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

yes but there are many ways of cooking meat ronan, i was asking which one. "browning" tells me nothing.

not that i can do any of those ways but nm

I know the lex hates attempts to analyse this but I'm curious about ready meals, do you use oven ones? Cooking a piece of chicken or something in an oven would be exactly the same surely? also all meat does come with cooking instructions and times, if you buy at a supermarket rather than a butchers.

xpost fair enough, there's always google I guess.

yes but i don't eat that many ready meals. new covent garden soups and their ilk, mostly.

wouldn't know where to start cooking just a lump of meat tbh, also then you have to think about sauces and other things as well and it's just too much hassle.

You really dont, tbh. Buy a bag of readymade salad from tesco and a steak. Fry the steak 3-4 mins each side in a frypan, plonk it on a plate, salt and pepper it, chuck some dressing from a bottle onto the salad, mix, put on plate, eat. :)

Mind you cooking is my equivalent of other ppl going "oh really, Reason is o easy to use I write songs every day" and me wanting to kill them so I get why its not everyone's bag.

that does actually sound nice and simple and not like "cooking" at all.

though actually, another thing I like about ready meals is how idiot proof they are - I mean, I seem to always manage to either burn or undercook them anyway, so the thought of dealing with actual food really does scare me a bit.

I mean I regularly fuck up things like toast and boiled eggs and even sodding crackers and cheese the other day, you really cannot underestimate how awful I am in the kitchen.

toast = everyone fucks this up now and then!
boiled eggs = i am an excellent cook but the combination of precision and nothing to do for quite a long time after the first bit means i have exploded many eggs and ruined several pans while surfing the internet; eggs are NOT the easiest things really
crackers and cheese = haha ok clue: DON'T TRY AND COOK THESE

i think a handy list of meats/fish you can fry v.quickly would be prob a boon to you

Good boiled or fried eggs are actually relatively tricky. I hate frying eggs. I was going to suggest steak earlier. You don't have to fear it being uncooked at all really. Just let your pan get incredibly hot first.

i have a bit of a fear of frying too. don't like the idea of spitting oil and the washing up is always worse afterwards. really, all i'm ever prepared to do is shove a thing in the oven and wait until it's done, end, no extra sauces or accompaniments or hassle.

back to IA-making:
ppl who own or deploy or otherwise approve and encourage UMBRELLAS it is the wheelie-suitcase of the sky plus WITH SPIKED BARBS TO TAKE YOUR EYE OUT -- it is only water, you won't dissolve you nesh feebs

(exception: used upside down to cross unexpected floodwaters like pooh bear and moses)

xp A non-stick pan and spray-oil should make things easier.

Mark S, do you not do much walking? People don't melt, but we do get soaked and then have to sit in soggy clothes once we reach our destination. Not to mention the ruined hair and the soaked phone in our pockets. And washed away make-up.

Crikey--I was off sick one day last week, and so put 7 hrs sick leave on my time sheet, leaving the other .6 hrs as flexi (since I had hours up). this seems to have been the end of the world as far as admin is concerned--lots of back-and-forth emailing, people explaining things to me in slow, patronising voices--even after I quickly folded and said for them to do it their way. Leave me be!

LOL that gives me horrible DFAT flashbacks, that does :) Oh my god, the red tape pedantics.

Yesterday, I saw a guy on a bus with a bag of comics...he proceeded to read one by handling the comic as if it was a common newspaper...bending the spine, holding it, eating chocolate and leaving creases!! I had to divert my eyes from such savagery :(

And I expect he threw it away afterwards. It's a comic!

It's an iconic art form!

So's a postcard with the Mona Lisa on it but that doesn't make it valuable per se! Once something's mass marketed media, the intangible genius (or whatever) of the content remains holy but the hundreds of thousands of disposable bits of paper they're printed on have effectively no value.

I guess I can expand on this by saying that I can't bear it when people are incredibly precious with books, especially paperbacks. Break the spine, fold over the pages, spill your lunch on them - I actually prefer the look of a well-worn book that's obviously been appreciated than a sterile new one that has never shared its bounty.

