start me up!

I hate this crap, so you oughta hate it too!

Entertainment

• popular songs remixed to have a disco beat (man, you can't dance to Coldplay, pictured)
• radio announcers who say stupid things instead of just playing the music (why isn't the music the most important part any more?)
• sports-talk hosts who froth at the mouth
• legions of unimaginative people trying to knock off anything that works (e.g. reality shows)
• idiots being worshipped by the public (e.g. Paris Hilton)
• great shows that go about two minutes between commercials (e.g. "24")
• great shows that only air once, so if you miss it you're screwed (e.g. "Gray's Anatomy")
• commercials for the same turds over and over (e.g. Sci-Fi Channel movies)

Driving

• people turning right in front of me when I have half a mile of empty road behind me
• people not knowing where they are going right in front of me
• people playing their obnoxious music at full blast out of their open car windows

Workplace

• meetings that are unnecessary, over-long, poorly organized, or covering a topic that could've been handled by e-mail
• "required" duties you're never told about until after you don't do them
• co-workers who need you to help them with stuff you haven't got time to do (e.g. unjamming the copy machine)
• letting good ideas die
• letting good experience retire or quit without being passed on

Waiting

• waiting in a doctor's office
• waiting at red lights
• waiting in grocery lines
• waiting for computers to respond
• waiting for elevators

Schools

• students doing just about anything other than what they are supposed to do
• students who ignore what's going on in class until they need to know it, and then ask to be taught again
• teaching to tests
• copy machines jamming
• unreasonable parents
• unreasonable teachers
• unreasonable students
• unreasonable sdministrators
• levies
• property taxes

Politics

• a few getting richer and richer while more and more of us barely get by
• lies
• thinking a win, however close, means a mandate to do whatever you want to screw the country
• activist voters who piss and moan about the state of the country, and snipe at elected officials, without offering a single suggestion for real improvement

Entrepreneurs

• thinking they have no competition (this is Kawasaki's lie #6, paraphrased)
• thinking their sales will grow without bound indefinitely (this is Kawasaki's lie #2, paraphrased)
• not recording a good idea
• not learning the lesson of a bad idea
• spending money on a nice ride, or a well-stocked refrigerator, or a game room, or anything that's not contributing to the mission (this is described wonderfully in Ryan, M. "Digital Debacle." Smart Business, 11.2000, which is unfortunately apparently not available online)
• thinking they can sell through spam

Myself

• having to do things over again because I didn't do them right the first time
• losing stuff
• forgetting stuff
• dropping stuff
• breaking stuff
• lies (my own this time)
• people (including myself) thinking about what they're going to say next instead of listening
• having enough leisure (just enough in this case) and willingness to ponder over what I hate

:-) :-) :-)

Labels: diversions

posted by Ron @ 8:15 PM