Asshole Taxonomy presents: "The Neo Nerd."

I have bemoaned, here and elsewhere, that while the Internet is a wonderful invention in terms of its capacity for expanding freedom of expression and thought—and possibly democracy itself—it is also killing us all, dammit. While there is a certain charm in the idea that any dribbling hill person can have an Internet Web Log in which to stammer out the innermost machinations of his or her brain (long Swiss-cheese’d by a combination of Creutzfeldt-Jakob and turpentine cocktails), the Internet is fraught with the same perils of all cultural expansions. Not only does it open up an unprepared West for all the horrid perversions of the Orient, it also allows groups formerly relegated to the outskirts of acceptability and decency a place to congregate, confabulate, and masturbate.

It in this unforeseen capacity that the Internet is mostly responsible for this post’s Asshole: The Neo-Nerd.

“But Jackson!” you might say, as you typically do whenever I need this construction, “Cannot you, yourself, be classified as a nerd? Do you not enjoy an occasional science fiction romp? Are you not highly critical of the new Transformers movie due to your not-so-secret homorobotic crush on Optimus Prime? Do you not wear glasses and work in a book store and contribute to an Internet Web Log that regularly references such things as the Technodrome?” And, after hissing and shushing you because of the possible presence of ladies, I would admit it as so. And yet, while I may be a considerable nerd I am not—and as God as my witness will never be—a Neo-Nerd.

And what, pray tell, is the difference? What makes a nerd fit to walk upright among men while the Neo-Nerd, in a just and sensible society, would be banished to the sewers, forever to feast upon the refuse of the society that shunned it? Allow me first to properly secure my ranting hat.

Nerdiness has become an acceptable part of society. Everything from calculator watches to quoting Star Wars has become a-OK. Comic book movies are blockbusters and nominated for Academy Awards. Lost has made science fiction palatable. But there is always balance in the universe—and as such, some nerds were pushed into a dark wasteland opened up by once-beautiful openness of the Internet. Suddenly there is someone who does want to read your stories about Captain Kirk giving it to Obi Wan Kenobi. Suddenly there is someone who does want to argue with you about why it’s “Elvish” and not “Elfish.” Suddenly there is someone who also likes to dress up like a wolf and…do whatever Furries do. I assume rub each other and howl or something.

There is a Never Never Land, children, and good Lord in Heaven is it eye-meltingly horrible. Peter Pan doesn’t fight pirates and live in a kick-ass tree-house here, kids. Instead he insists he’s a vampire and can’t hold down a job to pay for his microwave burritos. Anyone who claims that it’s a virtue to remain a child at heart hasn’t seen the real world outcome: two physically mature sub-humans dressed as raccoons humping each other.

But, honestly, as long as they stay in their cold, dark corner of the Internet, I have no beef with the Neo-Nerd. If they stayed on their fan fiction and sword-collecting websites, all would be well. But, being completely unaware of their status as most undesirable, they occasionally venture out into the real world; their skin ghostly white, their sweatpants stained with long streaks of cheeto dust, hair greasy from an apparent abandonment of all tenets of personal hygiene, brains confused by light and three dimensions, compounded by their inability to separate themselves (worthless on virtually all measurable levels) from their MMORPG avatar (ninth level paladin dragon-slaying troll-bashing he-man love-machine). Whereas the Fattie is deluded enough to think that they can do magic, the Neo-Nerd is deluded enough to have a baffling amount of confidence.

You have probably encountered the Neo-Nerd if you are nerdy enough to read and understand SQR. He is the guy who will call you a “fag” even though he himself has never and will never know the love of a woman. He is the guy who will cite his skills at Halo as if they are really worth something beyond the typically advanced eye-hand coordination of the hourly masturbator. If you are stupid enough to engage the Neo-Nerd, he will spend the entire conversation criticizing you and everything you like or enjoy, even though later he will have to call his mother for a ride home. Basically, the Neo-Nerd’s mind and perception is so twisted by lack of reality that they believe their social inadequacies and unacceptability are actually benefits. Like all Assholes, the Neo-Nerd simply, and bafflingly erroneously, believes that they are better than you. Yes, you.

