Over the course of my so far fairly short
life, I was sitting in
bed one night just thinking about the things that truly do
suck, and I came up with 3 or 4 things. So I got out a piece of
paper, and decided to fill out the list to 10 things. Bah. So here ya go, in reverse order.
10: You will probably never fulfill your potential, and even if you do, it won't be enough. Just think of what kind of person you could be if you actually did something productive or constructive with your time, instead of, say, making node writeups. You always could get around to those books you wanted to read, or perhaps to start exercising to lose some weight, or perhaps to get buff. Well, the first part says that you won't do that, and even if you do, it won't be enough. You won't lose enough weight, won't get smart enough, and won't get buff enough to draw any attention away from that guy who has 2% body fat who hangs around during lunch time so that your female friends can shamelessly feel his stomach. Related to the 2rd law.
9:Other people can do the same thing you do or worse, but get more credit for it because they are other people, and not you. Ever have one of those math tests, where after grading, you look at your friends test, and see marks such as "great", "good", "pure genius", or even "super" followed by an explanation of "Your methods of solving these problems are very novel, great work". Then of course, you gaze upon your own paper, which at least has the proper (better) grade on it, but is otherwise blank, even though you used the same methods that he did, and it took you half the time. Yeah. So you take a moment to write in all the compliments you never got, but tire of it and throw it away. These kind of things can be mentally written off I suppose, but still are annoying.
8:There is always a better way to do what you just did. It never fails, either during a moment of hindsight or when somebody asks you why you are being so damn stupid, you realize that you just spent an untold amount of work for something that could have been done in perhaps 10 seconds. Of course, it's too late now to go back, and a similar problem will never come around again for you to redeem yourself.
7:You are flawed. This seems to be a reoccurring theme in this writeup, but I really don't mean it to be. Still though, all people are flawed, or so they say, but all that you know is that you yourself are. You can't do everything right all the time, but somebody else probably can. Find that person. Make them do it, but that usually doesn't work either.
6:There are many many other things that suck, not just these ten. Not much unlike the ninth amendment to the US Constitution, due to the sheer quantities of things that suck it would take a long time to list them here, and as a consequence of the 7th rule, you would probably screw up if you tried. In any case, just because something is not on this list, does not mean that it doesn't suck. In fact, it probably does.
5:Your great idea was thought of 10-20 years ago, was tried, and probably failed miserably, or they fixed your process and are now rich. In grade school I remember finding this cute little way to find prime numbers, by putting them in a grid and using their positions to find the easy factors. Then I remember looking in a math book one day, and it outlines the method I used, telling me it was done by some Greek guy about a billion years ago, along with a refinement or two I think. Although he didn't get rich, and it wasn't 10 or 20 years ago, the basic principles still apply.
4:It it always your fault. I don't mean to sound so self-hateful, but most things that screw your life up are your fault, and/or could have been avoided with some forethought. Maybe you shouldn't be so stupid.
3:Women always mean the opposite of what they say. Now, this probably applies to men as well, or at least I'm sure some negaitive thing about men could go here, but I don't spend my time wondering why I try to bother with women. Women always say that they like nice guys, who are kind, polite, sensitive, and smart are all looked upon favorably by women. Sure. Women tell you this while you are having lunch with them for the first time in a long time, because she recently became unattached to her last boyfriend and will do things with the lowly single people for awhile. They also tell you that you that you always have fit all these qualities in the extreme, and yet she fails to see the signifigance in the fact that you are 22 and haven't even been close to going on a date in your life. It just doesn't register, that perhaps something in their theory is slightly askew. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she'll take notice of some high school dropout she met 5 minutes ago who mumbles a lot, *but can play guitar like a mofo*, and she'll say good bye, and perhaps you'll have a serious conversation with your best friend again in 1-6 months when she gets tired of him and she sees you for lunch again. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Guys, guitar = chicks, and you probably don't play the guitar. I don't care what they tell you.
2:No matter how good you are at anything, somebody else is/was better. This is the "somebody else" clause. The universe is very big, so naturally there is some entity out there that can kick your ass. The odd thing is, it almost always turns out that this entity is right here on earth, living right now, getting ready to kick your ass, personally. Examples include that Asian kid who kicked your ass in that MathCounts state competition so long ago, or maybe that kid down the block who is the only person who can take you on in Q3A.
1:You can't win, you can't even break even. This is basically what it all boils down to. Some people say this because in the end, everybody dies, and they see this as a loss. I don't see death as losing really, just the end of the road, but the losing streak in a persons life begins before death anyway, so the law still holds true. Oddly, because of its nature, this is the only rule that has a chance to hold true for everybody, not just yourself in relation to other people. This is not a pro-suicide deal here, you just can't win. Ironically, this is probably what sucks the most, but it is also the only thing I can think of that unites us all. None of us can win. It's all so lovely.