Yelling out the windows at people on the street. Get out and talk like normal people.
Women who dress like teen starlets (and are not).
Pulling out wedgies, rearranging the package or picking your nose in public.
Littering.
TMI conversations in public places. Bonus points for elevators, waiting rooms or other spaces where your victims cannot just flee the scene.
Am I the only person that doesn’t mind cell phones? Why is it ok for people to talk to other people if it’s in person but not if it’s through a mechanical device? What’s the difference?
I hate people listening to headphones on the bus loud enough for me to hear it. How can they even hear it? Doesn’t it sound distorted and blown out? All I can hear is the high hat. Usually, these are the same people wearing pants that they have to hold up and speak in ebonics. Grrr.
The problem, for me at least, isn’t that the cell phone is less worthy of attention than a face-to-face discussion, it’s the assumption that may cellphone users seem to make that they must take the cell call, now, and never excuse themselves from the current conversation, to deal with the cell phone.
To use examples:
I’ve had someone hold up her hand, look at her cell phone’s display, and tell me, “Excuse me, this is from (work, home, child’s school) and I need to find out what it’s about.”
No problem there, and I can wait quite patiently while she works through the matters that she has to deal with.
I’ve also had someone hold up her hand, answer her cell, and start a conversation full of inanities. Without any attempt to excuse what seems to me to be the very height of rudeness.
Vastly different experiences, and unfortunately, the second scenario is the far more common one. I didn’t like it when it was just land line crap when dealing with businesses, and I like it less now that the cell phone majority are doing it all the time in all sorts of conversations.
People who chew with the mouth open like cows chewing the cud.
Previously mentioned cell phone bullshit.
Chewing tobacco.
Public spitting. If you're sick and have to get it out, fine, but please go behind a bush or something.Playing a car stereo so loud I can hear it with my car windows rolled up, or inside my house when you drive by. Do you really think that atonal, dissonant whump! whump! whump! is something you simply must share with the world?
Troglodytes.
Your statement is ignorant and bigoted. If you find obesity such a trial, I suggest you do your best to refrain from uttering such sentiments. Your disgust only makes it more difficult for the obese to deal with their weight.
I find it unfortunate, to say the least, that so many intelligent people have such a difficult time understanding that for many it is not a question of calories consumed versus calories burned. Human beings are not machines. If obesity were a simple matter of will power, the statistics regarding how many people in particular populations were overweight or obese would not have altered in the past fifty years. If obesity were a simple matter of will power, the percentage of those who have lost weight and kept it off for more than three years would be better than the pitiful single digit number it is.
Instead of disgust, try a little pity or compassion. There is nothing pleasant about being obese, and unlike the rest of the habits brought up in this thread, there is no quick fix.
OK I came in to say that throwing cig butts into a urinal is my big peeve. I used to work at a place that had urinal and I’d rather you throw your butts on the floor so I could just sweep them up than make me fish for your disgusting habit in pee water. But, my whole rant has become skewed. I just came to a realization.
For years I’ve seen Anaamika as Anaarnika. Sure, the difference is pretty inconsequential, but I just figured it out.
Now I regard Irredeemably Degenerate as people who put a “m” where a “rn” could be mistaken. 
v
I didn’t do it! Blame my language. 
Jesus. I guess I have a different definition of ‘irredeemably degenerate’.
I was going to say looking at child porn. But ‘being a judgmental prick’ is definitely in second.
Many of mine have been offered up already. But…
If I don’t know you, and you’re in the confines of your car/not invading my personal space and not a danger to me, I don’t give a shit what you do in your car. Smoke, drink, eat, whatever. As long as you’re paying attention to the road. I guess a habit I regard as irredeemably degenerate is the need to castigate people who aren’t bothering you. Like people who get their knickers in a twist because someone has a Bluetooth headset on. What’s the big deal, unless they’re gabbing in your ear, or in a library?
Spitting is fine in the grass. (Sinus/allergy/asthma sufferer for life; trust me, when I have to hock one it ain’t for fun.) But yes, spitting on a sidewalk is disgusting.
I love books. I’ve co-authored, edited, and contributed chapters to books. And if it’s your book, write in it to your heart’s content. A well-used and well-loved book is going to be beat up and written in. But again, treat your books however you want to treat 'em, I guess.
Obnoxious pimping of cars is something I don’t get, especially when said car is a POS. Ridiculous booming bass system that rattles neighborhood windows, stupid tints over the headlights (seriously!), and xeon powered headlights that burn the retinas of anyone unfortunate enough to look into them by accident… Castration should be the mandatory punishment.
Hand in hand with this is street racing and peeling out from traffic lights, stop signs, and so forth. Yeah, be a menace to everyone in the community. Why don’t you play Gran Turismo or whatever instead of putting people’s lives at stake? Fucking assholes.
Thank you, THANK YOU. I can’t imagine walking around with my claws out all the time, but it seems a lot of people are annoyed by the strangest things.
I came in to mention loud car stereos–the ones where you can hear the base (bass?) from down the block. But **Fear Itself ** beat me to it on page 3. It is particularly “degenerate” when I can hear it inside the house while the car drives a block towards me and then a block away. There are many things that annoy me (tailgating, bad grammer), but to be classed degenerate it has to make me think less of the person engaging in the behavior. So I wrestled with whether or not this is annoying or degenerate. Degenerate it is.
