Has anybody else noticed that civility is disappearing faster than a pack of smokes at an AA meeting? And, you know, it appears as if we�ve even given up on trying to preserve it. Most people seem to accept this disintegration of manners as a fait accompli, and have simply lined the borders of their personal space with razor wire.
Now, I don�t want to get off on a rant here, but we�ve devolved over the past few decades from a Barry Linden gentility to a bunch of Thunderdome mooks. Nowadays thoughtless clods all across this great land of ours do everything from clipping their fingernails in restaurants to checking themselves for polyps in the buffet line. As a matter of fact, you can�t go anywhere without suffering incivility. You go to the mall to pick up a smoky link gouda gift set from Hickory Farms, you come out, your car�s been keyed and some workforce fringe player has left a flier on your windshield about how you can get 10% off gay porn films at Dick�s Porn Film Video Shaft. You go to the market and you wind up in a line that is clearly marked 10 items or less, cash only, waiting behind a ninja drifter with no ID who�s attempting to pay for 14 fucking carloads of pudding pops with a personal check from the bank of Tehran.
People no longer understand the basic rules of courtesy:
RULE #1 � You must get out of the way and let people off the elevator before you can get on the elevator, ok?
RULE #2 � When you call someone at 3:15 in the morning and get the wrong number, don�t just say, �Oh, this isn�t Charlene...� CLICK. Say, �I�m very sorry to have pestered you... I am an assface!�
And RULE #3 � Turn your goddamn car stereo down! Did you ever think that maybe I didn�t want to hear the bassline to Baby Got Back? Did that ever enter your assface skull, assface?
Even when I try to escape the cold, rude world and isolate myself in a darkened movie theater for two hours of unencumbered escapism, I invariably get stuck behind some idiot, faux Truffaut, who not only ruins the movie, but ruins my enjoyment of my Anna-Nicole Smith-sized box of Milk Duds.
But, you know, the fountainhead of all this bad behavior has got to be the daytime talk shows. What an intergalactic fucking freakshow that is, huh? You tell me, what Rusty the Bailiff Fan Club meeting do they go to to harvest these losers: Ricki Lake, Richard Bey, Jerry Springer? These people shouldn�t be allowed to own a TV, for Christ sake, much less be on it. And, you know, their guests not only aren�t ashamed of their asinine antics, they positively revel in their own grand-maul shitheadedness. Screaming in people�s faces. Screaming at the audience. The audience screaming back. I just want to say, �Fuck this culture,� pack up some jerky and go time-share with Jeremiah Johnson sometimes. Look, I�m not some tie-died karma mater dei trying to seat everyone in the non-conflict section. Day-to-day life, to say the least, can be combative. And as far as I�m concerned the new-aged goal of perpetual, smiling bliss is a far worse hell than anything imagined by Todd Browning on Windowpain. I don�t want some vacant-headed, de-fanged Quakerland. That�s not civility, that�s banality. And I�m not talking Amy Vanderbilt civility either, where there�s nine goddamn forks arranged around your dinner plates like some cutlery Stonehenge and if you choose the wrong one you�re sent away to become Edwin Neuman�s personal fucktoy. But, you know, I am saying that when civility breaks down, the fall of civilization is close behind. Is it surprising to anyone that the rudest of all nations has 222 million guns? It�s gotten so weird out there that we�ve all turned inward and in the process we seem to�ve forgotten that there are other human beings schlepping this pebble. That�s where civility comes in. Civility is acknowledging that we don�t live in a solipsistic universe. We do share this planet with each other and we should strive to exist in some sort of civilized, respectful manner.
And, so to all of you out there that don�t cover your mouth, who don�t have the money ready when you get to the toll booth, who do burp so loudly in public that the people around you wonder where the epicenter was; to all of you dwelling out there on the crassy knoll � if you don�t want to join us in this noble pursuit of good manners, well then we all cordially invite you to, please, go fuck yourself... and I thank you.
Course that�s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
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