The Pretentious Illiterate

“Enjoy the little things” on my chest

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  

Today I was walking down the street and a lady said to me, “Honey, tie your shoelaces. You’re going to trip.” I stopped, looked abashed, and tied my shoelaces — but only to be polite. Let me tell you something. I’m thirty years old. For reasons I can’t quite explain, my shoelaces are untied a lot. Most of the time, even. It’s been that way all of my life. Maybe it has something to do with my poor fine motor skills, or maybe I’m just weirdly bad at tying shoelaces. Whatever. The point is, in all of the thirty years that I’ve been strolling around this earth, my shoelaces flopping about my feet, I have never tripped on my shoelaces. Not once. Not ever.

When was the last time you tripped on your shoelaces? I bet it’s been at least ten years, ever since you really mastered the art of walking. Frankly, I have no idea how one would even go about tripping on one’s shoelaces. When I trip, it’s usually on something that’s sticking up from the ground, like a rock or something. Shoelaces don’t stick up from the ground! Sometimes my shoelaces slide underneath my feet, but I just step on them and move on. The only way I can legitimately imagine tripping on your own shoelaces is if you stepped on your shoelace with your other, opposite foot, but even that is a stretch. Why would you do that? Just walk normally. In my mind, the main undone-shoelace danger is not tripping; it’s getting your shoelace stuck underneath someone else’s foot and being unable to move. Getting your shoelace stuck underneath someone’s foot is not dangerous, though. It’s only embarrassing. This is mainly because when you point out to people that they’re standing on your shoelace, they always look at you condescendingly and say, “Be careful. You should tie your shoelaces. You don’t want to trip!”

I think it’s time we call the older generation out on this hypocrisy. Undone shoelaces do not pose a significant danger to our health and safety. “Tie your shoelaces” is the “Wait a half an hour before going swimming” of the new millennium. The next person who tells me to tie my shoelaces is going to get an earful from me. If my decision not to pause in the middle of the day to retie my shoelaces offends your fashion sensibility, so be it. But don’t try and dress your aesthetic objections up in faux-altruistic safety concerns. It’s time to tell the truth about untied shoelaces, which is: you are probably not going to trip on them. Enough is enough!

My first ever tattoo, and it is of the Swahili symbol for “Hakuna Matata” which also means “No Worries”. People always assume it is of a treble clef, but they would be sadly mistaken. I love this tattoo because no only does it express a certain attribute of myself I would like to improve on (too worrisome), but it also is a way of expressing my love for The Lion King. Growing up, I believed I was a real lion, and my zodiac symbol being a leo, didn’t help my case at all. I would definitely say though, my spirit animal is a lion. This tattoo was done by a friend of a friend of mine in Battleground, Washington. His name is James Atchley, and he is actually doing more ink on me soon. He rocks by the way!

Except that Swahili is written using the Roman alphabet, so the Swahili symbol for “hakuna matata” is actually…wait for it…”hakuna matata.” Which, given that the internet exists, would have taken you literally five seconds to figure out, if you could have been bothered to do even the teensiest bit of research on the symbol you were going to be carrying around on the back of your neck for the rest of your godforsaken life. Especially since the top result for “Hakuna matata Swahili Symbol” is a Yahoo Answers page in which someone asks, “What is the history of the Swahili symbol for Hakuna matata?” and is repeatedly told “THERE IS NO SWAHILI SYMBOL FOR HAKUNA MATATA.” Here’s a clue, lady, if fucking Yahoo Answers is smarter than you, then you aren’t just “sadly mistaken,” you are dumb as fucking shit.

Oh, and not that this really rates on the grand scale of your massive ineptitude at life…but if, when you were a kid, you thought you were a real lion, then, setting aside the fact that astrology is made-up nonsense that only idiots believe, the fact that your zodiac sign was a Leo would have helped your case. Because of how Leo is a lion. And so were you, at least in your stupid head. 

Unfortunately, in that instance you were also “sadly mistaken” because it turns out that your spirit animal isn’t actually a lion at all. It’s some stupid lazy garbage animal that I made up in my head just now, but that I’m going to pretend is real because I feel like it.

Idiot.

Dear The Satorialist,

Why do you think it is that fat ladies never wear any fashionable outfits? I bet it has something to do with genetics. Maybe the skinny gene and the fashion gene are, like, located on the same chromosome, or something? Anyway, just curious as 2 your thoughts. <3 u Sartie!

~K