Puntabulous

Anyone who knows me knows I hate talking about politics, which is why you’ll never see me talking about them (it?) on here. This post is a list of things I find irritating about politics and things I find wrong with both parties. Examples I use should in no way be interpreted as my personal viewpoint or endorsement. Try and keep your comments general in regards to what you don’t like about politics and not about a specific party. It’s just not how I roll. So here goes.

Here are some things that bug me about politics:

The Extremes: Are there no republicans or democrats anymore? Why is everyone conservative or liberal?

The Insults: Whenever politicians want to prove that they’re just like us they either go to a seedy bar and drink a shot of whiskey, or go buck hunting. Is that all us average Americans are into? Drinking and hunting? Don’t you find that a tad insulting? How about taking a break from the campaign to see The Dark Knight? I’d be impressed!

The Debating: Is anyone ever gonna be like: “Oh! That’s why you think abortion should be illegal? I never thought of that before! I’m totally Pro-Life now!” No. Not gonna happen. So how about everyone just shuts their traps?

The Cattiness: A few years ago I heard someone on the train say: “Yeah, I’m gonna go see Passion of the Christ because I’m curious, but I’m gonna buy a ticket for another movie because I don’t want to show it any support.” Um, what? Don’t be a dick. Oh, and did you know that “Obama Nation” is a play on the word “Abomination”? I just figured that out. I’m a little slow.

The Hyperbole: “He scares the crap out of me!” Really? You know what scares me? People who punch kittens in the face. I’m pretty sure both candidates are really nice people. How about: “I really hope he doesn’t win.”

The Hypocrisy: “The children of the candidates are off limits!” Unless they’re pocket-sized and adorable and say cute things, or if they’re going off to fight in Iraq, or if they make good photo-ops.

The Definitions: I understand that by definition reporters are supposed to be impartial while commentators are allowed to be partial. But to me, anyone in the newspaper, or on the TV or radio giving me news is a reporter and shouldn’t be partial. You know what they say: “A rose by any other name would still have let go of Jack’s hand.” Or something.

The Life or Death Stakes: Oh my god! This is the most important election ever in the history of elections! Whoever wins, the world will implode upon itself just as the other party had tried to warn you about! Why didn’t you listen?! You bastard! Also, your life is so frakked up, that you need a new president to fix everything for you, which again goes back to the insulting aspect.

Okay fine, you want to know who I’m endorsing? I’m campaigning for a Michelle Obama/Sarah Palin co-president ticket, like some sort of Amazonian society that you’d see on episode of Star Trek. I bow down to our sassy overlords! And if they ever disagree on a topic, they can settle it with a bikini mud wrestling match. You say sexist, I say patriotic!

This post is a forum to discuss your outrage over this year’s Emmy nominations. For me, it’s the usual snubbing of Battlestar Galactica in the Acting and Best Drama categories that annoys me the most. Apparently people are upset about The Wire not being nominated as well, but I’ve never seen it. Which nominations (or lack thereof) grind your gears the most?

Or maybe we can just discuss the So You Think You Can Dance eliminations that took place last night instead.

1. Smokers who take smoke breaks at work. It was annoying when I was a bus boy and I had to clean up more tables because the other bus boys were taking their smoke break. But it’s possibly more annoying now, working in a New York City office building where the elevator ride makes each break a 20 minute excursion.

2. People who have enormous umbrellas. What? You can’t get a single drop on you? Seriously, next time it rains I’m going to take the umbrella from our patio furniture and go stomping down a crowded sidewalk and see how they like it.

3. I’m also not crazy about the 20 pounds I’ve gained in the last year. My mom can’t stop going on about how much she loves it and how much better I look. She should feel how I feel in my pants. Especially my jeans after they’ve come out of the wash! She also enjoys calling it the “secretary spread” because all I do is sit at my desk all day. Which makes me feel so much better about it. Maybe I need to start workin out? Or I could just wait until my pants can’t take it any longer and the button pops off and takes out someone’s eye and the state of New York mandates that I exercise for the good of public safety.

4. Two weeks until the next LOST? How come no one told me this before? I was left feeling cold and betrayed when the LOST announcer guy was like: “The season finale of LOST in two weeks! At a special time!”. Special, my ass! And how come I always write LOST in capital letters? It’s not like it’s anagram or anything. I guess it’s because of the wooshing logo in the beginning. And Lost just doesn’t look right.

5. Can you please just tell us when the second half of the current season of Battlestar Galactica will be airing? If you’re going to push it back to 2009, at least tell me now so I can prepare myself. I don’t do well when my TV schedule is thrust upon me without my prior consent (see above). As a public service I’d like to inform you that there is no Battlestar Galactica next week. They’re taking a break for Memorial Day. As if we actually do anything on Memorial Day weekend.

