Tuesday, December 23, 2008

festivus and the airing of grievances '08

Happy Festivus everyone! Looks like I'm just squeaking this entry in time. I was hoping to get some feats of strength in this year, but I'm way down in Orem.

Anyway, on to the Airing of Grievances!

1. The lack of straightforward HTML embed codes on some online videos
They may provide the embedding, but often they actually have the audacity to ask for my Blogger username and password. There's no way I'm volunteering that! Get over yourselves and just give me the straight code. I don't care if it's easier on everyone who wants to share specifically with Blogger or Wordpress or Facebook or whatever. Yeah, you're probably legit, but it sets a bad precedent. We should never be asked that information by a third party. One of these days when everyone's used to supplying their info, somebody's going to nab all our blogs and identities.

2. Apostrophe's in plural's
Lately it's gone catastrophic. This past year has been especially harsh for this mistreatment. Hardly any words are pluralized with an apostrophe. I believe that just about the only exception is when you pluralize specific letters of the alphabet. Speaking of...

3. E's ate thee ende ofe wordse
Sure it may seem classier to spell it "towne" or "centre" or "theatre," but it's simply wrong. Correctness trumps classy. Incorrect classy is simply sleazy. We fought a revolution with the British to fight the lame pretentious way they spell words, and we won, dammit! (You say: "Pretentious? Moi?")

4. Cars parked on the wrong side of the road
Cars go on the right. Remember that revolution thing? Yeah.

5. All the football players on the team pointing that they have possession of the ball after a fumble
Yeah. As if your pointing is going to affect what the ref finds out when he piles all the guys off the ball.

6. Writer's strike fallout
How lame is it that they didn't release the new Harry Potter in the fall? I don't even care much about Harry Potter and I think it's lame. They already marketed it for the fans for a fall release. Now they're just sitting on it because they have so little for next summer? Same goes for Star Trek. It's done. It's sitting somewhere. I can watch it. And here's the thing: it's supposed to be a winter movie. It's not a summer blockbuster. I like Star Trek because it doesn't belong to the masses. It belongs to me and my people in the middle of winter. I know, I know. It's good business. This year was a good movie year so they have to save some for next year so the investors will be happy. Fine. Good business. Fine. Hey, how's this for good business: DON'T SPIT IN THE FACE OF THE CUSTOMER!

7. Getting penalized for keeping an unregistered car at my house
I can understand why we need to register cars. It could be a dangerous car after all. It's simply not dangerous sitting at my own house. Look, don't ticket unregistered cars in residential areas, okay? If it's parked in a business area. Fine. Ticket.

8. Firefox refusing to update
For some reason this open-source wonder miracle of all browsers doesn't like me or my computer. Haven't tried lately, but the latest version is not being used on this computer. And the other computer's Firefox doesn't recognize generic Quicktime embeds. Sometimes IE is way easier (and it shouldn't be!).

9. Too much emphasis on momentum in sports
I hear the phrase too much. "This play is a real momentum-changer." Can't these athletes be a little zen about their work and take every individual play seriously regardless of the context? Maybe not, but at least try to get it in their heads, coaches and fans. Don't weigh the game entirely on single plays.

10. Goatees

11. Gears of War 2 controls
I love me some Gears, but I am so sick of doing a somersault into a crowd of monsters instead of doing what I WANTED to do which is hide behind a stack of sandbags.

12. Lack of Mr. Plow
Did the city cut its funding in this area? I seriously think they did. The roads are way less plowy than last year. And where's the salt? I haven't seen any.

13. U of U basketball jerseys
When did they change everyone's name on the team to "Utah?"

14. Fast food inconsistency
It's too hard to memorize where all the "good" Arby's and Wendy's restaurants are in the valley. Can't you organize the franchise management so that they're all good?

15. Cafe Rio getting my meal too fast
Hold on there senor. I don't automatically want everything on my salad. Wait for me to say I want shredded lettuce before you put the entire cabbage head on there. Pico is like biting into a living rabbit. Guacamole is green, putrid play-doh. I don't want any of that stuff. And it would be nice if half the meal wasn't cilantro.

16. Dvds that don't rip
Why does my ripping program fail with only some dvds? Look, I'm not running a piracy ring out of my basement. Just let me grab a couple of scenes. Remember that bit with the ax going through the door in the Halloween movie? Well it would have been waaaaaay better if I grabbed it from the actual Shining cd instead of YouTube.

17. Simple cruelty
We're so mean to each other. You know that, right? I think we don't even know how cruel we are. Sometimes it's easy to miss when constantly surrounded by idiocy. That's no excuse. We've all been the moron before. When surrounded by idiocy, be nice. Try to anyway. I HATE being nice. Seriously. It's just something that needs to be done, you know? And it's way easier when everyone else is doing it.

5 comments:

newby said...

the lack of plows has been a recent ranting point for me and chelsea. the provo/orem metropolitan area (prorem? orvo?) has gotten hit hard at the mere start of winter with nary a plow or plowed road to be seen. i've been driving to work/school/shopping everyday since it started to snow and have seen a grand total of 3 plows, 2 of which weren't even in service. the roads have been snowy/icy/slushy everyday, and the ineptitude of drivers multiplies exponentially in bad weather. my in-laws are in town from pennsylvania and are in "shock and awe" at the whole thing. way to drop the ball, orvo!

Steph said...

I totally agree on the writers strike. My big pet peeve about that is they still want you to pay full price for last seasons TV show DVDs when there are less episodes than a real season. I'm going to be super super ticked if the actors go on strike now.

Maria said...

Amen to Cafe Rio. I laughed out loud to your Gears of War grievance. I'm sorry you think people are so mean...maybe you need to hang out with nicer people?

dre said...

Please everyone, friends don't let friends wear goatees! And it's a word with an "e" at the end. Goatees are dumb, please stop growing them guys!

And Yes I hear the snow plows were cut in funding. It use to take 30 min to an hour for a plowed road, now it takes a few days.

Johnny 5 said...

I have a greivance. Airports and planes really suck the joy out of the holidays. The best deals always have five hour lay overs. Honestly, how does that encourage repeat customers? Plus, they charge you 50 dollars to change flights even though the plane leaving earlier isn't full. They can bump you to a different flight that makes you leave at 4 in the morning even though you had paid a little extra to leave later. No wonder the industry is going bankrupt! Finding a good ticket requires hours of looking at different sites. At JFK first class passengers have access to special rooms where they can view from above lowly peasants like me sitting below. This class based, elitist, system needs to go, really.