Things That Are Pissing Me Off, Version 4.0

In no particular order:

1. This woman. She "wants" to call presidential candidate John Edwards a faggot (she can't, cause then she'd have to go to "rehab"), she claims that the best thing she could say about Mr. Edwards is that she wishes he'd died in a terrorist attack, and she makes fun of the horrific death of his child. In a time when our civil rights, including that of free speech, are slowly being chipped away, somehow this nightmare of a pundit doesn't ever get the bitch slap she deserves.

2. These folks. Well, five of them at least. See above free speech decision as an example of why I think Canada is looking more and more attractive.

3. This incident. First off, if you can't show two young men kissing in a yearbook, you can't show ANYONE kissing in a yearbook. Secondly, to label the photo as "obscene" in the initial response to the uproar is fucking stupid because it wasn't any more obscene than any other kiss in that yearbook. Thirdly, if you were going to prevent the photo from ending up in the yearbook, you should NOT have taken the kid's $150 to include it AND perhaps you could have stopped it at SOME EARLIER POINT IN THE PROCESS instead of BLACKING OUT THE PHOTO like you were a high school student yourself. This story has ended as well as it could; the superintendent admitted that she was homophobic and apologized to both the student and the entire graduating class, and they are reissuing the yearbook with the photo intact. But STILL.

4. This asshole. Thanks, douche bag, for making an entire generation of kids flunk their civics exams by stating that the Vice-President is NOT PART OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT. In the United States. Even though a little document called the MOTHERFUCKING CONSTITUTION says differently. In other words, are you fucking kidding me??? Charlie thinks he should be in jail. I think he should be booted out of office and forced to cash in his immense fortune and send us each a damn check. Then he should be forced to live on food stamps for a while. That seems fair.

5. Stuff closer to home; everything is breaking. For instance, our wireless port thingy is dying. And our car just underwent another $1,200 repair, and the moment it came home from the shop it started making a horrible rattling noise when it idles. And that it's roughly 10 million degrees out and the new air conditioner we just bought for our bedroom SUCKS ASS and doesn't cool it down at all. I'm tired of things breaking in our homes and lives. Damn it.

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What's pissing you off today?

Comments

[Kristin]

In no particular order:

1. The heat. If I don't run air conditioners, I get sticky and cranky. If I do run them, I get deliciously comfortable as long as I'm in the room with them, and then I get worse when I have to go out. DH doesn't mind the heat, doesn't get why I don't want to cuddle up, doesn't get that I worry about the Boy sleeping, doesn't get that putting AC in our room is great for me, but unless we bring the Boy in to sleep in his pack n' play with us, is only part of the issue, etc.

2. That woman you mention above. I don't understand how people can spend so much time and energy just spewing vitriol. And getting PAID for it.

3. Rotten lousy awful things happening to kids lately. The 2 year old boy who will walk around for the rest of his life knowing that "mommy's in rug" (not to mention the full-term baby girl, and their mother...) to the 7 year old smothered by his father (not to mention his wife). And that's just this week. I don't know whether these things hit me more now that there's a small boy in my house, or whether there's been more of this kind of stuff to hit me. Either way, I find myself wanting to scream at people to pick on somebody their own size, wanting to pack up my job and find a field that rescues, comforts and otherwise fights this sh*t more directly. It makes me feel sick, and cowardly, and angry and sad and helpless. For all the progress we make in the world, it makes me furious and sad to think we're spinning our wheels: no matter how many people we reach out to, there will always be, somewhere, a parent with no support and no coping skills, and so there will be abuse. No matter how good we get at diagnosing and treating mental illness, we are still not good at it, and it will keep coming up, and there will be cases of desperately disturbed people taking the lives of their spouses and children before they take their own. And then this kind of thought turns inward: so what am I doing to help? Is it enough that I make sure that my son is safe and healthy and loved? Is it enough that I try to raise him - and talk to my students - in ways that I hope will lead away from this kind of thing? Do what I can in my little sphere, to the best of my ability, instead of sitting around lamenting what I can't do, and letting the enormity of it be an excuse for inaction? Or is the "just bloom where you're planted" way of thinking ITSELF just a good way to keep myself from feeing guilty about not getting off my duff and trying to do something bigger and more concrete? (Like what? she says. Well, exactly.)

