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

New features like contacts?

I think so? I thought you told me she was in law school. Would she be a "law clerk" if she was not even in law school? What is law school?

I know she wanted to go and as cynical as I am about legal education in the US I had always assumed she would be unable to manage it.

Calling herself a law clerk when she is not in law school is exactly her kind of stupid.

New features like contacts?

hahaha no

SURELY her employer controls the titles in his office? I mean, he has a good name in his field. But then again he thinks that little dip has some brilliant ideas.

Aaaarggh fuck new Firefox updates, now its Google home page has no thing at the top letting you choose 'Images', 'Videos', etc etc

ALSO businesspeople (well, they're probably all men) who read Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' to get an edge on their rivals

i think they've moved on to robert green's 48 laws of power

When having woken up late, in a hurry, life is a drag, still hurry, tying your shoelaces and a shoelace snaps. 1000 times worse than a knot. IA.

Had to google if the right English phrase was "snap" or "break" (turns out both are used?), stumbled onto Charles Bukowski being OTM:

The Shoelace

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
licence plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
lightswitch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the, market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

• People walking in bike lanes (not really innocuous)

Especially when 2/3 of the path is marked explicitly for peds and 1/3 for bikes, and the idiot peds ALL walk in the tiny bike lane because they are idiots

The young woman behind me on this bus has been on the phone with various friends for all of this 30 min ride so far and she is so. LOUD. and then she laughs LOUDER still to the point of actually hurts my ears.
She is apparently a scientist who works in a lab.

But she says shit like

- omigaahd she just like needs to lve herself more ya know?

- I've never driven in LA but I think it'll really help me grow cuz it'll take me out of my comfort zone? (every sentence ends w a question mark?)

-there's this book I was going to buy for you? but there're no more book stores! :(

I turned to look at her once when she cackled so she might realize, oh, I'm being a little loud, but no.

Then she BRAYED with laughter and I turned and said, "Excuse me but --" and she she gave me a look up, down and away, so I dropped the friendly time and enunciated at her "you. are. very. loud." and waited till she looked back in my eyes. She made an indignant face but he toned it down a lot. Still as loud as a stage actor tho.

awesome!

- ia that there are events and sales and whatever surrounding the super bowl

- ia-er that these events and sales and whatever have to use the euphemism "the big game"

OTOH, I also find the sound whispering annoying. All the S's are so audible - all that sibilance. I don't like unnecessary whispering. It reminds me of my mom saying people should speak up and not act like nuns/monks. It draws as much attention as being a loudmouth.

This week I was on a bus next to a person (couldn't really see if they were a guy or girl) who received a phone call. At first I thought they were being funny by going "Pssst psst psst" into the phone, but they were whispering and I could only hear "ssss" and couple P's and B's.

IMO, there is a very decent, unobtrusive volume for public phone speaking. Others might make out a word or two, or hear you chuckle, but you're not being very conspicuous in any way.

I've got this public transit etiquette shit sorted.

I hate loud in person conversational speaking just as much.

People are horrible. Kill us all.

The worst is at a restaurant and you just can hear the entire conversation of the table next to you. AND THEY ARE JUST FOOLISH. Use you quiet in public voice.

I really enjoy others' conversations. Overhearing people is a great pleasure for me.

why

If it's such a great pleasure, why did you tell that woman on the bus to be quiet?

I hate whispering. I've got a coworker who'll scoot his chair up and whisper.

I've gone p/a on him now.

- "*schwip schwip they're serving soup today schwipp schwipp**"
- "SOUP? WHY I LOVE SOUP!"

and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.

Wonderful, wonderful! My toilet chain keeps rusting and breaking (apparently because I keep fixing it with florist's wire, which you'd think would be water-safe because it GOES ON FLOWERS but NO) and the light in our hallway has been out for weeks.

If it's such a great pleasure, why did you tell that woman on the bus to be quiet?

Because she was being anti-social with her loud mouth and horrible laugh! If she had just been saying stupid things at a decent volume, I would have probably found her ding-dongitude amusing. I mean "I wanted to buy you a book but there are no more bookstores" is awesome and ridiculous. I would appreciate absurdity if it weren't overshadowed by the inconsiderate volume.

As far as "why" I like hearing conversations, it's b/c people come up w/ interesting stuff sometimes. And sometimes even ordinary talk is interesting IRL the way "mundane" dialog is interesting in movies.

Jenny, don't you feel kind of the same way? You tell me (and ILX) about some pretty interesting overheard stuff!

