1.Fireworks. All fireworks are illegal in California, but my neighbors shoot them off anyway starting at the end of May with Memorial Day weekend. Happy Tuesday… BOOM! My poor dog is terrified of fireworks. This makes the 4th of July and the surrounding weeks miserable for both of us. This past Saturday, someone set one off hours before it was even dark. Dude, what is the point of shooting off fireworks during the day? Please explain. For that matter, what is the point of fireworks at all?
2.People who walk down the street looking only at their phones, particularly if that person is also walking a dog. I never take my phone with me when I walk my dog. This is partly because I do some of my best thinking on walks. Many posts on this blog have been conceived while walking my dog. The other reason I don’t take my phone is that my dog has leash aggression. I need to constantly do reconnaissance of the surrounding areas looking for trouble. People who look at their phones while walking do not pay attention to their surroundings. Last night, I was waiting for a guy with a dog to cross the street and get out of my dog’s line of sight. It took him forever because he was looking at his phone and nothing else. He didn’t even see me and my dog waiting for his slow ass. Rude.
3.Birthday messages. I recently had another one. Getting a bunch of “Happy Birthday” messages from people I don’t really hear from any other time that I have to stop what I’m doing and answer is not my idea of a good time. I particularly hate the messages from businesses like my dentist or giant consumer chains. Yeah, as if Target really cares about my birthday. How did they get that information anyway?
4.Cars that are loud on purpose. There’s a stupid late model electric blue coupe on my street where the standard muffler has been swapped with a muffler intended to increase the sound. Why? I can hear this car come and go from inside my apartment which is set back from the street at least 100 feet. Mufflers are supposed to make cars quieter, not louder. It’s right there in the name. The guy who drives that car (yes, it’s a guy) will never be a ninja. He rolls with disadvantage on all stealth checks.
5.Cars that take modifications to the extreme. I own a Jeep Wrangler, which is the most customizable car in the world. You can swap wheel and tire sizes, bumpers, suspension, tops, doors, fenders, mirrors–name any part and there’s at least one aftermarket manufacturer who can mod it on a Wrangler. I myself have modded my Jeep a bit. I have put side steps on, swapped the ugly silver wheels it came with for black ones, added an aftermarket soft top, and some other things like a new antenna, seat covers, and cargo netting to keep the dogs inside. Eventually, I’d like to replace the plastic bumpers and fenders too. Those are all functional modifications (alright, I swapped the wheels purely for aesthetics). I’m talking about the people who spend thousands of dollars on mods that make the original vehicle barely recognizable, and usually, not as functional. Like, what the hell is this thing?
6.Airplanes. I don’t hate flying per se, but I do hate airplanes. I have flown first class twice, but that was only because I got bumped up as they oversold my flight. The designers of aircraft are tasked with fitting as many humans in a tube as possible. I assume that they take the average human height (5′ 6″ [171 cm] for men, 5′ 2″ [158 cm] for women) and divide the tube by that. At 5′ 9″ (175 cm), I’m above average height for either gender, but even at that, I’m not exceptionally tall. Still, the last time I flew, my knees were jammed against the seat in front of me for over 4 hours. And don’t even get me started on the terrible excuse for cushioning they used on the seats. I know they’re trying to make flying as cost effective as possible, but really, they should add at least 6 to 8 inches to their calculations all around.
7.Mental blocks on specific words or phrases. When my sister and I flew east in June, we flew Spirit Airlines there and back. My sister has a mental block on Spirit, and the entire time, she called it Sprint. I kept repeating SPIR-IT to no avail. As for me, I have always had a mental block on tornado watch versus warning. I know one means the conditions are right for a tornado while the other means a tornado has been sighted, but I can never remember which is which. I grew up in the Midwest where we had a lot of tornado watches/warnings. You’d think I’d know which is which by now.
8.Targeted ads that follow you around. Speaking of flying, when I was looking for a flight, I went to a lot of different websites looking for the cheapest flight available. Even now, a month later, I still get targeted ads that follow me around the internet offering me cheap flights. Too late, fuckers. I’ve already been there, done that.
9.Getting yelled at by the dentist. Yes, I know that my teeth are a mess. That’s precisely why I’m wearing a bib in a reclining chair, waiting for you to do something about it. My teeth are a mess. Every year, I make as many appointments as my dental insurance pays for, then I wait until my benefits roll over and start the process again. Every time I see my dentist with fresh benefits, she yells at me saying that I never let her get any work done. My dentist seems to think I’m a bajillionaire.
10.I hate how expensive dental procedures are. I recently had to get a root canal and a crown. I am now $1,398.30 in debt because of it and that’s with dental insurance. Without dental insurance, you could quadruple that cost. That’s just for one tooth. Last I checked, adult humans have 32 of them. I’ll never be able to afford all the things my dentist wants to do to my teeth. Sigh.
Find 350 more things I hate here.
Fish Of Gold 