The Neo-Nerd is also incredibly skilled at the art of what we have previously termed conversation rape. Whereas the Fattie was maybe an apprentice-level conversation rapist, the Neo-Nerd will leave you in the shower, fully clothed and in the fetal position, sobbing and knowing that you will never be clean. There is one particular Neo-Nerd who stalks [Demarcations], whom the staff calls [Fat Bitch]. My latest encounter with [Fat Bitch] was when I was tasked with alphabetizing the science fiction series. I was working on our largest series, Forgotten Realms—which, as far as I can tell, is about long-haired people fighting abominable snowmen with crossbows. Because I was touching these books, [Fat Bitch] must have assumed I read them and would also like to talk about them even though I was clearly at work and too polite to put steel-toe to testicles. He stood over me for about ten or fifteen minutes, vomiting endlessly upon me his opinions on things with too many apostrophes and consonants to ever be pronounceable by anyone without a brain disease. Eventually I stopped even my stock of non-response responses (“uh huh”, “right”, “sure”, “K’frrd’nch does sound like a nice place to raise a half-elf”, etc.), hoping that he would get the subtle message that I hated him and wanted him to die. Just when I was about to open my jugular with my pen two more people walked into the section and [Fat Bitch] smelled fresh meat. I finished my section feeling like a helpless coward, not strong enough to protect those poor, innocent people from an hour-long conversation about which guild is the best in a place that is not real.

And so, friends, heed my warning! Should ye be approached by anyone wearing ankle-cuffed sweatpants who is not (A) in the immediate vicinity of a gym, (B) over the age of sixty-five, or (C) asleep, run! Run for the nearest and brightest source of light that is not a Best Buy or an establishment that regularly sells Hot Pockets! God forbid, if one should bite or scratch you, immediately wash the wound with soap, water, and the highest proof whiskey you can find, then fill your pockets with stones and walk into the nearest river or lake.

Remarkably, through this piecemeal taxonomy of individual species, we are quickly approaching a general rubric for Assholes. So far we seem to have two rules down:
1) Whereas the individual has a complete disconnect from reality (e.g. believing in magic, thinking that his or her Xbox Live gamerscore is comparable to carpentry or masonry or being actually able to do anything and be paid money for it).
2) Whereas the individual has a baseless claim of superiority (e.g. a lot of people reading their Smurfs fanfiction, having seen a boob once in Warcraft).

Be sure to tune in next time for more Asshole Taxonomy. Or other stuff. Or maybe I’ll go another two weeks without posting.

Asshole Taxonomy presents: “Wal-Mart Shoppers”

After reading Canada Jackson post on Asshole Taxonomy, I felt the need to share some of my thoughts and encounters with Assholes in Scranton. While Demarcations is clearly a place where assholes gather and make crude attempts at socializing, a true hotbed for assholes and other bottom feeders is none other than your local small business-destroying corporation, Wal-Mart. The assholes you meet here will truly astound you and deserve their own classification and are simply titled "Wal-Mart Shoppers."

I had never been to Wal-Mart before I went to school in Scranton, so what I knew about Wal-Mart I heard from other people at school. I imagined a store of immense size where everything you could imagine for sale, where everything is clean, and where people were pleasant. This is not what I witnessed when I first visited Wal-Mart. First, there was the sign stretched across the front reading “Grand Re-Opening.” Can you really have a grand re-opening? The parking lot was littered with cars and trucks that seemed to have all been involved in the same monster truck/demolition derby show. When I entered the store I realized that this was a place where culture goes to die and where social inadequacies somehow becomes advantages. Trying to navigate a shopping cart through any part of the store felt as if I was stuck in some bizarre video game where I had to avoid being struck by rogue carts and fat children. It was as if they had released ever retard in Scranton and put them in Wal-Mart with a shopping cart. I was routinely hit from behind by other carts or had to quickly stop to avoid hitting some obese child making a break for the free sample lady. Scientists who study obesity and why it is so prominent in this nation need not look at the human genome, but only need to visit their local Wal-Mart, and they will discover that the average grocery cart has enough garbage in it to put a family of three into a diabetic coma.

Unfortunately, that was not the last time I visited Wal-Mart during the years in Scranton. It seemed that no matter what time you visited this pustule, there was also something unnerving to witness. On one occasion Canada and I had to go to Wal-Mart for some reason, and immediately upon entering, we saw in the 10-items-or-less-lane, an enormous fattie of a women arguing with the clerk over coupons. I’m betting this cow was upset because she couldn’t get enough off her fifteen loaves of Wonder Bread. She was dressed in black, most likely hoping that the color would have the beneficial “slimming effect” that she had read in US magazine. She was covered in crumbs, and I can only guess where the crumbs came from, probably from the sixteenth loaf of Wonder Bread she pounded before getting to the register. Unfortunately for her, and anyone who happened to look at her, she more closely resembled something that had just been dragged out of the La Brea Tar Pits, with a light coating of bread crumbs.

