start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

sat down with half an hour to finish off the last 20 pages of the book i was reading this morning. hadn't figured on the last dozen pages being 'thank you' from the author. left high and dry after 10 minutes.

worse imo: 300 page book ends on page 280 on a cliffhanger, next 20 pages are a "preview" of the next book and an assortment of adverts for other books

(I read some crap-to-mediocre SF book which did this; the second half of the book I was limping along going "well I've got this far, I may as well finish it to see what happens" but noooo)

(I don't remember what the book was but it turned out to have been published on the same industrial estate I work on; they're lucky I was reading it as a Christmas holiday take-on-family-visits book or I might have been tempted to drop in)

Aaggghh fuck you kindle books "27 mins left in book" "87%" ... "read on for a preview of his next book!"
I want to know when i'm near the end goddammit

― kinder, Thursday, July 23, 2015 10:09 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes! though the cliffhanger "read the next two not-yet-published books to find out what really happens!" last sentence was an extra kick in the should've-stopped-reading-on-page-30 pants

especially when I have so many other books lying around which I really did stop reading on page 30 for no particular reason

attention spans are difficult

i will know better for next time

i usually read public domain stuff which i reformat myself - no surprises. actually, part of the reason i started reformatting things before reading them was the 8 pages of legal bumpf at the end of gutenberg texts (and their shitty tocs and cover pages)

my kobo seems to have stopped telling me percentages when asleep. it still puts the crappy banner saying 'sleeping' over the cover, but now it contains no useful information.

people who insist on instantly stopping dead in their tracks when they're right in front of you at a theme park

being at a theme park

theme parks

When it's science fiction, assume it's a trilogy. I swear they're not even publishing stand-alone books anymore unless you're, like, Neal Stephenson.

Yeah that shit has totally ruined the pleasure of picking up a random SF book at a thrift store or used book shop. I have to track down two more volumes? No thanks

mysteries are the same way now too, loads of detective series of every stripe

Mystery series I don't mind 'cause they're usually stand-alone enough that you don't need to read them in chronological order. I've been dipping into John Sandford's Prey books for a year or so now, and there are like two dozen of those, and/but the only real way to tell where each one falls in the series is that occasionally he'll drop in a mention of something that happened in a previous book, or he'll tell you how old a given character is at that point. But the stories themselves are always single-serving.

SF novels of the young adult variety, are all trilogies now cos these authors want their stories to get picked up as a movie franchise. now that crap like Divergent and Maze Runner are also getting multi-film deals like Hunger Games.

To the extent that this "omg Starbucks cups are only red and green this season and do not feature intensely religious iconography like snowflakes and reindeer, it is another assault on Christianity!!!" thing is a legitimate outcry, it makes me want to burn the earth down to its molten core.

When you do, write three books about it.

irrational, and more a bit irritated than angry, but:
One of my NCT (new mum group) friends was telling someone about my house while I was there, and said 'ooh, you invited us over and said you weren't sure you'd have enough room but it's massive compared to ours!' I'm lucky enough to have a fairly spacious living area and really feel conscious of this as most of my friends are in small apartments, so I never ever would have said this - other mums said it a lot, what I had said was 'there's plenty of room at ours, you're welcome to come when we have sofas', which we didn't have for a while after building work, and then we did get some and everyone came over. I'm a bit annoyed that she thought I was so blasé about it when I've always been conscious of it being roomy enough.
eh, it doesn't matter.

This new thing that websites do where a screen-filling popup emerges when you're on the brink of leaving, vomiting 6-12 additional links at you in a desperate "Don't leave! Look at this, and this, and this!" move, drives me BERSERK.

Ha, our pub family recently put these on our sites too. We were all impressed that they don't pop up until your cursor starts flying northwest back to the top.

They do suck, but at least you don't have to click OK like the real pop-ups.

the google tensorflow logo. the top of the F isn't in the same plane as the crossbar of the F.

To the extent that this "omg Starbucks cups are only red and green this season and do not feature intensely religious iconography like snowflakes and reindeer, it is another assault on Christianity!!!" thing is a legitimate outcry

Well it isnt really, as it transpires.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/10/1448007/-Simply-Red-The-Con-Man-Behind-the-Rightwing-s-Starbucks-Cup-Freak-Out

People who live and work in the city, get married, move out of the city to the biggest McMansion they can afford, then complain about their work commute. CAUSE AND EFFECT, MOTHERFUCKER.

this was probably already covered but...

when a web page is loading (slowly) and you try to click on a link, but then new content loads that causes your link to shift and you click on something else instead

the absolute worst. think i mentioned this sometime in recent years.

nothing worse than this has ever happened to anyone.

I'm clearly suffering from Early Onset Grumpiness. I find myself more and more frequently IA about all kinds of things. I think my patience for nonsense in general has basically bottomed out.

me too, I got IA in Boots today (big drugstore chain) at the amount of 'gift' bath & body stuff. aisles of it. and I say this as someone who quite likes beauty products. I just think the world would be better if only the best 10% of them existed.

people who sit at the goddamn vending machine poring over every product as if they're at a Michelin star restaurant poring over world-class dinner options and not merely deciding if they want their M&Ms with or without fucking peanuts

"Your estimated delivery date is:
Sunday, November 15, 2015"

not going to happen, because that is obviously a work address and the office is closed at the weekend. LIKE IT WAS THE PREVIOUS 3 TIMES.

it's a complete waste of their time but i can't see a way of pointing this out to them.

Online grocery delivery substituted 2 items due to them being out of stock. But subbing them with COMLPETELY DIFFERENT THINGS is not how its meant to work, ffs. I ordered celery salt. you gimme another brand, or you dont gimme it. I dont want or need garlic salt, wtf even is that. Likewise, thanku for subbing my requested hard/high proteien flour with THE EXACT OPPOSITE (00 cake flour which I already had).

