According to our only primary source on the matter, its inventor Frank Costanza from Seinfeld, Festivus (December 23rd) begins with The Airing of Grievances. “I got a lot of problems with you people… And now, you’re gonna hear about it!”
So cut loose on whatever - current events, persons real or fictional, fellow Dopers past, present or banned! (And this isn’t actually in the Pit so keep it light…)
I suppose I should air some grievances in my own MPSIMS thread, eh?
Skald: How many things do I have to make plans for before you finally deliver on one of your exciting opportunities? You offer this, and then that, and the check’s always in the mail or you’ve moved on to another project. Pfah!
I wish I was taller.
Ok seriously, roommate/tennant - why are you so bad at parking in the garage?
I spent a lot of time an effort cleaning the garage down to the bare walls for maximum width. When I pull my car in, on the right side (the harder side, as the mirror is farther away), I nudge over to the right even further so I’m as close to the right wall as possible.
You, on the other hand, somehow manage to park your tiny-ass VW ON OR OVER THE CENTER LINE. You have like 5’ of space to the LEFT, where you exit the car. Leaving me with about 2’ to exit MY car. Sometimes I have to bend down your side mirrors to be able to open my door. WHAT THE FUCK?!
Now, I know you’re not used to parking in a garage because you’ve never lived in a civilized suburban home until last year, but just use a little common sense.
The only reason you’re even IN the garage is so I can have plow service so YOU can get to work (I work from home - I have no place to be, ever). PAY ATTENTION WHEN PARKING IN THE GODDAMN GARAGE!
Oh and yeah, this is possibly a problem that can be easily fixed by a short conversation but another one of my grievances is that I am a seriously spineless twat who can’t bring herself to make others feel even slightly bad, so I just sit around and brood about it like a total dumbass.
Dumbass.
Fuck this cold, fuck this illness, fuck winter!
I with I could just be like a bear and hibernate through the entire god damn season. I’ll gladly miss Thanksgiving and Christmas if it means I’ll never have to deal with another drive to work at 7am when it’s 40 degrees, drive home at 5pm when it’s completely dark outside, the lethargy that comes with less sunlight, and the clockwork predictabily of yet another winter flu
Mom and Brother’s family, learn to make a goddamn decision without dragging me into it.
DH and I are off on Christmas Eve through Monday. We are free. You can tell us where to be and when to be there, and we’ll show up. Bro and SIL have wonky schedules. Fine. We’re happy to work in the family festivities around said schedules. IF SOMEONE WILL TELL ME WHAT WE’RE DOING! They’ve known since before Thanksgiving when they’d be working over the Christmas weekend. Surely a decision could have been made before 11:00 A.M. on Dec. 23. But thus far…
Mom, I don’t control Bro. If we weren’t related, we wouldn’t bother associating with each other (and your attempts to try to force us to be BFFs are going to fail - deal with it). Don’t email me 20 times a day expecting ME to get him to decide something. 1. Because he won’t listen to me anyway, and
Bro, seriously, answering your phone or email once in a while is usually recommended.
Coworker, don’t turn around to me and start angrily complaining about how there are no content producers here to answer your questions. It is two days to the Christmas four-day weekend, it is 4:55pm, and they have LITERALLY NOTHING TO WORK ON. We have no deadlines until the second week of January and no information is coming in for them, so there is nothing they could be doing even if they wanted to. They are out having fun, or travelling home. The only reason I am not out having fun with them is that I took a 3-hour pub lunch with the other person in our department (we did ask you along!) and so I feel I should stay the extra 5min until actual closing time.
40 degrees? I wish it would get up to 40 degrees here. It’s been below freezing most of this month. Damn North Atlantic Oscillation, being negative and giving us a cold winter again. I really hope we don’t have Snowmageddon and Snowpocalypse again this year like we did last year.
I hear you on the late sunrises and early sunsets. Though, at this point, I’d take just a glimpse of the sun. Stupid Great Lakes and lake-effect cloudiness.
