Non Sequiturs Abound

Blogs were invented for enhancing the public discourse, i.e. making exhaustive lists of the piddly things that irritate you, right? Of course, I'm far too sweet-natured and life-affirming for such negativity, so instead let's discuss Some Random Crap That's Currently Eating Away at the Fraying Fibers of my Rapidly Decaying Soul. I can feel that positive energy flowing already.

1. The driver who seems to end up in front of me every morning and appears to require an engraved invitation before she feels comfortable merging. To her, Route 9 is a black tie gala and she's hovering coyly on the sidelines waiting for one of the other motorists to ask her to dance. I can't think of any rational explanation for why a fully awake and cognitively intact human being would choose rush hour as the opportune time to sit and stare at the cars passing her by, when between each of them is a yawning black hole large enough to comfortably contain a medium-sized planet (what's up, Neptune).

2. The Pussycat Dolls. To be fair, I have a deep love for kitsch in all aspects of life, but that music is about as tacky as it gets. I'm not talking using the wrong fork and forgetting to send thank you notes tacky, more like not keeping up payments to your heroin dealer and calling INS on your baby daddy's new girlfriend tacky. I'd say it's music to strip to, but I think that's exactly what they're going for. So, okay, it's music to get gonorrhea and a gunshot wound to. It's the same sort of reason that I can't watch Desperate Housewives: it's trying to be over the top and in on the joke, but instead it IS the joke, and you just feel dirty and kind of sorry for them.

3. A manager at Bath and Body Works who immediately, to her credit, recognized me as a product whore and then tried to get Party Jen and I to work there, as all crazed retail managers try to do this time of year. I attempted to explain that I don't live in that town and I already have a job. Then she came at me with, "Thirty percent discount, baby girl!" Even Jen, who would be polite to an inanimate object, just walked away from her. I'm not aproning up for you, B&BW. You may have cornered the market on antibacterial soap, but you're no Beauty and Main. That's right, I said it. Baby girl.

4. When I'm stuck in traffic and some fun song comes on the radio and I can't properly sing along because there's another car right next to me, or there's a person walking down the street next to my car, and I don't want them to catch me belting out "DO YOU TAKE SUGAR, ONE LUMP OR TWO?" so I have to sit there and act reasonable and not like a person who car dances and then I miss the moment entirely.

5. People who state the obvious, even when it's well-intentioned, like it's a novel idea. "I just think that we need to support the troops, even if we don't support the war. You know what I mean?" Hmm, you've lost me, please elaborate. If it's already on a bumper sticker, no need to reiterate.

6. I decided to have a Halloween party... well, if we're being honest, Steve told me that he was thinking of having one, and I stole it from him. I made the compelling argument that most everyone he was inviting lives a lot closer to me (and some people on his guest list were "that friend of yours, what's-her-name"). I used pie charts and Power Point and I successfully partylifted the event. I guess I was just motivated by the power struggle because immediately afterwards I remembered that I hate parties. Awe-some.