Oh and no thanks also for not even sending the bag of rice, which you had advertised as a big ticket sale item, but were completely out of. Thanks for telling me.

F U ColesOnline :(

When people justify really bad, implausible writing in biopics/historical fiction with "artistic license" or "reality doesn't always make good fiction."

"Abraham Lincoln's childhood reads better if his parents were both run over by a train engineered by Gavin Booth"

I get up to get off at a bus stop that the bell has been rung for. Some woman in too tall heels sits back down after realising this isn't her stop but sticks her foot right across the walkway, so it's not easy to get past while the bus is moving. Another large woman starts telling the bus driver she doesn't want to get off at the stop, blocking the walkway past the driver while she does so so the bus takes off again without stopping long enough at a stop that several people normally get off at.
& it's pissing down with the rain one might probably expect at this time of year.

But at least I'm not in a European capital city so I guess I'm otherwise safeish.

& my washing machine has decided to pack up right at the time that the building I'm living in is being sold. So really hope I'm going to get another one. Otherwise would be sticking my soaking clothing into wash.

seriously: fuck you, autocorrect on my phone. you think I typed 'shane' and of all the alternative suggestions you don't include 'shame'. THE M IS RIGHT NEXT TO THE N

lol. i hate when my phone suddenly autocorrects every word into beginning with a capital letter. it's arbitrary when it decides to do this

I decided to begin my 35th life anniversary by getting drunk as hell and going out of town without my anxiety meds. have spent most of the day feeling like I'm in a shitty Terry Gilliam flick

(irrationally angry at MYSELF)

the term "prayer warriors" on FB makes my vein pop out. as if everybody praying simultaneously = like using some kind of spiritual proton pack that gets the person extra help.

ya think maybe God lets so many people die because you're annoying the shit out of him with everyone praying for the same person at once? pretty sure if he were to exist, he'd only need to be rung once.

callous thing for me to say obv cos it makes people feel better but years of dogma have made me bitter - esp when in the aftermath, when the person being prayed for dies, they always pull a "well the Lord must have needed another angel" bullshit.

(I know I know, makes people feel less helpless....that's why this one's an irrational anger)

maybe they just want a way to become a warrior wo having to do anything.

sometimes I squint really hard and keep hoping one day lasers come out so I can appreciate that

this is prob rational anger, but are all landlords mildly addicted to trying to subjugate people?

i mostly get on fine with mine but he has real form for berating females - he can be aggressive with me also but i've learned long ago just to create an illusion of him "winning" so that he fucks off for the next nine months.

however i recently told him there's some mould in our newly redecorated bathroom - the roof is a little yellow - there's a long history of this in there. i mentioned that the shower had some mould in it which i removed with industrial mould remover and he then started asking about the cleaner, when she comes in, how good a job she does etc, then asked when she is coming in next as he wants to "have a word".

he kept pressing on this until i eventually had to just say that i paid her and he could raise any issue he had with me - he is like a "normal" family man type with plenty of money, or that's how he'd be seen in the world, but i find this actually reprehensible, the level of effort he's putting in to try and have some time alone with the woman who cleans my house, so he can shout at her presumably or make her feel like shit.

it is incredibly hard not to just unload on him and tell him what a piece of shit he is - treat him with his own medicine, but since i want to keep living there it's not an option.

has aer lingus just totally got rid of its old navigable interface which was user friendly and replaced it with something thta's counter intuitive?
Used to be a set up on the first page that you could enter dates, locatons etc into and now it has a set up that doesn't show you options so takes you to pages you don't need to go to

the term "prayer warriors" on FB makes my vein pop out. as if everybody praying simultaneously = like using some kind of spiritual proton pack that gets the person extra help.

ya think maybe God lets so many people die because you're annoying the shit out of him with everyone praying for the same person at once? pretty sure if he were to exist, he'd only need to be rung once.

Reminds of a recent tweet by one of the "weird Twitter" folks to the effect of, "Guys, please stop praying for my grandpa. He's broken out of his hospital bed and bullets can't stop him now."

JUst wondering if travel sites are more likely to be accessed from smart phones than computer terminals these days. So what I was exepriencing with that air site earlier might have been swapping over to something that was designed for smart phone use and was therefore less good on a computer terminal.

The new Amazon (UK) invoices/checkout summaries. Either they got more confusing or I got stupider.

Item Subtotal: (not the sum of the listed item prices)
Postage & Packing: (hey wait I thought I clicked free shipping but - oh there it is:)
Free Shipping: -(a different amount to the p&p price)

Random unnamed discount: (I have no idea what this was for. maybe it's good! I like discounts! and the total did seem a bit expensive! oh shit, did I accidentally sign up for something?)
Total before VAT: (not an obvious combination of any of the preceding numbers)
VAT: (wait I have to pay VAT on top of the prices now oh what, also VAT is 20% and this isn't 20% of anything)
Total: (admittedly the sum of the two previous lines, but by now I have no idea whether I'm paying what I expected)

Yes!! I'm sure I keep adding stuff with free shipping then there's a shipping charge and I just get confused and do something else

this is prob rational anger, but are all landlords mildly addicted to trying to subjugate people?

I imagine that there have to be landlords who are decent people. Still awaiting empirical evidence but I live in hope.

Sweartogod our landlord is a really nice guy. He's also desperately trying to see our building and get out of the landlording business. Make of that what you will.

Buy the building, kick everyone else out, and start the ilx commune!

i have my first nice landlord ever :)

asked him for some spare keys recently and he'd popped them through the letterbox by the time I got home from work, no charge.

otoh the two landlords before that were satan