I can only imagine the shanty this plaque of a human lives in. Wooden paneling being held up with staples, six cars strewn across the front yard, all with “Terrorist Hunting License” bumper stickers on the back. The smell of freshly microwaved SPAM wafting through the air, two brand new satellite dishes on the roof, but plywood in the windows. This is the the type house that shows up on one of those lame excuses for reality TV that the once respectable A&E now peddles. “Tonight, on Home Exterminators, we visit a house that is overridden with cockroaches and toxic mold.”

Several times upon going to Wal-Mart we would see stray children meandering through the aisles totally unsupervised. Where are these children’s parents? Wait, I forgot there was a sale on anti-freeze in aisle 48. I bet they were looking to get drunk good and cheap. And why not! It’s cheap and tastes like sugar. The products that you find in the “watch for falling prices” bins always amazed me too. Eight DVDs for $2.50! Hot Dog! I’ve always wondered how the Japanese interpreted Snow White. Camouflage linens? Heck Yes! How’d they know I wanted it to look like I was sleeping in a pile of leaves? Perhaps it wasn’t that these bins existed that amazed me, but the fact that people actually bought the crap in them. I even remember two acne scared teenagers arguing over some lame ass DVD. How about the lard ass ripping open the toy boxes while good old tramp stamped mom is hitting on the stock boy? Saw that.

As I said earlier, Wal-Mart is where culture goes to die. Any place that I can visit at 3am and buy a gun, an Ipod, NASCAR underwear, a desk and knock off Dr. Pepper should be shut down and firebombed with extreme prejudice. The philistines that lurk around Wal-Mart would undoubtedly think you were making a “momma” joke if you asked them if they had ever been inside the MOMA. The closest these people come to hanging art in their homes is the Boondock Saints poster and the poster of Bob Marley smoking a blunt they have on their kitchen walls. These are the type of people who save up their money to buy a new fishing boat instead of getting their cavities filled.

I’m sure you can tell that Wal-Mart shoppers do not hold a special place in my heart. Even just visiting Wal-Mart I feel as if a bit of my soul has been crushed. If you don’t believe me, just drive up to your local Wal-Mart and spend a few hours people watching and I’m sure you’ll feel the same way.

Asshole Taxonomy presents: "The Fattie"

Something that you may not know about Scranton is that recent census statistics show that between ninety-eight and ninety-nine percent of all residents are insufferable assholes. Whereas most cities have at least something resembling a shadow of a sense of community, Scranton and its immediate vicinity is virtually identical to most popular depictions of post-apocalyptic survival societies—in which not only has civilization as an institution broken down, but also civility on an individual, person-to-person level. As my good friend and brother-in-arms RJP4 has so aptly said, Scranton, Pennsylvania is Thunderdome.

But note that I did not say that Scranton is full of mere assholes, but insufferable assholes. These are not the ordinary assholes that one might encounter occasionally in normal life. While most regular assholes are irritating, the Scranton species of asshole is something different altogether: these are people who not only willingly opt out of the basic social contract of manners, decency, and mores, but seemingly delight in their abandonment of basic interpersonal skills. While most assholes bend the rules of civility—implying that they are at least aware of them—the Scranton asshole will smile at you with empty, uncomprehending eyes as they shit on your birthday cake. If man is, as Aristotle claimed, a political animal, then most of the residents of Scranton ceased to qualify as human when they sat naked in their kiddie pools and removed, via unsterilized ice cream scoop, the parts of their brains in which most of us store our social tool box.

Another interesting part of the Scranton species of asshole is that there is a somewhat distinct taxonomy. Enough time spent here, and one will gradually begin to see various types of asshole emerge. I would venture that most of these types are not limited to Scranton, but the already asshole-conducive nature of the city amplifies their natural abilities of social disruption and all-around cake-shitting. (That is not to say the shitting of cakes, but rather the aforementioned shitting on cakes.)

And so, as a public service, I intend to do my Linnaean duty and classify some subgroups of the asshole. Tonight’s edition is what I shall call the Fattie.

Now, now, to head you off at the pass: the fatness of the Fattie is not what makes them socially unacceptable. It is the behavior of the Fattie, which is unique to the Fattie and mostly likely caused by insensitive societal reactions to said fatness, such as this. And not all overweight people are Fatties. I know upwards of three—perhaps four—overweight people who are positively delightful. Also, I think the word “Fattie” is funny and that they wouldn’t be anywhere near such assholes if they pulled out the IV of ranch dressing and began some systematic lurching in order to gain enough momentum to get outside—preferably by means of a door, or barring that, crashing through a non-weight bearing wall.

