Ghosts: Assholes of the Afterlife

It's moving week at the CAC household. Truck rented, boxes ready, dust everywhere. While carefully packing away my bacon syrup, I stopped to reflect on our time here. It was quiet, spacious, a great place to relax. Our landlord was the best we've ever had, and always quick to respond to any issues we came across. Anything was a quick fix here. Well, almost.

We had to deal with a ghost.
After dealing with it, we have come to the same conclusion: ghosts are just assholes.

Call them whatever you like: specter, spirit, ghost, the undead. I think they are just a bunch of jerks without the decency to just go away. We knew these people when they were alive. The same guys who would cut in front of you on the freeway. Who count change penny by penny at the drive-thru. Test every piece of noisy equipment at 3am. Loud, pestering, obnoxious, life-sapping jerks.

Two assholes having undead, Santorum-angering sex

Ours in particular was insufferably annoying. Lights would go on and off (SoCal Edison was probably in cahoots with the phantom, which makes sense because in life jerks still find a way to be employed), the constant sensation of being watched, the poking, the thumping, the rattling of the blinds, the footsteps, and the worst of it: the sensation of someone leaning over you when you are trying to sleep. That last bit is hard to describe, so let me pitch it in a different way.

You know when you go to a Denny's, and you order extra bacon and extra pancakes, and there's always some obese, Rascal-riding jerk in the booth behind you leaning over and staring at your food, breathing heavy? No concept of personal space or manners. It is an awkward, irritating feeling.

With our move, the activity has spiked a bit. First I can't sleep, then the soon-to-be misses can't, then we both fall asleep, and the lights turn on. I pity the next couple that rents here. I think our particularly jerky spirit is upset with us leaving, and like a petulant child told no, its throwing a tantrum.

Some people yearn to talk to the dead. They think they will get some great truth out of the conversation. They assume the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything are all resolved the second you croak. Many actively seek an encounter with a ghost. There are now whole tourist divisions dedicated to encounters with the unexplained.

These people are painfully misguided. They don't understand the true nature of what they are dealing with. Ghosts, I now firmly believe, are the assholes we encounter in our daily lives, doomed to walk the earth because nobody wants to put up with their nonsense. Neither the Creator nor His detractor has the time or the patience to deal with people who whine at a Starbucks barista that they won't put caramel and whipped cream on their (free) water.

So back to the world of the living are they forced to wander about. Every now and then, a camera crew, a fat plumber, and a few anorexic goth chicks will come around and give them some undue and seriously undeserved attention. But for much of their existence in non-corporeal form, they continue to do what they always did, and irritate the lot of us.

posted by CAC at 12:32 PM

| Access Comments