I loaned a brand new copy of a favourite book to a friend, she returned it a month later with a "Wow, that was great, oh no but I've had it in my handbag and now it's all battered and spine broken sorry". No, no, it's fine! Now it looks like a book I have loved and read plenty times, which I have! (She didn't quite believe me, but it was true)

Break the spine, fold over the pages, spill your lunch on them - I actually prefer the look of a well-worn book that's obviously been appreciated than a sterile new one that has never shared its bounty.

yes! as long as all the pages are there, not falling out and the words are readable who honestly cares what a book looks like or what state it's in?

savages

nah, pristine paperbacks are pretty suspicious imo. obviously take better care of beautiful hardbacks but even there there's degrees.

savages

NEVER LET A PAPERBACK GO THROUGH THE WASHING MACHINE

But mark s, how do you get the grass stains out of your football kit without using Sylvia Plath's Ariel?

use George Non-bio obv

Oh, paperbacks should be a bit battered, but principles of rockism should be applied to comics.

I dunno, I'm with Lester Bangs on this specific one: "My (mono) copy of "White Light White Heat" is well worn because I HAVE PLAYED IT SOOO MUCH!!!! (oh, Ok, it's second-hand really)...."

i wipe my ass with the mona lisa. on the bus, too.

Performance art?

more like self-publishing.

Here's something: That thing waiters are trained to do in restaurants where about 2 mins into your meal, no matter what, they interrupt the flow of any conversation to ask if everything's alright with your meal. Generally they won't leave until they've received a satisfactory answer. Very annoying, because much of the time you've barely tasted it yet.

ppl who own or deploy or otherwise approve and encourage UMBRELLAS it is the wheelie-suitcase of the sky plus WITH SPIKED BARBS TO TAKE YOUR EYE OUT -- it is only water, you won't dissolve you nesh feebs

Yeah, I'm always amazed at how many people seem to have the foresight to bring these out with them as well. I just wear a mac. How come I never notice people carrying the umbrellas when it's not raining - where do they produce these bastarding things from?

aha the actual incident that brought on that IA-spasm was dodging past the vicious hedgehog umbrella spines of THREE PEOPLE walking with open umbrellas when it hadn't even really started spitting, it was just threatening to maybe

i: YOU WILL NOT DISSOLVE, this isn't actually even water yet
ii: you in fact caused it to rain later by putting the umbrellas up now, this is obvious

If you were a sandstone statue, you may dissolve in the rain, just saying...

We're all water from diff'rent rivers,
That's why it's so easy to meet.
We're all water in this vast, vast ocean,
Some day we'll evaporate together.

nah, pristine paperbacks are pretty suspicious imo. obviously take better care of beautiful hardbacks but even there there's degrees.

― Frogbs (Pray Like Aretha Franklin (in Whiteface)) (Noodle Vague), Monday, 5 September 2011 13:11 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I went out with a girl who I swear never even touched any books she owned. They went right up on the shelf and stayed there. I vaguely remember her going apeshit when I, I dunno, had a quick flick through one of them or something...

Here's something: That thing waiters are trained to do in restaurants where about 2 mins into your meal, no matter what, they interrupt the flow of any conversation to ask if everything's alright with your meal. Generally they won't leave until they've received a satisfactory answer. Very annoying, because much of the time you've barely tasted it yet.

If they are observant enough to do this after you've tasted your meal, I like it, it's a nice little stage in the dining-out ritual. If they do it too quickly, it's irritating. Sometimes when a server approaches too soon and says "how is everthing?" I give them the Full Attention Stare and say "I have no idea."

Everything...IN THE WORLD?

I have comics with coffee rings on them! I'm oddly careful with paperbacks, though.

xpost I just hate it - the conversation's just getting going and then it gets interrupted on a formality. If there was anythign wrong or if I needed anything I'd ask. However the worst offenders of these restaurants tend to be the type where getting hold of a waiter when you need one is nigh impossible.

Saturday night I actually brought my check up to the waitress as she was chatting with her friends because I was tired of waiting.

Was she appropriately abashed?

it was only the second time I'd been there and I wasn't sure if that's what you're supposed to do anyway (hipsterish diner-type place) and she was like "sorry, I'm kinda spacing out tonight" ¬_¬

i would empathetically accept that as an explanation tbh

I hate whe I order an entree that includes a side, then say that I would also like a side of Mac and cheese and immediately be told I can't substitute. No fucking shit, I didn't say anything about substituting, I want them both.

idgi

Oh yeah, "I'll have a Chicken burger with latte, a chicken salad with latte"

and I got the salad, so I "Where's the Chicken burger?", and she's "oh, you want both? I thought you'd changed your mind!"

Because it's confusing when there's less people at the till than are actually eating.