If you could rid the earth of one thing, what would it be?

“Rid the earth”? Seems a little excessive. As I recall, some people tried to “rid the earth” of some twin towers, and that didn’t exactly go down like honey. I don’t know; I guess I’m just not a fan of mass execution. You know, even if I said, “I want to kill all paedophiles,” I still don’t exactly come off looking like Anne of Green Gables. No, I’m still just publishing a list of “people to kill”. Great, that’s sane. Let’s see, who else has tried that nugget? Hitler? Timothy McVeigh? Uh, I don’t know, every known psychopath in the history of time? The Manson Family?

I think there is only one answer to this question that acts an effective safeguard against character assassination, and that answer is “cancer”. But for the sake of the argument, I would like to wipe out every pretentious person in the universe, beginning with Fenton.

Yes, Fenton. I was twelve, as I recall; he was eighteen, or close to it. Son of parents’ friends, long story, not interesting. Unusually fat, face is a blur, wore moleskin trousers, parents kept some kind of fucked up ceramic dogs. Rich. Parents claimed they bought Fenton a bicycle so expensive it had to be insured. What the fuck? I remember sitting there at the time thinking: the only people who should be insuring their bicycles should be actual cyclists, I mean, look at your son, this is obviously not money in the bank.

We then discovered Fenton had an English accent. Fuck knows why, it literally just came out of nowhere. We then heard some laboured story about how Fenton was in a foul mood because he was unable to golf that week. Again, I remember sitting there thinking: why is you NOT golfing a problem? Who cares? Why do you have the interests of a billionaire geriatric anyway? What unfathomably boring realm do you people live in? What even motivates you people? Money? Golf? Dogs? Insuring your son’s fat arse against hitting the ground when he careens his solid gold bicycle into the Seven Eleven?

Fenton was the first pretentious person I ever met. He also bled me of the will to live.

There is a natural beauty in everything that exists on earth, and pretentious people ruin everything; I would go so far as to say that they ruin life itself, possibly the universe. They certainly ruined my entire tertiary education, inasmuch as they were running it. They also seem to have wormed their way throughout the globe, including a certain local record store, where the staff are visibly disgusted by every single purchase I make. I once went in and asked for a certain Dimmu Borgir album; the guy on checkout refused to face me, closed his eyes, audibly groaned and shook his head. “We don’t stock Dimmu Borgir,” he spat over his shoulder. Of course. God forbid I try and make a purchase at your store. God forbid I try and give you my money.

“Well, what are you doing there?” I asked, gesturing towards his notes.

“I’m compiling my top ten albums of the year.” He stated this as if it was ridiculously obvious.

“Cool. What are they?”

Still refusing to face me, he slid the paper across the counter.

“Oh. So Amon Amarth didn’t make the cut for you?”

He looked at me as if I had just shat in his store. “Uh, that album came out in 2006.”

“Of course.” Kill me.

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