Punch them in the face, and then eat ice cream

This strikes me as sage advice, and yet it is frowned upon — nay, shunned — by the world at large.

You are given two options instead:

You must smile and simper and bury the rage, until one day it bursts forth in a torrent of flames. More specifically, you call the flames forth when you burn down their house and laugh maniacally as the smoke plumes tousle your hair. It’ll happen. A person can only swallow down so much anger.

I like to call option two the Edmund Dantes option. Yes, you can be angry, but you must be smart about it. You must take that anger and funnel it like a good psychopath. Keep it at a low simmer for decades, until you have instituted the building blocks to destroy your nemesis. And then you — what a surprise — laugh maniacally in your new mansion (which used to be their house), with your beautiful new wife (once theirs) and drink their whiskey (formerly belonging to your nemesis) — while they are either dead, defeated or destroyed.

 

Yes, that sounds healthy. Whereas walking up to the person who wronged you, punching them in the face, and then getting on with your life (with ice cream) is such a bad idea. That would make you a bad person.

 

 

 

Anger management is for sissies

Today I was told by a colleague that I was an angry person.

I feel that this may be unfair.

Yes, I may shout (sometimes volume is the only way to engage over the deafening roar of someone else’s stupid). Yes, there may be some extravagant gesticulation (miming the act of snapping someone like an autumn twig requires elbow movement, otherwise you aren’t really putting your heart into it). And, yes, there may be a crease line developing between my eyes from excessive frowning (it’s my “game face”).

But that doesn’t mean that I am angry. No, I am just trying to engage with a world that endeavours to thwart, enrage and prematurely age me. I am a science writer, and from colleagues to advertising people to PR people to lobbyists, there is a great deal of fuel to stoke the fires of rage.

In an attempt to make my colleagues slightly less scared of me (although only “slightly” because a healthy dose of fear should be wielded strategically like a shield), I have decided to start this blog, instead of ranting near or at them. This way you can decide whether the odd bout of shouting and setting-someone-on-fire mime is misplaced.

In the event of my incarceration for any one of the (very justifiable) consequences of such rage, please point my lawyer to this blog.

Yours etc etc,

Angry Science Girl (with a keyboard)