1. Misuse of the word irony. It all started with one song. I blame her:

In case you’re twelve years old, that’s a screenshot from the Alanis Morrissette video for her song called Ironic, where she lists off a bunch of circumstances that aren’t actually ironic at all. Rain on your wedding day and a death row pardon two minutes too late may be things that suck, but they are not ironic.

Irony is the opposite of what’s expected. Rain isn’t really contrary to what one could expect from a day on the planet earth, wedding or not. Dear Alanis and everyone else who insists on not knowing what irony is, this is ironic:

There are a billion options in the English language. If you aren’t entirely sure what a word means, don’t use it. Or you could, you know, look it up:

2. Pointless arguments. Humans like opinions, particularly our own. Sometimes, we like other people’s opinions, but only if they coincide with ours.

Yes, your crayon drawing of Justin Bieber is incredibly lifelike and should be in an art gallery. No, your size XXXL ass doesn’t look fat in those jean shorts.

Awesome! That’s what I thought.

Opinions are like assholes; everyone’s got one and no one wants to hear yours. I am really deep down joyful that you have an opinion because it means we live in a free country. I have one, too. When our opinions don’t coincide, let’s leave it at that, shall we? Because there ain’t no way you’re ever going to convince me that Justin Bieber is cool and I’m not going to convince you that he’s about as musically talented as a sack full of angry cats. Let’s just agree to disagree.

3. Justin Bieber. He’s about as musically talented as a sack full of angry cats and damned if he don’t look like a total moron high out of his mind on catnip. At least he’s not flipping his hair out his face in this picture:

Have you ever really listened to a Justin Bieber song?  “My first love broke my heart for the first time and I was like baby, baby, baby, oh, like, baby, baby, baby, no” are actual lyrics to this song. I’m not joshing you.

Your first love broke your heart for the first time. Thanks for clearing that up, because I might have thought your first love broke your heart for the 9.469 × 10² time. Being “like baby, baby, baby, oh, like, baby, baby, baby, no” is a perfectly rational response. That’s some amazing songwriting. Such clarity…

Man, do I feel old now. Thanks a lot, Biebs. I hope your voice drops soon.

4. The inevitable rap interlude. I’m really not sure who started this trend of interrupting a crooner song with an R&B/Rap interlude, but I wish they never had. I think it might have been Blondie actually.

Mmm drugs are fun:

Anyway, in the Biebalicious Baby song mentioned in Hate Item Number Three above, we have Biebs singing “And I was all like oooh” for two minutes and then comes Ludacris with some babbling nonsense about his first love at 13 years old and Starbucks:

And I was like what the hell does Ludacris have to do with I was like oooh? OOOOOOOOOOH. I said, oooooooh, dammit.

5. I hate when people mispronounce common words. It puts me in an awkward position. I then have to decide if I’m going to be a total superior doosh and correct them, or if I just let them go through life with metaphorical milk on their upper lip and metaphorical spinach stuck in their metaphorical teeth. That’s a lot of metaphorical. I hate when people use two metaphors in the same sentence.

Anyway, mispronunciation. I am terrible at pronouncing French–my tongue just doesn’t move that way–but I am painfully aware of my bad French. While I use common French phrases when I write, I rarely say them aloud, because I know it will come out sounding like I just had a stroke.

Don’t sound like you just had a stroke. If you are unsure how to pronounce something, there is the internet. I know those diacritics (the squiggly things next to the word “pronunciation” below) can be confusing, but nowadays, most online dictionaries have a little pronunciation button you can click to hear how something is said.

YouTube is helpful, too. For example, here is the proper way to pronounce Justin Bieber:

You’ve all been saying it wrong. Haha!

6. 3XT3M3 W3ATHER!!!!1! It’s very windy in Los Angeles today. And by very windy, I mean Chicago WINDY. There is a high wind advisory at the moment.

60 mile per hour gusts. It’s so windy that we just lost power at work for approximately 30 seconds. I lost about two sentences of this post. I don’t remember what they said, but they might have been the best two sentences I’ve ever written. I lost them because of wind. Wind!

