provides ample evidence of our global idiocy en masse as pitiable specie. Pitting African against American, injury attorney against artisanal bourbon cooper, plumber versus highwayman with 12 string axe from Asheville, North Carolina, wrongly rerouted due to wind shear in Chicago, to this, your tent, your middle western tin can of discontent. My money is on the plumber. Only his toils match the bluntness of his tools, the bluntness of his intellect, the severity of his abler anger, his jagged, angular angst.
The blue of his collar’s sky matched only by the wideness of berth afforded his brighter brethren.
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Trauma here we come.
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One way to solve the population problem: make every airplane flight a death match. Every stroll to the corner store also offers endless arrays of small choices on the huge haul of vacating a gasping mother’s poor outer crust of pestilence, endless cysts— the pustules that are her overpopulation.
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Your neighbor, she gobbles another garlic, pork tube. Now her breath smells like the crease between her pubis and navel. Clammy as yesterday’s ham, pungent as the rot of corpses all around. Pull up a flotation device, folks, come join the pageant. Snacks for sale— they make you smell. Flutes for fruits and never a tasty steward.
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One who gets wise by way of Schlitz and macaroni and cheese can easily grow accustomed to vintage Veuve Clicquot and crepes galettes. Why does it not work backwards? The stronger specimen, accustomed to shark’s fin soup, cannot, somehow, get used to a sardine tin. The weak link tortures the high priest with his incompetence. The strong sort tortures the weakling by way of the temper’s tribulations.
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Nothing is quite as appalling as the choosy eater. A grey and white and yellow plate— well done mush, in essence, drives me to spasms in any public place. My patience blanches watching a young woman carefully pick every green pea from her tiny platter of mixed-diner-vegetable provisions. Once at a museum reception I watched a man take a tiny bite of a blueberry. Picky is icky. I wanted to smack the chopsticks out of her hands. I wanted to slap the fruit out of his fingers. You are eating in public, act as if you had some manners.
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Stop quick in the fairly madding throng. The lights are lit! 900 Strollers stick on the blue grease paint of sidewalk stuck by December sixty degrees of melting per minute. Trust me, I’m your alderman. Trust me, I’m your library, trust me, I’m your artisanal newspaper. Trust me, I’m about to slaughter you with the freedom afforded a righteous USA fan, through stink of pink tape. So many truly stupid people stroll our freest streets. Much population could be struck. Stricken. Stroked. As the DADAist said 100 years ago, get rid of 99% of Germany and we would be OK— in America, eliminate 99.9% and dig!
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Why does a dog yawn when nervous? Does the canine brain require extra oxygen to process anxiety? Then why does the human feel the need to stuff some food substance into his regurgitation route whenever a television isn’t nearby? Is it the same reason given for the human who cannot but fiddle incessantly with a piece of plastic wrapping when sitting in a crowded but otherwise quiet public place? I prefer dogs. But my therapy dog needs a therapy dog.
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How can the public announcement voice in an Asian airport requesting the presence of a dozen American passengers at the desk of the departing gate never have spoken a word of English in her life? Is it somehow a pre-requisite that the entire universe be so inconsiderate? When one is American, one thinks it’s just Americans who are idiots until he crosses a border. Any border, any time. We are not alone.
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Density bespeaks idiocy.
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Any human activity requiring a ticket automatically shaves off half of the bearer’s intelligence quotient and thus makes them a pedestrian. PhD’s disappear into thin air. Watch a seasoned, well-traveled, well-dressed man board an airplane, for instance. Once he’s licked the sickening syrup of anticipation from his sweaty face and stuffs the nearest dead animal into his gaping maw, he’ll drift toward sleep and snore all the way to Detroit, Phoenix, Dallas, Anchorage— burping up dreams in his oily bliss.
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My family just took a luxury cruise. I stayed home, thereby dubbing my next essay A Supposedly Fun Thing I’m Not Even Going to Try. Imagine all the pedestrians on that boat! I’d rather not.
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Excluding present company (I’m alone), one isn’t particularly concerned with education, lest he call the smallest human decency, the sparest courtesy and dignity, the basest etiquette or the simplest animal shame an education. Cross your enormous legs you fat, stupid fuck and tuck that pudding-stained sweatshirt into your thread-barest sweatpants. You’re in public now; you should have left your diaper at home.
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There is something to be said for the human being who understands how to carry himself in the public world. To wit— when you are walking in a crowded, narrow passage, don’t stop stock still. Step aside, and turn your head and then your body around and away to look for or at whatever you’re looking for or at. If you are passing in heavy traffic, don’t slow down. Once again, if human beings were automobiles we’d all be dead. Then animals would reign again and murder would be crucial to survival. The world could eat its own annoyance.
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The poor soul borne of a moron begets another moron. This is not advocacy for murder or cannibalism (mind you, the Lord knows we have enough to eat if simultaneously thrifty and generous)— but if horses are glue and frogs become ink, can’t we find a way to make idiots into bullets? Can’t we find a double-duty, fool-proof way to protect ourselves from ourselves?
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It seems all Americans in the airport are military today. Nothing against them— they too need to feed their spawn with the dead by killing sanctioned from on high. They will grow fat as saints, healthy as second-string basketball billionaires. Someone strong needs to protect us from China when that grave, grey nation comes a- calling for payback.
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No, really, we all revel in eyeballing your extra 60 pounds of belly fat as you take up five seats for a nap at the overcrowded airport gate. We understand your sleep is needy, both beauty and brain, we’re tired too, but it must be exhausting for you eating that many inhuman meals in a single day. Please, snore a little bit harder for us, we can’t hear you clearly enough, can’t smell your rancid breath on our ways to Los Angeles, Stockholm and Guam.
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Women are more important than men. In Tokyo— no cows, no fruit, no dirt and the old cigarettes teach the new cigarettes about flowers. In Seoul traffic cops wear helmets for good reason. I’ve never been to Norway, but their sneeze is Snorri Sturluson. We are told it is America’s fault for the globe’s demise. Until we witness a Lithuanian king drive through his reckless, crooked night, or a Mexican president sink like a shit-sack, or watch the Chinese learn how to drive. The world devours itself like the ancient symbolic snake— spineless, unaware and unscrupulous.
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Pity the unpardonable sot who can’t sit still for more than a minute with only his thoughts, the poor, tortured troglodyte who must fuss with the vacancy in his overhead compartment for fear of the shifting contents within. The unforgivable cluck with no peace in his naked soul, no parcel of understanding of the joy of indifference, unaware as we prepare for our initial descent… I am not an angry man. Brace for impact. We are all exactly the same. Everybody’s empire is empty.
Born and raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Scott Zieher has published four books of poetry, as well as numerous books and articles on poetry, art and vernacular photography. He is co-owner of Zieher Smith & Horton, a contemporary art gallery singled out by The New York Times’ Roberta Smith for “their abilities to find young or underexposed talent.” This essay, a screed toward less humanity, does not reflect his general attitude, serving instead the smaller purpose of aiding the author in identifying his fears. Zieher lives and works in New York City with his wife and two sons.