End-Of-May 2010 Big List Of Things I Hate

• People thinking Daria is the total extent of sarcasm or irony
• “Sports” water bottles with a weird sucky nubbin on the top instead of a normal screw cap
• The Phantom of the Opera
• Green Salad
• Pick Your Own
• Enormous strawberries that are shaped like organs or tumours
• Anything that goes with the territory
• When cling film or sticking tape tears and you can’t find the edge or keep unravelling it with a section on the end staying stuck
• Anybody pointing out that anything goes in cycles, and from that inferring that things must go in cycles, that cycles are mystically the correct way of understanding or predicting things. Generally, hate people thinking they are clever for pointing out any trait or trend which is “natural” and then inferring that what is natural is also what is best, most optimal, most morally desirable etc
• People who claim to be a man of their word
• English kids on skateboards
• File extensions in capital letters
• Moving text in footer of TV news screens
• Anyone being said to be the “darling of” some group or movement or, even more irritatingly, the “poster child of”
• Any organization or movement having a “mantra”
• Fabric shopping bags with long handles that cause the bag to drag along the ground when you carry them
• Taps that are too close to the basin causing you to crash your knuckles when running your hands under the water. (Almost all non-kitchen taps are like this)
• People self-consciously introducing something uninteresting they’re about to tell you with “A word in your ear” or “A word to the wise” or “A word”
• People pronouncing “scone” as Scohne
• Enormous backpacker rucksacks
• People wearing mini rucksacks which look lost in the middle of their backs
• Kirsty Wark
• Jeremy Paxman being so damn negative and interrupty the whole time
• People constantly calling me “My Friend”
• The arsey attitude of WordPress expert community in their forums/codex
• Laptop design only being focused on being even lighter and even thinner
• People calling Nick Clegg the kingmaker
• Americans joking “I’m a horrble horrble person ha ha”
• Centileters
• People answering the phone “yello”
• Labels saying that carelessness causes fire
• Voltaire’s Candide
• Marketing asking “which (product) are you?”
• People in offices saying “what can I do you for?”
• Penguin paperback books
• That series of software books with animal pictures on the front
• The “for dummies” books, which always seem to make the subject much more complicated and impenetrable than it actually is
• Look Who’s Talking
• French people saying “Gigo” or “Go” to mean Gigabytes
• Warnings expressed in the format of “you’ll only [do mistake bad thing] once”
• People poop scooping their dog’s shit into little bags… but then leaving the bags lying on the path (or quite often, on a fence or hanging in a tree)… I mean, what kind of people?
• The s in Johns Hopkins
• People saying in a silly voice “the man’s a nutter!” (or variants such as “the man’s a loon”)
• Kes / A Kestrel For A Knave
• The lack of urgency about road works in the UK
• Americans getting all excited about wine, cheese, whisky etc when what they have over there is invariably lame
• Modern (field) hockey sticks
• Midwives not using articles or pronouns “Delivery ward is where baby comes out, and father will want to sit on chairs here, perhaps buy coffee, or read magazine?”
• Mickey Mouse
• This banner http://screencast.com/t/ZDBjYmY4
• Anti spam blacklists
• The bingly bangly theme tune of the harry potter films
• Merged cells
• All-female musical ensembles
• People saying that someone “had a good innings” when they die, and even more annoying is the way one finds oneself saying it because there is nothing else to say.
• Debentures and time shares
• Women having to have a python draped on them in ‘sexy’ photo shoots
• Party political broadcasts
• Professional body builders
• Companies called -aco or -corp
• People sending emails to everyone in their address book to announce they are changing email address
• The Beach (book and film)
• Software or (no-shit) advice about “home budgeting”
• Stupid UK rappers’ names like Titchy Brainstem and Wiener Dimwit
• Helplines and websites having Welsh language options
• The attempt to rebrand the Post Office as ‘Consignia’
• Microformats
• Boys at school constantly “knocking in” their cricket bats; even more annoyingly, the sale of cricket balls stuck on the end of a wooden stick solely for the purpose of constantly knocking in cricket bats
• Women in the UK saying “norr bless”
• The way price tags are quoted without sales tax in America
• That song that goes “so you had a bad day” (yes, well, I did now)
• Marketers deliberately trying to create viral videos
• Cocktails with “outrageous” or “sexy” names
• Anyone saying g’day
• In journalismspeak, people “calling for” things
• Having to worry if the American you’re talking to will get that you are being sarcastic
• “Schlepping” or indeed any other yiddish word inserted into English on the assumption that it automatically makes the speaker funny because all things Jewish automatically must be ironic
• Schools getting relaunched / rebranded as “academies”
• The Wombles
• Being routed to call centres in Pakistan and India
• Helplines where you can hear massive chatter of hundreds of other call centre people in the background
• Customer facing staff in shops or on the phone who sigh audibly because it’s such a big ffing effort being nice
• The excuse for university that we have in the UK
• Sports technology as a school or university subject
• Anyone constantly discussing, debating, teaching as if there is any controversy, doubt, uncertainty, or mystery about evolutionary theory. (The whole thing is just so manifestly common sense as to hardly be a theory. As much as perhaps gravity is a theory.)
• The good times
• Adrenalin junkies
• Sporrans
• Parties
• People saying they did something because they were bored
• People blowing their nose when it is dry and doesn’t actually need blowing, making a sound like an elephant trumpeting
• Pasta in salad; even worse, raisins or other fruit in salads
• Crisps served on a plate especially as a side to a sandwich
• Stadiums
• Shitty British place names incorporating “dean” “lea” (/lee/leigh) and “park”
• People maintaining that they “had you pegged as” something you are not
• Anything described as “a blast”
• Skater girls [Fall into the category of "I don't know what they are but I already know they are annoying]
• People being surprised that in general people can flip out and gun down their office or school. The people being gunned down being surprised that the person is doing it.
