Well, I just teared up a little bit. I find the sonnets fascinating and beautiful (hint: it just takes a little effort, then it gets easy). Because I can’t help but try to talk to some sense into you, please give listening to this byte-sized (and I think very entertaining) podcast a shot:
“Shakespeare Sonnets Read by Some Guy from New York:”
http://fiddleandburn.com/bardny/
I would say “maddening” is a prety strong word to use here. I really don’t “get” how you could really be “maddened” by someone saying such things.
I find some of Shakespeare’s dramas and wordplay to be brilliant, but can surely understand someone getting bored by it. I found 2001 boring–I really just liked the music.
Here’s another one: people who claim to like winter. I’m sure they do. I just…
This is life here in the Northeast. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining. I choose to live here, and that’s the way it goes.
But to claim I like this? I don’t like it, I hate it. I tolerate it. Snow is pretty and that’s about it. Winter is bitterly cold, and we’re not even remotely in the coldest areas of the country - generally we don’t drop below 20 below, even with the windchill. But all that aside, it’s just to be borne and not enjoyed.
People who “enjoy” winter are freaks. 
Thank you! Winter is terrible, snow sucks ass, and if I could I’ve move someplace that’s warm (or at least not cold and snowy) in a heartbeat.*
*Ok, I realize that there’s technically nothing stopping me, but I do have friends, family, and a job here.
First of all, I think there is a very large distinction between “getting bored by it” [implicit: bored from time to time] and “Shakespeare is boring.” Yes, even the greatest writer who ever lived wrote a less-than-great stanza or two, but that’s not the same as generally equating his work with boredom.
Second of all, “maddened” (def:* extremely irritated or annoyed*). It does make me extremely irritated. Maybe it’s just me (is it?) but if someone walks out of “Citizen Cane” saying “boooring”, it irritates me. If someone walks out of the Louvre and says “boring”, it irritates me. If someone walks out of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and says “boring”, it irritates me. And if someone says “Shakespeare? Boring,” it irritates me. Why? Because all of my experience tells me that this person is ignorant, and apparently totally uninterested in understanding the cause of the dissonance between his own perception and the encomiums from those who spend years learning to appreciate it. Over and over again in my own life I’ve found whole worlds open up, worlds that previously seemed “boring” only because I was too ignorant to appreciate them. It just seems so tragic that others can be incurious enough as to dismiss whole universes of wonder.
Heh, the older I get, the more I feel that way - but my kid absolutely loves winter - because of all the amazing winter sports. Skiing, skating, hockey … !
But it’s no skin off your back! Lots of things bore me. Hell, I am no fan of Shakespeare’s tragedies. I like tragedies…sometimes. I vastly prefer Shakespeare’s comedies, they are a rollicking good time. You can keep your King Lear and MacBeth and even Hamlet, most days. I’ll stick to Much Ado about Nothing and Midsummer Night’s Dream and others like that.
And I tend to think a lot of classical music is boooooring too. It is. My tastes tend towards two instruments - string, and flute. I’ll listen to most violin pieces, love the piano, but really brass and full orchestras bore the piss out of me.
But why does it matter to you? It’s not as though somehow my lack of pleasure should diminish yours! 
Summer Glau as an actress (as opposed to a geek sex symbol).
Poetry.
Straight girls who only like slash. As in, they won’t touch het at all and every ship they have is male/male.
Hating bands that sound just like the ones you like. I can kinda understand on this on the level of ‘hey, they’re ripping off my favorite band!’ but at the same time, if they sound like your favorite band, then you get 2x the music you like! Everyone wins! Except Hipster Kitty.
I can understand the appeal of reality TV because it broadly apes the tropes and devices of standard fiction. I don’t see how those tropes and devices can be applied to a sporting event.
But the purpose of a TV show isn’t to “win.” It’s to create an interesting, engaging story. A TV show can do that, and still get bad ratings and get canceled. Economically, it may be a failure, but artistically, it’s a success. How hard they try doesn’t really enter into it. Maybe Joss Whedon half-assed his way through Firefly. Maybe the producers of Jersey Shore work as hard as they can to make the best reality TV show they possibly can. It doesn’t change the fact that I really liked the former, and have no interest in the latter.
So that’s one major disconnect for me right there. I don’t really get the idea of watching people fail at their jobs, and being entertained by it. A team that can’t ever win seems, to me, analogous to a writer who can’t write, or an painter who can’t paint. Sure, they may try hard, but who gives a shit? They still suck at their job.
