Let's Bitch

I’ll be the first to mention that I am not the most patient person in the world; or probably in the room.  But, I do know that I am not the person I am about to describe as the most annoying person possible! 

I don’t understand how a 50 year old Asian woman riding a beach cruiser style bike down a busy high school aged infested sidewalk has the audacity to come to the crosswalk and push the button for the crosswalk signal 43 times within two seconds!  ONCE is enough.  Twice is a little obsessive and anything over that will get you dirty looks and possibly a very legitimate voo-doo curse issued under my breath.  In my experience, Asian people are never in a hurry – especially if you are behind one walking at the mall or in traffic.  Also, who would dare ride a bike in front of a high school at the precise time the kids have made it out to the streets and parking lots and then give off the illusion of being in such a hurry that they are unwilling to wait the 12 seconds for the cross light to signal the go ahead?  So picture if you will….a very busy sidewalk with angry and self proclaimed Princesses walking across the street to the nearest Starbucks for after school social hour and an old Asian woman on a bike trying to make it to the crosswalk.  Once the Asian lady makes it to the crosswalk she proceeds to hit the button multiple times.  I’m sitting in my car with my daughter and we are watching all of this happen.  My daughter notices the Asian lady pushing the button and asks why this lady keeps doing that.  I said I didn’t know, she must be mentally unstable and then I proceeded to chant “Banish, Bind, and Enemy Be Gone”.  So with all that said, please don’t be the person that mashes the button more than once.  This applies to elevators, buzzers, doorbells, and crosswalk signals.  You just look stupid and you piss people off.  STOP!   

Last time I checked, Christmas was December 25th.  A one day only event.  And I do understand that in the days and weeks leading up to Christmas that it is fun to decorate, put up a tree, hang Christmas lights, etc.  I love driving around on Christmas Eve and looking at all of the decorations and lights and other bits of festiveness that people have put out.  The purpose of all of this though is to help build the excitement and Christmas spirit in people, the culmination of which is Christmas Day.  Christmas is not a season however….it is one day.  No matter how much retailers want you to believe that Christmas starts in August….it doesn’t.  It starts on December 25th and ends on December 25th - just as it did last year and just as it will in all the years to come.  There should really be no confusion.  My point in all of this being….once Christmas is over (meaning 12:01 on the 26th)…take down your lights, remove Santa from your windows, take down the tree, turn off the awful Christmas music.  People try to rationalize with “well it is still Christmas week, I’ll leave them up through the weekend” and then “well New Years is around the corner, I will leave them up to celebrate that too” and then “well it is still cold enough outside to feel like Christmas, I should probably leave them up” and finally “well it is already May, no point in taking it all down now!”  There should be no grace period….December 26th everything comes down…PERIOD!  If anyone notices their lights and decorations missing it is because I have taken matters into my own hands…

One thing I have noticed about working in the so-called “corporate world” is that businessmen love to use cliches, idioms, analogies, metaphors, similes… basically everything you tried to forget from high-school English class. And the higher up the company ladder they are, the more apt they are to use these. I don’t think I can sit through another meeting and hear these guys go back and forth with this crap and not get up and hurt someone. As soon as you stick a man in a suit and give him some important title suddenly his vocabulary is taken over with phrases like “low hanging fruit” and “skin the cat on both sides” and “soup-to-nuts”. During my meeting yesterday I decided to make a list of all of the ones I heard (and these are in addition to the ones I just listed):

- bread and butter

- in the wheelhouse

- beat a dead horse

- between a rock and a hard place

- pedal to the metal

- high on the hog

- cut the mustard

- you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette

- cash cow

- firing on all cylinders

I mean people say some of these things every now and then, but I swear to you this is all these entire meetings consist of. It is like some game I’m not aware of to see who can squeeze the most into the conversation. No actual work gets accomplished because no one is actually saying anything other than this crap!!! All of these phrases do not make you sound any more intelligent or important and they certainly don’t serve to get anything accomplished! ARGH!!! Just talk normally!!!!!

Why has the concept of keyless entry not been extended outside of the automobile industry? No one actually uses a key to unlock their car anymore, so obviously people really like this idea of only having to push a button and *presto* their doors are unlocked. Don’t you think they would like this same concept applied to all of the other doors in their life that need unlocking?? I would love to be able to pull a clicker out and be unlocking my apartment on the way up the stairs. I just don’t understand why there is this fantastic keyless entry idea out there and auto-makers have been the only ones to grab on. Think how much more fun checking the mail would be if you could do it keyless-ly!!!

I do not understand people that are getting so excited about the gas prices dropping so low so quickly. Do you people not understand that the reason they are dropping like this is because the economy is in a damn recession?? That isn’t something to celebrate! And the minute the prices dropped everyone seemed to forget everything they learned from having to pay $4/gallon. I was watching this family on the news that was traveling for Thanksgiving and Bubba said, “Well, we were going to take the car, but with gas prices so low again we said, ‘Ah Hell’ and decided to take the truck!” Really?!?! Do people not understand that the over consumption of a limited resource was one of the reasons gas prices got to the level they did in the first place?? Just because gas is now cheaper doesn’t mean you have permission to use it with reckless abandonment. Everyone went on this eco-friendly kick not because they cared, but because they couldn’t afford any other option. Apparently, no one actually LEARNED anything from the gas prices getting so high. The underlying reasons that the prices got so high are still there and are still going to come back to bite us in the ass…they didn’t disappear just because of the recession-aided sudden drop in prices. Just because it is now $1/gallon instead of $4/gallon does not mean the supply is any more plentiful than it was 5 months ago. Due to people’s lack of reasoning and general intelligence I swear America is headed no where other than self-destruction.