Too Much Tequila, Too Little Sunscreen

Introduction

I thought I had all of my pet peeves on paper with my first two rants. Nope, more things continue to piss me off. Here is some more stuff that is getting under my skin:

Boom-Box Cars

I can’t think of anything more irritating than those idiots that boom their high-wattage stereos through huge speakers in their cars. Do you think that they just want to be noticed, not for their cool cars like we did when we were kids, but for their bad taste in music and their hearing impairments? You can actually feel the air move and your car shake as their bass notes, and it all seems to be bass, rattle the fillings in your teeth. This can’t be music that they play; even the worst hip-hop music is better than this awful noise. What are we going to do with these guys? I don’t know, should we report them, give them a one finger salute, call 911, crash into them, what? Think about this the next time one of these imbeciles pulls up beside you at an intersection with his boom box throbbing and let me know.

Tattooed Young People

Where was I when we decided that looking like tattooed carnival freaks was a cool or in thing. Watch a pro basketball or football game on TV and you’ll think they recruited their heavily tattooed players from our nation’s prisons.

I’m not terribly proud of the one small USMC tattoo I have on my left shoulder. I’m proud to have been a Marine but there are better ways of showing my loyalty to the corps than writing their initials indelibly on my arm. I’ll live with my thirty minutes of adolescent stupidity forever.

When I see an attractive young girl with tattoos I have to wonder why? Why? Why? These tattoos don’t enhance her beauty or add a token element of mystery or sexiness to her appearance; they only show how dumb young people can be when they try too hard to look grown up.

How about the plain looking girls that load up on tattoos? I only see their socially acceptable exposed parts and I’m aghast. How must they look nude? If they have all of that on her arms what must their breasts, bellies, and their butts look like? What do their lovers think of all of this very permanent artwork?

Unfortunately a tattoo is not something you can choose to wear or not wear, or change when you tire of it and move on to different things. It is permanent, like forever. What are these girls going to look like when they are little old grandmothers? I can’t even imagine.

Hand Held Food

Don’t you hate the sandwich that falls apart the minute you try to pick it up? How about the burrito that unwinds as you lift it for your first bite? Then there’s the chili dog that spills all over your lap, the soggy taco that dumps its contents into an inedible pile, the deli sandwich that is so fat that there is no way to get it into your mouth, and on and on. I don’t know about you, but I think there ought to be a law that would require hand held food to be truly hand held. No dripping, leaking, crumbling, drooping, soggy, or over filled items would be allowed. If you want that kind of food order a bowl of chili.

Call Centers in India

Have you ever spent a frustrating couple of hours trying to do some simple thing, like schedule a local repairman through their dispatch center in India? I really try to be polite to these young, they all seem to be young, call center people who struggle in their heavily accented English to solve my problems or honor my requests. I’m glad these people have jobs and I feel that they are truly trying but there is a limit to my compassion. Often they seem poorly trained or don’t have the information I need available to them. They never have a solution for what seems to me to be an ordinary request. Who trains these people? Who writes their manuals? Why do we put up with this?

Celebrities That Make Me Want To Puke

Everyone has their likes and dislikes. Our personal points of view become even more pronounced as we become older. I’ve recently noticed a freighting trend; I have a new “people I can’t stand” category that goes well beyond my simple dislikes. These are people I want completely out of my life. But, they’re all celebrities and they keep showing up again and again. Let me give you an example: I dislike Donald Trump, or the modern Liz Taylor but I can’t stand Donny and Marie Osmond or Tom Cruise. See the difference? Another example might be: I dislike George W. Bush but I couldn’t stand Lyndon Johnson.

Topping my list of people that really make me gag are Wayne Newton and Barry Manilow. I wouldn’t go see these guys if they were playing in my front yard. A couple of women I’d like to forget and never see again are Kathy Lee Gifford and Starr Jones. And, the guys that really get to me are that smug, red-haired prick on CSI: Miami, David Caruso along with Paul Shaffer, the creepy little band leader on the Letterman show.

Another category of people I want out of my life are Jewish singers that think we want to hear their Christmas carols; people like Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond.

I know, I know, I’ve never met any of these people and I’m basing my opinions on their public personas, but I hate them anyway.

Cell Phonies

A lot has been written about cell phone etiquette, or our lack thereof, so I’m hesitant to add my little rant. What the hell, these people deserve all of the bitching we can muster. Does anything piss you off more than the air-head in her huge SUV whipping in and out of traffic with one hand on the wheel and her cell phone stuck to her ear? How about the inconsiderate moron that answers his phone in an otherwise quiet waiting room and shares his meaningless conversation with everyone within shouting distance? I especially dislike the yoyos that answer their phones while you’re talking to them without batting an eye or saying a word to you. Recently, I was half-way through buying my stuff at a convenience store when the clerk’s cell phone rang. She stopped tallying up my purchases and began a long conversation that was far more important to her than me or her job. I don’t know how long she talked, I left. What can we do about these assholes?

©2008 by Bob Rockwell