Whoever built this house, why did you put the water pipes for the sink in the master bathroom against the outside wall? That means we have to drip the faucet all night if the temperature is supposed to get below 15, plus the water is really cold when it comes out of the faucet. I have to remember to run some hot water when I run water to brush my teeth in the morning, otherwise the cold water hurts like hell.
Ford Ranger dude, don’t pull out in front of me and an oncoming car and then go 35 MPH in a 55 MPH zone. With no passing zones.
MPSIMS/IMHO, stop taking yourself so seriously and start being funny again.
The BBQ Pit is for blowing off steam. Just 'cause it’s in there doesn’t make it steamy. It’s just a big tub of tepid.
Great Debates, take a one week break from religion and politics. It will do you good to realize there exist other controversies.
Cafe society, Firefly was good but it’s over.
Every other board (except GQ), go away.
Also, most of your usernames suck.
Ha! I’d like to see that complaint get rectified!
*Not for me! (I just started watching it on Netflix)
Oh, my grievance…hmm…I didn’t get any Christmas tamales this year.
I don’t really like Christmas. I don’t think I’ve really liked Christmas since I was about 14 or 15 years old. (That was 30-some years ago.) There was maybe one or two Christmases when my kids were old enough to know what was happening, yet young enough to not fully grasp the commercialization and gift expectations.
It’s too much work. It’s too much stress.
What I do like, is having a week off work. But I’d gladly trade that if we could just skip Christmas altogether.
Huh, and here I thought that I’d see an “Airing of Grievances” thread in the Pit (well, I rarely poke my head in the Pit, so I doubt I’d see it at all in that case).
The reason I don’t go to the Pit is that I’m not good at ranting on things/people that bug me, so “Airing of Grievances” isn’t my thing.
What perfect timing!
Dear Son,
I know you’re nearly 16 years old. I know you’re really into the computer game you just got. But please, please try to stay on task when I ask you to do something for me. You’ve had computer and television privileges taken away twice this week for not finishing something in your eagerness to get back to tv or gaming. You ‘forgot’ to shovel? You ‘forgot’ to close the attic door and push the futon back against the wall? C’mon, work with me here or you’re not playing that slick new game until after the New Year.
I’ll second this. Especially when there’s no one behind me and if the person would just wait 5 more seconds, they can pull out and drive as slow as they please w/o inconveniencing anyone for several minutes.
To the person “pacing” me and sitting in my blind spot: I realize that you’re not doing this intentionally, that you, like most other people on the road, are just travelling “with traffic,” and you are unconsciously adjusting your speed to match mine.
But you can’t see my turn signals sitting in my blind spot (you can kinda see the front ones, if you notice them), and you’re blocking me from changing lanes by adjusting your speed to stay in my blind spot.
Dear Oldest Niece: do you have to buy every single DVD movie that comes out? I know you have kids and like to plop them in front of the electronic babysitter while you do laundry, clean house, etc. But a NetFlix or similar account would save you not only tons of money you don’t have, it would free up a considerable amount of space in your tiny home, as well.
Dear Second-Oldest-Niece (and your husband): I know your husband comes from money, that his family is fairly well-off, and that he’s a smart, industrious guy, just like his dad. But “the Good Life” can only be financed so far on credit and hopes for a better tomorrow. And his changing jobs every six months to a year is not helping, especially when they (newest employer) start wanting to move your growing family around the U.S.
Dear Nephews: one of you dropped out of high school, and the other barely scraped through in 4 1/2 years with a D- average. Why do you wonder why no one will hire you? You have no job skills, and little work ethic. And quit playing the victim card whenever your lead foot gets you pulled over, and your lack of auto insurance gets you arrested and fined.
And when the rest of the family recommends that one of you gets his GED, and both of you do something like Trade School, or join the military for job training and income, you blow it off and tell us you want to “stay in the 'hood and ‘keep it real’.”
Well, get used to meals of Ramen noodles, regular interruptions in telephone and other utilities due to non-payment, and having a car sitting in your driveway that you can’t drive due to lack of gas, insurance, and license.
