Innocuous things that make you irrationally angry (a list thread)

hahah exactly.

to boldly go, etc

ha yeah i noticed that

i mean bless 'im for working around it but jesus aitch

graphic design that uses cyrillic letters to 'spell' english words when the subject is
russian/east european/communist.

Stinking people on public transport, there really is no need.
Water and soap is not that expensive!

Yeah, do not stink people on public transport. Wash them if you have to.

Tempting.

Should install a smellometer.
Too smelly, can't enter the vehicle and upset clean people.

i'm sorry col poo but EVERY oxfam bookshop i've ever been in has been full of overpriced stock, half of which could be bought cheaper brand new, in better condition. on average, they charge at least twice as much as any other charity shop. not long ago i read a good article in the book collector magazine complaining abt oxfam's tactics generally - they are absolutely loathed in the secondhand book trade for their greed and ignorance.

lol i'm getting wound up just posting abt this - i mean, it's not even about 'bargain hunting' - i'm buying for myself, not to re-sell (tho obv if i saw a first edition of Ulysses for a quid i wld prob buy) - and i have, on v v rare occasions, even found bks that were underpriced in Oxfam. it's just when i see a wordsworth paperback priced at 3 quid (new: £1.50) or whatever that i get annoyed.

graphic design that uses cyrillic letters to 'spell' english words when the subject is russian/east european/communist.
-- cb, Thursday, 5 May 2011 09:11 (1 hour ago)

106. Fake 'Russian' text that is just English with backwards 'R's.
-- ledge, Thursday, 30 September 2010 19:43 (7 months ago)

108. "Greek" text written by loading up Microsoft Symbol font and typing English words, so it no longer either resembles the English or is a meaningful transliteration (thankfully this has pretty much died but it was a thing in the early/mid-90s when doing irredeemably naff things w/word processors and paint packages was new and cyberpunk or something)
-- patapon pataphysics (a passing spacecadet), Thursday, 30 September 2010 19:50 (7 months ago)

(I'm only reposting this because I found myself rewriting my previous complaint and deja vu washed over me - you are otm)

I found a pair of purple docs - proper english made ones, in my size (ie stupidly small) - in the Sacred Heart Mish opshop for $20 some time back. What are the odds? I bought them like wo.

Now I think about it I dont even know where they are though, huh.

I've heard wonderful things about op shops. My best charity shop find happened two months ago and well outflanks the black Margiela jacket I got for £6 in the same shop - I found a beautiful, almost unworn tweed winter coat by Preen for £12 and did not breathe again until I grabbed it up and paid.

this dude at karaoke bar last night was videotaping performers with a professional camera without explaining who he was, what the video was for, or even securing permission first. Like I kinda wanna make sure that I'm not gonna wind up on Stormfront.org!

not really an innocuous thing but I did get pretty irrationally angry about it, fortunately he didn't tape me cuz I woulda had a Sean Penn moment.

i'm sorry col poo but EVERY oxfam bookshop i've ever been in has been full of overpriced stock, half of which could be bought cheaper brand new, in better condition

ive got some academic paperbacks from there in new condition for a fifth of the amazon price

Yeah, and, funnily enough, the last book I was tempted by was a £1 copy of Ulysses.

But then I thought about d/l a epub version instead...

this is in a fairly upmarket area and i suspect a lot of the stock (of good books rather than litfic trash) comes from relatives disposing of dead ppls' books en masse

those cheap paperback classics probably qualify for this thread, always too small and cramped to read easily

id include the everyman hb versh of 'the idiot' i got last week for being printed in too small a font and w/ no paragraph spacing, as if dostoevsky needed unfavourable typesetting to convey the travails of the prince

fair enuff, nak, i'm not really browsing the specialist academic stuff (when i used to work in a 2nd hand bkshop my experience was that textbooks were generally v v hard to shift, especially subjects like business/accountancy, computing, medicine etc where the info tended to date p quickly, so im not surprised that even oxfam are punting them out cheapo)

I wish our Oxfam bookshop wd punt out its computing books cheapo, they are often £15 for something that would be on Amazon for £24 new and is now several versions out of date

(for some software/programming languages this doesn't matter much at all and for some it makes the book basically unusable, and unfortunately if you know enough about it to guess which then you probably don't need a book anyway)

but then the branch I'm thinking of is right opposite Oxford University's science area, so I guess most of it will shift regardless of price, and if anything doesn't it can be assumed to be unusably out of date and junked

Most (London) Oxfam Bookshops I've been in do beat London secondhand prices for at least the stuff I look at (poetry, classic lit). Like I'm more maddened by the prices in Skoob than I am the Portobello Oxfam Bookshop. If they spot something that looks collectible, they'll overprice it, but a lot of decent things slip by.

the sort of things i was describing are academic press humanities stuff....i've found some surprising things in a branch of oxfam

also tho i doubt i spend as much time in secondhand bookshops as ilb hierarch woof, i'd concur with his observations

don't think it's quite correct/'fair' to compare oxfam bookshops to places like (yeah, the hideously overpriced) skoobs - non-charity shops have to buy their stock, and in theory are staffed by ppl who know something abt bks, so can, to some extent, justify higher prices than the likes of PDSA, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research etc. etc. - oxfam's real competitors, who make them look like robbers in comparison.

