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

did your mum keeping speaking to you in french after you went to school?

Not so much. Only on holidays or if we had French guests. It was pretty much impossible. I started pre-school chatting French to all the teachers and students (amusingly, I thought all women spoke French and men spoke English) but my sister and I would soon be coming home and speaking English, so it went.

I would NEVER put my feet on someone's coffee table if I didn't know it was OK, but at the homes of friends I visit most, it is definitely OK, as it is in my home, aka chez cowboys. Not with shoes, though.

also. je55e, your curtain rods sound awesome. what did you use to hold them up?

― kkvgz, Wednesday, August 24, 2011 6:16 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

I forget how I explained the project above, but it's a vertical pole going from floor to ceiling, with a T joint near the top, from which another steel pipe - the curtain rod - extends to the wall.

The floor-to-ceiling part is necessary b/c on that side there is no wall to which to fasten the rod. If there were, I would just buy a curtain rod.

Dude on the train next to me this morning that kept looking over at my Nook to stare at what I was reading, in the most blatant and not at all subtle ways. Especially considering he had his own Kindle on his lap.

people who post on facebook shit like "why is Deadmau5 so fucking awesome?"

I posted about this in the earthquake thread, but:

Californians being dicks about 5.8 earthquakes in places that never get them. As if the reaction is about the earthquake itself and not the fact that it is ridiculously novel.

Deep Southerners being dicks about Northern heat waves. Yes, you live in the steaming armpit of our nation. Good job.

Cascading dickishness from north to south re the more southerly people's reactions of alarm and paralysis at snowfall and cold that is routine to the more northerly ones. Surprise, surprise: places that don't get much snow are less prepared to manage larger amounts of snow. Superiority of humanity increases as latitude decreases.

― weakness for Cinnabon; rampant heterosexuality (Je55e), Wednesday, August 24, 2011 10:51 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

Out West, Eye Rolls and Jeers for East

I'm sure some of it is good-natured ribbing, I'm also sure that definitely not all of it is.

sack up, pussy

You joke, but that's the genuine reaction of a lot of people in the situations I listed.

I was trying to think what NYCers annoying stereotypical "pfft that's nothing" would be in reaction to, but I dunno.

Everything besides earthquakes, I guess.

that's what makes New Yorkers so endearing though

Crime? Crowding? The smelliness of trash on the sidewalk in August?

building collapses

here are some driving things that make me IA, a series:

1. people backing into parking spaces when there's no clear reason to (ie they need to load things into the back or... no that's the only reason), especially when they suck at it and waste ten seconds of my time trying

-People in general seemingly think it is just fine not to reply to emails

2. figured i'd draw this one out

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/4924/peeve.png

pedestrians in general suck

oh my god YES, infuriating

I mean I am generally a very pedestrian-friendly driver but sometimes I just want to floor it into one of those hypotenuse-tracing motherfuckers—it's the only way they'll ever learn

3. in a busy lot, when parking spots are sparse and there's a huge lineup of cars trying to find them, one car decides to camp outside a spot and wait for a family of four to enter their car and buckle their seatbelts and turn the ignition and back out and leave. and after the campers park in their precious spot, you drive a few spaces past and find an open one right there.

xp i know, how the hell do people not realize that there has been a car lurching behind them for fifty yards

4. people who nearly come to a complete stop when they make a turn, on a 30+ MPH street, nearly causing rear-end collisions in the fifteen cars behind them

You're Parking Wrong

Why it's almost always better to back into a space than pull into it head-on

5. yesterday i saw a bumper sticker that said "the meaning of life is to give life meaning." that is not a meaning. that is a purpose. you could just say "the purpose of life is to give life purpose." you can't answer "what does it all really mean, man" with "TO MAKE FARTS" because that doesn't make sense and it sounds like you weren't listening to the question

slate article: ppl who do not know how to leave a parking spot without getting hit are not parking incorrectly, they're just bad drivers

bonus IA: people who give their pets ironic/ironic pop culture ref names. if you're committed to taking care of a sentient being for however many years, at least have enough respect to name it "buttons" and not "baberaham lincoln"

how about 'stephen meowlkmus'

btw where do you live?

meowriel pink
joanna mewsom

Or the classic, "Chairman Meow"

d.c. purrman

cat literally on the tv on the radio

DC area xp

haha well okay that's a pretty bad area to drive. i would still much rather drive there than in nyc, but the beltway/66/95/270 is like an exercise in 'what the fuck are you thinking'

DC itself is absolute hell to drive through 50% because no one knows how to drive 50% because the city was definitely not built for a decent road system/grid.

i'm in college park/pg county tho so it's not too bad, just too many people.

the thing that most infuriated me about dc roads was that you'd be driving on a street -- even a theoretically major route subtitled us rt 1/29/50 -- and then, without turning or seeing a sign, you are magically on a one-way street that circles the arboretum, forever

We had a big thread somewhere a few years back about reversing into spaces, with Advanced Driver grimly fiendish strongly in favour of it iirc. Then we had a poll, inspired by earlier posts on this thread about it - reversing lost by a 2 to 1 majority.

I am irrationally annoyed by people who either refuse to parallel park or parallel park wrongly. Indeed, rather than expand on this, I am going to stop now as I am getting irrationally annoyed just thinking about it.

I am delighted to see a diagram on this thread because every day on my walk home (sry for being a pedestrian) I end up spending the entire journey mentally composing IA posts with diagrams showing the transgressions of other walkers and/or whichever town planner arranged the pavements, side streets and cycle lanes

several of these have probably actually made it to this thread, so far all without diagrams, but still only a tiny percentage of them

Here is my first diagram! Bring on the irrationally angry MS Paint diagrams!

http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/381/96144521.gif

(don't worry, it didn't take me all 47 minutes. and if it did, it was much more fun than working, A+ would recommend)

awww <3

"busy road or whatever" <3 <3

Have I already moaned about people who use the term "myself" or "yourself" wrongly. One of the most extreme examples being seen in a hotel guestbook which read "Myself and my wife had a very pleasant stay".

very impressive diagram :)

people that overtake slowly are disgusting savages imo.

maybe 'people who don't use the default pedestrian overtaking technique of speeding up until you're a reasonable distance ahead of the overtakee' is cause for irrational anger.

xp. i had thought it was more suitable for disgusting savages than irrational anger too! i'm not that bothered by it, but regardless if you're doing it then you are worse than hitler.

Whenever there are pedestrian vs pedestrian battles over space, if i am slightly annoyed in anyway I a fast-step shuffle in order to gain advantage. Feet never really leave the ground so, particularly in crowded areas, I will always have the advantage.

I will also pedestrian-tailgate

slate article: ppl who do not know how to leave a parking spot without getting hit are not parking incorrectly, they're just bad drivers

there is not enough OTM in the world for this statement

xxp now that's something else IA-making, when I'm going behind someone who's going slightly slower than I'd like but I don't think I can speed up enough to get past them quickly

not angry at them so much as myself for being bothered when they are obviously not going that slow or it'd be easy to get past, plus then you have to worry about whether you've got creepily close behind them, and then you have to worry about whether you should be worrying about that, and so on

its good if they think you are a creep then they will move out of the way

my IA w/r/t pavement etiquette is almost always about people coming towards me who don't make the slightest effort to move to the side when there's obviously limited space. i can't remember the last time i was overtaken, i think 2002?