I hate tourism. I hate everything about it. I hate being lost. I hate overpriced food and I hate overhyped attractions and I really hate old fat people who drop all their fold-out maps and inhalers in my way when I’m trying to get off the Tube. You should hate it too. If you're going to some famous important city this summer, don't. I know I'm right because I have a brain bigger than the Internet.

    I have been in London for almost five weeks now, and I am fine with being in that place of stumpy buildings and insane,  medieval street layouts. It’s a pleasant enough city, and by that I mean I haven’t gotten knifed for wearing the wrong hat (see Boston) and my debit card has only mysteriously vanished once (New York). I haven’t gotten spit on (that’s Paris) and I can grab a beer with my veggie burger when I go to the local pub (as opposed to, you know, every single city in the States).

    But being a tourist here is stupid. Being a tourist anywhere is stupid. Tourists are loud and obnoxious and they never know what they’re doing. They flock to "Sightseeing Destinations" like a bunch of magnetic lemmings, except that they never seem to fall off cliffs and die, so you just get more of them all the damn time. In fact, tourists are surprisingly resilient. I must have seen about two dozen asshole Americans (you can tell them buy their American Eagle polo shirts) try to fit their ballooning bulks into Tube cars and get concussed by the closing doors, but not once did one bite it in a satisfying way. Maybe I just play too many violent video games, but I'd quite like to see this scenario unfold one time:

    Tourist: HEY WHERE WE GOIN'
    Other Tourist: UHH THEY HAVE PIZZA HUT HERE
    Tourist: COOL DO THEY HAVE BEER
    Other Tourist: BEER IS FUCKIN GREAT
    Third Tourist: THEN WE SHOULD GO SEE THAT BIG CHURCH
    Doors: *close*
    All tourists: OH GOD MY SOFT BODY IS SO YIELDING BLOOOARGH *blood everywhere*
    British People: What a bloody toff! Lorry, take the lift to the loo, blimey chap! Winston Churchill!

    Wishful fantasies! Honestly, I think our only hope is that Jesus himself shows up in St. Paul's and breaks everyone's neck with his wrestling moves.

    And it's not just Americans; there are plenty of morons from France and Spain and Italy and every other country able to afford airplanes. I hate them all, and because I am a tourist too, I hate myself.

    The worst thing about tourism, though, worse than the gross people from your home country, is how pointless it is. Because this is the thing about tourism: it's just  a big, self-directed slide show. You pick a bunch of old stone lumps out of an expsneive guidebook and go take pictures of them. Then you go home and you can go "hey, check me out. I was at this lump. This is the lump that I was at." And of course everyone that sees the picture is totally bored because they've seen about four thousand other pictures of this lump, and they've seen your ugly ass plenty of times so there's really nothing for them to work with. And the only interest they might have in your pictures is "well, damn. Now I need to go get a picture with that lump, so I don't feel as empty and soulless about writing quarterly reports on pink post-its for a living."

    So why do people go on these stupid trips anyway? If you really want to know what London is like, or anywhere else in the world, you sure as hell shouldn't go there as a tourist. Nobody who lives in London would ever actually want to go to Buckingham Palace or Big Ben or Westminster Abbey; it'd be like a New Yorker going to the Statue of Liberty. Nobody does that. People have their friends and loved ones, they have their particular pub, they have that one all-night kebab shop. They have real fun doing real things. And real Londoners know the places you're actually supposed to go eat and drink and find other lonely people to talk to and eventually have sex with, instead of the places where they charge you forty dollars to see a lump. No sex.

    You know what I liked in London? I liked walking around and watching people going to work and living their lives and being actual humans, instead of wobbling piles of flesh that congregate outside museums. I loved the city, and I loved the food when it was simply being given to me, as opposed to being kept somewhere else while I am supposed to feast on the "beautiful view" of the Thames, which mostly looks like a brown river, if you've ever seen a river and the color brown.

    So you know what? This summer, if you go anywhere exciting, European or otherwise, forget the guidebook and forget the lumps. Stay somewhere on the cheap and just hang around. People-watch. Sit around in pubs and listen to the stupid crap that people talk about. It's the same stupid crap they talk about here, but at least they're doing it in sexy accents. And please try not to get killed by the local railroad system. When they say "Mind The Gap," they mean business.