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

I think of "school" as the most general term for any established (or unestablished) place for learning.

"I'm going to school in the fall." - could be college
"I graduated from school. SENIORS RULE!" - high school
"Today at school, I pasted macaroni" - elementary

Hell, there's even a School of Hard Knocks, that from what I can tell, has many who falsely claim alumnus.

With our children, we refer to their daily trips to the Child Development Center as "school". They learn. They have schedules. They don't just sit there and eat graham crackers while shitting their pants. It's a word we use with them to make them think of learning. Even if we were independently wealthy, I could see them still attending "school". Maybe they'd go to the fancy Episcopalian one down the way where Beethoven himself teaches piano lessons, but they'd still get their learning on somewhere.

I honestly don't think of that place as "daycare". I went to daycare as a kid. Lots of time in the backyard. Lots of kool-aid. Lots of TV. Lots of naptime. Lots of boredom.

office construction sucks

They don't just sit there and eat graham crackers while shitting their pants.

lol

You know what sucks? The last week in August when everyone is on vacation except me and I have nothing to do. BORED.

They don't just sit there and eat graham crackers while shitting their pants.

Unlike college students. </rimshot>

having just found out taht I do have access to Sky Arts and already caught a couple of great music programmes on it, I'm just wondering if I had it without knowing it for all this time.
So been going through the UPC tv listings looking at things that were on a channel that I didn't have and reconciling myself to not seeing them when I could have been watching them. Or has UPC only just added the channels?

Anyway got to see the '86 Iggy Pop bio, made for I think German tv, again just now. The one where they revisit the Stooge house and first showed a lot of the really early band footage. If I've been missing that kind of stuff on tv for a while when i had access to it I wish I'd known.

Not knowing how ribbon band cables are supposed to reconnect on the camera I just finally took apart a couple of weeks after finally getting a new screen since the old one shattered in a wind storm in 2009. Hoping to fuck that I haven't completely wrecked a camera that still took pretty good photos without a screen.

Think I may need to buy a magnifying glass and get back to this, just hope it is fixable. Like having a camera and I can't afford a new one.

Could also do with growing a 2nd set of arms/hands that I could coordinate and hide for the rest of the time. Anybody know any good radioactive siders anywhere around the west coast of ireland?

- Some people's reflexive need to respond to any good news with reasons why it's actually not that great. Fuck you! Be happy for other people! It's nicer that way, you miserable prat!

equally annoying is people who always try put a positive spin on any kind of bad news.

Specifically, I tell a colleague I've put in my notice here. He acts shocked and wants to know why, which is weird because he used to work here and quit. I tell him it's boring, the pay sucks, there are no opportunities for advancement, and there's no job security. He says all condescendingly, "And you think you're going to find those things where you're going?" Um... yes? That's why I accepted the other offer?

I'm so crabby today anyway. I think this thread is going to see a lot of me.

xp AGREED. Trying to put a positive spin on somebody else's bad news is just condescending.

he's only jealous.

"Oh yeah? How are you going to cope with being away from ALL THIS?" *motions toward file cabinets.*

That's totally it. He hates hates hates his job now and so assumes that all jobs are just as bad. Which is another IA thing - universalizing your experience all over me.

There was a smidgen of "silly girl, you don't know how the world works" in his comments, too, which UNSURPRISINGLY sent the Carl Agatha Rage Alert Level to Orange.

Some people always react that way, even denouncing what you've said, because it cuts too close. A few weeks later they're vocalizing the same thing or they magically switch jobs and act like they were in agreement with you the whole time.

some people are just miserable and don't know how to be any other way

- homemade greeting cards because I feel compelled to keep them when I would throw away store bought cards without a second thought.

ribbon cables in cameras that keep undoing when I'm trying to reassemble the thing.
Not having realised that I might need to solder a part of the camera, not that that might be the best way of attaching that bit.
& feeling lousy & fluey but thinking if I got into fixing the thing I might have a working camera. Now just have a disassembled thing that can't take pictures and a fear that screws may disappear.

& hoping that the supplies of the new Nick Cave covered Uncut with the Zappa reissue reviews in haven't all sold out around town cos the students are back. Couldn't see any left in the main newsagents in town yesterday & they had stacks on Tuesday. Normally still have it at the end of the month too. Is Cave that popular?

when i see a signpost that has become loose in the ground and instead of properly remounting it, the dpw just props it up by sticking a little wooden wedge in the hole.

Now a third dude at my gym with his own personal fan from home. Also, he was walking around in the locker room this morning naked except for still having his gym shoes on.

I really hate when people are walking around with shorts and flip-flops on yet also a jacket. If you are wearing a jacket you should also be wearing long pants. Otherwise it just looks top-heavy and weird and lazy.

Now a third dude at my gym with his own personal fan from home. Also, he was walking around in the locker room this morning naked except for still having his gym shoes on.

Bizarre.

- drivers who use the gas pedal like they're playing a pump organ!! FU! Should I say something???? Fuck!

I'm angry and queasy.

Everybody wanna be just like me.

Ha I was mentally composing an IA post yesterday which went something like:

"dear bus driver,

it is clear from your footwork that you are a highly esteemed drummer in the speed metal world, but your high-speed alternate stamping between accelerator and brake is a little less conducive to a pleasant commute home"

but then I got home and forgot about it

People who get in the inside lane at a stoplight and then turn their left blinker on when the light changes to green.