4. People who can't drive on their own side of the road. If you can't take the turn without ending up in my lane, you probably need to actually TURN the wheel, and SLOW DOWN.

5. On-line systems for managing, renewing, etc. whatever it is you have to manage and renew. All very well until the website doesn't cooperate, and then there's no live person to help you, and all the "help" does is tell you to do things you've already done, or tell you to do things that don't make sense because you've just finished explaing how that's NOT THE PROBLEM, and that's if you can even find a place to send a question at all.

6. Finding my "$10 off" coupon sitting on the counter when I get home from Stop & Shop.

[brooke]

An officer abusing his authority by putting a skateboarding teen in a headlock. http://tinyurl.com/35lb7r

[Claire]

this .. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/27/1963766.htm
I can't quite articulate what is really putting me off. But it is pissing me off. I have Koorie friends with kids and the fact that they are going to be compulsorly checked is making me really angry.
It seems good in theory but I think it just setting things back another 50 years.
Maybe I will join you in Canada?

[AngelaVan]

For starters, everyone you just mentioned. And everyone affiliated with them.

And my husband, because for once I wish he could be encouraging about one of my ideas. Even the ooh! let's raise chickens! one.

Oh and hey! I have that linksys thingy. Since we've lived in the boonies for a few years owning it is pretty pointless. I think it's the same one (linksys 2.4 gGHz wireless access point router, it says. Do you want it? By the time we get wireless available here (around the year 2032) I'm sure it will be obsolete.

[AngelaVan]

agggh I didn't close my parenthesis. And I can't edit. Dammit I hate when that happens.

[Whitney]

Nothing is pissing me off today. For once.

I am on vacation, at the beach, with absolutely perfect weather (knock wood), and even with my kids' best friends here. Life is freaking good.

Sorry you are pissed off!

[z]

that coulter biatch for sure is pissing me off. seeing/hearing how she handled herself when mrs. edwards called was disgusting. i can't believe anyone (even the super duper conservative) would follow her thoughts and beliefs. it's just pure hatred...blagh!

same here...EVERYTHING IS BREAKING. first our A/C $400 then our dryer $200 and now Naima is sick with a virus somewhere the doctors can't quite tell me where. BLAGH!!!

[Christy]

Nill illigitimi carborundum, Cecily.

[Jackie]

two words,

Paris Hilton

[Ami]

This has me pissed off. http://www.helpmybabylive.com/ Super pissed. Is it real? Oh my god. Is it a hoax? Again, oh my god.

What is WRONG with people???

[amy]

Hmm, pissed at myself for caving and buying cigs on day 2 of my latest quit. Very discouraged and gearing up to go again on Sunday.

Come on up to Canada, most of us hate Bush and think he is a criminally insane idiot fuckwitt. You could join our club!

[Abigail]

The Coultergeist and Cheney are NOT invited to our Canadian commune.

How that wretched woman gets away with the incredibly cruel things she says is really beyond me. Imagine for a second that she was a lefty? Yeah, she'd be publicly executed.

What is pissing me off? 1. My car, which has a problem nobody can figure out. 2. Everyone complaining about the weather here in famously grey and rainy Seattle. Unless someone misled you as to the weather here just SHUT UP or move. Is it just me or is everyone becoming a total pussy about cold weather? I guess that is why Phoenix and Vegas are such fast growing cities. (shudder) 3. This http://tinyurl.com/2a32wp documentary we're watching.

[Tracy]

Life. Life pisses me off. The total unfairness of it all. Oh, I know our parents warned us and shit, but it still pisses me off. And iced tea out of a soda machine...that pisses me off, too.

[lilinoe]

instead of what's pissing me off, how about what is keeping me from being pissed off right now?

my brother and his wife, after struggling with infertility for years, have conceived and all signs point to a healthy little boy due in november! i am going to be an aunt! gotta focus on the positive, keep the good vibes flowing for little jack :)

[Lisa V]

Ann Coulter is a pig. Plain and simple. I despise the way she uses hate speech to make a buck. But to be fair, the remark about being killed by a terrorist is a play on one Bill Mahr made about Cheney. Equally as unfunny in my opinion, joking about people dying, no matter how much I dislike them or their politics.

