Vegasius Interruptus

You know, I was halfway through a blog on my antics in Las Vegas over last weekend – then suddenly everyone took it upon themselves to annoy me all at once. So here's a blog of **** I hate instead.

1) Constant Mucus 'sounds' – Let's get the really gross one out of the way. There are people out there who, through lack of tact or manners in general, don't find it the least bit rude to sound like they're about to hock a giant loogie out in front of you. You all know this noise – wherein some jackhat sucks their nose clean through their throat, giving them the options of either spit or swallow. Let me tell you something : whatever choice they make, everyone loses.

2) People who speak endlessly and yet say nothing. This happens a lot with people who are the 'know it all' types. No matter what you've done or achieved in life – they've already done it, and by god, they did it better than you. Which is fine, except they don't shut up about it – and indeed, thoroughly prove themselves total morons in the process when it becomes apparent they've no clue about what they're speaking. There's an old saying with a lot of variations but all means the same : "Better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and prove it" – Sage wisdom. Unfortunately, those to whom it would apply are far too insipid to ever figure that out.

3) The refusal to eat anywhere that doesn't have 'fried chicken strips' on the menu. My experience with this is mostly with women – as they tend to be pickier about what they eat, which is fine to an extent. I also know for a fact that there are men out there that act the same way, though they tend to be more rural, redneck types that fear all things different.. for example I have a coworker, who somehow manages to keep his job that refers to 'sushi' as "fish bait". Which is disrespectful in all sorts of ways, and when he makes this little joke of his I want to choke his squishy neck with my bare hands. I get irritated when people want to go out to eat, they talk a big game and we all go out, then ONE person has to have a ***** fest about how they don't eat Italian, or seafood, or sushi, or whatever and we all end up being dressed up really nice for IHOP. I stay away from restaurants that rely on pictures on the menu. (Unless I am really drunk, of course)

4) Women who speak to other adults as if they were speaking to one of their children. I say women here because to date, I have never seen a guy do this. I work around a lot of women who all have young children, and the majority of them are in a constant state of 'kid mode'. This annoys the ever living **** out of me. In particular, I was in a meeting with our lawyers, and one of our admins was taking notes. There was a pretty bad typo in the paperwork we were going over, and the admin who coincidentally had typed it all up, instead of saying something like "I'll fix that in the next draft" instead pipes up and says : "Uh-OH! I made an oopsies!" The lawyers both looked at me with eyebrows raised as I covered my eyes with the edge of my hand and looked down in shame. The typical conversations with these people however are frequently inundated with things like "ooh! I gotsta go potty!", "time for nye-nye!", or some other ridiculous kid-safe phrase. You are an adult; you are speaking to another adult. Follow suit or shut the hell up - I don't need you to censor yourself, nor do I care about your bodily functions or your fatigue level. Most of all though, don't speak to me as if I was a toddler.

5) In the same vein as the above item – people, that is ANYONE, men and women alike – who get into this weird 'child worship' thing. My monthly schedule is semi planned out for me by people who manipulate it around school schedules. We usually have a big meeting in August wherein the company puts us up in a nice hotel somewhere for a weekend and the days are spent in a conference room outlining goals for the following year. Thanks to the powers that be, that meeting has been moved to November, essentially giving us about a month to get the groundwork laid for 2011. Why? Because August is when school starts. Why not in September? Because that's when football starts. (more on that stupidity in a minute) So why not October? Because there are a lot of school bake sales that month with Halloween themes. ****. I get that everyone wants to be a good parent and all that bs… but don't bring it to work, and certainly don't plot out your company's business plan around your kid's school schedule. Oh, and while I'm on the subject, NO, I do not want to buy any crap from your kid. Leave your sales magazine at home with your personal life.

6) Sports obsession. All week I've had football brought up to me in every conversation I've found myself in. I have spent the majority of my life making fun of this sport, and the people who play it – from the middle school kids all the way up to the pro's and the aging retired bastards that cling to their endorsements like a shunned stalker. Since being out of college, I am no longer in a position to make fun of players directly to their faces anymore, as unlike in High School and College; I am not around them anymore. However, the fans swarm in herds of stupidity. Not that I go out of my way to seek them out and berate them for whatever they find interesting, ultimately I don't care – It's only when I get verbally called out because of my disinterest in it. Football fans are particularly rabid if they discover someone does not share their love of watching large gorilla-men in tight pants jump on top of each other, and will be alarmingly aggressive. It is no secret that I don't care for most sports as I simply find them boring to watch, and yet, every year – these people's minds lose this information and come back telling me to wear a jersey on Friday to show my support for my favorite team (which had BETTER be theirs if I know what's good for me) The very idea that I don't own any jerseys, nor any sportswear for that matter is completely foreign to them, so much so that others are brought in to point and wonder what planet I'm from. How could I *not* have a wall adorned with autographed jerseys and sports paraphernalia? The over the top drama in which this whole thing plays out is just enough to make me snap, which I often do, I'll then begin picking them apart one by one using only their irrational hard-on for football until they go away. If you want me to watch football – leave the score up, and keep the camera on the cheerleaders at all times. Until that happens, leave me alone.

