The Different Kinds of People That There Are

People Who Choose to Correct You About the Definition of “Hobo”

Am I making this up? I feel like every time someone uses the word “hobo” to mean “homeless person,” somebody else has to climb waaay up on their high horse and don their semantics cap and start getting highfalutin all over town about how “a hobo is someone who rides the rails in the Great Depression, and is it 1934 right now? I don’t think so! And I can’t believe you don’t even know what words mean. How embarrassing. Have you heard of Wikipedia? Hhhhhhhhhhhhh.” Maybe I’m making all of this up, but if I’m not, I’d just like to say that I’m aware of what year it is, and I am going to continue using the word “hobo” however I please (within reasonable homeless- related limits, of course), thank you very much, and the way in which I please to use it is, “No thank you, hobo, I do not wish to go on a date with you.” Also I will accept “transient.”

People Who Are Mean to Hoboes

Lay off, man. Being homeless is terrible. Give the dude a dollar. (I’m still not going on a date with you, hobo.)

People Who Still Have Jobs

As bad as things are right now, this is still most people. Like, 93 percent of people. People with jobs are great, except for the few who talk shit to people without jobs (things like “Hey, get a job!” or “Where’s your job?”). In such instances, these people need to be reminded that they, too, possess jobs vulnerable to layoffs and should probably shut the fuck up.

People Who Are Quietly Less Than $100 Away from Complete Destitution

You have to hope it’s going to be okay. This recession can’t go on forever.

People Who Secretly Have Vast Family Fortunes/Trust Funds to Keep Them from Ever Knowing Complete Destitution, or Even Mild Hardship

Just do something interesting with it. You already won. Don’t be a douche.

People Who Care About “Tweet” Being the Verb Form of “Twitter” and Have Opinions About Its Usage

This includes people who think you should say “tweet” when you talk about the activity associated with Twitter and people who think you should just use the word “Twitter.” These opinions are equally uninteresting. If you must use the Twitter, or not use the Twitter, just do it (or don’t). Let’s not bring grammar and logic and giving a shit into this.

People Who Claim to Be Afraid of Clowns

These people (and they are numerous) are attempting to cultivate a cute quirk, but they are really just aping a cute quirk cultivated by thousands of cute-quirk-cultivators before them in a giant, gross, boring feedback loop. Yes, clowns can be mildly creepy. But come on. Among the many things that are scarier than clowns: fire, earthquakes, a guy with a knife, riding the bus, colon cancer, falling down the stairs (it could happen at any time!), rapists, people who just kind of look a little rapey and are standing too close to you in line at 7-Eleven, Marlo from The Wire, influenza, and scissors.

People Who Don’t Watch TV

Symbolically not doing something for the sake of not doing it is almost never evidence of sophistication. It is evidence of not knowing what you’re fucking talking about. Are we really still having this conversation? Television is a part of the cultural landscape at this point—a lot of it is good. A lot of it is bad, some of which is also good. You know, LIKE ALL THINGS MADE BY HUMANS? Obviously it is also a good idea to go outside once in a while. But the presence of a television in your home does not make that decision for you. You make it. Feel free to still go outside at any time.

People Who Will Just Have a Bite of Whatever You’re Having

Please, please, please just order your own lasagna.

People Who Studied Abroad in a Third-World Country

Congratulations.

People Who Are into Whimsy

You can’t really be mad at people who send away for porcelain figurines of poodles wearing poodle skirts that they saw in the back of PARADE, or who enjoy movies in which impish children attempt to call grandma in heaven on the CB radio. That’d be like punching Helen Keller in the face. These people just want to be left alone with their extremely lifelike baby replicas—small false humans filled with pretend love, that can be asphyxiated with attention and never poop, cry, or grow up to make fun of anyone’s stretch pants and doily collection. Forever-babies. (Note: Sometimes people who are into whimsy vote against things like gay marriage. In which case, fuck ’em.)