The phone call with Edwards was golden. Elizabeth was on the right side of the fence. However, I do wish that Edwards would donate the money from the fundraising letters about the incident to People From the American Way. It's profit from hate speech, and it's dirty.

France's elections sound so much more sane with rules about spending and air time etc. The candidates don't waste their time insulting each other and instead talk about issues.

We need campaign reform. Now.

[Amanda]

Whats pissing me off today?

YOU!

hehe, nah, just kidding, I just wanted to rile you up a bit more.

The only thing grinding my gears today is the rain. Sydney and rain just do not go - we are STAGE 4 water restriction people, not spare water falling from the sky people. And yet, it hasnt stopped for three weeks. Of course, I'm not in a flood distaster declared area and therefore living my happy, dry, uninterrupted middle class life, but still, will this rain never end??

[Lisa]

Oh lord, where do I start? Maybe there's something in the stars. I was switched to a 9 pm to 5 am shift at work unexpectedly yesterday (hence trying to stay awake here at 1:21 am Pacific), I went to the airport (took 2 hours round trip) to pick up friends and spent 40 minutes (and a quarter of a tank of gas) circling only to find out their flight had been cancelled and they'd emailed me but of course I was at the airport so I didn't get it, I'm moving to a new apartment on Saturday, working Sunday and I'm leaving to fly to the East Coast on Monday. So yeah. Life is not fun right this moment. But tomorrow is a new day, right?

[Beret]

Just like with Paris Hilton, I refuse to watch Ann Coulter for even one second. I don't read what she says, I don't watch or listen to her speak. Life is tooooo short to pollute your brain with that type of idiocy. Unfortunately, she's making money left and right because people DO listen to her. If no one paid attention it wouldn't matter what she said. I just don't understand why "news" programs are still letting her on the air (oh yeah, RATINGS). Can we PLEASE stop giving her an audience???!!!

The only thing pissing me off today is the fact that I lost my sense of smell (and therefore my sense of taste) due to a cold. I hate when I can't taste anything!

[jen]

What is pissing me off is your numbers 1-4. In addition, 5. the fact that my period decides to come 12 days after the last. 6. Assholes at work. 7. People at the art institute where i take classes being elitist assholes. 8. Bush.

[maggie]

My husband. And everything you mentioned.

[SandyC]

What's to be cranky about? the war...that "bong hits for Jesus" advocates drug use(??)...that a senior prank involving a bunch of alarm clocks results in felony charges...that our VP runs a frightening covert government...that the government has relabled insurgents as Al Queda (to scare us? ok, we are)...the we can't get a gun bill in Philly because the rest of the state thinks we want to take their deer rifles...well, I could go on and on and on.

Rahm Emmanuel for president!

[Garnigal]

Come to Canada, we'd love to have you. Of course, we have our own dramas up here, including (but not limited to) a deeply ingrained habit of belittling America.

[Sarah]

Thanks for the great post. I couldn't have said it better (and I won't try).

[Suzanne]

This is pissing me off, I can't even provide a comment about it I'm so dumbfounded.

http://helpmybabylive.com/

[Kristin]

Hi again,

BTW, I hope nothing in my comment sounded like I was lumping all kinds of mental illness together, or blaming that for all the ills of society. Not in the slightest. My point (if I wasn't clear) was that what pisses me off and makes me feel helpless is the sense that even if we address all the things we CAN address...new things will continue to keep coming up. No matter how many people get helped, educated, treated, supported...there will be new people who never got the memo, and THAT pisses me off.

Abigail, I love your comment about the weather. I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to the 3 H's (hazy, hot and humid), and heat indices above 100 degrees. There's just no need for that kind of weather, darn it. But it also drives me nuts when people in New England talk about 30 degree weather as if they're surprised and offended that it could get so cold here. And when it's March and it's rainy one day and cold the next and hot the day after that...that's what we call SPRING. It happens. Suck it up, and bring a sweater.

lilinoe, I also like your thought about what's keeping you from being pissed off. Good luck and best wishes!