New Mini-Rants for 2007

The BBQ Pit
81

[QUOTE=Hogwash]
To the fucking idiots who rent from LoveFilm (Euro type of Netflix), stop eating your fucking dinner off of the DVDs or playing frisbee with the damn things. The last three films I received all had fucking annoying moments where the picture freezes and the sound STU-UH-UH-UH-TTERS as my DVD player goes into overdrive trying to read through the spaghetti of scratches made by you dumbfucks.

As soon as you take the DVD out of the tray, PUT IT IN THE DAMN CASE. Not on the top of the player, not on the floor, not on the bottom of your fucking Black & Decker sander, in the FUCKING CASE. And put it straight onto the central nub, don’t put it half-assed on the case and slide it around like you’re waxing a fucking car. You ain’t Daniel-son.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, this is our peeve, too. We don’t even want to rent dvds any more, because chances are great that we will be frustrated trying to watch one (“Okay, well, that isn’t working. Whaddya wanna do now, since our plan for a quiet night at home just got binned?”), and have to hassle with getting a store credit and all that crap the next day. Seriously, what are people doing with dvds? The last one we had that wouldn’t play looked like someone had cleaned it with a Brillo pad. :confused: :mad:

82

Mom, stop trying to diagnose my mood by the way I answer the phone. It really pisses me off.
Riiiing
“Hello?”
“Are you okay? You sound a little down.”

Are you freaking kidding me?! Do you really think that’s a good way to start a conversation??

Even better, from pseudo-step-mom:
*Riiiing"
“Hello?”
“Oh dear, it sounds like this isn’t a good time…”

Arrrgghh!!!
I’ve told both of you 100+ times that I don’t like talking on the phone. If you were afraid you might have caught me at a bad time, you could have used email. Mom, you won’t use email, because if you do ninjas will invade your home at night and steal your identity, but if you really wanted to do you could write me a freakin’ letter. You were an English major in college, no?

83

[QUOTE=The Chao Goes Mu]
This is exactly what I came in here to bitch about. In the little college town where I live, no one, not ONE single person except me knows how to function at a four-way stop.
[/QUOTE]

On Sunday (1/7) there was a major windstorm in my area that knocked down quite a few power lines. The result was a few major intersections with no working traffic lights. The power outages were rather patchwork, i.e. one block had power and the next block didn’t, so all the lights were working on the street I was driving down until I got the the big intersection. I ended up having to drive through two intersections like this. Both intersections involveda 3-lane one-way street crossing another major street with two lanes in each direction.

Anyway, I was absolutely astonished at the way drivers handled the situation. Everything proceeded in an amazingly orderly fashion, with people proceeding as if the intersection had flashing red lights in every direction. Talk about a breath of fresh air (and I don’t mean the 60 MPH wind)!

After the second intersection like that, though, I decided it would be best to just go home. I didn’t know how many other lights were out, and I didn’t want to press my luck.

84

To my dearest, darling Lurch:

I love you. I truly do. For five years now, you’ve been a very good little car. Yes, replacing your alternator twice in two years was a bit of a pain, and yes you shed mufflers like my cat sheds hair, but otherwise, you’ve been good to me.

Then came this fall’s sudden death, and the seven-hundred dollar repair bill that I never truly understood. Then the slowly leaking tire. The spastic flickering of the dashboard lights that left me paralyzed for fear that the alternator was about to go on me again. But we’ve gotten through all that, and although I did rename you, my feelings for you were as strong as ever. I thought I could count on you, Lurch. Then yesterday, I heard the back brakes squealing when I was not even pressing the brake pedal, and I realized that you had frozen on me. Now you sit alone in the driveway, because if I attempt to drive you again, I could ruin you for good.

I never wanted this to end, Lurch, but I’m worried I may have to let you go forever. And we worked so well together… I’m really not ready to move on. Please don’t do this to me, Lurch. Please.

85

[QUOTE=by-tor]
Thou, thee, twas, tis, what say yee? Leave it at the renaissance fair lamer.
[/QUOTE]

What, you know people who talk like this? I must hasten thither.

86

[QUOTE=katie1341]
I am a public defender. I hate, hate, hate it when I go to the jail to see a client, and he’s been taking advice from the other inmates. And, since they’re telling him what he wants to hear and I’m not, he believes the inamtes.

Me, in my head: Three years of my life and thirty thousand dollars in tuition pissed away. I could have just gotten arrested and known everything there is to know about the law…
[/QUOTE]

I think this is how there ended up being the trial that I was recently a juror on.

Lawyer: Well, the videotape clearly shows you driving your car on the sidewalk and running right over the victim. And it was on Fox News.

Deft: I don’t care, my cell mate says that Fox News isn’t evidence. I’m not pleading to anything.

And they really had no case. The defender did his best to discredit the People’s witnesses, introduced none of his own, and ended up mocking the victim’s girlfriend, who’d wept on the stand, in his closing argument. I felt sorry for him having to worth through the case when he really had so very little to work with.

87

  1. People who don’t use their turn signal when changing lanes (yes, this one has been done to deat)

  2. Akin to that, People who see someone using their turn signal to change lanes and instantly do thier best to cut them off.