• People attributing violence, criminal behaviour, children’s bad behaviour – to “video games”
• Stupid camera settings like solarize, sepia etc that you never use
• Arbitrary sloppy use of -wise at the end of a word, e.g. entertainmentwise, caloriewise, alcoholwise, fuel economywise
• People who walk swinging their arms sideways across their body instead of by their sides
• Fake and gay / evil software claiming to speed up your computer / fix your windows registry
• Adsense about tooth whitening
• Drying up with a dishcloth
• Majorettes
• Military tattoos
• Tattoos
• Pantomime horses
• Pantomimes
• The Royal Tournament
• The Royal Variety Show
• Variety shows
• Anything described as “right royal”
• Shaver power sockets in every bathroom in the world despite the fact that there are only three people left who need them
• Women who are celebrities only because of having gigantic fake breasts
• The crayon smell of primary schools
• School
• Plastic cups
• Wetsuits
• White papers
• Platitudinous school report cards
• People taking the afternoon off work because it’s a lovely day outside
• Ridiculously loud scooters and motorcycles
• Shops selling roast/mashed/boiled potatoes (if only they had readymade fried egg or shrink wrapped beans on toast..?)
• Gnocchi
• People who wheeze or even start coughing when they laugh
• People introducing their boring opinions with “to be honest wiv ya”
• Benny Hill, Harry Hill
• Wines with “funny” animal names like “waxed bat” (usually from Australia)
• People who are short and drive their car with their heads barely peeping over the steering wheel, with their hands right up top blocking their view – get a booster seat!
• Women’s shoes that have a long pointy empty bit at the toe, especially where you can already see the foot bulging just to fit in the top bit
• The company names PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Kleinwort Benson, Andersen, Arthur Anderson, Clancydocwra, and Sodexho
• Annie Leibovitz
• People who speak in really loud voices
• The universal belief (religion, even) that not going out drinking in bars with shallow people who are not really your friends, and having photos taken where you pretend to be “wild”, means you do not “have a life”, and the willing relegation of anyone not fitting that bizarre religion of denial to a category of an under-human.
• People pronouncing “block and tackle” as “tayy-cul”
• Cold calls from sales people introduced as “just a quick courtesy call”
• The same English customer service girls who always say “yay” instead of “you” always appending “at all” to the end of any question as in “Have yay got any ID on you at all?”
• Whatever happened to the likely lads
• Puppetry of the penis
• The Rocky Horror picture show
• IAMS Eukanuba and “scientific” pet foods
• Celebrities signing autographs with big fat permanent markers
• Why anyone like lifetouch would want to retouch kid’s yearbook photos. Oh, and I hate yearbook photos
• Ber used in cooking, especially since you can’t taste anything special, e.g. beer duck in China, beer batter on anything deep fried. Even more annoying is the use of Guiness
• People making blog posts about upgrading their wordpress
• People talking about “there are always Black Swans ready to land” or some such lame metaphor using black swans
• Trainers worn as normal shoes
• Game shows
• Children’s fashion shows
• Lexus cars
• The Elements Of Style
• Being called puerile or immature, or to grow up, when I was a little boy ffs.
• TGI Fridays.
• TFI Friday. The isn’t-it-witty-to-hate-our-job attitude that spawned that catchphrase.
• People saying “I hate to say it but…” in front of things they love to say
• The way you can close Firefox but it won’t quit the program because the download window is still open
• When things come out of the dishwasher all squeaky/sticky
• Music tracks that include ‘street’ sounds like traffic or police sirens at the beginning or end
• That “Swing low sweet chariots” song
• Airline use of the word “momentarily”
• Hotels not considering internet a basic amenity. And it should be wireless not some 30cm cat cable at the dressing table, fork
• People talking about “the hoi polloi”, even more annoying because it is usually attempting to mock elitist attitudes and the speaker is attempting to identify themselves protectively with the masses as if that is a good thing.
• That Tevas are the only viable brand for all purpose sandals
• Socks and sandals
• Almost anything made by grown ups specifically for children that the adults themselves would not believe in, engage in, participate in, consume etc, especially when I was little
• Stomp
• Slogans that answer a question that you didn’t ask… “Because I’m worth it.” “Because life is about living” etc
• Every update of Firefox breaking at least one of your essential extensions
• American actors doing English accents
• English actors doing American accents
• When you email someone on a b2b matter and they add you to their b2c newsletter without asking
• Things which describe themselves as “made in the heart of…” e.g “…cornwall” to sound more rural and authentic
• Wedding favors and Baby showers
• Field gun races
• Alain de Botton
• People who have their.name@their-lame-ISP.co.uk email addresses
• That “ah feel lahk a woman” song
• People doing the 1812 overture with guns or fireworks and thinking it’s cool, funny, or original
• Anyone suffixing anything with “which is what makes us human”
• Tall ships
• White football boots
• The concept of options and futures
• Credit checks
• People on stilts
• Films about weddings
• Celebrity lookalikes
• Doonesbury
• Men hugging
• The Edinburgh festival
• The Glastonbury festival
• All festivals
• Swatch watches
• Rio Carnival women
• Living statues
• Hello Magazine
• Burger King fries
• Evian roller babies
• Evian
• Bull fighting
• Poodles
• People giving me unsolicited advice