Bateman: Blame the Man for abounding social injustices

If there’s one thing that the recent hockey riots in Vancouver, British Columbia, have proven… If there’s one thing that the recent hockey riots in Vancouver, British Columbia, have proven to us, it’s that you don’t need a good reason to fight the Man. Only wimps and wussies cool their heels while waiting for a G-20 Summit to roll around. Those of us with camera phones, aluminum bats and an abiding desire to loot the cologne rack at the local Brooks Brothers know better: Every single minute of our lives is filled to bursting with injustice. Let us count some of the ways.

You’re not famous yet. When you look in the mirror, do you see a famous person looking back at you? Of course not, because you’re nobody special. Meanwhile, people like reality show legend Heidi Montag, pint-sized pageant queen “Little” Eden Wood and business guru Donald “You’re Fired!” Trump are out there cornering the market on fame. What do they have that you don’t? Aren’t your quotidian goings-on — such as walking in loose sweatpants and sans makeup to purchase a $5 pizza — equally worthy of being recorded in the “Stars — They’re Just Like Us” section of Us Weekly? Given your success at “Madden 07” and “Call of Duty” as well as your well-documented ability to sleep past noon, there can’t be any explanation for your lack of fame other than the fact that the Man has it out for you.

Red and khaki used to go so great together. They did, didn’t they? Back in the old days, all of us wore red and khaki, often for weeks at a time. When onlookers saw us in these ensembles, they took notice. “Oh how those colors harmonize when worn together,” they would say. Now, however, we can’t wear this combination without some jerk asking us if we work at Target (or “the bull’s-eye,” if he’s down with the way the kids are talking). And don’t even get us started on what happens when we’re carrying our walkie-talkie and pushing a shopping cart.

LeBron James didn’t win a title. Can you think of a top slam dunker other than Stephon “Starbury” Marbury who was more deserving of an NBA title? A player who gave a harder effort or threw down such thunderous hoop jams? Someone on whose team’s fortunes we wagered more money on bodog.eu (our life savings, to be exact) only to watch said star play like he couldn’t care less while a bunch of old men and a German kicked his ass and bankrupted us for all time? And why are Germans playing in the NBA, anyway? Didn’t our amazing country — which had roughly three times the population of Germany — waste four glorious years and the lives of many in its “Greatest Generation” struggling to defeat that warlike nation? We’re damn sure our grandfather didn’t spend three years locked in a submarine only to have our best ballers lose to the leading representative of a place that we’ve learned from movies and TV once embodied Absolute Evil.

These jerks don’t know how to drive. Have you ever driven on one of our fair city’s highways or side streets? If you have, you’d know that almost everyone out there is a worse driver than you are. It’s a tragedy on par with the death of Princess Diana that you have to get behind the wheel every day and deal with these morons. Regardless of where you go, there’s always some goofus blocking your way, driving too slowly, driving recklessly, struggling to parallel park, taking too long to leave his parking spot and so forth. You deserve far better than this, and it’s owing to the Man and his stupid laws that you can’t just roll down the street in a 67-ton M1 Abrams tank, crushing all the unlucky pedestrians who happen to cross your path.

That n00b keeps posting out-of-date links on his Facebook. While you’re working your butt off trying to stay on top of the latest cute-baby and horrible-accident videos, some loser is clogging your news feed with stuff you encountered minutes or even hours ago. Guy eats a guitar and then contracts his stomach muscles to play the opening riff to “Smoke on the Water”? Owl appears to befriend an orangutan on top of the Empire State Building? C’mon, why are people commenting on this ancient history? Don’t they have better things to do? Oh the humanity!

This teacher totally screwed me over. Remember that class where you blew off most of the work and turned in a final paper you had written two semesters ago for some other class? That class where the instructor talked in kind of a weird voice and wasn’t nearly as entertaining as the Angry Birds 3D extravaganza game on your iPhone? Well, you got a B- in there, and that’s about as unfair as you can get. A B-, and you dragged your hung-over self to at least half or maybe even more of the classes? And, on top of that, it was in one of those super-uncomfortable Nationality Rooms, where all of the chairs are cut from granite and about as wide as a bicycle seat! Snakes alive, what are you paying all these loans for, anyway?

As you can see, there’s so much wrong with the world today. Far from being the vandals and louts that the Man’s journalists and op-ed writers have portrayed them as, then, the young people in Vancouver were heroes in this never-ending war against how bad stuff is. They took a cold hard look at their city’s swanky downtown, mild climate and progressive reputation and decided to beat the hell out of some sh*t. We must never forget their sacrifice.

To learn more about what passes for social justice these days, visit the Moustache Anarcho-Slacktivist Club of America at moustacheclubofamerica.com. For up-to-the-minute reports on the progress of the Revolution, check out http://twitter.com/#!/MoustacheClubUS. If you just want to watch some cool Super Smash Bros. fight videos, go to http://allisbrawl.com/video.