At school sporting events, I’d give a big “degenerate” to parents who hurl abuse at the referees and coaches. Get a grip. I think less of you for this.
Tremorviolet–I agree with your thoughts on people who start drinking in the morning and keep at it all day. I’d like a personal excemption, however. I much prefer a bloody mary or screwdriver (or even a beer!) for breakfast over a drink at any other time of the day. I find it calming and enjoyable. I’m unlikely to have another drink the entire day or evening. So do I get a pass for the two or three times a year when I imbibe before noon?
Acsenray (and others)–Thanks for the heads up on writing in privately-owned books. It never occurred to me that anyone would be bothered by this. I have treasured heirloom books from my parents and grandparents that have their favorite passages underlined. One is an old book of poetry. Each year people noted their favorite poems. It has notations going back 75 years and shows changes across lifetimes and generations. My brother gave me a copy of Lord of the Rings for a wedding present. He’d gone through and marked his favorite quotations. I love these books and the additions from my family make them even more precious. So it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that this was offensive to anyone. Ignorance fought.
I’m completely with you, Scissorjack doesn’t have a clue. Some of my days go from 8 till 7, consisting of drive-teach-drive-teach-drive-teach-drive. I guess the ‘forethought’ is choosing to move schools closer together? Or telling kids they ain’t getting a lesson? And ‘restraint’ would consist of fasting throughout daylight hours?
Offensive doesn’t even begin to cover it, but fear not, there’s a “Grandfather Clause” for family heirlooms and so on.
Personally, I liken writing in books to sporterising military surplus rifles- it destroys the value of the original piece, and is abhorrent as a result. A book is a work of art, and to add your own notes is displaying a huge amount of disrespect to the author- althought YRMV, as it appears to in this case.
I’ll add another vote for “Watching TV in the morning”- the bloody thing is inane enough at the best of times, it’s certainly not the best way to be starting your day- and add my own dislike of “Not saying Goodbye at the conclusion of a phone call”.
As a corollary to this, people in two different vehicles who, headed in opposite directions on city streets, will stop their vehicles, right in the middle of the street, roll down their windows, and fuckin’ have a conversation, blissfully unconcerned about the traffic that cannot get around them!! What the hell is so freakin’ important in your life that you cannot pull over to talk? Or, you know, call each other or something?
Now, I will say, Cumberland is a very small city, and sometimes this happens on the tiny back roads no one much travels, and as soon as the conversants notice someone is trying to pass, they’ll end their conversation. Fine. But sometimes (too often), it’s on the busier streets, and these meatpickles will have traffic backed up on both sides and still be yakkin’ away, like they’re the only people in the world!
People like this should not be allowed to operate motor vehicles.
Oh, and the asshats with the stereos blasting should be locked in a sound-proof cell and be forced to listen to Barry Manilow and Dan Fogelberg, full-blast, for six hours.
I find this weird. A book is a pile of paper. I scrawl all over them (I teach Lit, so I’m usually making notes for class, but not always.) How on Earth am I disrespecting anything or anyone by jotting a note in the margin of ‘Moby Dick’? Degenerate that I am, I encourage students to do the same. Library books are diffeent, but even that doesn’t strike me as a particularly big deal, depending on what’s written in them. I find other people’s thoughts interesting. I must also admit to folding corners and all other manner of book abuse.
As for utterly degenerate behaviour in others, my current peeve is people who start a sentence with any variation of, 'I don’t mean to be rude, but… ’ as though that simple utterance frees them from all conventions of decency.
Exactly. If you’ve got enough class for a one-room schoolhouse, you don’t repeatedly yell at or spank a child in public. You find somewhere more private and do your disciplining there. If your kid is doing something bad enough that you have to do more, discipline-wise, than say “No” once or give them The Look, you should probably be getting them out of a public place anyway- they’re almost certainly bothering other people. The rest of us don’t want to see and hear what you have to do to discipline your kids (if it goes beyond a simple “No” at a reasonable volume), any more than we want to see or hear your kids acting out.
How do you respond, Kalhoun? Surely anyone who shares that stuff is joking (or irreparably oblivious), so I usually stand there dumbfounded, waiting for the punchline. And I attract these people. I have frequently had men who expressed interest in dating me describe such issues. “Hey, you look really hot today. Man those tacos kept me up all night.”
I mean, you must be fantastically self-obsessed to think that I (or any friend or co-worker) find the minutia of your digestive complaints as fascinating as you do.
Since it’s mainly me and Anaamika on this particular point, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably a cultural thing. In Hinduism, objects can acquire divinity, and, particularly, books have an aura of the divine and it’s an act of disrespect and vandalism to mark on it. Strange for an atheist like me to retain this idea of holiness, but there it is.
When I feel the need to make notes, I slip an index card into the relevant pages and write there.
I don’t see anything wrong with sporterizing military rifles. If you own it, do what you want with it. Maybe if it was a specific rifle with a known, and important, historical provenance it’d be different. There were many millions of Mausers, Moisin Nagants, SMLE-variants, Springfields, Enfields, et.al. cranked out. The vastly overwhelming majority of them are just anonymous hunks of wood and metal.