Peeved

Someone, on their blog entry, was talking about pet peeves and they observed that they could never come up with an exhaustive list because they are reminded of peeves when they happen, and they usually block them out when they're not happening.

I tend to agree. But I was reminded of one of my pet peeves this noon trying to get some walnuts out of a bag, so I'm going to take a whack at listing pet peeves.

1. Those zip-top bags that are "factory sealed" to within a fraction of a millimeter of the zip, and then, unhelpfully, have "cut here" or "tear here" instructions pointing to a part of the bag where, once you cut or tear, it will still be perma-sealed. Often when I finally cut down to where the bag will actually open, I've cut into the zip top itself, rendering it useless. Just give me a regular bag and let me put a twist-tie or one of the hundreds of rubber bands I've harvested off of my newspapers to seal it back up.

2. Those "Sealed for freshness!" things that are on everything these days. Yeah, "freshness," my fanny. It's really "Sealed so we won't be sued by your family because some maniac poisoned our product!" It's directly traceable to the Tylenol poisonings of the 1980s. I hate the seals for two reasons: first of all, what they represent: that we live in a society where it is not unexpected that someone would choose to tamper with the food we eat or the medications we take. And second, for a practical reason: it's harder than heck to open the things. Especially aspirins and the like: if you don't have a headache when you're opening a new bottle, you will by the time it's opened. The ones I buy tend to have the glued-shut box, with the shrinkwrap collar, the childproofed cap, and then a foam circle glued on UNDER the cap (and they never come off in one piece), and then, to add insult to injury, a wad of cotton over the pills. (Yeah, I know the cotton is there to prevent pill breakage, but it just feels wrong to have to pick cotton out of a bottle before I can cure my headache)

3. Going to the grocery store to buy bagged salad and finding that every single variety has an expiration date of the very next day. Look, that may be fine if you're having eight or 12 people over for dinner that night, but I live alone. It takes me at least 5 days to choke down consume a whole bag of salad. And I hate wasting food.

I just generally hate it when produce is old. Or when meat or dairy is close to expiration. Can't you at least discount it, if it's about to go bad?

4. The general rude behavior that some people adopt in public. I call it "bubble syndrome" - that there are people who act as though they have a little bubble all around them, that their behavior doesn't affect anyone else. This has several subcategories but many of them involve cell phones.

5. People who fight with friends/spouses/lovers/children in public. Please, take it outside, at least. I'm already depressed when I'm standing in the magazine aisle of the wal-mart; do not threaten to push me over the edge by making me view your slapfest with your pimply, skinny-moustached boyfriend.

6. On the opposite end: sloppy goopy PDAs. Now, I'm okay with public handholding - in some cases I even think it's cute. And a small kiss is okay. But, for the love of all that's good - do NOT play tonsil hockey in the pots and pans aisle of the wal-mart*
Don't grab your SO's tush or boob, or, worse, crotch, and make them squeal. And no dry-humping anywhere where anyone else can see you. It's just gross and unecessary and I'm not saying this solely because I'm a bitter lonely spinster with no one's hand to hold.

(*yes, I actually witnessed this once. Nearly made me puke.)

7. That damned strip of tape that CD manufacturers use to seal up the jewelcases. Look, the thing is shrinkwrapped. If someone's going to steal the CD, a little strip of fractionating tape with the band's name and the CD title printed on it is not going to stop them. If you need to use the tape, at least buy a variety that doesn't split into 1,265 tape-splinters as soon as someone tries to peel it off.

8. Unnecessary noise. I have several people in my neighborhood who own boom cars and I fantasize about an airplane engine falling on the car and destroying it. (No, not necessarily while the owner is in it; I'm not that cold-blooded). I loathe that time on warm Sunday afternoons when one of the fellows sets to polishing his car in the drive as the stereo in it generates subsonic waves and makes all the metal panels rattle.