I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. There’s plenty of room to change lanes, I turn on my signal and suddenly the person way back in the lane I want to get into hits the gas and roars up so I don’t get in front of them.

88

The remote for my new receiver will not work if the batteries are one fucking micrometer off its happy place. The master remote I have for the TV will not program in the new receiver. The Yamaha people reeeealy want me to get up off my ass, don’t they? No wonder the damn thing was on half price.

89

Thanks, Annie - that reminds me of a technological mini-rant of my own. I got an iPod for Christmas from my husband (I’ve wanted one for years, but they are just too expensive for us - he shouldn’t have gotten me one, but I absolutely love it; anyway…) we got the fm transmitter so we can listen to our entire library of cds in the car, but it gets horrible static every time we pass a traffic light. While we’re stopped at a light, we hear nothing but static. Dang it all to heck! We didn’t even get the cheapest, crappiest one - we shopped around and got what we thought was a high-quality one. :mad: :frowning:

90

Mine does that too Featherlou, not that bad, but mucho feedback.

[mst3k] But now I know what the world sounds like to Pete Townsend![/mst]

91

This one came in the mail today (and every day.)

Capital One - you assholes can stop sending me your stupid credit card offer every fucking day. Not only that, if I threw away the offer in an envelope, I’m still going to throw it away when you put the envelope into another envelope and mark it time sensitive.

I know I can call you to stop the mail - but I’m not going to. I want you to go bankrupt from the expense of sending this crap out everyday, and I figure I save money from increasing our recycling. I’m just waiting until you figure out how futile this is. Morons.

92

To the woman with three children standing stock-still blocking the entire entrance to the bookstore this afternoon, so that the group of us trying to get in, as well as the group of people behind you trying to get out, were totally blocked: It’s no wonder your children have no manners. You have none, either.

93

[QUOTE=Mama Tiger]
To the woman with three children standing stock-still blocking the entire entrance to the bookstore this afternoon, so that the group of us trying to get in, as well as the group of people behind you trying to get out, were totally blocked: It’s no wonder your children have no manners. You have none, either.
[/QUOTE]

I’m about ready to start calling people on this; something along the lines of, “Are you aware that you are standing in a doorway, and blocking other people from getting in and out?” Give them the benefit of the doubt that they are so mooblivious that they don’t even know where they are standing, but leave no doubt how I feel about it.

94

EXCUSE ME!!! from about 2 feet from the right ear usually get their lead out.

95

  1. The parking-space counter in the Wayne Avenue garage in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. A good parking-space counter is a thing of beauty, viz the intallation at BWI airports’ parking garage. A series of sensors mounted above each spot monitors space availability in real-time, and feeds that data to a central computer which drives signage that will unerringly guide you to an empty spot each and every time with no circling around. The counter at the Wayne Avenue garage, unfortunately, seems to just guess randomly at how many cars are on each level and then shares that completely useless information with you. For example, this afternoon, the display sign on the first level said that level one was full, but there were 200 open spots between levels 2 and 7. The sign on the next level claims that it too is full, but there are now 230 spots open between levels 3 and 7. Level 3 was likewise thought to be full, but now there are 290 spots on levels 4 thru 7. I finally parked on level 4, which was also said to be full (and clearly was not) and by then the signs were telling me there were 1370 available parking spaces on levels 5 thru 7. I don’t know why, but those signs just piss me off, since they seem to always provide information that cannot be correct, as in the prior example. My wife doesn’t like it when I park there.

  2. The shit-for-brains neighbor who found my cat when he ran away Christmas weekend. This neighbor (who I don’t know) called and left a message, and when we didn’t call back within 12 hours, he gave the cat up to animal control. It took me 2 weeks and $100 to spring the cat from the big house, and he came out with a very bad infection that has cost me another $400 in vet bills to date, plus I may end up having to put the damned cat down anyway. It was Christmas fucking weekend you jackass, didn’t you think maybe we were out of town? You had our fucking phone number, google it and find out that we only live a block away, and leave a fucking note so the neighbors who are taking care of the house (and the cat) can maybe come and get him back. Fuckers.

  3. Everyone else on the road. Please just pull over and let me pass.

That is all, thanks.

96

[QUOTE=Emilio Lizardo]

  1. A good parking-space counter is a thing of beauty, viz the intallation at BWI airports’ parking garage.
    [/QUOTE]
    Yeah, the system at BWI now is awesome; so easy to find a space!
97

[QUOTE=FatBaldGuy]
The only thing I can come up with is that someone else (perhaps someone such as black rabbit) may be approaching the parking spot from another direction planning to pull into it, when your car drives into the spot from the opposite side.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=lowbrass]
Dang. I guess I suck. I never did it to snipe a space from another driver, though. So I guess I don’t especially suck. I just regular suck.

Note: Make sure there isn’t one of those concrete divider thingies on the ground before you try it. :eek:
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=mhendo]
Huh?

Most crowded lots, by definition, generally don’t have enough free spaces to allow this tactic anyway.

