Hey, CraveOnline readers! Here’s a list to celebrate (if you can call it that) the places on our great blue marble that really suck. The places and situations that really suck in any event. Of course, there are no end of ghost towns and toxic waste dumps of which to choose from, but who spends any time there? No, gentle reader, this list is of the ten Hells On Earth that you have any reason to deal with in your life, or at least could. Prepare yourself for a walk through Hell, and when you’re done tweet your own examples of Hells on earth to @SaxCarr or @CraveOnline. because we’re interested. Leave them as comments here too! Hell, why not?
10. The DMV
HA HA HA Right? Every hack comedian since before Vaudeville told the old joke that the DMV sucks. Well, guess what? It STILL sucks. That’s the worst part. Even after people complaining about their experiences to co-workers and on television shows, after every comedian and jerk who THINKS he’s a comedian has uttered his comment, they still haven’t fixed this place. That’s just ballsy. It takes a lot of gumption to be this horrible and stick to sucking for years and years, but the DMV has no problem keeping up its million year streak of suckyness. Between the confusing lines, unhelpful staff, the long wait is just the icing on a cake made of poopy. When “The Simpsons” sees fit to make some of their worst characters work there it was time to clean up their act, and the DMV didn’t. Paging SATAN. please come to the next window please.
Ok I appreciate I am kicking that dead horse of an old joke. but have you tried to renew the registration on your horse lately? Kick, Kick, Kick!
9. Toilets in Foreign Counties
Not every foreign country has bathrooms of the dammed, but every now and again, and seemingly when you want to go the most, you run into one of these toiletless glorified holes in the ground and it becomes painfully obvious, its not your day. My father once told me a story of a “squat” bathroom that charged 10 dollars for every SQUARE of toilet paper. Hepatitis YAY! Now, I have to admit that when it comes to human comfort while visiting at least a semi-industrialized country I feel like toilets are the thing to spend the money on. Do we need Japanese robot toilets? No. (But they sure would be cool!) But we should at least have a place to sit. Of course I can’t really defend the need for a quality men’s room when most guys turn even the classiest mens rooms into a urine soaked Hell hole. (I’ll never understand that. Must be a lot of aiming problems amongst my gender.) Of course maybe men would treat their bathrooms better if they all looked like this:
Yep, you gotta bend… WAY over.
Oh yeah. Here’s a patented Sax Carr tip to all you guys who indiscriminately pee-pee all over bathrooms across this nation: you might drag a girl back into one of those stalls one day! Also. be glad you have stalls. and TOILETS. because starving children in Africa. well you know the rest.
EDITORS NOTE: A woman has informed me that women’s rooms are EVEN worse, at least in a club by the end of the night. Part of me is glad that women are in the same boat, the other part of me will never see women in the same light again. Although I can’t imagine how bad one’s aim can be when one is ALWAYS aiming at point blank range.
8. The last month of a failed relationship.
I have no idea why we do it, but we all do, we stick around in a relationship for that one extra month after its over. Why? Because we want it to work or because we don’t want to hurt someones feelings, or the sex is really good, or you really hate doing your own laundry! Whatever the reason, its so much of a strain on most of us emotionally that by the time we finally pull the trigger, we’ve been reduced to a husk of our former selves. We are post-relationship zombies, and we know are are going to be, but we don’t just get out. Imagine if we had the same feeling about parachuting out of falling aircraft. Sure we are going to die when we hit the ground, but this chair is so comfy, and there’s that bag of peanuts you never got around to. Whoops, too late. SMASH! It’s not just relationships, it’s jobs…. and failed friendships…. and apartments with noisey neighbors….and wasting valuable company time reading CraveOnline. We are gluttons for punishment, and we bring it on ourselves. I know its not that funny, but you know what is funny? THIS!
Oh, that was good. now about that relationship you really want to be out of? Oh, you live together?. ok. see you next month.
7. The middle of nowhere.
One of the more oddly forgettable quality of life issues is being able to go out of your house (or hotel room) and find something to do. Sadly most of us will end up at least temporarily in a place where this is just not possible, mostly due to car trouble or poorly located relatives. There are those holes in the universe that simply have no entertainment, or even people to talk to. I was once stuck in a factory town in Canada for a week while my transmission got fixed and the only place to eat was the motel lobby. Cabin fever set in quickly, exacerbated by Canadian television being basically a 24 hour documentary about curling. I considered committing crimes for the social stimulation of a police investigation. Some people even claim to dream of that kind of seclusion. Those people are commonly called idiots. It does get worse though. Boredom is nothing compared to “127 Hours” style fear of death when you are in the REAL middle of nowhere. On a similar trip through the logging roads of Canada once I had car trouble on a secluded mountain road that was almost the death of me. Basically being away from people sucks. Let’s all be friends.
Today’s lesson: Cananda sucks.
Also! Let’s make it a point to put cell phone towers in the middle of nowhere. I know you might think its better to have good service say, in Beverly Hills, but you’ll change your tune as you slowly die of exposure in a place that regrettably does not support T-Mobile.
6. Strip malls with a check cashing place.
In our parent’s generation, the sign that a neighborhood was bad news was the local pawn shop. For our generation, the key to knowing you are in a “dodgy” part of town is a check cashing place. You’ll find them in malls with a c-rated Thai restaurant, a dollar store, and a guy on the sidewalk who is homeless, or crazy, or just got mugged, or all 3. I can understand the desire to cash your check without dealing with a big crazy bank, but why does that mean you need a bullet proof vest. This may be a little unfair to ALL these establishments, there MAY be exceptions. I just found a classy upscale pawn shop in Beverly Hills, so there might be a dinner jackets-only Check Cashing place somewhere, but I haven’t found it. You could call it “The Currency Alchemist” or “Checks and Balances” or “Signature Required”. or maybe just “Bank of America”. I have found myself locking my car doors and eating questionable Pad Thai, but I walk on the wild side.
5. High School
I don’t remember who pointed out that, at the time in which we want acceptance, success, and romance the most is during everyone’s awkward pimply phase while we are forced to associate with basically the same group of peers who have long memories and judgmental attitudes. Also, your whole future is on the line, or so they tell you, and every itty bitty social situation seems critical to your whole life. High school is NOT, as it turns out, the be-all-end-all of existence, but you can’t convince anyone of that when they are a part of it. Except for the occasional character played by Ellen Page who is old beyond her years and sees the forest for the trees, we are all trapped in a 4 year social experiment where the winners only get nostalgic stories that make them sound like a letterman jacket wearing dick. We’ve all had basically the same experience with our lunch room cliques, and strangely ramped up social pressures, and one teacher who really “gets us” but the rest are some how “out to get us”. On top of that, there’s that one movement where you realize you are in a big John Hughes movie and you look around for the cameras and you know this is going to end bittersweet, and you just have to ride the social rollercoaster to its inevitable sub-par ending. And a cheesy, awful soundtrack that people will make fun of in a few generations. A friend of mine told me her high school had a physics event where students were asked to make a boat out of only cardboard and duct tape and row them across the pool. Of course, half way across, the boats’ integrity started to fail, and most students sank depressingly in what was steadily becoming card-board soup. It’s nice that high school forced their students to take part in basically the best metaphor for high school ever. Have fun in your leaking, shoddily constructed, socially awkward educations kids. It gets better. College is right around the corner.
4. Traffic
You have to remember that your car is the most dangerous weapon you will ever posses. I mean a gun is dangerous, but a car is a lot worse. So, the fact that most of us reach the highest level of measurable anger and disregard for human life while driving is pretty scary. I think after a few hours in traffic you could convince most anyone to toss their own mother on the train tracks if it meant a clear path to drive home. You want to know the worst part. brace yourself here. the traffic experts say most traffic jams and slow driving is caused by mob mentality. Yep, its not an accident that’s slowing down the fast lane on Thursday afternoon, it’s you, genius. and others like you. because humans manage to f@#k up driving. You can at least take solice in the fact that while you are stuck in traffic, your car is wasting petroleum, polluting the environment, and probably making you look like a douche bag. Oh Wait! The only way traffic gets worse is if you’ve got a broken radio. If your only options are silence, or AM (Aside note from Sax Carr: Up yours, Limbaugh), or that one CD you’ve had stuck in their for months. you should be listed as a deadly weapon. I spent 2 years with a Barenaked Ladies album stuck in one of my cars and my therapist thinks that is the cause of a lot of my social problems now. I came within a hair’s breadth of killing small animals just for the emotional release. Once on a trip across country, my U-Haul and I were in a radio dead zone where only one station could be picked up, and that station for some reason played “Margaritaville” on repeat, over and over again. for an hour. Have you ever noticed that song never really clearly begins or ends? I have. By the end of the hour I was going to fly down there and help that asshole find that salt shaker….up his tailpipe. But I digress.
3. Party with fighting couple.
Here’s the situation: You’re at a dinner party, or a birthday bash, and the hosting couple has gotten into a fight. Welcome to your own personal cold war, and there is no way out. You go for your coat, and you are informed you can’t leave, it’s going to be ok, let’s just play Pictionary and the feuding couple are going to be in the same team. Social pressure can be much harder to walk away from then a jail cell, and a lot more invasive. This situation is worst when you see the worm turn early and then you know you are one glass of wine away from it all melting down. “Well, let me tell you all about Karen.” and bickedy-bam. now, it’s a big fight that you are captive audience for. Hooray, right? Here’s a patented Sax Carr tip: I can give you a way out of this one. If you really have to get clear of happy-couple-Jonestown here is what you do. Mind you, this is going to have lasting repercussions but it’s worth it, I assure you. Just pick a side in the argument and really go after the other party aggressively. Blame them for things you know they didn’t do. “Why did you set off Mt St. Helen’s, Karen?!” Even an angry significant other will spring to their defense and ask you (and a lot of other thankful guests) to leave. You may have lost two friends, but everyone you bought an escape for with your classic douche maneuver moves is going to send you a fruit basket. FRUIT BASKET!
Speaking of being one wine glass away from DEFCON 5, how about Thanksgiving dinner and aunt whatever and that question of why you haven’t gotten married yet. Or maybe it’s the “dark family secret” that is so secret you discuss it every time you all get together, but this time your fianc‚e is with you. FUN! A whole lot of f’ing fun. Pass that wine.
2. Prison.
Well I don’t need to tell you why Prison sucks. You know they don’t let you leave whenever you want! But it’s not just the gangs and the rape (so much rape!) and the hepatitis tattoos. Prison sucks because either you KNOW you brought this on yourself, or you KNOW you didn’t. Prison is a big area of trapped people who are either screwed by the system or their own actions. In many ways Prison and Community College suck for the same reason. But that’s not all, you can land yourself in a foreign prison and now every trip the shower is a bad reenactment of the “I don’t like you either” scene from Star Wars. only you get beaten and raped. Nothing quite puts a bow on your prison experience like not speaking the language of your penetrator. I hope all those drugs you stuffed up your butt were worth the trouble of your trip to Shanghai Sing Sing. Then there’s secret CIA prison, and while we don’t know what goes on there, we know it sucks. Can’t keep a lid in that, CIA. One benefit to prison is that I bet the inmates don’t know anything about the current social memes. Shawshank may be one of the only places in the country you don’t have to sit through Rebecca Black and Tiger Blood jokes. note that Shawshank is fictional. speaking of Tiger Blood.
1. Front Row at a Charlie Sheen Concert
So the reports are in, and even if it was “better then Detroit” most all of the Charlie Sheen live shows so far have not exactly been “entertaining”. But that’s not the point. The point is that this is all based on what is basically a fad. These people are paying hundreds of dollars for what is this era’s equivalent of “Leave Brittney Alone”, but live, and unproven.
Come see THIS live!
This was doomed from the start and these “Torpedoes of Truth” had been set to detonate in the tubes before you even sat down. But there you are, in the front row, and he can SEE you, this “warlock” can see you not-enjoying his horrible attempts at live performance based on an interview in which he was crazy. He knows you aren’t enjoying this. You know you aren’t enjoying this. But this is going to go on for hours and you can’t escape. Its like that time you saw someone across the bar, and they seemed charming and fun, and you took them back to your place, and subsequently into bed, and then it quickly became clear their appeal was intercourse, not discourse, but you’re having sex anyway and there really isn’t any stopping it until its done. Now they’re asking you if there is anything more they can do to “make it better for you” but it’s over. and you just want to roll over and fall asleep and be done with this. but you can’t. Anyway, TIGER BLOOD! Woo Hoo.
Fortunately, Hell on Earth is temporary. It comes to an end eventually. Just like this article. Have a nice day.
