Things That Really Annoy Me

"I go from exasperation to a state of collapse, then I recover and go from prostration to Fury, so that my average state is one of being annoyed." Gustave Flaubert

With thanks to George Carlin and my sister Judy I put together a list of my own.

The pop-up ad for classmates.com. There's a reason you don't talk to people for 25 years -- because you didn't like them in the first place. Besides, I already know what the captain of the football team is doing these days: mowing my lawn or selling you insurance.

Buying food through a window (except Pat's steaks). People were shocked that a human finger was found in a bowl of Wendy's chili. Hey, it cost less than a dollar. What did they expect it to contain, Chilean Sea Bass?

[There was one here I removed, thanks to a Reality Check from Citizen Mom.]

Men who collect baseball cards. If you're a kid, the cards are keepsakes of your idols. If you're a grown man, they're pictures of men. Nuff said.

"Sculptured" eyebrows. Ladies, here's how much men care about our eyebrows: do we have two of them? That's it.

Flavored water. Water is water, period. Anything else is a soft drink. You want flavored water, pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. Now that's flavored water.

The Starbucks cult. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a "decaf grande half soy, half low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot cappuccino with one Sweet-n'-Low," you are not someone I want to know. It's coffee for cryin out loud, not a new car.

Turning customers into cashiers. By the time I slide my card, enter my PIN number, press "Okay," verify the amount, decide if I want cash back and press "Okay" again, the kid who's supposed to be ringing me up is standing there eating my Mars bar.

Young women with Chinese character tattoos. They do not make you spiritual. They make you look like trailer trash. (And they will look even stupider when you're 60.) Tattoos are not spiritual or hip. They're just evidence you have no taste.

Competitive eating. Eating to excess isn't a sport. It's one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Binging and purging is already a life-threatening epidemic, we don't need to ratify self-destructive behavior by showing it on ESPN.

Mega M&M's. Half the fun of eating M&M's is the piece by piece rush. If I'm that hungry for M&Ms, I'll eat half a bag anyway. And if I want a bigger bite of candy, I'll buy a Snickers.

Movies based on lame old television shows. Just because Jessica Simpson needs a job doesn't mean we have to be subjected to recycled schlock. Let's remember the reason something was a television show in the first place is that the idea wasn't good enough to be a movie.

Gift registries. They used to be just for weddings. Now they're for babies and new homes and graduations from rehab. Picking out stuff you want and having other people buy it for you isn't gift giving, it's the lifestyle of Paris Hilton.

$2000 baby strollers. Speaking of Paris Hilton... No baby on the face of the earth needs a stroller with its own mortgage. Buy something safe and sensible for 200 bucks or less and put the rest in your kid's college fund. He won't give a damn about the cost of his stroller when he's stuck in the local community college.

People who drive while talking on cell phones. You are a serious danger to the rest of us and should be shot.