People Who Complain About the Printed Seattle P-I Going Under Even Though They Never, Ever Used to Read the Seattle P-I

You know what? That’s called “heart in the right place.” Don’t even sweat it.

People Who Are White Who Call Black People “Brothas” When Talking to Other White People, as in, “A Lot of My Friends Are Brothas”

These embarrassing people have lots of black friends and are very comfortable around black people. They also aren’t weirded out about being at the gay bar because their ex-girlfriend was bisexual.

People Who Are Old

Notable old people include: Methuselah, George Burns, Andy Rooney, an elephant, Dick Van Dyke, Slade Gorton the senator, Father Time, Slade Gorton the Gorton’s fisherman, Chinese people (they kick white people’s asses at not dying), John McCain’s mom, the old lady who dropped it into the ocean at the end, Harrison Ford.

Old People Who Think Pigeons Are Their Best Friends

Listen, old people. Pigeons do not love you. Much like robots and the British, pigeons do not have the capacity to feel love. They only have the capacity to desire croutons. And when you spread infinity croutons across the grass outside MY house, for the purpose of making pigeons love you (WHICH WILL NEVER HAPPEN), the only result is infinite feces. I now have to walk upon feces-encrusted streets through a feces-encrusted world. Because of you and your delusions of pigeon love. Stop it.

Babies

The opposite of old people. They are like you and me, except smaller, more illiterate, and with less money.

People Who Are Secret Hookers

They’re your friends, but they’re hookers! Ssssh!

Recession Hookers

No judging. Sometimes these things happen. There but for the grace of writing a bunch of bullshit in the newspaper go I.

People Who Are Pretty and Smart and Funny and Nice

You probably want to hate these people, but why bother? They are absolutely wonderful, and all we can do is deal with it and hope to be charming enough that they will some day mate with us so that our children can absorb some of their impossible magic.

People Who Are Hot Greek Waiters

Once, my sister and I were in a restaurant in Greece, having a fight, and the hot waiter (all waiters in Greece are hot) took one look at our bleak, tear-puffed faces and said, “Ouzo power.” He brought us two little glasses of cold, cloudy ouzo, and the ouzo cured our fight.

People Who Smile at You on the Street

It’s always nice when any noncreepy stranger smiles at you. There is not enough interstranger smiling going on these days. I also appreciate it when people working in customer service behave in a genuinely nice manner. Thank you. Please enjoy this large tip for your wonderful smile.

People Who Don’t Know How to Drink

Sometimes a person forgets to eat dinner, or sometimes they just didn’t have time or money, and then they end up at the bar and the only snacks available are Rainier tallboys. And yes, sure, sometimes they grab your beard and tell you, “You are drinking the most successful sausage,” even though that’s barely even English, and then they lose their keys and have to sleep on your floor, where they wake up utterly bewildered and have to walk back to Capitol Hill and drink a Big Gulp of Sprite for breakfast on a Thursday. Be kind to these people. They mean well.

People Who Are Only Interesting When They’re Drunk

This one is a bummer, but it’s so much less depressing than its half brother, which is People Who Are Just Boring All the Time.

People Who Believe in Sasquatch

What’s that? You couldn’t afford your bunion surgery because you spent all your money on Sasquatch detectors? And now your bunion hurts? Bummer. A few years ago, a friend of mine told me that he’d discovered the secret to finding Sasquatch (he’s a believer because once, in an Idaho forest, he “heard things” that he “couldn’t explain”) and called some cryptozoological society to announce his epiphany: “Just find out what it eats, and then go to where that is.” He and I, we are not friends anymore.

People Who Don’t Believe in Evolution but Love Antibiotics

Seriously? Either you believe in science or you don’t. If you want to say sentences to me like “God made the earth 29 years ago out of Billy Graham’s stool” or “Every time you take the morning-after pill, Satan has two orgasms,” then go ahead and stay away from Dr. Syringey O’Medicine, MD, from here on out. Because you know that pill that made your strep throat go away? Science invented that. For you. Hey, why don’t you just pray for God to take care of that root canal? I’ll tell you why: Because God didn’t go to dental school, because dental schools don’t admit people who DON’T EXIST.

