Things that piss me off.

I know, it’s been a long stretch since my last entry, but it’s hard to find a Starbucks with wireless internet that doesn’t have my likeness on the wall. Many have given me up for dead, but this is hardly the case. Well, not entirely. The details are foggy, but the involvement of a German yachtsman is a certainty, and this haunts me. Images of him in his red and white striped shirt and little navel hat dancing around a flaming suitcase flash in front of my eyes whenever I think of tropically named cocktails in Polynesian designed drink-ware. The possible connections frighten me. Or perhaps it’s the that the barista looks like a fed I once burned on a coke deal. You just can’t trust the kind of people Starbucks hires these days.

But I digress. There never seems to be enough time think about all the things that really piss me off, although I think I have made some progress in that regard. To start with, People Who Say “Squozed” When They Mean “Squeezed”. Generally, these are the people that have enough trouble with existing words in the english language and they have no business inventing more. People Whose Cellphones Are Still Set To Corporate Branded Ringtones. What the fuck? Are you getting paid by Nokia for the advertising, or are just a lazy asshole? Not that the two are mutually exclusive. David Letterman. People At The Supermarket Who Pay By Check. These tend to be old people, very old people. They feel technically savvy for using a ball-point pen, and believe swiping a card can steal their wizened souls. In the time it takes the to pay for their groceries you could grow old enough to find yourself involuntarily reaching for your own check book.

These are all subjects I’ve spent sometime on and have for most part exorcised their poisons from my being. With the exception of David Letterman, which for reasons I won’t get into, I won’t get into. But the thing that today sucked me into a vortex of anger is the exclusion of the letters “X”, “Y” and “Z” from the naming convention applied to hurricanes. Currently the Florida coast is being threatened by Hurricane Wilma, the twenty third named Atlantic storm. After this, if some atmospheric anomaly has enough gusto to put the fear of God into the National Weather Service it will be named using the greek alphabet. How lame! Who wants to have their roof torn off by Hurricane Beta, when they could cry out “DAMN YOU HURRICANE XUXA! Why have you wrought this destruction upon me!”? Doesn't that have more of the drama you’d expect? More OOMF? More esprit du jour? And besides, once you got done with Hurricane Zdenek you could move on to historical figures with alliterated names, such as Betty Boop and Tiny Tim and Where’s Waldo! How much fun would that be!? But no! In the future historians are likely to think the country was ravaged by roaming hoard of drunken frat boys! Which brings me to George Bush. The man is simply a boob. What can be said about him here in this public forum that you wouldn’t rather pay a whore to say in private. Now I’m not some bleedingheartrightwingliberalpussy, but come on folks, he will end the world if he has his way. Does he even know that he is responsible for the whole country, not just Crawford, Texas? You half expect him to show up in a Tee-shirt reading “Someone toppled a sovereign nation and all I got was this stupid shirt”. I mean here’s a man who doesn't see the irony in calling himself both a “war president” and a “right to life president”. In some towns across America police cadets are given a special I.Q. test to make sure they are dumb enough not to get bored waiting to beat someone, so why can’t a similar wisdom be applied to the highest oblong office in the land? And no points for spelling your name correctly.

Well, I’ve gone on too long and the barista is looking at me over his shoulder and talking in to his sleeve, so I must leave now.

Until I can come up for air again, try to keep your nuts out of the fire.

X