Barnes Burning

Are Loud Sneezers Just Looking For Attention?

The other day I was merrily tap tapping away at work when a two ton car bomb exploded. I ducked away from the tumult into my workstation shielding myself against traumatic brain injury. Of course, within an instant I realized that thankfully, the thunderclap of terror wasn't the work of a bloodthirsty Jihadist. It was just a Loud Sneezer, that strange breed that undergo a thermonuclear reaction each time they inhale a little bit of dust.

I am not a bigot. I don't discriminate against race, gender, or creed. I am a uniter, not a divider. That said, I've grown deeply suspicious of the Loud Sneezers. Are they really seized with an uncontrollable force each time they break the sound barrier with a hellacious sneeze? Is a sneeze that sounds like a demonic invocation to Satan really something we should just brush aside? Or maybe, are they looking for a little bit of attention?

Loud Sneezers cling to their right to reap wanton audible destruction. "I can't help it, I sneeze loudly," they say, as if it's a matter of genetic predisposition. And given how accepted the practice has become, sneezing loudly is practically an amendment to the Constitution. Call it the 28th Amendment: the right to sneeze so fucking obnoxiously that you probably distend your eyeball from your optic nerve a few times each year.

You can sneeze like a space shuttle engine in plenty of places that it's perfectly unacceptable to make a peep otherwise: the opera, funeral masses, the 18th green of The U.S. Open, operating rooms, during sex in your in-laws guest bedroom. I could go on and on about this problem and I'm not the only one.

I'm probably being heavy-handed. I don't aim to create a rift with these high decibel divas, I just want some answers. Maybe scientists could look into the issue in a laboratory setting. Kind of like a lie detector test that would allow us to know, for once and for all, whether loud sneezing is really an affliction, something that can't be helped, a disability that should be pitied, not criticized.

Then we could say "bless you" and really mean it.

My Problem With L.A. Fashion

If you're a happening young thang, the polo shirt and khaki outfit I'm disposed towards (the de rigueur uniform for East Coast prep schoolers) is pretty much this generation's lame Mr. Rogers polyester sweater and dark slacks ensemble. I couldn't stand out more if I burst into "It's A Beautiful Day in The Neighborhood" while clicking my heels like Tinkerbell. And it's a good thing I'm not single, because a 20-something bachelor who dares to wear a collar in the Los Angeles Basin has a much better chance of hooking up a "Kick Me" sign on his back than he does with a chick.

I'm by far not the first person to deconstruct hipster fashion, but it's still fun to go through the motions.

Here's the type of look that's in: greaseball aviator shades from 1978, a tight-fitting factory-distressed Fresca tee shirt that runs about 200 bucks, dark jeans with knife slashes from that time you gave a poetry reading in the hood, and leather boxing footwear of some sort. Let me quickly add that if Jack Dempsey were alive today and saw some weasily Account Executive from MTV Networks parading around in boxing shoes, he'd cheerfully give him a brain-damage inducing 1-2-3 combo right on the spot. All in all, dudes wearing this kind of getup are trying to say "I'm an artist who happens to wield my brush in the corporate reaches of pop culture" but I can't help thinking that they're hapless followers who would wear a bonnet and sun dress if they thought it made them alternative, edgy, and unique.