Sometimes, yes.

do you feel the same?
or am i only dreaming?

or is this burning
an subdermal flame?

people that keep whining about Timeline on FB. Like people actually preferred the clumsy old setup that made it difficult to locate posts that were a few weeks old without hella scrolling?

Irrational Anger: Gym Version

1. When people put stuff in lockers but don't lock the lockers, such that I end up opening five lockers that look unoccupied only to feel like I've violated someone's personal space by peeking in at their underpants. This is totally unforgivable at my gym, which is fancy and has those programmable digital locks on the lockers and don't require that you bring your own.

2. Crybaby lap swimmers who complain about not being able to swim laps during the one evening hour in the entire week that is occupied by a water aerobics class.

3. When the pool water is too cold.

4. When the pool water is too warm is even grosser. I feel like dying, and I think I'm inhaling baquacil fumes, and I can't go for very long.

Email IA: ppl who use those fucking Outlook stationery templates, ie spiral-bound detail or ruled notepaper or clouds rainbows etc

it just makes me hate the sender SO much more

Oh OH, AND since most of my senders are on PCs and I use a mac, my email program turns all of those graphic sig files, background colors, ANYTHING, into ATTACHMENTS. So every email has MULTIPLE ATTACHMENTS: one for every design element.

all scientists are cheap whores

Pretty much any extended whining on Facebook about Facebook. It's like being stuck in a boring meeting that isn't going anywhere, but with the world.

4. When the pool water is too warm is even grosser. I feel like dying, and I think I'm inhaling baquacil fumes, and I can't go for very long.

That's true, and I always warm up once I get moving. Okay I amend #3 to my gym not having steps for pool entry, just a ladder, because I'm always afraid I will slip and fall getting in and out.

you should jump in imo

cannonball entries ftw

Oh OH, AND since most of my senders are on PCs and I use a mac, my email program turns all of those graphic sig files, background colors, ANYTHING, into ATTACHMENTS. So every email has MULTIPLE ATTACHMENTS: one for every design element.

Yes, this. Usually they're named something that makes it obvious that they're junk, but if somebody emails me a bunch of images w/ arbitrary names, I worry that I'll accidentally omit a legit file if I ignore AT1.jpg or whatever.

Hate this so much

I hated going into the pool at Plato's Retreat - so many stds

you should jump in imo

But I cannot jump back out ;_;

true, but at least you would cut your problem in half

also, fun

Also making me irrationally angry: my bookmarks aren't sticking. I have bookmarked this thread approx 1,000 times and it won't stay bookmarked.

hi buffandmaxsmom? No problem bookmarking. My beloved IA thread? Bookmark teflon.

blogs on which the next page/previous page navigation is counter-intuitive

that bookmark teflon happened to me when i changed my name too!

del, i was on a site (looked like tumblr but that wasn't in the url) where the on the first page, the Next Page button was on the left, with an arrow pointing right. on subsequent pages, both were on the left. PLUS, the buttons didn't show arrows until you hovered over them. it was not just awkward, it was fucking confusing.

Website complaints:

• The very site I work for (which is soon going to be updated) currently has Next 10 | Last links at the bottom of one of our article directory pages. And every time, I think that "Last" means the last page I looked at and instead, I get transported to 1994.

• College athletic websites are the worst. Inevitably, they'll have some weird four-part slideshow scrolling in the center where you have to click on the picture and not the headline. And if you hesitate, the slide will change on you. You can go to a thumbnail at the bottom and click to get the correct slide to come back up so you can try again, but why not just link the thumbnail instead?

(This site is a little bit like what I'm talking about here.)

• And even worse than that last one is the icon trend I'm seeing more of. Quick, go to this school's website and click on the men's cross-country page. C'mon, we don't have all day…

It's like that Far Side cartoon with the martian choosing its restroom based on two indecipherable graphics on the doors.

hah argh

these site designers need to demonstrate some respect for my time-wasting time!

cartoons where the drawing doesn't add anything to the text. where the caption or the dialogue bubbles could literally be presented without the image and you wouldn't lose anything in terms of humor/interpretation/etc. i noticed this recently with some of the NYer cartoons and now it's really bugging me, but i've seen it in the shitty far side-ripoff single-panel cartoons in the paper too.

also i know you guys have talked before about men being "polite" and letting women go first in situations where everyone's in a hurry, which doesn't usually bug me, but i noticed this morning that some guy let a woman get on an elevator ahead of him, which seems to be the opposite of chivalrous, because she ended up at the very back of a crowded elevator, which isn't the ideal place to be.