Behold, a Grunting Buffoon

As you might imagine from the title of this humble “weblog,” we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are a bunch of cool, cool cats. Very little, you see, gets under our skin. Call us the possessors of preternaturally sunny dispositions. In short, we seldom get irked.

Even so, every once in a great while, we find our blood pressure boiling. As we say, this happens to be an uncommonly rare occurrence. You know: Only when, say, Phil Collins comes out with a new album or, say, Rosie O’Donnell opens her mouth. That is to say, seldom.

Yesterday, however, one of those mesmerizingly rare times was upon us. Or, we should say, it was upon one of our junior editors—let’s just call him “Chip.” For “Chip” was huffing and puffing his way to physical fitness at the local gymnasium, and he happened upon one of the most irksome fellows in the early history of the 21st century.

Mind you, dear reader, the gymnasium is chock-a-block with life’s little irritants. For starters, one routinely runs into women preening like peacocks and wearing far too little. To make matters worse, one also routinely runs into men preening like peacocks and wearing far too little.

And let’s not even discuss the morons who force you to watch “Sex and the City” whilst you both sweat on the elliptical machines. Nothing quite says “uncomfortable” like taking in vivid sexual banter on the boob tube when you’re next to a sweaty stranger wearing a jog bra.

But these minor drawbacks pale in comparison with the galactic bother that “Chip” experienced. That’s because “Chip’s” entire gymnasium visit was ruined by an obnoxious, grunting buffoon.

You know the sort of chap of whom we speak, dear reader. Bedecked in clown pants and a cut-off T-shirt, this ninny seemed to want everyone in the Western hemisphere to know that he was working out.

A very accommodating person might guess that this guy had his i-Pod on stun, and thus couldn’t tell that he was a-grunting and a-groaning louder than Mussolini at his death. If you weren’t looking directly at this animal, you’d have thought that a man was being drawn and quartered in the gym.

And was he clanking down his weights with reckless abandon? You bet he was! In fact, “Chip” had the sneaking suspicion that this chucklehead would soon tear a hole in the concrete floor.

Quite frankly, dear reader, we wonder what this ignoramus was thinking. “I’m going to the gym; I better not forget to grunt like a WWE wrestler and toss my weights around like I’m Ike Turner and those dumbbells are my bitches.”

Yeah, that seems to be his thought process. Except for the semi-colon, of course: A guy this obtuse doesn’t think with semi-colons.