Things I don't like.

(And now, by popular demand, things I do like!)

• People who are tanned in the winter, without having been anywhere near a beach.  (What part of intentionally laying under strong artificial UV radiation seems like a good idea?)
  
  
• The bumper sticker (et alia) that says "Keep your laws off my body."  I have an idea for you then: "Get your body out of our country."
  
  
• PEOPLE WHO YELL FOR NO REASON on messageboards or in emails.
  
  
• When you get lost driving somewhere, and you stop at a gas station to ask for help, and the guy goes "oh yeah, you just go down the road and hang a left, can't miss it." Right, buddy. If I "can't miss it" then I wouldn't be in here asking you for directions, now would I?
  
  
• People who aren't brave enough to sign their name when they post messages on websites or newsgroups.
  
  
• Roommates who always dip their fingers in crisco right before pressing buttons on the microwave.
  
  
• People who are anti-war because it's trendy, who obviously haven't though it through for themselves, or who believe that freedom and safety have EVER been achieved without the struggles of war.  War is a necessary process of the human condition, and there are cases where it is the only way to resolve a dispute among nations, or the only way to preserve the freedom and safety of nations.  You can live as an idealist in your own little reality, but in the real world people need to solve problems.  Pretending that absolutely anything can be achieved through "peaceful protests" will not cause real-world problems to disappear.
  
  
• Olives.
  
  
• Gaper delays.  It's just senseless stupidity, and it's making me late.
  
  
• People who mutter to themselves during exams.  You're either so selfish that you have no concern for the people around you, or you're so self-absorbed that you're oblivious to the fact that there ARE people around you.
  
  
• Things made out of hemp, and people who think they're so cool for wearing things made out of hemp.
  
  
• When people for whom English is a secondary language get jobs where their primary task involves communicating with Americans.  That is so insanely idiotic, and it happens all the time: salesmen, professors, tech support personnel... this is AMERICA, and we speak AMERICAN ENGLISH here, so if you don't speak that language well, then you shouldn't have a job that requires you to speak it to other people.
  
  
• Websites with pop-up advertisements, or websites where the whole page is inside a popup.  (Fortunately, I use mozilla so I haven't actually seen a popup in a long time.)
  
  
• Internet Explorer.  It displays pages inaccurately, it allows unrequested popup windows, it only runs on Windows and Macintosh... it's just horrible.  The worst part is, it's so popular that most "web designers" don't test their pages in any other browsers... and since IE lets you write broken code and still displays the page, the result is that 90% of webpages are broken and don't display in any browser except IE.  Grrr... anyway, the browser that you should be using is mozilla.  It's free, runs on just about anything, blocks unrequested popups, and best of all, it displays webpages correctly!  So tell your friends!
  
  
• "Fast food", because it's neither.
  
  
• Feminism, liberalism, and liberal feminist colleges.
  
  
• People who try to be like everyone else, and people who try to be different.
  
  
• When people try to use an apostrophe to pluralize a word.  The plural of shoe is shoes, not shoe's.  Same for CD, it's CDs, not CD's.  Same for every other word!  If you or someone you know has been abusing the apostrophe, please, share the truth about this.  The apostrophe is for contractions, like you're = you are, they're = they are, etc... and for posession, like Anthony's website, dad's truck, etc.  It is simply mind-boggling how many intelligent people cannot properly utilize the apostrophe.
  
  
• Instant Messenger / messageboard "smiley" icons.  Those things are so gay.  A plain old text   : )   is a million times better.
  
  
• Obnoxious software like RealPlayer.  Ugh, that program is so evil.  It tries to take over your computer, installing shortcuts to itself everywhere, insisting on running all the time regardless of whether you want it to, and giving you about ninteen "are you sures" when you try to disable it.  Any programmer who had anything to do with that piece of spyware/bloatware/junkware should be forever forbidden from programming anything else ever again.
  
  
• People who believe it's appropriate to use their own personal fork when taking a piece of food out of a serving dish.
  
  
• When a little bird is in the road in front of my car, and it just sits there until the very last minute, and then flies away, so that I get all worried like I'm gonna hit the poor thing.
  
  
• When people type "u" and "r" instead of "you" and "are".
  
  
• Gigantic, slow-moving vehicles that drive in the passing lane without passing anyone.  If you have more than 10 wheels, then YOU DON'T BELONG IN THE PASSING LANE.  Am I the only person who understands these important things?
  