Seeing as anecdotal evidence is always the best way to prove a claim, I will proceed to tell you about my recent experience with the Fattie.

[Demarcations], being a book store, is prone to Fatties. They spend most of their time trundling about the science fiction, horror, manga, and metaphysical studies sections. Occasionally one might get lost and end up, frightened and confused, in the health and fitness section—but the staff is typically quick to respond to their distressed squeals and roll them back to their self-indulgent fantasy land.

One particular Fattie completely destroyed my night recently. It began with her awkwardly slaloming up to the information desk, breathlessly asking two questions. First, she had a birthday coupon for fifty percent off, but her email “crashed.” Two problems: birthday coupons are always, always twenty-five percent off, and her email “crashing” doesn’t make any sense unless she personally consumed the servers at gayharrypotterfanfiction.net. Being clinically polite, I replied “Uhhh I believe the birthday coupons are only twenty-five percent off an item.” She smiled, and most of her facial features were obscured and she helpfully informed me that I was wrong, even though I work there at a desk with a big sign that says “INFORMATION” over it. Although, to be fair, she may have merged completely with the Internet by now and may be more informed about my workplace than I am. Perfectly possible.

The second question this girl asked was “Where are your books on magic and astrology?” Now, you must understand that I find it incredibly difficult to maintain decorum when someone asks me anything like that—from “where are your Scientology books?” to “Where are your books about the Lizard men that secretly run the world?” Luckily, these books are all contained in the Retarded Horse Shit section (or, in the original Latin, “metaphysical studies”). Every time I help a customer find this section, I am tempted to close the conversation with “Have a nice day. Oh, and everything in this section is not real and you are an idiot. Please do not breed. Thanks.” Like a doctor attending an execution, I feel morally uncomfortable with people purchasing books on drug-addled space religions or how the people in third world countries are hungry because they don’t want food badly enough.

Here’s an excerpt from Dr. Jackson’s Certified Real World Horoscope:
Leo: Today you are still fat and no one likes you. Years from now you will die because your diaphragm cannot support your weight in a reclining position.

But Jackson, old boy, you might be asking yourself, does this poor water horse really deserve the full brunt of your devastating wit? Not yet, I would reply. Patience, friends. Our adventure is not yet over.

Hours later I was called up to the registers to check people out. Who comes up to my register but my new friend the magical land whale. The transaction was uneventful, save for the fact that she was buying a book on playing the piano. This fact stuck in my mind because the image of her fingers caused me some distress—wedged and nearly immobile onto her hands like sausages mid explosion; oily, I imagine, from tearing apart a meal of broiled duck like an insane medieval king. But she left the store and these disturbing thoughts left me. And never would I have thought of this poor beast again had I not had to close the store that night.

After all the customers had left, it is the duty of the booksellers to straighten up and make sure the books are all back where they belong. It is, at times, a lengthy and terrible process. And what did I find that night, scattered all about the store? Books on magic, astrology, and pianos. Apparently in the hours between out meetings she had carried most of these sections in her sturdy arms and discarded them as she pleased all over. Teenagers—who I typically consider the worst people in the world next to myself and my associates—cause less of a mess than this single cow-eyed she-troll.

There are rare moments in life when you are completely defeated. Where, upon seeing the task or foe before you there is nothing to do but put your hands on your head and utter a completely involuntary groan of despair. This is what the Fattie had reduced me to. Her absolute disregard for the people who might have to clean up after her book holocaust and her smiling non-comprehension of the pain she would cause, typical of the Scranton breed of asshole, left me destroyed. My birthday cake had been thoroughly shit on, and it would be well past midnight before I got home.

These are the classifying traits of the Fattie: a lack of basic interpersonal skills based on either home-schooling or social rejection due to physical unattractiveness—not entirely their fault. Sometimes in order to make up for these social inabilities, the Fattie may become overly confident and outgoing, leading to a long conversation about Star Wars in which one party is nonconsensual (what I like to call “conversation rape”). A sense of entitlement, probably due to suffering at the hands of people who think being fat is not totally rad. Finally, due to their horrible existence, the Fattie has a complete detachment from reality. Magic? Sure! Harry Potter was a documentary. Also, people don’t like you because you are fat, not because you’re a terrible person.

In closing, I cannot stress enough that the Fattie is not a terrible person simply because of being overweight. I am simply insensitive and fat jokes are easy.

More Asshole Taxonomy on the way (and hopefully more astute that this incoherent crap written in blind rage).