You can shut the fuck up now

Benjamin Law versus Mia Timpano

1. Your Urgent Need for Coffee

Ben says: Everyone has their vices. Your vice might be shopping. My boyfriend’s is a good bottle of New Zealand pinot noir. My vice is homosexual pornography. However, you don’t hear me exclaim during the middle of a work shift: “Oh, it’s been such a long day! I can’t wait til I can go online, drop my pants and stroke my wang.” No, that would be indecent.

So why do coffee-drinkers feel the need to groan their way through a day at the office about their undying, constant need for a “caffeine fix”? Even heroin users have enough discretion not to go on about junk. Most of them refer to their habit as “bus tickets.” I like their style. Keep your vices to yourself. Coffee makes you jittery and your breath smell like rubbish. Wow. Fantastic beverage there. We get it—you need coffee. Just buy your skinny latté and shut up already.

Mia says: You don’t have a caffeine addiction. You want to be perceived as having a caffeine addiction (or any addiction) because you’re an attention whore. Caffiene is an extremely mild stimulant. You don’t have an addiction to it any more than you have an addiction to beans. “Ooh, I so need beans! Where is my bean-fix? I really need to ram beans into my face.” Shut up and deal with it. And you’re the same whore who wanted crutches in primary school because you thought it would win you friends. It didn’t. News flash, no matter how many bones of yours you have set in plaster, you’re still the same vacuous bitch, just rendered motionless.

2. The Weather

Ben says: I hate most forms of weather. Sunny? Rainy? Windy? Hate them. Because my body shape can only be described as “skin draped over skeleton”, I have no insulation whatsoever to protect me from the cold. As for the heat, my factory-like metabolism makes my body like a furnace, so hot days are torturous. During summer, I practically lie in bed all day with a bucket of ice, nude and moaning. Maybe I just hate the outdoors. Either way, the last thing I need is people telling me what I’m feeling. “Ooh, it’s hot outside today, isn’t it?” Or: “The clouds are darkening up there, aren’t they?” Or: “It’s getting quite cold. Brrrr!” Jesus. I have never understood this banter. Folks, the weather is a shared experience. I feel what you feel. Yes, it is hot. Obviously—we are both sweating. How much more can be said? Unless my central nervous system has collapsed, or I’ve suddenly become Helen Keller, I am privy to this information too. It’s not like you’re some Navajo weather shaman, because you can tell me how the sky looks.

Mia says: Visit the earth’s core and get some perspective. No, seriously. You have been living in the same atmospheric condition since the day you were born, yet the concept of heat still alarms you. “It’s so hot.” Yeah, welcome to the planet, bitch. And word to the slow: you have no other frame of reference. You are not Vulcan. You are experiencing a subtle climactic change regular to earth. You are only allowed to tell me “it’s so hot” if you’ve been set on fire or are being sucked into the boiling lava of a volcano. Actually, don’t. You’re still wasting my time. Move on.

3. “Should I Call Him?”

Ben says: Yes, you should. Absolutely. You’ve got nothing to lose. And don’t give me that “dignity” bullshit. If you had any, you would not be talking to me about this crap. You know the answer to this question; we know the answer. Call him. If you don’t, you’re a loser. And if you talk about it ceaselessly, I will kill you. As Dame Edna once said: “No one wants to hear about your low self-esteem.” I agree; it brings the mood down. When you get to the stage of the relationship where the important question is, “Should I do anal?”, then we should talk.

Mia says: If he hasn’t responded to your email, he doesn’t care whether you live or die. He has reported you as junk. You are human spam to him. And I can see why. Because you’re an attention whore and need to dump the endless barrage of shit that is your “sex life”, or whatever, onto people who don’t care. If you actually have something to say other than “me me me”, then why don’t you get off your arse, walk up to him (or drag yourself to him —no doubt you’ve had all four limbs broken and set in plaster and rigged yourself up to some giant metal frame so you can only move by being dragged or lowered in by crane) and say, “Hey, whatever your name is, you stupid pimp. What gives?” Do it or shut up.

4. Your Physical Ailments

Ben says: To be honest, this is a grey area, really. It’s about personal preference. For me, any dysfunctions to do with the genitals (or, better yet, your partner’s) should be discussed with sweeping hand gestures and loudly. Menstruation is monthly and quite banal, but should be discussed if it explains why you’re acting like such a goddamned bitch to me right now. Other people’s ailments are also fascinating (eg. Trent ’s psoriasis of the liver; Becky’s laser eye surgery). God, come to think of it, I’m pretty entertained by this stuff. Why did we include it again? Take it away, Mia.

Mia says: Because I don’t care. Because your wisdom teeth do not interest me; they never will. Why would they? Why would I care about bits of bone stuck in your face? Because you need to have them extracted? So? This isn’t the fifth century. They’re not going to be dug out with a dirty spoon. The dentist does whatever, takes them out and flicks them in the bin, tra la la. Nobody cares. Just like nobody cares that you had your butt irrigated. And why do people say, “Oooh, you’ll never guess what colour my shit is today!” Oh, fuck, I don’t know. Brown? Seriously, it would not matter what colours your turds are affecting —they’re your turds. Please, just shut up.

See also: other rants co-authored by Benjamin Law and Mia Timpano
“Horrific trends in fashion”
“Snowy vs Brain”

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