  
• Any vehicle that drives in the passing lane without passing anyone.  They're not paying attention, or they don't know motor vehicle laws... either way, they don't belong on the road.
  
  
• When people feel the need to dress or act or talk a certain way, in order to give their lives purpose and meaning by identifying with some trend.
  
  
• (For example) when people wear dog collars.
  
  
• When people "interpret" the Bible to suit their own personal ideas and beliefs.  98.32% of the Bible doesn't require any interpretation.  It says what it says and that's what it means.  If your religion requires someone to tell you what the Bible means, that's a good sign that your religion is a cult.  God wrote it for every person to read.  He didn't make it confusing, and he didn't write one thing but mean something else.  You wouldn't pick up a book at the library and read it, assuming that what you're reading is figurative.  No, you'd assume that it means what it says unless the context indicates otherwise.  So where do people get the idea that the whole Bible needs to be "interpreted"?  It doesn't!  God even told us that he is "not the author of confusion" and that "no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation".  If you're gonna read it, then believe it... and if you don't believe it, don't make up stories about what it says.
  
  
• Cars with loud mufflers and weak engines.
  
  
• When people complain about their weight, and decide to go on a diet to remedy the situation.  This mindset is all wrong and totally illogical.  If you're unhappy with your weight, then you need to change your eating habits permanently (i.e., eat better all the time, not just "go on a diet" for a while), and EXERCISE MORE.  The whole reason we eat food is to get energy to power our muscles to cause MOTION.  You can't be suprised that you're not losing weight if you're not exercising a bunch every day.
  
  
• Girls with foul mouths.
  
  
• People who say "I love you" to every person in every relationship they've ever been in.  Also, when such people say it after an absurdly short period of time into the relationship, like a few weeks.
  
  
• Non-KingJames versions of the bible.  Not only do they confuse and mislead people by disagreeing with eachother and extant manuscripts on important issues (which is certainly bad enough), but they treat you like a moron by dumbing down the text so much.  These modern books read more like storybooks than like the beautiful Words of God that is the King James bible.  Just because our society speaks sloppy English, that's no excuse not to learn real English, especially for such an important reason as the Word of God.
  
  
• Websites with dark backgrounds and dark text... or light backgrounds and light text.
  
  
• Smoking.  Smoking has been killing hundreds of thousands of people per year for decades, and it's still legal.  That is just stupid, there isn't any other way to describe it.  But since we can't make it instantly illegal (there isn't enough room in the world's prisons), we need to 1) put a 100% tax on cigarettes, so that people will eventually get the hint, and they can pay for some of the damage they're causing in the process, and 2) gradually reduce the amount of addictive chemicals in cigarettes until it goes to zero, so that the problem WILL eventually go away for good.  In the meantime, make it as inconvenient as possible for people to smoke -- no smoking indoors anywhere, no smoking at sports events or concerts, etc.  It causes cancer and a host of other diseases, it stinks horribly, it kills people... there is absolutely no reason that smokers should be allowed to inflict those things on other people by smoking around them.
  
  
• When people type "kewl" instead of "cool".  Except for Nate, because he's been doing it for years, before all the 13-year-olds on the planet started doing it.
  
  
• Neighbors who smoke outside, and thereby cause the smoke from their cancerous filth to enter MY lungs.
  
  
• "VITAMIN X ADDED!!!!" in my food.  I don't want vitamin C added to my ketchup, and I don't want calcium added to my orange juice.  I don't want anything there that wasn't there in the first place -- it doesn't belong there, and it doesn't taste the same.
  
  
• Instant Messenger profiles that never change.  And websites that never change.
  
  
• Websites that alter the status bar so you can't tell where a link goes to.
  
  
• Girls who whine about "equality for women."  Equal means "the same" and clearly, men and women are not the same, and it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to be the same.  If you want to whine and be maniacal about something, at least know what the heck you're talking about, and define your terms properly.
  
  
• The word homophobia.  Let's be honest, no one's really scared of gay people.  It's a loaded word used by gay and pro-gay people to put down those who think it's wrong to be gay.  If they wanted to be honest, they'd say "that person thinks it's wrong to be gay," instead of "that person is homophobic," but who wants to be honest nowadays.
  
  
• Cheap paper towels that don't tear on the perforations.
  
  
• Cheap paper towels period.  The $5/year that you save by not buying Bounty isn't worth the aggravation of a year's worth of sub-par paper towel performance.