The Mighty Rantasaurus

This is my disgruntled face

So I'm not really sure what happened to Tom.  I think the Internet ate him.  Hopefully, he'll spring back from the dead and tell us about his pet peeves.  In the meantime, it's already Saturday (which comes after Friday, Friday...), so I guess I'll go ahead and tell you guys about the things that irk me. 



Things That Annoy The @#$% Out Of The Yank (in no particular order):

-  When you offer to do someone a favor and then they get all demanding.  The prime example of this is the time I let a guy use my printer/copier one time.  He kept coming by to use the printer, which was okay except he was starting to use all of my ink and my paper with no intention of reimbursing me.  One morning, he woke me up at 9am to copy a whole stack of documents.  "I didn't want to go to Kinkos," he said.  If you expect me to be nice to you, you better not knock on my door before 11.  Noon to be safe. 

-  People who naturally assume that my truck exists for hauling around their crap.  I don't mind helping friends move, but when people that never talk to me are only nice to me when they need to pick up a couch, it gets a little irritating. 

-  People who don't understand my relationship with cell phones.  My stance on cell phones is simple:  If I am hanging out with someone, driving, dancing, playing music, or am just not in the mood to talk, I will not answer my phone.  This does not mean I don't like you.  This just means you should leave a message and I will call you back on my own time line.  It might not be in fifteen minutes.  It might not even be that same day.  Do not call me multiple times and leave me multiple messages unless it's really important.  This will just make me put my phone in my wall safe (next to my diamond necklaces and cocaine, naturally) and go hide in a tea shop.

-  Serious conversations/arguments over text messaging.  I have gotten sucked into way too many of these over the years and they are bad news every time.  Most arguments I've had over text messaging turn out to be miscommunications anyway because words can be interpreted a million different ways when there is no body language or vocal inflections to go with them. 

-  People that answer their cell phones in the middle of a face-to-face conversation.   Unless it's your mother or an emergency, you better boot that call over to your voicemail and keep talking to me.  As you can see, I have a lot of gripes about cell phone etiquette (or lack thereof). 


-  Vegans.  Okay, I don't care if you choose not to eat meat, cheese, and everything else that's interesting.  If you want to confine yourself to a life of eating creepy-looking meat substitutes, go for it.  What annoys me is the whole attitude that tends to go along with a vegan diet.  I accidentally found myself at a vegan potluck one time and was amazed at how annoying the whole experience was.  Not only did everyone have to go around and list off the ingredients in the food they brought (just in case somebody was allergic), but none of the food was even really recognizable.  And people were acting like eating polenta cakes drizzled in the essence of bean curd made them more intelligent than the rest of the world.  Newsflash:  Eating tofudles (noodles make out of tofu) does not make you superior, it just makes you weird. 

-  When I wake up in the morning and discover I'm out of coffee creamer.  I don't let this happen very often and I've definitely gotten better at handling it, but there's nothing worse than pouring coffee into your cup and thinking "Crap...I was supposed to go to the store yesterday..."  It happened this morning.  Luckily, there's a grocery store nearby.

-  Conversations with people I haven't seen in awhile in which I feel like I have to justify my "irresponsible" lifestyle.  Most of my friends from college now have jobs, practical life plans, significant others, etc.  It's gotten to the point where I avoid a lot of my old college friends because I can't deal with the raised eyebrows when I talk about my bohemian adventures.  I feel like I'm quickly becoming "the weird friend" or "the comic relief" for a lot of people and that doesn't make me feel that great. 

-  The song "Wonderwall" by Oasis.  Everybody has that song that grates on them and they can't even really explain why.  That song for me is "Wonderwall."  I don't really have a problem with the rest of the Oasis catalog, but that song just doesn't work for me.  Plus I have a lame boy-related memory attached to it.  So that doesn't help.


-  The way Facebook makes it impossible to just naturally lose track of people.  Facebook can be a great communication tool, but sometimes I'm nostalgic for the days where you could just meet somebody, enjoy their presence for a short period of time, and naturally part ways without having to subscribe to a lifetime of reading their status updates. 

-  Fabreeze.  It generally does not help a smelly situation.  It usually just makes it worse.  Example:  The staircase outside of Tweaked Out Elvis Costello's room.  It smells always smells like Fabreeze and drugs.  So, so gross. 


-  The fact that I can never make a grilled cheese sandwich without burning the bread before the cheese melts.  Then I eat it anyway and tell myself that a carcinogenic meal is good every once in a while.  And since I share a kitchen with a million people, someone is always around to witness said burning of the bread.  Dammit. 

Okay, ranting about pet peeves is fun, but I should probably stop before I become too incredibly bitchy. 

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!  And Tom - you better not be dead.