7) Shenmue III and its insistence on not ever existing. What? Not everything I hate is people related, just 99.999% I can't quite fully explain this one, I played the first one, and I really enjoyed it despite its flaws, and it ended on a cliff hanger. The story desperately wants to be epic but the pace of the game was so painfully slow it's hard to push through for the casual gamer. Skip ahead some years later and I played through part 2 on the Xbox. I was finally going to get the end of the story! Or so I thought. Instead, I was left with yet another cliffhanger – it has been many years since then, and there's no rumor of finally finishing the damn story, not even a pamphlet summary floating around. So I guess really what I'm hating here is cliffhanger endings. It's arrogant of anyone to think whatever they do will warrant sequels, and while I'm not against having an epic overarching storyline across a series of books, games or movies, Each one should still have a self-contained narrative, with defined and achievable goals. The epic story line should remain in the background and not take center stage until the final act, basically – in a series of three for example, the first two should hint at things, but not give enough information to seem important, the third should pull it altogether and give the observer a big "wow" moment that can make you look back and see it all happening under your nose for the big finale. The carrot, not the stick. Bam.

8) Camping. I seriously hate camping; I don't care for being one with the bushes and squirrels or whatever. I have camped quite a bit in my life, each experience having its ups and downs – when I was a kid I loved it. I liked the idea of building a campsite from scratch – in my mind the goal was to make it as much like home as possible using whatever was available. The term "roughing it" was lost on me. Somehow I always ended up sleeping on a rock or a branch or root, or something – regardless of how well I cleared the area for the tent, or sleeping bag on the several occasions where the tent turned out to be a rolled up tarp or just the tent and no poles. My last camping trip I went on was my sophomore year in college with my girlfriend and her family. I bought the biggest tent I could find, the biggest self-inflating air mattress I could find, and basically built a house in the woods. Alas, for all my preparations, the lack of a/c and privacy combined with the fact that there is no way for me to be comfortable in a tent, tracking dirt everywhere and the lack of a shower or proper plumbing settled – furthered by aches and pains that a 19 year old shouldn't have settled it for me: That was the last time I would camp. Nowadays when I say I'm going camping, I mean I had to settle for a holiday inn.

9) Shopping. Like most guys, my method of shopping is extremely precise – when I go into a store, I don't 'browse' – I know exactly what I want and go grab it from the shelf and make my way to the cashier. This works great in stores like Best Buy, however shopping for clothes is annoying because you have to sort through shirts trying to find your size, pants too – and god help you if you, like me, have to buy a lot of dress clothes – then there's a salesman and a tailor following you around extending the process by an hour. I know you can buy things off the rack, which I also do, but having nice, tailored clothing is a good thing to have in your wardrobe when you need to appear professional. However, in these instances I at least know HOW to shop for these items. Grocery shopping however is something I consistently fail at – no matter how often I go into a store, it is always a maze to me, I can't ever find anything easily, the best I can do is wander aimlessly and hope I stumble across whatever I'm looking for. Even with my best effort, I can spend hundreds on groceries and upon filling my kitchen with everything – it still looks bare. Being the quintessential bachelor that I am, I've never really figured out what "kitchen essentials" are. I've seen them – my parents always have a full pantry, and by all logic I should be able to maintain that as well, since I'm only one person and barely ever eat at home. Yet somehow, my cupboards remain bare 95% of the time, which sends me back to the grocery store and the cycle continues. I hate all things there, so let's wrap this up with number 10.

10) People who write checks at the checkout line. OH you know who you are, you usually middle aged to elderly lady. Paying for your six cans of cat food and Metamucil with your 9 coupons and quietly waiting with your blank check laid out in front of you. I see you there, that smug look on your face as if your check is announcing a high status in society, which it in fact did back when you were a teenager… roughly 1920 to 1930 – you could use this time to at least write out the date and the name of the store… you could sign it. Anything to expedite what I know is going to be a painful process of waiting for you to get your way with your no doubt expired coupons from 1987 so Mr. Mittens can have his dinner. Mr. Mittens who may or may not be dead for the last decade. **** you, Mr. Mittens.:evil: