The sum of all borezzzzz
Iwas regaling my friends with a convoluted story about how the author evelyn Waugh hated bores when it occurred to me to ask: “am I boring?” after a short pause, the guarded response was “no.” a few minutes later, I started holding forth about crossword puzzles. an intervention occurred: “now, alex, this is boring.”
bores are top of mind because I recently read an article in the economist magazine about “the great british bore.” “bores come in many forms,” the rarely dull publication warned. “some are farmers. … some are climate-sceptic. some are vociferous nImbYs. … some are eco-warriors, putting biodiversity before people.”
It dawned on me that I could provide a useful public service: a field guide to the american bore.
blah blah trump blah blah biden, blah blah I read on truth social — stop! political bores are in full spate this election year. they are like the tortuous audio affliction tinnitus; it’s hard to tune them out. can’t these people get a hobby, like tending vegetable marrows? It worked for agatha christie’s detective hercule poirot, it could work for David brookzzz.
belichick-brady-bob Kraft bores — these guys never stop. It’s a sad commentary for the team that these ghouls of Yesteryear (Kraft is arguably a ghoul of the here and now) still haunt the nominally alive-andkicking 2024 patriots, who seem to command zero fan interest.
have you bought your ticket for the umpteenth celebration of the Way We Were tom brady’s June 12 patriots hall of fame induction? my un-boring friends and I will be instead observing national peanut butter cookie Day, a more salubrious use of our time.
Do you know any tesla bores? (“We got all the way to north attleboro on one charge!”) they are just like the prius bores of yesteryear (“67 miles to the gallon in the summer!”) but wealthier.
travel bores, oh my heavens. the slide projector is long dead, but now everyone carries a record of their fascinating ramblings on their furshlugginer smartphone. one minute you are minding your own business, the next minute you are ogling poorly framed tourist photos of some foreign country you didn’t quite catch the name of.
my new rule for travel stories: If you didn’t encounter a bigfoot, sasquatch, or yeti, your trip is of zero interest to me. crytozoologoical meetups are never boring — just ask sir edmund hillary, one of the first conquerors of mount everest. seven years after his famous climb, he led an internationally publicized yeti hunt in the himalayas with american zoologist marlin perkins.
acres of newspaper coverage, yes. Yetis, no.
our common medical travails are endlessly uninteresting, except in that gray area where science bumps up against hypochondria. has coVID-19 exacerbated my tennis elbow? It can’t be ruled out.
oral hygiene, of course, is endlessly fascinating. Dentists often recommend teflon-infused glide dental floss, but don’t they know it’s too smooth and frictionless to be effective? I’m a Reach man, but now that I’ve learned about planet-friendly and crueltyfree cocofloss, “cleanly spun from ~85% recycled water bottles,” some intermolar changes may be afoot.
Weather bores are ubiquitous, always doomscrolling their worst-case-scenario smartphone app. (“tornado watch in fitchburg!”) god forbid they should look out the window and see the sun shining. that would be information overload.
Ditto traffic bores. these people never leave home, immobilized by smartphone alerts — “it looks like they’re repairing Route 16, or else building a mcDonald’s, hard to tell” — that may or may not correspond to reality.
air traffic, now that’s a different story. You are of course aware that pilots navigating boston airspace fly among aerial navigation points named ssoXs, fenWY, gloWb, and nImoY.
Did you know that san Diego airport is the rare american airport that lacks Instrument landing system guidance into its busiest runway? a parking garage blocks the signal. pilots flying onto runway 27 instead use area navigation, which must be perfectly safe because I’ve flown in there plenty of times to visit my supernally un-boring grandchildren.
Would you like to hear more about them? Direct from the boomer grandparent — the sum of all bores.