And there's a newer thing I heard about on the news over break: apparently some idiots in California have discovered if you mount a donut-shaped disk in the car's tailpipe, it "makes the car go WOOOO!" as one of the proponents so enthusiastically yet unletteredly said.

And why, pray tell, would you do that, other than to wake up sleeping babies and piss off the other people in your neighborhood? Yeah, yeah, customization and getting people to notice you and all that - but I vaguely remember a day when you could get noticed for excellence rather than sheer loudness. I wish those days would return.

9. People who think it makes them look important when they are rude, nasty, or condescending to waiters and shopclerks and the sort of people whose lives would be made a living hell by having to deal with that kind of attitude 8 hours a day.

Being rude never makes you look important. It makes you look rude. Rude isn't cool or funny or sexy, at least not in my book.

On a slightly different tack - I get a little uncomfortable when waiters (especially) get too jokey or familiar. I don't mind it when it's someone I KNOW - like for example if it's the guy who always takes my order at the local barbecue place - but when someone uses that kind of over-familiar jokiness with someone they've never waited on before...I don't know, it just makes me uncomfortable. Perhaps because of #10:

10. Guys who think they can get away with anything by acting cute. There's a very particular kind of "acting cute" - it's hard for me to describe but it's that kind of jokey, unserious, "c'mon and loosen up, be one of the guys" attitude. Kind of like when you're out at a bar and there's that one guy who tries to push people to drink more than they really want to, and who makes off that they're a piker or a Puritan if they aren't up for getting wasted that particular evening.

It's sort of (but not exactly) an attitude I attribute to some of the frat guys I knew years ago - sort of a "Life is so serious so let's not be serious about anything! Whoo!" attitude.

There ARE some things that are serious, that are deadly serious. Please do not act as if everything is a joke, or as if everything can be excused because you have a cute smile.

I'm immediately suspicious of people like that, and also people who are TOO smiley and TOO glad-handy. I think it's because I had some bad experiences in my past - one with a guy who was borderline sociopathic - who came across at first as being very charming and very open and very funny. It was only when he didn't get his way that the ugly side came out...

11. When people play basketball or hockey or whatever in the street and then give you ugly looks or flip you the bird because you interrupt their game because you are driving down "their" street. There's a halfway-house along one of the routes I can take to go home, and there are often four or five guys playing basketball in the street. And as I slow down, approaching them, they move verrrrrrryyyyy slowwwwwwwwlllly out of the street and give me evil looks (one even yelled something today but mercifully I couldn't understand what he said). Look, guys. I'm assuming that since you're in a drug-rehab house, you're not exactly taxpayers, especially of property tax. I am. The taxes I pay go for upkeep and building of roads. I'd like to be able to use that road, unfettered, for its PROPER PURPOSE without having to deal with your piss-ant comments and looks.

It's a ROAD. It's not a basketball court. You'd be justified in giving me the stink eye if I were driving on a basketball court but this is not one.

Also - I am going home from WORK. You know, that place where you earn money so you can pay taxes for stuff like roads and you can buy stuff like cars. You have been playing basketball all afternoon because you apparently do not work. Please don't begrudge me the fifteen seconds I need your little stretch of road for so I can get home from my day at work.

12. Stuff that breaks before its time. Yeah, I know, people having to buy new stuff is what keeps the economy going, but really, radios and such should last for at least a dozen years. And cars should last for fifteen. Just because some people get tired with their stuff after three years and want a new and different one doesn't mean you should make the things to wear out that fast.

13. Diet ads. All those stupid "before" and "after" pictures, where, if you look closely, in the "after" the differences are really that the person is smiling, has a higher-cut bathing suit on, and may be standing in a slightly different posture. If there was a pill that really and truly worked and was safe, every doctor in the nation would be pushing them. (Hell, they'd probably be lobbying to put it in the water). And those ads for Jenny Craig or whatever - could Kirstie All*y please, PLEASE go away? I hate her voice. I hate her attitude.

