It’s snowing again the winter here in Portland. It’s a rare occasion when it snows more than once a winter out here, but so far it’s snowed at least a dozen times. Despite growing up in the snow-bound Midwest, I moved out here for the temperate weather and relative lack of snowstorms.
This is just one of the things in life I could do without. Not surprisingly, it’s only one in a sea of many, many irritating things that bug the living hell out of me on a near-daily basis. Here’s a taste:
• Candy Corn and it’s Bastard Children.
Every Halloween, it’s all over the place. Every single one of us has some at some point, whether we mean to or not. It’s like an involuntary reaction. You walk into a house, they have a dish of Candy Corn, you start talking and somehow, someway, you end up mawing on a handful of Candy Corn. It’s the devil’s candy.
And now it’s being spread over more and more holidays, against all rational thinking. Now there’s Christmas Corn and Valentine Corn. Seriously, what the hell? Why is this happening? Now I have two more holidays that I have to try against my better judgement to not grab handfuls of this toxic, nauseating confection. The real kicker is; they all taste the same, despite the color change. That is not a sign of a healthy snack or even something that can be called “food.”
• Verizon & UPS.
I’m going to make this shorter than the rant that I wanted it to be. No one wants to read a 2000 word treatise on how shitty both of these companies are. I’ll be publishing my first book; Verizon and UPS Can Suck Shit Through a Twisty-Straw, on Sodblog Press. You can all read more about my latest shitstorm with these two hulking behemoth assholes there.
In any case, last Thursday, my modem started smoking. Not in that “all the cool kids are doing it” kind of way, but in a “this smells like burnt hair and smoked socks” kind of way. I tried to take the burnt-out modem to a local Verizon store to get a replacement, was told that they don’t stock modems and that I’d have to call to get one sent to me. I wrangled the call-center stooge into sending the modem next-day air, which of course meant that the modem showed up this past Monday. Bastards.
The reason UPS makes it into this list is their complicity with Verizon in depriving me of my modem for the longest period possible. My modem showed up in the distribution center near my house very early Saturday morning, but did not get put on a truck until Monday and wasn’t delivered until 6:15 Monday night. Assholes.
• Republicans in the Senate & House Since January 20th.
Y’know, it was nice, that bi-partisanship talk that eminated from Washington for about three hours or so after Barack Obama was inaugurated. I almost thought that it would last a few more days or so. It frustrates even me that these slimebags are playing politics with everything, when it at least seems like Obama is trying to extend an olive branch and work with them. It doesn’t surprise me, mind you, but it’s frustrating nonetheless. So it was no surprise, after inviting top GOPers to the White House for cocktails and the Super Bowl and meeting with them multiple times, that when they threw all of that back in his face with their party-line voting on the stimulus bill in the House, he decided to basically say “okay, fuck you guys.”
Most of the time that you see Obama speak now, whenever he talks about the stimulus and the GOP’s obstruction, he sounds like a tired parent of a problem child. You can hear in his voice that he just wants to go all Homer Simpson to their Bart and strangle the little bastards.
So, that’s just a little bit of the things that bother me on a daily basis. Be glad that I didn’t get into the tyranny of bagels or stupid iTunes album art finder.