Wizards

Assholes with beards who do magic. In modern times, wizards look just like normal people, because they’ve learned to wear tracksuits and tuxedos over their robes. This means that wizards could be anywhere. Can you trust the people you work with not to be wizards?

Russians

Citizens of Russia. The sworn enemies of wizards.

Russian Wizards

Don’t be ridiculous.

People Who Let Their Cat Walk Across Their Kitchen Cutting-Board, Even Though Those Are the Same Fucking Paws That Have Been Tramping Around That Shit-Filled Cat Box and I Don’t See a Kitty Foot-Washing Station Around Here, Do You?

Well? Do you? ANSWER THE QUESTION.

People Who Don’t Know How to Navigate a Four-Way Stop or an Uncontrolled Intersection

Can a lady get a wave, please? Just a courtesy wave. That’s all I ask. These people are under the impression that rules do not apply to them. They do not have to wait their turn because they are special. They are probably the worst people on this entire list, and that includes wizards.

Animals That Are Really People Who Got Transformed by a Witch

These are people who got on the wrong side of a witch. Now they are turkeys and iguanas or some shit, and all they can do is cry (except not really, because emotional tears are a physiological phenomenon unique to humans and possibly camels). Don’t loan these people money, because they obviously have bad judgment.

People Who Are Just a Down-to-Earth Guy, Who Enjoys the Little Things in Life Like Going for Walks, Lifting Weights, or Just Doing Whatever (LOL), Whose Friends Would Probably Describe Him as Honest, Truthful, Loyal, Affectionate, Compassionate, and Romanceful, and Is Looking for a Woman Who Is That Rare Combination of Stunning on the Outside and Beautiful on the Inside, and Most Importantly Down to Earth, Enjoys the Little Things in Life, Loves Children, Animals, Has a Passion, Laughter. I Especially Like Asians.

Can we just skip to the part where you gun down everyone in the Taco Bell?

People Who Try to Pretend Like They Already Knew the Story About Jimmy Stewart Smuggling a Yeti Hand out of Nepal in His Wife’s Underpants

I do not believe you, unless your name is Jimmy Stewart’s Wife’s Vagina. And I’m pretty sure Jimmy Stewart’s Wife’s Vagina doesn’t know how to read. So…

People Who Sit at Their Day Jobs All Day Anonymously Posting the Meanest Things They Can Think of in the Comments Sections on Blogs

These people are just mad because they all have herpes of the eyeball. And diarrhea of the heart. But just to save them some time: I am fat; I am a hipster; I am an idiot; this is the most boring, self-indulgent article ever written; I hate everything because I work for The Stranger, and if I ever say anything nice about anything I will be fired immediately because this is the policy; I should be fired right now; why don’t I just go write in my LiveJournal; Dear LiveJournal, I am sooo cunty and fat; I am a “hiptard” who thinks that everything not on Capitol Hill is like that space desert in Beetlejuice with the giant sand worms, and I don’t want to go there because I can’t ride my fixie on the space dunes (and also I don’t want to be devoured); anyway, I probably haven’t even seen Beetlejuice because I’m too busy FIRING MYSELF FOR BEING FAT; Dan Savage supported the Iraq war; and something about pit bulls.

People Who Are Bill Paxton

I really enjoyed your work in Twister.

People Who Miss the Point

(See also: People Who Choose to Correct You About the Definition of “Hobo,” People Who Claim to Be Afraid of Clowns, People Who Don’t Watch TV, People Who Will Just Have a Bite of Whatever You’re Having, Old People Who Think Pigeons Are Their Best Friends, People Who Don’t Believe in Evolution but Love Antibiotics, People Who Are Bill Paxton, and Babies.)

People Who Don’t Miss the Point

I love you.

Find Lindy West every day on Slog, The Stranger‘s big, beautiful blog.