I moved to the west coast of the United States to avoid extreme weather. I’m a temperate sort of girl. Los Angeles doesn’t usually let me down with its lovely not extremeness, but every once in a while, we have extreme wind, extreme heat or extreme cold. Right now, we have extreme cold and wind. Screw you, extreme. I want average back.

7. Computers and how they never seem to work properly. When we got our power back, I turned my computer on. I opened Microsoft Word and found that it decided to stay in some no man’s land of functionality. It wouldn’t open; it wouldn’t close. This window was all I saw.

No matter what I clicked on, this window stayed front and center on my screen. I tried hitting open. I tried hitting close. I tried force quitting it, but it said it was working fine. It lied. I force quit it anyway and it stubbornly stayed put. I force quit again and it did not go away. Finally after clicking force quit about thirty times, it actually force quit. Why do we even have a force quit option if it’s not going to force quit anything? Force quit is lies.

I’m tired of your crappy nonfunctional software. I’m looking at you, Adobe. You’ve had over twenty years to come up with a version of Photoshop that doesn’t crash every five seconds and you still haven’t managed it. Even the halfwit Microsoft Word has an Autosave function, but not you. You’re too good to save anything. My favorite crash is when you crash while I’m trying to save. Freezing while saving is so goddamn productive. (<irony.)

Either the Photoshop team is, and always has been, grossly incompetent or Photoshop is a longer running joke on society than Scientology.

8. I hate when “Stupid American” applies to me. I went to a friend’s Hanukkah party last night even though Hanukkah is over. She makes a mighty fine Matzoh ball soup. A girl from France whom I have known many years was there. I have no damn clue what she’s saying, like, ever. I understand about 1/3 of the things that are coming out of her mouth. Even though, by all accounts, she speaks English fluently, she has a very thick French accent and I, as a stupid American, can’t understand it. Most of the time, when I see her, she’ll say something that should be a recognizable French phrase like “Mm, what delicious hors d’oeuvres,” and my brain will hear this:

Stupid American.

9. Los Angeles industry parties. The post-Hanukkah Hanukkah party I attended last night was populated mostly by people “in the industry.” I hate industry parties. You’ll get to small talking to someone around the cheese dip about cheese dip or 3XT3M3 W3ATHER!!!!1!, then the inevitable “what do you do?” question happens. However, at an “industry party,” it’s never asked as such. Instead, you will be asked, “Are you in the industry?” Apparently, in Los Angeles, there is no other industry besides the film industry. When you say “no,” this is what happens to the conversation:

The conversation ball pops under your non-industry dead weight and skitters out of frame leaving you flat on your face. That’s what “industry” parties are like. Because I enjoy messing with industry people, sometimes I ask, “which industry?” It’s usually met with a disapproving cluck. If you attend an industry party, I suggest that you take lots of booze and come up with an excuse to leave early.

10. Drunk people. To survive a post-Hanukkah Hanukkah party when you’re not in the industry, you’re going to need booze and lots of it. If done properly, the booze will help inoculate against the conversation ball popping. However, it’s a very fine line between not enough and too much booze. It’s kind of like trying to get the perfect temperature in the shower.

Too little booze and you’ll stab someone. Too much booze is an altogether different problem that is equally likely to land you in prison as making with the sober stabby-stabby.

You see, drunk people are loud and their inhibitions are gone. They tend to talk and repeat themselves a lot. They think everything they say and do is interesting to everyone and they cannot see the look of boredom/murder in their audience’s eyes. Alcohol makes you annoying to be around unless you are around other drunk people.

At a party, especially one around this time of year, it’s a safe bet that there are other drunk people there. Go hang out with them. Do not bother the sober people. Do not get stabbed because you’re drunk. Sober people are sober, which means they can actually handle a knife, unlike you who can’t even walk two paces without falling over like Santa.

Ho Ho Ho.

More Things I Hate.