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

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

On radio/tv: people who respond to "Thank you" at the end of an interview with "Thank you" in return.

yeah we have geese wandering the parking lot at work pretty often, goddamn they are turd machines

I have to say, every since I adopted my cockatiel, I love the shit* out of pigeons. They have personality just like my little guy! I don't touch or feed them, but I admire them. They make me smile. Thankfully the area of the city I work and live in is not nearly as pigeonful as Carl's though!

*really bad choice of words, but also kind of funny. You know what I mean.

I'm not a huge fan of birds in general. My inlaws have a pet eclectus parrot, and while it's beautiful to look at, I cannot stand having it anywhere near me. Something about their eyes, I'm just afraid they're going to go nuts and peck me to death

I don't care for birds as pets (too loud and sharp) but I really don't mind pigeons. I like observing all the different pigeon colors and patterns and pretending I am learning about Mendelian genetics. It's a little tiresome to have to dodge them on the train platform and I would prefer people didn't feed them because then they flock and poop everywhere, but otherwise they are fine.

I think I deleted the picture but in the winter, the pigeons at my work train station huddle under the heated shelter, all puffed up in the cold, to the exclusion of humans, which I find kind of hilarious. I wasn't kidding when I said that pigeons owned this train station.

I meant to say that I had a picture of the birds doing that but I deleted it.

xp The parrot is probably too big. Rigby's just right! You come to Toronto and kiss the top of his little head, you'll love him. His beak is not large enough to do any major damage. ;) I would probably be afraid to interact with a parrot myself, having no experience with them..

One thing I have to say (re Carl's 'too loud')! My bird used to be loud and obnoxious all the time but we 'put him to bed' by covering his cage around 8pm and husband uncovers him around 10am and his whole personality has become so much more pleasant and lovely. So if you know any bird owners with shrieky pets that MIGHT help :) Now that won't stop him from happy whistles but he's usually so beautiful and melodic that we don't mind.

Maybe I have told this story, but when we first moved to Chicago, Jeff, Jesse, and I lived in an apartment together Jesse's African Gray who would do this little talking routine that was basically Jesse answering his phone, talking, and then hanging up ("Hello? Hey." *mumbling that sounds like someone's voice heard from another room* "Okay, bye." *CLICK* (as in he would make the sound of a clamshell phone shutting), and all of this in Jesse's voice). One night Jesse and Jeff were out and I was home alone studying, and the bird's cage was covered so we were all quiet and peaceful UNTIL I walked by his cage to go into the kitchen for some water and the bird heard me and went, "HELLO? HEY" in Jesse's voice and I nearly pooped my pants.

it's not the size -- I've had to petsit canaries, and I had a friend who had a dove...it's their eyes. and they smell sort of weird. I dunno.

I like to look at birds and read about them. Do not like pet birds. I do not like being in small spaces with birds. A pigeon once flew into my head so those suckers can fuck off.

Also, one time that bird climb down off Jesse's shoulder, waddled across the floor and bit my toe for no good goddamn reason.

xp ahhhhh! Scary creepy bird! I suppose I am lucky then because the best I have achieved is my bird tweeting the appropriate syllables/cadences when I say 'Hello Rigby,' 'I love you,' 'Pretty bird,' and 'Goodnight Rigby!'

Birds do smell. I clean all the fucking time to keep that at bay. A bird and a dog in my apartment, two smokers (but outdoors) - then my sister's apartment has the two rats, two cats and a bunny. :P

hahaha Rigby recently discovered my toenails and started biting them.. I just kicked him (softly) :P

I didn't love Jesse's bird, but he wasn't that bad. The noises he made were at least mostly amusing and not normally shrill. Long ago, I lived with a cockatiel named Bob who was a jerrrrrrrrrrrk and shrieked if you left him alone in a room.

I lived with a bunch of roommates years ago and one of them said we'd take care of a stupid parrot and it was loud and messy and stinky and got its food everywhere and then we got so many mice. I hated that bird.

xp ugh, yeah. That was definitely a problem we used to have - still do, but less. He gets timeouts (locked in covered cage) whenever he's bad like that. Or pre-emptively when we have Saturday morning brunch because he REALLY wants to eat our eggs 0_o

loool mice, I never considered that might happen. Luckily our dog is a part-time vacuum cleaner; they have a symbiotic relationship.

