Things that are annoying me

2/11/10

Normally, I am pretty easy going.  But in the past few days there have been several things that have REALLY annoyed me.  And, I feel sort of petty about some of them, because, they don’t really matter all that much. But they are all REALLY annoying.  So here we go.

1) Why do I need scissors now to open up everything?  It used to be that I could just tear a package open.  Now, everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, requires scissors.  I appreciate that the packaging is better and less flimsy, but I don’t like needing to pack scissors with me on a picnic to get into the tube of jello we packed. Seriously, can people in packaging do a little less well at their job and make things that you can actually get into.  I can’t remember the last time I was able to tear something along the dotted line where it says tear.  They don’t tear anymore.  There is no perforation.  You need scissors and that is just annoying.

2) Politically Correct speech taken too far annoys me.  And no, I am not talking about Sarah Palin’s valid concerns about the word ‘retard – which I do think is offensive.  What I am talking about is PC attempts that simply transpose the language to make it more awkward to say things as if that improves anything. This week I was party to an online dialogue where someone told a person with an autistic child that she shouldn’t refer to her child as an autistic child as she had, but should instead refer to her child as a child with autism because ‘autistic child’ is apparently offensive and ‘child with autism’ isn’t.  Seriously.  I don’t know why this annoys me so much, but if all you are going to do is make it more difficult to say something but use the exact same words to say it then you are accomplishing nothing!  As long as the parent isn’t referring to their child in a disparaging way, who the heck cares!  The offended individual then went on to tell another woman who is high functioning autistic with 2 high functioning autistic children that she was totally out of line for thinking the term autistic child was just fine as she couldn’t possibly know how hard it is to defend children with autism.  And yes, this woman had made it clear that she is an autistic person with 2 autistic children before this idiot launched into her.  (Sigh).  Stupid people with issues annoy me.  Let’s just leave it at that.

3) Conservatives bashing liberals despite the evidence annoys me. Gerard Alexander wrote an article for the Washington Post where he asked why are liberals so condescending?  In his article he goes through the litany of liberal complaints about conservatives.  Which is that they lie, don’t play fair, play the fear card, engage in duplicitous conspiracies to get their way politically and refuse to work in a bi-partisan manner in the best interests of the country.   His litany of complaints liberals have against conservative leaders is accurate.  What was annoying was that he acted as if those complaints didn’t have any validity.  Which they clearly do.  He didn’t provide a single piece of evidence to counter these claims. Not one. I understand that it is upsetting to be called a liar. But it is only innappropriate for the other side to call you a liar if you are not lying. If you are lying, then your attempts to try and paint the person calling you a liar is a bit duplicitious - which is again - one of the liberal complaints - so - thank you Gerard Alexander for giving us a prime example of why liberals dislike conservatives so much. If you want to prove liberals are out of line when they call conservatives liars, then you need to prove that you told the truth and didn't lie. And I am sorry that this upsets Gerard, but it is hard for me to consider calling a liar a liar as condescending.  If conservative intellectuals want liberal intellectuals to respect them more, then perhaps they should start telling the truth.  Or at least as intellectual leaders of the movement they should be willing to speak out against the most obvious of the lies told by people in their movement.  Their failure to do so speaks poorly of them. Quite honestly, Alexander’s attempt to make me feel bad because I dislike people who lie to me annoys me. And the fact he is trying to obscure the real issue - which is that conservative leaders are lying through their teeth about just about everything annoys me.  

4) People who do drugs are stupid and annoy me.  Seriously.  In my paper today in Florida, I saw an article about Manhattan Beach.  I was excited there was a story about where I grew up until I realized that it was about some idiot who was high on drugs who needed a clean urine sample for a drug test and tried to get one by going into a grammar school bathroom and trying to buy some urine from a 3rd grade boy.   Only someone who is high would think that trying to buy clean urine from a 3rd grader in a school bathroom is logical.  Don’t do drugs, they make you REALLY stupid and that annoys me.

5) Torture annoys me.  And the fact the Bush administration did it annoys me.  And the fact that we haven’t prosecuted those jerks for breaking the law annoys me.  Today, the British released a memo that shows we did indeed torture a British citizen.  And our state department is acting as if – whoa – we aren’t going to share intel with you anymore because you let the cat out of the bag and let the world know we tortured this guy so we can’t trust you to keep our secrets anymore.  Seriously?  At this point we all know that the Bush administration tortured people.  The only question being discussed is whether we should prosecute them or not.  And that shouldn’t be a matter of debate.  Of course we should!  THEY BROKE THE LAW AND DID SOMETHING HORRIBLE!  Prosecute the buggers.  I am getting seriously tired of this merry go round.  Let’s just bring them to court and get it over with and stop pretending that what happened wasn’t that bad.  IT WAS!  At some point these guys need to answer for their crimes in a court of law and the sooner we accept that the better. It is embarrassing me and therefore annoying me that our government is still dancing around this issue as if hiding the facts on this is going to do us any good. We need to man up to our collective crimes, take our punishment and promise not to do it again. Anything else is just us being wusses and that seriously annoys me.