Dear Dad: I know you had shitty relatives who routinely took advantage of your generosity (and blood relationship) to essentially squat in your home and sponge off of you for extended periods of time. I know your better, gentle nature made it hard for you to “draw the line” or “put your foot down” with regards to them.
But letting your house become a trash dump in order to discourage people from wanting to live with you isn’t exactly the best answer. When I got out of the Army in December '91, with a hefty chunk of cash to my name, and needed a place to stay in Illinois in order to enroll in SIU (and get free tuition for being a veteran) and arrange permanent digs, the best you could offer me was an unheated camper trailer with a leaky roof, parked in your driveway.
I didn’t ask you for free room and board for months at a time; just a place to crash (a couch would’ve been great) until I got enrolled in college. Hell, Mom had a good excuse for telling me no: Sister was just dumped by Husband#2, and had two babies, and no home or income, to take care of them with.
For 20+ years you’ve lived in what is essentially a trash dump, and have never been remotely motivated to clean your house and reciprocate familial hospitality; you’d rather go to someone else’s home on holidays, and eat their food, and enjoy their clean homes.
Dear Sister: this is the opposite of a grievance. You finally found a decent man to spend the rest of your life with; you finally completed some higher education, and if it isn’t currently “paying off” in the kind of job you’d like, what you’re doing now is still good money, and I’m proud of the way you’ve hung in there and keep plugging away.
I just wish you would have had this “Come To Jesus” period of personal growth and maturity while Mom was still alive. Your perpetual screw-ups and bad, abusive relations are behind you, but Mom bore the emotional and financial brunt of picking you up, over-and-over again, until the two of you were essentially estranged when she died.
If these is an afterlife where those who have gone before us can still see us, Mom would be so proud of you now; you are now the person, and the Daughter, she tried to help you be for so many years.
Dear Brother: I know Dad was an asshole towards you as a kid, and the way he spoiled and favored Sister over you has left deep emotional wounds. But there’s 14 years between us. You were out of high school and off into the Air Force before I had any clear memories of you. The guilt Dad carries (and Mom carried, about her lack of action to protect you from Dad) are all before my time.
The man I call Father is not the man you knew, and I thought after Mom’s death that you and Dad had reconciled.
But you’ve turned your back on all of us, and retreated to your fastness in Idaho.
Dear Me: face it dude, this is about as good as it gets. Yeah, you’ve had a few shitty hands dealt to you, but not enough to justify your lack of the kind of personal and financial progress through life that you desired. You are where you are at because of a string of decisions, some of which seemed good at the time, but most of which were flawed in conception and/or execution.
And if you have been dealt some shitty hands, well, you put yourself in a position where those bad turns of fortune could have a greater impact than they otherwise would have, had you developed better critical thinking and problem solving skills.
You were always essentially lazy in nature, coasting on a decent IQ, but never putting the real effort in developing the necesary skills to advance yourself. You’d blow off homework, but do well on exams, until it came time for Finals and you’d pretty much forgotten everything from the earlier part of the year. End result: C averages.
And if you harbor some resentment over a life that “might have been” had you not left Texas to help take care of Mom when she got the cancer, remeber that that was also your decision.
So, get comfortable with the bed you have; you made it. And if you feel that it’s now “too late” to make the kind of life-altering changes that’d redress some of your perceived shortcomings, then things will never get better than they are now.
Not that where you’re at is all that bad. You have a decent paying job, great perks, and good benefits; there’s a damned sight “more-than-a-few” folks who’ve had it tough in this job market for a good while.
So be thankful you ungrateful asshole; as bad as you may think your situation is, it could be one hell of a lot worse.
Quite possibly the most honest post I’ve ever read on the SDMB.
To my uterus: Will you get your act together already and stop leaking, for the love of Baby Jesus? We’re going on day 15 already and enough is enough. I do not own stock in Playtex. If you don’t get it together I’m going have you and your nastly little ovary friends forcibly evicted. Seriously.
To my head cold: fuck off and die. Seriously, go the hell away and never come back. My head hurts, my throat hurts, and I sound like someone crammed a dish towel up my nose. My whole body is sore. Get thee out of my system, virus!
Great username/post combo. 