NO BLINKER - we are in the fast lane together, lead the way!
BLINKER - you are a roadblock, I will sit here behind PeePaw.

People who speed up to pass you as soon as you turn your blinker on, although this is not innocuous, nor is my anger irrational.

My dad does this old-man thing of turning on his blinker if the car in front of him turns on their blinker to signal to the drivers behind him that a car is turning.

I tell him that his brake light should do the trick, and a car attempting to pass him as he supposedly turns is going to get surprised when he just keeps moseying down the avenue. He says he's providing a public service.

my mom always forgets to turn her blinker off after she changes lanes. i'm like, you're deceiving everyone behind you!

pp's dad definitely gets the Old Man Driver award for that move. What the hell.

Yeah that's nuts!

I hate when people put their blinker on while already turning. Indicators, they're not an after thought!

If I want to cross a road and look directly at your car nosing out onto the road I want to cross, and you're not indicating, I will suddenly develop a severe limp when you subsequently decide to drive in my direction.

For some reason, my entire life, I've absolutely hated T-shirts that have a logo tiny and on the top left side, just over the heart. I will never willingly wear one in a million years.

Also, to a lesser extent, shirts that have stuff on the back, particularly text. A t-shirt should be a cool design, nice and big, on the front. Or otherwise wrapping around the entire shirt.

When Jesse and I were shopping for pants the other day, I noticed that the horse logo on Polo shirts is now like three inches tall, but still in the same place. It's very ugly.

My dad does this old-man thing of turning on his blinker if the car in front of him turns on their blinker to signal to the drivers behind him that a car is turning.

Hey!!!! I was JUST thinking about this behavior not even 5 minutes ago! When I got my license at 16, I was living in Michigan, where the driving test asks if it is legal to go around a car making a left turn by passing them on the shoulder on the right (it is not), and how everyone did it anyway. But then when my family moved to NC, at first my dad had many near-misses and fits of road rage because while he was trying to going around a stopped car w/ its left blinker on, they suddenly went straight, since their signals meant "Hey, look, someone in front of me is turning left!"

So tonight I was remembering that and wondering if anyone else had ever noticed that phenomenon, which is ubiquitous in North Carolina. I thought how if I asked, people would think I was imagining it, but that I knew for sure that it was a thing, and how it was just me and my memory against the world, and then PPlains, you rescued me from my isolation! Thank you, Pleasant Plains..... thank you.

Well, I guess my dad shared that experience, but he's dead, so he couldn't validate the memory. So it's just you and me, PP.

I've never seen the left blinker/car not turn thing.

Just me, Je55 and my dad.

Dad does it a lot more on the right lane in the city. Usually there's a turn lane for the left-leaning, but I wouldn't doubt he'd do it there too.

I've seen it a few times too. Hate it.

That's some counterintuitive shit.

It's up there with waving someone out of turn at a four-way stop, that's for sure.

ha, yeah

I was at a busy 4-way-stop yesterday where everybody did exactly what they were supposed to do. It made me irrationally happy.

IA PIGEON EDITION:

1. Dumb tourist kids feeding pigeons on the plaza in front of my building so that I had to walk through a massive flock of pecking pigeons to get to the train.
2. Kids on the corner doing whatever it is that kids these days do, and one of them drops a french fry or something, so allasudden PIGEONS ATTACK, which nbd, but then this woman walking in front of me FREAKS OUT and starts squeaking about "oh my god! no! pigeons!" and trying to dodge them, and the pigeons flap out of her way and then go back from the fry, so she just freezes in the middle of the sidewalk until her friend grabs her and pulls her forward at which point the woman breathlessly describes how the pigeons just attacked her. YOU ARE IN A CITY. PIGEONS. GET OVER IT. All this while I'm trying to get past the damn kids, the fry-crazed pigeons, and this dingaling so I can walk down the street.
3. The pigeons at my work train station, who basically own that damn platform, and will just flap right at your head if you happen to be between where the pigeon is and where it wants to go, which even though I live in a city and come on, pigeons, get over it, is still a little disconcerting.

This is why a water bottle with a raver spout, set to 'stun', can be so useful.

that reminds me - while we were camping we swam in the lake, and all these idiots on the shore were throwing out food for the ducks who would then come up on the shore and eat and THEN the stupid tourists would shoo them away! ragh

I was camping near a lake at the end of July and we heard a bunch of canadian geese down near the beach. We went down for a morning swim probably an hour later and the geese had shat all over the beach. The entire waterfront. Fuck canadian geese.

geese are assholes, I hate them

LOOOOOOOOOOOL back in the days when Canada geese were endangered, my uncle (hunter/conservationist cop) raised 14 goslings each spring. This lasted long enough that hundreds of birds adopted his acre on Minnehaha Creek as part of their migratory pattern. My uncle worked with MNDNR, who tagged/fitted transmitters to most of the birds for tracking purposes, so spring was something we defined as '500 geese arrive, shit from shore to door, fly off' but a) in mitigation, goslings are cool and b) my uncle happily fed all the waterfowl/game birds who wanted seed corn from a barrel kept in the garage. Some of the other species were endangered, and there was a Great Blue heron in the marsh nearby.

Still, goose shit - yeuccccch.

I park underneath an interstate off-ramp populated by pigeons. I'm probably the only dude in my neighborhood who actually uses the foam brush at the car wash.

it's like a dog-sized shit