The List

[Hagar]

More and more often lately, I find myself getting royally pissed at everyday things, idiots and the general futility of it all. I don't consider myself old, but I can see myself heading down the dusty, narrow, rutted dirt track of thousands of grumpy old men before me.

So I started making a list.

(if you're not looking for a generally pointless wingeing rant, this is the bit where you click something else - you've been warned - don't complain later)

1. Idiot drivers
1a. Idiot drivers who still haven't figured out that a hands free kit is not only a legal necessity if you want to talk on the mobile phone while driving, it also makes it a shitload easier to talk and put on makeup/eat a cheesburger/read the paper/take notes/smoke if you've got a handsfree kit. Truckdrivers and housewives with unrestrained kids in the car - I'm looking at you here.

1b. The indicators are there for a reason, dickheads. So is that little warning light on the dash that says a brakelight bulb has blown. If you haven't got the little warning light, how about you take the initiative and check that your fucking brakelights work. I mean really, most cars have three brake lights these days, so how useless are you if you've let all three fail?

2. Mobile phones/phone reception. I already have a digital camera, internet and email access, an am/fm radio etc. I don't need another second rate crap one in my phone. How about making a thing that's just a phone, but at the same time, a GOOD phone, not jam-packed with all these bullshit un-necessary functions. And, how is it that you can be within direct line-of-site to a phone tower (that I know for a fact is the carrier that i'm with) and still suffer drop outs in exactly the same spot each time?
Here's a tip for you, Nokia - take out the extras and put in some mega big signal reception diode dealies and circuits and shit, and make it so the phone actually does what it was meant to do in the first place.

3. Graffiti. What has happened to good, politically motivated graffiti? It's been years since I've seen anything other than pointless, illigible tagging and ghetto inspired (albeit sometimes very talented) work. Taggers have to be the lowest possible form of human existance that still maintain the ability to walk upright. Suddenly "Foo was ere" looks like high art, at least you could read it.

4. Ricers/chavs/bevans. That big ass, indervidual rear spoiler you've stuck on your front wheel drive, underpowered shopping trolley of a car doesn't make you cool or phat or indervidual. It doesn't make you go faster either. Neither does the 60 kilos of subwoofer/amp in what's left of your boot space. And the fart cannon exhausts and under car neon lights - wankers' plumage - you're on the list too.

5. IT support staff. There was a time, about 15 years ago, when you were the only one who knew how cool it was to have a 57 terrabit gigafast server with a gazillion kb of ram, and you could avoid our (ie. the users)gaze and scutter off to your cubicle to play Doom and ignore our requests for email access fixes and other general help, such requests being, naturally, beneath your masterful abilities and not worthy of even a millisecond of your precious time. That time has passed. Remember that "Communication" subject you ignored at university? Time to dig out the old textbooks ( or just fucking Google it) and see what you're missing out on. BTW chicks dig eye contact, they don't dig Doom hi-scores.

6. Local idiot politicians. We've got a state election here in a couple of weeks, so every morning and afternoon, and all day on weekends, we get to see the local candidates standing by the side of busy roads, flanked by a couple of their campaign signs, waving at us. This does not make me want to vote for them. I don't consider waving an important ability for a politician. Waving is an important ability for those guys with the orange ping-pong bats that guide in planes, not political candidates. Go and do some community work, dickheads. Take a camera crew and the local media if you have to, but get the fuck off my footpaths. The only thing that these waving wombats have convinced me of is that they are so much uglier in the flesh than they are in their campaign signs. Stop it now. You're on the list.


I'm sure there'll be more. Feel free to add you own.