The other day, I had a stopover at the Trailways station in
Kingston, New York. Inside, at the
counter, behind the glass, was a portly lady and her portly French bulldog. The dog was clearly a real character,
sitting on the desk and regarding the room like a rotund pasha.
"May I say hello to your
assistant?" I asked the lady.
"Oh, that's not my assistant," she replied. "That's my boss."
I offered the little fellow a sniff of my hand and made the
usual hello doggie noises.
"It's actually his birthday today," the lady said proudly.
"Oh, will he get a birthday cake?" I said, trying to be cute.
"Yes, he will," she said proudly. "It's chocolate and it's shaped
like a huge pile of dog poop! It's
got little bits of wax paper on
it, to make it look realistic, and they also put these little plastic flies on
it! Of course, he can't have any,
but it's delicious."
"I bet it is!" I replied cheerfully.
SOME PEOPLE ARE UGLY
Some people are ugly. That is a rock-solid statement. You can throw all the rocks at it you want and you still won't break any windows, much less break down the door, storm in and trash the place, and walk out with cool stuff like an old transistor radio or a tiny bottle of top-shelf scotch. I have to say, that's a great metaphor because all statements, like some buildings, should have a foundation; the foundation here being the ugliness of some people. I did say "some" buildings because, not being an architect, I don't know, maybe some buildings don't have foundations, so I left myself an out there. Which is smart: always leave yourself an out when making sweeping statements because there's always some wisenheimer out there who will find something to carp about and you need to anticipate jerks like that and if you don't, you're a loser whom I do not ever want to know or even meet at a bachelor party. Anyway, another reason it's such a solid statement is that "some" can mean as few as two, and surely there are at least two ugly people out of the 11 billion on the planet. Virtually anyone would agree about that, so you're pretty safe there, although I say "virtually" to, once again, leave myself an out in case there are some people out there who disagree and feel that there are no ugly people at all, or that there is only one ugly person and therefore "some people" doesn't apply because it's plural. But that would be easy enough to research — just image search for a photo of some hockey team or military platoon or presidential Cabinet. After taking a gander at a few of those, you'll probably find two people who are ugly, and, like I say, that's just enough to satisfy the claim. You'll have made your nut, so to speak, and now nobody can fuck with you. Good lord, I hate it when people fuck with me. And if anyone gives you grief about whether those two people are in fact ugly, you can just say, "Well, I find them ugly and that's good enough." If they try to start some nonsense with you, you can just whip out the old saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and then blow their freakin' minds inside out by adding, "And so is it not logical that ugliness is also in the eye of the beholder?" And then — and this is crucial — glare at them while arching one eyebrow. I 100% guarantee you will win that one. It's interesting, though, about people being the ones who are ugly. Can animals be ugly? Personally, I think they're all beautiful in their own way but I'm a human being, or at least I'm recognized as one by the government of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, so I have to admit that I don't possess the know-how to distinguish, for instance, a pretty blue heron from an ugly blue heron. They all look the same to me: beautiful. But maybe blue herons have a power of discernment about their own kind that we don't have about them and they know an ugly blue heron when they see one, sort of like how former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart knew pornography when he saw it. Maybe blue herons think we humans all look alike even if some of us can look rather handsome when they get a haircut at that place in the Village and wear a clean shirt for a change and that nice tweed blazer with the leather buttons. Although I wonder if they find us beautiful or, more interestingly, find some of us beautiful, which would mean they have a power of aesthetic discernment about us that we don't have about them. That would be unfair but OK, life is not fair and the sooner you acknowledge that, the better off you'll be. But can birds sense beauty? You got me. But, like I said, even ugly is a subjective thing. Abraham Lincoln is often said to be ugly. Or at least physically ugly since he was beautiful in other respects, especially his use of colorful adverbs. Which brings up an ambiguity in that first sentence: ugly in what sense? There is physical ugliness. But there is also moral ugliness. One can't be helped; the other is a condemnable failing that can get you canceled or doxed or not invited to the best cocktail parties on Martha's Vineyard, the ones where they serve oysters. But it's ugly to attack someone for being physically ugly — that's a sort of meta-ugliness, if you will — so if you're having one of those days when you need to pick on someone and a physically ugly person is the only person around, find something better to pick on them for, like their racism or their annoying habit of crushing aluminum cans with one hand after they've finishing drinking from them. There is plenty of ugliness out there to condemn and I, for one, will not fault you one bit for calling it out. But just remember: only some people are ugly.