Yeah, but… why not? Sure, maybe you suck at it, but you don’t have to be good at a game to enjoy it. If the appeal of sports fandom is the feeling of comity you get from other fans of the same team, it seems that would be even greater if you were actually on the same team as other people, instead of just watching the same team. It’d be a smaller pool of people, sure, but it seems that the emotions your talking about would be much, much stronger if you were personally involved in a team, versus merely being a spectator.
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to argue that people shouldn’t like sports. I’m just trying to explain where my understanding of sports fandom is falling short. I’m not saying that there’s something wrong with watching sports but not playing them.
It matters to me because it makes be feel alone 
I’m adding a “Me, too!” to those people who don’t get spectator sports (Why would you want to watch someone else playing a game? What is interesting about it? Why not play the game yourself?) or Shakespeare (Why is he the greatest writer ever? Does anyone actually understand what’s going on without looking up every other word in the glossary? Why is it not translated into contemporary English–it is essentially in a different language, after all?).
I would add that I don’t get Indian food (Why would you want to eat something that smells and looks so unappealing, burns your insides out, gives you “Delhi belly” and leaves your house stinking?) or poetry (What is the point of it? It’s like a story without a plot, or a song without a tune–just unnecessary words with no reason).
I also don’t get people who think that someone is “ignorant” just because he has different tastes.
It’s a puzzle. Do you like puzzles?
Open up a (gasp) book and find out.
Yes.
Because the beauty is the language. Shakespeare’s greatness is far more about the beautify of his language than anything else.
Not knowing what the point of poetry is (for example), or not having any idea what makes Shakespeare a great writer, has nothing to do with taste.
The only thing I will protest about in Kiyoshi’s post is the Indian food. It’s not one solitary amalgam! It’s no different than saying all American food is hamburgers and hoddogs, ignoring the plethora of foods available. Indian food is the same - there are a million different types and flavors so it does surprise me that anyone could think it all smells terrible and tastes worse!
But, again, no skin off my back!
Shakespeare is already “translated” into contemporary English, in that they’ve changed the spelling to match standardized English. Other than that, it was already written in modern English in the original.
Autograph hounds.
I really don’t see the purpose besides being completely annoying to the person you’re getting the autograph from. A memoir of the time you met them? That’s kind of a crappy memoir don’t you think? Wouldn’t you rather have your picture with them or something? Proof that you met the person? Please, I could scribble Peyton Manning on a jersey and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Because it makes an item valuable? Sure, people claim it makes something worth more but good luck finding a buyer.
Say hi, shake hands, tell them you love their work, ask for a photo, put please lay off the stupid autograph crap.
Anything of or relating to American Idol.
Don’t we have enough bland pop singers being told what to perform by market researchers?
There is a very distinctive smell at all the Indian restaurants I’ve been to, because even if you aren’t ordering a dish with the stereotypical spices in it someone in there is. I mean, I’m not trying to single out Indian restaurants here - you can smell the garlic at the Ukrainian deli a mile away - but the spices produce a strong smell, that if you don’t like it/aren’t used to it, can overwhelm you and what you’re actually eating.
The more authentic Indian restaurants will use Asafoetida, so you could be smelling burning latex 
(for the record, I loooove, Indian food)
The Matrix. The philosophical point isn’t exactly new. The story isn’t really that engaging, at least to me. So what is it, and why do people get defensive about it when you say you didn’t care for it? I get that people have different tastes in movies, but it’s like you criticized their religion or something.
Fargo has been mentioned. I love Fargo. I understand the acclaim. I have the DVD. But can someone explain to me what Marge meeting her old classmate had to do with anything? Did it have some relevance to the movie in some allegorical way or something? Did it somehow trigger something in her mind that led her back to the car dealership? Was it just something the writers thought would be interesting but really had nothing to do with the rest of the story?
About sports. They don’t interest me but I understand how others might be interested. I also understand why some non-fans can be touchy about it and might even want to portray fans as weird in some way. It’s difficult in this culture being a male who doesn’t get sports. You get the feeling sometimes that others think of you as not being a real male if you’re not a fan. You often feel like you don’t belong or aren’t part of the crowd when others start discussing the latest game or whatever. I think seeing sports fans as odd or fanatical is a reaction to that.
Chris Nolan.
i love indian food, sports, Jersey Shore, and texting. (in fact, i prefer texting to actually calling somebody 99% of the time)