Whoa your bird eats eggs...

yeah, it's fucked right? He just picks at them, never really -eats- eats them, but he still won't leave them alone. Not sure if cannibal or completely heartbroken anew each weekend.

A few weeks after we got him, he'd finally got the hang of navigating our apartment and flew and landed directly on the yolk of one of my husband's fried eggs. He was so sad as he scraped it into the compost...

My inlaws' electus (female) went into the most bizarre freakout a few years ago and became this crazy hermit-bird in her own weird little nest in the back of the cage and would come out and scream and was pulling out her feathers and we all thought she was having some kind of nervouse breakdown and eventually she laid an egg! it was so weird.

- restaurants that are all cool and trendy by being located in industrial areas such as across the street from a garbage truck lot but don't open until 6 pm.
- dining companions that pick trendy restaurants for dinner and then call to say they will be 15 minutes late.
- standing in front of trendy restaurants waiting for late dining companions with the smell of a garbage truck lot wafting around you.

gross

tell the dining companion to wait for 15 minutes before joining you at the table, so you can make them endure the smell too

This makes me feel like a very old person. Why can't people be on time? Who locates a restaurant across from a parking lot full of garbage trucks??? Is this supposed to be hip? Edgy? Why can't I wait inside where it doesn't reek of garbage?

finding trendy-stuff-in-desolate-industrial-locations more transparent and uninteresting is I guess a good thing about my 30s.

ALSO ironically I did not pee before I left work because our bathroom is especially rank with the smell of poop and BO today and I thought oh I'll just wait an pee at the restaurant! NO! I will instead stand outside in the garbage smell, having to pee.

overheard by a coworker "Yeah...but you can't cook at home for under $20 for two people."

RAGE

This might be true if you're starting from square one - no oils, salt, pepper, seasonings, whatever. But otherwise that's kind of insane.

I bought mozzarella and prosciutto and bread the other day to go with the abundance of tomatoes and basil that I had in the backyard and because I was really tired and didn't want to cook, and I felt kind of bad because I spent like $15 on all this stuff and only got four meals out of it (two dinners, two sandwiches for lunch the next day).

The guy who said it is kind of a moron, to be fair

IA: House at the End of the Street marketing with the hashtag HATES. the movie is not called House at the End Street. you can't cut out one preposition and one "the" and then leave another preposition and the other "the". it's HATEOTS or HES. dicks.

she hateots me

zachlyon, I like you. You're a good egg.

Wooo y'all the rest of dinner was pretty IA, too, but I did eventually get out of the garbage smell and in to the restaurant to pee. My dining companion was 30 minutes late!

LOL I wondered if I had posted about this particular person before and indeed I have:

Irrational Anger, how do I end up friends with these people edition:

- It's fine to be The Friend Who Is Always Late, and it's fine to be The Friend Who Won't Use a Mobile Device, but it is not okay to always be late and refuse to use a cell phone so you can text me and let me know your ETA.

― Polly biscuit face (carl agatha), Tuesday, May 8, 2012 4:36 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She started using a cell phone so she did call me to tell me she would be late. Not 30 minutes late, nor did she revise her ETA when it became clear that she had underestimated her arrival time, but we're making progress.

It's not fine to be the friend that is always late.

I used to have a friend who was always late. I started telling him the wrong time for things - if an event was at two, I told him it was at one. He'd get there at 2:15 or so.

The thing is, the friend almost always chooses the time and place!

Oh, well in that case it's your fault for showing up at the agreed time instead of half an hour late. (I'm only half joking. If someone you know is always late invites you to meet them somewhere, show up late yourself. What's the worst that can happen? It'll either be the one time they get there on time and they'll get pissy with you, at which point you can confront them with their own hideous track record re such things, or you'll both show up at the same time and everybody's happy.)

I am the friend that's always late but I normally make more of an effort to get there on time if I know I'm meeting someone who's going to be on their own if I don't turn up on time. Also I do have a mobile phone :)