Also hate it when I take pains not to make an overgeneralization by using such words as “many” and “some”, and planting the statement well within the context of “in my experience” and someone still will try to counter what I’m saying–usually in a snotty manner, I might add–by pointing to one or two example that violate what I’m talking about.
Look, if what I’m saying doesn’t apply to you, clearly it’s because you are in the whatever percentage of people who I purposely exempted when I made my statement from the mother fucking get go. Your response only makes sense if I didn’t make any such allowances and was speaking only in absolutes.
That reminds me: chick tracts. I hate fucking chick tracts. I get them at work sometimes (because the museum I work at is a science based one, with that evil evolution and stuff) and it bugs the crap out of me every time. Well, okay, I don’t really mind the “Jesus loves you!” ones, but I hate the ones that are like “if you don’t repent, you’ll go to Hell!”
First of all, it just goes completely against my entire philosophy surrounding God. Conversion by fear, IMO, is a horrible way to try and convince someone to join a religion, because it smacks of an abusive relationship. As in, “I can’t leave him otherwise he’ll kill me!” Why would a truly loving God resort to such bullshit tactics? God should be better than that. And what business is it of yours, anyway?
Second of all, they’re just so simplistic and cartoonish (hell, they’re mini comic books) that I feel like I’m being condescended to. If you really want to get me to convert or repent or whatever, treat me like a goddamned adult.
Wow, this hit a nerve with me. Last Saturday, the spouse and I ordered a pizza on Saturday. We do this every week, because we both play WoW and have raids on Saturday night. So the pizza gets here, I call him down, he takes his half upstairs and puts the box on the range like he always does. I’m in the middle of a boss fight so I’ll get to mine in a few minutes when we have a break. I hear a noise behind me but I think nothing of it–it’s probably the cats messing around in the kitchen.
Boss fight ends, I go to get my pizza (very hungry by this point and thinking how good it will taste), and–horrors!–there’s the pizza box face down open on the floor, my pizza underneath it, and one of the cats licking one of the pieces!
I pretty much lost it at that point. I IM’ed the spouse (my computer is downstairs, his is up) and told him what happened. By that point he’d already finished his half so he couldn’t even give me a piece. He offered to go out and bring me something, but all I wanted was pizza. I adore my cats, but I was about ready to sell them to the circus at that point.
Ended up ordering another pizza, which the spouse graciously agreed to deal with (since my raid was still going on and his was pretty much over). I had to wait for it to be delivered, but I got my pizza. The other half went in the fridge and became dinner the next day. So it all worked out–but I was surprised at just how upset/angry I got over something that was, in retrospect, pretty trivial.
I think getting upset over food is an evolutionary trait that hearkens back to a primarily hunter-gatherer sort of era. I can’t imagine our hominid ancestors (or, hell, our early human ancestors) would be terribly pleased about losing a big kill to another predator. I know I’d be pissed if the mammoth I’d hunted were stolen by a wolf* or something. Probably a survival tactic that makes you desire to either get your kill back, or try for another one.
*I don’t really know what other predators would have existed in the same geographic sphere as mammoths. My thought process was mammoths = Northern = arctic wolf, but I’m fully prepared to be wrong about this.
I’m sort of over it now, but for nearly a decade, email spam made me apoplectically insanely furious. I changed from AOL to a standard ISP, ditched that email address for another when the spam caught up again, switched to Eudora for its superior spam filtering, then beefed that up over the years until finally got to the point that unless the sender is affirmatively filtered IN, their email had better not have any links in it or any RTF or HTML or so much as an “@” sign in the email body or off it goes to the trash.
I would have endorsed capital punishment via prolonged torture for spammers. Vigilante justice if the legal system wouldn’t comply. Etc.
I’m still mad about it, but less than one spam email per month sneaks through (I spend more time fishing valid emails out of the trash but I prefer it that way) and my anger is probably no longer beyond proportion.
I think I spend most of my time unreasonably angry. I agree with almost everything in this thread! I may agree most with the smiling thing. My favourite occasion was when my partner’s mother had just had a stroke, and I was sitting outside the hospital door having a cigarette while they had some time together. Some absolute fuckwit came over to me, sitting there looking exhausted and slightly distraught AT A HOSPITAL, and told me to cheer up because “it might never happen”. It’s a HOSPITAL. For all you know, someone I love has just died, or I’ve just been told I have two weeks to live, or anything. Fuck off, cunt. So I looked at him, without changing my expression, and said, “It already has”. I even managed to tear up. He looked like he wanted to bite off his own tongue. Good. Maybe he’ll think twice before he does it again.