Look, the only real way to lose weight is to eat less and to exercise more. The reason those "don't feed yourself, we'll feed you" diet plans work for a time is that they enforce portion control. It's not magic. It's just expensive.

That said - I'd really like an end to all the "OMG! Americans are SOOOOOO fat!" stories on the news. Yes, we know we're fat - trust me, at least 90% of fat people are NOT in denial. We're aware of the problem and we're dealing with it however we choose. For some of us, that may mean eating what we regard as a sensible diet and exercising and figuring that if we don't magically become a size 2, well, then we're not meant to be a size 2. Don't imply that we're somehow not doing things "right" because we're not in the single-digit sizes.

And you know? Sometimes a piece of chocolate or a cookie really DOES make it better. Don't tell us we're weak and drugging ourselves and that we need to find a better "coping mechanism."

Just back off, okay? Go torment the smokers some more or something. (Kidding on that last one.)

14. The fact that, in my town and at my place of work, if you want a snack or a quick meal that's not been deep fried, you have to bring it or fix it yourself. Sometimes I'd just like to grab a lunch "out" but the deep-fried chicken parts that most of the places here serve are not in that "sensible diet" that I eat (the same sensible diet that skinny people say, "yeah, if you were really following it, you'd be a size 6 by now"). And the vendeteria where I work is a joke. I'd like to be able to get a yogurt or an apple or just some plain crackers out of it sometimes. (I don't like keeping food in my office; thanks to a colleague, we have a meal-moth infestation and I don't want to contribute to it).

15. People who act all superior because they live on one of the coasts. Or people who live in a major metropolitan area who think they can dictate to the rest of the country how they should live ("Get rid of your cars!" Um, can't do that, the nearest grocery is 7 miles away). In general people who judge and make proscriptive suggestions without taking the effort to learn the facts of the situation they are judging. Also people who scream about how you should not shop at wal-mart because of its corporate policy but who conveniently overlook that for many Americans, it's the only viable option for shopping.

16. All the bugs that live in the South. I live in an older house and it has a crawl space under it that's not totally sealed off. So in the summer I get ants unless I'm utterly scrupulous about mopping up every single crumb. And I get "waterbugs" (actually a large sort of cockroach but they are different from the little German cockroaches in that they mostly lay their eggs out-of-doors) occasionally regardless of what I do.

I don't have an exterminator come for a couple reasons: first, the whole issue of trying to get a workman in this town to understand that a "8 am to 3 pm window" is not acceptable for someone with a full-time job; second, because I just don't like being exposed to those chemicals if I can choose not to be; third, because I just get creeped out by the thought of some guy that I do not know going deep into my closets and my messy sewing room and under my bathroom counters (feminine hygiene supplies, eek) to spray.

But I still hate the bugs, I hate them with a passion. One reason why I am not a creationist is that I cannot believe that God would specifically design something so annoying. I mean, if He had to make something that filled the role of a cockroach in the environment, couldn't He at least make it pink or sparkly or give it fewer legs or make it smell good?

17. (This is a very personal and idiosyncratic one). I do not like it when food touches on a plate. While I won't REFUSE to eat food when it touches (mainly because I think I'd never get away with it; you have to be famous in some way to be allowed that kind of bad behavior), it still makes me uncomfortable. I have to say that I don't like a lot of the Chinese (and other Asian) food where there's all kinds of stuff mixed up together and if I do wind up getting some to eat somewhere I will usually either separate the things on my plate, or I will pick out and eat, say, all the bamboo shoots first, and then the chicken, and then the pea pods.

The worst though is when gravy gets where it's not supposed to go, or when corn or beans wind up mixed in the mashed potatoes. That is bad and wrong and I almost throw up in my mouth a little when I see that ad from Kentucky Fried Chicken for those trough-dinner things where chicken and potatoes and gravy and corn and cheese are all mixed together (I mean, dear God, cheese on top of all that...as if the potatoes and corn together were not disgusting enough). I cannot believe that people actually like to EAT that way but I know that they do...I can't.

So, what are your pet peeves?