I pull through empty spaces to park facing outwards quite often, and in such cases the lot usually has dozens of free spaces, so no-one is inconvenienced.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=DeadlyAccurate]
Why? I’ve been going over the possibilities in my head, and I genuinely cannot think of any reason someone would be bothered by this. Please inform.
[/QUOTE]

(and anybody else I missed… sorry, forgot about this thread)

Because it’s kind of hard to see through two solid parked rows of SUVs, especially since, unlike apparently everybody else on the planet, I don’t have x-ray vision.

At least half a dozen times between thanksgiving and New Year’s this year, I made it 1/3 through my turn into a space only to discover that I was blocked halfway through my turn by some jerkoff who’s trying to pull through.

I’ve been tempted to just sit there and wait for them to back up, but holiday parking being what it is, they’ve usually got somebody waiting directly behind them to get in to the space that they were pulling through.

I wish I still had my totally shitty car, so I could “accidentally” tap their bumper.

98

[QUOTE=featherlou]
I’m about ready to start calling people on this; something along the lines of, “Are you aware that you are standing in a doorway, and blocking other people from getting in and out?” Give them the benefit of the doubt that they are so mooblivious that they don’t even know where they are standing, but leave no doubt how I feel about it.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, instead I had a lovely “The rudeness of people these days! Harumph!” conversation with the woman behind me. We nearly descended to the level of “And keep the damn kids off my lawn, too!” It made me feel utterly virtuous and stunningly ancient at the same time.

99

I remembered a long-simmering one today (regarding parking, no surprise there) - in the parking lot, I parked my small Corolla between two other small cars. Everyone was parked smack between the lines, and I still had to suck it in and bend around the door to get out. Who is deciding how big to make parking spaces these days? Seriously, I want to know, so I can send them an email that reads, “MAKE THEM BIGGER, YOU ASSMUNCHER!!!”

100

I drive a little over 100 miles every day that I work, so most of mine are driving-related. A few are work complaints that have been piling up… On preview, there are more than I’d expected.

  1. For fuck’s sake, if you simply must inexplicably go 10-15 UNDER the speed limit, could you at least get the fuck over to the right? Hmm? Maybe instead of being in a lane already going your speed or faster and then cutting people off on the left?

  2. Folks going 10-15 under the speed limit, period. In general I don’t care if someone wants to poke along, but it grates my cheese when they do it and it isn’t easy or safe to pass them. I seem to be coming across this a lot lately.

  3. Hey, you’ve got a tailgater behind you. Yeah, it’s annoying, I know. Yep, they’re an asshole, I realize. Do you think you could open your wee little mind and realize you two aren’t the only ones on the road? See, when you decide to “punish” your tailgating friend by gradually slowing down, you make it dangerous for the rest of us. We weren’t tailgating you (or the guy behind you), but now we find ourselves going way below the speed of the other lanes, so we can’t safely pass you and move on with our lives. Thanks. Really. Oh and slamming on your brakes? Yeah, that’s not a brilliant move, either.

  4. Look before you change lanes! I almost got nailed by some jackass tonight that was going 10-15 slower than I was and decided to cut over to the left without warning. Moron. It wasn’t even like I was in a middle lane and had room to just avoid him, either. All I had was a fucking barrier to my left.

  5. If I have to hear “Just one more thing” from another goddamn resident, I’m going to chuck a wrench at their head. Look, dippy, we have 399 other apartments here. This is a reasonably old apartment property, and things break routinely, especially during the winter. We prioritize our service requests based on what you reported to our office and what was put down on the work order. If we’re at your apartment, it’s because your’re next on our list of priorities, based on what you reported! Don’t report 1 or 2 minor things to our office, then wait 'til we show up and keep us there a fucking hour with “oh just one more thing”!

NO! NO MORE THINGS FOR YOU! Call everything into the office so we can actually prioritize and get the serious things done first.

  1. No, I’m sorry, a spider is not an emergency. Neither is a streak on your mirror or a scuff mark on your floor. A closet door not “gliding properly” is not an emergency. A garbage disposal not working is not an emergency. Stop calling our office every 20 minutes, harassing our office staff, insulting them and screaming, because your fucking closet door isn’t perfect. Get a little perspective, huh?

  2. To our answering service: A stove that doesn’t work at all is important. NO HOT WATER is important. A washing machine spraying water everywhere is important. Pull your fucking head out of your ass and PAGE US for things we’ve told you we consider emergencies. People sitting at home with no stove or washing machine over a long holiday weekend, because you told them “That’s not important, I won’t page maintenance” is unacceptable.

  3. To the office staff: Look, we told you there’s NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT THAT. Nothing. No. It isn’t going to be done. No amount of you asking me “what can we do to make sure it gets done TODAY?” is going to change that. Maybe my co-worker here is too nice to say no, but I’m not. No. No no no no no.

  4. Office staff: We’re maintenance technicians, we aren’t piddly little grunt workers put on this earth to do your bidding. Stop being rude to us, stop trying to fuck us over by switching around the move-in schedule without telling us, and stop putting in work orders for stupid shit you’re perfectly capable of doing and are, in fact, responsible for doing. Oh and kill your own spiders for once.