Skoob can bite me - they pay very little for secondhand books.

Fair enough on the real competitors - I guess stock just feels a lot more limited in most other charity shops, so I'm less likely to find something interesting in the first place than I am in an Oxfam shop (in an area with ailing academics). I'm aware of the book-trade anger about Oxfam (this would be about that Bookseller article?), but from a buying end, I'm ok with it - a range of good stock, at prices that are still ok.

the article i was talking abt was actually in book collector magazine, but yeah essentially the same complaints - unfair advantage, aggressive targetting of towns/areas where secondhand bookshops already exist etc. the bc article also claimed that oxfam favour certain book dealers who buy stuff from them (first editions and the like) well before the dregs reach the oxfam shops.

I don't remember mentioning this in here:

News sites that recognise you as a foreign visitor and show you an "international" version by default. It happens all over the place but I'm talking specifically about the BBC. When I go to a UK news site I want UK news, NOT what the BBC calls its "international" version but is in actual fact just a load of shit about America. If I want American news I'll fucking well go to CNN (which btw hassles me about ITS "international" version).

This only counts as irrational because I don't use news sites like the BBC anymore specifically because of this crap.

Oh and also the BBC's sociopathic obsession with America.

You probably know this already but on the BBC news site for the UK you can click on UK or England/Scotland/Wales and get the news for that location. Maybe that's not available outside the UK, in which case I apologise for what may seem as patronising...

No, we can see that too, I frequently look at specific-area news on the BBC site (for local lulz)

xp oit's there and it's easy to click (hence the ia) but we go to a UK news site for UK news, so defaulting to an "international" version is ridiculous.

It's like "oh you're from somewhere else are you? well here's some news that suits YOU!!", the two obvious problems with that being (1) 95% of us are not american kthx and (2) we're going all the way to a UK news site for news about THAT country, otherwise we'd stick with our own local agencies.

The BBC used to at least do a CNN-style "this is all UK news, would you like to see the international edition y/n" but at some point they pulled that option completely, citing unnecessary maintenance requirements or similar dumb shit.

people who make right turns on red when the sign says no right turn on red. today me and this other dude are in the left and right lanes at a light with one of those signs, after coming off a toll road. Dude's coming up behind us, sees us sitting there, decides he doesn't want to wait, and jumps into the two lanes nearest us, which are left turn lanes, then illegally makes a right turn out of it in front of us.

probably shouldn't have thrown a molotov cock. in his car but hey

lolol Molotov cock

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2216/1682649966_645aeea158.jpg

There is, officially, an image for everything.

people who double click hyper links

ia: my fear of going to the doctor because i hate when they weigh me. look, i know, ok? let's just get to why i came here.

tbh right now my ia is against doctors full stop. Is there such a thing as a GP that's worth a shit? OK I've had one good doctor in the last 10 years, but I don't live there any more. This week she might as well have just told me to fuck off as soon as I walked in the door. I'm not even gonna go into how they could've let my wife die from TB "it's just a chest infection you'll be fine"

i have irrational anger at people who tell unfunny jokes in public, then when nobody laughs, say it again at twice the volume because obviously, we didn't laugh because we didn't hear it the first time.

I mean that's not innocuous, but the irrational anger is that I want to impale these people with a bayonet.

tbh right now my ia is against doctors full stop. Is there such a thing as a GP that's worth a shit?

not when their sole motivation is to save the insurance company money -- no, you don't need an MRI or a referral to a specialist or anything, we'll just give you some generic pills.

I've had several good, dedicated, concerned and diligent GPs look after me. I've always been impressed. I've also had some who were indifferent or just plain clueless, but I wouldn't want to have an IA against GPs. Some of them have been superb, and much needed.

not when their sole motivation is to save the insurance company money

Thankful that doesnt come into play here really due to our medicare system. That said, we get the problem where GPs cram as manuy patients into a day as possible cos their givt subsidies arent great. So you're shoved in and out in 15 mins tops, and if you need more? Double appointment, that'll be $80 thanks. Grrr. I have something in the order of 5 unrelated, fairly pressing health issues I should address but Ive put it off cos fuck landing it all on a GPs head all at once.

givt? Govt. Damn bandaided finger.

people who double click hyper links

― smh (cozen), Friday, 6 May 2011 09:33 (2 days ago) Bookmark

ha, and people who type a full url into google

people who use yahoo or msn as their search engine instead of google

I kind of admire people stubbornly avoiding Google.

(just went to alta-vista and discovered it's now yahoo. I found it by googling)

My dog insists on using Dogpile.