To add something I don’t think I’ve seen already: cyclists who get in your way and make it difficult to overtake them, then breeze through a red light so that you have to overtake the fucker again. One of these days I’ll just knock one of those titwads off.
People griping about practices that have been going on for a long time and which there is nothing wrong with.
Somebody complained about calling the USA America. AMERICA IS A SHORTENING OF UNITED STATE OF AMERICA. BIG EFFING DEAL, LIVE WITH IT!!!
OK, now that that’s out my system, I will mention one other thing, theft. While that is serious, the way I want it handled would be considered cruel and unusual.
First, for people who are paid hourly, like I use to be (when I had a job), for most of us if we want something expensive we have to work lots of hours to earn the money to buy it. It’s worse if you’re stuck in a job you hate, like I was. So you work all those hours and buy an expensive item, only to have a thief waltz in and take it way.
My punishment? Lock their hands and feet to a wall; have two guys built like Arnold Schwarzenegger was in his prime come in and take a couple of minutes punching the thief in the gut. I wouldn’t advocate broken bones, but put cause enough pain that for days the thief is usually cuddled up in the fetal position because of the pain in their stomach.
It seems every time I set out to put air in my shitty leaking tires, which is at least once a week, no matter when I go - morning, noon, night, weekday, weekend - there is always always ALWAYS someone already there at the air machine. And they have to put air in every tire, in slow motion. And I have to pay 75 cents for AIR. Frustrating!!!
I like to watch the local news, but I could really do without “we now take you to a random idiot we found on the street, who is going to say something completely obvious, adding nothing to this story.”
YES! Especially the first day the temperature cracks 80 degrees and the reporters nearly soil their panties with excitement and interview random doofuses capering about in the bright, bright sun as if released from a life of solitary confinement.
Related, and not really infuriating beyond proportion, but curious to me: Somebody gets murdered, kidnapped, disappears - newspaper does a human interest story on it. Photo accompanies the story, features several family members all lined up, squeezed together onto a sofa, holding up loved one’s photograph.
People usually find out that startling me isn’t a good idea when they try it. If you don’t want claw marks on your face or an elbow to the belly, don’t grab me from behind.
Following every. Single. Rule. And. Regulation. To the letter (being very, very careful and checking everything at least twice) is known as “going on a Japanese strike” in Spain. I don’t know whether Japanese workers do it or not, but the thing is, what will they do, dock you for following procedure?
In the US it’s known as work-to-rule. And, I just learned from the link, in some languages it’s known as an “Italian strike”.
This may highlight a difference between our European and North American dopers: absent a contract, many (if not most) US states follow the at-will employment principle, in which you can be fired (or you can quit) for any reason at all so long as it’s not a specifically defined illegal reason (race, age, sex, disability, maybe sexual orientation and a handful of others). So yeah, an employer could fire you (though not necessarily dock your pay) for “not being a team player” or whatever reason they come up with.
I thought of another one, though it’s more of a major annoyance than infuriating: so called “water-saving” faucets that are becoming more and more common in public restrooms.
Ok, so in theory they dispense, let’s say, half as much water. But it takes five or ten times as long for that little trickle to get all the soap off of my hands. Don’t the people who come up with these “great ideas” do the math? I suppose not.
Thankfully I haven’t noticed this in years, but for a while around holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas news channels would talk about the homeless, but in a way designed to make you feel like crap for enjoying yourself in a decent home and eating a good meal with your friends and family while they have to huddle in shelters eating crap.
When the did it I did feel some guilt, but looking back I just feel angry. I’m not doing anything wrong by living a lot better than they are. And while I don’t mind news organizations bringing up the plight of the homeless, I don’t appreciate a guilt trip!
Hmph! I feel the same way about the Humane Society, lately.
Last week, my 9YO daughter made me a “card” with a teary-eyed puppy inside. The caption said: “Hint; he is sad”
This is because of all the manipulative crap the HS is doing lately.
I had a conversation with her about what we do to help (donating to the HS; adopting pets from rescues/shelters, etc. instead of pet stores/pet mills). But they run advertising during programming aimed at 'tweens. Why would they do that, except they think the 'tween is going to guilt their parents into giving?