And just so I’m not a complete Negative Nellie today, here’s another Battlestar Galactica LOLCat:

How about you don’t drag your poor wife out on stage like some sort of show dog, while you announce to the world that you aren’t actually a prime example of Americana? I’m looking at you too McGreevy! And Craig! (Larry Craig, not me.)

Wouldn’t it be so much better if they were just like: “Yeah, my wife is staying at her mother’s for a while. We hope to work things out.” It seems so phony to have to stand there and pretend like things are great. What is this, the 1950’s? The committed wife is there to stand by her man, no matter what! Meanwhile she probably wants to rip his throat out. Look! She’s staring right at it, probably gauging her probability of success.

The same teacher who gives group projects to adult students with full time jobs and doesn’t give time in class to work together also said C.A.D. stood for “Computer Aided Drawings”.

He’s my Introduction to Construction Project Management teacher.

Just sayin.

Why do teachers always say that group projects prepare us for the real world? That reasoning may have worked when I was a naive high schooler and college student, but I’ve been in the real world for quite some time now, and it isn’t nearly as annoying as group projects.

Here are my usual team members:

1. The over-eager over-achiever who invents a new day so you can meet 8 times a week
2. The slacker who’s work you do and isn’t even nice about it
3. The girl (sorry girls, it’s usually you!) with zero opinion whatsoever
4. The foreign exchange student who doesn’t speak english

I’m taking night classes now for a professional certificate, and the teacher gave us a group project. Luckily, everyone this time around is pretty cool. But we all have full time jobs, we’re just taking these crappy night classes to make our resumes look better. We don’t have time to coordinate group projects, especially when you don’t give us time in class to work on the projects with our group. Arg!

Okay. Rant over.

When I was going to college in Binghamton, I worked as a cashier at a Price Chopper Supermarket. When I was cashiering, I would bust my ass and go as fast as I could. Not because I cared about my costumers. But because I wanted them to go away. So the faster I worked, the more they would go away. Sometimes if I went fast enough, my line would disappear altogether! Woo! I worked nights mostly, which is what made this feat feasible.

I don’t understand that about slow cashiers when I am a customer. Don’t you want me to go away and leave you alone? Why must you go so slow?

Anyway, not everyone can be as perfect as me. I was super fast and super friendly.

Unless you annoyed me. Then I was a nasty asshole.

For example, one time, this spanish speaking couple was on my line. As I was ringing them up, the wife went off to get pistachio nuts. She took forever. There was a huge line forming behind them and I didn’t want to back out their entire order to let the people behind them go ahead of them. So I locked up my register and went charging after her in the produce department and did my whole snotty cashier routine.

After I found her nuts (LOL!) she followed me back to the register. I continued to be a huffy queen while I checked them out.

She leaned into her husband and said a sentence that contained the word: “Impatziando”. (The spelling of said work is made up by me, since I’m not entirely certain of what I actually heard.)

I don’t speak spanish, but I was so mad I just assumed that “impatziando” meant “impatient” and assumed she was talking about me.

So after I bagged up their groceries (thanks for not helping!) I said in my most snotty, queeny, and huffy voice: “Sorry for being impatziando!”

They looked at me funny and left.

I got home and tried to look up “impatziando” but never found anything.

I am a stupid gringo.

Maybe this mysterious “impatziando” word means: “gorgeous, and greek god-like in appearance”.

Maybe not.

I hate when I’m in the bathroom at work. Sitting in the stall. Doing that thing you do when sitting in a bathroom stall. And you hear someone else come in, use the urinal, and then head straight for the door without washing their hands. And there I am. Sitting in the stall. Still doing that thing you do when sitting in a bathroom stall. Wishing I knew who didn’t wash their hands in order to avoid shaking them in the future.

Has anyone else noticed that YouTube has become a bit elitist lately? And I’m not talking about taking down all the copyrighted material. We all knew that was bound to happen. But I feel like in the old days (last year) you could go to the front page and watch a few videos and have a few laughs in a matter of two minutes. But these days all the “Featured Videos” are either:

1) Video Blog entries by people I don’t care about
2) Episodes of Internet Shows that you need to already be involved in to understand
3) Singers trying to jump start their careers

Take a look at the screenshot I took today:

Look at all those featured videos! The average length of all those is 3 minutes and 24 seconds. And not a single one is something short and fun I can watch at work with the volume down. What happened to short snippets like Sea Otters holding hands? It’s a minute and forty seconds. I can watch it at work. And it makes me smile. Why don’t they feature stuff for the little people anymore? Or you know, like, Spoofs of the A-Team, or something.

Am I alone on this?